Critical philosophy

“ The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations ”

“ I wish only to maintain that the motives and interests which inspire it are so exclusively practical, and the problems with which it deals are so special, that it can hardly be regarded as touching any of the questions that, to my mind, constitute genuine philosophy. ”

“ But we have now won the philosophical right, and have become subject to the practical obligation, not only thus to follow out our theoretical interests, but also to show how the philosophy set forth in our earlier lectures stands related to the more immediate problems of life. ”

“ Instead of recognizing, as in the Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound view of philosophy, with a few capital errors, it is in their general character that we deem the subsequent speculations false and misleading, while in the midst of this wrong general tendency, we find a crowd of valuable thoughts, and suggestions of thought, in detail. ”

“ Yet more, only from exact science can you get the best concrete examples of that unity of conception, that mastery of complex details, that exhaustive perfection of insight, that we must attribute in an infinitely complete form to our all-embracing Ideal Thought, now that we have got it before us as our Ideal. That all facts and relations of facts should appear in one moment of insight to the all-knowing thought is our postulate, and, as we have shown, it is no mere postulate, but a necessary and absolute principle of philosophy. ”

“ The Absolute Philosophy, or the thought knowing itself as all truth, and reproducing the whole natural and intellectual universe from itself, having the system of philosophy for its development—a closed circle of circles. ”

“ The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract thought. Society, literature, art, politics, in any given age are what the prevailing system of philosophy makes them. We recognize this clearly in studying any past period. ”

“ The doctrine is as deep and pure as it is simple and true. It is eminently characteristic of a philosophy which, by virtue of its attribute of reality, subordinates all scientific conceptions to the social point of view, as the sole point from which they can be co-ordinated into a whole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The theoretic philosopher might interpose just here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists the reality of the world and whereon is based our assurance of this reality. ”

“ I assent to the veracity of sense, and I believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object, and on no account whatever will I consent 'to disclaim this principle.' Your philosophy—your more rational opinions— representation—your reasonings which, you say, necessitate me to depart from my primary instincts—all these I give, without reservation, to the winds. ”

“ We find the principle by means of the universal doubt, and it is this method of procedure that distinguishes the foregoing discussion of the basis of morals from many of those that have previously been concerned with this problem. To point out that the average man, or the reputed saint, or the inspired prophet, or the great poet, or the reader himself, whenever he is enthusiastic has or has had a given ideal, is not to justify this ideal. ”

“ It is a rather popular exposition of the chief ideas of the Critique, namely, of the critical realism, which consists in the critical and conscious acceptation of the facts first given to a naïve mind, namely, that the world consists of ‘things’ and ‘ideas,’ in opposition to those idealistic theories, which consider the world as ‘representation’ or ‘will,’ or ‘will and representation,’ etc. ”

“ In these four sciences of Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics, is comprehended almost everything which it can any way import us to be acquainted with, or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament of the human mind. ”

“ Not in the vast field of logic, of empirical psychology, in questions concerning the essence of bodies and their forces, in matters of mere history of philosophy; but in questions of views of the world and life, in metaphysics and ethics, it does. These, the highest questions, bearing on the direction and pursuit of human life, matters that most occupy the human mind, are at the same time subjects of revelation ”

“ How shall we set about the acquisition of a philosophical as distinguished from a common consciousness? Here, too, I shall merely offer a few hints, for I think that by this time you ought to have formed for yourselves a pretty distinct conception of what philosophy is in its means and in its ends.
3. To obtain a distinct idea of philosophy let us ask, first of all, What is its converse? If we can get hold of the opposite or counter idea, this will help us to grasp the conception we are in quest of. The converse of philosophy is opinion. ”

“ And I call ethica, that which, broadly taken, contains the scientia monastica, oeconomica and civilis. And I call that the scientia rationalis, broadly taken, which includes every mode of proceeding from the known to the unknown. From which it is evident that logic is a part of philosophy.”
And finally it may be shown that
“if anything is within the scope of philosophy it must be that without which philosophy cannot reach any knowledge. ”

“ The author’s meaning is, that it is only by a process of philosophical reasoning that you can decide whether philosophy is possible, valid, or useful. You must philosophize in order to decide whether you ought or ought not to philosophize. ”

“ Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us. ”

“ Right or wrong, one thing is plainly manifest—that you convey a philosophy each part of which is so reasonable, consistent and harmonious with every other part, and with the ground-work itself, that he who doubts must question himself as to why he doubts. ”

