Ordinary objects are composed of parts. My writing pen, for instance, has a cap, a clip, a barrel, and a nib. Alternatively, I could analyse it in terms of its various qualitative characteristics: its blackness, heaviness, roundness, etc. Either way, what I call one pen is a conjunction of many things. As soon as I proceed in a less commonsensical and more philosophical manner, I can raise further questions: is the number of components that constitute my pen finite or infinite? And if it is finite, what should I say really exists—the pen or its underlying, ultimate constituents? Such questions have vexed philosophers since antiquity.1 Those who believe that ordinary objects are composed of a finite number of parts are committed to the view that, at the ultimate level of analysis, these parts are simple. Some of those who believe that ordinary objects are thus composed of simples hold, furthermore, that what there really is are these simples, not their conjunction into one object. Call this view atomism, and those who endorse it atomists.
This paper examines an instance of atomism that occurs in nineteenth-century German philosophy, more specifically, in the works of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841). Unlike other atomists, however, Herbart does not substantiate his atomist proposal by considerations about the composition of things from parts. Instead, he argues that it is the notion of being that makes atomism the correct account of ultimate reality.
While I hope to have made clear what this study is about, it is probably not yet clear whom it is about. Apart from notable exceptions (Martin 2006, 2010; Beiser 2015, 2022), there is virtually no contemporary literature on Herbart’s metaphysics. On the rare occasion that Herbart is mentioned in academic philosophy today, he is (correctly) counted among ‘forgotten figures—Herbart, Drobisch, Lotze, Maier, Lipps’ (Martin 2006: 10). By contrast, as late as 1920, Ernst Cassirer ([1920] 2000: viii) still counted Herbart among the most significant post-Kantian thinkers (together with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel). A student of Fichte and Kant’s successor at Königsberg, Herbart had developed an original strand of post-Kantian philosophy, often—though controversially2—associated with a ‘realist’ countermovement to the idealist mainstream of his time.
On Herbart’s own assessment, the main achievement of his philosophy is nothing less than to have restored rigorous metaphysical thinking after Kant. While Kant was right to reject rationalist metaphysics, the reaction should not be to avoid metaphysical claims altogether but to improve them. However, as Herbart sees the post-Kantian aftermath, there are two tendencies, each fraught with difficulties: first, there is the attempt to do without metaphysics entirely, which he associates with Reinhold’s theory of consciousness, Fries’s psychological interpretation of Kant, and Jacobi’s inconclusive agonising over Kantian philosophy. At the same time, Herbart thinks that none of Reinhold, Fries, or Jacobi can ultimately do without metaphysical claims, which, in Herbart’s view, may be disguised but never successfully avoided. What is more, he warns that the resulting hidden metaphysical claims turn all the more dogmatic as they are swept under the carpet of supposedly non-metaphysical theories.
The second tendency is to embrace metaphysics after Kant, and Herbart associates this tendency especially with Fichte and Schelling.3 If we cannot come to terms with reality without metaphysics, we might as well do it overtly and rigorously! However, while Schelling may not disguise his metaphysical ambition, he is said to lack critical distance and is therefore bound to reproduce the mistakes of the pre-Kantian past, especially those of Spinoza.4 By contrast, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is regarded by Herbart as a ‘metaphysical journey of discovery’ (HSW VII.166) made in good faith: Fichte does not avoid the problems that present themselves to the metaphysically inclined thinker. He bravely tackles them, systematically proceeding from his key insight that all putative ‘external’ reality is actually constituted by the absolute I, which thus becomes ‘that ray of light, which transforms itself, through various refractions into that which seemed to be objects [die scheinbaren Gegenstände]’ (HSW VIII.199). However, while Herbart always shows the greatest respect for the rigor and consequentiality of Fichte’s thought, he finds himself unable to agree with the idea that reality is a product of the I. Thus, the task Herbart finds left for himself is to address the metaphysical problems left unanswered by Kant, to do so in light of Kant’s critique of traditional metaphysics, and to arrive at a realist alternative to Fichtean idealism.
Today, Herbart is mainly remembered for his contributions to pedagogical theory and psychology rather than for his work on metaphysics. In fact, this part of Herbart’s writings now receives the least attention.5 At the same time, Herbart himself (alongside his philosophical contemporaries) considered his metaphysics the cornerstone of his system.6 Metaphysics also plays an important role in Herbart’s philosophical reception by his followers (Drobisch, Zimmermann) and critics (Lotze, Bradley) alike.7 Understanding Herbart’s metaphysical views therefore advances our grasp of an original yet under-examined thinker and focuses on an important aspect of his legacy.
This paper contributes to this by reconstructing a central ontological claim of Herbart: his appeal to atomism, the view that only simple entities exist.8 More specifically, I argue that Herbart supports atomism in an unusual way, namely through an analysis of the notion of being, which he derives from Kant’s notion of ‘absolute position’. Broadly speaking, Herbart suggests the following: once we acquire proper command of the concept of being, we will come to see that this concept only works in relation to simples. As a consequence, our pre-philosophical belief in the existence of complex objects must be given up. There are, however, problems with Herbart’s argument. The point of my reconstruction is therefore not to endorse Herbart’s view, but to make clear how he arrives at it. Along the way, we will also learn more about Herbart’s philosophically courageous attempt to clarify and work productively with Kant’s influential but enigmatic proposition that being should be understood as ‘absolute position’.
As indicated above, secondary sources on Herbart’s metaphysical writings are scarce. That being said, two contemporary contributions provide an important background for my analysis of Herbart’s atomism thesis: Frederick Beiser’s discussion of Herbart’s Monadology (Beiser 2015; cf. 2022) and Wayne Martin’s work on ‘thetic judgement’. Martin (2006: 57–58) emphasises that Herbart differentiates existential judgments from ordinary ‘S is P’ judgments. While the latter have a ‘synthetic’ structure relating a subject to a predicate, the former are ‘thetic’; that is, they neither are nor express a relation between distinct terms. Rather, they express an unconditional or absolute commitment which Herbart associates with the nature of existence. Beiser (2015: 1064) notes that, for Herbart, metaphysics ‘has to begin with an analysis of the concept of reality itself’ and that we must therefore first ‘determine […] what it means to ascribe reality to something’. He also rightly states that, for Herbart, a ‘substance or real being […] is absolutely simple’, that it is ‘one thing, completely integral and indivisible’ (Beiser 2015: 1065). While I agree on both points, Beiser’s account does not sufficiently spell out the argumentative link between them: how exactly does Herbart’s atomistic ontology of simple substances follow from his account of ascribing existence in terms of absolute positing?9
An early commentator of Herbart, namely J. E. Erdmann (1853: 333), suggests that the idea of absolute position is incompatible with ‘a negation’ and that the relational organization of complex entities entails negations.10 However, it remains unclear (to me) what exactly is meant here by ‘negation’, why relations entail negations, and why they are incompatible with absolute position. Given these difficulties in spelling out how Herbart’s account of existence as absolute position leads to the conclusion that only simples exist, I offer the following interpretation.
