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
This difference between the natural and the mental sciences has been
emphasised, at various times, since the time of Plato. But the
difference tended to become obliterated through the discoveries of
natural science and its great influence during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The key of evolution had come at last into the hands
of men, and it fitted so many closed doors; it provided an entrance to a
new kind of world, and gave new methods for knowing that world. But, as
already stated, evolution is capable of dealing with what _is_ in the
light of what _was_, and the _Is_ and the _Was_ are the physical
characteristics of things. In all this, mind and morals, as they are in
their own intrinsic nature operating in the world, are left out of
account. A striking example of this is found in the late Professor
Huxley's Romanes Lecture--_Evolution and Ethics_. In this remarkable
lecture it is shown that the cosmic order does not answer all our
questions, and is indifferent [p.22] and even antagonistic to our
ethical needs and ideals. Huxley's conclusion may be justly designated
as a failure of science to interpret the greatest things of life. Before
culture, civilisation, and morality become possible, a new point of
departure has to take place within human consciousness, and the attempt
to move in an ethical direction is as much hindered as helped by the
natural course of the physical universe. This lecture of Huxley's runs
parallel in many ways with Eucken's differentiation of Nature and
Spirit, and Huxley's "ethical life" has practically the same meaning as
Eucken's "spiritual life" on its lower levels.
Numerous instances are to be found in the present-day philosophy of
Germany of the need of a Metaphysic of Life, and of the impossibility of
constructing such from the standpoint of the results of the natural
sciences either singly or combined.
Professor Rickert's investigations are having important effects in this
respect. In his works he has made abundantly clear the difference
between the methods and results of the sciences of Nature and the
sciences of Mind. And even amongst the mental sciences themselves,
all-important aspects of different subject-matters present themselves,
and render themselves as of different _values_.
Professor Muensterberg has worked on a similar path, and has insisted
once more on the nature of reality as this expresses itself in [p.23] a
meaning which is over-individual. Professor Windelband's writings (_cf.
Praeludien, Die Philosophie im XX. Jahrhundert_, etc.) have emphasised
very clearly the need of the presence and acknowledgment of norms in
life, and of the meaning of life realising itself in the fulfilment of
these norms.[2]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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