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
In my judgment it cannot be affirmed that the attempts of the latter
half of the nineteenth century to develop an experimental science of
psychology in independence of philosophical criticism and metaphysical
assumption, or the claims of this science to have thrown any wholly new
light upon the statement, or upon the solution of philosophical
problems, have been largely successful. But certain more definitely
psychological questions have been to a commendable degree better
analyzed and elucidated; the new experimental methods, where confined
within their legitimate sphere, have been amply justified; and certain
_quasi_-metaphysical views respecting the nature of the human mind, and
even, if you will, the nature of the Spirit in general--have been placed
in a more favorable and scientifically engaging attitude toward
speculative philosophy. This seems to me to be especially true with
respect to two problems in which both empirical psychology and
philosophy have a common and profound interest. These are (1) the
complex synthesis of mental functions involved in every act of true
cognition, together with the bearing which the psychology of cognition
has upon epistemological problems; and (2) the yet more complex and
profound analysis, from the psychological point of view, of what it is
to be a self-conscious and self-determining Will, a true Self, together
with the bearing which the psychology of selfhood has upon all the
problems of ethics, æsthetics, and religion.
The more obvious and easily traceable influences which have operated to
incite and direct the philosophical development of the nineteenth
century are, of course, dependent upon the teachings and writings of
philosophers, and the schools of philosophy which they have founded. To
speak of these influences even in outline would be to write a manual of
the history of philosophy during that hundred of years, which has been
of all others by far the most fruitful in material results, whatever
estimate may be put upon the separate or combined values of the
individual thinkers and their so-called schools. No fewer than seven or
eight relatively independent or partially antagonistic movements, which
may be traced back either directly or more indirectly to the critical
philosophy, and to the form in which the problems of philosophy were
left by Kant, sprung up during the century. In Germany chiefly, there
arose the Faith-philosophy, the Romantic School, and Rational Idealism;
in France, Eclecticism and Positivism (if, indeed, the latter can be
called _a_ philosophy); in Scotland, a naïve and crude form of Realism,
which served well for the time as an antagonist of a skeptical idealism,
but which itself contributed to an improved form of Idealism; and in the
United States, or rather in New England, a peculiar kind of
Transcendentalism of the sentimental type. But all these movements of
thought, and others lying somewhere midway between, in a pair composed
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account