Idealism, Metaphysics and Community

IDEALISM, METAPHYSICS AND COMMUNITY
Idealism , M etaphysics and Com m unity exam ines the place o f idealism in
contemporary philosophy, and its relation to problems o f metaphysics, political
thought, and the study of the history of philosophy. Drawing together contributions
from philosophers from several distinct traditions, this book presents a range of
perspectives - revealing areas of agreement and disagreement, addressing topics of
contemporary discussion, and providing new insights into philosophical idealism.
Following an extensive introduction by the editor, and drawing on the work of the
Canadian idealist, Leslie Armour, the book is divided into three main parts: Part 1
focuses on the British idealist, F.H.Bradley; Part 2 examines metaphysical issues and
idealism, such as the realism/anti-realism debate, the relation of classical and idealist
metaphysics, rational psychology, time and eternity, and the divine; Part 3 draws on
idealism to address contemporary concerns in ethical theory, political philosophy,
social philosophy and culture and the history o f philosophy.
Presenting new insights into the work of classical authors as well as contemporary
philosophers, this book provides a better understanding of classical idealism and
addresses important areas o f contemporary philosophical, social and political
concern.
ASHGATE NEW CRITICAL THINKING
IN PHILOSOPHY
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contemporary philosophical research into new directions and debate.
Series Editorial Board:
David Cooper, University of Durham, UK

Peter Lipton, University of Cambridge, UK
Sean Sayers, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Simon Critchley, University of Essex, UK
Simon Glendinning, University of Reading, UK
Paul Helm, King’s College London, UK
David Lamb, University of Birmingham, UK
Stephen Mulhall, University of Oxford, UK
Greg McCulloch, University of Birmingham, UK
Ernest Sosa, Brown University, Rhode Island, USA
John Post, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Alan Goldman, University of Miami, Florida, USA
Joseph Friggieri, University of Malta, Malta
Graham Priest, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Moira Gatens, University of Sydney, Australia
Alan Musgrave, University of Otago, New Zealand
Idealism, Metaphysics and
Community
E d ite d by
WILLIAM SWEET
St F rancis X a v ie r University, C anada
ROUTLEDGE
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Taylor & Francis Group
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First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing
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Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the 20th Century 1

William Sweet
PA R T I-ID E A L ISM 19
1 Primus inter pares: D.C. Stove among the Idealists 25

Hugo Meynell
2 F.H. Bradley’s Absolute, or Rationality Transmuted 39

Lee F. Werth
3 Bradley and Green on Relations 55

W.J. Mander
4 F.H. Bradley on Conflict of Interest 69

Don MacNiven
5 F.H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and the Theory of Relations 77

James Bradley
PART 2 -METAPHYSICS 107
6 Anti Anti-Realism 111

John Leslie
7 St. Thomas and Infinite Causal Regress 119

Lawrence Dewan, o.p.
8 Leslie Armour, Spinoza, and Rational Psychology 131

James Thomas
vi Idealism, Metaphysics and Community
9 The Suffering Reality of Reason and Love:

Kierkegaard’s Attempt to Overcome Epistemological Scepticism 153
Vidar Lande
10 On Time and Eternity 163

Thomas De Koninck
PART 3 - COMMUNITY 175
11 Radhakrishnan’s Concept of Universal Liberation 181

Kevin Sullivan
12 The Act/Rule Dispute 195

RichardM. Fox
13 Conceptualizing Community in Order to Realize It 207

Brenda WirJcus
14 Religious Belief and Community 219

William Sweet
15 Cultural Diversity and National Identity in Canadian Political Philosophy 235

David Lea
16 A History of the History of Philosophy in Canada 245

Bradley Russell Munro
17 Cows, Wolves, and the Absolute 257

Elizabeth Trott
18 Canadian Nationalism and Canadian Philosophy 275

Robin Mathews
Afterword: Beyond Idealism? 287

William Sweet
Bibliography o f the Works o f Leslie Armour 291
Index 303
Contributors
James Bradley [“F.H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and the Theory of Relations”]
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He
is editor of Philosophy after F.H. Bradley (Bristol, 1996), and has published in Archives
de philosophie, The Heythrop Journal, Etudes maritainiennes, Process Studies, and
other journals.
Lawrence Dewan, o.p. [“St. Thomas and Infinite Causal Regress”] is Professor of
Philosophy at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology (Ottawa, Canada) and
author of articles in The New Scholasticism, Laval théologique et philosophique,
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Proceedings o f the American Catholic
Philosophical Association, M odem Schoolman, Dionysius, Dialogue (Canada), and
other journals. APast-President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and
of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association, he has received the distinctions of being
named a Master of Sacred Theology by the Dominican Order, and election to The
Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Rome.
Richard M. Fox [“The Act/Rule Dispute”] is Professor of Philosophy at the Cleveland

State University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of Moral Reasoning: A
Philosophical Approach to Applied Ethics (Fort Worth, TX, 1990) and editor of New
Directions in Ethics: the challenge o f applied ethics (New York, 1986). He was editor
of the journal Philosophy in Context (1978-86), and has published in The Journal o f
Applied Philosophy, The Journal o f Value Inquiry, The Southern Journal o f
Philosophy, The Journal o f Religious Studies, and The Proceedings o f the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, and other journals. In 1988 he received the
Distinguished Service Award of the Ohio Philosophical Association. He completed a
PhD in Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled The Presuppositions
and Principles o f Moral Inquiry (University of Waterloo, 1967).
Thomas De Koninck [“On Time and Eternity”] is Professor of Philosophy at Université

Laval, Québec, and author of La Question de Dieu selon Aristote et Hegel (Paris, 1991),
Urgence de la philosophie: actes du Colloque du cinquantenaire de la Faculté de
philosophie, Université Laval> 1985 (Québec, 1986) and, most recently, De la dignité
humaine (Paris, 1995). In 1996 he was named Chevalier de VOrdre des Palmes
Académiques de la République française by ministerial decree for his services to French
culture, and is also the recipient of the Prix La Bruyère of the Académie française. He
is currently President of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
Vidar Lande [“The Suffering Reality of Reason and Love: Kierkegaard’s Attempt to
Overcome Epistemological Scepticism”] has taught philosophy at Hvam Agricultural
College in Jessheim, Norway and is currently teaching at Oslo College, Norway. He
viii Idealism, Metaphysics and Community
completed a PhD in Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled A Critical
Interpretation o f Kierkegaard's Philosophiske Smuler (University of Ottawa, 1992).
David Lea [“Cultural Diversity and National Identity in Canadian Political Philosophy”]
is Acting Dean of Humanities and Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Papua New Guinea. He is author of Melanesian Land Tenure in a Contemporary and
Philosophical Context (Lanham, MD, 1997), and has published in The Journal o f
Applied Philosophy, History o f European Ideas, Sophia, Reason Papers, The Journal
o f Social Philosophy, Dialéctica: Revista de Filosofia, dentas Sociales, Literatura y
Cultura, and other journals. He completed a PhD in Philosophy under the direction of
Leslie Armour, entitledA Critical Evaluation o f Two Fundamental Forms o f Liberalism
(University of Ottawa, 1990).
John Leslie [“Anti Anti-Realism”] is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University

of Guelph (Canada). He is author of M odem Cosmology and Philosophy (Buffalo, NY,
1998), The End o f the World (London, 1996), and Universes (London, 1989), and has
published in Philosophia (Israel), American Philosophical Quarterly, Idealistic Studies,
The Journal o f Applied Philosophy, Religious Studies, The International Journal o f the
Philosophy o f Religion, Mind, Biology and Philosophy, The Philosophical Quarterly,
and other journals. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Don MacNiven [“F.H. Bradley on Conflict of Interest”] is Director of the Centre for
Practical Ethics and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York University (Canada). He
is the author of F.H. Bradley ’s Moral Psychology (Lewiston, NY, 1987), Moral
Expertise (London, 1990) and Creative Morality (London, 1993) and has published in
Mind, Dialogue, and other journals.
W.J. Mander [“Bradley and Green on Relations”] is Tutor in Philosophy and Senior
Tutor at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. He is the author of An Introduction to
Bradley's Metaphysics (Oxford, 1994), editor of Perspectives on the Logic and
Metaphysics ofFH . Bradley (Bristol, 1996) and Anglo-American Idealism, 1865-1927
(Westport, CT, 2000), co-editor of Collected Works o f F.H. Bradley (Bristol, 1999), and
editor of the journal, Bradley Studies.
Robin Mathews [“Canadian Nationalism and Canadian Philosophy”] is an adjunct

professor in Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa and Simon Fraser
University in Burnaby, British Columbia. His publications include books of poetiy, plays,
and short stories as well as books on the universities, library criticism, Canadian identity,
Canadian intellectual history, and Canadian cultural ideals. He is author of Canadian
Identity: Major Forces Shaping the Life o f a People (1988), The Death o f Socialism &
Other Poems (1995), Treason o f the Intellectuals: English Canada in the Post-Modern
Period (1995). In 1991 he was named the recipient o f The Award o f Merit o f the
Association fo r Canadian Studies. He has lectured in Canada, the US, Britain, France,
and Finland.
Contributors ix
Hugo Meynell [“Primus inter pares : D.C. Stove among the Idealists”] is Professor of
Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and author of Is Christianity True?
(Washington, DC, 1994), The Nature o f Aesthetic Value (New York, 1986), The
Intelligible Universe (London and New York, 1982),A n Introduction to the Philosophy
o f Bernard Lonergan (New York, 1976), God and the World (London, 1971), The New
Theology and M odem Theologians (London, 1967), and Sense, Nonsense and
Christianity (London, 1964). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Bradley Russell Munro [“A History of the History of Philosophy in Canada”] was
formerly employed by the Department of the Secretary of State, Canada, and is currently
a researcher in human rights policy in Ottawa. He completed a PhD in Philosophy under
the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled The Philosophical Significance o f Quine ’s D-
thesis (University of Waterloo, 1975).
Kevin Sullivan [“Radhakrishnan’s Concept of Universal Liberation”] teaches

philosophy at Heritage College, Hull (Québec), Canada. He completed a PhD in
Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled Release and Realization: A
Study o f the Concept o f Spiritual Liberation in the Philosophy o f Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan (University of Ottawa, 1993).
William Sweet [“Religious Belief and Community”] is Professor of Philosophy at St

Francis Xavier University. He is author of Idealism and Rights (Lanham, MD, 1997),
and has edited several collections of scholarly essays, such as La philosophie de la
religion à la fin du vingtième siècle (Ottawa, 1993), Religion, Modernity and Post
Modernity (Bangalore, 1997), God and Argument (Ottawa, 1999) and, most recently,
The Bases o f Ethics (Milwaukee, 2000). He is author of over seventy articles, primarily
in the history of idealist political thought and the epistemology of religion, and is editor
of The Collected Works o f Bernard Bosanquet, 20 volumes (Bristol, 1999) and of
Volume VI of The Collected Works o f Jacques Maritain (Notre Dame). He has served
on the executives of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, the Canadian
Philosophical Association, the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, the
Canadian Jacques Maritain Association, and the Canadian Society of Christian
Philosophers. He completed a PhD in Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour,
entitled The Foundations o f Rights in the Political Thought o f Bernard Bosanquet
(University of Ottawa, 1994).
James Thomas [“Leslie Armour, Spinoza, and Rational Psychology”] is author of

Intuition and Reality: A Study o f the Attributes o f Substance in the Absolute Idealism
o f Spinoza (Aldershot, UK, 1999), and has published in Maritain Studies, Idealistic
Studies, Ultimate Reality and Meaning, and Bradley Studies. He completed a PhD in
Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled The Identity and Diversity o f
Attributes in the Absolute Idealism o f Spinoza (University of Ottawa, 1989).
X Idealism, Metaphysics and Community
Elizabeth Trott [“Cows, Wolves, and the Absolute”] teaches philosophy at the
Ryerson Polytechnical University. She is co-author (with Leslie Armour) of The F aces
o f Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada, 1850-1950
(Waterloo, ON, 1981), co-editor (with Leslie Armour) of The Industrial Kingdom O f
G od by John Clark Murray (Ottawa, 1981), and has published in The Journal o f
Aesthetics and Education, Dialogue, Philosophy and Culture (ed. Venant Cauchy), and
The Canadian Encyclopedia. She completed a PhD in Philosophy under the direction of
Leslie Armour, entitled Experience and the Absolute (University of Waterloo, 1971).
Lee F. Werth [“F.H. Bradley’s Absolute, or Rationality Transmuted”] is Associate

Professor of Philosophy at the Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. He has
published in History o f Philosophy Quarterly, Philosophy in Context, Process Studies,
The American Philosophical Quarterly, and other journals. He completed a PhD in
Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled Tense and Temporality
(University of Waterloo, 1971).
Brenda Wirkus [“Conceptualizing Community in Order to Realize It”] is Associate

Professor and Chair of Philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. She has
published in Journal o f the British Society o f Phenomenology and other journals. She
completed a PhD in Philosophy under the direction of Leslie Armour, entitled The
Philosophical Concept o f Legal Capacity: A Reconceptualization o f the Reason/Will
Relationship (University of Ottawa, 1989).
Acknowledgments
The preparation of collections of essays can be trying—not only for the editors, but for the
contributors whose patience is often tested as the volume goes slowly through the various
stages of production, from the initial conception to its appearance in printed form. I would,
therefore, like to thank my many fellow authors for their patience as well as their
participation in this project. But there are also those whose work does not appear in the
collection, but whose efforts were just as indispensable to the finished product. In
particular, I want to express my gratitude to Mostafa Faghfoury, for filming an interview
with Leslie Armour in December 1997, and to Leslie’s wife Diana, who provided some
more subtle help. I must also thank my friends and colleagues, at St Francis Xavier
University and elsewhere, who have both provided moral support and tolerated my
spending too many hours in the office as I pursued this, and similar, projects. Finally, I wish
to acknowledge the assistance of Mr Ken Mackley, Philosophy Librarian at Birkbeck
College, London, Ms Angela Hagar, Interlibrary Loan Librarian at St Francis Xavier
University (who provided some of the materials required in the preparation of the
Bibliography), and Ms Monica MacKinnon, for her help with reading the proofs of this
volume.
Above all, and along with the contributors and many of his students and colleagues, I
wish to acknowledge Leslie Armour—not only for his commitment to pursuing areas of
philosophy that have all too often been seen as being on the margin of philosophy, but
particularly for the guidance and support that he has consistently given to those who have
worked closely with him.
The initial impetus for this volume (though he may not yet know this) came from a
comment by Armour’s colleague, John Leslie. He once remarked that it was a scandal that
Armour’s work had not received a greater recognition in Canada. Other conversations with
some of Armour’s colleagues and former students suggested that a volume focusing on the
principal themes of his work would be a suitable tribute. As this volume was reaching
completion, his own country began, in some measure, to remedy this past neglect. Armour
was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the country’s senior academic
accolade to which scholars and scientists aspire.
L eslie A rm our
philosopher, colleague, teacher, fr ie n d
Introduction:
Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in
the 20th Century
WILLIAM SWEET
Contexts and Criticisms
Despite their difficult histories through the twentieth century, idealism (particularly Anglo-
American idealism), metaphysics, and the study of community find themselves well-placed
at the beginning of a new millennium.
At the start of the twentieth century, in the English-speaking world, idealism still
flourished—in Britain, but also in Canada, South Africa, India, and even Australia and the
United States. Figures such as F.H. Bradley1and Bernard Bosanquet,2 John Watson3 and
Rupert Lodge,4 Jan C. Smuts5 and R.F.A. Hoemlé,6 A.G. Hogg7 and Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan,8 (Sir) William Mitchell9 and W.R. Boyce-Gibson,10 and Josiah Royce,11
George H. Howison12 and Borden Parker Bowne13 dominated the philosophical scene.
Theirs was an idealism whose impact extended beyond the academic sphere, addressing
concrete concerns in public policy, religion, and social life. Some of the many issues on
which their views were influential include welfare, social legislation, and anti-colonialism
(in Britain), the fight for home rule (in India), the ‘race question’ (in South Africa),
educational policy (in Australia), and the application of modem critical method to, and the
search for unity in, the organisation and practice of religion (in Canada and the United
States).
But by the 1920s, and for much of the rest of the century, idealism—the philosophical
theory that ‘primary reality consists of ideas,’ that ‘reality is capable of rational
interpretation,’ and that ‘social relations and institutions are not ultimately material
phenomena, but best understood as existing at the level of human consciousness’—fell out
of fashion in Anglo-American philosophy.
For metaphysics, too, the twentieth century was a difficult period. Although the
beginning of the century saw a wide range of metaphysical debates involving authors as
diverse as Dilthey, Eucken, Nietzsche, Croce, Husserl, Bradley, McTaggart, Bergson,
Sertillanges, Maritain, Royce, Santayana, and Whitehead, by the time of the publication of
The Open Society and its Enemies (in 194514)—in which Karl Popper charged that the
philosophies of Plato, Hegel, and their ‘disciples’ were grounded on assumptions that were
antithetical to human freedom— ‘traditional’ systematic metaphysics had long been out of
fashion. Metaphysics, or at least metaphysical system building, was, as Popper, A. J. Ayer,15
and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle had already argued, non-scientific, if not
altogether nonsensical. At best, a number of puzzles that might easily be grouped under the
philosophy of mind, were still open to discussion, but systematic enquiry had largely been
abandoned.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, one finds fierce debates among Anglo-
American philosophers concerning ethics, social policy, and theories of the state. But, as
2 Idealism, Metaphysics and Community
metaphysics fell under suspicion, there came a corresponding distrust of any systematic
normative philosophy, and discussions of moral and political topics in professional
philosophical circles soon came to focus on metaethics and analytical political theory. The
study of community, by philosophers such as R.M. Maclver (whose seminal work,
Community,16was one of the premier theoretical analyses of society of the early part of the
century), turned out to be of more interest to those active in the ‘new’ discipline of
sociology than to the less ‘practically’ focussed philosophers. By the 1950s, a not
uncommon view among many analytic philosophers was that normative political (and
social) philosophy was dead.17
In the last decades of the twentieth century, and now at the beginning of the twenty-first,
the tide is reversing. Of course, the ‘demise’ of metaphysics and political philosophy was
largely exaggerated, and idealism itself (contrary to some impressions) never really
disappeared. In the 1960s, when analytic philosophy was certainly dominant in the English-
speaking world, one could also find influential idealists such as G.R.E. Mure,18 A.C.
Ewing,19Brand Blanshard,20 Errol Harris,21 Henry Harris,22 and Nicholas Rescher,23 and
J.N. Findlay.24
Perhaps the first sign of this turning of the tide was the dramatic shift to political
philosophy and normative ethics, beginning in the 1970s, with questions of rights and
freedoms (in the work of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin), and extending
in the 1980s and 1990s to issues of community and nation (in the writings of Alasdair
MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Allen Buchanan,25 and Michael Walzer26).
And, gradually, such investigations raised the question of whether a satisfactory theory of
justice or rights required at least a ‘thin’ metaphysical foundation. Other authors, such as
Hilaiy Putnam, Timothy Sprigge,27 John McDowell, and Crispin Wright have taken up the
discussion of a number of topics in metaphysics as well. There is clearly a much stronger
interest in metaphysics today than even a decade ago, although the field certainly has not
regained the stature it had at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A second sign of this reversal was the recognition by many philosophers, by the late
1970s, of the public perception of the apparent marginality of their discipline. One popular
magazine opined that the recent history of intellectual culture in the United States could be
written with scarcely any mention of its philosophers. The abandonment of studies of
metaphysics, and the focus on questions of language—a characteristic of Anglo-American
philosophy through the middle decades of the twentieth century—resulted in a view of
philosophy as turned in on itself, and as engaged simply in rarified intellectual skirmishes.
It is perhaps in response that today one notes a return to ‘philosophizing’ in a larger sense.
The influence of the long-dominant ‘analytic’ tradition has not only begun to weaken, but
there is talk of a ‘post-analytic’ style of doing philosophy. Without eschewing the rigour
and attention to argument and language that characterized the analytic movement, many
philosophers now attempt both to bring their work to bear on contemporary issues, and to
address questions and intellectual concerns that have long been neglected or disregarded.
Feminism, literary theory, ethnic and race studies, and (to some extent) religion and
spirituality have begun to have a significant impact on the contemporary professional
academic study of philosophy.
Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the 20th Century 3
This return to many of the traditional concerns of philosophy has included a renewed
interest in the work of the British idealists. The attention paid to the writings of F.H.
Bradley is particularly revealing here. Though once considered by many Anglo-American
philosophers as obscurantist, it is often forgotten that such an opponent of idealist
metaphysics as Bertrand Russell held Bradley in great respect,28 and Bradley’s
metaphysical work (presented principally in his Appearance and Reality) reveals a singular
and powerful analytical mind—as analytical as any of the ‘empiricist’ philosophers who
were to follow him. It is, perhaps, no surprise that recently some authors have come to find
Bradley’s style of philosophizing more congenial, even if they still demur from his
conclusions.29
Again, with the decline of Marxism in the latter part of the twentieth century—both as
a political force and as an intellectual resource—many philosophers have been concerned
with finding an alternative to liberal, individualist political theoiy that can provide an
account of human beings as social and political animals, that recognizes the historical and
cultural rootedness of humanity, and that can give an explanation of not only rights, but
obligations and responsibilities. By the late 1980s, philosophers began to rediscover the
work of T.H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet—texts that had been long abandoned to
political scientists and social historians. The writings of Bosanquet and Green, and of those
influenced by them (e.g., Michael Oakeshott and Harold Laski), have been seen as
providing an alternative to Marxism and individualism that recognises the value of human
autonomy and the importance of community.
In short, philosophical idealism, particularly that developed in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, has much to say about contemporary discussions of metaphysics
and social and political philosophy, and it is because of this an increasing number of
philosophers have turned to the writings of the British idealists.30 At the beginning of a new
millennium, then, even if the term ‘idealism’ is still viewed with some suspicion, several
of the insights of idealist philosophy, metaphysics, and accounts of community (under such
labels as ‘anti-realism,’ communitarianism, social knowledge, holism, and perfectionism)
have come increasingly into fashion.31
We can see more clearly what philosophical idealism has to offer, and how specifically
it bears on current debates (e.g., in metaphysics and in social and political thought), by
briefly turning to the work of one of today’s leading idealist philosophers, Leslie Armour.
Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the Philosophy of Leslie Armour
Idealism, metaphysics, and community are themes that have long gone together, and we can
see how they interrelate by looking at the work of the Canadian philosopher, Leslie
Armour. Indeed, Armour’s intellectual itinerary, and the extent of his research, call to mind
the breadth and depth of the work of idealists of the beginning of the twentieth century.
Armour is the author of a range of books, essays, and articles that have made important
contributions to the study of philosophy, from examinations of idealist logic and
metaphysics, through ethics and political and legal philosophy, to questions of philosophy
and culture, the history of modem philosophy, and the philosophies of non-westem
4 Idealism,Metaphysics and Community
cultures. Yet despite the diversity and encyclopaedic character of his interests, underlying
his work is a common theme—a theme that one finds in much idealist philosophy—that
philosophy is necessary to an understanding of culture and community.
Leslie Armour was bom in Canada, in New Westminister (Vancouver), British
Columbia, on 9 March 1931. While an undergraduate student at the University of British
Columbia (1947-52), he was both editor of the university student newspaper and worked
for the daily Vancouver Province. It was during his undergraduate studies that—in spite
of a philosophical department that was not particularly sympathetic to idealism—he
encountered and became intrigued by J.M.E. McTaggart’s The Nature o f Existence. After
receiving his B.A. in 1952, he moved to London, England, where he worked as a subeditor
for Reuters News Service (1953) and as a reporter and feature writer for the London
Express News and Features Service (1953-57), while completing his Ph.D. at Birkbeck
College, University of London (1956).32 The University of London had not yet been swept
up in the shift towards ‘ordinary language’ philosophy and, according to Armour, his
position as a journalist allowed him to have some independence from the dominant
philosophical ethos.
While in London, Armour studied with C.E.M. Joad and, after Joad’s death on 4
September 1953, with Ruth L. Saw.33 In his doctoral thesis, A Survey o f Some Problems
in British Idealist Ontology: a re-examination and attempted reconstruction, Armour’s
aim was to challenge both scepticism and the reduction of metaphysics to a branch of
science. His defence of ontology involved arguments that focused on the existence of the
self, and he argued that his conclusions could be confirmed by an ‘ethical premise.’
Armour’s early interests in political philosophy and ethics were thus clearly in the
background. His thesis was not just ‘constructive’; it raised a number of important
questions: Why did British idealism come to an apparently sudden halt by the 1920s? What
sorts of arguments were taken to ‘refute’ it? And, most importantly, was there a single
fundamental position held in common among the idealists?—which, presumably, there
would have to be if idealism could be readily ‘refuted.’ Armour found that there were in
fact rather significant differences among the idealists—differences of which the
philosophers themselves were well aware.
Nevertheless, it is fair to say—and Armour would no doubt agree—that, although the
British idealists did not hold to a monolithic doctrine, there is a unity or common thread to
be found through much of their work. For example, idealism is committed to the traditional
philosophical standard of the importance of reason—although ‘reason’ is not to be
construed narrowly. There must be, on philosophical questions, a ‘logic of the case’ which
different minds could uncover at different times. In many idealist authors we see the view,
exemplified in Plato and Hegel, that the real is the rational, and the rational, the real— and,
further, that reality requires, depends on, or is in some way inseparable from consciousness
or mind.
A second feature that one finds in the British idealists, and which again exemplifies a
commitment to a traditional philosophical ideal, is a concern with articulating an overview
that reveals a coherence or ultimate consistency and unity to reality. This systematic unity,
sought for by philosophy, is best described in logic. Such a logic is not that of syllogistic
or ‘linear inference,’ but is, rather, one of ‘systematic inference’ which is based on the
presumption of an essential connection of judgement and inference, and that holds that all
knowledge involves knowing the whole. Thus, Bosanquet writes that “truth and reality are
to be looked for in the whole of experience, taken as a system.”34 And as reality has a
systematic structure, philosophy must be systematic as well. Moreover, since reality does
not divide neatly and discretely into subfields, any philosophy that is to be adequate to its
task cannot confine itself to just one subfield or another.
Finally, the idealists were united, as Armour notes, by an interest in finding not only a
principle of metaphysical unity, but one of ethical and political unity. In metaphysics, the
idealists eschewed the atomism and empiricism of their predecessors. Reason had a key
place in their accounts, but reason was itself something that was characteristic of a system,
not of an individual subject. The ultimate principle, the principle of systematic unity that
the idealists sought, was variously described as ‘eternal consciousness,’ ‘the Absolute,’ and
‘the concrete universal.’ At the level of social life, we see that Bosanquet spoke of it as the
‘real will,’ the ‘common good,’ and the ‘kingdom of God on earth’; McTaggart said that
what is real is a community of interlocking souls, and that the knowledge that reflects this
unity requires a supplement—love; Green saw a central role in social life played by the
‘common good,’ which was a reflection of an ‘Eternal Consciousness’ underlying all of
reality;35 and Bradley noted the essential role in ethics of the ‘moral organism’36 and the
‘moral universal.’ Such a principle of unity and value is not particularly religious. Still,
although as individuals the idealists tended not to hold to orthodox or traditional Christian
dogma, they were reluctant to abandon talk of religion or to attempt to establish a ‘secular’
faith. When we look, for example, atBosanquet’s The Civilization o f Christendom (1893),
we see a conscious effort to avoid turning to a Comtian civic religion.37
From the time of his early philosophical work, Armour recognised, then, that discerning
the similarities and differences among the British idealists is essential not only to
understanding their arguments, but also to appreciating better their place in the history of
recent philosophy—and it is a matter to which he has periodically returned in his later
work.
Following his studies in England, Armour moved to the United States, where he taught
at Montana State University (now the University of Montana) (1957-61) and at San
Fernando Valley State College (now California State University), Northridge (1961-62),
before returning to Canada to teach at the University of Waterloo (1962-71 ).
Armour’s first three books, The Rational and the Real (1962), The Concept o f Truth
(1969), and Logic and Reality (1972), were written during these years. In them, and in
some related articles, he attempted to address a number of questions arising out of his Ph.D.
thesis: Is it possible to articulate a coherent metaphysical system and a theory of truth that
would answer ‘fashionable’ philosophers who were anti-metaphysical? Is there a way of
putting together correspondence, coherence, and pragmatist theories of truth? (Here,
Armour saw Collingwood’s account of truth and his method of ‘question, answer, and
presupposition’ as being especially insightful.) In Logic and Reality, for example, Armour
pursued these questions, not by engaging in a straightforward metaphysical investigation,
but by looking at the logic of inquiry into truth itself. What he found was that an
examination of logic leads one to metaphysics and, ultimately, to the notion of community.
As he wrote in his first article published in a philosophy journal,38 the possibility of truth
implies a duty to search for truth. This entails that one must help others to seek it as well.
Thus, the possibility of any rational investigation entails a social dimension, and this, in
turn, leads us to the recognition that logic must have, at the very least, a ‘thin’ metaphysics
of community.
The theme of community has been treated at length in Armour’s studies of Canadian
philosophy. Though he had been interested in Canadian philosophy since his undergraduate
years, Armour came to explore it in detail in connection with research on the interplay
between philosophy and culture. As well, he noted that, if one is to look for relations
between the two, one could not ignore the contributions of one of the great philosophers of
culture, G.W.F. Hegel. Besides, given Hegel’s influence on the early philosophers of
English Canada, an understanding of Canadian culture required looking at how Hegel was
received—and adapted—in that context.
Armour, and his then graduate student Elizabeth Trott, saw in the example of the early
Canadian philosophers that culture has a significant influence on the way in which one
pursues philosophy. Armour cites the Canadian idealist, John Watson, making just this
point about Watson’s own teacher, Edward Caird.
The outer and inner life,” he says, “are at every point in close correlation, and there is no
experience of ours, theoretical or practical, in which we have not to do with both. The growth
of our inner life is just the development of our knowledge of the outer world and our interests
in it.39
Given the interplay between philosophy and culture, Armour also noted that his
inquiries into the history of philosophy in Canada provided him with statements by
philosophers on what Canada is. For example, Armour found in Watson a plea for a
“pluralist federalism”—a federalism where each group or cultural unit mutually recognises
all the other groups. This ‘philosophical pluralism,’ found in some of the early Canadian
idealists, is a precursor to the theory of multiculturalism that has been of increasing interest
to philosophers, particularly in Canada—e.g., in James Tully40 and Charles Taylor.41
Armour argues that an idealist philosophy can carry out the function of articulating a
pluralist federalism because it is ‘open.’ As Armour sees it, idealism is not so much a
doctrine—though it certainly has canonical principles—as an approach. As such, it can be
particularly receptive to the insights of other cultures—and, as we have already seen, one
finds philosophers who were influenced by Hegel, not only in the ‘west’ but in India and
South Africa and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in China and Japan. In Canada,
as in many countries today, people find themselves surrounded by a wide range of cultures.
Traditional practices, by themselves, are not sufficient to understand others and to facilitate
interaction, and so one is called to replace these practices with reasons. For Armour,
because the idealist tradition—which begins with Plato, through the Neo-Platonists, to
Berkeley and, much later, to the British idealists—holds that primary reality consists of
ideas, and that reality is capable of a rational interpretation, it is the kind of philosophical
theory that can provide such reasons, and that is singularly suited to a multicultural,
pluralist world.
There was a strong reaction to this research—this is detailed in the chapters by Munro,
Trott, and Mathews later in this volume—and it led in part to Armour’s accepting a
position at Cleveland State University, in the United States, in 1971, where he served as
Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department. The move provided some professional
opportunities—there was a new graduate programme and Armour was offered the
editorship of a new journal (Philosophy in Context). It also provided some ‘critical
distance’ from the Canadian debates concerning national culture—and concerning national
philosophy. But Armour did not leave these debates behind. At this time, his writing
focussed on topics relevant to events in Canada—questions of law and the person,
sovereignty, and human rights. And as he worked on manuscripts on the history of
philosophy in Canada, and on the idea of Canada, he also pursued questions in metaphysics
and epistemology. He was particularly interested in the issue of rationality, which
eventually culminated in his essays on J.H. Newman and in his book The
Conceptualization o f the Inner Life (co-authored with Edward T. Bartlett and completed
in 1977, but not published until 1980).
In 1977, shortly after the victory of the “indépendantiste” Parti Québécois in the
legislative election in the Canadian province of Quebec, Armour returned to Canada to
teach at the University of Ottawa. The Philosophy Department there was bilingual and
multi-traditional, and it seemed to be an environment suited to reflecting on the possibilities
of a pluralistic philosophical federalism. Soon, two books on which he had been working
for over a decade appeared—The Faces o f Reason: Philosophy in English Canada, 1850-
1950 (1981, co-authored with Elizabeth Trott) and The Idea o f Canada and the Crisis o f
Community ( 1981 ).
Though rooted in the history of philosophy, these books discuss a number of
issues—federalism, nation building, and multiculturalism. Armour argued in The Idea o f
Canada that there are ways in which one can try to make a federalist, pluralist vision of
Canada ‘work.’ But Armour’s concerns, like those of the early idealists, Green, Bosanquet,
Watson, and John Clark Murray, are not just political, but philosophical. Federalism,
multiculturalism, confederation—all provide distinctive views of community, but all can
also affect the issues and methods that philosophers engage in.
Although some philosophers have shown concern about such issues as globalization
and political sovereignty—particularly in the wake of advances in technology,
developments in the global economy, and the successes of nationalist, separatist and
secessionist movements42—Armour argues that most of them have been reluctant to engage
in debates on these topics. Moreover, even when they do, they tend to use a vocabulary
‘imported’ from the United States. For Armour, to abandon philosophical reflection on
concrete issues is to abandon one of the central concerns of philosophy. Philosophers
should be concerned about such questions as ‘What is the range of possible associations
between Quebec and the rest of Canada?’ and ‘What alternatives are open with the advent
of globalization and the collapse of social democracy?’ Armour’s own efforts in addressing
these issues have led to working with the Canadian Studies programme at Simon Fraser
University in British Columbia, and being asked to join the Editorial Board of the
preeminent Quebec philosophy journal, Laval théologique et philosophique, and to
evaluate Laval University’s graduate philosophy programme. It has also influenced him to
pursue research on philosophical questions concerning the economy, and for some 15 years
he has given papers at annual meetings on social economics. It has led, as well, to an
interest in cross cultural philosophy.
Armour’s research on the relation of community and culture to philosophy and
philosophical thinking has brought him to publish more on the history of western
philosophy. (Interestingly, one finds an interest in the history of philosophy in many of the
British idealists as well. The Oxford tradition of philosophy was one that emphasized the
Greek and Roman classics. T.H. Green developed his philosophy out of a discussion of
Hume; Russell, a student of McTaggart, wrote on Leibniz; Bosanquet’s The Philosophical
Theory o f the State is, in many respects, a reading of the history of western political
thought.) Armour’s turn to the history of late mediaeval and early modem philosophy,
however, was motivated not so much by a desire to find a way of expressing his
philosophical views, as by a wish to locate and identify philosophical and social and
political options that may still be available to us.
But while these investigations serve to shed light on options open to us in building
community today, they also reveal a number of forgotten or neglected features of some of
the major philosophical debates of the modem period. Armour notes, for example, that
Descartes’s interests included providing a philosophical basis for community—and he
claims that this explains in part the early interest in Descartes in Quebec, where Descartes
was read as a kind of proto-communitarian, and not as an atomistic liberal.43
Through the late 1980s and 1990s, then, Armour’s work addressed a range of questions
in the history of philosophy—and also in ethics, social philosophy, and religion. Passing
through the writings of René Rapin, Pierre Lemoine, Eustacius a Sancto Paulo, and Yves
de Paris, Armour has produced major studies of Spinoza and Hegel (Being and Idea:
Developments o f Some Themes in Spinoza and Hegel, 1992) and of Pascal ( “Infini Rien ”
Pascal 's Wager and the Human Paradox, 1993). Sometimes these studies ‘complete’
earlier work; sometimes they signal a deepening of research into a problem or period.
Armour retired from the University of Ottawa in 1996, but in 1997 he accepted a post
as Research Professor at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology, in Ottawa,
where he teaches graduate courses every half year. In these courses, Armour continues to
pursue the kinds of questions that have always interested him. Dividing his time between
residence in London (near the British Library) and Ottawa, he has also been able to work
on the theory of the history of philosophy. He is completing a book on scepticism, and has
other projects as well—manuscripts on The Metaphysics o f Community, on The Idea o f
Idea in the History o f Philosophy, and on McTaggart and Augustine (the latter topic being
of special interest since his student days). In addition, he is pursing research into some
aspects of the turn of the century idealism-realism debate that involved Samuel Alexander
and J.A. Smith.
Armour’s intellectual interests are, and always have been, broad and multifaceted. The
eclectic character of his work is largely reflective of his commitment to a philosophical
idealism that seeks to find unity in diversity, without making that diversity any less real.
This comprehensiveness in approach is rooted in a respect for the major philosophers and
philosophies of the past Not surprisingly, one finds the influence of several central figures
in the history of philosophy in Armour’s work; he specifically acknowledges McTaggart,
and one also notes frequent reference to Spinoza, Malbranche, John Henry Newman, and
Idealism,Metaphysics and Community in the 2&h Century 9
(though perhaps misleadingly) F.H. Bradley. The degree of this influence varies, and one
should not infer from this that the conclusions of these earlier authors are in any way
decisive or make his own reflections any less original.
It is also fair to say that the research areas of Armour’s graduate students have
influenced him—and that they have also added to the breadth of his philosophical interests.
Among the doctoral dissertations he has supervised, one finds theses in metaphysics (on
time and tense, on formalism, and on the nature of the self and consciousness), in idealist
logic, in the history of philosophy (on Spinoza, Arthur Collier, John Watson, and
Kierkegaard), in the philosophy of law (on the concept of law, the concept of legal capacity,
and on human rights), on political philosophy (on classical and contemporary liberalism,
and on idealist political philosophy), and on comparative philosophy—particularly Indian
philosophy (including two theses dealing with the work of Radhakrishnan). Today, Armour
continues to direct Ph.D. theses—the more recent have been on Edith Stein, on freedom
in the thought of Hannah Arendt, and on liberalism and genocide. As some of the essays in
this volume attest, Armour’s graduate students are devoted to, and have a particular
affection for him. But he has eschewed the thought of giving birth to a philosophical school.
Armour’s current teaching and research at the Dominican College have, it seems, taken
him back to his roots. In the ninth grade, he was sent to a Catholic girl’s school, run by the
Sisters of Saint Ann, in New Westminister, British Columbia, where he first encountered
teachers who spoke of the value of knowledge for its own sake—a heady (and today far
from popular) philosophical view. Though he has frequently distanced himself from
orthodox Christian religious belief, throughout his life—and particularly since the mid-
1980s—he has published on questions in ‘natural theology,’ and he has long been an
elected member of the Society for the Philosophy of Religion. In 1979 he was a founding
member of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association—an association which, as Armour
describes it, “is devoted to keeping open the kinds of philosophical questions which [the
French Catholic philosopher, Jacques] Maritain thought important.” He served as its
President from 1996 until 1999 and, under its aegis, organised international conferences
on ‘The Bases of Ethics,’ ‘God and Argument,’ ‘Theories of the History of Philosophy,’
and ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ Perhaps in this Armour is again
following a course travelled by many of the British idealists—in particular,
McTaggart—who sought to distinguish themselves from traditional Christianity but who
in fact held to (as Armour has it) many of the views that a Christian philosopher like
Augustine did.
Despite the range of his work and his interests, there are three themes that run through
Armour’s writings to date. The first is a concern with fundamental questions in metaphysics
and epistemology. We can see, beginning with his doctoral dissertation, that Armour has
been interested in finding a paradigm of knowledge, distinct from and broader than those
employed in the pure and applied sciences, and in articulating a view of reason that is not
reducible to scientific reason. For many philosophers in the west, Armour believes, any
claim to know must meet the standards of what is deemed necessary for knowledge in the
sciences—but such a view excludes, a priori, certain kinds of human interests and
activities. There must be, then, some other way of understanding knowledge.
A second theme present in Armour’s many essays and books is the emphasis on the
concept of community and the analysis of the conditions for community. Armour holds that
one’s community and culture influences one’s philosophy, how one understands oneself,
and how one does philosophy. Idealism is an important tool here because it is open to the
differences that characterize other cultures. Armour is also interested in how philosophy
can contribute to an understanding of culture. It is this that has directed his work on the
Canadian idealists influenced by Hegel. This interest is not based on mere intellectual
curiosity. For Armour, the philosopher must be ‘engaged’—which does not necessarily
entail political activism, but does require, at the very least, reflecting on substantive issues.
Third—something implied in the first two themes—Armour’s work attempts to provide
a response to a narrow empiricism and atomism. This, Armour believes, requires
articulating a ‘metaphysics of community.’ Like the idealists of the nineteenth century, he
holds that the answers to a number of philosophical problems are to be found in a
metaphysics that is open, comprehensive, and unifying, but which does not negate or
diminish individuality.
Leslie Armour’s books and essays show, then, that a serious philosophical reflection
on metaphysics, or epistemology, or community will lead—and must lead—to a
consideration of each of the others, and that philosophy must, in some way, be systematic.
While some of the authors in this volume may not agree with Armour on how such a
philosophical reflection might be carried out, they nevertheless acknowledge that Armour’s
attempt cannot and should not be ignored.
Exploring Idealism, Metaphysics and Community Today
An enquiry into metaphysics and community—determining how they are related to one
another but also how they bear on issues in epistemology, logic, religion, and culture—is
one that can profit from the insights of the history of philosophy and from philosophical
idealism. The contributors to this volume suggest that, in order to do justice to debates on
these topics we must ‘resituate’ the classical arguments and texts within their contexts.
Thus, while many of the authors take a strong historical approach to these issues, they are
also interested in addressing a number of concerns in contemporary philosophy, such as the
relation of the individual to community, the debate between anti-realism and realism, the
role of culture in philosophy, and the nature of truth. Even though several of the essays that
follow do not adopt an explicitly idealist perspective, all reveal an openness to idealist
arguments and to an idealist approach.
In Part 1, for example, the contributors focus on idealism—particularly that of F.H.
Bradley—and on some of the principal criticisms raised against it. Here, just as much of
Armour’s recent work has involved uncovering the context and culture that lies behind the
arguments of the canonical philosophers, so the contributors invite us to return to Bradley’s
texts. While Bradley has been accused of employing arguments that ended only in paradox
or scepticism, the force of this charge is diminished if (the authors in this part claim) we
understand his discussions in the context of the specific problems that he intended to
address, and in relation to his work as a whole. Bradley’s idealism is helpful, then, in a
number of respects. The idealists argued that a strict realist view, emphasizing the
separateness of nature from humanity, cannot explain the possibility of knowledge.
Moreover, at a time when atomism and extemalism have come to be challenged, idealism
provides a useful alternative—we see this especially in the discussion of ‘internal relations.5
And while contemporary moral philosophers wrangle over whether morality is ultimately
rooted in self-interest or altruism, the idealists offer a more holistic and comprehensive
alternative—one that has become more popular under the name of ‘perfectionism.’ Far
from leading to a tired conventionalism, an idealist ethic requires effort, the development
of personal character, and self-sacrifice. At their most benign, idealism’s critics are really
doing nothing more than insisting that idealism meet the standards of another approach to
philosophy—that of phenomenology or analytic philosophy. And many of these criticisms,
the authors in this part point out, simply arise out of a failure to read the idealist arguments
attentively, or by taking an argument or a passage out of the intellectual and philosophical
context in which it was made.
In Part 2, the contributors discuss metaphysical arguments, but also address (explicitly
or implicitly) the question of how one might construct a metaphysical argument or defend
a metaphysical position. Metaphysical arguments have been faulted or criticized because
they are allegedly unverifiable, or compatible with all possible empirical states of affairs,
or fly in the face of experience (though it is not clear that they could be accused of all three
at the same time). Yet it is far from clear that many contemporary philosophers have
adequately addressed debates about time and eternity, or about whether it makes sense to
talk of a principle of unity in the world—a causal (God) or a logical principle (the Absolute
or what Bosanquet called ‘the principle of value’), or have explored what relation there
might be between faith, love, and the passions, and reason. The contributors to this part
require us to reexamine some of the standard objections to familiar metaphysical
arguments, and to consider responses to them. The authors also present positions that
challenge commonly accepted views. Here, too, the history of philosophy, and the
importance of tiying to situate arguments in their historical and philosophical context, come
to the fore.
Discussions of community and culture have a central place in contemporary philosophy.
The essays in Part 3 focus on two particular concerns: on how context or culture influences
philosophy, and on how that context or culture is itself a product of, or can be affected by,
philosophy. Some of the contributors examine how religion, or ethnicity, or national origin,
play a role in building community; others focus on concerns that arise—or have arisen—in
the Canadian context. Philosophy’s role in building community can range from identifying
principles and structures on which the concept of community depends, to the articulation
and development of distinctive national philosophies, which both influence and are
influenced by national communities. A review of recent literature reveals that while some
of these issues have been raised by philosophers, these analyses and solutions fail to go
beyond the liberal individualist presuppositions with which the authors begin. In this third
part, the contributors show how philosophical idealism can provide some new options here,
including the basis for a genuine, international humanism.
All this is not to say that the solutions to the problems of metaphysics, values,
community, knowledge, and so on, are to be found only in an idealist theory. For many, the
idealist metaphysical and ethical views still seem to end in paradox or metaphysical
extravagance. (In fact, even canonical figures in idealism, such as Bosanquet, came to
eschew the term ‘idealist’ to describe his position.) Nevertheless, in the pages that follow,
the essays bring three important points to the attention of the reader.
First, we should remember that it was not all that long ago that many of the leading
philosophers turned to idealism to address questions of metaphysics and community—and
these earlier philosophers (e.g., Bradley, Green, McTaggart, and Bosanquet) were certainly
no less intelligent than we are. And so, as philosophers today grapple with problems that
have much in common with those of 100 years ago, one might ask whether the work of
those philosophers might contain usefiil insights or might suggest possible alternatives to
contemporary debates. Second, these essays indicate that idealism does address a number
of central philosophical problems, and therefore deserves at least a greater hearing than it
has had— if not some measure of rehabilitation in determining its place in the history of
twentieth centuiy philosophy. Finally, the authors invite us to reconsider the widely-shared
view that philosophy can be done in a piecemeal fashion. They insist instead that we pay
attention to the relations among the varied questions philosophers discuss, and that we note
the importance of ‘situating’ arguments in their contexts, and not uprooting them or
attempting to see if they can thrive in alien soil.
It is the great merit of scholars and philosophers like Leslie Armour that, by their
example and their work, they have given their colleagues, friends, and students good reason
to hold that philosophical enquiry on idealism, metaphysics, and the study of community
can flourish, and will flourish long into the twenty first centuiy. The essays in this volume
should be seen, then, as continuing the ideals and interests one finds in Armour’s work. It
is with this goal in mind, but principally to acknowledge and thank Armour for his personal
and professional contributions to the study of idealism, metaphysics and community, that
the authors have contributed these essays to this collection.
Notes
1. Among Bradley’s most influential works are Ethical Studies (London: Oxford University Press,
1876; second edition, with notes, 1927), The Principles of Logic (London: Oxford University
Press, 1883; second edition, revised, with commentary and terminal essays, 1922), Appearance
and Reality (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893; second edition, with an appendix, London:
Swan Sonnenschein, 1897; ninth impression, corrected, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930). For
further references, see the essays in Part 1 of this volume.
2. Bosanquet (1848-1923) was one of the central figures, with Bradley, of British Idealism. His
major works include Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888;
2nd ed., 1911), A History of Aesthetic (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1892; 2d ed., 1904), The
Philosophical Theory of the State (London: Macmillan, 1899; 4th ed., 1923), The Principle of
Individuality and Value. The Gifford Lectures for 1911 delivered in Edinburgh University
(London: Macmillan, 1912), The Value and Destiny of the Individual. The Gifford Lectures for
1912 delivered in Edinburgh University (London: Macmillan, 1913), Science and Philosophy
and Other Essays by the Late Bernard Bosanquet, ed. J. H. Muirhead and R. C. Bosanquet
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1927). See also William Sweet, Idealism and Rights (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1997).
Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the 2&h Century 13
3. Among Watson’s (1847-1939) major works are Christianity and Idealism : the Christian ideal
of life in its relations to the Greek and Jewish ideals and to modem philosophy (London: The
Macmillan Co., 1897), Comte, Mill, and Spencer: an outline o f philosophy (Glasgow: J.
Maclehose, 1895), The Interpretation of Religious Experience, The Gifford lectures delivered
in the University of Glasgow in the years 1910-12.2 vols. (Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1912), Kant
and his English Critics: a comparison of critical and empirical philosophy (Glasgow: J.
Maclehose, 1881), The Philosophical Basis of Religion (Glasgow: J. Maclehose and Sons,
1907), and The State in Peace and War (Glasgow: J. Maclehose and Sons, 1919). For more
information on Watson and the history of Canadian philosophy, see the essays by Trott, Mathews,
and Munro, below.
4. Rupert Clendon Lodge (1886-1961). Among Lodge’s works are The Questioning Mind; a
survey o f philosophical tendencies (New York: Dutton, 1937), An Introduction to Modem
Logic (Minneapolis: The Perine Book Company, 1920), Philosophy o f Business (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1945), Philosophy of Education (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1937), The Philosophy o f Plato (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), and Plato 's Theory
o f Art (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953).
5. Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950) is best known for his military and political service in South
Africa, but he was also the author of the influential Holism and Evolution (London: The
Macmillan Company, 1926; 3rd ed., 1936).
6. R. F. A. [Reinhold Friedrich Alfred] Hoemlé (1880-1943) was Professor of Philosophy at the
University of the Witwatersrand and an active liberal in South African politics. He was author of
several books, including Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Howe, 1920), Idealism as a Philosophy (New York: George H. Doran, 1927), South African
Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit (Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1939), and
(posthumously) Race and Reason (ed. I. D. MacCrone [Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University
Press, 1945]) and Studies in Philosophy (ed. Daniel S. Robinson [London: G. Allen & Unwin,
1952]).
7. A. G. (Alfred George) Hogg (1875-1954) was, for many years, Professor of Philosophy at Madras
Christian College (India). His work includes Karma and Redemption: an essay toward the
interpretation of Hinduism and the re-statement of Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: Christian
Literature Society for India, 1910) and he was active in the early Hindu-Christian dialogue. Hogg
taught Radhakrishnan in Madras (1905-1909).
8. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) taught in India and England, and was, later in life, Vice-
President (1952-1962) and President (1962-1967) of India. Among his important philosophical
works are his Hibbert lectures for 1929, published as An Idealist View o f Life (London:
Macmillan, 1932). For more on Radhakrishnan, see the essay by Sullivan, below.
9. Author of The Place of Minds in the World (Gifford lectures at the University of Aberdeen,
1924-1926 [London: Macmillan and Co., 1933]), The Quality o f Life (British Academy. Annual
philosophical lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust, 1934 [London: H. Milford, 1935]), Structure and
Growth o f the Mind (New York: Macmillan, 1907), and Nature and Feeling (Adelaide: The
Hassell Press, 1929), Sir William Mitchell (1861-1961) is perhaps best known in Australia for
his government service, particularly in the field of education.
10. The personal idealist W.R. [William Ralph] Boyce Gibson (1869-1935) was author of
Philosophical Introduction to Ethics; an advocacy o f the spiritual principle in ethics, from the
point of view of personal idealism (1904). He had studied at Oxford, but also at Jena, and there
been much influenced by the ideas of Rudolf Eucken [see Boyce Gibson’s Rudolf Eucken s
philosophy o f life (1906)]. Bernard Bosanquet was one of those who wrote a testimonial (in
1911) for Boyce Gibson’s successful application for the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy
at the University of Melbourne.
11. Josiah Royce (1855-1916) is, perhaps, the best known American idealist, and author of a number
influential works including The Conception of Immortality (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.,
1900), The World and the Individual (The Gifford lectures delivered before the University of
Aberdeen, 2 vols. [New York : Macmillan, 1901]), The Hope o f the Great Community (New
York: Macmillan, 1916), and The Philosophy of Loyalty (New York : Macmillan, 1908).
12. George Holmes Howison’s (1834-1917) principal work was The Limits of Evolution: and other
essays illustrating the metaphysical theory of personal idealism (London: Macmillan, 1901 ; 2d
ed. rev. and enl., 1905). For general information on Howison, see John Wright Buckham and
George Malcolm Stratton, George Holmes Howison: philosopher and teacher; a selection from
his writings, with a biographical sketch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934).
13. Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910) was the author of Metaphysics: a study infirst principles
(New York, Harper & Brothers, 1882; rev. ed. 1898), Personalism (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin,
1908), Philosophy of Theism (New York: Harper, 1887), and The Principles of Ethics (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1892).
14. 2 vols. (London, G. Routledge & Sons, 1945). Vol. I is subtitled “The Spell of Plato”; Vol. II is
subtitled “The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the aftermath.”
15. Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: V. Gollancz, 1936).
16. Robert M Maclver (1882-1970), Community, a sociological study; being an attempt to set out
the nature andfundamental laws of social life (London: Macmillan, 1917).
17. See Peter Laslett, “Introduction,”Philosophy, Politics and Society: a collection, ed. Peter Laslett
(New York: Macmillan, 1956), vii.
18. G. R. G. Mure (1893-1979), Idealist Epilogue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), The Philosophy
of Hegel (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), A Study ofHegel’s Logic (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1950), An Introduction to Hegel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).
19. A. C. Ewing (1899-1973) was the author of The Individual, the State and World Government
(New York: Macmillan, 1947) and Idealism: a critical survey (London: Methuen, 1961).
20. Brand Blanshard (1892-1987), The Nature of Judgment (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University,
1921), The Nature of Thought (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1939), Reason and Analysis (La
Salle, IL: Open Court Pub. Co., 1962), Reason and Belief (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974),
Reason and Goodness (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1961) (based on the Gifford lectures at St.
Andrews and the Noble lectures at Harvard). A bibliography of Blanshard’s writings to 1980 may
be found in The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1980).
21. See Errol Harris, The Foundations ofMetaphysics in Science (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965),
Hypothesis and Perception: The Roots of Scientific Method (London: Allen & Unwin; 1970;
repr. Prometheus Books, 1996), Objectivity and Reason: inaugural lecture (Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press, 1955), The Survival of Political Man: a study in the principles
o f international order (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1950), Revelation
through Reason: religion in the light of science and philosophy, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1958).
22. SeeH.S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1960), HegeVs Development: toward the sunlight, 1770 - 1801 (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1972), HegeVs Development: night thoughts (Jena 1801-1806) (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1983), Hegel: Phenomenology and System (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1995),
HegeVs Ladder, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997).
23. Conceptual Idealism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
24. John Niemeyer Findlay (1903-1987), was author of The Orientation of Modem Philosophy:
inaugural address, June 17, 1946, Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg, 1946
(Pietermaritzburg : The Natal Witness, Ltd., 1946.), Hegel, a re-examination (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1958), Language, Mind, and Value: philosophical essays (New York: Humanities
Press, 1963), Ascent to the absolute: metaphysical papers and lectures (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1970), and of the Gifford lectures given at the University of St. Andrews, 1964-1965,
The Discipline of the Cave (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966).
25. See, for example, Mar* and Justice: the radical critique of liberalism (Totowa,NJ: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1982).
26. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: a defense ofpluralism and equality (New York: Basic
Books, 1983).
27. T. L. S. Sprigge, Vindication of Absolute Idealism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1983), James and Bradley: American truth and British reality (Chicago, IL: Open Court,
1993).
28. See, for example, the letters between Russell and Bradley found in Volumes 4 and 5 of The
Collected Works ofF.H. Bradley, ed. W.J. Mander and Carol A. Keene, 12 vols. (Bristol, UK:
Thoemmes Press, 1999). In his last letter to Bradley, dated 20 November 1922, Russell writes
“Your [Principles of] Logic was very nearly the first philosophical book that I read carefully,
nearly thirty years ago; & the admiration which I felt for it then has never diminished.” Vol. 5,
269.
29. Outside of philosophy—in political theory, for example—it was arguably the interest in T.H.
Green that kept idealism 'alive’ in the academy.
30. See, for example, studies by Andrew Vincent and Raymond Plant {Philosophy, Politics, and
Citizenship: the life and thought of the British idealists [Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1984]), Geoffrey
Thomas (The Moral Philosophy ofT. H. Green [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), Peter P.
Nicholson (The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: selected studies [Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1990]), Alan P. F. Sell (Philosophical Idealism and Christian
Belief [Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995]), Sandra M. den Otter (British Idealism and
Social Explanation: a study in late Victorian thought [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996]), William
Sweet (Idealism and Rights: the social ontology of human rights in the political thought of
Bernard Bosanquet [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997]), Phillip Ferreira
(Bradley and the Structure of Knowledge [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999]),
and collections of essays edited by James Bradley (Philosophy after F. H. Bradley [Bristol, UK:
Thoemmes Press, 1996]), Guy Stock (Appearance versus Reality: new essays on Bradley's
metaphysics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998]) and W.J. Mander (Anglo-American Idealism,
1865-1927 [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000]). Current Issues in Idealism, ed. Paul
Coates and Daniel D. Hutto (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1996) shows how philosophers like
Donald Davidson, Tom Sorrell, and Michele Marsonet have brought this idealism to bear on a
number of contemporary concerns.
31. See, for example, Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),
Paul Mattick, Jr., Social Knowledge: an essay on the nature and limits o f social science
(London: Hutchinson, 1986), H. E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and
Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), Hilary Putnam,
The Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), Harry Settanni, Holism—a
philosophyfor today : anticipating the twenty-first century (New York: P. Lang, 1990), and The
Communitarian Challenge to Liberalism, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey
Paul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
32. John Leslie McKenna Armour, A Survey of Some Problems in British Idealist Ontology: a
re-examination and attempted reconstruction, Ph.D. in Philosophy, Birkbeck College,
University of London, 1956. In his Abstract, Armour writes:
In this thesis, I examine certain arguments put forward by T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley,
Bernard Bosanquet and J. M. E. McTaggart, and make certain suggestions toward a
satisfactory idealist ontology. After a brief definition of idealist ontology and some
tentative suggestions towards a classification of idealist views I endeavour to demonstrate
that certain efforts to show either that ontological claims are incapable of justification or
that ontology is property regarded as a branch of science have not succeeded. I conclude
this part of the thesis by setting forth five types of argument capable of yielding valid
ontological conclusions. Examining arguments which purport to establish four variants
of idealist ontology, I conclude that a case could be developed for a type of subjective
pluralist idealism. I then embark on an attempt to outline a satisfactory idealist ontology.
I attempt to prove the existence of selves and than consider the status of other objects of
knowledge. Via an argument which seeks to elicit the ontological significance of the
seeming clash between our ordinary perceptual world and such systems as that, for
instance, presented by physical science; and via an examination of space, time, change
and causality, I conclude that all those objects of knowledge dealt with could be classified
as selves or the perceptions and introspections of selves. This conclusion is reinforced
with arguments based on logical considerations. An independent verification from an
argument from an ethical premise follows. Many of the arguments in this latter part of
the thesis—with the major exception of those used to demonstrate the existence of
selves—are original. They constitute what seems to me the main contribution of this
thesis. They establish, I believe, that there is a path along which further progress toward
a satisfactory idealist ontology can be made.
33. Ruth Lydia Saw is best known for her Leibniz (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1954) and The
Vindication ofMetaphysics: a study in the philosophy of Spinoza (London: Macmillan, 1951).
Another of her principal areas of study was aesthetics (see Aesthetics: an introduction [Garden
City, NY: Anchor Books, 1971 ]).
34. See “Logic as the Science of Knowledge” [originally published in Essays in Philosophical
Criticism, ed. A. Seth and R. B. Haldane (London: Longmans, 1883) 67-101], The Collected
Works of Bernard Bosanquet, ed. William Sweet, 20 vols. (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1999)
Vol. 1,297-332.
35. See T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A.C. Bradley, 5th. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1907)78.
36. See F. H. Bradley, Collected Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1935), 158.
37. The Civilization o f Christendom and Other Studies (Collected Works, Vol. 13; originally
published London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893). Some of Bosanquet’s views on ‘Comtian’
religion arc alluded to in The Story of Religious Controversy, by Joseph McCabe, ed. and intro.
E. Haldeman-Julius (Boston, MA: The Stratford Company, 1929), Ch. XXXI.
38. See “The Duty to Seek Agreement,” Journal of Philosophy, 56 (3 December 1959) 985-991.
39. John Watson, “Edward Caird as a Teacher and Thinker,” Queen’s Quarterly, 17 (1909)
309-310.
40. See Tully, Strange Multiplicity: constitutionalism in an age o f diversity (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
41. See, for example, Chartes Taylor,Multiculturalism and “The Politics o f Recognition”: an essay
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Reconciling the Solitudes: essays on
Canadian federalism and nationalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).
42. For example, the 20-22 April 1979 conference, organised by the Canadian Philosophical
Association, whose ‘proceedings’ were later published as Philosophers Look at Canadian
Confederation—La confédération canadienne: qu ’en pensent les philosophes?, ed. Stanley G.
French (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1979). For Armour’s contribution to this
conference, see “Confederation and the Idea of Sovereignty,” 225-232.
43. “Descartes and the Ethics of Generosity,” The Bases of Ethics, ed. William Sweet (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 2000) 79-102.
Taylor & Francis
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Part 1: Idealism
Taylor & Francis
Introduction
This first part focuses on ‘idealism’ and, in particular, on the work of the best known of the
British Idealists, F. H. Bradley.
Hugo Meynell begins by putting the discussion of idealism in context. He draws our
attention to a remark by David Stove—that, a century ago, the vast majority of English-
speaking philosophers had been idealists, but that nowadays the species is almost wholly
extinct, and yet it is not obvious that our contemporaries are any more intelligent or well-
informed than our predecessors.1 One might expect, from such a reminder, that Stove
would have it that contemporary opponents of idealism should be a little more humble.
Nevertheless, Stove is critical of idealism—and the contributors to this part spell out some
of the principal objections to it, particularly as they target Bradley.
As noted in the Introduction to this volume, idealists maintain that there is an insepara
bility of reality and mind and that there is a basic unity or coherence to reality. But this
gives rise to a number of questions. What exactly does idealism hold? Do the views of the
principal idealists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Green, Bradley,
Bosanquet, and McTaggart—come to much the same conclusions? And where does
idealism lead? Does it lead to a denial of orthodox religion, to metaphysical paradox and
to epistemological scepticism? Does its ethics result in a tired conventionalism, as one
simply waits for reason to realize itself, and all evil to disappear, in something called ‘the
Absolute’?
In the first essay of this Part, Meynell presents Stove’s claim that idealism was a ‘rest
stop’ for philosophers on the way from Christianity to a view of the world more in keeping
with science. Stove suggests that the idealists themselves likely did not believe much of
what they wrote on such topics as knowledge, metaphysics, and religion. For example,
though many argued that there was a place for religion in the modem world, their analysis
of religion, for example, eviscerated traditional theism; many denied even the possibility
of a personal God.2
But Meynell argues against Stove, noting (as the ‘objective idealists’ Bradley and
Bosanquet did, in their respective accounts of the relation of reality and consciousness) that
‘the universe’ cannot be indifferent to us, and in some way must be like us, in order for it
to be known. This connaturality of nature and mind, properly drawn out, Meynell adds, does
not result in science leading people away from religion but, rather, towards many rather
traditional religious views. If the contemporary sceptic and the objective idealist alike are
attentive to the idealist theory of knowledge, there may be a basis for natural theology and
apologetics after all.
Lee Werth recognizes that idealism—particularly Bradelian idealism—leads to a
number of paradoxes, and it is this, no doubt, that has led to the movement being ignored.
But even if idealist logic and metaphysics appear to undermine themselves, they are surely
no less paradoxical in their conclusions than today’s existentialists or Nietzscheans, and
they are serious attempts to address real philosophical problems. For Werth, Bradley’s
strength—and his weakness—is his rigor, for Bradley tries to provide a rational account of
that which goes beyond reason. Werth examines Bradley’s views on relations—particularly
the relation of ‘time’—showing that all relations dissolve in the ultimate ‘principle’, the
Absolute, but that Bradley still thinks of this Absolute as having a structure. Werth then
draws on the poetry of Bradley’s disciple, T. S. Eliot, to show that reason can take one only
so far, and that it is not Bradley’s idealism, but his rationalist tendencies, that are problem
atic.
W. J. Mander and James Bradley argue that F. H. Bradley actually does recognize the
limits of ‘reason’ (in a narrow sense), and that this can be seen in his emphasis on the place
of feeling in his metaphysics. Mander begins by discussing Bradley and his teacher and
most distinguished predecessor in the Idealist tradition, T. H. Green. Mander shows that
both Green and Bradley held that an analysis of relations led to a monistic and idealist
conclusion—the Absolute. For Green, relations are fundamentally real, but they are also
mind-dependent. To know something is to bring it into relation with mind. Reality, then,
was a single unalterable coherent system of relations. According to Mander, Bradley also
starts with an analysis of relations, arguing that they are ‘contradictory’ but that their
contradictory character can be reconciled by his ‘two level’ metaphysics of ‘appearance’
and ‘reality.’ Green and Bradley agree, then, that there is a basic unity; what differentiates
them is whether that unity—the Absolute—can be grasped in thought. Green argues that
it can, and that ‘reason’ and ‘feeling’ ultimately come together. Bradley, on the other hand,
holds that it is ‘feeling’ that is fundamental.
It is just this latter point that James Bradley explores in his essay. He acknowledges the
central place of the account of internal relations in Bradley’s thought, but notes that it is
often misunderstood because most critics either fail to see it in the context of the controver
sies F. H. was engaged in, or forget that it depends on the analysis of feeling in Chapter 3
ofAppearance and Reality. Leading us carefully through Chapter 3, James Bradley argues
that critics misread F. H. Bradley in several respects—F. H. does not deny relations, just
their intelligibility, and external relations are rejected, not because they are contradictory,
but because there is no direct knowledge of the atomic particulars relations are said to
relate. Relations, however, are not givens in Bradley’s metaphysics; non-relational
‘feelings’ is basic.
These first four essays consistently remind us that idealist arguments emphasize unity
and coherence. While some of their conclusions seem, at odds with ‘common sense,’ the
idealists would argue that, as Bernard Bosanquet writes, their approach “is the spirit of the
faith in real reality, and its way of escape from facts as they seem is to go deeper and deeper
into the heart of facts as they are.”3
On such a metaphysics, what becomes of evil? Some critics argue that idealism leads
to moral passivity—that we need simply wait for reason to realize itself, and all evil will
either be justified or disappear. Yet all the principal idealists— Green, Caird Bosanquet,
and Bradley—were interested in promoting moral and social action. Don MacNiven looks
at Bradley’s ethics and at Bradley’s account of the motives underlying moral activity.
Though close to egoism and while opposed to self-sacrifice as such, Bradley holds that
neither egoism nor altruism is satisfactory, and that love of self and love of others are
mutually dependent. Moreover, and despite Bradley’s hesitations about ‘practical’ ethics,
MacNiven holds that Bradley provides some resources for engaging in moral action after
all.
Part 1: Introduction 23
Notes
1. D. C. Stove, The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 ), 79. “/«
1887 almost every philosopher in the English-speaking countries was an idealist^ (Stove’s
italics).
2. See William Sweet, “Bernard Bosanquet and the Nature of Religious Belief,” Anglo-American
Idealism: 1865-1927, ed. W. J. Mander (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000) 123-139.
3. “Idealism in Social Work,” The Collected Works of Bernard Bosanquet, ed. William Sweet,
(Bristol, UK: Thoemmes, 1999) Vol. 14,149-160 at 151 (Originally published in The Charily
Organisation Review, n.s. 111(1898): 122-133.).
Taylor & Francis
1 Primus inter pares:
D.C. Stove among the Idealists
HUGO MEYNELL
Introduction
It is not the least of the many merits of Professor Leslie Armour, that he has bravely kept
the torch of philosophical idealism alight through times when, to say the least of it, it has
not been particularly fashionable. My colleague J. J. Macintosh once quoted to me a
remarie of the late Australian philosopher David Stove. A century ago, wrote Stove, the
vast majority of English-speaking philosophers had been idealists, though nowadays the
species was almost wholly extinct; and yet it was not obvious that our contemporaries
were any more intelligent or well-informed than their predecessors.11 have been haunted
by the remark ever since; having conceived a great respect for Stove as one who was
willing to speak his mind on behalf of unpopular causes which he considered had had
insufficient justice done to them.2
There is a potted history of human thought which goes something like this. In the old
days, human beings thought that they were at the centre of the universe, and of great
significance in the overall scheme of things. The sky was peopled with gods made in the
human image, who, while they might be exceedingly temperamental and capricious, at
least took some interest in the doings of humankind one way or the other. If you thought
of an earthquake in terms of the anger of Poseidon, you could reassure yourself with the
reflection that people aren’t angry for ever; and that they can be soothed or coaxed into
being less angry. The conquest of multitudinous gods and godlings by the one God did
not make any fundamental difference; the universe remained a relatively cosy place for
human beings to live in. However, the advance of science gives a very different picture.
With the revolution of Copernicus, human beings reacted with shock to find themselves
no longer at the centre of the universe; now, we know that even the sun at the centre of
our system of planets is just one among billions of others in a galaxy which is itself one
among billions. We are crawling on the surface of a tiny blue and green speck in an
unimaginably vast space; we evolved entirely by chance, through the operation of blind
and meaningless physical laws over thousands of millions of years. But human pride, fear
and self-esteem revolt against such a conception of our insignificance. Millions still cling
pathetically to the old religious beliefs, in accordance with what Freud called the
‘pleasure principle’ as opposed to the ‘reality principle.’ And many of those who saw
through the crude delusions of traditional religion have found comfort, at least
temporarily, in the more sophisticated delusions of the philosophers. In particular, the
idealist philosophy advanced in the ancient world by Plato and his followers, and revived
in modern times by Berkeley and the successors of Kant, has provided a half-way house
between the comfortable but plainly mistaken older views, and the austere and cheerless
modem one to which every honest and clear-sighted human being must nowadays be
ineluctably driven.
I do not think that this overall view of things is very rare among contemporary
intellectuals. But I am sure that few people have expounded it with more panache than
David Stove. Two chapters of The Plato Cult are devoted to an account of British
nineteenth-centuiy idealism, and its role in giving a temporary respite to those who could
no longer stomach traditional Christianity, but were not yet prepared for a thoroughly
secular outlook. I do not insist that such a view is totally mistaken; however, there are
other aspects of the matter to be taken into account, about which I would like to say
something in what follows. Briefly, I shall argue that the facts about human consciousness
and knowledge to which the idealists drew attention can only be reconciled with the
assumptions both of science and of common sense, if something close to certain
traditional religious views is true. Berkeley was certainly motivated by considerations of
religious apologetics, as Stove remarks (PC ix); but he laid his finger on some problems
which are intrinsic to human knowledge as such, without the emotional needs catered to
by religious (or irreligious) considerations being relevant one way or the other.
Stove, Idealism, and Religion
Why on earth, asks Stove with exasperation, are human beings religious? Nearly everyone
knows some human being who is more intelligent or powerful than herself. ‘But no one
knows of any such non-human being; or rather, everyone positively knows that there is
no such thing in his environment. ’ Yet almost everyone has believed just the opposite as
well—that is, that there are gods. Similarly, we all know very well that we must die; but
religious persons characteristically believe what is in flat contradiction to this—that
somehow we don’t die. If a dog’s human mistress or master is its god, as Charles Darwin
and others have suggested, then the dog’s belief in the existence of its god is a credit to
its intelligence, since there is a vast amount of evidence which confirms the fact. ‘But
where is the evidence for our belief that we are somebody’s cattle?’ While some claim
to base their adherence to such a position on science, Stove’s own realism, positivism,
materialism, or whatever one chooses to call it, is nothing very abstruse or technical; it
amounts in effect just to this. “[H]uman beings are a race of land-mammals, the most
intelligent things known to exist, but things which are bom, develop, and die like all other
mammals” (PC 83, 98).
W herever did the cleverest animal on earth pick up the idea that it was not the
cleverest? The main source of the illusion seems to be a kind of deprivation effect. It is
well known that human beings have a tendency to hallucinate when their sensory
receptors have too little stimulation. But what is systematically and permanently underfed
is our longing for care. “It is simply imposible [sic] for us ever to have enough interest
taken in us.” And the fact is that we live in an almost totally indifferent universe; like
Pascal, we shudder at the vast emptiness of space—for just so long as we let ourselves
think about it. Who really takes an interest in us? At best our family, a few friends, and
perhaps a dog or a cat; and the odd reader if one is an author. So it is that “[w]e populate
the world with superior non-humans who can take an interest in us, precisely because we
know there aren’t any, and wish there were.” It may be protested that the gods are
Stove among the Idealists 27
frequently cruel and capricious; how could they be other, given the unpleasant and often
dangerous aspects of our environment? Yet “[e]ven hostile attention is better, beyond all
comparison, than no attention at all” (PC 84-6).
As Stove sees it, the business of philosophical idealism is just the same at bottom as
that of religion, to make the world “reassuring or consoling, or at least kindred.” However
superior they may think themselves to the purveyors and consumers of crude beliefs about
divine births, wars, adulteries, and so forth, Plotinus, Berkeley, Kant, Bradley, McTaggart
and the rest are at one in this respect. And the fact is that philosophical idealism is even
more irrational than ordinary religious belief. The idealism of nineteenth-century Britain,
which reflected the influence of Kant and Hegel, was essentially part of the religious
reaction against the eighteenth-century enlightenment; for the philosophers concerned,
idealism was just what drugs are to millions of our contemporaries—an anodyne for the
‘misery of godlessness.’ One can only comment that, while nineteenth-century science
is a proper object of reverence, nineteenth-century philosophy in general ought rather to
be a source of shame. It is lamentable that some respected contemporary physicists have
actually claimed that something like Berkeleyan idealism follows from their theories; thus
one has even said that the moon is not there when nobody is looking at it (PC vii, 87, 99,
174).
Idealism “provided an important holding-station or decompression chamber, for that
century’s vast flood of intellectual refugees from Christianity.” The plight of these people
was pitiful indeed; they had exhausted all their mental powers, to no avail, in a futile
attempt to ward off the criticisms of the Book of Genesis which were coming out of
geology, biology, and sheer logic. The basic problem which faced them was, “how to part
with the absurdities of Christianity, while keeping cosmic consolation.” J. H. Newman
had the effrontery to maintain that certain Alexandrian bishops in the fourth century had
got the relations between the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity just right, and
that this removed all serious intellectual objections to Christianity. But his proposal was
generally and rightly regarded as both ludicrous and unfeeling. Various other ‘solutions’
were of course on offer—spiritualism, Auguste Comte’s ‘religion of humanity,’ ‘the
wisdom of the East,’ and so on. But the only one that met the needs of those who
combined strong religious feelings with some pretension to intellectual respectability was
idealism. “Let the refugees from Christianity be told, on the highest possible authority,
that Nature is Thought, that the Universe is Spirit [...], that the dualism of matter and
mind, like the related dualism of fact and value, is a superficial one, and ‘ultimately’ (as
the Hegelians loved to say) even a self-contradictory one. That should buck them up, as
nothing else could” (PC 87-9).
The formative years of T.H. Green were spent in an atmosphere of extreme
evangelical piety; as a result of which he confessed “parting with the Christian
mythology” to be “the rending3 asunder of bones and marrow.” However that might be,
Green felt himself entitled to take and retain Anglican orders, and to exert himself to keep
the young men of Balliol assiduous in the exercise of their religious duties. This pattern
was quite typical of British idealists. Thus the brothers Edward and John Caird were
eminent at once in the church and university life of Scotland, providing cosmic
consolation for ex-Presbyterians. F. H. Bradley may seem at first sight an exception to the
rule; in his work, there is little by way of concession to any specifically Christian
doctrines or ideas. But if you have demonstrated, as Bradley claimed to have done, that
“reality is experience,”4 then you have granted the essential religious premise that the
universe is kindred to us. Many people will not then object too much to a few harsh words
on the personality of God, or individual human immortality, or any other traditional
Christian extravagance (PC 89-91).
Still, while former Christians might have gained from such idealists their basic
requirement of a congenial universe, otherwise they got nothing at all, at least from any
prominent idealist later than Green. “A personal God, a unique historical revelation,
miracles, immortality, efficacy of prayer, a divinely inspired ethics [...] all these things
were blankly refused them, even rudely [...] by Bradley, and only more politely [...] by
Bosanquet.” Since things really seemed to have gone too far at this rate, a form of
idealism arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which was less
ineluctably monistic, and more compatible with traditional Christianity; among those who
followed this path were Andrew Seth and A. E. Taylor. These thinkers have not been
historically influential, largely of course because they were adopting again those very
intellectual embarrassments which had originally driven people away from Christianity.
“But they deserve some credit, both for the comparative sanity of their philosophy, and
for the comparative honesty of their religion” (PC 94-5).
It follows from what has already been said, that idealism could only flourish as long
as there was a popular religion which was in process of being given up by intelligent
persons. It had collapsed as a movement by about 1940, largely because “there were
simply not enough intelligent people, needing a substitute for Christianity, to keep the
business going” (PC 96).
What kind of arguments have idealists used to support their curious position? It is fair
to say that, since Kant, they have usually not deigned to argue for their position at all (PC
103-4). What arguments there are all seem to amount to some version of what Stove calls
“the Gem”—essentially that one cannot have something in mind—say, a tree—when it
is at the same time outside the mind. Yet so far from being impossible, this feat is
achieved by every bird that alights in a tree! (PC 139-40) The trouble with ‘the Gem,’
which appears in various forms and guises in the work of idealists, is that it depends on
a simple equivocation; it is true and indeed trivial when taken in one sense, but has
idealist implications only when understood in another. “[T]hat consciousness cannot get
outside of itself, can equally well be taken either to mean: ‘Consciousness can reach only
what it can reach,’ or to mean: ‘Consciousness can reach only itself.’”5 Kant is relying on
the same equivocation when, in the course of criticizing the notion that we can get to
know ‘things in themselves,’ he says that real things with their properties cannot
“migrate” into our representations of them.6 T.H. Green expresses the thought succinctly
in his often-repeated maxim that “outside itself, consciousness cannot get”; Bradley at
rather greater length in the following passage from his Ethical Studies:7 “If about any
matter we know nothing whatever, can we say anything about it? [...] And, if it is not
consciousness, how can we know it? [...] If the ultimate unity were not self or mind, we
could not know that it was not mind: that would mean going out of our minds.” You could
say that Bradley was trying to scare his readers into idealism here, rather as Malebranche
was trying to joke them into it when he suggested that non-idealists must believe that,
when one was doing astronomy, one’s soul went for a walk among the stars (PC 158-60).
As to the ‘objective idealists,’ “half of their object was to put guts back into the world
which Berkeley had eviscerated.” But they could only do so at the expense of making
their position effectively indistinguishable from materialism. Thus when Bosanquet says
that there is nothing but spirit, he does not seem to be implying what any materialist or
person of common sense would deny. He was clearly right, that “the extremes of idealism
and materialism meet”; it is impossible to say what the real difference is between
sandstone which consists of ‘thoughts’ of the Absolute or whatever, and common or
garden sandstone as it is encountered by the materialist and the person of common sense.
At that rate, all that distinguishes idealism is the pulpit tones in which it talks about a
world which is really just the same as everyone else’s (PC 117).
What is usually taken to be human thought in its highest reaches is thought gone
hopelessly wrong—as can be seen from the Trinitarian theology affected by Christians,
the work of idealists like Plotinus or Hegel, and such near-contemporary gurus as Michel
Foucault.8 We seem to be faced with a damning verdict on past human
thought—excepting only Greek mathematics in antiquity, and natural science since
Copernicus. “From an Enlightenment or Positivist point of view, which is Hume’s point
of view, and mine, there is simply no avoiding the conclusion that the human race is
mad.” Just what, then, is wrong with the vast majority of human thinking? What we need,
according to Stove, is a “nosology” of thought, a classification of the diseases to which
it is prone. Stove admits that he does not know what such a thing would be; but he does
think he knows various things that it would not be. It is connected in some ways with
abuse of language; but whatever some logical positivists may have implied, what is wrong
with ‘The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone’ has little or nothing in common
with what is wrong with ‘Lenin or coffee how.’ It is not ordinary falsity, the
misrepresentation of empirical truths; and it is hardly ever logical falsity, at least if this
is understood in its usual sense. Defects in character seem to have something to do with
it. Thus Epicurus said one should live retired, and avoid public notice; as Plutarch
remarked, however, “the author of this injunction hoped to be, and was, famous for it.”
If there were only twenty contributions like Plutarch’s to the nosology of thought, we
would be much more advanced on the subject than we are now (PC 179,183-4, 187-90).
Philosophy, Idealism and Religion
My own view of these matters is more or less the polar opposite of Stove’s. It may be
summarized as follows. The questions very properly raised by the idealists, about the
relation of the human mind to extra-mental reality, and related questions like the bearing
of facts upon values, do indeed lead to a view of things which is repugnant to unreflective
common-sense. But when the questions are consistently carried through, the
contradictions to common-sense disappear; but only at the cost of a world-view which is
at least very suggestive of traditional theistic religion. For Stove, the advance of
intellectual enlightenment destroys first religion, and then the idealistic philosophies
which are in effect a substitute for it. For me, the advance of intellectual enlightenment
may at first seem to destroy religion and all philosophy which seems to do any of the work
of religion; but when applied rigorously leads to a philosophy which is surprisingly
harmonious with much traditional religion—indeed, more so than are most forms of
idealism.
According to Stove, the idealists said things which were absurd, which they really
knew were absurd, and which their whole behaviour implied they knew were absurd. In
my view, the absurdities are only at first sight implied by the important things that the
idealists had to say; and when the implications of what they were getting at are fully
worked out, the absurdities disappear. It must be admitted, however, that we will never
see the world in quite the same way again as a result of attending to what they said. We
will have moved from the naive realism which merely brushes the considerations that
motivated the idealists aside, to a critical realism that takes them fully into account.
Stove writes with a great deal of scorn about the underlying motive which he believes
to pervade all idealist philosophy, even that which, like F. H. Bradley’s, is at first sight
quite inimical to traditional religion; that the world is, after all, ‘kindred’ to us, rather than
being, as he thinks is clearly the case in the light of science, wholly indifferent to our
purposes, needs and values. Stove is a great champion of modem science, and very rightly
so. But what he consistently fails to take into account, though all idealists have done so
in their way, is that the world must be in some way kindred to us and our thought-
processes for science itself to be possible. For all the disputes which plague or enliven
contemporary philosophy of science, I believe that hardly anyone would deny that science
is a matter of (1) attending to experience, (2) propounding hypotheses which may account
forthat experience, (3) accepting as likely to be the case in each instance the hypothesis
which is best corroborated by the experience. For science to be possible, reality must be
sufficiently ‘kindred’ to us to be knowable in this way.
Stove complains that idealists after Kant hardly ever bothered to argue for their basic
position. But Kant’s own main argument for his position, which he got by reflecting on
Hume, and which his idealist successors largely took for granted, is surely a serious one.
How do we know that ‘every event has a cause,’ when we have not observed every event?
To put it in a way that I would prefer, what is the justification for our conviction that the
phenomena of the world are subject to explanation? Surely there is nothing incoherent
from the point of view of strict logic—as Hume notoriously shows at great length9—in
the notion, for example, that the building in which I am working now might suddenly
collapse in ten seconds, or that any one of us might instantly drop dead, for no reason that
was ever found or could be found.10
Knowledge, and so the world which is to be known, seem very different after one has
attended carefully to the nature of knowledge, from the way they seem when one has not
done so. Stove, who is nothing if not a very entertaining writer, asks rhetorically what
difference there could be between sandstone which consists of ‘thoughts’ in the manner
supposed by idealists, and ordinary sandstone as conceived by materialists and persons
of common sense (PC 117-8). But however rhetorical the question, there is a perfectly
good answer—which is, that sandstone will appear to you one sort of thing before you
have reflected on your knowledge of it, but a somewhat different sort of thing after you
have done so. It is something anyone can see, touch, kick or lean against. But it is also
something which, as a result of repeated questions put by the scientific community about
sandstone as observed in the field or subject to experiment in laboratories, can be known
in terms of the theories of physics and chemistry. It is now notorious that the technical
terms of these sciences do not always correspond directly to experience; but are apt to
denote entities which are theoretically intelligible and ultimately explanatory of
experience. You cannot see electrons; but there are many things you would not be able
to see unless there were electrons. It may be ridiculous at first sight to say that sandstone
consists of ‘thoughts,’ and it is certainly an odd way of speaking to anyone who is not an
idealist; but the fact remains that it does, if one is to take science seriously, consist of
intelligibles which are to be conceived by thought, and verified by thought as explaining
the relevant data better than other intelligibles which might be postulated.
Stove mentions others who have become materialists due to scientific considerations,
but says that they were irrelevant in his own case. And he writes of a physicist—evidently
not the only one—who has drawn subjective idealist conclusions from his specialty. One
would have thought that this might have shaken Stove’s confidence that materialism or
positivism was really the metaphysics which consorted best with science. In my view, it
follows from the epistemological considerations that I have sketched, that materialism,
so far from being implied by natural science, is not even compatible with it. The existence
of science depends on autonomous mental acts, of questioning, hypothesizing, marshaling
evidence, and judging, which are neither logically reducible to, nor mere ‘epiphenomena’
of, entirely physical processes.
The person of common sense has no doubt that the real world is, and is largely as it
is, prior to and independently of our thoughts about it. Idealists seem to claim, to the
contrary, that the whole of reality is somehow dependent on thought. As Flew’s
Dictionary tells us, idealism is “[a] name given to a group of philosophical theories, that
have in common the view that what would normally be called ‘the external world’ is
somehow created by the mind.”11 Now I agree with Stove that the notion that reality is
dependent on your thought or on mine, or even on that of the whole human race, is
absurd. No less absurd is the view that each of us has our own ‘reality’ (unless this is just
a misleading way of saying that we all have slightly differing beliefs about what is real);
or the notion attributable to the sociologist Emile Durkheim, that ‘society’ determines
what reality is, or that each society makes up its own reality. What every human
individual thinks or feels, and even what the most prestigious members of our own or
other societies agree on thinking or feeling, is at best a tiny and very insignificant part of
reality or the universe as a whole. And yet reality is nothing other than what is to be
known by human individuals and communities, so far as they attend to experience,
hypothesize, and judge in the manner that I have sketched.
So I heartily agree with Stove that reality is by no means dependent on human
thought. But might one not suppose that a reality which is open to and for thought in the
way I have sketched, is best explained as being ultimately dependent on some kind of
non-human thought—say, that of many angels or godlings, or of one God? (J. M. E.
McTaggart thought ‘the Absolute’ was to be compared to a college of many conscious
subjects—for which view he is ridiculed by Stove as a “poor demented man” [PC 96].)
One might say that the overall consistency of the universe suggests that it is ultimately
attributable to a single intelligent will, that is, to what everyone calls God. Such an
explanation might well seem an improvement on (other forms of) idealism, in that these
tend to have difficulty in accounting for the element of contingency in the world.12 The
divine intellect accounts for the world’s intelligibility, the fact that it is open to our
intellectual probing at all; the divine will for the actual intelligibility that it is
progressively found to have—in terms of ninety-four elements rather than four, of
evolution rather than special creation, and so on.
Given such a traditional view of God, the notions of special revelation, miracles, and
the rest—which are repugnant both to positivists and to many idealists—may not be so
contrary to reason after all. Might it not be reasonable to anticipate that God as so
conceived would provide a special revelation of the divine nature and purposes for
humankind; and that a particular section of history, set of writings, community (or
whatever) would commend itself as the locus of such special revelation to the most
objective and rigorous possible inquiry? And if the section of history concerned appeared
to be marked by acts which were at once out of the ordinary, and plausibly taken to be
significant of the divine nature and purposes, could not David Hume, many idealists, and
all positivists be just wrong in maintaining that miracles can never occur or have
occurred?13
Stove treats with surprising, and to me rather commendable, respect, those late
idealist philosophers like Andrew Seth and A.E. Taylor, who moved on from idealism to
something more like traditional religion; though he says that they did so at the cost of
resurrecting all the old embarrassments (PC 95). But if what I have been suggesting in
this paragraph is at all on the right lines, the obstacles in the way of such an undertaking
are perhaps not insurmountable.14 Stove correctly points out that those idealists who
returned to a more literally theistic and Christian position have not proved historically
influential (PC 95). In my view, their time may yet come; it may well be that the
fascinating but ultimately irrelevant distractions of logical positivism and linguistic
philosophy have prevented them from having their due. Logical positivism has after all
now been demonstrated to be mistaken (due to the notorious self-destructiveness of its
‘verification principle’), far more convincingly than idealism ever was; and the fashion
for a narrowly linguistic philosophy seems to be nearing its end, if not already past it.15
Stove complains that when idealists actually purport to argue for their
position—which too frequently they do not deign to do—they come up with some version
of the argument which he calls ‘the Gem.’ This is to the effect that one cannot have
anything in mind—like oxygen or the Bank of Nova Scotia—which is at the same time
outside the mind. He answers contemptuously that of course we can; since a bird
performs the feat whenever it succeeds in alighting in that tree. But I wonder whether it
is proper to say that a bird has the tree in mind, in quite the same sense as Max Planck
might have had the same tree or the Quantum Theory in mind. The bird’s ‘knowledge’
of the tree is presumably a matter of sense-impressions coming from the tree, and an
ability to react to the tree in such a way as to be able to alight in it. The knowledge that
Planck might have of the tree has a number of other features as well—he could have
information about its biological classification, or whether it was good for burning or for
building sheds. To stick to human examples, it appears that anything whatever can in
some sense be ‘in mind’ or ‘in the mind’; physical objects, events, worries, theories,
sensations, judgements and so on; but different things are ‘in the mind’ in different ways.
Our sensory experiences are ‘in our mind,’ and nowhere else, in the sense that other
people cannot perceive them as such, however much they scrutinize the parts of the body
which are characteristically affected when we have them, or the part of the brain which
is stimulated by the appropriate nerves. Our questioning, feeling of perplexity, coming
to understand, marshaling of evidence, judgement, deliberation, and decision are ‘in our
mind’ in a slightly different sense still; as it seems odd to say that the sudden feeling that
we have forgotten something is in our brain in just the same sense as an itch might be in
our left foot. Real shoes, ships, insects and planets, though they can in a sense be ‘in
mind,’ are also, at least according to the vast majority of people (including most idealists),
external to our minds in the sense that they are in no way dependent on them for their
existence. Whatever Stove’s opinion may have been, it does not seem to me an obviously
foolish question to ask, how we proceed from apprehension of things which are ‘in our
mind’ without being in the public world—like sensation, inquiring, deliberating, judging
and the rest of it—to gain knowledge of things which, though they may in another sense
be ‘in the mind,’ are also in a plain sense outside the mind, in that they would exist, at
least according to the vast majority of people, if human minds had never evolved to think
about them. How do we get from experience and thought to knowledge of a real world
which exists prior to and independently of our experience and thought? This is the
question that Kant is addressing in the passage abusively cited by Stove; and whatever
one thinks of Kant’s answer to it, the question does seem to be a real and a serious one.16
That Stove, as he himself admits, is in a position to contribute virtually nothing to a
‘nosology’ of thought is an immediate consequence of what he calls his ‘positivism. ’ One
would infer from a strict empiricism, that (apart from uttering tautologies) we cannot talk
intelligibly of what we cannot perceive; which of course would rule out statements about
the past, about other minds, and about the particles of nuclear physics. ‘But at least,’ it
may be protested, ‘such things are required if we are to have an adequate explanation of
what is perceived. ’ But this looks liable to let in a much more generous ontology than
could be acceptable to any positivist. Many sorts of theist, including myself, would say
that something like what everyone calls God is ultimately needed in order to account for
the existence and overall nature and structure of the world of our experience. And a fair
number of theists think they have reason to believe that God is revealed in a special way
through the writings of the New Testament, where we appear to be informed of three
divine beings in some way distinct from one another, without monotheism being thereby
impugned. Talk of procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, as opposed to
from the Father and the Son, concerns the relations between these beings; it is certainly
pointless unless there is a God, and unless the New Testament is some sort of special
revelation of God; but given these things, its pointlessness is not obvious. And as I
mentioned before, if one attends carefully to the nature of knowledge, and then to that of
the world to be known—instead of brushing such considerations aside in the manner of
positivism—one finds that we inhabit a universe consisting of intelligibles to be known
by inquiry into experience; it is to make sense of such a world and of our relations with
it that the mystical idealism of Plotinus, and the ‘objective idealism’ of Hegel, were
developed. Unless one has some inkling of the point of the questions to which they
attended, the basis of which I have just sketched, one cannot expect to make any sense of
what they wrote. Foucault has done some remarkable work on the means by which
knowledge-claims have tended to be devices through which some people—for example,
doctors or psychiatrists—may gain power over others; though admittedly he applies his
principles in a manner so extreme as at least to verge on the self-destructive (are
Foucault’s own knowledge-claims to be interpreted merely as bids for power?). But
without some worked-out conception of the nature of knowledge and the means by which
it may be acquired, and so of the world to be known in its overall nature and structure,
one is in no position to assess either what may be Foucault’s merits or his possible
defects.
As to the ‘nosology’ of philosophy and of human thought in general, if the truth about
things is to be attained by attending to experience, by envisaging possibilities, and by
judging to be correct in each case the possibility best supported by the relevant
experience, then the defects of thought, at least as a means by which the truth about things
is to be reached, are to be classified in accordance with which of these primary elements
of the acquisition of knowledge is lacking, and how much it is lacking. One may thus err
by lack of attention to evidence; by failure to envisage possibilities; or by inability or
refusal to judge strictly in accordance with the evidence. Stove is quite right to note that
a significant motive for failing in one or more of these directions is the desire to gain
notoriety; and also that abuse of language, or lack of logical consistency, are even together
only a small part of the story. He also seems justified in his suggestion that what is apt to
go wrong has something to do with badness of human character. Certainly, in matters
where one stands to lose by knowing and acknowledging the truth, it is the mark of the
virtuous person to attend to the evidence, and to envisage the possibilities, which may
lead to the judgement that she or he has made a mistake, or owes someone an apology,
or ought to do something about her or his own inconsiderateness or bad temper. Where
truth is not directly at issue, the difference between the good and bad use of language and
other forms of self-expression is largely a matter of how far they promote, or how far they
counteract, the capacity unrestrictedly to attend to evidence and to envisage possibilities.
As to philosophical idealism, it has the merit of adverting to the creative role of
intelligence, in the sense of envisaging possibilities, which is an essential aspect of our
coming to know the truth about things.17But it is apt to underestimate the role of reason,
in the sense of the disposition to judge appropriately which of the possibilities envisaged
is likely to be true of the world. Idealism is thus an important antidote to naive realism,
empiricism, and positivism; but may too easily respond to their crude travesties of
objectivity by apparently destroying all basis for objectivity whatever.
Friedrich Schiller said that philosophical reflection at first appears to subvert common
sense, but finally returns to and supports it. As Stove incessantly complains, idealism
seems to destroy the external world, in a manner which is obviously outrageous to
common sense. According to a fully critical philosophy which takes into account the
epistemological problems raised by idealism, the world is indeed ‘external’ to us in a way
somewhat different from what might be supposed on the basis of naive reflection. Reality
that is external to or other than oneself is that which is to be judged to be such on the
basis of certain possibilities envisaged to explain the relevant experience. Such
judgement tends to converge on the proposition that I am distinct from the present
Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and from anyone who was ever Prime Minister
of Great Britain; but that I am one and the same person as a baby who was bom in
England in 1936, and was interested as an adolescent in wild birds and classical music.
Idealism was vigorously and sarcastically repudiated by Kierkegaard in the name of
the human individual, by Marx in view of the independent reality of the material world,
by Moore on behalf of common sense. But did these thinkers quite take its measure? By
now we may have some reason for believing that they did not. It is sometimes said that
the most important single development in twentieth-centuiy philosophy has been what is
called ‘the linguistic turn.’ But it is curious how many of the problems which preoccupied
idealists about the relation of mind to the world, have turned up again in terms of the
relation of language to the world. Does the recasting of these problems in linguistic terms
really constitute a philosophical advance? Though I seldom agree with Richard Rorty, I
think he is perfectly right in maintaining that it does not.18 It may look better to some
people to have two sets of objects to relate (language and that to which language may
refer) which are both in the public world; thoughts are proverbially nebulous, whereas
spoken language can be heard, and written language seen. But one may envisage language
in the following two ways; either as successions of sounds or patterns of marks on paper,
or as expressive of thoughts, beliefs, desires and so on. In the former case, the relation
between language and what is other than language is clear but unhelpful for the problem
at issue; noises and inscriptions are characteristically different from other phenomena
which may be heard and seen, and usually easy to recognize with a little practice. But how
they refer to what is other than themselves remains totally obscure. In the latter case,
language is able to refer to what is other than itself because it is expressive of thought.
But in that case, the problem remains exactly where it was before, and the supposed
advantage of considering the nature of reference in terms of language rather than thought
turns out to be completely illusory.
People sometimes try to escape this difficulty by appealing to maps or computers.
Evidently a map can refer to the United States, and a computer to the fact that my bank
account is overdrawn. But maps and computers refer only by virtue of the fact that they
have been deliberately designed by persons to do so. Suppose, if I may use an analogy I
have used before in this connection, that someone in a frenzy hurls a lump of mud at a
sheet of paper, and, by a strange coincidence, it is found possible to use the result as a
map of Hussar, Alberta. In what sense, and in what circumstances, would it be such a
map? Only, it seems to me, after someone had hit on the idea of using it for this purpose.
And the figure ‘-130’ outside my bank, when I push the appropriate buttons, can mean
that my account is $130 overdrawn because the computer with which I have been
interacting has been designed by someone for that purpose. Appeals to such models to
solve the problem of reference turn out to be mere evasions; they presuppose the very
thing they were supposed to explain—the capacity of conscious subjects, through their
words, writings or artifacts, to refer to things and events in the world. To sum up the issue
of argument of the last few paragraphs, it is an illusion to suppose that one advances
much towards solving the basic problems of philosophy when one comes to conceive
them in terms of the relation of language rather than of mind to the external world.
I conclude that, in spite of Stove, the world must be in some ways connatural to our
minds for knowledge to be possible, just as idealists and religious persons have supposed.
Idealism has in general been contemptuously brushed aside by analytical philosophers for
the last sixty years or so; but the basic philosophical problems which concerned the
idealists, about the relation of mind to the reality which is in some sense external to it,
remain as intractable as ever.
Notes
1. D. C. Stove, The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies [PC] (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 )
79. “In 1887 almost every philosopher in the English-speaking countries was an idealist
(Stove’s italics).
2. Cf. Stove, “The Scientific Mafia,” in Velikovsky Reconsidered, ed. the editors of Pensée,
(London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1976).
3. Stove’s text has “rendering”; but presumably this is a misprint.
4. Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed., 9th impression corrected (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930)
129.
5. I have repunctuated this passage in accordance with my own taste.
6. Prolegomenon to Any Future Metaphysics, tr. P. G. Lucas (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1953)38. Stove, PC 160.
7. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1876,323-324n. Stove, PC 158-159.
8. Stove quotes four passages showing what he means. PC 183-4.
9. A Treatise of Human Nature, I, ID, xiv; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, vii.
10. For Kant’s discussion of Hume on causality, see N. Kemp Smith (tr.), Immanuel Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1978) 44,55,606-607; of Hume’s denial of
a priori knowledge, 127,606ff.
11. Anthony Flew, ,4 Dictionary of Philosophy. Revised Second Edition (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1979) 160.
12. This complaint was made by the mature Schelling about Hegel’s philosophy.
13. On Hume’s arguments against miracles, see Ch. 4 of H. A. Meynell, God and the World
(London: SPCK, 1971).
14. This is argued with great force by Richard Swinburne in his series of books on the philosophy
of the Christian religion. Cf. also H. Meynell, God and the World, The Intelligible Universe
(London: Macmillan, 1982), and 7s Christianity True? (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 1994).
15. It was a fine remark of J. L. Austin’s, that analysis of language might not be the last word in
philosophy, but should be thefirst word. The eternal questions of metaphysics may not be, and
in my view certainly are not, dissolved by linguistic analysis, but they are better approached
after linguistic confusions have been cleared away.
16. There are no other things in themselves than what we may come to know in terms of
judgements based on understanding of experience. Hence they neither consist in experience,
as Bradley maintains, nor are unknowable, in accordance with Kant’s notorious doctrine.
17. It is instructive to see the way in which Stove deals with similar tendencies in contemporary
philosophy. He dismisses as nonsensical Nelson Goodman’s description of artists as “world
makers” (PC 96). I myself think that this way of looking at art can be illuminating, and
consequently view more sympathetically than does Stove, Goodman’s preoccupation with
modem art and artists. Artists can surely by their constructions shed light on the world, irradiate
the world, and even create possible worlds which may help us to get to know better the actual
world. Also, especially in the case of modem art, their work brings out the manner in which we
do in a sense ‘construct’ our world, just in the way to which idealists have drawn attention. (On
Goodman, see Stove, PC Ch. 2.)
18. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 8.
Taylor & Francis
2 F.H. Bradley’s Absolute, or
Rationality Transmuted
LEE F. WERTH
Introduction
When a philosopher declares time and space to be unreal, he or she risks being ignored;
and when, in addition, relations and qualities are rejected as irrational, the philosopher
secures oblivion, at least among those who appreciate logical thinking as a means for
achieving truth rather than relying upon intuition or revelation. It is, therefore, ironical
that F. H. Bradley, who devoted so much to the study of logic, should be a philosopher
who has derived such unhappy conclusions from his logical investigations. And it is
regrettable that his arguments have received relatively little attention among
contemporary thinkers.1
Perhaps if Bradley had been classified among the existentialists, his apparently absurd
conclusions might have been embraced, although Bradley’s analytical style of reasoning
dissociates him from the often polemical prose of existentialism. Passages from
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche illustrate themes that reveal a kinship with Bradley, even if
the respective contexts are not wholly identical.
[...] The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought
cannot think.
What then is the Unknown? It is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes [...]
Reason cannot even conceive an absolute unlikeness. The Reason cannot negate itself
absolutely, but uses itself for the purpose, and thus conceives only such an unlikeness
within itself as it can conceive by means of itself; it cannot absolutely transcend itself, and
hence conceives only such superiority over itself as it can conceive by means of itself.2
An existential system cannot be formulated. Does this mean that no such system exists? By
no means; nor is this implied in our assertion. Reality itself is a system-for God; but it
cannot be a system for any existing spirit [...] It may be seen, from a purely abstract view,
that system and existence arc incapable of being thought together, because in order to think
at all systematic thought must think it as abrogated, and hence as not existing.3
Bradley speaks of the Absolute and employs the metaphor of harmony, but Kierkegaard’s
conclusion, if not his terminology, is clearly in keeping with Bradley’s claims.
Nietzsche’s atheism is antithetical to Kierkegaard’s claim that reality is a system for
God, not us. Yet Nietzsche’s pragmatic account of the utility of reason displays insights
which are consonant with Bradley’s:
Intellect has produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful and
preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged battle for
himself and his offspring with better success. Those erroneous articles of faith (include) [...]
for example, the following: that there are enduring things, that there are equal things, that
there are things, substances, and bodies.4
However, it will be argued subsequently that Bradley’s view has far more in common
with themes from Asian philosophy than with existentialism or any form of objective
idealism of the continental sort of Bradley’s time. The contradictions of a Hegelian
dialectic, the moral order which is Fichte’s Absolute, Schopenhauer’s will as thing in
itself, are all rejected by Bradley whose Absolute is an ineffable harmony inclusive of
seemingly incompatible elements. Yet Bradley attempts to arrive at his conclusion
rationally, not by appeal to intuition, mystical enlightenment, or an act of will. His
methodology is one of logical analysis. How is it then that logic seems to undermine
itself? How does Bradley rationally reinstate into the harmony which is the Absolute, the
qualities and relations he rejects as mere appearances? Isn’t scepticism the conclusion
Bradley actually derives? In what sense is the metaphorical harmony intelligible? It will
be explicated how Bradley’s account can be understood as being both rational and viable.
The Nature of Questioning
Philosophers in their search for answers sometimes forget that much is to be revealed,
even answered, by an examination of the questions asked and the logical form imposed
upon alleged answers by those questions. Bradley’s investigation of the subject-predicate
form showed that a proposition involves asserting ‘what’ some ‘that’ is. Indeed our
colloquial, ‘What’s that?’ displays the mind-set underlying our interrogations. The
predicate logic of Russell ’s Principia Mathematica does nothing to alter Bradley’s point;
indeed, the use of quantifiers and predicate functions highlights the ultimately arbitrary
character of our parsing of reality, i.e., our cutting off and singling out some ‘that’ which
we predicate in terms of ‘what’ it is. Such parsing reflects our purposes and needs; the
objects we describe may have no more ontological autonomy nor separate existence than
a handful of water in a swimmer’s palm against which propulsion becomes possible.
Parsing reality, as the earlier quotation from Nietzsche reveals, is useful but, perhaps, no
more than that.
It would be beyond the scope of this paper to offer detailed criticisms of Bradley’s
analysis of relations and judgements. Yet the main ideas might be paraphrased as a
preface to an explication of Bradley’s rejection of the reality of time.
Any assertion or judgement divorces the ‘what’ from the ‘that,’ otherwise an assertion
is impossible. Yet the subject (‘that’) is richer than the word or term that symbolizes it.
The attenuation of the subject is inescapable both because language must make the same
words work for different instances and because the ‘that’ relates to reality in ways either
not relevant, not known, or not knowable. The predicate (‘what’), in being divorced from
the subject (‘that’), becomes ‘ideal’; it acts as an adjective or universal and lacks
ontological autonomy. But doesn’t judging attempt to join predicate to subject, not to
divorce them? Yes, but prior to the attempt at union and what Bradley speaks of as
“healing,” we must conceptually isolate the ‘that’ and ‘what’ before even imperfect union
Rationality Transmuted 41
can be achieved. And why must the union be imperfect? The demands of a judgement
require the rending of the ‘what* from the ‘that’ before we can determine whether the
predicate is correctly attributed to the subject, which, as already stated, must be artificially
attenuated or treated as a sort of variable. The divorce of the ‘what’ and ‘that’ requires
characteristics to be related to the subject. The word ‘is’ is a relational bond, or an
attempt to marry what is divorced. What does this ‘is’ achieve? Certainly, to be
informative, it is not the tautological ‘is’ of identity. But if, e.g., sugar is sweet, we have
a judgement which reflects our interests more than it describes reality. Sugar as a subject
is more than sweet. Sweetness as a predicate has no ontological autonomy as a universal.
The synthesis of ‘what’ and ‘that’ is serviceable for some purposes, but even the
relational bridge or ‘is’ cries out for clarification.5
Since the subject and predicate cannot exist independently (a ‘that’ must be a ‘what’
and conversely), and since the divorce is a conceptual byproduct not an ontological
reality, we may ask about the reality of the alleged relation which heals the gash between
subject and predicate (between ‘that’ and ‘what’). Yet the relation, if it is to unify the
respective terms, must bear some relation to each, i.e., a relation must be related to its
terms. This leads to an infinite regression, a regression which is more correctly
understood as a byproduct of our having torn the ‘what’ from the ‘that’ in the first
instance, and having arbitrarily tom off a ‘that’-’what’ as our conceptual focal point when
all of reality can lay equal claim to our attention.
Of course the above is an oversimplification of Bradley’s arguments. (Some might
consider it nonsense.) It is admittedly more phenomenological than logical, but it is hoped
that it is serviceable for present purposes. If the argument that a relation leads to an
infinite regression seems untenable, that is, if it is argued that relations do not need
relations in order to relate the terms, then this is tantamount to claiming that relations are
irreducible.6Even so, clearly what we choose from the many possible relations to which
we might attend illustrates the arbitrary manner of our reality parsing. Yet some relations
are essential, others not. A table, to be a table, need not be blue, but it must be
serviceable as a table. But here are we not speaking of characteristics, not relations?
However, Bradley has shown the mutual dependence of relations and qualities (AR 21 -
29). He calls our attention to a nominalistic predisposition to carve out objects, to
‘thingify’ a reality, which, according to Bradley, is not per se divided even if it admits of
distinctions.
Perhaps another way of indicating the significance of Bradley’s analysis, even if some
might reject his supporting arguments, is to specify other ways we might have parsed
reality, thereby illustrating the sense in which the ‘what’-‘that’ attribution is arbitrary.
Phenomenalists will have no difficulty understanding how the collections of sense data
which constitute an object might have been bound up differently. Rather than define an
orange in terms of its color, taste, texture, etc., we might have a rule prohibiting us from
making one ‘object’ from diverse senses. Rather, vision might give us visual objects,
touch the tangible, and no object could be both touched and seen.
For that matter, we might organize reality in terms of amplitude: the bright, loud,
sharp, hot ‘that’ would be our object rather than something edible, such as an orange. Of
course, our objects are those that aided our survival (Nietzsche’s point, i.e., conceptual
Darwinism). The orange is a more useful ‘that’-cwhat’ than the bright-loud-sharp ‘that.’
Nor need an object have a location and be movable, such as a cup. Why isn’t the cup
simply part of the table upon which it rests? Regarding the cup as simply a lump of the
table lacks utility. The cup is a separate object. It needn’t be. Nor need objects to have
a specific place and time. An object might be constituted from yesterday’s coffee and
tomorrow’s scrambled eggs, not by mixing coffee and eggs at some particular time, but
by defining the object as the ‘that’ which is yesterday’s coffee and tomorrow’s scrambled
eggs. And is there utility in doing this? —Only for purposes of explicating philosophical
ideas. However, we do, in fact, do this (although not with coffee and eggs). The objects
so constituted are called events! Indeed, any object said to endure can be thought of as an
event.
This brings us closer to an examination of temporality. In addition to asking, ‘What’s
that?,’ we ask, ‘What happened?’ or ‘What’s happening?’ The arbitrary parsing of reality
into events is more apparent than that of rendering objects. The termini of events are
‘soft’ in many cases, unlike the edges of physical objects. Moreover, the spatial edges of
physical objects appear coexistent (at least with objects that can be taken in at a glance),
whereas the termini of events are not seen as we see or touch the boundaries of a cup.
Perhaps a car accident might be a single speciously present experience; but normally,
events are understood in terms of their successive components and serially experienced.
A mountain, even if experienced serially as we circumambulate it, is understood as
composed of coexistent parts similar to Euclidean objects. The mountain is not an event,
at least not with respect to ordinary discourse. But why not? It seems not fleeting, and so
we make a thing of it. Our brains, as biologically-evolved computers, ‘thingify’ and
‘eventify’ in a manner which, in general, is most conducive to our survival. The biological
programme was written by necessity, pragmatic necessity, not by reality. Any science
fiction writer can create alternative mindscapes that dwarf the imaginations of most
philosophers mired in conventional space and time. Bradley was different. He saw the
possibilities and problems others overlooked. And what is possible must somehow be
accommodated by reality. Possibilities are real.
The following quotations from Bradley exemplify the foregoing remarks. It is not
simply the concepts of space, time, and causation which Bradley sees as problematic. Any
judgement presents epistemological difficulty.
But reality is not a connection of adjectives, nor can it so be represented. Its essence is to
be substantial and individual. But can we reach self-existence and individual character by
manipulating adjectives and putting universais together?7
But if judgment is the union of two ideas, we have not so escaped. And this is a point we
should clearly recognize. Ideas are universal, and, no matter what it is that we try to say and
dimly mean, what we really express, and succeed in asserting, is nothing individual. For
take the analyticjudgment of sense. The fact given us is singular, it is quite unique; but our
terms are all general, and state a truth which may apply as well to many other cases. In ‘I
have a toothache’ both the I and the toothache are mere generalities [...] It is in vain that
we add to the original assertion ‘this,’ ‘here,’ and ‘now,’ for they are all universais. They
are symbols whose meaning extends to and covers innumerable instances.
Thus the judgment will be true of any case whatsoever of a certain sort; but, if so, it can not
be true of the reality; for that is unique, and is a fact, not a sort. (PL 49)
We may take the familiar instance of a lump of sugar. This is a thing, and it has properties,
adjectives which qualify it. It is, for example, white, and hard, and sweet. The sugar we say,
is all that; but what the is can really mean seems doubtful [...] Sugar is obviously not mere
whiteness, mere hardness, and mere sweetness; for its reality lies somehow in its unity. But
if, on the other hand, we inquire what there can be in the thing beside its several qualities,
we are baffled once more. We can discover no real unity existing outside these qualities,
or, again, existing within them. (AR 16)
The immediate unity, in which facts come to us, has been broken up by experience, and
later by reflection. (AR 19-20)
Bradley addresses a likely suggestion, that is:
The distinctions taken in the thing are to be held only [...] as the ways in which we regard
it. The thing itself maintains its unity, and the aspects of adjective and substantive are only
our points of view. Hence they do no injury to the real. But this defence is futile, since the
question is how without error we may think of reality. (AR 20)
Underlying the difficulty concerning the unity of a fact and our attempt at judgement is
that:
The arrangement of given facts into relations and qualities may be necessary in practice,
but is theoretically unintelligible. The reality, so characterized, is not true reality, but is
appearance [...]
[...] Our conclusion briefly will be this. Relation presupposes quality, and quality relation.
Each can be something neither together with, nor apart from, the other, and the vicious
circle in which they turn is not the truth about reality. (AR 21)
The General Nature of Reality
Irrespective of whether one accepts the arguments Bradley offers in support of his claim
that all qualities and relations are unintelligible, the concept of time at least has
traditionally presented perplexities. There is the further question: If Bradley finds
relations and qualities to be unintelligible, isn’t he rather at a loss for words when
characterizing the nature of reality? What is there left to say? How can he speak of a
harmony even metaphorically? Is reality truly rational—perhaps non-rational? In fact,
Bradley argues that logic demands us to regard reality as rational. Inconsistency entails
that something belongs to appearance only and not reality. Reality must be consistent and
rational. But, of course, consistency or its lack is a kind of relationship. Can reality
correctly be characterized as consistent?
We must remember that Bradley, the logician, uses reason to reach his conclusions.
He is not one to fall into the trap of arguing that logic logically entails that logic is
illogical. And, yet, doesn’t he have the option of arguing that consistency or its lack
applies only to our descriptions and that reality is ultimately neither consistent nor
inconsistent, rational nor irrational? In a sense, he does seem to adopt this strategy, even
if not explicitly. Why else would he employ the metaphor of harmony (and write so
profoundly and poetically as to have sown the seeds of T.S. Eliot’s poetry)? Clearly,
Bradley realizes that his discourse on the general nature of reality must be taken as a less
than literal presentation, after having argued for the unintelligibility of qualities and
relations.
Subsequently, a model of sorts will be offered in terms of which Bradley’s harmony
is intelligible, and space, time, causation, and things will be seen as logically derivative
and not the fundamental features of reality. It is hoped that the model in capturing
Bradley’s central claims will have the effect of unpacking Bradley’s metaphor, so as to
reveal that the Absolute as he construes it is, indeed, rational even if ineffable per se.
Initially, however, quotations from Bradley concerning reality will be helpful. Then the
nature of time can be addressed properly.
[...] We may say that everything, which appears, is somehow real in such a way as to be
self-consistent. The character of the real is to possess everything phenomenal in a
harmonious form.
[...] Reality is one in this sense that it has a positive nature exclusive of discord, a nature
which must hold throughout everything that is to be real [...] the real is individual. It is one
in the sense that its positive character embraces all differences in an inclusive harmony.
(AR 123)
Our result so far is this. Everything phenomenal is somehow real; and the Absolute must
be at least as rich as the relative [...] Hence the Absolute is, so far, an individual and a
system [...]. (AR 127)
What we discover rather is a whole in which distinctions can be made, but in which
divisions do not exist. (AR 128)
We have already considered that manner in which judgements distort reality by tearing
from it a ‘that’ which is predicated as being a ‘what. ’ Error is inescapable.
[...] in qualifying this reality, thought consents to a partial abnegation. It has to recognize
the division of the ‘what’ from the ‘that’, and it cannot so join these aspects as to get rid
of mere ideas and arrive at actual reality. For it is in and by ideas only that thought moves
and has life. The content it applies to the reality has, as applied, no genuine existence. It is
an adjective divorced from its ‘that’, and never in judgement, even when judgement is
complete, restored to solid unity. Thus the truth belongs to existence, but it does not as such
exist. (AR 147)
If the Absolute seems rather formal and alien, an ineffable harmony beyond finite
comprehension, we should attend to Bradley’s answer to materialism, that is, to what
plays the role of matter in Bradley’s idealism:
When we ask as to the matter which fills up the empty outline, we can reply in one word,
that this matter is experience [...] Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not
this is not real [...] Feeling, thought, and volition [...] are all the material of existence, and
there is no other material, actual or even possible [...] I can myself conceive of nothing else
than the experienced. Anything, in no sense felt or perceived, becomes to me quite
unmeaning. (AR 127-128)
The argument is more subtle than it first appears. Bradley is saying that to think that
reality might be beyond thought or experience is to relate reality to thinking in order even
to make the assertion. Therefore, reality is based upon sentient experience, but we must
understand such experience to embrace more than thought as it is employed in judgement.
And, moreover, there is “no self-contradiction in its (thoughts) own judgement that it is
less than the universe” (AR 148).
The Absolute still seems somehow remote, even if “indissolubly one thing with
sentience” (AR 128). Bradley provides intimations of reality in passages which would
appear to have inspired the poet, T. S. Eliot:
And what I repudiate is the separation of feeling from the felt, or of the desired from the
desire, or of what is thought from thinking, or the division—I might add—of anything from
anything else [...] to be utterly indivisible from feeling or perception, to be an integral
element in a whole which is experienced, this surely is itself to be experience. Being and
reality are, in brief, one thing with sentience; they can neither be opposed to nor even in the
end distinguished from it [...]. (AR 129)
To be real “is to be something which comes as a feature and aspect within one whole of
feeling [...] an integral element of such sentience.”
It may be understood that if we are in touch with our feelings (to use a still current
expression), we know an element or aspect of reality; but we must not suppose that reality
itself is divided, and as soon as we interpret the ‘what’ and ‘that’ of our feelings, we
plunge into error, although with respect to ordinary activities, a useful sort of error. We
do not survive by abstaining from judgement.
Bradley argues on behalf of his account of the Absolute, yet the extrapolations from
ordinary feelings and thoughts to the unity of feeling which is the Absolute seem more a
product of speculation than argument. (Remember, qualities and relations were said to
be unreal. Hence, the relationships which constitute valid argument forms have also been
impugned.) With respect to ultimate reality, Bradley as poet provides more insight than
Bradley as philosopher and logician. His logical analysis would seem to lead to
scepticism once the relationships we understand as validity have been cast aside along
with all other relations. Even if reality is somehow self-consistent, its harmony and unity
can be only metaphorically expressed if Bradley is not to violate his own canons. Yet the
following passage is powerful, although it seems more a product of revelation than of
reason:
[...] both truth and fact are to be there [...] in the Absolute we must keep every item of our
experience. We cannot have less [...] we may have much more [...] in the whole they may
become transformed [...] And feeling and will must also be transmuted in this whole, into
which thought has entered. Such a whole state would possess in a superior form that
immediacy which we find (more or less) in feeling; and in this whole all divisions would
be healed up. It would be experience entire, containing all elements in harmony. Thought
would be present as a higher intuition; will would be there where the ideal had become
reality; and beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this total fulfillment. Every
flame of passion, chaste or sensual, would still bum in the Absolute unquenched and
unabridged, a note absorbed in the harmony of its higher bliss. We cannot imagine, I admit,
how in detail this can be. But if truth and fact are to be one, then in some such way thought
must reach its consummation. But in that consummation thought has certainly been so
transformed, that to go on calling it thought seems indefensible [...]. (AR 151-152)
And time would also be there in harmony, transmuted, of course.
Temporality ‘Transmuted’
Bradley revives some rather old arguments against the reality of time, while also adding
some novel insights concerning the ‘direction’ of time, and the possibility of separate
unrelated time series (parallel times, in the slang of science fiction).
Among the perplexities are questions concerning the parts of time and space,
respectively. Is a part of time divisible? If so the parts must coexist but hardly can coexist
simultaneously. But if the parts of a time (of a duration) are earlier or later than one
another, then each ‘part’ only occupies a durationless instant. How can duration be
constituted from even an infinity of durationless instants? Although the parts of space
might be said to coexist, unlike the parts of time, the problem remains: each point of
space is without extension. How then do we constitute a space? In practice, there is no
problem, e.g., we can navigate well enough. But success in practical matters hardly
entails that we understand reality.
Considering time: Augustine recognized the problem long before Bradley, who like
Augustine refused to ignore the difficulty by appeal to pragmatism. The future doesn’t yet
exist, the past no longer exists, and the present is a boundary without duration which
divides the no longer from the not yet. How can anything be in time?8 Yet our lives are
temporal; we are immersed in flux. If our present is somehow specious, then what is the
reality which allows for the appearance of the present as we experience it? For purposes
of science we need not speak of the present but of state descriptions at respectively
different serially-ordered times. However, to ‘detense’ the discourse about our lives as
lived, as opposed to our lives as chronicled, would be to arrest the passage of time’s
arrow. Novels bring to life a long lost ‘now’; art does not detense time as does a nautical
almanac.
Moreover, the metaphorical arrow of time not only passes, but as Bradley recognized,
it might fly in a multitude of other directions from the perspective of other sentient
creatures (AR 189-92). Bradley was too sober a thinker to allow himself the pleasures
associated with writing science (speculative) fiction, but the concepts upon which such
fiction is based were anticipated by Bradley prior to our century in which the concepts of
parallel universes and counterdirected times are the raw material of many a plot.
Bradley recognized that the timescape of a dream or fantasy is not to be integrated in

