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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
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by Morris Raphael Cohen
Unlike science, philosophy has never been able entirely to dispense with pure speculation, nor has it been able entirely to eliminate the bias of temperament, and in these respects philosophy resembles a certain art, viz., the art of poetry and of reflective literature generally. Actual scientific knowledge is too fragmentary to enable us to so form a complete picture of the world to which we must react, and so imagination must be called in. Sometimes imagination and science work together, but often imagination does all the work and science is a silent spectator, as in the case of Fechner's "Zend-Avesta." It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one. The assumption back of this attitude is that philosophy is determinate knowledge which will not admit of variation. But is this assumption necessary? Can not two pictures of the same object both be true, in spite of radical differences? The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic. A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy. The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions. But it is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views. There are a number of points in which the method of philosophers is precisely that of literary essayists of the type of St. Benre, Matthew Arnold, Stevenson, or Lowell. Both use examples to suggest or illustrate rather than to demonstrate. In science this would be called the fallacy of one example. In both literature and philosophy the temper of the lesser Napoleon, aut Caesar out nullus, is very prominent. In science this might be called the "all or nothing" fallacy. Constant reservations and numerous qualifications destroy literary sweep, and take away the air of profundity from philosophic discussion. Some philosophers, notably Aristotle and St. Thomas, might perhaps be excepted from the last statement, but in spite of all our hankering after the epithet science, I can not see that we have been making much progress in this habit of self-control against the extravagance of generalization. Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols. These idols came into vogue in different ways. They are seldom refuted or directly overthrown. Generally they are simply outlived, or they do not survive the change of fashion. In the latter eighties or in the earlier nineties the term relation was a magic word to conjure with. It was brought into mode by Thomas Hill Green, and died a natural death with the eclipse of his influence. Today if anything is characterized as experimental, functional, or dynamic, that is enough to allow it to pass all the watchdogs of philosophic criticism, and to characterize anything as static is to consign it to the lowermost depths from which no power can rescue it. I am not anxious to bring down the wrath of the gods by questioning the all-sufficient potency of such terms as experience, evolution, etc.; but may I ask what progress would mathematical physics have made if every time one approached a problem of stresses, he were frightened off by the warning that he must not for a moment entertain that most heinous criminal, the static point of view? I humbly agree with those who claim that the static point of view is mechanical and lifeless and, therefore, inapplicable to the entire universe, but I am quite sure that the dynamic point of view itself may be mechanical and lifeless. Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist. If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again. In thus pointing out certain respects in which philosophy resembles literature more than science, I do not mean, of course, to imply that it would be well for philosophy if it ceased to aim at scientific rigor. Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.
Excerpted from Conception of Philosophy in Recent Discussion, by Morris R. Cohen |
A Dreamer's Journey: The Autobiography of Morris Raphael Cohen
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