CHAPTER I

THE RELATION OF PHILOSOPHIC METHOD TO THE DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY

One of the problems of philosophy is the nature of philosophy itself. In recognizing such a problem at all, I suppose, the beginning of its solution has been made. For the very question, what is this or that? is conditioned on an incipient definition of the subject of it, a discriminating acknowledgement of it as something in particular, and, so, as something already more or less qualified or defined. Certainly there would be no common problem and no difference of theory without such initial agreement as a point of reference in disagreeing.

But the explicit statement of this starting point of agreement encounters a practical dilemma. On the one hand, anything can be defined in terms so general that the thing is bound to be included: make the genus large enough and it includes anything. The limit, in this direction, would be to define the object as a case of being; which would be safe, but hardly a start toward determining anything about it. On the other hand, the least advance toward narrowing the meaning incurs a very rigorous obligation to produce a principle of selection which shall be a satisfactory logical warrant for narrowing it in just the way selected, since this way excludes others whose claims may be in question. The situation is thus beset with the pitfall of logical presumption.

There are three quite distinct conceptions of philosophy, in the form of ill criticized assumption, each of which is taken by its adherents to be unquestionable--as safe as the concept “being.” I will word them thus: (1) An absolute _evaluation_ of reality; (2) A _revelation_ of reality in its _essential nature_; (3) A _comprehension_ of the _meaning_ of reality.

The first of these conceptions is that of Kant and Fichte and those philosophers to whom reality seems unrelated to apprehending consciousness, related only to will. Reality is neither directly nor indirectly perceivable. Knowledge of it is possible--if the term is proper at all--only in the broadest sense of “knowledge,” the sense equivalent to “consciousness,” within which will is sharply distinguished from two more or less receptive or cognitive modes, thinking and feeling. Knowledge of reality is thus, for this type of philosopher, a practical, personal evaluation of it, only; a moral disposition or attitude.

The second conception is Professor Bergson’s; its meaning is a peculiarly intimate acquaintance with reality. It is a relationship between reality and consciousness in the æsthetic mode, consciousness as the quality-knowing faculty, very explicitly distinguished by Bergson, under the name “intuition,” from the relation-knowing or intellectual faculty.

The third conception, the analytic or intellectualistic, means knowledge about reality, such knowledge as may be relatively independent of acquaintance. The second and third conceptions are distinct from each other only in emphasis, and may be indefinitely approximated toward each other, to the limit of mutual identity. But, historically, the philosopher’s besetting sin of hypostasis has pushed the emphasis, in each of these two conceptions, to so vicious an extreme that they contrast with each other sharply. Pushed to such extreme, the third conception has been stigmatized by adherents of the second as “vicious” conceptualism or intellectualism. By the same right, the intellectualist may denounce intuitionism as equally “vicious.”

To these three conceptions of philosophy this is common: a relationship between reality and consciousness which is apogeal. Philosophy is at any rate a _supreme experience_, a mode of consciousness which is eminent over other modes. But this initial generalization is too indeterminate to constitute a satisfactory theory of the nature of philosophy; whereas (for the other horn of the dilemma), the above attempts at greater specificity appear to invoke no logical principle, but rather to follow a deep-lying personal instinct, without due critical reflection on it; in other words, without logical justification of it. They all beg the question.

Such ill criticized assumption concerning the nature of philosophy is what determines a philosopher’s “method” in distinction from his “doctrine.” The names voluntarism, intuitionism and rationalism have been applied to philosophies whose method is one or other of the three outlined above. Religion, art and science are their models, respectively. Under voluntarism fall the romantic and the pietistic philosophies, wherein value is all that is real, and personal attitude towards value is the only mode of consciousness that illuminates reality. Intuitionism includes radical empiricism, temporalism and mysticism. Such philosophies are based on the conviction that only quality is real, only intuition is knowledge. And under rationalism are positivism and absolutism, in which reality is order and knowledge is reason.

If art, science and religion correspond to the ancient triad feeling (intuition), thought (intellect) and will, it would seem either that philosophy must be consciousness employed in one or more of these modes, or else that a fourth mode of consciousness, coordinate with these, must correspond to philosophy. Such a mode has not been discovered. Philosophy must therefore be one or two or all three of the above things. Can analysis of that generalization which was derived above from the more specific definitions produce a logical principle capable of determining the genuine philosophic method among the three modes of consciousness, feeling, thought and will? Yes, such analysis of the _supremacy_ which is a feature common to all three conceptions of philosophy proves unequivocally that philosophy must be a function of intellect, and cannot be a function either of will or of intuition.

