Latest / Logic Library / 01 Part 1 - The Present Dilemma in Philosophy - Pragmatism - William James

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01 Part 1 - The Present Dilemma in Philosophy - Pragmatism - William James · Logic Library

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Lecture one the Present Dilemma in Philosophy. In the preface to that admirable collection
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of essays of his called Heretics, mister Chesterton writes these words, there are
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some people, and I am one of them, who think that the most
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practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.
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We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know
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his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that
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for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the
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enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think
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the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos effects matters, but whether
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in the long run anything else affects them. I think with miss Chesterton in
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this matter. I know that you, ladies and gentlemen have philosophy, each
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and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you
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is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You
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know the same of me, And yet I confess to a certain tremor at
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the audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy,
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which is so important in each of us, is not a technical matter.
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It is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply
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means. It is only partly gut from books. It is our individual way
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of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I
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have no right to assume that many of you are students of the cosmos in
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the classroom sense. Yet here I stand desirous of interesting you in a philosophy
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which, to no small extent has to be technically treated. I wish to
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fill you with sympathy, with a contemporanoiust tendency in which which I profoundly believe.
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And yet I have to talk like a professor to you who are not
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students. Whatever universe a professor believes in must, at any rate be a
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universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is
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something for which the professorial intellect has no use, no faith in anything of
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that cheap kind. I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize philosophy in
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this very hall, but they soon grew dry and then technical, and the
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results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The
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founder of pragmatism himself recently gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute with
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that very word in its title, flashes of brilliant light revealed against Simerian darkness.
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None of us, I fancy, understood all that he said. Yet
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here I stand making a very similar venture. I risk it because the very
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lectures a speak of dru They brought good audiences. There is, it must
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be confessed, a curious fashionation. In hearing deep things talked about, even
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though neither we nor the disputants understand them, we get the problematic thrill.
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We feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking
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room anywhere about free will, or God's omniscience, or good and evil,
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and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern
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us all most vitally, and philosopher's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety
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and ingenuity. Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind
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of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled periphas et nephas
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to try to impart to you some use of the situation. Philosophy is at
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once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in
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the nightest crannus, and it opens up the widest vistas. It bakes no
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bread, as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage
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and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling, and
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dialectics of an hour to common people. No one of us can get along
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without the far flashing beams of lighted sense over the world's perspectives. These illuminations,
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at least, and the contrast effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them,
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give to what it says, an interest that is much more than professional.
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash
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of human temperaments. Undignified, as such a treatment may seem to some of
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my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a
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good many of the divergences of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional
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philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament.
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Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his
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conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his
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more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the
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other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard hearted view of the
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universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament,
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wanting a universe that suits it. He believes in any representation of the
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universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out
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of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and
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not in it in the philosophic business, even though they may far excel him
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in dialectical ability. Yet in the forum he can make no claim on the
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bare ground of his temperament to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a
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certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions. The potentest of all our premises is never
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mentioned. I am sure it would contribute to clearness if in these lectures.
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We should break this rule and mention it, and I accordingly feel free to
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do so. Of course, I'm talking here a very positively marked men,
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men of radical idiosyncrasy, who have set their stamp and likeness of philosophy and
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figure in his history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer are such temperamental
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thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no very definite intellectual temperament.
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We are a mixture of opposite ingredients, each one present very moderately.
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We hardly know our own preferences in abstract matters. Some of us are easily
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talked out of them, and end by following the fashion or taking up with
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the beliefs of the most impressive philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be.
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But the one thing that has countered so far in philosophy is that a
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man should see things, see them straight in his own pecurely away, and
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be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason to
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suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in
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the history of man's beliefs. Now, the particular difference of temperament that I
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have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature,
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art, government, and manners, as well as in philosophy. In manners
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we find formalists and free and easy persons in government, authoritarians and honarchists in
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literature, purists or academicals and realists. In art, classics and romantics.
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You recognize these contrasts as familiar. Well in philosophy we have a very similar
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contrast expressed in the pair of terms rationalist and empiricist. Empiricist meaning your lover
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of facts in all the crude variety, rationalist meaning your devotee to abstract and
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eternal principles. No one can live an hour without both facts and principles.
