The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  In reconstructing the views of scientific materialism, one can distinguish two levels. At the first level, a programme is formulated; at the second level this programme is spelled out:

  (1)At the programmatic level scientific materialism advocates two principles: (i) only the sciences bring forth real knowledge about the world; (ii) there is nothing in the world that, in principle, lies outside the scope of scientific knowledge. The materialists were not very explicit and scrupulous when it came to justifying these two (philosophical) principles. For them, they both resulted—empirically, so to speak—from the evident and indubitable progress of the sciences. And insofar as a further philosophical justification was necessary, it was deduced from the fundamental ontological claim of materialism that the world is a totality of objectively material processes and objects the existence and structure of which is not dependent on subjectively mental processes. But objectively material processes and objects can only be known scientifically.

  (2)At the first, programmatic level scientific materialism does not make particular claims about the world, but merely indicates where such claims can be found. Only at a second level does it make claims about the world—claims which are, however, to be taken exclusively from the sciences. They take the place previously held by philosophy. In its self-understanding, the achievement of materialism lies in the collation, systematization, generalization, and popularization of the fast-growing stock of scientific knowledge. This second level thus takes up the greatest portion of their writings, which were aimed at presenting and spreading a new understanding of nature, society and man based on current science.

  Like their French precursors in the eighteenth century, in characterizing the key notion ‘matter’, the German materialists closely followed what, at the time, was the best developed physical theory, that is, classical mechanics. So matter was to consist in atoms and their interactions. Although this physicalist interpretation of ‘matter’ was never revised, it was overshadowed by a different, biologically influenced, understanding. The reason for this was, on the one hand, that the main proponents of scientific materialism were what we today might call life scientists: Vogt was a zoologist, Moleschott a physiologist, and Büchner a physician. They were inclined, therefore, to think about matter in biological terms. Furthermore, this was attractive, as life sciences, in contrast to mechanics, also deal with developmental processes in nature. As early as 1847 Carl Vogt had spoken of a ‘principle of a revolution of inorganic and organic nature’ (Über den heutigen Stand der beschreibenden Naturwissenschaften 1847: 41) and Büchner had in 1855 speculated on a ‘law of gradual development’ in nature (Force and Matter: 75). It is no surprise that notions of ‘matter’ and ‘reality’ were increasingly shaped by evolutionary ideas when in the 1860s Darwin’s theory was received by the materialists.

  If the world is purely material and regulated by immutable laws of nature, then it forms a causally closed material unity. In the disputes about worldview throughout the nineteenth century, this conclusion was significant for three reasons. (a) If the world forms a causally closed nexus, there can be no intervention from anything external. The world can thus not be created by a supernatural being, nor can it be governed by any such being. The anti-religious implications of this conclusion are obvious and that was what mattered to the proponents of materialism: in a material world there is no place for gods and miracles. (b) If the world forms a unity, there cannot be different segments of nature which radically differ from one another. Animate and inanimate, terrestrial and stellar nature were seen as subject to the same laws of nature and were thus part of the same nature. This claim was particularly relevant for understanding animate nature, which was, at the time, still seen by many as a field with a special set of laws and principles (teleology, vitalism). Such laws and principles had a certain affinity with religious or idealist thought and were thus rejected by the materialists. (c) A causally closed world of course also includes humans. Humans are not supernatural or otherworldly, but natural creatures that are subject to the laws of nature just like any other natural creature. This is true of all their properties and abilities, especially their intellectual properties and abilities. This view was, on the one hand, directed against the Christian doctrine of an immortal soul independent of the body given by God exclusively to man; on the other, it was directed against philosophical theories that assumed some sort of independence of the mind, for instance, against Cartesian substance dualism or the Kantian idea of moral autonomy. While older materialism had already assumed that matter is independent of thought while thought is not independent of matter, the scientific materialists sought to corroborate this view with the results of contemporary science. In their opinion, the then still inchoate research into the brain and neurophysiology confirmed the view that all ideational feats are tied to matter, especially to the brain. In this vein, Moleschott reports results of contemporary nutritional physiology, according to which the brain cannot subsist and function without phosphorous fat. From this he draws the conclusion: ‘No thought without phosphor.’ (Lehre der Nahrungsmittel, für das Volk 1850: 115). A great uproar was provoked by the following statement of Carl Vogt: ‘Thinking consistently, any naturalist will, I believe, come to the conclusion that those abilities which we consider activities of the soul are merely functions of brain substance, or to put it coarsely, that thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain in which bile stands to the liver or urine to the kidneys.’ (Physiologische Briefe 1847: 6). Here we leave aside the olfactory associations that this comparison gave rise to and which motivated indignation and satire.4 Instead, let us here highlight the effort undertaken to support the materialist axiom of the mind’s dependence on matter with the results of contemporary science.

