Johann Friedrich Herbart - Philosophy - Metaphysics

Metaphysics

As a metaphysician he starts from what he terms the higher scepticism of the Hume-Kantian sphere of thought, the beginnings of which he discerns in Locke's perplexity about the idea of substance. The validity of even the forms of experience is called in question on account of the contradictions they are found to involve. And yet that these forms are given to us, as truly as sensations are, follows beyond doubt when we consider that we are as little able to control the one as the other. To attempt at this stage a psychological inquiry into the origin of these conceptions would be doubly a mistake; for we should have to use these unlegitimated conceptions in the course of it, and the task of clearing up their contradictions would still remain, whether we succeeded in our enquiry or not.

But how are we to set about this task? We have given to us a conception A uniting among its constituent marks two that prove to be contradictory, say M and N; and we can neither deny the unity nor reject one of the contradictory members. For to do either is forbidden by experience; and yet to do nothing is forbidden by logic. We are thus driven to the assumption that the conception is contradictory because incomplete; but how are we to supplement it? What we have must point the way to what we want, or our procedure will be arbitrary. Experience asserts that M is the same (i.e. a mark of the same concept) as N, while logic denies it; and so it being impossible for one and the same M to sustain these contradictory positions there is but one way open to us; we must posit several Ms. But even now we cannot say one of these Ms is the same as N, another is not; for every M must be both thinkable and valid. We may, however, take the Ms not singly but together; and again, no other course being open to us, this is what we must do; we must assume that N results from a combination of Ms. This is Herbart's method of relations, the counterpart in his system of the Hegelian dialectic.

In the Ontology this method is employed to determine what in reality corresponds to the empirical conceptions of substance and cause, or rather of inherence and change. But first we must analyse this notion of reality itself, to which our scepticism had already led us, for, though we could doubt whether the given is what it appears, we cannot doubt that it is something; the conception of the real thus consists of the two conceptions of being and quality. That which we are compelled to posit, which cannot be sublated, is that which is, and in the recognition of this lies the simple conception of being. But when is a thing thus posited? When it is posited as we usually posit the things we see and taste and handle. If we were without sensations, i.e. were never bound against our will to endure the persistence of a presentation, we should never know what being is.

Keeping fast hold of this idea of absolute position, Herbart leads us next to the quality of the real:

1. This must exclude everything negative; for non-A sublates instead of positing, and is not absolute, but relative to A.
2. The real must be absolutely simple; for if it contain two determinations, A and B, then either these are reducible to one, which is the true quality, or they are not, when each is conditioned by the other and their position is no longer absolute.
3. All quantitative conceptions are excluded, for quantity implies parts, and these are incompatible with simplicity.
4. But there may be a plurality of reals, albeit the mere conception of being can tell us nothing as to this.

The doctrine here developed is the first cardinal point of Herbart's system, and has obtained for it the name of pluralistic realism.

The contradictions he finds in the common-sense conception of inherence, or of a thing with several attributes, will now become obvious. Take some thing, say A, having n attributes, a, b, c ...: we are forced to posit each of these because each is presented in intuition. But in conceiving A we make, not n positions, still less n+1 positions, but one position simply; for common sense removes the absolute position from its original source, sensation. So when we ask, What is the one posited? we are told the possessor of a, b, c or in other words, their seat or substance. But if so, then A, as a real, being simple, must be equal to a; similarly it must be b; and so on.

Now this would be possible if a, b, c ... were only contingent aspects of A, as for example 23, √64, 4+3+1 are contingent aspects of 8. Such, of course, is not the case, and so we have as many contradictions as there are attributes; for we must say A is a, is not a, is b, is not b, etc. There must then, according to the method of relations, be several As. For a let us assume A₁+A₁+A₁ ... ; for b, A₂+A₂+A₂ ...; and so on for the rest.But now what relation can there be among these several As, which will restore to us the unity of our original A or substance? There is just one; we must assume that the first A of every series is identical, just as the centre is the same point in every radius.

By way of concrete illustration Herbart instances “the common observation that the properties of things exist only under external conditions. Bodies, we say, are coloured, but color is nothing without light, and nothing without eyes. They sound, but only in a vibrating medium, and for healthy ears. Colour and tone present the appearance of inherence, but on looking closer we find they are not really immanent in things but rather presuppose a communion among several.” The result then is briefly thus: In place of the one absolute position, which in some unthinkable way the common understanding substitutes for the absolute positions of the n attributes, we have really a series of two or more positions for each attribute, every series, however, beginning with the same (as it were, central) real (hence the unity of substance in a group of attributes), but each being continued by different reals (hence the plurality and difference of attributes in unity of substance). Where there is the appearance of inherence, therefore, there is always a plurality of reals; no such correlative to substance as attribute or accident can be admitted at all. Substantiality is impossible without causality, and to this as its true correlative we now turn.

