Humanistic Studies of the University of Kansas, Vol. 1Mitchell, Arthur
Philosophy
Humanistic Studies of the University of Kansas, Vol. 1
Mitchell, Arthur
Humanities
Professor A. D. Lindsay has pointed out[152] that, in one important
respect, Bergson’s genius is of the Kantian kind. It is capacity
for such interpretation of old problems that they become veritably
renewed. “It is a great and essential proof of cleverness or insight,”
said Kant, “to know how to ask reasonable questions.” Now, comments
Professor Lindsay (without suggesting any comparison in importance
between Kant and Bergson), there is this resemblance between them,
that much of the interest of Bergson’s work, as of Kant’s, consists
in statement and exposition of antinomies in philosophy. Like Kant’s,
Bergson’s philosophy is interesting because it is a new method, and, in
the same sense as Kant’s, is a critical philosophy, for it consists in
finding the main source of previous difficulties in uncriticized false
assumptions.
Such criticism of the question (“interpretation of the problem” I
called it above) is just the proper business of the philosopher. For,
every question is also an unconditional assertion. Falseness in this
implied assertion is a case of the fallacy of “many questions,” which,
accordingly, may be regarded as the philosopher’s first concern.
Bergson is a philosopher preeminently in this sense. He is a
philosopher also (in spite of the cavalier denial of Sir. E. Ray
Lankester)[153] in that he is a man with an articulate conviction
concerning the nature of being and of knowledge. In the aspersion
of Bergson’s thought by the above writer and by Mr. Hugh S. R.
Elliot,[154] there is a rancour which, in spite of much valid criticism
in detail, produces an impression of ill-regulated prejudice.
This impression is no more than fairly counterbalanced by the contrary
enthusiasm of such whole-souled votaries of Bergsonism as Edouard
LeRoy, William James and H. Wildon Carr.
“There is a thinker,” writes M. LeRoy, “who is deemed by acknowledged
philosophers worthy of comparison with the greatest.... Beyond any
doubt, and by common consent, Mr. Henri Bergson’s work will appear to
future eyes among the most characteristic, fertile and glorious of our
era. It marks a never-to-be-forgotten date in history; it opens up a
phase of metaphysical thought, it lays down a principle of development
the limits of which are indeterminable; and it is after cool
consideration, with full consciousness of the exact value of words,
that we are able to pronounce the revolution which it effects equal in
importance to that effected by Kant, or even by Socrates.”[155] It is
a “profoundly original doctrine.” And of endless fertility: “There is
no doctrine ... which is more open, and none which ... lends itself to
further extension.” Again: “... a doctrine which admits of infinite
development ... a work of such profound thought that the least passing
example employed takes its place as a particular study.”[156] And so on
_ad libitum_.
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