  The closeness to the sciences was a strength of this type of materialism; it could make the claim not merely to postulate opinions but to offer the best knowledge of the time. But this closeness was also one of its weaknesses, for even if it might have been the ‘best’ knowledge at the time, it was by no means certain. The sciences are a dynamic project, the results of which are continuously challenged and replaced by more advanced knowledge. By tying itself to such an intellectual process the substantial claims of materialism are undermined by being drawn into a vortex of a research project that is constantly reinventing itself. An assertion like ‘No phosphor, no thought’ does not today so much appear to be false as naïve and uninformative. And when in the last third of the nineteenth century classical mechanics was questioned from within physics and replaced by other conceptions, scientific materialism, too, was put on the defensive. On the basis of new physical and chemical theories, Wilhelm Ostwald in 1895, for instance, proclaimed the Emancipation from Scientific Materialism. The reduction of the philosophical concept of matter to the statements of a certain scientific paradigm, that is, the identification of ‘matter’ with ‘palpable material’ had led scientific materialism into a dead end.

  31.4 MATERIALISM AS NON-PHILOSOPHY

  From the beginning, scientific materialism aimed at overcoming philosophy, that is, at transforming it into scientific knowledge. Briefly put, it aimed at non-philosophy. There are good reasons to doubt that it succeeded in reaching its goals, for the programmatic principles (1) and (2), given in section 31.3, are not scientific knowledge, but philosophical claims or postulates. Scientific materialism can be seen as part of the current of ‘antiphilosophical philosophy’ in the nineteenth century, among which authors as diverse as Auguste Comte, Søren Kierkegaard, or Karl Marx can also be counted. So even though it is philosophy, scientific materialism is not just philosophy and, in order to understand it, it is important to see what it is beyond that. Three of its non-philosophical dimensions are characterized in what follows.

  31.4.1 Materialism as Worldview

  Philosophy was not only charged with being an obsolete form of thought, but also with having become detached from the true spiritual needs of the people and, as such, no longer being able to offe
r guidance in a modern world. What the materialists aimed to achieve was (a) a comprehensive synthesis of the fast growing and ever more diversifying stock of scientific knowledge; (b) a post-religious endowment of human existence with meaning, including a scientifically grounded morality; and (c) a descriptive as well as normative theory of politics and society. Since the end of the eighteenth century the technical term for such systems of thought had been ‘Weltanschauung’. Such worldviews were supposed to differ from philosophical theories by being ‘popular’. They aimed to satisfy the desire for orientation felt by the greater part of the people, even if this was possible only at the expense of theoretical consistency. Without being a member of the core group of the materialists, but picking out several of their substantial topics and, moreover, taking up their project of a new (i.e. scientifically founded) worldview, David Friedrich Strauss chose a telling title for his last book: Der alte und der neue Glaube (The Old Faith and the New).

  31.4.2 Materialism as a Political Reform Programme

  In antiquity, materialism had been a programme of privately pursuing one’s own happiness. The decidedly anti-political nature of this programme was aptly reflected in the Epicurean slogan ‘Live in seclusion!’ Throughout modernity, however, materialism became increasingly political. In eighteenth century France it included an agenda for overcoming social hindrances to individual happiness; feudal power structures and their religious justification were seen as such hindrances. The materialist authors in Germany, too, had a political agenda from the very beginning and their critique of religion was motivated both politically and practically (Bröker 1973). Its growing influence in the 1850s can be seen as a result of the revolution of 1848, in which the governing feudal powers had been victorious over the rather weak democratic and liberal movement; any hope of political reform in the near future had been dashed. Members of the liberal bourgeoisie who clung to the ideals of the revolution saw industrialisation as a force that would first bring about economic and later inevitably social and political progress too. In the natural sciences they saw a force that would counteract the spiritual hindrances to this progress, that is, the reigning feudal forces and their allies, religion, and idealist philosophy. Vogt, Moleschott, and Büchner were protagonists of the bourgeois democratic reform movement in Germany and in the sciences they saw a decisive weapon, with the aid of which their aspirations would prevail. Thus, in its specific shape and effect, scientific materialism was a product of the historical situation in Germany after the failed revolution of 1848: a situation in which parts of the bourgeoisie sought an invincible ally in fighting for the modernization and democratization of Germany. They believed that they had found it in science and technology.

  The hope was that science would perform three feats. (a) It was to be a repository for arguments against superstition, religion, and idealism as well as promulgating a modern and rational way of thinking. (b) It was to give the idea of progress a foundation. Part of the aforementioned attractiveness of a biological understanding of matter can be explained by political motives: reality was seen as modifiable. In one of his earliest public statements on Darwin’s theory, Ernst Haeckel claimed that it offered an unshakable foundation for an all-encompassing worldview and, at the same time, a guarantee of social progress. The same ‘law of progress’ that Darwin had proven for organic nature was also to be found in the history of mankind, for here too the same principles of struggle for survival and natural selection applied. Haeckel makes an obvious allusion to the revolution of 1848:

  regression in political, social, in moral and scientific life such as has been the aim of the joint efforts by priests and despots in all periods of world history may temporarily hold back or even suppress this general progress, but the more unnatural, the more anachronistic these attempts at regression are, the faster and more energetically the progress following in its wake is brought about. For this progress is a law of nature which no human force, no tyrant’s weapons, no priest’s curses will ever be able to permanently suppress.

