BECK. 41; ically, but only in degree, viz., as complete and incomplete consciousness. Sensation is an incomplete consciousness, because we do not know how its object arises. ' By the removal of the thing in itself -^nesidemus- Schulze sought to refute the Kantian theory and Maimon to improve it. Sigismund Beck (1761-1840), in his Only Possible Standpoint from which the Critical Philosophy must be Judged^ 1796,* seeks by it to elucidate the Kantian theory, holding up idealism as its true meaning. In oppo- sition to the usual opinion that a representation is true when it agrees with its object, he points to the impossi- bility of comparing the one with the other. Of objects out of consciousness we can know nothing; after the removal of all that is subjective there is nothing positive left of the representation. Everything in it is produced by us ; the matter arises together with the form through the "original synthesis." The last mentioned attempts to develop the Kantian phi- losophy were so far surpassed by Fichte's great achievement that they have received from their own age and from pos- terity a less grateful appreciation and remembrance tlian was essentially their due, A phenomenon of a different sort, which is also to be placed at the threshold between Kant and Fichte, but which forms rather a supple- ment to the noetics and ethics of the latter than a link in the transition to them, has, on the contrary, gained an honorable position in the memory of the German people, viz., Schiller's aesthetics.f In its center stand the Kan- tian antithesis of sensibility and reason and the reconcilia- tion of the two sides of human nature brought about by its occupation with the beautiful. Artistic activity or the play-impulse mediates between the lower, sensuous matter- impulse and the higher, rational form-impulse, and unites
- This book forms the third volume of his Expository Abridgment of tJie
Critical Writings of Professor Kant; in the same year appeared the Outlines of the Critical Philosophy. Cf. on Beck, Dilthey in the Archiv fiir Geschichte dtr Philosophic, o. ii., 1889, pp. 592-650. f The most important of Schiller's aesthetic essays are those On Grace artd Dignity, 1793 ; On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1795-96 ; and the Letters on. Esthetic Education, intermediate between them. Cf. Kuno Fischer, Schiller als Philosoph, 1858, 2d ed. {Schillerschiiften, iii., iv.) 1891-92.
