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Philosophy of the unconscious
by Eduard von Hartmann
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Excerpt:
The "Fhanomenologie des sittlichen Bewesstseins" turned the polemic of the philosophers and theologians' against me into a new phase. Hitherto I had been met with the argument that Pessimism must be intrinsically without an Ethic; but r.ow, when the Ethics of Pessimism had in principle come to light, that argument could no longer hold water, and it was now contended that this Ethics was worth nothing, because it was the Ethics of Pessimism. Thereby the contest concerning Pessimism was renewed, but also at the same time carried over to a new battlefield. I felt moved to plunge into this discussion with some journalistic disquisitions and essays, which, at the end of 1880, were collected, and appeared in pamphlet form under the title "Zur Geschichte und Begrtindung des Pessimismus." The first shows that not Schopenhauer but Kant is the father of the Pessimism advocated by me, whereas Schopenhauer has one-sidedly disfigured and spoilt the Kantian Pessimism; the second refutes the objections which deny that Pessimism is a problem of science, or soluble by science; the third has the task of sharply separating the ethically valuable Pessimism advocated by me from sundry ethically questionable and injurious varieties of Pessimism, and the fourth gives a phenomenology of Suffering, as it were, which already serves as a transitional chord from Ethics to the Philosophy of Eeligion.
The effects of my "Phanomenologie" on the public reach manifestly less widely and more deeply than those of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious;" the polemic called forth by the former is, it is true, not yet free from obliquities and misunderstandings, but it is far more scientific, more intelligent and thorough than that, which, in the first four years after the appearance of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," saw the light. The polemic on the
"Phanomenologie" has manifestly not a little contributed to correct the previous judgment of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," and to silence much superficial chatter. I hope that this will be the case in still higher degree with my "Philosophy of Eeligion," which yields the proof that my philosophy is just as little non-religious as non-ethical, but in both respects stands in perfect continuity with the previous course of development of the consciousness of humanity.
In the " Philosophy of Eeligion" my standpoint, as I have already indicated in the closing section of the "Self-disintegration of Christianity," specially represents a synthesis of the Christian and Indian Eeligions, or a synthesis of Hegelianism and Schopenhauerism. For that purpose it was important to me to come to terms with the present leading representatives of a speculative Christian Theology, as this has been developed from the twofold startingpoint of Hegel and Schleiennacher. I have done this in the memoir: "Die Krisis des Christenthums in der moderneu Theologie." As in the " Self-disintegration " I had criticised the vulgar liberal Protestantism, so here speculative Protestantism, and by how much the latter is philosophically more considerable and of greater religious worth than the former, so much the more important is also the critique of the latter than that of the former. But as the subject is more difficult and requires a subtler handling, the later writing has by no means received the same amount of notice as the former; it may be that this is owing in part to the circumstances of the times.
My third principal work consists now of two parts; the first, historically critical part, appeared at the end of 1881, under the title: "Das religiose Bewusstsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Entwickelung;" the second, systematic part, is issued simultaneously with this ninth edition of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," under the title, "Die Eeligion des Geistes." The first part deduces from the previous course of evolution of the religious conscious
PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.
INTRODUCTOEY.
