RECONSTRUCTION AS AFFECTING SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
How can philosophic change seriously affect social philosophy? As far as
fundamentals are concerned, every view and combination appears to have
been formulated already. Society is composed of individuals: this
obvious and basic fact no philosophy, whatever its pretensions to
novelty, can question or alter. Hence these three alternatives: Society
must exist for the sake of individuals; or individuals must have their
ends and ways of living set for them by society; or else society and
individuals are correlative, organic, to one another, society requiring
the service and subordination of individuals and at the same time
existing to serve them. Beyond these three views, none seems to be
logically conceivable. Moreover, while each of the three types includes
many subspecies and variations within itself, yet the changes seem to
have been so thoroughly rung that at most only minor variations are now
possible.
Especially would it seem true that the "organic" conception meets all
the objections to the extreme individualistic and extreme socialistic
theories, avoiding the errors alike of Plato and Bentham. Just because
society is composed of individuals, it would seem that individuals and
the associative relations that hold them together must be of coequal
importance. Without strong and competent individuals, the bonds and ties
that form society have nothing to lay hold on. Apart from associations
with one another, individuals are isolated from one another and fade and
wither; or are opposed to one another and their conflicts injure
individual development. Law, state, church, family, friendship,
industrial association, these and other institutions and arrangements
are necessary in order that individuals may grow and find their specific
capacities and functions. Without their aid and support human life is,
as Hobbes said, brutish, solitary, nasty.
We plunge into the heart of the matter, by asserting that these various
theories suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the
logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be
brought. What we want light upon is this or that group of individuals,
this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or
social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally
accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and
their dialectical relationship to one another. The discussion goes on in
terms of _the_ state, _the_ individual; the nature of institutions as
such, society in general.
We need guidance in dealing with particular perplexities in domestic
life, and are met by dissertations on the Family or by assertions of the
sacredness of individual Personality. We want to know about the worth of
the institution of private property as it operates under given
conditions of definite time and place. We meet with the reply of
Proudhon that property generally is theft, or with that of Hegel that
the realization of will is the end of all institutions, and that private
ownership as the expression of mastery of personality over physical
nature is a necessary element in such realization. Both answers may have
a certain suggestiveness in connection with specific situations. But the
conceptions are not proffered for what they may be worth in connection
with special historic phenomena. They are general answers supposed to
have a universal meaning that covers and dominates all particulars.
Hence they do not assist inquiry. They close it. They are not
instrumentalities to be employed and tested in clarifying concrete
social difficulties. They are ready-made principles to be imposed upon
particulars in order to determine their nature. They tell us about _the_
state when we want to know about _some_ state. But the implication is
that what is said about _the_ state applies to any state that we happen
to wish to know about.
In transferring the issue from concrete situations to definitions and
conceptual deductions, the effect, especially of the organic theory, is
to supply the apparatus for intellectual justification of the
established order. Those most interested in practical social progress
and the emancipation of groups from oppression have turned a cold
shoulder to the organic theory. The effect, if not the intention, of
German idealism as applied in social philosophy was to provide a bulwark
for the maintenance of the political _status quo_ against the tide of
radical ideas coming from revolutionary France. Although Hegel asserted
in explicit form that the end of states and institutions is to further
the realization of the freedom of all, his effect was to consecrate the
Prussian State and to enshrine bureaucratic absolutism. Was this
apologetic tendency accidental, or did it spring from something in the
logic of the notions that were employed?
Surely the latter. If we talk about _the_ state and _the_ individual,
rather than about this or that political organization and this or that
group of needy and suffering human beings, the tendency is to throw the
glamor and prestige, the meaning and value attached to the general
notion, over the concrete situation and thereby to cover up the defects
of the latter and disguise the need of serious reforms. The meanings
which are found in the general notions are injected into the particulars
that come under them. Quite properly so if we once grant the logic of
rigid universals under which the concrete cases have to be subsumed in
order to be understood and explained.
Again, the tendency of the organic point of view is to minimize the
significance of specific conflicts. Since the individual and the state
or social institution are but two sides of the same reality, since they
are already reconciled in principle and conception, the conflict in any
particular case can be but apparent. Since in theory the individual and
the state are reciprocally necessary and helpful to one another, why pay
much attention to the fact that in _this_ state a whole group of
individuals are suffering from oppressive conditions? In "reality" their
interests cannot be in conflict with those of the state to which they
belong; the opposition is only superficial and casual. Capital and labor
cannot "really" conflict because each is an organic necessity to the
other, and both to the organized community as a whole. There cannot
"really" be any sex-problem because men and women are indispensable both
to one another and to the state. In his day, Aristotle could easily
employ the logic of general concepts superior to individuals to show
that the institution of slavery was in the interests both of the state
and of the slave class. Even if the intention is not to justify the
existing order the effect is to divert attention from special
situations. Rationalistic logic formerly made men careless in
observation of the concrete in physical philosophy. It now operates to
depress and retard observation in specific social phenomena. The social
philosopher, dwelling in the region of his concepts, "solves" problems
by showing the relationship of ideas, instead of helping men solve
problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used and
tested in projects of reform.
Meanwhile, of course, the concrete troubles and evils remain. They are
not magically waived out of existence because in theory society is
organic. The region of concrete difficulties, where the assistance of
intelligent method for tentative plans for experimentation is urgently
needed, is precisely where intelligence fails to operate. In this region
of the specific and concrete, men are thrown back upon the crudest
empiricism, upon short-sighted opportunism and the matching of brute
forces. In theory, the particulars are all neatly disposed of; they come
under their appropriate heading and category; they are labelled and go
into an orderly pigeon-hole in a systematic filing cabinet, labelled
political science or sociology. But in empirical fact they remain as
perplexing, confused and unorganized as they were before. So they are
dealt with not by even an endeavor at scientific method but by blind
rule of thumb, citation of precedents, considerations of immediate
advantage, smoothing things over, use of coercive force and the clash of
personal ambitions. The world still survives; it has therefore got on
somehow:--so much cannot be denied. The method of trial and error and
competition of selfishnesses has somehow wrought out many improvements.
