Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of LifeEucken, Rudolf
Philosophy
Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life
Eucken, Rudolf
Life; Ontology
reproach in that it must continually bring itself into relation to
perception: nevertheless it will interweave all that is imparted to it
by perception into a framework of thought--transform it, in fact, into a
realm of thought. Spirituality is bound; but how dull an individual must
be to confuse such a bound spirituality with mere sensuousness!
The error of Naturalism is obvious; concerned solely with the object and
its form, it entirely leaves out of account the psychical activity which
is involved in the perception of an object; it overlooks the
life-process within which alone we can have knowledge of an object and
occupy ourselves with it. As soon, however, as we regard the object from
this point of view, it will be transformed and will assume far more
spiritual traits. Reality will then burst asunder the framework into
which Naturalism desires to press it.
The type of life which Naturalism gives rise to also contains more than
Naturalism is able to explain. At first sight it seems as though man is
taken up completely into a wider conception of nature; as though his
life obeys its forces and impulses exclusively; as though all his
asserted superiority to nature is simply imaginary. As a matter of fact,
in this turning to nature, man, with his spiritual activity, stands not
within, but above, nature. For he does not appear as a mere piece of
nature, but experiences it and thinks over it: its kingdom, its
organisation, its stability become to him a joyful possession and a
widening of his being. The spiritual life has developed in relation to
nature; nature has not welded it together. The same may be said of the
idea of the increase of power, which constitutes the main gain of life
in the naturalistic system. For, in the naturalistic type of life power
is not directed towards externals, as in nature, but is experienced and
enjoyed, and only thus does it constitute a source of happiness; yet how
could it be that, without an organisation of life in an inner unity
which transcends individual occurrences? Thus, the intellectual and the
technical control of nature which the Modern Age has acquired attracts
men and prevails over them chiefly as a growth of life, as an increase
of self-reliance. Even material goods, wealth and property, do not
determine the endeavour of the man of culture so much through sensuous
enjoyment, the limit of which is soon reached, as through their
possibilities as means to activity and creation, to the advancement of
human capacity. It is this in particular which has filled the material
civilisation of the present with the spirit of restlessness and
extravagance, and gives it its demoniacal power over men. It is this
relation alone which explains and justifies the present estimate of
material goods, so much higher as that is in modern culture than it was
in the older systems of thought, which branded as unworthy all endeavour
directed to the acquirement of such things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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