ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2015.COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Public Domain. Published prior to 1923. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2015[Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 6, November, 1910.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. ^ I "HAT definition should keep pace with discussion is a well -*• established maxim in argument. The temptation to exaggerate differences or to seize upon points that are relatively unimportant, or perhaps quite irrelevant, is constantly present, and the natural outcome is inevitably a confusion of issues. In the heat of controversy the attack is likely to be conducted in the spirit of the advice given to a person of pugilistic pro- clivities: "Keep milling away; don't stop to pick out your friends/' In the more sober-minded critic this spectacle easily begets the disposition to minimize the actual differences which exist between the warring factions, and hence his endeavors to function as mediator and pacificator merely serve to make confusion worse confounded. The course of the discussion that has been going on concerning idealism, realism, and pragmatism is an exemplification of the point. Thus we see the realist assailing the idealist because the latter reduces objects to 'mental states;' while the idealist in turn attacks the realist for entertaining the belief in 'independent1 objects, and the pragmatist for attempting to find a starting- point in 'immediate experience/ untinctured by thought. Again the realist charges that pragmatism is merely a shame-faced idealism, whereas the pragmatist harbors the suspicion that realism is nothing but a revival or modification of the old-fash- ioned copyism. All these allegations being vociferously denied by the aggrieved parties, the contention gains color that the disputants hold essentially the same beliefs and that the issues, therefore, are mainly verbal, a contention which increases the bewilderment of whoever attempts to unravel the tangled skein of argument. A situation of this kind reflects little credit upon philosophy. The need of definition has become sufficiently urgent to justify repeated attempts, although the difficulty with which professional philosophers understand each other leaves little ground for the 597598 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. hope that the situation will soon be remedied. In view of the fact that realism and pragmatism have appeared upon the scene primarily as rivals of idealism, a proper understanding of idealism would seem to be the most fruitful point of orientation. An interesting attempt to define the idealistic standpoint is presented in an article by Professor Albee on "The Present Meaning of Idealism."1 Philosophy, as the writer points out, is concerned with the general problem of experience. The endeavors to explain experience in terms of either its 'external' or its 'internal' factors have had their day. At the present time we can afford to classify both dogmatic materialism and subjective idealism as bygone theories. We must take our stand upon "concrete experience/' upon the organic unity of the external and the internal, a unity in which the subject-object relation is funda- mental. To be an idealist does not mean to believe in a priori principles, i. e., principles which "may be detected by an analysis of experience in general, never by dealing with experience in the concrete'' (p. 303). Thus space and time are not mere forms of intuition, but are real in the same sense that anything else is real. The differentia of idealism does not lie in apriorism, but in the fact that it preserves inviolate the seamless garment of experience. Idealism regards experience as primary and not I derivative; it refuses to admit the possibility of explaining ex- [ perience in terms of one of its own parts. We are idealists if we insist upon this primacy of concrete experience, i. e., upon experience as an organic whole in which subject and object are not independent, but interdependent principles. That this characterization is consonant with present-day idealism would doubtless be generally admitted. That it serves as an orientation in current controversy, however, is not so ob- vious. As a differentiation of idealism from realism and prag- matism it is defective, since, after all, it asserts nothing to which the realist and the pragmatist may not perfectly well subscribe. It all depends upon the interpretation of the language; which is only to say that the differentia of idealism is still to seek. Thus the realist and the pragmatist may agree that subject and object Philosophical Review, Vol. XVIII, 1909, pp. 299-308.No. 6.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. $99 are organic to each other; that "mind is not an entity, endowed with creative power, but rather is one side of experience itself, regarded as an organic whole"; that "'matter' and 'form' are meaningless abstractions in this connection; what is 'given' is nothing less than experience itself" (p. 304). Even the old-time idealistic watch-word, 'No object without a subject,' need cause the opponents of idealism no concern, unless it becomes apparent to them that the phrase is intended to convey a meaning which the language itself does not clearly point out. In substantiation of these statements we need only inquire what is meant by the assertion that the subject-object relation is basal in experience. The idealist, it seems, does not hold that subject and object are explicitly distinguished from each other within every experience. To say that the relation is 'implicit* evidently makes everything hinge upon a definition. That the subject-object relation is implicit in the sense that experience somehow contains within itself the potency of bringing this relation c early into the limelight of consciousness, is so self-evi- dently true that disagreement is impossible. In this sense, how- ever, other things are equally