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The teaching of philosophical preparatory sciences in the gymnasium has two dimensions: subject areas and the methods. I. Concerning subject matter and its distribution between the three class levels, the directive definitely specifies, 1, religious knowledge and a knowledge of law and duties for underclassmen although it is also indicated that practice in speculative thought might be begun here with logic; 2, both cosmology and natural theology – in connection with the Kantian critiques – and psychology on the intermediate level; and, 3, the philosophical encyclopaedia for the upperclassmen.
1. Taking up the question now more closely with respect to the first subject matter for instruction, the expression "theory of religion, law, and duties" is employed with the supposition that between these three doctrines it is with religion that the beginning is to be made. Insofar as no compendium is at hand, freedom must surely be left to the teacher to establish the order of succession and connection according to his insight. As for myself I can do nothing else but begin with law, the most simple and abstract consequence of freedom, proceeding thereupon to morality, and progressing from there to religion as the highest stage. This procedure corresponds more closely to the nature of the content to be treated, but a more extensive elaboration is out of place.
If the question were asked as to whether this subject matter is suitable for beginning an introduction to philosophy, I can only answer in the affirmative. The concepts of these doctrines are simple, and yet they at once possess a determinateness which makes them entirely accessible to the age group in this class. Their content finds support in the natural feeling of the pupils, and has actuality in their inner life, for it constitutes the side of inner actuality itself. I thus by far prefer for this class the present subject matter to logic, for the latter has a content which is more abstract, is particularly removed from this immediate actuality of inner life, and is purely theoretical. Freedom, law, property, and so forth are practical determinations with which we deal on a daily basis, and which beyond such immediate existence possess a sanctioned existence and real validity as well. For the mind not yet at home in thought, logical determinations of the universal, particular, and so on are shadows as compared with the actuality to which it [habitually] returns when not yet practiced in holding fast to and contemplating such determinations independently of such actuality. The customary demand placed on the teaching of introductory philosophy is indeed that one should begin from what exists [vom Existierenden], and should from that point lead consciousness to what is higher, i.e., to thought. Yet in concepts of freedom, the existent and immediate are present and are at once already thought without any prior anatomy, analysis, abstraction, and so on. Thus in these doctrines a beginning will in fact be made with what is sought: with the true, the spiritual, the actual. I have always found in this class greater interest in these practical determinations than in the little theoretical content which I had introduced as preliminary. And I felt the qualitative difference in this interest still more sharply when for the first time, following indications in the explanatory part of the directive, I made a beginning with the basic concepts of logic. I have not repeated the experience.
2. The next highest stage for the pupil is the theoretically spiritual stage: the logical, metaphysical, and psychological. If the logical and psychological are to be immediately compared, it is the logical which on the whole is to be seen as easier, because it has as its content simpler, abstract determinations, while the psychological on the other hand has a concrete and in fact even spiritual content. Yet psychology is too easy if it is taken so trivially as to be merely empirical psychology, as perhaps in Kampe's psychology for children. What I know of Cams's manner is so tedious, unedifying, lifeless, and spiritless as to be completely unendurable.
I divide the teaching of psychology into two parts: a, the psychology of emergent spirit and, b, [the psychology] of spirit as it is, in and for itself. In the former I treat consciousness in accordance with my Phenomenology of Spirit, though only the first three stages of the Phenomenology: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason. In the latter I deal with the succession of stages from feeling through intuition, representation, imagination, and so on. I distinguish these two sections such that spirit as consciousness acts on determinations as upon objects, and so that its determining becomes for it a relation to an object; while spirit as spirit acts only on its [own] determinations – alterations in it being determined as its own activities and being so viewed.
In that logic is the other science in the intermediate class, metaphysics thus seems to go away empty-handed. Metaphysics is, moreover, a science about which one is nowadays accustomed to some embarrassment. In the directive the Kantian exposition of the cosmology of antinomies and of dialectical natural theology is mentioned. It is in fact not so much metaphysics itself as the dialectic thereof which is thus prescribed. And with that the venture comes back again to logic in the form of dialectic.
According to my view, metaphysics in any case falls entirely within logic Here I can cite Kant as my precedent and authority. His critique reduces metaphysics as it has existed until now to a consideration of the understanding and reason. Logic can thus in the Kantian sense be understood so that, beyond the usual content of so-called general logic, what he calls transcendental logic is bound up with it and set out prior to it. In point of content I mean the doctrine of categories, or reflective concepts, and then of the concepts of reason: analytic and dialectic. These objective thought forms constitute an independent content [corresponding to] the role of the Aristotelian Categories [organon de categoriis] or the former ontology. Further, they are independent of one's metaphysical system. They occur in transcendental idealism as much as in dogmatism. The latter calls them determinations of being [Entium], while the former calls them determinations of the understanding. My objective logic will, I hope, purify this science once again, expositing it in its true worth, but until it is better known those Kantian distinctions already contain a makeshift or rough version of it.
Tümünü Göster
