International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Philosophy
International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Conference proceedings; Medicine -- Congresses; Science and the humanities -- Congresses; Technology -- Congresses
Each of those four great types of will-attitude which we insisted
on--that is, of submitting, of approving the given, of approving change,
and of transcending--can be carried out on these three stages, that is,
as individual act, as historical act, and as over-individual act. And we
may say at once that only if we submit and approve and change and
transcend in an over-individual act, do we have Truth and Beauty and
Morality and Conviction. If we approve, for instance, a given experience
in an individual will-act, we have simply personal enjoyment and its
object is simply agreeable; if we approve it in harmony with other
individuals, we reach a higher attitude, yet one which cannot claim
absolute value, as it is dependent on historical considerations and on
the tastes and desires of a special group or a school or a nation or an
age. But if we approve the given object just as it is in an
over-individual will-act, then we have before us a thing of beauty,
whose value is not dependent upon our personal enjoyment as individuals,
but is demanded as a joy forever, by every one whom we acknowledge at
all as a complete subject. In exactly the same way, we may approve a
change in the world from any individual point of view: we have then to
do with technical, practical achievements; or we may approve it in
agreement with others: we then enter into the historical interests of
our time. Or we may approve it, finally, in an over-individual way,
without any reference to any special personality: then only is it
valuable for all time, then only is it morally good. And if our will is
transcending experience in an individual way, it can again claim no more
than a subjective satisfaction furnished by any superstition or hope.
But if the transcending will is over-individual, it reaches the absolute
values of religion and metaphysics.
Exactly the same differences, finally, must occur when our will submits
itself to experience. This submission may be, again, an individual
decision for individual purposes; no absolute value belongs to it. Or it
may be again a yielding to the suggestions of other individuals; or it
may, finally, again be an over-individual submission, which seeks no
longer a personal interest. This submission is not to the authority of
others, and is without reference to any individual; we assume that every
one who is to share with us our world of experience has to share this
submission too. That alone is a submission to truth, and experience,
considered in so far as we submit ourselves to it over-individually,
constitutes our knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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