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COLLEGE
LIBRARY
.SOHELLINa'S
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALIS%
A CRITICAL EXPOSITION
Bv JOHX^VATSON^LL.D., F.R.S.C..
PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, QUEEN'S
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, CANADA.
CHICAGO:
R. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
1882.
6
CoPTmoBT, 1882,
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
MAY 0 i 1989
GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS
fob
EDITED BY
GEORGE S. MORRIS.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER IL
CHAPTER nr.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHT.
CHAPTER VI.
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
CHAPTER I.
determine each other, while yet both are only for the
absolute Ego, leaves it undecided what is the exact
sense in which the mutual determination is to be
understood, and also how the contradiction is to be
reconciled. We have, therefore, to take each of the
modes of determination and examine it separately
before we can come to any decision as to the ulti
mate synthesis by which the two contradictions are
reconciled with one another. How can it be the
case that the Ego determines the non-Ego, while yet
the non-Ego determines the Ego? This problem
can only be solved by asking in what sense each
proposition is true consistently with the relation of
both Ego and non-Ego to the absolute Ego.
If the three propositions which have just been
"deduced," or shown to be implied in the very
nature of intelligence, should seem somewhat ob
scure to the reader, their significance may be easily
apprehended by bringing them into relation with
the better known philosophy of Kant. The very
titles of Kant's first two Critiques imply that in
both it is Reason as a single indivisible unity which
is under consideration, and that it is the same Rea
son variously determined which manifests itself
now as knowing and again as practically active.
Substitute Reason for the self-positing Ego of Kichte,
and it is plain that the absolute thesis is simply a
48 schelling's transcendental idealism.
THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY.
OLLOWING the method inaugurated by Fichte,
Schelling always begins by " deducing " each
stage of consciousness, that is, by explaining it in
consistency with the principle that all knowledge
arises from a self-limitation: and only when this
deduction has been completed does he go on to
show that the result is consistent with the actual
facts of consciousness. He begins, for example, at
the point to which we have now come, by show
ing that the simplest form of consciousness must
be the perception of a limit; and, having done so,
he draws attention to the fact that the immedi
ate consciousness of a limit is identical with that
stage of knowledge known as sensation. It will,
however, be advisable rather to follow the reverse
method: to begin with the characterization of sen
sation as it actually exists as a state of conscious
ness, and then to consider the transcendental ex
planation of it.
I. The first phase of knowledge is sensation.
What then is sensation? In sensation conscious
ness seems to be purely passive or receptive ; it
116 schelling's tkanscendental idealism.
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.
TN the theoretical part of his system, Schelling
has shown, by a consideration of the various
ideal phases through which knowledge may be said
:o pass, that an ultimate explanation of intelligence,
ind therefore even of knowledge, must be sought in
k :ne nature of Will. Intelligence, regarded as
merely theoretical, never goes beyond the conception
of reality as something more or less alien to itself.
It cannot indeed be said that in knowledge we
regard ourselves as passively apprehending a world
if objects, existing apart by themselves and acting
in our intelligence in a purely external or mechani
cal way. Such a view is the distorted explanation
which is put forward by the dogmatist to explain
knowledge. Not to speak of those objections that
iave already been made against this uncritical and
unthinkable hypothesis, it utterly fails to account
for the fact of intelligence as active or willing and
i= displaying its activity in a world of real objects,
vhich passively submit to be moulded by it. It is
ao explanation of the consciousness of self as de
termining itself, or at least as apparently determin
ism
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 153
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
N previous chapters an attempt has been made
to exhibit the phases of Schelling's philosophi
cal development as they are registered in the
various treatises which form their vehicle. All
the elements for an independent judgment have
been supplied to the reader, together with some
hints of the weak parts of the system, but it may
be of some little use to students of Schelling to say
a word or two on the relation of his philosophy
as a whole to that of Kant, and to suggest one
or two points of analogy with the thought of our
own day.
There is a sort of dramatic interest in follow
ing the course of Schelling's speculations that does
not attach in quite the same way to the study of
the fully articulated system of Hegel. The start
ing point and the goal of Schelling seem, and in
some sense are, the exact opposite of each other;
his development is not so much evolution as revo
lution. In the one we have the unqualified denial
of God as other than the ideal of moral perfec
tion; in the other, we have the unflinching affir
238 schelling's transcendental idealism.