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HUME

David Hume, a Scotch philosopher (a.d. 1711–1776), afterward carried Locke’s fundamental theories to their logical conclusion, and held that there was naught knowable other than conscious experiences; that is, “impressions” and their reflection, “ideas.” Hume held that we cannot transcend this knowledge, although we may combine the ideas by association, etc., according to the established principles of psychology. Hume taught that we cannot prove the existence of God, of self, or of matter—all of which ideas are the illusions of imagination, having no basis in actual experience. He carried empiricism to the realm of pure skepticism.

BERKELEY

George Berkeley was a bishop of the Church of England, who lived a.d. 1685–1753. He was the founder of the modern school of Idealism, which system he developed largely upon the basis of Locke, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz. He held that matter cannot be conceived to actually exist, the only real substance being mind; and that the material world is nothing but a complex of mental impressions which appear and disappear in accordance with established laws of nature. He held that the reality of sense objects consisted in their being perceived, and that the assumption of an object apart from its idea is fallacious. He denied the individual existence of object apart from the subjective idea of it, and of both subject and object apart from the mind of God, or the Absolute. He held that, there being no real external world, the phenomena of sense must depend upon God continually, necessitating perception. Berkeley set out to prove the existence of God by his idealistic theory, but reasoned in a circle when he assumed the existence of God to make his theory tenable. His opponents endeavored to confute him by the familiar illustration of one kicking a stone and realizing the reality of the effect produced, but he and his followers logically explained that the said effect was merely a sensation known by the mind, and not a thing outside of the mind. Idealism, in various forms, has permeated many later philosophical systems. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have made the doctrine parts of their respective systems, and it is heard from in the metaphysical systems and theories of to-day.

KANT

Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, lived a.d. 1724–1804. His work created a new era in modern philosophy, and has profoundly affected all subsequent philosophical thought, even in systems which are apparently opposed to his fundamental principles. He was the founder of the modern school of Critical Philosophy. He, following the skepticism of Hume as to the idea of causality, enunciated the proposition that the faculty of knowledge, and the sources of knowledge, must be critically examined before anything could be definitely determined regarding objective truth. He aimed to separate the intuitive, or a priori mental forms, from those obtained empirically, or through experience; and also to define and determine the limits of human reason and the knowledge obtained therefrom. He attributed to the faculties of sense, understanding, judgment and reason, certain innate ideas, intuitive truths, or a priori forms, which must be valid and real because of their necessity, as, for instance, the ideas of time and space, cause and effect, action and reaction, reality, unity, the idea of the Absolute, and certain moral truths, such as his famous “categorical imperative” which held as axiomatic the idea that one should “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law”—the latter being claimed by him to be a moral law which admits of no condition or exception.

He held that theoretical knowledge was limited, inasmuch as the universal ideas existing in the mind would yield knowledge only when excited thereto by the presentation of their corresponding objects in actual experience, and that even then what we really know is not the “thing-in-itself,” but merely the “thing-as-it-appears”—the phenomenon, not the noumenon . The result of his reasoning is that certain “things-in-themselves” must be unknowable, as they can never appear to the mind as objects of actual experience in consciousness, and are to be thought of only as belonging to the noumenal , or the world of “things-in-themselves.” These unknowable things are the transcendental thought-postulates in psychology, cosmology, and theology, as, for instance, “God, freedom, and immortality of the soul,” and the “opposites” or contradictions which reason meets in considering the ideas of infinity, as infinite time, infinite space, infinite chain of cause and effect. As an authority says of Kant’s teachings: “His point is that though it is unquestionably necessary to be convinced of God’s existence, it is not so necessary to demonstrate it.…He shows that all such demonstrations are scientifically impossible and worthless. On the great questions of metaphysics—immortality, freedom, God—scientific knowledge is hopeless.”

It will be seen that Kant ambitiously essayed to harmonize and blend the opposing principles of rationalism and empiricism—of a priori and a posteriori knowledge—of innate ideas and ideas arising from experience. He held that knowledge is composed of two factors, as follows: (1) A priori , innate in the mind itself, antedating experience and necessary to make experience possible; and (2) a posteriori , coming from without, as the raw material of sensation, through experience. He held that the a priori knowledge is not usable without the material of sense experience; and that the a posteriori knowledge would fail to take form in consciousness were it not for the mold ideas innately existing in the mind. He held, therefore, that while theoretical reason or scientific inquiry is necessarily limited to the realm of experience and phenomenon, still practical reason is valid in postulating belief in the moral law and order, and belief in the existence of a world of transcendental reality; “Practical reason,” he held, made it necessary for us to postulate the existence of “God, freedom, and immortality,” and to manifest our belief in our moral life, although “pure reason” was absolutely unable to demonstrate their existence. Thus did Kant endeavor to build a structure of faith upon a foundation of reason.

HEGEL

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who lived a.d. 1770–1831, was one of the greatest and most influential of the modern German philosophers. His philosophy is known as that of Absolute Idealism. It is almost impossible to state his philosophy in popular terms, and in a limited space, so subtle and complicated is his thought and so voluminous the expression thereof. The following brief synopsis, therefore, must be accepted only with the above understanding. Hegel was a Rationalist of the most extreme type, although his expression differed from that of the English philosophers of that school, and his conceptions blended Rationalism with Idealism in a striking manner. He held that reality is but a manifestation of mind, and mind a manifestation of reality. The universe, he held, is the product of thought, and its life and activities are those of thought—nature is “petrified intelligence.” History, he held, is but the record of the process of absolute spirit toward complete self-realization. Mind, or reason, is all there is—“the real is rational and the rational is real,” he said. He held that in knowing “what is” we knew reason, for reason is all “that is.” He held that progress, in reality, is an illusion, and that “the consummation of the infinite end consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem still unaccomplished…the idea makes itself that illusion by setting up an antithesis to confront itself, and its acting consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created.” He also held that the motive force of the world-development was “opposition and negation”—everything is what it is by reason of what it is not, and everything, therefore, “both is and is not” at the same time, and can be understood only by combining the “is” and the “is not” in a higher synthesis. But he is careful to state, the contradictories are not annulled when combined, but are merely conserved—though when thus conserved they are no longer contradictory. By this process of reasoning, Hegel held that Being and Not-Being are one—from a union of and conservation of these two contradictories he obtained the idea of “Becoming.” After Hegel’s death his followers divided into opposing schools, each claiming to truly represent his thought, although diametrically opposed to each other. To such radical extremes was Hegelism carried by his followers that his system fell into disfavor in Germany, although at present it is experiencing a revival in England and America under the name of Neo-Hegelism, and in some of the “New Thought” cults.