the time series of ordinary life as we would include the flowers blooming in our garden.
We can, of course, indicate how long we were dreaming, e.g., in terms of clock time it
was a five-minute dream. But the temporality of the dream might well have encompassed
several hours. Moreover, if T. S. Eliot is correct, we can sometimes be lost in a
distraction fit in which we might perhaps be said to have intimated the timelessness of
eternity (Bradley’s Absolute?).
The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint-
(T.S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” Lines 206-207)
For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
(Lines 210-212)
Does time pass? Does it take two hours for two hours to pass? Things come and go;
events ‘take’ time; time does not take time. Nor should we confuse those things we
employ to record time or to measure time, with time. The points in a coordinate system
may coexist. If we call one coordinate ‘time,’ we ought not confuse the coordinate with
the time it indicates or serializes. And, as Bradley understood, other coordinates now
called ‘spatial’ might, with justification, also be called ‘temporal.’ Why are we to believe
time is one dimensional, or that the series we experience as temporal is the only one to
be so experienced? Our spatial dimensions might constitute some other creature’s time.
As Bradley recognized, if indeed there are occult or paranormal phenomena, such
considerations might render them intelligible. With respect to mundane time, it might be
that precognition is simply having a different perspective than the ‘now’ in which one is
usually entrenched. We see what we do because of where we are, but also because of
when we are.
As to tim e’s passage in which we seem to be floating down the stream of time,
Bradley understood the defects of the metaphor and substituted his own version of the
stream of time:
Let us fancy ourselves in total darkness hung over a stream and looking down on it. The
stream has no banks, and its current is covered and filled continuously with floating things.
Right under our faces is a brilliant illuminated spot on the water, which ceaselessly widens
and narrows its area, and shows us what passes away on the current. And this spot that is
light is our now, our present.
[...] There is a paler light which, both up and down stream, is shed on what comes before
and after our now. [...] What we know is, that our now is the source of the light that falls
on the past and future. Through it alone do we know there exists a stream of floating
things, and without its reflection past and future would vanish [...] There is a difference
between the brightness of the now, and the paler revelation of past and future. But, despite
this difference, we see the stream and what floats in it as one. (PL 1,54-55)
Subsequently, Bradley’s light will be employed in terms of a motion picture analogy,

one which affords a better model of Bradley’s Absolute than does the stream metaphor,
even as improved. The current still is merely unidirectional; moreover, does it truly matter
whether we float upon the stream successively spotlighting its banks, or whether we
hover over a current with our spotlight pointing downwards? Relative motion metaphors
still have the effect of spatializing time, to use H. Bergson’s expression for models that
distort duration’s nature. And yet, the observer and stream metaphors do suggest that time
might be thought of as a relation between two more fundamental realities that are not
themselves to be confused with time. That is, it is a mistake to equate time with the
stream. Time is logically derivative, not a primitive feature of reality. Both stream
metaphors, if correctly understood, use relative motion to illustrate temporality. Since
motion involves spatial relations, the metaphorical stream is mistakenly identified as
being time. Let us see how motion picture analogies might clarify the underlying truth in
the stream metaphors.
Bradley’s metaphorical light reveals that our perspective (temporal and spatial) is
limited. The limitations allow for relations of successive order which are features of our
series of experiences. Reality need not be temporally ordered. We do not say that Chicago
is earlier than Philadelphia when driving east. Yet with respect to much of our
experiencing, we attribute the temporal order of our experience to that which we
experience. What if the whole ‘stream’ should be brightly illuminated? We are reminded
of Plato’s cave allegory: such light would no doubt be more dazzling than informative.
Poetry might be a fitting prelude to the cinematic musings to follow.
T. S. Eliot writes in “East Coker”:
[...] There is, it seems to us,

at best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies.
(Lines 82-85)
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment.
(Lines 192-196)
And there is the familiar poem by William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
With respect to the same theme, Alfred, Lord Tennyson contemplates:

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here root and ail, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Returning to water metaphors and T. S. Eliot, we have:
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

(“The Dry Salvages,” Line 15)
The sea is often used as a metaphor of the Absolute, the river as a metaphor of the stream
of time which is our lives. (Of course Eliot’s metaphors serve several purposes, e.g., we
evolved from the sea, our blood stream is a product of that evolution, i.e., the river within
us.)
We should not forget that Bradley presents his view as allegedly the product of
reasoning, not revelation. Should we disagree with that reasoning and believe his
discussion of the Absolute as a harmony bears more kinship with poetry than
philosophical analysis, we ought, nevertheless, to render that account as intelligible as
possible. The poetry is included if only to show that ‘something’ is likely to be behind the
respective poetic insights.
Consider a reel of film, perhaps a film of someone’s life. All the frames coexist as
information or possibilities to be projected on the screen. The frames, p er se, are not
earlier or later than one another. Only upon projection does the temporal ordering arise.
First our character is an infant, a child, a man. But wait, perhaps the film has a flashback,
or a flash forward—perhaps a superimposition in which the old man is contemplating his
childhood happiness while playing with a sled named ‘Rosebud,’ and the audience sees
two separate streams of events simultaneously. The film analogy clarifies how
information, or possibilities for experience,9 might exist independently of any particular
time series or direction of time. The film might be projected backwards. We might even
have a forking film and a projector with switches allowing the audience to choose
alternative endings for the film (or alternative beginnings). Whatever the order of
projection, or the number of superimposed sequences, or the number of branches and
options for beginnings and endings, the important fact not to be overlooked concerns the
frames perse. All the information must already be ‘there’ in order for various sequences
(temporal streams) to be possible. The frames do not change nor engage in causal
relations. Only on being projected do we experience a motion picture and the seemingly
causal orders associated with the apparent changes. A moment’s deliberation reveals that
the motion picture analogy captures many claims about the Absolute as Bradley construes
it. The Absolute is intelligible with respect to the analogy.
However, analogies break down. The frames are spatially separate and exist at the
same time rather than coexist in some timeless manner. And, not everything is included
in a film about one man’s life. No matter, if the analogy has served its purpose, we can
stretch it with a thought experiment, and thought experiments do not rest upon poetic or
mystical revelation. We must consider that consciousness is the screen of our motion
picture and that time is meaningful only upon projection of the film. The projector,
screen, and film are not in time. Time arises as a result of the changing relation of
projector and frames on the reel. Consciousness (screen) experiences the frames
temporally ordered. Time is logically derivative and not a feature or relationship of the
projector or film if these are considered independently. (John is not tall unless compared
to shorter people. Tallness has no independent existence, nor do time series.) However,
the thought experiment requires more. We must imagine that all information is somehow
captured in the film frames; moreover, the film is self-projecting. What it projects is not
one frame at a time. Rather, it projects every frame, a sort of ultimate superimposition of
all information. Now, if all frames are ‘always’ being projected, this is tantamount to
nothing happening and no change occurring. It is a sort of activity without temporality.
Yet by negation or limitation of perspective, i.e., if we can only attend to one frame at a
time, we will have a temporally-ordered experience even if the film itself (the Absolute)
does not itself change or have its own indigenous temporal order. Different sorts of
limitations of perspective constitute different experiencing subjects; some are human
beings and others might be creatures whose time series is counterdirected to ours. Our
capacity to illuminate frames is limited; we seem obliged to illuminate successively
different things. We observe the clouds passing over the mountains. But we can also drift
into a reveiy unrelated to the mountains. Yet, our lights are dim for we have only the fire
of the cave, and we see only shadows.
With respect to the film analogy, the poems quoted become intelligible. We can in
principle understand ‘a lifetime burning in every moment’ and how mutually
incompatible events can coexist as elements included as frames of the superimposition.
The Absolute or superimposition is a system, all inclusive, a whole in which distinctions
can be made, but they result only as a consequence of our limited perspective which
produces the reality parsing o f ‘what’ and ‘that’ and ‘where’ and ‘when.’
But can we hear the harmony? T. S. Eliot tells us there is:
[...] music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
(“The Dry Salvages,” Part V)
Reality being itself undifferentiated, yet manifesting itself in terms of particulars in

space and time to those of limited perspective, is a theme we find in Asian philosophies.
Ignorance and striving chain us to our limited perspectives, and we must be bom and
reborn innumerable times; or in terms of the analogy, we get to play many roles of those
included in the superimposition. Occasionally, a mystic or poet catches a glimpse of
‘more’ and recognizes ordinary reality for the fiction it is. However, it would be a mistake
to characterize Bradley’s Absolute as identical to that of Buddhist idealism, for example.
Bradley speaks of a system and of pleasure when characterizing the Absolute. There
seems more structure than the non-rational Absolute of a Buddhist nirvana. Every desire,
chaste or otherwise, is said to be somehow in the system which is Bradley’s Absolute.
The film superimposition allows the information an ontological status as a possibility for
projection in someone’s experience, i.e., temporal sequencing. Finite minds