The core of Herbart’s account of ascribing existence in terms of absolute positing is that the ascription of existence must not be tied to conditions. At the same time, Herbart has a story to tell about why we cannot avoid mentioning conditions whenever we make the attempt to ascribe existence to an entity that has parts or components of some sort. Therefore, only that which lacks complexity can be claimed to exist. Of course, this account needs to be fleshed out in greater detail, and, as we shall see, there are reasons to resist the Herbartian picture.
In order to arrive at a position to understand and evaluate Herbart’s view, I will proceed as follows: I will first elaborate on what type of argument Herbart envisages and place it within the broader scheme of his metaphysics (section 1). In section 2, I will then make an attempt at clarifying Herbart’s understanding of existence and how he derives it from Kant’s notion of absolute position. Although my account can only be preliminary here, it is important to make clear why (for Herbart) existence claims must be absolute in the sense that they must do entirely without an appeal to conditions on which the existence of something depends. Against this background, we then come into a position to understand why Herbart thinks that his views on the notion of being support an atomistic ontology (section 3). Finally, I will discuss a difficulty with this argument in the fourth and concluding section of the paper.
1. Smoke and Fire: Herbart’s Metaphysics
Herbart claims that only simple entities exist, but how does he arrive at that conclusion? One might expect Herbart to justify this claim by appeal to the nature of things and their composition from underlying components. For instance, when Aristotle discusses atomism, one argument in favour of the atomistic hypothesis is that the division of a macroscopic object cannot go on ad infinitum, or else ‘nothing will remain and the body will have passed-away into what is incorporeal’ (GC 316b 25–30). This argument is built on an observation about things and putative conditions on their composition from underlying parts. Herbart’s argument, by contrast, takes its starting point not from a claim about things, but rather from a claim about how existence is ascribed to things.
As we shall see below, Herbart argues that the very notion of existence is applicable only to simples. That is, he believes that any attempt to ascribe existence to a complex entity is bound to fail—for reasons that have to do with the nature of existence itself. But if only simple entities can be claimed to exist, it makes no sense at all to entertain belief in the reality of compounds. In fact, the very notion of a ‘complex existent’ is oxymoronic from Herbart’s point of view. Complexity is fraught with something that ‘pure being does not, in any way, tolerate’ (HSW II.226).11 It is therefore a fact about being or existence that rules out complex objects on the level of mind-independent reality.
While we will need to keep this argumentative framework in mind as we progress to a more detailed reconstruction of Herbart’s case for atomism, it is helpful to first say more about how the argument sketched above fits into his overall approach to metaphysics. In doing so, I will highlight the peculiarities of Herbart’s approach against the more familiar background of Kant.
Any reader familiar with Kant will notice an unusual combination of Kantian commitments and an overtly metaphysical ambition in Herbart’s writings. Like Kant, Herbart believes that the history of metaphysics, especially the rationalist tradition (Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten), is caught up in an irresolvable tangle impeding real scientific advances. Furthermore, Herbart and Kant agree that this has to do with a neglect of the role of experience, with pre-critical metaphysicians’ tendency to explore ontological concepts detached from their application to the empirical world.12
What metaphysicians should do, according to Herbart, is provide a critical analysis of the forms of experience, that is, of the basic conceptual framework through which we encounter the world. Although Herbart’s metaphysical aspirations will turn out to be more ambitious, one aspect of his project is to clarify concepts and to critically evaluate their experiential usage: ‘[O]ur intention is just to shed light on obscure concepts’ (HSW VII.119). That much is broadly in line with a Kantian project of critiquing categories.13 However, as we shall see now, Herbart departs from Kant in important ways.
First, Herbart believes that the empirical use of our basic concepts provides us with a distorted view of reality. Kant wouldn’t say that. On his account, the problems with our concepts begin only when we allow them to produce illusions, or Schein, by using them outside the realm of possible experience. But the categories themselves (say, of substance, cause, or actuality) are fine; they show the empirical world as it should be shown and thereby grant us access to appearance in the non-pejorative sense of Erscheinung (as opposed to Schein).14 Herbart, by contrast, thinks that the categories—or, to use his own expression, the forms of experience—present us with ‘contradictions’, i.e., an inconsistent view of reality. Herbart’s prime example for such a ‘contradiction’ is the fact that we perceive the world as composed of objects that seem to be simultaneously one and many: they are (or at least appear to be) single objects with many properties.15 For Herbart, this tension is irresolvable and indicates that there is something wrong with how we conceptualise what we receive through the senses. Consequently, the task of metaphysics is not just to map categories and restrict their use to possible experience; metaphysics aims to identify inconsistencies in our pre-philosophical view of the world and to remove them by revising our conceptual framework:
It is the concern of metaphysics to bring to light the contradictions inherent in the forms of experience. These contradictions are the real motives of the progress of thinking; and the more vividly they are felt, the better they are expressed, the greater the hope, even if it is fulfilled late, that good minds will set themselves to work to eliminate them. (HSW VII.177)
In contrast to Kant, Herbart thus sees the need not only to restrict but also to revise the use of our basic concepts. On one occasion Beiser (2022: 243–44) goes so far as to describe Herbart as ‘limiting metaphysics’ to this task of ‘examin[ing] and […] resolv[ing] the contradictions in’ the ‘basic concepts and principles’ of experience. While I agree that this is part of what Herbart seeks to achieve, I think that Herbart has metaphysical ambitions that extend further beyond the scope of a Kantian approach. As Drobisch (1876: 18) rightly states, Herbart endeavours ‘to resurrect metaphysics, which had been reduced by Kant to the knowledge of subjective conditions of experience, in the traditional and objective meaning of the term as a science of what truly exists [Wissenschaft vom wahrhaft Seyenden]’. Beiser (2022: 256) rightly notes that Herbart will insist that metaphysical inquiry must always take its departure from an analysis of how reality is ‘given’ to us through the senses. This is indeed what sets Herbart apart from a more traditional metaphysician, who begins his inquiry assuming a direct link between thought and being. Nonetheless, it remains true that Herbart ultimately proceeds to claims about reality as it is in itself, i.e., prior to its appearance to a subject.
