SCHWEGLER'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.*
'Tim author of this very instructive handbook of the History of Philosophy regards his subject from a Hegelian " stand-point," but relieved from the strictly logical character which renders it so difficult to receive the Hegelian view. According to Hegel, the history of philosophy is a necessary process, and he claims as the result of his valuable, though often obscure Geschichte, to have demonstrated the necessary procession of every system of philoso- phy from its predecessor, "so that the one absolutely presupposes the other." " The general result of the history of philosophy is," he continues, " first, that in all time there has been only one philosophy, whose simultaneous differences constitute the neces- sary sides of the one principle ; second, that the succession of philosophical systems demonstrates no contingent, but the neces- sary series of the development of this science ; third, that the last philosophy of an age is the result of this development and the truth in its highest form, which gives the self-consciousness of the spirit of itself. Therefore the last philosophy contains the preceding, comprehends all systems in itself, is product and result of all that went before." That there is a general truth in all this will not be questioned by those who believe there is a law of intellectual progress governing the developments of human life. And as we may trace throughout the history of humanity the action of such a law, though sometimes working fitfully, and at others seeming to be overborne and counteracted by hostile influences, so we may trace through the history of philosophy the progress of philosophical thought in the genetic relations of various systems to each other. To this extent the Hegelian prin- ciple may be allowed to be capable of demonstration, and to this extent it is admitted by Dr. Schwegler. But Hegel himself claimed more than this. A merely general idea, fundamentally true in principle, but not logically demonstrable in application to all the detailed steps in the history of philosophy,—simply because there is :such an element in human life as contingency and such a fact as free-will,—would not satisfy him. He boldly declared that the succession of philosophical systems is identical with the logical categories, and claimed to be able, by stripping from them their merely external and formal elements, to exhibit the various steps of the logical notion (being, becoming, individual being, particular being, quantity, &c.). Dr. Schwegler maintains, and we think with justice, that this conception in all its strictness cannot be justified either in principle or experience. " It fails in prin- ciple, for history is a combination of liberty and necessity, and exhibits, therefore, only on the whole, any connection of reason ; while in its particulars, again, it presents but a play of endless contingency. It is thus, too, that Nature, as a whole, displays * Handbook of the History of Philosophy. By Dr. Albert Schwegler. Translated And annotated by James Hutchison Stirling, LL.D., Author of "The Secret of Beget," Re. Edinburgb Edmonston and Douglas. rationality and system, but mocks all attempts at a priori schemata in detail. Further, in history it is individuals who have the initia- tive, free subjectivities,—what consequently, therefore, is directly incommensurable." Further, we find that the experience of history does not run parallel with our logical preconceptions. The course of actual historical development differs almost always from the logical. " Historically, for example, the origin of the State was the desire of protection from violence and fraud ; while logically, on the other hand, we are to find it, not in natural anarchy, but in the idea of justice."
We see no inconsistency in Schwegler holding these views and rejecting the strict application of the Hegelian principle, and yet maintaining that the various systems of which the history of philo- sophy takes account " constitute together but a single organic movement, a rational, inwardly-articulated whole, a series of evolu- tions founded in the tendency of mind to raise its natural more and more into conscious being, into knowledge, and to recognize the entire spiritual and natural universe more and more as its life and outward existence, as its actuality and reality, as the mirror of itself." The object of philosophy in the highest sense is to inform the world with reason, to discern the ultimate why and wherefore of all things, thereby to discover the intellectual principles of the universe and to weave all our knowledge into system. As the amount of our knowledge, and, to a certain extent, its nature, is continually varying and being constantly added to, it therefore follows that no final philosophy can be found. Hence the fluc- tuating character of philosophy, and the fact that it takes form as successive systems (each being but the philosophical expression of the entire life of its time). But while the method of philosophy— seeking final principles—necessitates constant advance, the matter of it—the fact, that is, that it always deals with investigation into ultimate results, and is therefore the Science of Ends (a considera- tion which Schwegler overlooks)—obliges each succeeding philoso- pher to regard the latest system as absolute. Thus we find that a number of philosophical systems, each of which in its time has been regarded as final, succeed each