13. Johannes Volkelt — A Contemporary German Thinker

"Honor your German masters, then you will banish good spirits", Richard Wagner aptly calls out to us. Unfortunately, we still follow this call in a rather one-sided way. However, while we strive to create ever clearer and more complete images of the deceased greats of German intellectual development, we are often unfair to the living.

Without wishing to object in the slightest to the just appreciation of past cultural periods and to the ever-increasing immersion in the study of Schiller, Goethe, Herder and so on - on the contrary, we fully recognize the necessity of this - we cannot deny ourselves the insight that we usually lack the good will to come to a judgment about the greats of the present. Admittedly, it takes less courage to express one's admiration for Goethe and Schiller over and over again, whereby one can meet with no contradiction anywhere in the educated world, than to stand up for a living person and to speak a ruthless word here for once.

Since we believe that a newspaper is preferably called to serve the present, we would like to record our judgment on one of the most sympathetic German thinkers, Johannes Volkelt.

We want to start from a fact that will still be vividly remembered by many who studied in Vienna in the seventies. On March 10, 1875, Johannes Volkelt, a 27-year-old scholar at the time, gave a lecture at the "Reading Association of German Students in Vienna" which must be regarded as the most significant contribution to the cultural history of the present day.

In every sentence, Volkelt shows how deeply he has delved into the history of his time. There is an astonishing wealth of spirit in this lecture, and indeed of genuine German spirit.

Of course, this is not the light, French-style wit of Ludwig Speidel, Eduard Hanslick, Hugo Wittmann or even Oppenheim and Spitzer, who supposedly speak about some important subject, but in reality entertain their audience with stale quips and thoughtless phrases. No, Volkelt's speech was witty in the sense that it found the right word at the right moment, the genuine, pithy German word that always entertains us because it lifts us spiritually.

In this lecture, Volkelt measures our time against Kant's high concept of morality, which is deeply rooted in the essence of the German people. Kant makes the morality of an action solely dependent on the attitude from which it emerged. An action that complies with all existing laws, that is of incalculable benefit to others and posterity, is not moral if it does not flow from the good mindset of its author. If two do the same thing, one out of selfishness, the other out of duty, the first acts immorally, the second morally. Volkelt now asks: What is the attitude of our time to these views of the Königsberg sage? He comes to a sad answer. The view seems to have become almost universal: you don't get anywhere with a moral attitude, you don't build railroads with it, you don't found industrial enterprises with it. People believe they have done enough for morality if they do not come into conflict with the criminal law. Being good at heart is seen as a prejudice that children have to be taught at school, but which is of no use in life. There are circles today that have adopted ways of life that are immoral at their root. "It seems to me," says Volkelt, "that hardly any expression characterizes the moral life of our time as aptly as the word ' beguem'. Cool laxity, genteel comfort is part of the good tone."

There was a time when man had to wring the least he needed for his sustenance from nature. Hard work, a struggle in the truest sense of the word, was required to eke out an existence. Today things have changed. Conquering nature is easy for us. We have machines and tools that do what our ancestors had to do with their own hands. Like any sensible person, we naturally recognize this as progress. But we also do not fail to recognize that this very progress goes hand in hand with a decline in character and morals. The toil and labor that man once had to perform in order to wring a living from nature were for him a high school of morality. Today, all we have to do is lift a hand and the whole social apparatus works to satisfy our needs. As a result, the latter increase to the point of exaggeration, people lose the desire to walk the straight and hard path of duty, preferring instead the easy path of comfort. This results in a paralysis of personal strength of character, of the ability to work.

A large part of our society suffers from marrowlessness and softening of the bones in spiritual terms.

"We live in a time of general upholstery," says Volkelt aptly, and adds: "You will find out how right I am when you look around your comfortably furnished room, when you take a walk through the streets, when you go on a journey. Even the most remote mountain valleys are no longer safe from railroads and modern hotels. You experience it as often as you allow yourself to be served in a pub by the slickly combed waiters, those poetry-less machines; as often as you have to move about on a mirror-like saloon floor in tails and gloves. You experience it with every legal transaction you get into, with the simplest business you are supposed to handle. Even war today has an impersonal, prompt machine character." This is the age in which there are few who have an ideal goal in mind and, without a sideways glance to the right or left, head ruthlessly towards it; no, where everyone just abandons themselves to the blind hustle and bustle of the world and, playing a frivolous game with happiness and life, tries to get as much out of the social machine as they can. Everywhere the comfortable is preferred to that which requires the use of the whole personality. Who reads a systematic book today that has been produced by years of hard work? No, people prefer to take note of the issues of the day from "elegantly" written feuilletons or "popular", i.e. shallow lectures. The former is tedious and requires rigorous thinking, the latter is comfortable. In the theater, the audience is offered the lightest, meanest, even the most stupid stuff. They sip it with pleasure, because the enjoyment of something higher also requires mental effort. Political party life everywhere reveals only half-measures and opportunism. Almost no one can be found who utters a sincere, ruthless "That's what I want!"

The firmness of character has perished in the staggering life of pleasure. Volkelt recommends reading Kant's writings to all those who are corroded by the evil spirit of our time. For they are a school for the weak in character. In particular, Volkelt addresses his admonition to journalists. It is precisely this profession that most degrades the dignity of man in his own person, when he surrenders himself to the will-less tool of his financial backers. The journalist turns his person into a thing by selling himself.

