make ourselves acquainted with it, for it is everywhere discovered in finite relationships. There are many sciences, subjects of knowledge, &c., that know and apply no other forms of thought than these forms of finite thought, which constitute in fact the general method of dealing with the finite sciences. Mathematics, for instance, is a constant series of syllogisms; jurisprudence is the bringing of the particular under the general, the uniting together of both these sides. Within these relationships of finite determinations the syllogism has now, indeed, on account of its terms being three in number, been called the totality of these determinations, and hence by Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 261) also the rational conclusion; but this syllogism addressed to the intelligence as it appears in the ordinary logical form, is only the intelligible form of rationality, and, as we saw above (p. 76), is very different from the rational syllogism proper. Aristotle is thus the originator of the logic of the understanding; its forms only concern the relationship of finite to finite, and in them the truth cannot be grasped. But it must be remarked that Aristotle’s philosophy is not by any means founded on this relationship of the understanding; thus it must not be thought that it is in accordance with these syllogisms that Aristotle has thought. If Aristotle did so, he would not be the speculative philosopher that we have recognized him to be; none of his propositions could have been laid down, and he could not have made any step forward, if he had kept to the forms of this ordinary logic.
Like the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, his logic really requires recasting, so that all his determinations should be brought into a necessary systematic whole—not a systematic whole which is correctly divided into its parts, and in which no part is forgotten, all being set forth in their proper order, but one in which there is one living organic whole, in which each part is held to be a part, and the whole alone as such is true. Aristotle, in the Politics, for instance (_supra_, pp. 207-208), often gives expression to this truth. For this reason the individual logical form has in itself no truth, not because it is the form of thought, but because it is determinate thought, individual form, and to be esteemed as such. But as system and absolute form ruling this content, thought has its content as a distinction in itself, being speculative philosophy in which subject and object are immediately identical, and the Notion and the universal are the realities of things. Just as duty certainly expresses the absolute, but, as determinate, a determinate absolute which is only a moment and must be able again to abrogate its determination, the logical form which abrogates itself as this determinate in this very way gives up its claim to be in and for itself. But in this case logic is the science of reason, speculative philosophy of the pure Idea of absolute existence, which is not entangled in the opposition of subject and object, but remains an opposition in thought itself. Yet we certainly may allow that much in logic is an indifferent form.
At this point we would leave off as far as the Aristotelian philosophy is concerned, and from this it is difficult to break away. For the further we go into its details, the more interesting it becomes, and the more do we find the connection which exists among the subjects. The fulness with which I have set forth the principal content of the Aristotelian philosophy is justified both by the importance of the matter itself, because it offers to us a content of its own, and also by the circumstances already mentioned (p. 118), that against no philosophy have modern times sinned so much as against this, and none of the ancient philosophers have so much need of being defended as Aristotle.
One of the immediate followers of Aristotle was Theophrastus, born Ol 102, 2 (371 B.C.); though a man of distinction, he can still only be esteemed a commentator on Aristotle. For Aristotle is so rich a treasure-house of philosophic conceptions, that much material is found in him which is ready for further working upon, which may be put forward more abstractly, and in which individual propositions may be brought into prominence. However Aristotle’s manner of procedure, which is to take an empirical starting point of ratiocination [Raisonnement], and to comprehend this in the focus of the speculative Notion, is characteristic of his mind, without being one which, on its own account, can be freely elevated into a method and a principle. Thus of Theophrastus as of many others (Dicæarchus of Messina, for instance), amongst whom Strato of Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus, is best known, there is not much to tell. As regards Dicæarchus, Cicero says, (Tusc. Quæst. I. 31, 10) that he controverted the immortality of the soul, for he asserted that “the soul is no more than an empty name, and the whole of the capacities and powers with which we act and feel are equally extended over all living bodies, and inseparable from the body; for it is nothing but the body so constituted as to live and feel through a certain symmetry and proportion in its body.” Cicero gives in an historical manner a result as he made it comprehensible to himself, without any speculative conception. Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 796), on the other hand, quotes from Dicæarchus that he held the soul to be “a harmony of the four elements.” We have only a little general information to give of Strato, that he acquired great fame as a physicist, and that his conception of nature went upon mechanical lines, and yet not on those of Leucippus and Democritus, and later, of Epicurus; for, according to Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 298), he made warmth and cold into elements. Hence, if what is said of him is accurate, he was most unfaithful to the beliefs of Aristotle, because he led everything back to mechanism and chance and did away with the immanent end, without accepting the false teleology of modern times. At least, Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 13) relates of him that he maintained that “divine strength lies altogether in nature, which has in itself the causes of origination, of growth, and of decay, but lacks all sensation and conformation.” The other Peripatetics occupied themselves more with working up individual doctrines of Aristotle, with bringing out his works in a commentated form, which is more or less rhetorical in character, though similar in content. But in practical life the Peripatetic school maintained as the principle of happiness, the unity of reason and inclination. We thus may set aside any further expansion of the Peripatetic philosophy, because it has no longer the same interest, and later on tended to become a popular philosophy (Vol. I. p. 479, Vol. II. p. 130); in this mode it no longer remained an Aristotelian philosophy, although this, too, as what is really speculative, must coincide most closely with actuality. This decay of the Aristotelian philosophy is, indeed, closely connected with the circumstance already mentioned (pp. 126-128), that the Aristotelian writings soon disappeared, and that the Aristotelian philosophy did not retain its place so much through these documents as through the traditions in the school, whereby they soon underwent material changes; and amplifications of Aristotle’s doctrines were brought about, as to which it is not known whether some may not have slipped into what pass for his works.