The common-sense conception of change involves at bottom the same contradiction of opposing qualities in one real. The same A that was a, b, c ... becomes a, b, d ...; and this, which experience thrusts upon us, proves on reflection unthinkable. The metaphysical supplementing is also fundamentally as before. Since c depended on a series of reals A₃+A₃+A₃ ... in connection with A, and d may be said similarly to depend on a series A₄+A₄+A₄ ..., then the change from c to d means, not that the central real A or any real has changed, but that A is now in connection with A₄, etc., and no longer in connection with A₃, etc.

But to think a number of reals in connection (Zusammensein) will not suffice as an explanation of phenomena; something or other must happen when they are in connection; what is it? The answer to this question is the second hinge-point of Herbart's theoretical philosophy.

What actually happens as distinct from all that seems to happen, when two reals A and B are together is that, assuming them to differ in quality, they tend to disturb each other to the extent of that difference, at the same time that each preserves itself intact by resisting, as it were, the others disturbance. And so by coining into connection with different reals the self-preservations of A will vary accordingly, A remaining the same through all; just as, by way of illustration, hydrogen remains the same in water and in ammonia, or as the same line may be now a normal and now a tangent. But to indicate this opposition in the qualities of the reals A+B, we must substitute for these symbols others, which, though only contingent aspects of A and B, i.e. representing their relations, not themselves, yet like similar devices in mathematics enable thought to advance. Thus we may put A = α+β-γ, B = m+n+γ; γ then represents the character of the self-preservations in this case, and α+β+m+n represents all that could be observed by a spectator who did not know the simple qualities, but was himself involved in the relations of A to B; and such is exactly our position.

Having thus determined what really is and what actually happens, our philosopher proceeds next to explain synthetically the objective semblance (der objective Schein) that results from these. But if this construction is to be truly objective, i.e. valid for all intelligences, ontology must furnish us with a clue. This we have in the forms of Space, Time and Motion which are involved whenever we think the reals as being in, or coming into, connection and the opposite. These forms then cannot be merely the products of our psychological mechanism, though they may turn out to coincide with these. Meanwhile let us call them intelligible, as being valid for all who comprehend the real and actual by thought, although no such forms are predicable of the real and actual themselves.

The elementary spatial relation Herbart conceives to be “the contiguity (Aneinander) of two points,” so that every “pure and independent line” is discrete. But an investigation of dependent lines which are often incommensurable forces us to adopt the contradictory fiction of partially overlapping, i.e. divisible points, or in other words, the conception of Continuity. But the contradiction here is one we cannot eliminate by the method of relations, because it does not involve anything real; and in fact as a necessary outcome of an intelligible form, the fiction of continuity is valid for the objective semblance. By its help we are enabled to comprehend what actually happens among reals to produce the appearance of water. When three or more reals are together, each disturbance and self-preservation will (in general) be imperfect, i.e. of less intensity than when only two reals are together. But objective semblance corresponds with reality; the spatial or external relations of the reals in this case must, therefore, tally with their inner or actual states. Had the self-preservations been perfect, the coincidence in space would have been complete, and the group of reals would have been inextended; or had the several reals been simply contiguous, i.e. without connection, then, as nothing would actually have happened, nothing would appear. As it is we shall find a continuous molecule manifesting attractive and repulsive forces; attraction corresponding to the tendency of the self-preservations to become perfect, repulsion to the frustration of this. Motion, even more evidently than space, implicates the contradictory conception of continuity, and cannot, therefore, be a real predicate, though valid as an intelligible form and necessary to the comprehension of the objective semblance. For we have to think of the reals as absolutely independent and yet as entering into connexions. This we can only do by conceiving them as originally moving through intelligible space in rectilinear paths and with uniform velocities. For such motion no cause need be supposed; motion, in fact, is no more a state of the moving real than rest is, both alike being but relations, with which, therefore, the real has no concern. The changes in this motion, however, for which we should require a cause, would be the objective semblance of the self-preservations that actually occur when reals meet. Further, by means of such motion these actual occurrences, which are in themselves timeless, fall for an observer in a definite time — a time which becomes continuous through the partial coincidence of events.

But in all this it has been assumed that we are spectators of the objective semblance; it remains to make good this assumption, or, in other words, to show the possibility of knowledge; this is the problem of what Herbart terms Eidolology, and forms the transition from metaphysic to psychology. Here, again, a contradictory conception blocks the way, that, viz. of the Ego as the identity of knowing and being, and as such the stronghold of idealism. The contradiction becomes more evident when the ego is denned to be a subject (and so a real) that is its own object. As real and not merely formal, this conception of the ego is amenable to the method of relations. The solution this method furnishes is summarily that there are several objects which mutually modify each other, and so constitute that ego we take for the presented real. But to explain this modification is the business of psychology; it is enough now to see that the subject like all reals is necessarily unknown, and that, therefore, the idealist's theory of knowledge is unsound. But though the simple quality of the subject or soul is beyond knowledge, we know what actually happens when it is in connexion with other's reals, for its self-preservations then are what we call sensations. And these sensations are the sole material of our knowledge; but they are not given to us as a chaos but in definite groups and series, whence we come to know the relations of those reals, which, though themselves unknown, our sensations compel us to posit absolutely.