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FAITH, REASON, AND REVELATION IN THE THOUGHT OF THEODORE BEZA

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The Worldview of

Personalism

Origins and Early Development

JAN OLOF BENGTSSON

1

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Preface

This book is a revised and expanded version of my Oxford D.Phil. thesis from2003. I am indebted to my supervisors, the Revd Prof. em. Keith Ward andDr William J. Mander, for their commitment and complementarity; to theRevd Prof. em. Alan P. F. Sell and the Revd. Dr Philip Kennedy for their valuablecriticism and suggestions; to the Revd Prof. George Pattison for his carefulreading of and comments upon the thesis as well as the manuscript of this revisedtext; to Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch for his kind interest in my work; to the staVof the Bodleian Library, the Taylorian Institute Library, the Theology FacultyLibrary, and the Philosophy Faculty Library, and of the British Library, the RoyalLibrary in Stockholm, Lund University Library, Uppsala University Library, andStockholm University Library for their professionalism and friendliness; to theRoyal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities for a grant; to Prof.Svante Nordin of Lund University for encouraging me to do doctoral work onSwedish personalism, for supervising the Wrst stage of that work, and for com-menting upon my revision of the thesis; to Prof. em. Stig Stromholm, the formerVice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, for his support and for reading andcommenting upon early drafts of parts of the thesis and parts of the manuscriptof this revised text; to the Fellows and students of St Cross College and Dr JohnWalsh of Jesus College for conviviality; to Prof. Claes G. Ryn of the CatholicUniversity of America for a unique philosophical conversation over many years;to Prof. Randall E. Auxier of Southern Illinois University, the editor of the Libraryof Living Philosophers, and Prof. Thomas O. Buford of Furman University fordiscussions of American personalism; to my colleagues in the Department of theHistory of Ideas at Lund University, and in particular Dr Jonas Hansson, forrelevant discussions; to Dr Carl Johan Ljungberg for his congenial ideas; to PuseyHouse and the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society for inspiration; to Prof.Francis X. Clooney of Harvard University, the former academic director of theOxford Centre for Hindu Studies, for discussions of comparative perspectives onpersonalism; and to Prof. em. Thure Stenstrom, Uppsala, Prof. Bo Lindberg ofGothenburg University, Prof. Alf W. Johansson and Prof. Hans Ruin, bothof Sodertorn University College, Dr Mats Persson of Uppsala University,Dr Gosta Wrede, Stockholm, Prof. em. Anders JeVner, Prof. David Boucher andothers at the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre at CardiV University, Prof.em. Timothy Sprigge, Dr Peter P. Nicholson of the University of York, Prof. JohnHaldane of the University of St Andrews, Prof. Roger Scruton, Lord Plant ofHighWeld, Dr R. T. Allen, Prof. em. J. W. Burrow, and the Revd Prof. em. SirHenry Chadwick for important conversations and encouragement. As always, Iam grateful to my parents, Birgitta and Bengt Olof Bengtsson, for their interest inmy work and their unfailing support and love.

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Contents

Introduction 1

1. The current view of personalism and its origins 31The view of the historians 31The view of the personalists 49

2. Personal reason and impersonal understanding 67Jacobi 68Schelling 83Speculative theism 93British personal idealism 116

3. The personal absolute 129Jacobi 134Schelling 142Speculative theism 151British personal idealism 177

4. Personal unity-in-diversity 203Jacobi 205Schelling 212Speculative theism 217British personal idealism 240

5. Early personalism and its meaning 271

Bibliography 284Index 297

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Introduction

Personalism exists in many diVerent forms, and an exhaustive classiWcation willnot be attempted in this book. The two best-known forms are the Americanpersonalism initiated by Borden Parker Bowne, and the French school ofEmmanuel Mounier. But there are also strong currents of phenomenologicalpersonalism, existentialist personalism, and Catholic personalism. Althoughthere are many signiWcant diVerences between these various forms, as personal-isms they also have much in common, their positions often overlap, and histor-ically they can be seen to have stood in more or less close contact and to haveinXuenced each other. The journal The Personalist, edited by the leader of theCalifornian branch of the American school, Ralph Tyler Flewelling, regularly andfrequently published articles on and by all kinds of personalists, and Mounier wasone of its advisory editors. Less representative versions of personalism weredeveloped by Charles Bernard Renouvier and William Stern. Before becomingbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtya developed a personalism inspired not only byThomistic thinkers like Jacques Maritain, but also by Max Schelers personalisticphenomenology. The French school of Mounier has been a strong presence inPolish personalism, but the latter also draws inspiration from the Americanschool. Martin Bubers dialogical philosophy can be considered a distinctform of personalism. A British version of personalism was developed by JohnMacmurray. National variations have developed in many countries.

The argument in this book concerns the historical origins of modern perso-nalistic philosophy. Against the current view of these origins, I will show howpersonalistic philosophy emerged throughout the late eighteenth, the nineteenth,and the early twentieth centuries. This philosophy was richly embedded in other,more familiar philosophical, theological, and other currents, which togetherconstitute a complex intellectual landscape, determined by broad cultural andhistorical forces and not reducible to philosophy in any narrow technical sense.One of my purposes is to disentangle the central themes of what can be discernedas a distinctly personalistic worldview in this context. One reason why the originsand early development of personalism have been hidden from view is that manythinkers in whom personalistic themes appear have, rightly or wrongly, been seenrather as belonging, with regard to their main contributions, to some othercurrent or to a current better described in other terms.

As we will see, the American school remains the paradigm of personalism. It ison personalism in the somewhat more precise sense, as deWned by this school,that I will focus in my argument about its historical origins. American person-alism began as a rather distinctly idealistic philosophy: the term personal ideal-ism was Wrst used by the American George Holmes Howison, and subsequentlyby a number of British thinkers. The concept of idealistic personalism, however,can be said to be much older.

I will show that its origins are the same as the origins of personalism in general.These origins are to be found in the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century opposition to the radical Enlightenment rationalism which was seen byits critics to lead to pantheism, atheism, and fatalism, and against the forms ofpost-Kantian idealism that were seen by the same critics to be alternative forms ofimpersonalistic pantheism. This opposition, which began with the so-calledPantheismusstreit in Germany in the 1780s and continued and developedthroughout the following decades, was led by the philosopher and novelistFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi (17431819), one of the most widely inXuential writersof the age. According to Arthur O. Lovejoy, as a historic inXuence he is hardlysecond to Kant.1 Jacobi was primarily a man of letters and a man of the world,not an academic philosopher. Throughout his life he remained close to the centreof social and cultural life in Germany. He knew personally most of the leadingWgures on the German cultural and intellectual scene, and they were all familiarwith and commented on his work. Many of his philosophical views were Wrstexpressed in letters to them. Today, philosophers are increasingly recognizing thetrue nature of his genius: his ability intuitively to cut to the core of the dominantphilosophies of the age, to see the hidden connections and commonalitiesbetween these philosophies, to reveal the nature of their shared essence despiteall divergences, and to do all this with a cultural, moral, and religious clarity ofvision highly unusual for someone who played a considerable role in other aspectsof the movements on the contemporary scene. Yet with regard to his own positivealternative, most scholars still share Ernst Cassirers view that, although Jacobi wasa brilliant Anreger (stimulator) who with great Scharfsinn (acuteness) raised newquestions and discovered diYculties that determined the shape of philosophy for along time, the answers that he gave were granted only a brief historical semblanceof existence.2 This book will challenge Cassirers judgement. For all of the other,older and newer inXuences on modern personalism, I believe there are goodreasons to trace the latter back to Jacobi, and to recognize as its beginningnot only his deep perceptions of the problematic meaning of contemporaryphilosophy, but also the positive alternative he suggested.

Jacobi made the new term nihilism known by using it to describe theconsequences of Fichtes philosophy, which he regardedas indeed did Fichtehimselfas merely inverted Spinozism. While still shaped in other respects bythe Enlightenment and by Romanticism, Jacobi defended what he found to bethreatened by a certain radical form of abstract rationalism: the status and themoral freedom of the individual, the moral values of the ordered community ofpersons, and the personality and transcendence of God. The criticism of the newphilosophical pantheism, and of its consequences, was certainly not new.3 Jacobisversion was in important respects of a new and diVerent kind, however. Jacobi

1 Lovejoy, The Reason, the Understanding, and Time, 5.

2 Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, iii: Die

nachkantischen Systeme, 1617.

