The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
GA 4
XIV. Individuality and Genus
[ 1 ] Against the view that the human being has it in him to be a complete, self-contained, free individuality, there seems to stand the fact that he appears as a part within a natural whole (race, ancestral line, folk, family, male or female gender), and that he is active within a whole (state, church, and so on). He bears the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and gives a content to his actions which is determined by the place he holds within the larger group.
[ 2 ] Given this, is individuality still possible at all? Can one still regard the human being himself as whole in himself, seeing that he grows out of one whole and integrates himself into another?
[ 3 ] A part of a whole, in its characteristics and functions, is determined by the whole. An ethnic group is a whole, and everyone belonging to it bears the characteristic traits that are determined by the nature of the group. How the single person is constituted and how he acts is determined by the character of the group. Through this the physiognomy and behavior of the individual person takes on something of a generic quality. If we ask for the reason why this or that about a person is this or that way, then we are directed away form the individual person and toward his genus. The genus explains to us why something about him appears in the form in which we observe it.
[ 4 ] The human being frees himself, however, from these generic qualities. For man's generic qualities, when rightly experienced by him, are not something which restrict his freedom, and should also not be made to do so by artificial means. The human being develops traits and functions for himself whose determining factors can only be sought within man himself. His generic qualities serve him thereby only as a medium through which to express his particular being. He uses the characteristic traits given by nature as a basis and gives to what is generic a form in accordance with his own being. Now we would seek in vain the reason for an action of this being within the laws of the genus. We have to do with an individual who can be explained only through himself. If a person has won his way through to this detachment from the generic, and if, even then, we still want to explain everything about him by the characteristics of the genus, then we have no organ for what is individual.
[ 5 ] It is impossible to understand a person entirely, if one bases one's judgment upon a generic concept. One persists the most in judging according to the genus where it is a matter of gender. A man sees in a woman, a woman in a man, almost always too much of the general characteristics of the opposite sex and too little of what is individual. In practical life this does less harm to men than to women. The social position of women is such an unworthy one mostly because in many respects what her position ought to be is not determined by the individual qualities of a particular woman but rather by the general picture one forms of the natural task and the needs of women. The activities of a man direct themselves in life according to his individual abilities and inclinations; those of a woman are supposed to be determined exclusively through the fact that she is after all a woman. A woman is supposed to be a slave to what is generic, to womanhood in general. As long as it is debated by men whether a woman is fitted “by natural disposition” for this or that profession, the so-called woman's question cannot get out of its most elementary stage. What a woman can want according to her nature must be left up to the woman to judge. If it is true that women are fitted only to the tasks which are presently theirs, then they will hardly be able out of themselves to attain to any others. But they must be allowed to determine for themselves what is in accordance with their nature. The response is someone who fears an upheaval of our social structure if women are to be regarded, not as generic entities, but rather as individuals, is that a social structure in which one half of mankind leads an existence unworthy of a human being is in fact very much in need of improvement.1Immediately upon publication of this book (1894) the objection was raised against the above arguments, that, within her generic sphere a woman can already now live out her life just as individualistically as she could want, much more freely than a man can, who, through schooling and then through war and profession is already stripped of his individuality. I know that one will raise this objective perhaps even more strongly today. In spite of this I must still let these sentences stand here and would like to hope that there will also be readers who understand how great a violence such an objection does to the concept of inner freedom which is developed in this book, and who will judge the above sentences of mine by something other than by how a man is stripped of his individuality by schooling and profession.
[ 6 ] Whoever judges people according to generic characteristics gets only as far, in fact, as the boundary line beyond which people start to become beings whose activity is based upon free self-determination. What lies below this boundary can, of course, be the object of scientific study. The characteristic traits of races, ancestral lines, peoples, and sexes are the content of particular sciences. Only people who wanted to live solely as examples of genus could make themselves coincide with the general image which arises out of the observations of such sciences. All these sciences, however, cannot penetrate through to the particular content of the individual. Where the realm of freedom (of thinking and doing) begins, the determining of the individual by generic laws ends. The conceptual content which man, through his thinking, must bring into connection with perception in order to take hold of full reality (see page 77ff.), this no one can establish once and for all and leave behind for mankind in a finished form. Each individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual person is to think cannot be deduced from any generic concepts. It it purely and simply the individual who decides this. And just as little should the concrete goals which the individual wants to set for his willing be determined out of general human characteristics. Whoever wants to understand the single individuality must enter into his particular being, and not stop short at typical characteristics. In this sense every single human being is a riddle. And every science that concerns itself with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is only a preparation for that knowledge which is afforded us when a human individuality communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for that other knowledge which we gain from the content of his willing. Wherever we have the feeling that here we have to do with that in a person which is free of any typical way of thinking and free of any generic willing, there we must cease from taking recourse to any concept out of our spirit, if we want to understand his being. The activity of knowing consists in the joining of concept and perception through thinking. With all other objects the observer must gain his concepts through his intuition; with understanding a free individuality it is only a matter of purely (without mixing in our own conceptual content) taking over into our spirit his concepts, by which he, after all, determines himself. People who immediately mix their own concepts into every judgment about another person can never arrive at an understanding of an individuality. Just as the free individuality makes himself free of the characteristics of genus, so must our knowing activity free itself from the way generic qualities are understood.
