VON HARTMANN'S MORAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, I. THE POSITIVE ETHIC.[1]
MY purpose in the two following papers is not so much to add another to the many criticisms that now exist of the errors and exaggerations of Hartmann's philosophy, as to try to point out in it elements of value for the philosophy of to-day. There are many things in this ethical philosophy that seem to me to have a high interest and importance. One of these is the exposition of what might be called some of the fallacies in the philosophy of social democracy. Then there is very much, I think, in Hartmann's writings that is calculated to revive and sustain the metaphysical impulse itself. In an age that is supposed to have substituted (if this be really possible) science and positivism for philosophy, he is one of the few writers who have the courage to act upon the eternal need of mankind for a metaphysic. While I shall not be able to do more than suggest the wealth of material for metaphysic that is lying ready in Hartmann's so-called (and imperfectly understood?) philosophy of the unconscious, I hope to be able to show, as one of its consequences, that the most fruitful ground for speculation at the present time is to be found in the facts and necessities of the moral life itself. At least we shall find that, while Hartmann sets out with the idea of discovering the supreme principle of all morality, or the supreme reality upon which morality itself may be made to depend, his results seem to afford fresh confirmation of the position that the facts and necessities of the moral life are themselves the terra firma of all science and all philosophy; that they are capable of sustaining not merely their own weight but that of all other facts and all other ideas. In my first paper, I shall endeavor to exhibit the successive steps and stages of the
- ↑ See a paper by the present writer in Mind (N. S., Vol. II, p. 188) on the Epistemology of Ed. v. Hartmann. Since writing this I have been occupied with my studies in Schopenhauer. There are many ways in which Hartmann tries to connect his philosophy with present thought and present tendencies. I have intended for some time to resume study of his system from this standpoint.
