Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism.
There is a form of scepticism which would like to appear critical and refined and which takes the name ofagnosticism.It is a scepticism limited to ultimate things, to profound reality, to the essence of the world, which amounts to saying that it is limited to the supreme principles of philosophy. Now, since the principles of philosophy are all equally supreme, such agnostic scepticism extends its affirmation of mystery over neither more nor less than the whole of philosophy and consequently over the whole of human knowledge. Its limits would be nothing less than the boundaries of knowledge. Indeed, agnosticism is the spiritual fulfilment sought by all those who negate philosophy, such as æstheticists, mathematicians, and especially empiricists; and agnostics and empiricists are ordinarily so closely connected that the one name is almost synonymous with the other.
Mysticism.
The sceptical error, which consists in stating the problem as solution and mystery as truth, can give way to another mode of error, in which thevery affirmation of scepticism is denied and it is recognized that thought cannot explicitly state mystery. But this recognition, which would imply that of the authority of thought, is strangely combined with the most precise negation of such authority. Thought being excluded, either affirmatively or negatively, as in the self-contradiction of scepticism, what remains is life, no longer a problem, or a solution of a problem, but just life, life lived. To affirm that truth is life lived, reality directly felt in us as part of us and we part of it, is the pretension ofmysticism.This is the last general form of error that can be thought; and its self-contradiction is evident from the genetic process which we have already expounded. Mysticism affirms, when no affirmation is permitted to it; and it is yet more gravely contradictory than scepticism, which, though forbidding to itself logical affirmation, does not forbid itself speech, that is to say, æsthetic expression. To mysticism not even words can be permissible, because mysticism, being life and not contemplation, practice and not theory, is by definitiondumbness.But we shall say no more of mysticism, having had occasion to refer to it, as also to æstheticism and empiricism, at the beginning of this treatise on Logic.
Errors in the other parts of philosophy.
When we consider these errors more closely, it is easy to see that dualism, scepticism, and mysticism manifest themselves not only in the forms of thought, in philosophy as Logic, but also in all the other particular philosophic problems, distinct from those that are peculiar to Logic, and in the errors due to them. The complete enumeration of these and their concrete determination would (as has already been said) require the development of the whole philosophic system, and therefore cannot all be contained in the present treatise. Indeed, they take their name, not from the forms of the spirit, with which the logical form is confused, or from the internal mutilation of the logical form, but from the confusion and mutilation of the remaining spiritual forms. They are no longer called æstheticism, mathematicism, or philosophism, but ethical utilitarianism, moral abstractionism, æsthetic logicism, sensationalism and hedonism, practical intellectualism, metaphysical dualism or pluralism, optimism and pessimism, and so on. It is not those who, as in the previous instances, deny philosophy itself, that fall into such errors, but those who admit it and carry it out more or less badly in its other parts. Without the admission of the method of philosophic thought, and withoutthe assertion of a concept, it is impossible to conceive logical usurpations in the domain of another concept, which is not less necessary than the first to the fulness and unity of the real.
Ethical utilitarianism,for instance, thinks the concept of utilitarian practical activity; but its fallacy consists in arbitrarily maintaining that the concept of utility altogether exhausts that of the practical activity, thus negating the other concept distinct from it, the practical moral activity.Moral abstractionismcommits the opposite error, affirming the moral activity, but negating the utilitarian.Æsthetic logicismrightly affirms the reality of the logical mental form, but is wrong in not recognizing the intuitive mental form and in considering it to be resolved in the logical form. Æstheticsensationalism,directing its attention to crude and unexpressed sensation, emphasises the necessary precedent of the æsthetic activity, but then makes of the condition the conditioned, defining art as sensation. Æsthetichedonism, utilitarianism or practicism,is true in so far as it notes the practical and hedonistic envelope of the æsthetic activity; but it becomes false in so far as it takes the envelope for the content, and treats art as a mere fact of pleasure and pain.Practical intellectualismperceives that the will isnot possible without a cognitive basis, but by exaggerating this, it ends by destroying the originality of the practical spiritual form, and reduces it to a complex of concepts and reasonings. In like manner,metaphysical dualismavails itself of the difference between the concept of reality as spirit and that of reality as nature, the one arising from logical thought, the other from an empirical and naturalistic method of treatment, in order to transmute them into concepts of two distinct forms of reality itself, as spirit and matter, internal and external world, and so on.Pluralismor monadism, confounding the individuality of acts with the substantiality which belongs to the universal subject, makes entities of single acts and turns them into a multiplicity of simple substances.Pessimismandoptimism,each one availing itself of an abstract element of reality, which is the unity of opposites, maintain that reality is all evil and suffering, or all goodness and joy. This process of exemplification could be carried much further, and would become, as we see, a deduction of all philosophical concepts and errors.
