On the significance

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On

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the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age.

An Invitation to

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a Series of Lectures on Philosophy

by

Johan Ludvig Heiberg

Copenhagen Published by the University Bookseller C. A. Reitzel Printed at C. G. Schiellerup’s

1833

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Anyone who, with an attentive eye, has observed the present generation as it appears in the most civilized states and as it thus can be said to represent humanity at its present level of development, will without doubt have found that this generation—which is rich in the experience which the previous centuries have provided and is armed with the strength which only the living moment bestows—strives powerfully forward in manifold new directions. However, it does not itself know where many of these directions will lead it and thus does not know whether they all lead to a common goal or what that might be. This generation is willing to sacrifice itself for ideas of which it is not conscious. It is a brave soldier, who fights to the last breath without knowing the plans of its general.

A condition of this kind is actually no condition; it is only a transition from a previous condition to one that is yet to come. It is not a fixed existence but only a I becoming, in which what is old ends and what is new begins, an appearance of existence, destined to take the place of a real condition; in other words, it is a crisis. Humanity has already experienced many such transitions, but it is only history which has brought them to consciousness. While such moments last, one seldom recognizes them as such. Only when they are over, do we understand what they were, that is, in comparison with the ordered and calm condition to which they led us.

The critical periods in the development of humanity are everywhere the result of an increase in the objects of knowledge, such

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that, on account of their expansion, they no longer fit into the form which contained them before. In order to make room for themselves, they thus break through the old form or carry out a revolution, which casts off the old yoke, but which contains a new organization in embryonic form. It is not—as one often imagines—the growing population, the so-called overpopulation, which becomes too large for the limits of the established order, since individuals as such, i.e., as isolated and not acting en masse, are nothing in the state and take up absolutely no room in it. Instead, it is the overpopulation in the world of ideas which is dangerous for the existing I form; for it is the ideas which ground every form, and only they can cause a form to break down. One is tempted to deduce great effects from small causes, yet the simplest observation teaches us that the effect can contain nothing which was not already in the cause. If philosophy did not teach it to us, then history would nevertheless demonstrate that only ideas deserve with justice to be called “causes.” It may seem that ideas are sometimes subjugated by force and sometimes cunning, but one forgets that both force and cunning themselves are forms of the eternal Idea or reason. Thus, no despot is more despotic than this one, which demands the absolute submission of all and employs every means, even brute force, to achieve this end. Force is the Idea’s first and coarsest form; cunning is immediately a higher and more refined form, but knowledge is the only thing which is worthy of the Idea itself. Even that which we are accustomed to call “war” is a polemic among ideas; war is no more a struggle of canons against canons or of bayonets against bayonets than the apple which fell on Newton’s head was the cause of the discovery of gravity.

Philosophy is nothing other than the knowledge of the eternal or the speculative Idea, reason, or truth; these different terms all designate the same substance. Philosophy presents the Idea as the I only cause. Consequently, in all finite effects philosophy sees nothing but the Idea. But, one objects, “there are so many philosophies; the one system contradicts and negates the other; in which of these can one

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find the truth?” To this one can answer that the different philosophical systems—assuming that they really are philosophical, i.e., that they are penetrated by the speculative Idea, for otherwise they cannot be considered—all contain the same philosophy, only seen from different levels of culture in the development of humanity, just as the different religions all contain the same God, viewed from different standpoints in the religious Idea, and just as the different works of art contain the same beauty in changing forms, and the different forms of poetry contain the same poetry under different conditions.

All differences are grounded in unity; they are only moments in it, i.e., they are the necessary stages in the unity’s own development.

The truth is not so empty or abstract that it could not, without damage to itself, take up the conflicting moments and keep them in the common womb. They contradict, they sublate each other; for just this reason it is absurd to ask: “in which of them is the truth?” It is in none of them, but they are all in it.

Every age which finds itself in a calm and orderly condition rather than a critical transition I has its philosophy, which is the result of all the previous experience and the knowledge to which that experience has led. It is important to note that philosophy cannot appear before there is material for it to take possession of, just as in the order of nature a child cannot be born before the nourishment for it has been prepared in the mother’s breast. Indeed, philosophy, as knowledge of the eternal Idea, transcends all temporal change. But every determinate or individual philosophy appears in a specific age and is tied to the conditions of that age. Its material therefore does not lie in the future which neither is nor has been. It is not prophetic and cannot, indeed, does not want to be. Likewise, its material cannot be sought in the present because the present is not yet finished and therefore partly falls within the limits of the future; if it were finished or completed, then it would belong to the past. Only the past is a finished and thus an actual material; but by taking possession of the past, philosophy makes it something present since it indeed

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expresses the highest and deepest thought about it by humanity at that time. Thus, philosophy brings about the resurrection of the dead to life. Hegel says most aptly that only when a form of life has become old does philosophy come forth to it: “The Owl of Minerva begins its I flight only with the onset of dusk.”* An opinion which is no less in error than the one mentioned above is that philosophy is not a creation of humanity itself but of philosophers. What is substantial in philosophy is the Idea, truth and reason; but philosophers do not create these. The different philosophical systems represent different forms under which the unchangeable substance is presented. Each of these is a product of its age, an individual, to which the present has given birth, but whose genealogical table reaches back through the entire past. No one will assume that the teachers of religion have themselves produced the religion which they teach. Indeed, no one would dare to make such a claim about the founders of religions since this would be equivalent to stating that there is no truth in any religion. Least of all could we, as Christians, assume that the founder of our religion was its producer, for, indeed, he announced himself as the Son who was sent by the Father. But the Father did not send the Son before the fullness of times had come, i.e., when the present had ended and was finished and therefore belonged to the past, to what is dead, when there was a material, that is, a formless I substance which, in the creation of a new form, could find a resurrection from what is dead.

This material was the culture of the Roman Empire, which haunted the living like a ghost from past ages, which had lost all meaning in the present, thus demonstrating that it belonged with the dead. The Roman religion, by idolizing the finite, little by little set it apart from the infinite and set the divine apart from the human. The Idea, reason and truth became a land which lay beyond. The hopeless

* Philosophie des Rechts, p. xxiv.

