Critique of the philosophy of Hartmann (2)

2. Psychology

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Two of your heroic feats on psychological domain have I already mentioned: you made will a physical principle again and explained consciousness as

You add another success to this immortal explanation with the remark that:

I reckon, Mr. von Hartmann, that this passage too belongs to those you deeply, deeply regret. It could not be otherwise. If I would have unconsciously written this passage, like by the way your whole philosophy, I would rush to seas and shame myself to the most desolated tropes of Brazil. Have you not thought, for a short moment, about a human, whose senses are all dead, who can therefore no longer have fresh representations, but who would nevertheless mirror his inner and bodily state in his self-consciousness? He would feel pleasure and displeasure (states of the demon), pain and lust (states of the organs) and completely conscious of it. Is the inside of man an object for you? In the self-consciousness subject and object indeed collude, and we grasp ourselves immediately as feeling: only in the most abstract thought this feeling becomes object for us. Mr. von Hartmann! I hope, that I can end this Critique will philosophical rest. I hope so. With certainty I can’t say so, so I ask you to forgive me, if sometimes I lose all patience, yes, become angered.

So how do you initially let the outer world arise in a perceiving subject? In your essay “The thing in itself”, on whose cover, after having read it, I wrote the Goethean expression:

You come to a transcendent causality which should be identical with the aprioric category of causality (page 77). You say:

The consciousness thinks in its subjective category the cause of that which is discursive, which is intuitively for-thought in the unconscious ideal-real causal process.

After this identification you maintain with other words: without subject the things of this would nevertheless stand in a real causal nexus.

Here too, Mr. von Hartmann – as you will come to see, in case you did not already know it “consciously” or “unconsciously” – here, at your first step in philosophy, you talk as if Kant and Schopenhauer have never been on this planet, or better: you believe that you’re able to blow down with one breath from your “divine” mouth the on rocks built thought-systems of our philosophical heroes, as if they are cart houses. You won’t succeed in doing so.

The aprioric causal law, i.e. the transition of the change in the sensory organ to its cause is, as Schopenhauer has found with the highest human prudence, the exclusive function of the Understanding.

As groundbreaking genius he was allowed, in astonishment about his splendid deed, lose the prudence again. The prudence was allowed to go under in the euphoria about an authentic, great achievemt, for Schopenhauer was human, no God. So he kept standing here; yes, he declared: the cause of the change in the sensory organ is, like the change itself, subjective. (As we know later on he revoked this intentional (?) mix-up of activity and cause.)

Kant established causality, i.e. the relation between cause and effect, by which all objects, all appearances stand always in pairs to each other – (please, distinguish between this causality and the Schopenhauerian causal law) – as aprioric function or form of thought, and added that the empirical affinity of the things is the mere consequence of the ideal affinity or with other words: if we take away the ideal causal nexus, then the things stand no affinity to each other. So both great thinkers have in common:

1. that without subject we cannot speak of causality, that without subject no causal nexus exists, that cause and effect are words which stand and fall with the subject;

2. that causality cannot lead us the thing-in-itself.

As you know, Kant has nevertheless subrepted with ideal causality the thing-in-itself; as you know as well, we must condemn his action, and therefore we are left with what I said under 2.

Regarding the sentence of 1, no one will ever succeed in overturning it; it is absolutely certain, that the words cause and effect stand and fall with the subject. A causal nexus exists only for a perceiving subject: independent from the subject no change in a thing-in-itself is the effect of a cause.

Meanwhile I have shown that even the Schopenhauerian causal law gives the indication of a from the subject independent force, of an activity of things-in-themselves, which is on the real, i.e. from subject independent domain is only force or activity, not cause.

It will be clear to you, that this is not about a poor game of words or about one and the same issue with two different words, but about a completely necessary separation of two fundamentally different concepts in philosophy, which, if they are mixed up, will obstruct the way to the truth forever.

