Riddles of Philosophy
Part I
GA 18
IV. The World Conceptions of the Middle Ages
[ 1 ] A foreshadowing of a new element produced by thought life itself emerges in St. Augustine (354–430). This element soon vanishes from the surface, however, to continue unnoticeably under the cover of religious conception, becoming distinctly discernible again only in the later Middle Ages. In St. Augustine, the new element appears as if it were a reminiscence of Greek thought life. He looks into the external world and into himself, and comes to the conclusion: May everything else the world reveals contain nothing but uncertainty and deception, one thing cannot be doubted, that is, the certainty of the soul's experience itself. I do not owe this inner experience to a perception that could deceive me; I am in it myself; it is, for I am present when its being is attributed to it.
[ 2 ] One can see a new element in these conceptions as against Greek thought life, in spite of the fact that they seem at first like a reminiscence of it. Greek thinking points toward the soul; in St. Augustine, we are directed toward the center of the life of the soul. The Greek thinkers contemplated the soul in its relation to the world; in St. Augustine's approach, something in the soul life confronts this soul life and regards it as a special, self-contained world. One can call the center of the soul life the “ego” of man. To the Greek thinkers, the relation of the soul to the world becomes problematic, to the thinkers of modern times, that of the “ego” to the soul. In St. Augustine, we have only the first indication of this situation. The ensuing philosophical currents are still too much occupied with the task of harmonizing world conception and religion to become distinctly aware of the new element that has not entered into spiritual life. But the tendency to contemplate the riddles of the world in accordance with the demand of this new element lives more or less unconsciously in the souls of the time that now follows. In thinkers like Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) and Thomas Aquinas (1227–1274), this tendency still shows itself in such a way that they attribute to self-supportive thinking the ability to investigate the processes of the world to a certain degree, but they limit this ability. There is for them a higher spiritual reality to which thinking, left to its own resources, can never attain, but that must be revealed to it in a religious way. Man is, according to Thomas Aquinas, rooted with his soul life in the reality of the world, but this soul life cannot know this reality in its full extent through itself alone. Man could not know how his own being stands in the course of the world if the spirit being, to which his knowledge does not penetrate, did not deign to reveal to him what must remain concealed to a knowledge relying on its own power alone. Thomas Aquinas constructs his world picture on this presupposition. It has two parts, one of which consists of the truths that are yielded to man's own thought experience about the natural course of things. This leads to a second part that contains what has come to the soul of man through the Bible and religious revelation. Something that the soul cannot reach by itself, if it is to feel itself in its full essence, must therefore penetrate into the soul.
[ 3 ] Thomas Aquinas made himself thoroughly familiar with the world conception of Aristotle, who becomes, as it were, his master in the life of thought. In this respect, Aquinas is, to be sure, the most prominent, but nevertheless only one of the numerous personalities of the Middle Ages who erect their own thought structure entirely on that of Aristotle. For centuries, he is il maestro di color che sanno, the master of those who know, as Dante expresses the veneration for Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas strives to comprehend what is humanly comprehensible in Aristotelian method. In this way, Aristotle's world conception becomes the guide to the limit to which the soul life can advance through its own power for him. Beyond these boundaries lies the realm that the Greek world conception, according to Thomas, could not reach.
Therefore, human thinking for Thomas Aquinas is in need of another light by which it must be illuminated. He finds this light in revelation. Whatever was to be the attitude of the ensuing thinkers with respect to this revelation, they could no longer accept the life of thought in the manner of the Greeks. It is not sufficient to them that thinking comprehends the world; they make the presupposition that it should be possible to find a basic support for thinking itself. The tendency arises to fathom man's relation to his soul life. Thus, man considers himself a being who exists in his soul life. If one calls this entity the ego, one can say that in modern times the consciousness of the ego is stirred up in man's soul life in a way similar to that in which thought was born in the philosophical life of the Greeks. Whatever different forms the philosophical currents in this age assume, they all hinge on the search for the ego-entity. This fact, however, is not always brought clearly to the consciousness of the thinkers themselves. They mostly believe they are concerned with questions of a different nature. One could say that the Riddle of the Ego appears in a great variety of masks. At times it lives in the philosophy of the thinkers in such a concealed way that the statement that this riddle is at the bottom of some view or other might appear as an arbitrary or forced opinion. In the nineteenth century this struggle over the riddle of the ego comes to its most intensive manifestation, and the world conceptions of the present time are still profoundly engaged in this struggle.
[ 4 ] This world riddle already lived in the conflict between the nominalists and the realists in the Middle Ages. One can call Anselm of Canterbury a representative of realism. For him, the general ideas that man forms when he contemplates the world are not mere nomenclatures that the soul produces for itself, but they have their roots in a real life. If one forms the general idea “lion” in order to designate all lions with it, it is certainly correct to say that, for sense perception, only the individual lions have reality. The general concept “lion” is not, however, only a summary designation with significance only for the human mind. It is rooted in a spiritual world, and the individual lions of the world of sense perception are the various embodiments of the one lion nature expressed in the “idea of lion.”