3 See Israel, Radical Enlightenment.

2 Introduction

relied on experience and intuition, groped towards a historical form of reason toaccompany sensual experience, and simultaneously defended a higher intuitiveexperience, a direct awareness of transcendent reality. Both endeavours weredirected against what he considered the abstractions of pantheism, and amongthe results were new insights into the primacy of the person.4 While contributingstrongly in some respects to the new Romantic movement, he was not fully partof it himself, keeping his distance, as we will see, from many of its typicalphilosophical and religious expressions, and maintaining instead strong ties tothe culture of the cosmopolitan society of the rococo.5

Although he did not deny them, there was in Jacobi a tendency to playdown the legitimate use of discursive reason and conceptuality, and their rolein conjunction with experience. In some respects he was a kind of realist inspiredby Scottish common-sense and moral-sense philosophy.6 It was partly out ofScottish philosophy that the distinctive personal experiential and intuitive basis ofphilosophy which characterizes personalism developed. Jacobi adapted theargument of belief in external reality with which David Hume supplementedhis scepticism, and combined it with other aspects of Scottish common- andmoral-sense philosophy.7 This inner connection seems to be conWrmed by the

4 Jacobis philosophical works, Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza (1785); David Hume uber den Glauben,oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gesprach (1787); Jacobi an Fichte (1799); Ueber das Unternehmen

des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu Bringen, in Reinhold (ed.), Beytrage zur leichtern

Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophie beymAnfange des 19. Jahrhunderts, iii (1801);Von den gottlichen

Dingen und ihrer OVenbarung (1811); and two philosophical novels, Woldemar (1779) and Eduard

Allwills Briefsammlung (1792), are all collected in Koppens and Roths edition of Jacobis Werke (ivi,

181225), the edition I will mainly use, although the considerable changes in the Werke versions in

some cases make it necessary to consult also the earlier editions. A critical, annotated edition of

Jacobis Werke has recently been published by Hammacher and Jaeschke. It is pointless to delve here

into the comprehensive German scholarship on Jacobi; some works will be referred to in the course of

my discussion when needed. Jacobi has normally been seen through the more or less unhistorical

lenses of other and later philosophies: transcendental idealism, Neo-Kantian value-philosophy, irra-

tionalist philosophy of life, existentialism, and phenomenological dialogicism. But there are partial

truths in many of these approaches. I will point to Jacobis neglected connection with idealistic and

theistic personalism, but, I hope, not unhistorically reinterpret him in the light of it. Most works deal,

of course, with Jacobian positions related to what I call his personalism. Of special relevance are those

which relate him to twentieth-century dialogical philosophy, which is closely related to twentieth-

century personalism. The excellent section on Jacobi in Timms Gott und die Freiheit focuses on the

themes of his work that are most relevant for the present study. The best work on Jacobi in English isthe Introduction by diGiovanni, published together with his own translations in Jacobi, The Main

Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill; in some cases I have cited the earlier editions of Jacobis

works from diGiovannis translation. Beisers chapters on Jacobi in The Fate of Reason (chs. 2, 3, and 4)

and Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism (ch. 6) should also be mentioned.

5 Heraeus, Fritz Jacobi und der Sturm und Drang, 102.

6 On the inXuence of these philosophies not only on Jacobi but in Germany in general, see Kuehn,

Scottish Common Sense in Germany. Jacobi called himself a realist; see Bollnow, Die Lebensphilosophie

F. H. Jacobis, 132.

7 See diGiovanni, Hume, Jacobi, and Common Sense; Baum, Vernunft und Erkenntnis, 429, 164

73; Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1415, 15866; and Berlin, Hume and the Sources of

German Anti-Rationalism, in Against the Current.

Introduction 3

fact that a distinctive inXuence on the leading British personal idealist, AndrewSeth Pringle-Pattison, was his Scottish teacher A. C. Fraser.

Jacobi was often perceived to verge towards Wdeism, or what was at the timecalled the philosophy of faith, although his conception of faith was not in allrespects the traditional or orthodox Christian one. A number of subsequentthinkers whom he inspired sought to remedy this. Most important amongthem was the later F. W. J. Schelling who, naturally enough considering his earlierphilosophical development, was unwilling to relinquish his high estimate ofreason in his assimilation of Jacobis criticism of idealism. In his PhilosophischeUntersuchungen uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809), the work which,according to Heidegger, shatters Hegels Logic before it was even published,8 heclaimed to have developed the Wrst clear, philosophical concept of the personalityof Goda very signiWcative claim, as we will see. The book was written inMunich, where Jacobi was president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Jacobiattacked the kind of ideas defended by Schelling in Von den gottlichen Dingen(1811), a book on which he had been working for ten years and which wasdirected primarily against Schellings Naturphilosophie and his Philosophie undReligion (1804), but leading up to the ideas which characterized Schellings newdeparture in the Freiheitsschrift.9 There ensued a heated debate throughout 181112which was in substance a permutation of the older pantheism controversy, butas he proceeded further along the road taken in the Freiheitsschrift Schelling latercame to recognize the importance of Jacobis contributions. In 1841, at a very latestage of his career, Schelling was famously called to a chair at Berlin with theexpress purpose of having him eradicate die Drachensaat des HegelschenPantheismus, the dragon seed of Hegelian pantheism. He was chosen by thePrussian authorities because by that time he had long since abandoned theabsolute idealism he once shared with Hegel, and had developed a new kind oftheistic philosophy.10 This positive alternative to Hegelianism, developed over aperiod of several decades, while not compatible in its particular details with

8 Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, ed. Fieck (1971), 97,

cited in Snow, Schelling and the End of Idealism, 149.

9 The fact that Jacobi does not mention Schelling, and makes no precise references, has led to some

confusion about the targetof his criticism. Ford argued, in TheControversyBetweenSchelling and Jacobi,

thatVonden gottlichenDingendid not treat of Schellings Freiheitsschrift, and that it was not intended as anattack on Schelling at all. Subsequent German scholarship has carried on treating it as an attack on

Schelling, however; it has also pointed out that Jacobis copy of the Wrst edition of the Freiheitsschrift has

extensivemarginalia, although it is clear that hehad not yet fully studied it whenwritingVonden gottlichen

Dingen. See Hammacher, Jacobis Schrift Von den gottlichen Dingen, 133 and n. 34.

10 I use Schroters edition of Schellings Werke (192754), but follow its practice of giving volume

and page references to the Wrst edition of the Sammtliche Werke edited by K. F. A. Schelling (185661);

and occasionally, for texts or versions of texts not included in the Werke, Fuhrmanss edition of

Grundlegung der positiven Philosophie. Munchener Vorlesung (1972), Peertzs edition of System der

Weltalter, Munchener Vorlesung 182728 (1990), Wirths translation of The Ages of the World (2000),

and the Historisch-kritische Ausgabe which began to appear in 1976. Schellings main criticism of

Hegel is found in his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (c.18334) and Philosophie der OVenbarung

(18412).

4 Introduction

developing personalism, strongly inXuenced it because of its more general orien-tation towards a new personalistic theism.

Schellings criticism of Hegel, however, was only one expression of a morewidespread critical reaction, on which Jacobi and his disciples and followers weredecisively inXuential. Its theological side has been coveredin general termsbyGerman scholars. Especially, the works of J. E. Kuhn and F. A. Staudenmaier ofthe Catholic Tubingen School should be mentioned for stating in paradigmaticfashion the distinctive personalist critique, and thus indirectly also much of thealternative, personalist worldview.11 Other types of critics too, like A. Trendelen-burg for instance, were inXuential on emerging personalism. This was, takentogether, a massive attempt at confutation which reverberated throughout thenineteenth centuryand most palpably perhaps in personalistic thought. What Iam interested in here are the critics who themselves developed personalistic ideasas an alternative. Schellings polemic is thus here set in the context of emergentpersonalism rather than that of the general reaction against Hegel.

Schelling only partly managed to transcend the distinct teachings of whatJacobi had criticized as pantheism, and combined new personalistic insightswith the now familiar themes of irrationalism, existentialism, the unconscious,and language. SigniWcantly, it is these aspects of his later work, in which antici-pations can be found of the broadly postmodern current from Nietzsche andHeidegger, and not his personalism, that recent scholarship focuses on.12 AllGerman idealism was influenced by the Western esoteric tradition, and the laterSchelling continued to draw on it, albeit with new emphases. On the basis of thespeculation of Bohme, a new kind of theistic philosophy was also developed on aparallel line by F. von Baader and by J. J. von Gorres, who were both leadingCatholic thinkers in Munich.13

With regard to Jacobi and Schelling I will merely draw out the main features ofthe distinctly personalistic elements which can be found in their works, to the

11 Graf andWagner (eds.), Die Flucht in den BegriV. Graf s and Wagners introduction, Turks essay,

Rezeption und Kritik der Philosophie Hegels in der Katholischen Tubinger Schule , which deals

with Kuhn und Staudenmaier (the decisive inXuence of Jacobi on the Tubinger Schule has been

studied by Weindell in F. H. Jacobis Einwirkung auf die Glaubenswissenschaft der katholischen

Tubinger Schule), and Graf s on Der Untergang des Individuums, together give an overview of the

personalist theological criticism.

12 Since these aspects are comparatively well known, I will not emphasize them. As in the case of

Jacobi, it is not meaningful here extensively to inventory Schelling scholarship. Something must be

said, however, about the rediscovery of and the issues in the growing scholarship on the later Schelling.

