Translated from Store norske lexikon.

Marcus Jacob Monrad was a Norwegian philosopher and one of Norway’s most significant thinkers in the 19th century.

Monrad was strongly influenced by German idealism , especially Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . He is still considered the foremost representative of Hegelianism in the history of Norwegian philosophy. Through German-language publications and translations, he also distinguished himself as a philosopher in the rest of Europe. Monrad was also a significant voice in Norwegian debates about politics and pedagogy .

Monrad was born on Nøtterøy and grew up in Mo ( Tokke ) in Telemark . After the examen artium at Skien’s Latin School in 1834, Monrad completed the theological official exam ( cand.theol. ) at Det Kongelige Frederiks Universitet ( University of Oslo ) in 1840. He then stayed for some time on the continent and in Berlin witnessed the disputes between Friedrich von Schelling and Hegelians . In 1845 he became a university lecturer in Oslo. He became a professor in the same place from 1851. He was a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Science and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences .

Metaphysics and logic

Hegel’s absolute idealism forms the basis of Monrad’s philosophy. Of particular importance were his lectures published as Philosophisk Propædeutik in 1851 as well as the works Tankerettring i den nyere Tid from 1874 and Udsigt over den høiere Logik from 1881.

Monrad considered knowledge to have inner, inherent value regardless of external utility considerations. Knowledge could thus not be justified elsewhere than in itself. It was a central Hegelian motive for Monrad that thinking could not have access to a reality outside of concepts. Knowledge presupposed firstly an object that is known, secondly a knowing subject and thirdly the union of these two in such a way that the subject itself became the subject of knowledge.

Complete knowledge was defined by Monrad as the subject’s awareness of himself. For Monrad, Hegel’s logic was also very much connected with Christianity . For this reason, he is often placed in the so-called right-wing Hegelianism .

Scientific theory and critique of positivism

In Thought Tendencies in the Newer Times, Monrad attacked positivism and Darwinism from his Hegelian point of view. He defined positivism or positive philosophy as the attempt to adopt a position outside of reason, that is to say without the use of concepts and reflection. With this, Monrad criticized both Schelling’s positive philosophy which was based on religious revelation (“right positivism”), and the sense-based positivism formulated by thinkers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Auguste Comte (“left positivism”). Despite differences between them, Monrad considered these forms of positive thinking to be unreflective and expressions of a denial of spirit in Hegel’s sense. All attempts to reach reality directly and immediately, that is, independently of reason through revelation or through sensation, must fail.

The same anti-positivism was expressed in Monrad’s criticism of Darwinism in the same place. He attacked Darwin for having reduced qualitative differences of species to quantitative differences of degree without regard to the purpose or intent of the species. Monrad called for a formative principle for the development of species. He argued that Darwin’s theory was unable to see appropriateness elsewhere than in the purely factual existence of a species. Monrad saw a contradiction in Darwin, as the theory of evolution itself necessarily had to presuppose the maintenance of the species as its highest purpose. Without this purpose, no reproduction or struggle for existence would be possible.

Philosophy of religion

Monrad considered all science to be religious in nature in the sense that the sciences seek the one and divine truth. Religion, Religioner og Christendom , which was published in 1885, was his attempt to revive the philosophy of religion in a systematic way based on Hegel’s thinking. Here he defined the religious consciousness as the consciousness of something absolute and eternal outside oneself. The feeling of finality towards the absolute was to be understood as a feeling of dependence.

According to Monrad, the task of the philosophy of religion was to determine the general idea of ​​religion and, based on this, seek out religious phenomena in history, before finally examining the revelation of the idea in its finality through Christianity. In Christendommens Mysterier viewed from the Standpoint of Reason from 1895, Monrad claimed that religious mysteries are phenomena that only become visible through reason. At the same time, he believed that the mysteries opened the boundaries of reason so that it could achieve its purpose, namely the recognition of the reasonable in itself.

Political philosophy and moral philosophy

Although he did not publish any actual political-philosophical work, Monrad expressed clear views with philosophical arguments through his many interventions in contemporary political newspaper debates. He understood progress in general as developing something new from the old and already existing. This basic view underpinned his understanding of political progress as an articulation of what is already implicit in society, not as the satisfaction of random needs.

