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Arseniy gulyga - German classical philosophy. Read online "German classical philosophy" Gulyga myth as a philosophical problem

German classical philosophy.

Gulyga A.V.

Gulyga A. V. German classical philosophy. - 2nd ed., corrected. and additional - M.: Rolf, 2001. - 416 s, with illustrations. - (Library of history and culture).

ISBN 5-7836-0447-X

BBK 87.3 G94

In the book of the famous Russian philosopher A. V. Gulyga, German classical philosophy is analyzed as an integral ideological trend, its origins and connection with modernity are traced. The main stages in the development of German classical philosophy are viewed through the prism of the creative search of its outstanding representatives - from I. Herder and I. Kant to A. Schopenhauer and F. Nietzsche.


Foreword ................................................................ ...................................
Chapter first. THE EVE
	First breach .................................................................. ...............................
	Lessing and the literary revolution ..............................................
	"Controversy about Pantheism". Herder................................................. ...
Chapter two. THE COPERNICAN TURN OF IMMANUEL KANT
	The activity of cognition .................................................................. ...............
	The primacy of practical reason .............................................................. .
	Kant's system of philosophy. The meaning of aesthetics...................
	"What is a person?" .................
Chapter three. PHILOSOPHY OF ACTIVITY
	controversy around Kant. Schiller ...............................................
	German Jacobinism .............................................................. .............
	Fichte. Jena period ................................................................ .........
Chapter Four. RETURN TO NATURE
	Goethe. Dispute about the artistic method ..............................................
	The Humboldt brothers .................................................. .................
	The Birth of Romanticism................................................... ............
	Early Schelling .................................................. ...................
Chapter five. THE IDEA OF ALL-UNITY
	Schelling. Philosophy of Identity ..............................................
	Fichte. Berlin period .............................................................. ....
Chapter six. "THE CLICKNESS OF THE MIND" (HEGEL)
	At the origins of the concept ............................................... ..............
	System and method .............................................................. .......................
	Forms of the absolute spirit .............................................................. ........
Chapter seven. IN THE NAME OF MAN
	Criticism of idealism .............................................................. .................
	Anthropological principle(Feuerbach).......................
Chapter eight. EXODUS TO THE EAST (SCHOEPENGAUER)
	Another path .................................................. ................................
	Man in the world of will and representation ..............................................
	The fate of the doctrine .................................................. .........................
Conclusion................................................. .................................
NOTES
Chapter first................................................ ................................
Chapter two ............................................................ .................................
Chapter Three .................................................. .................................
Chapter Four ................................................................ ...............................
Chapter five ............................................................ .................................

In memory of Soviet philosophers who gave their lives in the fight against German fascism

FOREWORD

This book- the result of more than thirty years of work of the author. It is based on a number of previously published works; some provisions have been clarified, some have been corrected, much has been written anew. It should be noted that the first edition (1986) was subjected to the usual biased editorial violence at that time, as a result of which a number of essential moments of the book were lost, and in some cases the text was inserted in the spirit of the ideological dogmas of that time. Nevertheless, the appearance of the book caused dissatisfaction with some of the bosses of the then philosophy, as evidenced by the negative review that appeared in the press, where the author's views were opposed to the "settings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism." This today can only cause a smile, but in those days the accusation of anti-Marxism smelled of "organizational conclusions." At the same time, however, a number of positive responses to the book appeared, one of which - A.F. Loseva - is published in the form of an afterword. A feature of the book is an attempt to consider German classical philosophy as a history of interrelated problems, as a developing whole. Usually the work of each thinker is presented separately from others. This approach has its strengths and weaknesses. The advantage is the opportunity to see everything at once character traits outstanding personality. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to understand the history of thought as a "drama of ideas", as an integral process that includes the interaction and confrontation of various concepts, mutual influences and disputes. In addition, for example, it is difficult to understand the late Fichte without knowing the early Schelling, and the late Schelling without becoming acquainted with Hegel. As for Kant, between "critical" and "sub-critical"

antique plastic art, Renaissance painting, Russian literature of the 19th century. It is a world-historical cultural phenomenon. Before our eyes is a kind of "ladder" of thought, and a "fan" of concepts. General movement forward is often achieved at the cost of losing previously achieved results. Fichte is not an absolute step forward compared to Kant. And Schelling, and Hegel, and Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer, pronouncing a new word, sometimes missed something that was said before them. We should not forget about the less important philosophical names. Without Lessing and Herder, Goethe and Schiller, without the Humboldt brothers, without the romantics, it is impossible to comprehend the search and achievements of the luminaries, to trace the transition from one to the other. Considered on their own, the works of the great classics are like the piers of a bridge with unfilled spans; it is impossible to move on such a bridge. The historian of the German classics has no right to forget this. Its task is to cover a wide range of problems - not only ontological and epistemological, but also problems of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of history and history of philosophy, philosophy of religion. Aesthetics, which is directly related to artistic creativity, is especially important: literature and theater played a significant role in the philosophical biography of the era under consideration.

CHAPTER ONE THE EVE

1. FIRST GAP

In 1755, two significant events took place in Germany, which were destined to open a new era in the spiritual life of the country. A book appeared - a philosophical treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky", and the premiere of the play "Miss Sarah Sampson" took place.

The book was published in Koenigsberg anonymously, although the candidate of philosophy Kant did not make much secret of his authorship. He substantiated the hypothesis of the natural origin of the solar system, expressed bold guesses about the development and death of stellar worlds. Prior to Kant, the dominant view was that nature has no history in time. In this conception, which fully corresponded to the metaphysical way of thinking, Kant made the first breach...

Lessing's play "Miss Sarah Sampson" was played in the summer of the same year in Frankfurt an der Oder. For the first time, new heroes appeared on the stage of the German theater - ordinary people. Before that, picture characters borrowed from ancient mythology or world history, the great ones of this world. Lessing shocked the audience with the death of a simple girl, the daughter of a burgher, seduced by an aristocrat.

It is noteworthy that both events took place in Prussia. The young kingdom established itself as a military bastion, pushing its borders by force of arms.

The Prussian army was the fourth largest in Europe (despite the fact that the country ranked thirteenth in terms of population). However, it would be unfair to see in Prussia only barracks. This is how the creator of the kingdom, Frederick I, looked at his country, but his grandson Frederick II turned things around differently. The barracks remained, but the Academy of Sciences also flourished.

Lessing and Kant are the most prominent representatives of the Enlightenment. This term denotes a necessary stage in the cultural development of any country that is parting with the feudal way of life. For Germany, the Age of Enlightenment is the 18th century. The slogan of Enlightenment is culture for the people. Enlighteners waged an uncompromising struggle against superstition, fanaticism, intolerance, deceit and stupidity of the people. They considered themselves as a kind of missionaries of the mind, called upon to open people's eyes to their nature and destiny, to direct them on the path of truth. The Renaissance ideal of a free individual acquires in the Enlightenment an attribute of universality: one must think not only about oneself, but also about others, about one's place in society. The idea of sociality gains ground underfoot; in the center of attention is the problem of the best social order.

It can be achieved through the dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge is power, to acquire it, to make it public property means to get the key to the secrets of human existence. The turn of the key - and Sesame opened, prosperity found. The possibility of misuse of knowledge is thus excluded. The early Enlightenment is rationalistic, it is an age of rational thinking. Disappointment sets in rather quickly, then they seek salvation in "direct knowledge", in feelings, in intuition, and somewhere ahead one can see the dialectical mind. But as long as any increase in knowledge is accepted as good, the ideals of the Enlightenment remain unshakable.

And finally, the third feature Enlightenment - historical optimism. The idea of progress is the conquest of this era. Previous times did not think about self-justification. Antiquity know nothing

wanted about her predecessors; Christianity attributed its appearance to the account of higher predestinations; even the Renaissance, which acted as a mediator in the dialogue between two previous cultures, considered its task not to move forward, but to return to the original sources. Enlightenment first became aware of itself new era. From here it was already a stone's throw to historicism as a type of thinking. And although not all enlighteners have risen to a historical view of things, its roots lie in this era.

A characteristic feature of the German Enlightenment is the struggle for national unity. The "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" existed only on paper. The rights of the emperor were limited to granting titles and honorary privileges. The number of sovereign monarchs in Germany reached 360. One and a half thousand imperial knights should be added to them, who were almost complete masters in their possessions. Some cities also retained their liberties. The largest principalities - Saxony and Mecklenburg in the center of the country, Hesse, Hanover, Braunschweig in the west, Württemberg, Bavaria in the south, the kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg monarchy were strongholds of unlimited absolutism. But even among the petty princelings, according to Frederick II, there was no one who did not imagine himself like Louis XIV; each built his own Versailles and kept his own army. The population suffered from the arbitrariness of petty tyrants. One spoiled the coin, the other monopolized the trade in salt, beer, firewood, the third forbade the use of coffee, the fourth sold soldiers abroad.

Abuse of power, drunken revelry and debauchery became common at the court of dwarf monarchs. They were imitated by the nobility, who bullied the burghers and mercilessly exploited the peasants. It is not surprising that the voice of the Enlighteners, demanding the creation of a common German state with a single legal order, sounded louder and louder.

IN German philosophy The beginning of the Enlightenment is associated with the name of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), a systematizer and popularizer of Leibniz's teachings. Wolf for the first time in Germany created a system that covered the main areas philosophical knowledge. He first created the philosophical

school. Wolfians did a lot to spread scientific knowledge. Their teaching was called "popular philosophy" because it was intended for the general reading public. Wolfians were convinced that the spread of education would immediately lead to the solution of all acute issues of our time. They combined the cult of reason with reverence for the Christian faith, which they tried to give a "rational" interpretation. The center of "popular philosophy" was Berlin - the capital of Prussia, whose king Frederick II liked to take the pose of a freethinker and enlightener, "a philosopher on the throne."

And one more feature of the spiritual life of Germany at that time must be mentioned - pietism. This movement arose at the end of the 17th century as a protest against spiritual stagnation and rebirth. Lutheran church. Pietists rejected ritualism, transferred the center of gravity of religion to inner conviction, knowledge of texts Holy Scripture and moral behavior. In the future, pietism gave rise to a new intolerance, degenerated into fanaticism and exalted asceticism. But in his time he played a refreshing role; many figures of the Enlightenment grew up on the ideological ground of pietism, developing its anti-clerical tendencies.

The son of a saddler Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) received a pietistic upbringing. While still a student at Königsberg University, he wrote his first work - "Thoughts on the true assessment of living forces", which was published in 1749. The young author acts here as an arbiter in the dispute between the Cartesians and Leibnizians about measuring kinetic energy. According to Descartes, it is directly proportional to the speed, according to Leibniz, the square of the speed of a moving body. Kant decided to separate the disputants: in some cases, he believed, Descartes' formula is applicable, in others, Leibniz's. Meanwhile, six years earlier, in 1743, D "Alembert gave a solution to the problem, expressing it by the formula F = mv squared / 2 Kant, apparently, did not know about this.