But social theory nevertheless exists as an idle luxury rather than as a
guiding method of inquiry and planning. In the question of methods
concerned with reconstruction of special situations rather than in any
refinements in the general concepts of institution, individuality,
state, freedom, law, order, progress, etc., lies the true impact of
philosophical reconstruction.
Consider the conception of the individual self. The individualistic
school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
was empirical in intent. It based its individualism, philosophically
speaking, upon the belief that individuals are alone real, that classes
and organizations are secondary and derived. They are artificial, while
individuals are natural. In what way then can individualism be said to
come under the animadversions that have been passed? To say the defect
was that this school overlooked those connections with other persons
which are a part of the constitution of every individual is true as far
as it goes; but unfortunately it rarely goes beyond the point of just
that wholesale justification of institutions which has been criticized.
The real difficulty is that the individual is regarded as something
_given_, something already there. Consequently, he can only be
something to be catered to, something whose pleasures are to be
magnified and possessions multiplied. When the individual is taken as
something given already, anything that can be done to him or for him it
can only be by way of external impressions and belongings: sensations of
pleasure and pain, comforts, securities. Now it is true that social
arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man
is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and
progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for
individuals, not even happiness. They are means of _creating_
individuals. Only in the physical sense of physical bodies that to the
senses are separate is individuality an original datum. Individuality in
a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means
initiative, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of
responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts, but
achievements. As achievements, they are not absolute but relative to the
use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the
environment.
The import of this conception comes out in considering the fortunes of
the idea of self-interest. All members of the empirical school
emphasized this idea. It was the sole motive of mankind. Virtue was to
be attained by making benevolent action profitable to the individual;
social arrangements were to be reformed so that egoism and altruistic
consideration of others would be identified. Moralists of the opposite
school were not backward in pointing out the evils of any theory that
reduced both morals and political science to means of calculating
self-interest. Consequently they threw the whole idea of interest
overboard as obnoxious to morals. The effect of this reaction was to
strengthen the cause of authority and political obscurantism. When the
play of interest is eliminated, what remains? What concrete moving
forces can be found? Those who identified the self with something
ready-made and its interest with acquisition of pleasure and profit took
the most effective means possible to reinstate the logic of abstract
conceptions of law, justice, sovereignty, freedom, etc.--all of those
vague general ideas that for all their seeming rigidity can be
manipulated by any clever politician to cover up his designs and to make
the worse seem the better cause. Interests are specific and dynamic;
they are the natural terms of any concrete social thinking. But they are
damned beyond recovery when they are identified with the things of a
petty selfishness. They can be employed as vital terms only when the
self is seen to be in process, and interest to be a name for whatever is
concerned in furthering its movement.
The same logic applies to the old dispute of whether reform should
start with the individual or with institutions. When the self is
regarded as something complete within itself, then it is readily argued
that only internal moralistic changes are of importance in general
reform. Institutional changes are said to be merely external. They may
add conveniences and comforts to life, but they cannot effect moral
improvements. The result is to throw the burden for social improvement
upon free-will in its most impossible form. Moreover, social and
economic passivity are encouraged. Individuals are led to concentrate in
moral introspection upon their own vices and virtues, and to neglect the
character of the environment. Morals withdraw from active concern with
detailed economic and political conditions. Let us perfect ourselves
within, and in due season changes in society will come of themselves is
the teaching. And while saints are engaged in introspection, burly
sinners run the world. But when self-hood is perceived to be an active
process it is also seen that social modifications are the only means of
the creation of changed personalities. Institutions are viewed in their
educative effect:--with reference to the types of individuals they
foster. The interest in individual moral improvement and the social
interest in objective reform of economic and political conditions are
identified. And inquiry into the meaning of social arrangements gets
definite point and direction. We are led to ask what the specific
stimulating, fostering and nurturing power of each specific social
arrangement may be. The old-time separation between politics and morals
is abolished at its root.
Consequently we cannot be satisfied with the general statement that
society and the state is organic to the individual. The question is one
of specific causations. Just what response does _this_ social
arrangement, political or economic, evoke, and what effect does it have
upon the disposition of those who engage in it? Does it release
capacity? If so, how widely? Among a few, with a corresponding
depression in others, or in an extensive and equitable way? Is the
capacity which is set free also directed in some coherent way, so that
it becomes a power, or its manifestation spasmodic and capricious? Since
responses are of an indefinite diversity of kind, these inquiries have
to be detailed and specific. Are men's senses rendered more delicately
sensitive and appreciative, or are they blunted and dulled by this and
that form of social organization? Are their minds trained so that the
hands are more deft and cunning? Is curiosity awakened or blunted? What
is its quality: is it merely esthetic, dwelling on the forms and
surfaces of things or is it also an intellectual searching into their
meaning? Such questions as these (as well as the more obvious ones about
the qualities conventionally labelled moral), become the starting-points
of inquiries about every institution of the community when it is
recognized that individuality is not originally given but is created
under the influences of associated life. Like utilitarianism, the theory
subjects every form of organization to continual scrutiny and criticism.
But instead of leading us to ask what it does in the way of causing
pains and pleasures to individuals already in existence, it inquires
what is done to release specific capacities and co-ordinate them into
working powers. What sort of individuals are created?
The waste of mental energy due to conducting discussion of social
affairs in terms of conceptual generalities is astonishing. How far
would the biologist and the physician progress if when the subject of
respiration is under consideration, discussion confined itself to
bandying back and forth the concepts of organ and organism:--If for
example one school thought respiration could be known and understood by
insisting upon the fact that it occurs in an individual body and
therefore is an "individual" phenomenon, while an opposite school
insisted that it is simply one function in organic interaction with
others and can be known or understood therefore only by reference to
other functions taken in an equally general or wholesale way? Each
proposition is equally true and equally futile. What is needed is
specific inquiries into a multitude of specific structures and
interactions. Not only does the solemn reiteration of categories of
individual and organic or social whole not further these definite and
detailed inquiries, but it checks them. It detains thought within
pompous and sonorous generalities wherein controversy is as inevitable
as it is incapable of solution. It is true enough that if cells were not
in vital interaction with one another, they could neither conflict nor
co-operate. But the fact of the existence of an "organic" social group,
instead of answering any questions merely marks the fact that questions
exist: Just what conflicts and what co-operations occur, and what are
their specific causes and consequences? But because of the persistence
within social philosophy of the order of ideas that has been expelled
from natural philosophy, even sociologists take conflict or co-operation
as general categories upon which to base their science, and condescend
to empirical facts only for illustrations. As a rule, their chief
"problem" is a purely dialectical one, covered up by a thick quilt of
empirical anthropological and historical citations: How do individuals
unite to form society? How are individuals socially controlled? And the
problem is justly called dialectical because it springs from antecedent
conceptions of "individual" and "social."
Just as "individual" is not one thing, but is a blanket term for the
immense variety of specific reactions, habits, dispositions and powers
of human nature that are evoked, and confirmed under the influences of
associated life, so with the term "social." Society is one word, but
infinitely many things. It covers all the ways in which by associating
together men share their experiences, and build up common interests and
aims; street gangs, schools for burglary, clans, social cliques, trades
unions, joint stock corporations, villages and international alliances.
The new method takes effect in substituting inquiry into these specific,
changing and relative facts (relative to problems and purposes, not
metaphysically relative) for solemn manipulation of general notions.
Strangely enough, the current conception of the state is a case in
point. For one direct influence of the classic order of fixed species
arranged in hierarchical order is the attempt of German political
philosophy in the nineteenth century to enumerate a definite number of
institutions, each having its own essential and immutable meaning; to
arrange them in an order of "evolution" which corresponds with the
dignity and rank of the respective meanings. The National State was
placed at the top as the consummation and culmination, and also the
basis of all other institutions.
Hegel is a striking example of this industry, but he is far from the
only one. Many who have bitterly quarrelled with him, have only differed
as to the details of the "evolution" or as to the particular meaning to
be attributed as essential _Begriff_ to some one of the enumerated
institutions. The quarrel has been bitter only because the underlying
premises were the same. Particularly have many schools of thought,
varying even more widely in respect to method and conclusion, agreed
upon the final consummating position of the state. They may not go as
far as Hegel in making the sole meaning of history to be the evolution
of National Territorial States, each of which embodies more than the
prior form of the essential meaning or conception of _the_ State and
consequently displaces it, until we arrive at that triumph of historical
evolution, the Prussian State. But they do not question the unique and
supreme position of the State in the social hierarchy. Indeed that
conception has hardened into unquestionable dogma under the title of
sovereignty.
There can be no doubt of the tremendously important rôle played by the
modern territorial national state. The formation of these states has
been the centre of modern political history. France, Great Britain,
Spain were the first peoples to attain nationalistic organization, but
in the nineteenth century their example was followed by Japan, Germany
and Italy, to say nothing of a large number of smaller states, Greece,
Servia, Bulgaria, etc. As everybody knows, one of the most important
phases of the recent world war was the struggle to complete the
nationalistic movement, resulting in the erection of Bohemia, Poland,
etc., into independent states, and the accession of Armenia, Palestine,
etc., to the rank of candidates.
The struggle for the supremacy of the State over other forms of
organization was directed against the power of minor districts,
provinces, principalities, against the dispersion of power among feudal
lords as well as, in some countries, against the pretensions of an
ecclesiastic potentate. The "State" represents the conspicuous
culmination of the great movement of social integration and
consolidation taking place in the last few centuries, tremendously
accelerated by the concentrating and combining forces of steam and
electricity. Naturally, inevitably, the students of political science
have been preoccupied with this great historic phenomenon, and their
intellectual activities have been directed to its systematic
formulation. Because the contemporary progressive movement was to
establish the unified state against the inertia of minor social units
and against the ambitions of rivals for power, political theory
developed the dogma of the sovereignty of the national state, internally
and externally.
As the work of integration and consolidation reaches its climax, the
question arises, however, whether the national state, once it is firmly
established and no longer struggling against strong foes, is not just an
instrumentality for promoting and protecting other and more voluntary
forms of association, rather than a supreme end in itself. Two actual
phenomena may be pointed to in support of an affirmative answer. Along
with the development of the larger, more inclusive and more unified
organization of the state has gone the emancipation of individuals from
restrictions and servitudes previously imposed by custom and class
status. But the individuals freed from external and coercive bonds have
not remained isolated. Social molecules have at once recombined in new
associations and organizations. Compulsory associations have been
replaced by voluntary ones; rigid organizations by those more amenable
to human choice and purposes--more directly changeable at will. What
upon one side looks like a movement toward individualism, turns out to
be really a movement toward multiplying all kinds and varieties of
associations: Political parties, industrial corporations, scientific and
artistic organizations, trade unions, churches, schools, clubs and
societies without number, for the cultivation of every conceivable
interest that men have in common. As they develop in number and
importance, the state tends to become more and more a regulator and
adjuster among them; defining the limits of their actions, preventing
and settling conflicts.
