Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  The notion of logical necessity is the superordinate of causation, final causality, and motivation; all necessity, causal, final, and deterministic (by motive), is only necessity therefore because it is logical necessity. It is false to maintain, with Kant and so many moderns, that there is no other than a subjectivistic notion of necessity, but it is true that all happening and existence as such would be mere factness devoid of all necessity if the formal-logical moment did not import the compulsion of necessity into objective reality, precisely as we are conscious of it in our subjective thinking. But whoever concedes the objective reality of the world (i.e., independent of the consciousness of the subject) can no longer deny the necessity of the operation of the laws of Nature, unless he commits the absurdity of assuming that quality of matter-of-factness, which the abstraction of empirically exceptionless rules affords and imposes upon us, to be fortuitous. Since the probability of such a continually recurring accidental order which compels us to formulate abstract laws, is infinitely small, the probability that an objective necessity answers to and underlies the subjectively abstracted rule borders on certainty. Certain as is the existence of an objective necessity in the world, so certain is it that everything happening in the world is logically determined and conditioned, simply because the notion of necessity is only tenable as logical necessity. Thus and only thus are the difficulties resolved which the concept of causality has caused from Hume to Kirchmann.

  4. The Identical Substance of both Attributes. —We now approach the question whether the Idea is attribute or substance, whether it is the thought of a Being before, behind, or above it, or whether it in its turn is itself an ultimate? We have seen that Plato did not definitely decide in favour of any of these views. Hegel asserts that the Concept is sole substance, that the Idea is God, whilst Schelling denies the self-movement of the Concept postulated by Hegel (Werke, i. 10, p. 132): “There lies therefore in the asserted necessary movement a double illusion: (1.) In that for thought the Notion is substituted, and this is represented as something moving itself, and yet the Notion would of itself lie perfectly immovable if it were not the notion of a thinking subject, i.e., if it were not thought; (2.) In that one imagines thought is only impelled by an inherent necessity, whilst it yet manifestly has a goal towards which it strives.”

  In the first place I would remark, that the difference of the two views, although important enough theoretically, yet is hardly so important as it might appear at the first glance, because we find ourselves here already in a region of the super-existent, where our conceptions finally leave us in the lurch; and even when they appear to us sufficient, are indeed hardly able to cover that transcendent objectivity in the way in which metaphysics only too easily imagines.

  Nevertheless thus much stands firm, that of whatever kind this or the final metaphysical principles of a system may be, our thinking always finds itself under the inevitable compulsion to conceive the same either as functioning substances, or, however, to assume a substance behind them as whose attributes they appear, and which is functional as active subject when the principles become operative. Thus we cannot think the IDEA of Hegel or the unconscious intuitive Perception otherwise than as either itself raised to substance, or, however, as supported by another substance as attribute. We have likewise in the Will of Schopenhauer only the choice of substantialising the Will itself or of regarding it as attribute of a substance lying behind it. Our thinking is absolutely unable to think a function without active subject, which at the same time must, as ultimate principle resting upon itself, be metaphysical substance. We cannot think perception without a perceiving, volition without a willing subject; and the only question is, whether we will think and can think as perceiving subject the Idea itself, as willing subject the Will itself, or whether we find ourselves caused to assume a support of the attributes of willing and perceiving lying behind them. This necessity of thought goes even behind the functions as such, and tracks the principles into the condition of their super-existent calm and concealment. Even there we must distinguish in the “being-able-to-be” and “purely being” between that which can be or purely is, and the states of the being-able-to-be, or purely being. The necessity of this separation in our thinking is not to be disputed. The only question is whether one is to ignore it as merely subjective, or whether one must allow it to be transcendent and objective, a question which is hardly to be decided a priori.

  Hegel would have had to do the former if he had dealt with this alternative; the latter is the point of view of Schelling. In the former case one speaks of the whole Idea or the whole Will irrespective of this distinction as Substance; in the latter, the subject that is functional or that supports the state is posited as substance, the function or the state as Attribute. In the former case, the Idea or the Will is the whole, therefore substance and attribute at once; in the latter, they are in the narrower sense only the function, or that which is state, thus only attribute, and presuppose a substance behind themselves as their functioning substance or their substrate.

  The difference only becomes important when we have to do with a duality of principles and with their mutual relation. Hegel and Schopenhauer, each of whom only allows one of the two principles, have logically no reason, to make that separation, since it would be needless for them; but as the need of the unity of the two principles, Idea and Will, makes itself felt, is the carrying out of that division called for. Although, namely, the functions or states of ideation and volition are different, still this does not prevent our positing the substantial element of the two principles, or the subject of both functions, that which knows and that which wills, as one and the same. So far as the substantial identity and only functional difference of the two principles is recognised, we have reached Spinoza’s one substance with two attributes.

