Philosophy
I. Definition of Philosophy.
II. Division of Philosophy.
III. The Principal Systematic Solutions.
IV. Philosophical Methods.
V. The Great Historical Currents of Thought.
VI. Contemporary Orientations.
VII. Is Progress in Philosophy Indefinite, or Is there a Philosophia
Perennis?
VIII. Philosophy and the Sciences.
IX. Philosophy and Religion.
X. The Catholic Church and Philosophy.
XI. The Teaching of Philosophy.
XII. Bibliography
I. DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY
Etymology
According to its etymology, the word "philosophy" (philosophia, from philein, to
love, and sophia, wisdom) means "the love of wisdom". This sense appears again
in sapientia, the word used in the Middle Ages to designate philosophy.
In the early stages of Greek, as of every other, civilization, the boundary line
between philosophy and other departments of human knowledge was not sharply
defined, and philosophy was understood to mean "every striving towards
knowledge". This sense of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and
Thucydides (II, xl). In the ninth century of our era, Alcuin, employing it in the
same sense, says that philosophy is "naturarum inquisitio, rerum humanarum
divinarumque cognitio quantum homini possibile est aestimare" - investigation
of nature, and such knowledge of things human and Divine as is possible for man
(P.L., CI, 952).
In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the aggregate of the human
sciences, but "the general science of things in the universe by their ultimate
determinations and reasons"; or again, "the intimate knowledge of the causes
and reasons of things", the profound knowledge of the universal order.
Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of philosophy, some of the
most significant may be given. Plato calls it "the acquisition of knowledge",
ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d). Aristotle, mightier than his master at
compressing ideas, writes: tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta procirc;ta aitia
kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes - "All men consider philosophy as
concerned with first causes and principles" (Metaph., I, i). These notions were
perpetuated in the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism,
neo-Platonism), with this difference, that the Stoics and Epicureans accentuated
the moral bearing of philosophy ("Philosophia studium summae virtutis", says
Seneca in "Epist.", lxxxix, 7), and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing (see
section V below). The Fathers of the Church and the first philosophers of the
Middle Ages seem not to have had a very clear idea of philosophy for reasons
which we will develop later on (section IX), but its conception emerges once more
in all its purity among the Arabic philosophers at the end of the twelfth century
and the masters of Scholasticism in the thirteenth. St. Thomas, adopting the
Aristotelean idea, writes: "Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas
et universales causas; sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat"
- Wisdom [i.e. philosophy] is the science which considers first and universal
causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes" (In Metaph., I, lect. ii).
In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this way of looking
at it. Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom: "Philosophiae voce sapientiae
studium denotamus" - "By the term philosophy we denote the pursuit of
wisdom" (Princ. philos., preface); and he understands by it "cognitio veritatis per
primas suas causas" - " knowledge of truth by its first causes" (ibid.). For
Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things; for Berkeley, "the study of
wisdom and truth" (Princ.). The many conceptions of philosophy given by Kant
reduce it to that of a science of the general principles of knowledge and of the
ultimate objects attainable by knowledge - "Wissenschaft von den letzten
Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft". For the numerous German philosophers
who derive their inspiration from his criticism - Fichte, Hegel, Schelling,
Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and the rest - it is the general teaching of
science (Wissenschaftslehre). Many contemporary authors regard it as the
synthetic theory of the particular sciences: "Philosophy", says Herbert Spencer,
"is completely unified knowledge" (First Principles, #37). Ostwald has the same
idea. For Wundt, the object of philosophy is "the acquisition of such a general
conception of the world and of life as will satisfy the exigencies of the reason and
the needs of the heart" - "Gewinnung einer allgemeinen Welt - und
Lebensanschauung, welche die Forderungen unserer Vernunft und die
Bedurfnisse unseres Gemüths befriedigen soll" (Einleit. in d. Philos., 1901, p. 5).
This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of values (Wert lehre) is
emphasized by Windelband, Déring, and others.
The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely prolonged. All of them
affirm the eminently synthetic character of philosophy. In the opinion of the
present writer, the most exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle.
Face to face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours to
discover what the world is, and what he is himself. Having made the real the
object of studies in detail, each of which constitutes science (see section VIII),
he is led to a study of the whole, to inquire into the principles or reasons of the
totality of things, a study which supplies the answers to the last Why's. The last
Why of all rests upon all that is and all that becomes: it does not apply, as in
any one particular science (e.g. chemistry), to this or that process of becoming,
or to this or that being (e.g. the combination of two bodies), but to all being and
all becoming. All being has within it its constituent principles, which account for
its substance (constitutive material and formal causes); all becoming, or change,
whether superficial or profound, is brought about by an efficient cause other than
its subject; and lastly things and events have their bearings from a finality, or final
cause. The harmony of principles, or causes, produces the universal order. And
thus philosophy is the profound knowledge of the universal order, in the sense of
having for its object the simplest and most general principles, by means of which
all other objects of thought are, in the last resort, explained. By these principles,
says Aristotle, we know other things, but other things do not suffice to make us
know these principles (dia gar tauta kai ek toutôn t'alla gnôrizetai, all' ou tauta
dia tôn hupokeimenôn - Metaph., I). The expression universal order should be
understood in the widest sense. Man is one part of it: hence the relations of man
with the world of sense and with its Author belong to the domain of philosophy.
Now man, on the one hand, is the responsible author of these relations, because
he is free, but he is obliged by nature itself to reach an aim, which is his moral
end. On the other hand, he has the power of reflecting upon the knowledge which
he acquires of all things, and this leads him to study the logical structure of
science. Thus philosophical knowledge leads to philosophical acquaintance with
morality and logic. And hence we have this more comprehensive definition of
philosophy: "The profound knowledge of the universal order, of the duties which
that order imposes upon man, and of the knowledge which man acquires from
reality" - "La connaissance approfondie de l'ordre universel, des devoirs qui en
résultent pour l'homme et de la science que l'homme acquiert de la rémite"'
(Mercier, "Logique", 1904, p. 23). - The development of these same ideas under
another aspect will be found in section VIII of this article.
II. DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
Since the universal order falls within the scope of philosophy (which studies only
its first principles, not its reasons in detail), philosophy is led to the consideration
of all that is: the world, God (or its cause), and man himself (his nature, origin,
operations, moral end, and scientific activities).
It would be out of the question to enumerate here all the methods of dividing
philosophy that have been given: we confine ourselves to those which have
played a part in history and possess the deepest significance.
A. In Greek Philosophy
Two historical divisions dominate Greek philosophy: the Platonic and the
Aristotelean.
(1) Plato divides philosophy into dialectic, physics, and ethics. This division is
not found in Plato's own writings, and it would be impossible to fit his dialogues
into the triple frame, but it corresponds to the spirit of the Platonic philosophy.
According to Zeller, Xenocrates (314 B.C.) his disciple, and the leading
representative of the Old Academy, was the first to adopt this triadic division,
which was destined to go down through the ages (Grundriss d. Geschichte d.
griechischen Philosophie, 144), and Aristotle follows it in dividing his master's
philosophy. Dialectic is the science of objective reality, i.e., of the Idea (idea
eidos), so that by Platonic dialectic we must understand metaphysics. Physics
is concerned with the manifestations of the Idea, or with the Real, in the sensible
universe, to which Plato attributes no real value independent of that of the Idea.
Ethics has for its object human acts. Plato deals with logic, but has no system
of logic; this was a product of Aristotle's genius.
Plato's classification was taken up by his school (the Academy), but it was not
long in yielding to the influence of Aristotle's more complete division and
according a place to logic. Following the inspirations of the old Academics, the
Stoics divided philosophy into physics (the study of the real), logic (the study of
the structure of science) and morals (the study of moral acts). This classification
was perpetuated by the neo-Platonists, who transmitted it to the Fathers of the
Church, and through them to the Middle Ages.
(2) Aristotle, Plato's illustrious disciple, the most didactic, and at the same time
the most synthetic, mind of the Greek worid, drew up a remarkable scheme of
the divisions of philosophy. The philosophical sciences are divided into theoretic,
practical, and poetic, according as their scope is pure speculative knowledge, or
conduct (praxis), or external production (poiêsis). Theoretic philosophy
comprises: (a) physics, or the study of corporeal things which are subject to
change (achôrista men all' ouk akinêta) (b) mathematics, or the study of
extension, i.e., of a corporeal property not subject to change and considered, by
abstraction, apart from matter (akinêta men ou chôrista d'isôs, all' hôs en hulê);
(c) metaphysics, called theology, or first philosophy, i.e. the study of being in its
unchangeable and (whether naturally or by abstraction) incorporeal
determinations (chôrista kau akinêt). Practical philosophy comprises ethics,
economics, and politics, the second of these three often merging into the last.
Poetic philosophy is concerned in general with the external works conceived by
human intelligence. To these may conveniently be added logic, the vestibule of
philosophy, which Aristotle studied at length, and of which he may be called the
creator.
To metaphysics Aristotle rightly accords the place of honour in the grouping of
philosophical studies. He calls it "first philosophy". His classification was taken
up by the Peripatetic School and was famous throughout antiquity; it was
eclipsed by the Platonic classification during the Alexandrine period, but it
reappeared during the Middle Ages.
B. In the Middle Ages
Though the division of philosophy into its branches is not uniform in the first
period of the Middle Ages in the West, i.e. down to the end of the twelfth century,
the classifications of this period are mostly akin to the Platonic division into
logic, ethics, and physics. Aristotle's classification of the theoretic sciences,
though made known by Boethius, exerted no influence for the reason that in the
early Middle Ages the West knew nothing of Aristotle except his works on logic
and some fragments of his speculative philosophy (see section V below). It
should be added here that philosophy, reduced at first to dialectic, or logic, and
placed as such in the Trivium, was not long in setting itself above the liberal arts.
The Arab philosophers of the twelfth century (Avicenna, Averroes) accepted the
Aristotelean classification, and when their works - particularly their translations
of Aristotle's great original treatises - penetrated into the West, the Aristotelean
division definitively took its place there. Its coming is heralded by Gundissalinus
(see section XII), one of the Toletan translators of Aristotle, and author of a
treatise, "De divisione philosophiae", which was imitated by Michael Scott and
Robert Kilwardby. St. Thomas did no more than adopt it and give it a precise
scientific form. Later on we shall see that, conformably with the medieval notion
of sapientia, to each part of philosophy corresponds the preliminary study of a
group of special sciences. The general scheme of the division of philosophy in
the thirteenth century, with St. Thomas's commentary on it, is as follows:
There are as many parts of philosophy as there are distinct
domains in the order submitted to the philosopher's reflection. Now
there is an order which the intelligence does not form but only
considers; such is the order realized in nature. Another order, the
practical, is formed either by the acts of our intelligence or by the
acts of our will, or by the application of those acts to external
things in the arts: e.g., the division of practical philosophy into
logic, moral philosophy, and aesthetics, or the philosophy of the
arts ("Ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet considerare ordinem
rerum quem ratio humana considerat sed non facit; ita quod sub
naturali philosophia comprehendamus et metaphysicam. Ordo
autem quem ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad
rationalem philosophiam, cujus est considerare ordinem partium
orationis ad invicem et ordinem principiorum ad invicem et ad
conclusiones. Ordo autem actionum voluntariarum pertinet ad
considerationem moralis philosophiae. Ordo autem quem ratio
considerando facit in rebus exterioribus per rationem humanam
pertinet ad artes mechanicas." To natural philosophy pertains the
consideration of the order of things which human reason considers
but does not create - just as we include metaphysics also under
natural philosophy. But the order which reason creates of its own
act by consideration pertains to rational philosophy, the office of
which is to consider the order of the parts of speech with reference
to one another and the order of the principles with reference to one
another and to the conclusions. The order of voluntary actions
pertains to the consideration of moral philosophy, while the order
which the reason creates in external things through the human
reason pertains to the mechanical arts. - In "X Ethic. ad Nic.", I,
lect. i).
