The Knowledge Of The Ideas

The intellect, which has hitherto only been considered in its original and natural condition of servitude under the will, appears in the third book in its deliverance from that bondage; with regard to which, however, it must at once be observed that we have not to do here with a lasting emancipation, but only with a brief hour of rest, an exceptional and indeed only momentary release from the service of the will. As this subject has been treated with sufficient fulness in the first volume, I have here only to add a few supplementary remarks.

As, then, was there explained, the intellect in its activity in the service of the will, thus in its natural function, knows only the mere relations of things; primarily to the will itself, to which it belongs, whereby they become motives of the will; but then also, just for the sake of the completeness of this knowledge, the rela- tions of things to each other. This last knowledge first appears in some extent and importance in the human intellect; in the case of the brutes, on the other hand, even where the intellect is consid- erably developed, only within very narrow limits. Clearly even the apprehension of the relations which things have to each other only takes place, indirectly, in the service of the will. It therefore[122] forms the transition to the purely objective knowledge, which is entirely independent of the will; it is scientific knowledge, the latter is artistic knowledge.

If many and various relations of an object are immediately apprehended, from these the peculiar and proper nature of the object appears ever more distinctly, and gradually constructs itself out of mere relations: although it itself is entirely different from them. In this mode of apprehension the subjection of the intellect to the will at once becomes ever more indirect and less. If the intellect has strength enough to gain the preponderance, and let go altogether the relations of things to the will, in order to apprehend, instead of them, the purely objective nature of a phenomenon, which expresses itself through all relations, it also forsakes, along with the service of the will, the apprehension of mere relations, and thereby really also that of the individual thing as such. It then moves freely, no longer belonging to a will. In the individual thing it knows only the essential, and therefore its whole species; consequently it now has for its object the Ideas, in my sense, which agrees with the original, Platonic meaning of this grossly misused word; thus the permanent, unchanging forms, independent of the temporal existence of the individuals, the species rerum, which really constitute what is purely objective in the phenomena.

An Idea so apprehended is not yet indeed the essence of the thing in itself, just because it has sprung from knowledge of mere relations; yet, as the result of the sum of all the relations, it is the peculiar character of the thing, and thereby the complete expression of the essence which exhibits itself as an object of perception, comprehended, not in relation to an individual will, but as it expresses itself spontaneously, whereby indeed it determines all its relations, which till then alone were known. The Idea is the root point of all these relations, and thereby the complete and perfect phenomenon, or, as I have expressed it in the text, the [123] adequate objectivity of the will at this grade of its manifestation. Form and colour, indeed, which in the apprehension of the Idea by perception are what is immediate, belong at bottom not to the Idea itself, but are merely the medium of its expression; for, strictly speaking, space is as foreign to it as time. In this sense the Neo-Platonist Olympiodorus already says in his commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades (Kreuzer’s edition of Proclus and Olympi- odorus, vol. ii. p. 82): “ƒø μπ¥ø¬ ºμƒ±¥μ¥…∫μ ºμΩ ƒ∑¬ ºø¡∆∑¬ ƒ√ Qª√ ±ºμ¡μ¬ ¥μ øΩ ºμƒμª±≤μΩ μæ ±≈ƒ∑¬ ƒø≈ ¥μ±√ƒ±ƒø≈:” i.e., the Idea, in itself unextended, imparted certainly the form to the matter, but first assumed extension from it.

Thus, as was said, the Ideas reveal not the thing in itself, but only the objective character of things, thus still only the phenomenon; and we would not even understand this character if the inner nature of things were not otherwise known to us at least obscurely and in feeling. This nature itself cannot be understood from the Ideas, nor in general through any merely objective knowledge; therefore it would remain an eternal secret if we were not able to approach it from an entirely different side. Only because every knowing being is also an individual, and thereby a part of nature, does the approach to the inner being of nature stand open to him in his own self-consciousness, where, as we have found, it makes itself known in the most immediate manner as will.

