The striving itself can by no means be regarded as displeasure. Therefore, if it so happens that in the moment a striving is fulfilled, immediately a new one arises, I should not say that the pleasure has produced displeasure in me, because in all circumstances an enjoyment produces desire for its repetition, or for a new pleasure. Here I can speak of displeasure only when this desire runs up against the impossibility of its fulfilment. Even when an experienced enjoyment produces in me the demand for the experience of a greater or more refined pleasure, I can speak of a displeasure being produced by the previous pleasure only at the moment when the means of experiencing the greater or more refined pleasure fail me. Only when displeasure follows enjoyment as a natural law, for example when woman's sexual enjoyment is followed by the suffering of childbirth and the nursing of children, is it possible to regard the enjoyment as the source of pain. If striving as such called forth displeasure, then the removal of striving would be accompanied by pleasure. But the opposite is the case. When the content of our life lacks striving, boredom is the result, and this is connected with displeasure. And as the striving naturally may last a long time before it attains fulfilment, and as it is satisfied with the hope of fulfilment meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that displeasure has nothing to do with striving as such, but depends solely on its non-fulfilment. Schopenhauer, then, is wrong in any case in regarding desire or striving (the will) as such, to be a source of pain.
In reality, even the opposite is correct. Striving (desire), as such, gives pleasure. Who does not know the enjoyment caused by the hope of a remote but intensely desired aim?
This joy is the companion of all labor, the fruits of which will be ours only in the future.
This pleasure is quite independent of the attainment of the aim. Then when the aim is attained, to the pleasure of striving is added that of the fulfilment as something new.
Should someone now say: To the displeasure of a non-fulfilled aim is added that of disappointed hope, and in the end this makes the displeasure of non-fulfilment greater than the awaited pleasure of fulfilment, then the answer would be: Even the opposite could be the case; the recollection of past enjoyment, at the time when the desire was still not satisfied, will just as often act as consolation for the displeasure of non-fulfilment. In the moment of shattered hopes, one who exclaims, I have done what I could! proves this assertion. The blessed feeling of having tried one's best is overlooked by those who say of every unsatisfied desire that not only has the pleasure of fulfilment not arisen, but also the enjoyment of desiring has been destroyed.
The fulfilment of a desire calls forth pleasure and its non-fulfilment, displeasure. From this must not be concluded that pleasure means satisfaction of a desire, displeasure means its non-satisfaction. Both pleasure and displeasure may also appear in a being where they are not the result of desire. Illness is displeasure for which there has been no desire. One who maintains that illness is an unsatisfied desire for health, makes the mistake of regarding the obvious but unconscious wish, not to be ill, as a positive desire. When someone receives a legacy from a rich relative of whose existence he had no notion, this event gives him pleasure without any preceding desire.
Therefore, one who sets out to investigate whether the balance is on the side of pleasure or of displeasure, must bring into the account the pleasure of desiring, the pleasure of the fulfilment of desire, and those pleasures which come to us without any striving on our part. On the debit side of our account-sheet would have to be entered the displeasure of boredom, the displeasure of unfulfilled striving, and, lastly, displeasures that come without being preceded by any desire. To the last kind belongs also the displeasure caused by work which is not self-chosen but is forced upon us.
Now the question arises: What is the right means of estimating the balance between debit and credit? Eduard von Hartmann is of the opinion that reason is able to establish this.
However he also says: "Pain and pleasure exist only insofar as they are felt."59 From this statement it would follow that there is no other yardstick for pleasure than the subjective one of feeling. I must feel whether the sum of my feelings of displeasure, compared with my feelings of pleasure, leaves me with a balance of joy or of pain. But disregarding this, Hartmann maintains that: "Even if the life-value of every being can be estimated only according to its own subjective measure, this is not to say that every being is able to calculate, from all that influences its life, the correct algebraic sum or, in other words, that its final judgment of its own life, in regard to its subjective experiences, is correct."
This, however, only means that rational judgment is still made to estimate the value of feeling. [footnote: One who wants to calculate whether the sum total of pleasure or of displeasure is the greater, overlooks that he is calculating something which is never experienced. Feeling does not calculate, and what matters for a real estimation of life is true experience, not the result of an imagined calculation.]
One whose view more or less inclines in the direction of thinkers like Eduard von Hartmann may believe that in order to arrive at a correct valuation of life he must clear out of the way those factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure or displeasure. There are two ways in which he can do this. One way is by showing that our desires (urges, will) act disturbingly in our sober judgment of our feeling-values. While, for example, we should tell ourselves that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us misleads us into anticipating a pleasure far greater than in fact occurs. We want to enjoy, and therefore will not admit to ourselves that we suffer through the enjoyment. Another way is to subject feelings to criticism, and attempt to prove that the objects to which feelings attach themselves are revealed as illusions by the insight of reason, then are destroyed the moment our continually growing intelligence recognizes the illusion.
He can reason out the situation in the following way. If an ambitious person wants to make clear to himself whether, up to the moment of making this calculation, pleasure or displeasure has occupied the greater part of his life, he must free himself from two sources of error before passing judgment. As he is ambitious, this fundamental feature of his character will make him see the pleasures of recognition of his achievements as larger, and the hurts suffered through being slighted as smaller than they are. At the time he suffered from being slighted he felt it just because he was ambitious, but in recollection this appears in a milder light, whereas the pleasures of recognition to which he is so very susceptible leave a deeper impression. Now it is of real benefit for an ambitious person that this is so. The deception diminishes his feeling of displeasure in the moment of self-observation. Nevertheless, his judgment will be misled. The sufferings, over which a veil is drawn, he really did experience in all their intensity, and therefore he really gives them a wrong valuation on his balance-sheet of life. In order to come to a correct judgment, an ambitious person would have to get rid of his ambition during the time he is making his calculation. He would have to consider his life up to that point without placing distorting glasses before his mind's eye. Otherwise he is like a merchant who, in making up his books, also enters his own business zeal on the income side.
He could go even further. He could say: The ambitious man must also make clear to himself that the recognition he pursues is something valueless. Through his own effort, or with the help of others, he must come to see that for a sensible person recognition by others counts little, since one can always be sure that "In all matters which are not vital questions of evolution or are already finally settled by science, the majority is wrong and the minority right." "Whoever makes ambition his lodestar, puts the happiness of his life at the mercy of an unreliable judgment."60 If the ambitious person admits all this to himself, he will have to recognize as illusion, not only everything his ambition caused him to regard as reality, but also the feelings attached to the illusions. For this reason it could then be said: From the balance sheet of life-values must also be erased those feelings of pleasure that have been produced by illusions; what then remains represents, free of all illusions, the totality of pleasure in life, and this, in contrast to the totality of displeasure, is so small that life is no joy and non- existence is preferable to existence.
While it is quite obvious that the deception caused by the interference of ambition leads to a false result when making up the account of pleasure, what is said about the recognition of the illusory character of the objects of not only everything pleasure must nonetheless be challenged. To eliminate from the balance-sheet all pleasurable feelings connected with actual or supposed illusions would positively falsify it. For the ambitious person did genuinely enjoy being appreciated by the multitude, quite irrespective of whether later he or someone else recognizes this appreciation as illusion. The pleasure already enjoyed is not diminished in the least by such recognition. The elimination of all such "illusory" feelings from life's balance-sheet, far from making our judgment about feelings more correct, actually eliminates from life feelings which were genuinely present.
And why should these feelings be eliminated? One possessing them derives pleasure from them; one who has overcome them, gains through the experiences of self-conquest (not through the vain emotion, What a noble fellow I am! but through the objective sources of pleasure which lie in the self-conquest) a pleasure which is indeed spiritualized, but no less significant for that. If feelings are erased from the balance-sheet because they attached themselves to objects which later are revealed as illusions, then life's value is made dependent not on the quantity, but on the quality of pleasure, and this, in turn, on the value of the objects which cause the pleasure. If I set out to determine the value of life by the quantity of pleasure or displeasure it brings, then I have no right to presuppose something else by which to determine first the qualitative value of pleasure. If I say I will compare the amount of pleasure with the amount of displeasure and see which is greater, then I must also bring into the account all pleasure and displeasure in their actual quantities, regardless whether they are based on illusions or not. To ascribe to a pleasure which rests on illusion a lesser value for life than to one which can be justified by reason, is to make the value of life dependent on factors other than pleasure.