  The indispensable requirement of the essential or substantial identity of Will and Idea is thus at the same time decisive also for the question as to the substantial or attributive character of the Idea by itself and of the Will by itself. That requirement is altogether inevitable. If Will and Presentation were separate substances, the possibility of their influence on one another would be as little obvious as the possibility of a real action on one another of distinct individuals is conceivable according to the principles of a consistent pluralism (cp. above, vol. ii. p. 230 ff.) It would not be apparent how the one is to enter into relation with the other, how the Will can grasp the logical as its content, how the logical can find itself compelled to react against a foreign alogical not appertaining to it at all and its anti-rational doings. If, on the contrary, it is one and the same essence which is these two, i.e., of which and in which they are attributes, the intimate connection of both is so much matter of course that its contrary even becomes impossible. The same that is the one is also the other; the wilier is the perceiver, and the perceiver is the wilier,—only the willing and the perceiving is different, not the wilier and the perceiver. Volition is non-rational, but the reason of the wilier is just the idea; perception is without energy, but the power of the perceiver is simply volition. It is no contrary opposition of opposed tendencies of one and the same activity, for such would annul each other, or at best allow the excess of the one quantitatively superior tendency to subsist; it is also no negatively contradictory opposition between two terms, of which only the one is positive, the other, however, negative or privative as regards the first, but it is a positively contradictory opposition, in which each term is positive in a quit6 different sphere, thus certainly, in relation to the other, is not what the other is. Such a contrast involves also no inconsistency; the Will and the Logical, or power and wisdom in the Absolute, contradict one another as little as, say, the redness and the perfume in a rose or goodness and truthfulness in a man. There are not two drawers in the Unconscious, in one of which lies the irrational Will, in the other the powerless Idea, but they are two poles of a magnet with opposite qualities, on whose opposition the world rests in its unity; as in a magnet we do n
ot succeed in isolating the north magnetic function from the south magnetic, but with continued division of the magnet the double activity or polarity itself appears bound to the smallest pieces, so also are the two attributes of the Unconscious inseparably united, in each single function of the All-One however insignificant, as matter and form, as ideal and realising moment. It is not a blind man who carries a lame man showing the way, but it is a single whole and sound one, that certainly, however, cannot see with the legs and walk with the eyes.

  If Will and Presentation were separate substances, an insurmountable dualism would pervade the world, and leave its mark in the soul of the individual—but of such a dualism there is nowhere any trace. Monism, towards which, as we have seen, all tends, would therewith be absolutely annulled, and a pure dualism put in its place. Now at length is the secret dread of this division, which was a disturbing element, especially in Chap. vii. C., removed by our recognising the same as a dualism only of attributes, which does not prejudice the unity of the substance, but which cannot possibly be done away with when in general an existence is to be explained. A pure and absolute one is equally a self-contradictory conception with a pure and absolute many, as Plato long ago showed in his “Parmenides.” To be possible, whether as concept or as existent, the unity of the One must be unity of an inner manifoldness or plurality, which plurality is most simply duality. The inner duality is accordingly an indispensable condition of the All-One on the side of its existence, or, in other words: untenable as is every absolute dualism, so indispensable a supposition is a relative immanent dualism for the truth of absolute Monism.

  This becomes still clearer if we consider the necessity of the explanation of the process. Could even a non-plural One exist, it yet could only exist as absolutely rigid, identically self-persistent, and we should never reach the possibility of a process. To explain a process we necessarily need a peace-disturber in the rigid repose of the All-One, that seizes the initiative in order to interrupt the same. But even such moment of the initiative alone would yield no actual process, but would at the most reach the mere velleity of the process (empty volition). That an actual process may come to pass there must be, beside the commencing factor, at least one more that encounters the former, and indeed in the double sense of the term of succouring and opposing; for only from the co-operation and counteraction of at least two moments can a process result. The second only helps the first to attain that which it wills to attain with its initiative, the process, as we saw more fully above; on the other hand, however, only two factors are required, because from the standpoint of the second the first is a something that should not be, against which the second feels itself compelled by its nature to turn, in order to make that which ought not to be again the not-being. In this sense Schelling also says (i. 10, 247), “There would altogether be no process if there were not something which should not be, or which at least was in a way in which it should not be” (namely, the being-able-to-will as blindly willing, or, as Schelling usually says, the being-able-to-be as blindly being).

