## 1. Yorck's Life



Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg was born in Berlin on March 1, 1835.
His grandfather was the famous Field Marshal Hans David Ludwig Yorck
von Wartenburg. (The Field Marshal's courageous signing of the
Convention of Tauroggen, originally unauthorized by the king and thus
in effect treasonous, started the Prussian War of Liberation against
Napoleon in 1813. It made the Field Marshal Yorck a national hero.)
Paul Yorck's father, Ludwig David Yorck von Wartenburg, managed
the family's estate at Klein-Oels in Silesia (near Breslau,
today Wroklaw) where Paul Yorck grew up. Paul Yorck's
parents were well-connected to a number of literary, philosophical,
and artistic circles in Berlin and elsewhere. They were acquainted
with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Tieck, Bettina von Arnim,
Alexander von Humboldt, Karl August Varnhagen, Johann Gustav Droysen,
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst von Wildenbruch, to name but a few.
The family Yorck von Wartenburg belonged to the dominant elite in
Prussia and the German Empire. Yorck's life-long enthusiasm for
history and historical reality must be seen against this biographical
background.



In 1855 Paul Yorck began his university studies in law at Bonn, but
soon moved to the university at Breslau where he also enrolled in
philosophy courses. After passing the second law exam, Yorck published
his exam essay "The Catharsis of Aristotle and Sophocles'
Oedipus of Colonus" (Yorck 1866), the only publication by him
during his lifetime. When his father passed away in 1865 Yorck took
over the management of the family estate at Klein-Oels. He also
assumed his father's hereditary seat in the Prussian Upper
Chamber [*Herrenhaus*] where he participated in political
debates. He took part in the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871);
and he was present at the Proclamation of the German Empire in the
Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in 1871.



In the same year Yorck met Dilthey, who had been called to the
University at Breslau. They quickly became friends and Dilthey was a
frequent guest at Klein-Oels, often staying for prolonged working
holidays. The posthumously published Dilthey-Yorck
*Correspondence* (Yorck 1923) is an impressive testimony to
this friendship.



From the early 1890s Yorck worked on a manuscript on Heraclitus (Yorck
1896/97) and a book about the *Stances of Consciousness and
History* (Yorck
 1892-1897).[1]
 Before his death, Yorck declared the two works unfinished and not
ready for publication. Published only posthumously, they are, in the
words of Karlfried Grunder (1970, 55), "sketches" of
first drafts for "great philosophical books." Paul Yorck
died at Klein-Oels, September 12, 1897. His grandson, Count Peter
Yorck, who had studied Yorck's unfinished works, was a leading
member of the Kreisauer Circle, the German resistance cell responsible
for the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.


## 2. Correspondence with Dilthey



When in 1923 the *Correspondence* between Yorck and Dilthey
(Yorck 1923) (abbreviated hereafter as CR) was published as "a
memorial" to their philosophical friendship (CR, VI), it
established Yorck not only as an equal to Dilthey and a faithful
interlocutor and eager co-worker on Dilthey's
 project(s),[2]
 but also as a philosopher and keen observer of his times in his own
right.



In 1892 Yorck writes to Dilthey:



> 
> 
> Our time portends something of an end of an epoch. A token of this is
> the disappearance of the elemental pleasure in historical realities.
> The feeling that everything passes [*Gefuhl der
> Verganglichkeit*] haunts the world once again. (CR, p.
> 140)
> 
> 
> 



Dilthey clearly shares this sentiment. In a more extensive note about
the same topic Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> It is my growing conviction that today we stand at a historical
> turning point similar to the one of the 15th century. In
> contradistinction to the scientific-technological progress, which
> consists in increased abstraction and isolation, a new formation comes
> into being because the human being in his entirety [*der ganze
> Mensch*] once again takes a stand and faces the problems of life.
> Every time it is a new stance towards life [*Lebensstellung*]
> and a new conception of it that ushers in a new epoch, not any old
> discovery or invention, even if it is of the greatest import. The
> thread on which science hangs has become so long and spun ever so
> thin, that now it is snapping in the face of the impetuous question:
> What is truth? (CR, p. 128)
> 
> 
> 



In yet another letter, Yorck claims that, since the Renaissance,
science and knowledge--abstracted from feeling and
volition--have followed an eccentric trajectory, in which they
have lost sight of man, resulting in profound self-alienation:



> 
> 
> The ripple effects caused by the eccentric principle, which ushered in
> a new age more than four hundred years ago, seem to me to have become
> exceedingly broad and flat; knowledge has advanced to the point of
> nullifying itself, and man has become so far removed from himself that
> he no longer catches sight of himself. 'Modern' man, that
> is, man since the Renaissance, is fit for the grave. (CR, p. 83)
> 
> 
> 



The general thrust of these reflections and the language used are
reminiscent of Nietzsche's descriptions of the "uncanniest
of all guests," nihilism. In fact, it is the usually so cautious
Dilthey who, in one of his last letters to Yorck, remarks that the
true but "horrible word about the age has been announced"
by no one other than Nietzsche (CR, p. 238). There is no reason to
believe that Yorck would have disagreed.



