On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature · Arthur Schopenhauer
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT VIEWS HITHERTO HELD CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON. § 6. _First Statement of the Principle and Distinction between Two of its Meanings._ A more or less accurately defined, abstract expression for so fundamental a principle of all knowledge must have been found at a very early age; it would, therefore, be difficult, and besides of no great interest, to determine where it first appeared. Neither Plato nor Aristotle have formally stated it as a leading fundamental principle, although both often speak of it as a self-evident truth. Thus, with a _naïveté_ which savours of the state of innocence as opposed to that of the knowledge of good and of evil, when compared with the critical researches of our own times, Plato says: ἀναγκαῖον, πάντα τὰ γιγνόμενα διά τινα αἰτίαν γίγνεσθαι· πῶς γὰρ ἂν χωρὶς τούτων γίγνοιτο;[16] (_necesse est, quæcunque fiunt, per aliquam causam fieri: quomodo enim absque ea fierent?_) and then again: πᾶν δὲ τὸ γιγνόμενον ὑπ' αἰτίου τινὸς ἐξ ἀνάγκης γίγνεσθαι· παντὶ γὰρ ἀδύνατον χωρὶς αἰτίου γένεσιν σχεῖν[17] (_quidquid gignitur, ex aliqua causa necessario gignitur: sine causa enim oriri quidquam, impossibile est_). At the end of his book "De fato," Plutarch cites the following among the chief propositions of the Stoics: μάλιστα μὲν καὶ πρῶτον εἶναι δόξειε, τὸ μηδὲν ἀναιτίως γίγνεσθαι, ἀλλὰ κατὰ προηγουμένας αἰτίας[18] (_maxime id primum esse videbitur, nihil fieri sine causa, sed omnia causis antegressis_).
11, he states four kinds of causes in a more satisfactory manner: αἰτίαι δὲ τέσσαρες· μία μὲν τό τι ἦν εἶναι· μία δὲ τὸ τινῶν ὄντων, ἀνάγκη τοῦτο εἶναι· ἑτέρα δὲ, ἥ τι πρῶτον ἐκίνησε· τετάρτη δὲ, τὸ τίνος ἕνεκα.[22] (_Causæ autem quatuor sunt: una quæ explicat quid res sit; altera, quam, si quædam sint, necesse est esse; tertia, quæ quid primum movit; quarta id, cujus gratia._) Now this is the origin of the division of the _causæ_ universally adopted by the Scholastic Philosophers, into _causæ materiales, formales, efficientes et finales_, as may be seen in "Suarii disputationes metaphysicæ"[23]--a real compendium of Scholasticism. Even Hobbes still quotes and explains this division.[24] It is also to be found in another passage of Aristotle, this time somewhat more clearly and fully developed ("Metaph." i. 3.) and it is again briefly noticed in the book "De somno et vigilia," c. 2. As for the vitally important distinction between _reason_ and _cause_, however, Aristotle no doubt betrays something like a conception of it in the "Analyt. post." i. 13, where he shows at considerable length that knowing and proving _that_ a thing exists is a very different thing from knowing and proving _why_ it exists: what he represents as the latter, being knowledge of the _cause_; as the former, knowledge of the _reason_.
If, however, he had quite clearly recognized the difference between them, he would never have lost sight of it, but would have adhered to it throughout his writings. Now this is not the case; for even when he endeavours to distinguish the various kinds of causes from one another, as in the passages I have mentioned above, the essential difference mooted in the chapter just alluded to, never seems to occur to him again. Besides he uses the term αἴτιον indiscriminately for every kind of cause, often indeed calling reasons of knowledge, and sometimes even the premisses of a conclusion, αἰτίας, as, for instance, in his "Metaph." iv. 18; "Rhet." ii. 2; "De plantis." p. 816 (_ed. Berol._), but more especially "Analyt. post." i. 2, where he calls the premisses to a conclusion simply αἰτίαι τοῦ συμπεράσματος (causes of the conclusion). Now, using the same word to express two closely connected conceptions, is a sure sign that their difference has not been recognised, or at any rate not been firmly grasped; for a mere accidental homonymous designation of two widely differing things is quite another matter.