Someone estimating pleasure as less valuable when it is attached to a worthless object, is like a merchant who enters in his accounts the considerable profit of a toy-factory at a quarter of the actual amount because the factory produces playthings for children.
When it is only a matter of weighing pleasure against displeasure, the illusory character of the objects of some pleasures must be left out of the picture altogether.
The rational consideration of the quantities of pleasure and displeasure produced by life, which Hartmann recommends, has led us as far as knowing how to set up the account, that is, to knowing what we have to put down on each side of our balance sheet. But how are we to make the actual calculations? Is reason also capable of determining the balance?
The merchant has made a mistake in his account if the calculated balance does not agree with the profit which has demonstrably been enjoyed from the business or which can still be expected. The philosopher, too, will undoubtedly have made a mistake in his judgment if the calculated surplus of pleasure or, as the case may be, of displeasure, cannot be proved by actual sentiments.
For the moment I shall not go into the account of those pessimists who base their world view on rational estimation; but a person who is to decide whether or not to carry on the business of life will first demand proof that the calculated surplus of displeasure exists.
Here we touch the point where reason is not in a position to determine on its own the surplus of pleasure or of displeasure, but where it must point to this surplus in life in the form of perception. For reality is attainable for man not through concept alone, but through the inter-penetration, mediated by thinking, of concept and perception (and a feeling is a perception) (cp. pp. 153 ff.). A merchant, too, will give up his business only when the loss of income, calculated by his accountant, is confirmed by the facts. If this is not the case, he will let the accountant go through the books once more. And in regard to life, man will do exactly the same. If the philosopher wants to show him that displeasure is far greater than pleasure, and if he has not felt it to be so, he will reply: You have gone astray in your brooding; think things through once more. But if there comes a time in a business when such losses are really present that no credit any longer suffices to meet the claims, then the result will be bankruptcy, even though the merchant may have avoided keeping himself informed about his affairs by means of accounts. Similarly, if there comes a time when the quantity of displeasure a man suffers is so great that no hope (credit) of future pleasure could carry him through the pain, then this would lead to bankruptcy of life's business. However, the number of suicides is relatively small in proportion to the number of those who bravely live on. Very few people give up the business of life because of the displeasure involved. What follows from this? Either that it is not correct to say that the amount of displeasure is greater than the amount of pleasure, or that we do not make our continuation of life at all dependent upon the amount of pleasure or displeasure we feel.
The pessimist, Eduard von Hartmann, in a quite extraordinary manner reaches the conclusion that life is valueless because it contains more pain than pleasure, and yet he maintains the necessity of carrying it through. This necessity lies in the fact that the world purpose mentioned above (p. 222) can be achieved only through the ceaseless, devoted labor of human beings. So long as men still pursue their egoistic desires they are useless for such selfless labor. Not until they have convinced themselves through experience and reason that the enjoyments of life pursued out of egoism are unattainable, do they devote themselves to their real task. In this way the pessimistic conviction is supposed to be a source of selflessness. An education based on pessimism is meant to exterminate egoism by convincing men of its hopelessness.
This means that this view considers striving for pleasure to be fundamentally inherent in human nature. Only through insight into the impossibility of its fulfilment does this striving abdicate in favor of higher tasks of humanity.
Of such a moral world view, which, from recognition of pessimism, hopes to achieve devotion to non-egoistical aims in life, it cannot be said that it really overcomes egoism in the true sense of the word. Moral ideas are supposed to be strong enough to take hold of the will only when man has recognized that selfish striving after pleasure cannot lead to any satisfaction. Man, whose selfishness desires the grapes of pleasure, finds them sour because he cannot reach them; he turns his back on them and devotes himself to an unselfish life. According to the opinion of pessimists, moral ideals are not strong enough to overcome egoism, but they establish their rulership on the ground which recognition of the hopelessness of egoism has first cleared for them.
If in accordance with their natural disposition human beings strove after pleasure which they could not possibly attain, then annihilation of existence and redemption through non-existence would be the only rational goal. And if one accepts the view that the real bearer of the pain of the world is God, it follows that the task of men consists in helping to bring about the salvation of God. To commit suicide does not advance, but hinders, the accomplishment of this aim. God must have created men wisely for the sole purpose of bringing about His salvation through their action. Otherwise creation would be purposeless. And such a view of the world envisages extra-human purposes. Every one of us has to perform his own definite task in the general work of salvation. If he withdraws from the task by suicide, another has to do the work which was intended for him.
Someone else must bear the agony of existence in his place. And since in every being it is, fundamentally, God who is the ultimate bearer of all pain, it follows that the suicide does not in the least diminish the quantity of God's pain, but rather imposes upon God the additional difficulty of creating a substitute to take over the task. All this presupposes that pleasure is the standard of life's value. Now life manifests itself through a number of craving (needs). If the value of life depended on whether it brought more pleasure than displeasure, a craving which brought a surplus of displeasure to its owner, would have to be called valueless. Let us examine craving and pleasure, in order to see whether or not craving can be measured by pleasure. And lest we give rise to the suspicion that life does not begin for us below the level of the "aristocratic intellect," we shall begin our examination with a "purely animal" need: hunger.
Hunger arises when our organs are unable to continue their proper function without a fresh supply of substance. What a hungry man aims at, in the first place, is to have his hunger stilled. As soon as the supply of nourishment has reached the point where hunger ceases, everything that the food-instinct craves has been attained. The enjoyment connected with satiety consists, to begin with, in the removal of the pain which is caused by hunger. Also to the mere food-instinct a further need is added. Man does not merely desire to overcome the disturbance in the functioning of his organs by the consumption of food, or to get rid of the pain of hunger: he seeks to accompany this with pleasurable sensations of taste. When he feels hungry and is within half an hour of an enjoyable meal, he may even avoid spoiling his enjoyment of the better food by refusing inferior food which might satisfy his hunger sooner. He needs hunger in order to obtain the full enjoyment from his meal. In this way hunger becomes a cause of pleasure for him at the same time. If all the hunger in the world could be satisfied, then the total amount of enjoyment due to the need for nourishment would come about. To this would have to be added the special pleasure which gourmets attain by cultivating the sensitiveness of their taste-nerves beyond the usual measure.
This amount of enjoyment would have the greatest value possible if no aspect of this kind of enjoyment remained unsatisfied, and if with the enjoyment a certain amount of displeasure did not have to be accepted into the bargain.
The view of modern natural science is that nature produces more life than it can sustain, that is, nature produces more hunger than it is able to satisfy. The surplus of life produced must perish in pain in the struggle for existence. It is granted that at every moment of the world process, the needs of life are greater than the corresponding available means of satisfaction, and the enjoyment of life is thereby impaired. But the individual enjoyments actually present are not in the least reduced thereby. Wherever a desire is satisfied, there the corresponding amount of pleasure is also present, even though in the creature itself which desires, or in its fellow-creatures, a large number of unsatisfied cravings exist.