A pioneering work in the renewal of scholarship on the later Schelling was Schulzs Die Vollendung des

deutschen Idealismus in der Spatphilosophie Schellings, which, in emphasizing the existentialist elem-

ents, in some respects challenged Leeses notion of a Spatidealismus (Philosophie und Theologie im

Spatidealismus), which had been taken up by Fuhrmans (Schellings letzte Philosophie). Bowies Schel-

ling and Modern European Philosophy concentrates on the relations between Schelling and Heidegger

and other twentieth-century thinkers, but also contains an account of Schellings criticism of Hegel.

Snows excellent Schelling and the End of Idealism is more relevant for my present purposes, since itfocuses to a considerable extent on the relations between Schelling and Jacobi. Mention should also be

made of Brown, The Later Philosophy of Schelling.

13 See OMeara, Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism, esp. chs. 4 and 6.

Introduction 5

extent necessary in order to make clear the presence and the nature of a person-alistic worldview at this early stage, and thereby to demonstrate its connectionwith later developments. The link between Jacobi and Schelling has always beenwell known, and is highlighted in all works on the later Schelling.

Although to some extent sharing the continuously present extra-idealisticcriticism from Jacobi, much of the reaction against the pantheistic and absolut-istic lines of development within German idealism remained, in the eVorts towork out an alternative to them, within the boundaries of idealism in a moregeneral sense. It marked the emergence of a new and distinct kind of idealism.Schellings central personalistic and theistic themes were taken up and partlyextricated from the theoretical contexts of Romantic irrationalism by the schoolof so-called speculative theism (spekulativer Theismus) in Germany, led bythinkers like Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Christian Hermann Weisse, and Her-mann Ulrici, a philosophical movement which has as yet received little scholarlyattention.14 The speculative theists were also directly inspired by Jacobi. Thesimilarities and the diVerences between Jacobi, the later Schelling, and the schoolof speculative theism have been studied in German works on the history of

14 Immanuel Hermann Fichte (17971879), son of Johann Gottlieb, attacked pantheism in general

in Satze zur Vorschule der Theologie, published in 1826. Gottlob Benjamin Jasches Der Pantheismusnach seinen verschiedenen Hauptformen, seinem Ursprung und Fortgang, seinem spekulativen und

praktischen Werth und Gehalt. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Kritik dieser Lehre in alter und neuer

Philosophie appeared in three volumes in 1826. Fichtes Wrst sustained attack on Hegels version of

pantheism appeared in his Beitragen zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie in 1829 (the work also

contains an extensive treatment of Jacobi), the same year that Christian Hermann Weisse (180166)

published his Uber den gegenwartigen Standpunkt der philosophischen Wissenschaft. In besonderer

Beziehung auf das System Hegels. In 1832 Fichtes Uber Gegensatz, Wendepunkt und Ziel heutiger

Philosophie appeared, in 1834 his Die Idee der Personlichkeit und der individuellen Fortdauer, in 1836

hisOntologie, and in 1846 his Spekulative Theologie. Weisse published his Die Idee der Gottheit in 1833,

his Grundzuge der Metaphysik in 1835, and his Das philosophische Problem der Gegenwart. Sendschrei-

ben an I. H. Fichte in 1842. The inXuence of German speculative theism culminated towards mid-

century. The main organ of the movement, Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und spekulative Theologie, was

founded in 1837, and in 1847 it was given its new name, Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosophische

Kritik. Fichtes Anthropologie appeared in 1856, and his Psychologie in 1864; Vermischte Schriften

appeared in 1869. Hermann Ulrici (180684), the editor of the Zeitschrift, turned against Hegel in

Uber Prinzip und Methode der hegelschen Philosophie (1841), and against the purely atheistic materi-

alism into which pantheism had already developed in Gott und die Natur (1861); Weisses magnum

opus, Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums, appeared between 1855 and 1862 in

three volumes. Fichtes last work, whose title, Die theistische Weltanschauung und ihre Berechtigung: einkritisches Manifest an ihre Gegner und Bericht uber die Hauptaufgaben gegenwartiger Spekulation, bears

witness to the consistently maintained position, appeared in 1873. Other speculative theists were Jakob

Sengler, Karl Philip Fischer, Isaak August Dorner, Richard Rothe, Moritz Carriere, and Heinrich

Moritz Chalybaeus. These and very many other speculative theists are listed and brieXy discussed in

the later editions of Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. The most ambitious scholarly

work in the Weld is still Drewss Die deutsche Spekulation seit Kant, which, however, is an extreme and

idiosyncratic critical study from the perspective of E. v. Hartmanns philosophy. Among the few

relevant older monographs there can be mentioned A. Hartmanns Der Spatidealismus und die

Hegelsche Dialektik, and three works on Fichte: Scherers Die Gotteslehre von Immanuel Hermann

Fichte, Horstmeiers Die Idee der Personlichkeit bei Immanuel Hermann Fichte, and Eberts Sein und

Sollen des Menschen bei Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Von spatidealistischer Spekulation zur Existenz.

6 Introduction

philosophy.15 It is quite clear that the speculative theists, like subsequent person-alists, often misunderstood aspects of Hegels philosophy, but it is not theircriticism of these aspects per se that is decisive here, but the whole discourse ofwhich this criticism was a part, and which contained the early development ofpersonalism.

Rudolph Hermann Lotze (181781), who published his main works when theearlier speculative theists had been around and even dominated German aca-demic philosophy for a long time, introduced new theoretical elements in pacewith the development of the times, but retained some of the basic idealisticthemes as well as the cardinal theistic and personalistic positions.16 Lotze, whoheld Fichtes, Hegels, and Schellings chair at Berlin and was succeeded in it byDilthey, was widely recognized as Germanys most important philosopher. Herenewed idealistic personalism, not least through his development of a philoso-phy of values and meaning which was of considerable consequence for thethinking of the Baden Neo-Kantians, and which would also inXuence laterforms of personalism.17 Although its epistemology, metaphysics, and ethicswere rather diVerent, personalism was now, because of its recourse to Wnitesubjectivity as at least the point of departure of philosophy, in opposition toabsolutism, increasingly identiWed with the Neo-Kantian movement with itssimilar reaction. The two currents certainly shared some philosophical territory,

The introduction by Graf and Wagner, and the contribution of Graf to Graf and Wagner (eds.), Die

Flucht in den BegriV relate the speculative theist criticism of Hegel, which is not sharply distinguishedfrom the theological criticism to which the volume as a whole is devoted; the volume also reprints a

major part of a central article by Weisse, Uber die eigentliche Grenze des Pantheismus und des

philosophischen Theismus, from 1833. Jaeschke deals with speculative theism in Die Vernunft in der

Religion, ch. 4. Kohnke deals with the speculative theists in a separate chapter in Entstehung und

Aufstieg des Neukantianismus, 88105. Ehrets Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Ein Denker gegen seine Zeit is

the only recent work which coversvery selectivelythe work of a leading speculative theist. Breck-

man, in Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory, deals at unusual length

with Christian personalism, but only as a foil to Young Hegelianism; I will discuss his important work

in Ch. 1.

15 See Drews,Die deutsche Spekulation seit Kant, Fuhrmans, Schellings letzte Philosophie, and Schulz,

Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus. The latter, challenging Leeses notion of a unitary Spatidea-

lismus, corrected Fuhrmanss results with regard to the relation between Schelling and the speculative

theists in important respects, but this does not seem to me to aVect Fuhrmanss general observations,which are still apposite in the present connection. The links that I want to emphasize are the ones that

indicate a continuity in the general, central themes of personalistic theism. It is not a question of

denying the considerable diVerences between Schelling and the speculative theists; for Schelling, the

latter were much too close to Hegel; cf. Tilliette, Schelling, ii. 39 n. 5, 801, 346.

16 Reardon, in From Coleridge to Gore, characterizes Lotze as a personal idealist, 305, 317. The term

Personalismus was used to characterize to Lotzes philosophy in the 1890s; Ueberweg, Grundriss der

Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 278. Through his new concerns, such as that with the theoretical

presuppositions of the sciences, Lotze belonged in a diVerent sense and more decisively in the post-

Hegelian period; see Wentscher, Hermann Lotze, 10912.

17 Bamberger, Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des Wertproblems in der Philosophie des 19. Jahrhun-

derts ; Piche, Hermann Lotze et la gene`se de la philosophie des valeurs. Other German speculative

theists also adopted at least the language of value at this time.

Introduction 7

but the similarities are on a very general level, and the identiWcation has notfacilitated the understanding of the distinct personalist positions.