The philosophy of nature, or speculative philosophy, is divided into metaphysics,
mathematics, and physics, according to the three stages traversed by the
intelligence in its effort to attain a synthetic comprehension of the universal order,
by abstracting from movement (physics), intelligible quantity (mathematics),
being (metaphysics) (In lib. Boeth. de Trinitate, Q. v., a. 1). In this classification
it is to be noted that, man being one element of the world of sense, psychology
ranks as a part of physics.
C. In Modern Philosophy
The Scholastic classification may be said, generally speaking, to have lasted,
with some exceptions, until the seventeenth century. Beginning with Descartes,
we find a multitude of classifications arising, differing in the principles which
inspire them. Kant, for instance, distinguishes metaphysics, moral philosophy,
religion, and anthropology. The most widely accepted scheme, that which still
governs the division of the branches of philosophy in teaching, is due to Wolff
(1679-1755), a disciple of Leibniz, who has been called the educator of Germany
in the eighteenth century. This scheme is as follows:
1.Logic.
2.Speculative Philosophy.
Ontology, or General Metaphysics.
Special Metaphysics.
Theodicy (the study of God).
Cosmology (the study of the World).
Psychology (the study of Man).
3.Practical Philosophy.
Ethics
Politics
Economics
Wolff broke the ties binding the particular sciences to philosophy, and placed
them by themselves; in his view philosophy must remain purely rational. It is
easy to see that the members of Wolff's scheme are found in the Aristotelean
classification, wherein theodicy is a chapter of metaphysics and psychology a
chapter of physics. It may even be said that the Greek classification is better
than Wolff's in regard to speculative philosophy, where the ancients were guided
by the formal object of the study - i.e. by the degree of abstraction to which the
whole universe is subjected, while the moderns always look at the material
object - i.e., the three categories of being, which it is possible to study, God,
the world of sense, and man.
D. In Contemporary Philosophy
The impulse received by philosophy during the last half-century gave rise to new
philosophical sciences, in the sense that various branches have been detached
from the main stems. In psychology this phenomenon has been remarkable:
criteriology, or epistemology (the study of the certitude of knowledge) has
developed into a special study. Other branches which have formed themselves
into new psychological sciences are: physiological psychology or the study of
the physiological concomitant of psychic activities; didactics, or the science of
teaching; pedagogy, or the science of education; collective psychology and the
psychology of people (Volkerpsychologie), studying the psychic phenomena
observable in human groups as such, and in the different races. An important
section of logic (called also noetic, or canonic) is tending to sever itself from the
main body, viz., methodology, which studies the special logical formation of
various sciences. On moral philosophy, in the wide sense, have been grafted the
philosophy of law, the philosophy of society, or social philosophy (which is much
the same as sociology), and the philosophies of religion and of history.
III. THE PRINCIPAL SYSTEMATIC SOLUTIONS
From what has been said above it is evident that philosophy is beset by a great
number of questions It would not be possible here to enumerate all those
questions, much less to detail the divers solutions which have been given to
them. The solution of a philosophic question is called a philosophic doctrine or
theory. A philosophic system (from sunistêmi, put together) is a complete and
organized group of solutions. It is not an incoherent assemblage or an
encyclopedic amalgamation of such solutions; it is dominated by an organic
unity. Only those philosophic systems which are constructed conformably with
the exigencies of organic unity are really powerful: such are the systems of the
Upanishads, of Aristotle, of neo-Platonism, of Scholasticism, of Leibniz, Kant
and Hume. So that one or several theories do not constitute a system; but some
theories, i.e. answers to a philosophic question, are important enough to
determine the solution of other important problems of a system. The scope of
this section is to indicate some of these theories.
A. Monism, or Pantheism, and Pluralism, Individualism, or Theism
Are there many beings distinct in their reality, with one Supreme Being, God at
the summit of the hierarchy; or is there but one reality (monas, hence monism),
one All-God (pan-theos) of whom each individual is but a member or fragment
(Substantialistic Pantheism), or else a force, or energy (Dynamic Pantheism)?
Here we have an important question of metaphysics the solution of which reacts
upon all other domains of philosophy. The system of Aristotle, of the
Scholastics, and of Leibniz are Pluralistic and Theistic; the Indian, neo-Platonic,
and Hegelian are Monistic. Monism is a fascinating explanation of the real, but it
only postpones the difficulties which it imagines itself to be solving (e.g. the
difficulty of the interaction of things), to say nothing of the objection, from the
human point of view, that it runs counter to our most deep-rooted sentiments.
B. Objectivism and Subjectivism
Does being, whether one or many, possess its own life, independent of our mind,
so that to be known by us is only accident to being, as in the objective system of
metaphysics (e.g. Aristotle, the Scholastics, Spinoza)? Or is being no other
reality than the mental and subjective presence which it acquires in our
representation of it as in the Subjective system (e.g. Hume)? It is in this sense
that the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale" (see bibliography) uses the term
metaphysics in its title. Subjectivism cannot explain the passivity of our mental
representations, which we do not draw out of ourselves, and which therefore
oblige us to infer the reality of a non-ego.
C. Substantialism and Phenomenism
Is all reality a flux of phenomena (Heraclitus, Berkeley, Hume, Taine), or does
the manifestation appear upon a basis, or substance, which manifests itself, and
does the phenomenon demand a noumenon (the Scholastics)? Without an
underlying substance, which we only know through the medium of the
phenomenon, certain realities, as walking, talking, are inexplicable, and such
facts as memory become absurd.
D. Mechanism and Dynamism (Pure and Modified)
Natural bodies are considered by some to be aggregations of homogeneous
particles of matter (atoms) receiving a movement which is extrinsic to them, so
that these bodies differ only in the number and arrangement of their atoms (the
Atomism, or Mechanism, of Democritus, Descartes, and Hobbes). Others reduce
them to specific, unextended, immaterial forces, of which extension is only the
superficial manifestation (Leibniz). Between the two is Modified Dynamism
(Aristotle), which distinguishes in bodies an immanent specific principle (form)
and an indeterminate element (matter) which is the source of limitation and
extension. This theory accounts for the specific characters of the entities in
question as well as for the reality of their extension in space.
E. Materialism, Agnosticism, and Spiritualism
That everything real is material, that whatever might be immaterial would be
unreal, such is the cardinal doctrine of Materialism (the Stoics, Hobbes, De
Lamettrie). Contemporary Materialism is less outspoken: it is inspired by a
Positivist ideology (see section VI), and asserts that, if anything supra-material
exists, it is unknowable (Agnosticism, from a and gnôsis, knowledge. Spencer,
Huxley). Spiritualism teaches that incorporeal, or immaterial, beings exist or that
they are possible (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics, Descartes,
Leibniz). Some have even asserted that only spirits exist: Berkeley, Fichte, and
Hegel are exaggerated Spiritualists. The truth is that there are bodies and spirits;
among the latter we are acquainted (though less well than with bodies) with the
nature of our soul, which is revealed by the nature of our immaterial acts, and
with the nature of God, the infinite intelligence, whose existence is demontrated
by the very existence of finite things. Side by side with these solutions relating to
the problems of the real, there is another group of solutions, not less influential in
the orientation of a system, and relating to psychical problems or those of the
human ego.
F. Sensualism and Rationalism, or Spiritualism
These are the opposite poles of the ideogenetic question, the question of the
origin of our knowledge. For Sensualism the only source of human knowledge is
sensation: everything reduces to transformed sensations. This theory, long ago
put forward in Greek philosophy (Stoicism, Epicureanism), was developed to the
full by the English Sensualists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and the English
Associationists (Brown, Hartley, Priestley); its modern form is Positivism (John
Stuart Mill, Huxley, Spencer, Comte, Taine, Littré etc.). Were this theory true, it
would follow that we can know only what falls under our senses, and therefore
cannot pronounce upon the existence or non-existence, the reality or unreality, of
the super-sensible. Positivism is more logical than Materialism. In the New
World, the term Agnosticism has been very happily employed to indicate this
attitude of reserve towards the super-sensible. Rationalism (from ratio, reason),
or Spiritualism, establishes the existence in us of concepts higher than
sensations, i.e. of abstract and general concepts (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine,
the Scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin etc.). Ideologic Spiritualism
has won the adherence of humanity's greatest thinkers. Upon the spirituality, or
immateriality, of our higher mental operations is based the proof of the spirituality
of the principle from which they proceed and, hence, of the immortality of the
soul.
G. Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Criticism
So many answers have been given to the question whether man can attain truth,
and what is the foundation of certitude, that we will not attempt to enumerate
them all. Scepticism declares reason incapable of arriving at the truth. and holds
certitude to be a purely subjective affair (Sextus Empiricus, Ænesidemus).
Dogmatism asserts that man can attain to truth, and that, in measure to be
further determined, our cognitions are certain. The motive of certitude is, for the
Traditionalists, a Divine revelation, for the Scotch School (Reid) it is an inclination
of nature to affirm the principles of common sense; it is an irrational, but social,
necessity of admitting certain principles for practical dogmatism (Balfour in his
"Foundations of Belief" speaks of "non-rational impulse", while Mallock holds that
"certitude is found to be the child, not of reason but of custom" and Brunetière
writes about "the bankruptcy of science and the need of belief"); it is an affective
sentiment, a necessity of wishing that certain things may be verities
(Voluntarism; Kant's Moral Dogmatism), or the fact of living certain verities
(contemporary Pragmatism and Humanism William James, Schiller). But for
others - and this is the theory which we accept - the motive of certitude is the
very evidence of the connection which appears between the predicate and the
subject of a proposition, an evidence which the mind perceives, but which it does
not create (Moderate Dogmatism). Lastly for Criticism, which is the Kantian
solution of the problem of knowledge, evidence is created by the mind by means
of the structural functions with which every human intellect is furnished (the
categories of the understanding). In conformity with these functions we connect
the impressions of the senses and construct the world. Knowledge, therefore, is
valid only for the world as represented to the mind. Kantian Criticism ends in
excessive Idealism, which is also called Subjectivism. or Phenomenalism, and
according to which the mind draws all its representations out of itself, both the
sensory impressions and the categories which connect them: the world becomes
a mental poem, the object is created by the subject as representation (Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel).
H. Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism
Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism are various answers to the question of
the real objectivity of our predications, or of the relation of fidelity existing
between our general representations and the external world.
I. Determinism and Indeterminism
Has every phenomenon or fact its adequate cause in an antecedent phenomenon
or fact (Cosmic Determinism)? And, in respect to acts of the will, are they
likewise determined in all their constituent elements (Moral Determinism,
Stoicism, Spinoza)? If so, then liberty disappears, and with it human
responsibility, merit and demerit. Or, on the contrary, is there a category of
volitions which are not necessitated, and which depend upon the discretionary
power of the will to act or not to act and in acting to follow freely chosen
direction? Does liberty exist? Most Spiritualists of all schools have adopted a
libertarian philosophy, holding that liberty alone gives the moral life an acceptable
meaning; by various arguments they have confirmed the testimony of conscience
and the data of common consent. In physical nature causation and determinism
rule; in the moral life, liberty. Others, by no means numerous, have even
pretended to discover cases of indeterminism in physical nature (the so-called
Contingentist theories, e.g. Boutroux).
J. Utilitarianism and the Morality of Obligation
What constitutes the foundation of morality in our actions? Pleasure or utility say
some, personal or egoistic pleasure (Egoism - Hobbes, Bentham, and "the
arithmetic of pleasure"); or again, in the pleasure and utility of all (Altruism -
John Stuart Mill). Others hold that morality consists in the performance of duty
for duty's sake, the observance of law because it is law, independently of
personal profit (the Formalism of the Stoics and of Kant). According to another
doctrine, which in our opinion is more correct, utility, or personal advantage, is
not incompatible with duty, but the source of the obligation to act is in the last
analysis, as the very exigencies of our nature tell us, the ordinance of God.