What is thereby diminished is not the quantity, but the value of the enjoyment of life. If only a part of the needs of a living creature find satisfaction, the creature experiences enjoyment accordingly. This has a lesser value the smaller it is in proportion to the total demands of life in the sphere of the desire in question. We might represent this value as a fraction, of which the numerator is the enjoyment actually experienced and the denominator is the sum total of needs. This fraction has the value 1 when the numerator and the denominator are equal, i.e., when all needs are fully satisfied. The fraction becomes greater than 1 when a creature experiences more pleasure than its desires demand. It becomes smaller than 1 when the amount of enjoyment falls short of the sum total of desires. But the fraction can never be nought so long as the numerator has any value at all, however small. If a man were to make up a final account before his death, and thought of the amount of enjoyment connected with a particular craving (e.g. hunger) as being distributed over the whole of his life with all the demands made by this craving, then the value of the pleasure experienced might perhaps be very small, but it could never be nil. If the quantity of enjoyment remains constant, then with every increase in the needs of the living being the value of the pleasure diminishes. The same is true for the totality of life in nature. The greater the number of living beings in proportion to those able to fully satisfy their cravings, the smaller is the average pleasure-value of life. The shares in life enjoyment, made out to us in the form of instincts, become less valuable in proportion as we cannot expect to cash them at their full face value. If I get enough to eat for three days and then have to go hungry for three days, the enjoyment during the three days when I do eat is not thereby diminished. But I have to think of it as distributed over six days, and this reduces its value for my food instinct by half. The same applies to the quantity of pleasure in relation to the degree of my need. If I am hungry enough for two sandwiches and can have only one, the enjoyment gained from it has only half the value it would have had if after I had eaten it my hunger had been stilled. This is how the value of a pleasure is determined in life. It is measured by the needs of life. Our desire is the yardstick; pleasure is what is measured. The enjoyment of eating has a value only because hunger is present, and it attains a value of a specific degree through the proportion it bears to the degree of the hunger present.
Unfulfilled demands of our life throw their shadow even upon desires which have been satisfied, and impair the value of enjoyable hours. But one can also speak of the present value of a feeling of pleasure. This value is the more insignificant, the less the pleasure is in proportion to the duration and intensity of our desire.
An amount of pleasure reaches its full value for us when its duration and degree exactly coincide with our desire. An amount of pleasure which is smaller than our desire diminishes the value of pleasure; a greater amount produces a surplus which has not been demanded and which is felt as pleasure only so long as we are able to increase our desire during the enjoyment. If we are not able to increase our demand in order to keep pace with the increasing pleasure, then the pleasure turns into displeasure. The thing that otherwise would satisfy us now assails us without our wanting it, and we suffer under it.
This is proof that pleasure has value for us only so long as we can measure it by our desires. An excess of pleasurable feeling turns into pain. This may be observed especially in people whose desire for a particular kind of pleasure is very small. In people whose desire for food is dulled, eating readily produces nausea. This too shows that the desire is the yardstick for measuring the value of pleasure.
Here pessimism could say: The unsatisfied craving for food brings not only the displeasure of lost enjoyment, but also positive pain, torment and misery into the world.
In this he can point to the untold misery of people who starve, and to the amount of displeasure such people suffer indirectly through lack of food. And if he wants to extend the assertion to the rest of nature, he can point to the torment of animals that starve to death at certain times of the year. The pessimist maintains that these evils far outweigh the amount of enjoyment which the food-instinct brings into the world.
There is no doubt that one can compare pleasure and displeasure, and can determine the surplus of the one or the other, as is done in the case of profit and loss. But when the pessimist believes that there is a surplus on the side of displeasure and that from this one can conclude that life is valueless, he already makes a mistake, insofar as he makes a calculation that is not made in actual life.
Our desire, in each instance, is directed to a definite object. The value of the pleasure of satisfaction will, as we have seen, be the greater, the greater the amount of pleasure, in relation to the degree of our desire.[footnote: We disregard here the instance where excessive increase in pleasure turns it into displeasure.] But upon the degree of our desire also depends how great is the amount of displeasure we are willing to accept in order to achieve the pleasure. We compare the quantity of displeasure not with the quantity of pleasure, but with the intensity of our desire. If someone finds great pleasure in eating, by reason of his enjoyment in better times he will find it easier to bear a period of hunger than will someone for whom eating is no enjoyment. A woman who desires a child compares the joy of possessing the child, not with the amount of displeasure due to pregnancy, childbirth, cares of nursing, etc., but with her desire to have the child.
We never want a certain quantity of pleasure in the abstract, but a concrete satisfaction in a quite definite way. When we want a pleasure which must be satisfied by a particular object or a particular sensation, it will not satisfy us if we are offered some other object or some other sensation, even though they give the same amount of pleasure. One desirous of food cannot substitute the pleasure this would give him by a pleasure equally great but produced by a walk. Only if our desire were, quite generally, for a certain quantity of pleasure, would it have to die away at once if this pleasure were unattainable except at the price of an even greater quantity of displeasure. But because we aim toward a particular kind of satisfaction, we experience the pleasure of realization even when we have to bear a much greater displeasure along with it. The instincts of living creatures tend in definite directions and aim at definite goals, and for this reason we cannot set down as an equivalent factor in our calculations the amount of displeasure that must be endured on the way to the goal. Provided the desire is sufficiently intense to still be present in some degree after having overcome the displeasure - however great that may be - then the pleasure of satisfaction can still be tasted to the full. The desire, therefore, does not measure the pain directly against the pleasure achieved, but indirectly by relating its own intensity to that of the displeasure. The question is not whether the pleasure to be gained is greater than the displeasure, but whether the desire for the goal is greater than the opposition of the displeasure involved. If the opposition is greater than the desire, then the desire yields to the inevitable, weakens, and strives no further. Since our demand is always for some quite specific kind of satisfaction, the pleasure connected with it acquires significance for us in such a way that once we have achieved satisfaction, we need take the quantity of displeasure into account only insofar as it has reduced the intensity of our desire. If I am passionately fond of beautiful views, I never calculate the amount of pleasure the view from the mountain-top gives me as compared directly with the displeasure of the toilsome ascent and descent, but I reflect whether, after having overcome all difficulties, my desire for the view will still be sufficiently intense.
Consideration of pleasure and pain can lead to a result only indirectly in relation to the intensity of the desire. Therefore the question is not at all whether there is a surplus of pleasure or of displeasure, but whether the desire for the pleasure is strong enough to overcome the displeasure.
A proof of the correctness of this view is the fact that we put a higher value on pleasure when it must be purchased at the price of great displeasure, than when it simply falls into our lap like a gift from heaven. When sufferings and misery have toned down our desire and yet our aim is attained, then the pleasure, in proportion to the remaining quantity of desire, is all the greater. And as I have shown (p. 235), this proportion represents the value of the pleasure. A further proof is given in the fact that all living beings (including man) seek satisfaction for their cravings as long as they are able to bear the opposing pain and agony. The struggle for existence is but a consequence of this fact. All existing life strives for fulfilment, and only that part gives up the fight in which the desire has been suffocated by the power of the assailing difficulties. Each living being seeks food until lack of food destroys its life. Man, too, lays hands on himself only when he believes (rightly or wrongly) that he is not able to attain the aims in life which to him are worth while. As long as he still believes in the possibility of attaining what in his view is worth striving for, he will fight against all suffering and pain. Philosophy would first have to convince man that the element of will has sense only when the pleasure is greater than the displeasure, for it is man's nature to strive to attain the objects of his desire if he is able to bear the necessary displeasure involved, be it ever so great. The above mentioned philosophy would be mistaken, because it would make the human will dependent on a factor (surplus of pleasure over displeasure) which is fundamentally foreign to man's nature. The actual yardstick for measuring will is desire, and the latter persists as long as it can. One can compare the calculation that is made in actual life, - not the one an abstract philosophy makes concerning the question of pleasure and pain connected with the satisfaction of a desire - with the following. If when buying a certain quantity of apples, I am forced to take twice as many bad ones as good ones because the seller wants to clear his stock, then I shall not hesitate for one moment to accept the bad apples as well if the few good ones are worth so much to me that, in addition to their purchase price, I am also prepared to bear the expense of disposing of the bad ones. This example illustrates the relation between the amounts of pleasure and displeasure that arise through an instinct. I determine the value of the good apples not by subtracting the sum of the good ones from that of the bad ones, but by whether the good ones retain any value for me despite the presence of the bad ones.
Just as I leave the bad apples out of account in my enjoyment of the good ones, so I give myself up to the satisfaction of a desire after having shaken off the unavoidable pain.
