British Philosophy

In England under the heading of philosophy is understood natural science.

Thus it happens that a journal (like Hermbstadts Journal), for example, which talks about agriculture (manure), economics, industry, chemistry, etc., and tells about discoveries in these areas, is called a philosophical review.

By the same token optical instruments, barometers, thermometers, etc., are called philosophical instruments. Even theories, especially those concerned with morality, which are derived more from the feelings of the human heart and from experience than from the concept or from determinations of what is right, in England belong to philosophy.

The Scottish moral philosophers in particular should be mentioned in this connection; they reason in a Ciceronian manner, taking as their starting point drives, inclinations, and immediate certainty, i.e., from the sort of thing which Cicero calls insitum natura.

In the same way modern English theories of political economy, e.g., that of Adam Smith and of those influenced by him, are counted as philosophy.

The result is that, at least in England, the name philosophy is respected, because there whatever is derived from general principles or can be taken out of the realm of experience and brought back to determinate principles is called philosophical.

A short time ago a banquet was held in honor of Canning. In his speech of acknowledgment it comes out that he congratulates England, because there philosophical principles are employed in government. Thus, in England at least, philosophy is not a term used ironically.

Even though all these ways of viewing things go under the heading of philosophy, we must exclude them from our treatment of the subject, despite the fact that in all of them there is a principle which they have in common with philosophy, i.e., that in them it is one’s self which sees, senses, thinks, is present.

Whatever the area may be, this is the great principle opposed to authority. In perception it is 1 myself who perceive; and the same is true of sensing, understanding, thinking.

What is to have significance for man must be contained in his own thinking. Properly speaking, “in his own thinking” is a pleonasm.

Every man must think for himself, no one can think for another, any more than he can eat or drink for another.

It is this moment of the self, plus the form which is produced in thinking, the form of universal laws, principles, fundamental determinations, in short the form of universality, that philosophy has in common with those sciences, philosophical points of view, representations, etc., of which we have been speaking; they are what has given to all of them the name philosophy.

2. Relation of Philosophy to Religion

The second sphere of those manifestations of spirit which are more closely related to philosophy is the area of religious representations in general. Here belongs primarily religion as such, then mythology and the mysteries, and even to a certain extent poetry.

Just as the first area of which we spoke had in common with philosophy its formal element, the I and the form of universality, so what is common here is the other side, i.e., the substantial element, the content.

In the various religions, peoples have left a record of the way they thought regarding the being of the world, the absolute, that which is in and for itself. There we find what they held to be the cause, the essence, the substantial, in both nature and spirit.

There, too, we discover their opinions regarding the manner in which human spirit or human nature is related to such objects – to the divinity, the true.

In religion, then, we immediately observe two characteristics (Bestimmungen): first, how man is conscious of God, i.e., how in consciousness he represents God, this being the objective form or determination of thought whereby man sets the essence of divinity over against himself, represents it as something other than himself, as an alien being in the beyond.

The second characteristic is to be found in devotion and cult, which constitute the overcoming of this opposition, whereby man raises himself to God and becomes conscious of his unity with God’s being. This is the sense which cult has in all religions.

Among the Greeks cult served rather to raise them to an enjoyment of this unity, since for them the being of God was not in itself something beyond them.

Religion and philosophy, then, have as an object in common what is true in and for itself – God, insofar as He is in and for Himself – and man in his relation to God. In religions, men have made manifest the consciousness they had concerning the supreme being. To this extent religions are the supreme work of reason. Thus it is absurd to believe that priests invented religion in order to deceive the people – as though men would permit anything to be imposed on them with regard to the ultimate and supreme being.

