The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
You know that the "wisest of men" was not interested in air and water,
in natural science of the strict order, but rather in the good, the
true, and the beautiful, in the human in the narrower sense, in the
realm of the spirit, in the soul. It was indeed unwise that he was
interested to the verge of idolization, since in consequence of this
interest in a special part, the other, the material part was being
neglected. According to Goethe's statement that one thing is not fit for
all, Socrates did right. He and all philosophical lights after him
studied the intellect. What they missed was the now dawning
understanding that the faculty of thought is not a prodigy but a
special, and at the same time common, part of universal nature. While
these philosophers looked for truth in any one special form of
excellence, you are now invited to look for it in the total
interrelation of things.
Science has ever endeavored to do away with miracles and prodigies. This
could be accomplished only gradually, and the logicians have, therefore,
remained more or less biased and confused. The great Kant was no
exception. He looked for supreme truth, and for its sake he investigated
the intellect. He is celebrated because he explained so well that this
intellect feels no mission for anything transcendental, and cannot
understand anything but phenomena. Still he permitted something
transcendental to remain.
Kant is of the opinion that we perceive things as they appear, but not
as they are "in themselves." Nevertheless we should believe that a
mysterious truth is at the bottom of those phenomena, because we should
otherwise arrive at the irreconcilable contradiction that there are
phenomena without anything which could appear. The intellect, he holds,
can operate only on the field of phenomena, and for this reason we
should give up the endless grubbing after the transcendental. But we
should leave one little room in the house of reason, one little chamber
of faith, which points beyond experience up to the point where a
mysterious truth guards God and His commands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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