The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lecturesSchlegel, Friedrich von
Philosophy
The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures
Schlegel, Friedrich von
Language and languages -- Philosophy; Life; Philosophy
to the judgment of the world, nothing is undertaken or transacted
without a view to some object of a selfishness more or less refined. But
when we look to the worst and most violent cases of this disease--an
insatiable avarice and a morbid love of gain, then we at once see the
baneful effects which the fancy, dwelling exclusively on material
property and chinking coin, has on this moral disease, where, with the
golden treasure, mind and soul are shut up and buried, and both
completely numbed and petrified, in the same way that, by certain
organic diseases of the body, the heart becomes ossified.
By these pernicious passions, the higher moral organ of life is in
different ways attacked and destroyed. In the first case, that of the
blinding of the mind by pride and vanity, the moral judgment is
perverted and falsified. In the second case, where the soul is
brutalized by a life of sensuality, the moral sense is clouded, loses
all its delicacy, and is at last totally obliterated. In the third
instance, that of a thorough numbness of the inner life produced by
selfishness and avarice, the idea of moral duty is in the end totally
lost, dies away, and becomes extinct, while the dead Mammon is regarded
as the supreme good of life, and, being set up as the sole object of
human exertion, is substituted for the best and noblest acquisition of
mind and soul. The three passions which we have already examined are
founded indeed on a positive pursuit, however false may be the extent or
perverted the direction in which it is carried out. We might now proceed
with our speculation, and, progressively developing it from the same
point of view, extend and apply it to the aggressive passions, which are
based on a merely negative pursuit--the attack, annihilation, and
destruction of their objects. I allude to the passion of hatred, in its
three different elements or species, viz., anger, malice, and revenge.
But to enter further upon such investigations would be inappropriate in
the present place. Generally, indeed, in touching upon matters so
universally known, my object has been merely to consider and exhibit
them from their psychological side, in order to show partly how the
triple principle of human existence, according to mind or spirit, and
soul, and the third element, wherein the former two conjointly operate,
finds its application, and is repeated, as it were, in miniature, in the
narrower sphere of the natural inclination, both good and bad, and also
in that of the external senses. At the same time it was also my wish to
call attention to the fact, that the dominion of the fancy over its
subordinate faculties, whether of the external senses or the instincts,
manifests itself likewise in the pernicious passions, as exercising over
them a very baneful influence, and, indeed, as being the principal
source of the prevailing aberrations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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