The Philosophy of Law: Supplementary Explanations of the Principles of Right: Occasion and Object
The Occasion for these Explanations was furnished mainly by a Review of this work that appeared in the Gottingen Journal, No. 28, of 18th February 1797. The Review displays insight, and with sympathetic appreciation it expresses ‘the hope that this Exposition of Principles will prove a permanent gain for juridical Science.’ It is here taken as a guide in the arrangement of some critical Remarks, and at the same time as suggesting some expansion of the system in certain points of detail.
Objection as to the Faculty of Desire.
In the very first words of the GENERAL INTRODUCTION the acute Reviewer stumbles on a Definition. He asks what is meant by ‘the Faculty of Desire.’ In the said Introduction it is defined as ‘the Power which Man has, through his mental representations, of becoming the cause of objects corresponding to these representations.’ To this Definition the objection is taken, ‘that it amounts to nothing as soon as we abstract from the external conditions of the effect or consequence of the act of Desire.’ ‘But the Faculty of Desire,’ it is added, ‘is something even to the Idealist, although there is no external world according to his view.’—ANSWER: Is there not likewise a violent and yet consciously ineffective form of Desire as a mere mental longing, which is expressed by such words as ‘Would to God such a one were still alive!’ Yet although this Desire is actless in the sense of not issuing in overt action, it is not effectless in the sense of having no consequence at all; in short, if it does not produce a change on external things, it at least works powerfully upon the internal condition of the Subject, and even may superinduce a morbid condition of disease. A Desire, viewed as an active Striving (nisiis) to be a cause by means of one’s own mental representations, even although the individual may perceive his incapacity to attain the desired effect, is still a mode of causality within his own internal experience.—There is therefore a misunderstanding involved in the objection, that because the consciousness of one’s Power in a case of Desire may be at the same time accompanied with a consciousness of the Want of Power in respect of the external world, the definition is therefore not applicable to the Idealist. But as the question only turns generally upon the relation of a Cause (the Representation) to an Effect (the Feeling), the Causality of the Representation in respect of its object—whether it be external or internal—must inevitably be included by thought in the conception of the Faculty of Desire.