BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL
Dissertation THE PROBLEM OF A RATIONAL GOOD
by
Delbert Raymond Gish (A.B., Bethany-Peniel College, 1932; M.A. , Oklahoma University, 193A-)
s
submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1943
1 9+3
Approved
by
THE PROBLEM OF A RATIONAL GOOD
Outline
Chapter Page
I. THE PROBLEM 1
1. Statement of the problem 1
2. The definition of « rational' 4
i. Rationality and probability . 8
ii. Methods and techniques versus ends ... 9
1) . The scientific method 11
2) . Method in philosophy 13
iii. A working definition of rationality . . . 16
3. The definition of feood' 17
i. Good versus value and ideal 17
ii. Fundamental assumptions concerned with
the good 20
iii. The claim of good upon rational beings . 24
iv. A working definition of the good .... 26
v. Validation of the definition 26
4. Summary of the chapter 29
5. Sources 31
6. Statement on method and the plan of future chapters 31
II. OPPOSITION TO THE RATIONAL GOOD 33
1. Review of the definition of the rational good 33
2. The incompleteness of the progress of mind . . 33
V
Chapter Page
3. Classifications of various metaphysical
views which fall into irrationality 34
i. First view: mechanism and atomism .... 36
ii. The second view: authoritarianism .... 38 iii. The third view: pessimism and fiction-
alism 40
iv. The fourth view: transvaluation 43
v. The fifth view: mysticism 48
vi. The sixth view: realism or factualism • . 51
4. Epistemological views which make concessions
to the irrational 56
i. Irrational sources of belief 57
ii. The repudiation of reason, scepticism . . 62
iii. Epistemological dualism 66
iv. The will to believe: voluntarism. 70
v. Intuitionism and mysticism 73
5. Summary of the chapter 76
III. THE RATIONAL AND THE GOOD 79
1. The suspicion of conflict between logic
and reality 79
2. The conviction of connection between ration- ality and goodness 80
i. Plato 81
ii. Urban 82
iii. Kant 82
vi
Chapter Page
3. Intuition, reason, and the good 85
U* Results of the comparison of intuition
and reason for the good .......... 95
5. Summary of the chapter 99
IV. THE RATIONAL GOOD AND THE REAL 100
1. Reality defined 100
2. Modernist and traditional views of the problem 101
3. Intrinsic and instrumental goods 103
4. Values and goods on the practical plane
are instrumental 104
5. Values and. goods on the theoretical plane . 106
6. Arguments for the objective reality of
good * 107
i. Urban 107
ii. Kohler 107
iii. Alexander 108
iv. Pr ingle -Pa ttison 108
v. Other arguments 109
vi. Plato Ill
vii. Lotze Ill
viii. Bowne 112
ix. Leighton 112
x. G-ilson 113
vii
Chapter Page
xi. Results of the arguments 114
7. The meaning and place of evil 115
8. Summary of the preceding section 118
9. The mode of the objective existence of
good 119
i. Good is not a hypostatized abstraction 120
ii. Good exists concretely in personality . 120
10. The good and God 124
11. God's nature and relation to the world . . 126
12. The outcome of the view of God as personal for the rational good 135
13. Summary of the chapter 139
V. THE RATIONAL GOOD AND, SOCIAL PROGRESS 142
1. Definitions and viewpoints 142
2. Principles of social progress 145
3. Views of the prospects of social progress 149 i. Kant 149
ii. Otto and Santayana 150
iii. Dewey 150
iv. Plato 150
4. Views of the good to be gained and criticisms 151
5. The problem of social control 157
viii
Chapter Page i. Contrast of totalitarianism and
democracy .......... 159
ii. National socialism 160
iii. Estimate of the principles of
democracy 165
6. Modes of achieving rational democratic
ends 169
i. Ways of securing co-operation 170
ii. Special value of rational persuasion. . 171 iii« Training in value-appreciation 172
7. Summary of the chapter 173
3. Some final thoughts 175
BIBLIOGRAPHY 179
ABSTRACT 193
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
1. Statement of the problem This dissertation is an attempt to find out whether the good is defined and established altogether by reason, whether the good is partly rational on the one hand and partly nonrational, intuitive, emotional, traditional, or empirical on the other; or whether it is wholly determined by nonrational factors with reason serving merely as an in- strument in its realization. Plato and Kant are important advocates of the first view; the philosophic tradition has been more generally in the spirit of the second; and var- ious aspects of the third are being strongly urged in many quarters today, although it has never lacked supporters.
In the course of the investigation, answers to such questions as the following will also be sought: In what form is the good observed or experienced? What are the log- ical, epistemological, metaphysical and social strands of the good which need to be explored? Does the good possess any permanent, self-consistent character? What relation does good have to the external world beyond finite minds?
In spite of the constant repetition of the term "good" in the languages and literatures of mankind, there is a notorious disagreement about ultimate goods; and partic- ularly is there disagreement about whether goods are in any
2
sense rational. If such a good is possible, then it needs to be brought to clear expression; for in spite of the en- lightenment of modern nations, their disunity and lack of orientation toward a common goal speaks of anything but ra- tionality.
Skepticism and indecision about ends characterize both nations and individual persons. Wilbur M. Urban des- cribes the present time as one when "strange contradiction
1
pervades our entire modern culture. . . ," and says that
"the implicit assumption of the meaning, significance and
value of our civilization. . . is being questioned on all 2
sides." In the same mood Blanshard finds that "self-will
and the repudiation of a common standard of judgement and
obligation threaten to extinguish the life of reason alto- 3
gether." Wolfgang Ktthler notes the tendency of educated and professional men to avoid problems of value, and to dis- claim any responsibility for making "frames of reference," i.e. standards or ideals of worth. Because of this, there is a lack of convictions, of" stable mental orientation" to help people stand the strain and stress of trouble. He be- lieves that science must bear its share of responsibility — all learning and research tend to resist the "orientation
1. Urban, IW, 172. (All symbols in bibliography).
2. Ibid., 131.
3. Blanshard, NT, II, 520.
that existed before the era of science." Science has helped
destroy the stabilizing ideals, but apparently has no power
U
to replace them.
It would be unfair to lay the blame for the present confusion about good wholly at the doors of science, but considering its bias for description as opposed to evaluation, and its attempt to eliminate the personal factor as far as possible, it must bear a considerable part of the responsi- bility. With science as such, there is no problem of a ra- tional good, — in fact, no problem of a good at all, for strictly speaking it recognizes none, or at best describes beliefs in good as facts, without regard to their validity. Typical scientific training evades personal evaluations as far as possible along with moral and ethical entanglements. The remarkable achievements of the sciences have given them tremendous influence, and during the last century the dogmat- ic confidence that science was a panacea for human ills was
created. Most scientists had little inclination to discour-
5
age this feeling. However, the disillusionment has begun, and the wiser scientists now see that science must be con- tented to be a part and not the whole of human knowledge. Good and values contain obstinate elements that will not yield to the purely descriptive methods of science, but which still persist as facts in human experience.
U. Kohler, PVWF, 7, 11.
5. See Flewelling, art. (1926), 81-86.
4
Among reasons why the rational good becomes a prob- lem these may be noted: First, as just mentioned, science is a marvel of the modern age which has had its success in- dependently (apparently) of the concept of any good at all, except the assumed good of science. Second, there is no gen- eral and clear idea of what a rational good means, what it should require of a society or nation. Third, there is no guarantee that a rational good is possible. Finally, it has not been made an actuality, except in an unsatisfactory man- ner in isolated societies, and much of the gain has been lost.
Under such circumstances, one might ask, why should there be any search for a good that is determined by reason? Why not be content with the intuitive way, the "instincts of the blood," the drives that underlie the whole complex men- tal and physical organization of individual persons? Why not let the good be determined by force, authority, chance, or its subjective marks? Simply because it is possible that the discipline and direction of reason can bring more bene- fits to more people than can any other means. If a rational good is possible, it should be explored. But in order to produce a rational good, it seems probable that something more than rational exploration is required.
2. The definition of rational
Although the terms "good" and "rational" are familiar and frequently used, they require constant redefinition in
5
order- to acquire for them and preserve a basic, sharply de- lineated meaning. There are are certain loopholes in the
conception o: rationality; it is ambiguous, said Hastings 6
Rashdall, for
It may mean intelligible1 or ♦reducible to a coherent system such that one part of it could (with adequate in- sight) be inferred from another.' In this sense the Universe might be rational if it were a sort of infernal machine. Or it may mean (and that is the only sense in which we ought to talk about a reality which includes events as 'rational') realizing an end which is abso- lutely good. It has been part of the legerdemain of a certain school to prove that the Universe is rational in the first sense, and then to assume that it must be ra- tional in the second, and therefore, it is urged, any- thing in it which strikes us as bad must be mere appear- ance.
Rashdall' s analysis deals with rationality at a rath- er high level. At lower less complex levels of explanation, where immediate practical purposes (e.g. communication), are involved, customary action and ordinary sanity pass for ra- tionality. If an idea conveys any intelligible meaning, it is in some sense rational. However, the term "rational" has different meanings on the practical level of necessary com- munication between persons, on the scientific level of pre- cise description and causal explanation (including the psy- 7
chiatric), and on the philosophical level of explanation by teleology, synopsis, and system-building. There is of course no absolute demarcation between these levels concerning the
6. Rashdall, TGE, II, 219, footnote.
7. See Allport, PER, Chap. XIV, 369-399.
meaning of rational, but on the whole the following distinc- tions will obtain.
On the level of necessary intercommunication rational
means whatever is not purely subjective or arbitrary; the
9
clear, simple, related, or conceivable; the moderate, tem-
10
perate, nonextreme; what is expressible in the language which is in general use; what is expressible in finite (math- ematical) terms; whatever is sensible, enlightened, discreet,
11
intelligent, sane, sound; the intelligible, comprehensible,
12
or understandable; and anything which has the power to
satisfy the intellect.
On the scientific level where description, the concept
of mechanical cause, and analysis are extensively used, ra-
13
tional means completely objective and impersonal; factual rather than speculative, with quantities expressed in exact mathematical rather than approximate figures; whatever is least complex and least involved, i.e. as simple as possi- ble; expressible in terms of causal antecedents and conso- le 15 quents; experimentally verifiable; predictable; and in
8. Pratt, RC, 333. H. Ayer, LTL, 180-181.
9. Santayana, LOR, 243. I5. Reichenbach, EAP,
H5, 192, 404.
10. Spinoza, ETH, IV, lxi, 183.
11. Century Dictionary, VI.
12. Blanshard, NT, II, UU9*
13. Kohler, PTWF, 36.
7
general, rational means for science whatever is fruitful or
promising, as exemplified in ideas or procedures, hypotheses
or methods which yield immediate results.
On the philosophic level rational means interconnected,
16
unified, linked significantly with other objects or ideas; systematic, grounded upon a substantial supporting concept;^ concrete, organically related, harmonious; conceptual in character, following largely from deduction, and less from perception and induction; interpretative rather than des- criptive; and partaking of coherence, self -consistency,
18
ever- increasing inclusiveness, and the best possible end.
The difference between reasonable and rational should not be overlooked. A rational plan which effectively con- nects end and means may be unreasonable in its demands. A
person who is unreasonable (e.g. a convalescent) may be in
19
full possession of his mental powers. But to reiterate what was said above: the distinctions will not always be clear-cut; they are intended chiefly to show that there are grounds for scientists to call philosophers irrational, and the reverse; and for both to declare irrational an idea which might satisfy a man of less reflective temperament.
16. Hobhouse, RG, 62-64; Pringle-Pattison, IOG, 239, 260.
17. Bowne, MET (rev. ) , 328; Schopenhauer, WWI, I, 65.
18. Brightman, presidential address at National As- sociation of Biblical Instructors, Cambridge, Mass. See also Brightman, art. (1941), 393-414.
19. See Kolnai, WAW, 57.
\
8
i. Rationality and probability. Both truth and prob- ability may be called rational ideas. Truth is an end in whose direction both rationality and probability aim; but while probability is at its highest reach when it closely approximates truth, rationality seeks also other ends which are conceived as valuable — for example, the good and the beautiful — and in its highest reaches it partakes fully of their nature. Thus probability and rationality may be said to become fellow-travelers on the path toward truth. They progress together; as a result it turns out that the most probable account of an event is also the most rational. Both rationality and probability depend upon the relation of propositions which are candidates for belief to the evi- dence upon which they are grounded. The mental task of testing beliefs for probability and for rationality is never fully completed, but as its results are achieved a person's whole system of knowledge and belief is raised to constantly higher levels of comprehensiveness, clarity, harmony, and objectivity.
The task is never done. Even at the higher levels where system-building brings more and more particulars into intelligible unity, one system-maker may arrive at a synop- tic view of things which seems to him to solve the metaphys- ical paradoxes of all time; but another system-builder, view- ing the same phenomena from another position, finds the solu- tion as puzzling as the problems. It is with this situation
9
20
in mind that Urban writes the following words:
Among philosophers the lack of a common idiom is no- torious. Natural 1st ically minded philosophers find Hegel unintelligible; and it is no less the case that propositions, which to positivism and naturalism seem to have meaning, are for critical philosophers little less than nonsense.
It may well be that the first step toward rationality is a look at the ways in which men believe it is to be produced.
ii. Methods and techniques versus ends. The intelli- gibility of any point of view is largely a function of the method by which that point of view is reached. In the last analysis, one's ideal of rationality may be attained only if he employs a method which can satisfy that ideal, and which will not contradict the ideal. No absolute methods are known. Philosophers disagree, for example, on whether the explanation of parts by reference to wholes or the reverse is more intelligible. But to be logical, which is the min- imum demand of the rational mind, one must adopt a mode of
21
procedure and follow it through. There is, says Bowne,
need of a critical procedure which shall help the mind to self-knowledge, define and clarify its aims, secure consistency in the development of its practical postu- lates, and adjust their mutual relations. This is the field of logic; and in this work of development, adjust- ment, and rectification logic has its inalienable rights and a function of supreme importance.
Yet the differences of opinion about procedures lead to many an impasse. Some philosophers advocate the selec- tion of ends without any criticism of means other than to
20. Urban, IV/, 187, 188(quoting from latter page).
21. Bowne, TTK, 383.
10
note their chances for immediate success or failure. It is irrational from this point of view, to court failure by rea- son of scruples which prohibit the use of the shortest and most effective methods possible. Yet other philosophers seem to say that little attention to ends is necessary if only self-consistent means are used. The differences reduce to the question of the remoteness or the immediacy of the ends considered, and of the emphasis which is to be given the one or the other. The scientific ideal is characterized by an
emphasis on method. It is in this spirit of confidence in
22
method that Ayer insists upon its primary rtfle.
For to be rational is simply to employ a self-consist- ent accredited procedure in the formation of all one's beliefs. ... We define a rational belief as one which is arrived at by the methods which we now consider re- liable. There is no absolute standard of rationality. . • • We trust the methods of contemporary science be- cause they have been successful in practice. If in the future we were to adopt different methods, then beliefs which are now rational might become irrational from the standpoint of these new methods.
Huxley and Rader make a plea for a balance between
the selection of ends and the employment of techniques. The
former declares that the ideal of charity must govern men of
all ranks, for otherwise "technological progress has merely
23
provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." Ends must not be selected without any attention to means, for "the means employed determine the nature of the ends pro- duced." * Rader also takes a view which calls for rational
22. Ayer, LTL, H4-H5.
23. Huxley, EAM, 9.
24. Huxley, EAM, 10.
11
means and a rational criticism of ends. His idea is that2 5
A science of means, without a critique of ends, does not make liYe rational. If there is no way of determin- ing whether our purposes are reasonable, there can be no way of judging whether the means are rightly employed. Every technique may be adapted to a variety of ends. • . . Clearly, we shall be none the better for all our technical knowledge unless we have something more — know- ledge of the good.
Differences in human temperaments are largely respon- sible for varied emphases on means and ends. It seems to be part of the fundamental nature of some persons to think ana- lytically, and to view things atomistically . Theirs is a scientific turn of mind, and they will ordinarily be perfect- ers of techniques rather than critic izers of ends. Other persons naturally think synoptically, view things more read- ily as organic wholes, and exhibit a philosophic tempera- ment. What one type of person may regard as an intelligible approach to the world and its secrets often seems futile and senseless to the other. Is there no help for this difficul- ty? At least one will be suggested after a further short ex- amination of the difficulty itself.
1). The scientific method. Required by the scientif- ic method are the following assumptions or procedures:
(1) Exclusion of the concepts of value and purpose.
(2) A thoroughly objective approach; the experimenter to be as inconspicuous as possible, free of bias and partiality. 26
25. Rader, NC, 53-54. 26. KBhler, PWF, 36.
(3) Results must "be verifiable, and only the suc- cessful outcome or fruitfulness of a method just- ifies it; it should give rise to successful pre-
27
dictions.
(4) The use of mathematical and quantitative measure- ments is fundamental.
(5) Terms, categories, and definitions should be
28
standardized as far as possible.
(6) Observance of the principle of parsimony is es- sential.
(7) Exact observation and discovery rather than dem-
29
onstration is the goal of science.
(8) Analysis is the chief instrument to be used, and usually takes precedence over synthesis.
(9) Sensory, perceptual knowledge is, as a rule, more trustworthy than conceptual knowledge, and induc- tion more valuable than deduction. (Many excep- tions to this should be granted) .
Modern science has had success enough to make it tre- mendously important; through its labors the physical world has been made more the servant than the master of man. Yet nothing is more certain, a fact recognized by scientists
27. Ayer, LTL, 180-181.
28. KBhler, FVWF, 36.
29. Dewey, EN, 152.
13
themselves, than that something is wrong with the way the whole matter has worked out. There is a paradox in it; the results which have the greatest potentiality for human good often are employed most diligently to the destruction of the things which humanity ought to prize.
2). Method in philosophy. A somewhat wider range of starting points is nossible for philosophical study than for scientif icCrestricted as it is by its subject matter). In philosophical investigation one may begin with the self (as will, mind, or consciousness) and introspection; with the objective world (assuming it to be fundamentally either matter, will, or mind-stuff) ; or with God and the realm of ideals, goods, and religious values. Otherwise philosophy will use every method which science uses, the main differ- ence being that philosophy will attempt to create a system as inclusive as possible, to get a whole view, while science is necessarily restrictive. There was a time when little dis- tinction existed between philosophical and scientific meth-
30
ods. Both traveled the 'high priori roadf of deduction from ultimate propositions. Science has now deserted this path- way, while philosophy on occasion uses both inductive and de- ductive methods, both experience and reason, much more read- ily than does science.
No method is final except the method which makes the individual mind superior to all modes of procedure. This is the basis for the removal of the impasse between those who
30. Ayer, LTL, 62; used by Blanshard, NT, II, 403.
u
are scientifically inclined and those who are imbued with the spirit of philosophy. Often enough a useful way of at- tacking a problem becomes "a method, then a habit, and final-
31
ly a tyranny that defeats the end it was used for." None
of the various aspects of the world can be made intelligible
throughout by a single method, except the method of giving
the active mind free rein. It is of course true, as Bright- 32
man indicates, that
sense-experience lends itself more readily to the meth- ods of atomistic logic, while values, being true wholes, can be understood only by what we have called organic logic.
However, as he would be the first to insist, neither atom- istic nor organic logic without the active mind can bring understanding.
Ultimately one must see that method is important as an aid to the working mind, but that it is not the final guarantee of success in striving for the rational good, "There is no simple and compendious standard which will give
the truth by mechanical application. The living mind deal-
33
ing with the concrete facts is the only standard." "Atom- ism is rational, we see, only to the extent to which it sat- isfies the demand of the mind for that which remains identi-
31. James, APU, 219.
32. Brightman, IPI, 30.
33. Bowne, TTK, 3S5.
15
34
cal without changing . . . ." The older view (a rather
35
extreme teleology) is also but a partial one:
There is plainly much in human experience that can be brought under the idea of the good, in the sense of be- ing taken as means to a special and limited end. But sooner or later the attempt to work this scheme over the whole field of experience breaks down, and to persist in it is fanaticism.
Irrationality develops in the exclusive use of one
method or another. In the appropriate circumstances, which
the individual person must decide upon, the "part-working"
of the mind may be most effective, and in other circum-
36
stances the "whole -working" • The search for rationality
cannot rest in methods — in fact, it cannot rest at all. The
37
work of the mind is never done.
