History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [400]
Berkeley took an important step towards ending this inconsistency. For him, there are only minds and their ideas; the physical external world is abolished. But he still failed to grasp all the consequences of the epistemological principles that he took over from Locke. If he had been completely consistent, he would have denied knowledge of God and of all minds except his own. From such denial he was held back by his feelings as a clergyman and as a social being.
Hume shrank from nothing in pursuit of theoretical consistency, but felt no impulse to make his practice conform to his theory. Hume denied the Self, and threw doubt on induction and causation. He accepted Berkeley's abolition of matter, but not the substitute that Berkeley offered in the form of God's ideas. It is true that, like Locke, he admitted no simple idea without an antecedent impression, and no doubt he imagined an 'impression' as a state of mind directly caused by something external to the mind. But he could not admit this as a definition of 'impression', since he questioned the notion of 'cause'. I doubt whether either he or his disciples were ever clearly aware of this problem as to impressions. Obviously, on his view, an 'impression' would have to be defined by some intrinsic character distinguishing it from an 'idea', since it could not be defined causally. He could not therefore argue that impressions give knowledge of things external to ourselves, as had been done by Locke, and, in a modified form, by Berkeley. He should, therefore, have believed himself shut up in a solipsistic world, and ignorant of everything except his own mental states and their relations.
Hume, by his consistency, showed that empiricism, carried to its logical conclusion, led to results which few human beings could bring themselves to accept, and abolished, over the whole field of science, the distinction between rational belief and credulity. Locke had foreseen this danger. He puts into the mouth of a supposed critic the argument: 'If knowledge consists in agreement of ideas, the enthusiast and the sober man are on a level.' Locke, living at a time when men had grown tired of 'enthusiasm', found no difficulty in persuading men of the validity of his reply to this criticism. Rousseau, coming at a moment when people were, in turn, getting tired of reason, revived 'enthusiasm', and, accepting the bankruptcy of reason, allowed the heart to decide questions which the head left doubtful. From 1750 to 1794, the heart spoke louder and louder; at last Thermidor put an end, for a time, to its ferocious pronouncements, so far at least as France was concerned. Under Napoleon, heart and head were alike silenced.
In Germany, the reaction against Hume's agnosticism took a form far more profound and subtle than that which Rousseau had given to it. Kant, Fichte, and Hegel developed a new kind of philosophy, intended to safeguard both knowledge and virtue from the subversive doctrines of the late eighteenth century. In Kant, and still more in Fichte, the subjectivist tendency that begins with Descartes was carried to new extremes; in this respect there was at first no reaction against Hume. As regards subjectivism, the reaction began with Hegel, who sought, through his logic, to establish a new way of escape from the individual into the world.
The whole of German idealism has affinities with the romantic movement. These are obvious in Fichte, and still more so in Schelling; they are least so in Hegel.
Kant, the founder of German idealism, is not himself politically important, though he wrote some interesting essays on political subjects. Fichte and Hegel, on the other hand, both set forth political doctrines which had, and still have, a profound influence upon the course of history. Neither can be understood without a previous study of Kant, whom we shall consider in this chapter.
There are certain common characteristics of the German idealists,