Even if pessimism were correct in its assertion that there is more displeasure than pleasure in the world, this would have no influence on the will, since living beings would still strive after what pleasure remains. The empirical proof that pain outweighs joy, if such proof could be given, would certainly be effective for showing the futility of the school of philosophy that sees the value of life in a surplus of pleasure (Eudaemonism).61 It would not, however, be suitable for showing that will in general is irrational, for will does not seek a surplus of pleasure, but seeks the amount of pleasure that remains after removing the displeasure. And this always appears as a goal worth striving for.
Attempts have been made to refute pessimism by asserting that it is impossible by calculation to determine the surplus of pleasure or of displeasure in the world. The possibility of any calculation depends on the comparability of the things to be calculated in respect to their quantity. Every displeasure and every pleasure has a definite quantity (intensity and duration). Further, we can compare pleasurable feelings of different kinds with one another, at least approximately, with regard to their quantity. We know whether we derive more pleasure from a good cigar or from a good joke. No objection can be raised against the comparability of different kinds of pleasures and displeasures in respect to their quantity. The investigator who sets himself the task of determining the surplus of pleasure or displeasure in the world, starts from presuppositions which are undeniably legitimate. One may declare the conclusions of pessimism to be mistaken, but one cannot doubt that quantities of pleasure and displeasure can be scientifically estimated, and the balance of pleasure determined thereby. But it is incorrect to maintain that the result of this calculation has any consequence for the human will. The cases in which we really make the value of our activity dependent on whether pleasure or displeasure shows a surplus, are those in which the objects toward which our activity is directed are indifferent to us. When it is only a question of whether after my work I am to amuse myself by a game or by light conversation, and if I am completely indifferent what I do for this purpose, I then ask myself: What gives me the greatest surplus of pleasure? And I definitely refrain from an activity if the scales incline toward the side of displeasure.
When buying a toy for a child we would consider what will give him the greatest pleasure. In all other cases we are not determined exclusively by considerations of the balance of pleasure.
Therefore, when pessimistic philosophers of ethics believe that by showing displeasure to be present in greater quantity than pleasure, they are preparing the way for selfless devotion toward cultural work, they do not realize that by its very nature the human will is not influenced by this knowledge. Human striving directs itself to the measure of possible satisfaction after all difficulties have been overcome. Hope of this satisfaction is the very foundation of human activity. The work of each individual and of the totality of cultural work springs from this hope. Pessimistic ethics believes that it must present the pursuit of happiness as an impossibility for man, in order that he may devote himself to his proper moral tasks. But these moral tasks are nothing but the concrete natural and spiritual cravings, and their satisfaction is striven for, despite the displeasure involved.
The pursuit of happiness, which the pessimist wants to exterminate, does not exist at all.
Rather, the tasks which man has to fulfil he fulfils because from the depth of his being he wills to fulfil them when he has truly recognized their nature. Pessimistic ethics maintains that man can devote himself to what he recognizes as his life's task, only when he has given up the pursuit of pleasure. But there are no ethics that can invent life-tasks other than the realization of the satisfactions demanded by man's desires, and the fulfilment of his moral ideals. No ethics can take from him the pleasure he has in the fulfilment of what he desires. When the pessimist says: Do not strive after pleasure, for you can never attain it, strive for what you recognize to be your task, then the answer is: It is inherent in human nature to do just this, and it is the invention of a philosophy gone astray when it is maintained that man strives only for happiness. He strives for the satisfaction of what his being demands, and its fulfilment is his pleasure; he has in mind the concrete objects of this striving, not some abstract "happiness." When pessimistic ethics demands: Strive not after pleasure, but after the attainment of what you recognize to be your life's task, it lays its finger on the very thing that, through his own nature, man wants. He does not need to be turned inside out by philosophy, he does not need to discard his human nature before he can be moral. Morality lies in striving for an aim that has been recognized as justified; it lies in human nature to pursue it so long as the displeasure connected with it does not extinguish the desire for it altogether. And this is the nature of all real will. Ethics does not depend on the extermination of all striving after pleasure in order that bloodless abstract ideas can set up their control where they are not opposed by a strong longing for enjoyment of life; ethics depends rather on that strength will has when it is carried by ideal intuitions; it achieves its aim even though the path be full of thorns.
Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of man. Their attainment depends upon whether his desire for them is strong enough to overcome pain and suffering. They are his intuitions, the driving forces spanned by his spirit; he wills them, because their attainment is his highest pleasure. He needs no ethics first to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to prescribe to him what he ought to strive for. Of himself, he will strive for moral ideals when his moral imagination is active enough to impart to him intuitions that give strength to his will and enable him to carry them through, despite the obstacles present in his own organization, to which necessary displeasure also belongs.
If a man strives for sublimely great ideals, it is because they are the content of his own nature and their realization will bring him a joy compared with which the pleasure, derived from the satisfaction of their ordinary cravings by those who lack ideals, is of little significance. Idealists revel spiritually in translating their ideals into reality.
Anyone who wants to exterminate the pleasure in the fulfilment of human desires will first have to make man a slave who acts, not because he wants to, but only because he ought to. For the attainment of what has been willed gives pleasure. What we call goodness is not what a man ought but what he wills to do when he unfolds the fulness of his true human nature. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must first drive out of man all that man himself wills, and then prescribe to him from outside what content he is to give his will.
Man values the fulfilment of a desire because the desire springs from his own nature.
Achievement has its value because it has been willed. If one denies value to the aims of man's own will, then worth while aims must be taken from something that man does not will. Ethics based on pessimism arises from a disregard for moral imagination. Only someone who considers the individual human ego incapable of giving a content to its striving would see the totality of will as a longing for pleasure. A man without imagination creates no moral ideas. They must be given to him. Physical nature sees to it that he strives to satisfy his lower desires. But to the development of the whole man belong also desires that arise from the spirit. Only if one takes the view that man has no such spiritual desires can one maintain that he should receive them from outside. And then it would also be justifiable to say that it is man's duty to do what he does not will. All ethics which demand of man that he should suppress his will in order to fulfil tasks that he does not will, reckon not with the whole man, but with one in whom the faculty of spiritual desire is lacking. For a man who is harmoniously developed, the so-called ideas of what is "right" are not outside but within the sphere of his own nature. Moral action does not consist in extermination of one-sided self-will, but in the full development of human nature. One considering moral ideals to be attainable only if man exterminates his own will, does not know that these ideals are willed by man just as much as the satisfaction of so-called animal instincts.
It cannot be denied that the views outlined here can easily be misunderstood. Immature persons without moral imagination like to look upon the instincts of their undeveloped natures as the full content of humanity, and to reject all moral ideas which they have not produced, in order that they may "live themselves out" without restriction. But it is obvious that what holds good for a fully developed human being does not apply to one who is only half-developed. One who still has to be brought by education to the point where his moral nature breaks through the shell of his lower passions, cannot lay claim to what applies to a man who is mature. Here there is no intention to outline what an undeveloped man requires to be taught, but rather to show what human nature includes when it has come to full maturity. For this is also to prove the possibility of freedom, which manifests itself, not in actions done under constraint of body or soul, but in actions sustained by spiritual intuitions.
