Lecture 7. German classical philosophy

1. Kant's transcendental dialectic as the doctrine of the mind and its purposes.

2. The dialectic of "I" and "non-self" in the doctrine of Fichte.

3. Hegel: the identity of being and thinking.

4. Feuerbach: the unity of being and thinking.

German Idealism is a philosophical movement centred in Germany during the Age of Enlightenment of the late 18th and early 19th Century. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant and is closely linked with the Romanticism movement. It is sometimes referred to as Kantianism (although that more correctly also involves acceptance of Kant’s ethical and epistemological views).

Other than Kant himself, the main contributors (who all had their own versions of Kant's theory, some close in nature and some quite distinct) were Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and (arguably) Arthur Schopenhauer, and additionally Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Although essentially a German movement, the Swiss-French writer and philosopher Madame de Stael (1766-1817) introduced (in her famous book "De l'Allemagne") the works of Kant and the German Idealists to French thinkers, who were still largely under the influence of John Locke at that time.

In general terms, Idealism is the theory that fundamental reality is made up of ideas or thoughts. It holds that the only thing actually knowable is consciousness (or mental entities), and that we can never really be sure that matter or anything in the outside world actually exists. The concept of Idealism arguably dates back to Plato, and reached a peak with the pure Idealism of Bishop George Berkeley in the early 18th Century.

In the 1780s and 1790s, Immanuel Kant tried to bridge the two dominant philosophical schools of the 18th Century: Rationalism (which held that knowledge could be attained by reason alone, a priori), and Empiricism (which held that knowledge could be arrived at only through the senses, a posteriori). Kant's Transcendental Idealism claims that we know more than Berkeley's ideas in our minds, in that we also directly know of at least the possibility of "noumena" ("things-in-themselves"), which are both empirically and transcendentally real even if they cannot be directly and immediately known. The actual "phenomena" which we perceive and which we think we know are really just the way things appear to us and not necessarily real.

Other German philosophers of the time used Kant's work as a starting point, adding in their own interpretations and biases. As a movement, it was not one of agreement (although there was some common ground), and each successive contributor rejected at least some of the theories of their predecessors. Many of the German Idealists who followed Kant, effectively tried to reverse Kant's refutation of all speculative theology and reinstate notions of faith and belief in their explanations of what exists beyond experience, a trend which was continued later in the 19th Century by the American Transcendentalists.

Jacobi, although in agreement with Kant that the objective thing-in-itself cannot be directly known, tried to legitimized belief and its theological associations by presenting the external world as an object of faith, even if logically unproven. Schulze tried to use Kant's own reasoning to disprove the existence of the "thing-in-itself", arguing that it cannot be the cause of an idea or image of a thing in the mind. Following from Schulze's criticism of the notion of a "thing-in-itself", Fichte asserted that there is no external thing-in-itself that produces the ideas, but our representations, ideas or mental images are merely the productions of ourego, or "knowing subject". Schelling's view was that the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended objects which are external to the mind ("absolute identity"), so that there is no difference between the subjective and the objective. Schleiermacher's variation was that the ideal and the real do not have a productive or causal effect on each other, but are united and manifested in the transcendental entity which is God.

Another German Idealist, Hegel, claimed that pure abstract thought (as in Kant's formulations) is limited and leads to unsolvable contradictions. In order to overcome these shortcomings, Hegel introduced the integral importance of history and of the "Other" person in the awakening of self-consciousness. In the process, he established a whole new movement of Hegelianism, which in turn was hugely influential in the later development of continental Philosophy, Marxism and (by virtue of its opposition to Hegel) Analytic Philosophy.

Schopenhauer claimed that Kant's noumenon is the same as Will, or at least that Will is the most immediate manifestation of the noumenon that we can experience. He saw the "will-to-life" (a fundamental drive intertwined with desire) as the driving force of the world, prior to thought and even prior to being.

Kant's major contribution to Ethics was the theory of the Categorical Imperative, that we should act only in such a way that we would want our actions to become a universal law, applicable to everyone in a similar situation (Moral Universalism) and that we should treat other individuals as ends in themselves, not as mere means (Moral Absolutism), even if that means sacrificing the greater good.

