Biography of the Gumboldt brothers

Arseniy Gulyga brothers Humboldt Vilhelm Humboldt-and his younger brother Alexander-did not represent any special ideological current. The first humanitarium, later the statesman and the largest linguist, the second - the natural scientist and traveler, they differed from each other not only around their interests, but also by the approach to the subject of research. Wilhelm Humboldt at first, referring to anthropology, state theory, aesthetics, was limited to speculative constructions; Alexander Humboldt immediately developed as an experimenter, a supporter of an empirical study.

Nevertheless, both of the direct kinship had something common in a spiritual warehouse. Each of them showed a lively interest in the creativity of the other; Alexander’s work on underground gases came out with the preface of Wilhelm. Both considered them their friend and mentor George Forster the pre -revolutionary era. The first large work of Wilhelm Humboldt is “ideas for experience about the boundaries of the state’s activity” - the development of Kantian ideas.

Humboldt glorifies the natural course of social development, criticizes the despotic state with its interference in the daily lives of people. The spectacle captured, but at the same time it was alerted: he preferred reforms to revolutions. Humboldt is the most complete and proportional development of human forces. Can the state argue this? It may interfere; In an effort to raise the welfare of the nation, lead to the opposite result.

Excessive state intervention in the affairs and lifestyle of subjects introduces destructive monotony, weakens the strength and enterprise of the people. Who many and often leads, he easily comes to the fact that he voluntarily refuses the share of independence provided to him. At the same time, “real management of state affairs is overly complicated, so that the incredible masses of the most detailed decisions and many people are required to eliminate confusion, of which the majority does not deal with the very objects, but only with their symbols and formulas.

Thanks to this, a whole mass is distracted, perhaps very sensible minds from thinking, and many hands that could be useful in real, living work and the most spiritual forces suffer from this barren and too unilateral lesson ... Because of this, classes become completely mechanical, people-cars ... ”. You might think that V. Humboldt foresaw the appearance of the Fichtevsky “closed trading state” and advanced arguments in advance against the state regulation of all forms of private life.

The state, he insisted, should refrain from all concern for the “positive good” of citizens and should not go beyond the need to ensure their security within the country and beyond. The treatise on the state remained unpublished did not pass censorship; The literary fame of V. Humboldt was brought by the work “On the difference between the sexes and their influence on the organic nature”, the work printed in the city attracted Kant's attention; He recognized the author’s abilities, called the chosen topic “abyss for thought”, and he was abstained from the assessment of the work.

The latter is not by chance: Humboldt overcame Kantianism, asserted the unity of nature and man, the physical and spiritual world. Humboldt develops original ideas in his remaining incomplete work “Aesthetic experiments. The first part. From the extensive circle of problems raised there, we will dwell on the one that is important for our consideration - the specificity of art and its method.

Art, according to Humboldt, is the ability to bring imagination into a state of logical productivity. Humboldt picks up a well -known Kantian thought of a productive imagination, justifying it in relation to art. The productivity is that the artist creates an ideal world, the pattern is that this world is always connected with the real world. The artist’s task is to the ideal world created by him “to introduce all nature that is true and completely observed”.

But there is a higher concept of ideal creation of what surpasses reality. This, of course, does not mean that the artist creates something more beautiful than nature, there is no single measurement scale. Just an artist “and in addition to will, fulfilling his calling the poet and relying on fantasy in the implementation of this calling, sees nature from the framework of real being and offers it into the kingdom of ideas, turning his individuals into ideal.” Humboldt compares two poets - Homer and Ariosto.

Achilles and Agamemnon, Patroclus and Hector are facing us, we see how they live and act, and forget what power caused them from the world of shadows to this living reality. Ariosto's actors are no less real, but we are not losing sight of the poet, he is all the time on the stage ... Homer is represented only by nature and business, Ariosto has skill and personality of both the poet and the reader.

For if the reader forgets himself, he will not remember the poet. Both possess a high degree of objectivity. ”In a letter to Schiller, he formulated his thought: "The sentimental poet differs in that he tears the ideal from reality." One of the most interesting sections in "aesthetic experiments" is th. Here the author’s thought, as it were, moves between the positions occupied in the aesthetics of Goethe and Schiller.

Names are not named, only the Goethe term "style" is taken. There are two possibilities, says Humboldt, to lose a high, genuine style. Poetry loses its high calling, degenerates, "trying to please picturesque paintings, then surprise and shock brilliant and touching maxims." The entire section seems to be a carefully formulated, designed for an attempt by an attempt to determine his point of view in Goethe's dispute - Schiller, who also went implicitly and did not contain open polemic attacks.

Goethe's gaze on the “style” we know, like the Schiller's understanding of “sentimental” poetry. Humboldt warns that both of these methods contain the same possibility of oblivion of the main task of art - approving the ideal with artistic means. In one case, “picturesque paintings” may abuse the ideal, in the other “brilliant and touching maxims” - poetry disappears.

This is only a warning, a reminder of the main duty of the artist. Let us turn to what his brother committed during these years. The merits of Alexander Humboldt have not yet been appreciated before philosophy, meanwhile, he is undoubtedly an outstanding theorist. Humboldt rejected the mechanistic worldview, considering it insufficient to explain the secrets of nature.

Of great interest in this regard is his review of the contemporary French science: “... the French ... have a decisive tendency and excellent ability to mathematics. Here, even young people show perseverance; They have more mathematical minds and work than the Germans. But they have been lingering in mathematics for too long, even they are suitable for chemistry mathematically, and only in this direction they make discoveries ...

They give all the natural sciences a mechanical and atomistic interpretation. They even explain chemical affinity mechanically. Thanks to this, they are free from spiritualistic errors, but they cannot penetrate deeper, they do not have a whole natural view of things anywhere. ” In the spirit of this theory, he writes an article “Aphorisms from the chemical physiology of plants” considering the difference between organic and inorganic bodies, Humboldt claims that there is supposedly a special “internal” force that acts stronger than chemical affinity.

Death means that life force left the body. Realizing that these are common words, he regrets with regret: “There is nothing more difficult than giving a suitable definition of vitality.” In conclusion to the work “Experiments about irritated muscular and nerve tissues along with assumptions about the chemical process of life in the animal and plant world”, he writes: “I do not dare to call special forces what happens due to the interaction of material forces previously known separately.” Such was the experimentally found materialistic response of the natural scientist to the question put by Kant in the work of cosmogony.

One organ determines the other and gives it a temperature at which this particular connection arises. ” If you crush a stone or metal, then the parts will be preserved in the previous composition. The situation is different with living matter. But the collapse of the tissues of the deceased organism, where the connection between the parts of the whole is violated, is inevitable.

Schelling was familiar with the works of A. Humboldt. He relied on them in his natural philosophy.