Conversion of these errors with one another and with logical errors.
Now, each one of those false solutions, obeying the law of errors, is obliged, in order to maintain itself, to pass into that from which itwas distinguished, and then to pass back again from that to this. Thus utilitarianism becomes abstract morality and abstract morality utilitarianism. Hence the work of scepsis and the consequent appearance of aparticular scepticism of this or that concept.Ethics having vainly struggled with the alternate negations, of utility and of morality, ends inethical scepticism;Æsthetic torn between sensationalism and utilitarianism and logicism, and other errors, and destroying them all with its scepsis, ends inÆsthetic scepticism; Metaphysics, torn between materialism, abstract spiritualism, dualism, pluralism, pessimism, optimism, and other erroneous views, ends inmetaphysical scepticism.And to these errors of particular scepticism, errors ofparticular mysticismsoon succeed. Thus we hear it said that there is no concept of the beautiful, as there is of the true or the good, but that it is only felt and lived; or, again, that there is no possible definition of what is good, since it concerns a thing that must be left to sentiment and to life; or, finally, that thought has value within the limits that abstraction has value, but that it is impotent before complete reality, because life alone is capable of comprehending reality, by receiving it into its very bosom.
On the other hand, it is not possible that any æstheticism, empiricism, mathematicism, philosophism, mythologism, or logicism whatever, should remain limited to a determinate philosophic concept without coming in contact with others, because those forms of error strike at the logical form of thought itself, and therefore equally at all other philosophic concepts. The ethical or æsthetic empiricist, for instance, must logically affirm a general philosophic empiricism if he does not wish to correct himself by contradicting himself (an hypothesis which must be neglected and left to be understood in this consideration of the simple, elementary, fundamental, ornecessaryforms of error). He who in a particular philosophic problem has committed a confusion of concepts, and has thence arrived at a particular scepticism and mysticism, is led by the systematic and unitary character of philosophy to widen that mysticism and scepticism from particular to general. From this general mysticism and scepticism, he is led to return gradually to mythologism, philosophism, empiricism, and to the other negations of the logical form of philosophy. Everything is connected in philosophy and everything is connected in error, which is the negation of philosophy.
[1]Proslog.,c. 18.
[1]Proslog.,c. 18.
Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number.
Everything is connected in errors; error has its necessary forms. This implies, in the first place, that the possible forms of errors, the logical forms of the illogical, areso manyandno more.Indeed, the forms of the spirit or concepts of reality, which can be arbitrarily combined, can be stated as a finite number (where the process of numbering can be applied to them). Consequently, the arbitrary combinations or errors which arise from them can also be similarly numbered. Only the individual forms of error are infinite, and that for the same reason which we have already given, as the individual forms of truth are infinite. Problems are always historically conditioned, and the solutions are conditioned in the same way; even false solutions, which are determined by feelings, passions, and interests, also vary according to historical conditions.
Their logical order.
In the second place, and as corollary to thepreceding thesis, the possible forms of errors present a necessary order; and this, because the forms of the spirit or the concepts of reality stand in a necessary order to one another. They cannot be placed after or before one another nor changed at will. This necessary order is, as we know, a genetic order of degrees, and consequently the possible forms of errors constitute a series of degrees. It is commonly said thaterror has its logic,and we must say more correctly, that it cannot constitute itself as error, save by borrowing logical character from truth.
Examples of this order in the various parts of philosophy.