Secondly, we should therefore note that a striking difference between Herbart and Kant concerns the prospects of their respective critical projects. For Kant, the critique of categories has the goal of establishing firm boundaries for their use, meaning that they can only give us knowledge of appearance, never of that which produces the appearance.16 Herbart, by contrast, believes that we can gain (at least some) knowledge of reality itself (‘the Real’) by removing the contradictions inherent to our pre-philosophical worldview. Experience thus figures as a starting point from which the Herbartian metaphysician gradually removes inconsistencies until a consistent picture of ultimate reality emerges. The ‘original tasks’ of metaphysics therefore have the goal ‘that contradictions must be removed from the forms of experience’ (HSW VII.252). But this activity is not merely aimed at improving our conceptual scheme; it is directed at gaining knowledge of reality. In the course of metaphysical research,
[e]xperience is [initially] considered to be knowledge of the Real; however, any contradiction found therein cancels this claim; or rather, it suspends it until a solution is found. All resolutions must now be summarized in order to ensure the reality of that which presents itself to be contradictory in multiple ways. (HSW VII.252)
Once we exorcise the ‘contradictions’ produced by the forms of experience, we actually gain knowledge of that which appears, knowledge of reality as it truly is, prior to experience. In this spirit, Herbart also compares the realm of appearance with smoke rising from a fire representing an underlying realm of reality (i.e., that which appears). As he sees things, Kant only dealt with the smoke of appearance, but the point is to investigate where this smoke originates and to provide an account of mind-independent reality: ‘Like smoke indicates fire, so appearance [Schein] indicates being; it does not merely indicate this, it also demands from us that we go and see where it burns’ (HSW VII.222).
So far, we have seen that Herbart’s metaphysics begins with an analysis of the conceptual framework operative in experience and proceeds from there to an account of reality as such. Although most of what follows concerns this part of Herbart’s account, it is important to note that his project includes a further step. Herbart not only seeks to descend from the surface level of experience (the empirical Given, as he often puts it) to an underlying ontological reality (the Real); he also seeks to explain why this reality appears to us in the way it does. Even though the realm of the Given is not an adequate representation of the Real, Herbart thinks it must be possible to explain how and why the Real is given to us in these ways. Metaphysics thus proceeds from the Given to the Real and then (ideally) arrives at an explanation of how the former emerges from the latter. As Herbart puts it:
Metaphysics in the entirety of its course follows, as it were, an arc. This arc, descending from the surface of the Given into the depth, first approaches the Real [but] only to rise again from that depth […] and to arrive at the Given and its explanation as far as the latter is possible for us. (HSW VIII.14)
Given this exposition of Herbart’s metaphysics, it is natural to wonder to what extent Herbart’s philosophical ambition leads him back to a form of pre-critical, dogmatic philosophy. A key point here is that while Herbart certainly goes beyond the bounds of transcendental idealism, he will insist against the rationalist tradition that metaphysics must begin (and in fact end) with an analysis of experience. To determine more specifically where this leaves Herbart vis-à-vis pre-Kantian dogmatism would deserve a more elaborate response than I can provide here, so I will not attempt to do so. Instead, I will now turn to an aspect of Kant’s philosophy that Herbart positively appropriates, namely Kant’s account of being or existence as ‘absolute position’. As we shall see in section 3, this notion is also key to Herbart’s argument for atomism.
In broad strokes, we can say that Herbart proceeds from a Kant-inspired clarification of the concept of existence to exposing versions of the contradiction of one and many which arise once we attempt to claim existence of anything other than simple beings. Once we take seriously the notion of existence, the contradiction will become apparent to us, and we will come to be in a position to correct our view of reality. Reality, we will be bound to admit, is not composed of complex things, but only of entities that have no complexity, i.e., of atoms. In expounding this argument, Herbart closely follows the script of his metaphysical methodology: start from an analysis of concepts to expose and revise inconsistent elements in our pre-philosophical account of reality, correct this account accordingly, and thereby gain knowledge of reality as it truly is. To understand and evaluate the application of this procedure on the problem of atomism, we must now examine its first step: Herbart’s analysis of Kant’s concept of being or existence.
2. Herbart on Being as Absolute Positing
As we have seen, Herbart is an unorthodox Kantian in many ways. Nonetheless, he unambiguously endorses Kant’s view that the primary mistake of rationalist metaphysicians is to treat being as a property of things. It is Kant’s great achievement to have exposed this error and to thereby supply us with what Herbart approvingly calls the ‘true concept of being’ (HSW VII.55).
But what is Kant’s concept of being? Even a cursory glance at the canonical passage from the first Critique quickly reveals that while Kant states what being is not, he is less outspoken regarding a positive interpretation of being:
Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain determinations in themselves. (B 626)
To sum up the negative strand of Kant’s statement: while being can, of course, be logically predicated of things (I can say of narwhals that they exist), it can never be a qualitative determination or property of a thing (existence is not among the characteristics of narwhals). Instead, we are told that being should be understood in terms of ‘positing’. But even though this term has considerable currency in the writings of Fichte, Hegel, and the like, its meaning is hardly ever defined.
Modern interpreters have pointed here to the idea that being might indeed be treated as a property, though not in relation to objects but rather to their concepts.17 However, it is far from obvious whether Kant really held that view (cf. Rosenkoetter 2009), and, for better or worse, Herbart’s interpretative efforts go in a different direction.
As we have seen already, Herbart believes that any philosophical concept should be analysed in its experiential use. Unsurprisingly, the notion of being is no exception. After all, experience usually occasions existence claims. We judge that narwhals exist when we have seen some, or at least have credible reports that others have had that sort of experiential warrant. For Herbart, the decisive clue to a better understanding of being as absolute position must therefore be derived from an analysis of experience, more specifically of sensation: ‘[T]he absolute position, to which alone the concept of being must be traced back in its true meaning, lies nowhere else than in sensation’ (HSW VIII.235).
Herbart analyses experience in matter and form (cf. HSW VIII.235). What is ‘given’ to us are complex objects with many sensuous properties. While the form of experience concerns the way these properties are grouped into objects, individual sensations constitute its matter. These sensations, then, present us with simple sensuous properties (like shape or colour). This analysis is, again, broadly compatible with Kant.18 That being said, Herbart proceeds from it in his own inventive ways. He distinguishes the degree of certainty with which we react to individual sensations on the one hand, and the relational forms or groupings in which they appear on the other. The former, sensation, is ‘never an object of doubt, and cannot be one […] because it is precisely sensation which is the immediately Given’ (HSW VIII.17–18). The idea here is this: sensations have an authority that defies hesitation on the side of the subject. If I sense the yellow colour of a dandelion, I cannot help sensing yellow; the sensation simply commands to be taken as real.