IV. PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS
Method (meth' hodos) means a path taken to reach some objective point. By
philosophical method is understood the path leading to philosophy, which, again,
may mean either the process employed in the construction of a philosophy
(constructive method, method of invention), or the way of teaching philosophy
(method of teaching, didactic method). We will deal here with the former of these
two senses; the latter will be treated in section XI. Three methods can be, and
have been, applied to the construction of philosophy.
A. Experimental (Empiric, or Analytic) Method
The method of all Empiric philosophers is to observe facts, accumulate them,
and coordinate them. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, the empirical
method refuses to rise beyond observed and observable fact; it abstains from
investigating anything that is absolute. It is found among the Materialists, ancient
and modern, and is most unreservedly applied in contemporary Positivism.
Comte opposes the "positive mode of thinking", based solely upon observation,
to the theological and metaphysical modes. For Mill, Huxley, Bain, Spencer,
there is not one philosophical proposition but is the product, pure and simple, of
experience: what we take for a general idea is an aggregate of sensations; a
judgment is the union of two sensations; a syllogism, the passage from particular
to particular (Mill, "A System of Logic, Rational and Inductive", ed. Lubbock,
1892; Bain, "Logic", New York, 1874). Mathematical propositions, fundamental
axioms such as a = a, the principle of contradiction, the principle of causality are
only "generalizations from facts of experience" (Mill, op. cit., vii, #5). According
to this author, what we believe to be superior to experience in the enunciation of
scientific laws is derived from our subjective incapacity to conceive its
contradictory; according to Spencer, this inconceivability of the negation is
developed by heredity.
Applied in an exaggerated and exclusive fashion, the experimental method
mutilates facts, since it is powerless to ascend to the causes and the laws
which govern facts. It suppresses the character of objective necessity which is
inherent in scientific judgments, and reduces them to collective formulae of facts
observed in the past. It forbids our asserting, e.g., that the men who will be born
after us will be subject to death, seeing that all certitude rests on experience,
and that by mere observation we cannot reach the unchangeable nature of
things. The empirical method, left to its own resources, checks the upward
movement of the mind towards the causes or object of the phenomena which
confront it.
B. Deductive, or Synthetic a Priori, Method
At the opposite pole to the preceding, the deductive method starts from very
general principles, from higher causes, to descend (Lat. deducere, to lead down)
to more and more complex relations and to facts. The dream of the Deductionist
is to take as the point of departure an intuition of the Absolute, of the Supreme
Reality - for the Theists, God; for the Monists, the Universal Being - and to
draw from this intuition the synthetic knowledge of all that depends upon it in the
universe, in conformity with the metaphysical scale of the real. Plato is the father
of deductive philosophy: he starts from the world of Ideas, and from the Idea of
the Sovereign Good, and he would know the reality of the world of sense only in
the Ideas of which it is the reflection. St. Augustine, too, finds his satisfaction in
studying the universe, and the least of the beings which compose it, only in a
synthetic contemplation of God, the exemplary, creative, and final cause of all
things. So, too, the Middle Ages attached great importance to the deductive
method. "I propose", writes Boethius, "to build science by means of concepts
and maxims, as is done in mathematics." Anselm of Canterbury draws from the
idea of God, not only the proof of the real existence of an infinite being, but also a
group of theorems on His attributes and His relations with the world. Two
centuries before Anselm, Scotus Eriugena, the father of anti-Scholasticism, is
the completest type of the Deductionist: his metaphysics is one long description
of the Divine Odyssey, inspired by the neo-Platonic, monistic conception of the
descent of the One in its successive generations. And, on the very threshold of
the thirteenth century, Alain de Lille would apply to philosophy a mathematical
methodology. In the thirteenth century Raymond Lully believed that he had found
the secret of "the Great Art" (ars magna), a sort of syllogism-machine, built of
general tabulations of ideas, the combination of which would give the solution of
any question whatsoever. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are Deductionists:
they would construct philosophy after the manner of geometry (more
geometrico), linking the most special and complicated theorems to some very
simple axioms. The same tendency appears among the Ontologists and the
post-Kantian Pantheists in Germany (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), who base their
philosophy upon an intuition of the Absolute Being.
The deductive philosophers generally profess to disdain the sciences of
observation. Their great fault is the compromising of fact, bending it to a
preconceived explanation or theory assumed a priori, whereas the observation of
the fact ought to precede the assignment of its cause or of its adequate reason.
This defect in the deductive method appears glaringly in a youthful work of
Leibniz's, "Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro rege Polonorum
eligendo", published anonymously in 1669, where he demonstrates hy
geometrical methods (more geometrico), in sixty propositions, that the Count
Palatine of Neuburg ought to be elected to the Polish Throne.
C. Analytico-Synthetic Method
This combination of analysis and synthesis, of observation and deduction, is the
only method appropriate to philosophy. Indeed, since it undertakes to furnish a
general explanation of the universal order (see section I), philosophy ought to
begin with complex effects, facts known by observation, before attempting to
include them in one comprehensive explanation of the universe. This is manifest
in psychology, where we begin with a careful examination of activities, notably of
the phenomena of sense, of intelligence, and of appetite; in cosmology, where
we observe the series of changes, superficial and profound, of bodies; in moral
philosophy, which sets out from the observation of moral facts; in theodicy,
where we interrogate religious beliefs and feelings; even in metaphysics, the
starting-point of which is really existing being. But observation and analysis once
completed, the work of synthesis begins. We must pass onward to a synthetic
psychology that shall enable us to comprehend the destinies of man's vital
principle; to a cosmology that shall explain the constitution of bodies, their
changes, and the stability of the laws which govern them; to a synthetic moral
philosophy establishing the end of man and the ultimate ground of duty; to a
theodicy and deductive metaphysics that shall examine the attributes of God and
the fundamental conceptions of all being. As a whole and in each of its divisions,
philosophy applies the analytic-synthetic method. Its ideal would be to give an
account of the universe and of man by a synthetic knowledge of God, upon whom
all reality depends. This panoramic view - the eagle's view of things - has
allured all the great geniuses. St. Thomas expresses himself admirably on this
synthetic knowledge of the universe and its first cause. The analytico-synthetic
process is the method, not only of philosophy, but of every science, for it is the
natural law of thought, the proper function of which is unified and orderly
knowledge. "Sapientis est ordinare." Aristotle, St. Thomas, Pascal, Newton,
Pasteur, thus understood the method of the sciences. Men like Helmholtz and
Wundt adopted synthetic views after doing analytical work. Even the Positivists
are metaphysicians, though they do not know it or wish it. Does not Herbert
Spencer call his philosophy synthetic? and does he not, by reasoning, pass
beyond that domain of the "observable" within which he professes to confine
himself?
V. THE GREAT HISTORICAL CURRENTS
Among the many peoples who have covered the globe philosophic culture
appears in two groups: the Semitic and the Indo-European, to which may be
added the Egyptians and the Chinese. In the Semitic group (Arabs, Babylonians,
Assyrians, Aramaeans, Chaldeans) the Arabs are the most important;
nevertheless, their part becomes insignificant when compared with the
intellectual life of the Indo-Europeans. Among the latter, philosophic life appears
successively in various ethnic divisions, and the succession forms the great
periods into which the history of philosophy is divided; first, among the people of
India (since 1500 B.C.); then among the Greeks and the Romans (sixth century
B.C. to sixth century of our era); again, much later, among the peoples of Central
and Northern Europe.
A. Indian Philosophy
The philosophy of India is recorded principally in the sacred books of the Veda,
for it has always been closely united with religion. Its numerous poetic and
religious productions carry within themselves a chronology which enables us to
assign them to three periods.
(1) The Period of the Hymns of the Rig Veda (1500-1000 B.C.)
This is the most ancient monument of Indo-Germanic civilization; in it may be
seen the progressive appearance of the fundamental theory that a single Being
exists under a thousand forms in the multiplied phenomena of the universe
(Monism).
(2) The Period of the Brahmans (l000-500 B.C.)
This is the age of Brahminical civilization. The theory of the one Being remains,
but little by little the concrete and anthropomorphic ideas of the one Being are
replaced by the doctrine that the basis of all things is in oneself (âtman).
Psychological Monism appears in its entirety in the Upanishads: the absolute
and adequate identity of the Ego - which is the constitutive basis of our
individuality (âtman) - and of all things, with Brahman, the eternal being exalted
above time, space, number, and change, the generating principle of all things in
which all things are finally reabsorbed - such the fundamental theme to be
found in the Upanishad under a thousand variations of form. To arrive at the
âtman, we must not stop at empirical reality which is multiple and cognizable;
we must pierce this husk, penetrate to the unknowable and ineffable
superessence, and identify ourselves with it in an unconscious unity.
(3) The Post-Vedic or Sanskrit, Period (since 500 B.C.)
From the germs of theories contained in the Upanishad a series of systems
spring up, orthodox or heterodox. Of the orthodox systems, Vedanta is the most
interesting; in it we find the principles of the Upanishads developed in an integral
philosophy which comprise metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, and ethics
(transmigration, metempsychosis). Among the systems not in harmony with the
Vedic dogmas, the most celebrated is Buddhism, a kind of Pessimism which
teaches liberation from pain in a state of unconscious repose, or an extinction of
personality (Nirvâna). Buddhism spread in China, where it lives side by side with
the doctrines of Lao Tse and that of Confucius. It is evident that even the
systems which are not in harmony with the Veda are permeated with religious
ideas.
B. Greek Philosophy
This philosophy, which occupied six centuries before, and six after, Christ, may
be divided into four periods, corresponding with the succession of the principal
lines of research (1) From Thales of Miletus to Socrates (seventh to fifth
centuries B.C. - preoccupied with cosmology) (2) Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
(fifth to fourth centuries B.C. - psychology); (3) From the death of Aristotle to
the rise of neo-Platonism (end of the fourth century B.C. to third century after
Christ - moral philosophy); (4) neo-Platonic School (from the third century after
Christ, or, including the systems of the forerunners of neo-Platonism, from the
first century after Christ, to the end of Greek philosophy in the seventh
century-mysticism).
(1) The Pre-Socratic Period
The pre-Socratic philosophers either seek for the stable basis of things - which
is water, for Thales of Miletus; air, for Anaximenes of Miletus; air endowed with
intelligence, for Diogenes of Apollonia; number, for Pythagoras (sixth century
B.C.); abstract and immovable being, for the Eleatics - or they study that which
changes: while Parmenides and the Eleatics assert that everything is, and
nothing changes or becomes. Heraclitus (about 535-475) holds that everything
becomes, and nothing is unchangeable. Democritus (fifth century) reduces all
beings to groups of atoms in motion, and this movement, according to
Anaxagoras, has for its cause an intelligent being.
(2) The Period of Apogee: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
When the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias) had demonstrated the insufficiency of
these cosmologies, Socrates (470-399) brought philosophical investigation to
bear on man himself, studying man chiefly from the moral point of view. From the
presence in us of abstract ideas Plato (427-347) deduced the existence of a
world of supersensible realities or ideas, of which the visible world is but a pale
reflection. These ideas, which the soul in an earlier life contemplated, are now,
because of its union with the body, but faintly perceived. Aristotle (384-322), on
the contrary, shows that the real dwells in the objects of sense. The theory of act
and potentiality, of form and matter, is a new solution of the relations between
the permanent and the changing. His psychology, founded upon the principle of
the unity of man and the substantial union of soul and body, is a creation of
genius. And as much may be said of his logic.
