Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  By logic was formerly, and in part still is, understood theory of thinking in the widest extent; but in order to understand what is here meant by the logical, we must first of all abstract from that too general conception all that is specifically psychological and anthropological, e.g., the special doctrine of method, which provides a guide to research in the various departments of human inquiry, and the theory of knowledge, which investigates the problem whether and how consciousness may transgress its immanent sphere and attain to being per se. We must further remove from it the framework of Ontology, which the human consciousness has contrived with the help of the categories for the better understanding of existence, but which itself is only an implicit part of the material content of the Idea, and only seems to be formal because it is abstract. Finally, we must deduct all that appertains only to the discursive form of the manifestation of the logical in consciousness, and not to the logical as such, thus the diremption of the logically connected moments, which may be likened to the exhibition of an illuminated point as a shining line in a quickly rotating milror. It is the logical formal principle that causes the moments successively related in the discursive-logical thought-process of consciousness (e.g., the terms of a conclusion) to stand to one another in actual logical relation; but that the related moments are discursively sundered is due only to the nature of conscious thought, not to the logical principle, which is ever inherently unconscious, and even in the discursively logical process of consciousness is interposed between every pair of terms as a timeless unconscious factor, so that it is not to be wondered at, that it is also manifested as such in the implicit intuitive thinking of the unconscious Idea and its self-determination (cp. Chap. vii. B., vol. i. pp. 314–316). The logical principle is in theological language the divine reason; in metaphysical, the very simplest primitive reason, from which everything rational is derived. As primitive reason it is the formal regulator of the material self-determination of the Idea; it is generally the formal aspect of the unconscious intuition of the All-One, whose material aspect is the Idea in the narrower sense. Lastly, it is the matrix from which the not yet existing Idea is unfolded at the beginning of the world-process.

  If we would now more precisely specify what the Logical or the primitive Reason is, not for the Idea, but in itself, we shall be obliged to keep to the old enouncement of the logical formal principle under the form of the laws of identity and contradiction, i.e., not to the discursive expression of these laws, but to the logical element contained in them. The two are one, and only the positive and negative expression of the same thing, but at the same time also the positive and negative mode of manifestation of the same principle. The logical formal principle in the shape of the law of identity is absolutely unproductive (the A = A leads to nothing); it has been the error of all logistic philosophers that they regarded the logical principle as positively creative, and even imagined it possible to attain, by its means, to a positive content of the world, to a positive final aim of the same. All positive teleology is therefore a still-born child, because the positive end must be a creation of the logical principle in the positive sense, but the latter is in the positive form altogether uncreative, nay, of itself could never attain to a process, but must persist in pure identity with itself.

  Not so the negative aspect, although here certainly the logical formal principle can only be manifested if a non-logical is present, which the logical can oppose with its negation. The inner conflict of the void Will that wills willing and yet cannot will, that aims at satisfaction and reaches dissatisfaction, is such a non-logical; the volition itself is the negation of the Law of Identity, in that it annuls persistence in identity, and demands that A (pure potentiality) do not remain A, but change into B (the act); it is therefore the negation of the positively logical, and therewith challenges the logical formal principle to manifestation in a negative sense.1The logical negates the negation of itself: it says, “The contradiction (namely, to me, the logical) is not to be;” and in saying that it proposes to itself an end, namely, the abolition of the alogical, of volition. Certainly this end, that follows from the negative mode of manifestation of the logical principle, is itself only negative, directed against the genuinely positive in volition, that only from the standpoint of the logical appears relatively negative. In the same sense will also, from the point of view of the logical, the end—the suppression of volition—appear as negation of the negation of itself, i.e., as double negation, i.e., as something relatively positive, but from the point of view of the alogical the end remains a purely negative one, as is confirmed by the result, reduction to nought. Accordingly we too must hold by the expression of a negative final end, in contrast to the impossible positive final end (in the sense of an emanation from the logical principle in its positive form), and shall have to lay stress on the fact that here teleology altogether, in the last resort, has only been saved by the absurdity of all search after a positive end and the untenability of all positive teleology being apprehended through the principle of the logical itself,and by the adoption of a negative teleology, i.e., a teleology with absolutely negative end, but which from the point of view of logical speculation is, on account of the double negation contained in it, just as positive as a directly positive teleology could ever be.

  We see, then, that we may and must go beyond Plato’s determination of the One Idea as the Good or the end, to the higher determination of the ideal principle as the formal-logical. The eternity of the Ideas is not to be understood, as if they one and all, just as they are afterwards realised, lay from the very first and for ever boxed up in the ideal, and only waited for the Will to realise them; for then the infinite empty volition must realise the whole mass of Ideas at a stroke, which would only yield an eternal chaos, but no development. Rather must the Ideas always unfold themselves by self-determination from their formal principle only in the extent in which they are to be realised by the Will in the course of development; and this extent is determined by the constant final purpose on the one hand, and by the stage of development of the world at any time attained on the other. The eternity of the Ideas is therefore not to be understood as eternal, even if only ideal, existence, but only as eternal pre-formation or possibility. The logical is in itself to be regarded as a purely formal principle, which is stimulated to the ideal productivity of its content only by the other of itself, the alogical. We may say there is no pure logic, i.e., no manifestation of the logical purely in and by itself; there is only applied logic, i.e., manifestation of the logical in and by its other, the alogical. Only through applied logic is the ideal principle that is primo loco pure formal principle filled with an ideal content (first the end, and then the succession of means to attain this end).