Nowhere, however, does this error appear more conspicuously than in his definition of the sophism _non causæ ut causa_, παρὰ τὸ μὴ αἴτιον ὡς αἴτιον, (reasoning from what is not cause as if it were cause), in the book "De sophisticis elenchis," c. 5. By αἴτιον he here understands absolutely nothing but the argument, the premisses, consequently a reason of knowledge; for this sophism consists in correctly proving the impossibility of something, while the proof has no bearing whatever upon the proposition in dispute, which it is nevertheless supposed to refute. Here, therefore, there is no question at all of physical causes. Still the use of the word αἴτιον has had so much weight with modern logicians, that they hold to it exclusively in their accounts of the _fallacia extra dictionem_, and explain the _fallacia non causæ ut causa_ as designating a physical cause, which is not the case. Reimarus, for instance, does so, and G. E. Schultze and Fries--all indeed of whom I have any knowledge. The first work in which I find a correct definition of this sophism, is Twesten's Logic. Moreover, in all other scientific works and controversies the charge of a _fallacia non causæ ut causa_ usually denotes the interpolation of a wrong cause. [19] "We think we understand a thing perfectly, whenever we think we know the cause by which the thing is, that it is really the cause of that thing, and that the thing cannot possibly be otherwise." [Tr.'s add.]
For here, where the law of causality demands a _cause_, he substitutes a _reason_ instead of it, because the latter, unlike the former, does not immediately lead to something beyond it; and thus, by means of this very axiom, he clears the way to the _Ontological Proof_ of the existence of God, which was really his invention, for Anselm had only indicated it in a general manner. Immediately after these axioms, of which I have just quoted the first, there comes a formal, quite serious statement of the Ontological Proof, which, in fact, already lies within that axiom, as the chicken does within the egg that has been long brooded over. Thus, while everything else stands in need of a cause for its existence, the _immensitas_ implied in the conception of the Deity--who is introduced to us upon the ladder of the Cosmological Proof--suffices in lieu of a cause or, as the proof itself expresses it: _in conceptu entis summe perfecti existentia necessaria continetur_. This, then, is the sleight-of-hand trick, for the sake of which the confusion, familiar even to Aristotle, of the two principal meanings of the principle of sufficient reason, has been used directly _in majorem Dei gloriam_.
Considered by daylight, however, and without prejudice, this famous Ontological Proof is really a charming joke. On some occasion or other, some one excogitates a conception, composed out of all sorts of predicates, among which however he takes care to include the predicate actuality or existence, either openly stated or wrapped up for decency's sake in some other predicate, such as _perfectio_, _immensitas_, or something of the kind. Now, it is well known,--that, from a given conception, those predicates which are essential to it--_i.e._, without which it cannot be thought--and likewise the predicates which are essential to those predicates themselves, may be extracted by means of purely logical analyses, and consequently have _logical_ truth: that is, they have their reason of knowledge in the given conception. Accordingly the predicate reality or existence is now extracted from this arbitrarily thought conception, and an object corresponding to it is forthwith presumed to have real existence independently of the conception. "Wär' der Gedank' nicht so verwünscht gescheut, Man wär' versucht ihn herzlich dumm zu nennen."[26] [26] "Were not the thought so cursedly acute, One might be tempted to declare it silly." SCHILLER, "Wallenstein-Trilogie. Piccolomini," Act ii. Sc. 7.
After all, the simplest answer to such ontological demonstrations is: "All depends upon the source whence you have derived your conception: if it be taken from experience, all well and good, for in this case its object exists and needs no further proof; if, on the contrary, it has been hatched in your own _sinciput_, all its predicates are of no avail, for it is a mere phantasm." But we form an unfavourable prejudice against the pretensions of a theology which needed to have recourse to such proofs as this in order to gain a footing on the territory of philosophy, to which it is quite foreign, but on which it longs to trespass. But oh! for the prophetic wisdom of Aristotle! He had never even heard of the Ontological Proof; yet as though he could detect this piece of scholastic jugglery through the shades of coming darkness and were anxious to bar the road to it, he carefully shows[27] that defining a thing and proving its existence are two different matters, separate to all eternity; since by the one we learn _what_ it is that is meant, and by the other _that_ such a thing exists.
