RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY
BY
JOHN DEWEY
Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University
[Illustration]
NEW YORK.
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
The Quinn & Boden Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
PREFATORY NOTE
Being invited to lecture at the Imperial University of Japan in Tokyo
during February and March of the present year, I attempted an
interpretation of the reconstruction of ideas and ways of thought now
going on in philosophy. While the lectures cannot avoid revealing the
marks of the particular standpoint of their author, the aim is to
exhibit the general contrasts between older and newer types of
philosophic problems rather than to make a partisan plea in behalf of
any one specific solution of these problems. I have tried for the most
part to set forth the forces which make intellectual reconstruction
inevitable and to prefigure some of the lines upon which it must
proceed.
Any one who has enjoyed the unique hospitality of Japan will be
overwhelmed with confusion if he endeavors to make an acknowledgment in
any way commensurate to the kindnesses he received. Yet I must set down
in the barest of black and white my grateful appreciation of them, and
in particular record my ineffaceable impressions of the courtesy and
help of the members of the department of philosophy of Tokyo University,
and of my dear friends Dr. Ono and Dr. Nitobe.
J. D.
September, 1919.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY 1
Origin of philosophy in desire and imagination.
Influence of community traditions and authority.
Simultaneous development of matter-of-fact knowledge.
Incongruity and conflict of the two types.
Respective values of each type.... Classic philosophies
(i) compensatory, (ii) dialectically formal,
and (iii) concerned with "superior" Reality. Contemporary
thinking accepts primacy of matter-of-fact
knowledge and assigns to philosophy a social
function rather than that of absolute knowledge.
II SOME HISTORICAL FACTORS IN PHILOSOPHICAL RECONSTRUCTION 28
Francis Bacon exemplifies the newer spirit....
He conceived knowledge as power. As dependent
upon organized cooperative research.... As tested
by promotion of social progress. The new thought
reflected actual social changes, industrial, political,
religious.... The new idealism.
III THE SCIENTIFIC FACTOR IN RECONSTRUCTION OF PHILOSOPHY 53
Science has revolutionized our conception of Nature.
Philosophy has to be transformed because
no longer depending upon a science which accepts
a closed, finite world. Or, fixed species. Or,
superiority or rest to change and motion. Contrast
of feudal with democratic conceptions. Elimination
of final causes. Mechanical science and the possibility
of control of nature. Respect for matter.
New temper of imagination. Influence thus far
technical rather than human and moral.
IV CHANGED CONCEPTIONS OF EXPERIENCE AND REASON 77
Traditional conception of nature of experience.
Limits of ancient civilization. Effect of classic
idea on modern empiricism. Why a different conception
is now possible. Psychological change emphasizes
vital factor using environment. Effect
upon traditional ideas of sensation and knowledge.
Factor of organization. Socially, experience is now
more inventive and regulative.... Corresponding
change in idea of Reason. Intelligence is hypothetical
and inventive. Weakness of historic Rationalism.
Kantianism. Contrast of German and
British philosophies. Reconstruction of empirical
liberalism.
V CHANGED CONCEPTIONS OF THE IDEAL AND THE REAL 103
Idealization rooted in aversion to the disagreeable....
This fact has affected philosophy....
True reality is ideal, and hence changeless, complete.
Hence contemplative knowledge is higher
than experimental. Contrast with the modern practise
of knowledge.... Significance of change....
The actual or realistic signifies conditions effecting
change.... Ideals become methods rather than
goals. Illustration from elimination of distance.
Change in conception of philosophy.... The
significant problems for philosophy.... Social
understanding and conciliation. The practical problem
of real and ideal.
VI THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 132
Present confusion as to logic. Logic is regulative
and normative because empirical. Illustration from
mathematics. Origin of thinking in conflicts. Confrontation
with fact. Response by anticipation or
prediction. Importance of hypotheses. Impartial
inquiry. Importance of deductive function. Organization
and classification. Nature of truth.
Truth is adverbial, not a thing.
VII RECONSTRUCTION IN MORAL CONCEPTIONS 161
Common factor in traditional theories. Every
moral situation unique. Supremacy of the specific
or individualized case. Fallacy of general ends.
Worth of generalization of ends and rules is intellectual.