  (Über die Entwicklungstheorie Darwins: 27 et seq.)

  (c) Finally, the results of science were also to be utilized as tools for solving social problems. The social practices envisioned by them consisted in applying the sciences. Early on, Moleschott, for example, defines the problem of poverty in scientific terms, that is, as a ‘lack of matter’ and expects the solution of the ‘social problem’ to come not from politics but from the sciences:

  One has to teach the proper distribution of matter! In this sense, the farmer, the doctor, the politician, the pauper are in the right when they have insight into their needs. Naturalists are the most ardent workers on social questions which, with weapon in hand, are clearly articulated as needs, which, as open questions, are revealed, but will never be answered. Their resolution lies in the hand of the naturalist, which is securely guided by experience of the senses. On the tree of knowledge, desire grows, but in desire the power that satisfies it is inchoate. Knowledge is the most insuperable power, it is the power of peace. Insight is not merely the highest prize, it is also the broadest foundation for a dignified life.

  (Der Kreislauf des Lebens: 322)

  This kind of materialism is modern not least in that it formulates a scientistic and technocratic programme of social reform (Bayertz 2007: 63–70). It has to be seen as pioneering an understanding of politics that has become most influential to this day: politics is nothing but the application of science and technology to society.

  31.4.3 Materialism as ‘Zeitgeist’

  Feuerbach had already seen his ‘philosophy of the future’ as a theoretical expression of a new epoch; for his successors, materialism was part of a historical upheaval in the whole of society. In the course of industrialization, material interests had gained greater weight; through democracy and socialism, the people had greater influence on society; through science and technology, the power of religion and idealism had diminished; in art and literature, an interest in reality gained more and more prominence. The enemies of materialism, too, repeatedly drew attention to these interrelations. When the famous botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden in 1863 wrote a book against materialism, he pointed to the novels Madame Bovary and Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert as indications of the pervasiveness of materialist thought and its ‘deep immorality’ (Über den Materialismus der neueren deutschen Naturwissenschaft: 335). This allusion is insightful in that it, on the one hand, links materialist thought to a fundamental change in nineteenth-century culture and, on the other, stresses the European dimension of this change. It was perhaps in Germany that scientific materialism found its most resolute proponents, but it was connected to several parallel movements all over Europe. In Great Britain, for instance, one might think of utilitarianism or the popularization of the sciences by people such as John Tyndall or Thomas H. Huxley.

  31.5 THE MONISTIC DILUTION

  However, as materialistic ideas seeped into the general culture, they simultaneously got diluted. An instructive example is monism. Its founder and most famous representative was the zoologist Ernst Haeckel. Most of its other prominent champions were natural scientists as well, including such famous ones as Wilhelm Ostwald, Svante Arrhenius, Jacques Loeb, and August Forel. Its common ground with natural scientific materialism consisted in (a) a conviction that the natural sciences were the only legitimate form of thought in the nineteenth century and of course for the future as well; and (b) an attempt to make this insight practically fruitful for a reform of the modern worldview, culture, and society as a whole. To that end, 1906 saw the founding of a German Monist Society (Deutscher Monistenbund) (quickly followed by an Austrian and a Swiss Monist Society), which was supposed to promote monistic ideas. While academic philosophy remained resistant to those ideas, they found strong, though of course also controversial, resonance among the public (cf. Hillermann 1976; Brücker 2011). In 1933 the German Monist Society was dissolved by the Nazis.

  The term ‘monism’ was used and defined by Haeckel in 1866
. His basic thought was:

  the thought of the absolute unity of nature, the fundamental thought that one and the same almighty and immutable causal law governs without exception all of nature, both the organic and the non-organic world…This unity of nature has as its perfect counterpart the unity of humankind’s knowledge of nature, the unity of natural science, or equivalently, the unity of science in general. All human science is knowledge that rests on experience, is empirical philosophy, or if you prefer, philosophical empiricism.

  (Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, vol. II: 446f.)

  On this basis Haeckel developed a sort of system that comprised all philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, ethics, theology, aesthetics, and so on. Viewed historically, Haeckel’s monism reveals several motifs from earlier philosophers: Spinoza’s substance-monism, Schelling’s philosophy of nature, and Schleiermacher’s thesis that the universe is a unitary development process which is indeed set in motion by God but with which God cannot interfere. Although Haeckel occasionally cites several of these philosophers (especially, and repeatedly, Johann Wolfgang Goethe), one cannot assume that he was really familiar with their theories. The starting point and source of his views was rather Darwin’s theory; he drew his ‘empirical philosophy’ or ‘philosophical empiricism’ almost exclusively from that.