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The Great Ages of Western Philosophy #6
The age of analysis: 20th century philosophers
Nonfiction. Philosophy.
253 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1955
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152 people want to read
About the author
Morton Gabriel White
29 books7 followersMorton White (born 29 April 1917) is an American philosopher and historian of ideas. He is both a central figure in the philosophical movement of Holistic Pragmatism and a noted historian of American philosophical thought. He was a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard from 1953 to 1970, and since then has been at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ where he is currently professor emeritus.
White was born in the Lower East Side of New York City. White attended City College of New York as an undergraduate before doing his postgraduate studies at Columbia University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1942 and was influenced by John Dewey. In 1949 he published Social Thought in America, a critical history of liberal social philosophy as represented by the ideas of Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Thorstein Veblen, Charles A. Beard, and James Harvey Robinson. When the book was republished in 1957 he added a preface in which he softened some of his criticisms, and he added an epilogue in which he attacked the religious liberalism of Reinhold Niebuhr and the conservatism of Walter Lippmann. "Time and recent events," he wrote, "have brought the liberal outlook under a very different kind of attack- an attack with which I have no sympathy- and I fear that my own critical observations might wrongly be associated with arguments, positions, and purposes quite foreign to my own." In his 1956 work, Toward Reunion in Philosophy, White attempted to reconcile the pragmatic and analytic traditions in American philosophy.
At Harvard, White was a colleague of Willard Van Orman Quine, and the philosophical views of the two are closely related, particularly in their rejection of a sharp distinction between a priori and empirical statements. But White rejects Quine's view that "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough." Using the framework of Holistic Pragmatism, White argues that philosophical inquiry can just as well be applied to cultural institutions beyond science, such as law and art.
White was born in the Lower East Side of New York City. White attended City College of New York as an undergraduate before doing his postgraduate studies at Columbia University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1942 and was influenced by John Dewey. In 1949 he published Social Thought in America, a critical history of liberal social philosophy as represented by the ideas of Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Thorstein Veblen, Charles A. Beard, and James Harvey Robinson. When the book was republished in 1957 he added a preface in which he softened some of his criticisms, and he added an epilogue in which he attacked the religious liberalism of Reinhold Niebuhr and the conservatism of Walter Lippmann. "Time and recent events," he wrote, "have brought the liberal outlook under a very different kind of attack- an attack with which I have no sympathy- and I fear that my own critical observations might wrongly be associated with arguments, positions, and purposes quite foreign to my own." In his 1956 work, Toward Reunion in Philosophy, White attempted to reconcile the pragmatic and analytic traditions in American philosophy.
At Harvard, White was a colleague of Willard Van Orman Quine, and the philosophical views of the two are closely related, particularly in their rejection of a sharp distinction between a priori and empirical statements. But White rejects Quine's view that "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough." Using the framework of Holistic Pragmatism, White argues that philosophical inquiry can just as well be applied to cultural institutions beyond science, such as law and art.
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September 19, 2011
A dense paperback of basic writings of twentieth century philosophers. From Moore through Wittgenstein, these men no longer agreed what the basic stuff of philosophic reflection was. Like rockets from an exploding fireworks stand, their works sparkle and burn across the sky—at once lighting the darkness and confusing the observer. White's introductory passages help the modern reader sort through the debris of this riot of intellectual fecundity. A trove of original writings, but incomplete from having been written when the century was but half over.
Still, when I first read this--and the other Mentor Philosophers volumes--in the 1960s, it opened a world of thought that I didn't then realize existed. These people examined problems that I didn't realize where problems. In some cases I'm reminded of Bill Cosby's comic routine "Why is there air?"
Still, when I first read this--and the other Mentor Philosophers volumes--in the 1960s, it opened a world of thought that I didn't then realize existed. These people examined problems that I didn't realize where problems. In some cases I'm reminded of Bill Cosby's comic routine "Why is there air?"
November 27, 2019
There were many times when I was confused while reading this collection of essays and lectures. Not so much because the language is dense and winding, nor because the content demands so intellectual acrobatics, but because it often seemed as though I was stepping into the middle of a conversation that had been raging for a very long time. There are references to philosophers from all ages of recorded humankind that the narrator uses to set a tone for a particular excerpt or to give context on how the proceeding text originated, and I felt left behind because I don't have an extensive knowledge of those those philosophers and their terminology. It was only about halfway through the small book that I finally found my bearing and understood how to approach the texts, which is this: don't read the descriptions by Morton White. Let the essays from each philosopher come naturally one after the other so that you can internalize what they are saying and order it in a way that makes sense to you. That is, after all, the point of the book. You likely won't come to any epiphanies here. The texts are mostly about how to approach philosophy. What is important to consider? How can we use logic and art and experience and emotion in order to make sense of the world? How can those conclusions and ordered bits of knowledge be used to any effect?
And going forward, hopefully after reading you have a few philosophers whose ideas resonated enough to guide you to more precise and meaningful books.
And going forward, hopefully after reading you have a few philosophers whose ideas resonated enough to guide you to more precise and meaningful books.
February 21, 2024
Review: This is a good introduction to some philosophers of the early 20th Century. The front pieces to each reading by Morton White are the real treasure, like having a very well-read professor for a philosophy survey course. The readings themselves are short, allowing for the introduction of GE Moore, Santayana, Bergson, Whitehead, Husserl, Sartre, CS Pierce, W James, Dewey, Russell, Carnap, and Wittgenstein in a book of only 250 pages.
Notes to myself:
Intro: The Age of Analysis, 20th Century philosophy before 1950, is united in its rejection of Hegelian philosophy, according to White. Hegel had offered a view of all the universe based on his concept of a world spirit, a world becoming itself through dialectical logic. Although these men were all influenced by Hegel, they are all part of a movement that seeks to free itself from his influence, to show where Hegel was wrong by advancing their own views. Hegel had been welcomed after the pragmatism and science of Kant and Hume because he offered a way to bring religion/spirituality back into the explanations of the world offered by philosophy.