Monrad was critical of parliamentarism , which he believed would lead precisely to a politics of chance. He therefore defended a strict separation between different political bodies. The Storting was to have a limited role as a body for the will of the people, while the king in person represented the people as an organic unit. His defense of a strong royal power made him a conservative voice in conflict with the political developments of the time.

Human Free Will and Evil , which was published just before his death in 1897, was Monrad’s clearest discussion of moral philosophical issues. Here he defined free will as the self-determination of thought in the sense of acting on the basis of intrinsically valid reasons. As a Hegelian, Monrad regarded concept and phenomenon as standing in a dialectical relationship with each other. This meant that the human spirit unfolded gradually from the particular to the universal. Evil as a problem was connected with the fact that man can be determined by his own nature and not by his own thinking, that is, his actual determination. Monrad believed this could become second nature through the power of habit.

Aesthetics

The two-volume work Æsthetik , which was published in 1889 and 1890, was Monrad’s last major contribution to philosophy. There he laid the foundations for an aesthetic science, that is to say a philosophical aesthetics , which was eternal and thus independent of changing perceptions of taste. He divided this science into the doctrine of the concept of the beautiful, the doctrine of the natural beauty and the doctrine of the beautiful in art, the former being pure aesthetics and the two following applied aesthetics.

Monrad defined the beautiful as lying between the good and the pleasant. He explained the natural beauty as a natural and independent beauty that arose by itself, while the artistic beauty was considered to be a product of the human spirit’s urge to present a subjective ideal objectively. Monrad understood art as the rebirth of the beautiful.

Educational philosophy

Monrad can be considered the Norwegian representative of the originally German neo-humanist movement , whose main term is Bildung (education). He advocated public education early on, not least by contributing to the establishment of the Society for the Promotion of Folkeopplysningens Fremme in 1851. He was also active in contemporary discussions about the university’s role in society. On the Importance of Classical Studies for Higher General Education defended the importance of ancient culture being disseminated at universities. He also had clear culturally conservative views on the school’s upbringing of young relatives. The acquisition of cultural heritage and historical knowledge should be guiding principles for schools and universities.

Works

• The Mysteries of Christianity viewed from the Standpoint of Reason. Christiania, 1895.
• Human Free Will and Evil. Christiania, 1897.
• On the Importance of Classical Studies for Higher General Education. Christiania, 1857 (2nd edition 1891).
• Philosophical Propaedeutics. Christiania, 1851 .
• Religion, Religions and Christianity. Contribution to the Philosophy of Religion. Christiania, 1885.
• Trends of thought in recent times. Christiania, 1874 (new edition Oslo, 1981).
• Twelve Lectures on the Beautiful. Christiania, 1859.
• View of the Higher Logic. Christiania, 1881
• Aesthetics, vol. 1-2. Christiania, 1889–1890 (new edition Oslo, 2013).

Literature

• Christophersen, HO Marcus Jacob Monrad. A magazine of the history of Norwegian education in the 19th century. Oslo 1959.
• Evenshaug, Trude. A Relocated Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, History of European Ideas, 42:7 (2016), 893-908
• Evenshaug, Trude. Monrad and public opinion. A reading of the philosopher MJ Monrad’s participation in the public discourse 1845-1891. Oslo 2006.
• Hegge, Hjalmar. Marcus Jacob Monrad and his “Thoughts”, introduction to Marcus Jacob Monrad: Thoughts in the recent times . New ed., Oslo 1981.
• Holm, Soren. Philosophy in the Nordic countries before 1900 . Copenhagen 1967.
• Lundestad, Erik. Early Norwegian philosophy. A reading of Treschow, Schweigaard and Monrad . Tromsø 2002.
• Lundestad, Erik. Norwegian philosophy from Ludvig Holberg to Anathon Aall . Tromsø 1998.
• Slagstad, Rune. The National Strategists . Oslo 1999.
• Slagstad, Rune. Afterword to Aesthetics. New ed. Oslo 2013.