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Updated: May 16, 2025
Before we proceed to outline Eucken's philosophical position, it will be well if we can first be clear as to the special problem with which he concerns himself. Philosophers have at some time or other considered all the problems of heaven and earth to be within their province, especially the difficult problems for which a simple solution is impossible.
But before we proceed to deal with Eucken's contribution to the problem, it will be profitable to stay awhile to consider how it is that we can obtain truth at all, and what are the tests that we can apply to truth when we think we have attained it. It is the problem of the possibility of knowledge, really, that we have to discuss in brief.
Thus, we get in Eucken's teaching the over-historical as the power which operates within the events of history. It is what philosophy has termed the Ideal, and what religion has termed the revelation of God.
This is nothing less than the possession of a new kind of reality. The struggle has yielded a conquest for the time being. He tastes and "eats his pot of honey on the grave" of enemies within and without. This is the kernel of Eucken's Truth of Religion. The book deals with the most subtle psychological problems of the soul, and reaches the conclusion of an entrance by man into a divine world.
Strict scientists aver that the investigator must set out without prejudice, to examine the phenomena he observes; and Eucken's initial bias may form a fatal stumbling-block to the acceptance of his philosophy by these, or indeed, by any who are not disposed to accept this fundamental position.
Liebmann's successors, especially Windelband, Rickert, Münsterberg, Adickes, and Vaihinger, work on similar lines. And there is a great deal in Eucken's teaching which tends in the same direction. But he goes a step further than all the neo-Kantians. We have already noticed how he gives judgments of value and spiritual norms a cosmic significance.
We may bring this chapter to a close by once more pointing out Eucken's insistence on the Spiritual Substance of Christianity and the need of a new Existential-form. But such a fact is not sufficient. It is something which happened in someone else, and not in ourselves. The fact is to serve as an inspiration that something similar shall and can happen in ourselves.
And as the meaning of reality reveals itself the more we pass along the mysterious transition from sensation to concept, so a further meaning of reality is revealed when concepts search for a depth beyond themselves. This is the clue to Eucken's teaching in regard to spiritual life. It is a further development of the nature of man a development beyond the empirical and the mental.
It is hence called upon to perform great tasks, which cannot be carried out without serious efforts and the mobilisation of all our spiritual forces. This necessarily leads us back to the original sources of strength, and hence to the individual." This passage represents well Eucken's main teaching in regard to our social problems.
Eucken has grasped this truth in an unmistakable manner; and he sees nothing but disaster for religion in any attempt to present a new clothing at the expense of ejecting the Eternal kernel. When we turn to Eucken's conception in connection with the place of the personality of the Founder in the Christianity of the present, we are treading on very difficult ground.
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