The fully mature man gives himself his value. He neither strives for pleasure, which is given to him as a gift of grace either from nature or from the Creator, nor does he merely fulfil what he recognizes as abstract duty after he has divested himself of the desire for pleasure. He does what he wants to do, that is, he acts in accordance with his ethical intuitions, and in the attainment of what he wants he feels the true enjoyment of life. He determines life's value by the ratio between what he attains and what he attempts. Ethics which puts "you ought" in the place of "I will," mere duty in the place of inclination, determines man's value by the ratio between what duty demands of him and what he fulfils. It applies a standard to man that is not applicable to his nature. - The view developed here refers man back to himself. It recognizes as the true value of life only what each individual himself regards as such according to what he desires. This view accepts neither a value of life not recognized by the individual, nor a purpose of life which has not sprung from the individual. In the individual who is capable of true self knowledge it recognizes someone who is his own master and the assessor of his own value. Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918. What is presented in this chapter can be misunderstood if one clings to the apparent objection that the will is simply the irrational factor in man and that this must be proved to him because then he will realize that his ethical striving must consist in working toward ultimate emancipation from the will. An apparent objection of this kind was brought against me by a competent critic who stated that it is the business of the philosopher to make good what the thoughtlessness of animals and most men fail to do, namely, to strike a proper balance in life's account. But in making this objection he does not recognize the real issue: If freedom is to be attained, then the will in human nature must be carried by intuitive thinking; at the same time it is true that an impulse of will may also be determined by factors other than intuition, but morality and its worth can be found only in the free realization of intuitions flowing from the nature of true manhood. Ethical individualism is well able to present morality in its full dignity, for it is not of the opinion that the truly moral is brought about by conforming to an external rule, but is only what comes about through man when he develops his moral will as a member of his total being, so that to do what is immoral appears to him as a stunting and crippling of his nature.
INDIVIDUALITY AND SPECIES.
The view that it is inherent in man to develop into an independent, free individuality seems to be contradicted by two facts: that he exists as a member within a natural totality (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex) and that he is active within a totality (state, church, etc.). He shows the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and he gives his deeds a content that is determined by the place he occupies within a plurality.
Is individuality possible nevertheless? Can we regard man as a totality in himself when he grows out of a totality and integrates himself into a totality?
The characteristic features and functions of the individual parts belonging to a whole are determined by the whole. A tribe is such a whole, and all the human beings comprising it have characteristic features which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe itself. How the individual member is constituted and his actions will be determined by the character of the tribe. This is why the physiognomy and activity of the individual will express something generic. If we ask why some particular thing about him is like this or that, we are referred beyond the nature of the individual to the species. The species explains why something about the individual appears as it does.
But man makes himself free from what is generic. For the generic qualities of the human race, when rightly experienced by the individual do not restrict his freedom, and ought not to be made to restrict it by artificial means. Man develops qualities and activities, the sources of which we can seek only in himself. In this, the generic element serves him only as a medium through which to express his own particular being. The characteristic features that nature has given him he uses as a foundation, giving them the form that corresponds to his own being. We shall look in vain among the laws of the species for the reason for an expression of this being. Here we have to do with something individual which can be explained only through itself. If a person has advanced so far as to loosen himself from the generic, and we still attempt to explain everything about him from the character of the species, then we have no sense for what is individual.
It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one's judgment is based on a concept of the species. The tendency to judge according to species is most persistent where the differences of sex are concerned. Man sees in woman, and woman in man, nearly always too much of the general character of the other sex, and too little of the individual. In practical life this harms men less than women. The social position of women is often so unworthy because in many respects it is not determined, as it should be, by the individual qualities of the particular woman herself, but by general representations of what is considered the natural task and needs of woman. Man's activity in life comes about through the individual's capacities and inclinations, whereas woman's tends to be determined exclusively by the fact that she is a woman. Woman is supposed to be the slave of her species, of womanhood in general. As long as men continue to debate whether according to her "natural disposition" woman is suited to this or that profession, the so-called woman's question cannot advance beyond the most elementary stage. What woman is capable of in terms of her own nature, woman must be left to judge for herself. If it is true that women are useful only in those occupations they occupy at present, then they will hardly have it in themselves to attain anything else. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is in accordance with their nature. The reply to him who fears an upheaval of our social conditions as a result of accepting woman, not as an example of her species but as an individual, would be that social conditions, in which the status of one-half of humanity is below the dignity of man, are indeed in great need of improvement.
[footnote: Immediately upon the publication of this book (1894) I met with the objections to the above arguments that, already now, within the character of her sex, a woman is able to shape her life as individually as she likes, and far more freely than a man who is already de-individualized, first by school, and later by war and profession. I am aware that this objection will be urged today, perhaps even more strongly. Nonetheless, I feel bound to let my sentences stand, and must hope that there are readers who also recognize how utterly such an objection goes against the concept of freedom developed in this book and will judge my sentences above by another standard than that of man's loss of individuality through school and profession.]
One judging human beings according to their generic qualities stops short just at the very frontier beyond which they begin to be beings whose activity depends on free self- assessment. What lies below this frontier can naturally be the object of scientific study.
Thus the characteristics of race, tribe, nation and sex are subjects of special sciences.
Only men who wanted to live simply as examples of the species could possibly fit the general picture of man these scientific studies produce. All these sciences are unable to reach the particular content of the individual. Where the sphere of freedom (in thinking and doing) begins, there the possibility of determining the individual according to the laws of the species ceases. The conceptual content which man, through thinking, must bring into connection with perception in order to take hold of full reality (cp. p. 105 ff.), no one can fix once for all and hand over to mankind ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual has to think, cannot be deduced from any concept of a species; this depends singly and solely on the individual himself. Just as little is it possible from general human qualities to decide what concrete aims an individual will set himself. One wishing to understand a particular individual must broaden his understanding to encompass the essential nature of the other, and not stop short at those qualities which are typical. In this sense every single human being is a problem. And every science which deals with abstract thoughts and concepts of species is only a preparation for that insight which becomes ours when a human individuality shares with us his way of looking at the world, and that other insight which we obtain from the content of his will. Whenever we feel: here we have to do with that in a man which is free from the typical way of thinking and free from a will based on the species, there we must cease to make use of any concepts that apply to our own I if we want to understand him. Cognition consists in combining the concept with the perception by means of thinking. In the case of all other objects the observer must gain his concepts through his own intuition; when it is a case of understanding a free individuality, the essential thing is to receive into our own I those concepts by which the free individuality determines himself, in their pure form (without mixing them with our own conceptual content). People who immediately mingle their own concepts with every judgment of another, can never reach an understanding of an individuality. Just as a free individuality frees himself from the characteristics of the species, so our cognition must become free from the means by which all that belongs to species is understood.
Only to the degree that a man has made himself free from the characteristics of the species in the way indicated, can he be considered to be a free spirit within a human community. No man is all species, none is all individuality. But every human being gradually frees a greater or lesser part of his being from the animal-like life of the species, as well as from the commands of human authorities ruling him.
With that part of his being for which a man is unable to achieve such freedom, he is a member of the natural and spiritual organism of the world in general. In this respect he does what he sees others do, or as they command. Only that part of his activity which springs from his intuitions has ethical value in the true sense. And those moral instincts that he has in him through the inheritance of social instincts become something ethical through his taking them over into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind has its source in individual ethical intuitions and their acceptance by human communities. One could also say: The moral life of mankind is the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals. This is the conclusion of monism.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF MONISM What is here called monism, this unitary explanation of the world, derives from human experience62 the principles it uses for explaining the world. The source of activity also is sought within the world to be observed, that is, in human nature accessible to self- knowledge, more particularly in moral imagination. Monism refuses to seek the origin of the world accessible to perceiving and thinking, outside of that world, by means of abstract conclusions. For monism, the unity that thinking observation - which can be experienced - brings to the manifold plurality of perceptions is, at the same time, just what the human need for knowledge demands, and by means of which entry into physical and spiritual realms is sought. One looking for another unity behind the one sought by thinking observation, thereby shows only that he does not recognize the agreement between what is found by thinking and what the urge for knowledge demands. The single human individual actually is not separated from the universe. He is part of it, and the connection of this part with the rest of the cosmos is present in reality; it is broken only for our perception. At first we see this part as a being existing by itself because we do not see the cords and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the cosmos sustain our life.
One remaining at this standpoint sees the part of the whole as a truly independently existing being, as a monad, who somehow receives information about the rest of the world from outside. But monism, as meant here, shows that one can believe in this independence only so long as what is perceived is not woven by thinking into the network of the world of concepts. When this happens, separate existence of parts is revealed as a mere appearance due to perceiving. Man can find his self-enclosed total existence within the universe only through the intuitive experience of thinking. Thinking destroys the appearance due to perceiving, inserting our individual existence into the life of the cosmos. The unity of the world of concepts, which contains the objective perceptions, also embraces the content of our subjective personality. Thinking shows us reality in its true character as a self-enclosed unity, whereas the manifoldness of perceptions is only its appearance determined by our organization. (cp. p. 105 ff.).