Behind all methods, then, is actual thought, living thought, the rational operation of the whole mind. Methods should have the same importance as workmen^ tools, no more. No saw is so important as the carpenter, for it is not so relevant to a wide variety of situations as he. It has a limited use. In the same way methods have limited uses, and important truth should not be required to stand or fall with methods. For many pursuits (e.g. childtraining) a lively ingenuity which uses or discards any and all established
34. Russell, art. (1922), 5II-512.
35. Blanshard, NT, II, 441.
36. Terms used by Rufus Jones in Bennett, SGH, xi, Introduction.
37. Hobhouse, RG, 73, 75.
16
methods according to the end that is aimed at is indispen- sable. In such cases the adherence to a single method would fall to the inefficient level of "using a square peg in a round hole." Rationality requires a sense of the fit- ness of things.
Explanation and intelligibility suffer from the inad- equacies of language and the aberrations of the mental pow- ers. The highest level of rationality that can be attained by finite minds, while worth the effort, is short of the de- gree of perfection that is to be desired; but at the same time that they fall short of the full perfection, individ- ual minds do make encouraging and necessary progress. It is hard work to be rational, but disastrous not to try to be. "Reason comes by her own. . . because unreason carried far enough produces miseries and disasters.
iii. A working definition of rationality. Hence- forth, rationality as intended in these pages will be used to designate the goal of a dialectic which in the Socratic manner leaves no important idea undefined, and in the man- ner of Hegel attempts to include all facts in the explana- tory scheme. It will emphasize neither analysis nor syn- thesis to the exclusion of one or the other; nor will it ignore the place of feeling and intuition as it explores reason. Rationality is an achievement of the whole man,
38. Hobhouse, RG, 121.
17
not of reason only. In no case will the abdication of rea- son in a sceptical or agnostic mood be regarded as ration- al. Rationality will be thought of as having some immedi- ate and some more ultimate characteristics which differ and which must be combined in order to attain the highest prac- tical level of self-consistency possible. In this combin- ation of the present and partial knowledge of things with an ideal of reason, there is the first intimation of the rational good — a good which consists first of all in the clarity and coherence and truth of thought itself, and af- terwards in man's realization of its benefits in his en- vironment. Above all, at its higher levels, rationality will be thought of as a movement toward a wider inclusion of facts of experience, and this continually expanding hor- izon constitutes an ideal aim. To show that a moral act
39
is rational is to connect it with a rational end or aim.
3. The definition of good
i. Good versus value and ideal. In order to define
good it is helpful and necessary to distinguish it from two
other closely related concepts, namely value and ideal.
Human experience is complex; within it can be differentiated
the notions of the actually liked and the ought-to-be-liked.
Whatever is actually liked or arouses interest may be said
40
to be or to have a value. The assertion that anything is
39. Hobhouse, RG, 77.
40. See Brightman, ITP, 126; Hobhouse, RG, 66.
18
41
good is a value -claim. Value-claims may refer to true values, i.e. genuine, objective goods; or they may be mere- ly subjective, arbitrary, and irrational. Human beings at- tribute value to numerous sensations, emotions, ideas, and feelings which they experience; but further experience and the processes of reason bring them to the point of denying real and lasting worth to many immediately pleasurable con- scious states. Value-claims are usually the expressions of original impulses; a man likes in the sheer immediacy of liking before he likes for a more valid reason. However, as a man comes to be ruled more and more by reason, his value-claims are based increasingly upon what he sees ought to be liked, rather than upon physiological drives or un- criticized emotional states. Thus a value-claim may be- come a true value.
In this dissertation, good is the term which will be used whenever a true value is meant. It will refer to any event or fact which makes a valid demand upon rational per- sons for recognition. Whatever ought to be liked will be called good. That there is such an aspect of reality is an assumption without which any further discussion is blocked. It cannot be proved by anything other than an ap- peal to rational experience. If a man says "that is good", he means to assert a characteristic of something in his en-
41. See Brightman, RV, 15, et passim; also POR, 91- 92, 114-116, 206.
19
vironment. Cases often occur in which a man makes this judgment under logical and ethical compulsion. Even though the consequences are unpleasant to him, the perception that a new order of things increases benefits to a great many oth- er people makes the judgment of value the necessary reaction to it, called for by its objective validity. It compels respect because men are in some measure ethical and logi- cal beings. They see in this order characteristics which they cannot deny and at the same time retain their integ- rity; they feel the obligation to recognize it as good.
An ideal is any pattern or concept of a more perfect state of affairs than the idealizer has yet been able to make actual; or an ideal is a good end which makes a valid claim upon a person in so far as it is capable of being re- alized by him. In their original status ideals are not real in the sense of existing, but they are real in so far as they are valid for rational minds. As they represent a ma^s ut- most capacity to achieve perfection they are true values or goods. One is not obligated to love an ideal which cannot be realized at all, but the love of valid ideals makes what would otherwise be merely change in the world a genuine pro- gress. Ideals are the counterpart of the capacity of per- sons to transcend the immediate by perceiving and desiring a remote good.
From the above discussion it will be seen that ra-
42. See Brightman, POI, Chap. Ill, 62-100.
20
tionality as defined in this dissertation includes the ef- fect of ideals on individual minds, for it has been said that rationality aims at the good.
In spite of the contention of numerous philosophers
43
that good and value are indefinable, one may demur that when a person has a concept of anything he has an idea which can in some way, however inadequate, be expressed or defined. Thus one who has seen the color yellow may grope for words, but there are propositions about it which have meaning, according to the intelligence and previous experi- ence of the person to whom the propositions are addressed. To regard any term as wholly indefinable seems to reduce a person to complete inability to say anything significant about it. Good and value may resist adequate definition, but some meaningful statements may be made about them. Some of these follow in the succeeding paragraph.
ii. Fundamental assumptions concerned with the good. Good will be better understood by examining the postulates presupposed by the supposition of a rational good. These are necessitated if good is to have any rational meaning, and must be seen as implied by the notion of rational good. The first postulate to be noted here is that a good with some degree of rationality must be real, i.e. it is not merely a matter of preference; it has some status in the
43. Moore, PE, 7; Urban, IW, 139-140; Rashdall, TGE, I, 135; Dewey, EN, 398; Sorley, MVIG, 91, 93, 108, 139, 141; Demos, POP, 74.
21
actual world. If there is no objective good, no benefit that man does not now possess could result from his action. To act at all would be both futile and foolish. A ration- al good is one that is objective. This idea will be ex- plored rather fully in Chapter Four.
The second assumption is that good can be actualized.
Freedom is essential to the good as it is essential to ra- 44
tionality. For if there were good, and man could not re- alize it, this would be to cause him pain and misery, and thus would contradict the idea of good which motivates him. And if men believe that their choices make a difference in the world when they actually do not, then the system in which such a thing is possible is irrational. This will be treated more fully in Chapter Five.
The third assumption is that some goods are not yet realized in practical affairs. This is to say that ideals and duties are bound up with the notion of good. For it would be meaningless and irrational for creatures with the power of reason and the capacity for realizing values that human beings have, to carry on life in a world where noth- ing else good could ever be achieved. Human beings normal- ly neither feel that there are no goods to be valued and re- alized, nor that life would be bearable unless goods could be realized. There are still persons who forego places of prestige and opportunity with high salaries because they
44. Bowne, MET, 329.
22
cannot feel that they deserve the amount paid. They have an ideal of actualizing a proportionate amount of good for the remuneration they receive. This general question, also will be more fully dealt with in Chapter Five.
Fourth is the assumption of the enduring quality or the permanence of goods. It must simply be seen that if a supposed good does not last long enough to be tested and evaluated, if it does not remain valid everywhere it occurs, it loses its rational character, which is the chief quality which could require it to be regarded as good. This assump- tion, if true, makes possible the rational choice of alter- natives v/ith. a view to the long run. Although human con- ceptions of good may be only partly stabilized or made per- manent, the objective world-order still retains a systemat- ic mode of operation in which everything that is good makes a lasting contribution. Chapter Four will deal with this postulate at greater length.
The fifth assumption is that the concept of the good which each person has is binding upon him, and also is to be taken as indicative of the general nature of good every- where in the universe. This is expressed in Brightma^s Law
of Autonomy (derived from Kant) , that "self-imposed ideals
45
are imperative." If the first proposition is not true, then we are being deceived about good and no rational ideal
45 • Brightman, ML, 106; See Rashdall, TGE, I, 61.
23
is possible. If the Law of Autonomy is untrue, then no further progress in understanding the nature of the good can be made, for a manfs own mental capacity is the first and last means by which he can know anything. The good be- comes an" ought -to -do" , a fact binding upon the man who com- prehends it; and increasingly so in proportion to its de- gree of coherence with the rest of his thinking. Chapters Four and Five will both employ this assumption and give it further explication.
The sixth postulate concerning the rational good is concerned with its requirement that all persons should be regarded as equal so far as the primary fact of selfhood alone is considered. Good is realized in persons; only persons recognize the ought — the obligation which the per- ception of an ideal places upon them. Rationality permits no unfairness among persons, and a rational good is impos- sible if some persons have unearned and unmerited advantages. Basic equality of persons, then, is a postulate of the ra- tional good; if there is inequality it must be such as can be rationally justified — an equality which in the final an- alysis is really adjusted reward, deserved, and coherent in the whole social scheme. In Chapter Five this postulate will be considered still further.
The ought-to-be-liked, the good, will be the goal when one values rationally, i.e. with a coherent, self-con- sistent, and most widely inclusive end in view. The ought-
46. Cf. Wheelwright, CIE, 378.
24
to-be-liked takes precedence over the liked because it makes a universally comprehensible appeal; i.e. it has meaning for all rational minds, whereas value-claims are individual and often hotly contested opinions with doubtful validity when carried to wider areas of experience.
iii. The claim of good upon rational beings. The rea- sonable person is oriented by his own nature toward the ought-to-be-liked. As soon as a man begins to discipline his likes by referring them to reasons, he becomes more ob- jective. His value-claims will either gain new strength thereby, or die for want of sustenance because they cannot assimilate the strong meat of rational objectivity with which adult ideas are nourished. One may differ with Plato concerning the mode of conceiving the objectivity of the
good, but that the way of knowledge leads to the good seems
47
undeniable. Plato expresses the idea thus:
The idea of good is the highest knowledge, . • .all oth- er things become useful and advantageous only by their use of this.
Do you think that the possession of the whole world is of any value without the good? or of all wisdom, without the beautiful and good?
It has already been intimated that purpose is an as-
pect of rationality. Purpose is basic in the nature of a
reasonable person, a rational being. Coherent thought it-
47. Plato, Rep. , Bk. vi, 505a.
48. See above, 15-17.
25
self is fraught with intention, with a motivation toward 49
its object. "At any moment," says Royce, "your ideas,
50
in so far as they are rational, embody a purpose." Pur- pose is the term applied to the will to approve, choose, and pursue an end persistently. A good purpose may be said to rule the person who approves, chooses, and persistently pursues ideal ends, those which ought to be pursued. "Rea- son calls us to see our minds and our world as a whole; and
to approve as ideal only those ends which are rational in
51
the light of that vision."
Purposes come into conflict and contradict each oth- er—a condition which indicates that the task of reason is not yet fully performed, and that the good is incompletely realized. A man who is at cross-purposes with himself can- not assert that his mental state is good, nor is he able with confidence to reason about what ought to be liked in a more ultimate sense. He is irrational in as much as he sees the good imperfectly. When one sees what ought to be liked and finds his satisfaction in it, he has, for the time being, realized his rational capacity to the full. Changing conditions, and the arrival of new ideas may later require him to look again, to select and pursue ends in the
49. Cf. Hobhouse, RG, 22.
50. Royce, WI, I, 441, 443.
51. Brightman, POI, 82.
26
service of the good, but each challenge thus met brings him a rung higher on the ladder of rationality.
The definition of good, as well as that of ration- ality, requires reference to purpose, the kind of purpose that is expressed in a rational will. "The coherent will
alone is concretely good. It is the source of the goodness
52
of objects or things." Until there is some sense of di- rection, of goal or end, no one can say with conviction that anything is good except the purpose or will which in- tends to move in such a direction that good will be pro- duced, whatever that direction may turn out to be.
iv. A working definition of the good. If purposes are both rational in the sense defined above, and success- ful, a good objective order is the probable outcome. What- ever men find or whatever they experience is accepted by them as good if they see that it fulfils a rational purpose, i.e. a purpose which includes the greatest possible benefit to all together. Rational purposes and anything that ful- fils rational purposes may be said to be good. Anything which has not been employed, is no longer employed, or can- not be employed to fulfil a rational purpose may be neutral or evil; the latter if it fulfils an irrational purpose.
v. Validation of the definition. This description of the good, although somewhat general, is clear. To be ra-
52. Paton, GW, 180.
27
tional as previously defined, includes being coherent, self- consistent, and the constant attempt to include more facts. Purpose refers to the persistent will to approve, choose, and pursue any end, good or bad. Rational purpose indi- cates the self-direction and self-restraint of the person actively seeking the things he likes and ought to like, vol- untarily submitting to the principles of coherence, self- consistency, etc. The motivation, the will to make pur- poses rational, must come from childhood training, from an active conscience, or from a religious consciousness.
The definition places emphasis upon purposes, and thus indicates two functions of a purpose — the motivating of a person to choose ends and to select means. Since ra- tional purposes themselves are basic agencies in the service of the good, without which it could have neither meaning nor realization, such purposes must be designated as in- trinsic goods, or ends-in-themselves. The means which they employ are instrumental goods; the latter will be rational so far as they are harmonized with the end sought, examined and selected with the view of increasing the rationality of purposing agents everywhere. It is not intended to main- tain that the only intrinsic goods are rational purposes, — any end, rationally chosen, may be said to be an intrinsic good. But it will be instrumental in so far as it con- tributes still further to the development of rational pur- poses or wills. Rational purposes will include the inten-
28
tion to like what is worth liking, and thus exclude values based merely on impulsive or erratic desires. One of the strange paradoxes of the human self is its ability to ac- complish its aim to be rational by deciding against itself, choosing a rational end in spite of its strong inclination toward an irrational end.
Someone might object that purposes are often evil, so that the definition would allow whatever serves evil ends to be called good. An evil political machine, like the Nazi party, could be called good because it fulfils a purpose. The word rational is the sole safeguard against this interpretation. Whatever is evil is so because it conflicts with well-established, well-attested purposes. Evil is by nature ungrounded, detached, illogical, partial, spasmodic, and incoherent. Within a limited realm evil pur- poses may be elaborately and intricately organized, but their success must depend upon deception concerning their true place in the whole order of existence.
The attempts to define the good and the rational have shown how closely related the two concepts are. In experi- ence they seem to be inseparable if one adheres closely to the idea of good as that which ought to be liked. In that case the rational is part of the good — it is one of the items which ought to be liked. On the other hand, if there is a genuine good, it will inevitably and invariably be found to be rational in the sense in which rational has
29
been defined. This problem is fundamental — it will occupy the most of Chapter Three.
4. Summary of the chapter
In the present chapter a statement of the problem and definitions of terms have been presented. The fact must be recognized that in spite of the constant use of the term good and the efforts of men to develop a rational society, the present state of things is disappointing. Modern sci- ence, which has been regarded as possibly the most rational of human interests, and which has its day of profound in- fluence, has assumed an attitude of indifference toward the good. Therefore one is constrained to ask, first, in what sense, if any, is the good rational? Second, are there valid concepts of good which human reason can discover? Is a rational good either necessary or possible? Finally, can the supposedly valid concepts of good be realized in con- crete experience?
Such questions can only be answered when it is known what is meant by the rational good. The ambiguity of the word rational is one of the stumblingb locks which must be removed. For this dissertation the meaning of the word was taken to be three things: First, the clarity and coherence of the thought-process itself; second, a dialectic where- by the end to which a constantly wider inclusion of data logically points is taken as making certain justifiable de- mands upon the reasoner; and third, the attempt to fulfil
30
these demands by applying them to nature and to society.
Thus rationality may he thought of as a union of the ideal
53
and the practical.
The good, it was said, requires differentiation from ideals and values. Whereas value refers to whatever is de- sired, liked, loved, enjoyed, or prized, the good is taken to refer only to what ought to be liked. Values are thus dependent upon persons and are subjective; true values are taken to be equivalent to the good and have also an objec- tive aspect. As objective, the good makes a rational demand on minds everywhere — its appeal is universal. Ideals are goods which call upon rational beings to realize them; they are ends which ought to be liked because of their nature, and because of the nature of the rational persons who ap- prove of them. Of course they are values, too, when some- one likes them.
Good is of two orders or kinds- -the good end, good- in- itself , and the good means, or instrumental good. The good-in-itself is defined in this chapter as a rational will or the intention of a rational mind. The first thing that can be said to be good is the agency which intends to move and does move in such a direction that good will be pro- duced, increased, spread abroad. Instrumental good is the designation for anything which fulfils rational purposes.
53. See above, 16-17.
n
5. Sources
Among ancient philosophers, Plato and his successors up to the closing of the Academy furnish considerable rele- vant material. Germs of much modern thinking are present in the philosophy of the Sophists, the Cyrenaics, the Cyn- ics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, In the modern period the material becomes so abundant as to be almost unwieldly. From the seventeenth century until the present in Germany, France, and England able men have contributed extensively to the better understanding of rationality and goodness. Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, the British moralists, the Deists, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the German idealists — but time and space fail even the naming of the contributors. No attempt can be made to review all these sources, but wherever fitting and needful, they will be used for illustration and reference.
Recent books which relate closely to the problem of this dissertation are: The Rational Good by L.T. Hobhouse, The Good Will by H.J". Paton, and The Intelligible World by W.M. Urban. A glance at footnotes will reveal that much help has been derived from Bowne, Blanshard, Bosanquet, Brightman, Dewey, James, Leighton, Pringle-Pattison, Rader, Rashdall, and many others.
6. Statement on method and the plan of future chapters.
The method to be followed in the dissertation is to explore first the writings of certain philosophers who en-
32
tertain doubts about the rationality of the world, and who are somewhat arbitrary in their selection of ideals which they regard as valid. These writings and viewpoints will be subjected to criticism. With the help of the results obtained by criticism, with the method indicated, the prob- lem of the implicative system in which the rational good plays its part will be explored. Throughout, the aim will be to realize the ideal of rationality already portrayed, and if this effort is successful, the final chapter will indicate what relation the rational good may be expected to bear to social progress, and will constitute an attempted application of the principles evolved to the social en- vironment. The plan as a whole follows: Chapter One, as noted, states the problem and offers definitions. Chapter Two will deal with objections to the notion of a rational good. In Chapter Three certain logical and epistemo logi- cal ramifications of the rational good will be explored; the problem of Chapter Four will be the relation of the ra- tional good to the real; and as stated above, Chapter Five will be concerned with the possibility that a rational good may bear fruit in social progress.
With this prelude, then, the course is set, and the task is ready to begin. The first question to ask is, what case do those have who challenge the rational good? Can it be demonstrated to be an ideal alike impossible to conceive coherently and to realize? These questions require an an- swer which the following chapter will attempt to supply.
CHAPTER II
OPPOSITION TO THE RATIONAL GOOD
1. Review of the definition of the rational good
In the preceding chapter the rational good has been defined as having a dual aspect: the first and fundamental one is a will that moves coherently, consistently, and in- telligently to produce and increase harmony; and the sec- ond aspect consists of the means which this will employs to produce harmony. The present chapter will set forth a number of views which oppose one or both of the elements of rationality as thus defined. These views will then be evaluated.
2. The incompleteness of the progress of mind All philosophers worthy of the name have recognized one fact — namely that finite intelligence has proceeded but a small distance toward complete understanding of the world. Whether this results from the intrinsic irration- ality (brute f actuality) of nature, or from the limitations of finite reason, or from both together, is a point at is- sue. Comparatively few thinkers are persuaded that the world is meaningless, but it seems only fair to say that1
The actual knowledge that we have arrived at in no way justifies us in assuming the absolute rationality of the universe. Strictly speaking, not a single event
1. HSffding, POR, 36-37.
34
has ever "been entirely explained. Our causal series display many gaps, and they come to an end altogether long before we have reached any cause which we can suppose to be first.
Therefore reason is often at rope's end, and many sys- tem-builders charge the objective world, both physical and nonphysical, with the responsibility. Reason could discov- er its secret if it had a secret, and solve its problems if a solution were possible. Many world processes apparently neutralize each other and are therefore self-defeating. The
world is in part irrational and there is no guarantee that
2
a rational good is possible.
3. Classifications of various metaphysical views which fall into irrationality Various conceptions of the world's supposed irration- ality have been formulated. To say, on metaphysical grounds that the objective world partakes of unreason may mean
(1) that it is mechanical in its operation, atomistic in its composition, and infiltrated with unaccount able (or brute) facts. This view is called mech- anism, atomism, naturalism, or the scientific view The names of Democritus, Hobbes, Hume, and Darwin may be associated with the idea of mechanism or atomism. Empiricism and realism in general are aspects of philosophy which take account of brute fact.
