Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  The third condition is a sufficient communication between the peoples of the earth to allow of a simultaneous common resolve. On this point, whose fulfilment only depends on the perfection and more dexterous application of technical discoveries, imagination has free scope.

  If we assume these conditions as given, there is a possibility that the majority of the spirit active in the world may form the resolve to give up willing.

  There now arises the further question whether, in the nature of the will, its functional activity and the mode of its determination by motives, the possibility is at all given of attaining a universal negation of the will, supposing the preponderating part of the actual world-will to be contained in that mass of conscious mind which resolves a tempo to will no more, no matter whether this supposition be fulfilled within humanity or another species, or only under quite other conditions of existence of a future phase of development of the kosmos? We have to go back for the decision of this last question to our knowledge of the nature of volition and the laws of motivation following therefrom (comp. Chap. xi. B.), it being always assumed that these must remain identical in every possible form of objectification of the will.

  It admits of no doubt that a special volition in man, a desire, affection, or passion, may, in certain circumstances, be neutralised by the influence of conscious reason in the special case. If, e.g., I aim at honour by a deed or a work, and my reason tells me that those whose recognition I covet are fools and blockheads, this insight, if it is sufficiently convincing and potent, is able to allay my ambition, at least in this case. But now all psychologists are agreed that such a suppression is not to be conceived by direct influence of the reason on the desire to be suppressed, but only indirectly by the motivation or excitement of an opposite desire, which now on its part comes into collision with the first, the result of which is that they neutralise one another. Only in this manner is the suppression of the positive world-will to be conceived that Schopenhauer calls the will to live. Conscious cognition cannot directly diminish or suppress the will, but it can only excite an opposite, therefore negative will, which diminishes the intensity of the positive will. Quite inadmissible accordingly is Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the quietive of the will consisting in an altogether different mode of knowledge, before which the motives are to be inefficient, and which shall be the only possible case of an incursion of the transcendent freedom of the will into the world of phenomena (cp. W. a. W. u. V., Bd. ii. p. 476–477). Such incomprehensible, utterly unjustified miracles are with our view superfluous. How beautifully, on the contrary, Schelling says (ii. 3, p. 206), “Even God cannot otherwise conquer the will than through itself.”

  If in the struggle of the special desires often two desires effect no reciprocal suppression in spite of the struggle, this happens either because they are only partially opposed, but partially pursue different side-ends, therefore their paths form only an angle, as it were; or it happens because the one desire is indeed in fact continually annihilated, but just as continually is instinctively born anew from the persistent ground of the Unconscious, so that there arises the appearance of its not being altered at all. In the opposition of the affirmation and negation of will the contrast is so mathematically strict that the former case certainly cannot occur, and for an immediate resurgence of the world-will after its total annihilation there is at any rate entirely wanting the analogy with the single desire, because in the latter the background of the actual world-will, in the former, however, nothing actually any longer remains. (For the rest, the possibility of a resurgence will receive notice in the following chapter.) As long, then, as the opposition of the will motived by consciousness has not yet attained the strength of the world-will to be suppressed, so long will the continually annihilated part continually reassert itself, supported on the remaining part, which also further secures the positive direction of the will; but as soon as the former has attained the same strength as the latter, there is no obvious reason why both should not completely paralyse one another and reduce to zero, i.e., be destroyed without residuum. A negative excess is therefore inconceivable, because the zero-point is the goal of the negative will, which it will not transgress.

  The motivation or excitement of the negative will by conscious knowledge is, according to the analogy of the excitement of a special negative desire through rational insight, not merely conceivable, but demanded; for here in the universal, just as in the individual, the ground on which reason sets in motion the conscious will of opposition is no other than an endsemonological one—regard to the attainment of the happiest possible state, beyond which goal the positive unconscious will in its blindness darts to its misery. This endeavour after the greatest possible state of satisfaction, which the blind will only seeks from want of understanding in a perverse direction, thus belongs actually quite universally to the nature of the will itself, and wherever in the kosmos so high a consciousness may arise that it perceives the absurdity of the way to the goal, there necessarily a conscious volition is motived by this knowledge, which seeks to attain the greatest possible state of satisfaction by the opposite path, namely, by way of negation of the will.

