Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and the Arts: A Survey, a Criticism, a New Approach, and a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Study of Letters and Arts

The principal historical stages in the dialectic-absolutistic concept of the reason. Kant's rationalistic successors. Hegel. The dialectic- absolutistic notion of knowledge. The ontological fallacy. The "substratum."

The main result obtained from the evidence offered in the first chapter is that the current academic cultural metaphysics of "neo-romanticism" or "Geistesgeschichte" or "Geisteswissenschaft" rests principally upon the premises essential to the rationalistic or dialectic-absolutistic philosophy of Kant. "Rationality" is in that mode of thought identified with dialectic deduction from the major terms inherent in an absolutistic verbal concept of the "reason." Every other mental process is described as "irrational."

"Rationality" is thus limited exclusively to the rationalistic mode of thought. "Rationality" is really rationalisticality; "irrationality," non-rationalisticality.

This essential identity is manifest in the characteristic terms of neo-romanticism. Their meanings, revealed in the neo-romantic definitions and applications, are derived directly from the premises of the Kantian philosophy. Those classified under "rationality" are the positive elements of Kant's "reason"; those under "irrationality" are dialectic negations of those terms. The terms of "irrationality" are no more than the Kantian terms of "rationality" to which minus-signs have been added.

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