Studies on Critical Philosophy (1887)

by African Spir. Translated by M Witte August 2010

During his lifetime African Spir was disappointed that his influence on his contemporaries was less marked than he had hoped. In view of the author’s variegated career and background he has nonetheless an interesting contribution to make in political philosophy. Yet what precedes and informs this later work is a well established metaphysics, inspired, at least in part, on his reading of the rationalists Leibniz and Spinoza, the empiricist Hume, and the idealist Kant, readings that are then complicated by the infusion of Spir’s anti-philosophical mysticism. The influence of Spir’s metaphysics on Nietzsche’s concept of Will to Power (pronounced most radically in the posthumous notebooks) is evident in the following excerpt. A physicalist picture, adopted from the new science, is outlined and overturned in favor of the occult imagination (“the non-self”) . For the first time, these essays are available in English:

“Considerations on the Question and Object of Philosophy”

Philosophy finds itself in this strange situation. We do not agree on the object and purpose of our research, nor on the nature of the knowledge it must provide us. Not only does philosophy not exist as a science, we do not even know exactly what kind of science it should be. However, most of those engaged in philosophy may agree on this point that it must seek the highest and most universal notions; and that it must constitute a synthesis of the particular sciences. Nowadays many are inclined to believe that such a synthesis can be arrived at by means of experience alone.

If philosophy could be erected on this basis, it would be limited to the world of experience. It would only expose the most universal laws dictating the connection of objects and empirical phenomena. But it is a proven fact that the human mind does not want nor can it be satisfied with the world of experience that it tends, in its thought, to exceed. Some philosophers are of the opinion that the sole task of philosophy is precisely to seek the reason for this tendency. Here, then, are two different and somewhat incompatible opinions on the object and the object of philosophy. In the following we propose to examine the supposition that philosophy can be a purely empirical science, through which can be obtained a general synthesis of the sciences using only the data of experiments. The result of this examination, even if it is negative, will not be without use because the clear and certain proof of the impossibility of conceiving the general connection of things by means of the data of experience available to us can save a lot of unnecessary mental work, and could contribute, furthermore, to dispel the darkness that offends philosophical thought.

The definitive solution of such a question would itself be worth it. Our experience is divided, as we know, into two distinct domains: We have an inner experience and a soft external experience; We know ourselves and we know a world of bodies that is foreign to us and outside of us. Experience also shows that the psychic or spiritual life, which is peculiar to humans, is connected with certain material organs, and is never encountered in their absence. For the simple observation of this connection between the spiritual and the material, there is no need for philosophy. Those researching cerebral physiology are in fact deceived if they believe that they are philosophers. If a purely empirical philosophy is possible, it must make us conceive this connection by means of the only data of experience, that is to say, it must show how, by the very nature of certain combinations and material functions, the phenomena of psychic or spiritual life are formed. We must therefore erase what experience teaches us about the nature of objects and material events.

It is a great pleasure for us that experimental science has itself come to shed light, in a definitive way, on the nature of objects and material phenomena, for it is therefore possible for us too to solve our problem in a definitive way. This result has been attained by the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat and the law of the conservation of force. An in-depth study of the facts has shown that in the material world there are no different forces than what was held in the past, as only modifications of movement. Mechanical movement can be transformed into light and heat, electricity and chemical action; heat can be transformed into mechanical motion, electricity, or chemical action; electricity can be transformed into mechanical motion, heat, and chemical action. In all these transformations, the quantity of energy always remains the same. As much has been spent in the form of mechanical movement, as much we gain in the form of heat, or electricity, or chemical action, and vice versa .

It is thus proved experimentally in the world of bodies that there are no other forces than these driving forces, and only movement and the transmissions of movement from one body to another occur. In this way, natural science is brought about by the result of research, with the goal of explaining everything causally in the mechanical world of bodies. According to its result, bodies, in their most reduced form, have no qualities, strictly speaking, and do not qualitatively differ from each other. This proposal seems to be contradicted by the fact that there are different chemical substances, for which qualitative differences between these substances exist only in our perception of them. Considered in itself, independently of our perception, the effects of all chemical substances comprise the same types of movement, because in the material world there are no other other possible effects. No future discovery can change this result because it should overturn the established truths, such as, for instance, the law of the conservation of force. This notion, therefore, is acquired for all time: In the material world there are no other events than those of movement and the transmission of movement.