  The result of the last three chapters is, then, as follows. Volition has by its nature an excess of pain for its consequence. Volition, which posits the “That” of the world, thus condemns the world, no matter how it may be constituted, to torment. To obtain redemption from this unblessedness of volition, which the all-wisdom or the logical element of the unconscious Idea cannot directly effect, because it is itself in bondage to the Will, the logical in the Unconscious procures the emancipation of the Idea through consciousness in that it thus dissipates the will in individuation, so that its separate tendencies turn against one another. The logical principle guides the world-process most wisely to the goal of the greatest possible evolution of consciousness, which being attained, consciousness suffices to hurl back the total actual volition into nothingness, by which the process and the world ceases, and ceases indeed without any residuum whatever whereby the process might be continued. The logical element therefore ensures that the world is a best possible world, such a one, namely, as attains redemption, not one whose torment is perpetuated endlessly.

  1 We must not regard this alogical, which afterwards becomes an antilogical, as a something that undergoes change, but it is per se alogical, so far as it is out of all relation and contact with the logical, and keeps entirely aloof from this, whilst it shows itself as antilogical by coming into relation with the logical through its activity, which latter now cannot avoid finding in this activity of the alogical a contrast to its own nature, therefore an antilogical in contrast to the logical, and encountering it as such. Were there no logical principle, were the other principle, which is not the logical, the only one, its activity could also never be termed antilogical, and so far it is accidental to the alogical that it afterwards becomes anti-logical, in the same sense as it is accidental to it that there is altogether beside and beyond it a logical principle.

  1 I hardly need specially call the reflective reader’s attention to the point that the notion of redemption is here extended from the individual to humanity and the all-one world-essence sentient in it ant: the rest of Nature, not in respect of sin, but of evil. The former would be perfectly meaningless, the latter is an unavoidable consequence of the monistic theory.

  1 Cp. Ges. Phil. Abhandlungen, No. iv.: “Ist der pessimistische Monismus trostlos?”

  1 Experience has shown me that all limiting clauses in respect of the purely problematical nature of the following suggestions are insufficient to guard against an intentional or unintentional misunderstanding, as though positive assertions of any kind whatsoever were meant to be made here upon the “How” of the end. If I wrote for success, it would certainly have only been the commonest prudence to suppress in the first edition these four pages, literally indifferent for the book as a whole. It is always more profitable for the author not to expose too much the difficulties of a sub
ject which are for the time being insoluble; for the advance of science, on the contrary, the clearest exposure is most advantageous.

  XV.

  THE ULTIMATE PRINCIPLES.

  WE have in our previous inquiries ever and again met with two principles, Will and Idea, without the assumption of which no explanation would be possible, and which are really principles, i.e., original elements, because every attempt to resolve them into simpler elements appears from the first hopeless, but all previous endeavours to refer one to the other are to be regarded as miscarrying. We have, however, also nowhere needed other than these two principles for our explanations, and what perhaps might be regarded as principia, feeling or sensation and consciousness, we have seen to be phenomenal consequences of our principles. Other elementary activities, as imagining, willing, perceiving, or feeling, have, so far as I know, never been introduced even tentatively in any spiritualistic philosophy, so that he alone could find fault with our adhering to Will and Idea who, on his part, should furnish the proof that the previously received elementary functions of the mind are not the right ones, and show what others are to be put in their place.

  Now, as concerns our conceptions of these principia, we proceeded here too purely empirically, and inductively. We understood them, in the first place, as the ordinary intelligence formed in the leading-strings of the Teutonic languages apprehends them, and altered, extended, and limited them as the scientific need of explaining facts required. The starting-point of our philosophising is accordingly anthropological, so far as the linguistic popular consciousness and philosophic empiricism derive both from the inner experience of the mental activity of men. In fact, this starting-point appears, after a little reflection, the only possible one. Only what we are able to understand by analogy with ourselves, only that are we able at all to understand of the world; and were we not ourselves a piece of the world, and had not our anthropological elementary functions, like all the other phenomena of this world, grown out of the common simple fundamental principles of this world, then with the absence of resemblance and analogy between us and the rest of this world all possibility also of an understanding of the same would be cut off for us. But supported precisely on this intimate affinity of ourselves with other products of Nature and with the common metaphysical roots of all, we may confidently indulge in a cautious use of analogy, and risk the analogous transference of the anthropological principia to the rest of Nature, if we only proceed critically enough in the separation of those peculiarities which distinguish us men from the rest of Nature.