Harmfulness of division of goods into
intrinsic and instrumental. Into natural and moral.
Moral worth of natural science. Importance of
discovery in morals. Abolishing Phariseeism....
Growth as the end. Optimism and pessimism. Conception
of happiness. Criticism of utilitarianism.
All life moral in so far as educative.
VIII RECONSTRUCTION AS AFFECTING SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 187
Defects of current logic of social thought. Neglect
of specific situations. Defects of organic concept
of society. Evils of notion of fixed self or
individual. Doctrine of interests. Moral and institutional
reform. Moral test of social institutions.
Social pluralism. Political monism, dogma
of National State. Primacy of associations. International
humanism. Organization a subordinate
conception. Freedom and democracy. Intellectual
reconstruction when habitual will affect imagination
and hence poetry and religion.
INDEX 217
RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER I
CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
Man differs from the lower animals because he preserves his past
experiences. What happened in the past is lived again in memory. About
what goes on today hangs a cloud of thoughts concerning similar things
undergone in bygone days. With the animals, an experience perishes as it
happens, and each new doing or suffering stands alone. But man lives in
a world where each occurrence is charged with echoes and reminiscences
of what has gone before, where each event is a reminder of other things.
Hence he lives not, like the beasts of the field, in a world of merely
physical things but in a world of signs and symbols. A stone is not
merely hard, a thing into which one bumps; but it is a monument of a
deceased ancestor. A flame is not merely something which warms or burns,
but is a symbol of the enduring life of the household, of the abiding
source of cheer, nourishment and shelter to which man returns from his
casual wanderings. Instead of being a quick fork of fire which may sting
and hurt, it is the hearth at which one worships and for which one
fights. And all this which marks the difference between bestiality and
humanity, between culture and merely physical nature, is because man
remembers, preserving and recording his experiences.
The revivals of memory are, however, rarely literal. We naturally
remember what interests us and because it interests us. The past is
recalled not because of itself but because of what it adds to the
present. Thus the primary life of memory is emotional rather than
intellectual and practical. Savage man recalled yesterday's struggle
with an animal not in order to study in a scientific way the qualities
of the animal or for the sake of calculating how better to fight
tomorrow, but to escape from the tedium of today by regaining the thrill
of yesterday. The memory has all the excitement of the combat without
its danger and anxiety. To revive it and revel in it is to enhance the
present moment with a new meaning, a meaning different from that which
actually belongs either to it or to the past. Memory is vicarious
experience in which there is all the emotional values of actual
experience without its strains, vicissitudes and troubles. The triumph
of battle is even more poignant in the memorial war dance than at the
moment of victory; the conscious and truly human experience of the chase
comes when it is talked over and re-enacted by the camp fire. At the
time, attention is taken up with practical details and with the strain
of uncertainty. Only later do the details compose into a story and fuse
into a whole of meaning. At the time of practical experience man exists
from moment to moment, preoccupied with the task of the moment. As he
re-surveys all the moments in thought, a drama emerges with a beginning,
a middle and a movement toward the climax of achievement or defeat.
Since man revives his past experience because of the interest added to
what would otherwise be the emptiness of present leisure, the primitive
life of memory is one of fancy and imagination, rather than of accurate
recollection. After all, it is the story, the drama, which counts. Only
those incidents are selected which have a present emotional value, to
intensify the present tale as it is rehearsed in imagination or told to
an admiring listener. What does not add to the thrill of combat or
contribute to the goal of success or failure is dropped. Incidents are
rearranged till they fit into the temper of the tale. Thus early man
when left to himself, when not actually engaged in the struggle for
existence, lived in a world of memories which was a world of
suggestions. A suggestion differs from a recollection in that no attempt
is made to test its correctness. Its correctness is a matter of relative
indifference. The cloud suggests a camel or a man's face. It could not
suggest these things unless some time there had been an actual, literal
experience of camel and face. But the real likeness is of no account.
The main thing is the emotional interest in tracing the camel or
following the fortunes of the face as it forms and dissolves.