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demand which resulted from this was that one was supposed to recognize that everything finite and human amounted to nothing since it was separated from the divine, that is, one was supposed to give up the finite without ever receiving the infinite as a replacement. One can say that under such conditions there was an inner necessity that things had to be different, for the described condition had become what was called above the “absence of a condition,” “a crisis,” “a becoming,” i.e., a suspension between being and nothing, that is, a contradiction, which, like every other contradiction, must be sublated and pass over to an actual condition. The violent separation of the divine from the human—this crisis, in which man felt abandoned by all gods, and for good reason since not only the great Pan but the entire world of gods was dead—contained in itself the necessity of the divine returning to man, I thus reconciling the finite with the infinite. It was necessary that the divine, in human form, come to live among humans. Therefore, one can say with justice that the Christian religion was a work not of Christ but of humanity. This is why the Son was sent forth, not by himself, but by the Father, for any work of humanity is thereby a work of God. This unity contains no contradiction; on the contrary, such a contradiction would arise from their separation and would remain insurmountable.

If we go further back in time, we find that earlier religions also arose out of the dissolution of those which preceded them. Thus, the formless and mysterious darkness of the Egyptian religion was the condition for the clear, beautiful forms in the Greek religion; this is perhaps already hinted at in the ancient myth that a Greek (Oedipus) killed the Egyptian Sphinx after having solved its riddle, the content of which was “Man, the free, self-knowing spirit.”* The case is the same in art and poetry. Every age has its own art and poetry, and all true works of art and poetry belong to their age

* Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, I, p. 376.

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and therefore to humanity. It is only the bad and failed I works which are the artist’s or the poet’s own and which can justifiably be called their private property, just as books which lie around unread are the property of the author and not of the public.

Art, poetry, religion, philosophy, these forms of humanity’s highest thought can give us nothing actually new, for this would presuppose a relation of one individual to another but not of humanity to itself. On the contrary, they give us what is our own and what is oldest of all. They do not increase our property but open our eyes to what we already possess.

But humanity does have its representatives, those individuals among whom the consciousness of humanity is awakened to a higher clarity, while it remains more or less asleep among the masses. These representatives we call “artists,” “poets,” “teachers of religion,” and “philosophers.” We also call them “humanity’s teachers” and “educators.” And so they are, but not by virtue of their own individual power. They earn these titles by presenting the mirror in which humanity sees itself and becomes conscious of itself as its own object.

They do not have the spirit of themselves but of God. But God’s spirit is humanity’s spirit. We would be bad Christians if we separated what Christ had united and thereby turned back to the last crisis of the dissolved Roman religion. I Philosophy cannot arise before there is material at hand. Further, the material must belong to the past and thus to that which is now dead and whose form has dissolved. By shaping it into a new form, philosophy calls it back to life and to the present. Thus, the present generation cannot have its philosophy yet since it is itself in a crisis, that is, in a period of transition in which the material is still present and thus not completed or incorporated into the realm of the dead, and this lack is what the manifold conflicting undertakings of the age, sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously, try to set right, even though this goal cannot be reached before the critical time has been survived. But in the age, as in every becoming, there

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lies the force necessary to sublate itself and become a condition. The critical ferment has no other goal than to bring forth its opposite: the calm clarity which can serve as a mirror for the Idea.

But what belongs to the past and what to the present? This question cannot be decided absolutely for every object, for what is present for the one can be past for another. Just as, for example, one person may be better at walking than another and thus have covered the road upon which the other still finds I himself, so also certain experiences, opinions, perceptions and systems can be placed ad acta for the one, while the other, who finds himself right in the middle of them, has yet to go through the crisis which will lead him to the same goal. Is this not a familiar transition in the different ages of a human being? The child stretches out his arms for the moon and the stars and would like to put them on a string in order to carry them around on his neck. A short time is sufficient to consign this wish to the past; but for the older child and the young person in the different periods of youth, new undertakings constantly replace one another such that the death of the one is the birth of the other, none of them any more likely to be realized than the first childhood wish. Only manhood is accustomed to determine for itself a sphere of action inside the limits of what is possible. But old age has time to reflect on how many of the plans of manhood were not carried out and which ones consequently, for just this reason, belonged to the impossible. In this long series of failed undertakings, each one of them originally appears as resting in the future, but it passes immediately over into the past without having been brought into the existence of the present.

Thus, if in the gradual development of humanity one individual is ahead of another, then I it is self-evident that the representatives of humanity, as we have called them, must be in the vanguard. From there they are able to observe the masses which still occupy many of the stages which these representatives themselves have already covered and which have also been covered by humanity itself to the extent that they are representatives. The masses, inasmuch as they

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approach these representatives or lag far behind them, occupy different standpoints whose position itself determines the varying relationship between the past and the present. If one wants to observe again the differences in this manifold from two main points of view, then we could divide the individuals into the cultured and the uncultured, the latter of which could likewise be regarded as representatives of humanity, but, as it were, in a larger and more popular chamber, a kind of lower house, in contrast to the aristocratic, less numerous chamber, which consists of those to whom we actually gave the name of representatives. By contrast, the uncultured, having confined themselves merely to their own lives, are excluded from all representation beyond that of their own persons.

If we cast a glance at the present age, then we find first of all that certain undertakings, which among the uncultured have the life of the present and the interest of the moment, are regarded by the cultured as already completed material, belonging to the past. The I most striking example of this is our frequent theological disputes which are carried out exclusively for the edification of the uncultured, while the cultured, who have gone beyond that standpoint, are almost entirely unaffected by them but have their heaven and hell in the ferment of politics. I dare say the spokesmen for both theological parties are themselves counted among the class of the cultured, but this does not matter, for since the attacking party turns itself to the uncultured masses, so must the defense. The cultured know very well that literalism in faith and heresy-hunting are ghosts of a past age, without flesh and blood, but they fear them like one fears ghosts which can molest the living by becoming involved in the affairs of life. Therefore, they like the so-called rationalism because it strews linseed before their doors in order to keep the ghosts out. But their friendship with rationalism does not go any further; in itself it is a matter of indifference to them, for they have a feeling that it too belongs to the past and, at best, can be exploited like a rusty old sword, which one makes do with until new weapons are forged. The

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favor in which rationalism stands is therefore of a merely negative nature: one regards what is old as an army conscripted to protect us against what is even older; yet, when the latter is totally destroyed and peace I has been achieved, it is then best to get rid of the army.

Cultured people in our times are thus by no means rationalists. How could they be? Rationalism has come to the result that God is inscrutable and cannot be known, and with this result it wants to preserve religion. But people have been more consistent, for they have taken the result alone and preserved it, and after thus having taken the head off the church, they now strive to keep that church out of their dreamt republic.

