Philosophy of Mind in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Barbara Gail Montero
In Germany during the nineteenth century there was, as there is today, enormous interest in
understanding the mind, its structure, its place in the world, and the possibility of a complete
scientific account of human nature. Nineteenth-century Germany also witnessed a flowering of
thought about the machinations of unconscious mental processes, thought which would go on to
influence Sigmund Freud’s work at the turn of the twentieth century. And, as today, these ideas
were discussed and debated among philosophers as well as natural scientists and educated
members of the general public. In what follows, I focus on a small sampling of issues from
nineteenth-century German philosophy and point out ways in which they resonate with various
topics in contemporary philosophy of mind. For some this approach may prove to be a puzzle
inside of a conundrum, however, I hope that for others it will bring out some interesting
connections between then and now.
1. The Reinhold-Fichte-Hegel Model of Consciousness
Although there were deep and virulent disagreements among the philosophers Karl Reinhold and
Johann Fichte about how to understand consciousness—Fichte (1930)1, for example, writing to
Reinhold in 1795, “I am a declared opponent of your system”—these and other philosophers at
the turn of the nineteenth century held a similar view about the basic structure of consciousness,
Quoted in Breazeale (1981). See also Breazeale (1982). Reinhold’s goal was to systemize Kant and antecedents to his view
about consciousness are found in the Critique of Pure Reason.
1
a view about what all forms of consciousness share. This is the idea, roughly, that consciousness
involves awareness of an object, of the self, and of the self’s representation of the object.
Reinhold (1790, p. 167) referred to this as the “principle of consciousness,” which he stated as
follows: “in consciousness representation is distinguished through the subject from the subject
and object and related to both.”
Much of the interest in this principle at the time had to do with what Reinhold saw as its
primary value: that it would give philosophy its much-needed indubitable grounds, thus enabling
it to become a science—not an empirical science, but, even better, a science about which no
doubt remains. For the principle of consciousness, according to Reinhold, was a self-evident
principle from which all further philosophical claims could be derived. “Consciousness forces
everyone to agree,” Reinhold (1789, p. 200) claimed, “that to every representation there pertains
a representing subject and a represented object, both of which must be distinguished from the
representation to which they pertain.” Furthermore, such a self-evident, universally valid
proposition was needed, he argued, “or else philosophy as a science is impossible, and in that
case the bases for our ethical duties and rights—as well as these duties and rights themselves—
must remain forever undecided”.2
Whether the principle of consciousness did this work, however, was questioned by,
among others, the philosopher Gottlob Ernst Schulze. Schulze held that the principle, rather than
being self-evident, had the status of an empirical generalization, indeed, an empirical
generalization that was neither universally valid nor capable of grounding the rest of Reinhold’s
philosophy.3 But let me put aside the larger question of whether such a principle can serve as a
2
Quoted in Breazeale (1982).
Breazeale (1982) explains that Fichte, persuaded by Schulze’s criticism, aimed to arrive at an even more basic principle from
which the principle of consciousness follows, and what he proceeds to show in his Science of Knowledge is how the
representational element of consciousness can be derived from the act of positing a subject and an object.
3
grounds for philosophy and focus on the truth the principle, on the question of whether
consciousness contains these elements, an idea that has striking similarities to the views of
certain contemporary theorists, such as Uriah Kriegel (2003, p. 104), who claims that “in your
auditory experience of [a] bagpipe you are aware primarily, or explicitly, of the bagpipe sound
[the object]; but you are also implicitly aware that this auditory experience of the bagpipe [your
representation of the bagpipe] is your experience[the self].”
Despite Schulze’s criticism, this model of consciousness maintained its hold in the
philosophical community in Germany into the nineteenth century and, as Michael Forster (1998,
p. 117) points out, Hegel typically proceeds on the assumption that consciousness does have this
threefold structure, with Hegel even at one point echoing Reinhold’s wording of his principle:
“[c]onsciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time
relates itself to it.” In the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, however, Hegel does
submit the view to some scrutiny. “Consciousness,” Hegel (1807/1977, §85) states, “is, on the
one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of
what for it is the True, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth,” which seems to capture
at least the idea that in being conscious of an object (what for it is the True) we are also aware of
representing—not just representing but aware of representing—the object (that is, we are
conscious of our knowledge of the truth). Yet how does consciousness get to the object? Why
does it not just stop at the representation? Hegel anticipates these questions, telling us that
although it might seem “that consciousness cannot, as it were, get behind the object as it exists
for consciousness so as to examine what the object is in itself,” nonetheless “the distinction
between the in-it-self and knowledge [representation] is already present in the very fact that
consciousness knows an object at all;” that is, the very fact that we are representing an object,
Hegel seems to think, implies that there is an object—“something quite separate from us,” as he
puts it in Faith and Being (1907, p. 383)4—that we are representing.
What are we to say of the Reinhold-Fichte-Hegel (RFH) model of consciousness? Is
consciousness representational? And if it is, are we aware of it as such? Does consciousness
contain awareness of the self? Does it contain awareness of objects? These are, of course,
difficult and much debated questions, but let me touch on a few considerations. Of the three
elements, the idea that consciousness is representational in some sense or other was generally
taken as the linchpin of the view, with Fichte (1988, p. 71), for example, arguing that the
representational element of consciousness is derived from the act of positing a subject and an
object and at one point remarking that the idea that we could understand consciousness without
representation was “a piece of whimsy, a pipe dream, a nonthought.” Some contemporary
philosophers, however, such as John Searle (1983) and Amy Kind (2013), suggest that moods
like free-floating anxiety or general depression may be conscious, yet they do not represent
anything. 5 Of course, as those who hold representational accounts of consciousness do today,
someone who upholds the RFH model of consciousness might find representations lurking in
these darker moments—general depression is depression about everything, they might say. Still,
even if consciousness is representational, it is a further question whether we are conscious that
we are representing objects. Another contemporary philosopher, Joseph Levine (2006, p. 179),
seems to think we are not: “I am not in any way aware of any cognitive distance between me and
the scene in front of me; the fact that what I’m doing is representing the world is clearly not itself
part of the experience.” Hegel (1807/1977, §85), however, seems to think this distance is part of
4
Quoted in Forster (1998). Even assuming that a distinction between representation and object exists in the concept of object,
whether all consciousness involves a distinction between representation and object still depends on whether all consciousness is
consciousness of objects (for discussion, see Forster, 1998).