Although philosophy has the same object as religion, still in relation to each other they have developed many differences. The first question, then, is: how does philosophy differ from theology and religion in general? The second is: to what extent must we in the history of philosophy take the religious into account?

a. The Form of Philosophy Distinguished from That of Religion. First, then, the question how philosophy and religion differ from each other. In this connection I intend to present their general characteristics and – so far as possible – discuss them.

b. Divine and Human Spirit. Common to both is what is in and for itself, the universal, absolute Spirit. This is spirit, but at the same time it includes nature within itself; it is itself and the grasp of nature within itself. It is not identical with nature in the superficial sense in which the chemically neutral is, but is rather in its own self identical with – nature, or one with itself in nature. Such is its identity with nature that the latter, its negative, the real, is posited only as ideal. That is the idealism of spirit. The universality of spirit, to which both philosophy and religion are related, is absolute, not exterior, universality. It is a universality which penetrates everything, is present in everything. We have to represent spirit to ourselves as free, and freedom of the spirit means that it is with itself, has a rational awareness of itself. Its nature is to grasp the other in such a comprehensive way as to find itself in the other, to unite itself with itself in the other, there to possess and enjoy itself.

Here, then, is manifested the relationship of Spirit to the human spirit. No matter how fragile and isolated individuality may be represented, abstraction must simply be made from this sort of atomistic representation. When spirit is represented in truth it is what is rationally aware of itself (das sich selbst Vernehmende). The difference between the individual and the universal, then, is so to be expressed, that the subjective, individual spirit is the universal divine Spirit, to the extent that there is rational awareness of the latter, to the extent that the latter manifests itself in each subject, each man. The spirit which is rationally aware of absolute Spirit is, then, the subjective spirit.

If we take this determination as our point of departure, then as further determinations we have simply various forms of this rational awareness. What we call religious belief is the substantial, universal manner in which man is rationally aware of the divine Spirit.

Apart from belief the divine Spirit is not what he is according to the teaching of the Church. In this way the divine Spirit is not in himself but is present in the spirit of man, in the spirit of those who belong to his community. Then it is that the individual spirit is rationally aware of the divine Spirit, i.e., of the essence of his own spirit, of his own essence, of what is substantial in him; and this essence is precisely the universal in and for itself, the enduring.

That is the faith of the Evangelical Church – not an historical (historischer) faith, not a belief in historical (geschichtliche) things; rather this Lutheran faith is the spirit’s own faith, the consciousness whereby it is rationally aware of the substantial in spirit.

According to a recent theory of faith it is said: I believe, I have immediate knowledge that I have a body. This, then, is called belief, that something determinate, some content or other is immediately in us, is produced in our consciousness. That is belief in the external sense.

But the internal, the religious sense of belief is precisely the knowledge of the absolute Spirit of which we have been speaking; and this knowledge, as it is first of all in the human spirit, is immediate and, as a result, is immediate certitude.

It is simply a testimony of man’s spirit, which is the profound root of the identity of spirit in general. Spirit generates (erzeugt) itself, manifests its own self, shows itself and gives testimony of itself also, of its unity with itself. It also has consciousness of itself, consciousness of its unity with its object, because it is itself its own object.

When consciousness of this object comes on the scene, develops, and takes form, the content in question can seem to be something given in sensation, sensibly represented, coming from outside; the way in mythology a myth has of coming into being according to an historical pattern. This pattern is external. To faith, however, belongs the testimony of the spirit. The content can, of course, come from outside, be given and received, but the spirit must give testimony to it.

To be more precise and to speak of the Christian religion, we know that Christ came into the world almost 2000 years ago. He said, however, “I am with you all days, even to the end of the world,” and “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” Still, this was not to be the sensible presence of this individual person. He also said , when I am no longer with you, “the Spirit will lead you to all truth,” i.e., the relation of externality must first be removed; it is not the true relationship. Herein we find an elucidation (Erklarung) of what we said above.

On the one hand we have to do there with a representative consciousness, where the content is an object, and it is outside us, separated from us. On the other hand we have devotion, cult, the feeling of union with this object. The result is a certain ambiguity; at one time externality is stronger, at another, devotion. At one time the indwelling Christ is sent back 2000 years to Palestine and is simply an historical person in th at land and those surroundings. At another time, however, in devotion and in cult, the feeling of His presence is predominant. Consequently, at this point there is to be found a contrast in religion.