William James made the following points about Hegelian philosophy in an 1882 article.
1. We cannot eat our cake and have it; that is, the only real contradiction there can be between thoughts is where one is true, the other false. When that happens, one must go forever, nor is there any 'higher synthesis' in which both can wholly revive.
2. A chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense; that is, no mere negation can be the instrument of a positive advance in thought.
3. The continua, time, space, and the ego, are bridges because they are without chasm.
4. But they bridge over the chasms between represented qualities only partially.
5. Their partial bridging, however, makes the qualities share in a common world.
6. The other characteristics of the qualities are separate facts.
7. But the same quality appears in many times and space. Generic sameness of the quality wherever found becomes thus a further means by which the jolts are reduced.
8. But between different qualities jolts remain. Each, as far as the other is concerned, is an absolutely separate and contingent being.
9. The moral judgment may lead us to postulate as irreducible the contingencies of the world.
10. Elements mutually contingent are not in conflict, so long as they partake of the continua of time, space. etc., -- partaking being the exact opposite of strife. They conflict only when, as mutually exclusive possibilities, they strive to possess themselves of the same parts of time, space, and ego.
11. That there are such real conflicts, irreducible to any intelligence, and giving rise to an excess of possibility over actuality, is an hypothesis, but a credible one. No philosophy should pretend to be anything more.
Number (9) there may seem an inconspicuous part of the list, but it is in fact critical to the significance of the whole for James.
If (9) is so significant, perhaps you might explain it a bit. Is the irreducibility of the contingencies of the world a statement of Schopenhauer's view that the noumenon is a single undifferentiated entity? Whatever the irreducibility of the contingencies of the world means, what is its connection to moral judgment?
ReplyDeleteThe last sentence in the first graf of the below answer should read, "I can think of only only one reference...."
DeleteThe contingencies of the world are the presence of unrealized possibilities, or the fact that the world could have been other than it is. James understood Hegel to be saying that the dialectic is both all-encompassing and inevitable -- thus to the extent we understand it we reduce and in principle eliminate contingency. James somewhere else calls this the "upper dogmatism" in contrast to the "lower dogmatism" of materialists. No, I don't think this is a reference to Schopenhauer -- indeed, I can think reference to Schop in WJ's work, in the essay "Is Life Worth Living?".
ReplyDeleteWhy would the moral sense lead us to postulate contingency as irreducible? Because in James' view judging an action to be right or wrong is bound up with the idea that it could have been otherwise, and determinism higher or lower, "hard" or "soft," is corrosive to morality.