5 And some see consciousness as not representational at all. Such philosophers instead see consciousness as a relation between
the self and objects that does not involve representations, in part, because they think it does not make sense to talk of perception
as being either true or false. See Susanna Schellenberg’s (2010) discussion of the view she calls “austere relationalism.”
consciousness: “something is for it the in-itself [the scene]; and cognition, or the being of the
object for consciousness [my representing the scene], is, for it, another moment.”
One objection to the idea that consciousness contains an awareness of the self, an
objection that was voiced at the time and is heard today in connection with the concept of
“flow,” is based on the idea that sometimes we get “lost,” in thought, in sensation, or in action.6
When we are engrossed in a philosophical problem and making progress (which may happen
occasionally), are we not lost in thought? When we experience overwhelming pain, is it not true
that the only thing present to our minds is the pain? And, when all is going well, might not the
self disappear in running a marathon or dancing Swan Lake? Kreigel deals with such objections
by making the awareness of the self in conscious experience implicit rather than explicit. But I
wonder if one need even concede as much, for just what is it to get lost in movement? I believe
that a more accurate description of such situations is not that one gets lost, but rather that all
those uninvited worries about death, taxes and the like that have been crowding your mind
vanish. The self is there when movement flows and you feel lost; but it is just your better self.7
The idea that the self gets lost when thought flows may also be questioned. Does one
really loose the self, or do you experience yourself as focused on a particularly engaging topic?
Moreover, in as much as one does get “lost” in either thought or in skill, it seems that, again, one
might argue (contra the idea of phenomenal consciousness) that consciousness does as well, for
if there are times when you get lost, perhaps because you are working on automatic pilot, there is
no conscious at all.8 And although the case of the self getting lost in pain is a difficult one, it
James Messina (2011) points out that this objection was made by Johann Schwab, who, commenting on Reinhold’s principle of
consciousness, asks, “Is there not a consciousness where we do not distinguish ourselves from the object; and is this not the case
when we lose ourselves, as one says, in a sensation?”
7 Or rather, I would argue that when experts perform at their best, in general the self is not lost. See Montero (forthcoming), for
discussion of this issue.
8 For a neuroscientific approach to the question of whether a certain type of self-consciousness is necessarily part of
consciousness experience, see Goldberg, Harel, and Malach (2006).
6
might be said that at least when pain is not overwhelming, one has a sense of an object (the
painful sensation in, say, your foot) and your awareness of such object (if only, you might think,
I could turn my awareness away from it).9 As for overwhelming pain, a defender of the RHF
model of consciousness might resort to making the awareness of the self implicit, however, there
is another line of defense: since, arguably, one can’t actually remember what goes on in extreme
pain, one might argue that one cannot know whether the self is present. Perhaps, a defender of
the RHF model of consciousness might say, in pain, one has the experience, I am in pain; yet one
forgets.10
A further consideration that is sometimes bandied about today in discussions of whether
consciousness is representational involves the neurological disorder “pain asymbolia,” whereby
one experiences pain but feels disconnected from it; individuals who have this condition may say
that they don’t mind the pain and even that it feels as if it is someone else’s pain. If we take these
statements at face value, what should they lead us to believe? Some think that pain asymbolia
illustrates that the experience of p need not involve an experience to the effect that I am
experiencing p. Yet one might say that pain asymbolia illustrates the relative forcefulness of the
“I” in ordinary pain experiences.11 Furthermore, one might find the self in the experience of
feeling as if someone else is in pain: It is I, who is aware of someone else’s pain.
As for the idea that in consciousness we are always aware of objects, this is refuted,
according to Schulze, by examples of deep reflection, wherein, according to Schulze, it is only
our ruminations that are present. But now we are entering the rocky terrain involving what is to
count as an object. Forster (1998, p. 188) suggests, in his defense of Hegel’s idea that all
9
This might not always be a helpful thought since it might be that that in some situations, focusing on pain, rather than
distracting oneself from it, reduces it. See Johnston, Atlas, and Wager TD (2012).
10 Another line of defense might even be that as there is no memory, there was no conscious experience.
11 Of course, if we take what these individuals say at face value, this would still seem to counter the idea that it is analytic or
necessary that conscious experience involves awareness of a subject.
consciousness involves thinking of something as objective, that “even if one is conscious only of
one’s own mental states, still one must think of them as objectively or really mental states.” In
short, the question of the validity of the RFH model of consciousness is very much an open one.
2. Hegel’s Dissolution of the Mind-Body Problem
Hegel, in overcoming mind-body dualism, had an explicit practical motivation: he felt
that his culture’s acceptance of dualism led to unhappiness; persuade people to think of mind and
body differently, and such unhappiness is eliminated. 12 And the way he aims to persuade
individuals to see the union in the disunion of mind and body is by helping them to understand
geist, or what is often translated as “spirit.” How successful are Hegel’s arguments against
dualism? And does the elimination of dualism help to alleviate unhappiness?
In the Encyclopaedia, Hegel (1830/1971, §389) tells us that “the soul is no separate
immaterial entity,” not because the soul or mind is material in the sense of solid, weighty matter,
but rather because matter is far less material than is often presumed. Once we realize this, Hegel
tells us, the question of mind-body dualism dissolves: “the question of the immateriality of the
soul has no interest, except where, on the one hand, matter is resolved as something true, and
mind conceived as a thing, on the other.” To accept this type of disunity, he argues, is a mistake,
for “in modern times, even the physicists have found matters grow thinner in their hands,” and
“they have come upon imponderable matters, like heat, light.” For Hegel, as matter thins, so
does the problem of the relation between mind and matter, for if matter is, as Hegel sees it, just
I say “explicit” here because although philosophers’ views on the mind-body problem today are often explicitly expressed as
being motivated by purely theoretical concerns, grounded in logical argumentation, I think it is a reasonable guess that implicit
motivations are at least sometimes at work as well.