It is of no use to hide or gloss over the truth; we must confess that religion in our age is for the most part a matter for the uncultured, while for the cultured it belongs to the past, to the road already traveled. This sad result had been reached even before the first French Revolution, which merely brought it closer to consciousness and brought it about that a great mass of the uncultured went over to the class of the cultured, for the cultured are in recent times the people engaged in politics, and with the Revolution almost everyone became a politician. Politics is indeed in our times the present in which the cultured world lives. But precisely because it is the present, its material is not yet complete, at least not for those who live in this present, for another question is whether those who constitute I what was called above “humanity’s upper house” have come so far that they can regard the political question as answered and can regard the cultured masses’ uncritical ideas about freedom as completed material for a new and higher form. What they, in any case, must see is that it is the very political character of the age which constitutes its crisis and which therefore is a contradiction. For after having cast out religion, that is, knowledge of the infinite, the age has only finite determinations left, and with these it nonetheless wants to build an eternal state and constitution. It is due to the feeling of this contradiction that the better people have turned back to the abandoned

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religion, but this is of no use, for it is impossible for them to recapture the faith of past ages. Rather, they act in religious matters like merchants who, although near bankruptcy, nevertheless do not dare to admit their poverty to themselves. Things look even more doubtful with regard to their followers, for whom religion has now become a matter of fashion. But a matter of fashion is never a serious thing, and it, moreover, has only become a matter of fashion for the pretentious, not for the truly cultured.

In an unhappy age—and a critical age is always unhappy—people have a vague sense of what is missing. What then makes more sense than that many people call upon religion, that old consoler, for help?

But no sooner does this happen than religion itself is caught up in I the conflict. It becomes a part of the affair instead of a peacemaker standing above all parties, and those in conflict end up by showing it the door, like a busybody who interferes in the dispute of others.

Let one consider whether among the honest believers of our age—that is, those who lie only to themselves but not to others—there can be found a single one, who, if God’s existence and the immortality of the soul could be proved to him as clearly as a mathematical proposition, would not with eagerness, indeed thankfulness, seize the proof and feel infinitely happier than theretofore?

Would he not admit that he only now had certainty while what he previously called solid faith was nothing more than a hope and therefore a doubt? But it is easy to see that the aforementioned truths can only be proved for someone who already knows them; for a proof is based on reasons, and these in turn are based on previous reasons, and so on, either in an infinite series, in which thus no certainty can be achieved, or to those limit-points, to which one ascribes immediate certainty, just like the axioms of geometry. But what truth can have immediate certainty if the existence of God does not have it? Is it not obtuse to demand a proof for the thing in which all proofs are grounded? Thus, if God’s existence comes about as the result of a proof, then it itself must be the premise I in the proof. To be the last

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thing, with which one ends up, it must be the first thing, with which one begins. Since this is very obvious, the believers of our age look with contempt upon the so-called philosophical proofs, whereas they would prefer to have a revelation from the world of spirit, in the crass belief that the sensible phenomenon can teach them what science cannot. But they ignore the contradiction which this thought involves. If people in our time do not believe in reason, they believe even less in the senses. And even if miracle after miracle took place, our skepticism would soon finish them off. We would be more than happy to believe that Christ rose from the dead. Unfortunately, we ourselves did not see it happen. But can we then for a single moment imagine we would believe it if we actually did see it? Could the senses, which so often deceive, appear to us as more reliable witnesses than history? And how could we accept sense experience as immediately certain and indisputable when at the same time we demand that certainty about the divine be produced with a proof? If Christ were to come back to Christians of the present day, he would hardly be much better treated by them than formerly by the Jews. Since torture has been abolished, I do not suppose that they would crucify him, but our doctors would claim I he was a quack, our jurists would claim he was a disrupter of the civil order; and the theologians, his born defenders, how would they receive him? The orthodox would call him a false teacher, and the rationalists, a fanatic.

If it goes like this with religion, it will not fare much better with art and poetry, the spheres in which a person, just as in religion, is supposed to have immediate certainty of the divine and the eternal and to enjoy in the present what one otherwise, under the name of another life, expects in the future. It is only by presupposing this certainty that art and poetry have a true existence and that their effects, even in the most profane jest, can be explained. But when the cultured world has discarded religion, one cannot expect its sisters to carry much weight. In this case art and poetry can at most be merely a pleasant luxury. Even if, following the example of the

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Romans, some countries put drama in the same class as bread, then it only means that nowadays luxury belongs among the first necessities of life. It is even debatable whether it would not be better for religion to be abolished than for art and poetry to be tolerated; it is debatable whether these two, which stand as high above all political undertakings, as the infinite over the finite, are not doubly wronged I by being relegated to a simple recreation amidst the seriousness of political life. Be that as it may, tolerance toward art and poetry must be preferred to intolerance toward religion, for they provide, nonetheless, a glimmer of a higher life and the seed of a new condition.

Let the serious, politically reasoning and politically acting citizen remain unaware that his actual life lies in what he considers mere amusements. The time will come when he will have his eyes opened.

But that time has not yet arrived. Likewise, it is not art and poetry which will put an end to the present confusion; it is already a great deal for them to maintain a secret connection to the infinite without their friends noticing it. If they made it known publicly, then their relationship to religion would be all too obvious, and our politicians, who already have excluded religion, would soon do the same to art and poetry.

What is it then that will bring order to the present chaos? Or, to use a term which cannot be misunderstood so easily—for the ordering principle cannot be something new which comes to what exists, like a deus ex machina, but must be contained in the fermenting material and must be developed out of it—what is the goal towards which the present confusion strives? What is the unity towards which the present difference will be developed? The answer is easy after all the I preceding considerations: it is philosophy which will put an end to the confusion. It is towards this that the conflicting forces are directed. For truth is at once philosophy’s content and form; truth is, further, its only content and its only form. Philosophy is truth itself and nothing else; and truth is for all times the only unchallenged power. One can doubt God; as atheist, one can completely deny

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Him. All this is possible, but one can neither doubt nor deny the truth. If one denies God, then it is because one regards the truth to be in this negation. One can act badly; like the criminal, one can sacrifice good for evil. But even this happens with the recognition of the truth in the sense that one posits the truth or the good in that which the law calls the opposite. One can claim that man can know nothing, that the truth, therefore, is not for man; but even then one must regard this proposition not only as a truth but as the only truth, i.e., as truth itself. Both in the theoretical and in the practical, one can reason away the infinite and live in merely finite determinations; but then one posits truth in the finite and regards the infinite as its opposite. The truth is thus the watchword which unites humanity under all possible kinds of divergence; I it is the only power of which no one under any condition whatsoever would deprive oneself. For however conflicting our opinions might be, they nonetheless are in agreement that only under the presupposition of the truth which they contain, do they make a claim for validity.