Such a “reality of ideas” was opposed by Nominalists like Roscellin (also in the eleventh century). The “general ideas” are only summary designations for him, names that the mind forms for its own use for its orientation, but that do not correspond to any reality. According to this view, only the individual things are real. The quarrel is characteristic of the specific mentality of its participants. Both sides feel the necessity to search for the validity, the significance of the thoughts that the soul must produce. Their attitude to thoughts as such is different from what the attitudes of Plato and Aristotle were toward them. This is so because something has happened between the end of the development of Greek philosophy and the beginning of modern thought. Something has gone on under the surface of historical evolution that can, however, be observed in the attitude that the individual thinkers take with respect to their thought life.
To the Greek thinker, thought came as a perception. It arose in the soul as the red color appears when a man looks at a rose, and the thinker received it as a perception. As such the thought had the immediate power of conviction. The Greek thinker had the feeling, when he placed himself with his soul receptively before the spiritual world, that no incorrect thought could enter from this world into the soul just as no perception of a winged horse could come from the sense world as long as the sense organs were properly used. For the Greeks, it was a question of being able to garner thoughts from the world. They were then themselves the witnesses of their truth. The fact of this attitude is not contradicted by the Sophists, nor is it denied by ancient Scepticism. Both currents have an entirely different shade of meaning in antiquity from similar tendencies in modern times. They are not evidence against the fact that the Greek experienced thought in a much more elementary, content-saturated, vivid and real way than it can be experienced by the man of modern times. This vividness, which in ancient Greece gave the character of perception to thought, is no longer to be found in the Middle Ages.
What has happened is this. As in Greek times thought entered into the human soul, extinguishing the formerly prevalent picture consciousness, so, in a similar way, during the Middle Ages the consciousness of the “ego” penetrated the human soul, and this dampened the vividness of thought. The advent of the ego-consciousness deprived thought of the strength through which it had appeared as perception. We can only understand how the philosophical life advances when we realize how, for Plato and Aristotle, the thought, the idea, was something entirely different from what it was for the personalities of the Middle Ages and modern times. The thinker of antiquity had the feeling that thought was given to him; the thinker of the later time had the impression that he was producing thought. Thus, the question arises in him as to what significance what has been produced in the soul can have for reality. The Greek felt himself to be a soul separated from the world; he attempted to unite with the spiritual world in thought. The later thinker feels himself to be alone with his thought life. Thus, the inquiry into the nature of the “general ideas” begins. The thinker asks himself the questions, “What is it that I have really produced with them? Are they only rooted in me, or do they point toward a reality?”
[ 5 ] In the period between the ancient current of philosophical life and that of modern philosophy, the source of Greek thought life is gradually exhausted. Under the surface, however, the human soul experiences the approaching ego-consciousness as a fact. Since the end of the first half of the Middle Ages, man is confronted with this process as an accomplished fact, and under the influence of this confrontation, new Riddles of Life emerge. Realism and Nominalism are symptoms of the fact that man realizes the situation. The manner in which both Realists and Nominalists speak about thought shows that, compared to its existence in the Greek soul, it has faded out, has been dampened as much as had been the old picture consciousness in the soul of the Greek thinker.
[ 6] This points to the dominating element that lives in the modern world conceptions. An energy is active in them that strives beyond thought toward a new factor of reality. This tendency of modern times cannot be felt as the same that drove beyond thought in ancient times in Pythagoras and later in Plotinus. These thinkers also strove beyond thought but, according to their conception, the soul in its development, its perfection, would have to conquer the region that lies beyond thought. In modern times it is presupposed that the factor of reality lying beyond thought must approach the soul, must be given to it from without.
[ 7 ] In the centuries that follow the age of Nominalism and Realism, philosophical evolution turns into a search for the new reality factor. One path among those discernible to the student of this search is the one the medieval Mystics—Meister Eckhardt (died 1327), Johannes Tauler (died 1361), Heinrich Suso (died 1366) – have chosen for themselves. We receive the clearest idea of this path if we inspect the so-called German Theology (Theologia, deutsch), written by an author historically unknown. The Mystics want to receive something into the ego-consciousness; they intend to fill it with something. They therefore strive for an inner life that is “completely composed,” surrendered in tranquillity, and that thus patiently waits to experience the soul to be filled with the “Divine Ego.” In a later time, a similar soul mood with a greater spiritual momentum can be observed in Angelus Silesius (1624–1677).
[ 8 ] A different path is chosen by Nicolaus Cusanus (Nicolaus Chrypffs, born at Kues on the Moselle, 1401, died 1464). He strives beyond intellectually attainable knowledge to a state of soul in which knowledge ceases and in which the soul meets its god in “knowing ignorance,” in docta ignorantia. Examined superficially, this aspiration is similar to that of Plotinus, but the soul constitution of these two personalities is different. Plotinus is convinced that the human soul contains more than the world of thoughts. When it develops the energy that it possesses beyond the power of thought, the soul becomes conscious of the state in which it exists, and about which it is ignorant in ordinary life.
