(Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 62) Max Scheler, John Cutting (Translator) - On The Constitution of The Human Being - From The Posthumous Works, Volumes 11 & 12-Marquette University Press (2008)

the constitution of
the human being

Max Scheler
the constitution of
the human being
from the posthumous works,
volumes 11 and 12
Translated by
John Cutting
Marquette Studies in Philosophy
No. 62
Andrew tallon, Series Editor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scheler, Max, 1874-1928.
[Selections. English. 2008]
On the constitution of the human being : from the posthumous works, volumes 11
and 12 / Max Scheler ; translated by John Cutting.
p. cm. — (Marquette studies in philosophy ; no. 62)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-760-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-87462-760-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Human beings. I. Cutting, John ( John C.) II. Title.
B3329.S482E5 2008
193—dc22
2008012753
© 2008 Marquette University Press

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-3141
All rights reserved.
www.marquette.edu/mupress/
Founded 1916
Cover photo compliments of Max-Scheler-Gesellschaft e.V.
www.max-scheler.de
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
table of contents
About the Translator................................................................................ 6
Translator’s Introduction ........................................................................ 7
1. The Essential Theory and Typology of Metaphysical Systems

and Weltanschauungen . .................................................................. 11
2. My Theory of the Cognitive and Methodological

Aspects of Metaphysics.................................................................. 77
3. The Constitution of the Human Being . .......................................129
4. The Metaphysics of the Human Being .........................................203
5. The Metaphysics of Cognition . .....................................................255
6. The Metasciences . ...........................................................................261
7. Theory of the Causes of Everything ..............................................323
8. Supplementary Remarks . ...............................................................369
Bibliography .........................................................................................421
Index of Key Terms..............................................................................423
Index of Names.....................................................................................427
about the translator
John Cutting was born in Aberdeen in Scotland, was brought up
in Yorkshire, and has lived in or near London for most of his life. He
qualified as a doctor of medicine in London, then studied psychiatry
and worked as a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley and Bethlem
Hospitals and the Institute of Psychiatry in London for twenty years.
For the last fifteen years he has been studying philosophy with the aim
of contributing to the growing discipline of philosophical psychopatho
logy – explaining conditions such as schizophrenia and depression in
philosophical terms. He is married with five children.
Translator’s Introduction
Biographical Sketch
Max Scheler was born in 1874 in Munich. His father was a Protestant,
who administered the estates of the King of Bavaria, and his mother
was Jewish. He was brought up as an orthodox Jew, but later converted
to Catholicism, and at the end of his life renounced all official theisms
and developed his own theological notions, which he referred to as
‘panentheism’ – the perpetual becoming of God.
He was an unpromising student at school, being engrossed in Niet
zsche’s books rather than the main lessons. He began his university
studies in Munich, electing for medicine and philosophy, but soon
opted for philosophy, and his first mentor was Rudolph Eucken in
Jena, who won the Nobel Prize for his writings, and who was a neo-
Kantian philosopher interested in the relationship between culture,
religion and work. He then returned to Munich and in the first decade
of the 20th Century he began his own independent philosophical ca-
reer, acknowledging the parallel work of Husserl, but never being a
‘student’ of Husserl, as some commentators falsely maintain. After the
First World War he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in Co-
logne and just before he died he was planning to move to a chair in
Frankfurt.
His personal life was quite turbulent, much more so than that of
most philosophers, but probably fed into his particular philosophical
preoccupations, which were early on to do with the emotional life of
a human being. He was married three times, had a high sexual drive,
and his career was blighted by scandal concerning his affairs. Never-
theless, he was a charismatic lecturer, who shortly before his death
held the German High Command spellbound for four hours on the
subject, of all things, of pacifism. He was a wonderful companion who
could transform the most mundane situation into a magical affair. And
he was regarded as an incomparable genius by all those who had the
intellectual quality to see it, most notably the other great philosophers
of that era – Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann. Husserl regarded
8 The Constitution of the Human Being
him as one of his two ‘antipodes’, the other being Heidegger. Not only
this; he took the greatest interest in contemporary life. He was a pa-
triot at the outset of the First World War and wrote semi-propaganda
on the issue. He then became a pacifist and offered his services in the
search for an Armistice. He was a close friend of Walter Rathenau
who was Foreign Minister in the Weimar Republic, and who was mur-
dered by the Brown-shirts. He was immensely knowledgeable about
sociology, psychology, psychiatry, physics and biology, in which respect
he is virtually the last of the philosopher-polymaths – akin to Ber-
trand Russell.
He had quite uncanny premonitions of his own death, as he told his
wife, and sure enough, after surviving one heart attack, he developed
chest pain one day, asked for a beer, and was dead in a few moments.
Heidegger, in his eulogy, referred to him as the greatest of contempo-
rary philosophers.
Philosophical Significance
Scheler’s total writings amount to fourteen volumes, and are available
from the publishers thanks to his third wife who preserved and col-
lated them, and to Manfred Frings, a German philosopher who took
up residence in the United States and who is the current editor. Over
the years there have been translations of some of these, the greatest
part of which has been carried out by Manfred Frings himself.
To those philosophers who are acquainted with Scheler, he has the
reputation of being the phenomenologist who studied the emotional
life of the human being, and in their eyes a minor figure relative to
Husserl or Heidegger, who supposedly took on the task of explicating
the entire human being. This reputation is utterly false, and is attribut-
able to the neglect of his late works concerning metaphysics and the
anthropology of the human being. The impetus for translating these
late works, dense though they be, and incomplete – they are almost
short notes for a work that he never lived to write – is the overwhelm-
ing sense, conveyed by these, that Scheler saw himself as a metaphysi-
cian, indeed almost the only metaphysician around, and the notes he
made are to be seen in that light.
Scheler’s position in the pantheon of philosophers is in no way se-
cure, but his reputation is undoubtedly growing – among psychiatrists
engaged in finding a non-psychoanalytical and non-biological way of
3 Translator's Introduction 9
formulating psychopathology for one thing – and it is hoped that this
translation will alert – or in my case completely bowl over – the phi-
losopher, would-be philosopher, or intelligent lay-person on issues
which no-one else even dreamt about.
1
Manuscript on the Essential
Theory and Typology of
Metaphysical Systems and
Weltanschauungen
[Theory of Weltanschauung]
Introduction
S
ince every sort of knowledge and all sorts of cognition are a
participation by the knowing subject in a being which is inde-
pendent from him himself, and actually exists, then metaphys-
ics is equally the eternal attempt by human beings, by virtue of their
spontaneous reason, to participate in the absolute reality of things
themselves. In the first place, by virtue of this spontaneous knowledge
of reason, it sets metaphysics sharply apart from all religions, which al-
ways concern some privileged revelation. Metaphysics seeks to provide
knowledge – whether hard evidence, or of a probable sort; it is not
belief, or faith. Secondly, metaphysics seeks out the absolute reality –
in which endeavour it differs from conventional science. This absolute
reality is one whose existence and nature is no longer influenced in
any way by the special organization of the psycho-physical make-up
of the human being. Nor is it beholden to any other sort of reality
or actuality for its existence, and it is therefore absolute in an objec-
tive sense, and conforms to the principles and reasons which Aristotle
laid down as befitting a ‘First Philosophy’. Furthermore, any human
participation in this absolute realm – which metaphysics seeks – also
means coming to know all other realms which are deeply rooted in this
absolute realm – the dead as well as the living world, plants, animals,
human beings themselves and their reason, along with consciousness
and each level of the soul, and even the irreal, ideal world of objects.
Thirdly, for all these reasons, metaphysics is knowledge of the real,
and that separates it from all formal and ideal sciences, such as logic,
mathematics, and any study of the structure of essences of the world.
They are undoubtedly necessary for constructing metaphysics, but
they are not metaphysics itself. Whoever restricts metaphysics to ex-
istence-free ideas and ideal connections in this way, like Husserl does,
or to values, as Rickert and Windelband do, or to the bare content of
consciousness, for example, that person is denying what metaphysics
actually comprises.
Even the person who coined the very word ‘metaphysics’ restricted
what it connoted by putting Aristotle’s writings on the matter after
those where he had written about physics, and it was only later that
this ‘editorial’ decision was graced with the title – Knowledge of the
highest principles and basis of beings – which Aristotle had indicated his
First Philosophy was about.
Admittedly, the word ‘metaphysics’ points to a fairly clear-cut sub-
ject matter for discussion, to do with the absolute reality underlying
physics and nature. But one can, and should, with no lesser right, talk
about a metapsychology or a metamathematics or a metahistory or a
metabiology or a metasociology, or even a metanoetics, or a metaphys-
ics of art, or a metaphysics of nationhood and law. For, each of these
major subdivisions of human knowledge and its subject matter has its
own peculiar ‘meta’-problems or ‘metascience’, which were deliberately
ignored by the actual practitioners of such disciplines, for the purpos-
es of getting on with their work, but ought now to be looked at. This
applies to subjects other than physics, even physics in the broad sense
which Aristotle took it to mean. These metasciences are the bridging
connections between the individual sciences themselves and the high-
est reaches of metaphysics. They each – each metascience – help build
up a picture of a background to the world by framing the results of
their own science in such a way that it can be looked at in conjunction
with [and with the same vocabulary of ] the other metasciences [to
flesh out the absolute reality].
Metaphysics is then – in contrast to the individual sciences – a total
and universal sort of knowledge, in fact, wisdom of the world [Welt
weisheit]. It reintegrates the centuries-old scattered and fragmented
scientific observations, by dint of a method which is unique to it, and
is unlike any scientific method. For, in spite of what I have said, meta-
physics is not simply the gathering up of the results of the various
sciences to produce a coherent view of Being as a whole, as Wundt
1 3 The Essential Theory & Typology of Metaphysical Systems 13
thought. It rather treats what we know of the world from a different
vantage point than do the individual sciences, looking at it under the
guidance of the ‘whole’ itself, and allocating a particular place within
this totality of things to what each individual science contributes.
The subjective consequence of this objective exercise is that in genu-
ine metaphysics it is always the whole human being, as a mental and
spiritual creature, who is active and knowledgeable, and we are not
talking about any specific human function or part of his spiritual and
mental make-up. How it is that the human being can gain access to
the absolute reality of things, and with what part of him – whether
through thinking, sensory perception, intuition, feeling, drives or will;
whether immediately in a mystical fashion, as Schopenhauer thought,
or mediately; and through what practice or technique of life or spiritu-
al means : all this must be left open at the beginning of our metaphysi-
cal quest. Only one thing is certain, and that is that only by bringing
to bear the total human being to the task, can the totality of existing
things be grasped. Only the human being in its entirety is equal to the
entirety of what there is : in short, the human being is a microcosm.
How the absolute reality of the human participation allows the very
human to do what he must do in this situation – which spiritual activ-
ity and in which order he must bring to the situation to achieve his
aim – lies exclusively in the nature of this very reality.
So much for the first hazy definition of the matter in question. I
shall now set out my preparatory considerations as to what I think
each of us knows and finds, or does not find, in the realm of metaphys-
ics, loosely defined above.
It is definitely not my intention to present a metaphysical system,
in the way the traditional philosophical schools approach things. I
eschew this, first, because philosophy itself is not primarily a set of
opinions held by previous human beings, but is something on-going,
and of the nature of an immersion into the living book of the world.
Secondly, the very claim of metaphysics, as we have defined it, to a
rightful place in the scheme of things, has been vigorously contested
for centuries, and this from a variety of powerful philosophical di-
rections, right up to our current times. Thirdly, I myself have never
understood, and it will never be understood, why one can read ten
thousand books, all held in more or less high esteem, and contain-
ing the opinions of the supposed greatest academic minds, and yet
each and every one announces the demise of metaphysics. We must
be clear from the start that the way I define metaphysics – as a pure
claim on our knowledge – is denied by Kant, by all Neo-Kantians,
by all Positivist philosophers – from Bacon to Mach and Avenarius
– by any adherent of Husserl’s phenomenology, by all historicist phi-
losophers like Dilthey and Spengler, and by all philosophers whose
notions are dominated by values or consciousness. In fact, it is true
to say that what I have in mind is denied by virtually all modern phi-
losophers. From the time when I was a university student, and during
the first ten years of my tenure as a university lecturer, a lecture on
metaphysics, outside anything the Scholastics had to say about it, was
virtually unheard of. It is only in the course of the last ten years that
this attitude is slowly receding, and that has to do with the waning of
the Neo-Kantian influence. Admittedly, a literary figure has recently
talked about a rebirth of metaphysics, and it is scarcely believable how
much is now written, even outside strictly philosophical circles, about
this supposed event. But even though this metaphysical philosophy of
the Wilhelminian era, as well as the more recent sort, are refreshing
to behold, in terms of their cultural-psychological significance, they
have little or no bearing on the question as to the rightful position of
metaphysics. The claim of metaphysics on us can only be addressed by
looking at the actual facts of our situation, facts which must hold sway
or not long before anyone starts speculating in a metaphysical way.
This foundation can be investigated in two major ways, an exercise we
shall follow ourselves.
Part 1A will consist of ‘Essential Theory and Typology of Metaphysi-
cal Systems and World-views’, and Part 1B of ‘Cognition and Method-
ological Theory in respect of Metaphysics as Positive Knowledge’. Part
IIA – ‘The Metasciences’ – and Part IIB – ‘A Theory concerning the
Cause of Everything’, subtitled a ‘Theory of God’ – are the two chief
divisions of metaphysics which will come under scrutiny following our
discussion – in Part 1 – of classificatory and methodological issues.
The traditional classification into: ontology – consideration of what
sorts, forms or categories of beings there are; cosmology – notions
about the inorganic and organic world; and psychology and theology;
we consider as of secondary importance.
In the second part, just alluded to, I shall report my own investiga-
tions into the matter, especially the results I have come to in the last
two years or so, and will for the first time present an overview of the
systematic structure to my thoughts about philosophy and the notion
of God, an overview in which all my far-reaching excursions into phi-
losophy will be accorded their latest meaning.
First, though, we must try and secure a firm and secure basis for
metaphysics, and this is the purpose of the first part of the book, un-
der the two headings – Essential Theory and Typology and Cognitive
Theory and Metaphysics.
The first of these has almost become a discipline in its own right
in the past decade, and any philosopher, whether he accepts the right
of metaphysics to exist or not, must be conversant with it. For, we are
concerned here with the essential characteristics of all spiritual and
mental structures and productions, among which we include meta-
physics. But there are others, with which we need to compare meta-
physics itself, e.g. myth, religion, art, mysticism, spiritual healing and
science; and, further, we need to place the metaphysical world-view in
some perspective, alongside the natural world-view and the scientific
world-view. It is only through a comparison of these different struc-
tures, with a special eye on their mutual boundaries, that this ques-
tion can be solved. For example, do Plato’s myths belong to his meta-
physics? and is Spinoza’s Ethics rather a rationalist doctrine belonging
to metaphysics than a work of refined mysticism? Any discussion of
all this should include the motive behind any metaphysical enquiry,
in comparison with what motivates the theologian or scientist, and
should further consider the emotional background to what is being
presented as a formal treatise, and even take note of what technol-
ogy and art are, at root; all of this has a bearing on metaphysics. Of
relevance, too, are important questions concerning the type of person
who becomes a metaphysician, as opposed to a great individualist or
a prophet or a mystic; there are questions too about the social group-
ing to which a metaphysical scheme appeals – i.e. school or sect – and
how it is preserved, reproduced and subject to changes in the course
of history. Next there is the issue of whether a metaphysical sort of
knowledge is actually outdated or not. There are a great number of
problems facing the humanities as a whole, which face any individual
investigator in these subjects, but none of these is metaphysics itself,
and is not even part of the subdivision of ‘cognitive theory and meta-
physics’, which I mentioned.
Because a vast number of metaphysical systems have cropped up in
the course of history, we should give some order to them, according to
their principal theme. There are four separate points of view to heed
in any such exercise.
1. First, there is a psychological point of view – i.e. What different
types of human being are persistently over history linked with one
metaphysical system rather than another, e.g. materialism, positivism,
pantheism?
2. Secondly, which objective unities of meaning are incorporated in
the chief varieties of metaphysical systems – e.g. in accordance with
Dilthey’s well-known classification into naturalism, objective idealism,
and personal idealism of freedom? Linked with this are the questions
as to how the parts of a metaphysical system go together, and which
parts necessarily belong together and which parts not?
3. Thirdly, how do the various metaphysical Weltanschauungen re-
late to the major historical cultural groupings of humans – e.g. Indian,
East Asian and Western – and over history itself – e.g. Ancient and
Modern?
4. Finally, there is the historical point of view itself, concerning what
in a metaphysical system corresponds to the particular preoccupations
[or maturity] of an era, and what not? For example, the Ancient ones
share the influence of a mental set towards substance and geometrical
thinking, whereas the more recent ones acknowledge functional and
temporal influences. How do we start to analyse a metaphysical sys-
tem? Each major metaphysical system can and should be attributed
to a group of urphenomena and ur-experiences on the one hand, and
a conceptual elaboration of these on the other. The appropriate ap-
proach would be a phenomenological reconstruction of the system.
Overall one would have to separate the original basic intuition of the
person who initiated the system from the arcane way in which it was
expressed, but also take into account the historical climate in which it
was formulated.
This part of what I call the essence and typology of metaphysics has
been used in recent years precisely to undermine the very possibil-
ity of there being any metaphysics at all [i.e. by historicizing all such
attempts]. Comte, Mill, Dilthey, Simmel, Jaspers, Weber and others
have argued just this. Indeed, they tried to subordinate metaphysics
to science for this very reason. We, on our part, resolutely reject this
attempt, because we think we can show that metaphysics is, and how
it is, possible. But, setting aside the value for the humanities as a whole,
which any such an attempt on our part possesses, we think it is doubly
necessary and essential for the construction of a metaphysics itself.
In the first place, we can easily avoid innumerable one-sidednesses
and basic errors if we penetrate the rules by which the major extant
metaphysical systems have been constructed. In fact, we shall allow
ourselves to be guided by the principle which Leibniz and Hegel first
made good use of, which is that any metaphysics must contain within
itself the part-truths of all previous systems, and must even conserve
and touch on the compressed truth and wisdom of the entire history
of metaphysics – and raise it to a condensed and higher plane [auf
heben]. It is through such a broader truth and a broader whole that
relative falsehoods and inadequacies, and a partial one-sidedness, are
brought to light. Anyway, there is no metaphysical system which did
not contain a great deal of essential part-truths, and the questions
which should be put are : Truth about what? and, About which sort
of objectivity? and, About what level of existential relativity this ob-
jectivity is to be set at? This means that a fully adequate metaphysi-
cal knowledge is one which permits even the inadequate and merely
partial truth of all other systems to be completely explained. It further
entails that a correct metaphysical theory is always an integrated part-
result of metaphysics itself. Metaphysics must not only determine the
nature of absolute reality, which is pre-given to any knowledge of it; it
must also show how knowledge is possibly derived from the very real-
ity it seeks to know, and in what order all this happens. A metaphys-
ics of knowledge and a knowledge of metaphysics go hand in hand,
as Hartmann realized. We intend to show the complete untenability
of the following relativistic world-views: Jaspers’ and Simmel’s notion
of different metaphysical systems as an expression of certain essential
types and spiritual physiognomies; metaphysics as merely a historical
series of interesting sketches as to what certain high-profile characters
thought and wrote – Nietzsche’s view; Germain’s description of meta-
physics as a novel about thinkers; the claim that metaphysics is only
the expressions of certain psychopathic types; and even the claim by
Hegel that metaphysics is only a series of encapsulations of the pre-
vailing Zeitgeist. These are already the consequences of the conviction
of these authors that metaphysics is impossible. This conviction – en-
demic among positivists and Neo-Kantians – is completely false, and
is even false for the average man in the street, who has at least a modi-
cum of metaphysical talent, whether it turns out to be true or false.
It is even the case that relativistic thinkers, such as the above, are
steeped in metaphysics too. Metaphysics belongs to the basic com-
portment of what it is to be a human being, and indeed is essential
to it. The choice for each and every one of us is only whether it is
good or bad metaphysics, whether we are conscious or unconscious
of it, and whether it is a traditional variety or self-formulated. It is
true that none of this makes up a logical and cognitive justification
for metaphysics, and certainly does not add up to a comprehensive
theory of cognition. But it would be a unique state of affairs in the hu-
man condition if a human being possessed a mysterious tendency to
persuade himself of something, whose truth or falsehood he himself
had no power to study.
One of the metaphysical world-views and essential notions at the
core of our exercise is what I call the Erkenntnislehre der Metaphysik
[Cognitive theory of metaphysics].
With this, we come much closer to what metaphysics is really about,
and begin to get a feel for the actual cognitive activity and power, the
application of which makes metaphysical knowledge at all possible.
Even if our exercise does not succeed in showing that metaphysics is
possible, then it would surely be of inestimable benefit if we could show
– unlike the more recent claims which simply wrote it off – why this
is so, and give the various reasons. In fact, Kant, in his Critique of Pure
Reason, started out with the avowed aim of showing that metaphysics
was possible, though ended up giving reasons for its impossibility. In
the same way, modern mathematics demands that when something
has been incapable of being proven for a long time, then the precise
proof of this very unprovability should be demonstrated.
The demand that some measure and analysis of human knowledge,
and a theory of it, should precede any statement that we might make
about Being itself, was not Kant’s original contribution, but had been
mooted by the modern wave of philosophers from Descartes and
Locke onwards. Ancient and Medieval philosophers had little or no
time for a theory of knowledge, or else considered such a consequence
of what was really out there: Aristotle, St. Thomas, and even Spinoza
thought along these lines. The new wave of philosophers deemed this
‘dogmatic’, and combated it with their ‘critical philosophy’. To the ex-
tent that I believe that a theory of knowledge should be given proper
consideration before any metaphysical notion itself can be approved, I
am at one with these ‘critical metaphysicians’. Nevertheless, I am com-
pletely opposed to their associated [and central] notion that theoreti-
cal philosophy is nothing more than a theory of cognition or knowl-
edge. This last point of view is the result of a completely erroneous
notion of what knowledge and truth are, and is tied up with the [most
pernicious] philosophical view [of all], which is that everything is a
subjective content of consciousness. The heuristic value of the theory
of knowledge, as I expound it, became completely enmired, in a variety
of ways, from Locke onwards. Although any theory of knowledge has
to be ‘in place’, to some extent, before any metaphysical insight them-
selves can be gleaned, we cannot assume that there is a logical depen-
dence of metaphysics on how we know what we know. The human
understanding cannot examine its own capacity and breadth before
its actual achievements and works are on display, but only ‘in’ them
and with them on view. If one mistrusts the way human beings go
about matters, why should we have any more confidence in the actual
things that they investigate? Any critique of knowledge is only possi-
ble through knowledge itself. The naïve creative spirit, which not only
Ancient and Medieval thinkers paid lip service to, but so did relatively
modern ones such as Spinoza and Goethe, is simply a notion where
the primacy of Being vis-à-vis our knowledge of it is extolled. One
might well comment: My child, I spent my life without thinking about
thinking itself.
Recently, Lotze has taken up a completely contrary position against
the critical theory of knowledge. He maintained that in order to exam-
ine the entire range of what my human knowledge covers, I must al-
ready possess a vague impression of reality itself to know what I want
to know. In this way, he deliberately puts the metaphysical situation
before the theoretical cognitive one, and demands that metaphysics
should even make knowledge about it understandable. Let us leave
aside for the moment a detailed examination of this argument. But,
instead, I shall present this well-considered thesis. Logically, I assume
there to be neither a dependence of metaphysics on cognition, nor an
inverse dependence – as Lotze would have it. Instead, the basic princi-
ple applies that the various sorts, and nature, of objects are intimately
connected with an essential act of cognition. There is, therefore, an
objective independence of both disciplines – metaphysics and cogni-
tive theory – one from the other, but at the same time a strict recipro-
cal logical dependence of the truths they bring out. That means that a
cognitive theory of metaphysics is equally a metaphysics of cognition.
This further means, that, as Schelling aptly put it, there is a path from
the ideal to the real as well as a path from real to the ideal, and that
both – metaphysics and cognitive theory – co-determine both paths,
and, reciprocally, contribute to both. How the reality at issue here,
slowly, and stage by stage – via plants, animals, and then humans – ar-
rives at a state whereby knowledge of what is happening accrues to the
actual happenings, and ultimately at a state which allows metaphysi-
cal knowledge, and how ‘I’, as a conscious and knowing subject, get to
know real nature, my fellow humans, God, and finally the absolute
reality which metaphysics illuminates, are questions which are per-
fectly co-original and co-justified. There are, equally, several ways to
knowledge, but they must be ways which have some point of contact,
and must be reciprocally justified. Both theories that we are consider-
ing – that of metaphysics and that of cognitive theory – have, however,
over and above each of them, a superordinate philosophical discipline,
which is neither one or other of them, but is that of pure logic and the
ontology of essences [Wesensontologie]. This last is neither a science of
consciousness nor a science of the whys and wherefores of anything’s
existence, but rather an attempt to grasp the very organization of ideas
about the content of the world independently from the separate issues
of what constitutes – and what comes-to-be as – an accidental being-
so, and what constitutes – and what comes-to-be in – consciousness.
What we will be concerned with in the second subdivision of Part 1
of our presentation is not the whole theory of knowledge, but only an
examination in the most general terms of the nature of knowledge and
cognition, with a particular emphasis on the special sort of knowledge
involved in metaphysics. The sorts of knowledge pertaining to the
individual sciences, or to myth, art, mysticism and religion, we shall
exclude unless we need to mention the way in which they differ from
that concerning metaphysics. It is pleasing to know that even the fol-
lowers of Kant recognize more and more that to restrict all knowledge
to the sort of knowledge that is appropriate to mathematical science –
and to that accidentally obtaining in Newton’s era to boot – is grossly
one-sided. Kant had to ascribe to a knowledge supposedly befitting
mathematics not only the means to tackle metaphysical problems but
also the way into chemistry, psychology and history. In fact, even the
question, as to how mathematics and the pure sciences are possible,
is completely untouched by assuming that the full power and range
of the human mind has to be brought to bear on it, even further as-
suming a certain functional leeway in the Kantian system – a further
assumption that I steadfastly refuse to accept, because his so-called
Copernican turn can only mean that our understanding of anything
actually prescribes the rules for that something’s being. At the most, all
Kant proved was that if one assumes that the same means and power
of a knowledge that enables one to do mathematics will do for meta-
physics, then one is mistaken. In this he is undoubtedly correct. But
it does not mean that metaphysics is impossible. One of the foremost
mathematical physicists of our time wrote the much quoted words:
‘To have a physical existence is only that something allows itself to be
measured’. This is more correct and more illuminating a way of demar-
cating the physical than any more dignified way of putting it. However,
anyone who said or wrote that anything real is only what allows itself
to be measured, would be laughed out of court by a philosopher, and
then be shown ten thousand undoubted ways in which something can
be real without being measurable. The limits of the scientific meth-
ods for investigating the world are not the limits of what is real. All
versions of what we can call ‘methodologism’ – i.e. the thesis that the
methods belonging to our way of knowing an object determine the
actual object, either pulling it out of some chaos, or even producing
it de novo, as Cohen and Natorp taught – are not only utterly false,
but a crude form of a most dangerous tendency in science towards
German subjectivism. And although the broadening of this function-
alism and methodologism into the realms of myth, language, religion
and history, in the sense which Cassirer and Simmel gave to it, can be
taken as a noteworthy step beyond Kant’s one-sidedness, looked at
another way, it can be taken as a more wrong-headed and a still more
impossible way forward than even Kant’s path. What is impossible in
all this is, first, the lumping together, without gradation or rank or-
der, of all these disciplines and realms of affairs; and, secondly, the law
[presumably unknown to or ignored by the above-mentioned school
of thought] that the degree of existential – and ‘what-something-is’ –
relativity of an object to the human organization is proportionately
smaller the more that object approaches the absolute realm, and there-
fore the less influence the understanding and methods of the human
being prescribe the laws of such objects. To all intents and purposes,
we can only dictate the process of knowing something when it comes
down to the signs and names with which we unequivocally, but spar-
ingly, designate what is given to us. Whenever we step outside this,
we come up against intrinsic [i.e. extrinsic to us] connections between
phenomena and things. Even the axioms of arithmetic display some-
thing which is outside our mind, and the formal, logical laws [which
our mind does contribute on this particular matter] are merely contin-
gent on the former. The planetary orbits may seem to an astronomer
as if the astronomer were dictating the laws governing these, and not
the stars themselves by influencing what we pick up of these through
our senses. Even the smallest movement of a primitive plant frees itself
in a similar way from complete dependence on anything outside it, and
conforms in a rudimentary way to Kant’s Copernican turn, whereby
the understanding prescribes to nature its rules. But it belongs to the
very essence of personhood – humans’ as well as God’s – that it cannot
know anything in a spontaneous way. It is precisely the incalculabil-
ity and uncontrollability of what is given that is a sign of the degree
of absoluteness and of an absolute level of the existence of anything.
Methods directed at the nature of objects which are in or close to the
absolute realm must therefore be in tune with the objects themselves
[as compared to methods appropriate for relatively non-absolute ob-
jects e.g. relatively more humanly-relative objects]. This last rule ap-
plies precisely to metaphysics [which is uniquely concerned with ab-
solute objects].
All this we can briefly summarize here by saying that the theory
of knowledge as it pertains to metaphysics is a specially independent
part of this whole area. The sorts of questions which belong here are:
What categories or concepts of being still retain metaphysical signif-
icance, and which not? Which method is particular to metaphysics
as opposed to the methods of the individual sciences? e.g. dialectical
methods? intuition? We can further say now that neither the method
appropriate to the individual sciences – for example, the mathematical
model promoted by Kant and Descartes – nor that applied to history
– for example, by Hegel and Croce – is the method befitting meta-
physics. What is critical here is the very nature of the object itself.
This demand on our subject we hold most strongly, and we consider
there to be the sharpest distinction, in respect to independence and
autonomy, between philosophy and any other discipline; in particular,
philosophy is neither the handmaiden of theology nor of science.
In the first part of our deliberations we shall aim at a precise ap-
preciation of all the reasons why metaphysics has been denied any in-
dependent status. There are six major schools of thought which have
taken just such a view.
These comprise:
1) sensory positivism – which treats metaphysical questions as ata-
vistic and of historical significance only;
2) Kant and his school;
3) relativistic historicism and psychologism;
4) traditionalism and fideism – which relegate metaphysics to a
branch of religion or faith;
5) scepticism; and
6) subjective idealism of consciousness.
In the second part of our survey we shall be concerned with our own
positive methods for investigating metaphysics. We reject Kant’s defi-
nition of the matter, which was that metaphysics is an ‘intuitive science
based on pure apriori concepts’. This definition only makes sense any-
way in the context of the Wolffian school of philosophy [which was
the mainstream in Germany before Kant], a school which gave undue
emphasis to unbridled conceptual thought, and in whose atmosphere
Kant was spiritually steeped. In actual fact, this definition is quite ex-
treme, even by the standards of previous metaphysics. Schopenhauer
rightly treated it as ludicrous.
Metaphysics and Mysticism

By mysticism we understand an attempt by the human mind to be
at one with absolute reality, and to have an immediate, living partici-
pation in what that reality is and its ultimate nature. By mysticism,
therefore, we understand a unification with this reality on the part of
the human mind, not just some association with a particular content
of it. If the prevailing relationship with this reality is deemed, on the
human side, to be our intuition, or our emotion, or our will, then one
can talk about, respectively, intellectual, emotional, or practical-ascetic
sorts of mysticism. The majority of Western mystics, beginning with
Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite, have been of the intellectual
sort. Indian mysticism is a mixture of aristocratic and intellectual el-
ements, with more down-to-earth feelings and intoxication-induced
tendencies. A work such as Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ
is the best example of the practical-ascetic variety.
In terms of the relationship between metaphysics and mysticism,
although mysticism may often be linked with either religion or a vari-
ety of metaphysical systems, fundamentally it need not be. Certainly,
metaphysics is not mysticism. In fact, the claim by the mystic to have
a preferential and sure entry into reality, by some soul-technique, is
just that, a claim, as his technique cannot do what he claims, and his
claim that it does so is a mere presupposition. Whether the claim in-
volves bringing to light some religious matter of faith, or some original
insight properly belonging to metaphysics, the claim is bogus. This
explains why there are Ancient Greek mystics, Indian mystics, Chris-
tian mystics, and pantheistic mystics – including Spinoza – because
all mysticism is ‘interdenominational’ [interkonfessionell und interwelt
anschaulich] – i.e. an independent category vis-à-vis religion and meta-
physics. This also shows that mysticism is a secondary, derivative phe-
nomenon, as opposed to the mental powers and methods which bring
forth the contents of religion, metaphysics and Weltanschauung.
The mystic supposes that he has reached reality itself, by whatever
method he proclaims – intuition, life, feeling – yet all he is doing is
presupposing a belief or an idea that he already had, and then vaulting
over [and ignoring] what he believes or knows, to claim a togetherness
with reality. There is, however, no possible way in which the existence
or nature of this reality can originally emerge from anything the mys-
tic claims to do.
From this, there already follows a strict and distinct boundary be-
tween metaphysics and mysticism, and also between religion and mys-
ticism. For metaphysics, reaching this reality is precisely what it wants
to [and can] do. Mysticism simply cannot deliver the goods. Mysticism
is always beholden to an extant religious or metaphysical system, and
never contributes anything new on its own to either. Moreover, one
might point out that mysticism has no greater kinship with religion
than with metaphysics. There are completely non-mystical religious
Weltanschauungen and ways of life, and there is a whole series of non-
religious metaphysicians whose claim to knowledge is mystical. Scho-
penhauer was an atheist and a mystic.
There is, however, at least one similarity between the metaphysician
and the mystic, in that each wants to know something ultimate, and
in those metaphysical systems where this ‘ultimate’ is proclaimed to
be known in an immediate way, to be ’had’ and relished, as it were, a
separation from mysticism is [superficially] hard to detect. But even
here, it is not the mystical form of this immediate ‘having’ of some-
thing which one expects a metaphysical system to justify. It is rather
the meaning of the system as a whole which one cares about [and how
that meaning, if worthy of our attention, comes about is secondary].
There are a variety of metaphysical proposals which we could well call
mystical-like. On the other hand, there are philosophers, to whom the
real sources of their system are quite hidden – Hegel, for example,
and his dialectical method [which does not account for what he came
up with]. What mysticism and some metaphysics share is what one
might call ‘intuitionism’. As a formal definition, the intuition involved
here is: an immediate, non-sensory, ‘having’ of something actual, in the
form of something that independently exists outside us, and whose
nature and very existence we ‘have’ in this having. So taught Plotinus,
anyway, whom we can regard as the most extreme case of someone
claiming that we could ecstatically catch sight of something without
the aid of concepts or language. Schopenhauer also maintained that
one could grasp internally [von innen her] that the absolute existence
of the world was ‘Will’, and that the same experience was true for the
rest of the world – ‘Is not the nature of human beings in the heart?’
Schelling, too, considered that there was an intellectual intuition, and
that it was the authentic organ of philosophical knowledge. Hegel be-
lieved in this as well, and thought that in the dialectical movement of
thought, as thesis – antithesis – synthesis, one could actually grasp
God’s ideas themselves, through which the world was necessarily al-
lowed to spring forth. In this, he was a mystical, dynamic rationalist.
Bergson also teaches that intuition unites the merits of understanding
and instinct, but at the same time exceeds them both, allowing some-
one to grasp the élan vital and its very existence, as well as the version
of time he calls durée.
What concerned the earlier philosophers, what we now regard as
ontologism [i.e. an overreliance on pure ontology], is also an intuition-
istic philosophy – and is exemplified by St. Augustine, Malebranche,
and others. The ‘negative theology’, which was current in the Middle
Ages, which proposed an exaggerated contradictoriness in original
Being [Űbergegensätzlichkeit des Urseins], and which rejected rational
categories as a means for grasping this, was a mystical philosophy too
– Nicholas de Cusa being an example. Whatever this system of intu-
ition claims as to truth or profundity, however, and which may very
well be hidden in it, is, with respect to the claim that this sort of intu-
ition brought it forth, a mere illusion, a contradiction of the facts, and
all this is common to every intuitionistic metaphysics.
What is true and correct about intuitionism is, first, that a non-
sensory intuition and its corresponding content does occur, and that
it is wrong to suppose that all our knowledge derives from sensory
perception and mediated deductive [and inductive] thinking; and, sec-
ondly, that this intuition is completely independent from all measures
of conventional thinking.
What is principally wrong about it is the notion that only definitive
and illusion-free access to anything real can be achieved through an
immediate, asensory intuition, and, that this applies, above all, to what
is absolutely real. The strictly asensory intuition, that we do possess,
and which indeed gives us definitive knowledge, and in an apriori man-
ner, has, for its object, exclusively, something that does not actually
exist, and something that is independent of anything that does exist
[daseinfreie und daseinsunabhängige]. In fact it gives only the nature
of what something is, and the relations between such natures or es-
sences [Washeiten und Relationen solcher Was – oder Wesenheiten]. It
gives urphenomena and ideas. It can never have for its object some-
thing actually real: either 1) a concrete entity; or 2) some chance oc-
currence which does not necessarily owe its existence to its suchness
[solchheit] which is then displayed in space and time; or 3) something
whose being is independent of our mind. Metaphysics, remember, is
the cognition of the real; indeed it is this par excellence. The real, how-
ever, can only be accessed through either sensory stimulus-determined
perception or through a mixture of sensory and asensory perceptual
intuition, but then this only gives an inadequate version of what is
given. The asensory intuition that we possess is therefore restricted
to what is ideal, though not at all to what is consciously immanent of
this ideal world.
Furthermore, what is available to grasp of something real is only
its suchness [Solchheit], which cannot be achieved solely through in-
tuition and perception, but requires thinking in meanings. This last
contribution is not a back-up for intuition, but is essential for picking
up anything about the real, which is not amenable to intuition at all.
Thinking in meanings can pick up signs and characteristics of the real,
for example the number of a given set of bodies in the world. So, not
only is the existence of an existent entity transcendent to a knowing
mind – to intuition and thinking alike – but, as we shall see, is only
traceable [spűrbar] by the volitional [volitiven] component of mind,
and then only by its ability to sense resistance to the world.
Moreover, even the complete nature of what something is [in addi-
tion to the existence of that something] is transcendent to intuition.
Anyone who merely holds the view, against this, that there is such a
thing as asensory intuition and that it gives a secure knowledge of es-
sences and their connections – for example, an intuition of the es-
sence of the divine – is no intuitionist. Otherwise, Aristotle himself
and even Hume would fit the bill. On this point it was completely
wrong for these people to have labelled phenomenological philosophy
in general, and my version even more so, as intuitionistic.
The particular error of intuitionism is none of the above, but simply
that what they claim to have discovered [through intuition] cannot
also be something that is amenable to being thought or expressed in
language.
Despite this, mysticism and metaphysics do share something in
common, which has long been underrated, even though Plato, Spi-
noza, and several others, understood it, and that is a particular tech-
nique for arriving at essential knowledge. They both realized that it
was something to do with cancelling out the element of reality that
could bring the essential component of the world into view, i.e. achiev-
ing some sort of pure contemplation of the essence of things.
Husserl’s error on this score was to think that looking away [ab
sehen] from reality was sufficient to remove it from play. But that does
nothing of the sort. [A more radical cancellation is needed].
If metaphysics and mysticism were indistinguishable, there would
be a complete collapse of all metaphysical viewpoints into a morass of
mystical obfuscation, coupled with the following trends.
First, there would be an increasing alienation between philosophy
and science, with Plato, rather than Aristotle, the role model. Philoso-
phy would furthermore become a ‘theology’, as it did in the case of
Proclus, a pupil of Plotinus. It would proclaim the ecstatic spectacle of
a simple unification of everything philosophers had ever said. Spinoza
and Schopenhauer have something of this in their outlook.
Secondly, lacking any strict method and technique, metaphysics
would risk degenerating into an arbitrary subjectivism, as did the an-
throposophical movement of our times. Philosophy would lose any
claim to be generally valid. On this point, the claim by mystics to have
their own ‘emotional feel for the truth’ is completely unacceptable.
Thirdly, mysticism can at times, through its exaggeration of the mys-
tery of everything, actually lead to the anti-metaphysical notion of ag-
nosticism. If one violates and distorts the actual things that there are,
this is exactly what happens. What metaphysics aims for is to reveal
the mystery of the world, but not just in the way of a silent, thought-
less reverence for it, leaving it alone as an uninvestigated jewel. On
the one hand, it takes the view that what is absolutely real is not com-
pletely unknowable, but, on the other hand, it is not so foolhardy as
to assume that we can gain more than an inadequate knowledge of all
possible essences, all possible ways of being, or all attributes of what
is absolutely real.
Nevertheless, our opponents, who maintain that what we are up
against is a completely unknowable sphere of things and events, should
be asked two questions.
First, how they themselves would set about uncovering what exactly
they know and don’t know about the world – i.e. their placing of a
boundary in this respect?
Secondly, how would they show that if the ‘real’ itself does not guide
us as to what we come to know about it, what does? If nothing real has
any direct or indirect influence on our senses, what is then our own
situation in the middle of all this? If their view is correct, we are any-
way free to either propose a metaphysical point of view or repudiate it
[as it will have no effect on their opinion]. What do they say?
In answer to all this, we propose two guiding principles. 1) We must
not deny the accidental existence of anything, if its ideal nature has
been demonstrated. 2) We should not positively promote it either.
Anyone who proposes that we must know an accidental reality
simply because our cognitive apparatus tells us it is there is simply
wrong.
Anyone who proposes that we cannot know an accidental reality
when it is actually there enters problematical ground, although it is
probably correct to assume that at some time in the future our capac-
ity in this respect will increase.
What is of ultimate significance in all this, and circumscribes meta-
physical knowledge as opposed to the boundless mystique and mys-
tery we have been combating in this section, is the following proposi-
tion. To each genuine essence there corresponds an accidentally real
entity, because every existent entity has an essential nature of some
sort, and to every essence or essential nature there belongs at least one
extant exemplar.
Metaphysics and Art

There has been no shortage of attempts to invoke art as a way of get-
ting closer to the meaning of metaphysics, though the sort of art en-
visaged in such a model is not the same as we normally mean by ‘art’.
This way of looking at metaphysics is admittedly never a starting point
for metaphysicians themselves, but rather stems from metaphysically-
agnostic thinkers. Even those metaphysicians whose thoughts them-
selves are presented in a particularly artistic way, and whose overall
philosophy approaches the unity, harmony, compactness, insight, and
aesthetic impetus of a work of art in itself, have never adopted the view
that metaphysics be subsumed under art. One thinks, in this respect,
of Plato, Schopenhauer, Schelling and Novalis, and, in recent times,
Nietzsche and Bergson. In fact Bergson’s chief work Creative Evolu
tion was considered more a work of art than a piece of science by one
critic. From time to time, at the very most, such philosophers have
suggested that metaphysics is more similar to art than it is to science
– as Schopenhauer, for example, did say. Aristotle considered meta-
physics to be ‘theoretical’, as opposed to practical activities, and to be
more similar to art – particularly dramatic art – than it was to history.
His reason for thinking so was that philosophy and art had to do not
with chance events but with typical and general states of affairs. And
whereas art divined the idea, the eidos in things, in especially outstand-
ing cases – mimesis, it was up to philosophy to grasp this conceptually.
On the other hand, quite paradoxically, as he was probably the greatest
artist of all among metaphysicians, Plato accorded art a very low status
in the system of values and goods, and it did not occur to him to look
on metaphysics as art.
Almost the only philosopher to have contended that metaphysics
can only rightly be seen as art – by which he meant poetry [Dichtung]
– was Albert Lange. It was his interpretation of Schiller’s intellectual
verse, and its connection with Kant’s philosophy, which Lange took as
his model. His proposal – that metaphysics was poetry in concepts
– was meant in a negative and a positive way. Albert Lange, from this
definition, believed in the Kantian thesis that rational metaphysical
knowledge of absolute reality, by way of concepts, was not possible,
but at the same time went beyond Kant, in saying, contrary to Kant’s
forthright dismissal of the matter, that metaphysics provided a func-
tion in the human mind and life which could not be gainsaid. This is
the starting point for the so-called fictionalism of Vaihinger, where
not only metaphysics and religion, but science, even mathematics and
mechanics, were only ‘structures’ – ‘as-if suppositions’ – which ulti-
mately rested on fictions. Because Vaihinger held that our knowledge
and thoughts of the world, including anything that the most exact sci-
ences could come up with, were all based on deliberate fiction, then in
one sense what he was saying is that the entire range of sciences was
nothing more than art. Anglo-Saxon pragmatism is essentially dif-
ferent from this thesis. Pragmatism, for instance, holds that not only
thinking is conditioned by our actions, but so are perception and sen-
sation conditioned by motor impulses and processes, and that ‘truth’
is merely the course of an action which has certain consequences. For
Vaihinger, the question – What is given? – has a strict sensualistic
meaning, as, for him, truth is merely becoming aware of the content
of sensation; everything else is fiction, meaning the work of deliberate
fiction. Moreover, the fiction in question is something that stems from
our activity, partly an eternal, unstoppable and spontaneous set of fic-
titious reasonings, but partly a set of purposeful fictions with some
aesthetic and practical motives. What this fiction was, at root, was
therefore an apparently continuous, law-governed thinking, which
somehow succeeded in pinning us down to a traditional and earthly
way of living. Vaihinger meant that such fictions were unreal and de-
liberately false, somewhat akin to Fiedler’s notion of a deliberate activ-
ity of fantasy, which was responsible for artistic inventions and scien-
tific models. According to Vaihinger, the only truth that was available
to us, which was responsible for something blue or something sour,
etc., was already a fictional object or thing or relationship, and this
itself founded what would be a scientific explanation [hence science
itself was based on fiction].
Among those metaphysicians who imagined that they had un-
covered a particularly deep connection between a metaphysical and
an aesthetic way of looking at things, and who were inclined to see
metaphysics and art as interrelated, Plotinus has pride of place. But
Schopenhauer, the young Nietzsche, and Burckhardt – as a philoso-
pher of history – also belong here. They had, in common, a sense of
despair about the world as something willed, and taught that an aes-
thetic, contemplative attitude arising in human spirit was the highest
of all human attitudes. Nietzsche’s Dionysian pessimism lies in this
way of thinking. In general, there is a close link between metaphysical
pessimism and the promotion of an aesthetic attitude to life. Another
group of metaphysicians, who considered the originator of the world
itself to be some sort of artist in the first place, and who attributed
fantasy to it as a primary and fundamental attribute, also belong here.
The Logos and ethos of the world are then traceable to this very fan-
tasy, in such metaphysician’s formulations. Goethe and Schelling are
examples of this view, in which the world is a living work of art.
There are even attempts to see aesthetic principles of pleasing rela-
tionships and configurations in subjects such as logic. Certainly, as far
as mathematics is concerned, Poincaré expressly stated that the highest
measure of mathematical achievement was not logic itself, but an aes-
thetic value, whereby a unity and harmony of thought and proposition
were reached. Poincaré sought to prove, against the opinion of pure
logicians, that there were an infinite number of mathematical repre-
sentations of some logical problem, all of which could be equally cor-
rect, and that it was infinitely boring, and scientifically pointless, to go
through all, or even most, of the proofs. The achievement of a creative
mathematician lay exclusively in being able to select that sort of proof,
from among equally correct candidates, which was the most ‘elegant’,
in terms of a harmony between axioms, consequences, theoretical
principles and proofs. This selection of aesthetic, valuable and elegant
proofs constitutes, according to Poincaré, the only and ultimate way
of measuring the value of mathematical achievement. Even illogical
and contradictory propositions can, and should, conform to the same
value of maximum unity and harmony as proposed for logical ones,
according to him. Above all, the principle of the non-contradiction of
a proposition – if A = B then A = non-B cannot be true – would be
deniable [if its denial were couched in more aesthetic terms than the
actual proposition itself ]. Certainly Heraclitus and Hegel denied this,
but not on the aesthetic grounds as are being mooted here.
If, then, the most obvious and certain science that we know of –
mathematics – is deemed to be subordinate to aesthetics, and if logic
is only a technical means for the realization of aesthetic rules, how can
it stand otherwise with less certain sorts of knowledge? And the same
situation must obtain in the case of metaphysics. Anything in its do-
main can only be ‘true’, if it manages to convert a maximum amount of
accidental and essential experience into a system which is maximally
harmonious with principles and concepts.
Any strictly metaphysical theory of Weltanschauung, which sets up
the above thesis, has to take account of the following problems. Can
one really subsume philosophy, and especially metaphysics, because it
is certainly not a science, under the umbrella of art, in particular po-
etry? Which historically occurring objective relationships, in the form
of spiritual affinities, exist between metaphysics and art, in particular
poetry? Which subjective dependencies exist between them, i.e. be-
tween poet and metaphysician? What relationships are there between
the work of art and a metaphysical system? Above all, what essential
relationship is there between art and metaphysics? In what way [if
any] are the proposals of the metaphysicians mentioned above, who
advocated this link, definitely correct and definitely incorrect? Is there
anything worthwhile in the suggestions that logic be subsumed as a
variety of aesthetics? What is there in the notion of ‘fictions’ referred
to above, of any significance? Finally, what role does fantasy play in
metaphysics and in art?
Turning to the first question: metaphysics is cognition, and, like all
cognition, is not art. Knowledge, the ur-concept for cognition, is par-
ticipation in being. Art is poiein, making something [Bilden], bring-
ing forth a meaning-structure in, or on, some material stuff, a formed
thing [Gebildes], which, at the very least, cannot be measured by the
degree it accords with the haphazard reality of the world. Whoever
makes out that cognition is indebted to a ready-made pictorial form,
or is poiein, or must adhere to some form or shape, like Neo-Kantians
do, particularly Vaihinger, and that it is not merely a way of knowing,
i.e. a participating in the being of an object, or, whoever sees in artists’
pictures only a way of knowing something, or only a sort of knowledge,
simply fails to realize [both the nature of cognition and the nature of
art and] the most critical and essential distinction between pictures
or images and knowledge. Even if all possible concepts, rules and fic-
tions, with which both philosophy and science work, and all ways of
signifying things – which are admittedly the product of human activ-
ity – were exhaustively brought to light, it would still be the case that
in order to use all this, they would have to be known, i.e. they would still
be the subject of an enlightenment as to what the state of affairs was in
the human mind. Alternatively, if all knowledge about the world were
complete, as we imagine it to be if there were an all-knowing God,
then it would be the case that not a single work of art could be created,
and the aesthetic value of the world, its beauty and its ugliness, would
remain unsuspected. It is simply a folly of Neo-Kantians, especially
Cohen, to want to derive how we know art [i.e. one sort of knowing]
from art itself. And it is further nonsense to make knowledge, as the
pragmatists do, into a sort of action, which [apart from anything else]
makes action itself superfluous.
Knowing is the registering of something which is there, and this covers
metaphysical knowing as well. Art is making up [Bilden] what is not
there, but which is worthy of being there, or deserves to be there, by
virtue of certain aesthetic notions of value. That’s the way things are.
In metaphysics there is the intention to know what is absolutely real.
To maintain that metaphysics is conceptual poetry is quite ridiculous.
At most, one could say that there is no metaphysics. The thesis of Al-
bert Lange, referred to above, was only supposedly justified anyway
under the agnostic assumption of Kant’s and his notion of a produc-
tive understanding. If his categories are actually forms of being [and
not categories of judgement] then his entire theory collapses.
The very notion of conceptual poetry, in which there are only un-
intuitable concepts, and not, as in all other poetry, intuitable images,
which symbolize the highest ideas and concepts, and have values ad-
hering to their intended objects, and linguistic values of all sorts, in the
‘material’ they use, is simply nonsense. In any case any so-called ‘poetry
of ideas’ – Dante’s Divine comedy, Goethe’s Faust, Schiller’s thought-
poetry – is not ‘poetry with ideas’, but ‘poetry about ideas’, written with
images, with an eye to the appropriate mood, along with characteriza-
tion and concrete events and deeds, which, altogether, may refer to
some symbolic idea. The very concept of ‘conceptual poetry’ is there-
fore a falsification of what poetry is about, which, like any art, is invari-
ably an ideal structure realized through its concrete intuitable content,
and which owes its meaning, not simply to the bare tract in front of
one, but to its being able to convey some immediate givenness.
Albert Lange’s proposal, that metaphysics is art, and is poetry in
concepts, may have seemed, to an age saturated with science, as an un-
requited urge to reverse the progress of the German spirit, and retrieve
the extravagant romantic and idealistic philosophy of Fichte, Hegel
and Schelling, who in fact mistook the essence and limits of meta-
physics, as indeed did scientists, from a completely different angle.
But a one-sided historical occurrence, such as that, does not give us
any right to re-formulate metaphysics in this vein. Metaphysics is not
science, but neither is it art. Even Schopenhauer went too far in the
direction of bringing art and metaphysics together.
On the other hand, it is an undoubted fact that, historically, the re-
lationship between metaphysics and art has been closer than that be-
tween art and science, and that, in any era, what is meant by, and what
is carried out in the name of, art, and what is meant by, and carried out
in the name of, metaphysics, attain some sort of unity. Doubtless, the
actual and profound links between metaphysics and art, particularly
poetry as spoken art, have a shared basis. We can point to similari-
ties between Plato’s philosophy and Sophocles’ tragedies; or between
the Sophists and Euripedes; or between St. Thomas’ mysticism and
Gothic art; or between Dante and St. Thomas; or between Descartes
and classical, French tragedy; or between Schelling and the Weltbild of
the romantic poets; or between Kant and Schiller. These metaphysical
and artistic interconnections, even at their most interesting, fruitful
and profound, are not an indication of deliberate subjective influences
on one group by the other, whether poet on philosopher, or the other
way round, but are rather the influence on both sets of practitioners
of the same objective Zeitgeist, independently of any particular indi-
vidual, and affecting all experience of the world through the same cat-
egories inherent in their shared Weltanschauung – metaphysicians and
artists alike. I regard this connection, between the two groups, as all
the more deeper and fertile, because it is, in itself, quite desirable that
artist and philosopher do not work with ideas which they have so-to-
speak borrowed from one another, but each, with his own materials,
and the rules of his ‘trade’, do their separate ‘thing’ [in the same era].
No artist of the first order has worked to a philosophical programme,
and no great philosopher ever wanted only works of art to feature in
the way he spoke about philosophical concepts. Despite all this, there
exists a deliberate dependency, one on the other, which, in its most
obvious form, can be illustrated by the cases of St. Thomas and Dante,
Kant and Schiller, and Spinoza and Goethe.
Even the relationship between metaphysical systems and works of
art, which has often been pointed to, in support of their identity, has
an insufficient basis in fact. Any similarity, anyway, only applies to
those metaphysical systems which I call ‘closed’ – e.g. Spinoza’s Philoso
phia or Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation – but these
are the very sorts of philosophy which I do not consider to be on the
right track to get to grips with metaphysics. The work of art is at rest
with itself, self-sufficient, and a closed structure [and that is right].
But a closed philosophical system, which is the one most similar to the
work of art, is a system which is not ‘open’ to new experience, cannot
develop, and can only be accepted or rejected en bloc.
The deep connection that we find historically between metaphys-
ics and art has its ultimate basis in the fact that metaphysics, like art,
must be primarily directed at that in the happenstance of the world –
whether inner or outer world – which is only an embodied exemplar
of the realm of essences and ideas. This distinguishes what both have
in common from science, which ignores essences, and also distinguish-
es them from all practical considerations and technology. The known
and recognized set-up and order of this world of essences is in unified
form by virtue of the stage that spirit has reached in any era, and this
is why art and metaphysics cannot but have some similarities, if they
are accessing the same stage of spiritual development.
Admittedly, only the first component of metaphysical knowledge –
the essential ontology of the world – contributes to this connection
between metaphysics and art, not the second connection – to do with
the contingent or accidental state of reality. In fact, this second com-
ponent is what concerns science, and, we have, therefore, a unity here
between metaphysics and science, from which art is completely shut
out. For art has no connection whatsoever with the accidental world
of reality, or indeed with any reality. It creates a new world of what
something is [eine neue Welt des Soseins], which is not in harmony with
a real world such as would produce a world of objects [eine Objekten
welt], but is only a world in images [im Bilde] – an ideal, though not
a consciousness-immanent world – and one guided by a certain sort
of values – aesthetic values. Although it creates this world with real
means, what it creates – the art-work in the real work of art – holds
sway in the sphere of purely ideal being.
Nevertheless, even in this ideal world, art must – and this is its first
objective rule – perfectly meet the conditions demanded by the struc-
ture and connections of essences. Indeed, it must do this in a clearer,
more immediate, and purer way, than any exemplar of these essences
achieves in our actual, everyday world. Artistic truth is simultaneously
truer and falser than that of either philosophy or science. The work of
art seems to want to have something to say from the far-off reaches
of the eternal basis of everything, without being capable of precisely
saying what this is, or of penetrating the will of God on the matter.
In other words, it is as if God is allowing it to say something that He
would have wanted to say, without letting on that He Himself is the
sovereign of the world of essences. Therefore, although art is an objec-
tive exercise, it is not an arbitrary, boundless flow of fantasy, nor even
something constrained by contemporary taste. It is connected, in the
same way as metaphysics, to the core essences that govern our world,
and is not merely a set of subjective, functional laws to do with taste.
But whereas metaphysics is, in addition, connected to the real world,
and, in contrast to science, is focused on the absolute level of this, art
is not connected to this at all. Art rather creates a new world, and adds
its own brand of reality to it, which, unlike God’s ability to produce a
newly real world, is merely idealistic, albeit, just like the real world, a
version that is concretely intuitable.
The relationship of the artist to the basis of everything is unique.
He transposes himself, as it were, without taking this to have any
temporal implications, into a position where the coming-to-be of the
world opens up for him, and he suspends the actual way in which the
rational, impenetrable will determines by ‘fiat’ whether the existence
of things are this way or that, laying out only essences and ideas as
contributors to the world. The artist manages all this by means of a
procedure which, in a philosophical context, we call the ‘existential re-
duction’ [Daseinsreduktion], meaning the deliberate holding back of all
desire, in respect of which world is actually the one given to us. The
result is a disinterested, apractical intuition of the bare ’what’ of the
essence of the world, a relationship originating from a pure contem-
plation of matters, and something which sets in train both philoso-
pher’s and artist’s shared activities. Once this profound alienation and
distancing from the actual accidental world has taken place, and the
ensuing nature of whatever is experienced becomes nothing less than a
love for what it has become, then the paths of artist and metaphysician
diverge. The artist – a little God – then creates a world – in miniature,
and in images – through an active manipulation of real material, into
the sign language of qualities, the precise version of which depends on
whatever art he is practising. The metaphysician, on the other hand,
turns back towards the real world, in order to know the levels of exis-
tence he has journeyed through, from the stage he reached, with the
artist, all the way back to the absolutely real. That [the consequences
they both experience when they carry out the existential reduction] is
their meeting point, but it is also the point where they part company.
What I have just said is already a gross simplification. For, before
their above-mentioned parting of the ways, there is already a profound
difference in the way in which metaphysician and artist penetrate the
realm of the ur-essence and its interconnections, a difference which
is evident in the intentional object – ‘ur-essence’ – which each comes
across, as well as in the way they penetrate it. Each ur-essence is a
combination of urphenomenon and idea, the first of the pair being
intuitable – though not in the form of a sensory experience – whereas
the second of the pair is non-intuitable. The coincidence and comple-
menting of the two reveals the ur-essence of an object as self-given. In
itself it is simple, when considered from the point of view of its own
ideal being; its bipartite nature only comes to light when it is an ens
intentionale [the entity the mind intends or focuses on]. The metaphy-
sician approaches the essence from a perspective focusing on the ur
phenomenon and the idea, treating it as a limiting case [Grenzfall] in the
overall objective of his referential thinking. With the help of mediated
thinking, what the metaphysician wants is something that lies beyond
this mediated thinking – something that is graspable in immediate
thinking through ideas. It is thus connected with language or writing.
The artist and the pleasure-seeking aesthete approach the ur-essence
solely from the side of the urphenomenon, whose idea-correlate, in
itself, they are indifferent to. They carry out this exercise in an analytic
and synthetic way, by virtue of a re-constructive intuition [synthetisch-
nach-konstruktive Anschauung], or, in other words, having an immedi-
ate image of what is at stake. For the artist, even the urphenomenon
becomes, in the process whereby he arrives at his goal, a limiting case
– the limiting case of his sensory intuition and active observation of
what has been intuited. As for language, the artist is not beholden to
this except in his role as poet. He can carry out his re-constructive
intuition, and his intuitable remaking of an urphenomenon, both for
the sake of others and for himself, with materials completely different
from language.
What is essential about art – whether poetry, sculpture, painting,
music, drawing, dance or song – is the process of representation that
must accompany it. Things stand with a representation – which is
only the mental objectivization of the expression of the idea and emo-
tion of the artist – in the same way as the intuiting of an urphenom-
enon or the thinking of an idea stand with respect to a living being
who perceives in a sensory way or who thinks with intelligence. For
this reason metaphysics and conceptual poetry are completely differ-
ent when it comes to their symbolic and communication functions. In
poetry, language functions as a means of representation, i.e. as a means
whereby the urphenomenon first comes to givenness. In contrast, for
metaphysics, and indeed for cognition in general, language functions
in a normal way the more it is merely the grasping of some state of af-
fairs by intuition and thinking, i.e. a functional sign for what has been
shown and thought. It is not a creative process in which, at the end of
this, the urphenomenon comes to fruition. In poetry, for instance, lan-
guage is even the material from which the end-product is forged. It is
equivalent to marble, colour and light for sculpture and painting, and
to the world of sounds for music. The poet represents ‘in words’. For
philosophy, however, language is either an object – as in the philoso-
phy of language – or only a rather unsatisfactory means for getting
to grips with the thoughts themselves, and the relationships between
thoughts that the practitioner seeks. In fact, because it is so unsatisfac-
tory, the philosopher even finds it better, to a certain extent, to supple-
ment everyday language with artistic terminology, a way of expressing
things that the poet knows nothing about and must not know.
A more profound distinction between art and metaphysics is the
very difference in what each means by ‘representation’. Whereas meta-
physics has its movement in the following direction – concrete, in-
dividual structure to ur-essence, then to immediate showing of the
urphenomenon, coupled with the critical thought of the idea – and
whereas it achieves in this process the systematic interconnections
of the realms of the urphenomenon and idea, and thereby the entire
world as an interweaving of eternal Logos, the artist has a completely
different approach. The artist starts with the germ of a given urphe-
nomenon, exemplifies the urphenomenon in a concrete form, and cre-
ates this as an ideal image. He illustrates all this by a representation of
what he had intuited. But it is not the systematic interconnections or
step-wise arrangements of the urphenomenon and idea that he wants
to give, but, in each work of art, he is concerned with only one urphe-
nomenon. In fact, the artist even deliberately cuts through all referen-
tial threads which urphenomena possess in the contextual mass of es-
sences – hence the closedness of a work of art – and makes immanent
only the references which pertain to the particular urphenomenon he
has chosen. He does not see the particular in the order of the world,
but rather the order of the world in the particular entity that he cre-
ates. He represents subjectively – by virtue of his freedom from the
constraining influence of the happenstance of the real – what is, ob-
jectively, the urphenomenon itself, a representation, moreover, which
he strives to depict in the most perfect and pure sense.
And now to the chief matter of all. In the representational pro-
cess and by virtue of the representational process itself – of the ur-
phenomenon – the artist penetrates concretely the full content of the
urphenomenon with his object, an object which at the beginning of
this process was only vague and inchoate, a phase which has been re-
ferred to as the artist’s ‘conception’. He then develops and opens out
the urphenomenon, moving on from this conceptual phase, through
the process of representative exemplification – painting, constructing,
word-finding, etc. To the artist, the urphenomenon is therefore not
‘given’ at the beginning of the representational process in its full and
adequate exemplification, but it is rather the case that the representa-
tion is only an outer conveyance of the same entity in a sensory form,
or it is conveyed by means of some body of material: what he is aiming
at, however, is something he already had in mind. The painter thus
‘sees’ with the end of the brush, and the drawer with the point where
his pencil touches the surface on which he is drawing. For this rea-
son, says Fiedler, even the art itself contains knowledge and cognition.
Moreover, this knowledge and cognition is not already there before the
representation, but becomes so in the course of the realization process,
and, as such, it is only attainable through this process, and in all its
uniqueness. Again, we see that art cannot be replaced by philosophy.
In fact, what the artist does is not just to tag on the urphenomenon
and the idea as an afterthought to the work of art – graft them on to
it as it were – but make them completely intuitable and represented.
Furthermore, the artist manages to make the intuitable content of the
work of art – without any explicit programme as to what he is do-
ing, nor any commentary, nor any additional instructions – completely
comprehensible to anyone looking at his work, just as if the complete
work of art were as ‘normal’ as anything in the world is to any empirical
grasp of it. Only then is the urphenomenon – or the idea – completely
objectively complemented [by the idea or urphenomenon, respective-
ly], and not half-baked [as it would be if one without the other was
presented]. With all this in place, the work of art then says something
to us, it addresses us; it does not merely give us something to think
about in the sense of setting up ‘associative factors’.
So far, in our delineation of the work of art, we have hardly spoken
a word about aesthetic values, or, indeed, the particularly unique posi-
tive aesthetic values, which we call ‘the beautiful’, and against which, on
one hand, we set ‘the ugly’ as their negative correlate, and, on the other,
we recognize an assortment of other associated positive values, such
as ‘the sublime’. ‘the charming’, ‘the dainty’, ‘the attractive’, ‘the delightful’,
etc. Are these values completely without significance for the work of
art? Is art – which is certainly something to do with showing the ur-
phenomenon and the idea – only ‘cognition through representation’? If
Fiedler were right, then there would indeed be a much deeper connec-
tion between metaphysics and art than I have deemed fit to give here.
For one could say that the aesthetic values already realized in nature,
along with the mutual lawfulness which determines how they crop up
in this or that shape or form, are quite sufficient for an artist to rep-
licate, without any need for invoking a philosophical theory of what
an artist is doing to be an artist, that I have set out here. But if this
[Fiedler’s opinion] were correct, then non-aesthetic values, aesthetical-
ly- compromised values, and even aesthetically-negative values, would
all be legitimate objects of an artist’s representational repertoire, in
addition to the specifically positive values I maintain are at stake, and,
[more astoundingly] the same [sort of positive, deficient and negative
values] would obtain for philosophy and metaphysics as well.
What is correct about this thesis is only this: art is not only a rep-
resentation of the beautiful – a view which earlier philosophies of art
maintained; this is because the beautiful is only a subset of aesthetic
values, and not the overriding characteristic of all positive, aesthetic
values. There are other positive aesthetic values, as well as negative
aesthetic values, which can just as well be perfectly represented. What
I cannot associate myself with in the above thesis is that the aesthetic
values are only objects which mediate knowledge through represen-
tation. They are, if anything, signposts directing the selection and
composition of the representational forms of the objects, which are
eventually the representations. Moreover, I cannot accept, either, that
anything aesthetically value-free can be a possible object for art. To
be sure, aesthetic values are not restricted to art. There is, of course,
natural beauty or natural grace or natural decorativeness, along with
their opposites, and each of these can be found in the organic, inor-
ganic, psychic and spiritual realms. Even if metaphysics were accepted
as valid, and its aim understood as letting the objectively pre-given
essences and ideas in the actual world be the thoughts of an infinite,
spiritual being, this natural, objective beauty, though independent
from our consciousness – though it could be construed as a work of
art of this infinite, spiritual being – nevertheless has a completely dif-
ferent meaning from that of the works of art produced by humans,
which we normally refer to as art. In the former [supposed works of
art] we must disregard reality to see them like this; in the latter [Art]
it comes about as an addition to [not a subtraction from] something
real, and that is the representation.
On the other hand, for philosophy and metaphysics, the aesthetic
values, in either nature or art, are only an object of cognition and true
judgement upon what is cognised, and are not guiding and direct-
ing, selection principles with respect to the urphenomenon and idea.
Metaphysics must be true. If the ‘true’ world is additionally beautiful
and harmonious, or worthy of esteem, then this is a bonus. To as-
sume this from the outset, as the Pythagorans did, is to overstep the
mark by far. If, in addition, the ideas in a metaphysical corpus are fe-
licitously expressed, or the language well-chosen, then this is a second
bonus. Schopenhauer’s philosophy is well-written, but this does not
guarantee the truth of anything he wrote. The artistic truth, however,
is completely different from the metaphysical version. The work of art
must be aesthetically worthy and essentially true, but does not have
to be true in respect of the real; moreover, it must not be aesthetically
neutral. Metaphysics must not only be essentially true, but also true
in the sense of whether it measures up to the accidental reality; there
is no place for aesthetics in metaphysics. The same applies for all sci-
ences, for example mathematics or theoretical physics. In contrast to
Poincaré’s all too Gallic comments about elegance in mathematics, I
recommend the down-to-earth German remark of Einstein’s: the el-
egant I leave to my tailor. There are certainly many, perhaps an infinite
number of, equally correct logical proofs for a proposition, but only in
the sense that you can get from Cologne to Berlin via America or the
North Pole. There is no purely aesthetic value of beauty or harmony
which will tip the balance in favour of the best proof, of which, in my
opinion, there is only one, and this is anyway some minimal principle
of reason, similar to that which obtains in physics under the name of
the ‘smallest effective route’, discovered by Planck. Each mathematical
region has, in addition to the laws of logic, its own essentially-linked
laws of an intuitive minimum of the manifold it covers, which then
give mathematical objects their ultimate truthfulness.
It is crucial that the work of art, from the outset, does not bring to
light all the realizable essences that there are in the world, but only
the aesthetically valuable ones. Perhaps, for a more substantial spirit
than we humans are, all essences are aesthetically valuable. We hu-
mans, however, know aesthetically neutral ones, and they are certainly
not objects of art. Fiedler, however, fails to see this. He also fails to
understand that, on the subjective side of the process of representa-
tion, the sort of feelings and form induced by the aesthetic values are
not something that are being grasped by a spiritual gaze of our heart,
as it were, but are directing and leading us through the very on-going
artistic conception which gives rise to the representation of the urphe-
nomenon in the concrete artistic structure. For this reason, the soul
is the artistic history of the change in creative feelings of style, not of
taste, which, at most, develops from the created and enjoyed work of
art. And this changing pattern of feeling for style is primary, as op-
posed to technique, and material and sociological influences.
Admittedly, the sense of style – in its simplest form – is not first of
all a spiritual or reasoning function. It is in its elementary form already
effective in the natural perception of the world, and is responsible for
the realization of our ‘sensory options’ – if we can so name everything
which crops up before any stimulus or normal nerve pathway takes
such up. And these too are also aesthetically valuable. Our inner, law-
fully organized, drive-based attention also acts in an aesthetic way, in
that, out of our ‘sensory options’, it only realizes those whose partial
elements are ‘good’ – i.e. with a concise [pregnant] form. For the spiri-
tually – not drive-based – aesthetic feelings this selection of concise
forms is only one element in their make-up. And all this is first made
at least implicit in a work of art.
Finally, we come to the role of fantasy in metaphysics and art. Any-
one can tell straight away that metaphysics and art are in a different
league from science when it comes to fantasy, and that in art it is much
more significant than in metaphysics. But what is fantasy? and what
is its relationship to our knowledge of the essences and to our knowl-
edge of what is accidentally real?
We humans have the peculiar ability to create objects, which, if we
do create these, must be deemed ‘fictions’, and, although they can have
no being other than an existentially-free ‘whatness’, which is, though
not exclusively so, immanent to consciousness, they are not unique to
any individual consciousness, because they can be identified through
a variety of acts other than consciousness, and are common to a va-
riety of other individuals. Number 3, Sleeping Beauty, and the god
Apollo as a collective fiction of the ancient Greeks, are such fictions.
Fictions are therefore essentially consciousness-immanent, but are not
necessarily relative to any one individual or even to a psycho-physical
organism. They can be either of these: for example, the hallucinated
object of a madman, which he only has once; or the content of a dream
by a dreamer while he is dreaming it. But, for example, the number
3 – a mental fiction – although a fiction, is neither relative to an in-
dividual nor to a collection of such, but supra-individual and supra-
psychophysical. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, is not relative to
an individual, but is relative to a collection of individuals.
This peculiar ability of humans is certainly a productive activity,
and not a mere transformation or re-arrangement of perceptual or
representational contents, let alone an arbitrary matter. Association
psychology knows nothing of such ‘productive imaginative powers’ –
a concept which is specific to German philosophy. It knows only a
‘reproductive’ sort of fantasy, and would attribute any fantasy to this.
Hume, whose profound acumen makes him the leading light of sen-
sory associationism, posed a question which is quite pertinent to the
notion of productive imagination. Can a human being, he asked, who
has never experienced a certain colour – for example, a particular nu-
ance of green – bring this forth through his fantasy? or can he only
ever have ideas of something which he has already experienced as
an impression, which he then somehow copies? That we can imag-
ine things that do not exist – golden mountains, diamond castles, the
Kingdom of Heaven as by Mohammed – is without question. But can
we imagine completely new elementary constituents of our conscious-
ness, such as green or red? Hume denies that this is possible. But he
never proved his case. What we can definitely say on the matter is
only this: the human being, in general, cannot represent or fantasize
a colour which he has never experienced in the form of a sensation.
But this does not mean that he can only represent whatever he has
actually had a sensation of. It is, for example, quite possible to notice
something in a representational object of a representation that one
did not even notice in the perception belonging to it. Our natural per-
ception is anyway always three-fold – sensation + memory + fantasy.
The primary representations and intuitively-derived images contain
all three, if not more components. The pure observation of something
must first be learned – i.e. fantasy must be curbed.
The activity of fantasy is in itself anyway neutral with respect to
ideas, essences, and even values. In fact, it is blind to ideas, value, truth,
falsehood, knowledge and deception, and is an ability of the vital soul.
It does not belong to spirit, and is the highest representative function
which the vital soul can bring to bear on things – achieving a mix of
freedom, liveliness and versatility, which other functions of the vital
soul – e.g. sensory perception and reproduction – lack. Its goals can
be guided by the ideas and values of the spirit, and it can be aroused
by the drives, and, sometimes, in this latter case, be whipped up to
produce senseless and chaotic images. Generally, it is led to meaning-
ful images – partly serving the spirit, and partly at the service of the
drives. Just because fantasy is neutral as to value, truth and knowledge,
this does not mean, as it is often taken to imply, that fantasy is hostile
to value, truth and knowledge. The highest and lowest, the morally
best and the most depraved, and the truth and the falsehood of an
image of the world, can just as equally be a result of fantasy. Fantasy
has just as much a role to play in the lives of successful businessmen,
statesmen, generals, artists, scholars and scientists, as it has in those
of utopians and demagogues, and this applies to their successes and
to their embarrassing failures. Anyone who possesses only a meagre
capacity for fantasy is simple and insignificant – in whatever good or
bad they do, and in their mistakes as well as what they do know of
anything. From a thousand projects of fantasy, only one is ever real-
ized. Even history is a work of partly realized utopias. Fantasy even
creates the objects of ideal sciences, such as mathematics, with the aid
of pure intuitively-derived matter, such as number or geometric form.
In astronomy, just as in physics, fantasy is at work; for example, it is
behind the model for the relationships and positions of positive and
negative electrons in the atom. Whatever thought one has, be it a fun-
damental one, such as the coming together of intuition with ideation
to produce cognition of their respective co-incidental correlates, then
this too needs fantasy. Fantasy, therefore, does not necessarily lead to
deception and error, but can just as well serve our knowledge of what
is real, and even truth itself.
Now, to the role of fantasy in metaphysics and art. Because meta-
physics, which is knowledge of the real, and not simply an insight into
ideas, begins at the very point where possible direct and indirect sen-
sory experience come to an end, all its concrete intuitively-derived set-
tings-out – not just some, as in science, which is only half rounded off
in the sensory perceptual givenness – are works of fantasy. The yawn-
ing gap between knowledge of essences and accidental experience – i.e.
sensory experience – is filled up only by fantasy. If we renounce the
presupposition that there can be an intuition of something which does
not correspond to the nature of something real, than we see that it is
fantasy that mediates this [translation into the nature of ] something.
The important role which fantasy plays in metaphysics makes meta-
physics again closer to art than art is to science. This might seem fur-
ther support for the theory that metaphysics is conceptual poetry, but
this is not a justified step. For the role which fantasy plays, with its
intrinsic neutrality towards true-false or evidence-deception distinc-
tions, in metaphysics and art, is completely different in the two disci-
plines. In the former – metaphysics – fantasy ought to lead to intuitive
knowledge of something which is transcendent to sensory perception;
in the latter – art – it should lead to the representation of an image of
an object in a sensory, material form, which [normally, i.e. outside art]
only the essences – the Logos – represent.
If fantasy, as we are saying, is blind and neutral with respect to
true and false, beautiful and ugly, and other spiritual value-contrasts,
and is not something that actually belongs to that stratum of spiri-
tual existence which we call ethical-spiritual in nature, then nor does
it belong to the sensory-mechanistic stratum of the soul. Strange to
say, the most boundless, bursting, uncritical and confused – in short,
unbridled – fantasy, which occurs, for example, in the mad and de-
lirious, has nevertheless some goal. It may be that some simple drive
impulse is behind it – hunger, thirst, sex – or some more complicated
one, such as power, ambition or aggression. These changing impulses
each determine their own image, and provide the aim of the impulses.
But the same fantasy can be directed and steered by spirit and reason,
whereupon it is transformed into aesthetic or logico-constructive or
technico-constructive fantasy. These situations show that fantasy is
not merely image-producing fantasy, but can be fantasy for feeling or
striving – making up the realm of wishing as opposed to willing, this
latter, in contrast to wishing, thereby belonging to the experience of ‘I
can’. We can feel what we have never exactly experienced, and wish for
something that we have never personally known.
The activity of fantasy has its place, therefore, in the vital sphere of
the living soul, and is amechanistic, though automatic, and goal-di-
rected. What sets it going are determining tendencies, but never mere
associative, reproductive motives.
The erroneous way in which association psychology treats fantasy
is shown up particularly by the fact that in the early psychic develop-
ment of a human, as an individual and as a group, fantasy activity is
at its height, although even here it is directed to some extent by our
spirit. From childhood and youth onwards, however, experience and
thoughtful assimilation of this, and, furthermore, because of the com-
ing up against the ineffectiveness of pure wishing, there is a gradual
shrinking of the realm of wishing. The philosophical school of positiv-
ism, which is poor in fantasy, and which is so prevalent these days, is,
in historical terms, an attendant phenomenon of an over-ripe civiliza-
tion. The imagination of children, primitive peoples, and certain psy-
chopathological types, are, in the highest degree, ‘fantastic’, and there is
a continuous confusion between mere drive-fantasy and reality. But, as
every scientific observer knows, it is even difficult for an adult to dis-
tinguish the content of an observation from the accretion of fantasy,
and this applies to their theoretical reflection on observations, as well.
In the same way, as [in the course of civilization] there is a transforma-
tion in the realm of striving from what was originally a ‘will’ – rain-
making, domination of Nature, indeed domination of Gods – to a
‘wish’, when the impracticability is experienced, so, in each individual’s
old age what was once a ‘will’ becomes a ‘wish’. Faced with thousands
of such established facts, sensualist psychology and ‘theory of mind’
would still have us believe that the purest and most primary way that
the soul functions is by linking up a stimulus with a corresponding
sensation, whereas, in actual fact, this is the most derived and [devel-
opmentally dilapidated] last way it ever occurs.
What actually happens is that there is an original, productive power
of imagination, in every living creature in possession of a higher, more
complicated, psychic structure, powerfully impelled by the drives of
the vital soul, but eventually considerably reduced in mature creatures
[humans] to a pure sensory perception, and this is subjected by the no-
etic acts of spirit to an increasing correction, critique and selection. In
the mature and optimal states of a human being it is not extinguished
or neutralized, but rather enters more and more into the service of
the spirit, whose reasoning will curbs the drive impulse, and steers it
towards serving its [Geist’s] aims. The aesthetic felt values of fantasy
are then placed in the service of artistic ends, and its images are taken
up by the asensual intuition and thought of metaphysical knowledge,
to provide an order with which one can grasp absolute reality itself.
Once the essential place of fantasy in the stratification of our spirit,
mind and soul is worked out, we have in our hand nothing less than a
criterion with which to pose the question, as to whether the very basis
of the world, and divine Being itself, might not be credited to fantasy
itself, or not.
Metaphysics, Science, and

the Natural World-view
With regard to the relationship that holds between metaphysics and
science, there are two extreme theoretical positions. The first is the
view, known as ‘inductive metaphysics’, as stated by Fechner, accord-
ing to which metaphysics is only an additional connecting up of the
results of the various individual sciences – a quantitative elaboration
of their formulations, carried out with the same ways of thinking,
intuition and methods, and without a unique sort of knowledge of
its own. This position knows essentially nothing about the notion of
existential relativity and its various levels. A second theoretical posi-
tion – which itself has several strands – is engaged in a search for the
royal road to metaphysics, independently of any individual science. To
this approach belong Kant’s definition of a sort of a priori knowledge
based on pure concepts, intuitivism, all sorts of mystical metaphys-
ics, and adherents of dialectical and intellectually intuitive methods.
A third approach – which I believe is required – involves a fertile in-
tegration of three different sorts of knowledge: the philosophically-
achieved existence-free nature [Wassein] of something, as an a priori
venture, equivalent, in our terms, to the ontology of essences of the
world [Wesensontologie]; the results of the individual sciences them-
selves; and knowledge concerning the natural view of the world. In
my opinion, the philosophical and scientific components of this triad
must both start out from the natural view of the world, but their paths
must then radically diverge – indeed oppose one another – in order to
achieve what they are trying to achieve. Further, metaphysics is not just
a quantitative elaboration of scientific formulations, but is, in Kant’s
words, to do with ‘matters in themselves’ [Sachen an sich], matters with
which science has absolutely nothing to do. Its objects and realities
lie on another existential level from those of science – the absolute
existential level. On the other hand, the objects of science are exis-
tentially relative only to: a) possible direct or indirect perceptibility,
through sensory intuition, and, simultaneously, on practical alterabil-
ity of things; b) a spiritual entity tied to a vital, living organism – which
gives understanding [Verstand] – but not to a pure spiritual entity;
and c) their own actual interrelationships. This again is in contrast to
metaphysics, whose aim is to know the actual nature of reality – which
does not show itself through any direct or indirect perception, nor has
anything to do with practical alterability of things, and nor does it
rest on a spiritual entity attached to a vital organism i.e. does not show
itself through understanding. In fact, metaphysics must uncover the
very forms of intuition and thought in which science interprets things,
in order to show what the origin of these is. Metaphysics itself is only
relative to a pure spiritual entity.
Metaphysics, in short, aims to reach a position where it can actually
ask: How is science possible?
For a start [despite what scientists might believe on this point] the
sort of reality applicable to, and the existential nature of, the natural
world-view cannot be explained through science itself. On the con-
trary, science takes as its starting point the very environment of the
human being that is meant by world-view. What it can explain is only
the particular sensory contents of this environment, in terms of sen-
sory physiology and psychology. It is true that science goes beyond the
actual givenness of a human’s environment, but this is in a direction
which alters what is real – both in a microscropic and macroscopic
way – such that science’s Weltbild is generally valid for all possible
creatures possessed of sensory organs, not just humans. Its Weltbild
remains existentially relative to a living creature in general – i.e. relative
to both spirit and life – but not to any particular organized version of
life.
Again, this contrasts with the aim of philosophy, which is to make
the various existential forms of anything the subject of a formless
knowledge, a knowledge: 1) which concerns existentially absolute ob-
jects; and 2) whose relativity to a living creature is cancelled out. As an
illustration of the three approaches – natural, scientific, metaphysical
– consider how the sun can be an object of a natural Weltanschauung,
can be the sun of astronomical investigation, and can be the sun as a
being-in-itself [Ding an sich].
Theoretical philosophy has its starting point, in respect of that com-
ponent of it which I refer to as an ontology of essences, not in the
world of science, but in the natural Weltanschauung. It starts out by
studying the latter’s various existential forms, and the laws determin-
ing the givenness of these. It achieves this by the technique of cancel-
ling [Aufhebung] the existential status and element of reality in these
objects, in order to reveal how they look when shorn of this accidental,
existential status. In this new state they become what they essentially
are – a coincidence of idea and urphenomenon. What I am emphasiz-
ing here is only that the direction which the [metaphysical] technique
must lead us in this exercise, surpassing the natural world-view, is con-
trary to that adopted by science.
Each of the three world-views considered above – natural, scientific,
metaphysical ontology of essences – is uniquely linked to one sort of
knowledge, and this latter to its own set of values and demerits [Un-
werte].
If we now consider the merits [Vorzüge] and demerits [Nachteile]
of the three world-views – natural, scientific, phenomenologically re-
duced world [i.e. ontology of essences] – we shall see that metaphysics
itself integrates the merits of all three and evens out their demerits.
I Natural Weltanschauung
In the first place this is characterized by its insurmountability [Un
überwindlichkeit].
Its merits are five-fold.
1) It gives a sense of reality which neither science nor philosophy
can match nor detract from. Phenomenologically, we can still ask what
this reality is, and how it is given. It is certainly a specific sort of real-
ity, but the naïve knower of this remains completely oblivious of its
‘one-among-many’ nature. Science, on the other hand, ‘knows’ what is
general about it, but cannot account for its very specificity.
2) The existential forms of the objects of the natural Weltanschau
ung – i.e. everything which is pre-given to human sensory perception
and independent of the human’s sensory organs – have their ultimate
basis in the absolute existence of things. In this sense the natural Welt
anschauung partakes of absolute knowledge, and even metaphysics
must take its cue from what this gives. But, metaphysics must look
into whether, and, if so, to what extent, there are regional differences
in entities, and on what level of existential relativity these regions lie.
A scientific explanation of the forms of existence is impossible; it can
only provide their ‘eidology’ [their general make-up] and their mutual
interdependencies, all the time ignoring their particular way of ap-
pearing in the natural world-view.
3. The same goes for the ‘spheres’.
4. The natural world-view gives adequate knowledge within the
boundaries of what is biological and practically valuable.
5. It gives qualities and their respective contrary qualities.
Its demerits are four-fold.
1. It gives inductive knowledge only.
2. The entire content of this is objectively, existentially relative to the
psychophysical entity we know as a human being. The entire content
will then disappear if we strike out this human being in the order of
things. It is therefore ‘anthropocentric’.
3. The voids of absolute space and time, conceived of as indepen-
dently varying extents, are phantoms – even artistic fictions.
4. The natural world-view gives imperfect knowledge of reality, be-
cause it only gives that part of an intrinsically much wider realm of
qualities which directly affect our particular human sense. Science,
moreover, is essentially different, not just in degree, from the natural
world-view.
II Science
Its merits are that it provides a general thesis as to what reality is vis-à-
vis the natural world-view – in more exact and more complete terms,
and independently of the human sensory organization. It broadens our
acquaintance of the world, through technological advances and experi-
ment, and does so in an indirect way by means of mediated thinking.
It thereby provides an index [Index] for all the possible experiences
that a human being might have of a sensory nature. Its world-picture
is conveyed by language [including mathematical symbols], and all
other ways of conveying sense or meaning are translated into language
of some sort. It only gives quantitative references to anything, and, in
fact, merely temporo-spatial co-incidences of appearances.
It takes over the existential forms and spheres as they are in the
natural world-view, and then investigates the forms, not according
to any ontological ordering, but simply along the lines in which they
are given as naturally perceived things. So, for example, a substantive
entity [Substanz] becomes an ‘x’ and force becomes ‘y’, and this whole
formulation of things becomes the model for how any matter of fact
is dealt with. In respect of the spheres, the scientific ordering of these
[with the huge implication that the first-mentioned cause the later] is:
dead – living – psychic – spiritual/mental. As for causation itself, the
supposed sequences are: from simple to complex, from parts to whole,
and from what is empirically earlier to what is later.
Science’s demerits are as follows.
1) It takes for granted the phantoms of space and time.
2) It only explores the spatio-temporal co-incidences of the appear-
ances, and deliberately ignores their essence and the effective workings
of substances and forces. It is overall a rule-bound, functional relativ-
ism.
3) It derives all qualities from quantities, and all sorts of coming-
to-be from movement – which it anyway regards as merely a change
in place.
4) It has no concern for anything that is not controllable by the pos-
sible movement of a living creature.
5) The nature of life remains transcendent to it, and especially so
does the nature of mind or spirit.
6) The nature of freedom – whether an autonomous spontaneity
or a spiritual freedom makes no difference – it also by-passes, because
it only looks into what would happen if nothing free or spontaneous
were the case. Its methodology specifically excludes any sense of won-
der and any free action by a person.
7) Its adequation to what there is is nil. It is pure symbolism.
III Ontology of essences

Its merits are the fact that its knowledge is evident, adequate, apriori
and absolute. This goes for the knowledge that it seeks of inexperien-
cable reality.
Its demerits are that the knowledge which it gives is only of an exis-
tentially-free essence, even though it acknowledges that to each genu-
ine essence there belongs some extant entity. Its knowledge is achieved
by veering off in a completely different direction from that intrinsic to
the natural world-view.
Metaphysics as an integration of these three

