I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflective world of
experience over against the critical thought-situation--such a
contrast implies the very wholesale, at large, consideration of
thought which I am striving to avoid. Doubtless many and many an act
of thought has intervened in effecting the organization of our
commonest practical-affectional-aesthetic environment. I only mean to
indicate that thought does take place _in_ such a world; not _after_
a world of bare existences; and that while the more systematic
reflection we call organized science may, in some fair sense, be said
to come _after_, it comes after affectional, artistic, and
technological interests which have found realization.
Having entered so far upon a suggestion which cannot be followed out,
I venture one other digression. The notion that value or significance
as distinct from mere existentiality is the product of thought or
reason, and that the source of Lotze's contradictions lies in the
effort to find _any_ situation prior or antecedent to thought, is a
familiar one--it is even possible that my criticisms of Lotze have
been interpreted by some readers in this sense.[20] This is the
position frequently called neo-Hegelian (though, I think, with
questionable accuracy), and has been developed by many writers in
criticizing Kant. This position and that taken in this chapter do
indeed agree in certain general regards. They are at one in denial of
the factuality and the possibility of developing fruitful reflection
out of antecedent bare existence or mere events. They unite in denying
that there is or can be any such thing as _mere_ existence--phenomenon
unqualified as respects organization and force, whether such
phenomenon be psychic or cosmic. They agree that reflective thought
grows organically out of an experience which is already organized, and
that it functions within such an organism. But they part company when
a fundamental question is raised: Is all organized meaning the work of
thought? Does it therefore follow that the organization out of which
reflective thought grows is the work of thought of some other type--of
Pure Thought, Creative or Constitutive Thought, Intuitive Reason,
etc.? I shall indicate briefly the reasons for divergence at this
point.
To cover all the practical-social-aesthetic objects involved, the term
"thought" has to be so stretched that the situation might as well be
called by any other name that describes a typical form of experience.
More specifically, when the difference is minimized between the
organized and arranged scheme out of which reflective inquiry
proceeds, and reflective inquiry itself (and there can be no other
reason for insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought is
itself somehow thought), exactly the same type of problem recurs
which presents itself when the distinction is exaggerated into one
between bare existences and rational coherent meanings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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