Like an oracle of the future, he pronounces the sentence: τὸ δ' εἶναι οὐκ οὐσία οὐδενί· οὐ γὰρ γένος τὸ ὄν: (ESSE _autem nullius rei essentia, est, quandoquidem ens non est genus_) which means: "Existence never can belong to the essence of a thing." On the other hand, we may see how great was Herr von Schelling's veneration for the Ontological Proof in a long note, p. 152, of the 1st vol. of his "Philosophische Schriften" of 1809. We may even see in it something still more instructive, _i.e._, how easily Germans allow sand to be thrown in their eyes by impudence and blustering swagger. But for so thoroughly pitiable a creature as Hegel, whose whole pseudo-philosophy is but a monstrous amplification of the Ontological Proof, to have undertaken its defence against Kant, is indeed an alliance of which the Ontological Proof itself might be ashamed, however little it may in general be given to blushing. How can I be expected to speak with deference of men, who have brought philosophy into contempt? [27] Aristot., "Analyt. post." c. 7. § 8. _Spinoza._ Although Spinoza's philosophy mainly consists in the negation of the double dualism between God and the world and between soul and body, which his teacher, Descartes, had set up, he nevertheless remained true to his master in confounding and interchanging the relation between reason and consequence with that between cause and effect; he even endeavoured to draw from it a still greater advantage for his own metaphysics than Descartes for his, for he made this confusion the foundation of his whole Pantheism.
A conception contains _implicite_ all its essential predicates, so that they may be developed out of it _explicite_ by means of mere analytical judgments: the sum total of them being its definition. This definition therefore differs from the conception itself merely in form and not in content; for it consists of judgments which are all contained within that conception, and therefore have their reason in it, in as far as they show its essence. We may accordingly look upon these judgments as the consequences of that conception, considered as their reason. Now this relation between a conception and the judgments founded upon it and susceptible of being developed out of it by analysis, is precisely the relation between Spinoza's so-called God and the world, or rather between the one and only substance and its numberless accidents (_Deus, sive substantia constans infinitis attributis_[28]--_Deus, sive omnia Dei attributa_). It is therefore the relation in knowledge of the _reason_ to its consequent; whereas true Theism (Spinoza's Theism is merely nominal) assumes the relation of the _cause_ to its effect, in which the cause remains different and separate from the consequence, not only in the way in which we consider them, but really and essentially, therefore in themselves to all eternity.
For the word God, honestly used, means a cause such as this of the world, with the addition of personality. An impersonal God is, on the contrary, a _contradictio in adjecto_. Now as nevertheless, even in the case as stated by him, Spinoza desired to retain the word God to express substance, and explicitly called this the _cause_ of the world, he could find no other way to do it than by completely intermingling the two relations, and confounding the principle of the reason of knowledge with the principle of causality. I call attention to the following passages in corroboration of this statement. _Notandum, dari necessario unius cujusque rei existentis certam aliquam_ CAUSAM, _propter quam existit. Et notandum, hanc causam, propter quart aliqua res existit, vel debere contineri in ipsa natura et_ DEFINITIONE _rei existentis_ (_nimirum quod ad ipsius naturam pertinet existere_), _vel debere_ EXTRA _ipsam dari._[29] In the last case he means an efficient cause, as appears from what follows, whereas in the first he means a mere reason of knowledge; yet he identifies both, and by this means prepares the way for identifying God with the world, which is his intention. This is the artifice of which he always makes use, and which he has learnt from Descartes.