White divides his philosophers into three groups. The first group includes Croce, Bergson, Whitehead, Sartre, Santayana, and Husserl. These philosophers are still searching for an overarching theory of existence just as Hegel did. The second group of philosophers included here are the American pragmatists like Pierce, James, and Dewey, who break with Hegel more completely than the former group. They are not seeking an overall theory. The last group consists of Moore, Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Russell, who are associated with logical positivism. Morton White writes of this last group: "The great contemporary devotees of clarity who seem to demand no more than the good sense that Descartes thought so well distributed, find fewer sympathetic readers among the laity than those philosophers who keep the reader in tow by touching his deepest anxieties, hopes and fears." From this it is fairly clear where Morton White's sympathies lie.
Moore (1873-1958) : In this excerpt Moore methodically outlines the field of philosophy in terms of the questions philosophers are concerned with regarding existence, knowledge, and ethics. He defines the reality that most people believe as the common sense view of reality. Philosophers then take positions more or less accepting of the common sense view of things. Common sense includes the idea that objects exist in the world and that people and animals have consciousness and act upon the real objects that exist in the world. One might accept or reject either of these ideas, or one could also say that it is impossible to accept or reject them due to lack of proof one way or the other.
Croce (1866-1952):
White sees Croce as most influenced by Hegel, although he is also in rebellion against Hegel. Croce is Italian. We are told that his philosophy found favor with artists, notably WB Yeats. Croce is hard to fathom. In this excerpt from 1941, he first insists that it is wrong to see history as a collection of facts. It is also wrong to see truth in the abstractions of mathematics and rules of science. You don't get at truth by breaking experience down into facts and abstractions. What he means when he says that history and philosophy are one is hard to understand, but I gather it has something to do with the interconnectedness of the world becoming and our perceptions of that as thinking, judging observers. White tells us that he thinks that what Croce is trying to say is that we can only be aware of mental or spiritual activity and cannot postulate the existence of something outside of what we are aware of. We must analyze our perceptions of the the world to make ethical decisions but in analyzing we are not actually analyzing the world but our perception of it. We cannot stand apart from the world while analyzing it and so history and philosophy are essentially the same mental process. There is also the idea that histories/philosophies are tied to specific times and contexts. Leave it there for now.
Santayana (1863-1952): Santayana is writing in the context of times that have seen the undermining of absolute values. In the 1905 excerpt here he is writing about religion. For Santayana, who claims to be both an atheist and a Catholic, religion has a vital role to play but it is not the source of truth. As he sees it, the poetry and ceremonies of religions are important in the striving of people to rise above the animal reality of our existence, to strive towards some ideal that which may not be real or be reached. The problem with religion arises when we assert that it is the Truth. Religion's proper role is to inspire and teach but not to provide the meaning of existence or to give us truth. He says, "Religion remains an imaginative achievement, a symbolic representation of moral realty which may have a most important function in vitalizing the mind and in transmitting by way of parables the lessons of experience. But it becomes at the same time a continuous incidental deception." To avoid this, we are to treat religions as neither true nor false but as better or worse. We can lend ourselves to each religion in turn to find what they have to offer. Religion must be flexible and not set itself up as the truth of existence. As White writes of Santayana, he was part of a movement that sees theology, ethics, and metaphysics being mythologized. Eventually even science would be seen as a myth, a story we tell ourselves for our own purposes. But rather than being disillusioned, Santayana asserts the continuing value of religion even though it is not Truth.
Bergson (1859-1941): Somewhat opaque like Croce. One of the ideas here is to choose a philosophy that is not hand-in-hand with science. Science gives a false picture of reality by insisting on dividing things up into discrete units. This is false because in fact things are more indivisible and interconnected than the mechanistic view imposed by science. Philosophy needs to chart a different course than it could if it were yoked to science. Where he loses me is in his attempts to describe the intellect as both intelligence and substance. He seems to want to suggest that science is more properly concerned with the inert and unliving substances than with the living because the living are imbued with intellect and freedom to act, not simply driven mechanistically. People can transcend the material and the intellect by acts of will, he seems to be saying.
Whitehead (1861-1947)
Whitehead started in a collaboration with Russell around 1910 in driving algebra wholly from logic, which would put him on one side of the philosophical continuum, but in his 60s he started to write more like Croce, Bergson, and Husserl in his belief that nature is alive. Here he is arguing against the mechanistic view of the world that came from 17th century science and which forms the common sense view of the world today, namely that the world consists of material objects with clear and separate identities moving around in space. Presumably new knowledge gained by science requires rethinking the common sense of the world and this is what he sets out to do with his philosophy.
Life must be fused with nature. Life consists of moments of self-enjoyment and these moments of individual self-enjoyment collectively form the unity of the "evolving universe ever plunging into the creative advance." The process of self-creation transforms the potential into the actual, Whitehead writes. This is an ongoing process and it is meaningless to speak of a moment in time. It is all connected. I suppose what he is describing is bounded liberty of action. Life pursues enjoyment within the limitations of the potential paths available. And every action affects everything around it, and so it is all connected. But perhaps I am simplifying because Whitehead seems to need quite a bit of jargon to formulate his ideas. (Reflection: Perhaps what Whitehead is grappling with is the way thinking and consciousness fit within the scientific picture. Is thinking just a chemical process as deterministic as a rock rolling down a hill, or is there some motive decision maker, some seeker at the throttle making decisions?) Final quote from excerpt: "Existence is activity ever merging into the future. The aim of philosophic understanding is the aim at piercing the blindness of activity in respect to its transcendent functions."