Yorck's and Dilthey's awareness of an epochal shift,
written some twenty years before World War I, could not fail to
impress the generation of students who, in the aftermath of this
European catastrophe, their predicament exacerbated by continued
economic hardship and hyperinflation, returned to studying philosophy
in the early 1920s. This may explain why, much later, in the 1980s,
Gadamer would still speak of the enormous significance of the
publication of the Dilthey-Yorck correspondence in 1923, calling
it an "epoch-making moment" in its own right (Gadamer
1995, p. 8).



According to Yorck, the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary
intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy--all
the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably
historical nature, which in itself is one of Yorck's main
philosophical interests. The basic idea for the historicity of
philosophy is fairly straightforward. For Yorck, as for Dilthey,
philosophy is "a manifestation of life"
[*Lebensmanifestation*] (CR, p. 250), a product or an
expression in which life articulates itself in a certain way. But all
life is intrinsically historical. Life is inconceivable without its
historical development. Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> The entire given psycho-physical reality is not something that
> *is*, but something that lives: that is the germ cell of
> historicity. And self-reflection, which is directed not at an abstract
> I, but the entirety of my own self, will find that I am historically
> determined, just as physics grasps me as determined by the cosmos.
> Just as I am nature, I am history. And in this decisive sense we have
> to understand Goethe's dictum of [our] having lived
> [*Gelebthaben*] for at least three thousand years. Conversely,
> it follows that history as a scientific discipline exists only as
> psychology of history. (CR 71/72)
> 
> 
> 



For Yorck, as for Dilthey, human life is incorrectly understood if it
is subsumed under the generic catch-all category of
"existence." The first point is that human life is
inconceivable without temporal and historical development, movement,
and change; life always transcends itself, hence it never simply
"is." The mode of being for humans is "life,"
not
 "existence."[3]
 And life, unlike existence, is intrinsically historical. Precisely
this distinction is brought home by Yorck's demand to always
observe "the generic difference between the ontic and the
historical" (CR, p. 191). The ontic is what is simply
"there" without inner life, temporality, or history. It
includes the physical entities in the world, as well as abstract
objects, numbers, essences, ideas, etc. The "ontic" is
*toto caelo* other than "the historical."
Yorck's second point is that all history is a development of
human powers or *human psychology*, where psychology does not
mean some inert or fixed "nature," but the constant play
of forces, the ever shifting configurations between understanding,
affectivity, and volition. (See
 Section 3.1
 below.)



In addition, Yorck emphasizes the "virtuality" or
"effectivity" of history, i.e., the cumulative effects and
results of individual persons exerting power and influence in
transmitting the possibility and conception of life to their
descendants. Successor-generations develop their own stance towards
life in response to what they have inherited from the individuals and
generations preceding them. History is the ongoing transmission of
life's potentiality, including the transmission of power, ideas,
and material conditions.



> 
> 
> The child gains through the mother's sacrifice, her sacrifice
> benefits the child. Without such virtual transmission of power
> [*Kraftubertragung*] there is no history at all. (CR, p.
> 155)
> 
> 
> 



Yorck does not refer to some anonymous bio-power or power structures,
as discussed in contemporary philosophy, but to the authority,
sacrifice, and direct action and communication through which an
individual person or groups of persons form and shape the lives and
behaviours of coming generations. It is for this reason that Yorck
insists that "person" is the key historical category (CR,
p. 109). History is the history of historical, individual agents,
projecting their power and authority into the future.



Since Yorck understands history as a connecting band of ideas and
conditions passed on from one person to another, and indeed from one
generation to another, his position must not be associated with
historicism. For Yorck, there is one continuous and common line of
historical life--a living *syndesmos*. Past generations
and past persons are not "outside" a present horizon in a
past world of their own. Rather, they live on, as it were, in their
descendents. Moreover, because of this connecting band, one can go
"backwards" by way of what Yorck calls
"transposition" (CR, p. 61), transposing oneself into the
lives of others and thus "re-enacting," as Dilthey would
say, the positions towards life that have been lived by one's
predecessors. That life is historical means that each person is always
already outside his or her own individual "nature" and
placed within the historical connection to predecessor- and
successor-generations. For Yorck, living self-consciousness is, to use
Hegel's fortuitous phrase, "the *I* that is
*we* and the *we* that is *I*" (Hegel 1807,
p. 140).



Consequently, Yorck rejects from the start the transcendental method
in philosophy as insufficient for grasping lived historical reality.
Transcendental philosophy reduces historical life to the merely
"subjective," which misses the genuine characteristic of
*Geist*, spirit or mind, namely its real, historical extension
and connection. As Yorck puts it, "the transcendental
method" merely suspends or sublates "the realm of the
objective," but it fails to "extend the region of
*Geist*" (CR, p. 194). Insisting that "the
character of subjectivity does not even reach the realm of
*Geist*" (CR, p. 194), Yorck clearly implies that the
"realm of history" is the proper domain for
*Geist*. It follows that, despite his criticism of the narrow
confines of transcendental and/or subject-centred philosophy,
Yorck's philosophical conception of history is still inscribed
within the confines of *Geist*-philosophy. Following Hegel, who
argues that everything hinges on the understanding that
"substance is subject" (Hegel 1807, p. 19), Yorck agrees
that everything hinges on the understanding that "substance is
history" or "substance is historical
 spirit."[4]



Yorck's primary category of historical life does not only
challenge transcendental philosophy as too-narrow a foothold for
philosophy. *A fortiori*, it also challenges the entire
metaphysical tradition, which presupposes or searches for an ultimate
objective reality (being, idea, substance, and so on), divorced from
the ground of the always shifting historical life. Yorck rejects
claims to "knowledge" *sub specie aeternitatis*.
For Yorck, metaphysics is a flight from the historical reality
'on the ground.' By making historical life primary, Yorck
effectively aims to dismantle the predominance of Greek metaphysics,
including the modes of thought of modern science derived from it.