12
as mysterious as mind, there is no question of either materialism or immaterialism. This is
Hegel’s dissolution of the mind-body problem.
In contrast, the Cartesian conception of matter, or body, which holds that body is
extension—extension in length, breadth, and depth—grounds the mind-body problem: if mind is
unextended and body is extended the distinction is plain, since something unextended cannot be
identical to something extended. Moreover, if causal interaction requires contact, causal
interaction between mind and body on the Cartesian picture is at best difficult to fathom. In
Hegel’s words, “the usual answer [as to how to understand the interdependence between mind
and body], perhaps, was to call it an incomprehensible mystery; and, indeed, if we take them to
be absolutely antithetical and absolutely independent, they are as impenetrable to each other as
one piece of matter to another, each being supposed to be found only in the pores of the other,
i.e. where the other is not.” But physics as Hegel saw it, and even more so today, fails to suggest
a conception of matter, wherein matter is diametrically opposed to mind.
For Hegel, the inaccuracy of the Cartesian conception of matter was apparent in such
physical phenomena as light and heat, which, in accord with the physics of his day, have, he
says, “lost the property (peculiar to matter) of gravity and, in a sense, even the capacity of
offering resistance.” And the more we learn about matter, the more “imponderable,” it becomes.
Noam Chomsky (1993, p. 41) puts it well: it is difficult to arrive at a “delimitation of ‘the
physical,’ that excludes Fregean ‘thoughts’ in principle, but includes mathematical objects that
‘push each other about,’ massless particles, curved space-time, infinite one-dimensional strings
in 10-dimensional space, and whatever will be contrived tomorrow.” Or as Bertrand Russell said
in 1927 (p. 104), “matter has become as ghostly as anything in a spiritualist’s séance.”
Like Russell and Chomsky, the thinning of matter allows Hegel to see mind, or “vital
spirit,” as sitting comfortably in the physicist’s world. Yet the distinction between mind and
matter, for Hegel, does not entirely disappear: these “imponderables,” he tells us, “which have
lost the property (peculiar to matter) of gravity and, in a sense, even the capacity of offering
resistance, have still, however, a sensible existence and outness of part to part; whereas the
‘vital’ matter, which may also be found enumerated among them, not merely lacks gravity, but
even every other aspect of existence which might lead us to treat it as material.” Nonetheless,
“vital matter,” on Hegel’s view, still is matter.13 And today, with the matter of physicists being
described in terms of equations and functions and, as such, no longer even having a sensible
existence and an “outness” of part to part, the mind-body problem dissipates almost entirely.
It should be clear that I am rather sympathetic to Hegel’s dissolution to the mind-body
problem. But let me look at a very different approach he takes to arguing against dualism: what
some commentators have seen as his argument for behaviorism. Hegel tells us in
Phenomenology of Sprit (1807/1977, §322) that “the true being of a person is that person’s deed”
and that “when a person’s performance and inner possibility, capacity or intention are contrasted,
it is the former alone which is to be regarded as their true actuality, even if he deceives himself
on the point, and, turning away from his action into himself fancies that in this inner self he is
something else than what he is in the deed.” The deed, he tells us, “is not merely a sign, but the
fact itself…and the individual human being is what the deed is.” And in the Encyclopaedia
(1830/1975, §140), referring favorably to the Gospels, in which it is written, “by their fruits ye
shall know them,” Hegel tells us , “a man is what he does.” Is Hegel, then, a behaviorist, holding
the view that mind isn’t distinct from body since it is no more than the movements of the body?
13
See Montero (1999, 2001, and 2005) for further discussion of how to understand the concept of matter in
discussions of the mind-body problem.
I am not convinced that Hegel is presenting an argument for a metaphysical position,
which tells us what the mind is, rather than a normative one, which tells us how we ought to
judge others. Or at least, if Hegel is arguing for metaphysical behaviorism, he arrives at it by
means of normative considerations, considerations that have an echo in a strand of present-day
feminism. Hegel is bothered, and rightly so in my opinion, by people who brag about how great
they are or about how they could have done great things, when, in fact, their actions do not
reveal this. Similarly, Hegel is infuriated when others judge someone not by what the individual
has done, but by how the individual supposedly is inwardly, criticizing those who might discredit
someone’s apparently praiseworthy actions because they think that the inner motivation for such
actions was merely vanity or some other contemptible passion. He seems to think that, at least
for adults, what matters is what they do. And if so, though he does not speak of such cases
explicitly, Hegel would seem to think it similarly wrong to praise an adult for all his inner
genius, if such “genius,” has not produced any worthwhile actions, for, as researchers point out
today, such praise may very well be influenced by implicit biases, or stereotyping.14 Hegel, I
think, is right: in such situations, we should praise people according to what they do, rather than
how they supposedly are inside.
In fact, I think that Hegel might not go far enough in his advice, for he (1830/1975, §140)
seems to accept that “a sharp-eyed teacher may, from perceiving in a boy marked talents, express
the opinion that there is a Raphael or Mozart in him,” even if it is “the outcome [that] will then
teach to what extent such an opinion was grounded.” If our perceptions of others come with
implicit biases, as tests such as the implicit bias test seem to indicate, then even such an attitude
needs to be adopted with caution for it is most likely that certain groups of individuals will be
seen has having inner potential, and that perception, rather than having its accuracy tested by the
14
See Saul (2013) for discussion of implicit bias and women in philosophy.