It is curious that Volkelt, in view of the outcome of the Ofenheim trial in 1875, had already bluntly exposed the damage done to the Viennese press. He chose an example from the series of papers that do not want to know anything about morals and sentiment when it comes to large-scale undertakings, for which the only decisive factor is whether more or less can be gained from something. Irrespective of the fact that you risk a lot when you make enemies of the powerful, our thinker chose the "most respected" newspaper in Vienna, the "Neue Freie Presse", as the object of his attack. He was right, because although this newspaper lives only from the phrase, it still impresses many. One must first remove its mask. The other leaves of this character are not even worth this effort. Volkelt says: "After the acquitting verdict of the jury - in the Ofenheim trial - one should have confessed with moral sorrow: Our penal law is unfortunately so imperfect that it cannot catch the immorality of those people in its snares. But what happened instead? The next morning, an editorial appeared in the "Neue Freie Presse" that must make every simple and healthy-minded person nauseous. If the Ofenheim spirit was not adhered to in industrial undertakings, we would fall into an "era of dull, despondent resignation". This paper goes so far in its forced, artificially incited enthusiasm that it regards acquittal as the highest achievement for the 'conscience', for 'ethics'. The same conflation of legal right and morality can be found in the next editorial. In order to present its lapchild Ofenheim as completely morally rehabilitated, the 'Neue Freie Presse' seeks to scandalize morality in general. It has the temerity to declare that there is 'no earthly tribunal' for morality at all.

I ask: does not a voice of judgment live in the people, does not a voice of judgment live in every man's breast, urgently proclaiming his moral guilt and innocence? The 'Neue Freie Presse', which describes morality, which is different from law and justice, as an 'insubstantial abstract' and wants us to believe that every person's breast is as arid and paragraph-like as that of its followers, should take a lesson from the old Kant that acting in accordance with the law is legal, but not yet 'moral'. But the "Neue Freie Presse" probably knows this itself. Only the oppressive feeling of having once stood up for something morally hollow could give it the sentence: "If justice and the law have spoken, then morality has also been satisfied." While she usually loved to dress herself with a certain idealistic verve, she now displays a moral dullness and moral nakedness. In her eyes, all those who are morally indignant are hypocrites, sycophants, people with a crude attitude."

These were strong words. Volkelt had said what moved hundreds of people. Anyone who heard his words had to recognize the German man in Volkelt and agree with him wholeheartedly. And he has so far proved himself to be an energetic, fully German man. He leads a life of thought in the German sense and strives to solve the highest world problems. His works definitely bear the trait that is imprinted on them by his harmonious, indomitable personality.

Mind and thought are equally present in this man. If you want to see this for yourself, read his book: "Dream Fantasy."

Just as astronomy developed from astrology and chemistry from alchemy, a science of the dream world will develop from dream interpretation. Man always wants to exploit the realms of reality for his personal desires first and will only penetrate them later with the selfless research of science. In his book, Volkelt has eloquently compiled all the elements we have today for a future 'dream science'. Anyone who goes through the book will soon realize that this intimate field, this world of fairy tales, could only have been treated so favorably by a German.

Volkelt's writings: "The Unconscious and Pessimism", "Individualism and Pantheism", "The Concept of Symbol in the Latest Aesthetics", show us everywhere the highly gifted, thorough thinker who finally appears at his full height in his last writings: "Kant's Epistemology" and "Experience and Thought".

Volkelt is an original researcher who builds on Kant in his own way. Kant argued against the scientific "groping around in the dark" that we must first test our own cognitive faculty to see whether this instrument is also suitable for understanding extraordinary things such as God, the soul and the like. And he believed he had proved that we can understand nothing but the experience that is spread out before our senses. Everything supernatural remains uncertain. Volkelt is also of the opinion that we only have certain knowledge of that which is given to our eyes and ears and so on. However, he believed that by logical reasoning we could also gain knowledge of the active causes lying behind this sensory world, but that this knowledge had no character other than that of probability. He wanted to unite the "cautious criticism", which he had adopted from Kant, with a "highly aspiring idealism". It is true that the latest phase of his thought is not entirely free of the lack of courage and energy that generally prevails in thought today, but his healthy nature and his German sense will hopefully not allow him to fall into the error of thinking that our research is a futile struggle. We hope to see the disappearance from his philosophy of that which he regards as necessary today: "A going forward, which again partially recedes, a yielding, which again to a certain extent takes hold." We demand that the philosopher also be inspired by Hutten's spirit and speak a strong and resolute "Through!"

We would have liked this German thinker, who was born in Austria, to have found an appropriate place for his work here too. His bold, free spirit made him impossible in his homeland. Truly, he would have become a role model for the academic citizenry here in the upholding of our ideal goods and in the hatred of all that is bad and half-baked. Not everywhere, however, people love a free, unrestrained demeanor, and so Volkelt had to wander. He first found a place to work at the University of Jena, then in Basel, where he lives today.

Neither the future historian of philosophy nor the cultural historian will be able to deny Volkelt's name a place of honor.