  That something ought not to be as it is can always only be said from a certain point of view, and indeed only from a point of view opposed to that of the being in question; thus, e.g., it can only be said from the point of view of the Logical that the Alogical as such should not be, so that in the last resort the turning-against-willing of the Logical, and therewith the possibility of the process, rests on this, that a logical opposition exists between the two attributes, i.e., that the one is not what the other is (the Will not logical, and the Idea not endowed with Will). Only from the logical opposition of the two in the One can a process arise. Not, indeed, that this logical opposition forthwith and immediately becomes a real antinomy, in the sense in which we apprehend the contradiction between the divided will-acts of the All-One as a real conflict, for to this end there is wanting, as we know, to the logical Idea self-dependence and independence of the Will, as well as all energy of action; rather this opposition remains eminently a logical one, and only indirectly leads to a real opposition, in that a part of the Will is in the course of the process brought by means of the emancipation of the conscious Idea to turn as negative volition against the positive volition, until with continued enhancement of consciousness the negative part of volition is so far augmented as to be able to paralyse the positive, and thus to hurl back that which ought not to be into non-being. That which forms the real opposition is accordingly always volition with opposite content, and Will and Presentation as such never come into real opposition, but remain in the logical opposition appertaining to them by nature. But undoubtedly the halves of volition turned against one another bear the stamp of this opposition, because in positive volition the (still unconscious) presentation, while bound to surrender itself to the will-to-live, serves to bring the latter to the point where the conscious presentation in pessimistic self-knowledge comprehends the folly of the Will, and now motives the willing of the willing-no-longer.

  The exclusion of such a misunderstanding seemed desirable in order not to render difficult, or to prevent, by this erroneous assumption of a real conflict between the attributes, the understanding of the inseparable unity of both attributes, as we have just expounded it.

  Precisely in the same manner does Schelling apprehend the Dualism in Monism (Werke, ii. 3, p. 218): “The identity must rather be taken in the strictest sense as substantial identity. The meaning is not that potential being and pure being are severally conceived as independent being, i.e., as Substance (for Substance is what exists in independence of aught else). They are not themselves Substance, but only determinations of the One super-actual. The meaning, therefore, is not that there is potential being and pure being, but the meaning is, that the very Same, i.e., the same Substance, is in its unity, and without thereby becoming twain, potential being and pure being.”

  One might call this Substance identical in Will and Presentation, this individual Single Being, which only supports those abstract generalities, “the absolute subject,” as that “which can be related to nothing else, and to which all else is related as Attribute” (Schelling, ii. 1, 318); but unfortunately the word Subject is so ambiguous that one may easily call forth misunderstandings by its employment (e.g., if we should take it here as correlated to an object). On the other hand, if one is entitled to call anything original the Absolute Spirit, assuredly every reader not prepossessed by Hegel’s arbitrary limitation of the word Spirit to its manifestation in the restricted form of consciousness will allow that it must be this unity of Will and Perception, of Power and Wisdom, this One Substance, that everywhere both wills and perceives,—as we have hitherto called it, the Unconscious. The One “super-existent, which is all that is,” we may therefore now define as pure, unconscious (impersonal, but indivisible, therefore individual) Spirit, according to which our Monism may be more precisely characterised as spiritualistic Monism. Herewith have we reached the apex of the pyramid, and have advanced the elucidation of the concept “the Unconscious,” provisionally outlined in I. 3 to cognition of the first order.

  To come to an understanding with Spinoza we have, lastly, still to emphasise the following points of difference. It would be a great error if we tried to conceive the relation of our substance to our attributes in the way in which this has been done by many interpreters of Spinoza, namely, as if the former were the potentiality of the Attributes, and these were its actus or activities. With regard to the notion of Potentiality we are quite out of danger, for the potentiality of Being or Willing is itself the One of the Attributes, and the other we have expressly defined as the pure Being, which has issued from no Potentiality. To neither of these, therefore, can Substance stand in the relation of Potentiality, and neither is Actus, which proceeded from a Potentiality. This is a cardinal difference from Spinoza, with whom manifestly Substance appears as the potentiality of the Attributes. But we may agree with Spinoza in this, that Existence is only to be found in the ejected (ξιστἁμєνον or ) Mode; to Substance a
s such, with all its attributes, however, only subsistence appertains (which underlies the eject, subsistit).

  The second difference lies in the definition of that one of the two Attributes which Spinoza, after the precedent of Des Cartes, calls Extension. But now Thought and Extension are no contrasts, for Extension is indeed also in Thought. Only Thought and real Extension, which is intended by Spinoza, form a contrast. However, between the concepts Thought and real Extension, the opposite again is not between “Thought” and “Extension,” but between “Thought” and “Real” or “Ideal and Real;” it is not Extension that makes Reality, but it itself must first be made real, in order to form a contrast with Thought. The second attribute of Spinoza must therefore be that which makes real, not merely Extension, but also all the rest of the Ideal; but this is no other than Will. Then first, when for Extension we put Will, does Spinoza’s Metaphysic become what it should be, but then also the apex of our pyramid coincides with the One Substance mystically postulated by Spinoza.