Lotzes work was to exercise a decisive inXuence on British and Americanpersonalism,18 as its leaders studied under him in Germany. But Lotze wasWeisses student, and, although prominent and in many ways original, as apersonalist and theist he was only one of many in a broad and deep personalisticmovement in Germany. There were considerable diVerences between Lotze andthe earlier speculative theists which have been duly documented by Germanscholars.19 But Weisse clearly acknowledged the merits of Lotzes work, andwhat has been overlooked is the continuity in the personalistic and theisticthemes, these themes themselves as expressed in Lotzes work, and how it isthese themes that, in Lotzes formulation, have inXuenced later personalisticphilosophers in Britain and America.20

Lotze strongly inXuenced his friend Albrecht Ritschl, whose work dominatedthe theology of the late nineteenth century. His Kantian ethical focus, criticismof rationalist and Romantic immanentist metaphysics, defence of the primacy ofpersonality in Wnite beings and in God, and emphasis on the historical personof Christ were also, alongside Lotze, a considerable inXuence on more theologicallyoriented personalists, and, more generally, personalistically oriented theologians inBritain and America.21 But the Ritschlian school was not fully representative ofpersonalism, in that it embraced a kind of German liberal theology from whichpersonalism typically kept some distance.

This broad movement in nineteenth-century German philosophy is character-ized as a whole by the attempt to break free from the pantheistic tendencies in themain line of German idealism, and to transcend the pantheistic elements even inthe later Schelling. Against such pantheisms, it sought to erect a theistic philoso-phy with the help of new speculative instruments, a philosophy shaped by a newand more pronouncedly personalistic interpretation of Christian theism. Butthe movement is also marked by the frequent failure of this attempt: many ofthe speculative theists seem to have been too close to the new sources of

18 Especially hisMikrokosmus. Ideen zur Naturgeschichte und Geschichte der Menschheit, iiii (1856

64), his Metaphysik (1879), and his Grundzuge der Religionsphilosophie (Diktate from lectures)(1882).

19 Pester,Hermann Lotze. Lotze was involved in direct polemics against I. H. Fichte. His divergences

from Ulrici can be studied in two long reviews, reprinted in Kleine Schriften (188591), ii and iii/1.

20 In his brief Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Kant (1882), Lotze barely mentions Right

Hegelianism proper, and tends to identify it with the speculative theism of Weisse and I. H. Fichte,

which partly joined the later Schelling; his sympathy is clearly on their side rather than on that of the

Left Hegelians, whom he directly criticizes: op. cit. 723. Lotzes position as a kind of speculative theist

has been made clear by Drews and others. On Lotzes relation to Weisse, see Wentscher, 267, et

passim. An early study of Lotze in relation to Weisse is Pannier, Lotzes GottesbegriV genetisch

dargestellt; Lotzes relation to Weisse is also discussed by Bamberger, and, brieXy, by Pester.

21 In the second part of The Making of American Liberal Theology, Dorrien describes the proximity

of post-Bownian personalism and Ritschlianism, ii. 305.

8 Introduction

pantheism, too dependent on their speculative projects, to succeed unambigu-ously in the eVort of transcending the pantheistic results.22

It should be mentioned that already at the beginning of the movement ofspeculative theism there came to dominate, even within Hegelianism, thosefollowers of the Centre and the Right who gave Hegels teachings a theisticinterpretation.23 According to E. Hirsch, speculative theism and the Hegelianright represented the two main branches of German Kathederphilosophie between1830 and 1870.24 As for the Young Hegelians, Warren Breckman has shown howthey cannot be properly understood apart from the constitutive polemical neg-ation of the Christian personalism that Jacobi, the later Schelling, the Hegelianright, the speculative theists, and various theologians presented.25

Left Hegelians too developed the dialogical aspect of personalism. SigniWcantly,however, for Feuerbach, the IThou relationship was exclusively human, andeven meant mans Wnal achievement of his identity as Godand thus the Wnalabolition of the traditional God.26 Feuerbachs naturalism did not prevent himfrom sharing some ground, in his criticism of Hegel, with the speculative theistsearlier criticism. But from the perspective of what I regard as the main line ofpersonalism, Feuerbachs personalism, like that of other Left Hegelians,remained constantly vitiated by a never-relinquished pantheism, of which Feuer-bachs naturalism can be regarded as merely a further extension.

Under the inXuence of Schelling and other German thinkers, but to someextent also parallel to them, a philosophy selectively combining the substance ofJacobis criticism and his positive alternative with elements of idealism wasdeveloped in Sweden by four professors of philosophy at the University ofUppsala. Their philosophy too was called speculative theism, but in additionto that, it also came to be called personlighetsidealism (idealism of personality),and later, personlighetsWlosoW (philosophy of personality)the term Personlich-keitsphilosoph was also used by I. H. Fichte.27 By this time Kantianism had beenintroduced in Sweden by Daniel Boethius (17511810) and others, and post-Kantian idealism by Benjamin Hoijer (17671812), one of Swedens best-knownphilosophers. The idealists of personality, however, also preservedas didBoethiussome of the inspiration from the Scottish common- and moral-sense

22 This is demonstrated not only by the criticism of stricter theistic philosophers, but also by

Drewss pantheist criticism; Drews divides his discussion of speculative theism into two main sections,

True Theism and Pseudo-Theism.

23 To these camps belonged thinkers like G. A. Gabler, K. Daub, P. K. Marheineke, K. F. Goschel, J. K.

F. Rosenkrantz, and J. E. Erdmann.

24 Quoted in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Ritter (Theismus, spekulativer).

25 See n. 14.

26 Buber, Zur Geschichte des dialogischen Prinzips, 2934.

27 Fichte, Vermischte Schriften, i. 58. SigniWcantly, he uses it in connection with a discussion of the

parallel between himself and Jacobi, and the inXuence of the example of the latter. The term

Personlichkeitsidealismus was also used in Germany, although in a slightly diVerent sense, with

reference rather to the general programme of Bildung.

Introduction 9

philosophy that had been amajor force in Swedish eighteenth-century philosophy,and modiWed German idealism accordingly.28

Partly because the German speculative theists cannot normally be consideredto have fully succeeded in their eVorts to supersede the pantheistic and theo-sophical elements in the later Schelling and other German thinkers, specialattention will be given here to the Swedish branch of this tradition of idealisticpersonalism, a branch which in some respects seems to represent more clearly thenext step in the development of personalism.29 Here we Wnd an unbrokencontinuity of idealistic personalism from the beginning of the nineteenth centuryand well into the twentieth, dominating academic philosophy throughout mostof this period. Nils Fredrik Biberg (17761827), Samuel Grubbe (17861853), PerDaniel Amadeus Atterbom (17901855), Erik Gustaf Geijer (17831847), andChristopher Jacob Bostrom (17971866) developed the worldview of late ideal-ism, speculative theism, and personalism by continually relating their own eVortsto what was of relevance in what happened on the German philosophical scene.This development took place in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, with Bostrom, whorepresented a second generation of Swedish personal idealists, exercising hisinXuence from the mid-1840s, and the main tendency is fairly clear. Biberg30was from the very beginning busy with the refutation not only of Schellingsphilosophy of identity, but also of his philosophy of freedom, by means of anindependent assimilation of Jacobis and Hegels criticisms. This was presented inhis lectures of the academic year 181112, at the same time that Jacobi publishedVon den gottlichen Dingen.31 Jacobis formulations on the problematic tendencies

28 See Segerstedt,Moral Sense-skolan och dess inXytande pa svensk WlosoW (The School of Moral Sense

and its InXuence on Swedish Philosophy).

29 The complex subject of the relation between the developments of the personalistic themes in

Sweden and Germany, and the question of priority in this development, are not of importance for my

argument. What I am concerned to demonstrate is only the presence in Europe at this early stage of the

development of the speciWc themes of personalism. Although priority was later claimed for the

Swedish thinkers, and this will have to be mentioned since the substantial diVerences adduced in

support of that claimwhether the latter is strictly tenable or notare of relevance for the general

argument about the direction of the development of personalism, it is probable that this argument

could also have been made with reference to some German thinkers. By paying scant attention to the

German speculative theists, however, German scholars concur in playing down their importance. It is

a little strange that they are frequently dismissed as epigones, for it is not at all clear of whom they are

supposed to be epigones. They may not all have been important philosophers, but they undoubtedlyrepresented a distinct line of their own.

30 Among his most important works are Om philosophiens allmanna problemer (On the General

Problems of Philosophy), and a number of unpublished manuscripts (articles and lecture notes), such

as Inledning till etiken (An Introduction to Ethics), Om forhallandet mellan religion och sedlighet

(On the Relation between Religion and Morality), Om de etiska formalbegreppen (On the Formal

Concepts of Ethics), and Forelasningar i WlosoWens historia (Lectures on the History of Philoso-

phy). Bibergs Samlade skrifter (Collected Writings), edited by Dellden in three volumes (182830),

contains mostly his work in the philosophy of law. Other important works include a commentary on

the Stoics, and the essay Om falsk och sann liberalism (On True and False Liberalism) (in Svea,

18234).

31 Henningsson, Nagra frihetsproblem hos Nils Fredrik Biberg (Some Problems of Freedom in Nils

Fredrik Biberg), 57; Frykenstedt, Atterboms kunskapsuppfattning (Atterboms Theory of Knowledge),

10 Introduction

in the kind of ideas that shaped Schellings philosophy of nature, and to someextent the Freiheitsschrift, were thus supplemented by an analysis using otherphilosophical instruments. After these lectures, the other Swedish philosophers,Grubbe, Atterbom, and Geijer, were soon engaged in the same kind of criticism ofSchellings Freiheitsschrift of 1809, on the grounds that it did not representsuYcient progress beyond the earlier philosophy of identity with regard to theconcept of God.