He substitutes a cause acting from without, for a reason of knowledge lying within, a given conception. _Ex necessitate divinæ naturæ omnia, quæ sub intellectum infinitum cadere possunt, sequi debent._[30] At the same time he calls God everywhere the cause of the world. _Quidquid existit Dei potentiam, quæ omnium rerum_ CAUSA _est, exprimit._[31]--_Deus est omnium rerum_ CAUSA _immanens, non vero transiens._[32]--_Deus non tantam est_ CAUSA EFFICIENS _rerum existentiæ, sed etiam essentiæ._[33]--_Ex data quacunque_ IDEA _aliquis_ EFFECTUS _necessario sequi debat._[34]--And: _Nulla res nisi a causa externa potest destrui._[35]--Demonstr. DEFINITIO _cujuscunque rei, ipsius essentiam_ (essence, nature, as differing from existentia, existence), _affirmat, sed non negat; sive rei essentiam ponit, sed non tollit. Dum itaque ad rem ipsam tantum, non autem ad causas externas attendimus, nihil in eadem poterimus invenire, quod ipsam possit destruere._ This means, that as no conception can contain anything which contradicts its definition, _i.e._, the sum total of its predicates, neither can an existence contain anything which might become a cause of its destruction. This view, however, is brought to a climax in the somewhat lengthy second demonstration of the 11th Proposition, in which he confounds a cause capable of destroying or annihilating a being, with a contradiction contained in its definition and therefore destroying that definition. His need of confounding cause with reason here becomes so urgent, that he can never say _causa_ or _ratio_ alone, but always finds it necessary to put _ratio seu causa_. Accordingly, this occurs as many as eight times in the same page, in order to conceal the subterfuge. Descartes had done the same in the above-mentioned axiom.
For what Descartes had stated in an exclusively _ideal_ and _subjective_ sense, _i.e._, only for us, for _cognitive purposes_--in this instance for the sake of proving the existence of God--Spinoza took in a _real_ and _objective_ sense, as the actual relation of God to the world. According to Descartes, the existence of God is contained in the _conception_ of God, therefore it becomes an argument for his actual being: according to Spinoza, God is himself contained in the world. Thus what, with Descartes, was only reason of knowledge, becomes, with Spinoza, reason of fact. If the former, in his Ontological Proof, taught that the _existentia_ of God is a consequence of the _essentia_ of God, the latter turns this into _causa sui_, and boldly opens his Ethics with: _per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia_ (conception) _involvit existentiam_, remaining deaf to Aristotle's warning cry, τὸ δ' εἶναι οὐκ οὐσία οὐδενί! Now, this is the most palpable confusion of _reason_ and _cause_. And if Neo-Spinozans (Schellingites, Hegelians, &c.), with whom words are wont to pass for thoughts, often indulge in pompous, solemn admiration for this _causa sui_, for my own part I see nothing but a _contradictio in adjecto_ in this same _causa sui_, a _before_ that is _after_, an audacious command to us, to sever arbitrarily the eternal causal chain--something, in short, very like the proceeding of that Austrian, who finding himself unable to reach high enough to fasten the clasp on his tightly-strapped shako, got upon a chair. The right emblem for _causa sui_ is Baron Münchhausen, sinking on horseback into the water, clinging by the legs to his horse and pulling both himself and the animal out by his own pigtail, with the motto underneath: _Causa sui_.
Let us finally cast a look at the 16th proposition of the 1st book of the Ethics. Here we find Spinoza concluding from the proposition, _ex data cujuscunque rei definitione plures proprietates intellectus concludit, quæ revera ex eadem necessario sequuntur, that ex necessitate divinæ, naturæ_ (_i.e._, taken as a reality), _infinita infinitis modis sequi debent_: this God therefore unquestionably stands in the same relation to the world as a conception to its definition. The corollary, _Deum omnium rerum esse_ CAUSAM EFFICIENTEM, is nevertheless immediately connected with it. It is impossible to carry the confusion between reason and cause farther, nor could it lead to graver consequences than here. But this shows the importance of the subject of the present treatise.
In endeavouring to add a third step to the climax in question, Herr von Schelling has contributed a small afterpiece to these errors, into which two mighty intellects of the past had fallen owing to insufficient clearness in thinking. If Descartes met the demands of the inexorable law of causality, which reduced his God to the last straits, by substituting a reason instead of the cause required, in order thus to set the matter at rest; and if Spinoza made a real cause out of this reason, _i.e._, _causa sui_, his God thereby becoming the world itself: Schelling now made reason and consequent separate in God himself.[37] He thus gave the thing still greater consistency by elevating it to a real, substantial hypostasis of reason and consequent, and introducing us to something "in God, which is not himself, but his reason, as a primary reason, or rather reason beyond reason (abyss)." _Hoc quidem vere palmarium est._--It is now known that Schelling had taken the whole fable from Jacob Böhme's "Full account of the terrestrial and celestial mystery;" but what appears to me to be less well known, is the source from which Jacob Böhme himself had taken it, and the real birth-place of this so-called _abyss_, wherefore I now take the liberty to mention it.