(perspectives) explain the genesis of a ‘that’ which is seen as a ‘what.’ The Absolute,
itself, is somehow self-projecting but not as an ultimate subject aware of itself. We do not
have a Hegelian Spirit “make eyes at itself in a mirror” (AR 152). Bradley’s reality does
not contemplate itself as an object. The Absolute is a sentience or feeling not divisible
into feeler and felt. There is no celestial musician; the harmony is ‘one’ and all inclusive.
Comparing Absolutes
A question arises, one which exists in some form in any metaphysical system which
makes a claim about absolute reality. (Metaphysical schemes which stop at some form
of scepticism might escape the problem.) If absolute reality is a timeless harmony without
discord, what has given rise to the finitude of our own perspective in which discord
certainly seems real enough? This question might be called the ‘Fall from Grace’
problem. Bradley’s Absolute seems to have no seeds within it, or instability, which would
lead to those appearances which are our lives. It is not that Bradley’s account is in greater
difficulty than Schopenhauer’s or Kierkegaard’s, for example. Indeed, the latter’s
expression, ‘leap of faith,’ highlights the chasm between a perfect ultimate reality and our
lives. Schopenhauer’s thing-in-itself is Will, which is objectified as the phenomena we
see. But why should the Will fragment itself into a phenomenal plethora? Schopenhauer
claims ultimately the galaxies and stars are simply nothing.10 Whether it is
Schopenhauer’s nothing or Bradley’s harmonious everything, the chasm between the
ultimate and us remains.
Nietzsche’s refusal to provide a metaphysical ultimate, or God surrogate, seems
unburdened by the ‘Fall from Grace’ problem, but then the ‘brute facts’ of our places in
nature, that is, of an evolutionary process which might have proceeded in innumerable
alternative ways, seems to demand explanation. Moreover, Nietzsche rejects the
“prejudices of philosophers,”11 which include atoms, causation, substance, etc., thereby
eliminating scientific materialism as an alternative to some form of absolute idealism.
Even scientific materialism can’t explain why there are these laws of nature
(uniformities), rather than others that are at least logically possible (or appear to be so,
given present scientific knowledge). Moreover, the claim that nature is somehow uniform
cannot be supported in a noncircular argument. Allegedly brute facts cry out for
explanation; and the explanations offered are all too very much in need of explanation.
Process philosophy, in terms of which ultimate reality is neither perfect nor simply a
brute fact, might seem a happy alternative to some all too perfect ‘Absolutes,’ and also
an alternative to the blatant refusal to provide speculative answers to philosophical
questions (a refusal which currently is common enough). Charles S. Peirce and Alfred N.
Whitehead12both argue for a finite God who interacts with us to the betterment of reality
by means of an evolutionary process guided ultimately by a sort of mutual love: ideas
spread; societies constitute themselves from simpler entities; higher (thinking) organisms
come about whose behaviour is capable of novelty rather than nature’s habits (e.g., the
motion of planets would be a habit of nature). Nature is not to be understood as composed
of mind independent matter; rather, as Peirce claims: “[...] matter is effete mind,
inveterate habits becoming physical laws.”13 God’s finitude helps us to understand how
things might be less than perfect (and indeed are). God’s relation to the universe changes;
in process philosophy, there is no nontemporal perspective in which God knows all
‘while’ timelessly seated upon his epistemic throne. God, too, is in time and is part of the
process. Free will is not compromised by God’s foreknowledge; neither man nor God can
know a future free act prior to its happening. The future doesn’t yet exist, hence God need
not know what is not yet real, and thereby God’s omniscience is protected by process
philosophy. All acts, whether they be the habits of planets moving in their elliptical orbits
or J. S. Bach’s composing cantatas, are acts of minds; all efficacy is mental. In this
ultimate ‘becoming,’ mind and matter are substantially the same, and God is with us in
time.
As is usually the case with metaphysical solutions, one difficulty is removed by
creating another. With respect to the process God, we ask: Why is God finite? Why does
God need us? The question becomes one of God’s ‘Fall from Grace’ rather than of ours.
Does the process begin? Why then? Why should the process have had only that duration
rather than having begun earlier? Did the process always exist? Why aren’t matters more
wonderful, given an infinity of past time? And how are we to understand the ‘present’
state of the process in a universe in which simultaneity is observer dependent? Is the real
present God’s time (rather like nautical time is Greenwich time)? Process views require
a sort of Bergsonian intuition of “real duration.” They do not escape reliance upon some
form of transrational revelation. Otherwise, time and the process have parts, and we have
Augustinian difficulties.
In a sense, Kierkegaard saw something Bradley failed to see. Reason will take one
only so far; at a certain point, Bradley ceased being an epistemologist and began being
a poet. The harmony he so eloquently describes is not demonstrated to exist after Bradley
undermines all possibility of a logical demonstration by his rejection of relations. A ‘leap
of faith’ is required. There is always the option to endure allegedly brute facts and to
abstain from philosophical questions. Admittedly, they can only be answered
speculatively in language more akin to poetry14than scientific discourse (which begins
to approximate precision only when numerical). But a failure to speculate is a choice to
refuse any sort of leap of faith. The failure of the courage to leap is not “all too human”;
it is somehow less than human. (No doubt, even Zarathustra on his mountain had to leap
from time to time.) In our present post-romantic age, Bradley’s fondness for the Absolute
might seem silly, even disingenuous. August Comte would claim Bradley’s metaphysical
harmony to be just a step away from the personal Judeo-Christian God; it is a metaphysics
designed to recapture what scientific sophistication lost for us.15 Scientific philosophy,
Comte would argue, will have no need for an ineffable harmony as ultimately remote and
unintelligible as Kant’s thing-in-itself, despite Bradley’s protestation to the contrary (AR
Ch. 12, Ch. 15, 147-9). And yet, as T. S. Eliot observes, “you are the music while the
music lasts” and not just the music but the dancer and the dance.16—Dancers leap!
Notes
1. Bradley’s arguments do receive some attention, even if not that which is deserved. A relatively
recent popular book includes Bradley’s argument that relations lead to an infinite regression:
Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind (New York: Bantam Books, 1982) 155-157,161-162.
Bradley’s views are not studied only by historians of philosophy.
2. Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments (originally published in 1844) (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1962) 46-57.
3. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (originally published in 1846)
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941) 107.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (originally published in 1882), tr. T. Common
(Edinburgh & London, 1910) 151-164, see aphorism 110.
5. F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed., 9th impression, corrected (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1930) Ch. 15, 143-152 (1st ed. 1893).
6. See A.C. Ewing, Idealism, A Critical Survey (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1974) 443 (notes
added in third edition), original edition published 1934. Ewing’s note for chapter four is
significant: “I have spoken on p. 147 as if Bradley himself assumed that a relation was a sort
of third term, when in fact what he is doing is criticizing this very view as one of the
alternatives to his own. Thus interpreted, it seems to me that his argument must succeed unless
we admit, as I should, that the notion of relation is unique and irreducible. For his argument
consists in showing that a relation cannot be reduced to anything else, either to a third term or
to some quality or qualities, for if so it would not relate, and then assuming that this destroys
the chance of giving any defence of the concept of relation at all.”
7. F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Logic [PL] (1st ed. 1883) 2nd ed., corrected impression
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928) Vol. I, Ch. 2,46.
8. William G.T. Shedd, ed., Confessions of Augustine (Boston: Draper and Halliday, 1867) Book
11,300-333 (originally written circa 400). The present Big Bang cosmology lends itself to an
Augustinian analysis, as does any cosmology in which the universe has a beginning. Bradley’s
universal harmony is not ‘in’ time, nor can it begin or end.
9. The expression “possibilities for experience” can be found in Leslie Armour, The Rational and
the Real (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962). Possibilities for experience would encompass
more than John Stuart Mill’s permanent possibilities for sensation, or what plays the role of
matter for Mill. See An Examination of Sir William Hamilton ’s Philosophy (originally
published in 1865) (London, 1889) 225-239. Possibilities for experience would seem to allow
for any sort of information. As to the actualities which allow for the respective possibilities,
Armour seems to invite us to ask: why must actualities be logically prior to possibilities;
possibilities could be ontologically autonomous, as indeed Mill argued on behalf of his
permanent possibilities for sensation. Bradley’s Absolute avoids “free floating” possibilities,
however.
10. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I (originally appearing in
1818) (New York: Dover Publications, 1969). Schopenhauer’s nihilism is clear in the
following passages (411-412): “We must not even evade it, as the Indians do, by myths and
meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahman, or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. On the
contrary, we freely acknowledge that what remains after the complete abolition of the will is,
for all who are still full of the will, assuredly nothing. But also conversely, to those in whom
the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours with all its suns and galaxies,
is—nothing.”
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886), The Philosophy of Nietzsche (New
York: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1927) 381-407. After claiming the utility of falsehoods with respect
to our self-preservation, i.e., after offering a fictionalist account of our philosophical and
scientific concepts, Nietzsche states (section 21): “It is we alone who have devised cause,
sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and
when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as ‘being in itself with things, we act once
more as we have always acted-mythologically.” One wonders if Nietzsche’s account is part
of the myth, and if so, it would seem self-stultifying.
In “Twilight of the Idols” (1889), Nietzsche observes: “Even the opponents of the Eleatics
still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when
he invented his atom. ‘Reason’ in language-oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am
afraid we are not rid of god because we still have faith in grammar” (The Portable Nietzsche,
ed. Walter Kaufmann [New York: The Viking Press, 1967] 483). Nietzsche, himself, writes
grammatically enough-is his view self-stultifying?
12. Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy, in which a “becoming of continuity” replaces
absolute immutable being, employs process concepts from H. Bergson, C. S. Peirce and
William James (see Process and Reality [New York: The Free Press, 1978; originally
published in 1929]. Peirce contributes a view of matter as a form of habitual activity of mind,
hence the uniformities of nature; Bergson’s refusal to “spatialize” time, and James’s “stream
of consciousness” have influenced Whitehead’s view. Peirce’s “finite” God is offered in C. S.
Peirce, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” Hibbert Journal, 1 (1908), reprinted
in Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings, ed. P.P. Wiener (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1958) 358-379.
13. C. S. Peirce, “The Architecture of Theories,” The Monist, 1 (1891), partially reprinted in
Justus Buchlerphilosophical Writings of Peirce (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955)
322. See also 350 and 358-9.
14. “The difficulty of philosophy is the expression of what is self-evident.” Alfred N. Whitehead,
Modes of Thought (originally published in 1938) (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958) 68-69.
15. August Comte claims: “each [...] branch of knowledge, passes successively through three
different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and
the Scientific, or positive [...] The first is the necessary point of departure of the human
understanding; and the third is its fixed and definitive state. The second is merely a state of
transition.” (The Positive Philosophy, 1853) excerpts included in Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy, ed. Patrick Gardiner (New York: The Free Press, 1969) 133.
16. The allusion is to William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children,” the last two lines
are “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know the dancer from the
dance?” Irrespective of music and dance metaphors, there is Bradley’s incredibly moving
statement about written language and the spoken word: “The paper and ink cut the throats of
men, and the sound of a breath may shake the world” (The Principles of Logic, Vol. I, 4).
Bradley’s words shook the world more than many realize.
3 Bradley and Green on Relations
W. J. MANDER
Introduction
The two central figures of the British school of idealism were T. H. Green (1836-1882)
andF. H. Bradley (1846-1924),1and of central importance to each of their philosophies
was the subject of relations. Both held that a consideration of relations, properly carried
through, leads inevitably to a monistic and idealistic conclusion, which they called ‘The
Absolute.’ This coincidence has received surprisingly little attention from commentators,
and in this paper I attempt to make good that gap by offering a comparative analysis. The
similarities and differences uncovered will, I hope, help to clarify their two positions.
Both Oxford philosophers of about the same period, this coincidence of focus
naturally raises the question of what influence, if any, there was between them. In 1865,
when Bradley first came up to Oxford, Green had already been lecturing at Balliol for five
years, and in 1878 he was appointed Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, a post he
held until his death four years later. We know that Bradley attended some of Green’s
lectures2and it is certain that he would have been familiar with Green’s published work.3
In view of these facts, and of the philosophical relationships between their views which
we shall consider below, it seems to me very likely that Green was an important influence
on Bradley’s thought. But such matters are, of course, hard to establish.4 Bradley’s own
work on relations, I should add, appeared too late for there to be any influence the other
way.5
Since neither of these philosophical systems are as well known as once they were I
shall begin with a brief summary of each, before going on to draw out the central points
of comparison between them.
Green
In order to understand Green’s doctrine of relations we need first to remind ourselves of

what Locke had to say on this subject, for Green’s philosophy was formed in large part
as a reaction against the prevailing empiricist orthodoxy of his day, which in essentials
at least had advanced little over the previous century. Locke’s basic stance, it will be
remembered, is that we derive our ideas of relation from the mental act of comparing
other ideas, simple or complex. But unlike most other things of which we form ideas, he
thinks, relations are “not contained in the real existence of Things, but something
extraneous and superinduced.” They have, Locke says, “no other reality, but what they
have in the minds of men.” Thus there seems to be, in Locke’s mind, no real difference
between ‘relations’ and ‘ideas of relations. ’
For Locke (and, it must be admitted, for most other philosophers) ‘not real, but
mental’ are two charges which in effect come to the same thing. But Green wishes to
challenge this assumption of equivalence. In the case of relations, he rejects the first
whilst accepting the second, and thus, as he puts it in his Lectures on Logic, his
fundamental position may be summarized in the twin claims “that all reality lies in
relations, and that only for a thinking consciousness do relations exist” (L 177). That is
to say, he thinks that relations are real, but that they are no less mental for that.
The Reality o f Relations
Green has no doubt that relations are real. Indeed, so sure is he of this fact, that he uses
their reality to ground that of absolutely everything else. That is to say, for Green, the
appropriate criterion for declaring something real is precisely a relational one. Without
relations there would be no reality at all. In support of his claim that relations have this
role Green offers one very general argument together with a connected series of more
particular ones. We may look at these in turn.
The general nature o f reality Beginning with the general argument, we can reflect on the
fact that philosophers often dismiss things as unreal. Unicorns, pink rats, phenomenal
smells and colours, sometimes even such categories as causality or substance, have all
at one time or another by some philosopher or another been denied their place in the
ranks of fundamental reality. But what is objective reality?
To call something unreal is not to say that it belongs to the class of unreal things. For
there is no such class (PE 26). The object of some wholly false experience, such as a
dream or an hallucination, presents itself to us in the same manner and just as undeniably
as does that of the most clearly veridical experience.
To call something unreal is rather, suggests Green, to say that it does not ‘fit’ in with,
that it does not bare the appropriate relations to, those other things already deemed to be
‘real. ’ There is no room for such items in the world because they cannot, except on the
most absurd and extravagant hypotheses, be reconciled with what we understand about
everything else; they lack the permanence, stability, intersubjective availability, or causal
efficacy of what we paradigmatically consider to be real. In this sense, for Green, the
contrast between real and unreal is not, as we sometimes and unreflectively suppose, the
difference between what exists and what does not, but more properly the contrast between
the permanent or unalterable order of things and their temporary or changeable order.
Thus reality, for Green, is to be defined as “a single and unalterable system of relations”
(PE 26). Things are real precisely insofar as they can be fitted into the one enduring
systematic relational matrix, and reality extends just as far as does that integrated and
permanent complex of relations.
Once something is recognised as being our own contribution to experience we tend,
in virtue of that fact alone, to think of it as unreal. But, as Green notes, one important
corollary of the definition he offers is that this attitude is justifiable only where that
contribution is transient or otherwise irreconcilable with its context. Where our own
constructions are as, or more, stable than any external reality, they must be held to be as,
or more, real. Says Green, “It is not the work of the mind, as such, that we instinctively
oppose to the real, but the work of the mind as assumed to be arbitrary and irregularly
Bradley and Green on Relations 57
changeable” (PE 26). It is unreal because of its current relation to everything else, not in
virtue of its historical or metaphysical origins.
The relational nature o f all things In addition to such general argumentation about the
concept of reality itself, Green thinks it possible to reach the same overall result by
following a series of more specific considerations. Take any individual thing, he claims,
what so ever you please and however non-relational it first may seem, and its reality will
be revealed ultimately to consist in relations to other things, at very least to the
consciousness that knows it. Upon analysis, everything is found, in the end, to be so
thoroughly relational that if you take away the relations you take away the thing itself. The
basic drift of Green’s reasoning in this respect is that our thought and language are both
essentially general so that we are unable to pick out atomic individuals through isolated
acts of pointing, but have rather to catch them in more or less expansive frameworks of
general concepts, and that that is essentially to relate them to other things. For our
concepts are neither simple in their structure, nor isolated in their opperation. On analysis
everything turns out to be relational, and reality proves to be nothing but “an
inexhaustible complex of relations” (I 39).
It is common, for example, to identify reality with what is material. But if we ask what
is meant by matter, claims Green, the answer is always a statement of some relation or
other (L 178). Be it mere extension, solidity (the power to exclude other bodies), the
support of qualities, the unknown cause of our sensation, or the origin of all life and
consciousness, its reality is still constituted by its relations. And how could it be
otherwise? In itself, unrelated to anything else, matter would be as nothing to us.
We might attempt to escape this conclusion by thinking instead of reality as whatever
it is that is given to us in feeling or sensation. But really this is no advance, argues Green,
for a sensation is something equally relational, determined by the conditions of its
production and its place among other sensations. “[A] sensation can only form an object
of experience in being determined by an intelligent subject which distinguishes it from
itself and contemplates it in relation to other sensations” (PE 50), he claims, and hence
Locke’s so-called simple idea “is already, at its minimum the judgement, ‘I have an idea
different from other ideas which I did not make for myself” (I 19) and, as such, not
simple at all. Qualities are what they are through their relations to others and hence,
without relations, thinks Green, any quality would be indistinguishable from any other
(PE 20).6
But surely it is possible to pick things out as real without bringing in their relational
context? At very least can we not just point them out using the simple demonstratives,
‘this,’ ‘that,’ ‘here’ and ‘now’? Green thinks not. Even here, he argues, our attempt to
locate a given thing is implicitly relational; “if we say that it is the mere ‘this’ or
‘that’—the simple ‘here’ and ‘now’—the very ‘this’ in being mentioned or judged of,
becomes related to other things which we have called this,’ and the ‘now’ to other
‘nows’” (136).7In thus claiming that even the most ostensibly particular form of thought
turns out to be implicitly general, Green is, of course, closely following Hegel’s treatment
of what he called sense-certainty in the Phenomenology o f Spirit. But he, thinks Green,
is simply repeating “what Plato long ago taught [... that] a consistent sensationalism must
be speechless” (I 36).
In this way Green argues that analysis demonstrates the reality of things to consist in
nothing but the relations that bind them together and allows us to recognize “relations as
constituting the very essence of reality” (PE 25).
The Mentality o f Relations
If Green champions the reality of relations, he none the less finds them thoroughly mind-
dependent, products of our own intellectual activity. While all reality lies in relations, “it
is not that first there are relations and then they are conceived” he says, rather “Every
relation is constituted by an act of conception” (L 179).
This second thesis is the source of Green’s idealism. For clearly if reality consists in
relations, and those relations are judged ideal, then reality as a whole must share the same
fate. Nature in its reality, or in order to be what it is, implies a principle which is not
natural but spiritual (PE 61).
It must be confessed that Green’s defence of this thesis is somewhat lacking. In going
beyond Kant, who had only argued that some relations were ideal (such as those of space
and time or causation), Green seems at times unduly impressed by the authority of Locke
on this point. But the claim does not go wholly undefended. Indeed, as in the case of the
previous thesis, we find two arguments for this position, which we may consider in turn.
The perception o f relations Green objects to the thesis that relations might have an
existence independent of the mind principally on the grounds that, were that the case, we
would be unable to perceive them, and thus to acquire the very idea of a relation, which
of course we have. Our idea of relation is something quite inexplicable in empirical
terms, he thinks, and hence it could only spring from the original work of mind, as
something that we add to our own experience.
The problem, as Green sees it, is that no mere series of perceptions could ever explain
our consciousness of the series perceived, and thus that there can be no (Humean)
impression from which we might derive the idea of a relation; a relation is “neither a
feeling nor felt” (1149). For consciousness of events as related is not at all the same thing
as a series of related events of consciousness (PE 21). As he says “Of two successive
feelings, one over before the next begins, neither can be consciousness of time as a
relation between the two” (L 170). Even if the relation in question be one of succession,
it will be no help for our ideas to succeed one another. “In order to constitute the relation
they must be present together” (PE 41) says Green. Yet that is impossible.8 The lesson
Green drew from his long study of empiricism was precisely its inability to deal with
relations; atomic in both metaphysics and epistemology, ultimately it leaves us with
nothing but an aggregate of unrelated particulars. For the merely receptive consciousness,
he urges, there are no relations between feelings, merely a series of feelings. As an
element of independent reality a relation is something that we could simply never come
to know.
It might be objected that, even if correct, this argument merely demonstrates the
unperceivability of mind-independent relations, not their impossibility. But this is to
appeal to a third way with which Green has absolutely no patience at all. The notion of
unknowable reality is, for him, quite simply, an absurd contradiction; unless we say
something about it, it is literally nothing to us, but whatever we say about it can only bring
it into relation with the knowing consciousness (L 184, PE 47). In this basic anti-realism,
he is in agreement with Bradley (AR 111, 114), and all of the other British Idealists.
The mystery o f relations Green’s second argument about relations can be most clearly
expressed using his own words.
Relation is to us such a familiar fact that we are apt to forget that it involves all the
mystery, if it be a mystery, of the existence of many in one. [...] But a plurality of
things cannot of themselves unite in one relation, nor can a single thing of itself
bring itself into a multitude of relations. [...] There must, then, be something other
than the manifold things themselves, which combines them without effacing their
severalty. [...] if it were not for the action of something which is not either of them
or both together, there would be no alternative between their separateness and
their fusion. [...] we must recognise as the condition of this reality the action of
some unifying principle analogous to that of our understanding (PE 33-34).
A relational whole combines unity and diversity—though containing several

components, it is yet one whole—but this is something strange that needs further
explanation, for a single thing cannot on its own become many, nor many things become
one. There must be something else that helps the relational structure to achieve this result,
and the only thing which we know that is able to do this is mind. Our own minds, claims
Green, holding, as they do, many ideas in one thought and many thoughts in one
conscious experience, are examples of precisely such unity in diversity. In consequence,
he concludes, we need to recognize as the underlying condition that makes nature itself
possible, the ground of its relationality, something analogous to our own minds.9
Since quite clearly it is not yours, or mine, or any other finite mind that underlies the
relations that constitute nature, Green postulates a higher experience to undertake the
task, which sharing in the unalterable character of the relations it grounds he calls the
“Eternal Consciousness” (PE 78). As the underlying ground of all reality, including our
own finite experience, it is also the Absolute.
Bradley
Bradley’s philosophical position on the subject of relations is, of course, much better
known than Green’s. I shall here summarize it in three sections.
The Inter-relatedness o f All Things
In opposition to the atomic pluralism that characterized the prevailing philosophy of his
day, the primary direction of Bradley’s thought is holistic. Whatever is, is part of a single
systematic whole in which everything is related to everything else. To consider anything
in any kind of isolation is to abstract it out from its surrounding background in a manner
that can only distort and mislead. The way to a truer view is to bring into our
understanding of anything more and more of the inexhaustible context which crowds
behind it, a process which leads us ultimately to the conclusion that we cannot really
know anything until we know everything.
In Bradley’s early work the primaiy impetus towards this holism comes from his anti-
atomistic conception of logic, a conception from which he derives a correspondingly anti-
atomistic metaphysics. We may consider three illustrations of this movement. First, he
attacks the separation of one idea from another that is involved in subject-predicate
thought. Instead of dividing a judgement into several discreet ideas each with a different
role to play, he urges us to treat its elements as symbolically on a par (PL 11 ) and to
group all its content together as one idea which our very act of judgement then attributes
indifferently to reality as a whole (PL 10, 630). Second, he argues that any finite
judgement, in so far as it deals with abstractions, functions subject to a series of implicit
conditions concerning those background factors not explicitly mentioned. But strictly
speaking, if it is not to be regarded as false, these need to be spelled out explicitly, and
thus “The growth of knowledge consists” he says “in getting the conditions of the
predicate into the subject. The more conditions you are able to include, the greater is the
truth” (ETR 233). The net result is that the judgement expands indefinitely from within
until it becomes a statement of everything. Third and last, Bradley follows Hegel in a
specific view about the nature of human thought. He claims that two things separated
without any point of connection between them is as unthinkable a notion for us as any
logical contradiction. Indeed it is precisely what is meant by logical contradiction (AR
505). Consequently, he thinks, in principle at least, that “you could start internally from
any one character in the Universe, and you could pass from that to the rest” (AR 520).
In his later thinking Bradley became more preoccupied with the psychological
background which he believed this position to imply. He emphasized more and more the
role of what he called our immediate experience s a wholly pre-conceptual encounter with
reality, which, though far from homogeneous, is scarred by no division or distinction, and
which grounds all our mental life (ETR 160). He argues that to concentrate on any
individual item is to distort it by pulling it to the fore from this continuous felt
background.
The Contradiction o f Relations
Nothing is separate or without relation to its context, but as necessary and all-pervasive
as Bradley holds relations to be, he nonetheless goes on to argue that they are incoherent
and a mark of appearance, not reality. We uncritically employ relations all the time, he
argues, but if we once stop and think just what we mean by a relation, the concept
crumbles in our hands. Only two basic possibilities for understanding present themselves
to us, but neither can satisfy.10
An initial idea would be to suppose that relations are nothing more than a façon de
parler, a different way of talking about individual things and their characters—for what
more is there to Sam’s being taller than Alex than Sam and Alex and their respective
heights? Despite its intuitive appeal, Bradley holds this line of thinking unable to really
account for relations. For it only works where there exists a common frame (such as
space) within which the two predicates may be located, which is as much as to say that
it already presupposes the concept of a relation. This is particularly clear if we think of
cases where any such frame is absent, as in the problem of mind-body interaction.
We might perhaps do better to think of a relation as an extra item in any fact somehow
bringing together its two terms, but on reflection this turns out to be no better. It falls
afoul of Bradley’s notorious ‘chain argument’ (AR 17-18, 28). If two terms, a and b,
require a relation R to connect them, what, asks Bradley, connects R itself to a and b l We
would appear to need two new relations, but if that is conceded, our problem arises
again—how are we to connect the new relations to their terms?— and clearly we are
launched on an infinite regress. This argument has been much abused, but many of its
critics have simply failed to recognize that it forms, together with the argument of the
paragraph above, but one part of an either-or case. Bradley’s point is that if neither
treating relations as integral to their terms nor treating them as separate elements make
any real sense, and if all attempts to understand them come down in the end to variants
of one or other of these strategies, then it would seem as though we must conclude that
relations don’t make any real sense either.
And that is precisely what Bradley does. “The conclusion to which I am brought” he
says “is that a relational way of thought—any one that moves by the machinery of terms
and relations—must give appearance and not truth. It is a makeshift, a devise, a mere
practical compromise, most necessary, but in the end most indefensible” (AR 28). He is
not denying that they do appear to us, only that they are ultimately real, that they figure
in any final account of the way things are.
The Supra-relational Whole
We find ourselves with a strange pair of theses; everything is inter-related, but relations
are unreal. Bradley reconciles these positions by adopting a two-level metaphysics—any
final account of the world, he argues, must make room both for the level of reality and the
level of appearance.
If relations and whatever involves them are unreal, then there must be such a thing as
reality. This realm of being, which Bradley called the Absolute, is characterized in terms
precisely opposite to those used to describe ordinary experience; where the latter
separates and distinguishes, the former unites and relates, and where the latter isolates,
the former reconnects us to our unending context. The Absolute is a holistic realm in
which everything is internally connected to everything else; it is, in that phrase much
loved by the British Idealists, an identity-in-difference. A foretaste of this is given to us
in immediate feeling, thinks Bradley, but in its fullness it is something that transcends all
thought or finite experience.
The level of the Absolute must be distinguished from the level of appearance, the
level of everyday life. Bradley argues that it belongs to the very nature of immediate
experience to break up and produce a pluralistic realm of relations. The resulting world
is governed by abstract identity and connections which remain merely external to their
terms, and viewed in such a manner, relations, far from being a mark of truth, become an
impossibility, and the world thus produced a distortion of the truth (ETR 231 -2). Bradley
was a determined critic of this world, and the first book of his metaphysical treatise
Appearance and Reality consists in a sustained attack on its categories—space, time,
thing, property, action, cause, self, God and so on. All are declared unreal.
Comparisons
With these two basic expositions behind us, let us go on and make a few comparisons
between Green and Bradley’s positions with respect to relations. I shall begin with two
points of agreement and then go on to consider two differences.
(1) Both philosophers agree about the central place that needs must be given to
relations in any attempt to understand our everyday experience, for both recognize the
thoroughly relational character of that experience. The world we know is saturated by a
complex of relational linkages. Green finds relations at the heart of everything, while
Bradley, in identifying what he calls the ‘relational way of thought,’ brings out the manner
in which all our basic categories are in one way or another relational. To condemn
relations is to condemn at the same time “almost without a hearing, the great mass of
phenomena” (AR 29).
But not only do they consider relations equally pervasive, they take them equally
seriously. They are agreed that no attempt to understand reality could succeed in which
relations were treated as somehow secondary or an afterthought. For both philosophers,
unity is as important and basic as distinction. In this insight they join together in attacking
the atomism of their empiricist predecessors. If everything is connected to everything else,
they argue, nothing is wholly or ultimately separate from anything else, and the more you
probe the more relations you uncover. This relational holism is one source of their
common monism.11
(2) There is a second very important point of agreement between Green and Bradley.
They concur, not just in the views they hold of their importance, but also in the accounts
that they give of the origin of relations. Although their reasons for thinking this differ, and
that difference will be considered below, both thinkers agree that relations come from us
not external reality; they are our own mental creations not pre-existing realities awaiting
discovery by us.
Indeed both philosophers hold, not simply that thought relates, but that the essence
of thinking is to relate. To relate is the key function of thinking. This is, of course, a
common debt to Kant who emphasises the distinctive work of the mind as one of
synthesis.
If relations are mental, but integral to the world we experience, it follows that that
world is something through and through ideal, that is to say, something constructed by
mind.12This result is endorsed by both Green and Bradley, placing them squarely in that
long idealist tradition which sees the work of the mind in everything we experience; in
which our concepts and categories are seen one by one to flow, not from the world, but
from us. This further Kantian debt is very clearly acknowledged in Green,13 but rather
more hidden in Bradley where the critical implications of this contribution tend to shout
so much louder than its constructive significance.
(3) These major similarities between Green and Bradley are partnered by some
equally major dissimilarities. The most important of these can be very simply put: Green
accepts relations while Bradley rejects them. For Green relations are real. For Bradley
they are unreal. Green has no worries about the possibility or coherence of relations, he
just tends to take them as something ultimate and unproblematic. Indeed far from
worrying about them, he holds up relationality as the very mark of reality itself. Reality
is precisely the fixed and unalterable order of relations. Bradley, by contrast, worries
deeply about relations and, looking at them from all angles, in the end judges them
incoherent and impossible. Relationality, for Bradley, however permanent or pervasive
it may be, far from being a badge of reality, is an incurable defect and a sign that we are
dealing merely with appearance. For Bradley, in the last analysis, ultimate reality is
something wholly non-relational (or as he prefers to put it, ‘supra-relational’).
Behind this ontological disagreement about ultimate reality lies a difference, not just
in what is found acceptable, but also in the role that relations are seen to be playing. For
Green, relational thought unifies and binds together what would otherwise be distinct, it
is the glue that holds the world together. Bradley, by contrast, sees relational thought as
something disruptive and destructive, something that pulls apart what was originally
together in a whole, the hammer that smashes the world apart. Bradley’s point of view
may seem perverse, but the idea behind it is not difficult. He does not want to deny that
relations unify, but asks us to reflect more deeply on what that entails. You can only unify
what is already disunified, he argues, and so relations, with their machinery of distinct
terms and connecting links, are as much agents of disintegration as combination. They
perversely offer to stitch back together what they at the same time pull apart.
This difference in their attitude towards relations connects interestingly with their
relational holism that we considered above. At one level they are both monists because
they believe that everything is related to everything else, and that nothing is so isolated
as to be unaffected by its relations to its neighbours. But at a deeper level the picture
changes. Green persists in thinking reality a unity because of its relational character. For
Bradley, by contrast, reality is a unity precisely despite its relations. Notwithstanding the
attempts by our relational concepts to tear it asunder, it remains at bottom a non-relational
unity.
Two qualifications are in order here. To say, as I did above, that Green accepts
relations while Bradley rejects them is to draw the difference between them a little too
sharply. Although he attacks the apparatus of terms and relations, Bradley accepts that
beyond thought, in the Absolute, there does exist some kind of (non-relational) coming
together of unity and diversity. Green, on the other hand, accepts that the unity in
difference which relations claim to create for us is something thoroughly mysterious. In

this way the difference between the two philosophers closes, and the issue becomes not
whether differences can be brought together (which they both hold possible), nor whether
this is mysterious (which they both accept it is), but whether this can in any sense be
thought or not. Bradley thinks it a union forever beyond intelligible thought, something
which we can see must be the case, but which we can never hope to grasp. Green, on the
other hand, together with most of the other British Idealists, thinks it something we can
intelligibly conceive because it is something uniquely revealed to us in our own self-
consciousness. For Green, human self-consciousness, which he explicitly identifies with
Kant’s ‘unity of apperception’ (PE 37) provides the key to understanding the fundamental
nature of reality, for Bradley, on the other hand, it is just one more contradiction that
separates us from that reality (AR Ch. X).14
The second qualification concerns the use of relations as a criterion for reality. Whilst
disagreeing, in the final analysis, with Green’s idea that a thing’s reality lies precisely in
its relations, Bradley does see a limited role for this idea. Bradley’s universe is a veiy
democratic and full one, offering at least a degree of reality, to the worlds of myth, fiction,
dreaming and so forth. But how, within this crowd, can he pick out that subset which we
commonly call the ‘real world’? For this task he appeals, like Green, to relations, defining
it as the universe of those things which are continuous in space with my body. It earns its
place of preeminence because of its superior relational integrity; “The order of things
which I can construct from the basis of my waking body, is far more consistent and
comprehensive than any other possible arrangement” (ETR 462). Bradley and Green’s
methods of picking out ‘reality’ here are identical, the difference simply that what Bradley
thinks he has captured in this net is smaller in scope and less fundamental in significance
than what Green claims to have caught.
(4) I turn now to draw an important contrast between their views regarding the
relative roles of reason and experience in our investigation of reality. The reason why
Bradley agrees with Green that relations are mental, is because he finds them
contradictory or impossible. “Reality is such that it does not contradict itself,” he tells us
(AR 120). Thus, for him, their being mental is indicative of their unreality. But Green,
it will be remembered, was trying to undermine precisely this traditional association of
‘work of the mind’ and ‘that which is unreal. ’ Thus, far from following in his footsteps,
Bradley is undoing all Green’s efforts in this direction, and in a very real sense going back
to Locke. ‘Created by us’ is once again contrasted with ‘really there,’ and ‘ultimate
reality’ to be thought of as the residue remaining once all input or contamination by ‘us’
has been removed.
As an anti-realist, Green accepts that we can know only what knowing itself has
created, but he insists that what we know is none the less real for that. Moreover, as itself
a product of our thought, the universe is rationally intelligible and may be uncovered
through the use of our reason. For the world is relational, and relations are something of
which the knowing subject is conscious only because he thinks (L 171).15For Bradley,
on the other hand, ultimate reality is unknowable or beyond thought, and intellect is
consequently engaged on a hopeless quest, attempting to recover what it has already
destroyed. With a gap opening up in this way between thought and reality, Bradley argues
that our only true contact with uncontaminated being is in feeling or immediate
experience, and hence that it is through feeling not reason that we come closest to
knowing how things really are. Ultimate reality turns out to be a matter of feeling or
experience, rather than thought.
Green differs from Bradley, not so much by taking the opposite line, as by refusing
to accept the sharp distinctions which Bradley here (and perhaps rather untypically)
insists on. “We deny that there is really such a thing as ‘mere feeling’ or ‘mere thought’,”
he says. “We hold that these phrases represent abstractions to which no reality
corresponds” (PE 57), while, with respect to the Absolute, he holds that “It is one and the
same living world of experience which, considered as the manifold object presented by
a self-distinguishing subject to itself, may be called feeling, and, considered as the subject
presenting such an object to itself, may be called thought” (PE 55). Looked at another
way, the difference between Bradley and Green here could be put like this. While Bradley
operates with a very strong nominalist intuition of reality as something particular or
individual, for Green universality is an eliminable aspect of what it is to be real.
Conclusion
The value of any comparative study consists in the light that it throws upon the positions
compared, that is, upon its ability to pick out illuminating similarities or contrasts that
might otherwise go unnoticed. Such has been the case here with respect to Green and
Bradley. The initial impression is one of great similarity between them. Both systems take
their starting point and inspiration from Kant and Hegel, both find their first principles
in which we might call the metaphysics of our own experience—the question of how that
experience relates to the world of which it is part—and both end up with a similarly
holistic and idealistic result: Green’s Eternal Consciousness and Bradley’s Absolute. But
if we look through this superficial similarity we find at the deeper levels a very great
difference between them. Bradley is often thought of as an anti-realist, but what the
comparison with Green brings out most clearly, is the strength of his realist
convictions—thought for Green is the very mark of reality, while for Bradley it is a kind
of barrier to be passed over before reality may be reached. It is almost as though they had
arrived at the same position from completely opposed starting points. Certainly we see
that it would be a great mistake to think of Bradley as belonging in any simple sense to
‘the school of Green.’16
Bradley’s philosophical system is in many respects a development of Green’s. He
strengthens Green’s admittedly weak arguments for the mind-dependence of relations, he
realizes that the power of relations to unite presupposes a prior function of dissolution on
their part, and he sees that if we are to criticize the data of experience for their conceptual
or relational contamination we may not simply halt this critique where it suits us, but must
press on to include the data of our own self-consciousness. But for each of these
‘advances’ there is a price to pay, and as a whole they tend to take his position in an anti-
intellectualist, even a somewhat mystical, direction. Thus in the end it remains an open
question whether we should view Bradley’s philosophy as a legitimate and natural

development of Green’s or as its reductio ad absurdum.
Notes
1. Abbreviated page references to Green’s works are as follows: Prolegomena to Ethics [PE]
[1883] 5th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907); “General Introduction to Hume’s Treatise of
Human Nature” [I] [1874], in The Works of Thomas Hill Green, ed. R. L. Nettleship (London:
Longmans, Green & Co., 1886) Vol. 1,1-299; “Lectures on Logic” [L] [1874-1875], in The
Works of Thomas Hill Green, Vol. II, 158-306; “Faith” [F] [1877], in The Works of Thomas
Hill Green, Vol. IH, 253-267; “Review of J. Caird: Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion”
[C] [1880], in The Works of Thomas Hill Green, Vol. HI, 138-46. Abbreviated page reference
to Bradley’s works are as follows: The Principles of Logic [1883] [PL] 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1922); Appearance and Reality [AR] [1893] 2nd ed., 9th impression,
corrected (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930); Essays on Truth and Reality [ETR] (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1915).
2. Bradley’s unpublished remains at Merton College, Oxford contain notes on Green’s lectures
on ethics. In the same place see also a letter from A.C. Bradley to his sister, Mrs de Glehn, 29
August 1927: “He heard some (I don’t remember which) of Green’s lectures.” See also
comments in the obituaries by A. E. Taylor in Proceedings of the British Academy, 11 (1924-
1925) 464, and by Bernard Bosanquet in the Times, 20 September 1924. There is also
evidence that in 1872 or 1873 Bradley, along with some others, asked Green to join a
philosophical essay society that they had formed; it is not known whether Green did join (see
M. Richter, The Politics of Conscience [Bristol: Thoemmes Press reprint, 1996] 159-161).
3. Green’s General Introduction to his and Grose’s edition of the works of David Hume was
published in 1874, eight years before Bradley’s The Principles of Logic, while his posthumous
Prolegomena to Ethics appeared in 1883, ten years before Bradley’s Appearance and Reality.
4. An alternative possibility worth exploring is that their common interest in relations stems less
from Green’s influence on Bradley than from their common interest in Lotze.
5. Although Bradley’s Ethical Studies was published in 1876, seven years before Green’s
Prolegomena to Ethics, in the first place, he largely avoids discussion of the metaphysics of
relations there, and in the second place, the material from Green’s book had already been used
for some time in his professorial lectures.
6. Bradley too argues that qualitative diversity is only possible in the presence of relations. “Their
plurality depends on relation” he says “and, without that relation, they are not distinct” (AR 24).
7. In his own discussion of this matter, Bradley takes a very similar line. “The self-transcendent
character of the ‘this’ is,” he claims, “on all sides, open and plain. Appearing as immediate, it,
on the other side, has contents which are not consistent with themselves, and which refer
themselves beyond. Hence the inner nature of the ‘this’ leads it to pass outside itself towards
a higher totality” (AR 201-202).
8. The doctrine of the specious present was introduced to overcome this problem. But that is
another story.
9. This argument has been used also by Herman Lotze (Metaphysics [Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1884] Bk. I, Ch. 6,80) and Hastings Rashdall (Philosophy and Religion [London: Duckworth,
1909] 10-11).
10. In other terminology, these are the options that relations be either internal or external to their
terms. Bradley’s main discussion of relations occurs at AR Ch. HI.
11. For an important qualification of this claim see Section (3) on p. 65, below.
12. The question of just whose mind it is that performs this construction is a difficult one. Green
and Bradley would both agree that it is not the ordinary finite mind—yours or mine. For Green
the principal point of describing as “unalterable” the system of relations that constitutes reality
is that it is unalterable by us, not subject to our individual wills, while for Bradley the finite self,
because irredeemably relational, has no ultimate reality at all and hence could not perform this
function. Yet neither would they say, with Berkeley, that the world is the creation of some mind
wholly external to us. In effect what Green and Bradley try to do is to find a path between these
two positions, and argue that it is the Absolute through us that thinks or creates the world. This
is no doubt a difficult idea, but it is not an optional extra. The notion of an Absolute mind in
which we ‘participate’ and which ‘reproduces’ itself through us (Green’s terms) is central to
both of their systems.
13. Kant’s error for Green was simply that he did not go far enough in thinking through the
consequences of the principles he established (PE 48).
14. Their differing attitudes towards self-consciousness have other consequences as well. Both
philosophers reach idealist and monistic conclusions, inasmuch as Bradley’s Absolute is parallel
to Green’s eternal consciousness. But Green (albeit tentatively) identifies his with God,
something that Bradley’s attitude toward the self absolutely precludes.
15. “Reason is self-consciousness” argues Green, and “It is only as taken into our self-
consciousness, and so presented to us as an object, that anything is known to us” (F 267). This
point should not be overemphasized, however, for he is far from slavish in his Hegelianism
insisting that “If thought and reality are to be identified, if the statement that God is thought is
to be more than a presumptuous paradox, thought must be other than the discursive activity
exhibited in our inferences and analyses” (C 142).
16. In this connection the fact that Bradley did not contribute to Essays in Philosophical Criticism
(ed. Andrew Seth and R. B. Haldane; pref. Edward Caird [London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1883]), the memorial volume for T. H. Green, is perhaps significant (although, of course, we
cannot be sure of this).
Taylor & Francis
4 F.H. Bradley on Conflict of Interest
DON M acNIVEN
One of the main issues which F. H. Bradley addresses in his analysis of the concept of
“Goodness,’ in Chapter 25 of Appearance and Reality, is the conflict between duties to
the self and duties to others.1This may appear surprising for a philosopher who repudi
ated radical individualism and made social norms the pivot of his moral philosophy. Why
should he dwell on this topic while developing a metaphysical account of morality?
Certainly the enigma of self-sacrifice had always puzzled Bradley. The conflict between
duty and self-interest is a recurring theme throughout Bradley’s moral philosophy. His
moral psychology was first presented in the context of a discussion of selfishness and self-
sacrifice in Chapter 7 of Ethical Studies ? Bradley had argued there, that human beings
developed from an early stage of egoistic hedonism into one of social conformity where
moral agency proper first appeared. He was concerned to explain how this transition from
selfish to unselfish, and disinterested, conduct was possible. Morality seemed to require
some genuine acts of self-sacrifice. But how could self-sacrifice be made to square with
personal self-realization which controlled the dynamics of moral development? How can
we realize ourselves by sacrificing ourselves?
He dealt with the same theme in his article, “The Limits of Individualism and National
Self-Sacrifice,” in 1879, and again in another article, “Is Self-Sacrifice an Evil?,” in
1883. He had also intended to add a further note on the topic for the second edition of
Ethical Studies but he failed to do so.3 In these articles, and in Appearance and Reality,
Bradley argued that genuine self-sacrifice must involve some real cost to the agent. If self-
sacrifice always furthered the agent’s well-being there would be no true self-sacrifice. We
can act benevolently, if doing so would involve no cost to ourselves, or if it furthered our
own well-being. We can even sacrifice some things if the cost is little. But when a major
loss of well-being is involved, how can this be justified on moral grounds? For example:
Someone sacrifices their life to save the life of another. What we laud as the supreme
sacrifice. The sacrifice involves the agent’s premature death. Premature death is surely
an evil, hence the sacrifice was evil. Since all genuine sacrifices involve evil they cannot
be justified on moral grounds. Self-sacrifice violates the Pauline Principle of never doing
evil in order to do good. Ordinary morality accepts both a duty to the self to strive for
perfection, and a duty of benevolence towards others. But when self-interest and
benevolence conflict it normally requires self-sacrifice and condemns selfishness, and this
appears inconsistent.
The paradox of self-sacrifice presents a serious problem for a theory like Bradley’s
which holds that the supreme principle of morality is self-realization or the harmonious
development of the self. So too does self-assertion. When we act selfishly, our self-
assertion often involves some real cost to others and this is also morally unacceptable. It
is morally permissible to pursue our own good, provided it costs others, little, or nothing.
But if we take some person’s life in order to further our own ends this is clearly evil, and
morally unacceptable. Selfishness, like self-sacrifice, violates the Pauline Principle of
never doing evil in order to do good. If we cannot reconcile personal self-development
with our social responsibilities, as self-sacrifice, and selfishness, suggest, then the
principle of self-realization is self-defeating, and untenable. As we mature morally we
recognize that morality is not exhausted by living simply in terms of community values.
It also involves a commitment to social progress and personal self-development. The
adult moral agent tries to harmonize his social and personal life into a single whole which
is as rich and integrated as possible. The higher stages (Personalism and
Religious/Metaphysical stages) in our moral development are marked by tension between
duties to the self and duties to others, in which self-sacrifice can no longer automatically
take precedence. The principle of self-realization commits us both to self-development
and self-sacrifice. As Bradley says:
An individual system, aimed at in one’s self, and again the subordination of one’s own
development to a wide-embracing end, are each an aspect of the moral principle. So far as
they are discrepant, these two pursuits may be called, the one self-assertion, and the other
self-sacrifice. And, however much these diverge, you cannot say that one is better than the
other. (AR 367)
Bradley doesn’t think that our duties to ourselves and our duties to others always
conflict. Normally they don’t. To a large extent, by pursuing the good of others, with no
thought of the ourselves, we can secure our own welfare, and by pursuing our own good,
with no thought of others, we can secure the general welfare. We can realize ourselves
through the development of both the social and personal virtues and normally these
compliment each other, but there are occasions when they conflict. As Bradley says:
To a very large extent by taking no thought about his individual perfection, and by aiming
at that which seems to promise no personal advantage, a man secures his private welfare.
We may, perhaps, even say that in the main there is no collision between self-sacrifice and
self-assertion, and that on the whole neither of these, in the proper sense, exists for
morality. But while admitting or asserting to the full the general identity of these aspects,
I am here insisting on the fact of their partial divergence. And that, at least in some aspects
and with some persons, these two ideals seem hostile no sane observer can deny. (AR 367)
Still self-development does not always mean living for the self with no thought of
others. Nor does self-sacrifice always mean living for others with no thought of the self.
Not unlike some Egoists, Bradley believed that the best way to promote the public good
is to pursue one’s own good. He also believed, unlike some Egoists, that the best way to
promote our self-interest is to promote the public good. As Bradley says:
The whole is furthered most by the self-seeking of its parts, for in these alone can it appear
and be real. And the part again is individually bettered by its action for the whole, since thus
it gains the supply of that common substance which is necessary to fill it. (AR 370)
Bradley, like many Egoists, holds that ultimately there can be no real conflict of
interest. The principle of self-realization implies that there can be no genuine conflict of
interest. The principle requires the moral agent to pursue a life which is as rich and
harmonious as possible both at the personal and social level. This would be impossible
Bradley on Conflict o f Interest 71
if our duties to ourselves and others were truly incompatible. If the moral universe is
rational then there cannot be any incommensurable moral dilemmas. Bradley is commit
ted to the view that the moral universe is rational. As Bradley says: “Now that this
divergence ceases, and is brought together in the end is most certain. For nothing is
outside the Absolute, and in the Absolute there is nothing imperfect” (AR 371 ).
There cannot be any ultimate conflict of interest. Again like many Egoists, Bradley
held that what we perceive as conflicts between the public good and private interests are
appearance and not reality. The Egoist, of course, is defending the principle of universal
egoism, i.e. everyone ought to act in their own self-interest, and not the principle of self-
realization. Universal egoism would be incoherent, and thus untenable, if conflicts of
interest really existed. Consider a chess game. If one player A, makes a move X, he will
checkmate his opponent B, and win the championship, and the money and fame which
accompany it. Move X is clearly in A ’s interest but not in B ’s interest. So both players
cannot sincerely assent to the proposition that “B ought to make move X.”
One way to save universal egoism is to deny that there are any real conflicts of
interest. This is the strategy many Egoists adopt. They argue that each person in pursuing
their own self-interest, indirectly and unwittingly, promote the public interest. Thus an
unintended consequence of everyone pursuing their own good is the promotion of the
public good. The defence depends on the claim that in practice any conflict of interest can
be shown to be apparent rather than real. We might be able to show that this is true in
some cases. For example we could argue that playing chess at a championship level is
perhaps more important than winning a competition in which both competitors are trying
their best to win. Its the game, not winning which really matters. But Bradley does not
think that in practice we can always do so. He says: “But, on the other hand, this general
coincidence is only general, and assuredly there are points at which it ceases. And here
self-assertion and self-sacrifice begin to diverge, and each acquires its distinctive
character” (AR 370).
Can someone who gives their life to benefit others be said to be acting in their own
self-interest? Here Bradley parts company with the Egoist. Theoretically there can still
be no genuine conflict of interest for Bradley, but in practice we encounter moral
dilemmas which cannot be resolved by human agents. Bradley holds that the conflict
between self-assertion and self-sacrifice can never be completely resolved by morality
alone. Humans are finite creatures with limited power and understanding so they can
never reach perfection. And all societies are imperfect as well. The fact that societies and
social institutions require self-sacrifice from the individuals which compose them to reach
their goals is proof of this. If societies were perfect, no sacrifice would be required. The
conflict can only be resolved by going beyond morality proper (Stage Three: Personalism)
and transforming it into a religious or metaphysical problem. Morality must develop
beyond itself to a religious / metaphysical perspective in which the moral agent comes to
terms with human finitude (Stage Four: Religious / Metaphysical). Here we have reached
the supererogatoiy world of saints and heroes, where self-sacrifice appears to be accepted
as a duty. As Bradley says: “The problem can be solved only when the various stages and
appearance of morality are all included and subordinated in a higher form of being” (AR
386).4
From the religious / metaphysical perspective goodness and evil are seen as mutually
dependent. Everything in the universe is sacred. Even evil must paradoxically be good.
Good and evil are recognized as different aspects of the same process of individual
development. There can be no goodness without evil because evil is discord, and it is
discord which fuels the process of moral growth, creating the desire for harmonious
being. Human beings abhor chaos as nature abhors a vacuum! As Bradley says: “If
goodness as such is to remain, the contradiction cannot quite cease, since a discord, we
saw, was essential to goodness” (AR 388).5 Similarly there can be no evil without
goodness, because discord possesses no ordering principle. “The content of the bad self
has no principle, and forms no system, and is relative to no end” (ES 280).
Evil is essentially anarchical, and is parasitic on good. The relation between goodness
and evil is asymmetrical rather than symmetrical. Goodness is a necessary condition of
the existence of evil, but evil, although it is a necessary condition of moral development,
is not a necessary condition of goodness as such. The religious/ metaphysical perspective
alters our understanding of morality and provides a potential intellectual solution to the
paradox of self-sacrifice but it does not alter moral practice in any fundamental way. At
the practical level the problem of the conflict between duty and self-interest remains.
From the moral point of view we must always try to get rid of evil hence we must strive
to eliminate self-sacrifice, as well as selfishness. As Bradley says: “From the moral point
of view, evil and with it self-sacrificing virtue are both undesirable; we must look at them
as things which ought not to be.”6
Conflicts between duties to the self and duties to others must be solved by appeal to
the principle of self-realization. If acting benevolently produces self development, creates
a richer more integrated personality, then it is right to act benevolently. If acting prudently
produces self-development, then it is morally right to act self-interestedly. To repeat the
principle of self-realization commits us to the view that moral universe is rational. In a
rational moral universe there can be no real conflict of interest. Bradley accepts the
Egoist’s doctrine of harmony at the theoretical if not the practical level. Bradley’s analysis
of conflict of interest has important consequences for both theoretical and practical ethics.
It provides a way for harmonizing Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism and produces a
methodology which helps resolve conflicts of interest.
Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism are often used to resolve conflict of interest
dilemmas. We can legitimately maintain that these theories represent the abstract
expression of what Bradley identified in our moral experience as “self-assertion” and
“self-sacrifice.” These theories have been developed in different ways in recent moral
philosophy but there is no agreement among professional moral philosophers as to which
form is the best Without further argument I shall assume that the universal forms of these
theories are the most defensible.7
Briefly, Ethical Egoism maintains that everyone ought to act selfishly, while the
Ethical Altruist maintains that everyone ought to act altruistically. The egoist believes that
we ought to be solely concerned with our own well-being and not with the well-being of
others. Whether we are accommodating, hostile, or indifferent to others will depend on
whether doing so will further our interests. We have no obligations to others, even those
in need, unless it can be shown that acting benevolently will further our own interests or
Bradley on Conflict o f Interest 73
the interest of those close to us on which our well-being depends. For the egoist, the
agent’s well-being is the sole intrinsic good. The well-being of others is only instrumen-
tally good. Others are not ends-in-themselves but are merely means to the agent’s good.
The central virtue of the Egoist is self-reliance. Let each one look after themselves and
the devil take the hindmost.
On the other hand the altruist holds that we ought to be primarily concerned with the
well-being of others rather than with our own well-being. Whether we are accommodat
ing or indifferent to ourselves will depend on whether doing so will further the interests
of others. For the altruist the well-being of others is the sole intrinsic good, the well-being
of the agent is largely instrumentally good. The moral agent is a means to the good of
others and not an end-in-itself.
Most of us recognize a natural obligation to help others in need, when there is little
or no cost to the self. A child drops her ball into a pool of water in a public park. The pool
is too deep for her to retrieve her ball, so she asks someone to help. He refuses to do so
because he does not want to get his shoes muddy and wet, and walks off leaving the little
girl in her distress. Normally we would be outraged if we had witnessed such mean
behaviour. But for the altruist the obligation of benevolence holds even when the cost to
the agent is very high. Hence the supreme sacrifice, giving one’s life for another’s well
being, The central virtue of the altruist is self-sacrifice.
Ethical Egoism is open to several obvious objections, which the Ethical Altruist is
quick to point out8First it implies that we must be totally self-reliant, however no one can
be totally self-reliant because no one is omnipotent. We all need the help of others to
some degree. Secondly in a purely selfish society in which we care little or nothing for the
well-being of others, human relationships become essentially manipulative. We use each
other as mere means to our own ends. There would be no true concern or respect for
others. Nor of course no real respect or concern for ourselves.
Ethical Altruism is also open to several obvious objections, which the Ethical Egoist
is quick to point out.9 First it implies that self-interested action is evil. Few of us would
be willing to accept the view that we have no duties to ourselves or no responsibility for
our own well-being. Secondly, Ethical Altruism implies Paternalism. It holds that we
have to be totally dependent on others for our own happiness. People are too stupid or
weak to be trusted with the responsibility of looking after themselves. Paternalism is self
destructive because it robs human agents of the self-confidence which is required to act
responsibly. Altruism is also incoherent because self-reliance is a necessary condition of
acting benevolently, as it is of acting self-interestedly. In order to act benevolently we
need to have some self-confidence in ourselves. Persons with low self-esteem will find
it as difficult to act benevolently as they would to act selfishly.
From Bradley’s Idealist perspective both theories are even more inadequate than these
criticisms suggest, because in each values which ought to be respected fail to find
adequate expression in our personal and social lives. Ethical Egoism abandons benevo
lence, and respect for others, while Ethical Altruism abandons self-development, and self-
respect Both theories then are deficient in significant ways. In each case important values
are sacrificed and our lives would be less morally rich than we would want if we adopted
either of them as our ethical guide. This should not surprise us because for both theories
duties to the self and duties to others are seen as externally, rather than internally, related
to each other. There is no intrinsic relationship between our well-being and the well
being of others. For the Egoist the well-being of others is only accidentally related to their
own. Their good has no intrinsic merit, it is only a means to our good. For the Altruist our
own well-being is only accidentally related to the well-being of others. Our good has no
intrinsic merit, it is only a means to the good of others.
For Bradley, on the other hand, the good of self and the good of others are intrinsi
cally related. The love of self and the love of others are mutually dependent. One who is
unable to love others is not very likely to be able to love themselves. One who does not
love themselves will not likely be able to love others. Self-respect and respect for others
are also intrinsically related and mutually dependent, for Bradley. One who has no self-
respect will not likely respect others, and one who is unable to respect others will not
likely be capable of self-respect. Benevolence, self-development and respect for persons,
must all be taken seriously in any comprehensive moral theory. This is clearly possible
within the theoretical framework of Bradley’s Idealism but clearly impossible within the
framework of either Ethical Egoism or Ethical Altruism.
Although Bradley was sceptical about the relevance of ethical theory for ethical
practice, I would argue that his theory has an important contribution to make to practical
ethics.10It provides us with a methodology for resolving conflicts of interest. If the moral
universe is rational then it follows that ultimately there can be no incommensurable moral
dilemmas. That they exist is a function of our finite existence, as Bradley rightly points
out. But in practice we must act as if there were rational solutions to all our moral
dilemmas. The presence of a conflict of interest is an indication that we have failed to
develop the appropriate personal and/or social structures which would resolve the
dilemma.
Adopting Bradley’s Idealist approach the moral agent is required to try and express
the conflicting interests of the self and others in more complex personality and social
structures. To resolve conflicts of interest we need to restructure our experience into
richer and more highly integrated states of affairs. This may not always be possible but
at least we know what to search for and what a solution would look like if we found one.11
Of course the methodology might not always lead to a resolution of the dilemma, but
at least it represents a more imaginative approach to our moral dilemmas than the self-
centred approach of Egoism, which negates the value of others, or the self-sacrificial, self-
righteous approach of Altruism, which negates the value of self. Even after using all the
creative thought and energy we can muster to resolve our moral problems, we may still
be faced with the prospect of self-sacrifice or the sacrifice of others. In these cases we
must do the lesser evil. Here we would be entering into the little understood world of
supererogation, which Bradley correctly recognized as the natural extension of the moral
world. And now we would be trying to understand the tragedy of our finite existence and
no longer trying to fully solve the dilemma from the moral point of view. For, as Bradley
noted, self-sacrifice is always an admission of moral failure.
No existing social organism secures to its individuals any more than imperfect good, and
in all of them self-sacrifice marks the fact of a failure in principle. (AR 373)
Bradley on Conflict o f Interest IS
Notes
1. F.H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality [AR], 2nd ed., 9th impression, corrected (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1930) 355-402. Bradley also developed a definition of good, and discussed
the principle of self-realization and the stages of moral development in the chapter.
2. F.H. Bradley, Ethical Studies [ES], 2nd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927) 251-312.
The transition referred to was from Stage One (Egotistic Hedonism) to Stage Two
(Institutionalism), which Bradley argued could not be accounted for by Utilitarian Association
Psychology. For a full account of Bradley’s developmental psychology see my Bradley ’s Moral
Psychology (Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 1987) 147-199 and 246-249.
3. F.H. Bradley, “The Limits of Individualism and National Self-Sacrifice,” and “Is Self-Sacrifice
an Evil?,” Collected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935); ES 309. In AR (footnote 1,
356), Bradley says that the theory of morality developed in Ethical Studies in the main still
expresses his opinions. He does think, however, that in the earlier work he had misrepresented
the truth, by arguing that all virtue is social virtue (AR 368). For this implies, falsely, that any
development of the individual which does not increase the welfare of society cannot be moral.
In AR, he admits that there are personal goals which sometimes involve the sacrifice of social
for private good. The claim that all virtue is social virtue is valid for Stage Two morality
(Institutionalism) but not for Stage Three morality (Personalism). This might have been the
modification he intended but failed to add to the second edition of ES.
4. See also my discussion of Bradley’s religious/ metaphysical stage of morality in Bradley’s
Moral Psychology, 173-179,234-241, and 248.
5. See also Bradley’s discussion o f“ Evil” in AR 175-180, and his discussion of the “bad self’
in ES 276-308.
6. Bradley, “The Limits of Individualism and National Self-Sacrifice,” Collected Essays, 131.
7. For a fuller discussion of Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism, see my Ethical Theory
(Toronto: TV Ontario, 1982) 16-23.
8. Ethical Theory 18-19.
9. Ethical Theory 20-21.
10. See Bradley, “Some Remarks on Punishment,” Collected Essays 163, and ES 193. See also
my Bradley ’s Moral Psychology, Ch. 1,20-36.
11. See my “Towards a Unified Theory of Ethics,” in Ethics and Justification, ed. D. Odegard
(Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1988) 173. See also my Creative Morality
(London: Routledge, 1993).
Taylor & Francis
5 F.H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of
Feeling and the Theory of Relations1
JAMES BRADLEY
Introduction
It is of course Chapters II and III of Appearance and Reality1which offer the classical
expression of Bradley’s doctrine of relations and which, for some ninety years, have been
the centre of critical attention—the point from which the rest of that work, and indeed the
whole of Bradley’s metaphysics, is usually approached. But without denying the text its
due importance, my general concern here will be to argue that such a weight of emphasis
is seriously misplaced. To be sure, to misinterpret Bradley here is to misunderstand much
of what follows in AR. Yet it is equally the case that commentators and critics alike have
been singularly myopic in their handling of these chapters. Not only have they overlooked
the fact that throughout Bradley closely engages the views of contemporary thinkers, but,
above all, they have ignored the presence there and elsewhere in Bradley’s work of his
theory of feeling or immediate experience.
In his theory of feeling Bradley denies that sensation is atomistic in nature. He
maintains, rather, that it is a non-discrete continuum of sense-contents. And this allows
him to agree with idealists such as T. H. Green at least on the negative point that there is
no such thing as the immediate apprehension or direct knowledge of particulars. So
understood, I shall refer to this aspect of Bradley’s theory as his ‘epistemic’ account of
feeling; as we shall see, it plays an important role in Section 1 of AR Ch. III.
Bradley does not, however, regard feeling as the merely indeterminate starting-point
of thought; unlike Bosanquet, for instance, he does not hold it to be completely assimila
ble in the process of cognition. Instead, he maintains feeling to be a precognitive and
hence nonrelational unity of subject and object, in which idea and existence, the ‘what’
and the ‘that,’ are as yet undifferentiated and form “one integral whole” (AR 156), “a
knowing and being in one” (ETR 159). By thus endowing feeling with a complex unity
of its own as a “many-in-one” (cf. ETR 174), Bradley attempts to secure the distinction
of thought and existence against the rationalist idealism of his contemporaries.3
As such a unity, feeling is an actual level of experience for Bradley, but not in any
psychological sense.4 Far from being an event or stage in the history of the mind, the
actuality of feeling resides in the fact that it is the permanent “background” (AR 199,
461) or “condition” (ETR 176) of identifiable events and as such does not itself occur or
exist.5Hence feeling is not for Bradley a mental or psychological or subjective entity; as
the common root of all the contents of the objective world, it is neither subjective nor
objective in nature (cf. AR 128).
So understood, Bradley expresses the nonrelational unity of feeling in different ways:
either in terms of the “presented subject” (AR 155), i.e. the distinguishable particular
taken as a given ‘this’ or term or quality prior to its relational differentiation, or in terms
of the general character of experience prior to its relational differentiation. Indeed,
Bradley will sometimes use the ‘this’ in both senses at once (cf. AR 199,201,405; PL
659). But whichever mode of expression he employs depends—as we shall see—on the
nature of the argument in which he is engaged. In what follows I shall distinguish these
two modes of expression as, respectively, Bradley’s “metaphysical given” and his
“metaphysical substratum”; and we will find that in both guises feeling plays a fundamen
tal role in his treatment of relations. After all, as he himself says, whatever the difficulties
the theory of feeling might bring with it, in his view the relational form “would cease to
be” unacceptable “only if the immediacy of feeling could be shown to be merely rela
tional” (ETR 190). Once we recognize it is exactly that point which Bradley is making
in his critique of relations—both in AR and elsewhere—then, I believe, it will at long last
be possible to recover the real nature and purport of his metaphysics, even if, so dense
has the overlay of critical discussion become, only the major areas of confusion can here
be taken into account.
Internal Relations
One term is internally related to another if in the absence of the relation it could not be
what it is. One term is externally related to another if the relation could equally be present
or absent while the term remains the same. And in respect of Bradley’s treatment of this
distinction in AR II and ID, two very different views prevail. On the one hand we are told
that there Bradley is bent mainly on providing a proof for the doctrine of internal
relations; or, more specifically, that he is trying to secure the view that all relations are
internal relations by means of a logically undeniable argument, i.e. one which is inde
pendent of any particular metaphysical premise.6 On the other hand it is said that he
merely assumes that doctrine.7
Such a divergence of opinion suggests that neither party has got to the bottom of the
matter. And this is indeed the case. For in Bradley’s view the doctrine of internal relations
neither requires independent proof of its own, nor is it an axiom which he takes for
granted at the outset. Rather, we shall find that it is a consequence of the epistemic
account of feeling and in Ch. Ill, Section 1 is expounded as such, in terms that make it
quite clear that Bradley regards the main issue as having already been decided in the
post-Kantian tradition, particularly as represented in England by T.H. Green. In any case,
Bradley is quite unequivocal as to what his central concern is in these chapters: namely,
to show that relations are “theoretically unintelligible” (AR 21 ), i.e. that no “intelligible”
(AR 16) account is possible of the nature of the connections we find in the world.
Now in Chapters II and ID, admittedly, Bradley neither explicitly lays out his general
view of what intelligibility or intellectual satisfaction consists of, nor does he offer any
justification of it as a legitimate concern in philosophy. Those few pages—it needs to be
said—do not constitute the whole of his work and have to be viewed (as will emerge) in
the light of considerations he deals with elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently obvious
that Bradley is seeking for a theory of relations which will provide an adequate account
of the nature of the bond between terms and relations. So for present purposes let us
accept that the question of intelligibility or satisfaction is legitimate at least as a general
Bradley 's Metaphysics o f Feeling 79
philosophical question. In the context of AR II and III, and in view of the veritable babel
of interpretation that has grown up around those chapters, the more pressing task is to
determine what the question means there and whether or not it should be there at all.
Internal Relations and AR II
As will become evident, it is of some importance that the ways Bradley puts the question
of intelligibility in AR II and III be carefully distinguished. Here, indeed, Chapters I and
II of AR are best regarded as critical preliminaries, clearing a way to the question as it
will be put in Chapter III.
Bradley’s procedure in AR I and II can be defined as typological in nature; in other
words, he provides a brief and highly selective reading of philosophical debate on the
nature of objects and their characters or qualities up to his own day. He does not attempt
to treat his topics exhaustively, nor on the whole does he seem to be anticipating
disagreement with the points he makes. So having “easily” (cf. AR 9) dealt with the
theory of primary and secondary qualities in Chapter I, he moves on in Chapter II to deal
with “Substantive and Adjective.”
Bradley begins with a discussion of the Lockean notion of a substance and its
adjectives or properties (AR 16). And having made the familiar objection—that when
“we inquire what there can be in the thing besides its qualities we are baffled” (AR
16)—he moves on to consider the phenomenalist view of things as proper-
ties-without-substances (AR 17). Here he again remains on conventional ground; the
properties cannot be “identical with the thing” in the sense that they cannot, as properties,
merely be identical with their relations to one another. Bradley then considers the notion
of attributes, and rejects it on the grounds that to substitute ‘has’ for ‘is’ is of no help
here. Admittedly, he has at this point been accused of conflating the ‘is’ of predication
with the ‘is’ of identity. But whatever merits such a charge may have in relation to his
metaphysics as a whole—and it will become evident it has none—as leveled at this
particular chapter in AR it is mere over-interpretation. For he says only that the notion
of attribution is merely a metaphor for, and not an explanation of, the relational unity, i.e.
the question of the unity of the different attributes remains, and hence the ‘old dilemma’
of the Lockean substance still stands. And if this is not already enough to suggest that
Bradley is not making any unusual moves here, it should be noted that he now goes on to
present a contemporary empiricist account of the connection between a thing and its
properties precisely as an attempt to avoid the Lockean ‘dilemma.’ So it would hardly
seem likely that at this point he would regard himself as doing anything more than stating
generally acknowledged difficulties.
The doctrine which Bradley proceeds to discuss he calls that of “independent”
relations. From this point onwards in AR II the extent to which his treatment of relations
is embedded in contemporary debates could not be more evident. For this doctrine was
advanced by two of the most eminent philosophical thinkers of the day—Herbert Spencer
and T. H. Huxley. Moreover, it was based on a theory of sensation diametrically opposed
to Bradley’s own.
In his Principles o f Psychology Spencer maintains that a relation is “itself a kind of

feeling—the momentary feeling accompanying the transition from one conspicuous
feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling.” He claims that as such qualitative character
is “appreciable.”8 He is supported in this view by T. H. Huxley in his Hume, who, with
characteristic bravado, proclaims it to be a proper clarification of (what he thinks is)
Kant’s objection to Hume, viz., that discrete sensations are not the only “materials of
thought.” On this basis he sets about amending Hume’s “geography of the mind,” and
adds to the “primary elements of consciousness” what he calls “impressions of
relations.”9
Bradley first discusses this position in PL Chapter II (96) where he refers explicitly
to Huxley’s Hume. What he says in PL is more or less identical with his remarks in AR:
namely, that to take relations as independent feelings or qualities is to ignore their nature
as relations, with the result that they contradictorily require other relations to relate them
to their terms. With reference to Spencer and Huxley the objection is, I think, irrefragable.
But it is presented in AR II in a way that is not without significance.
For there Bradley draws on Lotze’s critique of relations. Lotze claims that taken as
“third ideas” which stand “between” their terms, relations fail to render intelligible the
actual connectedness of their terms. He concludes that relations subsist “not between a
and b [...] but rather in them, as an influence which they reciprocally exert upon and
receive from each other” (author’s italics).10Now not only does Bradley himself employ
Lotze’s spatial metaphor of ‘between,’ but he also agrees that a relation “must be
something which appears in its terms” (AR 18) and so cannot be treated as an independ
ent, term-like entity alongside the thing that it relates. Moreover, Bradley goes on to draw
the same conclusion as Lotze: “A relation between^ and B implies really a substantial
foundation within them” (AR 18). Just what Bradley understands this foundation to be he
will shortly make clear. But he does so by way of a critique of Lotze’s account of its
nature.
For Lotze, the fact that relations must somehow subsist ‘in’ their terms and cannot be
‘between’ them implies that “the thought of an objective connection between things is
altogether impossible, and that what we used to call by this name is in all cases some state
or action in things themselves.”11 All relations, in other words, are nothing more than the
“appearance” which the world “assumes for each of its parts which is capable of having
anything whatever presented to it.”12 The reality of which relations are the appearance is
in fact nothing else than the states or inner conditions of monad-like beings, which states
“as soon as they exist, are the direct producing cause of some fresh inner condition in a
second being” in virtue of “an Infinite that unites them as one substance.”13
At least one reason for Bradley’s rejection of Lotze’s uneasy combination of monad-
ism and monism is made clear in AR II: Bradley regards Lotze’s all-containing monads
or wholes of qualities and relations as no more than an unsatisfactory compound of both
substantialism and phenomenalism; “It consists in saying to the outside world, ‘I am the
owner of these my adjectives,’ and to the properties, ‘I am but a relation, which leaves
you at your liberty’” (AR 19). Having thus put aside the most recent theory of relation in
the German tradition, Bradley states his own view of the “substantial foundation” or
“whole” (AR 18) or “real unity” (AR 19) which, at least at the initial stage of experience,
Bradley ’s Metaphysics o f Feeling 81
binds terms and their qualities together; it is not the Lotzean monad or Infinite, but the
“immediate unity” (AR 19) of feeling.
The significance of Bradley’s reference to the theory of feeling at this point becomes
apparent in Chapter ID. It is worth noting here, however, that having given Lotze’s ‘third
idea’ critique a restricted bearing in terms of the Spencer-Huxley theory of feeling, it
seems unlikely (contrary to the usual views on the matter) that Bradley will mount a
Lotze-type critique of the intelligibility of relations in the following chapter. But let us
turn to AR III itself.
Chapter III of Appearance and Reality
Previous Views
C. D. Broad has no doubts as to the meaning of the question which Bradley puts to
relations in AR III. “Is there any valid objection to there being relations?” he asks, and
considers the chapter in that light.14 But of course the question is not Bradley’s. For
Bradley does not deny that there are such things as relations. Rather, he regards
relations—for reasons which will emerge—as the essential character of ideal or reflective
experience. His question concerns only the intelligibility of relations.
Broad would however reply that this is only apparently the case; that in fact there is
more going on in his discussion of relations than Bradley would like to admit. For Broad
claims that in AR III Bradley treats relations “as if they were particulars like the terms
they relate”15and that only on these grounds is he able to go on to maintain that a relation
requires another relation to relate it to its terms, thus engendering the infinite regress. In
other words, Broad holds that Bradley can deny the existence of relations only because
he does not consider them as relations but as independent entities. And this is clearly an
argument “which would disgrace a child or a savage.”16
Broad’s account is, however, but a variant of a particular interpretation of AR III that
has achieved almost canonical status. For a whole line of critics of various philosophical
persuasions maintain that the objections which Bradley brings against the intelligibility
of relations would be valid only if relations did not fulfil the fonction of relating—in
which case they would not be relations.
Some, although they do not suggest with Broad that Bradley denies the existence of
relations, nevertheless agree that he can treat relations as unintelligible only because he
supposes them to be separate, independent qualities or third terms.17 They maintain that
while Bradley indeed eschews the (sensationalist) theory of independent relations, the
question of the intelligibility of relations—which by their very nature relate—can only
result from treating them as independent term-like entities whose relational form
consequently requires justification. Of course, they do not deny that the fact of relation,
or some given phenomenon of attachment, might be held to require explanation and might
be explained in different ways. It could be claimed, for instance, that what is needed is a
theory of specific attachments which will tell us what can be attached to what. Yet such
a theory would not query the fact of relation, but provide an account of it. It would not
illegitimately put the relatedness of relations to the question but, accepting relations to be
such, would try to show what kind of attachments a term is capable of forming.18 In
contrast, Bradley’s denial of independent relations in AR II merely serves to hide the fact
that the contradictions generated in AR III rest on the tacit assumption that relations are
qualities and do not of themselves fulfil the function of relating. Independent relations
may be formally denied in AR II, but they are in fact the basis of Bradley’s critique of
relations in AR ID. Only by means of this illegitimate ploy is the question of intelligibility
as addressed to relations given any purchase in AR III.
Other critics either deny or do not consider the view that Bradley’s position is a result
of taking relations as independent of their terms. Nevertheless, they concur in maintaining
that relations relate whatever their nature; in other words, that both internal and external
relations are patent facts for which no justification is required. A relation that is such
needs no further grounding as a relation. Thus, from the start, they maintain that the
inherent relatedness of relations rules out of court the question of intelligibility; any
relational fact is as such satisfactory.19
In consequence, all parties would maintain that Bradley’s formal rejection of
independent relations in AR II does not leave the theory of internal relations discussed in
AR III as the sole remaining alternative, and that Bradley’s argument in these chapters
is in fact based on a false or non-exclusive disjunction.20For Bradley nowhere considers
external relations in their proper sense, i.e. as relations which are not independent, third
terms precisely because as relations they do relate. Rather, he identifies them with
independent relations. And he can do this only because he overlooks the fact that the
objections he brings against relations are valid only if they are not treated as relations. In
short, he can condemn relations as unintelligible because he treats them as if, absurdly,
they had no relating power.
Hence AR Chapter HI is generally regarded as a nest of unwarranted assumptions and
gratuitous confusion; Bradley denies the theory of independent relations while tacitly
treating relations as independent throughout and thus rendering them unintelligible in any
form The only reason he has for putting the question of intelligibility to relations is that
he ignores their nature as relations.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The sport of accusing Bradley of making
assumptions in AR III owes its immense popularity among commentators to their own
assumption that in a brief chapter of eight-and-a-half pages he lays the foundation of his
entire metaphysic. To be sure, it must be admitted that by placing Chapter III at the outset
of AR, Bradley invited such misapprehension. But even so, an accurate reading of
Chapter III indicates that Bradley’s assumptions are at least not those of which he is
accused. That the organization of AR does not reflect the order of thought which sustains
that work is clearly indicated in the text itself.
AR Chapter III, Section 1
At the very outset of AR III Bradley leaves us in no doubt as to how, in his view, the
question of intelligibility arises in respect of relations taken as other than independent. For
relations, as AR II has shown, cannot be treated as atomistic ‘givens’: the given is the
immediate unity of nonrelational feeling. In consequence, the relational form is not “a