It is above all metaphysics’ role to integrate the merits of these three
Weltbilder, while at the same time setting aside their defects.
That is why we assign the discipline of the ‘metasciences’ a critical
and bridging role between science itself on the one hand and the lofti-
est problems of metaphysics itself – the theory of the causes of every-
thing.
The claim that we are putting forward here has been far too little ap-
preciated throughout the entire history of metaphysics. On the other
hand, there is hardly a major region of science, particularly when it
is still in its infancy, which has not claimed, or has been claimed by
others, to be itself a one-sided metaphysics. The basic concept of such
a science is then taken for the very nature of absolute reality itself.
In fact, one can say that it is almost a law that each major scientific
advance has a tendency to accord its particular objective reality the
status of absolute reality, and to claim that its basic concepts are what
determines this reality. To give a few examples. Mathematics, espe-
cially the branch dealing with numbers, ‘becomes’, in the hands of the
Pythagorans, metaphysics itself. True things, so they say, are numbers.
Logic ‘becomes’ metaphysics, in the case of Plato, for whom indeed
dialectics and metaphysics co-incide – hence the reification of ideas
as things. Aristotle’s metaphysics of matter and form – which had the
most pervasive and long-lasting influence on Western spiritual history
and on Arabic thought as well – is a compromise between dynamic,
metaphysical logic and an elaborated biological thesis, with the end-
result a metaphysical conceptualisation of existence, whereby the en-
tire world – including inorganic nature, as well as spirit, and God too
– are made to conform to this bipartite formula of ‘form’ or ‘matter’.
In fact the specific claims of the inorganic and the spiritual in this
respect were a closed book to Aristotle, and everything else was what
one can call a ‘logicized biologism’. When, in the 16th and 17th Cen-
turies, through Leonardo, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens and Newton,
mechanics, especially the dynamic sort, began its triumphant progress
through science, this was then hailed as an incursion into metaphys-
ics itself, and the absolutely real was deemed nothing other than the
movement of very small particles. Materialism is only mechanics made
universally valid. In Britain, through empirical psychology, in the form
of association psychology, Berkeley, Hume and others, attempted to
ground the absolutely real in impressions, ideas and laws of associa-
tion. The soul, bodily substance, everything in fact, were only constant
complexes of impressions. Causality was only a subjective constraint
brought about by habit to link an idea A with an idea B. Hume wanted
to explain the category of things through impressions and ideas and
to regard these things as absolute, which meant that he treated the
rules of association themselves as absolute. This further means that
he must have held psychic causality too to be absolute. What the ge-
nial Scot did not realize was that in doing so he was also making the
laws of formal mechanics absolute too. On the Continent, in the 18th
Century, there was a tendency to regard the objects of mathematics as
absolute objects behind the brightness of our outer and inner experi-
ences, and to accord them the status of absolutely real, and to consider
what was absolutely real as comprising nothing more than something
mathematically simple, clear and all-pervasive. This was instead of see-
ing mathematical objects for what they actually are – i.e. special sorts
of fictions, which we humans use to order and determine the perceiv-
able outer world by virtue of their forms and clear-cut laws. It was only
Kant at that time who realized that there was a distinction between
the mathematical method and metaphysics.
In the 19th Century – after the Romantics had re-claimed the his-
tory of the spirit in their terms – metaphysics became a completely
one-sided story of human inwardness, and, finally, in the case of Fichte
and Hegel, it became the metaphysics of history. Soon after, when the
Century was becoming highly capitalistic and ‘realistic’ in character,
even though Germany itself was initially left behind in this trend,
along came someone – Marx – who proclaimed that economic his-
tory and the mundane affairs of humans were the critical factor in
the progress of the world, and that all art, religion and science were
epiphenomena of this economic history. Then in the second half of
the 19th Century when biology took on a new lease of life, there then
arose a biological Weltanschauung of a metaphysical sort, whereby the
dead world and spirit alike were deemed outgrowths of life itself, and
several thinkers – Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Simmel, and
others, including Driesch to some extent – set about trying to explain
life in terms of absolute reality itself. Ostwald, whose background was
in physical chemistry, took the concept of energy, which in the hands
of Meyer, Joule, Helmholtz, Carnot and Clausius, had been given a
new significance, and explained energy in terms of the absolutely real,
and then attempted to derive virtually everything – matter, soul, spirit
and thoughts – in terms of its form and changing forms.
It is at this point that this ‘philosophy’, which emphasizes its scientific
credentials, feels confident to simply deny philosophy and metaphys-
ics any autonomous status, despite the fact that scientific philosophy
itself is one-sided, even childish, in this pretence. In any case, everyone
has his or her own metaphysical outlook, whether they know this or
not, and it is a grotesque overstatement to make out that the partic-
ular science one is studying is the metaphysical, absolute, existential
region. But this sort of opinion is hardly surprising if one denies any
independent metaphysical method, and if one degrades philosophy to
the status of a mere science. Even to take the view that philosophy is
indeed not an auxiliary branch of science, but the queen of sciences or
it is nothing, is wrong-headed. This would be the case if philosophy’s
task were merely to elaborate on the results of science, or to take a
loftier view of science as a whole. But this is precisely how pseudophi-
losophy arises – an anarchic set of claims for why one man’s science
should be the absolutely real. One might just as well give credence to
a cobbler’s opinion as to why a particularly marvellous set of boots are
what is absolutely real. All this talk of scientific philosophy is nothing
but journalistic nonsense, and does not deserve serious consideration.
But setting aside these grotesque caricatures of pseudo-scientific
metaphysics thrown up in recent times – by Marx, for example, as well
as by Ostwald – we have to admit that even serious-minded, would-
be metaphysicians in the ancient past, as well as now, have had grave
misgivings and doubts about the possibility of metaphysics. The very
fact that whenever a new breakthrough is made in the field of science
that particular individual science is then elevated to be the metaphysi-
cal claim of all time, along with the fact that metaphysics throughout
its history has been defined in terms of the scientific domain [ever
encroaching], which it is not, simply encourage such profound scepti-
cism. The radically sceptical question then arises as to whether meta-
physics will not always be condemned to frame its deliberations in
terms of some finitely circumscribed factual experience in the place of
absolute reality, or to at least need a basic concept of some such, in the
form of a reification [hypostasieren] as Kant called it, in order to have
any sense of Being-itself. This is certainly the position of relativistic
positivism, which wants to restrict itself to the laws governing what
actually appears, and therewith deny all metaphysics.
I myself do not believe that this radical scepticism is justified, if only
one could secure a clear metaphysical method, and if only one could
come up with a sort of cognition which were strictly independent from
the sort germane to the sciences. My own approach – via an ontology
of essences – should give the metaphysical investigator precisely the
exact theory of metaphysical cognition he has so far lacked.
For then, in my opinion, it should be obvious, despite the collective
scientific clamour to the contrary, that metaphysics reveals the entire
set of human self-experiences and world-experiences to lie at different
proximities or distances from absolute reality, and, that within their
very nature, there is an essential gradation among them in the extent
to which they are affected by the absolute realm – for example, spirit,
life, inorganic [are differentially affected in this respect].
In fact, I can go further. If there were one thing in the entire world,
that was not party to all possible essences, but was nevertheless party
to everything that was knowable in the form of essences and relation-
ships between them which were effective in this thing and which this
thing had in itself – in other words, a thing in which all essences of
this world came together at the same time – then this thing would be
truly exceptional. It would be something with an irreplaceable signifi-
cance for metaphysics, and of the very first rank among all objects that
metaphysics has to deal with.
I have already indicated earlier that there is such a thing. This thing
is the human being. The determination of its essence and its origin is
then the critical question for metaphysics, as everything else meets up
in this very thing. It is actually in everything, in an essential sense – a
microcosm, just as the old and profound concept put it. The human
is in this way everything. It is numerate and numerable; it is equally
an example of mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, no-
ology, history and ethnology, and, in a certain sense, an example of
theology, insofar as something divine is inside it. Inside a human being
and on the surface of a human being one can not only study this hu-
man being, but everything else in the world as well, in all the spheres
and levels of being that exist metaphysically, and, moreover, from the
point of view of all essences and ideas that have ever been realized –
and that includes all forms of nature and all forms of the soul. And
this is not all: in a human being alone – in him and on him – we have
access to the most supreme finite fact that we know – the form of the
being of a person and spirit. Metaphysical anthropology is the focal
point of the metasciences.
Moreover, we can show that the issue of the nature and the struc-
tural make-up of this thing – the human being – possesses at the very
least an heuristic priority above all other metaphysical questions, and,
if once its nature were clearly known, then not only the human being
itself, but the nature of all other things too, would be known. ‘It is not
outside of yourself that the gate [to knowledge] lies, but inside you; it
is you yourself who bring forth what you seek. Don’t think, moreover,
that I am not being serious. The very core of human nature is in the
heart.’
For this reason, the essential nature of what humans are [Wesensan
thropologie] is the most central point of the ontology of essences itself,
above all other eidetic disciplines, serving metaphysical knowledge.
Having given a boost to metaphysics in this way, and set in train a
programme for beginning to understand its relationship to religion,
mysticism, art, the natural Weltanschauung, science and the ontology
of essences, as well as sketching out something of the method we pro-
pose to adopt, there still remains one introductory question to lay out:
What is the relationship between metaphysical knowledge regarding
the nature of what is absolutely real and those sorts of knowledge
which we can call knowledge of values [Wertwissen], axiology – the
highest integrated synopsis of values – ethics, aesthetics and the re-
maining value-sciences?
Metaphysics and Knowledge of Values,

especially Ethics
First of all, there is no doubt that just as there is a meta-logic and a
meta-mathematics, there is also a meta-axiology and a meta-ethics,
and that these metasciences must have some significance for the meta-
physical knowledge of the basis of the world.
The basis of the world, or, from a dualistic or pluralistic perspective,
the ‘bases of the world’ – as its unity is itself a metaphysical problem,
and by no means a foregone conclusion – has been intimately linked
with the sphere of values by all the greatest metaphysicians in history.
Plato’s highest ‘idea’ was for him the idea of ‘goodness’, though admit-
tedly he did subordinate it to something [even higher] which he called
ontos on [unchanging being or the really real], which was itself the Be-
ing of beings [Sein des Seienden]. The entire era of Western metaphys-
ics, which has been most powerfully influenced by Plato and Aristotle,
has clung on to this central Greek notion that something that is [any-
thing at all] is also good [auch gut] – i.e. it is good simply because it
is – and [looked at from the viewpoint of what is good] the highest
sort of goodness is that something simply is, or [alternatively] that a
being in itself and through its being a being is by this very fact good.
This thesis exemplifies [in metaphysical terms] the most intimate link
between axiology [the study of value] and metaphysics [the study of
what is real] that there could possibly be. Every being is good [omne
ens est bonum], as the Scholastics also maintained. Taking the meaning
of ‘good’ as iridescent [schillernden] is dubious, but it certainly had the
meaning of ‘most perfect’ or ‘most complete’, with respect to its content
or nature for what it was. Consequently, the bad and the evil must be
of a non-positive sort of being – me on [non-being] – or of a status
lacking in being – steresis [a state of privation].
By the standards of our contemporary, Western way of thinking,
these categories have become completely alien. They simply do not
correspond to the way the Logos has come down to us, and how we
understand it in our epoch. In fact, very few philosophers would un-
derstand it either, and those would be specialist historians of philoso-
phy. Many now would say that it meant that the most perfect beings
were the ones with the most perfect nature [i.e. beings are rank or-
dered, e.g. God higher than a speck of dust]. But this is not what it
means at all. It means something completely different. It means that in
a perfect being, the being is the participle of the verb [das Partizip des
Verbums]. The more perfect, the closer the being of some entity is to
the verb, not to some representation of its nature. This way of thinking
confused the ultimate grounding of all axiology with the theoretical
basis of metaphysics. It neither knew our own concept of value-free
being – for example, science – nor any sort of being which was neutral
in value, as opposed to positively and negatively valued, or higher and
lower valued beings. There are metaphysical systems, for example Bud-
dha’s, whose point of departure is that being – [of a doing nature, i.e.]
the verb – is value-unfriendly [wertfeindlich] – i.e. everything is bad,
if it is a realized entity. Schopenhauer, who went along with this, then
deemed ‘good’ any activity which subverted this. Nevertheless, the vast
thrust of Western metaphysics, until the end of the Middle Ages, took
place under the axiomatic pre-supposition that: It is better that there
is something than that there is nothing. A metaphysical optimism lies
at the root of this metaphysics of Ancient and Medieval epochs.
This way of interpreting things supposes a simple connection be-
tween the axiology of the world and its existing entities. To be good,
in an ethical sense, means to be and to act in accordance with what
is. Making distinctions between values – identifying so-called norms
– also follows the same pattern: the most perfect and most realized
entities are those which are re-mirrored in the world as the image
of the Supreme Being – as Aristotle thought. Spinoza, Leibniz and
Wolff took the same view, even elevating its significance. Spinoza, for
example, considered that the distinction between true and false could
only become apparent to us through gradations of adequacy and inad-
equacy of our ideas, and, in the same way, good and bad, or good and
evil, only became accessible to us in the course of our activities, or our
sense of power, or our sense of being able to do things. His thesis was
that it were better that everything possible were brought to light than
that nothing at all were brought forth.
In Leibniz’ case, this tendency is taken to peculiar lengths. In his
famous ‘Principle of the better’, according to which God has created
the best and most perfect of all possible worlds, the concept of ‘good’
changes to ‘better’, and is no longer linked to existential possibilities at
all. For, to the question as to which world is the best or most perfect,
he answers – not like Spinoza, who says that it should be the one
which maintains the maximum of possibilities – but that it should
contain the maximum of ‘compossibilities’ [i.e. it should be maximally,
internally coherent.]
In Christian metaphysics, this categorical conflation of ‘goodness’
and ‘being’ is introduced by St. Augustine, who is concerned to coun-
ter the arguments of the Manichaeans – who believed in the co-orig-
inality of good and evil – and is keen to prove the original perfection
of God’s creation.
Despite the similarity of the basic views on this matter of Plato, Ar-
istotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics and the High Scholastics, on the
one hand, and Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff, on the other hand, there
are a series of important differences between the two groups. These
can be dealt with under two headings. In the first group of metaphy-
sicians, all existing entities – and not just those to do with life and
reason – are subject to an ongoing, goal-orientated activity [zielhafte
Tätigkeit], the ultimate aim of which is Being-itself or God. In this
way, the value of anything lies in the extent to which it achieves its idea
and essential form. Moral goodness is a special case of this, because
the self-development is [subject to the vagaries of ] a creature with free
reasoning. ‘Become who you are ‘ – is the motto. But, in the case of
Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff, this element is omitted from their for-
mulation – to the greatest extent by Leibniz. The activity, movement
and alterations [deemed integral to the process by the first group] are
no longer accorded any immanent role, and that is because all three
metaphysicians are immersed in the new mathematico-mechanistic
version of nature. The only conditions which anything is subject to
now are mathematical laws, and these make no allowances for value,
goal or purpose. What emerges with these metaphysicians is a situa-
tion where the concept of value with respect to good and bad is com-
pletely quantified.
The second difference between the two groups of metaphysicians is
that whereas the first group recognizes a second dimension of differ-
ences between values – in addition to their being positive or negative –
the second grouping of metaphysicians do not: this dimension – which
disappears in the second group’s formulations – is a rank ordering of
values according to high and low. But even this rank ordering is, ac-
cording to comments by the Ancient and Medieval philosophers, one
which is based on differences between the existential status of things,
namely on the differences between something’s independence. From
pure matter, which has not yet got its own existential status, but is only
in a state of ‘objective possibility’; on to the realms of inorganic forms
and bodies – central point of a mass at one end to crystalline structure
at the other; then organic living creatures, with all the numerous sorts
of plants and animals; right up to humans and their reason; culmi-
nating in angels and the Supreme Being Himself; all these illustrate
the tremendous growth in independence and intrinsic generation of
extant entities. The same older philosophers conceived of there being
a rank ordering of values and degrees of ‘goodness’ to match these, an
order, however, which at times was out of kilter with the rank order of
independencies. For example the Devil is certainly evil, but in the rank
order of forms of being it was superior to the best of men. Neverthe-
less, the Supreme Being is the ultimate in goodness, because it is Being
in-and-for-Itself. And human beings, despite being free creatures, al-
ready have within them a constant attachment to higher values which
they are responsible to. The second group of philosophers, referred to
earlier, simply did not subscribe to this, because their adherence to a
mathematico-mechanistic model of everything does not allow it, as
this model levels out all rank ordering of values, and all discrete levels
of existential status, allowing [at most] a quantification of value differ-
ences. In this way, everything – from a stone to a human – becomes
increasingly similar and increasingly a non-independent member of
the universal mechanism.
If this trend were extrapolated to its logical conclusion, then exactly
what happened to qualities, purposes and forms, would apply to val-
ues. They are subjectivized, and attempts are then made to derive them
from pleasant or unpleasant experiences, or from desiring or detest-
ing states of an organism, or from some experience of ‘I ought to do
such-and-such’ conditioned by an immanent law of practical reason
– as Kant supposed. In such proposals, ‘what is good’ is originally ei-
ther what occasions pleasure, or what is desired, or what ought to be.
But this boils down to the following: values have no more significance
whatsoever for either science or metaphysics. All theoretical knowl-
edge must be value-free.
In fact, this conclusion is as unjustified with respect to values as it
is with respect to qualities. The natural Weltanschauung, for one thing,
makes all values appear as properties of things or psychic processes,
exactly as it does with qualities. Its anthropocentrism does not consist
in the fact that it does this, but in the particular selection of values
that it prefers. It simply gives preference to those values which appear
on goods which are important for the living processes of an organism,
or to those which lead into a particular practical activity. Even ethical
and aesthetic values only appear by virtue of the fact that the things
which carry them are useful or harmful. Science, then, achieves its
value-free object by abstracting from the objective existence of values
and from the value differences inherent in beings. It treats and inves-
tigates the world ‘as if ’ no free and spontaneous acts ever occur. Why
does it do this? It does so because it does not possess the sense or aim
to give adequate knowledge about the absolute state and nature of the
world, but is only concerned with a symbolic, one-sided ordering of
all possible coincidental relationships of objects that might crop up in
space and time – an order, moreover, which it makes possible in order
to control events through actions and technique. Further, in order to
control the objective values of the world, it has to adopt the mental set
that all appearances are dependent variables of a universal and formal
mechanism. This follows, because only if the world is considered to be
similar to a mechanism is it amenable to being technically controlled
and mastered. Insofar as this does not apply, then all that is left for
the world is to be an object of contemplation. The apparent value-free
nature of the world that emerges under these conditions is actually its
[artificial] manipulation under the isolated influence of one value alone
[i.e. its supposed value-free status is nothing of the sort], precisely to
master it, and the value in question normally belongs in an objective
arrangement of other values, with a specific place in this arrangement
as part of the subdivision of values belonging to life [Lebenswerten].
Metaphysics sees its role as an elevation above both the natural and
the scientific world-views, a vantage point from which the whole range
of values can be seen in their proper objective character – a vantage
point that restores the values to what they are before they are restrict-
ed by either the anthropomorphic or scientific constraints. It aims to
impart the very lay-out of a philosophical axiology – incorporating
both an axiology and ontology of essences by means of an ‘eidetic re-
duction’. But even this ‘axiology’ gives nothing ultimate. This is because
each value belongs to an existing entity – even if we do not know to
which one it does belong. Metaphysics, indeed, seeks the absolute or-
der of anything good and bad – i.e. seeks to know realized values, not
free-floating value-qualities. In fact, its final task – a thesis on the basis
of the world – seeks both to know the absolute itself, and to know
the highest level of values that obtain there. The various levels that
anything can exist on, and the various levels that something of ‘good’
value – or ‘bad’ – can exist on, must correspond one to another, in fact
must correspond exactly, because ontically [actually] it is not a value
that founds anything’s existence, but an existing entity that founds a
value. At this point in our deliberations we can reassert the truth of
what the Ancient and Medieval philosophers held about the value of a
thing’s residing in its existence.
What is still true in their collective views on the matter is:
1) it is not a value which founds an existing entity, but an existing
entity which underlies a value; and
2) there are discrete levels of value-modalities, e.g. – pleasant and
useful as distinct from ‘good’ [agathon] – Aristotle.
But despite this, the whole set of metaphysical positions from Pla-
to’s up to St. Thomas’ contain a profound error. This consists in the
logical consequence that one has to draw if everything in existence
is good. It is true that values rest on extant entities, but if the order
of values is made to rest on the degree of independence that an en-
tity has from anything else, and if the contrasting values of good and
bad are also derived from the mere status of something’s being extant,
then to conclude that everything is good is nothing more than an ana-
lytic proposition, which takes no account of the actual experience of
whether things are good or bad, or whether any examination of the
matter might show up some extant entities to be bad. One can even
say that metaphysical optimism becomes merely a bare definition, and
even that God’s all-goodness is nothing but a logical fact. The actual
state of affairs is rather that although the extant entity is necessarily
the carrier of value, and is essentially imbued with value, whether we
humans find positive or negative value there or not, the most one can
say is that everything is value-laden [omne ens est aestimativum], but
not that it is good just because it is there. It has a nature, whether good
or bad. Moreover, one cannot make out that the goal of the world or
the origin of this goal must be good, because it can always be asked
whether it is not simply bad. Still less can one assume, based on an idea
of purpose or totality, that this purpose or totality must be good. For
example, it can always be asked about pain whether it is good – e.g. as
a way of helping preserve the total organism – or bad.
The situation is therefore that an extant entity must be intrinsical
ly neutral as to whether it is valuable or valueless, and that there is
required a special experience as to its nature before we can establish
what any extant entity’s nature, over and above [its extantness and
nature], is in the hierarchy of good things, and which positive – or
negative – value belongs to it. This must also apply to Being-itself – the
basis of the world, which certainly carries the highest form of value
there is. But whether this value is good, or bad, or both, or ethically
blind in value – demonic – is a question which can only be decided
by inquiring into the essential nature and value structure of the world
itself. Otherwise, the world could turn out to be utterly bad, while
Being-itself remained utterly good.
The value of an entity is ultimately just as basic a sort of being as is
the existence or the nature of an entity. If this is not recognized, then
values either become falsely subjectivized – a form of scientificism –
or become the focus of a dogmatic ‘optimism’. This latter stance, which
supposes a maximum amount of good co-original with the creative
process, of which Leibniz’ version is the crassest, has two quite nefari-
ous consequences. First, the overestimation of good in the world kills
the sense and power of will and action to make the world better, inso-
far as anything can be altered. Secondly, with respect to matters which
cannot be altered, it kills – by inducing an illusionary satisfaction with
the world – the value and power of an attitude of resignation to the in-
evitability of certain things, along with a sense of pity at all the suffer-
ing in the world [Mitleiden des Weltleiden] – which latter stance is the
only appropriate attitude to take towards unalterable evil. Obviously,
an overestimation of the actual evil in the world deadens the power of
action and will too, because it induces a false resignation to something
that may not be there, or may not be there eternally if certain actions
or guided development over the course of history were set in train to
overcome it. Whoever views the world with rose-coloured spectacles
simply ignores the task of making it better. On the other hand, Marx
and the pragmatists do not see that some things – both good and bad
– are from a practical point of view unalterable.
But this is not the only error of the one-sided Ancient and Medieval
metaphysics emphasizing existence. As well as ignoring the thesis that
Being-itself is subdivided into the existence, nature and value of some-
thing – and that all three are equal in metaphysical status – and as well
as conceiving of value as a derivative of existence, with the further er-
ror of equating ‘goodness’ with existence – incidentally Buddha made
the same error in the opposite direction when he equated existence
with ‘being bad’ – another no less serious error was as follows.
The issue involved is: In which intended act are values grasped, if
they are grasped? The answer given by every single major school has
always been, and could not have been otherwise, given their overall
philosophical position, that they are grasped in an obscure, muddled
and implicit fashion, through perception, representation and thinking,
i.e. by means of the very classes of act, in which the nature of what
something is is grasped – although each of the schools actually [and
erroneously] supposes that the existence of that something is grasped
in this way too. The fact that our spirit and mind, according to the
very way it works, has the capacity for intentionally feeling something
– at the highest level through preference of something and the setting
aside of something else, and through love and hate – and that it pos-
sesses its own irreplaceable organ to do just this – grasp and arrange
the objective realm of value qualities – was completely overlooked.
Furthermore, what was also ignored was the fact that our reason pos-
sesses just as much of a growing capacity to reveal feelings for the value
of things as it does an indispensable tool for understanding proposi-
tions and the like. It, therefore, has an ‘order of the heart’, or a ‘logic of
the heart’ [in addition to, and independently of, the propositional vari-
ety]. It is therefore a complete mistake when someone like Przywara
supposes that feeling for values, preference, love, and hate, are nothing
more than ‘implicit thinking’ or ‘natural thinking’. This is a reversion
to the previous outmoded theory that our feelings are merely obscure
and muddled inchoate versions [Vorformen] of thought – i.e. things,
which once developed, must fade away. But, in fact, just as ‘red’ and
‘blue’ are not amenable to being grasped by our thinking alone, neither
are ‘pleasant’, ‘unpleasant’, etc. Though, on this point, Descartes, Leib-
niz, Hobbes and others, did actually believe that red and blue were
only obscure and indistinct thoughts, or tendencies in this direction
which were physically linked with them. This theory is as false for
colours as the former is for values.
The philosophers coming after the above-mentioned, right up till
now, completely overlooked the role of intentionality and the real
meaning of our emotional life, and, at most, referred to blind feeling-
states which were projected as value-free states of affairs. Overall, the
independence of emotions, and the fact that they cannot be resolved
into will or intellect, was not realized. The faculty of evaluation was
considered a mixture of desire and judgement, or will and judgement,
and even love and hate were subordinated to our striving for some-
thing or against something. The entire source of our experience of val-
ues, which is actually independent of the specific organization of the
bearer of this experience – and that applies even for animals and God
– was therefore overlooked. The fact that values can also be thought
about – as in conceptualisation of values or judgements about values
– after they are felt, misled thinkers into assuming that they could be
thought about without first having felt them. A state of ‘value-blind-
ness’ then became ‘lack of judgement’ concerning values, and ‘value-
deception’ became simply ‘error’.
We claim, however, that the experience of value is one of the most
fundamental experiences there is, that it stems from what one can call
the ‘cognitive heart’, that it grasps not only essential matters in the world
but in God too, and that it provides certain [sicheres] metaphysical
data. Metaphysics has one material presupposition, one which results
from the axiology of essences and the accidental empirical knowledge
of values, and that is history, which is the chief showcase for the re-
alization of values over time. This does not mean that metaphysics
ought to give the mind and the heart a satisfactory world-view [befit-
ting them], in the sense that it should somehow interfere with them or
manipulate them in some way. This is nonsense. What it means is that
the objective world of being portrayed by the heart – the world of val-
ues and the heart as the means of grasping these values – builds up a
sort of ultimate state of affairs for metaphysics, which it – metaphysics
– has to make understandable from the very basis of the world itself.
In fact, if values were able to be explained psychologically, they would
become without significance for metaphysics. Metaphysics itself is
nothing to do with the heart, but a matter for understanding and rea-
son. But the ‘heart’s data’, and everything which in the broadest sense
belongs to spirit – including conscience, taste, style, and aesthetic and
religious feelings – are irreplaceable, and cannot be recast in terms of
a metaphysical investigation.
Axiology, especially the eidetic variety, i.e. ethics, must therefore be
independent of metaphysics, and cannot – as Fichte and Hegel sup-
posed – be merely deduced from some metaphysical hypothesis.
There is yet another point which the one-sided, intellectual phase of
metaphysics completely missed. This concerns the ontological order of
an extant entity, its nature, and its value, and the totally different way
in which these three sorts of being are each ‘given’ to us.
Because no-one recognized that the existence of something – its
real being – is transintelligible, whereas only the nature of something
is intelligible, it was supposed that not only the nature of some extant
entity which was accessible to us, or the existence of some particular
sort of thing, was able to be known, but even the very existence of
something hitherto unsuspected by our knowledge could be known.
And although it was correctly appreciated that the value of something
in an ontical [real] sense is always only the value of some already ex-
isting entity whose nature is also already determined, it was not ap-
preciated that, in terms of the order in which these are given, it is the
other way round – i.e. value is given before the nature or existence of
anything is given – and that we can only know what something is, and
that it is, if that ‘something’ is loved, hated, preferred or rejected – i.e.
if it is felt.
This principle, that value is prior in its givenness to the other two
fundamental ways of being, a principle, moreover, that I have pro-
moted for years, and given evidence to this effect from every possible
angle, has been strangely misunderstood. It has been either taken as an
ontic priority [which I mentioned above], or as a priority in time itself,
rather than in the time ordering of certain given acts.
St. Augustine’s views on this, as interpreted by Przywara, are that:
one cannot love something that one has no knowledge of whatsoever,
but love makes what one knows only slightly into something better
and completely known. If that is what St. Augustine did mean, then it
would be a complete contradiction of my views on the priority of the
act of love vis-à-vis that of cognition. In actual fact, I too admit that
empirically one cannot love something without knowing something
about the loved object, nor without there being some appreciation of
its existential status – whether real, fictional or ideal.
There are only two ways in which we can sort out the relationship
between two acts of this nature [i.e. love and cognition]. One is by
establishing which precedes and which succeeds the other – as St. Au-
gustine did. The other way is the method I refer to as the ‘limiting case
method’ [Grenzfälle], whereby one sees what if anything remains when
each of the two ‘givennesses’ is [artificially] taken out of the situation. If
indeed St. Augustine had said what Przywara alleges he said, then he
[St. Augustine] and I would be at loggerheads about whether cogni-
tion or love precedes one another [St. Augustine favouring cognition, I
love]. But he did not say this, and therefore we are at one on the issue.
What I dispute [and this is where both St. Augustine and myself have
been misinterpreted] is the time-ordering of both acts [as formulated
by Przywara]. I do not say: first love, then cognition; nor do I say: love
causes cognition. What I do say is that both are simultaneous, as far as
one can place any measurement of time on them. Looking at the same
issue using the limiting case method, it is clear that one can perceive
or remember that something is or was pleasant or unpleasant without
knowing what it is that is or was pleasant or unpleasant [i.e. a value
remains even if its cognized object has disappeared].
Furthermore, the primacy of the givenness of a value can be dem-
onstrated separately for all such situations – i.e. perception, memory,
expectation, fantasy, intuition-free thinking, immediate idea-thinking,
‘showing’ the urphenomenon of something, etc. It would therefore
seem that it is a strictly generalizable principle.
The same holds good for the relationship between the appreciation
of the value of something and willing. Here again the projection of a
value precedes the projection of an image, and therefore love or hate
precede both knowledge and willing, a principle that can be confirmed
by the results of developmental psychology: our understanding and
will in all matters to do with soul and spirit are first differentiated
from a primitive feeling-laden urge [Gefűhlsdrang], which itself is not
yet either sensation or striving.
From these considerations there follow several important principles.
First, axiology must not only be independently grounded from meta-
physics itself – i.e. ethics cannot be based on the existence or nature
of God – but the situation is rather that the prevailing value system
determines the structure of a metaphysical system. Secondly, it means
that there could be values in the sphere of absolute being whose nature
remains unknown to any particular individual capable of picking up
values. And thirdly, metaphysical knowledge must require a particular
emotional disposition on the part of any would-be metaphysician [be-
cause if values precede knowledge then the would-be metaphysician
must grasp the appropriate values before such knowledge can occur].
Furthermore, such a disposition is not just advantageous, but actually
necessary, for such an exercise.
This special requirement of a particular moral sort of being and at-
titude before metaphysical knowledge can be attained was well known
to Plato, failed to impress St. Augustine, but influenced Spinoza to a
great extent.
I myself have given a comprehensive account of such disposition in
my essay On the Nature of Philosophy. It is precisely what is involved
in the technique [of the phenomenological reduction], whereby the
element of reality – the individuating principle – is cancelled and the
[philosophical] objects [- the essences -] are revealed. It is, in the first
place, a disposition towards a spiritual love for uncovering such es-
sences in all things, and the [thirst for such] knowledge is a defining
feature of a philosopher from Plato onwards. In the second place, it
requires a humiliation of the self in the face of the pure beings them-
selves, and a propensity to seek out what is absolute in anything by
dint of sweeping aside all anthropocentric drives, and, furthermore,
all relative values and existential relativities, in particular those which
lead a scientist to seek control of whatever there is. Metaphysics is even
that sort of knowledge which surpasses the living part of us. Thirdly,
the appropriate emotion which best befits the would-be metaphysi-
cian is that of reverence, a state which facilitates the dim apprecia-
tion of the values of things whose cognitively-determined nature still
eludes us. The central role played by emotion in all this gives the lie to
all those who propose that metaphysics can provide adequate and evi-
dent knowledge of the absolute. Fourthly, self-control over our drive-
impulses and over volitional behaviour in general disposes to: a) objec-
tifization, and b) the cognition of essences. Fifthly, pure sympathetic
understanding [Nachfűhlen] is a condition for knowing all aspects of
the historical soul of the world.
Curiously, there are philosophers – Windelband and Rickert, for
example – who subscribe to the theory, which, since Kant’s time, has
been called ‘the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason’. I
myself was deceived by this ‘residue of Kantianism’ at one time. I am
now of the opinion that it is as false as anything can be. It, and its as-
sociated axioms, can be formulated as follows. 1) There is a primacy of
practical attitudes in the scheme of things vis-à-vis theory. 2) Practical
matters are what count; not love. 3) Theoretical knowledge, so far as
it occurs, is quite possible without any moral disposition for this to
emerge. 4) The appreciation of what we might call a ‘supra-empirical’
object first takes place in the act of fulfilling a duty – in the realization
of a pure ‘ought’ [Sollen]. 5) The existence of anything is nothing but
the correlate of a true judgement, namely an ‘existential judgement’, as
to what a mental act that I perform demands as its object. This means
that anything’s existence is merely the X of what should be there. Both
its existence and its nature are derived from a sort of construed thought
of what ‘ought to be’, based on intuited material. 6) All cognition and
all knowledge of any kind is related to what is good for us, and their
value is only a means to an end, not an end in itself.
That all this is the complete opposite of the sort of disposition that I
set out earlier is clear. Kant restricted our knowledge to whatever con-
cerned our moral duty, and placed the latter itself in the metaphysical
absolute sphere. Plato and Spinoza adopted the opposite stance, and
ascribed significance to ethics only to the extent that it served pure
theory. This view on their part, concerning the relationship between
ethics and metaphysics, is also false because it is too one-sided. For
although an ethical attitude is both a form of asceticism and a dispo-
sition towards attaining metaphysical knowledge, it is not just these.
It has its own value for facilitating our participation in Being-itself,
something which can only be achieved by co-executing our will and
God’s at the same time, without which any practical or ethical atti-
tudes on our part are incomplete.
If we turn to the actual state of affairs, we must refuse to accept the
absolute dualism between the value of something and its existence or
its nature, which was put forward during Ancient and Medieval times,
whereby an ideal value and validity were taken to be the highest sort of
being, and the existence and nature of a being were, in respect of this,
considered derived, subordinate sorts of being. Similarly, we deny any
claim – whether Kant’s moderate one or Fichte’s and Rickert’s extreme
one – to the effect that practical reason is primary vis-à-vis theoretical
reason. It is simply not an option to make out the existence of an ob-
ject to be a mere exercise in construing sensory material as something,
nor to make truth into a value and say that the existence of an object
is merely an affirmative proposition to this effect. This latter claim is
simply to confuse the existence of an object with its possible status as
an objective object. Truth is always the agreement between a meaning-
ful judgement and some particular state of affairs. Anyway, truth itself
is not a value; only the knowledge of truth can be a bearer of a value
for us. Truth is not something that determines an object’s existence or
nature, however beautiful, good or pleasant that may seem. For this
reason, the expression ‘value-metaphysics’ is nonsense, and so is the
idea of a transcendent region of values or truth, while, at the same
time, making out all existing things to be immanent to consciousness.
Setting aside other errors in the doctrine of so-called ‘value-meta-
physics’, its proponents fail to see that the ontic [actual] sequence of
foundations of the existence, nature and value of anything, one upon
the other, is completely reversed when it comes to the issue of how
they are given to us [i.e. actually existence and nature precede value,
but we grasp values first before we can know anything’s existence or
nature]. The proponents of the above doctrine cannot see this because
they are wedded to the notion of cognitive idealism, whereby what
is absolute is simply a transcendent supra-individual consciousness,
a notion I was at pains to refute in my book On the Eternal in Man.
These adherents of ‘value-metaphysics’ cannot see that the connections
between the existence, the nature and the value of something, obey
synthetic axioms which are completely independent of our inductive
experience of any of them, and that this excludes the possibility of
there being free-floating values lacking any attachment to an existing
thing but somehow linked with a transcendent object of knowledge.
They further assume quite uncritically a mechanistic and dynamic
view of nature – something which is anyway outdated even in the field
of physics – and compound this error by accepting the outdated tenets
of association psychology, with the net result that, in their eyes, the
entire field of empirical reality is dominated by a ‘value-blind’ causality,
and there is no room for any essential connection between what is real
and what is of value, nor for any agent who is driven by values. When
Max Weber, for example, wants to free science from any value-judge-
ments he is quite right. Science, strictly speaking, has only a technical
and practical significance. It can never make pronouncements about its
own values or activities, but only set the scene for other conditions, e.g.
if you act like this or like that, or if you venerate this or that idol, then
this or that is likely to happen.
To expect science to come up with a theory of the order of values
is nonsense. But Max Weber’s refusal to acknowledge the possibil-
ity of objective value-judgements in philosophy and metaphysics is
completely wrong. In fact, metaphysics assigns science its place in the
scheme of things, and any claim by science that the only things worth
knowing are those with a technical purpose precisely shows up its lim-
ited role as an adjunct to life.
Max Weber is also wrong with regard to his views on history – as
the Italian philosopher Croce pointed out. What is realized in the ma-
terial of history are values which we can come to know, not [as Weber
supposes] the imposed norms and values of the present generation –
[an example of ] relativism. He is right about the causal factors in all
historical events being blind to purposes, except if human subjects are
involved. But even here he is only partially correct, because, although
drives are without purpose, they are not without aims or goals, and are
not blind as to values but only blind as to purposes. In fact they exert
an influence on the intentions and purposes of individuals and groups,
and it is one of the objects of the philosophy of history to study just
such matters. Furthermore, as well as ignoring such subconscious and
collective factors with which history is steeped, he fails to see that
there is also a supraconscious spiritual direction through the agency of
the spirit of Being-itself. Even though the spiritual Godhead is not the
positive regent, director or steersman of history – as it is in strict the-
ism – nevertheless it does exert an influence, by virtue of an act of ‘not
allowing’ everything to be excluded from happening which could hap-
pen according to the blind historical factors, but which now, because
of this act, can only happen if it – the event – does not clash with
the absolute system of rank ordering and laws of preferential quality,
dictated by the law that positive values are to be given precedence over
negative values, laws which we must represent to ourselves as emanat-
ing, as they do, from the hold that God’s love or hate has over us.
If we consider the Ancient and Medieval interdependencies of the
value, existence and nature of anything as unduly optimistic – to be
interpreted psychologically as an expression of a youthful and affirma-
tive life-force, a life instinct almost divorced from all logic and axiology
– then we must further dub this way of thinking ‘pantragical’ in nature.
Why? Because if the overriding principle of this philosophy were true,
genuinely true, not just words on paper – i.e. that everything, irreal
and real, is only brought about by a completely value-blind causality,
with no contribution from an eternal and reasonable ‘hand’ – then it
doesn’t matter a hoot whether good or bad, or moral goodness or evil,
comes into being or not. If one further subscribes to the view that
anything that exists is valueless, and that any value is adrift of anything
that exists, then this reinforces my view that this way of thinking is
‘pantragical’. Anything that is valuable becomes so, completely by ac-
cident. That is what is false about this philosophy. For it denies the
axiom that everything is at least ‘of value’. The only saving grace of this
philosophy – in which some relative truth can be salvaged – is its no-
tion that a positive value attaches to something purely because it ex-
ists. In this respect it rightly counters the irrational antithesis of this,
which is to say that everything which exists is bad. It is further wrong
in holding that metaphysics is a purely practical affair, and that science
is in any way theoretical.
If the thrust of this way of thinking – i.e. that there is no connection
between the existence, the nature and the value of anything – is then
joined to the thesis espoused by Rickert, Windelband and Weber –
i.e. that value should be stamped on things – then we have a situation
where the only place that this could happen is in the future. This then
transforms the ‘pantragical’ outlook into its complete opposite, and we
have the situation of a ‘metaphysical value-utopia’ or a Messianic view.
According to this way of thinking, positive and higher values ought to
occur in the future. The major incorporation of this into a historical
context is the Judaic notion of Messianism, whereby there is an eternal
‘coming’ of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. Here, the King-
dom of God is exclusively promised at each historical moment, but
always in the future, a situation which sets up a spiritual realm of eter-
nal awaiting. You might well ask what would happen if this actually
came about? Ah! It would be something indeed! This way of think-
ing – the eternal expectation of something good – is accompanied by
a complete failure to heed anything which is good here and now. It is
a romantic notion, at root, a way of thinking which only recognizes
positive and higher values as occurring in some impossible fulfilment
of a longing for something that was in the past or in the distance –
e.g. Ancient Greece, the Middle Ages. It is also a way of thinking one
can call ‘futuristic’ and utopian, because its principal attitude to values,
which it holds as an apriori law, is that a sphere is better solely because
it comes later, a notion not dissimilar to the Romantics’ attitude to
love, which is to the effect that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The delusion of unlimited progress of mankind, which came to a halt
with the Great War, had a similar origin, as do all epochs where es-
chatological hopes are prominent – e.g. early Christianity, especially
Judaic Christianity prior to St. Paul, the theological beliefs underly-
ing the Peasants’ Wars, the expectation of a Thousand Year Kingdom
prevalent prior to the 11th Century, and even the Social Democratic
faith in a ‘State of the Future’.
It is self-evident to any ‘thinker’ that the opposition of values con-
tained in good – bad or good and evil cannot have the slightest bit to
do with whether they are realized in the past or the future. There may
well be certain sorts of values – or modalities of values – which are of
concern in such contexts. It is probably not incorrect to consider that
there is a change of vital values over time, and a growth of human
spiritual values over history, although we should restrict such consid-
erations to a differentiation and integration of values, because the vital
higher organization or ‘encephalization’ of such values is determined
by a [pre-existing] spirit itself. This re-organization opens up new av-
enues for spirit. It is utter nonsense to expect that the qualitative con-
trasts between good and bad or good and evil somehow become expe-
rienced as more marked, or that their equilibrium is altered, through
any such process alone.
A human being does not become more evil or better in the course
of history, because whether he is good or evil remains a free act of the
person that he is, whose source is ‘suprahistorical’, and he adopts good
or evil intentions from a whole host of factors involving the make-up
of the circumstances and ‘matter’ of his life. Good and evil have al-
ways been around, whatever the particular ‘ethos’, vital circumstances
or environment, which have obtained, and even if sometimes the same
action which is deemed evil in some epoch is now deemed ‘good’. It is
not in the action itself, let alone the consequences of an action, that
the seat of what we call good and evil lies: it is in the actual mental
disposition [tatbereiter Gesinnung]. A law whereby there is a moral
progressivity in human affairs simply does not exist. Nor could there
be any, as long as there is ‘freedom’, the existence of which only sci-
ence, for its own practical purposes, ignores. What there is, is an ever
increasing development of human affairs [Angelegenheit], in which
what good or evil is becomes ever clearer and ever more significant for
the final sense of the world. From God’s point of view epochs are all
immediate. They do not undergo ‘self-mediatization’. Each epoch and
each individual has characteristic determinations and goals. Indeed so
does each day. This ‘call of the day’ is not something that anyone else
can heed [ist nicht ersetzlich]. It does not obey general norms which
derive from generally applicable values. It is a matter for each person’s
individual conscience and the rules they live by. It can be obeyed, or
it can pass by unheeded. What happens in this respect depends on a
person’s intuition and their freedom. The developmental tendency of
history, which is always there, takes its course only when I or you act
not as another with respect to this or that directional sense or value,
but when we take on the full weight of our free personhood. The value
and sense of history do not lie in some original state of affairs – as Ro-
manticism would have it – nor in some end-state, but in the meaning-
ful cooperation across generations, epochs, peoples, races and cultural
groupings: in fact, bringing to fruition that which from all periods is to
the good and which promotes higher values. History could have taken
an entirely different course from the one it did at each historical mo-
ment. History is not the law of the world. Even the future of history
is not a foregone conclusion, given what has gone on beforehand. Hu-
manity can end up as a state of holiness or as complete villainy. Which
outcome ensues depends on how it is ‘personally’ led, and this lead is
dependent on the extent to which the leading is in tune with the basis
of things [Grund der Dinge] or against them.
The Godhead makes itself felt, not just in either allowing or pre-
venting actions – the means through which it steers the course of his-
tory, and through which it can avoid bad and evil or neutral events
happening – but it also has a part to play in an epoch’s ‘creative mo-
ment’ – something which the Greeks called kairos – and in moulding
those abiding leading figures and iconic symbols of history, who then
influence the leaders and trend-setters within each age itself.
History is not something which sweeps everyone along. A man or
woman is not someone who is simply enveloped by history, but rather
someone who includes himself or herself in it. The human being is
rather the mode in which all values are taken up, and history is only an
attribute of humans, albeit a necessary one.
In each era there are ‘supra-historical’, incidental [nebenhistorische],
and historically-inert [unterhistorische] events going on. Metaphysical
knowledge, a prayer, or an act of love – even if no-one notices them
– are ‘supra-historical’ matters, and no less a matter because they are
‘supra-historical’. Anything which does not impinge on the overall
course of human things is nebenhistorische. My pure sensory pleasures
or pains, for example when a tooth is extracted, are ‘unterhistorische’
matters, no less matters because they are historically-inert, but below
the threshold which is historically noteworthy. It is historically impor-
tant that Caesar or Napoleon, or indeed in our day Mayor Soundsa,
died. But whether they died of a fever or a heart attack is not a histori-
cal matter. The sun at Austerlitz is a historical fact, because it influ-
enced the outcome of the battle, and therefore is still significant today.
But although every dawn which breaks or dusk which falls on a simple
human dwelling is a fact, as is the mountain peak glistening at sun-
set a fact too, they are historically irrelevant. Even though knowledge,
beauty, hate, goodness or evil, are all connected with every single fact,
this does not turn them into a historical value either.
What is the essence of a historical fact, then? It is a fact which is
both relevant in respect of a value and which also exerts some influ-
ence on the fate of some human grouping, in short, an effect on the
‘social person’. Merely having a great effect does not turn a fact into a
historical fact. The Japanese earthquake is nothing like the Great War
in terms of being a historical fact. Consider the relative significance of
the two slogans: No more earthquakes! No more war! But a historical
fact is not something which is merely relevant and flows from the act
of an individually free person, as Rickert thought. At the very least,
history is something that always contains something good about it,

but it is party-politicking to think that history can be twisted to suit
whatever value – good or bad – one happens to hold. The historian
must be open to values which he actually did not appreciate before
his studies. There are ‘forms’ in which ethics, taste and thinking, occur
over time, which are historically relative; and judgements as to what
is good or evil, true or false, beautiful or ugly, must take these into
consideration. But these ‘forms’ themselves must be measured against
what is ‘given’ to the person as eternally true, good or bad, i.e. what is
‘given’ to the free, ‘supra-historical’ and ‘God-counselled’ person.
All specifically philosophical disciplines concerning values must be
strictly independently grounded vis-à-vis metaphysics. They can never
be deduced from any metaphysical theory, for example as something
that is posited by the will, as Duns Scotus, Hobbes, Kant and Wundt
thought. Nevertheless they are just as significant for metaphysics as
any other new sort of givennesses.
2
Manuscript on my Theory
of the Cognitive and
Methodological Aspects
of Metaphysics viewed as
Positive Cognition:
distinguishing my philosophy
from those of opponents
What disappears and in which order
with the [cancellation of]
the reality factor?
1. Because originally the vital act which gives us the fundamental sense
of reality gives this as a pre-givenness with respect to all other sorts of
givennesses – for example, spatial and temporal manifolds, existing
entities and their form, the existence of anything itself, the value of
anything, and, particularly, what anything at all is and its interconnec-
tion with anything else – and is definitely not given after these – then
[if this vital act is considered cancelled] what is left is of a restricted
nature – lessened in scope – with respect to the fullness of what is
given.
2. Belonging to the sense of reality – a sense that things simply are
given as they are – there is a whole host of other fundamental sorts of
givennesses concerning the natural and scientific worlds, givennesses
which must also drop out if the sense of reality fails – or, better put,
if the vital act which determines this sense of reality fails. The loss of
such co-givennesses and post-givennesses, which are essentially linked
with the givenness of reality, have in common the effect of restricting
the fullness of what the human mind can achieve and conceive, name-
ly the appreciation of the range of chance happenings and accidental
beings-so of anything. In place of this, however, a human subject will
divert the released energy into the mental act of love, with the result
that, instead of anything’s being accidentally so and so, the very es-
sence of anything will stream in to that subject, who, by virtue of hav-
ing a latent mental apparatus capable of appreciating the essence of
something, will begin to grasp the essential structure of the world.
A detailed exposition would show the strictly determined order in
which such matters disappear along with the sense of reality. Here is a
provisional list of what and in which order such matters disappear.
i) The first casualty is the absence of any reflective knowledge of, and
therefore consciousness of, the matters which have disappeared. For –
as we shall see – it is originally our suffering of the resistance of the
world to our vital drive impulses, whose original undifferentiated root
I call Lebensdrang [the urgency of life], which sets everything going
for us, including the very fact that one can be conscious of anything,
although this last is a mental act whose functional basis involves will
and attention. Nevertheless, everything stems from this original resis-
tance, and the original subjective experience of suffering.
ii) Next, there is a disappearance of all qualifying reference points to
matters, leaving everything in the form of two basic sorts of being-so:
a generally pure manifold devoid of quantification or actual number;
and a pure interconnection of essences.
iii) In particular, there disappears all causal interconnections, be-
cause reality itself is the basis of all such causes. The result of this is
that the reduced world is a perfectly adynamic world – nothing has
an effect on anything else any more. With the prevention thereby of
any effectiveness of things impinging on either life’s urges or subjective
will, which between them account for all ways in which activity can
be experienced, this in turn precludes all known interaction between
things themselves.
iv) There then disappears that which people have long falsely held
to be the ‘principle of individuation’ – it were better and more correct
to call it a ‘principle of singularization’ – which is anyway not a ‘prin-
ciple’ of singularization, but merely an index; this index is space and
time, as an apparent void underlying things and events, thereby creat-
ing a sense of the ‘here and now’ or background and figure. Further-
more, the function [vital act] which gives the primary experience of
2 3 Cognitive & Methodological Aspects of Metaphysics 79
the world as resistance, and the functions which provide an overview
of the fluctuating changes in the attention guided by each drive, which
are the source of givenness of this void, are tightly bound together. [So
if the sense of reality is cancelled, so is the fictitious sense of an empty
vessel waiting to be filled.] What then remains [in the reduction] is
a heterogeneous extension lacking magnitude and measurability –
which changes with the qualities to which it belongs – and in effect is
determined by these qualities. Temporal and spatial extension, as the
appearance of dynamically conditioned acts of what is itself extended,
are not yet differentiated in this residuum. Of the two special forms
of separateness, namely ‘next-to-one-another’ and ‘after-one-another’,
whose givennesses set in train the givenness of a ready-made void,
there is no trace whatsoever.
v) Reality is therefore prior in its givenness to any spatial or tempo-
ral manifold – a principle, which, apart from his notion of the thing-
in-itself, even Kant correctly recognised, as did Spencer. And reality
itself – not space and time, nor, as Husserl seems to assume, time on
its own – is the true principle of singularization : whereby an acciden-
tal being-such of something is determined by an accidental being-so,
and this means that the singularization which is the spatial-temporal
here-and-now is first a consequence of the being-such of reality.
This makes it first understandable that there is in space and time
something already conditioned, and that these two modes of things
are not merely arbitrary ways of altering the order of things, but rather
they allow a translation into the ‘language’ of space and time of some-
thing already in absolute reality, a such-and-such which already be-
longs to the real. Kant, who denied that our mind could know anything
emanating from the realm of absolute reality, and who considered time
and space to be positive forms of intuitive knowledge, and who falsely
thought that things and events preceded time and space in the order of
givenness – whereas, on this last point, they result from a negative sort
of looking away from what is given to us of the real in the form of re-
sistance – because of his views on all these points can no longer derive
the actual order of conditioning which I regard as correct. His scheme
may serve the investigator of natural philosophy, but extension, and
certainly time and space, are not part of absolute reality.
If, however, it is real being itself, or, more correctly stated, the ex-
istence of anything itself, which is the original source of what can be
given through its effective resistance to us, then this itself must be the
principle of singularization. It therefore follows that with the fading
away of the reality factor [in the reduction] as a correlate of the two
centres – Lebensdrang [life’s urgency] and will – all that is left in the
form of a residuum are pure essences and their structural connections,
matters which are open to intuitive knowledge and which we call ideas
and forms.
vi) With this in mind we need to stress that what remains behind
[at the stage of the reduction we are considering here] is not, as in
Husserl’s philosophy, the accidental such-and-such of objects, as in
his example of the apple tree in bloom. For all empirical-accidental
such-and-such’s are correlates not of intuitive knowledge of essences
but of bare observation, which is itself dependent on a pre-existing
intuitive knowledge of essences to direct and guide it, and is empirical
and accidental by virtue of the further fact that it is also dependent on
a co-given spatial and temporal lay-out for its very status as accidental.
So, if the givenness of reality is abolished, with it is also abolished the
whole realm of accidental such-and-such, leaving nothing but the pure
and typical essences of things behind, all of which are available for
intuitive knowledge and thought.
Husserl’s specific mistake on this point, a Platonic one, is that he al-
ternates between two meanings of ‘essence’: sometimes treating it as an
‘ideal species’ – an abstract object obtained through ideation; at other
times as an essence, but meaning by this an ideal existing entity above
and outside concretely given things, and even requiring a special sort
of mental technique for it to be grasped.
The essence is however only the typical identical such-and-such con-
tent of the things themselves; it is certainly not derived each time from
its distribution in what exists, but is there before this distribution, as
an example already achieved and seen, in which form it is seen again in
conjunction with an appropriate event. The same form, for example a
triangle, is really immanent [experienced as it is] in many triangles; the
self-same experience of what it is to be a human being accompanies
the factual experience of every human we meet. An idea is above all a
certain amount of particularity, in which form it realizes itself.
Husserl does not want to allow this identical, immanent whatness
to inhabit many individuals, the reason being that he assumes that
such whatness simply cannot really be inherent in many individuals.
Setting aside the issue of the existence of anything necessarily stem-
ming from reality, he believes that everything is a chance consequence
of being here and now. This is erroneous because the givenness of ex-
isting entities and the givenness of reality – as well as existent entities
themselves and reality itself – precede the givenness of time and space,
and the latter givenness simply confers the place of anything in the
overall scheme. Aristotle, not Plato, was generally right in this respect,
in that he saw that a universal was present in anything, even though
he made the nature of the essence of anything too closely linked to a
concept, jumped too readily to the conclusion that these were bound
to the dynamism of a living organism, and did not distinguish between
the genuine essence and an empirical concept. If, however, as Husserl
assumes, or seems to assume, time were the principle of singulariza-
tion, then with the cancellation of the reality element the individual
nature of a chance occurrence – e.g. the same particular redness of
something, the same nuance of it on several red spheres – could not be
replicated. But a mental action and technique which renders the world
‘irreal’, and cuts out temporal and spatial givennesses, would simply
make the notion of an ‘ideal species’ over what was given, or the notion
of a special direction of gaze, redundant, as theoretical explanations
for how we achieve a universal. A perfectly carried out irrealization of
the extant world would both ‘de-singularize’ it and enhance an ‘essen-
tialization’ of it at the same time.
Certainly, there is a proviso to what we say. We are explicitly saying
only that if the reality of the world is envisaged as cancelled, then its
essential connections would be available to intuitive knowledge; or we
are saying that the world would then be a residuum of essential struc-
tures. We are not saying that such essential structures emerge auto-
matically. Knowledge as to the intuitive essence of something; an idea
of something which reaches us in immediate – not discursive – think-
ing; and the simultaneous conjunction of the two – intuitively derived
essence or what I call the ‘Urphänomen’ and idea – which together
give us what I call the ‘Urwesen’ [core-essence]; all these come about
through the irrealization of the givenness, in which case the essential
nature of the world stands out in all its purity. But such knowledge is
not yet complete. For this to happen, it requires a positive contribu-
tion from the mental act of love, which then ensures that essences and
ideas appear in their complete form, a process which only occurs if
the energies of Lebensdrang [urgency of life] and of the will are dis-
empowered.
vii) There then disappear sensory states. If the reduction, in my
sense, is perfectly thought through, there remains in the intuitively
derived sphere of knowledge – or in its correlate, which I call the ‘Bild
sphäre’ [realm of images] – only that remnant of the givenness of the
world which, with respect to the sensory features of the natural world,
is: a) completely independent of this; and b) pre-given to it, in the
form of non-sensory features such as essence, idea or Urphänomen.
And in the sphere of pure thinking – or in its correlate which I call
the non-intuitive Bedeutungswelt [the world of non-intuitive meaning]
– what is wiped out is everything to do with the subjective access of
our discursive thought to the unities and subdivisions in which mat-
ters are conveyed to this sort of thinking e.g. propositions, concepts,
conclusions; nothing remains of this, nor of the versions of truth and
falsehood appropriate to this sort of thinking, whereas what does re-
main is an opposition-free sphere where the facts of any matter are
also free of the constraints of time and space and are available to be
realized in existing things. This remnant forms a purely logical sphere
of meaning dimensions. We also call this sphere ‘the sphere of ideas’, in
sharp distinction to the objects of all merely empirical and accidental,
historically changing concepts, which, for their part, are actually under
the direction of idea-thinking, but are directed to the sensory given
material of existing matters and reality, which our subjective activity,
whether automatic or artistically based, works on. To describe this
state of affairs as applicable to the realm of ideas is a gross mistake,
already of Plato’s, and of Aristotle’s, and unfortunately of still many
philosophers today, Husserl, for example. On the other hand, to deny
that the essence is part of each concrete whatness is no less serious a
mistake, and indeed is the greatest mistake of all nominalism.
viii) Qualities, values, forms of existence (categories), and quantity,
finally achieve in the reduced and irreal givenness of the world an equal-
ly fundamentally altered status. Depending on the extent to which
the reality factor disappears, there then grows in meaningfulness an
ever intuitively given fullness of qualities. For that aspect of reality on
which the vital drive-based attention is directed is only those qualities
of existing things in reality which can act as signs for that subdivi-
sion of the multitude of things, properties, samenesses, similarities or
collective effectivenesses in this reality [which have a vital relevance
to that living organism]. This means, however, that they block off all
those potentially intuitively-knowable qualities which this system of
signification [i.e. signification for us and me] finds dispensable [which
do not have a relevance for that living organism]. Thenceforth come,
so to speak, free-floating qualities [in a reduction which cancels out
the above vital relevancies]. The quality of a thing’s colour, a surface’s
colour, and an area’s colour, are all such free-floating qualities. Even
here, there will be oscillations of the vital attention between real uni-
ties and those given as existing objects, both of which are given prior
to the bare quality. [The reduction] leads via a movement process to a
situation where the appearance of qualities, as experienced by a liv-
ing individual in a time-based system, would become fuller in rich-
ness than in the natural world-view. For, as Hering has shown [in the
natural world-view], only those possible qualities which are of use to
an organism for distinguishing things, happenings, and causal conse-
quences of events, enter its awareness. The same principle, which Katz
first showed in the case of colours, applies to all modalities – touch,
smell, hearing. The order of matters is not yet definitely known, but, in
the case of colour, the precondition is an area, followed by a coloured
patch, and then the pure qualia. This order, which is certainly the same
for all qualities which have been studied, has a direction which con-
forms to the rule that there is an increasing detachment of qualities
from the real world to which they were originally joined, a detachment
which is intensified in the reduction.
But there are still two other directions in which the reduction frees
up the qualities, so to speak. In the order of givennesses, reality and
existing entities – things, activities – not only precede the qualities,
but so do the unities of form precede them, in so far as qualities can
only become objects of knowledge in the natural world – whether in
consciousness or subconsciousness – if they are foundations for the
pre-intended form. The reduction, to the extent that it succeeds, dis-
torts this by imposing a new limitation in the givenness of qualities,
to no lesser extent than the reduction’s effect on existing reality, by, in
the present case, enforcing a ‘uniform’, so to speak, on matters. Forms,
whose whatness has been limited in this way, become, in the reduced
world, independent objects – and known through intuitive knowledge
and not sensory knowledge – and each then exists as a ‘one-off ’ ver-
sion of a pure essence. Triangularity or a trochaic rhythm are always
the same whatness or form. The nature of triangularity is not affected
one jot if things that were triangular become square – as Lotze rea-
lised – nor is the nature of red or green if red things become green.
Furthermore, all the drive-based, conditioned preferences among the
various qualities, some before others, a matter which cannot be elu-
cidated here, collapse in the reduction. The fact, that, for example, the
[eventual] qualia solid, liquid and gaseous – qualities of touch – are
given before visual and auditory qualities of the same stuff, and are so
by virtue of their obtrusiveness for the vital drive attention system, is
completely abolished in the reduction. Such matters are rules of the
natural world-view, determined by the vital values which decide what
can possibly come into existence for a living being and be clothed in a
certain way. All this falls by the wayside in the reduction. The natural
tendency in the natural world-view to prefer something good for life
as opposed to something bad – a rule which applies equally in remem-
bering, perceiving and expecting – is cancelled out too in the reduction,
and is replaced by complete indifference in this respect, a fact which
alters the preference for or against each stem of, for example, the pairs
– fast/slow, warm/cold, bright/dark, small/big, little/much, active/
passive, etc. Also in the reduction there is a falling away of the tem-
poral and spatial perspectives determined by interest [i.e. what I am
interested in normally looms large and near], perspectives which are
completely different from those presupposed by mathematical notions
of space and time.
Furthermore, the realm of meanings itself, whose subjective corre-
late is human thinking, is no less perspectival in character than the
contents of intuition, whose subjective correlate is intuition itself; even
science cannot completely overcome a perspectival view on matters,
and its perspective on the givenness of the ‘noetic cosmos’ it investi-
gates is equally as original as the perspective of intuitive thinking, and
is certainly not a derivation of the latter, as most philosophers and
scientists alike assume. From amongst the myriad meanings of things,
our understanding extracts only that tiny fraction which is appropri-
ate to the cultural and historical norms of our natural world-view. For
example, as a European in 1922, the natural meaning of that black,
longish thing over there is ‘umbrella’! I have this meaning in a different
way from the thousands of statements that I can make about this um-
brella. The meaning is given to me automatically in my intuitive think-
ing, certainly in complete contrast to a primitive Negro, who does not
know this meaning at all. In object agnosia this meaning can also be
lost to an adult European who once had it, without any accompanying
loss of the status of the object at the image level, or the various visual
and tactile aspects of this image, a fact which all forms of rational-
ism can never explain. The interest perspective at the meaning level
ensures that out of the myriad meanings in the natural world-view
only those which elicit the interest and value preferences of a thinking
subject are addressed. Useful plants and useful animals become sharp-
ly separated from other plants and animals by the rich vocabulary
concerning the former. Science manages to overcome racial, national,
professional and class differences in ideology to achieve its noetic cos-
mos, but cannot overcome the general human vital interest perspec-
tive. It even surmounts all differences ascribable to particular sensory
organizations in the animal kingdom, but never the constraints which
intuition imposes on the range of sensory awareness overall [– the
bounds of sense]. The vital drive structure and its accompanying inter-
est perspective is the self-same root of both the perspective attached
to intuition and that attached to the realm of non-intuitive meanings,
and this remains so even in the course of the reduction, even though
other functions and avenues of meaning are opened up.
Finally, the reduction leads, in the measure to which it is successful,
to a four-fold blocking of the givenness of qualities achieved through
intuition. This affects and distorts the ‘natural’ tendency in the follow-
ing four respects. a) First, it affects the spatial and temporal statistical
summation of the inconsistencies of events, which normally favours
the emergence of constant images and therefore simple objective
‘urqualities’ [e.g. red and blue, sour and sweet]. b) Secondly, it affects
the preference for regularity above all in any sort of happening; this
normal trend stems from seeing what benefits there are in regularities
in the actual events which have a bearing on life’s needs – as in the
expression voir pour prėvoir. c) Thirdly, it affects the overall trend in
the natural view to interpret the world in quantitative terms. d) There
is a tendency, finally, – other things being equal – for the phenom-
enon of movement to be preferentially experienced at the expense of
an alteration in state in the normal state [e.g. a fluctuating pattern of
shadows under a tree in the sun can be seen as the same shapes moving
or as shapes altering] – this too is affected; there is a further normal
tendency for the alteration of one form to be preferred over complete
transformation of that form – this too is affected; and, further for such
transformation to be preferred over a pure change in qualities – this
is affected too.
In addition to all this, there are distortions to do with the effect of
the ‘reduction’ on space and time.
A constant image in space – which is inexplicable from a physical
point of view and is only explicable psychologically, or rather biologi-
cally, and is never a bare noema at an unconscious level, as Helmholtz
thought – is actually, in the normal state, for example, the inherent
colour of a visual object as distinct from the colour of the light illu-
minating it. However, if the structure of solid things is undermined
in the ‘reduction’, at its very root, by removing the givenness of objects,
then this difference between inherent colour and the colour of illumi-
nating rays is completely levelled out.
The constancy of an image in time is given in the duration constants
of colours, shapes, and the apparent size of visual things. These ap-
pearances Jaensch has recently shown to be derived not through as-
sociations, or empirically through some value-indifferent unconscious
inference, but to actually form the basis of these very associations and
any value-indifferent conclusions. The very notion of a so-called stim-
ulus X or Y as a real physical object is nonsense [see my Arbeit und
Erkenntnis, in particular]. These time constants are in fact biologically
preferred rhythms which determine the facts that we choose: straight
lines as opposed to crooked, a circle rather than a polygon, and a regu-
lar polygon over an irregular one. Furthermore, these preferences have
in common the rule that qualities can only emerge into experience in
the natural world-view in so far as they themselves are appropriate
to the forms and founding relationships of things. This then has the
consequence that possible qualities with no such appropriate link with
forms and foundational relationships are simply suppressed. In the ‘re-
duction’ all such preferences are null and void, and so qualities which
were suppressed can emerge into the daylight, so to speak.
Essence, Ur-phenomenon and Idea,

Evidence, Rationalism and Intuitivism
Whatever some entity is – however simple and indivisible in itself –
it breaks down into an image content and a meaning content, whose
reciprocal coincidence then provides the full concrete version of what
it is. If we now consider the intuitively derived image content to be the
genuine nature of something – which we designate the ur-phenome-
non or ur-image [Ur-bild] – and consider the meaning content to be
the genuine idea of something, then the unified coincidence of the two
makes up the very ur-essence [Urwesenheit] of something. This ur-
essence precedes, in the order of things, all existing entities, all reality,
and even the accidental being-so of something as we intuit it through
our senses, along with the empirical concept of it that results; the ur-
essence is an aspect of God’s essence itself, making up part of the Su-
preme Being.
In that I maintain that we first achieve the ultimate evidence of
something – in the sense of being mentally illuminated as to what
something is – through the reciprocal unity of the coincidence of the
intuitive correlate – image, ur-phenomenon – and the thought corre-
late – the empirical meaning of the matter in question incorporated by
its idea – and I consequently grasp this coincidence in consciousness
as ‘subjective’ evidence, a process whereby an object comes to present
its intrinsic nature, my formulation of all this sets me apart from all
those thinkers, such as Plato and Husserl, whom we can designate as
predominately rationalist or intuitive in orientation.
A rationalist philosopher – and this applies whether they are objec-
tive rationalists, like Plato, Aristotle, and the Scholastics; or whether
they are subjective rationalists, like Kant, or, particularly so, the Mar-
burg School of Neo-Kantianism – is characterized as follows. He or
she takes for granted that it is first of all the thought of something
which gives to the unconditioned, formless and disordered stuff [Hyle]
or primary material, which is the intuited material, its ‘objectivity’, its
‘order’, its ‘bounds’, and its ‘form’. A definite fact, for these philosophers,
first becomes so through the possibility of agreement of the stuff of the
intuited given with the purely fictional concept, which is, so to speak,
‘cut out’ of this stuff. Whoever, for example, would go along with Plato,
Helmholtz and Natorp, and maintain that the individual tree standing
before me is actually a conceptual object which directs the synthesis of
sensory appearances in a particular direction to make this object, an
object which maintains itself as it is across different intuited aspects
which can crop up, adhering to the same general concept of tree re-
gardless of what any individual tree might be, and whose concept first
sets the boundaries of the non-being of the stuff of sensory givenness,
that person is in this sense a rationalist. The ramifications of this way
of looking at things are extensive. For example, it pervades the modern
theory of knowledge, which, in conformity with modern science, has
shifted the notion of objectivity from types of things to rule-governed
relationships as a central tenet, and indeed sees reality, and the very
existence of an object, as part of the lawful interconnections of na-
ture, and then relegates everything of an intuitively-derived nature to
a questionable or unjustifiable claim against our reason. What we find
in this line of thought is precisely a one-sided correspondence of any-
thing intuitive with a rational version of the object.
Closely and essentially linked with this rationalist theory, we find a
particular theory of what intuition is taken to be. The intuitive given-
ness is first of all deemed to be relative to the human make-up, and
therefore to have no validity for the nature of the thing in itself. Fur-
thermore, intuition is regarded as providing nothing which does not
derive from sensory data, or from some developmental product of
this. In other words, any pure intuitive sort of grasping of the nature
of something is basically beholden to an unproven sensualist theory. If
this last assumption were true then we would be correct to infer that
everything is only intuitive and humanly relative. It is, however, false if
any one of the following is true.
1. It is false, if intuition allows direct contact to be made outside of
ourselves with the nature of existing things.
2. It is false, if the essential givennesses provided by intuition are not
in the least bit derived from specific sensory material.
3. It is false, if the sensory phenomena, which all intuition in any
natural outlook on the world and which all scientific observation as-
sumes to be primary, are in fact secondary, and only occur as a special
or selective case, and that what is primarily given to intuition are forms
and structural unities as part of the milieu.
4 It is false, if the materialization of all intuitions of what is intuit-
able is not a purely receptive affair – as Aristotle and Kant both as-
sume – but is tied up with emotional and volitional factors, in other
words is drive-based; or, put another way, if not only is the principle
wrong that ‘nothing can reach the intellect that was not once in the
senses’, but so is the claim that ‘nothing can reach intuition that was not
once in the senses’.
5. It is false, if, finally, it is not even in the intuitive grasping of what
something is that one arrives at what is primary or secondary – i.e. it
is not purely intuitive or rational knowledge that counts – but it is the
combination of the two – apriori intuitive knowledge and aposteriori
sensory acquisition – that make up evidence for something.
If we could show that a ‘free-functioning’ mind, released from its
dependency on the exigencies of life, takes its bearings, not only from
thought but equally originally from intuition, then the whole edifice of
rationalism would come tumbling down.
Rationalism, however, not only owes its continuing influence to a
false understanding of the meaning of things to be gleaned from in-
tuition, but also to a false over-estimation of the role of pure thinking
in the human enterprise. It is not intrinsically false that rationalism
should ascribe an overall role to thought in achieving a valid mea-
sure of what things are, or that it should maintain that only through
thought can there be a definite element of ‘what’ something is, which
can never be gained through intuition alone. All this – which nominal-
ism, pragmatism, and the intuitivism of Bergson and Husserl under-
line – is undoubtedly true. But rationalism – and these offshoots – fail
to see that thought and its correlate, the sphere of meaning, is, above
all, essentially divisible into, on the one hand, a human and sociologi-
cal component – which is relatively reflective and discursive as an act
– and, on the other hand, a valid act in its own right, which grasps the
nature of something in an immediate fashion. In this way, intuition
and thought both break down into humanly relative and non-relative
factors, as do their respective correlates which provide a version of
what something is. Rationalists, in all eras, despite differences in the
precise way in which they formulate matters, have no satisfactory an-
swer to the trail-blazing analyses of Emil Lask of a sphere of thinking
which he called the unnatural sphere [gekűnstelte Sphäre]. The ratio-
nalist simply assumes that there is only one sort of thinking – subjec-
tive, mediated, reflective, and discursive, and to which labels such as
conceptualization, judgement and inference are given, along with the
correlate of what they do. So, for example, in ancient and Scholastic
rationalism, a concept was taken to be a true ‘form’ of something, or, in
recent times, a quantitative or rule-governed part of nature, whereas,
in fact, none of these versions is anything other than a humanly-rela-
tive fiction. Finally, even Kant’s presuppositions, that intuition is only
a receptive faculty whereas thinking is spontaneous and creative, are
actually a false portrayal of their contributions to matters. The first
presupposition, involving intuition, brings Kant and Aristotle to-
gether; the second does not. According to Aristotle’s generally correct
teaching here, pure thinking is receptive and immediately so – as is
Plato’s ideation – and is not form-giving or shape-giving. But Aristotle
assigns this purely receptive faculty a place which is not appropriate,
as his reification of a concept as an actual existing form clearly shows.
The empirical concept, which, moreover, he fails to distinguish from
a general idea, is without doubt merely an artefact of human thought,
and what is receptive in this is only the grasping of the ideal formative
rules which apply. It is of no consequence whatsoever to the potential
meaning which lies within the world what we actually extract from
the objective and timeless meanings therein, nor how we do it – for
example, whether we concentrate on cause rather than effect, or effect
rather than cause, or whether we home in on a concept, a judgement or
an inference, or even whether we approach matters by seeing positive
similarities or make negative comparisons. In fact, we can go further,
and say that the objective sphere of meaning runs its course indepen-
dently of our notions of true and false. Such a sphere stands outside
the opposition that true and false entail. The first condition before
anything can be deemed true is that there is an objective affiliation
of each meaningful unity with a corresponding existing and pictorial
object. To this truth condition there corresponds no possible falsity.
We must already presuppose that this antithesis-free truth is rela-
tive to a potentially knowing subject, and then that only through the
cooperation of intuition and thought can knowledge occur. For in the
actual matter focused on there is no separation between meaning and
picture. To move from a material truth to a judgement as to some-
thing’s being true is then the agreement between a judgement – which
means here the relative part of a previously grasped extract of objec-
tive meaning and a particular pictorially-given and intuitively-derived
existent – and that original truth. It is only at this point that falsehood
enters the situation in the form of a conflict between a judgement and
this original truth. There can be neither a truth itself in the sphere of
world meaning nor controversy about truth as to whether judgement
conforms or not to the antithesis-free realm of meaning, both of which
rationalism maintains. Still less can there be a correct or an incorrect
version of a controversial issue solely in mediated thought which bears
the truth for the meaningful realm itself.
But just as we reject the rationalist formulation of these matters, so
we also reject any purely intuitivistic way of putting the issues, both
in the radical form that Bergson proposed, and in the less radical way
that Husserl wrote about. These thinkers denied that any reciprocal
coming together of meaning and image, or idea and urphenomenon,
was at the root of the self-givenness of the nature of extra-mental ex-
isting entities. They denied this by demanding that for every meaning
there was intuitive evidence – in the same way as Hume saw the need
for a sensation to underlie each idea, except that the former two had
got rid of Hume’s sensualist doctrine. This alleviated the problem of
having to account for a shape with a thousand angles, which is obvi-
ously definable and the subject of a possible investigation, but which
cannot be intuited, and also the problems of getting to grips with our
distance from the moon or sun, or with the speed of light, etc. For a
pure intuitivistic theory has to admit that anything we humans grasp
about what anything is has to come from intuition. Such a theorist
then has to make do with only the simplest examples of original mean-
ings to prove their point that intuition is the core faculty for anything
to be known, to which mediated thinking might be applied as an elab-
orative faculty. We dispute this proposal.
The actual situation with respect to the original meanings and ideas,
and for genuinely intuitively-derived essences – i.e. urphenomena –
and furthermore for connections of ideas and connection of essences,
is that there are a variety of sound criteria as to how these come about.
These not only distinguish sharply between concept and idea, rule and
principle, or between a phenomenon that can be shown and the sen-
sorily observed fortuitous nature of something, or from inductively
summating temporo-spatial connections and essential bonds, but also
distinguish sharply between a ‘thinkable’ idea and a ‘showable’ urphe-
nomenon, and, moreover, between ‘thinkable’ connections of ideas and
‘showable’ inter-connections of essences.
Criterion-theory
I shall state the facts briefly.
1. An ‘idea’ is an ‘unintuitable meaning’, and is to be distinguished
from a concept because the former has a genuine ‘shadow-correlate’ in
the world itself, whereas the latter does not. Further, an ‘idea’ is that
whose meaning cannot be demonstrated by recourse to any hierarchi-
cal definition, and any attempt to do so necessarily leads to a circular
definition. An idea is necessarily involved when concepts themselves
are defined. This criterion holds good for sensation-free, pure con-
cepts, such as mathematically ideal and scientific ones. Within these
regions, however, there are concepts and ideas. For example, there is an
idea of a number or an idea of a group, and also a concept of a number
or a group.
In the case of non-formal and real meanings the following criterion
applies : they are ideas, if, regardless of how they come into psychic
being, any attempt to fix what they are through abstracting from a
concrete existing object turns out to be a futile exercise, because the
very range or population of objects which they apply to is already pre-
supposed. We have regional ideas before us, but they are never actually
caught sight of themselves, for the reason that they are unintuitable
even though they may be immediately thought. They are objects of
reason [Vernunfts-Gegenstände].
2. A genuine ideational connection or a principle of being [Sein
sprinzip] in the context of the formal sciences is an objective meaning
relation – in the judgemental form that if something is X then it is Y
– if the attempt to deduce its propositional correlate from established
propositions inevitably gets entangled in a circular argument, for the
precise reason that each possible deduction on which the appropriate
theoretical subject matter for the ideational connection rests is already
assumed – this holds for the axiom of mathematics, and the so-called
geometry of colours and sounds. In contrast, in the inductive real sci-
ences, an ideational connection is a principle, if, during an attempt,
either in the case of actual or fictitiously observed objects, to make an
induction, it becomes evident that the boundary of the surrounding
area of induction of the connection of ideas is already assumed.
Quantitative determinations, which always only represent approxi-
mations, can never comprise principles, in distinction to laws of na-
ture. Principles are also never derived one from another; they form
for each regional matter a reciprocally supporting and basic system.
At root this criterion is not essentially different from the one whose
discovery we owe to Kant, i.e. the one which he – not entirely felici-
tously – named a deduction from the basic principle of the possible
experience of objects. It would have been better to call it a ‘reduction’
instead of a ‘deduction’, and, instead of experience, to refer to it as per-
taining to regional experience. In this sense, there is, for each major
region of knowledge, a theoretical principle and this holds, not only
for all the varieties of natural sciences, but also for all the humanities
and for biology too.
3. An intuitable content of what anything is is a ur-phenomenon,
if, during an attempt to establish a real or fictional object through ob-
servation, whether it corresponds to this content or not, the intuitable
content – i.e. the urphenomenon – must have already been grasped
in order that the observation leads in the direction of the pertinent
objects. Observation, in contrast to perception, is a goal–directed
procedure, which never comes into the open as such, but is rather a
procedure of questioning, in the form : Is the object like this – c =
x – or like that – c = y – or is this something already assumed within
the object or not? But, if the givenness of the intuitable content has
already to be assumed in order to find the pertinent object out of the
untold abundance of the world, then this content cannot be the con-
tent of observation. It must come to light ‘at’ [an] the object itself, or,
alternatively, the something, whose nature ought to comply with the
already determined object, must precede the instalment of the obser-
vation as the phenomenon which directs and leads it. From this, the
ur-phenomenon can be precisely defined – as the intuitable which is
never observed, but can only be shown in something else [erschaut].
The urphenemenon unites fictitious entities, phantoms and real rela-
tions between what is [Soseinsverhalte], and is just as much in evidence
and demonstrable in fictional entities and phantoms as in real things.
In formal sciences the urphenomenon corresponds exactly to an ‘in-
tuitive minimum’, which is the material basis of the relevant system of
propositions and theorems, and out of which the sort of entities we
know as fictitious objects of mathematics are produced. The proposi-
tions and theorems are valid in an a priori manner for possible nature,
only because these intuitive minima precede, in the order of givenness,
all meaningful possible perceptual contents.
4. An intuitable ensemble of essences, finally, is a relation between
intuitable data A and B, if there can be no datum A without the other
datum B, however one actually or potentially – through imagination
– observes one without the other.
All apriori knowledges of ideas, urphenomena, interconnections of
ideas and ensembles of urphenomena – although they are receptive
in themselves – are, in relation to all experience through observation
and induction, and in relation to all possible mediated thinking, and
considering the infinite nature of its thought processes, completely in-
dependent of the amount of experience. On the other hand, new re-
lationships between what things are, and new ideas and new essences,
can always be uncovered in the course of the history of knowledge.
As things stand, however, the ultimate guarantee of what anything
is, in terms of apriori knowledge, obtains in the reciprocal but uni-
fied co-incidence of both apriori regions – the intuitively-determined
and the thought-based. It is above all in this coming together that
there is revealed the fact that there is something or someone apriori
to our world, which latter ‘world’ then appears as contingent. What is
revealed is that our intellectual intuition is intimately linked with the
intellectual intuition of an Ens a se. Furthermore, the contrast between
idea and essence is only a relative contrast, valid for a finite mentally-
endowed creature in possession of a life. We, as such, know ideas nei-
ther primarily in God – as Malebranche thought – nor primarily in
the world. In knowing them we simultaneously grasp the immanence
of God in the world and the world in God.
Urphenomenon as original form

[Urgestalt]
1. What we call urphenomena are intuitively known, formed objective
appearances, and connections between such, which must precede in
the order of givenness all possible observation and induction of any
functional and causal laws. For the various sciences, they are an ul-
timate presupposition. For metaphysics, they are a very window on
the absolute – as Goethe and Hegel both realized. They are ‘the’ phe-
nomena of metaphysics, and its way of understanding and explaining
anything. For example, there are urphenomena of colours and sounds,
along with their pure qualitative harmonic order; there are the basic
‘ideas’ of a plant, an animal and a human – all of which rely on an ur-
phenomenon; there are the possible elements of chemistry.
These urphenomena, in unity with their ‘idea’ correlate, make up the
essence of something. The ordering of all these amongst themselves
comprises the specific matter which metaphysics addresses, and must
be made understandable and explicable by this discipline.
Urphenomena are neutral with respect to the ideal-real and psychic-
physical modes of being.
2. Goethe imagined himself transported into the very source of the
coming-to-be of animals and plants, in the course of which he cap-
tured in his works the very type of this form. He projected himself
into the drive structure, whose objective manifestations of life are the
morphological organization of animals and plants and the way they
behave. The productive phantasy of the life forces of nature and his
own productive phantasy must have come together for him to have
seen what he did. He had to re-create and re-discover the very struc-
ture of life.
The urphenomenon is a wholly positive affair; it is not curtailed or
limited in any way, unlike the idea.
3. An intellectual intuition is available to the genius, who thereby
comes close to the living process which emerges as an eternal structure
from God himself. It is a unification of one and the other.
4. The essence of something and its incidental nature are related
only by their mutual negation of the other – i.e. the coming into being
of an essence of something wipes out its incidental happenstance. This
holds for actual entities themselves and for our knowledge of them.
However, this only makes sense if the following are assumed to be
true:
a) reality itself is cognitively and metaphysically a willed affair;
b) there is an ordered abolition of the temporo-spatial and acciden-
tal being-so of anything as a precondition for the emergence of its es-
sence; and
c) without the co-operation of mind and life force, which is a meta-
physical fact, cognition itself cannot proceed.
From the perspective of the sphere of essences, everything in the
way of an accidental being-so of something appears in a negative light
– as a modification of something whole – in line with Spinoza’s prin-
ciple that all determinations of anything are negative.
But from the perspective of the sphere of the accidental nature of
anything, the essence too has a negative look about it, as if one had
dissected out some residue, and in this case the principle is still that
everything negative is a determination.
The objects of both spheres, on the one hand, from that within
ourselves, as a knowing entity, which is responsible for bringing out
objectivity through an act and its correlative object, and, on the other
hand, the accidentally being-so state – the whatness – lack a common
identical subject – i.e. there is no king – but are first allocated to each
other through this very situation that I have just described.
The entity, as an essence, through its demarcation from other es-
sences, already presupposes the existence of anything and a life force,
but also presupposes the very existence of essences, in order to bestow
its particular range of possibilities on anything.
This itself only makes sense because we ourselves are only ever given
the concrete structures themselves as a product of idea and life force,
and therefore the pure essences can never apply to experiential struc-
tures, and, besides, what applies to the essences never applies alone
to the accidental way something is; on the other hand, each natural,
living thing is thereby capable of intention and movement towards
something which it could never have otherwise reached.
The essence rules the appearances but does not control them. It is
the essence itself which itself appears in the appearances, the way in
which the appearances are grounded in the essence. If we take our
starting point on matters from the perspective of the essences, then
time merely seems to be a diminution of eternity.
If we take our base as the accidental efficacy of things, then eternity
is only ‘a very long time’ [sempiternitas].
Metaphysically, this means putting oneself in the very eternal and
temporal production of nature and history, and treating everything
that has become as re-produced or co-produced.
‘Speculation’ wants to treat everything according to its ideational
side; the Dionysian ‘technique’ wants to consider everything as real.
5. The negativity of the metaphysical method, as a specific negation,
corresponds exactly to the actual delimiting role that the mental prin-
ciple plays in the coming-to-be of the world.
6. ‘First philosophy’ – formal and material ontology – is not meta-
physics; it is only its – metaphysics’ – first presupposition. Its second
presupposition is the ‘speculative’ perception, the co- and post-expe-
riencing of the life force and its consequent imagination, which sets
before us the finite images of what things are. Science is only a spring-
board in this endeavour.
7. What metaphysics makes possible, in the final analysis, as a meta-
physics of metaphysical knowledge, is the dual participation by human
beings in the being and efficacy of the World-ground itself: on the one
hand, the substantial, but partial, identity of human mind with divine
mind, and, on the other hand, the human life drive with the divine
life force. Mind knows itself, and the essence knows itself, only in the
course of human knowledge. Before human beings and their knowl-
edge came on the scene, mind would have worked away in a knowing
way, but without it itself being aware of its knowing, i.e. its knowing
and knowledge were of an ecstatic sort. In analogous fashion, the life
force would have only had a capacity for feeling in the way an animal
does. In this respect, it would have only been a feelingful drive, as in
plants, that was in play. In humans, both mind and life-force interpen-
etrate in the unity of a consciousness.
8. Whereas a scientific analysis only shows how one can think of
something as made – in a logically simple fashion – metaphysics wants
to get inside the actual world of God.
9. What is the relationship between metaphysics and art?
10. The exhibition of the essence as a condition of the knowing crea-
ture itself, itself as participation in the productive intuitive meaningful
lay-out of things, first allows the very possibility of metaphysics, in
conjunction with the productive imaginative powers of the life-force.
Any inductive findings, in terms of laws, rules and functional connec-
tions, are only an occasion of this. Metaphysics is the re-production of
the world out of its divine ground – the world as a totality.
11. Metaphysics is knowledge of the world as a totality and deter-
mination of what meaning each preceding step, each appearance, each
force, and each expression of force, has in this entirety. It seeks to un-
derstand the world.
12. Intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding are only lim-
iting concepts of a mind, to which, according to its theoretical side,
thoughts and intuitions alike are intrinsic facts. An undifferentiated
primitivity – as Klages promotes – is not its subject matter, the latter
being rather a reintegration of the highest differentiations of all men-
tal and emotional forces.
13. The pictorial images are not just examples of an idea. Otherwise,
how could they be good and bad examples? Without images of what
something is even ideas could not be such examples either. The divine
mind is only a potency to bring forth ideas, not a realm where plans
are being hatched – not a place where ideas exist before any actual
thing.
An empirical concept cannot contain a sign of something, which the
objects, which are its field of application, have not in themselves some-
how already concretised. It may well be, on the other hand, that the
ideas provide an insight into how to build such concepts.
Even less does perception contain the urphenomenon. Even the per-
ceptual objects do not contain the urphenomenon.
There are neither: ideas prior to some matter; nor ideas in some mat-
ter, if ‘in’ is taken to mean that the things contain the idea, in the sense
of a content of a concept of a superordinate nature; nor are there ideas
supervening on some matter, as a portrayal of how a matter might be
seen. The only condition which applies in this respect is that of ideas
‘with’ matters – equally originally and simultaneously.
Because the divine mind is only a potential to produce ideas, even
our knowledge of ideas must be an affair ‘after the event’, not a hav-
ing of the object; and not even a portrait. The ideas are spontaneous-
ly brought forth and grasped simultaneously, but not as objects are
grasped, but grasped in humans in the course of their production.
14. An individual is a ‘type’, the more it allows the fullness of the
idea and the more it represents the wealth or the pregnancy of the
idea. The type is therefore definitely an individual version and not a
generality of individuals.
15. Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophers of the Middle Ages took
an empirical concept to be the idea; nominalism – which was right
about empirical concepts on their own – took ideas to be empirical
concepts.
16. The immanent essence is definitely only an inadequate part of
the transcendent essence, the latter being a rounded totality.
17. An empirical concept is a concept whose content is bound to-
gether by a finite compass, which must be able to be defined by its po-
sition in a hierarchy of superordinates and subordinates. The concrete
and individual objects have an exact position in this hierarchy which
coincides with what they are.
On the other hand, an idea of something is quintessentially a predi-
cate which can only function as a predicate if, in the series of defini-
tions – A is B, B is C – no definition of the second member can then
supplement its meaning above what is intrinsic in the predicated state-
ment.
18. Urphenomena and their connections, their structures, their ap-
propriate ideas and their connections, the ways they are, and the forms
in which they exist, all transfer their validity to the realm in which we
actually perceive them. It was an error by Kant to abandon the notion
that non-formal intuition is relevant to metaphysics, and to restrict
himself only to categories and ideas, and, furthermore, even to under-
mine these by deeming the categories to be merely subjective.
But even the postulates of existence, and real relationships between
all possible real entities, are translated into our own experience of re-
sistance, which gives us the experience of the real. There exists a for-
mal ontology of the real, which is independent of anything which is
valid for the accidental being-so and being-there of something which
is time- and place-bound. The actual existence of anything is not re-
ducible to anything else.
19. Structure is a complex framework of individual forms, which
are themselves part-forms of a complete form which regulates their
being-so.
20. Meaning is then something which is to be gleaned from what-
ever something is in relationship to something else and to the entirety
of things.
21. Metaphysics is the process of following in the footsteps of God,
and travelling with Him in the world as a whole.
22. We separate: a) the meaningful lay-out of all things as part of the
divine mind, which is the potential to bring this forth from the pure
essences; b) the essences and their inter-connections in any moment
of absolute time; c) the essences themselves, which become accessible
in the process of thinking an idea and grasping a urphenomenon; d)
the urphenomena and their interconnections; e) the types of anything;
f ) the forms of anything; g) the constancies of the contents of our
observation and individual rules, all of which contribute to the acci-
dental being-so of anything; h) empirical concepts and empirical rules;
i) pictorial images and their contribution to the accidental being-so of
anything; and j) perceptions, conclusions, judgements, rememberings
and expectations.
Towards the
Phenomenological Reduction
I. Techne
1. The epochė [or reduction] is not a question of the cancellation of an
existential judgment, but rather the switching off of the function in us
through which the factual reality element is given and happens to us.
The judgment of reality is itself built on this givenness. The relevant
function in the cases of the givenness of scientific and artistic reality is
the will and its accompanying active attention, whereas in the case of
the natural view of the world the function is drive-based Lebensdrang
[urgency of life] along with passive attention. The sensory theory of
perception is not a true version of events in either case. Husserl’s ‘gen-
eral thesis’ is based on resistance to this urgency of life.
It is decisive for the correctness of our formulation that the follow-
ing are shown to have one and the same basis : a) reality and intercon-
nected causality; b) a spatial and temporal interpretation of the world
as a presupposition of the here and now; c) a foundation order of ref-
erences in contrast to absolute being; and d) the individuation of an
identical whatness in many discoverable and accidental instances.
But underlying them all is not the here and now or time, but real be-
ing itself. Real being is the being that offers resistance; it is being that
actually has an effect on something, and is a unity of effective causes.
2. The switching off [of the function which renders the reality of the
world as given] will fail [to achieve the chain of events in the reduction],
despite the elevation of mental consciousness over will and drive, over
any considerations of a particular perspective on matters, and even
over the whole set of interlocking causes in the world, if what there
is is only a definite order of accidental facts conditioned by time and
space, such as Schopenhauer thought. [In addition, for the reduction to
succeed, what is necessary is that] each genuine essence is constituted
in reality. Moreover the fact that each genuine essence is real means
that it demands that there are primary and eternal causes – under the
aegis of God’s will – which determine all secondary causes in a time-
less way, the latter being merely the distribution of many realizations
of the same whatness in time and space. What is explicable in all this
is that something is ‘so’ here and now, and further that this something
here and now is such and such, i.e. it happens to be such and such;
what is not explicable is why there are such things in the first place.
3. Whereas the imposition of technical purposes on vital values has
the effect of leading to the categories of understanding and scientific
principles, by splitting up the function of intuitive thought into its
meaningful parts, the phenomenological reduction is an attempt : a)
to reverse this, and to restore the unity of meaning in a ruined world;
and b) to reinstate the unity of the intuitive mode of thinking. The set-
ting of technical goals in life only has any sense within the volitionally
given sphere of reality.
II. What sorts of new givennesses are

revealed in the phenomenological reduction
1. All references to anything except the internal coherence of the
system of whatnesses are made immanent [i.e. gathered up into the
mind].
2. Qualities become richer, and the richer they become the more de-
tached they are from their function as signs indicating what real being
is, what things are, and what events are.
3. An identical whatness appears in many instances and in the tem-
poral conditioning of things. This is the [true] principle of the iden-
tity of indiscernibles. Empirical concepts and observed facts are to be
distinguished from ideas and essences. Only ideas and essences can be
identical; everything else is merely similar.
4. The spatial-temporal void is to be distinguished from the pro-
cess whereby spatial and temporal references are gathered up into the
mind. In the latter situation, the same event occurring at a different
time becomes a different event, and the same objects in different places
become – in the course of the reduction – different from one another.
5. The notion of ‘generality’ in respect of reality in the two world-
views – natural and scientific – as opposed to any individual existing
entity disappears [in the reduction], so that ‘universal’ and ‘singular’ are
interchangeable, as are ‘general’ and ‘individual’. This is because ‘general’
is an idea and essence first of all in respect of the real; it is not ‘in itself ’
anything.
6. The direction towards absolute being is promoted at the expense
of everything which is existentially relative bar what is co-given with
absolute being.
7. The ideal whatness and ideal essence of anything are not imma-
nent in absolute consciousness because a such-and-such which was
thrown up by real being is simply cancelled. There is rather an inten-
sification of the process whereby the mind develops a more adequate
version [of this real such-and-such, which, when perfect, I call] ‘evi-
dence’. [I describe these matters elsewhere in my works.]
8. It must be that it is only individual things determined by real be-
ing which are cancelled; the generality of thingness is not cancelled.
This follows because each genuine essence corresponds to a real ob-
ject with this essence, regardless of whether we, with our particular
psychophysical organisation, can know anything about it or not. Real
being is still, however, the determination of objects. Which?
9. There is an abolition of the differences between noemata [the ob-
jective correlates of consciousness], as these are only achieved through
the performance of a human act which somehow enters into the actual
qualities. [With the abandonment in the reduction of all existentially-
relative handles on things, and that includes human consciousness, all
the usual trappings of conscious experience go by the board].
10. The reduction has nothing to do with a spontaneous judgment,
but concerns the very raw ‘material’ which possible judgments rely on.
A situation is set up [in the reduction] in which neither the real world
is considered abolished nor is any judgment on this matter suspended;
what is struck out is the reality element, by virtue of a suspension of
that act which give us reality as givenness. The reduction is – probably
– something which goes on in consciousness, where it concerns a mir-
rored transformation of the actual being of the ‘mind’ and the ‘person’
who is the functionary of the act of consciousness.
Something is happening both outside us and inside us in these acts
of consciousness, and the ‘consciousness’ of these objects is merely a
sign of the objects.
This process entails a complete change in the person affected, as it
is a penetration by that person’s environment into the world [of the
mind].
11. The reduction enacts an ‘essentialization’ of the world in the way
it is experienced, and transforms the world into an idea for the sake of
thought – immediate thought.
12. Does the reduction result in a loss of anything? Indeed it does.
There is a loss of volitional practical references to the world, because
the world is now a cohesive structure of essences [without any rules as
to how an individual might use them]. Anything to do with the philo-
sophical position of ‘realism’ is out of the question. For everything has
now to be seen in the light of an absolute world. Husserl’s notion of
‘absolute consciousness’ is actually an admission that God exists. But it
is a God without a partner, i.e. a God with no will to create anything.
For Husserl, the reality of the world is nothing more than the content
of an absolute consciousness.
13. Only ‘love’ holds together the conscious act [which can produce
anything at will] and the vagaries of caprice [i.e. the chance that it
will produce complete nonsense] in some sort of unity [i.e. ‘love’ keeps
consciousness on the track of what really is].
14. The categorical forms become themselves material for my intu-
ition.
15. There is a shift in the status of my act of thinking [in the reduc
tion] whereby it becomes not an act of consciousness of whatever is
around, but an act within the realm of absolute being. The sovereignty
of this act, previously mine, now becomes completely under the aegis
of God. It is not simply a matter of logic, nor of any abstraction from
the psychophysical unit of life which a human being also is, but rather
a breaking free by the mind of the subservience to the needs and exer-
cises and aims of life, in a direction which subserves mental exigencies
– thinking, loving, contemplating and wishing, and all in the further-
ance of God’s aims. A simple disregard of everything that life and its
aims stand for is insufficient to achieve the results of the reduction.
Such a procedure would have no bearing on the nature, direction, aim,
or enactment of the act [of reduction]. The whole issue has to do with
an ascetic and practised overcoming of the usual givennesses which are
the way in which the world is granted to us when the human being is
considered a drive-centred organism. However, when it is a question
of trying to isolate what the human being as a conscious entity is up
to, this is completely different from the human being as a vital entity.
Again, the reduction has nothing to do with ignoring reality, but is a
specific [thought experiment on the possible consequences of ] what
would happen if the reality element is deemed to be cancelled. What
we are considering is not what would happen if a person were com-
pletely detached from life, but what would happen if the functional
bond linking them to life [in a specific way, i.e. the cancellation of the
givenness of reality] were severed.
16. The natural, vital determinedness which is the correlate of our
natural world-view holds an analogous correspondence to technical
goal setting in the same way in which the artistic positive affirmation
of life does to mathematical physics.
17. Husserl’s false teachings about the reduction completely distort
what the ‘psychic’ is.
18. Husserl’s ‘I’ is pure, and hardly different from Kant’s notion of
transcendental apperception.
19. The withdrawal of everything into essences is a return to the
original idea of God’s, ‘before’ He freely created the world.
III. On the becoming immanent of references

1. Leibniz had already made such a claim by virtue of his basic prin-
ciple that a predicate is part of the subject. It is still a long way from
this to suggest that references are neither the product of referential
thinking nor absolutely indissociable givennesses, but are rather the
consequence and residuum of an ever partly suppressed content of our
intuitive thinking. For example, successive comparisons in size of the
lines a) ▬ and b) � show that with b’s thinning a sense of ‘greater
than’ is bound to the experience if the smaller line a) comes first. The
a) and the b) are intrinsically bound together by an ‘and’, a binding
which falls under the essence ‘size’. Overall, however, what is changing
in this situation is an absolute content of a qualitative nature – in the
sense that there is a decline in the fullness of the quality : size merely
functions as a foundation for a reference. [But in this very decline from
an absolute fullness, which, in its absolute fullness, would not be avail-
able as an experience to us humans] the possibility of the fullness does
become ‘transintelligible’, as in another example – the co-registration
of ‘same’ and ‘similar’.
Actually, the situation is that we are embedded in the natural view
of the world – theoretically, ethically and aesthetically – and can only
experience objects: a) in their referential determinations as resistance
to our drive-based requirements : and b) in their reciprocal referential
determinations as exit points for what we regard as biologically im-
portant in their interactions in the here and now. Because drive-based
attention determines the actual sensory content we experience, our
sensory functions are already part of the structures which determine
the importance of matters to ourselves.
What is true is this : what is given at a higher stage of development
– life, humanity – as an intrinsic fullness A is only given at a lower
stage as a foundation of a reference. The ’references’ are therefore prior
to what is being referred to in the order of foundation. This means that
the essence of a human being has nothing to do with what Lindworsky
called the ability to make reference to things, but [rather the opposite,
in that] it is the mental ability to allow something which originally
appears as a foundation for something else to be seen as a fullness in
its own right, in other words to make immanent [make mentally sub-
stantial or ‘alive’] what is first of all given as a reference. A child takes
‘similar’ to mean the ‘same’ and ‘same’ to mean ‘identical’. What for us
adults is a referential foundation – e.g. flying is similar in the case of a
butterfly and of a bird – is for the child the self-same activity. Only the
loosening of the changing foundation of the rules of reference among
themselves, which they already possess as they are essences of deter-
mination, leads to thinking, even to inferential thinking.
Science makes absolute the rule of the natural world-view that ref-
erences precede foundations, and foundations precede the appearance
of some matter in its own intrinsic fullness. That is why it leads to
relativism, which, taken to its extremes, makes the actual things X,
Y and Z, transcendent and unintelligible. But it loses, on the other
hand, any link between these references and : a) an individual and its
needs; and b) the changing directions of the drives responsible for goal
setting. In place of these, all that remains is a form of reference which
is guided by a living organism and conscious will in general. Even the
various sorts of importance of the givenness of the drives are levelled
out in favour of a common denominator which is merely an [empty]
‘general importance overall’. This means that the scientific world is a
rule-governed causal nexus where the only value in sight is what hap-
pens to be here and now [which is no value at all, or worse a travesty
of the meaning of value].
The phenomenological approach to matters starts out from the
same base [as does the scientific], namely the natural world-view, but
then takes off in a direction which is the complete opposite of the sci-
entific. In that it switches off the ‘urgency of life’ – the root of all drives,
needs and vital attention – it attempts, in the first place, to reinstate
the intrinsic fullness of matters which have hitherto been attenuated
through their subservience to life’s drives. Secondly, it tries to trace the
very references back to their origin in the intrinsic meaningful coher-
ence of matters, that is to see how they look in their immanent form
[as gathered up in the mind] or in the form the Greeks referred to as
Logos. In this form they are held together in their coherence of es-
sences by the single binding – ‘and’. For example, ‘similarity’, ‘sameness’,
etc. are in fact qualitative phenomena, in which form they are essences.
The essence of the experience of ‘sameness’ contains nothing quantita-
tive, as it would if it were of the nature – ‘of ……. more’. Sameness is a
qualitative phenomenon, and that means that a perfectly reduced world
would contain only pure differences: everything therein would be non-
identical. The relationship between such essences in this reduced world
would be themselves essences as a logical order connecting them.
Metaphysics is then that superordinate discipline which encompass-
es both the phenomenologically reduced world and that of science.
In absolute being, then, all references to anything except that of non-
identity disappear, because any other reference is only a condition of
our oscillating attention which is then placed in a separateness which
we call time and spare.
But what does it mean to say that things have a reference to one
another independently of our mental grasp of this? It means that they
have a constitution which actually determines what reference can be in
a human mind. The relationships between what is actually real – cau-
sality, real goal-directed relationships – are ‘more real’ than anything
in the mind, as they are constellations of forces which are merely rep-
resented in the human mind. The ‘laws of nature’ are only human ver-
sions of such constellations, even though such original constellations
may well be part of God’s design for life.
As reality precedes all contents of perception in space and time in
the scheme of things, so is causality a more primordial effectiveness
than either : i) the spatial continuum; or ii) the immediate succession
of cause and effect. Kant was right: only through original causality
can there be an unequivocal order of objective consequences. The true
situation is not that cause and effect is the regularity of succession as a
rule of our knowledge of matters, but is a true ontical principle of the
way reality is.
2. How qualities and the category of quantity look like in the phe-
nomenological approach is as follows. Quantity is essentially linked
with a being for which the following axiom holds good : identical
whatness can exist as multiple instances, whose multiplicity allows it
to exist in a variety of sizes. This sort of being calls for there to be
a fundamental ‘separateness’ which itself is an identical essence, but
which then allows number, space, time and intensity to come into be-
ing. Because the reference to separateness disappears in the reduction,
so must any notion of quantity disappear as well. To think otherwise
would entail the fact that quantities are extant in the sphere of the
real [which is not true]. The reduced world contains only simple quali-
ties, which give rise to the appearance of quantity only through a sum-
marising and statistical treatment of them. Reality and quantity are
therefore ‘volitionally’ related – through the joint intermediaries of
drive and will. All magnitude must be explained within any theory
of knowledge by deriving it originally from spatial dimensions, and
from an ontic point of view from intensity. The legitimacy of the ra-
tional treatment of long-short, fast-slow, large-small or strong-weak,
and, analogously black-white, quiet-noise, rest-movement, suffering-
effecting or arising-passing away, etc. is always the same : one of the
contraries is struck out – slow, short, little, black, rest, suffering, etc.
We are the potential recipients of the givenness of the world in four
sorts of general ways:
i) as a natural world view, which can be absolute or historically rela-
tive, with various degrees of adequation and with versions which are
existentially-relative to different species, including the human one;
ii) as a result of the phenomenological reduction, where ‘adequation’
is perfect and hence ‘evidence complete’;
iii) in a scientific mode, which is generally valid and complete, but
existentially-relative to a living organism in general, and generally ‘in-
adequate’, even completely so; and
iv) metaphysics, which is ‘adequate’, existentially absolute, and a sort
of knowledge which is person-based, hypothetical and probable.
Metaphysics is a synthesis of the first three sorts of world-view ac-
cording to a quite definitive method. The phenomenologically reduced
world, which is a combination of Logos and the essential structure of
intuition, yields the most basic facts of the world which are true ab-
solutely and for us humans. Each genuine essence corresponds to an
infinite series of realities, of which only a certain part are directly in-
telligible to us. There is, in fact, an infinite number of dead worlds, an
infinite number of organic realms over even one life, and the same ap-
plies to the personal world. There are people, organisms, dead things,
etc. which remain completely unknown to us by whatever mode of
knowledge.
Science broadens our world picture along a quantitative and me-
chanical front, compared to what is covered by the natural world-view,
and then treats these forms as absolute building blocks of the world.
In metaphysics the aim is to portray the following matters. How
do we get a handle on the transintelligible realities, whether directly
here or indirectly so? The natural world-view is reinstated along with
its relative form of things, but enriched on two counts: first, through
the addition of an appreciation of the cohesive realm of essences: and,
secondly, through a development of the previously unacknowledged
component of scientific thought. [The metaphysical contribution is]
the fact that all quantitative elements correspond to unknown quali-
ties.
3. Identical whatness is the potential raw material for the appearance
of genuine essences in different instances of here-and-now objects. Be-
cause we deny that ideal objects have a specific ‘being’, but rather con-
tend that anything ideal is only a whatness, which is further only what
is ours to discover from the genuine essence, we now need to show to
what extent the phenomenological reduction, with its removal of the
reality element, can make even singular ‘matters of fact’ [in English in
original] disappear as singular. The purpose of such a demonstration
would be to clarify how the contents of identical whatnesses can be
given to us, and, how, as these contents are definitely not ‘general’ in
themselves, they become so if they are referred back to singular reality
– as in the examples triangle and human being.
The answer lies in the nature of the interconnection of essences. As
only the real is concrete, then, if two or however many things have the
same form or the same colour, the very possibility of a multitude of
forms or colours can only occur through the intervention [or penetra-
tion] by some freely available complex of content deriving from the
essence [into the actual givenness of the reality element], and all this
independently of the role of time and space as [further] individuating
influences.
4. The phenomenological reduction is directed towards absolute be-
ing. Husserl is right in that the phenomenological reduction leads to
absolute being, if what he meant by this was absolute whatness, but he
was wrong to claim that it led to absolute consciousness, and wrong to
say that it led to a sort of absolute existence – ideal existence. What,
however, is ‘absolute being’? It is ‘being’ whose essence and existence
are one and the same thing. What is absolute whatness? It is the genu-
ine essence of something which all existentially relative entities must
partake of.
How does the phenomenological reduction lead to absolute being
or absolute whatness? It does so because it disregards what whatness
specifically means for the following sorts of entities: a) an ‘Ego’; b) a
human being and its social group; c) any kind of living being; and d)
any finite sort of being with a mind. Depending on the extent to which
this happens, the stage of being to which it leads becomes ever more
empty. But the stages themselves remain behind in all the spheres of
being as separate unities within these. For humans conserve the ves-
tiges of all the stages that they are [or were] : i) Ego; ii) human being
– with its social group, national identity, culture adherences and gen-
eration characteristics; iii) living being; or iv) finite being in possession
of a mind. And it is towards being as a combination of whatness and
existence that any sort of knowledge and potentialities for knowledge
are directed. With all this to take into account is it then indeed an
emptier world that we find ourselves in? We shall see in which order
the existential relativity dissolves.
Addendum. Solipsism, humanism as a natural world view, science,
metaphysics, philosophy, and religion, are not abolished [in the reduc
tion].
5. Concerning the reduction of the I, Husserl says that the pure I
cannot be reduced. The pure I is an individual I, whereas I say that
the reduction of the existence of the I is quite possible. What remains,
however, is the individual whatness, and, in particular, the intercon-
nection of whatnesses, so that Leibniz’ comment ‘Cogitatur ergo est’
[there is someone thinking therefore thinking exists] is all that is true
[See my The Nature of Sympathy].
6. Is the general thesis [of Husserl’s] switched off or only his special
thesis? Because genuine essences are part of real being – given in the
essence of resistance to the spontaneous activity of acts involved in
wanting, which comprise willing and attention – it must therefore be
true that each genuine essence corresponds to an existence of some-
thing in general, and that means being real. The ‘that it is’ of the real
being of something in general remains therefore an atheoretical pre-
givenness. Only if this is so can something be taken away [in the reduc
tion].
7. a) Absolute consciousness never remains as a residuum [in the
reduction]. Only ideal whatness can remain, and that can be both im-
manent in consciousness and transcendent to it at the same time. It is
incorrect:
i) to consider whatness to be able to be duplicated as two existential
varieties;
ii) to maintain either of the two philosophical positions – absolute
idealism and critical realism; and,
iii) to take up the position of agnosticism.
What is then consciousness? It is first of all knowledge of the broad-
er concept. There is no conscious ‘knowledge of ’ something in ecstatic
knowledge. Furthermore, there can be no ‘overconscious’ knowledge of
something; but there can be unconscious knowledge of something, for
example – 1 know that I know something, i.e. that it is in my sphere
of knowledge but I can’t put my finger on precisely what. There is also
instinctual knowledge and reasoned knowledge.
What is ‘knowledge of ’ something then, if A knows B? It is a rela-
tionship between one being and another being – methexis or participa-
tion – whereby B remains unaltered by the occurrence of this relation-
ship whereas A now has part of B’s whatness. It is A that changes, not
B. B lights up in A. Secondarily, after an ens intentionale [an intended
entity] is there, it is also the givenness of an intended act, for example
perception. In third place, it is the [new] subjective status of the one
who carries it out, hence arises self-consciousness or apperception.
‘Consciousness of ’ something is then that which we call ‘the approach-
ing relationship’ or accessibility between a human being and a thing.
The following are to be distinguished: real being from whatness –
this latter being divided into intelligible, and unintelligible but voli-
tionally, realisable being; three sorts of whatness – intuitively achieved
whatness, meaningful whatness, and value-being; whatness from ob-
jectified being; and an object from the sphere in which it occurs.
b) The knowledge of the transcendent ideas and essences must
therefore precede knowledge as to the ideas and essences which are
immanent in consciousness.
c) The problem of the origin of ‘consciousness of ’ has to do with
pure consciousness’ being the limit of reflection, and reflection itself
first occurs when there is inhibition.
All knowledge is directed towards the being of the thing known and
the possible real relations it has with other existing things.
The problem is not: how does consciousness transcend itself? but
how does an existing thing become immanent in consciousness?
There are sorts of ideal participation which are not knowable to us.
For example, all being of an act is unobjectifiable and therefore unin-
telligible being; it is only possible to be a co-executor. One of these
sorts [of unknowable participations] is the act of love. It acts as the
very determination of knowledge.
8. The elevation of the forms of being – the categories – to the status
of special objects of pure thinking and pure intuition [occurs]. There
is also a cancellation of noetic differentiation.
9. Concerning the effects of the reduction on the subjective side, the
following points can be made.
a) Is the existence of God switched off? No, this is impossible. The
existence of an ’Ens a se’ [the ultimate entity in itself ] rests on the
hardest evidence that there is.
b) But life; the biopsychic entity that we are; the carrying out of a
reflective act on whatever is going on; and the ‘I’, as the consciousness
of matters by a person; all these can be switched off.
c) Things appear as if part of an absolute mind, as if the act of know-
ing and thing known were one, even as if the whole situation were
proof of God’s existence.
d) It is not a question of any ‘abstraction from’ anything, as Husserl
thought. There is no actual substantial separation between anything.
The whole situation is rather a functional elevation of consciousness.
IV. Does the reduction lead to

an absolute consciousness?
1. If the reality element is cancelled, this does not automatically lead
to everything’s being gathered up into the mind. Identical whatness, or
the highest level of whatness, or genuine essences, or ideas, are given in
this situation. Because, however, the whatness of objects is definitely
partly extra-mental and partly in the mind, although the reduction does
not affect this general rule, it does enhance the possibility that each
whatness can be in the mind. There is anyway a close bond between
the mental act and its respective object and between the form of this
act and the form of the object, but this connection is not essentially
between something happening in consciousness and the noema – the
object which the consciousness is conscious of – but between a mental
act – which is independent of any reflective awareness of this act –
and the object itself – again, independently of how many ‘noemata’ the
object may induce in consciousness. The ontical relationship between
mind and objectifiable being lies, therefore, prior to these, and is the
foundation of any conscious knowledge of matters or consciousness
and its noema.
2. More central to our theme, however, is the fact that, when ‘life’
and its here-now characteristics fail [in the reduction], the individual
centre at the root of the mind does not correspondingly fail. In fact,
the very opposite occurs: the reduction isolates and purifies this mental
centre from its erstwhile links [with life, for example], and there is
now [in Husserl’s terms, there is indeed] a ‘pure I’. The reduced ‘world’
is, therefore, a personal-individual world although part of God’s world
too. Between three people – A, B and C – [on whom the reduction
has been carried out] this new world of theirs is mutually incompre-
hensible because it is ontically different one from another; this is in
complete contrast to the ‘generally valid’ [i.e. interpersonally compre-
hensible] environmental world. The reduction leads, therefore, to ‘ab-
solute being’, but also to a multiplicity of individual worlds, which are
first [i.e. only] united in the overall scheme of God’s world. This in
itself switches off the influence of their status as a living animal with
its corresponding environment, and affects their status as a human
being as a whole. If we compare Husserl’s views on this, we see that he
considered that the pure I could not be ‘bracketed off ’ and that each
ray of consciousness threw up a different being.
3. How does this switching off, cancellation, or abolition process,
happen?
a) That part of us called Leib [the animality of us] is switched off,
and by a certain process it then becomes objectified, and what is ob-
jectified is all that which [as others have called it] is vital or soul-like
about us. This process is completely different from a merely logical
setting aside of these matters. It has much more to do with excluding
all influence of our living self on the ‘life’ of the mind – not dissimilar
to the Indian technique of yoga. The end-point and ideal aim of this
technique is to alter the relationship between mind and our animality,
namely that I, now, am a ‘geistiger Person’ [a person with only mental,
intellectual or spiritual dimensions] and consider myself merely to
have or possess or dominate my animality.
b) The environment of my vital or animal self is abolished – its very
structure, not just its formative capacity – and hence any sort of object
which I might know through my intuitive mode of knowing. It is as
if we had been living [imprisoned] hitherto between walls, without
awareness of the walls, and suddenly see these walls, and then even see
what spheres of things lie beyond.
c) There is a switching off of our sense of cohesion with other hu-
man beings, at least in the sense that these are living beings like us. All
social conventions, even those which underlie our language and the
mutual understandings between people, are shut off [in the reduction],
and that includes all conventional expressions of our common inter-
personal situation. All preconceptions of a social or historical nature
are also swept aside in the elevation of all things mental.
d) Absolute Godliness as a positive revelation is denied the human
being [in the reduction]. But the ‘idea’ of God remains, and, as essence
and existence of something of this essence are necessarily one in this
realm, God cannot be put out of the question. In fact, God must be
‘switched on’, not ‘switched off ’ [i.e. a Godliness will pervade all issues
in the reduced world].
e) There is a switching off of all ontical [actual] images of anything,
and that includes pure logic and the usual ways of quantification of
anything, but not their fundamental possibility [in some other form
than that which we are accustomed to].
f ) The sorts of pictures of reality which consciousness normally pro-
vides [the transformation of the phenomena which are the basis of all
perception, memory and expectation] are not abolished. Why is this?
Either all matters of fact pertaining to the real world are distorted or
even determined by the rules of knowledge with which any living be-
ing is equipped [i.e. epistemology – the rules of how any living thing
studies beings – is paramount], and these are reflected in what we call
‘phenomenology’? or the situation is the complete opposite of this [i.e.
ontology is paramount, along with the transformation of how things
are in the real world into the only ‘languages’ that we can regard them
as]? I say that the latter is true.
4. There is a switching off of the reality of God, and each real God
is a positive entity only in a theological sense [i.e. as a studied, intel-
lectual object rather than as a living being].
I. The Problem of the Spheres of