Kant's first work is a document of an era that decided to bring to the judgment of reason all the accumulated prejudices.

Authorities have been abolished, a new time has come. Now, Kant insists, one can safely disregard the authority of Newton and Leibniz, if it hinders the discovery of truth, and not be guided by any other considerations than the dictates of reason. No one is guaranteed against mistakes, and the right to notice a mistake belongs to everyone. A "dwarf" scientist often surpasses a scientist who is much higher in the total amount of his knowledge in one area or another. This is clearly about myself. "The truth that the greatest masters labored in vain human knowledge, first

opened up to my mind. " Having written this, the young man realizes: is it not too bold? He likes the phrase, he leaves it, providing it with a clause: "I do not dare to defend this idea, but I would not like to give it up and give up ".

In June 1754, in two issues of the Königsberg Weekly, a short article by Kant appeared, written on the competition theme of the Prussian Academy of Sciences: of its origin." Kant, however, did not dare to take part in the competition; the prize was awarded to a certain priest from Pisa, who answered the question in the negative. Meanwhile, Kant, in contrast to the undeserved laureate, came to the correct conclusion that the Earth in its rotation experiences a slowdown caused by tidal friction of the waters of the oceans. Kant's calculations are wrong, but the idea is correct. Its essence is that under the influence of the Moon, sea tides move from east to west, i.e., in the direction opposite to the rotation of the Earth, and slow it down. In the summer of 1754, Kant published another article - "The question of whether the Earth is aging from a physical point of view." The process of aging of the Earth causes no doubts in Kant. Everything that exists arises, improves, then goes towards death. Earth, of course, is no exception.

Kant's two articles were a kind of prelude to the cosmogonic treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky, or an Attempt to interpret the structure and mechanical origin of the entire universe, based on Newton's principles." The treatise was published anonymously in the spring of 1755 with a dedication to King Frederick II. The book was not lucky: its publisher went bankrupt, its warehouse was sealed, and the circulation did not ripen in time for the spring fair. But to see in this (as some authors do) the reason why the name of Kant, as the creator of the cosmogonic hypothesis, did not receive European fame, nevertheless, one should not. The book eventually sold out, the author's anonymity was revealed, and an approving review appeared in one of the Hamburg periodicals.

In the 17th century naturalists (including Galileo and Newton) were convinced of the divine origin of the heavenly bodies. Although Kant dissociated himself from the ancient materialists, in fact (following Descartes) he extended the principles of natural-science materialism to cosmogony. "... Give me matter, and I will build a world out of it, that is, give me matter, and I will show you how the world should arise from it" - Kant's formula sounds like an aphorism. It contains the main meaning of the book: Kant really showed how, under the influence of purely mechanical causes, our solar system could form from the initial chaos of material particles.

The early Kant is a deist: denying God the role of the architect of the universe, he still saw in him the creator of that chaotic substance from which, according to the laws of mechanics, the modern universe arose. Another problem that Kant did not undertake to solve in a natural scientific way was the emergence of organic nature. Is it permissible, he asked, to say: give me matter, and I will show you how to make a caterpillar out of it? Here it is easy to make a mistake right away, since the variety of object properties is too large and complex. The laws of mechanics are not enough to understand the essence of life. The thought is right; having expressed it, the young Kant, however, did not look for ways of the natural origin of life. Only in old age, reflecting on the work of the brain, will he emphasize the presence in the body of a more complex type of interaction.

The treatise on cosmogony retains the emotionally rich manner in which Kant's work on "living forces" was sustained. The beauties of style do not lead away, however, from the main thing. The treatise consists of three parts. The first is introductory. Here Kant expresses ideas about the systemic structure of the universe. The Milky Way should not be viewed as a scattered cluster without apparent order

stars, but as a formation resembling the solar system. The galaxy is oblate and the Sun is close to its center. There are many similar star systems; the infinite Universe also has the character of a system, and all its parts are in mutual connection.

The second part of the treatise is devoted to the problem of the formation of celestial bodies and stellar worlds. For cosmogenesis, according to Kant, the following conditions are necessary: particles of primary matter, differing from each other in density, and the action of two forces - attraction and repulsion. The difference in density causes a thickening of the substance, the emergence of centers of attraction, to which light particles tend. Falling on the central mass, the particles heat it up, bringing it to a red-hot state. This is how the sun came into being. The force of repulsion, opposing attraction, prevents the accumulation of all particles in one place. Part of them, as a result of the struggle of two opposite forces, acquires a circular motion, forming at the same time other centers of gravity - the planets. The satellites of the planets arose in a similar way. And in other stellar worlds the same forces, the same regularities operate.

The creation of the world is not a matter of an instant, but of eternity. It started once, but it will never stop. Perhaps millions of years and centuries passed before the nature around us reached its inherent degree of perfection. Millions and millions more centuries will pass, during which new worlds will be created and improved, and the old ones will perish, just as countless living organisms perish before our eyes. The universe of Kant is expanding. Celestial bodies located near its center are formed earlier than others and die sooner. And along the edges at this time there are new

worlds. Kant predicts the death of our planetary system. The sun, heating up more and more, will eventually burn the Earth and its other satellites, decompose them into the simplest elements that will dissipate in space in order to then take part in the new world formation: "... through all the infinity of time and space we we watch this phoenix of nature, which only then burns itself to be reborn from its ashes ... "

The third part of the book contains "the experience of comparing the inhabitants of different planets." Educated people in the 18th century there was no doubt that the heavenly bodies were inhabited (Newton considered that even the Sun was inhabited). Kant is sure that intelligent life exists in space, his only caveat is not everywhere: just as there are uninhabitable deserts on Earth, so there are uninhabited planets in the Universe. The philosopher is occupied with the problem of the extent to which distance from the Sun affects the ability to think in living beings. The inhabitants of the Earth and Venus, Kant believes, cannot change their places without dying: they are created from a substance adapted to a certain temperature. The body of the inhabitants of Jupiter must consist of lighter and more fluid substances than those of earthlings, so that the weak influence of the Sun can set them in motion with the same force with which organisms move on other planets. And Kant deduces a general law: the substance of which the inhabitants of various planets are composed, the lighter and thinner, the farther the planets are from the Sun.

And the strength of the soul depends on the mortal shell. If only thick juices move in the body, if living fibers are coarse, then spiritual abilities are weakened. And now a new law has been established: thinking beings are the more beautiful and perfect, the farther from the Sun is the celestial body where they live. A person who occupies, as it were, the middle step in the successive series of beings, sees himself between the two extreme boundaries of perfection. If the idea of the intelligent beings of Jupiter and Saturn makes us envious, then looking at the lower levels, on which the inhabitants of Venus and Mercury are located, restores peace of mind. "What an amazing sight!" exclaims the philosopher. On the one hand, thinking beings for whom some Greenlander and Hottentot would seem like Newton, and on the other, beings who would look at Newton with the same surprise as we look at a monkey. Today, much in the General Natural History and Theory of the Sky (even that which does not cause a smile) seems outdated. modern science does not accept either the basic hypothesis about education

The solar system of cold scattered particles of matter, nor a number of other provisions that Kant tried to substantiate. But the main philosophical idea- historicism, the idea of development - remains unshakable.

natural science matters for a long time will dominate in spiritual world Kant. But along with them, there is also an interest in philosophy. The first actually philosophical work of Kant was his dissertation "New illumination of the first principles of metaphysical knowledge". Kant explores the principle of sufficient reason established by Leibniz. He distinguishes between the basis of the being of an object and the basis of its knowledge, the real and logical basis. The properties of the ether serve as the real basis for the movement of light at a certain speed. Basis for

knowledge of this phenomenon gave observations of the satellites of Jupiter. It was noticed that the pre-calculated eclipses of these celestial bodies occur later in those cases when Jupiter is the most distant from the Earth. From this it was concluded that the propagation of light occurs in time, and the speed of light was calculated. In these arguments, the germ of the future dualism: the world of real things and the world of our knowledge are not identical.

His next work - "Physical Monadology" - Kant begins with the image of the methodological crossroads at which he found himself. He agrees with natural scientists that nothing should be admitted into natural science "without agreement with experience." However, he is dissatisfied with those who are so attached to this principle that they do not allow anything beyond directly observable data. "After all, they remain only with the phenomena of nature, are always equally far from the understanding of the first causes hidden for them, and will never reach the science of the very nature of bodies any more than those who would convince themselves that, climbing to a higher and higher peak mountains, they will finally feel the sky with their hand. The data of experience, according to Kant, are significant insofar as they give us an idea of the laws of empirical reality, but they cannot lead to knowledge of the origin and causes of laws. Hence his conclusion; "... metaphysics, without which, in the opinion of many, it is quite possible to do without resolving physical problems, alone renders help here, kindling the light of knowledge."

It should be borne in mind that Kant had to deal with the metaphysics of the Wolffian school, which expelled all living content from Leibniz's philosophy. Unlike the previous period, when metaphysics carried a positive content and was associated with discoveries in mathematics and physics, in the 18th century it turned exclusively to the systematization of accumulated knowledge and fell into dogmatism. Simplifying and organizing the picture real world, Wolffian metaphysics consistently adhered to the identification of being with thinking, looked at the world through the glasses of formal logic. It was believed that the logical and real foundations are identical, that is, the logical relationship of foundation and effect is equivalent to the relationship of cause and effect; things are interconnected in the same way that concepts are interconnected. Kant, however, has already shown that this is not the case.

In the work "False sophistication in the four figures of the syllogism" (1762), Kant questions certain provisions of formal logic. The latter he calls a colossus with feet of clay. He does not flatter himself with the hope of overthrowing this colossus, although he threatens him. Kant makes a demand to logic to trace the formation of concepts. Concepts arise from judgments. And what is the mysterious power that makes judgments possible? Kant's answer is that judgments are possible thanks to the ability to turn sensory representations into an object of thought. The answer is significant: it testifies to Kant's first, as yet very vague, desire to create a new theory of knowledge. Prior to this, he shared the Wolffian admiration for deduction, was convinced that the possibilities of deriving some concepts from others were unlimited (although his own studies of nature were based on experimental data). Now he is thinking about how to introduce empirical knowledge into philosophy. Kant's work did not go unnoticed. She was greeted with positive feedback, and one anonymous reviewer (suggested that it was M. Mendelssohn) described the author of the article as "a brave man who threatens the German academies with a terrible revolution)" .