Students of the primitive history of mankind tell of the enormous part
played by animal tales, myths and cults. Sometimes a mystery is made out
of this historical fact, as if it indicated that primitive man was moved
by a different psychology from that which now animates humanity. But the
explanation is, I think, simple. Until agriculture and the higher
industrial arts were developed, long periods of empty leisure alternated
with comparatively short periods of energy put forth to secure food or
safety from attack. Because of our own habits, we tend to think of
people as busy or occupied, if not with doing at least with thinking and
planning. But then men were busy only when engaged in the hunt or
fishing or fighting expedition. Yet the mind when awake must have some
filling; it cannot remain literally vacant because the body is idle. And
what thoughts should crowd into the human mind except experiences with
animals, experiences transformed under the influence of dramatic
interest to make more vivid and coherent the events typical of the
chase? As men in fancy dramatically re-lived the interesting parts of
their actual lives, animals inevitably became themselves dramatized.
They were true _dramatis personæ_ and as such assumed the traits of
persons. They too had desires, hopes and fears, a life of affections,
loves and hates, triumphs and defeats. Moreover, since they were
essential to the support of the community, their activities and
sufferings made them, in the imagination which dramatically revived the
past, true sharers in the life of the community. Although they were
hunted, yet they permitted themselves after all to be caught, and hence
they were friends and allies. They devoted themselves, quite literally,
to the sustenance and well-being of the community group to which they
belonged. Thus were produced not merely the multitude of tales and
legends dwelling affectionately upon the activities and features of
animals, but also those elaborate rites and cults which made animals
ancestors, heroes, tribal figure-heads and divinities.
I hope that I do not seem to you to have gone too far afield from my
topic, the origin of philosophies. For it seems to me that the historic
source of philosophies cannot be understood except as we dwell, at even
greater length and in more detail, upon such considerations as these. We
need to recognize that the ordinary consciousness of the ordinary man
left to himself is a creature of desires rather than of intellectual
study, inquiry or speculation. Man ceases to be primarily actuated by
hopes and fears, loves and hates, only when he is subjected to a
discipline which is foreign to human nature, which is, from the
standpoint of natural man, artificial. Naturally our books, our
scientific and philosophical books, are written by men who have
subjected themselves in a superior degree to intellectual discipline and
culture. Their thoughts are habitually reasonable. They have learned to
check their fancies by facts, and to organize their ideas logically
rather than emotionally and dramatically. When they do indulge in
reverie and day-dreaming--which is probably more of the time than is
conventionally acknowledged--they are aware of what they are doing. They
label these excursions, and do not confuse their results with objective
experiences. We tend to judge others by ourselves, and because
scientific and philosophic books are composed by men in whom the
reasonable, logical and objective habit of mind predominates, a similar
rationality has been attributed by them to the average and ordinary man.
It is then overlooked that both rationality and irrationality are
largely irrelevant and episodical in undisciplined human nature; that
men are governed by memory rather than by thought, and that memory is
not a remembering of actual facts, but is association, suggestion,
dramatic fancy. The standard used to measure the value of the
suggestions that spring up in the mind is not congruity with fact but
emotional congeniality. Do they stimulate and reinforce feeling, and fit
into the dramatic tale? Are they consonant with the prevailing mood, and
can they be rendered into the traditional hopes and fears of the
community? If we are willing to take the word dreams with a certain
liberality, it is hardly too much to say that man, save in his
occasional times of actual work and struggle, lives in a world of
dreams, rather than of facts, and a world of dreams that is organized
about desires whose success and frustration form its stuff.
To treat the early beliefs and traditions of mankind as if they were
attempts at scientific explanation of the world, only erroneous and
absurd attempts, is thus to be guilty of a great mistake. The material
out of which philosophy finally emerges is irrelevant to science and to
explanation. It is figurative, symbolic of fears and hopes, made of
imaginations and suggestions, not significant of a world of objective
fact intellectually confronted. It is poetry and drama, rather than
science, and is apart from scientific truth and falsity, rationality or
absurdity of fact in the same way in which poetry is independent of
these things.
