Philosophy of the Unconscious Read online

  The International Library of Philosophy

  PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

  Founded by C. K. Ogden

  PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

  Speculative Results according to the Inductive Method of Physical Science

  EDUARD VON HARTMANN

  Preface by C K Ogden

  First published in 1931 by

  Routledge, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd

  Published 2014 by Routledge

  2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

  711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

  Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

  © 1931 Eduard von Hartmann, Translated by William Chatterton Coupland

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in the International Library of Philosophy. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

  These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases the condition of these originals is not perfect. The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be apparent in reprints thereof.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 13: 978-0-415-22556-4 (hbk)

  ISBN 13: 978-0-415-61386-6 (pbk)

  Authorized Translation by

  WILLIAM CHATTERTON COUPLAND

  M.A., B.SC.

  EDUARD VON HARTMANN

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE. BY C. K. OGDEN

  EXTRACTS FROM THE AUTHOR’S PREFACES TO THE SEVENTH, EIGHTH, AND NINTH EDITIONS

  I

  INTRODUCTORY.

  I.

  GENERAL PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

  (a) OBJECT OF THE WORK

  (b) METHOD OF RESEARCH AND MODE OF EXPOSITION

  (c) PREDECESSORS IN RESPECT OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

  II.

  HOW DO WE COME TO ASSUME AN AIM IN NATURE?

  (A) THE MANIFESTATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE.

  I.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS WILL IN THE INDEPENDENT FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD AND GANGLIA

  II.

  UNCONSCIOUS IDEATION IN THE EXECUTION OF VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT

  III.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INSTINCT

  IV.

  THE UNION OF WILL AND IDEA

  V.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN REFLEX ACTIONS

  VI.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE REPARATIVE POWER OF NATURE

  VII.

  THE INDIRECT INFLUENCE ON ORGANIC FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIOUS PSYCHICAL ACTIVITY

  (1.) THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONSCIOUS WILL

  (2.) THE INFLUENCE OF CONSCIOUS IDEATION

  VIII.

  THE PLASTIC ENERGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

  (B) THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE HUMAN MIND.

  I.

  INSTINCT IN THE HUMAN MIND

  II.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN SEXUAL LOVE

  III.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN FEELING

  IV.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN CHARACTER AND MORALITY

  V.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ÆSTHETIC JUDGMENT AND IN ARTISTIC PRODUCTION

  VI.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

  VII.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THOUGHT

  VIII.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ORIGIN OF SENSE-PERCEPTION

  IX.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MYSTICISM

  II

  X.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN HISTORY

  XI.

  THE VALUE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS AND OF CONSCIOUSNESS FOR HUMAN LIFE

  (C) METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

  I.

  THE DIFFERENTIÆ OF CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL ACTIVITY AND THE UNITY OF WILL AND IDEA IN THE UNCONSCIOUS

  II.

  BRAIN AND GANGLIA AS CONDITIONS OF ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS

  III.

  THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  (1.) THE BECOMING CONSCIOUS OF THE IDEA

  (2.) THE BECOMING CONSCIOUS OF PAIN AND PLEASURE

  (3.) THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF THE WILL

  (4.) CONSCIOUSNESS HAS NO DEGREES

  (5.) THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  IV.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM

  (1.) THE UNCONSCIOUS PSYCHICAL ACTIVITY OF PLANTS

  (2.) CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE PLANT

  V.

  MATTER AS WILL AND IDEA

  VI.

  THE CONCEPTION OF INDIVIDUALITY

  VII.

  THE ALL-ONENESS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

  VIII.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE GOD OF THEISM

  IX.

  THE ESSENTIAL NOTION OF GENERATION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE UNIVERSALITY AND UNITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

  X.

  THE ASCENDING EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC LIFE ON THE EARTH

  XI.

  INDIVIDUATION

  (1.) POSSIBILITY AND MANNER OF EFFECTING INDIVIDUATION

  (2.) INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER

  XII.

  THE SUPREME WISDOM OF THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE PERFECTION OF THE WORLD

  III

  XIII.