What Something Is
It is a constitutive basic feature of all human knowledge that the
cognizing subject in a human being, from the very outset, and in all
stages of actual development of the human psychophysical organiza-
tion, looks out over not one but many spheres of what something is,
spheres, moreover, which in no way can be derived one from another.
A genuine sphere is only that which cannot be derived from another.
Such spheres include: the external world with its appropriate external
perception; the inner world with its inner perception; the spiritual and
psychic component of another person; and the living and the dead.
Before trying to demarcate these spheres, to show how they are ir-
reducible, or to establish laws which obtain between them, it is neces-
sary to say something of a general nature concerning the ‘theory of the
spheres’.
1. The sphere is always given as a whole, and pregiven to whatever
special appearances one may find in it. As a unified sphere it only al-
lows a completely formless pure intuition to be grasped; whereas all
non-philosophical knowledge, e.g. natural and scientific knowledge of
an ‘x’, inhabits the sphere. In no way are the spheres only more or less
arbitrary collections of unstructured continuous being.
2. The spheres themselves are consequently given apriori and con-
stitute the directions of all possible experience and knowledge, in the
sense of what can be observed and induced. They are not beholden
to the accidental experience for their status as spheres. Each sphere
comes to light, in its special way, with every matter which stands in the
particular sphere.
3. However much philosophical or scientific dispute there might be
as to what particular thing should be in this or that sphere, the essen-
tial differences between the spheres themselves are nevertheless sharp
and discontinuous.
4. The essential connections between acts of a particular sort and
the corresponding sorts of being they give rise to also holds for the
spheres. Each sphere of being corresponds to a special sort and man-
ner of mental taking possession of this sphere, or, better, of the matters
in it: whether inner perception, outer perception, or the perception
of other people, etc. The ways of knowing and the consciousness of
something within each sphere are therefore just as different from each
other as the spheres themselves.
5. The spheres are not primarily amenable to thought – although
they are at some stage – but rather primarily intuitable, even, rather,
pre-sensual. As many spheres of what something is that there are, so
there are that many forms of intuition.
6. The spheres must not be equated with the so-called list of cat-
egories of being and thought. The categories – thing/property, thing/
activity, equality, similarity, causality, goal-directedness, etc. – are gen-
eral forms of being, which appear in most spheres. The category of
substance, for example, crops up in the Ens a se, and in body, soul, and
organism. Its differences in this respect follow that of the spheres. Not
only are the spheres pre-sensual, they are also pre-logical. They pre-
cede in the order of things all possible thoughts on some matter, even
intuitions of the same.
7. It is very important to appreciate that the spheres have even noth-
ing actually to do with the opposition real-irreal, for they are imme-
diate spheres of what something is, not of whether something exists
or not, and in all its modifications – real, fictional or ideal, etc. It is
simply wrong to say that before the reality of a certain body has been
established the sphere of the external world remains unestablished.
The sphere remains as a given, even if all reality in this sphere were
questionable or void. The distinction between real and ideal repeats
itself in all spheres – in the psychic, in the spatio-temporal nature of
the external world, in the intersubjective world [Mitwelt], in posterity
[Nachwelt], and in former ages [Vorwelt]. The belongingness to the in-
ner world or the outer world of an appearance has nothing to do with
its reality or ideality. The feelings induced by a fictional figure belong
just as much to the sphere of the inner world as do the actual feelings
induced by an actual person. The rainbow belongs just as much to
nature as does the actual sun. A dreamt or hallucinated table belongs
just as much to the sphere of artefacts as does an actually perceived
one. The spheres are pre-given with respect to fantasy as they are with
respect to perception.
8. The spheres are most definitely to be distinguished from genuinely
material essences – made up of ideas and urphenomena. For example,
it might seem reasonable to suppose that Life is just as much a mate-
rial urphenomenon as a sphere. But this is not so. There is a sphere of
living entities, but there are also material essences and ideas of organ-
isms or living things. In relation to the genuine material essences and
ideas, spheres are regions of what something is, and equally they are
regions of existing things, hence regions of being. In each region there
can be any number of extant essences – urphenomenon and idea.
9. Existential relativity obtains in all spheres.
10. There is a fulfilment of the spheres, especially when real things
are set in the sphere.
II. Absolute sphere and world –

Godliness and worldliness
Each finite knowing subject has a sphere of the absolute, a sphere
where nothing is any more relative, and which at the very least con-
tains matters to which three predicates – absolutely real, absolutely
valuable, i.e. holy, and absolutely essential, i.e. an ur-essence – apply.
This sphere stands correlatively opposed to spheres of being which are
relative to another being, which contain relative as opposed to absolute
values, and concern the world. If we call the first sphere the sphere of
godliness, and the second the sphere of the world, the world then con-
tains psychic as well as physical entities, along with all possible organ-
isms, and all possible ideal and fictional objects. The absolute sphere
is at the same time the sphere of the metascientific absolute being and
the religious sphere. In so far as only this sphere in itself is taken into
consideration, and not whatever is in it, or whether what is in it is real
or not – e.g. God or idols, etc. – the sphere is simply given to anyone
possessing human knowledge and consciousness. It can never be con-
trived or made up, as it is simply the absolute background for all finite
relative being. An object of positive religion and metaphysics is always
only the answer to the question as to what is in this sphere, and how
one can achieve participation in what is there. It itself is therefore ever
pre-supposed. One can nevertheless maintain that what holds sway
in this sphere and what is actually there are forever unknowable to a
human being – as agnosticism in general, and Kant and Spencer in
particular, propose.
One can maintain, further, as Buddha did, that the content of this
sphere is ‘the Nothing’, where ‘nothing’ means non-effective being. This
viewpoint, i.e. Buddhism, regards all real existing entities [i.e. effective
entities] as bad and finite. With these last excluded from the sphere,
there would be in it ‘nothing but’ absolute essences and absolute val-
ues. One can even maintain that absolutely nothing lies in this sphere
– a view known as metaphysical nihilism, and proposed by Gorgias.
According to this view, there is either nothing at all in this absolute
sphere, or, if there is anything, then it is unknowable.
The sphere is undoubtedly there despite all such sceptical remarks.
One can close ones mental and spiritual eyes to what might be in this
sphere, and arbitrarily go along with the sensory images and relative
being that one naturally encounters. In this case one is a metaphysical
and religious ‘illusionist’. Even then, the sphere does not go away. One
can then say that the ‘foreground’ scene facing us is hard enough to
explain, without invoking yet more complications to do with its back-
ground. And further say that whatever there is in way of background
we simply do not know. Another approach – and this is the common-
est – is to insert into this absolute sphere of intuitional being any ar-
bitrary thing whatsoever of a finite sort – a thing, a good, a creature,
and in so doing one then finds oneself in a condition of the uttermost
metaphysical deception. There is no thing in this entire world that one
cannot put in this sphere. A child’s plaything, money or some other
possession – as in the worship of Mammon – ones race or ones nation
– as in extolling nationhood – a person of the opposite sex – a loved
one – a yearned for object of ambition, or even oneself – absolute
autoeroticism; there is always, always something for a human being,
of which it is said: Everything, everything you can have, but you are
required to sacrifice one thing, and that is the ‘nothing’. Everything, and
you only have to forgo this one thing, and this one thing is as change-
able as the human character. If a human being does vouch for such a
finite value or ‘good’ in the absolute sphere then we tend to call him
‘smitten’ with this, and the ‘good’ a ‘world-smittenness’. If such smit-
tenness is to recover and the person regain a normal attitude to the
absolute sphere and its possible content we must point out to him the
nature of his object of smittenness, his idol. Completely setting aside
what a human being finds or does not find in the absolute sphere –
whether true or false – he returns to a normal attitude to this sphere,
whether through self-analysis of his life or because of someone else’s
analysis of him, when the deception in this respect is brought home to
him. The idol which he hitherto placed in this sphere is a finite, relative
thing [and should not therefore be in this sphere]. The normal glimpse
into the sphere of absolute being – which is the pre-supposition for
all metaphysical striving towards knowledge – does not guarantee the
truth or falsehood of any metaphysical or religious entity found there-
in, but is simply a shattering of idols.
The capacity of finite things to become idols is the great enemy of
participation in the actual and true godliness. There is no life, no de-
velopment of soul or mind – either in an individual or a race – which
does not run through a chain of disenchantments or comes to see the
need for the eradication of deception concerning the true meaning and
importance of the value of worldly things. In this process of dis-en-
chantment there is slowly revealed the truth and importance of abso-
lute things, values, goods and essences. The human being is therefore
essentially a metaphysical and religious creation. He is so, not in an
ongoing temporal sense i.e. because eventually he comes to this con-
clusion. On the contrary, the very having of this sphere defines the
human being from the outset. Animals have an environment and live
ecstatically in this. The human being has at the same time a knowledge
of the world and a consciousness of God.
The critical point here is that religion and metaphysics are possible
because they are already in a potential sense in this sphere. Even a-
theism is only a denial of an already determined God-like entity. The
path whereby dis-enchantment over the finite things that have filled
the absolute sphere can occur, which have caused these to be idols, is a
path to absolute being. Once the contents and reality of the objects of
the absolute sphere are set up, then the direction of gaze moves to the
world. The variation in the idea of God is the key to the changeability
of the world images – and not the other way round – and the unity of
the world is indeed even the consequence of the unity of divine mat-
ters.
Existential Relativity inside the Spheres

We are indebted to Kant for the introduction of the basic cognitive
concept of existential relativity in theoretical philosophy. His dis-
tinction between appearance and thing-in-itself is one of existential
relativity. This is illustrated most sharply when he tries to show that
all possible inner experience only rests on the organization of human
intuition and understanding of existentially relative appearances, and,
when he attributes the primary givenness of all being to conscious-
ness, regarding it, following Descartes and Berkeley, as the correlate
of the Cogito. He saw that some of what had previously been regarded
as subjective was correctly designated as such – i.e. what was in the
soul – and which we call the inner world; but he also saw that some
of what had previously been regarded as subjective was untenable as
so designated, because it concerned matters to do with the existence
or non-existence of things or the being-so or not-being-so of things
which had nothing to do with a particular individual human being’s
subjective outlook, and therefore must be deemed relative to some-
thing else. He also saw that there was a level of existential relativity in
all spheres, and that this was generally the same; or, rather, he at least
saw this so far as the spheres of the inner world and the outer world,
psychic and physical, were concerned. Despite the unsatisfactory way
in which he expressed this notion – partly because of his erroneous
‘Copernican’ revolution, partly because of his rationalism, and partly
because he confused objectively real appearances with representations
and conscious appearances – the notion itself should never be lost
sight of.
It is a far cry from Kant’s undoubted insight to then say that the
givenness of the world and the determination of what anything is, is a
question of what sort of intuition and what sort of categories knowl-
edge brings to the matter. This sort of doctrine, which is at the root
of all idealism, is further undermined when one realises that Kant’s
approach was always based on a mathematical and scientific notion of
what anything is, where the absolutely real is given no credence at all.
No less incorrect, however, is the philosophy known as critical real-
ism, where it goes off in the direction of pre-Kantian philosophy, and
claims that what does not belong to the absolute reality of nature must
belong to the subject, and, exclusively, to the soul of that subject. In
other words it took up what I call the notion of the two-layeredness
of existing things – that there are only conscious appearances and ab-
solute reality, the latter somehow being made accessible to the former.
Kant’s contribution to the existential relativity thesis was already more
profound, in that he proposed three levels of being: 1. a subjective con-
scious appearance; 2. an objective appearance – whose appearing was
of an undetermined thing in itself – corresponding to what empirical
and scientific approaches took it to be; and 3. an absolutely real ‘thing
in itself ’.
The correct path leading us out of this muddle is certainly not the
way of idealism – whether Husserl’s, Rickert’s or Cohen’s, etc. – which
strikes out the sphere of the thing-in-itself and treats the scientific real-
ity merely as accidental objective being-so experiences for a conscious-
ness and the rules of all this. The correct way is rather the laying out
of the series of stages of the existential relativity of things with respect
to the organization of the real bearer of knowledge, in order to com-
pletely account for what at each stage of the cognising act is precisely
shown and determined for these stages. The overall aim would be to
establish a principle concerning the immanence of knowledge and the
transcendence of what something is at each stage of existence. Critical
realism, on the other hand, whether it presents its building blocks as
images or signs – the latter, for example, in the work of Schlick – re-
duces the existential levels to a subjective consciousness and absolute
reality, abolishing therefore the second limb of the Kantian series – i.e.
objective appearance – reality – and then arrives at the fundamentally
flawed thesis that the ‘realities’, which science deals with, instead of as-
cribing them to levels of existential relativity which each science can
itself determine, are regarded as the same absolute reality.
Any metaphysics is in this way even more excluded than it was by
Kant’s reasoning, because the ‘place’, so-to-speak, of its reality has al-
ready been chosen for it by scientific reality, and an independent cog-
nitive principle is denied to it: namely, that there is essentially struc-
tured knowledge pertaining to each existential sphere, which is apriori
and equally relevant for all existing entities, even for the thing-in-itself
or absolute entities.
The theory of the levels of existential relativity of objects – and this
applies to non-objectifiable being as well – is precisely constructed ac-
cording to our principle that an identical being-so of some extra-men-
tal entity can be just as much in the mind as outside the mind, and,
secondly, that knowledge is neither a portrayal nor a description nor
a transformation nor a design of the real object – and certainly not a
logical judgement or conceptual working up of some matter or repro-
duction in immanent consciousness – but a concrete entity’s – i.e. the
knowing subject’s – participation in, and sharing of, the being-so of
another concrete entity. And existential relativity now means nothing
other than existing extra-mentally but at the same time only relatively
so – i.e. an existence dependent on the existence of some other entity,
and objectively so, albeit relative to an entity which is the real bearer of
this knowledge. Each potentially appearing knowledge-relativity – i.e.
anything that relies on the knowledge organisation of the subject, for
example, a human and its relative knowledge of things – is therefore
derived from the existential relativity of the known object itself and
absolute knowledge of it. Or, in short, there is no relativity of knowl-
edge, but only an absolute knowledge of existentially relative things.
Even physical states of affairs can be existentially relative among them-
selves – e.g. the mirror image on the mirror and the mirrored object
– something that I can establish without knowing anything about the
laws of light waves or refraction.
We are using the expression of existential relativity here only for
the special case in which one of the things is a knowing object, for
example, an animal or a human, with all its physical, vital, psychic and
real properties. So, in our view, an hallucinated thing definitely has its
existential status outside a mind, but at the same time it is existen-
tially relative on an individual with a sick brain. In the same way as
other perceptual things [i.e. existentially relative on a ‘normal’ brain] it
can be grasped through various sensory functions – hearing, smelling;
its visual form can be analysed physiologically and mathematically; it
can be observed and attended to adequately or inadequately; true or
false judgements can be made about it, and even correct or incorrect
conclusions drawn on the basis of these. One can see from all this that
measures of knowledge concerning true and false, correct and incor-
rect, or adequate and inadequate increases and reductions in intuitive
fullness, have simply nothing to do with distinctions between sorts of
existential relativity.
If, however, the sort of entity which we have just been considering
as existentially relative on an individual were relative to an entire cul-
tural epoch – for example the God Apollo for 4th Century B.C. Greeks
– or to the human species as a whole – for example the sun’s ‘going
down’ or ‘coming up’ – we are dealing with some entity being placed
in a false position in the order of existential relativity, and I call this a
‘metaphysical illusion’ and its objective correlate a metaphysical ‘phan-
tom’. This notion can also be illustrated by considering the way a post-
Copernican vis-à-vis a pre-Copernican scientist treats the experience
of the sun going down behind the horizon. The post-Copernican re-
gards it as a ‘phantom’, whereas in the Middle Ages it was taken for an
event occurring in absolute reality. Furthermore, an adherent of the
relativity theory of our times regards time as a ‘phantom’ – as he does
constant mass or absolutely constant life forces – whereas Galileo and
Newton took it for a real measure of simultaneity.
The following are some basic principles for establishing existential
relativity.
1. The range of that which a knowing subject has knowledge of –
because knowledge is a relationship between beings – is dependent on
the condition of the subject. The existential status and the nature of
the subject determines knowledge and knowledgeability – and con-
sciousness – and not the other way round.
2. If a known object A is existentially relative on a knowing subject
S, then a knowledge – and a knowledge-source for this knowledge –
must also be present for the condition of the object S, and, moreover,
a sort of knowledge, whose subject S, and whose object A, are not on
the same level of existential relativity as A is to S. Anyone who, like
Kant, claims that there are objects which are existentially relative to a
form of thinking and form of intuition in an intellectual organisation,
for example, man, must show that there is a knowledge and a source
of knowledge for these forms, i.e. a source of knowledge whose objects
are not existentially relative on these forms.
3. If it can be shown that there is a genuinely irreducible essence of
a real or irreal object, then the accidental being-so of something must
correspond to its appropriate essence at any stage of its existence, even
if this is unrecognized or unrecognisable. For phantasy can produce
any number of accidental fictions with any number of combinations,
but never produce a genuine essence.
4. To negate something that has not been experienced so far – wheth-
er perceived or simply conjectured – but yet is an existent example of
an already shown genuine essence, occurs only if it can be positively
shown that the existence of the relevant thing is experiencable and has
already been experienced. On the other hand, if an existing example is
inexperienceable, even if, as above, it concerns an already shown genu-
ine essence, then it cannot be falsified. The principle behind this is
that to each extant thing there belongs a so-being and to all so-beings
which are genuine essences there belongs an existent version.
5. Existential relativity and metaphysical illusions and phantoms oc-
cur in each sphere of being and possible knowledge: e.g. in the sphere
of ecstatic knowledge as well as in the sphere of consciousness – i.e.
reflective knowledge; in the sphere of the inner world – i.e. the psychic
– as well as the external world – i.e. the physical; in the sphere of the
psycho-physically neutral givenness of life as well as in the spheres of
self-knowledge and knowledge of others.
6. The only definitely unknowable region of matters is the non-ob-
jectifiable being of the acts and the persons, because participation of
another sort to that which applies in the case of knowledge belongs
here. On the other hand there can occur any kind of being-so of an
extant entity at all levels of existential relativity, even in the level of
absolute existence, though admittedly in this case the adequation of
possible knowledge available to a creature gets less and less the closer
the object is to the absolute level. For example, we have no idiographic
knowledge of the stars as we do the geography of the earth nor of the
moon in the moon sciences, even though such knowledge is in itself
quite possible.
7. All objects and groups of such which are not existentially relative
on a human being as a member of a species, but which are relative
to an individual creature’s unique life – for example, an hallucinated
object – cannot be the foundation of a known, generally valid judge-
ment – true or false. The same caveat applies to knowledge which has
its objects in the absolute sphere, but which is restricted to a handful
of people of exceptional nature – for example, geniuses – or of a par-
ticular ethical constitution or with a particular technical know-how. In
fact, all eventual knowledge which has to do with the free opening-up
of a person does not necessarily allow a generally valid judgement to
be made about it. This follows because knowledge depends on the na-
ture of the person who knows, and knowledge about absolute things,
in particular, requires the knower to be at least in tune with an abso-
lutely existing subject. Because the latter sort of knower is so rare, and
cannot be an object himself, each piece of knowledge about absolute
things must be an approximation, and each person who even achieves
this will have a different knowledge from another such person. Only
God, or ‘the Person of Persons’, can actually know the absolute being
of the world.
8. In order to establish existential relativity, the carriers of knowl-
edge must be set in place, but only insofar as they allow essential ideas
to be determined. For example, in order to determine existential rela-
tivity with regard to human beings, it is not necessary that the human
being be an earth-bound anatomical and physiological creation of this
or that type, but only set in place as an essential specimen of a human
being, i.e. a finite entity with vitality and an embodied life, endowed
with reason and mind with their own essential attribution, in contrast
to that which constitutes animality or ‘plantness’, or in contrast to God,
or to entities between God and man, such as angels and demons.
9. Existence precedes, in the order of things, the efficacy of what
is an existing thing, i.e. the extant, insofar as it is real or efficacious.
Although the existential relativity of an object is an existing fact, and
is even ascertainable – for whatever objects of intention one wishes
– before and independently of each causal connection between exist-
ing objects and a real carrier of knowledge, nevertheless each knowing
participation by a real subject in the nature of an existing object must
be procured in a special and unique way, and procured through an ef-
fective and causal connection with the subject, and both knower and
known must lie on the same level of existence. Therefore, it is quite
clear, for example, that for the human being, insofar as he or she is
embodied life, only those bodies can be given in knowledge which
have an effect, directly or indirectly, on this embodied life. And it is
equally clear that each piece of knowledge about objects, whose pos-
sible givenness again assumes knowledge of bodies, likewise can only
be given under the general condition that the human being, as a speci-
men of embodied life, is part of the universal mechanism of things –
i.e. shares the same set of chemical, physical and mechanical processes
as the entity it will come to know.
Subdivisions of Knowledge
Wissen, Kennen, Erkennen, Begreifen, Erklären,
Verstehen, Deuten, Beschreiben, Klassifizieren
Kennen [knowing] is knowledge about the accidental being-so of
something [zufälliges Sosein] and Erkennen [cognition] is knowledge
about something as a something.
1. Self-givenness and evidence

The ideal end-point, which the highest form of knowledge – cogni-
tion – can in principle achieve, though in fact almost never achieves,
or only achieves in the case of the simplest objects of inner and outer
intuition or only in the most elevated moments of mental exertions,
would be the self-givenness of the entire nature of what some object
is. It would form the insuperable maximum and therefore the ultimate
and highest measure of each and every knowledge and cognition. A
minimum on the same scale would be a clear-cut sign of something,
for example the proper name of a person. Many philosophers deny
that this radical goal is feasible. Some of these would assert that it
even lies in the essence of cognition that the cognitive contents and the
actual contents of an entity itself are always of two different sorts and
remain different, and that all cognition is a symbol of something else.
Others of this group would deny it specifically for human cognition.
The purest and most definite denial of the possibility of this goal of
cognition can be found in Spinoza’s Ethics, indeed even for the divine
Substance itself.
He distinguished: an ‘intuitive cognition’, when the mind had its ob-
ject completely and enjoyed it; discursive cognition through mediated
thought; and cognition through hearsay. In intellectual love of God
there takes place according to his teaching such a particular sort of
identification of human mind with the divine substance that both are
one and the same. He denies all so-called cognitive criteria and truth
for this level, and expresses his famous words on the matter thus:
‘verum signum sui ipsius et falsi’ – truth is a sign of itself and falsehood.
This means that there is self-luminosity and self-illumination between
them [i.e. the knower and the known] in the grasping of knowledge of
given objects, and it no longer makes any sense to ask by what criteri-
on this arises. The same view can also be found among recent philoso-
phers – Husserl in Logical Investigation, Brentano and his School; and
in Augustine and the mystics. I myself started out from this position.
Because the self-givenness still belongs to the actual ontic order of
things, then for there to be any representation of this, two additional
interposed concepts are necessary: the illumination of the object in
the mind, and our immediate knowledge about this illumination – so-
called evidence. These two should not be confused. The illumination
starts out from the object. It shines forth its very whatness [Er scheint
sein Was in ihm] to reveal an appearing out of its hiddenness – as
Heidegger wrote about with his notion of aletheuein, – to become it-
self an ens intentionale, in the sphere of truth. Evidence, on the other
hand, is the immediate grasping of this illumination and truth. This
entire notion has without doubt an important ontological presupposi-
tion. An object or state of affairs can only present itself to the mind,
if, at the very least, what it is is part of something that is superior to
all human knowledge – an ‘all-knowledge’, as it were – which human
knowledge partly embraces. This knowledge, or, figuratively speaking,
this ‘knowledge light’ [Wissenslicht], is then that very enlightening of
the self-givenness of an object in the human mind and the conscious-
ness thereof which is its precise whatness. Spinoza and Augustine
simply assume this. In all evidential cognition, in all ‘Aha-cognition’,
which denotes a clear solution to some problem, the human knower is
at the very least identical in its carrying out of this act with the carry-
ing out of the same act by the Ens a se, which is also a knower.
In no case can the actual existence of something be illuminated,
a matter, which, according to our opinion, is not only absolutely ir-
rational but even trans-intelligible. To ascribe to the object itself an
illumination would be nebulous mysticism, and nonsensical without
this assumption of an overriding universal mind, whose knowledge
content is the essence of the object. The object as an existing entity has
no little lamp burning in itself which could illuminate what it is. The
identifiability of a human mind with the mind of the Ens a se is pre-
supposed in all talk, by Hegel and Fichte, for example, of an identity
of thought and being.
What then is evidence? Evidence is the experience of that, which in
everyday language is called an ‘insight’, through which a cognition and
thought of a new, so far unknown, state of affairs suddenly becomes
this very state of affairs, a process which we call insightful. Aha, now
it becomes clear; now something reveals itself as a ‘Some-thing’, which
exists independently of us. The fog clears; the deception is uncovered.
Or: I previously had a sign, instructions, as it were, about some mat-
ter, in symbolic form, whereas now it appears out in the open itself,
and I now have it itself. Put this way we have merely characterized
the psychological descriptive structure of the experience of evidence.
The question is: a) What is the actual evidence? and b) Under which
conditions does it arise?
What evidence is not is the following. First, it is nothing to do with
anything of the same name which demeans the real notion and makes
evidence some ridiculous romantic and arbitrary power of the mind.
Nor is it a more serious version of this, a view held by many outstand-
ing thinkers – Schlick, Cohen, Natorp, Hartmann, Leibniz, Kant – to
the effect that evidence is an isolated and qualitatively distinct psychic
experience, to which one is finely attuned in a reflective state of self-
observation, and which, when it comes, encases a thought or an intu-
ition with nothing less than the truth. A further view on the matter
is to portray evidence as a qualitatively distinct feeling, the so-called
‘evidence-feeling’. A sign of the error involved here is that no-one can
characterize it in any other way than to say that the feeling X is the
actual evidence, which merely presupposes what one is trying to deter-
mine. Furthermore, evidence is not, as William James stated, an inner
bell. Nor is it to be confused with subjective, personal certainty, which
can accompany even the wildest superstitions. We know through the
experimental investigations of J.E. Műller that, for example, in the case
of memory, an objectively false memory can be held with a maximum
of subjective certainty. Certainty is a measure of truthfulness, not
of cognition and truth. Finally, evidence is never given in a reflective
state; it is only when cognition and thought are turned to the matter
in question, and only when these two are ‘productive’, that evidence
arises. Naturally, the opponents of the view that evidence is a measure
or sub-division of cognition have made light of this.
From a positive perspective evidence consists of the following. It is
an immediate coincidence – or identification-experience – set up by
productive thinking and cognition between intended states of affairs
and objects, always involving a plurality of cognitive acts, and directed
at one and the same object which is independent of these acts. The
acts in question can be: intuitive acts among themselves e.g. seeing and
hearing the same thing, which then reciprocally testifies to it among
sensory functions; different acts of thinking among themselves, i.e. an
act of grasping something’s meaning and an act grasping something’s
relationship; they can be an act of intuition and an act of thinking; and
finally there can be apriori knowledge – intuitive or rational – coupled
with an aposteriori knowledge, which is the most important case. In
short, we can never call something evidence that only occurs in an iso-
lated act – e.g. a perception or representation of a real surface, or if I
simply think of the number 2 or the sun. Moreover, if there is no inde-
pendent realm of meaning there is no evidence either. This means that
an ideal structure of thought which we can make judgements about
cannot by itself provide evidence of anything. For example, an ‘evident’
memory is only given in the co-incidence of several rays of memory,
or, if in the course of perception, I come across the same being-so of
something that I hitherto only remembered. Other examples of evi-
dence are if several sensory functions – e.g. seeing, hearing, touch-
ing – testify reciprocally to the same object; or if I actually gaze on
something which hitherto I had only thought about or symbolically
represented.
Evidence is therefore always the experience of a coming together of
several different and mutually independent intentional acts – in re-
spect of what the intended act focuses on – on the same object. It is not
therefore an established index of consciousness in a mind reflecting on
itself, but a relationship experience of acts, and in fact an identifica-
tion- and coincidence-experience of the contents of these acts on the
same being-so of the entity.
And how does evidence relate to self-givenness and illumination?
Here we find that an object illuminates its being-so in the mind of a
knower to the same extent that the knower has the evidence-experi-
ence of the co-incidence of intuition with thought, or of apriori form
and structure with the aposteriori matter of fact – whether sensually
or intuitively gained. The object reveals itself in the course of these
conjunction-experiences, and enters the mind as a growing adequa-
tion of what it is as a result of such experiences. What the object is in
itself does not break down into a pictorial entity and a thought form
– as Aristotle considered was the case – but it is the cognitive acts –
thought and intuition, apriori and aposteriori – which do the breaking
up into these mental elements. Then the co-incidence [or recombina-
tion] reveals what the object is, in a growing fashion.
All this assumes two underlying issues: a) that we have an original
knowledge [Urwissen] of all these matters, such that all our intentional
acts pertain to one and the same world and bring forth the same en-
tities into objects – i.e. there is a unity of being; and b) that all our
intentional acts, however varied they may be, illuminate one and the
91
same act of knowledge. Schematically this is as follows:
seeing, hearing
remembering, perceiving one

Knowledge act
entity
thinking
etc.
3
On The Constitution of the
Human Being
Developmental Stages of the Soul
W
estern ideas about the qualitative stages inherent in a liv-
ing soul have undergone considerable changes from the
time of Plato and Aristotle up to the present day. This
applies equally to the most primitive properties of soul in the lowest
creatures as well as to the highest processes and acts of the human
mind – as in a genius, or, even beyond, as in God, or, even beyond that.
If this is true for the range of living souls encountered, it applies even
more so to the sequence of stages within a living creature to which we
give the name ‘development’.
We are setting ourselves two aims in the following account. First, we
shall briefly describe the actual historical notions about these matters,
as they appear in Western philosophy and science. Secondly, we shall
draw attention to relevant contemporary findings within the sciences,
although we shall put all this in the context of certain dominant philo-
sophical ideas.
Theories about the various stages that a living soul can achieve, and
those concerning the actual development of these within a living crea-
ture, both touch on numerous disciplines of knowledge. We shall struc-
ture the discussion of both sets of questions according to the following
scheme. First, we shall consider the sorts of living creatures to which
we can attribute an inner way of being and set of events which fulfil cri
teria for a soul. We shall review, for example, plants, animals, humans,
angels, devils and God, in this respect, and take a special look at the
peculiarity of humans, and consider the possibility of an Űbermensch.
Secondly, we shall examine the status of certain well-defined functions
of soul and mind to see whether they capture the essence of the matter.
Such functions include sensation, perception, representation, memory
and recollection, thinking, instinct, higher and lower emotional func-
tions and acts, reflexes, drive impulses, conscious aims, expression,
and mental willing and choice. Thirdly, we shall survey complex acts
and activities pertaining to the soul and mind, such as speech and lan-
guage, ethical and aesthetic valuations, conscience, questions of taste,
and the construction of tools and artistic productions; and how these
relate to instinct, associative memory, habit and intelligence. Finally,
there are the achievements and works of a living creature to consider,
whether possessed of soul or mind. The last of these matters are not
in themselves capable of being inwardly displayed to the creature it-
self, or even re-experienced or understood by it. They are nevertheless
established, meaningful, goal-orientated activities. These stretch from
animal nest-building to human civilization and culture, from its very
beginning to its blossoming in our own age. Allied to this is the ques-
tion of whether we humans ourselves, on our own, have built up the
entire world structure in the above sense as creative achievement and
work, or whether we owe it to some sort of super-human mind – God
– or some other sort of meaningful and goal-directed effective agent
to which we belong – call it God, ‘pan-reason’, ‘pan-life’, the ‘world soul’,
or whatever. In any case we cannot bring up the issue of this question
with the agent itself, as we have no direct intuitive or experiential con-
tact with this powerful being in the sense of any religious experience
of it. Of particular interest in this whole area is how certain psychic
and mental functions – whether they be called instinct, intelligence,
ideation, conscience, or something else – ended up as they are, from
the achievements and actions and works of animals, and whether the
latter could be the rudimentary origins of the higher stages of soul
and mind.
This method, which at the very most only gives us a foretaste of the
factual matters at issue here, is anyway the hardest to carry through,
and is fraught with potential errors and false turnings. Nevertheless, it
does raise the following questions.
1. First of all, we need to consider what right we have to conclude
that certain actions, achievements, and works in animals, are compa-
rable to those we imagine to be precursors of the human soul or mind.
In the case of certain animal achievements it does seem that they have
been carried out in an intelligent way: that is, a solution to some prob-
lem is reached without any previous experience of it or without the
availability of a model to copy. In such cases either one invokes an
acquired reflex, or one has to admit some completely different basis
3 3 On the Constitution of the Human Being 131
for the behaviour: consider cats always landing on their feet, or wasps
which can paralyse their victim without killing it.
2. A second problem in the method we are considering is whether it
is justified to assume that just because one subject has on the face of
it achieved more in the way of growth, perfection, and differentiation
of his or her works and actions, than another subject, whose achieve-
ments appear more modest, then this means that the former is in pos-
session of superior soul or mental functions. Whether the average
human being in present-day Europe has a greater understanding of
things, or more refined logical faculties, or a more sophisticated moral
sense from birth onwards, than say an ancient Greek such as Aristotle,
is arguable. Spencer, for example, believes it is so, whereas Weismann
demurs. Or, are there genuine differences in talents, between, say, the
black and white races, as Boas maintains, or is it simply a question of
acceleration and slowing up of various aspects of their respective de-
velopments? Or, further, what about the issue of how a child learns to
stand and walk? Some say that it comes about through a gradual accu-
mulation of experiences concerning the various movements of its feet
and legs. Others say that it is a natural consequence of a certain stage
in the development of its nervous system, and has nothing to do with
the assimilation of large amounts of experience. Recently, the latter
explanation has been shown to be more plausible. In fact, all achieve-
ments and works of a purely cumulative nature, which come about
through a quantitative growth of associations concerning the same
physical function, cannot be regarded as evidence for the evolution of
the soul itself – i.e. that they are a sign that a completely new function
has arisen. This means, however, that we must already possess the es-
sential concepts and ideas for any possible functions of soul or mind
to emerge, and that we must have found examples of them in external
works and achievements of various degrees of perfection in order that
the achieving subject in question can organise their new functions. We
cannot simply acquire a completely different sort of function de novo
and without help, but only in the following circumstances:
a) if the content and value of the performance or work are essentially
different from those of the performance or work with which they are
being compared – i.e. there must be nothing gradual about it, e.g. the
shift from instinct to intelligence, or the example of monkeys throwing
stones to some end;
b) if the mere accumulation of experiences can be treated as if it
were switched off; and
c) if the achievement in question is one which deviates markedly
[sprunghaft und diskontinuierlich] from its comparable predecessor in
contrast to the simple accumulation of experiences which will only
lead to a mild improvement in performance.
3. Finally, this method we are tracing has to contend with yet more
difficulties. If we consider nest-building, or a chimpanzee’s ability to
reach down a fruit from a tree with a stick, or even Japanese Shinto-
temple construction, what we come up against is that the only way we
can give sense to these is by means of a sort of ‘second-hand experi-
ence’ [Nacherleben], or by transporting ourselves in imagination into
the mind or soul of the creator of the work [Miterleben] or through
so-called empathy [Einfűhlung]. Any success in such attempts dimin-
ishes the more our own state of soul and mind diverges from the state
we are intending to get to know and understand. In the case of plants
and lower animals, and already in children and primitive people, and,
further, even in our own racially heterogeneous culture and civiliza-
tion, this subjective understanding of another is particularly difficult.
A source of ever-present deception is our tendency to read into what-
ever we want to understand our own world-picture, sorts of values and
soul-functions. Illustrations of all this include: the actual approxima-
tion of a child’s perception and representation as being more separate
than they really are, as they are so in adults; the primitive person’s fear
of nature being projected on to lions and tigers, for example, making
them more dangerous than they really are; and the ‘animistic’ world-
view in general as an investment of all things with the valence – life
– actually attached to our soul functions.
A sceptical approach to all such matters should not go so far as to
dispense with the relevance of our knowledge of our mental or soul
functions and their development, although the American school of
behaviour psychology does move in that direction. Admittedly, this
direction would be justified if all understanding rested on empirically
derived analogous conclusions – i.e. assuming ourselves as the norm.
In actual fact, however, we grasp the meaning of events in another soul
in a broad and immediate fashion by way of a symbolic apprehen-
sion of its expressive appearances and actions. The execution of this
is completely unrelated to how we experience our self, and is rather
based on our construction of a universal grammar and pantomime of
expressions.
There is still much truth today in Aristotle’s notion that the human
soul is in certain respects all there is – i.e. a microcosm. At the very
least, every living entity carries within itself a functional version of a
soul, even if in some cases it is in a very rudimentary form, as in plants
and animals. The portion in plants is what we call ‘vegetative life force”
[vegetativer Drang], and in animals ‘instinct’. On the other hand, the
highest examples of human beings – saints, geniuses – also possess
soul-functions, which we can only get an inkling of through glimpsing
their ideas, coming up with analogies, or engaging in thoughts our-
selves touching on the infinite and the absolute. The actual range of
the functions in the divine or semi-divine entities mentioned we can
hardly imagine, but they include an intuitive knowledge of both past
and future. The human soul can equally well descend to the level found
in plants, animals, children and primitive people. It can, in fantasy,
vault across the boundaries of race and historically distant and strange
cultures. It can rise up to the level of the superhuman mind, and, to
a certain extent, even to God’s. As a microcosm of all potentialities of
the soul, though subject to all the complicated casual actualities of the
matter, it is, in essence and in principle, in tune with the entire variety
of souls and minds.
Surveying the developmental theories put forward during the his-
tory of philosophy, we can identify four main types:
1. Aristotle’s timeless system;
2. Plotinus’ theory of emanation, Descartes’ way of posing the prob-
lem of thinking and Leibniz’ notion of a monad;
3. the theories of Lamarck, Darwin, Spencer and Wundt; and
4. Bergson’s vitalist metaphysics.
There is much truth buried in each of these theories, but, the way
the theory is put, it is hidden. Our own theory is only a new sort of
synthesis of the theory, current in Ancient Times and in the Middle
Ages, of a hierarchy of soul-containing organisms and personal minds,
along with their empirically and mutually underivable essential dif-
ferences, coupled with the Modern theory of a continuous, temporal
and empirically demonstrable development in fortuitously occurring
genera and species of creatures. Our theory puts forward a plausible
explanation of the whole issue.
The basic thought behind this synthesis is as follows. In all con-
tinuous and temporal physical and psychic transition states – which
do occur – there emerges, in definite and distinctive places, and in
a relatively small number of cases in question, a qualitative shift [or
quantum leap] such that there is a novel creation of psychic or mental
functions, and this itself involves an immediate return to the origins
of the world and its two basic attributes – mind and pan-life [Alleben].
Or, in other words, during the continuous empirical development of
the psychophysical organism, there is uncovered over time a realm of
essential forms and ideal types of psychic and mental structures, which
in themselves are discrete in essence, and which are displayed in front
of the empirico-temporal development, as ideals in the mind of God,
but are at the disposal of the pan-life [Alleben] in the course of its ac-
tivity. Such essential dispositions would be ‘plantness’ or ‘animality’. In
itself the perfected entity precedes the imperfect in the order of things
– the theory of the Ancients and those of the Middle Ages thereby
supported – but ‘for us’ the perfection or completeness of matters only
reveals itself in the opposite direction, wherein an imperfect leads to a
perfect, or a simple specimen progresses to a differentiated one. In this
way, the Scholastic term causae occasionalis is seen to cover an original
effect whereby ever new psychic and mental forces are unleashed.
From all this our method of setting out the ideal systematised array
of essences of the psychic and mental stages and centres seems to be
the most correct. For example, we presume the existence of tropisms
and a sensitive life force [Gefűhlsdrang], then instinct, then associative
memory, intelligence, and finally idea formation, on the basis of the
stages of the various sorts of elements of soul and mind and their con-
nections. Then comes the question: Under what particular circum-
stances – what causae occasionalis – of the empirical, ongoing, develop-
mental interconnections do these essential forms actually fit best?
We are convinced that even the biological developmental theory,
even if it is based on a study of actual organisms, cannot get by with-
out a theory of discrete shifts in stages, in which the complete organi-
sation undergoes an alteration – as in mutation – and therefore we
are in complete opposition to any theory which tries to explain the
same process in terms of a quantitative accumulation of simple adap-
tations of a single organ in a hereditary manner – whether within an
individual, as Lamarck and Wundt thought, or through some external
environmental agency, as Weismann and the neo-Darwinians think. It
is rather only explicable in terms of a creative act of the unified world
process, which allows a new thought to be realized through its eternal
life-force [Lebensdrang].
A Revolution in Human Beings.

The Human Mind
It is hard to be a human being. The animal’s psychic life, by virtue of
their soul, is played out in their environmental milieu, and the achieve-
ments which the higher vertebrates are capable of, touched on in the
last section, have been until recently completely underestimated. The
animal possesses not only instinct, which can be put down neither
to reflexes nor tropisms nor to hereditary habituation, and which oc-
curs to a greater extent than in humans – consider insects and herd
animals. It also has the ability to learn through its associative memory,
and, to some extent, hands on what it has learnt to its offspring. Even
this is not all. It also possesses the beginnings of a mediated referen-
tial thought activity, by means of which the relationships of things are
classified in terms of identity, similarity, analogy, and means-to-an-end
references. It can even, to a degree, take an overview of a situation, and,
in the sphere of what is intuitively present, appreciate simple relation-
ships between matters, such as cause and effect, means-to-an-end, and
appropriate ways of directing itself. It can then use all this knowledge
in a free combination of ideas to serve its practical concerns. Further-
more, it possesses a vague sense of general representations. It can set
up anticipatory schemata, whose content it can then intuit in diverse
situations, even to the extent of recognizing recurring themes – i.e.
behaving against its instinct. The only points at which it fails in these
sorts of endeavours are when the task involves consolidating a general
notion in the form of an independent object of thought, or when it is
required to distinguish between a general category of something and
an individual something, and particularly so when it comes to compar-
ing different members of the same abstract category. In other words,
the representative functions which underpin language, number and
quantity are lacking.
What it can do, however, allows it to communicate with its peers.
It has humanly analogous, expressive movements of joy, sorrow, cu-
riosity, jealousy and tenderness, and even the beginnings of humour.
It experiences anxiety and the rudiments of a higher fear. It shows
gratitude – for its food, for example – and there are stubbornness,
defiance, forgiveness over punishment, gift-giving propensities in the
way of offering food to other animals, and vengeful desires brought
about through anger or annoyance. It can set aside its vengeance,
co-experience feelings and affects arising within the herd, and even
co-experience such with humans through contagion and empathy.
It can have a sense of clothing and even the beginnings of a need to
adorn itself. There is the start of tool construction, and the distinc-
tion between a valuation of one pleasure versus another. Authority,
leadership, friendship, and various sorts of social bonds can be found,
including specialization of tasks within these. Animals, moreover, do
not simply display the character of their species, as Schopenhauer
thought, but have the seeds of individual characters. With respect to
their sensory acuity, many animals are actually much superior to hu-
mans, and it is only their overview of broader spatio-temporal regions
and their attention to distance which can be deemed impoverished
relative to humans here. Nevertheless, all in all, their perceptual abili-
ties are very similar to humans. For instance, the ability to apprehend
size, colour-constancy, and the relationship of sensory appearances to
a ‘thing’ or an ‘event’, are the same. An animal’s perceptual field is less
tightly structured, but it has the same set-up for projecting meaningful
forms out of the chaotic mass of sensations. It avails itself of memory,
reproduction and associative conscious representations. There is also
a certain predilection for beautiful as opposed to ugly partners in its
sexual selections. The objective quality of ‘beauty’, which fills the living
world in the form of patterns, plumage, song and symmetrical colours,
not only corresponds to the function of preference for beauty rather
than ugliness, but is in a far-reaching way exactly the same beauty for
the animal as it is for us. The peacock strutting for its mate gives us
pleasure too.
If, as I have endeavoured to show, all the usual distinctions between
human being and animal – the animal has instinct but the human be-
ing intelligence, the animal has no concepts, no notion of relationships,
no altruism, etc. – are invalid, how do we then explain the equally ob-
vious and massive difference between humans and animals?
The Revolution
There are three things in which the difference between human being
and animal cannot lie.
1. First, it cannot be attributed to some detail of their anatomical
make-up: for example, mobile thumbs, a larynx, or a particular jaw
structure; the last two being alleged explanations for the ability to pro-
duce sound of such variety that it gives rise to speech, and, following
on this, thought. Nor can it lie in the human’s erect posture. There
must surely be something simple, pervasive and fundamental, which
separates human and animal.
2. Nor can the difference be a purely bodily or vital matter, concern-
ing their external structure or the internal make-up of their soul. This
follows because the human being, in terms of its body and soul, dif-
fers only in degree from the animal, for example even in the size of its
forehead. It has the same sensory acuity, perceptual awareness, affects,
drives, sorrows, representational capacity and adaptational opportuni-
ties towards its environment.
3. It cannot, furthermore, merely consist of a quantitative increase in
any characteristic of the animal soul, as positivism and Spencer teach;
nor in some richer mediated thinking power – i.e. it is not simply su-
perior technical intelligence; nor is it a consequence of a richer affec-
tive life or range of expressions. Assuming, as I do, that the human
being is an empirical earth-bound thing – whether homogeneous as to
its phylogenetic origin or heterogeneous in this respect, the latter be-
ing more probable – and that it is something which has escaped from
its animal origins by way of a discrete leap, then, given the fact that its
nervous system and brain are not greatly different from those of higher
primates, in order to explain the exceptional place in the universe that
we find ourselves in, which is just high enough to release us from the
environmental constraints which characterize an animal – however
this comes about, whether we are a newly created entity or whether
we have effected a breakthrough from vital soul to a completely differ-
ent sort of ‘acts’ rather than functions of the soul and which belong to
what we call mind – then no amount of scientific observations about
the human being can ever reveal its true nature or its true unity. The
difference between human and animals must therefore be of a ‘supra-
vital’ order, and cannot be reduced to any obvious correlation with
anything to do with the nervous system.
Before we ask ourselves what mind is, what a person is, what this
human condition of being rooted in the mind is – i.e. to have ones
core being in a mental world and its values – and what the specific
mental laws actually are, we need to consider the following. In a hu-
man being there is not simply a quantitative developmental increase in
the same psychical agency which we find in animals. The human being
is not just a complicated animal or a cleverer animal. What has hap-
pened at the root of the matter is a complete about-turn, a revolution
[Umschwung], or, if you wish, an inversion of the basic relationship
which obtains between the organic life of the entity and its mental or-
der. Moreover, this turn-around [Umschwung] or this inversion, in re-
spect of the metaphysical act which renders it viable, is the very thing,
which, taken in a non-temporal and non-empirical sense, is what the
coming-to-be of a human being actually is.
What does this radical shift [Umschwung] in a living entity consist
in ? In short, it consists in the consciousness, which in animals serves
the exigencies of life, now becoming the master of that life; it consists
in the means, whereby an animal’s life is maintained and promoted,
now becoming its own self-perpetuating goal or end; it consists in
what, in animals and plants must be a parallel process to the actual liv-
ing process [latent as to its eventual role], being raised up above these
very life processes, to become an essential part of mind [i.e. making
what was latent now overt], and then treating this organic life that it
has left behind – with all its tendencies, drives and needs – as auto-
matically serving itself – mind – and the will of its – mind’s – disin-
terested aims and values. In a similar way to how the life-centre and
the animal psyche concentrates the physical and chemical forces which
surround it in a temporal fashion to foster its – the life-centre’s or
animal psyche’s – aims, so the mental soul – the mind – directs and
steers the living agent [life-centre, animal psyche] to promote its – the
mind’s – goals.
What is at stake here, in the coming-to-be of a human being, is noth-
ing less than a cosmic or even a metacosmic revolution [Revolutio]. The
earth-bound human being is only a testament to, or case history of, all
this, an example thereof. It testifies to this: the human being as an idea
is the point, phase or place in the cosmos through which all forms of
families, species or sorts of unfolding specimens of life lose their own
indeterminate control over themselves, and simply serve an overriding
principle, which we call mind, for which, and for whose actuality, aims
and value-setting, the entire variety of the organic world has opened
up a gap or a thoroughfare. This means that there is a three-fold cau-
sality in play and a three-fold parallelism: natural forces – life agency
– mind. Looking at it another way, mind, through its acts, allows the
appearance of a form of being and coming-to-be whose common de-
nominator is that it is ‘supramaterial’ [űbermaterielle] and ‘supranatural’
[űbernaturdynamische] – i.e. a new and higher version of the matters of
fact and natural dynamics of becoming and being in the vital sphere.
This new version is freed from its organic links, and the mental acts
which bring out its appearance now turn their allegiance to building
up a consciousness of God. The whole new situation is one whereby
a new realm of evaluation springs up, and one which we call ‘culture’,
leaving the sorts of knowledge and feelings appropriate to a living crea-
ture behind. The supravital realm’s concerns are entirely to do with
ideas and values relevant to a world where consciousness of the self
and God are the determining aims, and the essential nature of things
is the content it works with, and both are nothing to do with adapta-
tion to nature or fortuitous inductive experiences derived from this.
The subject is now someone who not only knows nature, but knows
what determines it. The entire situation is no longer that of some sub-
jective agency emerging out of whatever nature lets come-to-be, nor of
a subjective agent finding itself in whatever corner of the world that
it happens to have been born and brought up in. It is now a situation
where the agent is in a position to withdraw from such chance contin-
gencies, and survey the wider arena of values and goals which have al-
ready been gathered up by humans concerning the coming-to-be and
the having-been of the world from the very beginning.
If we focus more closely on the implications of this about-turn,
whose final outcome is the genius, then we can see that animals’ per-
ception, representation, instinct, rudimentary intelligence, and knowl-
edge of various sorts, are all constrained by what is useful or harmful,
although they do not know that they are constrained in this way. The
boundaries of its environment are like thick walls which close it off
from the breadth and height of the universe. On the other hand, a hu-
man being has world. It even knows that there is a world beyond the
walls which it knows, and which it cannot know. No animal knows
anything about the stars and the laws which govern them, nor indeed
about mathematics, physics, science and metaphysics. It is first among
human beings that there arises a will to know. It is first among them
also that any notion of truth, or a universe, or an ordered whole, springs
up, and, along with this, a clear awareness that its sensory functions
only give it an inadequate, miniscule and illusory version of all there is.
The human cannot even recognise the boundaries and confines of its
sense of things with its sensory apparatus alone, but can only do this
with its reasoning faculty. It steps out from the confines of its animal
environment, recognizing this very step, into the breadth and distance
of the world.
There can only be proper knowledge and truth on the part of a hu-
man being if there is an agency within it which can grasp that things in
the world are such-and-such [Sosein], and whose activity is indepen-
dent from its specific nervous and sensory organization. With these
criteria met, a sphere is available for intuiting the basic phenomena,
and for thinking ideas. It is only in this way that the human being can
overcome the bounds of its sensory organization, just like the scientist
or historian who does just that every day. The human being can even
grasp and recognize matters which lie in some sphere, which are in fact
only relative to his specific organisation, yet distinguish what is rela-
tive about them from what is absolute. The agency which can do this is
not relative to the human organism [i.e. it is extra-human].
The same goes for the ideas of what is good, beautiful and right,
from which grow great works, comprehensive systems of morality,
art and legal systems, all of which place life at their service, and all
of which, as elements of civilization and its technological framework,
seek to subjugate life, and consign it to the status of a substructure of
their own self-enhancing existence.
It is not critical to my argument whether individual aesthetic values,
moral values, or simple feelings of what is right and wrong, do or do
not occur here and there in the life and world of animals. What is
decisive is that they only occur, in things or actions, as carriers of val-
ues which are meaningful for the preservation and promotion of the
animal’s life. The animal has desire, or lack of it, in the presence of the
beautiful, as Darwin showed, but it neither freely produces beautiful
things, nor does it show any sign of enjoying them – as Lotze showed.
It has an emotional solidarity with the herd, and can contagiously take
on the emotional state of others. But it has no free scope for compas-
sion, and no spiritual [geistige] love and kindness against, or indepen-
dently of, its own vital interests; only sexual appetite and tenderness
belong to the animal in this respect. It has anxiety, and maybe fear at
what concerns it now, but no fear of death, and no sense of respect. It
remembers its punishment, and what it has been frightened of, but
has no sense of remorse. It hesitates if it comes up against something
unfamiliar, such as a mirror image of itself, but has no sense of aston-
ishment and no admiration. An animal experiences pain and desire,
but has no notion of a suffering which actually tolerates this for some
higher ideal, as in martyrdom, let alone an acknowledgement that
some people enjoy suffering. Even less has the animal a notion that
life is a trial. The animal occasionally chooses perhaps between one or
other item within its sphere of vital interests, but there is no question
of an objective and definite preferential ordering of values and goods.
It is a question of the animal’s vacillating between one thing and an-
other, rather than an actual choosing.
The human being comes to life again as a mental and spiritual per-
son – in the form of his or her mental and spiritual individual self-
consciousness. In this form it is indivisible, individualized, indepen-
dent, actual, supra-temporal, and supra-spatial. In this form, too, it
possesses its life, which means that it freely steers it, and is able to
control it within definite limits. Furthermore, it, the mental agent, is
able to bring the inner play of the automatic goings-on of life – drive
impulses, representations – to a state of objectivity, and, according to
its own supravital aims, enables it, as if from the outside, to steer these
and utilise them. By contrast, the animal has only a functional, divis-
ible, vital soul-centre and corresponding consciousness of itself, the
last of these reliant only on the continuity of its memory. It is first indi-
vidualized through the chemical and physical substances and energies
which make up its body. The plant is probably only momentarily and
discontinuously in charge of its movements, and is a disunited col-
lection of sensitive life forces [Dranggefűhl]. It has no consciousness,
and no sensations of a sort which can report back its state and move-
ments to some central place which one could call a ‘self ’. It has no life
of the sort that an animal and human have. In humans the vital soul is
relatively isolated, and only shows through in dreams, hypnosis, mass
contagious behaviour, sexual intercourse, and, in the child, in its first
few months.
What is free and active about the act centre of the person is by no
means arbitrary, but refers to its conforming to rules and determina-
tions of its timeless individual nature, whose modus vivendi is to have
an effect or not to have an effect on the life-centre, and never to be a
passive recipient of what the life-centre might have to pass on. This
results in the nature of the person’s only being revealed slowly in the
course of its [subordinate partner’s] empirical vital development [- i.e.
it, the person, is revealed as the exhibition of what it, the person, lets
appear of what is going on in the psychic domain and, in a negative
manner, what it, the person, does not let appear]. The favourableness
or otherwise of our genetic inheritance, and our organic fate with re-
spect to illness and longevity, and the hazards in our environment, can
all reveal themselves to a greater or lesser extent in this way. However,
its own nature, its own fate, and what has led it to be what it is, the
person knows differently from how the organic living part of it knows,
despite the two being part of one another.
The human being is not a product of development and history. Only
a creature who is outside time can understand what history is. Each
person is newly created by the circumstances of their parental beget-
ting, in conjunction with the laws of the universal life process of which
they are part.
From that point onwards – i.e. its parents’ begetting – the human
being’s life is available to serve whatever mental schemes the mind has
in store, which in essence concern God himself and His unfolding. In
this context the following words are apposite: ‘And if a man gain the
whole world and lose his soul …….’.
Lecture on Life and Soul

The motive that made me decide to choose the theme ‘Life and Soul’
for a public lecture was not that I wanted to set out a conventional
philosophical theory about this obscure relationship. For, it is rather
my utter conviction that all conventional theories – whether those of
the Scholastics, which treat the soul as a corporal form of life; whether
those which allow all sorts of interaction between the two; or those
which see a parallelism between the two – are all found wanting from
the current standpoint of appropriate scientific investigation. When I
began to concern myself with this scientific problem about twenty-five
years ago the entire philosophical contribution, both in Germany and
elsewhere, was as to whether the soul was a sort of substance which
could influence the body, or whether the principle of conservation of
energy in its broader version as a simple mechanical law of natural
causality forbade anything other than a parallelism between conscious
psychic events and nervous or brain physiological events. From the
viewpoint of this latter position – so-called psycho-physical parallel-
ism – there were three alternative formulations put forward for these
strange parallel happenings.
1. First, there was the so-called idealistic or pan-psychic version,
which at root considered the entire sequence of physical causality as
only the content of a universal consciousness, and as an assertion of a
continuous psychic causality.
2. A second version, an epiphenomenological one, which made psy-
chic experience equivalent to conscious appearances, was that the ap-
pearances of the soul were among themselves completely disconnected
and only occurred in exceptional places in the physical causal nexus
– in more highly organized creatures, and certainly not plants. This
theory was near enough a sort of materialism, and made out that all
psychic connections were ultimately only explicable as cerebro-physi-
ological events.
3. A third proposal was a version of monism, whereby the two series
of events, viewed as having the same span and continuity, each reflect-
ed the same natural event but from two different angles – one psychic
and one physiological. However, in the final analysis both series were
regarded as objective appearances of the same metaphysical unknown
substance and its modifications – as Spinoza thought.
Whoever today takes a serious look at the problem of life and soul,
takes on something which, on the face of it, is a dry-as-dust, boring,
Scholastic, intellectual gymnastics. It reeks of some bygone venture,
full of unproven assumptions, short on living matters of fact, and ad-
dicted to theory-building, in short, insulated, equally, from the facts
of life and the scientific approach. It is, however, childish to put mat-
ters in this way, as if either there is a parallelism or there is an inter-
action. Surely there must be numerous possible ways of expressing
the relationship between the two, in addition to parallelism or simple
interaction. Even the Ancient philosophers came up with plausible
alternatives to this ‘either-or’ format. There are Plato’s parable of the
prisoners in the cave, and Aristotle’s theory, which St. Thomas Aqui-
nas reworked in a peculiar way, to start with. In recent times we have
Bergson’s account, as set out in Matter and Memory. Furthermore, it
is completely childish to assume that in human beings there are only
two possible realms to consider: soul – which is phenomenologically
reduced to consciousness – and life – which is generally treated in the
accounts in question as reduced to its chemical and physical compo-
nents. Why could there not be three, or five, such realms in play? How
do you know, before a proper investigation of the matter is under-
taken, that there is not a ‘trichotomy’ – say, life, soul and mind?
To completely write off this suggestion is to fall into the very trap
whereby this problematic has previously been tackled, a method which
I like to call the ‘method of principles’. What I mean by this is that no-
one first of all asks how the actual experienced or inferred workings
of the soul do interrelate with events of the living body in any of the
scientific domains where it is appropriate to ask this question. These
include empirical psychology, physiology, anatomy, and the relevant
parts of medicine. Moreover, no-one asks whether, in all this tangle,
there might not be some connecting theme. Instead, all one hears are
defeatist remarks to the effect that none of this can even be properly
thought about if the two principles of nature themselves are shrouded
in mystery and are intangible. The whole point, however, is that these
two principles – soul and life – are set up and then deemed enigmatic,
whereas the proper way to proceed is surely to start with all the facts
of the matter and then see whether these two principles fit the facts.
Allow me, before I get on to an actual broadening of our question, to
give a brief account of the causes and basis for the completely altered
formulation of the question which our contemporary philosophy and
science adopts, as opposed to the way the same obscure questions were
asked in the past. We can divide this up into six main considerations.
1. First, there is the influence of the pervasively different Zeitgeist of
our own times.
2. Secondly, there are masses of new psychological facts and theories
on the matter, which have a bearing on the way the questions might
be asked.
3. Thirdly, profound revolutions in the fields of physics and chemis-
try, particularly the theories of Einstein and Planck, have to be borne
in mind. No less relevant are fundamental transformations in biologi-
cal and medical thoughts and their implications, for example, on the
meaning of vitalism, on the very notion of what medicine is, in endo-
crinological research, in the growing investigation into brain function,
and for the progress of developmental psychology and pathological
psychology, and, in particular, knowledge about psychopathology.
4. Fourthly, there is the role of so-called phenomenological philoso-
phy to consider, which offers a philosophical method which is more
relevant to our question than any other recent suggestion in the field.
There are two aspects to this:
i) its separation of questions about the essence of something from
questions about the fortuitous experience one might have of the same
thing; and
ii) the linking of the life-soul problem with issues to do with theo-
ries of cognition and ontological, metaphysical questions.
5. Then, there is the contribution of one man, Freud, to take into
account. He has illuminated aspects of what we call life and soul and
their inner connections in an entirely new way. The obscure world of
the human unconscious drives and their energy, along with their dual
effects, on the one hand influencing conscious states, and on the other
hand channelling into physiological events of all sorts – breathing, car-
diac activity, sexual activity, digestion etc. – have been opened up.
1. Zeitgeist
Whether the so-called Zeitgeist is a source of truth or error – it is fre-
quently one or the other – there is no doubt that it affects the way our
above-mentioned question is put. The profound thinker George Sim-
mel once said, in the same vein as Rudolph Eucken in his book Basic
Concepts of Present-day Life, that each era has its own model category
of how the world is conceived and ‘imbibed’, as it were. For example, in
the 18th Century it was the heavenly constellations of stars and their
movements. Today there is no doubt that our model category is ‘Life’.
This trend has been taken to extremes, perhaps to a laughable degree
in its uncriticalness, in the clamour with which Lebensphilosophie has
been adopted in all countries.
I do not wish to labour this point. But anyone can see the meaning
which sport, dance, and the worship of the body, have for the youth
movements in all countries, and can only be amazed at the dual renun-
ciation on the part of our era, on the one hand of the values of intel-
lectual and spiritual achievement – sportsmen and popular singers are
these days much more important people than any poet, philosopher,
painter or scientist – and on the other hand the ideals of a mechanistic
work ethic. You only have to feel the Dionysian undercurrents in all
this to see what I mean. The English economist Keynes has captured
this trend in striking images.
Nietzsche, Bergson, Simmel and Dilthey, and a variety of neo-prag-
matists, make up this so-called Lebensphilosophie of a primitive sort,
and even some rationalist philosophers, such as Rickert, fall into the
category.
At this point one should note that ‘Life’, the dominant world cat-
egory of our time, is quite neutral with respect to the psycho-physical
distinction. For, what is ‘psychic’ and what ‘physical’ when a human be-
ing smiles, blushes, hesitates or dances? Especially since Descartes, the
usual thinking about all this, in Western circles, is to cram it into a du-
alistic framework. For such things to occur, it is assumed, there must
first of all be some event in consciousness, and, secondly, in addition
and in a strange way, all sorts of physical movements which one must
conceive of in physical and chemical terms – which taken as a whole
are referred to as mechanistic. Alternatively, the human behaviour in
question is attributed to an unknown X – which stands for soul –
which relies for its activity in an unknown way on the molecules and
atoms of its nervous system, which, according to this view, it is noth-
ing else besides. But none of this is acceptable in our era. Where, in
all this, resides ‘Life’ and its ‘unity’? Has it not been spirited away, if all
this were true? Is the sequence of conscious events then life itself? No,
they are merely knowledge of what is happening in psychic life! Are,
then, chemical and physical processes life? If we take an actual example
of what I mean, we can see that if I am presented with a lemon, then I
salivate. This is Pavlov’s core experiment. The perception, indeed even
the suggestion, of a fruit, and even in sleep, stimulates the activity of
the salivary gland, and further causes a build-up of gastric juices. How
does it do this? The traditional way of explaining it, deriving from
Descartes, and invoking soul – as equivalent to consciousness – and
body – as a mechanistic entity – and both in this formulation being
separately stimulated because they are separate ‘substances’, is as fol-
lows. A series of light waves impinges on the eyes and generates mul-
tiple reproductions of this stimulus in a path from the sensory nerves
to the occipital cortex, where, without further ado or explanation, a
conscious image is somehow created. The whole issue is considered to
be a purely receptive event. But no-one can say how and why there is
this conversion of a stimulus event into a motor event in the stomach
involving chemical happenings in this organ. Why should this gastro-
intestinal activity happen in this precise way, and not correspond to
the visual presentation of some other food? No-one seems to under-
stand the mystery.
How should we put the matter these days, or at least counter this
traditional version of events? First of all, it is not correct to say that the
visual perception of the lemon or some other fruit is only determined
by the stimulus, sensory organ, efficient nervous conduction, and oc-
cipital cortical arousal. The situation is rather that there must be some
drive-based hunger or appetite, or some other such drive-based at-
tention of a spontaneous sort, which already bears on the situation.
Otherwise, no perception would arise in the first place. A receptive
set of events is simply not enough. The formula E = f (R + tr A) must
hold – i.e. E – Empfindung [sensation] = function of Reiz [stimulus]
and triebhafter [drive-based] Aufmerksamkeit [attention]. Secondly, it
is not true that the functional unity of the build-up of gastric juices
or the salivary glands’ output can be solely explained within a physi-
cal and chemical framework. Their functional unity cannot be directly
explained within the framework of matter and energy even, although
the last two play a part, and their role can be investigated. Even in re-
spect of the role played by the physical and chemical factors, the same
psycho-physically neutral, living drive-impulse is necessary to activate
the physical and chemical factors. For how else could the last-named
make these gastric juices as opposed to some other juices flow, or act as
a constituting determination for the perception which the fruit com-
prises?
By now the picture we have built up is completely different from
the one we started out with. It is no more a case of there being a pure
visual perception arriving from outside us, and, in the absence of any
arousal of the organism, setting in train gastric secretion by mechanis-
tic or purely chemical motor direction, along with chemical and physi-
cal events. The true situation is schematically as follows.
Drive impulse – an actual living matter, psycho-physically neutral
Perception Functional unity of the build-up of this gastric juice
An undivided life event now operates in the place of two completely

disparate things [proposed by the erstwhile philosophical theory],
things about whose connections no-one knows anything anyway, and
for the possibility of whose coming together Descartes’ pupils had to
resort to coining the term ‘occasionalism’ – which required the inter-
vention of God – or had to explain away the strange gap between them
by coming up with the notion of ‘parallelism’ – as Spinoza recom-
mended. For our part, we think that it is high time that one stopped
casting out ‘life’ from our world, and stopped substituting it with pas-
sive, so-called conscious events on the one hand, and physico-chemical
formulae on the other.
If we make the same point more formally, this runs as follows. The
specifically, vitally oriented Zeitgeist in our day has destroyed the pre-
vious Western pattern of thinking, itself fairly new, and one to which
most scholars adhered. The pattern of thinking in question is the du-
alistic Cartesian way of thought, which on the one hand makes of the
body something that purloins force only to make of it nothing more
than a bit of ‘extension’, and on the other hand turns the might of the
soul into nothing more than a passive, so-called consciousness. All this
has the net result of demeaning knowing and reflective knowing, and
of disastrously splitting apart body and soul one from the other.
2. The New Experimental Psychology

Independently of the Zeitgeist, there are a number of investigations
into sensation, perception, memory, affect and acts of feeling and will
-particularly those of Kulpe and his school, which inaugurated the
psychology of thinking – whose rich results provide a new set of facts
and elementary laws governing relationships in this area, and are abso-
lutely critical to our understanding of the issue of soul and life. Here,
I shall only deal with a few general points of view. In the course of the
above investigations, three connected, theoretical and basic assump-
tions on the whole matter have been gradually destroyed.
1) The first of these is sensualism. This theory takes the stimulus-
proportional, isolated sensation to be the most elementary, in the sense
of simplicity, and hence as the most causally earliest, conscious experi-
ence. But, in fact, it is not a sensation, but the emotional, drive-based
and motor sides of the soul’s life, which are demonstrably the elemen-
tary obscure womb from which all sorts of intellectual processes first
causally spring forth. It is probably the case that in plants and lower
animals there is a living soul, which, in general, possesses nothing re-
sembling sensations or consciousness, but merely drive-based, directed
movement. Furthermore, there simply does not exist any strictly, pure,
stimulus-proportional sensation, independent of either drive-based
attentional events or motoric impulses. A sensation is a special case
[Grenzbegriff]. But virtually everyone continues to treat the notion of
a sensation as a fact of the elementary stage of the life of the soul,
and that is because they simply assume the truth of the traditional
psychological teachings. A relatively stimulus-proportional sensation
is, as Jaensch showed, just a late product of a soul’s development, and
therefore is to be regarded as a by-product of the growing dissociation
between representations and perceptions which occur – normally –
as one grows old. Perception itself is an adaptation to spontaneous,
drive-induced fantasy. Moreover, what these days is variously called a
holistic approach, a unified complex, a form [Gestalt], or a structure,
all such precede the isolated sensation in the order of things, and the
experience and observation of a so-called sensation are demonstrably
dependent on the nature and structure of these ‘totalities’ in every con-
sideration. For this reason, the older versions of sensualism – Hume’s,
Condillac’s, Mach’s – and a mechanistic version of the philosophical
notion of parallelism, were made for each other. Even the assumption
of higher order supervisory faculties of the soul, which first allegedly
give order, allow assimilation, and allocate relationships, to the scat-
tered points of sensations – an assumption which lies at the basis of
Kant’s philosophy – should, in the light of the new experimental psy-
chology, be jettisoned, and with it any distinction between a ‘higher’
and a ‘lower’ soul, as Wundt envisaged. In fact, if one joins the sensual-
ist doctrine to that of epiphenomenal parallelism then what one gets
is Lotze’s version of an interaction between the two entities, whereby
it is now referential thinking [beziehende Denken] [and not simply
consciousness as in the traditional formulation] which is supposed to
bring ordered meaning and purposefulness to otherwise isolated sen-
sations, and which, according to Lotze and his school, is supposed to
assume the chief burden of evidence for the existence of a substantial
soul which works on the body.
2) Association psychology, which is closely bound up with the truth
of sensualism, is the next traditional assumption to have been under-
mined. Association psychology was historically a metaphorical analo-
gy drawn from Newton’s vision of how everything worked in the same
mechanistic way, from celestial bodies to simple molecules. The im-
petus to fashion an association psychology was further fuelled by two
considerations. The first was the tendency to regard the living soul as
something that could be controlled – a tendency particularly promi-
nent among Jesuits, doctors and pedagogues – and to treat it as rather
amorphous and needing an imposed structure. The second consider-
ation was the view, taken by Priestley and Hartley for instance, that its
smooth running bore a one-to-one relationship with the physiological
activity of the nervous system, a physiology moreover which treated
life’s events as merely applied physics and chemistry, they themselves
being regarded as purely mechanistic sciences, a view directly attribut-
able to Descartes. Neither of these two influences on the subject was
an insight derived from actual investigation of the matter in question,
but was mere wishful thinking, prior to any such investigation. They
corresponded to the wish to bring the life of the soul in line with the
Weltbild of the physics and biology of the Newtonian era. This asso-
ciation psychology, the nature of which is to view all soul complexes,
meaningful connections and motivating currents, as isolated spatio-
temporal potential contact points – so-called representations – which
recur in identical fashion, join up then fall apart, and carry out their
business with all sorts of tendencies, such as reproduction and perse-
veration, is nowadays, generally, though not completely, discredited.
Philosophically, we can say that pure associations of the above sort
generally do not occur. Approximation to these, however, do turn up
as pathological instances – for example, the word association univer-
sity – universe, instead of university – rector. But they are least of all
seen in elementary states of the soul, such as in children and animals.
They are rather special cases of cognition, which may occur in some
sorts of mental illness. For these reasons, i.e. the demise of association
psychology, we have to adopt one of two positions with regard to any
replacement. Either we give up the notion that there is any co-ordina-
tion between the representational processes and physiological events.
Or else we have to rethink our ideas of what physiological events actu-
ally are. The latter is the route known as functional vitalism, and, in a
different way, is reflected in Gestalt psychology and Gestalt physiol-
ogy.
It is the latter, not the former, path along which we have to go. There
are certainly a wealth of psychic connections not derived from either
association, reproduction or perseveration; for example, the naming
function of a word, instinctual activity, judgement and proposition
formation, the simplest thought processes, and even the solution of
the most elementary tasks. A so-called ‘mental soul’ [Geistseele] is not
what first brings order and sense in some consequential act dealing
with the supposed chaos proffered to it by some other part of the soul.
Ach’s treatise on Will and Temperament, with his notion of a ‘determin-
ing tendency’, provided the first inklings of our new concept of a soul.
The critical insight here was that the soul’s inherent way of proceeding,
from the very outset, is characterized by a functional aim-directedness
without the intervention of any mental acts. This occurs at all stages of
development, and does not just apply at a special point in this develop-
ment. This means that tasks are being carried out, referential links of
a meaningful sort are being made, and organized and unified reactions
are occurring in the organism as a whole, and all this in the context of
corresponding changes in the environment as a whole. The living soul
– hitherto, in the previous epoch of psychology, regarded as an exotic
addition to the life process itself – now becomes the very living event
itself of the entire organism, closely and inwardly linked to everything
that is going on. In fact, this new account has much in common with
the Ancients’ views, in which biology and psychology are again tightly
joined. Psychology again becomes the study of the life of inwardness, a
biology of the inner life. Instead of laws of association-forming, there
is one overriding law in play: each organized complex and each form
and structure has the tendency to amplify its own meaningful totality,
though under the influence of value-laden and emotionally appropri-
ate anticipatory drive aims. Anything resembling an association is a
sheer co-incidence, and, if it occurs, is more likely to be a manifesta-
tion of a failing, disintegrating organism, a situation as far as one can
possibly get from how any elementary, early, or causally prior living
set-up proceeds.
These are only a few examples of the new psychology. [There are
many others in all areas of psychic life.]
3) Because those who study the labyrinth that is our brain are more
of an expert on psychology than are psychologists expert on the brain,
the picture of the soul that we are building up here has quickly led
to marked revisions in our knowledge of how the brain works. This
new knowledge in turn has influenced philosophical formulations of
life and soul. A psycho-mechanistic parallelism of any sort has been
abandoned, as has any theory of mutual interaction. For, if the very
simplest creation of the soul – an elementary perception, for instance
– is already possessed of a form and unified meaning in its own right,
and does not derive this from any additions or supplementary laws,
and the same is true for the simplest memory events – for example,
learning strings of nonsense – there is simply no need to invoke the ex-
istence of some authoritarian soul substance which first confers unity
and meaning in a supposedly ‘associative’ accord with whatever an al-
legedly existing ‘under-soul’ brings to this supposed accord.
3. Transformation of the Scientific

Weltbild of Nature Itself
With this we arrive at the most obscure, and, even today, still unclear
side of the contemporary problematic. All present-day philosophical
theories concerning life and soul, however different, and that includes
Driesch’s, take as read, to a greater or lesser extent, a mechanistic view-
point of nature, at the very least when it comes to the inorganic realm.
Their model is classical Newtonian physics. At the very least they for-
mulate matters as if they had never heard of Einstein, Planck, Duhem,
Poincarē, Bergson, Le Roy, Meyerson, Mach, Schlick or Reichenbach.
Such ignorance can also be seen among philosophers following in the
Kantian tradition – Riehl, Cohen, Natorp – who regard the problem
of life and soul as nothing more than a challenge for the theory of
knowledge.
In fact, if one takes a mechanistic view of nature to be the endeav-
our to make the perceivable phenomena of natural things merely the
consequence of measurable alterations in place in space and time – or
in some four-dimensional matrix as Minkowsky proposed – and to
grasp the laws of such changes and how they are determined, then
virtually all philosophers can be accused of adhering to a mechanistic
view of nature, a ‘pangeometry’, as it were.
But if one gets to grips with what contemporary physicists are tell-
ing us about nature, then notions of an absolute space, absolute time,
absolute movement, or absolutely extended matter, are simply wrong.
Contemporary physics has simply no truck with a unified, overarching
Weltbild, but, on the contrary, is coming up with an obscure, unimagi-
nable, and even contradictory relativity, whose only truth is contained
in the equations of quantum physics. Some physicists deem the laws
of nature to be the laws of large numbers. Others, Planck, for example,
conceive of there being two sorts. The whole issue of what nature is has
been reduced to a question of electrons, and that in itself only intensi-
fies the whole question as to what matter is. The quantum physicist is
questioning the very fabric of his discipline just like a physical Bolshe-
vist, coming up with radically new answers, and demanding a complete
overthrow of the old, formal, mechanistic principles of causality in the
field of physics. Their endeavours have hardly been exploited by those
of us tackling our own philosophical problems. But there is one no-
table exception, a partial application of the young physics, and that is
Koehler’s book Physical Forms of Rest and Stationary States, published
in 1920. The gist of this briefly is that in the inorganic world, looked at
in a purely theoretical way and excluding any practical considerations,
there is as little in the way of a mechanistic set-up as there is in the
physiological and psychic domains. There exists a set of laws, espe-
cially in the field of electricity, whereby, at any given point in a field of
forces, what happens is dependent on the potential structural altera-
tions of the entire field. This structural law has led to the discovery of
a similar law in the domain of the psychic, a matter which Wertheimer
sets out in his Visual Experience of Movement. From this we can con-
clude that in spite of the demise of association theory we neither need
to resort to any sort of vitalism – whereby the dead world is deemed
to have an intrinsic goal-orientation towards mechanistic workings, as
Driesch thought – nor to any sort of soul-substance, to account for a
strict parallelism between the physical and the psychic. That which is
outside is also inside! This proposition has been taken to mean, and
so far rightly so, that the inorganic world is so stupid and meaningless
that everything in it has to work according to sacrosanct and necessary
laws of a mechanistic sort. For us, however, the proposition has poten-
tially a completely new meaning: there is an amechanistic parallelism
between the goings-on in the physical and the psychic realm. I myself
do not believe that this hypothesis is sufficiently robust to justify a
reinstatement of an unequivocal parallel organization and monism
between physical and physiological events. This law of forms neither
suffices to explain all physiological matters, nor, even less, those of a
psychological nature. Even the supposed similarities between physi-
ological and physical events are not properly thought through. All the
same, the whole approach opens a new perspective.
What if, though, the entire formal- mechanistic view of nature had
merely a practical and biological determining value, as Bergson in his
Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution and I in my Cognition and
Work have proposed? Here for the first time the life-soul problem is
recognized as being inextricably linked with cognitive theories about
physics, an issue that Bergson first realized. If it could be demonstrat-
ed that the basic categories and intuitively derived manifold, which the
formal-mechanistic version of nature assumes, were not determined
by human reason and what it establishes, as Kant thought, but that,
for example, space, relative time and the laws of the formal mechanistic
structures, were already pre-rational and biological, then the conse-
quence of all this would be to make it illegitimate to try to explain life
itself by means of categories which are themselves the tools of life. This
then raises the question as to whether there are not entirely different
ways of knowing inorganic nature. What about Goethe’s notions of a
secret intelligence or witness of something long past [Kunde] or a pan-
physiognomy? Perhaps inorganic nature is itself only ‘petrified dead
life’ [erstarrtes gestorbenes Leben]. When life dies does it petrify accord-
ing to discoverable laws? Pan-vitalism or pan-psychism [are so general
as to be virtually meaningless]. Bergson’s solution is too rash and the
way he poses the problem is classical – see my Cognition and Work.
4. Mind and Life and the New Dualism

But what is now the most remarkable thing of all in the profound
reorganization of our thoughts on all these matters is, that at the same
time as the dualism of life and soul, along with the processes of the
soul and the physiological life processes, are being completely dis-
mantled, and the thesis of an independent soul becomes merely the
‘biology of inwardness’, and all this has repercussions on what the soul
is regarded as encompassing – stretching from the lowest forms of
animal life, even the protozoon, to at least the lower centres of the
nervous system in humans – at the very same time as all this is up
for consideration an entirely new dualism opens up. This dualism has
been largely unsuspected by anyone in the 19th or even the 20th Centu-
ries, and was completely overlooked by the Ancient Greeks or Kant. In
fact the more Life and Soul become one concept of life itself along with
a vitally, unified set of functional laws – i.e. monism – the more the
dualism of Life and Mind advances and eventually reaches the stage
where it alone lays claim to metaphysical validity. In this way, certain
hoary philosophical problems – e.g. psychologism, whether in logic,
ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics or natural theology – are overcome.
Mind realizes itself only in partnership with the highest level of a
living creature, which we refer to as its technical intelligence. Mind, in
its most essential sense, ‘is’ something only by virtue of its carrying out
acts of intention. These acts:
1) are directed upon pure objective ideas and the essential nature
of things;
2) possess a final goal whose direction has nothing to do with any
values belonging to life, but with truth, beauty and goodness, for ex-
ample, and with devotion to God;
3) concern the being-so and laws of matters which are nothing to do
with any comparable laws which apply in the sphere of living entities;
and
4) are free of any reliance on the changing states of a psycho-phys-
ical organism – be these psychic or physiological – but have to do
with the very nature of what things are, their being such-and-such and
none other.
[The following remarks and questions should give a flavour of the
nature of mind.]
i) Is mind part of the psyche? Or is it rather only linked with the
psyche by virtue of the latter’s necessary role in the mind’s actualisa-
tion, without mind being in any way comprehensible in terms of any
of life’s characteristics?
ii) Mind is transcendent to all objective psychology. There is ob-
jectifiable being and non-objectifiable being, and mind is of the latter
sort.
iii) Mind has sociological and historical determinations.
iv) Mind should be studied in the context of objective cultural
achievements.
v) Can mind have a definite correlate within the nervous system? No
doubt there is mental activation in a given individual, but the intrinsic
nature of the intention and act can have no such correlation.
vi) There are implications for the theory of what the mind is in the
new ideas on the relationship between sub-cortical and cortical re-
gions of the brain.
vii) Technical intelligence and mind are not the same.
viii) Our notion of mind leads to the demise of: nominalism, sub-
jective accounts of the nature of values, and biological formulations of
ethics and aesthetics.
ix) Human beings and animals are now, through our theory of mind,
appropriately contrasted as, respectively, an open and a closed system.
x) Mind reveals itself and grows as the human being ages.
xi) Mind is not something that can be sick or healthy.
xii) Mind is not something that one inherits.
xiii) Mind is outside space – i.e. non-extended – and outside time.
xiv) Mind is outside consciousness, for the reason that it – mind – is
that very thing of which one is conscious.
xv) Mind is an opening to genuine freedom in contrast to the mere
spontaneity of the vital soul.
xvi) Following death the act-centre of the mind is not completely
wiped out, insofar as the mind is also part of God, and that part of the
centre remains in God.
xvii) Only as a mind and as a subject of mental activity can the hu-
man being embrace both psyche and nature.
5. Theses
I
The totality of noetic-psychic, physiological, and physiologico-physical
relationships breaks down not into two but into three levels.
These are: 1) a mind and person centre; 2) a vital centre with a vital
soul and living agent; and 3) centres and fields of forces, whose activity
underlies each special sets of laws. These sets of laws are, in the cases
of 2) and 3), rules of form-building, but not in general formal-mecha-
nistic ones, the latter being special cases of the former. But within the
ambit of the effectiveness of the vital centre, there are, in addition to
the form-building rules applicable to the physical and chemical ma-
terial to hand, yet another set of laws which deal with building up
temporal forms – in an absolute time – which have the same structure
from a physiological and a psychological viewpoint. All vital happen-
ings: a) are aimed at something; b) are automatic; c) are based on a
hierarchy of functions and drives, which is ordered like a monarchy;
d) are those which pertain to the preservation and development of the
living psycho-physical entity as a whole, and are aimed at something
relatively immediate but do not have a pre-planned ultimate or ex-
trinsically meaning-invested goal – i.e. they are teleoclinical and not
teleological; and e) are intrinsically meaningful [sinn-voll] and not ex-
trinsically meaning-invested [nicht sinnhaft], and neutral with respect
to mental values.
Life and soul are not like substances, but are only two objective
groupings of appearances deriving from the same psycho-physically
neutral vital-centre. Living events are both physiological processes
of life and psychic goings-on, and both are strictly co-ordinated one
with another. The appearances exist as physiological and psychologi-
cal at the same time, and stem from one and the same elements and
therefore should not be counted twice as two intrinsically separate
entities. The two are each functions; they are not in one case actual
appearances and in the other case only potentialities for such. Mind
is divorced from life, autonomous, and not a part or a function of the
soul. A person is an individuated act-centre whose ultimate subject is
an attribute of the original basis of the world. But it is lacking both
activity and force.
II
Concerning causality, there are two sorts of genuine, metaphysical and
actual causal connections to distinguish, neither type being a simple
interaction. One is the relationship between person and the life cen-
tre, the other the relationship between the life centre and the centre
of forces. One general rule common to both is that the higher set-up
works on the lower, so the person works on the life centre and the lat-
ter on the force centre.
1) A person determines, directs and steers – by way of inhibiting
and disinhibiting –the activity of the life centre. By means of this it
imposes its own ideas and values on to the actual real order of the
world.
The person is in this process intentionally related to the real world,
functionalizes1 what is there, and holds up its own agenda to the im-
1 [The editor brings to our attention two comments about ‘functionaliza-
tion’ in other parts of The Collected Works which clarify this crucial notion
of Scheler’s.]
1. I call ‘functionalization’ the process by which the experience of a definite
object sheds all but its essential, distinguishing features to become the form
of the concept of all other objects of the same nature. (Coll. Works, Vol.5,
p.198)
2. There is no inheritance of acquired properties but there is inheritance of
acquired functions. The acquisition of functions, however, is by way of the
pulses of the life centre as a precursor to guiding them. This guiding
is carried out by checking whether each particular impulse of the life
centre suits the person’s own project or not, or whether promoting this
one and not that one will serve the purpose of fostering its preferred
value regime, or whether inhibiting that drive impulse and dis-inhib-
iting this one – ‘saying no’ or ‘not saying no’, as it were – will contribute
to realizing its project or not. All this happens without any increase in
drive activity on the part of the life centre, and without any expendi-
ture of energy on the part of the person in any physical sense.
Furthermore, the upshot for the person in all this is not to be af-
fected or worked on. The person, on his or her part, either determines
the situation through the acts that he or she carries out, or does not
determine what is going on by leaving the vital happenings free to go
their own way.
2) The second overriding causal relationship is between the vital
centre and the centre and fields of forces. This only takes place in ab-
solute time. Otherwise it is very similar to the way the person deals
with the life centre – by guiding and steering – but, in the present
case, what is guided and steered are the form-building rules of the
chemical and physical processes, which are made to serve the aims of
the psychic processes, through the intermediary of the physiological
processes. In this way there is a continuous link between the dead in-
organic environment and psychic processes. But here, as in the case of
the person, there is no equal interaction: either the life centre exerts its
veto, or it does not [by ‘saying’ no, or not so saying.]
There is a comparison in all this with the disparate elements which
make up a concert [see below]. Relationship 1), between person and
life centre, is like that of the composer to the eventual performance
of the piece. Relationship 2), between life centre and form building,
regulated electrodynamic and static forces, is like that of the conduc-
tor to the musicians. In no case is there an equal interaction between
the two parties.
3 The spatio-temporal matrix assumed by the formal-mechanistic
formulation of nature, both the version of it in the physical and chemi-
cal spheres and the one allegedly providing the framework of the psy-
functionalization of attitudes of the organism in an early period of its life
in response to definite stimuli – experience – but which then become fixed
such that they accommodate all experiences of the same general nature. (Coll.
Works, Vol.8, p.24-29, 37)
chic sphere, is merely fictitious and at best a statistical invention. At
most it only occurs as an ideal, special case in the actual scheme of
things and has no actual existence itself and no actual efficacy.
III
As for parallelisms, if we now move on from the real metaphysical
relationships just considered to functionally dependent relationships,
there are four firm parallelisms to distinguish.
1) First, there is an associative-mechanistic parallelism. This is be-
tween physiological pathways which are deemed to approximate to
stimulus-proportionality, on the one hand, and a psychic association
matrix, on the other hand. But the whole scheme here is just a meta-
phorical fiction, a handy substitute for what is really going on.
2) There is then a parallelism between the form-building laws regu-
lating chemical and physical processes, on the one hand, and psychic
form processes on the other.
3) Next, there is a parallelism between physiological structure-
building processes, on the one hand, and psychic happenings, on the
other. This parallelism is between temporal events on both sides, is
occurring at the subconscious level and has nothing to do with mental
values, and is, essentially, the two sides of the coin of the soul.
4) The fourth parallelism is between mental acts and the rules gov-
erning the way objective values – such as ethical and aesthetic – are
ordered.
These four parallelisms can be presented schematically as follows:
[See diagram, next page.]
1) What is physical and what is world generally consist of the same

elements: striving and force, quality and sensation, thoughts and ob-
jective meaning, values and feeling, representation and pictorial im-
age, experienced relation and relationship to being. They also contain
the same lawful structures: formal-mechanistic, chemical associative
formation rules, teleoclinical – i.e. determining tendencies, and noetic
rules.
2. The critical difference is that one, world, is being-for-itself, and
the other, physical, is being-for-others. This applies to all living crea-
tures.
50
Person
Mental acts Rules of ‘being’
Vital centre
Psychic Physiological lawfulness
Centre of forces
Psychic Physiological
lawful formations lawful formations
Mechanistic
parallel
3. For this reason there is no double bookkeeping of contents – of
nature and of consciousness. It follows, therefore, that only the psychi
cal functional course of events has a strict parallel link with physiological
matters. The actual contents of perception, feeling, representation and
thinking do not have this link.
4. What forces are for bodily images, drives are for representations.
The implications of all this for the problem of causal development in
history I have discussed in my treatise on The Sociology of Knowledge.
All this leads to a final reflection, that the human being is truly a mi-
crocosm, and, at the same time, as Leibniz said, a ‘little God’. Through
his or her mental person centre he or she is in touch with God, indeed
a part-centre of God’s. And he or she is part of a speck of dust too, and
the laws determining it. And, we can add, he or she is part of every-
thing else in between God and a speck of dust.
6. The Isomorphic Analogy of Mind