This original material has, however, to pass through at least two stages
before it becomes philosophy proper. One is the stage in which stories
and legends and their accompanying dramatizations are consolidated. At
first the emotionalized records of experiences are largely casual and
transitory. Events that excite the emotions of an individual are seized
upon and lived over in tale and pantomime. But some experiences are so
frequent and recurrent that they concern the group as a whole. They are
socially generalized. The piecemeal adventure of the single individual
is built out till it becomes representative and typical of the emotional
life of the tribe. Certain incidents affect the weal and woe of the
group in its entirety and thereby get an exceptional emphasis and
elevation. A certain texture of tradition is built up; the story becomes
a social heritage and possession; the pantomime develops into the stated
rite. Tradition thus formed becomes a kind of norm to which individual
fancy and suggestion conform. An abiding framework of imagination is
constructed. A communal way of conceiving life grows up into which
individuals are inducted by education. Both unconsciously and by
definite social requirement individual memories are assimilated to group
memory or tradition, and individual fancies are accommodated to the body
of beliefs characteristic of a community. Poetry becomes fixated and
systematized. The story becomes a social norm. The original drama which
re-enacts an emotionally important experience is institutionalized into
a cult. Suggestions previously free are hardened into doctrines.
The systematic and obligatory nature of such doctrines is hastened and
confirmed through conquests and political consolidation. As the area of
a government is extended, there is a definite motive for systematizing
and unifying beliefs once free and floating. Aside from natural
accommodation and assimilation springing from the fact of intercourse
and the needs of common understanding, there is often political
necessity which leads the ruler to centralize traditions and beliefs in
order to extend and strengthen his prestige and authority. Judea,
Greece, Rome, and I presume all other countries having a long history,
present records of a continual working over of earlier local rites and
doctrines in the interests of a wider social unity and a more extensive
political power. I shall ask you to assume with me that in this way the
larger cosmogonies and cosmologies of the race as well as the larger
ethical traditions have arisen. Whether this is literally so or not, it
is not necessary to inquire, much less to demonstrate. It is enough for
our purposes that under social influences there took place a fixing and
organizing of doctrines and cults which gave general traits to the
imagination and general rules to conduct, and that such a consolidation
was a necessary antecedent to the formation of any philosophy as we
understand that term.
Although a necessary antecedent, this organization and generalization of
ideas and principles of belief is not the sole and sufficient generator
of philosophy. There is still lacking the motive for logical system and
intellectual proof. This we may suppose to be furnished by the need of
reconciling the moral rules and ideals embodied in the traditional code
with the matter of fact positivistic knowledge which gradually grows up.
For man can never be wholly the creature of suggestion and fancy. The
requirements of continued existence make indispensable some attention to
the actual facts of the world. Although it is surprising how little
check the environment actually puts upon the formation of ideas, since
no notions are too absurd not to have been accepted by some people, yet
the environment does enforce a certain minimum of correctness under
penalty of extinction. That certain things are foods, that they are to
be found in certain places, that water drowns, fire burns, that sharp
points penetrate and cut, that heavy things fall unless supported, that
there is a certain regularity in the changes of day and night and the
alternation of hot and cold, wet and dry:--such prosaic facts force
themselves upon even primitive attention. Some of them are so obvious
and so important that they have next to no fanciful context. Auguste
Comte says somewhere that he knows of no savage people who had a God of
weight although every other natural quality or force may have been
deified. Gradually there grows up a body of homely generalizations
preserving and transmitting the wisdom of the race about the observed
facts and sequences of nature. This knowledge is especially connected
with industries, arts and crafts where observation of materials and
processes is required for successful action, and where action is so
continuous and regular that spasmodic magic will not suffice.
Extravagantly fantastic notions are eliminated because they are brought
into juxtaposition with what actually happens.
The sailor is more likely to be given to what we now term superstitions
than say the weaver, because his activity is more at the mercy of sudden
change and unforeseen occurrence. But even the sailor while he may
regard the wind as the uncontrollable expression of the caprice of a
great spirit, will still have to become acquainted with some purely
mechanical principles of adjustment of boat, sails and oar to the wind.
Fire may be conceived as a supernatural dragon because some time or
other a swift, bright and devouring flame called before the mind's eye
the quick-moving and dangerous serpent. But the housewife who tends the
fire and the pots wherein food cooks will still be compelled to observe
certain mechanical facts of draft and replenishment, and passage from
wood to ash. Still more will the worker in metals accumulate verifiable
details about the conditions and consequences of the operation of heat.
