German philosophy and politics · John Dewey
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY: THE TWO WORLDS
Then he proceeds to reinterpret in terms of the sensuous natural principle and the ideal rational principle the main doctrines of Lutheran Protestantism. The doctrines of incarnation, original sin, atonement, justification by faith and sanctification, while baseless literally and historically, are symbols of the dual nature of man, as phenomenal and noumenal. And while Kant scourges ecclesiastical religions so far as they have relied upon ceremonies and external authority, upon external rewards and punishments, yet he ascribes transitional value to them in that they have symbolized ultimate moral truths. Although dogmas are but the external vesture of inner truths, yet it may be good for us "to continue to pay reverence to the outward vesture since that has served to bring to general acceptance a doctrine which really rests upon an authority within the soul of man, and which, therefore, needs no miracle to commend it."
It is a precarious undertaking to single out some one thing in German philosophy as of typical importance in understanding German national life. Yet I am committed to the venture. My conviction is that we have its root idea in the doctrine of Kant concerning the two realms, one outer, physical and necessary, the other inner, ideal and free. To this we must add that, in spite of their separateness and independence, the primacy always lies with the inner. As compared with this, the philosophy of a Nietzsche, to which so many resort at the present time for explanation of what seems to them otherwise inexplicable, is but a superficial and transitory wave of opinion. Surely the chief mark of distinctively German civilization is its combination of self-conscious idealism with unsurpassed technical efficiency and organization in the varied fields of action. If this is not a realization in fact of what is found in Kant, I am totally at loss for a name by which to characterize it. I do not mean that conscious adherence to the philosophy of Kant has been the cause of the marvelous advances made in Germany in the natural sciences and in the systematic application of the fruits of intelligence to industry, trade, commerce, military affairs, education, civic administration and industrial organization. Such a claim would be absurd. But I do mean, primarily, that Kant detected and formulated the direction in which the German genius was moving, so that his philosophy is of immense prophetic significance; and, secondarily, that his formulation has furnished a banner and a conscious creed which in solid and definite fashion has intensified and deepened the work actually undertaken.
In bringing to an imaginative synthesis what might have remained an immense diversity of enterprises, Kantianism has helped formulate a sense of a national mission and destiny. Over and above this, his formulation and its influence aids us to understand why the German consciousness has never been swamped by its technical efficiency and devotion, but has remained self-consciously, not to say self-righteously, idealistic. Such a work as Germany has undertaken might well seem calculated to generate attachment to a positivistic or even materialistic philosophy and to a utilitarian ethics. But no; the teaching of Kant had put mechanism forever in its subordinate place at the very time it inculcated devotion to mechanism in its place. Above and beyond as an end, for the sake of which all technical achievements, all promotion of health, wealth and happiness, exist, lies the realm of inner freedom, of the ideal and the supersensible. The more the Germans accomplish in the way of material conquest, the more they are conscious of fulfilling an ideal mission; every external conquest affords the greater warrant for dwelling in an inner region where mechanism does not intrude. Thus it turns out that while the Germans have been, to employ a catchword of recent thought, the most technically pragmatic of all peoples in their actual conduct of affairs, there is no people so hostile to the spirit of a pragmatic philosophy.
"While all other Indo-European languages allow a wide liberty in placing the accent and make external considerations, such as the quantity of the syllables and euphony, of deciding influence, the Germanic tribes show a remarkable and intentional transition to an internal principle of accentuation. . . . Of all related peoples the Germanic alone puts the accent on the root syllable of the word, that is, on the part that gives it its meaning. There is hardly an ethnological fact extant which gives so much food for thought as this. What leads these people to give up a habit which must have been so old that it had become instinctive, and to evolve out of their own minds a principle which indicates a power of discrimination far in advance of anything we are used to attribute to the lower stages of civilization? Circumstances of which we are not now aware must have compelled them to distinguish the inner essence of things from their external form, and must have taught them to appreciate the former as of higher, indeed as of sole, importance. It is this accentuation of the real substance of things, the ever-powerful desire to discover this real substance, and the ever-present impulse to give expression to this inner reality which has become the controlling trait of the Germanic soul.
