Pragmatism and idealism

by William Caldwell

As for the first of these charges, the “abstractionism” of “Individuality and Value,” coming as it does on the top of the general perversity of the book, is really a very disastrous thing for philosophy. While we may pardon an enthusiastic literary Frenchman[360] for saying that, “The fact is, you see, that a fine book is the end for which the world was made,” there is hardly any excuse for a philosopher like Dr. Bosanquet coming before the world with the appearance of believing that the richly differentiated universe that we know only in part, exists for the benefit of the science that he represents, for the dialectic of the metaphysician, to enable the “universal” to “become more differentiated” and “more individualized,” to become “more representative” of the “whole.”[361] We might compare, says Dr. Bosanquet, in a striking and an enthralling[362] passage, “the Absolute to Dante’s mind as uttered in the Divine Comedy ... as including in a single, whole poetic experience a world of space and persons, ... things that, to any ordinary mind, fall apart.” Now even apart from the highly interesting question of the manifestly great and far-reaching influence of Dante over Dr. Bosanquet, and apart, too, from the notable modesty of Dr. Bosanquet’s confession as to the “imperfect” character of the simile just reproduced, no one to-day can think of attaching any ultimate importance to “Dante’s mind” without thinking of the extent to which this truly great man[363] was under the influence, not only of his own passions and of the general “problem” of his own life, but of such specialized influences as, for example (1) the mediaeval dualism between the City of God and the Empire of the World, (2) Aristotle’s unfortunate separation of the “intellectual” and the “practical” virtues, (3) the evil as well as the good of the dogmatic theology of the fathers of the Church. Goethe is of infinitely more value to us men of the twentieth century than Dante. And one of the very things Goethe is most calculated to teach us is precisely this very matter of the limitations of the cultural ideal of the Middle Ages and of the entire Renaissance period that succeeded it.[364] We should never, therefore, think for a moment of taking Dr. Bosanquet’s intellectual abstractionism about the “universal” literally without thinking at the same time of its limitations, and of its sources in Plato and in Hegel and in Neo-Hegelian rationalism, and of remembering with Hegel himself, “after all, the movement of the notion is a sort of illusion.”

Then, secondly, to attempt to think in philosophy or any other science merely in accordance with the Principle of “Non-Contradiction” will never[365] take us beyond the few initial positions of fact or of principle (God, “substance,” pure being, matter, identity, final cause, freedom, force, the will, the idea a perfect being, or what not) with which we happen for one reason or another to start in our reflections. Nor will this procedure account, of course, for these initial assumptions or facts.

Thirdly, in virtue of its implication in the “solipsism” and the “representationalism” of Subjective Idealism, Dr. Bosanquet’s “Absolute” is inferior (both so far as fact and theory are concerned) to the Pluralism and the possible Theism of Pragmatism and Humanism to which we have already made partial references.[366]

Fourthly, it is only natural that, on account of these, its many polemical mannerisms, “Individuality and Value” has already made upon some of its critics the impression of being a book that refuses to see things as they are—in the interests of their forced adaptation to the purposes of a preconceived philosophical theory.

Fifthly, there is certainly a sufficient number of contradictions in “Individuality and Value” to prevent it from being regarded as a consistent and a workable (i.e. really explanatory) account of our experience as we actually know it. Of these contradictions we think the following may well be enumerated here: (1) That between Dr. Bosanquet’s professed principle of accepting as real only that which is “mediated” or established by proof, and the arbitrariness he displays in announcing convictions like the following: “That what really matters is not the preservation of separate minds as such, but the qualities and achievement which, as trustees of the universe, they elicit from the resources assigned them.” (2) The contradiction between his belief in the conservation of “values” without the conservation of the existence of the individuals who “elicit” these “values,” or who are, as he puts it, the “trustees” for the “universe.” (3) That between what he logically wants (his “concrete individual”) and what he gives us (an impersonal “system”). (4) The contradiction between the completed personal life in God (or in a perfected society of individuals) that most of us (judging from the great religions of the world) want as human beings, and the impersonal “conceptual” experience of his book. (5) The contradiction that exists between his intellectualism and his commendable belief in “great convictions” and “really satisfying emotions and experiences.” (6) The standing contradiction between his “solipsistic” view of reality (his reduction of the universe to the conceptual experience of a single self-perfecting individual), and the facts of history in support of the idea of the “new,” or the “creative” character of the contributions of countless individuals and groups of individuals, to the evolution of the life of the world, or the life of the infinite number of worlds that make up what we think of as the universe. (7) The remarkable contradiction between Dr. Bosanquet’s calm rejection in his argumentation of all “naïve ideas” and his own naïve or Greek-like faith in reason, in the substantial existence of the concept or the idea over and above the phenomena and the phenomenal experiences which it is used to intepret.

Lastly, as for the matter of the non-moralism or the essentially anti-ethical character of “Individuality and Value,” this is a characteristic of the book that should, as such, be partly apparent from what has already been said, in respect of its main argument and its main contentions, and in respect of the apparent contributions of Pragmatism and Humanism to philosophy generally. The abstractionism of the book, and the absence in it of any real provision for the realities of purpose and of accomplishment (and even of “movement” and “process” in any real sense of these words), are all obviously against the interests of ethics and of conduct, as purposive, human action. So, too, are the findings of the critics that Dr. Bosanquet’s “Absolute” is not a reality (for, with Professor Taylor and others, man must[367] have an Absolute, or a God, in whom he can believe as real) that inspires to action and to motive on the part of ordinary human beings. And it is also fatal to the ethical interests of his book that he does not see with the pragmatists that our human actions and reactions must be regarded as part of what we mean by “reality.” And so on.

Apart, however, from these and other hostile pre-suppositions the following would seem to be the chief reasons for pronouncing, as unsatisfactory, the merely incidental treatment that is accorded in “Individuality and Value” to ethics and to the ethical life.

(1) It is not “conduct” or the normative[368] voluntary actions of human beings (in a world or society of real human beings) requiring “justice” and “guidance” and “help” that is discussed in these Lectures, but abstractions like “desire,” or “ordinary desire,” or “the selective conations of finite minds,” or “the active form of a totality of striving” or [worst of all] the “self as it happens to be,” that are discussed there.

(2) Even if conduct, as of course an “organic totality” in its way, be faced for the nonce in “Individuality and Value,” it is invariably branded and thought of by Dr. Bosanquet as “naïve morality,”[369] and it is forthwith promptly transformed and transmuted, in the most open and unabashed manner in the interests and exigencies of (1) logical theory, (2) aesthetics and aesthetic products [perhaps Dr. Bosanquet’s deepest or most emotional interest], and (3) metaphysical theory of a highly abstract character.

(3) The conception of ethics as a “normative science” and of conduct as free and autonomous,[370] and as the voluntary affirmation of a norm or standard or type or ideal, is conspicuous by its absence.