unique way of being which the reality possesses and which we have got merely to receive.
For it most evidently has ceased to be something quite immediate” (AR 21). Thus
relations cannot merely be assumed to be endowed with relating power. Though that
assumption may be necessary “in practise” (AR 21 ), in metaphysics it has to be justified.
As Bradley later puts the same point: “A thing, for example, with its adjectives can never
be simply given [...] We have an intellectual product, to be logically justified if indeed
that could be possible, and most certainly we have not a genuine datum” (AR 503).
To be sure, it is possible to grant what might be called the formal legitimacy of the
question ‘How do relations relate?,’ and yet also maintain that the question immediately
answers itself: relations relate in virtue of their nature as relations. In this respect, indeed,
Green or Blanshard, for example, would be at one with Russell or Moore; the relating
power of relations is held to be an entailment of the fact that there are relations insofar as
the obvious connectedness of things would otherwise remain inexplicable, i.e. insofar as
experience is not thought to afford any other form of connectedness. But this is not the
case with Bradley; he maintains that in feeling we have the experience of unity. And this
renders the question ‘How do relations relate?' much more than merely formal. For once
granted that we experience another form of unity besides the relational, then the fact that
there are relations no longer entails that the relational form relates in virtue of any relating
power of its own. That has now to be demonstrated.
For Bradley, therefore, any recourse to the entailment argument merely begs the
question at issue. At the same time, however, he will attempt in AR III to show that the
nature of the relational form is itself such that it lacks any relating power. In order to see
how he does this, the contexts in which Bradley sets his argument, and the way he goes
about establishing the terms of reference in which he will work, have to be specified. So
let us turn to AR III, Section 1, where Bradley presents his own account of relations as
internal.
Throughout Section 1 Bradley keeps two things firmly in view: the monadism of
Herb art and Lotze and the role played by the ‘given’ in any doctrine of relations (cf.
289n.). The latter concern is evident from the start. For we now discover that qualities as
well as relations are not directly known as such. After proposing the thesis that there are
no such things as “qualities without relations,” Bradley goes on: “In the field of con
sciousness, even when we abstract from the relations of identity and difference, they are
never independent” (AR 22). In other words, even apart from any special considerations
drawn from metaphysics, he would maintain that “One quality is together with, and
related to, one other, at the least—in fact, always to more than one” (AR 22).
There is of course nothing in this statement which an externalist would deny, for it is
no more than an empirical claim about the contents of consciousness. Nevertheless, it has
a sting in its tail. For Bradley immediately proceeds to counter a possible objection based
upon “an appeal to a lower and undistinguished state of mind”; he points out that in
feeling as such there are no “qualities proper,” i.e. discrete and independent terms which
are given as such. He is, in other words, referring to his epistemic account of feeling as
a non-discrete whole or continuum—feeling as “mere unbroken feeling” (AR 22).21 So
at this juncture it is evident that while Bradley’s theory of feeling is anti-atomistic, he at
least agrees with idealists such as Green that there is no such thing as the direct knowl
edge of given particulars.
That this is indeed the case becomes even clearer in the course of Bradley’s next
move, when the argument shifts from the empirical to the metaphysical level. He begins
(AR 22-3) by innocently noting that no-one will deny that the distinction of qualities or
terms involves relations, at least the relation of difference. In itself this is doubtless an
unexceptionable point; all parties to the relations debate would at least agree that
concepts are essentially contrastive in nature. After all, as Bradley emphasizes, it can still
be claimed that “the relation has existence only for us, and as a way of our getting to
know” (AR 23).
Here Bradley is referring not only to Lotze, but also to Herbart, who, while maintain
ing like Lotze that there is a plurality of monadic qualities outside of our relational mode
of apprehension, nevertheless holds that these qualities are absolutely simple and
self-identical, and, in consequence, that their differences are not relations at all. For
Herbart, different terms are actually different without relations or any relational activity
of thought, their differences being reducible to the simple natures of the terms. In his
view, that is, the world is composed of a plurality of simple and unchanging entities or
substances, which he calls “reals” (Realen’, cf. AR 25).22
There is little here which either Green or Bradley could endorse. This is made clear
by the way Bradley continues. For he responds with his notorious “process and product”
passage (AR 23). This is certainly no more than a largely negative series of assertions.
But what Bradley is asserting is that the question of the nature of qualities or relations
cannot be settled except in terms of a theory of the ‘given.’ That is, he asserts his view
that qualities or terms are not given as such; that therefore there are no identifiable
qualities or terms which are independent of our relational process of apprehension; and
that therefore all identifiable qualities or terms are relational in nature. The idealist denial
of immediate knowledge is, in other words, the position Bradley is expressing throughout.
The extent to which at this point he wants to be seen as standing alongside Green is
indicated by his insistence that, in the defence of any contrary position, “the burden lies
wholly on the assertor” (AR 23). Here he is almost quoting Green, who writes “But at any
rate one should think that the burden of proof lies with those who hold that relations exist
otherwise than as we know them to exist.”23 At this stage, then, Bradley is clearly
stressing his point of agreement with Green—that there is no such thing as the direct
knowledge of particulars. Here he is content, like Green, to defend the position nega
tively.
By now, then, the central issue is clear: “our question is really whether relation is
essential to differences” (AR 24). Bradley proceeds to argue that the differences between
terms cannot be treated as “absolute,” i.e. that they cannot be identified with the natures
of terms as by Herbart. For either the relation of difference between terms is distinct from
them and so cannot be identified with them (which Herbart would deny); or, if the relation
of difference be made wholly internal to the terms, then, inside these monadic terms we
now have to distinguish “their own quality and their otherness” (AR 24), i.e. they are no
longer monads. Here Bradley is clearly assuming that, there being no direct knowledge
of particulars, differences are constituted as such only by means of the relational mode of
apprehension. His endorsement of the idealist position in this respect is driven home
when, in the face of the objection that, while a plurality of qualities may well be relational
in nature, this is not true of any particular quality taken as such, he insists to the contrary
“if there is any difference, then that implies a relation” (AR 25), i.e. that there are no
identifiable qualities or terms outside our relational mode of apprehension.
As I see it, then, the doctrine of internal relations is for Bradley a consequence of the
view that there is no such thing as direct knowledge of given, atomic particulars. It is this
denial which gives the otherwise harmless point that we apprehend qualities or terms
relationally its especial sting. For if there is no direct knowledge of atomic data, then any
identifiable quality or term is an ideal construction, i.e. its identifiability or particularity
is not a matter of mere existence but of ideal differentiation. In consequence, all relations
are internal to their terms, for the terms—as ideal products—are nothing apart from any
of their relational differentiations.
As this position makes apparent, the doctrine of internal relations is for Bradley
neither an axiom which he takes for granted, nor is he attempting to offer a purely
“logical” proof of it. Rather, he defends it negatively, in terms of the idealist denial of
direct knowledge of particulars. Hence it cannot be said that Bradley is working in AR
IE in terms of a false or non-inclusive disjunction between relations taken as independent
and relations taken as internal. For once the doctrine of relational feelings is denied,
Bradley deploys the epistemic account of feeling; and it is this which excludes the notion
of external relations. In this light, indeed, it would hardly seem likely that in Sections 2
and 3 following in Chapter III, when Bradley develops his critique of the intelligibility of
internal relations, he might be guilty there of regarding relations as independent third
terms. For as Section 1 makes clear enough, Bradley does not deny the fact that there are
relations. Nor again does he deny the fact that terms are related and indeed related
internally. This is not only his argument in Section 1, but he himself reiterates at the end
of Chapter m that terms or qualities “certainly in some way are related” (AR 28; author’s
italics). It might be expected, then, that Bradley’s critique of relations will turn out to be
something different from what it is normally taken to be. But let us look closely at these
Sections themselves before deciding the issue.
AR Chapter 111\ Sections 2 and 3
In the course of his critique of internal relations in Sections 2 and 3 of AR III, Bradley
rejects not only Green’s rationalist identification of relations with Reality, but also
Hegel’s dialectic. Strangely, this latter move has caused no puzzlement among either
Bradley’s critics or his sympathizers—presumably on the grounds that, Hegel’s dialectic
being what it is, negative comments are only to be expected. So they quite happily see
Bradley as offering an Hegelian critique of the realm of Understanding, even while
refusing the possibility of any dialectical movement into Hegel’s realm of Reason. In
consequence, while it would be granted on all sides that Bradley maintains a
supra-relational conception of Reality, rather oddly his means of getting there is univer
sally regarded as unequivocally Hegelian or ‘intellectualist’ in character, i.e. the critique
of relations which entails that conception is held to rest on a metaphysically
presuppositionless, purely logical analysis of the deficiencies in our concepts—and to be

defective as such.24 It has, then, gone completely unnoticed that in Sections 2 and 3
Bradley deploys the anti-rationalist and more empiricist oriented aspects of his
thought—aspects which, once recognized, will allow us to distinguish his critique of
relations from anything that might be described as Hegelian or ‘intellectualist. ’
What Bradley is about in Section 2 could hardly be made more evident (pace the
commentators) than in the opening paragraph (AR 25-6). To the idealists Bradley grants
that in cognition “without distinction no difference is left”; indeed, he insists that “for
thought what is not relative is nothing.” But he nevertheless maintains: “for all that, the
differences will not disappear into the distinction,” i.e. the terms cannot be said to be
“constituted” by their ideal or relational distinction, or to be nothing outside of it. The
grounds on which he distinguishes between terms and their relational distinction is quite
explicit:25“They [the different terms] must come to it [the relational distinction], and they
cannot wholly be made by it.” Or elsewhere: “Thought cannot do without differences, but
on the other hand it cannot make them” (AR 501 ). In other words, Bradley grants that no
firm line (‘more or less’) can be drawn between what is ‘given’ and what is ‘made. ’ Yet
while on the one side a term can be known or identified only as it is relationally distin
guished or differentiated, on the other side it “cannot wholly be made by” but “must come
to” its ideal or relational differentiation. Or, as he puts it a little later on when speaking
of “relational perception”: “It has the feature of immediacy or self-dependence; for the
terms are given to it and not constituted by it” (AR 159).
Clearly, then, Bradley regards the term qua given as not itself relational in nature and
hence as irreducible to the relational form of thought. It is on this basis that he refrises to
move with Hegel from the realm of Understanding to that of Reason. Whether or not
Bradley has his own good grounds for suggesting (AR 25) that in Hegel’s dialectic terms
are reduced to their relations, can for the moment be left as an open question. The fact
that a term has a “double character”(AR 26) as both ‘given’ and ‘made’ in itself disbars
the reconciliation of these two aspects in any higher synthesis of dialectical logic, and
rules out the possibility of any identification of the rational with the Real.
For the term is “at once condition and result” (AR 26) as double-natured, i.e. it is at
once the ground of its relational differentiation qua ‘given’ and the consequence of its
relational differentiation qua object of knowledge. In the nature of the case,, the term qua
‘given’ can never be assimilated to, or identified with, the term qua object of knowledge.
Or, more specifically: as the term qua ‘given’ is nonrelational in nature, then the
connection between it and the term qua object of knowledge can never be rendered
intelligible because it cannot be rendered as a relation.26 As Bradley puts it, if our term
is A(a - a \ with a as the term qua ‘given’ and a as the term qua object of knowledge,
then not only has our term A turned out itself to be a diversity “somehow together as A(a
- a),” but, further, if we attempt to relate a to a—as we must if we are to render their
connection intelligible—then “We have got against our will, not a mere aspect, but a new
quality a, which itself stands in a relation; and hence (as we saw before with A) its content
must be manifold. As going into the relation [i. e. as ‘given’] it itself is a2, and, as
resulting from the relation it itself is a2 [i.e. as object of knowledge]” (AR 26).
In this fashion the search for an intelligible account of the bond between terms and
relations gets under way; and it is condemned to infinite regress because of the
nonrelational nature of the terms qua ‘given. ’ For the connection of the term qua object
of knowledge to the term qua ‘given’ can only be thought as a relation; but the term qua
‘given,’ as nonrelational, cannot in the nature of the case be connected to its possibilities
of relation by means of a relation; each aspect lies, so to speak, on the far side of the
other. It is this ‘diversity’ which is “fatal to the internal unity of each” (AR 27) and, as we
shall see, it is this ‘diversity’ which later in AR will be elaborated as the distinction
between ‘existence’ and ‘idea.’
As might be expected, in Section 3 Bradley has little trouble in reaching “the same
dilemma” (AR 27; my italics) from the side of relations as well as of terms. As he puts
it: “a relation without terms seems mere verbiage; and terms appear, therefore, to be
something beyond their relation,” (AR 27), i.e. to be more or other than their possibilities
of relation. Moreover, as all parties to the relations debate would agree, a relation is
‘something itself,’ i.e. it cannot be reduced either to an adjective or to a common property
of its terms. Yet a relation cannot itself be the bond which connects it to terms which are
more or other than their possibilities of relation, so “clearly we now shall require a new
connecting relation.” However, any attempt to determine the connection to that which is
more or other than relational by means of a relation would necessarily engender in the
relation the regress already elaborated from the side of the terms. Hence, while terms are
related, and related internally, we can only say that “in some way” (AR 28) are they so
related; for what has eluded us and must necessarily remain unintelligible is the bond that
connects the possibilities of relation. As Bradley later puts it: “the relation of sensible
qualities to their arrangements, the connexion of matter with form” remains “entirely
inexplicable” (AR 422; cf, 415).
Metaphysical Presuppositions and Bradley's Critique o f Relations
At this point I will not distract the reader with any elaborate analysis of the multifarious
criticisms which have been levelled at AR III, Section 2. The claim that Bradley fails to
perceive that ground and consequent refer unproblematically to the same feature of an
object,27 or that the relation between them is properly one of determinate to
determinable,28or that he is here treating identity as abstract identity,29 or that the meaning
of a proposition does not depend on its derivative characteristics30—these, I think, are
best left to themselves and passed by. What unites or underlies these criticisms, however,
is the more general view that Bradley’s critique of relations is metaphysically
presuppositionless in character, i.e. that it is based in a logical or purely internal defi
ciency in the concepts of terms and relations as such. As this view is also unanimously
shared by Bradley’s more sympathetic commentators, it is less likely to die the natural
death it so richly deserves. To help it on its way, it would perhaps be instructive to see
if the interpretation of AR III, Sections 2 and 3, which I have so far offered is borne out
by what Bradley says elsewhere in AR and in his other writings. Throughout what follows
I will not hesitate to quote extensively from the texts—both to enforce the point at issue
and to secure a hearing for an interpretation that on the standard readings is otherwise
unlikely to be given much credence.
1. Those who see Bradley’s arguments in Sections 2 and 3 as metaphysically
presuppositionless will above all be puzzled by the claim that the distinction he is
concerned with there is that between the term as ‘given’ and the term as ‘made. ’ Surely,
it will be said, his point is a purely logical one: namely, that the concepts of term and
relation are essentially contrastive in nature (i.e. they are not interchangeable with or
reducible to one another), and hence that a term cannot be identified with, or reduced to,
its relations or possibilities of relation. Rightly or wrongly, what Bradley does—so the
story runs—is to base his critique of relations on this conceptual point.
Yet a number of important considerations have been overlooked here. In the first
place—the theory of feeling having hitherto been so neglected—it perhaps needs
emphasizing that the difference between the term or quality qua ‘given’ and qua ‘made’
is not at all unusual or exceptional in Bradley’s writings. As he himself insists: “I have
great sympathy with the view that [...] characters are so developed as to be in a sense
constituted by distinction, but I cannot defend this view or identify myself with it.” Indeed,
he is prepared to go so far as to maintain that even a quality in feeling may already have
the character,/! o rB, which we find when afterwards quality proper is made by ‘distinc
tion.’ But his main point is clear enough: “Qualities exist [...] improperly as diverse
aspects of felt wholes, and then again properly as terms which are distinguished and
related” (AR 513). Now as we shall see, Bradley uses the distinction he makes here
between nonrelational ‘qualities’ and relational ‘terms’ to good effect in his later writings.
For the present, however, it is enough to notice that what he elsewhere calls the “this”
(AR 199) or “the aspect of datum” (ETR 204) should hardly take his readers by surprise,
so often does he recur to it; indeed, I will return below to the larger significance of what
he also terms the “immediacy” or “aspect of existence” of a “presented subject,” in which
“the aspects o f‘what’ and ‘that’ are not taken as divorced [...] it is given with its content
as forming one integral whole” (AR 156).
2. Even if it be granted, however, that in various places Bradley distinguishes between
the term or quality qua ‘given’ and qua ‘made,’ it could still after all be asked what direct
relevance this has to the distinction between terms and relations on which he bases his
critique of the relational form. Is it anything more than a general back-ground point?
This question must be answered in the negative. For, secondly, in his article “Con
sciousness and Experience,” published in the same year as AR, Bradley states that
“Terms are never constituted entirely by a relation or relations. There is a quality always
which is more than the relation, though it may not be independent of it” (ETR 193). This
point is made in the course of a somewhat complex argument; Bradley is engaged in
criticizing James Ward’s version of Kant’s transcendental ego as a unity which is prior
to experience.
Over against Ward’s position Bradley urges in the first place that nothing can be prior
to experience. In this context he maintains that in so far as “terms are more than their
relation,” then “the ‘more’ must be experienced or be nothing” (ETR 193). In the second
place, Bradley argues that the unity which Ward requires is provided by nonrelational
feeling—“a unity complex but without relations” where “the experienced and the
experience are one” (ETR 194)—and which in contrast to Ward’s ego he here calls the
“felt subject ” While Bradley freely admits that the theory of feeling is not without severe
difficulties, the conclusion he goes on to draw as to the sense in which terms are ‘more’
than their relation is clear enough. For once granted nonrelational feeling as the perma
nent background of the objective world,
the experienced is therefore always more than objects [...] Everything experienced is on one
side felt, and the experienced is, also in part, still no more than felt [...] The real subject, we
may say, is always felt. It can never become wholly an object, and it never, at any time and
in any case, ceases also to be felt (ETR 194-5; cf. 200).
Moreover, it is on this “same basis” that Bradley suggests “the difficulty of the relation
and its terms might [...] be dealt with, though naturally I cannot attempt to work this out
here” (ETR 195).
The difficulty Bradley here refers to is of course the difficulty of the connection
between the term qua given and its relations. He had earlier hinted that this difficulty
might turn out to be a matter of the kind of “underlying whole” required or implied by the
relational form (ETR 193). He now suggests that such a whole is “at once supplied by
feeling” (ETR 195). In other words, he suggests that once the ‘more’ of terms is
understood as nonrelational feeling the problem of the connection between the ‘more’ of
the term and the term’s relations can be resolved: what connects terms and relations is
not relational in nature. It is precisely this position which Bradley will maintain in AR.
To be sure, it is often suggested that in AR Chapter III and elsewhere Bradley is either
assuming or implying the ridiculous view that relations do not relate, i.e. that they are not
relations. But in fact his point is that while relations indeed approximate to or “inade
quately express” (AR 125) actual connections, these connections are not relational in
nature. So relations do relate for Bradley, but not because they themselves have any
relating power. Rather, relations relate only in virtue of the nonrelational unity of feeling.
Far from constituting the connections we find in the world, it is upon the nonrelational
unity of feeling that the relational form depends (cf. AR 125, 201, 522; ETR 200, 231 &
n., 239; PL 695-696; CE 658).
3. In the third place, the usual accounts given of AR III are guilty of overlooking an
important contextual factor to which Bradley explicitly refers there—namely, the
distinction between his own analysis of the relational form and Hegel’s “dialectical
method” (AR 26).
Bradley’s objection to Hegel’s dialectic is clear enough; he maintains that Hegel
reduces terms to relations, i.e. that he regards terms wholly as products of their relational
differentiation. The basis for this objection has already been noted above—it is the
“quality in feeling” (AR 514) or term qua ‘given’ which renders terms irreducible to their
relations or possibilities of relation. Indeed, this is the criticism which Bradley explicitly
makes of the dialectical method in PL. For there he maintains that Hegel’s account of
differences as wholly determined by their negations (PL 121) denies the “positive” (PL
122) nature of qualities as they appear “in presentation” (PL 114; cf. 115), and hence
mistakenly treats the contrary “as simply contrary” and not as “partially contrary” (PL
150). For Bradley, in other words, Hegel analyzes difference as no more than the product
of conceptual contrariety. Hegel, in his view, thus overlooks the fact that, as data given
in feeling, “both sides of the correlation are positive,” and that in consequence each
negates the other not by way of mere conceptual contrariety but “from the ground of its
positive counterpart” qua datum (PL 410).31 To be sure, by the time of AR, Bradley’s
critique of Hegel’s dialectic is no longer tied in with the account of negation as a “floating
idea” offered in PL. But that this does not affect his view of Hegel is indicated by the
remarks made in AR III.
Once the nature of Bradley’s objection to the dialectical method as a whole is
recognized, it becomes possible to distinguish between his critique of relations and that
offered by Hegel as he understands him. Both make the same point: namely, that it is the
irreducibility of terms and relations which renders the relational form incapable of
providing an intelligible account of the connectedness of things. To this extent Bradley
later readily acknowledges his debt to Hegel (CE 653, n. 1). But the difference is of
course that whereas for Hegel (as Bradley understands him) it is the contrastive nature
of the concepts of term and relation at the level of Understanding which both constitutes
their irreducibility and condemns the relational form to unintelligibility, for Bradley in AR
HI it is the nonrelational ‘felt’ or ‘positive’ quality of the terms qua ‘given’ which does
so.
4. thisAt point, however, the ‘intellectualist’ interpreter of Bradley might well see his
chance and seize it. What grounds are there, he might ask, to think that Bradley’s
acknowledgement of debt to Hegel in CE is anything but an unqualified admission that,
like Hegel, his critique of relations is based on the conceptual irreducibility or contrastive
nature of term and relation? Furthermore, when the late “Relations” essay is taken into
account, surely it is quite obvious that there Bradley’s condemnation of relations (CE
635-636) is lifted directly and almost to the point of quotation from Hegel?
But such claims are by no means as convincing as they might appear at first sight.
After all, what Bradley takes from other thinkers he takes on his own grounds and for his
own reasons—as will shortly be noted with respect to the theory of feeling itself. Enough
evidence has perhaps been presented to indicate that this is as true of AR III as it is
elsewhere. However, the “Relations” essay certainly deserves separate consideration. For
here—in the fourth place—Bradley indeed develops a different kind of argument against
relations—one which is characteristic of his later writings and has not, I think, hitherto
been properly understood.
At first glance, admittedly, Bradley’s critique of relations in the late essay has all the
appearance of a logical or metaphysically presuppositionless argument. For it is on
account of the irreducible conceptual distinction between term and relation (CE 634-635)
that Bradley maintains that any attempt to render the nature of connections intelligible by
means of the relational form “must end obviously in failure” (CE 635). Indeed, as he says
(CE 635), his subsequent arguments (CE 635-638) are no more than exemplifications or
illustrations of this point.
However, it can hardly be denied that the theory of feeling in its guise of metaphysical
substratum is now writ large in Bradley’s analysis (CE 631 -634). In fact it is here that he
develops the distinction, noted earlier, between ‘qualities’ as elements of the
nonrelational whole of feeling, and ‘terms’ as ideally or relationally differentiated
particulars (CE 634, 636). Moreover, it is by means of this distinction that Bradley
restates the “condition and result” argument of AR III (CE 637). Indeed, that argument
is now presented as one of the subsequent exemplifications or illustrations of the point
about conceptual distinction. So, as these considerations suggest, it may well be that
Bradley’s point is not as ‘Hegelian’ as it seems.
This is indeed the case. For what has of course been overlooked so far is that the
conceptual distinction argument is only introduced after the discussion of feeling as a
nonrelational unity of ‘whole’ and ‘part.’ So unlike AR III, Section 2, where Bradley
appeals to the metaphysical ‘given,’ in the “Relations” essay he starts out from a
full-blooded account of the theory of feeling as metaphysical substratum. Hence it is in
that context that the conceptual distinction point has to be read; and in that context the
point is no longer merely ‘logical’ in nature.
For by beginning the “Relations” essay with a statement of the theory of feeling,
Bradley has postulated the experience of a particular form of unity in which, as he puts
it, “the whole and the parts (if we may use that expression) qualify one another through
out” (CE 634; cf. 631). It is that kind of unity, manifest (Bradley holds) in the perception
of a green leaf or an emotional or aesthetic experience (CE 633), which has now to be
explained. For brevity, I shall refer to this kind of unity as ‘complete’ qualification. The
consequences it has for the relational form are quite straightforward. Indeed, once granted
the experienced fact of complete qualification, then what for empiricists and rationalists
alike would be the otherwise harmless point that the concepts of term and relation are
essentially contrastive in nature, takes on its damaging significance. For as irreducible or
contrastive, the concepts of term and relation cannot render the experienced unity or
connectedness of things intelligible in that they cannot, as contrastive, completely qualify
one another. It is the experience of nonrelational or complete qualification which for
Bradley is the unity that has to be explained by the relational form, and which, in the
nature of the case, the essentially contrastive character of concepts—specifically, term
and relation—renders impossible. As Bradley puts it: “And the attempt to find the
required unity and totality in the terms and relations taken somehow together must end
obviously in failure. For this ‘together’ must bring in something more than, and going
beyond, the experience if (ex. hyp.) that is taken as relational” (CE 635).
In this light it should be evident that while in Chapter III it satisfies Bradley’s
purposes in AR (as we shall see below) to concentrate on the connection between the
metaphysical ‘given’ and its relational form, and in that particular way to mount a critique
of relations, in the “Relations” essay feeling is given a full-dress exposition as a meta
physical substratum. As a result, it is this latter concept of unity which is there employed
to condemn the relational form. It may be said that AR III and the “Relations” essay view
the same problem—how nonrelational feeling and the relational form stand to each
other—from two different angles. In AR III it is a matter of the connection between the
nonrelational character of terms and the relational form. In the “Relations” essay, it is a
matter of the contrast between two different forms of unity, the experienced and the
relational, and the evident inadequacy of the latter to the former—a contrast made
possible by the fact that feeling is explicitly made the starting-point of the argument.
In my view, then, it is only when Bradley’s critique of relations in AR III and

elsewhere is understood as based on the theory of feeling that it becomes possible to
appreciate the full force of his remark that the relational form “would cease to be”
unacceptable “only if the immediacy of feeling could be shown to be merely relational”
(ETR 190). Again, it is only in this light that the real nature of Bradley’s appropriation
of what he takes to be Hegel’s “conceptual distinction” critique of relations can properly
be understood. For what Bradley has done in AR III and elsewhere is to take Hegel’s
critique and re-cast it in a form that is free of what he regards as a major defect of the
dialectical method—namely, its failure to recognize the ‘positive’ nature or “aspect of
existence” of the “presented subject” or quality as it is experienced in feeling. Of course,
Bradley explicitly insists that his theory of feeling itself has its sources in Hegel (cf. AR
508n.; ETR 153; CE 695). But even when he cites a specific text of Hegel’s in order to
emphasize his debt (PL 515), his subsequent remarks confirm the analysis given here
both of his view of the dialectical method and his transformation of what he takes to be
Hegel’s critique of relations. For he immediately goes on to say: “Against an exaggeration
of this importance [i.e. of the importance of feeling as a vague continuum below
relations] Hegel often, and perhaps too sweepingly, protests” (PL 515). In other words,
Bradley is maintaining that the theory of substrative feeling is—or ought to be—the real
basis of Hegel’s dialectic, and that Hegel’s insistence that the original unity only emerges
as a retrospective result of the dialectical procedure is not an accurate—or acceptable—
description of his procedure.
We have followed the ramifications of this view of Hegel throughout Bradley’s
critique of relations. In order, however, to appreciate the full significance of his rejection
of the dialectical method, it is necessary to consider his account of the nature of intelligi
bility or intellectual satisfaction. Without this, indeed, the present analysis of Bradley’s
critique of relations is hardly complete. For it is here if anywhere that those who want to
defend some kind of ‘logical’ or metaphysically presuppositionless interpretation of
Bradley’s thought would make their last stand, and it is here if anywhere that they could
do so in the confidence that Bradley’s followers and critics alike speak on this point with
complete unanimity: his position on this issue is universally held to be ‘intellectualist’ in
nature.
Bradley on the Nature of Intelligibility
Bradley’s account of intelligibility or intellectual satisfaction is commonly held to rest on

some form of the principle of sufficient reason, despite his own vigorous protests on the
issue: “There is an idea,” he says, “that we start [...] with certain axioms, and from these
reason downwards. This idea to my mind is baseless” (ETR 311).32 To take his protests
seriously, laying out the real but hitherto unrecognized nature of his position here, is an
enterprise that will perhaps have more to recommend it than its mere singularity.
Against his critics Bradley maintains that the “method” he employs in his metaphysics
is not axiomatic but “experimental” (ETR 311). In AR he describes it thus: “The actual
starting-point and basis of this work is an assumption about truth and reality. I have
Bradley rs Metaphysics o f Feeling 93
assumed that the object of metaphysics is to find a general view which will satisfy the
intellect, and I have assumed that whatever succeeds in doing this is real and true, and
that whatever fails is neither” (AR 491). Elsewhere he says: “What is assumed is that I
have to satisfy my theoretical want, or, in other words, that I resolve to think. And it is
assumed that, if my thought is satisfied with itself, I have, with this, truth and reality”
(ETR 311).
As to the nature of this assumption, Bradley says two things. In AR he remarks that
it “can neither be proved nor questioned” (AR 491). In ETR, after the quotation given
above, he adds: “But as to what will satisfy I have of course no knowledge in advance [...]
the way and the means are to be discovered only by trial and rejection. The method is
clearly experimental” (ETR 311).
These quotations make quite clear what status Bradley gives to the principle of
satisfaction taken as an experimental principle. We are not here in the presence of an
‘argument,’ nor are we being provided with an (‘intellectualist’) criterion of reality. On
the contrary, what is meant here by ‘intellect’ or ‘intelligibility’ or ‘intellectual satisfac
tion’ explicitly remains to be determined. On the other side, in consequence, nothing has
yet been said which specifies the nature or natures of the ‘true’ and the ‘real,’ or the
relation between them. So, as to whether truth and reality are what the complete sceptic
would claim them to be, or whether the real is in some sense identical with the true, or
is more or other than the true—no pronouncements have as yet been made or are implied.
Thus Bradley is certainly standing outside of his own metaphysics when he states the
experimental nature of the principle of satisfaction; but as experimental that principle is
no more than a vade m ecum 33 In all respects open-ended, it neither states, nor tacitly
assumes, nor embodies a metaphysical argument or doctrine of any kind, but is offered
as a procedural rule or methodological premise to which, in the nature of the case, any
participant in philosophical inquiry or discussion subscribes, even if he be an extreme
sceptic or thoroughgoing intuitionist.
This, then, is at least one sense in which for Bradley the principle of satisfaction “can
neither be proved nor questioned.” Everything therefore depends on how he goes on to
determine the nature or content of the concepts of ‘satisfaction,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘reality,’ in
the course of the ‘experiment’ which he holds his metaphysics to be. The central text in
this regard is of course AR Chapter XIII, on “The General Nature of Reality.”
The strictly logical moves Bradley makes in AR XIII further to specify the nature of
satisfaction are clear enough and can be briefly summarized. He points out, first of all
(AR 120), that in Book I whatever manifested itself to be ‘inconsistent’ has been rejected;
consequently, ‘inconsistency’ or ‘contradiction’ has been the criterion employed
throughout. And because, when we think, “either in attempting to deny it, or even in
attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity,” this criterion is ‘absolute’ in
thinking, i.e. it is an “assumption” (AR 134) which belongs to the nature of the enterprise,
though as yet we have not of course discovered what it is that constitutes ‘inconsistency. ’
Secondly, Bradley points out that if we have been rejecting what is inconsistent, then it
follows by contrapositive inference that we are seeking the consistent. Consistency or
noncontradiction is, then, that satisfaction which the intellect seeks, even if, clearly, we
as yet know nothing else about it; as Bradley observes, “The question is solely as to the
meaning to be given to consistency” (AR 123).
No-one, I believe, would want to object to any of this as it stands—it is too neutral or
indeterminate to be a cause for concern. And Bradley’s next move is at least quite
straightforward, based as it is on his critique of the doctrine of “things-in-themselves”
(AR Ch. XII); for he now claims that, as everything which ‘appears’ must in some sense
belong to the ‘real,’ then, in consequence, “everything which appears is somehow real
in such a way as to be self-consistent” (AR 123). What the intellect seeks for, in other
words, is “unity,” “individuality” or “system” (AR 123-125) and, at this stage of the
‘experiment’ in AR, Bradley uses all these terms as synonyms for “consistency” (AR
123-124). Moreover, here again Bradley insists that consistency or noncontradiction is
an “assumption about reality” (AR 134) which the intellect necessarily makes. This
constitutes a second sense in which, as its nature unfolds in the course of the “experi
ment,” the principle of satisfaction “can neither be proved nor questioned” (AR 494, cf.
135, ETR 315). Bradley claims in consequence that the law of noncontradiction gives us
“positive news” (AR 124) or “absolute knowledge” (AR 134) of the real.
It is here of course that the real problems begin. For Bradley is clearly maintaining
that noncontradiction or consistency cannot be understood in metaphysics as a merely
formal criterion—either in the sense that it is absolutely independent of any
subject-matter or in the sense that it is relatively independent of any particular sub
ject-matter34—nor as a report of linguistic usage, a convention with no reference to the
world. On this basis it is usually claimed that for Bradley consistency and ‘reality’ are
mutually entailing concepts, synonyms for one another. In other words, Bradley’s doctrine
of noncontradiction is held to be rationalist in nature, i.e. like Bosanquet or Joachim, he
is said to maintain that the law of noncontradiction, as an absolute necessity of thought,
is also an apprehension of necessity in the being of things.35 Indeed, to deny this would
be to depart from a view of his position which, among friend and foe alike, hardly one
dissenting voice has been raised.36
What has here been overlooked, however, is that Bradley himself insists that the
criterion of noncontradiction, taken merely as a logical principle and without further
determination, is “general and empty” (ETR 315). For we still do not know what is the
relation between the ‘consistent’ and the ‘real.’ The real world, for instance, could be
either singular or plural in nature, and there is nothing in the criterion itself which
guarantees that either its singularity or plurality is or is not intelligible (cf. AR 124-125;
on which, see below). On the side of ‘consistency,’ equally, we know only that in some
sense, but not in what sense, the ‘consistent’ is the ‘real. ’ To this extent it should not be
forgotten that Bradley and Bosanquet are at one. For both would agree that the law of
noncontradiction has to be interpreted in the context of metaphysics. After all, both
maintain that the law— ‘A is not not-A’—cannot be understood in the traditional
tautological sense as meaning that “A can be nothing but what is simply A” (PL 146).37
So, for both, the question as to what constitutes noncontradiction or consistency is a
metaphysical question. In logic, as Bradley says, the law of noncontradiction “takes for
granted that nature of things in which certain elements are exclusive of others” (PL 145);
it does no more than “rest upon the fact” (PL 146) of “incompatibility.” And because “it
gives not the smallest reason for the world being such in nature and not otherwise” (PL
145), it is as far as metaphysics is concerned what Bradley calls a “practical” maxim (AR
133-134; “Do not try [...]” etc., PL 145). In other words, the law of noncontradiction, as
such, serves only to raise the question as to what incompatibility is; it is up to metaphysics
to “ask itself the question if any further account can be given of incompatibility” (PL
146).
If Bradley goes so far with Bosanquet, though, how could he not go further? For when,
in respect of the law of noncontradiction, we find Bradley carefully insisting that “about
the truth of this Law, so fa r as it applies, there is in my opinion no question,” and then
going on to ask “how far the Law applies and how far therefore it is true” (AR 506, my
italics; cf. PL 165 n.9)—we might be forgiven for wondering if, for Bradley, consistency
and ‘reality’ are the synonyms which the rationalists hold them to be. So just what could
be the account of incompatibility which Bradley’s metaphysics gives? In other words, on
what grounds could he possibly maintain that consistency is neither merely formal
(absolutely or relatively), nor merely a report of linguistic usage— and yet hold that it
constitutes a rational necessity in the being of things?
At this point, clearly, everything depends on the way in which, in the course of his
‘experiment,’ Bradley goes on further to determine the nature of the ‘unity’ which thought
seeks. And were it not for the previous history of Bradley commentary, it might have been
assumed that at least his derivation of the nature of ‘inconsistency’ in AR XIII was
obvious enough. For there, having stated the theoretical necessity of the principle that
consistency (in some sense) is the criterion of the real (in some sense), he then goes on
to show that the consistent ‘real’ could not be plural in nature, i.e. that it could not be a
relational system of independent reals; and this not only because “a mode of togetherness
such as we can verify in feeling destroys the independence of the reals,” but also because:
Relations, we saw, are a development of and from the felt totality. They inadequately
express, and they still imply in the background that unity apart from which the diversity is
nothing. Relations are unmeaning except within and on the basis of a substantial whole
(AR 125).
In other words, a relational system of independent reals is condemned because it is

contradictory or “unmeaning”—and it is so because it cannot render intelligible the
concrete nature of the ‘reals’ as they are experienced in the unity of feeling.
For Bradley, therefore, it is feeling which defines the metaphysical account of
inconsistency. The inconsistent is that which fails to render intelligible the unity of
feeling. The implication of Bradley’s position is clear: it is the unity of feeling which is
the unity thought seeks to explain. But in AR XIII Bradley does not yet go on explicitly
to draw this positive conclusion; as we shall see, he will do that in Ch. XV with reference
to a specific objection. In contrast, all he does in Ch. XIII is to conclude to monism by
way of his critique of relations. Elsewhere, however, where Bradley is not proceeding
according to his plan of exposition in AR, he is more positive and explicit, employing his
theory of feeling and the critique of relations it involves in tandem in order directly to
define the unity which thought seeks to render intelligible, and which, on account of the
nature of that unity, it cannot.
Consider, for instance, “Note A” of the 1897 Appendix of AR, to which Bradley
refers us for “the order of thought” (AR 494) in that work. For there, having made the
now-familiar point that “Thought cannot do without differences, but on the other hand it
cannot make them” (AR 501); and having affirmed that “What is given is a presented
whole, a sensuous total” (AR 502); Bradley goes on to state the main issue—which is that
“when we try to think its [feeling’s] unity, we end in failure” (AR 508). Or as he
describes it a little earlier and in more detail, against the view that “What is offered is not
the elements apart, nor the elements plus an external bond, but the elements together and
in conjunction” which, as given, should be accepted by the intellect:
the question is how thought can think what is offered. If thought in its own nature
possessed a ‘together’ [...] it could reaffirm the external conjunction. But if these sensible
bonds of union fall outside the inner nature of thought, just as much as do the sensible
terms which they outwardly conjoin—the case is surely different (AR 504).
By ‘external’ or ‘outwardly’ Bradley does not here mean ‘external’ in the sense of
external relations (that he explicitly excludes from the view he is considering: “not the
elements plus an external bond”). He is here using ‘external’ or ‘outwardly’ of conjunc
tion or relation in the sense that for thought the conjunction or relation lies ‘between,’ or
cannot be identified with, its terms. In this passage Bradley is maintaining that, once his
critics accept (like Hobhouse) the thought-sensation distinction and acknowledge the
‘sensible’ or ‘given’ nature of terms and their conjunction, then, ‘i f his interpretation of
the offered conjunction in terms of nonrelational feeling is correct, the failure of the
relational form is evident. Indeed, throughout the Appendix Bradley employs feeling in
its guise as non-relational whole or metaphysical substratum—much as he does in the
“Relations” essay. In the Appendix, however, he is following his logical “order of
thought,” and not, for instance, the veiy different arrangement of the two Books of AR
(which will be discussed below). So he begins with the demand of thought for rational
unity (AR 501). But when we discover that the kind of unity for which thought must seek
an explanation is defined in terms of the complete qualification experienced in feel
ing—then the fate of thought is sealed.
The same position is expounded in ETR. There, Bradley defines thought as the
attempt, by means of the relational form, to “reconstitute” (ETR 231) or “to make good
ideally our lost unity” of feeling (ETR 313). Once again it is the nature of this unity which
renders intelligibility impossible:
You go on to think, you analyze, you introduce terms and relations, whereas in your
immediate whole there were no relations or terms; or at least and in any case, the whole
itself was nonrelational. And, so far as you have terms and relations, the unity is destroyed.
It now, as the fact of ‘relatedness,’ falls outside of the relational scheme, and this fact you
have not specified. The attempt to specify this fact, to re-include it not really but ideally, and
so to make good the broken unity, is the demand and search for the ‘how’ and the ‘why.’
[...] We have here no axiom, standing on which we proceed to argue downwards. So far
as this is true, it is a result and character of our procedure itself (ETR 313-314).
At this point in the present essay detailed comment on this passage would, I think, be
superfluous. But two general points may perhaps be made.
In the first place, it is evident enough that Bradley is not, impossibly, asking thought
to ‘be’ feeling, or, again, confusing the ‘having’ and the ‘knowing’ of an experience;38
rather, he is asking whether the relational form of thought can of its own nature “make
good ideally” or “re-include [...] not really, but ideally” the experienced complete
qualification of feeling.
In the second place it should be noted that, when read alongside AR Chapter XIII, the
passages cited do serve to indicate Bradley’s difference from rationalists such as
Bosanquet on the status to be given to ‘consistency.’ For insofar as it is the experienced
unity of feeling which is to be rendered intelligible, then it is apparent that for Bradley
‘consistency’ does not constitute any kind of necessity in the being of things; the real
cannot itself be said to be consistent or inconsistent, necessary or non-necessary, in any
meaningful sense. The real indeed remains a ‘unity’ or ‘system’ or ‘individuality’; but
these are contrastive definitions (AR 463) of that which is not rational (relational) in
nature.
It is in this context that we can now understand “how far the Law of Noncontradiction
applies and how far therefore it is true” (AR 506). The law “holds” so far as it condemns
the incompatible or inconsistent (PL 167 n. 9). Moreover, whatever is relatively or
comparatively consistent for thought can be regarded as expressions of the one real— and
in that qualified sense the ‘consistent’ is ‘true’ and ‘real.’ Beyond that, however, it is
feeling which defines the nature of the unity that thought must explain; it is feeling which
defines what constitutes ‘incompatibility’; and so it is feeling which forces us to deny that
the ‘true’ can as such be identified with the ‘real. ’ This is not to deny, of course, that in
the Appendix, ETR, and the late essay Bradley’s critique of relations works from the
sides of both feeling and relations at once; that it is the “contrast” (CE 631 ) between the
unity of feeling and the conceptual distinctness of terms and relations on which his
argument rests. But it is equally evident that it is only the nature of the unity of feeling as
complete qualification which gives the otherwise unexceptionable fact of conceptual
distinctness its damaging significance.
Some Objections
In maintaining such a position, however, Bradley faces two different kinds of objections.
The first is that of the rationalists—namely, that thought cannot think that which is ‘other’
than thought. This is nowadays perhaps a position which does not command much
interest; but for Bradley, writing after Green and against Hegel, it could not be ignored,
and he attempts to meet it in AR Chapter XV—a chapter which he describes as contain
ing “the main thesis” of that work (AR 493). In the context of the present essay, more
over, that chapter has a particular significance; for here the theory of feeling in its various
guises is everywhere in evidence—as the “that” or “aspect of existence” (AR 145, 149),
as experienced emotion (AR 150-151 ), and as the “felt background” (AR 153). Indeed,
Bradley is throughout explicitly employing feeling in an ostensive or phenomenological
fashion to indicate the distinction between thought and experience (as he remarks
elsewhere, “‘Experience’ is not definable; it can only be indicated” [CE 205 n. 1]). At the
high point of his argument he introduces the “presented subject” (AR 155), of which, for
present purposes, only the aspect of ‘immediacy’ need be referred to: “In it the aspects
o f‘what’ and ‘that’ are not taken as divorced [...] it is given with its content as forming
one integral whole” (AR 156). After his critique of relations, Bradley has of course little
difficulty in showing that such a unity cannot be achieved or rendered intelligible by
means of the relational form (AR 157-159). But he now adds two further points.
In the first place, he makes quite clear what kind of unity it is which on his account
of the matter thought attempts to render intelligible. For as he says:
The reality that is presented is taken up by thought in a form not adequate to its nature [...]
But [...] this nature also is the nature which thought wants for itself [...] The end which
would satisfy mere truth seeking, would do so just because it had the features possessed by
reality (AR 158).
If it be asked what is the force of the “also” here, this is Bradley’s second point; for
he maintains against the rationalists that we are able to think an Other which is not
thought because thought already possesses the Other “in an incomplete form” (AR 158),
i.e. in the experience of immediacy (“the terms are given to it and not constituted by it”
[AR 159]). Hence “this nature also is the nature which thought wants for itself’ in the
sense that it is the nature of the presented subject, as experienced in feeling, which
defines and gives content to the completely empty and indeterminate kind of unity sought
for by thought. Thus it is on account of the unity of the subject “presented” in feeling that
for Bradley there are no difficulties here of the sort the rationalists would maintain.
It should perhaps be added at this point that, contrary to the conventional and strictly
‘logical’ interpretation of Bradley’s theory of predication, he defines the kind of unity or
‘qualification’ that is sought for in predication in exactly the same way as that required
of the relational form. Here, indeed, extensive misinterpretation justifies extensive
quotation. For as he tells us, the meaning of qualification
is derived from immediate experience and sensible perception. If you take, for instance, an
object such as an apple, this is qualified by its adjectives. It is each and all of them, and yet
it is something more, though you are unable to say what. It is different from its qualities,
and it is also the same and one with them. This is the idea of qualification which we apply
in judgement (ETR 324).
Or as he puts it elsewhere, when discussing his theory of predication; its “meaning,” he

says,
comes from and, we must add, rests on that which is called immediate experience or
feeling. In the sensuous inherence[39] of qualities in a subject you have given to you,
without any relation, “parts” which both are the whole and one another, and yet (as taken
separately) are not either. And it is an appeal, however unconscious or denied, to an
experience of this kind on which depends the entire sense given, when any sense actually
is given, to predication and judgment (PL 695-696).
Moreover, the metaphysical consequences of such a view he spells out clearly enough:
I cannot accept, for instance, the relation of subject and predicate as an adequate expression
of reality. It evidently fails to carry over consistently into a higher region the felt sensible
unity of the one and the many. And there is no possible relational scheme which in my
view will end in truth. The apprehended fact of terms in relation cannot itself, I am sure,
be reconstituted ideally (ETR 239, cf. 231-232).
Thought and Reality
But even if the role of feeling as defining the satisfaction and unity which the intellect
seeks has usually been overlooked by Bradley’s commentators, it is not likely to impress
some of his more telling critics. They would readily grant the irreducibility of the
distinction between thought and experience. But if experience is an intellectually
inaccessible unity, why, they would inquire, should the intellect seek to comprehend it?
Why ask so much? What justifies us in making this kind of demand on the intellect? As
J. H. Randall puts it, writing in the pragmatist tradition, “Why is not Bradley content to
say, thought can ‘experience’ or ‘formulate’ reality, without having to ‘comprehend’ [...]
it?”—a question which echoes John Dewey’s much earlier claim against Bradley that “the
object of thinking is not to effect some wholesale [...] reconciliation of meaning and
existence, but to make a specific adjustment of things to our purposes and our purposes
to things.”40Yet by far the most explicit and damaging statement of the problem is Gilbert
Ryle’s. He confesses himself at a loss
to know why the idea of an object should satisfy the demands of reason, or, more impor
tantly, how reason can be dissatisfied with the idea of any object. And why should we
suppose that it is in philosophy that thought is following its own bent most completely
rather than in, say, astronomy or Antarctic exploration [...] ?41
Now were Bradley to share those views of the relation of finite truths to the complete
reality—i.e. of metaphysics to the special sciences—imputed to him by C. A. Campbell
or Brand Blanshard, he would indeed find himself in difficulties here. However, the very
diversity of their interpretations of his position on intellectual satisfaction suggests that
neither is accurate.
Blanshard maintains that all individual propositions or groups of propositions can be
arranged in a series tending to full reciprocal entailment as a limit, i.e. that they constitute
a system of mutual entailments.42But here Ryle’s objections are, I believe, fatal. From the
search for causal necessities or laws to explain observed conjunctions in the natural
sciences, it hardly follows that the canons of inductive reasoning are in some way
continuous with those of mathematical reasoning, or that such knowledge displays a
tendency toward the form of a system each of the propositions of which entails the other.
Natural knowledge does not suggest a nisus to a system of inter-necessitations.43
Moreover, it is usually forgotten that this is Bradley’s view also.
For Bradley insists on the “want of unity” and “disconnectedness” (AR 325; ETR 31)
between different spheres or aspects of experience, and this he regards both as empirical
fact and—on the basis of substrative feeling—as the inevitable condition of the relational
form. To be sure, in PL Bradley emphasizes that insofar as there is a distinction between
logic and metaphysics this resides in the fact that for its own purposes logic must work
with the assumption that knowledge constitutes an intelligible system (PL 598ff; cf. AR
321). But this can hardly be regarded as a final revision and bequest of PL in the rational
ists’ favour. For of course Bradley maintains that logic “is powerless to justify” (PL 599)
its assumption, i.e. it is not an assumption which (for the reasons just given) can be
sustained either in practice or in principle, as a metaphysical account of the nature of
knowledge which issues in a doctrine of the real as inclusive system. Rather, Bradley
explicitly states what he holds to be the enabling ground of logic’s system-principle:
namely, “that which is called immediate experience or feeling,” in which “you have given
to you, without any relation, ‘parts’ which both are the whole and one another, and yet
(as taken separately) are not either” (PL 695-696). Only because unity is ‘given’ in
substrative feeling does the idea of logical system have any ‘meaning’ or “sense” for us
(PL 695, 696). But it is equally on that basis that the idea of knowledge as intelligible
system founders. So for Bradley the demand for intelligibility, and hence the doctrine of
the inclusive real, can hardly be said to be justified by any account of the systematic
nature of thought.
In this light, it could appear that Bradley’s view of intellectual satisfaction and the
relation of metaphysics to the special sciences, if not Blanshard’s, may well be Camp
bell’s. For Campbell, after all, insists on the radical difference of thought and reality in
terms of the suprarelational nature of the real. And Campbell is correct in pointing to the
importance of Bradley’s analysis of the nature of contradiction in “Note A” of the
Appendix to AR for an understanding of his metaphysics. There, Campbell maintains,
Bradley presents the demand for a complete grasp of the object as a demand “intrinsic to
the intellect,”44 holding that thought of its own nature both rejects bare conjunctions of
differences as contradictory, demanding a ground of connection wherein the mutual
implication of elements is perfect and their union a completely understood system.
Although Campbell acknowledges that this demand of reason for perfect implication or
“intrinsic connection”45 is taken fully into account only by metaphysics—where due to
the failure of relational thought it results in a sharp distinction between what he calls
“phenomenal” (relative) and “noumenal” (ultimate) truth—he nevertheless places it on
a continuum with the “practical” sciences and sees its metaphysical statement as the final
step or ultimate unfolding of a “pure intellectual interest”46 that elsewhere is limited or
controlled by other interests or objectives.47
Yet Campbell’s position is clearly the result of a very one-sided reading of Bradley’s
“Note A” in the Appendix to AR. Rejecting the theory of substrative feeling,48 Campbell
ignores the fact that for Bradley in “Note A” the question is how thought can think what
is offered (AR 504; my italics); that what is offered “is a presented whole, a sensuous
total”; and that only on this ground does Bradley maintain that “a bare conjunction [...]
is for thought unsatisfactory and in the end impossible” (AR 505). So whereas for
Campbell the demand for a ground of connection issues from the intrinsic nature of the
Bradley ’s Metaphysics o f F eeling 101
intellect—and thus metaphysics and practical inquiry can be placed on an ascending

scale—for Bradley there is nothing in the intellect’s demand for a ground which as such
warrants that demand being taken to the lengths to which Campbell takes it.
Bradley is in fact much closer to his critics here than to those who have traditionally
claimed him for their own. For Bradley, unlike the rationalists, does not suggest “that it
is in philosophy that thought is following its own bent most completely.” Rather, his point
is that only in metaphysics does thought follow the object completely. Elsewhere, the
object is always the practical or finite object, i.e. it is approached from the perspective
of a practical interest and in terms of some determinate feature or features with a view,
as Dewey says, to making specific adjustments. The ‘interest’ of metaphysics, in contrast,
resides in the object as a whole, i.e. as it is experienced in the unity of feeling. Thus to the
query ‘why the idea of an object should satisfy the demands of reason?,’ or ‘how can
reason be dissatisfied with the idea of any object?,’ Bradley would reply that it is not any
intrinsic demand of the intellect which is considered in metaphysics, but of the object as
experienced in the unity of feeling. Indeed, Bradley makes it quite clear that, without the
theory of feeling, he regards the rationalists’ so-called demand of the intellect, if merely
that, as no more than that, i.e. as lacking, and requiring, a justifying ground. For, as he
says in criticism of what he sees as Hegel’s intellectualism and in confirmation of the
analysis of his attitude to the dialectical method offered earlier:
I [cannot] accept what is often understood as the process of Hegel’s dialectic. I do not
believe in any operation which falls out of the blue upon a mere object [...] the series of
reflection is generated by and through the unity of immediate experience [...] It is this
totality which for ever demands an expression which is unattainable within our relational
experience [...] The principle of the process therefore does not reside in pure thought, but
on the contrary must be said to imply [in thought] a mere conjunction (ETR 278).
It is, in short, the theory of feeling which for Bradley both defines and justifies the
question of intelligibility or intellectual satisfaction. While that question is in the first
instance a metaphysically presuppositionless procedural principle, as Bradley goes on to
determine it within the ‘experiment’ of his metaphysics, it is quite explicitly defined and
defended by means of the theory of feeling. I, at least, cannot see how Bradley’s state
ments on the matter can be otherwise interpreted.
Concluding Remarks
It is by now, I think, more than evident that in every area of Bradley’s work which bears
directly on his critique of relations, the theory of feeling plays a crucial role. That this has
hitherto been so often ignored is, I believe, due to a variety of factors, ‘internal’ and
‘external.’
Among the ‘external’ factors, not the least has been the fact that Bosanquet’s later
twentieth-century followers have tended to identify rather than to differentiate the
metaphysics of the two thinkers, and have tried to enlist the more dashing and pugnacious
figure of Bradley in an otherwise lack-lustre cause.49 Among the ‘internal’ factors perhaps
the most important is the structure or organization of AR. As has already been noted, in
contrast (for instance) with the late essay on “Relations,” Bradley does not begin AR with
any full statement of the theory of feeling, i.e. his method throughout is clearly not a
matter of stating his premises and proceeding from there. Instead, he employs the theory
of feeling in AR whenever he needs it—as a premise in Chapter III, in the form of an
ostensive argument in Chapter XV, and so on. There are a number of reasons why he
does this.
In the first place, it can plausibly be said that, rather like Hegel’s Phenomenology but
without his graded progressions, the first Book of AR is offered as a kind of drama of the
contemporary consciousness. Throughout, Bradley works through and overturns the
Greenian, personal idealist, Spencerian, and other comforts of the late nineteenth-century,
and takes the sceptical doubts of the period to their furthest point—in order to redeem
them in Book II, though in a fashion that does not obliterate the tragedy of the realm of
appearance. It is in line with this ambitious and even histrionic format that Bradley does
not attempt in AR HI (or elsewhere in Book I) to go into any detail on the character of the
term qua ‘given.’ There, he merely employs the theory of feeling in its simplest and (for
his empiricist-educated “English readers” [AR viii]) most easily accessible guise as the
‘given’ that cannot be identified with, or reduced to, the relational form of thought, only
allowing its full nature to emerge later on.
It hardly needs stressing, however, that the shock-tactics of Book I have a distorting
effect on the whole work. True enough, Bradley himself tried to clarify the situation in the
1897 Appendix. For there he is unequivocal about the role played by feeling in his
argument:
We start from the diversity in unity which is given in feeling [...] The criticism which really
desires to be effective ought, I should say, to show that my view of the starting point is
untenable [...] and such criticism I have not seen (AR 494).
But it was too late; as subsequent interpretations have made all too clear, the organization
of AR amounts to a serious tactical error. Furthermore, it must be admitted that feeling
is employed in an oblique, crab-like fashion throughout that work; it sidles up to the
topics under discussion, but does not itself receive any independent or extensive treat
ment.
In part, Bradley is doubtless encouraged to present the theory of feeling in this
somewhat presumptive fashion by the convergence of sources which (as I have tried to
indicate elsewhere50) impelled him to that theory in the first place. Nor must it be
forgotten that as a defence of the distinction between thought and experience, feeling is
for Bradley a matter of ostensive rather than argumentative demonstration. At the same
time, however, as his essay on “Consciousness and Experience” indicates —written as
it was at the same time as AR—he was also acutely aware of the problems the theory of
feeling brings with it, problems which at that time he felt he could not fully resolve (cf.
ETR 198). In the light of these considerations I would suggest that in AR Bradley is more
interested in vindicating the theory of feeling by demonstrating its effectiveness as what
he will later call “the one road to the solution of ultimate problems” (ETR 159) rather
than in dealing with it head-on. In other words, the structure and development of
argument in AR can be described as essentially ‘immanent’ in character; and this is why

of course, as Bradley says, the actual order in which topics are discussed in the book are
“to myself a matter of no great importance” and could easily be altered (AR 491). The
theory of feeling would have brought the same results wherever he had begun.
Once seen in the light of these considerations it can be acknowledged that the division
of AR into two books is by no means as objectionable or as misleading as it is sometimes
said to be. Bradley’s philosophical readers have been too busy searching for syllogisms
to notice the carefully-wrought way in which the theory of feeling at once shapes and
unfolds within the structure and organization of the work. Nevertheless, that division does
help to throw the work off-centre and too easily invites those travesties of
Bradley-interpretation which have become part of our philosophical folk-lore. In dealing
with AR, and particularly with Chapter III, the reader has to save Bradley’s view of
relations and intellectual satisfaction not only from his critics, but also, to some extent,
from himself.
Notes
1. I would like gratefully to acknowledge the generous support of the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation while doing much of the research for this article. I am also indebted to the
invaluable comments and criticisms made by colleagues at the Colloquium of the Department
of Philosophy, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
2. Appearance and Reality, 2nd. ed., 9th. corrected impression (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930);
henceforth AR. Other abbreviations are as follows: Principles o f Logic [PL] 2nd. ed., corrected
impression (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928); Essays on Truth and Reality [ETR] (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1914); Collected Essays [CE] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935).
3. The theory of feeling, in other words, constitutes the “bad reasons” for which Bradley’s
well-known epigram on metaphysics seeks (AR x)—as he explicitly indicates at ETR 20-28;
see also PL 591.
4. Admittedly, Bradley never quite gives up the view that feeling could also be a psychological
level or stage. But, as he makes quite clear, this is philosophically a matter of indifference to
him (cf. AR 461; ETR 175-157; CE 632,635) contra James Ward, “Bradley’s Doctrine of
Experience,” Mind, 34 (1925) 14-17.
5. Contra Rudolph Kagey [The Growth of Bradley ’s Logic (New York, 1931)56], R.D. Mack
[The Appeal to Immediate Experience: Philosophic Method in Bradley, Whitehead and
Dewey (New York: King's Crown Press, 1945) 25], and J. H. Randall Jr. [Philosophy after
Darwin: Chapters for The Career of Philosophy, Volume III, and other essays, ed. Beth J.
Singer. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) 192], Bradley’s insistence that “feeling”
is a permanent feature of experience is not a late development, See AR 125,128, 129,156,
199,406-407,413,462, 502-503.
6. See, for example, R. Wollheim, F. H. Bradley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959) 110, 112.
7. See B. Russell, “The Monistic Theory of Truth,” in Philosophical Essays (London: Longmans,
Green, 1910) 161-162; and R.W. Church, Bradley’s Dialectic (London: G. Allen & Unwin,
1942) Chs. Vin and DC.
8. H. Spencer, Principles o f Psychology, 3rd. ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1890) para.
65.
9. T.H. Huxley, Hume (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879) 67,69.
10. H. Lotze, Logic [in three books, of thought, of investigation, and of knowledge], tr. ed. Bernard
Bosanquet. 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), Vol. II, 263. See also his Metaphysic [in
three books, ontology, cosmology, and psychology], tr. ed., Bernard Bosanquet, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887) Vol. 1,186-91.
11. H. Lotze, Microcosmus [an essay concerning man and his relation to the world] tr. Elizabeth
Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones. 3rd ed. 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888) Vol. II,
596.
12. Lotze,Microcosmus, Vol. II, 619.
13. Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol. H, 620, 621. See also H. Jones, A Critical Account o f the
Philosophy of Lotze - the doctrine of thought (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1895) 308-312.
14. C.D. Broad, Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Cambridge: The University Press,
1933) Vol. 1,84; see also A.C. Ewing, quoted in R. W. Church, Bradley 's Dialectic 165-156,
and G. F. Stout, “Bradley’s Theory of Relations,” in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology
(London: Macmillan, 1930) 186-187.
15. Broad,McTaggart, Vol. 1,84.
16. Broad, McTaggart, Vol. 1,85.
17. See Broad, McTaggart, B. Russell, An Outline of Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956)
262-264; A. C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey ( London: Methuen & Co., 1934) 147.
Ewing documents the supporters of this view: L.T. Hobhouse, Theory ofKnowledge (London:
Methuen, 1895) Ch. XU F.C.S. Schiller, Humanism (London: Macmillan, 1903) Essay xi; G.
F. Stout, Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, Ch. IV; J. Cook Wilson, Statement and
Inference (Oxford, 1926) Vol. D, 692ÍF. The same view is also supported by F .L. Will,
“Internal Relations and the Principle of Identity,” The Philosophical Review, 49 (1940) 506;
Wollheim, Bradley 113; and David Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in
Philosophy, 2nd. ed. (London: Fontana, 1972) 165. At least Ewing, however, recognized what
we shall find to be his mistake and added a note to that effect in the 3rd. ed. of his Idealism;
consequently his well-known classification of theories of internal relations does not apply to
Bradley.
18. See Pears, Russell, 171-173.
19. See B. Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1914) 18;
G. E. Moore, “External and Internal Relations,” in Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge
& K. Paul, 1922) 276-309. See also W. James, “The Thing and Its Relations” in Essays in
Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912) especially 117-122; and
F. L. Will, “Internal Relations” 506-507.
20. See R.G. Ross, Scepticism and Dogma: A Study in the Philosophy ofF.H. Bradley (New
York, 1940) 88; R.W. Church, op. cit., Ch. X; H. Khatchadourian, The Coherence Theory of
Truth (Beirut: American University, 1961) 47.
21. C. A. Campbell, “Bradley’s Anti-Relational Argument,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 8
(1958) 58, refusing as always to acknowledge the theory of feeling, misses this.
22. See J. F. Herbart, Sämtliche Werke, ed. G. Hartenstein (Leipzig, 1850ff.) Vol. IV, 69-74,8Iff.;
Vol. 1,219ff. Cf. AR 539.
23. T. H. Green, Works ed. R. L. Nettleship, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1906-1908) Vol. n, 179. Against the view that the idealist doctrine of internal relations is anti-
scientific, I should add that undoubtedly one reason for its ready acceptance in the late 19th
century was the fact that the scientific developments of the period were seen as lending it
support. (See J.B. Stallo, Concepts and Theories of Modem Physics [London, Kegan Paul,
1882] especially pp. 184-185.) This was one of the few books on science that Bradley had in
his possession; see the catalogue of his library at Merton College Library. See also David
Masson, Recent British Philosophy [a review, with criticisms; including some comments on
Mr. Mill's answer to Sir William Hamilton] 3d ed.: with an additional chapter (London:
Macmillan and Co., 1877) 141,144.
24. See, for instance, C.D. Broad, “Critical and Speculative Philosophy,” and J. H. Muirhead, “Past
and Present in Contemporary Philosophy,” in Contemporary British Philosophy, 1st. Series,
ed. J. H. Muirhead (London: Allen & Unwin, 1924) 97,317-318. For a recent expression of
the same view, see M. J. Cresswell, “Reality as Experience in F. H. Bradley,” Australasian
Journal of Philosophy, 55 (1977) 179.
25. On Bradley’s alleged obscurity see, for instance, B. Blanshard, “Autobiography,” in The
Philosophy o f Brand Blanshard (La Salle, IL.: Open Court, 1980) 142; and Wollheim,
Bradley 114.
26. It is this ideally inaccessible “sort of relatedness” which we are “to boggle at”—in answer to
a query of H. W. B. Joseph’s in an unpublished Ms. (p. 5) with the title “Bradley on Quality
and Relation” and dated 17 February 1937 (in the possession of Prof. D. M. MacKinnon, to
whom I am grateful for giving me access).
27. See Wollheim,Bradley 114-115, who has failed to recognize that it is the “double character,”
as both given and made, of the “same feature” of an object which is the problem. I should add
that, contra pp. 112 and 114,1 fail to see how Bradley’s arguments on AR 26 can be taken as
arguments ‘for’ internal or ‘against’ external relations.
28. See R. D. L. Montague, “Wollheim on Bradley on Idealism and Relations,” The Philosophical
Quarterly, 14 (1964) 162ÍF.
29. See A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, “A New Theory of the Absolute” in Man ’s Place in the Cosmos
(Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1897) 92-159; a view reiterated by H. B.
Acton, ‘T. H. Bradley,”Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy; ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan
and the Free Press, 1967) Vol. 1,359-363.
30. See J. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921)
Vol. I, 89; Broad, McTaggart Vol. 1,98-99; S.V. Keeling, La Nature de TExperience chez
Kant et chez Bradley (Montpellier, 1925) 112-116. See also B. Russell, Principles o f
Mathematics (Cambridge: University Press, 1903) Ch. IX, 99 and Wollheim, Bradley 113-4.
31. It is interesting to note that in the 2nd. edition of PL (426, n. 19) Bradley is prepared to revise
his account of Hegel’s theory of negation in the light of McTaggart’s Studies in the Hegelian
Dialectic. This is not surprising, however, in view of the fact that McTaggart’s work is an
attempt to re-read Hegel in the light of Bradley’s insistence on the irreducibility of the
distinction of thought and existence and the primacy of affirmation over negation. See my
“Hegel in Britain: A BriefHistoiy of British Commentary and Attitudes,” Part 2, The Heythrop
Journal, 20 (1979) 163-182.
32. Among those who see Bradley’s metaphysics as based upon the principle of sufficient reason
are B. Russell, “The Monistic Theory of Truth,” Philosophical Essays (London: Longmans,
Green, 1910) 165; T. L. S. Sprigge, “Russell and Bradley on Relations,” The Bertrand Russell
Memorial Volume, ed. George W. Roberts (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1979) 162-3; and
Stewart Candlish, “Scepticism, Ideal Experiment, and Priorities in Bradley’s Metaphysics,” The
Philosophy of F.H. Bradley, ed. A. Manser and G. Stock (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984)243-267.
33. J. de Mameffe, “La preuve de l’Absolu chez Bradley,” Archives de Philosophie, 22 (1959)
76-99,227-249,566-604; 23 (1960) 207-229, emphasizes Bradley’s hypothetical method and
rigorously distinguishes it from any particular metaphysical starting-point. For an excellent
treatment of Bradley’s notion of “ideal experiment” see Don MacNiven, Bradley ’s Moral
Psychology (Queenston, ON: Edwin Mellen, 1987) Ch. I.
34. See PL 520-521,533 n. 1 & 2.
35. Among Bradley’s critics, see L. T. Hobhouse, The Theory of Knowledge (London: Methuen,
1897) 495-6; John Dewey, “The Intellectualiste Criterion for Truth,” in The Influence of
Darwin Upon Philosophy (New York, 1910) 112ff., and Logic: The Theory o f Inquiry (New
York: H. Holt and Company, 1938) 529ff.; A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, “A New Theory of the
Absolute,” 230; R. G. Ross, Scepticism and Dogma (New York, 1940); R. D. Mack, The
Appeal to Immediate Experience, 15-16; A. Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction Against Science,
tr. Agnes McCaskill (London: Macmillan, 1914) 106-107. Among those who impute to
Bradley, and defend, an “intellectualist” position on noncontradiction and its derivation, see B.
Blanshard, The Nature of Thought 2 vols. (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1939) Vol. H,
422-423; CA. Campbell, Scepticism and Construction (1931) Ch. I; S. K. Saxena, Studies in
the Metaphysics of Bradley (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967) Ch. V; G. Vander Veer,
Bradley 'sMetaphysics and the Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970) Ch. 9. The list
could be lengthened indefinitely.
36. The honourable exceptions are M. B. Foster, “The Concrete Universal,” Mind, 40 (1931) 16;
andH. H. Joachim, Logical Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948) 290-291. Foster does not
develop the point, however, and Joachim raises objections that do not take the theory of feeling
into account.
37. See B. Bosanquet,Logic, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911) Vol. H, 21 Iff.
38. Contra Mack, The Appeal to Immediate Experience, 22.
39. Bradley uses the term “inherence” at AR 27 n. At both at PL 695-696 and CE 657 it is defined
in terms of the unity experienced in feeling.
40. J. H. Randall Jr., Philosophy after Darwin, 195; Dewey, “The Intellectualiste Criterion for
Truth,” 135. For the earliest expression of this criticism of Bradley, see “The Unpublished
Letters from William James 1842-1910 to F. H. Bradley 1846-1924,” ed. J.C. Kenna, Mind,
75(1966) 33 Iff.
41. Gilbert Ryle, “Mr. Collingwood and the Ontological Argument,” Collected Papers, 2 vols.
(London: Hutchinson, 1971) Vol. II, 105.
42. See Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962) Chs. 6 and 10.
43. See Gilbert Ryle, “Review of Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought,” Philosophy, 15
(1940)324-329.
44. C.A. Campbell, On Selfhood and Godhood (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957) 391.
45. C.A. Campbell, Scepticism and Construction (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1931) 18.
46. Campbell, Scepticism 12.
47. Campbell, Scepticism 11-13; Selfhood, 391-392.
48. Campbell, Scepticism 51-53.
49. See especially J. H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy (London:
G. Allen & Unwin, 1931), “Dioscuri,” 255-256. For an extreme version of this view, see F.
Houang,Le néo-hegelianisme en Angleterre (Paris: Vrin, 1954).
50. See my “F. H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and Its Place in the History of Philosophy,”
The Philosophy of F.H. Bradley, ed. A. Manser and G. Stock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
227-242.
Part 2: Metaphysics
Taylor & Francis
Introduction
This second part focuses on metaphysics. As noted in the Introduction, metaphysics has had
a rather varied legacy in the last 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it still
had a high degree of respectability. But metaphysics—and systematic philosophy in
general— soon encountered a number of challenges—that they were given to paradox or
obscurantism, that their statements were meaningless, and that there was no legitimate way
in which they could prove their conclusions.
Excluding metaphysics, however, was eventually seen as excluding many of the hitherto
central questions of philosophy—questions such as, ‘What is the nature of reality?,’ ‘Is
there a principle of unity?,’‘What is time?,’ and, most importantly, ‘Is there a reason for
what there is?’ It also entailed that the classical philosophers were important only for the
arguments one could isolate in and extract from their works, and relatively little attention
was given to identifying and articulating the contexts in which these arguments were made.
The return to metaphysics that one finds in the last few decades began by an acknowl
edgment that many of the criticisms raised were based on a failure to see arguments in their
context—either by uprooting them from their texts or by placing them in another context.
And it has, therefore, provided a fertile ground for the traditional forms of speculation
engaged in by many idealists.
It was noted in the Introduction to this volume that a number of philosophers who
endorse contemporary ‘anti-realism’ do so by drawing on arguments that look remarkably
like those employed by some idealists. But the arguments of the British Idealists—and
especially those like Bosanquet—are often far from easy to classify; McTaggart once
complained that many of Bosanquet’s arguments could quite consistently be endorsed by
a materialist. And so it is interesting to see, as John Leslie argues, that not only is anti
realism not plausible, but that opposition to it might well be compatible with idealism.
When it comes to looking for an explanation for what there is, Leslie suggests that we can
be anti anti-realists and yet hold, with Spinoza, that we are all elements in a ‘divine mind. ’
Lawrence Dewan’s essay also deals with the question of ‘explanation’—in particular,
the question of the character of a philosophical proof that claims to explain what there is.
Dewan focuses on Aquinas’s first and second ‘ways’ to the existence of God, arguing that
metaphysics can provide proofs or demonstrations (in this case, of God), and pointing out
some misunderstandings of Aquinas that occur when his arguments are taken out of their
contexts (as in Peter Geach’s reading of ‘the five ways’).
Aquinas’s arguments for a principle of unity and a principle of explanation hinge on the
exclusion of the hypothesis of an infinite, eternal series of causes. Thomas De Koninck
turns to the great Greek classical philosophers to clarify these notions of time, eternity, and
causality. In Aristotelian metaphysics, the primary cause is substance and time is eternal.
Nevertheless, De Koninck notes that, from the eternity of time and the world, we can still
be led to the divine— God.
The focus on argument and on an (at least) quasi-demonstrative method in metaphysics,
characteristic of the early modem period, led inevitably to a reaction. The metaphysical
tradition, following Descartes and refined by Kant and Hegel, is often seen as ‘rational
ist’—one that excludes the passions, such as love—and as an approach that, as it came to
influence theology, naturalized the character of evil. Vidar Lande presents Kierkegaard’s
response to the speculative metaphysical tradition as it is developed in Hegel. For
Kierkegaard, like St. Augustine, love is central to reality. While he separates reason from
the passions, he recognizes that there must also be a relation between them. Kierkegaard’s
solution may be confusing, because the context of his remarks is often overlooked. In work
such as the Philosophical Fragments, he is not only involved in a polemic with Danish
theologians, but is also attacking the Hegelian notion of ‘speculative reason’ and protesting
that speculative thought had an insufficient awareness of the importance of suffering to the
consciousness of sin and the need for salvation.
Lande reminds us of Kierkegaard’s ‘neo-Platonic’ and Kantian inheritance, and
suggests that it is here that Kierkegaard’s ‘idealistic’ solution to the problem of the separa
tion of reason and the passions is to be found. For Kierkegaard, the answer is to hold reason
and passion in a tension—to embrace the paradox—in a way that nevertheless has reason
at its core.
It is clear from the studies in this Part that, in raising certain metaphysical questions,
one is inevitably led to questions concerning community and values. James Thomas’s essay
explores this in detail, through examining central themes in Leslie Armour’s metaphysical
‘trilogy’—The Rational and the Real, Logic and Reality„ and Being and Idea—and by
relating them to Armour’s recent work in the history of philosophy. Thomas’s strategy is
to focus on the work of Spinoza and Hegel—the principals of Being and Idea—who
addressed the central metaphysical question of whether there is a unity within, or underly
ing, diversity in the world. Thomas notes that Hegel criticized Spinoza’s account for failing
to show how the Absolute relates to the diversity of things, but that Hegel, too, left the
problem unresolved. Armour’s work, influenced by Spinoza’s ‘rational psychology’ (i.e.,
a psychology that aims at expressing the conditions for intelligible experience) and in
formed by Armour’s own notion of “dialectical individuality” (involved in his account of
logic and his ‘deterministic’ analysis of the form of community), provides a way of explain
ing some of the characteristics of ‘reality,’ how the Absolute enters experience, and the
ethical consequences of such a view. Thomas suggests that, just as Bradley distinguishes
two metaphysical levels o f‘reality’ and ‘appearance,’ so Armour gives us the ‘idea of idea’
(or Absolute) and its expressions (i.e., finite individuals) that are on different levels and
cannot be reduced to one another.
6 Anti Anti-Realism
JOHN LESLIE
Introduction
Metaphysics is world-modelling of a bold kind It goes beyond immediate verification and