2. See Cohen, RN, 136, for an assertion that there is irrationality in the universe.
t
35
(2) that it is governed by an arbitrary will or mind which is indifferent to human valuations and ideals. This view may be called authoritarianism and is exemplified in Calvinism and in Mohammed- anism.
(3) that the so-called goods which the world affords are subjective and illusory while seeming to be real; values are palliatives to keep human vic- tims disposed to endure further suffering. There is no true good. This is called pessimism, and Schopenhauer is the most famous proponent of it.
{U) that there are real or objective goods, but that these are contrary to usual human valuations; the usual valuations are irrational. This is approx- imately what Nietzsche affirms in what he calls transvaluation in the subtitle of The Will to Power.
(5) that the real goods are inaccessible to the dis- cursive reason, and hence incapable of definition and conceptual treatment. Plotinus is an out- standing representative of this view, which is called mysticism.
(6) that the world contains an irrational element (not merely brute fact) which is intrinsically antag- onistic to law and order, and which continuously resists the efforts of reason to overcome it. The
t
36
religions of the world recognize such an element as a rule; (Ahriman, Satan, karma) . But it is al- so recognized by certain empirical philosophers, of whom Plato is an eminent representative. The view itself, for want of a better term, may be called realism or factualism.
First view: mechanism and atomism* Naturalism and
the natural sciences contain views which approximate that
expressed in the first group above. For the scientist the
world is a maze of facts to be discovered and described in
3
as orderly a fashion as possible.
It is loosely knit. Its primary material are minute particles, and the main principle which science recog- nizes in their behavior is mere chance. ... So much progress in our appreciation of the world could not be achieved in a few years. Galileo, for instance, was en- tirely unaware that nature is ruled by chance and thus escapes all understanding. It was practically our gen- eration which made this final discovery.
Science employs one main explanatory principle — the mechanioal principle of cause and effect. It must find the antecedents and the consequents of each single fact, and it makes no attempt to explain why any fact should be just what it is, beyond asserting that some event or chain of events immediately preceded it. One effect of this adher- ence to the scientific method is to rule out the possibil- ity of adequate explanation of certain kinds of facts, par- ticularly in the fields of ethics and psychology, or in oth-
3. KShler, PVWF, 13. K&hler is rot in full sympathy with the view expressed. Cf. ibid., 35-37, 410- 411, 413.
37
ers where human preferences and volitions must enter in. Cause and effect relationships simply do not account, in any satisfactory sense, for the occurrence of our ideas or our preferences. For this reason philosophers and even sci- entists themselves have condemned the inadequacies of the scientific method. In the realm of fact, says Blanshard, genius is no better than lunacy; better and worse are con- trasts which no science which deals exclusively in facts 4
can. indulge in. The critic of science and of scientists 5
may say:
You give us correct but misleading statements about man so long as your statements refer to mere facts and not to the very essence of the human world, to value and to insight in values. Lastly, science is a destruc- tive agent in that it tends to demolish not only this or that particular valuation of man, but even his be- lief in value as such, as a principle that transcends mere facts.
The self-limitation of science to facts of a mechan- ical and atomistic nature blinds it to other facts just as significant — facts which point to a different kind of ra- tionality and to an objective order of goodness. Socrates saw this danger of missing part of the truth in his day; and Bowne represented the opinion of many when he wrote: ^
4. Blanshard, NT, I, 4-63.
5. KBhler, PVWF, 32. Kflhler is not precisely stating his own view. Cf. ibid., 35-36, 410, 411.
6. Plato, Phaedo, 97b-99d.
7. Bowne, MET, 296; cf. THE, 290.
38
But as to science, we must remember the relativity and incompleteness of actual science. If it will hold for a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases, it will do all we can ask of it.
The natural sciences cannot really challenge a ra- tional good, for they are by their choice of methods ex- cluded from the realm of knowledge where the rational good may be found. Its rationality lacks a full-blooded vital- ity— its method is rational only with respect to the lim- ited purpose which called it into being. The great con- tributions of the established descriptive and experimental sciences should not be ignored or disparaged, but these contributions must not blind men to its shortcomings and inadequacy to deal with man*s ethical and spiritual prob- lems, which are, after all, the fundamental ones.
ii. The second view: authoritarianism. The second classification of beliefs about the objective world which purport to offer a challenge to the rational good is that which asserts the domination of the world by an arbitrary will which is indifferent to humanity and its standards of valuation. These beliefs include primitive animistic con- ceptions, theological views of God as an inexorable poten- tate, and the notions of fatalists or other persons who have a continuous quarrel with the universe. In animism, worshippers are filled with a superstitious fear of evil spirits or gods whose capricious demands have no logical ground or explanation — they are wholly irrational, and are met as well as can be by the practice of irrational magic
39
and sacrifice. Mohammedanism represents God as a supreme potentate who demands complete submission of his servants (to whom he is merciful). Even though Allah is cruel to his enemies, however ungodlike that may seem to most mod- ern Christians, he is probably not more cruel than the God
of Calvinistic theology has been represented by some of its o
adherents, for the latter God has been said to vent his wrath upon infants, and his mercy toward men or his con- demnation of them is unpredictable.
As for the notions of fatalists or disgruntled per- sons— not all, of course, regard the world as under the dom- ination of will. Many see it as contingent. However, James Thomson* s "The City of Dreadful Night" describes a divine being who delights in visiting woes upon mankind and is con- sequently not bound by human standards of rationality and goodness.
Such views carry little conviction with the majority of thinking people. They appeal more to emotional persons, or to those who have experienced frustration. The main arg- ument against them is that they do not adequately account for the whole experience of mankind. Science itself has overcome any argument for animism; and common sense pro- hibits worship of a God who is arbitrary, unfair, or unpre-
8. See the Koran, Chap. Ill, 32, 45; Chap. VI, 89; Chap. X, 157; Chap. XXII, 250-251; Chap. XL, 352; Chap. XLII, 359.
9. See M. Wigglesworth,MThe Day of Doom."
40
dictable. Human beings often show more of divine nature. And men who think of God as a tyrant who loves to torment them simply accuse the divine of originating evils which actually have other causes; if they would be rational, many of these causes might be pointed out to them. They ignore the good that comes to them and magnify the evil — an irra- tional procedure. Rationality calls for an ever-widening inclusion of facts in a man*s account of things — hence these beliefs constitute no fundamental challenge to the rational good.
iii. The third view: pessimism and f ictionalism. The third mode of conceiving of an irrational world is that of the pessimists. There are moments when most human beings feel strongly inclined to be Schwarzseher. Values seem il- lusory and the apparent goods which come to mankind, when viewed more comprehensively, are seen to be evils, for they make possible to mankind the great evil of survival. To live is to desire, to desire is to be frustrated and to suffer; suffering is evil, therefore life is an evil. This theme recurs in Schopenhauer's writings, and reaches a climax in such passages as the following:^"0
But the present is always passing through his hands into the past; the future is quite uncertain and always short. Thus his existence, even when we consider only its formal side, is a constant hurrying of the present into the dead past, a constant dying. But if we look at it from the physical side; it is clear that, as our
10. Schopenhauer, YJWI, I, 401-402.
u
walking is merely a constantly prevented falling, the life of our body is only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-postponed death.
,In the same minor key sound forth such expressions as that the life of man and brute alike "swings like a pen- dulum backwards and forwards between pain and ennui"; this is true because the essential nature of life is to will and to strive; it is a nature "which may be very well compared to an unquenchable thirst. "^ This is the worst of all pos- sible worlds, for if it were any worse, it could not en-
12
dure; all life would cease.
Blind irrational will, the deepest reality in the
universe, is the agency back of all activity. This will is
inscrutable — it is ungoverned by reason in its original
13
status. It is postulated because of the fact that
in everything in nature there is something of which no ground can ever be assigned, of which no explanation is possible, and no ulterior cause is to be sought.
Some temporary alleviation of this otherwise com- pletely hopeless situation may be found by some persons in
14
artistic contemplation.
Most extreme of the pessimists whose writings are
15
available is Prince Troubetzkoy, who asserts dolefully that
11. Schopenhauer, WWI, I, 401-402.
12. Cf . Wright, HMP, 364.
13. Schopenhauer, WWI, I, 153, 230, 354.
14. Schopenhauer, SEL, 120, 127-128; WWI, I,
15. Troubetzkoy, art. (1917), 179-181.
42
. • . Life in its entirety, always repeats the same vicious circle, spinning on its axis like any stupid top.
Every life struggles to rise above the earth like the butterfly, only to fall back, without hope of respite, and be blended with the dust.
What we now experience is no longer the mere ab- sence of rational meaning, no longer the disappointment of failing to reach the goal; it is something far more excruciating. ... We see the meaning of life, for which we were in search, transformed into an object of mockery.
A type of thought which takes goods to be illusory after the manner of pessimists but from a different motive is f ictionalism, of which Vaihinger1 s philosophy of the "as if" is illustrative. This philosophy owes much to Kant*s phenomenalism. According to Vaihinger, "all ideals, log- ically considered, are fictions."^" The presence of fic- tions is proved by the contradictions, the antinomies that are generated. Fictions are useful inventions, — they "are
mere temporary halting-places for thought and have no bear-
17
ing on reality." In a manner similar to that of prag- matism, fictionalism looks to action and to practical con- sequences as the end of thought; and the fact that an idea
is false does not preclude the possibility of its being
18 TO useful. Good and values are unreal, for
16. Vaihinger, PAI, 46-47.
17. Ibid., 66, 100.
18. Ibid., pref., viii.
19. Ibid., 124.
43
the only thing that is real and will remain real is the observable unchangeability of phenomena, their relations, etc. Everything else is a mere illusion with which the psyche plays about.
Suoh a nihilistic treatment of goods and values con- tradicts both common sense and sound reason, for over and over again the power of ideas, ideals, truth, and love, as against "the observable unchangeability of phenomena" has been demonstrated. Today, as ever, "the pen is mightier than the sword."
If it were able to describe the whole of life as well as it characterizes men's blacker moods, pessimism would constitute a challenge of considerable significance to the rational good. But if a man will have it that good is real- ly bad, that value is an illusion, that the world is only
20
intelligible when it is irrational, then he is arbitrary
and subjective, and his account of things, while it may be
21
intriguing, cannot be authoritative. Most men choose to be rational rather than irrational.
iv. The fourth view: transva lua t ion . The fourth con- ception of the irrational character of the world, as pre- sented above, was that there are real, objective goods but that these conflict with ordinary and usual human valuations by reason of their superiority. The usual valuations are not only irrational — they are weak. The fundamental fact in the world, says Nietzsche, who advocates this view, is
20. Urban, IW, 187.
21. Rashdall, TGE, II, 236.
44
the "will to power," This will simply exists as a primary
22
force in the world. In the affirmation of it lies the possibility of realizing the true goods; but only strong men are courageous enough to follow out the implications of ruthlessness and individualism which it demands. The will to power is the metaphysical ultimate, and all things else are instrumental. When the will to power can be ade- quately realized in an individual, he is a superman or over- 23
man.
The usual valuations, those of the Sklaven, bring on decadence in a society — they produce mediocrity or some- thing worse. They deny instead of affirming the will to 24
power. Traditional Christianity, for example, fosters a
"poor people's God," and honors the weak, simpering virtues
25
of pity, benevolence, and love. Democracy, the political code of the herd, is rejected; and in its place is substi- tuted the ideal of men who are strong enough to be "free 26
spirits." The inferior race is justified in existing at
all, only because it serves as a pedestal for the superior 27
men. The latter constitute the aristocratic, ideal class
22. Nietzsche, WTP, II, sees. 533, 552; see also sees. 3, 4, and 6; BGE, sec. 36.
23. Nietzsche, TSZ, Prologue, sec. 3; cf. Perry, PRP, 171-172.
2U. Nietzsche, BGE, 57.
25. Nietzsche, GOM, Pref. sees. 5, 6; ANT, sees. 17,18.
26. Nietzsche, DOD, sees. 199, 201; Wright, HMP, 391.
27. Cf. Barrett, ETH, 243.
45
of masters; they exercise their strength and create their own morality, --their own way of life, which is one of self- assertion, splendid courage, self -crucifying exertion (for one must not pamper himself). Nietzsche found his ideal in classical Greece — in her splendid art, her intellectual aris- tocracy, her delight in strong physiques and athletic skill. Nietzsche was convinced that Christianity was chiefly respon- sible for the loss of these values, and that they must be
regained, if at all, by the denial of traditional morality.
28
He describes the reversal thus:
Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions ♦God* and 'sin1 will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to an old man.
On Nietzsche's view truth can no longer be regarded
as a rational ideal, if the true goods are to be gained.
29
This is evident when he writes that 7
the falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it. . . . The question is how far an opinion is life- furthering, life-preserving. . . . And we are fundamen- tally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong) are the most indispensable to us; that without a recognition of logical fictions. . . man could not live.
If one is to take Nietzsche seriously, it is evident that he discards the usually accepted principles of ration- ality, for he asserts the absence of any end or goal in the 30
universe, and declares that although destruction (presum-
28. Nietzsche, BGE, 75.
29. Ibid., 8.
30. Nietzsche, WTP, 425; BGE, 20.
46
ably of everything that thwarts the will to power) is il- logical, "the Nihilist does not believe in the necessity
31
of being logical."
The only way one may take Nietzsche seriously is to
look for what he was trying to do. His inconsistencies
are difficult if not impossible to reduce to rationality —
he seems to intend to be provocative and exciting rather 32
than logical. But underlying his demand for a trans- valuation of values, back of the condemnation of the old insipid order of human mediocrity, he seems to have some- thing of the same idea in mind as Socrates had in the fol- 33
lowing speech:
I only wish, Crito, the people could accomplish the greatest evils, that they might be able to accomplish also the greatest good things. Then all would be well. But now they can do neither of the two.
Thus it may be that Nietzsche* s radical and paradox- ical language conceals the true underlying rationality of his chief purpose — to rid the social order of hypocrisy, weakness, resentment, envy, mediocrity, and meanness of spirit. There is nothing in the conception of the ration- al good which conflicts with this aim, and in so much Nietzsche offers no real challenge to the rational good.
However, Nietzsche is irrational in his method, even
31. Nietzsche, WTP, 425.
32. Of. Wheelwright, CIE, 128.
33. Plato, Crito, 44d.
47
though his "beneficent purpose be acknowledged. His view is
partial; his ideas of men and things are too absolute in
some respects, for he would have a man either master or
slave, and good either the expression of the will to power 34
or nothing. In other words, Nietzsche's ideal is too re- stricted, too one-sided, too prejudiced. Merely to dismiss the goods or values to which he is opposed does not blot them out of existence, nor refute their claims, nor prove them irrational.
35
One other point as raised by Barrett may be noted. Nietzsche's view does not reveal fully what shall be the function of the superman, beyond the fact that he will ex- ult in his power and in his anticipation of the eternal re- currence. But an idle, aimless perfection is an irrational culmination of any effort. The likely occupation of super- men would be war, which unfortunately means the destruction of all values, to a considerable extent even those of the victor.
Various features of Nietzsche's philosophy lack suf- ficient ground to be acceptable. For example, the world as driven wholly by blind will is an hypothesis untrue to the totality of facts, some of which point to a rational tele- ology. The assumption that the masses must serve as step-
34. Cf. Wheelwright, CIE, 128.
35. Barrett, ETH, 244.
48
ping-stones for the few masters is contrary to the ration- al principle that men benefit themselves as they benefit others — a theory at least as old as Socrates, Nietzsche contradicts the rational good, for the most part, but it may be said that his contribution, if he has been rightly interpreted, is greater than his challenge. Rationality is largely determined by purpose, by the intended end.
v* Tne fifth view: mysticism. The fifth mode of conceiving of the world's irrational character is one which declares that the real goods of the world are inaccessible to the discursive reason, and must be comprehended by other means. Conceptual treatment of them, attempts to define them, are futile; real goods and rational valuations are incommensurable .
This viewpoint may be broken up into two problems, the metaphysical and the epistemo logical, of which the lat- ter, which is concerned with the ways other than reason by which one may know reality, will be treated in a later por- tion of this chapter. The metaphysical problem will deal briefly with the goods themselves, with what is regarded as real.
Mysticism is the type of philosophy which approxi- mates this point of view most nearly. In this discussion it will neither be feasible nor necessary to separate re- ligious from philosophical mysticism. The question to be
36. Plato, Apol., 2$c-e; cf. Rep. , 335.
49
considered is, how does the mystic think of the real, and in what way is his thinking opposed to the idea of a ra- . tional good?
According to Josiah Royce, the mystic supposes the
37
real to be indefinable. Nothing can be said about the real without contradiction, since the necessary judgment represents a finite viewpoint about an absolutely all-in- elusive unity which contains even the knower himself. Any statement is limited to an abstract and partial meaning and is therefore false — it cannot tell the whole truth. Any partial reality is scorned by the mystic; he desires only
the genuine, the one reality. Bennett describes the mystics.
39 They^
turn their backs on everything that we include under the terms culture and civilization. They leave behind the whole elaborate system of goods which men have discov- ered and laboured to establish. For action they sub- stitute contemplation; for society, solitude; for rea- son ecstasy.
Since the ultimate reality cannot be described with- out falsifying the reality, many mystics have given up the attempt. But not all; and some of the keen reasoners in the history of thought have been mystics.^0 If one rea- sons, he must ascribe some predicate, character, or quality
37. Royce, WI, I, 80-83, 186, 188, 191-192. Quoted in Bennett, SOM, 29.
38. Hocking, TP, 380, 381, 384.
39. Bennett, SOM, 15.
40. Hocking, TP, 390.
50
to whatever he names as real. Thus it is, that in mysti- cism, God or the Real has also been called the Good. The reason for this has been, as Hocking shows, that some mys- U
tics waver.
We may refrain from calling the Real 'good/ for fear of limiting it to our conceptions of goodness, and yet believe that ♦good* comes nearer the truth than 'evil.' And while hesitating to assert that the Real is 'mental1 or •personal1 — for the mentality we know requires a non- mental environment to live and grow in, and the person- ality we know needs a society of other persons around it to play its very partial role in — the mystic still implies, when he identifies the Real outside us with the ultimate self within us, that »mind* or • spirit' would come nearer the truth than 'matter' or any other non -mental thing. Thus, while mystics have commonly been in trouble with an orthodox tradition which in- sists on the literal personality of God, they have com- monly referred to their Real as 'God.' And Spinoza, who maintained a stricter neutrality than most, used the expression 'Natura sive Deus, * — Nature or God.
For the mystic, then, God is the essence of all good, for which or for whom all lesser goods or human values are gladly renounced. Such a 'world-flight' contradicts the elements of the rational good which call for its realiza- tion in nature and society and for the inclusion of all sorts of facts within it. This renunciation of the world seems insufficiently concerned with social progress; and it refuses to face realistically the actual facts of human ex- perience. It is less ready to bear the ills that plague mankind than it is tc "fly to others that we know not of The extreme otherworldl iness of mysticism is not the way of the rational good.
41. Hocking, TP, 392; he quotes Plotinus, Enneads, VI, 9, vi.
42. Bennett, SOM, 29; quotes Plotinus, Enneads. VI vii, 34.
51
vi. The sixth view: realism or factualism. The six- th way of conceiving of the irrationality of the world was expressed thus: It was said that existence is weighted with an irrational element which by its very nature con- flicts with reason, law, and order. Contemporary writers who hold this view are numerous. Among them are William James, E.G. Spaulding, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Otto, and M.R. Cohen. The latter writes
Existence in the actual world is more than rational connectedness and ... it cannot be entirely grasped by mere reasoning.
There is thus something which will always be for us beyond rational form or system, and in that sense ap- propriately called irrational.
Spaulding designates this irrational element as
"chance" and the "Valueless" and thinks of it as a nonra-
tional aspect of nature. ^ Otto calls it the "numinous"--
an obscure depth "which is not accessible to our power of
conceiving, and which is therefore called the non-rational.
