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
I. The problems which the critical philosophy undertook definitively to
solve may be divided into three classes. The first is the
epistemological problem, or the problem offered by human knowledge--its
essential nature, its fixed limitations, if such there be, and its
ontological validity. It was this problem which Kant brought to the
front in such a manner that certain subsequent writers on philosophy
have claimed it to be, not only the primary and most important branch of
philosophical discipline, but to comprise the sum-total of what human
reflection and critical thought can successfully compass. "We call
philosophy self-knowledge," says one of these writers. "The theory of
knowledge is the true _prima philosophia_," says another. Kant himself
regarded it as the most imperative demand of reason to establish a
science that shall "determine _a priori_ the possibility, the
principles, and the extent of all cognitions." The burden of the
epistemological problem has pressed heavily upon the thought of the
nineteenth century; the different attitudes toward this problem, and its
different alleged solutions, have been most influential factors in
determining the philosophical discussions, divisions, schools, and
permanent or transitory achievements of the century.
In the epistemological problem as offered by the Kantian philosophy of
cognition there is involved the subordinate but highly important
question as to the proper method of philosophy. Is the method of
criticism, as that method was employed in the three Critiques of Kant,
the exclusive, the sole appropriate and productive way of advancing
human philosophical thought? I do not think that the experience of the
nineteenth century warrants an affirmative answer to this question of
method. This experience has certainly, however, resulted in
demonstrating the need of a more thorough, consistent, and fundamental
use of the critical method than that in which it was employed by Kant.
And this improved use of the critical method has induced a more profound
study of the psychology of cognition, and of the historical development
of philosophy in the branch of epistemology. More especially, however,
it has led to the reinstatement of the value-judgments, as means of
cognition, in their right relations of harmony with the judgments of
fact and of law.
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