Kant believed that any attempts to prove God's existence are just a waste of time, because our concepts only work properly in the empirical world (which God is above and beyond), although he also argued that it was not irrational to believe in something that clearly cannot be proven either way (Fideism).

In the Modern period, Kantianism gave rise to the German Idealists, each of whom had their own interpretations of Kant's ideas.

J. Fichte, for example, rejected Kant's separation of "things in themselves" and things "as they appear to us" (which he saw as an invitation to Skepticism), although he did accept that consciousness of the self depends on the existence of something that is not part of the self (his famous "I / not-I" distinction).

J.G. Fichte (1762-1814) was a German philosopher, and one of the founding figures of the German Idealism and Kantianism movements in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. At one time perceived merely as a bridge between the ideas of Kant and Hegel, he has since begun to be appreciated as an important philosopher in his own right, with original insights into the nature of self-awareness. Fichte's later Political Philosophy also contributed to the rise of German Nationalism. He is thought of by some as the father of German Nationalism.

After the publication of some radical works defending the principles of the French Revolution in 1793, Fichte began working in earnest on the formulation of his philosophy of Wissenschaftslehre which he continued to revise for most of the rest of his life. He saw it as a search for new foundations for Kant's Critical philosophy, although never as a repudiation of Kantianism. Following on from the "Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre" of 1794/5, came "Foundations of Natural Right Based on the Wissenschaftslehre", 1796/7 and "System of Ethical Theory Based on the Wissenschaftslehre", 1798. Other re-formulations, explanations and digests followed.

F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854) was a German philosopher, and one of the quintessential figures of the German Idealism and Romanticism movements in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. His views arguably always focused on a few common themes, especially human freedom, the absolute, and the relationship between spirit and nature.

Always a champion of Romanticism, he advocated a philosophy which emphasized intuition over reason, and which held the aesthetic and creative imagination as the highest values. Schelling's philosophy constituted a unique form of Idealism, known as Aesthetic Idealism.

Schelling's conception of "Naturphilosophie" has not fared well at the hands of modern science, which has roundly criticized his fragmentary knowledge of contemporary science, and his lack of intellectual rigour, but some of his thoughts are nevertheless original and valuable.

The most influential of the German Idealists, though, was Hegel (1770-1831), a philosopher of the early Modern period. He was a leading figure in the German Idealism movement in the early 19th Century, although his ideas went far beyond earlier Kantianism, and he founded his own school of Hegelianism. He has been called the "Aristotle of modern times", and he used his system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion. Despite charges of obscurantism and "pseudo-philosophy", Hegel is often considered the summit of early 19th Century German thought.

His influence has been immense, both within philosophy and in the other sciences, and he came to have a profound impact on many future philosophical schools (whether they supported or opposed his ideas), not the least of which was the marxism of K. Marx which was to have so profound an effect on the political landscape of the 20th Century. Although his works have a reputation for abstractness and difficulty, Hegel is often considered the summit of early 19th Century German thought, and his influence was profound.

He extended Aristotle's process of dialectic (resolving a thesis and its opposing antithesis into a synthesis) to apply to the real world – including the whole of history – in an on-going process of conflict resolution towards what he called the Absolute Idea. However, he stressed that what is really changing in this process is the underlying "Geist" (mind, spirit, soul), and he saw each person's individual consciousness as being part of an Absolute Mind (sometimes referred to as Absolute Idealism).

His works have a reputation for their abstractness and difficulty. These difficulties are magnified for those reading him in translation, since his philosophical language and terminology in German often do not have direct analogues in other languages (e.g. his essential term "Geist" is usually translated as "mind" or "spirit", but these still do not cover the full depth of meaning of the word).

However, the traditional triadic dialectical interpretation of Hegel's approach (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) is perhaps too simplistic. From Hegel's point of view, analysis of any apparently simple identity or unity reveals underlying inner contradictions, and it is these contradictions that lead to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself, and its development into a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradictions.

For a number of years in the mid-nineteenth century Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) played an important role in the history of post-Hegelian German philosophy, and in the transition from idealism to various forms of naturalism, materialism and positivism that is one of the most notable developments of this period.

