Idealism holds, speaking more positively, that philosophers must submit
the conceptions and methods which they employ to a preliminary immanent
criticism, in order to determine the limits within which they may be
validly applied. Every genuine category or method is valid within a
certain sphere of relevance, and the business of criticism is to
determine by empirical investigation or by 'ideal experiment' (which
means much the same thing) what concrete significance the conception is
capable of bearing. Dewey, from the standpoint of idealism, is guilty of
a somewhat uncritical use of the categories of 'description' and
'evolution.' Are the categories of biology fitted to explain mind and
spirit? Instead of instituting an inquiry designed to answer that
question, Dewey accepts 'evolutionism' as final, and attempts to force
all phenomena into conformity with his resulting logical scheme. He
misses the valuable checks upon thought which are furnished by the
'critical method,' and is none too sensitive to the technical results of
the special sciences.
The logical approach to philosophy strictly involves certain
implications which have been overlooked by many of its critics. It may
well be admitted that our real categories are not fixed and final, but
are perpetually in process of reconstruction. The process of criticism
inevitably makes manifest the human and empirical character of the
particular forms of reflective thought. It recognizes the fact of
development, both in knowledge and in reality, and by this very
recognition the value of knowledge is enhanced. It is forced, by the
very nature of its method, to recognize the concrete and practical
bearings of thought. Indeed, there is a sense in which idealism would
declare that there is no thought--when thought, that is, is taken to
mean an isolated fact out of relation to the world. It is not possible
to make this retort upon the critics of idealism without recognizing
that there has been a vast misjudgment, amounting almost to
misrepresentation, of the intellectual ideals of modern speculative
philosophy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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