Recognition of the reality in contrast to the appearance resulting from perceiving has always been the goal of human thinking. Science has striven to recognize perceptions as realities by discovering the laws that connect them. But where the view was held that connections ascertained by human thinking had only a subjective significance, the real reason for the unity of things was sought in some entity existing beyond the world to be experienced (an inferred God, will, absolute Spirit, etc.). And on this basis, in addition to knowledge of the connections that are recognizable through experience, one strove to attain a second kind of knowledge which would go beyond experience and would reveal the connection between experience and the ultimate entities existing beyond experience (metaphysics arrived at by drawing conclusions and not by experience). From this standpoint, it was thought that the reason we can grasp the connection of things through strictly applied thinking is that an original creator built up the world according to logical laws, and the source of our deeds was thought to be contained in the will of the creator. It was not realized that thinking encompasses both subjective and objective in one grasp, and that in the union of perception with concept full reality is mediated. Only as long as we consider in the abstract form of concepts the laws pervading and determining perceptions, do we deal in actual fact with something purely subjective. But the content of the concept, which is attained - with the help of thinking - in order to add it to perception, is not subjective. This content is not derived from the subject but from reality. It is that part of reality that our perceiving cannot reach. It is experience, but not experience mediated through perceiving. One unable to recognize that the concept is something real, thinks of it only in that abstract form in which he grasps it in his consciousness. But this separation is due to our organization, just as the separateness of perceptions is due to our organization. The tree that one perceives, has no existence by itself. It is only a part of the great organism of nature, and its existence is possible only in a real connection with nature. An abstract concept has no reality in itself, any more than a perception, taken by itself, has any reality. The perception is the part of reality that is given objectively, the concept is the part that is given subjectively (through intuition, cp.
p. 113 ff.). Our spiritual organization tears reality into these two factors. One factor appears to perception, the other to intuition. Only the union of the two, that is, the perception fitted systematically into the universe, is full reality. If we consider the mere perception by itself, we do not have reality, but a disconnected chaos; if we consider by itself the law that connects perceptions, we are dealing with mere abstract concepts. The abstract concept does not contain reality, but thinking observation which considers neither concept nor perception one-sidedly, but the union of both, does.
Not even the most subjective orthodox idealist will deny that we live within a reality (that we are rooted in it with our real existence). He only questions whether we also reach ideally, i.e., in our cognition, what we actually experience. By contrast, monism shows that thinking is neither subjective nor objective, but is a principle embracing both sides of reality. When we observe with thinking, we carry out a process that in itself belongs in the sequence of real occurrences. By means of thinking we overcome - within experience itself - the one-sidedness of mere perceiving. We are not able through abstract conceptual hypotheses (through pure conceptual reflection) to devise the nature of reality, but when we find the ideas that belong to the perceptions we live within reality. The monist does not try to add something to our experience that cannot be experienced (a Beyond), but in concept and perception sees the real. He does not spin metaphysics out of mere abstract concepts; he sees in the concept, as such, only one side of reality, namely, that side which remains hidden from perceiving but having meaning only in union with perceptions.
Monism calls forth in man the conviction that he lives in a world of reality and does not have to go beyond this world for a higher reality that cannot be experienced. The monist does not look for Absolute Reality anywhere but in experience, because he recognizes that the content of experience is the reality. And he is satisfied by this reality, because he knows that thinking has the power to guarantee it. What dualism looks for only behind the world of observation, monism finds within it. Monism shows that in our cognition we grasp reality, not in a subjective image which slips in between man and reality, but in its true nature. For monism the conceptual content of the world is the same for every human individual (cp. p. 128 ff.). According to monistic principles, the reason one human individual regards another as akin to himself is because it is the same world content that expresses itself in the other also. In the unitary world of concepts there are not as many concepts of lions as there are individuals who think of a lion, but only one concept, lion.
And the concept which "A" adds to his perception of a lion is the same concept as "B"
adds to his, only apprehended by a different perceiving subject (cp. p. 107) Thinking leads all perceiving subjects to the common ideal unity of all multiplicity. The one world of ideas expresses itself in them as in a multiplicity of individuals. As long as man apprehends himself merely by means of self-perception, he regards himself as this particular human being; as soon as he looks toward the idea-world that lights up within him and embraces all particulars, he sees absolute reality living and shining forth within him. Dualism defines the divine primordial Being as pervading and living in all men.
Monism sees this common divine life in reality itself. The ideal content of another human being is also my content, and I regard it as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I think. In his thinking each man embraces only a part of the total idea-world, and to that extent individuals differ one from another by the actual content of their thinking. But these contents are within one self-enclosed whole, which encompasses the content of all men's thinking. In his thinking therefore, man takes hold of the universal primordial Being pervading all humanity. A life within reality filled with the content of thought is at the same time a life within God. The merely inferred, not to be experienced Beyond is based on a misunderstanding on the part of those who believe that the world in which we live does not contain within itself the cause and reason for its existence. They do not recognize that through thinking they find what they need to explain the perceptions. This is also why no speculation has ever brought to light any content that has not been borrowed from the reality that is given us. The God that is assumed through abstract conclusions is nothing but a human being transplanted into the Beyond; Schopenhauer's will is the power of human will made absolute. Hartmann's unconscious primordial Being, composed of idea and will, is a combination of two abstractions drawn from experience. Exactly the same is true of all other transcendent principles that are not based on thinking which is experienced.
In truth, the human spirit never goes beyond the reality in which we live, nor is there any need to do so, since everything we require in order to explain the world is within the world. If philosophers eventually declare that they are satisfied when they have deduced the world from principles they borrow from experience and transplant into an hypothetical Beyond, then the same satisfaction must also be possible, if the borrowed content is allowed to remain in this world where, for thinking to be experienced, it belongs. All attempts to transcend the world are purely illusory, and the principles transplanted from this world into the Beyond do not explain the world any better than those within it. And thinking, properly understood, does not demand any such transcendence at all, because a thought-content can seek a perceptual content, together with which it forms a reality only within the world, not outside it. The objects of imagination, too, are contents which are valid only if they become representations that refer to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they become part of reality.
A concept that is supposed to be filled with a content from beyond the world given us, is an abstraction to which no reality corresponds. We can think out only concepts of reality; in order actually to find reality itself, we must also perceive. An absolute Being for which a content is devised is an impossible assumption when thinking is properly understood.
The monist does not deny the ideal; in fact he considers a perceptual content, lacking its ideal counterpart, not to be a complete reality; but in the whole sphere of thinking he finds nothing that could make it necessary to deny the objective spiritual reality of thinking and therefore leave the realm which thinking can experience. Monism regards science that limits itself to a description of perceptions without penetrating to their ideal complements, as being incomplete. But it regards as equally incomplete all abstract concepts that do not find their complements in perceptions and nowhere fit into the network of concepts embracing the world to be observed. Therefore it can acknowledge no ideas that refer to objective factors lying beyond our experience, which are supposed to form the content of purely hypothetical metaphysics. All ideas of this kind which humanity has produced, monism recognizes as abstractions borrowed from experience; it is simply that the fact of the borrowing has been overlooked.