This is already clearly seen in the exposition given of the forms of logical error, and more clearly still when, resuming, we consider that the spirit, when it rebels against the concept, must by this very act affirm the term which is distinct from the concept, whether it be called representation, intuition, or pure sensation. Hence the necessity of the form of error (in a certain sense the first), which isæstheticism,—the affirmation of truth as pure sensation. Below this stage, the spirit can descend to annul the problem indualism;or, going further and abandoning affirmation, it may fall into scepticism; or, finally, abandoning even expression, it may fall intodumbness,ormysticism,which is the lowest degree. Aboveæstheticism it can raise itself to try to take refuge inempiricism,in which is posited a universal, but one that is merely representative and, therefore, a false universal. It is the second step, nor can any other be conceived as second:—we must give a false value either to the pure representation (æstheticism);—or (taking the second step), to the representation and the concept together, as is the case in the form of the empirical concept (empiricism). The third step is the desperate escape from the insufficiency of the empirical concept, by means of the abstract concept, which guarantees the universality which the other lacks, but gives an empty universality (mathematicism). Finding no refuge in this emptiness from the objections of its adversaries, it is obliged finally to enter philosophy. But the erring spirit continues its work in philosophy itself and, once it has taken possession, abuses it. Now it is not possible to abuse philosophy, save by reducing it either to a concept without intuition, which is nevertheless taken as a synthesis of concept and intuition (philosophism); or to an intuition without concept, which, in its turn, is taken as the requisite synthesis(mythologism).The result of all this process is always the renunciation of the philosophic problem, disguised by the admission ofthe double method (dualism), and hence the descent below the logical form, either with the affirmation which denies itself (scepticism), or, again, with that which denies even the possibility of expression (mysticism) and returns to life, which is not a problem at all, being life lived.
The same thing occurs with the other errors, when we refer to the other concepts of the spirit or of reality, although we shall not be able to give the complete series without summarizing the whole of philosophy, which is not necessary here, and by its excessive concentration and extreme brevity would be obscure. Suffice it to say, by way of example, that the ethical problem, besides being negated by means of erroneous sensationalist, empiricist, and mycologist solutions, and so on (to which, in common with all philosophic problems, it is subject), can be negated by practical intellectualism, which does not recognize a practical problem side by side with that of the theoretic spirit, and reduces virtue to knowledge. Henceethical intellectualism.Since ethical intellectualism cannot resist objections, it is obliged to introduce at least the slightest practical element that can be admitted, which is that of individual utility, and resolving morality into this, it then presents itself asethicalutilitarianism.This in its turn, finding itself in contradiction with the peculiar character of morality, which goes beyond individual utility, arranges to recognize and to substitute for the first a super-individual utility, which is the universal practical value or morality. And thus, by negating the first on account of the second concept, it presents itself asmoralismorethical abstractionism.The impossibility of negating both the first and the second, and the necessity of affirming both, urge the acceptance of the final form ofpractical dualism,in which utility and morality appear as co-ordinated or juxtaposed. Each one of these arbitrary doctrines is critical of the others, and, by its internal contradictions, of itself. Hence the fall into scepticism and mysticism. The circle of error can be traversed again, but it is impossible to alter the place that each of those forms has in the circle, by placing, for instance, practical dualism before utilitarianism or intellectualism after moralism.
Spirit of error and spirit of search.
There is no gradual issuing from the infernal circle of error, and salvation from it is not possible, save by entering at one stroke into the celestial circle of truth, in which alone the mind rests satisfied as in its kingdom. The spirit thaterrsor flees from the light must be convertedinto the spirit ofsearch,that longs for the light; pride must yield to humility; narrow love for one's own abstract individuality become wider and elevate itself to an austere love, to an unlimited devotion toward that which surpasses the individual, thus becoming an "heroic fury," the "amor Dei intellectualis."
Immanence of error in truth.
In this act of love and fervour the spirit becomes pure thought and attains to the true, is indeed transmuted into the true. But as spirit of truth it possesses truth and also its contrary transfigured in that. The possessing of a concept is the possession of it in all its relations, and so are possessed all the modes in which that concept can be wrongly altered by error. For instance, the true concept of moral activity is also the concept of utilitarianism, of abstractionism, of practical dualism, and so on. The two series of knowledge, that of the true and that of its contrary, are, in truth, inseparable, because they really constitute one single series. The concept is affirmation-negation.
Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth.
