Religion and Science from Galileo to BergsonHardwick, J. C. (John Charlton)
Religion
Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson
Hardwick, J. C. (John Charlton)
Religion and science
Here we have one form of the religious spirit; for the mystic it is
always true that "there is neither speech nor language." The mystic and
the dogmatist stand at opposite poles, for dogmatism is always an
attempt at definition even when that which is to be defined is
indefinable; and here is to be found the common denominator between Kant
and Rousseau. The former, by his analysis of reason, discredited
dogmatism: the latter, by his apotheosis of feeling, contributed towards
the same result.
ROMANTICISM IN GERMANY.--This strong movement of feeling, created on the
one hand by Kant's _Critique_, and by the mysticism of Rousseau, took
different forms in the two countries to which these two philosophers
belonged. In France the new philosophy became the hot-bed of
revolutionary ideas; whereas in Germany it found vent in a ferment of
speculative systems, and in an outcrop of artistic production. It
produced the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the prose
and poetry of Goethe and Schiller.
"It was the age of 'beautiful souls' and of 'noble hearts'; men believed
themselves capable of the highest things; the immediate needs of the
heart were set over against reason ... under many successive forms
Romanticism prevailed in literature, effecting the re-birth of human
fancy after the long labour of intellect."[27]
THE GOAL OF PHILOSOPHY.--Philosophic young Germany had set itself an
ambitious programme. Kant, indeed, had cleared the ground for them, but
his warnings that an eagle cannot soar beyond the atmosphere which
supports it, were disregarded.
The philosophy of Kant himself was felt by the successors to be lacking
in the _idea of totality_--in the conception of a whole. His division of
existence into Appearance and Reality seemed to indicate a certain lack
of finish in his philosophy; and they set themselves to explore the root
of reality which to Kant seemed undiscoverable, but in which the
sensuous and super-sensuous worlds are united, and from which they have
emerged. This task became and remained the grand problem of philosophy
for a whole generation of thinkers. All externality, isolation, and
division were to disappear, all existence must be shown to be but
degrees and phases of the one infinite reality. Spinoza's work had to be
done again in the light of increased psychological knowledge.
FICHTE.--Of the thinkers who addressed themselves to this ambitious
task, only two need be considered here; and these are chosen because
they attacked the problem from different directions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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