But Yorck is not content with just opposing metaphysics and
transcendental philosophy. Instead, he attempts to instill and to
cultivate historical awareness in philosophy itself, based on the
principle that all productions of life are as historical as life
itself. He writes: Since "to philosophize is to live,"
"there is no real philosophizing which would not be
historical" (CR, p. 251). More radical than Dilthey, Yorck calls
for the "historicization" [*Vergeschichtlichung*]
of philosophy:



> 
> 
> Just as physiology cannot abstract from physics, so
> philosophy--especially if it is critical--cannot abstract
> from historicity [*Geschichtlichkeit*]. After all, the
> uncritical *Critique* of Kant's can be understood
> historically only, and thus be overcome. [Human] behaviour and
> historicity are like breathing and air pressure--and--this
> may sound somewhat paradoxical--the failure to historicize
> philosophizing appears to me, in methodological respects, a
> metaphysical remnant. (CR, 69)
> 
> 
> 



It is therefore not surprising that, unlike Dilthey, Yorck
specifically appreciates the emphasis on historicity
 [*Geschichtlichkeit*][5]
 in Hegel and some of his followers, despite his rejection of
Hegel's speculative or ontical superstructure (CR,
 59).[6]



In light of the historical nature of philosophy, Yorck draws two
decisive methodological inferences. First, he rejects as too rigid and
untenable the opposition between theoretical or systematic philosophy
and the history of ideas (CR, p. 251), because, as an ongoing
historical development, philosophy always requires both a genetic and
historical clarification, as well as a systematic and theoretical
account. Instead of a mutually exclusive relation, Yorck sees a
mutually productive combination. Second, because Yorck always includes
the present situation within the domain of history, he calls for a
"critical," and not "antiquarian," or
quietistic mode of philosophizing (CR, p. 19). Speaking for Dilthey
and himself, Yorck argues that this critical work of philosophy lays
the groundwork for the practical intent or the historical vocation of
philosophy:



> 
> 
> The potential for practical application is of course the real
> justification for any science. Yet mathematical *praxis* is not
> the only kind. In practical terms, our standpoint is pedagogical in
> intent, in the broadest and deepest sense of the word. It is the soul
> of all true philosophy and the truth of Plato and Aristotle. (CR, pp.
> 42/ 43)
> 
> 
> 



In the condensed and all too general format of the
*Correspondence* with Dilthey, Yorck develops the practical
"application" of philosophy in only the most fragmentary
fashion. Its most important part is the actual clarification of the
contemporary situation, the determination of the given historical
possibilities, and the avenues for implementing some of them. Yorck
holds that since the Renaissance and through the works of such
thinkers as Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes, the self-interpretation of
life has found its centre of gravity in the cultivation of the
theoretical understanding [*Verstand*]. The primacy accorded to
theoretical understanding and what it projects as objective,
unchangeable, and ultimate reality (metaphysical & physical) has
ushered in "the natural sciences,"
"nominalism," "rationalism," and
"mechanism," (CR, pp. 68, 63 & 155). But this has come
at the exclusion of the full thematization, expression, and
appreciation of human affectivity [*Gefuhl*], including
the underlying feeling of human connectivity through a shared life in
history. Blocked-out are questions which affect the temporal,
historical and personal existence of human beings, or what Yorck once
calls "existential questions" [*Existenzialfragen*]
(CR, p. 62), which relate to the life-goals human beings strive after,
the recognition of dependency, and the awareness of human mortality,
finitude, and death (CR, p. 120). The relative sidelining of these
aspects in the psychology of human beings lies at the bottom of
Yorck's diagnosis of the increasing self-alienation of modern
man and the crisis of his time.



With Dilthey, Yorck attempts to highlight the "full human
being" [*den ganzen Menschen*] (CR, p. 157), as opposed
to the rationalistically reduced, one-dimensional individual that has
preoccupied modern philosophy and shaped modern culture. The
historicization of philosophy belongs to this project, as does the
acknowledgment of transcendence. According to Yorck, transcendence
(CR, pp. 120, 144) facilitates the withdrawal from the world in its
objective reality (as represented by thought and metaphysics). It lets
human life pivot around the personal, historical, and affective
dimension, foregrounding personal responsibility and accountability to
the transcendent God. Against the theoretical-metaphysical stance
directed at an ever present objective reality, Yorck insists on the
primacy of the personal, historical relation to the transcendent God.
Yorck's dictum "Transcendence contra metaphysics!"
expresses not only a very strong leitmotif in his philosophical
thought (CR, p. 42); it is actually the very
 capstone.[7]
 For this reason, Yorck has been interpreted as a religious
existentialist (Kaufmann, 1928). This sets him apart from Dilthey.
Yorck's conception of Christianity is heavily biased in favour
of Luther's theology. According to Yorck, Luther's
anti-metaphysical, historical stance towards transcendence remains a
historical task for the future development of philosophy (CR, pp. 144
& 145).



