An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's PhilosophyJones, W. Tudor (William Tudor)
Religion
An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy
Jones, W. Tudor (William Tudor)
Eucken, Rudolf, 1846-1926
Pleasures are coming and going; but the onlooking subject of
consciousness has simply to become aware of them, and has no right to
say that they are better or more valuable than pain, or that the
emotions of enjoyment or the ideas of wisdom or the impulses of virtue
are, psychologically considered, more valuable than grief or vice or
foolishness. In the system of physical and psychical objects, there is
thus no room for any possible value; and even in the thought and idea of
value there is nothing but an indifferent mental state produced by
certain brain excitement. For as soon as we illuminate and shade and
colour the world of the scientist in reference to man's life and death,
or to his happiness and pain, we have carelessly destroyed the pure
system of science, and given up the presupposition of the strictly
naturalistic work."[27] Wundt presents a standpoint not quite so
pronounced, but which looks in the same direction.[28]
This fundamental difference has been recognised by Eucken, and forms an
important contribution on his part towards elucidating [p.95] the
meaning of spiritual life not only in the process of knowing but in its
new beginning in its creation of an "inner world of values." The content
present in the construction of this "new world" is other than a mental
content expressing connection of psychical and physical. Eucken
differentiates between the two aspects already referred to, and
designates the difference by the terms _Noological and Psychological
Methods_. These methods are most clearly presented in _The Truth of
Religion_. He says: "To explain _noologically_ means to arrange the
whole of spiritual life [including mental life] as a special spiritual
activity, to ascertain its position and problem, and through such an
adaptation to illumine the whole and raise its potencies. To explain
_psychologically,_ on the contrary, means to investigate _how_ man
arrives at the apprehension and appropriation of a spiritual content and
especially of a spiritual life, with what psychic aids is the spiritual
content worked out, how the interest of man for all this is to be
raised, and how his energy for the enterprise is to be won. Here one has
to proceed from an initial point hardly discernible, and step by step,
discover the way of ascent; thus the psychological method becomes at the
same time a psychogenetic method. The main condition is that both
methods be held sufficiently apart in order that the conclusions of both
may not flow together, and yet may form a fruitful completion."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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