implicit, and the subject-object relation, therefore, does not appear to be peculiarly fundamental. Or if the organic relationship of objects to consciousness means that a world in which no consciousness appeared would, ipso facto, be a different world, and the facts within such a world would con- sequently be different facts from the facts which actually exist— then again the statement is merely an obscure assertion of what is evident to all concerned. As against an antiquated material- ism or unreflective realism the insistence might be in place, but with these exceptions the assertion of an organic relationship is not only harmless but amiably trite. And finally, as regards the the contention, 'No object without a subject,' we are again em- barrassed by the question of interpretation. If this be taken to mean that every fact in the universe must be a fact for some consciousness like unto our own, with its own psychological pecu- larities, then indeed there is room for disagreement. But this, so far as I can make out, is not what the idealist necessarily means. Or if we are told that 'subject' and object' are abstractions from6oo THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. a 'concrete whole/ we find that this doctrine obtains assent from the side of pragmatism; and so we are still without a workable definition of idealism. It must be admitted, I think, that this absence of a satisfactory definition for idealism is properly a source of embarrassment for the realist and pragmatist as well as for the idealist. Since pres- ent-day realism and pragmatism are of more recent date than the idealism which they assail, we may assume that they are under obligation to specify the precise reasons for their hostility. To proceed by identifying objective with subjective idealism and then refuting the latter, as is done so often, does not expedite discussion. If we avoid this confusion, the real point of the con- tention is anything but apparent, and it becomes easy to under- estimate the importance of the disagreements. Unless the rea- sons are forthcoming, the opponent of idealism is open to the just suspicion that he is disturbing the peace by brawling with a man of straw. Professor Bakewell, in an article in which he rightly complains of the misconceptions to which idealism has been subject, thus states the case against current realism: "In so far as realism is merely a protest against subjectivism we can all be realists. If it means to affirm the existence of independent reals outside the realm of experience, and therefore wholly independent of consciousness, it is the old hypothetical realism whose absur- dities have so often been shown up in the history of philosophy. If it means to affirm the existence of independent reals which are none the less wholly accessible to experience, directly experienced or known, it is hard to see how this doctrine differs from idealism, except that the idealist would be constrained to point out that the word independent is not strictly taken in such usage." 1 In this passage the realist, unless he is willing to accept an alternative which is repugnant to him, is confronted with a program of benevolent assimilation in which he finds himself cast for the passive role. The actual ground of his opposition, and at the same time the differentia of idealism, may be found, as I venture to think, if we remind ourselves of the historical antecedents of idealism. From Kant's uncertain ^'Idealism and Realism," Philosophical Review, Vol. XVIII, 1909, p. 509No. 6.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. 6oi disquisitions regarding the a priori elements within experience, his followers deduced the conclusion that experience is a union of the mediate with the immediate, of the evanescent and particular with the permanent and universal. The analysis of experience, it is held, brings to light a constituent which is variously described as Idea, Thought, the universal, the element of mediacy, or the identity in difference. This element is transcendental, in the sense that it is not an event occuring here and now, but somehow holds over from one moment of experience to another. Or, to state it differently, experience contains a factor which transcends the narrow limits of the present moment, not merely vicariously through the agency of symbolism or meaning, but existentially or ontologically, in such wise that a reality lying beyond the circle of the passing experience is yet 'present' in and to that experience. Objective idealism, in short, is transcendentalism; and transcen- dentalism, to paraphrase a remark of Professor James, is an echo, the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing medieval realism upon the air of philosophy. This peculiar blending of the trans- cendental and the temporal, of the universal and the particular, reminiscent of Plato's Ideas, is asserted to be fundamental in the structure of experience. The insistence that the subject-object relation is implicit in all experience means for idealism that all experience involves this synthesis of universal and particular, or identity in difference, a synthesis which, when grasped by our consciousness, takes the form of a distinction and relation be- tween subject and object. Hence the subject is not a thing among other things, not a transient function within experience, but a principle of organization, co-extensive with experience in the widest sense. An apology is perhaps due to the reader for this elaboration of a doctrine with which he has long been familiar. In extenuation I may plead that it seems to be required by the exigencies of con- troversy. The opposition to idealism seems to derive its inspira- ation especially from the doctrine that 'idea' or 'thought' is not the mere temporal pointing of a vanishing experience, but a reality in which the distinction between meaning and thing meant, between here and there, between now and then, is in some sense602 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. overcome