It will be said that this is perhaps exact in the case of thepossessionof truth, but not in that of thesearchfor it, where the two series may well appear disunited. Truth, to one who searches, is at the top of the staircase of errors, and as itis possible to climb a great part of the staircase without reaching what is at the top of it, so when once the desired place has been reached, it is possible not to see or not to remember the staircase that is below. But the possession of truth is never static, as in general no real fact is static. The possession of and the search for truth are the same. When it seems that a truth is possessed in a static way and almost solidified, if we observe closely we shall see that the word expressing it, the sound of it, has remained, but the spirit has flown away. That truth was, but is no longer thought, and so is not truth. It will be truth only when it is thought anew, and thinking and thinking anew are the same, since each rethinking is a new act of thought. In thinking the truth is search for truth; it is a most rapid ideal motion which, starting from the centre, runs through all the possibilities of error, and only in so far as it runs through and rejects them all does it find itself at its centre, which is the centre of motion.
The search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; and the series of errors.
In order to separate truth from the search for truth this latter must be understood, not as the will for thought and so as thought in action, but as thewill which lays down the conditions for thought,the will which prepares itself for thought,but does not yet think effectually. This indeed is the usual meaning of the word "search." To search is to stimulate oneself for thinking, by employing opportune means for that purpose. And there is no more opportune means than that of confronting one with another the various forms of the spirit and the various concepts; because in the course of that confrontation there is produced the true combination; that is to say, thought, which is truth, is aroused. To search means therefore torun through the series of errors.
Transfiguration, in the search thus understood, of error into suggestion or hypothesis.
But the seeker sets to work in quite a different spirit from that of the assertor of errors. The spirit of research is not the rebel erring spirit, and therefore the path that both follow is only the same in appearance; the first was the path of errors, but the second can only be so called by metaphor. Errors are errors when there is the will for error. Where, on the other hand, there is the will to unify material and to prepare the conditions of thought, the improper combination of ideas is not indeed error, butsuggestionorhypothesis.The hypothesis is not an act of truth, because either it is not verified and so reveals itself as without truth, or it is verified and becomes truth only at the moment in whichit is verified. But neither is it an act of error, because it is affirmed, not as truth, but as simple means or aid toward the conquest of truth. In the doctrine of search, the series of errors is all redeemed, baptized, or blessed anew; the diabolic spirit abandons it precipitately, leaving it void of truth, but innocent.
Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis.
The distinction between error aserrorand error assuggestion,betweenerrorandhypothesisor heuristic expedients, is of capital importance. It is found as basis of some common distinctions, such as those betweenmistakeanderror,between error committed ingood faithand error committed inbad faith,and the like. These and others like them show themselves to be certainly untenable, because error as error is always in bad faith, and there is no difference between error and mistake, save an empirical difference, or a difference of verbal emphasis, for it can be said according to empirical accidents that an affirmation is either simply erroneous or altogether a mistake. But although they cannot be maintained as they are formulated, they nevertheless suggest the desirability and the anticipation of this true and profound distinction.
Immanence of the suggestion in error itself as error.
On the other hand, error and suggestion, error and heuristic procedure, since they havein common the practical, extrinsic, and improper combination of ideas, stand in this relation to one another, that the suggestion is not error, buterror always contains in itself willingly or unwillingly a suggestion.The erring spirit, though without intending it, prepares the material for the search for truth. It means to evade that search or to bring it to an arbitrary end; but in doing so it breaks up the clods of earth, throws them about, ploughs and fertilizes the field where the truth will sprout. Thus it happens that many combinations of ideas, proposed and maintained through caprice and vanity with the lawyer's object of scoring his point, or of shining and astonishing with paradox, or for pastime and for other utilitarian reasons, have been adopted by more serious spirits as steps in the progress of research. The enemies of the truth not only testify to the truth but come to serve it themselves, through the unforeseen consequences of their work. A sort of gratitude comes over us at times and makes us tender toward these adversaries of the truth, because we feel that from them has come the stimulus to obtain it, as from them come the strengthening of our hold upon it and the inspiration, the clear-sightedness, and the warmth of the defence of it that we make against them.
Individuals and error.
