A History of Philosophy ; Ancient And Mediaeval Philosophy Vol. 1

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

INTRODUCTION.

IF the History of Philosophy admitted of no other modes of treatment than either the simply learned, which regards all systems as equally true, as being alike mere opinions ; or the sceptical, which sees equal error in all ; or lastly, the eclectic, which discovers fragments of the truth in all, we should have to agree that those are right who, in the interests of philosophy warn all, or at least beginners, against studying its history. But whether a better method exists, and which is the right one, can only be decided by a consideration of the conception of a history of philosophy.

Philosophy arises when, not content with the facts of existence (that is, of the world), men proceed to the inquiry into their reasons, and ultimately into their unconditioned reason, i.e. their necessity or rationality. It is not, however, on this account, merely the work of an individual thinker ; rather, there are laid down in it the practical and theoretical convictions of mankind, just as the wisdom and the experience of individuals is laid down in their maxims and principles, and that of nations in their proverbs and laws. Just as a people or a country utters its wisdom and its will through the mouth of its sages and lawgivers, so the world-spirit (i.e. collective humanity) utters its (or the world its) wisdom and its will through the philosophers. If, therefore, we substitute " world-wisdom " for philosophy, " the world " here stands as at once the subjective and objective genitive.





And just as the individual passes through the various stages of life without detriment to his unity, so the world-spirit is in succession the spirit of the various times and centuries. Man in the eighteenth century is not the same as in the seventeenth. If by the same substitution by which we say " world " instead of " world-spirit," we say " times " instead of " spirit of the age," and " century " instead of " spirit of the century," then every time has its own wisdom, every century its own philosophy. And those who are the first to utter it, are the philosophers of these various times. They have the true knowledge of their time, and the philosophy, in which the time arrives at knowledge of itself, does nothing but formulate the unconscious life, the instinctive tendencies of that time, and utter its secret, utter what " one" feels to be true and right.

This dependence upon a particular time, into which every philosophy is driven by the fact that it is final truth only for that time, impairs its absoluteness just as little as duty ceases to be unconditional because duties are different at different times of life. Nor does duty thereby become transitory ; for the boy's function of obedience is preserved in the man—who learnt by obedience to command—in the form of having obeyed. Moreover, since philosophy ever follows like the fruit upon the flower of an age, it has often appeared to be as the cause of a decay, which, however, it never calls forth, but only betrays. In particular, it is not philosophy that destroys naive piety, but rather this must have ceased before philosophic movements can appear.

Just as the world-spirit passes through the different spirits of the ages that make up the history of the world, so its consciousness, the wisdom of the world, passes through the different consciousnesses of the times, and it is just in this that the history of philosophy consists. In the one case, as in the other, there is nothing lost ; but the results of one age and one philosophy afford the material and the starting-point for ....