LECTURE VI
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN PHILOSOPHY
Fichte, as we have seen, had begun by setting aside Kant’s things in themselves. What, after all, thinks he, is the use of even mentioning such mysteries as the dead things in themselves, whereof you only declare that they are unknowable? What if they are said to exist? Unless we can know them, they are to us as good as nought. But now, for others besides Fichte, Kant’s things in themselves used at that time to be objects of no little sport, — sport which took, of course, a rather heavy and German form, but which was very well warranted by the situation. The things in themselves of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the sources of all our experience, but themselves never experienced, were too dim and distant to seem to a further reflection anything but chimeras. An epigram, usually attributed to Schiller, compared them to useless household furniture, once the pride of that very form of metaphysic which Kant’s “Critique” had undertaken to slay. For this old metaphysic had pretended to know them. Now that the pretentious doctrine is dead, what is the use of the abandoned furniture?
- “Da die Metaphysik vor Kurzem unbeerbt abging
- Werden die Dinge an sich morgen sub hasta verkauft.”[1]
But the house of our philosophy thus once emptied of cumbersome furniture, Fichte had found himself able to
- ↑ That is, freely translated: —
“Notice: The late metaphysic is dead without heirs, and to-morrow
All the things in themselves shall under the hammer be sold.”