But it is not necessary in yielding to the generous feeling for human fraternity to exaggerate in this last direction. The gratitude that we feel is not deserved by them; at the most, it is God or the universal spirit or Providence who deserves it. They did not wish to serve the truth and did not serve it, save through consequences which are not their work. One-sided and abstract optimism has intruded here also; and perceiving in error the element of suggestion, it has altogether cancelled the category of error in favour of that of suggestion and has pronounced that man always seeks the true, as he always wills the good. Certainly; but there is the man who stops at his individual good,fruges consumere natus; and there is the man who progresses to the universal good. There is the man who combines words to give himself and others the illusion of knowing what he does not know and of being able to attend to his own pleasures without further trouble; and there is the man who combines words with anxious soul and spirit intent,venator medii,a hunter of the concept. Here, too, the truth is neither in the optimism nor in the pessimism, but in the doctrine, which conciliates and surpasses them both. Nor does it matter that owing to the defect of abstractoptimism that very philosopher, who did more than any other to reveal the hidden richness of the dialectical principle, was not able to look deeply into the problem of error.
The conscience of humanity well understood knows how to do justice to all men, without, on that account, confounding him who seeks with him who errs, the man of good will with the utilitarian. It does justice to them, because in every man, indeed at every instant in the life of every man, it discovers all those various spiritual moments, both inferior and superior. Error and the search for truth are continually intertwined. Sometimes a beginning is made with research, and it ends with an obstinate persistence in the suggestion that has been made, which is converted into a result and an erroneous affirmation. At others a beginning is made, with the deliberate intention of escaping difficulties by means of some sort of a combination of ideas; and that combination arouses the mind and becomes a suggestion for research, which is followed until peace is found in the truth. Each one of us is at every moment in danger of yielding to laziness and to the seduction of error and has hope of shaking off that laziness and following the attraction of truth. We fall and rise up again at everyinstant; we are weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. When we call another weak and cowardly, we are condemning ourselves; when we admire another as strong and courageous, we idolize the strength and courage which is active within us. When we are in the presence of a complex product, as, for example, a faith, a doctrine, a book, it would be naïve and fallacious to look upon it as only error or as only suggestion. For it is both the one and the other; that is to say, it contains equally the moments of error properly so-called, and the other moments of suggestion and search; the voluntary interposition of obstacles to the truth and the voluntary removal of such obstacles; the disfigured image of the truth and the outline of the truth. Sometimes we are unable to say of ourselves whether we are erring or are seeking, whether we believe that we have found the whole truth or only discovered a ray of it. The logical criticism which implacably condemns us seems to be unjust, although we cannot contest its arguments which impose the truth upon our thought. We feel that that truth was in a way sought, seen for a moment, and almost possessed in that spiritual state of ours, which has been summarily and abruptly condemned by others as altogether erroneous.
The double aspect of errors.
For this reason even that which has been rejected and blamed as false from one point of view must be accepted and honoured from another as an approach to truth. Empiricism is perverse in so far as it is a construction opposed to the philosophic universal, but it is innocuous and indeed beneficial in so far as it is an attempt to rise from pure sensation and representation to the thinking of the universal. Scepticism as error annuls the theoretic life; but as suggestion it is necessary to the demonstration of the impossibility of dwelling in that desert when all false doctrines have been annulled. Mythologism presents this double aspect in a yet clearer manner; religion is the negation of thought, but it is also in another aspect a preparation for thought; the myth is both a travesty and a sketch of the concept; hence every philosophy feels itself adverse to myth and born from myth, anenemyand adaughterof religions. In what is empirically defined as religion or as a body of religious doctrines, for example, in Christianity, in its myths and in its theology, there is so much of truth and suggestion of truth that it is possible to affirm (always from the empirical point of view) the superiority of that religion over a well-reasoned but poor, a correct but sterile philosophy.Nevertheless, a period of reverence, of attentive harkening, of philosophic study and criticism, which is not pure scepticism, succeeds to a period of encyclopædism, of irreligious scepticism, of enlightenment, and of Voltaireism. Those who in the nineteenth or in this twentieth century have repeated the Voltairean scepticism and have jibed at religion have with good reason been considered superficial of intellect and soul, vulgar and trivial people. The philosophy of the eighteenth century has filled and filled well the office of enemy of religion; that of the nineteenth century has disdained to give blows to the dead and has adopted towards religion the attitude of a pious daughter and diligent heir. For our part we are persuaded that the inheritance of religion has not been well and thoroughly utilized. This inheritance is at bottom indistinguishable from the philosophic inheritance, for is there not religion, in, for instance, the Cartesian idea of God, which unifies the two substances and guarantees with its truth the certainty of our knowledge? And is it not also philosophy, that is to say, the concept (in however gross a form), of the immanent Spirit which is a self-distinguishing unity and certainty of itself?
