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
The reality of spiritual life is not discovered in anything which is
external to life; it is to be found in life itself. The reality is
revealed and, indeed, created by an act of the spirit of man. Such an
act must be the act of one's [p.136] own deepest being. But although
such a new reality is not to be found in anything external to life, yet
the very revelation points, as we have already observed, to something
which is over-individual. Even the meaning of the reality itself, from
its _immanent_ side, is something quite other than the natural life and
its contents. It is something revealed, but not as yet possessed; it is
hard to be reached; and even within the man's own nature obstacles and
hindrances of various kinds are to be found. But the new reality
persists in the midst of the hindrances; the man discovers himself as
the possessor of a deeper kind of truth than was present and operative
in the ordinary life. A cleavage is therefore made between the "small
self" and the spiritual life. In the degree the former wins through the
calling forth of the deepest activities of the soul, in that degree does
the transcendent aspect of the new reality urge itself upon man. And
when the two aspects--immanent and transcendent--of the reality are
firmly grasped by the soul, the soul moves upward in the exploration and
possession of its new world.
The failure to enter into this region of religion is due to the fact
that men often attempt to construct religion on certain so-called
faculties of the soul. Some attempt to discover and establish religion
through the power and conclusions of the intellect. It is evident that
when the knowing aspect of consciousness [p.137] takes such a leading
part, and deliberately ignores the affective and active aspects, no more
than a segment of the reality can be discovered, and such a segment
leaves out of account important elements of human nature. If the
affective aspect takes the lead at the expense of the other two aspects,
we are here again in a region where only certain fragments of our nature
are touched. If the active aspect busies itself without carrying along
with itself the content of meaning and value to be discovered in
consciousness, the true element of the greatness of the reality is
missing. Eucken shows in his _Truth of Religion_ that there must be a
point in the soul, at some deeper level than any of the three, where the
three are working conjointly.[48] It must be so, because what is now at
stake is more than knowing a thing; it is to _be_ the thing we know we
_ought to be._ It is unfamiliarity with such a truth that brings a
difficulty into the mind when face to face [p.138] with the problem of
religion. The mind has not learned how to attend to the truth in its own
self-subsistence, but posits this truth in its relation to the
conditions in the external world which brought it forth.[49] Thus the
conception of truth is made up very largely of its history on its
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