Pragmatism and idealism

by William Caldwell

Fourthly, there is the drawback from the point of view of social philosophy about the thought of Bergson to which we have already made reference—that it lacks somehow the ethical and the social idealism that would warrant us in thinking of it as a worthy rival or substitute for the philosophy of history of the great idealists of the past and the present. It is necessary to speak here with the utmost caution if we would avoid doing injustice[425] to Bergson. We cannot mean, for example, that he does not do justice[426] to the social factor in human development of which we have heard so much, perhaps too much, from the sociologists.[427] We might mean, however, and we do in a sense mean that he has not made as much as he might have done of this factor, by developing for the thought of to-day the reality of that world of “spiritual communion” and “inter-subjective intercourse” of which we have spoken more than once.

Then we might also contend that Bergson has not as yet, in his philosophy of human life, taken much cognizance of the deeper[428] experiences of life, of the specifically ethical and religious feelings and thoughts of men. With the pragmatists he is unduly optimistic about the free expansive development of the individual. Against this objection it may be replied, that he has so thoroughly assimilated into the very texture of his thought and feeling some of the finest things in the spiritualism and the idealism of the reflective thought of France[429] that we would not, if we could, wish the germinal or fructifying elements in his system to be different from what they are. His “social” message is perhaps after all the best thing that it can be—the need of the inward spiritualization of the life and thought of the individual.

Lastly, in addition to the fine traditional spiritualism and libertarianism of French philosophy, we may think of the voluntarism of Kant and Schopenhauer as also militating somewhat against the idea of Bergson’s originality[430] in philosophy. Despite this it is still possible to regard him as one of important, modern, exponents of just that development of the Kantian philosophy that became imperative after Darwinism. He has indeed inaugurated for us that reading of the “theory of knowledge” in terms of the “theory of life”[431] which is his true and real continuation of the critical work of Kant. Hypothetical although it may be in many respects, it moves (owing to his thorough absorption in the many facts and theories of the biology of recent years) in an atmosphere that is altogether above the confines of the physical and the mathematical[432] sciences with which alone Kant was (in the main) directly acquainted. It is time that, with the help he affords in his free handling of the facts of life and of the supposed facts and theories of science, we should transform the exiguous “epistemology”[433] of the past generation into the more perfect hold upon “criticism” and upon the life of things that is represented in his thought.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Enough has now been said in the foregoing pages about Pragmatism and the philosophy of Actionism in relation to Rationalism, and to the Personalism and the Humanism that they would substitute for it and for Absolutism. Indications have been given too of the shortcomings and the defects of this very Personalism or Humanism, and of some of the different lines along which it would require to be reconsidered and developed to constitute a satisfactory philosophy. In addition to some of the greater names in the history of philosophy, I have referred—in the footnotes and elsewhere—to the thoughts and the works of living writers who might be profitably studied by the reader in this connexion.

Pragmatism is in some respects but a sociological or an anthropological doctrine significant of the rediscovery by our age of the doctrine of man, and of its desire to accord to this doctrine the importance that is its due. It represented, to begin with (in its Instrumentalism chiefly), the discontent of a dying century with the weight of its own creations in the realm of science and theory along with a newer and fresher consciousness of the fact that there can be no rigid separation of philosophy from the general thought and practice of mankind. And even if we accept this idea of the supremacy of the doctrine of man over both philosophy and science, this does not mean that we exalt the worker and the prophet over all knowledge, but simply that philosophy must have a theory of reality that provides for their existence and function alongside of those of the thinker or the student as such. The true philosophy is in fact the true doctrine of man.

Another lesson that we may learn from Pragmatism and Humanism is the truth of the contention that there can be no philosophy without assumptions of one kind or another, without facts and intuitions and immediate experiences. A philosophy itself is an act or a creation, representative of the attention of the thinker to certain aspects of his experience and of the experience of the world which he shares with other thinkers and with other agents. And, as Bergson has reminded us, it is often the great intuition underlying the attention and the thought of a philosopher that is of more worth to the world than the dialectic, or the logic, through the aid of which it is set forth and elaborated. This latter he may frequently have inherited or absorbed from the schools of his time.

The reason why the idealists and the dialecticians of our time have so often fought shy of beginning with the immediate or the “given,” is partly that they are not yet in their thoughts perfectly free of some taint or tincture of the supposed realism or dualism of the common-sense philosophy or the correspondence view of truth. They seem to have the fear that if they admit a given element of fact in speculation they will unconsciously be admitting that there is something outside thought and immediate experience in the true sense of these terms. In this fear they are forgetful of the great lesson of Idealism that there is nothing “outside” thought and consciousness, no “object” without a “subject,” that the world is “phenomenal” of a great experience, which they and other men are engaged in interpreting, and of which we may all become directly conscious. And while to God the end of all experiences and processes is known from the beginning, or apart from the mere time and space limitations that affect us as finite beings, it is still true that for us as men and as thinkers the reality of things is not “given” apart from the contribution to it that we ourselves make in our responsive and in our creative activity. In contending, therefore, for the reality, in every philosophy, of this assumption of ourselves and of the working value of our thought and of our activity, Pragmatism has been contending in its own fashion for the great doctrine of the sovereignty of the spirit which (when properly interpreted) is the one thing that can indeed recall the modern mind out of its endless dispersion and distraction, and out of its reputed present indifference. It is in the placing of this great reality before the world, or, rather, of the view of human nature that makes it a possibility, and in intelligibility, that (in my opinion) the significance of Pragmatism consists, along with that of the various doctrines with which it may be naturally associated. There are many indications in the best thought and practice of our time that humanity is again awakening to a creative and a self-determinative view of itself, of its experience, and of its powers. Of the presuppositions and the conditions under which this idea may be regarded as true and intelligible I have already spoken. Its proper interpretation, however, along with the exposition of the metaphysic upon which it must be made to repose, is at least part of the work of the philosophy of the future—if philosophy is true to its task of leading and guiding the thought of mankind.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See, for example, the concessions and the fresh statements of the problem of philosophy, and the “clearing of the ground,” etc., referred to on [p. 76] and [p. 74]. Also [p. 27] in reference to the stir and the activity that have been excited by the pragmatist controversy. See also [p. 230], in the eighth chapter, in reference to some things in such a typical intellectualist as Professor Bosanquet that may be construed as a concession to Pragmatism and Humanism.