[ 9 ] Paracelsus (1493–1541) already has the feeling with respect to nature, which becomes more and more pronounced in the modern world conception, that is an effect of the soul's feeling of desolation in its ego-consciousness. He turns his attention toward the processes of nature. As they present themselves they cannot be accepted by the soul, but neither can thought, which in Aristotle unfolded in peaceful communication with the events of nature, now be accepted as it appears in the soul. It is not perceived; it is formed in the soul. Paracelsus felt that one must not let thought itself speak; one must presuppose that something is behind the phenomena of nature that will reveal itself if one finds the right relationship to these phenomena. One must be capable of receiving something from nature that one does not create oneself as thought during the act of observation. One must be connected with one's “ego” by means of a factor of reality other than thought. A higher nature behind nature is what Paracelsus is looking for. His mood of soul is so constituted that he does not want to experience something in himself alone, but he means to penetrate nature's processes with his “ego” in order to have revealed to him the spirit of these processes that are under the surface of the world of the senses. The mystics of antiquity meant to delve into the depths of the soul; Paracelsus set out to take steps that would lead to a contact with the roots of nature in the external world.
[ 10 ] Jakob Boehme (1575–1624) who, as a lonely, persecuted craftsman, formed a world picture as though out of an inner illumination, nevertheless implants into this world picture the fundamental character of modern times. In the solitude of his soul life he develops this fundamental trait most impressively because the inner dualism of the life of the soul, the contrast between the “ego” and the other soul experiences, stands clearly before the eye of his spirit. He experiences the “ego” as it creates an inner counterpart in its own soul life, reflecting itself in the mirror of his own soul. He then finds this inner experience again in the processes of the world. “In such a contemplation one finds two qualities, a good and an evil one, which are intertwined in this world in all forces, in stars and in elements as well as in all creatures.” The evil in the world is opposed to the good as its counterpart; it is only in the evil that the good becomes aware of itself, as the “ego” becomes aware of itself in its inner soul experiences.
Die Weltanschauungen im Mittelalter
[ 1 ] Wie eine Vorverkündigung zeigt sich ein neues Element, welches das Gedankenleben selbst aus sich hervorbringt bei Augustinus (354-430), um dann wieder unbemerkbar weiter zu strömen in dem es überdeckenden religiösen Vorstellen, und erst im späteren Mittelalter deutlicher hervorzutreten. Bei Augustinus ist das Neue wie eine Rückerinnerung an das griechische Gedankenleben. Er blickt um sich und in sich und sagt sich: Mag alles nur Ungewisses und Täuschung geben, was sonst die Welt offenbart, an einem ist nicht zu zweifeln: an der Gewißheit des seelischen Erlebens selbst. Das wird mir durch keine Wahrnehmung zuteil, die mich täuschen kann; in diesem bin ich selbst darinnen; es ist, denn ich bin dabei, indem ihm sein Sein zugeschrieben wird.
[ 2 ] Man kann in diesen Vorstellungen etwas Neues gegenüber dem griechischen Gedankenleben erblicken, trotzdem sie zunächst einer Rückerinnerung an dasselbe gleichen. Das griechische Denken deutet auf die Seele; bei Augustinus wird auf den Mittelpunkt des Seelenlebens gewiesen. Die griechischen Denker betrachten die Seele in ihrem Verhältnis zur Welt; bei Augustinus stellt sich dem Seelenleben etwas in demselben gegenüber und betrachtet dieses Seelenleben als eine besondere, in sich geschlossene Welt. Man kann den Mittelpunkt des Seelenlebens das «Ich» des Menschen nennen. Den griechischen Denkern wird das Verhältnis der Seele zur Welt zum Rätsel; den neueren Denkern das Verhältnis des «Ich» zur Seele. Bei Augustinus kündigt sich das erst an; die folgenden Weltanschauungsbestrebungen haben noch zu viel zu tun, um Weltanschauung und Religion in Einklang zu bringen, als daß das Neue, das jetzt in das Geistesleben hereingetreten ist, ihnen schon deutlich zum Bewußtsein käme. Und doch lebt in der Folgezeit, den Seelen mehr oder weniger unbewußt, das Bestreben, die Welträtsel so zu betrachten, wie es das neue Element fordert. Bei Denkern wie Anselm von Canterbury (1033-1109) und Thomas von Aquino (1227-1274) tritt das noch so hervor, daß sie dem auf sich selbst gestützten menschlichen Denken zwar die Fähigkeit zuschreiben, die Weltvorgänge bis zu einem gewissen Grade zu erforschen, daß sie diese Fähigkeit aber begrenzen. Für sie gibt es eine höhere geistige Wirklichkeit, zu welcher das sich selbst überlassene Denken niemals kommen kann, sondern die ihm auf religiöse Art geoffenbart werden muß. Der Mensch wurzelt im Sinne des Thomas von Aquino mit seinem Seelenleben in der Weltwirklichkeit; doch kann dieses Seelenleben aus sich selbst heraus diese Wirklichkeit in ihrem vollen Umfange nicht erkennen. Der Mensch könnte nicht wissen, wie sein Wesen in dem Gange der Welt drinnen steht, wenn nicht das Geistwesen, zu dem sein Erkennen nicht dringt, sich zu ihm neigte und ihm auf dem Offenbarungswege mitteilte, was der nur auf ihre eigene Kraft bauenden Erkenntnis verborgen bleiben muß. Von dieser Voraussetzung aus baut Thomas von Aquino sein Weltbild auf. Es hat zwei Teile, den einen, der aus den Wahrheiten besteht, welche sich dem eigenen Gedankenerleben über den natürlichen Verlauf der Dinge erschließen; dieser Teil mündet in einen anderen, in welchem sich das befindet, was durch Bibel und religiöse Offenbarung an die Menschenseele herangekommen ist. Es muß also in die Seele etwas dringen, was ihrem Eigenleben nicht erreichbar ist, wenn sie in ihrem vollen Wesen sich erfühlen will.