Its "supremacy" approximates that of the conductor of an orchestra, who
makes no music himself but who harmonizes the activities of those who in
producing it are doing the thing intrinsically worth while. The state
remains highly important--but its importance consists more and more in
its power to foster and co-ordinate the activities of voluntary
groupings. Only nominally is it in any modern community the end for the
sake of which all the other societies and organizations exist. Groupings
for promoting the diversity of goods that men share have become the real
social units. They occupy the place which traditional theory has claimed
either for mere isolated individuals or for the supreme and single
political organization. Pluralism is well ordained in present political
practice and demands a modification of hierarchical and monistic theory.
Every combination of human forces that adds its own contribution of
value to life has for that reason its own unique and ultimate worth. It
cannot be degraded into a means to glorify the State. One reason for the
increased demoralization of war is that it forces the State into an
abnormally supreme position.
The other concrete fact is the opposition between the claim of
independent sovereignty in behalf of the territorial national state and
the growth of international and what have well been called
trans-national interests. The weal and woe of any modern state is bound
up with that of others. Weakness, disorder, false principles on the part
of any state are not confined within its boundaries. They spread and
infect other states. The same is true of economic, artistic and
scientific advances. Moreover the voluntary associations just spoken of
do not coincide with political boundaries. Associations of
mathematicians, chemists, astronomers; business corporations, labor
organizations, churches are trans-national because the interests they
represent are worldwide. In such ways as these, internationalism is not
an aspiration but a fact, not a sentimental ideal but a force. Yet these
interests are cut across and thrown out of gear by the traditional
doctrine of exclusive national sovereignty. It is the vogue of this
doctrine, or dogma, that presents the strongest barrier to the effective
formation of an international mind which alone agrees with the moving
forces of present-day labor, commerce, science, art and religion.
Society, as was said, is many associations not a single organization.
Society means association; coming together in joint intercourse and
action for the better realization of any form of experience which is
augmented and confirmed by being shared. Hence there are as many
associations as there are goods which are enhanced by being mutually
communicated and participated in. And these are literally indefinite in
number. Indeed, capacity to endure publicity and communication is the
test by which it is decided whether a pretended good is genuine or
spurious. Moralists have always insisted upon the fact that good is
universal, objective, not just private, particular. But too often, like
Plato, they have been content with a metaphysical universality or, like
Kant, with a logical universality. Communication, sharing, joint
participation are the only actual ways of universalizing the moral law
and end. We insisted at the last hour upon the unique character of every
intrinsic good. But the counterpart of this proposition is that the
situation in which a good is consciously realized is not one of
transient sensations or private appetites but one of sharing and
communication--public, social. Even the hermit communes with gods or
spirits; even misery loves company; and the most extreme selfishness
includes a band of followers or some partner to share in the attained
good. Universalization means socialization, the extension of the area
and range of those who share in a good.
The increasing acknowledgment that goods exist and endure only through
being communicated and that association is the means of conjoint sharing
lies back of the modern sense of humanity and democracy. It is the
saving salt in altruism and philanthropy, which without this factor
degenerate into moral condescension and moral interference, taking the
form of trying to regulate the affairs of others under the guise of
doing them good or of conferring upon them some right as if it were a
gift of charity. It follows that organization is never an end in itself.
It is a means of promoting _association_, of multiplying effective
points of contact between persons, directing their intercourse into the
modes of greatest fruitfulness.
The tendency to treat organization as an end in itself is responsible
for all the exaggerated theories in which individuals are subordinated
to some institution to which is given the noble name of society. Society
is the _process_ of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas,
emotions, values are transmitted and made common. To this active
process, both the individual and the institutionally organized may truly
be said to be subordinate. The individual is subordinate because except
in and through communication of experience from and to others, he
remains dumb, merely sentient, a brute animal. Only in association with
fellows does he become a conscious centre of experience. Organization,
which is what traditional theory has generally meant by the term Society
or State, is also subordinate because it becomes static, rigid,
institutionalized whenever it is not employed to facilitate and enrich
the contacts of human beings with one another.
The long-time controversy between rights and duties, law and freedom is
another version of the strife between the Individual and Society as
fixed concepts. Freedom for an individual means growth, ready change
when modification is required.
It signifies an active process, that of release of capacity from
whatever hems it in. But since society can develop only as new resources
are put at its disposal, it is absurd to suppose that freedom has
positive significance for individuality but negative meaning for social
interests. Society is strong, forceful, stable against accident only
when all its members can function to the limit of their capacity. Such
functioning cannot be achieved without allowing a leeway of
experimentation beyond the limits of established and sanctioned custom.
A certain amount of overt confusion and irregularity is likely to
accompany the granting of the margin of liberty without which capacity
cannot find itself. But socially as well as scientifically the great
thing is not to avoid mistakes but to have them take place under
conditions such that they can be utilized to increase intelligence in
the future.
If British liberal social philosophy tended, true to the spirit of its
atomistic empiricism, to make freedom and the exercise of rights ends in
themselves, the remedy is not to be found in recourse to a philosophy of
fixed obligations and authoritative law such as characterized German
political thinking. The latter, as events have demonstrated, is
dangerous because of its implicit menace to the free self-determination
of other social groups. But it is also weak internally when put to the
final test. In its hostility to the free experimentation and power of
choice of the individual in determining social affairs, it limits the
capacity of many or most individuals to share effectively in social
operations, and thereby deprives society of the full contribution of all
its members. The best guarantee of collective efficiency and power is
liberation and use of the diversity of individual capacities in
initiative, planning, foresight, vigor and endurance. Personality must
be educated, and personality cannot be educated by confining its
operations to technical and specialized things, or to the less important
relationships of life. Full education comes only when there is a
responsible share on the part of each person, in proportion to capacity,
in shaping the aims and policies of the social groups to which he
belongs. This fact fixes the significance of democracy. It cannot be
conceived as a sectarian or racial thing nor as a consecration of some
form of government which has already attained constitutional sanction.