It is in this sense that philosophy can be said to stand above art, poetry and religion, even though it, like them, has the infinite as its object. For since the form in which it presents this object is the truth, all other forms of the infinite have their justification in it. Therefore, philosophy is the highest judge whose authority no one will underestimate. For even those who disparage philosophy as an empty and good-for-nothing discipline, by this only mean certain specific philosophical systems; and even in the reproach against these systems lies the recognition of the true philosophy which should sublate them.

For even if one denies the possibility of such a true philosophy, then the knowledge of this purported truth itself is the true philosophy. If thus art, poetry and especially religion are abandoned in the present crisis, then they are not what is called to put an end to the crisis. But now the time has come for that which humanity can never give up without giving up itself: the truth, i.e., philosophy. Indeed, art, poetry and religion contain the same I truth as philosophy, but not in the

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truth’s own form: the truth is in the former as substance and has there its different contingent forms; but the Concept is the truth in the latter, and the Concept has only one form, just like material.

It was remarked at the beginning of the treatise that critical transitions occur in the development of humanity when the objects of knowledge have developed to the point that they no longer fit into the form or into the system which had contained them previously.

They burst out of the old form and work forward blindly and chaotically until a new one has emerged. And this is where we in fact find ourselves at the moment. It is sufficient to name the expansion which the natural sciences and politics have experienced and which could not be reached without limiting religion and setting aside art and poetry. For the natural sciences and politics, these two undertakings with which academic life at present is concerned (though the former is itself already beginning to be regarded more and more as subordinate to the latter), are undertakings in the realm of the finite, whereas art, poetry and religion are realizations of the infinite. Although the latter three activities present the infinite as realized in the finite, it nonetheless lies in the contingent character of their forms that finitude, which constitutes their I foundation, can only be abstract finitude, or finitude in general, so that they can never exhaust the infinite manifold of finite determinations which constitute the finite. Thus, with respect to our present undertakings, the reconciliation of the infinite with the finite, which religion presents and which art and poetry also present, though in other contingent forms, can only be a reconciliation of the infinite with nature and the state in general, but not with the infinitely many determinate details in which these finite things have their existence. The specific investigation of the laws of nature and of the relations of the state must necessarily remain foreign to art, poetry and religion, and therefore, the latter also remain just as foreign to the former.

Thus, here the aforementioned case comes on the scene: the expansion of the objects of knowledge (which, since they could ex-

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perience an expansion, are finite) bursts the form of what exists, and since the form itself is the infinite, the infinite retreats away from the finite and becomes an unknown, undiscoverable and unattainable land lying beyond. But likewise one can, on the contrary, claim that this far-away land, precisely because it is infinitely far-away, is known, discovered and attained. For by making the infinite the opposite of the finite, one makes it the same determination as the latter, that is, the finite I itself, in whose ground we have taken root and in whose presence we live. With greater truth we could therefore say that the infinite is destroyed or that God does not really exist in the age or in the country or in the person which does not believe in Him. For when God is not in consciousness, He can only exist as a slumbering God, that is, only in blind reason, which fills up unconscious nature whose eternal laws are the final refuge where human arbitrariness cannot penetrate.

Thus, the infinite, having departed from our finite relation, can only be won back by seeing these relations in their truth, i.e., recognizing them as striving toward philosophy. What was formerly able to reconcile the divine with the human, is no longer capable of doing so because knowledge of the human has, so to speak, grown higher than knowledge of the divine. Religion, art, and poetry, since they were not able to posit themselves in the undertakings of the age, necessarily had to posit themselves beyond them. But the age would not be satisfied with this, for it will not let anyone steal from it that for which it fights, and it is right not to since the infinite now, as before, must be won by the development of the finite undertakings, not by their sudden I cessation. Only philosophy can go into the many details of our finite goals, particularly our political ones. Only it can see their tendency toward the infinite and, with this knowledge, clarify their obscure aspects. Only it is in a position to sublate them without destroying them; on the contrary, in their sublation to the infinite it affirms their validity. In this manner our finite undertaking becomes grafted into the infinite, the human into the divine, and the limita-

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tion has disappeared; our sciences become philosophy, and our state wins back its regulating form.

But just as philosophy confirms the legitimacy of our finite undertakings, specifically by showing how the infinite is their goal, so also, by the same action, it reinvests the infinite in its rights by determining it as the goal, thereby, as it were, giving it an estate in the actual world. Far from wanting to make art, poetry and religion superfluous, on the contrary, philosophy wants to create for them recognition in actuality. It wants to do this for its own sake since it cannot do without them. If at the moment they lack this recognition, it is not because people doubt the truth as substance but only because they question whether it is contained in the contingent I forms in which these activities present it. Thus, it is a matter of grasping these three spheres of spirit as an actual relation of substantiality, that is, of conceiving them or understanding them in their Concept.

But when one raises oneself to the Concept, one has raised oneself above substantiality; one has come out above the changing, contingent forms and has reached the only and the necessary form which is identical with its content, namely, the form of the Concept, which is the Concept itself, the truth, which itself is the form of truth. Thus, art, poetry and religion receive their justification in philosophy, and philosophy documents its own validity by documenting theirs, for which reason it was said above that philosophy itself cannot do without them. For if philosophy is supposed to show itself as philosophy precisely by the fact that it sees the Concept in the substantial, then it can no more do without the substantial than without any other moment in its development.

But—one will perhaps object—if art, poetry and religion are to win back the significance that they formerly had for humanity, must this not happen by their own infinite power? How is it conceivable that they, not by their own power but by an authority outside themselves, namely, philosophy, may be restored to their rightful position?

The answer is that philosophy is not outside them but in them, that

15 ] that is, of conceiving [at begribe] them or understanding them in their Concept [Begreb].

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it is their own immanent I power which they themselves only need to develop. All three of them contain truth and, therefore, philosophy; this is their common substance with which from the beginning they have announced their divine origin. But the substance is the dark truth veiled under its contingent form. In previous ages when so much of what now has developed was still veiled in a dark seed, the dark substance itself was able to be a sufficient light in this darkness.

But just as the light which shines for us at night is hardly noticed in the rays of the day, so also in an age where so much else has been developed from its seed, the truth, as long as it is substance and therefore in the form of contingency, must shine with a dim light.

