A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in PhilosophyJames, William
Philosophy
A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy
James, William
Philosophy, Modern
Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power
by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give
due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and
amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its
behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he
elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of
transition, but says that
[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W.J.]
when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living
experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. 569).
Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like
in case we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not
spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or
otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace
relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be
hooked on _ad infinitum_. The nearest approach he makes to describing
a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_
as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the
nature of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley,
seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if
not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure
experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet'
are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and
optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[1] All that I can verify
in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as
its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible
conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions),
[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes
(or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an
additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related
again to each! Both Bradley (_Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33) and
Royce (_The World and the Individual_, i, 128) lovingly repeat this
piece of profundity.]
but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized.
Bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its
image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest
union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite,
the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of
them,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as
given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for
some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained
it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full
possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all
of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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