That Feuerbach never accepted Hegel’s characterization of Christianity as the consummate religion is clear from the contents of a letter he sent to Hegel along with his dissertation in 1828. In this letter he identified the historical task remaining in the wake of Hegel’s philosophical achievement to be the establishment of the “sole sovereignty of reason” in a “kingdom of the Idea” that would inaugurate a new spiritual dispensation.

Feuerbach’s basic objection to the theistic conception of God and his relation to creation is that, on it, both are conceived as equally spiritless. Feuerbach argues that nature contains within itself the principle of its own development.

Feuerbach’s central claim in The Essence of Christianity is that religion is an alienated form of human self-consciousness insofar as it involves the relation of human beings to their own essence as though to a being distinct from themselves.

In the years following the appearance of The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach published two short philosophical manifestos, the “ Preliminary Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy ” (1842) and the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), in which he called for a radical break with the tradition of modern speculative thought. In Principles he locates the origin of this tradition in the Cartesian philosophy, and specifically in “the abstraction from the sensuous, from matter” through which the conception of the cogito first arose.

 

Required reading:

1. Russell, B: "A History of Western Philosophy", page xi. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1972

2. Fichte, J.G. Foundations of Natural Right, ed. Frederick Neuhouser, trans. Michael Baur, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

3. Schelling, F.W.J. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: as Introduction to the Study of this Science, translated by E.E. Harris and P. Heath, introduction R. Stern, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

4. Schelling, F.W.J. Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, translated with an introduction by M. Vater, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.

5. Schelling, F.W.J. On the History of Modern Philosophy, translation and introduction by A. Bowie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

6. Hegel, G. W. F., 1991, The Encyclopedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting & H. S. Harris, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett.

7. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller, 1977, tr. by Terry Pinkard, 2012.

8. Hegel, G. W. F. Science of Logic, tr. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers, 2 vols., 1929; tr. A. V. Miller, 1969; tr. George di Giovanni, 2010

9. Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, tr. T. M. Knox, 1942; tr. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood, 1991

10. Feuerbach, L.A. Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. M. Vogel with an intro by T. E. Wartenberg, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986.

11. Feuerbach, L.A. Thoughts on Death and Immortality from the Papers of a Thinker, trans. with intro and notes by J. A. Massey, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

 

Optional reading:

1. Ameriks, K., 2000, “The Legacy of Idealism in the Philosophy of Feuerbach, Marx, and Kierkegaard,” in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, K. Ameriks (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 258–281.

2. Bishop, P., 2009, “Eudaimonism, Hedonism and Feuerbach’s Philosophy of the Future,” Intellectual History Review, 19(1): 65–81.

3. Breckman, W. 1999, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4. Gooch, T., 2011, “Some Political Implications of Feuerbach’s Theory of Religion,” in D. Moggach (ed.), Politics, Religion, and Art: Hegelian Debates, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 257–280.

5. Gooch, T., 2013, “‘Bruno Reincarnate’: The Early Feuerbach on God, Love and Death,” Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte, 20(1): 1–23.

6. Harvey, V. A., 2009, “Ludwig Feuerbach,” in G. R. Oppy and N. Trakakis (eds.), The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, v. 4, New York: Oxford University Press, 133–144.

Marxism

1. Materialistic character of Marx’s dialectics.

2. Basic ideas of the social doctrine of Marxism.

 

Marxism, the philosophical and political school or tradition his work gave rise to, is a variety of radical or revolutionary Socialism conceived as a reaction against the rampant Capitalism and Liberalism of 19th Century Europe, with working class self-emancipation as its goal. Among other things, he is known for his analysis of history (particularly his concept of historical materialism) and the search for a systemic understanding of socioeconomic change.