Since Yorck frequently and conspicuously uses the term
*Bodenlosigkeit* [groundlessness], or *bodenloses
Denken* [groundless thought] to describe the one-sided
intellectualism of the scientific-technological civilization since the
Renaissance (CR, pp. 39, 103, 250, 230, 143), questions have been
raised about Yorck's preference for autochthony
[*Bodenstandigkeit*] and the political implications
 thereof.[8]


## 3. Philosophical Fragments on History and Psychology



More than half a century after his death, three philosophical
fragments by Yorck--originally written in the last six years of
his life--were published between 1956 and 1970 (see the
 Bibliography).
 The most important is entitled *Bewusstseinsstellung und
Geschichte* ["Stances of Consciousness and History"]
(abbreviated hereafter as ST). It addresses the sources and the
development of human history, providing the philosophical underpinning
and more detailed exploration of views that Yorck had mentioned in his
*Correspondence* with Dilthey. The following section presents
the major points of this systematic fragment.



Yorck's main aim is to provide an analysis of the underlying
psychology of human life, which he considers the basis for all
historical development. According to Yorck, particular configurations
in the psychology of man, or stances of consciousness, determine the
dominant shape of historical epochs. In other words, certain positions
adopted on the level of "primary life" [*primare
Lebendigkeit*], the stances taken by consciousness within life,
determine "historical life" [*historische
Lebendigkeit*] at large and can define entire epochs (ST, p. 5;
also pp. 52, 53). Therefore, Yorck speaks of the "psychology of
history" and, the "philosophic history of
philosophy" (which traces the stances of consciousness through
empirical history) (ST, p. 10).



All this is predicated on the supposition of our intuitive access to
psychological or primary life through "self-reflection"
[*Selbstbesinnung*]. Yorck interprets Dilthey's insight
that one cannot go beyond life to mean that one cannot surpass or
transcend "the empirical givenness of self-consciousness,"
which entails that philosophy is "empirical," not
speculative (ST, pp. 8, 3). Evidence can only be found in
self-consciousness. What does not pass the test in one's own
life cannot count as a valid expression of life: The seat of all
necessary truth is "self-experimentation" (ST, 9, also
 54).[9]



Not unlike Husserl, Yorck pursues, albeit without an elaborate set of
methodological rules, a "re-duction" of all objectivity to
self-consciousness, where self-consciousness is a living and
historical structure that cannot be restricted to knowing or any other
particular function of life. As Gadamer (1990, pp. 246-269) has
pointed out, despite his critique of transcendental philosophy, Yorck
may be read as actually expanding the transcendental focus, which
traditionally used to be on knowing, so as to include the entire gamut
of human experiences and their necessary conditions in human
*life*. Following Dilthey, Yorck sees human consciousness as a
living structure where the emphasis lies on its
"aliveness," *Lebendigkeit*, which includes not
only outward-directed intentionality towards objectivity
(representation and volition), but also self-awareness, and
self-feeling of inner life. Close to Schleiermacher, Yorck even
specifies that "the ultimate datum" in self-consciousness
is "the feeling of life" [*Lebensgefuhl*]
itself (ST, p. 11).


### 3.1 Psychology of Life



According to Yorck, life is divided and articulated in itself, namely
as an ongoing process of self-differentiation relative to others and
the environment. Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> The primary and exclusive datum is self-consciousness, which, although
> divided [*dirimiert*] into self and other, soul and lived body
> [*Leib*], I and world, inner and outer, is nonetheless,
> polarity [*Gegensatzlichkeit*] and articulateness
> [*Gegliedertheit*] in one. But self-consciousness experiences
> itself in the play and counter-play of its constitutive factors, that
> is, as something alive [*ein Lebendiges*]. This aliveness is
> the basic constitution. (ST, p. 8)
> 
> 
> 



But there is no way that this aliveness can ever be grasped in its
purity outside the fundamental differentiation. The antithetical
division in "self" and "other" is so
fundamental that one cannot go back behind it.



> 
> 
> The separation [*Trennung*] of self and other, I and world,
> soul and lived body [*Leib*] is such an early separation,
> indeed, the first act of life, as it were, such that these derivatives
> appear as absolute, autonomous, and self-sufficient. (ST, pp.
> 11/12)
> 
> 
> 



Yorck concludes: "The self is only through the other, just as
the other is only through the self" (ST, p. 11).



Yet "life" remains the primary datum for Yorck.
Reminiscent of German Idealism, particularly Hegel and Holderlin,
Yorck understands life as "differentiated unity"
[*differenzierte Einheitlichkeit*] (ST, p. 38). Life explicates
itself in form of an inner division and polarity. Each stance of life
is a particular configuration of life's original division
[*Urtheil* or *Urtheilung*] (ST, p. 25). Yorck
writes:



> 
> 
> Observation shows that primary life manifests a double diremption into
> [1] polarity [*Gegensatzlichkeit*] and [2] difference
> [*Verschiedenheit*], such that the character of polarity
> permeates and determines the elements of the articulation. (ST, p.
> 10)
> 
> 
> 



Life *articulates* or expresses itself *differently* in
three "functions" or "comportments"
[*Verhaltungen*], as life is lived in [1] "feeling"
[*Empfinden*] or affectivity, [2] "willing"
[*Wollen*], and [3] "cognizing"
[*Vorstellen*] (ST, 32). Life is *divided* between the
two antithetical or opposite poles of spontaneity and dependence (ST,
p. 9), which, applied to the different comportments or functions of
life, yields [1] the tension between motivation and spontaneity in
volition, [2] the opposition in cognition between objective,
matter-of-fact representation [*Sachlichkeit*] and spontaneous
projection of formed images [*Bildlichkeit*] as the object of
knowledge, and [3] the polarity between dependence on others versus
ownness [*Eigenheit*] in the domain of affectivity (ST, p.
32).