Husserl: (1859-1938) He starts off exploring the way in which what is present before us at any particular moment feathers out into what is present intuitively but not actually present to our attention. For example, I am aware of my family in other rooms in the house although I am not with them or in sight of them. Still I "know" they are in their beds sleeping at this moment. That sense of unseen but intuitively believed knowledge builds our existence from more than just sense-perceptions. Our reality does not, as lived, reduce to sense-perceptions of the world.
Husserl writes in this excerpt about his idea of bracketing. Following Descartes, we can adopt an attitude of doubting everything, but he rejects this and suggests using our doubting as a tool for examining rather than a complete stance of doubting. He also suggests that this doubting of a thesis is not to adopt an anti-thesis but rather to just entertain as a thought process that which is the opposite of what we "know" to be true. Given how labored the language is here, I suspect he is gesturing towards something more than what I'm getting. What I'm getting is this: "If we imagine that A, which we know to be true, were not true. If Not A were instead true, what would follow from that? What would follow from this bracketing A, this questioning of what we know is true?" Husserl actually states that what is meant is something other than just supposing some fantasy like faeries dancing in a ring. What is being bracketed are those things that are accepted as part of the natural world, perhaps what Moore would term the Common Sense world. Faeries are not part of that world, so that is not something appropriate for this approach. You could instead bracket out the sun, . . . but then what? Not clear to me. One thing he does suggest that this would permit the philosopher is to bracket out all of science, to give it no consideration but without doubting it in the least: "Thus all sciences which relate to this natural world, though they stand never so firm to me, though they fill me with wondering admiration, though I am far from any thought of objecting to them in the least degree, I disconnect them all, I make absolutely no use of their standards, I do not appropriate a single one of their propositions that enter into their systems, even though their evidentiary value is perfect, I take none of them, no one of them serves me for a foundation--so long as it is understood in the way that these sciences themselves understand it, as a truth concerning the realities of the world. I may accept it only after I have placed it in a bracket." What then? Well then one can turn to the experience of reality as it is actually experienced free from all theory, which we bracket off, free from the overwhelming presence of positivistic science (without challenging any such views about reality) we have a space for consideration that is not addressing itself to any of that. Yet another 20th century philosopher struggling to build castles in the air against the powerful counter-balance of science and all that comes with it? Perhaps what is wanted is a space to search for some more humane answer to what is and how one should live without having to relate everything to science--a sandbox for the humanities to play in.
Sartre (1905-1980) Representative of Existentialism in this book. (Note: also accomplished novelist, recommend The Age of Reason.) Morton White sees a line running from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche to Sartre and Kafka and the Existentialists. Sartre also was influenced by Husserl. On the other hand, he is not in the line of Kant, Hegel and J.S. Mill because they are not concerned with the same ethical questions about existence as troubled Sartre and others in the aftermath of WWII. Sartre may lie in the line that passes through Kierkegaard but like Nietzsche he is an atheist and does not believe that there is any self that exists before birth or that is affected by fate or some world spirit. He believes in radical free will. Again, as with others in this volume of philosophy, Sartre wants an arena for philosophy apart from science, which exists in a realm of objects and determinism, while humans are outside that frame and have free will. For us, existence precedes essence, we are not created for a purpose by determine our own purposes. Man is and there is no fundamental human nature. However, he also suggests that what we do to fashion ourselves, also fashions mankind. Choosing to marry imposes the monogamy of marriage on humanity to some extent. This decision to act, knowing it is an act for all humanity, can lead to anguish. Another existentialist feeling is abandonment. Without God, it becomes difficult to ground morality and Christian values, e.g. thou shalt not lie, cheat, steal, etc. While some philosophers wanted to keep the a priori existence of values, the existentialist rejects this fig leaf. One is free to choose ones values, too. There is no a priori value at all.
Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) Whom William James credited as the original pragmatist for his writings in 1877. Pierce seems to want philosophy and communication to be more like science. Often words carry connotations taht interfere with communication. It is easy to misunderstand, but if we operationally define language, we avoid this. To be clear about the meaning of "hard", we expand the word to a conditional: "This is hard" becomes "If this is scratched, no line will be left. Thus, it is hard." This is like the operational definition of a scientist or a mathematical postulate.
I find reading Pierce to be a bit laborious but I did take his point. I particularly liked his description of how much of philosophy consists of taking an available position and then holding it against all comers without any evidence that one is seeking truth. He says, "It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system." William James clarified some of Pierce's ideas for me. I'll put what James said of Pierce under James.
William James (1842-1910) James takes from Pierce the idea that meaning is related to what it causes one to do. The essential point is what one will do if one believes a statement to be true. As he puts it, "beliefs are rules for action. To develop a thought's meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance." Thus any debate over something that makes no practical difference when one or the other is held true is meaningless and a waste of time.
Morton White tells us that Pierce was the pragmatic philosopher of science, James the pragmatist of religion, and Dewey the pragmatist of morals.
For James the purpose of the pragmatic approach is to settle metaphysical debates that might otherwise be interminable. One looks at the practical consequences of taking one side or the other as true and decides on truth by looking at which one produces the best results. White summarizes James thought as boiling down to three sentences: "The true is what we ought to believe. That which we ought to believe is what is best for us to believe. Therefore, the truth is what is best for us to believe."