Gulyga Arseniy

German classical philosophy

In memory of Soviet philosophers who gave their lives in the fight against German fascism

Foreword

This book is the result of more than thirty years of work by the author. It is based on a number of previously published works; some provisions have been clarified, some have been corrected, much has been written anew. It should be noted that the first edition (1986) was subjected to the usual biased editorial violence at that time, as a result of which a number of essential moments of the book were lost, and in some cases the text was inserted in the spirit of the ideological dogmas of that time. Nevertheless, the appearance of the book caused dissatisfaction with some of the bosses of the philosophy of that time, as evidenced by the negative review that appeared in the press, where the author's views were opposed to the "settings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism." This today can only cause a smile, but in those days the accusation of anti-Marxism smelled of "organizational conclusions." At the same time, however, a number of positive responses to the book appeared, one of which - A.F. Loseva - is published in the form of an afterword. A feature of the book is an attempt to consider German classical philosophy as a history of interrelated problems, as a developing whole. Usually the work of each thinker is presented separately from others. This approach has its strengths and weaknesses. The advantage is the opportunity to see all the characteristic features of an outstanding personality at once. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to understand the history of thought as a "drama of ideas", as an integral process that includes the interaction and confrontation of various concepts, mutual influences and disputes. In addition, for example, it is difficult to understand the late Fichte without knowing the early Schelling, and the late Schelling without becoming acquainted with Hegel. As for Kant, between the "critical" and "sub-critical" periods of his activity, an entire era of "Sturm und Drang", which influenced the philosopher, lay. Therefore, the author tried to choose in each case the method of presentation that is dictated by the material. And the material is surprisingly rich and modern. German classical philosophy is not only a foundation, it is in itself a majestic building, each of its representatives has a self-contained value. It is unique, as ancient plastic art, Renaissance painting, Russian literature of the 19th century are unique. It is a world-historical cultural phenomenon. Before our eyes is a kind of "ladder" of thought, and a "fan" of concepts. The general movement forward is often achieved at the cost of losing previously achieved results. Fichte is not an absolute step forward compared to Kant. And Schelling, and Hegel, and Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer, pronouncing a new word, sometimes missed something that was said before them. We should not forget about the less important philosophical names. Without Lessing and Herder, Goethe and Schiller, without the Humboldt brothers, without the romantics, it is impossible to comprehend the search and achievements of the luminaries, to trace the transition from one to the other. Considered on their own, the works of the great classics are like the piers of a bridge with unfilled spans; it is impossible to move on such a bridge. The historian of the German classics has no right to forget this. Its task is to cover a wide range of problems - not only ontological and epistemological, but also problems of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of history and history of philosophy, philosophy of religion. Aesthetics, which is directly related to artistic creativity, is especially important: literature and theater played a significant role in the philosophical biography of the era under consideration.

Chapter first

the day before

1. First breach

In 1755, two significant events took place in Germany, which were destined to open a new era in the spiritual life of the country. A philosophical treatise, The General Natural History and Theory of Heaven, was published, and the play Miss Sarah Sampson was premiered.

The book was published in Königsberg anonymously, although Kant, Ph.D. in philosophy, did not make much secret of his authorship. He substantiated the hypothesis of the natural origin of the solar system, expressed bold guesses about the development and death of stellar worlds. Prior to Kant, the dominant view was that nature has no history in time. In this conception, which fully corresponded to the metaphysical way of thinking, Kant made the first breach...

Lessing's play "Miss Sarah Sampson" was played in the summer of the same year in Frankfurt an der Oder. For the first time, new heroes appeared on the stage of the German theater - ordinary people. Before that, picture characters borrowed from ancient mythology or world history, the great ones of this world, perished in tragedies. Lessing shocked the audience with the death of a simple girl, the daughter of a burgher, seduced by an aristocrat.

It is noteworthy that both events took place in Prussia. The young kingdom established itself as a military bastion, pushing its borders by force of arms. The Prussian army was the fourth largest in Europe (despite the fact that the country ranked thirteenth in terms of population). However, it would be unfair to see in Prussia only barracks. This is how the creator of the kingdom, Frederick I, looked at his country, but his grandson Frederick II turned things around differently. The barracks remained, but the Academy of Sciences also flourished.

Gulyga Arseniy German classical philosophy

Arseniy Gulyga

Arseniy Vladimirovich Gulyga

German classical philosophy

Foreword ................................................................ ..........3

Chapter first. THE EVE

1. The first gap ........................................................ .........5

2. Lessing and the literary revolution...............................................22

3. "Dispute about pantheism." Herder ........................................35

Chapter two. THE COPERNICAN TURN OF IMMANUEL KANT

1. The activity of cognition .............................................. .41

2. The primacy of practical reason...............................................70

3. The system of Kant's philosophy. The Meaning of Aesthetics...................................82

4. "What is a man?" .............................................. ...100

Chapter three. PHILOSOPHY OF ACTIVITY

1. Disputes around Kant. Schiller............................118

2. German Jacobinism.............................................. 129

3. Fichte. Jena period..............................................135

Chapter Four. RETURN TO NATURE

1. Goethe. Dispute about the artistic method....................................163

2. The Humboldt Brothers.............................................. ..173

3. The birth of romanticism.............................................. 179

4. Early Schelling.............................................. .....185

Chapter five. THE IDEA OF ALL-UNITY

1. Schelling. Philosophy of Identity...................................198

2. Fichte. Berlin period ..........................................220

Chapter six. "THE CLICKNESS OF THE MIND" (HEGEL)

1. At the origins of the concept............................................... .233

2. System and method ............................................... .....254

3. Forms of the Absolute Spirit..............................................278

Chapter seven. IN THE NAME OF MAN

1. Criticism of idealism.............................................. ..301

2. Anthropological principle (Feuerbach)..................................313

Chapter eight. EXODUS TO THE EAST (SCHOEPENGAUER)

1. Another way ............................................... ..........333

2. Man in the world of will and representation ............................... 337

3. The fate of the doctrine ............................................... ......354

Conclusion................................................. .........364

NOTES

Chapter first................................................ ........367

Chapter two ............................................................ ........370

Chapter Three .................................................. ........377

Chapter Four ................................................................ .....382

Chapter five ............................................................ .........388

Chapter six ............................................................ ........391

Chapter Seven ............................................................ .......397

Chapter Eight................................................... .......400

V.F. Losev. INSTEAD OF AFTERWORD......................................404

Name index ................................................................ ......409

In memory of Soviet philosophers who gave their lives in the fight against German fascism

FOREWORD

periods of his activity lay the whole era of "Storm and Onslaught", which influenced the philosopher. Therefore, the author tried to choose in each case the method of presentation that is dictated by the material. And the material is surprisingly rich and modern. German classical philosophy is not only a foundation, it is in itself a majestic building, each of its representatives has a self-contained value. It is unique, as ancient plastic art, Renaissance painting, Russian literature of the 19th century are unique. It is a world-historical cultural phenomenon. Before our eyes is a kind of "ladder" of thought, and a "fan" of concepts. The general movement forward is often achieved at the cost of losing previously achieved results. Fichte is not an absolute step forward compared to Kant. And Schelling, and Hegel, and Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer, pronouncing a new word, sometimes missed something that was said before them. We should not forget about the less important philosophical names. Without Lessing and Herder, Goethe and Schiller, without the Humboldt brothers, without the romantics, it is impossible to comprehend the search and achievements of the luminaries, to trace the transition from one to the other. Considered on their own, the works of the great classics are like the piers of a bridge with unfilled spans; it is impossible to move on such a bridge. The historian of the German classics has no right to forget this. Its task is to cover a wide range of problems - not only ontological and epistemological, but also problems of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of history and history of philosophy, philosophy of religion. Aesthetics, which is directly related to artistic creativity, is especially important: literature and theater played a significant role in the philosophical biography of the era under consideration.

CHAPTER FIRST

THE EVE

1. FIRST GAP

In 1755, two significant events took place in Germany, which were destined to open a new era in the spiritual life of the country. A book of philosophical treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of Heaven" appeared, and the premiere of the play "Miss Sarah Sampson" took place.

Lessing's play "Miss Sarah Sampson" was played in the summer of the same year in Frankfurt an der Oder. For the first time, new heroes appeared on the stage of the German theater - ordinary people. Before that, picture characters borrowed from ancient mythology or world history, the great ones of this world, perished in tragedies. Lessing shocked the audience with the death of a simple girl, the daughter of a burgher, seduced by an aristocrat.

Lessing and Kant are the most prominent representatives of the Enlightenment. This term denotes a necessary stage in the cultural development of any country that is parting with the feudal way of life. For Germany, the Age of Enlightenment is the 18th century. The slogan of Enlightenment is culture for the people. Enlighteners waged an uncompromising struggle against superstition, fanaticism, intolerance, deceit and stupidity of the people. They considered themselves as a kind of missionaries of the mind, called upon to open people's eyes to their nature and destiny, to direct them on the path of truth. The Renaissance ideal of a free individual acquires in the Enlightenment an attribute of universality: one must think not only about oneself, but also about others, about one's place in society. The idea of sociality gains ground underfoot; The focus is on the issue of the best social service...

Chapter first

the day before

1. First breach

Lessing's play "Miss Sarah Sampson" was played in the summer of the same year in Frankfurt an der Oder. For the first time, new heroes appeared on the stage of the German theater - ordinary people. Before that, picture characters borrowed from ancient mythology or world history, the great ones of this world, perished in tragedies. Lessing shocked the audience with the death of a simple girl, the daughter of a burgher, seduced by an aristocrat.

And finally, the third characteristic feature of the Enlightenment is historical optimism. The idea of progress is the conquest of this era. Previous times did not think about self-justification. Antiquity did not want to know anything about its predecessors; Christianity attributed its appearance to the account of higher predestinations; even the Renaissance, which acted as a mediator in the dialogue between two previous cultures, considered its task not to move forward, but to return to the original sources. The Enlightenment for the first time recognized itself as a new era. From here it was already a stone's throw to historicism as a type of thinking. And although not all enlighteners have risen to a historical view of things, its roots lie in this era.

German classical philosophy.
Gulyga A.V.

Gulyga A. V. German classical philosophy. - 2nd ed., corrected. and additional - M.: Rolf, 2001. - 416 s, with illustrations. - (Library of history and culture).
ISBN 5-7836-0447-X
BBC 87.3

G94
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, sound recording, any storage device or information retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder.