What I can doubt is whether the yellowness I sense indeed forms part of a dandelion. It might also belong to a different flower, or to some other yellow object. For Herbart, this shows that ‘the form, which must be distinguished from the matter (that is, here, from sensation), is not the immediately Given! Hence the [possibility of] doubt’ (HSW VII.17–18). As we shall see in greater detail below, Herbart oscillates between the suggestion that form is something merely mental and the insistence that it nonetheless belongs to the realm of the Given. Leaving this aside for the moment, I wish to draw attention to the idea that sensation provides insight into the notion of being. In having a sensation, we find ourselves unconditionally committed to something. This idea of unconditional commitment, Herbart suggests, corresponds to the essence of being. To illustrate this, he often contrasts sensation with thought, which he believes to lack the character of unconditional commitment:
[T]hinking itself, detached from sensation, posits only tentatively and with the reservation of withdrawal. To renounce this reservation is to declare something to be [Etwas für seyend erklären]. (HSW VIII.59)
According to Herbart, thinking works in the mode of making hypotheses, of suggesting what might exist, given certain conditions. It does not, however, involve any definite commitment to what actually is. Such a commitment only comes into play once we renounce the hesitation characteristic of thought. Sensation, by contrast, provides us with a clue to what being and existence truly amount to, in as much as sensation commands unconditional commitment to its object. It is this idea of unconditional commitment which Herbart recognises in Kant’s notion of absolute position:
Being (he [Kant] rightly states) is just the position of a thing. But with that position, the object must be posited such, that it stands. If there remains a fear that it might topple and fall [umfallen] unless something else (e.g. a consequence or a ground) gets posited in addition, then the position yields nothing real according to the concept required by abstract science at its beginning. (HSW VII.121)
If the positing of some entity A is relative to the positing of some other entity B, all we recognise is that under certain conditions, A exists. But that A actually does exist remains a mere hypothesis. In contrast, where an absolute position is made, we do recognise an unconditional commitment to the object. Here, we no longer ask under what conditions A might exist; we acknowledge its reality without further ado. As Herbart writes:
The concept of being in fact designates nothing but the admission that we have raised, an unnecessary question with respect to the object—namely, whether in positing the object one should let matters rest there? (HSW VIII.57)
Thus, for Herbart, the meaning of the concept being is just that our commitment to that which is claimed to exist must do away with conditions.
Of course, our first reaction to this proposal must be that it is not technically a definition of being. Rather, what Herbart proposes is an analysis of the attitude we take (or should take) in relation to that which exists. However, Herbart might reply to us that he has nonetheless made an important step forward in elucidating the notion of being. Seeing that unconditional commitment is the adequate attitude towards what exists gives us a clue to what being or existence amounts to, namely: to be is to be without a condition.
This is also why Herbart thinks that the structure of ordinary ‘S is P’ judgments is inadequate for expressing existence. On Herbart’s interpretation, any judgment that combines two terms expresses only what would be true of the subject if it was to exist. ‘The rose is red’ therefore only tells me that redness will be a property of the rose if this rose were to exist. Whether it really does exist is entirely open. Thus, Herbart writes:
The so-called categorical judgments, which under the form ‘A is B’ assert the inherence of the mark B in the concept A, are wholly incapable of expressing being. […] In the judgment ‘A is B,’ A is posited [only] on trial; then, insofar as this has been done, it is supposed to be certain (this the judgment asserts categorically) that the mark B is to be ascribed to [beyzulegen] it. If one cancels outright the attempt to posit A, without passing through any intermediate stages, then indeed the mark B may still have other supports enough on which it can lean—perhaps there are countless other objects to which it belongs—yet of this the judgment knows nothing. If its subject falls away, then this particular occasion for positing the predicate also falls away, and the predicate itself withdraws back into the series of mere concepts; the judgment leaves behind not the slightest trace of its existence. (HSW VIII.59–60)
Accordingly, Martin (2006: 57) has pointed out:
At the heart of Herbartian logic was the claim that categorical judgments lack existential import. To say that Cyclops are one-eyed, for instance, or that square circles are impossible, is certainly not to assert the existence of Cyclops or square circles. An existence claim, Herbart proposes, must accordingly be recognized as an independent, non-categorical judgmental form.
Herbart believes that ordinary language does have judgments of this form at its disposal. In fact, we frequently express unconditional commitment when we say things like ‘it freezes’ or ‘it thunders’:
[T]he linguistic form itself designates the kind of absolute positing [absoluten Aufstellung]. The words can be used as predicates: for instance, Zeus lightens, Zeus thunders. However, for the fact to be described as present [vorhanden], the subject must be absent [fehlen]. If Zeus thunders, the question arises whether Zeus exists. If not, the judgment does not say that thunder really happens. But this question is blocked if one simply says it thunders. (Herbart 1813: 48–49)
Again, what Herbart finds important in existence claims of the form ‘it thunders’ is that they do not express how one term relates to another but rather an unconditional commitment to one single term. As such, these judgments preserve the original insight we gained from the analysis of sensation: that being first and foremost designates the absence of conditions.
In Herbart’s eyes, all this is just a faithful explication of the Kantian notion of absolute position. It goes without saying that in reality, Herbart has invested a good deal of interpretative work and arrives at a highly idiosyncratic rendition of Kant. However, the point where Herbart himself believes he goes beyond Kant concerns not so much the concept of being, but rather what metaphysical inferences we are warranted to make on the basis of this concept. According to Herbart, Kant has bequeathed to us the ‘true concept of being’, but he did not put it to use in metaphysical inquiry: ‘How did he use it? What has he posited as being? For this one searches in vain in Kant’s entire teachings’ (HSW VII.55). As Herbart hoped to show, faithful analysis of the concept of being as absolute position not only tells us what it means to exist, but also what types of things exist. As we shall see in the subsequent section, Herbart proposed an argument to the conclusion that only simple things exist.
3. From Absolute Positing to Simple Being
With an account of Herbart’s take on being as absolute position in hand, we can now approach his argument for atomism. In outline, Herbart offers a two-step argument that first establishes that complex acts of positing cannot be absolute if they are conceived as a series of individual positings. Against this backdrop, it is then argued, in step 2, that a collective (absolute) positing of all involved entities at once is not possible either. After reconstructing these steps in some detail, I shall conclude with a critical discussion of this second step in Herbart’s argument.
Before doing so, two remarks about Herbart’s approach are appropriate. First, when Herbart speaks of simple versus complex entities, what he has in mind is simplicity versus complexity in terms of qualitative ‘marks’ [Merkmale].19 While this sets his account apart from the claim that reality consists of smallest material parts, Herbart preserves the central tenet of atomism, namely that reality is ultimately composed of entities that lack complexity. Second, given Herbart’s strategy of grounding atomism in his views about existence, we should also bear in mind that when he uses the expression ‘ascribing’ being to something (cf. 1813: 125), this is not meant to evoke the association of ascribing an attribute to a thing: absolutely positing X means to acknowledge or ‘set up’ X without further ado, not to describe its attributes (cf. 1813: 48).
3.1 Step one: positing all elements of a complex individually turns the positings conditional
As we have seen, Herbart thinks that conditional (‘relative’) positings are always hypothetical. They do not involve a definite commitment to the existence of anything. However, this does not, as such, explain why absolute positings must be simple. So far, we only learned why they must be non-conditional. But why simple?