pupil’s future actions, can in part determine them (those with Mozart inside of them will of
course be trained more rigorously than those without such perceived talent), which is great for
those who are seen as having potential, yet detrimental for those who are seen as lacking it.15
So it seems, then, that there is at least a normative component to Hegel’s view. But why
is it not also a metaphysical behaviorist view? Perhaps the above claim provides a clue, for
Hegel seems to think that there is something that the sharp-eyed teacher notices, that there is
some inner potential or talent. The ultimate judge of whether such talent exists, or how great it
is, he holds, is going to be seen, at least in the long-run, in behavior. Yet apart from the fact that
he says that the deed is not merely the sign of the mind, but the mind itself, he seems to accept
that we do have intentions, for if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be the case that, as he (1830/1975, §140)
says, “[occasionally] in individual cases …well-meant intentions are brought to nothing by
unfavorable outward circumstances.” And indeed, in such cases—for example, when a person
sets out to help a sick child, yet is struck with an illness himself and can no longer follow
through—we want to look to a person’s intentions rather than actions and praise those intentions
rather than seeing such a person as worthless because of his or her inaction. Of course, Hegel
would say, and probably rightly so, that we determine whether such intentions exist in the first
place by the actions they produce. But this does not mean that the inner intention does not exist
and, when illness strikes, it would not seem right to say that that person’s worth is the totality of
their deeds. Similar claims could be made for inner intelligence. Although in favorable
circumstances we ought to judge people’s smarts by what they do, in unfavorable circumstances,
such as extreme poverty, the wisest council would seem to be: make no judgment at all, or,
perhaps even better, assume Mozarts, Raphaels and Galileos exist in all. So although I think that
One might also wonder about the extent to which Mozart, himself, had “Mozart inside of him,” for it is well known that his
father played a large role in guiding his musical development. See Rushton (2006).
15
Hegel’s dissolution of the mind-body problem based on the thinning of matter is persuasive, I am
not convinced that his behaviorist leanings should be understood as an argument for
metaphysical behaviorism.
This bring us to the question of whether overcoming mind-body dualism does the
practical work he thinks it does; that is, whether it promotes happiness. Whatever one may think
of the truth of Hegel’s metaphysical picture, his motivation is noble; who can cavil with wanting
to promote happiness? But does separating the mind from body lead to unhappiness? Perhaps it
does if dualism leads us to value individuals not for their bodily actions but for what goes on in
their minds; for such a picture, as Hegel (1807/1977, §322) suggests, may lead to thinking of
one’s actions as meaningless: “[w]ork and enjoyment…lose all universal content and
significance.”
Hegel, however, also thought that dualism was at the root, or at least a key component of
the Christian disparagement of the body. Dualism, he thought (§225), leads to embarrassment
about our natural bodily functions and to the view that “it is in them that the enemy reveals
himself in his characteristic shape.” I am not so sure. Specifically, I’m not sure if any
thoroughgoing materialist would or should feel any less shame than a dualists would at what we
now take to be shame worthy bodily functions. For example, materialist or dualist, one should
be ashamed of, say, pedophilic actions. If anything, it would seem that thinking of the body as
the not-self would make one less ashamed of its movements. It was, after all, a bodily urge, one
might say in explanation of purported shameful act, and thus not representative of who I really
am. Of course, if one accepts a religious doctrine that disparages the body, then that doctrine
might lead you to be at war with certain aspects of your bodily self. However, this would seem
to result entirely from the doctrine’s demotion of the body rather than its promotion of dualism.
Indeed, it might even be that, rather than mind-body dualism leading to desecrating the body, it
is the desecration of the body that makes one distance oneself from one’s body and thus lead to
mind-body dualism.
3. The Materialismusstreit
In September of 1854, twenty-three years after Hegel died, the prominent Göttingen physiologist
Rudolph Wagner presented a general lecture before the Association of German Scientists and
Physicians. In this lecture, he condemned the zoologist Karl Vogt’s materialistic stance on the
soul and the origin of human beings. The ensuing intellectual melee over the relative roles of
religion and science in our understanding of the world, what came to be known as the
materialismusstreit, or the controversy over materialism, touched virtually all aspects of German
society, affecting science, politics, religion, morality, education, even the food people chose to
eat, and in many ways prefigured the schism we find today at the root of some of our thorniest
political battles: abortion, gay marriage, cloning, and contraception.16
Materialism had been gaining popularity among German academics through the views of
the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who had studied with Hegel and, with the aim of, as he put
it, “plunging into the direct opposite,” also went on to study anatomy.17 However, the central
players in the materialismusstreit, which took place in the public eye, were scientists, such as
Vogt who, among other things, had a flair for rhetoric. In his Physiologische Briefe (Letters on
Physiology), Vogt claimed that all mental processes, “are but functions of the brain substance or,
to express myself a bit crudely here, that thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain as gall
the issue of diet, it was during the Materialismusstreit that, for example, the well-known pun, “Der mensch ist was er
isst,” originated.
17 It is unlikely that Vogt had read Feuerbach’s works, for he had a strong aversion to philosophy, yet he was likely exposed to
some of Feuerbach’s ideas second hand. See Gregory (1977).
16Regarding
does to the liver or urine to the kidneys.” Though today many materialists hold precisely Vogt’s
view that mental processes are functions of the brain (though they would likely quibble with his
analogy seeing it as having too much in common with dualism, as it makes mental processes out
as something secreted by and thus separate from the functioning of the brain), at the time it was
considered scandalous and was the subject of much ridicule. Vogt, however, remained
undaunted, seeing his materialistic understanding of the mind as following directly from his
scientific investigations of the brain and his experiments on animals; “to assume a soul that
makes use of the brain as an instrument with which it can work as it pleases” Vogt said, “is pure
nonsense.”
Wagner, on the other hand, was inclined to think that Vogt’s materialism was actually
worse than pure nonsense, for as he saw it, it was dangerous nonsense.18 Though Wagner was
also a scientist, he held that there were certain limits to what science can and should
investigate.19 Not only was materialism not grounded in empirical evidence, according to
Wagner, but it also presented a serious threat to the moral and political order. There is no
reason, Wagner argued, why a religious conception of the origin of human life on earth and the
immortality of the soul cannot be upheld consistently with a scientific picture of the world. On
Wagner’s (1854) view, the realms of science and spirituality have nothing to say to one another:
“reason and belief are just as different from one another, … as the senses, as vision and
hearing”(pp. 18, 14f). To accept the picture Vogt paints of the natural world, Wagner said,
Many of the materialists also saw their opponents’ views as dangerous since they saw them as devaluing existence here on
earth.