1. The first gap ........................................................ ...............................5

2. Lessing and the literary revolution..............................................22

3. "Dispute about pantheism." Herder................................................. ...35
Chapter two. THE COPERNICAN TURN OF IMMANUEL KANT

1. The activity of cognition .............................................. .................41

2. The primacy of practical reason............................................... ...70

3. The system of Kant's philosophy. The Meaning of Aesthetics...................82

4. "What is a man?" .............................................. .....................100
Chapter three. PHILOSOPHY OF ACTIVITY

1. Disputes around Kant. Schiller.......................................118

2. German Jacobinism .............................................. ...............129

3. Fichte. Jena period ................................................................ .........135
Chapter Four. RETURN TO NATURE

1. Goethe. Dispute about the artistic method...............................................163

2. The Humboldt Brothers.............................................. ....................173

3. The birth of romanticism.............................................. ..............179

4. Early Schelling.............................................. .......................185
Chapter five. THE IDEA OF ALL-UNITY

1. Schelling. Philosophy of Identity..............................................198

2. Fichte. Berlin period .............................................................. ....220
Chapter six. "THE CLICKNESS OF THE MIND" (HEGEL)

1. At the origins of the concept............................................... ................233

2. System and method ............................................... .........................254

3. Forms of the absolute spirit............................................... ..........278
Chapter seven. IN THE NAME OF MAN

1. Criticism of idealism.............................................. ...................301

2. Anthropological principle (Feuerbach)..................................313
Chapter eight. EXODUS TO THE EAST (SCHOEPENGAUER)

1. Another way ............................................... .................................333

2. Man in the world of will and representation .............................. 337

3. The fate of the doctrine ............................................... ...............................354
Conclusion................................................. .................................364
NOTES

Chapter first................................................ ................................367

Chapter two ............................................................ .................................370

Chapter Three .................................................. .................................377

Chapter Four ................................................................ ...............................382

Chapter five ............................................................ .................................388

Chapter six ............................................................ ................................391

Chapter Seven ............................................................ ...............................397

Chapter Eight................................................... ...............................400
V.F. Losev. INSTEAD OF AFTERWORD.......................................404

Name index ................................................................ ...............................409

In memory of Soviet philosophers who gave their lives in the fight against German fascism
FOREWORD
This book is the result of more than thirty years of work by the author. It is based on a number of previously published works; some provisions have been clarified, some have been corrected, much has been written anew. It should be noted that the first edition (1986) was subjected to the usual biased editorial violence at that time, as a result of which a number of essential moments of the book were lost, and in some cases the text was inserted in the spirit of the ideological dogmas of that time. Nevertheless, the appearance of the book caused dissatisfaction with some of the bosses of the then philosophy, as evidenced by the negative review that appeared in the press, where the author's views were opposed to the "settings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism." This today can only cause a smile, but in those days the accusation of anti-Marxism smelled of "organizational conclusions." At the same time, however, a number of positive responses to the book appeared, one of which - A.F. Loseva - is published in the form of an afterword. A feature of the book is an attempt to consider German classical philosophy as a history of interrelated problems, as a developing whole. Usually the work of each thinker is presented separately from others. This approach has its strengths and weaknesses. The advantage is the opportunity to see all the characteristic features of an outstanding personality at once. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to understand the history of thought as a "drama of ideas", as an integral process that includes the interaction and confrontation of various concepts, mutual influences and disputes. In addition, for example, it is difficult to understand the late Fichte without knowing the early Schelling, and the late Schelling without becoming acquainted with Hegel. As for Kant, between "critical" and "sub-critical"
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CHAPTER FIRST

THE EVE

1. FIRST GAP
In 1755, two significant events took place in Germany, which were destined to open a new era in the spiritual life of the country. A book appeared - a philosophical treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky", and the premiere of the play "Miss Sarah Sampson" took place.
The book was published in Königsberg anonymously, although Kant, Ph.D. in philosophy, did not make much secret of his authorship. He substantiated the hypothesis of the natural origin of the solar system, expressed bold guesses about the development and death of stellar worlds. Prior to Kant, the dominant view was that nature has no history in time. In this conception, which fully corresponded to the metaphysical way of thinking, Kant made the first breach...
Lessing's play "Miss Sarah Sampson" was played in the summer of the same year in Frankfurt an der Oder. For the first time, new heroes appeared on the stage of the German theater - ordinary people. Before that, picture characters borrowed from ancient mythology or world history, the great ones of this world, perished in tragedies. Lessing shocked the audience with the death of a simple girl, the daughter of a burgher, seduced by an aristocrat.
5
It is noteworthy that both events took place in Prussia. The young kingdom established itself as a military bastion, pushing its borders by force of arms. The Prussian army was the fourth largest in Europe (despite the fact that the country ranked thirteenth in terms of population). However, it would be unfair to see in Prussia only barracks. This is how the creator of the kingdom, Frederick I, looked at his country, but his grandson Frederick II turned things around differently. The barracks remained, but the Academy of Sciences also flourished.
Lessing and Kant are the most prominent representatives of the Enlightenment. This term denotes a necessary stage in the cultural development of any country that is parting with the feudal way of life. For Germany, the Age of Enlightenment is the 18th century. The slogan of Enlightenment is culture for the people. Enlighteners waged an uncompromising struggle against superstition, fanaticism, intolerance, deceit and stupidity of the people. They considered themselves as a kind of missionaries of the mind, called upon to open people's eyes to their nature and destiny, to direct them on the path of truth. The Renaissance ideal of a free individual acquires in the Enlightenment an attribute of universality: one must think not only about oneself, but also about others, about one's place in society. The idea of sociality gains ground underfoot; in the center of attention is the problem of the best social order.
It can be achieved through the dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge is power, to acquire it, to make it public property means to get the key to the secrets of human existence. The turn of the key - and Sesame opened, prosperity found. The possibility of misuse of knowledge is thus excluded. The early Enlightenment is rationalistic, it is an age of rational thinking. Disappointment sets in rather quickly, then they seek salvation in "direct knowledge", in feelings, in intuition, and somewhere ahead one can see the dialectical mind. But as long as any increase in knowledge is accepted as good, the ideals of the Enlightenment remain unshakable.
And finally, the third characteristic feature of the Enlightenment is historical optimism. The idea of progress is the conquest of this era. Previous times did not think about self-justification. Antiquity know nothing
6
wanted about her predecessors; Christianity attributed its appearance to the account of higher predestinations; even the Renaissance, which acted as a mediator in the dialogue between two previous cultures, considered its task not to move forward, but to return to the original sources. The Enlightenment for the first time recognized itself as a new era. From here it was already a stone's throw to historicism as a type of thinking. And although not all enlighteners have risen to a historical view of things, its roots lie in this era.
A characteristic feature of the German Enlightenment is the struggle for national unity. The "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" existed only on paper. The rights of the emperor were limited to granting titles and honorary privileges. The number of sovereign monarchs in Germany reached 360. One and a half thousand imperial knights should be added to them, who were almost complete masters in their possessions. Some cities also retained their liberties. The largest principalities - Saxony and Mecklenburg in the center of the country, Hesse, Hanover, Braunschweig in the west, Württemberg, Bavaria in the south, the kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg monarchy were strongholds of unlimited absolutism. But even among the petty princelings, according to Frederick II, there was no one who did not imagine himself like Louis XIV; each built his own Versailles and kept his own army. The population suffered from the arbitrariness of petty tyrants. One spoiled the coin, the other monopolized the trade in salt, beer, firewood, the third forbade the use of coffee, the fourth sold soldiers abroad. Abuse of power, drunken revelry and debauchery became common at the court of dwarf monarchs. They were imitated by the nobility, who bullied the burghers and mercilessly exploited the peasants. It is not surprising that the voice of the Enlighteners, demanding the creation of a common German state with a single legal order, sounded louder and louder.
In German philosophy, the beginning of the Enlightenment is associated with the name of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), the systematizer and popularizer of Leibniz's teachings. Wolf for the first time in Germany created a system that covered the main areas of philosophical knowledge. He first created the philosophical
7
school. The Wolfians did much to spread scientific knowledge. Their teaching was called "popular philosophy" because it was intended for the general reading public. Wolfians were convinced that the spread of education would immediately lead to the solution of all acute issues of our time. They combined the cult of reason with reverence for the Christian faith, which they tried to give a "rational" interpretation. The center of "popular philosophy" was Berlin - the capital of Prussia, whose king Frederick II liked to take the pose of a freethinker and enlightener, "a philosopher on the throne."
And one more feature of the spiritual life of Germany at that time must be mentioned - pietism. This movement arose at the end of the 17th century as a protest against the spiritual stagnation and degeneration of the Lutheran church. The pietists rejected ritualism, transferred the center of gravity of religion to inner conviction, knowledge of the texts of Holy Scripture and moral behavior. In the future, pietism gave rise to a new intolerance, degenerated into fanaticism and exalted asceticism. But in his time he played a refreshing role; many figures of the Enlightenment grew up on the ideological ground of pietism, developing its anti-clerical tendencies.
The son of a saddler Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) received a pietistic upbringing. While still a student at Königsberg University, he wrote his first work - "Thoughts on the true assessment of living forces", which was published in 1749. The young author here acts as an arbitrator in the dispute between the Cartesians and Leibnizians about measuring kinetic energy. According to Descartes, it is directly proportional to the speed, according to Leibniz, to the square of the speed of a moving body. Kant decided to separate the disputants: in some cases, he believed, Descartes' formula is applicable, in others, Leibniz's. Meanwhile, six years earlier, in 1743, D "Alembert gave a solution to the problem, expressing it by the formula F = mv squared / 2 Kant, apparently, did not know about this.
Kant's first work is a document of an era that decided to bring to the judgment of reason all the accumulated prejudices.
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Authorities have been abolished, a new time has come. Now, Kant insists, one can safely disregard the authority of Newton and Leibniz, if it hinders the discovery of truth, and not be guided by any other considerations than the dictates of reason. No one is guaranteed against mistakes, and the right to notice a mistake belongs to everyone. A "dwarf" scientist often surpasses a scientist who is much higher in the total amount of his knowledge in one area or another. This is clearly about myself. "The truth, on which the greatest masters of human knowledge have labored in vain, was revealed to my mind for the first time." Having written this, the young man realizes: isn't it too bold? He likes the phrase, he leaves it, providing the proviso: "I do not dare to defend this idea, but I would not like to give it up either."