Yorck claims that the three psychological "functions" or
comportments circumscribe the fixed and unalterable "natural
ground" [*Naturboden*], or the parameters within which
all human history is played out (ST, p. 26). There is no history
without such fixed reference points. The economy of the three
functions is not fixed (unlike the functions as such), but is always
open to the play of shifting configurations and imbalances (ST, p. 24
& 54). More specifically, the three functions are neither
reducible to each other nor derivable from another source, making them
in effect equiprimordial. However, they stand in a variable and
inverse relationship to each other, where the relative preponderance
of one function is offset by the relative subordination of the
remaining ones, but at no time can any particular function be
cancelled out altogether (ST, p. 98). This inverse relationship,
coupled with the internal polarity within each function, accounts for
"the restlessness of primary life" (ST, p. 32). Since life
does not exist in some generality, but only as a particular
configuration or alignment of its functions, the overall
"totality" of the shape of a particular life is always
determined by a pre-dominant position of one of its functions (ST, p.
55). This onesidedness, which necessarily fails to express life in its
"entire
 fullness"[10]
 (ST, p. 54), results in the instability of each particular shape of
consciousness. Each real configuration of consciousness and its
particular bias to one function, as well as one of the antithetical
poles within, lends itself to a new transformation, without ever
reaching a stable or final state. Since "historical life"
is nothing other than "primary life" writ large, Yorck
holds that this inbuilt instability and restlessness in primary life
also constitutes the "motor of history" (ST, 33). (See
 Section 3.2
 below.)



Yorck holds that two functions of life, willing and cognition, are
"eccentric;" they pursue objects that are projected
outside the felt interiority of self-consciousness (ST, p. 120).
Concerning representation or cognition, Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> Self-reflection reveals representation [*Vorstellen*] as an act
> of exteriorization, as a projection, which therefore is primarily
> marked by its opposition to feeling. The feature of projection,
> [i.e.,] expulsion from within [*innere Entfernen*], being the
> characteristic element of all representation, is spatialization
> [*Verraumlichung*] as such. (ST, p. 70)
> 
> 
> 



Spatialization is thus necessary for representation or the work of the
understanding, thought. By contrast, temporality (located in
affectivity) is not at all necessary for cognition or
representation:



> 
> 
> Thought can abstract from temporality. Indeed, every act of thought
> contains [...] an abstraction from [temporality], inasmuch as
> thought involves an expropriation [of inner feeling]. By contrast,
> spatiality is the precondition of all
>  thought.[11]
>  (ST, p. 147)
> 
> 
> 



All thought is inherently spatial, representing objects at a distance
in space: "Spatiality is the basic character of all
thought" (ST, p. 119). According to Yorck, thought or cognition
may abstract from particular characters of space, such as
"direction" and "place," but it cannot do
without the projective opening of spatiality as such (ST, p. 100). And
Yorck suggests that it is the inherent spatiality in all thought
which, within the intellectualist tradition of the West, has rendered
"space" an unsurpassable "metaphysical"
reality, or transcendental condition of reality as such (ST, p. 100).
Since thought or cognition is an achievement of life in abstraction
from temporality and feeling, space itself appears as eternal, neutral
exteriority.



Yorck emphasizes that cognition of objects in space amounts to an act
of "liberation," because what has been
"placed" at a "psychological distance" in the
realm of an eternal, and neutral objectivity has lost its power over
the representing subject, has no impact on the person's
affectivity, and can no longer excite the feeling that everything
passes away (ST, p. 74).



There is thus a positive correlation between cognition and volition.
Cognitive projection is already an attempt to gain a foothold relative
to "the flight of impressions, appearances, and
strivings," and the fixation of an object in space goes hand in
hand with the search for self-constancy and
"self-affirmation" [*Selbstbehauptung*] (ST, p.
66). Therefore, Yorck holds that philosophy and science, as cognitive
comportments in life, are rooted in the striving for self-affirmation.
He thus attributes an eminent ethical impetus to them.
"Freedom" and "autonomy" are the psychological
motivation for philosophy and science (ST, p. 42).