Last form of the methodological error; Hypothesism.
We have now attained to the theory of research, yet we cannot abandon the survey of the necessary forms of error without mentioning a new form which arises precisely from the confusion between truth and the search for the conditions preparatory to truth, between truth and hypothesis. This error, which converts Heuristic into Logic, may be calledhypothesism.It asserts that in regard to truth man can do nothing more than propose hypotheses, which are said to be more or less probable, so that his fate is not dissimilar to the punishments which were assigned to Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the Danaids. But in the kingdom of the True, differently from that of Erebus:
The birds do not feed,The wheels do not turn,The stone is not rolled up the high mountain,Nor water drawn with the sieve from the fountain.
The hypothesis is made, because it serves toward the attainment of the truth; did it not serve this end it would not be made. The spirit does not admit waste of time; for it time is always money. Hypothesism is sometimes restricted to the supreme principles of the real, or to what is called metaphysics, which would thus be always hypothetical; but for the reasons given in ourdiscussion of agnosticism, if the principles of the real were hypothetical, the whole truth would be so, that is to say, there would not be any truth. For the rest, hypothesism, besides being internally contradictory, openly reveals that it is so, in its reference to the greater or lesserprobabilityof hypotheses. It would be impossible to determine the degree of approximation to the true without presupposing a criterion of truth, a truth and consequently the truth. We should hardly have made mention of this error did it not constitute the fulcrum of some of the most celebrated and revered philosophies of our times.
Inseparability of the phenomenology of error from the philosophic system.
The phenomenology of error, in its double sense of error and of suggestion, coincides therefore with the philosophic system. Both error and suggestion are improper combinations of philosophic ideas or concepts. To determine these improper combinations is equivalent to showing theobverseof that of which the philosophic system is theface.But face and obverse are not separable, for they constitute a single thought (and single reality), which is positivity-negativity, affirmation-negation. There is, therefore, no phenomenology of error outside the philosophic system, nor a philosophic system outside the phenomenology of error; the one is conceived at the moment when the other is conceived. And since the philosophic system and the doctrine of the categories are the same, the phenomenologyof error is inseparable and indistinguishable from the doctrine of the categories.
The eternal going and coming of errors.
As such the phenomenology of error is an ideal and eternal circle, like the eternal circle of the truth. Its stages are eternally traversed and retraversed by the spirit, being the stages of the spirit itself. At every instant of the life of history and of our individual life there are represented the stages that have been surpassed and must again be surpassed: the lower stages return and announce beforehand the higher.
Returns to anterior philosophies, and their meaning.
In this lies the origin of a fact which cannot fail to attract attention in the history of philosophy: the tendency which is found there, toreturnto one or other of the philosophies of the past, or, more correctly, to one or other of the philosophic points of view of the past. The thirteenth century returned to Aristotle, the Renaissance to Plato; Bruno revived the philosophy of Cusanus, Gassendi that of Epicurus; Hegel wished to renew Heraclitus; Herbart, Parmenides; in recent times a return has been made to Kant, and in times yet more recent to Hegel. These are spiritual movements, which must be understood in all their seriousness. This consists wholly in the need of the philosophic spirit of a certain moment, which, struggling withan error, discovers the true concept with which it should be corrected, or at least, the superior and more ample suggestion, to which we must pass in order to progress. And since that concept or suggestion had already been represented in an eminent degree in the past by one particular philosopher, or by one particular school, they speak of the necessity of again asserting the superiority of that philosopher and his school against other philosophers and other schools. In reality neither Aristotle nor Plato returns, nor Cusanus nor Epicurus, nor Heraclitus nor Parmenides, nor Kant nor Hegel; but only the mental positions of which these names are, in those cases, the symbols. The eternal Platonism, Aristotelianism, Heracliteanism, Eleaticism are in us, as they were formerly in Plato and in Aristotle, in Heraclitus and in Parmenides. Divested of those historical names, they are called transcendentalism and immanentism, evolutionism and anti-evolutionism, and so on. To the philosophers of the past, as men of the past, no return is made, becauseno return is possible.The past lives in the present and the pretence of returning to it is equivalent to that of destroying the present, in which alone it lives. Those who understandidealreturns in thisempiricalsense, do not in truth know what they are saying.