Since Aristotle’s leading thought has penetrated all spheres of consciousness, and this isolation in the determination through the Notion, because it is likewise necessary, contains in every sphere the profoundest of true thoughts, Aristotle, to anticipate here the external history of his philosophy as a whole, for many centuries was the constant mainstay of the cultivation of thought. When in the Christian West science disappeared amongst the Christians, the fame of Aristotle shone forth with equal brilliance amongst the Arabians, from whom, in later times, his philosophy was again passed over to the West. The triumph which was celebrated upon the revival of learning, on account of the Aristotelian philosophy having been expelled from the schools, from the sciences, and specially from theology, as from the philosophy which deals with absolute existence, must be regarded in two different aspects. In the first place we must remember that it was not the Aristotelian philosophy which was expelled, so much as the principle of the science of theology which supported itself thereon, according to which the first truth is one which is given and revealed—an hypothesis which is once for all a fundamental one, and by which reason and thought have the right and power to move to and fro only superficially. In this form the thought which was awakened in the Middle Ages reconstructed its theology more especially, entered into all dialectic movements and determinations, and erected an edifice where the material that was given was only superficially worked up, disposed and secured. The triumph over this system was thus a triumph over that principle, and consequently the triumph of free, spontaneous thought. But another side of this triumph is the triumph of the commonplace point of view that broke free from the Notion and shook off the yoke of thought. Formerly, and even nowadays, enough has been heard of Aristotle’s scholastic subtleties; in using this name, men thought that they had a right to spare themselves from entering on abstraction, and, in place of the Notion, they thought that it justified them in seeing, hearing, and thus making their escape to what is called healthy human understanding. In science, too, in place of subtle thoughts, subtle sight has commenced; a beetle or a species of bird is distinguished with as great minuteness as were formerly conceptions and thoughts. Such subtleties as whether a species of bird is red or green in colour, or has a more or less perfect tail, are found more easy than the differences in thought; and in the meantime, until a people has educated itself up to the labour of thought, in order to be able thus to support the universal, the former is a useful preparation, or rather it is a moment in this course of culture.
But inasmuch as the deficiency in the Aristotelian philosophy rests in the fact, that after the manifold of phenomena was through it raised into the Notion, though this last again fell asunder into a succession of determinate Notions, the unity of the absolute Notion which unites them was not emphasized, and this is what succeeding time had to accomplish. What now appears is that the unity of the Notion which is absolute existence, makes its appearance as necessity, and it presents itself first as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, as pure thought. The unity of existence as existence is objective unity, thought, as that which is thought. But unity, as Notion, the implicitly universal negative unity, time as absolutely fulfilled time, and in its fulfilment as being unity, is pure self-consciousness. Hence we see it come to pass, that pure self-consciousness makes itself reality, but, at the same time, it first of all does so with subjective significance as a self-consciousness that has taken up its position as such, and that separates itself from objective existence, and hence is first of all subject to a difference which it does not overcome.
