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George Stuart Fullerton - An Introduction to Philosophy

G >> George Stuart Fullerton >> An Introduction to Philosophy




It is a fair question to ask: Why is philosophy so bound up with the
study of the past? Why may we not content ourselves with what has up
to the present been attained, and omit a survey of the road along which
our predecessors have traveled?

84. THE ESPECIAL IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TO REFLECTIVE
THOUGHT.--In some of the preceding chapters dealing with the various
philosophical sciences, it has been indicated that, in the sciences we
do not regard as philosophical, men may work on the basis of certain
commonly accepted assumptions and employ methods which are generally
regarded as trustworthy within the given field. The value both of the
fundamental assumptions and of the methods of investigation appear to
be guaranteed by the results attained. There are not merely
observation and hypothesis; there is also verification, and where this
is lacking, men either abandon their position or reserve their judgment.

Thus, a certain body of interrelated facts is built up, the
significance of which, in many fields at least, is apparent even to the
layman. Nor is it wholly beyond him to judge whether the results of
scientific investigations can be verified. An eclipse, calculated by
methods which he is quite unable to follow, may occur at the appointed
hour and confirm his respect for the astronomer. The efficacy of a
serum in the cure of diseases may convince him that work done in the
laboratory is not labor lost.

It seems evident that the several sciences do really rise on stepping
stones of their dead selves, and that those selves of the past are
really dead and superseded. Who would now think of going back for his
science to Plato's "Timaeus," or would accept the description of the
physical world contained in the works of Aristotle? What chemist or
physicist need busy himself with the doctrine of atoms and their
clashings presented in the magnificent poem of Lucretius? Who can
forbear a smile--a sympathetic one--when he turns over the pages of
Augustine's "City of God," and sees what sort of a world this
remarkable man believed himself to inhabit?

It is the historic and human interest that carries us back to these
things. We say: What ingenuity! what a happy guess! how well that was
reasoned in the light of what was actually known about the world in
those days! But we never forget that what compels our admiration does
so because it makes us realize that we stand in the presence of a great
mind, and not because it is a foundation-stone in the great edifice
which science has erected.

But it is not so in philosophy. It is not possible to regard the
philosophical reflections of Plato and of Aristotle as superseded in
the same sense in which we may so regard their science. The reason for
this lies in the difference between scientific thought and reflective
thought.

The two have been contrasted in Chapter II of this volume. It was
there pointed out that the sort of thinking demanded in the special
sciences is not so very different from that with which we are all
familiar in common life. Science is more accurate and systematic, it
has a broader outlook, and it is free from the imperfections which
vitiate the uncritical and fragmentary knowledge which experience of
the world yields the unscientific. But, after all, the world is much
the same sort of a world to the man of science and to his uncritical
neighbor. The latter can, as we have seen, understand what, in
general, the former is doing, and can appropriate many of his results.

On the other hand, it often happens that the man who has not, with
pains and labor, learned to reflect, cannot even see that the
philosopher has a genuine problem before him. Thus, the plain man
accepts the fact that he has a mind and that it knows the world. That
both mental phenomena and physical phenomena should be carefully
observed and classified he may be ready to admit. But that the very
conceptions of mind and of what it means to know a world are vague and
indefinite in the extreme, and stand in need of careful analysis, he
does not realize.

In other words, he sees that our knowledge needs to be extended and
rendered more accurate and reliable, but he does not see that, if we
are to think clearly and consciously, all our knowledge needs to be
gone over in a different way. In common life it is quite possible to
use in the attainment of practical ends knowledge which has not been
analyzed and of the full meaning of which we are ignorant. I hope it
has become evident in the course of this volume that something closely
analogous is true in the field of science. The man of science may
measure space and time, and may study the phenomena of the human mind,
without even attempting to answer all the questions which may be raised
as to what is meant, in the last analysis, by such concepts as space,
time, and the mind.