Thus, the age justifiably demands that it be developed from its husk in order to become the naked truth, the transparent truth, which has cast off its contingent dress so that its form no longer veils it, but, as nakedness, shows, indeed is, truth itself. By this action it documents that it really was substance; for if art, poetry and religion could not develop themselves to philosophy, then it would mean that the substance could not develop itself to the Concept and was therefore not substance. Then these higher activities would be lacking substance, i.e., would be empty of content, and thus would not be what we took them to be, but, on the contrary, I would be false directions of the human spirit. If in an age which demands to know what the previous ones have felt and believed, they want to demonstrate their valid claim, then they must expose their truth, i.e., must develop themselves to the form of the Concept in which they themselves could be conceived.

Only thereby would we receive the certainty that our feelings, our faith, were not empty but really were filled with the substantial content. Therefore, far from knowledge putting an end to feeling and faith, it, on the contrary, makes them more secure, for only when we know that they contain the truth, can we freely abandon ourselves to them.

Concerning religion in particular, it coincides with philosophy insofar as religion contains it. But insofar as philosophy is a content of

24 ] they must expose their truth, i.e., must develop themselves to the form of the Concept [Begrebets] in which they themselves could be conceived [begribes].

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religion, against which religion itself constitutes its own form, religion is thereby different from philosophy. Philosophy presents the same content but in its own form, which is not distinct from its content and which thus does not exist separately as a content. When regarding religion as distinct from philosophy, one regards it in its own determinate form, by which it is distinguished from philosophy.

The form of religion is thus, to this extent, religion itself, that in which it consists or its essence. But, by contrast, the form, as contingent and opposed to substantial content, is itself inessential, so that the essence of religion can be said to be I the inessential. Further, the form of religion is a determinate form, against which one must posit other equally determinate forms, while the form of philosophy, on the contrary, is the form itself in its infinity or the sole form in which all determinate differences are sublated. Since, furthermore, the finite is precisely the determinate, i.e., that which excludes all other determinations, it thus follows that religion, though it, like philosophy, has the infinite for its object, nonetheless, insofar as it is different from philosophy, presents the infinite from the standpoint of the finite. Thus, since what is characteristic of religion (in its opposition to philosophy), its nature or its essence, is posited in its determination, finitude, limit or limitation, it is then the nature of religion to be a determinate religion. To be sure, philosophy in each of its systems is also a determinate philosophy, but this contingent nature is inessential for philosophy, while it is essential for religion. The difference in the systems is sublated in philosophy itself, and each system is only philosophical due to the fact that it contains more than its own determination. But the different religions are not sublated in religion itself since that in which the determination consists would thereby itself be sublated. One can deny all philosophical systems, but by doing so, one must admit I philosophy itself. By contrast, one cannot deny all individual religions without denying religion itself; for only someone who has a certain determinate religion, has religion in general. Just as the different philosophical systems—as re-

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marked previously—all represent the same philosophy at different stages of development, so also all religions admittedly contain the same God and therefore the same truth. In this point religion is identical with philosophy. But since the difference between the two lies in the fact that religion makes the contingent into the essential, the differences among the different religions become essential differences (since they are grounded in contingency), so that when a certain determinate religion is declared to be true, the others are necessarily declared to be false—a relation that in no way is found among the different philosophies. One may justly praise the tolerance of the Christian religion insofar as Christianity is far from demanding that the confessors of other religions be persecuted with fire and sword. But if one understands by tolerance that Christianity grants to the other religions the same substantial essence that it itself possesses, then such praise is obviously not warranted. In this sense it is not tolerant and cannot and should not be, for it must, like every religion, posit its essence in the contingent difference which exists between it and the others. I The relation in which art and poetry stand to philosophy is rather of a different kind. They do not—like religion—present the infinite from the standpoint of finitude. For them, therefore, the contingent form is inessential. The Muses are sisters: one art or poetic art does not stand in hostile opposition to another. Each is equally good, for they all have the same substantial essence. In this they distinguish themselves from religion and are in agreement with philosophy. But their difference from philosophy must not be overlooked. The contingent and inessential form, with which works of art and poetry are distinguished, are for each of these arts again the essential form (the form, which is posited opposite the material, not opposite the substance). So this contingent form is in each of them the only or necessary form and is just as essential as their very essence (colors, sounds, language, etc.). But it can be incomplete, i.e., distinct from the essence (form distinct from matter), so that it takes ability and

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virtuosity to unite them. Hereby the work of art or of poetry may be considered under the category of infinite closeness to an ideal; and in this, art and poetry are different from philosophy, in which matter and form, thought and its organization, are not able to be distinguished because they are one, and the ideal therefore is realized rather than merely sought. I Philosophy is thus the ground in which all our goals, both finite and infinite, find their truth and thereby their justification and demand for validity. When one recognizes that the truth is the common, substantial content which unites them, while what distinguishes them is only their contingent form—and one knows this by conceiving them, i.e., by grasping their common substance as Concept, in which the contingent form with its differences are sublated, and this is what philosophy is—then one realizes that they all can exist peacefully alongside one another. This is the case since each of them is determined by its limit and in this limiting has its freedom; each of them is assured that no more will it be encroached upon by the others than it itself will encroach upon them. The only thing that is unlimited is the truth in which all these limitations rest in sublated independence and therefore in peaceful existence. Illness appears in the corporeal, organic world when an individual activity, a moment in life, tries to assert itself as the whole, but only life itself has this absolute right.

Similarly, the moral world is ill when finite activities, even if they are finite in different ways or to different degrees, e.g., politics and religion, each on their own make themselves the infinite, that is, the whole, when only the moral life, the truth, is really the infinite I and the whole. Every illness is a crisis, and under this last appellation the character of the age is also given, just as was remarked that as long as the age was in its crisis, it could not have its philosophy. Yet, its crisis cannot be sublated except by philosophy. An illness cannot stop before health has appeared, but neither can health appear before the illness has stopped. This circle takes place in all real activity, and it is only a misunderstanding when one believes that something is the

11 ] one knows this by conceiving [at begribe] them, i.e., by grasping the common substance as Concept [Begreb] . . . .

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first in this in some absolute sense. For whatever is the first must precisely express this by the fact that it is the last, and vice versa.

Every true result is its own presupposition, and every true conclusion is its own premise. Philosophy could not be the final thing in which all finite activities lose themselves if it were not the first thing from which they all sprang forth as from their substantial foundation.