Given what we have learned about the nature of positing, a plausible answer would be that a positing involving many sub-positings always takes the form of a conditional positing. For instance, when I posit an object A with two features a and b, my belief in A’s existence seems to entail that A’s features do not exist independently of their connection in A. After all, a and b are features of A! For instance, in relation to individual sensations that warrant the reality of an object’s various features, Herbart writes:
For as long as they [the individual sensations] remain within [a group], none of them is [alone] for itself; and none represents what exists in itself [was an sich ist]. Each gets posited under the condition that the others, which are connected to it, are to be posited as well [auch … gesetzt seien]. That which is posited [however], is just One for the entire group. (HSW VIII.77)20
If this is true, by positing A, I have committed myself to positing b as soon as I posit a.21 If a exists, b must exist too! But this, Herbart might point out to us, is no longer an absolute positing. It is a conditional positing, and as such a hypothetical one.
Intuitively, however, there seems to be an easy way out of this predicament: it seems possible to posit the entire series of A’s features at once. For even if positing any one of them individually is conditioned by positing the others, positing all of them collectively does not seem to be conditional on anything we have not committed to by this single act of positing. Herbart is aware of this theoretical option, but it is clear that he is sceptical of its success when he writes: ‘In this way, we would have escaped all problems with ease, and the investigation would have come to an end even before it began’ (HSW VIII.78).
If this escape were possible, the atomism hypothesis could be dropped. However, as Herbart’s use of the subjunctive betrays, things are not that easy. Indeed, there is a second step in his argument for atomism, ruling out the possibility of positing many items collectively in one single act. Having shown that positing the elements of a complex individually turns the positings conditional, Herbart then sets out to show that the apparent escape route (of positing all elements at once) is blocked. In brief, he argues that positing a complex would require an absolute position of something merely mental, namely a unifying ‘form’.
3.2 Step two: positing all elements of a complex collectively is impossible
This second step of the argument starts by asking what is involved in positing the entire series of features of a complex object ‘A’. Intuitively, this simply means that one claims existence for all of A’s constituent components (say, a and b) at once. However, according to Herbart, positing a complex object entails more:
It is neither a (in so far as it is conceived unconnected with b), nor b (as separate from a), but rather the connection of both to which a single being [Ein Seyn] gets ascribed. (Herbart 1813: 125)
So, rather than positing A’s features (a and b) one by one, we would have to posit them all at once and in so far as they are connected into the complex object A. At first sight, this looks like success: positing a complex is possible, as long as this positing involves commitment to its components in so far as they are connected. It seems we can commit to this (and in fact do so whenever we claim the existence of houses, trees, or societies) without running into a problem.
So why shouldn’t we be able to posit all of A’s components in so far as they are connected? Here, Herbart’s interpretation of unity comes into play. For Herbart, unity (or connectedness) among many items is ‘a mere form’, and as such, it is ontologically reducible to the plurality of the items themselves. This view is motivated, again, by an appeal to experience. As we have seen already, Herbart thinks that what we receive through sensation is warranted regarding its reality. At the same time, he insists that sensation only delivers the matter of experience but no structural features, i.e., the form of experience.22
From this point of view, it would be a mistake to believe that one could somehow see that two objects are two metres apart from each other. We can never literally see (or otherwise sense) distance as such. What we can see are the two objects, but not the two meters between them (cf. Herbart 1813: 14–15). But even to claim that we can see two distinct objects is problematic for Herbart. For this would mean once again that we would somehow see, or hear, or feel structural features (forms) that group sensually given features into distinct objects. But unity or connection among many can be sensed no more than distance.
To illustrate this further, let us say we experience two cubes of metal—one of solid gold, the other of solid silver. The matter of this experience contains the yellow colour and heavy weight of gold just as much as it contains the shiny whiteness and lighter weight of silver. It seems clear that sensation gives us a reason to believe in the reality of these features. But what exactly warrants their distribution into two distinct groups for gold and silver, respectively? If we were to reply that it is the form of this experience that underpins the distribution, Herbart might ask us, in turn, how we are aware of this. Have we seen anything like a unifying form among the yellow, white, and heaviness, which gets delivered to our mind by sensation? As Herbart is quick to reply, we have not: ‘We have perceived the features indeed, but not their unification’ (Herbart 1813: 16).
While Herbart thus associates the grouping of manifold empirical properties in distinct, unified objects with the notion of form, he makes clear that such unifying forms are not received through the senses (Herbart 1813: 15–16). If we cannot, however, warrant the reality of unifying forms through sensation, Herbart concludes, we should not treat such forms as having mind-independent reality at all. To the extent that we ‘nonetheless claim a unity’ among manifold features, the latter is ‘not intuited’ but ‘added in thought [hinzugedacht]’ (Herbart 1813: 16).23
Therefore, for Herbart, any appeal to the existence of a connection among several sensual items (say a and b) is just shorthand for the claim that each of these items exists. For, on his view, their ‘connection is a mere form; and to ascribe being to it just means [heißt gerade soviel als] ascribing being to a and b. This in turn, amounts to [positing] two beings rather than a single one’ (Herbart 1813: 125).
Against this background, we can now understand better what problem might arise when we attempt to posit a thing of many features. On Herbart’s interpretation of unity, what really exists are just the features a and b. Their connection into one, single object A, by contrast, is an addition by the thinker who entertains the concept of A. Thus, when we said above that we were ‘positing A’s features in so far as they are connected’, this really was a pleonastic expression for ‘positing A’s features’. We can think of these features as connected, but we cannot successfully translate that thought into an existence claim. For despite the fact that the many marks or features are definitely given to us, there is no empirical fact to the matter of whether these marks make up one object, or three. This depends on how we group them, and groupings are not given like marks in sensation. They are up to us. Hence, we can posit many marks, but we cannot posit unities of them, although unities appear to us.
As we have seen, Herbart believes that experience does not teach us what it would mean to exist for a ‘connection’. As far as existence is concerned, we are competent only with regard to simples, for only in this case do we have an implicit familiarity with existence through sensation. Thus, while we may entertain the thought of many entities unified into a whole, this remains a mere thought, according to Herbart:
Here, unity in the realm of being and the multiplicity of what is thought stand opposed to each other: these may well jointly apply [mit einander bestehen], but one must not confuse the former with the latter. A, in as much as it is thought, i.e. the concept of A, can indeed dissolve itself into several and distinct features, it can, as it were, be translated into them; however, this plurality must disappear as soon as one speaks of being. For being gets ascribed to what is one [single entity], not to what is in itself many [.] (Herbart 1813: 125–26)
Although Herbart concedes that, in thought, we can move from A to its manifold features (and back), he believes that we must stick to the account of A as one single and simple entity when we claim existence of it.24 For Herbart, the unity of many features in one object is merely a byproduct of our thinking.25 Absolute positing, however, is meant to indicate reality, not mere thinking. Since he believes that unifying principles, i.e., forms, have no reality, it would be a mistake to posit unified complexes and thereby attribute reality to forms. If we were to move from positing A to positing a and b, our positing would fall apart into many, and, given Herbart’s claim about the irreality of forms, all routes to the original unity of positing A would be blocked: ‘[Th]e plurality of the features is utterly incompatible with the unity of the object’ (Herbart 1813: 88). The problem with positing a complex therefore is that it requires us to treat principles of unity (forms) as real. This, however, is a mistake according to Herbart.