Russell compares the action of nature to a state of anar- 46
chy. James feels that if the world is one orderly, pur- posive, rational system, then the fight we are in "is no
better than a game of private theatricals from which one
47
may withdraw at will."*"
43. Cohen, RN, 136.
44. Spaulding, WOC, 276; art. (1912), 241; Cf. Bright man, IPII, 19.
45. Otto, TH, 75; quoted in Baillie, IOR, 251.
46. Russell, ABCR, 196.
47. James, WTB, 61; Pringle-Pattison, IOG-, 394, quotes
52
As a matter of fact, this conception of irration- ality in nature is one of the most ancient of all views, ap« pearing in numerous religions, and in philosophies at least from Plato*s time. Before Plato, Anaxagoras felt that he had to account for the order and harmony. that existed — ap- parently he felt that disorder and disharmony needed no ex- plaining. And Empedocles explained the irrational motions and events by a principle of hate or strife. ^
Plato was keenly aware of the evil, chaos, and con- tradiction in the world. Wild motions surge in the cosmos,
49
and wild emotions in the soul. Neither soul nor cosmos
is in the complete control of reason — for besides reason,
which is the efficient cause, there is a rival cause which
50
is responsible for "accidental and irregular effects."
51
This rival of reason is named "Errant Cause.** It is ir- rational— a kind of unpredictability which to a consider- able extent baffles both the finite and divine minds, al- though God copes with it successfully when he exerts him- 52
self. It is necessity — the state of things which existes
53
"in the absence of God," when the composite elements of
48. See "Fragments" in Nahm,SEGP, 130-131, 150-151.
49. Plato, Rep. , 439c, d,e.
50. Plato, Tim. , 46e.
51. Ibid., 48a.
52 Ibid., 68d, e; 53b; 30a.
53. Ibid., 53a, b.
53
54
the world possess only aimless motion.
What Plato means exactly by his figures to express
the irrationality of the world is a controverted point
55
among interpreters. At various places he intimates that
some achievements are impossible because of the refractory
nature of the materials from which the world must be formed.
56 57
Whether it is mechanical causation, chance, the conflict
of divine purposes by which one purpose necessarily excludes 58
some other, or the nature of things sensed as brute facts
59
or immediate ideas is impossible to determine with any
great degree of certainty from Plato's description. But the
fact remains that necessity arises out of the aimlessness
and incoherence of things, in the absence of God, hence in
60
the absence of order and logical grounding.
The conflict of necessity with reason is one that oc-
61
curs in nature, as Plato conceives of it. It does not oc- cur in the mind of the Artificer, for he is not obligated
54. Plato, Tim., 52e, 53a.
55. Ibid., 30a, 32b, d; 37d; 53b.
56. Plato, Tim. , Bury's footnote, Engl, page 109.
57. Cornford, PC, 164 .
58. Hitter, EPP, 376-378.
59. Taylor, CPT, 300; Demos, POP, 12.
60. Plato, Tim. , 53a, b.
61. Ibid., 56c.
54
to have anything to do with it as he would be if it were a
part of his own consciousness. God could rest serene in
his contemplation of ideas; he entered voluntarily into the
62
task of reducing unreason to reason. The process was hin- dered by the factor of necessity, but the result is a highly desirable one, ^3 especially in view of the fact that the
former chaotic condition is transformed into a self-acting,
64
self-sufficing universe in which other valuable results can be wrought out by lesser gods and presumably by men.
The "ever-existing Place" "Wherein" all process oc- curs is the "Receptacle," otherwise called "Mother," "Nurse,"
65
and "a Kind, invisible and unshaped." The receptacle con- tained all the "suchlikes" (material possibilities of becom- ing) befoBe the generation of the universe, when they were
66 n
"always circling round" and there was no reason or meas-
67
ure in anything. Every variety of appearance is manifest- ed in the receptacle; its motions are irregular, and its con- tents are shaken like grain being separated from the chaff. It is upon the contents of the receptacle that God begins the task of introducing order and reason by "first marking
62. Plato, Tim. , 29e, 30a.
63. Ibid., 33a, b; 34a, 53b.
64. Ibid., 33d, 34a.
65. Ibid., 4Be-53c
66. Ibid., 49e.
67. Ibid., 53a.
55
them [i.e. the suchlikes of earth, air, fire, and waterlout
68
into shapes by means of forms and numbers." The receptacle is a permanent factor of reality, along with the pattern (model, form) and God (the Artificer). In it is found ne- cessity, the errant cause, v/hich makes the receptacle a hin- drance, yet a necessary hindrance (if a world is to exist) to God's plan.
To speculate here upon the ultimate or real nature of the receptacle, what Plato intended to symbolize, or what it may mean for modern interpreters, is beside the
point. There are numerous capable interpreters whose con-
69
elusions differ. The point is that a rational account of the world, from Plato's point of view, cannot assume that the world is completely orderly, coherent, intelligible, rational in itself — reason must operate upon it, and make it as perfect as possible. Reason is a teleological prin- ciple which must persuade indeterminate "suchlikes" (poten- tialities) to take on regular motions and harmonious rela- tionships rather than to remain irrational. The irrational element in the world is thus not absolute, not wholly in- corrigible; evils can be transmuted, and a rational good is possible — it is even in large measure already achieved.
This view, thus expressed, is not a refutation of the possibility of a rational good, but is rather an il-
68. Plato, Tim. , 53b.
69. Cf. Cornford, Demos, Taylor, Ritter, Archer-Hind, Lutoslawski, and others.
56
lustration of the problem which it confronts, and of the way in which it may be articulated. Most of the so-called challenges to the rational good are challenges to other at- tempts to harmonize the contradictions in our experience of nature. Any normal human effort (thought or action) aims both to be rational and to achieve the good. Others may see his system as nonsense, but to the man who forms it, it appears as light and truth. "The philosopher seeks a world that is intelligible even when, as in the case of
70
Schopenhauer, to be intelligible it must be irrational." To aim at unintelligibility is self-defeating.
U* Epistemological views which make concessions to the irrational The foregoing discussion in this chapter has dealt with objective aspects of irrationality, and has considered how experienced metaphysical facts have been interpreted in important philosophies. The following section will be con- cerned with epistemological or subjective irrationality —
with views that reject or repress reason and thus challenge
71
the rational good. As Rader asserts:
Anti-intellectualism has been part of the mental climate of the age. Among the creeds which have con- tributed to the revolt against reason may be mentioned Henri Bergson*s theory of the superiority of instinct and intuition, Oswald Spengler's preference for the more romantic and activist phases of culture, Giovanni
70. Urban, IW, 187.
71. Rader, NC, 22.
57
Papini's exaggerated interpretation of the pragmatism of Wm. James, Vilfredo Pareto's emphasis upon senti- ment and illusion as the "basis of social action, and such voluntaristic creeds as Gabriele d'Annunziofs theatrical romanticism, Charles Maurra's passionate nationalism, Maurice Barre's "philosophy of energeti- cism," Giovanni Gentile's "philosophy of the pure act," and Houston Chamberlain* s theory of militarism and ra- cial imperialism.
In this section, so far as the attempt is capable of being realized, various elements of the revolt against rea- son will be considered under the following headings: (1) Ir- rational sources of belief; (2) the repudiation of belief, scepticism; (3) epistemological dualism; [U) the will to be- lieve, voluntarism; (5) belief on the basis of immediate perception or insight, mysticism, intuitionism.
Irrational sources of belief. Well-expressed in
72
the language of James is the fact that
Reason is only one out of a thousand possibilities in the thinking of each of us. Who can count all the silly fancies, the grotesque suppositions, the utterly irrele- vant reflections he makes in the course of a day? Who can swear that his prejudices and irrational beliefs con stitute a less bulky part of his mental furniture than clarified opinions?
The mode of genesis of the worthy and the worthless seems the same.
The "mode of genesis" referred to is the life of feel- ing, desire, emotion, and sensation. A ma^s first disposi-
7
tion to call a thing good arises from a feeling of pleasure. Infants, as James says in a well-known passage, experience
72. James, PP, I, 552.
73. Hobhouse, RG, 72.
58
74
naught but "a blooming, buzzing confusion." Impulses run riot in the childfs consciousness; bodily organization and structure rather than mental activity is responsible for whatever harmony and order the child's ideas possess. As he develops, the life of feeling comes gradually under con- trol; but it is doubtful that even the most stoical ever completely subdues his imagination and emotions.
How true this is may be gathered from observation of men, from introspection, or from literature. Most men heed their desires and impulses to near exclusion of the claims of reason. "Wild" emotion and "calm" reason — thus do many writers describe man's inner life. Plato* s allegory of the charioteer illustrates the point. The ill-bred, untamed animal represents the life of sense; the thoroughbred rep- resents the spirited element in man. Both are active, en- ergetic, and in need of control; hence the part of the charioteer, who symbolizes reason. Reason does not originate
its materials and task, but is faced with the problem of
75
organization and control.
In the realm of practical conduct, morals and ethics, the undisciplined following of impulses is generally recog- nized to be self-defeating. The man who seeks pleasure or happiness without regard for other goods, experience re- veals, will come to a sad disillusionment. A man who seeks
74. James, PP, I, 488.
75. Plato, Phaedr. , 246a ff.
59
power exclusively must seek some kind of power: political, economic, military, physical, or intellectual. In general, to seek one of these alone will mean that, in the long run, deterioration will set in as a result of the lack of one or more of the others. Hence the need of a principle of guid- ance in one's life to keep it balanced, desire by discipline, means by ends.
Is the life-force perhaps more fundamental than rea- son as a directive agency? So-called modernism in philoso- phy sponsors the viewpoint says Urban.
Life is perpetually at war with thought, and the forms of reflective thought are made only to be broken, all goals are set only to be surpassed. The only absolute truth is that there is no such truth.
James supports the notion of the ultimate power of
life over reason in his description of the faith-ladder,
which he says all people use in their thinking. "It is
life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which
the theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion
77
is once there." This thought has also been expressed by Borden Parker Bowne, who is reported to have reiterated frequently in his lectures to students that "life is deeper than logic." And a man from the medical ranks indicates what is probably a common sentiment among professional men, that "intelligence is almost useless to those who possess
76. Urban, IW, 29.
7?. James, APU, 328-329.
60
nothing else."^ Even more radically than any of the men
yet mentioned, Nazi theorists teach the primacy of life and
79
instinct over reason. In the minds of different men the same creed means something different, but they all mean that reason is being challenged as an end-in-itself that should completely rule men's lives. This creed is a kind of re- verberation from the world-shaking creed of Kant — that the practical reason is the basis of our belief in fundamental things, and not the theoretical reason.
Again, in art, subjective emotional states often re- sult in monstrosities when they are embodied in some medium. One type of art which portrays emotions is that called "ex- pressionism"—a type often powerful. Emotion in it is the very "steam of art." Its emphasis rests upon the making of the art work an expression of the total life of the artist, but this tends to become chiefly the expression of feeling. The steam needs "to be kept in a boiler." In art, as in ethics and in life, the challenge to reason, if it leads
to successful resistance to reason, also leads in the long 80
run to chaos.
Thus in different ways the life of emotion and feel- ing is asserted, and the principle of reason is relegated to the background, — in extreme cases practically into the
78. Carrel, MTU, 137.
79. See Kolnai, WAW, 193, 194ff . Also 202 ff .
80. Kelps from notes taken in Professor Brightman*s course in Aesthetics.
61
discard. This situation must be recognized and acknowledged by all, and seems to be a canker in the very heart of any rational good. There is no question but that it is a chal- lenge which must be overcome by reason if the idea of a ra- tional good is to be maintained.
However, the challenge is probably less serious than its external appearance would indicate. There has been no claim that rationality springs full-grown from its sources, as Minerva sprang from the forehead of Jove; but rationality must be earned, and it develops as an organic growth. Rea- son must wrestle (and grow by the exercise) with impulses,
desires, and emotions, and build a rational structure out
81
of them. As Hobhouse insists:
The stupidest human being outside an idiot asylum is not guided by pure impulse alone. . . . Irrational as the average life may seem. . .it is orderly when compared with the chaos of spluttering impulses which would re- main if the element of reason were once for all ab- stracted.
A sane view, acceptable to many with widely variant metaphysical positions, a view which neither denies reason
8
nor assumes its omnipotence, is that of Balfour. He writes:
If we have to submit, as I think we must, to an in- complete rationalization of belief, this ought not to be because in a fit of intellectual despair we are driv- en to treat reason as an illusion; nor yet because we have deliberately resolved to transfer our allegiance to irrational or non-rational inclination; but because reason itself assures us that such a course is, at the
81. Hobhouse, RG, 19.
82. Balfour, FOB, 67.
62
lowest, the least irrational one open to us. If we have to find our way over difficult seas and under murky skies without compass or chronometer, we need not on that ac- count allow the ship to drive at random. Rather ought we to weigh with the more anxious care every indication, be it positive or negative, and from whatever quarter it may come, which can help us to guess at our position.
In spite of the lowly manner of the origin of ideas,
the powerful influence of practical and vital interests, a
rational good is still possible. Rationality is a goal that
must be won.
ii. The repudiation of reason, scepticism. The sec- ond kind of epistemological challenge to the rational good appears in the repudiation of belief, both in reason and in objective goods. Some of the words used to describe the en- emies of reason and of certain rational values are interest- ing. For the most part, they are not commonly used; this is probably because few people really deserve to be described by them. Some of these words are: misanthropist, misogam- ist, misogynist, misologist, and misoneist. The common terms which are akin to the term misologist are sceptic, agnostic, and anti-intellectualist. The first two of these indicate doubt more than hatred of reason; all three deprecate the power of reason to grasp reality.
Men normally find it much easier to accept than to doubt their reasoned conclusions. There are no completely sceptical persons, for such extreme distrust of reason leads to self-annihilation. Most of the early sceptics were lit- tle more than clever rhetoricians, able to invent reasons
63
for repudiating the knowledge attained "by reason (or by
some other means) • Hume confessed that his scepticism
83
seemed impracticable when he was in certain moods. And in his book Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana has de- clared the impossibility of maintaining the skeptical at- 84
titude. Thus the challenge is partially met by the inabil- ity of skepticism to sustain itself.
However, it is a hardy growth, and crops up regular- ly from generation to generation. It appears in unexpected places, in response to diverse motives, not infrequently, as in the cases of Hume, Kant, Santayana, and Bradley, being a by-product of attempts at rational explanation. The view of Santayana will serve to illustrate the trend toward skep- tical withdrawal from certain crusades of reason.
Santayana proposes that essences resembling Platonic
forms are the immediate data of experience. They are change-
85
less, inert, subsistent, known by contemplation. Essences become embodied in the material world (which all conscious creatures accept on animal faith) by accident or chance. "A world of accidents, arbitrary and treacherous, first lends
8(
to the eternal a temporal existence and a place in the flux."
83. Hume, EHU, Bk. I, Part IV, Sec. VII; quoted in Wright, HMP, 208.
84. Santayana, SAF, 40, 67, 108.
85. Santayana, ROM, 84; quoted in Blanshard, NT, I, 434.
86. Loc. cit., both references.
Whatever is behind essences to cause among them the order
and arrangement that we know, is hidden from our knowledge,
87
for Santayana says:
The mind cannot pursue the roots of things into the darkness; it cannot discover why they exist; it must be satisfied with noting their passing aspect, which is but an essence; and it must follow the chase, carried by its own galloping substance, to see what aspect they may wear next.
A man is compelled to act in order to sustain life;
this action of both men and animals is done on faith. But
knowledge is beyond the power of reason; the only thing any-
88
one can be sure of is the realm of essence. The best that one can do with the material world is, as far as possible, to escape it.
Santayana 's viewpoint is an interesting variation of the Platonic and Kantian schemes of the Eternal and the Be- coming, or the noumenal and phenomenal realms. But, says
8Q
Blanshard in criticism, 7
stripped of the glamour with which a splendid prose has invested it, 'the life of reason' is a life of servitude to the irrational. Rationality becomes animal luck.
One suspects that the underlying motive is similar to that which moved the Epicureans — the desire for equanim- ity of spirit which no restless, necessarily futile search for the ultimate causes of things will permit. If no dis-
87. Santayana, ROM, 10 3- KM.; Blanshard, NT, I, 435.
88. Edman, POS, 479.
89. Blanshard, NT, I, 438.
65
covery is possible, it is irrational to seek.
Such a viewpoint "poisons the wells" against venture- someness, inventiveness, and a broadening conception of the good life. It promotes ennui and defeatism by emphasizing the uncertainties of human experience more than the cer- tainties, so far as practical, ethical, everyday pursuits are concerned; for there exists "no necessity in the rela- tion between cause and effect, and no assurance that law is 90
constant." Again, "no moment, no event, and no world can insure the existence or the character of anything beyond it. If these statements express fact, then a rational good is out of the question. Indeed one cannot be rational; reason loses all foundation of requiredness or necessity at the be- ginning.
In some quarters, the doubting tendency has become cynical and sophisticated. When man and his values are ne- gated by the educated, the skeptical attitude must penetrate
92
the thinking of the masses after a time. When that occurs
no principle will seem worth defending. What after all are principles? The only principle that still holds is: I want to be left alone. . . . Without any conviction whatsoever nobody can be expected to have much courage.
The cynical attitude expresses itself in a "willing- ness to combine the incompatible" and in the "denial of all
90. Santayana, ROM, 111; in Blanshard, NT, I, 435.
91. Santayana, ROM, 114; ROE, 80-81; Blanshard, NT, I, 435.
92. XShler, PVWF, 33- KOhler quotes an unnamed man.
66
93
finality." It is seen in such criticism of the rational
94
function as the following:
A dog is content to turn round three times before lying down; but a man would have to invent an explan- ation of it. These explanations are often fantastic and rationalistic in the highest degree. There is not a single human social institution which has not orig- inated in hit or miss fashion, but, nevertheless, every one of these institutions is justified by some ration- alizing argument as the best possible, and, what is worse, the community demands the acceptance of these arguments as a precondition of happy social life.
This account does injustice to the aims of reason which are not, when it is at its best, to "invent" explan- ations nor to justify the status quo as the "best possible," nor to compel acceptance of irrational arguments. For rea- son does not invent, but discovers logical connections and relations; it does not justify what it does not see is real- ly best under the circumstances; and the only compulsion it would use is logical compulsion. This is the only true ob- jective reason. Anyone may strike an arbitrary attitude, may accuse and berate reason, but he thereby closes to him- self the doors of any possible truth, even that of defending his own cause.
iii. Ep is temo logical dualism. The third division of actual or supppsed challenges to rationality from the sub- jective standpoint is dualism — the separation of thought and thing, knower and known, idea and object. This question
93. Urban, IW, 28.
94. Bridgman, art. (1933), 21.
67
follows in natural logical succession from the last one
discussed, for "perhaps the chief criticism passed on the
95
dualist ic theory is that it leads to skepticism." In the same way that the mind-body problem appears baffling, so the antithetical poles of thought and thing present a per- plexing paradox. Eow do they come into significant relation with each other?
Dualism has been challenged in recent years as being an irrational position because it appears to make knowledge impossible. A great gulf is fixed by it between the knower and the known, or the would-be-known. If the theory is cor- rect, it would seem impossible for anyone to know the exter- nal world at all.
The complexity of the problem rests in the fact that there are numerous schemes of explanation on the assumptions of either monism or dualism, and in the further fact that terms (such as object, subject, idea, intuition, etc.) are used somewhat indiscriminately by adherents of both posi- tions. One of the fundamental principles of rationality-- a clear understanding and exact use of terms — is violated by the latter procedure.
A high degree of dialectical skill is necessary to establish anything about the idea-object relation beyond immediate experience. If one attempts to employ a catalyst,
95. Knudson, PP, 100.
68
such as a datum or essence, to bring the two poles together, the problem turns out to be doubled in difficulty, for now the knower must not only grasp the essence, but the essence must in some mysterious way partake of the object. In some way it must be explained "how the character of objects can belong at once to the self and to the world. Absolute idealism and new realism have attempted to preclude the skeptical outcome of dualism by affirming the unity of idea and object in knowing.
The difficulty which the latter positions have with the problem of error is notorious. If one knows reality directly, it is difficult to see how he can ever labor un- der an illusion; and if error can be explained as only in- adequate finite comprehension, how can any distinction be made between truth and error, since finite comprehension is never fully adequate? If it is said that the adequacy of human comprehension may be tested by the coherence of the new idea with the body of coherent ideas already possessed, one v/ould feel impelled to ask what value can come from co- herence when the whole system of knowledge is infected with error? There is nothing remarkable about the fact that false ideas may cohere — most evil plans can be intelligibly and plausibly worked out.
Hence on the face of it, the theorist must cope with
96. Blanshard, NT, I, 44-4.
69
this situation: He must choose between wrestling with the problem with error or with the possible skeptical outcome of dualism.
Is the dualist necessarily shut up in a solipsistic retreat? Must he admit ignorance of the outer world? Al- most no dualist would admit the necessity. The task is to produce a rational account of how mind can cross the chasm separating it from things. If this can be done, it is all any theory can do; and to charge a theory of knowledge with being dualistic is not on that account to charge it with be- ing irrational.