That such concepts should be analyzed has, I hope, been made clear, if
only that erroneous and misleading notions as to these things should be
avoided. But when a man with a genius for metaphysical analysis
addresses himself to this task, he cannot simply hand the results
attained by his reflections over to his less reflective fellow-man.
His words are not understood; he seems to be dealing with shadows, with
unrealities; he has passed from the real world of common thought into
another world which appears to have little relation to the former.

Nor can verification, indubitable proof, be demanded and furnished as
it can in many parts of the field cultivated by the special sciences.
We may judge science fairly well without ourselves being scientists,
but it is not possible to judge philosophy without being to some extent
a philosopher.

In other words, the conclusions of reflective thought must be judged by
following the process and discovering its cogency or the reverse.
Thus, when the philosopher lays before us an argument to prove that we
must regard the only ultimate reality in the world as unknowable, and
must abandon our theistic convictions, how shall we make a decision as
to whether he is right or is wrong? May we expect that the day will
come when he will be justified or condemned as is the astronomer on the
day predicted for an eclipse? Neither the philosophy of Locke, nor
that of Descartes, nor that of Kant, can be vindicated as can a
prediction touching an eclipse of the sun. To judge these men, we must
learn to think with them, to survey the road by which they travel; and
this we cannot do until we have learned the art.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we must admit, if we are
fair-minded and intelligent, that philosophy cannot speak with the same
authority as science, where science has been able to verify its
results. There are, of course, scientific hypotheses and speculations
which should be regarded as being quite as uncertain as anything
brought forward by the philosophers. But, admitting this, the fact
remains that there is a difference between the two fields as a whole,
and that the philosopher should learn not to speak with an assumption
of authority. No final philosophy has been attained, so palpably firm
in its foundation, and so admittedly trustworthy in its construction,
that we are justified in saying: Now we need never go back to the past
unless to gratify the historic interest. It is a weakness of young
men, and of older men of partisan temper, to feel very sure of matters
which, in the nature of things, must remain uncertain.

Since these things are so, and since men possess the power of
reflection in very varying degree, it is not surprising that we find it
worth while to turn back and study the thoughts of those who have had a
genius for reflection, even though they lived at a time when modern
science was awaiting its birth. Some things cannot be known until
other things are known; often there must be a vast collection of
individual facts before the generalizations of science can come into
being. But many of the problems with which reflective thought is still
struggling have not been furthered in the least by information which
has been collected during the centuries which have elapsed since they
were attacked by the early Greek philosophers.

Thus, we are still discussing the distinction between "appearance" and
"reality," and many and varied are the opinions at which philosophers
arrive. But Thales, who heads the list of the Greek philosophers, had
quite enough material, given in his own experience, to enable him to
solve this problem as well as any modern philosopher, had he been able
to use the material. He who is familiar with the history of philosophy
will recognize that, although one may smile at Augustine's accounts of
the races of men, and of the spontaneous generation of small animals,
no one has a right to despise his profound reflections upon the nature
of time and the problems which arise out of its character as past,
present, and future.

The fact is that metaphysics does not lag behind because of our lack of
material to work with. The difficulties we have to face are nothing
else than the difficulties of reflective thought. Why can we not tell
clearly what we mean when we use the word "self," or speak of
"knowledge," or insist that we know an "external world"? Are we not
concerned with the most familiar of experiences? To be sure we
are--with experiences familiarly, but vaguely and unanalytically, known
and, hence, only half known. All these experiences the great men of
the past had as well as we; and if they had greater powers of
reflection, perhaps they saw more deeply into them than we do. At any
rate, we cannot afford to assume that they did not.

One thing, however, I must not omit to mention. Although one man
cannot turn over bodily the results of his reflection to another, it by
no means follows that he cannot give the other a helping hand, or warn
him of dangers by himself stumbling into pitfalls, as the case may be.
We have an indefinite advantage over the solitary thinkers who opened
up the paths of reflection, for we have the benefit of their teaching.
And this brings me to a consideration which I must discuss in the next
section.

85. THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW.--The man who has not read is
like the man who has not traveled--he is not an intelligent critic, for
he has nothing with which to compare what falls within the little
circle of his experiences. That the prevailing architecture of a town
is ugly can scarcely impress one who is acquainted with no other town.
If we live in a community in which men's manners are not good, and
their standard of living not the highest, our attention does not dwell
much upon the fact, unless some contrasted experience wakes within us a
clear consciousness of the difference. That to which we are accustomed
we accept uncritically and unreflectively. It is difficult for us to
see it somewhat as one might see it to whom it came as a new experience.

Of course, there may be in the one town buildings of more and of less
architectural beauty; and there may be in the one community differences
of opinion that furnish intellectual stimulus and keep awake the
critical spirit. Still, there is such a thing as a prevalent type of
architecture, and there is such a thing as the spirit of the times. He
who is carried along by the spirit of the age may easily conclude that
what is, is right, because he hears few raise their voices in protest.

To estimate justly the type of thought in which he has been brought up,
he must have something with which to compare it. He must stand at a
distance, and try to judge it as he would judge a type of doctrine
presented to him for the first rime. And in the accomplishment of this
task he can find no greater aid than the study of the history of
philosophy.

It is at first something of a shock to a man to discover that
assumptions which he has been accustomed to make without question have
been frankly repudiated by men quite as clever as he, and, perhaps,
more critical. It opens the eyes to see that his standards of worth
have been weighed by others and have been found wanting. It may well
incline him to reexamine reasonings in which he has detected no flaw,
when he finds that acute minds have tried them before, and have
declared them faulty.

Nor can it be without its influence upon his judgment of the
significance of a doctrine, when it becomes plain to him that this
significance can scarcely be fully comprehended until the history of
the doctrine is known. For example, he thinks of the mind as somehow
in the body, as interacting with it, as a substance, and as immaterial.
In the course of his reading it begins to dawn upon his consciousness
that he has not thought all this out for himself; he has taken these
notions from others, who in turn have had them from their predecessors.
He begins to realize that he is not resting upon evidence independently
found in his own experience, but has upon his hands a sheaf of opinions
which are the echoes of old philosophies, and whose rise and
development can be traced over the stretch of the centuries. Can he
help asking himself, when he sees this, whether the opinions in
question express the truth and the whole truth? Is he not forced to
take the critical attitude toward them?

And when he views the succession of systems which pass in review before
him, noting how a truth may be dimly seen by one writer, denied by
another, taken up again and made clearer by a third, and so on, how can
he avoid the reflection that, as there was some error mixed with the
truth presented in earlier systems, so there probably is some error in
whatever may happen to be the form of doctrine generally received in
his own time? The evolution of humanity is not yet at an end; men
still struggle to see clearly, and fall short of the ideal; it must be
a good thing to be freed from the dogmatic assumption of finality
natural to the man of limited outlook. In studying the history of
philosophy sympathetically we are not merely calling to our aid critics
who possess the advantage of seeing things from a different point of
view, but we are reminding ourselves that we, too, are human and
fallible.

86. PHILOSOPHY AS POETRY, AND PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE.--The recognition
of the truth that the problems of reflection do not admit of easy
solution and that verification can scarcely be expected as it can in
the fields of the special sciences, need not, even when it is brought
home to us, as it is apt to be, by the study of the history of
philosophy, lead us to believe that philosophies are like the fashions,
a something gotten up to suit the taste of the day, and to be dismissed
without regret as soon as that taste changes.

Philosophy is sometimes compared with poetry. It is argued that each
age must have its own poetry, even though it be inferior to that which
it has inherited from the past. Just so, it is said, each age must
have its own philosophy, and the philosophy of an earlier age will not
satisfy its demands. The implication is that in dealing with
philosophy we are not concerned with what is true or untrue in itself
considered, but with what is satisfying to us or the reverse.