Only with this insight can one understand that art, poetry and religion contain the same substance as philosophy; for from where could they have received it if not from philosophy? They have received their substance from philosophy, and to philosophy they return it.

We have previously regarded the crisis of the present age as striving towards philosophy and seeking its sublation in it. In order to make the truth I complete, we now add that it is philosophy itself which has evoked this crisis, i.e., it is philosophy which leads the deviating directions back to their source. The critical transition of the age is thus of such a sort that shall produce the philosophy of the age. But the latter is already present since it has produced the former; in other words, what is produced is here what produces, and what is sought is what is found. It is found since a pair of humanity’s highest representatives in our times have already presented it in the name of humanity; it is sought since the majority of the cultured still have not appropriated it and thus are not conscious of it.

Goethe and Hegel are undoubtedly the two greatest men the modern age has produced. No others deserve to the same degree to be called the representatives of our age, for their works contain the entire life of spirit of our age, as existing and present, i.e., encompassing the future in unity with the past. Though they now have both been called away from their earthly life—and this almost simultaneously as if by a curious coincidence, which would complete the parallel between them in this last circumstance, though the one only seemed to follow the command of lawful nature, while the other was torn away perhaps at the culminating point of his work—nevertheless far from I already belonging to the past, to the dead, they, as the

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most present of all spirits, will, on the contrary, only be understood and grasped completely by future generations. With regard to Hegel, most people openly acknowledge that they do not understand him; but the fact that Goethe is at bottom no better understood is evinced if only by the fact that poetry, for the enjoyment both of poets and of the public, is driven in a manifold of inferior directions, which from the standpoint of Goethe’s poetry are past and already covered and above which his poetry is raised, just as the Idea is raised above all its inferior, finite levels of development. The reason that our cultured literary world can nonetheless find pleasure in Goethe, though they actually do not understand him, must presumably be sought precisely in the fact that he was a poet, for poetry does not present the truth in its own form, but rather in a contingent one, so that one can relate to it and thus grasp exoterically what only the esoteric observer sees in the correct light. But in this sense there is not any great reason to place Goethe high above other poets; and one can therefore also be quite certain that when one hears this enthusiastic statement, it is seldom meant seriously but is only an echo of the judgment of some critical coryphaeus.

What distinguishes Goethe from all contemporary poets is the same thing that distinguishes Dante and Caldero´n I from their contemporaries: namely, that they present their age’s philosophy insofar as poetry can do so without forsaking its own characteristic nature (and hereby one must recall what was said above, that poetry can go into the details of our finite goals but not to the same degree as philosophy itself). These three poets are perhaps, since the rebirth of the sciences, the only ones about which this is true, and thus the only ones which one can with justice call “speculative poets.” For indeed all true poetry is penetrated by the speculative Idea or the truth. Indeed, it is always idealist since it lets the finite lose itself in the infinite or presents the finite, not for its own sake, but as a vehicle for the presentation of the infinite. But this is not always true of the poets themselves, for they are not so rational as poetry and are in

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many cases realists who do not themselves know that their poetry is idealist. (Realism is the view, which stops with things which are finite; idealism, by contrast, is the conviction of their sublation in the Idea, in the infinite.) Thus, even though poetry is idealist in itself and in spite of all those who produce it, one can nonetheless divide up poets into realists and idealists, and only the latter are conscious both of what poetry is and what they themselves are. The idealists I or speculative poets are themselves philosophers and produce philosophy just like the actual philosophers, only with the difference which poetry’s contingent form stipulates. But the contingent form, which disappears in philosophy itself while it is present in poetry, is inessential here (as in all art in general), while it is essential in religion. For this reason the speculative poet can regard the difference between poetry and philosophy as inessential and present philosophy in his works. The teacher of religion cannot do the same since the essence of religion consists precisely in the difference. In an age which is not religious, religion then comes into the aforementioned dangerous position, which actually is a dichotomy: namely, either to exist in this distinction from philosophy, which means destruction, or to eliminate the difference, which is to eliminate itself. By contrast, poetry in an age which is not poetic retains the expedient of becoming philosophy and, instead of being eliminated in this transformation, on the contrary, finds its eternal existence therein. It must also be admitted that poetry has partly supplanted religion in the present cultured world since true edification is sought more often in it than in religion. It is no wonder, for simply reaching the barren conclusion that human nature is infinitely distant I from the deity and offering the hopeless prospect of an unattainable eternity are not edifying; on the contrary, true edification is that which creates a happy, cheerful enjoyment of the divine in the present and thus really reconciles the deity with man.

How poetry becomes philosophy can be said in two words: it happens with the didactic poem. But these two words are so ambiguous

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that they require many others for their explanation. By “didactic poem” one should not understand what is usually designated by the term, namely, a versified presentation of finite practical matters, such as agriculture, gardening, navigation, etc., or theoretical ones, such as propositions of physics, astronomy and psychology, etc. All such objects are, because of their finitude, incommensurable with poetry, and a true didactic poem is therefore only that which has for its object knowledge of the infinite, i.e., philosophical knowledge. From this it follows that the didactic poem, understood in this manner, does not belong to the genres of poetry, but, on the contrary, designates the highest development of poetry. The old cosmogonies were true didactic poems, for they did not present, like the more recent ones, the world’s coming into existence from a previously assumed material—which is to presuppose the world in order to explain its origin—but rather they explained I the question from the speculative point of view of pure logic: nothing, as the ground for everything.

Dante’s famous poem is a didactic poem in the true, speculative meaning of the word; its purpose is to present consciously what other poetry unconsciously portrays: the sublation of everything finite in the infinite. In the three parts of which it consists, hell, purgatory and paradise—which in no way correspond to the limited moral conceptions which people otherwise usually associate with these words—he portrays the world of thought, nature and spirit, or to express it with terms from logic, the world of immediacy, reflection and the Concept, in their difference and unity. (Hell is for him precisely independence grounded in immediacy, which is only an isolation from everything—a state which needs nothing but is likewise not needed by anything else.)

Caldero´n, that most wondrous of all poets, is at first glance contradiction personified, at once the most repulsive and the most delightful, the most prejudiced by national prejudices, shortcomings and limitations, who nonetheless has expressed what no one before

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or since has been able to, a Scribe, who with hundreds of works, clothed in the most popular form, i.e., theatrical works, won the constant praise and thundering applause of both the cultured and the uncultured masses, while he, like the speculative philosopher, set down in these works—which are admired by the cultured public and I the riffraff alike—his age’s highest perception and deepest comprehension of nature, the state, religion, philosophy—in short, of all life’s interests. He was also a didactic poet. For even if not all of his, from a certain point of view ephemeral, works can be thus designated, nevertheless his work in general, that is, the essence of all of them, is the greatest and most impressive didactic poem which literature has to show.

