| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Changing Conceptions of Philosophy | [1] |
| Origin of philosophy in desire and imagination. Influence of community traditions and authority. Simultaneous development of matter-of-fact knowledge. Incongruity and conflict of the two types. Respective values of each type.... Classic philosophies (i) compensatory, (ii) dialectically formal, and (iii) concerned with "superior" Reality. Contemporary thinking accepts primacy of matter-of-fact knowledge and assigns to philosophy a social function rather than that of absolute knowledge. | ||
| II | Some Historical Factors in Philosophical Reconstruction | [28] |
| Francis Bacon exemplifies the newer spirit.... He conceived knowledge as power. As dependent upon organized cooperative research.... As tested by promotion of social progress. The new thought reflected actual social changes, industrial, political, religious.... The new idealism. | ||
| III | The Scientific Factor in Reconstruction of Philosophy | [53] |
| Science has revolutionized our conception of Nature. Philosophy has to be transformed because no longer depending upon a science which accepts a closed, finite world. Or, fixed species. Or, superiority or rest to change and motion. Contrast of feudal with democratic conceptions. Elimination of final causes. Mechanical science and the possibility of control of nature. Respect for matter. New temper of imagination. Influence thus far technical rather than human and moral. | ||
| IV | Changed Conceptions of Experience and Reason | [77] |
| Traditional conception of nature of experience. Limits of ancient civilization. Effect of classic idea on modern empiricism. Why a different conception is now possible. Psychological change emphasizes vital factor using environment. Effect upon traditional ideas of sensation and knowledge. Factor of organization. Socially, experience is now more inventive and regulative.... Corresponding change in idea of Reason. Intelligence is hypothetical and inventive. Weakness of historic Rationalism. Kantianism. Contrast of German and British philosophies. Reconstruction of empirical liberalism. | ||
| V | Changed Conceptions of the Ideal and the Real | [103] |
| Idealization rooted in aversion to the disagreeable.... This fact has affected philosophy.... True reality is ideal, and hence changeless, complete. Hence contemplative knowledge is higher than experimental. Contrast with the modern practise of knowledge.... Significance of change.... The actual or realistic signifies conditions effecting change.... Ideals become methods rather than goals. Illustration from elimination of distance. Change in conception of philosophy.... The significant problems for philosophy.... Social understanding and conciliation. The practical problem of real and ideal. | ||
| VI | The Significance of Logical Reconstruction | [132] |
| Present confusion as to logic. Logic is regulative and normative because empirical. Illustration from mathematics. Origin of thinking in conflicts. Confrontation with fact. Response by anticipation or prediction. Importance of hypotheses. Impartial inquiry. Importance of deductive function. Organization and classification. Nature of truth. Truth is adverbial, not a thing. | ||
| VII | Reconstruction in Moral Conceptions | [161] |
| Common factor in traditional theories. Every moral situation unique. Supremacy of the specific or individualized case. Fallacy of general ends. Worth of generalization of ends and rules is intellectual. Harmfulness of division of goods into intrinsic and instrumental. Into natural and moral. Moral worth of natural science. Importance of discovery in morals. Abolishing Phariseeism.... Growth as the end. Optimism and pessimism. Conception of happiness. Criticism of utilitarianism. All life moral in so far as educative. | ||
| VIII | Reconstruction as Affecting Social Philosophy | [187] |
| Defects of current logic of social thought. Neglect of specific situations. Defects of organic concept of society. Evils of notion of fixed self or individual. Doctrine of interests. Moral and institutional reform. Moral test of social institutions. Social pluralism. Political monism, dogma of National State. Primacy of associations. International humanism. Organization a subordinate conception. Freedom and democracy. Intellectual reconstruction when habitual will affect imagination and hence poetry and religion. | ||
| Index | [217] |
[RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY]
[CHAPTER I]
CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
Man differs from the lower animals because he preserves his past experiences. What happened in the past is lived again in memory. About what goes on today hangs a cloud of thoughts concerning similar things undergone in bygone days. With the animals, an experience perishes as it happens, and each new doing or suffering stands alone. But man lives in a world where each occurrence is charged with echoes and reminiscences of what has gone before, where each event is a reminder of other things. Hence he lives not, like the beasts of the field, in a world of merely physical things but in a world of signs and symbols. A stone is not merely hard, a thing into which one bumps; but it is a monument of a deceased ancestor. A flame is not merely something which warms or burns, but is a symbol of the enduring life of the household, of the abiding source of cheer, nourishment and shelter to which man returns from his casual wanderings. Instead of being a quick fork of fire which may sting and hurt, it is the hearth at which one worships and for which one fights. And all this which marks the difference between bestiality and humanity, between culture and merely physical nature, is because man remembers, preserving and recording his experiences.