Hence the conviction gained by countless unfruitful efforts, that reason alone will never get at the true foundation of things; hence the thoroughness of German science; hence a great many of the qualities that explain Germanic successes and failures; hence, perhaps, a certain stubbornness and obstinacy, the unwillingness to give up a conviction once formed; hence the tendency to mysticism; hence that continuous struggle which marks the history of German art,--the struggle to give to the contents powerful and adequate expression, and to satisfy at the same time the requirements of esthetic elegance and beauty, a struggle in which the victory is ever on the side of truth, though it be homely, over beauty of form whenever it appears deceitful; hence the part played by music as the only expression of those imponderable vibrations of the soul for which language seems to have no words; hence the faith of the German in his mission among the nations as a bringer of truth, as a recognizer of the real value of things as against the hollow shell of beautiful form, as the doer of right deeds for their own sake and not for any reward beyond the natural outcome of the deed itself."
The essay in question is that entitled "What is the Enlightenment?" His reply in substance is that it is the coming of age on the part of humanity: the transition from a state of minority or infancy wherein man does not dare to think freely to that period of majority or maturity in which mankind dares to use its own power of understanding. The growth of this power of free use of reason is the sole hope of progress in human affairs. External revolutions which are not the natural expression of an inner or intellectual revolution are of little significance. Genuine growth is found in the slow growth of science and philosophy and in the gradual diffusion throughout the mass of the discoveries and conclusions of those who are superior in intelligence. True freedom is inner freedom, freedom of thought together with the liberty consequent upon it of teaching and publication. To check this rational freedom "is a sin against the very nature of man, the primary law of which consists in just the advance in rational enlightenment."
In contrast with this realm of inner freedom stands that of civil and political action, the principle of which is obedience or subordination to constituted authority. Kant illustrates the nature of the two by the position of a military subordinate who is given an order to execute which his reason tells him is unwise. His sole duty in the realm of practice is to obey--to do his duty. But as a member not of the State but of the kingdom of science, he has the right of free inquiry and publication. Later he might write upon the campaign in which this event took place and point out, upon intellectual grounds, the mistake involved in the order. No wonder that Kant proclaims that the age of the enlightenment is the age of Frederick the Great. Yet we should do injustice to Kant if we inferred that he expected this dualism of spheres of action, with its twofold moral law of freedom and obedience, to endure forever. By the exercise of freedom of thought, and by its publication and the education which should make its results permeate the whole state, the habits of a nation will finally become elevated to rationality, and the spread of reason will make it possible for the government to treat men, not as cogs in a machine, but in accord with the dignity of rational creatures.
Before leaving this theme, I must point out one aspect of the work of reason thus far passed over. Nature, the sensible world of space and time, is, as a knowable object, constituted by the legislative work of reason, although constituted out of a non-rational sensible stuff. This determining work of reason forms not merely the Idealism of the Kantian philosophy but determines its emphasis upon the _a priori_. The functions of reason through which nature is rendered a knowable object cannot be derived from experience, for they are necessary to the existence of experience. The details of this _a priori_ apparatus lie far outside our present concern. Suffice it to say that as compared with some of his successors, Kant was an economical soul and got along with only two _a priori_ forms and twelve _a priori_ categories. The mental habitudes generated by attachment to _a priori_ categories cannot however be entirely neglected in even such a cursory discussion as the present. If one were to follow the suggestion involved in the lately quoted passage as to the significant symbolism of the place of the accent in German speech, one might discourse upon the deep meaning of the Capitalization of Nouns in the written form of the German language, together with the richness of the language in abstract nouns. One might fancy that the dignity of the common noun substantive, expressing as it does the universal or generic, has bred an intellectual deference. One may fancy a whole nation of readers reverently bowing their heads at each successively capitalized word. In such fashion one might arrive at a picture, not without its truth, of what it means to be devoted to _a priori_ rational principles.