In contrast to cognition and volition, which are
"eccentric" and directed towards the "outer,"
feeling or affectivity [*Gefuhl* or *Empfindung*]
is the awareness of inwardness or interiority. Yorck writes:
"The essence of the inner [*des Innen*] is feeling
[*Empfindung*]" (ST, p. 71). At the limit, feeling is
object-less and an immersion in subjective life. As Yorck explains,
feelings are only secondarily attached to objects. Pain or pleasure,
for instance, has no "representational content"
[*Vorstellungsinhalt*]. Yorck writes: When "I feel, I
stay within me" (ST, 71)--*chez moi*, *bei
mir*. Feeling is only minimally projective. However, since
polarity permeates all psychological functions, Yorck is quick to
recognize "a relation" to the other, for there is no
"inner" without an
 "outer."[12]
 But the centre of feeling or affectivity is the sphere of one's
own, pure interiority, not as representation, but as something felt.
Therefore, it is the actual seat of "all things personal"
[*alles Personliche*], the innermost centre of personal
life (ST, p. 85). It is the "central" and immediate pulse
of life, antecedent to the objectifications by cognition and volition
(ST, p. 14). Yorck writes: "The relation of self to feeling is
more immediate" than the subject's relation to
representation (ST, p. 99). Since the personal is something
*felt* in the interiority of one's life, and not
something *thought* or represented and projected outwards,
Yorck concludes that self-relation is not cognitive in the first
place; it is not "knowledge" (ST, p. 72). Therefore, Yorck
also finds it a misguided effort "to grasp natural and
historical communities by means of representation," because it
misses the felt personal attachment, which alone lends reality to the
historical connectivity and relation (ST, p. 72). Already in the
*Correspondence*, Yorck had stated that "historical
reality is a reality of feeling
[*Empfindungsrealitat*]" (CR, p. 113).



Next, Yorck also claims that "time originates in feeling"
(ST, p. 135). But as feeling is non-projective, it follows that,
originally, "temporality" is not
 "objective"[13]
 (ST, 146). Yorck distinguishes between the feeling of transitoriness,
i.e., that everything passes away
[*Verganglichkeitsgefuhl*] (ST, p. 33), and the
feeling or awareness of one's own mortality
 [*Sterblichkeitsgefuhl*][14]
 (ST, p. 90). Acquiescence into one's own mortality constitutes
the opposite pole to self-affirmation: "self-renunciation"
[*Selbsthingabe*] (ST, p. 14), which is thus distinct from and
even antithetical to the ethical impetus in philosophy and science.
Yorck argues that the inversion of volitional and cognitive projection
in feeling and its concentration in pure, passive interiority amounts
to a "religious comportment" and the feeling of dependency
(ST, 121). To the extent that the religious concentration of life in
interiority is inversely related to projective representation, Yorck
understands religious life in terms of its "freedom from the
world" or *Weltfreiheit* (ST, p. 81 & 112).
Psychologically, freedom from the world is the precondition for the
consciousness of a world-transcendent God, or the consciousness of
transcendence (ST, p. 105). Yorck only hints at the projection *sui
generis* involved in transcendence. But it is a projection that
has no cognitive or volitional content: God is intended without
becoming "an object," and willing becomes a
"non-willing," albeit without loss of energy (ST,
104).



Drawing on Dilthey and Schleiermacher, Yorck argues that the immediate
and indubitable reality of life is exclusively
"guaranteed" through volition and affectivity alone. Yorck
writes: "That which opposes me or that which I feel, I call
real," because I cannot doubt what resists my will or affects my
personal life, whereas it is always possible to doubt objects
neutrally represented in space outside me (ST, p. 89). What is thought
and grasped as an unchanging, stable and self-same object in the space
of thought does not affect me or solicit a desire. For Yorck,
cognition, in abstraction from feeling and volition, is the realm of
pure "phenomenality," which is always open to doubt in
virtue of its being merely represented or thought (ST, p. 88). Because
"the category of reality is a predicate of feeling and
willing" alone (ST, p. 128), Yorck concludes that it is an
"utterly uncritical" and self-contradictory undertaking to
attempt to prove "the reality of the world" by means of
the understanding (ST, p. 129). What Yorck writes to Dilthey in a more
general vein is also applicable to this particular problem:



> 
> 
> Thinking moves in circles and the people appear to me like flies which
> always bump into the window pane when they try to get out into the
> open. Someone has got to open the window, but much work and leisure is
> required for
>  that.[15]
> 
> 
> 


### 3.2 History of Life



According to Yorck, the characteristics of human psychology and the
economy of primary life delimit the course of history, since
historical life merely repeats or amplifies the primary stances of
consciousness. Although there is thus a natural ground for history,
Yorck is at pains to emphasize that the three psychological functions
outline "possibilities" only, without any inbuilt
teleology or fixed equilibrium, or a relation to "an unchanging
*ordo*" as a permanent backdrop for history (ST, p. 4).
Against such approximations of history to nature, Yorck argues for a
thoroughly historical conception of the historical: "History has
nothing of the isolation [*Selbstandigkeit*] of the
natural [order]" (ST, p. 6), but rather, in each of its phases,
history is self-reflexively involved in its own
historicity--"as the ferment of its
aliveness"--and thus opens itself to the ever new
"historical *contrapposto*" (ST, p. 6). Nothing is
exempt from historical change. Philosophical categories through which
the world is understood are historical products of life and hence
inextricably bound up with the historicity of humankind. For instance,
Yorck explicitly claims that the category of "being" is
itself "a result of life" (ST, p. 8). This liberates
history from all relation to an unchanging, fixed point of reference
outside historical
 life.[16]



