Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
But only a small portion of the greatness of Jena can be touched on. Eucken has nobly upheld the great traditions of the place, not only as a philosophical thinker but also as a personality. What is the secret of Eucken's influence? A great deal of Eucken's personality may be discovered in his writings.
Eucken's great endeavour in his discussion of the Christian religion is to bring out the distinction between the eternal substance that resides in it and the human additions that have been made to it in different ages, between the elements in Christianity that are essentially divine and those essentially human.
After the brief statement of Eucken's special problem, of the purpose and methods of his investigation, we can proceed to outline his theories in greater detail, beginning in the next chapter with his discussion of the solutions that have in the past been offered and accepted. What is the meaning, the value, and purpose of life, and what is the highest and the eternal in life the great reality?
The conclusion he has come to with regard to the eternal truth as contrasted with the temporary colourings of Christianity, with the essential as contrasted with the inessential, can best be outlined by taking in turn some of the main tenets and characteristics of the Christian faith. Eucken's conception of the negative movement is very much akin to the Christian idea of conversion.
This is Eucken's standpoint, and it is no other than the carrying farther of some of the important results Kant arrived at. This difference between the natural and the mental sciences has been emphasised, at various times, since the time of Plato.
One of these was pointed out long ago by Eucken: "The gist of religion is with Hegel nothing but the absorption of the individual in the universal intellectual process. How such a conception can be identified with moral regeneration of the Christian type, with purification of the heart, is unintelligible to us." Eucken's philosophy, on the other hand, is pre-eminently a spiritual activism.
Religion, Idealism, Naturalism, Socialism, Individualism, while calling attention to important facts in life, all fail in themselves to form adequate theories to explain life. We have given the main outlines of Eucken's arguments, but such a brief summary cannot do justice to his excellent evaluations of these theories these the reader may find in his own works.
It is quite easy to understand how a young man of Eucken's temperament and training should acquiesce in all the logical treatment of Lotze's philosophy, and still find that more was to be obtained from other sources which had quenched the thirst of the great men of the past. Adolf Trendelenburg was a great teacher as well as a noble idealist, and his influence upon young Eucken was very great.
We have followed Eucken's system developing step by step from the stage of knowing the world up through the evolution of spiritual life in history, in the soul, in art, and in society. Everywhere the investigation has revealed a progressive autonomy and duration of spiritual life in the midst of all the kaleidoscopic aspects of the objects which presented themselves to consciousness.
Indeed, the effect of all this is nothing less than an ideal creation of a world consisting of Nature and the spiritual potencies of man. And this is Eucken's complaint in regard to much of the art of the present day: the internal factor is absent. Seriousness is not blended with freedom in it; or, in other words, the inward has no power to pass its quality into the outward.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking