Part 2

Result of preceding enquiry: the judgment of definition and the individual judgment--Distinction between the two: truth of reason and truth of fact, necessary and contingent, etc.; formal and material--Absurdities arising from these distinctions: the individual judgment as ultra-logical; or, duality of logical forms--Difficulty of abandoning the distinction--The hypothesis of reciprocal implication, and so of the identity of the two forms--Objection; the lack of representative and historical element in the definitive--The historical element in the definitions taken in their concreteness--The definition as answer to a question and solution of a problem--Individual and historical conditionally of every question and problem--Definition as also historical judgment--Unity of truth of reason and truth of fact--Considerations in confirmation of this--Critique of the false distinction between formal and material truths--Platonic men and Aristotelian men--Theory of application of the concepts, true for abstract concepts and false for true concepts.

II

THE _A PRIORI_ LOGICAL SYNTHESIS

The identity of the judgment of definition and of the individual judgment, as synthesis _a priori_--Objections to the synthesis _a priori,_ deriving from abstractionists and empiricists--False interpretation of the synthesis _a priori_--Synthesis _a priori in_ general and logical synthesis _a priori_--Non-logical synthesis _a priori--_The synthesis _a priori,_ as synthesis, not of opposites, but of distincts--The category in the judgment. Difference between category and innate idea--The synthesis _a priori,_ the destruction of transcendency, and the objectivity of knowing--Power of the synthesis _a priori_ remained unknown to its discoverer.

III

LOGIC AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE CATEGORIES

The demand for a complete table of the categories--This demand extraneous to Logic--Logical categories and real categories--Uniqueness of the logical category: the concept. The other categories, no longer logical, but real. Systems of categories--The Hegelian system of the categories, and other posterior systems--The logical order of the predicates or categories--Illusion as to the logical reality of this order--The necessity of an order of the predicates not founded upon Logic in particular, but upon the whole of Philosophy--False distinction of Philosophy into two spheres--Metaphysic and Philosophy, rational Philosophy and real Philosophy, etc., derived from the confusion between Logic and Doctrine of the categories--Philosophy and pure Logic, etc.; overcoming of the dualism.

SECOND PART

PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND THE NATURAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

I

THE FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE DIVISIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

Summary of the results relating to the forms of knowledge--Non-existence of technical forms, and of composed forms--Identity of forms of knowledge and of knowing. Objections to them--Empirical distinctions and their limits--Enumeration and determination of the forms of knowing reality, corresponding to the forms of knowledge--Critique of the idea of a special Logic as doctrine of the forms of knowing the external world and of a special Logic as doctrine of the methods--Nature of our treatment of the forms of knowledge.

II

PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy as pure concept; and the various definitions of philosophy--Those which negate philosophy--Those which define it as science of supreme principle, of final causes, etc.; contemplation of death, etc.; as elaboration of the concepts, as criticism, as science of norms; as doctrine of the categories--Exclusion of material definitions from philosophy--Idealism of every philosophy--Systematic character of philosophy--Philosophic significance and literary significance of the system--Advantages and disadvantages of the literary form of the system--Genesis of the systematic prejudice, and rebellion against it--Sacred and philosophic numbers; meaning of their demand--Impossibility of dividing philosophy into general and particular--Disadvantages of the conception of a general philosophy, distinct from particular philosophies.

III

HISTORY

History as individual judgment--The individual element and historical sources: relics and narrative--The intuitive faculty in historical research--The intuitive faculty in historical exposition. Resemblance of history and art. Difference between history and art--The predicate or logical element in history--Vain attempts to eliminate it--Extension of historical predicates beyond the limits of mere existence--Asserted unsurmountable variance in judging and presenting historical facts and consequent demand for a history without judgment--Restriction of variance, and exclusion of apparent variances--Overcoming of variances by means of deep study of the concepts--Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning--Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique--Various legitimate meanings of protests against historical subjectivity--The demand for a theory of historical factors--Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements--Empiricity of the division of the historical process into four stages--Divisions founded upon the historical object--Logical division according to the forms of the spirit--The empirical division of the representative material--Empirical concepts in history; and the false theory as to the function they fulfil there--Hence also the claim to reduce history to a natural science; and the thesis of the practical character of history--Distinction between historical facts and non-historical facts; and its empirical value--The professional prejudice and theory of the practical character of history.

IV

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy--Historical quality of the culture required of the philosopher--Apparent objections--Communication of philosophy as changing of philosophy--Perpetuity of this changing--The overcoming and continuous progress of philosophy--Meaning of the eternity of philosophy--The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc.; and its meaning--Philosophy as criticism and polemic--Identity of philosophy and history--Didactic divisions, and other reasons for the apparent duality--Note.