It is but a name for the fact that human nature is developed only when
its elements take part in directing things which are common, things for
the sake of which men and women form groups--families, industrial
companies, governments, churches, scientific associations and so on. The
principle holds as much of one form of association, say in industry and
commerce, as it does in government. The identification of democracy with
political democracy which is responsible for most of its failures is,
however, based upon the traditional ideas which make the individual and
the state ready-made entities in themselves.
As the new ideas find adequate expression in social life, they will be
absorbed into a moral background, and will the ideas and beliefs
themselves be deepened and be unconsciously transmitted and sustained.
They will color the imagination and temper the desires and affections.
They will not form a set of ideas to be expounded, reasoned out and
argumentatively supported, but will be a spontaneous way of envisaging
life. Then they will take on religious value. The religious spirit will
be revivified because it will be in harmony with men's unquestioned
scientific beliefs and their ordinary day-by-day social activities. It
will not be obliged to lead a timid, half-concealed and half-apologetic
life because tied to scientific ideas and social creeds that are
continuously eaten into and broken down. But especially will the ideas
and beliefs themselves be deepened and intensified because spontaneously
fed by emotion and translated into imaginative vision and fine art,
while they are now maintained by more or less conscious effort, by
deliberate reflection, by taking thought. They are technical and
abstract just because they are not as yet carried as matter of course by
imagination and feelings.
We began by pointing out that European philosophy arose when
intellectual methods and scientific results moved away from social
traditions which had consolidated and embodied the fruits of spontaneous
desire and fancy. It was pointed out that philosophy had ever since had
the problem of adjusting the dry, thin and meagre scientific standpoint
with the obstinately persisting body of warm and abounding imaginative
beliefs. Conceptions of possibility, progress, free movement and
infinitely diversified opportunity have been suggested by modern
science. But until they have displaced from _imagination_ the heritage
of the immutable and the once-for-all ordered and systematized, the
ideas of mechanism and matter will lie like a dead weight upon the
emotions, paralyzing religion and distorting art. When the liberation of
capacity no longer seems a menace to organization and established
institutions, something that cannot be avoided practically and yet
something that is a threat to conservation of the most precious values
of the past, when the liberating of human capacity operates as a
socially creative force, art will not be a luxury, a stranger to the
daily occupations of making a living. Making a living economically
speaking, will be at one with making a life that is worth living. And
when the emotional force, the mystic force one might say, of
communication, of the miracle of shared life and shared experience is
spontaneously felt, the hardness and crudeness of contemporary life will
be bathed in the light that never was on land or sea.
Poetry, art, religion are precious things. They cannot be maintained by
lingering in the past and futilely wishing to restore what the movement
of events in science, industry and politics has destroyed. They are an
out-flowering of thought and desires that unconsciously converge into a
disposition of imagination as a result of thousands and thousands of
daily episodes and contact. They cannot be willed into existence or
coerced into being. The wind of the spirit bloweth where it listeth and
the kingdom of God in such things does not come with observation. But
while it is impossible to retain and recover by deliberate volition old
sources of religion and art that have been discredited, it is possible
to expedite the development of the vital sources of a religion and art
that are yet to be. Not indeed by action directly aimed at their
production, but by substituting faith in the active tendencies of the
day for dread and dislike of them, and by the courage of intelligence to
follow whither social and scientific changes direct us. We are weak
today in ideal matters because intelligence is divorced from aspiration.
The bare force of circumstance compels us onwards in the daily detail of
our beliefs and acts, but our deeper thoughts and desires turn
backwards. When philosophy shall have co-operated with the course of
events and made clear and coherent the meaning of the daily detail,
science and emotion will interpenetrate, practice and imagination will
embrace. Poetry and religious feeling will be the unforced flowers of
life. To further this articulation and revelation of the meanings of the
current course of events is the task and problem of philosophy in days
of transition.
INDEX
Absolute reality, 23, 27
Absolutism, 97, 190;
Kant and, 99
Abstract definition, 20
Abstractions, 149-150, 174
Absurdities, 10
Achievements, 194
Action, kind of, 80
Adult life, 185, 186
America, 41
Amoeba, 91
Animals, dramatisation in primitive life of man, 4
Antiquity, 33
Apprehension, 142
Aquinas, 55, 106
Argumentation, 31, 132
Aristotle, 13, 17, 19, 55;
Bacon's charge against, 30-31, 36;
distinction in ends, 171;
experience, 79, 80;
forms, 105;
on change, 107;
on philosophy as contemplation, 109, 110;
on slavery, 191;
theory of the state, 44;
ultimate reality, 106
Art, 34, 103, 211, 212
Artisan, 15;
knowledge, 110
Associations, 205;
voluntary, 203
Astronomers, 65, 113
Astronomy, 75
Athenians, 13, 19
Augustine, St., 111
Authority, 48, 139, 195;
final, 161;
seat of, 160.