other, and are connected with each other as members of an organic whole, which, however, we must always view as always to be, but which never actually is complete. To hold that philosophical systems are thus gene- tically connected, and yet that they do not adhere to a strict course of logical development, is not, we say, incon- sistent. We are not surprised to find, however, that so ardent a Hegelian as Mr. Stirling should declare that the two views are irreconcilable, and that Dr. Schwegler is illogical in holding both. In his annotation on the general idea of the history of philosophy Mr. Stirling maintains that both Schwegler and Zeller (who in this agrees with Schwegler) are guilty of self-contradiction, because the former argues that either we must regard history as mere contingency, which governs and determines thought, instead of being determined by it, or we must allow that Hegel was right in banishing contingency from the history of philosophy, and regarding the latter as one process which can be constructed a priori. But there is an alternative different from both of these views. We may retain our belief in the rationality of history, and allow that the various systems of philosophy are evolved in obedience to a law of rational progress—that, consequently, there is a necessary element in the historical development —with- out at the same time maintaining that there is nothing else. Because we admit the presence of contingency we are not shut up to the assertion of mere contingency, and of that alone. Because I believe that I can trace purpose in the world and in human life, and that throughout them and in their course there are rational principles operating, I am not therefore forced to endeavour to compress everything into, and explain everything by, the forms of the logical concept. Undoubtedly Hegel did this, and he was consistent in applying to the history of philo- sophy the principle applied by him to everything else. Accord- ing to him the concept is everything, even God himself. The Christian dogmas are explained by the concept. The Trinity is but its development. God the Father before the creation is the pure logical concept which develops itself in the categories of Being. The revelation or self-affirmation of the concept is God the Son. But this self-affirmation disturbs the unity of pure Being, and the negation must be taken away which is realized in art, religion, and philosophy in the human spirit, and this human spirit is at the same time the Holy Ghost, whereby God first arrives at complete consciousness of Himself. We need not wonder when Hegel applied his logical concept in this region that he should also have applied it in others. With him logic, instead of being merely the foundation to philosophy, as it is, was philosophy itself, and all reality must be compressed into the necessary logical forms or
categories. Everything which is, is in the idea or logical concept, and therefore the idea is the truth of everything. In criticizing the Hegelian system Schelling admits that everything may be iu the logical idea, but only in the sense that the logical is the mere negative of existence—as that without which nothing could exist, but from which it does not follow that everything also only exists
by means of it " The whole world lies, as it were, in the nets of the understanding or reason ; but the question is, first, how it came into these nets, since in the world there is evidently something else and something more than were reason." This something more, which Schelling elsewhere calls ausserlogisches Seyn, is the element of contingency and freedom, which operating always renders impossible any absolute a priori construction of nature and history- on philosophical principles. In reality, ardent Hegelian as he is, Mr•. Stirling himself admits that it is impossible to apply rigidly to the history of philosophy the Hegelian principle, when he allows the existence of lacuna; which be tries to account for by " the unavoidable imperfections both of philosophy and the history of philosophy as yet." Schwegler points out, too, that Hegel himself was forced to abandon the reali- zation of his main idea at the very threshold of Greek philosophy. -" Being, becoming, individual being,—the Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atomists,—thus far the parallel extends, but not further. Not only there follows now Anaxagoras with the notion of a designing mind, but even from the first the two series agree not. Hegel would have been more consistent had he entirely rejected the Ionic philosophy (for matter is no logical category), and had he assigned to Pythagoras a place, seeing that the categories of quantity follow those of quality, after the Eleatics and the Atomists. In short, he would have been more consistent logically had he put chronology entirely to the rout." But could anything prove more thoroughly the impotence of his principle as applied, at least, by its author. Mr. Stirling, too, ac- knowledges " that Hegel's chain of logical categories can only partially and interruptedly be demonstrated to underlie the phe- nomenal contingency, whether of nature or of history." Which we think demonstrates that not pure reason alone, but reason plus contingency, is the field in which philosophy disports itself, both in nature and history, and that no absolute and necessary logical development of philosophical systems according to the logical categories can be traced either in nature or history.
