The Oldest Programme for a System of German Idealism
By Friedrich Hölderlin, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
an ethics. Since the whole of metaphysics will in future go over into morals (for which Kant only gave an example with his two practical postulates, but exhausted nothing), this ethics will be nothing less than a complete system of all ideas or, which is the same thing, of all practical postulates. The first idea is of course the idea of myself as an absolutely free being. With this free, self-conscious being a whole world immediately steps forth – out of nothingness – the only true and conceivable creation ex nihilo. – Here I will descend to the fields of physics; the question is this: how must a world be constituted for a moral being? I would like to give our physics, which is slowly and with difficulty moving forward by experiments, wings once again.
Thus – if philosophy provides the ideas, experience the data, we can finally achieve the grand physics I expect from future ages. It does not seem that contemporary physics can satisfy a creative mind such as ours is, or ought to be.
From Nature I come to Man’s actions. First the idea of humanity – I want to show that there is no idea of the State because the State is a mechanical thing, just as there is no idea of a machine. Only that which is the object of freedom can be called an idea. We must therefore also go beyond the State. – For every State has to treat free human beings as mechanical cogs; and it should not do that; thus it must stop. You can see from this that all ideas, of eternal peace and so forth, are only the subordinate ideas of a higher idea. At the same time I here wish to lay down the principles a history of mankind, and strip the whole miserable mess made up of State, constitution, government, legislation – right down to the skin. Finally, there come the ideas of a moral world, Godhead, immortality – the overturning of all superstition, false belief, and the persecution of the priestcraft that lately feigns reason, by means of reason itself. – The absolute freedom of all spirits, that contain the intellectual world within themselves and cannot seek God or immortality outside themselves.
Finally the idea that unites them all, the idea of beauty, taking the word in a higher, Platonic sense. I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, that in which reason contains all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are only united in beauty. – Indeed the philosopher must possess as much aesthetic power as the poet. People without aesthetic sense are intellectual pedants. The philosophy of the spirit is an aesthetic philosophy. You cannot be clever about anything, you can’t even think cleverly about history – without aesthetic sense. Here it should become manifest what people actually lack who can understand no ideas – and admit frankly enough that they do not understand anything, as soon as matters go beyond tables and indices.
By this means, Poesy regains a higher dignity, and in the end becomes again what it was in the beginning: the educator of humanity; for there will be no more philosophy, no history, Poesy alone will survive all other arts and sciences.
At the same time we often hear that the masses must have a sensible religion. Not just the masses but the philosopher needs this too. Monotheism of reason and the heart, polytheism of art and the imagination, that is what we need!
First I will here speak of an idea which as far as I know has never entered anyone’s head before – we must have a new mythology, but this mythology must stand in the service of ideas, it must be a mythology of reason.
Unless we make ideas aesthetic, that is to say mythological, they have no interest for the people, and conversely, unless mythology is rational the philosopher will be ashamed of it. In the end the enlightened and the unenlightened must join hands, mythology must become philosophical to make the people rational, and philosophy must become mythological to connect philosophers to the senses. Then eternal unity will reign amongst us. Never again the look of disdain, never the blind trembling of the people before its wise men and priests. Then finally we can expect the equal education of all powers, of the individual and of all individuals. No power will be suppressed any more, then the universal freedom and equality of all spirits will reign! – A higher spirit sent from heaven must found this religion amongst us, it will be the last, the greatest task of humanity.