Robert Adamson

“ In the critical philosophy can be traced the transition from the somewhat narrow, psychological method, characteristic of modern thought, to the larger view of speculative problems which recalls the great work of the Greek thinkers. The analysis of human knowledge, which had been for Locke and his successors the sole function of philosophy, appears in the critical system as part, though an essential part, of the more comprehensive inquiry dealing with the whole round of human interests, to which only the title philosophy by right belongs. ”

“ How knowledge becomes possible for any intelligence, is in fact the problem how are we to think, under one of its aspects, the relation between individual consciousness and the wider sphere of reality? ”

“ Of the value of scientific realism as a contribution to philosophic reflection, there can be no question. Every effort of speculative thought is affected by the general condition of knowledge, and every advance in scientific inquiry opens up new aspects of these notions through which explanations of speculative difficulties have been found. The problem which now lies before philosophy is, in brief, the effort to rethink the new materials that have been furnished in such ample quantity. ”

“ Reflection upon self, in which the individual consciousness transcends its own individuality, through which only it can recognise itself as one with other individuals, is not explicable through the notion of mechanical composition. Nor is scientific realism more successful in the application of its favourite conception, that of development. Neither the evolution of consciousness, nor the concrete nature of consciousness which appears as the final term of evolution, can be regarded as completely explained by mere reference to the simplest, most abstract elements involved in the development. ”

“ So far, however, as scientific realism has yet endeavoured to offer a metaphysical explanation of its own procedure, its success has been small. The attempt to regard thought as somehow arising from mechanical conditions has only resulted in the reappearance of the old perplexities which pressed with such intolerable weight upon the earlier English philosophy. We cannot regard thought as merely a product, a thing, of which the characteristics are due to the nature of the mechanical antecedents out of which it has arisen. ”

“ The final notion of Fichte’s philosophy, expressed more clearly in the later works than in the ‘Wissenschaftslehre,’ has been seen to be that of the divine or spiritual order of which finite spirits are the manifestation or realisation, and in the light of which human life and its surroundings appear as the continuous progress in ever higher stages towards realisation of the final end of reason. ”

“ It was left for a later philosopher to take up afresh, in the light of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ and of Schelling’s contributions, the critical principle, and to incorporate all that was of value in them in one comprehensive system. The Hegelian method contains nothing but the systematic development of that which had already been brought to light in the ‘Wissenschaftslehre;’ but as opposed to Wissenschaftslehre, the Hegelian work has all the value of the system to which the other has been the introduction. In some respects, it is true, an introduction has advantages over a system. ”

“ The forms under which the critical method is applied—such as the distinctions between a priori and a posteriori elements in cognition, between matter and form, between phenomena and noumena, between sense, understanding, and reason—ought not to disguise from us the true nature of the question which underlies all of them. ”

“ The true notion of humanity is not to be found by consideration of the undeveloped thought, but in thought in all the fulness of its concrete life and reality. The external history of the several stages by which human thought and culture have developed, though an indispensable auxiliary to philosophic reflection, can never be accepted as adequately solving the problem of the significance or meaning of experience. ”

“ The merely subjective or psychological analysis of the cognitions possessed by the individual mind, even if the result, as stated in Locke and his followers, be accepted—that such cognitions are effects produced we know not how—still leaves at an immeasurable distance the true problems of philosophy. For it offers no explanation of the nature of this individual consciousness, formed in whatsoever fashion ”

“ There still runs through all the critical work, the obtrusive idea that the ultimate reality is the individual consciousness, given as a fact, and that this individual consciousness is mechanically related to the sum of existence. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the full bearings of the critical method only become apparent when viewed in the light of the development it has received at the hands of Fichte and Hegel. In the Kantian system, the problems of speculation were taken up in the form presented by the antecedent, popular philosophy,—a form essentially limited in scope,—and it was therefore matter of some difficulty to discern the real import of the new treatment to which they were subjected. ”

“ The question how the human mind, regarded as a thing of definite or indefinite characteristics, comes to have the filling-in which we call experience, opens out, when duly considered, into the much wider problem as to the relation of any individual consciousness to the sum total of things, a relation which may be either cognitive, or practical, or religious. ”

“ Under this conception, the oppositions of thought which play so important a part in philosophy,—Being and Thought, Mind and Nature, Soul and Body, Freedom and Law, Natural Inclination and Moral Effort, Mechanism and Teleology,—are reconciled. ”

“ A fundamental difficulty of this nature is clear evidence of the abstract or one-sided character of the principle which has been applied. It is not possible that the view of thought as a thing or product should also be competent to explain the nature of thought as self-consciousness. ”