even, in many cases, all possibility of ever reaching anything worth so strong a name as
‘verification.’ While evidence may give some support to metaphysical speculations, they
remain deeply speculative.
Notoriously, there have been efforts to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless. The
logical positivists deployed a ‘verifiability criterion of meaning,’ complaining that
metaphysical pronouncements failed to satisfy it. They quickly found themselves in
difficulties over verifying statements about events far in the past, for instance, or
statements of the laws of nature which apply, if the universe is infinite, to infinitely many
happenings. What if they contented themselves with a weak kind of verifiability? How
about calling events verifiable if suitably empowered, suitably located possible observers
(such as observers able to survive in the heat of the sun’s centre, or existing at times
before any life in fact evolved, or able to tour an infinite universe in its entirety) could in
principle check up on these events, or have checked up on them, with the help of
principles for interpreting evidence which had at least some plausibility? Then, alas, it
seemed possible to give meaning to even the boldest metaphysical speculations. You
could say, for example, that an observer able to investigate in detail a burning bush which
seemed to utter impressive words could (had any such bush made an appearance) have
checked up on the existence of God. Still worse: mere claims to have met God mystically,
or suggestions that the wonders and beauties of the natural world were signs of its
supernatural origins, might have to be taken seriously. Yet if the criterion of verifiability
were instead kept strong, so that all such theological speculations could be dismissed,
then many standardly accepted scientific theories would have to be dismissed as well.
After all this had been appreciated, logical positivism appeared irremediably dead.
Philosophical errors can be surprisingly hard to kill, though, and today’s journals are
filled with what is called ‘anti-realism.’ To all appearances this is logical positivism back
from the dead, and only flimsily disguised. Anti-realists oppose any ‘view from nowhere’
which reveals things as they really are, as distinct from how they would seem after
suitably prolonged investigation. They claim that ‘how things really are’ must mean
nothing other than how matters would seem, were collection of evidence to be adequately
persistent. It would be impossible, they declare, to find any meaning in the suggestion that
one was oneself an immaterial soul tricked by a Cartesian demon, or a brain kept alive
in a vat by a mad scientist and stimulated by her gigantic computer, if one’s tireless efforts
to gather evidence were fated never to reveal this. Their arguments for their position
involve many sophisticated claims about the nature of meaning, claims which have grown
complicated enough to be virtually immune to criticism. Chopping away at one anti
realist claim, you find it defended with another, and that in turn by another, and so on; and
each, taken individually, can seem to make a lot of sense. Typical anti-realists are no
fools. Yet what they have in common is an inability to grasp just how badly logical
positivism failed, and what a disgrace it would be if anything markedly like it became
philosophical orthodoxy.
In “Demons, Vats and the Cosmos,”11 argued that anti-realism must deny meaning
to many fairly evidently meaningful speculations in the field of physical cosmology. For
all practical purposes, the case is exactly as if the anti-realists were logical positivists of
the old school. How could “sufficiently prolonged investigations” ever decide the
rightness or wrongness of claims about events early in the big bang or hidden inside the
horizons of black holes, or about the existence and nature of other universes which lacked
all causal contact with our own? Even when they are kept very vague, cosmological
speculations may well be rejected by one rational person, as not at all reflecting how
things seem to be, while another finds them plausible. Believe it or not, Professors
Hawking, Penrose and Rees, without any of them being positively irrational, differ widely
in the principles they use for evaluating theories. And when one’s cosmological hypothe
ses are made precise, perhaps at the cost of becoming sheer guesswork (but since when
have all sheer guesses been guaranteed to be meaningless?), it can well be thought
ludicrous to equate their truth or falsehood with how they would seem after investigations
suitably prolonged—unless we introduce suitably empowered possible investigators
travelling to, say, the early stages of the big bang, to count the precise number of tiny
black holes which formed as the primordial material underwent quantum fluctuations, or
visiting other universes to verify just how many of these were life-containing. Yet
wouldn’t such investigators have to inhabit the realm of magic?
We do not need, though, to bring in the marvels of black holes and multiple universes
in order to make out our case against anti-realism. It is enough to consider some hypothe
sis about exactly how many ants ever came to be squashed by any one dinosaur. The
suggestion that the number is 9,335,967,005 is a mere guess and presumably wrong; but
surely it is meaningful and with some slight chance of being right. Surely, too, it would
be impossible for suitably prolonged investigation by suitably equipped investigators to
decide firmly on its correctness or incorrectness—unless, that is to say, we invoke
possible investigators following around eveiy single one of the larger dinosaurs and
counting the squashed ants with superb accuracy at times long before any actual human
investigators had evolved. Yet if we are allowed to introduce such investigators, then why
not also possible mystics who would be able, by sufficiently prolonged efforts, to make
contact with any mind, even the mind of God if any such mind existed, thanks to the
telepathic powers with which they came “suitably equipped”? Yet isn’t it clear enough
that imagining investigators suitably proficient in telepathy in order to throw light on the
statement ‘There really is a divine mind’ would be just a fantastically roundabout way of
saying that the statement in question would be correct i f there indeed were a divine mindR
Here as in the case of the dinosaurs, “being suitably equipped” and “working away for
sufficiently long” must boil down to being in a position to arrive (by magic if need be) at
what really is so, and then working long enough to arrive at it. In which case trying to
understand the phrase ‘what really is so’ in terms of the activities of the ‘suitably
equipped’ and ‘suitably persistent’ investigator is putting cart before horse.
Anti Anti-Realism 113
Again, consider the theory that reality has a genuinely fractal structure: that is to say,
possesses structure on progressively smaller scales, ad infinitum. Some physicists deny
that this is possible. They believe that the smallest meaningful scale is given by the
Planck length, important to quantum physics, of roughly a billion trillion trillionths of a
centimetre. Other physicists think otherwise, however. Well, disagreement over whether
increasing fineness of structure must come to an end at the Planck length does not look
to be disagreement of a kind resolvable by some theory, such as the anti-realist one, of
how words get their meaning, neither does it look as if any such theory could settle
whether any smaller-than-Planck-scale structures would be genuinely fractal. The most
that an anti-realist could hope to get away with would be a flat denial that it was
meaningful—more than pure verbiage—to talk of infinitely detailed structure. But surely
it is fairly plainly meaningful to suppose that, no matter how far investigators moved
through higher and higher magnifications, they would find more and more detail, were
they suitably equipped.
Why on earth should anyone believe that mere Principles of Meaning dictated that all
realities had to be realities of how things seemed, or would seem or would have seemed
if persistently investigated? When we try to say truly, ‘There are more things in heaven
and earth than intelligent beings could ever dream of,’ must this be either wrong or
meaningless, just on the basis of the correct theory of truth and meaning? Presumably not.
But wrong or meaningless is what it would have to be if the never-dreamable-of things,
because they could never seem in any fashion whatever, could never truly be supposed
to exist.
I can guarantee that the above points will not convince all anti-realists. Some of these
folk have even tried suggesting that past events are essentially fuzzy. It is then neither
right nor wrong that the largest number of ants ever squashed by a dinosaur is
9,335,967,005, or that the geese on the Capitoline Hill, on the night when those helpful
birds gave timely warning of the barbarian attack on Rome, numbered precisely 53. Exact
statements in these areas are meaningless, some leading anti-realists have suggested, or
are perhaps meaningful but exceptions to such logical principles as Excluded Middle.
This is reminiscent of the story (perhaps apocryphal, so we had best not reveal its hero’s
name) about one of the more famous American analytical philosophers of recent years
who swore that, were he ever to become convinced of a need to choose between believing
in God and rejecting the law of Non-Contradiction, then he would reject the law. There
are some who will never be persuaded!
Let me make a few further attempts at persuasion, none the less. They concern what
could be meant by ‘would seem’ in the sentence ‘This is how things would seem, in the
end, to investigators suitably located and equipped who pursued their investigations with
adequate persistence. ’
My first point is that it is often devilish hard to say how things seem. I would often
much prefer the task of deciding whether a rod was over one metre in length, really, to
that of saying whether it really seemed so, because ‘seems’ can be terribly ambiguous.
When a young child atop a skyscraper gazes on cars down below, perhaps it seems to the
child that the cars are the size of toy cars, in a strong sense of ‘seems.’ There may even
be a sense, a weak one, in which cars seen from such a position seem toy cars to adults.
There is another sense, though, in which they seem to them just ordinary cars. To try to
define the two senses exactly, also discovering at what age children stop finding that
distant cars seem (in the strong sense) to be of toy car size, is as much a waste of time as
trying to say precisely when a balding man becomes worth the description ‘bald. ’ Quite
apart from all the well known difficulties of introspecting mental states accurately,
attempts to describe how things seem run into such a morass surrounding the meaning
of ‘seem’ that this by itself might be enough to ruin the idea of a world whose truths were
all of seeming.
Anti-realists might answer that it is in many cases possible to say firmly that some
thing really seems thus and so, and that these are the cases which interest them. Look
again at the case of the rod. After measurement, mayn’t it have seemed over a metre long,
beyond all possibility of doubt? But to this I reply that I might fail to know whether a rod
seemed over a metre long, even after extremely careful measurement; for might it not
stretch to more or less exactly the one-metre mark? Yet even then, surely it would be
meaningful to suppose that the rod really was (or was not) over a metre long. Also, surely
saying that something really seems, after long investigation, to have characteristics such
and such, is saying that long investigation gives a strong impression that the thing really
does have characteristics such and such, instead o f merely seeming to have them.
The fact is that the idea of something’s really seeming to be thus and so is parasitic
on the idea that things actually can be thus and so—and not vice versa. Really seeming
to have such and such properties, to anyone not just interested in describing impressions,
means seeming actually to have them. There may be a sense in which a metre rod seen
from atop a skyscraper ‘seems only a centimetre long, to adults as well as children.’ But
in a more interesting sense of ‘seems,’ a rod really seems a centimetre long to a grown
man when he has measured it carefully and decided that this really is its length (and
therefore really would be, regardless of how distant it was from anybody). Admittedly,
when he claims that this is the rod’s true length that's because this is how the matter
seems to him after conscientious measurement; but the claim is not itself a claim that this
is, after conscientious measurement, how the matter seems. He could later become
convinced that he had measured wrongly, while still accepting that it truly had seemed to
him that he had measured rightly. In this case he ought to say ‘What I claimed was
wrong’—and not that his claim had been only about how matters seemed after conscien
tious measurement, and had therefore been, like a document stamped with a Chinese
imperial signet, composed of truth, no matter what evidence might afterwards come to
light.
Have I have given the anti-realists too quick a dismissal? Mayn’t my arguments
against them have relied too much on repeating ‘surely,’ ‘surely,’ ‘surely’? My excuse,
if one is needed, is that these people are only encouraged in their errors when philoso
phers try to fault, one after another, their successive very complicated claims about how
words get meanings. True, I am tempted to diagnose their main mistake. I suggest it lies
in the queer notion that there is just the one way—pointing and naming, plus complex
extensions thereof—in which words could possibly become meaningful. ‘Genuine water’
might then always have to mean stuff of just the sort, in all its physico-chemical detail,
which people had in fact pointed at when they uttered the word ‘water,’ whether or not
they had ever heard tell of physics and chemistry. ‘Genuine brain’ and ‘genuine vat’
would have to get their meanings similarly. And, no doubt, for the meaning of ‘witch’ to
be teachable, somebody at some stage would need to lay hands on a genuine witch or two.
These excessively firm and often bizarre consequences stem, I suggest, from exaggerated
philosophical worries about the technical difficulties facing any theory about how
word-pictures and mental maps come to correspond to actual or possible realities. (The
philosophical worriers notice that what we call ‘word-pictures’ are always clearly
distinguishable from genuine pictures produced by painters, and that even masterpieces
of representative art and of cartography are in many respects unlike what they represent.
They then disregard the all-important structural similarities which exist between a map
and the correctly mapped countryside, between an expertly produced pattern of
paint-blobs and the reality which it portrays, and even between a detailed word-picture
of a witch and the wax model of a witch in a museum of folk mythology. They are
therefore baffled by how, say, a cosmologist could possibly hope that his or her verbal
descriptions or graphs correctly represented a universe which existed in parallel with
ours but which was totally disconnected from it—so that the cosmologist’s words or other
symbols could never be linked to any such parallel universe through the kind of causal
history which joins, say, our talk of Aristotle with the man to whom people could once
point while uttering the word ‘Aristotle’ or, to be more precise, the original Greek word
from which the English word ‘Aristotle’ is derived.) However, it does not much matter
whether my diagnosis is right. It ought to be enough to point out that anti-realism must
be wrong because it denies meaning to what is obviously meaningful, also trying to get
us to declare that what we really meant, ail along, was what we fairly clearly didn’t mean.
In this brief paper, at any rate, my main aim has been to speed onwards to my next
theme, which is that opposition to anti-realism is perfectly compatible with idealism:
idealism, that is, in the Eveiything-is-Mental sense. Like Leslie Armour, I have consider
able respect for this sort of idealism. I am now hard at work on a book expanding “A
Spinozistic Vision of God”2 and “A Neoplatonist’s Pantheism” — articles which
defended the metaphysical speculation that we are all of us simply elements in the
thoughts of a divine mind. This Spinozistic speculation avoids, I reckon, any conflict with
our day-to-day experiences. I actually consider it plausible. Now, people who join me in
these possibly bizarre opinions can be firmly opposed to anti-realism. Making everything
mental does not automatically erase every difference between the realm of true being and
the realm of appearance.
To begin with, the Spinozistic speculation is about how things really are, not about
how they seem. When I suggest we are all of us elements in a divine mind, I am calling
it fairly probable that that’s what our situation really is. And if that’s what it really is, then
that’s what it really would be no matter whether it seemed like this to most of us. As a
matter of fact, it does not seem like this to most of us. Most people of today treat
Spinozism of the sort I have in mind as little (if at all) short of madness. Again, I feel
certain that most of them would continue to react in this way after long, careful investiga
tion both of their principles of reasoning and of all evidence they would ever find. The
theory that everything is mental, and the more specific theory that it is all of it divinely
mental, are not theories identifying being with seeming, or even with seeming after long
and serious investigation.
Second, there is little enough excuse for basing idealism, the belief that everything is
mental, on a mere theoiy of meaning. Logical positivists such as the early A. J. Ayer, the
Ayer who was a convinced phenomenalist, were driven to believing that everything was
mental because they thought that only the mental could be verifiable; but their verification
theoiy of meaning was a disaster. Again, while Bishop Berkeley may have been right in
arguing that the only actual existents (meaning things which are not just abstractions like
the number nine) which can be conceived in any complete fashion are mental existents
(minds or elements in their thoughts or experiences), I do not see how anyone could prove
that mental existents were the only ones which could be conceived in any way whatso
ever. It seems to me meaningful to describe complex structures mathematically and then
add, ‘The structures are real but not mental. ’
Third and finally, it seems to me that even a reality in which everything was mental
could be extremely complex, and that there are strong reasons for thinking it would be
infinitely complex. In particular, a divine mind might include knowledge of what infinitely
many possible universes would be like. Some of these universes would be (as cosmolo-
gists often think our universe is) infinite in extent, so that they could include infinitely
many planets inhabited by observers. As knowing everything, or at least everything worth
knowing, the divine mind would know precisely how it would feel to exist as a finite and,
indeed, very severely limited being in one such universe, and to be convinced of one’s
severe limitations. Therefore (this was Spinoza’s magnificent central insight) the divine
mind would have inside itself elements, intricate sub-systems of the divine thought, which
firmly believed, and believed correctly, that they actually were severely limited beings,
beings ignorant of immensely much—beings some of them with such names as ‘John
Leslie.’ What is more, the ignorance of these beings might never be removed. It might be
utterly irremovable. Reality might stretch vastly beyond how things could ever seem to
them.
It might be, for instance, that the structure which most tidily completes, rounds out,
the crude and broken patterns of John Leslie’s conscious life, the structure which he calls
‘the structure of the physical world of which I form part,’ was genuinely fractal, with an
infinite number of layers of ever smaller details. The divine mind could know this entire
pattern—which would make it a real pattern, one truly existing inside that mind, whether
or not it existed anywhere else as well—without much of it ever becoming known to John
Leslie, by computer-assisted human efforts or in a mystical vision or anyhow else. And
it is actually rather doubtful whether any mind could remain the mind of John Leslie, if
it could be led to grasp such a pattern in its infinite entirety.
A nice thing about Leslie Armour is that you can indulge in such speculations in his
hearing without feeling thoroughly defensive. While he may not agree with them, he at
least does not hiss them. He knows stunningly much about the history of metaphysical
theories and about how hard it is to evaluate them. It is a pleasure and an honour to be
contributing to this festschrift.
Notes
1. Philosophical Papers, 18 (1989) 169-188.

2. Religious Studies, 29 (1993) 277-286.
3. The Monist, 80(1997) 218-231.
Taylor & Francis
7 St. Thomas and Infinite Causal Regress
LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.
Introduction
In an essay on Thomas Aquinas published in 1961, Peter Geach1 contends that all of
Thomas’s Five Ways, i.e. the five arguments for the existence of a God presented in the
Summa theologiae,2have in common a move which he calls “lumping together.”3 Rather
than consider merely this or that particular object, one treats the world as an object; one
gathers together all observables, and makes statements pertaining to them. In this fashion,
one arrives at God as Maker of the World.
Geach tells us that, in proposing this, he is opposing certain theologians who wish to
conceive of the Ways as starting from the existence of any random object and arriving at
the existence of a God. He contends that this is not possible, and is not what Thomas
himself was trying to do. In order to show this, he argues that the causal explanation of
any particular object is satisfied by pointing out the immediate particular cause or causes,
as the child is caused by the parents.4 He points out that this sort of causation can be
traced back to infinity in a line of parentage, according to Thomas himself. Thus, it is not
a chain of causes that Thomas is speaking about in the Ways, nor is the God at which they
arrive first in such a chain ( 111 -112).5
Geach sees the alternative to this as what he calls “lumping things together” in a
“world.” He sketches what he means by speaking of the Earth, the Solar System, the
Galaxy, the Galactic Cluster, etc. He takes the whole as in process, and, on the basis that
a process requires a cause other than itself, he holds that there must be such a cause,
outside of or beyond all process, even if one contends that the world as so described
extends to infinity (113-114).
It is clear from what he says that Geach’s world consists in a causal system, origins
of change that require ontologically prior to them other origins of change.6 For this reason
I was puzzled as to why he spoke of “lumping things together.” In a causal system, things
are already together in a unity. Where, if I may so put it, is the iu m p ’?
The answer seems to lie in his consciousness of (as he sees it) the possible infinity of
the causal system he can observe. Aware that someone might simply let the mind run
back from item to item endlessly, never seeing the need to encounter a “changeless origin
of change,” he calls for a lasso, so to speak, and grasps the infinite as a “whole.” Focusing
on the fact that it all would be in process, he calls for something beyond the infinite causal
system, a different sort of thing, a ‘God. ’
It is significant that Geach was criticized by Patterson Brown in a paper on infinite
causal regress.71 say this because it seems to me that what Geach is evading is the need
to show that one cannot go to infinity in origins of change. His world, though it is a causal
system, may be infinite, just as long as it is, as a whole, in process. Everything depends
on the grasping of the world as a whole, the whole of which is changing. And so it is
important for him to be able to say: all the members of the series, all the parts of the
whole, are in process; therefore, this must also be true of the world as a whole.
I do not think Geach is adequately presenting Thomas’s line of thought, nor do I think
Geach’s own argument is adequate. Can an infinite series such as he has in mind exist?
Thomas proves that it cannot. What about a per impossibile argument? It seems to me
that seeing the validity of the per impossibile argument requires seeing the prior validity
of the real argument given by Thomas. And it is not a per impossibile hypothesis for
Geach.
Before criticizing Geach any further, let me look at Patterson Brown and a recent
Geach defender, John Lamont. Brown is writing about the doctrine that one cannot
regress to infinity in causal series. He himself is able to understand such a doctrine only
as an expression of the determination to have a scientific explanation for everything.8 To
go to infinity removes the possibility of such explanation. However, he notes the position
of Geach. He sees that some such composition arguments (the “lumping together”) are
valid, and that Geach’s particular composition argument is valid. If the parts are in
process, the whole is in process. His complaint is that this move by Geach is not the
needed mainspring for Geach’s own position. What he rather sees as central is the
argument: if the parts are moved by another, the whole is moved by another. This he says
neither Geach nor Thomas nor Aristotle has shown (231).
John Lamont9 writes to defend Geach against Brown. He thinks that with a little
explanation and patching up, Geach’s sort of argument is valid. His own argument says
that there are effects; that an effect requires a cause other than itself; that this is true not
only of effects taken one by one, but also of effects taken collectively. Thus, there must
be an uncaused cause for the whole effect, even if its (the effect’s) parts or members are
infinitely numerous.
Lamont’s argument rests on the principle: if you take a group of things that are all
effects, the group itself will be an effect. This seems to be the same as the argument which
Brown required of Geach but did not find: if the parts are moved by another, the whole
is moved by another; or if the parts derive from something else, the whole derives from
something else.
Can we then say that Lamont has successfully responded to the complaint Brown
brought against Geach? Several features of Lamont’s presentation trouble me. The
principle: “if you take a group of things which are an effect, the group itself will be an
effect” is true, especially if by ‘group’ one means a causal series or hierarchy (not a mere
‘chain’). Lamont is able to appeal to this principle as pertaining to Thomas’s Second
Way, the argument from efficient causal order. It depends upon one’s ability to recognize
such order in observable reality, something Brown would probably not concede,10but that
is not necessarily a reason to reject it. However, Lamont says, speaking of the First Way,
the “Way of motion or change,” that Thomas “assumes” that change requires something
other than the changed thing as origin of change.11 This is not true. Thomas proves it in
the First Way. That, at any rate, is what he primarily undertakes to do in that Way. This
in fact is what should be replied to Brown as regards his criticism of Geach, namely that
Thomas, for one, did show that if all the members of a causal series are caused, the whole
series is caused. Or rather, there I fall too much into the Brown-Geach pattern. Thomas
is not working with the composition schema. He is saying that i f there is a causal series,
St. Thomas and Infinite Causal Regress 121
there is afirst, by which all the members save the first are caused. This is what I would
say both Aristotle and Thomas have shown. Geach did not do so.
Still, there is more wrong with Lamont’s presentation than that ‘assumption.’ He
recalled an argument of Hume’s that while each effect requires a cause, still the whole
assemblage of effects does not necessarily require a cause, since the assemblage is
something conjured by our minds. Lamont challenges Hume’s contention. He acknowl
edges the mental dimension of the assemblage, but he continues to affirm the need for a
cause for the whole. He takes as an example all the buns baked in the bakery today. Each
bun has a cause, and so all the buns have a cause (269-270).
In this matter, I side with Hume against Lamont. I do not mean to say that all groups
are mental constructs. I underline that what Geach and Thomas were talking about were
causal series, i.e. a multiplicity with an extramental coherence or unity. Geach regularly
refers to a causal “system.” It was Brown who first mentioned the Hume argument, with
similar remarks from William of Ockham, only to say that Geach was not touched by it.12
This is true, because of the system. However, Lamont has no such system in his picture.
He expressly states that the buns have no connection one with another. Yet he thinks the
argument: each bun has a cause; therefore all the buns have a cause, will hold. This is not
so. It holds only in the possible sense that many buns have many causes. Each bun in the
bakeiy might be baked by a different baker. There is no need for one cause for the buns.
Thus, I see Lamont as failing in his project.13
Could we not put together Lamont’s principle with Geach’s system and have a
defence against Brown? We could do so, but there is the question: is it enough to answer
Brown? Brown himself is weak, I contend, because he does not see the force of the
argument against infinite causal regress. He thinks it all comes down to the desire for
scientific explanation. I believe that the argument against regress has solid (I might even
say ‘hard’) foundations. Nevertheless, it does not work along the lines sketched by Geach.
An indication of the source of Brown’s difficulty can be found in his attempt to answer
a criticism made by C. J. F. Williams concerning Thomas’s argument.141 think Brown’s
answer is inadequate, and inadequate in a way which shows why Brown himself is not
really facing Thomas’s argument. Thomas, in both the First and Second Ways,15 argues
that a second mover only brings about movement under the influence of a first mover. In
an infinite series, there is no first. Hence, there is no other mover. This last is clearly false.
Therefore, etc. Williams objects to the premise which mentions a “first mover” (and thus
also a ‘second’ mover). He sees this, in a quest for a first mover, as begging the question.
Brown, who otherwise is v ay helpful in clearing up confusions about the meaning of the
issues under discussion, here stumbles, I believe. He reads the expression “first mover”
in the premise as describing the item as situated merely p rio r to the so-called ‘second’
mover. The second is ‘second’ merely as depending on another (222-223). In this way,
he avoids the appearance of question-begging, true enough, but in so doing he empties
the argument of its force. In an infinite regress, every member would have a member
prior to it, and so every member would have a cause. No wonder that in the end he does
not find the argument convincing.
W illiams’s complaint needs another answer. Thomas does not say ‘prior’; he says
‘first.’ He generally means what he says, and the Five Ways, despite what some
Thomists16have thought, are very subtly crafted.
The problem reminds me of the doctrine of a cause of beings as beings. Thomas
himself points out that in particular natures a cause cannot be the cause of the very form
which it itself possesses. This dog cannot cause doghood, for it would thus be the cause
of all dogs including itself. It can only cause “doghood to be in this matter,” i.e. ‘this
dog.’17Yet Thomas speaks of a cause of beings as beings.18 This means that the cause in
question must have a nature prior to the nature of being. That can only be the case if
‘being’ does not name a univocally common nature, i.e. one that is on the same level in
eveiy particular. It is because ‘being’ is found already, in the things which are available
to us, according to priority and posteriority that one can reason to a cause beyond this
domain of being, and thus discover an even more elevated occurence of what it is to ‘be. ’
So here. ‘First cause’ is something we already actually encounter, but encounter as open
to higher realizations. Thus, Thomas will say:
[...] it does happen that some principle of change [motus] is first in a domain [primum in
genere], which nevertheless is not unqualifiedly first \primum simpliciter]: for example,
in the domain of things subject to alteration the first source of alteration [primum alterans]
is the celestial body, which nevertheless is not the first source of change unqualifiedly
[primum movens simpliciter], but rather it is changed as regards local motion by a higher
source of change (ST l-2.6.1.ad 1 [753a36-49]).
And again:
[...] a first cause [causa prima] can then be impeded from [bringing about] its effect
through the deficiency of a second cause [causae secundae], when it is not universally first
[universaliter prima] containing under itself all causes [...] (ST 1.19.6.obj. 3 and ad 3).19
Because of this openness to higher realizations, we do not know what precisely the nature
is to which we eventually reason in the First and Second Ways, but we know there must
be such a nature. And if there were a regress to infinity, there would be (we will maintain)
no such nature.
How do we see the nature of ‘first cause’ or ‘first mover’? The example of Thomas,
in the hand-stick-stone line, is the human being. It is the human agent, as a source of
events, which gives us an experience of primacy in causality. Aristotle (in Metaphysics
9) presents power20 in two levels or modes: without reason (i.e. natural power) and with
reason. Whereas nature is a power determined to unity, reason is a power relative to
opposites, and thus a source of choices. It is this power of choice which most clearly
exhibits for us primary causality. For certain activities, we can obviously use an instru
ment or do without the instrument. This is crucial since the property of true causal
hierarchy is that the higher cause is causing the causal contribution of the lower cause.21
It can do this only if it itself possesses the power to do what the lower cause does. I say
‘most clearly exhibits’ because, while I am sure that we obtain much light on causality
and first causality from ourselves as agents, I would not say, as Williams (404-405)
seems to mean, that this is the exclusive source. Do we not appreciate causality in nature
outside ourselves? Do we not ‘see’ that the hot stove is a source of my hand’s being
burnt?22
Williams sees Aristotle (and I am sure he would put Thomas in the same boat in this
respect) as evincing “a conceptual preference for unmoved movers: uncaused causes are
real causes” (404, his italics). He goes on:
Maybe this is due to our originally deriving our conception of causation from ourselves as
agents. Nevertheless the conceptual preference exists [...]
There is here an implicit analogy between the microcosmic uncaused cause [the human
free act] and the macrocosmic [the act of God]. (404-405) [my italics]
Williams is right about the analogy. I would say that the issue is whether we have a
case of mere “conceptual preference” or of genuine metaphysics. The priority of act over
potency, I contend, is no mere conceptual preference.
We should note that, though Williams calls first causes “uncaused causes” and
“unmoved movers,” this is not what Thomas says. He comes at the very end of the First
Way to a “first mover which is moved by none.” (To put a comma after ‘mover’ is, I
suggest, wrong and misleading. He does not appear to mind ‘first movers’ being moved,
as long as there is one which is not.) He allows for a hierarchy of ‘first causes’ having
several levels (though he does end the Second Way simply with “some first efficient
cause”).23
The really interesting part of Williams’s note is his reference to Thomas’s Commen
tary on Aristotle 's P h y s ic s . He is quite right in seeing that Thomas and Aristotle are
thinking of causes which can do without the subsequent causes. He is quite right in
relating this to our appreciation of causality seen in our own freedom of choice. However,
he seems to think that Aristotle has overlooked examples such as bulldozers, i.e.
instruments which are truly indispensable for what we can do with them. (Aristotle’s
example is of our being able to move a stone either by means of a stick or doing without
the stick.) Here, Williams is wrong. Aristotle knows of plenty of instruments which one
cannot do without (the arm cannot do without the hand, nor the shoulder without the arm).
The point is that Aristotle is envisaging a true causal hierarchy, not a composite single
cause (the mover of the stick would be the hand-arm-shoulder as a single cause, not a
hierarchy in the sense Aristotle is considering; man and bulldozer are a single cause of
things man alone cannot cause).
My general line of thinking is that we must encounter ‘first cause’ as a type of thing
(according to priority and posteriority, just as with the nature of being). We do this when
we see the action of the rational power or human agent (hand or man). This is our
encounter with the sort of cause which can use an instrument or do without it. This
provides the vision of a hierarchy in the domain of efficient causality as such (nature, and
will or reason as moments in the hierarchy). God emerges as the cause at the head of the
hierarchy, just as he is the infinite nature of being beyond the infinite nature of being.24
One need not shy away from making God the first in the series, if one understands to what
extent the higher member of such a series transcends the lower.
Accordingly, Williams’s objection is one the correct response to which illuminates

the true meaning of the argument. It seems to me that one should stay closer to the
proposal of Thomas himself than Brown has done. Second movers do not bring move
ment about, save under the influence of a first mover, as the stick only as influenced by
the hand. The hand is an example of a ‘first mover.’ If it does not qualify as “altogether
first,” then we must posit something higher. But we must arrive at a first which is
unqualifiedly first, for this is clear from the very nature of causal order as evident to us
in the stone-stick-hand setup. To propose a regress to infinity is to ignore the evident
demands of causal order.25
Is it really necessary to consider the natures of the three items in the efficient causal
hierarchy? I have stressed the role of the hand or man as such. However, in Thomas’s
presentations, particularly for the Second Way, he does not seem to need such a consider
ation. We read:
But it is not possible that in efficient causes there be procession to infinity. Because in all
ordered efficient causes, the first is the cause of the intermediate, and the intermediate is
the cause of the last, whether the intermediates are several or one only; but, the cause being
removed, the effect is removed; therefore if there is not a first in efficient causes, there will
not be a last nor an intermediate. But if there is a procession to infinity in efficient causes,
there will be no first efficient cause, and thus there will not be an ultimate effect, nor
intermediate efficient causes, which plainly is false (ST 1.2.3 (14a29-41); italics mine).
And in his presentation of Aristotle in Me tap h. 2, he says:
[...] if it is necessary for us to say which is the cause among some three items [inter aliqua
tria], which are first, middle, and last, of necessity we will say that the cause is that which
is first [...]26
Even as regards the First Way parallels, consider Summa contra gentiles 1.13, the second
argument given there for not going to infinity in movers and things moved:
In ordered movers and things moved, i.e. one of which is moved by another by virtue of
the order, this necessarily is found to obtain, that, the first mover having been removed or
ceasing to bring about movement, none of the others will bring movement about or be
moved: because the first is the cause of movement of all the others. But if there are movers
and moved items in an order unto infinity, there will not be any first mover, but all will
have the role of intermediate movers. Therefore none of the others will be able to be
moved. And thus nothing in the world will be moved.27
I would say that we must save ourselves from too abstract a consideration, lest we fall
into a mathematicism. When envisioning the series, we should always insert likely
members of the series, such as the stone, the stick and the hand, or the surrounding air,
the violin, and the violinist. A thing is neither a mover nor a thing moved merely as
occupying a position in a line. Rather, we are supposed to consider ‘first, middle, and
last’ in a group of things having the natures which fit them to be movers and moved.28
We see this identification, this pointing out within common experience, of first movers
in Aristotle himself, as Thomas comments:
[Aristotle] presents a comparison of first mover and second. For, though we say “brings
about movement” of both the first mover and the last,29we say that the first mover brings
movement about moreso [magis] than does the last.
And this is clear for two reasons. One is that the first mover moves the second mover,
but not the converse. The second reason is, because the second mover cannot bring the
movement about without the first, but the first mover can bring the movement about
without the second; for example, the stick cannot move the stone unless it is moved by the
man, but the man can move [the stone] even without the stick.30
The above is the veiy passage from Thomas which Williams had the merit of considering.
Is my answer the same answer as that given by Brown to Williams, viz., that the term
‘second’ merely means ‘having something prior to it’? No. Brown does not mean by
‘prior’ what I do. I think it has to be made clear that a term like ‘prior’ should here
suggest ‘having more of the nature of a first, ’ ‘closer to a first. ’31
It is interesting that Geach,32 aiming to agree with St. Thomas, stresses the idea that,
even //the series of causes stretches to infinity, still there will be need of a cause beyond
the infinity. He seems to make this a part of the essential explanation. If this is the
procedure, it is obviously no longer a doctrine that one cannot have a causal regress to
infinity. The suggestion that the series might go to infinity comes from Aristotle himself.
Having made the argument that the first is the cause of the middle, he then points out that
it does not matter whether the middles are one, many or even infinite in number. If they
are all middles, nothing will happen (Aristotle, Metaph. 2.2 [994al4-19]).
Thomas, in commenting, simply incorporates this point into the reasoning, accepting
it without any special comment. However, in making the argument on his own account,
he never, to my knowledge, includes the possibility of an infinity of middle causes. In fact,
it is clear that no such infinity is even possible. If the causal hierarchy is truly causal,
positing an infinity of members negates the very causal structure. One might envisage a
hierarchy of created pure spirits, and it might be posited to stretch to infinity;33 but it
could not be an efficient causal hierarchy, even as regards some added perfection such as
illumination. The structure of an infinite series cannot have a causal nature.
Thus, I see Aristotle’s suggestion as a per impossibile challenge. Once the nature of
a “middle cause” is caught sight of34—i.e. that which needs something more causal to
activate it—then one can multiply it to infinity, to no effect. However, the point is only
valid because one has seen what it is to be a first in causality. Thus, it seems to me that
the enthusiasm of Geach for this point leads, not merely to confusion, but to a contradic
tion of the very point Thomas is making.
Ultimately, the argument seems to return to the distinction between the actual and the
potential. We can recognize a causal nature which stands in need of fulfillment, if it is to
do anything. We see other things which supply that extra something, the completive, the
nature o f actuality. We thus see the proportion (or distance) between potency and act.
This is indeed what we mean by ‘priority’ or ‘dependence.’ ‘Firstness’ is actuality.
We see the nature of efficient causal hierarchy, presented in a small observable

system. We thus see that this nature must obtain in any efficient causal hierarchy, no
matter how univeral or ultimate. There is no such thing as an infinite causal series. It is
a contradiction in terms. Notice, again, that the conclusion of the First Way should not be
to a “first mover (comma) which is moved by no other,” but rather to a “first mover which
is moved by no other”; the comma after “mover” in deceptive. We have already encoun
tered first movers in the Way, arid what is new in the conclusion is not a “first mover”
merely, but one that is moved by no other, one that is “universally first.” We arrive at an
ultimate first mover.
Williams calls the root of the procedure “conceptual preference.” I would say it is
metaphysical observation that drives the reasoning. It is what we see in causal natures and
the way they dominate the effect. There is a “local” wealth of being in any causal nature,
a “local stop,” most obviously in humans but to a lesser extent in lower animals, plants,
and indeed in any substance35 which reveals that ‘the buck always stops somewhere/
Notes
1. Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961)
65-125 contains Geach’s essay entitled “Aquinas”; 109-117 are on the existence of God. I will
sometimes simply refer to the page number in my text.
2. Summa theologiae [ST] 1.2.3. Where helpful, I will indicate the pagination in the edition
published at Ottawa (Collège Dominicain, 1941).
3. Geach says:
[...] It seems clear, then, that in spite of what a hasty reading of Aquinas’s “Five Ways”
might suggest, he did not think God could be reached by following to its end a causal
chain starting from a random object. I shall argue that what is in fact essential to the
“Five Ways” is something tantamount to treating the world as a great big object (112).
4. This is, in itself, a potentially disastrous contention. While we shall ourselves below affirm the
reality of the contribution of particular causes, we note that Thomas would say that to satisfy
causal requirements, one must mount from the cause of the individual to the cause of the
species, etc. Cf. e.g. Summa contra gentiles 3.65 (Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra
errores infidelium, seu Summa contra gentiles, vol. IE, ed. C. Pera, P. Marc, et P. Carmello
[Rome\Turin: Marietti, 1961] #2400).
5. I take it that Geach means by a “chain” such a mere juxtaposition of local causes as one finds
in the parental sequences; thus, a chain would not be a true ‘system’ (nor, perhaps, a true
‘series’).
6. He lumps together the series of causes and calls it ‘X.’ And he asks:
[...] But what is it that maintains this process of change in X? Something that cannot
itself be in process of change; for if it were, it would be just one of the things in process
of change that causes the process in A (or the coming-to-be of A); i.e. it would after all
be just part of the changeable system o f causes we called X, and not the cause of the
process in X. Thus we are led to a changeless cause of the change [...] in the world [...]
The number of items in X is irrelevant; and the changeless cause is introduced as the
cause of the change in the whole system X, not as the last link in a chain, directly
related only to the last link but one [Geach, 113-114, my italics].
7. Patterson Brown, ‘Infinite Causal Regression,” in Aquinas, ed. A. Kenny (New York: Anchor
Books, 1969) 214-236; reprinted from The Philosophical Review 75 (1966) 510-525.1 will
sometimes refer merely to the (Kenny ed.) page number, within my text.
8. Brown seems to be followed in this by Lubor Velecky, Aquinas ’Five Arguments in the Summa
Theologiae la 2,3 (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Phares, 1994). At 56-58, he considers the
infinite items discussed as “explanatory steps” rather than “things” (agreeing, he says, with
Brown and opposing Williams). The efficient causes, I would say, are things which are
explanatory steps.
9. JohnR. T. Lamont, “An Argument for an Uncaused Cause,” The Thomist, 59 (1995) 261-277.
I will sometimes refer simply to the page number, within my text.
10. Brown ended his essay (235) by wondering if the whole conception of cause as what is
responsible for something ought to be allowed in science, or whether one ought to limit
causality to concomitance.
11. He says:
[...] The first way, the argument for an unchanging changer, assumes that one of the
properties that make something an effect is change. Every change is an effect;
whenever we encounter change, like the rotting of food or change in the weather, we
assume that it has a cause. Since every change is an effect, all change put together is
an effect and has a cause. This cause cannot itself be changing, so there is an
unchanging cause of all change (270-271, my italics).
12. Brown 229-230. It is “not certain” it is effective against Geach.
13. Since I wrote this criticism of Lamont, he has also been criticized by Antoine Coté, “A Reply
to John Lamont,” The Thomist, 61 (1997) 123-131. Coté (131) seems to be saying something
along the same lines as I am, as regards the Lamont 'composition argument.’
14. C.J.R Williams, “Hie autem... (St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3 ) ”Mind
LXIX (1960) 403-405.
15. The first two Ways differ as regards their starting-points, change and causal order. They do not
differ as regards there being no infinite regress in causes. Thus, Thomas, in his commentary
on Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.2, at In Metaph. 2.3, ed. Cathala (Rome\Turin: Marietti, 1935)
(#303), discussing the very argument used in the Second Way, uses what amounts to his own
vocabulary of the First Way: “prima causa movens” and “secunda causa movens.”
16. Cf. e.g. W. Norris Clarke, The Philosophical Approach to God: A Neo-Thomist Perspective
(Winston-Salem, N.C.: Wake Forest University, 1979): “I do not think that [the Five Ways]
represent the best of St. Thomas’s own truly original and most characteristic metaphysical
structure of ascent to God as shown in the rest of his works.” and “The first three are
Aristotelian and for that very reason incomplete” (35).
17. Cf. again Summa contra gentiles 3.65 (ed. Pera, #2400).
18. Cf. e.g. ST 1.44.2; also In Phys. 8.2. ed. M. Maggiolo (Rome/Turin: Marietti, 1954) (#975
[5]).
19. Thomas, arguing at ST 1-2.1.6 (716b 1-9) that one always wills in view of something having
the role o f ‘ultimate end,’ says:
[...] an ultimate end has a role in moving the appetite, which is the same as the role
which a first mover [primum movens] has in other motions. But it is evident that
second movers do not bring movement about save according as they are moved by a
first mover [a primo movente]. Hence, second objects of appetite [secunda
appetibilia] do not move appetite save [as] in an order to a first object of appetite
[primum appetibile]9which is an ultimate end.
My interest here is in the fact that one is dealing with causal roles, not with particular
realizations of them. This is clear from the fact that the immediately following article asks
whether there is one ultimate end for all human beings. It is I who translate as “a first mover”
and “an ultimate end,” rather than “the first mover” and “the ultimate end,” since that seems
to me the sense of the text.
Another text actually employing the first mover-second mover premise is ST 1-2.17.1
(802M2-48), where the first mover involved is the human will.
20. “Power” is precisely “source of change in another, or in the same thing qua other.” Cf.
Thomas, In Metaph. 9.2 concerning Aristotle at 1046b 1-27, and 9.4 (#1820), concerning
1048al0-17.
21. Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis expositio, prop. la. ed. H.D. Saffrey, O.P.,
(Fribourg/Louvain: Société philosophique/Nauwelaerts, 1954) 8, line 21-ff):
For it is evident that, to the extent that any efficient cause is prior, to that extent its
power is extended to more things; hence it is necessary that its proper effect be more
common. On the other hand, the proper effect of the second cause is found in fewer
things; hence it is also more particular. For the first cause itself produces or moves the
cause acting secondly, and so becomes for it the cause that it act. (my transi, and
emphasis)
A recent English translation of Thomas’s commentary is: St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary
on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, O.P., Charles R. Hess, O.P., and Richard
C. Taylor (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
22. Cf. ST 1.115.1, “that some body is active,” i.e. acts on another. Thomas begins: “[...] it is
sensibly apparent that some bodies are active.” And the role of fire and warmth in our
experience of this is used (ad 5).
There are the “sensibles by association” (Latin: per accidens). These are the things which
occur to the intellect as the immediate fruit of our orchestrated sense-experience. Thus, for
example, Thomas says that when I see someone speaking and setting himself in motion, I
apprehend that person’s life (considered universally), and I can say that I ‘see’ that he is alive
(thus speaking of the intelligible object as a ‘visible’). For a short resume of the doctrine, cf. ST
1.78.3.ad 2. For the example mentioned, cf. Thomas, Sentencia libri De anima, in Opera
omnia, t. 44/1 (Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Vrin, 1984) 2.13 (lines 182-190). Cf. Aris
totle, De anima 2.6 (418a7-26).
23. In this connection, Thomas’s treatment of the existence of a God in Compendium theologiae
1.3. ed. Leonine, t. 42 (Rome: Editori di san Tommaso, 1979) 84, is of interest. There is only
one proof, and it concludes to “a first mover which is supreme over all; and this we call a God.”
Only once the existence of a God is established does Thomas prove, in 1.4, the point: “it is
necessary that God be altogether immobile.”
This work is dated with hesitation at 1265-1267 (ed. cit., p. 8), thus at about the same time
as the ST 1.
24. On created esse as infinite relative to creatures but finite relative to God (who is thus the infinite
beyond the infinite), see Thomas Aquinas, In Librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus
Expositio, ed. C. Pera, O.P. et al. (Rome/Turin: Marietti, 1950) XIII, iii (989):
[...] each thing, to the extent that it is finite and bounded [>terminatum], to that extent
has actual unity. But the one which is God is prior to all end [finem] and boundary and
[prior to] their opposites, and is the cause of the boundedness [terminationis] of all
things, and not only of existent things [existentia], but even of being [esse] itself. For
created being itself [ipsum esse creatum] is not finite if it is compared to creatures,
because it extends to all; if, nevertheless, it be compared to uncreated being [esse
increatum], it is found to be deficient [i.e., to fall short], and [to be something] having
the boundedness [determinationem] of its own intelligible character [stemming] from
the forethought of the divine mind.
25. An indication that this is the right understanding of the Ways is the objection introduced by
Thomas which mentions the human mind, as well as nature, as satisfying all causal needs.
Though nature is regarded as requiring a higher cause, an intelligence, as shown in the Fifth
Way, the human mind is shown as needing something higher on the grounds that it is mobile
and subject to failure. See ST 1.2.3. obj. 2 and ad 2.
26. InMetaph. 2.3 (#302), concerning Aristotle at 994al5-20.
27. Summa contra gentiles 1.13 (#94). We see here the ‘all’ applied to the movers, which is
perhaps what prompted Geach to speak of “lumping together.” However, it seems to me that
the ‘all’ is justified by the systematic character of the group, thus requiring no “lumping” to
speak of. Moreover, note well that Thomas’s ‘all’ here applies to a hypothetical and impossible
‘all.’
28. The presentation in the Compendium theologiae 1.3 reads:
[...] It is impossible that this proceed to infinity. For since everything which is moved
by something is in some measure an instrument of a first mover [quasi instrumentum
quoddam primi mouentis], if a first mover is not, whatever things bring movement
about will be instruments. But it is necessary, if one proceed to infinity to movers and
things moved, that a first mover not be; therefore, the entire infinity of movers and
moved will be instruments. But it is ridiculous, even among the untutored, that one
posit instruments to be moved, save by some principal agent: for this is comparable to
someone proposing, concerning the making of a cabinet or a bed, the saw or the
hatchet without the carpenter acting.
Obviously, we must be able to recognize “principality” or “firstness.”
29. William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argumentfrom Plato to Leibniz (London: Macmillan,
1980) explaining Thomas, says: “in an essentially subordinated series, the only cause that is
really moving anything is the first cause. The others are like lifeless instruments.” (174, my
italics). This is hardly the view of Thomas.
30. In Phys. 8.9 (#1039 [3]). At #1038 [2]-# 1040 [4], we see that Thomas introduces much the
same vocabulary that he employs in the First Way, calling the moved mover a “second” mover:
an expression not found in the text of Aristotle. This discussion in Aristotle, at Physics 8.5
(256a4-20), is the basic source of the First Way premise on not going to infinity in movers.
31. Thomas, In Metaph. 2.3 (#304), concerning Aristotle at 994a 1-15, points out that in an infinite
which has neither first nor last, no part is closer to the first or to the last: all are equally
“intermediate.” Notice that the doctrine that the first mover is “more” of a mover than the
second brings the first two Ways of Thomas into the ambit of the Fourth Way, the way of
degrees of nobility or actuality.
32. Cf. Joseph Owens, “Aquinas on Infinite Regress,” Mind, 71 (1962) 244-246. This is a reply
to Williams. Father Owens (like Brown in this) reads “second” merely as “dependent on
another.” He tells us that “any moved movent” has a “secondary status as a movent” (244).
While this is true, it will only do the work St. Thomas demands of it as equivalent to: needing
afirst mover (not merely “another”). Owens also says: “whether a particular series of moved
movents is finite or infinite is beside the point” (244). He holds that there is the “philosophical
possibility of an infinite series of moved movents.”
Owens merely focuses on the potentiality and dependence proper to what is moved. He
does not discuss ‘first mover’ as explicitly involved in the premise of the Way. Nor does he take
seriously the causal order among the moved movers themselves: his examples are taken from
the discussion of a per accidens series of causes. Need it be said that we earlier noted the
possibility of a regress to infinity in causes related only incidentally? The issue at present
concerns an essentially ordered system of moved movers. To hold that such an ordered system
can go to infinity contradicts Thomas. As I say, I can understand Aristotle’s mention of an
infinity of middle causes only as a per impossibile challenge.

33. Thomas’s negation of the possibility of an actually infinite multitude, at ST 1.7.4, seems based
on its being out of keeping with the divine wisdom: it would, as such, have neither form nor
purpose. He does not seem to consider it a contradiction in terms. See Quaestiones de quolibet
12.2.2 [3], in Leonine ed., t. 25-2 (Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Cerf, 1996) 400, lines 12-
28:
When, therefore, it is asked whether it is possible for God to make something [which
is] actually infinite, it is to be said that [it is] not. For something is repugnant to the
power of one acting through intellect in two ways: in one way, because it is repugnant
to his power; in another way, because it is repugnant to the way in which he acts
[modo quo agit]. In the first way, it is not repugnant to the power of God absolutely,
because it does not imply contradiction. But if the mode of acting by which God acts
be considered, it is not possible; for God acts through his intellect and through his
Word, which is formative of all; hence it is necessary that all that he brings about [agit]
be formed. But the infinite is taken as matter without form, for the infinite stands on
the side of matter. If therefore God were to bring this about [ageret], it would follow
that the work of God was something formless, and this is repugnant to that through
which he acts and the way of acting, because through his own Word he brings about
all, by which [Word] all are formed.
This is dated by the editor, R.-A. Gauthier, at 1272, just before Thomas left for Naples. If this
is correct (and I believe it is), it is clearly his last word on the subject.
34. This is in fact how Thomas handles the point, at InMetaph. 2.3 (#303):
[...] And similarly it makes no difference whether there be a finite or an infinite
[number of] intermediates; because as long as they have the nature of the intermediate
[dummodo habeant rationem medii], they cannot be a first moving cause [prima
causa movens].
3 5. 1 say “any substance.” In this regard, I think of ST 1.45.7, as to whether a vestige of the Trinity
of Divine Persons is necessarily to be found in every creature. In affirming that it is necessary,
Thomas says:
[...] any creature whatsoever (1) subsists in its own being, and (2) has form whereby
it is rendered determinate as to a species, and (3) has order towards something else.
Therefore, according as (1) it is a certain created substance, it represents the cause
and the principle: and thus it demonstrates the Person of the Father, who is the
principle not from a principle [...]. [my italics]
And he goes on to relates the other Persons to the other two items. The point is that the
subsisting substance as such is a representation of what characterizes a source, a principle, a
first or cause.
8 Leslie Armour, Spinoza, and Rational
Psychology1
JAMES THOMAS
Introduction
In the preface to his Being and Idea: Developments o f Some Themes in Spinoza and
Hegel? Leslie Armour makes reference to two of his earlier works: Logic and Reality:
An Investigation into the Idea o f a Dialectical System and The Rational and the Real:
An Essay in Metaphysics? It is suggested that the latter two works are of some impor
tance as background to Being and Idea. More recently, in a personal communication,
Armour wrote that The Rational and the Real studies being from the point of view of the
inquirer; Logic and Reality, from the point of view of the inquiry; and Being and Idea
completes the trilogy by focusing on “the object of enquiry—being and/or idea.”4 My
intention in this paper is to review each of these works to better understand Armour’s
interpretation of Spinoza and the ways it helps us to understand Spinoza’s rational
psychology.
The Rational and the Real
The Rational and the Real approaches the study of being by establishing the necessary
conditions for intelligible discourse about experience—one might say for intelligible
experience. One needs to note, as Armour remarks, that the premise of this approach to
metaphysics is “that ‘it is possible to talk sense in and about the world’” and that this
premise “is the justification for a certain sort of a priori concept.”5 It should also be
remarked that to deny this premise would be self-refuting. However, it is also difficult to
avoid begging the question against those who deny the possibility of metaphysics, or this
type of study of being, claiming that experience rests on no conditions over and above
itself. This is one reason why a rational psychology is so important to Armour’s program
of study, as it is through this psychology that the understanding of the conditions for
intelligible experience can be said to make a difference to the world. It is because we can
develop ourselves as rational beings that the claims we make about the conditions on
intelligible experience are meaningful in experience.
The primaiy conditions for intelligible experience are, according to Armour,
“noticing, remembering and identifying” (RR 4): we are unable to make our experience
intelligible without applying a priori concepts to intuitions. Armour is clearly using
memory in this context in its Platonic and Neoplatonic sense, as the recognition of a
priori concepts. The exploration of the conditions for intelligible experience is thus a
continuation of experience as it starts out; that is to say, such an exploration continues to
be the application of such concepts to our intuitions of thought. However, Armour’s
objections to empiricism suggest that the conditions for intelligible experience must be
explored through rational inquiry.
The method in this work is therefore to show that certain paradoxes can be resolved
by denying the presuppositions underlying these paradoxes and by adopting others, and
this is fairly obviously an attempt to make our self-reflection more coherent. In the case
of the concept of the self (or the mind), Armour adapts Ryle’s reasoning regarding the
idea of the self as being a “ghost in the machine,” i.e., another thing. Armour denies
Ryle’s conclusion, that the self is the body’s acts. For Armour, the “category error” in
identifying the self as another thing is that of identifying a whole with any one of its parts.
That the self is a collection of acts of the body or of any collection whatsoever, or of
anything determinate, is opposed to the very notion of reasoning, as this implies the
freedom to infer the conclusions one ought to infer from a given set of premises (RR 16).
One’s self is not the collection of things one was, is, or is expected to be; nor can one’s
self be impossible to experience—even on a strictly empiricist account of meaning, it
would be meaningless and self-contradictory to suppose one’s self to be in principle
impossible to experience. One is thus invited to suppose that the self is “co-extensive
with all possible reality” or at least that the self is “the possibility of experiencing” (RR
25).
This concept of the self is further clarified through a study of universais. For Armour,
the universe is never made finally comprehensible—which is the traditional task of
universais—because thinking is always a process and thus cannot end if it is to remain
what it is. Nor can the world turn out to be wholly inexplicable, because to say so would
be to make a self-contradictory statement: this would be to express an understanding of
the universe as something that cannot be understood. The paradox presented by these two
conclusions suggests that though the “concept” of the universe is complete, the
actualization of it in thought is always incomplete (RR 30-1). Universais, similarly, can
neither be reduced to particulars (as the universais would then fail to help us to
understand the particulars) nor be said to be something else—another particular—as this
would presuppose another universal. Thus, we are led to think that a universal is a
“determinate possibility” actualized in the particular and that the self as the universal in
the particular is “a tendency to experience, a tendency to actualize possibility” (RR 36).
Although Armour does not at this stage directly examine the term idea or its concept,
he considers the contents of experience, suggesting that these are “permanent
dispositional properties” actualized by acts of thought. The reason is that experience must
be structured in terms of noticing, remembering (or interpreting) and identifying.
Consequently, the contents of experience cannot take the form of merely given entities,
without structure; nor can these contents take the form of pure possibility. So, it is
suggested that they might be “permanent possibilities” actualized by thought. This
answers the question about the relation of the type of understanding that physicists have
of material things to that had by others, as constituting their ordinary experience, since
these two interpretations of the contents of experience are within the range of possibilities
in the permanent dispositional properties of experience (RR 46-7). In the universe, then,
there are selves, acts o f thought, and these permanent dispositional properties.
Armour, Spinoza„and Rational Psychology 133
Similar paradoxes—concerning the concepts of space, time and causality—are dealt

with in similar ways. Our experience of spacial objects is perspectivai; thus, my view of
a given object sometimes seems incompatible with another’s impressions of it. The idea
of Euclidean space is in some respects very useful in understanding events in space, but
it seems to capture little if any of this perspectivai nature of space as experienced. The
solution to the paradox of the way one deals with space in Euclidean terms and the ways
we experience space may be to say that these differing impressions of the object lie within
the range of its possibilities. To really capture that range requires an interpretation of the
experiences of a community of observers. Euclidean space is in some sense a pragmatic
fiction (although Armour’s views on the status of these ‘fictions’ change) (RR 57).6
A similar problem emerges with the concept of time, which is also experienced as
perspectivai; Euclidean space seems moreover analogous to time in McTaggart’s
explorations of the nature and impossibility of time. He explored the concept of the
“before-and-after series” (i.e., time as measured by the clock), as opposed to the “earlier-
and-later series” (consisting of events always changing from future to present to past).
Time, McTaggart argued, cannot be constituted by any of the following three possibilities:
1) time cannot be both these series, any more than space can be constituted by both
Euclidean space and the experience of the whole community of perspectives; 2) time
cannot be constituted by the earlier-and-later series, as this is no more like our experience
of time than Euclidean space is like our experience of space; and 3) time cannot be
constituted by the before-and-after series, as the nature of events in this series seems to
generate conflict. Each event is, on the whole, with its whole history, an event before, at,
and after the present; in other words, it is an event future, past and present. However,
events in time can be spoken of as actualizations of possibilities, actualized in a before-
and-after series in each temporal perspective, but actualizations of possibilities that are
not themselves in time (RR 60-1). The earlier-and-later series would be again in some
sense a pragmatic fiction.
The paradox Armour considers in the case of causality he develops from his own
premises: “we cannot understand the notion of causal law unless choices are possible and
[...] we cannot understand the notion of choice unless there are causal laws” (RR 64). The
freedom of choice involved in causality is that of being able to recognize the truth about
something. On the other hand, the possibilities must be determinate for us to make any
choice among them. Armour suggests a solution to this paradox in viewing causality, or
determinism, as consisting of the restrictions on a given self or on the content of the self s
experience and in viewing choice, or freedom, as occurring within a determinate range
of possibilities. Confusions about determinism and freedom are confusions of two types
of question: “one has to do with the range of possibilities known to a given man, the other
to the choice among these possibilities” (RR 66). Statistics thus pertain to the ways
possibilities are generally restricted by circumstances, and the ability of the researcher to
state these restrictions is compatible with the freedom of choice of those who experience
them.
Armour develops an argument like Kant’s for freedom and immortality—i.e., it is
based on a moral premise and is intended to bring us to conclusions about the nature of
reality. But this is an argument for freedom and for a determinism compatible with
freedom. A m our’s argument differs from Kant’s in that Armour denies the reality of the
unknown and unknowable thing in itself: the moral premises of Armour’s contention are
based on reason, without a starting point in faith. The argument is based on two moral
principles: the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative, to treat all rational
beings as ends in themselves, and the imperative to attempt to increase the freedom o f
every rational being. Armour shows that the contraries of the first imperative are false:
to treat no rational agent as an end in his or herself would be self-defeating, as it means
treating one’s self as other than an end. To apply the imperative to some but not all makes
it false because there are no relevant distinctions to be drawn among rational beings. One
may note that the imperative to give the greatest freedom to every rational being is
probably open to the obvious qualification that each one’s freedom must be compatible
with that of others.
This imperative follows from the fact of there being any moral imperative, as without
freedom it is impossible to be moral. From the truth of either of these two principles,
Armour argues that, because we need to be free to be moral, we are free, or potentially
able to realize our morality. Also, we need to have determinate choices to exercise our
freedom to be moral; therefore, a complete determinism follows in the sense of events all
having explanations (including explanations in the decisions of free agents).
Indeterminism would undermine our ability to understand the consequences of our actions
for ourselves and for others and therefore also undermine our ability to realize our
morality, contrary to the given imperative.
Three conclusions seem to Armour worth emphasis: 1) that material objects are
permanent possibilities of experience; 2) that minds, or selves, are tendencies to have
experience; and 3) that reality “[is] a panorama of experience against a permanent
background of possibility, an experience driven on to its own completion, but a
completion which, under the impact of free agents faced with an infinity of possibilities,
may take any number of forms” (RR 90). He is unwilling to conclude that the views
derived by the method of paradox and solution necessarily solve all the problems that may
arise in discussing the conditions for intelligible experience or to conclude that no other
paradoxes might be implied by these dialectical opposites of the positions originally so
paradoxical. This in turn suggests that the study of metaphysics will be in constant
progression and that it involves a plurality of views that must itself be made sense of. To
explain the nature of this process and the diversity of the views it gives rise to is the work
of Logic and Reality.
Logic and Reality
The aim of Logic and Reality is to establish the most general conditions for rational
discourse (LR 33), which is a way of dealing with the diversity of interpretations of
experience sanctioned in The Rational and the Real. This is the explanation for starting
with “pure being.” The generality of the category is the justification for the logic in the
sense that this makes it “possible to develop one’s inference rules and arguments together
with one’s subject matter” (LR 3), so that the logic provides its own justification without
Armour, Spinoza, and Rational Psychology 135
its presupposing itself. In other words, the categories and inferences of the logic always
depend for their validity on being whatever one finds otherwise inconceivable, and this
structure of thought is the logic’s subject. The logic developed from the starting point of
pure being is similar to Hegel’s. But the method in Armour’s logic enables him to
overcome some of the ambiguity and indeterminacy of other idealist logics. In Armour’s
logic, moreover, “‘becoming’ is a property of philosophical systems rather than (as Hegel
thought) a category.”7The significance of this is tied to the justification of the logic in two
ways: where the method in the logic is applied to a given person or subject matter, it is
open to development in ways compatible with the categories developed in the logic.
Armour and Suzie Johnston explore this point in suggesting that “objectivity in a world
in which a plurality of agents plays a creative part can be found only in a system within
which each constituent member is able to understand the others.”8 The categories of the
logic are unchanging in a way that allows individuals and the sciences a certain
development. But also the categories and inferences obviously are related to intuition in
the sense that they depend for their validity on the perception of the conceivability or
inconceivability of other forms of interpretation. Consequently, the validity of the logic
depends on the endeavour of the inquirer and the community of inquirers, which is the
point that Armour and Johnston are making in saying that “each mind [...] depends in
some measure on the insights of other minds.”9 This approach to logic is not therefore
self-defeating, although it implies a sense of being rational that is always an exploration,
rather than a mastery, of being.
At the outset, the approach to research in Logic and Reality is like that of the earlier
work, The Rational and the Real—resolving the paradoxes in the categories to satisfy the
conditions for rational discourse explains the movement from one category to the next.
“Pure disjunction” is needed to make distinctions to form any intelligible concept (LR
36). The further transition to “determinate being” stems from the inability of pure being
and pure disjunction “to draw attention to anything,” as a result of their being too general
(LR 37). Pure disjunction and determinate being owe their emergence to the structure of
experience, as that of noticing, remembering (structuring) and identifying; one may say
pure being is the simplest form of noticing, pure disjunction is the simplest form of
structuring, and determinate being is the simplest form of identifying.
Determinate being defines collections of discrete objects. It is more concrete than
pure being or pure disjunction; determinate being establishes a level of concreteness (or
abstractness, relative to the next level). The logic’s triads each establish another such
level. Thus, “systematic unity” is needed to distinguish at least two categories, to make
anything comprehensible on the level of determinate-being. This is confirmed in the
ability of systematic unity to overcome the paradoxes generated by determinate being.
Such paradoxes result from the inability of determinate being to completely define objects
within its domain, such as the paradox (developed by Russell) of the class of all classes
that do not contain themselves. Because Russell defined objects as sets of sense data that
do not contain themselves, there should be a class of all classes that do not contain
themselves to constitute the universe of such objects. But this class is self-contradictory ;
it can neither contain nor fail to contain itself without contradiction. If it contains itself,
then it is self-contradictory, as it is therefore not one of the classes that do not contain
themselves and thus does not contain itself. If it fails to contain itself, then it satisfies the
description of the class, but it does not contain itself. If the class of all classes that do not
contain themselves does not contain itself, then it should contain itself, but it fails to. The
paradoxes of infinity are other examples, such as illustrated in Hilbert’s infinite hotel that
has an infinite number of rooms, all full, but that can always accommodate one more
guest. Kant’s antinomies of space, time, causality and freedom are also examples of
paradoxes stemming from determinate being (LR 43-50).
Such paradoxes stem from the division into discrete entities of the object of reference
under the category of determinate being, whereas under systematic unity “we can think
of the domain as being divided into a set of ordered perspectives, each of which contains
the whole but differs from the others in centre of focus” (LR 55). As with the earlier-and-
later series, one can say that set theory and mathematics applied in the domain of
determinate being are pragmatic fictions, with limitations defined by this category of
interpretation, which cannot, like systematic unity, refer to itself (Armour further explains
the status of the paradoxes of determinate being in Being and Idea.)
Logic has rules of inference: the moves from pure being to pure disjunction and from
determinate being to systematic unity exemplify “specific exclusion reference.” The move
from pure being and pure disjunction to determinate being exemplifies “joint specific
exclusion reference.” Joint specific exclusion reference applies specific exclusion
reference to something common—the “specific inclusion reference”—of two categories
(LR 63-64).
Exclusion is negation, and to negate is to shift the focus of attention within systematic
unity; something is not if there are conditions excluding its being (LR 78). This concept
of negation helps to resolve the paradox of material implication, which is another of the
paradoxes of determinate being. The paradox arises in truth-functional logics owing to
their use of abstract inference patterns, without the inference deriving from the meaning
of the premises and the conclusion within the argument. Truth-functional logic abstracts
a certain relation of premises to conclusion from the argument that is a whole that cannot
be analyzed in this way without distortion. A statement like “if 2 + 2 = 5, then I’m the
Pope” does not derive a true conclusion from false premises, the only condition on valid
implication in determinate being. So it is a valid implication if logic is truth functional,
but the antecedent bears no necessary relation to the consequent. Implication in
systematic unity, in contrast, depends on demonstrating that the premises of an argument
exclude any possibility other than the conclusion (LR 84).
The laws of noncontradiction, identity and the excluded middle must be accordingly
redefined. Properties in determinate being are reordered in systematic unity, with centres
of experience, rather than objects, made the point of reference. Objects in determinate
being are related through external relations, which make no difference to their terms, such
as resemblance, proximity and inclusion in sets. In systematic unity, relations are internal,
they make a difference to their terms. Centres are defined by relations among themselves,
such as in a genuine community, and the properties appearing in the experience of each
centre are defined by their place in the order of the whole system of these perspectives.
Centres of experience and their contents each constitute a focus of attention within the
system as a whole. As each centre is in this sense “identical to the whole,” its contents can
be said to exist, to be themselves and not another thing, or to be one type of thing rather
than another, only by degrees (LR 118-119).
The joint specific exclusion reference of determinate being and systematic unity is
“pure process.” What determinate being and systematic unity have in common is the static
state of being (LR 120-121). Pure process is again, like systematic unity, an identity in
difference, but it is also a changing pattern of experience, and if in one’s experience there
is the idea of another’s similar changing pattern of experience, one’s focus shifts to
“determinate process.” One’s own changing pattern of experience is then determined
through a community of such processes. A determinate process is again the realization
of possibilities (LR 126). To express the idea of the realization of something more than
these changing patterns of experience, Armour uses the example of a symphony being
more than a series of notes (LR 152). What plays the role of the symphony to determinate
process is “ideal universality.” A realization of a possibility is the expression of a
universal in a particular, and the joint specific exclusion reference of pure and
determinate process is therefore this ideal universality.
An event in history appears under ideal universality as the universal to be realized.
The specific exclusion reference of ideal universality is thus “objective universality,”
under which the same event appears as conditioned by circumstances explaining its
realization, such as socioeconomic conditions and the ways people are prepared to
receive one’s thought. But these seem to make agents in history appear as passive
expressions of circumstances and the universal to be realized. Freedom as the active
expression of the individual is underemphasized. “Pure individuality” is therefore the
joint specific exclusion reference of ideal and objective universalities, as it is opposed to
the universal law expressed in each. The specific exclusion reference of pure individuality
is “pure activity,” as this is pure individuality’s other in the dialectic Armour develops
(LR 207-208).
Finally, the joint specific exclusion reference of pure individuality and activity is self-
determination, or “dialectical individuality.” Something more is needed to explain the
relation of the individual to his or her activity, something other than whatever is common
to each:
What is seems to be [...] something which is only intelligible in and through the activities
which manifest it but which, in order to explain and sustain those activities, must, itself,
transcend them. It is, in a way, a subject of cognition and activity which cannot, itself, be
turned effectively into an object of cognition and activity except insofar as its existence is
a presupposition of these occurrences (LR 216).
Pure individuality and activity are unable to be self-determining. A single individual