The revivals of memory are, however, rarely literal. We naturally remember what interests us and because it interests us. The past is recalled not because of itself but because of what it adds to the present. Thus the primary life of memory is emotional rather than intellectual and practical. Savage man recalled yesterday's struggle with an animal not in order to study in a scientific way the qualities of the animal or for the sake of calculating how better to fight tomorrow, but to escape from the tedium of today by regaining the thrill of yesterday. The memory has all the excitement of the combat without its danger and anxiety. To revive it and revel in it is to enhance the present moment with a new meaning, a meaning different from that which actually belongs either to it or to the past. Memory is vicarious experience in which there is all the emotional values of actual experience without its strains, vicissitudes and troubles. The triumph of battle is even more poignant in the memorial war dance than at the moment of victory; the conscious and truly human experience of the chase comes when it is talked over and re-enacted by the camp fire. At the time, attention is taken up with practical details and with the strain of uncertainty. Only later do the details compose into a story and fuse into a whole of meaning. At the time of practical experience man exists from moment to moment, preoccupied with the task of the moment. As he re-surveys all the moments in thought, a drama emerges with a beginning, a middle and a movement toward the climax of achievement or defeat.
Since man revives his past experience because of the interest added to what would otherwise be the emptiness of present leisure, the primitive life of memory is one of fancy and imagination, rather than of accurate recollection. After all, it is the story, the drama, which counts. Only those incidents are selected which have a present emotional value, to intensify the present tale as it is rehearsed in imagination or told to an admiring listener. What does not add to the thrill of combat or contribute to the goal of success or failure is dropped. Incidents are rearranged till they fit into the temper of the tale. Thus early man when left to himself, when not actually engaged in the struggle for existence, lived in a world of memories which was a world of suggestions. A suggestion differs from a recollection in that no attempt is made to test its correctness. Its correctness is a matter of relative indifference. The cloud suggests a camel or a man's face. It could not suggest these things unless some time there had been an actual, literal experience of camel and face. But the real likeness is of no account. The main thing is the emotional interest in tracing the camel or following the fortunes of the face as it forms and dissolves.
Students of the primitive history of mankind tell of the enormous part played by animal tales, myths and cults. Sometimes a mystery is made out of this historical fact, as if it indicated that primitive man was moved by a different psychology from that which now animates humanity. But the explanation is, I think, simple. Until agriculture and the higher industrial arts were developed, long periods of empty leisure alternated with comparatively short periods of energy put forth to secure food or safety from attack. Because of our own habits, we tend to think of people as busy or occupied, if not with doing at least with thinking and planning. But then men were busy only when engaged in the hunt or fishing or fighting expedition. Yet the mind when awake must have some filling; it cannot remain literally vacant because the body is idle. And what thoughts should crowd into the human mind except experiences with animals, experiences transformed under the influence of dramatic interest to make more vivid and coherent the events typical of the chase? As men in fancy dramatically re-lived the interesting parts of their actual lives, animals inevitably became themselves dramatized.
They were true dramatis personæ and as such assumed the traits of persons. They too had desires, hopes and fears, a life of affections, loves and hates, triumphs and defeats. Moreover, since they were essential to the support of the community, their activities and sufferings made them, in the imagination which dramatically revived the past, true sharers in the life of the community. Although they were hunted, yet they permitted themselves after all to be caught, and hence they were friends and allies. They devoted themselves, quite literally, to the sustenance and well-being of the community group to which they belonged. Thus were produced not merely the multitude of tales and legends dwelling affectionately upon the activities and features of animals, but also those elaborate rites and cults which made animals ancestors, heroes, tribal figure-heads and divinities.