  THE IRRATIONALITY OF VOLITION AND THE MISERY OF EXISTENCE

  NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

  First Stage OF THE ILLUSION: HAPPINESS IS CONSIDERED AS HAVING BEEN ACTUALLY ATTAINED AT THE PRESENT STAGE OF THE WORLD’S DEVELOPMENT, ACCORDINGLY ATTAINABLE BY THE INDIVIDUAL OF TO-DAY IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE (ANCIENT WORLD—CHILDHOOD)

  (1.) CRITICISM OF SCHOPENHAUER’S THEORY OF THE NEGATIVE CHARACTER OF PLEASURE

  (2.) HEALTH, YOUTH, FREEDOM, AND A COMPETENCE AS CONDITIONS OF THE ZERO-POINT OF FEELING AND CONTENTMENT

  (3.) HUNGER AND LOVE

  (4.) COMPASSION, FRIENDSHIP, AND DOMESTIC FELICITY

  (5) VANITY, SENSE OF HONOUR, AMBITION, LUST OF FAME AND POWER

  (6.) RELIGIOUS EDIFICATION

  (7.) IMMORALITY

  (8.) SCIENTIFIC AND ART-ENJOYMENT

  (9.) SLEEP AND DREAMS

  (10.) THE ACQUISITIVE INSTINCT AND COMFORT

  (11.) ENVY, CHAGRIN, REPENTANCE, ETC.

  (12.) HOPE

  (13.) RESUMÉ

  Second Stage OF THE ILLUSION: HAPPINESS IS CONCEIVED ATTAINABLE BY THE INDIVIDUAL IN A TRANSCENDENT LIFE AFTER DEATH (MIDDLE AGE—YOUTH)

  Third Stage OF THE ILLUSION: HAPPINESS RELEGATED TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD (MODERN TIMES—MANHOOD). CONCLUSION (OLD AGE)

  XIV.

  THE GOAL OF EVOLUTION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (TRANSITION TO PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY)

  XV.

  THE ULTIMATE PRINCIPLES

  (1.) RETROSPECT OF EARLIER PHILOSOPHIES

  (2.) THE WILL

  (3.) THE PRESENTATION OR IDEA

  (4.) THE IDENTICAL SUBSTANCE OF BOTH ATTRIBUTES

  (5.) THE POSSIBILITY OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

  APPENDIX.

  THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVE-CENTRES

  (1.) INTRODUCTION

  (2.) NERVE-FIBRE AND GANGLION-CELL

  (3.) THE SPINAL CORD

  (4
.) THE INNER PSYCHICAL ASPECT OF THE REFLEX PROCESS

  (5.) THE TELEOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF THE REFLEX FUNCTION

  (6.) THE FOUR CHIEF GRADES OF NERVE CENTRES

  (7.) THE MORPHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PARTS OF THE BRAIN

  (8.) THE CENTRES OF THE SPACE-SENSES

  (9.) THE CEREBELLUM

  (10.) THE FORE-BRAIN

  (11.) THE CO-OPERATION AND SUBORDINATION OF THE NERVE-CENTRES

  (12.) ORGANISM AND SOUL

  ADDENDA

  INDEX

  PREFACE.

  THE inclusion of “The Philosophy of the Unconscious” in the International Library of Psychology is justified on many grounds. The English translation has been out of print for some years, but the demand continues, and the re-issue in 1924 of Lange’s “History of Materialism” established a precedent which has led to the hope that other standard treatises of the past may in due course again be made available in convenient form.

  The original of the present work first appeared in November 1868, when its author, who died in 1906, was in his twenty-seventh year. The translation, made from the ninth German Edition, is dated 1884, ten years before the publication of Freud’s first statement of the theory from which Psycho-analysis was subsequently developed. The latest German Edition published during the author’s lifetime was the eleventh (1904), the twelfth being a reissue without alteration.

  Interest in Hartmann’s conception of the Unconscious until the beginning of the present century was primarily metaphysical; his treatise was merely the first, and most significant, of the thirty volumes which set forth his “system.” Only recently has the controversy as to the place of the Unconscious in psychological theory become acute, and to-day the pages which bear directly on psychology will probably make a wider appeal than those which extend the scope of the inquiry to the nature and origin of the Universe.1

  The translator, who occasionally adheres more closely to the idiom of the original than modern usage might sanction, quotes his master as follows: “This work is not the product of reflection and maturity, but the bold experiment of juvenile talent presenting all the defects and qualities of the work of youth. Fifteen years have passed since the manuscript first went to press, and I should conceive many things differently to-day.” Hence the Appendix and supplementary notes which the reviewer is naively requested to bear in mind “when exercising his critical function”; for “that the work is open to criticism of various kinds the present translator does not for a moment doubt.”