Now, it would sound absurd to say that each age must have its own
geometry or its own physics. The fact that it has long been known that
the sum of the interior angles of a plane triangle is equal to two
right angles, does not warrant me in repudiating that truth; nor am I
justified in doing so, and in believing the opposite, merely because I
find the statement uninteresting or distasteful. When we are dealing
with such matters as these, we recognize that truth is truth, and that,
if we mistake it or refuse to recognize it, so much the worse for us.

Is it otherwise in philosophy? Is it a perfectly proper thing that, in
one age, men should be idealists, and in another, materialists; in one,
theists, and in another, agnostics? Is the distinction between true
and false nothing else than the distinction between what is in harmony
with the spirit of the times and what is not?

That it is natural that there should be such fluctuations of opinion,
we may freely admit. Many things influence a man to embrace a given
type of doctrine, and, as we have seen, verification is a difficult
problem. But have we here, any more than in other fields, the right to
assume that a doctrine was true at a given time merely because it
_seemed_ to men true at that time, or because they found it pleasing?
The history of science reveals that many things have long been believed
to be true, and, indeed, to be bound up with what were regarded as the
highest interests of man, and that these same things have later been
discovered to be false--not false merely for a later age, but false for
all time; as false when they were believed in as when they were
exploded and known to be exploded. No man of sense believes that the
Ptolemaic system was true for a while, and that then the Copernican
became true. We say that the former only _seemed_ true, and that the
enthusiasm of its adherents was a mistaken enthusiasm.

It is well to remember that philosophies are brought forward because it
is believed or hoped that they are true. A fairy tale may be recited
and may be approved, although no one dreams of attaching faith to the
events narrated in it. But a philosophy attempts to give us some
account of the nature of the world in which we live. If the
philosopher frankly abandons the attempt to tell us what is true, and
with a Celtic generosity addresses himself to the task of saying what
will be agreeable to us, he loses his right to the title. It is not
enough that he stirs our emotions, and works up his unrealities into
something resembling a poem. It is not primarily his task to please,
as it is not the task of the serious worker in science to please those
whom he is called upon to instruct. Truth is truth, whether it be
scientific truth or philosophical truth. And error, no matter how
agreeable or how nicely adjusted to the temper of the times, is always
error. If it is error in a field in which the detection and exposure
of error is difficult, it is the more dangerous, and the more should we
be on our guard against it.

We may, then, accept the lesson of the history of philosophy, to wit,
that we have no right to regard any given doctrine as final in such a
sense that it need no longer be held tentatively and as subject to
possible revision; but we need not, on that account, deny that
philosophy is, what it has in the past been believed to be, an earnest
search for truth. A philosophy that did not even profess to be this
would not be listened to at all. It would be regarded as too trivial
to merit serious attention. If we take the word "science" in the broad
sense to indicate a knowledge of the truth more exact and satisfactory
than that which obtains in common life, we may say that every
philosophy worthy of the name is, at least, an attempt at scientific
knowledge. Of course, this sense of the word "science" should not be
confused with that in which it has been used elsewhere in this volume.

87. HOW TO READ THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.--He who takes up the history
of philosophy for the first time is apt to be impressed with the fact
that he is reading something that might not inaptly be called the
history of human error.

It begins with crude and, to the superficial spectator, seemingly
childish attempts in the field of physical science. There are clever
guesses at the nature of the physical world, but the boldest of
speculations are entered upon with no apparent recognition of the
difficulty of the task undertaken, and with no realization of the need
for caution. Somewhat later a different class of problems makes its
appearance--the problems which have to do with the mind and with the
nature of knowledge, reflective problems which scarcely seem to have
come fairly within the horizon of the earliest thinkers.