According to James the pragmatist looks away from first things, principles, categories, and looks towards facts, fruits and consequences. They are in league with scientists and scientific method and against abstraction and dogmatic closed systems. Truth is something we develop and continue to develop and not a dogma to be insisted upon. The importance of truth is in pragmatically helping us to achieve positive results. Pragmatism differs from Rationalism, James tells us, in that Pragmatism is most comfortable among facts while rationalism is most comfortable only in the company of abstractions. (He says this in defending Schiller and Dewey from rationalist attack.) (Note: Rationalism is the belief that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. (E.g. Descartes). He is rejecting this rationalist approach to religion, too, with its god mind, absolute mind. Pragmatism in turn differs from empiricism in that it is comfortable with abstractions as well as facts, so pragmatism has no a priori prejudice against theology. One of James's key points is that truth is a species of good. This means that if religion is good for people and does not directly conflict with other truths/goods, it can be taken as truth for James' purposes. When these different truths/benefits conflict, one must either live with the inconsistency or adjust ones beliefs. James would rather give up the Absolute than the good, I gather. I might suspect that James is struggling to live in a world where religion is seen by so many as a good, but also in a world in which Scientific understanding is challenging the truth value of religion. By redefining truth as the good, he preserves theology for the good it does people.
John Dewey (1859-1952)
I couldn't penetrate this reading at all. It was so abstract and dry, so lacking in any illustrations or definitions of ideas that each paragraph was like chewing on sawdust. Lack of definition and failure to explain make Dewey one that I will leave for some other day.
The one main idea I get is that he wants to define what is good based on what results from enjoyment of it. No absolute values but value determined by the relationship between the enjoyment and what results from that. It is very dry and abstract stuff, lacking in illustrations that could clarify his points. (Have reached the limit of characters on this site, so can't comment further.)
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Rudolf Carnap (1891- 1970
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951
Notes to myself:
Intro: The Age of Analysis, 20th Century philosophy before 1950, is united in its rejection of Hegelian philosophy, according to White. Hegel had offered a view of all the universe based on his concept of a world spirit, a world becoming itself through dialectical logic. Although these men were all influenced by Hegel, they are all part of a movement that seeks to free itself from his influence, to show where Hegel was wrong by advancing their own views. Hegel had been welcomed after the pragmatism and science of Kant and Hume because he offered a way to bring religion/spirituality back into the explanations of the world offered by philosophy.
White divides his philosophers into three groups. The first group includes Croce, Bergson, Whitehead, Sartre, Santayana, and Husserl. These philosophers are still searching for an overarching theory of existence just as Hegel did. The second group of philosophers included here are the American pragmatists like Pierce, James, and Dewey, who break with Hegel more completely than the former group. They are not seeking an overall theory. The last group consists of Moore, Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Russell, who are associated with logical positivism. Morton White writes of this last group: "The great contemporary devotees of clarity who seem to demand no more than the good sense that Descartes thought so well distributed, find fewer sympathetic readers among the laity than those philosophers who keep the reader in tow by touching his deepest anxieties, hopes and fears." From this it is fairly clear where Morton White's sympathies lie.
Moore (1873-1958) : In this excerpt Moore methodically outlines the field of philosophy in terms of the questions philosophers are concerned with regarding existence, knowledge, and ethics. He defines the reality that most people believe as the common sense view of reality. Philosophers then take positions more or less accepting of the common sense view of things. Common sense includes the idea that objects exist in the world and that people and animals have consciousness and act upon the real objects that exist in the world. One might accept or reject either of these ideas, or one could also say that it is impossible to accept or reject them due to lack of proof one way or the other.
Croce (1866-1952):
White sees Croce as most influenced by Hegel, although he is also in rebellion against Hegel. Croce is Italian. We are told that his philosophy found favor with artists, notably WB Yeats. Croce is hard to fathom. In this excerpt from 1941, he first insists that it is wrong to see history as a collection of facts. It is also wrong to see truth in the abstractions of mathematics and rules of science. You don't get at truth by breaking experience down into facts and abstractions. What he means when he says that history and philosophy are one is hard to understand, but I gather it has something to do with the interconnectedness of the world becoming and our perceptions of that as thinking, judging observers. White tells us that he thinks that what Croce is trying to say is that we can only be aware of mental or spiritual activity and cannot postulate the existence of something outside of what we are aware of. We must analyze our perceptions of the the world to make ethical decisions but in analyzing we are not actually analyzing the world but our perception of it. We cannot stand apart from the world while analyzing it and so history and philosophy are essentially the same mental process. There is also the idea that histories/philosophies are tied to specific times and contexts. Leave it there for now.
Santayana (1863-1952): Santayana is writing in the context of times that have seen the undermining of absolute values. In the 1905 excerpt here he is writing about religion. For Santayana, who claims to be both an atheist and a Catholic, religion has a vital role to play but it is not the source of truth. As he sees it, the poetry and ceremonies of religions are important in the striving of people to rise above the animal reality of our existence, to strive towards some ideal that which may not be real or be reached. The problem with religion arises when we assert that it is the Truth. Religion's proper role is to inspire and teach but not to provide the meaning of existence or to give us truth. He says, "Religion remains an imaginative achievement, a symbolic representation of moral realty which may have a most important function in vitalizing the mind and in transmitting by way of parables the lessons of experience. But it becomes at the same time a continuous incidental deception." To avoid this, we are to treat religions as neither true nor false but as better or worse. We can lend ourselves to each religion in turn to find what they have to offer. Religion must be flexible and not set itself up as the truth of existence. As White writes of Santayana, he was part of a movement that sees theology, ethics, and metaphysics being mythologized. Eventually even science would be seen as a myth, a story we tell ourselves for our own purposes. But rather than being disillusioned, Santayana asserts the continuing value of religion even though it is not Truth.
Bergson (1859-1941): Somewhat opaque like Croce. One of the ideas here is to choose a philosophy that is not hand-in-hand with science. Science gives a false picture of reality by insisting on dividing things up into discrete units. This is false because in fact things are more indivisible and interconnected than the mechanistic view imposed by science. Philosophy needs to chart a different course than it could if it were yoked to science. Where he loses me is in his attempts to describe the intellect as both intelligence and substance. He seems to want to suggest that science is more properly concerned with the inert and unliving substances than with the living because the living are imbued with intellect and freedom to act, not simply driven mechanistically. People can transcend the material and the intellect by acts of will, he seems to be saying.
