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RECENT PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: Henri Bergson - Thomas Hill Green - Francis Herbert Bradley - Bernard Bosanquet |
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OF THE SPIRIT
The first period of Recent Philosophy entailed a critical revision of positivism, including German Psychologism, the New Positivism, and American Pragmatism. The second period of Recent Philosophy is marked by several attempts to rebuild a metaphysics, commonly termed "spiritualistic," a metaphysics opposed to materialism in that it accepts the existence of a spiritual element in man. A few of these attempts will be discussed in this section. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) The founder and most famous exponent of Intuitionism is Henri Bergson (picture), who lectured at the University of Paris, and whose thought spread throughout the world. His fundamental work is Creative Evolution. Bergson adopts as his own Heraclitus' principle: "All things flow." Reality is a continuous becoming, an ever new process of creation, without beginning and without end, which never repeats an identical pattern but assumes ever new aspects. Every new aspect gives a new life to the past in a vital moving continuity, like that of a river branching out into a thousand tributaries. The profound principle of this eternally flowing reality is the "vital impetus," which is not grasped through an abstract concept, but through an act of intuition by means of which we literally submerge ourselves in the flowing stream of reality. Likewise, the deep ego of our personality is not the object of a superficial observation of our empirical life but an act of intuition. Of course, for such a metaphysics there exists an analogous theory of knowledge which belittles concepts. For Bergson, concepts solidify reality; they stop the flowing stream of the life of reality; they fix it between rigid outlines, much in the fashion that the camera freezes reality on the surface of the print. According to Bergson, concepts deform reality. Reality, in its continuous movement, is richer than any concept. Such a richness is known only by intuition, an immediate and interior form of knowledge. In The Radical Academy
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English Neo-Hegelianism During the final decades of the nineteenth century many English thinkers adopted Hegelian Idealism with the intention of opposing Positivism and of restoring the value of religion. Representative of this movement are Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882), Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924), John M'Taggart (1866-1925), and Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923). They maintain that reality develops itself according to Hegelian dialectic, culminating in an absolute Consciousness. But they discard Hegel's system in their interpretation of this absolute Consciousness. For them, the Absolute is not immanent in reality and identified with the process of "becoming," but is separate and Platonically conceived -- as a stable and perfect being standing apart from any movement and becoming. This Platonic conception of reality gave rise to the question of determining the relations between the Absolute and the world. The English thinkers held that there are no relations, because God is absolutely "the other" and completely opposite to the world; the human mind cannot reach Him in any way. In The Radical Academy
T.H. Green (picture) was born on April 7, 1836 and died on March 26, 1882. He was an English idealist philosopher who studied at Oxford and was eventually appointed a professor there. The tradition of empiricism was deeply rooted in British philosophy, and Green produced a major critique of this tradition in the introduction to an 1875 edition of the works of David Hume, of which he was coeditor. Green's positive philosophy strongly reflected Hegel's idealism. "Shut up your Mill and Spencer," Green, professor of moral philosophy at Oxford, admonished his audience, "and open your Kant and Hegel." Green repudiated the whole tradition of British philosophy, especially Locke and Hume, and became the leader of the opposition against positivism and utilitarianism in England. His oratoric power enabled him to convert many British students of philosophy to German idealism. He praised Kant's categories as "the connective tissue of the known world," derived from Kant his conception of self-distinguishing consciousness as a combining agency, and, although he did not adopt Hegel's dialectical method, he did agree with him regarding history and organized society as embodiments of divine will. He flatly rejected Locke's and Hume's assumption that sensations are the raw material of knowledge. According to Green, every experience takes place by forming relations which, consequently, are the real elements of that which is regarded as sensation. Since relations are the work of human mind, reality is characterized as essentially spiritual. Bitterly opposed as Green was to Darwin, his mind was nevertheless influenced by biological as well as Hegelian evolutionism. He held that an animal organism, which has its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness, which, in itself, can have a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. Green even described mystical union as an evolutionary process. He exposed the foundations of his metaphysics and ethics in his Prolegomena to Ethics (1883). Through Green's influence, idealism enjoyed a period of prominence in British philosophy. F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet, leading members of this movement, were both indebted to Green. In The Radical Academy