and set aside. If this doctrine be set up as a criterion, it would appear that all objective idealists are to be found in one group and all their opponents in another. The identification of idealism with transcendentalism, in the sense indicated above, is at all events serviceable to a certain extent. It not only enables us to locate the point upon which realism and pragmatism agree, but it throws some light upon the accusations that pragmatism is respectively idealistic and subjectivistic. Pragmatism, or at any rate the pragmatism represented by Professor Dewey, is undoubtedly idealistic, if by idealistic we mean the identification of reality with 'concrete experience,' in the sense that when we speak of reality we per- force imply a reference to a situation in which the experiencing individual is a vital factor. Object-in-relation-to-organism, as Professor Dewey puts it, is for his instrumentalism or immediate empiricism the final category.1 Immediate empiricism is idealism so revised as to leave out the transcendental factors. It agrees with idealism that all phenomena are qualified by meaning, that thought is organic to experience, that the categories of value are supreme. If, however, we regard this latter as the basal feature of idealism, we disregard the fact that the experience in question may be interpreted in either a transcendental or in an 'instrumental' fashion, and we thus lose sight of what is really significant in the pragmatic movement. It seems to be true that these two types of interpretation have not always been carefully kept apart. Pragmatists have laid themselves open to the charge of transcendentalism, and idealists have regarded instrumentalism as merely furnishing a psychological setting for idealism. Yet in principle the two interpretations seem entirely incompatible. Either we make use of transcendental elements, in order to make our particular experiences cohere, or we do not. If we do, then the 'instrumental' theory is 'mere psychology, in so far as it is not biology. Its assertions are not to be taken at face value. Subject and object are not merely functions which arise within experience, and the function of pointing does not exhaust the full nature of meaning. Pragmatism asserts, how- 1Essays in Honor of William James.No. 6.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. 603 ever, that this is the whole truth of the matter and that it is oossible to construct a consistent scheme of experience on this 3asis. Just here the issue is joined. This issue, according to Professor Dewey, is obscured by the "act that idealism profits by an ambiguity in the conception of ;hought. Idealism, as he maintains, uses thought in both a unctional and a constitutive sense. "It is taken to mean both ;he organized, the regulated, the informed, established character )f experience, an order immanent and constitutional; and that yhich organizes, regulates, forms, synthesizes, a power tran- scendent and noumenal. And the oscillation between and con- 'usion of these two diverse senses is necessary to Neo-Kantian dealism. . . . The fatal fallacy from which he [Kant] never :merges consists in vibrating between the definition of a concept is a rule of constructive synthesis in a differential sense, and the definition of it as a static endowment lurking in 'mind/ and giving automatically a hard and fixed law for the determination of every experienced object. The concept of a triangle taken geometrically, for example, means a determinate method for construing space elements;, but it also means something which exists in the mind prior to all such geometrical construction and unconsciously lays down the law not only for their conscious elaboration, but also for any space perception. The first of these meanings is intelligible, and marks a definite contribution to the logic of science. But it is not 'objective idealism'; it is a contribution to a revised empiricism. The second is a dark saying."1 From idealistic and other quarters the charge has been con- stantly made that pragmatism is infected with subjectivism. The idealist charges subjectivism, because to him there can be no objectivity apart from transcendental elements. Abstract these elements, and we have nothing left but 'sensations' and 'states of consciousness,' The realist joins in the charge because he takes exceptions to the view that the process of acquiring knowledge is a process in which things undergo a change. To the accusation of subjectivism in the latter sense the pragmatist ^'Experience and Objective Idealism," Philosophical Review, Vol. XV, 1906, pp. 470-1.604 THE*PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. pleads guilty, except in so far as it may convey the suggestion —which, it seems, is usually the case—that he is engaged in the attempt to rehabilitate the doctrine of 'mental states.. * As regards the charge of subjectivism, then, it must be insisted that the question is wholly one of definition. By subjectivism f we may mean that there is no truth which does not involve a \ reference to the individual, i. e., to adjustment or adaptation as the standard of evaluation; or the term may be interpreted in the sense of Humianism—and there is no warrant whatevei for identifying the two meanings. Taken in the former sense subjectivism is an essential characteristic of pragmatism; but the latter sense is the one which idealists have constantly and erroneously attributed to it. The Humian subjectivism, e subjectivism which begins and ends with 'mental states/ is the only subjectivism that the idealist is able to recognize. Histor- ically this attitude is of course quite intelligible. The relationless mental atoms which constitute Hume's entire stock in trade made the inference to transcendentalism both possible and necessary. If sensation be thus conceived there is no escape from the inference to a somewhat which overarches space and time and which gives to our experience the unity that we actually