Bosanquet's development of his subject has proved to be throughout the
necessary logical outcome of the presuppositions with reference to
reality from which he starts. The fundamental difficulty of erecting a
theory of the knowledge-process upon such a basis is recognized by him
at the start in a passage already quoted: "If the object-matter of
reality lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only our
analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to lay hold of reality"
(p. 2). But, in spite of this assertion, his fundamental conception of
reality remains that of a system which does lie outside the
thought-process. His theory is an attempt to reconcile the essentially
irreconcilable views that reality is outside of the thought-process, and
that it is inside of the thought-process, and he succeeds only by
calling upon our faith that so it is.
If it be true, as it seems to him to be, that we are compelled to adhere
to both of these views of reality, then surely there is no other
outcome. It means, however, that we finally resign all hope of _knowing_
reality. We may _have faith_ in its existence, but we have no way of
deciding what particular judgment has reality in it as it should have
it, and what as it should not. All stand (and fall) on the same basis.
But does not Bosanquet himself point out a pathway which, if followed
farther, would reach a more satisfactory view of the realm of knowledge?
He has shown us that the only sort of reality _we know_, or can know, is
the reality which appears within our judgment-process--the reality as
known to us. Would it not be possible to drop the presupposed reality
outside of the judgment-process (with which judgment is endeavoring to
make connections) and content ourselves with the sort of reality which
appears within the judgment-process? In other words, may there not be a
satisfactory view of reality which frankly recognizes its organic
relation to the knowledge-process, without at the same time destroying
its value as reality? Is it possible to admit that reality is in a sense
constituted in the judgment without making it at the same time the
figment of the individual imagination--"a game with ideas"?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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