Marxism is an economic and social system derived from the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1829-1895). It is atheoretical-practical framework based on the analysis of "the conflicts between the powerful and the subjugated" with working class self-emancipation as its goal. It asserts that the Capitalist mode of production enables the bourgeoisie (or owners of capital) to exploit the proletariat (or workers) and that class struggle by the proletariat must be the central element in social and historical change. According to Marx, a socialist revolution must occur, in order to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" with the ulimate goal of public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

Classical Marxism is a variety of Socialism and provides the intellectual base for various forms of Communism. It was conceived (as to some extent was Anarchism) as a reaction against the rampant Capitalism and Liberalism of 19th Century Europe. It is grounded in Materialism and it is committed to political practice as the end goal of all thought. As a philosopher, Marx was influenced by a number of different thinkers, including: German philosophers (e.g. Immanuel Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach); British political economists (e.g. Adam Smith and David Ricardo); and French social theorists (e.g. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Flora Tristan and Louis Blanc).

The defining document of Marxism and Communism is "The Communist Manifesto", published jointly by Marx and Engels in 1848. The first volume of "Das Kapital" (Marx's ambitious treatise on political economy and critical analysis of Capitalism and its practical economic application) was published in 1867, with two more volumes edited and published after his death by Engels. For the most part, these works were collaborations and, while Marx is the more famous of the two, he was strongly influencedby Engels' earlier works, and Engels was also responsible for much of the interpretation and editing of Marx's work.

Some of the basic ideas behind Marxism include:

· Exploitation and Alienation: Capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers by the owners of capital, due to the fact that the workers' labour power generates a surplus value greater than the workers' wages. This expropriation of surpluses leads to increasing alienation and resentment of workers, because they have no control over the labour or product which they produce (a systematic result of the Capitalist system, it is argued).

· Labour Theory of Value: The value of a commodity can be objectively measured by the average amount of labour hours that are required to produce that commodity. This is similar to the value theory established by classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo (1772-1823), although for Marx it is socially necessary labour which is important (i.e. the amount needed to produce, and reproduce, a commodity under average working conditions).

· Base and Superstructure: Relations are established among people as they produce and reproduce the material requirements of life, and these relations form the economic basis of society. A "superstructure" of political and legal institutions, and a social consciousness of religious, philosophical, ideological and other ideas arises on this "base". Any social revolution (caused by conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production) will result in a change in the economic basis and thence to the transformation of the superstructure.

· Class Consciousness: Any social class possesses an awareness (of itself, of the conditions of life, and of the social world around it), and its capacity to act in its own rational interests is based on this awareness. Thus, class consciousness must be attained before any class may mount a successful revolution.

· Ideology: The ruling class foists the dominant ideology on all members of that society in order to make its own interests appear to be the interests of all. Therefore, the ideology of a society can be used to confuse alienated groups and create a false consciousness (such as commodity fetishism, where social relationships are transformed into apparently objective relationships between commodities or money).

· Historical and Dialectical Materialism: This refers to the adaptation by Marx and Engels of Georg Hegel's theory of Dialectics, the concept that any idea or event (the thesis) generates its opposite (the antithesis), eventually leading to areconciliation of opposites (a new, more advanced synthesis). Marx realized that this could also be applied to material matters like economics, hence the label Dialectical Materialism. The application of the principle of Dialectical Materialism to history and sociology, the main context in which Marx used it, is known as Historical Materialism. The resulting theory posits that history is the product of class struggle and obeys the general Hegelian principle of the development of thesis and antithesis.

Primary sources:

1. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Berlin, 1975.

2. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Collected Works, New York and London: International Publishers. 1975.

3. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Selected Works, 2 Volumes, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962.

4. Marx, Karl, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 2^nd edition, David McLellan (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

5. Engels, Frederick, (1877) Anti-Dühring, Part I: Philosophy, XIII. Dialectics. Negation of the Negation

6. Engels, Frederick, (1883) Dialectics of Nature. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-11-03.

7. Lenin, V.I., On the Question of Dialectics: A Collection, pp. 7-9. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1980.

8. Lenin, V.I., Philosophycal Notebooks. Collected Works, Vol. 38. Digital edition. www.marx2mao.com

Secondary sources:

1. Breckman, W. 1999, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. Brudney, Daniel, 1998, Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

3. Cohen, G.A., 2001, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

4. Desai, Megnad, 2002, Marx's Revenge, London: Verso.

5. Leopold, David, 2007, The Young Karl Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6. Singer, Peter, 2000, Marx: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7. Wolff, Jonathan, 2002, Why Read Marx Today?, Oxford: Oxford University Press.