He may retain for special and ceremonial occasions traditional beliefs,
but everyday familiar use will expel these conceptions for the greater
part of the time, when fire will be to him of uniform and prosaic
behavior, controllable by practical relations of cause and effect. As
the arts and crafts develop and become more elaborate, the body of
positive and tested knowledge enlarges, and the sequences observed
become more complex and of greater scope. Technologies of this kind give
that common-sense knowledge of nature out of which science takes its
origin. They provide not merely a collection of positive facts, but they
give expertness in dealing with materials and tools, and promote the
development of the experimental habit of mind, as soon as an art can be
taken away from the rule of sheer custom.
For a long time the imaginative body of beliefs closely connected with
the moral habits of a community group and with its emotional indulgences
and consolations persists side by side with the growing body of matter
of fact knowledge. Wherever possible they are interlaced. At other
points, their inconsistencies forbid their interweaving, but the two
things are kept apart as if in different compartments. Since one is
merely super-imposed upon the other their incompatibility is not felt,
and there is no need of reconciliation. In most cases, the two kinds of
mental products are kept apart because they become the possession of
separate social classes. The religious and poetic beliefs having
acquired a definite social and political value and function are in the
keeping of a higher class directly associated with the ruling elements
in the society. The workers and craftsmen who possess the prosaic matter
of fact knowledge are likely to occupy a low social status, and their
kind of knowledge is affected by the social disesteem entertained for
the manual worker who engages in activities useful to the body. It
doubtless was this fact in Greece which in spite of the keenness of
observation, the extraordinary power of logical reasoning and the great
freedom of speculation attained by the Athenian, postponed the general
and systematic employment of the experimental method. Since the
industrial craftsman was only just above the slave in social rank, his
type of knowledge and the method upon which it depended lacked prestige
and authority.
Nevertheless, the time came when matter of fact knowledge increased to
such bulk and scope that it came into conflict with not merely the
detail but with the spirit and temper of traditional and imaginative
beliefs. Without going into the vexed question of how and why, there is
no doubt that this is just what happened in what we term the sophistic
movement in Greece, within which originated philosophy proper in the
sense in which the western world understands that term. The fact that
the sophists had a bad name given them by Plato and Aristotle, a name
they have never been able to shake off, is evidence that with the
sophists the strife between the two types of belief was the emphatic
thing, and that the conflict had a disconcerting effect upon the
traditional system of religious beliefs and the moral code of conduct
bound up with it. Although Socrates was doubtless sincerely interested
in the reconciliation of the two sides, yet the fact that he approached
the matter from the side of matter of fact method, giving its canons and
criteria primacy, was enough to bring him to the condemnation of death
as a contemner of the gods and a corrupter of youth.
The fate of Socrates and the ill-fame of the sophists may be used to
suggest some of the striking contrasts between traditional emotionalized
belief on one hand and prosaic matter of fact knowledge on the
other:--the purpose of the comparison being to bring out the point that
while all the advantages of what we call science were on the side of the
latter, the advantages of social esteem and authority, and of intimate
contact with what gives life its deeper lying values were on the side of
traditional belief. To all appearances, the specific and verified
knowledge of the environment had only a limited and technical scope. It
had to do with the arts, and the purpose and good of the artisan after
all did not extend very far. They were subordinate and almost servile.
Who would put the art of the shoemaker on the same plane as the art of
ruling the state? Who would put even the higher art of the physician in
healing the body, upon the level of the art of the priest in healing the
soul? Thus Plato constantly draws the contrast in his dialogues. The
shoemaker is a judge of a good pair of shoes, but he is no judge at all
of the more important question whether and when it is good to wear
shoes; the physician is a good judge of health, but whether it is a good
thing or not to be well or better to die, he knows not. While the
artisan is expert as long as purely limited technical questions arise,
he is helpless when it comes to the only really important questions, the
moral questions as to values. Consequently, his type of knowledge is
inherently inferior and needs to be controlled by a higher kind of
knowledge which will reveal ultimate ends and purposes, and thus put and
keep technical and mechanical knowledge in its proper place. Moreover,
in Plato's pages we find, because of Plato's adequate dramatic sense, a
lively depicting of the impact in particular men of the conflict between
tradition and the new claims of purely intellectual knowledge. The
conservative is shocked beyond measure at the idea of teaching the
military art by abstract rules, by science. One does not just fight, one
fights for one's country. Abstract science cannot convey love and
loyalty, nor can it be a substitute, even upon the more technical side,
for those ways and means of fighting in which devotion to the country
has been traditionally embodied.