becomes either the whole of the universe or is excluded from it in the attempt at self-
determination or at being self-sufficient (LR 225). Dialectical individuality allows us to
understand how each member of a community of individuals is concretely defined by their
rights in, and their unique ways of meeting their responsibilities to, their community (LR
223-227).
Although dialectical individuality is the form of the community to be realized, it is not
“the Absolute,” such as the existing community of souls knowing and loving one another
in the work of McTaggart (LR 239). To be the absolute, it has to be realized in the world.
Because the attributes of Spinoza’s substance are the ways Spinoza’s absolute is
expressed in experience, Armour views them as the categories of the logic, or as the
structures of things we can experience (LR 230). Spinoza’s metaphysics thus offers a
solution to the problem of how the absolute is realized in experience, and the study of
Spinoza’s metaphysics is therefore the work of Being and Idea.
Being and Idea
The issue dealt with in Being and Idea is that of how the absolute enters into experience.
Spinoza’s metaphysics provides an appropriate vehicle for dealing with this issue, as it
begins with the unity needed to avoid the paradoxes of determinate being and because this
unity, i.e, substance, is supposed to be the cause of itself (BI 7). Armour interprets
Spinoza’s metaphysics in terms primarily of the conclusions drawn in The Rational and
the Real. This takes Armour some way to solving the problems in Spinoza’s system cited
by Hegel. However, on this interpretation, Spinoza’s metaphysics contains unresolved
issues about the attributes, time, freedom and the status of ideas—or about the ways the
elements of diversity are contained in substance. Armour therefore develops an
alternative system, a set of principles serving to further define the system in terms of the
categories developed in Logic and Reality, which, with Armour’s further development,
results in a version of the system of Spinoza as a workable response to the issue of the
absolute’s entry into experience.
This issue is really about how unity contains diversity, or about how the absolute is
related to the diversity of things and people experienced in the world. This is what
Hegel’s criticism of Spinoza is about. Hegel’s basic criticisms stem from readings of
Spinoza’s substance, attribute and mode that take no account of the unity among these
concepts that contemporary idealist readers of Spinoza, such as Armour and Errol Harris,
tend to find. Hegel thus objected that 1) there is no unity in difference in Spinoza’s
substance, and hence, 2) diversity is defined merely by negation, or in simple contrast to
the unity of substance; 3) such diversity as is represented by the attributes is merely given
empirically; 4) the attributes are not united to substance through an identity in diversity,
and hence their simple distinctness from substance implies that they do not define its
essence but are subjective; 5) the modes of the attributes are unconnected to substance;
and 6) the unity of substance is not expressed in these modes (BI 14-15). Although Hegel
tried to develop a system in which these difficulties were overcome—working with the
idea of identity in difference, or systematic unity—it leaves unresolved the issue of how
the absolute enters into experience (BI 16).
If substance exists, then it exists necessarily as the cause of itself, according to its
definition, or as the “formal cause” of itself (BI 9)— a point which Armour is careful to
attribute to Alonzo Meyer. On the basis of this interpretation, Armour argues that “if we
think of Substance as that of which everything else can be predicated but which cannot
be predicated of anything else, then it becomes clear that it is unintelligible without the
corresponding plurality” (BI 32). Substance is, in other words, like a person who cannot
be reduced to any of his or her expressions, or the mind that cannot be reduced to any of
its ideas. Substance must therefore issue in infinitely many expressions, which are the
attributes and their respective modes.
Seen sub specie aetemitatis the system of modes is like the “actualization of the
largest set of compossibles” (BI 31). This is suggested by the “negative principle of
sufficient reason,” as Armour expresses it, used by Spinoza to prove God’s necessaiy
existence (Spinoza’s Ethics , E1P1 lDem2).10 In earlier work, Armour had argued that
this largest set of compossibles cannot be actualized, because the limits of possibility are
incomprehensible (RR 31). Here, Armour similarly suggests that the series of modes seen
sub specie temporis must be endless, on the ground that substance cannot be reduced to
its expressions (BI 41).
The idea of freedom developed in the earlier two works is incorporated into the
interpretation of Spinoza in Being and Idea. Armour suggests that Spinoza regards our
natures, or character, as determined in the ideas God has of us. Our character determines
our will in the way that a formal cause was said to restrict possibilities being realized in
the series of modes seen sub specie temporis , while leaving certain alternatives open (BI
47). This approach to the issue requires our adopting the idea of “reciprocal
determination” between substance and its expressions (BI 47-8), as now it seems we
contribute to the nature of the absolute as it is realized in our experience.
The status of ideas in Spinoza’s system depends on the interpretation of E2P21Schol,
that the idea of the body and that of the mind are one and the same. Armour suggests an
interpretation other than that of Errol Harris, who thinks that the idea of the body and that
of the mind have to be ideas of distinct individuals. However, they do not have to be
distinct individuals insofar as they are distinct “expressions” of the one substance,11 or the
results of two ways of structuring our experience.
On the one hand, Harris’s view, if it is frilly spelled out, is that the attribute of thought
has primacy among the attributes and that Spinoza was an idealist in this sense. On the
other hand, the diversity of attributes suggests dialectical materialist interpretations of
Spinoza (BI 57-8, 59). On Armour’s view, Spinoza’s starting with unity and the
conditions on unity suggest an idealist interpretation on which the series of adequate
reflections on ourselves takes us to a stage at which we are realized in the form of God’s
ideas of ourselves, and “our task, if you like, is to make what is there in eternity
intelligible in time” (BI 61). While the attribute of extension is influential in our lives and
while it seems evident that there are conditions in extension that have to be met for us to
be able to realize ourselves, extension is principally like thought in being a type of order
(BI 61).
Some problems remain, as Armour remarks:
1. the attributes are still merely given empirically (BI 34);

2. eternity and time are arguably incompatible, and if the series of modes seen sub
specie temporis is infinite, then there cannot be a system of modes seen sub specie
aetem itatis (BI 41);
3. Spinoza argued that God’s nature contains all things (E1P 15) and that God’s nature
excludes any contingency (ElP33Schol2), which suggests that Spinoza would deny
reciprocal determination (BI 48); and
4. John Clark Murray suggested that, after Descartes, different kinds of knowledge are
thought to indicate different kinds of objects, and Spinoza’s first kind of knowledge
seems to have material objects (BI 62-63).
According to the alternative system Armour develops to respond to these issues,

substance is a ‘whole’ with ‘parts.’ This language is in some respects deceptive, as the
parts of the whole are very like the ways the mind has of expressing itself (BI 68). The
attributes correspond to the categories of the logic developed in Logic and Reality.
Accordingly, extension corresponds to determinate being and thought is systematic unity,
as ways of ordering the properties, or modes, of substance through the attributes (BI 71 ).
This explains why there are more attributes as expressions of substance than just
extension and thought. “Taking temporality as basic distinguishes, for instance, physics
from biology” (BI 71 ).
The alternative system is in many respects simply a way of systematizing dialectical
individuality, to make it a system similar enough to Spinoza’s to be of use in answering
these issues. A key development in the alternative system is, however, the claim that
“eveiy real part has at least one of its defining parts determined by itself’ (BI 70), which
is to say that the mind has some part of itself that is not determined through the whole;
i.e., the mind has an idea of itself, as part of itself, a part that, being in a sense the whole,
is not determined through the whole, and insofar as the finite mind is a part of the infinite,
the finite has an idea of the infinite that is not determined by its place in the whole. This
claim derives from the mind’s self-identity, and it means that external relations
characteristic of determinate being acquire a reality according to the alternative
system—something they did not have in Logic and Reality : the whole is internally related
to its parts and determines their nature, but every part must be a whole with parts that are
not necessarily determined in this way. Although my thoughts of a rabbit, for example,
determine its nature as a part of my mind, the rabbit is more than this. Or again, some sets
of properties, such as in the case of a set’s being a member of itself, “sum” (in the sense
of being comprehensible in themselves), while a set’s not being a member of itself has
to be understood in terms of the property of a set’s being a member of itself, as its
negation (BI 79-81). So, although external relations play a role in our experience,
external relations are only real insofar as they represent the negation of our natures as
determined through the part of each us that is the whole.
This suggests that 1) the attributes are derived from substance as its ways of
expressing itself (they will not be merely given empirically but will be derivable as the
categories of the earlier logic); 2) eternity is related to time as systematic unity is related
to process and as the mind taken as containing the whole is related to the same mind taken
as the part; 3) insofar as the finite mind is a part of the infinite, the nature of the finite is
determined, but insofar as part of the finite mind is a complete perspective on the infinite,
it is self-determining and free; and 4) that the object of the first kind of knowledge is our
experience viewed from the point of view of time and the object of the second kind of
knowledge is the same experience viewed from the point of view of eternity.
The central issue is transformed in this way into one of resolving a certain tension
between two aspects of our experience without reducing the one to the other: one’s
experience insofar as one seems to be the whole, or “centre,” of experience and that
insofar as one seems to be a part of a greater whole, seen as the “periphery” of one’s
experience (BI 99). The way to resolve this issue is to develop an idea of our experience
without either reducing the centre of experience to a mere instantiation of an abstract idea,
which is in many respects the failure of the categorial imperative of Kant’s ethics (BI
105), or dissolving the distinction of the whole and its parts, which is the failure ascribed
to Hegel in saying that his system turns the finite individual into God. The resolution of
this issue cannot be in making substance into the formal cause of itself, as the form is
again a whole (centre) whose relation to its parts (periphery) is unclear: the form is either
the presupposition of finite experience and finite experience is the cause of the form (as
in Kant) or it is the cause of itself but bears no special relation to finite experience (BI
114-5). Values, Armour suggests, can alone explain the entrance of the absolute into
experience if the motivation for our realizing the absolute is the “good” taken in the sense
of the largest set of compossibles: “goodness nags at the world without being the world
and emerges in the long tendency of nature toward a rich set of possibilities and of men
(as Matthew Arnold had it) toward the best” (BI 115).
The idea underlying this alternative is that of the triad found in The Rational and the
Real—noticing, remembering and identifying—which is again the self: the idea of idea
introduced by Armour to explain this alternative makes ideas into “reflexive orders which
are capable of bearing knowledge” (BI 102, see 116). Given, or simply noticed, in
experience are the properties of experience, and thought is “the set of orders in which all
the various properties of the world can appear” (BI 123). Although the “idea of substance
is a substance [...] The idea may be useful, but the substance, as such, cannot be put to
any use [...] substance expresses the idea; the idea is made manifest in the substance” (BI
123). Substance is therefore the domain of dialectical individuality, or what is
progressively identified through a series of successively more adequate ideas of
community.
Two problems are recognized by Armour in this idea of idea: 1) the idea of the
number two, for instance, does not have to identify anything but can be defined by its
place in the system of natural numbers; and 2) the idea of the formal beauty of a piece of
music can similarly be known without reference to its sensual medium (BI 138-139).
These two problems can be resolved if the functions of noticing and identifying are
reduced to the intuition of different types of order, or ways of ordering properties as far
as they may be considered independently of these properties; i.e., noticing is the intuition
of an inadequate idea, whereas identifying is that of a more adequate idea. With
mathematics, one perceives the number in directly perceiving the relations that
characterize it. Music is different for the most part because its characteristic
structure—that of theme and variation—allows us to perceive ideas of determinate
process, which makes music seem to be a form of life.
Lawrence Dewan raised two objections to the account of the relation of eternity and
time that Armour expressed in 1981. In that year, Armour argued that
If anything explains how the unconditioned can enter our world, it might be the simple fact
of the existence of persons.
Centrally, of course, a person uses reason and acts in the world and thus bridges the
realms.12
The person is the self-reflexive order through which God is expressed in the world. The
ground for this relation is in the idea of a person as 1) the principle of identity in
difference developed by the tum-of-the-century British, Canadian and American idealists,
and by Plotinus andProclus, 2) Scotus’s “principle of disjunctive transcendentais,” or 3)
“the principle of the reciprocity of powers” (attributable to Scotus and to Spinoza).
Though they are identical, the third is a variation on the second. It is like the immediate
intuitive grasp of the principle as one purely of demonstration: “for instance, whatever
I will to happen, happens—unless something gets in the way.”13 This is clearly the
principle at work throughout the logic, as well as being the principle by which Spinoza
derived the existence of God in E1P1 lDem2. Armour also uses it to the define the
relationship of the eternal being of God to the world. Dewan’s objections are that to make
sense of Copleston and Maritain, which is Armour’s goal in this paper, then 1) the
relation should be defined by a causal rather than a logical principle14 and 2) Armour’s
position appears to make the person as involved in eternity related to his or her
appearance in time as “the soul is in the body as a pilot is in a ship,”15 whereas they
should be related to each other as “the soul being in the body as form in matter, i.e [...]
the two constitute one se lf”16
In his reply, Armour emphasizes Dewan’s first objection, arguing that if there is to
be a causal relation, then there must be a logical relation and “the unconditioned can be
construed as the formal cause of the world, but is not that relation inherently logical?”17
However, in 1987, Armour remarked that “if ethical requirements necessitated in a
purely logical way a kind of existence capable of filling their demands, then a world
which met those requirements would seem to be required as a kind of fa it accompli,
immediately,”18 which is evidently not the case; rather, values incline without
necessitating.
The thesis that values answer the question why there is something rather than nothing
is stronger than is needed for the issue of explaining how the absolute enters into the
world, but the latter issue is part of establishing how values answer this question. A value
account relies on a non-ontological principle: the existence of values needs no
explanation. Such an explanation overcomes the infinite regress of explanations in terms
of ontological principles. As it relies on a non-ontological principle, it is general enough
moreover to account for any ontological principle, and it is verifiable in the ways people
respond to values. Any alternative account has to contradict the rationality of the universe,
as the need to explain the whole without breaking it down into separate unrelated parts
is the need to view things in terms of values. Also, even assuming we can take the parts
on their own, we need to make reference to values to distinguish the parts.19
However, each of these arguments presupposes the existence, or the effectiveness in

the universe, of the idea of the person or community of persons as a formal cause, and this
is further apparent in Armour’s accounts of how values might be said to make the
transition to actuality in the world The will’s inclination to value is involved in this, along
with the ways values affect the part/whole relation in experience, the individuation of
things, and the possibility of the scientific investigation of occurrences otherwise
reasonably assumed to be random events.20
In contrast, the idea of the person or community of persons, as a value, can be said to
become efficacious insofar as its structure is concrete. An analogy of this is found in one’s
ability to imagine a possibility so concretely that it is experienced as an actuality: a value
in this way acquires the intuited properties of being clearly imaginable and internally
coherent. The difference between this and the case of the realization of the good, is in its
being an order of things so comprehensive that it is in no way refuted by any other
experience.
The idea of “relational properties” is important to understanding the attributes of
substance and the ways that the order of “the Eternal” (BI 33) is realized in experience,
and it is one that Armour develops in dealing with Bradley’s objections to the reality of
ideas as relations: these objections are 1) that the connection of a relation and its terms
always involves another relation, with the result that the idea is never a complete
explanation, and 2) the properties of things owing to their relations and those independent
of their relations must be related, but the terms of these relations must be similarly
divided in their properties, and so on, with the same result. To have the categories of the
logic or the attributes of substance govern the realization of values, these attributes must
be like “a characteristic of a thing which establishes a plurality but does not itself require
a further relation to explicate it.”21 The answer to this issue is found in “perspectives,”
which are not related to things in the way that bridges are related to rivers. They are not
something placed over the thing; they are the thing seen in a certain light. Being
expressible in and through some activity is a property of the absolute and one that we
know that it has.22These perspectives are analogous to Bradley’s finite centres, which are
also ideas in the sense of being expressible as order and being expressible as something
that exists.23 The idea is not the reality constructed from its expressions; rather, it is the
reality preceding its expressions.
The idea of idea developed by Armour is thus a promising approach to understanding
the metaphysics of Bradley, as this idea of idea and its expressions are analogous to
Bradley’s reality and its appearances: both reality and idea necessarily appear or are
expressed; they are nothing over and above their appearances or expressions and never
exhausted by any of the ways they appear or are expressed. But if the idea is a form of
self-reflection with terms in relation, such as a triadic relation of the noticed, the structure
of things, and the identified, then the same problem about the reality of relations is left
unresolved. The relation can be triadic if the order of the Eternal, through its
concreteness, explains the intuition of being and if the intuition of being, through its
immediacy, connects this structure of being with the mind’s idea of it. The issues raised
by Bradley about the reality of relations can thus be resolved if a relational property is in
this sense the intuition of the order of things in substance; if the order of things is what
is to be explained, however, then the intuition rather than the order is primary, at least in
the order of discovery.
The attributes of Spinoza’s substance are differing ways in which the order of
substance is constituted by a given intuition: thought is given in our experience as the
intuition of affirmation and denial that, for Spinoza, is the intuitive aspect of the structure
of things ultimately constituting the “infinite intellect”; extension is given in our
experience as the intuition of motion and rest that, for Spinoza, ultimately constitutes the
entire face of the universe. Spinoza identified the immediate infinite mode of extension
as “motion and rest.” Conceived through an attribute, the order of experience intuitively
grasped is the mediate infinite mode. So, the order of extension is the “face of the whole
universe,” or the same intuition of extension but constitutive of a systematic order, and
it is as such that this order is clearly conceivable in an intuition of space. Spinoza’s face
of the whole universe, “although varying in infinite ways, yet always remains the same”;
it remains the organic whole of substance, as the structure of the real. The immediate
infinite mode of thought is the “absolutely infinite intellect.”24 This can be read by analogy
with the case of extension as the intuition of affirmation and denial; the mediate infinite
mode of thought, the intuitive grasp of the concrete order of ideas, or the intuition of an
internally coherent system of ideas, including each of the attributes as nuances on this
intuition in the absolutely infinite nature of God. This same order is intuitively apparent
through each of the attributes of God. The intuition of an internally coherent system of
ideas determines the order of things in substance insofar as it is a mode of a thinking
substance, and the intuition of the clarity of the conception of things subject to motion and
to rest determines the same order insofar as it is constituted by extension.
One order can be said to be constituted by each of the attributes, i.e., the order of
dialectical individuality, or the order of experience in a community of centres of
experience, each with a moving perspective on the world. For example, if I see a train
moving toward me, it is one thing to perceive this motion and another to affirm the idea
of this motion, although the order of this motion is in the idea and this motion affects the
centre of experience as a motion of one’s whole sense of being in the world. The
attributes as intuitions are nevertheless independent: the motion felt by a centre of
experience cannot directly contradict its affirmation of any idea in the ways that ideas can,
nor can an affirmation of an idea deflect motion. Still, the intuition of motion and rest in
extension and that of affirmation and denial in thought both enter into the formation of the
order of things, and their corresponding mediate infinite modes—the intuitive clarity and
coherence of this order—enter into the ways we develop our conception of the order of
things in substance.
The interpretation of the attributes as nuances on the intuition of being enables us to
understand how eternity as the order of dialectical individuality is commensurable with
time in our experience—just as Armour understands this—but also how Spinoza was able
to say that we think and feel (sentimus) that we are eternal (E5P23Schol). The attributes
as intuitions are an implication, moreover, of the logic developed by Armour: if
dialectical individuality is not the absolute and they are on the same level of concreteness,
then the absolute is the specific exclusion reference of dialectical individuality. As these
categories will have order in common, their joint specific exclusion reference will be
Armour, Spinoza, aw</ Rational Psychology 145
intuition. Such intuition will be subject to transformations similar to those of pure being,
pure disjunction, and systematic unity but using the categories of pure intuition, diverse
intuitions and interdependent intuitions, with each being allowed to be through the
conception of the others. Consequently, a reading of Spinoza’s attributes as intuitions
cannot be expected to affect the gist of Armour’s construction. In addition, it has the
advantage of more adequately accounting for the doctrine of the parallelism of the
attributes, that the same “order and connection” of things is found in each of the attributes
(E2P7, E2P7Schol). On the view that the attributes are differing sets or systems of
relations, it seems that the order of things must differ in one and the other attribute.
Armour effectively distinguishes the order and the connection of things, making the
attributes the ways the order of things in eternity enters into time and the world:
There is the order manifested (the essence of substance itself) and the order of
manifestation, the attributes themselves. There is nothing very difficult about this. A poem
by Matthew Arnold, for instance, may be said (as he hoped) to manifest (some of) the order
o f‘the Eternal.’ But the poem itself can be considered as an order of meanings and these
are distinct [...] every attribute must manifest itself as a set of modes just as every meaning
must manifest itself in words or whatever, and these do limit it but, since the set of
attributes is infinite, there is no ultimate limitation. (BI 33)
This suggests that Spinoza distinguished the order and the connection of things, with
order made to refer to the Eternal and the connection made to refer to the ways this is
expressed in the world. However, Spinoza insisted that the order and the connection of
things are the same in each of the attributes.25
The attributes as Armour understands them should rather be considered parts of the
one order and connection of things involved in each of the attributes, as the complete
order of things compatible with any one of these nuances on the intuition of being.
Whereas extension as a set of external relations, or the category of determinate being, is
the order of time (as opposed to pure process) and inadequate ideas, systematic unity
defines the order of eternity, rather than distinguishing the attribute of thought. This
interpretation of the attributes thus enables us to align the alternative system with the
terms used in Spinoza and to better understand the contribution of the alternative system
to understanding of Spinoza’s rational psychology.
Spinoza’s rational psychology is directed to bringing our minds to God to make us
more active and self-determining. Spinoza’s psychology depends on his theoiy of the
emotions, and fundamental to this theory are the concepts of desire, pleasure and pain.
The conatus by which one is sustained in his or her being is any one of these intuitions
as the order and potentiality of self-reflection in a centre of experience. Spinoza wrote that
the essence of any reality is “the conatus with which each thing endeavors to persist in its
own being” (E3P7). He demonstrated this on the ground that the essence of a thing is
what follows necessarily from its nature and on the ground that (as he says in the
preceding proposition, E3P6) “each thing, insofar as it is in itself, endeavours to persist
in its own being.” This claim is based on the proposition that “particular things are modes
whereby the attributes of God are expressed in a definite and determinate way”
(E3P6Dem) and the proposition that “no thing can be destroyed except by an external
cause” (E3P4).
The objection that Michael della Rocca develops to this demonstration is that to meet
certain counterexamples to E3P4 and E3P6—such as the candle or the sun, which seem
to naturally destroy themselves, and the suicide victim—one needs to distinguish the
essence of a thing, or what it is in itself, from its state, or the relations it bears to other
things, and hold that its state as opposed to the essence of the thing destroys it if it is
possible for it to be destroyed. But for E3P6 to follow from E3P4 and for E3P6 to be
compatible with E3P7 (in which the conatus to remain in being is made the essence of
a thing), E3P4 has to be read in the sense of a thing’s state being insufficient for its
destruction and E3P6 has to be read in the sense of a thing’s state persisting unless
affected by something external to it. E3P6 must be compatible with E3P7, as Spinoza
makes it an implication of E3P6, but “according to 3p7, the striving to persevere in its
being is the essence of a thing [...] it follows that a thing cannot exist without such
striving.”26 While meeting the counterexamples depends on considering the essence of
a thing independent of its state, the state must be given when its essence is, and thus the
essence of a thing cannot be considered independent of its state. If the essence of a thing
is to persevere in its existence then its state is to do so as well. However, this objection
depends on reading essence both as something distinct from a thing’s relations to other
things and as something involving the thing’s relations to other things, without
considering how these are compatible.
The essence of any real thing in Spinoza’s system is an instance of the principle of
disjunctive transcendentais, or the essence of a person, which is why Spinoza insisted that
the emotions are explicable in the same way as any natural phenomenon (E3Preface).
This identification of the person with the fundamental reality of things already disqualifies
counterexamples such as the sun’s or the candle’s self-destruction. Although della Rocca
is correct to remark that Spinoza was in some sense a panpsychist,27 on the ground of
E 2 P 13 Schol, Spinoza is a panpsychist in the sense of making bodies a function of the
mind, rather than in that of making ideas a function of bodies. Suicide victims constitute
a more effective counterexample to E3P4 and E3P6 on this interpretation; nevertheless,
on this interpretation it is arguable that the suicide is, as Spinoza argued, the victim of
forces not stemming from this person’s essence, or what this person is in his or her self.
Up to a point, it is plausible to say that a person is always in his or her self because the
essence of a person is realized in the form of self-reflection. But this form of self-
reflection can be that of an abstract idea, which is not the idea of the self in God. The
desire to destroy oneself is one directed to realizing an abstract idea of the self. This
seems to imply the impossibility of a rational desire to take one’s own life; however,
Spinoza’s contention that the mind is eternal as an idea in God’s intellect makes rational
suicide something other than genuine self-destruction.
One’s desire is the felt contradiction or dialectical opposition of the inadequate and
the adequate ideas of one’s experience, and irrational desire is the attempt to resolve this
in the direction of the inadequate idea. One’s conatus is desire, according to Spinoza,
insofar as one is conscious of it, but it is appetite insofar as it is unconscious; when we
desire, we are impelled to go into the object of knowledge, entering into the sphere of the
periphery of experience. Our desire is therefore always to be a part of a whole. According

to Spinoza, one’s striving toward this unity determines the judgement that it is good: “we
judge a thing good because we endeavor, will, seek after and desire it” (E3P9Schol).
One’s desire, as opposed to appetite, is conscious and involves an idea of one’s relation
to its object. This is not the good in itself but in relation to a certain realization of the self,
as a free and rational being.
One’s emotional pleasure is thus a sense of being a part of the whole defined by an
adequate idea of experience, which is the genuine satisfaction of desire; the dissatisfaction
of desire, or emotional pain, is the felt discord between an inadequate self-conception and
the adequate idea of one’s self. But the emotions stemming from inadequate ideas can
hold a certain appeal. The emotions stem in general from the ways one’s ideas of one’s
self tend to reduce or increase one’s activity, or one’s ability to be rationally self
determining. An emotion stemming from an inadequate, abstract self-conception is
appealing in as much as it tends to satisfy the desire to be concretely realized in the form
of an adequate self-conception. Spinoza distinguished pleasure as titillation (titilatio) and
cheerfulness Qiilaritas). Our passionate states may give us titillation and appear to us
good, but they cannot fully satisfy our desire. Abstract ideas of self-reflection can thus be
a source of pleasure, as they give us a limited form of self-realization, which only seems
painful by contrast to other ways in which our experience can be defined. This explains
why emotions such as pride and humility, which stem from over- and underestimations
of one’s self, respectively, can be pleasurable but potentially painful. This also explains
why there can be emotions of vacillation, such as jealousy and loathing, which begin as
forms of love, or self-realization, and then start to seem painful insofar as the pattern of
self-realization is disconfirmed. For example, vanity is self-love depending on the idea
of being loved by another similar to one’s self (E3P34). A vain person confuses the
pleasure of the other with his or her own, and this also makes one depend for this
satisfaction on the other’s disposition to be pleased by one.
Titillation can be excessive and in a sense addictive, according to Spinoza, owing to
its having its basis in abstraction, or a self-conception developed in determinate being,
i.e., a set of shared properties needed for a certain inadequate form of self-contentment.
Titillation is an infinite source of satisfaction but only in the sense of lacking a limit
through its fonction within the whole person; it thus may result in one’s neglecting other
aspects of one’s self (E4P43). Cheerfulness is the satisfaction of desire in every aspect
of one’s self (E4P42), as it is pleasure with which “all parts of the body are affected
equally” (E4P42Dem). An adequate self-conception thus allows one to derive self
contentment from contemplating “only what follows from his power of activity” (E4P52).
Self-love derives from one’s understanding one’s self through God’s concrete idea; this
means that the individual person is also defined through relations to others, and because
of this implicit interdependence, one loves others for what they are in themselves, or as
concretely self-reflective. “Only free men,” therefore, “are truly advantageous to one
another and united by the closest bond of friendship [...] and are equally motivated by
love in endeavoring to benefit one another” (E4P71Dem).
Under a more adequate idea, vanity is seen as an attempt to satisfy the desire
expressed in piety—“a desire to establish friendship with others” (E4P37Scholl). An
inadequate idea developed in determinate being thus partially expresses the adequate idea
developed in systematic unity, and this is the sense in which Spinoza insisted that
cheerfulness is a pleasure with which “all parts of the body are affected equally”
(E4P42Dem). On the other hand, if body is taken in the sense of determinate being, such
passages are difficult to make sense of They are comprehensible only with body read in
the sense of intuition informed by an idea of self-reflection.
Abstract ideas can appear insurmountable, owing to the conatus to remain in
existence being regarded as something essential to us, even if it is only directed to
maintaining our existence in the form of an abstraction. Abstract ideas participate in the
concrete order of being and have some of the properties of the reality at which this
conatus is aimed. They can be intuitively and immediately grasped; they give us an
explanation for our modes of being insofar as we interpret our experience through them
and thus give us a sense of the necessity of these modes of being. Consequently, emotion
stemming from an abstract idea of the self has an appeal that is explicable according to
the principles Spinoza established for this purpose:
1. our emotions are constituted by forms of the body, or imagery, and a stronger image
is needed to change them: “an emotion cannot be checked or destroyed except by a
contrary emotion which is stronger than the emotion which is to be checked” (E4P7,
see also E4P7Dem);
2. our emotions are stronger if the image of the cause of the emotion is imagined to be
present: “an emotion whose cause we think to be with us in the present is stronger
than it would be if we did not think the said cause to be with us” (E4P9, see also
E4P9Dem);
3. our emotions are stronger the more they are imagined to be either in the near past or
the near future (E4P10), as otherwise one can imagine other things to exclude the
presence of the emotion’s object; and
4. our emotions are stronger or weaker with the idea of the necessity or contingency of
the cause of the emotion, as the idea of the cause of an emotion cannot influence the
effect unless it is imagined to be inevitable (E4P11, E4P12, E4P13).
These principles stress the need to grasp the adequate idea of the order of things in one’s
experience intuitively if this is to influence one’s emotions: “from this we readily
conceive how effective against the emotions is clear and distinct knowledge, and
especially the third [intuitive] kind of knowledge” (E5P20Schol; see also E2P40Schol2).
Virtuous emotions stem from an adequate interpretation of things in one’s experience,
whereas the influence of this interpretation on a person’s life depends on intuiting it. The
reading of the attributes as intuitions of the order of things in substance allows us to say
that the intellect relates to imagery as a way of informing a spatial intuition of being, and
this interpretation enables us to understand how the cheerfulness of the intellect becomes
a more powerful force in one’s life than titillation, as it takes the shape in the attribute of
extension of a system of spatial perspectives—the face of the whole
universe—constitutive of the idea of the community of free and rational beings. With the
shift in emphasis in the role of the alternative system, one supposes that ideas are
inadequate insofar as they are abstract in relation to our experience and that they are
adequate in as much as they are more concrete, which suggests that the development of
a more satisfactory emotional life, as well as the expression of the absolute as community,
can be a function of someone’s understanding of the logic developed by Armour.
This interpretation is bom out by its ability to clarify Spinoza’s five methods for
overcoming the force of emotions stemming from inadequate interpretations of
experience (E5P20Schol):
1. To understand the nature o f the emotions—Understanding ambition and pride as

inadequate expressions of piety (E5P4Schol), for example, transforms these emotions.
On this interpretation, this is to understand that the emotions consist in tensions
created by conflicts between adequate and inadequate ideas. Comparing the two
engenders the greater sense of freedom with the greater sense of the possibilities open
to us, which can be seen to result from the move from determinate being to systematic
unity and so on through to a more concrete conception of our experience.
2. To separate the emotionsfrom their causes—Given that the “causes” of the emotions
are the formal but inadequate causes, or self-conceptions, restricting one’s self-
realization, separating emotions from their causes can be said to happen only insofar
as we are again able to conceive of more adequate ideas. A more concrete self
conception involves detaching the emotion from the idea of the external object as its
cause. Only in this way can one’s pleasure in some inadequate ideas be seen as
resulting from their partial resemblance to adequate ideas, or can one’s pain in
inadequate ideas be seen as resulting from a contrast between these and the more
adequate ones.
3. To endure an emotion through time— By relating an emotion to the idea of God, it
is, with time, possible to overcome the emotion derived through an abstract idea. An
emotion stemming from an inadequate idea is made weaker (E4P10), whereas the
more concrete ideas of pure and determinate process, activity, universality and
dialectical individuality explain the reality of time, and they persist through time
(E5P7Dem).
4. To relate the events in our lives as much as possible to a greater number o f causes,
to the attributes, and to God—The more concrete idea of an emotion relates its object
to eveiy other thing in the order of the intellect, i.e., the attributes and the order of the
community in God. It is thus the result of a greater number of causes (E5P9) and has
a greater necessity, i.e., “in proportion as a mental image is related to more things, the
more frequently does it occur—i.e. the more often it springs to life—and the more it
engages the mind” (E5P11). Such are the elements of the adequate formal cause of
the emotions—the other persons and the categories of the order of things that limit but
give meaning to our own self-realization.
5. To appropriately arrange and associate the emotions—The integration of the
imagery of the emotions is most appropriately developed through the concrete life of
the community in God: this is the order, according to Spinoza, “wherein the mind can
arrange its emotions and associate them one with another” (E5P20Schol). An
intuition of space is needed to make imagery compatible with the order of the
intellect. The order of dialectical individuality can therefore serve as this order if it is
allowed that it is directly intuited in extension such as to make this image of God the
strongest force in one’s life.
The transformation from bondage to freedom thus occurs with the same logical necessity
as that with which the absolute, as the idea of community, enters into experience.
Although it works by means of the logical inference of determinate being, systematic
unity, and so on, this process of reasoning is the recognition of the good in the sense of
the greatest self-realization of individuals compatible with their interdependence.
Conclusion
This, then, is the main contribution of Armour’s interpretation of the relation of Spinoza’s
metaphysics to his rational psychology, showing how a logical process of thought (such
as that recommended in Spinoza’s psychology) is compatible with and promotes freedom.
As this process makes us realize the structure of the real, i.e., as it brings the absolute as
the idea of the good into experience, it provides the determinate structure needed to
realize oneself as an individual. But it also gives us options that seem unavailable to us
in any but a more concrete, adequate interpretation of experience, which helps to
overcome the determination of the will through the passions stemming from inadequate
ways experience is otherwise interpreted. I have criticized this interpretation of Spinoza
from the viewpoint that the attributes should be seen as nuances on the intuition of being
governing the interpretation of experience, such that the order of the absolute can be
intuitively grasped. But this is compatible with the metaphysics Armour develops to
explain Spinoza and in no way detracts from its contribution to our understanding of the
rational psychology.
Notes
1. Versions of some parts of this paper appeared in Chs. 5 and 8 of my Intuition and Reality: A
Study o f the Attributes of Substance in the Absolute Idealism of Spinoza (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 1999).
2. Leslie Armour, Being and Idea: Developments of Some Themes in Spinoza and Hegel [BI]
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1992).
3. Leslie Armour, The Rational and the Real: An Essay in Metaphysics [RR] (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); Logic and Reality: An Investigation into the Idea o f a Dialectical
System [LR] (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972).
4. L. Armour, personal communication, 1997.
6. See also the third section of this paper on Being and Idea.
8. Leslie Armour and Suzie Johnston, “Logic, Community and the Taming of the Absolute,”
Laval théologique et philosophique, 51(1995) 521.
9. Armour and Johnston 521.
10. See Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters,
tr. Samuel Shirley, ed. and intro. Seymour Feldman (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1992); Armour,
BI38.
11. Armour, BI 57. See also Errol E. Harris, Salvation from Despair (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1973) 87.
12. L. Armour, “Copleston and Maritain: the Absolute, Rational Desire, and the Existence of God,”
De Philosophia, 8 (1988-1989) 81.
13. Armour, “Copleston and Maritain” 72.
14. L. Dewan (O.P.), “Some Observations on Professor Armour’s Paper,” De Philosophia 8
(1988-1989) 117.
15. Dewan 120.
16. Dewan 121.
17. L. Armour, “A Reply to Father Dewan,” De Philosophia, 8 (1988-1989) 128.
18. L. Armour, “Values, God, and the Problem About Why There is Anything at All ” Journal o f
Speculative Philosophy 1 (1987) 148-149.
19. Armour, “Values, God” 150-153.
20. Armour, “Values, God” 154-161.
21. L. Armour, “F.H. Bradley, Duns Scotus, and the Idea of a Dialectic,” Bradley Studies, 1 (1995)
22-23.
22. Armour, “Bradley, Duns Scotus” 23,25-26.
23. L. Armour, “Bradley’s Other Metaphysics,” Perspectives on the Logic and Metaphysics of
F.H. Bradley, ed. W.J. Mander (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996) 133-134.
24. Letter 64, tr. Shirley.
2 5 .1 am indebted for this point to the late Léon Charette, personal communication, 1989.
26. Michael della Rocca, “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology,” The Cambridge Companion to
Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 199. See also
199-204.
27. della Rocca, “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology” 194.
Taylor & Francis
9 The Suffering Reality of Reason and
Love: Kierkegaard’s Attempt to
Overcome Epistemological
Scepticism
VIDAR LANDE
Preliminary Presentation of Reason and Love
There is hardly a term to which Kierkegaard gives more attention than “love.” His
writings are full of references to God as ‘love,’ and he repeatedly asserts that our right
relation to God can be established only through ‘love.’ There is no need to argue
extensively for the clear correspondance between Kierkegaard and St. Augustine on this
issue. Kierkegaard’s presence within the neo-Platonic, Augustinian tradition may be seen
through his Lutheran and pietistic inheritance. However, differences between Kierkegaard
and St Augustine are also conspicuous. St. Augustine lived in the Roman Empire in the
4th and 5th centuries A.D.; Kierkegaard lived in Copenhagen, in the 19th century. St.
Augustine understood love primarily within a neo-Platonic and Biblical context and,
while Kierkegaard did so as well, he also understood it within a romantic, post-Kantian
and a modem, post-Hegelian context, when radical criticisms of the Bible and religion
were part of the common theological, philosophical, and scientific attitude. Thus, for
Kierkegaard, love had to be a ‘modem,’ despairing passion, a feeling that God is lost, as
well as a Kantian-influenced categorical duty: ‘Thou shalt love your neighbour. ’ Still, due
to Kierkegaard’s dépendance on Kantian ethics and epistemology, as well as on Pietism
and post-Kantian Romanticism, love had also to be, as it was for St. Augustine— a neo-
Platonic longing for eternity and Biblical reverence for the holy God, together with
suffering and compassionate responsibility for others.
Thus, Kierkegaard’s concept of love is complex, giving room for diverse
interpretations. In epistemological questions, Kierkegaard appears most clearly as what
we might call ‘a sceptical logician,’ separating radically reason and passions. Like his
sceptical predecessors in this respect—among them, for instance, Hume and
Kant—Kierkegaard claims that reason and passions belong to totally different spheres.
Love— and all passions—belong to existence; reason is only a formal procedure, an
abstraction, tending to distract people and lead them away from reality. In Kierkegaard’s
opinion, Hegel’s sole domain is reason. Hegel is, like Plato, an idealist who subsumes
passions under reason. Hegel’s views have serious consequences for Christian theology,
especially concerning the concepts of sin and salvation. The foremost theologians of the
Danish Lutheran church in Kierkegaard’s time were apparently not aware of this danger.1
Although Kierkegaard on many occasions certainly tries to disregard the value of
reason, there are problems in arguing that he rejects reason altogether. He is hardly an
‘irrationalist’ in this sense of the word.2 Upon closer scrutiny, it is clear that Kierkegaard
does not primarily attack logical thinking as such, but rather Hegel’s concept of
Speculative Reason. In their discussions of speculative rational activity, Hegelians had
claimed that the concept of contradiction could be transgressed and overcome. Thus,
reason may be tied so tightly to existence that it both rules over and is ruled by existence.
Reason can therefore render a true image of human existence.3
Kierkegaard could not accept such a ‘confusing’ logic, where the necessary
presuppositions for logical thinking are violated by existence. He thinks that a good
thinker must adhere to correct logical rules, primarily the principle of contradiction. By
so doing, reason designs fixed borders. As in Kant’s First Critique, reason should stay
within the sphere where it meaningfully may be used, and not venture into what Kant
would call transcendental illusions. Reason must, in Kierkegaard’s opinion, encounter
the impossibility to think what cannot be thought. At this stage the thinking subject will
founder over the impossibility to think the impossible. Then he/she will attain so-called
paradoxical passions, and thus make a link between thinking and existence.4 The more
clearly a rational problem can be understood, the clearer and more organized will the
ensuing existential passions be. Fallacious thinking can only lead to weak and confused
feelings, misleading the thinking subject into ‘perdition,’ i.e. away from true, ‘passionate’
existence.
Nevertheless, while Kierkegaard is sceptical about reason and thinks that there should
be a clear separation between thinking and passions, he also holds an idealistic, non-
sceptical view—that there should be a real connection between them. In order to
understand this connection, we must examine thoroughly the concept of ‘paradox.’ For
reason and passions are linked in the paradoxes. Will it be possible to say that this
relation is ‘rational,’ or is it solely to be accounted for in categories of existential matter
that are indifferent to, or only partly dependant on reason? This question touches the very
centre of Kierkegaard’s dialectical method. It is my opinion that the paradox contains
connotations from both reason and existence, and the ensuing paradoxical passions also
contain elements from both strands. The central claim of this article is that this ambiguity
dwells in the very centre of Kierkegaard’s thinking, making it impossible for him to say
without reservation, whether reason and passions are or are not tied ‘rationally’ together.
It seems clear to me, concerning this issue, that Kierkegaard is careful to maintain these
ambiguities, because they may account for the seriousness of sin that is required in
Kierkegaard’s ‘correct’ Lutheran and pietistic religion.
On Kierkegaard’s view, sceptical ideas are necessary in several respects. First, they
can cast doubt on the Hegelian belief in reason’s capacity to handle existential matters.
Second, the sceptical ideas implicit in the Kantian epistemological tradition can account
for the necessary concept of transcendence. Only on this epistemological basis may the
concept of sin be understood to be radically transcendent, and thus serious enough. Third,
correct logical thinking can increase the passions, the only means for man to reach the
right contact with God, as known from the Augustinian, neo-Platonic tradition. This
contact might be harder to attain than St. Augustine had said, however. Taking Kantian
epistemological premises into due consideration, ultimate religious reality must be totally
beyond reason. Thus, ‘Kierkegaardian idealism,’ built upon reason and love like in the
The Suffering Reality o f Reason and Love 155
neo-Platonic tradition, assumes Augustinian ideas concerning the power and seriousness
of evil. The ultimate spiritual reality must be a highly suffering reality of reason and love.
It is, however, possible that these—for many people apparently negative—sides of
Kierkegaard’s religion, are part of an indirect way of communicating his opinions.
Perhaps Kierkegaard thought that sceptical ideas were necessary, only in his polemics
against Hegelians. Perhaps he thought that it was only from sceptical presuppositions that
he might be able to show Hegelian theologians, the contents of ‘correct’ Christianity. If
so, Kierkegaard might hold that the correspondance between passions and thinking is so
close that reason may be able to purify passions. However, Kierkegaard can hardly
answer this question unambiguously. Therefore, the possibility of serious suffering can
hardly be definitively eradicated from ‘Kierkegaardian idealism.’
Kierkegaard and Paradox
One of the most important concepts in the literature on Kierkegaard is paradox.

Interpretations of this concept have ranged over a variety of perspectives, depending upon
the intentions and interests of the commentator. This implies that any approach to
paradox must be incomplete and relative, only relevant in a limited perspective. The
following exposition attempts to clarify paradox in three short paragraphs. The intention
is solely to point out basic presuppositions in the understanding of the relation between
Kierkegaard’s concepts of reason and passions.
Tentatively, we could say that Kierkegaard distinguishes between two main categories
of paradox, each category closely connected to what he holds to be two different spheres
of existence. These could be named the Socratic and the Christian spheres, and the
ensuing paradoxes the Socratic paradox and the Christian paradox. In both spheres
there arise insoluble problems on logical and existential matters. These ‘impossibilities’
constitute borderlines beyond which human beings should not go, or are unable to go.
Kierkegaard calls these borderlines paradoxes. If the borderlines are clearly delineated,
paradoxical passions may arise, and by developing passions, a human being will be more
suited to receive and develop faith, the ultimate strand of human existence. Faith occurs
through passions and, like other thinkers in the sceptical tradition—for instance, like the
Ancient Greek sceptics, or the more modem sceptic, David Hume—Kierkegaard thinks
that only a passion (feeling) may influence and neutralize another passion (feeling). Thus,
faith is suited for, and capable of counterinfluencing, destructive passions of anxiety and
guilt—passions which may become transformed into sin in the correct transcendent,
Christian perspective (PhS 46,52).
Before going further into the analysis of the term paradox, one should bear in mind
some fundamental ideas and influences in Kierkegaardian thinking. The most important
ones in our connection are the ontological, ethical, and epistemological elements from
Greek-religious thinking of the neo-Platonic tradition, as well as from Kant’s First and
Second Critiques. In addition, Kierkegaard is highly influenced by both the Hegelian view
which he attacks, and Old Testament, Biblical ideas.
Many of the problems in writings on Kierkegaard are caused by confusion in relating

the abovementioned ideas and influences. Thus, for instance, when Kierkegaard presents
‘Socratic’ views, his ‘Socrates’ might contain Kantian elements, and the ‘Hegel’ he
attacks in the views of his contemporary Danish theologians, appears to be more or less
identical with his image of Plato. Apparently Kierkegaard thinks that the ambiguous
historical background of his concepts does not interfere with his basic message. He
simply uses whatever ideas and ideological connections are necessary in pursuing his
polemics against the most prominent Danish theologians of his own time. Therefore, what
is important to focus on in the following are not the views that belong to the philosophers
Kierkegaard avails himself of, but the new concepts that Kierkegaard develops on the
basis of elements from these philosophers.
Turning to the Socratic paradox, it is clear that Kierkegaard first defines ‘paradox’
within the sceptical-logical epistemological tradition, as a logical contradiction. What is
paradoxical is illustrated by the fact that Socrates both knows and does not know himself.
He has encountered a borderline for thinking’s ability to think. Beyond this borderline lies
‘the absurd’—the transcendental illusions, in Kantian terminology from the First
Critique. Socrates avoids these illusions by excluding them. Thereby he establishes
another logical border, the principle of exclusion.
Second, in order to define fully the Socratic paradox, Kierkegaard also presupposes
the epistemological idealistic, non-sceptical Platonic idea, that reason and existence are
manifestations of one and the same reality. In this connection, Kierkegaard seems to
equate Hegel with Plato/Socrates as having committed the same cardinal sin, namely
having confounded reason and reality—two spheres that are totally different. Thus, the
second strand of the Socratic paradox reflects a dialectical opposition within the Socratic
consciousness, giving him a tool to decide whether he wants to dissolve the clear rational
borders and go beyond—into the unknown—or to turn back from dissolution, to the
rational world, where reason meaningfully can be employed. This is a different kind of
borderline than the purely logical one. It is the limit for a sound consciousness, i.e. a
consciousness which can make rational choices. This border should be kept as clear as
logical principles, for in this Platonic and idealistic perspective, ethical and ontological
aspects enter the reality of paradox together with epistemological aspects. Socrates must
stay within the rational, secure realm of existence, and not venture with hubris into an
illusory realm of transcendence (PhS 3 8).5
In Kierkegaard’s opinion, the two strands of the Socratic paradox may expand into
a third realm, through adding the central dogmatic contents of Christianity. The
Kierkegaardian concept of paradox then acquires new elements of incomprehensible,
dogmatic, Christian matter; Kierkegaard calls this transformed concept the Christian
paradox. The new contents now added are the Christian dogmatic concepts of guilt, sin,
redemption, atonement, and salvation. By accepting the transcendent truths of
Christianity, one also accepts that one can reach beyond the Socratic borderlines without
falling into transcendental illusions and Socratic disintegration. In the Christian passion
of faith, the Christian Saviour, Atoner, and Redeemer miraculously gives birth to a new
reality, preserving the paradoxical borderlines and, in addition, expanding the human
sphere of integrative existence into a deeper reality than Socrates had access to. Now, the
transcendent Christian God gives each human being the truth of this Christian double
paradox—in the passion of faith. Faith can counterinfluence the destructive passions of
the second strand of the Socratic paradox, so that a ‘correct’ Christian relation between
each human individual and the transcendent Christian God may be established (see PhS
46, 52).
As a conclusion of this brief discussion, we can sum up the Kierkegaardian paradox
in three points:
1. The sceptical contents of paradox: The paradox is a logical contradiction. The

paradox is also the logical principle of exclusion.
2. The idealistic contents of paradox: The paradox is a borderline within human
consciousness, consisting of ethical and ontological, as well as logical matter, since
these spheres are totally intervowen and connected. This borderline separates what
is integrative from what is disintegrative in human consciousness.
3. The sceptical-idealistic contents of paradox: The paradox is the complete and
collateral affirmation of all three points above, as well as additional contradictions and
incomprehensibilities to be added upon the Socratic paradox. An ‘absurd,’
transcendent principle (the Christian God) gives the logical, ethical and ontological
borderlines validity in such a way that the paradox appears to be ‘absurd’ and ‘not-
absurd’ at the same time. Kierkegaard calls this point the double paradox (see PhS
38).6
Kierkegaardian Paradoxical Passions
Kierkegaard holds that paradoxical borderlines never should be made relative. The
mistake Hegel made in his concept of Speculative Reason was to try to bridge the
paradoxes and further subordinate passions and other existential matter to reason. Hegel
is like the idealist Plato in this respect, who had subordinated eros (passions) to nous
(reason). However, as a sceptic in epistemological matters, Kierkegaard must distinguish
sharply between reason and existence. This implies that a human being, as comprehended
in the Platonic-Hegelian perspective, will become a stranger to herself/himself. When
thinking, human beings will always abstract themselves from existence into rational
concepts. In Kierkegaard’s opinion, a human being is not primarily ‘a rational animal,’
as Aristotle had put it. More like the Greek sceptics, Kierkegaard thinks that the deepest
ground in human beings consists in feelings and emotions, so-called ‘passions. ’ Thus, by
adhering consistently to the clear borderlines of paradox, a human being will always stay
within the right (Kantian) limits of thinking, and cause paradoxical passions to arise. The
sceptical and idealistic aspects referred to above will heighten the passions, and prepare
the ground for our most true aesthetic and ethical existence. However, the third point
above introduces the so-called double paradox, which must lead to a further
strengthening of passions. In this stage ‘impossibilities’ become complete and total.
Human beings become stripped of all possibilities to understand anything,—and they can
only receive their lives as a grace from God who loves them. In ‘mutual understanding,’
God and the human person—as two lovers—can be on right terms with each other. This
implies that passions o f love become transformed into what Kierkegaard calls passions
of faith (see PhS, Ch. 2 ,2 6 $ .
Thus understood, right or proper sceptical thinking is a precondition for the passions,
which turn out to be the means by which humanity can transcend the rationally-founded
human spheres of existence—consisting of ethics and aesthetics (the two first so-called
Kierkegaardian existential stages)—and attain full human development in the third stage,
the ultimate religious reality. Passions go beyond, but are nevertheless influenced and
directed by, right thinking.
In the non-sceptical, idealistic, neo-Platonic, Christian tradition, thinkers often use
reason as a means to purify and control passions in some way. For only purified passions
may transcend rational foundations and approach the transcendent divine mystery. In this
way, Plotinus, for instance, divided reason into two different spheres Çhypostases), to
make transition ‘beyond’ reason (nous) somewhat more compatible with rational
principles. Transcendence is not an ‘irrational’ leap into the Socratic ‘unknown.’ On the
contrary, human consciousness can preserve its integrity, and evil may be excluded from
transcendent reality.7
Some of the Danish Hegelian-influenced theologians of Kierkegaard’s time can be
said to have held an idealistic, romantic view, sharing rational ideas with the above
mentioned neo-Platonic view. By giving priority to reason in relation to passions,
‘irrationalism’ may be avoided. The well-known university-teacher and later bishop, The
Rev. Martensen (whose Hegelian religious views were much influenced by the Christian,
neo-Platonic mysticism of Meister Eckhart), explained that there is a steady, growing
development in Christian faith, a growth which can be handled and influenced by means
of a human being’s ability to make rational, constructive choices.8
Kierkegaard reacted to such a view. As a true Lutheran protestant he pointed out that
a human being is unable to save herself/himself. Instead of pointing to Hegel or to a
mystic like Meister Eckhart in religious views, he pointed to sceptical epistemology,
especially to the indisputable value of logical principles, as well as to the separation of
logic and existence. His fellow-pietist Kant’s preconditions on these issues must not be
weakened in the polemical situation against Hegelian theologians.
In addition, on idealistic, neo-Platonic, as well as Christian dogmatic grounds,
Kierkegaard had to hold that there is a religious, transcendent reality. For neo-Platonists,
‘sin is ignorance. ’ On Kierkegaard’s Christian view, however, sin must have a stronger
position. For it is only the Christian, transcendent God who can forgive sins, and thus
save human beings. From the sceptical, Kantian epistemological perspective, logic can
never be relativized. But when the idealistic, neo-Platonic perspective is added to the
sceptical perspective, transcendent reason must become ‘anti-reason.’ And as ‘reason’
in the neo-Platonic perspective eradicates sin, ‘anti-reason’ in Kierkegaard’s neo-Platonic
and Kantian perspective must create and undergird sin. In this way, Kierkegaard’s
complex use of different ideas puts him in a position to argue, on sceptical grounds, for
the reality and seriousness of transcendent sin in his view of Christianity.
Additionally, by introducing dogmatic concepts of guilt and sin in transcendent reality,
passions may become filled with misery. There can be no clear procedure to purify
passions by means of reason, since the very passions go beyond reason, and are at least
partly excluded from clear rational governance. Suffering must therefore have a
fondamental ground in transcendent reality. As Christianity of the Augustinian tradition
emphasizes, God is a suffering God, who suffers in order that there can be an atonement
and extirpation of human sin. God could therefore himself be tainted with evil, as He
operates from the transcendent realm which Kierkegaard seems partly to have equated
with non-existence and irrationalism. God could be unpredictable, as the Yahweh of the
Old Testament. He may suddenly punish human beings if, in his inscrutable wisdom, He
should decide to do so.
Thus, the problem of evil is at least as serious for Kierkegaard as it had been for St.
Augustine. For in Kierkegaard’s time, after Kant and Hegel, the only accepted ground to
build thinking upon is a thoroughly secularized world—with no place for God. Therefore,
it must be a dogmatic truth, an axiomatic presupposition, that Christianity cannot be
understood. Only on such presuppositions could Christianity assume credibility.9 In
Kierkegaard’s terminology, Christianity must be totally paradoxical, even ‘doubly
paradoxical. ’ However, by underlining that logical thinking can never be made relative,
connotations of irrationalism, anti-rationalism and transcendent evil also follow. This fact
certainly heightens paradoxical passions, but it also introduces so serious contradictions
that the clear borders between reason and passions which Kierkegaard wanted to
preserve, seem weakened and ruined. The rational foundation of sceptical reason might
thus be unsatisfactory. Passions and reason might again mingle and become confused in
a way that Kierkegaard had never intended, and transcendent evil seems to become
emphasized to the same extent as sceptical, logical thinking is emphasized.
Thus, by adhering to elements of scepticism in his idealistic view of Christianity,
Kierkegaard is faced with an important problem that he had attacked in the Hegelian
position, as well as additional problems of evil which the Hegelians had avoided. By
holding that there are paradoxical borders, as strongly as any sceptic would, Kierkegaard
weakened the very same borders, and ended up confusing elements that a sceptic would
think should be held apart. The only discernible difference from the views of the
theological Hegelians is the mighty presence of guilt, dread, anxiety, and sin, i.e. the
elements of ‘negative passions,’ which Kierkegaard claims must belong to ‘correct
Christianity’ and ‘true’ Christian existence.10 Transcendent passions must contain these
evil elements as well as good ones. Thus, suffering cannot be totally under control, but
must also partly be founded in an irrational or anti-rational, transcendent principle.
Suffering of this kind cannot clearly be used as a meaningful means for purposes of
purification.
Conclusions
This paper has argued that Kierkegaard’s concepts of reason and love may be considered
from very diverse perspectives, and therefore contain connotations from diverse and
partly contradictory philosophical approaches. When he appears as a sceptic in
epistemological matters, Kierkegaard thinks that reason and existence must be held
strictly apart, so that paradoxical borderlines result. However, the Kierkegaardian

sceptical position introduces a new connection between reason and love, founded on their
very separation. For, on the basis of sceptical rationality, paradoxical passions arise, and
through clear passions human beings attain a way of approaching transcendent reality. By
means of such a paradoxical position, Kierkegaard adopts the idealistic idea of a
connection between reason and the passions, where reason in fact lies at bottom. By
adhering to right rules of thinking, human beings increase and purify passions, so that
ultimate reality may be approached.
However, this position leads also to negative consequences. By emphasizing sceptical
elements in his epistemological views, Kierkegaard cannot avoid irrational and/or anti-
rational elements from entering his view of transcendent reality. The power of evil
assumes so strong a position that it may seem to threaten a sound balance between reason
and love. In this perspective, Kierkegaard stands as the possible ‘irrational/anti-rational
confuser’ of rational borders, without allowing any possibility to purify passions
constructively. On his Kantian and sceptical epistemological presuppositions, together
with his idealistic neo-Platonic and non-sceptical views, both negative and positive
passions may accumulate ad infinitum, and destroy a sound balance between reason and
passions. Thereby also reason (scepticism) seems partly to lose its solid, constructive
function. It turns rather into a rigid, blind, meaningless system, of the same nature as the
rational system that Kierkegaard attributes to, and ridicules in, Hegel. This system must
be upheld through great pain and misery, and it is hard to see how it may be used as a
means to purification. There does not seem to be any possibility of having a positive
influence on passions.
The Kierkegaardian view might, nevertheless, be both more complex and more clearly
positive than the conspicuous negativity suggested above. One should not forget to give
due recognition to the fact that Kierkegaard’s views are set forth within a polemical
context where Hegelian-influenced Danish theologians, in Kierkegaard’s opinion, had
made Christianity into a rational Platonism. On such a view, sin is ignorance. What
Hegelians lack in their view of Christianity is sufficient awareness of guilt and
suffering—the only factors that can lead to sin-consciousness—and the need for salvation.
For human beings are unable to save themselves; evil is too strong (PhS 46). In this
polemical context, Kierkegaard certainly needs sceptical ideas from Kantian
epistemology, but possibly only as an indirect means of making a point. By underlining
the passions, he points to basic elements in human existence which the Hegelians had
neglected. Thus understood, Kierkegaard’s irrationalism and anti-rationalism may only
be relative. Ultimately, he might more rightly be understood as a typical representative
of the idealistic, neo-Platonic tradition of St. Augustine and Pascal. Both these
theologians/philosophers underline with great vigour that there must be evil and suffering
in Christian existence. However, more clearly than Kierkegaard, they both resort to
reason and attempt to use suffering as a purifying tool to attain higher perfection. Life is
suffering, full of evil and misery, but not a suffocating suffering. Suffering could be used
as an ascetic means to purify passions of love, and to approach the ultimate, divine
reality.11
In support of this view it could be argued that, in many of Kierkegaard’s writings, he

deliberately imposes suffering on himself as an ascetic means to perfection. One could
point to many discussions in his Papers and religious writings as evidence. The double
paradox is not necessarily ‘irrationalist.’ It assumes, according to Kierkegaard, another
dimension: that it is not paradoxical at all—for the believer.12
What Kierkegaard’s ultimate view is, is an open question. Not to be willing to answer
clearly what one’s ultimate view is could reflect an attitude of humility, but equally one
of arrogance. Humility will most naturally find its expression in good passions, for
instance, in humour. Arrogance will most naturally find its expression in more negative
passions, as in irony. Considering Kierkegaard’s private life and writings, both these
attitudes can easily be discerned. Such a complex and ambiguous attitude could be
positive so long as it avoids resentment and bitterness. This attitude may, then, bring
together the views of Kierkegaard’s opponents as well as the Kierkegaardian Christian
way out of the misery—i.e., in the passions of faith.
In this way, then, Kierkegaard’s position could be considered the best suited to
communicate the Christian gospel of love and faith to the idealistic, Platonic-Hegelian
theologians of his time, in a ‘secularized’ time after Kant and Hegel. These theologians
had minimized the importance of passions in religious matters, and thereby weakened a
necessary part of Christian life. For Kierkegaard, the right balance between reason and
passions could therefore only be held in a protesting, despairing attitude against the
scientific and atheistic truths of his time. For this purpose, ambiguity was needed. The
Christian passions offaith had therefore to be expressed as a despairing ‘evil’ position,
never to be made relative or totally subsumed under reason. The Christian message must
remain a double paradox. Reason and the passions must be separated as well as united.
As they are further transformed into sin-conscious ness, and into forgivenness o f sins,
suffering and misery can become appropriate passions offaith.
Notes
1. See for instance, Soren Kierkegaard, Afsluttende uvidenskabeligt Efterskrift [AUE]