19 His scientific approach to materialism is illustrated by the fact that he tried to discredit Vogt’s thesis, unsuccessfully according
to Vogt, by weighing brains, claiming that if the mind is purely material, more intelligent people should be endowed with heavier
brains. See Vogt (1864).
18
“would completely destroy the moral foundations of social order” and thus it is our “duty to the
nation” to reject it.20
The debate brought others into the fray and over the next two decades, the schism grew
ever more virulent and vitriolic. For example, the physiologist and physician Ludwig Büchner,
in his popular and provocative Force and Matter, argued that “atheism, or philosophical
Monism, alone leads to freedom, to intelligence, to progress, to due recognition of a man—in a
word, to Humanism.”21 And Andreas Wagner (no relation to Rudolf Wagner) defended the other
side, calling Vogt a conniving deceiver and arguing that the history of science provides no reason
to think that the posits of science and religion cannot be consistently upheld. Materialism, rather
than following from science, according to Andreas Wagner, “belongs to the diseased phenomena
of our time which have resulted from the displacement of the Christian standpoint and have
gripped all classes of civil society like an influenza.”22
Part of the interest in this debate, and no doubt part of the reason why it captivated the
public at large, has to do with the personalities involves. None of the central players were
overflowing with that virtue we call “modesty,” and all had consummate command of invectives.
However, there is quite a bit of philosophical interest as well; for there arose debates covering
questions about the existence of God, the nature of consciousness, the limits of scientific
knowledge, the respective roles and importance of sense experience and rational thought in our
understanding of the world, the reduction of chemistry, biology and physiology to physics, the
origin of morality, the existence of free will, and the epistemic status of faith. The sine qua non
of the materialist position, however, during this time was atheism; there is nothing beyond this
world, was the cry, and what science cannot capture, must be relegated to a figment of the
20
Wagner, R. (1854), op cit.
Buchner, L. (1855) Kraft und Stoff: empirschnaturphilosophische Studien (Frankfurt am Main: Meidinger).
22 Quoted in Gregory (1977, p.38).
21
imagination. “The world is not the realization of a unitary creative mind, but rather a complex of
things and fact,” Büchner said, and “we must recognize it as it is, not as we would like to
imagine it.”23 The loser on this picture, as we will see, was free will, yet consciousness, if not
the entire triad of mind, meaning, and morality, was seen as amenable to a complete scientific
explanation, and thus preserved, as materialists saw it.
Vogt, no doubt, thought that he was salvaging the mind, and in particular, consciousness,
by identifying mental processes with functions of the brain. Pointing to what we today call the
“explanatory gap” between mind and brain, his opponents ridiculed his approach. Their
criticism is brought out perhaps most acutely by the philosopher Hermann Lotze. Lotze wanted
to know how, on a materialistic picture of the universe according to which all of nature is
ultimately mechanical movements of extended substance, could consciousness exist? If the
workings of the brain are no different in essence from the workings of a spinning-jenny, he
asked, are we to then say that a spinning-jenny is conscious?
The physician Heinrich Czolbe, a lesser known, though in Lotze’s eyes more consistent
materialist, took Lotze’s comments to heart, leading him to diverge from the other materialists.
Czolbe admitted that Lotze had rightly identified an unbridgeable gap between a mechanical
description of consciousness and one’s own experience of consciousness and responded by
reducing human consciousness to fundamental consciousness in nature, propounding what might
be seen as panpsychism.24 To the question of whether a spinning-jenny is conscious, Czolbe
now had an answer: Yes, it is, but just a little. However, remaining committed to atheism, he
denied that consciousness implied or was in any way connected to a realm of reality beyond the
scope of science and empirical inquiry. Moreover, by similarly pushing morality and something
23
Bruchner, L. op cit. p. iv.
This is similar to how various non-religious philosophers who accept the idea of an ineliminable explanatory gap between
mind and brain, such as Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and Galen Strawson, respond to such a lacuna today.
24
he called “purpose” down to the level of fundamental physics, he sought to retain morality and
purpose in a world without God.
Though the materialists saw themselves as preserving consciousness, free will did not
fare as well. Büchner trumpeted the view that “not only what we are, but also what we do, want
sense, and think...depends on the same natural necessity as the entire construction of the
world.”25 And Vogt argued that physiological investigation shows us that “man, as well as
animal, is just a machine” and, with characteristic boldness, explained that because tampering
with the brain leads to changes in the mind, the proposition that we have free will is refuted.26
Perhaps the move here from premise to conclusion is rather quick, nonetheless, materialism and
freedom of the will do make unhappy bedfellows. Regardless of anything else one might say of
the ontological status of the mind, inasmuch as it interacts with matter in a deterministic way (for
example, inasmuch as brain damage deterministically leads to damaged mental processes) or
inasmuch as mental processes cause actions that occur on a deterministic plane (such as, the
movements of our bodies) it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the mind is determined.27
Yet, it is also difficult for materialists to maintain a coherent position on free will. Karl
Fischer (1853), a professor of philosophy at Erlangen, brought this out in his criticism of Vogt
and other materialists: how is it possible, he asked, to accept both, as the materialists seem to do,
that the mind is entirely material and that human beings are masters over their voluntary actions?
How is it possible to accept that humans are responsible yet lack freedom? Some of this
inconsistency can be straightened out. Vogt was a staunch supporter of freedom in the political
realm, especially regarding the separation of church and state, indeed, arguing that the very
25
Büchner, op. cit. 236.
Vogt, op. cit.
27 See Montero (2006) for discussion. Today we would want to say “in as much as it interacts in a deterministic or probabilistic
way” and revise the conclusion accordingly.