It would be attractive to pursue the theory of mind and person still
further, continuing from where I left off in the two previous lectures.
But I intend in this last lecture to cut this short, and to give you a
schematic version of my theory. I shall seek to show that everything
I have brought out in a successive manner is in fact capable of being
grasped altogether and simultaneously. At the same time I shall be
proposing that they provide the basic framework of a new theory of
life-soul-mind, which, in my opinion, will stand as the foundation for
any subsequent particular theory of this.
A theory such as mine has to answer three questions: 1) To what
ultimate centres and agencies does the human being owe its existence?
2) What ontological and metaphysical causal relationships are there
between these centres? 3) What functional parallel dependencies are
assumed between appearances of anything?
To help get my meaning across, I propose to devote this lecture to
an illustrative analogy of these matters, and I shall choose a subject
whose structure is as ‘isomorphic’ as possible with the human activity
I wish to illustrate.
Imagine that we are listening to a Beethoven symphony, played by
an orchestra under the guidance of a conductor, and performed by
a number of musicians and their instruments. The entire experience,
which we hear and enjoy, has five principle components, with com-
pletely different sorts of causal sources.
1. First, there is the composition, whose aesthetic and artisti-
cally meaningful context is the symphony, and whose composer is
Beethoven. We are equating this composer with the mental person
centre in a human being, and with the way the human being’s indi-
vidual nature determines matters – i.e. it is not real, but something
that is only present and value-conferring, or not, in this or that human
being, if it can, or cannot, be brought to realization.
2. Next, there is the conductor, whose musical conception and baton
movements are motivated by the artistic meaning content of the com-
position, without which the musicians would soon fall into confusion.
We are equating the conductor isomorphically with the vital centre in
a human being, each vital centre being a function-bundle of pan-life –
life itself – a centre, moreover, which is in itself neutral with respect to
what is psychic and what is physical, but which is able to make manifest
both sides of this intrinsically unified entity.
3. Now we come to the musicians, many in number, well-practised,
and ordered among themselves – e.g. first violinist, second violin-
ist, etc. – depending on the meaning which they wish to bring to the
performance of the artwork. We are equating them, in our model of
the human being, with the psycho-physical part-centres, in which the
form-giving functional and drive-based course of the living process has
its sources, physiological and psychological structure-building alike.
4. Then there are the instruments that the musicians play – vio-
lins, drums, trumpets, etc. – each with its special sound-effect within
the system as a whole. We are equating these as isomorphic with the
physical and elementary psychic form-building laws.
5. Finally, the immediate causes of our sensory hearing is the world
of air vibrations, which trigger our hearing and all the specificities of
this functional modality. We are equating these with the formal-mech-
anistic dependencies which we find in physiological events of all sorts
and which belong to the principle of controllability.
There are still two other considerations which emerge from this
comparison.
a) The direction of what determines what along the chain is com-
poser → conductor → musicians → instruments → airwaves, and not
the reverse order. There is no interaction at play at any point in the
chain.
b) Each higher, more complex cause or determinant does not owe
its power to condition the coming-to-be of something to the existence
and effectiveness of a lower determinant, even though the latter are re-
sponsible for our possible experience of what comes-to-be. What is an
unperformed symphony? Or a score without a conductor? What is a
conductor without musicians? What is a musician without an instru-
ment or with one that does not work? And if I could only make out
a confused noise from the air vibrations, then the composition would
be a closed book to me for ever. In the same way, the mind is nothing
without a vital soul; the latter is nothing without events conforming to
the lawfulness of vital temporal formations; these last nothing with-
out matter and energy.
In spite of these considerations the higher determinant is never
completely accounted for by the lower. The higher one could always
be something else than what it actually is. The meaningful content of
the symphony stems from the mind of Beethoven, who has long been
dead and whose works have outlived him. What actually accounts for
what we experience, from among the various determinants which we
have considered, has a strange look about it. The lower determinants
have force behind them, whereas the higher determinants only have an
idea [and yet the latter are the more powerful]. One then arrives at the
even more curious conclusion that what is predominantly responsible
for our experience – i.e. Beethoven – has ceased to exist: it is no more;
it is false.
To conclude our illustrative analogy, the advocate of a psycho-mech-
anistic parallelism is equivalent to someone who wants to derive the
entire living composition from the airwaves and sensations. The Ge-
stalt psychologist is someone who wants to derive it from the instru-
ments. The psychovitalist is someone who tries to derive it from the
musicians and conductor.
Mind is nothing to do with the psychic. Let’s put this behind us and
get on with the crux of the matter.
Essential Ontology of the Human

Being as an Embodied Creature
If we start out with the behaviour of a human and at the same time
consider what is given to us in immediate experience we can readily
list the following essentially different sorts of behaviour which under-
lie the human being.
1. In one way the human being behaves exactly like the bodily things
which he experiences in the external world under conditions of a natu-
ral Weltanschauung. Were he to fall from a tower he would fall exactly
as a stone does, and according to the same laws. A boulder or a rifle
shot can destroy him; he can burn up. In short, he is, and experiences
himself as, a body, just as if he were perceiving part of his life from an
external viewpoint. Should he forget for a moment that he is a body
he only has to stumble and hit himself against something and he will
soon notice that he is a body – a body among bodies. The laws govern-
ing the relationships between bodies apply equally to him as a body
and as a subject with bodily behaviour.
The body or the bodily thing is a genuine essential idea. The struc-
ture of the determinations of a thing with this essential nature – e.g.
movement potential, extension, duration, form, and all sorts of quali-
ties – and the essential order with which these determinations are
built up, are the same for the human body as for all other possible
bodily things.
Everything that science has established in the way of mechanical,
physical and chemical laws, along with the accompanying basic no-
tions of what matter and force are, apply to that sort of body which
we call a human body as well as to how that body interacts with other
bodies – living or dead – and the same principles to do with exchange
of energy apply. The laws of geometry, physics, chemistry, and ontol-
ogy and metaphysics, apply to his body as to all others. According to
St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle one should expect a different sort
of chemistry and physics in the former case. But this is ruled out, by,
among other things, the principle of the conservation of energy, which
applies to all bodies of whatever sort.
Note that what this embodiment of a human being alerts us to
from a metaphysical point of view is that whatever else a human being
might be it also enters into the problematic of the metaphysics and
ontology of bodily things. And for those of us who are concerned with
metaphysics, bodies, in their essence, if we set aside their existence and
dynamic effects, are nothing but pictorial images [Bilder] or objective
– i.e. consciousness-transcendent – appearances, underlying which
is a centre of force and field of forces and its accompanying fields of
forces. Space as a real factor is a product of this. One can arrive at
this principle of a centre of force in two ways. First, it can be seen as
the end-result of modern physics. Secondly, it follows from a purely
ontological analysis of the construction and founding of the nature of
a body. Such an analysis leads us, independently of the conclusion of
modern physics, to the following ordered foundation.
1. First, there arises an effective agency in the form of centres of
forces. This allows transformation. It then allows movement – altera-
tion – separation in four dimensions.
2. The next stage is extension and duration in physical time.
3. There then emerges spatial formation and rhythmic alterations.
4. Next colours come on the scene – light and dark, bright.
5. Then come all the remaining qualities.
The order of these determinations is in the first place a sequence
of the givennesses and pre-givennesses which enter into the consti-
tution of a body. This means that whatever is earlier in this order is
pre-given with respect to what is later. This order of givennesses is an
order of what is in being and what is coming-to-be. In the second place
the order is also that of our potential knowledge, because knowledge
is only a relationship to what is in being [Seinsverhaltnis]. However,
there is one exception to the exact correspondence between knowledge
and what is in being. Only step two, three, four and five is [a poten-
tial] appearance, a pictorial image available for knowledge. The first
stage, the effective reality [Wirken] is only experienced in the form
of resistance to our volition and then objectified through the func-
tion which provides objectivity, having first been transmitted through
the relationship of the two bodies involved – i.e. the resisted and the
resisting. What cannot enter into a lawful effective exchange with the
human body cannot be known. The haphazard nature of something
or the fortuitous behaviour of a body can only be explained scientifi-
cally in accordance with the essential construction of a body, as given
above. That means that we can make any number of observations,
measurements and mathematical formulae about some thing or qual-
ity, but what it is has already been partly determined by the position
it holds in the sequence of determinations referred to earlier. So, for
example, extension and duration and space and time are only possible
if the founding determinants movement and alteration are in place,
and these last two are derived from the transformation possibilities
inherent in the manifestation of force. Colour and all sensory qualities
are further down the chain than form, rhythm, extension, duration,
speed and movement. All this means that there are primary, secondary,
tertiary, and so forth, essential determinants of a body.
But the existence of these primary or secondary qualities does not
mean that the later ones in the chain, for example colours, are only
subjective contents of consciousness. All determinations, with the ex-
ception of those of the first stage, are equally transcendent to con-
sciousness. Nevertheless, none of them achieves an absolutely constant
state of being something, only a relative state of being such and such
(Sosein). Extension, form and colour are certainly of a similar nature
in this respect. The secondary qualities are just as consciousness-tran-
scendent as the primary ones; the primary qualities are just as relative
as the secondary ones – that means variable with respect to the chang-
ing flux of the spatio-temporal relationships of the body. There is no
extended matter.
Whilst temporality is chiefly a way of being of the actual effective-
ness of the centres of forces, spatiality is only a product of this, and
is, above all, a way of being relative to a living creature. What is intel-
ligible is only that part of the temporal formation which the force fac-
tors determine in space; neither extension nor spatiality themselves,
nor the intuitive rendering of the force centre, can become intelligible.
There are therefore stimuli of a purely metaphysical nature which af-
fect the life-centre, and there are stimuli within the spatio-temporal
matrix; only the latter are intelligible, and these are what we call the
pictorial image [Bild].
All this means that the human body is a pictorial image [Bild]
among other pictorial images, one which is nevertheless transcendent
to consciousness, and one which, as an immanent experience, is only
partly what it in fact is. Its extension and spatiality are only a form of
what can potentially be meaningfully intuited were we purely a liv-
ing creature with a life-centre. This applies to what I can intuit about
myself and to what I can intuit about others, and is nothing to do with
reason, as Kant thought.
In the real sphere of metaphysical concern, the body is only a certain
grouping of non-spatial, but potentially space-forming, centres and
fields of forces, which are inter-relating with all other remaining
centres and fields of forces in the universe in a unified and lawful man-
ner.
The entity and the corresponding substrate it resides in can be sche-
matically set out as follows.
1. Material stimulus 1. Material sphere. Brain

2. Movement event 2. Movement mechanism
3. Pictorial image 3. Pictorial image. World
4. Environmental thing 4. Subjective appearance
The lawful unity of this effective exchange, whose manifestations are

the pictorial images of the body, is only comprehensible if the centres
are part-centres of one and the same agent. Otherwise one cannot ex-
clude a pluralistic universe in which nothing connects with anything
else in any way whatsoever. Only this proposal above – the penetra-
tion of part-centres in some all-embracing centre – guarantees the
unity of space. All determinations such as intensity, duration, direc-
tion, dimensionality of effectiveness, quality, and the lawfulness of an
effect, which we are crediting to the centres of forces as the ultimate
actual repository of all scientific meaning, are exclusively proportional
to the appearances and the rules governing the transformation of these
appearances in a four-dimensional separateness which we investigate
scientifically as a dead world.
2. In addition to everything above concerning its embodied condi-
tion, the human being has a completely different way of behaving, ap-
propriate to its being a living creature, in which manner it resembles
animals and plants.
What a living creature might be, the human being can only origi-
nally grasp from within himself, and not in the same way as he can
grasp the nature of a thing or an effect or a body or an environmental
thing, which he can conceive of through himself, but in the case of
his mode of being as a living creature he must grasp it from within
himself. For there is at the very least a side and a determination of a
living creature, which he can only originally grasp by taking himself as
an example of one, and one, which once aware of, he must then carry
over to all other living creatures. This side or determination is the ‘in-
wardness’ of a living creature, which is also the quintessence of what
the notion ‘psychic’ means. A living creature is: a) something which is
capable of spontaneous movement, something which has inwardness,
and something which is always in the process of becoming [something
else], and these together comprise the ultimate phenomenon of life
[Urphänomenon des Lebens]; and b) a unified, changing, spatial form,
where what changes is chiefly its matter, and whose form is unified
owing to its time-forming processes.
That which makes a human being into a living creature, or that
which he experiences as being alive in him, is, in the first place, his
very life, and the fact that everything comes to him with an inbuilt
reference to a living creature, despite everything, including himself, be-
ing changeable in all other respects. The human being is therefore not
only a bodily entity, but also a living entity. And to this appearance
of his life there corresponds an activity centre, from out of which he
experiences, and which somehow has him at its disposal, dramatizing
and expressing itself through him. This we call the life centre. In addi-
tion, the human being not only experiences his life and everything that
stems from life’s essence with the life centre, but has a further access
to what is alive by being surrounded by a living environment which is
essentially related to the life centre.
These points can be schematically presented as follows:
Life, life centre, and living environment, belong together, and do so
for each living creature. They comprise a collective structure which
provides the category ‘life’ with its essential meaning, and, in which any65
empirical perception of something’s being alive is grounded. Without
it no living creature can be given as alive for any potential knower.
Everything alive is a group of temporal processes between these three
poles. Finally, the natural Weltanschauung is the human environment.
I Life Centre II Life Centre
Life Environment; Sensory Motor

physically real apparatus system
factors
Body
a) Life
It seems funny to say this, but philosophy has recently had to redis-
cover life. It is however true. It has ignored life as a unified, inseparable
totality, and as a proper sphere in its own right, with a tremendous va-
riety of empirically occurring entities and categories. For, philosophy
and psychology, hitherto, have half consciously, half unconsciously, la-
boured under two cardinal misapprehensions, which phenomenology
and Gestalt psychology are just beginning to unravel.
1) The first of these is that life is taken to be merely a product of
experienced associations, of which one set pertains to perception of
bodily things in the outside world, and the other set has to do with the
psychic, this latter set even being equated with conscious psychic phe-
nomena. In this scheme everything is duplicated, so that, for example,
in the case of the experience of our own body, there are assumed to be
tactile sensations and internal sensations of tendon tension, or move-
ment, pain, etc. Somehow the two haphazard sets are supposed to join
up to produce the peculiar combination they call life.
2) Secondly, it is assumed that life can only be given in the form of
its exterior aspect, especially so in the case of other living creatures.
Life, by this account, is nothing more than a summation and a particu-
lar arrangement of bodily things of the same general nature as dead
bodily things. Inside a living organism there is nothing except a fluc-
tuating swarm of organ sensations – this was Descartes’ and Rickert’s
view, for instance.
The first assumption denies that life can have a genuine inside and
an outside, or, better put, an inwardness and an exterior, or anyway
that this can be experienced. The second denies that the totality of
the givenness of life is actually a ‘sphere’ of its own, and is actually pre-
given to a human being, with respect to any single sensory experience
of it which might appear in it, e.g. pain, proprioception. The core expe-
rience, ‘I have life’, precedes all sensory experiences of it.
It is completely naïve to equate life with a mere body, as is frequently
done, especially since Descartes.
It is admittedly correct that what it is to be alive, and what it is to
be a mere body, form a natural unity. Life appears in bodies and in
bodily forms, and it is understandable to want to call those bodies
which are required for the appearance of a life – Life itself or living
bodies. But what goes into a body, as it were, or belongs to a body,
which circumscribes the very sphere of the living, is precisely some-
thing pre-given to the body itself. It is nothing to do with a self, and
the situation is certainly not the other way round – i.e. a certain sort of
body cannot come to life – but rather life makes a body alive. Mutual
exchanges between bodies which play a part in my life are going on
continuously, and this includes the entire physical and chemical world,
and this stretches as far as the sun and moon, and even beyond. If we
restricted ourselves merely to concepts of what a body is, in trying to
ascertain what life is, we would never know where and when our life
stopped. Someone might say: But a child doesn’t know what life is,
because sometimes it treats an inorganic object as if it were a living
thing, and often takes its own feet for foreign bodies. No! The first
is not true; only the second is. It takes everything for something alive,
but not necessarily as belonging to its life. And the second point only
demonstrates that the child must learn which special bodily things
which it perceives do in fact belong to its own living body as a pre-
given sub-sphere of what is alive; it does not learn that it itself has a
life and therefore is not an angel.
b) Life’s Ways of Appearing

The single totality of life which is manifest in each living body shows
itself in two main ways. It shows itself, first, as an expressive sphere of
the human being as a living creature, and, secondly, as an inwardness
[Innes-ein] which is the quintessence of the living soul, and through
which the human being, at least, experiences a for-himself or for-her-
self [Fűr-sich-Sein] in the form of an immediate region of control of
their actions. The sphere of inwardness and the sphere of expression
cohere, and this coherence applies to all living creatures, even to those
which are merely ideally possible. How much we actually notice of
this is immaterial. This coherence of the two ways of appearing, along
with the strict parallelism between the two, is based on their actual
identity, which I experience or reflect on as an immediate givenness.
Once I grasp this coherence in myself, it generalizes to my experience
of all living creatures I might encounter. I call this inwardness – which
is not actually an objectivity of anything in being, because it belongs
to the earlier stage of pictorial imageability of bodies – psychic being
[psychisches Sein]. If this is so, then the following are true.
1) Each living creature is above all something which has an inward-
ness of a psychic make-up.
2) Each living creature is something which has a for-itself [Fűr-sich-
Sein] about it, though it does not need to know this, and certainly does
not need to be conscious of this or to be able to reflect on this, for this
to be true.
3) Dead creatures or bodily things have no inwardness about them.
It is generally so that other entities with a soul – i.e. living creatures
– are first given to us on the basis of this above-mentioned coherence
through the medium of their expressive sphere of their living body. It
is not out of the question that another creature’s very inwardness is
available to us as direct knowledge which we intuit by means of their
expressivity – see my book The Nature and Forms of Sympathy. In the
case of our own selves it is generally so that we are given to ourselves
in such a way that the actual coherence of our inwardness and expres-
sions are mutually realized in the same time period. For example, my
joy ends up as my experiencing myself smiling, and my grief as mourn-
ing. Each accompanies the other. But the coherence of one with the
other, the inwardness and the expression, is a pre-given fact and not a
created experienced association. Every living creature I encounter, I do
so, knowing intuitively that it possesses an inwardness, knowing with-
out further ado that it has a ‘psychicity’ [Psychizität] about it. This is
even true of my experience of plants, which I so little resemble. When
I encounter something dead, moreover, it is precisely the above that I
do not experience. In other words, how we experience something as
dead is still based on the way we know that something is alive, except
in the case of the dead it is the absence of aliveness that strikes us, i.e.
a negative state of affairs. The monopoly of the phenomenon of life is
still in force. The same actual identity of something’s being alive is even
given in every living movement, in contrast to arbitrary movements [of
the dead, say leaves being blown about]. Think of the expressivity of
the movement of someone who has stubbed their toe.
Drive-motivated action is an undivided, unified event through and
through. It is wrong to regard it as only a series of sensations and rep-
resentations plus a consciously monitored execution of movement
based on information from these, as Descartes thought. This would
make active movement no different from any passive movement of my
body, which someone else might induce by lifting my arm, or from
any reflex jerking of my leg if someone tapped my knee. A spontane-
ous living movement is none of this, but a unified, indivisible sort of
psychic-bodily happening. This explains why I experience a sense of
inhibition [when I don’t move in a certain situation, which would oth-
erwise be nonsensical if sensation and representation were all there
were, as nothing is happening to these last if I do not move].
The Distinction between the Spheres

of the Psychic and the Physical
The ‘living soul’, for me, encapsulates the quintessential meaning of all
inner states, which are best considered as states or as movements and
alterations of our life and its parts, even the organs themselves. But
from this alone there does not stem what we mean by an objective
experience of the soul.
If we try and characterize what is common to all experiences of the
soul, we shall find that it is impossible to come up with a single mate-
rial property, such as, for example, being extended, or being material or
immaterial, or being simple or cohesive, or being qualitative or quan-
titative, etc. It is much more to do with a relationship, and one which
is immediately experienced and not thought through, which circum-
scribes what is psychic. What belongs to the human psyche, besides a
life schema, is everything which has been immediately related to the
human life centre, insofar as it – the life centre – is the subject of its in-
wardness. As such, the life centre is the experienced-self [Erlebnis-Ich],
which, on reflection upon, becomes a self-experiencing [Icherlebnis]. It
is an essential phenomenological principle that each life centre is also
an experiencing centre [Erlebenszentrum] insofar as it is inwardness.
The perceptual contents in this experienced relation, i.e. the appear-
ances of the living functions of perceiving – and the same applies to
representational, drive-based strivings and strivings against resistance,
along with all vital and soul-based feelings – are psychic experiences.
They are sharply distinguished phenomenally from all immediate
givennesses which are not experienced in relation to life or the life cen-
tre. These latter experiences have an objective reference to an exter-
nal source, to objects or resistances in a temporo-spatial separateness,
and their intuitively given nature in this manner is precisely what we
experience as their physical phenomenality. These latter phenomena
are in fact referred to something in the environment, and everything
which can eventually appear in the environment is built up from this
original experience – e.g. colours of things, colours of surfaces, sound
qualities of things, even mirror reflections, and all sorts of illusions
and mirages.
The psychic realm of experience further stands in strict contrast to
two other realms of objects.
1) The first comprises acts and objective correlates of these acts,
and this realm we designate the mental sphere. What one experiences
[psychically] is outside our control [Schicksal – fate]. There is noth-
ing one can do about it, unlike what one can do or bring about when
our mental acts come into play. Psychic experience is automatic, in the
sense of being spontaneous but not free; it arises on its own, comes
and goes, and carries on in its own way, now like this, now like that.
Mental acts, in contrast, do not carry on in this way, but we carry them
out, and from a different centre. We carry them out from the person
centre, and not the life centre where psychic experience is generated.
2) The other realm which is separate from that in which psychic
experience resides is that of the phenomenal content of the environ-
ment, which only touches on the inner world of the [psychic] experi-
ence centre in a fragmentary fashion, and only insofar as it simultane-
ously and momentarily meets some need of the living body in the form
of a sign or a stimulus value.
It is therefore wrong, first of all, to characterize all form of givenness
as primarily psychic. There are also physical phenomena. The physical
is not reconstructed [out of the psychic], as Wundt thought. In addi-
tion, the mental acts are not psychic, because they are essentially un-
objectifiable. No less psychic are the objects of the mental acts, which
may be ideal, real or fictitious, but never essentially psychic. If they
were psychic then any fortuitous psychic experience could be made
the object of a thought or a contemplation or become the resistant to
our will. It is also incorrect to maintain that only functions – e.g. see-
ing or hearing – can be psychic. There are psychic appearances as well,
including illusions and hallucinations as well as genuine appearances.
Admittedly, a psychic appearance is only something that can appear
in the setting of a psychic function. On the other hand, the functions
which permit the appearances of things in the external world – e.g.
seeing – and which are definitely living functions, are not only psychic
but physiological functions. Moreover, temporality, spatiality, exten-
sion and duration all crop up in both realms, whereas a separateness
is unique to the physical and an intermingling of elements is unique
to the psychic.
Because we defined psychic as the inwardness of a living creature, its
sphere of potentially objectifiable objects – i.e. not objective objects –
and its centre – the experiencing centre – have nothing whatsoever to
do with the sphere of consciousness – which is not concerned with the
ecstatic mode of presentation characteristic of the psychic, but with
what can be given in reflection at various levels. What it is that passes
from this psychic realm, or what does not pass on, into the sphere of
alertness, reflection and knowledge of what is going on – which char-
acterise what one is conscious of – is a completely different question.
Each circumscribed vital part of life has its own portion of inward-
ness as part of the total state of inwardness of the individual, and
therefore its own measure of the psychic. It is not the psyche, but only
the conscious having of the psychic – along with the conscious having
of the physical, the ideal, etc. – which are therefore somehow condi-
tioned through the human brain and its activity. This means that just
because we must start out with the consciousness of the psychic in
our scientific knowledge of the psychic itself and what it might be, this
fact does not allow us to demarcate the psychic from other realms on
this point alone, because what is physical, what is ideal, and what the
soul of another living creature is like, all have to be filtered through
the same channel of consciousness. A ‘consciousness of ’ is a general
characteristic of all rational knowledge geared at all objects, and is not
privileged with respect to the psychic over any other realm of objects
– if anything, it is more distant. Each organ, even each cell, partakes of
vital functional fields, and is therefore psychic.
We have two definitions of psychic.
1) Psychic is the inwardness of anything real.
2) Psychic is whatever is given as immediately related to the life cen-
tre as an experiencing centre and that means also something that is
experienced.
The first definition is the most general; it does not exclude the pos-
sibility that even things that we regard as dead could have a psychically
inward side to them.
The second definition is valid across the range of living creatures –
animals and plants included. Whether there is a psychic component
to entities outside this range is an issue that the definition does not
cover.
It is important to note that the realm of the psychic only covers real
entities and objectifiable entities. Mental acts, their objects, and the
centre for these – the person – are neither of these. They are not real,
especially so in the case of the person and the acts, because their sort
of being what they are is only an act or a bringing into presence, and
only to what is real belong positive and gradable – and therefore quan-
titative – activity. The being of an act and the bringing into presence of
something – each of which corresponds to the other – are not real sorts
of being for another reason, and that is because real being itself is first
co-defined through its very independence from mind, and especially
from consciousness – as an act of mind. Mind cannot be independent
from itself [and therefore cannot, at the same time as presenting what
is real, present itself ]. The mental person is not a form of reality with
the capacity to have an effect on something. It is only the X which acts
as a focus for collecting oneself [zu dem man ‘sich sammeln’ kann] –
from the standpoint of the way it is given. Actually, its way of being
in the scheme of things is something which it itself and only it itself
determines and which creates itself as an entity in us by carrying out
the acts which it does [was sich ‘in’ uns durch sein Akten vollzieht]. It is
above all the cause of itself, where ‘cause’ here means the basis of being
what it is and not the capacity to have an effect on something else. The
person can realize itself only by performing acts which are completely
reliant on the activity and functioning of the vital centre, though, on
the other hand, the person can influence the latter by guiding and
steering it. We assume here that guiding is not generally a way of ef-
fecting something, but only holding up an idea to some agent, and nor
is steering a positive effect either, but only a negative inhibition and
disinhibition, and neither is an effectiveness with graded steps. Even
less is the person carrying out such acts an objectifiable sort of entity.
The only possible elaboration of the act is by means of a reflection
on it, certainly not objectivization of any sort. To participate in the
nature of what a person does is not an objectifying sort of knowledge,
but an understanding sort [verstehendes Wissen] or one based on co-
performing [Mitvollzug] and re-performing [Nachvollzug] the acts of
that person, none of which involves any sort of objectivization.
The overall essential ontological relationship

between psychic and physical, their varieties and
forms, and evidence for a
psycho-biological-physical monism
The much advocated claim that the psychic and the physical fall into
two absolutely distinct sets of objective realms each with their own
sort of effectiveness, or into two sorts of substances, or into two sorts
of appearances, or comprise two different sorts of independent real
entities with their own power and capabilities, is historically nothing
more than an heirloom of primitive animism – a totem cult. West-
ern thought simply took this over from Asia. For this reason alone we
should treat the whole notion with mistrust.
The first assumption, if all this were true, would be the expectation
of finding some empirical definition of a generic difference, and then
specific differences, between psychic and physical. This is simply com-
pletely excluded by the facts. A strict phenomenological analysis can
even show the opposite, namely that there is no objective phenomenal
distinction, even though there is one in the way the matters are treated
by us – as in Kant’s philosophy. We maintain the following theses.
1) In the final analysis, there is not the slightest difference between
psychic and physical, when the elementary qualities out of which psy-
chic experiences and physical things are built up are defined in clear
terms.
2) The essential laws according to which physical and psychic ob-
jectivities are built up out of these elementary qualities are, wherever
encountered and whether inner or outer, exactly the same.
3) The level, at which the laws responsible for joining, interweav-
ing, unifying, and multiplying, the output of the psychic and physi-
cal processes, is not further reducible, is exactly the same for the two
spheres.
4) A strict, reciprocal parallelism exists between physical and psy-
chic phenomena, their transformations, and their alterations, as well
as between each different stage of the relativity of their existence.
5) This parallelism of phenomena at the very heart of the matter,
however, is only the consequence of an actual identity of something
real which underlies both groups of phenomena. The different ways
in which we consider this same real bedrock of matter and its activi-
ties can never be simultaneous or executed in the same act, but can
only be successive. That is why the real state of affairs looks as if it
has two actual sides to it, or two actual attributes, whereas it is only
our two ways of contemplating the whole matter, or the fact that two
existentially-relative forms [daseinsrelative Formen] are in play, which
give this false impression. Consider, as an illustration, the difference
between concave and convex.
6) A mutual interaction between physical and psychic does not oc-
cur. Anyway there is no causal relationship, but only a functionally re-
ciprocal dependence of objective appearances one on the other, which
is only a consequence of one causality, or rather a series of sorts of
causalities, which in themselves are neither physical nor psychic, but
are psycho-physically neutral.
7) The ‘consciousness-of ’ anything, however, has to what it is that is
made conscious – whether this is physical or psychic – neither a causal
relationship nor a functional relationship, but only an intentional re-
lationship, and in fact a relationship of knowledge to what is known
– as a reflection by the former on the latter – and this is an irreducible
relationship between beings [Seinsverhältnis]. There is, moreover, no
effect of anything on consciousness.
8) A true causal relationship, on the other hand, and of a special
sort, does take place within the basic sorts of dynamic centres and
what they influence, from which all objective appearances of the world
derive. These relationships are between:
a) the centres of forces and their fields;
b) the vital centres and their functional fields; and
c) the person and mental centres and the negative influence of their
guiding and steering realms.
These centres each have a basically different relationship to the
diversity of appearances that can occur, and especially to space and
time.
9) The human being consists of these three sorts of centres, as the
metaphysical and metapsychic primary causes of three essentially and
lawfully determined different sorts of appearances.
Similarities and Dissimilarities between

Physiological and Psychic Processes
One opinion has it that the two series of processes – physiological
and psychological – are completely dissimilar. It further holds that one
cannot separate psychic functions and appearances, and that not only
psychic functions but psychic appearances too have a one-to-one cor-
relate in the nervous system. This means, for example, that when red
or green themselves appear, or when I perceive the sun or this tree,
or when I recollect my father or mother, such a brain correlate oc-
curs. If it were merely the functions which had such a correlate then
the equivalent situation would be: when I carried out an act here and
now of a certain sort, or when I comported myself in one and not in
another way towards many possible objects, these objects – my father
and mother – and no other would be chosen. But the something that I
take up in my psychic functions to produce an appearance is, in terms
of its content of my psychic life, neither an elementary psychological
something nor a physiological something. It is something in my envi-
ronment. This is true even for the most elementary somethings – for
example red, green or the tone C. Qualities are psycho-physically neu-
tral, ideal contents, which one cannot explain further in terms of the
physical, nor the physiological, nor even the psychological. They are
not part of some geometry of colour, nor of any tone geometry, and are
neither constituents of nervous processes or even of the soul.
At a physical explanatory level one can say that the red is a condi-
tioned nuance that occurs here and now as a surface colour or as a
coloured patch of a bodily thing, and then describe how this is deter-
mined by light refraction and the absorption and reflection of rays. At
a physiological level the sorts of relevant issues that crop up are: how
I have the sensation of red then green as contrast phenomena; that I
would see everything as yellow if I were given the drug santonin; and
why I do not sense qualities which other animals do, for example ul-
traviolet light, as do ants, bees, and birds.
This means that the contents of psychic appearances are always rela-
tive to physical ‘objective appearances’ – i.e. the pictorial image of the
body-thing – and to our social environment and its contents. More-
over, there is information to be had not just in the subjective or psychic
but in the objectively physical, social and historical appearances. Even
in each electron or molecule there is something in the way of informa-
tion, a fact which will remain forever a closed book to mathemati-
cal physics. The pictorial bodily images [Kőrperbilder] themselves, in
respect of what they are and how they might be made up, will never
be explained by mathematical physics. For this science, they are, and
will forever remain, merely a case of haphazard and accidental being-
so (zufälliges Sosein]. The laws according to which they arise and pass
away in some predetermined spatio-temporal position – their being-
so now and here and their being-otherwise then and there – can be
grasped within scientific notions of lawfulness. In this sense, however,
the same goes for the chemical elements and chemistry in general.
But when it comes to the pictorial images of bodies [Kőrperbilder]
and psychic appearances a complete scientific explanation now eludes
us, and they are only accessible as heralds [Kunde] of something or as
understandable [Verstehen].
What can only be brought together at this sort of level in a definite
relationship are physiological and psychic functional unities, which are
not at all dissimilar, but, on the contrary quite similar. On both sides
of the relationship one finds: 1) automatic occurrences; 2) teleoclini-
cal directions [aim-directedness]; 3) a definite rhythmicity; 4) an in-
tegrated relationship with the total performance of the organism; 5)
the development of new functions and a greater reliance on the cortex
of the brain during the growth of the organism; and 6) the same set
of dominant functions, sub-functions, associated functions, auxiliary
functions, and inhibitory functions, arranged in a non-mechanistic
way.
The substrates on which any psychic function, as a temporally uni-
fied process, happens are appearances, and the elements of these: sub-
jective appearances on the psychic side, and physico-chemical ingre-
dients and physical processing unities on the physiological side. The
particular function in question is then developed in the context of the
performance and behaviour of the organism as a whole, but with its
own rhythmical unity, direction and goal.
If one now considers that even the ingredients of matter in modern
physics are not ultimate entities, but are only special places in fields of
forces, then one is not allowed to speculate, as Becher does in his book
Brain and Soul, as to whether a psychic experience might be a passing
event on a permanent object, because there are no permanent objects
anyway, and therefore they can only be ever-newly becoming and ever-
passing away unities of events in a temporal, but not spatial, coherent
flux. Becher sees an essential dissimilarity between the two because
he regards the brain as ultimately composed of constant atoms, mol-
ecules and electrons – thus providing a constant substrate – whereas
he sees the psychic as a substrate-less [substratloser] event. He cannot
therefore make one correspond with the other. Becher is wrong on a
number of counts.
1. First, he clings on to a notion of physiology based on a conduction
or a telegraph wire principle, which admittedly cannot be brought into
any appropriate comparison with a simple psychic event, as Wertheim-
er, for example, showed. Then, if the traces of a visual perception had
a definite place in the cortex, in the form of a circumscribed brain-
complex – of atoms, electrons and molecules – it would admittedly
be inconceivable how such traces could keep track of the same object
seen at different distances and under different illuminations, or how
any traces could keep a constant correspondence to it when the same
position on the retina which was its entry point must also be the sub-
sequent entry points for all sorts of other objects: why does it not then
cover the original one up, or allow it to fade, or disturb it in some
way? But the very notion of such object-specific neurophysiological
representations has long been abandoned, following Goldstein’s work
in particular.
Anyway, even if this localization theory were correct, one would
have to propose independent, but localized, ‘psychic dispositions’, as
well as physiological traces [otherwise there would be no path from
physiological to psychic according to the sort of theory which Becher
is promoting], and then a substrate of the soul for them to have their
own sphere, and then the existence of a mutual interaction [Wechsel
wirkung] between them and the physiological conduction processes,
and even well-worn anatomical pathways [ausgeschliffenen Bahnen] for
the conduction to pass down, to tie up all the loose ends in such a
scheme. But all this is unnecessary if one realizes that parts of the
brain, which are aroused by one and the same physiological function,
are capable of considerable flexibility, whereby, for example, a circum-
scribed part of the brain – say a cell complex – can be sensitive to
a field of numerous different functions, none of which it needs de-
compose in any way. The so-called localization of brain processes – as
Semon partly demonstrated in his book Mneme – is a transformation
of the temporal succession of functions [zeitliches Nacheinander] into
a corresponding structure in the form of a side-to-side [Nebenein
ander] arrangement. This is referred to as ‘chronogenic localization’.
The conduction principle, which could only explain habits or patterns
of behaviour by assuming habitual pathways of physiological events
between two separate places, is thereby overcome. It is therefore only a
coarse mechanical formulation of physiological functions which fools
Becher into claiming that a disparity exists between physiological and
psychic functions, and leaves him open to criticisms of ‘psychism’ and
to having to resort to the false notion of a mutual interaction between
the two.
2) Moreover Becher completely overlooks the fact that even phys-
ics and chemistry have given up the notion of absolute ingredients of
matter in favour of field physics, and therefore his proposed disparity
between psychic and physical, which is based on an out-of-date version
of physics, simply evaporates. All ingredients are only relatively con-
stant, not absolutely so, and are only intersections [or nodal points]
in law-governed interconnected movement and in a co-ordinated as-
sembly of forces. All spatially determined pictorial bodily images right
down to their simplest elements – molecules, atoms, electrons – must
be considered at every moment as a newly becoming, existing and ef-
fective entity, because of the very nature of the ever-changing situation
in the centres and fields of forces. They resemble in this respect what
James referred to as the ‘substance-like’ [substanzartigen] elements
of the life of the soul, whose appearances and elementary parts are
likewise always coming-to-be and passing away, but not, as Herbart
coarsely put it, sinking under the waves and rising above them, as if
they were memory images in a black box which could be taken out and
put back. What Herbart’s theory illustrates is simply the straightfor-
ward application of the philosophy of ‘substances’, long the prevailing
framework in physics, to the life of the soul, representation and sensa-
tion, turning them all thereby into mere lumps of this and that. This
Becher also forgot. His overall theory collapses on both sides – [faulty
formulations of both physiology and the psyche].
3) The many difficulties which Becher found in trying to tie up
psychic and physiological functions have already been dissipated on a
purely physical basis by Kőhler, in his book Form in Physics.
Becher’s writings teach us the same as Lotze’s did and the same as
Descartes’ did – to quote a classical example – that the only way in
which the notion of a duality of substances and their mutual interac-
tion can be salvaged is if in both physics and physiology one has re-
course to a crude mechanistic model, in which case the resulting laws
apply. It is not sufficient to say that referential thinking or judgement
are not mechanistic, as Lotze argues. I accept that they are not mecha-
nistic. But the crucial point is that nature itself, in its physical realm,
is not mechanistic either; it is only treated as mechanistic by us for
pragmatic reasons. The same, even more so, goes for nature in a physi-
ological sense, which is already at least one level above the physical.
Trying to marry a functional psychology based on the intrinsic pri-
ority of drives – which is correct – to a mechanistic model of physiol-
ogy – which is incorrect – is bound to lead to disparities between the
two realms. Even in physics itself there is a dispute between those who
hold to a mechanistic version and those who propose a Gestalt-based
model, and the same obtains within physiology. Just as in physics,
where matter as a constituent of any sort is only a relatively constant
nodal point in a field of forces, what we call structural formations in
the physiological and anatomical regions are, even if not perfectly the
same as in physics, nothing other than a frequently used functional
field or a functional field unity.
The general thesis that our living body is simply an agglomerate of
cells, or that our nervous system is only a bundle of neurones with a
loosely interconnecting set of dendritic processes, is still being pro-
moted at a time when physics has got rid of any such notion of matter
on which they could draw support. At the same time the old associa-
tion psychology has been ditched in favour of act and function psy-
chology.
4. It has also been said that many experiences of the soul are sim-
ple, whereas their physiological correlate is a complicated coherence
of several factors. Alleged examples of this are: a simpler tone and a
more complicated physiological set of happenings along a whole se-
ries of centres and nerves; or a psychological simplicity of a so-called
mixed colour [e.g. orange] as an absolute quality without the underly-
ing complexity of their place in the colour spectrum being taken into
account. We shall not reject, what Schlick did reject, namely that there
might be in these complicated processes a simpler process which cor-
responds to the psychological simplicity. But what should be rejected
is a confrontation of a simple quality, which in itself is neither psychic
nor physical, with a nervous process. The same tone quality – which
is never given as something psychically isolated – can be heard and
‘had’ psychically in a thousand ways and can possess the most mani-
fold function in one psychic form content. Alertness and attention in
auditory and other modalities can vary almost imperceptibly, but such
changes can make a world of difference, between something’s becom-
ing an object or not, or a sign of something or not. Into the hearing
of a tone, therefore, there enters a whole host of psychic functions,
each of which demands its own appropriate physiological function in
a definite way. The psychic experience must then always be a new one,
whereas the tone C itself is as an individual an ideal something, in the
same general [metaphysical] category of things as the number two. As
a psychic experience the tone C is an abstract content, not a real piece
of anything, and for each individual person the experience of hearing
it is different every time. The contention by Meinong, for instance,
that one might not see the resemblance between a mixed colour and a
basic colour, but that in trying to remember it one is reliant on whether
one makes an association between its position in the spectrum with
respect to a basic colour – orange to green – is rightly contested by
Hering. The conclusion from all this is that what might be a simple
appearance in consciousness can be a very complicated real entity in
the soul [and therefore any complicated physiological make-up has to
be measured against its psychic status and not its appearance in con-
sciousness].
5. Driesch also puts forward a multi-faceted argument against the
notion of a one-to-one coordination between the psychic and the
physiological. It seems to me that it undermines his own theory of
vital-psychic conscious parallelism. Anyway, what he claims is that
the psychic manifold is more powerful than the physical manifold. In
the psychic area, according to him, there are many discrete qualities
and the most diverse sorts of interconnections. In the physical region,
on the contrary, there are far fewer ultimate things – atoms, positive
and negative electrons [and that is about it] – and, besides these, only
space, time and movement, which are anyway also part of the psychic
manifold. Is it not the case then that the psychic arena is much more
diverse, much richer? How can there then be a one-to-one coordina-
tion with an impoverished physical region? But the mistake here is
to assume that a mechanistic version of physics exhausts what there
actually is in the physical. This assumption is completely unfounded.
In fact the richness lies on the side of the physical region, which is
incomparably rich compared with what our sensory thresholds allow
us to sense of this. Driesch further assumes that absolute space, abso-
lute time and absolute movement are valid for physical things, whereas
even in the case of the centres of forces [- which he does not even
recognize -] which are actually responsible for the pictorial images of
bodies [which he, and most other people, take to be physical things]
such ‘absolutes’ are only our [pragmatic] constructs of these. Even if
one treats the theory as applicable to groupings of such matters, as
Schlick does, it is open to attack. But above all, with what right does
Driesch compare a mechanistic, mathematical, scientific version of
nature not with a mechanistic version of the soul, which would have
some sense, but with the way in which consciousness represents the
soul’s intuitions? It is fair to compare the natural [man-in-the-street’s]
view of any matter with a lawfully reduced version of this or that mat-
ter, but one cannot compare a physically reduced version of nature
along mechanistic lines with a non-reduced psychic version. Are there
not in the natural view of the world a whole host of qualities? How
come Driesch knows that the qualities en bloc are subjective? and that
it is not rather that the formal-mechanistic view gives absolute priority
to the spatial-temporal determination of their appearance as a sign of
their being a solid thing without clarifying in any way what they really
are.
Finally, and this is the chief issue I wish to address, it is false, and
putting matters the wrong way round, to compare the psychic manifold
only with its physical determination, rather than with the biological or
physiological in conjunction with the physical. Driesch’s overall thesis,
to which I am more sympathetic than I am to Schlick’s or Kőhler’s,
is still invalid because there is no one-to-one co-ordination between
purely physico-chemical events and psychic events. It is only when we
introduce the notion of physiological functions that we can bring the
psychic, and only in the form of functions, into mutual accord.
6. Lotze saw in relational or referential thinking [beziehenden Den
ken] – for example, the rose is red, A is equal to B – an achievement of
the soul for which no physiological correlate could be found. For here
the situation is that two items are both separate – rose and red – and
together – the red rose – simultaneously. That could only happen, he
thought, through an activity of a soul-substance which was above all
representational processes. In the physical world, forces obeyed the
‘principle of the resultant of forces’, which means that forces merged as
a result of some interaction, and could not therefore remain separate
if they were not actually asunder.
But against this one could say that relationship experiences [in the
way he meant] leave out: a) the transitional experience of how one
thing is related to another, which at the same time is an experience
of transition; b) the reflective component in all this, where there is
some identical core experience of ‘relationship’ in all actual experi-
ences of any relationship; and c) the general concept of there being
an underlying essence of ‘identity’ which can account for the fact that
there are such concepts as ‘relationships’ or any other such concept,
anyway. For such notions to have developed into what they are in
human beings, except the last point [which is a prerogative of mind
alone], one should expect to find some physiological counterpart in
some parallel appearance. Relationships are not something special [i.e.
not outside any physical/physiological/psychic/mental explanation].
They might fit in, for example, with: a) a formulation which proposes
that physiological functions are completely explained by physical and
chemical processes; or b) a scheme in which physiological functions
are mechanistic. But both of these assumptions are false, according
to Planck. And the second one is undermined by evidence from von
Kries, Wertheimer, Koffka and Kőhler. [Therefore, what does under-
lie them?] Certainly against Lotze’s suggestions one can even think
of physical processes which can clearly be attributed to a relationship
experience. Because all relationships which become relationship ex-
periences are determined by drive-bound factors the sort of parallel-
ism adduced by Köhler is not sufficient. Central nervous physiological
functions are temporal processes and are besides this still under the
direction of the life centre.
7. If one defines ‘psychic’, in the way both Wundt and Schlick do, as
the content of immediate experience, and physical as the content of
mediated experience, then according to Wundt there would be dis-
similarities but according to Schlick similarities [between psychic and
physiological realms]. This definition is however false.
What it is that is immediately given as the something that is the fo-
cus of the ‘consciousness of something’ is a problem for phenomenol-
ogy, not psychology. Psychology is science of what is real. Certainly
even the psychic has something in existence in its immediate experi-
ence – such as a number, a body, or even God. This would come under
the phenomenology of the psychic. But although this region can be
the focus of phenomenology it cannot be clarified by science because
the immediate experiences are not identifiable or repeatable [i.e. they
are unique], and are only given to a ‘self ’ in its immediately present
circumstances. Even a psychological enquiry is mediated, and forever
falls short of explaining its immediate concerns. Wundt confounds the
physiological event with knowledge [of its psychic counterpart and
elaboration].
8. On the relevance of the distinction between understanding [Ver
stehen] and explaining [Erklären] we can say that even in physiology
there is room for an ‘understanding’ of objective meaningful complexes,
which is distinct from any chemical or physical ‘explanation’ of them.
On the other hand, the so-called understandable psychic coherence
of motivation must also be amenable to explanatory classification as
well, and that means, in this case, to be derivable from its psychic ele-
ments.
9. In the objectifiable psychic sphere there is as little and as much
‘freedom’ as there is in the physiological domain. What crops up here
and then crops up there [hier und dort] is not a return of the same
simple case of whatever, but has to be put in the context of an entire
history of its predecessors. The only truly free entities are the non-
objectifiable mental acts of a person, and that means acts by means
of which the person determines the very nature of who or what it is.
That an event involving choice between two options can have no phys-
iological correlate, according to Lotze, because, according to him, in
the case of drives, it is always the strongest which prevails [i.e. there is
no choice], is just as wrong as was his notion of a ‘relationship experi-
ence’. According to him, each organism chooses its nourishment, and
if, by choice, we understand him to mean something that is going on
independently from any chemical or physical determinations, the very
nature of a simple tropism disproves his thesis. Freedom is won [only
in the case of the human being], but is already constrained by its reli-
ance on the [automatic] activities of the life centre, on which, it, the
person, can only ply its ‘freedom’, by its will saying Yes or No to the life
centre for the purpose of promoting its – the person’s – projects. No
such even constrained choice is available to an animal. What it ‘sees’ is
what it ‘wants’ – i.e. the simple realization of its drives and their lawful
elaboration through its vital centre.
10. The unity of consciousness, or, better put, the ‘recognizability’
[Erkennbarkeit] of an object of experience, is nothing at all in the way
of being physically real, but is, quite simply, an ideal principle. The
empirically objectifiable unity of consciousness is neither a simple nor
a rigid matter of fact. Anyway its unity is not superior in some way to
the unity which the organism manifests.
Only if one reduces the whole organism to the state of its constitu-
ent cells, exaggerating the latter at the expense of the former, does one
even approximate a situation where the physiological and the psychic
appear dissimilar. The primacy of the ‘cell’ in the whole construct of
what we call life is today generally abandoned. But, if this is so, where
do we look for the ‘simple essence’ [einfache Wesen] of a creature? No
part of the brain, if missing, would push the soul off course.
Qualitative and Quantitative

Concept of Force
The qualitative concept of affinity of force already appears in chem-
istry, something which so far every mechanistic explanation in this
area has evaded. One can even talk about the force having a ‘character’,
meaning that there is a constitutional predilection for a particular re-
action rather than some other one. It would appear that the function
involved is at a chemical and not a physical level. There is no direct ef-
fect of psychic material on physical matter. But in the various theories
of ‘character’ in general – those of Klages, Heyer, and Pfänder, for ex-
ample – despite a consensus that there is a psycho-physical neutrality,
there is a view that there is some in-between realm [Zwischengebiet],
between what is conscious or psychic on the one hand, and, on the
other hand, physical. This would account for the fact that a psychic
agent can inhibit and disinhibit the potential chemical links which are
the basis for its affinities, and, although this agent is doing what it does
in absolute time, it presents itself as something working in objective
time, and hence we only have cognisance of measures of time.
Apropos this, one can make the following remarks.
1. A functional unity is preserved in an organism despite huge dif-
ferences between its organs and even parts of each organ.
2. There must be a function whose primary nature is that of form
creation.
3. The unity of such a function is independent of its starting point
and of whether there is a lack of some normal organ in the system.
4. Development in an organism involves the break-up of the original
functional coherence, at the very least the bond between function and
‘field’, and, within the ‘field’, between function and the bearer of the
field – i.e. an organ – which the function has created.
5. The interplay of the functions is determined by the drives, and a
drive has to be regarded as a psycho-physically neutral, basic category
[of life].
6. The more highly differentiated the organ, the less its function in
a psychic sense is related to the organ and the more its contents are
objectifiable. For instance, the functions of the cerebral cortex are not
themselves represented in consciousness. The objective localization
[e.g. the fact that the objects that the cortex fashions reside outside the
cortex] and the subjective localization [e.g. nevertheless the fashioning
is done in the cortex] become ever more separated.
7. A unity of functional lawfulness is maintained across various mo-
dalities. And within the modalities there is a priority – seeing is above
the rest.
8. The activity of a mind, but not the original ‘mentality’ of its activ-
ity [which is part of God], is determined by cortical functions. But the
cortical contribution is only: a) the connection of potential mental acts
with this particular living individual; b) their actualization through
psychic energy; and c) the provision of the psychic correlate of cortical
function – e.g. waking consciousness, intelligence, association and dis-
sociation, acts of choice, soul-based feelings – in the form of ‘material’
for mind. The cortex also supplies the condition of its own freedom by
providing the wherewithal in the form of a technically civilized world
[technischen Zivilisation]. Finally, by means of the vehicle of mind
there comes forth language, which provides the social determination
of mind. Eros, name-giving, utensil manufacture, and capacity for se-
lection, are the highest properties of psyche – not mind.
9. Drives are above all intensive quanta of energy – e.g. strong-weak.
They are not, however, measurable quantities, and are not such because
they are not constant forces. They are rather ever-changing dynamic
factors in a state of mutual antagonism, and their precise condition
at any one time depends on the overall state of the organism and its
unified situation. For this reason it cannot be the same quanta which
enter into the various different overall situations of the organism. One
can still talk about ‘drive energy’, however.
But there is no psychic energy in the way there is physical energy. The
drive is self-directed and qualitatively self-related. These two alone set
it apart from the concept of physical energy. Nevertheless it can still be
as an effective cause of something as can physical energy, because not
all causes are measurable. Not only is it effective, but, in fact, it is the
original source of this very concept of effect; the will cannot be such a
source because it only has its say-so in a negative manner – being able
to thwart the aims of the drives.
10. Parallelism – the associationist-mechanistic variety as well as
the vital one championed by von Driesch and von Hartmann – sets up
a double world as the actual place we live in, if such a theory also takes
the contents of perception to be physiological as well as psychological.
These contents anyway are only variations on how the environmen-
tal world is, with different degrees of adequation and with different
parts highlighted, each such version being existentially relative to the
interests of the individual psychophysical organism. Expectation, rec-
ollection and perception are each evident in even the tiniest part of the
psychic flow of material and form a reciprocity within the content of
the whole.
An appearance of an object and an act-related appearance – or func-
tion-related appearance – can be the same appearance. Real represen-
tations do not occur. There are only acts, functions, drives, forces, and
ideal contents. Representations are either the being such-and-such of
what is real, or they are the contents of the act of representing. Sche-
←▁
matically, the input into representations can be put as follows:
▁ ←
Drive — Representation — Object (pictorial image)
If X is a function of (a) and X is also a function of (b), then instead

of X and X one arrives at X and Y. This is how the form of the paral-
lelism arises.
Moreover although it looks less binding than a causal relationship,
the relationship between psyche and physics is actually more profound
than any causal relationship; it is even a sort of identity.
The representation is not a thing, but the something which it repre-
sents is still a thing, and a thing which is altered in some way. If the ac-
tual representation is altered then it now represents a different object.
The true dualism does not lie between the psychic and the physical,
but between a dynamic factor and the content of a pictorial image – on
the subjective and objective side.
11. Consciousness is only the most general form of the appearing
of all things for a self [Ich], and not just psychic ‘things’. It has an in-
tentional relationship to what its content is, not a causal one. There
are not any so-called ‘experiences of consciousness’ [Bewusstseins-er
lebnisse], only experience and ‘experienced self-awareness’ [Erlebnisbe
wusstheiten]. As a reflection the effect of the psychic is made manifest,
whereas consciousness itself has no efficacy. All [? proper] knowledge
is mental.
12. The drive-impulses belong completely to the real causes of
things, and have nothing to do with purposes.
13. Mind has no direct effect on life. It only holds up ideas, values,
and projects to the vital psychic stream of events, and through its will
inhibits or disinhibits the drive impulses. In this way it can influence
the course of life’s events and also physiological events. Freud and
Adler were correct in principle here. Mind directs and steers. Its pure
determination of what can or cannot be such-and-such [Soseinsdeter
mination] is not a form of causality. It is rather a sort of pure under-
standing [reine Verständlichkeit]. Causality involves real existing enti-
ties and their fortuitously distributed being-so. There are, for example,
‘psychogenic’ illnesses, but no ‘noogenic’ ones. For this reason good and
evil are fundamentally different from healthy and ill. Adler muddles all
this up. That mind can indirectly affect vital events is correct. It can do
so through inhibiting and disinhibiting the drive impulses, and also by
establishing cultural works [which influence life in a variety of ways].
There is no mental ‘psychotherapy’, even though therapeutic goals can
be worked upon with the aid of mental communication. Mental con-
flicts frequently become psychic issues [psychisieren] if they remain
mentally unresolved, something which Schilder correctly pointed
out. Moreover where this appears to be so there are subsequent ra-
tionalizations and illusory attributions of meaning, while the seat of
the problem lies in less developed levels of the human being. Anyway,
every illness and any notion of health are invested with a moral and
religious meaning. It is quite possible that illness disposes one to cer-
tain otherwise impossible mental achievements – as Birnbaum and
Schneider speculated. One of Freud’s basic contentions was that all
sorts of disturbances and [physical] illnesses originated in the mind
and the psyche. In such cases only dealing with the conscious issues
helps matters. What had gone wrong was that repressed material had
undergone an inversion or had discharged itself into some symbolic
image and had pushed its way into consciousness in that form.
The whole problem of parallelism boils down to two points of view
about life processes, which in fact are one united whole, but these
two points of view are held to refer to two actual concrete series of
events, which are then deemed in need of uniting again, the difficulties
of which seem insuperable, and so they are deemed parallel. None of
the extant versions of this formula – e.g. critical monism, epiphenom-
enalism, psycho-physically neutral monism – overcomes the basic flaw
in this argument. This is that it refers to a transcendental X, which
stands outside both parallel series without having any effect on our
experience. But what we [I] mean by the unified nexus of the two is: 1)
something which we can grasp intuitively; 2) something which is pre-
given to both psychic and physical realms; and 3) something which is
by no means mysterious, because it is life itself.
Consciousness is intrinsically an intermittent activity, and the high-
er the level of reflection and self-concentration involved, the greater
this is. The drive-based affective life, on the other hand, over which
the conscious levels are superimposed, is characterized by continuous
activity, or at least rhythmic activity, and the more unconscious the
psychic activity the more it is regulated by rhythms. Such rhythmic
activity becomes pronounced when the higher activity is switched off
[Ausschalten] for whatever reason.
[We come now to the issue of how the physical and physiological
aspects of life are experienced as psychic] something which I call the
‘smooth transition’ [fliessende Űbergang]. [I shall first consider why this
has been overlooked for so long.] The whole issue will be concealed if
one adopts the following [false] philosophical options.
1) It is concealed if one fails to recognize the determining role of the
drives in producing physiological functions and perception.
2) It occurs if one only takes into account the pairing consciousness-
soul, and neglects the intrinsic movement and intrinsic self-control of
each living part of the organism.
3) It further applies if the drive is taken for a mere auxiliary con-
cept.
4) The transition is obscured if one overlooks the facts that life and
its parts form a meaningful unity of behaviour, that they are given in
two ways [but are not actually dual], and that they are pre-given with
respect to any scheme of their special sensory contents when seen
from outside.
5) A further prerequisite for an understanding of the transition is
that one appreciates that living feelings such as cardiac anxiety precede
any single sensations ‘on’ any organ and that such living feelings actu-
ally determine the occurrence of these sensations.
6) If one regards the action of the will as a conscious ‘I will’ with
immediate causal effect on body movement instead of its having only
a negative effect on the psychic side of drive impulses, again the whole
position of a transition will not even be raised.
7) The same failure to understand what is going on will occur if one
only recognizes the physical stimulus aspect of perception and further
tries only to explain it physiologically, chemically and physically; and
overlooks aspects involving a conscious pictorial image, the environ-
mental stimulus and the metaphysical stimulus.
8) Finally, the whole matter will be completely obscured if one mis-
takes the condition of life for something in space, and treats it as sur-
rounded by a Euclidean spatial layout as any dead body would be.
Positive appearances of the

smooth transition
These include: 1) a tension between the two; 2) vital feelings and
states; 3) drive; 4) life and its expressivity; 5) the [mutual] conversion
of psychic and physical energy, not unlike Hertz demonstrated when
he showed the identity of electricity and light; and 6) tactile sensation,
and how they can alternate between a subjective and then objective
impression.
There are then certain functions of life which cut right across the
distinction between psychic and physical. These include: a) individual
differences in cells, tissues, organs, endocrine systems, and layers of
the nervous system; and 2) the sorts of rules according to which mat-
ters are assimilated, integrated, taken up into new forms, and related
to time-based processes.
In the entire history of science one can find nothing whatsoever
about this collective realm of betweenness [das gesamte Zwischenreich]
of the smooth transitions [der fliessenden Űbergänge]. It has been com-
pletely covered up. Instead of any mention of this, science has done
the following: 1) it has torn apart the biological unity of life; 2) treated
everything in the same concrete way; 3) turned physiology into ap-
plied chemistry or physics, and psychology into the scientific study
of consciousness and human beings; and 4) adopted the mechanistic
model as an explanation for absolutely everything.
The end-result of all this is that the human being is torn apart, into
one part a mere living body, and the other part a mere conscious soul.
The unity of life is thereby destroyed, and yet at the same time the true
dualism between mind and life is completely lost to view.
Mind – Soul
1. There is a basic methodological principle which is that whatever
can still be influenced by hypnosis and suggestion is to do with the
soul.
2. Anything to do with the soul is automatic, teleoclinical [goal-di-
rected] and directional; anything to do with mind is, respectively, with
regard to the above three designations, an act of the person, teleologi-
cal [purposeful] and intentional.
3. The mind deals with the determinations of objects, the soul with
determinations of states.
4. The mind has purpose [Zweck] and runs its affairs through its
will; the soul has aim [Ziel] and is drive-bound.
5. With respect to their spatio-temporal relationships, the soul and
physiological events are only ‘within time’ [zeitlich], whereas men-
tal events are punctuated acts in their own time [zeitlich punktueller
Akt].
6. Schematically, the following illustrates the issue:
7. To equate mind with practical intelligence is to completely mis-
understand the notion of ‘functionalization’ of the apriori. It is equally
wrong to equate its ability to grasp essences and ideas as merely a sort
of empirical concept formation.
8. Social and historical determinations of the human being are mis-
placed if it is not realized that mind is something which is generated
between human beings, not in a human being. 110
9. Another mistake is not to see that mental acts basically constitute
the person, and that the person is not some pre-existing and substan
Mental centre (outside time)
Life centre (temporal in World (intermediate zone)

absolute time)
_______________
Organism ! Environment
Spatiality
!
Inorganic world
tial entity. Further, the identity of the principles of being and mind
necessarily requires a mind, even if the mind has to be individualized
to make this come about.
10. Mind cannot be objectified, but can only be studied through
what it carries out, what it co-executes, and in terms of the correlate of
the meaning of works it has actually produced.
11. Space is under vital control; time is under mental control, and is
the ‘form of mental activity’.
12. What it is to be a person is to be identical to oneself [Sosein
sidentität der Personen] and this pre-empts their being multiple [ihre
Vielheit], but also their freedom.
13. What is hereditary or non-hereditary in all this? Mind is not
something that obeys Mendel’s laws [Geist mendelt nicht]. Psychic life,
on the other hand, with its aptitudes and talents, does have a heredi-
tary basis. Mind anyway is not something that can be ill or healthy,
and there are no no-ogenic illnesses.
14. Mind has its own set of values and feelings, and has a monopoly
7. onTothe equate
will. mind with practical intelligence is to completely
misunderstand the notion of ‘functionalization’ of the apriori (see
15. It is not strictly correct to say that the more organized living
creatures have drives; it is rather that the drives guide their morpho-
genesis. The living creature is in its inner aspect a system of drives,
and in its external aspect a form of life founded and realized in bodily
terms by physical and chemical events. For these reasons, proposed
links between bodily structure and character, such as were suggested
by Schopenhauer and Schilder, are, in principle, correct. What is in
fact ‘driving’ a living creature is in the final analysis its being part of, in
respect to its drives and function, pan-life [Alleben].
The Core Difference

between Psychic and Physical
If, as we have seen, in the final analysis the phenomenal elements of
the appearances of psychic and physical are exactly the same, and if
the laws which go into forming them are also the same – pictorial
images and representations resulting from the same dynamic factors –
the question then arises as to what ultimately the difference between
these two actually is, remembering that we cannot recognize all physi-
cal qualities.
The answer is that psychic is the name for each finite, real entity, as
something which is a ‘being-for-itself ’ [Sein-fűr-sich], whereas physical
is the name for each real entity, as something which is a ‘being-for-
other beings’ [Sein-fűr-andere Seiende]. Even dead things have a corre-
sponding psychic element – though without any having- or knowing-
relationship, which first emerges with living creatures. Psychic being
does not entail having a reference to an ‘I’ [Ichbezug], but does entail
there being a relationship to oneself [Bezogenheit auf sich selbst].
Anything that were only an object, and not in addition a subject,
could not be a real being. By essential laws there belongs to the pic-
torial images the ability to become representations [Vorgestelltsein
werdenkönnen]. If the pictorial images are independent from us, and
if they follow purely arithmetical laws, according to which their form,
extension and duration can change, then we must accept that they par-
ticipate in a vital ‘pan-subject’ [Allsubjekt]. The same conclusion also
follows for many other reasons in the fields of metabiology, metaethics
and sociology.
This notion is a version of monism of the psychic and physical, in
the sense that every entity in itself has an existence and nature which
is neither psychic nor physical. There are two ways of existing, whose
two ways correspond to [different] perception[s] – self-perception
and perception-of-another [Fremdwahrnehmung] – but only in the
case of entities where knowledge comes into play. Only a subject with
a mind – a human being – can simultaneously grasp and separate both
of these.
Each physical entity even has an expression which points symboli-
cally to its ‘being-for-itself ’, the varieties of which depict something of
what any thing has meant over the course of time.
The physical Weltbild is therefore, from a human point of view, the
world as how it is for an ‘everyman’, i.e. what is generally valid about it
for anybody [als allgemeine gűltig gehabt].
Leibniz’ concept of representation was that in each monad the world
was mirrored. He was probably on the right track. But is the true situ-
ation not rather a mirroring of a mirroring? In any case he gave prefer-
ence to a one-sided being-for-itself.
The dead world in point of fact is even ‘immaterial’. The atoms of
energy are special cases of a being-for-itself. For example, they have
a direction – a direction in space and a place in space to which they
return time and again – even though this directionality is completely
overlooked if one regards them as haphazard entities. Secondly, the
very existence of quanta of an indivisible sort attests to their having
an extremely primitive sort of soul. Thirdly, they exert their effects in
a lawful, temporal manner.
The Soul
The notion of a soul-substance, whether in an Aristotelian or a Car-
tesian or a Lotzean sense, is just as implausible as is the notion of an
extended bodily-substance.
The soul is a structure of drives of various importance, and of vari-
ous relevance to the entire organism, arranged in a four-fold complex,
and without extension or measurability. They determine spatio-tem-
poral formations, but run their own course in the absolute time of the
pan-life [Alleben].
At some point in the developmental course of biological species,
mind is revealed, mind being one and the same, and set above all di-
verse forms of life.
The individual human life means different things – it has a meaning
in the context of God, in the context of fate, and in its own right. The
soul, however, is not immortal.
The laws underlying the progression in the soul’s life – at a maxi-
mum in children, and in decline in old age – completely contradict the
notion of a [constant] soul-substance.
The raw material of a mind must be present in some form in ani-
mals, even plants, and even in them it must have some rudimentary
activity. But only humans can be said to possess it properly. For human
beings, furthermore, it is not just raw material or a latent object, but
the human being is now actually the carrier and subject of mind.
Matter and Self [Stoff und Ich]

On account of various psychopathological conditions which arise
from the splitting and misidentification of the self, along with states of
possession and automatisms, the absolute constancy of an individual
self is today just as questionable as the persistence of matter. What
still holds true is that a unified structure retains its identity despite
continual alterations in the dominant mental act at any time.
Consciousness of the self or self-consciousness [Selbst-Bewusstsein],
like all kinds of consciousness, is always a consequence of both men-
tal and psychic activity together, and not therefore the prerequisite
of these activities. Although that of which self-consciousness is con-
scious is partly in an objectively real sphere – and in this respect is
what in fact is going on in the vital relative level and is individual and
substantial – it is also part of something where body and organism
are no longer either substances or genuine individual entities, and this
part is a participant in God’s mental act-centre, whose substance has
to be deemed the ultimate substance.
God could not create a free creature. He could only set up the condi-
tions for Himself – God – in many people.
The person is a construction of acts under the guidance of an indi-
vidual idea of value which is part of the idea of value which God has
of Himself in his capacity as a possible person.
Any theory which maintains that a person is substantial – i.e. has an
absolute reality – is mistaken for the following reasons.
1. The act centre is transposed [verlegt] into time and lasts in it. Kant
was the first to see this.
2. Consciousness is bestowed on mind, and self-consciousness then
becomes a criterion of being a person.
3. The genesis of self-consciousness and its ‘phantoms’ is misunder-
stood. A knowledge of the alterations in self-consciousness in various
psychopathological conditions is critical for any correct philosophical
formulation of the self.
4. Mind and the soul are insufficiently separated, and hence their
assumed product is taken as one substance.
5. The original cohesion of the person in the person of God himself
– as God’s coming-to-be – is not appreciated. Furthermore, the soli-
darity between people which consciousness bestows and the apriori of
the Thou are also unnoticed.
6. What is true is that any substantiality of the person is its very
relationship to the organism and body. What is false is that a person is
seen as in some way opposed to God; whereas to be free entails being
‘in’ God, and being part of this coming-to-be.
7. Even the idea of the person is first realized through and in life, even
God’s person.
God becomes a person, first of all, through the world-process.
8. Persons are the most immediate revelations and self-creations of
God as mind that there can be, if not the only ones.
9. The disinhibition of the force of life [Drang] led to the first re-
alization of the lowest level of existence – that is, to the dynamic im-
pulses which lie metaphysically at the basis of the simplest forms of
matter. Only on the assumption of a mind is that conceivable.
Is there a Substantial Soul?

The thesis that the appearances of consciousness might be derived
from a substance and its activities receives support from the fact that
the experience of self seems simple and seems not to lend itself to any
piecemeal analysis. However, a more accurate examination of the facts
of the matter shows the following.
1. The unity is only a monarchic, structural ordering of acts and
functions. What this order excludes is a physical correlate of a formal-
mechanistic type. It further excludes the psychological theory that the
so-called identity and continuity of the self is a result of associative
memory activity, as Hume proposed. For example, severe memory dis-
orders do not damage the sense of person.
2. A self-consciousness is to be found on various levels of conscious-
ness, and is therefore itself multi-faceted. For example, what is going
on in the vital centre, in life in general, in the ‘social centre’ of the hu-
man being, and in the intimacy of a person, all concern it.
3. The actual identification of a self is a phenomenon which belongs
to another person – outside the self which is the focus of identifica-
tion.
4. The dissociability and variety of the self is spread amongst both
psychic functions and mental acts.
5. The self can simply be abandoned in states of ecstasy.
6. The mental centre can be inactivated in the course of hypnosis,
deep sleep, or sleepwalking. It can be dominated by the mental centres
of others. As for its temporal manner of being what it is: it is outside
time.
It is in itself individualized.
7. In a social context it can take on a variety of guises: it can be sub-
merged in some mass movement, it can be a participant in a close-knit
community, it can reflect the amorphousness of society, and can hold
up in solidarity when needed.
8. To some extent the self is subject to changes in its size or dimen-
sions. For example, with the loss of a bodily organ there is the conse-
quent experience of a diminution in the self ’s capabilities. Its unity, as
well as the unity of mind and equally so the soul, is only a functional
one, and there is simply nothing substantial about it.
9. The gradual build-up of a centralization to the psychological mul-
tiplicity of a living organism, which is evident both on an evolutionary
scale – plant, animal – and in a human being in the course of their
life – child, adult – is reflected in the tendency for consciousness in
general to become concentrated into a consciousness of a self and self-
consciousness.
A self-consciousness is the work of the psychic functions in conjunc-
tion with the mental acts, which no longer emanates from anything
real, but is rather modelled on the phenomenal self which it copies.
The ordinary self-consciousness that is evident to us is only an appear-
ance of consciousness in which a whole host of psychic functions and
mental acts meet up.
10. The self-consciousness first emerges through reflection on the
ecstatic manifestation of all matters brought to us through perception,
memory and expectation.
11. That aspect of the organism to which consciousness belongs is
not the morphological one but rather the physiological and functional
aspect, which is nevertheless a unified entity.
12. The ‘we’ and the ‘thou’ are pre-given with respect to the ‘I’, when
the ‘I’ in question is an individual I and not the general form which a
self takes [Ichform].
13. The individuality of the mental centre as the subject of a self-
consciousness does not require any substantiality for it to be what it
is.
14. The psychic centre is only the cohering of the leading drive-im-
pulses amongst themselves in absolute time. Any apparent substantial
identity should be explained on the basis of an actual series of psychic
events which have been bound together over time and according to
biological laws at each stage of Evolution – not the other way round.
The material, psychic self can alter what it is focusing on just as readily
as the organism alters daily in respect of what matter it is composed of.
My own childhood, for example, seems to me today as objective and
foreign as if it were someone else’s. In spite of this a life-long functional
togetherness is forged, which clearly then does not rely on the continu-
ity of the contents of memory. In fact the converse is true – the latter
assumes the former.
15. Even when there are marked changes in what is given to it from
the psycho-vital realm, the unity and sameness of the mental act centre
persists. For example, in situations where the perceptual world takes
on an alienated look, or when I do not approve of a post-hypnotic
suggestion, or when I experience an obsessional urge, under all these
circumstances where my vital centre has become estranged I am still
the same person with the same mental centre.
16. In hypnosis, the two centres – vital and person – are most sharp-
ly separated.
17. There is no absolute physiological centre, from which a substan-
tial soul could receive stimuli, as Fechner thought.
18. Psychic being takes up no actual place, but it does have a sort of
spatiality in the form of a domain of changing functional fields within
life as a whole.
The mental centre is utterly devoid of spatial characteristics and is
also outside time. Its acts cut into the psychic stream, and each act
centre belongs to a particular psychic stream and appropriates its in-
tensive energy.
19. The mental centre is only a structural unity of acts which es-
sentially back one another up. What each act centre is, in relation to
the vital psychic way of being, is a modification of the act of divine
mind. Because the centre is outside time its activity is discharged and
completed in each act [ist es ganz in jedem Akte tätig].
20. Substances without place or time, individuated in themselves,
would be absolute monads, and could not communicate with each
other unless they were groups of acts already part of one mind, and
that means God’s mind.
21. Mind as an attribute of the Supreme Being [Ens a se] is a pre-
requisite for any individual human mind. It is a concentration of what
gives rise to a personality, but is not the actual capacity to be such. It
activates itself in the form of personal unities, the latter [persons] be-
ing entities only in the execution of their acts and hence self-positing
entities.
22. The individuality of the person is only the idea and the essential
value which hover in front of the act of an act centre as a goal. There
is nothing real in any of this. Consider the maxim: Become who you
are. It cannot even be realized without the help of some aspect of the
drives, which belong to the vital centre, and which are subject to direc-
tion and steering by mind.
23. Whereas spatiality, both as an intuitive way of knowing some-
thing and as a way of being itself, is relative to the vital nature of a
creature, absolute time is its actual requirement for its coming-to-be.
However, in respect of the acts and the act centre absolute time itself is
a sphere where objects created through the mental acts can appear [ein
Gegen-standsbereich der Akte]. The person is outside time and reveals
itself only as an individual in the temporal development of a human
being.
24. The person is therefore secured through a combination of tem-
perament, character, intelligence and will.
25. For the empirically real order of matters what counts is only the
principle: from action there follows being [ex operari sequitur esse]. In
the absolute order of matters what is valid is: from being there follows
action [ex esse sequitur operari].
26. In the same way as the person is an act product of a divine mind,
or, better put, an act product of a divine mind in concentrated form in
the light of an essential idea, so is the whole centre an ordered func-
tional cluster of pan-life [Alleben]. What we call matter is a pictorial
result of forces. There is no constancy in any of these centres, and, as
for referring to any part of the above scheme of things, outside the
divine, as ‘substance’, at most one can talk about ‘pseudosubstances’.
27. In every respect, therefore, the human being is an open system
– and that means open to God, open to life, and open to the world.
There is nothing in him of a finished substantial nature, and he or
she is in no sense simple. His or her unity, in an actual sense, lies only
in the unity of the very basis of the world itself and its fundamental
groupings of matters, which simultaneously encompass subject and
object, mind and life force [Drang], and substance and subject. The
human being is a ‘little God’ and God a ‘great human’.
28. The pure or transcendent person in my philosophy is the act
centre and its individual essence and essential value. The empirical
personality is the product of this ‘pure person’ and the drive – and
function-clusters along with their associated ways of sensing anything
– hence character and intelligence. The individual life is only the body-
based objective manifestations of this cluster of drives along with the
organic forces at play – hence temperament.
29. All pure personhoods in humankind are connected to the mind
of God alone, and in an immediate fashion, and are not therefore cre-
ated finite substances. Similarly, all living natures in humankind are
connected to pan-life [Alleben].
30. According to our theory of existential relativity (see Idealism and
Realism) the person centre, on the one hand, in respect of its juris-
diction over objectivity, is relative to life, and by virtue of this side to
it, can be considered a substance in respect of its simplicity. Any up-
heavals, any alterations of any sort, in the vital-psychic sphere cannot
fragment it, dissolve it, change its individual nature, or influence the
lawfulness of the acts. Any such upheavals or simple alterations can
only affect what the mind or person centre makes externally evident,
reveals, consciously displays or does not consciously display. On the
other hand the same person centre, in respect of its participation in
the absolute sphere of being and in the very basis of the world itself, is
neither a substance nor simple. If a person were ever to achieve a genu-
ine grasp of himself or herself, he or she would discover themselves as
an entity ‘in God’. It was an error of Spinoza’s, and in a different way
of Schopenhauer’s – the latter completely overlooking the existence
of any independent mental sphere in a person – that they denied that
any aspect of the multiplicity that makes up a person could have a real
objective part to it. They then tried to relate the contents of conscious-
ness either to God or to very basis of the world itself. This is simply an
error resulting from restricting the discrete realms or levels of the ways
of being to two: consciousness and what is absolutely real.
4
Towards a Metaphysics of
the Human Being
The Exceptional Metaphysical Place of
the Human Being
I
t is a fact, which also applies to its language, art, fabrication of
tools, and all sorts of social communion, that the human being’s
most profound sort of existence at all times is anchored in an
absolutely superior and absolutely holy, but invisible, actuality. The
form of the divine being – a holy being in and through itself – is an
idea which was always and everywhere present to a human being, and
which belongs to his world-consciousness as immediately and essen-
tially as it does to his consciousness of self. The origin of religion or
metaphysics – i.e. a recognition of something over and above natural
things – is as an important indication [as to who we are] as the evalu-
ation of human beings themselves. Von Humboldt’s profound words
about language – that the human being could never have discovered
this, for the simple reason that the human being is already constituted
in language – apply with the same force to the formal sphere in which
we have a finite experience of the independence of this absolute sort of
being, of its awe-inspiring nature, and of the power of its uncondition-
al superiority. In this yet empty formality there lies the idea of absolute
being as the first apriori idea which the human being possesses, and
which he can then apply to each example of a being. Wherever there
is the accidental being-so of something, there is also something un-
conditionally almighty; wherever there is relativity there is something
absolute; wherever there is one world – and not simply many environ-
ments – there is also one root cause, one essential cause, and one real
cause, of the existence of this world. What can fill this absolute sphere
is remarkably varied – as childish, restricted, foolish and superstitious
as one can imagine – but whatever it is, it makes no difference to the
fact that the absolute sphere is pregiven to human beings before any fi-
nite thing comes into being, and that its historical status is established
before a human being can intuit anything to do with their world, their
self or their social set-up. The human being has always seen itself in
terms of the brilliance and darkness of its gods.
It cannot be otherwise, because, in the same act in which the com-
ing-to-be of a human being takes place – the transformation into a
self, and the opening up of an infinite vastness, which is what the very
word ‘world’ means – as opposed to an animal’s environment, at the
same moment when the words ‘No, no’ entered the finite present, there
was the dawning of the mind, a mind whose defining feature is nega-
tive determination of anything. Furthermore, the mind’s tendency to
sublimate and ‘encephalise’ everything are the precise physiological
preconditions for its ‘world-opening’ [weltoffene] attitude to every-
thing. There is, from all this, a release of an unquiet searching, and a
boundless surging forward into a new world-sphere, which nothing
will quell. Some act with this in mind, or, better, whatever compo-
nent X of the human being is responsible for the matter in question,
then simply by-passes the whole environmental set-up and heads off
in another direction. The implications for the world in this new situa-
tion are clear – it serves the cortical processes of the hemispheres and
forms the field structures for these highest physiological processes.
This is now in complete contrast to the animal, where the brain is an
auxiliary organ of the entire organism. The new situation is one where
the nature X of a human being breaks completely with the principles
pertaining to a natural creature, and rather fall in line with the art-
ists’ principle, so to speak, that we start from scratch. In any case, the
mind’s centre is neither anchored outside nor beyond the domain of
the natural creature, but right on top of it.
Because of all this, the historical contents with which the holy, abso-
lute sphere is filled on the part of the human being – who is perforce
God-related – and the relationship which the human has to his self
and the world – which latter is the correlate of a mental act – become
the deepest core of the mental level of the human being. The religious
and metaphysical history, into which a human being is born, is the
kernel or the independent variable of all his mental and spiritual his-
tory, a state of affairs in which blood plays a comparably critical role in
the case of his real history. It is always the case that humans form their
own history before history influences humans, and this in the shadow
4 3 Toward a Metaphysics of the Human Being 205
of his own consciousness of his self and of God. History as a branch
of knowledge is concerned with both.
If we now consider a few of the main sorts of relationship which
have been proposed as obtaining between man and God, a relation-
ship we can express as XY, we find among Western examples of this,
to which we shall restrict ourselves, a curious set of parables, drawn,
for the most part, from social relationships between humans them-
selves. For example, in Judaism, man forges a pact with God on the
condition that God chooses their race to be His select one. Or else
man is God’s slave, and seeks to influence Him, now with cunning
and slavish prostration, now with threats. Or man is a faithful servant
of the sovereign master. Or man is a free servant of a self-recognized
source of authority. Or else, as in Christianity, one man is the son of
God, identical to the father, and all the rest are children of God, as
long as they listen to and obey the first-born son and accept what he
says, orders and advises in his father’s name. Moreover, in all religions
there is always a first stage in which a group of followers attach them-
selves to the founder – the originally holy man – and a later stage in
which the common mass of people idolize the founder with the help
of things associated with him, and this dissolves the tight-knit original
disciple set-up and gives rise to a worship of the founder himself. In
Greece, after a slow ebbing away of its polytheistic pantheon, there
arose a philosopher–god or a wise god, who, from a position outside
the human being, infused them with the gift of mind – reason, which
by virtue of the subject’s free will alone could appreciate ideas – and
thereby allowed them to think and feel, and to contemplate the noble
forms of the cosmos just like he – the philosopher-god – himself did,
in his capacity as the thinker of thinking and blessed with creative
powers. But this philosopher-god is not actively exerting his will over
mankind, nor expressing eternal love, nor even pitying the world and
the human beings in it. He is through and through a lucid, perfect and
pure individual, whose activity moves the world, but whose effect in
this respect is rather like that of a loved one on a lover, a loved one,
furthermore, who does not actually reciprocate this love.
The above are only a handful of the extant relationships. But we are
not primarily interested in the history of the relationships – a vast
theme – but in the critical question as to what man might and ought
to know and experience from his position as a member of humanity
with respect to the very basis of every conceivable thing around him.
What is his special place in all this?
1. Because mind and life force can have their being in the eternal
substance as objects and as real things, and because, in fact, everything
that is objectifiable first becomes an object by means of the mind, and
because everything that first enters into existence [ins Dasein tritt] does
so through the offices of the life force, this invalidates any attempt to
formulate the basis for anything at all in terms of these two modes
of being – object and existent entity [i.e. because these are derived
modes of some more basic state of affairs]. We simply are, or live, or
spin out our lives, or think, or look out on the world, inside, through
and with, whatever this basic foundation is. It is always behind us, just
as it is always in front of us! What a thing or an object might be is
not completely accounted for by invoking human mind or human life
force, let alone talk of the highest sort of being. Whatever is involved
in this basic foundation of everything, it is eternally self-positing and
we are in it. But everything to do with religion involves being a fol-
lower of someone, worship is at most putting oneself in a position
of being such a follower, and praying as a supplication is a nonsense
[ein Nichts]. Now if the eternal being [which we equate with the basic
foundation of everything] is neither thing nor object, then nor can it
be a holy man, and nor can objective deification be the root of religion,
and it certainly cannot be the church and its dogma. The mind itself
is the self-revelation of the highest sort of being, but it does not work
alone in this respect, and is anyway only an entity which is coming-
to-be, and works in alliance with the life force and with all the images
that the latter conveys to the equation. The concept of a ‘supernatural’
entity results from our confusing mind and reason with ‘intelligence’,
and then counting the first two as natural talents. There is a sense in
which the mind’s field of activity is ‘supernatural’, although this has
no spatial connotations, but in the main the mind is best regarded as
‘counter-natural’ [widernatürlich], as Spinoza aptly put it.
2. The human being does not stand in any of the relationships to the
basic foundation of everything which were listed earlier. This remains
true even if we take account of the outdated ideas in which Christian-
ity is expressed, with mention of covenants, slaves, bondage and ser-
vice. We might point out anyway that the meaning of the Sermon on
the Mount and St. Paul’s profound wisdom were to the effect that the
Law is nothing other than an encouragement to sin. In any case, is man
really a ‘child’ of God’s? Devotion to, and a hope of security in, a power
which will make everything alright, is quite understandable, but one
should remember that under Roman law a father had the right to kill
his child, and even though this obliged the father to cut off his hand,
which he was not obliged to do if he killed a slave – who was a thing
– the constant terror engendered in the relationship must have been
considerable, and strikes us now as a completely un-Christian-like
state of affairs. If I seriously and honestly examine my self-conscious-
ness and what I am aware of consciously as to my responsibilities, and,
at the same time, apply my profound and well-founded scepticism as
to whether any paternal guidance – however well-meaning – is war-
ranted for me or the world, my overall response to this last issue is a
resounding No! I am no child in general, even though I do or did have a
living father, but I am certainly not anyone else’s child, not even God’s.
I, Max Scheler, this social figure, this psycho-physical living creature
endowed with uncertain hereditary values, this creature related to a
thousand other groups of creatures, and even I myself as a naked and
unique I, whom one can shunt about at different times without my
essential nature being broken, an I, furthermore, who can only guess
at why he feels responsible for good and bad without actually knowing
why, an I who cannot achieve an integrated view of himself without
finding that God is intertwined with my existence and nature : despite
and because of this, and much more, I am nobody’s child. For one
thing I do not have a child’s bliss or sense of security, or its trepidation
and fears, or its care-free attitude about the fate of this world. I repu-
diate a God who wants to be my father, and who has taken such bad
care of me that I must suffer as I do, and the same goes for the rest of
the world. What there is in me of a God with any actual driving force
whispers to me something quite different from any of the above. He
says: It’s not you – Adam – who is the sinner, who set the world into a
tumbling confusion; not even Lucifer, a fallen angel, is to blame; it is I
Myself, the fount of all things, and who also inhabits you; I couldn’t do
otherwise than to bring forth you and the world as you are. I Myself
am still suffering; I Myself am still in a state of becoming; I Myself am
not perfect. Therefore I need your help, Adam, from that part of me
which is in you, and from that part of you which is in me, to keep up
the direction of an eternal Divinity, and to accomplish what has to be-
come – an all-inclusive God under your influence. The budding hatred
against the supposed ‘father of all fathers’, who has treated his children
so badly, can henceforth be transformed into love and reverence for the
eternal ‘Substance’. What I have just related is an indication of the way
in which I, as a mature person, a man of our times, has again learned
to trust and love the fount of everything that is, and have faith in Him,
and faith that God has faith in God.
Yet again I say: No, man is no child of God’s. He is a collaborator
of God’s, as well as a living creature in the world befitting a God, both
roles reflecting the original conflict at the source of everything that is,
but man’s conflicting roles are played out in the world process, basical-
ly in the form of a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm. In his role as
a coming-to-be human he surmounts the problems inherent in God’s
original conflict, which to me, as a man, are virtually a closed book –
in this respect God’s workings being unknown and foreign – but is
then party to just as much as is needed to form this microcosm which
reflects the macrocosm itself. The human being endlessly weaves a
mantle for and with God [i.e.? fleshes out God in the world]. Man is
a co-creator, co-thinker, co-worker and a ‘co-exponent’ [Mitschauer] of
the world, co-writing the rules as concern Nature, and not simply a
transcriber of some interpretation of them.
I am impelled to say that it seems to me false to object to the theistic
idea of God, which is anyway much more extensive than my position
set out above, and, in addition, deny the notion of a unique basis for
the world, without realizing that in its place we are confronted with a
major difficulty, namely, that we ourselves are in the last resort respon-
sible for what becomes of this very world.
The impetus for this ‘demanding atheism’ [postulatorischen Atheis
mus], as I call it, and it is not a biological version of the Űbermensch,
originates in the following profound remark of Nietzsche’s: ‘If there
were gods, how could I bear not to be a god, and therefore there are no
gods’. This way of thinking, in what it bravely and beautifully expresses,
is completely different from the sort of atheism that stems from resent-
ment, where the all-seeing eye and yet ‘loin-teasing’ [Nierenprűfer] of
an eternal judge simply cannot be endured and is therefore dismissed
as fiction. It is further far removed from the atheism whose only stand-
point is that because there is no way of proving the existence of a God
then such an entity cannot exist, or from those versions which appeal
to the failure of our experience of the world itself to throw up any
evidence for a god or which regard the human as merely a tiny cog in
the vast world machine. It is indeed a quite revolutionary remark, as
it is put in the context of a human being face to face with the over-
whelming nature of the world, to which he is encouraged to respond
with responsibility because he is free. The human being is the most
responsible of beings – that is what Nietzsche’s remark ought to be
interpreted as. He is the pinnacle and the ultimate being of the entire
cosmos. Furthermore, it means that any notion of an entity which has
an existence before and independently of humans, and which decrees
the latter’s future, by being able to predict it or by having power to set
goals and ideas about it, is simply stealing the responsibility, freedom
and autonomy that belongs to a human being. To wager ones very be-
ing, to venture forth, and to be decisive, and all this in the absence of
any hope that one will be protected or that ones goals will be promot-
ed, is Nietzsche’s prescription. The whole issue has been neatly and
exhaustively considered in recent years by the German philosopher
Nicolai Hartmann in his Ethics. Admittedly, in Hartmann’s thesis,
there is a significant difference from that of Nietzsche’s, in that Hart-
mann subscribes to there being an objective order of ideas and values
before, and independently of, the mind and consciousness of a human
being, which a human being is free to assess. Nietzsche’s view is that
the human being, or rather a virtuoso of the species, sets up its – the
human being’s – values for later menial and plebeian members to take
up, as if they were God-given. A similar view of these matters can be
found in the work of Kerler and Ziegler.
This new atheistic direction of ideas originates in a justified rejec-
tion of theism – with all its assumptions that at the back of man there
is a perfect, universal, all-wise and all-powerful God and father. What
sustains the new atheism is an overwhelming feeling for, and a clear
awareness of, the autonomy of reason, and of the human being as a
person, along with a disdain for the way theism invokes a child-like
notion of mankind. Allied to these insights the new atheist condemns
the lack of scepticism and mistrust inherent in a theistic approach,
and is highly dubious about the invocation of nation or race, and the
involvement of the masses in establishing its validity. In fact there is a
strong undercurrent of aristocratic prejudice in theism, although, in
general, there is no need at all for theism to be aristocratic. The ir-
responsible masses may well continue to hang on to their ‘God’, some-
thing which their ‘free’ peers now look upon as merely a security charm
of the weak. But what Nietzsche’s remark implies is that even if God
might be dead the Űbermensch is already in play – His being actually
dead is only an extreme case of the state of affairs. Everyone else [bar
the Űbermensch and similar souls] should heed God’s word. Masses
need authority and their very mediocrity invites the authority. A simi-
lar notion can be found in Machiavelli. And the core thought – the re-
pudiation of God as almighty when it comes to goodness and wisdom
in the world – is contained in my own philosophy. I too accord the
human being the most weighty role in respect of steering the course
of the original basis of the world, and deny him any reliance on God
or on any pre-set teleological path. The objective world-order is, in my
philosophy, to be inscribed [einzuschreiben] in the deity – in eternal
mind – but is not already written into some programme for the world-
process. The order forms itself around events as they crop up.
But on whose account are we promoting our ‘demanding atheism’?
Where have we reached, by establishing the responsibility of human
beings? It is at the expense of any unity of being, any unity of the realm
of values, and at the expense of the very possibility of grasping the
origins and goal of mankind and of their proper place in the cosmos,
indeed, even asking about it. The human being is anyway not a self-
propelled spinning wheel. If a person were some ultimate and absolute
lone traveller there would be as many worlds as there are persons. But
this last point is false. The Nietzschean perspective envisages a human
individual torn asunder from nature, society and history, and with
nothing else to support him but himself – alone in an absolute sense,
not simply as a hermit who restricts his contact with world and soci-
ety, but alone and mistrustful of everything which he has not decided
upon himself; this is the Űbermensch portrayed here. The ‘Mensch’ re-
ferred to is no longer the crowning glory of God’s works, but a dictator
of nature, subject to his own approval and interpretation of right and
wrong alone. But, consider this: ‘If I am not for myself, who is it then
who is for me? and, ‘If I am only for myself, then what am I supposed to
be? This second question of Rabbi Hillel invites as answer a similar
idea of mankind as the Nietzschean one. But this idea is not only an
aberration, but the most extreme exaggeration of the classical view of
man, in which reason alone is power, and sets up our freedom. Any
notion of solidarity with the cosmos and with other human beings
completely disappears. This version of the Űbermensch idea, according
to which the world peaks in humans as the highest form of being, with
human beings being its supreme ‘exemplars’, makes humans to be out
for themselves – even though it is to be objectively and not subjectively
interpreted, i.e. it is the opposite of egoism.
In our view the special metaphysical situation of a human being
in relation to the original basis of everything is not something which
only humans themselves become conscious of and which only humans
grasp, know and come upon – a thesis which one finds in Spinoza,
Hegel and von Hartmann. Our view is that the human being has two
‘attributes’ – an unconscious life force and a supra-conscious mind
[űberbewussten Geistes] – and although the whole matter of these two
attributes may become the focus of consciousness, as it is in the classi-
cal version of Western philosophy, this seems to us to make the human
out to be far too isolated and intellectual.
The real situation, in our view, is not that the ‘eternal substance’ is
brought to consciousness only in humans and in their world – as Spi-
noza thought – nor that the same process occurs in world history –as
Hegel thought. It is rather that human beings are capable of knowing a
certain amount of the highest sort of being because they have a mental
and spiritual centre, and also a heart, which allows them access to the
ideal demands of the divinity, which they then co-execute with Him.
Moreover, the very place where this is carried out – a place where one
can also say that the self-deification of the original basis of the world
occurs – is the human being itself, and its heart.
Although at every instant things emanate from the eternal sub-
stance, and from the inherent tension of its two attributes, in a con-
tinuously creative flow – with maintenance of such and their creation
being one and the same – nevertheless, a harmonious accord is only
effected in the self-consciousness of a living creature. The human be-
ing can as little achieve its designated status without the help of the
eternal substance and without the ever-growing substantiality of the
divinity in the course of the world process, as can this substance itself
without the human being. Mind and life force are in fact never finished
with their reciprocal dealings. They both grow apace in terms of their
manifestations, and one can truly say that God Himself thereby grows
in stature and triumphs when viewed over a vast stretch of time.
It has been put to me that a human being cannot endure the thought
of such an imperfect God in the making, and that He would mean
nothing if the human being could not rely on Him for support and
confidence, particularly so if the eternal substance was itself always
on a journey to become a God, and making history and the world in
the process. My answer to this is simply that God is not a ‘crutch’ for
the feeble, nor is true faith an ‘insurance policy’, and, moreover, that
it is actually up to you, my brother or my sister who talk in this way,
through the way you conduct yourself and act, whether or not the
eternal substance becomes more or less of a God, and whether this
substance within or outside of you continues to suffer the original ten-
sions [of its partition into two attributes].
Whoever cannot cope with the notion of an imperfect God in the
making, and one moreover who is dependent on the human being for
its development, and who can only abide the thought of an all-power-
ful, kindly father in the background, is simply not mature enough for
our times. In any case such a person might well ask himself how it is
that such a perfect being created a world full of evil and suffering, or
even allowed the possibility of wickedness to enter it. Theism answers
this inadequately, with the notion that God created the world for His
glorification, otherwise for no reason and in other respects arbitrarily;
others say that He did it out of love. But, if this were so, why would
an absolutely perfect God need acclamation, renown, honour and glo-
rification? Is He an ambitious priest? Why isn’t an eternal satisfaction
with Himself sufficient, as it was with Goethe’s watchman? And, if out
of love, love for whom? – because surely nothing was there other than
He Himself, before he created it.
I am also reproached with having ‘demonized’ eternal being, on the
grounds that I admit a mind-value-indifferent life force alongside the
original powerless mind and the divinity with its attributes, and that I
try to understand the nature of evil and the possibility of man’s wick-
edness in the light of God Himself.
All this may be so. But I do dispense with the notion of the devil,
which in theistic versions of God accompanies Him as his shadow,
and without whose inclusion the theistic formula is not only false but
completely senseless. What we call a sin – i.e. wickedness committed
in relation to God – is not an affront to God – which is pure nonsense
– but a way of causing suffering to the original basis of everything in
its on-going conflict between the real and demonic principles within
itself, a cause of suffering because it impedes the very becoming of
God Himself.
What we call ‘being good’, in its strictest sense, is nothing that in
itself directly fosters the well-being of the world – whether today, to-
morrow or in the distant future. Quite often wicked acts have more ef-
fect in this way than do good ones. ‘Being good’ is a direct matter only
for God – for His development – and only indirectly for the world,
because a world is better for the presence of perfect God in it. Virtue
needs no reward, because it itself is bliss, but there would anyway be
positive and negative consequences for the world of good or evil ac-
tions – as mentioned. ‘Bliss is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself ’,
as Spinoza said, though we would say that it [bliss] is its [virtue’s]
source. The relationship between human beings and the basis of all
things is not essentially one of slavery, servitude, service, duty, or even
filial obligation, but membership of the substance itself, and, at the
same time, of mind and life force. There is a tension in all true lives,
and the best are those who maintain the greatest tension in the eternal
substance.
I have also been reproached for anthropomorphizing God. On this
point I reply that all I know about the eternal substance itself with
its infinite attributes is what I know in respect of being. I anthropo-
morphize it so little in fact that I hold the view that all these infinite
attributes outside only two – mind and life force – are absolutely un-
knowable. All metaphysics comes up against its absolute limit in the
form of unknown being.
But whatever there is of an eternal self-positing being, which does
enter the cosmos and can be demonstrated in some way, and must also
enter into the microsm, I do, admittedly, assign to the Supreme Being
in an infinite form. But I only attribute the essences to this Being in
this context, and I do not treat the empirical predicates of real earth-
bound humans in this way, nor their particular psycho-physical orga-
nization. Only such epithets as God as king, as master, or as father,
deserve to be called anthropomorphisms. There is anyway an older
theological discussion on the matter – ‘if God created humans accord-
ing to His own image, why shouldn’t humans apprehend God in their
own image’. A human being, however, is more than just an exact like-
ness. It has a share of being, and that means a share of the essence
and the existential roots of everything, and yet always only a share of
the mental act which belongs to the eternally self-positing substance.
Moreover, the human being is a centre of all finite being and its own
unifying microcosm, and through this means assigns its own essence
on to the Supreme Being.
For this reason it is completely irrelevant that the earth-bound hu-
man happens to live on a peripheral satellite of the sun, or that he is
in temporal and spatial terms a ridiculous speck of dust compared to
the rest of cosmos, or that his life on Earth is but a fleeting moment of
joy. In that he is a ‘thinking reed’ he is already superior to the bare facts
of his cosmic domicile. Furthermore, in that he knows that spatiality
is only the modus vivendi – and later the form of intuition – not of
his mind but of his status as a living creature and its sensory equip-
ment and that an extended and absolutely constant material basis for
spatiality is now repudiated by physics – he has no need to fear the
particularity of his cosmic situation.
The metaphysical centre of things is not the physical realm, which
anyway does not even exist in its own right. What the world knows
does not completely belong to it either. And life itself, to which spatial-
ity is merely relative, is not physical either, but rather a temporal pro-
cess, where the time in question is truly and ontologically irreversible,
because the processes involved are such that the time in which the pro-
cesses proceed is, without the processes and their inter-relationships, a
pure fiction of our understanding. In the case of the inorganic realm it
is still doubtful whether there are any irreversible microprocesses at all.
Boltzmann certainly disputes this. This seems to me correct, because
time – and I mean absolute time – has a higher valence of being than
does space – Kant’s mistake here was to think too much in physical
terms – and this absolute time is completely different from the relative
time which pertains to the moving state of the observer. But, unlike
space, whose quintessence is to allow the possibility of movement for
a living creature, this time we are considering, which sets up the flow
of life in its very flowing, is still relative to a mental act which takes an
overview of all this. The X, which oversees it, can therefore not itself
be any more in time. It is part of the eternal by virtue of its centre, and
this makes it part of the self-positing substance itself.
Freedom
Does something such as freedom belong to the metaphysical account
of the special place of a human being? Freedom! Everything’s at stake,
that’s what the word ‘freedom’ means first and foremost, when we use
it in the objective sense as objective possibility, as physicists thus use
it when they talk about the degrees of freedom within a system, and
from start to finish, from electron to the human being, it means a step-
wise growth in laws governing form and individuality. At the same
time, when we talk about a growing freedom in the indeterminancy
of any existing entity, we imply a growing necessity for the essence of
something to arise.
Theoretical physics is divided today, when considering the quan-
tum theory, as to whether it applies to each ultimate microprocess or
whether it only applies to some statistical aggregate of these. If the
latter of these views is true, a view which physicists such as Einstein
and Planck sympathize with, the problem we are faced with would be
made much simpler. In fact the concept of ‘natural laws’ would become
subordinate to that of ‘vital laws’, and there would be a ‘monism of cau-
sality’. The laws determining the creation of forms would have an on-
tological necessity, something which scientists from Descartes till now
have disputed. The human being, as a creature with a mind, would
be free of this necessity, but his will and actions would be subject to
the essential necessity attached to his individual make-up, and would
be further constrained by his situation as an act-centre of the eternal
substance, whereby he has to will and act within the parameters of the
direction of ideas and values of the divine mind. In fact, his freedom
would stand or fall with that of the Divinity Himself. In the case of
the empirical human being, such freedom is only a possibility. This
possibility would be the very thing which constituted his special place
in the cosmos, in other words his scope for avoiding the strict one-
to-one determinations which obtain in all other states of affairs and
things in the cosmos. Moreover, because the will has only a negative
effect on action – i.e. don’t do or don’t not do – a human’s freedom is
more in the way of a freedom to default [Unterlassung] rather than a
freedom to actually do something. This further means that the degree
to which a human being is actually free is dependent on the extent to
which he has achieved a sublimation of his drives.
The human being is essentially both free and determined [freiunde
terminiest] – both involving finite causality – and is free in a positive
sense in so far as he frees himself. Whether a human’s essential free-
dom can be made factually so is in his own hands. The whole question
of what constitutes human freedom has hitherto been erroneously
posed, by indiscriminately lumping all humans together as possessing
free will or not possessing it, a practice which is also found in designat-
ing them mortal or immortal. The principle here is that reason gives
humans the essential possibility of becoming free in a negative sense
– free from something [frei wovon] – but not an unlimited degree of
actual freedom nor freedom in a positive sense – free for something
[frei wozu].
It is grace of the external energy supply accumulated in the drives
which then becomes available to mind and reason that a factual and
positive freedom comes into being. This freedom allows the individual
mentally and personally endowed creature to realize itself at the ex-
pense of the psycho-physical organism, and promotes a spiritualising
and ‘mentalizing’ [vergeistigen] of its life and an embodiment [verlei
ben] of its mind. Freedom, in a positive sense for a living creature, is a
determined way, by means of its own, individual and personal nature,
of sharing in the mind of the originator of all there is, and thereby
partially participating in eternal freedom and in the self-positing it-
self of the Supreme Being. There is no freedom opposed to God’s
[gegenűber Gott]. Even less so is there a freedom opposed to a fully
adequate insight into the values that apply in some situation, or any
situation where one is idiosyncratically free to designate one value as
higher than another, or where ones own individual nature can be re-
constituted avoiding God and the entire extant value system. In fact
at the very highest zenith of ones mental and spiritual life there comes
a point where even the freedom of choice [Wahlfreiheit] – which even
animals have in some degree – disappears [a state of affairs which ap-
pears paradoxical given all the above], and one arrives at a position
where one can say: ‘Here I stand; I can’t do anything other than this’.
On Immortality
We have to reject the notion of an individual, personal immortality for
the soul, in the sense given to this by the theistic system, because the
soul and the person are simply not ‘substances’. The psycho-physical
organism is only an organized clustering of functions of a universal
life, a transit point of its rhythmically growing action and movement.
But because this universal life is growing in all individual versions of
it – and in all varieties, species, branches, organizations and realms
of it – any effort taking place in one part of the system, from plant to
man, is not without metaphysical consequence for the original root of
the living being itself. A dynamic after-effect of a metaphysical sort
permeates the seemingly self-contained life-process of each plant and
animal, and this is not solely through some empirical effect of altered
conditions in the earth’s crust. But even the human being, in whom
spirit and mind ‘come to life’, cannot be said to be everlastingly immor-
tal in respect of his individual act-centre. There is, however, a sense in
which his individual version of the life process does outlast his bodily
demise, and that is because the living energy in the course of his life is
gradually being transferred to his mind and spirit – through a process
that I, and indeed Goethe, call the sublimation of living into mental
and spiritual energy. The individual act-centres which profit from this
process do not themselves outlast his demise, but their contribution to
God’s growing substantiality does. A human being as such only pos-
sesses an essential possibility of achieving an immortal effect of this
nature, and whether it actual happens or not depends on the extent to
which he acquired freedom [during his life-time], and that in turn de-
pends on how he acted. Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann,
saw profoundly and correctly that any outlasting effect of a person’s
life and death was entirely dependent on what he called the power of a
‘spiritual entelechy’, but that it had to be of the right sort, because im-
mortality is not everlasting and is not bestowed in equal measure on
all. The transcendent fate of mankind cannot depend on a ‘few drops
of hot oil’, which could easily destroy his bodily organism, as Pascal
noted; that is a certainty. The lines of our fate, of our mental activity
and doings, have a significance way beyond the history of this earth, its
empirical culture, and our meagre remaining achievements, which are
so easily eroded by moths and worms – admittedly not their meaning
and value, but certainly the material which conveys these, a material
which makes them knowable for future generations.
The fact that mental and spiritual cultural achievements can out-
last any human being or any nation is no substitute for the continuing
personal input into the Godhead. This negative assertion concerning
religion is correctly rebutted by positive religions. But there are no
grounds for assuming an everlasting after-existence for a person, in-
dependent of the being of the basis of all things [to which they belong
anyway], which would be the same for all human beings regardless of
whether they conducted their lives more akin to animals or to God.
The eternal mind is at will to loosen the ties which bind individual
clusters of self-concentrated mind and spirit – which are anyway only
an ordering of acts – as soon as they have fulfilled their purpose and
rendered their contribution to the self-development of God. God is
not ‘in’ any sort of heaven, but is there, where the eternal mind and
spirit are, and that means in the scope or range of affairs where His
goodness and wisdom are at stake – which counts as heaven – wheth-
er it is on the earth or elsewhere. The person, on the other hand, is,
weaves its way, and has an effect, in the infinite attributes of the eternal
substance – as does life.
Only after I became involved in studying the theistic system – a pe-
riod of my life which I look on today as an odyssey, and to whose views
as to what constitutes the essence of man and to what one can gener-
ally make out God to be I have alluded to briefly here – did I know
what I as a human being live for. Nevertheless, it was not that alone
which allowed me to work out what I saw, heard and apprehended all
around me. What struck me was how little there was of all this avail-
able to me, compared with the wealth for the future of my nation, or
for the world of humanity in general, or for the cosmic potential of
humanity. Even the life of us on earth as a species is immeasurably
short, as is even the life and existence of our planet, compared with
the coming into existence and passing away of the stars. In the light
of all this, positivism, which cannot see beyond what has to do with
humanity, leaves both my reason and my heart completely unsatisfied.
In Rabbi Hillel’s words: ‘If I am not out for myself, who is out for me?
and if I am only out for myself, what am I supposed to be?’
The theistic system itself is deeper [than I have had time to deal
with here]. But my reason and my heart do not allow it to satisfy me.
It is anyway rendered obsolete by our experience of world history. A
God, who had created a world and living forms up to the level of hu-
mans, and without any inner necessity, and who had given them rea-
son and freedom and indestructible souls, knowing beforehand how
they would behave, and yet punishing or rewarding them for how
they behaved, seems to me a completely unacceptable state of affairs.
It makes God out to be in charge of a kindergarten or to be running
a moral gymnasium, rather than the God of the tempest which we
see the world as. No, the world, along with human beings and their
history, must surely be more than a spectacle or a courthouse for an
eternal, absolutely perfect God. It must surely signify something for
the very fate of the eternal substance itself! And when I, from within
this system, then ask, ‘What am I living for?’, I repeatedly receive the
answer, ‘For You, for You, for You’ – for this so-called eternal bliss, a
life for which the price I pay is to make God feel good. This is a God,
then, who wants nothing other than that I make Him feel good. He
doesn’t take any delight in my well-being. I can only bring about some-
thing which is more than I am myself, and which surpasses me. But I
must, nevertheless, do precisely this – that is, must be able to live for
this other being, whom I cannot oppose, and who is eternally perfect,
good, wise and almighty. His idea is always reverberating in me. To
live for God, however, can only mean to live with Him, to struggle and
fight for His self-development in the course of the world-process, a
world which is, from His point of view, only one of an infinite number
of histories of God, i.e. a miniscule detail of his biography and ideog-
raphy. The human being, in this scenario, is the creature in whom and
through whom the original basis of everything takes effect as a God.
This then assigns to all human beings, whoever they are and wher-
ever they reside in the cosmos, one and the same goal, which confers
value on their very being and life. I cannot find any trace of the unity,
seriousness or dignity of this goal either in theism, or in any form of
naturalism or positivism.
Am I the only person who thinks along these lines? Not at all. It is
far too little known that everyone or almost everyone in our universe
thinks or has thought in a metaphysical way contrary to traditional
theism. The following three very general metaphysical principles, each
with numerous ramifications, are examples of what I believe many
would subscribe to.
1. The ultimate basis of the world is in the process of becoming
something other than it has been – not necessarily in time – and is
not absolutely completed.
2. The coming-to-be of this world-basis stands in a reciprocal re-
lationship with the events occurring in the world and the history of
human beings.
3. The basis of the world, if it is pure spirit or mind, cannot be al-
mighty. There must be both light and dark, spirituality or mentality
and something non-spiritual or non-mental, incorporated into it, with
the relaxation of whose tension the world process has to do. There are a
handful of contemporary thinkers and writers whose life and thoughts
revolve around this theme, whose names I shall now mention, though
not with the aim of bolstering my own position. I do not need such
support, and anyway one person can be right and everyone else wrong
in these matters. Neither a show of hands nor democratic procedures
count for anything when it comes to the truth. I just want to show
how much certain thinkers of undoubted significance resemble me
and one another in their thoughts about the basis of things and man’s
relationship to this. I exclude those long dead, such as Master Eckhart,
Böhme, Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, von Hartmann and others,
and shall just mention Stumpf, Becker, Schwarz, Ziegler and Rath-
enau in Germany; Bergson in France; and H.G. Wells in England.
Human Being, Nature and God:

