[279] This idea of a “world of inter-subjective intercourse,” although
now a commonplace of sociology, was first expressed for the writer in
the first series of the _Gifford Lectures_ of Professor James Ward
upon “Naturalism and Agnosticism,” in chapters xv. and xvi. The first
of these chapters deals with “Experience and Life,” and the second
with the “inter-subjective intercourse” that is really presupposed in
the so-called individual experience of which the old psychology used
to make so much. The reader who wishes to follow out a development of
this idea of a “world of inter-subjective intercourse” cannot do better
than follow the argument of Professor Ward’s second series of _Gifford
Lectures_ (“The Realm of Ends,” or “Pluralism and Theism”), in which he
will find a Humanism and Theism that is at least akin to the theodicy,
or the natural theology, of which we might suppose Pragmatism to be
enamoured. The double series of these Lectures might well be referred
to as an instance of the kind of classical English work in philosophy
of which we have spoken as not falling into the extremes either of
Pragmatism or of Rationalism. The strong point of the “Realm of Ends,”
from the point of view of this book upon Pragmatism and Idealism, is
that it moves from first to last in the reality of that world to which
the science and the philosophy of the day both seem to point the way.
In opposition to “subjectivism” it teaches a Humanism and a Pluralism
that we recognise as an expression of the realities of the world of our
common life and our common efforts, and from this Humanism it proceeds
to a Theism which its author seeks to defend from many of the familiar
difficulties of Naturalism. Were the writer concerned with the matter
of the development and the elaboration of the philosophy that seems to
have precipitated itself into his mind after some years of reflection
on the issues between the realists and the idealists, between the
rationalists and the pragmatists, he would have to begin by saying
that its outlines are at least represented for him in the theistic and
pluralistic philosophy of Professor Ward.
[280] According to Professor Dawes Hicks in the _Hibbert Journal_
for April 1913, there is a great deal in the articles of Professor
Alexander on “Collective Willing and Truth” that supports some of
the positions I am here attempting to indicate, as part of the
outcome of the pragmatist-rationalist controversy. “Both goodness
and truth depend, in the first place, on the recognition by one man
of consciousness in others, and, secondly, upon intersubjective
intercourse” (p. 658).
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