“In recognition of his earnest search for the truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength of presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life.”
Time to introduce a character almost lost to history. Harald Hjärne, a history professor at the University of Uppsala, gave the presentation addresses at the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize in Literature on three occasions: as the director of the Swedish Academy in 1908, and as chair of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy in 1913 and 1919. The vast majority of the early presentation addresses were given by C. D. AF Wirsén, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. It would appear Harald Hjärme advocated a literal reading of Alfred Nobel’s will, as on each occasion he emphasized “idealism”. In his will Alfred Nobel established the Literature Prize for “excellence in works of an idealistic tendency.” Hjärne made it clear in his Presentation Address that this should be the standard. “This literature makes use of whatever art and science can offer, and from it mankind ‘profits the most’ precisely because it mirrors the ideal truth without any regard for the useful.” From this quote you can assume that the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize is the antithesis of his predecessor Rudyard Kipling.
Rudolf Eucken is not easy reading. The two works I chose, Ethics and Modern Thought and The Meaning and Value of Life, required careful and repeated reading. Eucken is concerned with the precise meaning of his words. Two of his earliest works are History of Philosophical Terminology (1879) and Images and Similes in Philosophy (1880). The first of these remained in print until 1960 and is still available among the 171 books by Eucken offered on Amazon.com. There is an enormous body of work still in print from this thinker who continued to write until his death in 1926.
I was captivated by the concept that true idealism is the process of defining and understanding the present. The meaning of life is the struggle with the conditions in which the thinker finds himself. When out of harmony with the way of life offered by his environment his choices are to retreat into the past or forge something new into the future, the latter Eucken defines as life. In Eucken’s day naturalism was popular. As practiced it was withdrawal from life into some environment seen to be of a more “pure” nature. Eucken saw naturalism as the antithesis of idealism. He believed there was “a spiritual life superior to man” which can be achieved through the experience of living. He called what he taught “activism”. Truth is to be found through the activity of living and the experience of life rather than pure intellect, as found in academe. He had little time for dominate social institutions such as government and the Church. He saw them as taking on a rigid form, reducing themselves to lifeless dogmas and observances. Indeed, to him the word “civilization” mainly designates social order while “culture” is education “from within” by which man as a whole is uplifted. Rudolf Eucken writes much about a “spiritual life” which is achieved through the process of living. There is an inner process of life by which humankind is able to raise itself above itself and achieve a civilization which will continue to propagate itself. I was deeply impressed and will value these small books.
In Ethics and Modern Thought Eucken introduced me to the four types of morality from which I am asked to form my ethics. First, there is “Religious Morality” which comes down from the past and is founded on a holy will, superior to the world. Religion links humankind’s destiny with attitude to moral obligations. Although a very powerful motivation to the moral life, in higher civilizations religious morality is supplemented by “The Morality of Reason” developed by society’s philosophers. For them morality is based on humankind’s own reasonable nature which seems to demand recognition of a universal law and voluntary submission to it. The morality of reason incites a proud independence of spirit which exalts humankind above everyday life. It is to this morality we owe the rise of science. “The Morality of Work”, a product of the Industrial Revolution, directs effort towards some object which must be perpetrated; it impels us to value the object for its own sake and treat it according to its own requirements. Work has become a primary factor in education and culture, even, in our time, disrupting the structure of the family. In the work culture the individual must subordinate himself completely to the demands of the whole. There is no doubt the morality of the marketplace has a profound influence on our lives. “Social Morality” proceeds from the immediate relation of human to human. Once we were confined to geographic and religious communities which were homogeneous. In our world we instantaneously share experience with millions of our brothers and sisters across the globe. We become increasingly independent and interdependent at the same time. It is the influence of this interdependence which needs to be understood. There is a union and a commonality with every other human being. Modern communications has expanded the concept “Social Morality” beyond anything Eucken could have imagined at the beginning of the 20th Century. If the concept of four moralities forming your ethics catches you like it did me I strongly recommend you find a copy of Ethics and Modern Thought to explore this brilliant thinker’s concept of the interweaving of them in our lives.
I do not have the space to go into The Meaning and Value of Life in the kind of detail it deserves. Instead, I list quotes from the book which struck me as profound.
1. “… unless faith in some lofty ideal infuse zest and gladness into every department of our activity, we cannot realize the highest possibilities of life.”
2. “Religion [in the traditional, ecclesiastical form] despite all it has effected, is for the man of today a question rather than an answer.”
3. “The Yes may be much less obvious than the No, but without the Yes the No would be unthinkable.”
4. “Freedom is essential if life is to have meaning.”
5. “Thus all genuine spiritually involves an achievement – an achievement in which the whole life is engaged. Life, from this point of view, is no mere unwinding of thread from a reel; it is a constant introducing of new material, a process of incessant creation.”
I hope this little taste whets your appetite sufficiently to send you to this thinker who has offered me many moments of quiet consideration. He is well worth the effort.
I look forward to a big change; from a German philosophy professor seeking the meaning of life to a Swedish schoolmarm seeking to introduce the beauty and history of Sweden to her elementary school charges. I think I will be able to stand the shock. For background music it will be Wilhelm Stenhammer’s Serenade for Orchestra. I will pass on the meatballs and try to make some blabärssoppa, a blueberry soup served cold. As it is a beautiful Indian Summer Day, I will settle under the cherry tree in the back yard with Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.