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So it is a difference rather of emphasis. Yet it breeds and typathies of
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the most pugnant character between those who lay the emphasis differently. And we shall
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find it extraordinarily convenient to express a certain contrast in men's ways of taking the
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universe by talking of the empiricist and of the rationalist. Temper these terms make
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the contrast simple and massive, more simple and massive than are usually the men
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of whom the terms are predicated. For every sort of permutation and combination is
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possible in human nature. And if I now proceed to define more fully what
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I have in mind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to
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each of those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg you to regard my
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conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary. I select types of combination that nature
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offers very frequently, but by no means uniformly, and I select them solely
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for their convenience in helping me to my alterior purpose of characterizing pragmatism. Historically,
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we find the terms intellectualism and sensationalism used as synonyms of rationalism and empiricism,
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while nature seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism and idealistic and optimistic tendency.
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Empiricists, on the other hand, are not uncommonly materialistic, and their
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optimism is apt be decidedly conditional and tremulous. Rationalism is always monistic. It
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starts from holes and universals, and makes much of the unity of things.
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Empiricism starts from the parts and makes of the whole a collection. Is not
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averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic. Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism.
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But there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention
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it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called
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a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist pries himself on being hard
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headed. In that case, the rationalist will usually also be in favor of
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what is called free will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist. I
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use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist five will be of dogmatic temper
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in its affirmations, while the empiricist may be more skeptical and open to discussion.
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I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will
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practically recognize the two types of mental makeup. That I mean, if I
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had the columns by the titles tender minded and tough minded, respectively. The
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tender minded rationalistic going by principles, intellectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious,
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free willist, monistic, dogmatical. The tough minded empiricist going by facts,
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sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, skeptical. Pray
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postpone for a moment. They question whether the two contrasted mixtures which I have
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written down are each inwardly coherent and self consistent or not. I shall very
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soon have a good deal to say on that point. It suffices for our
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immediate purpose that tender minded and tough minded people, characterized as I have written
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them down, do both exist. Each of you probably knows some well marked
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example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the example
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on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of each
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other. Their antagonism, whatever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has
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formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It
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forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere to day. The tough think of the
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tender as sentimentalists and soft heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined,
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callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that
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takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of a cripple creek.
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Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself, but disdain in
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the one case is mingled with amusement. In the other, it has a
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dash of fear. Now, as I have already insisted. Few of us
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are tenderfoot Bostonians, pure and simple, and few are typically rocky mountain tufts.
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In philosophy, most of us have a hankering for the good things on
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both sides of the line. Facts are good, of course, Give us
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lots of facts. Principles are good. Give us plenty of principles. The
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world is injupidly one if you look at it in one way, But as
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in jupiteriy is it many if you look at it in another. It is
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both one and many. Let us adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything,
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of course, is necessarily determined, and yet of course our wills are
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free. A sort of free will determinism is the true philosophy. The evil
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of the parts is undeniable, but the whole can't be evil. So practical
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pessimism may be combined with metaphysical optimism, and so forth. Your ordinary philosophic
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layman, never being a radical, never straightening out his system, but living
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vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the temptations of successive
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hours. But some of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We
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are worthy of the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much
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inconsistency and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual conscience so
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long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides of the line. And now
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I come to the first positively important point which I wish to make. Never
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were as many men of our decidedly empiricist proclivity in existence as there are at
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the present day. Our children, one may say, are almost born scientific,
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but our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us our religiousness. It
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is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devote. Now take a man
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of this type and let him be also a philosophic amateur, unwilling to mix
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our Hodgepodge system after the fashion of a common layman. And what does he
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find his situation to be in this blessed year of our Lord nineteen hundred and
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six. He wants facts, he wants science, but he also wants a
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religion. And being an amateur and not an independent originator in philosophy, he
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naturally looks for guidance to the experts and professionals, whom he finds already in
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the field a very large number of you here present, possibly a majority of
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you, are amateurs of just this sort. Now, what kinds of philosophy
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do you find actually offered to meet your need? You find an empirical philosophy
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that is not religious enough, and a religious philosophy that is not empirical enough
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for your purpose. If you look to the quarter where facts are most considered,
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you find the whole tough minded program in operation, and the conflict between
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science and religion in full blast. Either it is the rocky mountain tuff of
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a Heckel, with his materialistic monism, his ether God in his chest at
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our God as a gaseous vertebrate, or it is Spenser treating the world's history
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as a redistribution of matter and motion solely, and bowing religion politely out at
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the front door. She may indeed continue to exist, but she must never
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show her face inside the temple. For one hundred and fifty years past,
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the progress of science has seemed to mean the enlargement of the material universe and
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the diminution of man's importance. The result is what one may call the growth
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of naturalistic or positivistic feeling. Man is no law giver to nature. He
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is an absorber. She it is who stands firm. He it is who
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must accommon himself. Let him record truth in human though it be, and
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submit to it. The romantic, spontaneity and courage are gone. The vision
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is materialistic and depressing. Ideals appear as inert by products of physiology. What
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is higher is explained by what is lower, and treated forever as a case
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of nothing but nothing but something else of a quite inferior sort. You get,
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in short, a matrialistic universe in which only the tough minded find themselves
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congenially at home. If now, on the other hand, you turn to
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the religious quarter for consolation and take counsel of the tenderminded philosophies, what do
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you find religious philosophy in our day? And the generation is among us English
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reading people of two main times. One of these is more radical and aggressive,
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the other has more the air of fighting a slow retreat by the more
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radical wing of religious philosophy, I mean the so called transcendental idealism of the
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Anglo Hegelian school, the philosophy of such men as Green, the Cards,
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Bozanki and Royce. This philosophy has greatly influenced the more studious members of our
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Protestant ministry. It is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already blunted the edge
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of the traditional theism in Protestantism at large. That theism remains, however,
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it is the lineal descendant, through one stage of concession after another, of
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the dogmatic scholastic theism still taught rigorously in the seminaries of the Catholic Church.
