Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/511

 r/EfV OF THE WORLD. 489 I. Hegel's View of the World and his Method. In Hegel there revives in full vigor the intellectualism which from the first had lain in the blood of German phi- losophy, and which Kant's moralism had only temporarily restrained. The primary of practical reason is discarded, and theory is extolled as the ground, center, and aim of human, nay, of all existence. Leibnitz and Hegel are the classical representatives o^ the intellectualistic view of the world. In the former thd subjective psychological point of view is dominant, in the latter, the objective cosmical position : Leibnitz- argues from the representative nature of the soul to an analogous constitution of all elements of the universe ; from the general mission of all that is real, to be a mani- festation of reason, Hegel deduces that of the individual spirit, to realize a determinate series of stages of thought. The true reality is reason ; all being is the embodiment of a pregnant thought, all becoming a movement of the con- cept, the world a development of thought. The absolute or the logical Idea exists first as a system of antemundane concepts, then it descends into the unconscious sphere of nature, awakens to self-consciousness in man, realizes itsj content in social institutions, in order, finally, in art, reli-j gion, and science to return to itself enriched and completed,/ i. e., to attain a higher absoluteness than that of the begin- ning. Philosophy is the highest product and the goal of the world-process. As will, intuition, representation, and feeling are lower forms of thought, so ethics, art, and reli- gion arc preliminary stages in philosophy ; for it first suc- ceeds in that which these vainly attempt, in presenting the concept adequately, in conceptual form. If we develop that which is contained as a constituent factor or by implication in the intellectualistic thesis, I" All being is thought realized, all becoming a development of thought," we reach the following definitions: (i) The object of philosophy is formed by the Ideas of things. Its aim is to search out the concept, the purpose, the signifi- cance of phenomena, and to assign to these their corre- sponding positions in the world and in the system of knowl-