[ 7 ] Only to the extent that a person has made himself free of generic qualities in the way indicated does he come into consideration as a free spirit within a human community. No man is entirely genus; none is all individuality. But every person gradually frees a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic qualities of animal life and from the commandments, ruling him, of human authorities.
[ 8 ] In that part of his being in which he cannot attain such inner freedom, however, man is incorporated into the organism of nature and of the spirit. He lives in this respect as he sees other live, or as they command. Only that part of his actions which springs from his intuitions has an ethical value in the true sense. And whatever he has about him in the way of moral instincts, inherited from social instincts, becomes something ethical through his taking it up into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind springs from individual ethical intuitions and from their being taken up into human communities. One can also say that the moral life of mankind is the sum total of the creations of the moral imagination of free human individuals. These are the findings of monism.
XIV. Individualität und Gattung
[ 1 ] Der Ansicht, daß der Mensch zu einer vollständigen in sich geschlossenen, freien Individualität veranlagt ist, stehen scheinbar die Tatsachen entgegen, daß er als Glied innerhalb eines natürlichen Ganzen auftritt (Rasse, Stamm, Volk, Familie, männliches und weibliches Geschlecht), und daß er innerhalb eines Ganzen wirkt (Staat, Kirche und so weiter). Er trägt die allgemeinen Charaktereigentümlichkeiten der Gemeinschaft, der er angehört, und gibt seinem Handeln einen Inhalt, der durch den Platz, den er innerhalb einer Mehrheit einnimmt, bestimmt ist.
[ 2 ] Ist dabei überhaupt noch Individualität möglich? Kann man den Menschen selbst als ein Ganzes für sich ansehen, wenn er aus einem Ganzen herauswächst, und in ein Ganzes sich eingliedert?
[ 3 ] Das Glied eines Ganzen wird seinen Eigenschaften und Funktionen nach durch das Ganze bestimmt. Ein Volksstamm ist ein Ganzes, und alle zu ihm gehörigen Menschen tragen die Eigentümlichkeiten an sich, die im Wesen des Stammes bedingt sind. Wie der einzelne beschaffen ist und wie er sich betätigt, ist durch denStammescharakter bedingt. Dadurch erhält die Physiognomie und das Tun des einzelnen etwas Gattungsmäßiges. Wenn wir nach dem Grunde fragen, warum dies und jenes an dem Menschen so oder so ist, so werden wir aus dem Einzelwesen hinaus auf die Gattung verwiesen. Diese erklärt es uns, warum etwas an ihm in der von uns beobachteten Form auftritt.
[ 4 ] Von diesem Gattungsmäßigen macht sich aber der Mensch frei. Denn das menschlich Gattungsmäßige ist, vom Menschen richtig erlebt, nichts seine Freiheit Einschränkendes, und soll es auch nicht durch künstliche Veranstaltungen sein. Der Mensch entwickelt Eigenschaften und Funktionen an sich, deren Bestimmungsgrund wir nur in ihm selbst suchen können. Das Gattungsmäßige dient ihm dabei nur als Mittel, um seine besondere Wesenheit in ihm auszudrücken. Er gebraucht die ihm von der Natur mitgegebenen Eigentümlichkeiten als Grundlage und gibt ihm die seinem eigenen Wesen gemäße Form. Wir suchen nun vergebens den Grund für eine Äußerung dieses Wesens in den Gesetzen der Gattung. Wir haben es mit einem Individuum zu tun, das nur durch sich selbst erklärt werden kann. Ist ein Mensch bis zu dieser Loslösung von dem Gattungsmäßigen durchgedrungen, und wir wollen alles, was an ihm ist, auch dann noch aus dem Charakter der Gattung erklären, so haben wir für das Individuelle kein Organ.
