The Approach to Philosophy Part 21

With Kant there can be no morality except conduct be attended by the consciousness of this duty imposed by the higher nature upon the lower.

It is this very recognition of a deeper self, of a personality that belongs to the sources and not to the consequences of nature, that const.i.tutes man as a moral being, and only such action as is inspired with a reverence for it can be morally good. Kant does little more than to establish the uncompromising dignity of the moral will. In moral action man submits to a law that issues from himself in virtue of his rational nature. Here he yields nothing, as he owes nothing, to that appetency which binds him to the natural world. As a rational being he himself affirms the very principles which determine the organization of nature. This is his _freedom_, at once the ground and the implication of his duty. Man is free from nature to serve the higher law of his personality.

[Sidenote: Kantian Ethics Supplemented through the Conceptions of Universal and Objective Spirit.]

- 192. There are two respects in which Kant's ethics has been regarded as inadequate by those who draw from it their fundamental principles. It is said that Kant is too rigoristic, that he makes too stern a business of morality, in speaking so much of law and so little of love and spontaneity. There are good reasons for this. Kant seeks to isolate the moral consciousness, and dwell upon it in its purity, in order that he may demonstrate its incommensurability with the values of inclination and sensibility. Furthermore, Kant may speak of the principle of the absolute, and recognize the deeper eternal order as a law, but he may not, if he is to be consistent with his own critical principles, affirm the metaphysical being of such an order. With his idealistic followers it is possible to define the spiritual setting of the moral life, but with Kant it is only possible to define the antagonism of principles.

Hence the greater optimism of the post-Kantians. They know that the higher law is the reality, and that he who obeys it thus unites himself with the absolute self. That which for Kant is only a resolute obedience to more valid principles, to rationally superior rules for action, is for idealism man's appropriation of his spiritual birthright.

Since the law is the deeper nature, man may respect and obey it as valid, and at the same time act upon it gladly in the sure knowledge that it will enhance his eternal welfare. Indeed, the knowledge that the very universe is founded upon this law will make him less suspicious of nature and less exclusive in his adherence to any single law. He will be more confident of the essential goodness of all manifestations of a universe which he knows to be fundamentally spiritual.

But it has been urged, secondly, that the Kantian ethics is too formal, too little pertinent to the issues of life. Kant's moral law imposes only obedience to the law, or conduct conceived as suitable to a universal moral community. But what is the nature of such conduct in particular? It may be answered that to maintain the moral self-consciousness, to act dutifully and dutifully only, to be self-reliant and unswerving in the doing of what one ought to do, is to obtain a very specific character. But does this not leave the individual's conduct to his own interpretation of his duty? It was just this element of individualism which Hegel sought to eliminate through the application of his larger philosophical conception. If that which expresses itself within the individual consciousness as the moral law be indeed the law of that self in which the universe is grounded, it will appear as _objective spirit_ in the evolution of society. For Hegel, then, the most valid standard of goodness is to be found in that customary morality which bespeaks the moral leadings of the general humanity, and in those inst.i.tutions, such as the family and the state, which are the moral acts of the absolute idea itself. Finally, in the realm of _absolute spirit_, in art, in revealed religion, and in philosophy, the individual may approach to the self-consciousness which is the perfect truth and goodness in and for itself.

[Sidenote: The Peculiar Pantheism and Mysticism of Absolute Idealism.]

- 193. Where the law of life is the implication in the finite self-consciousness of the eternal and divine self-consciousness, there can be no division between morality and religion, as there can be none between thought and will. Whatever man seeks is in the end G.o.d. As the perfect fulfilment of the thinking self, G.o.d is the truth; as the perfect fulfilment of the willing self, G.o.d is the good. The finite self-consciousness finds facts that are not understood, and so seeks to resolve itself into the perfect self wherein all that is given has meaning. On the other hand, the finite self-consciousness finds ideals that are not realized, and so seeks to resolve itself into that perfect self wherein all that is significant is given. All interests thus converge toward

"some state of conscious spirit in which the opposition of cognition and volition is overcome--in which we neither judge our ideas by the world, nor the world by our ideas, but are aware that inner and outer are in such close and necessary harmony that even the thought of possible discord has become impossible. In its unity not only cognition and volition, but feeling also, must be blended and united. In some way or another it must have overcome the rift in discursive knowledge, and the immediate must for it be no longer the alien. It must be as direct as art, as certain and universal as philosophy."[391:13]

The religious consciousness proper to absolute idealism is both pantheistic and mystical, but with distinction. Platonism is pantheistic in that nature is resolved into G.o.d. All that is not perfect is esteemed only for its promise of perfection. And Platonism is mystical in that the purification and universalization of the affections brings one in the end to a perfection that exceeds all modes of thought and speech.