[ 3 ] Thomas von Aquino macht sich ganz vertraut mit der Weltanschauung des Aristoteles. Dieser wird ihm wie sein Meister im Gedankenleben. Thomas ist damit die hervorragendste, aber doch nur eine der zahlreichen Persönlichkeiten des Mittelalters, welche ganz auf dem Gedankenbau des Aristoteles den eigenen aufführen. Aristoteles wird für Jahrhunderte «der Meister derer, die da wissen», wie Dante die Verehrung für Aristoteles im Mittelalter ausdrückt. Thomas von Aquino hat das Bestreben, im aristotelischer Art zu begreifen, was menschlich begreifbar ist. So wird ihm Aristoteles' Weltanschauung zum Führer bis zu jener Grenze, bis zu der das menschliche Seelenleben mit seinen eigenen Kräften dringen kann; jenseits dieser Grenzen liegt, was im Sinne des Thomas die griechische Weltanschauung nicht erreichen konnte. Für Thomas von Aquino bedarf also das menschliche Denken eines anderen Lichtes, von dem es erleuchtet werden muß. Er findet dieses Licht in der Offenbarung. Wie immer sich die folgenden Denker nun auch zur Offenbarung stellten: in griechischer Art konnten sie nicht mehr das Gedankenleben hinnehmen. Es genügt ihnen nicht, daß das Denken die Welt begreift; sie setzen voraus, es müsse eine Möglichkeit geben, dem Denken selbst eine es stützende Unterlage zu geben. Das Bestreben entsteht, das Verhältnis des Menschen zu seinem Seelenleben zu ergründen. Der Mensch sieht sich also als ein Wesen an, das in seinem Seelenleben vorhanden ist. Wenn man dieses «Etwas» das «Ich» nennt, so kann man sagen: In der neueren Zeit wird innerhalb des Seelenlebens das Bewußtsein vom «Ich» rege, wie im griechischen Weltanschauungsleben der Gedanke geboren wurde. Welch verschiedene Formen auch die Weltanschauungsbestrebungen in diesem Zeitalter annehmen um die Erforschung der Ich-Wesenheit drehen sich doch alle. Nur tritt diese Tatsache nicht überall klar in das Bewußtsein der Denker. Diese glauben zumeist, ganz anderen Fragen hingegeben zu sein. Man könnte davon sprechen, daß das «Rätsel des Ich» in den mannigfaltigsten Maskierungen auftritt. Zuweilen lebt es in den Weltanschauungen der Denker auf so verborgene Art, daß die Behauptung, es handele sich bei der einen oder der anderen Ansicht um dieses Rätsel, wie eine willkürliche oder erzwungene Meinung sich darstellt. Im neunzehnten Jahrhundert kommt das Ringen mit dem «Ich-Rätsel» am intensivsten zum Ausdruck, und die Weltanschauungen der Gegenwart leben mitten in diesem Ringen darinnen.
[ 4 ] Schon in dem Streite zwischen Nominalisten und Realisten im Mittelalter lebt dieses «Welträtsel». Einen Träger des Realismus kann man Anselm von Canterbury nennen. Für ihn sind die allgemeinen Gedanken, welche sich der Mensch macht, wenn er die Welt betrachtet, nicht bloße Bezeichnungen, die sich die Seele bildet, sondern sie wurzeln in einem realen Leben. Wenn man sich den allgemeinen Begriff des «Löwen» bildet, um alle Löwen damit zu bezeichnen, so haben im Sinne des Sinnenseins gewiß nur die einzelnen Löwen Wirklichkeit; aber der allgemeine Begriff «Löwe» ist doch nicht eine bloße zusammenfassende Bezeichnung, die nur für den Gebrauch der menschlichen Seele eine Bedeutung hat. Er wurzelt in einer geistigen Welt, und die einzelnen Löwen der Sinneswelt sind mannigfaltige Verkörperungen der einen «Löwennatur », die in der «Idee des Löwen» sich ausdrückt. Gegen solche «Realität der Ideen» wandten sich Nominalisten wie Roscellin (auch im elften Jahrhundert). Für ihn sind die «allgemeinen Ideen» nur zusammenfassende Bezeichnungen Namen, welche die Seele zu ihrem Gebrauche, zu ihrer Orientierung sich bildet, die aber keiner Wirklichkeit entsprechen. Wirklich seien nur die einzelnen Dinge. Der Streit ist charakteristisch für die Seelenstimmung seiner Träger. Sie fühlen beide die Notwendigkeit, darüber nachzuforschen, welche Geltung, welche Bedeutung die Gedanken haben, die sich die Seele bilden muß. Sie verhalten sich anders zu den Gedanken, als sich Plato und Aristoteles zu ihnen verhalten haben. Dies aus dem Grunde, weil sich etwas vollzogen hat zwischen dem Ausgang der griechischen Weltanschauungsentwickelung und dem Beginn der neuzeitlichen, das wie unter der Oberfläche des geschichtlichen Werdens liegt, aber an der Art wohl bemerkbar ist, wie sich die Persönlichkeiten zu ihrem Gedankenleben stellen. An den griechischen Denker trat der Gedanke heran wie eine Wahrnehmung. Er trat in der Seele auf, wie die rote Farbe auftritt, wenn der Mensch der Rose gegenübersteht. Und der Denker nahm ihn auf wie eine Wahrnehmung. Als solche hatte der Gedanke eine ganz unmittelbare Überzeugungskraft. Der griechische Denker