WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
83. THE PROMINENCE GIVEN TO THE SUBJECT.—When one reflects upon the number of lecture courses given every year at our universities and colleges on the history of philosophy, one is struck by the fact that philosophy is not treated as are most other subjects with which the student is brought into contact.
If we study mathematics, or chemistry, or physics, or physiology, or biology, the effort is made to lay before us in a convenient form the latest results which have been attained in those sciences. Of their history very little is said; and, indeed, as we have seen (section 6), lectures on the history of the inductive sciences are apt to be regarded as philosophical in their character and aims rather than as merely scientific.
The interest in the history of philosophy is certainly not a diminishing one. Text-books covering the whole field or a part of it are multiplied; extensive studies are made and published covering the work of individual philosophers; innumerable historical discussions make their appearance in the pages of current philosophical journals. No student is regarded as fairly acquainted with philosophy who knows nothing of Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Spinoza, Berkeley and Hume, Kant and Hegel, and the rest. We should look upon him as having a very restricted outlook if he had read only the works of the thinkers of our own day; indeed, we should not expect him to have a proper comprehension even of these, for their chapters must remain blind and meaningless to one who has no knowledge of what preceded them and has given birth to the doctrines there set forth.
It is a fair question to ask: Why is philosophy so bound up with the study of the past? Why may we not content ourselves with what has up to the present been attained, and omit a survey of the road along which our predecessors have traveled?
84. THE ESPECIAL IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TO REFLECTIVE THOUGHT.—In some of the preceding chapters dealing with the various philosophical sciences, it has been indicated that, in the sciences we do not regard as philosophical, men may work on the basis of certain commonly accepted assumptions and employ methods which are generally regarded as trustworthy within the given field. The value both of the fundamental assumptions and of the methods of investigation appear to be guaranteed by the results attained. There are not merely observation and hypothesis; there is also verification, and where this is lacking, men either abandon their position or reserve their judgment.
Thus, a certain body of interrelated facts is built up, the significance of which, in many fields at least, is apparent even to the layman. Nor is it wholly beyond him to judge whether the results of scientific investigations can be verified. An eclipse, calculated by methods which he is quite unable to follow, may occur at the appointed hour and confirm his respect for the astronomer. The efficacy of a serum in the cure of diseases may convince him that work done in the laboratory is not labor lost.
It seems evident that the several sciences do really rise on stepping stones of their dead selves, and that those selves of the past are really dead and superseded. Who would now think of going back for his science to Plato's "Timaeus," or would accept the description of the physical world contained in the works of Aristotle? What chemist or physicist need busy himself with the doctrine of atoms and their clashings presented in the magnificent poem of Lucretius? Who can forbear a smile—a sympathetic one—when he turns over the pages of Augustine's "City of God," and sees what sort of a world this remarkable man believed himself to inhabit?
It is the historic and human interest that carries us back to these things. We say: What ingenuity! what a happy guess! how well that was reasoned in the light of what was actually known about the world in those days! But we never forget that what compels our admiration does so because it makes us realize that we stand in the presence of a great mind, and not because it is a foundation-stone in the great edifice which science has erected.
But it is not so in philosophy. It is not possible to regard the philosophical reflections of Plato and of Aristotle as superseded in the same sense in which we may so regard their science. The reason for this lies in the difference between scientific thought and reflective thought.
The two have been contrasted in Chapter II of this volume. It was there pointed out that the sort of thinking demanded in the special sciences is not so very different from that with which we are all familiar in common life. Science is more accurate and systematic, it has a broader outlook, and it is free from the imperfections which vitiate the uncritical and fragmentary knowledge which experience of the world yields the unscientific. But, after all, the world is much the same sort of a world to the man of science and to his uncritical neighbor. The latter can, as we have seen, understand what, in general, the former is doing, and can appropriate many of his results.
On the other hand, it often happens that the man who has not, with pains and labor, learned to reflect, cannot even see that the philosopher has a genuine problem before him. Thus, the plain man accepts the fact that he has a mind and that it knows the world. That both mental phenomena and physical phenomena should be carefully observed and classified he may be ready to admit. But that the very conceptions of mind and of what it means to know a world are vague and indefinite in the extreme, and stand in need of careful analysis, he does not realize.
In other words, he sees that our knowledge needs to be extended and rendered more accurate and reliable, but he does not see that, if we are to think clearly and consciously, all our knowledge needs to be gone over in a different way. In common life it is quite possible to use in the attainment of practical ends knowledge which has not been analyzed and of the full meaning of which we are ignorant. I hope it has become evident in the course of this volume that something closely analogous is true in the field of science. The man of science may measure space and time, and may study the phenomena of the human mind, without even attempting to answer all the questions which may be raised as to what is meant, in the last analysis, by such concepts as space, time, and the mind.
That such concepts should be analyzed has, I hope, been made clear, if only that erroneous and misleading notions as to these things should be avoided. But when a man with a genius for metaphysical analysis addresses himself to this task, he cannot simply hand the results attained by his reflections over to his less reflective fellow-man. His words are not understood; he seems to be dealing with shadows, with unrealities; he has passed from the real world of common thought into another world which appears to have little relation to the former.