[ 5 ] Es ist unmöglich, einen Menschen ganz zu verstehen, wenn man seiner Beurteilung einen Gattungsbegriff zugrunde legt. Am hartnäckigsten im Beurteilen nach der Gattung ist man da, wo es sich um das Geschlecht des Menschen handelt. Der Mann sieht im Weibe, das Weib in dem Manne fast immer zuviel von dem allgemeinen Charakter des anderen Geschlechtes und zu wenig von dem Individuellen. Im praktischen Leben schadet das den Männern weniger als den Frauen. Die soziale Stellung der Frau ist zumeist deshalb eine so unwürdige, weil sie in vielen Punkten, wo sie es sein sollte, nicht bedingt ist durch die individuellen Eigentümlichkeiten der einzelnen Frau, sondern durch die allgemeinen Vorstellungen, die man sich von der natürlichen Aufgabe und den Bedürfnissen des Weibes macht. Die Betätigung des Mannes im Leben richtet sich nach dessen individuellen Fähigkeiten und Neigungen, die des Weibes soll ausschließlich durch den Umstand bedingt sein, daß es eben Weib ist. Das Weib soll der Sklave des Gattungsmäßigen, des Allgemein-Weiblichen sein. Solange von Männern darüber debattiert wird, ob die Frau «ihrer Naturanlage nach» zu diesem oder jenem Beruf tauge, solange kann die sogenannte Frauenfrage aus ihrem elementarsten Stadium nicht herauskommen. Was die Frau ihrer Natur nach wollen kann, das überlasse man der Frau zu beurteilen. Wenn es wahr ist, daß die Frauen nur zu dem Berufe taugen, der ihnen jetzt zukommt, dann werden sie aus sich selbst heraus kaum einen anderen erreichen, Sie müssen es aber selbst entscheiden können, was ihrer Natur gemäß ist. Wer eine Erschütterung unserer sozialen Zustände davon befürchtet, daß die Frauen nicht als Gattungsmenschen, sondern als Individuen genommen werden, dem muß entgegnet werden, daß soziale Zustände, innerhalb welcher die Hälfte der Menschheit ein menschenunwürdiges Dasein hat, eben der Verbesserung gar sehr bedürftig sind. 1Man hat mir auf die obigen Ausführungen gleich beim Erscheinen (1894) dieses Buches eingewendet, innerhalb des Gattungsmäßigen könne sich die Frau schon jetzt 50 individuell ausleben, wie sie nur will, weit freier als der Mann, der schon durch die Schule und dann durch Krieg und Beruf entindividualisiert werde. Ich weiß, daß man diesen Einwand vielleicht heute noch stärker erheben wird. Ich muß die Sätze doch hier stehen lassen und möchte hoffen, daß es auch Leser gibt, die verstehen, wie stark ein solcher Einwand gegen den Freiheitsbegriff, der in dieser Schrift entwickelt wird, verstößt, und die meine obigen Sätze an anderem beurteilen als an der Entindividualisierung des Mannes durch die Schule und den Beruf.
[ 6 ] Wer die Menschen nach Gattungscharakteren beurteilt, der kommt eben gerade bis zu der Grenze, über welcher sie anfangen, Wesen zu sein, deren Betätigung auf freier Selbstbestimmung beruht. Was unterhalb dieser Grenze liegt, das kann natürlich Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Betrachtung sein. Die Rassen, Stammes, Volks, und Geschlechtseigentümlichkeiten sind der Inhalt besonderer Wissenschaften. Nur Menschen, die allein als Exemplare der Gattung leben wollten, könnten sich mit einem allgemeinen Bilde decken, das durch solche wissenschaftliche Betrachtung zustande kommt. Aber alle diese Wissenschaften können nicht vordringen bis zu dem besonderen Inhalt des einzelnen Individuums. Da, wo das Gebiet der Freiheit (des Denkens und Handelns) beginnt, hört das Bestimmen des Individuums nach Gesetzen der Gattung auf. Den begrifflichen Inhalt, den der Mensch durch das Denken mit der Wahrnehmung in Verbindung bringen muß, um der vollen Wirklichkeit sich zu bemächtigen (vgl. S.88ff.), kann niemand ein für allemal festsetzen und der Menschheit fertig hinterlassen. Das Individuum muß seine Begriffe durch eigene Intuition gewinnen. Wie der einzelne zu denken hat, läßt sich nicht aus irgendeinem Gattungsbegriffe ableiten. Dafür ist einzig und allein das Individuum maßgebend. Ebensowenig ist aus allgemeinen Menschencharakteren zu bestimmen, welche konkrete Ziele das Individuum seinem Wollen