And what, now, are the accurate, the adequate meanings of the three Ideas?—what does our profoundest thought intend by the Soul, by the World, by God? We know how Kant construed them, in consequence of the course by which he came critically (as he supposed) upon them,—as respectively the paramount Subject of experiences; the paramount Object of experiences, or the Causal Unity of the possible series of sensible objects; and the complete Totality of Conditions for experience and its objects, itself therefore the Unconditioned. It is worth our notice, that especially by his construing the idea of God in this way, thus rehabilitating the classical and scholastic conception of God as the Sum of all Realities, he laid the foundation for that very transfiguration of mysticism, that idealistic monism, which he himself repudiated, but which his three noted successors in their several ways so ardently accepted, and which has since so pervaded the philosophic world. But suppose Kant's alleged critical analysis of the three Ideas and their logical basis is in fact far from critical, far from "exactly discriminative,"—and I believe there is the clearest warrant for declaring that it is,—then the assumed "undeniable critical basis" for idealistic monism will be dislodged, and it will be open to us to interpret the Ideas with accuracy and consistency—an interpretation which may prove to establish, not at all any monism, but a rational pluralism. And this will also reveal to us, I think, that our prevalent construing of the Unconditioned and the Conditioned, the Necessary and the Contingent, the Infinite and the Finite, the Absolute and the Relative, suffers from an equal inaccuracy of analysis, and precisely for this reason gives a plausible but in fact untrustworthy support to the monistic interpretation of God, and Soul, and World; or, as Hegel and his chief adherents prefer to name them, God, Mind, and Nature. If the Kantian analysis stands, then it seems to follow, clearly enough, that God is the Inclusive Unit which at once embraces Mind and Nature, Soul and World, expresses itself in them, and imparts to them their meaning; and the plain dictate then is, that Kant's personal prejudice, and the personal prejudices of others like him, in favor of a transcendent God, must give way to that conception of the Divine, as immanent and inclusive, which is alone consistent with its being indeed the Totality of Conditions,—the Necessary Postulate, and the Sufficient Reason, for both Subject and Object.
But will Kant's analysis stand? Have we not here another of his few but fatal slips,—like his doctrine of the dependence of Number upon Time and Space, and its consequent subjection to them? It surely seems so. If the veritable postulate of categorical syllogizing be, as Kant thinks it is, merely the Subject, the self as experiencer of presented phenomena, in contrast to the Object, the causally united sum of possible phenomena; and if the true postulate of conditional syllogizing is this cosmic Object, as contrasted with the correlate Subject, then it would seem we cannot avoid certain pertinent questions. Is such a postulate Subject any fit and adequate account of the whole Self, of the Soul?—is there not a vital difference between this subject-self and the Self as Person?—does not Kant himself imply so, in his doctrine of the primacy of the Practical Reason? Again: Is not the World, as explained in Kant's analysis, and as afterwards made by him the solution of the Cosmological Antinomies, simply the supplemental factor necessarily correlate to the subjective aspect of the conscious life, and reduced from its uncritical rôle of thing-in-itself to the intelligible subordination required by Kant's theory of Transcendental Idealism?—and can this be any adequate account of the Idea that is to stand in sufficing contrast to the whole Self, the Person?—what less than the Society of Persons can meet the World-Idea for that? Further: If with Kant we take the World to mean no more than this object-factor in self-consciousness, must not the Soul, the total Self, from which, according to Kant's Transcendental Idealism, both Space and Time issue, supplying the basis for the immutable contrast between the experiencing subject and the really experienced objects,—must not this whole Self be the real meaning of the "Totality of Conditions, itself unconditioned," which comes into view as simply the postulate of disjunctive syllogizing? How in the world can disjunctive syllogizing, the confessed act of the I-thinking intelligence, really postulate anything as Totality of Conditions, in any other sense than the total of conditions for such syllogizing?—namely, the conditioning I that organizes and does the reasoning? There is surely no warrant for calling this total, which simply transcends and conditions the subject and the object of sensible experiences, by any loftier name than that which Kant had already given it in the Deduction of the Categories, when he designated it the "originally synthetic unity of apperception (self-consciousness)," or "the I-thinking (das ich-denke) that must accompany all my mental presentations,"—that is to say, the whole Self, or thinking Person, idealistically interpreted. The use of the name God in this connection, where Kant is in fact only seeking the roots of the three orders of the syllogism when reasoning has by supposition been restricted to the subject-matter of experience, is assuredly without warrant; yes, without excuse. In fact, it is because Kant sees that the third Idea, as reached through his analysis, is intrinsically immanent,—resident in the self that syllogizes disjunctively, and, because so resident, incapable of passing the bounds of possible experience,—while he also sees that the idea of God should mean a Being transcendent of every other thinker, himself a distinct individual consciousness, though not an empirically limited one,—it is, I say, precisely because he sees all this, that he pronounces the Idea, though named with the name of God, utterly without pertinence to indicate God's existence, and so enters upon that part of his Transcendental Dialectic which is, in chief, directed to exposing the transcendental illusion involved in the celebrated Ontological Proof. Consistently, Kant in this famous analytic of the syllogism should be talking, not of the Soul, the World, and God, but of the Subject (as uniting-principle of its sense-perceptions), the Object (as uniting-principle of all possible sense-percepts), and the Self (the whole I presiding over experience in both its aspects, as these are discriminated in Time and Space). By what rational title—even granting for the sake of argument that they are the genuine postulates of categorical and of conditional syllogizing—can this Subject and this Object, these correlate factors in the Self, rank as Ideas with the Idea of their conditioning Whole—the Self, that in its still unaltered identity fulfills, in Practical Reason, the high rôle of Person? If this no more than meets the standard of Idea, how can they meet it? How can two somethings, neither of which is the Totality of Conditions, and both of which are therefore in fact conditioned, deserve the same title with that which is intrinsically the Totality of Conditions, and, as such, unconditioned? To call the conditioned and the unconditioned alike Ideas is a confounding of dignities that Pure Reason should not tolerate, whether the procedure be read as a leveling down or a leveling up. Distributing the titles conferred by Pure Reason in this democratic fashion reminds us too much, unhappily for Kant, of the Cartesian performances with Substance; whereby God, mind, and matter became alike "substances," though only God could in truth be said to "require nothing for his existence save himself," while mind and matter, though absolutely dependent on God, and derivative from him, were still to be called substances in the "modified" and Pickwickian sense of being underived from each other.
