When Philosophy Turned Against Itself: The Great Rebellion of Feeling
The Living Question
Standing in my study one gray Berlin morning, surrounded by volumes of Hegel's dense logic, I experienced what Johann Friedrich Herbart must have felt in 1806. The grand system that promised to explain everything through pure reason suddenly seemed like a magnificent prison. Outside my window, a child laughed. Inside Hegel's pages, that laughter dissolved into abstract categories of Being and Becoming. Something was catastrophically wrong.
Herbart saw it first. While Hegel proclaimed that "the real is rational and the rational is real," Herbart noticed something peculiar: contradictions exist only in our thinking, never in actual reality. A simple observation that would spawn computational theories of mind over a century later.
The Mathematical Rebel: Herbart's Revolution
In Psychology as Science (1824), Herbart performed an extraordinary feat: he attempted to calculate consciousness itself, not through mystical speculation but through mathematical precision. He conceived all psychic phenomena as 'presentations' competing for consciousness like forces in physics, challenging the notion of independent faculties.
Watch your thoughts right now. Notice how one idea pushes another aside? Herbart was the first to mathematize this process. When an activity is held back or inhibited from expressing itself, we call it a 'striving' (Streben). Since the many competing representations striving one against the others are all ultimately the self-preservings of one consciousness.
His five practical-ethical ideas emerged not from abstract reasoning but from immediate aesthetic judgment:
- Inner Freedom: harmony between will and insight
- Perfection: the aesthetic pleasure in growth
- Benevolence: harmony between one's will and another's
- Right: the pain of conflict between wills
- Equity: the aesthetic demand for balance
Modern Echoes: The Computational Mind
The computational theory of mind holds that the human mind is a computational system that is realized (i.e., physically implemented) by neural activity in the brain. What Herbart intuited through phenomenological observation, modern neuroscience confirms through brain imaging.
Though his mathematization of the mind proved a dead end, it encouraged early experimentalists like Fechner to apply mathematics to the psyche. Today's artificial neural networks, processing competing activations through mathematical functions, embody Herbart's core insight: consciousness emerges from calculable interactions between mental representations.
Theory of Mind AI is having a profound impact on healthcare. It's capable of catching early signs of mental health issues, which means we can address these problems before they escalate. Herbart's dream of mathematical psychology lives on in algorithms that model human consciousness.
The Dark Prophet: Schopenhauer's Abyss
While Herbart calculated, Arthur Schopenhauer descended into the basement of Being itself. His personal library contained over 130 volumes on Buddhism, extraordinary for 1818 Berlin. But scholars have started to revise earlier views about Schopenhauer's discovery of Buddhism. Proof of early interest and influence appears in Schopenhauer's 1815-16 notes.
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer didn't just critique Hegel—he inverted reality itself. Behind the orderly world of representation lurks something monstrous: blind, irrational Will, endlessly striving, never satisfied. This Will is the fundamental, metaphysical force behind all of existence, manifesting itself in both nature and human beings.
Picture the natural world through Schopenhauer's eyes: Junghuhn saw an immense field entirely covered with skeletons... These turtles come this way from the sea, in order to lay their eggs, and are then seized by wild dogs... with their united strength, these dogs lay them on their backs, tear open their lower armor, the small scales of the belly, and devour them alive. Not divine order but cosmic horror.
Buddhism Meets Western Crisis
Schopenhauer's genius lay in recognizing that Eastern wisdom addressed Western philosophy's deepest crisis. "If I wished to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should have to concede to Buddhism pre-eminence over the others". He didn't import Buddhism wholesale but discovered parallel insights through independent philosophical investigation.
His path to liberation mirrors Buddhist practice with uncanny precision:
- Aesthetic Experience: In art, especially music, the Will temporarily ceases its striving. Art offers a momentary respite from the tyranny of the Will
- Ethical Insight: Recognizing suffering's universality births compassion
- Ascetic Denial: Voluntary renunciation of willing itself
These philosophical principles may add to specific psychotherapeutic techniques in expanding the individual's awareness beyond herself/himself. Not escape but transformation through denial of the will-to-live.
Contemporary Vindication: Mindfulness and Neuroscience
Schopenhauer's influence on modern psychology proves profound yet often unacknowledged. Schopenhauer is not mentioned in emblematic contemporary texts of psychiatry & philosophy... even though he anticipated relevant features of psychoanalysis, evolution theory and modern cognitive neurosciences.
Consider modern therapeutic approaches:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Recognizing thought patterns that create suffering
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: A preface by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program, contextualizes the book and describes its influence on his life and work
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Embracing rather than fighting difficult experiences
We do not directly perceive the will, but only its phenomena through the 'Veil of Maya', which, in contemporary terms, refers to the cognitive and perceptual limits imposed by our own biological species. Modern neuroscience confirms: we construct reality from electrical signals in the darkness of the skull.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle this historical aspect is intertwined with a textual aspect: Freud made extensive use of Schopenhauer's argumentative structures and terms. The death drive, the unconscious, the primacy of instinct—Freud's revolutionary insights echo Schopenhauer's metaphysics.
The Theological Rebellion: Personality Against Abstraction
While Schopenhauer gazed into the abyss, Christian philosophers mounted a different rebellion. Franz von Baader returned to Jakob Böhme's mystical visions. Friedrich Krause sought God through mathematical formulae. Immanuel Hermann Fichte (son of the famous idealist) demanded recognition of conscious personality as the world's ground.