(3) The Moral Period
After Aristotle (end of the fourth Century B.C.) four schools are in evidence:
Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Aristotelean. The Stoics (Zeno of Citium,
Cleanthes, Chrysippus), like the Epicureans, make speculation subordinate to
the quest of happiness, and the two schools, in spite of their divergencies, both
consider happiness to be ataraxia or absence of sorrow and preoccupation. The
teachings of both on nature (Dynamistic Monism with the Stoics, and Pluralistic
Mechanism with the Epicureans) are only a prologue to their moral philosophy.
After the latter half of the second century B.C. we perceive reciprocal infiltrations
between the various schools. This issues in Eclecticism. Seneca (first century
B.C.) and Cicero (106-43 B.C.) are attached to Eclecticism with a Stoic basis;
two great commentators of Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes (first century B.C.)
and Alexander of Aphrodisia about 200), affect a Peripatetic Eclecticism. Parallel
with Eclecticism runs a current of Scepticism (AEnesidemus, end of first century
B.C., and Sextus Empiricus, second century A.D.).
(4) The Mystical Period
In the first century B.C. Alexandria had become the capital of Greek intellectual
life. Mystical and theurgic tendencies, born of a longing for the ideal and the
beyond, began to appear in a current of Greek philosophy which originated in a
restoration of Pythagorism and its alliance with Platonism (Plutarch of Chieronea,
first century B.C.; Apuleius of Madaura; Numenius, about 160 and others), and
still more in the Graeco-Judaic philosophy of Philo the Jew (30 B.C. to A.D. 50).
But the dominance of these tendencies is more apparent in neo-Platonism. The
most brilliant thinker of the neo-Platonic series is Plotinus (A.D. 20-70). In his
"Enneads" he traces the paths which lead the soul to the One, and establishes,
in keeping with his mysticism, an emanationist metaphysical system. Porphyry
of Tyre (232-304), a disciple of Plotinus, popularizes his teaching, emphasizes
its religious bearing, and makes Aristotle's "Organon" the introduction to
neo-Platonic philosophy. Later on, neo-Platonism, emphasizing its religious
features, placed itself, with Jamblichus, at the service of the pagan pantheon
which growing Christianity was ruining on all sides, or again, as with Themistius
at Constantinople (fourth century), Proclus and Simplicius at Athens (fifth
century), and Ammonius at Alexandria, it took an Encyclopedic turn. With
Ammonius and John Philoponus (sixth century) the neo-Platonic School of
Alexandria developed in the direction of Christianity.
C. Patristic Philosophy
In the closing years of the second century and, still more, in the third century,
the philosophy of the Fathers of the Church was developed. It was born in a
civilization dominated by Greek ideas, chiefly neo-Platonic, and on this side its
mode of thought is still the ancient. Still, if some, like St. Augustine, attach the
greatest value to the neo-Platonic teachings, it must not be forgotten that the
Monist or Pantheistic and Emanationist ideas, which have been accentuated by
the successors of Plotinus, are carefully replaced by the theory of creation and
the substantial distinction of beings; in this respect a new spirit animates
Patristic philosophy. It was developed, too, as an auxiliary of the dogmatic
system which the Fathers were to establish. In the third century the great
representatives of the Christian School of Alexandria are Clement of Alexandria
and Origen. After them Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose,
and, above all, St. Augustine (354-430) appear. St. Augustine gathers up the
intellectual treasures of the ancient world, and is one of the principal
intermediaries for their transmission to the modern world. In its definitive form
Augustinism is a fusion of intellectualism and mysticism, with a study of God as
the centre of interest. In the fifth century, pseudo-Dionysius perpetuates many a
neo-Platonic doctrine adapted to Christianity, and his writings exercise a
powerful influence in the Middle Ages.
D. Medieval Philosophy
The philosophy of the Middle Ages developed simultaneously in the West, at
Byzantium, and in divers Eastern centres; but the Western philosophy is the
most important. It built itself up with great effort on the ruins of barbarism: until
the twelfth century, nothing was known of Aristotle, except some treatises on
logic, or of Plato, except a few dialogues. Gradually, problems arose, and,
foremost, in importance, the question of universals in the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh centuries (see NOMINALISM). St. Anselm (1O33-1109) made a first
attempt at systematizing Scholastic philosophy, and developed a theodicy. But
as early as the ninth century an anti-Scholastic philosophy had arisen with
Eriugena who revived the neo-Platonic Monism. In the twelfth century
Scholasticism formulated new anti-Realist doctrines with Adelard of Bath,
Gauthier de Mortagne, and, above all, Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée, whilst
extreme Realism took shape in the schools of Chartres. John of Salisbury and
Alain de Lille, in the twelfth century, are the co-ordinating minds that indicate the
maturity of Scholastic thought. The latter of these waged a campaign against the
Pantheism of David of Dinant and the Epicureanism of the Albigenses - the two
most important forms of anti-Scholastic philosophy. At Byzantium, Greek
philosophy held its ground throughout the Middle Ages, and kept apart from the
movement of Western ideas. The same is true of the Syrians and Arabs. But at
the end of the twelfth century the Arabic and Byzantine movement entered into
relation with Western thought, and effected, to the profit of the latter, the brilliant
philosophical revival of the thirteenth century. This was due, in the first place, to
the creation of the University of Paris; next, to the foundation of the Dominican
and Franciscan orders; lastly, to the introduction of Arabic and Latin translations
of Aristotle and the ancient authors. At the same period the works of Avicenna
and Averroes became known at Paris. A pleiad of brilliant names fills the
thirteenth century - Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, Bl. Albertus Magnus,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and
Duns Scotus - bring Scholastic synthesis to perfection. They all wage war on
Latin Averroism and anti-Scholasticism, defended in the schools of Paris by
Siger of Brabant. Roger Bacon, Lully, and a group of neo-Platonists occupy a
place apart in this century, which is completely filled by remarkable figures. In
the fourteenth century Scholastic philosophy betrays the first symptoms of
decadence. In place of individualities we have schools, the chief being the
Thomist, the Scotist, and the Terminist School of William of Occam, which soon
attracted numerous partisans. With John of Jandun, Averroism perpetuates its
most audacious propositions; Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa formulate
philosophies which are symptomatic of the approaching revolution. The
Renaissance was a troublous period for philosophy. Ancient systems were
revived: the Dialectic of the Humanistic philologists (Laurentius Valla, Vivés),
Platonism, Aristoteleanism, Stoicism. Telesius, Campanella, and Giordano
Bruno follow a naturalistic philosophy. Natural and social law are renewed with
Thomas More and Grotius. All these philosophies were leagued together against
Scholasticism, and very often against Catholicism. On the other hand, the
Scholastic philosophers grew weaker and weaker, and, excepting for the brilliant
Spanish Scholasticism of the sixteenth century (Bañez, Suarez, Vasquez, and
so on), it may be said that ignorance of the fundamental doctrine became
general. In the seventeenth century there was no one to support Scholasticism: it
fell, not for lack of ideas, but for lack of defenders.
E. Modern Philosophy
The philosophies of the Renaissance are mainly negative: modern philosophy is,
first and foremost, constructive. The latter is emancipated from all dogma; many
of its syntheses are powerful; the definitive formation of the various nationalities
and the diversity of languages favour the tendency to individualism. The two great
initiators of modern philosophy are Descartes and Francis Bacon. The former
inaugurates a spiritualistic philosophy based on the data of consciousness, and
his influence may be traced in Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Bacon heads
a line of Empiricists, who regarded sensation as the only source of knowledge. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a Sensualist philosophy grew up in
England, based on Baconian Empiricism, and soon to develop in the direction of
Subjectivism. Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and David Hume mark the stages of this
logical evolution. Simultaneously an Associationist psychology appeared also
inspired by Sensualism, and, before long, it formed a special field of research.
Brown, David Hartley, and Priestley developed the theory of association of ideas
in various directions. At the outset Sensualism encountered vigorous opposition,
even in England, from the Mystics and Platonists of the Cambridge School
(Samuel Parker and, especially, Ralph Cudworth). The reaction was still more
lively in the Scotch School, founded and chiefly represented by Thomas Reid, to
which Adam Ferguson, Oswald, and Dugald Stewart belonged in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and which had great influence over Eclectic
Spiritualism, chiefly in America and France. Hobbes's "selfish" system was
developed into a morality by Bentham, a partisan of Egoistic Utilitarianism, and
by Adam Smith, a defender of Altruism, but provoked a reaction among the
advocates of the moral sentiment theory (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Samuel
Clarke). In England, also, Theism or Deism was chiefly developed, instituting a
criticism of all positive religion, which it sought to supplant with a philosophical
religion. English Sensualism spread in France during the eighteenth century: its
influence is traceable in de Condillac, de la Mettrie, and the Encyclopedists;
Voltaire popularized it in France and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau it made its
way among the masses, undermining their Christianity and preparing the
Revolution of 1759. In Germany, the philosophy of the eighteenth century is,
directly or indirectly, connected with Leibniz - the School of Wolff, the Aesthetic
School (Baumgarten), the philosophy of sentiment. But all the German
philosophers of the eighteenth century were eclipsed by the great figure of Kant.
With Kant (1724-1804) modern philosophy enters its second period and takes a
critical orientation. Kant bases his theory of knowledge, his moral and aesthetic
system, and his judgments of finality on the structure of the mind. In the first half
of the eighteenth century, German philosophy is replete with great names
connected with Kantianism - after it had been put through a Monistic evolution,
however - Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have been called the triumvirate of
Pantheism; then again, Schopenhauer, while Herbart returned to individualism.
French philosophy in the nineteenth century is at first dominated by an eclectic
Spiritualistic movement with which the names of Maine de Biran and, especially,
Victor Cousin are associated. Cousin had disciples in America (C. Henry), and in
France he gained favour with those whom the excesses of the Revolution had
alarmed. In the first half of the nineteenth century French Catholics approved the
Traditionalism inaugurated by de Bonald and de Lamennais, while another group
took refuge in Ontologism. In the same period Auguste Comte founded
Positivism, to which Littré and Taine adhered, though it rose to its greatest height
in the English-speaking countries. In fact, England may be said to have been the
second fatherland of Positivism; John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Alexander Bain and
Herbert Spencer expanded its doctrines, combined them with Associationism
and emphasized it criteriological aspect, or attempted (Spencer) to construct a
vast synthesis of human sciences. The Associationist philosophy at this time
was confronted by the Scotch philosophy which, in Hamilton, combined the
teachings of Reid and of Kant and found an American champion in Noah Porter.
Mansel spread the doctrines of Hamilton. Associationism regained favour with
Thomas Brown and James Mill, but was soon enveloped in the large conception
of Positivism, the dominant philosophy in England. Lastly, in Italy, Hegel was for
a long time the leader of nineteenth-century philosophical thought (Vera and
d'Ercole), whilst Gioberti, the ontologist and Rosmini occupy a distinct position.
More recently, Positivism has gained numerous adherents in Italy. In the middle
of the century, a large Krausist School existed in Spain, represented chiefly by
Sanz del Rio (d. 1869) and N. Salmeron. Balmes (181O-48), the author of
"Fundamental Philosophy" is an original thinker whose doctrines have many
points of contact with Scholasticism.
VI. CONTEMPORARY ORIENTATIONS
A. Favourite Problems
Leaving aside social questions, the study of which belongs to philosophy in only
some of their aspects, it may be said that in the philosophic interest of the
present day psychological questions hold the first place, and that chief among
them is the problem of certitude. Kant, indeed, is so important a factor in the
destinies of contemporary philosophy not only because he is the initiator of
critical formalism, but still more because he obliges his successors to deal with
the preliminary and fundamental question of the limits of knowledge. On the other
hand the experimental investigation of mental processed has become the object
of a new study, psycho-physiology, in which men of science co-operate with
philosophers, and which meets with increasing success. This study figures in the
programme of most modern universities. Originating at Leipzig (the School of
Wundt) and Würzburg, it has quickly become naturalized in Europe and
America. In America, "The Psychological Review" has devoted many articles to
this branch of philosophy. Psychological studies are the chosen field of the
American (Ladd, William James, Hall).