[Concluding Unscientific Postscript], in Samlede Vcerker, 20 vols. (Kobenhavn, 1978), Vol.
9 ,94fF. See also Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard s Relation to Hegel (Princeton, N. J: Princeton
University Press, 1980) 82ff.
2. Alastair McKinnon argues that Kierkegaard is not an irrationalist in this sense of the word. See
for instance Alastair McKinnon, “Kierkegaard, Paradox and Irrationalism,” Journal of
Existentialism,7 (1967) 401-416.
3. See Note 1, above.
4. See Philosophiske Smuler [PhS] [Philosophical Fragments: or, A Fragment o f Philosophy],
in Samlede Vcerker, Vol. 6,38 ff.
5. PhS 38. This reference is to Plato, Phaedrus, 230 A.
6. Note also here that Kierkegaard’s paradox could be in full accord with the three first stages of
the Buddhist Nagaijuna’s negative dialectics. See T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy o f
Buddhism (London: Unwin, 1980) 129. Kierkegaard does not reject all contents in the ultimate
reality, i.e. infaith. In Buddhism such a passion would lead to desire and rebirth. The ultimate
reality in Madhyamika Buddhism, sunyata,must be devoid of all desire. The Buddhist
‘paradox’ must therefore have an additional fourth stage, more radically negative than
Kierkegaard’s negative dialectics, created to function within a Christian and neo-Platonic
cultural context.
7. See Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead V.1.10 and 1.2.6.
8. H.L. J.Martensen, A f mit Levnet [About my Life] (Kobenhavn, 1883).
9. Pascal holds a view closely related to Kierkegaard’s. Pascal planned to write an Apologyfor
the Christian Religion, a work which never was completed. However, some of his ideas are
preserved in the well-known, fragmentary work of Pensées. See for instance fragments 10 and
11, according to Lafuma’s numbers.
10. See AUE, in Samlede Vœrker, 20 vols. Vol. 9, 18f. See also Papirer [Papers] 16 vols
(Copenhagen, 1968-1978), Vol. VH 1A, 158, Vol. X 6B, 105 and Vol. X 1A, 556. See also
Om min Forfatter-Virksomhed [OMFV] [Concerning my Work as an Author], in Samlede
Vœrker, 20 vols. Vol. XVIII, 73.
11. See Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres (Paris, 1926) Vol. 6, De Vesprit géométrique, 25-52, and Vol. 4,
Penseés Diverses, 265-269. See also Pensées, fragm. 343 (Lafuma), and St. Augustine,
Confessiones, Book IQ, Ch. 7ff.
12. See for instance,Papirer, Vol. VDI, 1A, 250, from 16 August 1847. See also PhS 47. Here, as
in Note 6, above, it is clear that Kierkegaard’s negative dialectics stops before the last stage,
known from Madhyamika Buddhism. There is no indication in Kierkegaard’s writings
whatsoever, that faith might be negated for a higher telos, a higher paradox. However, the
Buddhist insight is possibly shared by the German Christian mystic in the Middle Ages, Meister
Eckhart. Eckhart recommends that the Christian God must be negated in relation to the
Godhead. He describes the Godhead in terms reminding of the Buddhist concepts of nirvana
and sunyata.
10 On Time and Eternity
THOMAS DE KONINCK
Introduction
Can there be a time before time, a time when time was not, can there be a time after time,
a time when time will no longer be? No, you justly say, because this would be a
contradiction, to say the least Saint Augustine is rightly scathing when in the De Civitate
Dei, he writes:
For if time has not existed for all time, it would follow that there was a time when there was
no time. And the most complete fool would not say that! We can correctly say, “There was
a time when Rome did not exist; there was a time when Jerusalem, or Abraham, or man,
or anything of this kind, did not exist.” [...] But to say, “there was a time when time did not
exist5’ is as nonsensical as to say, “There was a man when no man existed”, or, “This world
existed when this world was not.” If we are referring to different individuals, we can rightly
say, “There was a man when that man did not exist”, and so we can say, “There was a time
when this time did not exist”; but to say, “There was a time when there was no time” is
beyond the capability of the veriest idiot.1
Yet what, then, could such expressions as “before time,” or “before creation,” or “the
end of time,” possibly mean? Who would want to quarrel with Aristotle’s statement, in
his Metaphysics, “If time did not exist, there could be no before and after”2 [ou y á p oíòv
T e t ò Tipóxepov K a i u o t g o v e iv a i /x fj õ v t o ç %pó v ou;]—provided, of course, the
words “before and after” are taken in their usual sense? But then, if “before time” is
impossible, how can one speak meaningfully of the “origin” of all things, including of
time itself? Can time begin without a “before” which would absurdly involve its
preceding itself—within itself, to boot? Surely, in other words, such an origin could only
precede it in some other sense of “preceding.” But what could that other sense be, and
how could that be? Can time ever end? How can there be a “last syllable” of time, without
something beyond it of another nature? Would not the sole alternative be sempiternal
time—that time always existed, without beginning, and will always exist, without end?
We are all familiar with Saint Augustine’s answer, which transcends such an
alternative.
It is not in time that you precede times [he writes, addressing God]. Otherwise you would
not precede all times. In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present, you are
before all things past and transcend all things future, because they are still to come, and
when they have come they are past. “But you are the same and your years do not fail”
(Psalm 101:28). Your years neither go nor come. Ours come and go so that all may come
in succession. All your years subsist in simultaneity, because they do not change; those
going away are not thrust out by those coming in. But the years which are ours will not all
be until all years have ceased to be. Your “years” are “one day” (Psalm 89:4; 2 Peter 3:8),
and your “day” is not any and every day but Today, because your Today does not yield to
a tomorrow, nor did it follow on a yesterday. Your Today is eternity.3
The answer, in a word, is eternity. In the subsequent lines of the Confessions, in

Augustine’s deservedly famous pages on time, stamped though they plainly are by his
own genius and by his faith, there are echoes of the great Greek philosophers, of
Heraclitus and Parmenides, of Plato and Aristotle, and of their followers, such as, of
course, Plotinus. Time and eternity were, from the outset of our tradition, the object of
great debates which have lost none of their import. The words “time” and “eternity”
themselves are notoriously in constant need of strict definitions and clear, critical
consideration to avoid oversimplifications; confusion concerning their exact meanings
may easily lead into the kind of hazy thinking and inaccuracy by which many a page of
contemporary popular works on the subject is flawed (even, unfortunately, A B rief
History o f Time, by the eminent contemporary physicist Stephen Hawking). I propose
here to consider some of the problems and some of the distinctions and clarifications that
we owe mainly to the ancient Greek philosophers, steering away from most of the vast
secondary literature on the subject in order to bring out just a few essential aspects that
can still greatly enlighten us. These problems and clarifications I propose to gather under
three heads: I—The “Now” o f Time ', II—The “Now” o f Eternity', III—Time, Eternity
and God.
The “Now” of Time
The best and plainest point of departure for any discussion of time (and indeed also, as
we shall see later, of eternity) is no doubt the present—right now, so to speak, or rather,
more accurately, the “now,” since that “right now,” indeed every “right now,” is already
obsolete the moment we say it. You will recall Aristotle’s wonderful analysis of time and
of the “now” in Physics IV, 10-14. His discussion of the latter opens with the query:
the “now” which seems to divide the past and the future—does it always remain one and
the same [cv icai xaircòv àei ôia^évei] or is it always other and other [aAAo icai
ccAAo]? It is hard to say. (IV, 10,218 a 10-11)
One is reminded here of the Heraclitean observation that you cannot step twice into
the same river, since its waters are ever flowing, “always other and other” in that sense;
and yet we still say “the same river” and we speak of “its” waters. Hegel will call this:
“identity in difference.” But how does Aristotle himself answer his own question?
By pointing out, first of all, that when we are not aware of any changes, no time seems
to have passed; if you will allow an anachronistic example, Rip Van Winkle needs to
wake up to another “now” to begin to notice the lapse of time (twenty years of slumber).
So [Aristotle goes on to say], just as there would be no time if there were no distinction
between this “now” and that “now”, but it were always the same “now”; in the same way
there appears to be no time between two “nows” when we fail to distinguish between
them.4
On Time and Eternity 165
In other words, we need to discern two “nows,” one prior to the other, in a change, in
order to see that there is time; two extremes distinguished from what is between them.
We apprehend time only when we have marked motion, marking it by before and after, and
it is only when we have perceived before and after in motion that we say that time has
elapsed.5
What is bounded by a now, is what we mean by time (cf. 219a 29-30). Should we
perceive a “now” as just one (dx; iv [219a 31]), without any reference to a before and an
after, no time will have elapsed in our view, in the absence of any perceived motion or
change. Hence the familiar definition: “For time is just this—number of motion in respect
of “before” and “after”” [toOto yá p éoTiv ó xpóvoç, à p i0 /*ò<; kivtío€G)ç Kara tò
rcpÓTepov Kai voxepov] (219b 1-2).
But we have not yet faced our initial query concerning the “now.” Just as the waters
of the Heraclitean river, motion is “always other and other” (à ei <xÀÀr| Kai &XXf] [219b
9-10]), and so is time, of course. Are we to infer, then, that the answer to the question
posed at the outset is simply that the now is perpetually other, that time is made up of
difference alone? This would be intrinsically absurd, since something needs to be
different, for difference to be, and besides, as Aristotle has pointed out in a preliminary
skirmish against such a reduction, the “now” “cannot have ceased to be when it was itself
the “now,” for that is just when it existed”; and it is just as “impossible that the past
“now” should have perished in any other “now” but itself’ (IV, 10, 218 a 16-18,
Cornford). It won’t do, furthermore, because the most evident, indispensable constituent
of time is the present now, as we saw, dividing past from future, as both the end of past
time and the beginning of friture time, identical “in its essence,” as Cornford translates
it—though indeed perpetually “other” (eiepov) in being (eïv a i) (cf. 219 b 10-11). The
answer is, then, that it is the same in one sense, not the same in another (219 b 12-13).
This is in effect what was already apparent earlier when we felt forced to distinguish “the
now” from that or every “right now.”
Examples help to clarify this “identity in difference,” if I may borrow the phrase from
Hegel. Aristotle brings in a favoured example: being in the Lyceum is doubtless different
from being in the market-place, and therefore being in one or the other place does make
Coriscus differ in that regard, but in no way does it alter his identity, making him a
different substance as the well-known fallacy would want it (cf. 219b 20-22).
The motion of a point generates a line in geometry; the point itself then serves as a
marker to discern the before and after in that motion. The “now” may be compared to
such a moving point, both in so far as it remains the same, as do all moving objects, and
in so far as its perpetual otherness generates time itself. “There is a sense, then [writes
Aristotle], in which what we mean when we say “now” is always the same, and a sense
in which it is not, just as is the case with anything that is in motion” (219b 31-32;
Cornford). Without time, there could be no “now,” and, reciprocally, if there were no
“now,” time would not be; just as there would be no motion in the absence of a concrete
moving object. The “now” is related to the flux of time as is the moving object to the flux
of motion, and it is to the number that is time like the unit, the “monad,” of number (cf.
219b 28—220a 4).
The identity of the moving object helps to understand, likewise, how it is that time
owes its continuity to the “now” as well. Here the analogy of the point is again helpful,
not least in the difference that will soon appear between point and “now.” The point both
constitutes the continuity of the line and may divide it, marking the end of one part of it
and the beginning of the other. In the latter case, however, you use one point as if it were
two—both end and beginning—which entails a pause if it is to retain its identity in this
double function—a fact, incidentally, well exploited by Zeno in his paradoxes concerning
motion.
The contrast here between the “now” and the point, is most enlightening. For the
before and after marked by the “now” are “ever different,” insists Aristotle (cf. 220a 14:
a e i Etepov). (This is central to our theme. And if I may be allowed a parenthetical
remark, notice how the word àei, “always,” keeps recurring throughout the analysis of
time, whether to convey sameness or otherness: they are both, strangely enough,
perpetual.) The contrast is obvious from the fact that whereas you may take the same
dividing point twice, marking the end of one line and the beginning of another, when you
count time however, it is impossible to take the same “now” twice, but you need take
different “nows,” like the extremities of a line (cf. 220a 4—220a 21).
If I understand Aristotle rightly, he is bringing out here most forcefully what it is that
constitutes time proper, what causes it to be what it is, namely the fact that the “now” of
time is perpetually “other,” inexorably so, unstoppable, forever running, never recurring
in that sense. Is this what Shakespeare meant by “time’s thievish progress to eternity”
(Sonnet 11)1
The “Now” of Eternity
Although it needs to be defined negatively, as the opposite of time, eternity, in the strict
sense of the term, has been exceptionally well served in the tradition. So much so that it
might even appear easier to define than time, oddly enough. The greatest philosophers
and theologians are basically in agreement when it comes to define the eternal in the
strictest sense. In this section, then, a few rapid reminders should suffice.
Parmenides, in DK 28 b 8,1. 5-6, appears to have been the first to define the eternal
with rigour: oí)ôe 7iot f\v oi)Ô Sereai, ercei vûv é<mv òpov tïcxv, ëv, ouv€%£<;: “It
never was nor will be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous.”6 “All together,”
òfiov 71av, reappears word for word in Plotinus’s treatise On Eternity and Time, Ennead
III, 7, 3,1. 38 (òfiov Tictoa), as we will see, as well as in Boethius’ definition, which
we’Dconsider briefly further on, in the formula tota simul (Consolation o f Philosophy,
V, pr. 6), which Aquinas will adopt: eternity contains no succession, being all at once,
in simultaneity. Compare also Augustine in his Confessions (XI, xiii, quoted above:
omnes simul stant: for God, “all years subsist [or stand] in simultaneity”). But no less
remarkable is the fact that Parmenides already understands eternity as a vûv, a “now” in
the rigorous sense of something “one” and “indivisible,” like the geometer’s point, which
will be defined by Euclid—after a long tradition—as ou /iEpoç oí)0ev, “that which has
no part” (Euclid’s very first definition). Parmenides is out to exclude from being all forms
of non-being: coming-to-be which supposes that what now is was not, and passing-away,
which entails that it will not be; but also multiplicity, where one thing is not another. To
be one means to be indivisible, as Aristotle will repeat in a number of places (e.g.
Metaphysics, A, 6,1016 b 4-5). By excluding becoming, by explicitly excluding past and
future as he does in that same sentence, it is clear that Parmenides does not here mean
“continuous” (ouve%éç) in the sense in which we speak of “continuous time” (cf.
Aristotle, Physics V, 3,227 a 11-12; and IV, 13,222 a 10-12); in this sentence oi)V€%8<;
seems to mean “holds together,” “contains,” is but one with itself. Being is continuous in
the sense that it lasts in a now which does not pass, but is ever-present. There is, further,
the notion of a “duration,” an ever-lastingness without succession. Marcel Conche, in a
most remarkable recent edition of Parmenides,7 refers to Aquinas: aetemitas durationem
quamdam significat\ yet ipsa aetemitas successione caret (1.10.1). As Conche points
out, for Aquinas creation clearly excludes the idea of succession: omnis creatio absque
successione est (Contra Gentiles, II, 19).
In Plato’s TimaeuSy 37c 6-38c 3, especially 37e 6-38a 2, the emphasis is on the
present form of the verb to be as best rendering eternity:
[...] The past and the future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but
wrongly transfer to eternal being, for we say that it “was,” or “is,” or “will be,” but the truth
is that “is” alone is properly attributed to it [ t ò etm v / i ó v o v Kaxà t ò v àA.T)0í} Aoyov
Ttpoafjicei], and that “was” and “will be” are only to be spoken of becoming in time, for
they are motions, but that which is immovably the same forever cannot become older or
younger by time, nor can it be said that it came into being in the past, or has come into
being now, or will come into being in the future, nor is it subject at all to any of those states
which affect moving and sensible things and of which generation is the cause. These are
the forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves according to a law of number.8
Plotinus is even more explicit:
[...] Seeing all this one sees eternity in seeing a life that abides in the same, and always has
the all present to it, not now this, and then again that, but all things at once, and not now
some things, and then again others, but a partless completion, as if they were all together
in a point [oíov év ar|^€Í(*) ó/a ou rcocvxwv õ v t o v ] , and had not yet begun to go out and
flow into lines; it is something which abides in the same in itself and does not change at all
but is always in the present, because nothing of it has passed away, nor again is there
anything to come into being, but that which it is, it is [...]. So there remains for it only to
be in its beingjust what it is. That, then, which was not, and will not be, but is only, which
has being which is static by not changing to the “will be”, nor ever having changed, this
is eternity. The life, then, which belongs to that which exists and is in being, all together
[ó/iou Tcâaa already referred to as an echo of Parmenides, DK 28 B 8,5: ó/ioô róv]
and full, completely without extension or interval, is that which we are looking for, eternity
[aiQv].9
In Stephen MacKennna’s splendid prose, the same passage has a different flavour,
which makes it worth quoting too:
We know it as a Life ehangelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content in
actual presence, not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one
mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval. All its content is
in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all
remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now, since
nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever. [...]
That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys
stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed—that is Eternity.
Thus we come to the definition: the Life—instantaneously entire, complete, at no point
broken into period or part—which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence,
this is the thing we were probing for—this is Eternity.10
And of course there is the great Boethius, in his De Trinitäte, IV, 69-77. Some of the
formulas in the Latin text have become famous indeed:
Semper enim est, quoniam “semper” praesentis est in eo temporis tantumque inter
nostrarum rerumpraesens, quod est nunc, interest ac divinarum, quod nostrum “nunc ”
quasi currens tempusfacit et sempemitatem, divinum vero “nunc ” permanens neque
movenssese atque consistens aetemitatem facit; cui nomini si adicias “semper, ”fades
eius quod est nunc iugem indefessumque ac per hoc perpetuum cursum quod est
sempitemitas.
He [God] is ever, because “ever” is with him a term of present time, and there is this great
diffference between the present of our affairs, which is now, and the divine present: our
“now” connotes changing time and sempitemity; but God’s “now,” abiding, unmoved, and
immovable, connotes eternity. If you add semper to eternity, you will get the flowing,
incessant and thereby perpetual course of our present time, that is to say, sempitemity.11
Hence Thomas Aquinas: “nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aetemitatem ”
(ST 1.10.2. obj. 1), which could be translated literally as: “the flowing now makes time,
the subsisting [or standing] now makes eternity”; or, in his commentary to chapter 11 of
Book IV of Aristotle’s Physics (In Phys.y IV, lect., xviii, 5):
Ex hac autem consideratione, de facili potest accipi intellectus aetemitatis. Ipsum enim
nunc, inquantum respondet mobili se habenti aliter et aliter, discemit prius et posterius in
tempore, et suo fluxu tempus facit, sicut punctus lineam. Sublata igitur alia et alia
dispositione a mobili, remanet substantia semper eodem modo se habens. Unde intelligitur
nunc ut semper stans, et non ut fluens, nec habens prius et posterius. Sicut igitur nunc
temporis intelligitur ut numerus mobilis, ita nunc aetemitatis intelligitur ut numerus, vel
potius ut unitas rei semper eodem modo se habentis.
See also the fine analogy in the Contra Gentiles, I, 66, where the now of time is
compared to a point running along the circumference of a circle, the centre of which is
the indivisible now of eternity; whereas every moment of time is either before or after any
other moment of time, they are all simultaneously in the presence of eternity, as all points
of the circumference are simultaneously in the presence of its one, indivisible centre
(Georges Poulet’s book Les métamorphoses du cercle quotes this text along with a
number of parallel texts from a variety of great authors):
[...] Cum aetemi esse nunquam deficiat, cuilibet tempori vel instanti temporis
praesentialiter adest aetemitas. Cuius exemplum utcumque in circulo est videre: punctum
enim in circumferentia signatum, etsi indivisibile sit, non tamen cuilibet puncto alii
secundum situm coexistit simul, ordo enim situs continuitatem circumferentiae facit;
centrum vero, quod est extra circumferentiam, ad quodlibet punctum in circumferentia
signatum directe oppositionem habet. Quicquid igitur in quacumque parte temporis est,
coexistit aeterno quasi praesens eidem: etsi respectu alterius partis temporis sit praeteritum
vel futurum. Aeterno autem non potest aliquid praesentialiter coexistere nisi toti: quia
successions durationem non habet. Quicquid igitur per totum decursum temporis agitur,
divinus intellectus in tota sua aetemitate intuetur quasi praesens.
The definition of eternity which tradition has finally retained reads Interminabilis
vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio: “the complete, simultaneous and perfect
possession of everlasting life.”12We owe it to Boethius, in the already mentioned passage
of the “Consolation of Philosophy” (V, pr. 6). It can be seen as summing up masterfully
a good deal of the best that preceded. In order to be able to define eternity, one must
clearly transcend motion completely, that is to say any form of succession (one thing
before or after another), which time, as we saw, embodies perfectly ; in other words, one
must clearly transcend time altogether. Limitless life connotes activity at its fullest in an
indivisible timeless “now,” without a beginning, nor an end, altogether one, perfect,
lacking nothing.
Time, Eternity and God
Although the question Txóxepov ó k o o /x o ç àíôioç fj ou; “Is the world eternal or not?”
is given by Aristotle (see e. g. Topics, I, 11, 104 b 8) as an example of a dialectical
problem, that is to say, as admitting only probable, not demonstrative, proof, Aristotle is
evidently of the opinion that the answer is yes, the world is eternal. To him the question
is of great import, not only, as he writes in Physics VIII, 1,251a 6-9, for the study of
nature, but because of its bearing on the search for the very First Principle (içai Tïpôç
t t j v fiédoÒov xrjv 7t€pi Tifc ap%T]<; Tíjç TTpoSTTiç: 251a 8-9). This is borne out, of
course, by the argumentation that follows in that same chapter and in chapter 6 of Physics
VIII, to say nothing o f Metaphysics A, 6.
We cannot go into the arguments with any thoroughness at present, but the gist of
Aristotle’s view may best be considered by attending to his use of the nature of the “now”
of time to argue his position in Physics, VIII, 1,251 b 20 sq.. A close paraphrase of that
passage would run something like this. It is impossible for time to exist or to be
conceived without the now. But the now, as we saw, is both beginning and end: beginning
of future time, end of past time. From which it follows that there must always be time.
How is that, you ask? The reason was just given: every now being both end and
beginning, there must always be time on both sides of it. We must remember that nothing
of time is ever actual except the “now,” which is why time appears at first to be made up
of non-existents (Cf. Physics, IV, 10,217b 32 sq.); for what is past is no longer, what is
future is not yet; so that what there is of time is what divides the past from the future, the
“now.”
In a word, then, we are back with the problem stated at the outset of this paper. A few
lines earlier in this same chapter 1 of Physics VIII, at 251b 10-11, Aristotle puts the
question: “how could there be any before or after at all if time were not?.” I quoted above
a similar statement in Metaphysics A, 6. If Ttoiepov icai uoxepov, “prior and
posterior,” “before and after” are taken in their sole temporal sense, as is here the case,
then the argument is surely valid. Even if I say of a principle, or beginning, of time that
it is such that nothing of it existed before, I still imply a before in my very statement and
conception, and this makes my beginning the end of a prior time; always in the
understanding, I repeat, that there is no other kind of priority. The “now” taken to be the
beginning of time, has to be the end of a prior time as well, since that is the only priority
that is being acknowledged. The same obtains with the end of time; for the end means that
there is nothing of it left afterwards; but if there is no after without time, it follows that the
“now” ending time is also a beginning of time. And if there is always time on both sides
of the “now,” it must also be true of motion, since time is an affection, or property, of
motion (7KX0OÇ t i x iv i^ o e c o ç : 251b 28). The world is therefore eternal—sempiternal
would be a better translation.
In chapter 6 of Book VIE (258 b 10 sq.), Aristotle will proceed to show that since that
motion is eternal, there must be a Prime Mover. It would take us too long to go into the
details of that proof there. Suffice it to sum up the similar inference he makes in
Metaphysics A, 6, where he wants to show, once again, that “it is necessary that there
should be an eternal unmovable substance” (avayicri eiv ai àíÔióv Tiva ovoiav
< x k ív t|to v : 107 lb 4-5). He has restated in chapter 4 the causal role of the Prime Mover:
“besides these there is that which as first of all things moves all things” (1070b 34-35).
The main point is that the continuous, eternal motion must have an actual cause. “But
if there is something which is capable of moving things or acting on them, but is not
actually doing so, there will not necessarily be movement; for that which has a potency
need not exercise it” (107 lb 12-14). Eternal Forms will not do “unless there is to be in
them some principle which can cause change” (b 15-16). Nor will this be enough, or
even another substance besides the Forms be enough;
for if it is not to act, there will be no movement. Further, even if it acts, this will not be
enough, if its essence is potency, for there will not be an eternal movement [où yàp tax ai
Tdvrjaiç àîôioç] since that which is potentially may possibly not be. There must, then, be
such a principle, whose very essence is actuality” (b 17-20).
It must furthermore, as a consequence, be immaterial, since matter is potency.

Now what are we to make of all this? From the eternity of time and of motion, from
the eternity of the world, Aristotle is able to deduce the necessary existence of an eternal
and immaterial primary substance. Does it follow that if the world is not eternal, one
cannot infer the existence of such a primary substance? From his definition of before and
after, and his conception of the “now” of time, he concludes that the world cannot have
come to be and cannot pass away. Does this necessarily exclude any other form of
primaiy existence? As Aquinas points out in his commentaries to the passages I have just
sketchily paraphrased, it is not necessary to confine priority to temporal priority, to posit
a quid imaginatum, an imagined priority, no more than a beyond to space need be spatial
in turn, or need mean another place (cf. In Me tap h., XII, lect. 5, n. 2498 [Marietti]; In
Phys. VIII, lect. 2, n. 990 [Marietti]).
The answer to those two questions is, in both cases, no. “Coming-to-be” need be no
more univocal than “before” does. Aristotle has made things in fact toughest for himself,
since he aims to prove, notwithstanding, the necessary existence of a Prime Mover,
unmoved, immaterial, eternal, pure act and so forth. He has in fact proven that accounting
for it by natural causes alone, the world would be sempiternal. Yet that even in that case
one needs to transcend the order of natural causality and to discover the necessity of a
primary cause of all being.
Thomas Aquinas is most helpful here, concerned as he constantly shows himself to
be by the conformity or non-conformity of such views with the faith. He remarks, first of
all, that Aristotle’s approach is most effective—via efficacissima. “Haec enim via
probandi primum principium esse, est efficacissima, cui resisti non potest”, he writes in
his commentaiy to Physics Vm, 1, n. 970 [Marietti]. If [he goes on to say] the world and
motion being everlasting, it must still be necessary to posit a first principle, all the more
so in the absence of this everlastingness. For it is manifest that whatever is new needs an
innovating principle. So much so that such a first principle would in fact appear
unnecessary if things are eternal. But if even in the latter case a first principle must still
exist, then one will have shown that a first principle is absolutely necessary.
The same point is made in the Contra Gentiles, 1 ,13, n. 110 [Marietti]):
[...] Via efficacissima [the same word] ad probandum Deum esse est ex suppositione
aetemitatis mundi, qua posita, minus videtur esse manifestum quod Deus sit. Nam si
mundus et motus de novo incoepit, planum est quod oportet poni aliquam causam quae de
novo producat mundum et motum; quia omne quod de novo fit, ab aliquo innovatore
oportet sumere originem; cum nihil educat se de potentia in actum vel de non esse in esse.
But Thomas makes a further point. Aristotle saw clearly in God a causa essendi and
not just a causa motus. A conclusion he draws from the fact that, in Aristotle’s view, even
eternal beings must have a cause of their being. It is not enough, Aristotle claims, to admit
as an explaining principle the fact that it is always so: “a triangle always has its angles
equal to two right angles, but there is nevertheless an ulterior cause of the eternity” (àXX ’
ô/xa)Ç éoTi t i TÍjç aíôióiTjTOÇ Taúxrjç Eiepov aÍTiov: 252b 3-4), and that cause must
be sought. To be content with saying that “something always (aei) is so or always
happens so” is insufficient. The cause of this aei must be found (cf. Phys., VIII, 1 ,252a
32—252b 5). Est autem valde notandum quod hie dicitur, declares Thomas: Aristotle
understands that there exist eternal beings whose existence must have a cause (causant
sui esse). Even if he has argued for an eternal world, Aristotle does not therefore believe
God to be the cause of motion alone, as some have claimed; he is also, for him, cause of
the existence of the world itself {causa essendi ipsi mundo): In VIII Phys., lect. 3, n. 996
(Marietti).
If I understand correctly, it is one thing for all beings to depend on a first, primary
cause of their being, it is quite another to speak of a temporal beginning of the world and
of motion. This distinction was well made by Maimonides and then by Aquinas in his De
aetemitate mundi: “In hoc ergo tota consistit quaestio, utrum esse creatum a Deo
secundum totam substantiam, et non habere durationis principium, repugnet ad invicem,
vel non” (Opuscula philosophica, n. 298 [Marietti]). For Thomas, “quod mundum non
semper fuisse, sola fide tenetur, et demonstrative probari non potest” (1.46.2, c.). Nor is
the opposite more demonstrable. Both he and Maimonides underscore the fact that
Aristotle was the first to recognize that either view is at best probable for reasons left to
itself. (Cf. Kant’s first antinomy, and Leibniz’s third letter to Clarke.)
But there is much more about eternity than this somewhat vexed question of the so-
called eternity of the world in Aristotle’s philosophy. In Physics IV, 12,221 b 3—7 we
read:
[...] Plainly, things which are always are not, as such, in time (xà à ei õvxa, rj àei õvxa,
oúk caxiv év xpóv(*>); for they are not contained by time, nor is their being measured by
time. An indication of this is that none of them is affected by time, which shows that they
are not in time.
Concern for things which are always is predominant in Aristotle’s work, as is obvious
from his constant insistance that in pursuing the truth we must be primarily concerned
with them. The little knowledge we are able to gather of them lends meaning to our
existence.
For although our grasp of the eternal things is but slight, nevertheless the joy which it
brings is, by reason of their excellence and worth, greater than that of knowing all things
that are here below, just as the joy of a fleeting and partial glimpse of those whom we love
is greater than that of an accurate view of other things, no matter how numerous or how
great they are.13
Some of the loftiest pages in all ancient literature concern God’s eternal life and were
indeed written by Aristotle. The lines I just quoted from the “Parts of Animals” bring to
mind the famous teachings of the Aristotelian Ethics on contemplation, including the
“contemplation of God” (tou theou theôrian) described at the conclusion of the Eudemian
Ethics (VIU, 3 , 1249b 13-21) as the best mode and the finest standard for human life:
whatever mode of choosing and of acquiring things good by nature—whether goods of the
body or wealth or friends or the other goods—will best promote the contemplation of God
(tou theou theôrian), that is the best mode, and that standard is the finest; and any mode
of choice and acquisition that either through deficiency or excess hinders us from serving
and from contemplating God—that is the bad one.14
In a splendid passage of the Nicomachean Ethics (X, 7, 1177 b 26-1178 a 8), Aristotle
urges us to live the life of the divine element in us, the intellect, even if between human
and divine activity, there is only “some likeness” of such activity (ó/ioío)/iá xi: E N X ,
8, 1178 b 27). By contrast with ours, divine life is perpetual wakefulness (öiaycoytl:
Metaphysics, A, 7 , 1072b 14; aei,: bl5), pure joy. The Nicomachean Ethics are clear:
“The activity of God, which is supremely happy, must be a form of contemplation” (EN
X, 8. 1178b 21-2). The activity of each of the senses was said to be perfect when it is in
good condition and directed towards the highest, or “most beautiful” (kalliston: 1174b
15), the best (kratiston: b 19) of its objects; it will then be “most perfect and most
pleasurable” (b 20). Thought and contemplation will likewise be “most perfect and most
pleasurable,” repeats Aristotle, when directed to the worthiest (spoudaiotaton) of its
objects (cf. b 21-23).
The central notion here is of course pleasure, which, it must be remembered, is not,
in Aristotle’s view, a process; its form is “complete at any given moment” ( E NX , 4.
1174 b 5-6); it is comparable in that respect to the act of seeing, which is “regarded as
complete at any moment of its duration, because it does not lack anything that, realized
later, will perfect its specific quality. Now pleasure also seems to be of this nature,
because it is a sort of whole” (1174 a 14-17). A movement is not complete at any given
time, “whereas pleasure is something that is whole and complete” (1174 b 7); it is
instantaneous, and that which is “in the now” (évtdô vûv) is a whole (b 9). Among the
fine lines ofMetaphysics 0 , 6 that were restored by Bonitz, we read: “At the same time
(&fia) we are seeing and have seen, are understanding and have understood, are thinking
and have thought (while it is not true that at the same time we are learning and have
leamt, or are being cured and have been cured)” (1048b 23-25). Process, or movement
(kinesis), is, of course, imperfect actuality (àieÀf)Ç: Physics III, 2 ,291b 31-2), which
ceases to be when its end has been reached; whereas the actuality here described is itself
its own end and is at once all it can be (cf. Metaphysics 0 , 8. 1050 a 21-3); to quote
Victor Goldschmidt: “Un tel acte est d’emblée tout ce qu’il peut être. Sa fin lui est
immanente, et lui-même est immanent à l’agent.” All of which makes perfect sense of the
remark, in the Nicomachean Ethics again, regarding God’s pleasure:
if any being had a simple nature, the same activity would always give him the greatest
pleasure. That is why God enjoys one simple pleasure for ever. For there is an activity not
only of movement but also one of immobility; and there is a truer pleasure in rest than in
motion (EN VU, 14. 1154 b 24-28).
In a word, the higher the actuality, the more perfect, the greater the joy. Now the
primary cause, we have just seen, is substance, actuality and nothing but actuality (cf.
Metaphysics, 1071 b20). And the highest actuality is that of the intellect or of thought
(voûç), since it is thinking (cf. ap%f| y a p r| v<5r|oi<;: 1072a 30) which understands the
simple, the actual, the first object of thought and the first object of desire, the beautiful
or the real good. Hence the lines that follow in A, 7 ,1 072b 18-19: “And thinking in itself
deals with that which is best in itself, and that which is thinking in the fullest sense with
that which is best in the fullest sense.” Lambda 7 then goes on to say:
And thought thinks on itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it
becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking [Siyyavaiv icai
vowv: b 21] its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same. For that which
is capable of receiving the object of thought, i. e. the essence, is thought [icai xfy; oûaiaç
voûç: b 22]. But it is active when itpossesses this object. Therefore the possession rather
than the receptivity is the divine element which thought seems to contain, and the act of
contemplation is what is most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that good state
in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder, and if in a better this compels it yet
more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought
is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and
eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and
duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God (1072 b 19-30).
Surely, these lines must count among the finest ever written by a philosopher on
eternity in its fullest possible sense.
Notes
1. Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, tr. Henry Bettenson; introd. David Knowles
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972) XD, 16,491-492.
2. Aristotle's Metaphysics: a revised text with introduction and commentary, ed. W. D. Ross 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) A, 6,1071 b 8-9.
3. Confessions, tr. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 ) XI, xiii ( 16).
4. Physics, tr. Philip H. Wicksteed and Francis M. Comford. 2 vols. (London: W. Heinemann,
1929-34) IV, 11,218 b 27-29.
5. Works of Aristotle - Physica, tr. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1962) 219a 22-25.
6. The Pre Socratic Philosophers, ed. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield. 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
7. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Coll. “Epiméthée,” 1996).
8. Plato's cosmology: the Timaeus of Plato, tr. Francis Macdonald Comford (London: K. Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., 1937) 37e 4-38a 8.
9. Enneads, tr. A. H. Armstrong. 7 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966-88)
Ennead 111,1,3.
10. Enneads, tr. Stephen MacKenna (abridged with an introduction and notes by John Dillon)
(London: Penguin, 1991) 216.
11. Boethius, De trinitate, in The Theological Tractates, tr. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand
(London: W. Heinemann, 1918).
12. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. V. E. Watts (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969).
13. De Partibus Animalium, I, 5,644 b 31-35. See De partibus animalium [Parts o f animals],
tr. A. L. Peck, Movement of animals, progression of animals, tr. E. S. Forster (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1937).
14. Eudemian Ethics VUI, 3, 1249 b 17-21. See The Athenian Constitution. The Eudemian
Ethics. On Virtues and Vices, tr. H. Rackham (Rev. ed.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967).
Part 3: Community
Taylor & Francis
Introduction
In this third section, the authors examine some of the relations among philosophy, culture,
and community. As we saw in the general introduction to this volume, philosophy can be
essential to building community in a pluralistic world, but culture and community also
influence philosophy.
Now, it is generally accepted that, for some countries, one can speak of ‘national’
philosophical traditions. When we hear the term ‘American philosophy,’ we think of such
philosophers as Josiah Royce, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty, and we can refer to ‘French
philosophy,’ even though it includes philosophers as diverse as René Descartes, Jean-Paul
Sartre, and Jacques Derrida. Yet there is a reluctance by many Canadian philosophers to
admit that there might be something called ‘Canadian philosophy’—that, despite their
differences, there may be something distinctive that is to be found in, say, Louis Lachance,
John Watson, and Charles Taylor. Why is this so?
Or again, consider philosophers such as Radhakrishnan, Hoemlé, Dewey, and John
Watson. Each has in many ways reflected or influenced the community and the culture in
which he lived. But can one make a more general statement—that there is a relation
between philosophy, community, and culture—even in our post-modern, multicultural
world?
The essays in this section address both of the preceding questions. Though the issue of
the relations among philosophy, culture, and community is not a uniquely Canadian one,
several of the authors focus on questions that arise—or have arisen—in the Canadian
context.
Some preliminary questions must first be addressed. ‘What is the nature of community?’
and ‘What might philosophy’s role be here?’ The papers by Kevin Sullivan, Brenda
Wirkus, Richard Fox, and William Sweet deal with these, and related, conceptual matters.
Sullivan investigates the relation between individuals and the community in the thought
of the Indian idealist philosopher and statesman, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
Radhakrishnan—schooled in British idealism as a student in Madras, but who sought to
recover its insights within Hindu culture—argued that individual self realization or
liberation was not possible unless all of humanity achieves liberation. Radhakrishnan’s
account of the nature of the self and of its relation to individual centres of consciousness is
clearly parallel to that which one finds in idealists like Bradley. Importantly,
Radhakrishnan argued that this ‘liberation,’ characteristic of ‘the Kingdom of God’ or the
‘divine community’ (bramäoka), is not indifferent to the here and now. Unlike many Hindu
spiritual leaders, Radhakrishnan maintained that since all is spirit, all are free, and have
rights. There is, then, as the British idealists also wrote, a close relation between
metaphysics and community. Moreover, for Radhakrishnan, an idealist account of
community—and of the relation of individuals to the state—provides not only ‘western’ but
‘eastern’ culture with a basis for a genuine humanism.
Richard Fox reconsiders the long-standing debate between act and rule utilitarianism
over the question of whether, in addition to the principle of utility, one needs moral rules
in order to ascertain our obligations. One central question in this discussion concerns what
the basis for such moral rules might be. If moral rules are to be understood as a kind of
underlying ‘practice rule’ for moral activity, Fox maintains that there must be prior
agreement both on the goals to be achieved in moral action and on the means of attaining
them— and, more broadly, there must be a recognition of what an idealist might call a
common good and of the ‘functions’ of moral agents and their corresponding duties.
Idealism, then, offers a solution to the act/rule debate concerning how to construe those
moral rules that are so necessary to life in community.
Whatever the difficulties of its metaphysics, Brenda Wirkus argues that idealism can
serve as a guide in addressing the problem of the fragmentation of experience and the
breakdown of national and local communities. Starting with the principle that if we can
grasp the concept of ‘community’ we will be better able to grasp its reality, Wirkus focuses
on ‘thinking through community. ’ She suggests that it is through a reflection on language
that we can see how, concretely, this ‘thinking’ might take place. Specifically, she finds that
community is that locus where individuals are defined (as McTaggart and Bosanquet held)
through their relationships. Since the reality is that individuals become what they can be
only within communities, communities provide us with a “means of adjudicating
relationships within and without them.” Once we recognise this, we are better placed to
avoid the atomism that characterizes the contemporary world.
William Sweet shows a similar concern with fragmentation and the ‘atomization’ of
communities. There are those who embrace or celebrate this fragmentation, but still argue
that community is possible; others claim that we can construct communities in this post
modern world, but providing that we keep our private—including our
religious—commitments to ourselves. Sweet argues that individuals cannot, and should not,
make a sharp distinction between their public responsibilities and their ‘private’ beliefs.
Like Wirkus, Sweet argues that a person’s ‘individuality’ depends on having a place in a
community, and that what binds communities together is the presence of what some
idealists have called ‘dominant ideas.’ ‘Reason’ or ‘philosophy’ can help in identifying
these ideas. In answer to the question whether, in a culturally diverse world, the explicit
articulation of religious belief would serve to build community or lead to conflict, Sweet
argues that, because belief does (and must) recognise the existence of certain dominant
ideas that reason also identifies, it need not (and, indeed, cannot) be restricted to a purely
private realm. Indeed, most systems of religious belief enjoin religious believers not only
to build community, but to build a community that is open to others. Like Wirkus, then,
Sweet draws on insights provided by idealism to explain what community is, and to show
the role of reason or philosophy in the construction of community. Such a response is close
to that of contemporary communitarianism, but it also avoids some of the difficulties
brought against communitarian theories.1
Is the concept of community expressed in idealists like Radhakrishnan, Bosanquet,
Royce, and Armour, and appealed to by Wirkus and Sweet, one that can help to resolve
what Armour has called “the crisis of community”?
David Lea addresses some of the practical problems in the analysis of community,
particularly as they apply within a Canadian context. He surveys recent work by James
Tully and Will Kymlicka, who discuss how the legitimacy of the Canadian state is related
to minority culture and language groups in Canada. Lea points out that both Tully and
Kymlicka make the same argument—that the state’s legitimacy is gained through the
Part 3: Introduction 179
consent of the ethnic and national groups within it—and that both take for granted that
ethnic or linguistic or religious identity is fundamental to one’s sense of belonging to a
natioa Lea responds that Tully and Kymlicka misconceive the reason for the allegiance of
minority groups to the nation state in which they live. For a more plausible account of
authority and the legitimacy of the nation, Lea turns to Michael Oakeshott and Leslie
Armour, arguing not only for the possibility of ‘transethnic cultures’ but for the actual
existence of such a transethnic culture in Canada. Once we acknowledge the ‘dominant
ideas’ of community, reason, and the collective relation to nature that are characteristic of
this transethnic culture or community in Canada, we have a means of defending the concept
of the Canadian nation state, even in the face of forces from different regions that preach
secession.
The final three essays in this section—by Bradley Munro, Elizabeth Trott, and Robin
Mathews—provide a close study of the relation between philosophy, culture, and
community. Each author refers at length to the attempts to identify and develop a
distinctively Canadian philosophy. Here, Armour’s seminal work has a central place in the
discussion.
Munro begins by providing some of the context and background in which early accounts
of the history of Canadian philosophy took place. He argues that what is distinctive in
Canadian philosophy is, as Trott and Mathews also note, partly a result of a set of unique
conditions—that it is the product of an unusual interplay among ideals of community,
reason, and relation to the physical environment. But Munro also draws attention to the
influence and role that American philosophy, and American philosophers, have had in the
teaching of philosophy in Canada, and he holds that, as a result of that influence,
philosophers in Canada have generally moved towards an ‘American’ view of philosophy
as ‘problem solving.’ It is this turn that, Munro thinks, has effectively stifled the possibility
of a distinctive school of Canadian political thought. He suggests, however, that if we can
recover a more systematic approach to philosophy, we would have a basis for a distinctive
Canadian philosophy.
Elizabeth Trott’s essay focuses on the relation between philosophy, community, and
culture in a slightly different way—she provides a reading of Armour’s first three books by
placing them in the specific context in which they were written. In The Rational and the
Real, The Concept o f Truth, and Logic and Reality, Trott argues that Armour is building
a cumulative case for a metaphysics of community—that a coherent metaphysics cannot be
separated from the existence of communities any more than communities can exist without
underlying metaphysical truths. Personal in tone and orientation, Trott claims, as noted in
the general introduction to this volume, that if we reflect on the close relation among
experience, truth and logic, we will discover that we are involved in ‘world making’; we
are not just ‘made’ by the world. Thus, ‘reality’—what some idealists have called the
Absolute—is simply this activity (i.e., ‘world making’ by a community of minds).
According to Trott, on Armour’s view ‘reality’ is simply ‘a world where everything fits,’
and where the relation among members of this community is shown by the identification
of each’s station and his or her corresponding duties.
In the final essay in this section, Robin Mathews develops some of the ideas introduced
by Munro—specifically, relating the issue of national philosophies to the broader issue of
nationalism.
Mathews argues that nationalism is generally misrepresented, marginalized, and often
barely tolerated, and that it is so treated by many intellectuals in Canada because it raises
questions about community and the individual that challenge capitalism and imperialism.
Mathews considers the case of ‘Canadian philosophy.’ Like Munro, Mathews argues that
philosophies are products of their contexts—that they serve to express ideas distinctive of
the societies in which they come to exist. He finds that, although its roots lie in Europe,
idealism is a philosophical view that is particularly congenial to expressing Canadian
national sentiment—and that it is partly for this very reason that idealism has been opposed
by the many ‘American’ philosophers in Canada.
Though they address the issue of the relations among philosophy, culture, and
community in different ways, the authors would likely agree that it does make sense to talk
not only of national philosophies, but of ‘Canadian philosophy,’ and that while philosophy
can help in the resolution of issues that arise in cultures and communities, it is also
influenced by them. There is, in short, a close relation, not only among philosophy, culture
and community, but also among these phenomena and foundational or ontological
principles.
Note
1. See William Sweet, ‘Individual Rights, Communitarianism, and British Idealism,” in The Bill of
Rights: Bicentennial Reflections, ed. Yeager Hudson and Creighton Peden (Lewiston, NY :
Edwin Mellen Press, 1993) 261-277.
11 Radhakrishnan’s Concept of
Universal Liberation
KEVIN SULLIVAN
One of the traits common to both Western and Eastern philosophy is a preoccupation with
what constitutes the highest value or ultimate goal of human life. Although many
candidates have been suggested, I wish to examine the one championed by the Indian
philosopher and statesman, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). For Radhakrishnan,
and for most of the Indian philosophical tradition, the supreme ideal or goal of human
existence is spiritual liberation (mok§a). In Radhakrishnan’s thought this takes the form
of an ethic of self-realization where the self to be realized is one’s true self, Ätman, which
is non-different from the ultimate divine reality, Brahman. When one has accomplished
this self-realization they have achieved jlvanmukti or liberation while still embodied. But
this is not the ultimate end; for even more important is the goal of sarvamukti or the
liberation of all human beings. Whereas many Indian philosophers have emphasized
eitherjjvanmukti or videhamukti (individual liberation after death), Radhakrishnan has
laid greater stress on sarvamukti or universal spiritual emancipation. He believes that
such an ideal is contained in what he terms the “ brahmMoka” or “Kingdom of God.” I
will endeavour thus to carefully dissect the idea of the brahmMoka in order to clarify
Radhakrishnan’s notion of universal liberation.
To adequately understand Radhakrishnan’s concept of sarvamukti, it will be
necessary to delve briefly into the metaphysical theory that it is anchored in.
Radhakrishnan basically accepts the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta (‘unqualified
non-dualism’) as formulated by the past South Indian philosopher, Sankara (788-820
CE). Both Sankara and Radhakrishnan are metaphysical idealists, meaning they believe
reality to be ultimately one and indeterminate. Such a reality is referred to as the Nirgupa
Brahman or Brahman without qualities. It is a reality that remains completely mysterious
and incomprehensibe since it represents the Brahman-in-itself. Although the Nirgupa
Brahman can best be described in negative terms as “neti, neti,” or “not this, not this,”
there have been attempts to describe it more positively as “saccidãnanda ,” or “pure
being, pure consiousness, pure bliss.” The core of the Advaita philosophy is the
Brahman/Ätman doctrine, which states that our innermost self (Ãtman) is none other than
the Nirgupa Brahman. Thus there is absolutely no difference between our true self and
the ultimate divine reality; they are one and the same, completely non-dual. But due to the
distorting effects of ignorance (avidya) or dualistic consciousness, we see the Nirgupa
Brahman/Ätman as the Saguça Brahman or Brahman with qualities. Such a conception
includes the creator (God/Goddess) and the created realm (mãyâ) of space, time, and
causality. It also means that through ignorance we end up mistaking our finite ego (jjva)
to be our true self (Ãtman). So what we observe from our finite, limited perspective is a
world of changing multiplicity, something we take to be ultimately real. But according to
Advaita Vedanta, this world has only relative ontological status, and once we have gained
direct spiritual knowledge (jnãnà) we will realize that reality is ultimately non-dual and
that our real self is Ãtman, not jl>a.
Now according to Radhakrishnan, universal liberation (sarvamukti) is associated with
Brahman’s pure being (sat). By pure being is meant several related things: First, that the
ultimate reality (Brahman) is completely one or non-dual, meaning it is undifferentiated
and thus transcends all boundaries; second, that there is nothing else existing, in an
ultimate sense, except Brahman. All other phenomena exist only in a relative, non
absolute state, which we realize at the moment of mystical insight (jnãna) when the
distortions of ignorance are fully overcome; third, that pure being is infinite, signifying
that Brahman is self-existent, depending on no other reality for its existence. It is therefore
complete-in-itself, limitless; finally, that pure being is eternal in the sense of existing
beyond time and thus immune to creation, change, or decay. Despite all this, it must still
be emphasized that Brahman is ultimately indescribable, beyond all thought and
language. In Radhakrishnan’s words: “Pure Being which is the Absolute can only be
indicated. It can be alluded to but not described.”1
Radhakrishnan insists that two conditions are necessary for the realization of
sarvamukti: “(i) inward perfection attained by intuition of self, (ii) outer perfection
possible only with the liberation of all.”2 The first condition refers to the jNanmukti ideal.
By directly apprehending the non-dual nature of the ultimate reality, the individual
overcomes ignorance and no longer identifies with the separate ego (jwa) but with the
supreme self (Ãtman). Such an experience fundamentally transforms one’s consciousness
and character, which leads to the second condition. In abolishing egoism, the jwanmukta
opens up to others, helping them along the path to spiritual freedom; the eventual result
is a world redeemed or a community of saved souls (brahmMoka).
It is important to note that thejlsanmukti state, seen from the human angle, is only the
first phase of the total liberation process and so is in a sense incomplete. Full liberation
occurs only when everyone is spiritually free. Radhakrishnan makes clear that it is
sarvamukti, and not jNanmukti or videhamukti, that is the final goal on earth, the
supreme destiny of human beings. It is insufficient that only a few individuals in history
realize mok$a\ all human beings are to be saved.
All individuals are destined to gain life eternal [...] When the condition is attained, we have
a divine community [brahmaloka] where the individual is transformed by contemplation
on the being of God into the likeness of that which he beholds.3
So it is with the advent of the brahmMoka that individuals become truly and completely
emancipated. “There is no such thing,” he argues, “as individual salvation, for it
presupposes the salvation of others, universal salvation, the transfiguration of the world.”4
Liberation is essentially social in character, embracing all of humankind.5
This distinguishes Radhakrishnan’s position from others in the Hindu tradition. For
example, Patanjali’s yoga philosophy affirms the view that universal liberation is
impossible to realize because that would then deviate from the traditional belief that
sam sara, the cycle of rebirths, is endless. Similarly, the Dvaita (dualist) Vedãnta of
Madhva asserts, in Calvinistic-like fashion, that only some souls will be saved, the rest
Radhakrishnan ’s Concept o f Universal Liberation 183
continuing on the wheel of becoming (samsãra) forever. Radhakrishnan’s position also

differs from some Advaitin views. One of the major debates in later Advaita thought
revolves around the question of whether all individuals are liberated simultaneously
(sarva-mukti-vãda) or whether each is liberated separately (pratyeka-mukti-vãda). Those
holding the former theory believe that since Ãtman is non-dual the liberation of one
individual will automatically liberate all beings; and this liberation is complete because
it involves the direct realization of Nirgupa Brahman, the Brahman-in-itself.
Radhakrishnan definitely rejects this position, at least when viewed from the empirical
standpoint, and sides more with the alternative theory which states Ãtman is indeed one
though it operates through many individual centres of consciousness.6 Consequently, the
emancipation of one individual does not instantly bring about the liberation of all. In fact,
no individual can completely realize the pure being of Nirgupa Brahman until all are
individually saved. The result is that jjvanmukti, from our limited perspective, represents
more of a realization of the Sagupa Brahman (God) than a full experience of the
Absolute-in-itself. This makes sense because the Absolute is viewed as God from the
finite, human end. So as long as even one individual remains unliberated, subject to
ignorance (avidya), God must continue to exist and guide the cosmic process. Only when
all individuals throw off the concealing and distorting functions of ignorance can God,
individual selves, and the world lapse back into the stillness of the Absolute.
The question is: How does Radhakrishnan actually conceive of the final goal of
universal liberation—the brahmMoka state—in his writings? The answer is that he
conceives of it in both a negative and positive sense. By negative here is meant what the
brahmMoka is not; by positive, what it is. Negatively speaking, the brahmMoka is not to
be associated with a heavenly paradise, an earthly utopia, personal immortality, or with
liberation after death (videhamukti). Positively, it is variously described as being the end
point of the whole cosmic process, the furthest manifestation of the World Spirit, eternal
life, a revolutionary change in human consciousness, and a spiritual community or
commonwealth. For obvious reasons, I will limit myself to examining only one negative
and two positive conceptions of sarvamukti as the brahmMoka.
Radhakrishnan warns us against equating the brahmMoka with a perfect terrestrial
future or earthly paradise: “The world-redemption (sarva-mukti) is not to be confused
with cosmic millennia or earthly paradises. It is not a gradual accumulation of the material
comforts through the ages” (BS 220). The reason for this is that “Life remains unfulfilled
until there is a vision of the Supreme.”7No matter how much wealth, power, and status
one achieves in society, true happiness will forever elude them. For the aim of life is not
to create a consumerist utopia but to radically transform one’s consciousness and being.
It is one of the illusions of modem life to believe that the way to spiritual peace is through
material goals, that we can win men’s hearts by offering them benefits [...] There is more
in life than economic values. We are men, not merely producers and consumers, operatives
or customers. Even if the world becomes an earthly paradise dripping with milk and honey,
even if cheap automobiles and radios are made accessible to all, we will not have peace of
mind and true happiness [...] (RS 161-2)
Here Radhakrishnan stakes his ground against those secular ideologies such as
liberal-capitalism andMarxian-socialism, which advocate a materialistic utopia on earth.
Despite being aware of the attraction such ideologies have for people throughout the
world, he refuses steadfastly to accept them as adequate solutions to the human
predicament because of their commitment to a materialist metaphysics.
The call of communism to the world has the passion of religion. It challenges existing evils,
offers a clear and definite programme of action, and professes to provide a scientific
analysis of economic and political situations. In its concern for the poor and the lowly, in
its demand for a more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity, in its insistence on
radical equality, it gives us a social message with which all idealists are in agreement. But
our sympathy for the social programme does not necessarily commit us to the Marxist
philosophy of life, its atheistic conception of ultimate reality, its naturalistic view of man
and its disregard of the sacredness of personality. To sympathize with Marxism as an
effective instrument for social revolution is different from accepting its metaphysical
background. (RS 25)
Even more problematic is the role such ideologies play in restricting the full
realization of the spiritual ideal. Indeed, anything preventing such a realization is
designated by Radhakrishnan as being a source of human bondage. Now Radhakrishnan
claims that the source of bondage on the individual level is the ego, and how for spiritual
liberation to occur the ego must be transcended. There is a parallel development on the
social level. The collective ego, in the form of the nation-state, is the source of political
bondage. Just as the closed, self-centredness of the ego leads to individual suffering, the
same kind of selfishness is evident in society as a whole and produces social evils. Since
a person’s individuality, according to Radhakrishnan, is the most concrete embodiment
of spirit on earth, anything threatening this individuality or damaging its inherent dignity
is suspect. “Any social order” he opines “built on the pains of spiritual freedom is
immoral” (RS 62). And since both political individualism (e.g., liberal-capitalism) and
collectivism (e.g., socialism, fascism) run roughshod over spiritual individuality, they
must be eclipsed if true political liberation is to be achieved.
Radhakrishnan assumes that the individual’s spiritual nature and non-difference with
the Absolute Reality (Brahman) guarantees certain rights. One of the most important is
the right to freedom. Since we are all in essence spirit, we are all free; for spiritual reality
implies freedom. “Absolute Being,” Radhakrishnan states, “is also absolute freedom [...]
the Absolute is both Being and Freedom” (F 39). But there are a number of things within
society that attempt to restrict our right to be free, the most conspicuous being a
totalitarian state. The state, Radhakrishnan concedes, has the limited purpose of
protecting individual rights and helping to create equal opportunities. This can play an
important role in facilitating the ultimate aim of spiritual freedom (mok$a). When,
however, the state becomes an end in itself then individual rights and freedoms get
sacrificed and the state idolized. The result is totalitarianism and the crushing of
individuality.
This is one of Radhakrishnan’s major criticisms of communism in his books Religion
and Society and Recovery o f Faith. Although Radhakrishnan admires the Marxist idea
of equality, he claims communism in practice has failed to live up to Marx’s vision of a

free and equal society. Instead, it has brought about a monolithic, overly bureaucratic
state, which attempts to control every facet of a person’s life within society. In treating
individuals as means towards an end—the state’s good—communist societies violate the
spirit in human beings. The person is reduced to a slave or automaton, a cog in the wheel
of the state-machinery. The inner life becomes subjected to stringent outer constraints and
the religious life degenerates. This occurs to an even greater degree in fascist societies
like Nazi Germany where the right to freedom gets completely suppressed. In both
communist and fascist societies, then, the state becomes an extension of the individual’s
self, a collective ego hell bent on satisfying its own rapacious desires at the expense of
severely curtailing human rights.
Radhakrishnan believes this can also happen, though to a lesser degree, in liberal-
democratic societies. He observes that a dominant elite often comes to rule in liberal
states and that elected representatives become subservient to the demands of the party
machine and corporate backers. As a possible remedy to this, greater stress should be laid
on getting more of the citizenry to participate in the formulation and execution of public
policy.
Although Radhakrishnan was greatly influenced by the Indian nationalism of Gandhi
and Nehru, he saw that nationalism should only be seen as a necessary step in establishing
an international community. When this end is lost sight of nationalism can lapse into
patriotic chauvinism, even imperialism.8 On the one hand, Radhakrishnan describes
nationalism as “a political religion which stirs the hearts of men and causes them to
service and self-sacrifíce” (RF 50). But on the other, in worshipping the nation people
are simply stroking the collective ego and doing a disservice to their divine selves within.
Radhakrishnan argues: “When a nation thinks itself divine and believes that it alone is fit
and destined to save the rest by its truth, love of power and dominion spring up” (RF 50-
51). Hence, despite the merits of nationalism, it can produce political bondage in the form
of collective selfishness, authoritarian rule, and hostility towards other nations. For all
these reasons, Radha-krishnan ultimately rejects secular ideologies and their vision of a
more perfect society; true freedom can only be realized with the establishment of a
Kingdom of Spirit, the brahmMoka.
This bring us to Radhakrishnan’s more positive descriptions of the sarvamukti or
brahmMoka ideal. As mentioned earlier, this ideal is variously described as the
culmination of the cosmic process, the full realization of the World Spirit, eternal life, a
revolutionary transformation of consciousness, and a spiritual community. Perhaps most
fundamental of all is the view that the brahmMoka is the culmination or end-point of the
whole cosmic process. It is, in short, the ultimate meaning of histoiy.
As previously noted, Radhakrishnan is adamant about the jivanmukta's selfless
devotion to others. This answers to both the criticism alleging mokça*s propensity to
discourage social activism as well as to what the means are to universal liberation. The
liberated souls tirelessly work for the salvation of all. They “take upon themselves the
burden of the redemption of the whole world.”9 The eternal spirit is the same in everyone
and complete freedom is not possible until all human beings realize their true, blissful self
(Ãtman). Indeed, “The perfect soul cannot look with indifference on the suffering of the
imperfect, for they are also his own self’10 The liberation of all, therefore, is the condition
for the liberation of one.
So long as there are unreleased souls, the released souls will here work in the temporal
order. The concept of the solidarity of mankind tells us that the saved souls and the sinners
are bound to one another. The former work on the latter by persuasion and love until they
are transformed and reborn into spiritual souls alive with the life that grows more and more
into life eternal [...] So long as the cosmic plan is not fulfilled, work will continue, in a
spiritual selfless way by the saints, in a material selfish way by others. (BS 219)
The love and compassion of the liberated individuals is what propels society towards the
brahmMoka or Kingdom of God. It is essential that after their enlightenment they remain
in the world to carry out the work of universal redemption. To this extent, the jlvanmuktas
retain their “individuality as a centre of action so long as the cosmic process lasts” (F 43).
The work will continue “until the struggle with evil and imperfection is altogether
overcome and the world is restored to spirit” (U 129). Only when everyone is saved will
the temporal become the eternal.11
Radakrishnan’s view of the redeeming action of the jlvanmuktas presupposes a
particular conception of history, one intimately connected to his idealist philosophy. In
An Idealist View o f Life, Radhakrishnan claims idealism to be a confusing word since
three different meanings can be attached to the term “idea” (IVL 9). The first he calls
mentalism where an “idea is taken as a particular mental image peculiar to each
individual” (IVL 9). On this scheme, idealism is a philosophy where reality ultimately
consists of mental-stuff, not matter. An example of this is the subjective idealism of
Bishop Berkeley. The second meaning posits ideas to be concepts or universal notions
that are shared and known by other minds (IVL 9). The Kantian categories of thought,
which organize the given sense datum, are an example of this kind of idealism together
with the objective idealism of Hegel. Radhakrishnan abides by the third meaning of idea
which can be captured in such queries as ‘What’s the big idea?’ Here one is not after
mental images or universal concepts but the purpose behind some act. According to this
view, idea signifies value, goal, or principle.
This idea or value is the operative creative force. An idealist view finds that the universe
has meaning, has value. Ideal values are the dynamic forces, the driving power of the
universe. The world is intelligible only as a system of ends [...] Idealism in the sense
indicated concerns the ultimate nature of reality [...] It finds life significant and purposeful.
It endows man with a destiny that is not limited to the sensible world. (TVL 10)
So by idealism Radhakrishnan means reality is imbued with purpose, ideals, or values.

The stress is on ‘ideal’ in the word ‘idealism’ rather than on ‘idea.’
What this all implies is that history has meaning to it, and human beings a purpose.
The historical process is not just “one damn thing after another.” It has value and is
directed toward some final end (telos). The end, according to Radhakrishnan, is the
brahmãloka, a society of saved souls. The whole purpose of human life is to realize
sarvamukti, the liberation of all beings.
The meaning of history is to make all men prophets, to establish a kingdom of free spirits.
The infinitely rich and spiritually impregnated future, this drama of the gradual
transmutation of intellect into spirit, of the son of man into the son of God, is the goal of
history. (F 30)
We are not just spectators in this grand drama but active participants in the long march
towards universal salvation.12 Our final destiny is to attain divine status. This is the
fundamental message of all the major religions of the world.
The divinity of the life of man in the individual and the race is the dream of the great
religions. It is the moksa of the Hindus, the nirvana of the Buddhists, the kingdom of
heaven of the Christians. It is for Plato the life of the untroubled perception of the pure
idea. It is the realization of one’s native form, the restoration of one’s integrity of being.
(IVL 97-8)
The ultimate goal of sarvamukti is reached through a process of evolution.