  Thus understood, our ideal principle also essentially agrees with that of Hegel (for the Absolute Idea of Hegel is nothing more than that to which the empty husk of thought, the notion of pure being identical with nothing has determined itself in virtue of its immanent logical formal principle in the progress of the evolution itself), except that one has in the word “Absolute Idea” an empty sign, which is only filled when the whole development has been gone through; whilst the more familiar “logical” denotes the formal moment of the self-determination in the extra-temporal ideal evolution.

  The process in the Idea per se is, as Hegel himself says, an eternal, i.e., extra-temporal one, consequently it is also strictly again no process but an eternal result, a being-in-one of all the moments mutually determined to all eternity; and this being-in-one of the moments determining one another appears to us only as process when we artificially sunder them in discursive thought. For this reason I cannot allow that the logical determination of that which at every moment emerges into actuality takes place through dialectic in the Hegelian sense, because in the sphere of the ultra-temporal eternity where we might at any rate speak of a peaceful juxtaposition and intermingling of contradictory representations, no process is possible than that which necessarily presupposes time,
and on the other hand, again, in the piece of the Absolute Idea emerging at a particular moment into reality the main requirement of the Hegelian dialectic, the existence of contradiction, is wanting,—quite apart from this, that a dialectic process in the Hegelian sense can only take place between concepts, these crutches of discursive thinking, whereas all unconscious thinking occurs in concrete intuitions.

  When Plato, who, properly speaking, had no idea of laws of Nature, assumed also transcendent ideas of everything of which he could abstract common notions, this was a childish point of view, which, as Aristotle reports at a later period, excited suspicion even in his own mind.

  We know now that all inorganic Nature is a consequence of the atomic forces acting according to their immanent laws (which are comprised in their Idea), and only with the origin of organisms is there an accession of genuinely new Ideas. We know also that as all the Ideas receive their determination from the Logical, and in strictness are altogether nothing but applications of the logical to given cases, the idea of the world-process is the application of the logical to empty volition. With Hegel the latter is represented by that which forms the commencing and starting-point of logic, pure being, identical with nothing; for this is the only form under which the impulse to self-alienation foreign to the logical can exhibit itself to the logical principle.

  We have seen that the Idea first becomes existent when the Will grasps it as content, and consequently realises it; but what then is it previously? At all events, not yet existent, a super-existent like the Will or empty volition. As the Will in volition passes out of itself (as potentiality), so is the Idea put outside itself (as super-existent) by the Will. This is the radical difference between the two: the Will itself ejects itself; the Idea is translated into being by the Will (as one in the condition of not-being).

  Could the Idea pass of itself into being, it would indeed be potentiality of being,—would therefore be itself Will. But, on the other hand, the Idea not yet translated into being can also not absolutely not be else the Will could also make nothing of it; it can only be a not-yet-being in a special sense Now, if it is to be neither active being nor potentiality of being, nor also absolutely nothing, what then remains? Language wants an appropriate word for the designation of this concept. One might be inclined to call this state latent being, which, even when it is made manifest by the Will, yet never becomes free being, but always only being as ideal content of a being in actu. From the actus the latent being of the Idea before its seizure by the Will is distinguished by this, that by the word actus, on the one hand,one involuntarily always thinks of a preceding potentiality that is here wanting, and, on the other hand, of an actual being, an efficient activity, whose strict contrary is that still, calm, latent being, altogether self-enclosed, never spontaneously going out of itself. The word actus therefore is at most suitable so far as this state like the actus forms a contrast to potentiality, but a contrast that is of quite a different kind from that of actus. Schelling seeks to make this relation of the concepts evident by terming this state actus purus, i.e., an actus that is pure or free from potentiality, or translates this “the purely (i.e., non-potential) being.” It is, however, clear that these expressions are by no means happy, since, in spite of the most satisfactory elucidations, they must always leave the impression of a “wooden iron.” This defect of expression, which arises through a vain struggling with the limitations of language, however, by no means prejudices the result, that the Idea before being sucked into the vortex of being by the Will elevated to being must be thought in a relatively non-existent state, which, elevated above the real Being arising from the co-operation of Will and Idea (i.e., super-existent), must be thought in this super-existent sense as a non-potential (i.e., also unsubstantial), hidden, still, pure being. Inevitably as Schelling was led to this definition so was Hegel also obliged to give to the Idea as first and most original determination that of pure being, which, in comparison with a later filled being, is as good as nothing, except that in Hegel’s panlogism by this determination the alogical is at the same time smuggled in as moment of the initiative of the process.—As we called the Will before its elevation pure potentiality or pure faculty, we may describe the Idea before its transportation into being the realm of pure possibility. Both expressions agree in determining their object by a reference to something future; the difference, however, is that this relation is in “faculty” an active, in “possibility” a passive one. The Will as per se simply and purely formal admits of no distinction; in the Idea, however, we have to distinguish first the ideal principle as formal moment of self-determination, and, secondly, the Idea as the infinite wealth of the possible forms of development which it hides in its bosom. So far as the latter collectively are predestined by the “purely being” formal element of the logical for the possible case of their birth, they stand implicitly as mere ideal possibilities precisely in the same eternal logical relation which is revealed on their entrance into being. But so far as they form in a special sense the realm of pure possibility, in an altogether different sense to the formal-logical principle underlying them, from which they are unfolded when once their hour is come, so far can the principle of latent (or, according to Schelling, pure) being appertaining to their matrix never be attributed to them, but must be reserved for the Idea as formal-logical principle of the ideal self-unfolding.