Such an intelligible account of knowing was set forth
by Borden P. Bowne, who felt that human minds must assume
a realistic, common-sense attitude toward the objective
97
world. Thus he writes:
The world itself, though more than a thought, is essen- tially the expression of a thought, and hence lies open to intelligence. If we assume that the world expresses thought, and that our thought has something universal in it, the ground of the parallelism between our thought and the system becomes apparent, and there is no longer any speculative reason why finite minds should not grasp the cosmic fact. Things, as products of the cre- ative thought, are commensurable with our intelligence and are essentially knowable. Both human minds and cosmic things must be traced to a common source in the creative thought and will. Only thus can the antithesis of thought and thing be transcended and mediated.
An ultimate metaphysical monism which takes the world
to be of the nature of mind is the most satisfactory answer
to the problem of epistemological dualism. On this view the
97. Bowne, TTK, 3U
70
physical world can be explained as independent of finite minds but as knowable, their knowledge of it being explained by the fact that all reality below the ultimate Mind has certain qualities and principles in common. The knowledge that a finite mind has of the world is valid, but it is no direct awareness, no copy of the objective order. It is rather a parallel to it in nature and character. The guar- antee of correspondence between ideas and objects rests in the ultimate ground of both orders of reality.
No more than any other theory or explanation can this be proved to be rational beyond doubt. To many rational minds it makes little appeal. But it does allow a conception that is in harmony with normal human intuitions; and it per- mits one to hold to an objective and rational good. It al- so leaves open the possibility of contingency and hence of evil in the cosmos.
iv. The will to believe : voluntarism. The fourth type of suspected irrational isms in knowing is that which has been labeled "the will to believe." This is, of course, the ti- tle of a book of essays by James, and of its leading essay. James 's view of the function of mind is considered in this section, although numerous other philosophers also stress the importance of the will in knowing. lames finds value to be an ultimate category, rather than the pure being of traditional rationalistic philosophies. Whatever we believe gets its hold upon us, in the last analysis, because of its
71
value, its attraction for us. All human activity, even sci- ence itself, arises in response to demands which are expres- sions of values to he realized in action. The result of any activity or belief is the test of its value; i.e. good results justify the action taken. The fruits are the just- ification of the tree. Hence if "by belief in "higher values" such as God, freedom, and immortality one gains added strength
and confidence in life, he needs no rational justification
98
of these beliefs.
The meaning which James intended has somehow been misinterpreted; he was not playing a child's game of wish- ing, but was advocating the making of choices upon which one would risk all his effort and his life if need be. This course of procedure especially lends a degree of certainty and assurance to one's action when ordinary rational pro- cesses have contributed their utmost and have failed to yield a satisfactory answer. The world is full of con- tingency, and is largely undetermined; effort and action, in the situations where reason is unable to advance, make a difference in the outcome of history, and may offer the best possible solution.
Rightly interpreted and given a limited area of oper- ation in individual lives, the will to believe is a ration- al will. A rational good includes the will to bring it in-
98. These ideas are chiefly from the essay. See also Perry, PRP, 191; Hocking, TP, 156 ff; Barrett, PHI, 352; Townsend, PIUS, 144.
72
to being, out of the realm of the ideal into actuality. One must be guided by consequences (but not solely by con- sequences) in order to be rational. The satisfaction of de- sires is legitimate as long as these are criticized and disciplined. James seems to say (although probably not in- tending to do so) that a course of action which yields "cash value" has in that result its justification. Not his logic but his sterling ethical character prevented James from ad- vocating reprehensible means to gain his ends. In addition to this lack of rigorous logical reasoning, the irrational- ity of the will to believe lies in the psychological ef- fect it has upon belief. Some minds will take it as a way of escape from the grueling work of achieving logical con- sistency, while upon minds in general, the decision that
"it shall be held for true" is disastrous to one's assurance
99
of certainty. Hocking describes the effect:
The suspicion that our will has tipped the balance of evidence brands for us the chosen hypothesis as sub- j ective ; but a belief is the reference of the mind to an object assumed real, independent, objective. The sus- picion of subjectivity therefore destroys belief.
The challenge of the will to believe to the rational good consists in the natural uncritical readiness of common sense to adopt it as final, coupled with the ease of misin- terpreting it. A merely subjective good cannot be a ra- tional good — the rational good is more than the actualizing
99. Hocking, TP, 163.
73
of values. The good that is determined by objective rela- tionships may not coincide with the good that is the result of action. The will to believe cannot be excused from pas- sing under rational criticism,
v. Intuitionism and mysticism. Mysticism employs the method of intuition or immediacy in knowing. It is on the basis of the way of knowing which it employs that it is
treated again in this chapter. No type of philosophy is
100
more anti-intellectual than mysticism. The mystic
regards conceptual knowledge as ever unsatisfying or meaningless, and Immediate experience as the only trust worthy guide and the only solid satisfaction.
The mystics almost alone among people who are found
101
as sharers in every kind of world-culture normally are
little concerned about the contradictions in experience,
102
between theory and practice. Bennett says:
Intellectual doubts trouble them very little: they are not concerned with philosophical problems. Phil- osophy, indeed, is one of the hindrances which they try to remove. This attitude is conspicuous among the Christian mystics, but it is not confined to them.
In place of conceptual thinking the mystics tend to
substitute the way of illumination; they believe that "it
is possible through visions, revelations, or in some other
100. Pratt, RC, 366.
101. Bennett, PSM, 20; Royce, WI, I, 178.
102. Wright, HMP, 623; cf. Royce, WI, I, 83, 86, 144 177.
74 103
superrational manner, to know God or ultimate reality." Explanation of the awareness of the presence of God is ex- ceedingly difficult, or even impossible; it rests upon a feeling of certainty, and all logical propositions are in- adequate to express it. For this reason it is common prac- tice for mystics to couch their meanings in allegories, par- ables, similes, and metaphors when they try to express them- selves. Mystics are greatly handicapped in expression; they are unable to communicate intelligibly with anyone who has not shared experience like theirs. Even though the most intense feeling and clearest certainty may endure but a short time, minutes or a very few hours at most, the ex- perience is a basis of assurance even through periods when ecstasy is absent.
The general method of knowing of the mystics bears a close kinship to that of the romanticists and intuition- ists in literature and philosophy, the chief difference be- ing its subject-matter and the use made of its results. Ro- manticists lay emphasis on heeding the commands of the heart, and on cultivating moods and atmospheres, thus re- vealing an interest in special or particular types of feel- ing. This feeling is not that of particular sensations but rather that of sensible states or "tones'1; it leads to im- pulsive rather than to reflective action. Carlyle, for ex-
103. Wright, HMP, 623; cf. Royce, WI, I, 83, 86, H4, 177.
75
ample, rejected analytic psychology and Utilitarianism be-
104
cause they required too much reasoning.
Among the philosophical intuit ionists, Bergson fol- lows out most completely the nature and implications of his method. For him intuition is a far more complete and per- fect way of knowing than intellectual effort. The former sees whole, sees the real which is invisible and intangible. Time, for example, is apprehended by intuition and complete- ly missed by intellect, which is by nature equipped to get only parts and details, and misses the whole. It is analy- tic, and cannot explain the great concepts in a way that will correspond to actual experience. The classic exam- ple of this failure of intellect to grasp the basic truth is found in the analysis of motion in Zeno's paradoxes where reason becomes muddled up with the idea of infinity.
Ultimate reality, l'elan vital, eludes the grasp of intellect but yields to intuition. Intuition makes no at- tempt to compare or relate but to comprehend the entire unit with which it is confronted. It is not nearly so use- ful or practical as intellect, but it brings persons much
105
nearer to the actual pulse beat of reality.
It is not in their insistence that truth may be reached by other ways than by discursive reason that in-
104. Hflffding, HMP, II, 379.
105. Bergson, CE, 46, 176 ff; See Hocking, TP, 188- 194; Urban, IW, 126.
76
tuitionism, mysticism, or romanticism may "be called irra- tional, but rather in their one-sided abstractionism and op- position to rational and intellectual procedures. From this criticism Bergson may in the main be excused. He grants the practical value of the rational and critical powers of the mind, and would in fact supplement intuition with reason. As will be pointed out in the following chapter, he finds the two functions to have a common ground and origin. Also the milder mystics, those who gain lasting good from their experience, remedy the one-sided and exclusive emphasis, making the rational processes complementary to the life of feeling. In the widest view of the matter, it is not ir- rational to depend for some help in knowing upon the sub- conscious mind, which may be, after all, the secret of much of the illumination of the intuitionist, mystic, or romanti- cist. Irrationality begins when a biased and exclusive con- ception of the way to acquire knowledge gets the whole right of way.
5. Summary of the chapter The outcome of the present chapter is about as fol- lows: the supposedly irrational attitudes or aims of seve- ral philosophical types have been examined. Some aspects of them are challenges to a rational good, yet each of them has a contribution to make toward a more rational outlook on life.
The challenges consist chiefly in emphases upon a
77
single point of view which excludes reason; the contri- butions appear in the fact that each new fact or belief adds to a whole that is more rational and more true than any single part. For example, among the objective aspects of irrationality, extreme pessimism is a negation of the rational good — it is an immoderate and unreasonable phil- osophy. Yet there is a less extreme variety which does not overlook the evils, but at the same time is not blind to the goods. Some prefer to call the latter realism or an even more eulogistic term.
In any case, too much stress cannot be placed upon the fact that the viewpoints of science, the belief in an objective purpose, a realistic pessimism, a recognition of the vast realms of possibility for human experience, and the conflict between reason and the recalcitrant factors in nature must all be considered in getting a rational ac- count of the universe. According to the definition of ra- tionality of the last chapter, in a rational system none of the points of view or ways of knowing may be arbitrarily omitted. Only if they have no good ground, or if they con- tradict the most inclusive experience that is self -consist- ent, would their omission be justified
Thus only the complete repudiation of belief among the supposedly irrational points of view would necessarily be omitted, for it is only the chronic kind of skepticism, the settled way of doubt, that is hopelessly irrational.
78
Skepticism as a method (dubito ut intelligam) , a policy of caution and conservatism, is a healthy symptom of a well- balanced personality; and it is not only admissible, but is required in a rational order or system.
In investigating these various challenges the def- inition of rationality given above has been reinforced and corroborated. For there it was insisted that rationality involves a dialectic process of exact definition of ideas, wide inclusion of facts, and an ideal aim. In the present chapter the attempt has been made to show what various views are, and what they contribute to a whole view, and in what way, if any, they do violence to a rational good. The ideal goal is a combination of all the possible benefits of dif- ferent approaches to reality and knowledge in one compre- hensive, practical, and universal philosophy — one which shall be as nearly as possible the essence of truth and ra- tionality.
The present chapter has set forth various attempts to dismember the rational from the good, or to discount the one or the other. The following chapter will attempt to show how the rational and the good are related, and to show whether they have any fundamental connections which each a concept necessary to the other. To this task the discus- sion now turns.
CHAPTER III
THE RATIONAL AND THE GOOD
1. The suspicion of conflict between logic and reality In the present chapter the central problem for dis- cussion is the relation of rationality and goodness from a logical and an epistemo logical standpoint. Is there any inevitable necessity which links coherent thought and sys- tem to value or good as defined above, on the one hand, and which necessarily connects irrationality with evil on the other? There is uncertainty on this point in contemporary thought. Much mediaeval scholasticism is an illustration that a flawless logic which leads to unprofitable and mere- ly speculative conclusions is possible. In the last chap- ter various questions which dealt with antagonism to ortho- dox conceptions of rationality and goodness were reviewed. Many feel with James that logic and the given reality are incommensurable. "Reality, life, experience, concreteness,
immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, over-
1
flows and surrounds it."
2
The conflict is widely felt. Of it Otto writes:
The fact of the matter is that the contemporary man is divided against himself. He is unwilling to forego the practical results based upon the achievements of
1. James, APU, 212.
2. Otto, TI, 172.
80
men and of science, but he is fearful lest the develop- ment and application of scientific method shall deprive human endeavor of meaning and worth. The question is whether this state of mind is necessarily final. Are science and human values by their very nature incom- patible, like God and Mammon, leaving us no choice but to serve one or the other?
To put the problem otherwise, it is reducible to the
question whether goodness and rationality must be divorced
in actual experience. Is there a hopeless conflict between
the theoretical and the practical life?
2. The conviction of connection between
rationality and goodness
Traditional logic is being critically examined and
in many quarters rudely handled in these days. Yet, although
3
logicians dispute about logic, in the dispute
is always involved the question of 'bong fide logic, 1 and the question of good faith always involves the ques- tion of sincerity and of values which again can be ack- nowledged but never proved. In other words, it is be- coming increasingly evident that the ultimate problem of logic is a problem of values.
This inability to prove values means an inability to fur- nish universally acceptable evidence. In the final analysis the only proof that anything is a value is that someone likes it. However, some evidence can be offered which many ration- al minds will accept.
The field of logic is the field of rational meanings, and meaning is a notion in which value and good are neces- sarily involved. The nature of meaning is derived from val-
3. Urban, IW, 85.
81
ue or from the objective good to which it points.^" It is by logic that a man must bring himself to be rational (in at least a part of its meaning) , for logic includes the work of definition, and that of properly connecting and de- riving meanings. The interconnection of meanings points to the interconnection of goods and their grounds. In the notion of meaning, rationality and good have a fundamental connection.
i. Plato. This conviction has ancient roots; it is
the historic tradition of idealism. Plato has expressed it
clearly and unmistakably. For Plato^
the Good is the principle of intelligibility; it sup- plies the criteria and norms by which all rational be- liefs are tested.
• . .The idea of the Good is the source of all knowledge; it generates all meanings, and validates all true beliefs.
The Good cannot be known except as one pursues it
through dialectic — and even then the final knowledge of it
is from direct insight. What is mean# is that" there is a
progression from reason to insight."^ No adequate concept
7
of it can be formed by finite reason. Taylor says:
Neither Plato nor anyone else could tell another man what the good is, because it can only be apprehended by the most incommunicable and intimate personal in- sight.
4. See Urban, IW, 23, 61.
5. Demos, PP, 74; Plato, Rep. , 532b, 534b.
6. Demos, loc. cit.
7. Taylor, PLA, 289.
82
Nevertheless, rational reflection can point to the good, and can call attention to its manifestations in the flux of experience. It is mainly through this ability, in fact, that the rational mind by means of dialectic traces the good, and directs intuition to the good as the ultimate object.
ii. Urban. Urban is convinced that as serious oc- cupations knowing and thinking are in their very nature
g
bound up with valuation. Truth would be unlovable and dis couragingly abstract were it not connected with the good. Modernist philosophies, those which disparage logic and in- tellectual values, have at their root the denial of the in- terconnection of meaning and value.
iii. Kant. Kant has shown that by virtue of their nature as rational beings men universally experience a con- viction of duty or sense of obligation. This obligation- consciousness is the demand of the moral law which pure rea
Q
son prescribes. It commands that men recognize their obli
gation to be rational. "Handle so, dass die Maxime deines
Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen G-e
10
setzgebung gelten konne." Any being with both reason and
8. Urban, IW, 23, 115.
9. Kant, KPV, Bk. I, Chap. I, Sec. 7, 36.
10. Ibid., 35«nAct so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." (Tr. Abbott, in Rand, MCP, 461).
83
11
will is "bound by the moral law, and such a being is re- quired to show his reverence for the law by seeking the re-
12
alization of the summum bonum in the world.
The summum bonum for Kant is thought of in two ways:
(1) The supreme good (virtue) which is the unconditioned
condition of happiness; and (2) a whole which combines vir-
13
tue and happiness. Virtue is personal — it is the state of
a will which is determined by the moral law, a will which
strives to make its own attempts to realize happiness the
universal maxim for the realization of happiness in other
persons. The happiness of the rest of mankind is thus not
sought because of personal inclination, but because of the
demand of reason. If one loves his own good, he must be
willing that this disposition should be universalized so
that he wills also the good of others. ^ The determining
principle is not the desire for happiness, but the moral
IS
law, the sense of ought. y
How virtue and happiness can unite to realize the summum bonum is the problem which calls especially for the postulate of God. When men respect the moral law, they nat-
11. Kant, KPV, Bk. I, Chap. I, Sec. 7, 36-37.
12. Ibid., Bk. II, Chap. II, Sec. 4, H6.
13. Ibid., Bk. II, Chap. II, Sees. 1, 2, 136-137 ff. H. Ibid., Bk. I, Chap. I, Sec. 8, theorem iv, 39, 15. Ibid., Bk. II, Chap. I, 131.
84
16
urally seek for the realization of the highest good. The
law is unconditional; to be rational one must fulfil its
insistent demand. But at the same time that reason calls
for observance of the moral law it also requires that the
outcome be a harmony of virtue and happiness. Kant argues 17
that
ist also das hBchste (Jut nach praktischen Regeln un- mBglich, so muss auch das moralische Gesetz, welches gebietet, dasselbe zu beftfrdern, phantasisch und auf leere eingebildete Zwecke gestellt, mithin an sich falsch sein.
This difficulty calls for the postulate of an in- telligent cause of all nature, which is distinct from na- ture, that shall guarantee the ultimate harmony of virtue and happiness, the possibility of the realization of the summuTn bonum. Man*s experience is that virtue and happi- ness are often unequal and progress in morality is slow. But if there is a being who controls the whole order, whose values are not inconsistent with human values, then the
struggle is not senseless, but fundamentally meaningful.
18
The existence of God is required for intelligibility. Nun war es Pf licht fur uns, das hBchste Gut zu be-
16. Kant, KPV, Bk. II, Chap. II, Sec. 4, 146.
17. Ibid. Sec. I, 137. "If then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules, then the moral law also which commands us to promote it is di- rected to vain imaginary ends, and must conse- quently be false. "(Tr. Abbott, in Rand, MCP,475).
18. Ibid., Sec. 5, 150-151. "Now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the summum bonum* (con- tinued in footnote section of following page).
85
fordern, mithin nicht allein Befugniss, sondern auch mit der Pflicht als Bedtirfniss verbundene Nothwendig- keit, die MBglichkeit dieses hSchsten Guts vorauszu- setzen; welches, da es nur unter der Bedingung des Da- seins Gottes stattfindet, die Voraussetzung desselben mit der Pflicht unzertrennlich verbindet, d.i. es ist moralisch nothwendig, das Dasein Gottes anzunehmen.
Thus although reason and will are autonomous, when they obey the laws of their own nature they come inevitably to the good, and to its realization. Rationality can find its ultimate satisfaction only in the idea of the good, and the will can be moral only as it strives for the realization of the good, only as it universalizes the maxims of its moral law. The s uranium bonum is inseparably joined to the fundamental rationality of man and made intelligible by the postulate of the existence of God.
It seems that only a short period of reflection should be needed to establish the connection of good and the rational. The means of ordering life is choice, and choice is possible only as we are presented with goods and their
19
alternatives. Hence "good keeps life from being chaotic." Goodness and rationality coincide.
3. Intuition, reason, and the good But now the problem of the relation of rationality r
consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is possible only on con- dition of the existence of God, it inseparably con- nects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God."(Tr. Abbott, in Rand, MCP, 479).
19. Dickinson, MOG, 7.
86
and good may be approached from another direction. Men are
motivated by what they like, by their sense of what is good;
and this motivation operates vigorously to stimulate the
20
activities of thinking and knowing. Liking and desiring occur in mental life earlier than reflection, and the direc- tion of practical reflection and effort, as well as the ac- tual arousing of these, begins in the feeling for values. From the time when the baby cries for the moon and reaches out for it until as an old man he longs for release from a weary existence, the sense of value stimulates him to ex- ert his powers.
In mere value-experience, however, reason does not necessarily play a large part, just because it is usual that feelings occur without being aroused by reflection. Liking and desiring may not correspond with a rational insight in- to values; in their most primitive stages values depend more upon instinct. There may be no rational understanding of the good, no comprehension of an ought-to-be-liked, no un- ity or system among likes and desires. To many persons a good which arises out of the coherent wholeness of things is incomprehensible, and an unknown quantity; they cannot be persuaded to let go of their preferences, their preju- dices, and their fixations.
Thus the daily living of individual persons may be out of all touch with a rational good. Values are present
20. Urban, Rf, 115, 127; Hobhouse, RG, 3.
87
in great numbers in daily life, but the good and the ration-
21
al must be striven for. Value -experiences are not ration- al in the sense that they fit into a coherent whole from their inception. As a rule they are comprehended by a kind of immediate awareness without reflection, although reason is not prevented from influencing what is valued. As Rader states: "Values. . .are based upon preference — a nonration-
al factor — but preferences themselves change in response to
22
knowledge and insight." However, when taken at their source, values are not affected by conscious purpose. They are not created by the mind but experienced by it, intuited. As a matter of fact, a man's values may run counter to his purposes, as in the case of the child who intends to dis- like his food, but is delighted in spite of himself; and the adult who strives to like a food because it is good for him, but finds the flavor detestable.