But if Kant's naming his third syllogistic postulate the Idea of God is inconsequent upon his analysis; or if, when the analysis is made consequent by taking the third Idea to mean the whole Self, the first and second postulates sink in conceptual rank, so that they cannot with any pertinence be called Ideas, unless we are willing to keep the same name when its meaning must be changed in genere,—a procedure that can only encumber philosophy instead of clearing its way,—these difficulties do not close the account; we shall find other curious things in this noted passage, upon which part of the characteristic outcome of Kant's philosophizing so much depends. Besides the misnaming of the third Idea, we have already had to question, in view of the path by which he reaches it, the fitness of his calling the first by the title of the Soul; and likewise, though for other and higher reasons, of his calling the second by the name of the World. In fact, it comes home to us that all of the Ideas are, in one way or another, misnomers; Kant's whole procedure with them, in fine, has already appeared inexact, inconsistent, and therefore uncritical. But now we shall become aware of certain other inconsistencies. In coming to the Subject, as the postulate of categorical syllogizing, Kant, you remember, does so by the path of the relation Subject and Predicate, arguing that the chain of categorical prosyllogisms has for its limiting concept and logical motor the notion of an absolute subject that cannot be a predicate; and as no subject of a judgment can of itself give assurance of fulfilling this condition, he concludes this motor-limit of judgment-subjects to be identical with the Subject as thinker, upon whom, at the last, all judgments depend, and who, therefore, and who alone, can never be a predicate merely. In similar fashion, he finds as the motor-limit of the series of conditional prosyllogisms, which is governed by the relation Cause and Effect, the notion of an absolute cause—a cause, that is, incapable of being an effect; and this, as undiscoverable in the chain of phenomenal causes, which are all in turn effects, he concludes is a pure Idea, the reason's native conception of a necessary linkage among all changes in Space, or of a Cosmic Unity among physical phenomena. In both conceptions, then, whether of the unity of the Subject or of the World, we seem to have a case of the unconditioned, as each, surely, is a totality of conditions: the one, for all possible syllogisms by Subject and Predicate; the other, for all possible syllogisms from Cause and Effect. Until it can be shown that the syllogisms of the first sort and the syllogisms of the second are both conditioned by the system of disjunctive syllogisms, so that the Idea alleged to be the totality of conditions for this system becomes the conditioning principle for both the others, there appears to be no ground for contrasting the totality of conditions presented in it with those presented in the others, as if it were the absolute Totality of all Conditions, while the two others are only "relative totalities,"—which would be as much as to say they were only pseudo-totalities, both being conditioned instead of being unconditioned. But there seems to be no evidence, not even an indication, that disjunctive reasoning conditions categorical or conditional—that it constitutes the whole kingdom, in which the other two orders of reasoning form dependent provinces, or that for final validation these must appeal to the disjunctive series and the Idea that controls it. On the contrary, any such relation seems disproved by the fact that the three types of syllogism apply alike in all subject-matter, psychic or physical, subjective or objective, concerning the Self or concerning the World,—yes, concerning other Selves or even concerning God; whereas, if the relation were a fact, it would require that only disjunctive reasoning can deal with the Unconditioned, and that conditional must confine itself to cosmic material, while categorical pertains only to the things of inner sense.