hatte die Empfindung, wenn er sich der geistigen Welt mit der Seele empfänglich gegenüberstellt, es könne in diese Seele aus der geistigen Welt so wenig ein unrichtiger Gedanke hereindringen, wie aus der Sinnenwelt bei richtigem Gebrauch der Sinne die Wahrnehmung eines geflügelten Pferdes kommen könne. Für den Griechen handelt es sich darum, die Gedanken aus der Welt schöpfen zu können. Diese bezeugen selbst ihre Wahrheit. Gegen diese Tatsache spricht ebensowenig die Sophistik wie der Skeptizismus. Beide haben im Altertum noch eine ganz andere Schattierung, als sie in der Neuzeit haben. Sie sprechen nicht gegen die Tatsache, die besonders in den eigentlichen Denkercharakteren deutlich sich offenbart, daß der Grieche den Gedanken viel elementarer, inhaltvoller, lebendiger, wirklicher empfand, als der Mensch der neueren Zeit ihn empfinden kann. Diese Lebendigkeit, welche in Griechenland dem Gedanken den Charakter einer Wahrnehmung gab, ist im Mittelalter schon nicht mehr vorhanden. Was sich vollzogen hat, ist dieses: So wie in den griechischen Zeiten der Gedanke in die menschliche Seele hereinzog und das alte Bildvorstellen austilgte, so zog in den Zeiten des Mittelalters in die Seelen das Bewußtsein vom «Ich» ein; und dies hat die Lebendigkeit des Gedankens abgedämpft; es hat ihm seine Wahrnehmungskraft genommen. Man kann nur erkennen, wie das Weltanschauungsleben fortschreitet, wenn man durchschaut, wie der Gedanke, die Idee für Plato und Aristoteles in der Tat etwas ganz anderes waren als für die Persönlichkeiten des Mittelalters und der neuen Zeit. Der Denker des Altertums hatte das Gefühl, der Gedanke werde ihm gegeben; der Denker der späteren Zeit hat das Gefühl, er bilde den Gedanken; und so entsteht für ihn die Frage: Welche Bedeutung für die Wirklichkeit kann dasjenige haben, was in der Seele gebildet wird? Der Grieche empfand sich als Seele abgesondert von der Welt; im Gedanken suchte er sich mit der geistigen Welt zu verbinden; der spätere Denker fühlt sich mit seinem Gedankenleben allein. So entsteht das Nachforschen über die «allgemeinen Ideen». Man fragt: Was habe ich in ihnen denn eigentlich gebildet? Wurzeln sie nur in mir, oder deuten sie auf eine Wirklichkeit?
[ 5 ] In den Zeiten, welche zwischen der alten Weltanschauungsströmung und der neueren liegen, versiegt das griechische Gedankenleben; unter der Oberfläche aber kommt an die Menschenseele als Tatsache das Ich-Bewußtsein heran; von der Mitte des Mittelalters an sieht sich der Mensch dieser vollzogenen Tatsache gegenüber, und durch ihre Kraft entwickelt sich die neue Art der Lebensrätsel. Realismus und Nominalismus sind das Symptom dafür, daß der Mensch die vollzogene Tatsache empfindet. Wie beide über den Gedanken sprechen, das zeigt, daß dieser gegenüber seinem Dasein in der griechischen Seele so abgeblaßt, abgedämpft war, wie in der Seele des griechischen Denkers es die alte Bildvorstellung war.
[ 6 ] Hiermit ist auf das treibende Element hingewiesen, das in den neueren Weltanschauungen lebt. In diesen wirkt eine Kraft, welche über den Gedanken hinaus nach einem neuen Wirklichkeitsfaktor strebt. Man kann dieses Streben der neueren Zeit nicht als dasselbe empfinden, was das Hinausstreben über den Gedanken in alter Zeit bei Pythagoras, später bei Plotin war. Diese streben wohl auch über den Gedanken hinaus, aber sie stellen sich vor, daß die Entwickelung der Seele, deren Vervollkommnung, sich die Region erringen müsse, welche über den Gedanken hinausliegt. Die neuere Zeit setzt voraus, daß der über den Gedanken hinausliegende Wirklichkeitsfaktor der Seele von außen gegeben werden müsse, daß er an sie herankommen müsse.
[ 7 ] Die Weltanschauungsentwickelung wird in den Jahrhunderten, welche auf die Zeit des Nominalismus und Realismus folgen, zu einem Suchen nach dem neuen Wirklichkeitsfaktor. Ein Weg unter denen, die sich dem Beobachter dieses Suchens zeigen, ist derjenige, welchen die mittelalterlichen Mystiker eingeschlagen haben: Meister Eckhard (gest. 1327), Johannes Tauler (gest. 1361), Heinrich Suso (gest. 1366). Am anschaulichsten wird dieser Weg durch die Betrachtung der sogenannten «Theologia deutsch», die von einem geschichtlich nicht bekannten Verfasser herrührt. Diese Mystiker wollen in das Ich-Bewußtsein etwas hineinempfangen, es mit etwas erfüllen. Sie streben deshalb ein inneres Leben an, das «ganz gelassen» ist, das sich in Ruhe hingibt, und das so erwartet, wie sich das Innere der Seele erfülle mit dem «göttlichen Ich». In späterer Zeit taucht eine ähnliche Seelenstimmung mit mehr Schwungkraft des Geistes auf bei Angelus Silesius (1624-1677).
