THE THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY of HERMANN L 0 T Z E. by ANDREW K. RULE, B.D. <l****f 3. eWo^.^H- '^ 3 f Edinburgh' •' 1923. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF LOTZE. Paje The Problem of "existence" and "value". The Problem in general 1. The Problem in Lotze's intellectual environment Materialism 3. Idealism 6. Lotze's training brings him into close contact with both sides 1j . His Problem 17. History and status of theistic proof The Teleological 19. The Cosmological 24. The Ontological 29. Negative attitudes, and Hegel. 32. CHAPTER II. HIS DISCUSSION OF THE TRADITIONAL PROOFS. Its casual and unsympathetic character 33 The Teleological Proof His statements of this proof 40 His objections to it 43 The Gosmologioal Proof His statements of it Discussion of the terms employed Criticism of the argument as corrected 09. The Ontological Proof His statements of it 74. Fallacy of the Cartesian form 75. Anselmic form nearly correct; the truth underlying these proofs 76. The Moral Proof 33. CHAPTER III. INTERACTION, LOTZE'S STARTING - POINT."1 Advantages of starting from interaction 37. Interaction vindicated against Occasionalism - criticism of Lotze 89. Pre-established Harmony 96. Proof of interaction The Being of Things is related Being cf. G-reen, ct. Bradley 109. Relations, in reality, are interaction 123. Criticism of this proof 126. CHAPTER IV. THE ABSOLUTE. Transeunt must become immanent action 131. Scientific and Herbartian views that elements are indeendent l3l. The logical element in explanation breaks this down 133. The metaphysical element disproves it; requires an Absolute 135. Examination of this argument 144. Interaction cannot prove a unitary Absolute - Thomas 146. Relation of finite things to the Absolute 149 . The physical analogies 152. The discussion transferred to the spiritual plane 153. Panpsychism 154. Spiritualism - personality of G-od lol. Relation of souls and spirits to the Absolute 132. CHAPTER V. SOME SPECIAL PROBLEMS. :3 Problems relating to personality Is there an Absolute at all? 185. Is the Absolute of philosophy the God of religion? 187. Arguments in favour of a finite G-od 189. The Problem of Sin - Lotze's position 190. Personality involves finiteness - Lotze's argument - criticism 192. Personality is not ultimate 2l4. The problem of Lotze's sources - his theological views 217. Lotze' s outstanding merits as s. theistic philosopher 223. Chapter I. THE PROBLEM OP LOTZE Man's inevitable attempt to unify and so explain his varied experience has reduced the world of thought to two great kingdoms which have offered strenuous resistance to our efforts toward further systematisation. On the one hand lies the realm of existence usually regarded as forming the proper object of the investigations of natural science; on the other, the realm of value, which is at least partially revealed in the normative sciences, in art, and in religion. That they lie in some sense, apart is quite obvious; that they belong together and must somehow be brought together both their unity in experience and the whole-constructing character of thought make equally evident. The natural scientist, as such, may be content to ignore questions of value as far as possible, and such a conception of natural science has sometimes been elevated into a veritable fetish, but this can be at most only a principle of method, and anything more than a relative success in the maintenance of such an attitude is utterly inconceivable. Certainly those whose attention is concentrated more directly on the questions of value will not usually be willing to ignore questions of existence, even if it were possible so to do; 1 and 1. Sorley, Moral Values, p. 77 ff. 2. least of all can a developed religion, the Ritschlians to the contrary, withdraw into the realm of value and deny the per­ tinence of any questions of existence. 1 The result is that these two realms are apt to confront each other, each endeavour­ ing to maintain itself as over against the other; each striving somehow - by compromise, by resort to points of view that promise to prove more ultimate, sometimes even by flat denial - either to absorb the other, or at least to remove the apparent contradiction of itself by the other. The problem had already emerged by Plato's time, for it appears quite explicitly in his attempt to understand all things in the light of The Good - indeed it can be traced back as far as to Anaxagoras - and ever since it has been fluctuating between the foreground and the immediate background of philosophic specu­ lation. It began to be prominent in modern thinking in the eighteenth century, owing largely to the work of Immanuel Kant. The problem was widened and deepened by the German Idealists, who extended, in philosophy, the domain of value from the exclusive moralism of Kant to include also the regions of aesthetics and of religion, independently considered; it was again made prominent in the nineteenth century owing to the active aggression of Naturalism, and the modern tendency to give primacy to the conception of value - at least in very influential quarters - has brought the question of its relation to existence hardly less definitely into the philosophic 1. cf. Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, Gh. III. 3. limelight. 1 Because of the fact that, of the disciplines that are devoted more explicitly to questions of value, religion is the most accessible and yet the most ultimate, it has tended to play the role in human thinking of the great protagonist of the value disciplines. As a result, the opposition between the realms of existence and of value has often betrayed a tendency to take the form of a conflict between natural science, relying on reason, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, religion, the medium of which is faith. This conflict between existence and value, in its various forms, was violently agitating the intellectual environment in which Lotze grew up and did his life's work; his educational contacts were with both sides in the fray, and his writings can be appreciated only in its light. On the one hand, natural science had been advancing with such spectacular success that its spirit and principles were coming increasingly to dominate the thinking of the age. Since the stronghold of medieval thought, with its theologico-Ptolemaic background, its syllogistic ideal of method, its recourse to extra-mundane, supernatural agents and externally imposed purposes, had fallen one by one before the ever-increasing dominion of the purely mechanical conception of Nature, natural science had hastened from victory to victory. Philosophy, also, lent its support, both positively and negatively, to the increasing encroachment of science upon the whole domain of thought. As early at 1. Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, Gh. II. 4. least as Descartes we find a fondness for the mathematical method that was destined to play a peculiarly important part in subsequent speculation, and the Cartesian doctrine of the automatism of animals, and the all but automatism of man, shows the extent of the dominance of purely physical categories in the realm of organic life. Biology, as a science, had not yet developed, and when it did there was a long struggle,complicated and intensified by the necessity of rejecting the mystical doctrine of Vitalism, and lasting almost up to the present time, to vindicate for it its own categories different from those of mathematics and physics. For Kant, science was just ma the mati co-physics; to this field he restricted the ..term "knowledge", all else being matter for subjective certainty or faith - and if this did not involve, on his part, any superior evaluation of the former, his terras soon carried that implication for others. When he finally came to the study of living organisms, he was forced to regard them as if other categories were operative in them; he did suggest, also, that for a higher intelligence the reconciliation of the mechanical and the teleological categories might be possible, but it remained his ideal to "explain all products and occurrences in nature, even the most purposive, by mechanism as far as is in our power." 1 This widespread philosophic attitude was the positive contri­ bution to which we referred. During this period also, - and this is her negative 1. Grit, of Judg., sect. 78. contribution - philosophy was exhausting herself in a series of brilliant campaigns, which yet seemed to yield no satisfactory result. How the last great philosophic drive had co.iie to a decided end, and the proud Hegelian army that had showed promise of subduing the whole world of thought in one comprehensive movement had lost its sense of unity and its consciousness of power. A few faithful adherents of genuine Hegelian! sin still strove to commend the method and the doctrine of the master, but they were greatly surpassed in importance, on the one hand, by such pseudo-Hegelians as Christian Weisse, Lotze's teacher in Leipsi,£«, who strove to retain the Hegelian form while applying it to more popular materials, 1 and, on the other hand, by the still more influential Young Hegelians. The latter - Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Strauss, and Feuerbach - were thoroughly materialistic in their sympathies, and were much more interested in the origin and machinery than in the meaning and function of natural existences and events. p Such a weakened and divided force was no match for the a^ressive naturalism of contemporary science, whose mechanistic principle came easily to be regarded as a universal solvent, and whose materialistic philosophy was taken to be the only logical con­ clusion. As such, materialism was taken up with something of a religious fervour, and became the subject of a widespread propaganda.