find. The one vicious abstraction necessitates the other. The rejection of transcendental factors, therefore, is supposed to involve a return to atomism. To quote again from Professor Bake well, who has stated the alternatives with commendable conciseness: "Either everything is real exactly as, and no further than, it is then and there experienced—and then there is no occasion to speak of correcting or rectifying experience; or there is in every experience a self-transcendency which points beyond that thing as experi- enced for its own reality—and then good-by to immediatisnu Either atomism or transcendentalism."1 That this disjunction is exhaustive is precisely what the pragmatist means to deny. It is true that there can be no oc- casion to speak of correcting or rectifying experience, if by experience we mean mental states. In the article previously cited Professor Bakewell urges that a doctrine of 'mental states' 1 Journal of Phil., Psych., & Sc. Methods, Vol. II, 1905, p. 521.No. 6.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. 60$ is foisted upon idealism in order to condemn the theory. He nay reasonably be expected, therefore, to sympathize with the pragmatist, who has precisely the same grievance. If it is unwarranted to infer that, since the transcendental is organically united with the finite, evanescent elements of our human ex- perience, therefore the experience as a whole may be reduced to terms of mental states, it is equally unwarranted to do so when the claim is made that the organic union of the individual with the given situation may be interpreted without the aid of tran- scendentalism. Can there be no correcting or rectifying exper- ience save through the agency of the transcendental? Whether or not this be possible, it should be noticed that if we drop the unfortunate conception of mental states made current by Hume, the question is no longer a question of logic but of fact. The identification of objective idealism with transcendentalism also aids in the understanding of what is meant by 'intellectual- ism/ concerning which so much has been said of late. While the intellectualist is not of necessity a transcendentalist, the latter —unless he be a mystic—is inevitably committed to intellec- tualism. If experience is to be interpreted from the standpoint Df transcendentalism, we are committed to the doctrine that thinking is not merely a process of functioning, but is likewise 'constitutive' in experience; and this view determines the cri- terion which must be supreme in our philosophic thinking. Incidentally, too, it sets a goal for thinking which can never be attained. The great merit of Mr. Bradley's work is that it brings both these facts clearly to light. Thus the mutual determination of qualities and relations, which from the standpoint of instru- mentalism is the simplest sort of fact, becomes for transcenden- talism an inscrutable problem, a problem which finally requires us to condemn human experience as mere appearance. If thinking consists in the reference of a given experience to some other specific experience as its fulfilment, as pragmatism asserts, this mutual determination of qualities and relations is not a problem but a datum. The question as to its nature is answered if we produce a single instance in point. For transcendentalism, however, the matter is not so simple. To know the true in-6o6 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. wardness of this determination, we must see the given instance as a fragment of the absolute experience which it implies, Or, to put it differently, the standpoint of transcendentalism obliges us to hold that there is an inwardness which is not evident to the casual glance. Unless we know the given experience as a member in an organic whole, we do not know it as it is. We must discover the hidden identity, the deeper unity, which binds the given fact transcendentally to other facts. This principle of unity must be such that its own inner determinations con- stitute the facts of experience. The thinking which discovered it would at the same time discover its own identity with it. Anything short of this would leave the experience in question unintelligible, since the test of intelligibility is in this case the perfect blending of particular and universal. If we are to con- template this perfect union, we must refuse to take the particular experience as a datum. That is to say, the perfect union de- manded by our criterion of intelligibility must be something which haply may be conceived, but which, in our finite state cannot be immediately presented. Hence all theories in which such a shift of emphasis occurs are asserted to be non-empirical or intellectualistic. And once this criterion is established, our difficulties multiply. If we venture upon analysis in order to find the principle of unity demanded by objective idealism, it soon appears, as Mr. Bradley has shown, that qualities presuppose relations and relations in turn presuppose qualities, and beyond this we cannot get. We are thus thrown back upon our starting- point, and Mr. Bradley's intellect remains unsatisfied. To rest here and to say that the thing as experienced is as real as any- thing else, is to forsake transcendentalism. It seems, however, that the experience presents a problem only if we insist ante- cedently upon the truth of transcendentalism. Mr. Bradley's conclusion that human experience is appearance indicates that idealism has an unpleasant affinity with agnos- ticism, an affinity easily understood if we consider the intellec- tualistic bias common to both. To say that the trouble results from an artificial separation of qualities and relations merely shows a failure to comprehend the nature of the problem, TcNo. 6.J OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AND ITS CRITICS. 