The great success of psychology has emphasized the subjective character of
aesthetics, in which hardly anyone now recognizes the objective and
metaphysical element. The solutions in vogue are the Kantian, which represents
the aesthetic judgment as formed in accordance with the subjective, structural
function of the mind, or other psychologic solutions which reduce the beautiful to
a psychic impression (the "sympathy", or Einfühlung, of Lipps; the "concrete
intuition" of Benedetto Croce). These explanations are insufficient, as they
neglect the objective aspect of the beautiful - those elements which, on the part
of the object, are the cause of the aesthetic impression and enjoyment. It may
be said that the neo-Scholastic philosophy alone takes into account the objective
aesthetic factor.
The absorbing influence of psychology also manifests itself to the detriment of
other branches of philosophy; first of all, to the detriment of metaphysics, which
our contemporaries have unjustly ostracized - unjustly, since, if the existence
or possibility of a thing-in-itself is considered of importance, it behooves us to
inquire under what aspects of reality it reveals itself. This ostracism of
metaphysics, moreover, is largely due to misconception and to a wrong
understanding of the theories of substance, of faculties, of causes etc., which
belong to the traditional metaphysics. Then again, the invasion of psychology is
manifest in logic: side by side with the ancient logic or dialectic, a mathematical
or symbolic logic has developed (Peano, Russell, Peirce, Mitchell, and others)
and, more recently, a genetic logic which would study, not the fixed laws of
thought, but the changing process of mental life and its genesis (Baldwin).
We have seen above (section II, D) how the increasing cultivation of psychology
has produced other scientific ramifications which find favour with the learned
world. Moral philosophy, long neglected, enjoys a renewed vogue notably in
America, where ethnography is devoted to its service (see, e.g., the publications
of the Smithsonian Institution). "The International Journal of Ethics" is a review
especially devoted to this line of work. In some quarters, where the atmosphere
is Positivist, there is a desire to get rid of the old morality, with its notions of
value and of duty, and to replace it with a collection of empiric rules subject to
evolution (Sidgwick, Huxley, Leslie Stephen, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl).
As to the history of philosophy, not only are very extended special studies
devoted to it, but more and more room is given it in the study of every philosophic
question. Among the causes of this exaggerated vogue are the impulse given by
the Schools of Cousin and of Hegel, the progress of historical studies in general,
the confusion arising from the clash of rival doctrines, and the distrust
engendered by that confusion. Remarkable works have been produced by
Deussen, on Indian and Oriental philosophy; by Zeller, on Greek antiquity; by
Denifle, Hauréau, Bäumker, and Mandonnet, on the Middle Ages; by
Windelband, Kuno Fischer, Boutroux and Höffding, on the modern period; and
the list might easily be considerably prolonged.
B. The Opposing Systems
The rival systems of philosophy of the present time may be reduced to various
groups: Positivism, neo-Kantianism, Monism, neo-Scholasticism. Contemporary
philosophy lives in an atmosphere of Phenomenism, since Positivism and
neo-Kantianism are at one on this important doctrine: that science and certitude
are possible only within the limits of the world of phenomena, which is the
immediate object of experience. Positivism, insisting on the exclusive rights of
sensory experience, and Kantian criticism, reasoning from the structure of our
cognitive faculties, hold that knowledge extends only as far as appearances; that
beyond this is the absolute, the dark depths, the existence of which there is less
and less disposition to deny, but which no human mind can fathom. On the
contrary, this element of the absolute forms an integral constituent in
neo-Scholasticism which has revived, with sobriety and moderation, the
fundamental notions of Aristotelean and Medieval metaphysics, and has
succeeded in vindicating them against attack and objection.
(1) Positivism
Positivism, under various forms, is defended in England by the followers of
Spencer, by Huxley, Lewes, Tyndall, F. Harrison, Congreve, Beesby, J. Bridges,
Grant Allen (James Martineau is a reactionary against Positivism); by Balfour,
who at the same time propounds a characteristic theory of belief, and falls back
on Fideism. From England Positivism passed over to America, where it soon
dethroned the Scottish doctrines (Carus). De Roberty, in Russia, and Ribot, in
France, are among its most distinguished disciples. In Italy it is found in the
writings of Ferrari, Ardigo, and Morselli; in Germany, in those of Laas, Riehl,
Guyau, and Durkheim. Less brutal than Materialism, the radical vice of
Positivism is its identification of the knowable with the sensible. It seeks in vain
to reduce general ideas to collective images, and to deny the abstract and
universal character of the mind's concepts. It vainly denies the super-experiential
value of the first logical principles in which the scientific life of the mind is rooted;
nor will it ever succeed in showing that the certitude of such a judgment as 2 + 2
= 4 increases with our repeated addition of numbers of oxen or of coins. In
morals, where it would reduce precepts and judgments to sociological data
formed in the collective conscience and varying with the period and the
environment, Positivism stumbles against the judgments of value, and the
supersensible ideas of obligation, moral good, and law, recorded in every human
conscience and unvarying in their essential data.
(2) Kantianism
Kantianism had been forgotten in Germany for some thirty years (1830-60); Vogt,
Büchner, and Molesehott had won for Materialism an ephemeral vogue; but
Materialism was swept away by a strong Kantian reaction. This reversion
towards Kant (Rückkehr zu Kant) begins to be traceable in 1860 (notably as a
result of Lange's "History of Materialism"), and the influence of Kantian doctrines
may be said to permeate the whole contemporary German philosophy (Otto
Liebmann, von Hartmann, Paulsen, Rehmke, Dilthey, Natorp, Fueken, the
Immanentists, and the Empirico-criticists). French neo-Criticism, represented by
Renouvier, was connected chiefly with Kant's second "Critique" and introduced a
specific Voluntarism. Vacherot, Secrétan, Lachelier, Boutroux, Fouillée, and
Bergson are all more or less under tribute to Kantianism. Ravaisson proclaims
himself a follower of Maine de Biran. Kantianism has taken its place in the state
programme of education and Paul Janet, who, with F. Bouillier and Caro, was
among the last legatees of Cousin's Spiritualism, appears, in his "Testament
philosophique", affecting a Monism with a Kantian inspiration. All those who, with
Kant and the Positivists, proclaim the "bankruptcy of science" look for the basis
of our certitude in an imperative demand of the will. This Voluntarism, also called
Pragmatism (William James), and, quite recently, Humanism (Schiller at Oxford),
is inadequate to the establishment of the theoretic moral and social sciences
upon an unshakable base: sooner or later, reflection will ask what this need of
living and of willing is worth, and then the intelligence will return to its position as
the supreme arbiter of certitude.
From Germany and France Kantianism has spread everywhere. In England it has
called into activity the Critical Idealism associated with T. H. Green and Bradley.
Hodgson, on the contrary, returns to Realism. S. Laurie may be placed between
Green and Martineau. Emerson, Harris, Everett, and Royce spread Idealistic
Criticism in America; Shadworth Hodgson, on the other hand, and Adamson tend
to return to Realism, whilst James Ward emphasizes the function of the will.
(3) Monism
With a great many Kantians, a stratum of Monistic ideas is superimposed on
Criticism, the thing in itself being considered numerically one. The same
tendencies are observable among Positivist Evolutionists like Clifford and
Romanes, or G.T. Ladd.
(4) Neo-Scholasticism
Neo-Scholasticism, the revival of which dates from the last third of the nineteenth
century (Liberatore, Taparelli, Cornoldi, and others), and which received a
powerful impulse under Leo XIII, is tending more and more to become the
philosophy of Catholics. It replaces Ontologism, Traditionalism, Gunther's
Dualism, and Cartesian Spiritualism, which had manifestly become insufficient.
Its syntheses, renewed and completed, can be set up in opposition to Positivism
and Kantianism, and even its adversaries no longer dream of denying the worth of
its doctrines. The bearings of neo-Scholasticism have been treated elsewhere
(see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).
VII. IS PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY INDEFINITE, OR IS THERE A
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS?
Considering the historic succession of systems and the evolution of doctrines
from the remotest ages of India down to our own times, and standing face to face
with the progress achieved by contemporary scientific philosophy, must we not
infer the indefinite progress of philosophic thought? Many have allowed
themselves to be led away by this ideal dream. Historic Idealism (Karl Marx)
regards philosophy as a product fatally engendered by pre-existing causes in our
physical and social environment. Auguste Comte's "law of the three states",
Herbert Spencer's evolutionism Hegel's "indefinite becoming of the soul", sweep
philosophy along in an ascending current toward an ideal perfection, the
realization of which no one can foresee. For all these thinkers, philosophy is
variable and relative: therein lies their serious error. Indefinite progress,
condemned by history in many fields, is untenable in the history of philosophy.
Such a notion is evidently refuted by the appearance of thinkers like Aristotle and
Plato three centuries before Christ, for these men, who for ages have dominated,
and still dominate, human thought, would be anachronisms, since they would be
inferior to the thinkers of our own time. And no one would venture to assert this.
History shows, indeed, that there are adaptations of a synthesis to its
environment, and that every age has its own aspirations and its special way of
looking at problems and their solutions; but it also presents unmistakable
evidence of incessant new beginnings, of rhythmic oscillations from one pole of
thought to the other. If Kant found an original formula of Subjectivism and the
reine Innerlichkeit, it would be a mistake to think that Kant had no intellectual
ancestors: he had them in the earliest historic ages of philosophy: M. Deussen
has found in the Vedic hymn of the Upanishads the distinction between
noumenon and phenomenon, and writes, on the theory of Mâyâ, "Kants
Grunddogma, so alt wie die Philosophie" ("Die Philos. des Upanishad's", Leipzig,
1899, p. 204).
It is false to say that all truth is relative to a given time and latitude, and that
philosophy is the product of economic conditions in a ceaseless course of
evolution, as historical Materialism holds. Side by side with these things, which
are subject to change and belong to one particular condition of the life of
mankind, there is a soul of truth circulating in every system, a mere fragment of
that complete and unchangeable truth which haunts the human mind in its most
disinterested investigations. Amid the oscillations of historic systems there is
room for a philosophia perennis - as it were a purest atmosphere of truth,
enveloping the ages, its clearness somehow felt in spite of cloud and mist. "The
truth Pythagoras sought after, and Plato, and Aristotle, is the same that
Augustine and Aquinas pursued. So far as it is developed in history, truth is the
daughter of time; so far as it bears within itself a content independent of time,
and therefore of history, it is the daughter of eternity" [Willmann, "Gesch. d
Idealismus", II (Brunswick, 1896), 55O; cf. Commer "Die immerwahrende
Philosophie" (Vienna, 1899)]. This does not mean that essential and permanent
verities do not adapt themselves to the intellectual life of each epoch. Absolute
immobility in philosophy, no less than absolute relativity, is contrary to nature
and to history. It leads to decadence and death. It is in this sense that we must
interpret the adage: Vita in motu.