The way to learn the fighting art is through association with those who
have themselves learned to defend the country, by becoming saturated
with its ideals and customs; by becoming in short a practical adept in
the Greek tradition as to fighting. To attempt to derive abstract rules
from a comparison of native ways of fighting with the enemies' ways is
to begin to go over to the enemies' traditions and gods: it is to begin
to be false to one's own country.
Such a point of view vividly realized enables us to appreciate the
antagonism aroused by the positivistic point of view when it came into
conflict with the traditional. The latter was deeply rooted in social
habits and loyalties; it was surcharged with the moral aims for which
men lived and the moral rules by which they lived. Hence it was as basic
and as comprehensive as life itself, and palpitated with the warm
glowing colors of the community life in which men realized their own
being. In contrast, the positivistic knowledge was concerned with merely
physical utilities, and lacked the ardent associations of belief
hallowed by sacrifices of ancestors and worship of contemporaries.
Because of its limited and concrete character it was dry, hard, cold.
Yet the more acute and active minds, like that of Plato himself, could
no longer be content to accept, along with the conservative citizen of
the time, the old beliefs in the old way. The growth of positive
knowledge and of the critical, inquiring spirit undermined these in
their old form. The advantages in definiteness, in accuracy, in
verifiability were all on the side of the new knowledge. Tradition was
noble in aim and scope, but uncertain in foundation. The unquestioned
life, said Socrates, was not one fit to be lived by man, who is a
questioning being because he is a rational being. Hence he must search
out the reason of things, and not accept them from custom and political
authority. What was to be done? Develop a method of rational
investigation and proof which should place the essential elements of
traditional belief upon an unshakable basis; develop a method of thought
and knowledge which while purifying tradition should preserve its moral
and social values unimpaired; nay, by purifying them, add to their power
and authority. To put it in a word, that which had rested upon custom
was to be restored, resting no longer upon the habits of the past, but
upon the very metaphysics of Being and the Universe. Metaphysics is a
substitute for custom as the source and guarantor of higher moral and
social values--that is the leading theme of the classic philosophy of
Europe, as evolved by Plato and Aristotle--a philosophy, let us always
recall, renewed and restated by the Christian philosophy of Medieval
Europe.
Out of this situation emerged, if I mistake not, the entire tradition
regarding the function and office of philosophy which till very
recently has controlled the systematic and constructive philosophies of
the western world. If I am right in my main thesis that the origin of
philosophy lay in an attempt to reconcile the two different types of
mental product, then the key is in our hands as to the main traits of
subsequent philosophy so far as that was not of a negative and heterodox
kind. In the first place, philosophy did not develop in an unbiased way
from an open and unprejudiced origin. It had its task cut out for it
from the start. It had a mission to perform, and it was sworn in advance
to that mission. It had to extract the essential moral kernel out of the
threatened traditional beliefs of the past. So far so good; the work was
critical and in the interests of the only true conservatism--that which
will conserve and not waste the values wrought out by humanity. But it
was also precommitted to extracting this moral essence in a spirit
congenial to the spirit of past beliefs. The association with
imagination and with social authority was too intimate to be deeply
disturbed. It was not possible to conceive of the content of social
institutions in any form radically different from that in which they had
existed in the past. It became the work of philosophy to justify on
rational grounds the spirit, though not the form, of accepted beliefs
and traditional customs.
The resulting philosophy seemed radical enough and even dangerous to
the average Athenian because of the difference of form and method. In
the sense of pruning away excrescences and eliminating factors which to
the average citizen were all one with the basic beliefs, it was radical.
