The Essential Colin Wilson (17 page)

Bishop Berkeley went a step further. Descartes had already, said that we can only know the physical world through the mind. Berkeley asked why, in that case, should we bother to assume that the physical world exists at all? He argues that all the qualities of objects are supplied by the mind. Jam is not really sweet; it only produces a sensation of sweetness; if a man burns the taste buds off his tongue with caustic soda, jam will taste like pork dripping. The sky is not really blue; it only produces a sensation of blueness on the optic nerve. Berkeley ends by suggesting that objects only exist when we are looking at them—or at least, they would, if it were not for God, who is everywhere and is always looking at everything.

It can be seen that, in this final conclusion, Berkeley is as inconsistent as the rest. David Hume, twenty-six years younger than Berkeley, made the usual attempt to push these conclusions to the absurd limit of consistency. He did this by blending together the essence of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley. He began with Descartes' principle of doubting everything, then proceeded to agree with Locke and Berkeley that all knowledge is derived from experience, and that there are no general ideas. Next he denied the 'self' (i.e., the soul), declaring that consciousness is just a flow of perceptions, and that men are bundles of perceptions (psychologically speaking). Finally, he went further than any previous philosopher and denied that cause and effect have any necessary connection. 1 + 1 = 2 may be a valid example of cause and effect, but in nature, 'every effect is a distinct event from its cause', and 'It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause'.

After Hume, philosophy faced a blank wall. Descartes at least had left a basis for certainty: 'I think, therefore I am.' Hume replied: "That does not prove that you exist at all.' Berkeley had got rid of the outside world; now Hume got rid of the mind as well. Reason had proved to be a kind of forest fire that ended by consuming everything. Descartes' principle of doubt left nothing standing.

The task of rescuing philosophy from Hume's total scepticism was undertaken by Kant. Kant, like all the rest, accepted Descartes' premise, and followed roughly the same line of reason as Berkeley and Hume. The main problem, as Kant saw it, was to re-establish Plato's idea that all knowledge can be found
inside
man—not just mathematical knowledge. Kant's aim was excellent, but his means were not entirely honest. And his first step seems to be only another concession to Locke and Hume. Nobody had ever doubted that 1 + 1 = 2 is a 'necessary' truth, as opposed to a statement like 'It is snowing because it is cold', which is logical enough, but may not be true. Kant declared that 5 + 7 = 12 is no more 'necessary' than the connection of cause and effect, because the idea of 12 is not 'contained' in the idea of 5 + 7. At first sight, it may seem that Kant was only giving away more ground to Hume. But this was essential to his plan, for he goes on to propose a theory of the mind which is the reverse of Hume's. For Hume, the mind is almost nothing, a machine set going by perceptions. For Kant, the mind is everything. For not only does the mind embellish nature with colours and textures and smells—not to mention cause and effect—but it also adds space and time. Kant agrees with Descartes that we can never know the external world, but only our impressions of it. In that case, what is the external world like? We can never know. The mind adds practically everything to what we perceive; these additions are divided into twelve categories, which include colour, shape, size, smell and causality. The only way we can understand our impressions is to sort them out into these categories, and arrange them tidily in the order of space and time. The categories are like a pair of coloured spectacles that we can never remove; we can never hope to see the
Ding an sich
, things as they really are. Reality remains unknowable.

It has been pointed out that Kant failed to follow his arguments to their extremes, like Descartes and Berkeley. For why should we bother to postulate a 'reality' out there, if the mind can do so much? Worse still, if my mind can create the whole world, how do I know that it is not also creating other people, and that I am not the only person in the universe? But Kant slips past these objections, and proceeds quickly to less bewildering matters. If the mind creates the world (and we can now see why Kant asserted that 1 + 1 = 2 is not a 'necessary' truth), then we can no longer dismiss our moral and religious feelings as delusions simply because they are in the mind. In one sweep, Kant had managed to reinstate religion.