VIII. PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENCES
Aristotle of old laid the foundation of a philosophy supported by observation and
experience. We need only glance through the list of his works to see that
astronomy, mineralogy, physics and chemistry, biology, zoology, furnished him
with examples and bases for his theories on the constitution, of the heavenly and
terrestrial bodies, the nature of the vital principle, etc. Besides, the whole
Aristotelean classification of the branches of philosophy (see section II) is
inspired by the same idea of making philosophy - general science - rest upon
the particular sciences. The early Middle Ages, with a rudimentary scientific
culture, regarded all its learning, built up on the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric,
dialectic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), as
preparation for philosophy. In the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism came
under Aristotelean influences, it incorporated the sciences in the programme of
philosophy itself. This may be seen in regulation issued by the Faculty of Arts of
Paris 19 March, 1255, "De libris qui legendi essent" This order prescribes the
study of commentaries or various scientific treatises of Aristotle, notably those
on the first book of the "Meteorologica", on the treatises on Heaven and Earth,
Generation, the Senses and Sensations, Sleeping and Waking, Memory, Plants,
and Animals. Here are amply sufficient means for the magistri to familiarize the
"artists" with astronomy, botany, physiology, and zoology to say nothing of
Aristotle's "Physics", which was also prescribed as a classical text, and which
afforded opportunities for numerous observations in chemistry and physics as
then understood. Grammar and rhetoric served as preliminary studies to logic,
Bible history, social science, and politics were introductory to moral philosophy.
Such men as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon expressed their views on the
necessity of linking the sciences with philosophy and preached it by example.
So that both antiquity and the Middle Ages knew and appreciated scientific
philosophy.
In the seventeenth century the question of the relation between the two enters
upon a new phase: from this period modern science takes shape and begins that
triumphal march which it is destined to continue through the twentieth century,
and of which the human mind is justly proud. Modern scientific knowledge differs
from that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in three important respects: the
multiplication of sciences; their independent value; the divergence between
common knowledge and scientific knowledge. In the Middle Ages astronomy was
closely akin to astrology, chemistry to alchemy, physics to divination; modern
science has severely excluded all these fantastic connections. Considered now
from one side and again from another, the physical world has revealed continually
new aspects, and each specific point of view has become the focus of a new
study. On the other hand, by defining their respective limits, the sciences have
acquired autonomy; useful in the Middle Ages only as a preparation for rational
physics and for metaphysics, they are nowadays of value for themselves, and no
longer play the part of handmaids to philosophy. Indeed, the progress achieved
within itself by each particular science brings one more revolution in knowledge.
So long as instruments of observation were imperfect, and inductive methods
restricted, it was practically impossible to rise above an elementary knowledge.
People knew, in the Middle Ages, that Wine, when left exposed to the air,
became vinegar; but what do facts like this amount to in comparison with the
complex formulae of modern chemistry? Hence it was that an Albertus Magnus
or a Roger Bacon could flatter himself, in those days, with having acquired all the
science of his time, a claim which would now only provoke a smile. In every
department progress has drawn the line sharply between popular and scientific
knowledge; the former is ordinarily the starting-point of the latter, but the
conclusions and teachings involved in the sciences are unintelligible to those
who lack the requisite preparation.
Do not, then, these profound modifications in the condition of the sciences entail
modifications in the relations which, until the seventeenth century, had been
accepted as existing between the sciences and philosophy? Must not the
separation of philosophy and science widen out to a complete divorce? Many
have thought so, both scientists and philosophers, and it was for this that in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so many savants and philosophers turned
their backs on one another. For the former, philosophy has become useless; the
particular sciences, they say, multiplying and becoming perfect, must exhaust
the whole field of the knowable, and a time will come when philosophy shall be
no more. For the philosophers, philosophy has no need of the immeasurable
mass of scientific notions which have been acquired, many of which possess
only a precarious and provisional value. Wolff, who pronounced the divorce of
science from philosophy, did most to accredit this view, and he has been
followed by certain Catholic philosophers who held that scientific study may be
excluded from philosophic culture.
What shall we say on this question? That the reasons which formerly existed for
keeping touch with science are a thousand times more imperative in our day. If
the profound synthetic view of things which justifies the existence of philosophy
presupposes analytical researches, the multiplication and perfection of those
researches is certainly reason for neglecting them. The horizon of detailed
knowledge widens incessantly; research of every kind is busy exploring the
departments of the universe which it has mapped out. And philosophy, whose
mission is to explain the order of the universe by general and ultimate reasons
applicable, not only to a group of facts, but to the whole body of known
phenomena, cannot be indifferent to the matter which it has to explain.
Philosophy is like a tower whence we obtain the panorama of a great city - its
plan, its monuments, its great arteries, with the form and location of each -
things which a visitor cannot discern while he goes through the streets and
lanes, or visits libraries, churches, palaces, and museums, one after another. If
the city grows and develops, there is all the more reason, if we would know it as
a whole, why we should hesitate to ascend the tower and study from that height
the plan upon which its new quarters have been laid out.
It is, happily, evident that contemporary philosophy is inclined to be first and
foremost a scientific philosophy; it has found its way back from its wanderings of
yore. This is noticeable in philosophers of the most opposite tendencies. There
would be no end to the list if we had to enumerate every case where this
orientation of ideas has been adopted. "This union", says Boutroux, speaking of
the sciences and philosophy, "is in truth the classic tradition of philosophy. But
there had been established a psychology and a metaphysics which aspired to
set themselves up beyond the sciences, by mere reflection of the mind upon
itself. Nowadays all philosophers are agreed to make scientific data their
starting-point" (Address at the International Congress of Philosophy in 1900;
Revue de Métaph. et de Morale, 1900, p. 697). Boutroux and many others spoke
similarly at the International Congress of Bologna (April, 1911). Wundt introduces
this union into the very definition of philosophy, which, he says, is "the general
science whose function it is to unite ia a system free of all contradictions the
knowledge acquired through the particular sciences, and to reduce to their
principles the general methods of science and the conditions of knowledge
supposed by them" ("Einleitung in die Philosophie", Leipzig, 1901, p. 19). And R.
Eucken says: "The farther back the limits of the observable world recede, the
more conscious are we of the lack of an adequately comprehensive explanation"
- " Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philos. u. Lebensanschanung" (Leipzig, 1903), p.
157]. This same thought inspired Leo XIII when he placed the parallel and
harmonious teaching of philosophy and of the sciences on the programme of the
Institute of Philosophy created by him in the University of Louvain (see
NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).
On their side, the scientists have been coming to the same conclusions ever
since they rose to a synthetic view of that matter which is the object of their
study. So it was with Pasteur, so with Newton. Ostwald, professor of chemistry
at Leipzig, has undertaken to publish the "Annalen der Naturphilosophie", a
review devoted to the cultivation of the territory which is common to philosophy
and the sciences A great many men of science, too, are engaged in philosophy
without knowing it: in their constant discussions of "Mechanism", "Evolutionism",
"Transformism", they are using terms which imply a philosophical theory of
matter.
If philosophy is the explanation as a whole of that world which the particular
sciences investigate in detail, it follows that the latter find their culmination in the
former, and that as the sciences are so will philosophy be. It is true that
objections are put forward against this way of uniting philosophy and the
sciences. Common observation, it is said, is enough support for philosophy. This
is a mistake: philosophy cannot ignore whole departments of knowledge which
are inaccessible to ordinary experience biology, for example, has shed a new
light on the philosophic study of man. Others again adduce the extent and the
growth of the sciences to show that scientific philosophy must ever remain an
unattainable ideal; the practical solution of this difficulty concerns the teaching of
philosophy (see section XI).
IX. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Religion presents to man, with authority, the solution of man's problems which
also concern philosophy. Such are the questions of the nature of God, of His
relation with the visible world, of man's origin and destiny Now religion, which
precedes philosophy in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into
consideration the points of religious doctrine. Hence the close connection of
philosophy with religion in the early stages of civilization, a fact strikingly
apparent in Indian philosophy, which, not only at its beginning but throughout its
development, was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books (see
above). The Greeks, at least during the most important periods of their history,
were much less subject to the influences of pagan religions; in fact, they
combined with extreme scrupulosity in what concerned ceremonial usage a wide
liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its independent flight
Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the common people believed; Plato does
not banish religious ideas from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them entirely
apart, his God is the Actus purus, with a meaning exclusively philosophic, the
prime mover of the universal mechanism. The Stoics point out that all things
obey an irresistible fatality and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus
teaches cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to conclude that
man can lay aside all fear of divine intervention in mundane affairs. The question
takes a new aspect when the influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are
brought to bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish theology
(end of the first century), and, above all, neo-Platonism (third century B.C.). A
yearning for religion was stirring in the world, and philosophy became enamoured
of every religious doctrine Plotinus (third century after Christ), who must always
remain the most perfect type of the neo-Platonic mentality, makes philosophy
identical with religion, assigning as its highest aim the union of the soul with God
by mystical ways. This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most
bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e.g. Jamblicus (d. about A.D.
330), who, on a foundation of neo-Platonism, erected an international pantheon
for all the divinities whose names are known.
It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its monotheistic dogma and its
serene, purifying morality, came in the fulness of time and appeased the inward
unrest with which souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though
Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school, the religion which
He founded supplies solutions for a group of problems which philosophy solves
by other methods (e.g. the immortality of the soul). The first Christian
philosophers the Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took
over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of philosophy and
religion. With them philosophy is incidental and secondary, employed only to
meet polemic needs, and to support dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this
Clement of Alexandria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued the same
traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to have received neo-Platonic
influences through the channel of the Fathers. John Scotus Eriugena (ninth
century), the most remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion is
true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div. praed.,
I, I). But as the era advances a process of dissociation sets in, to end in the
complete separation between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or the
study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and Scholastic
philosophy, based on purely rational investigation. To understand the successive
stages of this differentiation, which was not completed until the middle of the
thirteenth century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of capital
importance.
(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early Middle Ages, must
be sought within the domain of theology, in the sense that the philosophical
discussions arose in reference to theological questions. The discussion, e.g. of
transubstantiation (Berengarius of Tours), raised the problem of substance and of
change, or becoming. (2) Theology being regarded as a superior and sacred
science, the whole pedagogic and didactic organization of the period tended to
confirm this superiority (see section XI). (3) The enthusiasm for dialectics, which
reached its maximum in the eleventh century, brought into fashion certain purely
verbal methods of reasoning bordering on the sophistical. Anselm of Besata
(Anselmus Peripateticus) is the type of this kind of reasoner. Now the
dialecticians, in discussing theological subjects, claimed absolute validity for
their methods, and they ended in such heresies as Gottschalk's on
predestination, Berengarius's on transubstantiation, and Roscelin's Tritheism.
Berengarius's motto was: "Per omnia ad dialecticam confugere". There followed
an excessive reaction on the part of timorous theologians, practical men before
all things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the dialecticians. This
antagonistic movement coincided with an attempt to reform religious life. At the
head of the group was Peter Damian (1007-72), the adversary of the liberal arts;
he was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of theology.
From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle Ages in general put
philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim was current only among a narrow
circle of reactionary theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were
Manegold of Lautenbach and Othloh of St. Emmeram, in Germany.
(4) At the same time a new tendency becomes discernible in the eleventh
century, in Lanfranc, William of Hirschau, Rodulfus Ardens, and particularly St.
Anselm of Canterbury; the theologian calls in the aid of philosophy to
demonstrate certain dogmas or to show their rational side. St. Anselm, in an
Augustinian spirit, attempted this justification of dogma, without perhaps
invariably applying to the demonstrative value of his arguments the requisite
limitations. In the thirteenth century these efforts resulted in a new theological
method, the dialectic.
(5) While these disputes as to the relations of philosophy and theology went on,
many philosophical questions were nevertheless treated on their own account, as
we have seen above (universals, St. Anselm's theodicy, Abelard's philosophy,
etc.).
(6) The dialectic method, developed fully in the twelfth century, just when
Scholastic theology received a powerful impetus, is a theological, not a
philosophical, method. The principal method in theology is the interpretation of
Scripture and of authority; the dialectic method is secondary and consists in first
establishing a dogma and then showing its reasonableness, confirming the
argument from authority by the argument from reason. It is a process of
apologetics. From the twelfth century onward, these two theological methods are
fairly distinguished by the words auctoritates, rationes. Scholastic theology,
condensed in the "summae" and "books of sentences", is henceforward regarded
as distinct from philosophy. The attitude of theologians towards philosophy is
threefold: one group, the least influential, still opposes its introduction into
theology, and carries on the reactionary traditions of the preceding period (e.g.