26
existence of a religious institutions is necessarily an impediment to freedom. Such a call for
political freedom can be seen as consistent with deterministic views about the mind and indeed is
analogous to the type of freedom present day “compatibilists” argue for in defining freedom as,
for example, freedom from external constraints. However, on Fischer’s side, it also seems that
some of the motivation for Vogt’s atheism evaporates once we accept determinism. According
to Vogt, “every church, without exception, is as such a restriction of the free development of the
human spirit, and because I desire a free development of the human spirit in all directions and
without limits, I want no restraint on this freedom, and therefore I want no church.”28 Vogt’s
motivation for the elimination of the church is grounded in his belief in the value of freedom, yet
how, asked Fischer, is this value consistent with Vogt’s determinism? For the materialists, the
existence of free will, as it defies any scientific law and was seen as inimical to a scientific
picture of the world, must be rejected. The opponents to materialism, however, saw the rejection
of free will as undermining moral values and, as they saw faith as a valid route to knowledge,
were able to hold on to it. This brings us to the relation between faith and science.
More so than today, the debate over materialism focused on questions about the limits of
science and the role of religion in our understanding of the world. The materialists saw no need
for positing a world beyond that which is accessible to our senses, and where our senses leave
off, reason, they held, fills in. Even more, at times they professed the view that science has
definitely shown that there is no world beyond our senses. Vogt supported his position primarily
by pointing out what he saw were the untoward consequences of rejecting it: a devaluation of life
here on earth and the maintenance of a political order that depends on the coercive force of the
church. The church for him was the primary impediment to human freedom, which (his denial of
28
Quoted in Gregory (1977), p. 193, from the stenographic report by Willheim Vogt, Carl Vogt, p. 66, n. 1
free will notwithstanding) he saw as necessary for underpinning morality, as necessary for
underpinning our ability to freely choose the right action.
Büchner, though he presented similar reasons to reject the idea of suprasensual
knowledge, was also fond of another argument for the idea that there is no world beyond that
which we come to know through sense experience. His reasoning seems to be that because we
are “only a product of this world and of nature itself,” our experience of the world, “must mirror
and repeat the laws of nature.”29 Critics again pointed to what they saw as inconsistencies in this
picture, arguing that although the materialists call for social action and for individuals to right the
wrongs of society, their view leaves no room for right and wrong. Frederick Gregory, in his
delightful overview of nineteenth century German materialism, notes that this inconsistency was
perhaps brought out best Mathilde Reichardt in her letter to another of the central proponents of
materialism at the time, the physician Jacob Moleschott: “Sin [you claim] lies in that which is
unnatural—but where is there unnaturalness in a world in which each effect corresponds with
strict logical consequence to an endless series of causes, all of which themselves are based on a
natural necessity?”30
Rudolph Wagner (1854), who saw religious belief as a “new organ of the mind,” argued
for the view that faith and science must be kept as two distinct means of knowledge; where the
one treads, the other must not go. And like the materialists, Wagner’s arguments were based
primarily on the need to avoid the disastrous consequences of rejecting such a view. The natural
sciences, he agreed with the materialists, do not suggest an immaterial individual soul, and this is
why we need another form of knowledge, for the existence of an immaterial soul is indispensible
to the existence of morality (1854, p. 21). Lotze (1852) saw this as “a queer sort of double-entry
29
30
Quoted in Gregory (1977), p. 113.
Quoted in Gregory (1977), p. 48.
booking,” and “an unworthy fragmentation of our mental powers” (p. 36). And so the debate
went on.
Though Friedrich Lange in his 1865 History of Materialism considered the
Materialismusstreit settled, looking back it seems an open question as to which side won. Lange
gives the anti-materialists the upper hand. Summing up Lange’s conclusion, Bertrand Russell, in
his 1925 introduction to the book, puts it like this: “there is no good reason to suppose
materialism metaphysically true; it is a point of view which has hitherto proved useful in
research, and is likely to continue useful wherever new scientific laws are being discovered, but
which may well not cover the whole field, and cannot be regarded as definitely true without a
wholly unwarranted dogmatism.” (Lange 1950, p. xix). All three of the prominent materialists
lost their jobs. And in 1872, the physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond took himself to be
speaking for the scientific community when he said that there is a fundamental limit to what
science can tell us about the world, proclaiming, Ignoramus et ignorabimus (we do not know and
we will never know). 31
The contemporary German philosopher, Michael Heidelberger (2007), however, suggests
a way in which the materialists were ultimately victorious. Despite what he sees as their
excesses, he thinks that it is fortunate that their criticism of Wagner’s double-entry bookkeeping
prevailed since it led to what he sees as the general positive attitude toward natural science in
Germany. “If the materialists had not won this battle,” as Heidelberger sees it, “the dispute over
the role of Darwinism in German secondary education that took place towards the end of the
nineteenth century…would not have ended as it did,” adding that “American ‘creationism’ is not
The Mathematician David Hilbert later expressed his disagreement: “In opposition to the foolish ignorabimus our slogan shall
be: ‘We must know — we will know!' [Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!]” This was in 1930. In 1931, however, Gödel
proved his famous incompleteness theorem, which might be interpreted as showing that Hilbert’s goal is impossible.
31
taken seriously by anyone—across all circles, and entirely independently of political creed or
ideology.”
We are now quite a distance from what many today think of as standard philosophy of
mind, which sees itself as prescinded from religion and politics. Yet, perhaps one lesson we can
learn from the Materialismusstreit is that such issues are not always easy to pull apart.
4. Eduard von Hartmann's Theory of the Unconscious
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the German novelist Friedrich von Spielhagen
captured the intellectual milieu, in describing a Berlin salon as fixated on two topics: Richard
Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, which was thought to probe the depths of the unconscious,
and Eduard von Hartmann’s book, Philosophy of the Unconscious, which was thought to explain
it. Though discussions of Tristan und Isolde might be overheard today in cafes near Lincoln
Center after the curtain goes down, von Hartmann’s book has long faded from the limelight.