The detail is typical. In the very first work of Kant, there is not only an uncompromising striving for truth, but also a clear tendency to reasonable compromises, when he faces two extremes. Now he is trying to "combine" Descartes and Leibniz, in his mature years this attempt will be made in relation to the main philosophical trends. To reveal the contradiction, but to show tolerance, to overcome one-sidedness, to give a fundamentally new solution, while synthesizing the accumulated experience, not to win, but to reconcile - this is one of Kant's aspirations.
9
In June 1754, in two issues of the Königsberg Weekly, a small article by Kant appeared, written on the competition theme of the Prussian Academy of Sciences: of its origin." Kant, however, did not dare to take part in the competition; the prize was awarded to a certain priest from Pisa, who answered the question in the negative. Meanwhile, Kant, in contrast to the undeserved laureate, came to the correct conclusion that the Earth in its rotation experiences a slowdown caused by tidal friction of the waters of the oceans. Kant's calculations are wrong, but the idea is correct. Its essence is that under the influence of the Moon, sea tides move from east to west, i.e., in the direction opposite to the rotation of the Earth, and slow it down. In the summer of 1754, Kant published another article - "The question of whether the Earth is aging from a physical point of view." The process of aging of the Earth causes no doubts in Kant. Everything that exists arises, improves, then goes towards death. Earth, of course, is no exception.
Kant's two articles were a kind of prelude to the cosmogonic treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky, or an Attempt to interpret the structure and mechanical origin of the entire universe, based on Newton's principles." The treatise was published anonymously in the spring of 1755 with a dedication to King Frederick II. The book was not lucky: its publisher went bankrupt, its warehouse was sealed, and the circulation did not ripen in time for the spring fair. But to see in this (as some authors do) the reason why the name of Kant, as the creator of the cosmogonic hypothesis, did not receive European fame, nevertheless, one should not. The book eventually sold out, the author's anonymity was revealed, and an approving review appeared in one of the Hamburg periodicals.
10

In 1761, the German scientist J. G. Lambert, in his Cosmological Letters, repeated Kant's ideas about the structure of the universe; in 1796, the French astronomer P. S. Laplace formulated a cosmogonic hypothesis similar to Kant's. Both - both Lambert and Laplace - did not know anything about their predecessor. Everything is in the spirit of the times: Kant was not familiar with the work of D "Alembert on kinetic energy, others did not hear about his work.
In the 17th century naturalists (including Galileo and Newton) were convinced of the divine origin of the heavenly bodies. Although Kant dissociated himself from the ancient materialists, in fact (following Descartes) he extended the principles of natural-science materialism to cosmogony. "... Give me matter, and I will build a world out of it, that is, give me matter, and I will show you how the world should arise from it" - Kant's formula sounds like an aphorism. It contains the main meaning of the book: Kant really showed how, under the influence of purely mechanical causes, our solar system could form from the initial chaos of material particles.
The early Kant is a deist: denying God the role of the architect of the universe, he still saw in him the creator of that chaotic substance from which, according to the laws of mechanics, the modern universe arose. Another problem that Kant did not undertake to solve in a natural scientific way was the emergence of organic nature. Is it permissible, he asked, to say: give me matter, and I will show you how to make a caterpillar out of it? Here it is easy to make a mistake right away, since the variety of object properties is too large and complex. The laws of mechanics are not enough to understand the essence of life. The thought is right; having expressed it, the young Kant, however, did not look for ways of the natural origin of life. Only in old age, reflecting on the work of the brain, will he emphasize the presence in the body of a more complex type of interaction.
The treatise on cosmogony retains the emotionally rich manner in which Kant's work on "living forces" was sustained. The beauties of style do not lead away, however, from the main thing. The treatise consists of three parts. The first is introductory. Here Kant expresses ideas about the systemic structure of the universe. The Milky Way should not be viewed as a scattered cluster without apparent order
11
stars, but as a formation resembling the solar system. The galaxy is oblate and the Sun is close to its center. There are many similar star systems; the infinite Universe also has the character of a system, and all its parts are in mutual connection.
The second part of the treatise is devoted to the problem of the formation of celestial bodies and stellar worlds. For cosmogenesis, according to Kant, the following conditions are necessary: particles of primary matter, differing from each other in density, and the action of two forces - attraction and repulsion. The difference in density causes a thickening of the substance, the emergence of centers of attraction, to which light particles tend. Falling on the central mass, the particles heat it up, bringing it to a red-hot state. This is how the sun came into being. The force of repulsion, opposing attraction, prevents the accumulation of all particles in one place. Part of them, as a result of the struggle of two opposite forces, acquires a circular motion, forming at the same time other centers of gravity - the planets. The satellites of the planets arose in a similar way. And in other stellar worlds the same forces, the same regularities operate.
The creation of the world is not a matter of an instant, but of eternity. It started once, but it will never stop. Perhaps millions of years and centuries passed before the nature around us reached its inherent degree of perfection. Millions and millions more centuries will pass, during which new worlds will be created and improved, and the old ones will perish, just as countless living organisms perish before our eyes. The universe of Kant is expanding. Celestial bodies located near its center are formed earlier than others and die sooner. And along the edges at this time, new worlds arise. Kant predicts the death of our planetary system. The sun, heating up more and more, will eventually burn the Earth and its other satellites, decompose them into the simplest elements that will dissipate in space in order to then take part in the new world formation: "... through all the infinity of time and space we we watch this phoenix of nature, which only then burns itself to be reborn from its ashes ... "
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The third part of the book contains "the experience of comparing the inhabitants of different planets." Educated people in the 18th century there was no doubt that the heavenly bodies were inhabited (Newton considered that even the Sun was inhabited). Kant is sure that intelligent life exists in space, his only caveat is not everywhere: just as there are uninhabitable deserts on Earth, so there are uninhabited planets in the Universe. The philosopher is occupied with the problem of the extent to which distance from the Sun affects the ability to think in living beings. The inhabitants of the Earth and Venus, Kant believes, cannot change their places without dying: they are created from a substance adapted to a certain temperature. The body of the inhabitants of Jupiter must consist of lighter and more fluid substances than those of earthlings, so that the weak influence of the Sun can set them in motion with the same force with which organisms move on other planets. And Kant deduces a general law: the substance of which the inhabitants of various planets are composed, the lighter and thinner, the farther the planets are from the Sun.

And the strength of the soul depends on the mortal shell. If only thick juices move in the body, if living fibers are coarse, then spiritual abilities are weakened. And now a new law has been established: thinking beings are the more beautiful and perfect, the farther from the Sun is the celestial body where they live. A person who occupies, as it were, the middle step in the successive series of beings, sees himself between the two extreme boundaries of perfection. If the idea of the intelligent beings of Jupiter and Saturn makes us envious, then looking at the lower levels, on which the inhabitants of Venus and Mercury are located, restores peace of mind. "What an amazing sight!" exclaims the philosopher. On the one hand, thinking beings for whom some Greenlander and Hottentot would seem like Newton, and on the other, beings who would look at Newton with the same surprise as we look at a monkey. Today, much in the General Natural History and Theory of the Sky (even that which does not cause a smile) seems outdated. Modern science does not accept any basic hypothesis about education