With Spinoza, on the other hand, G.o.d may be said to be resolved into nature. Nature is made divine, but is none the less nature, for its divinity consists in its absolute necessity. Spinoza's pantheism pa.s.ses over into mysticism because the absolute necessity exceeds in both unity and richness the laws known to the human understanding. In absolute idealism, finally, both G.o.d and nature are resolved into the self. For that which is divine in experience is self-consciousness, and this is at the same time the ground of nature. Thus in the highest knowledge the self is expanded and enriched without being left behind. The mystical experience proper to this philosophy is the consciousness of ident.i.ty, together with the sense of universal immanence. The individual self may be directly sensible of the absolute self, for these are one spiritual life. Thus Emerson says:

"It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power upon which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or 'with the flower of the mind'; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life."[393:14]

[Sidenote: The Religion of Exuberant Spirituality.]

- 194. But the distinguishing flavor and quality of this religion arises from its spiritual hospitality. It is not, like Platonism, a contemplation of the best; nor, like pluralistic idealisms, a moral knight-errantry. It is neither a religion of exclusion, nor a religion of reconstruction, but a profound willingness that things should be as they really are. For this reason its devotees have recognized in Spinoza their true forerunner. But idealism is not Spinozism, though it may contain this as one of its strains. For it is not the worship of necessity, Emerson's "beautiful necessity, which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is not"; but the worship of _that which is_ necessary.

Not only must one understand that every effort, however despairing, is an element of sense in the universal significance;

"that the whole would not be what it is were not precisely this finite purpose left in its own uniqueness to speak precisely its own word--a word which no other purpose can speak in the language of the divine will";[394:15]

but one must have a zest for such partic.i.p.ation, and a heart for the divine will which it profits. Indeed, so much is this religion a love of life, that it may, as in the case of the Romanticists, be a love of caprice. Battle and death, pain and joy, error and truth--all that belongs to the story of this mortal world, are to be felt as the thrill of health, and relished as the essences of G.o.d. Religion is an exuberant spirituality, a fearless sensibility, a knowledge of both good and evil, and a will to serve the good, while exulting that the evil will not yield without a battle.

FOOTNOTES:

[349:1] By _Absolute Idealism_ is meant that system of philosophy which defines the universe as the _absolute spirit_, which is the human _moral_, _cognitive_, or _appreciative consciousness_ universalized; or as the _absolute, transcendental mind_, whose state of _complete knowledge_ is implied in all finite thinking.

[352:2] Plato: _Timaeus_, 29. Translation by Jowett.

[359:3] Plato: _Symposium_, 202. Translation by Jowett.

[359:4] Emerson: _Essays, Second Series_, pp. 65-66.

[364:5] Emerson: _Op. cit._, p. 25.

The possibility of conflict between this method of nature study and the empirical method of science is significantly attested by the circ.u.mstance that in the year 1801 Hegel published a paper in which he maintained, on the ground of certain numerical harmonies, that there could be no planet between Mars and Jupiter, while at almost exactly the same time Piazzi discovered Ceres, the first of the asteroids.

[368:6] McTaggart: _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 181.

[369:7] Green: _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 15.

[370:8] Plato: _The Sophist_, 248. Translation by Jowett.

[382:9] Hegel: _Encyclopadie_, - 45, lecture note. Quoted by McTaggart: _Op. cit._, p. 69.

[382:10] Hegel: _Encyclopadie_, - 50. Quoted by McTaggart: _Op. cit._, p. 70.

[385:11] Royce: _Conception of G.o.d_, pp. 19, 43-44.

This argument is well summarized in Green's statement that "the existence of one connected world, which is the presupposition of knowledge, implies the action of one self-conditioning and self-determining mind." _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 181.

[387:12] Kant: _Critical Examination of Practical Reason_. Translated by Abbott in _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, p. 180.

[391:13] Quoted from McTaggart: _Op. cit._, pp. 231-232.

[393:14] Emerson: _Op. cit._, pp. 30-31.

[394:15] Royce: _The World and the Individual, First Series_, p. 465.

CHAPTER XII

CONCLUSION

[Sidenote: Liability of Philosophy to Revision, Due to its Systematic Character.]

- 195. One who consults a book of philosophy in the hope of finding there a definite body of truth, sanctioned by the consensus of experts, cannot fail to be disappointed. And it should now be plain that this is due not to the frailties of philosophers, but to the meaning of philosophy. Philosophy is not additive, but reconstructive. Natural science may advance step by step without ever losing ground; its empirical discoveries are in their severalty as true as they can ever be. Thus the stars and the species of animals may be recorded successively, and each generation of astronomers and zoologists may take up the work at the point reached by its forerunners. The formulation of results does, it is true, require constant correction and revision--but there is a central body of data which is little affected, and which acc.u.mulates from age to age. Now the finality of scientific truth is proportional to the modesty of its claims. Items of truth persist, while the interpretation of them is subject to alteration with the general advance of knowledge; and, relatively speaking, science consists in items of truth, and philosophy in their interpretation. The liability to revision in science itself increases as that body of knowledge becomes more highly unified and systematic. Thus the present age, with its attempt to construct a single comprehensive system of mechanical science, is peculiarly an age when fundamental conceptions are subjected to a thorough reexamination--when, for example, so ancient a conception as that of matter is threatened with displacement by that of energy. But philosophy is _essentially unitary and systematic_--and thus _superlatively liable to revision_.