vorsetzen will. Wer das einzelne Individuum verstehen will, muß bis in dessen besondere Wesenheit dringen, und nicht bei typischen Eigentümlichkeiten stehen bleiben. In diesem Sinne ist jeder einzelne Mensch ein Problem. Und alle Wissenschaft, die sich mit abstrakten Gedanken und Gattungsbegriffen befaßt, ist nur eine Vorbereitung zu jener Erkenntnis, die uns zuteil wird, wenn uns eine menschliche Individualität ihre Art, die Welt anzuschauen, mitteilt, und zu der anderen, die wir aus dem Inhalt ihres Wollens gewinnen. Wo wir die Empfindung haben: hier haben wir es mit demjenigen an einem Menschen zu tun, das frei ist von typischer Denkungsart und gattungsmäßigem Wollen, da müssen wir aufhören, irgendwelche Begriffe aus unserem Geiste zu Hilfe zu nehmen, wenn wir sein Wesen verstehen wollen. Das Erkennen besteht in der Verbindung des Begriffes mit der Wahrnehmung durch das Denken. Bei allen anderen Objekten muß der Beobachter die Begriffe durch seine Intuition gewinnen; beim Verstehen einer freien Individualität handelt es sich nur darum, deren Begriffe, nach denen sie sich ja selbst bestimmt, rein (ohne Vermischung mit eigenem Begriffsinhalt) herüberzunehmen in unseren Geist. Menschen, die in jede Beurteilung eines anderen sofort ihre eigenen Begriffe einmischen, können nie zu dem Verständnisse einer Individualität gelangen. So wie die freie Individualität sich frei macht von den Eigentümlichkeiten der Gattung, so muß das Erkennen sich frei machen von der Art, wie das Gattungsmäßige verstanden wird
[ 7 ] Nur in dem Grade, in dem der Mensch sich in der gekennzeichneten Weise frei gemacht hat vom Gattungsmäßigen, kommt er als freier Geist innerhalb eines menschlichen Gemeinwesens in Betracht. Kein Mensch ist vollständig Gattung, keiner ganz Individualität. Aber eine größere oder geringere Sphäre seines Wesens löst jeder Mensch allmählich ab, ebenso von dem Gattungsmäßigen des animalischen Lebens, wie von den ihn beherrschenden Geboten menschlicher Autoritäten.
[ 8 ] Für den Teil, für den sich der Mensch aber eine solche Freiheit nicht erobern kann, bildet er ein Glied innerhalb des Natur, und Geistesorganismus. Er lebt in dieser Hinsicht, wie er es andern abguckt, oder wie sie es ihm befehlen. Einen im wahren Sinne ethischen Wert hat nur der Teil seines Handelns, der aus seinen Intuitionen entspringt. Und was er an moralischen Instinkten durch Vererbung sozialer Instinkte an sich hat, wird ein Ethisches dadurch, daß er es in seine Intuitionen aufnimmt. Aus individuellen ethischen Intuitionen und deren Aufnahme in Menschengemeinschaften entspringt alle sittliche Betätigung der Menschheit. Man kann auch sagen: das sittliche Leben der Menschheit ist die Gesamtsumme der moralischen Phantasieerzeugnisse der freien menschlichen Individuen. Dies ist das Ergebnis des Monismus.
XIV Individuality and genus
[ 1 ] The view that man is predisposed to a complete, self-contained, free individuality is apparently contradicted by the facts that he appears as a member within a natural whole (race, tribe, people, family, male and female sex), and that he acts within a whole (state, church and so on). He bears the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs and gives his actions a content determined by the place he occupies within a majority.
[ 2 ] Is individuality still possible at all? Can the human being itself be regarded as a whole in itself when it grows out of a whole and integrates itself into a whole?
[ 3 ] The member of a whole is determined by the whole in terms of its characteristics and functions. A tribe is a whole, and all the people belonging to it have the characteristics that are determined by the nature of the tribe. How the individual is constituted and how he acts is determined by the character of the tribe. This gives the physiognomy and actions of the individual something generic. If we ask why this or that is so or so in a person, we are referred from the individual to the genus. This explains to us why something about him appears in the form we observe.