We have dwelt thus long on this point because we consider it of moment that what we cannot but regard as a great and valu- able general philosophical principle, should not be rendered useless by the too stringent attempt, by stretching and distorting it beyond what it can bear, to apply it with strict logical exactitude. That Schwegler's history sustains the modifications introduced by Schwegler into the Hegelian principle we need not say. And it is much to be able to trace even generally the development of an intellectual principle giving unity to what otherwise would be a mere bundle of unconnected systems, by showing the genetic connection of these systems. It is one of the principal merits of this handbook that it establishes such a connection. The author was undoubtedly a thoroughly ripe and matured philo- sophical student, and his power of grasping the central prin- ciples of the various systems, and exhibiting them in their essen- tial aspects in brief space, has enabled him to present a work which more than almost any other we know gives us in little the com- pressed essence of thinking. The book is one essentially for students. No one will benefit by it who does not read it as a student, with careful and earnest thought. We cannot refer here to the way in which Schwegler deals with each individual system. But we wish to say a word on his exposition of the philo- sophy of Schelling, partly because Schelling is not known in Eng- land, in his later phases at least, as he ought and deserves to be, and partly because this, with the exposition of Hegelianistn that follows, is one of the most valuable portions of the work. Schwegler says, " The philosophy of Schelling is no finished and completed system, to which his various works are but as component parts ; like the philosophy of Plato, it is essentially a history of development, a series of progressive stages, through which the philosopher him- self passed." This is true, so true, indeed, that Schelling may be said to have represented in himself the leading phases of modern philosophy. Starting from the stand-point of Fichte, he developed the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre to their furthest extreme. He was there, as Erdmann has said, athe- istic in a bolder way even than Fichte himself, as his letters on Dogmatism and Criticism show. Becoming dissatisfied with subjective idealism, he passed, by means of his Philosophy of Nature, to the opposite extreme, and from maintaining that the Ego was everything denied the independence of the Ego altogether, and boldly professed a system of uncompromising pantheism. But Schelliug did not remain here. The medium between all and nothing is One, and he returned to Monotheism after having sought rest for the sole of his foot and found none in the opposing systems of Atheism and Pantheism, although in his last stage ho did not exclude Pantheism, but neutralized it by its opposite. In running through these various systems, we can trace in the development of Schelling four leading epochs. The first and in reality merely prefatory and preparatory period was that iu which he occupied the stand-point of Fichte as a subjective idealist. To this suc- ceeded the period of Nature Philosophy, iu which the objective side was prominent ; and this was followed by a third phase, in which the elements of freedom and personality, hitherto kept iu the background and unexplained if not sacrificed, were taken into account. After a long silence Schelling again appeared before the public with a totally new system. All his former philosophy he declared was purely negative and preparatory to the positive philosophy now proclaimed by him in his latest writings. This new system was essentially a system of speculative theology viewed from a world-historical stand-point. Ile accepted Reve- lation, and sought to explain its facts as parts of a universal scheme of development in which mythology occupied the posi- tion of a propmileutic to Revelation. In Schwegler we find a very clear exposition of the various phases of the Schellingian philosophy, though in dividing it into five periods we think he unduly multiplies the series. The sections on Schelliug and liege! in modern philosophy, and on Plato in ancient, are per- haps the most valuable portions of the volume. Schwegler wisely narrows the scope of his work by starting with Thaler, the true beginning of philosophy, and leaving wholly out of account Oriental dreams and theorizing& lie also dispenses with the Scholastic philosophy, on which he has only a few general pages. The work is written in a terse and nervous style, to which the translator hardly does justice. Mr. Stirling has yielded too much to the temptation to Germanize his English, and often uses very ugly and inelegant terms. One term which he has invented is simply atrocious. That there is a distinction between the ideas of being and existence (Sept and Daseyn) iu modern philosophy is unquestionable ; but it is wholly unjustifiable to invent such a word as beat, because existent does not " serve the turn," as he phrases it. With regard to the annotations appended to the volume, they are fragmentary and incomplete, only proceeding as far as the Sophists in ancient philosophy. Mr. Stirling promises to supply the wants of his commentary at a future time, but he would have done wisely not to have pro- fessed to annotate a book on seven-eighths of which he is wholly silent. His " Note Conclusory " on the Comtean philosophy is unsatisfactory, because he confesses that he knows nothing of Comte except through his English commentators. Alto- gether, Mr. Stirling has not discharged the duties of a trans- lator and annotator in a quite satisfactory manner. Yet the volume will, doubtless, be a valuable one to many, and we hesitate not to say is a decided acquisition to our philosophical literature.
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