The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not
less substantial or responsible than that of God himself.
And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience
supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make
realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be
abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the
hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express
satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the
both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive
experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite
to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there
always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In
practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there
always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to
leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is
all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social
classes or parties, can never be confined to a [p.146] single individual
representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly
practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but
instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely
many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed
individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and
competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly
practical, whether of things or realities--for the metaphysician--or of
ideas or categories--for the logician--or of persons or classes--for the
statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the
truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which
is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life
must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding
over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real
leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a
labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences
and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or
"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for
morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and
platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a
labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites,
that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which
is real and practical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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