These problems even the beginner may be willing to recognize as
philosophical; but he may conscientiously harbor a doubt as to the
desirability of spending time upon the solutions which are offered.
System rises after system, and confronts him with what appear to be new
questions and new answers. It seems as though each philosopher were
constructing a world for himself independently, and commanding him to
accept it, without first convincing him of his right to assume this
tone of authority and to set up for an oracle. In all this conflict of
opinions where shall we seek for truth? Why should we accept one man
as a teacher rather than another? Is not the lesson to be gathered
from the whole procession of systems best summed up in the dictum of
Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things"--each has his own truth,
and this need not be truth to another?

This, I say, is a first impression and a natural one. I hasten to add:
this should not be the last impression of those who read with
thoughtful attention.

One thing should be emphasized at the outset: nothing will so often
bear rereading as the history of philosophy. When we go over the
ground after we have obtained a first acquaintance with the teachings
of the different philosophers, we begin to realize that what we have in
our hands is, in a sense, a connected whole. We see that if Plato and
Aristotle had not lived, we could not have had the philosophy which
passed current in the Middle Ages and furnished a foundation for the
teachings of the Church. We realize that without this latter we could
not have had Descartes, and without Descartes we could not have had
Locke and Berkeley and Hume. And had not these lived, we should not
have had Kant and his successors. Other philosophies we should
undoubtedly have had, for the busy mind of man must produce something.
But whatever glimpses at the truth these men have vouchsafed us have
been guaranteed by the order of development in which they have stood.
They could not independently have written the books that have come down
to us.

This should be evident from what has been said earlier in this chapter
and elsewhere in this book. Let us bear in mind that a philosopher
draws his material from two sources. First of all, he has the
experience of the mind and the world which is the common property of us
all. But it is, as we have seen, by no means easy to use this
material. It is vastly difficult to reflect. It is fatally easy to
misconceive what presents itself in our experience. With the most
earnest effort to describe what lies before us, we give a false
description, and we mislead ourselves and others.

In the second place, the philosopher has the interpretations of
experience which he has inherited from his predecessors. The influence
of these is enormous. Each age has, to a large extent, its problems
already formulated or half formulated for it. Every man must have
ancestors, of some sort, if he is to appear upon this earthly stage at
all; and a wholly independent philosopher is as impossible a creature
as an ancestorless man. We have seen how Descartes (section 60) tried
to repudiate his debt to the past, and how little successful he was in
doing so.

Now, we make a mistake if we overlook the genius of the individual
thinker. The history of speculative thought has many times taken a
turn which can only be accounted for by taking into consideration the
genius for reflective thought possessed by some great mind. In the
crucible of such an intellect, old truths take on a new aspect,
familiar facts acquire a new and a richer meaning. But we also make a
mistake if we fail to see in the writings of such a man one of the
stages which has been reached in the gradual evolution of human
thought, if we fail to realize that each philosophy is to a great
extent the product of the past.

When one comes to understand these things, the history of philosophy no
longer presents itself as a mere agglomeration of arbitrary and
independent systems. And an attentive reading gives us a further key
to the interpretation of what seemed inexplicable. We find that there
may be distinct and different streams of thought, which, for a while,
run parallel without commingling their waters. For centuries the
Epicurean followed his own tradition, and walked in the footsteps of
his own master. The Stoic was of sterner stuff, and he chose to travel
another path. To this day there are adherents of the old church
philosophy, Neo-Scholastics, whose ways of thinking can only be
understood when we have some knowledge of Aristotle and of his
influence upon men during the Middle Ages. We ourselves may be
Kantians or Hegelians, and the man at our elbow may recognize as his
spiritual father Comte or Spencer.

It does not follow that, because one system follows another in
chronological order, it is its lineal descendant. But some ancestor a
system always has, and if we have the requisite learning and ingenuity,
we need not find it impossible to explain why this thinker or that was
influenced to give his thought the peculiar turn that characterizes it.
Sometimes many influences have conspired to attain the result, and it
is no small pleasure to address oneself to the task of disentangling
the threads which enter into the fabric.

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