A number of times during the course of the world war I have heard someone remark that he would not so much mind what the Germans did if it were not for the reasons assigned in its justification. But to rationalize such a tangled skein as human experience is a difficult task. If one is in possession of antecedent rational concepts which are legislative for experience, the task is much simplified. It only remains to subsume each empirical event under its proper category. If the outsider does not see the applicability of the concept to the event, it may be argued that his blindness shows his ineptness for truly universal thinking. He is probably a crass empiric who thinks in terms of material consequences instead of upon the basis of antecedent informing principles of reason. Thus it has come about that no moral, social or political question is adequately discussed in Germany until the matter in hand has been properly deduced from an exhaustive determination of its fundamental _Begriff_ or _Wesen_. Or if the material is too obviously empirical to allow of such deduction, it must at least be placed under its appropriate rational form. What a convenience, what a resource, nay, what a weapon is the Kantian distinction of _a priori_ rational form and _a posteriori_ empirical matter. Let the latter be as brutely diversified, as chaotic as you please. There always exists a form of unity under which it may be brought. If the empirical facts are recalcitrant, so much the worse for them. It only shows how empirical they are. To put them under a rational form is but to subdue their irrational opposition to reason, or to invade their lukewarm neutrality. Any violence done them is more than indemnified by the favor of bringing them under the sway of _a priori_ reason, the incarnation of the Absolute on earth.
Yet there are certain disadvantages attached to _a priori_ categories. They have a certain rigidity, appalling to those who have not learned to identify stiffness with force. Empirical matters are subject to revision. The strongest belief that claims the support of experience is subject to modification when experience testifies against it. But an _a priori_ conception is not open to adverse evidence. There is no court having jurisdiction. If, then, an unfortunate mortal should happen to be imposed upon so that he was led to regard a prejudice or predilection as an _a priori_ truth, contrary experience would have a tendency to make him the more obstinate in his belief. History proves what a dangerous thing it has been for men, when they try to impose their will upon other men, to think of themselves as special instruments and organs of Deity. The danger is equally great when an _a priori_ Reason is substituted for a Divine Providence. Empirically grounded truths do not have a wide scope; they do not inspire such violent loyalty to themselves as ideas supposed to proceed directly from reason itself. But they are discussable; they have a humane and social quality, while truths of pure reason have a paradoxical way, in the end, of escaping from the arbitrament of reasoning. They evade the logic of experience, only to become, in the phrase of a recent writer, the spoil of a "logic of fanaticism." Weapons forged in the smithy of the Absolute become brutal and cruel when confronted by merely human resistance.
The stiffly constrained character of an _a priori_ Reason manifests itself in another way. A category of pure reason is suspiciously like a pigeonhole. An American writer, speaking before the present war, remarked with witty exaggeration that "Germany is a monstrous set of pigeonholes, and every mother's son of a German is pigeoned in his respective hole--tagged, labeled and ticketed. Germany is a huge human check-room, and the government carries the checks in its pocket." John Locke's deepest objection to the older form of the _a priori_ philosophy, the doctrine of innate ideas, was the readiness with which such ideas become strongholds behind which authority shelters itself from questioning. And John Morley pointed out long ago the undoubted historic fact that the whole modern liberal social and political movement has allied itself with philosophic empiricism. It is hard here, as everywhere, to disentangle cause and effect. But one can at least say with considerable assurance that a hierarchically ordered and subordered State will feel an affinity for a philosophy of fixed categories, while a flexible democratic society will, in its crude empiricism, exhibit loose ends.
There is a story to the effect that the good townspeople of Koenigsberg were accustomed to their watches by the time at which Kant passed upon his walks--so uniform was he. Yielding to the Teutonic temptation to find an inner meaning in the outer event, one may wonder whether German thought has not since Kant's time set its intellectual and spiritual clocks by the Kantian standard: the separation of the inner and the outer, with its lesson of freedom and idealism in one realm, and of mechanism, efficiency and organization in the other. A German professor of philosophy has said that while the Latins live in the present moment, the Germans live in the infinite and ineffable. His accusation (though I am not sure he meant it as such) is not completely justified. But it does seem to be true that the Germans, more readily than other peoples, can withdraw themselves from the exigencies and contingencies of life into a region of _Innerlichkeit_ which at least _seems_ boundless; and which can rarely be successfully uttered save through music, and a frail and tender poetry, sometimes domestic, sometimes lyric, but always full of mysterious charm. But technical ideas, ideas about means and instruments, can readily be externalized because the outer world is in truth their abiding home.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.