But looked at in the perspective of history and in contrast with
different types of thought which developed later in different social
environments, it is now easy to see how profoundly, after all, Plato and
Aristotle reflected the meaning of Greek tradition and habit, so that
their writings remain, with the writings of the great dramatists, the
best introduction of a student into the innermost ideals and aspirations
of distinctively Greek life. Without Greek religion, Greek art, Greek
civic life, their philosophy would have been impossible; while the
effect of that science upon which the philosophers most prided
themselves turns out to have been superficial and negligible. This
apologetic spirit of philosophy is even more apparent when Medieval
Christianity about the twelfth century sought for a systematic rational
presentation of itself and made use of classic philosophy, especially
that of Aristotle, to justify itself to reason. A not unsimilar
occurrence characterizes the chief philosophic systems of Germany in the
early nineteenth century, when Hegel assumed the task of justifying in
the name of rational idealism the doctrines and institutions which were
menaced by the new spirit of science and popular government. The result
has been that the great systems have not been free from party spirit
exercised in behalf of preconceived beliefs. Since they have at the same
time professed complete intellectual independence and rationality, the
result has been too often to impart to philosophy an element of
insincerity, all the more insidious because wholly unconscious on the
part of those who sustained philosophy.
And this brings us to a second trait of philosophy springing from its
origin. Since it aimed at a rational justification of things that had
been previously accepted because of their emotional congeniality and
social prestige, it had to make much of the apparatus of reason and
proof. Because of the lack of intrinsic rationality in the matters with
which it dealt, it leaned over backward, so to speak, in parade of
logical form. In dealing with matters of fact, simpler and rougher ways
of demonstration may be resorted to. It is enough, so to say, to produce
the fact in question and point to it--the fundamental form of all
demonstration. But when it comes to convincing men of the truth of
doctrines which are no longer to be accepted upon the say-so of custom
and social authority, but which also are not capable of empirical
verification, there is no recourse save to magnify the signs of rigorous
thought and rigid demonstration. Thus arises that appearance of abstract
definition and ultra-scientific argumentation which repels so many from
philosophy but which has been one of its chief attractions to its
devotees.
At the worst, this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate
terminology, a hair-splitting logic, and a fictitious devotion to the
mere external forms of comprehensive and minute demonstration. Even at
the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system
for its own sake, and an over-pretentious claim to certainty. Bishop
Butler declared that probability is the guide of life; but few
philosophers have been courageous enough to avow that philosophy can be
satisfied with anything that is merely probable. The customs dictated by
tradition and desire had claimed finality and immutability. They had
claimed to give certain and unvarying laws of conduct. Very early in its
history philosophy made pretension to a similar conclusiveness, and
something of this temper has clung to classic philosophies ever since.
They have insisted that they were more scientific than the
sciences--that, indeed, philosophy was necessary because after all the
special sciences fail in attaining final and complete truth. There have
been a few dissenters who have ventured to assert, as did William James,
that "philosophy is vision" and that its chief function is to free men's
minds from bias and prejudice and to enlarge their perceptions of the
world about them. But in the main philosophy has set up much more
ambitious pretensions. To say frankly that philosophy can proffer
nothing but hypotheses, and that these hypotheses are of value only as
they render men's minds more sensitive to life about them, would seem
like a negation of philosophy itself.
In the third place, the body of beliefs dictated by desire and
imagination and developed under the influence of communal authority into
an authoritative tradition, was pervasive and comprehensive. It was, so
to speak, omnipresent in all the details of the group life. Its pressure
was unremitting and its influence universal. It was then probably
inevitable that the rival principle, reflective thought, should aim at a
similar universality and comprehensiveness. It would be as inclusive and
far-reaching metaphysically as tradition had been socially. Now there
was just one way in which this pretension could be accomplished in
conjunction with a claim of complete logical system and certainty.
All philosophies of the classic type have made a fixed and fundamental
distinction between two realms of existence. One of these corresponds to
the religious and supernatural world of popular tradition, which in its
metaphysical rendering became the world of highest and ultimate reality.
Since the final source and sanction of all important truths and rules of
conduct in community life had been found in superior and unquestioned
religious beliefs, so the absolute and supreme reality of philosophy
afforded the only sure guaranty of truth about empirical matters, and
the sole rational guide to proper social institutions and individual
behavior. Over against this absolute and noumenal reality which could be
apprehended only by the systematic discipline of philosophy itself stood
the ordinary empirical, relatively real, phenomenal world of everyday
experience. It was with this world that the practical affairs and
utilities of men were connected. It was to this imperfect and perishing
world that matter of fact, positivistic science referred.