However, it was certainly in the limelight in the 1870’s. Friedrich Nietzsche (1872, p. 262), with
characteristic irony, put it this way: “In the entire world one does not speak of the unconscious
since, according to its essence, it is unknown; only in Berlin does one speak of and know
something about it, and explain to us what actually sets it apart.”32 What, then, was all the
brouhaha about?
It is of course not true that in the nineteenth century it was only in Berlin that theories of
the unconscious were being discussed in the salons in Germany; and it is also not true that it was
only von Hartmann’s work that provoked such discussions. For example, before von
Hartmann’s book came out, the zoologist polymath Carl Gustav Carus had been lecturing on the
32Quoted
in Nicholls and Liebscher, (2010) Thinking the Unconscious, (Cambridge University Press), p. 1.
unconscious in Dresden, taking the unconscious as the foundation of his theory of the mind.
“The key to understanding the conscious life of the soul lies in the realm of the unconscious,”
Carus argued in his 1846 book, Psyche: On the Developmental History of the Soul, a book about
which von Hartmann commented was written with “senile long-windedness and verbosity.”33
However, it was von Hartmann’s perhaps also longwinded, near 1200 page tome that galvanized
the German public, going through nine editions between 1868 and 1884, and through its indirect
influence likely played a role in inspiring Freud’s theories about the unconscious, such as those
that appeared in 1900 in Interpretation of Dreams.
What was von Hartmann’s theory of the unconscious? What were so many chattering
about in the salons and smoke-filled cafes in Berlin in the 1870s? This is not at all an easy
question to answer, as von Hartmann acknowledges in an anonymously published criticism of his
own book wherein he faults the author for failing to define the central topic of inquiry.34
Nonetheless, let me attempt to highlight some of what I see as philosophically interesting about
his idea of the unconscious as well as his method for investigating it.35
Having completed his secondary education in 1858, the same year Büchner’s Force and
Matter was published, von Hartmann began developing his views on the unconscious at the
height of the Materialismusstreit, and his methodology, he claims, is thoroughly in line with
materialistic principles (an indication that, in the short run the victors of the Materialismusstreit
was at least seen by some as the materialists). As von Hartmann’s book’s subtitle, “Speculative
Results According to the Inductive Method of Physical Science,” indicates, he took the proper
method for philosophy to be empirical, to observe the world through our senses and to provide
33
Quoted in Nicholls and Liebscher (2010) p. 157
“Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkt der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie,” which along with other work, was added as a
third volume to the tenth edition to Philosophie des Unbewussten.
35 This, however, might not line up with what people were talking about in the cafes, for the book, beside addressing the
metaphysical nature of consciousness, has chapters on such things as sexual love, ambition, lust of power, vanity, domestic
felicity, dreams and so forth.
34
the best possible explanation of such data. “[A] scientific hypothesis” he (1893b, p. 167) tells us,
“should never extend farther than the need of explanation requires.” Conclusions, as such, cannot
be known with certainty, but, he thought, when reasoned through carefully, the precepts of his
book should be held with the same level of credence as any good scientific theory.
So far so good, however, what many later commentators took to be peculiar about his
project is just how far beyond the empirical he ultimately ventured.36 Quoting Arthur
Schopenhauer, von Hartmann (1893a, p. 57) says, “the materialists endeavor to show that all,
even mental phenomena, are physical: and rightly; only they do not see that, on the other hand,
everything physical is at the same time metaphysical.” And go beyond the physical—for this is
the intended sense of “metaphysical”—he does.
Von Hartmann, whose book was published ten years after Darwin’s Origin of the
Species, was, like Darwin, concerned with the appearance of teleology in the natural world.
How could instinctive behavior, reflex responses, and the body’s ability to repair itself be
purposive, yet not consciously so? What explains, von Hartmann (p. 79) wanted to know,
“purposive action without consciousness of the purpose.” Von Hartmann thought that Darwin
explained the transmission of traits, but not their existence in the first place (a view, as Sebastian
Gardner (2010) points out, that seems to imply his rejection of the theory of random mutation)
and the best way, he thought, to explain this was to invoke a metaphysical purposive
unconscious. Even in explaining intentional action, he thought, we need to posit some type of
unconscious purpose, for as he (p. 77) saw it, a decision to lift your finger depends on minute
muscular movements about which you are unaware, and in order to explain the purposiveness of
the intentional action, these minute musical movements must be purposive as well: “from the
For example, Lange op cit. Von Hartman does draw a line, though, at least here: “The question might here be raised whether
the atoms have a consciousness. However, I think that the data are all too lacking or any decision to be come to thereupon.” Vol
2, p. 183
36
necessity of a voluntary impulse at the point “P” it follows that the conscious will to lift the
finger produces an unconscious will to excite point “P.” In this way, conscious intention reduces
to mechanical movements, which themselves reduce to something mental; “matter itself” von
Hartmann (1893b, p. 86) held, “is in essence nothing else whatever but unconscious mind.” We
are already a long way from the materialism of Vogt and Büchner and Moleschott. However,
Hartmann takes us even further.
From the “impossibility of a mechanical, material solution [to the problem of
purposiveness in nature] it follows that the intermediate link must be of a spiritual nature,” he
(1893a, p. 77) tells us. And the spiritual nature, according to von Hartmann, involves a synthesis
of Schopenhauerian blind impulse and Hegelian reason; beyond our world, according to von
Hartmann (1893c, p. 145), lies a unity of Will and Idea: “Will and Idea conceived in
metaphysical essential unity, actually suffice for the explanation of the phenomena presented to
us in the known world, they form the apex of the pyramid of inductive knowledge.”
And now we take the final plunge, for von Hartmann holds that “the Unconscious Will
and the Unconscious Idea coalesced to form the one universal spiritual world-essence,” yet
ultimately, because of the preponderance of pain over pleasure in the world, the existence of the
world is not a good thing. Making Schopenhauer seem veritably cheerful in comparison, von
Hartmann tells us (p. 125), “we have seen that in the existing world everything is arranged in the
wisest and best manner, and that it may be looked upon as the best of all possible worlds, but that
nevertheless it is thoroughly wretched, and worse than none at all.” Thus, humankind’s ultimate
purpose is to come to this realization, which will bring about the end of the world. As Sebastian
Gardner puts it, on von Hartmann’s view, “[t]he world is thus only a device for cancelling the
original synthesis of Will and Idea,” only a device for cancelling itself.
