A HISTORY OF

MODERN PHILOSOPHY

BY

HORATIO W. DRESSER, Ph.D.

Author of

"Psychology in Theory and Application,” “Ethics in Theory and
Application," etc.

Waky

6-20-28 17469

PREFACE

This History introduces the student and general reader to leading tendencies and systems of modern thought, beginning at the point where studies in the philosophy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are brought to a conclusion, and continuing as far as current philosophy has become history. The logical prerequisite and natural introduction to the philosophy of the modern period is knowledge of ancient thought. But this History has been written with the realization that some will approach the study from the point of view of modern interests and problems, notably the results of the special sciences.

Philosophy is concerned with the universe as a whole: the first principles of the cosmos, the nature of mind, of the self, and of the moral order; as well as the nature of truth, the meaning of history, and the realm of ends or eternal values. Apparently, one system of thought displaces another to such slight advantage that there seems little prospect that this ideal will be realized. Yet the conflicts of systems are partly due to the fact that philosophers are intensively critical: they disparage a system if one objection can be raised against it. Time shows that from diverging systems have come a surprising number of conceptions essential to a world-view. Hence modern thought constantly reminds us of contributions made long ago by the ancient Greeks. We moderns have added the instruments, the laboratories, the precise methods, and the highly specialized research in co-ordinated fields by which we have verified ancient anticipations. This History endeavors to do justice to doctrines, sometimes neglected, which tend toward a comprehensive system.

Some of our modern tendencies might lead us to anticipate far less than this. Apparently, the theory of knowledge has been greatly over-emphasized, and we might be tempted to ignore it in studying the history of the past three centuries. Yet the discussion of this issue has in part given us the modern mind. We may have concluded that positivism is the only defensible doctrine, and so we might tend to exalt Bacon, the sceptics of the French Enlightenment, and Auguste Comte, by underestimating Descartes or Leibniz. But our history does not confirm this view. Again, the idealism of Berkeley may seem to have been so insistently refuted that Berkeley might well be ignored. Yet Berkeley has been given new recognition within the last two decades. More unfortunate would be the presupposition that pragmatism or instrumentalism is a philosophy, rather than a method of testing conceptions; and that anti-intellectualism has proved reason or intellect to be an essentially biological product, useful in our social environment, but of minor constructive value. Fidelity to reason has produced the modern types of philosophy, and the conviction that reason is competent is still the most defensible motive. The direct line of development is not from Bacon to Voltaire, and thence to the meagre results of thinkers who have given up the metaphysical enterprise: it is from Descartes and the other rationalists to the critical issues raised by Locke, the idealistic analysis of Berkeley, the sceptical analysis of Hume; and thence to Kant and the post-Kantians, with frequent reminders of Leibniz; and finally to the recent polemic of realists whose discussions can hardly be understood without grasping the idealisms wherewith they contend.

Modern philosophy is due to the conviction that First Philosophy or Metaphysics is extremely worth while, that philosophy seeks and can attain a world-view, can become a system by aid of the sciences. The early thinkers in the modern period acquired their conviction that reason is competent while science was emerging from centuries of neglect, while philosophy was overcoming its serv authority. To realize the force of the transition

e to

the

freedom of thought which made possible the liberalism and criticism of Spinoza and Hume, is to take up the point of view of those who ardently believe the human mind can progressively eliminate what is merely transient and temperamental in the several systems. Appreciatively following the changes from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth, thus to our own century, we come to the greatly enriched conceptions of the philosophy of science. The possibility of agreement among philosophers is partly due to the developments of science which have rendered theories less necessary. The philosophy of science is in a way the central interest to which we are led by following the constructive thinking of the past three hundred years.

Here as elsewhere the philosopher gives himself to a consideration of what he finds rationally prevalent, he does not, as some critics have supposed, invent systems in a rarefied atmosphere. Thus he finds the mechanical conception of the universe, wrought in the age from Galileo to Newton, modified by the contributions of chemistry, embryology, geology, the doctrine of evolution, as the idea of the organism is brought to the fore. Again, he notes the transition from absolute space to relativity, masses to atoms, atoms to electrons and protons, solid matter in fixed positions in space to centres of radiant energy, mere "things" to events in space-time. Materialism meanwhile has waned. Remarkable indeed is the transition from the time when, for Hobbes, reality was Body in space, and thought mere "calculation" explicable by mechanical law. The former world-view has been refined away to a point where there is decreasing difference between an electrical and a spiritual universe.

Whatever the contributions of science, however, the essentially human problems remain, the relation of the philosopher to his system, of his general principles to ethics and religion, the philosophy of history, the theory of the State. Many interpretations of human nature may still be called for, varied ideals and values. For most of us the cons vation of values remains the central interest. Philoso in the greater sense has manifested a diversity of