Whitehead (1861-1947)
Whitehead started in a collaboration with Russell around 1910 in driving algebra wholly from logic, which would put him on one side of the philosophical continuum, but in his 60s he started to write more like Croce, Bergson, and Husserl in his belief that nature is alive. Here he is arguing against the mechanistic view of the world that came from 17th century science and which forms the common sense view of the world today, namely that the world consists of material objects with clear and separate identities moving around in space. Presumably new knowledge gained by science requires rethinking the common sense of the world and this is what he sets out to do with his philosophy.
Life must be fused with nature. Life consists of moments of self-enjoyment and these moments of individual self-enjoyment collectively form the unity of the "evolving universe ever plunging into the creative advance." The process of self-creation transforms the potential into the actual, Whitehead writes. This is an ongoing process and it is meaningless to speak of a moment in time. It is all connected. I suppose what he is describing is bounded liberty of action. Life pursues enjoyment within the limitations of the potential paths available. And every action affects everything around it, and so it is all connected. But perhaps I am simplifying because Whitehead seems to need quite a bit of jargon to formulate his ideas. (Reflection: Perhaps what Whitehead is grappling with is the way thinking and consciousness fit within the scientific picture. Is thinking just a chemical process as deterministic as a rock rolling down a hill, or is there some motive decision maker, some seeker at the throttle making decisions?) Final quote from excerpt: "Existence is activity ever merging into the future. The aim of philosophic understanding is the aim at piercing the blindness of activity in respect to its transcendent functions."
Husserl: (1859-1938) He starts off exploring the way in which what is present before us at any particular moment feathers out into what is present intuitively but not actually present to our attention. For example, I am aware of my family in other rooms in the house although I am not with them or in sight of them. Still I "know" they are in their beds sleeping at this moment. That sense of unseen but intuitively believed knowledge builds our existence from more than just sense-perceptions. Our reality does not, as lived, reduce to sense-perceptions of the world.
Husserl writes in this excerpt about his idea of bracketing. Following Descartes, we can adopt an attitude of doubting everything, but he rejects this and suggests using our doubting as a tool for examining rather than a complete stance of doubting. He also suggests that this doubting of a thesis is not to adopt an anti-thesis but rather to just entertain as a thought process that which is the opposite of what we "know" to be true. Given how labored the language is here, I suspect he is gesturing towards something more than what I'm getting. What I'm getting is this: "If we imagine that A, which we know to be true, were not true. If Not A were instead true, what would follow from that? What would follow from this bracketing A, this questioning of what we know is true?" Husserl actually states that what is meant is something other than just supposing some fantasy like faeries dancing in a ring. What is being bracketed are those things that are accepted as part of the natural world, perhaps what Moore would term the Common Sense world. Faeries are not part of that world, so that is not something appropriate for this approach. You could instead bracket out the sun, . . . but then what? Not clear to me. One thing he does suggest that this would permit the philosopher is to bracket out all of science, to give it no consideration but without doubting it in the least: "Thus all sciences which relate to this natural world, though they stand never so firm to me, though they fill me with wondering admiration, though I am far from any thought of objecting to them in the least degree, I disconnect them all, I make absolutely no use of their standards, I do not appropriate a single one of their propositions that enter into their systems, even though their evidentiary value is perfect, I take none of them, no one of them serves me for a foundation--so long as it is understood in the way that these sciences themselves understand it, as a truth concerning the realities of the world. I may accept it only after I have placed it in a bracket." What then? Well then one can turn to the experience of reality as it is actually experienced free from all theory, which we bracket off, free from the overwhelming presence of positivistic science (without challenging any such views about reality) we have a space for consideration that is not addressing itself to any of that. Yet another 20th century philosopher struggling to build castles in the air against the powerful counter-balance of science and all that comes with it? Perhaps what is wanted is a space to search for some more humane answer to what is and how one should live without having to relate everything to science--a sandbox for the humanities to play in.
Sartre (1905-1980) Representative of Existentialism in this book. (Note: also accomplished novelist, recommend The Age of Reason.) Morton White sees a line running from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche to Sartre and Kafka and the Existentialists. Sartre also was influenced by Husserl. On the other hand, he is not in the line of Kant, Hegel and J.S. Mill because they are not concerned with the same ethical questions about existence as troubled Sartre and others in the aftermath of WWII. Sartre may lie in the line that passes through Kierkegaard but like Nietzsche he is an atheist and does not believe that there is any self that exists before birth or that is affected by fate or some world spirit. He believes in radical free will. Again, as with others in this volume of philosophy, Sartre wants an arena for philosophy apart from science, which exists in a realm of objects and determinism, while humans are outside that frame and have free will. For us, existence precedes essence, we are not created for a purpose by determine our own purposes. Man is and there is no fundamental human nature. However, he also suggests that what we do to fashion ourselves, also fashions mankind. Choosing to marry imposes the monogamy of marriage on humanity to some extent. This decision to act, knowing it is an act for all humanity, can lead to anguish. Another existentialist feeling is abandonment. Without God, it becomes difficult to ground morality and Christian values, e.g. thou shalt not lie, cheat, steal, etc. While some philosophers wanted to keep the a priori existence of values, the existentialist rejects this fig leaf. One is free to choose ones values, too. There is no a priori value at all.
Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) Whom William James credited as the original pragmatist for his writings in 1877. Pierce seems to want philosophy and communication to be more like science. Often words carry connotations taht interfere with communication. It is easy to misunderstand, but if we operationally define language, we avoid this. To be clear about the meaning of "hard", we expand the word to a conditional: "This is hard" becomes "If this is scratched, no line will be left. Thus, it is hard." This is like the operational definition of a scientist or a mathematical postulate.