13
The solar system of cold scattered particles of matter, nor a number of other provisions that Kant tried to substantiate. But the main philosophical idea - historicism, the idea of development - remains unshakable.
Natural-science matters will dominate Kant's spiritual world for a long time to come. But along with them, there is also an interest in philosophy. The first actually philosophical work of Kant was his dissertation "New illumination of the first principles of metaphysical knowledge". Kant explores the principle of sufficient reason established by Leibniz. He distinguishes between the basis of the being of an object and the basis of its knowledge, the real and logical basis. The properties of the ether serve as the real basis for the movement of light at a certain speed. The basis for the knowledge of this phenomenon was given by observations of the satellites of Jupiter. It was noticed that the pre-calculated eclipses of these celestial bodies occur later in those cases when Jupiter is the most distant from the Earth. From this it was concluded that the propagation of light occurs in time, and the speed of light was calculated. In these arguments, the germ of the future dualism: the world of real things and the world of our knowledge are not identical.
His next work - "Physical Monadology" - Kant begins with the image of the methodological crossroads at which he found himself. He agrees with natural scientists that nothing should be admitted into natural science "without agreement with experience." However, he is dissatisfied with those who are so attached to this principle that they do not allow anything beyond directly observable data. "After all, they remain only with the phenomena of nature, are always equally far from the understanding of the first causes hidden for them, and will never reach the science of the very nature of bodies any more than those who would convince themselves that, climbing to a higher and higher peak mountains, they will finally feel the sky with their hand. The data of experience, according to Kant, are significant insofar as they give us an idea of the laws of empirical reality, but they cannot lead to knowledge of the origin and causes of laws. Hence his conclusion; "... metaphysics, without which, in the opinion of many, it is quite possible to do without when resolving physical problems, it alone provides help here, kindling the light of knowledge" .
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It should be borne in mind that Kant had to deal with the metaphysics of the Wolffian school, which expelled all living content from Leibniz's philosophy. Unlike the previous period, when metaphysics carried a positive content and was associated with discoveries in mathematics and physics, in the 18th century it turned exclusively to the systematization of accumulated knowledge and fell into dogmatism. Simplifying and systematizing the picture of the real world, Wolffian metaphysics consistently adhered to the identification of being with thinking, looked at the world through the glasses of formal logic. It was believed that the logical and real foundations are identical, that is, the logical relationship of foundation and effect is equivalent to the relationship of cause and effect; things are interconnected in the same way that concepts are interconnected. Kant, however, has already shown that this is not the case.
In the work "False sophistication in the four figures of the syllogism" (1762), Kant questions certain provisions of formal logic. The latter he calls a colossus with feet of clay. He does not flatter himself with the hope of overthrowing this colossus, although he threatens him. Kant makes a demand to logic to trace the formation of concepts. Concepts arise from judgments. And what is the mysterious power that makes judgments possible? Kant's answer is that judgments are possible thanks to the ability to turn sensory representations into an object of thought. The answer is significant: it testifies to Kant's first, as yet very vague, desire to create a new theory of knowledge. Prior to this, he shared the Wolffian admiration for deduction, was convinced that the possibilities of deriving some concepts from others were unlimited (although his own studies of nature were based on experimental data). Now he is thinking about how to introduce empirical knowledge into philosophy. Kant's work did not go unnoticed. She was greeted with positive feedback, and one anonymous reviewer (suggested that it was M. Mendelssohn) described the author of the article as "a brave man who threatens the German academies with a terrible revolution)" .
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The coming philosophical revolution is also foreshadowed by the ideas that Kant expresses in the treatise "The Experience of Introducing the Concept of Negative Values into Philosophy". Kant complains that the problems under consideration are not yet sufficiently clear to him, but he publishes his work on the basis of a firm belief in their significance and an understanding that even unfinished experiments in the field of philosophy can be useful, because the solution to the problem is more often found not by the one who puts him. Kant's attention is drawn to the problem of the unity of opposites. The starting point of his reasoning is the difference established in his dissertation between the logical and real foundations. What is true for logic may not be true for reality. The logical opposition consists in the fact that, regarding the same thing, a statement is simultaneously affirmed and denied. Logic forbids both statements to be true. A body cannot be said to be both moving and at rest at the same time. Another thing is the real opposite, consisting in the opposite direction of forces. Here, too, one cancels out the other, but the effect is not nothing, but something. Two equal forces can act on the body in opposite directions, the result will be the rest of the body, which is also something really existing. The world around us is full of such real opposites. Mathematics in the doctrine of negative quantities has long operated with the concept of real opposition. Philosophy must adopt certain principles from mathematics, the truth of which has been proven by nature itself.
In 1762, the Berlin Academy of Sciences announced an open competition to find out whether philosophical truths, in particular the foundations of theology and morality, contain the possibility of proof as obvious as truths in geometry have; if such a possibility does not exist, then what is the nature of these fundamentals, what is the degree of their reliability and has
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whether the last completeness of persuasiveness? It seemed that the theme was specially invented for Kant, who was beginning to wake up from his "dogmatic sleep" in the arms of Wolffian metaphysics. Comparing philosophy with mathematics, Kant speaks of the qualitative diversity of the objects of the former in comparison with the objects of the latter. Compare the concept of a trillion with the concept of freedom. The relation of a trillion to a unit is clear to everyone, but no one has yet been able to reduce freedom to its constituent units, that is, to simple and well-known concepts. Many people, of course, consider philosophy an easier science than higher mathematics, but these people call philosophy everything that is contained in books with that name. Meanwhile, a true philosophy has not yet been written. Philosophy must assimilate the method introduced by Newton into natural science, the method which produced such fruitful results there. But what about theology? What experience can prove the existence of God? The experience on which philosophy must rely is not only the testimony of the senses, but also "inner experience", direct consciousness. Thanks to the latter, according to Kant, the knowledge of God becomes very reliable. Competitive work required an answer to the question about the fundamental principles of morality. Here, according to Kant, the necessary degree of evidence has not yet been reached, things are worse than with theology, although in principle a reliable justification of morality is quite possible. And Kant expresses an important consideration for his further philosophical development; one must not confuse truth and goodness, knowledge and moral feeling. At the same time, he refers to F. Hutcheson and A. E. Shaftesbury as the thinkers who most succeeded in revealing the fundamental principles of morality.
But the main role in awakening Kant's interest in the problem of man was played by J. J. Rousseau. After Newton, he was the second thinker who had the most significant influence on the young Kant. If through the prism of Newtonian equations the Königsberg philosopher looked at the boundless stellar world, then Rousseau's paradoxes helped him look into the recesses human soul. According to Kant, Newton saw order and correctness for the first time.
17
where before him only disordered diversity was found, and Rousseau discovered in human diversity the unified nature of man. Kant owed the books of Rousseau, first of all, the liberation from a number of prejudices of the armchair scientist, a kind of democratization of thinking. "I have a great thirst for knowledge ... There was a time when I thought that all this could do honor to mankind, and I despised the mob, who knew nothing. Rousseau corrected me. The indicated blinding superiority disappears; I learn to respect people ..." It was not just a change of outlook, it was a moral renewal, a revolution in life attitudes.
In addition to Rousseau, Kant later named Hume as a thinker who helped him wake up from his "dogmatic sleep." The French enthusiast and the English skeptic - again two opposites merge into one in the contradictory nature of Kant. Rousseau "corrected" Kant as a man and a moralist, Hume influenced his theoretical and epistemological searches, prompted a revision of metaphysical dogmas.
Under the influence of Rousseau and the English sensualists, Kant writes Observations on the Sense of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764). This treatise, which went through eight lifetime editions, brought Kant fame as a fashionable writer. The philosopher performs in an unusual genre for himself - as an essayist. The enthusiastic pathos of the first works disappeared, humor and irony appeared; the syllable acquired elegance and aphorism. Kant writes about the world of human feelings, considering them through the prism of two categories - beautiful and sublime. At the same time, there is no talk of aesthetics in the treatise. It does not contain any strict definitions. All approximately, figuratively.
The night is sublime, Kant argues, the day is beautiful. The sublime excites, the beautiful attracts. The sublime must always be significant, the beautiful can be small. The beauty of an act lies primarily in the fact that it is performed easily and, as it were, without tension; overcome difficulties cause admiration and belong to the sublime. The mind of a woman is beautiful, the mind of a man is deep, and that is just another expression for the sublime.
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Here Kant expresses some considerations about the difference between people according to temperaments. Again, he does not seek to exhaust the subject; the beautiful and the sublime serve for him as a kind of rod on which he strings his entertaining observations. In the realm of the sublime there is a melancholic temperament. Kant clearly gives preference to him, although he also sees some of his weaknesses.
The last section of his "Observations ..." Kant devotes to the peculiarities of the national character. This is one of the first steps in social psychology, a science that only today has acquired a more rigorous empirical basis. Kant is content with his own observations; he subsequently returned to them repeatedly each time he gave a course in anthropology. They are not always accurate, sometimes controversial, mostly original. Behind his bright, perhaps sometimes arbitrary passages, lies deep meaning: they anticipate a change in the spiritual atmosphere of the country, the coming turn from reason to feelings, the emergence of a keen interest in the unique experiences of the individual. Here you can feel the approach of "Storm and Drang".
This movement will soon shake up intellectual Germany. But so far, only latent processes are underway. And Kant, in particular, does not publish everything he thinks about. It must be said that Kant developed a habit from a young age: to put any thought that came into his head immediately onto paper. Sometimes these were specially prepared sheets, more often - the first scrap that accidentally caught my eye. Sometimes we find here notes that strike with the depth of insight; they overtake systematic thought. There are also unfinished phrases, and polished aphorisms, and preparations for future works. This is the most important addition to the completed works.
In draft notes relating to the period of work on "Observations ...", Kant (following Rousseau) approaches the problem of alienation. The term is unknown to him, but he grasps the essence of the matter correctly. The point is that ugly social relations turn the results of human activity into something alien, hostile. How
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good can turn into evil, Kant shows by the example of science. "The harm brought by science to people consists mainly in the fact that the vast majority of those who want to manifest themselves in it do not achieve an improvement in reason, but only its perversion, not to mention the fact that for the majority science serves only as an instrument for satisfying vanity". According to Kant, science in contemporary society is infected with two diseases. The name of one is the narrowness of the horizon, the one-sidedness of thinking, the name of the other is the absence of a worthy goal. Kant will repeatedly return to this theme. Science needs a "supreme philosophical oversight". The scientist becomes a kind of one-eyed monster if he "does not have a philosophical eye." This is a dangerous ugliness when a person closes in one area of knowledge: “I call such a scientist a cyclops. He is an egoist of science, and he needs another eye to look at things from the point of view of other people. The humanization of sciences is based on this, i.e., the humanity of honey agarics ... The second eye is the self-knowledge of the human mind, without which we have no measure of the greatness of our knowledge ". Kant sets himself the task of overcoming the vices of contemporary science. "If there is a science, indeed necessary to a person, then this is the one that I teach - namely, to properly take the place indicated to a person in the world - and from which you can learn what you need to be in order to be a person ". This recognition is of fundamental importance for Kant. He forever parted with learned arrogance an educator admiring his omniscience, idolizing the omnipotence of science. The value of knowledge is determined by moral orientation; the science to which he wants to devote himself is the science of people. From now on, the problem of man is at the center of Kant's philosophical searches. The whole question is what a person really needs, how to help him.
One thing is certain: a person should not fool his head. Kant's essay Dreams of a Spiritualist Explained by Dreams of a Metaphysician (1766) is directed against those who try to get by with this. Before us, again, is not a scientific treatise, rather, an essay. The reason for writing it was
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activities of E. Swedenborg, a remarkable person. A well-known Swedish scientist and inventor in his time, an expert in mineralogy, elected a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Swedenborg, in his old age, declared himself a visionary. He assured that he was in close relations with the spirits of the dead, receiving information from them from another world. Incredible stories were told about him. So, the widow of the Dutch envoy at the Swedish court allegedly turned to him for help, from whom they demanded payment for a silver service made by order of her husband. Knowing the accuracy of her husband, the lady was sure that the debt had been paid, but she had no evidence, Swedenborg allegedly talked with the spirit of the deceased and soon informed the widow where the receipt was kept. Kant conveys this story ironically, seeing in it, as in other similar stories, a bizarre play of the imagination. “Therefore, I will not in the least condemn the reader,” writes Kant, “if, instead of considering the ghost-seers as half belonging to another world, he immediately writes them down as candidates for treatment in a hospital ...”
The point, however, is not only Swedenborg and his followers. Kant puts the adepts of speculative metaphysics on the same level with the "spiritual seers". If the former are the "dreamers of feeling," then the latter are the "dreamers of the mind." Metaphysicians also dream, they take their ideas for the true order of things. The philosopher does not envy their "discoveries", he is only afraid that some sane person, not distinguished by courtesy, would not say to them the same thing that answered the astronomer Tycho Brahe, who was trying to determine the road by the stars, his coachman: "Oh, master, you may well understand everything in heaven, but here on earth you are a fool." Such is Kant's parting word to Wolffian metaphysics. He laughs not only at visionaryism, but also at speculative speculations, he calls on people of science to rely on experience, and only on experience - the alpha and omega of knowledge.
Kant says goodbye to metaphysics, but he cannot part. He admits that by the will of fate he is "in love with metaphysics", although she rarely shows her favor to him. This "failed romance" lasted for many years. All my
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University life Kant taught a course in metaphysics ("according to Baumgarten"), he was tormented by "damned" metaphysical questions - about the essence of the world, God, soul. But the further, the clearer it became that the answers could not be obtained speculatively. Therefore, Kant dreams of re-educating his beloved, he wants to see her only as a "companion of wisdom", drawing the boundaries of knowledge.
The educator is time. Kant publishes less and more, reflects more and more on the "main work". He mentioned it in one of his letters for the new year, 1766. The application for the "Critique of Pure Reason" has been made. The book will appear in fifteen years. During these years, many important events will take place in the spiritual life of Germany. Let us turn to them in order to then return to Kant fully armed with knowledge about what is happening around him and affecting his spiritual development.

2. LESSING AND THE LITERARY REVOLUTION
Kant was not the only one who paved the way for a general theory of development, who undermined the foundations of dogmatic metaphysics. Almost simultaneously with Kant's attack on the doctrine of the eternity of the solar system, in 1759 KF Wolf made the first attack on the theory of the constancy of species. Caspar Friedrich Wolf (1734-1794), a German physician and biologist who worked for many years in St. Petersburg, substantiated the theory of epigenesis, i.e., the development of an organism through neoplasm, in his dissertation "Theory of Origin". New organs gradually arise from pre-existing ones, the complex is formed from the simple. Wolff's ideas about ontogenesis (development of the individual) were later transferred to phylogenesis (development of the species). In the XVIII century. historicism is taking its first steps in the social disciplines as well. There are generalizing works on political history, on the history of philosophy. Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) laid the foundation for modern archeology and art history. A participant in the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, he taught to systematize the found monuments, to distinguish originals from fakes, and called for the study of disappeared cultures.
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But the most significant impulses came from fiction. The name of Lessing has already been mentioned above as an innovator who was destined to shape mindsets and tastes. N. G. Chernyshevsky will pay attention to the important role played by Lessing in the preparation of German classical philosophy. Despite the fact that Lessing left almost no philosophical works proper, Chernyshevsky writes, he "lay the foundation of the entire new German philosophy with his writings."