Here we have concluded the first division of Greek philosophy, and we have now to pass to the second period. The first period of Greek philosophy extended to Aristotle, to the attainment of a scientific form in which knowledge has reached the standing of free thought. Thus in Plato and Aristotle the result was the Idea; yet we saw in Plato the universal made the principle in a somewhat abstract way as the unmoved Idea; in Aristotle, on the other hand, thought in activity became absolutely concrete as the thought which thinks itself. The next essential, one which now is immediately before us, must be contained in that into which Philosophy under Plato and Aristotle had formed itself. This necessity is none other than the fact that the universal must now be proclaimed free for itself as the universality of the principle, so that the particular may be recognized through this universal; or the necessity of a systematic philosophy immediately enters in, what we formerly called one in accordance with the unity of the Notion. We may speak of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, but they are not in the form of a system; for that it is requisite that one principle should be maintained and consistently carried through the particular. In the perfect complex of the conception of the universe as it is to Aristotle, where everything is in the highest form of scientific knowledge led back to what is speculative, however empiric may be his manner of setting to work, there certainly is one principle brought forward, and that a speculative one, though it is not brought forward as being one. The nature of the speculative has not been explicitly brought to consciousness as the Notion—as containing in itself the development of the manifold nature of the natural and spiritual universe, consequently it is not set forth as the universal, from which the particular was developed. Aristotle’s logic is really the opposite of this. He in great measure passes through a series of the living and the dead, makes them confront his objective, that is, conceiving thought, and grasps them in his understanding; each object is on its own account a conception which is laid open in its determinations, and yet he also brings these reflections together, and thereby is speculative. If even Plato on the whole proceeded in an empiric way, taking up this and that idea, each of which is in turn examined, with Aristotle this loose method of procedure appears still more clearly. In the Aristotelian teaching the Idea of the self-reflecting thought is thus grasped as the highest truth; but its realization, the knowledge of the natural and spiritual universe, constitutes outside of that Idea a long series of particular conceptions, which are external to one another, and in which a unifying principle, led through the particular, is wanting. The highest Idea with Aristotle consequently once more stands only as a particular in its own place and without being the principle of his whole philosophy. Hence the next necessity in Philosophy is that the whole extent of what is known must appear as one organization of the Notion; that in this way the manifold reality may be related to that Idea as the universal, and thereby determined. This is the standpoint which we find in this second period.
A systematic philosophy such as this becomes in the first place dogmatism, in antagonism to which, because of its one-sided character, scepticism immediately arises. In the same way the French call what is dogmatic _systématique_, and _système_ that in which all the conceptions must consistently proceed from one determination; hence to them _systématique_ is synonymous with one-sided. But the philosophies that ensue are one-sided, because in them it was only the necessity of one principle that was recognized, without their meanwhile developing from themselves, as might well have come to pass in and for itself, the Idea as the real universal, and thus comprehending the world in such a way that the content is only grasped as the determination of the self-reflective thought. Hence this principle stands up formally and abstractly, and the particular is not yet deduced from it, for the universal is only applied to the particular and the rules for this application sought out. In Aristotle the Idea is at least implicitly concrete, as the consciousness of the unity of subjective and objective, and therefore it is not one-sided. Should the Idea be truly concrete, the particular must be developed from it. The other relation would be the mere bringing of the particular under the universal, so that both should be mutually distinguished; in such a case the universal is only a formal principle, and such a philosophy is therefore one-sided. But the true difficulty is that the two endeavours, the development of the particular from the Idea, and the bringing of the particular under the universal, collide with one another. The manifestations of the physical and spiritual world must first, from their respective sides, be prepared for and worked into the Notion, so that the other sciences can form therefrom universal laws and principles. Then for the first time can speculative reason present itself in determinate thoughts, and bring perfectly to consciousness the inwardly existing connection between them. As dogmatic, however, those philosophies, it may be further said, are assertive likewise, because in such a method the principle is only asserted and is not truly proved. For a principle is demanded under which everything is subsumed; thus it is only pre-supposed as the first principle. Before this we have had abstract principles such as pure Being, but here the particular, with which begins the distinction from what is different, became posited as the purely negative. That necessity, on the other hand, makes for a universal which must likewise be in the particular, so that this should not be set aside, but should have its determinate character through the universal.
This demand for a universal, even though still unproved principle, is henceforth present to knowledge. What answers to this demand now appears in the world through the inward necessity of mind—not externally, but as being in conformity with the Notion. This necessity has produced the philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans, New Academy, and Sceptics, which we have now to consider. If we have remained too long in the consideration of this period, we may now make amends for this protraction, for in the next period we may be brief.