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Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) An English philosopher at Oxford, Francis Herbert Bradley (picture) was born on January 30, 1846 and died on September 18, 1924. He was the most famous metaphysician in the British school of absolute idealism. He wrote many books on topics in metaphysics, logic, and ethics. In his youth, Bradley accepted a fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, tenable for life, but terminable at marriage. He enjoyed its benefits for more than half a century. An an athlete at University College, he contracted typhoid fever and subsequently suffered from an inflammation of the kidneys. These illnesses probably resulted in his being a crotchety recluse. Yet his literary efforts have polish, style, and even humor. His Appearance and Reality (1893) and Essays on Truth and Reality (1914) are philosophical classics. His Collected Essays was published in 1935 Bradley was, at first, a disciple of Hegel. He lost sympathy with Hegelian philosophy, and subsequently he opposed utilitarianism and supported the ethics of Kant, by insisting that good will was a universal principle, as well as a human quality. He found, by testing the relation of each claim to fundamental reality, that experience, as such, is nonrelational and contains within itself the essential features of thought which make for explicit logic. He stated that truth can only reside in judgment; that not all judgments are true; that when a subject is circumspect and sufficiently inclusive, then its judgment is true; and that truth really requires the absolute. Bradley lucidly restated the fundamental idealism and spiritual monism that form the bases for the analysis of individual experience. This analysis gradually developes into the realization of a universal coherent unity, infinite in character. Essentially, Bradley's metaphysics begins with the notion of immediate experience. Thought and judgment require, however, that one pass beyond this, in that thought abstracts from experience, and such abstraction leads to contradictions. Since everything that a person says about the world is riddled with contradictions, it is mere appearance, not reality. Metaphysics therefore attempts to find a view that can satisfy the intellect and be true and thus self-consistent. This can only be found in the absolute. Although the absolute cannot be grasped by thought, it is not totally unknowable because various features of experience suggest what it must be like. The absolute is an "all-inclusive and super-relational experience," in which all experiences are transcended. In The Radical Academy
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Bernard Bosanquet (picture) was born on June 14, 1848, and died on February 8, 1923. He was a British philosopher known for his reinterpretation of G. W. F. Hegel. Devoted to the application of philosophy to everyday life, he gave up his teaching post at Oxford in 1881 to engage in writing and social service. Bosanquet's primary concern was with individuals and individuality; however, he considered only the Absolute to be a genuine individual. Hence, humans should strive for unification with the Absolute. Bosanquet was the best known (next to Bradley) of the British idealist philosophers. He descended from an old Huguenot family. For eleven years he lectured on Greek history and philosophy and then he left this to devote himself to charity and the study of ethics, logic, and aesthetics. His interests, later shared by his wife, included the London Ethical Society and the Charity Organization Society. This work was not the hobby of a leisure-class gentleman, but the practical application of Bosanquet's philosophy. His emphasis was on the importance of the individual, the fruition of a cosmoramic view which could only be realized in the individual. Accordingly, he defined the Absolute (and in this he was profoundly influenced by Hegel) not as a personality lacking coherence and unity, but as a whole being. Similarly in his logic, he defined truth as a cohering, compresive whole. He perceived ethids as the endeavor towards a unity of pleasure and responsibility, all the while emphasizing the importance of the individual in his relationships with others. His philosophy may be said to bear the stamp of conciliation. His personal charm, his sympathetic attitudes, and his "critically appreciative powers" were hallmarks of his warm personality. His writings include Knowledge and Reality, A History of Aesthetic, The Essentials of Logic, The Psychology of the Moral Self, and The Philosophic Theory of the State. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
American Idealism Please see: American Idealism in the American Philosophy section.
Positive contributions of the above philosophers and philosophical movements to the Perennial Philosophy Virtually none. It should be recalled that metaphysical idealism in any form is antithetical to a genuine realistic philosophy. Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
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Introduction & Directory |
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