V

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature--Elimination of an equivocation concerning this practical character--Impossibility of unifying them in one concept--Impossibility of introducing into them rigorous divisions--Laws in the natural sciences, and so-called prevision--Empirical character of naturalistic laws--The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning--Pretended impossibility of exceptions to natural laws--Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity--Nature as practical activity--Nature in its gnoseological significance, as naturalistic or empirical method--The illusions of materialists and dualists--Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior reality in respect to a superior reality--The naturalistic method, and the natural sciences as extending to superior not less than to inferior reality--Claim for such extension, and effective existence of what is claimed--Historical foundation of the natural sciences--The question whether history be foundation or crown of thought--Naturalists as historical investigators--Prejudices as to non-historicity of nature--Philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and effect of philosophy upon them--Effect of natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation--Reason of these errors. Naturalistic philosophy--Philosophy as the destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

VI

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE

Idea of a mathematical science of nature--Various definitions of mathematics--Mathematical procedure--Apriority of mathematical principles--Contradictoriness of the _a priori_ principles. They are not thinkable, and not intuitive--Identification of mathematics with abstract pseudoconcepts--The ultimate end of mathematics: to enumerate, and, therefore, to aid the determination of the single. Its place--Particular questions concerning mathematics--Rigour of mathematics and rigour of philosophy--Loves and hates between the two forms--Impossibility of reducing the empirical sciences to the mathematical; and the empirical limits of the mathematical science of nature--Decreasing utility of mathematics in the loftiest spheres of the real.

VII

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

Theory of the forms of knowledge and doctrine of the categories--Problem of classification of the sciences; its empirical nature--Falsely philosophic character that it assumes--Coincidence of that problem with the search for the categories, when understood with philosophic rigour--Forms of knowledge and literary-didactic forms--Prejudices derived from the latter--Methodical prologues to scholastic manuals, their impotence--Capricious multiplication of the sciences--The sciences and professional prejudices.

THIRD PART

THE FORMS OF ERROR AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

I

ERROR AND ITS NECESSARY FORMS

Error as negativity; impossibility of a special treatment of errors--Positive and existing errors--Positive errors as practical acts--Practical acts and not practical errors--Economically practical acts, not morally practical acts--Doctrine of error, and doctrine of necessary forms of error--Logical nature of all theoretical errors--History of errors and phenomenology of error--Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts--Errors derived from errors--Professionally and nationality of errors.

II

ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM

Definition of these forms--Æstheticism--Empiricism--Positivism, the philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic--Empiricism and facts--Bankruptcy of Empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition--Evolutionistic positivism and rationalistic positivism--Mathematicism--Symbolical mathematics--Mathematics as a form of demonstration of philosophy--Errors of mathematical philosophy--Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.

III

THE PHILOSOPHISM

Rupture of the unity of the _a priori_ synthesis--Philosophism, logicism or panlogicism--Philosophy of history--Contradictions in its assumptions--Philosophy of history and false analogies--Distinction between Philosophy of history and books so entitled--Merits of these, philosophic and historical--Philosophy of nature--Its substantial identity with Philosophy of history--Contradictions of Philosophy of nature--Books entitled Philosophy of nature--Contemporary seekings for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings.

IV

THE MYTHOLOGISM

Rupture of the unity of the _a priori_ synthesis. The mythologism --Essence of myth--Problems relating to theory of myth--Myth and religion--Identity of the two spiritual forms--Religion and philosophy--Conversion of errors, the one into the other--Conversion of the mythologism into philosophism (theology) and of the philosophism into the mythologism (mythology of nature, historical apocalypses, etc.)--Scepsis.

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM

Dualism--Scepsis and scepticism--Mystery--Critique of affirmations of mystery in philosophy--Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism--Mysticism--Errors in other parts of philosophy--Conversion of these errors into one another and into logical errors.

VI

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number --Their logical order--Examples of this order in various parts of philosophy--Erring spirit and spirit of search--Immanence of error in truth--Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth--Search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; the series of errors--Transfiguration of error into tentative or hypothesis in the search so understood--Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis--Immanence of the tentative in error itself as error--Individuals and error--Duplicate aspect of errors--Ultimate form of error: the methodological error or hypotheticism.