_See also_ Final good
Bacon, Francis, 28, 81, 97;
criticism of the learning of his day, 29-30;
experience, 97-98;
"knowledge is power," 29;
summary of ideas, 29
Being, perfect, 111
Being and non-being, 107
Beliefs and facts, 12
Bentham, 166, 182, 188
Bergson, 71
Berkeley, 50
Biology, 75, 84
Bliss, 111, 112
Bosanquet, 134
Bradley, 107
Bruno, 66
Business, 41, 43, 183
Butler, Bishop, 21
Capital, 43
Capital and labour, 191
Capitalism, 41, 182
Castes, material, 59
Casuistry, 166
Causation, 63
Causes, 59, 60
Certainty, 21, 22
Change, ancient idea of, 57;
existing view, 113;
law of the universe, 61;
Plato and Aristotle on, 107;
progress and, 116
Chemistry, 75
Child life, 91-92, 184
Christian mediaeval philosophy, 17, 19
Christian theology, 111
Church, 47;
universal, 45
Classes, 75, 152, 155;
in the ancient conception of the world, 59
Classic conception of philosophy, 17, 22, 24, 74, 105
Classification, 152, 169
Common sense, 100
Communication at a distance, 118, 120
Comte, Auguste, 10
Conceptions, 81, 144, 145;
reconstruction in, moral, 161;
truth, 156
Concrete cases, in morals, 161;
in social philosophy, 188
Concreteness, 150
Condillac, 81
Conduct, 80;
right course, 163
Conflict, 108, 138, 140;
of ends, 166
Conscience, 46
Consequences, investigating, 163-164
Conservatism, 18, 33, 40, 100
Constant, 61
Contemplation, 109, 111
Contract theory of the state, 45
Control, 42, 64
Co-operation in research, 37
Cosmogonies and cosmologies, 9
Cosmology, 70, 75
Craftsmen, 12, 13
Criteria, 77
Crusades, 39
Cults, 8;
consolidation, 9
Custom, 17, 161
Dante, 55
Darwin, 75
Deduction, 148
Delusions, 139
Democracy, 47, 186, 206;
of facts, 66;
significance, 209
Demonstration, 20, 21, 31;
discovery vs., 32
Descartes, 50
Desires, 110, 111;
frustration, 104
Details, 141
Development, Aristotle's use of term, 57, 58
Diagnosis, 142
Direction, 176
Disagreeable, 103
Discipline, 103, 104, 184
Discord, 108
Discovery, contacts of 16th and 17th centuries, 39;
demonstration vs., 32;
logic of, 31, 33;
moral, 174
Distance, 118-119, 120
Doctrines, 8;
consolidation, 9
Dogma, 145, 159
Dreams, 119, 120, 139;
world of, 7
Dualism, 173
Duties and rights, 207
Earth, ancient conception, 55;
relation to universe, 66
Economic ends, 171-172
Education, 125, 183, 209
Efficient cause, 59, 60
Emotion, 103, 210
Empirical and rational, 81, 87
Empiricists, 78, 82
Ends, conflicting, 166;
fixed, 70;
intrinsic and instrumental, 170, 172-173;
means and, 72-73;
values, 175
English empiricism, 99
Environment, 10;
life and, 84
Epistemology, 49, 70, 123, 126
Errors, 35
Esthetic and practical, 66
Estheticism, 115-116, 117, 180;
science and, reconciling, 127
Ether, 55, 56
Ethical theory, 161
Europe, nationalistic movement, 201;
social cause of intellectual revolution in 16th and 17th
centuries, 38-39
Evil, problem of, 177
Evolution, in Aristotle, 58;
of the state, 200-201
Existence, two realms, 22
Experience, 32;
as a guide in science and moral life, 78;
basis of old notion of, 79;
changed conceptions, 77;
classic notion and modern, 81;
combined doing and suffering, 86;
evil result of unimaginative conception of, 100-101;
Greek, 79;
modern appeal to, 48;
new conception, 83;
Plato, 92;
principles and, 48;
self-regulative, 94-95;
true "stuff" of, 91
Experimental method, 13
Experimentation, 42
Exploration, 39, 40
Facing facts, 140, 141, 143
Facts, 10, 98
Falsity, 158
Family principle, 189;
in the world at large, 61-62
Fanaticism, 168
Fancy. _See_ Imagination
Fear, 40
Feudalism, 43, 45;
of the universe in ancient conception, 59, 61-62
Fighting, 15
Final cause, 59, 60, 68
Final good, 161-162, 183;
existence of a single good questioned, 162
Fine arts, 126
Finite, 107
Finite and infinite, 66
Fire, 11, 56, 86
Fixed ends, 165
Flux, 57, 108
Formal cause, 59, 60
Forms of Aristotle, 105
Free will, 196
Freedom, law and, 207;
religious, 46
Future, 48
Future aim of philosophy, 26
General notions, in morals, 161;
in social philosophy, 188
Generalities, 174;
social affairs and, 198
Generalisations, 10, 151
Geology, 75
German political philosophy, 200, 208-209
German rationalism, 99
Germans, system, order, docility, 98-99
Germany, 19
God, 10, 109
Golden Age, 48
Good. _See_ Final good
Goodness, 179
Greeks, 9, 13, 19, 66, 67, 126;
ethical theory, 161;
religion, 105;
science and arts, 93
Growth, 184;
of knowledge, 31;
moral, 177
Happiness, 179
Healthy living, 166, 167, 177
Heavens, ancient conception, 56
Hegel, 19, 106, 189, 190;
conception of the state, 200, 201;
logic, 134
Helvetius, 81
Hierarchical order, 59
"Higher" ends, 172
Hindoos, 126
History, Hegel's conception, 201
History of philosophy, 25
Hobbes, 88, 188
_Homo faber_, 71
Human aims, 42, 43
Human life, "real" and "ideal," a live issue, 128
Humanism and naturalism, 174
Humanity, 206