  We have seen that it is in truth the Will, more precisely empty volition, which entrudes the Idea out of its purely independent being into a being with external relations, in that it seizes it once for all as its content, but that the Idea as fulfilment of the Will determines and develops itself in virtue of its logical formal moment.

  This proposition holds good from the first moment when the Idea is externalised by the Will to the moment when Being is extinguished with the turning back of the Will; at every moment the sum of presentations which forms the content of the Will is a definite one, and indeed that definite, phase of the evolutionary process of the One World-Idea whose inner multiplicity it composes, and it is, since this evolutionary process of the World-Idea is a purely logical one, altogether and exclusively logically determined, or, what comes to the same thing, posited as regards its “What” with logical necessity. But since, as we know, the “What” of the world is at any moment only the realised content of the Will. the “What” of the world is at everv moment of the world-process determined by logical necessity. Because it is logically necessary (for the main aim) that there be development (in order to the genesis and enhancement of consciousness), because the necessity of evolution includes the necessity of time, thus time and the change of content in time belongs to the logically necessary content of the Idea itself, therefore the realisation also of this content is presented as a definite process in time (cp. what was said regarding Space, vol. ii. p. 181).

  The above proposition holds for every single event just as much as for the whole, for each individual forms indeed an integral part of the whole, and is as such an integral part determined by the whole, since each several existence and event is, as regards its “What,” only and wholly Idea, therefore a link in the inner organic manifold of the one and whole World-Idea at any time. If now the total content of the world-idea at every moment is logically determined throughout (namely, on the one hand, by the stable final end, on the other hand by the phase of development of the process attained at the last moment), and if each single part is determined by the whole, each single existence and happening is also at every moment logically determined and conditioned. If, e.g., this liberated stone falls, the falling takes place with this or that velocity for no other reason than because it is logically necessary under these circumstances, because it would be illogical if at this moment something else happened to the stone. Certainly that the stone altogether can still fall at this moment, that it is still there to fall, that the earth is still there to draw it to itself, this depends on the persistence of the Will; for did the Will cease at the moment to will, therefore the world t
o be, it would no longer be logical that the stone should fall.

  We see here the two elements which go to make up causality. That the stone which I now let go falls, depends on the continuance of the willing beyond this moment; but that it falls, and falls indeed with such and such velocity, depends on this, that it is logical that it is thus, and would be illogical if it were otherwise. That in general anything comes to pass, that the effect follows, depends on the Will; that the effect, if it follows, follows with necessity as this and no other, depends on the Logical. That indirectly the cause is determinative of the effect is quite clear, for only under those circumstances which collectively are termed “cause” is it logical that this effect follows.

  According to this, causality is another name for logical necessity, that attains actuality through the Will.

  Having thus perceived purpose to be the positive side of the logical, we shall now be able unconditionally to subscribe the proposition of Leibniz, “causœ efficientes pendent a causis finalibus;” but we also know that it only expresses a part of the truth, that the whole world-process is in its content only a logical process, but in its existence a continual act of Will. Only by this, that phenomenal equally with final causality is comprehended as logical necessity; only by this, that the logical necessity of the process is admitted in all its phases, and physical causation and final causality (we may add as a third “motivation”) are perceived to be only different projections, in which universal determination, regarded under different points of view, presents itself; only, by this, I say, has at bottom a universal teleological apprehension of the world-process become possible. For if every moment of the process is to be altogether and without residue a link in the chain of physical causation, and each at the same time altogether and without residue a link in the chain of final causality, this is only possible under one of the following three conditions: either causation and final causality have their identity in a higher unity, of which they form merely different aspects of the apprehension through the discursive thinking of man, or both chains stand in a pre-established harmony, or the present link in the chain of causation only accidentally agrees with the present link in the chain of final causes (as one and the same event). Chance would once and a way be possible, but not in constant repetition; the pre-established harmony is miracle or the renunciation of comprehension; thus only the first case remains, if, with Spinoza, one will not entirely abandon final causality.