[ 8 ] Einen anderen Weg schlägt Nicolaus Cusanus (Nikolaus Chrypffs, geboren zu Kues an der Mosel 1401, gestorben 1464) ein. Er strebt über das gedanklich erreichbare Wissen hinaus zu einem Seelenzustand, in dem dies Wissen aufhört und die Seele ihrem Gotte in der «wissenden Unwissenheit», der docta ignorantia, begegnet. Äußerlich betrachtet hat das viel Ähnlichkeit mit dem Streben des Plotin. Doch ist die Seelenverfassung bei den beiden Persönlichkeiten verschieden. Plotin ist überzeugt, daß in der Menschenseele mehr liege als die Gedankenwelt. Wenn die Seele die ihr außerhalb des Gedankens eignende Kraft entwickelt, so gelangt sie wahrnehmend dahin, wo sie immer ist, ohne im gewöhnlichen Leben davon zu wissen; Cusanus fühlt sich mit seinem «Ich» allein; dieses hat in sich keinen Zusammenhang mit seinem Gotte. Der ist außer dem «Ich». Das «Ich» begegnet ihm, wenn es die «wissende Unwissenheit» erreicht.
[ 9 ] Paracelsus (1493-1541) hat bereits die Empfindung gegenüber der Natur, welche sich in der neueren Weltanschauung immer mehr herausbildete, und die eine Wirkung der sich im Ich-Bewußtsein vereinsamt fühlenden Seele ist. Er richtet den Blick auf die Naturerscheinungen. So wie sich diese darstellen, können sie von der Seele nicht hingenommen werden; aber auch der Gedanke, der bei Aristoteles in ruhigem Verkehr mit den Naturerscheinungen sich entfaltete, kann nicht so hingenommen werden, wie er in der Seele auftritt. Er wird nicht wahrgenommen; er wird in der Seele gebildet. Man muß den Gedanken nicht selbst sprechen lassen, so empfand Paracelsus; man muß voraussetzen, daß hinter den Naturerscheinungen etwas ist, was sich enthüllt, wenn man sich in das rechte Verhältnis zu ihnen bringt. Man muß von der Natur etwas empfangen können, was man in ihrem Anblick nicht selbst bildet wie den Gedanken. Man muß mit seinem Ich durch einen anderen Wirklichkeitsfaktor zusammenhängen als durch den Gedanken. Eine «höhere Natur» hinter der Natur sucht Paracelsus. Seine Seelenstimmung ist so, daß er nicht etwas in sich allein erleben will, um zu den Gründen des Daseins zu kommen, sondern daß er sich gleichsam mit seinem Ich in die Naturvorgänge hineinbohren will, um sich unter der Oberfläche der Sinneswelt den Geist dieser Vorgänge offenbaren zu lassen. Hinunterdringen in die Tiefen der Seele wollten die Mystiker des Altertums; dasjenige unternehmen, was in der Außenwelt zur Begegnung mit den Wurzeln der Natur führt, wollte Paracelsus.
[ 10 ] Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), der als einsamer, verfolgter Handwerker ein Weltbild wie aus innerer Erleuchtung heraus sich bildete, trägt doch in dieses Weltbild den Grundcharakter der neueren Zeit hinein. Ja, er entwickelt sogar in der Einsamkeit seines Seelenlebens diesen Grundcharakter besonders eindrucksvoll, weil ihm die innere Zweiheit des Seelenlebens, der Gegensatz des Ich und der anderen Seelenerlebnisse, vor das geistige Auge tritt. Das «Ich» erlebt er, wie es sich in dem eigenen Seelenleben den inneren Gegensatz schafft, wie es sich in der eigenen Seele spiegelt. Dieses innere Erlebnis findet er dann in den Weltvorgängen wieder. Er sieht in diesem Erlebnis einen durch alles hindurchgehenden Zwiespalt. «In solcher Betrachtung findet man zwei Qualitäten, eine gute und eine böse, die in dieser Welt in allen Kräften, in Sternen und Elementen, sowohl in allen Kreaturen ineinander sind.» Auch das Böse in der Welt steht dem Guten als sein Widerschein gegenüber; das Gute wird sich in dem Bösen erst selbst gewahr, wie sich das Ich in seinen Seelenerlebnissen gewahr wird.
The worldviews in the Middle Ages
[ 1 ] A new element emerges from Augustine (354-430) like a premonition, only to flow on imperceptibly in the religious imagination that covers it and only emerge more clearly in the later Middle Ages. In Augustine, the new is like a recollection of Greek thought. He looks around and within himself and says to himself: "Even if everything that the world reveals is uncertain and deceptive, there is one thing that cannot be doubted: the certainty of spiritual experience itself. This is not granted to me by any perception that can deceive me; in this I am in it myself; it is, because I am in it, in that its being is attributed to it.
