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Updated: May 16, 2025
Eucken's views on immortality have already been dealt with. He does not accept the Christian conception of it, for he seems to limit the possibility to those in whom spiritual personalities have been developed, and he evidently does not believe that the "natural individuality with all its egoism and limitations" is going to persist.
But no account of Eucken's teaching is complete without a knowledge of his personality. We cannot understand his personality without bearing in mind Eucken's nationality. He is a man of the North. A mere glimpse of the deep blue eyes reveals this immediately. His ancestors lived in close contact with Nature, and faced the perils of the great deep.
They have helped to spread his spiritual teaching, and, along with his books, have made his name known in all the civilised countries of the world. Some of Eucken's most important works have already appeared in half a dozen languages. The demand for them increases everywhere. This receptivity is a good omen of better days.
The answer as to the possibility and necessity of such a synthesis constitutes the kernel of Eucken's Philosophy of Religion. He has succeeded in a remarkable manner in assessing the results of science, philosophy, sociology, art, and religion. This is his conclusion in regard to the work of the spirit of man on whatever plane of knowledge or experience that spirit works.
If Eucken's problem differs fundamentally from that of most other philosophers, perhaps the purpose of his investigations is still a more striking characteristic. He is anxious to solve the riddle of the universe in order that there may be drawn from the solution an inspiration which shall help the human race to concentrate its energies upon the highest ideals of life.
But our question now is, Does the nature of man himself confirm such statements as have already been made? And it is to man's own nature and its content we now turn, as these are presented in Eucken's teaching.
These are, of course, some of the greatest and most difficult problems that ever perplexed the mind of man, and we can only deal briefly with Eucken's contribution to their solution. Can a man choose the highest? This is the form in which Eucken would state the problem of freedom. His answer, as already seen, is an affirmative one.
But Eucken's main objection to Pragmatism is that, however adequate it may be at the beginning of the enterprise, it will tend, as time passes, to turn man in the direction of the line of least resistance, and so be degraded to the level of the ordinary life and its petty demands. His Activism is entirely different from James's Pragmatism.
To do so, however, would be quite out of keeping with Eucken's activistic position, as it would necessarily involve much intellectual speculation, and he does not believe that the problem of life can be solved by such speculation. It is unfortunate that he has so little to say concerning the world of matter.
This lecture of Huxley's runs parallel in many ways with Eucken's differentiation of Nature and Spirit, and Huxley's "ethical life" has practically the same meaning as Eucken's "spiritual life" on its lower levels.
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