Although Yorck provides only an unfinished sketch of the empirical
course of the history of life, he marks three decisive turning-points:
(1) The breakthrough to philosophy and science on the basis of the
dominant stance of the psychological function of representation or
cognition, primarily in ancient Greece and India; (2) the predominance
of willing in the Roman and Jewish stance towards the world; and (3)
the focal centrality of feeling and interiority in Christianity,
particular in the Reformation, i.e., Luther. Somewhat like Hegel,
Yorck holds that history unfolds through particular primary stances
towards life which then become dominant in particular historical
 peoples.[17]


#### 3.2.1 The Greek World



According to Yorck, in Ancient Greece consciousness displayed a
particular configuration of the primacy of cognition. For the Greeks,
the stance of consciousness towards the world is pure looking. It is
through looking that reality is understood. Affectivity (feeling) and
volition are not countenanced as functions that disclose the world as
 such.[18]
 Truth lies in the beholding eye alone; contemplation,
*theoria*, and intuition take centre stage.



> 
> 
> It is as if the clear-sighted eye is expressed in words. On the basis
> of this condition of consciousness, the function of looking
> [*Anschauung*], ocularity [*Okularitat*], becomes
> the organ of all free work of the mind, particularly of philosophy.
> (ST, p. 30)
> 
> 
> 



Yorck finds evidence for the prevalence of ocularity or the aesthetic
attitude, which is centred on plasticity [*Gestaltlichkeit*],
in Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, among others.



> 
> 
> Form and content constitute the aesthetic dichotomy which governs
> Greek thought in its entirety, the result of the liberation of
> ocularity from all other sensuality, the aesthetic liberation, which
> strikes a chord in everyone who has entered the threshold of Greek
> life. Looking is the essential comportment; hence, Gestalt or Form
> [qualifies as] ousia or
>  substance.[19]
>  (ST, p. 31)
> 
> 
> 



That Greek metaphysics seeks the unchangeable and impassable is the
result of the relative suppression of feeling and willing latent in
all cognition, which abstracts from desires, feelings, and temporality
(ST, p. 42). Put differently, the structural timelessness of thought
as such is intensified in metaphysical thought where it becomes
"absolute" (ST, p. 42). Yorck emphasizes that
"negation of temporality" marks "the decisive
metaphysical step" (ST, p. 66). Metaphysics constitutes the
counter-move against the feeling of temporality (that everything
passes away), as well as the liberation from the dependence on objects
desired by the will. According to Yorck, the escape from temporality
and attachment determines the entire metaphysical tradition up to and
including Hegel (because even Hegel "ontologizes" life and
renders it ontic) (ST, p. 83).


#### 3.2.2 The Roman & Jewish World



The breakthrough to a form of life predominantly lived through
striving and volition is, according to Yorck, characteristic of the
Jewish and Roman world. Concerning the former, Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> Whereas the Greek, metaphysical cast of mind abstracts from
> temporality, temporality is the determining element [in the Hebrew
> world], as the non-aesthetic character of the Jewish way of thought is
> already expressed in *Genesis* where time takes precedence over
> space. Yet the moment of time is here placed in some metaphysical
> distance, is, as it were, projected into the future, the realization
> of which is the prerogative of God. Thus, the stance of consciousness
> is one of hope. The messiah, who does not fulfil the law, but, rather,
> delivers on the promise, is hoped for. (ST, p. 20)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, the feeling of time is here aligned with volition and its
projective exteriorization. Relative to the Greek contemplation of the
everlasting presence of the cosmos, the intensive expectation of the
future reality in the Jewish world is "a-cosmic."
Comparing the Greek to the Jewish world, Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> Here, contemplative, eternal presence; there, intense hope for an
> invisible futurity. Here, knowledge and science; there, coupled with a
> radical devaluation of the object of knowledge, faith as personally
> grown postulate. Here, pleasant expansion and the fullness of existing
> objectivity; there, formless energy directed at the reality
> anticipated. (ST, p. 22)
> 
> 
> 



The unfinished character of Yorck's manuscript is apparent
especially in these passages, for there is no further exploration or
exposition of the Jewish world (let alone anything like a
justification for the juxtaposition of the Jewish world with the Roman
period). Yorck's comments concerning the Roman world are
likewise very sketchy at best. Although Yorck positions the Romans as
a world-historical people of the will, he does not do much more than
to refer to the popular notion of the "imperialist drive of the
Romans" (ST, p. 30). Once, in a letter to Dilthey, Yorck
emphasizes that the Roman pursuit of power locks life into pure
immanence, without temporality and transcendence: "Might is
everything," he writes (CR, p. 120). Yorck continues by
contending that the proverbial epithet of Rome as the "Eternal
City" is by no means a mere saying. Rather, for Yorck, it
captures something of the ostentatious display of Rome's
imperial power--its splendid oblivion of time. Yorck writes:
"Rome does not, just as no Roman ever does,
comprehend--death" (CR, p. 120). By way of historical
contraposition, Yorck then describes, in the same letter, the
"mute, simple crosses" scratched into the walls of the
underground *Carcere Mamertino* by imprisoned early Christians.
Yorck characterizes these crosses as "light-points on the
underground sky [of the prison], signs of the transcendence of
consciousness" (CR, p. 120). The immanence of a life lived for
power and might is contrasted with the interiority of a conscious
feeling of transcendence.