[ 2 ] We can see something new in these ideas compared to the Greek life of thought, even though they initially resemble a recollection of the same. Greek thought points to the soul; Augustine points to the center of the soul's life. The Greek thinkers consider the soul in its relationship to the world; Augustine contrasts the life of the soul with something in it and considers this life of the soul as a special, self-contained world. One can call the center of the life of the soul the "I" of man. The relationship of the soul to the world is a mystery to Greek thinkers; the relationship of the "I" to the soul is a mystery to more recent thinkers. With Augustine this was only just beginning to emerge; the subsequent efforts to develop a world view still had too much to do to harmonize world view and religion for them to become clearly aware of the new thing that had now entered spiritual life. And yet, more or less unconsciously, the endeavor to look at the riddles of the world in the way demanded by the new element lives on. With thinkers such as Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and Thomas of Aquino (1227-1274), this still emerges in such a way that although they ascribe to human thinking, which is based on itself, the ability to investigate world processes to a certain extent, they limit this ability. For them there is a higher spiritual reality to which thinking left to itself can never come, but which must be revealed to it in a religious way. In the sense of Thomas Aquinas, man's soul life is rooted in the reality of the world; however, this soul life cannot recognize this reality in its full extent by itself. Man could not know how his being stands within the course of the world if the spiritual being, to which his cognition does not penetrate, did not lean towards him and communicate to him by way of revelation what must remain hidden to cognition based only on its own power. Thomas Aquinas builds his world view from this premise. It has two parts, one consisting of the truths that are accessible to our own thought experience of the natural course of things; this part leads into another, which contains what has come to the human soul through the Bible and religious revelation. Something must therefore penetrate the soul that is not accessible to its own life if it wants to feel itself in its full essence.
[ 3 ] Thomas of Aquino familiarized himself completely with Aristotle's worldview. He became like his master in the life of thought. Thomas is thus the most outstanding, but nevertheless only one of the many personalities of the Middle Ages who based their own ideas entirely on those of Aristotle. For centuries, Aristotle became "the master of those who know", as Dante expressed his reverence for Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas strove to comprehend in the Aristotelian manner what is humanly comprehensible. Aristotle's worldview thus became his guide to the limit to which the human soul can penetrate with its own powers; beyond this limit lies what, in Thomas' view, the Greek worldview could not achieve. For Thomas Aquinas, therefore, human thought needs another light to illuminate it. He finds this light in revelation. However the following thinkers approached revelation, they could no longer accept the life of thought in the Greek way. It is not enough for them that thinking understands the world; they presuppose that there must be a way to give thinking itself a foundation to support it. The endeavor arises to fathom the relationship of man to his soul life. Man thus sees himself as a being that is present in his soul life. If we call this "something" the "I", then we can say that in more recent times the consciousness of the "I" is being awakened within the life of the soul, just as the thought was born in the Greek worldview. No matter what different forms the worldview endeavors take in this age, they all revolve around the exploration of the I-entity. But this fact does not clearly enter the consciousness of thinkers everywhere. Most of them believe that they are devoted to completely different questions. One could say that the "riddle of the ego" appears in the most diverse masks. Sometimes it lives in the world-views of thinkers in such a concealed way that the assertion that one or the other view is concerned with this enigma appears to be an arbitrary or forced opinion. In the nineteenth century, the struggle with the "ego riddle" is expressed most intensely, and the worldviews of the present live in the midst of this struggle.
[ 4 ] This "world enigma" is already alive in the dispute between nominalists and realists in the Middle Ages. Anselm of Canterbury can be called a bearer of realism. For him, the general thoughts that people have when they look at the world are not mere descriptions that the soul makes up, but are rooted in a real life. If one forms the general concept of "lion" in order to designate all lions with it, then certainly only the individual lions have reality in the sense of being sensual; but the general concept of "lion" is not a mere summarizing designation that only has meaning for the use of the human soul. It is rooted in a spiritual world, and the individual lions of the sensory world are manifold embodiments of the one "lion nature", which expresses itself in the "idea of the lion". Such a "reality of ideas" was opposed by nominalists such as Roscellin (also in the eleventh century). For him, the "general ideas" are only summarizing designations, names which the soul forms for its use, for its orientation, but which do not correspond to any reality. Only the individual things are real. The dispute is characteristic of the mood of its bearers. They both feel the need to investigate the validity and meaning of the thoughts that the soul must form. They have a different attitude towards thoughts than Plato and Aristotle had towards them. The reason for this is that something took place between the end of the Greek development of the world view and the beginning of the modern one, something that lies beneath the surface of historical development, but which is clearly noticeable in the way the personalities relate to their thought life. Thought approached the Greek thinker like a perception. It appeared in the soul as the red color appears when a person confronts the rose. And the thinker received it like a perception. As such, the thought had a very direct power of persuasion. The Greek thinker had the feeling, when he confronted the spiritual world with his soul receptively, that an incorrect thought could no more penetrate into this soul from the spiritual world than the perception of a winged horse could come from the sense world with the correct use of the senses. For the Greek it is a matter of being able to draw thoughts from the world. These themselves testify to their truth. Neither sophistry nor skepticism speaks against this fact. Both have a completely different shade in antiquity than they have in modern times. They do not speak against the fact, which is particularly evident in the actual characters of thinkers, that the Greek felt thought to be much more elementary, more substantive, more alive, more real than the man of modern times can feel it. This vitality, which in Greece gave thought the character of perception, is no longer present in the Middle Ages. What has taken place is this: Just as in Greek times thought moved into the human soul and eradicated the old pictorial imagination, so in the Middle Ages the consciousness of the "I" moved into souls; and this dampened the vitality of thought; it took away its power of perception. One can only realize how the life of world-view progresses if one sees through how the thought, the idea, was in fact something quite different for Plato and Aristotle than for the personalities of the Middle Ages and the new age. The thinker of antiquity had the feeling that the thought was given to him; the thinker of later times has the feeling that he forms the thought; and so the question arises for him: What meaning for reality can that have which is formed in the soul? The Greek felt himself as a soul separated from the world; in thought he sought to connect himself with the spiritual world; the later thinker feels alone with his thought life. This is how research into the "general ideas" arises. One asks: What have I actually formed in them? Are they only rooted in me, or do they point to a reality?