I find reading Pierce to be a bit laborious but I did take his point. I particularly liked his description of how much of philosophy consists of taking an available position and then holding it against all comers without any evidence that one is seeking truth. He says, "It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system." William James clarified some of Pierce's ideas for me. I'll put what James said of Pierce under James.
William James (1842-1910) James takes from Pierce the idea that meaning is related to what it causes one to do. The essential point is what one will do if one believes a statement to be true. As he puts it, "beliefs are rules for action. To develop a thought's meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance." Thus any debate over something that makes no practical difference when one or the other is held true is meaningless and a waste of time.
Morton White tells us that Pierce was the pragmatic philosopher of science, James the pragmatist of religion, and Dewey the pragmatist of morals.
For James the purpose of the pragmatic approach is to settle metaphysical debates that might otherwise be interminable. One looks at the practical consequences of taking one side or the other as true and decides on truth by looking at which one produces the best results. White summarizes James thought as boiling down to three sentences: "The true is what we ought to believe. That which we ought to believe is what is best for us to believe. Therefore, the truth is what is best for us to believe."
According to James the pragmatist looks away from first things, principles, categories, and looks towards facts, fruits and consequences. They are in league with scientists and scientific method and against abstraction and dogmatic closed systems. Truth is something we develop and continue to develop and not a dogma to be insisted upon. The importance of truth is in pragmatically helping us to achieve positive results. Pragmatism differs from Rationalism, James tells us, in that Pragmatism is most comfortable among facts while rationalism is most comfortable only in the company of abstractions. (He says this in defending Schiller and Dewey from rationalist attack.) (Note: Rationalism is the belief that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. (E.g. Descartes). He is rejecting this rationalist approach to religion, too, with its god mind, absolute mind. Pragmatism in turn differs from empiricism in that it is comfortable with abstractions as well as facts, so pragmatism has no a priori prejudice against theology. One of James's key points is that truth is a species of good. This means that if religion is good for people and does not directly conflict with other truths/goods, it can be taken as truth for James' purposes. When these different truths/benefits conflict, one must either live with the inconsistency or adjust ones beliefs. James would rather give up the Absolute than the good, I gather. I might suspect that James is struggling to live in a world where religion is seen by so many as a good, but also in a world in which Scientific understanding is challenging the truth value of religion. By redefining truth as the good, he preserves theology for the good it does people.
John Dewey (1859-1952)
I couldn't penetrate this reading at all. It was so abstract and dry, so lacking in any illustrations or definitions of ideas that each paragraph was like chewing on sawdust. Lack of definition and failure to explain make Dewey one that I will leave for some other day.
The one main idea I get is that he wants to define what is good based on what results from enjoyment of it. No absolute values but value determined by the relationship between the enjoyment and what results from that. It is very dry and abstract stuff, lacking in illustrations that could clarify his points. (Have reached the limit of characters on this site, so can't comment further.)
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Rudolf Carnap (1891- 1970
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951
May 11, 2022
The book’s format is a short introduction on major 20th century (first half) philosophers (selected by White), followed by a brief selection from their writing. These philosophers can be placed in three broad camps – the metaphysicians, pragmatists, and positivists. Several particulars stand out:
Bergson’s criticism of “the rationalism and intellectualism of the platonic and cartesian traditions” is based on his, Bergson’s, view that something more vital drives life and humans. It’s life’s energy, akin to the “élan vital” and Schopenhauer’s Will, operating in a field of interactions among energetic actors seeking to live, seeking not to die.
This Bergson perspective struck me as parallel to Whitehead’s “philosophy of the organism” where life is about value, in contrast to “inert” matter, and space is a field of force, “a field of incessant activity” in which there are no “moments of time." (1) For him, per Einstein, matter is energy and “energy is sheer activity” and “There are no “self-centered particles,” but only an environment of interaction. For modern physics, “activity” in turn prompts “very large questions” for philosophers: “Activity for what, producing what, Activity involving what?” The answers for Whitehead involve the fusion of life with “our concept of physical nature” and “the notion of life should involve the notion of physical nature.”
The division that William James makes between the tender-minded (rationalism) and the tough-minded (science) is interesting because of the pejorative tinge to these characterizations. James sees himself in the “tough-minded” camp whereas I don’t see that James really escaped the tender-minded school of thought, at least in his Varieties of Religious Experience, and it’s a point of view that White seems to share, at least to some degree. (2)
Pierce’s hypothetical approach makes sense when it comes to ethical behavior that stipulates the value at play and then evaluates (judges) whether behavior is consistent with that standard. This adds clarity to the philosophical discussion as it specifies the values that drive what we want to do and how we do it, so at least there’s minimal misunderstanding. This is helpful in naturalistic philosophy where biological ends (utility and instrumental value) play such an important – and deductive – role.
Dewey notes a philosophical bifurcation between the rationalistic and empirical methods, and he seems to pick up on a Pierce theme in his, Dewey’s, “theory of value” in which behavior can be evaluated in terms of specified values as to what is good. He avoids the “anything goes” problem of “'empirical theory’s’ exclusive dependence on raw impulse.., and the transcendentalist’s failure to make a contact with impulse altogether.” In doing so, “the ‘normative’ disciplines of logic, esthetics, and ethics had been brought closer to empirical science than at any previous moment in the history of philosophy.”