VII

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Inseparability of phenomenology of error from the philosophical system--The eternal course and recurrence of errors--Returns to anterior philosophies; and their meaning--False idea of a history of philosophy as history of the successive appearance of the categories and of errors in time--Philosophism case in point of this false view, as is the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy--Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy, and the books which take it as their title or programme--Exact formula: identity of philosophy and history--History of philosophy and philosophic progress--The truth of all philosophies; and criticism of eclecticism--Researches for authors and precursors of truths; reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.

VIII

"DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE"

Logic and defence of Philosophy--Utility of Philosophy and the Philosophy of the practical--Consolation of philosophy, as joy of thought and in the true. Impossibility of a pleasure arising from falsity and illusion--Critique of the concept of a sad truth --Examples: Philosophical criticism and the concepts of God and Immortality--Consolatory virtue, pertaining to all spiritual activities--Sorrow and elevation of sorrow.

FOURTH PART

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

I

HISTORY OF LOGIC AND HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Reality, Thought and Logic--Relation of these three terms--Inexistence of a general philosophy outside particular philosophic sciences; and, in consequence, of a general History of philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences--Histories of particular philosophies and literary value of such division--History of Logic in its particular sense--Works dealing with history of Logic.

II

THEORY OF THE CONCEPT

Question as to the "father of Logic"--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle --Enquiries as to the nature of the concept in Greece. Question of transcendency and immanence--Controversies in Plato concerning the various forms of the concept--Philosophic, empirical and abstract concepts in Aristotle. Philosophy, physics, mathematics--Universals of the "always" and those of "for the most part"--Logical controversies in the Middle Ages--Nominalism and realism--Nominalism, mysticism and coincidence of opposites--Renaissance and mysticism--Bacon--Ideal of exact science and Cartesian philosophy--Adversaries of Cartesianism --Vico--Empiristic logic and its dissolution. Locke, Berkeley and Hume--Exact science and Kant. Concept of the category--Limits of science, and Jacobi--Positive elements in Kantian scepticism--The synthesis _a priori_--Inward contradiction in Kant. Romantic principle and classic execution--Progress since Kant: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel--Logic of Hegel. The concrete concept or Idea--Identity of Hegelian Idea and Kantian synthesis _a priori_--The Idea and the antinomies. The dialectic--Lacunæ and errors in Hegelian Logic. Their consequences--Contemporaries of Hegel: Herbart, Schleiermacher and others--Posterior positivism and psychologicism--Eclectics. Lotze--New gnoseology of the sciences. Economic theory of scientific concept. Avenarius, Mach--Rickert--Bergson and the new French philosophy--Le Roy, and others--Reattachment to romantic ideas, and progress upon them--Philosophy of pure experience, of intuition, of action, etc.: and its insufficiency--The theory of values.

III

THEORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

Secular neglect of theory relating to history--Ideas upon history in Græco-Roman world--Theory of history in mediæval and modern philosophy--Writers on historical art in the sixteenth century--Writers on method--Theory of history and G. B. Vico--Anti-historicism of eighteenth century, and Kant--Hidden historical value of synthesis _a priori_--Theory of history in Hegel--W. von Humboldt--F. Brentano--Controversies as to the nature of history--Rickert; Xénopol. History as science of individual--History as art--Other controversies relating to history.

IV

THEORY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND WORD AND FORMALIST LOGIC

Relation between history of Logic and history of Philosophy of language--Logical formalism. Indian logic free of it--Aristotelian Logic and formalism--Later formalism--Rebellions against Aristotelian Logic--Opposition by humanists and its motives--Opposition of naturalism--Simplicatory elaboration in eighteenth century. Kant--Refutation of formal Logic. Hegel; Schleiermacher--Its partial persistence, owing to insufficient ideas as to language--Formal Logic in Herbart, in Schopenhauer, in Hamilton--More recent theories--Mathematical Logic--Inexact idea of language among mathematicians and intuitionists.

V

CONCERNING THIS LOGIC

Traditional character of this Logic and its connection with Logic of philosophic concept--Its innovations--I. Exclusion of empirical and abstract concepts--II. Atheoretic character of second, and autonomy of empirical and mathematical sciences--III. Concept as unity of distinctions--IV. Identity of concept with individual judgment and of philosophy with history--V. Impossibility of defining thought by means of verbal forms, and refutation of formal Logic--Conclusion.