Gauthier de Saint-Victor); another accepts philosophy, but takes a utilitarian view
of it, regarding it merely as a prop of dogma (Peter Lombard); a third group, the
most influential, since it includes the three theological schools of St. Victor,
Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, grants to philosophy, in addition to this
apologetic role, an independent value which entitles it to be cultivated and
studied for its own sake. The members of this group are at once both theologians
and philosophers.
(7) At the opening of the thirteenth century one section of Augustinian
theologians continued to emphasize the utilitarian and apologetic office of
philosophy. But St. Thomas Aquinas created new Scholastic traditions, and
wrote a chapter on scientific methodology in which the distinctness and in
dependence of the two sciences is thoroughly established. Duns Scotus, again,
and the Terminists exaggerated this independence. Latin Averroism, which had a
brilliant but ephemeral vogue in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, accepted
whole and entire in philosophy Averroistic Peripateticism, and, to safeguard
Catholic orthodoxy, took refuge behind the sophism that what is true in
philosophy may be false in theology, and conversely - wherein they were more
reserved than Averroes and the Arab philosophers, who regarded religion as
something inferior, good enough for the masses, and who did not trouble
themselves about Moslem orthodoxy. Lully, going to extremes, maintained that
all dogma is susceptible of demonstration, and that philosophy and theology
coalesce. Taken as a whole, the Middle Ages, profoundly religious, constantly
sought to reconcile its philosophy with the Catholic Faith. This bond the
Renaissance philosophy severed. In the Reformation period a group of publicists,
in view of the prevailing strife, formed projects of reconciliation among the
numerous religious bodies. They convinced themselves that all religions possess
a common fund of essential truths relating to God, and that their content is
identical, in spite of divergent dogmas. Besides, Theism, being only a form of
Naturism applied to religion, suited the independent ways of the Renaissance.
As in building up natural law, human nature was taken into consideration, so
reason was interrogated to discover religious ideas. And hence the wide
acceptance of Theism, not among Protestants only, but generally among minds
that had been carried away with the Renaissance movement (Erasmus,
Coornheert).
For this tolerance or religious indifferentism modern philosophy in more than one
instance substituted a disdain of positive religions. The English Theism or Deism
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries criticizes all positive religion and, in
the name of an innate religious sense, builds up a natural religion which is
reducible to a collection of theses on the existence of God and the immortality of
the soul. The initiator of this movement was Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); J.
Toland (1670-1722), Tindal (1656-1733), and Lord Bolingbroke took part in it. This
criticizing movement inaugurated in England was taken up in France, where it
combined with an outright hatred of Catholicism. Pierre Bayle (1646-17O6)
propounded the thesis that all religion is anti-rational and absurd, and that a state
composed of Atheists is possible. Voltaire wished to substitute for Catholicism
an incoherent mass of doctrines about God. The religious philosophy of the
eighteenth century in France led to Atheism and paved the way for the
Revolution. In justice to contemporary philosophy it must be credited with
teaching the amplest tolerance towards the various religions; and in its
programme of research it has included religious psychology, or the study of the
religious sentiment.
For Catholic philosophy the relations between philosophy and theology, between
reason and faith, were fixed, in a chapter of scientific methodology, by the great
Scholastic thinkers of the thirteenth century. Its principles, which still retain their
vitality, are as follows:
(a) Distinctness of the two sciences.
The independence of philosophy in regard to theology, as in regard to any other
science whatsoever, is only an interpretation of this undeniable principle of
scientific progress, as applicable in the twentieth century as it was in the
thirteenth, that a rightly constituted science derives its formal object, its
principles, and its constructive method from its own resources, and that, this
being so, it cannot borrow from any other science without compromising its own
right to exist.
(b) Negative, not positive, material, not formal, subordination of philosophy in
regard to theology.
This means that, while the two sciences keep their formal independence (the
independence of the principles by which their investigations are guided), there are
certain matters where philosophy cannot contradict the solutions afforded by
theology. The Scholastics of the Middle Ages justified this subordination, being
profoundly convinced that Catholic dogma contains the infallible word of God, the
expression of truth. Once a proposition, e.g. that two and two make four, has
been accepted as certain, logic forbids any other science to form any conclusion
subversive of that proposition. The material mutual subordination of the sciences
is one of those laws out of which logic makes the indispensable guarantee of the
unity of knowledge. "The truth duly demonstrated by one science serves as a
beacon in another science." The certainty of a theory in chemistry imposes its
acceptance on physics, and the physicist who should go contrary to it would be
out of his course. Similarly, the philosopher cannot contradict the certain data of
theology, any more than he can contradict the certain conclusions of the
individual sciences. To deny this would be to deny the conformity of truth with
truth, to contest the principle of contradiction, to surrender to a relativism which
is destructive of all certitude. "It being supposed that nothing but what is true is
included in this science (sc. theology) . . . it being supposed that whatever is
true by the decision and authority of this science can nowise be false by the
decision of right reason: these things, I say, being supposed, as it is manifest
from them that the authority of this science and reason alike rest upon truth, and
one verity cannot be contrary to another, it must be said absolutely that reason
can in no way be contrary to the authority of this Scripture, nay, all right reason
is in accord with it" (Henry of Ghent, "Summa Theologica", X, iii, n.4).
But when is a theory certain? This is a question of fact, and error is easy. In
proportion as the principle is simple and absolute, so are its applications
complex and variable. It is not for philosophy to establish the certitude of
theological data, any more than to fix the conclusions of chemistry or of
physiology. The certainty of those data and those conclusions must proceed
from another source. "The preconceived idea is entertained that a Catholic savant
is a soldier in the service of his religious faith, and that, in his hands, science is
but a weapon to defend his Credo. In the eyes of a great many people, the
Catholic savant seems to be always under the menace of excommunication, or
entangled in dogmas which hamper him, and compelled, for the sake of loyalty to
his Faith, to renounce the disinterested love of science and its free cultivation"
(Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supér. de philos.", 1891, p. 9). Nothing could
be more untrue.
X. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY
The principles which govern the doctrinal relations of philosophy and theology
have moved the Catholic Church to intervene on various occasions in the history
of philosophy. As to the Church's right and duty to intervene for the purpose of
maintaining the integrity of theological dogma and the deposit of faith, there is no
need of discussion in this place. It is interesting, however, to note the attitude
taken by the Church towards philosophy throughout the ages, and particularly in
the Middle Ages, when a civilization saturated with Christianity had established
extremely intimate relations between theology and philosophy.
A. The censures of the Church have never fallen upon philosophy as such, but
upon theological applications, judged false, which were based upon philosophical
reasonings. John Scotus Eriugena, Roscelin, Berengarius, Abelard, Gilbert de la
Porrée were condemned because their teachings tended to subvert theological
dogmas. Eriugena denied the substantial distinction between God and created
things; Roscelin held that there are three Gods; Berengarius, that there is no real
transubstantiation in the Eucharist; Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée essentially
modified the dogma of the Trinity. The Church, through her councils, condemned
their theological errors; with their philosophy as such she does not concern
herself. "Nominalism", says Hauréau, "is the old enemy. It is, in fact, the
doctrine which, because it best accords with reason, is most remote from
axioms of faith. Denounced before council after council, Nominalism was
condemned in the person of Abelard as it had been in the person of Roscelin"
(Hist. philos. scol., I, 292).
No assertion could be more inaccurate. What the Church has condemned is
neither the so-called Nominalism, nor Realism, nor philosophy in general, nor the
method of arguing in theology, but certain applications of that method which are
judged dangerous, i.e. matters which are not philosophical. In the thirteenth
century a host of teachers adopted the philosophical theories of Roscelin and
Abelard, and no councils were convoked to condemn them. The same may be
said of the condemnation of David of Dinant (thirteenth century), who denied the
distinction between God and matter, and of various doctrines condemned in the
fourteenth century as tending to the negation of morality. It has been the same in
modern times. To mention only the condemnation of Gunther, of Rosmini, and of
Ontologism in the nineteenth century, what alarmed the Church was the fact that
the theses in question had a theologic: bearing.
B. The Church has never imposed any philosophical system, though she has
anathematized many doctrines, or branded them as suspect. This corresponds
with the prohibitive, but not imperative attitude of theology in regard to
philosophy. To take one example, faith teaches that the world was created in
time; and yet St. Thomas maintains that the concept of eternal creation (ab
aeterno) involves no contradiction. He did not think himself obliged to
demonstrate creation in time: his teaching would have been heterodox only if,
with the Averroists his day, he had maintained the necessary eternity of the
world. It may, perhaps, be objected that many Thomistic doctrines were
condemned in 1277 by Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris. But it is well to note,
and recent works on the subject have abundantly proved this, that Tempier's
condemnation, in so far as it applied to Thomas Aquinas, was the issue of
intrigues and personal animosity, and that, in canon law, it had no force outside
of the Diocese of Paris. Moreover, it was annulled by one of Tempier's
successors, Etienne de Borrète, in 1325.
C. The Church has encouraged philosophy. To say nothing of the fact that all
those who applied themselves to science and philosophy in the Middle Ages
were churchmen, and that the liberal arts found an asylum in capitular and
monastic schools until the twelfth century, it is important to remark that the
principal universities of the Middle Ages were pontifical foundations. This was the
case with Paris. To be sure, in the first years of the university's aquaintance with
the Aristotelean encyclopaedia (late twelfth century) there were prohibitions
against reading the "Physics", the "Metaphysics", and the treatise "On the
Soul". But these restrictions were of a temporary character and arose out of
particular circumstanccs. In 1231, Gregory IX laid upon a commission of three
consultors the charge to prepare an amended edition of Aristotle "ne utile per
inutile vitietur" (lest what is useful suffer damage through what is useless). The
work of expurgatio. was done, in point of fact, by the Albertine-Thomist School,
and, beginning from the year 1255, the Faculty of Arts, with the knowledge of the
ecclesiastical authority, ordered the teaching of all the books previously
prohibited (see Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant et l'averroïsme latin au XIIIe s.",
Louvain 1910). It might also be shown how in modern times and in our own day
the popes have encouraged philosophic studies. Leo XIII, as is well known,
considered the restoration of philosophic Thomism on of the chief tasks of his
pontificate.
XI. THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY
The methods of teaching philosophy have varied in various ages. Socrates used
to interview his auditors, and hold symposia in the market-place, on the porticoes
and in the public gardens. His method was interrogation, he whetted the curiosity
of the audience and practised what had become known as Socratic irony and the
maieutic art (maieutikê techne), the art of delivering minds of their conceptions.
His successor opened schools properly so called, and from the place occupied
by these schools several systems took their names (the Stoic School, the
Academy, the Lyceum). In the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth century
the learned language was Latin. The German discourses of Eckhart are
mentioned as merely sporadic examples. From the ninth to the twelfth century
teaching was confined to the monastic and cathedral schools. It was the golden
age of schools. Masters and students went from one school to another: Lanfranc
travelled over Europe; John of Salisbury (twelfth century) heard at Paris all the
then famous professors of philosophy; Abelard gathered crowds about his
rostrum. Moreover: as the same subjects were taught everywhere, and from the
same text-books, scholastic wanderings were attended with few disadvantages.
The books took the form of commentaries or monographs. From the time of
Abelard a method came into use which met with great success, that of setting
forth the pros and cons of a question, which was later perfected by the addition of
a solutio. The application of this method was extended in the thirteenth century
(e.g. in the "Summa theologica" of St. Thomas). Lastly, philosophy being an
educational preparation for theology, the "Queen of the Sciences", philosophical
and theological topics were combined in one and the same book, or even in the
same lecture.