Hume, 50, 83, 89
Hypotheses, 22, 145
Hysteria, 139
Ideal, changed conceptions, 103;
problem of relation to the real, 130;
real and, a human issue, 128
Ideal realm, classic and modern conceptions contrasted, 118
Idealism, 129;
epistemological, 49, 51;
theological, 50;
tragic kind, 129-130
Ideality, one with reality, 111;
philosophic conception, 106
Ideas of Plato, 105
Idols, 36
Ills, 169;
philosophy and, 177-178
Imagination, 211;
empirical knowledge and, 73, 74;
reshaping power, 103, 106
Independence, 110;
social, 185
India, 41
Individual, 36, 45, 51;
concept as something given, 193;
in social and moral sense, 194;
social and, 199;
state and, 190, 191
Individualism, 50;
political, 45, 46;
religious, 46;
religious and moral, 46
Induction, 34
Industrial revolution and scientific revolution, 38, 41
Industry, movements, 47;
science and, 38, 41, 42
Infinite, 66, 67
Initiative 46, 209
Innate ideas, 35, 82
Inquiry, 174;
free, 146;
impartial, 147;
methods in moral ills, 170
Insincerity, 20
Instability, 107
Institutions, 196;
true starting-points of inquiry about, 197
Instrumental ends, 171
Intellect, 6
Intellectual somnambulism, 140
Intellectualism, 117
Intelligence, 36, 51;
as inquiry into consequences, 163-164;
definition, 96
Interest, 194-195
International interests, 204, 205
Intrinsic good, 170, 206
Introspection, 196
Invention, 39, 42, 49, 122
Investigation, 147
_Ipse dixit_ method, 166
Irresponsibility, 97
James, William, 21;
Pragmatism, 38
Judea, 9
Judgment, 133;
moral, 176;
standards, 175
Kant, 50, 83, 98, 206;
his philosophy and German character, 98-99
Kinship, 62
Knowledge, conception as beholding, 115;
degrees, 108;
empirical as organ of imagination, 73, 74;
existing practice, 112;
modern view of right way to get it, 113;
positive, 12;
positive vs. tradition, 16;
practical and operative, 121, 122;
sensations and, 87, 88, 89;
spectator conception, 112, 117
"Knowledge is power," 29, 42, 51
Law, 61, 64;
freedom and, 207;
reason and, 98.
_See also_ Final good
Learning, Bacon's three kinds, 29
Licentiousness, 163
Life, 167, 211;
environment and, 84-85
Literary culture, 39
Locke, 35, 50, 81, 89, 152;
philosophic empiricism, 82
Logic, a science and an art, 135;
apparatus, 20, 21;
character, 132, 134;
importance, 138;
in morals and politics, 138;
inconsistencies, 134;
new, 36;
of discovery, 33;
of discovery vs. that of argumentation, 31;
theory, chaotic state, 133
Logical system, 9
Lotze, 134
Making a living, 211
Man, perfectibility, 49;
primitive, 4, 5;
savage and civilized, 85;
tool-maker, 71
Marcus Aurelius, 106
Materialism, 50, 70, 73, 171, 182
Mathematics, 137, 149
Matter, 72, 211
Means and ends, 72-73
Mechanics, 67, 69;
Greeks and, 67
Mechanism, 211
Mechanisation of nature, 71-72
Mediaeval Christianity, 17, 19, 126
Meliorism, 178
Memory, 1, 6, 103;
emotional character, 2;
individual and group, 8;
primitive, 3
Metaphysics, 17, 124, 126
Methods, 149;
social philosophy, 193;
true, 32
Middle Ages, 47, 64, 132
Military art, 15
Mill, J. S., 132
Mind, pure, 111
Miracles, 125
Mistakes, 175
Modern thought, 52;
Bacon as founder, 28;
early, 49, 50.
_See also_ Thought
Mohammedans, 39
Moral ends, 169
Moral life, 165
Moral science. _See under_ Science
Morality, pragmatic rule, 163;
standard of judgment, 176
Morals, 126, 169;
politics and, 197
National state, 200;
end or instrument, 202-203;
rôle of the modern, 201
Nationalistic movement, 201
Natural Science. _See under_ Science
Naturalism and humanism, 174
Nature, contrast of ancient and modern conceptions, 53-54;
inquiry into, 32, 37, 48, 49;
loss of poetry when considered as mechanism, 69;
profound change in man's attitude to, 115;
value of mechanisation, 71-72;
web imposed on, 35-36
Neglect, 97
Neo-Platonism, 111
New World, 39
Non-being, 107
Noumenal reality, 23
_Nous_, 36
Obliviscence of the disagreeable, 103
Observation, 140
Optimism, 178
Opportunity, 211
Organic society, 187
Organisms, 86
Organisation, 206-207
Oriental nations, 127
Origin of philosophies, 5, 18, 24, 25
Pantheon, Greek, 105
Past, 212
Perfectibility of mankind, 49
Perfection, 177
Personality, 47, 189, 209
Persuasion, 31
Pessimism, 178
Phariseeism, 176
Phenomenal reality, 23
Philosophy, emancipation, 123;
function, 111, 122;
future aim and scope, 26;
hard and fast alternatives of English and German schools, 99-100;
history, 25;
opportunities, 49;
origin, 5, 18, 24, 25;
practical nature, 121;
proper province, 21, 124;
work, 18
Physician, 168
Physics, 75
Plato, 13, 14, 17, 19, 188, 205;
dramatic sense, 15;
experience, 79, 92;
ideas, ideal realm, 105;
on change, 107;
social arts, 94;
ultimate reality, 106
Pleasure, 181
Plotinus, 106
Pluralism, 204
Poetry, 7, 8, 103, 212
Political changes, 43
Political organisation, 44
Politics, 125;
morals and, 197;