Just as little, according to monistic principles, could the aims of our action be derived from a Beyond outside mankind. Insofar as they are thought, they must originate from human intuition. Man does not make the purposes of an objective (existing beyond) primordial Being into his own individual purposes; he pursues his own, given him by his moral imagination. The idea that realizes itself in a deed, man detaches from the unitary idea-world, making it the foundation of his will. Consequently, what come to expression in his action are not commands projected from a Beyond into the world, but human intuitions that are within the world. For monism acknowledges no world ruler who sets our aims and directs our activity from outside. Man will find no such foundation of existence, whose decisions he must fathom in order to discover the aims toward which he is to guide his activity. He is referred back to himself. He himself must give content to his activity. If he seeks for the determining causes of his will outside the world in which he lives, then his search will be in vain. When he goes beyond the satisfaction of his natural instincts, for which Mother Nature has provided, then he must seek these causes in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more convenient to let himself be determined by the moral imagination of others. This means: either he must give up being active altogether, or must act according to determinations he gives himself out of his world of ideas, or which others give him from that world. When he gets beyond his bodily life of instincts, and beyond carrying out the commands of others, then he is determined by nothing but himself. He must act according to an impulse produced by himself and determined by nothing else. This impulse is indeed determined ideally in the unitary idea world, but in actual fact it is only through man that it can be taken from that world and translated into reality. The reason for the actual translation of an idea into reality through man, monism finds only in man himself. For idea to become deed, man must first will before it can happen. Such will then has its foundation only in man himself. Therefore ultimately it is man who determines his own deed. He is free.
1st Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918. In the second part of this book the attempt has been made to give proof that freedom (spiritual activity) is to be found in the reality of human deeds. To do this it was necessary to separate from the total sphere of human deeds those actions that can be deemed free by unbiased self-observation. They are the deeds which prove to be the realization of ideal intuitions. No other deeds, if considered without prejudice, can be regarded as free. But unbiased self-observation will lead man to recognize that it is inherent in his nature to progress along the path toward ethical intuitions and their realization. Yet this unprejudiced observation of man's ethical nature cannot arrive at an ultimate conclusion about freedom by itself. For if intuitive thinking had its source in some other being, if its being were not such as had its origin in itself, then the consciousness of freedom, which springs from morality, would prove to be an illusion. But the second part of this book finds its natural support in the first part, where intuitive thinking is presented as an inner, spiritual activity of man, which is experienced.
To understand this nature of thinking in living experience is at the same time to recognize the freedom of intuitive thinking. And if one knows that this thinking is free, then one also recognizes that sphere of the will to which freedom can be ascribed. Acting human beings will consider that will as free to which the intuitive life in thinking, on the basis of inner experience, can attribute a self-sustaining essence. One unable to do this cannot discover any altogether indisputable argument for the acceptance of freedom. The experience which is referred to here finds intuitive thinking in consciousness, which has reality not only in consciousness. And thereby it is discovered that freedom is the characteristic feature of all deeds that have their source in the intuitions of consciousness.
2nd Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918. The content of this book is built upon intuitive thinking, of which the experience is purely spiritual, and through which, in cognition, every single perception is placed within reality. This book intends to present no more than can be surveyed through the experience of intuitive thinking. But it also intends to present the kind of thought which this experienced thinking requires. It requires that in the process of knowledge thinking is not denied as a self-dependent experience. It requires that one does not deny its ability to experience reality in union with perceptions, instead of looking for reality only in a world lying outside this experience, an inferred world in relation to which the human activity of thinking would be something merely subjective. - This characterizes thinking as the element through which man gradually enters spiritually into reality. (It ought not to be possible to confuse this world view, based on experienced thinking, with a mere rationalism.) On the other hand, it should be evident from the whole spirit of this presentation that for human knowledge, the perceptual element contains a reality-content only if it is grasped by thinking. What characterizes reality as reality cannot lie outside thinking. Therefore it must not be imagined that the physical kind of perceiving guarantees the only reality. What comes to meet us as perception is something man must simply expect on his life journey. All he can ask is: Is one justified in expecting, from the point of view resulting from the intuitively experienced thinking, that it is possible for man to perceive not only physically but also spiritually? This can be expected. For even though on the one hand intuitively experienced thinking is an active process taking place in the human spirit, on the other hand it is also spiritual perception grasped without a physical organ. It is a perception in which the perceiver is himself active, and it is an activity of the self which is also perceived. In intuitively experienced thinking man is transferred into a spiritual world as perceiver. What comes to meet him as perceptions within this world in the same way as the spiritual world of his own thinking comes to meet him, man recognizes as a world of spiritual perception. This world of perception has the same relationship to thinking as the world of physical perception has on the physical side. When man experiences the world of spiritual perception it will not appear foreign to him, because in intuitive thinking he already has an experience which is of a purely spiritual character. A number of my writings which have been published since this book first appeared, deal with such a world of spiritual perception. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the philosophical foundation for these later writings. For here the aim is to show that a properly understood experience of thinking is already an experience of spirit. For this reason it appears to the author that one able in all earnestness to enter into the point of view of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity will not come to a standstill at the entry into the world of spiritual perception. It is true that by drawing conclusions from the content of this book it is not possible to derive logically what is presented in my later books. But from a living grasp of what in this book is meant by intuitive thinking, the further step will result quite naturally: the actual entry into the world of spiritual perception.
FIRST APPENDIX (Addition to the Revised Edition of 1918) Various objections brought forward by philosophers immediately after this book was first published induce me to add the following brief statement to this revised edition. I can well understand that there are readers for whom the rest of the book is of interest, but who will regard the following as superfluous, as a remote and abstract spinning of thoughts. They may well leave this short description unread. However, problems arise within philosophical world views which originate in certain prejudices on the part of the philosophers, rather than in the natural sequence of human thinking in general. What has so far been dealt with here appears to me to be a task that confronts every human being who is striving for clarity about man's being and his relationship to the world. What follows, however, is rather a problem which certain philosophers demand should be considered when such questions are under discussion as those dealt with here, because through their whole way of thinking, they have created difficulties which do not otherwise exist. If one simply ignores such problems, certain people will soon come forward with accusations of dilettantism and so on. And the opinion arises that the author of a discussion such as this book contains has not thought out his position in regard to those views he does not mention in the book.
The problem to which I refer is this: There are thinkers who are of the opinion that a particular difficulty exists when it is a question of understanding how the soul life of another person can affect one's own (the soul life of the observer). They say: My conscious world is enclosed within me; the conscious world of another person likewise is enclosed within him. I cannot see into the world of another's consciousness. How, then, do I come to know that we share the same world? A world view which considers that from a conscious sphere it is possible to draw conclusions about an unconscious sphere that can never become conscious, attempts to solve this difficulty in the following way.
This world view says: The content of my consciousness is only a representative of a real world which I cannot consciously reach. In that real world lies the unknown cause of the content of my consciousness. In that world is also my real being, of which likewise I have in my consciousness only a representative. And in it exists also the being of the other person who confronts me. What is experienced consciously by him has its corresponding reality in his real being, independent of his consciousness. This reality reacts on my fundamental but unconscious being in the sphere that cannot become conscious, and in this way a representative that is quite independent of my conscious experience is produced in my consciousness. One sees here that to the sphere accessible to my consciousness, hypothetically is added another sphere, inaccessible to my consciousness, and this is done because it is believed that we would otherwise be forced to maintain that the whole external world which seems to confront me is only a world of my consciousness, and this would result in the solipsistic -absurdity that the other persons also exist only in my consciousness.