FIRST PART

THE PURE CONCEPT, THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT, AND THE _A PRIORI_ LOGICAL SYNTHESIS

FIRST SECTION

THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

I

AFFIRMATION OF THE CONCEPT

[Sidenote: _Thought and sensation._]

Presupposed in the logical activity, which is the subject of this treatise, are representations or intuitions. If man had no representations, he would not think; were he not an imaginative spirit, he would not be a logical spirit. It is generally admitted that thought refers back to sensation, as its antecedent; and this doctrine we have no difficulty in making our own, provided it be given a double meaning. That is to say, in the first place, sensation must be conceived as something active and cognitive, or as a cognitive act; and not as something formless and passive, or active only with the activity of life, and not with that of contemplation. And, in the second place, sensation must be taken in its purity, without any logical reflection and elaboration; as simple sensation, that is to say, and not as perception, which (as will be seen in the proper place), so far from being implied, in itself implies logical activity. With this double explanation, sensation, active, cognitive and unreflective, becomes synonymous with representation and intuition; and certainly this is not the place to discuss the use of these synonyms, though there are excellent reasons of practical convenience pointing to the preference of the terms which we have adopted.

At all events, the important thing is to bear clearly in mind, that the logical activity, or thought, arises upon the many-coloured pageant of representations, intuitions, or sensations, whichever we may call them; and by means of these, at every moment the cognitive spirit absorbs within itself the course of reality, bestowing upon it theoretic form.

[Sidenote: _Thought and language._]

Another presupposition is often introduced by logicians: that of language; since it seems clear that, if man does not speak, he does not think. This presupposition also we accept, adding to it, however, a corollary, together with certain elucidations. The elucidations are: in the first place, that language must be taken in its genuine and complete reality; that is to say, it must not be arbitrarily restricted to certain of its manifestations, such as the vocal and articulate; nor be changed and falsified into a body of abstractions, such as the classes of Grammar or the words of the Vocabulary, conceived as these are in the fashion of a machine, which man sets in motion when he speaks. And, in the second place, by language is to be understood, not the whole body of discourses, taken all together and in confusion, into which (as will be seen in its place) logical elements enter; but only that determinate aspect of these discourses, in virtue of which they are properly called language. A deep-rooted error, which springs directly from the failure to make this distinction, is that of believing language to be constituted of logical elements; adducing as a proof of this that even in the smallest discourse are to be found the words _this, that, to be, to do,_ and the like, that is, logical concepts. But these concepts are by no means really to be found in every expression; and, even where they are to be found, the possibility of extracting them is no proof that they exhaust language. So true is this that those who cherish this conviction are afterwards obliged to leave over as a residue of their analysis, elements which they consider to be illogical and which they call _emphatic, complementary, colorative,_ or _musical_: a residue in which is concealed true language, which escapes that abstract analysis. Finally, the corollary is that if the concept of language is thus rectified, the presupposition made for Logic regarding language is not a _new_ presupposition, but is identical with that already made, when representations or intuitions were discussed. In truth, language in the strict sense, as we understand it, is equivalent to expression; and expression is identical with representation, since it is inconceivable that there should be a representation, which should not be expressed in some way, or an expression which should represent nothing, or be meaningless. The one would fail to be representation, and the other would not even be expression; that is to say, both must be and are, one and the same.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and language as presuppositions._]

What is a real presupposition of the logical activity, is, for that very reason, not a presupposition in Philosophy, which cannot admit presuppositions and must think and demonstrate all the concepts that it posits. But it may conveniently be allowed as a presupposition for that part of Philosophy, which we are now undertaking to treat, namely Logic; and the existence of the representative or intuitive form of knowledge be taken for granted. After all, scepticism could not formulate more than two objections to this position: either the negation of knowing in general; or the negation of that form of knowing which we presuppose. Now, the first would be an instance of absolute scepticism; and we may be allowed to dispense with exhibiting yet again the old, but ever effective argument against absolute scepticism which may be found in the mouths of all students at the university, even of the boys in the higher elementary classes (and this dispensation may more readily be granted, seeing that we shall unfortunately be obliged to record many obvious truths of Philosophy in the course of our exposition). But we do not mean by this declaration that we shall evade our obligation to show the genesis and the profound reasons for this same scepticism, when we are led to do so by the order of our exposition. The second objection implies the negation of the intuitive activity as original and autonomous, and its resolution into empirical, hedonistic, intellectualist, or other doctrines. But we have already, in the preceding volume,[1] directed our efforts towards making the intuitive activity immune against such doctrines, that is to say, towards demonstrating the autonomy of fancy and establishing an Æsthetic. So that, in this way, the presupposition which we now allow to stand has here its pedagogic justification, since it resolves itself into a reference to things said elsewhere.

[Sidenote: _Scepticism as to the concept._]