[ 4 ] Humans, however, free themselves from this generic quality. For the human generic, correctly experienced by man, is nothing that restricts his freedom, nor should it be through artificial events. Man develops qualities and functions in himself, the reason for which we can only seek in himself. The generic serves him only as a means of expressing his particular nature. It uses the peculiarities given to it by nature as a basis and gives it the form appropriate to its own nature. We now search in vain for the reason for the expression of this being in the laws of the species. We are dealing with an individual that can only be explained by itself. If a person has penetrated to this detachment from the generic, and we still want to explain everything about him from the character of the genus, then we have no organ for the individual.
[ 5 ] It is impossible to fully understand a person if one bases one's judgment on a generic concept. The most stubborn way of judging according to genus is when it comes to a person's sex. The man almost always sees too much of the general character of the other sex in the woman, the woman in the man, and too little of the individual. In practical life this is less harmful to men than to women. The social position of women is usually so unworthy because in many points, where it should be, it is not conditioned by the individual peculiarities of the individual woman, but by the general ideas which are formed of the natural task and needs of women. The man's activity in life is determined by his individual abilities and inclinations, that of the woman should be determined solely by the fact that she is a woman. The woman should be the slave of the generic, the general feminine. As long as men debate whether a woman's "natural disposition" makes her suitable for this or that profession, the so-called woman question cannot leave its most elementary stage. What a woman can want according to her nature is left to the woman to judge. If it is true that women are only fit for the occupation that now belongs to them, then they will hardly be able to achieve another one of their own accord, but they must be able to decide for themselves what is in accordance with their nature. To those who fear that our social conditions will be shaken by the fact that women are not taken as generic human beings but as individuals, it must be replied that social conditions in which half of humanity has a degrading existence are in great need of improvement. 1In response to the above remarks, it was objected to me as soon as this book was published (1894) that within the generic, women can already live out their individual lives as they wish, far more freely than men, who are already de-individualized by school and then by war and work. I know that this objection will perhaps be raised even more strongly today. But I must leave the sentences here and would like to hope that there are also readers who understand how strongly such an objection violates the concept of freedom that is developed in this writing, and who judge my above sentences by something other than the de-individualization of man through school and profession.
[ 6 ] Those who judge men by generic characters come just to the limit above which they begin to be beings whose activity is based on free self-determination. What lies below this limit can of course be the subject of scientific consideration. Racial, tribal, ethnic and sexual characteristics are the content of special sciences. Only people who wanted to live solely as specimens of the species could coincide with a general picture that comes about through such scientific observation. But all these sciences cannot penetrate to the particular content of the individual. Where the realm of freedom (of thought and action) begins, the determination of the individual according to the laws of the species ends. The conceptual content that man must bring into connection with perception through thinking in order to take possession of the full reality (cf. p.88ff.) cannot be fixed once and for all and left to mankind ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual is to think cannot be derived from any generic concept. Only the individual is decisive for this. Nor is it possible to determine from general human characters what concrete goals the individual wants to set before his will. Whoever wants to understand the individual must penetrate into his or her particular nature and not stop at typical peculiarities. In this sense, every single person is a problem. And all science that deals with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is only a preparation for the knowledge that comes to us when a human individuality tells us its way of looking at the world, and for the other knowledge that we gain from the content of its will. Where we have the feeling that we are dealing with something in a human being that is free from typical ways of thinking and generic volition, we must stop using any concepts from our spirit if we want to understand his essence. Recognition consists in the connection of the concept with perception through thinking. With all other objects the observer must gain the concepts through his intuition; in understanding a free individuality it is only a matter of taking its concepts, according to which it determines itself, purely (without mixing them with its own conceptual content) into our mind. People who immediately interfere with their own concepts in every judgment of another can never arrive at an understanding of an individuality. Just as free individuality frees itself from the peculiarities of the genus, so cognition must free itself from the way in which the generic is understood
[ 7 ] Only to the degree to which man has freed himself from the generic in the manner indicated can he be considered a free spirit within a human community. No human being is completely a species, no one is completely an individual. But every human being gradually detaches a greater or lesser sphere of his being from the generic nature of animal life, as well as from the commandments of human authorities that govern him.
[ 8 ] For the part for which man cannot conquer such freedom, however, he forms a member within the natural and spiritual organism. In this respect, he lives as he imitates others or as they command him to. Only that part of his actions which springs from his intuitions has an ethical value in the true sense. And whatever moral instincts he has in himself through the inheritance of social instincts becomes ethical through the fact that he incorporates them into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind springs from individual ethical intuitions and their absorption into human communities. One can also say that the moral life of mankind is the sum total of the moral imaginative products of free human individuals. This is the result of monism.