In summary: Herbart’s starting point is the observation that positing a complex amounts to a conditional and therefore not to an absolute positing. The positing of a complex must be tantamount to positing all of its constituent components. But none of these components can be posited independently from the others, so each individual positing is conditional on further positings. Even if we posit all elements one after the other, we only get many conditional positings but zero absolute positings. It then seemed that positing all elements of a complex at once or collectively might offer a way out of the problem. But then we face a new difficulty: positing many elements collectively would require us to also posit their connection, i.e., the form or principle that makes them elements of one single complex. This, however, is not possible, because Herbart denies the reality of such forms. As a result, it turns out to be impossible to absolutely posit a complex. But if complex entities cannot be posited absolutely, they cannot be said to exist at all. Hence, Herbart’s conclusion is that there are no complex entities and that only simple things exist (atomism).
4. Herbart’s Staggering Commitment to the Irreality of Forms
Finally, I turn to a difficulty with Herbart’s argument. It should have become clear that Herbart’s case for atomism crucially depends on his appeal to the irreality of forms. At the same time, he is often hesitant to give a full endorsement of that premise.
Herbart frequently claims that only the matter of experience is given but not its form. While the former delivers atomistic features, the latter tells us how these features are organised into groups. According to Herbart, our epistemic make-up makes it inevitable for us to perceive unified complexes of features (i.e., objects) rather than the atomistic features that constitute them. For instance, he would concede that we cannot help but recognise complex unities in nature. However, he insists that this has to do with how we think about reality, not with how it is in itself:
Here it is […] convenient to remind ourselves that all this is just our thought! All these enigmatic unities arise only in our consciousness! […] Unities are what a thinker demands qua thinker in thought and for thinking. In as much as he—thinks—the real, a unity is required there as well; in his observations of nature, if they are to be satisfactory, there must be a general and thoroughgoing connection. But if his answer to the question what he is thinking is: the real, this need [for unity] drops away entirely because it is nowhere related to the What, but only to the thinking. (HSW II.298)26
Although many passages confirm his anti-realism about forms, Herbart also repeatedly warns that the forms of experience are not mere figments of the mind. Rather, they exercise force (Zwang) upon our minds and count among the Given:
Are the forms of experience given? Answer: Yes; they are given indeed, albeit only as determinations of the way in which sensations relate to each other. If they were not given, […] we could compose and rearrange things from features at our [arbitrary] choice […]. The important point always concerns the arrangement of these features into groups. It is here that we find ourselves bound and compelled as soon as we take the liberty to alter this arrangement. Through this compelling force [Zwang] experience tells us that it is given, also with respect to its form. (HSW VIII.21–22)27
It should be clear that Herbart’s undecidedness vis-à-vis the ontological status of forms threatens his argument for atomism. It is only because forms are denied reality that they cannot be an object of absolute positing, and it is only because they cannot be so posited that we are unable to posit many things at once. So, is Herbart’s argument undone by his ambivalence about the irreality of forms?
One way to save him from inconsistency might be to point to Herbart’s distinction between the ‘Given’ and the ‘Real’. The Given is Herbart’s term for empirical reality, for what we receive through the senses and in this sense consider as a datum, rather than a mere fantasy or illusion. But the Given is distinguished from the Real. In fact, the Given is merely how the Real becomes manifest to us, not how it is in itself. Interestingly, when Herbart suggests a more robust status for forms, he never writes that, after all, forms are ‘real’. What he does write is that they are ‘given’. Admittedly, this raises further questions. If the givenness of sensuous properties warrants the reality of these features (they cannot be doubted!), why does the alleged givenness of the forms not also warrant their reality? How can the forms be given, if they are at the same time said to be products of our mental activity (‘hinzugedacht’)?
It is not clear if Herbart’s account provides answers to these questions. However, he comes closest to giving such answers when addressing the relationship between the Given of experience and the Real which is disguised by the ontologist. The expressed goal of Herbart’s metaphysical inquiry is to reveal the world’s ontological make-up underneath the realm of how it appears (i.e., is ‘given’), and then, in a fresh bottom-up approach, to explain how this ontological reality can be given to us in the way it is. This is what Herbart means when he describes the course of metaphysical inquiry as an (inverted) arc, first descending to the Real and then resurfacing at the Given (cf. HSW VIII.14). The downward-reaching part of this arc culminates in an atomistic conception of ontological reality, while its upward-pointing part is meant to re-establish a connection between this atomistic world and the world of complex, unified objects which we encounter empirically. The question just is how we can proceed from the former to the latter.
Herbart did try to bridge this explanatory gap in his theory. In particular, he argued that the appearance of complex, unified things is due to a misinterpretation of the behaviour of atomistic entities. What really exists are atomistic beings which relate to each other in their respective striving to maintain themselves. These manifold relations (resulting from the self-preservation of atomistic entities) are what empirical subjects then (mistakenly) interpret as unified complexes of features:
All manifold, which resides in the fact that A preserves itself either against B or against C or against D etc., disappears together with this process itself if one goes back to being as it is in itself. For in all of these cases, it is A which preserves itself […]. (HSW VIII.106)
Accordingly, our impression that the forms of experience are neither arbitrary nor mere illusions does have some footing in reality, namely in the various ways in which individual Herbartian atoms relate to other such atoms. However, it remains a mistake to think of these relations as constituting unified complexes of features.