It was Leibnitz who first formally stated the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a main principle of all knowledge and of all science. He proclaims it very pompously in various passages of his works, giving himself great airs, as though he had been the first to invent it; yet all he finds to say about it is, that everything must have a sufficient reason for being as it is, and not otherwise: and this the world had probably found out before him. True, he makes casual allusions to the distinction between its two chief significations, without, however, laying any particular stress upon it, or explaining it clearly anywhere else. The principal reference to it is in his "Principia Philosophiæ," § 32, and a little more satisfactorily in the French version, entitled "Monadologie": _En vertu du principe de la raison suffisante, nous considérons qu'aucun fait ne sauroit se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement_.[40] [40] Compare with this § 44 of his "Theodicée," and his 5th letter to Clarke, § 125. § 10. _Wolf._
The first writer who explicitly separated the two chief significations of our principle, and stated the difference between them in detail, was therefore Wolf. Wolf, however, does not place the principle of sufficient reason in Logic, as is now the custom, but in Ontology. True, in § 71 he urges the necessity of not confounding the principle of sufficient reason of knowing with that of cause and effect; still he does not clearly determine here wherein the difference consists. Indeed, he himself mistakes the one for the other; for he quotes instances of cause and effect in confirmation of the _principium rationis sufficientis_ in this very chapter, _de ratione sufficiente_, §§ 70, 74, 75, 77, which, had he really wished to preserve that distinction, ought rather to have been quoted in the chapter _de causis_ of the same work.
In said chapter he again brings forward precisely similar instances, and once more enunciates the _principium cognoscendi_ (§ 876), which does not certainly belong to it, having been already discussed, yet which serves to introduce the immediately following clear and definite distinction between this principle and the law of causality, §§ 881-884. _Principium_, he continues, _dicitur id, quod in se continet rationem alterius_; and he distinguishes _three_ kinds: 1. PRINCIPIUM FIENDI (_causa_), which he defines as _ratio actualitatis alterius_, e.g., _si lapis calescit, ignis aut radii solares sunt rationes, cur calor lapidi insit_.--2. PRINCIPIUM ESSENDI, which he defines as _ratio possibilitatis alterius; in eodem, exemplo, ratio possibilitatis, cur lapis calorem recipere possit, est in essentia seu modo compositionis lapidis_. This last conception seems to me inadmissible. If it has any meaning at all, possibility means correspondence with the general conditions of experience known to us _à priori_, as Kant has sufficiently shown. From these conditions we know, with respect to Wolf's instance of the stone, that changes are possible as effects proceeding from causes: we know, that is, that one state can succeed another, if the former contains the conditions for the latter.
In this case we find, as effect, the state of being warm in the stone; as cause, the preceding state of a limited capacity for warmth in the stone and its contact with free heat. Now, Wolf's naming the first mentioned property of this state _principium essendi_, and the second, _principium fiendi_, rests upon a delusion caused by the fact that, so far as the stone is concerned, the conditions are more lasting and can therefore wait longer for the others. That the stone should be as it is: that is, that it should be chemically so constituted as to bring with it a particular degree of specific heat, consequently a capacity for heat which stands in inverse proportion to its specific heat; that besides it should, on the other hand, come into contact with free heat, is the consequence of a whole chain of antecedent causes, all of them _principia fiendi_; but it is the coincidence of circumstances on both sides which primarily constitutes that condition, upon which, as cause, the becoming warm depends, as effect. All this leaves no room for Wolf's _principium essendi_, which I therefore do not admit, and concerning which I have here entered somewhat into detail, partly because I mean to use the word myself later on in a totally different sense; partly also, because this explanation contributes to facilitate the comprehension of the law of causality.--3. Wolf, as we have said, distinguishes a PRINCIPIUM COGNOSCENDI, and refers also under _causa_ to a _causa impulsiva, sive ratio voluntatem determinans_.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.