[ 5 ] In the times that lie between the old worldview current and the newer one, Greek thought life dries up; beneath the surface, however, the human soul is approached as a fact by the I-consciousness; from the middle of the Middle Ages onwards, man faces this accomplished fact, and through its power the new kind of life puzzle develops. Realism and nominalism are the symptom of man's perception of the accomplished fact. The way in which both speak about thought shows that it was as dulled and muted in relation to its existence in the Greek soul as the old pictorial conception was in the soul of the Greek thinker.
[ 6 ] This refers to the driving element that lives in the newer worldviews. A force is at work in them that strives beyond thought for a new reality factor. One cannot perceive this striving of the newer age as the same as the striving beyond thought in ancient times with Pythagoras and later with Plotinus. These also strive beyond thought, but they imagine that the development of the soul, its perfection, must attain the region that lies beyond thought. The newer era assumes that the reality factor lying beyond thought must be given to the soul from outside, that it must come to it.
[ 7 ] In the centuries following the age of nominalism and realism, the development of the worldview becomes a search for the new reality factor. One path among those that show themselves to the observer of this search is that taken by the medieval mystics: Master Eckhard (d. 1327), Johannes Tauler (d. 1361), Heinrich Suso (d. 1366). This path is most vividly illustrated by a consideration of the so-called "Theologia deutsch", which originates from a historically unknown author. These mystics want to receive something into the I-consciousness, to fill it with something. They therefore strive for an inner life that is "completely serene", that surrenders itself in peace, and that expects the soul's interior to be filled with the "divine I". In later times, a similar mood of the soul with more momentum of the spirit appears in Angelus Silesius (1624-1677).
[ 8 ] Nicolaus Cusanus (Nikolaus Chrypffs, born in Kues on the Moselle in 1401, died in 1464) took a different path. He strives beyond the knowledge that can be attained intellectually to a state of mind in which this knowledge ceases and the soul encounters its God in "knowing ignorance", docta ignorantia. On the surface, this is very similar to Plotinus' quest. However, the state of the soul is different in the two personalities. Plotinus is convinced that there is more to the human soul than the world of thought. When the soul develops its own power outside of thought, it perceptively reaches where it always is, without knowing it in ordinary life; Cusanus feels alone with his "I"; this has no connection with his God. He is outside the "I". The "I" encounters him when it reaches "knowing ignorance".
[ 9 ] Paracelsus (1493-1541) already had the feeling towards nature that developed more and more in the newer world view and which is an effect of the soul feeling lonely in the ego consciousness. He directs his gaze to the phenomena of nature. They cannot be accepted by the soul as they present themselves; but even thought, which in Aristotle's case unfolded in calm communion with natural phenomena, cannot be accepted as it appears in the soul. It is not perceived; it is formed in the soul. Paracelsus felt that one must not let the thought speak for itself; one must presuppose that there is something behind the phenomena of nature which reveals itself when one brings oneself into the right relationship with them. One must be able to receive something from nature that one does not form oneself in the sight of it, like thought. One must relate to one's ego through another factor of reality than through thought. Paracelsus seeks a "higher nature" behind nature. The mood of his soul is such that he does not want to experience something in himself alone in order to arrive at the reasons for existence, but that he wants to bore himself, as it were, with his ego into the processes of nature in order to have the spirit of these processes revealed to him beneath the surface of the sensory world. The mystics of antiquity wanted to penetrate into the depths of the soul; Paracelsus wanted to undertake that which would lead to an encounter with the roots of nature in the outer world.
[ 10 ] Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), who as a lonely, persecuted craftsman formed a world view as if out of inner enlightenment, nevertheless carries the basic character of modern times into this world view. Indeed, he even develops this basic character particularly impressively in the solitude of his soul life, because the inner duality of soul life, the contrast between the ego and the other soul experiences, appears before his mind's eye. He experiences the "I" as it creates the inner contrast in his own soul life, as it is reflected in his own soul. He then finds this inner experience in the processes of the world. He sees in this experience a dichotomy that runs through everything. "In such contemplation one finds two qualities, one good and one evil, which are in this world in all forces, in stars and elements, as well as in all creatures in each other." The evil in the world also stands opposite the good as its reflection; the good first becomes aware of itself in the evil, just as the ego becomes aware of itself in its soul experiences.