On the real domain there is initially a relation between two things-in-themselves, i.e. the force of one of them brings forth a change in the other; furthermore all things in the world stand in a real affinity. The first relation is not the relation of cause to effect and the latter is not a causal nexus. The real affinity is the dynamical interrelation of the world, which would be present too without a perceiving subject, and the real relation in which two things-in-themselves stand, is the real consequence, which would be equally present if no perceiving subject would be present. Only when a perceiving subject is added to both interrelations, the real consequence is brought into an ideal relation of cause to effect [by the subject] and brings all appearances in a causal nexus, or better: it recognizes with support of ideal causality a real consequence and with support of ideal community (reciprocity) the real dynamical interrelation of the things.

There is thus, Mr von Hartmann, certainly no transcendent causality, but only an ideal one, in the head of the subject.

The ideal causal nexus is not juxtaposed on the real domain by a “real causal process”, as you dare to say despite Kant and Schopenhauer, but an entangled activity of things-in-themselves, which recognize by support of the purely ideal causality and purely ideal community.

I have furthermore shown in my psychology (Anlytic of the Cognition), that only Schopenhauer’s causal law is aprioric. The Kantian categories of relation: causality and reciprocity, are compositions a posteriori of the reason based on this aprioric law. They are therefore no primordial concepts, concepts a priori, categories, as Kant taught, but they are, as he very correctly determined for all times, purely subjective, purely ideal, exist only in our head, are prerequisites for the possibility of experience in general and have only sense and meaning on their application on experience. In anfd for themselves, without outside material, they are dead an really nothing.

You however come with staunch forehead in the world and say gruffly: “Kant was a foolish dreamer. Also without a perceiving subject there are cause and effect in the world.” You have furthermore the audacity to say “reciprocity does not exist.” And why do you say this? Because Schopenhauer has said so based on a misunderstanding (as I assume to his honor). I confidently assert that the relation which Kant wanted to designate with the category is reciprocity or community, so the third Analogy of Experience, the most valuable pearl of his Transcendental Analytic. You declare community to be

“an in itself defective conception.” (D.a.s. 81)

You intellectual giant, for whom even the great man of Königsberg should bow!

From the Kantian categories you let, extremely merciful and patronizing, only the following ones exist:

Quanity	Quality	Relation	Modality
Unity	Reality	Substance	Existence
Pluraltiy		Causality	Necessity

i.e. you continue philosophizing, as if Schopenhauer, whose errors you nevertheless have appropriated yourself with so much dexterity, has never lived.

How someone call still earnestly talk about concepts a priori, after Schopenhauer’s flawed, but still brilliant, magnificent Critique of the Kantian philosophy, is really beyond me. It is truly sad to see, how slowly the Truth comes forward, whereas the lie gets free play.

So you let the above mentioned forms of thinking exist and coldly declare

that these are as much forms of existence for being in itself, as forms of thinking for thoughts. (D.a.s. 89)

or with other words: you mix up again the forms of thing-in-itself with the subjective forms, just like with causality, i.e. you

pour everything, which rare minds like Locke and Kant separated with an incredible effort of sharpness and reflection, in the porridge of an absolute Identity. (Schopenhauer, Parerga I)

No, Mr. von Hartmann! The Truth still has loyal Knight Templars who are ready, when it is necessary, to give their life for the sublime Goddess, and these Knights of the Grail will not allow that immature lads play with the few achievements of the rarest minds like beans and peas, smashing them or throwing them into fire.

The categories which you left in the Kantian table are neither forms of thinking, nor forms of the thing-in-itself. Meanwhile we have now – as you will remember – two ideal connections, which we can bring under the categories of relation, namely:

1. causality, called general causality by me;
2. community.

Both are however not primordial concepts a priori, but – as I can’t tell you often enough – connections a posteriori of the reason based on the aprioric causal law (transition of the effect in the sensory organ to its cause).

Now we want to go further.

Are space and time ideal, only in our head, in accordance with Kant’s teaching, or these forms ideal and real?