“ As the original determinations of our theoretical knowledge are intuitions, so the original determinations of our will are principles and conceptions. The critick of the practical reason must, therefore, start from moral principles, and only after these are firmly fixed, may we inquire concerning the relation in which the practical reason stands to the sensory. ”

“ Natural, Ethical, and Dialectic. Natural philosophy occupies [12] itself about the world and the things in it; Ethical philosophy about life, and the things which concern us; Dialectics are conversant with the arguments by which both the others are supported. ”

“ Now, in this act, which is arbitrary and in time, for the philosopher as such, but which is for the Ego—which he constructs, by virtue of his just deduced right, for the sake of subsequent observations and conclusions—necessarily and originally; in this act, I say, the philosopher looks at himself, and immediately contemplates his own acting; he knows what he does, because he does it. ”

“ The philosophy which you seem to be cultivating closely resembles that which ascribes everything to the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware, it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a different view of causation. What have you been reading, that you adhere so pertinaciously to the idea of a moral purpose adopted by some being, overlooking those physical causes which may have produced all the results without that hypothesis? ”

“ If our philosophy concerning the mind be so lame with regard to the origin of our notions of the clearest, most simple, and most familiar objects of thought and the powers from which they are derived, can we expect that it should be more perfect in the account it gives of the origin of our opinions and belief? ”

“ To what degree this loose mode of classing and denominating objects has rendered the vocabulary of mental and moral philosophy unfit for the purposes of accurate thinking, is best known to whoever has most reflected on the present condition of those branches of knowledge. ”

“ Of Ethology, Or The Science Of The Formation Of Character.
§ 1. The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and all the truths of common experience, constituting a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or consequences of these. ”

“ Results in philosophy must needs lead to new problems. With this definition in mind of what it is to be, how shall we next undertake to describe that more special constitution of the world which our concept of Being involves? ”

“ What you wish to know further, through this introductory lecture, is, how this natural tendency to reflect critically upon life leads men to frame elaborate systems of philosophy, why it is that these systems have been so numerous and so varied in the past, and whether or no it seems to be true, as many hold, that the outcome of all this long and arduous labor of the philosophers has so far been nothing but doubtful speculation and hopeless variety of opinion. ”

“ The scientific theory of Knowledge results from analysis of the Concept, and constitutes psychology or Critical Realism, as opposed to all forms of transcendental or Critical Idealism. The scientific theory of Conduct results from analysis of the Word, and constitutes anthroponomy (including ethics, politics, and art in its widest sense) , sociology, or Ethical Realism, as opposed to all forms of Ethical Idealism. ”

“ The accusation that we have been running counter to the principles of natural philosophy, therefore, is devoid of foundation. The only question which can arise is whether we have, or have not, been tacitly making assumptions which are in opposition to certain conclusions which may be drawn from those principles. ”

“ To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the philosophy of our time.—Universal and necessary principles.—Examples of different kinds of such principles.—Distinction between universal and necessary principles and general principles.—Experience alone is incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible world.—Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these principles.—The study of universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest parts of philosophy. ”

“ How is the conversion of common sense into philosophy to be brought about? We answer, by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms. ”

“ There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. ”

“ From the very councils of absolute idealism there has issued a distinction which is fast becoming current, between the World of Appreciation, or the realm of moral and logical principles, and the World of Description, or the realm of empirical generalizations and mechanical causes. ”

“ When the adherents of the Positive Philosophy proceed to define matter as merely "a permanent possibility of sensations,"21 faith in the reliability of our knowledge of the realities about us, as true for those realities, is thoroughly undermined. ”

“ Having established the worth of the principles of consciousness, of evidence, and of contradiction, in relation to the dignity of fundamental, we will now examine the intrinsic value of the different criteria. ”

“ No one stably or sincerely uses the more critical notion, of a group of sense- qualities united by a law. With these categories in our hand, we make our plans and plot together, and connect all the remoter parts of experience with what lies before our eyes. Our later and more critical philosophies are mere fads and fancies compared with this natural mother-tongue of thought.
Common sense appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our understanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily successful way the purposes for which we think. ”

“ We profess no such enthu- siasm. If we are to give any foundation for our postulates by means of an idealistic doctrine, then this foundation must be no mere poetic fancy, but a well-framed philosophic doctrine, able to stand crit- icism, and to satisfy very unemotional aims, as well as the higher moral aims themselves. ”