While Herbart thus offers some explanation for the puzzling status of forms, his account remains problematic. In particular, it would appear that any such account would have to reintroduce some sort of principle that explains how many atomistic entities relate to each other, be it in terms of spatial, causal, or other relations. At the same time, however, Herbart wants his bedrock-real beings to be utterly simple and relationless.28
Notes
- See, for instance, Prm. 137c–d, where Plato’s Parmenides draws his dialogue partner (‘Aristotle’) into a debate about the impossibility of non-simple, complex objects. While Parmenides is, of course, after an account according to which there ultimately is but one simple substance, Democritus and Leucippus hold that there are many. Although Descartes (1985: 231; cf. 287) denies that there are indivisible atoms in this sense, he still appeals to the related corpuscular account, treating the behaviour of macroscopic objects as ‘derivable from the movement of the parts’ (1985: 232). Leibniz’s (1989: 215) Monadology is directed against this type of mechanistic explanation but resurrects the idea of smallest, indivisible units (monads, ‘simple substance[s]’) at the bottom of reality. This latter account also provides an inspiration for the philosopher discussed in this article, namely Johann Friedrich Herbart. In defending atomism, Herbart goes in the exact opposite direction from other nineteenth-century post-Kantians. Hegel, in particular, criticised both ancient and modern varieties of atomism as he deemed them unable to provide an account of unity among many entities in one object: ‘The main point is that, as soon as one allows these atoms, molecules, small parts etc. to persist as self-standing, [their] unification becomes just mechanical; those things that get united remain external to one another, the bond is only external,—a mere composition’ (TWA 18, 361). As we shall find out, Herbart thinks that the problem of unity is irresolvable, and that we must accept atomism as true. [^]
- Cf. Beiser (2015) for a discussion of how well the term ‘realist’ sits with Herbart’s philosophical views. [^]
- Although Herbart reviewed Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in 1822, Hegel remains remarkably absent from Herbart’s Allgemeine Metaphysik. One reason for this might be that for Herbart, Hegel’s thought was just a vamped-up version of Schellingian world-soul and identity philosophy (cf. Beiser 2021). Why deal with the epigone, if you have already dealt with the original? More philosophically speaking, there are several points of divergence between the two authors. For one thing, Herbart assumes Hegel to embrace true contradictions, which would be overtly at odds with his own method of freeing metaphysics from contradiction. Another point concerns the ontological status of the form that gives unity to an object: while for Hegel, unifying forms are Aristotelian universals and as such exist robustly within mind-independent reality (cf. Stern and Weiss 2024), Herbart thinks they can only ever be an addition we make to pre-existing, atomistic individuals (cf., e.g., HSW II.185). Finally, Herbart thinks that sensation is key to grasping the concept of being (as absolute position), which then delivers the correct account of real entities (cf. HSW VIII.235). By contrast, Hegel (1977, § 91) takes himself to have shown that the ‘pure being’ of ‘sense-knowledge’ leads to an inconsistent conception of the object—precisely because it ignores the role of universals. To the extent that Herbart was aware of these differences, he may have considered engagement with a thinker so radically opposed to his own views futile. At least regarding the issue of contradictions, we know his view: ‘Hegel has cast such a bright, yes indeed unrelenting, light on these contradictions that, however much his opponents may want to resist, even the dullest eye must see them. Yet, the famous man seems to forget one thing: Columbus’s egg had to be cracked before it could stand. Let no more words be demanded on this point’ (HSW VIII.6). [^]
- See, for instance, HSW VII.188. Herbart argues that Schelling uncritically assumes that the Absolute can be both one and many and that this is an inheritance from Spinoza. But on Herbart’s view, whatever combines many items into one cannot itself form part of what there is. As we shall see in due course, Herbart thinks this is exactly the sort of mistake we learn to avoid if we take seriously Kant’s notion of being as absolute position. [^]
- The Stanford Encyclopedia article on Herbart (Kim 2024), for instance, dedicates but four short paragraphs to logic and metaphysics, while discussing them only to the extent that they are relevant to Herbart’s treatment of ‘concrete psychological phenomena’. [^]
- As Wilhelm Wundt (1877: 494–95) remarks: ‘Herbart’s favourite subject for academic predilection was his metaphysical system, which he also made the basis of his psychology’. Gustav Hartenstein (1836: viii) regards it as Herbart’s lasting merit ‘that he has led philosophical inquiry back to its natural starting point’, by which he means: metaphysics. [^]
- Herbart’s early commentator Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1876) extensively discusses his metaphysical views, and Robert Zimmermann (1847) found Herbart’s account of atomistic entities important enough to give it an extensive treatment in his new edition of Leibniz’s Monadology. Herbart’s metaphysics is also a key point of reference for Hermann Lotze (1841), whose work, in turn, influenced Neo-Kantianism. F. H. Bradely brings up Herbart’s notion of the ‘Real’ in Appearance and Reality (1916: 30), and discusses his theory of judgment in his Principles of Logic (1883: 44). [^]
- Some (Beiser 2015; Dunham and Phemister 2015) might object that Herbart is not so much an atomist but rather a monadologist as he attributes inner tendencies of self-maintenance to the simple entities he postulates. While it is true that this idea would constitute a foreign body in the atomistic ontology proposed by presocratic thinkers like Democritus, I use the term ‘atomism’ in a sense that is neutral regarding the presence or absence of inner tendencies: atomism is the view that only simple (i.e., partless) things exist. [^]
- In his subsequent monograph, Beiser (2022: 164–65) provides a brief exposition of Herbart’s argument, stating that for a thing of several parts, the ‘parts of the thing, really depend on one another. Here, however, negation and relation appear, which are incompatible with true being. Negation and relation appear because we cannot posit A without B, or B without A. But, as we have seen, the absolute positing of a thing excludes all negation and relation.’ I agree that the problem with positing complex entities has something to do with the need to connect acts of positing individual parts. But it remains unclear what exactly the problem amounts to and why there is no option of simply positing all parts in one single act of positing. My subsequent interpretation will address these issues and offer a detailed, systematic reconstruction of Herbart’s argument. [^]
- ‘Because being [das Sein] means […] absolute position it follows that through it [the concept of being as absolute position] only that can be connected to a being [zum Seienden verbunden] which is not a mere relation and by that token also a negation [das nicht eine blosse Relation und darum auch eine Negation ist] since each negation presupposes the negated’ (Erdmann 1853: 333; cf. HSW II.225–26). [^]
- In this passage, the problematic ‘something’ that comes with complexity is termed ‘negation’. However, it remains somewhat unclear what exactly Herbart means by that. As we shall see below, the problematic side-effects of complexity have to do with conditionality and the problem of positing structural principles, i.e., forms. [^]
- Herbart (HSW VII.45) criticises the ‘old metaphysics’ for its ‘powerless striving to establish propositions which far exceed experience’. The other issue of metaphysics lacking progress comes out in (HSW VII.15): ‘[A]s often as attempts were made to discover the fundamental truths of metaphysics […], just so often did the annals of history have to record a failed work’. Both ideas are present in Kant’s statement that ‘up to now the procedure of metaphysics has been a mere groping, and what is the worst, a groping among mere concepts’ (B xv). [^]
