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The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada L'église Catholique Anglicane du Canada Newsletter Title Archdiocesan news February 2012 Province of Canada Office: PHILOSOPHY AND THE aged - and as his fame grew. 70 Bentley Avenue, Suite 102 CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN - 43 Among his written works are to be Ottawa, ON CANADA K2E 6T8 found: „The World as Will and Telephone: 613-233-3915 Four Later ‘Critical’ German Email: [email protected] Web- Idea‟; and „Fourfold Root of the Philosophers site: www.anglicancatholic.ca Principle of Sufficient Reason‟ „Pay no attention to what the crit- Metropolitan of the Province of Canada Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 - ics say: no statue has ever been put Diocesan Bishop of the Pro-Diocese of 1881) had studied medicine and Our Lady of Walsingham up to critic‟ philosophy at Leipzig, and he be- The Most Rev. Peter Wilkinson, OSG Attributed to Jean Sibelius came a teacher of physiology and 209-25 Government Street Victoria BC V8V 2K4 philosophy at that university. He The time had now arrived when 250-385-4444 some philosophers, and other sci- later taught at Gottingen and Ber- [email protected] entists, became doubtful as to the lin. Apostolic Commissary – Province of truth of previous recent teachings. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt Canada Although filled, for the most part, (1832 - 1920) was the son of a Lu- Auxiliary Bishop of the Pro-Diocese of with a deep reverence for Kant theran minister who began his life Our Lady of Walsingham they nevertheless also held The Rt. Rev. Carl Reid at Neckarau, near Baden. This 6541 Michelangelo Court „fashionable philosophy‟ in some eminent physician, physiologist, North Gower ON K0A 2T0 considerable contempt. „Criticism‟ psychologist, and philosopher is, 613-489-2538 then reduced to a form of uneasy even today, frequently referred to [email protected] unity, a variety of these opposi- as „the father of experimental psy- tions. It is the position of four such chology‟. He would later become Chancellor – Province of Canada Apostolic Adminstrator of the persons that I wish to examine in best known for his studies on con- Diocese of Canada this month‟s segment. sciousness. The Rt. Rev. Craig Botterill 10 Granby Court Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776 - The Nature of the Universe Halifax NS B3R 2M7 1841) was a critical German 902-444-5326 The idealistic philosophy of such thinker who opposed the entire Ide- [email protected] thinkers as Fichte, Hegel, and alistic movement. He held many Schelling could no longer go un- Assistant Bishop famous chairs of philosophy, in- challenged, if for no better reason The Rt. Rev. Robert Crawley, SSC cluding the one made famous by than that they had contradicted so 2689 Selwyn Road Kant himself at Konigsberg. Victoria BC V9B 3L2 much of common sense. It was in- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - evitable that others would emerge to 1860) was born in Danzig. His present another side of the story. Inside this issue: father was a banker and his mother a novelist. Refusing to A Wedding Sermon 5 follow in his father‟s footsteps he chose instead a career in philoso- Maggie’s Kitchen 6 phy. At first he lectured widely Some Notes on Candlemas 7 but gained little success, for his contemporaries, by and large, From Fr Edwin Barnes’ Blog—and News of Bishop Mercer 8 held the popular ear. Although Notes and News 9 this made him bitter initially his nature sweetened somewhat as he Johann Friedrich Herbart was just such a one. He Mary, wanted a coffee table I could (albeit only in took issue with every aspect of Hegel‟s philosophy theory) get together the wood, nails, and tools re- and set about to demonstrate that idealistic philoso- quired - and set about to build one. Or, which is far phy was full of impossible theories. more likely, I could draw some money out of my bank account and purchase a properly constructed For Herbart the universe consisted of a great num- one. ber of unchangeable principles, or substances, which he called „reals‟. Each real closely resem- By so reasoning, he argued that will is the cause of bled the monad which had been described by Leib- all things in the universe. The thing in itself, for niz half a century earlier. It was a simple entity: him, is will, the cause of everything. In organic absolute, indivisible, immutable, un-extendable in and inorganic life this fact remains the same. In a time or space - and not subject to decay. Thus, rock, will is blind, yet it is the creative principle Herbart‟s world of reals was necessarily static - for which brings the rock into being. As we move up- in it there could be no change or growth. Bodies ward