Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/557

 CONCLUSION. 535 In conclusion, we may sum up the points in which Herbart shows himself a follower of Kant — he calls himself a "Kantian of the year 1828." His practical philosophy takes from Kant its independence of theoretical philosophy, the disinterested character of aesthetic judgment, the abso- luteness of ethical values, the non-empirical origin of the moral concepts : " The fundamental ethical relations are not drawn from experience." His metaphysics owes to Kant the critical treatment of the experience-concepts (its task is to make experience comprehensible), in which the lead- ing idea in the Kantian doctrine of the antinomies, the inevitableness of contradictions, is generalized, extended to all the fundamental concepts of experience, and, as it were, transferred from the Dialectic to the Analytic ; it owes to him, further, the conception of being as absolute position, and, finally, the dualism of phenomena and things in themselves. Herbart (with Schopenhauer) considers the renewal of the Platonic distinction between seeming and being the chief service of the great critical philosopher, and finds his greatest mistake in the ^ /rz<?rz character ascribed to the forms of cognition. In the doctrine of the pure intuitions and the categories, and the Critique of Judg- ment, he rejects, and with full consciousness, just those parts of Kant on which the Fichtean school had built fur- ther. Finally, Herbart's method of thought, his imperson- ality, the at times anxious caution of his inquiry, and the neatness of his conceptions, are somewhat akin to Kant's, only that he lacked the gift of combination to a much greater degree than his great predecessor on the Konigs- berg rostrum. His remarkable acuteness is busier in loosening than in binding; it is more happy in the discov- ery of contradictions than in their resolution. Therefore he does not belong to the kings who have decided the fate of philosophy for long periods of time ; he stands to one side, though it is true he is the most important figure among these who occupy such a position. The first to give his adherence to Herbart in essential positions, and so to furnish occasion for the formation of an Herbartian school, was Drobisch (born 1802), in two critiques which appeared in 1828 and 1830. Besides