At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, the
University of Paris was organized, and philosophical teaching was concentrated
in the Faculty of Arts. Teaching was dominated by two principles:
internationalism and freedom. The student was an apprentice-professor: after
receiving the various degrees, he obtained from the chancellor of the university a
licence to teach (licentia docendi). Many of the courses of this period have been
preserved, the abbreviated script of the Middle Ages being virtually a
stenographic system. The programme of courses drawn up in 1255 is well
known: it comprises the exegesis of all the books of Aristotle. The commentary,
or lectio (from legere, to read), is the ordinary form of instruction (whence the
German Vorlesungen and the English lecture). There were also disputations, in
which questions were treated by means of objections and answers; the exercise
took a lively character, each one being invited to contribute his thoughts on the
subject. The University of Paris was the model for all the others, notably those of
Oxford and Cambridge. These forms of instruction in the universities lasted as
long as Aristoteleanism, i.e. until the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth
century - the siècle des lumières (Erklärung) - philosophy took a popular and
encyclopedic form, and was circulated in the literary productions of the period. In
the nineteenth century it resumed its didactic attitude in the universities and in
the seminaries, where, indeed its teaching had long continued. The advance of
philological and historical studies had a great influence on the character of
philosophical teaching: critical methods were welcomed, and little by little the
professors adopted the practice of specializing in this or that branch of
philosophy - a practice which is still in vogue. Without attempting to touch on
all the questions involved in modern methods of teaching philosophy, we shall
here indicate some of the principal features.
A. The Language of Philosophy
The earliest of the moderns - as Descartes or Leibniz - used both Latin and
the vernacular, but in the nineteenth century (except in ecclesiastical seminaries
and in certain academical exercises mainly ceremonial in character) the living
languages supplanted Latin; the result has been a gain in clearness of thought
and interest and vitality of teaching. Teaching in Latin too often contents itself
with formulae: the living language effects a better comprehension of things which
must in any case be difficult. Personal experience, writes Fr. Hogan, formerly
superior of the Boston Seminary, in his "Clerical Studies" (Philadelphia,
1895-1901), has shown that among students who have learned philosophy,
particularly Scholastic, only in Latin, very few have acquired anything more than
a mass of formulae, which they hardly understand; though this does not always
prevent their adhering to their formulae through thick and thin. Those who
continue to write in Latin - as many Catholic philosophers, often of the highest
worth, still do - have the sad experience of seeing their books confined to a very
narrow circle of readers.
B. Didactic Processes
Aristotle's advice, followed by the Scholastics, still retains its value and its force:
before giving the solution of a problem, expound the reasons for and against. This
explains, in particular, the great part played by the history of philosophy or the
critical examination of the solutions proposed by the great thinkers. Commentary
on a treatise still figures in some special higher courses; but contemporary
philosophical teaching is principally divided according to the numerous branches
of philosophy (see section II). The introduction of laboratories and practical
seminaries (séminaires practiques) in philosophical teaching has been of the
greatest advantage. Side by side with libraries and shelves full of periodicals
there is room for laboratories and museums, once the necessity of vivifying
philosophy by contact with the sciences is admitted (see section VIII). As for the
practical seminary, in which a group of students, with the aid of a teacher,
investigate to some special problem, it may be applied to any branch of
philosophy with remarkable results. The work in common, where each directs his
individual efforts towards one general aim, makes each the beneficiary of the
researches of all; it accustoms them to handling the instruments of research,
facilitates the detection of facts, teaches the pupil how to discover for himself the
reasons for what he observes, affords a real experience in the constructive
methods of discovery proper to each subject, and very often decides the
scientific vocation of those whose efforts have been crowned with a first success.
C. The Order of Philosophical Teaching
One of the most complex questions is: With what branch ought philosophical
teaching to begin, and what order should it follow? In conformity with an
immemorial tradition, the beginning is often made with logic. Now logic, the
science of science, is difficult to understand and unattractive in the earliest
stages of teaching. It is better to begin with the sciences which take the real for
their object: psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, and theodicy. Scientific logic
will be better understood later on; moral philosophy presupposes psychology;
systematic history of philosophy requires a preliminary acquaintance with all the
branches of philosophy (see Mercier, "Manuel de philosophie", Introduction, third
edition, Louvain, 1911).
Connected with this question of the order of teaching is another: viz. What should
be the scientific teaching preliminary to philosophy? Only a course in the
sciences specially appropriate to philosophy can meet the manifold exigencies of
the problem. The general scientific courses of our modern universities include too
much or too little: "too much in the sense that professional teaching must go into
numerous technical facts and details with which philosophy has nothing to do;
too little, because professional teaching often makes the observation of facts its
ultimate aim, whilst, from our standpoint, facts are, and can be, only a means, a
starting-point, towards acquiring a knowledge of the most general causes and
laws" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supérieures de philosophie", Louvain,
1891, p. 25). M. Boutroux, a professor at the Sorbonne, solves the problem of
philosophical teaching at the university in the same sense, and, according to
him, the flexible and very liberal organization of the faculty of philosophy should
include "the whole assemblage of the sciences, whether theoretic,
mathematico-physical, or philologico-historical" ("Revue internationale de
l'enseignement", Paris, 1901, p. 51O). The programme of courses of the Institute
of Philosophy of Louvain is drawn up in conformity with this spirit.
XII. BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL WORKS. - MERCIER, Cours de philosophie. Logique. Criteriologie
générale. Ontologie. Psychologie (Louvain, 1905-10); NYS, Cosmologie (Louvain,
1904); Stonyhurst Philosophical Series: - CLARKE, Logic (London, 1909);
JOHN RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge (London, 1901); JOSEPH
RICKABY, Moral Philosophy (London, 1910); BOEDDER, Natural Theology
(London, 1906); MAHER, Psychology (London, 1909); JOHN RICKABY, General
Metaphysics (London, 1909); WALKER, Theories of Knowledge (London,
1910-); ZIGLIARA, Summa philos. (Paris); SCHIFFINI, Principia philos. (Turin);
URRABURU, Institut. philosophiae (Valladolid); IDEM, Compend. phil. schol.
(Madrid); Philosophia Locensis: - PASCH, Inst. Logicales (Freiburg, 1888);
IDEM, Inst. phil. natur. (Freiburg, 1880); IDEM, Inst. psychol. (Freiburg, 1898);
HONTHEIM, Inst. theodicaeae; MEYER, Inst. iuris notur.; DOMET DE VORGEs,
Abrégé de métaophysique (Paris); FAROES, Etudes phil. (Paris); GUTBERLET,
Lehrbuch der Philos. Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Algemeine Metaphys.,
Naturphilos., Die psychol., Die Theodicee, Ethik u. Naturrecht, Ethik u. Religion
(Münster, 1878-85); RABIER, Leçons de phil. (Paris); WINDELBAND with the
collaboration of LIEBMANN, WUNDT, LIPPS, BAUSH, LASK, RICKERT,
TROELTSCH, and GROOS, Die Philos. im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhund.
(Heidelberg); Systematische Philosophie by DILTHEY, RIEHL, WUNDT,
OSTWALD, EBBINGHAUS, EUCKEM, PAULSEN, and MUNCH; LIPPS, Des
Gesamtwerkers, Die Kultur der Gegenwärt (Leipzig), pt. I, vi; DE WULF, tr.
COFFEY, Scholasticism Old and New. An Introduction to Neo-Scholastic
Philosophy (Dublin, 1907); KULPE, Einleitung in die Philos. (Leipzig); WUNDT,
Einleitung in die Philos. (Leipzig); HARPER, The Metaphysics of the School
(London, 1879-84).
DICTIONARIES. - BALDWIN, Dict. of Philosophy and Psychology (London,
1901-05); FRANCE, Dict. des sciences Phil. (Paris, 1876); EISLER, Wörterbuch
der Philosoph. Begriffe (Berlin, 1899); Vocabulaire technique et critique de Phil.,
in course of publication by the Soc. française do philosophie.
COLLECTIONS. - Bibliothèque de l'Institut supérieur de Philosophie;
PEILLAUBE, Bibl. de Phil. expérimentale (Paris); RIVIERE, Bibl. de Phil.
contemporaine (Paris); Coll. historique des grands Philosophes (Paris); LE BON,
Bibl. de Philosophie scientif. (Paris); PIAT, Les grands Philosophes (Paris);
Philosophische Bibliothek (Leipzig).
PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS. - Mind, a quarterly review of psychology and
Philosophy (London, 1876-); The Philosoph. Rev. (New York, 1892-); Internat.
Jour. of Ethics (Philadelphia); Proc. of Aristotelian Society (London, 1888-);
Rev. Neo-scholastique de Phil. (Louvain, 1894-); Rev. des sciences phil. et
théol. (Paris) Revue Thomiste (Toulouse, 1893-); Annales de Philosophie Chret.
(Paris, 1831-); Rev. de Philos. (Paris); Philosophisches Jahrbuch (Fulda);
Zeitschr. für Philos. und Philosophische Kritik, formerly Fichte-Utrisische
Zeitschr. (Leipzig, 1847-); Kantstudien (Berlin, 1896-); Arch. f. wissehoftliche
Philos. und Soziologie (Leipzig, 1877-); Arch. f. systematische Philos. (Berlin,
1896); Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. (Berlin, 1888-); Rev. Phil. de la France et de
l'Etranger (Paris, 1876-); Rev. de métaph. et de morale (Paris, 1894-);
Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam, 1907-); Riv. di filosofio
neo-scholastico (Florence, 1909-); Rivisto di filosofia (Modena).
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY. - Methods. - MARIETAN, Le probème de la
classification des sciences d'Aristote d S. Thomas (Paris, 1901); WILLMANN,
Didaktik (Brunswick, 1903).
GENERAL HISTORY. - UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philosophy, tr. HARRIS (New
York, 1875-76); ERDMANN, Hist. of Phil. (London, 1898); WINDELBAND, Hist.
of Phil. (New York, 1901); TURNER, Hist. of Phil. (Boston, 1903); WILLMANN,
Gesch. des Idealismus (Brunswick, 1908); ZELLER, Die Philos. der Griechen
(Berlin), tr. ALLEYNE, RETEHEL, GOODWIN, COSTELLOE, and MUIRHEAD
(London); DE WULF, Hist. of Mediaeval Phil. (London, 1909; Paris, Tubingen,
and Florence, 1912); WINDELRAND, Gesch. der neueren Philos. (Leipzig,
1872-80), tr. TUFTS (New York, 1901); HOFFDING, Den nyere Filosofis Historie
(Copenhagen, 1894), tr. MAYER, A Hist. of Mod. Phil. (London, 1900); FISHER,
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (Heidelberg, 1889-1901); STÖCKL,
Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (Mainz, 1888; tr. in part by FINLAY,
Dublin, 1903); WEBER, History of Philosophy, tr. THILLY (New York, 1901).
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. - EUCKEN, Geistige Strömungen der Gegenwart
(Leipzig, 1901); WINDELBAND, Die Philos. im Beginn d. XX. Jahr., I
(Heidelberg); CALDERON, Les courants phil. dans l'Amérique Latine (Heidelberg,
1909); CEULEMANS, Le mouvement phil. en Amérique in Rev. néo-scholast.
(Nov., 1909); BAUMANN, Deutsche u. ausserdeutsche Philos. der letzen
Jahrzehnte (Gotha, 1903).
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. - HEITZ, Essai hist. sur les rapp. entre la
philosophie et la foi de Bérenger de Tours à S. Thomas (Paris, 1909);
BRUNHES, La foi chrét. et la pil. au temps de la renaiss. caroling. (Paris, 1903);
GRABMANN, Die Gesch. der scholast. methode (Freiburg, 1909).
Maurice De Wulf
Transcribed by Kevin Cawley
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII
Copyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org