It is the immediate values and the goods which rea- son has explored enough to make familiar that are intuited. If there is an objective good which ought to be liked, its ultimate character cannot be recognized by such immediate perception as is described above; at least not, as Plato
insists, until reason has done its part to make this pos- 23
sible. A good (true value) may be liked before its objec-
21. See definitions above, 17-18.
22. Rader, NC, 53-54.
23. See Plato, Rep. , 532a, b.
88
tive nature is understood (i.e. it may be a value before it is recognized to be a good) ; but the understanding of this nature is a function of reason. The point is that none can say upon the immediate perception of a value that it ought to be liked. One can only assert his own preference. In- tuitive grasp has no reasons of its own, but only bare ex- perience. The chance that, out of the myriads of likes and dislikes that men experience, any one of these has the sta- tus of an ought- to-be-liked is small enough to make action on the basis of intuition alone a great risk. This is the conclusion intimated in the treatment of the mystical mode of apprehension in the previous chapter.
On the other hand, reason alone cannot satisfactorily settle the problems of value. It can relate a person1 s values to each other, and note in what direction lies the good to which the systematized body of values points. Rea- son can determine which values are spurious, and which are instrumental for the good. The function of reason is essen- tially relating, integrating, making coherent, systematizing, and it performs this task with materials which it does not make but finds in the flow of experience. Pure reason be- comes involved in mazes of abstraction and gets lost just as certainly as does intuition. The goal of concrete thinking is a system made orderly out of the chaos of im- mediate experience.
Probably most modern thinkers would hold that reason
89
and intuition are not two separate ways of knowing, but
rather two distinguishable functions of individual minds.
Bergson says in referring to the relation of intelligence
24 25
and instinct, which is the primal form of intuition, that
when given their place. . .in the evolution of life, they appear, as it were, two divergent and complementary ac- tivities.
The two activities, which began by mutual interpenetra- tion, had to part company in order to grow; but some- thing of the one has remained attached to the other.
In the introduction to Creative Evolution he speaks of the
"certain powers that are complementary to the understanding,"
thus at least making possible the inference that the under-
26
standing is fundamental. In any case, either way of know- ing is partially dependent upon the other, when the life of man as a whole is considered; and either way is inadequate for certain important aspects of the field of knowledge. In the realm of value this is seen by many philosophers. Dewey,
for example, pictures their complementary, yet oppositional
27
functions by the following discussion:
Whether it be a question of the good and bad in con- viction and opinion, or in matters of conduct, or in ap- preciated scenes of nature and art, there occurs in ev- ery instance a conflict between the Immediate value-ob- ject and the ulterior value-object: the given good, and that reached and justified by reflection; the now appar-
24. Bergson, CE, xii-xiii, 176, 178.
25. Bergson, TSMR, 107-108; CE, H3, 168, 175, 182.
26. Bergson, CE, xii-xiii.
27. Dewey, EN, 402.
90
and the eventual.
While it is true that a great many thinkers have per- sisted in elevating one or the other of these functions to a place of pre-eminence while more or less neglecting the other, it is possible that Leighton is not wholly just in his critical estimate of Bergson and James. After asserting that they "insist on the validity of immediate perceptual
experience as being the primary datum for philosophy," he 28
says they
argue that in the conceptualizing process the mind is carried, not deaper into, but farther away from, real- ity. Percepts are characterized as concrete and dy- namic, continuous with the original and ever varying flow of living reality; whereas concepts are static, abstract, pale shadows or skeletons which misrepresent the rich flux of experience, which is the real stuff of things.
This description, as seen from the excerpts and ref- erences from Bergson given above, does not adequately des- cribe his view, which is an attempt to explain and justify both ways of knowing. If perhaps Bergson seems to give an undue emphasis to instinct and intuition, this may be jus- tified by the vast neglect of this side of knowing at the hands of most traditional philosophy. Bergson would not use the Kantian language, but in large measure he would en- dorse the dual recognition of mental functions in Kant's famous statement: "Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, An-
28. Leighton, MC, 44.
91
29
schauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind." For Bergson teach- es nothing more unmistakably than that intuition is not self- 30
sufficient.
It is from intelligence that has come the push that has made it [intuition) rise to the point it has reaohed. With- out intelligence, it would have remained in the form of instinot, riveted to the special object of its practical interest, and turned outward by it into movements of lo- comotion.
31
As for James, his emphasis upon "pure experience" and his criticisms of intellectualism go to such extremes as to make him vulnerable to charges of prejudice and in- consistency. He writes that the only way to reality is to put off intellectualism and fall back on "raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer."-^ Rightly understood, how- ever, James may be seen as fighting for the rights of the intuitive capacity of man, and was led into extremes of speaking because the intellectualism he was fighting was extreme and irksome to his intense spirit. On the whole, he does not discard concepts and discursive reasoning as false or useless, although he struggled mightily to keep them from dominating the philosophical scene.
The opposite emphasis from that of James and Berg- son occurs in the system of McTaggart. On the rationalis-
29. Kant, KRV, 95.
30. Bergson, CE, 178.
31. James, ERE, 193; See Barrett, PHI, 139.
32. James, APU, 272-273; see also 256-257; quoted in Barrett, PHI, 188-189.
92
tic or intellectualistic extreme, he is sure that the dialec- tic which employs concepts can arrive at full knowledge of
the real, and he minimizes the necessity for the need of da-
33
ta from experience. But not all philosophers who wish to do homage to reason go to such extremes. Royce, for example, recognizes the unity of the mental functions in a more bal- anced form. There is neither pure conception nor pure per- ception. Both are cognitive processes, hut real knowledge,
which is the aim of thought, appears only in interpretation,
34
the combination of the two.
The defense of intuition is called for by the fact that so many regard it as irrational. Plato set the fashion by expressing distaste for the perceptual intuitions of sense- experience. This distaste has been a particular reaction of many to intuitions of the values. Intuitions, it is said, contradict each other, and therefore are false. Intuitions are often manifestly in error, and therefore cannot be trus- ted anywhere they occur in experience.
While these charges contain a degree of truth, it is based upon a partial view of intuition. Reason also often arrives at erroneous and contradictory ideas. The best thinking that a man can do may be false. When this is the case, it can be remedied in two ways: by reference to what- ever intuitions are relevant, and by further criticism from
33. McTaggart, SHD, 46; See Mackintosh, POK, 339.
34. Royce, POC, II, 117-123; Mackintosh, loc. cit.
93
reason itself on the basis of wider inclusion, greater co- herence, self-consistency, etc.
But if reason and intuition are distinguishable func- tions, they are also complementary functions, and truth, true values, the good, are not comprehended adequately with- out both. The average man does not greatly trouble himself to distinguish between those things which he likes and those which he ought to like — i.e. to think beyond the immediately practical need — and so the true values are neglected by the masses of people. The theorist, the dialectician, and the reflective person deduce the existence of a subsistent and invisible order of good and of reality from their value- experiences. Thus the chemist or the physicist has arrived at a complex account of atoms, although no one has ever im- mediately experienced an atom; and at least some philoso- phers arrive at the notion of the rational good, which to the multitude of people who are involved in the maze and whirl of normal value-experience, seems as unreal as the quantity for which the mathematician^ "X" stands.
Value-experience is seen to contain contradictions when it is viewed critically by reason. It is common ex- perience for the value of one person to be a disvalue for another, or for what is a value in one hour to be one*s chief antipathy in another. Any value under the exploring process of reason may appear as evil. A familiar example of this occurs with the apostle Paul, who at one time re-
94
garded the persecution of Christians as a worthy calling,
35
but who finally came to the support of their cause.
The endeavor of this discussion has been to show that a correlative relationship exists between reason and intuition, between intuition and values, and between rea- son and the good. The relationship between value and good was treated in Chapter One. Both reason and intuition show a peculiar instability alone; and the same appears to be the case with abstract good and immediate values. No one can be said to have reached a complete rational good until he likes what he ought to like, until his values and his goods coincide, or until his intuitions and his reasoning come together in harmony.
Values are neutral (neither rational nor irrational)
until they are defined by reference to a coherent body of
36
knowledge or fact.
Our values can only be understood and must always be in- terpreted and criticized in the light of our world view. No one has the right, rationally speaking, to say "This is of value," unless he has related it to everything he knows.
Relating an item "to everything he knows" would be an impossible task if one took it to mean each specific item of knowledge; but it is experientially possible to relate a new value to the coherent whole of one's knowledge, and to re-
35* Acts, Chap. 26.
36. Brightman, ITP, 147.
95
late it to as many specific items as he has time for. One must be governed by the practical factors of the amount of time he has, the degree of importance of the value, and his own purpose to do the best he can under the circumstan- ces .
Intuitions are not necessarily irrational because of their spontaneity, but they must be made rational. It is probably true that intuition has nowhere the right to make final and dogmatic pronouncements, but neither has reason apart from intuition. Value -experience is part of the whole experience of a person, and sets the task of living thought — the task of making an orderly, coherent and inclusive system of experience; in short the task of realizing the rational good.
4. Results of the comparison of intuition and reason for the good It appears, then, on the basis of the analysis of the functions of intuition and reason, that the rational and the good have a vital, internal, interdependent relationship. Values are presented in a chaotic immediacy which is be- wildering, but which in the systematizing processes of rea- son begins to take on more significant meaning, and to point to an enduring good. All those values for which reason can find grounds take on the likeness of the rational good, and the body of such values indicates what the most rational of goods must be. "Whatever is reasonably held good," says
96
Hobhouse, "must not tend to clash with anything else that
37
is reasonably held good." The removal of such clashes is the road both to complete rationality and complete good- ness— to the rational good.
One warning should be reiterated. Logical coherence and orderly system do not in themselves guarantee a rational good unless they characterize the widest possible range of events or facts. In a limited sense, rational evils are possible; for example, an organized underworld racket, or the Nazi political and military machine. The selection of an inclusive end is as important to rationality as a smooth- ly working system. The rational good results from the com- bination of rational ends with rational means. As Hegel
puts it: "Sie allein ist das Vernunftige und der Rhythmus
38
des organischen Ganzen."
The rational good is no single fact, event, or other item of experience, but is an ideal end indicated by the un- ity of a system of values, progressively discovered and re-
39
alized by rational minds. One who would be rational finds himself aiming at an end which is good, of which, the farther he moves toward it, he sees more and more clearly that it
37. Hobhouse, RG, 78.
38. Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede, 53; in Hegel, SW, II. "This alone is what is ration- al, th° rhythm of the organic whole." (Hegel, SEL, 51, edi Loewenberg, various trs.). The antecedent of "sie" is "die logische Nothwendigkeit."
39. See Kant, KPR, Bk.II, Chap. II, Sec. U\ tr. in Rand, MCP, 477.
97
ought to be desired. In the same way one who strives for an enduring good sees eventually, at least, that it can be what it is only by virtue of its being founded in a ra- tional order of things. Both the rationality and the good- ness of which men usually speak are relative terms. "Why
callest thou me good?" asked Jesus of the rich young man.
40
"None is good save one, even God." Goodness and rational- ity are both interdenendent ideals and practical ends. The
41
task of human beings, says James,
seems at first sight to resolve itself into that of get- ting a conception which will yield the largest balance of rationality, rather than one which will yield per- fect rationality of every description.
The "perfect rationality" is an ideal to strive for; Kant
has clearly stated this. Meanwhile "the rational as such
is not an established system, but a process governed by a 42
principle." It is the process by which the ideal good
is ever more perfectly apprehended. Even though this ideal
of complete realization is ever just beyond man's grasp, its
recognition "gives a direction to our efforts and prevents
43
our conduct from sinking back into its animal origin."
Finally it should be noted that the necessity which links rationality and goodness is not the mechanical neces-
40. Mark, Chap. 10:18.
41. James, APU, 113.
42. Hobhouse, RG, 75.
43. Cohen, RN, 448.
98
sity which connects physical aspects of the world in a caus- al chain. Mechanism breaks down in the attempt to account
44
for persons and values. "At the bottom of all human ac- tivities are Values*, the conviction that some things ' ought to be* and others not."^ This is the requiredness or necessity of value. "The ultimate inseparability of val- ue and reality is now almost axiomatic; the attempt to di- vorce them can issue only in unintelligibility."^ But there is no mechanical necessity by which a reasoning mind, using correct deductive principles, must arrive at the good. None of this kind of inevitability or rigor exists here. The ne- cessity in the relation between the rational and the good contains an "ought" rather than a "must".
Human rationality is incompletely won, and the good is dimly seen and partially achieved. All that can be af- firmed is a reasonable surety that whenever and wherever reason strives to be comprehensive and coherent, the ought- to-be-liked will appear. There is something independent, something recalcitrant and inscrutable about the universe; after man's most strenuous efforts to circumvent an evil, it may still ride roughshod over him. But perhaps far more of- ten it may be persuaded to give a modicum of co-operation. That faith is the basis upon which humanity as a whole rests
44. Blanshard, NT, II, 44-1.
45. Ktthler, PVWF, 35.
46. Urban, IW, Preface, 3.
99
its hopes for the future. The denial of rational good is the denial of that which most men implicitly "believe.
5. Summary of the chapter
In this chapter the attempt has been made to show that rationality and goodness are intimately connected. Logic is itself a value, and whosoever begins a crusade to displace any one kind of logic does so on the basis that another is better. Plato was convinced that the aim of any true science is the good; he thought that good must be the principle of intelligibility.
In an analysis of the functions of intuition and rea- son, it was indicated that intuition grasps values, but is unable to rise to the ought-to-be-liked, at least not un- til reason has led the way to it. The true good is of necessity rational — it is what the whole mind perceives to be required if one wants to be rational and live a life of coherent wholeness.
In the following chapter, the search for possible re- lationships between the rational good and the real will be pursued. Is everything that is real also rational and good? In what objective realm does the ultimate good lie? Are goods and ideals mere phantoms without objective, enduring status? These problems occupy thought in the pages ahead.
47. Cf . 81, 87 ff. above.
CHAPTER IV
THE RATIONAL GOOD AND THE REAL
In the preceding chapter rationality and the ought- to-be-liked were presented as kindred ideals. Valuations may occur irrespective of the real worth of the thing val- ued and may be irrational; but a real and objective good is necessarily rational.
1. Reality defined
Reality is anything which has objective validity, which becomes intelligible as it is thought about. The real tends to be determined by these marks: (1) That it does not give rise to self -contradictory judgments; (2) that it has
2
the nature of "common to all" rather than of "special to me*;
and (3) that it has an element of permanency and self-iden-
tity. Various levels of reality may be thought of — some
regard the more universal as the more real while others take
4
the more definite and concrete as more ultimately real. However, there is universality in every individual and in- dividuality in every universal that can be named or recog- nized. Reality consists of every referent, the idea of
1. Holt, art. (1912), 366; Bowne, MET, 9, 10 (Note that references to MET on this page are to the 1882 ed.); Stace, NOW, 5.
2. Bowne, MET, 8.
3. Garnett, RV, 109-110.
4. Cf. Stace, NOW, 3-4; Bowne, MET, 30-33, 41.
101
which can become a coherent part of a rational experience. In so far as the good is bound up with what is en- during and coherent, it has all the objective reality that is needed. This connection of the good and the real cannot
be finally proved in the sense of being made acceptable to
5 6 all minds. Yet Urban asserts:
The inseparability of the highest value from the most truly real has been at once the venture of faith and the •axiom of intelligibility1 of the greatest thinkers. . • .From Plato to Hegel the deliberate and reiterated iden- tification of being and value has been the hidden spring of traditional thought.
It seems that human life cannot achieve its highest
goods without the conviction that reality on the whole is
benevolent, self -consistent, and enduring. Leighton presents
this thought: ^
If the spiritual values of human existence at its high- est term of development and achievement do not endure, amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal universe, there seems to be no stable or coherent meaning in exis- tence. Then the universe is irrational — indeed it is no universe at all.
2. Modernist and traditional views
of the problem
So-called "modernist" philosophers are distinguished
from others in part by their willingness to divorce values
and goods from reality. They evidently think that criteria,
standards, purposes, and evaluations make no difference to
5. Cf. Hoffding, POR, 93, HI.
6. Urban, IW, 14. In quotations value often means the same as good means for this dissertation.
7. Leighton, MC, 463; cf. Alexander, STD, II, 413.
102
8
the existence of a world of fact and experience. Nature is believed to be ruled by inexorable law, with no stan- dard or ideal affecting it except incidentally and secon- darily. Professor Montague's definition of the real in The New Realism implies this belief, for it omits all reference to mental or spiritual reality. "The real universe," he
says, "consists of the space-time system of existents, to-
9
gether with all that is presupposed by that system."
Plato's conception of the Good as the highest real- ity is so well-known, so original, and so important that it must be noted here. Far from relegating good to a secondary
place or even farther down the scale of reality, Plato de- 10
clared that
the good may be said to be not only the author of know- ledge in all things known, but of their being and es- sence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.
The Good, then, is more real than essences (Ideas), which are the usually considered basis of his idealism. The Good is the cause of all kinds of being. It informs or in- fuses the world as a whole with purpose, and gives it a goal (perfection) at which to aim."^ The main point is that the world has a purpose; it is no mere blind striving, no col- lection of brute facts, nor senseless process.
8. See Dewey, EN, 405ff.; cf. above, 82.
9. Montague, art. (1912), 255; quoted Garnett, RV, 109.
10. Plato, Rep. , 509; cf. Royce, WI, I, 190.
11. Demos, PP, 66; see Plato, Tim. , 33b.
12
Demos describes what Plato means:
103
In nature the Good is striven for but never to be at- tained. But, since it may be striven for, the Good is immanent in nature. The Good is the summit of all be- ing, the idea which is beyond all other ideas; it is also the defining principle of all being.
It the Good is not only the defining principle of eth- ics; it is the basic notion in ontology, in theory of knowledge, in the arts, and in theology. It is the most fundamental of the metaphysical factors; all the other metaphysical factors are subordinate to the Good.
Plato fs Good is both a pre-existing form and an ab- solute end, an abstract, impersonal, unchanging perfection, the same for all races and generations. All phenomenal ex- istence comes short of it, but is moved or affected by it. The Good is the ultimate in the scale of reality and the highest in the order of rationality and truth, even while the finite mind, tangled as it is in physical existence, cannot adequately grasp it.
The conviction that rational goods and reality co- incide is not so much a result of proof as it is of faith. It is a working hypothesis. Evidence which favors the judg- ment that they coincide can be presented, and to do this is what is proposed for this chapter. In order to get under way, the distinction between instrumental values and goods and intrinsic should again be set forth.
3. Intrinsic and instrumental goods
In the scale of values and goods it is often possible
12. First half of quotation is from Demos, PP, 71; the second half from same source, 76.
104
to make a cleavage between the items which are valued for their own sake and which are good in their own right, and other items which are valued for their utility or instru- mental character. For example, there are some intrinsic goods (such as truth, beauty, purity, personality, good will) which ought to be liked for what they are: the culmi- nation, the highest expression, the most effective concept, or the most poignant insight in a whole system of ideas. Then there are other goods which ought to be liked because they make such a culmination, expression, concept, or in- sight possible. Probably no intrinsic good is merely in- trinsic, and no instrumental good is that and nothing else, for there is a mutual interdependence between goods which does not permit them to stand alone, except that they may be isolated in thought. But in so far as a good is intrin- sic, it stands higher in the scale of reality. Values of either kind are more or less indifferent to objective truth; they may be highly prized regardless of the marks of real- ity which they do or do not possess. But the recognition of true enduring values (goods) represents the highest un- derstanding which finite minds can have — the concept of what ought to be liked for its own sake.
4. Values and goods on the practical plane are instrumental On the practical, common-sense plane, the tendency of human beings is to accept instrumental and intrinsic val-
i
105
ues alike as real goods. All kinds of pleasure are desired, and the natural bent of uncritical reason is to say that what is liked ought to be liked, that the status quo is the most desirable state of affairs. In this case common sense would say that pleasure ought to be sought everywhere and at all times. Familiarity, habitual, constant contact with, and affection for objects of daily use may blind anyone to their really extrinsic nature. They tend to become synony- mous with the real. Professor Hocking describes the forma-
13
tion of the bias thus:
Our occupations always define for us some aspect of re- ality; whatever we are daily occupied with and can deal with successfully, making it respond to our wills, — that we regard as real. To the banker, the flimsy figures on his account sheets represent realities; to the artist, his colors and the things of beauty he can produce with them: and these may or may not seem to the banker as un- real as the abstractions of financial credit to the ar- tist. But there is one universal occupation, the occu- pation with physical things, place and motion, food and shelter, physical labor which fortunately no one escapes.