Unlike Biberg, Grubbe gradually worked his way out of an early adherence toSchellingianism.32 His teaching during this period strongly inXuenced the devel-opment of Atterbom, who moved beyond his earlier, more outre forms ofaesthetico-Romantic Schellingianism in the direction of at least a more strictlyphilosophical one. Atterbom was also under the inXuence of the Platonismshared by Biberg and Grubbe. His most important philosophical works areStudier till Philosophiens Historia och System (Studies in the History and Systemof Philosophy) (1835) and a number of extensive articles.33 Geijer, a professor ofhistory, had already published several works in the spirit of the neo-humanistic

1723, 379, 4950. Apart fromNyblaeuss work on the history of Swedish philosophy (see below) and

Nordins chapter on Biberg in Romantikens WlosoW (The Philosophy of Romanticism), there are as yet no

other works that deal extensively with Biberg. Nyblaeus uniquely built his account to a considerable

extent on the voluminous collection of Bibergs unpublished, and barely legible, manuscripts in Lund

University Library, which it has not yet been possible for meor anyone elseto go through in its

entirety. Henningsson does not challenge any of the interpretations I here accept. Nyblaeuss account

corresponds with the view held by Bostrom, and heeding Nordins warning about the extent to whichNyblaeus tends to see earlier thinkers in a one-sided Bostromian light, it seems possible to judge to the

extent necessary for my present purposes of its trustworthiness.

32 His Skrifter (Writings) were published in seven volumes (187684) by Nyblaeus, with some

linguistic, orthographic, and compositional revisions in accordance with the editing practices of the

times (some of them being problematical). The parts of this edition are given the following names by

Nyblaeus: Praktiska WlosoWens historia (The History of Practical Philosophy), iii; FilosoWsk

sedelara (Philosophical Ethics), iiiiv; Fenomenologi eller om den sinnliga erfarenheten (Phenom-

enology, or On Sensory Experience), v; Ontologi eller om det absolute urvasendet (Ontology, or On

the Absolute Original Being), vi; and Det skona och den skona konstens WlosoW (The Beautiful and

the Philosophy of the Fine Arts), vii. This edition was supplemented in 1912 with a volume of

Forelasningar till WlosoWens propedevtik (Lectures on the Propedeutic of Philosophy), published

under the title Om WlosoWens intresse och problemer (On the Interest and Problems of Philosophy) by

Fransen. The standard work on Grubbe is Cullberg, Samuel Grubbe. Cullbergs work is valuable partly

because of the detailed information on the problematic elements of Nyblaeuss editing; Cullberg alsoclaims to detect certain contradictions between the Platonic, Christian, and modern idealist elements

in Grubbes philosophy. (In other works, Cullberg demonstrated the relevance of Geijerian themes in

the contemporary context of phenomenological and existentialist dialogicism.)

33 Atterbom is best known as a Romantic poet, yet the extensive scholarship devoted to him has

largely neglected his philosophical work, especially as it relates to the tradition of Swedish idealistic

personalism. The standard biography is Tykessons Atterbom. Atterboms impressions of Jacobi,

Schelling, and other leaders of German culture can be studied in Aufzeichnungen des schwedischen

Dichters P. D. A. Atterbom uber beruhmte deutsche Manner und Frauen nebst Reiseerinnerungen aus

Deutschland und Italien (1867), and Menschen und Stadte. Begegnungen und Beobachtungen eines

Schwedischen Dichters in Deutschland, Italien und Osterreich, 18171819, edited by Schroder. As

could be expected, Atterbom was much more impressed by Schelling than by Jacobi.

Introduction 11

and idealistic programme of Bildung, works which, however, at the same timeupheld a Christian, theistic position.34 But until he published a largely original,partial criticism of Schelling in Thorild (1820) (partly a study of a late eighteenth-century Swedish philosopher), Geijers philosophical development seems to havebeen parallel to that of Grubbe and Atterbom.35 Geijer then became engrossed byhis historical work, and the task of leading the development of Swedish perso-nalistic idealism fell to the other thinkers. In 1835 Geijer wrote a highly appre-ciative review of Atterboms History and System of Philosophy, but only in the1840s, after his so-called defection to liberalism, did Geijer return to philosophy.It is now that his long career of philosophical, historical, and general broadhumanistic reXection culminates and his production reaches its qualitative apo-gee, making his reputation as the emblem of Swedish personalism.36 CertainlyGeijer here in some respects developed further the work of his colleagues andpredecessors in the 1820s and 1830s. But for the rest, he simply summed up theUpsaliensic insights that had gradually matured and deepened during thesedecades, and gave them a new and sometimes better expression.37

The theistic tendency of Schellings philosophy of freedom remained aconsiderable inXuence, however, as did the later, scanty, oracular utterancesof Schelling himself, and his mysterious manuscripts that were observed byhis Swedish and other visitors in Munich.38 Hegels criticism of the early Schel-ling, received partly through Biberg, was also not a negligible inXuence on thelater Swedish idealists way of apprehending the absolute, on their emphasison the concrete, and even, by means of the kind of interpretations that were

34 Geijer had also published a work in political philosophy, Feodalism och republikanism (Feudalism

and Republicanism) (181819), which evidenced the unique extent to which he was inspired by

the English political tradition. I use the Wrst edition of Geijers Samlade skrifter (Collected Writings)

(184955).

35 The controversies caused by Thorild forced Geijer to add a new section to this work as well as

replies to critics, which are important sources of his personalism.

36 The most important works from this period are Menniskans historia (The History of Man),

Geijers most inXuential work in philosophy, a lecture series from 1841 to 1842, posthumously

published in 1856, on the philosophy of history in relation to philosophy in general (the title betrays

Scottish inXuence); the Tillagg (Addendum) (1842) to his early work on Om falsk och sann upplysning

med afseende pa religionen (On True and False Enlightenment with Regard to Religion) from 1811; and

Ocksa ett ord ovfer tidens religiosa fraga (Also a Word on the Religious Question of Our Time) (1847).37 At this late stage, Geijer could also beneWt from the work of the German speculative theists and

other critics of Hegel in Germany. A study of Geijer in English is Spongberg, The Philosophy of Erik

Gustaf Geijer. The most important works on Geijer as a philosopher, and especially on his position in

relation to German thinkers, are Landquist, Erik Gustaf Geijer, and Norberg, Geijers vag fran romantik

till realism (Geijers Development from Romanticism to Realism) (some of Norbergs results have

subsequently been questioned). During the Second World War, Norberg used Geijers personalism

as a weapon in the Wght against the totalitarian systems of Nazism and communism, pointing to what

she perceived by then to be the tragic historical consequences of following Hegels rather than Geijers

lead. A selection from Geijers Minnen (Memoirs) and letters was translated and published under the

title Impressions of England in 1932.

38 Schelling did not publish much after the Freiheitsschrift; there were many rumours of his work on

Die Weltalter, but it was never completed and was only published posthumously in fragmentary form.

12 Introduction

later to be described as Right Hegelian, at least to some extent on their under-standing of the absolute as a person. However, like Schelling and the speculativetheists, they all came to see Hegels philosophy too as distinctly non-personalisticand as unable properly to explain the concrete, and to state the criticism of it interms which, in retrospect, can be seen to be paradigmatic of personalism.

With somewhat bombastic claims of independence, Bostrom then burst uponthe scene with an even sharper criticism, not only of Schelling and Hegel, but ofthe speculative theists in Germany as well. Bostrom exercised his inXuencethrough his lectures and informal seminars as holder of the most prestigious ofthe philosophical chairs at Uppsala, and did not publish much in his lifetime. Hedeparted from the more Jacobian understanding of faith and reason of histeachers Biberg and Grubbe by a higher degree of Hegelian rationalism, butmany of the central themes of personalistic idealism remained intact.39 As notfully typical of early personalism, and as representing a later phase of Swedishspeculative theism that is less important for my historical argument, his positionwill only brieXy be indicated in connection with the discussion of the otherSwedish speculative theists. With regard to the distinctly personalistic featuresof his metaphysics and ethics he in many respects remained close to his teachers.But his system does, I think, shed some light on the problem of the taxonomy ofdiVerent forms of personal and absolute idealism and the relations between them,a problem which is not without historical importance.