  The doctrine of the Unconscious thus first came into prominence, like the doctrine of Evolution, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Hartmann’s first edition appeared ten years after Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and subsequent controversy in both fields has been related primarily to these works rather than to the suggestions and speculations of their predecessors. The Freudian emphasis on determinism and wish-fulfilment takes us back, it is true, to the contention of Leibnitz that “the error of abstract determinism arises from neglect of subconscious perceptions and appetitions,” and to Schopenhauer’s view of the active Will (as taking the place of Kant’s “thing-in-itself” 2) as unconscious—“for consciousness is conditioned by the intellect, and the intellect is a mere accident of our being.” Similarly, the revisionist theories of evolution refer us back to Mendel and Lamarck. But if to Darwin must go the credit of first focussing the attention of the world on an Idea, even were science to retain nothing of his specific contribution, an analogous historical position may be claimed for Eduard von Hartmann.

  From the historical standpoint, no doubt, an adumbration of the Unconscious is to be detected in any early treatment of the Dream; and it was the Cartesian advocacy of innate ideas which led to the Locke-Leibnitz duel and the Leibnitzian argument for the formation of the Unconscious from a multitude of “petites perceptions.” 1 Nor must the influence of the Herbartian school, with its educational interest in the “apperception mass,”2 be overlooked; though neither Herbart nor Beneke, who also made considerable use of the notion of unconscious “traces,” seems to have had any great influence on Hartmann’s formulation. Hartmann’s own view of his relation to Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer is fully set forth in his work,3 and for English readers particular interest attaches to his discussion of the physiological theories of Maudsley, whose influence on the French school represented by Ribot and Paulhan was also considerable in the ’eighties.4

  For over fifty years, however, Hartmann’s three volumes have stood on the shelves of our libraries, and the English translation itself, like that of Lange’s “History of Materialism,” is a classic which the student has a right to expect in the form in which it was known to his spiritual pastors and masters for nearly three generations—with the removal only of a few obvious blemishes.

  In this form it has been mined and re-mined, sometimes with specific acknowledgment, more often, it would appear, by the Unconscious; and, for some decades still, those who have never made the acquaintance of the original are likely to find it not less stimulating, if perhaps less depressing, than did the Victorians to whom Pessimism was less interesting psychologically than as a disturbing “philosophy.” A Dostoievsky, a Gide, a Rank, or even a Great War, leave their survivors hardened against any philosophy which has already taken its place as literature; it was William James himself who insisted that “civilization is founded on the shambles,” and Freud’s “The Future of an Illusion” is an application of the theory of the Unconscious to which many might find “Pendennis” a tonic.

  With the various developments of the philosophy of the Unconscious by later writers there is no need to deal here. They fall roughly into four main groups:

  1. Theories concerned with the phenomena of Psychical Research.

  2. Theories due to the study of Automatism and Dissociation.

  3. Theories concerned with practice of Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion.

  4. Theories associated with the various schools of Psychoanalysis.

  Of the first group the classic is Myers’ “Human Personality,” in which “a soul or spirit absolutely beyond our present analysis—a soul which has originated in a spiritual or ‘metetherial’ environment,” is posited in addition to the “subliminal self,” which corresponds more closely to the orthodox Unconscious; there is also the more recent literature associated with the studies of Dr. Walter Prince and the case of Doris Fitscher. To the second group belong such researches as those of Janet and Morton Prince, introducing “the subconscious,” “co-consciousness,” and so forth. The third is represented by the theorists of the Nancy school, and the contribution of Sidis. The fourth is due to the genius of Freud, and its various aspects are represented in the present Library by the works of Jung, Adler, Van der Hoop, Rivers, and Rank.1

  Though the time has not yet arrived when it is possible to assess the value of the various hypotheses which may now be related to Hartmann’s pioneer formulation, it is at least becoming clear that from a symbolic standpoint we are concerned throughout with a highly dangerous series of metaphors. Just as the metaphor of “force” is now rigidly excluded by the physicist from any exact statement, so, as psychology advances or gives place to other sciences, its picturesque language will vanish like the vocabulary of “impulsions” and “resistances” which at a certain level have their descriptive usefulness. The “censor” and the “repressed complex” will then join the earlier doctrine of “possession,” though at present the Unconscious, which in Hartmann’s transcendental realism functions also as a new sort of Absolute, is often assumed to invade the personality much like a spirit from the underworld of medieval times.

  Meanwhile, the Unconscious will continue to serve as a stimulus to controversy and as a pillar for the building of systems. Those who resent the systematising tendency in the present work may incline to attribute its defects to the author’s early training as a Prussian artillery officer, before a defective knee-cap confronted him with the choice between music and philo
sophy as his life’s work. Others may find his advocacy of scientific induction, intuitive wisdom, and collective effort, the more attractive in virtue of its unusual setting.