Such considerations cannot but shake our confidence in the inquisition to which Kant has submitted the Ideas of Reason, both as regards what they really mean and how they are to be correlated. At all events, the analysis of logical procedure and connection on which his account of them is based is full of the confusions and oversights that have now been pointed out, and justifies us in saying that his case is not established. Hence we are not bound to follow when his three successors, or their later adherents, proceed in acceptance of his results, and advance into various forms of idealism, all of the monistic type, as if the general relation between the three Ideas had been demonstrably settled by Kant in the monist sense, despite his not knowing this, and that all we have to do is to disregard his recorded protests, and render his results consistent, and our idealism "absolute," by casting out from his doctrine the distinction between the Theoretical and the Practical Reason, with the "primacy" of the latter, through making an end of his assumed world of Dinge an sich, or "things in themselves." This movement, I repeat, we are not bound to follow: a rectification of view as to the meaning of the three Ideas becomes possible as soon as we are freed from Kant's entangled method of discovering and defining them; and when this rectification is effected, we shall find that the question between monism and rational or harmonic pluralism is at least open, to say no more. Nay, we are not to forget that by the results of our analysis of the concepts One and Many, Time and Space, and the real relation between them, plural metaphysics has already won a precedence in this contest.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD
[George Trumbull Ladd, Professor of Philosophy, Yale University. b. January 19, 1842, Painesville, Ohio. B.A. Western Reserve College, 1864; B.D. Andover Theological Seminary, 1869; D.D. Western Reserve, 1879; M.A. Yale, 1881; LL.D. Western Reserve, 1895; LL.D. Princeton, 1896. Decorated with the 3d Degree of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan, 1899; Pastor, Edinburg, Ohio, 1869-71; ibid., Milwaukee, Wis., 1871-79; Professor of Philosophy, Bowdoin College, 1879-81; ibid., Yale University, 1881—; Lecturer, Harvard, Tokio, Bombay, etc., 1885—, Member American Psychological Association, American Society of Naturalists, American Philosophical Association, American Oriental Society, Imperial Educational Society of Japan, Connecticut Academy. Author of Elements of Physiological Psychology; Philosophy of Knowledge; Philosophy of Mind; A Theory of Reality; and many other noted scientific works and papers.]
The history of man's critical and reflective thought upon the more ultimate problems of nature and of his own life has, indeed, its period of quickened progress, relative stagnation, and apparent decline. Great thinkers are born and die, "schools of philosophy," so-called, arise, flourish, and become discredited; and tendencies of various characteristics mark the national or more general Zeitgeist of the particular centuries. And always, a certain deep undercurrent, or powerful stream of the rational evolution of humanity, flows silently onward. But these periods of philosophical development do not correspond to those which have been marked off for man by the rhythmic motion of the heavenly bodies, or by himself for purposes of greater convenience in practical affairs. The proposal, therefore, to treat any century of philosophical development as though it could be taken out of, and considered apart from, this constant unfolding of man's rational life is, of necessity, doomed to failure. And, indeed, the nineteenth century is no exception to the general truth.
There is, however, one important and historical fact which makes more definite, and more feasible, the attempt to present in outline the history of the philosophical development of the nineteenth century. This fact is the death of Immanuel Kant, February 12, 1804. In a very unusual way this event marks the close of the development of philosophy in the eighteenth century. In a yet more unusual way the same event defines the beginning of the philosophical development of the nineteenth century. The proposal is, therefore, not artificial, but in accordance with the truth of history, if we consider the problems, movements, results, and present condition of this development, so far as the fulfillment of our general purpose is concerned, in the light of the critical philosophy of Kant. This purpose may then be further defined in the following way: to trace the history of the evolution of critical and reflective thought over the more ultimate problems of Nature and of human life, in the Western World during the last hundred years, and from the standpoint of the conclusions, both negative and positive, which are best embodied in the works of the philosopher of Königsberg. This purpose we shall try to fulfill in these four divisions of our theme: (1) A statement of the problems of philosophy as they were given over to the nineteenth century by the Kantian Critique; (2) a brief description of the lines of movement along which the attempts at the improved solution of these problems have proceeded, and of the principal influences contributing to these attempts; (3) a summary of the principal results of these movements—the items, so to say, of progress in philosophy which may be credited to the last century; and finally, (4) a survey of the present state of these problems as they are now to be handed down by the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Truly an immensely difficult, if not an impossible task, is involved in this purpose!
I. The problems which the critical philosophy undertook definitively to solve may be divided into three classes. The first is the epistemological problem, or the problem offered by human knowledge—its essential nature, its fixed limitations, if such there be, and its ontological validity. It was this problem which Kant brought to the front in such a manner that certain subsequent writers on philosophy have claimed it to be, not only the primary and most important branch of philosophical discipline, but to comprise the sum-total of what human reflection and critical thought can successfully compass. "We call philosophy self-knowledge," says one of these writers. "The theory of knowledge is the true prima philosophia," says another. Kant himself regarded it as the most imperative demand of reason to establish a science that shall "determine a priori the possibility, the principles, and the extent of all cognitions." The burden of the epistemological problem has pressed heavily upon the thought of the nineteenth century; the different attitudes toward this problem, and its different alleged solutions, have been most influential factors in determining the philosophical discussions, divisions, schools, and permanent or transitory achievements of the century.