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HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE extensa. Descartes used the term to denote the physical world, which is measurable; 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 between 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 Friedrich 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 Journal of Law and Economics 4 (1997), 111-128. + 234 +