You assert the latter and you aristocratically look with a face of a superior genius down on the intellectually as well as bodily small man, who is called Kant. Who is Kant? What this blockhead has written

must finally be treated with fitting disregard. (D.a.s. 97)

You say:

Space and time are just as well forms of existence as forms of thinking. (290)

The thing-in-itself is in its existence temporal. (90)

On page 114 (D.a.s.) you speak about a “real space” and on page 602 one can read:

In my view space and time are just as well forms of the outer reality as subjective brain perception.

Would this be so, Mr. von Hartmann, then Kant would certainly be nothing else than a cheeky fellow and at most a talented mind, but not a groundbreaking genius; because if you deny that Kant’s philosophy on the human intellect has any worth, then what valuable remains in his work? Something from his ethics, which ended with moral theology? Something from his aesthetics, which except for a few good ideas, contains nothing positive, only critical-negative ones? His assault on God, which ended with the postulate of a God? This clear fact, Mr. von Hartmann, should have made you very, very suspicious; for whoever reads, it is but a single page, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, has immediately the intuition that a superior mind is talking. This dark feeling transmutes itself in him, who studies Kant, into the clear judgement, that

Kant might be the most original mind, which nature has ever produced. (Schopenhauer)

You too, Mr. von Hartmann, must have felt this, for your mortal enemy will have to admit, that you are very talented. And nevertheless you have dared it do bring Kant down to the level where you are standing, by declaring the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic, the most miraculous blossoms of human profundity, to be idle, conceived fairytales.

Oh, Mr. von Hartmann! Not for the treasures of both India’s, as the saying goes, not for the Cakrawartti-crown, i.e. the Caeserean rule of the whole world, would I have passed your judgement on the “all-crusher”. And if I would possess no more uplifting consciousness than this: having understood Kant, then still I would not switch places with anyone in the world.

I would hold myself, like Hamlet, to be a King, although I merely sit in a nutshell.

Nevertheless I cannot completely condemn you regarding time and space, and you may take just from that, that I criticize your works sine ira et studio (without anger and fondness).

What has been told about you to me, namely that you regret having published your work so early, just as well as your pessimism, has caused, though I do not know you personally, a certain sympathy in me for you, so that I am reminded by my reason of justice and justice only. I am determined to take pleasure in the good pages of your works and only there, where you shroud the already discovered good in philosophy, or where the mind is led to false ways, as fighter for the truth, give the lie in your works – not you as person – a cuirassier blow. (TN: They were both cuirassiers)

The problem of the true nature of space and time is a so exceedingly difficult one, that it can really not be solved by a single thinker alone, Scotus Erigena broke a part of the bowl of the hard nut; Spinoza broke himself a tooth on it; Locke unified his whole thinking power in order to reveal its kernel; Berkeley broke another part of the bowl and finally Kant exposed one halve of the kernel. Schopenhauer is not to be mentioned, since he incorporated without any ado the results of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic in his “world as representation”.

You too, Mr. von Hartmann, have carefully investigated the problem and I consider your research: “The thing in itself and its nature” despite the through and through incorrect results of it for the best what you have written. In the mentioned work you try in a sober manner to solve the problem for all times. But what you achieved? In the end you started to lime the parts of the bowl which were broken off by Scotus Erigena, Berkeley and Kant, into one piece and closed the opened halve kernel back. You declared: space and time are subjective and thing-in-itself-forms. You poured all achievements, like your great role model Schelling “in the porridge of absolute Indentity.”(Schopenhauer.)

And you were so close to the truth! – so close that I can really not understand, that you didn’t shout out in joy, like Archimedes: Eureka! I have found it! Your good genius had let you step before the polemic of Kant together with the little yapper Eberhard, and you had already, like Kant himself, precisely distinguished form of perception from pure perception. Only a small step was to be made and the other half of the bowl would have sprung by itself in a thousand pieces.

You left it to me, to finish the last labor, and I thank you for this “unconscious” generosity.

I have verified, that the aprioric form of time is the present, the aprioric form of space the point-space. Time and space are compositions a posteriori of the reason, but nevertheless purely ideal, as Kant rightly taught: they are only not aprioric, which is a great difference. Or with other words: outside the mind there is space nor time, nor is there outside my head causality or a causal affinity of the things.

