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Updated: June 5, 2025
Eucken states that such a view of revelation belongs to the past history of the race. No close determinations, as we shall see later, are made concerning the meaning and nature of the Godhead. The man is here at an altitude so rare and pure that it forbids any logical or psychological analysis. God is not something to be explained, but to be possessed.
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.
He is now a denizen of the spiritual world, and there results "a life of pure inwardness," which draws its power and inspiration from the infinite resources of the Universal Spiritual Life in which he finds his being. This type of religion Eucken calls Characteristic Religion.
Certain periods in the history of the Christian Church give abundant evidence of the truth of this statement. Eucken points out in his Problem of Human Life how barren in creative power, for instance, was the fourth century. Why?
We can all believe in what naturalism has to say concerning organic and inorganic objects; but it has not said enough when it leaves the power that knows the meaning of what it says out of account. The conclusion Eucken arrives at is, then, that we must ascribe reality to the quality that knows and interprets as well as to the thing that is known.
But there is a great difference between the two in the sense that Eucken shows the constant need of spiritual activism on the part of individuals in order to realise and keep alive the norms and standards which have carried our world so far; and there is also the need of contributing something to the values of these through the creation of new qualities within the souls of the individuals themselves.
Indeed, the more the content of the spiritual life grows, the more becomes necessary on the side of psychic existence; the more we submerge ourselves in this psychic existence, the greater appears the superiority of the spiritual life." This difference between nöology and psychology is pointed out by Eucken in his delineation of spiritual life along the whole course of its development.
The spiritual life is thus individual and over-individual, historical and over-historical, transcendent and immanent. Eucken has worked for many years at this difficult problem a problem so important in the life of civilisation and religion. It has already been hinted that the conception bears striking resemblances to aspects of Hegel's philosophy. But there are differences.
His special method is to seek the idea or ideas which lie at the root of the proposed solution; if these are unsatisfactory, then he does not consider it necessary to discuss them further. Before a solution can be regarded as a satisfactory one, Eucken holds that it should satisfy certain conditions.
If, however, the standpoint of spiritual experience is gained, then religion succeeds in attaining entire certainty and immediacy; then the struggles in which it was involved turn into a similar result, and its own inner movements become a testimony to the reality of the new world which it represents." Eucken shows that the problems of history are closely allied with those of society.
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