Now what the Platonic Idea is, regarded as a merely objective image, mere form, and thereby lifted out of time and all rela- tions—that, taken empirically and in time, is the species or kind. This, then, is the empirical correlative of the Idea. The Idea is properly eternal, but the species is of endless duration, although its appearance upon one planet may become extinct. Even the names of the two pass over into each other: π¥μ±, μπ¥ø¬, species, kind. The Idea is the species, but not the genus: therefore the species are the work of nature, the genera the work of man; they are mere conceptions. There are species naturales, but[124] only genera logica. Of manufactured articles there are no Ideas, but only conceptions; thus genera logica, and their subordinate classes are species logicæ. To what is said in this reference in vol. i. § 41, I will add here that Aristotle also (Metaph. i. 9 and xiii. 5) says that the Platonists admitted no ideas of manufactured articles: “AπøΩ øπ∫π±, ∫±π ¥±∫ƒ≈ªπø¬, aΩ ø≈ ∆±√πΩ μπΩ±π μπ¥∑” (Ut domus et annulus, quorum ideas dari negant). With which compare the Scholiast, p. 562, 563 of the Berlin quarto edition. Aristotle further says (Metaph. xi. 3): “±ªª μπ¿μ¡ (Supple., μπ¥√ μ√ƒπ) μ¿π ƒ…Ω ∆≈√μπ (μ√ƒπ) ¥πø ¥∑ ø≈ ∫±∫…¬ A †ª±ƒ…Ω μ∆∑, Aƒπ μπ¥∑ μ√ƒπ A¿ø√± ∆≈√μπ” (Si quidem ideæ sunt, in iis sunt, quæ natura fiunt: propter quod non male Plato dixit, quod species Chapter XXIX. On The Knowledge Of The Ideas. 123 eorum sunt, quæ natura sunt). On which the Scholiast remarks, p. 800: “∫±π ƒø≈ƒø ±¡μ√∫μπ ∫±π ±≈ƒøπ¬ ƒøπ¬ ƒ±¬ π¥μ±¬ ∏μºμΩøπ¬; ƒ…Ω ≥±¡ Q¿ø ƒμ«Ω∑¬ ≥πΩøºμΩ…Ω π¥μ±¬ μπΩ±π ø≈∫ μªμ≥øΩ, ±ªª± ƒ…Ω Q¿ø ∆≈√μ…¬” (Hoc etiam ipsis ideas statuentibus placet: non enim arte factorum ideas dari ajebant, sed natura procrea- torum). For the rest, the doctrine of Ideas originated with the Pythagoreans, unless we distrust the assertion of Plutarch in the book, De placitis philosophorum, L. i. c. 3. The individual is rooted in the species, and time in eternity. And as every individual is so only because it has the nature of its species in itself, so also it has only temporal existence because it is in eternity. In the following book a special chapter is devoted to the life of the species.

In § 49 of the first volume I have sufficiently brought out the difference between the Idea and the conception. Their resem- blance, on the other hand, rests upon the following ground: The original and essential unity of an Idea becomes broken up into the multiplicity of individual things through the perception of the knowing individual, which is subject to sensuous and cerebral conditions. But that unity is then restored through the reflection of the reason, yet only in abstracto, as a concept, universale, which indeed is equal to the Idea in extension, but has assumed [125] quite a different form, and has thereby lost its perceptible nature, and with this its thorough determinateness. In this sense (but in no other) we might, in the language of the Scholastics, describe the Ideas as universalia ante rem, the conceptions as universalia post rem. Between the two stand the individual things, the knowledge of which is possessed also by the brutes. Without doubt the realism of the Scholastics arose from the confusion of the Platonic Ideas, to which, since they are also the species, an objective real being can certainly be attributed, with the mere concepts to which the Realists now wished to attribute such a being, and thereby called forth the victorious opposition of Nominalism.