It is thus that men come to regard certain values as final and to link them with the real, while the ought-to- be-liked, as a more spiritual and intangible fact, appears to be an unreal abstraction. Long contact with the physi- cal environment blurs but the vision of the good, while an untempered conception of reality as material becomes welded to the values (the merely liked) in the furnace of daily ex- perience.
13. Hocking, TP, 47.
106
Like most common- sense ideas, this way of talcing value-experience leads to contradictions. With its atten- tion fastened upon the immediate interest, common sense fails to apprehend the more remote inconsistencies which appear to maturer experience, to reflection. To pursue the object which is immediately liked is often to pursue a phan- tom, while paradoxically, what one really wanted eludes him. Uncritical common sense experiences this disappointment again and again. Values taken with no reference to the ra- tional ought-to-bp-liked lead to conflict and chaos in the life of the person who so takes them. An organizing prin- ciple to keep values in proper relation and perspective is a requirement of the good life.
5, Values and goods on the theoretical plane Some inkling of the confusion on the theoretical plane concerning the relation of values and goods to the real can be gleaned by noting the opinions of a number of modern thinkers.^ The disagreements among them might well cause a novitiate to throw up his hands in despair and re- nounce the rational good as nothing more than a wish or a 15
dream. At best goods are ideals which can be realized under favorable conditions. At worst, an ideal represents
14. Cf. Ayer, LTL, 17, 172; Alexander, STD, II, 243- 245; Dewey, EN, 28, 405, 415-416; Leighton, MC, 340, 406, 408, 411; Sorley, MVIG, 91, 93, 140, HI, 233; Perry, GTV, 115; Russell, WIB, 22; Spaulding, W0C, v; Urban, IW, 61, 65.
15. Cf. Gerard, art, (Jan. 1942), 98.
107
an impossible height of perfection which human beings can- not fully realize, or realize at all in the world as it now exists. Such an ideal is not real because it is not objective, public and enduring; and it is doubtful, even in spite of the fact that some people cling to such ideals, that they can rightly be called goods (what ought to be liked) . The position for this dissertation is that some ideals are genuine objective goods which have a valid claim upon all persons because of their rational and persistent
16
character, and their possibility of adequate realization, 6, Arguments for the objective reality of good
i. Urban. What is the nature of the arguments that are used to establish the objectivity and the reality of goods (or values, as some writers understand the term)? Urban writes that the "natural metaphysic of the human mind," the result of the basic constitution of human beings in an en- vironment like the present world, is to see the good and
17
the real as one, as an ultimate monism.
We find reality intolerable without raising it to the sphere of value, but we find it equally difficult to think value without its implying some kind of reality, and without giving it some form of being.
ii. KBhler. Kflhler speaks of something similar. The conviction that values are in large measure objective is well-nigh universal. "If the contrary is true should not
16. See Chapter One, 16.
17. Urban, IW, 130.
108
practically all mankind be able to see it?H he asks. It would seem that the present zest and initiative of human be- ings in the quest of goods and values would disappear if the conviction of their objective reference or status were to be dissipated.
iii. Alexander. Alexander bases the objectivity of
good upon its enduring quality, and in the coherence of the
objects to which it attaches. An excerpt of his metaphysi-
19
cal view may be used for description:
For goodness, whether we are considering the human val- ues or the subhuman values, is the character of the per- manent as opposed to the impermanent contrasted evil. The universe works in experience so as to secure the survival of good, or rather that which survives in the long run in the contest establishes its value thereby and is good. To repeat a saying already quoted, "mo- rality is the nature of things."
iv. Pringle-Pattison. Pringle-Pattison argues that 20
values must be objective because of the meaning or nature
21
of ideals for men in general.
Ideals would be impossible to a self-contained finite entity. To frame an ideal and pursue it means the pres- ence of the infinite in the finite experience; or, from the other side, it is the mark of the finite being who is to partake in an infinite life. All claims, there- fore, made on man's behalf, must be based on the objec- tivity of the values revealed in his experience, and brokenly realized there. Man does not make values any more than he makes reality.
18. Kohler, PVWF, 77.
19. Alexander, STD, II, 413; cf. 243.
20. Many authors use "values" in the sense that "good" is used here.
21. Pringle-Pattison, I0G, 238-239.
109
v. Other arguments. There are other grounds for be- lief in the objectivity of goods based upon the belief that there is an objective reason or mind which is expressed in forms, structure, law, universals, uniformity, and system. No one will seriously deny the presence of these factors in to world to some extent, but that they indicate the operation
of an infinite mindt is of course not universally aooepted.
22
Metaphysicians may well ask with Taylor:
Is the 'world* as a whole the embodiment of a defi- nite rational plan or structure, or is its very ground- plan something which, like the successive sensible ♦events1, is always unfinished and 'provisional1? Is the plan on which the world is constructed, so to say, subject to indefinite revision?
The facts point in both directions. Yet it does not seem that the world-plan is, in its broad outlines, subject to revision. Many details appear bound by an almost negli- gible necessity, in comparison with the validity of the laws
and broad principles which seem so definitely established.
23
A scientist writes:
The induction that nature is reasonable has been so for- tified by the crescendo of objective evidence that it has become a law of experience, and scientists have the same faith in the ubiquity of uniformity as have all men in the regular rising of the sun.
Since the essential nature of reason is to be pur- 24
posive, to speak of nature as "reasonable" would seem to
22. Taylor, CPT, 71.
23. Gerard, art, (Jan. 1942), 96.
24. See above, Chapter One, 24ff.
110
indicate that signs of purpose can be discerned therein; that the connections in the world are the work of a mind. That the good is rational and vice-versa was the chief proposi- tion of Chapter Three; if this be granted, then a reason- able or intelligible world is a good world.
If the world were simply a cumulation or succession of disconnected facts or events without value, it would be difficult to see how any predictions could be made which would occur as predicted, unless occasionally a lucky guess might coincide with some part of the flux of events. There must be some kind of co-operation and co-ordination between reality and realizers in order for knowledge to be possible.
Pringle-Pattison writes and quotes from Balfour a lucid ex-
25
pression of this requirement:
If the general system of scientific beliefs is to be accepted as rational — which is the contention of Natur- alism and also the assumption of commonsense — it must be because 'we bring to the study of the world the pre- supposition that it is the work of a rational Being, who made intelligible, and at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, able to understand it.1
The conviction that good is objective is a corollary of the belief in a benevolent world-purpose, because pur- pose is meaningless unless there is an objective end to be gained which is conceived of as good. Arguments for pur- pose are practically innumerable. A few samples should bring to light much of the evidence that is offered by the
25. Pringle-Pattison, IOG, 61; he quotes Balfour, FOB, 282; cf. 296, 301.
Ill
exponents of the idea.
vi. Plato. One of Plato fs arguments was based on a reduction to absurdity. It is ridiculous to argue that the world was not purposed and planned. How could earth, air, fire, and water, without any dynamic and intelligent princi- ple of organization, cause all the various intelligible forms of experience now present in the world?20 He makes use of the teleological and cosmological arguments, basing the case upon the analogy of a finite mind and its products
to a mind which has molded existing things after an eternal 27
model.
vii. Lotze. Lotze was convinced that forms do not arrive by accident. The efficient and formal causes of
things must be bound up in one unit with their final cause,
+ 28 for
we cannot regard Nature as a kaleidoscope that, shaken by chance, produces forms that look as if they had a meaning; if there is to be any meaning in this meaning, we must seriously assume and hold fast the conviction that the same power whence proceed the efficient capa- bilities of things, also directly includes the mould- ing imagination which assigns to these capabilities their points of application and their significant lines.
Mechanism cannot be the sole explanatory principle, he argues,
because nature favors the rational, and tends to expel what
26. See Plato, Phaedo, 97-99.
27. See Plato, Tim., 29ff.
28. Lotze, MIC, 411.
112
is irrational. Numerous benefits and requirements of life
on the earth are produced "by nature through its inner har-
29
mony of parts. He asks:
How could mechanical Nature — which must be contented with all that satisfies its universal laws — be the source of this superfluous perfection?
viii. Bowne. Borden P. Bowne argued that determinism
and necessity or the alternative chance would involve men
in speculative disaster; for that reason these explanatory
30
methods must be curbed or discarded. If man*s thinking is necessitated it is meaningless. It is not meaningless, therefore it is not necessitated. But if it is not neces- sitated then novelty and freedom exist in the world. Wher- ever novelty and freedom exist in the absence of lawless ir- rationality, there must be some kind of benevolent purposive control. Thus the idea of a governing agency which operates throughout the whole world is arrived at, and all reality is united by a common bond.
ix. Leighton. Two arguments used by Leighton are in- teresting. In one he suggests that purposiveness is a mark of incompleteness, of imperfection, and end not yet reached. Complete mechanical operation is perfect; thus engineers speak of the perfection of a motor, a locomotive, or oth- er machine. But nature is always apparently falling short
29. Lotze, MIC, 429.
30. Bowne, TTK, 365. The argument is slightly em- bellished.
113
of perfection, although seeming to aim at a mark. This ac- tivity without perfection implies the incomplete reign of
mechanism, and the presence of a purpose which aims at the
a 31 good.
His other argument follows the line of thought that man's progress has in it more of good than men themselves have contributed to it. There is a perceptible direction of human development which is neither the result of con- scious human planning nor of chance. He supports this by
32
the following idea from Bosanquet:
It is not finite consciousness that has planned the great phases of civilization, which are achieved by the linking of finite minds on the essential basis of the geological structure of the globe. Each separate mind reaches but a little way, and relatively to the whole of a movement must count as unconscious. You may say that there is intelligence in every step of the connection; but you cannot claim as a design of finite intelligence what never presented itself in that char- acter to any single mind.
z. Gilson. To those scientists who charge that the
belief in a benevolent purpose (or any purpose) in nature
is merely a projection of our own ideas into it, Gilson 33
replies:
We do not need to project our own ideas into the econ- omy of nature; they belong there in their own right. Our own ideas are in the economy of nature because we ourselves are in it.
Through man, who is part and parcel of nature, purposive-
31. Leighton, MC, 208. Slightly embellished.
32. Bosanquet, PIV, 154-155; in Leighton, MC, 211.
33. Gilson, GP, 133-134.
1H
ness most certainly is part and parcel of nature. In what sense then is it arbitrary, knowing from within that where there is organization there is always a pur- pose, to conclude that there is a purpose wherever there is organization?
xi. Results of the arguments. These then are some of the arguments that have been advanced to justify the be- lief in benevolent purpose in the objective world. They are some of the simpler, less complicated arguments. In the fi- nal analysis, one must have a comprehension of the nature of the world as throughout mental in order to see that it could not be what it is and still lack purposiveness. Those with the scientific bias may be willing to live "in a world of mere appearances, where that which appears is the appearance of nothing," and they may regard the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" as meaningless; but they take their stand on "notions of blind force, chance, emergence, sudden variation" for the reason that "they much
prefer a complete absence of intelligibility to the pres-
35
ence of a nonscientif ic intelligibility." They are un- willing to accept as plausible any kind of purposive eval- uation or explanation, or to acknowledge that cosmic facts, events, and structure are what they are because their par- ticular mode of being is better than some other. This seems arbitrary and irrational — it is the adherence to the strict
34. Gilson, GP, 132,
35. Ibid., 130.
115
application of a method to the point of fanaticism, 7. The meaning and place of evil If benevolent purpose is an objective fact in the world then there is a good which is an objective reality. For purpose which has no direction is nothing but a blind urge or will, and can be neither benevolent nor rational. This necessary union of benevolence and purpose is usually brought together or consummated in the concept of God, and will be considered presently in this chapter. But first let these questions be considered: what shall be done with the facts of particularity, novelty, mechanical operation, interruptions of process, and destructions of values in the world, all of which facts at times wear the outward appear- ance, at least, of evil? Do they point to the presence of
evil purposes? Are they objectively real evils? Do they
36
refute the idea of a rational good?
In general the explanations move in two directions. One explanation makes the evil or irrational aspects of the world merely apparent or phenomenal. The other pictures ir- rationality and evil as an established aspect of the real, fully as objective and enduring as the good. The issues tend to become somewhat beclouded; the Hegelians acknowledge evil, but not "real" evil, while the realists insist upon
36. These questions are answered specifically below, page 119.
116
remaining optimists in a world where evil remains as a per-
37
manent, untransmuted fact.
Evil depends for some of its unpleasant effect upon
its relation to time. It is obvious that in a world where
situations change, the evil of "now" may well be the good
of a later period. But as long as the evil does appear now,
it is difficult for the finite mind to see it as part of the
eternal purpose of a benevolent mind. Nevertheless, even
finite minds may attain to some notion of the way in which
evil might be taken as an instrumental good. Reason re-
38
quires irrational materials in order to be kept busy. Without some opposition, some antithetical other, it could have no task. Without evils there could be no idea of good, because there would be no criteria by which to recognize it. If there were no evils, rational minds could will no change, for there could be nothing to change from or to. Time would disappear if there were no change, for time is essentially of the nature of change. Benevolent purpose could have no further place in an economy of complete good, for all pos- sible good ends would already have been realized. Thus a world in which there is resistance to reason without the re- sult that reason is completely frustrated, is both good and rational. That is the kind of world that actually exists*
37. See Bradley, AP, 411; Spaulding, WAI, 255; Hock- ing, TP, 354, where he quotes Spaulding; also Hocking, TP, 372-375.
38. Santayana, LOR, 196.
117
Mankind seems almost incurably committed to optimism be- cause of it. The belief is practically universal that more and more of the problems that men face will be mastered. Many of those who would renounce any belief in a benevolent, rational world-purpose would be the first to insist upon this possibility of making the human lot a better, happier one. Such a combination of hopelessness with optimism seems in- consistent.
Evil is an overpowering fact only as one forgets the whole in which it appears. It is a bitter fact of the mo- mentary present, but is impermanent — H,twill not always be so." When it is carefully considered in a wider context than immediate experience (and it must be admitted that to view it thus when personal tragedies come is extremely dif- ficult), evil becomes transmuted and presents a different appearance.
Evil appears because the human ideal of perfection is contrasted with existing circumstances which are admit- tedly not perfect. The power to grasp ideals lures human aspirations on from the particularity of facts to the gene- rality of goods and values. Ideals direct the attention away from the irrationality of much of nature to the com- plete intelligibility which they possess. Chance and un- predictability give way to the hope of certainty in the mind which forms concepts of the ideal; the apparent purposeless- ness of the world becomes the reality of a precise realiza-
118
tion of a benevolent purpose; and the immediate persuasion that evil is a reality to the perception that in the supposed evil there is the possibility of advance to still greater goods. The infinite in the finite, the eternal in the tem- poral, the front stage and the background of life — it is the perception of the contrast between these that gives rise to the idea of evil. It is an idea which plagues mankind, yet if men can but get the total view, evil helps to make actual the infinite possible goods of individual personalities.
In the whole situation of good and evil the most amaz- ing fact is the ability of men to endure and rally under ad- verse circumstances. The first and most important battle of the whole struggle occurs within the unity of each individ- ual personality; the battle to understand, to adjust, and finally to alter the offending facts. It is by this that personality develops out of its beginning as a "blooming, buzzing confusion" (to borrow James* phrase) into a coherent whole. And as will be shown later, the creating and molding of rational and unified personalities appears to be the ulti- mate end of the world that now is — "the last of life, for which the first was made."
8. Summary of the preceding section
In order to summarize this section, the questions pro-
39. Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra,
119
LO
posed above may be answered briefly. The facts of the world which are called evil may be explained as really in- strumental goods (so long as they do not arise from finite wills), or facts capable of being used for self -development by rational minds. They do not necessarily point to evil world-purposes but to good purposes, since struggle against opposition is the only way higher good and greater perfection can come out of the less perfect. These evils may be said to be real in the sense that they arise from a comparison of the ought-to-be-liked (which is real) with the state of things as they are; but they are not real in the sense of being permanent. There is no rational mind to will their continued existence. Finally, they do not refute the idea of a rational, objective good, but rather strengthen it, since they are employed by a rational mind and minds to re- alize the good, to set the course in the direction of the ought-to-be-liked.
9. The mode of the objective existence of good Although a reasonable presumption of the objectivity and enduring character of good has been established, the man- ner or mode of its being has not yet been determined. In Chapter One it was asserted ^ that rational purposes and
40. See page 115*
41. See page 23.
120
anything that fulfils rational purposes may be said to be
good. Since rational purposes do not accidentally occur,
but in experience are found only in the minds of persons,
it follows that personality or a person is the locus of
42
the greatest potentiality for good. HBffding says:
In our experience personal beings appear in existence as centres of value, by which I mean as the living central points in which value can be felt and acknow- ledged. It is personality which in the world of our experience invests all other things with value. . . . The inhibition of a centre of value must necessarily involve a decrease of value.
i. Good is not a hypostatized abstraction. Thus the rational purposes, the good will, are not something apart from personal beings. The trend of philosophy is happily away from the hypostatizing of abstractions. Goods are not held to be objective in the sense of their being independent existences apart from other reality; they have their char- acter precisely because they are bound up with the most per- manent and self-identical essence known- -personality. Val- ues or goods have no "sort of ineffable and mysterious re- ality."43
ii. Good exists concretely in personality. Bright- man iterates the necessity for a view of good (or true val- ue) as concrete.44 "Value is an abstraction, a mere essence,
42. HBffding, POR, 279.
43. Leighton, ISO, 340.
44. Brightman, IPKI, 36.
121
apart from its existence in personality; and no metaphysic
of value is complete without a metaphysic of personality."
45
Elsewhere he writes in similar vein:
Personalism holds . . . that a value which does not exist is, as nonexistent, no value at all, and that the value of a value consists in some type of actual or pos- sible embodiment in personal life, finite or infinite. Without existence, no value. Without personality, no existence.
It was said above that in the final analysis, one must understand the world as being throughout mental in or- der to see that purposiveness is part of its essential na- ture. It is thought in the world structure that keeps its ordered, furnishes the efficient causes, resists the irra- tional, unintelligent drift toward disintegration and chaos. It is the kind of thought that is found in personality. Personality is far from being one of the last products of nature — rather the reverse seems more nearly true. It seems unintelligible to say that nature had no cause or beginning, far more so than to say that God had none. For if God be conceived to be a person, the analogy of human personality possessing self -activity and self -maintenance powers gives at least some clue to the nature of a self-identical, self- sustaining first cause. It has been said that nature is running down, that the available heat is being diffused, that in some billions of years the conditions will no long-
45. Brightman, POI, 190.
46. See page 114.
122
er be present to sustain life. If nature is running down, the question pressing upon the minds of many is, who has wound it up? What nature seems unable to do for itself calls for the idea of an adequate cause.
But aside from this, to say that nature is uncaused is unintelligible for these reasons: The assertion is un- satisfactory because it discards the ordinary mode of ex- planation; that is, it abandons the scientific mode of ex- planation by reference to causal antecedents. Being a neg- ative proposition, it fails to tield any fruitful hypoth- eses. Further, to speak of structure, law, order, and sys- tem as evolving on either a small scale or large without some kind of active agent seems to lack meaning. If there is neither an immanent purpose or nisus in nature nor an external agency dealing with it from its inception, the fact of its being a universe seems unaccountable.
Neither truth nor error, good nor value exists with- out minds which purpose and appraise. "The only thing that is of absolute value is the individual person* s experience,
since this is the only realizer, enjoyer, and bearer of val- 47
ues.n This is a "down to the earth" fact which must com- mend itself to minds which require something definite to which they may cling..
Let it be supposed that the statement opening the
47. Leighton, ISO, 340.
123
preceding paragraph is false. It would still remain true that all values and goods and the factors of individual growth and development are significant only by their ref- erence to mind or minds. Character develops by the contin- uous reasoned incorporation of the better and the best in-
4
to one's personal life, Leighton expresses it excellently:
We human selves discover values and in their realiz- ation become persons and thereby become richer and more harmonious finite embodiments of the meaningful and worthful life of the universe. . . • For the deepest quality in man, that which makes him a person or spir- it in becoming, is the capacity to transcend his natur- al or biological selfhood and to take on more universal and richer spiritual quality, Man is essentially a God- seeker, one who can become divine. This destiny of spir itual progress through self-transcendence is the deep- est word of the greatest human thinkers. . . .So too the doctrine of the union of the individual soul with the universal soul; Plato* s doctrine of the good; Aris- totle^ contemplative life; the Stoic life in harmony with the logos; the mystics contemplative and ecstatic union with the one. Through these and other one-sided or partial expressions of the same principle there shines one fundamental truth — the absolute principle of value, the objective ground of all value is personality, spiritual selfhood in widest commonalty spread.