movements, 47
Possession of knowledge, 31
Potentiality, Aristotle's use of term, 57, 58
Practical and esthetic, 66
Pragmatism, 38
Pretensions, 21
Primitive man, 4
Principles, 81, 163;
criteria of experience, 48
Probability, 21
Production, 181
Progress, 42, 48, 116, 211;
Bacon and, 32, 34;
economic and moral, contrast, 125
Proof, 20
Property, 182, 189
Protestantism, 46
Proudhon, 189
Prussian State, 190, 201
Psychology, 83, 135;
change in, 84;
malicious, 82
Pure reason, 78
Questioning, 17. _See also_ Inquiry
Radicalism, 18, 19, 100
Rank, 63
Rationalism, 97;
rigidity, 98
Rationalists 87, 88, 89
Rationalisation, 97, 102
Real, changed conceptions, 103;
ideal and, a human issue, 128;
problem of relation to the ideal, 130
Reality, 23, 27;
classic conception, 105;
nomenal vs. phenomenal, 23;
ultimate, 106;
ultimate, one with ideality, 111
Reason, 83, 174;
as a faculty separate from experience, 95;
as re-adjusting intelligence, 96;
changed conceptions, 77
Reasoning, 32
Reconstruction of philosophy, 52;
essential, 51;
historical factors, 28;
in moral conceptions, 161;
scientific factor, 53;
social philosophy and, 187;
specific present problem, 43;
value of a solution of the dilemma of reason and experience, 101
Re-creation, 51, 180
Reform, 179, 180;
starting-point, 196
Relativity of sensations, 88
Religion, 103, 211, 212;
movements, 47
Religious freedom, 46
Religious spirit, 210
Renaissance, 29
Research, 42;
co-operative, 37
Responsibility, 163
Revolution of thought, 60
Rights and duties, 207
Rome, 9
Ruler and subject, 44;
in nature, 64
Rules of conduct, 165
Sailors, 11
Salvation, 112
Santayana, George, on Locke, 82
Satisfaction, 157
Savage, 85, 176
Scholasticism, 30
Science, 11, 23;
advance in, 53;
co-operative pursuit, 37;
estheticism and, reconciling, 127;
human value, 173;
industry and, 38, 41, 42;
natural, 42, 48;
open world of, 61;
origin, 12;
picture of universe, 64-65;
relation to experience, 95;
separation of natural and moral, 173;
so-called, 36;
traditional, 30
Scientific revolution, 53
Self-delusion, 140
Self-interest, 194-195
Sensations, 84;
as points of readjustment, 89;
relativity, 88
Senses, 84, 87
Sentimentalism, 73
Shakespeare, 94
Slavery, 191
Social belief, 26
Social development, 43
Social evils, 182.
_See also_ Ills
Social philosophy, reconstruction, 187;
reconstructive impact, 193
Social unit, real, 204
Social welfare, 180
Sociality, 185
Society, 200, 205;
defect of usual theories about, 188;
individuals and, three views, 187-188;
philosophy and, 124
Socrates, 14, 17
Soldiers, 139
Sophists, 13, 14
Space, 118-119, 120
Spinoza, 106
Standards, 175
State, Aristotle's theory, 44;
contract theory, 45;
current conception, 200;
importance, 204;
individual and, 190, 191;
modern, 44;
origin, 44;
supremacy, 202, 203
Subject and ruler, 44;
in nature, 64
Success, 179
Suggestions, 3, 6, 7
_Summum Bonum._ _See_ Final good
Supernaturalism, 47
System, 98, 99
Telegraph, 120
Telephone, 120
Terminology, 21
Theories, 144, 145;
validity, 156
Theory and practice, 140
Things as they are, 115
Thinking, habits, 74, 75.
_See also_ Thought
Thomas, St. _See_ Aquinas
Thought, 117;
good and bad thinking, 136;
instrumental nature, 145-146;
its origin in difficulties, 138-139;
kinds, 135;
logic and, 134;
place, 96;
systems, 145
Tolerance, 46
Tradition, 14;
positive knowledge vs., 16
Transitoriousness, 106
Travel, 39, 40
Trouble, 138, 140
Truth, as utility, 157;
defining, 159-160;
logical conception, 156-157;
old and new, 33, 34;
pragmatic conception, 156, 159;
test of, nature of, 155, 166;
why the modern conception is offensive, 157, 158
Unity, 108
Universal, 64
Universe, closed conception, 54
Utilitarianism, defects, 181;
merit, 180;
need of reconstruction, 183
Utility, 157
Valves, 15
Verification, 156
Virtues, 164
Vision, 21
War, 204
War, world, lesson, 129;
nationalistic phase, 201;
"real" and "ideal" in, 128
Wealth, 40, 42, 125
Wind, 11
Work, 181
Workingmen, 139
World, closed and open conceptions, 54, 60-61;
modern conception as material for change, 114;
nomenal and phenomenal, 23
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Phrases in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Typos corrected:
(Chapter III) "Home Faber" to "Homo Faber"
(Index entry) "Summum Conum" to "Summum Bonum"
The text is in American-English but the Index seems to be done in
British-English. Below are some words in the Index which are different
from the text:
INDEX TEXT
----- ----
dramatisation dramatization
labour labor
mediaeval medieval
Generalisations Generalizations
mechanisation mechanization (2 instances)
organisation organization (2 instances)
Rationalisation Rationalization
nomenal noumenal (2 instances)
End of Project Gutenberg's Reconstruction in Philosophy, by John Dewey