Fechner, Gustav Theodor
Fechner, Gustav Theodor
(1801-1887) Philosophizing during the ascendency of modern science and the wane of metaphysical speculation, Fechner though as physicist believing in induction, analogy, history and pragmatic procedure, expounded a pure, objective idealism of Berkeley’s type. With Oken and Schelling as spiritual guides, he held that everything is in consciousness, there are no substances, no things-in-themselves, everything, including animals, plants, earth, and heavens, shares the life of the soul (alles ist beseelt). In a consequent psycho-physicalism he interpreted soul (which is no substance, but the simplifying power in contrast to the diversifying physical) as appearance to oneself, and matter as appearance to others, both representing the same reality differentiated only in point of view. He applied the law of threshold to consciousness, explaining thus its relative discontinuity on one level while postulating its continuity on another, either higher or lower level. In God, as the highest rung of existence, there is infinite consciousness without an objective world. Evil arises inexplicably from darker levels of consciousness. With poetic imagination Fechner defended the “day-view” of the world in which phenomena are the real content of consciousness, against the “night-view” of science which professes knowledge of the not-sensation-conditioned colorless, soundless world.
Main works-
Nanna o.d. Seelenleben d. Pflanzen, 1848;
Ueber die physikalische u. philos. Atomenlehre, 1855;
Elemente der Psychophysik, 1860;
Drei Motiven des Glaubens, 1863;
Vorschule der Aesihetik, 1876.
See K. Lasswitz, G. Th, Fechner, 1896. — K.F.L.