  Thus we extended the anthropological principles Will and Idea by recognition of the same, first in the descending scale of animals, then in the independent lower nerve-centres of the human organism, then in the kingdom of the lower animals and protists, then in the vegetable kingdom, then, lastly, in the domain of inorganic matter. We felt, however, compelled by criticism, at the stages more removed from man, more and more to strip off that which in self-observing man most strikes the eye, namely, Consciousness, but also at the same time perceived that even in the highest forms of the mental activity of man such volition and ideation play the most significant part as is free from the form of consciousness; that man too is what he is only by this, that the same unconscious spirit dwells in him which he long admired in silence in the manifestations of the phenomena of Nature of less developed consciousness. We understood, further, that this unconscious spirit must be the common bond of the world and the support of the unity of the creative plan prevailing in it; nay, that it must altogether be the indivisible metaphysical essence, as whose objective phenomena the only apparently substantially separated natural individuals are to be regarded. Thus before our searching glance the principles “Unconscious Will” and “Unconscious Idea” coalesced to form the one universal spiritual world-essence, which the dark impulse of mankind has always sought by the most diverse paths and denoted by the most diverse names, but yet everywhere at a certain stage of culture has apprehended as spirit As said, we can comprehend of the nature of such a being only just so much as is revealed of this nature also in ourselves through the medium of internal experience, as we ourselves are its phenomena and apprehend ourselves as such, as its principles are also visibly unfolded in us; only he who denies the essential identity and continuity of the world and the harmony of the principles efficient in it with the principles producing it, would be able to blame our procedure as anthropopathic; and only the absolute abandonment of thought of the most thorough-going scepticism would remain if this mode of procedure were repudiated in principle. The warning against anthropopathism is only justified so far as it is limited to the sharpest critical severance from the ultimate principles of all that could anyhow belong to the special phenomenal form of the world-essence in man or in the animal kingdom, or in some narrow group of objectifications of the All-one, not exhausting Nature in its totality. In this direction, however, I believe I have in fact also conscientiously satisfied the most far-going and most scrupulous requirements, which is best proved by this, that the principles Will and Idea are apprehended in the highest degree of a universality destitute of all empirical particularity, namely, as generally as the necessity of at all retaining a positive and precise concept any way admits. Thus is every unwarrantable and spurious anthropopathism most carefully avoided, without abandoning the only path of understanding that our position in the world renders possible for us, but also permits, i.e., justifies by results, without therefore from an ultra-scepticism distrusting and disdaining genuine anthropopathism, which indeed only reaches just as far as we ourselves are of metaphysical essence (or in theological language: of divine origin).

  If now, according to the results of our previous inquiries, the two principles Will and Idea, conceived in metaphysical essential unity, actually suffice for the explanation of the phenomena presented to us in the known world, they form the apex of the pyramid of inductive knowledge, and it only remains to us in conclusion to take one more view of the height thus scaled, when a comparison with the ultimate principles of existing philosophical systems may not be uninteresting. This chapter forms, accordingly, the direct continuation of Chap. iv. A., Chaps, i., vii., viii. C., and in part also of Chaps, xi., xii., and xiv. C., whose contents I beg the gentle reader particularly to bear in mind.

  The contents of the present chapter may perhaps possess least interest for the render who has had but little philosophical culture, because more than all the foregoing they lose themselves in the analysis of notions which in general extend to the bounds of abstraction and of our intelligence. However, on the one hand, the relation here first more precisely indicated of my point of view to the systems of the most important philosophers, and, on the other hand, the stricter discussion of the notions whose significance and mutual relations had hitherto for the most part been presupposed, should, on account of the clearing up of many points previously left in obscurity, be a sufficient inducement to a reader who has followed what has gone before with interest not to leave this concluding chapter unread.

  If the value of scientific conclusions be estimated solely according to the degree of their certainty or accuracy,undoubtedly the value of the same is less the further they are removed from the ground of the facts to be explained, because their probability becomes less, and then the value claimed by the apex of the pyramid of knowledge would be least. However, for the determination of value, yet other elements than merely the degree of probability should be taken into account, which may be summed-up in the degree of importance which these results would have in comparison with other objects of knowledge, supposing that they were all apprehended with the probability I, i.e., with absolute certainty. As for this factor, the value of the apex of the pyramid of knowledge manifestly exceeds all other possible objects of knowledge, and therefore I, for my part, shall not be weary in contributing my mite to the better establishment of the last metaphysical principles, hoping that very soon some other may come who may go still farther. On the other hand, howev
er, I hope that my successors will find the base of the pyramid built so well and firmly by me as to be able to build farther thereon, and will not have cause to demolish the same in its essential parts.