The false idea of a history of philosophy as the history of the successive appearances in time of the categories and of errors.
But just because the phenomenology of error and the system of the categories are outside time, we must also recognize the fallacy of a history of philosophy which expounds the development of philosophic thought as a successive appearance in time of the various philosophic categories and of the various forms of error. On this view the human race seems to begin to think truly philosophically at a definite moment of time and at a definite point of space; for example at a definite year of the seventh or sixth century before Christ, at a definite point of Asia Minor, with Thales, who surpassing mere fancy posits as a philosophic concept the empirical concept of water; or in another year and place, with Parmenides, who posits the first pure concept, that of being. And it seems further to progress in philosophic thinking with other thinkers, each of whom either discovers a concept or offers a suggestion of one. Thus each takes the other's hand and they form a chain which is prolonged to one who, more audacious and fortunate than the others, gives his hand to the first, and unites them all in a circle. After this, there would remain nothing else to do but to dance eternally,as the stars dance in the imaginations of the poets, without any further necessity to devise suggestions and to risk falling into error. All this is brilliant but arbitrary. The categories are outside time, because they are all and singly in every instant of time, and therefore they cannot be divided and impersonated within empirical and individual limits. It is not true that each philosophic system has for its beginning a particular category or a particular suggestion. A philosophic system, in the empirical signification of the word, is a series of thoughts whose unity is the empirical bond of the life of a definite individual. It is therefore without beginning, since it does not constitute a true unity and refers on the one hand to its predecessors, on the other to those who continue it, and on all sides to its contemporaries. In the strict sense, in that system, in so far as it is philosophic, there is always the whole of philosophy; and therefore, as we have previously seen, all philosophic systems (including materialism and scepticism) have, whether they admit it or not, displayed or implied the same principle, which is the pure concept, and every philosophy is idealism. Nor is it true that there is progress in the history of philosophy, in the sense of the passage from one category toanother superior category, or from one suggestion to another superior suggestion. Speaking empirically, we should have in this case to admit regress also, because it is a fact that a return is made to inferior categories and suggestions. Philosophically, we can speak in this case, neither of progress nor of regress, seeing that those categories and suggestions are eternal and outside time.
Finally, this conception of philosophic history itself declares its untenability, since in its last term it is logically obliged to posit a definitive philosophy (which is that represented by him who constructs such a history of philosophy), whereas there is nothing definitive in reality, which is perpetual development. Those very historians of philosophy themselves, who have desired and in part attempted to give actuality to that conception, have been perplexed at the assumption of so great a responsibility as to proclaim adefinitive philosophy,that is to say, to decree the retirement of Thought and so of Reality.
Philosophism both of this false view and of the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy.
The error which appears in this conception of philosophic history, is the same that we have already studied under the name of philosophism, and which appears here in one of its special applications. The formula of the error is theidentity of Philosophy with the History ofphilosophy.The sense in which this is meant is at once shown by the tendency which exists in this identity of the two terms, to be enlarged into a third term, that is to say, into the recognition of the identity of philosophy and of the history of philosophy with thePhilosophy of history.And this Philosophy of philosophic history, like every philosophy of history, converts representations and empirical concepts into pure concepts assigning to each one the function which properly belongs to the categories, corrupting philosophy and history and becoming shipwrecked in a sort of mythologism and propheticism.
Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy and the books that are so entitled or profess a like programme.