Carnap places philosophy into three categories – logical (analytic), metaphysics, and psychology (philosophy of values) – that are similar to White’s own division for this book. Psychology has two forms – moral behavior (what one does, why it is done, and the impacts on others) falls within empirical science. In contrast, what one ought to do – normative ethics; what is good and bad, right and wrong) – falls outside of empirical inquiry. Normative ethics offers imperative-based statements such as “do not kill,” which implies that “killing is bad,” but such statements cannot be proven as a scientific proposition. Similarly, Carnap denotes two forms of language: Expressive, which simply utters a state of feeling, versus representational language that describes, asserts and evaluates vis-à-vis some stated objective. The former gives “the illusion of knowledge” whereas the latter can be framed in terms of being true and false. Thus, for Carnap, philosophy, once the mothership for all deep thought, becomes the stripped-down stepchild to scientific analysis alone.
White is sympathetic to the Carnap point of view. In his concluding chapter, “Philosophy and Man: An Exhortation,” he attempts to bridge the gap between the broader metaphysical systems thinkers and the nuts and bolts approach of the positivists who see philosophy in terms of its clarifying and analytic role. (3) White’s attempt in this regard points to neither a meaningful nor realistic path forward. It seems to me that the positivists have appropriated philosophy’s meaning and turned it, ironically, into non-meaning, in the sense of what drives humans. There is nothing about their quest that has anything to do with life’s motive force. Life is about motivation and energy, for good and bad. In their ambition to claim the field, they have nothing much to do with how life really works. The positivists have a valued- role, but they are only part of philosophy and not its whole. At the other end, the metaphysicans, especially Plato and his contemporary adherents, have removed themselves from the real world. Their vision is based on a non-existent world. They have contempt for biological being and the energy of life, and their "objectivity" disguises their subjectivity.
While modern philosophy must reinvent itself to provide a broader, meaningful vision, positivists and scientists refuse to go here. A meaningful vision, unlike that of most metaphysical systems, must not be made-up narratives about how the world works. Though it can and should go beyond, any metaphysical account must not be inconsistent with science. Naturalistic ethics, based on evolutionary biology and physics, sidesteps the all-to-convenient is-ought distinction by stipulating that life wants to live. With that, it can then deduce an extensive philosophical system from that normative end. This is a valid way to bridge the scientific and normative divide in modern philosophy.
(1) Of Whitehead, White writes: "It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.”
(2) “James tried to mediate between these two sets of doctrinal attitudes by offering, as he said, ‘the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demands. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts.’”
(3) White writes: “I trust that in my efforts at objectivity I have not succeeded in hiding the fact that my own philosophical sympathies are closest to the pragmatic and analytic traditions, but I must also add that I sympathize with the concerns of some of the philosophers in the first part of the volume. I believe, therefore, that nothing could be more important than reuniting these two contrasting elements in twentieth century philosophy – the analytic, pragmatic, linguistic concern of the recent Anglo-American tradition supplemented by some of the insights and the more humane, cultivated concerns of the predominantly continental tradition.”
Bergson’s criticism of “the rationalism and intellectualism of the platonic and cartesian traditions” is based on his, Bergson’s, view that something more vital drives life and humans. It’s life’s energy, akin to the “élan vital” and Schopenhauer’s Will, operating in a field of interactions among energetic actors seeking to live, seeking not to die.
This Bergson perspective struck me as parallel to Whitehead’s “philosophy of the organism” where life is about value, in contrast to “inert” matter, and space is a field of force, “a field of incessant activity” in which there are no “moments of time." (1) For him, per Einstein, matter is energy and “energy is sheer activity” and “There are no “self-centered particles,” but only an environment of interaction. For modern physics, “activity” in turn prompts “very large questions” for philosophers: “Activity for what, producing what, Activity involving what?” The answers for Whitehead involve the fusion of life with “our concept of physical nature” and “the notion of life should involve the notion of physical nature.”
The division that William James makes between the tender-minded (rationalism) and the tough-minded (science) is interesting because of the pejorative tinge to these characterizations. James sees himself in the “tough-minded” camp whereas I don’t see that James really escaped the tender-minded school of thought, at least in his Varieties of Religious Experience, and it’s a point of view that White seems to share, at least to some degree. (2)
Pierce’s hypothetical approach makes sense when it comes to ethical behavior that stipulates the value at play and then evaluates (judges) whether behavior is consistent with that standard. This adds clarity to the philosophical discussion as it specifies the values that drive what we want to do and how we do it, so at least there’s minimal misunderstanding. This is helpful in naturalistic philosophy where biological ends (utility and instrumental value) play such an important – and deductive – role.
Dewey notes a philosophical bifurcation between the rationalistic and empirical methods, and he seems to pick up on a Pierce theme in his, Dewey’s, “theory of value” in which behavior can be evaluated in terms of specified values as to what is good. He avoids the “anything goes” problem of “'empirical theory’s’ exclusive dependence on raw impulse.., and the transcendentalist’s failure to make a contact with impulse altogether.” In doing so, “the ‘normative’ disciplines of logic, esthetics, and ethics had been brought closer to empirical science than at any previous moment in the history of philosophy.”
Carnap places philosophy into three categories – logical (analytic), metaphysics, and psychology (philosophy of values) – that are similar to White’s own division for this book. Psychology has two forms – moral behavior (what one does, why it is done, and the impacts on others) falls within empirical science. In contrast, what one ought to do – normative ethics; what is good and bad, right and wrong) – falls outside of empirical inquiry. Normative ethics offers imperative-based statements such as “do not kill,” which implies that “killing is bad,” but such statements cannot be proven as a scientific proposition. Similarly, Carnap denotes two forms of language: Expressive, which simply utters a state of feeling, versus representational language that describes, asserts and evaluates vis-à-vis some stated objective. The former gives “the illusion of knowledge” whereas the latter can be framed in terms of being true and false. Thus, for Carnap, philosophy, once the mothership for all deep thought, becomes the stripped-down stepchild to scientific analysis alone.