607 insist that the two are 'organic/ that the absolute experience is related to human experience, not as more to less but as whole to part, that the absolute experience is present in and through our finite experience, that the latter cannot be understood apart from the former, any more than a hand or foot can be understood apart from the organism to which it belongs—such and similar protestations with which endless reiteration has made us suf-^ ficiently familiar, is merely to offer us a program in lieu of per-^ formance. All this is doubtless the goal which transcendentalism sets itself. Whether it can be attained still remains to be seen; and meanwhile it is worth remembering that to set forth the ultimate goal is not equivalent to an elucidation of the various steps by which it must be reached. A word or two may be added at this point in order to indicate the divergence of current realism from both idealism and prag- matism. It has already been stated that realism is at one with pragmatism in its denial of transcendentalism. In the attempt, however, to construe experience without the aid of transcendental factors, realism and pragmatism proceed by separate paths. The program offered by realism is the more radical, in that it concedes less to the idealistic position. Human attitudes and values, as is maintained, with idealistic sanction, by Professor Dewey's immediate empiricism, invest and determine all objects of experience, and there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. According to instrumentalism, the aim of knowledge, when viewed as a question-answer process, is to work a certain change in things, to make a certain difference in reality. True knowledge means that the right kind of difference has been made. "The right, the true and good, difference is that which carries out satisfactorily the specific purpose for the sake of which knowing occurs."1 Realism, on the other hand, denies that the individual, in the furtherance of intelligent activity, accomplishes a change in things through the process of knowing, and hence it charges subjectivism. In developing its own posi- tion it has wavered between the old view that consciousness is a distinct kind of entity, and the view that consciousness is a 1 Essays in Honor of William James, p. 69.6o8 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. XIX. function of things which translates things into the language of universals. While it has shown some splendid virility, the realis- tic movement of our day has not, on the one hand, succeeded in eliminating the difficulties inherent in the notion of conscious- ness as an entity, nor, on the other hand, has it offered any thorough analysis of doubt and error, so as to reveal the organic relationship of cognition with the antecedent situation in which it has its origin. Whatever the merits of pragmatism and realism, however, they present a challenge to idealism which cannot be ignored. Whether or not idealism will ultimately succeed in its task, the reconciliation and blending of the particular and the transcen- dental is at all events its peculiar and pressing obligation. Unless this reconciliation can be accomplished, transcendentalism fails to justify itself and must be discarded. In the past it has been far too much disposed to confine itself to reiteration and criticism, being content to see in a glass darkly the reconciliation which hitherto the absolute alone might behold face to face, and trusting that the defects of competing views would be accounted unto itself as righteousness. As regards realism, the issue lies in the question whether the relation of the experiencing individual to the objects of experience is essentially additive or organic, in the sense previously indicated. As regards pragmatism, the issue lies in the question whether this relation, admittedly organic, must or can be interpreted in transcendental terms. As regards both realism and pragmatism, the issue concerns the method and assumptions by which the conclusions of transcendentalism are obtained. As was stated before, if we assume, in the manner of Hume, that sensation consists of relationless units, the logic o:c transcendentalism is irresistible. But even in the doctrine of sensation offered us by writers like Bradley and Royce, who disavow Hume, the leaven of transcendentalism leavens the whole loaf. One can scarcely escape the impression that their revision of Hume's psychology, instead of being a preliminary to their metaphysics, is a revision which is undertaken from the stand- point of an antecedently established metaphysics, and is thus rendered futile. Meaning is persistently invested with onto-No. 6.] OBJECTIVE IDEALISM AAD ITS CRITICS. 609 logical qualities; with thinghood, in short; and is thus set over against the immediate experience, with the result that the familiar contrast of the particular and the transcendental, and the re- sultant problem, are reinstated in essentially the same form. Hence the perpetual shifting in transcendentalist writings from 'meaning' to 'existence/ from experience as a temporal process to 'universal experience,' from thought to 'Thought'; an oscil- lation that obscures the inherent antipathy between the two elements which idealism vainly seeks to unite. That such antipathy exists, in spite of the efforts to prove the contrary, is the charge with which the objective idealism of the present time finds itself confronted. And if idealism is to defend itself against this charge, it must cease to urge its abstract transcendentalism as a substitute for the equally abstract immediatism of a former day. If transcendentalism is to be proved tenable and plausible, it must guard against the subtle appeal of mystical insight which joins itself so readily with the standpoint, and it must base itself, not upon a distorted con- ception of immediacy, but upon a fresh and more adequate anal- ysis of experience. B. H. Bode. The University of Illinois.This book is a preservation facsimile produced for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper). Preservation facsimile printing and binding by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2015