It is possible to attain clarity about this problem, which has been created by several of the more recent approaches to a theory of knowledge, if one endeavors to survey the matter from the point of view that observes facts in accordance with their spiritual aspect, as presented in this book. To begin with, what do I have before me when I confront another personality? Let us consider what the very first impression is. The first impression is the physical, bodily appearance of the other person, given me as perception, then the audible perception of what he is saying, and so on. I do not merely stare at all this; it sets my thinking activity in motion. To the extent that I confront the other personality with my thinking, the perceptions become transparent to my soul. To the extent that I grasp the perceptions in thinking, I am obliged to say that they are not at all what they appear to be to the external senses. Within the perceptions as they appear directly to the senses something else is revealed, namely what they are indirectly. The fact that I bring them before me means at the same time their extinction as mere appearances to the senses. But what, in their extinction, they bring to revelation, this, for the duration of its effect on me, forces me - as a thinking being - to extinguish my own thinking and to put in its place the thinking of what is revealed. And this thinking I grasp as an experience that is like the experience of my own thinking. I have really perceived the thinking of the other. For the direct perceptions, which extinguish themselves as appearances to the senses, are grasped by my thinking, and this is a process that takes place completely within my consciousness; it consists in the fact that the thinking of the other takes the place of my thinking. The division between the two spheres of consciousness is actually cancelled out through the extinction of the appearances to the senses. In my consciousness this expresses itself in the fact that in experiencing the content of the other's consciousness I am aware of my own consciousness as little as I am aware of it in dreamless sleep. Just as my day-consciousness is excluded in dreamless sleep, so in the perceiving of the foreign content of consciousness, the content of my own is excluded. There are two reasons why one tends to be deluded about these facts; one is that in perceiving the other person, the extinction of the content of one's own consciousness is replaced not by unconsciousness as in sleep, but by the content of the other's consciousness; the other reason is that the alternation between extinction and re-appearance of self-consciousness occurs too quickly to be noticed in ordinary life. - This whole problem cannot be solved by an artificial construction of concepts which draws conclusions from what is conscious to what can never become conscious, but by actual experience of what occurs in the union of thinking with perception. Instances like the above often occur in regard to many problems which appear in philosophical literature. Thinkers should seek the path to unprejudiced observation in accordance with facts, both physical and spiritual, but instead they erect an artificial construction of concepts, inserting this between themselves and reality. Eduard von Hartmann, in an essay63 includes my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity among philosophical works which are based on "epistemological monism." And this theory is rejected by him as one that cannot even be considered. The reason for this is as follows.
According to the viewpoint expressed in the essay mentioned above, only three possible epistemological standpoints exist. The first is when a person remains at the naive standpoint and takes perceived phenomena to be realities existing outside of human consciousness. In this case critical insight is lacking. It is not recognized that after all one remains with the content of one's consciousness merely within one's own consciousness.
It is not realized that one is not dealing with a "table-in-itself" but only with the object of one's own consciousness. One remaining at this standpoint, or returning to it for any reason, is a naive realist. However, this standpoint is impossible, for it overlooks the fact that consciousness has no other object than itself. The second standpoint is when all this is recognized and is taken into account fully. Then to begin with, one becomes a transcendental idealist. As transcendental idealist one has to give up hope that anything from a "thing-in-itself" could ever reach human consciousness. And if one is consistent, then it is impossible not to become an absolute illusionist. For the world one confronts is transformed into a mere sum of objects of consciousness, and indeed only objects of one's own consciousness. One is forced to think of other people too - absurd though it is - as being present only as the content of one's own consciousness. According to von Hartmann the only possible standpoint is the third one, transcendental realism. This view assumes that "things-in-themselves" exist, but our consciousness cannot have direct experience of them in any way. Beyond human consciousness - in a way that remains unconscious - they are said to cause objects of consciousness to appear in human consciousness. All we can do is to draw conclusions about these "things-in-themselves' '
from the merely represented content of our consciousness which we experience. In the essay mentioned above, Eduard von Hartmann maintains that "epistemological monism"
- and this he considers my standpoint to be - would in reality have to confess to one of the three standpoints just mentioned; this is not done, because the epistemological monist does not draw the actual conclusion of his presuppositions. The essay goes on to say: "If one wants to find out what position a supposed monist occupies in regard to a theory of knowledge, it is only necessary to ask him certain questions and compel him to answer them. Voluntarily he will not give any opinion on these points, and he will go to any length to avoid answering direct questions on them, because each answer will show that as a monist his claim to belong to some other standpoint than one of the above three, in relation to a theory of knowledge, is out of the question. These questions are as follows: 1) Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is: They are continuous, then we are dealing with one form or another of naive realism. If the answer is: They are intermittent, then we have transcendental idealism. But if the answer is: They are on the one hand continuous (as content of the absolute consciousness, or as unconscious representations, or existing as possibilities of perceptions), on the other hand they are intermittent (as content of limited consciousness), then we recognize transcendental realism. - 2) If three persons sit at a table, how many examples of the table are present? He who answers: One, is a naive realist; he who answers: Three, is a transcendental idealist; but he who answers: Four, is a transcendental realist. This last answer does indeed presuppose that it is legitimate to put under the one heading, 'examples of the table' something so dissimilar as the one table as thing-in-itself, and the three tables as perceptual objects in the three consciousnesses. Whoever finds this too much will have to answer 'one and three' instead of 'four.' - 3) If two persons are in a room by themselves, how many examples of these persons are present? One answering: Two, is a naive realist; one answering: Four (namely, one 'I' and one 'other' in each of the two consciousnesses), is a transcendental idealist; but one answering: Six (namely, two persons as 'things-in-themselves' and four objects of representation of persons in the two consciousnesses), is a transcendental realist. One wishing to prove that epistemological monism is a different standpoint from any of these three, would have to answer each of the above questions differently, and I cannot imagine what such answers could be."
The answers of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would be: 1) He who only grasps the perceptual content: and takes this to be the reality, is a naive realist; he does not make it clear to himself that he can actually regard the perceptual content as enduring only so long as he is looking at it and he must, therefore, think of what he has before him as intermittent. However, as soon as he realizes that reality is present only when the perceptual content is permeated by thought, he reaches the insight that the perceptual content that comes to meet him as intermittent, is revealed as continuous when it is permeated with what thinking elaborates. Therefore: the perceptual content, grasped by a thinking that is also experienced, is continuous, whereas what is only perceived must be thought of as intermittent - that is, if it were real, which is not the case. - 2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many examples of the table are present? One table only is present; but as long as the three persons remain at their perceptual pictures they will have to say: These perceptual pictures are no reality at all. And as soon as they pass over to the table as grasped in their thinking, there is revealed to them the one reality of the table; with their three contents of consciousness they are united in this one reality. - 3) When two persons are in a room by themselves, how many examples of these persons are present? There are most definitely not six examples present - not even in the sense of transcendental realism - there are two. Only to begin with, each of the two persons has merely the unreal perceptual-picture of himself as well as that of the other person. Of these pictures there are four, and the result of their presence in the thinking-activity of the two persons is that reality is grasped. In their thinking-activity each of the persons goes beyond the sphere of his own consciousness; within each of them lives the sphere of the other person's consciousness, as well as his own. At moments when this merging takes place, the persons are as little confined within their own consciousness as they are in sleep. But the next moment, consciousness of the merging with the other person returns, so that the consciousness of each person - in his experience of thinking - grasps himself and the other. I know that the transcendental realist describes this as a relapse into naive realism. But then I have already pointed out in this book that naive realism retains its justification when applied to a thinking that is experienced. The transcendental realist does not enter into the actual facts concerned in the process of knowledge; he excludes himself from them by the network of thoughts in which he gets entangled. Also, the monism which is presented in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity should not be called "epistemological," but rather, if a name is wanted, a monism of thought. All this has been misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. He did not enter into the specific points raised in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, but maintained that I had made an attempt to combine Hegel's universalistic panlogism64 with Hume's65 individualistic phenomenalism66 whereas in actual fact the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has no similarity with these two views it is supposed to combine. (This is also the reason I did not feel inclined to compare my view with the "epistemological monism" of Johannes Rehmke,67 for example. In fact, the viewpoint of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is utterly different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call epistemological monism.)
SECOND APPENDIX.
In this Appendix is repeated, in all essentials, what served as a kind of "Foreword" to the first edition of this book (1894). In this edition I place it as an appendix because it conveys the kind of thoughts that occupied me when I wrote the book twenty-five years ago, rather than having any direct bearing on the content. It is not possible to omit it altogether, since the opinion crops up, again and again, that because of my writings on the science of the spirit, I have to suppress some of my earlier writings. [footnote: Only the very first opening sentences (in the first edition) are left out here, because to-day they seem to me to be quite irrelevant; whereas to say the rest seems to me as necessary to-day as it did then, despite the prevalent scientific trend of thought, and in fact just because of it.]
Our age is one in which truth must be sought in the depths of human nature. Of Schiller's two well-known paths, it will be the second that most appeals to modern man:
"Truth seek we both - Thou in the life without thee and around; I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.