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HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE
extensa. Descartes used the term to denote the physical world, which is meas¬
urable; and res cogitans to denote the spiritual aspect of the human being. In
physics the atomic theory was not yet generally accepted, because there was no
direct experimental proof, for example, Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907), Ernst
Mach (1838-1916) and Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) rejected the theory. In
1858 Stanislo Cannizzaro (1826-1910) had already made the distinction be¬
tween the concepts of molecule and atom, by making a critical examination of
the method to determine the atomic weights.
All these realisations fit into a more general tendency, prepared by Fried¬
rich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), an influential Protestant theologian, who
defended the independence of science from faith. In this way God is beyond the
reach of science, proof, argumentation and discursive thinking?. And indeed
science developed more and more in a Positivistist, materialistic way, whereas
Continental philosophy was Idealistic or romantic. Some Neo-Kantians tried
to reconcile them, especially Lotze, founding his endeavour on Kant’s “Critique
of Judgement” (Kritik der Urteilskraft).
German academic philosophers restricted themselves to partial questions
or historical, philosophical critiques, performed in a spirit of free inquiry, but
unable to oppose the overpowering influence of certain dominant ideas which,
mainly through the literature of the period, swayed the German intellect.”
Even the necessity of philosophy was questioned. Neither science nor religion
felt any need for such speculation. “In the years from 1830 to 1870 philosophy
was wholly on the defensive in German thought. It was only after 1870 that
philosophers found some security again.” In opposition to the other Western
philosophical traditions, logic took a prominent place in Germany, beginning
with Leibniz and transmitted by the influential Christian Wolff (1679-1754),
and it was also logic that incited a revaluation of philosophy.'?
The period between the earlier and the later Idealistic school can be called a
period of transition. Lotze in Germany, August Comte (1798-1857) in France
and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and the Utilitarians in England prepared
in their own way the changes in thought at the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth century. Materialism and pessimism in Germany,
° Eco, Umberto, Weak Thought and the Limits of Interpretation, in S. Zabala (ed.), Weakening
Philosophy. Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo, Toronto, McGill-Queens’s University Press,
2006, 40.
10 MERz, John, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 3, Gloucester, Mass.,
Peter Smith, 1976, 178.
1! SLuGA, Gottlob Frege, 1980, 10.
12 Cf. DRECHSLER, Wolfgang, Christian Wolff (1679-1754). A Biographical Essay, European Jour¬
nal of Law and Economics 4 (1997), 111-128.
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