But, as in the case of the philosophy of history in general, so also in this application of it to the history of philosophy, it is necessary to recognize the elements of truth. These lie in the works of genius inhistorical characterization,which under this guise have been achieved by various thinkers and in various epochs of philosophy. Certainly Plato is not only transcendental, nor is Aristotle only immanentist; nor Kant only agnostic, nor Hegel only logical, nor Epicurus only materialist, nor Descartes only dualist; nor is Greek thought concerned only with objectivity, nor modern thought with subjectivity alone. But history takes shape as historical narrative, by noting theprominent traits of the various individuals and of the various epochs. Without this process it would be impossible to divide, to summarize, or to record it; without the introduction of empirical concepts, history could not be fixed in the memory.[1]By means of those characterizations, it also happens that historical names can be taken as symbols of truths and errors: all the crudity of dualism is expressed in Descartes, the paradox of determinism in Spinoza, that of abstract pluralism in Leibnitz. We owe (as is admitted by all those competent to judge) the elevation of the history of philosophy from a chronicle or an erudite collection to history properly so-called, to historians of philosophy who were tainted with phiiosophism. And since Hegel was the first and greatest of those historians, we must impute to Hegel the arbitrary act that he committed, but also the merit of having been the first to give a history of philosophy worthy of the name and accord to him all the more merit, in so far as he almost always corrected in execution the errors of his original plan.[2]
Exact formula: identity of philosophy and of history.
This original plan (and in general the position taken up by the system of Hegel) may perhapsbe considered as a deviation and aberration from a just impulse, which still awaits its legitimate satisfaction. This satisfaction we have attempted to give, by going deeply into the meaning of the Kantiana priorisynthesis and by establishing the identity of philosophy and history. Thus, as regards the question at issue, the formula that we oppose to Hegel's formula of the identity ofphilosophy and history of philosophy,is that of the identity ofphilosophy and history.This difference may at first sight seem non-existent or very slight, but yet it is substantial. Philosophy is indeed identical with history, because by solving historical problems it affirms itself, and is in this way identical with the history of philosophy, not because this is separable from other histories, or has precedence over them, but for precisely the contrary reason, that it is altogether inseparable from and completely fused in the totality of history, according to the unity in distinction already explained. Hence it is seen that philosophy does not originate in time, that there are not philosophic men and non-philosophic men, that there are not concepts belonging to one individual which another individual is without, nor mental efforts which one makes and another does not make, and that philosophy, or all thecategories, operates at every instant of the spiritual life, and at every instant of the spiritual life operates upon material altogether new, given to it by history, which for its part it helps to create. This amounts to saying that from that concept we obtain the criticism of philosophism and of the formula expressing the identity of Philosophy, History of Philosophy and Philosophy of history; and a more exact idea of the history of philosophy, free from the chains of an arbitrary classification.
The history of philosophy and philosophic progress.
It may seem that in this way we destroy all idea of philosophic progress; and certainly philosophy, taken in itself, that is to say as an abstract category, does not progress any more than the category of art or of morality progresses. But philosophy in its concreteness progresses, like art and the whole of life; it progresses, because reality is development, and development, including antecedents in consequences, is progress. Every affirmation of truth is conditioned by reality and conditions a new reality, which, in turn, is in its progress, the condition of a new thought and of a new philosophy. In this respect it is true that a philosophy which comes later in time, contains the preceding philosophies in itself, and not only when it is truly a philosophy,adequate to the new times, which comprehend ancient times in themselves, but even when it is a simple suggestion, of the kind we have called erroneous and in need of correction. As erroneous suggestion it will be, ideally, inferior to the truths already discovered. The scepticism of David Hume, for instance, is inferior from this point of view, not only to Cartesianism, but even to Scholasticism, to Platonism and to Socraticism. But historically it is superior even to the most perfect of those philosophies, because it is occupied with a problem which they did not propose to themselves and initiates its solution, by forming a first attempt at solution, however erroneous. Those perfect philosophies belong to the past, this, though imperfect, has the future in itself. Thus it is explained how we sometimes find far more to learn in philosophers who have maintained errors than from others who have maintained truths; the errors of the former are gold in the quartz, which when it has been purified will add weight and value to the mass of gold, which is already in our possession and has been preserved by the latter. Fanatics content themselves with truths, however poor they are, and therefore seek those who repeat them, even though they be poor of spirit. True thinkers seek foradversaries, bristling with errors and rich with truth; they learn from them, and while opposing, love and esteem them; indeed, their opposing them is at the same time an act of esteem and of love.