The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

§ [142]. Since the essence of subjectivism is epistemological rather than metaphysical, its practical and religious implications are various. The ethical theories which are corollary to the tendencies expounded above, range from extreme egoism to a mystical universalism. The close connection between the former and relativism is evident, and the form of egoism most consistent with epistemological relativism is to be found among those same Sophists who first maintained this latter doctrine. If we may believe Plato, the Sophists sought to create for their individual pupils an appearance of good. In the "Theaetetus," Socrates is represented as speaking thus on behalf of Protagoras:

"And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which are and appear to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. . . . I say that they (the wise men) are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants—for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations as well as true ones; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil seem just to states; for whatever appears to be just and fair to a state, while sanctioned by a state, is just and fair to it; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality."[299:22]

As truth is indistinguishable from the appearance of truth to the individual, so good is indistinguishable from a particular seeming good. The supreme moral value according to this plan of life is the agreeable feeling tone of that dream world to which the individual is forever consigned. The possible perfection of an experience which is "reduced to a swarm of impressions," and "ringed round" for each one of us by a "thick wall of personality" has been brilliantly depicted in the passage already quoted from Walter Pater, in whom the naturalistic and subjectivistic motives unite.[299:23] If all my experience is strictly my own, then my good must likewise be my own. And if all of my experience is valid only in its instants of immediacy, then my best good must likewise consist in some "exquisite passion," or stirring of the senses.

Pessimism and Self-denial.

§ [143]. But for Schopenhauer the internal world opens out into the boundless and unfathomable sea of the universal will. If I retire from the world upon my own private feelings, I am still short of the true life, for I am asserting myself against the world. I should seek a sense of unison with a world whose deeper heart-beats I may learn to feel and adopt as the rhythm of my own. The folly of willing for one's private self is the ground of Schopenhauer's pessimism.

"All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering. The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one, both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet. No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive to-day that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow. . . . The subject of willing is thus constantly stretched on the revolving wheel of Ixion, pours water into the sieve of the Danaids, is the ever-longing Tantalus."[300:24]

The escape from this torture and self-deception is possible through the same mystical experience, the same blending with the universe that conditions knowledge.

The Ethics of Welfare.

§ [144]. But though pleasant dreaming be the most consistent practical sequel to a subjectivistic epistemology, its individualism presents another basis for life with quite different possibilities of emphasis. It may develop into an aggressive egoism of the type represented by the sophist Thrasymachus, in his proclamation that "might is right, justice the interest of the stronger."[301:25] But more commonly it is tempered by a conception of social interest, and serves as the champion of action against contemplation. The gospel of action is always individualistic. It requires of the individual a sense of his independence, and of the real virtue of his initiative. Hence those voluntarists who emphasize the many individual wills and decline to reduce them, after the manner of Schopenhauer, to a universal, may be said to afford a direct justification of it. It is true that this practical realism threatens the tenability of an epistemological idealism, but the two have been united, and because of their common emphasis upon the individual such procedure is not entirely inconsequential. Friedrich Paulsen, whose panpsychism has already been cited, is an excellent case in point. The only good, he maintains, is "welfare," the fulfilment of those natural desires which both distinguish the individual and signify his continuity with all grades of being.

"The goal at which the will aims does not consist in a maximum of pleasurable feelings, but in the normal exercise of the vital functions for which the species is predisposed. In the case of man the mode of life is on the whole determined by the nature of the historical unity from which the individual evolves as a member. Here the objective content of life, after which the will strives, also enters into consciousness with the progressive evolution of presentation; the type of life becomes a conscious ideal of life."[302:26]