Evolution and a
Metaphysical Viewpoint (1925)
The human being is organized into a unified life-centre on the basis
of a unity of energy centres and a hierarchy of functional clusterings.
As a natural creature he is nothing other than the richest, most con-
centrated product of nature and its evolution. But then nature itself is
in reality and as a whole a coming-to-be and a developmental process,
and a history in absolute time of the structure of historical causality.
What emerges into a spatial lay-out of all this is only the quintessen-
tial dynamic movement possibilities, which presuppose the intrinsic
changes, movements and transformations being wrought within time
itself as the absolute way life comes-to-be. A human being is there-
fore neither his physical body alone, nor his living nature alone, and
nor his psychic capabilities as something ready created – as the older
version of theism would have it. Instead, he is nothing other than a
highly developed vertebrate with that special tendency to ‘encephalize’,
whereby the instincts decay more and more to make place for a highly
augmented associative memory and a highly developed technical intel-
ligence. Like all discrete types of animals and plants he has become
what he is by virtue of intrinsic causal factors of biological develop-
ment occurring in the highest vertebrates – even though so far it is
not possible to trace his ascent with any exactitude, and the transition
forms between Homo Dubois and Homo sapiens are not yet identified.
Discrete birth lineages are involved in this, not exclusively those to do
with adaptation and selection within an environment, but rather to do
with creative ventures deep within the ramifications of universal life
itself, and laid down as a result of diverse experiences which groups
of organisms have made use of over time. The functions that he pos-
sesses have been formed over time in an orderly way, according to the
principle of maximum form-creation at the cost of least energy, and
all this ‘beyond good and evil’ or nasty and nice. The upshot are goal-
directed rule-formations, leading to memory, phantasy, and a growing
technical intelligence, all of which belong to the universal life itself, or,
better, to the life-force – the second attribute of the original substance,
of which the first attribute is mind or spirit. The objective world of im-
ages of the material universe – supplying ‘bodies’ – and objective space
are products of universal life in its lowest form, i.e. where only soul-
less energy factors prevail. We study the objective appearances of these
when we engage in inorganic science, when their intelligible order is
manifest in a four-dimensional matrix that can be investigated.
But all such natural ways of portraying a human being fall short of
the whole truth of what this being is.
Whereas the whole world of finite things springs from an ever new
continuous creation, according to an ideal and essential structural plan
under the governance of the life-force and its motivating impulses, at
the same time humans also spring from the mental or spiritual attri-
bute of the original substance, which is manifest in them in the form of
an individual centre where divine mind and spirit is concentrated, and
which we call ‘personhood’. We, as humans, are not really ‘creatures’, as
a free spiritual and mentally-endowed being cannot be ‘created’, and in
fact would be better named ‘creators’ rather than ‘creatures’. The world
has become what it is, or, better put, is becoming ever new, by virtue of
the divine thoughts. But only humans [among all other things and life
forms] are actual participants in divine spirit. He – mankind – is not
only like all other things, constructed according to eternal thoughts,
but is also, unlike all other things, a thinking agent himself, who thinks
in and with the divinity. He thinks, loves and wills in the Godhead and
with Him; he lives and is effective on account of Him.
The idea of a human being, therefore, cannot be separated from ei-
ther the idea of God as the substance of all substances, or from the
spiritual attribute of this substance. He, the human being, is a theo-
morphic being, or, as Leibniz said, ‘a little God’.
I have systematically show [here and elsewhere] that we cannot at-
tribute spirit and reason to any earlier evolutionary rudiments of these
in the way of vital or psychic precursors, and therefore we are forced to
derive them – as we have the existence of all genuine essences – from
the Supreme Being.
If, then, the human being is neither a natural creature – neither
bodily thing nor living entity – and is not a spiritual creature either
– in the sense of being someone’s creation – but is more than any of
these, in that he is both those manifestations of God which all hu-
manly knowable and infinite things contain, and, in addition, is a very
spirit or mind incorporated into the divine spirit or mind – then the
human being and his history cannot be anything other than an extra-
temporal coming-to-be of the very eternally self-positing substance.
Moreover, this substance cannot in any way be indifferent to, or treat
as insignificant, our plight, as if it were a mere creation or object of its
knowing, commanding or judging.
It is rather the case that the human being realizes, or is co-responsi-
ble for, the spirituality of God. This must be so for each of His ideas,
or at least he – man – must be potentially capable of this task, for
there is always the actual possibility that man can sink back into ani-
mality. He – man – is neither servant, child nor tool of God. The bond
between them is solidarity, forged from mutual attention to the task
of realizing divine spirituality, including its ideas and values, by dint of
harnessing the energies of the life-force and transforming those into
ideation [Ideierung], spiritualization [Vergeistigung] and essentializa-
tion [Verwesentlichung].
And now it should be clear how enormously serious and significant
world history is, and that both human thought and human action are
behind everything, and that the way and the form in which they hap-
pen affects the eventual realization of God.
On the History of Human Metaphysical

Freedom, Man and God.
Historical Typology
1. Sociology is to do with the human being as: a) a trembling slave of
God’s, or as a humble servant, or as the one who is afraid; b) the freely
serving one of God; c) a child of God’s; d) a small God – as Leibniz
proposed; e) a microcosm and as a partnership; and f ) a creator of
God.
2. In human beings mind and spirit are not just the region where the
application of things is worked out, nor are they just the most devel-
oped level where the validity of things is brought into focus through
the noematic structure, nor are they even where a subjective partici-
pation in things takes place. They are not even just the place where
consciousness and self-consciousness first emerge. It is rather that
mind and spirit first meet up with the consciousness of the drives in
‘consciousness’ itself, and the two attributes of the original being for
the first time are immediately brought into proximity and their separ-
ateness made conscious.
The human being is the place and theatre where the fate of God is
ultimately brought to a head. In man alone, in the workshop of his
freedom, there takes place the ‘vitalization’ [Verlebendigung] of the
mind and the spiritualization [Vergeistigung] of life.
The human being is the struggle and the potential for victory that
God has with, and over, Himself.
His breast is riven in two, in constant turmoil, and completely given
over to the unrepeatable and irreplaceable fact that nature and spirit
have their very first meeting in his consciousness.
3. The human being is the manifestation of the ultimate self-un-
folding of the Godhead. He marches along within the manifestation
of God to their very summit, and that leaves him with nothing more
above him.
4. The human being is: a) in a condition of solidarity with God –
both as a creature with drives and as a spiritual entity; b) originally
just as much ecstatic life-force as he is ecstatic mind and spirit; c) at
root a possessor of double membership, but at the cost of double the
struggle; and d) someone who makes God more of a being with him
[man] around than without him. In fact a human being is more of a
being than God is Himself when there are no human beings around
– surely the ultimate and highest accolade one can pay a human being.
e) The human being is the place where the self-production [Selbster
zeugung] of God occurs. f ) We must think about matters like this –
God reveals his eternal spiritual light first of all in a human being. He
extends his freedom, sovereignty, holiness and kindness, and wisdom
and knowledge of ideas to us. But, at the same time, the human be-
ing draws the divine spirit into himself. He, mankind, having arrived
at the ultimate point of the manifestations of nature, a point beyond
which he can go no further by means of ‘Life’ alone, beseeches god as
a spiritual being to open up fresh ground. It is a prayer from the living
to overcome life itself.
5. It is therefore quite impossible to accept the notion – of Feuer-
bach, for example – that human beings have only formed an idea of
God along the lines of their own image. The human being, forever in
transition towards the goal of coming-to-be within God, and living his
life with all its troubles, struggles, victories and defeats, simply cannot
recognize such a notion. Nevertheless, in one sense the human be-
ing is theomorphic and God anthropomorphic. This way of looking
at things is relatively accurate when set against the notion of man as a
‘creature’. For the human being is the executor of the ultimate goal of
the coming-to-be of God Himself – or rather the co-executor – and
indeed the director and steersman of this project. If we take away our
role in such highest manifestation of God, then how petty does that
make the human being? – almost nothing. It is this very enactment of
the ultimate and highest part of His life in man – not over him or out
side him or alongside him – which provides the setting for His struggle
to realize Himself.
6. The realm in question comes about in and through mankind, not
as some supernatural miracle. It is in us that all this happens, and
through the fact of our being who we are that it is achieved.
7. It is only among mystics that one finds a religious socialism which
combines service to the realm in question and justification of the
poor.
8. Just as man cannot create God, neither can God man. The reason
for this is that mind or spirit cannot create life or extant material, and
therefore cannot create anything. The human being is anyway an en-
tity with drives, and these drives are locked in a constant struggle with
mind and spirit, hence the myth of the Fall of Man from Eden. More-
over, a free entity cannot be created, and anyway mind or spirit is sub-
stantially one entity and not several. Another reason why God could
not have created man nor man God is the undoubted genetic connec-
tion between humans and other animals in respect of their physical
make-up and psyche, and therefore if God had some plan for salvation
or revelation, it would have to apply to every living thing throughout
history, not just mankind. In any case the account in Genesis is wrong
on a number of counts – e.g. humans are much older than is made out
there – and, as well as an inbuilt contempt for animals in the story,
there is a bias towards a Jewish origin for humans, and a number of
other biases and foolishnesses.
Notes on Myth (1927)

1. Myth is an attempt by the life-force, as part of universal life’s high-
est stage in man, to produce a preliminary draft of its possible im-
age forms. Mythical images are therefore potentially contained in the
universal life which each individual partakes of. It is apriori to the real
history of mankind, and demarcates the range of possible history, in
the same way as do a child’s experience of its drives and the grown-ups
it models itself on prefigure the actual fate of an adult human being.
2. Myth forms the possible perceptual world, and it must ‘die’ before
ceding place to a more advanced perception adapted to what is real.
3. We have to consider the relationship between myth and the no-
tion of ‘longing’ in Schelling’s writings, and also myth in Jung’s and
Freud’s work.
4. There is then myth as self-experience and self-draft of the Su-
preme Being as a life-force.
5. Myth, and being given over ecstatically to drives, bring the human
being in direct contact with the life-force. Myth pre-determines the
philosophical and scientific images of a culture, all of which are con-
nected to the sociological stage of development known as the living
community [which precedes, for example, bourgeois society].
6. Myth runs its course in vital time – a variety of absolute time
which I refer to as a ‘group’s absolute time’. It is simultaneously before
and after history, if we are referring to mere physical time. It is the
fount of possible worlds and world history.
7. Each era has its own myth for its own actuality, and there is then
a period of disillusionment with the intoxication that adhered to its
heyday. To be able to show enthusiasm for such disillusion is some-
thing in itself.
8. There are myths of empty space, of empty time, of a mechanical
world-view – tied to bourgeois society. There are myths of a Utopia, of
man’s Fall and original sin, of theism, and even of the body and soul.
9. Myths are rooted in the drive dispositions of the races, and in
pre-human and pre-linguistic primary experiences of humans. They
are the remnants of a transition period during which Homo sapiens
was coming-to-be.
10. They have to do with a ‘vital apriori’, and have a functional role
within an undifferentiated living community.
11. By studying myths – mythology – one destroys their mythical
nature, and one certainly cannot build them up or preserve them by
trying to understand what they mean by recourse to reason.
12. Bachofen regarded them as primitive attempts to investigate na-
ture and as re-enlivenings of our psychic categorical system.
13. It is correct to see a romantic theme in the way they put across
psychic events, but it is wrong to take their value judgments seriously.
14. Myth and Logos are just as original as the life-force and mind.
15. Nature itself is the theme of consolidated myths.
16. A myth is a preconscious awareness of the origin of a supraindi-
vidual object as such.
17. The mythical objects lie somewhere between image and straight-
forward perception.
18. To interpret a myth means to co-produce or re-produce it, for
there is nothing substantial to interpret which would not be distorted
by putting it into our idiom.
The Act of the Coming-to-be of a

Human Being (1927)
The essential nature of a human being comes into focus if we bring to
mind the entire structure of the entity in question. All possible strands
of life accumulate in such a way that there results an increased interi-
orization [Verinnerung], centralization, sublimation and reflection. All
this comes about by dint of an ever increasing and almost unbearable
suffering, as one comes up against the resistance to life of the inorganic
being around us. With growing alarm at the powerful crescendo of
drive suppression going on, there is a pervasive sense of unease. The
direct enjoyment resulting from the satisfaction of the drives soon
gives way to, at the very most, an indirect sort of enjoyment, but there
then comes a point where the derived pleasure resulting from the sat-
isfaction, the replacement of pleasure with displeasure, is no longer
commensurate with the costs in suffering needed to achieve this. In
other words, the costs of this way of conducting a life outweigh the
benefits, and such a life is not worth living. Or, to put it another way,
the task allotted to he or she who would be a proper human being can
only be attempted with unsuitable means, the end-result being a blind
alley, a ‘Hamlet situation’.
The poor creature who is trying to be a human being can then only
hover between ‘being’ and ‘not-being’. ‘To be or nor to be – that is the
question’.
The implantation of Logos in this creature which has lost its way is
the critical event by means of which the act of becoming a human is
effected. It has the following repercussions for all concerned. The Su-
preme Being becomes self-conscious because its Logos is implanted in
this creature and is effective through its implantation. The creature it-
self becomes self-conscious as a result of the self-determination which
ensues, and through the gathering up of its hitherto scattered strands
of being. The experienced contact with a metacosmic being – which is
what Being-itself [Ens a se] is – leads to knowledge about this Being-
itself. There is then a sense of continual self-elevation over all finite
things, and this carries on until it is a constitutional elevation – sym-
bolised by upright gait – and until the world sphere itself opens up in
front of us. Finally there comes the realization that both world and self
are contingent on something else, which is indeed what has been true
all along i.e. an intra-divine process [innergöttlicher Vorgang], whereby
there is a self-discovery on the part of God, and a mutual joining of
hands on the part of the life-force and spirit – a coming together, in
other words, of primal Nature [natura naturans] and original ‘ordering’
[ordo ordinans].
The coming-to-be of a human being is the ideal-real meeting point
of two trends and actions – a movement in which the life-force reaches
its zenith and a movement in which the spiritual dimension of the Su-
preme Being lets itself down and implants itself into the very highest
peak of the life-force which is welling up and is thrown against it.
Any philosophy which wants to derive the fundamental nature of
the human being from only one of these movements – e.g. theism, pan-
logism [Panlogismus], and all naturalistic varieties – is in the wrong.
Any philosophy which wants to derive one of these two movements
from part of the other one – e.g. St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant,
Darwin, etc. – is also in the wrong, because they stand together only in
the undivided act of Being-itself.
The experience of the I and the we, the grasping of self and world,
the apprehension of world and God, God’s self-conscious coming-to-
be through human beings, the self-awareness of being alive and having
a psychic-physical unity, the intimate and social person, and the eleva-
tion of the self along with its concentrated self-knowledge – all these
acts are equally original part-views and part-elements of what it is to
be an entire human being.
Anyone who does not realize that these aspects lie at the back of
what it is to be human or who tries to derive them from particular
features of a human being – e.g. language – does not understand the
uniqueness of man. This applies whether the person studying the hu-
man being is an anatomist, historian, psychologist or physiologist, or
even a mortician. There is no category of being in the entire gamut
of being human which does not owe something to a conspectus or
synopsis of things, and which does not contain some other categorical
outlook on humans or a derivation therefrom.
An analytic approach to the human being is completely ruled out,
because the nature of a human being is entirely circular. All the cel-
ebrated contrasting features of a human being – the so-called con-
tradictions within its nature – are only artificial abstractions from an
otherwise totality. All essential qualities are penetrated by other es-
sences, and all drive directions by other drives.
In fact even to talk about contrasts and contradictions in human
nature is meaningless. The principle of non-contradictability, and even
its converse, are still parts of what it is to be human, because both arise
within our capacity to think, and are therefore essential qualities of
us.
The human being is not a human being because he thinks – as Des-
cartes and Pascal maintained – but the human being thinks because
he is a human being, and while he is a human being. Thinking is based
upon: 1) there being knowing and consciousness; 2) our having im-
ages and meanings of things; and 3) our participating as humans in
the collective concentration of what is common to us.
It is clear, therefore, that to think – the act which Descartes, Pas-
cal, Hegel and Kant delegate to an ‘I’ which thinks and which Kant
calls transcendental apperception – has been artificially taken out of
context of the entire human being and should be firmly re-installed
where it belongs. Only the entity we call a person can think, and, even
then, only if he is an entity which loves. Moreover, the person cannot
‘love’ if it is not capable of loving itself or of affirming its very being, by
virtue of which it determines who it is, lights up its being, collects up
what is his, as it were, and holds its head high. There is no possibility,
furthermore, of being able to love without co-executing the act of love
emanating from the Supreme Being as a spiritual or mental act within
the human being.
To think, furthermore, is only the segregation or breaking away [Ab
spaltung] from the intellectual archetype which the human mind co-
constructs, and is above all the apprehension of the sphere of meaning.
Thinking through reason gives the idea; thinking through intelligence
gives the empirical meanings of the images.
Even consciousness can only be determined through thinking, if
consciousness is deemed to be reflective knowledge as a partial con-
sequence of thinking, which then means that there must be a form of
pre-conscious thinking. What do we then understand by the entity
being-thought [denkendes Sein]?
If we take thinking to cover judgements, conclusions and concepts,
then this sort of thinking is precisely what can only be relative to the
earth-bound human being with its sensory organization. On the other
hand we maintain that his sensory organization also has an apriori es-
sential component which the animal lacks, and that: 1) the different
modalities are strands of a more comprehensive perceptual act which
reaches out to achieve objective being; 2) the images are transcendent
to the act which apprehends them; and 3) the human can reflect on
both sensations and the different modality functions.
It therefore follows that the human sensory organization is less es-
sential to his status as a human being than is his thinking – and to
ignore this is an error which pervades all rationalist philosophy, ex-
cluding Kant to some extent, as he partly saw through it. In the final
analysis the human being only has a mind because he is a human being,
and can only inhibit the boundless life-force because he is a human
being.
Although mind and the phantasy accruing to the life-force are the
two ultimately essential attributes of what it is to be a human be-
ing, that the human being does have both of them depends solely on
the fact that he is a human being and so long as he is a human being,
and not the other way round. Neither the pairings – soul and living
body [Leib] – the former being the form and the latter the matter of
the other – nor corpse [Körper] and thought – which in Descarte’s
scheme are respectively extended substance and thinking substance
– is an ultimate human attribute, because living body and soul are
rather founded on life itself, and life is founded on the capacity for
self-movement, and, moreover, corpse and living body are founded
on the life-force. Neither is the pair consciousness-unconsciousness
such an ultimate component as mind and life, because consciousness
is founded on both mind and soul. At root the human being has both
because it is a part-component of the existence and nature-bestowing
property of Being-itself, and because it has the self-determination of,
and is the entity which manifests, the coming-to-be tendencies of this
Being-itself. It is further so that the human being possesses core es-
sences pertaining to the essence of the world, for the human being is
the very entity it is because it co-determines what everything else is,
which makes it no wonder that it holds itself in such high esteem. The
fact that the human’s special place in the scheme of things is to activate
the coming-to-be of God and to ‘ideate’ [ideieren] the life-force – i.e.
render it idea – and turn it to account [verwerten], and thereby to be-
come the image of God – with the net result, however, of reducing
what God’s essence of man’s image is – all this only emphasizes that
the human being has both mind and life-force.
Originality of ‘Ecstatic homo eroticus’

alongside ‘Homo sapiens’
Only the human being has a proportionately higher ability to release
his instincts and disinhibit his drives. This allows him – despite the
fact that his nature is spiritually constituted, and in fact only because
this is the case – to go far beyond the point where he is merely pre-
serving objective goals or allowing his organic nature to grow. By being
able to disinhibit the very drive centre itself means that he can delve
into the eternal life-force more fully than can any other animal.
The human being can achieve such penetration into, and feeling
for, life, not simply because he is a creature of drives, but because he
can make himself into a ‘homo eroticus ecstaticus’ and sympathize com-
mensurately as such, and he does this by inhibiting and repressing the
sexual drive system, and in this condition he is at the very summit of
the life-force and of animal life.
Eros is sublimated sexual drive energy which has worked its way up
to control the perceptual system and its various modalities. In humans
this energy component stops serving only the sexual act and reproduc-
tion, and rather illuminates more and more what perception brings
forth. In this way it transforms, albeit in an oscillatory fashion, what
was objective in animals, merely because their particular drives deter-
mined it so, into a subjective viewpoint. This then lays out the world
and its images in such a way that their transcendental status comes to
the fore, and, unlike animals, they – the world and its images – are not
exclusively linked to whatever drive is presently paramount.
In this way, the human being has available to it the energy of the
life-force, but is not in the sway of the particular drives which once
monopolized it.
All this happens in such a way that an unencumbered pleasure in
the world as image results, something which acts as the original mo-
tive for art. However, the pleasure, for anyone, then permeates the re-
flection on, and the self-reference to, the world, and is bound up with a
sense of distance to the world. There is then a feeling induced towards
the world which is rather one of compassion [Mitleiden] as opposed to
the intimate pity [Eins-leidung] and intimate joy [Eins-freudung] which
the animal cannot but experience. Eros – sympathy – first makes it
possible for anyone to feel pure pleasure, or any pure emotion, without
its being intrinsically attached to the subjective needs which bias how
an object is looked at, and, hence, there is an entrance into the ‘objec-
tively beautiful’, with all self-references to any particular individual’s
prejudices being excluded. What is achieved here, above all, is a ‘supra-
organic’ infiltration into, and attunement with, both the demonic and
divine life-force [supra-organic because the view is one level above the
erstwhile immersion in it]. It is ecstatic and yet recognized as such.
The fact that humans, as opposed to animals, can achieve a ‘disinter-
ested’, but nevertheless ‘impassioned’, view of the world, free of their
drives, and allowing them to see the world as an image, is exclusively
because of ‘Eros’.
There is no greater error than that of Schopenhauer’s, who came
up with the notion of a ‘will-less’ intuition – i.e. free of any life-force
– in the context of aesthetics. Kant had already made a similar error
when writing about ‘disinterested’ intuitions in the same context, for,
although the erotic intuition is disinterested because it is drive-free, it
is further disinterested not because it is passionless but because it is
impassioned – i.e. erotic.
In the grip of a sympathetic-erotic take on the world we experience
something of the original imagistic make-up of the world.
Not only this, but in such a condition we are co-generating the very
images themselves – as accidental being-so’s of something; we can here
transcend our own make-up of drives and needs and individual nature
to grasp the consciousness – transcendent images themselves.
This sense of being-at-one with the life-force is only possible be-
cause we are part of this anyway. Our relationship to the centre of
forces belonging to dead nature is not of this sort, as here we can only
either control or order what is there, as a physicist does, or engage in
pure contemplation, in accord with our erotic intuitions, but without
any actual contact with the force itself.
All modes of experience are at root derived from either suffering
or joy at being at one with things. But whereas thinking with ideas,
uncovering the original phenomena in the world, or being part of the
essence of what is, all have to do with inhibiting the life-centre – in
keeping with the insight that to do philosophy is to be eternally dy-
ing – what we are concerned with here, in the notion of sympathetic
intuition, is the complete opposite: it is an ecstasis into the highest
component of life, in fact experiencing life itself, and what is inhibited
or cancelled under these circumstances is only our singular life as sin-
gular.
Because death in real terms is a re-immersion in the well of life, in
the sea of universal life, the sympathetic-ecstatic oneness we are con-
sidering is actually an anticipation or foretaste of death, a celebration
of the harvest of universal life. It must therefore be deemed a fading
away of life [Ersterben], but not an extinction [Absterben] or complete
passing away [Versterben].
As death, from the point of view of nature, is the other side of the
same developmental process as reproduction, so similarly the sympa-
thy of Eros, in its ecstatic demonstration of the images of the life-force,
is the essential entry point to the philosophical revelation of the sort
of entities which a life deals with, whilst at the same time requiring a
fading away of a unique form in order to achieve an intuitive under-
standing of everything that life, death and the life-force component of
Being-itself mean – its other side in this case being reason, ideas and
thoughts without which Eros does what it does quite adequately.
The meaning of all this is precisely contained in the myth of Dio-
nysis, who is both the God of the living organism, as the form of the
latter’s knowledge and participation, and also the God of death.
The erotic, ecstatic participation in the life-force component of Be-
ing-itself appears to be proportionately greater, and more dominant,
in matriarchal as opposed to patriarchal communities. Without this
assumption we cannot explain the peculiar categorical systems which
obtain in such women as opposed to men. For instance, among such
women, death gives meaning to life not life to death; this can be found
in Homer too, who celebrates death, not life. Other beliefs and at-
titudes to which they incline include the importance of the cult of the
soul, the weight of the past, the value of retrospection, and the propen-
sity to see in movement continual phases of repose.
A re-establishment of this being-at-one was aimed at in a highly
intellectual fashion in patriarchal societies through the technique of
consciously switching off the contribution of mind and spirit. This
is essentially what trends such as the romantic movement devoted to
Dionysian worship, the Renaissance, the 19th Century Romantics,
and contemporary Panromantics, were aiming at.
It is a fair question as to why it is only the sexual sphere – and not
the nutritional or power drive systems – which can lead, through re-
pression and sublimation, and detachment from their drives, to forms
of feeling and forms of love. The reason is, first, because the repro-
ductive system is the oldest, most original and most energized, and,
secondly, because the nutritional drive is essentially a self-preservation
drive, and, thirdly, because the power drive is a mixture of self- and
collective-preservation drives. The reproductive drive is the only one
of these which is originally teleoclinically [i.e. aim-orientated] direct-
ed towards another creature, and therefore is also the only one of the
three which is objectifiable and ‘intentionalizable’ – i.e. provides a res-
ervoir for Eros as a participating act.
It is first of all in the specifically human form of Eros that the energy
of the life-force becomes free, and detached from real objects whose
properties are merely either useful or harmful to life, and therefore
disengaged from the teleoclinical [drive-orientated] situation in force
in the animal. Eros, as a function of the soul, is anyway not exclusive-
ly focused on possible sexual objects, certainly not of a heterosexual
kind. It can generally make itself completely free from sexual matters,
and then direct itself towards all sorts of values. In this way it becomes
the starting point for the sense of the beautiful, and for showing up
qualities in general. Where it remains half-bound to the sexually at-
tractive is in the case of male-male or female-female homosexuality,
if there is a favourable disposition for its coming to the surface rather
than heterosexuality.
EROS (1927)
Eros as the starting point for the formation
of intelligence, willed choice and language
Among the highest psychic functions that we know about – restrict-
ing ourselves to sub-mental ones – Eros is more original than either
intelligence or drive-free choice. I am not claiming that intelligence
and choice can somehow be derived from Eros. Such an enterprise
would be nonsense. But I do think that the way these two functions
are applied to what is given of the bio-organic closed world which is
our environment – or of what is ‘to hand’ – comes under the jurisdic-
tion of Eros. The reason why mediated thinking and a genuine act of
choice remain so restricted in quality and rudimentary in scope is the
fault of Eros.
Eros is both objectifying and relatively ‘realizing’ in nature. It draws
our glance out over what is useful and available, even if in the first
instance it only steers us in the direction of aesthetic values. It con-
verts mere curiosity into a thirst for knowledge. Schiller’s remark, that
the ‘gate of beauty’ leads both to a land of knowledge and to what is
good, is, from a developmental psychological point of view, quite justi-
fied. Eros releases actuality and the accidental being-so of anything,
though not the existence or essence of anything, because, in contrast
with drive, it finds its goal in the nature of something as an image – by
way of its pictorial or musical component. The existence or real be-
ing of something is discovered through resistance, and, for this, the
sense of touch has a definite primacy. [The essence of something is
achieved through our mental make-up]. The release of the nature of
something, and even its reality, is however promoted by Eros, as is the
release of what constitutes form in formed things. Eros brings out the
preference for concise forms, but it is the form itself which carries the
meaning which lies in store for the intelligence. In the transition from
what is merely at hand to what is objective, it is Eros which is the in-
termediary. Eros broadens both the scope of future and past events, is
responsible for hope or fear with respect to the future, and is the gate-
way to reminiscence about the past. Eros is the father of yearning – of
detached love – and vision is its most refined accomplice, this latter
being no less than love at a distance [Fernliebe] itself.
Eros is also the source of the very ability of the past to enliven the
present. The mare remembers the stallion who first impregnated her.
Eros, in matriarchies, becomes the source of piety, backward-looking,
and the cult of death. In Eros there is the first intimation of a pure
happiness, over and above the joy of being in love, and even as a future
possibility – a step above the immediacy of erotic feelings. Desire is
then procured in phantasy. I am then love-sick with yearning [Sehn
suchtskranke] – what a nice present for mankind [die ‘schenkende Tu
gend’ des Menschen.]
It is, however, also Eros which differentiates the sphere of choice in
respect to action. Through it, the value qualities begin to be separated
from real goods. It is the source of preference – a function which ani-
mals do not possess. It organizes itself in the form of a world-knowing
function over and above the play of drive impulses. The freeing of
our momentary survey of anything from the drive impulse is one of
its main accomplishments. The independence which then accrues to
preference broadens the sphere of choice. Animals’ sexual selections
are often imaginative, but, where this is the case, it is on the basis of
showiness rather than beauty.
The source of morality is female sympathy, and Eros is behind ethi-
cal behaviour. Woman, with her natural calm, with her more gradu-
ally ebbing stimulation curve, and with a greater sense of unity and
sympathy with everything, in addition to her greater adherence to the
monogamous instinct, is man’s teacher about the entire sphere of what
is and what is valuable.
A man in our era is anyway already a mixture of female-erotic and
male-dominant-intellectual mentality.
Whatever goes beyond the conventional and humdrum ways in
which a function can be known we owe to Eros.
As for the expressive feelings contained in the sounds of song, for
one thing rhythm is not based on work, as some have suggested.
Dance, song, and individual art works, have a primary erotic function.
Even games – human as opposed to animal – get their particular value
from Eros, and are precursors of art. True understanding – i.e. the
apprehension of the intention of someone else’s utterance – originates
with Eros. Even today one learns a language best when one is in love
with the speaker of it.
The much greater variety in facial expressions than can be explained
in terms of their biological advantages is a consequence of Eros. Hu-
man expressivity is anyway essentially different from that of animals:
it lacks purpose, it is a reaction to natural phantasy-objects, and it has
a different sort of variety to it. The undoubted fact that the first uten-
sils were not specially made to serve a purpose [but as play-things]
testifies to the power of ‘purpose-less’ Eros.
Eros first of all marks out the activity of phantasy, and then secures
its supremacy over perception, in the life of the human being.
Eros and sexual selection
Eros is the anticipation or presentiment [Vorgefühl] of better repro-
duction. It is only through it that a true marriage is possible – some-
thing more than just habit, as an animal-like instinct. Eros and the
desire for marriage grow apace simultaneously, definitely so in the case
of woman, where there is also an economic bond in her need of a man
for procreation.
Summing up, I would say that the entire value attaching to the sen-
sually intuited world as opposed to the mere set of signals which it
conveys to an animal – i.e. the entire ‘higher’ pleasure if affords us – is
down to Eros.
Eros and shame

The clash between Eros itself – through which there arises a beautiful
image of a love free of biological needs – and the sensory desire which
it provokes, becomes the source of a self-concealment, in which saving
oneself for the worthy partner is the name of the game. This is aided
and abetted by shameful feelings.
Shame is the conscience of sexual love.
If marriage and the feelings that go with it have their source in a
drive for power or a craving for recognition, then Eros is behind these
too. A disappointment with everything Eros stands for leads to self-
deprecation, and therefore a craving to be recognized, in a forlorn
quest to revive what has been lost of Eros.
Eros – the purest assay of life that there is – is then carried forward
by means of technical intelligence to serve as the basis for objectively
formed things.
The suppression of the cut and thrust of life which leads to Eros is
not an innovation of our mind or spirit, but is a biological necessity
in itself, and, if anything, is what draws mind and spirit into the day-
to-day exigencies of life. Eros is above all the means whereby we are
saved from overpopulation, loss of personal identity, and an otherwise
completely disorganized sway of human drive impulses. It is precisely
the cement which binds mind and life-force.
Making sense at a distance [Fernsinne]

Whereas sensuality for the drives comes through touch, smell and
taste, and is an active laying hold of booty, Eros works in quite an-
other way – its modus vivendi being love at a remove, and its tools eyes
and ears. Its objective is detached from actual sensations and bare vital
feelings, and takes place in the sphere of objectivity, along with values
and psychic feelings which the animal lacks. Tenderness is probably
the highest sort of emotion that the animal arrives at, whereas Eros
lies at an entirely different level. The Christian world tried to excise it,
and it was Arabic culture which re-introduced it to the West.
Eros and mind

The intrinsically powerless mind does not extract its energy immedi-
ately from the sphere of drives, as Freud maintained. Between drive
energy and mind there is, in humans, an intermediate reservoir of en-
ergy, and this is Eros. Hunger and the striving after power may disturb
the mind, although the actual goals will be sought after extra-mentally
with the help of intelligence. Any involvement of mind in this is any-
way not sublimation. Sublimation is in the first place energising of
mind itself, and this can only take place through the offices of Eros.
Eros itself, when it is concerned with goals to do with economic and
power values, and when actual work is involved, is a ‘middle-man’ in
all this.
The basic act of mind is the Agape – whereby a kindly affirmation
that a being is a being and has a value takes place, independently of
what this being is and of whether it has a positive or negative value.
This act has nothing to do with Eros, not even sublimated sexual en-
ergy. A gift from an animal does not involve Agape. Agape is some-
thing for which the animal possesses not the slightest disposition, even
though its tenderness appears to us as if it were. Agape is an affirma-
tion of world and of Being-itself, and indeed of everything, even the
acknowledgement of suffering resulting from the resistance to the real.
Neither Buddha nor Christ plumbed the full depth of this, though
Buddha did so better than Christ. The energy which Agape can ac-
quire comes only from Eros. Eros therefore is linked to all of the fol-
lowing – everything that is over and above me [das Über mir], positive
values, image, form, the beautiful, and the concise [prägnante]. Agape.
activated by Eros, then becomes the source of the illumination into
the very essence of things. Agape is originally a male characteristic, and
enables that person to take a complete overview of essence, idea and
urphenomenon, irrespective of their content or value.
It was a basic mistake of Greek philosophy to make Eros the faculty
which unlocked the essence. Eros does nothing of the sort; it remains
in the sphere of images and its highest achievement is the form [Ge
stalt], not essences. This mistake is bound up with the Greeks’ misun-
derstanding of form [Form] – and whether it was actual or potentially
in the non-being of the life-force.
Mind, and its source Agape, although founded on our apprehension
of essences and essential values, nourishes this activity with Eros’ en-
ergy, as the only energy source available to it.
Eros and intelligence are both

features of universal life
What has been called a refinement in life’s drives over the course of
evolution is none other than Eros, which, along with the life-force’s
phantasy, and the aid of technical intelligence, has helped bring forth
ever more complex forms.
It is not universal life which positive mutations has brought forth
[- which was there at the beginning -] but universal Eros. Eros grows
with every achievement it effects, and is sited at a level above intel-
ligence and phantasy. It sketches out the ideal possibilities of how life
can take form.
It is the vision [sehend] of what the life-force has come-to-be, but at
a sub-mental stage. Eros remains demonic.
Eros between human beings

It springs forth in the contact between two human beings and is at the
same time a single independent function of universal life, in which two
humans can merely participate.
So far as I know the phenomenon of Eros is most magnificently
described by Klopstock. Schopenhauer referred to it as ‘the genius of
the species’ and considered that ‘in it lay Elysium’. Jung’s remarks on
‘anima’ and ‘animus’ are outstanding, and Kretschmer wrote about it.
Schopenhauer, however, got it wrong when he called it a ‘swindler’, and
when he related it only to reproduction.
Bliss and the best of what is biological meet together in Eros.
Lovers behold themselves and the possibility of a beautiful life at
the same instant, and see something more than just two human be-
ings propagating the species. The sexual drives are bound to a living
organism, and remain arrested at the level of an individual’s pleasure.
Not so Eros, which is, like language, myth, and mind – in this respect
– bound essentially to a mutual togetherness [Miteinandersein], yet is
inexplicable purely as an interaction. It shows itself here as the imme-
diate presupposition for language, and, indeed, as the sine qua non of
mutual understanding itself.
Eros and authority

Eros is the single positive basis for all authority and otherwise unfath-
omable reverence. Everything else is angst.
The higher forms of the life-force never emerge from lower ones in
a way that their essence, quality and special lawfulness can be directly
traced. Eros is no exception: it is not simply a consequence of drive
suppression. It – and other higher manifestations – are founded on
this, but not wholly explained through it.
Eros, along with its correlate – beautiful forms – is eternal. In the
beauty of the forms of nature the mirror of its smiling gracefulness is
unveiled. But in human beings Eros allows the opportunity offered by
an ascetic setting aside of drives for all this to appear as a subjective
experience.
In this way Eros becomes conscious of its own endeavours.
Eros and quality

Eros opens up pure images, first of all life as an image of opposing
sexual phenomena – male, female – but all other entities as well, and
it does so by uncovering their expression physiognomically – as a face.
It gives preference to visible beauty, the noble, and adequate types of
things. It is at odds with the notion of grasping something, an attitude
typical of drive.
Quality is first activated by Eros, but it – quality – then organizes
Eros to serve its – quality’s – own essential valuation, according to
the invisible demands of the mind, to which quality – but not Eros
– belongs. Together, Eros and quality result in love. Quality affirms
according to the way the essential mental and spiritual values are set
up. Eros’ role in this, with its capacity to emote at a distance from an
entity, is to activate the growth of love, and to be the very source of that
love which is quite specific to humans.
Eros, not quality, is sublimated sexual energy, and this infuses visual
intuitions which the person has available. The upshot of this process
is that Eros, guided by phantasy, can create an adequate, concrete ex-
ample of something, whereas an essence is only a mental construct [i.e.
it exemplifies, fleshes out and individuates essences]. This is itself how
artistic conceptions arise.
To try and explain art in terms of a ‘will to power’ is absolute non-
sense. All art has to do with pathos, not will; it is to do with ‘being
seized’ [Ergriffenheit], not with seizing [Ergreifen]. Kant’s notion of an
‘interest-free’ intuition, or Schopenhauer’s, of a pure contemplation
free of the constraints of the will, are just as false. What neither phi-
losopher saw was that there was something between drive and reason,
and this something is Eros.
Aesthetic joy, however naïve, is always a joy in some actual state of
affairs and values – Yes, that is how it is; or, Yes, you are just like that.
This needs Eros.
The images are first set free from their mere status as functional
signs of real being by Eros. Without this release they remain simple
lures or repulsions experienced as non-resistance, resistance, or pos-
sible resistance.
Eros has its rudimentary beginnings among animals in the form of:
1) a choice of available sexual partners; 2) tenderness – an eroticism
of touch; and 3) gift-giving.
In fact, in the very grasping of something, the beautiful image of it
dwindles away, and melts into nothing. Eros stops desire from getting
too strong, yet at the same time summons it up. It releases kindness,
energizes it, and particularizes it, yet at the same time subsuming it
under an essence. In this way Eros spans the poles of what it is to be a
human being as a unifying tendency.
Unification of Life-force and Mind in

the Human Being (1925-1926)
In the human being the mentally-creative, original, basic factor raises
itself to a consciousness of its totality. Whereas the mind is only active
in the way of technical intelligence in the sphere of inorganic matters,
when it comes to organic life it rises up to be a purveyor of particular
forms, and when it comes to the human level there is [for the first
time] a ‘being out for itself ’ [fűr sich sein] and a unification with the
life-force and drives, all this despite the inevitable conflict.
The human being is that creature where a unification of the life-
force and mind comes about, where mind gets its own strength, and
drives get their direction; where God becomes an actual entity from its
erstwhile potential in this respect from amongst the original basis of
the world; and where the mental potentials of what lies in the power
of things actually leads to a powerful status of mind.
Schopenhauer (1925/1926)
Without doubt, Schopenhauer found an essential truth about the way
everything is. But he encumbered his notion of ‘will’ with all sorts of
Christian – ascetic – paraphernalia, and denies it any creative poten-
tial. He knew nothing of either the Dionysian affirmation or of the
relatively negative bringing forth of matters through the offices of the
mind. The darkest reaches of the immeasurable fertility of the life-force
is certainly blind, in one sense, but this sense is only in respect of the
values entertained by mind; it is not blind ‘in itself ’. Anyway, it – life-
force – is not a unified entity. It is multifaceted, and each facet has its
own goal. Its highest level is Eros, which seeks the perfect shape, con-
densing it in the most appropriate way. It is geared to pinpoint what is
beautiful. It has its own principle of phantasy to back it up, and leads
on to what mind eventually does do. From Eros – the highest that
the life-force achieves – to mind, the following transformations occur:
form → idea; noble → good; intelligence → mind; and Eros → quality.
What drives this transposition is not a simple ‘no’, but a steering and
a directing through mind and will to a realization of God’s own goal.
Mind gets power and positivity, and the life-force learns ideas and val-
ues. All ideas and values come from divine mind, through love of God,
even though at root they are derived from the life-force itself.
What is irrational is irrational only when measured against reason.
In itself, the irrational is not irrational, and it has its own recognizabil-
ity and its own way of being.
Female and Male (1927)

The human female represents the life-force, insofar as it has evolved
into an idea and can be the subject of a longing for it.
The male represents mind and spirit, insofar as they have a tendency
to realize what sun, earth, light and darkness mean.
The two of them, male and female, in their coming together in love,
bring to fruition the disposition for God Himself to come about, from
the melding of the divine with the life-force.
This last is the ultimate reason why both are appropriately paired,
one to the other, and why what is Holy can only appear as this pairing
of the ‘mother-world’ and the ‘father-world’, and why this is an end-
result of the amalgamation of the two ‘sexual’ cultures.
You – woman – daughter of the earth, Is not the moon and its light
sufficient for your purposes? What need do you have of the sun?
The drive towards death and the reproductive drive – Are they not
amply sufficient for you? You – woman – were anyway born because
of the latter, and why not serve them, suffer for them, put up with
them and even be sacrificed to them? You, not we – Man – hold the
key of life in your hands.
Gentle you should be, and an eternal example for man to turn to as
to what gives shape to life.
If it were only to you that we men ever turned, then we would love
and be tender.
You – woman – are children of the night of the soul, of life, of fate,
and of what is constant. You are the guardian of what comes round
again, of tradition, of decency, of morals, and of shame. You are the
prey of the hunter, the hunter being the man, and even consciousness
itself is a male preserve – ‘capture the booty’ is its motto. On the other
hand, you – woman – remain the negative politician, the martyr, and
yet the producer. You are allied to the church and the priest.
In Dionysian times you were at the forefront of humanity.
It is to you that we owe our eternity, but from you there arose the
spirit of God.
Without you, what would we – Men – be or do? We would fly off
into the rarefied atmosphere of ideas. Without us, you – Women –
would be like worms, trapped in the earth. You are blind without
us men; we men are lame without you. We men alone steer us both
through life.
We – Men – make ourselves heroes to please you. You – Women –
make yourselves into courtesans to please us, or did so in the Middle
Ages.
Asceticism and chivalry, protection of maidens, and all sorts of oth-
er renunciations – these are the most beautiful ways in which human
life has taken shape.
Just as the engine which drives world history is not fuelled by ideas
but by the life-force, so is the true activation of human beings in and
by women and not in and by men. The man has such a great sex drive
that he no longer notices how often and how much he is actually serv-
ing women, and most so at the very moment when he thinks he is
controlling them.
A mind that believes it is becoming powerful is definitely deceived.
Therefore, it is man as opposed to women who is responsible for the
actual sociological determination of mind.
Man thinks; woman directs.
If a creature finds itself in a situation of self-defeating resistance, it
begins to control its impulses. In fact the disequilibrium in aims be-
tween plants and inorganic matter was the direct cause of the creation
of animals. The plant is seemingly in a state of confidence in, and soli-
darity with, its inorganic environment, but what it lacks is catabolic
metabolism.
All progress takes place at the junction of some lack of adaptation –
a mal-adaptation to future conditions, a dissatisfaction, a repression, a
resistance. In the ensuing suffering there lies the basis for progress.
The Human as an Open System and

its Two Evolving Pathways
As an ‘open system’ the human being is equally at liberty to apprehend
ideas and to co-determine which ones will be realized in nature, as
well as to penetrate into the drive-based ecstasis which gives him a
taste of universal life and its imagistic world. He can just as well hitch
his horses to a mental and spiritual vehicle which will take him far
beyond the mundane constraints of his needs and purposes, as take
off in another direction altogether with all its technical and moral edi-
fices for promoting the sophisticated animal in us. In one direction,
one is participating in one of the attributes of the basis of everything,
and one becomes homo sapiens, whereas in the other, one participates
in the second of the world-ground’s attributes, and one becomes Dio-
nysian man. If one of these two paths becomes a prevailing route for
mankind, then the other is deemed sinful. This is what all spiritual
religions have done to Dionysian humans. They have branded them
impure and flawed [unrein], and demeaned their very way of life, their
culture and their traditions; their moral codes too have been deni-
grated as too emotional, too relaxed, and too close to the raw end of
life. Any tendency to extol the virtues of ‘communism’ of any sort has
been damned and hounded out. Above all they have taken issue with
the notion that sexuality is the original drive of life, and have sim-
ply condemned the charms of this and charged it with being sinful
and dirty, with the sole motive of channelling all its vast energy into
fuelling mind and spirit through its sublimation. When Plato called
philosophising an eternal dying he expressed the fundamental prin-
ciple of a pure asceticism. History, however, is replete with rhythmic
movements for or against each human path, towards homo sapiens or
towards the Dionysian man – orphic cults, the Renaissance, Romanti-
cism, the peasant Bolsheviks against Marxism.
This rhythm – now one path, now another – is, however, tied up
with the respective preponderance of the female psyche or the male
mind and spirit. This is an essential truth of all knowledge, according
to Bachofen, and is valid over and above all wrong turnings in history.
All culture is a consequence of the fertilization of these two principles
– Apollonian and Dionysian, in Nietzsche’s account. The Romantic
spirit is childish and female at root. In Schopenhauer’s and Kant’s eth-
ics the Dionysian and classical moral schemes come together in a way
which is reminiscent of more recent ‘marriages’ – Jewish Marxism and
peasant Bolshevism – or more ancient – Plato and Buddha. Phenom-
enologically, the two types of culture in question are aptly described,
by Strich, for example, as ‘romantic’ and ‘classical’. Nadler proposed an
ethnological-biological exposition of the two in the following terms.
Romanticism appears when a foreign folklore interpolates itself at a
time of crisis within an indigenous culture, with the result that the
indigenous folklore takes the form of a receptive ‘mother’ to the foreign
import.
If female and male are functional and original ways of being of two
sorts of living cells, then it would appear as if Life itself, which fosters
these, is bisexual. Bisexuality would then be a core characteristic of
Life, which would only be partitioned into ‘male’ and ‘female’ as an idea.
The Dionysian human being represents an essentially primitive aspect
of ourselves, the Apollonian that of progress. The Romantic mental-
ity is essentially backwards-looking, a longing for what has been lost.
It can be conservative or revolutionary, and is above all a condition of
the soul, which can have any number of actual contents. The following
dichotomy holds good.
Classical Romantic
1. Space Time
2. Concept Feeling, introverted state
3. Outside Inside
4. Day and light Night
5. Heaven Earth
6. Law Individual
7. Form Expression
8. Finitude Infinitude
9. Tension Relaxation
10. Plasticity Musicality
11. Stationary/static Coming-to-be
Catholicism is a High-Classical or Roman appearance of things. But

in times when this seems outdated it turns to the Romantic mentality,
which is quite un-Catholic and too subjective. These are illusions of
the first order. German spiritual history is Romantic when compared
with France, but Russian is more Romantic than German. The future
is definitely taking a turn for the Dionysian mode: consider the victory
for women in Socialism; or the growing clamour of the East – which
is collectively motherly and Romantic.
Education has always taught what would lead to human totality.
The attraction between the opposite sexes is bound up with charac-
ter types which reflect the Classical and Romantic modes, so that no
person ends up with too extreme a set of drives.
The Greek culture was two-faced – Apollonian and Dionysian.
Homo sapiens was a Greek conception, but first fully realized in Ro-
man times, whereas in Russia the features of the Hellenistic Eros en-
tered more deeply into the national spirit.
As for morality, there are Apollonian and Dionysian versions. There
is an asceticism of mind and spirit, just as there is an asceticism of
drives. The Catholic Church’s forbidding of doubt stems from a delib-
erate attempt to impoverish the role of mind in human affairs. Instead,
it celebrates tradition and authority, and gives preference to a commu-
nal life over rational progress. Each moral code is a sort of asceticism
because willing is always a way of saying no. The move towards physi-
cal education, the ‘culture of the body’ and sport are a conscious moral-
ity against intellectualisation and against the urge to think too much.
This is in complete contrast to the Scholastic era, which encouraged
thinking among a select and closely-knit group. The medieval sort of
rationalism was anyway not a course of instruction leading to rational
thinking, but rather the conveyance of a pre-set idealistic system. Yet
another reversal of notions is exemplified by modern irrationalism –
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Bergson – where it is taken for granted that
thinking has become too instinctive, too overindulged in, and needs
taking down a peg or two, by encouraging sport, for example. Such is
an example of mental asceticism and a consciously worked out relax-
ation technique. Freud and psychoanalysis, and Nietzsche’s exhorta-
tion ‘Become hard’, are in the same general vein. Every morality is a
system of forbiddings – a set of No’s – aimed at a particular image of
a human being.
Interpenetration (1924/5)
In the same way as goodness and Eros – emotional affirmation of the
other as such and the noble forms of the selective Eros – become ever
more interpenetrated, so also do Logos and phantasy. Phantasy be-
comes ‘reasonable’ and spiritualized, and the world of ideas becomes
realized through constructions pertaining to shape and the life-force.
Phantasy in ourselves, and metaphysical phantasy belonging to the
life-force, which are the building blocks of the accidental being-so of
something in a consciousness-transcendent realm, are one and the
same. The psychology of artistic creation and its designs show us this
very process in miniature – i.e. how a world can become such. The
world is anyway just such a ‘work of art’, and world history is a tale
or song which the Divinity sings first. It is a song of melancholy, but
nevertheless of victory.
Phantasy, beginning with intuitively given images and analogous lev-
els of other sensory givennesses, is much more primary in the scheme
of things than are perception and reproduction, and this applies to
the child and the primitive person. Each representation, which is ever
newly built from reproduction, memory, expectation and phantasy,
never returns. But what perception and reproduction or memory and
expectation were becomes phantasy, in the same way as will becomes a
mere wish.
The animal and the child live in a world of phantasy reproduc-
tions without they themselves recognizing this as such. Caspar took
a speckled ball to be a face with eyes. Animals do not seem to be able
to distinguish the living from the dead. The stimulus which an image
arouses does not mean that a proportional sensation is thereby given,
let alone that any sensation is a copy of the thing, but only means
that the ever active production of drive-directed phantasy is being cur-
tailed and restricted in terms of what the actual phantasy content can
be, to the point where it even appears [inverting the true situation] as
if it is the starting point for a purposeful attitude in response to some
appropriate occasion. The stimulus is a narrowing down of phantasy
and the wishful life of the soul. The same process occurs at higher
levels too – in the cases of reproduction and association – so that the
images themselves seem ever more proportional to the surroundings.
The tendency to fill in blank dots, the tendency for conciseness of form
to stand out, or for complementary qualities in a row of qualities to be
‘seen’, cannot be explained in terms of ‘stimuli’ of the presenting form
nor of any shared stimuli. The same goes for the production of dark
regions of space, for the stability of the ‘field’ in which we experience
a face, the indeterminate sphere of the environment and its intuitively
given space, or the body scheme, or the phantom-limb experience of
amputees. All these, as well as testifying to the dearth of sense in a
stimulus-response explanation for such, also make clear that as in
some of them there is no actual stimulus at all – e.g. phantom-limb
– then only phantasy, with its objective correlate of the lack of any re-
sistant ‘thing’, whose subjective side is wish, can go any way to explain-
ing them. They conform to the developmental law, which is that what
was once perception, reproduction, memory or expectation becomes
ever more known as phantasy, as what was will becomes wish. But
if, nevertheless, phantasy activity can transform itself into perception,
memory or expectation, then the reason for this is threefold: 1) the
actual phantasy belonging to the world and any organism are the very
same entity; 2) they both abide by the same laws of shape-formation;
and 3) the drive structures which correspond to what is selected from
the milieu are the same as those which control the activity of phantasy,
with the consequence that an individual’s phantasy gradually adapts to
the world of things in the milieu structure and to what there is there.
The being-so of the world as image is definitely transcendent to
consciousness, but is made out of the same material as are dreams.
The objectively ideal qualities are the building-blocks of this imagistic
world. Each organic creature has at its disposal only a certain num-
ber of these, and they are ever produced according to what specific
energy lies in that organism’s sensory nerves in respect of their seeing
and hearing, in conjunction with the all-pervasive vital soul of the uni-
verse. There are in fact two principles at work here: 1) the principle of
the specific sensory energies – alluded to; and 2) the objectivity and
psycho-physical neutrality of the qualities.
What is inside is also outside, and the following correspondences
obtain.
1) With regard to phantasy and qualities, the inner is the accidental
image of perception and representation, and the outer is the being-so
of things.
2) With regard to mind and Logos, the inner is our apriori essences
and ideas, and the outer is the objective world of ideas.
3) With regard to the life-force, the inner is drive, and the outer com-
prises both forces with a variety of goals and our experience of reality.
4) With regard to Eros, the inner are subjective shape-forming laws,
and the outer are ontic or actual laws of shape formation.
5) With regard to love, the inner are value-feelings and preferences,
and the outer objective value-orderings.
6) With regard to life, the inner is the mini-organism, the outer the
world-organism as the life of God.
The human being is at the same time both part of nature and the
greatest concentration of it. Nature is its object only when the mind
or spirit supervene.
The superior impulse [Oberimpuls] sets the conditions for a sphere
of possible events, but what the inferior forces [Unterkräfte] make of
this depends entirely on the mechanical lawfulness which they bring
to bear on the entire situation. The superior force has the effect of only
excluding certain consequences.
Interplay between Mind and Life-force (1926)

In a nutshell, the problem of metaphysics is that of metaphysical an-
thropology and human history.
The divine substance, which is in an eternal state of coming to an end
and setting out, is both mind/life-force and life-force/mind, working
in functional unison as a continual slackening of an original tension.
The passage from mind to life-force is the will; the passage from
life-force to mind is Eros, which exerts its influence by creating the
noble, the well-formed, freedom and beauty. The will is the servant
of mind; Eros is the ‘King of life’. Shape is the agency for meaning,
whereby ideas and images are channelled from the life-force and its
intrinsic phantasy
Meaning of Religious History (1927)

If the nature of God and the nature of humans are partially identical,
then it must follow that the ideas of God and substitute idols and
the forms that religious history take are similar and correspond to the
way humans are and to the forms of their social communities. Theism,
which rejects this essential idea – which is so uncontroversial these
days that even secular, constitutional concepts are couched in theo-
logical terms – is simply burying its head in the sand on this point.
I see the whole matter as part of an essential relationship between
God and man. I do not, however, consider the views of Feuerbach, or
the sociological thesis of Durkheim that the idea of God is merely
an idealistic human projection, as part of the mainstream of religious
history. Nor do I see any virtue in making religion out to be merely a
‘group cult’ or one of many transcendental idols, nor of seriously enter-
taining Marx’ notion of religion as a way of bamboozling the popula-
tion with ideological froth and as an epiphenomenon of the supposed
economic realities in some epoch.
Gods and the Hereafter are instead true realities and powers, ‘rela-
tively absolute’ to the human type and its existing social situation, but
in the form of an enveloping divinity, and just as real for any race or na-
tion as the polar sun or the equatorial sun are in such peoples’ environ-
ment, except that God and the Hereafter concern the absolute sphere.
They are facets of God Himself, perspectives and glimpses of the true
and unique Supreme Being, and, just like the polar sun in being ema-
nations from the Divinity itself, indeed self-projections of God ever
related to the conditions and nature of a race or nation. Make no mis-
take! It is not simply that a human being comes to believe in, or puts
his faith in, such matters, but that such matters are already stronger
and have a higher reality than the human being anyway, and this latter
state of affairs could never have come about if they were merely wish
and phantasy-structures of humans. As Cassirer wrote: ‘The human
being takes his image from them, not them from him’.
In an objective sense the history of religion is not the history of pi-
ousness, but the way the very idea of God is given down the ages, the
way Being-itself ’s own Self-consciousness waxes in human beings,
and even the way the Self-actualization of God is taking place, albeit
subject to constraints of the perspectival intuitions of contemporary
human groups and the limits of their understanding.
The way the philosophical school of positivism formulates all this,
that man creates gods and should not love what he creates, or that he
is merely worshiping himself or his group, is completely false. Positiv-
ism misunderstands the essential nature of a human being, and takes
it to be a new projection at every moment, and a mature and adynamic
projection at that. In this it misunderstands the nature of life, just as
much as it does the nature of mind. In fact positivism assumes that a
human being is a complete and completed ‘given’ [einen Menschen als
voll ‘gegeben’], whereas this can only apply to a dead body, an object,
or an extant real thing, and not to an entity which at each moment is
coming-to-be [werdendes] what, at most, it is truly and genuinely sup-
posed to be, or, at least, struggling to come to terms with what this is.
The relationship God-man is a reciprocal relationship, in which, of
the two, God predominates in being, fullness and power. Just as it is
true that there can be no polar sun or equatorial sun without the as-
tronomical sun, and no astronomical sun without the group of unified
form-centres and fields of the life-force’s impulse which lie at the basis
of such images, it is no less true that without Being-itself there can be
no Apollo, Jehovah or Indra. They are all scraps and fragments of God
Himself, what human beings have prayed to throughout the history
of religion, but in no way at all are they mere projections of a pious
state of mind.
The only person who initiates this last way of thinking is the theist
who has invented a god as an absolute being and yet denied Him any
possibility of coming-to-be, and therefore given Him nothing that can
be deemed eternal. The same theist presumably regards the history of
the world as nothing more than a haze, an empty, futile cloud flying
past. He, however, who does know that God is a coming-to be and
that His fate in this respect is entwined with His works, deeds, and
self-manifestations in the world and in history, that person will soon
be disabused of the impulse to think in the way just described.
Of course our ‘theist’, in the same way as the believer in Apollo, is
a human being, with his own partial view on God. He has, as much
as anyone else now or previously, potential access to the knowledge
of God’s coming-to-be and of the world’s development, but instead
reifies [hypostasiert] the spirit and life of the Divinity – Being-itself –
and takes them for real, extant, thing-like objects. But this is precisely
what Being-itself can never be.
Being-itself is that entity which is still undecided in nature, but this
‘undecidedness’ is itself a resolve of Being–itself to make Its mode of
existence and nature something that It is driving at, something that
changes in every manifestation of It itself – in short, a determined at-
tempt to keep things incomplete [something which is almost a defini-
tion of what Being-itself is].
But this anticipation of a goal of what comes-to-be as an extant be-
ing – i.e. God is a person and world as a living entity – is an unwar-
ranted imposition on Being-itself, ignoring the very dynamic nature
of Being-itself and the world. It is a rigid will which states that: You –
God – must be, and be in such a way, that you are for me, not, however,
I for you. This is gross impudence on our part to assume that we can
rein in the steed which is God, as it were, and make it do whatever we
want it to do to promote our need for security in our particular era.
One comes up against completely false anthropomorphism here – in
the writings of anti-theists, e.g. Feuerbach, Comte and Durkeim, and
theists alike. Both groups place within a category of eternal – what in
fact is a self-positing and self-movement of some original being – what
is secondarily given to us of all this, i.e. its being extant, its real variet-
ies, whatever can be ascertained of all these goings-on, and whether it
is perfect or complete. All this is a complete accommodation to what
suits the bourgeoisie. Any previous version of God, as the entity which
is superior to man and transcendent to him, is completely forgotten.
Positivism, which makes out that humans create gods, has been,
since the time of Epicurus, merely the ridiculous antithesis to an
equally ridiculous theism, both mired by the foolish notion of a com-
plete and completed God.
It is the paradox of the theist that he is all for supporting the notion
of God’s will and God’s being, and proclaiming that God’s will should
be done, but when it comes to whether God is working for His own
realization, and that that is precisely what His will being done means,
the theist retreats into his own pragmatic mode of asking a ready-
made God for help.
The theist claims that he wants God’s will to live, but only so as he
can adapt it for his own purposes. When he parrots, Thy will be done,
he claims to know already what that will is. This is a prime example of
supposedly predicting what is going to happen, when all that it really
is, is justification after the event.
The Human Being as God’s Coming-to-be

(1924)
I believe that the completion of the world lies in God’s hands, and that
God’s realization and self-redemption depends on His acts in bringing
forward the world process. But what is at stake in this are not finite
matters, but infinite.
Moreover, what is at issue is not piousness and contemplation of
God’s works, but an active role in what God is doing along with an
informed participation in His Idea. I believe that our spiritual and
mental contributions to God are continuously needed, and that the
same applies to all finite creatures.
We are surely mature enough to cope with the notion of an incom-
plete, struggling and suffering God. We might even love Him better
if we knew that in these respects He is like us. If I seriously took the
world to be the work of an all-wise, all-good and almighty God, then
surely I would scarcely dare to breathe, never mind alter it, in case I
damaged the work of such a high and holy person through some im-
proper act on my behalf.
We cannot but sense, in the light of the Japanese earthquake, the
First World War or the Russian famine, that God struggles and suf-
fers, and that He is neither good nor evil. The world is the coming-
to-be of His life, and for us is the simple expression of His state of
mind.
All we know is that so far we cannot produce human beings and
cannot control Nature, and that everything attests to the intrinsic
goodness and nobility of human beings.
Human beings are ever improving on techniques which were origi-
nally the blind drives accorded to living creatures by their Master,
Whose further contribution is the potential empowerment of their
mind and the making available of bare ideas and rank orderings of val-
ues to the creative life-force. The human being, as possessor of mind
and spirit, is a positive accomplice and tool of God, not His apprentice
or slave. Technology, anyway, has its own ‘metatechnology’.
5
THE METAPHYSICS OF COGNITION
Elevation into the Sphere of Essences
The act and the technique through which there is an elevation into the
sphere of essences as a whole – which from a subjective point of view
is a participation in the mental network of meanings – precedes any
particular knowledge of an essence and the ability to grasp its inter-
connections. It is the Platonic impetus – a simultaneous love for the
essences and a switching off of the resistance of reality and the ac-
cidental being-so of anything. This sphere is in itself continuous and
it possesses its own logic, a logic which is different from formal logic
– this last being so far only an essential logic of everything that is
inorganic.
It is definitely the case that after the elevation in question a struc-
ture of essences as a whole is in play and this precedes any particular
grasping of an essence or its relationships and structure. I cannot, for
example, grasp the essence of a living organism without also having
a notion of the essence of a dead body or of what mind is. Nor can I
capture the essence of a human being without also knowing what it is
to be an animal, a plant or something divine. This integrated structure
breaks down into part-structures, out of which essential forms and
essential relationships arise. Because the pure essences are only a small
number and form a closed system – in contrast to the infinite number
of accidentally being-so’s of anything – each negation of an essence has
a knock-on effect on all the remaining ones.
This effect only occurs in the sphere of essences. There is no such
dialectical principle in the case of the accidentally being-so of any-
thing. In the sphere of essences, however, each essence is related to the
whole and to every other essence.
Because ideas and essences only express directions and ways for-
ward for the empirical formation of concepts – tendencies whereby
what is becoming becomes actual – any specific negation has a greater
effect than in other realms, especially if polarities are involved. For ex-
ample, if something is dead then it is not alive as well, if infinite then
it is not finite. In the case of a mechanistic network of meanings, such
negation would only cancel out the opposite [not enhance it, as in the
realm of essences].
Draft and Pre-conceived Idea

1. A draft [Entwurf] is, in distinction to a precise blueprint or plan
[Vorbild], a structural scheme, which, for it to be carried out or ful-
filled, needs special materials and forces, allows considerable leeway
for alteration, and will actually be altered. The same goes for a sketch
[Skizze]. It therefore lies in the nature of a draft that it neither already
contains within itself the complete set of rules for dealing with all con-
tingencies that may crop up in the execution of the necessary actions –
i.e. there is no unequivocal way of proceeding – nor that its enactment
should take account of everything written into the draft. Despite these
provisos the draft does determine, in every respect and at each stage,
the overall carrying out of the proposal. It further belongs to the draft
that without any actual enactment of what it is proposing it remains
meaningless, and only in the enactment does it have any truth or not.
Before the proposal is carried out it does not have any inner measure
of anything, and its value cannot be established by means of some in-
ner logic and meaning. It only achieves value as an extant project when
independent forces take up its carrying through.
All essences and ideas are of this nature, whether as entities having
an actual objective existence or whether as part of our knowledge.
Precisely because nature works like a genius, and, according to Kant,
brings forth exemplary models of things without any available design,
and does not work like a craftsman, who simply reproduces an arbi-
trary form, there are no pre-conceived ideas [ideae ante res]. Anoma-
lies, abortive projects, mistakes, inadequacies, and stupidities in the
organic world, abound, and are neither explicable within a teleologi-
cal view of the world nor within a mechanistic view. A mechanistic
view of the world simply cannot accommodate hiccoughs, stupidities
and mistakes in the course of events, but neither can it take account
of perfection, meaning and direction. But these crop up all the time
in organic and in inorganic nature. In the latter case, for example, no
atom conforms perfectly to a model atom. Even here normality and
abnormality are merely statistical.
5 3 The Metaphysics of Cognition 257
2. Our way of forming ideas is not merely an after-thought, but a
‘co-draft’ [Mit-entwurf]. The ideas derive their truth at the very door
of the experience which reveals whether the draft presuppositions are
in play or not.
3. The structural draft even precedes any individual grasping of an
essence. An essence is in fact always even an ‘ideal type’ of something,
in the sense first set out by Max Weber. But it is not really a humanly
subjective endeavour or an arbitrary form of something which gives
order to some manifold, but a co-endeavour with the eternal Mind
itself.
4. The ‘world-draft’ changes in content over absolute time. God must
become untrue to yesterday’s ordering of ideas in order to be true to
those of today. For this reason our job is to keep running after God in
this respect. In philosophy up till now, as well as in historical studies,
mathematics and the natural sciences, there is an unbelievable array of
false proposals as to the relationship between being and knowledge, in
particular emphasizing how human knowledge comes about instead
of considering the burden of being. This is originally an elementary
error of the Eleatics. It shows how important it is to take account of
the existential relativity of things.
The Essence as a Draft of What is

Coming-to-be [Werde-Entwurf] and
Knowledge of Essence
as a Construction
We have already seen that, in relationship to actual empirical things,
the essence is neither ‘pre-thing’ nor ‘above-thing’ nor ‘in the thing’. It is
only an ideal draft of the goal of what is coming-to-be, for it depends
on the autonomous workings of the life-force itself how far it gets and
to what extent the goal is reached. The actual world is always already
the product of the co-operation of both principle components of ev-
erything that is – the Supreme Mind which drafts the essences; and
the Supreme Life-force which sets forth the actuality of the real and
determines the positive accidental being-so of anything.
In a strictly analogous way to how the relationship stands between
idea, life force and actual thing, the way we participate in the nature of
something – and hence ‘know’ it – is not through some single act of
ours – be it thought or intuition – which latches on to an independent
object, but we construct an object through our mind in the coming
together of an ur-phenomenon and idea, albeit under the influence of
an empirical or phantasized example or image. This thesis proposed
here is in complete contrast to Husserl’s notion that the ‘species’ itself
has some ideal being which we can somehow actually perceive. It is
also in even sharper contrast to Hartmann’s theory, which proposes
that essences are ideal things in themselves which have a free-floating
existence in the real sphere of things.
The collective world of mathematical structures has no so-called
‘ideal being’ independently of all mental acts. It is a world of freely
constructed structures, but underpinned by what axioms are provided
by pure intuition’s material and pre-sensory excursions.
The same goes for the real empirical existence of anything as for the
realm of essences. We draft a version of it, in order to grasp the empiri-
cal world through this very draft. How we come by the appropriate
matter or the appropriate being of something is through construct-
ing, or rather co-constructing with the aid of the supra-singular mind
that envelops us, the objective nature of something. We do not simply
stumble on the essence of something nor are we let in to some cavern
of truth; we are driven by our life-force and its creative images and ac-
commodate these to our drafts. Our constructions are then objective
and valid only if they are co-produced with the divine Mind, and if
they acknowledge the life force’s images which underpin them. There
is no objective knowledge before all such events; it is rather that the
nature of something only evolves at the end of the mental process, and
whether this something exists or not is dependent on our achieving
this construction with all the rules that are involved.
1. Our own thinking and the eternal thinking of the Divine Mind
narrow down whatever the real actually is, though our own
thinking does not simply repeat the contents of eternal think-
ing, but rather co-constitutes it by grasping it, thereby making
our knowledge and consciousness additional to our thought.
2. The transcendental givenness has nothing to do with the notion of a
pervasive supra-individual thinking which I might somehow
incorporate into my judgement. Even eternal thought must
presuppose the givenness that I am referring to here.
3. The essence is co-constructed by our thought and that of the uni-
versal thinking, and not either picked up by us as it is, nor
5 3 The Metaphysics of Cognition 259
portrayed in some way. Our thought – stripped of its purely
social, human dimension – is a co-production, admittedly
only in a negative unbounded sense.
4. It is correct to regard universal thinking, like all thinking, as a prod-
uct of a concrete act-centre that has its own individual nature,
and we humans are individual part-centres.
5. This thinking is only a part-function of a mind, whose capacity to
know something is preceded by love for that something, a
something, moreover, whose value-correlate determines our
knowledge of it.
6. Furthermore, the actual being which we encounter [– our sense of
reality –] is co-produced from what there is by means of our
urges and our actions, and is not simply there waiting to be
recognized when we happen to feel its resistance.
7. Because our drives and our thoughts are part-elements, respectively,
of the divine life-force and divine thought, then God himself
is not only transcendent but immanent.
6
On The Metasciences
Meta-physics
(Force – Space – Time – Matter – Nature – God)
The Metasciences and Being-itself
T
hat being, to which the phenomenological reduction opens
a passage, is the most central problem of philosophy, though
not the only one. It concerns what is known as philosophia
prima, and deals with the essential structure of the world, its objective
Logos, and how it is realized. The way we come to know this essential
structure, however, is the focus of two entirely different standpoints.
Scientists build up their knowledge of how the essential elements go
together by means of thematically different axiomatic systems, and
this approach is their most deeply held presupposition. This is then
a springboard for them to take a shot at philosophia prima, by this
route of tapping into metascience. What they then glean of Being-
itself through their incursions into it is definitely valid, but the totality
of it is a closed book. What results is then a series of circumscribed
knowledge forms, depending on the particular approach, and these
include meta-physics, meta-biology, meta-psychology, meta-noetics,
meta-history, and meta-axiology. Each metascience develops from the
particular region of entities that it studies.
But taking the metasciences as a whole, they have their own unified
structure amongst themselves. They find this unity in the metasci-
ence of that entity in whose being all regions of relative being intersect
and have their unity, because this being itself is the quintessence of all
such regions. This being is the human being and the core metascience
which underpins all the others is metanthropology. The question as
to what all essential structures of the world are is reduced to a macro-
anthropology, and this then rests on the fact that the human being
itself is a micro-cosm, that is, a unity of all essential regions of being.
For this reason, human history is the kernel of the entirety of history,
and this is equivalent to what the world is in absolute time.
But in this metanthropology that we have just described, in which
the metasciences as a whole unite and demonstrate what they are ca-
pable of showing, lies the means for a passage from the metasciences
– a superficial metaphysics, as it were – to the most central problem
of all – the metaphysics of Being-itself and its attributes. The very fact
that there is such Being-itself is in the scheme of things by far the most
obvious truth, and one which immediately follows the most funda-
mental insight that there is, which is: There is not nothing. The meta-
physics of the absolute has to do with its attributes, not with its be-
ing. All being of a relative nature demands that there is a being of an
absolute sort. Any [relative] entity we encounter cannot itself carry
all the paraphernalia of reciprocal being. Because space and time – as
objective forms – owe their unity to an original unity of the reality
in which they are founded, and any apparent force accruing to them
comes from the interaction of real Being-itself, then what Democritus,
and latterly Newton, maintained about an atomic framework, where
there were any number of worlds without mutual effects, is out of the
question. In fact, the unity of Being-itself guarantees the unity of the
world, and the unity of the world guarantees the unity of the spatio-
temporal system of things – and not vice versa. Space and time are im-
manent in the world, and the world is not therefore in space and time.
Ideal relationships, such as equality or similarity, simply could not
obtain if there were, in the final analysis, merely a plurality of beings,
chained together. For ideal relationships – even if they were transcen-
dent to the human’s mental act – could only crop up with their par-
ticular sort of being in a mind, if the mind itself, which grasps them,
had already presupposed them. The same goes for every sort of being,
even absolute being, and this makes nonsense of any sort of pluralism.
Even the unity of knowledge with cognition is not, as Kant taught,
the precondition of the unity of being, but the result of the last. This
means that knowledge is itself a relationship between beings. Kant’s
‘transcendental apperception’, in which admittedly there is a kernel of
awareness of the notion of a ‘suprasingular mind’, is itself merely a con-
sequence of the unity of Being-itself, whose simple sort of being does
not yet contain any separation between what something is and extant
specimens of this. The sort of being which characterizes Being-itself –
6 3 The Metasciences 263
a problem which is central to both the question as to what evidence we
have about Being-itself, and the question about its attributes – has to
be considered in such a way that both the sort of being that the human
is and the very being of Being-itself, become understandable.
In the case of the metaphysics of Being-itself, we are talking about
how the quintessence of cognition can get a hold on the highest reach-
es of the attributes of Being-itself, and that means how cognition can
grasp the essential structure of the world, including the microcosm.
This sort of issue is completely alien to anything science sets out to
do, or even to its various grounding disciplines, which I refer to as
metasciences. Whereas the metasciences, whose unifying common
denominator is metanthropology, have to do with the nature of what
exists contingently beyond our possible experience of objects, and col-
lectively lead to the ultimate real subject and the rules governing this
in the interplay of real events, the metaphysics of the attributes of the
absolute deals with how this ultimate subject relates to Being-itself –
how bodies, living creatures and persons are rooted in Being-itself, and
in which order they have taken root. What is involved here – pertain-
ing to typical essences of all matters – is no longer explicable in terms
of science, but is of the nature of a window on to the attributes of
Being-itself.
The essential knowledge aimed at by philosophy thus has a double
function. First, it constructs the ultimate presuppositions for science,
and for the latter’s ever increasing dependence on the metasciences,
and, secondly, it forms the lowest level at which we can know anything
of the ideal attributes of Being-itself. In order to grasp the accidental
being-so of what is real we have to climb above what is merely experi-
encable, and, on the other hand, we have to treat essential philosophi-
cal knowledge as a springboard which brings into relief the attributes
of Being-itself. These attributes are so constituted that the essential
structure of the world, along with all finite entities – particularly the
essential structure and sort of entity that we human beings are – are
possible only by virtue of their being what they are.
But, because the essential structure of being does not determine in a
clear-cut manner any actual individually extant thing, nor the acciden-
tal being-so of anything, there is a second principle, which is associated
with the first, to account for all eventualities in the metaphysics of the
absolute, and that is what we call attribute X of Being-itself. If we set
aside time, position in space, mass and number, and further discount
the being-so of something here and now – which are anyway what
are also discarded in the primary objective of science – then what we
have – if we further demand that we are considering a non-spiritually,
non-idealistically, and non-essentially determined state of affairs – is
a state of affairs where real being and what is accidentally-so allow
themselves to be set out.
The way in which we are led to this real principle of Being-itself is
also the way we are led to acknowledge that there is a supra-singular
spirit as the other attribute of Being-itself. If real being is only given in
having a sense of resistance to our striving for something in life against
some X, and through an actual action – whereas mental willing only
gives a project and the intimation of a worthwhile idea, but not the re-
alization of the project – and, if the being of being real is independent
from the being of a human being, and is not existentially relative to a
human being, but existentially absolute, then there must be a unique,
supra-singular, image-creating Nature as an attribute of Being-itself,
which sets out this real being and accidental being-so of anything as
images. All real being is therefore a coming forth from something that
is a real coming-to-be, and therefore from something that is pre-real
and with an unobjectifiable nature, something which is seeking out, or
thirsty for, or pressing forward towards, reality, and something more-
over whose coming-to-be we can get inside and be part of, in order to
know it, but are never able to grasp it as an object, or, which is quite
absurd, as a ‘real’ object. Being-itself is in fact the purest example of
something unobjectifiable, the most perfect version of an un-thing-
like being, and this applies to its attributes too. That, within which
we are and live, is self-evidently unobjectifiable. Real being cannot be
explained by recourse to reality, as the philosophical school of Critical
Realism would have us believe. Being-itself cannot ever stabilize itself,
come to a rest, or even make itself identical with itself, and therefore
can never be a sort of being that ‘has come to be’, but only one whose
identifying feature is its ‘coming-to-be’ – an eternally self-setting-forth
sort of being.
Passage to the Metaphysics of Forces

In the dynamic metaphysics of inorganic nature, which we shall deal
with here, there are both essential laws and empirical issues to consid-
er. First, there are the theoretical notions and founding laws, whereby
space is based on movement, movement on alterations in state, and the
last on forces. There are then the findings of theoretical physics, that
the unity of the electromagnetic field of forces is the ultimate basis
for all physical matter, from which the electronic mass of positive and
negative electrons and the concept of electromagnetic force can be ar-
rived at. The mechanics of heavier masses then turns out to be a spe-
cial case of such electrodynamics. In the context of such elementary
particles, there is no place for either space nor time nor our conven-
tional notion of force. There is neither an absolutely stationary ether,
in which such changing fields could operate; nor is there an effect over
distance which some central force could maintain, something which
both Leibniz and Kant assumed could be responsible for attraction
and repulsion. The very changeability in the strength of the field alone
is the ultimate subject of any enquiry, and this conforms to the laws
of Maxwellian equations. This in itself is the final word on the matter
from the viewpoint of mathematical physics concerning the images
and principles of the world, the whole thrust of which simply relies on
our observation of what surrounds us.
The metaphysics of nature begins at the very point where the phys-
ics of images and principles leaves off. The supreme subject as an ab-
solutely real subject, which can exert any real effectiveness, and in a
four-dimensional changing matrix of separate entities, can now be
negatively described as follows.
1. It is not only not ‘in’ space, but not even ‘in’ objective time.
2. The relative space–time–mass-energy determinations of bod-
ies are relative to the state of motion of the observer, and are, as a
whole, only consequences of the alternating dynamics of the situation
in which the unified fields of forces influence one another, and inter-
penetrate one another and the images.
The strictly unified lawfulness of these changes in unified fields of
forces – which follows the principle of least resistance – indicates that
one and the same force is altogether involved, otherwise the separate-
ness would be inconceivable.
3. The supreme subject is anyway not in a four-dimensional sep-
arateness, but rather this is only the form of its first manifestation as
changing fields of forces.
4. Nevertheless, there belongs to what is real this four-dimensional
elementary unity, and this comes as a potential.
5. This force is at work in the coming-to-be processes of absolute
time, which we cannot measure for the world-image as a whole.
5a Absolute time is something which is set going by Nature as a
form of its – Nature’s – effectiveness, Nature itself being timeless,
and the transition from potentiality to actuality being timeless too.
This underlies our subjective time perspectives, and gives us actuality
[now], immediate memory [past] and immediate expectation [future].
It does not underlie the actual images, which wax and wane, but does
underlie the changing drive impulses in three directions, and gives :
1) the past – what can no longer be affected by our vital centre; 2)
the present – what is being modified; and c) the future – what is still
modifiable and what the drive is directed at. In this way, the future
span of phenomenal time gets laid out.
Relative, physical time is the shadow which absolute time casts, and,
whereas in absolute time itself there can be no recurrence of the same,
in relative time the manifold of an intuitively graspable space is per-
mitted [in which sameness at least persists].
6. Physics restricts itself to the principle that only secondary causes
of anything can be investigated, and recognizes only changing effec-
tiveness and quantitative properties. Metaphysics, on the other hand,
must regard it [absolute time] as a basic constant, and consider even
the images as something that reflect its qualitative nature, which, out-
side our consciousness, possess only an ideal nature. That means that
it [absolute time] must add a logical, directed fantasy to Nature’s im-
pulses.
7. The causal nature of this force is formally to be thought of as
one which: a) is neither ‘pull’ nor ‘push’, but ‘in front’ and ‘behind’ in
the same act, and that is what Nature is; and b) is such that it sets
out a four-dimensional spatio-temporal form as its primary job, and
one which has no measurable dimensions; and c) is such that Nature
acquires a framework for determining what things are.
8. A material substance, which is not simultaneously existentially
relative on knowledge and life, is thereby excluded. But also excluded
is an absolute contrast between material and non-material forces.
There are only forces which conform to the specification of Nature,
in addition to which there are images which manifest the former’s in-
ter-dynamic relationships. Both – Nature and images – exist beyond
our, and beyond all finite living creatures’, consciousness, the latter as
objective manifestations and appearances of an ideal nature, and the
former as that which lies at the basis of everything dead, and, in fact,
creates them ever anew, and is the fount of whatever comes-to-be. The
images and their schematic order, their four-dimensional arrangement
and their lawfulness, constitute the natural and physical existence of
things. Their quantitative determinations and the relations between
these are what we can call their ‘physical existence’. Nature, which is the
metaphysical reality behind them, produces them ever anew.
It is decisive in all this that a material, absolutely supporting, im-
penetrable, spatial, and persisting substance does not exist. Because all
spatial and temporal magnitudes, forms, masses, ‘befores and afters’,
places, and packages of energy, and even the living force, are all relative
to an observer and its state of motion, then an absolute reality can have
no role in all this. This is anyway the strict conclusion we find in the
Theory of Relativity. A block of iron can only ‘be’ an image; it cannot
be a material substance in absolute reality. An event a and an event b
cannot be simultaneous and non-simultaneous, or long and short in
duration, in any supposed measuring carried out in absolute reality. It
is only when they are images that any conscious view of such matters
makes any sense.
The true situation is as follows. Any apparent ‘thing’ is relative to an
observer and their state of motion, and, therefore, from the foregoing,
this must be a changeable image, and, for a human being, a relatively
absolute matter. Such ‘apparent things’ are not relative, however, to his
psychophysical organization, and certainly not relative to him as an
individual or to his sensory experience. But they are not absolutely
real either, in any metaphysical sense. For, only what is not relative to
an observer and his state of motion, and even explains this very ob-
server and his state of motion, can be deemed metaphysically absolute.
One way of looking at it is to imagine that the images relate to the
metaphysical forces, i.e. concentrations of Nature, as do bodies to their
mirror images. We can even describe the images as simulations [Vor
spiegelungen] of a productive, intuitive – or, better, examining – power,
which belongs to and is guided by, Nature i.e. the second attribute of
the Godhead. To the nature of something there belongs knowledge;
to the imagistic intuition of something, which is not simply a copy of
this something, but imaging [bildendes] knowledge itself, there belongs
productive fantasy. From a metaphysical point of view, the images con-
vey what is real [but are not real themselves], and in one sense we
can describe them as our affliction [Drangsale] – i.e. manifestations or
objective appearances of Nature. But our perception of them is inade-
quate, because of the limitations of our senses, and, for us, what we do
experience is a copy, but conforming to the same essential lawfulness
with which the actual image is constructed in the first place.
What we are calling ‘images’, ‘simulations’ or ‘afflictions’ are definitely
consciousness-transcendent, in the sense that their nature is objective,
and that they are in themselves much richer than what we can perceive
of them. We can only know that small part of them which our natural
circumstances as inhabitants of the earth allows them to convey.
None of this detracts from the fact that, in themselves, in terms
of the sort of entities which they actually are, they are empty [eitel],
ephemeral, irreal, powerless, and completely insubstantial. They are
spun out of the same stuff as are our dreams and fantasies. What cre-
ates their illusory reality – in the natural worldview – is only the at-
traction which they possess for arousing our drive impulses, without
which, in fact, no perception of them would be possible. If we imagine
these impulses as switched off – which would also involve switching
off our specific allocation of Nature and our natural worldview – but
after such perceptions had been given, we would be metaphysically
dis-illusioned [i.e. disabused of the illusion], and would see that noth-
ing of any substantiality or solidity adhered to them, and that they
were indeed images, with no independent status, and merely relative
to universal Nature which lies behind them and brings them forth as a
coming-to-be of this life-force.
But the images also mean something else, a meaning which adheres
to them over and above their ephemeral existence, and this is by virtue
of their sharing in the ideal content of the first attribute of the world-
basis and its dependence on this content. Nature, which brings these
images forth in profusion, is nevertheless limited by what is essentially
possible for, and compatible with, the divine Logos and divine image.
Nature, and its fantasies, therefore, although underpinning the images,
is still constrained by the negative influence of what God can do, itself
a consequence of God’s love.
Objective ideality of the world of

bodies and matter
‘Bodies’ are nothing but images, which are built up according to defi-
nite essential laws, but are in themselves – as ‘bodies’ – irreal and in-
substantial.
The most profound and central illusion of human beings is that they
take ‘bodies’ to be absolutely real, or that they claim to derive everyday
sort of ‘bodies’ from very small, absolute real bodies such as atoms or
electrons, or from absolute centres of forces with a fixed intensity. All
masses are relative with respect to a particular law-governed motion,
and with respect to the particular stage at which substance itself has
reached. If Berkeley and Fichte had only said this i.e. that bodies, mat-
ter and material qualities, are of an irreal, ideal nature – and they did
say this – they would have contributed a profound truth to metaphys-
ics. Their only false step was to deny that bodies were transcendent to
consciousness, and, instead, to maintain that they owed their objective
ideality to the ideality of conscious representation, and were therefore
subjective percepts. This is false. The images – of which bodies are an
example here – are ‘transsubjective’ for all finite individuals and their
group. Nevertheless, they are ideal, and, by nature, an accidental being-
so of something. They are not, and no part of them is, metaphysically
real, by which we mean absolutely constant.
They are objective ‘appearances of ’, and ‘manifestations of the power’
of, Nature.
The new metaphysics of bodies and their ultimate constituents has
simply jettisoned not only the atom of chemistry, but also the electron
with its positive or negative charge, as the smallest thing that there is,
and, with this, any notion of an absolute solidity at the root of mat-
ter. It has also given up the notion of such supposed tiny bodies hav-
ing certain fixed properties, which it now realizes should be deemed
functions of inter-dynamic relationships [between fields of forces].
Everything that the terms ‘bodies’, ‘matter’ or ‘material properties’, used
to stand for, has simply lost any semblance of what it is metaphysically
to be real.
Recent physics has confirmed the correctness of this philosophy of
dynamism, and has disproved the subjective ideality of bodies, matter
and material qualities, just as it has their absolute reality. All that is left
for them to be is images, and that is what they must be.
As images, one would expect the following: that they were now
one size, the next instant bigger, the next instant smaller; that they
be shaped so or otherwise; that they be now one after another and
the same, and the next instant to vary among themselves in intensity.
Or, one would expect that space, time, and all sorts of forces, could al-
ter them, and ever according to their relationship to other bodies and
with respect to their own state of motion.
One can only expect all this to be possible if they are genuine forces,
but not genuine substances.
The Theory of Relativity lends no support either to positivism – i.e.
that man is the measure of all things – nor to Kant’s idealism of con-
sciousness, although it does support an objective idealism for bodies.
If you dissect a body, however you do it, you expect it to have a ‘core’,
a ‘something’ which you can say makes it what it is. But an image, what
does an image have inside? Nothing; it is nothing but an image. You
find it has a surface and all you can say is that God alone knows what’s
inside. But when you try and divide it up, you still have only a surface
and nothing substantial. And this goes on for ever.
Matter, along with absolute space and absolute time, are the greatest
fictions of human beings. They are nothing but figments of imagina-
tion of a weak, frail, bodily creature.
A law whereby there is an ordered construction of qualities – a law
which applies to Nature and its fantasy, and one which is independent
of a particular human subject – is hypostatized [reified] as occurring
in bodies or in matter.
Images – three-dimensional, mirror images – are simply confused
for reality, substance and force.
What we call material or matter is brought forth at each instant
anew by divine Nature. This being so, it follows that there is:
1) no creation [i.e. a unique Creation] which can be distinguished
from the everyday, continuous creation happening all the time, the lat-
ter being one where a body is a changing product of the activity of
absolute substance [Being-itself] and its two attributes; and
2) only the essential idea of a body, and its orderly construction, in
the mind of God as an established idea.
For all these reasons, neither materialism, nor any theism which pre-
supposes absolute matter, can be defended.
Finitude and Infinitude of

the Dead World
That time has no beginning and no end, or that space has no limits,
are obvious. But this does not help us when it comes to the matters of
finitude and infinitude themselves.
Because there is a coming-to-be outside of time, a coming-to-be and
an origin of time can occur in the first place. If time is the form where-
by coming-to-be takes place [werde-form), in which Nature manifests
itself in images, then the images must form a time sequence, but only
insofar as Nature does manifest itself. The future is only the sphere
of expectation of a universal vital subject, and the past its memory
content.
The unlimitedness of time is nothing but the dynamic infinitude of
Nature, whose infinitude is however potential, whereas time itself is
finitely realized.
1. Objective physical time is life-relative, but retrograde [rückläu
fig].
2. Space is only a component of a four-dimensional spatial mani-
fold, which is actually curved or spherical, but in relatively small parts
has a Euclidean character. The Euclidean three-dimensional space and
actual space relate to one another as does a small plane on a sphere to
its entire surface.
3. Objective time then combines with the three-dimensional space
to produce a finite manifold of four-dimensional separation.
4. Just as there is no absolute mass, there is no absolute movement
and no absolute energy. Energy is nothing if there are no differentials.
But because the differences are always getting less, the law of exchange
of energies of different kinds demands that there be a growth in the
overall stock of energy in the universe. From a metaphysical point of
view, therefore, there is no principle of conservation of energy. This
also follows from relativity physics, in respect to electrodynamics,
which shows that a progressive exchange between matter and energy
can occur, but that it is ‘material plus energy’ which remains constant,
not energy on its own.
The principle of the declining energy differentials proves that the
world is getting older. It is a metaphysical principle, and is quite coun-
ter to the scientific principle of conservation of energy, which it shows
up as false. Only the principle of the equivalence of different forms of
potential energy is valid. The inorganic world strives towards death
and annihilation, in as much as it is not being renewed from the bo-
som and capital of the infinite potential of Nature.
The only absolute principles are: a) that substance is energy, i.e. the
principle of Nature; and 2) that maximal richness of images is achieved
through the least effort.
The second principle of physical matter, the gradual diminution in
energy over time, is only true if one builds into the equation the utili-
tarian values of work. From a metaphysical point of view, if the dead
world were dissipated and taken up everywhere by life, there would be
a transformation of energy into streams of warmth and light, which
would count as higher values, because the Godhead would then have
more light available and a greater scope for all visual matters would
ensue [Seh-Spielraum].
Space is anyway the free-play of light. Movement of living things
would be in complete disarray if it conformed to mechanic laws.
Space and Time in the