Nor can verification, indubitable proof, be demanded and furnished as it can in many parts of the field cultivated by the special sciences. We may judge science fairly well without ourselves being scientists, but it is not possible to judge philosophy without being to some extent a philosopher.
In other words, the conclusions of reflective thought must be judged by following the process and discovering its cogency or the reverse. Thus, when the philosopher lays before us an argument to prove that we must regard the only ultimate reality in the world as unknowable, and must abandon our theistic convictions, how shall we make a decision as to whether he is right or is wrong? May we expect that the day will come when he will be justified or condemned as is the astronomer on the day predicted for an eclipse? Neither the philosophy of Locke, nor that of Descartes, nor that of Kant, can be vindicated as can a prediction touching an eclipse of the sun. To judge these men, we must learn to think with them, to survey the road by which they travel; and this we cannot do until we have learned the art.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we must admit, if we are fair-minded and intelligent, that philosophy cannot speak with the same authority as science, where science has been able to verify its results. There are, of course, scientific hypotheses and speculations which should be regarded as being quite as uncertain as anything brought forward by the philosophers. But, admitting this, the fact remains that there is a difference between the two fields as a whole, and that the philosopher should learn not to speak with an assumption of authority. No final philosophy has been attained, so palpably firm in its foundation, and so admittedly trustworthy in its construction, that we are justified in saying: Now we need never go back to the past unless to gratify the historic interest. It is a weakness of young men, and of older men of partisan temper, to feel very sure of matters which, in the nature of things, must remain uncertain.
Since these things are so, and since men possess the power of reflection in very varying degree, it is not surprising that we find it worth while to turn back and study the thoughts of those who have had a genius for reflection, even though they lived at a time when modern science was awaiting its birth. Some things cannot be known until other things are known; often there must be a vast collection of individual facts before the generalizations of science can come into being. But many of the problems with which reflective thought is still struggling have not been furthered in the least by information which has been collected during the centuries which have elapsed since they were attacked by the early Greek philosophers.
Thus, we are still discussing the distinction between "appearance" and "reality," and many and varied are the opinions at which philosophers arrive. But Thales, who heads the list of the Greek philosophers, had quite enough material, given in his own experience, to enable him to solve this problem as well as any modern philosopher, had he been able to use the material. He who is familiar with the history of philosophy will recognize that, although one may smile at Augustine's accounts of the races of men, and of the spontaneous generation of small animals, no one has a right to despise his profound reflections upon the nature of time and the problems which arise out of its character as past, present, and future.
The fact is that metaphysics does not lag behind because of our lack of material to work with. The difficulties we have to face are nothing else than the difficulties of reflective thought. Why can we not tell clearly what we mean when we use the word "self," or speak of "knowledge," or insist that we know an "external world"? Are we not concerned with the most familiar of experiences? To be sure we are—with experiences familiarly, but vaguely and unanalytically, known and, hence, only half known. All these experiences the great men of the past had as well as we; and if they had greater powers of reflection, perhaps they saw more deeply into them than we do. At any rate, we cannot afford to assume that they did not.
One thing, however, I must not omit to mention. Although one man cannot turn over bodily the results of his reflection to another, it by no means follows that he cannot give the other a helping hand, or warn him of dangers by himself stumbling into pitfalls, as the case may be. We have an indefinite advantage over the solitary thinkers who opened up the paths of reflection, for we have the benefit of their teaching. And this brings me to a consideration which I must discuss in the next section.
85. THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW.—The man who has not read is like the man who has not traveled—he is not an intelligent critic, for he has nothing with which to compare what falls within the little circle of his experiences. That the prevailing architecture of a town is ugly can scarcely impress one who is acquainted with no other town. If we live in a community in which men's manners are not good, and their standard of living not the highest, our attention does not dwell much upon the fact, unless some contrasted experience wakes within us a clear consciousness of the difference. That to which we are accustomed we accept uncritically and unreflectively. It is difficult for us to see it somewhat as one might see it to whom it came as a new experience.
Of course, there may be in the one town buildings of more and of less architectural beauty; and there may be in the one community differences of opinion that furnish intellectual stimulus and keep awake the critical spirit. Still, there is such a thing as a prevalent type of architecture, and there is such a thing as the spirit of the times. He who is carried along by the spirit of the age may easily conclude that what is, is right, because he hears few raise their voices in protest.
To estimate justly the type of thought in which he has been brought up, he must have something with which to compare it. He must stand at a distance, and try to judge it as he would judge a type of doctrine presented to him for the first rime. And in the accomplishment of this task he can find no greater aid than the study of the history of philosophy.
It is at first something of a shock to a man to discover that assumptions which he has been accustomed to make without question have been frankly repudiated by men quite as clever as he, and, perhaps, more critical. It opens the eyes to see that his standards of worth have been weighed by others and have been found wanting. It may well incline him to reexamine reasonings in which he has detected no flaw, when he finds that acute minds have tried them before, and have declared them faulty.
Nor can it be without its influence upon his judgment of the significance of a doctrine, when it becomes plain to him that this significance can scarcely be fully comprehended until the history of the doctrine is known. For example, he thinks of the mind as somehow in the body, as interacting with it, as a substance, and as immaterial. In the course of his reading it begins to dawn upon his consciousness that he has not thought all this out for himself; he has taken these notions from others, who in turn have had them from their predecessors. He beg............