Christian Hermann Weisse went furthest, declaring the Trinity not metaphor but metaphysical truth—three persons in dynamic relationship, not Hegel's solitary Absolute thinking itself. Each sought what Hegel's system eliminated: a God who could hear prayers, respond to suffering, engage in genuine relationship.
Process Theology: The Modern Synthesis
Today's process theology continues this rebellion against the abstract Absolute. Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal, immutable, and impassible, but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.
Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne created a revolutionary synthesis:
- Dipolar Theism: God has both a changing aspect (God's existence as a Living God) and an unchanging aspect (God's eternal essence)
- Divine Relativity: God affects and is affected by creation
- Persuasive Power: While process theologians argue that God does not have coercive power, they also argue that God has supreme persuasive power
Process thought addresses the ancient problem of evil by reconceiving divine power. The parent may then respond by picking up the child bodily and carrying him to his room, but nothing can force the child to alter his decision to resist the parent's directive. God influences but cannot coerce—love's very nature.
Contemporary Theological Movements
The rebellion against abstract divinity continues in multiple forms:
- Open Theism: God knows all possibilities but not predetermined futures
- Relational Theology: Divine-human interaction shapes both parties
- Feminist Process Thought: Critiquing classical theism's patriarchal overtones
- Eco-Process Theology: God suffering with creation's environmental crisis
Process theology is compatible with panentheism, the concept that God contains the universe (pantheism) but also transcends it. Not God as cosmic monarch but as fellow-sufferer who understands.
The Pattern Recognition: Mind, Heart, and Will
Notice the pattern across these rebellions? Each philosopher discovered something Hegel's pure thought excluded:
- Herbart: The mathematical unconscious beneath reason
- Schopenhauer: The irrational will driving all existence
- Theological Rebels: The personal God responding to prayer
They weren't rejecting reason but expanding it. Pure thought alone cannot capture:
- Why we suffer despite understanding
- How unconscious processes shape consciousness
- Why persons matter more than concepts
- How love transcends logic without destroying it
Practical Integration: Living the Rebellion
These insights transform daily practice:
From Herbart - Track Your Mental Forces:
Notice which thoughts dominate your consciousness. Map the competition between ideas. Use this awareness to strengthen beneficial patterns.
From Schopenhauer - Aesthetic Meditation:
Find moments where striving ceases—in music, nature, or art. Aesthetic judgment depends on a contemplative state of ataraxic indifference or will-less-ness. Practice this will-lessness daily.
From Process Theology - Collaborative Prayer:
Approach the divine not as cosmic dictator but as supreme companion. Your choices matter because even God cannot coerce, only persuade through love.
Why This Matters Now: The Return of Feeling
We live in Hegel's nightmare—a world of pure systems, algorithms, and abstract networks. Mental health crises proliferate as humans become functions in vast computational machines. The rebellion of feeling returns with desperate urgency.
Yet we also possess tools these philosophers lacked:
- Neuroscience validates the unconscious forces Herbart mathematized
- Psychology applies Schopenhauer's insights therapeutically
- Process thought offers divine companionship in ecological collapse
The question facing us: Can we integrate systematic thinking with lived feeling? Can we honor both the computational mind and the suffering heart?
Your Exploration Continues
This rebellion against pure thought wasn't philosophy's failure but its maturation. By acknowledging what reason alone cannot grasp—unconscious forces, irrational will, personal relationship—these thinkers prepared consciousness for its next evolution.
Consider: Which rebellion speaks to your condition?
- If you feel trapped in mental patterns → explore Herbart's mathematical psychology
- If you suffer despite understanding → investigate Schopenhauer's Buddhist synthesis
- If you seek personal divine connection → engage process theology's relational God
The greatest rebellion may be recognizing that we need not choose. Mind, heart, and will unite in the complete human being. Pure thought serves its purpose, but so do feeling, willing, and relating. The task ahead: integration without reduction, synthesis without system.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What was the main rebellion against Hegel's philosophy?
The rebellion centered on restoring feeling, will, and personality to philosophy. Herbart emphasized mathematical unconscious processes, Schopenhauer highlighted irrational will, and theological thinkers demanded a personal God capable of relationship rather than Hegel's abstract Absolute.
How does Herbart's theory relate to modern AI?
Herbart conceived consciousness as competing 'presentations' that could be mathematically calculated. This prefigures computational theories of mind and modern artificial neural networks, where mental states emerge from calculable interactions between representations.
What is Schopenhauer's connection to Buddhism?
Schopenhauer discovered Buddhist concepts independently through philosophical investigation, finding his conclusions aligned with Buddhist teachings about suffering and liberation. His library contained over 130 volumes on Buddhism, and he considered it superior to other religions for confirming his philosophical insights.
What is process theology?
Process theology views God as having both unchanging (eternal essence) and changing aspects (responding to creation). It emphasizes persuasive rather than coercive divine power, with God and creation in genuine relationship, influencing each other through love rather than force.
How do these philosophical rebellions apply today?
These insights inform modern psychology (CBT, mindfulness), AI development (Theory of Mind), and contemporary theology. They address current challenges by integrating rational thinking with emotional intelligence, unconscious processes, and relational spirituality.