towards man, will becomes increasingly con- are composed of aggregates of these reals, and each scious. Man may direct his will by means of his soul is itself a real. In striving for self- intelligence, and succeed in getting what he wills. preservation, each real behaves differently in the The universe, then, is the result of will: a primal presence of different reals. will - which continues to work regardless of the coming or going of individuals. By relating reals together we create the universe which we experience. For example, I may come Rudolph Hermann Lotze sought to interpret Kant‟s into relationship with many reals and bring them „thing in itself‟ in terms of the mind. He taught that together into the form of a small black and white the physical world should be understood as being dog. Then, by bringing other reals into this situa- purely mechanical; as a matter of physical and tion, and by rejecting some others which I already chemical laws. But, this is the world of perception had there, that anonymous little dog becomes my and its cause is comparable to the soul or mind. very own small dog Goonie. Nevertheless, the real Thus, there are various degrees of reality: in the world, for Herbart, remains absolutely static case of matter mental life is present - but clouded. wherein nothing happens. All happenings are phe- In man this mental life is conscious and clear. The nomena in consciousness. As consciousness ar- universe is alive and is mind - and so here again we ranges and rearranges reals, things appear, change, encounter Idealism. The work of Lotze, and other and disappear. Idealists, made a profound impression upon the thinking of their age. Herbart‟s universe is made up of timeless and space -less units that never change, but which exert activ- By admitting the existence of a material world ity by preserving themselves against other reals. these philosophers seem to have met the objections This theory of the universe is known as „Realism‟ - of those who felt that Idealists had denied common and its basic tenet is that the universe is real and sense. But, by holding that the mind is the creative not a mere creation of the mind. Although experi- spirit in this world, in other words that the world is ence reveals only phenomena, an appearance must alive, they believed that they had also conserved always be an appearance of something! There ex- the fundamental values of Idealism. Their philoso- ists a reality which causes the appearance - and you phies may be seen as attempts to meet the demands will recall that Kant had called this reality the of the then growing natural sciences - while at the „thing in itself‟. Hegel, however, had argued force- same time to escape the crass materialism which fully that there was no such a „thing‟. threatened philosophy as science became stronger. They believed that the values of mind, spirit, or Arthur Schopenhauer attacked the problem from a soul should not be covered up and lost completely rather different angle. While he agreed with Kant in the landslide of modern science. that the world of experience is a world of phenom- ena, he nevertheless believed that we could become Man‟s place in the Universe aware of the „thing itself‟. He noted that when a These later German philosophers studied the mate- person wants something he can set about to build it rial universe very carefully and, having discovered (or otherwise acquire it). For example, if my wife, its laws and nature, they subsequently placed man 2 in the chain of inevitable causes and effects. If the The Nature of God universe is a machine governed by unchangeable The spiritual realities that Rudolf Lotze believed in laws, so then is man also a machine. Herbart is could not be thought of unless one admitted the representative of such thinking; both nature and existence of a universal substance of which all the man are represented by the coming and going, the spiritual units are modes or expressions. He saw in mingling and separating, of units (that is to say - this world the expression of some „absolute will‟ his „reals‟). The universe of reals is absolute, and which unified the parts without confusion. All na- the only change lies in our own habit of relating ture is controlled by the Absolute, a substance of reals in such a way as to form objects or patterns, which all the processes of nature are states. This is To explain this point further, picture yourself star- pantheism. God is the highest soul, a world soul, ing steadily at a picture for a while and notice how related to the world just as the human soul is re- it will appear to change before your eyes. Of lated to the human body. Nature, according to course you know that the picture has in fact not Lotze, is the body of God.

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