The Bostromian school dominated Swedish academic philosophy throughoutthe second half of the nineteenth century, headed by Bostroms leading disciples.One of the most prominent of them was Axel Nyblaeus (182199), professor atLund, who is best known for Den WlosoWska forskningen i Sverige fran slutet af detadertonde arhundradet (Swedish Philosophy from the End of the Eighteenth Cen-tury) (187397), a four-volume work which recapitulated and restated the wholeof the development of Swedish idealism of personality up to Bostrom and thesuccessive stages of its emancipation from German pantheistic idealism.40

39 A presentation of Bostrom and his philosophy in English is available in R. N. Becks Intro-

ductory Essay, published together with a translation of selections from Bostroms Philosophy of

Religion (1962); Beck, familiar of course with the American school, repeatedly refers to Bostroms

philosophy as personalism: op. cit. pp. xx, xxxvi. There are two unpublished American doctoral

dissertations on Bostrom, L. H. Becks AComparison of the Doctrines of Reality in the Philosophies of

Lotze and Bostrom and Noscos God in the Philosophy of Christopher Jacob Bostrom. Entries on

Bostrom appear in various philosophical encyclopedias; Swedish works on Bostrom are too many to

enumerate here.

40 Although, as less important for my historical argument, I will not cover the period except for

brief references where relevant, a few words on the later development of Swedish idealistic personalismshould be added for comparative purposes, since it was at this later stage that such personalism

emerged in Britain and America. Pontus Wikner (183788), arguably Bostroms most brilliant student

and considered by Bostrom himself as his successor, ultimately defected from Bostromianism, and as

professor at Christiania (subsequently Oslo) and in a number of his later writings set forth an

elaborate criticism of it. Wikner was not the only apostate from Bostromianism. He was soon followed

by Vitalis Norstrom (18561916) (Masskultur (Mass Culture) (1910), Religion och tanke (Religion and

Introduction 13

In a few places I will use the designation idealists of personality to distinguishthese Swedish philosophers from their German counterparts, but it should beborne in mind that the German and the Swedish currents belonged closelytogether within the same broader movement of the early European developmentof personalism. In Sweden, as in Germany, speculative theism was not yet a termof historical description and classiWcation, but one which signalled what thinkersin both countries were calling for. I will therefore use the title SpeculativeTheism for the sections which cover both the Germans and the Swedes, inorder to distinguish them as schools from the subsequent British personalidealism and American personalism. As will become plain, however, this in noway implies that the German and the Swedish schools were any less personalistthan the latter. What they called for under the general and unexpressive name ofspeculative theism was in reality the whole new personalist synthesis, as the onlyway ahead not just in Western philosophy and theology, but in Western culturemore generally.

The existentialist element in modern personalism can be traced back to Schel-ling, and in some respects even to Jacobi. Schellings late Berlin lectures were

Thought) (1912, German translation 1932)), professor at the University of Gothenburg, the leading

Swedish philosopher at the turn of the century and an inXuential cultural critic. Yet both Norstromand Wikner remained loyal to the personalist tradition. Indeed, it was precisely because they found

Bostroms rationalistic idealism insuYcient for the defence of theism and of the distinctness and

independence of the individual person, and incapable of doing justice to the dynamic realities and

experiences of life (and not least religious life), that they broke with it. Instead, while developing their

own positions in closer connection with historicism and traditional Christianity, and, in the case of

Norstrom, new impulses partly akin to those at work in his German friend, Rudolf Eucken, partly

from the Lotzean and Neo-Kantian philosophy of values, they also drew on the alternative Swedish

legacy within personal idealism, that of Geijer. SigniWcantly, Wikner left at his departure an unWnished

work entitled Tidsexistensens apologi (Apology of Temporal Existence) (published in 1888). Norstrom,

although highly respectful of the Grundlichkeit of German scholarship, was inclined to see the

diVerence between German (pantheistic) and Swedish (personal idealist) philosophy as an expression

of a diVerence in national character. Viktor Rydberg, a leading Swedish novelist and poet in the second

half of the nineteenth century who also published philosophical and historical works, was strongly

inXuenced by Bostromianism. In diVerent versions and new combinations, Swedish idealistic person-

alism remained a decisive inXuence on the whole of the intellectual and cultural climate of Sweden in

the last decades of the nineteenth century and the Wrst decades of the twentieth. Hegelianism, which

had representatives in early nineteenth-century Sweden, survived, and in the person of Johan Jakob

Borelius (18231909) (I hvad afseende ar Hegel Pantheist? (In What Respect is Hegel a Pantheist?)

(1851)), held one of the philosophical professorships at Lund. But signiWcantly, Swedish Hegelianism,like, for instance, the Finnish version of Johan Vilhelm Snellman (180681), was Wrmly established at

the Right end, emphasizing, to the extent to which it could credibly be done, the theistic potentialities

of the system. An important representative of Swedish personalistic philosophy in the early twentieth

century was J. A. Eklund, a theologian who synthesized elements from all branches of the Swedish

personalistic tradition and developed further the incorporation of the new philosophy of values, but

also selectively combined with this themes from Diltheys historicism and hermeneutics; much like

Nyblaeus and Norstrom, Eklund saw the whole modern philosophical development in Sweden as

driven by the need to break free fromwhat he considered the vague and murky pantheism of Germany.

In the work of the philosopher Alf Ahlberg, the Lotzean and Neo-Kantian philosophy of values was

Wrmly wedded to personal idealism. John Landquist interpreted Geijerian personalism in terms of a

new historicism partly inspired by Bergson.

14 Introduction

famously attended by Kierkegaard. Although he dismissed completely Schellingspositive teachings, Kierkegaard did develop further some similar existentialistelements in his own writing against Hegel.41 It is important to have a clear pictureof Kierkegaards position in relation to the early development of personalism. Hiswas not only among the most inXuential criticisms of Hegel; his philosophy wasalso one of the most important manifestations of a more general assertion ofhuman individuality in the nineteenth century. Although Kierkegaards positionwas theistic and Christian, stressed the value of the individual, displayed somesimilarities with Schellings existentialism, and in its mode of expression wascharacterized by the anti-systematicity and the kind of paradoxicalism that couldsometimes be found in Jacobi, it was diVerent from what I will argue was tobecome the main avenue of the further development of personalism, in Germanyas well as in Scandinavia. There were several more or less personalistic thinkers inScandinavian countries other than Sweden. In Denmark alone, J. Baggesen car-ried on a correspondence with Jacobi already in the 1790s and defended many ofhis positions, and F. C. Sibbern and the internationally inXuential H. L. Marten-sen espoused typical speculative theist and idealistic personalist positions, albeit,in comparison with their colleagues at Uppsala, leaning more towards Hegelian-ism (of the Right inXection) on some issues. It must be stressed that earlypersonalism was a truly international phenomenon, and although I have takenexamples from the country I know best, others could, I believe, be taken frommost Western countries.42 Yet with regard speciWcally to Kierkegaard, it seemsclear that the more important truth is that he developed the common reactions,insights, and impulses of personalism in a rather diVerent direction. Kierke-gaards famous attacks on Martensen are telling. Although Kierkegaardian radicalindividualism,43 subjective feeling, temporalism, and Wdeistic paradoxicalismwere to remain present, in various combinations, as alternatives, as exceptionaland somewhat extreme developments throughout the continued internationaldevelopment of personalismwith renewed inXuence on some of its twentieth-century formsthey were not, as will become clear in the course of this study,representative of the central line of early personalist thought.44

There are many other German inXuences on emergent personalism, some ofwhich deserve mention. They were on the whole minor ones, however, and variedconsiderably from one personalist thinker to the other. Most importantly, theinXuence of Schleiermacher has to be mentioned, although it must be observedthat he was himself strongly inXuenced by Jacobi. Schleiermacher also had

41 Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, 34. On the existentialist line extending from

Schelling to Kierkegaard and Buber, see Fackenheim, Bubers Concept of Revelation, in Schilpp and

Friedman (eds.), The Philosophy of Martin Buber, 2767.

42 In Russia too, V. Soloviev was inXuenced by the later Schelling, and his followers seem to have

been decidedly personalistic.

43 Buber points to this as the reason for the absence of dialogicist Wesensbeziehung in Kierkegaard:

Zur Geschichte des dialogischen Prinzips, 2945.

