Pragmatism and idealism

by William Caldwell

Truth, too, grows from age to age, and is simply the formulated knowledge humanity has of itself and its environment. And errors disappear, not so much in consequence of their logical refutation, as in consequence of their inutility and of their inability to control the life and thought of the free man. Readers of Schopenhauer will remember his frequent insistence upon this point of the gradual dissidence and disappearance of error, in place of its summary refutation.

Our “reactions” upon reality are certainly part of what we mean by “reality,” and our philosophy is only too truly “the history of our heart and life” as well as that of our intellectual activity. The historian of philosophy invariably acts upon a recognition of the personal and the national and the epochal influence in the evolution of every philosophical system. And even the new, or the fuller conception of life to which a given genius may attain at some stage or other of human civilization will still inevitably, in its turn, give place to a newer or a more perfect system.

Now Pragmatism is doubtless at fault in seeking to create the impression that Rationalism would seek to deny any, or all, of those characteristic facts of human nature. Still, it is to some extent justified in insisting upon their importance in view of the sharp conflict (we shall later refer to it) that is often supposed to exist between the theoretical and the practical interests of mankind, and that Rationalism sometimes seems to accept with comparative equanimity.[128] What Pragmatism is itself most of all seeking after is a view of human nature, and of things generally, in which the fullest justice is done to the facts upon which this very real conflict[129] of modern times may be said to rest.

A fourth characteristic of Pragmatism is its notorious “anti-intellectualism,”[130] its hostility to the merely dialectical use of terms and concepts and categories,[131] to argumentation that is unduly detached from the facts and the needs of our concrete human experience. This anti-intellectualism we prefer meantime to consider not so much in itself and on its own account (if this be possible with a negative creed) as in the light of the results it has had upon philosophy. There is, for example, the general clearing of the ground that has undoubtedly taken place as to the actual or the possible meaning of many terms or conceptions that have long been current with the transcendentalists, such as “pure thought,” the “Absolute,” “truth” in and for itself, philosophy as the “completely rational” interpretation of experience, and so on. And along with this clearing of the ground there are (and also in consequence of the pragmatist movement) a great many recent, striking concessions of Rationalism to practical, and to common-sense, ways of looking at things, the very existence of which cannot but have an important effect upon the philosophy of the near future. Among some of the more typical of these are the following:

From Mr. F. H. Bradley we have the emphatic declarations that the principle of dialectical opposition or the principle of “Non-Contradiction” (formerly, to himself and his followers, the “rule of the game” in philosophy) “does not settle anything about the nature of reality”; that “truth” is an “hypothesis,” and that “except as a means to a foreign end it is useless and impossible”; and “when we judge truth by its own standard it is defective because it fails to include all the facts,”[132] and because its contents “cannot be made intelligible throughout and entirely”; that “no truth is idle,” and that “all truth” has “practical” and æsthetic “consequences”; that there is “no such existing thing as pure thought”;[133] that we cannot separate truth and practice; that “absolute certainty is not requisite for working purposes”; that it is a “superstition[134] to think that the intellect is the highest part of us,” and that it is well to attack a one-sided “intellectualism”; that both “intellectualism” and “voluntarism” are “one-sided,” and that he has no “objection to identifying reality with goodness or satisfaction, so long as this does not mean merely practical satisfaction.”[135] Then from this same author comes the following familiar statement about philosophy as a whole: “Philosophy always will be hard, and what it promises in the end is no clear vision nor any complete understanding or vision, but its certain reward is a continual and a heightened appreciation [this is the result of science as well as of philosophy] of the ineffable mystery of life, of life in all its complexities and all its unity and all its worth.”[136]

Equally typical and equally important is the following concession from Professor Taylor, although, of course, to many people it would seem no concession at all, but rather the mere statement of a fact, which our Neo-Hegelians have only made themselves ridiculous by seeming to have so long overlooked: “Mere truth for the intellect can never be quite the same as ultimate reality. For in mere truth we get reality only in its intellectual aspect, as that which affords a higher satisfaction to thought’s demand for consistency and systematic unity in its object. And as we have seen, this demand can never be quite satisfied by thought itself.[137] For thought, to remain thought, must always be something less than the whole reality which it knows.”[138]

And we may add also from Professor Taylor the following declaration in respect of the notorious inability of Neo-Hegelian Rationalism to furnish the average man with a theory of reality in the contemplation of which he can find at least an adequate motive to conscious effort and achievement: “Quite apart from the facts, due to personal shortcomings and confusions, it is inherent in the nature of metaphysical study that it can make no positive addition to our information, and can itself supply no motive for practical endeavour.”[139]

Many of those findings are obviously so harmonious with some of the more familiar formulas of the pragmatists that there would seem to be ample warrant for associating them with the results of the pragmatist movement. This is particularly the case, it would seem, with the concession of Mr. Bradley with respect of the “practical” or “hypothetical” conception that we ought to entertain of “truth” and “thinking,” and also with the strictures passed by him upon “mere truth” and “mere intellectualism,” and with Professor Taylor’s position in respect of the inadequacy of the rationalist theory of reality, as in no sense a “dynamic” or an “incentive” for action. And we might well regard Professor Taylor’s finding in respect of mere systematic truth or the “Absolute” (for they are the same thing to him) as confirmatory of Dr. Schiller’s important contention that “in Absolutism” the two “poles” of the “moral” and the “intellectual” character of the Deity “fall apart.” This means, we will remember, that the truth of abstract intellectualism is not the truth for action,[140] that absolutism is not able to effect or harmonize between the truth of systematic knowledge and moral truth—if, indeed, there be any such thing as moral truth on the basis of a pure Rationalism.

To be sure, both the extent and even the reality of all this supposed cession of ground in philosophy to the pragmatists has been doubted and denied by the representatives of Rationalism. They would be questioned, too, by many sober thinkers and scholars who have long regarded Hegelian intellectualism and pragmatist “voluntarism” as extremes in philosophy, as inimical, both of them, to the interests of a true and catholic conception of philosophy. The latter, as we know from Aristotle, should be inclusive of the realities both of the intellectual and the practical life.

Pragmatist criticisms of Rationalism, again, may fairly be claimed to have been to a large extent anticipated by the independent findings of living idealist thinkers like Professors Pringle-Pattison, Baillie, Jones, and others, in respect of the supposed extreme claims of Hegelianism, as well as by similar findings and independent constructive efforts on the part of the recent group of the Oxford Personal Idealists.[141] That there is still a place for pragmatist anti-intellectualism is evidently the conclusion to be drawn from such things as the present wide acceptance of the philosophy of Bergson, or the recent declarations of Mr. Bradley that we are justified “in the intelligent refusal to accept as final an theoretical criterion which actually so far exists,” and that the “action of narrow consistency must be definitely given up.”