This would not be the case, needless to say, if “supremacy” were here a eulogism. Eulogistically, either of the three modes of consciousness has equal claim to supremacy. That mode of consciousness to which reality is most interesting is supreme, in the eulogistic sense, and this depends on the philosopher’s personal constitution. To the man of dominating intuition, the relations and teleology of things may be incidental characters of them; but, by comparison with reality’s qualitative aspect, those other aspects are relatively extrinisic and accidental. In whatever sense it may not be true, in the eulogistic sense it is true that such a man’s supreme experience is intuitional rather than intellectual or ethical. Bergson’s psychological life seems to be of such a type. But, for the man of ethical, and for the man of intellectual prepossession, supreme experience cannot be intuitional, in this sense of supreme. Yet, if an intuitional bent be regarded by anyone as a hopeful qualification for effective philosophizing, no intuitionist denies to the man in whom reason or will, instead, is paramount, the possibility, by proper effort, of achieving the genuinely philosophic--that is to say, intuitional--activity. And when such a man does, in spite of difficulty, achieve it, it has the same supremacy, as philosophy, that it has for the intuitionist, for whom it is, more fortunately, _also_ supremely congenial and “worth while”. It is not this latter supremacy, therefore, but the other, which distinguishes philosophy, on the intuitionist conception; and that other supremacy has a meaning which is thus proved to be independent of relation to any constitutional prepossession or aptness. If philosophy is intuitional, this is not because intuition is any man’s most characteristic faculty.

And so of the two other modes of consciousness, reason and will, in which, in different beings, according to their constitution, life most naturally and best finds realization: for each of these modes of consciousness, as for the intuitional mode, there is one sort of experience, called philosophy, which is distinguished by a certain supremacy of self-same nature, independent of any distinction of personal constitution among philosophers. The voluntarist, indeed, might claim a peculiarly eulogistic supremacy for volitional experience over any other kind; for it is ethically supreme for all, whatever one’s constitutional bent. But its ethical supremacy is no more the _philosophic quale_ of volitional experience, on the voluntaristic conception of philosophy, than is its other eulogistic supremacy, its mere congeniality, for the strongly volitional type of character. For, men of such character may be conspicuously deficient in philosophic faculty in the judgment of all, including the voluntarist philosopher.

Reason, finally, commands recognition of supremacy, among the modes of consciousness, in another sense, a sense distinct from the imperative or ethical supremacy of will. The supremacy of reason is its exclusive reflectiveness; and reflectiveness as the _quale_ of reason is the same character as criticalness; that is, it is the faculty of judgment. It is important to note that this critical reflectiveness is a _differentia_ of reason; it is not a character of intuition nor of will. The proof is that reflection is the substitution of a relational for a substantive object of consciousness, and relationality is nothing else than rationality. Thus, if feeling, will and rational thought are conceptually distinct, reflectiveness is foreign to the first two, and to anything coördinately distinct from rational thought. When consciousness is employed with an emphasis on the _qualities_ of its object, in distinction from aspects of value and relation (which also belong to any object), consciousness is intuitive, in the intuitionist sense of the term. In entering a consciousness, the qualities become, _ipso facto_, content of that consciousness, taking their place in this setting under the name “sensations,” or “sense data.” It is the act of reflection which “sets” the mind’s data in contexts; which is aware of contexts, that is, and of the setting of data in them. It is the reflective act which names its data accordingly, as “quality” or “sensation”, and is conscious of them as elements of their relational setting. Consciousness is volitional when its focus is a value. In the context of the subject’s consciousness, the value becomes a purpose. Thus value as substantive object of consciousness, again, is object of will just as the substantive quality was object of intuition; while value as element in the relational complex in which it is known as “purpose,” is object of reflection. Reason, then,--that is to say, mind active in the relation-knowing way--is the mode of consciousness in virtue of which mind is reflective, critical, judgment-forming; and it is a confusion among definitions of intuition, will and reason, to attribute reflectiveness to intuition or to will, as such. The peculiar supremacy of reason which inheres in reason’s reflectiveness is due to the inclusion of consciousness itself in the content of relational consciousness and of no other mode of consciousness.

Intuitionists and voluntarists, the same as intellectualists, do, as a fact, always characterize that supremacy which distinguishes philosophy, in no other way than the critical way. There is no dissent, in intuitionist or voluntarist schools of philosophic method, from this residual core of meaning in the conception of philosophy: by universal consent philosophy is consciousness (in whatever mode) sitting in judgment on its own findings; philosophy is critical reflection. And _therein_ is an ultimateness and absoluteness--in a word, a supremacy--which belongs to philosophy, on any view of philosophy, and to no other type of mental activity. But in rationalism, or intellectualism, alone, it is recognized that reflection, as such, is essentially and distinctively rational.