Lest I end on a pessimistic note, let me conclude with a comment from C. K. Ogen’s
1931 preface to von Hartmann’s book (p. xiii). This comment, I think, also sums up what is
most valuable about the work of the other philosophers I have addressed herein. If nothing else,
Ogen points out, we must admire von Hartman for “focusing the attention of the world on an
idea.”37
References
Breazeale, D. (1981). “Fichte's ‘Aenesidemus’ Review and the Transformation of German
Idealism,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 34 (3), pp. 545-568.
Breazeale, D. (1982). “Between Kant and Fichte: Karl Leonhard Reinhold's ‘Elementary
Philosophy,’” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 35 (4), pp. 785-821.
Chomsky, N. (1993). Language and Thought. Wakefield: Moyer Bell.
Carus, C. G. (1864), Psyche: Zur Entwicklungsegeschichte der Seele (Pforzheim “ Glammer
und Hoffmann).
Reinhold, K. L. (1790). Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Misverständnisse der Philosophen.
Jena.
Fichte, J. G. (1930). Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Schulze, 2nd Edition. Leipzig:
Haessel.
Fichte, J. G. (1988). “Review of Aenesidemus,” in Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed.
Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Fischer, K. (1853), Die Unwahrheit des Sensualismus mit besonderer Rüchsicht auf die Schriften
von Feuerbach, Vogt, und Moleschott bewiesen. Erlangen.
Forster, M. N. (1998). Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
37
In von Hartman, E. (1972) Philosophy of the Unconscious; Speculative Results according to the Inductive Method of Physical
Science, one volume edition (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press Publishers) p. xiii
Gardner, S. (2010). “Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious,” in Thinking the
Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought, eds. Nicholls & Liebscher. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, I. I., Harel, M., and Malach, R. (2006). “When the Brain Loses Its Self: Prefrontal
Inactivation during Sensorimotor Processing,” Neuron, Vol. 50 (2), pp. 329-339.
Gregory, F. (1977). Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany. Dordrecht, Holland:
D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1807/1977). Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1830/1971). Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the
Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, trans. Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1830/1975). Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, trans. Wallace. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1907). Theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
Heidelberger, M. (2007). “Freedom and Science! The Presumptuous Metaphysics of Free Will
Disdainers,” in Psychology’s Territories: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives from
Different Disciplines, eds. Ash & Sturm. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Inc. Publishers.
Johnston N. E., Atlas L. Y., and Wager T.D. (2012). “Opposing Effects of Expectancy and
Somatic Focus on Pain” PLoS ONE, Vol. 7 (6): e38854. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038854.
Kind, A. (2013). “The Case Against Representationalism about Mods,” in Current Controversies
in Philosophy of Mind.
Kriegel, U. (2003). “Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an
Argument,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 33 (1), pp. 103-132.
Lange, F. A. (1950). The History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance, trans.
Thomas. London: Degan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. (Originally published in three volumes
from 1877–1881.)
Levine, J. (2006). “Conscious Awareness and (Self-)Representation,” in Self-Representational
Approaches to Consciousness, eds. Kriegel and Williford. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lotze, R. H. (1852). “Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele,” (Leipzig:
Weidmann).
Messina, J. (2011). “Answering Aenesidemus: Schulze’s Attack on Reinholdian
Representationalism and Its Importance for Fichte,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol.
49 (3), pp. 339-369.
Montero, B. (1999). “The Body Problem,” Noûs, Vol. 33 (2), pp. 183-200.
Montero, B. (2005). “What is the Physical?” The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Eds.
Beckermann, McLaughlin & Walter. New York: Oxford University Press.
Montero, B. (2006). “What Does the Conservation of Energy Have to Do with Physicalism?”
Dialectica 60:4 (2006), pp. 383–396.
Montero, B. (forthcoming). The Myth of ‘Just do It’: Thought and Effort in Expert Action. XX,
Oxford University Press.
Nicholls and Liebscher, (2010) Thinking the Unconscious, (Cambridge University Press), p. 1.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1872-1874), Nachgelassene Fragmente, Sommer , Werke: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, part 3, vol. IV, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1978).
Reinhold, K. L. (1789). Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens.
Rushton, J. (2006). Mozart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Russell, B. (1927/1961). An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Saul, J. (2013). "Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat and Women in Philosophy,” in Women in
Philosophy: What Needs to Change?, eds. Hutchison & Jenkins. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Schellenberg, S. (2010). “The Particularity and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience,”
Philosophical Studies, Vol. 149, pp. 19-48.
Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vogt, C. (1864). Lectures on Man: His place in Creation, and in the History of the Earth, edited
by James Hunt (London: Longman, Green, Longman and, Roberts, Paternoster Row), lecture
three.
von Hartmann, E. (1893a). Philosophy of the Unconscious; Speculative Results According to the
Inductive Method of Physical Science, Volume 1, trans. by Coupland. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Tubner, & Co. Ltd.
von Hartmann, E. (1893b). Philosophy of the Unconscious; Speculative Results According to the
Inductive Method of Physical Science, Volume 2, trans. by Coupland. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Tubner, & Co. Ltd.
von Hartmann, E. (1893c). Philosophy of the Unconscious; Speculative Results According to the
Inductive Method of Physical Science, Volume 3, trans. by Coupland. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Tubner, & Co. Ltd.
von Hartman, E. (1972). Philosophy of the Unconscious; Speculative Results according to the
Inductive Method of Physical Science, one volume edition (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Press Publishers) .
Wagner, R. (1854), Ueber Wissen und Glauben mit besonderer Beziehung zur Zukunft der
Seelen. Fortsetzung der Betrachtungen über "Menschenschöpfung und Seelensubstanz.”
(Göttingen: Wigand). First published in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung on January 1, 1852.
(pp. 18, 14f).