a positivist that he limits the mission of knowledge
to the reduction of the temporo-spatial relations
of phenomena to rules, and declares the teleological
power of values to be undemonstrable. But science
is able to prove this much, that the belief in a suprasensible
world, in the indestructibility of that which alone
has worth, and in the freedom of the intelligible
character, which the will demands, is not scientifically
impossible. Since, according to formal rationalism,
the whole order of nature is a creation of the understanding,
and hence atomism and mechanism are only forms of
representation, valid, no doubt, for our peripheral
point of view, but not absolutely valid, since, further,
the empirical view of the world apart from the Idea
of the divine unity of the world (which, it is true,
is incapable of theoretical realization) would lack
completion, the immediate conviction of the heart
in regard to the power of the good is in no danger
of attack from the side of science, although this can
do no further service for faith than to remove the
obstacles which oppose it. The will, not the
intellect, determines the view of the world; but this
is only a belief, and in the world of representation,
the intelligible world, with which the will brings
us into relation, can come before us only in the form
of symbols.—While Albrecht Krause (
The
Laws of the Human Heart, a Formal Logic of Pure Feeling,
1876) and A. Classen (
Physiology of the Sense of
Sight, 1877) are strict followers of Kant, J. Volkelt
(
Analysis of the Fundamental Principles of Kant’s
Theory of Knowledge, 1879) has traced the often
deplored inconsistencies and contradictions in Kant
down to their roots, and has shown that in Kant’s
thinking, which has hitherto been conceived as too
simple and transparent, but which, in fact, is extremely
complicated and struggling in the dark, a number of
entirely heterogeneous principles of thought (skeptical,
subjectivistic, metaphysico-work, rationalistic,
a
priori, and practical motives) are at which, conflicting
with and crippling one another, make the attainment
of harmonious results impossible. Benno Erdmann
(p. 330) and Hans Vaihinger (pp. 323 note, 331) have
given Kant’s principal works careful philological
interpretation.
Among the various differences of opinion which exist
within the neo-Kantian ranks, the most important relates
to the question, whether the individual ego or a transcendental
consciousness is to be looked upon as the executor
of the a priori functions. In agreement
with Schopenhauer and with Lotze, who makes the subjectivity
of space, time, and the pure concepts parallel with
that of the sense qualities, Lange teaches that the
human individual is so organized that he must apprehend
that which is sensuously given under these forms.
Others, on the contrary, urge that the individual soul
with its organization is itself a phenomenon, and
consequently cannot be the bearer of that which precedes