- For Kant, shedding light on our basic concepts chiefly means understanding that they must not be used independently of experience: ‘[T]he understanding can never accomplish a priori anything more than to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general […], it can never overstep the limits of sensibility, within which alone objects are given to us. Its principles are merely principles of the exposition of appearances, and the proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general […] must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding’ (B 303). What we do not find in Kant, however, is the idea that the categories also require a revision regarding their content. [^]
- Kantian categories thus have objective validity: they ‘are conditions of the possibility of experience, and are thus also valid [my italics] a priori of all objects of experience’ (B 161). [^]
- Herbart (HSW VIII.74–87) discusses this issue under the heading ‘The Problem of Inherence’. Importantly, he thinks that while we are able to entertain the thought of one thing with many properties, it is not possible to maintain that a corresponding object exists. [^]
- Kant will concede that it would be ‘absurd’ to say ‘that there is an appearance without anything that appears’ (B xxvi). But while we can entertain the thought of this something underlying the objects of experience, ‘we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves’ (B xxvi). [^]
- E.g., Stang (2016: 78), who takes Kant to argue that ‘[w]hen we posit absolutely we assert that some concept, e.g., <God>, is instantiated by an object’. See Rosenkoetter (2009, note 18) for a list of expressions of this view. [^]
- ‘I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation its matter, but that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations I call the form of appearance’ (B 34). Note that for Kant, form is a priori and mind-dependent: ‘[T]he matter of all appearance is only given to us a posteriori, but its form must all lie ready for it in the mind a priori’ (B 34). [^]
- Where contemporary writers would speak of a feature or property, Herbart uses the German term Merkmal, an expression that carries the suggestion of something available to perception. To preserve this nuance, I translate Merkmal (pl. Merkmale) as mark (pl. marks). [^]
- Also cf. HSW VIII.79: ‘An object A shall be given through distinct marks (like sound, colour, taste), which are quite compatible and by no means opposed to each-other. However, they form a group; they cannot be posited individually, except in the way that the condition of their position [Setzung] emerges from their connection. The absolute position [Position] of these marks can only be [a single] One for All [of them] (§ 215). This is how they come into conflict with each-other. For this absolute position by proxy [die stellvertretende absolute Position] is supposed to be sufficient for each single one of the marks. However, they cannot be summoned together like the parts of an accidental view. And yet, this is precisely what would have to happen if the one [thing which gets] posited in the absolute position should be equivalent with the manyfold which must be posited due to the strictly and rigidly particularised plurality of the marks’. [^]
- One might wonder if we could simply ignore the putative ties of dependence between the various marks of a complex and posit them individually—regardless of how they hang together ontologically. However, this would mean to give up the very task we set for ourselves: to posit a complex entity. If there are such entities, their components are related, and our attempts at positing such entities must take this into consideration. Note that Herbart’s argumentative goal is to show that the task of absolutely positing a complex is impossible to fulfil. [^]
- One way to put this is to say that Herbart doubts the reality of relations. It would be a mistake however, to assume that Herbart’s worry was a version of the well-known Bradley regress. Bradley’s worry is that postulating a relation R holding between two items a and b commits us to assume a further relation R* connecting a with R: ‘But such a makeshift leads at once to the infinite process’ (Bradley 1916: 21), as we would then require a further relation R** to account for how a is connected with R*, and so on. Bradley therefore worries that it is impossible to explain how a is related to b without launching a regress problem. Herbart, by contrast, does not worry that we cannot explain what it means for an item to be related to another item. He just thinks that we lack sensuous awareness of such relations and that’s why, for him, they should not be treated as real. As mere thoughts (i.e., without a claim to their existence), Herbart thinks relations (or forms) are perfectly respectable. [^]
- Herbart (HSW II.184) makes a similar observation vis-à-vis the several components of a syllogistic inference: ‘Here unity and plurality contradict each-other. The many persists [besteht] for itself, and it amounts to a unity only in its conjunction [nur in seinem Zusammen]. Ture plurality [das wahre Viele] lies outside of this [unity] where it can only be represented. What is necessarily connected is not the many as such but only the Form of its conjunction’. [^]
- In this respect, my interpretation differs from that of Röd (2006) and Kim (2004): both commentators assume that Herbart’s rejection of complex entities rests on a conceptual incompatibility of unity and multiplicity. As Röd (2006: 185) puts it: ‘The thing as it is naturally conceived [i.e. as one thing with many properties] cannot be thought without contradiction [lässt sich nicht widerspruchsfrei denken]; therefore it cannot be assumed to be truly actual’. Similarly, Kim (2004, section 3.1) argues that Herbart frames the problem of one and many as a matter of ‘essentially opposed concepts’ being ‘thought together as unities’. That is, also for Kim’s Herbart, we struggle to think that ‘which is at once a unity and multiplicity’. On my interpretation, by contrast, Herbart concedes that we can entertain the thought of unity in complexity; what we cannot do is to claim existence of a thing that is both one and many. Cf. note 15 above as well as Herbart (1813: 125–26). [^]
- As Herbart (HSW VIII.78) puts it, a unified object is just an ‘accidental account [zufällige Ansicht]’ of what there really is. Beiser (2015: 1067) agrees that—for Herbart—the ‘forms of composition arise from the consciousness of the subject, which joins together the multitude of independent things so that they appear in space and time’. This is an important aspect of Herbart’s account. However, there are also certain hints at a more than just subjective basis of unity which I will discuss below. [^]
- Cf. HSW II.185: ‘The simple sensations themselves, the cold, warm, red, blue, sweet, sour, and so on—are presupposed here, as the pure manifold [das reine Viele], as the matter. By contrast, all form comes into question, that is the connection of changes, of the plurality of a thing’s features, of space, time, and ultimately of the conjunction of many presentations in the I. Count the matter, in any of these forms entirely. All the matter will be there, but not yet the form. All the matter, however, is tantamount to all that is given. Therefore, form is not given; neither in, nor outside of matter’. [^]
- Cf. HSW VII.223: ‘To remember that one finds [vorfinde] all those forms, one may only try to let them change arbitrarily in the matter. Immediately what is round will resist showing itself as square, and so on’ (HSW II.186). A more realist view of forms is also suggested by the fact that Herbart criticises Kant for having an overly mind-related account of forms. [^]
- This work was supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under Grant [AH/Y007506/1] for the project “Positing or Predicating? Existence after Kant”. I thank the members of the Existence after Kant research group, Jonathan Mai, Dolf Rami, and Mark Textor, for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. For helpful comments on talks based on this paper, thanks are also due to the attendees of the 2025 Northern Seminar in Late Modern Philosophy (University of Durham) as well as to Rachel Christy, Daniel Dearlove, Wayne Martin, and Juuso Rantanen who attended a project-related workshop held on 17 September 2025 at King’s College London. [^]
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.
References
Note on abbreviations and translations: Works by Plato, Aristotle, and Kant are cited according to standard conventions. References to Hegel (1969–71) are given as (TWA volume.page), and those to Herbart (1887–1912) as (HSW volume.page). Where no published translation is cited, translations from German are my own.
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