The meaning of Kant's achievement can be seen if we view it in historical perspective—and also its inevitability. Galileo had started the process when he talked about primary and secondary qualities. Shape and size and mass are primary qualities which really belong to nature; secondary qualities, such as colour, texture, smell, may be added by the mind. Berkeley went on to argue that even the primary qualities are added by the mind, because a square seen from an odd angle may appear to be a parallelogram. But still, space and time remained stubbornly 'out there'. Kant simply took space and time into the mind. The 'out there' vanished altogether, and everything was simple again—except that Kant's conclusions seemed a dead end. For where could philosophy go from there?

It seems astounding that no eminent thinker simply challenged the premises of Descartes' philosophy—total doubt—or felt intuitively that reason, applied in this sweeping way to the living world, was only producing destruction. In fact, one friend of Kant's
did
feel this, but he was unfortunately not an eminent thinker or a man of influence. This was J. G. Hamann, a passionately convinced Christian, who believed that Kant was leading philosophy into a cul-de-sac. Hamann asserted that the world is far too complex to submit to such clumsy reason, and that to try to apply scientific reason to the human situation is like using a fishing net as a tea strainer. Kant thought Hamann a crank and a dogmatist, and made no attempts to understand his objections. Kant can hardly be blamed; although Hamann published several books about his ideas, he was no thinker; his reaction was instinctive, and badly expressed.

The importance of Hamann, in the present context, is the influence he exerted on a young Danish thinker of the nineteenth century, Søren Kierkegaard, who is generally regarded as the founder of existentialism. This distinction should perhaps go to Hamann.

But there is yet another thinker whose work is, in many respects, an anticipation of existentialism—a man who usually receives only brief notice in the histories of philosophy. And yet, it might be contended, he produced some of the most exciting ideas of the nineteenth-century. This is Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Kant's disciple and thirty-eight years his junior. Fichte accepted completely Kant's view that the mind creates all the laws we know—the laws of nature, the laws of reason and logic. It is, of course, almost impossible for philosophy to go further in this direction. But Kant had proceeded from his examination of pure reason to the study of practical affairs, and concluded that man possesses free will which is more important than any moral laws. Only common sense and social necessity bid us to do unto others as we would have them do to us. (This is the famous 'categorical imperative'.) It was this aspect of Kant that struck Fichte as a way out of absolute doubt and despair. In one of his best books,
The Vocation of Man
(1800), Fichte states the whole problem with a splendid clarity worthy of Nietzsche, It is in three books. The first shows Fichte looking at the universe as a philosopher, and being overwhelmed by the problem of 'values in a universe of chance' (to use Pierce's phrase). Man thinks he is free, but as soon as he examines the problem, he finds that his freedom is an illusion. He can do nothing without a 'reason' from outside; he is a mere penny in the slot machine, and it is nature that puts in the pennies. In the second book, a spirit appears to him (probably inspired by Goethe's
Faust,
of which the first fragment had been published a few years before) and expounds to him Kant's philosophy—that nature itself is a figment of his brain; the mind creates everything, including the 'laws of nature'. This plunges the philosopher into even deeper despair. What is to prevent him from falling into total solipsism—believing that he is the only person in the universe?[1] 'You yourself have the answer to that' says the spirit, and disappears. And in the third book, Fichte addresses himself, and recognizes that, indeed, he
does
hold the answer. The answer—which is of considerable importance for existentialism—is that philosophers make the mistake of supposing that their only task is
to know
the universe; but just as important as knowing is
doing
. 'Not for idle contemplation of yourself are you here, not for brooding over devout sensations—no, for action you are here; action, and action alone, determines your worth.'

At first, this might sound a somewhat disappointing conclusion. It is important to grasp the spirit behind it. Descartes sat in his armchair and wondered what he could know. Philosophy accepted his way of propounding the question, and stayed in its armchair, until Hume managed to doubt the whole world out of existence. Then came Kant, and reversed the procedure. The mind, he said, creates the universe and its laws. True, there is an unknowable reality 'out there'—the
noumena
, but it is unknowable precisely because it does not need to obey our laws, and so cannot enter our perceptions, or even our reason. Now Fichte plunged into the next stage. Why bother about the
noumena
? he asked; let us forget about it.
What is left is Man in a universe of his own creating
. Here a minor problem arises. Can I 'create' the universe, and yet not be aware that I am doing so? Well, Kant said so, and his arguments sound convincing. So there must be
two
'me's'. One of them is Descartes' 'I think', which sits in its armchair. And plainly, there is a subconscious 'me' that does the work of creating—behind the back, as it were, of the other 'me'.

The full implication of Fichte's argument can now be seen. In Book One, the philosopher despaired because it seemed that he had no free will, only consciousness. In Book Two, the spirit showed him that what he thought was 'implacable nature' was actually his subconscious 'I' busily creating the world and
its
laws. This is a situation rather like the one in Chesterton's
The Man Who Was Thursday
where the detective who is spying on the anarchists finally discovers that all the anarchists are detectives who think they are spying on anarchists. The enemies are friends after all. A certain problem remains, as Chesterton saw. Who created the confusion? Who is responsible for the practical joke? Fichte is not concerned about this; he is too delighted by the realization that the enemy has turned out to be a friend. Man can stop worrying. We are cautious animals who basically distrust the world, and the philosopher is perhaps the most cautious of all. That is why Descartes decided to sit in an armchair and think. Now we have thought ourselves beyond mistrust we can act in the certainty that it will turn out all right.

Fichte had stumbled upon the most important single insight of the nineteenth century. But he was not aware of it. He had solved the basic problem of Cartesian philosophy—or rather, pointed out that Kant had solved it. But no one noticed his solution, and it has gone on troubling philosophy down to our own day. In a fundamental sense, Fichte had seen deeper than his master (who later repudiated Fichte). For Kant only believed that he had resolved the Cartesian dualism by reducing everything to mind. (And in fact, Kant really kept the dualism, for he kept the
noumena
.
)
Fichte perceived that he had done something more momentous: destroyed the dualism
and replaced it with a tri-alism.
Instead of the contemplating mind ('I think') looking out at alien nature, there is a far more interesting situation. There are two 'I's; one is the 'I think', and the other the 'transcendental ego', the ego behind the scenes, the cinema projectionist who is projecting 'nature' out there. This metaphor of the cinema describes the situation precisely. For if you are sitting in a cinema watching the screen, you assume that what you are watching is happening in front of you. But in a far more fundamental sense,
it is happening behind you
, in the projection room. If the film breaks, or the projectionist decides to go home, the screen will go blank. Descartes was only aware of the 'I' sitting in the cinema; Fichte pointed out that there is another 'I' in the projection room.

The left side of the mind doesn't know what the right side is doing.

It cannot be said that Fichte developed this insight in any important way. If his inspiration had held out, he might have gone on to ask: 'How can the "I" sitting in the cinema find out more about the "I" in the projection room?' This question might have led him to create the science of phenomenology a century before Husserl. As it was, Fichte only went on to anticipate the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre; for he went on to declare that philosophy is incomplete unless it leads to action, to commitment. (He was also a strong influence on the pragmatists.) Like Sartre, Fichte allowed philosophy to lead him into politics. He roused German youth with his
Addresses to the German Nation
, an attempt to incite resistance to Napoleon, and never afterwards retreated from his conviction that the most important thing about philosophy is its ethical and political consequences, which should lead to social reform. Because of the
Addresses
, he is now largely regarded as a kind of proto-Nazi; while his philosophy of the Ego is often interpreted as a mere anticipation of Nietzsche.

On the whole, one cannot be surprised that Fichte failed to grasp the meaning of his own thought. He swallowed Kant lock, stock and barrel—if we except rejection of the
noumena—
and consequently believed that there is nothing 'out there'. He failed to see that this is a self-contradiction; for even in our metaphor of the cinema, there is at least a screen 'out there'. Simply to posit an 'out there' is to posit a third member of the tri-ality.