#### 3.2.3 Christianity



For Yorck, the Christian life is the breakthrough to a fully
historical life. Unencumbered by the projection of objective knowledge
(Greek metaphysics and ocularity) and freed from the expectation of a
messiah (hope for the promised future), the Christian lives the
temporality of "absolute aliveness" [*absolute
Lebendigkeit*] in the depths of inwardness or
 interiority[20]
 (ST, p. 4). Since Christian consciousness has its dominant focus in
interiority and feeling, it is free from the cognitive and volitional
bonds to any objectivity, but free for the rhythm of temporality and
history. The Christian "freedom from the world"
[*Weltfreiheit*] (ST, p. 81) is at the same time freedom
*for* history and transcendence, i.e., the world-transcendent
God, and the personal, felt relationship to him, which is based on the
personal responsibility for one's historical life before God.
Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> Through Christianity an essentially transcendent stance of
> consciousness is achieved, namely by way of the basic factor of
> feeling. This is a transcendent stance, in contradistinction to a
> metaphysical
>  one,[21]
>  because feeling [*Gefuhl*]--the focal point of
> aliveness [*Lebendigkeit*]--is here turned inwards, even
> turned against itself and hence free of all givenness
> [*Gegebenheit*]. (ST, pp. 13/14)
> 
> 
> 



The release from cognitive and volitional projection facilitates an
inversion of life's tendency; it leaves behind the goals of
"certainty and security" (CR, p. 143) and grounds life in
the personal and intrinsically historical relationship to God.



On the one hand, Yorck emphasizes the absolute focus on inner life and
individual conscience, and the entirely unpredictable and historical
relationship to God, this side of all objective worldly realities and
public
 opinion.[22]
 The individual person is singled out in his relationship to God. On
the other hand, Yorck also holds that the Christian inversion of the
projective tendency of life ultimately results in
"self-renunciation" [*Selbstaufgabe*], which
expresses the religious pole, opposite to ethical self-affirmation
through philosophy and science. But precisely through this
self-renunciation, life is lived *as* life, instead of being
lost in the preoccupation with that which is merely intended through
life--the objectively known and desired world. With reference to
*Matthew* (10:39), Yorck writes:



> 
> 
> He who finds his life, will lose it, he who loses it, will find it.
> This word of the Lord describes the law of life itself, the basic
> condition of all life. Death is a mark of life and the radical
> transcendence of the deepest, the Christian standpoint postulates life
> as a mark of death. (ST, p. 58)
> 
> 
> 



Yorck's well-known love for paradox has its definitive origin
 here.[23]



Freed from the bonds to objective representation and the objective
world, Christian religion realizes the most concentrated or enhanced
form of living life *as* life; it is "supreme
aliveness" [*hochste Lebendigkeit*] and thus supreme
historicity (ST, p. 104; CR, p. 154). The Christian life is not
distracted by the aims of cognition (objectivity) or the ties to
objects of desire within the world (in the past, present, or future).
Accordingly, Yorck holds that the historical "origin" and
"supreme" manifestation of life--fully lived as
*historical life*--lies in Christianity.



In his *Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften* (1883),
Dilthey had made a similar, but by no means identical, point, arguing
that "historical consciousness" first came into existence
through the Christian freedom from the outer world (the cosmos) and
the newfound centre of life in inwardness (Dilthey 1959, p. 254).
Dilthey writes:



> 
> 
> For the Greek mind, knowledge was the depiction [*Abbilden*] of
> something objective, [given] to intelligence. Now [after the emergence
> of Christianity], lived experience [*Erlebnis*] becomes the
> centre point of all interests for the new communities; but this is
> nothing other than the simple, inner awareness [*Innewerden*]
> of what is given to the person in self-consciousness. (Dilthey 1959,
> p. 251)
> 
> 
> 



Yet Dilthey sees this as the first potential breakthrough to a new
science, the science of inner experience and the historical
disciplines, the Humanities or *Geisteswissenschaften*.
According to Dilthey, Augustine's fateful dependence on Greek
conceptuality made it impossible to fully articulate the new Christian
sense of inwardness and history (Dilthey 1959, p. 264). Only through
the work of Schleiermacher and Kant has there been progress in
articulating the original Christian insight into inwardness and
historicity of life (Dilthey 1959, p. 267). Not only does Dilthey
fully accept that the meaning of the original Christian experience is
thus adequately comprehended and harnessed for the understanding, but
he also sees his own work on the logic of the historical sciences as a
continuation and fulfilment of this same project.



By contrast, Yorck eschews all cooptation of the Christian
breakthrough to supreme historical aliveness and historicity for the
establishment of a science, fearing that this would not only
conceptualize life as something "ontic," always present
and available for the understanding, but also ignore the vital
consciousness of transcendence, or bury it in a new
 scholasticism.[24]
 Yorck, who always regarded Luther's work as the vital
re-affirmation of the early Christian historical life, suggests,
therefore, that instead of Kant and Schleiermacher, a return to
Luther's conception of life is the more fruitful way of
safeguarding and cultivating the breakthrough to historical life.
Acknowledging this difference, Yorck writes to Dilthey:



> 
> 
> You will not agree when I say that Luther should and must be more
> topical to the present time than Kant, if this present time is to have
> a historical future [*historische Zukunft*]. (CR, p. 145)
> 
> 
>