[Sidenote: The One Science and the Many Philosophies.]

- 196. It is noteworthy that it is only in this age of a highly systematic natural science that _different_ systems are projected, as in the case just noted of the rivalry between the strictly mechanical, or corpuscular, theory and the newer theory of energetics. It has heretofore been taken for granted that although there may be many philosophies, there is but one body of science. And it is still taken for granted that the experimental detail of the individual science is a common fund, to the progressive increase of which the individual scientist contributes the results of his special research; there being _rival_ schools of mechanics, physics, or chemistry, only in so far as _fundamental conceptions_ or _principles of orderly arrangement_ are in question. But philosophy deals exclusively with the most fundamental conceptions and the most general principles of orderly arrangement.

Hence it is significant of the very task of philosophy that there should be many tentative systems of philosophy, even that each philosopher should project and construct his own philosophy. Philosophy as the truth of synthesis and reconciliation, of comprehensiveness and coordination, must be a living unity. It is a thinking of entire experience, and can be sufficient only through being all-sufficient. The heart of every philosophy is a harmonizing insight, an intellectual prospect within which all human interests and studies compose themselves. Such knowledge cannot be delegated to isolated co-laborers, but will be altogether missed if not loved and sought in its indivisible unity. There is no modest home-keeping philosophy; no safe and conservative philosophy, that can make sure of a part through renouncing the whole. There is no philosophy without intellectual temerity, as there is no religion without moral temerity. And the one is the supreme interest of thought, as the other is the supreme interest of life.

[Sidenote: Progress in Philosophy. The Sophistication or Eclecticism of the Present Age.]

- 197. Though the many philosophies be inevitable, it must not be concluded that there is therefore no progress in philosophy. The solution from which every great philosophy is precipitated is the mingled wisdom of some latest age, with all of its inheritance. The "positive" knowledge furnished by the sciences, the refinements and distinctions of the philosophers, the ideals of society--these and the whole sum of civilization are its ingredients. Where there is no single system of philosophy significant enough to express the age, as did the systems of Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, and the others who belong to the roll of the great philosophers, there exists a _general sophistication_, which is more elusive but not less significant. The present age--at any rate from its own stand-point--is not an age of great philosophical systems. Such systems may indeed be living in our midst unrecognized; but historical perspective cannot safely be antic.i.p.ated. It is certain that no living voice is known to speak for this generation as did Hegel, and even Spencer, for the last.

There is, however, a significance in this very pa.s.sing of Hegel and Spencer,--an enlightenment peculiar to an age which knows them, but has philosophically outlived them. There is a moral in the history of thought which just now no philosophy, whether naturalism, or transcendentalism, realism or idealism, can fail to draw. The characterization of this contemporary eclecticism or sophistication, difficult and uncertain as it must needs be, affords the best summary and interpretation with which to conclude this brief survey of the fortunes of philosophy.

[Sidenote: Metaphysics. The Antagonistic Doctrines of Naturalism and Absolutism.]

- 198. Since the problem of metaphysics is the crucial problem of philosophy, the question of its present status is fundamental in any characterization of the age. It will appear from the foregoing account of the course of metaphysical development that two fundamental tendencies have exhibited themselves from the beginning. The one of these is naturalistic and empirical, representing the claims of what common sense calls "matters of fact"; the other is transcendental and rational, representing the claims of the standards and ideals which are immanent in experience, and directly manifested in the great human interests of thought and action. These tendencies have on the whole been antagonistic; and the clear-cut and momentous systems of philosophy have been fundamentally determined by either the one or the other.

Thus materialism is due to the attempt to reduce all of experience to the elements and principles of connection which are employed by the physical sciences to set in order the actual motions, or changes of place, which the parts of experience undergo. Materialism maintains that the motions of bodies are indifferent to considerations of worth, and denies that they issue from a deeper cause of another order. The very ideas of such non-mechanical elements or principles are here provided with a mechanical origin. Similarly a phenomenalism, like that of Hume, takes immediate presence to sense as the norm of being and knowledge.

Individual items, directly verified in the moment of their occurrence, are held to be at once the content of all real truth, and the source of those abstract ideas which the misguided rationalists mistake for real truth.

But the absolutist, on the other hand, contends that the thinker must _mean_ something by the reality which he seeks. If he had it for the looking, thought would not be, as it so evidently is, a purposive endeavor. And that which is meant by reality can be nothing short of the fulfilment or final realization of this endeavor of thought. To find out what thought seeks, to antic.i.p.ate the consummation of thought and posit it as real, is therefore the first and fundamental procedure of philosophy. The mechanism of nature, and all matters of fact, must come to terms with this absolute reality, or be condemned as mere appearance.