Metaphysical Absolute Sphere
Nature exerts its effect in the form of absolute time. This is a form of
activity on its part, and not a form of intuition on our part (as Kant
maintained). The multitude of its impulses and images take place in
an aspatial manifold of simultaneous qualities. Whatever in this mani-
fold undergoes a reversible change constitutes spatiality; whatever un-
dergoes irreversible change makes up objectively real temporality.
Only objective time – the flow of time – is based on this change and
its irreversibility; this does not apply to absolute time.
In absolute time the content of every instant is pregnant with the
entire future, whose content lies dormant within it and also contains
the entire past. The human being only ever approaches eternity in
such moments.
On the other hand, objectively real time is the flowing present, a con-
tinuous row of present points. In contrast, subjectively ideal time does
contain past, present and future, but this only applies to the individual
experience of an organism, and even this only in respect of a supracon-
scious representation.
In the objectively real sphere, space is only the ordering of homoge-
neously extended bodies, which themselves are only ideally objective,
and only come into contact with the spatial contents of intuition –
what one is ‘conscious-of ’ – in this homogeneous extension.
Substance and its highest essences are eternal – beyond time – not
sempiternal [everlasting ].
It is only fantasy-time and fantasy-space which are infinite. Real
space and time are finite, like things. In actual fact, fantasy-time, which
is given to us as infinite, is only a part of the short, objective life-span
of humans.
Objectively real space is not just an unknown three-dimensional or-
der of mysterious qualities. It is at least understandable as something
of an ideally objective nature to which a homogeneous extension ad-
heres, admittedly an extension which is closely dependent on the lows
of Nature, i.e. the causes and effects of the relationships between the
actual reality. But because the extent and form of this extension is not
independent of the states of motion of bodies, the extension itself can-
not be real. The foundation for both objective time and space in the
objective sphere is definitely the state of motion of all matters.
We then need to consider change, movement and alterations in state
in each of the four spheres: 1) relative to humans; 2) relative to life; 3)
relative to finite mind and 4) absolute.
Because space and time are homogeneous extensions, and first get
separated through the possibilities of change, they are overall four-
dimensional.
The extension of objectively real space is continuous, a point which
applies to everything real, but not to the nature of what we can know.
The nature of what we know, as opposed to what is real, is atomistic
[atomistisch], and this applies to space as well as time. The centres of
forces, which, metaphysically, lie at the root of all dead being as func-
tions of Nature, are centres which determine fields of forces in which
it is not possible to construe appearances by merely summating the
effective points. They determine a four-dimensional spatio-temporal
form, and, in each form, the summated mechanical happenings have
only a statistical character.
The intensity of Nature’s impulses and their quality, i.e. combina-
tions of elementary qualities guided by fantasy, determine the extent
and quality of the objectively ideal bodies. Subjective qualities are
merely a sample of the objective ones, and the purer the quality – e.g.
basic colours, vocal sounds – the closer they are to the objective ones.
Space – 1
1. If it is true that objective space owes its real being to nothing that is
independent of the absolutely real, and if it is further true that there
is no absolutely solid material, then it follows that in actual fact there
is no static and absolute space. From a subjective point of view it is a
fictional object, whose reified, supposedly independent status actually
derives from the perceptual law of figure and background. [What ob-
trudes in any situation is deemed figure and what does not is deemed
background ‘space’]. From an objective point of view it is, quintessen-
tially, what allows [negatively] the possibility of movement. From a
physicist’s point of view it must be thought of as something which
allows the laws of movement to remain possible [i.e. again a negative
determination].
2. The natural fiction of space belonging to the natural world-view
is nothing but the reversibility of potential change, i.e. where an es-
sential possibility of movement dominates the actual movement in our
vitally-conditioned intuitions. The scope for expectation and expec-
tancy-representations on the issue of possible movements becomes an
independent content of our intuitions.
3. The irreversibility of potential change leads to alteration or modi-
fication, and time is then the essential possibility of modification,
which in our intuition dominates any actual alteration.
4. From a phenomenological point of view, what is given in our
external intuition is a four-dimensional manifold – made up of the
present as a succession of present contents, and a three-dimensional
spatial order of simultaneous items. With age, phenomenal time and
phenomenal space themselves alter. ‘Present’ is a neutral term with re-
spect to either time or space.
5. The ultimately real, objective actuality, to which physicists aspire,
is fields of forces, i.e. effective fields of force which determine the na-
ture of things, and which themselves have their own temporal and
spatial beginning and end in a functional sense. Time and space are in-
extricably bound to these, as they are to phenomenological experience,
although in the former case we can only summate this statistically.
6. The dynamic origin of the forces giving rise to these fields of forc-
es is neither in space, as Kant, for example, thought, nor in objective
time, which is first set going by the forces themselves, although they
are, in a certain way, in absolute time.
7. The forces corresponding to the fields of forces are intensively ar-
ranged, and work in the direction of the four dimensions of possible
alteration.
8. Movement can and must be derived from the attractions in the
state of spatial position, and to our senses it looks continuous – but
think of cinematography. A force has a rectilinear trajectory and guar-
antees an identity because of this, for example, ensuring a stone will
not be a qualitatively different something during its fall. If this trajec-
tory is even slightly awry one receives the corresponding impression of
a continuous change of place of an identical something.
9. The form of a force’s actuality is taking place in absolute time, in
which an absolute simultaneity of force direction is still possible. Ob-
jective time is then only one of these directions of force. In it – objec-
tive time – there is only simultaneity.
10. Objective time has no present, future or past, and therefore no
absolute before and after, only a relative before and after, i.e. one which
is dependent on the observer in the four-dimensional matrix.
11. All bodies are an objective, imagistic appearance, which is based
on the absolute simultaneity of penetrating forces in four directions.
They have no absolute impenetrability, their apparent impenetrability
only stemming from the fiction of space, which excludes two figures in
space overlapping.
12. Because all mediated establishment of anything is based on an
immediate one, and because immediate ones are only spatiotemporal
coincidences of two appearances, then the rules of coincidence of ap-
pearances are the very ones which mathematical science allows us to
establish.
13. The objective and phenomenal spatio-temporal matrices only
share extension, succession and being beside one another, along with
the four-dimensional framework for changes in any heterogeneous
qualities. In all other ways they are different.
14. Because space and time are, objectively, only relationships be-
tween occupied extension and duration, they can only be unified if the
underlying force which determines the fields of forces is also unified.
If such forces were actually various there would be a variety of spatio-
temporal systems. This is impossible; this means that all centres of
forces are parts of one force.
15. The intensity of the impulses of Nature determines the extent
of the spatial and temporal form of bodies. The direction is only de-
terminable through the nature of the force. The forms themselves, in
their relationship to one another, are presupposed by the changing
positions and relative places which the bare image takes up. Images
are determined by the qualitative directions of Nature. The laws of
how images are formed, and their coincidences, determine the order
in which they appear, along with their spatial distance and temporal
duration and succession. The movement and alteration of the images
are a consequence of the impulses which lie beneath the images, and
whose objective appearances they are. Impulses have qualitative direc-
tions. These dynamic relationships are, at their most elementary, at-
traction and repulsion, which are such that they correspond to the
laws of the images. Where an elementary relationship of this sort can
no longer be found, then we are at the level of a force, and its quality
corresponds to the quality of the simplest part in which the images
run their course. The form in which all this occurs determines the ob-
jective meaning that is available.
The measurable intuitive extent of this is something that is then or-
ganically subjective.
Space and time as independent forms are organically subjective.
On account of this, anything organic is relative to the pre-given ex-
tension.
With all this in place, each bodily thing is now perfectly and un-
equivocally determinable.
There is no need of an objectively real and absolute space nor an
objectively real and physical time to explain such things. Instead we
only need to assume a four-dimensional variation in impulses and
their dynamic directions, whereby the resting mass of electrons and
the smallest effective quantum of energy together account for the most
elementary real unity of spatio-temporal form.
The demand, articulated by von Hartmann, for example, that a
principle of individuation requires that any body occupies a particular
place in space and time, is not needed. Von Hartmann requires five
dimensions – three for space and two for time, i.e. before and after –
for his version of matters to hold good. Furthermore, he takes forms to
be mechanistically constructed, which is incorrect, and denies that the
images and qualities are transcendent to consciousness.
For his scheme to work, he has to bring in objectively real time and
objectively real extended space, and at the same time make space part
of the divine substance.
The objective images are objective appearances of divine Nature-
phantasy, which is transcendent to our human knowledge and con-
sciousness, even though they are still ideal. The images appear for us
in the coincidence of our nervous apparatus’ independently imagined
visual or acoustic or tactile representation of things and the same pre-
existing forms which the images themselves present [in their own
sphere].
They are, as Indian philosophers recognized, made out of the
same stuff as our dreams, only they are everyday dreams [Träume
der Nűchternheit], or perceptions, or, alternatively, the coincidences
of memories, perceptions and expectations. In the same way as our
drives track down [aufjagen] the images of fantasy, and, like wind driv-
ing along leaves in front of it, so does divine Nature manage to get hold
of them, and, through their value tone, arouse our drives, and then,
through this, our own fantasy, from whom, by dint of the subsequent
removal of their inter-individual image-content, our own perceptions
are derived.
Space and time, as relationships between images, are relative to life,
but because there is a supra-individual life as the stuff of Nature, they
are at the same time objective. Only, they are not part of actual reality.
They are relationship products of Nature itself, and, as such, force-
products of its impulse.
Space – 2
Objective space, along with the imagistic nature of what is given of
real beings and effective causes, is no real entity itself, but an objective-
ly ideal entity. For this reason it is completely unnecessary to debate
whether space is a substance or an accident or some real relationship.
As it is not real it does not come under the category of existential
forms. This does not mean that phenomenal space, which is a sample
of the objectively ideal space, cannot be considered existentially rela-
tive to a psycho-physical organism, just as sensations of the quality of
something are functional contents of the intuition of a subject, but are
based on a more original fantasy. Again, there is a further relativity to
consider, in that the constellations of images are themselves based on
the objectively ideal space.
The partial agreement between subjectively and objectively ideal
space is to be understood as follows. The same fantasy which, as a
function of supra-individual life, creates first space and then the im-
ages, also produces in us the phenomenal intuition of space before the
qualities, because our fantasy is only an organized and meaningful ver-
sion of the overall vital fantasy. Objectively ideal space and subjectively
phenomenal space are then the mutual intuitional forms of the fantasy
of Nature, and both precede the respective possibility of any form, in
the former case, and movement as a dynamic something, in the latter
case. The disjunction involving subjective apriori and objective apriori
is false, i.e. they are not mutually exclusive. Both are apriori, one objec-
tive, the other subjective.
The images are ‘accidental’ but extension and form are ‘essential’. Ob-
jectively ideal space is objective, to be sure, but it is an objectivity of
possibilities for the various sorts of extension and forms. Its ideal ob-
jectivity secures the possibility of the forms of the images, and, equally
so, the elementary qualities – red, hard, etc. – of the images which
obtain between them.
The objective space of images [objective Bilderraum] is not real either.
It is only a manifestation – an objective appearance – of real forces,
whose efficacy is played out in absolute time, and which is relative to
Nature, but not, like objective space, relatively vital to a supraindivid-
ual vitality.
It is the phenomenal unity of form which provides the basis for our
subjective, sensory qualities, and it is physical form which predeter-
mines what can appear in individual, objective points of space. Geom-
etry, therefore, as the science of the dependencies of possible spatial
forms among themselves, applies to all possible, positive knowledge of
nature. In this way Kant’s problem is solved.
The movement – and action – possibilities open to Nature’s fan-
tasy determine shape, and this constitutes the objectively, ideal space.
This space, therefore, enables forms to take up an objective appear-
ance. Such space would remain, even if all human and animal subjects
were removed from consideration, although it would disappear if one
struck out – in a thought experiment – all trace of the vital stuff which
constitutes Nature as a whole, and which is alone responsible for the
world of images.
There are two basic facts to consider in all this talk of space, which
itself boils down to phenomenal space and objectively ideal space – 1)
form, and 2) movement.
Movement, as a dynamic phenomenon, objectively determines the
forms of spatial events and stationary images, which are longer or
shorter ways in which real events appear. Each form of a body must be
conceived of through the law of alteration of direction of some pro-
duced movement. In this respect, space, which for us, is the possibil-
ity of a variety of forms and the relationships between their bodily
appearances, is the quintessential enablement of possible movement.
The same goes for touch and kinaesthetic experiences as for visual, but
none is by itself responsible for space, as a homogeneous extension
precedes all of them.
What is shared by both phenomenal and objective space is the iden-
tity of forms wherever they appear in it.
The essential attributes of the stationary bodies are extension and
form, and they must adhere to the smallest part of the matter in ques-
tion. The fact that they are not real, but only objectively ideal and de-
pendent on the coming-to-be of the underlying impulses of Nature,
proves that there is no absolute solidity in anything in space, and that
even matter is objectively ideal. Form is neither a bare quality [poion],
as Aristotle thought, nor an essential relationship [Relationsinbegriff],
as Marty thought. Form precedes both in the order of things. Form is
not some accidental way in which bodies crop up in either objectively
real or ideal spheres, but bodies themselves owe their very core and
spatial configuration to form, which determines what they can possi-
bly be. Forms can only be explained by form itself, never through some
measurable quantity. The same applies to temporal forms and time.
Schematically the situation is as follows.
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Subjective Forces in the
Objectively ideal
phenomenal metaphysical Nature
images and space
space sphere
↓ ↓ ↓
spatial in- space of the natural
tuitions of world-view of panvital effect
geometricians humans
↓
animal spatial
intuitions
Metaphysical Meaning of Space in

Relation to the Basis of the World
1. Aristotle and the Scholastics viewed space as merely a set of re-
lationships between, and limits of, bodies. He made primary matter,
which itself was not extended, into the principle of extension, and into
what allowed something to be the same in different points of a spatial
field, and hence a principle of individuation. All actual bodily exten-
sion was a product of form arising from matter. This left the unity of
space completely unexplained, and he merely linked it with his impos-
sible theory of bodies having a natural place. In actual fact, neither
form nor matter can explain extension, and neither can both taken
together. A primary matter, in Aristotle’s sense, excludes any creation
of the world, and the Scholastics’ interpretation of Aristotle, whereby
God created the primary matter, is just nonsense, because, from a pure
form – which is what the Godhead would be here – there can never
be any way of grasping how its most extreme contrary – i.e. matter –
could come about. Aristotle, moreover, took space to be: 1) something
filled – in line with the notion that nature abhors a vacuum; 2) finite;
and 3) limited – at the end of the world where the scope of God’s
control through His mind [nous] of the movement of the fixed stars
ended. He believed in a midpoint of worldly space, but, at the same
time, in an infinite, Euclidean space, and in a finite, unlimited, curved,
three-dimensional space.
2. The Judaic-Christian theism holds space, at the most, to be a cre-
ation of God’s, but there is no unified thinking on the subject, as there
is on the subject of the creation of matter. The only certainty is that
God, as spirit, is not in space. In addition, space is not an accident of
God’s, but is either an absolute form of emptiness or an accident of
the world.
God’s efficacy, though not his existence, is ubiquitous. God also
ordered the world in terms of extent and number, but space and its
adhering reality are beyond human consciousness. In general, space,
like the world, is to be thought of as finite, not infinite. The thesis of
a temporal world creation means that God was already around before
the creation in time, or, at least was active in some way, and then creat-
ed the world at a particular point in time. The notion of St. Augustine
that time itself is a creation of God is half-heretical. Medieval theism
places the soul in space, but in each part of an organism it remains
whole.
3. Spinoza held extension to be an attribute of God’s.
4. For Malebranche, space was the place where bodies were; it ex-
isted outside of us as absolute being; and it was brought forth ever
anew by means of the primary agent – a moving cause.
5. Newton and Clark took it to be the sensorium Dei.
6. For Leibniz it was an ideal matrix of relationships of the rep-
resentation of the world, which was unified in the worldly idea of a
universal central monad.
7. In Kant’s case, it was a human form of intuition.
Absolute Time
1. Space and time, as physical conceptual measures, are coordinated.
They are not, however, ontological. This is so because time encom-
passes all life processes, along with everything objectifiably psychic,
and only excludes the person-centre, as this is outside time. Above all,
time is the form of the coming-to-be of finite entities, even non-spatial
entities. Kant’s thesis, that it is only a form of inner sense or of what
can be given there, is false. It encompasses both givenesses, i.e. of the
sense of what can be given and what can be given itself.
2. If we assume that it is a ‘before and after’ in a physical, ontological
sense, and that it is relative to the standpoint of an observer and their
state of motion in a four-dimensional separateness, then there must
still be an absolute ‘before and after’ to take account of growing old
and death, and this has an objective component as well as a psychic.
An observer is a living creature – a being with mind and spirit in ab-
solute time.
3. Space can be a function of temporal events – as the way reversible
change would be, i.e. as an ideal possibility for this. In this case space
and time would be collectively the determinants of: a) unity; b) homo-
geneity; c) continuity; d) infinity; and e) a way of transforming a tem-
poral sequence into a spatial order. An alternative situation, whereby
time were the fourth dimension of space, is impossible, because it is
incompatible with the nature of life and the psyche.
4. There are definitely a variety of differences in the intensity and
duality of each indivisible point of time, as occurs in the content of a
single moment of consciousness. But, in the case of a single element of
space, there is only an intensive shading of reality.
5. In addition, because space, in order to be what it is, must last,
without time, it cannot give a world, although there can be a world
of finite existence without space – consider the stream of the psychic
manifold.
6. Physics teaches us that there are absolute, atomic constancies in
time – as in the form of the smallest, effective quantum of energy;
but there are no absolute constancies in space – the resting mass of
electrons [is artificial].
7. There is certainly an absolute simultaneity – as in the content of
conscious experience. But it is not so certain that things and events in
space can be absolutely simultaneous. On the contrary, if space is only
the possibility of movement, any absolute simultaneity is excluded.
8. The objective time of physics has no: a) efficacy; b) absolute si-
multaneity; c) past, present or future; d) absolute ‘before and after’; e)
different sorts of ‘filledness’ at each point of time; f ) irreversibility; or
g) absolute rhythm. Whereas, absolute time does have all of these.
9. Whereas there is no absolute simultaneity in the physical world,
there is such in absolute time, which does not include spatial exten-
sion.
10. The relationship between objective time and the absolute can be
formulated by the following propositions.
a) The contents of objective time are contained in each absolute
present of the supra-individual life. Only what is identical in all abso-
lute presents occurs in objective time.
b) Only what is in phase in objective time can have been a compo-
nent of absolute time. Any acceleration of any process is not noticed.
11. Absolute time is the living time [Lebenszeit] and living duration
of the world organism, or, alternatively, the life of God, or, even better,
the form of the coming-to-be of God’s vivification [Verleibung Gottes].
In all this there is only a flowing, whose phasic streams each contain
the complete past and future in potential form. Hartmann and Berg-
son are also of this view. On the other hand, objective time is only a
fleeting now, without past, present or future, and without an abso-
lute ‘before and after’ grounded in what things are. Objective time is
a continuous row of ‘presents’, which, only through the memory and
expectation of a living creature, preserve the character of a definitive
passage of time.
12. The standpoint of the observer in the four-dimensional matrix
is not completely accidental and arbitrary, which it would be from a
purely physical point of view, but is rather pre-determined by the stage
in absolute time that he surveys matter from.
13. A creature that flew off from earth at a speed greater than the
speed of light would experience the progress of the inorganic world as
a reverse sequence of events, but it would not experience the organic
or historical processes in this way.
14. Whereas objective space is relative to life and is, by virtue of this,
more than just the laws of spatial perspective, in the case of supra-
individual life what is vitally relative is only measured time, and this
does not include an overall ‘before and after’ nor any rhythmic events
[which belong to absolute time].
15. If a creature could travel at the speed of light, it would be keeping
up with the ‘present’ of generation after generation. If it travelled at less
than the speed of the light it would experience our ‘past’. If it travelled
above the speed of light it would see our ‘future’. All this is only expli-
cable if objective time lies in the ‘present’ of an absolute time. The first
of these scenarios is possible because light waves always keep visible
the same time contents. It was formerly thought that what someone
would see in this situation would be what had already passed – even
light years ago – but this is false, because, according to Michelson’s
earlier version of relativity theory, only simultaneity can be maintained
in such a journey.
Theories of Time and Space according

to Relativity Theory
If one accepts, as Einstein does, in the Special Theory of Relativity,
that the speed of light is constant between whatever two points of
the material world that one chooses, and that it is independent of all
relative movements going on in a system within which an observer
finds himself, then the consequence is that all spatial and temporal
measurements, as well as all quantitative determinations of any body,
will be relative to the state of motion of that observer. The distance
between Paris and London would be actually different for an observer
on earth vis-à-vis an observer on the sun, and their respective clocks
would mark different durations of time for the same ray of light travel-
ling between London and Paris.
Is philosophy capable of responding to this challenge, and actually
getting to the bottom of it, a challenge which Einstein comes up with
through his pragmatic method?
It appears in fact to be quite possible to do this, if we assume:
1) that space is the possibility of movement; and 2) that real move-
ments, from the standpoint of physical investigations, must be related
to those which have maximum speed.
In this case, simultaneity – which is only truly given in conscious-
ness – does not actually occur in the dead world. What is then cus-
tomarily taken for such – i.e. simultaneity – thus turns out to be only
the fastest possible reversible movement.
The suggestion that simultaneity can be measured by comparing
clocks as well as by observing movement is to beg the question, be-
cause the assumption that the different places where the clocks are
sited will not affect what they show is unproven, and, in fact, follows
from the very theory which the objection tries to undermine.
The situation we are faced with is that we cannot expect there to
be any subjective conditioning of simultaneity when it comes to what
is actually real, but, on the contrary, any such conditioning will be a
consequence of the nature of space itself, which is the very possibility
of there being ‘light’.
The special principle of observation is that because observations
must coincide, and yet such might come from different sense modali-
ties, the sense modality which is most appropriate to the task must be
that with the finest differences in thresholds, and that points to the
visual modality.
The thesis at stake here, concerning the equivocation about the mea-
sures of space and time, is no longer a paradox, if the following points
are appreciated.
1. The first requirement is that the laws about movement, and not
those of absolute time or spatial distance, are to be given priority in the
scheme of things. For then, the measurable determinations of bodies
can freely alter without any loss of identity of their metaphysically dy-
namic ‘origins’. Even laws about the dynamic setting out of movement
are absolute vis-à-vis their temporospatial and relative appearance for-
mations.
2. Next, the perspective on the spatial and temporal extent of things
must be reliant on the perspectival status of a supra-individual spiritu-
ally-endowed living creature X and its repertoire of imagistic contents.
If such obtains, then absolute space and the absolute physical time of
Newton will then be merely approximations to this perspective. The
tiny perspective which our individual senses give then forms part of
objective absolute space and absolute physical time, and this itself is
part of a panoramic perspective which approximates absolute reality.
3. A further condition is that the functionally reciprocal depen-
dencies of the extents of time and space have their common root in a
changing matrix of separateness.
4. Furthermore, the observer and his state of movement have to be
as one in absolute time.
5. Finally, the relativity of dead movement has to be put in the con-
text of the laws of vital movement. Because, if space is the possibility
of movement and physical time the possibility of alteration, then dead
movement is movement in which a change in place or time is opened
up, i.e. simply one form of what happens in vital movement.
Our Theory and the

Theory of Relativity
The concept of separateness is the critical notion here.
1. We hold that an amorphous separateness, in which objective time
and objective space are not yet distinguished, is a form of being which
allows all possible objective appearances and images to occur. The
schematic organization of the dead world is therefore not purely logi-
cal. The four dimensions are required because of the four directional
variabilities of physical extent. We derive this latter set metaphysically
from the ordering of the dynamic efficacy of matters in absolute time.
But this makes the nature of being no separate item.
2. Objective space and objective time are anyway not absolute forms
of being either, but only forms of intuiting its environment on the
part of a living organism. We clarify their origin by means of inner
laws of selective drive-based attention, and the latter itself by move-
ment impulses of a living creature. Together, the possibilities of the
oscillation of attention and the changing impulses are traced out in a
scheme of actual acts. Because perception is actually determined by
such a scheme, and the overall scheme is independent of each sense,
all qualities which can be picked up by the sensory modalities must
already appear in this scheme. The intuition of space is therefore no
coincidence of sensations, as Poincaré and Schlick maintained, but
space, and objective time, are practical fictions or hypostatizations [re-
ifications] of the objective possibilities of the drive-based selections of
figure-background, which are themselves then installed as collective
expectations subjectively.
3. The objectively logical origin of our ideas of objective space and
objective time presupposes not our experiences but the images, whose
construction follows essential laws which are independent of our sen-
sory organs. The images are ‘intuitabilities’ or what intuition focuses
on [Anschaulichkeiten], and are what are meant when we perceive
something as sensory experience, but possess an existence as mat-
ters of fact outside the threshold of this sensory experience. They are
forms, stripped of the qualities of our sensory experiences, but in no
way beholden to these experiences for their existence. The qualitative
properties of the images never cover themselves with our sensory ex-
periences. In fact the images can contain qualities for which we possess
no means of incorporating into our sensory experience. Nevertheless
they remain [theoretically] intuitable.
If there existed no exchange, alteration or movement, between these
images which our fantasy extracts from the data of sensory experi-
ence, and then construes – according to essential laws governing the
foundation of what we take to be a consciousness-transcendent body
– then we could never arrive at the natural ideas of time and space
which we do have.
The origin of both these ideas has to be seen in the light of exchange,
alteration and movement of these objective appearances.
If we think about the images in a resting condition – when they
are not transforming themselves one into another or altering in some
way – then their modus vivendi in a vital consciousness is a state of
mutual togetherness. In this state their nature is comparable to how
they are in my actual consciousness. The phenomenon of exchange or
transformation is already contained within this manifold as a potential
to this effect.
If we now allow the images in consciousness to undergo their trans-
formations, what will then detach itself – according to the rule where-
by extension is founded before form and form before qualities – is a
homogeneous extension as the possible backdrop for all forms, which
is laid down in such a manner that this possibility predominates over
any actuality. There then arises, along with this, the potential lay-out
of a punctuate separation [the prerequisite for a matrix of positions in
space], and also a four-dimensional lay-out in whose manifold spatial-
ity and temporality are not yet distinguishable. Space is the potential
for movement. Time is the potential for alteration.
To give an example: Suppose I hear a whinnying sound simultane-
ously with the sight of a horse on the move. These appearances are
neither successive to, nor alongside, one another, but are both present
in a presence of separated entities.
We can further illustrate the transformation of images by consider-
ing the way a magician works. He takes out one egg and then another
egg from his apparently empty hand. We do not see the movement
whereby he achieves this feat, neither how the egg appears, nor where
it comes from. Or, what about a pond teeming with fish or a mound
of swarming ants? Or, take a kaleidoscope in which coloured shapes
come and go, now this configuration, now that. What all these ap-
pearances have in common is that an identification of the images over
and above their appearance does not occur, neither in the way of es-
tablishing a spatial location for what is going on through any act of
attention, nor, on the other hand, pinning down what is happening
to some qualitative state of affairs of a thing. Transformation of an
image, as I understand the notion, is something beyond [and prior to]
either of these two possible ways of capturing what is going on. The
very prerequisite of grasping the nature of the states of flux illustrated
above is not identifying the appearance in either of these two ways.
What is at the root of these appearances is the intuitive sensing that
neither a spatial framework nor a temporal framework is yet in place.
Time is anyway something that occurs to us as a consequence of some
act which we carried out, and is somehow mediated through our in-
ner experience. It is not an integral part of how or why we can grasp
images in external perception. That which we later call spatiality and
temporality, or alongside-one-another and after-one-another, which
are special forms of separateness, are derivatives of a more basic undif-
ferentiated entity.
How does this differentiation come about? There must undoubt-
edly be an act of identification which determines the spontaneous
establishment of something as an X. This act, moreover, must have
something to do with our drives, and cannot be purely arbitrary, al-
though we do not consciously appreciate this, as it appears to be an
arbitrary representation of what there is.
In order to tease all this out, we must choose instances of the fluc-
tuating phenomenon which are so ambiguous that there are several
options open to us as to what this fluctuating state of affairs might
be. The appearance of the fluctuating state in front of us, for example,
might be interpreted as: a) either a modification of the state of a fixed,
spatial position, in which case the extent of the variation in the ho-
mogeneous separateness, or the relation between images in this sep-
arateness, takes on the character of a temporal distance [between the
variations or relations]; or b) alternatively, the fluctuating state appears
to be more like a homogeneous movement of the images – in which
something continuously changes place – or else the images, as in the
case of the kaleidoscope, seem to be of one colour moving through
several positions. In the first case [a) above], the act in question homes
in on a piece of homogeneous extension, which thenceforth becomes
‘ place’. In the second case [b) above], it homes in on the qualitative
character of the image – being blue or being triangular – and therefore
the relationship of this image to some other possible quality. In the
first case it is the qualitative character which changes; in the second
case it is the location which changes.
It is thus quite clear that any transformation of an image can be
interpreted in two ways: 1) as the alteration of the state of something
occupying a stationary piece of space; or 2) as the movement of some
realized form.
Note that the transformations of the images and the laws govern-
ing them are derived from the possible options that apply, and there is
nothing already there in a spatial matrix.
We can now ask the question as to which conditions in the natural
way of seeing the world determine whether we interpret the more fun-
damental flux in one way rather than another.
My answer is as follows.
The separateness becomes a spatial separateness, and transformation
becomes movement in the same act, if the immediate expectation of
transformation is taken as reversible change. A homogeneous intuition
of movement is therefore the possibility of reversible change. Spatial-
ity is then the possibility of homogeneous movement. All movement
is derived from alteration in a state of affairs, and not the other way
round.
On the other hand, the separateness becomes a temporal separate-
ness, i.e. one-after-another, if the transformation which occurs is taken
by the subject as irreversible. Temporality is – in the external sphere of
images – only the possibility of irreversible change.
The paradoxes [Zeno’s paradoxes] which result from assuming space
[wrongly] to be an absolute entity are satisfactorily solved through my
formulation. All ‘empty space’ is only relatively empty – i.e. empty of
X, Y and Z. Emptiness and holes are only intuitively grasped relative
nothings – a negative state of affairs, me on.
It is therefore also clear that our spatial and temporal intuitions X
– inside the outside world – are only alternative arrangements of the
same ‘material’ of the homogeneous extension in the form of different
separatenesses. These are not two objective states of affairs indepen-
dent from each other, but two ways of grasping the same material.
Note that in this way we can, for the first time, properly explain the
apriori nature of principles such as the synthetic apriori which Kant
tackled, which are inextricably linked to the nature of space and time.
Kant overlooked this link, whereas Palagyi was on the track of it.
They can be listed as follows.
1) All points in space each occur at the same point in time. This
means that one part of space cannot be in another time than another
part of space. Only bodies move.
2) Points in time are never simultaneous, but successive – as Kant
did see.
3) All points in time, which we mark out from the flux of absolute
time, are the same for each part of objective space. Time traverses each
point in space, and in the same way.
All the above are valid for fictional entities. They show that each
point in a homogeneous separateness can become either a point in
space or a point in time, and that this depends on the way of looking
at things. Furthermore, because a point in space and a point in time in
the outside world of dead nature are ontically the same, time and space
are necessarily bound together. Kant saw that without a persistence of
space there would be no external determination of time, and this was
how he refuted idealism. But it is also the case that without time there
would be no space, because it is in fact only the possibility of move-
ment – in accordance with Einstein’s laws.
Our [everyday] separation of space and time in external intuition
as mutually independent, objective states is therefore complete fiction,
complete deception. What is in fact two possible ways of grasping the
phenomenal separateness and transformations that can occur is objec-
tified as two independent, objective state of affairs, and then, on top of
this, one even wonders how they come to be so well matched.
The actual facts that space emerges from the possibility of move-
ment and time from the alterations in states, and both owe their status
to change in general, make us confident that we can further probe their
origins, partly from a phenomenological perspective and partly from
a logical one.
1. Logically, I maintain, it is impossible to reach an uncontradic-
tory idea of movement if one holds to an absolutely empty space and
an absolutely empty time which is independent from this. Bringing
together both ideas will never give us the concept of movement. The
actual fact of the matter is much simpler. What gives the appearance
of movement is just not the fact that the same something can crop up
in different places at different times, for example watching a friction-
less pendulum going to and fro.
2. Phenomenally-speaking, we first of all grasp, as a founding event,
the possibility of change before any actual changing. Movement is
grasped before spatial distance or temporal duration, and before any
form is appreciated. Finally, alteration is given before any temporal
magnitude of a durable content.
From all this, we can conclude that the following are valid: a) the
apriori sway of functional theory: b) the apriori sway of pure kinet-
ics; and c) the priority of the principles to do with the growth of the
complexity of things – because every time something alters it leaves a
richness behind, and yet becomes richer.
Furthermore, all such principles and theories hold regardless of
whether something is real or not, as they have to do with the layer
upon layer of appearances only.
Movement is in all this a more original concept than space or time,
because the last two are bound together by movement.
Inert mass is identical with energy. It is therefore not possible to
think of any mass in world-space in isolation, as each mass is in a per-
petual, dynamic relationship with other entities. In fact any mass, as
Mach proposed, is really a relationship concept. It is only the extent to
which resistance against a moving force has come to some equilibrium.
Leibniz’s notion, that inertness, taking up space and impenetrability –
the essential determinations of a mass – are all based on forces, is also
proved correct.
Furthermore, what Faraday said about the movement of a body in
space being an alteration in the state of reality along a certain track
is neatly supported by Einstein’s discoveries. Taking what Relativity
Theory tells us about spatial determinations of size being dependent
on the state of movement of an observer, along with Faraday’s idea,
then the only situation where temporal matters come together as si-
multaneous is in the manifestations of consciousness.
The specific considerations of the Special Theory of Relativity allow
us to propose that there is a four-dimensional arrangement governing
the unity of movement and form.
The laws governing the images, pertaining to what something is in its
intuitively-derived fullness, and the factors leading to its coincidence,
are only consequences of force, and these obey Einstein’s equations, as
long as the forces in question here are not the forces making up a liv-
ing centre nor derived ones which we calculate in objective time. The
forces in question are those concentrations we call Drang [Nature],
which are at work in absolute time, but are themselves outside both
time and space, and, from this position, actually determine the spatial
and temporal frameworks of bodies.
What anything in the dead world is ‘in-itself ’ is purely a four-di-
mensional arrangement of these spatial and temporal frameworks,
which, with all elimination of extension and of the spatial separate-
ness of things and of the difference between space and time and of
all measurable determinations, is nothing else than an arrangement of
effective force.
The Nature of Physical Time

1. A pendulum swings to and fro in a frictionless environment in a
state of balanced equilibrium. Objective physical time is under these
circumstances a continuous series of movements, the existence [Da
sein] of which is entirely constituted by the particular point on the
path traversed by the pendulum. Because only we ourselves, as cog-
nisant I’s, see the pendulum and the points it has traversed and the
points it will traverse – on account of our present time [Präsenzzeit]
and our memory and our expectation – it makes no sense to ascribe to
this time the extensions – present [Gegenwart], past and future. Physi-
cal time then consists of [besteht] a flowing series of present points,
which can be filled with anything at all. If we suppose the existence of
a psychophysical creature, whose present time is O, then each point of
its physical time is homologous only to the immediate present point
of the present [Gegenwartspunkt], and at each moment the time of im-
mediate memory and expectation tower [ragt …. hinaus] above the
physical, continuous series of points.
2. Does physical time have what we call succession? Without doubt.
Otherwise it would not be time.
But before and after, in the case of the pendulum, are only determi-
nations of a relationship, as each point in its trajectory can just as well
be a ‘before’ as an ‘after’. For this reason we must deny physical time any
so-called direction. Direction can only be ascribed to a dynamic event.
Only what alters can have the direction that an event has. In the case
of the pendulum which moves back and forth to the same positions,
there is nothing against saying that the time taken up by its entire
swinging is only a return to the starting point. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ of
physical time is therefore relative.
What it is in these circumstances that ensues, such that there can be
a ‘before’ and ‘after’ about it, is relative in a second sense. This is because
the whole situation is dependent on the viewpoint and state of move-
ment of the onlooker.
3. The quantity of physical time which has elapsed is measured by
distance – and angular-computations between two comparable move-
ments, whose dynamic growth in speed at each moment of absolute
time is zero, for uniform movement, or equal. As the growth in speed
is equal or zero, the numerical physical measure does not change and
neither does the extent of absolute time. Nor does it change as long as
whatever rhythm a similar event has remains the same.
4. Whereas in the case of biological time, it is quite possible for a
‘before’ and an ‘after’ to be established in an absolute sense, without
estimating the cause and means whereby A leads to B, this is not pos-
sible in the case of physical time. Here, as Kant first clearly saw, the
exact dating of what ‘before’ and ‘after’ are is dependent on the laws
of nature, e.g. the speed of sound or light departing an event. These
laws of nature determine the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of every single state of
movement.
5. Whereas objective physical time gives a one-sided account of the
‘measurement’ of some event, biological time gives its one-sided ac-
count of an event’s rhythm. It is not just a case of different feelings
about the elapse of time, but it is an objective fact that 12 hours of
biological time in the life of a mayfly is just as much time passed as 35
years in the life of a human being. Each species, along with earthly life
in general, is rooted in death.
The incorporation of life into an organic body involves an integra-
tion of this measurable time [with the rhythmic time of life]. The life
of a human being lasts X days, that of a mayfly one. The two sorts of
time must both be seen in the context of absolute time.
The coincidence of the phases of evolution in one point of absolute
time is what is at issue here. At each point of absolute time the events
of the world as they pertain to the sub-personal sphere [unterpersonale
Weltgeschehen –i.e. non-geistige matters] are all happening without the
slightest trace of memory and expectation such as would constitute a
true ‘past’ or a true ‘future.
God, as spirit, has an intuitive overview of this entire sub-personal
worldly hustle and bustle [Weltgetriebe] of Nature at each point of ab-
solute time. All sub-personal, worldly happenings are pre-destined at
each point of absolute time. We can still know that this is so, even if
we do not know the duration of absolute time or the forms it throws
up. Our subjective, experiential time [Erlebniszeit] is a symbol, an ap-
proximate symbol of absolute time, and, in terms of its measurable
extent, it is encompassed by objective time.
A single person on their own cannot know the divine mind and spir-
it. It is only you and me together, through our joint willing, that can
know it. I deny the possibility of any divine prescience. It is incompat-
ible with personal freedom. It only has any sense if one believes that
God in His spiritual form has jurisdiction over every possible entity.
But God in this spiritual form simply cannot do this. The same applies
to any supposed calculating or intuitive foreseeing. If the latter were
true He must be deemed either to have intuitively wanted an event
such as the First World War to have occurred – in which case He is
evil – or He must be considered not to have wanted it but then let it
happen – but then the same event can also be laid at His door because
letting something happen is an act of freedom as well, and, in fact, the
only way that the will can act. Anway why should He create a world
for His glorification, if He already knew everything down to the last
detail. In fact, God’s special privilege, to know the entire history of or-
ganic life, is in our hands, even though we cannot forecast it. But God
Himself does not even know what He wants or does, and nor does He
know what the future brings. God is a timeless coming-to-be. His-
tory is then the symbol of the expression of the eternal process of His
becoming, in which He is absolutely intertwined. He – God – only
knows what He ‘can make impossible’ and which therefore becomes
impossible – for He is true to Himself – but this very [negative] state
of affairs already contains the seeds of what is positively possible. This
positivity is achieved through the means of the human being as a per-
son, but the human person itself can only achieve what it does achieve
through the offices of His – God’s – second attribute [Drang], and
therefore God has to wait for this to run its course in absolute time. In
this way He Himself becomes a concentrated version of Himself dur-
ing the appropriate course of the process. This state of affairs [i.e. the
particular course of Drang] determines what can crop up in absolute
time as any act of God or humans in respect of their personal being.
The person is itself a self-concentration of divine spirit itself. Be-
cause God does not know what He Himself wants in the progressive
state of what Drang is becoming, then nor can He know what being
a person entails, in respect to what a person wants, and nor can He
know His own role is determining in a concentrated fashion what it
is.
If we now then assume that Geist and Drang are only two of any
number of attributes of the original substance – including others
which we know nothing about – there is then no reason to doubt ab-
solute predestination [because all these other attributes are affecting
us and we are completely explained by them, although we know noth-
ing about them]. Even God does not know about this predestination,
because these other attributes can only know their own way of being if
they themselves have their own spiritual and mental aspect [i.e. unless
they too, like Drang, are paired with their equivalent of Geist, they too,
like Drang, will not be aware of what they are doing].
Meta-biology:
Force, Space, Time, Matter,
Nature, Spirit
Passage from Inorganic to Organic
1. As the inorganic forces are already centres of Nature with four-
dimensional, formed, surrounding fields, i.e. spontaneous determina-
tions of movement, then the centres of Life are isomorphically built
up on the same arrangement. Formal mechanical laws do not apply
in the absolutely actual realm we are considering here. The centres of
Life – or bio-centres – are distinguished from inorganic in the follow-
ing ways: a) the energy at issue is of a non-material nature; b) the only
forms laid down are temporal in nature, and in absolute time; and c)
image and psychic centre are established at the same time.
2. The body vanishes into space like a line on the surface of a sphere
vanishes. Space in turn vanishes into absolute time – in the aspatiality
of the simultaneous force-impulses of Nature.
3. The events in and outside the organism are in themselves identi-
cal but are not ontologically so. For, in the order in which structure is
built up, the living agents do not first break into the material images
and their parts, but first assail the atomic parts of Nature which they
then bring to light through their interaction with Nature. It is there-
fore not necessary to assume that the appearance of Life on the scene
is tantamount to a transgression of the principles of inorganic matter.
4. Living agency as a whole is the direction and steering of nature,
and a mechanistic viewpoint is only symbolic and practical.
5. Living and dead Nature are constructed in the same way, although
here and there with different empirical rules. Everything is in the end
a lawful arrangement of form-building. But the arrangement of vital
forms cannot be deduced from lower levels of the inorganic, because
the two levels – vital and inorganic – are both derived from the same
source.
6. In fact one can say that the organic and formal mechanistic world-
views both come under the notion of existential relativity – not unlike
the way Leibniz envisaged two simultaneous takes on the same mat-
ter.
7. The mistake the school of vitalism – and that includes psychovi-
talism – makes is that it assumes a ready-made physical and chemical
world which is already up and running on mechanistic lines, and then
further assumes that vital forces are somehow tacked on to this, in-
stead of siting life where it actually is – in a Nature – natura naturans
or Drang – still undecided [noch unentschieden] as to whether it will
be matter or life.
8. One should compare the views of Von Hartmann, Otto Wiener
and Dűrken on the laws governing such frameworks.
9. Life is a reciprocally arranged grouping of functional processes,
running their course in absolute time, and with a rhythm itself framed
by birth, maturity and death. An ordered wave-like movement of
functional outpourings is what it is at root, based on a pre-material
[vormateriellen] stage of Nature’s impulses.
10. Spirit and mind do not actually belong with the Natural side of
a human being.
Proof of this is: 1) that not until a child is two can it be said to
have spirit and mind; and 2) that primitive people are pre-logical in
outlook. That means that spirit and mind are based on a social interac-
tion between the most highly intelligent living creatures and historical
tradition, and the suffering of the former from the latter. Society and
language are equally original founts of spirit and mind.
Life and the Inorganic

Because there is such a thing as Life, and because it is eternal – i.e.
the possibility of ‘organism’ being laid down in Being-itself is always
there – there is an essential link between the existence and nature of
the living and the inorganic. Life and the inorganic are both eternal.
It is not a question of ‘matter’ and also ‘organisms’. The world itself is a
living organism – i.e. a spatio-temporal totality – with a history and
a passing away.
Whereas science treats the inorganic world as a separate issue from
life, philosophy must re-unite them.
The teleoclinical [goal-directed] relationships between life and earth
are rooted in their combined origin as Nature.
It is only if one averages out matters that inorganic nature takes on
an independent way of being. From both a micro – and a macro – per-
spective it is organic lawfulness that applies.
A wave movement in a four-dimensional manifold is how the ap-
pearance of continual alterations in the direction of Nature itself and
its impulses in absolute time strikes us. It is an aspatial, simultaneous
manifold. Appearances themselves can never be simultaneous unless
there is space for this to be grounded in. There is always a conflict go-
ing on in the inorganic way of being of Nature – itself between differ-
ently directed impulses. The usual mechanistic formulations of what
is going on should anyway be derived from a more basic mechanism
of wave forms – the usual one being an artificial summation in terms
of static points of mass. This follows because movement and abso-
lute time are the basic concepts, and the appropriate sequence of what
forms what, is: 1) movement before moved matter; 2) movement be-
fore space and time; and 3) constant alteration of dynamic movement
before lineality.
Living Creatures and Space

1. Can one say that living creatures hold an analogous position in space
as they certainly do in time? It is obvious that organized bodies – the
bearers of life and the visible theatres and bodily things where life goes
on, the melody of life – are in space. But taking images as a whole, just
because the piano is in space, does that mean that the melody which
someone plays on it must be in space too? But the organism, in that it
is endowed with life and ‘given’ as a bearer of life, is anyway not prop-
erly in space in this way of being, but is only properly in space insofar
as it is a piece of the world of bodies which can be grasped in a purely
objective manner. But it is neither exhaustively this last way of being,
and certainly not a spatial extension, but rather it is something which
takes up, in its relation to all other bodies, the position of a central
point of a sphere, whereupon all other bodies and entities group them-
selves around this. This feature of a living creature is quite remarkable.
In the organic world there is no absolutely central point. What one
regards as the centre of a sphere is merely conventional. There is no
‘centre of the world’, but in the case of an organism this centrality [Mit
telpunkthaftigkeit] is an absolute fact, and with respect to its part of the
world which stimulates it and to which it reacts, it itself is the centre.
The localized seat of the I of a human being is between the eyes
and the forehead, according to Claparède. Maybe this seat is variable
within bodily space. A person experiencing angina has their central
point, during the time it is going on, in the heart. But wherever it is,
there is always a central point, and the centre of life in an organism is
the point where life events are centred. As for living organisms other
than myself, they are not like dead bodies either – which are in space,
next to, or outside, one another. When I take another body for a mov-
ing organism I must always transfer on to this body the essence of
centrality which I assume for my own world.
2. Furthermore, the organism has an original directionality, arising
from its activity, towards its surrounding space, something which inor-
ganic bodies know nothing about. ‘Above’, ‘not below’, ‘near’, ‘far’, ‘in front
of ’, ‘behind’, ‘nearby’ and ‘in’ – and in the case of humans ‘right’ and left’
– are distinctions which for an inorganic body possess as little sense as
past, present, and future in respect to physical time. Is not this remark-
able? Is it the case that what is behind me stretches beyond my back
in a straight line – as an inorganic, geometric account would make out
– or is it rather that it is my back which is behind, and my eyes which
are in front? The latter is the true situation. It is the same for ‘above’
and ‘below’, and ‘right’ and ‘left’. It has taken a couple of millennia for
human beings to slowly discover that these contrasting positions in
space, where objects can appear, have no sense at all for the objects
themselves. The notion that simultaneity is relative to the movement
status of an observer took just as long to dawn on us, indeed until
Einstein worked it out. Are these concepts only psychic in status? Not
at all. Aristotle already recognized that plants have no ‘right’ and ‘left’,
but only an ‘above’ and a ‘below’.
The sense of the word ‘in’ is peculiar to organic beings alone. A
state of ‘inwardness’ [Innerlichkeit] is the model for everything that ‘in’
stands for, even in the realm of the inorganic, where an ‘in’ does not
actually occur – and therefore where it is an illusion – but where there
is only ‘away from one another’ [Aussereinander] and ‘near one another’
[Nebeneinander].
Time and Life

Just as the living creature is not ‘in’ space, as dead bodies are, but has
an environment, in which ‘far’, ‘near’, ‘above’, ‘underneath’, ‘high’, ‘deep’, ‘be-
hind’ and ‘in front of ’ all obtain, neither is it ‘in’ time, as an event, for
example a movement in the dead world, is ‘in’ time. Rather the situa-
tion is that time emerges through it itself. The life-centre – not in the
first place the person-centre or mind and spirit – is already capable of
setting in train and putting in place various spatial and material ele-
ments, by an act to this effect, and also setting going a variety of tem-
poral events, and, furthermore, determining the order in which they
are built up, and all without affecting its [the life-centre’s] nature itself.
This means only that it creates its own elbow-room for action and its
own stretch of time.
It further facilitates the spatial and temporal arrangement of the
pair’s common precursor in the form of a separateness of the manifold,
whereby it constructs spatial and temporal forms, whose respective
relationship to the underlying separateness is that they are alternative
manifestations [i.e. if the separateness is designated X, then the spatial
symbol is A and the temporal A1]. Admittedly, the temporal order is
the more original, and only under certain conditions is it transposed
into a spatial one.
Because pure life is a pure coming-to-be, time itself is the very form
of this coming-to-be; whereas space is only a piece of work [Werk] or
a creation of what has become [Gewordenheiten], not the form of its
very existence. Time is nevertheless existentially relative to mind and
spirit, but not to life itself. This is because, although there would be
no time without life, nevertheless time is the form of its [life’s] way of
coming to-be itself.
Branching out [Abzweigung] of the

organized from the disorganized images
1. The basic form of dynamic causality in organic and inorganic nature
is one and the same. It is neither mechanistic nor teleological.
2. Forces set up four-dimensional spatio-temporal forms, which are
unities of force-fields, whose centre is only the point where the lines of
forces intersect but not a dynamic exit point.
3. Form-bestowing, vital functions set up only process-forms in ab-
solute time, which then attach themselves to arbitrary unities in the
form of spatial Gestalts – a process which only takes place in living
creatures. What is represented in this way is a totality, a directional
goal, and something objectively meaningful. Such a unity of form is
a functional field. A functional field is capable of being reduced to a
force-field but is never merely a summation of the latter.
4. The critical constituents of organic and inorganic entities are not
the same, except when they are treated statistically.
5. Inorganic and organic entities emerge from the same general prin-
ciples of nature.
6. If one studies the organism along biological principles, one then
finds that inorganic unities simply do not apply. If one studies the or-
ganism from a chemical and physical standpoint there simply remains
a host of irrationalities which cannot be incorporated.
7. If one reduces the psychic to ontological categories, however, one
does find a perfect coordination with the physiological, in which case
one can say that life allows itself to be read according to two alpha-
bets.
8. Because the course of life allows itself to be represented by in-
organic categories and laws, and the psychic in physiological terms,
the psychic itself must allow itself to be represented in purely inor-
ganic terms – justifying the behavioural formulations of Watson, for
example.
9. The advent of a higher determining factor never occurs – onto-
logically – through either the transition of inorganic to organic or
physical to psychic or psychic to spiritual and mental.
The basis for such an advent is the following. a) The entire gamut of
laws applying to the lower category is not automatically taken up into
the higher category – only an extract of these now apply, and these
are anyway made subordinate to the higher category. b) The higher
determining factor – to do with what something is – is never a factor
which realizes anything. c) This higher factor always determines what
it can determine from a position of standing back or standing outside
the manifold which it determines. So, for example, number ‘overlooks’
a crowd, analogies ‘overlook’ instances, geometry ‘overlooks’ space, and
the supra-temporal spiritual and mental acts ‘overlook’ absolute time.
A conflict between lower and higher causality can therefore simply not
occur, because a determining factor such as these can never clash with
a realization factor.
The General Way of Being of Life

Life is an event or a process. It can only be defined functionally and
dynamically. No structural definition is sufficient and there is no way
one can grasp its meaning by invoking some spatial arrangement of its
parts – which was Kant’s starting point for an organism. Life is a sort
of being, which can only be properly got to grips with by emphasizing
its coming-to-be.
If one starts out from the separation of Being into being and non-
being, then coming-to-be is the transition from non-being to being. If
one starts from the separation of being into its nature and its existence
– this latter meaning being real – then coming-to-be is the transition
from the nature of something to its being real. There is nothing in
the essential nature of coming-to-be that requires it to be a temporal
way of being, i.e. being is not [necessarily] a being-in-time. There is
time-free, coming-to-be – for example, mathematics – and ‘timely’ or
temporal coming-to-be. Life is ‘timely’ or temporal [zeithaftes] coming-
to-be. This characteristic process is unique to it, and all the forms be-
longing to it stem from its nature as a being which comes-to-be. In
contrast to life, a dead being is something that has-come-to-be, and
its being is spatial and precludes a future. A temporal or ‘timely’ pro-
cess does not essentially belong to it. In fact a spatial arrangement is
a prerequisite of the inorganic. Within living creatures events are not
arranged along any spatial dimension, but along temporal.
The organism, in which a living process is active, has to do with
the arising and passing away of ontological matters. In the dead world
there is nothing of this, but only separation and joining together of
spatial unities.
Inside the living world everything ontic – actual – is based on what
is coming-to-be. Anything that has become here is derived from what
is coming-to-be. In the dead world what is actually coming-to-be is
based on what has become. From a cognitive, theoretical framework
the being that has come-to-be in living entities is immediately appar-
ent. The having-come-to-be, which we talk about as ‘coming-to-be’ in
the dead world, is nothing of the sort, but, on the contrary, precisely a
having-come-to-be, a concluded matter. In the case of living entities,
we see how coming-to-be leads to having-come-to-be, and equally we
see what could have become but did not – what was possible and what
is still possible.
The chief types of temporal processes involving the coming-to-be of
something are as follows. 1) There is always something changing, and
the relationship between appearances of this is not yet an assumed
thing. 2) There is a self-modification, which does presuppose a modifi-
able thing. 3) There is a self-movement. 4) There is a self-transforma-
tion or metamorphosis, where the relationship between appearances,
in distinction to a simple self-modification – when only a few quali-
ties change – is one in which all qualities simultaneously undergo a
change. 5) There is growth and reproduction, the latter being a pure
and actual increase in the fullness of the entity. 6) There is duration
and self-preservation. 7) There is ageing.
Coming-to-be
What pure, phenomenological, essential determinations for the ap-
pearance of life, in any respect, have we so far come up with?
1. First, we have established that there is a spatial and temporal
self-encapsulation [Selbstbegrenzung], a ‘form of its own’ [‘Eigenform’]
of something, made up in a typical and organized way from a variety
of qualities, a form, moreover, which does not owe its provenance to
something external to it, but seems to be determined from within.
2. There is then a temporal succession of a series of forms, but all
under the influence of a particular rhythm in absolute time – i.e. the
living organism is a continuous coming-to-be of forms and any given
form is only a temporary and transitional point of changes of a form-
altering rhythm, which is relatively independent of outside influences.
3. Further, life is intrinsically linked with death, the end-point of a
spontaneous inwardness, and the cessation of its efficacy. This end-
point does not come about wholly from anything external to the living
process – unlike the cessation in movement of something already dead
or never alive – but arises: a) from within; b) spontaneously; and c)
as a qualitative end-phase of the regular phases of change themselves.
Death is an absolute passing away of some matter which will never
return. Only individuals die.
4. The transformations involved constitute an increase in the mani-
fold of parts – quantitatively and qualitatively – and these parts are
neither something accruing from outside, nor something entirely ex-
plicable by the manifold itself. They are rather a living example of the
untruth of the principle that cause and effect are equal. This is pre-
cisely what the phenomena of growth are.
5. In complete and essential contrast to any dead process, the living
process is temporally irreversible.
6. It seems that only the entirety of each on-going process, with all
its qualitative and quantitative part-states, determines what is carried
over into the next phase of time. There is no one-to-one matching of
every part-state in what was before with what goes after.
7. It also seems that time is itself active in the phases of the process
and is not something that one retrospectively confers on the process
in old age.
8. Life has essentially built into itself two poles – the organism or
central entity and the environment. The latter stands in relation to
the former as the former’s ambit of efficacy [Wirkspielroum], and the
former to the latter as the latter’s reception area. The organism and its
environment belong together, and are so mutually harmonized that
they are both influenced by the same unknown constant. The value of
the stimulus for the possible reactions of the organism is determined
by the actions that an organism can anyway carry out. Such actions are
affected by the totality of what is going on, and not just by the precise
stimulus.
9. Something seems to us to be alive if its movements are not en-
tirely influenced by changes in its environment, and appears, as if in
addition, that there is an intrinsic, spontaneous activity arising from
within; it thus appears to move by itself.
10. The essential feature of vital movement is that there is a change
in place of an identical something by means of an already existent ten-
dency to this effect.
11. All causal relationships between the organism and its environ-
ment break down into determining factors which affect what hap-
pens.
12. The scope of what can happen gets narrower with every step of
a living creature’s development.
Biological Lecture
I shall start out in this lecture from the most likely precise character-
ization of the problem in the light of the massive strides made in the
last few years in the fields of biological science and philosophy.
In the first part of the lecture we shall come to know all essential
sorts of attempted solutions to the problem of life, and thereby un-
cover the historical situation and circumstances of these attempts. We
shall also subject these to an ongoing critique, in the course of which
we shall see at which points they connect with a philosophy of the
organic. Because the problem of life can be looked at from completely
different philosophical angles, we shall have to discuss these – espe-
cially those of Driesch and our own.
In the second part of the lecture I shall attempt to give a positive
phenomenology of life and its three chief forms – plantness, animal-
ity and humankind – starting out from the premise that an empirical
conceptualization of the actual signs which distinguish living organ-
isms from dead things simply cannot be achieved.
In a third part we shall subject these essentially phenomenological
fundamental problems to a philosophical examination, and show that
they are critical for defining the limits of biological science itself. Phi-
losophy, above all, in this case, shows that each issue has its own meth-
odological problematic. I would list the critical problems as follows.
1. There is first of all the problem of what can be known of a living
organism. There is no philosophical problem in which the ontological
problem – What is the living organism? – is so tightly but complexly
bound up with the question – How do I know what it is? The nature
of this conundrum is that the knowing human is not only a creature
with reason, but is also a living creature, and that its collective poten-
tial Weltbild – both of itself as a psycho-physical organism and of its
picture of other organisms – is dependent on the constitution and
apparatus of its biological organization. Until now, cognitive theories
and logic pertaining to inorganic science have been far too one-sidedly
applied to biological sciences. A cognitive theory of life [developmen-
tally and historically] actually precedes any inorganic theory. I have
said elsewhere that we are indebted to Bergson as the first person to
have exposed an entanglement of cognitive and ontological problems,
when he asked: Can one investigate both the appearances of life and
those of dead nature with the same sorts of understanding, and the
same principles and basic concepts? Bergson’s answer has generally
been rejected. But his question is still highly relevant. It raises issues
concerning the sorts of categories that there are in living nature, con-
cerning the nature of what we mean by psychic, and about expressive
appearances, individuals as [mini-] totalities, space and time.
2. Among critical ontological problems which need tackling I would
give precedence to the following.
a) There is the problem of the origin of life.
b) There are philosophical problems as to the mechanics of develop-
ment, beginning with Aristotle’s views, and culminating in Driesch’s
notion of ‘Formvitalism’.
c) There are then philosophical issues to do with whether the living
creature can be systematically defined or otherwise portrayed.
d) We then come to the problem of the unity and the variety of life.
e) Next, there is the matter of phylogenesis and the sorts of phylo-
genetic explanations that have been put forward.
f ) Then one can point out the philosophical contribution to the
problems of reproduction and hereditary transmission, as they have
been formulated since Mendel’s time. Philosophical contributions to
the problem of sex can also be mentioned, as this topic has been trans-
formed in the last few years.
g) Finally, there is the problem of ageing and death, along with the
‘sense’ [Sinn] of what it is to be alive and how it changes with ageing.
In a fourth concluding part we shall consider what can be termed
the most profound metaphysical problems concerning our topic.
These comprise:
1) the relationship between life and the inorganic or non-living na-
ture;
2) the relationship between life itself and its various stages, particu-
larly the various stages of what the term psychic means;
3) the relationship between life and certain mental acts and their
centre in a ‘person’; and
4) the metaphysical place of the human being in the cosmos.
The ultimate and most profound question one can ask within the
philosophy of the organic is what contribution does the philosophy
of the absolute make to the matter. Must not special attributes be as-
cribed to the original basis of everything that there is in order that
the facts and the apparatus of life could every have been willed? The
problem of life has anyway in all periods of history been inextricably
bound up with metaphysical and religious systems of thought. This
means that different sorts of theism – e.g. St. Thomas’, Descartes’ – led
to very different notions of what life was – e.g. pantheism, Schopen-
hauer’s pandemonism, etc.
First part of lecture :

contemporary philosophical theories of
life and their historical origin
Before we go into the contemporary philosophical theories of nature,
and give a systematic account of these, we need to consider the different
ways in which Nature was automatically viewed, and the correspond-
ing Weltanschauung which was current, when the actual philosophical
theories of Nature were being proposed. The scheme of the succession
of these is anything but accidental, but, on the contrary, conforms to a
lawful arrangement. Moreover, the same lawful sequence can be found
in: 1) the general development from primitive human beings through
to our contemporary civilization; 2) the individual development of a
child through to mature adult; and 3) the development of theories
about Nature in any particular cultural setting – here I shall consider
Western ideas.
In the beginning the human being experiences the appearances
of nature in the manner of changing expressions, in fact as a sort of
language, and derived from more or less individualized spiritual and
demonic centres of force, as I-like centres. In a second major phase
of cultural history the human world-picture is panvitalistic and or-
ganological. Instead of prevailing spirits and demons with their will
to magically influence events – the former mythological phase – there
arise categories which stem from the imagistic repertoire of the organ-
ism itself, but are then viewed as objective, and then become ways in
which the entire panoply of nature is grasped. This natural world-view
prevails until recent times. It is followed thirdly, but only in the West,
by the era ushered in by Galileo’s discovery of the dead world and its
basic laws, primarily of a mechanical nature. At this stage one no lon-
ger tries, as Plato and Aristotle did, to derive the arrangement of laws
of the dead world from that of the living, but tries to derive those of the
living from that of the dead – i.e. a mechanistic epoch prevails. This is
itself then followed finally by a fourth collective state of human mind
and spirit, in which the dogmatic broadening of mechanical categories
over the living world is called into question and put in reverse, and
the two dogmatic positions of panvitalism and panmechanisticism are
both given up. This then raises the critical question: which categories
are then applicable to living things and which to dead things? At pres-
ent we are still suspended in this phase and all current theory building
belongs here.
These four basic spiritual attitudes are not a consequence of the pre-
vailing status of investigation at any time; they are developmental stag-
es of human spirit itself, and are part and parcel of the development
of society and collective culture. The categorical characteristics of the
major regions of nature and culture – the dead, the living, the psychic
and the noetic – have only slowly been uncovered throughout human
history, and from a variety of starting points, but in a strictly organized
fashion. The peculiarity of death is the last to have been discovered,
and it is therefore nonsense to try and explain the mythical world-
picture [the earliest phase] by means of a retrospective, projective em-
pathy from our own times. The historical course of knowledge has
essentially been one of de-vivifying [Ent – lebendigung] nature, with
a concomitant restriction in the range of applicability of genuine, liv-
ing categories to both dead and spiritual matters. Specifically spiritual
categories were uncovered at the same time as those appropriate to the
dead were discovered. For a human being, the world was an organism
before it became a mechanism in infinite space. The biomorphic or
organismic Weltbild preceded the physico-chemical one.
Ontological and Cognitive Theories

If we set aside cognitive theories for the moment, we come to the first
division of theories about life, which take their starting point from the
supposition that the organic appearances of life occupy a central posi-
tion in a totality of everything that is.
1. First of all, one can regard life itself as a completely insoluble basic
concept, but at the same time try and derive the inorganic, the psychic
and the spiritual – the other three main categories of everything that is
– from life itself. This position, a relatively rare one, we shall call ‘pan-
vitalism’ – and is to be distinguished from a similar version which we
call ‘dualistic vitalism’. In fact there is only one actual philosopher who
has held this strict position – Bergson – though there have been sev-
eral scientists of a similar view, e.g. the physiologist Fechner. Not only
is the inorganic world deleted in such a formulation, and regarded as
swallowed up by, or reduced to, life, but a similar fate is meted out to
spirit and reason, which, for Bergson, are a created product of life. The
starting point for his position is that one can have the experience of
something that is alive then dying, but not the other way round. If one
then adds to this theory concerning the absolute originality of life the
further notion that life is a supraindividually unified agent then one
arrives at a further characterization of Bergson’s theory as ‘monistic
vitalism’.
Aristotle’s influential version of panvitalism is not quite the same
as this. First of all, Aristotle divides up everything real into mind or
spirit [Geist, Nous] and nature, human beings and God. Within na-
ture, however, the inorganic and organic world is constructed along
the same lines : both have the same combination of form and matter,
and both have a goal-directing form – Entelechy – and passive matter.
Neither a specifically chemical or physical or mechanical lawfulness,
nor specifically inorganic sorts of matter or force, enter his scheme.
The same four sorts of causes, discussed in his Metaphysics, apply to
both living and non-living entities. Modern vitalism assumes an in-
dependent mechanistic explanation for the dead world, but Aristotle
did not know of such a concept of a formal, mechanistic lawfulness in
Nature. He recognized what today we regard as probabilistic or sta-
tistical laws, which arise when there is a breakdown in the elementary
goal-directedness of something. Furthermore, Aristotle was a plural-
istic vitalist with respect to sub-human nature, i.e. the various Ent-
elechies were eternal, like the world, and they were dynamically time-
less. His prima causa was timeless – everything was constant and there
was no evolution. He would not even have maintained, as Driesch did,
that the difference between the dead and the living is a gradual one.
For, what he believed was that the living organism had its principle
of movement within, not outside, itself. The something that did the
moving of itself, according to Aristotle, was the X which he meant
by the ‘psyche’, which was at the same time the ‘living agent’. Life was
growth and decline of something, through itself. The soul was the first
integrated effectiveness belonging to a nature body, and was definitely
part of any organ too. As well as there being no gradual transition
between plant and animal, or animal and human, the entire natural
world – inorganic and organic – was constructed in the same way. He
knew nothing of what modern vitalists refer to as the ‘binomism’ of
dead and living nature. He neither knew of mechanistic laws nor even
knew of any special lawfulness for inorganic nature. Teleological and
teleoclinical [goal-directed] causes are anyway central to his physics.
In his treatise, the Generation of Animals, he makes all organic coming-
to-be a consequence of sexual procreation. The female exudate – in
humans the menstrual fluid – gives the matter, and the male semen
the active form, and by a process of transformation they both give rise
to a seed. The male semen is what determines the form and shape of
the organism. In Aristotle’s view what constitutes the coming-to-be of
a living creature is a definite, dynamic, logical and ideational, effective
shape-determining factor, analogous to the artist’s situation, where
from a given material something is constructed. He calls the forma-
tion process a ‘soul’ if it concerns an organic, living creature. A vitalistic
or organological view on nature – not a view on being – is inseparable
from the way he formulates his views on the psyche. This concept of
a soul Aristotle builds up from the object itself, and not from human
conscious experience. As a result of this, the soul itself breaks down
into as many basic sorts as there are realms of living things, and Aris-
totle recognizes as many special parts of the force in question as there
are extant, vital basic functions and ways of behaving within any or-
ganism. Functions form organs. All organs possess a generative psyche
– e.g. male semen, reproductive drive – a growth-engendering soul,
and a nutritional soul: three basic drives.
These three on their own make up the plant’s soul. With animals
there accrues, in addition, a soul whose principle contribution is sen-
sation and memory, which Aristotle denies to plants. In human beings
there is the additional arrival on the scene of pure theoretical reason.
The modern mechanistic notion of nature arose in deliberate opposi-
tion to this whole thesis, seen at its sharpest in Descartes’ philosophy,
where the soul is res cogitans and the body res extensa, and Aristotle’s
divisions of the soul, with the exclusion of human rationality, com-
pletely denied.
Currently, Aristotle’s teachings, transformed by St. Thomas, are
still carried on by the Neothomists. The constancy of everything is
what has been most abandoned. But there are several other versions in
which every aspect of his philosophy has been reassessed and redraft-
ed. Driesch’s and Stern’s accounts are of this nature, though Driesch
is an ‘ontic dualist’ concerning inorganic and organic, but a ‘monist’ by
virtue of his conflating Life and Spirit.
2. Secondly, we can suppose that the living world might be known
and explained through categories and principles which correspond to
those of inorganic nature – so far as these categories are clearly what
do belong to this. Again, however, life still occupies a central role in the
scheme. Any such formulation as this is a chemico-physical explana-
tion of life.
This way of looking at organic life is also ‘monistic’ with respect to
the relationship between the living and the dead, no less so than Berg-
son’s strong and Aristotle’s not so strong versions discussed above. In
the present supposition, too, we have laws, matter and force of one
and the same kind throughout Nature, though here they are those of
an inorganic world. It does not exclude elaborations into a dualism
between soul – taken as equivalent to spirit and mind in such versions
– and body. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Lotze in the 19th
Century, are the strictest mechanistic philosophers, but at the same
time dualists with respect to body and soul. Their dualism here is any-
way incoherent because they allow the soul to work on the body and
what they end up with is a parallelism [which is an incoherent version
of mechanistic monism].
There are eight chief sorts of chemico-physical monism.
a) There is a metaphysical materialism, which tries to derive, not
only all physical appearances and life, but soul and mind too, from
the movements of matter. This standpoint assumes the presence of an
absolutely real space, absolutely real time, absolute matter and move-
ment. Certain Ancient Greek philosophers – Empedocles, Democri-
tus and Leucippus – and some modern – Hobbes, Lamettrie with his
L’homme machine – held to this view, but today it is dead.
b) There is next the standpoint of an absolute mechanistic set of
explanations for everything in Nature. This is an ontological stance,
which considers that the sole way anything works is material contact
according to the simple order of before and after. Wherever it oc-
curs in philosophy, and if it is not completely materialistic – as a)
above – it is combined with a dualism of body and soul. This is ex-
plicitly stated by Descartes and Lotze. It crops up in psychology as
association psychology, where events are treated as summated effects
of forces. Hobbes and English association psychology epitomize this
approach. Where there is a dualistic element, the soul is considered
the X that does the thinking. The general standpoint of all theories
in this group is that the reality of the soul and conscious appearance
are one and the same, and there is no subconscious or unconscious life
of the soul. Our natural Weltanschauung, it derives from spontaneous
activity of the soul. Despite its limited standpoint it spawned a variety
of different versions of the psycho-physical problem. In one version –
e.g. Lotze’s – there is interaction between the psychic and physical. In
another version, there is parallelism between two ontically separate
series of happenings.
Mechanistic philosophies of this nature are commoner today than
materialistic ones, but overall rather rare. In any case the very way
physics formulates the world [which such mechanistic philosophies
aped] has itself discarded materialistic-mechanistic explanations, and
at the very most strives for formal-mechanistic formulae. Assumptions
about an absolute three-dimensional space, absolute time and abso-
lute extended matter, have been consigned to the dustbin by modern
physicists, as indeed they were by some philosophers before them. The
crucial thesis now is that energy and mass are mutually transformable.
Quantum physics and relativity physics have between them destroyed
materialistic-mechanical explanations of nature. For these reasons the
very notion of a mechanistic set-up in organic or psychic spheres has
been [or should have been] undermined.
c) Incidentally, we find within this out-of-date mechanistic stand-
point two quite different subgroups. One is more chemical in nature,
the other more physical. The chemical versions [obviously] attempt to
explain the difference between the living and the dead along chemical
lines, but they are nevertheless mechanistic explanations at root.
d) Physical versions of a mechanistic explanation are illustrated by
suggestions as to how the ‘colloidal status’ in an organism might dif-
fer in living and dead entities. For such theorists it is not chemical or
physical differences in themselves that account for differences between
the living and the dead, but some essential constitution of the colloidal
status in both these situations.
e) I now turn briefly to theories which formulate life in terms of a
particular sort of energy. Ostwald is the main representative here. He
rejects the notion of extended matter, and supposes that all appear-
ances of matter are energy complexes. He further proposes a special
sort of form-energy [Gestaltenergie] and another special sort of psy-
chic energy, both of which maintain some sort of equilibrium with
other mechanistic energies such as heat and light. Attempts such as
Ostwald’s have generally been abandoned these days.
f ) One additional version of a chemico-physical mechanistic phi-
losophy of the living and the dead is known as postivism – and exem-
plified by Comte, Spencer, Mach and Avenarius. This philosophical
position rejects any notion of a vital or psychic efficacy in explaining
organic appearances, and further refuses to accept that physical and
chemical appearances rest on any ontological substrate or force. It
maintains that only the laws governing the appearances themselves,
and only such as are sensorily perceived, are objects for science; ev-
erything else is only a symbolic representational aid. Because, further-
more, the concrete law is never contained in general laws, but is some-
thing ‘contingent’, a relatively accidental nature to things and events
supervenes, and organisms and living events can never be derived from
chemical and physical laws. Despite this, what is comprehensible to us
of any organic appearance is precisely what is derived from the lawful-
ness of physical and chemical appearances. A certain autonomy of the
science of life should exist, if all this were so, although nothing of any
essential substance compared with physics, chemistry and mathemat-
ics. The difference, then, between the objects of inorganic and biologi-
cal sciences, according to this philosophical position, is only a general
logical one – a concrete-abstract dichotomy, not an ontological and
essential one.
g) There is then the ‘Gestalt-physicalism’ of Koehler, whereby a phys-
ical Gestalt is assumed to be a real configuration in Nature.
h) Finally there is ‘machinism’, championed by Lotze, Schultz and
Henderson, whereby the organism is deemed scientifically inexpli-
cable, but has a purposeful constellation of material and energy-based
factors – forming a mechanical structure – which is ultimately derived
from a ‘world intelligence’.
3. The third main group of vitalist theories, in addition to the panvi
talist and the chemico-physical monistic which we have just covered, are
those with a dualistic orientation. They are still monistic in respect of
the living and the dead, but their dualistic orientation is given a new
and different emphasis from the ones we have discussed hitherto. No
new ‘substances’ are admitted than there were in the previous theories
– i.e. living, dead and inorganic – but a greater variety of effective fac-
tors and forces and a greater number of laws governing events are al-
lowed. Some earlier exponents of vitalism, for example, even believed
in a specific chemical ingredient to life, whereas all modern versions
of vitalism conform to the more complex formula just alluded to. In
deliberate opposition to Ancient and Medieval versions, they eschew
materialistic and formal-mechanistic explanations of life, these being
confined to their formulations of the dead world. But this then be-
comes a problem in its own right, as the modern vitalist is then faced
with what is to be done about mechanical or physico-chemical laws,
not to mention matter and energy. Aristotle and the Scholastics did
not have this problem, whereas the modern vitalist has to ponder an
interaction between a vital agent and the chemico-physical forces and
substances without sacrificing the law of conservation of living force –
the energy principle.
There are three main types of dualistic vitalism, each with different
pairings.
a) There is objective vitalism, which wishes to show that there is a
unique principle of life, and that certain appearances of life can nei-
ther result from any conceivable mechanism, nor from any chemico-
physical explanation. The latter, according to this theory, always leaves
a residue to life that defies explanation in these terms, therefore de-
mands its own unique explanation. Nothing of an essentially positive
nature is proposed in this sort of vitalism, and one may well ask why
its proponents assume that dead nature itself is mechanistic.
b) Then comes ‘psychovitalism’. What characterizes this is that the
objective problem of life and the life-soul problem are made one and
the same from the outset, and it holds the psychic to be what steers
and directs the physical and chemical events in the organism and even
underlies the conscious appearances of things.
The spiritual father of this orientation is Lamarck, and his theories
about the meaning of needs for, and uses of, form building.
c) A third distinction within vitalism is into those proponents of the
notion who consider there to be a single supra-individual life-agent, in
relation to which any individual life is only a part-agent.
Driesch, for example, says little about this, but seems to incline to-
wards some unitary notion of agency. Becher states expressly that there
is a supra-individual psychic agent, and Bergson and Lodge hold this
too. The older vitalists – e.g. Wundt – were pluralists on the matter.
4. There are then specifically noetic theories of life. Unfortunately,
to the detriment of the thorny problems we are tackling, the various
metaphysicians of absolute being have had a strong [but baleful] influ-
ence on theories about life. All metaphysicians who take their stance
from there being a spiritual, and only spiritual, origin of the world –
whether theistic, pantheistic or panentheistic [i.e. God is coming-to-
be] – have derived the appearances of life either directly or indirectly
from this original source. The theistic, religious tradition, in particular,
has posed the problem of life in a very one-sided manner, and what
has had the most detrimental effect is its assumption that either life is
teleological or mechanistic. As supposedly exhaustive alternatives this
is a profound error, partly because the harmony and teleology which
they assume simply do not exist, and partly because a whole series of
laws prevail in life which are neither teleological nor mechanistic.
The theistic sort of noetic explanations of life come in two forms.
There is, first, the Scholastic transformations of Aristotle’s notions,
according to which the appearances of life derive from the soul’s ent-
elechy, but the soul itself is a creation of God’s spirit. The entire life-
world is thereby created on an ideal plane, which has already existed
in the divine spirit. A second form is a machine theory, according to
which the divine spirit purposely constructed this machine on earth
in the first instance following an intelligent plan, and without any ent-
elechy or soul, and without the need of any matter and force as in the
dead world, which last He too then separately created out of nothing :
Descartes and Malebranche believed this. In this latter form it resem-
bles the way in which Aristotle compared an organism to a work of art.
Whereas psychovitalists and vitalists like Driesch and Becher derive
spirit from soul, theists and pure spiritual pantheists reverse this di-
rection, and derive everything to do with the soul from a creative or
divine spirit : even Hegel went along with this. It was Schopenhauer
who first tried to break away from this basic way of seeing things, and
instead proposed that there was a ‘Will’ – a drive-based, obscure, blind
force of Nature – which explained the nature of the world, and the
appearances of life were objectivizations of this will, which themselves
had built an organ in the human brain with which the appearances of
the human spirit – not divine spirit – were connected.
Von Hartmann, who occupies a peculiar place between Hegel and
Schopenhauer, derives the inorganic and the living appearances from
two attributes of the world-base [Weltgrund]. One is an alogical energy
and the other is a logical factor, and both are the idea of unconscious,
divine spirit. Together they allow the appearances of life and life’s de-
velopment to be understood. The process he suggested involved the
rearrangement of the material forces and quanta of energy into supe-
rior forces, without contravening the principle of conservation of en-
ergy, so that the appearances of life could be constituted. The superior
forces he introduces are at the same time the real, unconscious basis of
the appearances of consciousness – i.e. unconscious, soul-based real
factors.
In whatever way these ultimate metaphysical problems are posed,
under no circumstances can an idea of absolute being, which is reached
independently of any deliberations as to the nature of the appearances
of life themselves, be itself a way of deducing anything at all about life.
The way in which a world-base is constituted when appearances of life
are involved, must be viewed differently from the way it is constituted
when none is involved. This applies at least if appearances of life form
a genuinely essential class of appearances. In fact, what is generally
understood by the teleology of living appearances, is nothing at all to
do with the so-called teleological proof of a supposed all-good and
almighty origin of the world, and is no testimony at all to a ‘world-
master builder’, as Kant would have it.
The theory of cognition and

the philosophy of the organic
With the foregoing we have covered all the ontological theories of life
and organisms – about 18 in all – which are currently around – a sad
state of affairs. A critique of these theories, which we can first of all
mount in terms of the phenomenological basis of biology, will show us
that not one of these ontological theories is satisfactory.
Even taking them altogether, it is quite obvious that they share a
common error, which is that they are all more or less ‘dogmatic’, in the
sense that they do not pose or tackle the particular methodological
issues raised by the problem of what it means to be a living cognising
subject. To be sure, what constitutes cognition of, and by, an organism,
is not the only issue facing any would-be philosopher of organic life.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion that it is simply not possible, as Kant
and his Neo-Kantian followers – and many others as well – assume,
to treat the particular problems inherent in living cognition as if they
did not exist, and lump together the living and the dead within the
same cognitive exercise. On the other hand, it is not possible either to
dismiss the claims of theoretical cognition in general for our project. It
is a basic principle in my representation of philosophy that real, onto-
logical problems and problems concerning cognition both have a com-
mon origin in the objects themselves. What some appearance is, and
what its essence is, are the common starting points for any theory of
how we come to know this appearance and its real object, i.e. ontology
determines appearances. The real ontology of appearances of natural
things must therefore be constituted in such a way that it conjointly
explains the possibility of our knowledge of these appearances as well
as these appearances themselves, or at least does not make such a ven-
ture impossible. Furthermore, I hold it fundamental that any theory of
cognition of the real basis of appearances must itself be so constituted
that it does not distort or dissolve the essential nature of these appear-
ances.
We shall now propose a three-fold division in matters pertaining to
the relationship between ontology and cognitive theory in the field of
the organic. First, there is a dogmatic ontological method; secondly, a
purely cognitive method; and thirdly a simultaneous sort of investiga-
tion into both.
On the third point, we need to ask what it is among the experiences
we can have of nature that is relative to life in general, and relative to
the particular properties of a cognizing subject; and, further, at what
level of existential relativity. We should like then to know what lies at
the root of anything’s being ontologically real, both in the case of living
appearances and in the case of dead ones.
On the second point – the pure cognitive method – the critical is-
sue is how the differences between dead and living nature are taken
into our knowledge and not how they stand in the ‘On’ [Being] of real
objects.
Before we embark on all this, a few further remarks are needed. It
might seem to many of you as if the 18 theories of life that we sketched
out exhausted the logical possibilities that ontological explanations of
living appearances had to offer. I should say straight away that this is
not so, and I shall later give you a version which is not contained in any
of the ones I mentioned.
The first remark concerns explanations about nature. There is an
ultimate framework of essential laws which only provides a negative
influence and limit to all appearances of nature – chemical, physical
and living. Such a framework has its own logic and ontology, its own
ultimate principles, and its own laws for forms in a temporo-spatial
manifold. All these are neither vital nor chemico-physical, but lie
above these contrasting regions.
Furthermore, they are the same for the ontological existence of na-
ture as for our cognition of nature.
Secondly, there is a phenomenal dualism within an essentially phe-
nomenological rather than empirical sphere, and this applies to living
appearances as well as to dead ones. This particular dualism has gone
unnoticed by every single monistic formulation, and that includes Ar-
istotle’s, Bergson’s, and all the rest. In other words there is an ‘axiomat-
ic’ of dead and living nature, and the relevant categories which go with
this. This dualism extends into metaphysics, but only as far as meta-
physics of the first level, not into the metaphysics of the absolute.
At the level we are talking about the same dynamic and simultane-
ous image-producing principles are at work in dead and living nature,
and are ever being newly brought forth. We call this image-creating
Nature – ‘Nature in God’ [Drang].
The special axiomatic we are still considering comes into its own, as
valid for living and dead alike, in the passage from the absolute to the
relative metaphysical spheres of being, in accordance with our own
theory of the levels of existential relativity. We now ask: At what level
of existential relativity does the dualism begin?
My third point is that the most significant dualism concerning finite
being is not the dualism between the living and the dead, but that
between Geist – ideas and values – and Nature – existence. This is in
complete contrast to the views of Driesch, Becher, Bergson, etc. The
dualism I am referring to reaches into the essential attributes which
are the cognisable attributes of Being-itself.
A functional vitalism, but not a vitalism of form – an entelechy – is
justified, if the notion of a metaphysical unity of life is integrated with
it.
[The editor writes here that the text of the lecture breaks off, and he
summarizes some remarks of Scheler’s. The editor then finishes the
section on Metaszienzien with four pages on vitalism taken from other
notes written at the time.]
False and Correct Vitalism

Any vitalism of a negative sort such as Driesch’s, along with any pro-
posal in which the living agent is added on to the inorganic with sepa-
rate lawfulness, is to be unconditionally rejected.
It is only our abstraction from what is really going on that makes us
see the two – life and inorganic – as separate, whereas the inorganic
and the dead are rather relative to the living, and not the other way
round. The inorganic laws of nature are anyway ‘statistical’. At root
each appearance of nature is metaphysically inorganic and vital simul-
taneously and equally originally so.
The inorganic coming-to-be of nature and the vital coming-to-be
are originally reciprocally arranged, not because God ordained it this
way, and not because the forces of Nature are teleologically related,
but because a single Nature is goal-directed and provides the ultimate
framework for both the inorganic and the organic. The dead and the
living are only dynamic, chief directions of one Nature, which in itself
is functionally unified. The different laws applying to the living and
the dead are merely objective phenomena, not metaphysical in origin.
The fact that the inorganic world fits into life [rather than the other
way round] excludes the notion of vitalism as a metaphysical thesis.
The dead world is rather carved out of the environment of everything
alive.
The force of life, therefore, is not something actually added on. This
is anyway unthinkable, unless one imagines that a complete break with
the laws of inorganic nature prevails in life. All hypotheses of this sort
are false and empty. The living part of Nature itself enables the emer-
gence of the inorganic from this Nature, long before any such meta-
physical goings-on are at a stage when we can experience them. There-
fore we can never know that such goings-on are taking place. But we
can also never prove that they are not going on, and that they do go on
is metaphysically likely, because only if it is so can our world-picture
be free of contradictions. It is certainly false to want to prove that the
laws governing inorganic manifestations of nature can determine –
as an entelechy – the forms we eventually experience. Chemical and
physical events and laws cannot explain our formed world. Maybe
there is an intrinsic pattern, but we can never know it [Fűr ‘uns’ nicht;
‘an sich’ wohl.]
Functional Vitalism
I call a vitalism ‘functional’ if it is maintained that any living behaviour
or any function can be derived in a strictly one-to-one fashion from
chemical and physical states of affairs. A functional unity is in fact an
urphenomenon, and we can only explain how the functions take place
and on what material substrates they work. We cannot explain why
these and no others are in play. The temporal form in which the func-
tions run their course is a goal-directed process according to the par-
ticular laws pertaining to an organism’s birth-to-death framework.
Life is an event, and only an event, and takes place in absolute time –
i.e. is a part-manifestation of universal life itself. All morphology must
be explained in the context of both functions and inorganic lawful-
ness. But in the case of inorganic science the only sort of time involved
is that of successive relationships in absolute time.
Is there then some force, as a dynamic determinant, which is the
common denominator of living functions, and which we could call a
vis vitalis [? a living current]. Not at all. Only the urphenomenon itself
of the function requires a metaphysical explanation for its existence as
something having-come-to-be. We especially need an explanation for
how one function comes about through another function [but we have
no need for some added on life-factor which makes anything inorganic
organic and which pervades everything organic].
This means that although the functions can be considered within
an inorganic scheme – according to their temporal characteristics and
to the material which they work on – metaphysics itself is not an ad-
vanced sort of empirical science, and only life itself [the metaphysics of
which underlies empirical science and not vice versa] determines what
functions spring up, and from what source : life itself is part of Nature
[Drang]. Again, we stress that life is not something that supervenes
on an already existing ontologically real realm of inorganic things and
forces. Life in fact directs and steers these very inorganic processes, al-
though both – living and inorganic – are equally metaphysically origi-
nal. Each group of force-centres is assigned [zugeordnet] to a life centre
from the word go. A life centre is a ‘source-point’ [Quellpunkt] of living
processes arranged in a certain three-dimensional frame – i.e. with
the centre at the apex and the environment and the organismic event
forming the two points of the base.
This arrangement itself underlies change.
Driesch’s proof proves nothing. It is a mish-mash of unmethodical,
empirical and metaphysical approaches. In any case, an entelechy is an
‘asylum of ignorance’, crying out for the question to be asked : What
can and cannot a machine actually achieve? A machine ‘can’ perhaps
achieve more than it actually does achieve – as Buytendijk said. But
a machine as part of a rigid system is incapable of explaining physical
and chemical processes. Death is not the failure of entelechy. Death
belongs to the phenomenon of life itself. No-one can say why this
supposed entelechy now achieves what it is supposed to achieve, then
achieves this no more, or achieves this and not that, or, for that matter,
why it is now intelligent, now stupid.
The factor which sets up the temporal forms of things attaches itself
not to matter in space, but to the temporal ingredients of Nature itself
– atoms of energy, positive electromagnetic charges – which lie at the
basis of both the inorganic and organic, and which are pre-material
and pre-energizing – in the sense that they are not measurable as en-
ergy and matter themselves are.
It is even mistaken to think of the determining factors of living
events as something occurring in the time of something durably real,
as Driesch’s notion of entelechy is so formulated. The factor in ques-
tion has its own way of coming-to-be and its own rhythm, and it is
therefore also false to represent it as ‘something’ which exhausts itself
or is overcome by inorganic causality. Life is the quintessence of a force
which resists death.
What is most correct in Driesch’s theory is his notion of something
being ‘suspended’ or ‘not suspended’, which is a marked change in direc-
tion from anything Descartes or von Hartmann had to say on the mat-
ter. Driesch’s theory supposes the existence of rotating forces, without
any quantitative value or centralizing character – i.e. without any place
where there is a starting-point. Furthermore, he recognizes that, what-
ever entelechy means, it can only allow to happen what it itself has
[? not] suspended. The suspension or non-suspension of something,
however, must in addition be deemed to be occurring in the transition
from a metaphysical to a physical realm and is not something which is
attached to an already completed process in this respect.
The intrinsic state of inorganic matter and its components are noth-
ing other than the elementary force itself, which, together with other
impulses of force, sets out a four-dimensional spatio-temporal form.
The centres of the force orient themselves according to their respective
fields.
The identity of physical and chemical laws, and the relative constan-
cies among these, do not imply the identity of the concrete chemi-
cal and physical events going on inside and outside a living organism.
These are different.
In the first place, the identity is a strict consequence of our hypoth-
esis that the rhythmic and goal-determined factor underlying a living
appearance is already at work prior to the coming-to-be of measurable
quanta of energy, and prior to the ‘materialization’ of such quanta.
All living creatures are ‘structures’, but not chemically or physically
so. The ‘structure’ is rather derived from a functional agglomeration of
vital fields.
The branches of mathematics dealing with set theory and the topol-
ogy of four-dimensional manifolds are valid for both inorganic and
living matters; whereas linear, planar and quantitative approaches are
only appropriate for inorganic matters.
The formal logic which applies to both regions must not be equated
with ‘inorganic logic’. For example, the principle which states that an
object cannot be identical to another object is only valid for the inor-
ganic, i.e. it assumes something persisting in space and a constancy
over time. There must, anyway, only be a constancy of the extent of
movement, according to Planck, and energy and mass are therefore
subordinate, relative constants. But neither the latter nor the unre-
vised former principle apply in the case of life. What holds sway here is
only an identity of temporal forms in absolute time. Such identity does
not exclude anything new, nor any creation, nor any transformation. In
fact life is transformation, but not simple alteration [Veränderung].
In the case of life the general is contained in the particular, and nom-
inalism is simply false in any application to this realm. For individu-
als, sorts of individuals and families of living agents, are not separate
one from another, but dynamically within one another. This accounts
for intraindividual and interindividual heterogeneity of goals. In dead
nature the essential nature of something is having-come-to-be [Ge
wordenheit], whereas in organic nature it is the logic of coming-to-be
[Werdenslogik].
Whereas Driesch’s entelechy assumes rigid forces just like inorganic
versions of force, and supposes that the flux of life can be made un-
derstandable from two such rigidities [i.e. life and inorganic], we re-
quire even the metaphysical origin of living appearances to include life
itself, i.e. even the supraindividual life force itself must be conceived
of as a functional waxing and waning. This further means that life’s
dynamism, its tendency to maximise its image potential, its ultimate
leading up to humans and essences, its intermediate appearances as
plant and animal, its de-materialization [Ent-materialisierung] of the
temporal units of Nature, and the withering away of simple tropisms
[Antientropismus] – along with its promotion of memory and fantasy
– must all be considered, not as properties of some ‘living substance’,
but as properties of functions or as tendencies for repetition. Further-
more, all these wax and wane, as the concomitants of growth and dy-
ing. To conclude, they are, above all, not the subsequent joining up of
something to the inorganic and its forces.
7
Manuscript on the Theory of
the Causes of Everything
Part 1 – Nature and Spirit
Metaphysics of Nature
I
f there is a universal matrix of life [Alleben], and if it is respon-
sible for all acquired functional ‘methods’ whereby the forces of
the dead world become incorporated into species and organisms,
and if it serves the goal of Eros, which is to bring forth the maximum
amount of entities while at the same time striving for unity and perfect
forms, then the ideal end of this process is the evening out of organism
and bodily material [der Ausgleich von Organismus und Kőrper] – the
coming-to-be from the world of inert bodily material of the living body
of the organismic world. This organismic world is not an entity, how-
ever, as was thought in the Middle Ages, but a goal. It is a goal in the
same way as the unification of spirit and life is a goal, a goal inherent in
God’s personality and in the coming-to-be of life in the world.
The basic principles involved here are: 1) that all genuine essences
and essential connections can only be elucidated as to their actual exis-
tence within a metaphysical framework; and 2) that, nevertheless, this
does not exclude a genesis of essences and God.
The incarnation [Verkőrperung] of the matrix of life comes to an
end when all possible ways of adapting matter and energy have been
achieved, in a manner that allows everything to be penetrated by them.
The meaning of organic evolution is not just the preservation of the
highest organisms, nor an increase and growth of life itself, but is the
achievement of a maximum degree of spontaneous freedom over the
combined resources of matter and energy. Organisms are only the
means and tools through which the matrix of life elevates itself, as-
cends, and learns in an infinite sequence of trial and error. In this way,
even the dualism of the dead and the living, as indeed the dualism of
life and spirit, are eventually overcome.
Both the organic history of life and the history of the world are of
the greatest significance for elucidating the coming-to-be of the world’s
origin. Even inorganic nature has layered realms of forms, which are
not absolutely constant. It is also governed in what comes-to-be by
a tendency for order, for ever clearer and concise forms to arise. The
electromagnetic face of nature gives way to an ever increasing optical
dimension, in conformity with the law of least energy expenditure,
whereby all other forms of energy and all matter tend to adopt the
same [optical] character. There is anyway no absolute matter, and
what matter there is is only relatively constant, and is furthermore
only a transitional episode in the course of the world-process.
Goal of Nature
The goal or aim of Nature is to achieve a maximum amount of reality
and qualitatively various forms, with a minimal expenditure of effort,
in keeping with the ‘law of least effort’. In this respect Nature is strictly
goal-orientated, as are all its interrelated parts. Nature is therefore –
even without spirit – goal-directed, though completely alogical, value-
free and purposeless.
Nature’s Laws
1. Nature is a multiplicity of unified elements, the number of which
is unquantifiable, but whose structuring brings forth absolute time,
which is not measurable either.
2. Nature is composed such that each of its unities – a, , A – be-
longs to the same order of goal-directions, but each of the impulses
has a superordinate unity of impulses above it, which determines the
scope of the subordinate impulses. It is only within the latitude that
this affords that each of the subordinate impulses has any relation-
ship to other simultaneous impulses, and that the various inhibitions,
demands, freeing up or closing down, of such, become coordinated.
Each existing unity, which is determined by its superordinate impulse,
contains within itself impulses of various rank orders, and these too
come under the control of their respective superordinate. The lower
impulses never govern the higher ones.
7 3 Theory of the Causes of Everything 325
In the overall scheme, vital impulses appear as a new stratum in the
established rank order.
The distinction between material and non-material forces, however,
is not clear-cut – as Driesch, for example, would maintain. This is be-
cause energy and a living force are interchangeable with matter, as are
energy and matter.
Whenever the superordinate force is not actively at work, this leaves
the subordinate forces to their own devices. There is no question of
parallelism here, nor even of a chemico-mechanistic parallelism.
The force-functions of Nature, which determine organic life, are
themselves constituted in such a way:
a) that they are not materializable;
b) that they control the rhythm of the life-events in absolute time;
and
c) that the mutual adaptation of living and dead nature one to each
other is reciprocal and not one-sided, and is only understandable
through assuming the unifying character of Nature, which sets forth
both of them.
Modus vivendi of Nature