44 Kierkegaard signiWcantly found Jacobis salto mortale (see Ch. 1) insuYciently radical.

Introduction 15

marked Romantic and pantheistico-monistic leanings, and his defence of apersonal relation between man and God seems not to have impressed thepersonalists. Although personalism belongs broadly in the strand of modernliberal theologyin a general senseto which Schleiermacher contributed sodecisively, it is, precisely through its strictly personalistic theism, at the same timean exceptional current within that broader movement. Even as its concept of thepersonality of God was, as I will argue, in important respects new, the stress onpersonality turned it, at least in some important respects, away from the imma-nentist impersonalism and humanist moralism of the main liberal current andtowards orthodoxy and tradition. What was of importance for personalism inSchleiermachers work was above all his emphasis on religious experience and, inethics, his defence of the contribution of unique individuality and his neo-humanist rejection of the irreconcilable duality of duty and inclination inKants ethics. Among other inXuences could be mentioned the philosopher J. F.Fries, who shared some of the speculative theist arguments against Hegel,45 andK. C. F. Krause, who introduced the concept of panentheism, which describedwell one aspect of the speculative theist position.46 Increasing attention is todaypaid to the many thinkers of the age previously considered minor, even if it isstill mostly their contributions to the debates surrounding the works of Kant andthe well-known post-Kantian idealists that have been studied.47 The personalistsalso received many inXuences from such lesser-known thinkers who were notthemselves personalists. In my view, it is less important today, in connection withthe historiography and understanding of personalism, to chronicle all of thesevarious inXuences than to try to discern the distinct nature of the worldviewsynthesis emerging through the work of the thinkers who can properly beconsidered personalists. It has been argued that it is the specific welding togetherof the respective ingredient positions that is the distinguishing mark of person-alism, not the single positions in themselves. But it should be added that if, for thepurpose of ascertaining the derivation of the latter, we itemize the worldview ofpersonalism in the way in which, as we will see, it is done by Albert C. Knudsonwho holds this view with reference to American personalismwe must at thesame time bear in mind that the worldview of personalism as a whole came aboutas a creative synthesis from original perceptions, considerations, and motiv-ations, from an inner, coherent speculative need, rather than from a mere externalcombinatoric. And it had done this already at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury.

Mainly, but not exclusively, through Lotze, it was the tradition of speculativetheism in Germany that gave the decisive impulse to the thinkers who were tobecome the leading so-called personal idealists in Britain and personalists inthe United States. But these could also draw on native traditions and thinkers,partly representing developments of continental impulses received at a much

45 Fries was strongly inXuenced by Jacobi.

46 In Krause it had more esoteric and less personalist connotations, however.

47 Beisers The Fate of Reason was an important work of this kind.

16 Introduction

earlier stage. There had in fact long been a British, and to some extent anAmerican, intellectual movement in the direction of speculative theism andpersonal idealism.

Already the later S. T. Coleridge was not only thoroughly familiar with Schel-ling (including the Freiheitsschrift), but read and cited Jacobi, and although hewas critical in some respects of the latter, the whole late idealistic problematic ofpantheism versus personalistic theism, in all of its philosophical and religiousramiWcations, was, I believe, of the essence in Coleridges later development.48Bestowing the highest praise on Frederic Henry Jacobi, Sir William Hamilton, inhis Discussions (1852) and his Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (published 185961), quotes and translates long passages from him. The same holds for H. L.Mansel, who cites Jacobi at length in the notes to his Bampton Lectures of 1858,The Limits of Religious Thought. This work restated some central personalistthemes. Mansel seems to have been uniquely familiar with late idealist, RightHegelian, and speculative theist thought in Germany, and clearly transmittedJacobian insights to Britain. Interestingly, despite his diVerences from Mansel,some of the characteristic elements of personalism can also be found in F. D.Maurices works.49 One of the Wrst criticisms of Hegel in Britain, that of J. D.Morell in his Modern Philosophy and An Historical and Critical View of theSpeculative Philosophy in Europe in the Nineteenth Century (1846), was a typicallytheistic-personalistic one.50 The Cambridge philosopher John Grote wrote in hisExploratio Philosophica (1865) about The idealism, personalism, or whatever itmay be called, which lies at the root of the philosophy presented in the book,and which was not simply a doctrine or opinion but his earliest philosophicalfeeling.51

Likewise, James Martineau, the leading Unitarian philosopher, was shaped bythe Jacobian and the late idealist thematic, publishing a typical Study of Spinoza(1882), leaning on Jacobi in Types of Ethical Theory (1885), and opposing topantheism and materialism a distinctly personalistic theism in A Study of Religion(1888).52 Martineaus student, Charles Barnes Upton (18311910), professor ofphilosophy at Manchester College, was one of the Wrst to assimilate Lotzeanpersonalism in Britain. His Hibbert Lectures of 1893, Lectures on the Bases ofReligious Belief (1894), set out in broad outline the whole of the worldview ofpersonalism in its British variation. Most of the ingredients of the later and fullerformulations could here be found in embryonic form. This statement was oftenneglected because of its relative simplicity and what seems to have been perceivedas Uptons lack of prominence. I will, however, point to its historical signiWcance

48 For Coleridges reading of Schellings Freiheitsschrift, see Biographia Literaria, i. 247, n. to p. 103;

for his reading of Jacobi, and his annotated copy of Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza, see Coleridge, The

Philosophical Lectures, 464 n. 29.

49 Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, 179, 1967, 2304, 239.

50 Both works are cited in Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition, 151, 158.

51 Grote, Exploratio Philosophica, i. 146.

52 Jacobi is quoted in A Study of Spinoza, 185, and in Types of Ethical Theory, ii. 212 and 145.

Introduction 17

as a fusion of the continental and the British traditions by selecting Upton as oneof the representative British personal idealists.

Alexander Campbell Fraser (18191914) had developed a position in somerespects close to the later personal idealism by a combination of the Scottishtradition with Berkeley. Alfred William Momeries Personality: The Beginning andEnd of Metaphysics appeared in 1879. In 1900 Wilfrid Richmond published AnEssay on Personality as a Philosophical Principle. The theme of personality was bynow generally inXuential, at least in Anglican theology, and increasingly so inphilosophy.

Despite the modiWcations in the British version of absolute idealismdetermined by distinct British intellectual traditionsAndrew Seth, later SethPringle-Pattison (18561931; hereafter: Pringle-Pattison53), professor of logicand metaphysics at Edinburgh, detected many of the same weaknesses in histeacher T. H. Green as the German and Swedish personal idealists had pointed toin Hegel and the early Schelling. He launched personal idealism in Britain withHegelianism and Personality (1887), a series of Balfour Lectures at the Universityof Edinburgh, which decisively shaped the idealistic debate in Britain for decades.There can be no doubt that this is an important and in large measure originalwork. Pringle-Pattisons presentation of the arguments is brilliant and vigorous,and the application to the special British form that idealism had taken in Greenwas indeed new.54 Pringle-Pattison supplied not least a philosophical precision inthe formulation of the criticisms and the positions of personalism in Britainwhich was often lacking in its earlier British versions. He also introduced anumber of new philosophical ideas into personalism which, while the basicarguments remained unchanged, became more evident as he followed up hisearly polemic, taking into consideration the replies from the later British absoluteidealists, in his main work, The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy(GiVord Lectures, 191213, 1917),55 and in The Idea of Immortality (a secondseries of GiVord Lectures, 1922).

Yet Pringle-Pattisons basic arguments were not at all new. While he openlydraws on Lotze and Trendelenburg, there are not many signs of his awareness ofthe development of personalistic idealism that had taken place before Lotze:mention of the turning-point of Schellings philosophical career by the time ofPhilosophie und Religion (1804) is made in a footnote in Hegelianism and Person-ality, and in The Idea of God we Wnd two quotes from Ulrici.56 But it seemsobvious that during his period of study with Lotze in Germany Pringle-Pattison

53 The name Pringle-Pattison was added when this was made the condition of his inheritance of a

large estate from a distant relative.

54 Greens absolute idealismwas itself already strongly modiWed by inXuences from Lotze. The early

phase of British idealism, and its continuation, represented by Green, Stirling, John Caird, and

Wallace, was closer to Right Hegelianism, speculative theism, and personalism than the classical

German systems and the later British absolute idealism.

55 I use the second edition (1920), which contains important appendices.

56 Pringle-Pattison writes of Ulrici that he was prominent half a century ago as a defender of

Theism against all that he deemed pantheistic error: The Idea of God, 305.

18 Introduction

must have imbibed at least the substance of this earlier tradition as well; identicalarguments had been used since the last decades of the eighteenth century.

Apart from the historically important Hegelianism and Personality, I will focuson Pringle-Pattisons later works because the mature and deWnite expression ofhis thought is given there, and since only in them is the whole rangewith someexception for ethicsof the personalist worldview displayed. But it is importantto understand that the principles and contours of his personalistic worldviewwere Wrmly in place at a much earlier stage. His Two Lectures on Theism (1897),for instance, bear witness to his full assimilation of the older personalistic-theistictradition and its criticism of pantheism.

James Seth, professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh, supplied a kind ofethical corollary to his brothersHegelianism and Personality in Freedom as EthicalPostulate (1891) and in his widely inXuential and quintessential personalist work,A Study of Ethical Principles (1894).

John Richardson Illingworth (18481915), a pupil of Greens who, despitewithdrawing from his fellowships in Jesus and Keble Colleges, Oxford, to therectory of Longworth, Oxfordshire, became one of the most inXuential person-alist philosophers and theologians in Britain, worked out a distinct synthesis ofidealism and the Trinitarian, theistic positions of a comparatively orthodoxAnglican theology; at the heart of his philosophy was the concept of personalityon the level of God as well as of man. His main work, Personality Human andDivine (1894), was supplemented by two books where, in line with a main trendof personal idealism, he stressed the immanence of God against the deists (DivineImmanence, 1898), and his transcendence against the pantheists and monists(Divine Transcendence, 1911). Other important books are Reason and Revelation(1901) and The Gospel Miracles (1915).57

Clement Charles Julian Webb (18651954), fellow of Magdalen College,Oxford, and the Wrst holder of the Oriel (subsequently Nolloth) Chair of thePhilosophy of the Christian Religion, drew on the whole tradition of naturaltheology and modiWed Kants moral arguments by bringing them into closerelation to Plato and Christian theism, the centre of his philosophy ever moreclearly emerging as distinctly belonging in the personalist tradition and asopposed to the absolute idealist school. The fullest expression of his position isfound in his two volumes of GiVord Lectures, God and Personality and DivinePersonality and Human Life (191920).58

57 A useful study of Illingworth is Hoskins, The Doctrine of the Trinity. See also my entry in the

Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers.