What does however correspond on the real domain with the ideal forms space and time? The point of present corresponds with the real point of motion; time with the real motion, the flow of becoming; the point-space with the expansion of an individual, its sphere of force, its individuality; and mathematical space (the pure perception a posteriori, not a priori like Kant taught) with – absolute nothingness.

All these aprioric and aposterioric (but purely ideal) forms are merely given to is to recognize the outer world, i.e. the things-in-themselves and their motion (development). The point-space does not furnish he object expansion, as little as time furnishes them motion, but point-space only recognizes the expansion, time only recognizes the motion, the development of the things.

It will be completely clear to you, Mr. von Hartmann, that this is not about petty nitpicking or separating identical concepts by force, but about fundamentally different concepts. To the common man, i.e. the philosophical rogue, it may all sound the same, whether I say: every thing is spatial or every thing is expanded; every thing is temporal or every thing has inner motion, is living, develops itself; but you have taught about space and time, for a very long time and earnestly, and you know exactly, what immense consequences arise from this necessary separation of ideal and real on philosophical terrain. I will therefore no longer remain here, but in order to conclude, move your attention to the only consequence which follows from our investigation up till now with logical necessity:

That the infiniteness can be found only in the head of man, not on the real domain. Only subjective forms can possess the predicate “infinite” because the synthetical activity of the reason, and its ideal products, the ideal forms, must necessarily unbounded, if they want to be useful for knowledge at all. Therefore this predicate “infinite” may not unjustifiably be carried onto the force itself, resp. on a composition of individual forces. Will you keep this in mind, Mr. von Hartmann? If you do so, our coming investigation will proceed very smoothly.

Space and time do therefore belong on the Kantian table of categories under the categories of Quantity and Quality, and I kindly ask you, to throw away the “primordial thoughts a priori”, which you conserved, unity and plurality. At the same time I would like to remark that space and time are however not categories nor pure perceptions a priori, but visualizable compositions a posteriori.

Since the categories of Modality, as you know very well, contribute really nothing to experience (Kritik p. 217), the category reality, left by you under the rubric “Quality”, demands a discussion.

Here too, Mr. von Hartmann, I stand bewildered and can really not grasp it, that you did not recognize the truth. You were so close in this direction, that you, to speak figuratively, could put the nail of your forefinger on it. And here I thank you again for your “unconscious” friendliness, of leaving it to me, to harvest a sweet fruit.

You have researched very precisely, what in normal life is called material and found like Locke, that everything which we can tell about the qualities of an object, so about the material, matter, is a subjective sensation, reaction in our organs: like color, smoothness, taste, firmness, temperature, hardness etc.; brief, that our familiarity is limited to the qualities of the objects which Locke summarized under the concept “secondary qualities”, qualities which verifiably arise in us, in our head. Locke did equally verify that these secondary properties are begotten in us by from us independent forces.

But like him, you did not how to put the egg on the table. Like him, you assumed despite all of this a matter which is independent from the subject.

It is really unbelievable, that so many thinkers had to say to themselves: “Everything, which we know from matter, is subjective processing of a from subject independent activity of a force”, and did nevertheless, which would we so easy, not come to the evident conclusion: “Accordingly, the force alone is real and that which we call matter is purely ideal.” So this is what I have done. I have proven that matter is entirely ideal, force entirely real:

by the wedding of both in the senses of the subject arises that, which we call materialized object, matter.

The important consequences which follow from the ideality of matter, resp. the a posteriori obtained connection substance, based on the aprioric matter, will be, as I hope, known to you via my main work, which is why I will terminate the research here.

The results up till now are that space and time are not pure perceptions a priori, that there are no Kantian categories. But if one uses the table of categories as simple scheme, we have the following ideal compositions and connections:

Quantity	Quality	Reality
Space	Substance	General causality
Time		Reciprocity

and with their support we cognize the whole outer world.