This point of view is held by philosophers who dif- fer widely on other fundamental points. For example, Mc- Taggart argues that "only the spiritual can have value," but as an atheist he says that the universe, which in oth- er explanations would be the experience of God, has no val- ue, although its parts (selves) do have. In fact, selves are the locus of all value — they are intrinsic goods, and
48. Leighton, MC, 4.10; see also 406-407.
124
49
other goods are called utilities.
W.R. Sorley expresses his opinions in a way which seems adequately to summarize the main ideas of this section. He believes that value resides in persons "by virtue of the fact that they are individuals, and as such unique. "Given exis- tence, value is always possible; it attaches itself to unique- ness only because it is the individual that exists, and the individual is always unique." He quotes T.H. Green to the effect that personal worth is our ultimate standard in the
category of good, a standard in relation to which all other
51
values are relative. His belief that the good is rational,
52
real, and in persons appears in these words:
As free and rational, persons are also purposeful, seekers of ends. The law which the person recognizes as valid for his life is that which tends to be the end in which personality is conceived as reaching its true good. This is an ideal, and its attainment must be looked for in the gradual process by which character is built up and conduct brought into rational order. The moral agent is thus compelled to regard his true per- sonality as consisting not in the actual features of the passing moment but in an is to be — in something to which he should attain and"^o which he can at least approximate,
10, The good and God On the finite plane reason and good (and value) are included within the microcosmic unity of personal life. Are
49. McTaggart, NOE, II, 398, 399, 404.
50. Sorley, MVIG, 115.
51. Ibid., 122-123.
52. Ibid., 190.
125
they also ultimately identical with the macrocosm? Since the world conforms more or less readily to the persuasion of intelligent plans of action, since it favors rational ends and is apparently under the influence and direction of ends, it must be a unity of experience for some kind of mind capable of grasping it as a whole. This seems to be necessary, for without rational direction, it is difficult to see how such a rational character and continuity of di- rection could be true of the universe so steadily as is the case. All the mechanical systems which mankind knows defi- nitely require constant thought and attention to keep them at peak operating capacity and perfection. Therefore the world requires the constant and immediate oversight of an infinite mind.
This is a tremendous venture of analogical reasoning, one whose bases and implications will occupy the remainder of the present chapter. The question of the ultimate ob- jectivity of the rational good depends upon the disposition of the problem of an infinite mind.
Proofs for the existence of God need not be pro- duced here. For the most of mankind, such proof affects the belief but little; men depend more upon faith and prag- matic consequences than upon intellectual demonstration. The stock arguments, the ontological, cosmological, teleo- logical, and moral arguments, are faifcly familiar and can be found in numerous textbooks of philosophy and theology.
126
The gist of all arguments is that there must be a rational ground of the worlds existence, its interaction of parts, and its purposive operation. The denial of any explanatory principle, such as cause, agency, or purpose, or other cat- egories and empirical facts, detracts both from simple in- telligibility and from mental satisfaction. If human minds at the present advanced stage of the world's progress can- not produce phenomena like those of nature, or even repro- duce them adequately when given a pattern to work from, how could nature have been produced by a finite mind or minds at an earlier stage of history? And as the world now ex- ists, how could its mechanical parts interact so precisely, carry on as if under direction, and maintain themselves with- out breakdown or apparent deterioration, unless there were a
53
single unitary agent in control of them? Further, accor- ding to the scientific doctrine of evolution, the survival of a belief strongly suggests its truth and validity, and certainly theism has outlived many perilous periods in the history of thought and religion.
11. God's nature and relation to the world Four main conceptions of the nature of God have been developed to account for the intelligible character of the world. The first to be discussed here is pantheism. In this view, as is well-known, God is regarded as wholly immanent
53. Bowne, THE, 51-63. This is the gist of his argu- ment.
127
in the world. Extreme pantheism is a conception in which every particular fact is identified with God. God is dis- solved, as it were, in an ocean of particularity, in which he is indistinguishable from any particular — no predicate can adequately describe him. If everything is a manifesta- tion of God, then everything partakes of his nature. Every thing is good, and evil has no reality whatever.
Pantheism is such an all-inclusive conception, so entirely without an alter that to most persons it lacks
meaning. The views of some of the most important philoso- 54
phers have had a more or less pantheistic flavor, but are far more moderate than some others which can be positively identified as pantheisms. '
The method of obtaining the unity which an intelligi ble metaphysical theory demands, of identifying everything with God has produced some masterpieces of ingenuity and dialectical intricacy. Many of them bear a winning plausi- bility. Yet somehow one sees and feels that absolutes, be- cause they are not thinking and willing beings, but merely universal concepts which must contain everything that is, fall short of accounting for and unifying the diversity, novelty, evil, and other irrationalities of the physical
54. For example, Hegel, Bradley, Royce.
55* Philosophic Hinduism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Spinozism.
128
and moral universe. No matter what concepts are brought forth to explain the multiplicity of particular empirical facts, the explanation must be an inadequate one if God or the Absolute is not granted active intelligence and will. "Metaphysics," said Bowne, "shows that active intelligence alone fills out the true notion of being, unity, identity, and causality. "^ Unless God is an active mind, he cannot be a significant factor in the world*s processes, and the apparent purpose in the world remains an ungrounded phenom- enon.
Deism is the second view of God^ relation to the world which is offered to reduce the facts to some kind of intelligibility. It is at the farthest extreme from pan- theism. The term "deism" is usually used to refer to the religious rationalists and the advocates of natural as op- posed to revealed religion in the eighteenth century, par- ticularly in England, where, as shallow as it was, it had more depth than in some other countries, e.g., France. One
characteristic doctrine of deism in all countries was the
57
notion that God is far removed from the world-order. The world is mechanical; although God probably created it, he is both external to it and remote from it (i.e. wholly tran- scendent in relation to it). God may be personal on this
56. Bowne, THE, 140.
57. Rogers, SHP, 391.
129
58
view, but he is wholly unconcerned about his creation. In spite of its vogue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries deism was too superficial to win the support of able men. A religion which operates only by an uninspired reason, and a deity who serves only as creator have too little ap- peal either to become or to remain vital influences. The manifestation of purpose in the world is unintelligible if the world is mechanical. Growth, development, and progress cannot have meaning if only the reign of law is to make them possible. The modification of one law by another (e.g. the expansion and increased buoyancy of water as it arrives at the freezing point), seems difficult to conceive on the me- chanical plane.
The view of Aristotle is in some ways intermediary between the deistic and pantheistic views, but has some fea- tures also which distinguish it from both of them. Terms which might fittingly be applied to his conception of God are the "logical absolute" or the "ultimate abstract uni- versal." For him God is pure form, wholly inactive and in- corporeal, the highest object of pure thought and contem- plation. How God can move the world becomes a problem; Aristotle argues that the desire of finite existence for the ideal which God is, is the impelling power in all mo- tion, in all growth and development. God is only a final,
58. Joyce, PNT, 2, 56I.
130
and not an efficient cause. He is the entelechy, the re- alization for which the whole world strives. But Aristotle*
view of him is abstract, a projection from the finite hier-
59
archy of form and matter on the ascending scale.
The truth of this view is that forms or universals do bear the load of intelligibility for the world. The case rests upon this basis: HIf there are genuine univer- sals, the universe is rational; as someone has said it is •put together mindwise.* This much is fact: men think by means of universals, and the world accommodates itself to this method. The question upon which most disagreement develops is: what kind of universals? Aristotle's abstract universal is not in general favor at the present time.
The falsity of this view lies in its snpposal that God has any significant connection with the world, consid- ering the fact that he is pure form, a mind without activ- ity. Form and matter separated from each other are empty abstractions — even Aristotle saw how little could be said about them. It was Plato fs separation of them which he criticized and which he intended to overcome by his own view, although as has been seen, he did not wholly succeed. Form and matter are never experienced singly, hence for Aristotle to call God pure form is to make God an unknow-
59. Aristotle, Met. , IX, 6, 994a, 1049a, b; cf. Rogers, SHP"7~l02-107.
60. Brightman, ITP, 133.
131
able entity. The criticism which Leighton directs against those who try to avoid the concrete metaphysics of person- ality by having recourse to a 'transcendental ought1 seems to have relevancy when applied to the view of Aristotle. ^
To set up such a notion is an intellectually vicious ab- stractionism, of the same order as that which would ground all the reality, worth of personal life, in a 'consciousness in general' (Bewusstsein uberhaupt).
Aristotle maintains with the deists the objectivity of God, but God is so far from any effective relationship with the rest of reality that his function is not fully in- telligible.
The fourth view of God formulated to explain the in- telligible and benevolent aspects of the world is personal- istic and theistic. This conception of the nature of God is offered as a true synthesis of the views which make God an empty generality on the one hand and a meaningless uni- versal inclusion of all facts on the other. In this view God is regarded as both immanent and transcendent, as a mover,
purposer, and sustainer of the universe. Rashdall describes
62
the motive and spirit of this position:
I will simply state that to my own mind the only form in which belief in the rationality of the universe is intelligible is the form which ascribes the events of its history to a self-conscious rational Will direc- ting itself towards an end which presents itself to Him as absolutely good. However inadequate our conceptions
61. Leighton, MC, 408.
62. Rashdall, TGE, II, 214.
132
of 'Will1, 'Mind*, 'Purpose*, ♦Reason1, Personality1, may be to express the nature of such a Being, they are the best we have. Thought does not become more ade- quate by becoming vaguer.
There are several formulations of the personalistic position; in all, as the name implies, the highest reality is the fact of personality, individual, unique, active, and intelligent. In the system propounded by Bowne, God is con- ceived as a person under whose direction the world moves at
63 , 64
all times, Bowne writes:
Both laws and things exist or change solely because of the demands of the divine plan. If this calls for fix- edness, they are fixed; if it calls for change, they change. They have in themselves no ground of exis- tence so as to be a limit for God; because they are nothing but the divine purpose flowing forth into re- alization. . . .We hold that the world is no self- centred reality, independent of God, but is simply the form in which the divine purpose realizes itself.
Bowne consciously strives to avoid the extremes of
65
both the deistic and the pantheistic views. In his opin- ion the only possible way to accomplish this is on the plane of personality. The features of the world which force one to the conclusion that God is a person are these: (1) the world of interacting things requires an underlying ground of interaction which is effective at all points. (2) It is
63* God as personal was advocated by Plato; has been the Christian tradition held by the church fath- ers, many of the scholastic thinkers, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Lotze, Eucken, Green, Sorley, Green, Howison, Balfour, Ward, Pringle-Pattison, Rashdall, and the Personalists, Knudson, Bright- man, Flewelling, as well as many others. See
Knudson, PP, 32-33.
64. Bowne, THE, 227-228.
65. Ibid., 227.
133
66
an intelligible system which requires an intelligent orig-
67 m
inator--the opposite view is contrary to reason. But many
have held that the world-ground is intelligent and rational
in1 69
68
but not personal." This is contradiction; active intelli-
gence is what is meant by personality or personhood.
The universe of experience has no meaning or possibili- ty apart from conscious intelligence as its abiding source or seat. . . • Living, personal intelligence is the only possible first.
This is but one of the numerous metaphysical paths which lead to the same conclusion. "Identity, unity, caus- ality, substantiality are possible only under the personal 70
form." Everything impersonal is dependent and phenomenal and of the nature of instrumental good.
With the idea that the co-ordinated action of the universe can take place mechanically, with only the moving power of impersonal causal antecedents to bring events about it is difficult to have patience. On the impersonal plane, theorizers are given to assuming tacitly what they never ad- mit explicitly. Thus the following, quoted by Pringle-Patti son from A.E. Taylor: M,The succession of stages is welded into a unity by the singleness of the plan or law which they
V A «71
embody."
66. Bowne, THE, 51-53. 71. Taylor, EOM, 162-
' 163; Pnngle-Pat-
67. Ibid., 69-70, 151. tison, IOG, 360.
68. Ibid., 155.
69. Ibid., 169; see also 168.
70. Ibid., 204.
134
Now a plan or law can weld nothing. Of course one must make allowances for the modes of expression which, al- though inadequate to express the thought, are yet made neces- sary by the shortcomings of language. However, this mode of expression is typical of a considerable number of philosoph- ers who import dynamism into their systems of thought sur- reptitiously, without recognizing frankly and fairly that something more than order, system, intelligibility, a group of categories, and a physical world are needed to account for the unity that are actually experienced. The only orig- inal dynamism that men experience lies within their own per- sonalities,— they initiate events, begin activities. Any other self-starting activity cannot be intelligible to them, except on this basis.
Most learned men, particularly those with scientific training, look for mechanical causes, and are wont to over- look the fact that mechanical operation has no sufficient ultimate explanation within its own realm. They are content to rest in the immediate chain of causes and effects, and to ignore the ultimate cause.
No one need complain of this procedure so long as those who use it do not go beyond their prerogatives to deny that there are ultimate explanations and goods, or to affirm that there is no other explanation possible than me- chanical explanation. But when philosophers, either through timidity or carelessness, fall into the same error, and re-
135
main within the one limited realm of explanation, while still importing the necessary motive power and motion for the scheme of things, then an outcry must be raised. When science is able to prove that anything of a strictly mechan- ical nature is self-preserving in the same sense that liv- ing organisms are, then philosophy may cease to look for ultimate sources of power, because a nature that is self- sustaining could then be conceived as having no beginning. Until, then, the most logical and reasonable possibility for ultimate reference is a personality of the same order as human personality, a prototype of human personality. This is the natural and most satisfactory ultimate explanation for human thinking.
12. The outcome of the view of God as personal for the rational good It was said above that personality is the bearer of
value, the realizer of value, and is itself the highest of
72
values or goods. In short, it is the only intrinsic good; that is, whatever intrinsic goods may be distinguished re- side in personality. Therefore the Supreme Person is the summum bonum, the highest good of all. In him reality and all worth become identical; the proposition of the "Great Tradition" coheres with personalistic principles.
God's supremacy and perfection do not mean that he
72. See above, 122.
136
has no occupation, no task, no activity. Self -activity is a conspicuous fact in all personality, and there is no rea- son to suppose that the personality of God is any exception. The mirror-like intelligence of Aristotle^ God cannot be the God who is in active relationship with the universe, a God who both knows and wills the good.
But if God is a rational mind under whose direction the world moves, does he will its unpleasant, painful, and discordant features? Is he the author of irrationality? God wills no intrinsic evil — one may be sure of that a pri- ori, because he would no longer be God, but only a supreme tyrant. That is, if the Being who controls the universe wills contradictions of an intrinsic nature, then he is not God and the world is as senseless as the most extreme pes- simist thinks it to be. The facts do not support this opin- ion. The direction of God's will is set unalterably toward the good which ought to be liked, but the coming of this good may be long deferred as mortals count time, although it will be deferred in the interests of the whole ration- al end. Extrinsic evils may be aids to this final good. The events and conditions that cause pain may well be caused
or introduced by God. The patriarch Job thought so, and de-
73
clared, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but griev-
73. Job, Chap. 13:15. Cf. American Revision.
137
ous. Even so, a world or a character which contains the maximum possible good seems to require the chastening which is called evil.
On the basis of reason it would be difficult to say- that the world is good, even allowing that the evils are on- ly apparent. Reason is perplexed by the question, why the appearance of evil? Considering the whole realm of the world as it is, its possibilities and the apparent divine purpose in it, one may say that it is the best God can make. From the finite viewpoint it is knotty and thorny, yet or- derly and benevolent, and could be either better or worse than it is. It does serve a purpose (which may be the di- vine purpose) ; by making man toil and sweat it develops char acter and spiritual stamina, yields the satisfaction of prog ress, and prepares one so that he can enjoy a still more per feet world. If one's philosophy does not admit a realm of ends, this argument will be meaningless. Without ends, how- ever, all arguments are finally meaningless. This unques- tionably true of the individual argument itself--if it does not aim at truth, or at exercising the vocal cords, or at some other end, no matter how trivial, it is senseless. But in another sense even if the reasoning concerns particulars or immediate causes, if there is not something more ulti- mate to which it leads, these particulars or causes must of
74. Hebrews, Chap. 12:11.
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necessity bear a limited and partially misleading meaning. Cut off from ends, they can only be described, not inter- preted, and to the average man must seem barren and bleak in the long run. Ultimately every human thought is vanity if life is not moving toward an end that is full of mean- ing because full of the good.
What man calls imperfection, then, is for God but a tentative arrangement with a better end in view. This is proved only by the fact that such imperfection can be shown to serve the interests of reason and the good will. To some it may seem unnecessarily naive, but the analogy of God to a parent who takes the long run viewpoint in pro- viding for the welfare of his children seems a plausible notion. Discipline is an evil thing to a child, that is, from the observation point of a partial mind. However, if the characteristics of personality be the same in kind in man and in God, then God will not propose that man should have freedom from all trials. Rather, God will allow and ordain everything which will enable man to become an em- bodiment of the good, a rational will.
The fully rational good is not yet a reality in fi- nite existence, but is a plan to be realized, an ideal. Men
have good reason to hope and to exert themselves in its be-
75
half. As Bowne expresses it:
75. Bowne, THE, 212.
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The seeming evils and imperfections of the world being founded in purpose and freedom, and not in an intracta- ble necessity, we are permitted to hope for their remov- al or transformation in the completion of the divine plan.
The outlines of the plan are clear to those who can read the signs — not that it is a rational certainty, but it is at least a rational probability that "a community of moral per- sons, obeying moral law and enjoying moral blessedness, is
the only end that could excuse creation or make it worth 76
while." The conditions for this goal are present in the world, and men still have hope. The perfectly rational good is an ideal to urge man on to his fullest possible, and best possible self-realization; to his highest good, which is a personally achieved good. No good that could be given to a man would have such high value for him as that which he had a part in creating. Goods are only withheld, desires frus- trated, and evils permitted, in the anticipation of greater ultimate gains. These gains in personality growth are the concrete realization of the rational good, the creation and enhancement of a rational will.
13. Summary of the chapter This chapter began with the definition of reality and proceeded to show that the outstanding characteristic of the real is its capacity to keep its identity without contradiction while it is the object of coherent thought.
76. Bowne, THE, 231.
HO
The good can measure up to this requirement for the real, especially if it is taken to be a good will concretely ex- emplified in personality. Without the latten neither good nor value can be real. The natural human tendency to rest in what is liked without reference to the more enduring ought-to-be-liked was noted, along with the tendency to re- fer all values to an objective order. Evidence was presen- ted to show that goods are objectively real — they are the key to the whole meaning of the universe. Purposiveness with a benevolent tinge marks the whole character of the world. From this purposiveness, by analogical reasoning, the existence of a Supreme Mind or Person is inferred. Evil, so-called, appears as undesirable because it represents the status of phenomenal existence against the background of perfection; perfection is a goal to be striven for--having by that plan a greater value--rather than to be conferred on a man without effort or desire on his part.
The pantheistic, deistic, and Aristotelian conceptions of GodTs relation to the world were shown to be inadequate to account for the experienced facts. A much more coherent and satisfactory account was shown to be the view of God as a personal, intelligent, and efficient mediator of the other- wise loosely- jointed world. The deepest truth about the di- vine being is its active participation in the realization of man's good; the fundamental truth about finite beings is what
HI
they are capable of becoming.
In the following chapter, the implications of these conclusions for social progress will be investigated. How shall they be applied? What is social progress? What forms of social, political, and other kinds of organization contrib ute most to the development of individual personality and good will? Is individual development, after all, the thing most desirable, or is the desirable end a well-organized and unified state or society? These are the next questions awaiting attention.
CHAPTER V
THE RATIONAL GOOD AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
In the previous chapter, the conclusion was reached that the rational good is an ideal which becomes an objec- tive reality in personality. In finite personality, it was said, the important fact is its capacity for becoming in one process more rational and ethically better. These ends are identical when the definition of rational adopted in Chapter
One is accepted.^" The background of the previous chapter
2
for the present chapter is essential, because
The source of the principle of the perfection of so- cial man is to be found in the life and purposes of the cosmos. • . . The pattern and standard of moral worth is not to be found in man's nature alone, but in his en- vironment, not merely of human society, but of the wid- er cosmos.
1. Definitions and viewpoints In this final chapter the aim will be to discover how the ideal of the rational good may be realized in so- ciety as a whole, and what it will mean for society. Some of the questions to be considered are: (1) What is meant by "social"? (2) What is meant byMprogress"? (3) What prin- ciples are involved in an adequate conception of social progress? (4) What do men who have thought carefully on the subject of social progress feel