The supreme principles according to which Nature works are as fol-
lows.
1. It brings forth the maximum possible amount of reality.
2. It produces the maximum amount of variability [So – Anders],
i.e. fantasy.
3. It accords each effective element a maximum amount of intensity.
Therefore any efficacy of an individual impulse at any point in abso-
lute time is the smallest efficacious unit there is.
4. Nature is both cause and directional guide at each point in abso-
lute time. It is both a starting point, in that something is being urged
away from something, and an end-point, because something is being
pushed to something. The smallest quantum of efficacy is the simplest
element of Natural unity of an event. If there is set in train a multitude
of such chains of events, then the relationship between these takes the
form of a formal mechanistic and continuous lawfulness.
5. In addition, the chains themselves determine a unified form, which
is itself determined by the superordinate impulse we know as Eros.
Teleology [future determining present] and [conventional] causa-
tion [present determining future] are two human sides of the same
coin.
6. The values which Nature brings with it are the movement of
masses, heat, diffuse energy, light, and the very possibility of there be-
ing a vital agent – i.e. a psychophysically unified form.
7. Nature pervades [setzt seine Drangsale] matters in such a way that
an absolute time is formed, and the pervasiveness of Nature then ap-
pears in a four-dimensional extension. It is both intensive and quali-
tatively diverse. The four dimensions of the separatedness in absolute
time form the basis for objective space and objective time, the extents
of which are linked one to the other. They are existentially relative to
a vital creature, but all living organisms take them to be objective and
independent of themselves. The apparent independence of space and
time is, however, relative to the standpoint, or rather present standing
point, of an observer in the four-dimensional spatio-temporal system.
Objective time is the fleeting succession of ‘nows’, without past and
without future.
Only phenomenal time has a proper present, past and future, and
has these at any point in such time – and this applies to remembered
and expected points too.
Absolute time also contains, within each of its realized parts, the
absolute future and the absolute past.
Principles of Nature
1. A maximum amount of reality is aimed for. Because, therefore, Na
ture, by virtue of what it is, is potentially infinite – as is the Substance
of which it is an attribute – reality itself, which Nature sets out, must
also be infinite. But because Nature cannot set out the force of God’s
will as spirit, which emanates from His love and is never infinite, but
finite, then Nature can only strive for a maximum [which falls far short
of infinity].
2. Even its striving for a maximum is constrained by its finite sup-
ply of force, and [to compensate for this] it abides by the principle of
achieving the maximum effect with the least expenditure of energy.
That alone is its unconscious, technical ‘intelligence’.
3. The same tendencies apply to the fantasy of Nature. As the aim is
to get a maximum qualitative fullness with a finite amount of energy,
the solution is to set forth ‘good’ forms, thus making the most of lim-
ited energy. In this respect it comes under the sway of the laws of Eros,
an entity which prefers beautiful to ugly. Altogether, then, ‘good’ and
‘beautiful’ forms are the answer to the problem of maximizing reality
on a limited budget of energy.
4. Nature is itself a multiplicity of unities; it possesses lots of im-
pulses, so many that they are uncountable. What governs the mutual
influence of the various unified patterns is absolute time. What deter-
mines the objective space and time which is relative to any organism is
the form of Nature’s fantasy as a four-dimensional manifold. The order
of the imagistic content in this manifold results from the rules which
go to make up the finite, accidental nature of anything, and which pre-
cede in the order of things, space and time themselves.
5. The order in which the world is created from Nature and through
Nature follows the order in which the intrinsic goals attached to each
set of impulses are realized, the consequences of which being always
accidental and arbitrary, as they do not derive from the goals of the
superordinate stages. In other words, the simplest impulses are com-
pletely random and interact randomly with one another.
6. Each impulse possesses: a) intensity; b) direction in four dimen-
sions; c) image; d) form; e) significance; f ) position in absolute time;
g) value and h) a real relationship to other impulses.
Nature’s fantasy
All the accidental and imagistic nature of reality is set out by virtue of
the unity of Nature’s fantasy: Nature itself determining the accidental
existence of anything, and its fantasy component the nature of the re-
sulting entity. Fantasy comes under the same rules which constrain the
urphenomenon, but within these limits it is haphazard and free. The
accidental meaning of things is a dual consequence of their essence
and Nature’s fantasy
Space is in reality the form whereby this fantasy acquires an inten-
sive, simultaneous and qualitative manifold. It is not a human form
of intuition, but rather the overt form taken by fantasy, which is itself
the second divine attribute. God, in His spiritual manifestation, has
no ‘sensorium’, as Newton thought, but, on the contrary, space is ex-
istentially relative to a human being – as Kant was generally correct
about.
The elements of the divine fantasy are the simple qualities, which
are then supplemented by unknown qualities, which are inexperien-
cable for humans but come to be known about through chemistry and
physics.
At root, however, everything is an impulse of Nature, which pos-
sesses a particular directional form.
The representations of fantasy are not explicable through the repro-
ductions of their elementary parts. Any reproduction is a special case
of the production which has the same motor effect. All in all, there is
continuous creation.
Idea and Nature (I)

Spirit or mind is the passive ability to bring forth ideas, urphenom-
ena, values and purposes. In contrast Nature is the active ability to
set out reality and images. Both are activities of the attributes of the
original source of everything, whose eternal self-positing is itself what
makes possible the functional unity of both sorts of activity. The ac-
tualisation of spirit that is needed before any idea springs forth can
only come about through the initiative of Nature after Nature itself has
been disinhibited by the spiritual will. In fact this process is the only
way in which Nature can be actualised, always by its disinhibition, and
by means of the spirit holding up an idea or a value or a urphenom-
enon to Nature which typifies whatever spirit is proposing.
Because we can only grasp the contributions of idea and urphenom-
enon in an actual concrete factual experience, and therefore cannot
think of an idea as something prefiguring the actual experience, the
entire absolute sphere of essences must be continually re-thought for
each new entity. We grasp ideas as simultaneous possibilities of the
nature [of something actually given]; we do not have access to possible
ideas in themselves [in a vacuum, as it were].
The ideas of the divine spirit form the contents of the world itself.
There is no question of only a picture being involved. Because these
ideas are only produced to the extent that they are also realized – and
do not prefigure or postdate the situation – there cannot be any pre-
science or world-plan. The only ideal contribution to the actual situa-
tion is the eventual realized idea, which arises from the spiritual com-
ponent of the Eternal Substance as the idea it has of itself, and it is this
alone which is continually actual and determines all other ideas. The
same applies to Nature itself. At each moment of the world-process
the entire past and future is contained as a potential, objective, logical
sense, something which applies alike to both the living creature and
the world itself treated as an organism.
Idea and Nature (II)

1. Spirit is an inactive principle which brings forth essences, but it only
does so in accordance with Nature’s motivational directions, never in-
dependently from it. It is neither purely spontaneous in its ability to
produce ideas, but relies on the other principle [Nature] to do so, and
nor is it and the ideas and essences it comes up with of any intrinsic
value in themselves. In the first place, it is set in train by the love of
God, which affirms a maximum amount of reality. But, although it
can only be motivated by virtue of this love, it must all the same be
motivated by a simultaneous and co-original direction of Nature. It is
inherently wise – if we consider what the ultimate causal agent had in
mind – to have produced ideas which are capable of maximizing the
fullness which lies in Nature’s images. The ideas themselves are there-
fore an attempt, and exclusively so, to realize these images.
The principle that ordains that things are realizable, and the further
principle that things can be ideated, can only function together. Each
idea is intrinsically attached to the coming-to-be of what is real, and
reality itself is both force and ideality. An idea itself is never something
that is realized in all its purity, because it is only a limitation, measure,
negation or exclusion criterion of certain possibilities. Anything that
is necessarily so is only the non-actuality [Unwirklichkeit] of the con-
trary.
Heidegger understands quite correctly that Husserl’s notion of es-
sences is false. But then he is only aware of contingencies, which is also
false.
2. It is obvious that there cannot be an idea without any accidentally
existing thing with some sort of nature – i.e. images. The intercon-
nections of ideas possess a validity for things, but they do so for ‘this
thing’, not for some general interplay of Logos. The idea is there at the
moment of realization. For this reason there are not even any subjec-
tive thoughts without fantasy or representation. Even in God himself
such thoughts cannot occur.
Even though we can achieve a separation of ideas from their corre-
sponding images and reality in the exercise of Reduction, in themselves
[in the natural attitude] ideas cannot be so divorced.
3. a) The same goes for values. There are no free-floating values as
ontical [actual] entities, as Hartmann thought; there are only values
‘for us’. Values already appear in a natural setting, even in the inorganic
realm of things, a realm not without goal-determined reference points.
A dualism between values and reality is a false notion of how things
are. Even the ethical values inherent in a spiritual being have a basis in
the reality of God. And the shunting off of values into an ideal realm
is a consequence of making everything else mechanistic. Geometry, for
instance, is full of exceptional structures – straight lines, circles, etc.
b) The height of a value has to do with the existential relativity of
something and the sort of being that this something is. Only some-
thing that has actually come to be something definite [aktuales Sein] –
not real or accidental being – has the highest value. Values themselves
are a sort of being – value-being. In the case of loving something, its
existence and value are as yet unseparated.
c) Although the unity of value and reality is an accidental fact, the
acts which grasp value and set out reality are closely connected. Mem-
ory and perception presuppose resistance [as sense of reality] and the
evaluation of resistance.
d) Everything contributes to the notion of the world’s being a his-
tory. As this happens, we find that there has been a growth of values,
and not just an uncovering of pre-existing values for ourselves. There
is also a value-led development. All inorganic matter and energy is not
just a quantitative state of affairs, but it is rather the case that what is
inorganic is still life of a sort, and what is life is inorganic of a sort too.
This attests to the unity of Nature as a whole.
e) The laws underlying power of various kinds have their basis in
nature. Energy self-destructs and in so doing creates matter. Matter is
only a historical fact.
f ) The highest values are, at one point in the development of things,
the life of drives with the weakest motivation behind them. But the
law which accords the higher categories of anything to be weaker, and
the lower to be stronger, generally reverses itself in the course of the
world-process, with the result that there is a continual sublimation of
forces, whereby the higher categories attract to themselves ever more
force.
The world – at one time only an inchoate dream on the part of the
Godhead – becomes more and more organized with the interventions
of Nature, until it is a veritable cosmos, and then, even more, the his-
tory of this cosmos.
g) Although values and accidental reality are dual, this does not ap-
ply to the essences, which are at the same time essences of value and
of being.
The notion of an idea with its own value, in which value is some-
where beyond any actual entity, is bourgeois, and emanates from the
upper classes’ wish to hark back to some golden age. The only love
which is not selective is the love of divine spirit. It treats a grain of
sand and Goethe with equal respect, and, for this reason, it is truly the
ultimate measure of values.
Spirit and Nature

It is only through the actualisation – disinhibition – of Nature, by dint
of spirit’s not saying no, that spirit itself can achieve a positive influ-
ence on things. For it is not on spirit’s say-so alone that it can exert
its blind will and achieve any autonomous potential. That is to say
that it does not possess an independent ability to activate anything,
but depends on Nature. Before spirit forms a coalition with Nature
its own nature is inert. Before Nature makes its coalition with spirit,
it – Nature – possesses neither ‘reasonable’ goals nor projects. Spirit
is quite capable of outlining a perfectly harmonious ideal picture of
itself and the world on its own accord – i.e. without Nature. But such
an ideal picture would simply remain dormant and ideal. It can only
enable to happen what it thinks or loves, if it enlists the cooperation
of Nature’s power to realize something. Nature, for its part, is desirous,
from the word go, to set forth the maximum amount of reality, but it
is only when the ‘do not do not’ role of spirit enters the equation, and
re-creates the unity of the original Substance, that Nature is allowed to
actualise anything, and join its own inchoate fantasy-projects to those
– of spirit’s – which turn them into genuinely possible and sensible
ones.
Nature and spirit are therefore essences, of a sort, which are eternally
beholden to one another. Together, they form an essential ‘body’ of
contrasts, the members of which are themselves held in an intercon-
nected matrix with its own mutual inter-determinations.
The upshot of all this is not simply a brake on the reality goal of the
world’s evaluation, but the putting into effect of spirit itself.
Hartmann’s metaphysical pessimism has to do with the thought that
it would be better if there were no world, and if there were no world.
His ideal is that only spirit would be at play. Both his pessimism and
his reliance on spirit alone would be quite in order if the realization
of the world, and indeed the realization of anything at all [through
Nature], were not necessary for the self-realization of God as a simple,
eternal and perennial part of Substance itself. In order for God’s will to
be done, the world must be ‘thought of ’ as ‘work to be done’. That alone
guarantees the coming-to-be of the world and explains how anything
at all can ‘exist’.
It is certainly true that Substance has an eternal way of being, inde-
pendently from the world. But the eternal love inherent in God’s spirit
affirms the realization of His Substantial nature. This affirmation is a
positive affair, and has as its consequence the option of ‘not saying no’
of the spiritual will. Hartmann does not see that there is a spiritual
will – nor did Aristotle or Schopenhauer. Theism only errs in that it
takes this will to be a positive operation instead of a negative one, and
further confuses it with a positive love.
God does not take back anything of the world at the end of the
world-process, but reaches the point where His ‘idea’, set out in in-
creasing measure, becomes perfectly plain as an eternal idea of Him-
self. He is mirrored in the history of the world, while the world at the
same time becomes more and more divine. What is extinguished, as
the world-process goes on, is only the ‘extra-divine’ [aussergotthafte] el-
ements of the world as modes of Substance, not the world overall. The
duality between spirit and Nature is increasingly eroded, but not the
actualisation of Nature itself.
The divine spirit does not affirm the evil which Nature will unavoid-
ably have to bring forth, nor the wickedness which it – Nature – is
necessarily associated with. What this spirit, through its love, does af-
firm of Nature, is the component of Eros inherent in Nature, indeed
its most profound core element, Eros being that component which is
responsible for preferring values such as noble or beautiful. The divine
spirit does not affirm the inbuilt tendency of Nature to come up with
the maximum number of forms – that is a projection of Nature’s urge
to achieve a maximum amount of reality – that is something Nature
possesses independently of its own erotic core. Nevertheless it con-
dones these tendencies because they are dynamically at one with Eros
[i.e. it can’t have the latter without the former].
Hartmann fails to see that between and above the components of
Logos and will there is a unifying influence exerted by the love in
God’s spirit, and that this leads to the intellectual intuition by means
of God’s will. He also fails to recognize the Eros component in Nature,
which is responsible for independent vital values, and which precedes
in the scheme of things the striving for power in Nature, and which
is rather concerned with a qualitative, fantasy-driven fullness in the
accidental nature of things. Hartmann’s duality – between ‘spirit and
power’ – is something completely different from any dualism of ‘spirit
and Nature’. Anyway, the notion of spirit that I hold by is not merely
a logical faculty, but is primarily an entity exuding love, which holds
within itself the two components of Logos and will – the latter to be
understood as having a negative effect only.
Moreover, the notion of Nature I hold to is one which ascribes to
Nature not just blind, haphazard desires, but one which has room for
two Eros-led processes – what I call the facility of making real [Real
prinzip] and that of making fantasy [Phantasieprinzip]. In addition, I
consider that ‘qualities’ are entities in themselves, and deserve meta-
physical consideration in their own right; they are not exhausted by
specifying their intensity. Even Nature is badly portrayed as something
‘blind’, as if it were a mechanical force. It is goal-orientated in itself,
and only ‘blind’ with respect to spirit [geist-blind]; it would be better
to depict it as indifferent to spirit [geist-indifferent], i.e. indifferent [or
neutral] as to spiritual values. It even has an overall directional bias,
which is to contribute to the eventual unification of itself and spirit in
the one Substance, which last is superior to them both in the scheme of
things. It is by no means blind desire or foolish bashing on regardless;
on the contrary, it must learn to withdraw itself.
Goal and Purpose

1. Purposefulness only comes into play when the understanding of
an end-state occurs. In goal-directedness there is an original, shared
directionality of agents – A, B and C, for example – which is in agree-
ment with their nature and possesses some constancy, but where there
is no anticipation. 2. There occur no reasoned considerations as to
what ought to happen in the light of any spiritual values. The end-
result of several such concerted goal-directed activities can be stupid
or clever. 3. Beginning, middle and end of such a process come about
by forces acting linearly. 4. What results derives from the unity of
the impulses. 5. This [unity] is possible because of the shared spatio-
temporal manifold that they find themselves in. 6. Goal-directedness
is already subject to the constraints of quantum theory, whereby its
temporal form and rhythm is affected. 7. The formal-mechanistic for-
mulation of anything is a statistical approximation. 8. There is only a
pre-existing divine love, but no foresight, let alone a world plan.
Reaching the goal of some whole entity is dependent on the goal-
directedness of its parts. But the latter are not originally tied up with
the former, in the sense of sharing some teleological principle. In fact,
the particular lawful goings-on of the parts are never extinguished.
The forces behind them are ever active. Therefore, although the goal
of the entity as a whole can be set out, what comes to pass depends
continually on the goal-directedness of its parts. Moreover Nature’s
impulses are more in conflict the lower in the scheme of things that
they are, and the lower they are – in this scheme – the more powerful
they are. What determines victory in such a situation is the extent to
which these warring impulses are guided by the directing idea. And
the idea itself, given the situation it is faced with, is never perfectly
realized. A [superordinate] goal-directedness can only achieve cor-
respondence with its appropriate, subordinate goal-directedness by
inhibiting and disinhibiting such. It can never completely divert them,
nor create something from scratch in their absence. The sequence of
inhibitions and disinhibitions has to take account of the extant set-up
of lower goals, and make whatever job it can out of them.
The basic elements that any such goal-directedness have to deal
with are atoms of energy – indivisible centres of force – which science
treats as possessing only intensity, direction and form. In fact, they
possess more than this; they possess ‘character’ and quality besides.
Space itself is in fact already determined by the imagistic matrix of the
dynamic relationships between such ‘atoms’.
The disinhibition of Nature, whose unity is guaranteed by the unity
of the laws of movement, which itself indicates that there is a unity
of force, results in an order being set up from the lower to the higher,
and therefore also to a realization of the world in time. Autonomous
energy diminishes the higher in the scheme the goal-directed agent is,
until we reach the limit of spirit, where it becomes, as will, nothing at
all, except, in a negative sense, as mere inhibition and disinhibition [of
other lower agencies].
For example, if we consider three goal-directed sorts of activity – A,
B, C – B’s striving for its goal is dependent on its own intrinsic inten-
sity, but it is also constrained by the scope of A’s and by C’s activity. B
then learns its own position in the hierarchy, from the effects on it of
A and C. The hierarchy then arranges itself as follows.
Spirit
Consciousness A
Psychology – physiology ↓
Morphology B
Colloidal and crystalline status ↓
Inorganic state C
An overall state of affairs which we might call pluralism, which Na
ture conforms to, is not in any way simple. It is a functional structur-
ing of impulses, with each component possessing ‘character’ and ‘direc-
tion’. Force and drive-centres – or vital centres – are the two classes of
impulses that we know about. Whether they continually merge with
one another or not, we do not know. The only sort of unity [or uni-
fied centre] which is more than a functional unification of goals and
cooperation is that [instigated by spirit] which comes about through
inhibited Nature. If it is in a state of disinhibition, it is a layered realm
of different sorts of impulses.
We can only make sense of the unity of Nature in terms of the unity
of the laws of nature, so far as it includes the living and the dead, cou-
pled with its derivation from time. We cannot, however, derive from
the unity Nature the extent and characteristics of its particular im-
pulses, or put these in an order of precedence.
Dysteleology and Teleology

In order that some integrated purpose can fail, there must already be
a goal-directed dysteleological event. But living events certainly do not
give any indication in themselves that there is an intelligent author be-
hind them, who knows the contrasting spiritual values that might ap-
ply. The huge evidence for dysteleology in nature – something which
Darwin overlooked – in the form of an over-abundance of forms or
stupid ways of carrying on – e.g. non-adaptive instincts – speaks vol-
umes against the so-called teleological proof.
What there is of a harmonious or teleological scheme in nature –
dysteleological as well – has to be considered in the light of the fol-
lowing. First, what we are faced with when we see empirical organisms
or some vital activity going on is the remnant of some previously inte-
grated affair, comparable to a half-obliterated inscription in a fragment
of some ancient cultural relic. Secondly, at its origin, nature strives to-
wards a maximum amount of structural diversity, whereas any logical
appraisal [in retrospect] restricts what is set out, and certainly does
not determine it. The original setting forth is not attuned to spiritual
values, however much theism would deny this. Thirdly, it – nature
– cannot be derived from mechanistic sources, which would make it
already a mode of intelligence, or at least bordering on the intelligent,
instead of, as it actually is, to do with something completely differ-
ent from intelligence. To be sure, if it were intelligent, then teleology
would come into it, but as it is not, and as it is certainly not mechanis-
tic, then teleology or dysteleology do not enter the discussion.
The lower individual levels of some organism are in a state of strife,
war, and mutual repugnance, one from the other – the lower they are,
the more marked this is – and what serves the higher individual levels
is only the spare capacity freed up from such struggles. They are never
simply controlled by the higher levels; rather they are utilized and ex-
ploited.
The lower impulses – electrons, for example – must be thought of
as in a state of anarchy, and the picture we build up, of formal, mecha-
nistic laws applying to them, really grows out of completely capricious
and haphazard events concerning them, stretching down to the small-
est elements imaginable.
Quality and the Matrix of Life

If there is a living matrix [Alleben], distributed throughout its higher
and lower unities among what we call nature, then nature itself can
be defined as the game that the living matrix plays with itself. To be
sure, qualities as qualia are necessarily related to seeing, hearing, etc.
But at the same time the qualia are also outside the psychic realm, and
outside of a supposed universal consciousness proposed by Fechner.
They are inside the soul of the world and outside it at the same time,
and therefore objective qualia do exist – as Duhem believed – even
though we cannot but express their presence in the order of things in
mathematical and formal mechanistic terms, and thereby substitute
them for something else. All subjective, sensory organizations belong-
ing to a living creature only determine what selection is made from
qualitative systems, and the functions which they serve already belong
to the metaphysical arrangement of life.
But in another way too, seeing and hearing something in the here-
and-now are dependent on the vital energy of Eros within a subject,
which itself is part of the universal seeing and universal hearing of
the Eros of the entire matrix of life. Yet further, objective qualities are
themselves the consequence of constellations of goal-directed forces,
which contain the most primitive sorts of unities.
The Matrix of Life [Alleben]

The functional unity of breathing or walking, etc. is a definitive achieve-
ment of the entire nervous system, represented as a network. If this or
that organ is damaged or removed, the same function as before will
be carried out in another way. Even species are primarily a functional
classification. The entire rhythm of life, and not temporary morpho-
logical make-up, is decisive for species’ becoming what they are.
Expressive appearances precede purposeful actions, and are not
some remnant of these.
It is therefore necessary to give the issue of functions more impor-
tance than that of individual morphology. The matrix of life works
on the environment by means of its species and individuals, and even
through its constituent cells in their changing states. Environment and
individual living form are both determined by functional groupings.
Seeing, for example, is carried out by quite diverse-looking organs.
Why the Matrix of Life

cannot be Created
Because a God is pure spirit, it can only have a will ‘in spirit’, with no
power to put its will into practice. The power in question can only
come about through the intervention of the matrix of life as an at-
tribute of the Basis of the World, and not insofar as it is divine, but
insofar as it is demonic.
The world, as the ‘life’ of the living matrix is finite, is only one liv-
ing exemplification [Verleiblichung] of this living matrix, from which
an infinite number of other exemplars do and can come about, if the
divine spirit allows it. God is not the creator of the world; He only lets
it come into being.
There is no positive decree that something should be created, but,
instead, there is scope for a living exemplification by virtue of the di-
vine spirit’s desisting from forbidding it. In other words, the living ma-
trix strives to exemplify itself. A world is given only to the extent that
God’s spirit allows it to come about, and this itself is governed by His
own essential ideas. This all happens, moreover, at a level of a timeless
coming-to-be, eternally so, and from out of the living matrix. On the
other hand, this world, from beginning to end, is only one of an infi-
nite number which the matrix of life could allow to come forth.
The matrix of life itself, when it has handed over its exemplification
in the form of a world, then retires [to await] the death of the world
[Weltentod]. Pending its [re]-entrance [Bis zu seinem Eintritt] the
world ages, in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The world comes-to-be [ent-wird], in the course of which it develops,
spiritualizes itself and in due course passes away.
The meaning behind God’s release of the coming-to-be of the world
is as follows. He achieves autonomy, and life is spiritualized. The goal
of all possible world-processes is the unity and interpenetration of
spirit and the living matrix in Being-itself, this last, as the Ur-substance,
being neither divine nor demonic.
Although the matrix of life, with each world-exemplification that it
brings forth – each one having a shorter duration than its predeces-
sor – withdraws again in disenchantment, God benefits every time,
because, as originally powerless and lacking any existential status, He,
[with each round of life’s matrix coming and withdrawing] gains ever
more power and ever more existential footholds. The release of new
world-exemplifications ceases when God, as a spiritual entity, has
become, through His continually growing power, ever more relaxed
[gefűgiger]. The ‘mid-point in Time’ [Mitte der Zeit] is the point where
there is the beginning of a predominance of God’s spiritual power over
the power to spiritualise [Machtgeist] of the living matrix.
This ‘mid-point in Time’ of this world is now upon us. The era of
the predominance of the spiritualization of all matters has begun, and
that means that what was coming-to-be has largely come-to-be [des
Entwerdens dieser Welt].
When God is a finished entity [fertig geworden ist] – not just as idea
and essence, which He is anyway and eternally so, but as an existen-
tially viable and spiritually powerful entity as well – then we are at the
end-point of all world-coming-to-be, and we have reached the end of
spiritualising power [Machtgeistes].
The original tension in God, between spirit and life – goodness and
Eros – is then at its most relaxed. God rests content with His life
– His life as spirit. The Fall of Man now becomes superseded. The
spiritual will is redeemed in God, and the notion of a blind will – as
put forward by Schopenhauer and Hartmann – is avoided. For life is
goal-directed and ‘sensible’ [sinnvoll] – not moralistic or intelligent. It
is demonic, in the sense Goethe gave to the word.
The human being serves several purposes here: through God, in
whom he is eternally safe and sound, he is liberated; and, at the same
time, he contributes to God’s own liberation from His inner tension.
It is just as terrible to make God responsible for the existence of
this world, as it would be to deny His existence – as atheism does
– or to deny the existence of the world even – as acosmic pantheism
does. God is not responsible for the existence of the world, whereas
He would be if He were all-good and all-powerful. It is not ‘God in
God’, but the living matrix in God, which gave birth to the world. Any
living creature itself cannot be responsible for such matters.
The existence of the world cannot even be interpreted in a moral
sense, neither as the focus of blame – as Schopenhauer thought it
could – nor as the focus of praise – as theism holds.
In that all profound, contemporary, spiritual thinkers – such as Wil-
liam James, Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, von Ehrenfels and
Max Weber – deny that God can be all-powerful, this surely indicates
the correct path to take.
The world is a living organism of the living matrix, and holds sway
as a natura naturans [living nature] in God’s overall domain, eventually
leading to a more substantial God – hence panentheism. It comes-to-
be in God’s overall framework and becomes, en route, more divine.
The actual history of religion began with God the master and the
father. It ends with God the servant of love and the son. Power and
domination is for the sake of love and goodness. The father is now
there for the sake of the son. The first in God becomes the last.
God had to release the exemplification of the living matrix – which
led to the coming-to-be and birth of the world – if He did not want
His idea and spirit to remain powerless and without existential status.
As a spiritual entity He was free to do so. Its – the world’s – essential
nature was eternally predetermined within Him, but its – the world’s
– existence was not; its existence came about by virtue of the living
matrix, this last being its – the world’s – actual primary cause.
Furthermore God did not create the world for reasons of Self-glo-
rification. He allowed its coming-to-be from out of love alone – of
Himself and of all possible existential variants that are potentially in
Himself too.
In fact, God could have disallowed the coming-to-be of the world.
For without His doubly negative say-so – i.e. ‘it will not not become’
– the world would not have come-to-be. If He had taken this line
however – i.e. opposing its release – He would have condemned the
fount of all things [Ens a se] to an eternal tension and suffering. But
God wanted harmony amongst the original Being in which He found
Himself embedded. He even wanted to liberate life itself from its eter-
nal thirst to bring about its own existence into being. He more or less
said to the matrix of life: ‘pecca fortiter [sin away as much as you like];
get a move on, get the world on the road [Hinaus – ins Weltwerden]!
And come back when you’ve done it!
The further course of actuality is the coming-to-be of the world in
God, the ‘divinitization’ of the world – not the actualization of God,
as heretofore. Pantheism, as a theory of the world, is false. But it is
the eternal goal of all timeless coming-to-be. A timeless coming-to-be
transformed into an emergence in time [entstehen in der Zeit] [that’s it
in a nutshell] along with a fading away, also in time.
Principle of Solidarity – I
1. Without a living agent there would be no evolution.
2. The adaptation of the living and the dead, one to another, ex-
cludes the dualistic biology of Driesch. Together – organic life and
inorganic nature – make up Nature [Drang] itself.
3. If the goal of Nature is to produce a maximum amount of forms,
each arranged along with their functions into a totality, and indifferent
to the [spiritual values of ] good and bad, and even strife or mutual
support, then there is no reason to accept a spiritual origin for nature.
4. In the same general way in which the Logos realizes its ideas, by
appealing to the directional impulses of Nature, so does the matrix of
life bring into the open its functions, through appealing to constella-
tions of forces, thereby seeking to arrange them and adapt to them, in
order to work on them, they, meanwhile, being never completely con-
trolled. Each function remains latent for every new species, or example
of such, to utilize, without its necessarily being handed down directly
from its parents or its generic relatives.
5. The notion of morphological vitalism is not a necessary correlate
of the above theory, because it is a function – not a shape – which is
the critical element, and, in fact, each organ and each structure is to be
thought of as a ‘functional field’, analogous to the fields of force in the
inorganic realm.
6. The concept of ‘purpose’ should be removed from all biological
considerations. In the first place, we cannot speak of a separation [in
most, if not all, living organisms] between a representation and an act
of will. Secondly, [the critical spur to any action is] feeling the values,
and [if there is] purpose [it] comes after such an event, and judgement
[if that comes into it] even later. Thirdly, matters proceed by way of
orientation towards a goal and this involves the whole organism.
7. Functional habits – as Roux conceived them – must be distin-
guished from a functional rhythm. The former influence the size of
an organ relative to its neighbours, the latter actually determines the
shape and qualities of a structure. Overall, except for inorganic matter
and energy and the collection of functions, which guarantee a unity
of achievement, there is no third element: no entelechy, as in Driesch’s
works, or Aristotle’s, is anywhere involved.
Principle of Solidarity – II
1. In the same way as the matrix of life ‘learns’ as it goes about bringing
forth – i.e. it has a sort of ‘pan-organic’ memory – so does the origi-
nally, undifferentiated, divine Logos ‘learn’ from the history of its own
past achievements.
2. In the cosmopolitan and world-historical participation of the hu-
man race, human spirit acquires ‘structures’, which thereafter take on a
living and active role. These structures are also taken up into the divine
spirit, which then utilizes them to direct and steer Nature to realize its
[spirit’s] own projects.
Principle of Solidarity – III

Further examples are: 1) the unity of time and space and their interac-
tion; 2) the temporal, reciprocal dependence of events in the realm of
force impulses and those in the sphere of fantasy; 3) the lawfulness of
form-building in space; and 4) the finitude of the world.
There are, furthermore, principles of solidarity to be found between
God and world, spirit and Nature, and across the various social group-
ings in human interaction over history.
Part 2 – The Coming-to-be of the World

Continuous creation
The world, as the love of God, is at each moment newly made corpore-
al from the eternally available raw material of Nature, according to the
ideas and values imposed on this last by divine spirit. It is not strictly
a continuous creation on the part of this spirit, but rather a [continu-
ous] release and arrangement of what is being produced by divine Eros
out of the material of Nature’s fantasy. There is no [unique] temporal
creation of the world, therefore, because any point of absolute time is
identical to any other point of time, in respect of what is happening by
way of divine influence on the above material. The world, moreover, is
not co-original with God, although intrinsically connected with the
eternal tension and relaxation of this tension, which is part of God’s
nature. Whether I say that the world is being produced now, or yester-
day, or tomorrow, or was produced however many thousands of years
ago that you like, amounts to the same thing. It is like asking where
a stream of water starts – the water here being [a metaphor for the]
world – when the water has but an eternal source in the Godhead.
The world’s ‘sempereternality’ is only a symbolic image for the [actual]
eternity of the divine Substance. Time has no beginning, because any
beginning presupposes time itself and its contents. It can, however, be
said to have an origin.
It is only with the complete neutralization of the tension [in the
absolute Substance] that the world becomes wholly immanent in God.
Better put, the world is consumed [verzehrt] by God, in a process
whereby the intrinsic contrasts within God are erased in favour of the
self-realization of God Himself. Even though the world has no begin-
ning – but has an origin – it does have an end, or rather a re-turn
[Rűcksprung]. The end is the end of time, as a form of production,
and the origin [Ur-sprung] stands in direct opposition to the re-turn
[Rűck-sprung].
Strict theism cannot admit the notion of a continuous creation, be-
cause that would mean that the maintenance and creation of a world
amounted to the same thing – which it cannot accept – and it would
also mean that any unique temporal creation of the world was wrong.
Furthermore, theism’s separation of ‘primary’ from ‘secondary’ causes
would collapse. The theory of continuous creation also requires the re-
jection of any notion of ‘matter’, in the form of some purely passive sort
of stuff which God created in the beginning. In fact, any theism with-
out such notion of ‘matter’ is inconceivable, because it is such ‘matter’,
which bestows ‘substantiality’ on the world, in addition to, and outside
of, God. This makes Berkeley, for example [who denied there was such
matter], a Gnostic. But if all matter is only an ideal image of force,
then the substantial force must be part of the Godhead too – indeed
its second attribute. It is not spiritual-being, to be sure, but it is Nature
– being. Furthermore, if matter is only a variable measure within the
field of forces, then even the physical world is only the embodiment
of the divine – Natural fields of forces. And if there is no sustained
absolute material substance – in accord with the findings of recent
physics – then there cannot be a separate world-substance – distinct
from the divine substance itself – which God created at some point.
All existing entities in the world must therefore be potentially ‘in God’,
without God’s needing to have ever been in the world nor the world’s
needing to have ever been already actually in God.
In my scheme the supposed ‘secondary causes’ of things are not con-
flated with primary causes, but that is because the eternally continuous
production is not a continuous creation but only a release. Indeed the
notion of ‘secondary causes’ is quite essential to the scheme of things,
because, without them, even God, in his spiritual capacity, cannot ex-
clusively determine the efficacy of anything, but He must still have a
potential efficacy, by which He can influence things by holding up His
own idea and value. The secondary causes in this scheme of mine are
thus the ‘occasional causes’ for the primary cause of spirit to appeal to
– even though they are also part of the Godhead itself in the form of
its Natural attribute.
The principle – no more causation, no more effect – applies uncon-
ditionally for all spiritual issues, conditionally for all biological mat-
ters, but does not apply to mechanical versions of things.
The world is not a free creation of divine spirit. From nothing there
ensues only nothing, and God, as spirit, lacks any positive will or uni-
versal power. Moreover, the world is just as little an effect of a blind
declaration of divine will. Divine will is only the potential to inhibit
the second attribute [Nature]. God is responsible for the existence of
the coming-to-be of the world, because He let it happen, but He is
not responsible for what actually exists. Neither a no-strings-attached
concern on His part for what might happen, nor His self-glorification,
account for the inner reason for the coming-to-be of the world. Even if
God wanted to realize Himself or realize His own substance – which
He might want to do to give some embodiment to His love of His own
image – He simply could not do this unless He also released value-
neutral Nature, which also involves setting in train all sorts of good
as well as evil events. He had to take a big risk about the world [Er
riskierte die Welt] in order to become what was laid down in the im-
age of His love. God did not require that the world would reflect any
perfection, all-knowingness or all-goodness in respect of Himself; He
was quite happy that He was in some way realized. The basic reason
for this is that God, in His spiritual mode, is both essence and idea and
devoid of energy to act.
The ‘power’ that He has is the power of being able to do something,
and this precedes reality in the scheme of things. It is the possibility to
bring forth reality.
But God, in God, is independent of the world, and this is something
that He is eternally: He is an ideal entity. He is also eternal knowledge
of everything – at least outside of anything to do with Himself, as He
does not have any original consciousness. But His self-realization – as
a historical subjectivity and as absolutely self-independent – was not
possible without the coming-to-be of the world. God therefore need-
ed the world and world-history to enable His self-development. God,
in short, freely condescended to allow a world to be brought forth in
order that He Himself could come-to-be as an extant entity. He could
not avoid there being a world if He wanted to come-to-be Himself.
In God there is a dynamic direction of what is coming-to-be, but
no past, present or future. These temporal modes only apply to a fi-
nite living creature, and not even to the matrix of life, in relation to
which time is the form whereby living forms are brought forth from it.
Coming-to-be is anyway only the passage from the non-existence of a
certain something to the existence of the same something. Even self-
coming-to-be needs an origin, because every entity needs an origin to
account for its being more in a state of existing than not existing. Even
God, therefore, is no exception to this. And, to sum up, that is why the
world came into being.
Aristotle’s God, which was in every way perfect, had at least the con-
sequence that it did not need to create a world. It had no ‘will’ to do
this because it was purely ’determination and thought’ [Bestimmtheit
und Gedanke].
Technology has its meta-technology. If I took the world as the
work of an ‘all-wise, all-good and almighty God’, I wouldn’t even dare
breathe, never mind try to change it, in case I caused any damage to
the achievement of such a lofty and holy person through my improper
actions.
Substance and World

All inner properties or attributes of Substance, whose infinite nature
results from its eternal self-setting-out, are completely unknowable to
us. It is only because Substance is not only the basis of the world, but a
primary cause, and the supreme good, and final goal of the world pro-
cess – and that such a world process exists – that it came to be know-
able. A revelation as to the inner being and life of the Godhead does
not occur. Metaphysical agnosticism, therefore, if it serves to draw the
limit as to what metaphysics is, is quite in order, and, in fact, is de-
manded by the content of our metaphysics.
If the coming-to-be of the world is only possible because of the ten-
sion between the two active attributes, which functionally kick-start
things off, then the Godhead itself must be a coming-to-be, though
[differing from the world in its] eternally self-positing and atemporally
relaxing this tension. It is then clear that the Godhead, as a state of
such tension, must itself be reached in some way. We ourselves, how-
ever, know absolutely nothing about the timeless pre-history of God
before the world-process was set in motion. Nor do we know anything
about its eventual outcome [Nachgeschichte]. We are limited to what
has been arranged as a world according to God’s idea of it.
In fact, the entire world-process is only an episode in the eternal life-
process of God Himself. The world is a story, and one which is only an
episode in the eternal life and being of God.
We only know God as the foundation of the world. But let’s be clear:
He doesn’t exhaust His being and life by being the basis of this world.
The Coming-to-be of the World is both

a Free Act and
Teleologically Necessary
The world emerges dynamically and necessarily from the workings of
Nature, if divine spirit has freely waived its prohibitive option [sein
‘non non fiat’]. This option waiving is not at all necessary in any causal
or rational sense, because this ‘act of release’ is not a required effect of
anything. It is rather teleologically required [i.e. needed for the future]
for the self-realization of God. It is definitely a creation of something,
but in an a-causal though motivated way.
We have to admit that the world-process is finite, and so is absolute
time – which first comes into being with the actualisation of Nature.
But God Himself is eternal as Substance, and so are the activities of
His two attributes, and therefore God’s Substance does not need the
world to be an entity.
Why has He not then eternally accomplished the teleological neces-
sity of the coming-to-be of the world? If He had done so, then the
world would also be eternal – in complete contrast to its current tem-
poral finitude – and would mean that any entity would be the same at
any point of time, and it would be immaterial whether time were finite
or infinite. Our answer is as follows. God must have a way of coming-
to-be which is independent from that of the world’s [coming-to-be],
and His attributes – infinite when considered as a mass – are kinds
of ‘acts’ and [it is this fact] which makes any coming-to-be of anything
possible. There must, also, already be a coming-to-be [of something]
in God before any coming-to-be of the world. The teleological neces-
sity which attaches to God’s refraining from saying no [to the release
of world-coming-to-be] is itself something which has come-to-be, not
something which has applied eternally.
Theism can never make comprehensible how a God, without under-
going change in Himself and without even a modicum of coming-to-
be Himself, can create the world at one moment in time. It must resort
to invoking God’s inscrutable ways. It cannot show by what means an
act of creation – ‘Let there be world’ – differs from an absolutely arbi-
trary and random act of the sort that von Hartmann talks about. The
coming-to-be of the world envisaged in theism lacks any teleological
sense. On the other hand, von Hartmann, who is correct on the mat-
ter of the temporal finitude of the world as a process, has to assume
that the translation of a potential will to do something into an actual
act to this effect is haphazard and arbitrary, and totally devoid of any
teleological or value-charged necessity.
Theism, which teaches that the self-glorification of God has a teleo-
logical sense, but that the world is completely gratuitous [gratuiter],
and is not created through any need of God’s, can neither appreciate
how undignified is the notion of a completely perfect entity wanting
to glorify itself, nor explain why, if God did want self-glorification,
He could not indulge in this before creating the world. Moreover, if
He were only to engage in this after the Creation, the theist is guilty
of imputing that God has become vain, and that any perfection before
Creation has become tarnished. Alternatively, if He is not interested
in self-glorification, then the theist [lacking any other explanation] has
no way of escaping the view that Creation is arbitrary and accidental,
just as von Hartmann said it must be.
Our view is that ‘creation’ is an on-going historical affair – i.e. it is a
creative and continuous development [and not a one-off business] –
and that it includes the history of the world or the world as history,
and that it must have some sense for God Himself. Only this way of
looking at it makes any serious sense anyway, and shows how signifi-
cant the matter really is. Otherwise, creation doesn’t rise a jot higher in
the scheme of things than as a tragedy or comedy which the heavenly
master puts on for Himself.
Pantheistic ways of formulating the same matter are equally un-
satisfactory. For example, the world cannot be a logical necessity, in
Spinoza’s sense. If this were so, how come there is anything at all hap-
hazard, or even reality itself, neither of which pre-existed God, but are
the continuing product of His activity, even though they are ‘for us’.
Anyway, a notion such as Spinoza’s on this matter presupposes that
the world is eternal, and has been around for an infinite amount of
time, either of which points is contradicted by what we know on this
score. In fact, any lawfulness of nature is dependent on the nature of
reality [and not the other way round, as Spinoza assumes].
Another senseless notion is Hegel’s suggestion of ‘emanation’, some-
thing he regarded as a dialectical derivation.
God is not responsible for what we find in the world, even though
He does bear responsibility for its bare existence. Where should re-
sponsibility then lie? It cannot be laid at the door of a Substance which
is supra-personal [űberpersőnlich], for the very reason that this is not
a person, and because there is nothing that it could be answerable to
or for before any person appeared on the scene. Nature in the form of
natura naturans [self-creating Nature as opposed to natura naturata –
what is created] is not a suitable candidate for responsibility either. It
simply does what it does by strict necessity.
Furthermore, the spiritual dimension of God is not responsible for
the world either – only for itself – because it does not create the world,
but merely allows it to be. The release, thus effected, cannot be con-
strued as making the releasing-agent responsible for what the world
is, only for its being brought into existence. Nevertheless God, and
His spiritual dimension, is definitely responsible for the fact that the
world is.
Could He not have avoided bringing the world into existence? espe-
cially so, if He had anticipated the sorts of events that were to crop up,
e.g. the Great War of 1914-18. And, even if God as Substance could
only come to His essential nature, and only achieve self-realization,
by the very act of releasing the world so that it could come-to-be, but
thereby allowing Nature free rein, must He not have hesitated before
He gave the go-ahead, if He had anticipated the evil and wickedness
that would follow?
On this point we can make the following remarks.
1. God did not foresee what [das Sosein] world-history would be
like. He knew, as ‘master of ideas’, that His potential had limits, and,
within the confines of His spiritual dimension, what was not possible,
or, in other words, what He could stop. In His incarnation as Nature,
He knew nothing. The first of these [roles], however, gave Him a cer-
tain faith in carrying out his negative act.
2. God knew only what was impossible, but He did know that in
His role as Nature He would be blind with respect to spiritual values.
He deemed Nature to be innocent. So He must have known the likeli-
hood that He would suffer. He even knew of the power which He had
unleashed in Nature, and its infinite goal.
3. But God did let the world come into being, and, when He ‘spoke
out’ the words ‘Let it not not-be’, He simply resigned Himself to en-
dure the possibility of suffering, in order to achieve His self-realization,
along with a purification and harmonization. He loved the prospect of
what He could become, i.e. what lay in store for what He would come
to be.
4. He did not suffer on the Cross only for all the accumulated sins to
that date, but had already suffered them in the hour of creation, even
before they happened. He wept from the bottom of His heart as He
spoke the fateful words, ‘Let it go ahead’, but there was profound joy in
Him too as He forced Himself to take the decision.
5. But God, in His spiritual mode, has faith during the world-pro-
cess that He will be victorious, i.e. that His idea will be victorious, the
idea of His love for Himself. He remains true to Himself in this re-
spect, and believes that everything can be accomplished through Him.
He does not know precisely how things will turn out, but He does
know that there will be an acceleration in the good accomplished, and
a slowing down in the evil, although He knows that He cannot defini-
tively prevent a negative balance of these.
To believe in God means to keep faith with God’s intentions – to
believe along with Him.
Being-itself [Ens a se] and Time

Being-itself only has an eternal self-positing coming-to-be, and,
through this, has, purely and simply, independent self-existence. Its
infinite capacity for being what it is to become is based on this in-
exhaustible self-ness [Perseität]. Its spiritual dimension is not eternal,
even though it is outside time, but it is able to acquire something from
the absolute time of the world-process to enable it to grow. Spirit is
always outside time, and can only achieve what it wants to in absolute
time, and by letting whatever outline of an idea it has be taken up by
the temporal scheme which is under Nature’s jurisdiction.
It is Nature then that controls the absolute time which is the only
process available for anything to be realized or for anything to come-
to-be. Absolute time is dynamically infinite, but not actual, and that is
why the images it produces spew forth in a never-ending stream.
In one sense, however, absolute time is finite, as it pertains to the
particular course of events within one world, set against its infinite
ability to sustain the course of an infinity of world histories in addi-
tion. In each of the worlds that it does sustain there is a relative, objec-
tive time, which is relative to itself – absolute time.
Relative time is contained in this absolute time.
The world-process that runs in any particular version of absolute
time expires in God, whenever the two attributes become one and
completely interpenetrate one another.
Our world is therefore only one of God’s story-lines, amongst in-
numerable others which could be based on other of His attributes,
the only restrictions being that they [the attributes] are in a state of
tension, and that they can pan out historically.
All of God’s ideas have some temporal connections, even though
they are built out of the [supra-temporal] spiritual dimension of God
Himself. This follows because of the nature of the world-process, be
fore which there were no ideas, and nor will there be any when it is
done, and the same goes for Nature: all that will be left will be a con-
tinuing joy on the part of Being-itself at the harmony achieved.
Persons
The first attribute – spirit – is not something that can be called a per-
son. It has a capacity for being realized through its collaboration with
the second attribute [Nature, Drang]. The existential form which then
arises under such conditions of realization is ‘person’ [Personalitas]. It
is essentially linked with life and a living body. God, in the guise of the
first attribute, is a coming-to-be-person [Person-Werden], and simul-
taneously a coming-to-be-world.
From Timeless Coming-to-be to the

Coming-to-be of the World
Independently of, and before, the world’s gaining its existence there
is no absolute time. For this reason, one cannot ask what there was
before there was world. But, in the case of God, there is a timeless
coming-to-be of eternity. We do know that. What we do not know is
anything independent of the coming-to-be of the world in God. The
terms ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ in relation to the world-process are mean-
ingless, because all beginnings and ends rest in Him, and are only par-
tial processes. The totality of the world-process is a consequence of
His having given its go-ahead [i.e. not having not given it], coupled
with the offices of creative Nature, by virtue of its being based on the
eternal Substance. The world is becoming afresh at every moment, by
virtue of what God does – i.e. continually condone its release. The
world is not eternal but sempiternal. Only God is strictly eternal.
The Godhead [Deitas]

The Coming-to-be of the Godhead
The entity Substance is eternal, whereas the existential status of God as
the identity of spirit and idea is only a coming-to-be. The materializa-
tion of God’s essential nature is impossible without the co-coming-to-
be of the world. At the same time, without spirit, Nature’s off-loading
of its infinite riches, in the form of fantasy-images, would be nothing
but ephemeral chaos. Nature must submit to the ideas and values of
spirit, selected by spirit [with this in mind], for any enduring and in-
deed improved state of affairs to come about. Even the inorganic world
contains neither quantities nor qualities which have any absolute con-
stancy. The more ancient the level that we consider in the scheme of
things, the more it resembles chaos. The haphazard array of natural
things is a game played by God through His incarnation as Nature,
eventually through Eros, leading to forms and beauty.
World and God

The eternal Substance contains a tension within it, which it tries to
resolve. This resolution is what comes to be the dual process of both
God’s and the world’s coming-to-be, or, [looked at slightly differently],
‘personal’ coming-to-be [in the former case] and the life of the world
[in the latter].
Neither the coming-to-be of the world, nor the coming-to-be of hu-
mans as the highest creatures, were gratuitous, i.e. done for nothing by
God. The cost of realizing His eternal love in the form of the greatest
good, and His needing to translate His eternal will into something
efficacious, was His having to throw Himself, by means of His other
side – Nature – into the absolute adventure of the world-process, with
its high point being the coming of the human being, and, all the time,
not knowing precisely what might happen.
Only an absolute trust in Himself and His spirit could sustain
Him.
To be sure, what God could have done was to persist in keeping go-
ing an eternal tension between a powerless spirit and an all-powerful
Nature.
But then, not only would no world have come to be, but neither
would He Himself. The eternal spirit would have had to endure a
continuous encounter, throughout the vast night of eternity, with its
[twin] Nature in a state of tension, with no expectation that a glimmer
of light would be shed on the matter.
For its part, Nature [without spirit] would have had to work for ever
for an opportunity to realize what it can do [with spirit] –i.e. [trans-
form] God as purely spirit and, with the help of Eros, [incarnate and
elaborate] the world.
The Coming-to-be of Personhood

The Substance of Being-itself does not become a person. Personhood is
something that comes-to-be by virtue of the interpenetration of spirit
and Nature – the only two active attributes of Substance known to us.
In this way the directed acts of spirit acquire power, doing so according
to their intrinsic rank order – love, then Logos and intuition, then will.
The vital directives become spiritualized, according to their rankings –
Eros, vital Nature, then the forces of Nature. But all this is merely the
‘tip of the iceberg’, as it were, compared to the rest of eternal Substance,
which is capable of setting in train an infinite number of attributes.
As far as we are concerned, however, the coming-to-be of a person
is connected to there being a coming alive of the world as part of the
world-process. It is further connected to the requirement that all dead
nature become a fully, working part-mechanism of the matrix of life,
and that this serve the realization of spirit’s ideas and values, in the
process of which it too becomes spiritualized. Meanwhile Substance,
with its infinite attributes, remains in itself, and in a self-positing sta-
tus, for ever behind this curtain. The coming-to-be of personhood of a
part-subject of eternal Substance is further only a curtain, an interlude,
in the eternal being and coming-to-be of God Himself.
Coming-to-be of God’s Personhood

God, in His spiritual guise, is not supra-personal like Substance. God,
as spirit, is independent of His coming-to-be, which requires a grow-
ing interpenetration of spirit and Nature, and is also impersonal, the
way Nature is originally impersonal and disembodied. But with each
phase of the interpenetration of these two, a process catalysed by the
unifying function of each attribute itself, there is effected the coming-
to-be of personhood as the existential form [Daseins-form] of spirit,
and life as the existential form of Nature. God’s spirit or God as spirit
has indeed no existence, but only [as it were] ‘holds sway’ [weset]; the
same goes for Nature, which has no original existence of its own, but is
rather in a state of being ‘thirsty for existence’ [nur Daseins-durst].
The totality of Nature and spirit in their interpenetrations consti-
tutes the person of God; the partial, functional unities [Partialfunk
tioneinheiten] of the three functions – knowing, loving and willing –
constitute relative persons or finite persons.
God as spirit only becomes a person in the course of the world’s
completion, a process which concurrently leads up to the ‘enlivening’
of God [zum Leibe Gottes, i.e. God’s coming alive]. In such an eventu-
ality God’s person is no longer an attribute of Substance, but, instead,
personhood has become the existential form of the spiritual attribute.
Similarly, the world is no longer an attribute of Substance either, but
has become the embodiment [Leibhaftigkeit] of, or the existential form
of, the attribute Nature. The divine spirit breaks up or resolves itself
[lőst sich auf] into personhood, while Nature [Drang] undergoes a par-
allel dissolution into the living core of this person.
Substance
Substance must occupy a position above bodies, organisms and per-
sons; it cannot be considered to lie on the same level as these. Sub
stance can only be deemed something which is eternally self-positing,
and which, in the course of such simple self-positing, co-posits its
attributes. Nevertheless, this self-positing comes about through, and
with the help of, its attributive acts and activities, and that means that
Substance determines and sets out its essential nature through the at-
tribute of its Logos, its value through its love of itself, and its existence
through its eternal Nature. Personhood is only something which has
the characteristic of lasting throughout such activities.
Only when Nature realizes something that by chance falls within the
boundaries of what concerns an idea, and conforms to the direction
taken up by eternal love, is there a meeting of appropriate elements
– impulse plus love – and the makings of a profitable act. Nature be-
comes spiritualized in such encounters, while spirit becomes empow-
ered. At such moments Nature relates as a whole with its images to
life, and love relates to the indiscriminate pouring forth of reality by
Nature. All this is made possible in the first place by virtue of the self-
positing of Substance, whose background presence is guaranteed by
the eternal positing of the two attributes. The flow of images [from
Nature] is achieved by rules emanating from Nature itself, whereby a
maximum of reality, a maximum of variety, and a maximum of forms
of all sorts, are kept up.
There is no question of any teleology or plan here. Nature does not
have a plan; but it does have an objective direction and goal wrapped
up within it, which it realizes according to the universal law of trino-
miality [? genus, species and subspecies] in four-dimensional separ-
ateness. Purposes only apply when spirit is involved, and are spirit’s
‘goals’, or appraisals, conforming to its ideals, which it tries to foster by
inhibiting any goal-directed activities of Nature which are incompat-
ible with their furtherance, and by channelling Nature’s energy into
activities compatible with them. In fact, human culture proceeds sys-
tematically in such a fashion.
The reciprocal relationships between Nature’s various goal-directed
activities – what is ‘up’ and what is ‘down’ in terms of promotions and
inhibitions, what is lively and what is dying – do not take their cue
from anything we can call intelligence, but rather from whether an
impulse fits the bill for what serves the ‘whole’ or not. If you break
something, a pot for example, the shattered fragments can still be put
together, but not because of any intelligent activity on their part, but
because they simply go together as part of a whole.
Even ‘unconscious intelligence’ is a nonsense in this context. Goal-
directedness and stupidity are quite compatible bedfellows.
The predominant sort of causality – cause then effect – which we
find in the dead world is a fact of our practical interest and way of
looking at things. The predominant sort of causality at work in the
living world – purpose then means to achieve this – is no less an illu-
sion than the above. Theories such as Neolamarckism are just as false
as those making out God to be a mechanical sort of being or a creator
of a special kind of intelligent life. In the objective sphere, all we ever
have is a beginning, a means, and then a goal with side-effects, all tak-
ing place in an interchangeable, four-dimensional manifest.
With all this going on, we can see that our mind is faced with several
choices. In dead nature the predominant choice is: starting point →
cause → effect. But in the living world it is: starting point →effect →
cause, or goal then means.
In the second case, above, whenever Nature appears to be follow-
ing such a law, in keeping with a functional dependence on alterations
along four variables, from which we then select causal relationships
and purposeful means, this principle of regularity is not ‘logical’, but
only ‘economical’ and ‘technical’. It only stems from Nature’s actual mo
dus vivendi, which is to proffer maximum reality in shortest time. But
this is not something of which one could say either that it is good or
reasonable. The ultimate basis on which technical intelligence rests is
the relationship between Nature as a whole and the idea of God and
the love of God for Himself.
Substance and Attributes

1. Substance is eternal, self-positing being, superior, in the scheme of
things, to coming-to-be and having-come-to-be.
2. The self-positing happens while, as spirit, it is in a potential state
to love, think, intuit and will, and, as Nature, it is in a potential state of
striving for existence.
3. The self-positing can be either self-inhibition or self-disinhibi-
tion.
4. The self-disinhibition is at the same time an original actualising
of love, Logos, will and nature: in short, it is the starting point of the
world-process.
5. The result of this self-disinhibition is that God, as spirit and will,
actualizes Nature. Nature is thenceforth motivated or lured by God’s
loving image of Himself, which constitutes Eros. The concern with
this actualisation and motivation released both attributes from their
potential status. The actualisation of Nature – as Eros – was the effect
of the eternal love of God for Himself purposefully seeking His self-
realization, and, at the same time, was a release of the temporal com-
ing-to-be of a world – i.e. world-coming-to be or world history. God’s
self-enlivening goes hand in hand with the divination of Nature.
Ens a se and per se

[Being-itself and Being-for-itself]
There is a sort of being or entity whose ‘being’ is both in-itself and
for-itself. The ‘per’ [for] in question is the cause of neither ‘what it is’
nor ‘that it is’. It is rather purely and simply the cause of Being itself
[es ist Seinsgrund schlechthin]. However, by virtue of the first attribute,
Substance is the positive and essential cause of God and the essential
nature of the world; whereas by virtue of the second attribute, Sub
stance is the positive cause of God and the negative primary cause of
the world. We can present all this schematically as follows.
One cannot turn our mystical notion of the self-realization of God
into an exercise concerning human history, as this last – like the
Substance Being-for-itself
Realization of spirit
Spirit Nature
Will
condones Whatness - determining
(doesn’t ordains
ordain)
Being of world based on an entity whose being is to be for itself
Essence & Existence

whatness of world of world
world-process itself – is only a transition point in the timeless history
of what is absolutely real. World history is rather to be envisaged –
along with work – as a spin-off of God’s own realization – through
His person – and at the same time as a symbol of this self-realization.
Everyone lives through, in and for God. Our task is to co-release Him
from the shapelessness of His Nature, to avoid making Him suffer,
and to animate Him and ourselves in Him.
Substance and Attributes

Substance alone is eternal, and only accessible to us through whatever
the attributes express of the infinitude of these attributes, which is
re-mirrored in the world. These attributes are spirit and Nature. Sub
stance itself – absolute self-sufficient being in the absolute sphere – is
eternally self-positing in an eternal state of self-coming-to-be.
Attributes are act-attributes [Aktattribute] as well as act-Substances.
The acts can be potential or actual. But their potential being precedes
their actual being in the scheme of things. Substance itself is the only
entity where anything actual precedes anything potential.
Because they form an eternal parallelism in Substance itself, spirit
and Nature could only have been transposed – in an act of Substance
– as a pair. Eros, as the most developed attribute of Nature, i.e. an
attribute of one of the attributes itself, motivated spirit to release the
creative potential latent in Nature. But the impetus responsible for the
principle that a world be created was no-one’s ‘will’ – as Hartmann
suggested – nor spirit itself – a view held by theists and spiritual pan-
theists. Only Substance itself could provide the basis from within itself
for the conversion and change which took place in its own attributes
such that what was potential became actual.
This conversion and alteration was determined by means of a rela-
tionship between those attributes that are accessible to us and those
that are not accessible, hence the full cause of what happened is un-
known to us.
Being-itself is the Being of Coming-to-be

It is quite possible to think of some entity as becoming something
or other in the course of time, yet not through its own intrinsic na-
ture, whereas some timeless entity must always newly create itself to
be what it is.
1. Being-itself is something that has already come-to-be, because it is
something that eternally posits itself by virtue of what it is. What it is
within itself, that does this, is also eternal.
2. What of it that is at rest, which is the basis for anything changing
that it sets in train, we can never know.
3. If Being-itself were the basis for the world, i.e. the cause of a finite
history taking place in absolute time, it must be construed as coming-
to-be, because otherwise the world would be as eternal as God is – as
Aristotle thought – or would be without cause. The cause must itself
have become timeless, in order for any beginning of the world-process
to be explained.
4. God’s attributes are activities. Activity is, however, a coming-to-
be.
Objections to any of the above include the following. It is a contra-
diction in terms to say that something which causes its own self is a
primary cause of anything; surely, a cause must be something which
precedes its effect, or else it must be something which is identical with
its consequence? Against this objection, I would say that: 1)) this ap-
plies only to temporal entities; and 2) the identity A = A is only a lim-
iting case of the usual cause and effect relationship. An organic entity
must preserve itself in order to be what it is. The idea of absolute in-
dependence contains absolute freedom within this very notion. Only
something which allows its existence and nature to remain as formal
attributes of itself is absolutely free and independent.
Everything looks as if it is at rest at first glance; but everything even-
tually reveals itself as coming-to-be. There is an atemporal coming-
to-be in the case of mathematics. And strict continuity guarantees
coming-to-be.
Under the conditions governing panentheism [the doctrine which
asserts that God is coming-to-be] one has to understand the following
about God: 1) He is eternally on a higher plane to that on which the
being of the world lies; 2) there are many worlds in their own time; 3)
the world is a manifestation of some effect, but not something that is
detached from its cause, as it would be if it were transcendent; and 4)
the world is continually created, though, from our point of view, in a
negative way, and as an emanation.
The Self-realization of God

Substance is being, purely and simply; furthermore, it is what unifies
every other sort of being. It is incontrovertible being, whose non-being
can neither be, nor be contemplated. It is something which any be-
ing has, and is something that just cannot not be. Even if some entity
is no more, Substance does not just disappear, as it is also something
above both being and essences. If one holds that the value of some-
thing is connected with the nature and existence of that something,
then Substance is also something over and above values. It is even above
unity and multiplicity. It is metalogical, metamathematical and meta-
dynamic, and is the place where opposites and the highest categories
of anything co-incide. It can neither be thought, nor seen, nor felt.
Only through two of its attributes, which do have an expression in the
world and for us, can some glimmer of it be indirectly transmitted. It
is, itself, above space and time, and it is transcendent to all finite and
infinite things, and even to anything immanent.
As the eternal essence of what spirit is, it is an ‘ens per se’ [something
‘for itself ’], and, as Nature, it is its own cause. In relation to the be-
ing of Substance itself, the two attributes have to do with its timeless
coming-to-be. They are the two sides of the same act involved in Sub
stance’s self-positing. Substance thus causes itself, and causes all other
subjects [and matters].
Substance posits itself through its eternal affirmation of its own
values, by virtue of its eternal love, its self-orientated thinking, and
its self-directed willing – the triad here constituting it as an entity
for itself. Its self-realization is taken care of through another of its
attributes – Nature. This last also has a three-fold role – whereby its
component Eros sees to its self-procreation, its dynamism sees to its
self-materialization, and its fantasy sees to its self-qualification. Na
ture and spirit are connected by essential necessity in Substance, and
can only work as a functional unit.
A cause which causes itself would be a logical impossibility if one
considered Substance in isolation from its attributes, and it would also
look the same way if one treated such a cause as the origin of being
rather than as a timeless coming-to-be. Whereas, as a coming-to-be,
the determinations of the two attributes of Substance and their mutual
relationship are such that their ‘essences’ do not come-to-be; their ‘es-
sences’ continue to contain logically the entire Substance, as the objec-
tive concept of its signs. An attribute is not a property or an activity. It
is a peculiar relationship which the attribute has to Substance which is
the key to its nature. Each attribute contains Substance in a state of log-
ical immanence, Substance meanwhile being the bearer of the attribute,
not as an unknown X which has some sort of nature beyond whatever
the attribute has, but as the unifier of the multiplicity of attributes.
God’s Will
All possible causality between spirit and life does not come in the form
of interaction, but as a setting-in-train or not setting-in-train of life.
The efficacy which the will possesses is therefore only an efficacy of
being able to inhibit something, for, when it allows something to hap-
pen, the will can only approve whatever events are being striven for by
life, without being in any position to alter them, or even to effect them.
This applies to any willing which originates with spirit. Theism is
wrong to maintain that the will has primarily a positive nature, and to
believe in its creative power. Schopenhauer confused will with Nature,
and denied it any separate characteristics. Hartmann also put it at the
origin of things, and made it ‘blind’. But will is only the conscious cor-
relate of the efficacy of the entire spirit, which, as such, is only a ‘front’
for how a mixture of entities and activities – idea, value, inner mean-
ing, approval and negation – can have their say. In fact, without this
remonstrating on their behalf, Nature would anyway remain a mere
potential. Aristotle and Hegel denied that God had any will at all.
Psychophysical versus Noo-psychic

The human spirit is made up of various sorts of participations in
things. It is quintessentially a set of act-intentions, which, if and when
they are ever carried out, are self-regulated, and are independent and
underivable from anything biological – whether psychic or physical –
and yet whose form and laws do correspond to something that exists.
Each actual carrying out of one of their repertoire of acts is indepen-
dent from any vital-psychic or physiological influence, although these
have a parallel correspondence with the acts. All activity and energy
which is used up in the execution of one of these acts has to come from
life-energy, ie. drive-energy.
God ceases to have any influence on the physical body, although is
responsible for its actualisation by activating Nature itself, without
which act even God would never see any of His possible thoughts
emerge into the light. Even the pure act itself does not possess any
intrinsic power and force. The world and world-history are the co-
determinations of divine thinking, loving, intuiting and willing. They
are the ‘life’ of God, which latter is no less realized by the divine, spiri-
tual self-activity, than are the same mental characteristics in a human
being.
In addition, divine spirit gains experiences during the course of the
work it set in train, experiences which it never had originally.
Inside the world, as set going by God’s love, there obtains a strictly
unequivocal parallelism. The elements of this appear to our conscious
experience to be without any parallel elsewhere, but this is not so. It is
only the diverse selection order which is available at a ‘supra-conscious’
and reflective level [Ober-Bewusstsein als Reflexpsychisches] which cre-
ates the illusion that there is a physical side to things without a psychic
parallel, or a psychic side alone to anything, and hence the appearance
of an interaction between the two.
Only the formal-mechanistic level of being has no corresponding
psychic parallel, but then it is not real anyway.
The divine Substance ‘personalizes’ itself in the course of the inter-
acting activities of its two attributes. It is therefore correct to say that
theism is [at least] one goal of the divine coming-to-be. Divine spirit
is effective only within the unified conditions of a person. But it is not
something emanating from ‘person’ [God’s or man’s] which eventually
turns the world into a perfect organ of divine spirit [but Nature].
Consequences of our Idea of God

1. If divine Substance itself is coming-to-be, then religious history is
merely the culmination of finite spirit and its aberrations and delu-
sions. It is also the end-result of the theogenic process itself – the tem-
poral mirroring of the actual process.
Religion must be found wherever its object crops up.
2. Worship remains, but prayer as supplication withers away. The
only prayer which remains is the perfect devotion to maintain what-
ever God’s will has decreed. The empathic allegiance with everything
life throws up, in a Dionysian ‘at-oneness’ with Nature, becomes a typi-
cal religious comportment, not unlike a complete surrender to fate.
3. To sin is to cause God suffering, and if the human being is the
only known place [in the cosmos] where the coming-to-of God from
out of the Godhead and Nature takes place, then any worry about hu-
man beings that percolates down from above – from Substance – is
only an indirect way [Umweg] of regulating human historical affairs.
Because the objective sense of all human acts and attitudes is merely
the enablement of the coming-to-be of divine Substance, then the ul-
timate meaning of what it is to be human is an external direction of
human beings.
4. One can only act in any sense – e.g. love or know – in conjunction
with God; we cannot worship God as a thing-like object. The most
extreme waywardness of all is to take the view that there is an eternal
tabula rasa, a divine nothing, as it were, and throw everything into the
melting-pot.
5. God Himself is not without internal support [Stűtzung] [i.e. He
is not entirely reliant on us]. But this occurs after He has become what
He becomes, and because He has incorporated into Himself the con-
densed history of human beings in the form of a fourfold ‘principle of
solidarity’ – God, spirit, human spirit and life values. Religion is there-
fore essentially a cult for worshipping the dead and the heroes of the
past, or, put another way, sympathy with the untold masses of humans
whose lives were lived out beyond the zone that the illuminating torch
of history picks out – Unknown Soldiers, and the like. The dead come
alive, as it were, more and more so as the original tension of the origin
of the world dissipates as God becomes fleshed out [geworden ist]. An
historical way of thinking is therefore the revival of what has gone be-
fore, and the transformation of all its tensions into a cultural synthesis,
but, at the same time, the greatest service we can pay to God.
6. Serving God is not something to be done for reward or [for us] in
the name of God, but it is purely and simply serving God.
Metaphysical Consequences
1. If we admit the existence of one matrix of life [Alleben], the question
then arises as to how this matrix of life stands vis-à-vis Being-itself [Ens
a se]. We have said that the matrix of life cannot have been the latter’s
creation. What occurred was merely the materialization of an idea, by
virtue of life’s drives. Any notion of creation in this context presup-
poses life, as well as spirit. Something more must have been involved,
and that [something more] was Substance’s attribute and its activity.
Even in the case of Being-itself, its existence does not automatically fol-
low from its having an essence, and there has to be a ‘self-realization’ of
this Being-itself, brokered outside of anything solely to do with spirit.
All this forces us to conclude that there must be some ‘reality-positing’
attribute in addition to the attribute of spirit, in order that the essen-
tial forms – ideas and values – contained in Being-itself can take root.
In fact, this is a general ontological principle, and one cannot avoid
coming up with some sort of notion such as a thirst [Durst], or urge
[Drang, Nature], for reality in this situation. In addition, we have to
invoke something which will explain the undoubted accidental nature
of images, and it is that which I call fantasy. The matrix of life, there-
fore, is one sort of ‘Nature’s matter’ [eine Stufe des Dranges], a relatively
higher sort of matter than that out of which the inorganic world is
made, this last being derived from centres of fields of forces.
2. Here are some general remarks on Nature. a) The eternal Being-it
self, which is eternally self-positing Substance, is both Nature and spirit
– its two attributes which are known to us. b) As attributes, they are
above time – above absolute time – but they become activated when
disinhibited, and, in that condition, give rise to absolute time. Other-
wise [if not disinhibited] they remain as they were – above time; any
act of spirit, for example, can only determine timeless essences.
3. Being-itself [or Substance] is dynamic and all-powerful, because it
is so infinite, and that is why it can give rise to reality and the acciden-
tal nature of anything.
4. As for values, at the level of forces, any values are blind to vital
goals, but at the level of the matrix of life there is a maximum of posi-
tive values.
5. The general rule in nature is that a maximum of forms is achieved
with the smallest amount of means. This principle of economy, com-
bined with the principle of least effect [being behind the maximalizing
of forms], applies both to causal and goal-directed situations.
6. The creation of images, and the determination of all the accidental
natures of things, occurs under the shadow of the essences and their
inter-relationships. Nature’s fantasy takes qualities as its fundamental
raw material. The psychophysically identical qualities are the material
of Nature, but, in this case, the qualities involved are unrestricted. Any
theory invoking a subjective nature of qualities is wrong.
7. Temporal forms are functional unities – not simple elements –
and are set forth by Nature. The lawfulness underlying them is ar-
ranged from top down, although a higher function never actually un-
equivocally determines a lower one; it can only restrict it in some way.
8. Any increase in centres takes place from below upwards, starting
with the simplest inorganic centres of forces.
9. The same goes for the intensity of forces.
10. What spirit takes to be of primary concern – its idea of love
and its value-preferences, for example, or the strivings of the eternal
coming-to-be of Substance – are actually the last to occur in the order
of temporal coming-to-be. On the other hand, what Nature sets forth,
in the form of existential but accidental versions of anything, which it
takes for its primary concern, are the simplest elements of bodies. The-
ism’s notion, that an almighty spirit comes first, followed by a perfect
human, followed by everything else, is utterly false. The world evolves
from Substance [not purely from its spiritual attribute, and, although
actually from its Nature attribute, this latter source is both condoned
at the outset and steered by spirit in every phase.]
11. The matrix of life obtains the energy to fuel its manifestations
exclusively from the energy of the inorganic.
Spirit obtains its energy – or power – exclusively from sublimated
vital energy. Otherwise it is only a potential entity; directing, inhibit-
ing and disinhibiting Nature are its repertoire in this respect.
12. We deny that any gratuitous creation of the world takes [or
took] place. Being-itself [Substance], if it wanted to realize the God-
head, had to put up with the world. The supreme goal of theogeny and
world-process, each reciprocally related to one another, is the complete
transformation of the original Nature – at that time blind to both vital
and spiritual values – into an idea-laden, value-laden and purpose-
ful entity, according to the ideas and values pertaining to the spiritual
dimension of Being-itself; or, looked at another way, the realization of
the original Godhead, which at that time was only an ‘essential God’
[nur ‘wesenden’ Deitas]; or, in yet another way, the spiritualization of
the matrix of life and the realization of spirit; or, finally, in yet another
way, the unity and interpenetration of all dead energy with the matrix
of life, and the further pressing into service of all dead energy in the
interests of the matrix of life.
In short, we see in all this an indivisible process but proceeding in a
two-fold manner.
13. In addition, Being-itself, by virtue of what is happening to its two
attributes, grows and matures in respect of what it is coming-to-be.
Infinite spirit also grows in the course of the world-process, in terms
of the essences, ideas and values it is capable of exhibiting, both with,
and in, the actual historical spirit.
The matrix of life also grows in its functional manifestations, and
this by dint of the births and deaths that it encompasses. We see here
that the meaning of death is precisely to be a part-process in the entire
world-process which is serving the self-realization of God.
14. Until the world achieves a state of completion, Being-itself is also
still incomplete, i.e. it is not yet ‘God’. As soon as the world, in the form
of a perfect organism, i.e. life, has become God, then the Godhead
itself is realized.
15. The essence of the human being – a spiritual living creature and
a microcosm – is also to be that creature or entity in whom Being-itself
becomes aware of its two attributes and the tension which character-
izes their relationship, and, in whom, and through whom, the most
immediate sort of coming-to-be of God takes place. The human being
is therefore neither slave nor child of God, but friend and co-worker.
To be a human is a direction, not a thing [eine Richtung – kein
Ding]. The direction of life taken up by a human is in fact just as much
a continual humanization of God [Menschwerdung Gottes], as a divine
participation on the part of humans – i.e. a self-deification. God is
only a human – as a spiritual living creature – writ large; a human is
a small God.
16. The notion that world and Being-itself – this latter being the
supreme cause and origin of the world – should be made aware of
each other in the human being is common to the writings of Spinoza,
Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Hartmann. This becoming con-
scious of itself on the part of Being-itself in the human being takes the
form, on the part of a human being, of knowing God, and belongs to
the very essence of what a human being is. In short, religion is self-
consciousness in a human being.
17. In every sort of death, the organized functional arrangements of
the matrix of life, which are represented rhythmically in the function
field of an organic body, return enriched to the matrix of life. The life
of the Godhead grows with each death, most significantly with the
death of an entire species.
In the case of a human being’s death, there is the additional return
of his or her spirit back to the divine spirit – to the extent that this ob-
tained activating energy from sublimation [of Nature], and therefore
developed in the course of the life of the person – so that there will
be a concentrated residue of his or her individual person-act-centre
in God, a point in favour of human immortality. Furthermore, a hu-
man’s death will contribute all the more to God’s self-realization if
the human being let drive and spirit interpenetrate in their life-time.
The immortality at issue here is finite, what Goethe called relative,
aristocratic immortality, as the immortality does not get taken up by
Substance itself.
18. All finite creatures, therefore, are, live, think and act in, with,
through and for God.
In summary, the Substance, which is the basis of the world, has two
attributes – spirit and life. Spirit realizes itself in the form of a person;
life in the form of organisms. Its [Substance’s] coming-to-be consists
of the spiritualization of life – with the critical movement being from
below to above – and the enlivening or realization of spirit – with the
critical movement here being from above to below. God’s will is only
a ‘not saying no’, and is not a commandment. For these reasons, the
spiritual Divinity is not responsible for the world, because its power
was purely of a negative kind. Moreover, the [metaphysical impasse
one comes up against in considering the notion] ‘out of nothing’ is
avoided, because creative Nature creates what it creates from out of
itself. Nature, the principle of realization, is in itself beyond good and
evil, beyond good and bad.
67
Schematically, we can portray the situation as follows.
Unknown
attributes Attribute 1
Love ! being-of-value
Intellectual
Essence intuition
!
Being-itself Spirit
What something is
God in " Logos Will ! release of
God existence
pure intuition or condoning
existence
Supra-personal
Substance Attribute 2
Eros
Empirical concept Drive

Fantasy Positive reality factor Life drive
Qualities Quantity ! Life
Death
drive
8
Supplementary Remarks
Summary
C
ontrary to the false theory that there is a complete indepen-
dence between the appropriate mental act that gives us some-
thing and the essence of that something and the fact that this
something exists, a philosophical position that crops up in a variety
of guises, we teach that these three elements are inextricably bound
together [i.e. mental act, essence and existing entity]. The essence of
something ‘is’ only in the mental unity of the idea of that something
and its Urphänomen [its original manifestation as a living image],
along with the corresponding acts which give these; alternatively, we
can consider the essence as an intellectual intuition of something that
is actually in the mind of the Ens a se [the absolute Being]. Further-
more, we hold that to each existing entity there belongs an essence,
which is exemplified through this existing entity, and that for each es-
sence there is [necessarily] some existing entity. There are no essences
or values [adrift] ‘in themselves’, if ‘in themselves’ is taken to mean that
any mental act which reveals these is secondary and consequent on
their original independence of this act, i.e. that act and essence are on-
tically independent one from another. This formulation of matters is
counter to the views of Bolzano, Husserl, Linke and Hartmann alike.
It is the bulwark of our philosophy against all Platonist views. The sec-
ond principle [that each essence necessarily entails an existing entity]
is contrary to all forms of philosophical ‘idealism’, and therefore against
all theories which proclaim that an existing object is a consequential
being of some thought to this effect: whether this ‘thought’ be a judge-
ment as to something’s existence or an identification with its supposed
object is immaterial to the thrust of this [false] argument; Rickert and
Husserl went down this road.
If one does not realise that access to reality, on the one hand, and es-
sences, on the other hand, are quite separate, and that for one or other
to be given this requires a radical shift in our mental attitude, then one
simply cannot appreciate that both of these [reality and essences] are
but the same matter seen in a different way and at the same time. In
fact, the [blinkered] person we are criticizing would be led to assume
that there must be an absolute and pre-existing duality between the
actual being of anything and the objectively available being of it [for
humans], and that this duality is independent of anything to do with
any mental act which could bring either to light. Furthermore, anyone
who held this view would be forced to maintain that extant things are
in some way attached to a realm of essences which would still exist or
still hold sway even if the actual world we live in were no more, and
would have to maintain that this realm was the repository of truth
before anything actually existed; whether the truth of all this were
God-based, or ‘in-itself ’, or independent from any communally-based
mental disposition, would be irrelevant to the matter in question. The
same person [whom we consider on the wrong general path] might
turn to Aristotle and claim that the essence of something was inher-
ently attached to the thing, as a potentiality to this effect, whereby it
somehow caused the form to arise. Such an invocation falls flat be-
cause it ignores the fact that there are two sorts of human acts [we
might call them ‘vital’ and ‘mental’] – one to do with the drives of the
living, human being, and the other to do with the human being as a
thinker; the former encountering a world of resistance, the latter one
of objectivity – and that the human being is that sort of living being
which can shift at will between these two, and, therefore, any notion
of a ‘sensory world’ and a ‘world of the intellect’ is merely an artificial
consequence of our human apparatus, which cracks open the unity of
the actual world.
But any such solution as the above – where the essence of some-
thing is deemed either to be inherently invested in it or to precede it in
some way – does not do justice to the actual relationship which holds
between the essential nature of something and an accidental version
of something, nor to the different sorts of knowledge which pertain
to drive-based imagistic perception, to grasping the existence of some-
thing, and to completely knowing the essence of something. Let us
begin with the last of these.
8 3 Supplementary Remarks 371
Attempts to formulate this issue so far are littered with errors. For
example, because the focus of the inquiry is an independent ‘object’,
something that remains identical [over time and across space], the in-
quirer feels obliged to assume that there must be an independent sort
of being to essences. Such a conclusion is completely unwarranted.
The objectivity of an object, and its independence or otherwise from
a knower, tells us nothing about the actual being of an object. If the
existential status of a thing is abolished [e.g. in the thought experi-
ment we call reduction], even though the essence remains in this case,
it does not mean that they [the essences] were hovering over the things
all the time.
If it were the case that the realm of essences were made up of such
independent ideal beings, why then is it generally necessary for there
to be a passage through accidental experience in order that an entry to
the realm of essences can be achieved? According to the view we are
criticizing, this would make no sense. For example, can one really form
an idea of the number 3 without bringing in the notion of some set of
numbered things, or the idea of a plant without ever having perceived
one? Each knowledge of the essence of something must derive from
some original knowledge of an accidentally existing version. So, before
there is anything which is an example of an essence, there is simply no
essence of it, and, equally, there will be no essence of something when
that something has ceased to exist. The critical difference between es-
sential knowledge of something and inductive experience or observa-
tion is not that the former does not require any actual experience at all
in the form of a perception, etc., whereas the latter does, but is rather
that the former is in principle possible on the basis of one example
only, whereas the latter depends on there being a number of cases and
the creation of an empirical concept. If the being of an essence were
independent from existing things, it would be open to us to know all
possible essences, not just those which have been brought into play in
the course of the accidental circumstances of our world acquaintance.
Such radical knowledge as in this scenario is impossible. How could
I ever know now some essential matter which will only first come to
light in the future course of absolute historical time?
The acceptance of the preceding line of argument not only leads to
the establishment of a static, ‘non-developing’ world of ideas, but also
to the outrageous proposal, suggested by Husserl, that ideas can be
‘seen’, in the same way as perception lets things be perceived. The fact
is, that essences are only the means of grasping ideas and can never be
anything more than drafts put up by a mental apparatus geared to the
coming-to-be of things, a mental apparatus, moreover, with an inbuilt
tendency to serve this coming-to-be of things.
In that one can consider the essences in isolation from the men-
tal production process and living forces which gave rise to them, one
may well be inclined to talk about ‘things in themselves’, and indeed
Hartmann uses these very words in this context. However, if one
does do this, one is then driven to treat these essences as if they were
even responsible for providing the actual sense and aim of all beings
whatsoever. In which case, they seem to be there not for the sake of
the world process – whereby the latter is led and controlled – but,
on the contrary, the world process itself appears to be serving their
purpose – in the form of examples and illustrations of the very ideas
themselves. Becker’s remarks on Plato’s conception of mathematics are
germane here. Ideas, however, are far from being the meaning of the
world process; they rather only serve to guide it, and, in doing so, allow
the concrete being of the Ens a se to realize itself. Ideas serve a coming-
to-be, in the same way as knowledge of ideas fosters the cultural ac-
complishments of mankind and allows the world and everything in it
to be captured by us.
It goes completely unnoticed in all this that not only we humans,
but every creature capable of knowledge, would remain in the thrall
of such a ‘world of ideas’, without having any clue as to its orienta-
tion within it, and this regardless of whether the ideas themselves or
only symbols for them were grasped, and how much of the ideas were
grasped. By itself an all-knowing being could never know the complete
world of ideas fashioned by God – that it was complete and that he
was all-knowing – if ideas were independent from all possible acts and
existed in a realm of their own. Can one really envisage ideas circulat-
ing in some manner in complete freedom from the essential referential
acts?
It is moreover completely incomprehensible how this dualistic no-
tion of being which sets up ideas and reality [on an equal footing] can
account for the fact that ideas and their collective structure are valid
‘for’, and only rely ‘upon’, reality for their very significance. In this con-
text the so-called ‘panarchy of Logos’, which, as a matter of fact, is not
an extant thing, needs explaining. If, on the other hand, one considers
ideas to be an accompaniment of things, and fashioned such that they
promote the coming-to-be of the imagistic realization of life and real
being itself – as drafts or limitations of what can be, or otherwise con-
ceived as guiding concepts of the very coming to fruition of the world
– then the validity inherent in these ideas – as negative restrictions,
possessing ambiguous determinations, with partial and incomplete ju-
risdiction, and lacking in intrinsic power – becomes all too obvious.
It is also easy to see that the human mind can only bring forth such
ideas if it is part of a collective mind [a suprasingular Geist], otherwise
it could not give its world that unified structure and form, something
which the givenness of perception alone cannot supply, because this
last could apply in a number of possible worlds. According to the the-
ory we have been criticizing, however, there are only two solutions to
the position a proponent of this theory has found himself in.
1. Either one takes ideas to be the original causes and forces of the
actuality of the world, determining every twist and turn of it. In which
case, one must deny that there is any independent principle whatso-
ever which sets forth reality, or that reality has its own rule-governed
way of being. What this boils down to is that reason has a valid claim
to reflect what is going on in the world only because it, reason, has
created it, or is eternally creating it, whether directly so or through the
mediation of a will to this effect. Even ‘matters of fact’ then become, in
such a formulation, nothing other than ‘matters of reason’. This entire
scenario is unacceptable to us, because we reject the very possibility
that ideas have a positivity, or a power, or a clear-cut determination,
vis-à-vis the world, and we further reject the attribution to reason of
any creative power or even any element of a positive will.
2. Alternatively, one has to assume an independent principle of re-
ality along with its own rule-governedness. But, in this case, it then
becomes completely incomprehensible how any such process might
lead to a corresponding idea of something, which leaves the realm of
ideas completely out on a limb to conjure up its own way of being in-
dependently of whatever comprises the reality principle. This state of
affairs – in which ideas are ‘supra rem’ – no less than the former case
[alternative 1. above] – where ideas are ‘ante rem’ – fails to make the
plurality, content and interconnection of everything that is, in any way
explicable. It is a situation, moreover, even though it is supposed to
explain rationality, of a perfectly irrational world.
The way out of this impasse is to realize that the needs of the life
force make the whole matter in any way understandable – why, for ex-
ample, this and no other idea appears, and in this or that phase of the
world-process. That means that we can understand not only how par-
ticular ideas emerge from the mass of interconnected ideas and from
the totality and dynamics of the world-structure. It also explains how
ideas are in part a product of the coming-to-be of the Supreme Being
and in part the progression of humankind. Further, it explains how
even the content of the ideas comes about, as a selective realization of
those ideas available to an infinite mental and spiritual being, which
the life force calls for. What is now virtually agreed these days, in re-
spect of the history of the human race, is that each era devises ideas
which correspond to the real tasks and the constellations of being pre-
vailing at that time, and this is equally true for the era of world-time
measured against the entire history of the world, and that includes the
chemical composition of the world and all its living forms. The ideas
which a mental and spiritual entity brings forth – whether this entity
is human or divine – are therefore meaningfully related to its histori-
cal situation, and, in an ontological sense, it is quite easy to explain the
very existence of the entity we call ‘idea’. Reason itself is ontically expli-
cable [i.e. in respect of its nature as an existing entity] in terms of the
highest ideal and real principles of being and becoming. From the real
principles on their own, however, ideas are not explicable, because they
are the very means whereby the becoming of being is schematised and
led. On the other hand, the determination of the content and struc-
ture of the world of essences in no way follows from the inherent logic
alone of a mental entity capable of thinking, but, in addition to this
logic, there is always required the presence of the constellation of the
actual image-producing capacity of the life-force.
From the above, it follows that it is unnecessary to conceive of ideas
as existing ‘before’ and independently of the coming-to-be of the real
world, and, therefore, for them [idea] to have an existence, or a be-
ing, or a truth value. They are ontically explicable [i.e. in respect of
their nature] as accompaniments of the coming-to-be of things, not
precursors [or pre-existing entities]. As finite being generally emerges
at each moment of absolute time out of the Supreme entity, so there
also arises at each moment out of the idea-creating mind those idea
structures – and, as a consequence of this, those individual ideas also
– which are necessary for the guiding of the world at this moment.
What is absolute and eternal is only the principle of ideation, which
sustains the external mind itself, but not its particular creations, the
ideas. The essence at any moment is only an abstraction of thought
and a potential appearance – an entity with intellectual reference only,
and not an intuition. There is no separation of the essences from this
creative act.
Idea and Time

From the above account it is therefore incorrect to regard the ideas as
standing outside time or as eternal, without first specifying the notion
of time which one has in mind here.
We would like to show that the actual essences are outside time,
if time is taken in this context to be physical or relative time, which
is measurable. In this sort of time, the ideas are absolutely constant
and there is no question of any repetition of different examples of the
same idea: there is simply no exchange, no passing away, and no new
creations. All this does not apply, however, when we have in mind the
notion of an absolute time – to which no space corresponds – a time
in which the very history of the world takes place, where coming-to-
be and passing away do occur, and which is no longer relative to any
particular life. In absolute time actual ideas are exchangeable, though
not alterable, as ideas do not alter, and they are contents of the idea-
creativity of mind, and are not part of some pre-ordained eternal plan
or prophetic ability.
To give an example: I make a plan to myself in order to realize some
on-going project. I address the issues which are involved in bringing
the plan to a successful outcome – before, after, or concurrent with,
the steps and actions I need to take. In actual fact, my plan will alter as
I encounter, and then adapt to, different circumstances along the way.
But there may come a time, or may not, when the plan is achieved
down to the last detail. In either case, if I review the plan, along with
what has actually happened, I find that there is a history of what hap-
pened, and a history of what happened to the plan. These two histo-
ries do not run along the same level of temporality, but are on different
levels. The planning of the plan was not itself re-run; the plan simply
came to be in me, like the ripening of a fruit from its seed. It came to be
in ‘my’ absolute life span, not in ‘my’ relative temporality. Ten years on,
an objective measure of relative time, on which my absolute life span
is projectable, I can look back on the plan as a historical event which
has now become foreign to me, and I might even no longer understand
what it was all about.
The same sort of process applies to peoples and nations as well. A
nation may have a vision of its future, which underpins its character,
its politics and its mores. Such a vision has its foundation deep in the
absolute time of its history. But what happens if a completely new
vision erupts? The nation in question can then barely understand its
previous vision. What we have here is a shared set of temporal as-
sumptions affecting what a nation does or strives to do within the
scope of its vision. It involves a certain attitude towards the future,
which a nation now has, but on a different plane from that on which
its historical time rests, because the new vision even affects its actual
history, including its traditions and the way its history is represented
academically. In both sets of examples what we have, and these are not
contradictory notions, is: 1) a subjective relativity in relative time; and
2) the relativity of a subject in absolute time. In so far as these sorts of
instances occur, the subjective sort of absolute time is an objective sort
of generally valid time. But this entire way of looking at things no lon-
ger applies if we take into account the relativity of time to the Supreme
Being. In so doing the relativity of a subject – be it individual or nation
– to the time of its ancestors falls away. In this sort of absolute time –
that of the Supreme Being – there is no ‘recurrence of the same’ and no
reversibility of the past – without which relative time is unthinkable
– and this sort of time is simply not amenable to measurement.
In this absolute time we are talking about here, the very idea-struc-
ture of the world can undergo a transformation, making this sort of
time the crucible, not only for creativity, but for creating anew.
The relative poverty and limitation of human reason consists, there-
fore, not in the fact that it only allows the construction of historically
successive varieties of an eternal world of ideas, but its poverty lies in
the precise opposite of this. It is that a renewal of the essences of the
world in absolute time is simply not an available option for human
reason, and indeed the critical problem facing us is that we are stuck
with ideas of yesterday and long ago.
If the world itself is a coming-to-be in absolute time, and if there
can be no essence without an existing entity, then even the very set-up
of essential structures must be a coming-to-be, a transformation and
self-unfolding.
Once upon a time there was something called truth, but it was only
the manifestation of our clinging to convictions, a soporific for chang-
ing times. Now, however, our knowledge of the world corresponds to
Nietzsche’s version – no-one is going to let themselves be killed for the
sake of their convictions.
Philosophy is not a ‘perennial’, whereas it would be such, according to
the assumptions I have been criticizing. It is not even trying to trap the
vagaries of time in an apposite thought. Rather what is written about
in historical philosophy is at the very most the world of yesterday and
even before that.
When people say that despite the changes in our scientific knowl-
edge over the centuries we are still at root Greeks in our world-view,
that can only mean that, the above fact, the coming-to-be of an essence
in absolute time, has completely passed them by. It was by profound
necessity that Aristotle held scientific matters to have been completed
[bar our understanding of them]. It corresponded to his view that
all forms of things were constant – stars, elements, biological forms,
ethical constraints, political arrangements, etc. He had no notion of an
absolute time, and even relative time was only the way movement was
counted, which is anyway an instantaneous matter. He confounded
relative time with its measurement, and absolute time with relative
time.
We, however, take the view that the entire matter under discussion
here should be treated in exactly the opposite manner.
To uncover the truth of anything depends on the stage reached in
absolute time, and the world process; it does not mean that one is
searching for something already there. The world is merely a history,
and all apparent constancy in the world is relative to the subject caught
up in this historical process. Truth is dependent on the being-true of
the person, their self-gatheredness, and the creative base of things, all
of which vary according to the state the world has reached in its devel-
opment. All truth is therefore ‘historical’, but not in the sense given to
this by the school of thought known as relativism, rather it is historical
because, and in so far as, the very being of what is real is itself histori-
cal.
Even the being of mathematical objects does not stand outside time.
Either it is to be deemed within perennial time, and, for example, 2 +
2 = 4 has to be perennially reconstituted. Or, it is rather to be deemed
within historical time, where again it is constituted, and where it owes
its existence to the constituting process.
All actual being is not in relative time, but in absolute time. All ac-
tual being – whether potential being and coming-to-be, or life and
mental activity – is not identical with itself from one moment to the
next in absolute time. A = A is only valid for the sort of being we call
objectivity, which is completely relative to actual being.
The theory that absolute being is at rest and absolutely constant –
the Eleatic notion of the equivalence of thought and being – is only a
form of wishful thinking, allied to the human and general biological
need for security, and is itself a manifestation of the need for control.
It was kept alive during the mechanistic phase of modern mathemati-
cal notions of all sciences, which were anyway based on a false view of
mathematics. According to Descartes, being is whatever remains con-
stant, whatever one can be sure of finding in another time and place,
and whatever is explicable from what is already known. These days
this way of conceptualising nature has even been abandoned by physi-
cists. Think of the second law of thermodynamics or Heisenberg’s un-
certainty principle.
The theory that real being is a coming-to-be is definitely correct, but
the ‘forms’ which this being takes are not constant ideas, otherwise the
central tenet of [my] philosophy – that existence, act, and idea are dif-
ferent but inextricably entwined – would be invalidated.
A scientist might reply: Certainly the real being of matter – ele-
ments, atoms and stars – is time-based. But considering the millions
of years it has taken to produce these, the time scale involved is so great
that, in comparison, human life can be almost regarded as zero-time.
I reply: It is a question of different sorts of time, not of magnitudes
of time. All magnitudes of relative time are relative to humans – exis-
tentially relative and relative to consciousness. They are therefore rela-
tive to historical time. If we were to somehow do away with human
beings, numbers would still remain, but no one would know what they
were enumerating. This does not exclude the possibility that within
the sphere of scientific objects they would retain meaning and correct-
ness. In terms of the absolute time of human history, however, they
would lack any orientation. A moment of absolute time would be able
to contain within itself all forms of repeatable relative time.
The length or shortness of the time – relative time – that human
beings have been around on earth has no significance in relation to
their participation in the absolute time during which the Supreme Be-
ing realizes itself. All numerical measurements, which count relative
durations of time, are relative not only to a mental apparatus, but are
also relative to an arbitrarily chosen pre-existing similarity, and ex-
press only propositions of parts of absolute time, which whether zero
or infinity remain exactly the same. The panarchic superiority in the
regular retardation or acceleration of all pre-existing matters is only
valid within relative time. Already in the life process everything has
‘its’ time, and here it is a question of everything temporalizing itself
according to inherent phasic rules of maturation. Giving the absolute
time of repeatable processes a zero or an infinite number has no effect
whatsoever on the absolute time of my existence and life.
The coming-to-be of the Supreme Being in the course of the world
process is not unlike the way the environment, circumstances, and ac-
tions of a human being, make that human being into what it eventu-
ally becomes.
The history of human beings is longer and greater than any of our
ideas. The history of God is longer and greater than any of His ideas.
For these reasons, any notion of predicting what is to come goes by
the board. What the human being can predict is anyway only relative
to life. The sort of thing that life is itself is unpredictable, and only the
rule-bound phases are predictable. The sort of mental entity that we
are – co-determined by historical factors, freedom and the possession
of mind – is absolutely unpredictable, and although the acts involved
in trying to predict matters end up as part of an absolute coming-to-
be, this coming-to-be itself cannot be predicted. The same goes for
the decisions of our leaders. During the Great War, for example, it
was rightly said that historians, particularly in Germany, were try-
ing to make sense of events, which were actually the consequences of
whirlwind decisions, as if they were the most natural consequences of
centuries of history.
Life and history give no clue as to their future course, but not simply
because our minds are not up to the task, but because of actual inher-
ent reasons to do with the nature of life. Life and history temporal-
ize themselves, and are not therefore ‘in’ time – the relative time of
the dead. The Supreme Being’s superiority in respect of mere mortals,
who can actually predict their existential dependence on this Supreme
Being, consists not in the fact that He can see what is coming and they
cannot, but that He cannot see what is coming, even though He Him-
self becomes everything which does come-to-be.
To give an example: the actual situation is something like the way
a good statesman proceeds – without a plan, but carefully and with
intuition, following step by step the minute by minute events. Alterna-
tively, one can commend Napoleon’s saying to the effect that thought
has to follow the nature of things themselves and has no need of pre-
dictions.
The category of prediction is the recourse of the weak, of the nar-
row-minded, of the impoverished in spirit, which man inappropriately
and anthropomorphically attributes to God and His mind. It is a cat-
egory whose illusory nature stems from pretending that what is in fact
post-hoc is propter-hoc. The priest interprets everything which happens
as a consequence of God’s knowing wish for it to happen, and this ap-
plies also to philosophers like Hegel. All foresight, other than simple
calculation, is merely hindsight dressed up as foresight.
If there were indeed foresight, there would be no freedom and no
genuine possibility of any human being’s being able to set goals. His-
tory would be the enactment of a puppet theatre, whose participants
thought themselves free, whereas in actual fact the puppeteer already
knew what was going to happen.
Foresight is incompatible with freedom and the independence of
human beings. It takes away the seriousness of the notion of the Su-
preme Being, whose very being history is shaping, and reduces history
itself to a masquerade.
There is no foresight because thought and reality are only one in
God himself, even though they are separate attributes of Him.
Being and its basic varieties

