The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thoughtDewey, John
Philosophy
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
Dewey, John
Evolution; Philosophy; Pragmatism
The concept, once more, in its very generality, in its elevation above
the intensities and conflicts of momentary passions and interests, is
the conserver of the experience of the past. It is the wisdom of the
past put into capitalized and funded form to enable the individual to
get away from the stress and competition of the needs of the passing
moment. It marks the difference between barbarism and civilization,
between continuity and disintegration, between the sequence of
tradition that is the necessity of intelligent thought and action, and
the random and confused excitation of the hour.
When we thus consider not the details of the positions of the
sensationalist and rationalist, but the motives that have induced them
to assume these positions, we discover what is meant in saying that the
question is still a practical, a social one, and that the two schools
stand for certain one-sided factors of social life. If we have on one
side the demand for freedom, for personal initiation into experience,
for variety and progress, we have on the other side the demand for
general order, for continuous and organized unity, for the conservation
of the dearly bought resources of the past. This is what I mean by
saying that the sensationalist abstracts in conscious form the position
and tendency of the Germanic element in modern civilization, the
factor of appetite and impulse, of keen enjoyment and satisfaction, of
stimulus and initiative. Just so the rationalist erects into conscious
abstraction the principle of the Græco-Roman world, that of control, of
system, of order and authority.
That the principles of freedom and order, of past and future, or
conservation and progress, of incitement to action and control of that
incitation, are correlative, I shall not stop to argue. It may be
worth while, however, to point out that exactly the same correlative
and mutually implicating connection exists between sensationalism and
rationalism, considered as philosophical accounts of the origin and
nature of knowledge.
The strength of each school lies in the weakness of its opponent.
The more the sensationalist appears to succeed in reducing knowledge
to the associations of sensation, the more he creates a demand for
thought to introduce background and relationship. The more consistent
the sensationalist, the more openly he reveals the sensation in its
own nakedness crying aloud for a clothing of value and meaning which
must be borrowed from reflective and rational interpretation. On the
other hand, the more reason and the system of relations that make up
the functioning of reason are magnified, the more is felt the need of
sensation to bring reason into some fruitful contact with the materials
of experience. Reason must have the stimulus of this contact in order
to be incited to its work and to get materials to operate with. The
cause, then, why neither school can come to rest in itself is precisely
that each abstracts one essential factor of conduct.
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