Certain critics have in our time regarded Shakespeare as a similar poetic representative of humanity. It would be odd if England, which has never been rooted in anything but finite undertakings and whose literary history does not have a single speculative mind to its name, should in a single individual have been raised so high above itself.

But this is not the case: Shakespeare was all too national not to be a realist insofar as a great poet can be. Interesting character portrayals, remarkable events which awaken wonder and fear, psychological and historical memorabilia are the objects in which he loses himself. But one does not see any consciousness of the fact that these very things, as finite and transitory sides both of life and of the poetic art, are lost in the perception of the infinite. Our wonder of Shakespeare is certainly justified, but it can be exaggerated; and to make his works the Bible of I poetry is both laughable and inexcusable in an age which possesses a much greater poet. Thus, England’s new Shakespeare, Walter Scott, who is blind to what is present and simply lives in the past, is also realist because he is national, indeed, even provincial. Lord Byron, who sometimes hated his countrymen and held them in disdain, just as he himself was the object of their hatred and disdain, became an idealist poet. But he let himself be caught in the net of his own dialectic, came to a halt with skepticism and could not

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achieve unity. Nonetheless the Continent’s anglophiles have preferred the dissonance of Byron to the harmony of Goethe.

What Schiller, with his powerfully striving spirit, would have become if he had lived to experience the present age is difficult to decide. Such as he now stands for us, he is an idealist poet; but the subjective, and thus the finite and limited direction of his idealism precludes inscribing his name alongside those of the three aforementioned speculative poets. But just as he is, he provides a proof of the existence of speculative poetry, for his works are didactic poems which present Fichte’s philosophical system. The earlier Kantian system, as a merely critical undertaking, could in no way be born again in poetry. With Fichte the Kantian critique became a dogmatism, which consistently excluded nature from all interaction with I man, who, with the postulate of the pure “I,” created his nature and existed in a world of individual duties. The poetry of Schiller, which was contemporary with Fichte’s philosophy, wholly appropriated this character. Goethe, by contrast, whom this subjective, nature-excluding orientation could no more satisfy than it could satisfy humanity at a time when the natural sciences were beginning to assert their hegemony, let Fichte’s system pass by unnoticed and affiliated himself, by contrast, along with everyone else, with Schelling’s philosophy of nature, which perhaps also, as prepared by its Fichtean opposite, appeared by necessity. Schiller himself had a feeling for the one-sidedness of subjective idealism, but instead of adopting the idealism of Schelling—which leaned towards the objective side and therefore suffered from the opposite one-sidedness and could not be united with the view he had accepted—he thought, at least for a moment, that he merely could find reassurance by turning back to Kant,* something which, moreover, neither had nor could have had

* Schillers und Goethes Briefwechsel, Part I, p. 56. Flyvende Post, 1830, no. 114, where I am no longer satisfied with my introduction to the quoted passage.

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influence on his poetry. Thus, if the number of poets, who truly deserve the name of “speculative,” I is small, then there are all the more who, by striving towards a speculative and idealist poetry, have felt and expressed the age’s need for it. Lessing, Novalis, Tieck, von Kleist and the brothers Schlegel are examples of this, and—not to pass over our own literature—the earlier Oehlenschla¨ger and all of Schack Staffeldt.

With respect to Goethe, it now remains to specify how precisely his poetry presents the philosophy which the age seeks. Not only are some of his most significant works, such as Wilhelm Meister, Tasso and in particular Faust, didactic poems in the previously defined sense of the word, but the speculative Idea penetrates the composition of almost all his works, even those, which cannot actually be characterized by this name. For in his Tasso it is uncertain whether he prefers the poet or the diplomat, and all of his portrayals both of characters and of events are kept as subordinate moments in the unity, as finite elements, which are only valid inside their limits. Only when they are seen in this way, are they seen in their sublation and therefore in their truth. However, he effects this sublation, unlike Dante and Caldero´n, with a very abstract perception of the finite in universality.

On the contrary, no one goes into more details of nature and human life than he. No one lingers with greater desire on all our I finite determinations and relations. Indeed, he has taught us that poetry, without becoming either trivial or unpopular, can go much more deeply into these details, determinations and relations than had previously been suspected. What is grandiose, what is imposing, in Goethe is thus seen in the love with which he seems to lose himself in these finitudes, while he suddenly surprises us by standing above them and recognizing them for what they are.

A one-sided comprehension of one or another of these moments has evoked many coarse, undigested opinions, which Goethe’s opponents have brought against him. Those who keep to the first moment find him fixated on the senses and the material; those who keep to

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the second moment find him without warmth and enthusiasm and say that he does not mean anything seriously. The first of these charges is easy to understand and the second no less so when one remembers that realist poets, whose activity is directed more toward the limits of things than toward the unlimited which dwells inside and outside of the limits, have accustomed us to being continually enthused about a hero or a lover, instead of being enthused about the ideas which are contained in such individual and personal limitations. But Goethe was no more serious about the finite limitations than are nature and reason, which sublate them. That he is enthused only about I what really deserves our enthusiasm, justifies the admiration he has received. Yet each of these opposing criticisms easily leads to further charges: that he is immoral since he presents the moral rules of duty—by which the masses are reassured since they regard them as solid points—in their finitude and deprives them of their allegedly absolute validity, or, further, that he is irreligious since his poetry, instead of being placed below religion, has, on the contrary, taken up the religious standpoint into its own scope by merging with philosophy. In both of these respects Goethe has, however, done nothing more than bring our own thoughts to our consciousness; but it is precisely this, which many people take badly. No one in his actions regards the isolated rules of duty as absolute, but one nevertheless wants to imagine that one does so. Likewise, concerning the religious point, the world is quite in agreement that religion should be an object for our knowledge, not vice versa. Although people no longer feel compelled to submit to the hierarchy, with regard either to the universal or to the individual, they nevertheless do so when they accuse Goethe of being irreligious because he brings this, our serious thought, to consciousness. I Hegel’s system is the same as Goethe’s. That two great spirits at the same time have come to the same result cannot help but awaken a favorable conception of the result and must encourage those who demand evidence of the correctness of the thing before they famil-

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iarize themselves with it. To characterize the Hegelian philosophy in a few words, one can say that, like Goethe’s poetry, it reconciles the ideal with actuality, our demands with what we possess, and our wishes with what is achieved.

