The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular PhilosophyJames, William
Religion
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
James, William
Belief and doubt; Essays; Philosophy
One of these is that the thinkers may ignore each other's attitude
about good and evil altogether, and each continue to indulge his own
preferences, indifferent to what the other may feel or do. In such a
{192} case we have a world with twice as much of the ethical quality in
it as our moral solitude, only it is without ethical unity. The same
object is good or bad there, according as you measure it by the view
which this one or that one of the thinkers takes. Nor can you find any
possible ground in such a world for saying that one thinker's opinion
is more correct than the other's, or that either has the truer moral
sense. Such a world, in short, is not a moral universe but a moral
dualism. Not only is there no single point of view within it from
which the values of things can be unequivocally judged, but there is
not even a demand for such a point of view, since the two thinkers are
supposed to be indifferent to each other's thoughts and acts. Multiply
the thinkers into a pluralism, and we find realized for us in the
ethical sphere something like that world which the antique sceptics
conceived of,--in which individual minds are the measures of all
things, and in which no one 'objective' truth, but only a multitude of
'subjective' opinions, can be found.
But this is the kind of world with which the philosopher, so long as he
holds to the hope of a philosophy, will not put up. Among the various
ideals represented, there must be, he thinks, some which have the more
truth or authority; and to these the others _ought_ to yield, so that
system and subordination may reign. Here in the word 'ought' the
notion of _obligation_ comes emphatically into view, and the next thing
in order must be to make its meaning clear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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