White is sympathetic to the Carnap point of view. In his concluding chapter, “Philosophy and Man: An Exhortation,” he attempts to bridge the gap between the broader metaphysical systems thinkers and the nuts and bolts approach of the positivists who see philosophy in terms of its clarifying and analytic role. (3) White’s attempt in this regard points to neither a meaningful nor realistic path forward. It seems to me that the positivists have appropriated philosophy’s meaning and turned it, ironically, into non-meaning, in the sense of what drives humans. There is nothing about their quest that has anything to do with life’s motive force. Life is about motivation and energy, for good and bad. In their ambition to claim the field, they have nothing much to do with how life really works. The positivists have a valued- role, but they are only part of philosophy and not its whole. At the other end, the metaphysicans, especially Plato and his contemporary adherents, have removed themselves from the real world. Their vision is based on a non-existent world. They have contempt for biological being and the energy of life, and their "objectivity" disguises their subjectivity.
While modern philosophy must reinvent itself to provide a broader, meaningful vision, positivists and scientists refuse to go here. A meaningful vision, unlike that of most metaphysical systems, must not be made-up narratives about how the world works. Though it can and should go beyond, any metaphysical account must not be inconsistent with science. Naturalistic ethics, based on evolutionary biology and physics, sidesteps the all-to-convenient is-ought distinction by stipulating that life wants to live. With that, it can then deduce an extensive philosophical system from that normative end. This is a valid way to bridge the scientific and normative divide in modern philosophy.
(1) Of Whitehead, White writes: "It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.”
(2) “James tried to mediate between these two sets of doctrinal attitudes by offering, as he said, ‘the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demands. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts.’”
(3) White writes: “I trust that in my efforts at objectivity I have not succeeded in hiding the fact that my own philosophical sympathies are closest to the pragmatic and analytic traditions, but I must also add that I sympathize with the concerns of some of the philosophers in the first part of the volume. I believe, therefore, that nothing could be more important than reuniting these two contrasting elements in twentieth century philosophy – the analytic, pragmatic, linguistic concern of the recent Anglo-American tradition supplemented by some of the insights and the more humane, cultivated concerns of the predominantly continental tradition.”
December 31, 2015
This book contains some pretty good selections culled from the canon philosophers of the early 20th century. A couple of these guys don't get mentioned much anymore, but they were influential on the guys that you have heard about. My main issue with the book is that the editor is a bad writer. He wrote the intro and outro chapters to the book as well as lengthy introductory blurbs for each selection. I didn't find his intros to be very clear. They consisted of pages of name drops, (self-admitted) digressions, and generally didn't tell me anything about the philosopher.
Most of the selection are very basic. I had read almost all the selections before picking up this book, so that makes the book pretty pointless for me. That being said the book was worthwhile for the few selections I had not read. So, if like me, you find this in a local second hand shop for cheap, it's worth picking up as a supplemental text.
Isiah Berlin wtas he editor of a previous volume in this 6 volume series and his writing was much better. I'm hoping the other volume in this series I have is written by someone who has something to say.
Most of the selection are very basic. I had read almost all the selections before picking up this book, so that makes the book pretty pointless for me. That being said the book was worthwhile for the few selections I had not read. So, if like me, you find this in a local second hand shop for cheap, it's worth picking up as a supplemental text.
Isiah Berlin wtas he editor of a previous volume in this 6 volume series and his writing was much better. I'm hoping the other volume in this series I have is written by someone who has something to say.
February 18, 2014
Philosophy is sort of maddening, because on the one hand, one knows it's about the most important questions going-- what is the world, how do we know it, what does it mean to know, and all the rest. At the same time, reading philosophy feels disconcertingly like reading a college freshman paper on a topic that freshman doesn't understand terribly well. That is, the guys who write this stuff are either on such a different mental plain that it is difficult to recognize their skill, or they are just fumbling in the dark like everyone else and whistling loudly to show that they aren't scared.
I found Sartre and Santayana particularly compelling in this volume, and I'm glad to have read a little bit of William James and Dewey (pragmatism, by the way, seems to be the unofficial calling-card of just about everyone I've met).
I found Sartre and Santayana particularly compelling in this volume, and I'm glad to have read a little bit of William James and Dewey (pragmatism, by the way, seems to be the unofficial calling-card of just about everyone I've met).
February 18, 2015
Part of my rating of this book as only three stars is because of my lack of love for 20th century philosophy. This is a collection of some of the more important writers in the school of analysis and a few others. It is perhaps too close in time to the subject matter, and it reflects a philosophical discipline that has become fully academic.
It's OK, but outdated,
It's OK, but outdated,
November 18, 2013
Great introduction to some of the most amazing thinkers. Wonderful way to get a good idea of some philosophers that I may never get to read and it also confirms my love for some of my favorites such as Russell, Pierce, and Wittgenstein.
June 1, 2019
You just never know. This book started out slow, picked up in the middle, and ended as a slow read. I really liked one idea. The pragmatic method interprets competing ideas by evaluating their respective consequences. What difference would it make if one idea was true and the other false, or vice versa? If no practical difference can be found in the alternatives, then all dispute is idle. This is an inverse way to justify disputing ideas that do matter.
December 25, 2019
This book was published in 1955. Therefore, a number of the philosophers mentioned were still alive or recently dead. I suppose the biggest surprise for me was the exclusion of Karl Popper. Heidegger and Kaspersky are discussed, but not quoted. There is a lot of attention to Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Wittgenstein. The title reflects the editor's assessment that metaphysics weakened, and analytic philosophy expanded during the century. That's fair. My wife and I both had An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, by John Hospers, as texts in college, back in the Sixties.
June 3, 2013
I really enjoyed the selections from John Dewey and Benedetto Croce.
May 11, 2021
best 20th century phil anthology i’ve found
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