To understand our poetry, to understand our religion, these are our most immediate demands because they are individual. For as individuals, we find ourselves in these two spheres, and in them we as individuals already partake of the infinite. But it is also a matter of understanding our finite essence, on the one hand, in its subjective form as mere soul and not yet spirit in which we are also individuals, but finite and transitory, and, on the other hand, in its objective form, the state, in which the individual is nothing and the whole is everything. Nature also demands to be understood, not merely in its finite determinations, which are objects for empirical observation, but comprehended as the middle realm (called by Dante “purgatory”) which proceeds from thought and strives toward spirit.

In a word, philosophy, developed in its I own form, i.e., in the truth’s essential, naked form, is what is needed at the moment. And with this the occasion for contributing to its promotion is sufficiently motivated for anyone who knows he is in a position to do so.

That the author of the present work is convinced that he belongs among those who are called to this vocation, he demonstrates with the publication of this work and with the invitation to the oral lectures. However, he cannot show to what extent he is in a position to justify his own conviction to others, without putting his hand to the task.

The system to which he will particularly tie his presentation is the Hegelian. Yet he will be careful to distinguish between what is only thought to be particular to Hegel and what the latter has expressed in the name of humanity; for only the latter, not the former, is our common property, our true philosophy. In every human work there is much that is imperfect. It would be laughable to assume such was not the case here; but perfection is also there, and we will keep to it.

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In order to prevent all misunderstanding, it is perhaps not superfluous to repeat what has already been said expressly and to which the entire treatise refers: that neither in the Hegelian system nor in any other true system can philosophy be regarded as something new, which comes to what exists just like a panacea, I which once taken is supposed to quickly free us from all evils. But it is this goal to which our political activity, our science, our art, our poetry and our religion, in short, all our interests strive according to their own inner force, so that philosophy cannot be anything other than the knowledge of the truth to which these undertakings have already come. And on that basis the Hegelian system must be recognized as heretofore the most comprehensive one, which has grounded the greatest mass of these undertakings and most correctly comprehended the common direction in which they converge in a central science.

The fact that Hegelian philosophy, in all the years which have passed since its founder first presented it, has not yet had a greater influence on the course of the world or won popularity cannot justify any prejudice against it. Experience teaches, and, moreover, it lies in the nature of the matter that what ferments darkly and struggles in the ideas of humanity needs a long time before it can achieve the form of consciousness. The culture which in our times is so widespread, which has become so general that it seems almost to be present at birth, has little by little had to struggle out of centuries of barbarism and darkness. The idea of Luther’s Reformation needed several centuries to be I incorporated into the general consciousness.

For even in the Thirty-Years’ War, which was the Reformation’s first great work, people had, on the whole, only a vague conception of what it actually was that they were fighting for. Religion has always prepared the way with the sword and only later produced conviction.

But philosophy employs nothing but conviction, and religious wars cannot be replaced by philosophical wars, at least not by any other than those which are carried out with pen and ink. To be sure, the

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systems of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling were adopted more quickly and more generally than that of Hegel, but they were also one-sided, and therefore, easier to gain a general knowledge of. But for the same reason they were also far from expressing the thought of humanity and therefore could not satisfy it for very long. But Hegelian philosophy, which makes a claim to be the age’s own, needs, like any great work, a much longer time to be accepted. So much more ought anyone who has understood this claim feel called to contribute his part to realizing it.

Here it is merely a matter of opening our eyes to that which we already see without knowing it, of unfolding our consciousness and showing ourselves what it contains. The art, which one must use as the means to this end, is to tie the philosophical concepts to our representations, or, so to speak, translate the latter I into the language spoken by the former. For we are all at home in representations, but we feel alienated in the Concept until we realize that it also rests in representations, like an unknown room in the house in which we live. Philosophy lies unconsciously in ordinary common sense. Just as we eat, drink and digest, walk, stand and run, all without knowing our internal structure or the organization of our muscles, so also humanity’s common opinions and actions contain the absolute truth or the Concept; and language—which is the body for thought, of which we avail ourselves without having studied its organization, just as we avail ourselves of our material body without having studied its anatomy—is built in agreement with strict principles of logic and is formed from the inevitable reason which expresses itself in the unconscious as in the conscious. Philosophy’s presentation must be tied to this firm point of support; only in this manner is it possible to popularize it. And just as this undertaking has heretofore been lacking in accounts of philosophy—partly because philosophy, even among philosophers, had to educate itself to a greater clarity before those philosophers could make it clear for others, and it had to, as it were, become ripe before the world could enjoy its fruit—so also it is

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now precisely this undertaking to which I our activity in particular must be referred since the demands of the age assert themselves more and more.

The author of the present work nourishes at least the hope that he has now advanced sufficiently that he will be able to contribute to the attainment of the aforementioned end, so that in a series of lectures he will be able to present an “Introduction to Philosophy” accessible to all cultured people. Indeed, this hope is so alive in him that he does not even assume that he needs to limit himself to a lecture for gentlemen but dares to believe that cultured ladies will also be able to participate in the lecture’s serious investigations, in that they make the group more beautiful by their presence. For if men usually have a sharper and more consistent understanding, a greater dialectical proclivity, then the feminine sex is accustomed to having a more certain, infallible disposition for immediately comprehending the truth and, undisturbed by all finite determinations, for looking into the infinite in which they rest, the unity, in which they consist.

The author sees the one ability as just as effective for knowledge as the other.

The author will close with the declaration that although he sees the present work as popularly conceived, he nonetheless is well aware that it demands an unusual attentiveness and reflection before it can be understood. But in this respect he believes that he can excuse himself with the remark that I the work does not constitute a part of the lectures and that it consequently is not meant to be heard but to be read, and that much, which in the oral presentation would pose difficulty for the listeners (provided that it is not developed more closely or is not conveyed with different formulations to the faculty of representation), can in the written presentation be understood by sensible and calm readers in a more concise exposition and with less beating around the bush.

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The course will consist of about 16 to 20 lectures. Admission for gentlemen and ladies can be paid with 5 rix-dollar notes for each person. One may enroll for the time being at the publisher of this work of invitation, the University Bookseller, Mr. Reitzel, Store Kjøbmagergade no. 6. When a sufficient number of auditors has enrolled, the admission cards can be picked up at the same place after a more detailed announcement in the Adresse-Avis. The time and place will also be fixed at that time.

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