These compositions are an unconscious work of the mind, like how the stomach secretes its juice unconsciously for us. We become conscious of them however when we think about it and let them arise in the clear point of the consciousness, like how the anatomist becomes with a vivisection conscious of the functions of the organs.

So Kant, you will understand this by now, was not a cheeky fellow, but is the deepest thinker of the Germans: a groundbreaking genius.

One should not take too great umbrage at the categories, how Kant defined and developed them. The issue which they are about alone must be kept in mind, and if one does so, then one will bow humbly yet proudly before the great man of Königsberg: humbly, because the eminent heads stand exactly before Kant, as he lives in his works, like Saint Cecilia before the choir of angels on the painting of Raphael; proud, because all those who absorb the light of his wisdom, take part in his spirit and are pulled by him on the elevated place he takes. Kant belongs to humanity, or as the minnesingers would have said: a “sweet, clear feast for the eyes”; but we Germans will say till the end of our nation, that he was a German, which is a second source of proud for he, who senses Kantian wisdom in his blood.

One should not blame a past philosopher that he did not find the absolute truth fully and completely. Like everything in the world, the general human mind had and still has a development. The last philosopher will certainly reach the truth and take it completely in his hand, but only because he stand on so many stacked giants as the last one.

Thus neither could Kant find everything. Namely, he left the thing-in-itself completely undetermined, yes, he had to leave it undetermined, since it is, as result of his teaching, even less than x: a pure zero.

All mentioned ideal compositions and connections, as I have shown in my work, are juxtapose by true forms of the thing-in-itself, but not by you positioned identical forms, but instead forms which are toto genere (in every aspect) different:

on the subjective side	on the real side
Time	Motion
Substance	The universe as collective-unity
General causality	The dynamical interrelation of the things

Mathematical space is juxtaposed by the empty nothingness, the nihil negativum, which is certainly no form of the thing-in-itself, nor complies with any form of cognition, because it does not help for the recognition of the things: it does not belong to the formal net by which we perceive the world.

I don’t want to finish this treatment without making a remark for you.

If you assume a transcendent (!) causality, a real space and a real time, then for your philosophy the Kantian antinomy’s still have full validity, although you treat them with

with fitting disregard … and have learned to be lenient towards this part of the Kantian philosophy. (D.a.s. 97)

You can turn and twist it in whatever way you want – this plait of antinomies will hang on you and will make you into an unwilling comical figure; because you realize very well, what I am saying to say: Infinity is essential to causality, space and time, i.e. the motion of the subject is in these forms unbounded.

Of course, with great audacity, which is as essential for the unripe on as infiniteness is for space, you get over this numbing dust of philosophical unclearness and declare ex tripode (from the pulpit): I do not want it to be left unsaid, that even this subjective-potential infiniteness is valid only for the subjective representation-space, where the unboundedness of the spatial expansion can certainly be stopped by nothing but the early death of the individual. Unlike with the real space, which possess indeed also potential infiniteness as the unboundedness of possible real movement, which I can however not expand according the subjective will-choice through the motion of the thoughts, by which I am compelled (as transcendent correlate, on which I relate my subjective representation-space transcendentally), to assume it conceptually as finite at every moment, since it does not reach beyond the material things-in-themselves, whose existence-form it is, and that the material world must necessarily be finite. (D. a. s., 114.)

Mr. von Hartmann! Did you regret this passage as well? Certainly! I am sorry for you with all my heart and I suffer with you.

You say very rightly, that the world is finite, but could you prove this finiteness? The finiteness of the world can only be proved from the assumption of real individuals, an assumption which you deny. Given however that you could have proven the finiteness of the world, which you have not done, would we then not have, according to your philosophy,

a finite world in a real infinite space?

For – I tell you this one more time, and you will never, never be able to disprove it – infiniteness, regardless of it is real or ideal space, is essential to space. Ask it to the first person you encounter, the most brilliant or the stupidest – always he will tell you: “space is infinite.” There is no escape here: every way out is closed.