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was born in the Saxon town of Kamenz. The son of a pastor, he first studied at the theological faculty of the University of Leipzig, then switched to medicine. I started writing as a student. In Berlin, he publishes his famous "Literary Letters", which bring him the fame of the first critic.
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Germany. The seventeenth "letter", which is of the greatest interest, ends with an apology for Shakespeare: Shakespeare is a far greater tragic poet than Corneille. After Sophocles' Oedipus, no tragedy in the world will have more power over our passions than Othello, King Lear, Hamlet.
The treatise Pope the Metaphysician, dedicated to the English poet A. Pope, explores the difference between poetry and philosophy. Is it possible to compare poetry with a system of metaphysical truths? The philosopher adheres to precise and unambiguous terminology. The poet plays with words. He never seeks to express "strict, consistent truth", sometimes he says too much, sometimes he doesn't say something. Among philosophers, Jacob Boehme was capable of such a thing, and only he can be forgiven for such a thing. Strict order of presentation and poetry are incompatible things. “The philosopher who climbs Parnassus and the poet who intends to descend into the valleys of serious and calm wisdom meet halfway, where they, so to speak, exchange robes and turn back. Each brings to his abode the image of the other, but no more "The poet became a philosophical poet, and the sage became a poetic sage. And yet the philosophical poet is not a philosopher, and the poetic sage has not turned into a poet."
It is extremely important to draw a line between art and philosophy. In Lessing's time, the expression "beautiful science" (schone Wissenschaft) was in use, denoting art. The distinction between the two kinds of spiritual activity was not entirely clear. Lessing felt like a writer who stopped "halfway to philosophy." Here he met the theorist "halfway to literature" - Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). The result of the meeting is the treatise "Pope the Metaphysician", written in collaboration.
Lessing is known as a talented journalist, critic, poet, fabulist, playwright. In 1753-1755. published in six volumes of his first complete works. In the last volume - the last achievement by that time - "Miss Sarah Sampson". Lessing characterizes his play as a "burgher tragedy". Interest in the life of the individual -
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this is the new that the new, "burgher" era brought with it, which replaced feudalism and was marked by the breaking of the class hierarchy, the establishment of new, bourgeois principles in the economy and in spiritual life. A burgher is a citizen, a representative of the "third estate". But not only. A burgher is a citizen, a bearer of law and order. Finally, the burgher is the owner, the bourgeois.
Brighter than in Sarah Sampson, the civic, burgher ideal of an independent person living under the rule of law is expressed in Minna von Barnhelm. The play tells about the fate of an officer. The fearless and incorruptible Major Telheim is suspected of bribery, but at the end of the play the news comes: King Frederick II again calls him under his banner. A native of Courland, Telheim serves in the Prussian army and marries a girl from Saxony. This was seen as a call for the unity of the nation.
"Minna von Barnhelm" served as the main reason for the emergence of the "legend of Lessing" as a loyal bard of Prussianism. F. Mehring dispelled the legend: in "Minn" he saw not an apology, but criticism of the Friedrichian order. But this does not give grounds for another legend that overestimates the revolutionary nature of the German enlightener.
The question is how to evaluate the play "Emilia Galotti". In the five-volume "History of German Literature" "Emilia Galotti" is called "the first play of the revolutionary German theater." From "Emilia Galotti" supposedly "there comes the theater of the young Schiller and in many respects the theater" Storm and Onslaught ". Meanwhile, according to Goethe," Schiller had a very special attitude to the works of Lessing; in essence, he did not like them, and "Emilia Galotti" was downright disgusting to him. "What's the matter, Goethe does not explain. It is quite possible that Schiller just lacked Lessing's tyranny.
Why does Odoardo Galotti kill his daughter, who was seduced by the prince, and not her seducer? Yes, because Odoardo is not a fighter, but an avenger, and also very impulsive. Maybe I'm wrong, but in addition to the problem of law and order that concerns Lessing, in "Emilia Galotti" there is a controversy with the newly emerged movement "The Tempest
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and onslaught." The "Sturmers" proclaimed the primacy of feeling over reason, put the individual above the universal. Lessing showed where this would lead if the sense of proportion was lost. "Father's act is not an example of meaningfulness. In no case! The old man, like his frightened daughter, lost his head in the stupefying court atmosphere, and it was precisely this confusion, the danger that such characters carry, that the poet directly wanted to portray.
In 1766, Lessing published Laocoon, a treatise on the difference between the plastic arts and poetry. The notion of the identity of these art forms, inherited from antiquity, was called into question in the 18th century. Laocoön is polemical. Its author spoke out against Winckelmann's concept set forth in his work "Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture". (By the time the work on Laocoön was completed, Winckelmann's History of the Art of Antiquity had also appeared; references to it are contained in the last sections of the treatise.) The dispute arose, it seemed, on a private occasion. Why is the dying priest Laocoön depicted in the famous sculptural group uttering not an insane cry, but a muffled cry? Winckelmann saw in this an expression of the national character of the Greeks, their stoic greatness of spirit. Lessing held a different opinion: the essence of the matter lies in the specifics of sculpture. The tragedy of Sophocles "Philoctetes" is also a work Greek art, however, her wounded hero screams out loud. What narrative art can express is not permitted in plastic art. The poet has a wider range of expressive means. This does not mean that poetry is superior to painting and sculpture. There is simply a difference in the subject and ways of depicting. Some poetic images are not suitable for a painter, and, conversely, other pictures, when you try to convey them in verse or prose, lose their power of influence.
Lessing searches for "root causes". Art imitates reality, which exists in space and time. Hence the two kinds of art. The space is filled with bodies. Bodies with their visible properties constitute the subject of painting. Time is sequence
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actions. The latter are the subject of poetry. The difference, Lessing clarifies, is relative: painting can also depict actions, but only indirectly, with the help of bodies, and, conversely, poetry can depict bodies with the help of actions.
So, at the disposal of the artist (painter or sculptor) is not a period of time, but only one moment of it. Therefore, you need to choose the one that is most fruitful. “Only that which excites the free play of the imagination is fruitful. The more we look, the more we imagine, and the more the thought works, the more is given to our vision. But the image of any passion at the moment of the highest tension has this advantage least of all. Behind such an image there is nothing more: to show the eye this limiting point means to tie the wings of fantasy. That's why Laocoön only groans; it is easy for the imagination to imagine him screaming, and if he screamed, fantasy could not rise one step higher.
The observation is subtle, and it turned out to be fair not for one sculpture; this is the most important feature of art in general. "Productive moment" is looking for any artist, including a writer. Lack of understanding, a figure of silence, deliberate incompleteness of the image are the favorite devices of literature. Sometimes a hint is more powerful than a detailed description. Any artist, including a writer, reproduces life, but not in full detail, but in a generalized way, leaving room for the imagination of the viewer or reader. Aesthetic experience arises both from the "recognition" of reality, and from the fact that one has to "think" the image created by the artist. Such a conclusion arises when reading the Laocoön. Let us remember the conclusion: the problem of the imagination (and its "free play") will take the most important place in Kant's "critical" philosophy.
In 1767, a new bright stage began in the life and work of Lessing. The German National Theater opened in Hamburg, where the best actors are gathered. The new theater invited Lessing to the post of "playwright", that is, the head of the literary part. Hence the name of the new theatrical journal started by Lessing -
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"Hamburg Dramaturgy". The announcement of the publication of the magazine said: "Our Dramaturgy will be a critical list of all the plays that will be staged on the stage, and will follow every step that the art of the poet and actor will make in this field." During the year, thin books were regularly published twice a week, containing an analysis of performances and general reflections on the nature of dramatic art. Taken together, they formed a fundamental treatise, which is still considered the cornerstone of theatrical aesthetics. Usually the book contains the result obtained by the author. Here before us and the author's search. We see how Lessing's thought moves, how questions arise before him, how the answer is not immediately revealed.
In one of the first issues, the program was clearly formulated: "The theater should be a school of morality." But how can this be done? Since the time of Aristotle, it has been known that the law of the theater, as well as art in general, is the coincidence of the general and the individual. This applies to the speech of actors, and to their facial expressions, and to gestures. The gesture must be both "significant" and "individual". Lessing reminds readers of the advice that Shakespeare's Hamlet gives to wandering actors: words should easily slip off the tongue, do not shout on stage, observe the measure. There are few voices that would not be unpleasant under extreme tension. And hearing, like sight, the public should not be offended. Already in the Laocoön, boundaries were set for the transmission of the ugly. In "Hamburg Drama" Lessing writes that the art of the actor occupies the middle between fine arts and poetry. You can afford more in a play than on a canvas, but even here there are limits. Living people move on the stage, and yet this does not mean that life itself is on the stage. Truthfulness should not reach "to the most extreme illusion." You can not demand from the play and complete coincidence with historical facts. Tragedy is not history told in the form of conversations. With such reservations, Lessing accepts the thesis that goes back to Aristotle about art as an imitation of nature.
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Reservations also arise about the thesis about the unity of the general and the individual. It would seem an axiom that in art we are dealing with "raising a particular phenomenon into a general type." But Corneille violated the axiom. Lessing from his youth did not favor Corneille. Here he reveals the discrepancy between the principles of the French playwright and the ideas of Aristotle. The French "overloaded the expression, applied colors too thickly, until the characterized faces turned into personified characters ...".
Corneille, okay, but Diderot also started talking about the fact that such a degree of individualization is impossible in comedy as in tragedy. You can hardly find more than a dozen comic characters in life; the comedian, therefore, does not display personalities, but types, entire estates. Diderot spoke of the "ideal character". Lessing is not so much arguing with Diderot as striving to comprehend the difficulties he has identified. Why does Diderot bother about not being in contradiction with Aristotle, and at the same time contradicting him? Eventually Lessing finds a way out. He talks about two options artistic generalization, about the two meanings of the term "universal character": "In the first sense, a universal character is one in which those traits that can be seen in many or all individuals are brought together. In short, this is an overloaded character, rather a personified idea of \u200b\u200bcharacter than in another sense, a general character is one in which a certain middle is taken, an equal proportion of everything that is seen in many or in all individuals. In short, it is an ordinary character, ordinary not in the sense of the character itself, but because degree, measure of it" 3.
For some reason, those who write about the "Hamburg Dramaturgy" do not pay attention to this passage in the 95th edition. And here is just the quintessence of the treatise, according to the author, "fermenta cogitationis" - enzymes of thinking. Lessing believes that only "universality in the second meaning" corresponds to the views of Aristotle. As for the universality of the first kind, which creates "overloaded characters" and "personified ideas", it is "much more extraordinary" than Aristotle's universality allows. The problem of two possibilities of artistic generalization is one of the main ones in the German aesthetics of the subsequent time. To her
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we'll be back. In the meantime, let's pay attention to one meaningful tirade contained in the "Hamburg Dramaturgy". Lessing writes: "... it is not only writers who do not like to hear truthful judgments about themselves. We now, thank God, have a school of critics," the best criticism of which is that they undermine the credibility of any criticism. "Genius! genius!" they shout. "Genius is beyond all rules! What a genius does is the rule."
This was the first all-German social movement caused by a crisis in the feudal order, a crisis in the economy, in social relations, in the state system, in various forms of ideology. The movement was limited to the spiritual sphere, the "storm" raged only in literature, the "onslaught" did not go beyond the printed editions. This was manifested in an explosion of individualism, in an increased interest in the problems of the individual, in the inner life of an individual, in a sharp distrust of reason, in the rationalistic principles that the thinkers of the early Enlightenment defended. The complexity, the richness, the mysterious depths of man's spiritual life were suddenly revealed. This was perceived by many as a discovery that surpassed in significance the discovery of America: in every person, unknown continents of passions, feelings, and experiences are hidden.
Lessing was the forerunner of this "literary revolution" and its critic. He showed a keen interest in the life of the individual, the sturmers brought him to the extreme, to irrationalism and subjective arbitrariness. Kant, with his Observations on the Sense of the Sublime and Beautiful, contributed to the birth of Sturm und Drang. But the strongest impetus to the movement was given by Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788). A man completely alien to natural science, at the same time a connoisseur of languages and a brilliant erudite, Haman wrote in a heavy manner, overloaded with hints and omissions. His pamphlet "Socratic Landmarks" (1759) is dedicated to "no one and two". "Nobody" is the reading public. One of the "two" is Kant (the other is the businessman Berens). It is clearly said to Kant that he would like to become like Newton and become a Wardein (so
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was called the inspector of the quality of the coin) of philosophy; but in the circulation of money in Germany there is much more order than in the textbooks of metaphysics: the sages have not yet invented a standard by which one could determine the presence of truth in their ideas, as one measures the content of precious metals in a small coin.
Haman speaks not so much about the Athenian sage, but about himself, about his spiritual quest. Like his great predecessor, who became in opposition to the enlightened Athenians, Haman renounces the enlightenment postulates. "We think too abstractly" - that's the main problem. Our logic forbids contradiction, yet it is precisely in it that the truth lies. Prohibition is "parricide of thought". The Delphic oracle called Socrates the wisest, who admitted that he knew nothing. Which of them lied - Socrates or the oracle? Both were right. The main thing for Gaman is self-knowledge; here, in his opinion, the mind is powerless, knowledge is a hindrance; only faith based on an inner feeling can help. Under his pen, Socrates turns into an irrationalist, a herald of Christianity: the Athenian philosopher wanted to lead his fellow citizens out of the labyrinth of learned sophistry to the truth, which lies in the "secret", in the worship of the "secret god". This is how Haman sees his lot.
Another book of Hamann's that attracted attention was The Philologist's Crusades (1762), a collection centered on an essay with the somewhat unusual title "Aesthetics in a Walnut". First of all, the very word "aesthetics" was unusual. It was introduced shortly before by A. Baumgarten to designate the doctrine of beauty, which for him was equivalent to the theory sensory knowledge. A follower of Leibniz and Wolff, Baumgarten considered the aesthetic, the sphere of feelings, to be the lowest level of knowledge. Haman, on the very first page of his essay, categorically asserts the opposite: in sensual images "the whole wealth of human knowledge consists," there is nothing higher than the image. Poetry is the native language of mankind. Wolfians Haman reproaches in scholasticism, in isolation from life and nature. "Your deadly false philosophy has taken nature out of its way." The Wolfians want to dominate nature; meanwhile they bind themselves hand and foot. Those who think they are masters turn out to be slaves.
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Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) eagerly listened to Hamann's sermons. A student of Kant in Koenigsberg, who absorbed the ideas of his cosmogonic hypothesis and tried to transfer it to other spheres of being, he was equally guided by Kant's antipode Hamann. Herder's first works - "Fragments on the Newest German Literature" (1766-1768) and "Critical Forests" (1769) - testified to brilliant literary abilities, the desire to avoid extremes, and interest in the idea of development. In the autumn of 1770 Herder arrives in Strasbourg. Here he meets Goethe, which played a significant role in the life of both leaders of "Sturm und Drang". Here Herder wrote his famous treatise "On the Origin of Language" (1772), awarded a prize at the competition of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