It is, then, the contention of this essay that the supremacy peculiar to philosophy--which, by common consent of voluntarism and intuitionism, is no eulogistic nor even ethical supremacy, but critical--decides absolutely, among the three modes of consciousness, against will and intuition in favor of intellect, as the organ of philosophy, of intellectualism as the sole genuinely philosophic method. Kant called his voluntarism the “Critical Philosophy,” to distinguish it, as genuine philosophy, from what would be but failed (because it was not critical) to be philosophy. Critical his philosophy is; but because it is critical, it contradicts its own voluntarism--the assertion that reality is knowable only in obedience of will, and not in judgment. A contradiction; for _this_ (the gist of his voluntarism) is a judgment whose subject is reality. The inevitable fundamental intellectuality of noumenal knowledge is concealed, for Kant, under the phrase “postulate of will.” A postulate, so far as it is genuine knowledge, has indeed the character of necessity, but its necessity is simply the fact of logical implication.

With the intuitionist variety, and particularly the Bergsonian variety of anti-intellectualism, this essay is largely to be concerned. At this point I merely note the inevitable contradiction in Bergson’s intuitionism, as in Kant’s voluntarism. Intuition, Bergson explains, is “instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of _reflecting_ upon its _object_ and of enlarging it indefinitely.”[92] Now, consciousness reflecting upon its own data is criticism, predication, classification, judgment--whatever it is, it is the _objectifying_ of the data of consciousness, a thing which it is essential to instinct or intuition, on Bergson’s own conception of them, never to do, and which, precisely, on his conception, is the distinguishing function of intellect. “Instinct is sympathy,” says Bergson, in the same passage; and the sense in which instinct is sympathy is lucidly and emphatically explained as just this, that there is no distinction of subject and object, in instinct; they are identical. Whereas, intelligence or intellect is explicitly distinguished by him from instinct primarily in the disjunction of subject and object. It is merely to turn his back on his own use of these terms to describe philosophy as instinct extending its _object_ and reflecting upon itself.

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That the case of philosophical anti-intellectualism is a hopeless paradox, whether in voluntarism or in intuitionism, each of these methods itself best proves by its own inevitable intellectualism. The terms voluntarism, intuitionism, and rationalism express no real distinction of psychological mode, in philosophizing, since the psychology of every philosophy is necessarily characterized by that critical reflectiveness which constitutes philosophy a function of intellect. Philosophy is always interpretation, a function alien to what anybody ever meant either by will or by intuition; a function whose essential distinctness from both those functions is attested universally in such synonyms of “interpretation” as judgment, conception, understanding, reason.

There are, it is true, voluntaristic and intuitionistic, philosophies of the highest importance. And the intention of their authors is to distinguish their method from the rationalistic method. Are they foredoomed to futility on this account? So far as this intention is realized--yes, unquestionably. No philosophy that were itself a function either of will or of intuition is conceivable, since it would then lack the essence of philosophy, which is critical primacy. That philosophies designated by these methodological terms may be invaluable products, it is necessary only that these terms apply in fact not to the psychological method of the philosophy but to its psychological starting-point. They express a constitutional bias in the philosopher, who, after all, is human. To some the qualities of things; to others, value; and, finally, to other some, the order of reality is the “essence” of reality. Such essentialness is eulogism, of course. For it is an irreducible psychological fact that there are religious, æsthetic and scientific types of mind. Each to his bias; each to his taste. The apogee of living is religion to the first, art to the second, science to the third. Hence the illusion that philosophy, which must needs be experience supremely critical, is experience eulogistically supreme. Is not this illusion chargeable to failure to see in these three modes of consciousness three emphases or biases of living? To the æsthete, certainly, quality must be realest essence. But it cannot be so to the zealot; for, to him, that is value: nor to the intellectualist; to him it is order.

If æsthete and zealot will philosophize, they are at this disadvantage with the wise man, that their philosophy can do no more, in expressing the nature of this “realest essence” of reality, than the wise man’s rationalism may do--discourse about it, interpret it. Philosophy indeed never can, and never should aspire to enter into the inner nature of reality in any such sense as the immediatism of Bergson and James summons it to do. There is art and there is religion for that. It is not clear how the qualitative or how the teleological aspect of reality is more internal to it than its relational aspect; but, at any rate, philosophy has its own interest, and that is distinct from those of art and religion. Wherefore the own proper interest of art or of religion is not served in their philosophy; in their philosophy they deny themselves. The efforts of such philosophies to wrest from reality, in a non-intellectual way, its secret, must be rather superhuman. This characterization is hardly a burlesque of Bergson’s own observations on his method, for it is little less than the repudiation of our natural constitution, to which he exhorts us.[93] But, as with Kant, so with Bergson, prodigies of subtlety fail to produce a revelation of truth that is so subtle as to be inarticulate because immediate, or that does not lend itself to discussion and interpretation. Or, if this is not to be looked for in a philosophy which is ‘a method rather than a doctrine,’ neither is there any suggestion how such revelation may be socialized, rendered human; or even, in fact, how it can assume _meaning_, meaning to the philosopher himself (which is surely indispensable to truth), without becoming predication--assertion and denial;--that is to say, without becoming judgment. If humans make superhuman effort, it should not be surprising if the result is self-contradiction.