58 OnWebb, see my entry in the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers. In grouping

these thinkers together as personal idealists, I follow, as I will explain in Ch. 1, the classiWcation of

Metz, Copleston, Patrick, and Sell. In the anthology Personal Idealism: Philosophical Essays by Eight

Members of the University of Oxford (1902), edited by Henry Sturt (18631946), various themes of the

new school were discussed by Sturt himself, G. F. Stout, F. C. S. Schiller, W. R. Boyce Gibson, G. E.

Underhill, R. R. Marett, F. W. Bussell, and H. Rashdall, and the term personal idealismwas used for the

Wrst time in Britain. But interestingly enough, some of the contributors represent a clear departure

from the older tradition of personal idealism. Hastings Rashdall (18581924), fellow and tutor of New

Introduction 19

A Wnal British thinker deserves mention here, William Ritchie Sorley (18551935), who at Cambridge defended personal idealism as Knightbridge Professorof Moral Philosophy in Kings College, and conjoineduniquely in the Britishcontextthe British version of idealistic personalism with the Neo-Kantianphilosophy of values (which in turn was inspired by Lotze) in his main work,Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918).

G. H. Howison was not only the Wrst to use the term personal idealism;59 hewas also among the Wrst to introduce the personalistic movement in the UnitedStates. It soon found its leading American proponent in Borden Parker Bowne(18471910), professor at Boston University (Studies in Theism (1879), Meta-physics (1882), Philosophy of Theism (1887), Principles of Ethics (1892), Theory ofThought and Knowledge (1897), Theism (1902), The Immanence of God (1905),and Personalism (1908)),60 whose school soon dominated American personalidealism.61 Turning down oVers of prestigious positions from the presidents of

College, Oxford, long considered a main representative of the school, should in my view rather be seen

to have been exceptional in his tendency to separate the concepts of God and of the absolute, and in his

adoption of determinism. In central respects, his version of personal idealism, not least in The Theory

of Good and Evil, iii (1907), in fact marks a relapse into some of the characteristic positions of

pantheism. (On Rashdall, see my entry in the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers.)

Sturt went on to a more ambitious critique of absolute idealism in Idola Theatri: A Criticism of Oxford

Thought and Thinkers from the Standpoint of Personal Idealism (1906). Although this volume, like

Personal Idealism, contains many observations that were characteristic of the broader movement, his

version of it was shaped by a radical neoteric humanism and by pragmatism. SigniWcantly, despite the

fact that he himself used this designation of his philosophy and some of the central themes of the older

tradition are certainly part of his work as well, Metz, in A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, rangesHenry Sturt not under the heading The Personal Idealists, but under Pragmatism, along with

Schiller, the best-known of the contributors to Personal Idealism, who, although introducing some

personalist themes that were in line with the broader movement, falls clearly outside the ambit of the

latter by his pragmatist use of them. Schillers and Sturts contributions gave rise in some quarters to

the identiWcation of personalism with such pragmatic humanism. (On Sturt, see my entry in the

Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers.) Far beyond the pale of themain current falls also,

in a similar, signiWcant way, the atheistic version of personal idealism developed by J. M. E. McTaggart

(18661925). A. E. Taylor (18691945), fellow of Merton College, Oxford, professor of moral philoso-

phy at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh (The Faith of a Moralist, iii (GiVord Lectures,

1930)), moved gradually towards a Christian theistic position close to that of some of the personal

idealists. Henry Jones (18521922) (A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze (1895), A Faith that

Enquires (GiVord Lectures, 1922)) was perhaps the leading British proponent of a synthesis of absolute

and personal idealism. A number of thinkers strongly inXuenced by the themes of personal idealism

veered in the direction of empirical psychologism and/or realism; themost prominent among themwas

James Ward (18431925) (The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism (GiVord Lectures, 1911)).

59 The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism

(1901). Howison protested that Sturt, in his opinion a crude empiricist and pragmatist, had stolen the

term personal idealism.

60 There exists one biography of Bowne, McConnell, Borden Parker Bowne; among the works on his

philosophy is Pyles The Philosophy of Borden Parker Bowne and its Application to the Religious Problem.

61 Its leading subsequent representatives are Edgar S. Brightman (18841953), R. T. Flewelling

(18711960), and Peter A. Bertocci (191089). The leading American idealist, Josiah Royce

(18551916) of Harvard, represented one of the forms of synthesis of absolute and personal idealism,

but also moved in the course of his career from the former towards the latter, as is clear from his major,

20 Introduction

Yale University and the University of Chicago, Bowne remained loyal to the newBoston University, thereby contributing strongly to making it into a Wrst-classinstitution of higher learning; under his leadership, it was the Wrst in the UnitedStates to award a Ph.D. to a woman. Bowne studied not only with Lotze but alsowith Ulrici in Germany, and, like Pringle-Pattison, he must have assimilated at leastthe main results and conclusions of the earlier German development of personalismat that time. Bowne also cites Jacobi as a reference that can be expected to be familiarto his readers without any introduction. Ever since the publication of Bownes ownshort summary of his philosophy under the title Personalism, his school, despitebeing more unambiguously idealistic than its British counterpart, came to bedesignated by this term and no longer as personal idealism.

Contrary to the German, Swedish, and British schools, this American orBownian school will not be discussed in detail in separate sections in this book,since my focus is on the origins and early development of personalism; theAmerican school will appear only as that version which, at least in Anglo-American accounts of personalism and its history, still appears as the centraland deWning one.

The questions of the relations between the British and the American school andof the possible priority of one or the other in the development of personalism arenot of central importance for my argument, which concerns the shared Europeanbackground of both, and the fact that there is a British school at all. A fewobservations may nonetheless be added. At the time of Pringle-Pattisons GiVordLectures, Bowne was already departed, and his work was well known. It is notclear, however, how well known it was in Britain. Some evidence suggests that theBritish personal idealists may have been inXuenced by him. In a letter to theBowne, Pringle-Pattison enthusiastically welcomed his late, popular summary ofhis work, Personalism, and J. Cook Wilson (18491915), an inXuential Oxfordphilosopher, said in a letter that he always urged the study of Bowne as by farthe most important (to my mind) of the modern American philosophers 62(Cook Wilson and Bowne met at Gottingen). Yet there are few signs of thisinXuence in their works. The only reference to Bowne in Pringle-Pattison is asomewhat obscure footnote in The Idea of Immortality, where William JamessPrinciples of Psychology is said to be quoted from B. P. Bowne.63 Bowne consid-erably revised his early works in later editions, so that only the latter contain hisphilosophy in its deWnitive form, yet he clearly did develop a rigorous persona-listic philosophy somewhat earlier than Pringle-Pattison, and certainly a moresystematic one. There are, as far as I have seen, no references to Bowne inIllingworths or Webbs work, although, as we shall see, some passages in Illing-worth are highly reminiscent of him. None of the more speciWcally Bowniandevelopments of personalism seem to Wgure in the work of the British personalists,

late work, The World and the Individual, iii (GiVord Lectures, 19012), and from the work of his

student William Ernest Hocking (18731966), likewise professor at Harvard.

62 Knudson, The Philosophy of Personalism, 623 nn. 55 and 56.

63 Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality, 101 n. 2.

Introduction 21

however, and in this sense at least, British personal idealism was not inspired byBowne. It seems quite clear that the British personalists drew primarily on thecommon, earlier European sources of personalism, on the more general andinternational nineteenth-century development of a partly new kind of person-alistic theism, of which Lotze was but one representative.64

It should be mentioned here that personalistic philosophies were present alsoin France before Mounier and in alternative forms parallel to him, and thatamong these French philosophies we Wnd some that were in many ways closerto, and in some cases perhaps even part of, the main current that I will trace.Some of the personalist themes were present already in Maine de Biran. VictorCousin moved characteristically from a Hegelian towards a late Schellingianposition. The Wrst explicit version of French personalism is that represented byRenouvier (18151903) (Le Personnalisme, 1903) and his disciple (to someextent) Octave Hamelin (18561907). This, however, was an exceptional, Wni-tistic form, but, through William James, it exercised some inXuence in Americaand Britain. A Christian personalism, opposed to the radicalism of Renouvier,but with some themes in common with the idealists, was developed by LucienLaberthonnie`re (Le Realisme chretie