Herder connects the emergence of language with the development of culture. The treatise is devoted to the consideration of natural laws that determined the need for the emergence of language. If we consider a person only as an animal, he will appear in a very pitiful and helpless form. However, the weakness of a person becomes the source of his strength. A person deprived of instincts develops another ability bestowed on him by nature - "smartness", that is, intelligence in potency. Continuous improvement is a human feature. This development, the like of which no animal knows, has no limit. Man is never complete in himself. The development of the intellect influences the development of language, and vice versa, a chain of words becomes a chain of thoughts. The history of language is inseparable from the history of thought.
The weakness of a person becomes the cause of his strength also because it forces him to unite with other people. Kinship ties, absent in the animal world, are elementary social ties. Without society, a person would run wild, wither, like a flower torn from the stem and roots of a plant. Developing, society improves the language. The progress of language is endless, as is the development of society itself. Here Herder puts for the first time
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the question of continuity in the development of culture. Just as an individual assimilates accumulated experience, so do peoples perceive the achievements of past generations. The cultural tradition is transmitted from people to people, taking on new and new forms. Herder turns to the study of the origins of culture. Having settled in Bückeburg in 1771, where he took the post of court preacher, Herder studied folk art, studied the Bible, considering it both as the result of divine revelation and as ancient monument literature.
In addition to Herder and Hamann, the writer Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) and the young philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) joined the religiously minded wing of Sturm und Drang. Another leader of the "stormy geniuses", Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), does not share the pious aspirations of his friend and mentor Herder. He blasphemes, composes rebellious verses. "I don't know anything more miserable than you, gods! Honor you? Why?" These words are taken from Goethe's "Prometheus" - a poem that has become a kind of poetic manifesto of the "left" wing of "Storm and Drang". Among the radical "Sturmers" we find the former student of Kant J. Lenz (1751-1792), the future Kantians F. M. Klinger (1752-1831) and A. Burger (1747-1794). The movement turned out to be heterogeneous and contradictory: rebelliousness was combined with political indifference and conservatism, sympathy for the people - with extreme individualism, a critical attitude towards religion - with pious exaltation. But everyone was united by an interest in man, in his unique spiritual world.
Lessing shared this interest, but avoided extremes. At the center of the ideological disputes of this period is the problem of religion. The state of the contemporary church does not satisfy Lessing, but he is also far from the "newfangled" rationalist theologians who tried to "clean up" Lutheranism. He writes to his brother: “The religious system that they want to replace the old one seems to me to be more than a cook of stupid people and half-philosophers.”
In 1774, Lessing began to publish excerpts from the work of Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) "Apology, or Essay in Defense of the Reasonable Admirers of God."
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The work of Reimarus disputed the inspiration of the Bible and its significance for the knowledge of the truth; The Bible is full of contradictions, its heroes are deceivers, voluptuaries, murderers. Reimarus is looking for a true, "natural" religion, not built on revelation, but derived from the inner nature of man; he is a deist and demands toleration towards deists. As you might expect, the appearance of the texts of Reymarus caused a ferment of minds. Attacks on Lessing began. Defending himself, Lessing in a series of brilliant articles defended the right to research in any field of knowledge, including the history of religion, he expressed bold ideas, ridiculed his main opponent, Pastor Getze, showing his ignorance. Eventually, intervention by the authorities silenced Lessing. But the last word in the dispute still remained with him. It was uttered in The Education of the Human Race and in Nathan the Wise.
"Education of the human race" is one hundred theses about the moral progress of mankind. Different types of religions are the product of certain historical epochs. The genus, like the individual, goes through three ages. The Old Testament corresponds to the childhood of mankind, youth - New Testament. Maturity is coming - "the era of the new, eternal Gospel", when morality will become a universal, unconditional principle of behavior. The revelations of the Old Testament speak of a rough spiritual state of the world, when education is possible only through direct rewards and corporal punishment. In adolescence, a different teacher and other methods of education are needed. Christianity appeals to the highest motives of behavior: this is a higher stage of spiritual evolution, although not the last. Lessing is convinced that the human race will reach the highest level - perfection, universal enlightenment and moral purity, when morality will not be associated with faith in God, when a person "does good in the name of good, and not because someone else's arbitrariness to him there is a reward for this." In the meantime, he proposes to distinguish between the religion of Christ as a set of moral principles and the Christian religion, which is unacceptable to him, as the worship of an omnipotent deity. Whether Christ was more than human is problematic for Lessing. That he was a genuine person, if
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He existed at all, no doubt. Kant's "Religion within the Limits of Reason Only" and the works of early Hegel, the cradle of his dialectic, which was born in a persistent search for solutions to ethical problems, go back to Lessing's religious searches.
Lessing is afraid of fanaticism, religious and any other. Evidence of this is "Nathan the Wise", which cannot be understood without having studied the theses of "Education ..." (and the latter are incomplete and unclear without "Nathan" - these things complement each other). There was controversy around the last play of Lessing on issues of religion and religious tolerance. Without describing all the battles, I will only give a final description of F. Mering, who insists that "nothing can be more stupid than looking for belittling in" Nathan " Christian religion or the glorification of the Jewish ". The play is publicistic and didactic, the characters are deliberately "poster". The author acted quite consciously, parting (in the methodological aspect) with Shakespeare, from whom he studied all his life, and turning again to Corneille (not a bad playwright at all). Our acquaintance with the "Hamburg Dramaturgy", with the concept of "non-Aristotelian" artistic generalization outlined there, allows us to draw such a conclusion.
Lessing died early in 1781. The Critique of Pure Reason was published in May. However, there was no direct relay race in spiritual primacy: Kant's main work went unnoticed for a long time, and around the name of Lessing, a heated philosophical controversy suddenly flared up posthumously, which led intellectual Germany away from the problems posed by Kant. It was the famous "controversy about pantheism."