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
Schiller worked in practically the same direction. A moral standpoint of
a high order [p.121] is to be discovered in his writings, and he
believed this standard to be possible of preservation alongside of a
legitimate "freedom granted in the phenomenon." "Then the two tendencies
again became divided. Romanticism gave a peculiar definite and
self-conscious expression to the priority of art and the aesthetical
view of life, while Fichte and the other leaders of the national
movement exerted a powerful influence in the direction of strengthening
morality. The social and industrial type of civilisation, which became
more and more powerful during the course of the nineteenth century, was
inclined, with its tendency towards social welfare and utility, to
assign a subordinate part to art. Modern art arises in protest against
this and is ambitious to influence the whole of life; in opposition to
morality it holds up an aesthetic view of life as being alone
justifiable. Hence at the present time the two spheres stand wide
apart."[39]
Eucken shows how such an antithesis between morality and art has
partially existed for thousands of years. But whenever a cleavage takes
place both morality and art suffer. On the one hand, morality tends to
become a system of rules for the performance of which a reward is
promised either in this world or in the world to come. On the other
hand, art is stripped of the distinction between the values of sensuous
things as these express [p.122] themselves in their relation to human
life. In the former case, insistence on morality (even on morality
alone) has deepened human life; it has given it a more strenuous tone;
and it has created a scale of values which alters the whole meaning of
life. But morality conceived as a system of regulations and laws has
always the tendency to harden and narrow the life, and to posit the
individual too much upon himself. Any justification from without--from
the physical side--consequently fails to give any help or satisfaction.
And man needs this help. As it is impossible for him to fly out of the
world to some region where mind or spirit alone reigns, he has to do the
best he can with the physical world in the midst of which he exists. It
is within such a world that he has to cultivate the spiritual potencies
of his own being. It is true that the spiritual potencies of his own
being are higher and of more value than anything in Nature. Still, that
does not mean that Nature has to be discarded or condemned before the
potencies of his own being can develop. Nature is not a mere blind
machine; it has produced all--including man and his potencies--that is
to be found on the face of it. It is therefore not entirely meaningless,
and the meaning it possesses is a necessary element in the evolution of
personal spiritual life. Man must enter into some relation with Nature.
But such a relation produces even more than all this. When viewed in a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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