SECTION TWO SECOND PERIOD: DOGMATISM AND SCEPTICISM.
IN this second period, which precedes the Alexandrian philosophy, we have to consider Dogmatism and Scepticism—the Dogmatism which separates itself into the two philosophies, the Stoic and the Epicurean; and the third philosophy, of which both partake and which yet differs from them both, Scepticism. Along with this last we would take the New Academy, which has entirely merged in it—while in the Older Academy, Plato’s philosophy indubitably still maintained its purity. We saw at the close of the previous period the consciousness of the Idea, or of the Universal, which is an end in itself—a principle, universal indeed, but at the same time determined in itself, which is thus capable of subsuming the particular, and of being applied thereto. The application of universal to particular is here the relationship that prevails, for the reflection that from the universal itself the separation of the totality is developed, is not yet present. There always is in such a relationship the necessity of a system and of systematization; that is to say, one determinate principle must consistently be applied to the particular, so that the truth of all that is particular should be determined according to this abstract principle, and be at the same time likewise recognized. Now since this is what we have in so-called Dogmatism, it is a philosophizing of the understanding, in which Plato’s and Aristotle’s speculative greatness is no longer present.
In respect of this relationship, the task of Philosophy now comes to be summed up in the twofold question which we spoke of earlier (Vol. I. pp. 474, 475), and which has regard to a criterion of truth and to the wise man. At this point we may better than before, and also from a different point of view, explain the necessity for this phenomenon. For because truth has now become conceived as the harmony of thought and reality, or rather as the identity of the Notion, as the subjective, with the objective, the first question is what the universal principle for judging and determining this harmony is; but a principle through which the true is judged (κρίνεται) to be true, is simply the criterion. Yet because this question had only been formally and dogmatically answered, the dialectic of Scepticism, or the knowledge of the one-sidedness of this principle as a dogmatic principle, at once appeared. A further result of this mode of philosophizing is that the principle, as formal, is subjective, and consequently it has taken the real significance of the subjectivity of self-consciousness. Because of the external manner in which the manifold is received, the highest point, that in which thought finds itself in its most determinate form, is self-consciousness. The pure relation of self-consciousness to itself is thus the principle in all these philosophies, since in it alone does the Idea find satisfaction, just as the formalism of the understanding of the present so-called philosophizing seeks to find its fulfilment, the concrete which is opposed to this formalism, in the subjective heart, in the inward feelings and beliefs. Nature and the political world are certainly also concrete, but externally concrete; the arbitrary concrete is, on the other hand, not in the determinate universal Idea, but only in self-consciousness and as being personal. The second ruling determination is consequently that of the wise men. Not reason alone, but everything must be something thought, that is, subjectively speaking, my thought; that which is thought, on the contrary, is only implicit, that is to say, it is itself objective in so far as it appears in the form of the formal identity of thought with itself. The thought of the criterion as of the one principle is, in its immediate actuality, the subject itself; thought and the thinker are thus immediately connected. Because the principle of this philosophy is not objective but dogmatic, and rests on the impulse of self-consciousness towards self-satisfaction, it is the subject whose interests are to be considered. The subject seeks on its own account a principle for its freedom, namely, immovability in itself; it must be conformable to the criterion, _i.e._ to this quite universal principle, in order to be able to raise itself into this abstract independence. Self-consciousness lives in the solitude of its thought, and finds therein its satisfaction. These are the fundamental determinations in the following philosophies: the exposition of their main principles will come next, but to go into details is not advisable.