1. Being itself is an ultimate entity. It is not only nonsensical to want
to define it, but also nonsensical to want to derive it from knowledge
or consciousness or thinking of whatever sort, or to regard it as the
copula of the judgement of something. Kant went down this road.
The above holds true because even the being-known, being-thought
or being-conscious of something are ultimately only varieties of being
– again, in contrast to what Kant thought. It is therefore completely
nonsensical, for example, to talk about an opposition between knowing
and being. A correlate of knowing, in other words what all knowing is
directed at, is the what-being of something, not its actual being. This
what-being is what is known, though so far in undifferentiated form.
Another false notion about knowing and being concerns ‘objective be-
ing’ – a knowing through thinking or a knowing through meaning,
and what is known in this way is not being itself. An even falser notion
is that which contrasts being with consciousness. This is because con-
sciousness only reflexively knows i.e. it is a knowing that knows that
something is known, as opposed to a naïve or ecstatic pre-conscious
knowing and other preconscious experiences, such as that which gives
us the experience of reality. Consciousness is a way of knowing that
something is known, and is therefore a sort of being, a sort of ideal
being, i.e. a logical being without real existence. The bare contents of
‘consciousness-of ’ are therefore always only sorts of what-being, and
are moreover ‘of something’ which is not itself made conscious, be it
psychic, physical, fictional or mental in nature.
2. It is completely false to regard all being as objective being – or,
for that matter, resistance-being or real-being – as the neo-Kantians,
especially Rickert, did. What corresponds to objective being as its
polar opposite is the being of an act, in this case an act of thinking.
Corresponding to resistance-being is the will, and to value-being love
and feelings-of something. In all these three cases, the sort of being of
the act which gives the three sorts of being referred to is never itself
something that can become an object [i.e. it is not even objectifiable
being and certainly not an object]. The being of such acts has at its
basis the carrying out of what the act does. The substance of the act is
the person, and such acts include thinking, loving and judging. The ‘I’
is an act centre.
3. No less false is to contrast being with any of the following – be-
ing-true, having value, being valid or having meaning. For all these are
sorts of being, and even though they stand in stark opposition to sorts
of being such as the existence of anything and to part of the what-
being of anything, among others, they are never in direct opposition to
being itself.
4. The only thing which being must be opposed to is the ultimate
thought of absolute nothingness, by which we understand a state of
complete ‘non-being’, a state which we can further denote as an absence
of being itself – i.e. an absence of anything whatsoever and not just an
absence of the existence of something – as in the state of Nirvana –
nor a mere absence of the what-being of something – which would be
a state of there not being something. What we are considering here is
‘absolutely nothing’, a state which is quite possible to have a thought
about – in which case it is an object – in which case such an object
cannot be denied. This notion is not to be confused with ‘relatively
nothing’, i.e. the not being there of one object in a situation where there
is some other object there. In this situation not being green is an at-
tribute of a swan no less than being white is. In fact for each finite
being-so of an object a host of not-being-so’s would equally suit it. To
all ideal objects and all ideal being (fictitious entities derived from real
facts) – for example the consciousness of one of its contents – there is
a not-being-so that fits the bill. Not-being is in no way a bare predicate
of judgement or a sort of copula in judgement – as all those who derive
it from a sort of negation take it to be, whether they regard it as a disil-
lusionment over a future event’s not occurring or as a false account of
a positive proposition. It is in fact an objective matter of fact.
If, as Mill assumed, a negative judgement were a mere subsequent
judgement correcting the falsity of a positive judgement, then the prin-
ciple of non-contradiction [i.e. X cannot be X and non-X] would not
be a true evidential principle but merely a definition or a convention.
What this principle states is all of the following:
1) ‘A is B and A is not B’ is false;
2) A is not B means that it is false that AB is;
3) ‘A is B therefore A is not B’ is false;
4) A is not B therefore A is B is false and A is not B.
[or, in real examples:
1) ‘The animal is black and not black’ – false;
2) The animal is not black therefore it is false that there is a black
animal;
3) ‘The animal is black therefore the animal is not black’ is false;
4) The animal is not black therefore to say the animal is black is
false and the animal is not black. ]
But the truth of the fact that A is not B can be derived directly from
the agreement of this judgement with the negative state of affairs. The
relative non-being is therefore just as much a non-existence, and this
is an objective determination, and this is an objective determination
of the object. Setting aside the situation with regard to the Supreme
Being, a relative non-being belongs to each object that is. In actual fact,
therefore, the principle of non-contradiction is a relationship between
relative being and relative non-being.
Absolute nothingness, on the other hand, though very hard to have
any notion of, is something which one should try to conceive, because
only through a thought such as ‘there is something’ or, better, ‘there is
not nothing’, can one achieve a valuable insight into truth itself, in fact
the most valuable of all.
Hegel’s conflation of the various meanings of nothingness is a gross
error. Admittedly, the being of the absolute nothingness has nothing
to do with whether something exists or not, or whether it has a partic-
ular nature or not. This seems to have seduced Hegel into putting so
much emphasis on nothingness. Being itself, however, has a fictitious
being and has its own nature, though no existential status. Even Berg-
son erred when he repudiated the notion of an absolute nothingness
and recognized only the possibility of a relative nothingness.
5. The being of existence [Da-sein], what something is [So-sein] and
value [Wert-sein] the three sorts of being – must be strictly distin-
guished. The Supreme Being does not yet contain this distinction.
6. Furthermore one should not set up an opposition between being
and becoming, but only contrast coming-to-be with having-become.
Even becoming is a sort of being – a way of being in which the primar-
ily given ideal whatness of something passes over into existence. If this
passage is effected it is then in a state of having-become. Coming-to-
be [Werdesein] is not the same as the becoming of being [Seinswerden]
– as laid down in the future. The reason for this is that there is only
a coming-to-be of the existence of anything; there is no coming-to-be
of being itself. What comes to be is determined by what can be. The
Supreme Being has not yet come to be. God, however, as an extant
entity, has completely come to be, because each and every extant entity
has come to be. The coming-to-be of anything therefore precedes the
existence of anything and is itself only subsequent to pure being. The
existence of the Supreme Being is just as much the consequence of an
effect as any other existing thing, even though in its case this is effected
through itself, as a self-causal event.
7. A completely separate issue has to do with the differentiation
which the existence and whatness of something undergoes in respect
of time or what sort of being something has in time. These ways of be-
ing we know as possibility [Möglichsein] actuality [Wirklichsein] and
necessity [Notwendigsein].
Possibility is what-being which precedes the existence of a concrete
entity in the given order of things. It is not to be confused with an-
other meaning of possibility which is to do with problematical judge-
ments. The possibility or possible-being we are primarily considering
here is nothing to do with such judgements, which are concerned with
gaps in our knowledge of what some extant entity’s cause or determi-
nation is.
Actuality is being, in whose givenness the existence of something is
pre-ordained [Sein, in dessen Gegebenheit die Daseins vorhergeht].
Necessity is being, where the existence and nature of something
both follow and are caused by the existence and nature of something
else.
These three ways of being are not equal in their origin. Possibility
precedes actuality and necessity.
The ways of being which these three concepts denote are nothing to
do with relationships between objects and our possibilities for knowl-
edge through judgement, as Kant thought. They are not even sorts of
knowledge or stages in securing evidence about something. If things
stood as Kant thought, one could sensibly remark: ‘It is possible that a
triangle has sides of equal length or unequal length, or has equal angles,
or is right-angled, or has an obtuse angle, but as for me I don’t know
which of these it does have’. [This is nonsense because] it lies in the es-
sence of what a triangle is that the above predicates are constrained by
one another, whether I judge this so or not. In the case of necessity, if
Kant were right, I would have to review every single instance of some
matter before its reason or cause were to be finally deemed necessary.
As for actuality, we would be similarly forced to consider all present
perceivable instances of some matter to ensure that they were capable
of independent existence from out of the plethora of reasons, causes
and conditions which might combine to prevent something’s being in
an extant form.
[But in fact none of the above occurs.] The principal division of these
modalities of being is rather exclusively into the threefold variable re-
lationship that an entity, its nature, and whatever sort of existential
form it takes, has as something coming-to-be in respect of the order of
givenness which a potential knower possesses. We generally refer to an
entity’s having the status of possibly coming to be: when its nature 1)
is determined, and 2) has [internally] compatible characteristics – i.e.
its concept is not self-contradictory; but when its existential status is
compromised by a complete or partial lack of grounds for its coming-
to-be or else we are conscious of having to leave this open.
There are instances of something with a known nature achieving
existential status without any grounds for its coming to be. One is the
case of an objectively real possibility becoming an existential possibil-
ity. The other is the case of objectively ideal possibility becoming the
possible nature of something – e.g. the true situation that each triangle
is either right-angled or obtuse-angled.
We refer to the being of an entity having actuality if its existential
status has become so, or come-to-be, and it is no longer coming-to-be,
and if it is capable of so founding its nature for a knower to know it. Its
nature is accidental [zufälliges Sosein] if the basis for its coming-to-be
is not given to the knower or is open to question.
We ascribe an entity the mode of being called necessity if we do
know perfectly the basis for its coming-to-be. If the being is ideal we
talk about the basis or the grounds for its nature, for example the
proposition that 3 + 8 = 11; if the being is real we talk about an ef-
fective cause.
Possibility is not as subjective as is necessity and actuality.
Formal Ontological Principles

The principle of the identity – i.e. self-sameness – of what anything
is; the principle of the incompatibility of an entity with a particular
essence having such-and-such a nature and at the same time another
sort of nature; and the principle that the nature of something should
have an adequate basis in another instance of the nature of the same
essence, for the sake of which it is so and not otherwise: these are the
formal and highest principles of ontology. Logical principles with an
analogous meaning are founded on them.
The nature of all finite relative entities forms a system of reciprocally
determined causes and effects, in such a way that each nature of some-
thing can be seen as a cause and each as an effect, which attests to the
relativity of cause and effect. But this entire system itself has its own
ultimate basis in the Supreme Being, which contains the quintessence
of all possible essences, whose givenness in the form of cause-effect
relationship is presupposed.
The relationship that holds between cause and effect is: 1) synthetic,
and not derivable from identity; 2) given and known prior to any sin-
gle instance of this relationship; and 3) in the case of the pure essences
something that refers to the original essence, whereas the contingent
determinations of anything’s nature are only based on and result from
the being-so or being-otherwise of entities in the ‘here and now’.
An isolated nature of something is never given. It is given only as the
starting-point or end-point of a cause and effect relation. This relation
precedes the objective point of time where the nature of something
appears and determines it. There is no principle whereby all possible
experience of objectively time-ordered matters is, as Kant thought, the
basis for cause and effect relationships. On the contrary, the ultimate
determination and presupposition of each particular ordering of mat-
ters in absolute time is the way life comes-to-be and, in the final analy-
sis, the way the life principle itself holds sway. Post hoc propter hoc is
again Kant’s fundamental mistake.
The particular temporal order of ‘before and immediately after’ –
the mechanical order – is only one of several essential ways in which
lawfulness can occur in absolute time, and is certainly not the only
way, as Kant assumed. Two additional ones are the teleoclinical and
the teleological ways whereby two natures of something can be re-
lated: the former is goal-orientated, where the causal primacy in the
before-after chain is reversed, i.e. after determines before; the latter is
purpose-orientated, where the primacy of cause lies in a supra-tem-
poral idea. Finally, there are orders through which each of two natures
of anything, separated by a time interval, can co-determine two other
natures of something, which can lie inside or outside the time interval.
Such cases are the opposite of the “pull” and “push” which applies in
the more general cause and effect relationship.
Because time is only a relationship concept of the contents of such
goings on – and is otherwise nothing – empty time is not only indis-
tinguishable bit by bit, but does not actually exist. The unity of time
is dependent on the unity of life and on each temporal effect of the
timeless ordering of these contents.
The nature of something A is a cause or effect of the nature of some-
thing B, if A and B are examples of two essences W and W1 which
go together in a scheme of essential relationships. This relationship is
reciprocal.
Efficacy, goal-orientation and purposeful activity – all exemplified in
willed action – determine the existence of things and events which can
stand together in causal, teleoclinical or teleological dependencies.
As the cause-effect relationship is formally given before the time
course of matters and the means of the cause are given, then the ef-
ficacy and the tendency for this must be given before any actual cause
and the effect of any efficacy.
It is on this basis that we can say that all contingent natures can be
causes or effects and that all contingent reality is in a state of continu-
ous interaction.
A real thing that was not part of the universal interconnected in-
teractions, which is underpinned by the very life force itself, which is
moreover a primary cause of anything and also a cause of itself, could
neither be ‘given’ nor exist. For a thing is: phenomenal only in so far as
it conforms to an ordered construction of its intrinsic factual matter,
which then allows it to appear objectively; and is real only in so far
as it occupies a nodal point in the field of forces which themselves
penetrate it.
The unity of the existing world is the only guarantee of primary
causes.
On Vital and Atomic Principles

1. The insight that there is no clear-cut definitive law in the sphere of
atomic events, and that an energy principle such as the Second Law of
Thermodynamics only possesses a statistical character, are also of the
greatest significance for biological problems. The way forms take shape
in absolute time owes much to the vital principle’s tendency to proceed
along the lines of least energy expenditure, a tendency which is alien
to mechanical processes. In fact there is a whole host of principles of
this sort which are unique to neither inorganic nor organic nature, and
because of this we are led to conclude that dead and living nature are
basically the same. This does not mean that within the superordinate
dynamic principle which contains such similar sub principles as we
have discussed above there are not further sub principles which or-
ganic and inorganic matters do not share. Under certain conditions,
for example, there is activity at a level of an organism where effects are
produced in accordance with set temporal intervals, and without any
new energy or material being involved, and without any contribution
from lower levels which proceed along the lines of an uncomplicated
driving force. Therefore, even though the overall order of things is the
same for both the living and the dead worlds, nevertheless events per-
taining to the living state can never be analysed in purely physical and
chemical terms.
Any such analysis of the relationship between inorganic and organ-
ic nature must be called ‘metaphysical monism’ and ‘essential dualism’,
and underlies any empirical dualism which one comes across.
The collective picture of extended substances and their lawful in-
terchange in a system of relative space and time would then be both
ideal and at the same time relative to life. This arrangement means that
living bodies are not the same as inorganic bodies, as the latter are
only in a relative temporo-spatial system. The proposed arrangement
also allows one to see that although there is an orientation towards an
ideal formation of things, the ‘forms’ themselves are only momentarily
solidified structures arising out of absolute time and best understood
as emanating from the dynamics of the life process into whose param-
eters they have now been translated.
On the other hand, the inorganic forms – physical, chemical, crys-
talline, gelatinous – although not to be explained along mechanistic
lines either, and which must also be ascribed to the form-building po-
tential of the life-force, are distinguished from the actual forms of life
in the following way. First, life-forms are those which are primarily
temporal forms; they are not like inorganic forms, which are spatial
forms, and only a consequence of functions and chemico-physical
causes. Secondly, life-forms are established in absolute time, whereas
inorganic forms take their place in relative time.
Fictitious, Ideal and Real Being

The most recent philosophy – e.g. Husserl’s, Bolzano’s, Hartmann’s,
Meinong’s – readily accepts the categories of ‘ideal being’ and ‘real be-
ing’.
But what is understood by the term ‘ideal being’? There is, for exam-
ple, a proposed variety of ideal being, championed by Husserl, which
takes ideal being to be a proposition in itself or a ‘species’ of meaning,
which is grasped in an individual example of it. Another example is
that of mathematical objects. There are then associated types which
have been proposed: the nature of something or what something is
[Sosein]; the images of things [Bilder]; the pure essences of something
real; validity; values; qualities; even time and space themselves, by
some philosophers. Moreover proponents of such ideal being tend to
distinguish it from pure and empirical phantasy, from conscious expe-
rience and from objects immanent to consciousness. In fact, they tend
to regard conscious experience as having to do with real being, and
ideal being as being just as much transcendent to consciousness as is,
according to them, real being.
It must be said, and bluntly so, that this separation of real and ideal
being is completely without any foundation, is unclear, and, further-
more, is completely arbitrary. Historically, it began with Lotze and
Herbart, was then taken up by Husserl and Bolzano, was accorded
great significance by Rickert, but unfortunately then became even
more muddled.
My view is as follows. I deny in particular that there is an ideal being
in the form of an independent region of being. Instead, I maintain that
there is only: 1) a dependent nature and an essence of what something
is, along with the value of what something is and of anything real; 2)
a realm of fictitious objects – both pure ones, and meaningfully con-
trived ones as in a ‘fabulous world’; and 3) real being.
If one wants to call 1) and 2) above ideal being, so be it. But it must
be made clear that there is no such thing as ideal being in the form of a
special sort of entity that actually exists; there are only an ideal nature
of what something is or an essence of something, and these are objects
of knowledge and cognition, and therefore a type of being relative to
an act [aktrelatives Sein]. This sort of being belongs ontologically to a
real sort of being, and in fact cannot be separated from it. It is further-
more only separable in that it may belong to an intellect or a will, but,
overall, it belongs inextricably to a mental act-centre which is not itself
objectifiable.
Everything which is not construable as the nature or essence of
something real, is, I maintain, a fictitious entity, i.e. something which
is created from human, representational thinking or phantasy activity
alone, and is not an actual object.
If one sets up a system where the nature of everything is duplicated
– one sort in the mind, the other sort outside the mind – such that the
intended object of cognition as whatever is transcendent to the mind
relates to the mind only as a picture, a representation or a portrait
would do, as Hartmann, for example, proposes – then ‘ontologicizing’
ideal being is the only means whereby one can escape nominalism. To
take this philosophical step, however, means that you are no longer
of the view that what you are proposing as the nature of something
is actually part of the nature of the real object; it – your proposed
being – is instead an independent sort of objectness. In such circum-
stances neither a concept nor an intuition reaches the nature of the
object itself. In my scheme, on the other hand, it is the congruence of
the meaning and the image which allows the appearance of the other-
wise intrinsically undivided nature of the real object to arise, whereas
the real being of this object cannot in any way enter the sphere of our
cognition. Returning to the way of thinking that I am criticising, be-
cause it takes the separation between the meaningful nature of things
and the imagistic nature of things to be ontological, and not, as in
my scheme, merely relative to the acts and the difference between the
corresponding acts involved – i.e. thinking and intuition – then this
makes what is meaningful inhabit its own sphere and anything there
be its own object, and the same goes for what is imagistic, which then
must inhabit its own sphere, but another sphere from the meaningful,
and constitute a ‘world for the senses’.
Similarly, Husserl arrives at his notion of an ‘ideal species’ through
an erroneous process of abstraction. If I disregard the real being and
the here-and-now status of a sphere, what still remains behind is ‘the
red sphere’ of this shape and of this material make-up. Furthermore,
three reds of the same shape and same shade of red will stop being
three and different from one another if I manage to disregard their
spatio-temporal differentiation and their status as properties of three
different real things. They are not still individuated under these condi-
tions, and nor are they opposed in some way to ‘red’. The species ‘red
entity’ is immanent to each concrete red. What would be transcendent
to consciousness in this situation would be the sign of three things –
threeness – though not the number 3, and that would be an indepen-
dent ideal object. But redness would be immanent to the object and
existentially relative to it.
Husserl fails to see that if the real being of something disappears so
does its nature, and if the nature of something disappears so does the
real being, and that there are not remnants of both in an ontological
sphere.
Mathematical objects are mental constructions. The mathematician
Kronecker recognized something of this when he said that the Good
Lord made all the natural numbers whereas man made the fractions.
As for values, they must be existentially relative to a finite life, and
vis-à-vis humans they only have the character of a value relationship,
or of an ordered set of particular qualities, to which some goods or an
action or a person or a willing can belong. For the value, the existence
and the nature of something are only separable in and through a men-
tal act, and not in themselves and ontologically. There is no realm of
values, nor are there values that no-one has felt or could feel.
As for qualities, the same considerations as the above apply. They
are either determinations of objects, or determinations of surfaces of
bodies. Colours only arise if there is sight, and sounds if there is hear-
ing. In the case of the Supreme Being, value, existence and essence are
attributes of a being. There must therefore be some ultimate evalua-
tion, if there is a Supreme Being.
Everything is estimable – i.e. is potentially valuable, worth taking
notice of, and with some intrinsic dignity. But this does not mean that
everything is good or bad. The realization – i.e. the coming into exis-
tence – of a positive value is itself a positive value, and the not coming
into existence of a positive value is a negative value. The existence of a
negative value is bad, and the non-existing of a negative value is good.
Space and time are not independent sorts of ideal being, but ficti-
tious entities.
Love
Knowledge is being. But what sort of being? Knowledge must be ca-
pable of being expressed through the aforementioned sorts of given-
nesses.
If knowledge is a sort of participation, in which the knowing be-
ing ‘has’ something, a something which comprises the nature and the
objective status of another being, then two definite conclusions can be
drawn.
1. Something must be given in a being, in so far as it exists, which al-
lows it to pick up what it intends to [was das ens intentionale gibt]. Our
first inclination is to call this an ‘act’. But what act can that be? What is
it, that a being can command, that, so to speak, allows it to get outside
the skin of its own nature and existential status and exceed or tran-
scend itself in order to get hold of part of another being? This cannot
be another sort of knowledge! It must be whatever makes knowledge
possible, whatever leads to knowledge! What is it that stirs a being to
know? What leads to a situation where there is a participation in and
sharing of some situation going on elsewhere? I have long pondered
what one should call this reflective showing of something [reflektiv
Schaubare]. Even if I did not know the empirical findings showing that
all knowledge is driven by interest, attention or love, I should still come
to the conclusion that knowledge is the most formal sort of love. Love
is therefore the very basis of the act of intending something, whereby
some being stretches out to another.
This means that love provides the foundation for every sort of
knowing and every operation which leads to knowledge.
Note carefully: He, who, like all Cartesian philosophers, starts out
with knowledge, has no meaningful handle on the above question. The
problem of an act which leads to knowledge, which enables knowl-
edge to occur, is simply not even recognized as a problem. ‘Something
becomes known’ or ‘I know something’ or ‘I have something’ are what
this sort of philosopher starts out with. He must bring love and inter-
est in to his account somewhere. But he is forced necessarily to say
that these are secondary sorts of acts which merely direct us to what
is already in the sphere of knowledge. But what if we wish to derive
knowledge from being, the nature of something, its existence, and the
relationship between them? If we deny the correctness of the starting
point of such philosophers – i.e. that a thing knows something, and
that is that – then the questions arise as to: Why something should
know something else anyway? and: what is the purpose of knowledge?
Knowledge can then neither be some original bedrock of givenness
nor an absolute self-evident value and purpose. Knowledge then has
to be deemed to be founded in that act in and through which a being
relinquishes its boundaries, and goes beyond itself – transcends its
own very being. To know, furthermore, has then to be seen as resting
on a wish to share and participate in the universal and in a being which
is sufficient to itself i.e. God. To share a mental outlook on anything
then does not mean to will in some static fashion whatever things give
to us through our love for them, but to appreciate that everything is
dynamic and that things actually mean what they can mean and that
they become what they can become.
I am not saying that I have single-handedly discovered the principle
of the primacy of love over knowledge. But I am glad that those mat-
ters which I discovered in the course of empirical investigations into
knowledge and the appearances offered to consciousness confirmed
the conclusion which I arrived at through careful logical investigation
as to what knowledge actually was.
2. The second consequence [of the fact that knowledge is a partici-
pation in the nature of some other being) is this. Whenever there is
a possibility of us knowing what something properly is, and not sim-
ply knowing a selected version of it, as when our drives and needs are
paramount, then the love which leads to such knowledge must be a
love of such a nature that, in its pure form, it is self-referring and self-
interested. It cannot be dependent on whatever it is directed upon.
This holds for evident and adequate knowledge, as occurs in human
and animals, and for intellectual acts.
What this means is that pure knowledge or knowledge of actual
matters of fact assumes that the act of love through which we have
such knowledge is not itself determined by the particular sort of or-
ganisation which the carrier of the act has.
Only where there is a setting aside of the needs of an organism,
whose drives would normally give a restricted sort of knowledge of
matters, can there ever be knowledge of actual matters of fact.
Concerning Logos
1. What Logos is is demonstrated through the essential coherence
of act and objective correlate, itself accounted for by the conscious-
ness-transcending nature of the pure essences and the unity of subject
and object. The unity of Logos itself, its subjective-objective tie-ups,
is guaranteed by the partial identity of categories of thought and cat-
egories of existence and the continuous dialectical nature of the world
of essences, added to which is the pre-givenness of its entire structure
and the general validity of rational laws.
2. The potential is there for Logos to extend its influence over all pos-
sible ideas and essences, but, in fact, it does so only over those which
are humanly knowable or are already known.
3. Only those ideas which have entered our existence are graspable,
and only those which are available in our world and in the framework
of our experience are exemplifiable.
4. The activity of Logos is set in train through love, the life-force and
will. Love also guides our knowledge of values.
5. Logos is simultaneous thinking and intuition, simultaneous act
and object, and this means that it is intellectual intuition and provides
intellectual archetypes.
6. Logos is devoid of creative ability. It provides limits and measures.
7. What is irrational is: a) all reality; b) all contingent natures of
anything, including entities in the ideal realm e.g. irrational numbers
in mathematics; and c) all accidental being-so of anything.
8. Human beings have immediate access to Logos, and, thereby, are,
above all, human beings in the first place.
9. Logos precedes will but succeeds love in the order of things. It also
succeeds the impulse of the life-force.
10. Logos is neither force nor life.
11. When applied to forms – when the possibilities of alteration,
transformation and movement are involved – Logos comes under the
influence of ‘technical intelligence’.
12. Concerning the relationship between Logos and human reason,
Logos: a) lacks any separation between intuition and reason as it is
there in both; b) has no consciousness; c) is not discursive – i.e. it is
continuous; and d) it lacks judgement, concept and conclusion. Pure
Logos is not ‘technical intelligence’, which is mediated thinking. Logos is
primarily wisdom, not knowledge.
13. It is subject to dialectical movement on the occasions when it is
motivated by the life-force. It rules but does not directly control any-
thing, even though it can indirectly control matters.
14. The tool of Logos is the technical intelligence, through which
Logos’ ideas and essential forms are realized, under the ultimate in-
fluence of the life-force, which underpins technical intelligence. This
means that Logos is subject to the constraints of the life-force and its
principle that the least effort should have the greatest effect.
Technical intelligence. Technical intelligence is the most delicate in-
strument of life, and the summit of what it can do in this respect. The
maximum of effect with the least effort is its principle and, in terms
of the ordering of values, what it works on is the ‘useful’. It exploits the
relevant motivation in order to satisfy the drives.
Logos and absolute time. Because it is Logos that sets out essences,
as limit-setting arrangements for creative possibilities and not as posi-
tive ideas prior to the matter in hand, and because they are continu-
ously developed in a dialectical manner, under the influence of the life-
force and never without this influence, its idea-productions do have an
indirect effect on the progress of the historical dimension of the world
over absolute time.
On Thinking
1. In the inorganic world meaning is given in the form of sameness and
similarity. In the living world it is something more: it is immanent to
the individual living creature, and all physiological functions are inde-
pendent of the organisation’s unified sense. For this reason there can
be a sociological difference between: 1) a word as a power in itself, as a
property and as the realization of a concept in the living community;
2) the central position of nominalism in human society; and 3) the
objective ideality of essences [in a third stage of human development]
along with the actual continuity of meaning and sense which we sub-
jectively tap into. All empirical concepts are biologically and socially
relative. The same goes for conclusions and judgements.
2. All ‘sense’ is understood; everything which ‘meaning’ stands for is
thought. It is only when a creature has a mind that sense and meaning
can be anything more than the ideal nature of something, namely, can
have an existence. But the objective sense – and meaning – spheres
cannot be disputed. They cannot just be taken for some social prod-
uct. Each sphere is determined in a clear-cut way by the images and es-
sences, respectively. The interest-perspective of our concept formation
is just as firmly established and is primarily a sociologically-induced
break-up of language and speech.
3. The moving apart of the ideas even occurs in the Divine, under
the influence of the life-force, which selects and constructs its own im-
ages according to where its drives take it. Nevertheless it is the Logos,
as a universal capacity for producing ideas, which is pre-supposed in
all this. Ideas do not in reality pre-exist any divine action, even though
the Logos does.
4. Any general concept is born through a combined reflection on
the circumstances under which an image is perceived and the circum-
stances which lead to the very image itself.
5. The Divinity knows neither law nor casebook, neither individual
nor species. Its Logos is intuitive, and the demands of knowledge for
itself and for action are not present.
6. In the same way as the intuitively derived image is the basis for
perception and representation, a concept and an image are at the root
of a relevant living scheme. Thinking and language are also involved
in the coming into existence of a sensory perception – according to
the [neuropsychological] work of Gelb. In the course of development
there is always a reciprocal differentiation of the perceptual, represent-
ing and meaning realms of a subject one from another. The way things
run is not from perception, via representation, to a final meaning.
7. Logic is not a refined crystallization of the various sorts of think-
ing and speaking. It is built up in parallel with the rules whereby act
and object establish themselves, and whose ultimate explanation lies
in the fact that human thinking is part of God’s way of thinking. The
parallelism is in the end an identity of the two, in the same way as the
life force and the images are one and the same, and drive and percep-
tion are the same.
8. In the same way as the formation of a concept is the reflection on
the conditions underlying a drive-determined task and its solution,
so is a single-word proposition the primitive form of a judgement. It
expresses at the same time a feeling and a wish, for example Mummy,
whereby the current unity of the symbolic function between word and
object: 1) is not reflexively made conscious, as it is in the case of a con-
cept; but 2) actually gives the meaning of what appears from out of the
matter itself. The sequence is object → word, not word → object. In
fact the thing is primarily a sort of ‘meness’ [Ich], and so the relation-
ship between subject and activity – e.g. I am hungry, milk – is trans-
ferred on to the object. Verbs are the most original sort of words.
9. Positivistic philosophy [the sub-class of realism which assumes
that we can only know sensory qualities] is grossly mistaken on this
point. It does not realize that whatever meaning we derive from an
object originally belongs to that object, and not to our subsumption
or meaning which we put on to it. The original meaning adhering to
something actually forms the basis of the qualities and any image, and
constitutes the full nature of what some concrete object is. A lump
of lead is of a certain heaviness, greyness, etc. precisely because it is a
lump of lead. A body is of a certain shape, or presents such an image, or
gives out a meaning, or has such and such an effect, precisely because it
exists as such. But none of this is normally appreciated: people simply
take for granted a body’s existence and nature, and they completely
deny this in asserting that it is our language or our concepts which
accord the object any meaning. What is in fact happening is that it is
only our selection of meaning which is ‘ours’, not the meaning itself.
10. Empirical concepts are simultaneously dependent on the given
images of something and the variable categorical systematisation of
the same something, and are not derived from the images alone.
11. The individual perceives or represents something in the same
manner as does anyone in his society. The form of the signs involved,
and their content, are the same for numerous individuals.
12. The most important insight in this whole area concerns the ef-
fect of the two ‘reductions’. The first – the phenomenological reduction,
whereby essences result from the cancellation of the spatiotemporal
world picture along with its reality – and the second – whereby any
practical viewpoint on this world picture is enhanced – both together
reveal the human condition as one where the human mind moves back
and forth between each of these. Any philosopher who construes these
[options] as a system of two simultaneously extant worlds is on a false
trail.
13. The world itself is so structured that it can only be known in an
integrated way.
14 Abstraction is presupposed in the process of generalization.
Positive abstraction is a consequence of an interest-led attention, which
simultaneously points out – or brings out – and darkens some issue.
If the content which is brought out in this way is to do with an object
which is a function of meaning or naming, then what arises is always
the ideal nature of something, which can be placed in some connection
with another ideal nature. Husserl’s thesis, which is that red is an ideal
species and that it is different from the above-mentioned nature of
something, is false Platonism. If, for example, the element of redness
in a red sphere is brought out from the complexity of orderings of es-
sences in the sphere, everything other than the red fades away to zero,
and what is now given in every sphere of the same colour is identical.
It is no longer an individual sphere, not even a general example of one,
because what we have now is a content in respect of many red spheres
of the same nuance of colour and their various positions in time and
space. The primary abstraction was carried out ecstatically [i.e. pre-
consciously] – on a givenness which was a single object – and within
the realm of drive-based operations. A general or an individual object
differentiate themselves after this original operation, and simultane-
ously so.
15. A factual matter unveils itself and objectivizes itself – where-
upon it becomes amenable to intuition – during the course of a human
being’s individualization. It emerges out of the background ‘chatter’
[Gerede] of tradition. The stages of objectivization of the world follow
on the stages of this human individualization.
16. Neither mind, thought, will, nor grace [die Güte], can ever be
derived from feelings or drives, or from the reproduction, association
or dissociation of some factual element. Only the application of ones
own appropriate mental act can grasp these. It is, for example, always a
question of the content of a subject’s concept and not the conceptual-
ity of a content that counts. An ‘idea’ of truth or goodness can never be
replaced by the usefulness, applicability, consequence or average worth
of some corresponding matter. The psychology of thinking shows us
how actual thinking proceeds or how it solves some problem. But, as
for the acts and rules governing these acts, by means of which think-
ing does proceed or solve problems, the psychology of thinking tells us
nothing.
17. On the question of pragmatism in the field of mathematics, a
number is not only a rule governing the activity of addition and sub-
traction. There are rules governing numbers which are not themselves
rules governing such activity. A number is a fictional-ideal construct
and is itself construed from out of a pre-given ‘intuitive minimum’.
18. As the actual state of affairs is one in which the forces of nature
underpin the laws which regulate the images so it would seem that
the will must itself be subject to the same set of laws. But looked at
ontologically [i.e. what actually constitutes our will] the laws which
determine it, as with all relationships, are subject to the particular dy-
namic make-up of the centre in question [i.e. in this case the mind].
For, there belongs to each of these three centres – i.e. force-centre,
life-centre, person – a different species of cause and effect relationship
– respectively, ‘causality’, goal and purpose. The categories which are
available to reflection and which have a bearing on these three cause
and effect relationships – identity, equality and similarity – are actu-
ally only dynamic experiences of the translations of one sort of cause
and effect into another, and only from the standpoint of the third cen-
tre – mind.
On Metalogic
1. Just because x equals y excludes the fact that x does not equal y, this
does not mean that the proposition A is B excludes the proposition
that A is not B. [We are dealing with ‘equality’ of different categories
and the possibility that equality in one means something different
from equality in another].
2. The A that is B is another A from the A that is C: i.e. there is an
A1 that is B, and an A2 that is C. In the absolute sphere of things there
is no homogenous milieu in which A1 would be equal to A2. In this
sphere there is nothing in existence which is equal to anything else,
even though a conscious being can make such equal [i.e. in one sphere
there is a different sort of equality from in another].
3. Concepts, judgements and conclusions are therefore always rela-
tive to this absolute sphere.
4. Formal logic is only valid for objects which are relative to some
living being.
5. Köhler’s view on logic has to be seen in this light.
6. Perhaps the struggle between contradictory matters was an early
creation. Perhaps things were not around before this struggle erupt-
ed.
Creative Negation
1. Because the essences each stand in a unified complex, a negation can
actually lead on to the emergence – but not a de novo creation – of a
new essence. This point does not apply to propositions, because they
do not concern essences.
2. The negative limiting concepts, such as ‘finitude’, can indirectly
provide a positive meaning.
3. The method whereby negation leads to a definition of the essences
is quite appropriate to the matter and can be taken to the point where
they are so purified that they show themselves for what they are. It is
not simply a method involving negative judgements. Negative theol-
ogy, for example, is the outcome of an attempt to grasp understandable
categories of anything divine plus the accompanying insight that this is
impossible. Because understanding, by its very nature, is of a negative
ilk, whatever is presented to the understanding, however positive it
actually is, must be put into negative propositions.
4. The principle of identity, whereby a particular A is set out instead
of X and the two then deemed identical, is not an actual rational truth
and has nothing to do with any ‘transcendental apperception’, as Kant
thought. It is rather only the expression of the self-preservation of an
organism in the face of ever-changing stimuli, which objectifies what is
happening to it but which then makes it look as if it is a condition of
the other being.
The mind sublates the current fluctuating state of affairs into a new
stable state of affairs to the effect X = X, i.e. that two actually dis-
parate matters are identical. In other words it transforms the actual
state of affairs as it is in absolute time – where all ‘being’ is really only
coming-to-be – into a new state of affairs, incorporating the principle
which obtains here but not there – i.e. in absolute time – that matters
can be the same. All in all, Heraclitus is proved right.
5. [To be explored]: dreaming, magical thinking, childhood think-
ing, primitive thinking – in contrast to logical thinking.
6. [To be explored]: the phenomenon of witchcraft as an apparent
power to inflict injury.
7. [To be explored]: Lindworsky’s ideas.
8. [To be explored]: Koffka’s observations.
9. [To be explored]: historical sorts of thinking in contrast to propo-
sitional thinking – e.g. Indian thinking v. German dialectical thought.
10. Hegel overlooked the fact that contradictions can generally be
traced back to the dual originality of mind and life force, and certainly
not to mind alone. Hegel’s entire thesis about the creative power of
mind rests on his theory of the creative power of negation. But in be-
ing itself – the ens a se – there are no contradictions. A contradictory
experience or a contradictory thought involve genuine conflicts, but
these conflicts are only tendencies which the ideal content of thought
carries. The conflict is in thinking itself – dislike of contradictory ex-
perience, maybe. There is no contradiction itself in ideal being. Hegel’s
logic stems from the dialectic of conflict, and political conflict at that.
The struggles of the classes and their conflicting interests, as portrayed
by Marx, are the secret basis of a dialectic which is falsely deemed to
dynamise the mind itself. Anyway there are not even only two posi-
tions. By radicalising political struggle into proletariat versus capital
he omits any notion of a mediated position. Furthermore, he comes
up with the impossible suggestion that the whole world is spun from
some idea.
Essence
What an essence is is the congruence of an urphenomenon and an
idea. The essence, which appears in this very coincidence of both, is
created by our mind, but in conjunction with God’s mind, and, fur-
thermore, determined by the direction taken by the impulse of the
life-force. This whole process is not a pre-ordained matter; nor is it
achieved after the event – as would be the case if the will came before
a thought, and only knew afterwards what it was that it had created.
The true situation is that essences accompany the matter in question
which they refer to.
Image-making
Image-making is a world event. It is the demarcation of, or goal-direct-
ed drawing of impetus from, the all-fertile life-force. Image-making
out of turmoil and into a world and the realization of God as an idea
– these are the same thing.
The Three Reductions

I
Scientific
Positive science switches off the very possibility of the following:
1) the Ens a se [absolute being], a procedure which is counter to
the metaphysical one;
2) the human being, in respect of that part of it which is not objec-
tifiable;
3) personal freedom and the spontaneity of life;
4) the realm of essences and the various major divisions of sorts of
being, including anything to do with the mind, and including all stages
of established ontological varieties;
5) the real being of the accidental being-so of anything;
6) all individual and personal versions of truth, along with those
which stem from our communal life, e.g. public opinion [man sagt dass
…] or traditional views; and
7) all empirical, human and relative forms of things of the sort
which we consider generally true by popular opinion.
But science does not dispense with the law that things are ‘so here
and now and different there and then’ in space and time. Moreover, it
preserves something’s: a) practical value; b) its symbolic significance;
c) its link to our vital needs; and d) its historical relativity with re-
spect to the stage human reason has reached. Science is furthermore
strongly bound to objectifiable being and to generally valid truths,
which, despite their truth, are actually only existentially relative to the
stage the human being has reached in its overall development. Finally
e) science respects the intellect, but under certain mental assumptions
only, namely if these promote a version of truth which [values] things
only in so far as they are controllable by virtue of our vital movements.
In summary, science follows the principle that nothing exists unless it
falls within the range of what we can observe or measure.
II
Dionysian
The Dionysian reduction, known to Schopenhauer and Bergson, in-
volves the following.
1) There is a switching off of mind, intellect and the experienced
sense of the primacy of perception.
2) There is a coming to the fore of sympathy, animal sexuality and
the imaginal portrayal of the world drawn from the forces of nature
and life’s drives.
3) Our participation in all this is not objectified [i.e. none of this is
experienced as things or qualities of things].
4) There is an enhanced awareness of the historical dimension of
mankind and a heightened sense of being part of nature.
5) The artistic in the human is at the forefront.
6) The power of instinct is to the fore.
In respect of the integration of the reductions with the metaphys-
ics of the absolute the following remarks are pertinent. The following,
however, concern only the Dionysian.
a) All images are expressive.
b) Life is experienced physiognomically [i.e. as if everything were
a face].
c) The predominant mode of knowledge is through sympathy.
d) Everything here stems from the sexual drive of the human.
e) In place of the now switched off mental apparatus of the hu-
man there is an intuitive sense of participating in everything to do
with the life-force: a ‘co-striving’, a ‘co-feeling’ and a ‘co-urgency’.
f ) This participation is non-objectified [i.e. not in the form of per-
ceived things or qualities].
g) Animal instinct is already of this Dionysian realm.
h) The discipline of characterology comes into its own in nature
and history.
III
Phenomenological
The phenomenological reduction gives knowledge, including specific
philosophical knowledge, about only one of the two utterly fundamen-
tal sorts of being; the nature or essence of something. This knowledge
penetrates into the Ens a se, because all essences are part of God. But
this applies only to that part of God which [I call] the first of His two
attributes, which is the only attribute we have knowledge of. This is
achieved by way of our mind and its correlates – the essences. Because
these essences are, however, ineffective, negative, and only the ideal
impossibilities through which the possibilities of the real are first cir-
cumscribed, they determine nothing of an unequivocal nature. There
is, however, another sort of participation from which we can derive
knowledge, and this is united with that second principle [attribute]
which we must likewise ascribe to the Ens a se. This participation
concerns itself with the imagistic picturing of the world, a world of
accidental being-so, which is the manifestation of the life-force, and
whose being is given independently from us in an experience of reality,
a being which, moreover, precedes any subjective perceptual or repre-
sentational intentions. Both the accidental being-so of something and
the value of something are what the life-force sets before us from what
is actually happening in the centre of natural forces and the drive cen-
tre. The interaction between these two centres is only understandable
through an assumption of the unity of the life-force. What this unity
is we can only know through the rules that govern the appearance of
images.
The Metaphysics of Perception

Perception, insofar as it adequately conveys the accidental being-so of
the images, is none other than a participation in and a sharing of the
activity in which the divine life-force constructs its own images.
The images are objective appearances – manifestations of power, at
work before any living creature is in a position to capture them – but
which a living creature can capture, through its vision, hearing, smell,
etc. and which are the same available sort of entity for perception and
phantasy alike, and which allow the images to come into being when
they are stimulated by dead forces. In that we, as drive-led creatures,
succeed in participating in the direction of drive of the universal life-
force – i.e. drift along with it – and, further, in that we co-produce
what we see and hear along the lines which the universal life-force al-
lows, then an image will be partly conveyed to our knowledge faculty,
adequately so only if the participation is ecstatic and, we so to speak,
co-produce the image with energy from our drive-phantasy.
In general, I only perceive that aspect of a tree or a piece of coal
that I, as the sort of creature and individual that I am, am interested
in. This means that I am simply focussing on a few paltry fragments
of the entire image, and I am restricting my version of the latter to
what my body’s image wants of the entire image. This means further
that the restriction I impose interrupts the living and mystical ecsta-
sies whereby I cast forth a piece of my life as a psychic unity into the
centre of that image and then from this centre co-construct, with it, its
structure, with the help of reproductive and productive phantasy.
It is, in fact, the same life force that is coursing, both outside me as
images, and inside me and through me as their inadequate likenesses,
insofar as I bring them forth by my interest in them through my be-
ing the sort of creature and the individual creature that I am. For my
drives are only partial functions of the universal life force and my sight
and hearing, etc, are only a way of taking up a particular aspect of the
workings of the undifferentiated phantasy and intuition and produc-
tive capacity of this universal life force itself.
Furthermore the likenesses or portraits that I draw are not immate-
rial objects and things which approximate but do not touch or enter
the actual images – as the philosophical school of Critical Realism
supposes – but are the very images themselves, albeit in an attenuated
and fragmentary form, subject to my particular interest in them and
the constraints imposed by the contingencies of the act of perception.
Only the form, order and manner of this ‘dissociation of images’ is
available to any student of the physiology or psychology of cognitive
processes.
The laws governing forms and their relationships, which boil down
to the relationships of colours and tones among themselves and the
variations in intensity, quality, brightness and dimness – or high and
low in the case of sounds – and all the basic and mixed appearances of
these, are exactly the same for the different sense modalities. Even the
laws governing continuity and discrete intervals are the same across
the board.
Technique of vital ecstasis

The switching off of the mind [Geist] is the first negative requirement
for vital ecstasis to take place, in the same way as the switching off of
drive – indeed the universal life force as a whole – is the first require-
ment for the ‘ecstasis’ of mind to take place.
Whereas in the latter case this leads to a maximum amount of en-
ergy being diverted to the spiritual and mental love of things and an
affirmation of all valuing, in the former case the positive requirement
is a free outpouring of Eros [the highest animal-like sexuality and ten-
derness], which pervades everything and leads to a completely unself-
ish participation in the world.
Whereas the cerebral cortex, as the ‘dissociation organ’ of the vital,
sensory excitations, is acting for mind, what promotes the ‘vital ecsta-
sis’, on the other hand, are a whole set of states and activities which
effectively produce a narcosis of the cortex. Such states and activities
include alcohol intoxication, self-hypnosis, rhythmic dancing as a way
of losing oneself as opposed to concentrating on an idea of something,
any other way of loosening willed self-control, orgiastic mass events,
Dionysian-type music involving cymbals and drums, and, finally, and
this is the ultimate technique, the act of sexual intercourse in which
one attains a communion with nature.
The return to an all-embracing mother – Mother Earth in fact –
and the overpowering urgency of life which this releases are a glimpse
into the very ‘becoming of God’, and the workings of His first attribute
before any idea of God is manifest. The purely dynamic drives at play,
and the demonic nature of such goings-on – a turmoil of value-indif-
ference and maximum energy – fill out the whole nature of life. The
obscure forms of mysticism have their origin in all this – conveying
the mystic senses of Earth, fertility, night and mother.
‘Mother’ here is not an idea, as it is in Husserl’s philosophy, but the
complete antithesis.
There is indeed a mysticism of ideas about the coming-to-be of
God, [but this is not what we are talking about here.]
The critical matter in the vital ecstasis is not erotic pleasure, as Aris-
tippius proclaimed, but a total immersion in passionate love, come
what may. The pursuit of pleasure as an end in itself, following Aris-
tippius’ recommendations, is actually a form of egocentricism and a
way of maximising sensory feelings. What we are considering here, in
the vital ecstasis, is, in complete contrast, a way of getting rid of the
self, consciousness, and ‘Me’ – these horrid little tyrants as Rickert and
Klages called them.
Against Husserl
The essence is not visible, in the way a thing is perceived. Anything
ideal lacks resistance and for this reason we have no right to assume
that the essence remains in existence when we are not thinking about
it. This is nonsense. Husserl’s analogy of an essence residing in a solid
block of being is fundamentally wrong. Where is the distance between
object and act, if this were so? Where is the effective resistance which
would first indicate that there was something independent from our
mind? Granted, the essence is identifiable; but that does not allow us
to assume an independent existence to essences. The only part of Hus-
serl’s theory which is correct is that the essence, in distinction to a
mathematical object, is not fictitious or invented. It does have a sort
of being, and that is pure being, and this is independent from human
thought. But although the essence is re-produced or re-created from
the general essences belonging to our cultural realm equally so it is
co-produced through a cooperation between human and divine mind.
The latter is the means whereby the human mind does what it does
and in fact the human mind is what it is because of the divine mind.
The divine mind, moreover, does not simply come upon ideas, as Au-
gustine thought, but is forever newly producing them. Any sugges-
tion of spontaneity or receptivity is out of the question, in contrast to
perceiving, which is determined by drive. The essences do not impose
themselves on mind. Mind, in conjunction with God, must ever newly
produce them.
The technique of Wesenschau [showing the essences] is therefore
a productive showing, and the supratemporal essence, which is not
constantly there when it is not being thought about, is ‘carried’ by this
act of productive showing. A stable and detached heavenly abode of
essences and ideas simply does not exist. The fact that an essence re-
mains identical to itself does not require that we have to accept its
independent existence. The identity is a consequence of the fact that
the act itself is identical with itself and when the act is triggered it re-
creates the [same essence]. The whole situation is like a living mirror,
where we find [as if already created] what we are creating.
The philosophical proposal – by Bolzano and Malebranche – that
the essence pre-exists the mind’s involvement with it is therefore the
complete inverse of the truth.
The ‘showing’ in the ‘showing of essences’ [Wesenschau] is only a re-
flection on the co-recreated [Mit-Nach-geschaffene] in the course of the
recreation [Nachschaffens]. Husserl confuses this reflection with the
coming to light – or invention or arrival – itself of the created essence.
[He mistakes the reflection on the recreation for the actual recreation;
he takes an invention for an encounter].
But how can such essences also have any bearing on accidental and
real events? Any connection between the infinite truth of essences and
the time-based accidental happenings seems impossible. Nevertheless,
the essences are only there ‘for’ the demarcation of the accidental but
real matters which the life force is creating. For this reason the ‘truth’
which the realm of essences imposes on casual actuality has the air of a
counter-validity [Trotzgeltung] and not a consensus [Hingeltung]. This
is in keeping with the fact that the life force and mind only derive their
sense and indeed their ‘life’ in the context of one another and in the
final analysis are attributes of the same substance.
All ideal truths – not only insights about values – must be main-
tained in opposition to, and with some resistance from, accidental ex-
perience, insofar as these truths as knowledge affect the development
of new ‘types’ of things. This process is necessarily one of contradic-
tions. It is not a case of fitting whatever crops up as accidental into
a set of fixed truths, but of selecting which available essential truths
are best suited for rendering knowable the images which the life force
produces. This insight leads to the further realization that no actual
essential truth is eternally valid, and that the only eternal truth is that
there is an essence of essences [nur das Wesen der Wesenheiten ist es],
and it is this which corresponds to the divine mind. Because mind
itself is timeless, there is scope for a changing content to the essential
truths it conveys.
In addition, the interconnections between essences are being contin-
ually created and re-arranged by means of synthesizing and dialectical
activity. How can there be an essential relationship between Essence 1
and Essence 2 if neither of these is part of an all-pervasive totality of
essences, which the continual dialectical movement of the Logos first
isolates? Is the situation one where there is a simultaneous givenness
of two essences joined by a rigid ‘and’? In which case, what lies behind
the necessity of the connection? Or is it a case of identical, analytic
judgements being applied? Or is neither suggestion correct?
Ideas as Extrinsic to Things

We grasp ideas at or on [an] things, not in them. This notion of ideas
being in things is one of Aristotle’s big mistakes. The entire corpus of
mathematics contradicts the theory. Relative to Aristotle, Plato was
right here. An idea is opposed to reality; it is ideal – a preliminary
draft or sketch of the nature of something which the actual nature
of the something in question never comes up to; it is a skeleton draft
which is bound up with an agent’s own agenda and its implementa-
tion. Between the two of them [the ideal sketch and the actual nature]
the version of reality involved is a compromise. The influence of reality
[das Realprinzip] is such, however, that there is a rejection of whatever
in the positive idea is not realizable. Me on [non-being] and endekhom
enon [possible being] are simply shadows of the mistaken notion that
an idea has its own power, positivity and absolute objectivity.
Ideas as Not Pre-existing Things

An idea as an articulation, realization, portrayal or manageability of
an already determined process, or as the theoretical and methodical
application of perceptual experience, cannot be deemed as in any way
fixed prior to the matter articulated, realized, etc. Even God is no Uto-
pian. He is the absolute artist of the movable idea, a paragon of reso-
luteness without fanaticism. Resoluteness towards godliness, towards
himself, is his unique resoluteness.
Even though the idea is first determined and realized as part of
the life force, it is maintained by dint of its serving as a means of un-
derstanding the sense of experience. Alternative formulations would
either be to make experience subordinate to an idea or to make an
idea subordinate to experience, both of which are false. It is in the
congruence of both that the real itself in its totality emerges. Even
God is not party to an unconscious ecstatic foreknowledge of His own
coming-to-be. The situation here [analogous to that of humans] is a
self-design of the Ens a se.
Philosophical Cognition
The question is: What would still be around as an appearance if the
life-centre as the subject of the drive-based sensory system were put
out of play [Ausserkraftsetzung]? It is immaterial in this context to
what extent the completeness of the reduction is actually carried out.
It suffices that it can be carried out at all.
If the reduction entails a cancellation of the reality element, then
because the spatial and temporal order of matters are dependent on
this element and on causality, the very order in which spatial and tem-
poral issues come about will also be disrupted. All this stems from the
fact that reality itself is the individuating principle. Space and time are
only indices, and, in truth, only ‘singularizing’ indices of one and the
same essence, whereas the accidental being-so of something must be
different if it takes up another spatial and temporal position. It can-
not be sufficient, therefore, for any simple disregarding of the position
of something in a spatio-temporal system to lead to the identical na-
ture of many such somethings being discovered. It is in fact possible
to carry out an empirical abstraction without invoking the reduction.
But this presupposes an essentially comparable direction [between the
several items that are the focus of the abstraction], and this is differ-
ent from what occurs in the cognition of essences. The criteria for a
genuine knowledge of something are: 1) that there are ideas and ur-
phenomena; 2) that things can come into the world and be observed;
and 3) that there are fundamentally different ways in which something
can be what it is and there are natural creatures [to appreciate this].
If space and time were absolute forms of being, as Newton thought,
and independent from the mind and the vital centre, there could only
be empirical abstraction of similar things, and this would be so even
if real being were the focus of a reduction. Real being would be, in the
order of givenness, after space and time. The multitude of the acciden-
tally being-so’s of anything would remain as it is.
Alternatively, if space and time were integral parts of the mind’s in-
tuitional apparatus, then: 1) the cancellation of real being, in the same
way as in the scenario mentioned above, would also leave the multi-
tude of accidental images intact, and neither would it lead to anything
new, and certainly not to any essence of something; and 2) a situation
in which space and time were mentally-based intuitions would mean
that mind could never rise above its own intuitions, and its fate would
always be to be trapped by a spatio-temporal matrix of its own making
– again, only empirical abstraction would be possible.
If we now incorporate into the above notion our own theory of re-
ality then the only agent which is in a position to be responsible for
space and time is the life force itself, although without any direction
from a living entity as to what it should do. This is Schopenhauer’s
position, in which he ascribes to reason only an empirical abstract-
ing capacity and hands responsibility to the understanding for infer-
ring causal connections according to the principle of sufficient reason.
Schopenhauer’s formulation of ideas is incoherent.
But the whole situation is completely transformed if space and time
stand and fall with life itself – relative time and relative space with a
living creature, and absolute time with Life itself, whose way of becom-
ing this is. For in this case an inhibition of the life centre must dissolve
the diversity of appearance along with our access to reality, but not in
such a way that nothing at all remains, but, on the contrary, in a way
that reveals the very essences in front of the mind itself. The structure
of essences governing the world – although actually [ontisch] only to
be found in conjunction with any thing – under the conditions just
described [i.e. a true phenomenological reduction] is uncovered and
remains behind for us, whereas and because the accidental being-so
of anything, reality, and spatio-temporality, have been annulled. Like-
wise there is a disappearance of all connections between things which
allows them to be near or far, because the spatio-temporal determina-
tions of such positioning is biologically conditioned, and this last fac-
tor has been wiped out [in the reduction].
The cognition of essences is therefore the attempt to grasp how
the world would look independently of space and time, and before
the world were invested with these two forms. In other words, if one
carved out the structure of Logos in a cross-section of history what
would the world look like? What one would be looking at here is [the
correlate of ] reason.
Without the technique of the reduction [i.e. normally] the essences
must appear transcendent to us. Such insight certainly opens up our
dependence on the acts of the Ens a se, from Whom the world cer-
tainly originally proceeds, and from His ideas – not from any images,
symbols or clues. But the essences are not actually transcendent to
our mind, and can become immanent to it, and this is because our
mind itself is immanent to God’s mind – as Spinoza realised. Official
theological doctrine, following St. Thomas, denies this point. Its core
teaching here is that ideas are present in God before any thing which
they might refer to, whereas in our minds they come after whatever
thing is encountered, and our understanding is only a soul of God, and
not a part of supreme reason itself. We deny both points.
The essences themselves are neither in themselves general nor in
themselves individual.
The human being is therefore, in relation to its knowledge, in no way
a creature who merely reflects or reproduces things. Its way of being
is rather that of taking up a central position amongst all other sorts of
entities. As a spiritual and mental creature, as a concentration of the
forces of nature and as a creature with drives, it is part of the attributes
of the Ens a se, and equally so in its ability to participate in ideal and
real principles, and therefore be a co-producer of objective entities. I
have attempted to show in my Philosophy of Perception that the identity
of the contents of perception and the image – insofar as they exist –
can only be properly clarified by recourse to the identity of the drive
impulses, which give rise to the content of subjective perception, in
conjunction with the image-forming functions of the life force itself.
In addition, perception, although appearing to consciousness to be a
passive and reproductive process, is in fact psychic and a spontaneous
product of drive-phantasy, in addition to which it bears a practical re-
lationship to the real. An exactly analogous relationship pertains here
as does between the way our mind grasps essences and the way the
essences themselves are set out by the mind of the Ens a se.
But even the mind of the Ens a se is not the subject of a static or
eternal world of ideas, which in the progress of the world has always
remained the same and which the human mind has only reproduced.
This doctrine – a core feature of Plato’s and Aristotelian-Christian
theological philosophy alike – is based on all the errors of Ancient
Idealism: e.g. the existence of an ahistorical cosmos, in which only
one history runs its course, which therefore cannot itself be historical;
auto-generation [Selbstmacht] of an idea; ideas preceding the thing re-
ferred to; foreknowledge; and a plurality of an ordered realm of ideas,
independent from the real. All such philosophies deny any actual
movement of ideas, and only acknowledge any such movement in the
history of human consciousness, which itself merely flows past with
an ever fixed eternal order. But there are no such pre-existing ideas,
and no world plan independent from and prior to the coming-to-be of
the world, or independent of the very history which is what the world
essentially is. In addition, human ideas are produced by human mind,
but ever under the influence of the combined life force and drive inter-
ests and needs at any given time, and the ideas only serve to direct and
steer the world process, and are not there to be some end in itself or
to dazzle for the sake of dazzling. The same applies to the production
of ideas by the mind of the Ens a se. They differentiate themselves in
their very realization, with things, not before things. At each moment
of absolute time they are newly available for survey, and, when they
change, the whole system of ideas changes. The world can be regarded
as having an ideal side [ideelen Seite] to it as opposed to a set of simple
comings and goings, but this ideal side is not auto-genetic, as Hegel
thought, but hetero-genetic, because the comings and goings [on the
other side] are the workings of the life force, which is ever soliciting
mind itself.
There is no truth independent of the existence of objects and inde-
pendent of the acts which think the ideas, etc. Maier and Heidegger
appreciated something of this. There is certainly an independence
from relative time on the part of cognition of essences, and there is
a growth of our cumulative experience of them. But just as human
reason rearranges itself and advances in terms of the structure of its
principles and laws, so does the divine mind in terms of its eternal es-
sential content, as the world process moves on in absolute time. The
divine mind forms and differentiates its world of ideas in the context
of historical life forces. Even He grows, and, if you will, even He learns.
He learns in and through human beings. This raises the question of
what it is that is re-arranged.
The only eternal element in all this is a mind itself in God, and es-
sentially a mind which humans make definitive, and not a particular
ideal order, nor an order which is altered intrinsically or otherwise
throughout history. There are in the world process no absolutely con-
stant ideas, no absolute principles, and no absolute laws. Not only do
all stars come and go, but so does matter, and the same goes for all
forms of life. There are no eternal forms or categories of being. The
only thing eternal is one essential entity (ein Wesen), the essence of the
Divinity, which is the idea that the Ens a se has of its concrete goal of
becoming – in other words, the idea God has of Himself. It is the only
idea which pre-exists any thing or state of affairs. The limited capac-
ity of human cognition stems not so much from any subjective con-
straints, but from an intrinsic incompleteness in the state of becoming
of being itself. The metaphysical world process is actually unpredict-
able. Even if we knew the history of mental structures and everything
about hitherto existentially relative living creatures, it would at most
be calculable. To complicate matters the stage cognition has reached is
also a causal factor influencing the world process. This holds for the
value of cognition as well.
Anyone who speaks about ideas antedating their corresponding
states of affairs is simply an ignoramus about human thoughts and ac-
tions. Humans develop no ideas unless they are challenged to solve
some task posed by their drives. Any plan which they might come up
with will have to conform to what is feasible. Foresight is only justifi-
cation after the event. Reality is made up of ideal and real principles,
and the coming-to-be of a thought cannot be predicted by a second
thought, and that is why any ontological theory of the nature of things
which accords primacy to thoughts themselves cannot be sustained. In
other words, what becomes predictable, because it recurs, cannot itself
be predictable from a single instance.
It is turning matters on their head to attribute the lawfulness of nat-
ural events which concern us to our life itself, never mind our mind.
The Ens a se becomes what it is to become by first knowing what is
happening to human beings. The human mind is the reflection of the
divine mind on itself.
The divine mind is like the mind of a perfect statesman, who has no
basic principles and never knows what tomorrow will bring.
It is no knowledge of a superior sort of being, but rather the debase-
ment of a divinity, that one ends up with if one attributes the mores
and customs of a natural creature to His thinking and acting.
Person and Time, and Thoughts on the

Metaphysics of the Basis of the World
Whereas the notion of space presupposes a non-homogeneous exten-
sion, that of time is free of this presupposition. Everything that comes
under the name of psychic is actually in time. The acts have a temporal
order, even if they do not have to follow this. What do strictly follow
one another are inner intuition and its respective content, and it is this
content which we take for present time.
The person – the act centre – is above time. It only reveals its nature
in the time in which the vital drive impulse realizes the content of its
act’s intention. Kant was right to set the personal level above time.
The person rests in the spiritual and mental divinity, as both a concen-
trated centre of God and as mental ‘substance’.
Space is always only the way the various images appear – the subjec-
tive and objective manifestations of acts involving drive and natural
forces, not mental acts. On the other hand time, as a way for some-
thing to succeed something else, is the very way in which these acts can
render something’s coming-to-be.
The world in itself is history and progression in absolute time, and
objective time is only a measure of relationships within this. Concrete
causality, both real and absolute, has a lawfulness of such a kind that it
demands that the positioning of the elements involved is independent
of time and events. The core feature of this lawfulness is that it allows
the same thing to crop up at a different time and a different thing to
crop up at the same time. In other words, natural lawfulness demands
that there be a notion of space.
It is incorrect to regard the person as lacking the ability to change,
just because one places it a level above time. It is just as wrong to see
it as sempiternal or even as eternal for this reason. In fact the person
forms itself through instantaneous acts and only owes its existence to
the carrying out of these acts. It is self-positing – the divine likewise
in this respect – but the person is finite in terms of the potential acts
available to it.
One might say that a god who were not perfect or complete, and
who is busy making himself as he goes along, hardly inspires confi-
dence that he ever will be perfect. But consider the following.
1) Is it not up to you whether this process is hastened or not?
2) God is eternal as a mind, as well as the content of this, which
He alone can bestow to drive and life force, by disinhibiting His own
will, thereby releasing the life force.
3) But the fact that God does succeed in bringing harmony to
Himself, that you have to take on trust. You have to commit yourself
to God on this matter.
4) A God who were incomplete would never have had any mo-
tive to permit an emanation – a coming-to-be – of a world born in
pain, though might well rejoice at a victory for religious faith despite
adversity. But neither would a completed God have any motive either
to sustain the world process as it is. But, in fact, the world simply hap-
pens, and for Him, as well as for us, it is both experience and fate. He
is not indifferent to what becomes of ‘being’. What makes God great is
the fact that history is now seen as the deliberate fate of God himself.
Human beings have hitherto demeaned themselves and have not
given enough thought to the possible candidates as to what the divin-
ity is – restricting these maybe to only spectator or judge. I should
be able to weigh up a number of options and resolve these with my
Father, not simply obey His will. This teacher – God – also learns
through His pupil.
My metaphysics is based on the qualities of a person; it is an ideal
enabling of the divine, coupled with a realization that this itself ema-
nates from Him. God allows the world to emerge from Himself, and
through Himself.
A movement without direction and aim is impossible. What counts
is only the quantity of movement in the same direction. If space is rela-
tive, so must the direction of whatever it envelops. The moving point
must strive for something.
The life force, with its original directionality, and the idea, with its
possibilities with respect to essences – i.e. the possibilities of there be-
ing essences – are co-determined, one by the other. God has no design,
nor plan. Love, and its affirmation of good and evil, watches eternally
over everyone.
If the human being itself, as a participant in God’s mind, can rise
sufficiently to the challenge and the fall-out of what the coming-to-be
of God really means, and if by virtue of his drive energy, which now
accrues to his mind, he resolves to loosen his inhibitions concerning
that which he sees as evil, then he will sin against God, and at the same
time deepen his sorrow.
It is not a question of ‘each man for himself ’ and ‘God for all of us’,
but ‘all of us for God’. But is it not true that one must suffer in order
that one deserves this ‘for’?
I adhere to the notion of a God who suffers and struggles, but who,
by overcoming his sorrow, becomes a perfect God.
I know that an act carried out against our conscience, against every-
thing our person stands for and its metaphysical bonds, hurts every-
one and everything. It even makes our body ill, and sets up an ailing for
which there is no recovery. All that one can do then is show remorse,
repent, and make good.
Could not a perfect God, as Brentano suggests, actually and volun-
tarily make a good, or better or still better world? Oh, choosey, hesi-
tant and imperfect God!
Whoever lived through the Japanese earthquake and the First World
War would laugh at any suggestion that your God is all-good and al-
mighty. His might is definitely not all-good, and His good is definitely
not almighty. Even the devil can hurt Him.
I know that in those moments when I feel kind-hearted and loving
towards the world, I could not hurt a thing, not even inflict pain on a
worm. And God, the infinite, who knows thousands of ways to avoid
this, how do you think He could do this?
My metaphysics is of a global enhancing of the coming-to-be of God
in the world [Panentheismus der Welt]. The world as history is only a
phase, a destiny, or an epoch of the divine self-becoming; further, it
is a fashioned piece of work [Werkgestaltung], in which and through
which the master craftsman grows and achieves His true nature in the
course of realizing it. The world emanates from God, if He lets it do
so. God reveals His nature in the course of the very history in which
He realizes Himself.
The Possibility of Metaphysics

The widest grounds for supposing the possibility of a metaphysics
consisting of the knowledge and cognition of absolutely existent ob-
jects and reality entail that the following are true.
1) There should be a prior givenness of apriori cognition vis-à-vis
cognition of the accidental being-so and existence of anything; there
should be a priority of matters of fact vis-à-vis any form of thinking
about these – and that applies to the actual nature of anything, to the
spheres where things can be, to categories, and to connections between
all these.
2) There should be a prior givenness of the relationships within a
real and existentially absolute real sphere vis-à-vis the nature of any-
thing in the world or existentially relative levels.
3) There should be a primacy of phantasy vis-à-vis perception.
4) There should be a primacy of the givenness of values vis-à-vis
the givenness of images and meaning.
5) There should be a primacy of meaningful connections before
truth or falsehood come into play, and a primacy of the ‘asensual’ vis-à-
vis the ‘sensual’.
What constitutes one of the principal reasons for supposing that
there is the possibility of metaphysical knowledge is the fact that we
can achieve a varied knowledge of this accidental, empirically existing
world, and in each of its spheres. For despite the fact that this world
affects our psychophysical make-up and is bound to the organization
of our senses and vital psychic nature, we can nevertheless stand back
from this realm and see in it merely examples of the same essence. In
fact whether we are considering the urphenomenon or idea of a body
or of a living creature, or whether we have regard to multiplicity or
unity, or whether we are interested in the human being as a whole or
its social network or its role in historical causality, the very fact that we
can arrive at such notions on the basis of one example only testifies to
there being an absolute existence of something which is determining
our ability in this respect. At the very least we can lay out the essential
structure of such notions, whereas if we could not rise above what
we were considering we could not actually consider it at all, and the
realm of the accidentally being-so of anything would be forever locked
away for us. [But this “looking down to open up something” comes at
a price]. Our cognition of essences, by offering us knowledge of this
sphere, i.e. the knowable accidental existence of anything, narrows by
necessity what is there, which – i.e. the actual accidental being – is
considerably greater than what can be known about it.
Under what conditions, however, would metaphysics be definitely
excluded?
1) It would be ruled out if there were no essential lawful structure
joining objects and acts, but instead only non-binding summing up, so
to speak, of successive individual matters of fact, taking the form a + b
+ c, etc.
2) It would further be impossible if all our cognitive contents were
derived from the contents of our senses and their associative process-
ing, from which the only meaning allowed is what is precisely given
and nothing over and above that. This would only provide knowledge
to the effect that here and now something is red or sour, and the same
would go for sounds, etc.
But none of this actually applies. In fact, the situation is completely
and radically different. The sensory contents and the positive con-
scious appearances of inner experience in any situation are only a drop
in the ocean of a vast network of established orderings of being and
forms of being.
But not only this obtains. This fundamental fact – the only one
which Husserl recognized – would not by itself permit a metaphysics.
For metaphysics is not only the cognition of ideas and their ordered
arrangement; it is also the cognition of reality, indeed the cognition
of the basis and root of all reality. A theoretical formulation of the
essential structure of the world in all its spheres only gives us the es-
sential and objective possible world, not a participation in the real or
the absolutely real.
If we are, furthermore, exclusively reliant for our knowledge of the
real on accidental sensory information or on the way we process this,
which only really have an ideal objective nature and are a special case
of this, then metaphysics is likewise impossible. Kant’s thesis, where
categories and forms of intuition are apriori with respect to sensation,
is a clear case of such a view. But this puts things the wrong way round.
The correct way matters stand is that it is only because resistance oc-
curs to what we are striving for that any sensation enters our aware-
ness in the first place and thereby achieves any ontological status for
the first time. Only then do we begin to know anything about its effect
on other things, and that is because it was called up, as it were, as an
effect of our vital centre’s prior aspirations.
For all these reasons our experience of what is really going on is
again much broader than the extract of it which is shown to us in
the form of sensory perception. We are acquainted with the world
through suffering resistance to it, and this is our most direct aware-
ness of its reality, before we know what it is that resists us, and before
it is transformed into an object standing before our mind. Therefore,
the sequence of events is not that causal connections and what they
amount to are what is originally given to us as an extant state of affairs,
as if they were established and repeatable temporo-spatial relation-
ships between sensory images. The situation is the other way round:
we seek such laws between sensory perceivable manifestations and ob-
jective appearances of effective unities and effective centres because we
already know that these centres operate in an analogous way to how
I operate when striving for something and how in the course of such
striving a unified psychic action results. It is not the That, only the
How, of this causally effective exchange that I seek to know in a so-
called lawful formula. I already know – apriori – that as many lawful
structures as there are, so must there be as many independent sorts of
operative centres to place these in.
We must now clearly distinguish between two things: the meta-
physics of the real, or, better, the coming-to-be of the real; and the
metaphysics of what is only real in the sense of its being accidentally
so [zufälliges Sosein].
The metaphysics of real coming-to-be has to do with the immediate
participation by a subject, with respect to their status as a creature of
drives and displaying the life force, in the multiplicity of impulse cen-
tres of various sorts which form the distributed life force of the Ens a
se Himself. This involves co-operative strivings, drives and searchings
with the supreme entity, and a production of unity and harmony of
our intact life force with the relevant attribute of this supreme being.
The obscure mysticism of all eras recognized something of this, and
prescribed one or other Dionysian technique to get close to it. The life
force is at the same time an image-creating force with a potentially
infinite imaginative power in this respect. This would be enhanced if
mind were put out of commission, as in the reduction I refer to as the
Dionysian reduction, and anyway mind is blind to the power of the life
force and its phantasy. The dynamic participation of that part of our
being which owes its nature to our drives with the characteristics of an
outside centre of striving must give the same image as our phantasy-
image, because the same objective life force is involved in both cases.
The essential element in all artistic production is for the artist to install
himself or herself in the ‘inner flames’ of a thing, as Rodin, for example,
did, and let the thing arise again at each step of the reproduction.
Our Metaphysics
1. Our metaphysics is a metaphysics of a human race which has grown
old and which knows and recognizes the limits of their spiritual and
mental competence.
2. It is at the same time the first overcoming of the two class ideolo-
gies.
3. It is also a true reconciliation of the male and female outlooks on
the world.
4. It is the first philosophical corpus which makes any sense of how
we can live for God without merely obeying His orders.
The appropriation by mind of the energy which lies in our drives
and life force presupposes that even in the life force, at the very least
at the highest level of sophistication it can achieve – Eros [animal-like
tender sexuality] – there lives a propensity toward the idea of a mind
and toward the essence of essence. This further presupposes that even
mind not only takes on the nature of the idea of the eternal substance
– the unique, eternal idea, which we first dimly experience through
history – but that there also belongs to mind a way of acting which is
completely free of any nuance of intensity. Moreover, the impotence in
this last respect it shares with the essential ideas.
Bibliography
Scheler, M. (1913-1916). Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale
Wertethik. Trans. 1973 as Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Val
ues. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, I1.
Scheler, M. (1915). Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg. Verlag der
Weissen Bücher, Leipzig.
Scheler, M. (1915). Zum Phänomen des Tragischen. Trans. 1954 as On the
tragic, in Tragedy: Vision and Form, ed. R.W. Corrigan. San Francisco.
Scheler, M. (1915). “Die Psychologie der sogenannten Rentenhysterie und
der recht Kampf gegen das Übel.” Trans. 1984 as “The Psychology of so-
called compensation hysteria and the real battle against illness.” Journal of
Phenomenological Psychology, 15, 125-143.
Scheler, M. (1915). Versuche einer Philosophie des Lebens: Nietzsche – Dilthey
– Bergson. Republished 1919 in Vom Umsturz der Werte. Neue Geist Ver-
lag, Leipzig.
Scheler, M. (1915). “Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis.” Trans. 1973 as “The
idols of self-knowledge.” In Max Scheler; Selected Philosophical Essays, ed.
D.R. Lachterman. Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
Scheler, M. (1916). “Vom Sinn des Leides.” Trans. 1973 as “The meaning of
suffering.” In Max Scheler, Centennial Essays, ed. M.S. Frings. Martinus
Nijhoff, The Hague.
Scheler, M. (1921). Vom Ewigen im Menschen. Trans. 1960 as The Eternal in
Man. SCM Press, London. (Includes essay on Nature of Philosophy)
Scheler, M. (1923). Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Trans. 1954 as The
Nature of Sympathy. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Scheler, M. (1926). “Erkenntnis und Arbeit.” In Die Wissensformen und die
Gesellschaft. Der Neue-Geist Verlag, Leipzig. (Includes “Metaphysics of
perception.”)
Scheler, M. (1926). Probleme einder Soziologie des Wissens. Trans. 1980 as
Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Scheler, M. (1927). Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Trans. 1961 as
Man’s Place in Nature. Noonday, New York.
Scheler, M. (1927). “Idealismus – Realismus.” Trans. 1973 as “Idealism and
Realism.” In Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical Essays, ed. D.R. Lachter-
man, Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
Scheler, M. (1933). Tod und Fortleben. In Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Band 1.
Der Neue Geist Verlag, Berlin.
Scheler, M. (1933). “Über Scham und Schamgefühl.” Trans. 1987 as “Shame.”
In Max Scheler, Person and Self-value. Three Essays, ed. M.S. Frings. Mar-
tinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
Scheler, M. (1933). “Vorbilder und Führer.” Trans. 1987 as “Exemplars of
Person and Leaders.” In Max Scheler, Person and Self-value. Three Essays,
ed. M.S. Frings. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
Scheler, M. (1933). “Lehre von den drei Tatsachen.” Trans. 1973 as “The The-
ory of the Three Facts.” In Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical Essays, ed.
D.R. Lachterman. Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
Scheler, M. (1933). “Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie.” Trans. 1973
as “Phenomenology and the Theory of Cognition.” In Max Scheler, Selected
Philosophical Essays, ed. D.R. Lachterman. Northwestern University Press,
Evanston.
Scheler, M. (1947). “Metaphysik und Kunst.” Trans. 1974 as “Metaphysics
and Art.” In Max Scheler, Centennial Essays, ed. M.S. Frings. Martinus Nij
hoff, The Hague.
Scheler, M. (1976). “Idealismus und Realismus, V: Das emotionale Real-
itätsproblem.” Trans. 1981 as “Reality and Resistance: On Being and Time,
Section 43.” In Heidegger, The Man and the Thinker, ed. T. Sheehan. Presi-
dent Publishing, Chicago.
Index of key terms
aim, 6, 13, 18, 22, 41, 45, 48, 59, 60, 276, 277, 280, 282, 284, 286, 291,
103, 107, 112, 119, 192, 219, 324, 314, 335, 336, 344, 378, 380-382,
326, 372, 415 388-390, 392, 394, 406, 411
Being-itself (see also Ens a se and Drang (see also life-force and Na-
Supreme Being), 55, 59, 69, 70, ture), 133, 197, 291, 294, 295,
227, 229, 232, 237, 250, 251, 349, 316, 319, 340, 350, 353, 363
356, 357, 367
being-so (Sosein), 78, 79, 87, 95, 99, Ens a se (see also Being-itself and
118-120, 122, 124, 127, 155, 189, Supreme Being), 94, 114, 125,
203, 231, 234, 246, 248, 255, 257, 200, 227, 340, 349, 356, 362, 369,
263, 264, 382, 386, 394, 401, 403, 372, 400, 401, 403, 408, 410-413,
409, 410, 416, 417 419
Eros, 187, 230-241, 245, 246, 248,
cognition, 5, 11, 14, 18-20, 26, 32, 249, 323, 325, 327, 332, 333, 337,
38-41, 44, 55, 66, 68, 77, 95, 339, 342, 351, 352, 355, 357, 359,
124-126, 145, 150, 153, 154, 255, 367, 405, 420
257, 259, 262, 263, 315, 316, 389, essence, 16, 22, 27-29, 33, 36, 37, 51,
390, 409, 410, 412, 413, 416-418, 55, 74, 78, 80-83, 86, 87, 94-98,
422 100, 101, 104-109, 113, 122, 124,
concept, 33, 43, 52, 54, 55, 57-59, 125, 129, 133, 134, 142, 145, 164,
81, 87, 89-92, 97, 98, 109, 118, 167, 184, 186, 201, 213, 215, 218,
151, 154, 157, 184, 186, 188, 191, 230, 232, 234, 237-240, 255, 257,
192, 195, 206, 215, 245, 265, 285, 258, 297, 315, 327, 339, 344,
290, 307, 308, 341, 360, 367, 371, 356, 359, 363, 365, 367, 369-371,
384, 386, 390, 394-396, 398 375-377, 384, 385, 389, 391, 399,
consciousness, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 400, 403, 406, 407, 409, 412, 417,
23, 41, 43, 69, 78, 83, 87, 97, 420
100-103, 108-114, 116, 118-122, existential relativity, 17, 47, 50, 109,
125, 127, 138, 139, 141, 143, 146, 115, 118-123, 201, 257, 295, 316,
148, 149, 156, 160, 165, 166, 173, 317, 330
174, 176, 182, 183, 185-187, 189,
190, 192, 196-199, 202, 203, 205, fantasy, 30-32, 36, 42-47, 66, 115,
209, 211, 222, 223, 228, 229, 231, 133, 149, 266, 267, 270, 273, 277,
240, 242, 248, 258, 266, 269, 270,
278, 286, 321, 325-329, 333, 342, 327, 333, 352, 367, 369, 375, 380,
359, 363, 367 390, 393, 394, 397, 404, 413, 418
Geist, 193, 294, 307, 317, 333, 373, knowledge, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17-22,
405, 421 24-33, 35, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45,
Gestalt (see also ur-phenomenon and 47-51, 56, 60, 65-70, 74, 78-83,
image), 149, 150, 163, 168, 312 87, 88, 90, 92-98, 106, 107,
goal (see also teleology), 37, 45, 59, 109-111, 113, 114, 116-125,
62, 103, 105, 124, 138, 155, 156, 127-129, 132, 133, 135, 139, 140,
179, 200, 210, 219, 220, 223, 224, 144, 146, 151, 152, 160, 165, 170,
234, 241, 251, 257, 299, 323, 324, 173, 175, 176, 185, 189, 195,
332-335, 338, 340, 341, 345, 349, 197, 205, 223, 227, 229, 232,
354, 355, 361, 364, 398, 41 234, 244, 251, 255-259, 261-263,
266, 267, 277, 278, 306, 315, 316,
idea, 24, 29, 33, 37-41, 49, 53, 56, 344, 370-372, 377, 380, 384, 389,
59, 62, 69, 80-82, 86, 87, 90-92, 391-395, 402-404, 407, 409, 411,
94-99, 101-103, 113, 115, 118, 413, 416-418, 421
134, 138, 163, 175, 196, 197, 200,
203, 208, 210, 219, 221, 223, 228, life-force (see also Drang and
230, 237, 241, 244, 249, 250, 252, Nature), 71, 97, 135, 221-227,
256-258, 264, 270, 281, 290, 291, 229-233, 236, 238-243, 246,
314, 328, 329, 331, 332, 334, 248-250, 253, 257-259, 268, 374,
339, 340, 343-345, 349, 351, 354, 388, 393-395, 401-404
355, 358, 360-362, 364, 369, 371,
373-375, 378, 386, 398, 400, 401, mental, 13, 15, 16, 24, 37, 43, 51,
405, 408, 411, 412, 415, 417, 420 61, 68, 73, 78, 80, 81, 96, 97, 100,
image (see also ur-phenomenon and 103, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114,
Gestalt), 37, 38, 44, 45, 58, 67, 116, 124, 128, 130-132, 134, 138,
84-87, 90, 120, 141, 146, 159, 139, 141, 142, 150, 151, 155-157,
165, 166, 178, 188-191, 213, 223, 159-161, 172-174, 176, 184, 185,
226, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237, 239, 187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 196,
240, 246-248, 250, 258, 267, 268, 198-201, 204, 211, 213, 214, 216,
270, 276, 287, 288, 295, 321, 327, 217, 221, 228, 234, 239-241, 243,
342-344, 355, 369, 390, 395, 396, 246, 252, 255, 258, 262, 264, 294,
404, 411, 419 300, 305, 361, 369, 370, 372, 374,
intuition, 13, 16, 22-27, 36-38, 44, 378, 379, 381, 389-392, 398, 402,
45, 47, 48, 73, 84, 85, 88-91, 94, 405, 411, 413, 414, 419
95, 97, 98, 103, 107, 110, 114, mind, 14, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, 32,
118, 119, 121, 124, 126-128, 214, 37, 39, 46, 47, 51, 63, 65, 78-80,
231, 232, 240, 258, 267, 272-274, 89, 95-99, 101-103, 105, 106,
277, 278, 281, 285, 286, 288, 289, 108, 109, 111, 112, 117, 120,
123-127, 129-135, 137-139, 142,
3 Index of Key Terms 425
144, 154-157, 161-163, 174, 184, psyche, 138, 155, 156, 171, 173, 181,
187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195-198, 187, 189, 190, 224, 244, 281, 308
200, 201, 204-206, 209-217, 219, psychic, 41, 46, 51, 53, 60, 92, 103,
221-224, 226, 228-230, 233, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 126,
236-245, 248-250, 252, 253, 255, 130, 134, 135, 142, 143, 146,
257-259, 262, 270, 273, 280, 281, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157-160, 162,
293, 296, 298, 299, 306, 307, 309, 163, 167, 168, 170-191, 193-196,
310, 328, 329, 345, 351, 355, 369, 198-200, 220, 221, 225, 226, 233,
373-375, 379, 380, 389, 395, 397, 237, 281, 282, 295, 298-300,
398, 400-403, 405-407, 409-415, 304-307, 310, 311, 313, 336, 360,
418-420 361, 381, 404, 411, 413, 417, 418
Nature (see also Drang and life- reality, 11-13, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24,
force), 11-13, 17, 19, 20, 22-29, 27-29, 32, 35, 36, 41, 46-55, 67,
32, 36, 37, 40, 41, 45-52, 55-57, 70, 77-83, 87, 88, 95, 99-103, 106,
59-63, 65-71, 77, 81, 83, 86-89, 108, 111, 113, 115, 118-121, 165,
91-93, 95-97, 103-106, 108, 109, 174, 196, 220, 234, 248, 250, 255,
112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 259, 262, 264, 267-270, 273, 277,
124, 131, 132, 137, 139, 141, 142, 280, 282, 285, 291, 310, 324-332,
144, 149, 150, 152-158, 160, 161, 344, 347, 348, 354, 355, 363, 367,
163-168, 170, 172, 175, 180, 181, 370, 372, 373, 380, 381, 387, 394,
183, 185, 187, 194, 200, 201, 203, 395, 397, 403, 408-410, 413, 416,
204, 207-210, 212, 216, 217, 220, 418, 422
223, 225-228, 230-232, 234, 239, Reduction, 36, 37, 61, 67, 79, 80,
243, 248-252, 256-259, 262-281, 82-86, 92, 99-103, 106-113, 261,
284-287, 289, 291-296, 298-301, 330, 371, 397, 402, 403, 409, 410,
304-319, 321, 323-336, 339-346, 419
348-364, 366, 370, 374, 378-381,
383-393, 395-399, 402, 403, 405, Sosein (see also being-so and what-
408, 409, 411, 413, 414, 416-421 ness), 124, 140, 165, 178, 193,
348, 385, 388, 419
person, 12, 15, 16, 51, 56, 73-75, 87, soul, 11, 42, 44-47, 53-55, 67, 68,
102, 103, 111-113, 115, 117, 123, 114, 117-119, 129-135, 137, 138,
124, 132, 138, 141, 142, 156-158, 141-146, 148-152, 154, 156, 157,
160, 161, 172, 174-176, 182, 185, 159, 162, 170, 171, 173, 177,
186, 192, 193, 196-201, 208-210, 179-184, 186, 192, 195-199, 216,
212, 216-219, 227, 228, 237, 240, 225, 229, 232, 233, 242, 245, 247,
245, 246, 250-252, 293, 294, 297, 248, 281, 308-310, 313, 314, 336,
304, 305, 345, 348, 350, 352, 353, 411
357, 361, 366, 370, 377, 381, 390, space, 26, 50, 51, 60, 78, 79, 81, 82,
398, 413-415, 422 84, 86, 100, 106, 108, 152, 154,
personhood, 22, 73, 221, 352-354 156, 164-166, 177, 183, 191,
193, 195, 214, 221, 225, 245, 396, 397, 400, 401, 409, 410,
247, 261-263, 265, 266, 270-291, 412-415, 418, 419, 422
294-300, 304, 307, 310, 319, 320,
326, 327, 334, 342, 359, 371, 375, ur-phenomenon (see also image and
388, 391, 397, 401, 409, 410, Gestalt), 86, 87, 92, 93, 258
413-415
spirit, 19, 31, 33, 35, 42, 44-48, whatness (see also being-so and So
51-56, 63, 65, 67, 70, 72, 217, sein), 43, 80, 82, 83, 95, 100, 101,
219, 221-224, 227, 233, 236, 242, 106, 108-111, 125, 356, 383
244, 245, 248, 251, 253, 264, 280, will, 9, 13-15, 20, 21, 23, 25, 28, 34,
281, 293, 294, 296, 298, 299, 306, 36, 41, 46, 47, 50, 54, 63, 64, 67,
307, 309, 313, 314, 323, 324, 326, 69, 75, 78, 80, 81, 83, 99, 100,
328, 329, 331-335, 337-344, 346, 102, 103, 105, 106, 113, 123,
349-357, 359-367, 380 124, 132, 138, 139, 148, 151, 158,
Supreme Being (see also Ens a se 161, 163, 173, 178, 186, 188-193,
and Being-itself ), 58, 59, 87, 200, 200, 204, 205, 207, 209, 215, 217,
213, 216, 221, 225, 227, 228, 249, 237, 240, 241, 243, 247, 249, 251,
374, 376, 379, 380, 382, 383, 385, 252, 256, 275, 283-286, 290, 291,
391, 419 293-295, 302, 306, 314, 315, 326,
328, 331-334, 337, 339-341, 344,
teleoclinical, 156, 159, 178, 192, 345, 347, 349-352, 355-357, 360,
233, 296, 308, 386 361, 363, 366, 367, 370, 371, 373,
teleology (see also goal), 313, 314, 375, 381, 389, 390, 392-394, 398,
326, 335, 336, 354 401, 404, 409, 412-415
time, 14, 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, 28-30,
50-55, 60, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 75,
78-82, 84, 86, 96, 99-101, 106,
108, 109, 116, 118, 120, 121,
129, 134, 142, 146, 148, 152,
154, 156-158, 160, 161, 163-165,
170, 174, 177, 181-184, 186, 188,
192, 193, 195, 196, 198-200, 207,
211, 213-215, 218-221, 223, 225,
232, 238, 240, 241, 244, 245,
248, 251, 256, 257, 261-263, 265,
266, 270-287, 289-300, 302, 304,
306-310, 314, 317-321, 323-327,
331, 332, 334-336, 338-340,
342, 343, 345-347, 349-352, 355,
357-359, 362-364, 370, 371,
374-379, 383, 385-388, 391, 394,
Index of names
Ach, 151 Condillac, 149
Adler, 189 Croce, 22, 70
Aristotle, 11, 12, 18, 27, 29, 52, 57,
58, 61, 81, 82, 87-89, 98, 127, Dante, 33, 34
129, 131, 133, 143, 164, 279, 280, Darwin, 133, 140, 227, 335
298, 304, 306-309, 312-314, 316, Democritus, 262, 310
332, 341, 345, 358, 360, 370, 377, Descartes, 18, 22, 34, 52, 64, 118,
408 133, 146, 148, 150, 169, 171, 181,
Avenarius, 14, 311 215, 227, 228, 305, 309, 310, 314,
320, 378
Bachofen, 225, 244 Dilthey, 14, 16, 146, 421
Bacon, 14 Dionysius the Areopagite, 23
Becher, 179-181, 313, 314, 317 Driesch, 53, 152, 153, 182, 183, 188,
Bergson, 25, 29, 53, 89, 90, 133, 303, 304, 308, 309, 313, 314, 317,
143, 146, 152-154, 220, 246, 282, 319-321, 325, 340, 341
304, 307, 309, 313, 316, 317, 383, Duhem, 152, 336
402, 421 Duns Scotus, 75
Berkeley, 53, 118, 269, 343 Durkheim, 249
Birnbaum, 190
Boas, 131 Eckermann, 217
Böhme, 220 Eckhart, 220
Boltzmann, 214 Einstein, 41, 144, 152, 215, 283,
Bolzano, 369, 388, 389, 407 284, 289, 291, 298
Brentano, 125, 416 Empedocles, 310
Buddha, 57, 63, 116, 237, 244 Epicurus, 251
Burckhardt, 30 Eucken, 7, 145
Buytendijk, 319 Euripedes, 34
Carnot, 54 Faraday, 291
Cassirer, 21, 250 Fechner, 47, 199, 307, 336
Christ, 23, 237 Feuerbach, 223, 249, 251
Claparède, 269 Fichte, 33, 53, 65, 69, 125, 220, 269
Clark, 281 Fiedler, 30, 39, 40, 42
Clausius, 54 Freud, 145, 189, 190, 225, 237, 246
Cohen, 21, 33, 119, 126, 152
Comte, 16, 251, 311 Galileo, 52, 121, 306
Gelb, 395 87-89, 92, 98, 103, 106, 116,
Germain, 17 118-121, 126, 149, 154, 166, 175,
Goethe, 19, 31, 33, 34, 94, 154, 212, 196, 214, 227-229, 231, 240, 244,
217, 331, 339, 366 256, 262, 265, 270, 272, 274, 278,
Goldstein, 179 281, 289, 292, 300, 314, 315, 327,
Gorgias, 116 380, 384, 386, 399, 414, 418
Katz, 83
Hartley, 150 Kerler, 209
Hartmann, 7, 17, 126, 188, 209, Keynes, 145
211, 220, 258, 276, 282, 295, 314, Klages, 97, 186, 406
320, 330, 332, 333, 339, 347, 357, Klopstock, 238
360, 365, 369, 372, 388, 389 Koehler, 153, 312
Hegel, 17, 22, 25, 31, 33, 53, 65, 94, Koffka, 184, 400
125, 211, 220, 228, 314, 348, 360, Kretschmer, 238
365, 380, 383, 400, 412 Kronecker, 390
Heidegger, 7, 8, 125, 329, 412, 422 Kulpe, 148
Heisenberg, 378
Helmholtz, 54, 86, 87 Lamarck, 133, 134, 313
Henderson, 312 Lamettrie, 310
Heraclitus, 31, 400 Lange, 29, 33
Herbart, 180, 389 Lask, 89
Hering, 83, 182 Leibniz, 17, 58, 59, 63, 64, 104, 109,
Hertz, 191 126, 133, 160, 195, 221, 222, 265,
Heyer, 186 281, 290, 295, 309
Hillel, 210, 218 Leonardo, 52
Hobbes, 64, 75, 310 Le Roy, 152
Homer, 232 Leucippus, 310
Hume, 27, 43, 53, 91, 149, 197 Linke, 369
Husserl, 7, 8, 12, 14, 27, 79-82, 87, Locke, 18, 19
89, 90, 99, 102, 103, 108, 109, Lodge, 313
111, 112, 119, 125, 258, 329, 369, Lotze, 19, 83, 140, 149, 181, 184,
371, 388-390, 397, 405-407, 418 185, 309, 310, 312, 389
Huygens, 52
Mach, 14, 149, 152, 290, 311
Jaensch, 86, 149 Machiavelli, 210
James, 126, 180, 339 Malebranche, 25, 94, 281, 309, 314,
Jaspers, 16, 17 407
Joule, 54 Marty, 279
Jung, 225, 238 Marx, 53, 54, 63, 249, 400
Meinong, 182, 388
Kant, 14, 18, 20-23, 29, 30, 33, 34, Mendel, 193, 304
47, 48, 53, 54, 60, 68, 69, 75, 79, Meyer, 54
3 Index of Names 429
Meyerson, 152 Schlick, 119, 126, 152, 182-185,
Michelson, 283 285
Mill, 16, 382 Schneider, 190
Schopenhauer, 13, 23-25, 27, 29, 30,
Nadler, 244 34, 41, 53, 57, 100, 136, 194, 201,
Napoleon, 74, 380 231, 238, 240, 241, 244, 246, 305,
Natorp, 21, 87, 126, 152 314, 332, 339, 360, 365, 402, 410
Newton, 20, 52, 121, 149, 262, 281, Schultz, 312
285, 327, 409 Schwarz, 220
Nicholas de Cusa, 25 Semon, 180
Nietzsche, 7, 17, 29-31, 53, 146, Shaw, 339
208, 209, 244, 246, 377, 421 Simmel, 16, 17, 21, 53, 145, 146
Novalis, 29 Sophocles, 34
Spencer, 79, 116, 131, 133, 137, 311
Ostwald, 53, 54, 311 Spengler, 14
Spinoza, 15, 18, 19, 24, 27, 34, 58,
Palagyi, 289 59, 67, 68, 95, 124, 125, 143, 148,
Pascal, 217, 228 201, 206, 211, 213, 220, 281, 347,
Pavlov, 146 348, 365, 410
Pfänder, 186 St. Augustine, 25, 58, 66, 67, 280
Planck, 41, 144, 152, 184, 215, 321 St. Paul, 72, 206
Plato, 15, 27, 29, 34, 52, 56-58, 62, St. Thomas Aquinas, 18, 34, 62,
67, 68, 81, 82, 87, 89, 98, 129, 143, 164, 227, 305, 309, 411
143, 244, 306, 372, 408, 411 Stern, 309
Plotinus, 23, 25, 27, 30, 133 Strich, 244
Poincaré, 31, 41, 285 Stumpf, 220
Priestley, 150
Proclus, 27 Thomas à Kempis, 23
Przywara, 64, 66 Tolstoy, 339
Pythagorans, 41, 52
Vaihinger, 30, 32
Rathenau, 8, 220 Von Ehrenfels, 339
Reichenbach, 152 Von Hartmann, 188, 211, 220, 276,
Rickert, 12, 68, 69, 71, 74, 119, 146, 295, 314, 320, 347
169, 369, 381, 389, 406 Von Humboldt, 203
Riehl, 152 Von Kries, 184
Schelling, 20, 25, 29, 31, 33, 34, 220, Watson, 300
225, 365 Weber, 16, 70, 71, 257, 339
Schilder, 189, 194 Weismann, 131, 134
Schiller, 29, 33, 34, 234 Wells, 220, 339
Wertheimer, 153, 179, 184
Wiener, 295
Windelband, 12, 68, 71
Wolff, 23, 58, 59
Wundt, 12, 75, 133, 134, 149, 172,
184, 185, 313
Zeno, 289
Ziegler, 209, 220

(Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 62) Max Scheler, John Cutting (Translator) - On The Constitution of The Human Being - From The Posthumous Works, Volumes 11 & 12-Marquette University Press (2008)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 62) Max Scheler, John Cutting (Translator) - On The Constitution of The Human Being - From The Posthumous Works, Volumes 11 & 12-Marquette University Press (2008)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

the constitution of

the human being

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

© 2008 Marquette University Press

Translator’s Introduction ........................................................................ 7

1. The Essential Theory and Typology of Metaphysical Systems

2. My Theory of the Cognitive and Methodological

3. The Constitution of the Human Being . .......................................129

4. The Metaphysics of the Human Being .........................................203

5. The Metaphysics of Cognition . .....................................................255

6. The Metasciences . ...........................................................................261

7. Theory of the Causes of Everything ..............................................323

8. Supplementary Remarks . ...............................................................369

Index of Key Terms..............................................................................423

Metaphysics and Mysticism

Metaphysics and Art

Metaphysics, Science, and

III Ontology of essences

Metaphysics as an integration of these three

Metaphysics and Knowledge of Values,

history is something that always contains something good about it,

Essence, Ur-phenomenon and Idea,

Urphenomenon as original form

II. What sorts of new givennesses are

III. On the becoming immanent of references

IV. Does the reduction lead to

I. The Problem of the Spheres of

II. Absolute sphere and world –

Existential Relativity inside the Spheres

1. Self-givenness and evidence

remembering, perceiving one

A Revolution in Human Beings.

Lecture on Life and Soul

Perception Functional unity of the build-up of this gastric juice

An undivided life event now operates in the place of two completely

2. The New Experimental Psychology

3. Transformation of the Scientific

4. Mind and Life and the New Dualism

[See diagram, next page.]

1) What is physical and what is world generally consist of the same

160 The Constitution of the Human Being

Mental acts Rules of ‘being’

Psychic Physiological lawfulness

6. The Isomorphic Analogy of Mind

Essential Ontology of the Human

1. Material stimulus 1. Material sphere. Brain

The lawful unity of this effective exchange, whose manifestations are

Life Environment; Sensory Motor

b) Life’s Ways of Appearing

The Distinction between the Spheres

The overall essential ontological relationship

Similarities and Dissimilarities between

Qualitative and Quantitative

If X is a function of (a) and X is also a function of (b), then instead

Positive appearances of the

Life centre (temporal in World (intermediate zone)

The Core Difference

Matter and Self [Stoff und Ich]

Is there a Substantial Soul?

Human Being, Nature and God:

On the History of Human Metaphysical

Notes on Myth (1927)

The Act of the Coming-to-be of a