Now, what is motion? A qualitative change in extension? Or is it, more precisely, something to do with the reciprocal position of bodies in space? All that can happen in the world of bodies is reduced to the fact that bodies vary their reciprocal positions, that there is a change in their distances and their groupings, that what was on the left comes to the right, and vice versa, that what was below goes up, and what was above goes down. No event in the material world is therefore of an interior nature. No event can produce a change in bodies themselves, bodies properly so called. The elements of matter are by nature invariable. It must even be supposed that bodily movements are indifferent to the bodies they move and, so to speak, foreign. For if a movement were proper or inherent to a body, it could not be separated from it and transmitted to another body, the communication of the movement would be impossible. In wanting to explain everything mechanically, modern science obeys precisely the tendency to admit, in the material world, only movement, and to consider the movement itself as a state which is not proper or inherent to bodies themselves, something communicated to them from outside, something they thus can transmit to other bodies. For it is from this point of view that the mechanical laws, the law of inertia, the law of communication of motion, & c., are valid.

But as soon as it has been recognized that in the world of bodies only movement can occur, and that movements themselves are indifferent and foreign to the bodies they move, it becomes evident that the phenomena of psychic life or spiritual sensations, thoughts, volitions, etc., can never be explained by the nature of bodies and their functions. Whether one atom is to the right or to the left of another, whether they approach or move away from each other with a greater or lesser speed, that is, in general, all that can happen in the material world, contains in it no conceivable reason for something that is quite different from this kind of explanation, such as the reason supporting why a particular sensation or idea might occur. A community of nature between the spiritual and the material, between a feeling or a thought and a change of place of any atoms in space, cannot be conceived or admitted, even as a hypothesis. The dependence of spiritual life on material substances and their functions cannot therefore be explained by any philosophy derived solely from the data of experience, that is, philosophy in the sense of a general synthesis of sciences. It cannot, in other words, be derived or deduced from the data of experiments alone. This is no longer in doubt since the law of the preservation of force has been discovered, and it has been ascertained that bodies possess no qualities themselves.

The thesis developed in the preceding lines has already been supported by M. Du Bois Reymond in his remarkable speech on the limits of the knowledge of nature (Ueber die Grenzen des Natur-Erkennens. Leipzig, 1872, 5° éd., 1882), and has met many opponents. How could this be ignored? The main cause is, of course, in the opinion so widespread even today that the intimate nature of the body is still unknown to us. It can only be brought to light in a future more or less distant, that moment in time when it will then become suddenly possible to explain the spiritual life by material functions. This opinion, however, rests on a misunderstanding: we cannot know an object and, at the same time, ignore its nature, because the nature of an object is the object itself. For centuries now, the world of bodies has been the sole object of investigation in all experimental sciences, and yet the nature of these bodies, according to these philosophers, is still unknown to us. However, the natural sciences have, in fact, reached a definitive result in this respect, since it has found that bodies have no qualities and can only produce movement. The nature of bodies is, therefore, completely revealed to us, and no further progress is possible in this direction. Before the last discoveries, it could still be supposed, at least with a semblance of reason, that matter possesses properties or forces of an unknown nature (occult qualities); but the law of the conservation of force once recognized, as soon as we know that there is, in nature, only one and the same forest whose quantity remains always constant, we can no longer wait for any new revelation about the nature of bodies. It is also well known that the result obtained by experimental means can also be deduced a priori from the very concept of the body as an extended object, filling a space, and that this deduction has already been made a long time ago. In order not to go further, Descartes had taught that bodies have no qualities and can only produce movement. In fact, the fundamental properties, or, as they are called, the primary qualities of matter, extension and figure, impenetrability, divisibility, mobility and inertia, are recognizable at first glance and constitute the very nature of matter, which is, therefore, very far from being unknown to us. All the progress of physical science tends precisely to show that matter has no other qualities, since the progress of scientific theory consists in explaining everything mechanically, that is to say, to bring back all the actions of the bodies to movement.

The nature of matter is thus ascertained by a double path; the impossibility of deducing from it the phenomena of spiritual life is established for all times. But, basically, to answer our question, we do not need to run through, again and again, all the preceding considerations; the impossibility of explaining spiritual life by material causes can be shown, and more briefly, by this simple consideration, that we expressly recognize the world of bodies as a world foreign to and external to us. Whoever undertakes to derive our intimate, spiritual life from material data and conditions, must therefore prove that what is foreign to me is not foreign to me, that I am myself what I recognize as an external object, and that this implies a contradiction in terms. For whatever may be the nature of matter, it is beyond doubt that matter is precisely what I am not, and that it is right, therefore, to designate it as the non-self [non-moi]. There are, it is true, people who want to consider the difference between self and non-self as a simply phenomenal difference based on a unity common to one and the other; but in making this supposition, we leave the field of experience. We move into full metaphysics and abandon the question. For it is for us that the connection between the spiritual and the material, the ego and the non-self, is inexplicable by the mere data of experience, and against this fact, further hypotheses cannot prevail. It is not enough to affirm, without proof, that the self and the non-self are basically the same. We must show their unity in divergent natures. We must show that the ego and the non-self are basically the same thing. That is, I am what I am not or what is not me. No one has been able to make it known or will ever be able to do so.