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For a long time it used to be called, among us us the philosophy
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of the Scottish school. It is what I meant by the philosophy that has
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the air of fighting a slow retreat between the encroachments of the Hegelians and other
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philosophers of the absolute on the one hand, and those of the scientific evolutionists
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and agnostics on the other. The man that gives this kind of philosophy,
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James Martineau, Professor Baun, Professor Ladd, and others, must feel themselves
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rather tightly squeezed. Fair minded and candid as you like, this philosophy is
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not radical in temper. It is eclectic, a thing of compromises that seeks
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a modus vivendi above all things. It accepts the facts of Darwinism the facts
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of cerebral physiology, but it does nothing active or enthusiastic rhythm. It lacks
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the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in consequence, whereas absolutism has
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a certain prestige due to the more radical style of it. These two systems
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are what you have to choose between. If you turn to the tender minded
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school, and if you are the lovers of facts I have supposed you to
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be, you find the trail of the serpent of rationalism, of intellectualism over
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everything that lies on that side of the line. You escape, indeed,
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the materialism that goes with the reigning empiricism, but you pay for your escape
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by losing contact with the concrete parts of life. The more absolutistic philosophers dwell
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on so high a level of abstraction that they never even try to come down
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the absolute mind, which they offer us, the mind that makes our universe.
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By thinking it might for aught, they show us to the countrary have
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made any one of a million other universes just as well as this. You
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can deduce no single actual particular from the notion of it. It is compatible
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with any state of things, whatever being true here below, and the theistic
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God is almost as sterile a principle. You have to go to the world
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which he has created to get any inkling of his actual character. He is
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the kind of God that has once for all made that kind of a world.
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The God of the theistic writers lives on as purely abstract heights as does
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the absolute. Absolutism has a certain sweep and dash about it, while the
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usual theism is more insipid, but both are equally remote and vacuous. What
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you want is a philosophy that will not only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction,
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but that will make some positive connection with this actual world of finite human
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lives. You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty
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to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaptation and
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accommodation in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant
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spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type. And this is
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then your dilemma. You find the two parts of your cacetom hopelessly separated.
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You find empiricism with inhumanism and irreligion, or else you find a rationalistic philosophy
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that indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch
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with concrete facts and joys and sorrows. I am not sure how many of
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you live close enough to philosophy to realize fully what I mean by this last
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reproach. So I will dwell a little longer on that unreality in all rationalistic
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systems by which your serious believer in facts is so apt to feel repelled.
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I wish that i'd saved the first couple of pages of a thesis which a
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student handed me a year or two ago. They illustrated my points so clearly
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that I am sorry I cannot read them to you. Now. This young
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man, who was a graduate of some western college, began by saying that
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he had always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic classroom, you
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had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you left behind
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you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to have
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so little to do with each other that you could not possibly occupy your mind
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with them. At the same time, the world of concrete personal experiences to
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which the street belongs is multitudinous, beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful,
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and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy professor introduces you is simple,
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clean, and noble. The contradictions of real life are absent from it.
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Its architecture is classic principles of recent trace, Its outlines, logical necessities,
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cement its parts. Purity and dignity are what it most expresses. It
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is a kind of marble temple shining on a hill. End of Lecture one, Part one