This is the trait which, in my opinion, has affected most deeply the
classic notion about the nature of philosophy. Philosophy has arrogated
to itself the office of demonstrating the existence of a transcendent,
absolute or inner reality and of revealing to man the nature and
features of this ultimate and higher reality. It has therefore claimed
that it was in possession of a higher organ of knowledge than is
employed by positive science and ordinary practical experience, and that
it is marked by a superior dignity and importance--a claim which is
undeniable _if_ philosophy leads man to proof and intuition of a Reality
beyond that open to day-by-day life and the special sciences.
This claim has, of course, been denied by various philosophers from
time to time. But for the most part these denials have been agnostic and
sceptical. They have contented themselves with asserting that absolute
and ultimate reality is beyond human ken. But they have not ventured to
deny that such Reality would be the appropriate sphere for the exercise
of philosophic knowledge provided only it were within the reach of human
intelligence. Only comparatively recently has another conception of the
proper office of philosophy arisen. This course of lectures will be
devoted to setting forth this different conception of philosophy in some
of its main contrasts to what this lecture has termed the classic
conception. At this point, it can be referred to only by anticipation
and in cursory fashion. It is implied in the account which has been
given of the origin of philosophy out of the background of an
authoritative tradition; a tradition originally dictated by man's
imagination working under the influence of love and hate and in the
interest of emotional excitement and satisfaction. Common frankness
requires that it be stated that this account of the origin of
philosophies claiming to deal with absolute Being in a systematic way
has been given with malice prepense. It seems to me that this genetic
method of approach is a more effective way of undermining this type of
philosophic theorizing than any attempt at logical refutation could be.
If this lecture succeeds in leaving in your minds as a reasonable
hypothesis the idea that philosophy originated not out of intellectual
material, but out of social and emotional material, it will also succeed
in leaving with you a changed attitude toward traditional philosophies.
They will be viewed from a new angle and placed in a new light. New
questions about them will be aroused and new standards for judging them
will be suggested.
If any one will commence without mental reservations to study the
history of philosophy not as an isolated thing but as a chapter in the
development of civilization and culture; if one will connect the story
of philosophy with a study of anthropology, primitive life, the history
of religion, literature and social institutions, it is confidently
asserted that he will reach his own independent judgment as to the worth
of the account which has been presented today. Considered in this way,
the history of philosophy will take on a new significance. What is lost
from the standpoint of would-be science is regained from the standpoint
of humanity. Instead of the disputes of rivals about the nature of
reality, we have the scene of human clash of social purpose and
aspirations. Instead of impossible attempts to transcend experience,
we have the significant record of the efforts of men to formulate
the things of experience to which they are most deeply and
passionately attached. Instead of impersonal and purely speculative
endeavors to contemplate as remote beholders the nature of absolute
things-in-themselves, we have a living picture of the choice of
thoughtful men about what they would have life to be, and to what ends
they would have men shape their intelligent activities.
Any one of you who arrives at such a view of past philosophy will of
necessity be led to entertain a quite definite conception of the scope
and aim of future philosophizing. He will inevitably be committed to the
notion that what philosophy has been unconsciously, without knowing or
intending it, and, so to speak, under cover, it must henceforth be
openly and deliberately. When it is acknowledged that under disguise of
dealing with ultimate reality, philosophy has been occupied with the
precious values embedded in social traditions, that it has sprung from a
clash of social ends and from a conflict of inherited institutions with
incompatible contemporary tendencies, it will be seen that the task of
future philosophy is to clarify men's ideas as to the social and moral
strifes of their own day. Its aim is to become so far as is humanly
possible an organ for dealing with these conflicts. That which may be
pretentiously unreal when it is formulated in metaphysical distinctions
becomes intensely significant when connected with the drama of the
struggle of social beliefs and ideals. Philosophy which surrenders its
somewhat barren monopoly of dealings with Ultimate and Absolute Reality
will find a compensation in enlightening the moral forces which move
mankind and in contributing to the aspirations of men to attain to a
more ordered and intelligent happiness.