Although, as no doubt is the case, these philosophies, as regards their origin, pertain to Greece, and their great teachers were always Greeks, they were yet transferred to the Roman world; thus Philosophy passed into the Roman world and these systems in particular constituted under Roman rule the philosophy of the Roman world, in opposition to which world, unsuited as it was to the rational practical self-consciousness, this last, driven back into itself from external actuality, could only seek for reason in itself and could only care for its individuality—just as abstract Christians only care for their own salvation. In the bright Grecian world the individual attached himself more to his state or to his world, and was more at home in it. The concrete morality, the impulse towards the introduction of the principle into the world through the constitution of the state, which we see in Plato, the concrete science that we find in Aristotle, here disappear. In the wave of adversity which came across the Roman world, everything beautiful and noble in spiritual individuality was rudely swept away. In this condition of disunion in the world, when man is driven within his inmost self, he has to seek the unity and satisfaction, no longer to be found in the world, in an abstract way. The Roman world is thus the world of abstraction, where one cold rule was extended over all the civilized world. The living individualities of national spirit in the nations have been stifled and killed; a foreign power, as an abstract universal, has pressed hard upon individuals. In such a condition of dismemberment it was necessary to fly to this abstraction as to the thought of an existent subject, that is, to this inward freedom of the subject as such. As what was held in estimation was the abstract will of the individual ruler of the world, the inward principle of thought also had to be an abstraction which could bring forth a formal, subjective reconciliation only. A dogmatism erected on a principle made effectual through the form of the understanding could alone satisfy the Roman mind. These philosophies are thus conformable to the spirit of the Roman world, as indeed Philosophy in general ever stands in close connection with the world in its ordinary aspect (Vol. I. pp. 53, 54). The Roman world has, indeed, produced a formal patriotism and corresponding virtue, as also a developed system of law; but speculative philosophy could not proceed from such dead material—we could only expect good advocates and the morality of a Tacitus. These philosophies, always excepting Stoicism, also arose amongst the Romans in opposition to their ancient superstitions, just as now Philosophy comes forward in the place of religion.
The three principles of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism are necessary; in the first there is the principle of thought or of universality itself, but yet determined in itself; the abstract thought is here the determining criterion of the truth. There is opposed to thought, in the second place, the determinate as such, the principle of individuality, feeling generally, sensuous perception and observation. These two form the principles of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies. Both principles are one-sided and, as positive, become sciences of the understanding; just because this thought is not in itself concrete but abstract, the determinateness falls outside of thought and must be made a principle for itself; for it has an absolute right as against abstract thought. Besides Stoicism and Epicureanism, there is, in the third place, Scepticism, the negation of these two one-sided philosophies which must be recognized as such. The principle of Scepticism is thus the active negation of every criterion, of all determinate principles of whatever kind they be, whether knowledge derived from the senses, or from reflection on ordinary conceptions, or from thought. Thus the next result arrived at is that nothing can be known. Yet the imperturbability and uniformity of mind in itself, which suffers through nothing, and which is affected neither by enjoyment, pain, nor any other bond, is the common standpoint and the common end of all these philosophies. Thus however gloomy men may consider Scepticism, and however low a view they take of Epicureanism, all these have in this way been philosophies.
A. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STOICS.
We must, first of all, and in a general way, remark of Stoicism, as also of Epicureanism, that they came in the place of the philosophy of the Cynics and Cyrenaics as their counterpart, just as Scepticism took the place of the Academy. But in adopting the principle of these philosophies, they at the same time perfected it and elevated it more into the form of scientific thought. Yet because in them, just as in the others, the content is a fixed and definite one, since self-consciousness therein sets itself apart, this circumstance really puts an end to speculation, which knows nothing of any such rigidity, which rather abolishes it and treats the object as absolute Notion, as in its difference an unseparated whole. Hence with the Stoics, as also really with the Epicureans, instead of genuine speculation, we only meet with an application of the one-sided, limited principle, and thus we require in both to enter merely upon a general view of their principle. Now if Cynicism made reality for consciousness the fact of being immediately natural (where immediate naturalness was the simplicity of the individual, so that he is independent and, in the manifold movement of desire, of enjoyment, of holding many things to be reality, and of working for the same, really keeps up the external simple life) the Stoic elevation of this simplicity into thought consists in the assertion, not that immediate naturalness and spontaneity is the content and the form of the true Being of consciousness, but that the rationality of nature is grasped through thought, so that everything is true or good in the simplicity of thought. But while with Aristotle what underlies everything is the absolute Idea as unlimited and not set forth in a determinate character and with a difference—and its deficiency is only the deficiency which is present in realization, the not being united into one Notion—here the one Notion is undoubtedly set forth as real existence, and everything is related to it, and hence the requisite relation is undoubtedly present; but that in which everything is one is not the true. With Aristotle each conception is considered absolutely in its determination and as separate from any other; here the conception certainly is in this relation and is not absolute, but at the same time it is not in and for itself. Because thus the individual is not considered absolutely but only relatively, the whole working out is not interesting, for it is only an external relation. Likewise with Aristotle the individual only is taken into consideration, but this consideration is lost sight of by the speculative treatment adopted: here, however, the individual is taken up and the treatment is likewise