Radhakrishnan refers to the Upaniçhadic idea of the five stages of evolution to explain
the future advent of the brahmMoka.
In the ancient Upanisad, the Taittiriya (eighth century B.C.), the cosmic evolution is
represented by the five stages of matter (anna), life (prana), perceptual-instinctive
consciousness (manas), reflective consciousness (vijnana), and spiritual and creative
consciousness (ananda). In the cosmic process we have the successive emergence of the
material, the organic, the animal, the human and the spiritual orders of existence. (F 27)
Matter is thus the first manifestation of the cosmic process. Early theories conceived
matter as “an enduring substance moving through a static space in a uniformly flowing
time” (IVL 179). The modem theory of relativity and quantum mechanics altered this
conception; we now know matter to be a form of energy in a space-time continuum.
Physical objects are not permanent entities but a series of changing events with some
connected continuity. In Radhakrishnan’s words: “Matter is the name for a cluster of
events, possessing certain relatively persistent habits and potencies” (IVL 187). At this
level, consciousness is non-explicit, though potentially emergent.
The next stage in the evolutionary ascent is life. From inorganic matter arises
organisms that have characteristics that go beyond, and cannot be reducible to, physico
chemical reactions. The fonctions of assimilation, respiration, reproduction, and growth
help the organism maintain a dynamic equilibrium with its changing environment. This
adaptive activity displays a measure of inner direction, a recipient intelligence missing
in material objects. Radhakrishnan warns that this intelligence should not be construed
as a mysterious vital force as the theory of vitalism suggests. For him, “vitalism is
unsatisfactory, since it attempts to explain everything which occurs in a living organism,
and we are unable to test its truth” (IVL 199). Best to just recognize the fact “that life is
a unique kind of activity for which the formulas of matter and energy are not adequate”
(F 28).
When actual perceptual abilities develop in living organisms there appears

perceptual-instinctive consciousness, something Radhakrishnan also terms “animal
mind.” For him, “animals have only a perceptual consciousness, their mental horizon
being restricted to mere perceptions of the present moment.”13 Unlike human beings,
animals live only in the present and cannot imagine future possibilities. Although they
lack self-consciousness and are governed more by instincts, their perceptual
consciousness represents a higher degree of inner direction than is discernible in plants
or microorganisms. Moreover, animals are sentient, meaning they are capable of feeling
pleasure and pain.
The next higher level of evolution is human intelligence, which involves self
reflection. The human mind “is capable of rising above itself, of comparing itself with
other selves and of passing judgment on its own character.”14In contrast to other living
things, human activity is regulated more by rational deliberation, by the ability to organize
sense data, formulate abstract concepts, and derive inferences. Significantly different too
is the ability to construct an array of moral, political, and aesthetic ideals (e.g., goodness,
justice, beauty) to live in accordance with.
Despite the advanced quality of human intelligence, it is still filled with pitfalls and
so must be superseded by a higher spiritual consciousness. The human mind, in being
self-conscious, divides experience into a subject and external objects, thereby excluding
itself from all other things. As Radhakrishnan notes: “The natural outcome of such an
intellectual pluralism will be a narrow philistine spirit of individualism, sensualism and
selfishness.”15 The next state will usher in a consciousness that overcomes dualistic ego
awareness, one that directly apprehends the oneness of reality and transcends all
distinctions and conflicts. This is the level of spirit, the harmonious state of peace and joy
(ananda). Such a spiritual consciousness embraces all the lower levels, raises them up,
and stands at the peak of the evolutionary ascent.
Ananda, Spirit, which is the goal of evolution, comprises all the rest. It is not unrelated to
the others which it has superseded and resolved into itself. All of them are activities of the
Spirit [...] In the cosmic evolution the different stages are not opposed as good and evil. It
is an evolution from one stage to another and the different stages are distinguishable only
within a unity. The one Spirit is manifesting itself in its various activities which are all
partial and therefore inadequate. Wholeness belongs to the Spirit itself. (F 30)
When all human beings rise to the level of spiritual consciousness the brahmãloka will
be established, and then, and only then, will the cosmic purpose have been fulfilled.
Radhakrishnan’s idealist view of history differs significantly from the standard Hindu
cyclical theory, especially as it is found in the Purãçic literature. The Purãças (“ancient”)
are a large collection of old legendary lore and mythology connected to the different
theistic sects (i.e., Vai$çava, Saiva, Shãkta) of Hinduism. Among other things, they
articulate a comprehensive vision of the whole cosmic process. According to the
Purãças, cosmic time (kãla) operates and is measured in cycles, with this world passing
through four periods or ages (yugas) of declining length in its journey from creation to
destruction. (Each yuga is named after a side of the Indian die). The first period is the
Kfta (“lucky four dots”) yuga which lasts 4800 divine years or 1,728,000 human years.
(One divine year equals 360 human years.) This represents a golden age where people
completely devote themselves and successfully perform their duties. The second is the
Treta (“three dots”) yuga whose length is 3600 divine years or 1,296,000 human years.
This stands for a silver age where individuals begin to shirk their responsibilities and
public virtue decreases by one-fourth. The third period is the Dväpara (“two dots”) yuga
which exists for 2400 divine years or 864,000 human years. This represents a bronze age
where people become blinded by passion and their virtue decreases by one-half. And
lastly is the ÀTá?/(“unlucky one dot”) yuga whose length is 1200 divine years or 432,000
human years. It depicts an iron age where there is much strife, discord, and suffering.
Righteousness exists to the extent of one-fourth only. The present era is a K ali yuga,
estimated to have begun in 3102 BCE. It is the most corrupt of the four ages.
Each cycle of the îom yugas is known as a mahãyuga (“great age”) and comprises
12,000 divine years or 4,320,000 human years. One thousand mahãyugas or 12,000,000
divine years (4,320,000,000 human years) equals one kalpa, a day in the life of the
creator god, Brahmã. At the end of each kalpa, Brahmã dissolves the universe and rests
for an equal length of time. This is said to constitute a night in Brahma’s life. (The rhythm
of these days and nights is likened to Brahmã inhaling and exhaling.) One hundred years
of such Brahmã days and nights make-up a lifetime of Brahmã. At the end of Brahmã’s
life, the entire cosmos totally dissolves for a Brahmã century. Then another deity takes
Brahmã’s place and the immense cosmic cycle begins again, repeating itself endlessly.
In such a grand scheme, the cosmic process consists only of recurrent cycles with no
absolute beginning or termination. The same pattern repeats itself in an endless merry-go-
round. From this perspective, there is no overall progress, with individual human lives
appearing insignificant. Radhakrishnan’s view of history seems to substantially deviate
from the Purãçic cosmology. For him, the cosmic process operates more like a spiral or
helix than a constantly revolving circle. The entire universe is progressively moving from
inorganic matter to a spiritual kingdom where it will then lapse back into the Absolute.
It is because of this evolutionary process that individuals possess enormous significance
for they have such a crucial role to play in establishing the brahmMoka.
Despite this obvious difference, Radhakrishnan alludes to the possibility of some
other cosmos coming into being after the present cosmic purpose is fulfilled.
When the self-disclosure of personalities is accomplished, when the integral revelation of

the world is achieved, a simple continuance of such a state becomes a useless luxury. As
Lotze argues, souls will exist so long as their existence has meaning for the universe. When
this world order ends, the creative freedom of the Absolute may find expressions in forms
of which we have no knowledge today; other possibilities may be realized in other
frameworks. (BS 221)
Likewise, in An Idealist View o f Life he maintains: “We need not assume that this cosmic
process is an end in itself. When its end is reached, when its drama played, the curtain is
drawn and possibly some other plot may commence” (IVL 246). This sounds remarkably
similar to the Purãçic conception where the entire universe dissolves at Brahmã’s death
and another deity takes over repeating the whole grand cosmic cycle. The difference is
that Radhakrishnan only speculates about another cosmos and is unsure of it actually
occurring. Moreover, he does not believe that the next ‘plot’ will be more or less the
same as the previous one, which the Purãçic theory assumes. There will not, in short, be
an eternal reoccurrence of the same pattern. For him, “History is a forward movement and
not an endless recurrence or repetition” (RF 8 1)16 What Radhakrishnan does is
incorporate the idea of a progressive evolution into the traditional Hindu cyclical theory
to arrive at a one-spiral pattern vision of history. To what extent his views were
influenced by the Judeo-Christian notion of linear time, and by Western philosophy, is
uncertain. But it is safe to say that he relied a great deal on the evolutionary theory found
in the Upanish^dic texts, as well as the ‘process’ view of cosmic development found in
the writings of such Western philosophers as Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead,
to construct his own cosmological model.
The other positive description of the brahmãloka to be examined involves
Radhakrishnan’s notion of a spiritual community or commonwealth of spirits. There are
numerous passages where Radhakrishnan describes the brahmMoka as a “divine
community” (IVL 244) or as a “society of saved souls” (BS 220). The intent is obviously
a community made up of entirely liberated bémgs—jüanm uktas. With the establishment
of the brahmMoka, “Human society becomes charged with the grace and grandeur of the
eternal” (F 65).
Radhakrishnan believes freedom and harmony to be the chief characteristics of a
spiritual community. The spiritually communal nature of the brahmMoka is evident in its
English translation—the “Kingdom” of God. In the Bible, where the term is most
employed, the Kingdom of God has two related meanings. The first refers to God’s
sovereign reign, while the second relates to the realm over which God rules. This realm
of course is heaven where God’s elect rejoice in his glorious presence. Thus, the biblical
Kingdom of God represents a state of perfect unity between God and all saved souls. A
unitive state also pertains to Radhakrishnan’s notion of the brahmMoka. The attainment
of the jlvanmukti ideal by everyone marks the most perfect expression of the Divine in
the cosmic process as the World-Spirit (Hiraçyagarbha). In this sense one could say that
God, as the active side of Brahman, reigns in the brahmMoka state. A crucial difference,
however, between Radhakrishnan’s view and the biblical account is that for
Radhakrishnan the saved souls realize they are no different from the ultimate spiritual
reality and so there is no relationship as such between them and God. But “the liberated
individuals are present to each other as one” (U 131). Their consciousness of the divine
reality is unified and remains unaffected by different bodily forms. With each person
realizing the jwanmukti ideal there results a fellowship of liberated spirits, which
constitutes in Radhakrishnan’s words, “a life in which individuals are united by perfect
interpenetration of mind by mind [...] Such a state of perfection or spiritualized harmony
is the end of the world” (IVL 244). Hence, the universality of Spirit reveals itself as the
community of liberated beings.17
But does this notion of the brahmMoka as being a spiritual community, a fellowship
of free individuals, mean that some kind of individuality is retained? Some of
Radhakrishnan’s remarks are ambiguous on this point. On the one hand, he clearly states
the brahmMoka “marks the end of time itself’ (F 146) and that individuals only retain
their distinction till “the end of the cosmic process is achieved.”18 This can only mean that
individuality is transcended when, and only when, there is universal liberation since
individuality is associated with the historical process while the brahmMoka represents
eternal life. On the other hand, in describing the brahmMoka as a “society of saved souls”
(BS 220) or a “world fellowship,”19 there is the suggestion of a relationship between
liberated spirits, a situation obviously presupposing the existence of individual beings.
Moreover, Radhakrishnan even claims “There is no question in my scheme of the
individual being included in and absorbed by the Divine. What is involved is unity in
personal love.”20What is it then? Does a sense of individuality remain with the advent of
universal liberation (the brahmMoka) or is it completely transcended?
I think the ambiguity arises because of Radhakrishnan’s failure to clearly distinguish
whether the brahmMoka represents the actual end of the cosmic process or whether it is
the state where “cosmic existence lapses into Absolute Being” (F 46). There is a subtle,
though exceedingly important difference between the two. In describing the bramaloka
as “the furthest limit of manifested being,” Radhakrishnan is definitely implying that it is
simply the end point of cosmic evolution and not the Absolute Being itself. But his
copious remarks about the bramaloka representing a “victory over time” (F 46) or the
“end of time” (F 45) suggests that it is on par with the Absolute. The difference is really
one between eschatology, the doctrine of the world’s final destiny, and pareschatology or
the doctrine of the world’s penultimate end. Radhakrishnan continually confuses the two.
The bramaloka as the furthest limit of manifested being, in the form of a spiritual
community, is the pareschatological end since it only represents the full expression of one
of Brahman’s possibilities. Whereas bramaloka as eternal Being is the ultimate,
eschatological end for it retreats into the totality of Brahman itself. So the retention of
individuality makes sense only in terms of the pareschatological scheme of universal
liberation and would certainly be absent in regards to the eschatological conception.
According to Radhakrishan, a necessary step in eventually realizing a perfect spiritual
community is the establishment of a truly international, harmonious, democratic, and just
political order. Internationalism is essential. Following the ideas of Tagore and
Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan looks upon nationalism as particularly divisive in a world
of interdependent nations. His internationalism is a natural development of his insistence
on democracy and equality. True democracy demands not only tolerance and good will
among all members of a community but also among members of all communities in the
world. To be real, democracy must apply to the entire human family. Fortunately, he
believes the course of history is moving towards the growth of an international community
under the reign of law and freedom for all.
What form would this international community take? Radhakrishnan is somewhat
ambiguous on this point. In some of his writings, such as Education, Politics and War,
he talks of a “single commonwealth of nations” which suggests a plurality of nation
states.21But in his Religion in a Changing World he explicitly calls for the establishment
of one world federal government based on a universal moral order (democracy) and
system of legal justice.22 What Radhakrishnan wants is to maintain a diversity of states
but to incorporate them within a unity of human fellowship. He certainly rejects mass
uniformity and espouses instead a community of common nations. This kind of world-
community would be organic in structure, meaning each individual state would be
mutually related and dependent on one another for the fulfillment of the whole. For this
to occur, each nation must subordinate its own narrow interests for the common global
good. Just as an individual must renounce his or her egoistic desires to achieve inner
peace and harmony, individual nation-states must renounce their own selfish ambitions
to achieve global unity. The United Nations Organization, despite its serious short
comings, represents for Radhakrishnan the nearest we have to world government and for
this reason should be supported and strengthened.23
Radhakrishnan is enough of a realist to know that world unity, and eventually a
spiritual commonwealth (bramaloka), will not come easily. In fact, he believes it will only
develop when there is a “Religion of the Spirit.”24 By this he means the eternal religion
or perennial philosophy lying at the basis of all the world’s major religions. Like
Vivekanada’s “Universal Religion” and Tagore’s “Religion of Man,” Radhakrishnan’s
“Religion of the Spirit” recognizes the oneness of the individual self (Ãtman) with the
universal Reality (Brahman). Only the realization of our essential divinity can help us
perceive the same divinity in others and thus treat them with tolerance and respect. In
other words, only when we realize our true divine nature through a “religion of the spirit”
can love infuse the world and create a harmonious state of human unity. World politics
must be anchored on a religion of the spirit, which actually represents a fellowship rather
than a synthesis of the world’s major religions (F 75-77).
The ideal political order also requires the promotion and protection of civil liberties
and economic justice. This means the state has a positive and not just negative role to play
in society. For Radhakrishnan, the state must safeguard individual rights and prevent any
interference with the exercise of individual freedoms. A democratic society would fully
guarantee civil liberties such as the right to free speech, association, and assembly.
Although one of the state’s purposes is to remove constraints on individual liberty, this
does not warrant licence. Individuals should not be permitted do anything they want, only
that which does not prove detrimental to the rights of others. Here Radhakrishnan
supports the views of classical liberal theorists like Locke; but he also strongly advocates
a more positive function for the state. In other words, liberty is not just a freedom from
interference but a freedom towards something. The state should not only protect
individuals from external compulsions, but show the direction toward which the exercise
of this right should lead, namely, spiritual liberation (mok$a). It must create opportunities,
in the form of structures and institutions, which enhance the creative manifestation of the
right to freedom. This involves, among other things, genuine elections, true representative
and responsible government, and the just rule of law. Additionally, the state should
establish the conditions whereby reason and tolerance in interpersonal and inter-state
relations can reign supreme, and where friendly persuasion rather than violent
confrontation is the norm for settling disputes. All these elements would contribute to
creating the ideal environment for the realization of a spiritual community.
Finally, the positive role of the state should extend into the economic sphere. For
collective spiritual freedom to be realized the state must attend to the material needs of
individuals. So long as a person is not guaranteed at least the basic necessities of life they
cannot develop spiritually: “No man can be said to be free if his desire for food, shelter
and economic security is not satisfied.”25 Thus, economic democracy, as well as political
Radhakrishnan fs Concept o f Universal Liberation 193
liberal democracy, is essential to creating an ideal social order. For Radhakrishan, it is

socialism, in its genuine form, that best guarantees economic democracy because of its
commitment to equality. By socialism is meant some public ownership of the means of
production and the provision of equal opportunities for all. All people must be given
equal opportunity to develop whatever potential they have. In fact, “A free society is one
where each individual has real freedom to live as he wills, short of infringing on the equal
freedom of others to do the same.”26Radhakrishnan supported the socialistic goals of the
Indian Congress party and agreed with the public ownership of some utilities and
resources. He certainly rejected the totalitarian practice of Marxism-Leninism and
preferred democratic (i.e., parliamentary) socialism. His vision of an ideal social order
was one that would be liberal-democratic in its political structure and social-democratic
in its economic structure—a social democracy. “A free society is one which provides each
individual with economic security, intellectual life and spiritual freedom.”27 Only such a
society could fulfill the rights to freedom and equality, which are necessary for the
eventual realization of a spiritual community.
In sum, the ultimate meaning and goal of the whole cosmic process is sarvamukti or
the liberation of all human beings. This will take the form of bramaloka, a spiritual
community representing the furthest expression of the divine reality in history. The
establishment of such a community facilitates the realization of pure being (sat) since it
will then lapse back into Brahman’s absolute being. Thus, universal liberation signals the
overcoming of metaphysical limitation (maya), the transcendence of the finite world of
space, time, and causality.
Notes
1. S. Radhakrishnan, Recovery of Faith [RF] (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968) 91.
2. S. Radhakrishnan, The Brahma Sutra: The Philosophy o f Spiritual Life [BS], tr., intro, and
notes (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959) 219.
3. S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life [IVL] (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
Unwin Paperbacks, 1988) 244.
4. S. Radhakrishnan, “Fragments of a Confession” [F], in The Philosophy o f Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan, ed. P. A. Schilpp (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1952) 64.
5. In The Brahma Sutra Radhakrishnan calls this “corporate salvation” 218.
6. JnAn Idealist View of Life, Radhakrishnan states: “Till this goal is reached, each individual is
the centre of the universal consciousness” 98.
7. S. Radhakrishnan, Religion and Society, 2nd ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1948)
45.
8. Here the thinking of Rabindranath Tagore on the issue of nationalism influences
Radhakrishnan. See Tagore’s Nationalism (London: Macmillan & Company, 1917).
9. S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, with an Introductory Essay (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1948) 76.
10. S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads [U], tr., intro, and notes (London: George Allen
& Unwin Ltd., 1953) 130.
11. In “My Search for Truth,” Radhakrishnan expresses this thought in the following way:
No individual is really saved until society is perfected. If the historical process is a
burden from which the soul attempts to free itself, it can free itself only when the
historical process reaches its fulfilment. The stronger individuals help the weaker ones
until all are saved. Universal salvation is the aim of the historical process, and when the
goal is reached the process disappears. The temporal becomes the eternal.”
See Religion in Transition, ed. V. Ferm (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1937) 53.
12. In “Fragments of a Confession” Radhakrishnan states: “The end of the cosmic process is the
achievement of universal redemption, redemption of all persons who continue to live as
individuals till the end of history” 68.
13. S. Radhakrishnan, “The Vedantic Approach to Reality,” The Monist, 26 (1916) 207.
14. “The Vedantic Approach” 207.
15. “The Vedantic Approach” 211.
16. Likewise on the same page Radhakrishnan notes: “The world is not a mere repetition of order;
it makes advances into the future” (RF 81).
17. Interestingly, John Arapura shows the influence of Plato’s notion of the ideal state on
Radhakrishnan’s thought. See his “Idealism, Utopia and the Spiritual Commonwealth,” in G.
Parthasarathi and D. P. Chattopadhyaya, eds., Radhakrishnan: Centenary Volume (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1989) 279-296.
18. S. Radhakrishnan, “Reply to Critics,” in The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 799.
In a similar passage he says: “They retain their centres as individuals until the cosmic
consummation is reached” 800.
19. S. Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford
University Press, 1940) 57.
20. Radhakrishnan, “Reply to Critics” 799.
21. S. Radhakrishnan, Education, Politics and War(Poona: The International Book Service, 1944)
62.
22. See Religion in a Changing World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967) 157, 163.
23. Religion in a Changing World, 164.
24. Radhakrishnan describes this idea in numerous writings, including F 78-82.
25. S. Radhakrishnan, “Education and Spiritual Freedom,” in Education, Politics and War, 94.
26. “Education and Spiritual Freedom” 94.
27. “Education and Spiritual Freedom” 94. In the same article Radhakrishnan also writes: “A free
society is one in which economic security is provided for all and freedom of thought and action
is permitted within the limits of a reasonable social harmony” 27.
12 The Act/Rule Dispute
RICHARD M. FOX
Introduction
There have been differences of opinion among utilitarians about how the utilitarian
principle should be applied and whether the principle alone is sufficient to determine
particular obligations. Rule-utilitarians hold that moral rules are derived from the
principle of utility and that what is right or wrong in particular cases is determined by
moral rules. However, rule-utilitarians are not always entirely clear about whether
supplementary principles or rules are always needed to determine particular obligations,
or whether they are only sometimes needed, or whether indeed they are not really needed
at all but may affect particular obligations when and where they exist. The strongest
position rule-utilitarians could take would be to hold that particular obligations could not
be determined without subordinate rules. But they might also hold that rules are
sometimes necessary and sometimes not. It is also possible to hold that rules are never
necessary. But when there are rules, rules determine what is right or wrong in particular
cases. Such rules may also be said to be either categorical or prima facie.
There are, moreover, various positions rule-utilitarians might take with respect to the
nature and derivation of moral rules. They might hold, for example, that moral rules are
determined by the utilitarian principle alone, in conjunction with the known facts, or that
rules are determined by the utilitarian principle in conjunction with the facts and a
principle of universalizability. Not all utilitarians who argue for universalizability as a
moral criterion regard themselves as rule-utilitarians, but a rule-utilitarian might think of
a principle of universalizability as a formal criterion that must be added to the utilitarian
principle (conceived as a substantive principle) and that, when so combined, generates
moral rules. So, too, rule-utilitarianism may be viewed as a synthesis of utilitarian and
Kantian considerations. But rule-utilitarians might also maintain that, without specific
reference to universalizability, rules are determined by inductive generalization from past
decisions, or even that they are determined by personal habit, social custom, or decisions
to adopt rules of one or another kind. In the latter case, one may suppose that rules would
not follow from the utilitarian principle by strict deduction, or even induction, but would
be made-up to maximize utility.
Whatever else they may hold, it seems that rule-utilitarians must hold that the
application of rules can make a difference in moral reasoning, such that the results
obtained by applying a rule are somehow different from the results obtained if no rule is
applied. Yet it is difficult to see how rules can make a difference in moral reasoning, for,
if rules are derived from the principle, and if judgments about particular acts are derived
from the rules, it would seem that, by strict deduction, judgments about particular acts
follow from the principle alone. Indeed, if the point to be made is supposed to be a logical
one, as some rule-utilitarians have claimed, thinking that moral rules function as logical
rules, it is difficult to see how moral rules could add anything to the account.
In any case, I shall wish to emphasize that the rules of rule-utilitarianism must be
moral rules, in the sense that persons are morally permitted or obligated to follow them,
or even morally forbidden to do so. In fact, as I shall argue, persons may be morally
permitted, obligated or forbidden to adopt a given rule, for the matter of having or not
having a rule may be a matter of choice. Thus I shall also emphasize the importance of
making a distinction between having a rule and not having a rule, or the distinction
between actual and ideal rules. That is, if rules can make a difference in moral reasoning,
there must be some sense in which persons may be said to either have a rule or not have
a rule, so it is incumbent upon rule-utilitarians to explain in what sense rules may be said
to exist, or what it means to say there is no rule. Of course, they must also make a
distinction between justified and unjustified rules, explaining under what conditions
persons are or are not bound by rules and why they are.
Some rule-utilitarians appear to believe that only actual or conventional rules (or
practices) ought to be followed, or variously, that rules can be binding only if they are “in
force.” However, philosophers I shall call ideal rule-utilitarians maintain that only rules
justified by the principle can be binding, whether or not enforced, enacted, or generally
accepted or practised. The ideal rule-utilitarian’s point, apparently, is that it would be
inconsistent, if one is a utilitarian, to think that one should follow rules that are not
justified by utility. B. J. Diggs writes:
If the position is to have the advantage over act utilitarianism that is claimed for it, then the
criterion of right action must be a system of rules and not general utility. Rules are a
criterion of right action, however, only on condition that they are “rules-in-force” and in
some sense “agreed to.” But obviously the rules which are “in-force” or “agreed to” may
not be the rules which maximize utility.1
By contrast, the conventionalist’s argument seems to be based on the consideration

that rules are not likely to be effective unless generally accepted and acted upon. Rules
which are not acted upon could not have the best possible consequences, for they could
not have any consequences at all. G. E. Moore says, “it is doubtful whether Ethics can
establish the utility of any rules other than those generally practised [...]” He goes on:
The question whether the general observance of a rule not generally observed, would nor
would not be desirable, cannot much affect the question how any individual ought to act;
since, on the one hand, there is a large probability that he will not, by any means, be able
to bring about its general observance, and, on the other hand, the fact that its general
observance would be useful could, in any case, give him no reason to conclude that he
himself ought to observe it in the absence of such general observance.2
But, in either case, it seems that a particular act could be justified by utility only if that
act has utility, so it seems to make no difference whether or not an act conforms to any
rule. That is the main reason why, it seems, act-utilitarians have held that rules make no
difference in utilitarian calculations, so whether rules are supposed to be actual or ideal
seems beside the point.
The act utilitarian’s argument is really quite simple. In essence, what the act-
utilitarian argues is that, if the utilitarian principle determines what is right, then any act
The Act/Rule Dispute 197
which conforms to that principle is right, and any act which does not conform to it is
wrong. Therefore, it can make no difference whether or not an act conforms to a rule,
even if—and perhaps especially if—that rule is derived from the principle. To say that
an act must follow a rule adds nothing, unless, of course, acts which conform to rules
conflict with the principle. In that way, and in that way only, one may suppose that rules
could make a difference in moral reasoning. But any act which conflicts with the principle
is wrong. So rules either add nothing to the principle or they conflict with it. They are
either superfluous or non-utilitarian.
The motivation behind rule-utilitarianism seems to be much the same as that behind
rule-deontology, and, indeed, rule-utilitarianism may be seen as a compromise between
the utilitarian and deontological views. Hence, the accusation of act-utilitarians that the
rule-view is not purely utilitarian. But one of the objections against act-utilitarianism,
raised by deontologists, has been that act-utilitarianism is capable of justifying unjust acts.
This criticism reflects the rule-deontological view that certain kinds of acts are prima
facie right or wrong: that is prima facie wrong to steal, for example, or prima facie right,
and even obligatory, to keep promises. Thus, although rule-deontologists have allowed
that such rules may be overridden, they have also argued that they cannot be overridden
by a consideration of consequences alone, or that, if they can be overridden by
consequences, the exceptional cases must be ‘hard’ or ‘extreme.’ But act-utilitarians
seem to hold the position that moral rules are not binding at all. On the act-utilitarian
view, so the criticism goes, one would be forbidden to steal only if stealing turned out to
have bad consequences, and one would be obligated to keep a promise only if there were
no alternative that had better consequences. Or, it is said, the act-utilitarian could justify
the execution of an innocent person if killing that person turned out to have better
consequences than any other alternative.
In order to meet these kinds of objections, rule-utilitarians have adopted the position
that moral rules are indeed binding (if only in a prima facie sense) but that, nonetheless,
the rules must be justified by utility. They appear to have reasoned that, for example, if
executions were covered by rules pertaining to innocence or guilt, and if these rules could
be justified by the principle of utility, then the deontologist’s objection could be met. If,
in general, more good could be accomplished by having and following a rule of this kind,
the killing of innocent persons could be ruled out on utilitarian grounds. Thus, if one
justifies a particular act by a rule, and a rule by a principle, one appears to obtain a
different result than one would have obtained if one had reasoned directly from the
principle alone. Although executing an innocent person might be justified in a particular
case, by appealing to the principle alone, it could not be justified if one considered what
should be done as a rule. The whole point of having rules, one might add, is to follow
them, for that is the only way that rules can produce the desired effects. So it does seem
that, if one is justified in adopting a rule, one would also be justified in following it, for
the purpose of adopting a rule is to do what the rule says.
John Rawls says that his purpose is to defend utilitarianism against two traditional test
cases, namely the justification of punishments and promise-keeping. He specifically cites
the example in which utilitarianism is supposed to justify the punishment of an innocent
man. The other problem has to do with how the utilitarian can account for the duty to
keep promises. He tries to solve the problem by making a distinction between the
justification of a practice and the justification of a particular action falling under a
practice. Rawls argues that it is a mistake to think that, if the practice is justified on
utilitarian grounds, one can still cite the principle in deciding whether or not to follow the
practice. “The practice,” he says, “forbids this general defence; and it is the purpose of
the practice to do this.” “The point of having the practice would be lost,” he claims, “if
the practice did allow this excuse.”3
The main difficulty with this argument is that, although certain types of acts usually
produce more good than other types, they do not always do so. Therefore it seems that one
would be justified in following a rule, on utilitarian grounds, only if following the rule did
indeed have utility. In all other cases it would simply be wrong to do what the rule says.
Thus act-utilitarians can hold their ground in maintaining that rules do not make actions
right. An action is right because it conforms to the principle, not a rule. So rules are, in
principle at least, unnecessary. To be assured of a correct answer, a person would still
need to examine each and every case on its own merits, regardless of the consequences
of similar acts, or of the kinds of consequences such acts normally produce. Even if one
adopts a rule, one would still need to appeal to the principle in order to determine when
the rule does or does not apply, in which case the existence or nonexistence of a rule
would seem to make no difference in the calculation.
Summary Rules
I have said that there is a question about whether the act and rule views represent distinct
positions, and if they do, what the precise difference between them really is. This
difference is often thought to be marked off by the kinds of rules each position will or will
not allow. Rule-utilitarians hold that moral rules perform some sort of special logical
function in moral reasoning. But if so, rules cannot be merely a means of applying the
principle to particular cases, for the rules are supposed to make a difference in the results
obtained. Indeed, it is not always clear whether rule-utilitarians want to maintain that the
principle could not be applied without rules or that, although it could, it would be morally
or logically wrong to do so. Their position, apparently, is that one could not make a
correct moral determination without rules, but they may also wish to hold that one could
not make any determination at all. Therefore there is some question about why rules are
supposed to be necessary or in what sense they are.
The kinds of rules rule-utilitarians have in mind are often said to be ‘normative’ or
even ‘constitutive’ rules. Sometimes they are also said to be ‘practice’ rules, although the
work ‘practice,’ if taken in the sense of social practice, as it usually is, and not simply as
a rule of action, seems to beg the question in favour of conventional rules. To say that a
rule is ‘normative’ is usually taken to mean that it expresses a prescription for action, but
it may also be taken to mean that it is categorically binding. It is in this latter sense,
apparently, that moral rules are also said to be ‘constitutive,’ although there appears to
be a difference between constitutive rules that define acts and normative rules that
regulate acts otherwise defined. The difference between constituting and regulating may
be said to break down in the case of moral rules, for moral rules specify the
characteristics acts must have in order to be right. That is why, perhaps, moral rules are
sometimes said to express formal requirements, or why rule-views are said to be formalist
positions. Such rules would be categorically binding if all and only acts covered by them
could be right or wrong. But the question is whether moral rules, so conceived, could be
utilitarian rules. It seems that there must be exceptions to the rules based upon utilitarian
considerations, as even rule-deontologists admit. After all, the rules themselves may
conflict So it seems fairly obvious that all moral rules cannot be binding in all cases, and
that, when rules conflict, some other principle, such as the principle of utility, must be
used in order to determine which actions are right.
The usual rebuttal to the claim that rules can conflict and have exceptions is that even
cases of conflict must be covered by rules, as they must, indeed, if all particular
obligations are determined by rules. But this claim puts a great deal of strain on the
conception of a rule as a practice, for it is doubtful that in any society there are enough
rules to cover eveiy case or that there even could be. One might argue that, ideally, such
rules could always be determined by the utilitarian principle, but if so, it is a position
which could be held only by an ideal rule-utilitarian.
By contrast, act-utilitarians deny that rules are necessary to determine rights or
obligations. Rules, they hold, have no special logical function in moral reasoning, for the
principle can always be applied directly to particular cases. Nonetheless, act-utilitarians
have allowed that so-called ‘summary rules’ or ‘rules-of-thumb’ may be useful in moral
reasoning, when, for example, it is inconvenient or impossible to weigh the value of each
and every act on the basis of its own merits.4 One difference between such ‘summary’
rules, apparently, and so-called ‘practice’ rules, is that summary rules are not derived
from the principle before one determines the rightness or wrongness of particular acts,
for summary rules are generalizations from past cases, based upon particular moral
determinations previously made. That is, on this view, one must first know which
particular acts were (or were judged to be) right or wrong in the past in order to make
inductive generalizations about which courses of action are likely to be right or wrong in
the future. If so, then it must be possible to determine the rightness or wrongness of
particular actions without employing summary rules.5
On this view, even summary rules are not always needed to determine what is right.
However, if it is not always possible to determine the rightness or wrongness of an act on
the basis of its own merits, summary rules may sometimes be necessary. If so, it seems
that persons may at least sometimes be bound by summary rules. But act-utilitarians
appear to hold that, in principle at least, if not in practice, such rules are dispensable. If
one did have enough information, one could judge each and every particular act by the
principle alone. Indeed, it seems that summary rules would never be sufficient to
guarantee correct answers in any case, for although one may be forced to appeal to them
in reasoning, the case being judged may be an exception to the rule. The fact that certain
kinds of acts have had or were judged to have good or bad consequences in the past is no
guarantee that the same kinds of act will have good consequences in the future. So, on the
act-view, summary rules never make right acts right. At best, they may be cited as
evidence that an act of a certain kind is right.
However, there appears to be some confusion in both these views. The resolution of
the dispute between them depends largely upon how utilitarianism itself is interpreted.
It depends upon whether utilitarianism is supposed to be a theory which holds that
reasoning determines what is right or a theory of judgment about what is independently
or objectively right. If the former, a strong case can be made for rule-utilitarianism, but
if the latter, it would seem that act-utilitarianism is obviously true. That is, act-
utilitarianism would seem to be correct if acts were right or wrong independently of how
we reason about them. Inductive reasoning might then be used in an attempt to
approximate correct answers, but correct reasoning would not by itself make right acts
right. No matter how well persons may happen to reason, their answers might still be
wrong. But, even then, the act-utilitarian would need to rely on induction, and if so,
summary rules would seem to be indispensable finding out which acts are right. They
would not be merely a convenient substitute when other evidence is unavailable, for they
would in fact provide all the evidence there is. Therefore, even on the summary view, one
would be bound by rules. Summary rules would be necessary to supplement the principle
of utility in determining what persons should do. This appears to be G. E. Moore’s
position, for, on the question of exceptions to rules, he writes:
Can the individual ever be justified in assuming that his is one of these exceptional cases?
And it seems that this question may be definitely answered in the negative. For, if it is
certain that in a large majority of cases the observance of a certain rule is useful, it follows
that there is a large probability that it would be wrong to break the rule in any particular
case [...] it seems doubtful whether the individual’s judgment that the effects will probably
be good in his case can ever be set against the general probability that that kind of action
is wrong. [...] It seems, then that with regard to any rule which is generally useful, we may
assert that it ought always be observed, not on the ground that in every particular case it
will be useful, but on the ground that in any particular case the probability of its being so
is greater than that of our being likely to decide rightly that we have before us an instance
of its disutility.6
But if one is bound by summary rules, one is bound by reasoning and not by some sort
of predetermined objectively right thing to do. Act-utilitarians cannot have it both ways.
Their problem is not that they do not believe in induction: their problem is that they do
not believe that reasoning makes right acts right. Yet, if so, it is odd that act-utilitarians
regularly talk about obligations as being “the rational thing to do.” If the rational thing to
do is to reason inductively, it would also seem to be rational to act upon conclusions
inductively reached. It is difficult to see how Moore can reconcile his view that
obligations are determined by actual consequences with his view that we are bound by
inductive reasoning. As T. L. S. Sprigge puts it,
Any intelligent utilitarianism will acknowledge that the rightness and wrongness of an act is
determined by the consequences reasonably predictable beforehand rather than by the actual
consequences [...] To calculate the hedonic value of an act (before its performance or non
performance) is to make an inductive assessment of probabilities. Essentially, it is to take general
characteristics of the act, and consider what has usually followed upon acts of this sort in the
past.7
Furthermore, inductive conclusions are not conclusions about particular acts, except
as they are acts of certain kinds, for predictions can be made, I take it, only with respect to
kinds. But this appears to be precisely what rule-utilitarians have wanted to maintain:
namely that an act can be judged to be right or wrong only as an instance of a certain type.
Therefore, according to this interpretation of ‘rule,’ there appears to be no difference
between the act-utilitarian’s summary rules and the rule-utilitarian’s normative or
constitutive rules, for both types of rule would seem to be both summary and normative.
However, it would be odd to call such rules ‘practices,’ except, perhaps, as they are
practical guides, or as people may be said to customarily reason by means of them.
Nonetheless, the notion of a summary rule is still not entirely clear. Authors who make
a distinction between summary rules and practices often speak of summary rules as
summaries of past ‘decisions.’ But this is misleading. It may be taken to mean that
summary rules are summaries of the kinds of acts persons have chosen to perform in the
past. But that would be odd, especially if some of the acts chosen in the past were wrong
acts. What might be meant, instead, is that summary rules are summaries of past moral
judgments. But that would also be odd, especially if one had reason to believe that past
judgments were not good judgments. After all, more information may now be available.
What one really needs to summarize, it seems, are the consequences of past actions or
decisions, in an attempt to see what sorts of consequences tend to be produced by certain
types of act. But this would not by itself produce any moral rules. One would still need to
apply the utilitarian principle to the anticipated consequences.
The case being judged would still be a case, or a situation of some type, but one need
not judge it on the basis of past moral judgments or decisions. But one could. Persons could
and often do rely on the way they or others did things in the past. Perhaps they would even
be morally bound to do so, if they did not have time to consider the probable consequences
of each and every alternative. One of the advantages of such rules of thumb is that they can
be efficient, itself a utilitarian consideration. Even if one could judge each case on its own
merits, there may be little point in doing so. Indeed, to say that there is no time to weigh a
particular case on its own merits is already to have made the judgment that it would be
better to use one’s time doing something else. But a person may be able to take the time,
especially if that person has reason to believe that the customary or traditional ways of
doing things may be wrong.
The Practice Conception
The kinds of rules rule-utilitarians have in mind are apparently not summary rules, or if
they are, they are summary rules of a special kind. I have said that rule-utilitarians might
hold that moral rules are derived, not from the principle of utility alone, but from the
principle of utility in conjunction with a principle of universalizability. Thus rule-
utilitarians might hold that there are two supreme moral principles: the principle of utility,
conceived as a substantive principle, and the principle of generalization, conceived as a
formal test.
This might be interpreted to mean that moral rules are determined by asking what sorts
of acts in general tend to have utility, but we have seen that this is precisely how summary
rules are formed. However, another interpretation, offered by Kant, is obtained by asking
whether a rule can be applied to everyone in the same way. Kant appeared to think that no
rule could be a moral rule unless it were possible for everyone to follow it, or unless it
could be a universal law. This seems to mean at least that persons should be consistent in
the application of standards, an idea that is already presupposed in the idea of being a
standard. So it would seem that, in this limited sense, the consideration of universalizability
adds nothing new to the principle of utility, unless it is interpreted in a non-utilitarian and,
it seems, an implausible way. The principle of universalizability could have an additive
effect only if also applied to subordinate rules, making them categorical imperatives, but
this would place them in conflict with the principle and in conflict with one another.
The test of universalizability is sometimes thought to be expressed in the question,
‘what if everybody did the same?’ The implication seems to be that nothing could be a
moral obligation unless everybody were obligated to do it, or that nothing could be right
for one person which is not right for all. But this interpretation of the notion of
universalizability runs into problems if applied, not simply to the principle of utility, but
to subordinate rules or more specific kinds of act, for it is simply impossible for everybody
to always do the same kinds of things. Even if they could, there is no reason to think they
should. Indeed, since rules often conflict, it is impossible for one and the same person to
always be bound by every rule. Moreover, one person’s following a rule may prevent
another person from following it Even if everyone could do the same, they might not in fact
do so, so the good results of everyone’s doing the same cannot be relied upon, even if one
does what he or she supposes everyone should. It is what others will do, or what they may
be expected to do, that counts in utilitarian calculations, and not what we would like them
to do, or what ideally we think they should. That is why persons can be bound only actual
and not ideal rules.
However, since acts can conflict, or since the production of good consequences by one
act can prevent the production of good consequences by another, what counts in the
predictable long run are the consequences of combinations of acts. For this reason, persons
can cooperate in such a way that their combined acts produce better consequences than
each of them could produce alone. Indeed, it takes the cooperation of hundreds and
thousands of people to produce the goods of civilized life. That is why, instead of insisting
that everyone do the same, it is important to recognize the need for a division of labour.
Subordinate rules can serve this purpose. Such rules cannot simply be deduced from the
principle of utility but they can be made up or decided upon in the light of utilitarian
considerations. Thus persons may be faced with decisions about the sorts of rules they will
have, as well as decisions about whether or not they will follow the rules.
A species of such rules may properly be called laws, of the type enacted by legislatures,
but such rules are not limited to legal enactments. Anyone can make them up. They are
what traditional moral philosophers have usually called ‘conventional’ moral rules, as
opposed to ‘natural’ moral laws, although they have sometimes been called ‘natural,’ as
in the philosophy of Hobbes. In one sense, of course, it is quite natural to create such rules,
and, in another sense, they have a foundation in our understanding of the nature of people
and other factual conditions. But I wish to distinguish between rules that are binding
because we decide to adopt them and rules that are binding whether we decide to adopt
them or not. Summary rules are natural in this latter sense, for we do not decide which
summary rules are correct, nor do we decide to have or not have rules of this type. Or, more
accurately, since practice rules (as I am now using this expression) are a species of
summary rules, we should distinguish between summary rules that are chosen and summary
rules that are not. Practice rules are a species of summary rules in the sense that the
justification of practice rules and summary rules is the same, for both are founded upon
utility, or the tendencies of acts to produce good consequences. But the origin of each is
different. Of course, persons need to reason inductively in order to determine which
practice rules they should follow, or choose, but practice rules cannot always be established
by inductive generalization alone.
These points require some modification. The kind of practice rule that is needed may
be determined by strict deduction from the principle of utility, given the facts of the
situation, but, for the sake of contrast, I have tried to point out that it also may not. That is,
the principle alone may not be sufficient to determine the kind of rule we should have. It
is also true that such rules are not, strictly speaking, always chosen, for persons may
willingly accept them, out of habit perhaps, without actually choosing to do so. For that
matter, since rules may be enacted by the decisions of others, it is not necessary for each
and every individual who is bound by them to decide upon their adoption. That is, persons
may be bound by conventional or practice rules which they themselves do not and would
not choose to have. The reason for this, quite simply, is that persons are bound to do
whatever they think has utility, and it may turn out that they cannot perform acts which have
utility except by following conventional rules. How the rules come into existence really has
nothing to do with whether a person is bound by them, although, obviously, such rules must
be brought into existence before they can be binding. That is, one’s obligation may be quite
different in a situation where there is a rule from what it would be in a similar situation
where there is none. Below, I shall try to explain in more detail what this difference is.
It is also worth noting at this point that the justification persons have for adopting rules
must be distinguished from their justification for following them. Persons adopt rules
because they feel that, in general, it would be better to follow such rules than not, but
persons are sometimes justified in violating even justified rules. That is, even good rules
can have exceptions. For that matter, one may even be bound by an unjustified rule, for
although, ideally, it might not be a good rule to follow, it may be a rule that is generally
observed, and following it may produce better consequences than any other alternative.
Indeed, we generally feel bound by unjustified laws, not because we cannot think of better
ones, but because they are the laws. That is, we feel that more harm than good would be
accomplished by breaking the law, even if it would be better if the law were changed. So,
in a sense, our duty to obey a rule has nothing to do with whether or not that rule is
justified, although one may suppose that it is usually better to follow justified rules than
unjustified ones. And, this is only another way of saying that we are generally bound by
conventional and not ideal rules, for everything depends on what others may be expected
to do. One may feel that it would be better if other people acted differently, but, failing to
convince them that they are wrong, one must take into account the kinds of behaviour one
can reasonably predict. To say that people accept a practice is to say that they are more
than likely to act upon it, a factor which persons cannot afford to ignore in making their
own calculations. Such a theory of law, then, would be an acceptance theory for it would
be the acceptance of laws which makes them laws; but acceptance does not make the laws
good laws, nor are persons always (morally) bound by every law. One simply needs to
make a distinction between the grounds for enacting a law, on the one hand, and the
grounds for following it, on the other. However, since both enacting and choosing to obey
laws are moral acts, both require moral justification.
The factor of making a decision to enact or accept a rule, which (with qualification) I
have said accounts for what it means to have a practice rule, shows how practice rules
differ from (other types of) summary rules. Since summaiy rules proper are not made up
or chosen, there may be a question of verifying or validating them, but there can be no
question of justifying them in the moral sense. Summary rules may be said to require
epistemological justification, in the sense that one’s inductive procedures may or may not
be sound; but inductive conclusions appear to be determined by reason alone, not choice.
If so, there can be no question about whether one should or should not choose them.
However, in the case of forming practice rules, decisions may be required, and persons may
be either justified or unjustified in choosing them. That is persons may be morally required
(or permitted) to adopt a rule, but no particular one, in which case they could do what they
are morally required to do only by choosing to adopt one or another rule within a
disjunctive set. In a word, they may be faced with the decision to adopt a policy of action
where any one of several policies might do.
For example, the problem of determining obligations when two or more persons are in
a position to perform the same act may require rules for its solution. I have assumed that
persons can be obligated to perform acts only if it is possible for them to do so, but it is not
always possible for persons to perform the same type of act. Indeed, one person’s
performing an act that has utility may prevent another person from performing an act that
has utility. Suppose x is the only act A can perform to produce utility and y is the only act
that B can perform to produce utility. Suppose also that if A performs x, B cannot perform
y, and if B performs y, A cannot perform x. Since it is not possible for both A and B to
perform the required type of act, both cannot be obligated. And since there is no reason to
believe that one is obligated and not the other, it would seem that neither is obligated.
However, while it is not possible, and hence not necessary, for A to perform x and B
to perform y, it is possible for either A to perform x or B to perform y. If so, A and B may
share responsibility for either producing or failing to produce utility. Certainly, if there is
a conflict between them in this matter, and if it is possible for them to resolve the conflict,
they would be obligated to do so. That is, the resolution of the conflict may be an act which
is necessaiy to produce utility. Thus A and B may be obligated to adopt and follow a rule.
And since, supposedly, no such rule exists, the problem cannot be solved simply by
summarizing the results of past decisions, although the parties involved would need to
reason inductively in trying to determine what would happen if one or another decision
were made.
What one does in such situations is to think hypothetically, imagining what the results
would be like if one or another type of rule were chosen. If, therefore, it seems that only one
rule would do, the parties involved would be obligated to adopt that rule, and if more than
one, then one or the other. Thus particular obligations would not be determined by direct
reference to the principle, without employing rules, but by reference to a rule, even though
the need for adopting the rule would be determined by the principle. Ex hypothesis without
a rule, neither person is obligated, but with it, one or the other is.
Of course, even in such situations, everything depends upon what one believes the other
parties are likely to do. One person may be obligated just because the other person does
not act or is not likely to do so. Indeed, the very possibility of adopting rules depends on
the likelihood of reaching agreement. But it is sometimes the case that utility could be
produced only if the parties involved cooperated according to a rule. So if such cooperation
fails because of one person’s failure to cooperate, that person would be at fault. The
difficulty, of course, is that usually somebody needs to take the initiative, and any person’s
obligation to do so depends upon that person’s belief that others can be persuaded to do
the same.
I offer this as an argument for rule utilitarianism. It does not show that practice rules
are always necessary, or that persons are always bound by them, but it does show that they
are sometimes necessary and that persons are sometimes bound by them. Unlike the
generalization argument, it does not emphasize the need for everyone to act alike but, as
I have said, the need for a division of labour. On this view, rules would function not so
much to determine what needs to be done, but, rather, who is obligated to do it, although
determining who is responsible may also affect what should be done. In the well worn
example of the rule of the road, it is fairly obvious that more good is likely to be
accomplished, or more evil avoided, if some rule is adopted and followed, but it does not
matter very much which rule it is. Unless everybody agrees to drive on one side or the
other, there is apt to be confusion and conflict, but the same good results would be
accomplished by driving on either side. Likewise, it sometimes takes two or more people
to cooperate in producing a desirable result, but it may not matter much who does what,
as long as each is fairly clear about what the assignment is. Of course, given other factors,
it may also matter a great deal which decision is made and followed, for people may have
different abilities, or some may be in a better position to perform a task than others are.
Such a decision may be made implicitly as, for example, when one accepts a customary
way of doing things, in which case no law or decision need be announced, for the force of
such rules or laws is determined by our ability to predict what will happen according to
them. When we know that people have made decisions respecting future actions, we then
judge our own behaviour in view of what we expect them to do. Since the reliability of our
predictions depends largely upon the reliability of others, we feel that it is important for
them to follow the rules. That is, we feel that it is important for them to follow the rules if
we do indeed depend upon their following them. We may not only be disappointed in our
expectations if others fail us in this respect: the effectiveness of our own actions may be
undermined. Of course, one may be able to make more or less accurate predictions about
the behaviour of others in any case, with or without rules, but it may not be possible to
accomplish as much good.
Rules generally tend to fail, I believe, not simply because people are immoral, and
hence fail to do what they think they should, or even because they sometimes fail to see the
point of having rules, but because they do not agree about the consequences of obeying or
disobeying given kinds of rules. That is why differences in moral outlook and action really
depend a great deal upon different predictions about the future. In order for intersubjective
rules to be effective, a number of people must have similar conceptions of the
consequences of obeying or violating the same sorts of rules. Otherwise they would make
their calculations on independent grounds. Or, if they agree about the consequences, they
may not agree about the value of effecting them. So it seems that, in order to cooperate in
what they do, they must agree upon the same sorts of goals. But, in the final analysis, it is
not simply the similarity of goals that makes a moral community one; it is also agreement
about how those goals can be attained. A group of people becomes a moral community to
the extent that its members participate in a number of common practices upon which they
feel they can rely in planning their lives.
Notes
1. “Rules and Utilitarianism,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1(1964) 32-44.

2. Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 161.
3. “Two Concepts of Rules,”Ph ilosophical Review, 64 (1955) 6-7.
4. See J.J.C. Smart, “Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism,” Philosophical Quarterly, 6(1956)
344-354.
5. See Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules.”
6. “Two Concepts of Rules” 162.
7. “A Utilitarian Reply to Dr. McCloskey’s ‘A Non-Utilitarian Approach to Punishment’,”
Inquiry, 8 (1965) 264-291 at 287-288.
13 Conceptualizing Community in Order
to Realize It
BRENDA WIRKUS
Prologue
I first met Leslie Armour in the fall of 1973.1was beginning the Master of Arts programme
in philosophy at the Cleveland State University; he taught the first course I took in that
programme, a course in epistemology. On the very first evening I encountered a man who
appeared too stereotypical a philosopher truly to be one: tall, dishevelled, hair a bit unruly,
clothes a bit unkempt, accent resembling something British, lighting up one cigarette from
the butt of another. Then he began speaking about philosophers of whom I was totally
ignorant, Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrho, a pig farmer. Despite a first-rate A.B.
degree—both Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude—from an excellent undergraduate
institution, I was certain I was out of my league and had made a big mistake by even
thinking of pursuing graduate study in philosophy. Happily for me, after-class conversation
with other students indicated that they were as puzzled and bewildered and uncertain about
their suitability for the programme as I. We all stayed with it, and with Leslie Armour.
Now, nearly twenty-five years later, I know that were it not for Leslie Armour, I would
never have completed the Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, much less the Ph.D.
Although my contact with him these days is far less frequent, he remains the most constant
and supportive of colleagues, more genuinely interested in both my personal and
professional well-being than any other philosopher-colleague has been.
And so it is both quite exciting and quite humbling to be asked to contribute to a
volume in his honour. His work continues to set a standard to which I aspire but of which
I clearly fall short. His energy amazes me. His encouragement—even from a great
distance— sustains me.
I have veered somewhat from the idealist course charted by Leslie Armour; I have been
influenced by pragmatism and feminism, impressed by insights from the likes of Richard
Rorty, Ian Hacking and Stanley Cavell, and inspired by the Society for Women in
Philosophy. Nevertheless, all of my work remains informed by a concept of community
derived from idealism, a concept to which I was first introduced by Leslie Armour. Armour
taught us to view communities not simply as assemblies of individuals. Instead he taught
us also to see engaging, interesting and productive individuals as the outcome of
communities. I shall attempt to argue that this view of community as the site of
individuation is a legacy of idealism that might begin to contribute to the resolution of
practical and political issues plaguing the world at the close of the 20th century.
Introduction
Idealism, the philosophical position which claims that reality is not ultimately reducible to
nor explicable in material terms, fell out of favour at least partly due to empirical
considerations and, specifically, World War I. The Great War, based as it was on a series
of alliances among nations which required of them participation and action despite
themselves, called into question the veiy intelligibility of reality. The kinds of philosophical
projects that became popular after World War I—moral intuitionism, existentialism, logical
positivism, ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology—reacted against the systematic,
speculative, and holistic nature of idealism and represented negations of that community-
and metaphysics-based model. In fact, these newer movements abandoned systematization
and metaphysics; some focused on the individual as source of value and/or moral
knowledge (moral intuitionism), others on the meaninglessness and irrationality of the
universe (existentialism). Some (logical positivism) sought certainty in verifiability; others
(some versions of ordinary language philosophy) insisted that metaphysical problems
would be seen as pseudo-problems were we only clearer with our use of language. Yet
others (phenomenology) centred on the individual’s intentionality and on our experience
of appearances rather than reality. It does not appear likely that any of these projects will
survive the 20th century any better than did idealism. They have all been transformed and
superseded by versions of anti-realism and anti-foundationalism, by deconstruction, by neo
pragmatism. In fact many have argued, beginning with Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and
the Mirror o f Nature, that the very task of philosophy itself has become an exercise “to
keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth.”1
It is not possible, in the course of this essay, to address the status and self-understanding
of philosophy as we approach a new decade, a new century, a new millennium. My goal
here is more humble. In the course of the next few pages I shall argue that idealism,
rejected philosophically largely as a result of empirical considerations, can serve, ironically
enough, as the theoretical foundation for a better understanding of (and perhaps offer a
solution to) the fragmented human existence characteristic of the end of the 20th century.
Otherwise put, idealism, rejected on empirical grounds, may deserve another hearing as it
provides a way to understand a new set of empirical conditions.
Specifically, idealism can provide a way to understand and make intelligible the
concept of community without reducing it either to a collection of individuals on the liberal
model or to an over-arching separately-existing ‘state’ characteristic of fascism or
communism. Idealism offers a middle ground to talk about a ‘common good’ that does not
collapse into simple majoritarianism nor depend upon national or ethnic group identities.
‘Common good’ might then be understood as a ‘common stake’ in the self-actualization
of all members of a political entity (or, even, the earth), acknowledging that the presence
and participation of diverse voices within any society increase the possibilities for the self-
actualization of each of them, even if only by negation. And a community becomes,
therefore, the place within which all of us can flourish.
So, while it would be naive to expect to be able to rehabilitate idealism in to to, one
might argue that that does not preclude the use of the idealist concept of community to
respond to some of the ills of the end of the 20th century, including the ‘Balkanization’ of
Conceptualizing Community 209
the world and the fragmentation of the human experience. More concretely, I offer some
preliminary thoughts about community inspired but not exhausted by idealism, hoping that
these insights into ‘community5 as a set of relations and as the site of individuation might
generate further conversation in both academic and political arenas.
While I have indicated above that I do not envision my role as that of investigating the
status of philosophy at the end of this century, I do nevertheless feel obligated to alert the
reader to a fundamental assumption I am making about the philosophical enterprise. I have
not the space to argue for it here but, inasmuch as it serves as the underlying assumption
of my proposed project, it needs to be stated.
I understand philosophy as a practical activity, as praxis, as theoretical exploration
designed to transform reality rather than merely describe it or make sense out of it. I am
troubled by the notion of ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ (with all respect to F. H.
Bradley). Like Rorty I believe that the academic pursuit of philosophy has led to its
devaluation and to the popular view that it is in fact irrelevant to public concerns. The
narrow pursuit of academic philosophy appears frequently to be little more than an exercise
in intellectual hedonism, the pursuit of intellectual pleasure, a means lacking an end.
Instead, I would like to reinstate as one end of philosophy the concrete pursuit of questions
about the good life and how to live it. I would like to suggest that the role of philosophy is
to articulate specific possibilities and in turn to evaluate the consequences of their practical
adoption. One might argue, of course, that all knowledge is transformative, that reality is
changed simply in the thinking of it. I would not disagree. Nevertheless, my position is
somewhat stronger; I philosophize for the express purpose of political transformation. In
fact I am claiming that the activity of philosophizing should improve the world and advance
human well-being. The state of the world at the end of the 20th century is such that one can
see many areas in obvious need of improvement.
The Problem: The Primacy of the Individual and the Balkanization of the World,
or Symptoms of Disintegration and Fragmentation
Any quick survey of the events of the 20th century inevitably will appear either facile or
reductionistic. At the risk of each, I shall strive nevertheless to demarcate a few instances
of the symptoms of disintegration and fragmentation: World War I, the arts and popular
culture, and human relationships more generally.
It is tempting to imbue World War I with a profound philosophical and symbolic
significance, and it is perhaps not unreasonable to do so. Many intellectual historians
consider World War I to be a watershed, a war that transformed all wars, the final chapter
that dashed the hopes of a 19th century full of optimism and romanticism. The day after the
British entered the war, Henry James wrote to a friend:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness [...] is a thing that so gives
away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever
abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years
were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.2
Begun over the assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Bosnian Serb nationalist, the
war quickly expanded to encompass much of Europe and the Middle East and South
Africa. Prior diplomatic alliances forced nations to join the fight whether or not they really
wanted war. World War I was the first war in which civilian lives were jeopardized and
lost in such great numbers. There was no running away from this war. It was the first
‘global’ war, the first war in which everything in its path was destroyed, farms, forests,
homes, public buildings. That was made possible by the implementation of weapons of
mass destruction: long-range missiles, ‘Big Bertha’ guns, exploding shells, machine guns,
armed airplanes, mustard gas. Furthermore, those weapons made it possible to kill at a
much farther range than ever before; one could not see one’s enemy in the trenches, and
one could kill many people whom one never saw. Killing became impersonal. No one was
safe. Many survived this war but suffered permanently debilitating neurological damage,
i.e. shell shock. Most significantly, however, the technology which 19th-century thinkers
had hoped would be used to solve human problems like world hunger and poverty had
instead been employed to dominate and subjugate others, to kill them more efficiently and
more quickly. For the first time with this war arose the possibility of the annihilation of all
of humankind.
The arts, of course, likewise reflect these other forms of cultural dissolution. Modernist
literature, post-war poetry, stream of consciousness in Joyce’s Ulysses and Faulkner’s
Absalom, Absalom, Beckett’s Godot, Camus’ L \Etranger, all reveal a disorientation, a
dislocation, a sense that the universe holds no meaning beyond whatever we can manage
to impose upon it. The visual arts fare no better. Consider the work of Pablo Picasso. At
the veiy beginning of his career, during the early years of the 20th century, his subjects are
recognizable and identifiable as human beings although they might be pink or blue. But as
the century progresses so too does the deterioration of Picasso’s figures. First the body
parts become disconnected, then they are placed farther and farther apart. Finally they are
nothing more than splashes of color on a canvas. Music, too, loses first content and then
formal structure. Dissonance replaces harmony and melody. Experimentation leads to the
abandonment of old forms and old instruments, replaced by electronic gadgets and sounds
found nowhere in nature.
Popular culture also reproduces the concerns and characteristics of a changed world.
While the medium of film still provides a powerful artistic vehicle for cultural self-
understanding and critique, popular film, motivated perhaps by market concerns and the
exorbitant costs of production, tends to capitalize on some of the least salutary
characteristics of life in the 20th century. Graphic displays of violence horrify some viewers
but seem to inoculate and desensitize a great many others. ‘Shock value’ and ‘market
value’ go hand in hand, both in film and in radio.
Of all the media, however, perhaps television best exemplifies the frenetic pace of life
in the 20th century. Television cannot offer sustained arguments or well-developed theses
in 30-minute segments and 30-second sound bites. Instead it focuses on the image, on
quick sensory impressions. ‘Sesame Street’ is held as model television for children; it
offers bright colours and interesting sounds and a new topic every two minutes. To be sure,
children do learn their numbers and the alphabet. They also come to expect, however, that
learning will always be fun and entertaining, colourful and noisy. It hardly surprises one,
then, to discover the great numbers of children unable to succeed at school because of some
version of an attention deficit disorder.
Television has, in fact, overwhelmed the print media. The numbers of newspapers have
dwindled; the populace can now get its news in one hour while eating dinner or can tune
into CNN for ten-minute updates at its leisure. Students regularly complain that they hate
to read, and standard pedagogy now includes the video. As the value of the book
diminishes, our connection with our past becomes more tenuous and our preoccupation
with the immediacy of the present more powerful. And while the computer offers faster and
more efficient ways to “process words,” it can serve to isolate the learner, diminishing the
importance of classroom interaction and making libraries extraneous. After all, every bit
of information one might need is available on CD-ROM. University administrators,
motivated as much by financial crises as by academic integrity, capitalize on the
accessibility of both television and computers and market “distance-learning” as the wave
of the future. Learning on this model becomes a solitary and isolating activity, one that
separates individuals from one another, one that does not foster a sense of shared
experiences and cooperation. And yet workplace expectations now include a commitment
to ‘teamwork,’ something difficult to effect when one’s entire experience has been focused
instead on individual, competitive models. We end up then pitting ‘teams’ against one
another, merely escalating the individualism to a higher level.
Human relationships more generally, too, mirror these cultural shifts. During the 20th
century terrorism—random violence directed precisely at innocent targets for no reason
other than to incite fear—has become an expected, if not accepted, mode of political action.
Weapons of mass destruction initially implemented during World War I have achieved
levels of sophistication no one imagined even 80 years ago. Mustard gas has evolved into
chemical and biological warfare, ‘Big Bertha’ has become the ‘smart bomb.’
On the bright side, wars of national liberation and determination have freed many
peoples from the ugly colonialism of the 19th century. However, frequently these newly-
created political units offer little tolerance of ‘outsiders’ in their midst; ethnic minorities
in any location become easy prey for intolerance and violence. National identity becomes
tied to membership in a particular tribe, membership based on ethnicity, on some sort of
biological or genetic connection often coupled with a specific religious orientation.
Nations like the U.S. and Canada suggest slightly different manifestations of this
malaise. Intentionally pluralistic, these cultures find themselves having a difficult time
negotiating among the various ethnic groups represented therein. While supposedly
welcoming all peoples, in fact these nations do tend to identify their members by a
resemblance to the founding nation—in each case, England. So while theoretically, a Latino
or someone of Asian or African ancestry is equally ‘American,’ as a matter of fact in the
U.S. they are frequently seen as ‘foreign’ (in the case of Latinos and Asians) and suffer still
the effects of rampant racism if of African ancestry. Debates over whether English should
be the national language indicate further a real uneasiness about national identity and
citizenship. The debate in Canada looks slightly different because one of the two founding
groups lost out to the other and yet did not quietly disappear from the scene. But the
question remains the same: Who is a ‘real’ Canadian? And what language must s/he speak?
Similar symptoms of disintegration appear in other forms of human relationships. The

nuclear family replaced the extended family in much of the West approximately 50 years
ago, due in large measure to social and professional mobility that has taken people to new
jobs far away from their childhood home. More recently the nuclear family finds itself in
peril and may not survive the end of this century, as women become less dependent on men
as breadwinners and as divorce becomes easier. Fewer and fewer people share households;
family units, even where intact, are considerably smaller than they were 100 years ago.
Because, perhaps, of workplace pressures, ‘home’ has become a haven or a refuge from
which one emerges only to go to work or school. ‘Neighbourhoods’ have been replaced by
‘households.’ Frequently one has little contact with the people on one’s block. Those who
formerly were neighbours are now strangers. Gated communities in the suburbs protect us
from the scariness of the inner city which we have abandoned to those too unfortunate to
escape. People complain of rudeness in the workplace and in the marketplace; basic human
civility seems all but absent from our world. And civility on the roads is at an all-time low.
‘Road rage’ abounds and random acts of violence occur with increasing frequency.
Substance and alcohol abuse continues despite constant warnings and programmes. A
dearth of ‘impulse control’ characterizes not simply childhood and adolescence, but
adulthood as well. While any simple and straightforward diagnosis of these symptoms is
of course perilous, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that human beings seem to be
experiencing a lack of connectedness with one another, an isolation from one another, an
absence of community.
Towards a Solution: Some Idealist-Inspired Reflections on Community
What has remained with me some ten years after having completed my Ph.D. and,
therefore, after ten years of attempting to develop my own philosophical perspective, is the
certainty that the human, moral, and political dilemmas of the 20th century are intimately
connected with our inability to articulate well any vision of community that preserves group
interests and promotes tolerance without resorting either to the annihilation or the
veneration of the individual. We have come to see the two— community and
individual—as mutually exclusive, and we believe that we must choose, therefore, between
them. The history of the 20th century, at least on this perhaps over-simplified view,
becomes the history of the triumph of the latter over the former.
It is easy to see why we believe that individuals are real. We see and experience human
beings as discrete, atomic entities. This view is so strong as to make contemplating any
alternative seem ridiculous. We have trouble imagining the medieval world wherein
individuals were loci of talents, each one special because contributing something different
to the whole. We no longer inhabit a world where our identity was as a child of God or a
brother/sister of Jesus. We no longer experience the universe as an ordered structure; we
no longer derive our identity from our place within it. We place much importance on
biological and genetic identity, and we view the individual as containing within it the whole
of the species. Such is the legacy of Hobbes, of Descartes, of modernity. And such is the
basis of Western liberal political philosophy as it manifests itself in the United States, in
Canada, and in much of Europe throughout the 20th century. Individuals are unique and
real; they possess rights and articulate claims. Government exists to protect the rights of
individuals. Governments are thus artificial and clearly not the fundamental reality.
This modem perspective has so succeeded that even our attempts to realize community
in the 20th century do nothing more than simply incorporate—and enlarge in scary
ways—the focus on the individual. In fascist Germany and Italy as well as in the communist
U.S.S.R. the state ‘replaced’ the unique individual of modernity but actually was no more
than that individual writ large, a super-individual. These political positions did not offer an
alternative to the individualism of the modem, liberal West. What they did was transfer
their understanding of the individual from the discrete biological human being to the state.
Mussolini articulated this position most thoroughly. For him the state was an organism; the
state was the individual. Each citizen was a part of that state. Some—most—were the arms
and the legs. Others—most likely women—were the heart. He, of course, was the brain.
The Nazi metaphor of ‘Fatherland’ played itself out a bit differently. But if Germany was
the ‘Father,’ the adult, then the German citizen was a child. And children are not ordinarily
understood to be unique individuals. The U.S.S.R. as ‘Mother Russia’ seems to have
operated on the same model, or at least to have employed the same metaphor in its (her)
self-understanding.
Finally, at the end of the 20th centmy, we see yet a third version of this individualism.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed the development in Europe of a number
of nation-states, often connected by common language but sometimes not, often
incorporating many different ethnicities. Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and
the U.S.S.R. serve as obvious examples. The ‘Balkanization’ of Europe refers to the late
20th-centuiy phenomenon of restoring at least some of these nation-states to their smaller
ethnic constituents. And so the U.S.S.R. is no longer; only the Ukrainian Republic, Latvia,
Lithuania, Estonia, Byelorussia, etc. remain. Yugoslavia no longer exists, nor does
Czechoslovakia. These transitions have been painful, and perhaps most painful where the
‘nation-state’ idea had most succeeded at integrating ethnic groups. These new nations are
tied by ethnic identity and, in some instances, by religion and language. Each seems to be
based on a biological understanding of ethnicity. And each ethnicity has now assumed the
position of an individual, i.e. individual Estonians are simply instantiations of THE
Estonian as a type, as an individual writ large. Where intermarriage among ethnicities most
succeeded, as in Yugoslavia, there the transition to smaller political units has been the
bloodiest and most painful. That is, where people tried hardest to overcome the view of
ethnicity as biological and genetic individuality and tried to generate a community that
transcended that view, there the political consequences have been most deadly. One can
be either a Bosnian or a Croatian or a Serb. Those identities become as distinct as any
individual identities; in fact, they end up defining individuals. Ethnic identity comes from
sharing some supposedly biological characteristics; indeed, we often use language like
‘sharing the same blood’ to denote ethnic identity.
That none of these alternatives has succeeded seems clear. The people(s) of the former
Yugoslavia have not succeeded in learning how to coexist because they have not yet
figured out how to understand ‘Bosnian,’ ‘Serb,’ ‘Croatian. ’ The Soviet Union could not
succeed in sustaining a single identity that suppressed so many different ethnicities because
it was unable to provide a coherent account of what that single identity might be. Instead,
it survived as long it did largely by brute force. Germany and Italy lost the philosophical
as well as the actual war, and now operate on a model akin to the rest of ‘liberal,’
individual-based Europe and the U.S. The U.S. struggles daily with the identity question;
unable to articulate a national identity, it remains plagued by interest group politics and an
‘us against them’ mentality conducive to violence and other forms of social deterioration.
Canada, better able than the U.S. to articulate some version of identity probably both
because of its closer ties to Europe and its negative identity as ‘not the U.S.,’ cannot
resolve the veiy old tensions between English-speakers and French-speakers. Separatism
is an ever-present spectre, threatening to destroy an already-tenuous national identity.
Thus, neither turning the individual into the only reality nor turning the community into
a super-individual has worked. In fact, each of those options has failed grievously. As the
20th century draws to a close with us no closer to peace than we were at its inception,
perhaps it is time to consider a different philosophical model. Perhaps it is time to attempt
to recover and rearticulate a model that never quite received a fair hearing in the first place.
Central to most versions of idealism is a dialectical method which maintains that
identity is a struggle which proceeds through history and through negation in history. Most
importantly, on this model identity is not fixed, not substantive. This fundamental insight
can help us begin to address the critical political issues dominating the close of the 20th
centuiy. The conceptualization of community and, thus, of identity for which I shall argue
in the remaining pages is one which is clearly inspired by the idealist tradition. Yet, as I
began to articulate it and sought to ground it in specifically idealist texts, I discovered that
it is nowhere easily to be found in any of the major idealist thinkers beginning with Hegel
himself. What I discovered was that my own struggles to conceptualize issues about
identity and community resulted much more directly from the work of Leslie Armour.
Armour has not only been an important thinker in the Anglo-American idealist tradition;
he first and foremost has taught a generation of us not simply how to make sense of some
serious and sophisticated philosophers but also how to begin to philosophize ourselves.
Specifically, in a course in social and political philosophy taught by Armour at the
University of Ottawa in 1978-79, he first introduced me to these issues of identity and
community. He produced detailed notes for that course, nearly 130 single-spaced pages,
the rereading of which motivates me to rethink and to tiy again to make sense out of
‘community.’ What follows are my initial reflections on what this different—and more
useful—view of community might look like. I hope here simply to begin a conversation
which will need considerably more development than the space of this essay allows.
Few of the usual suspects in any list of idealist thinkers since Hegel used the word
‘community.’ The term appears only three times in the index of Baillie’s translation of The
Phenomenology o f Mind, only twice in Miller’s version, Phenomenology o f Spirit? Like
Hegel, Bosanquet utilized “state” and “general will”;4 McTaggart preferred
“relationships.”5 T. H. Green at least employed the term “common good” from time to
time;6F. H. Bradley focused instead on “self-realization.”7Before Leslie Armour’s work,
the clearest idealist exposition of community, or at least the one which most frequently used
that expression, could be found in American idealist Josiah Royce.8 But that is not to say
that there is no evidence for ‘community’ in these other thinkers. In fact, all of the major
idealists are much concerned with questions of identity, of selfhood, of the individual. And
implicit in all of their analyses is the proposal that identity, selfhood, or individuation
cannot be achieved except socially, except, that is, in community.
An interesting irony appears in the philosophizing of the 19th century. Utilitarianism
in its formulations by both Bentham and Mill prided itself on seeking ‘the greatest good for
the greatest number,’ but in fact grounded itself in the experience and ontological primacy
of unique and atomic individuals. Idealism, in Hegel and in his British and American heirs,
claimed that ‘community’ did in fact enjoy an ontological status equivalent to that to
individuals, but focused almost exclusively on the language of ‘self-realization’ and ‘self-
actualization’ and the ‘individual.’ One might argue thus for the impact of romanticism on
German idealism.
Idealism is not, obviously, a monolithic theory. But the idealism of the Anglo-American
tradition which is of concern to us here is one grounded in the work of Hegel and which,
in all of its forms, offers a view of community according to which communities are real, are
the loci of individuation, self-knowledge, and freedom.
One might argue, in fact, that any ‘Hegelian’ theory of community is bound to be
derivative, as Hegel’s interests seemed to have been primarily systematic, i.e. metaphysical
and epistemological, rather than political. His claim that “the rational is the real and the
real is the rational” entails a complicated view of the relationship between knowledge and
reality as well as between appearance and reality. According to Hegel, we try to
understand, to appropriate, and to subdue the ‘world’ to ourselves; we shape the world into
our ideas, we idealize reality. For Kant, ‘our’ world is structured by ‘our ideas,’ but ‘our’
world is not the ‘real’ world. For Hegel, on the contrary, it is reality which we grasp
through our thinking. And so the development of human knowledge through human history
is the development of the self-consciousness or self-recognition of reality, the Absolute
Idea, Spirit. That development comes about through the free activity of individuals.
Freedom serves as the principle for sorting out and relating the ‘facts’ of history into
an intelligible and connected account. Furthermore, freedom becomes the ‘good,’ the end
towards which all is aiming. This freedom is concrete; it is found only in history and in the
experiences of individuals. Philosophy is the high point of this experience, for Hegel,
because it is in philosophizing that we ‘rationalize,’ we see how a collection of parts and
of individuals fits together to make sense. And we are freest when we accurately see and
‘think’ the very nature of reality. For Hegel human freedom is necessary for knowledge.
And, for Hegel, individuals have worth and value and are central to the knowing process,
although individual knowing serves to give us insight into the connectedness of reality, to
the importance of community. It would follow, then, that if we could grasp the concept of
‘community’ better through our thinking, then we would also be able to grasp its reality.
If we get our thinking right, we get the ‘reality’ right. And so my goal in this essay has been
to initiate a reconceptualizing of ‘community’ in order to get it and individuation, its
corollary, right.
What form might that reconceptualization take? How might we understand
‘community’ as something real and not merely as a sum of individuals? One way to begin
to answer these questions might be to propose that a community is not, first of all, a real
‘thing’ like a discrete atomic unit. Instead, one might argue that ‘community’ is a set of
relations, much in the spirit of the work of John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart. Possible sets
of relations include families, civic groups, clubs, churches, nations, ethnic groups. These
sets of relations we call community share relations within themselves and among
themselves. That is, there are relations within families. But there are also relations among
families. In addition, there are relations between families and other groups including clubs,
churches, and nations. These sets of relations called ‘communities’ develop their own
language and beliefs and ideals and customs and traditions. Sometimes different
communities have vastly different languages and beliefs and ideals and customs and
traditions. Other times they look quite the same. Obviously, there is a lot of overlap. For
example, a family within a nation ordinarily shares the same language as that nation. It
likely shares some of the same beliefs and customs as well. But not always. Communities
also develop distinguishing marks, ways in which they are unique despite the many areas
of overlap.
Furthermore, ‘community’ also signifies the site of individuation, the figurative ‘place’
where one can become oneself. This further determination expands and concretizes our
understanding of community. This move—to envision individuation as a product of and
thus, logically at least, secondary to community—has its origins in certain medieval
thinkers,9 disappears into the morass of modernity, and then resurfaces with the idealists.
Bradley argued for ‘self-realization,’ and Royce encouraged the development of ‘loyalty’
to a unique and particular cause; each was in fact looking for the conditions for the
possibility of individuation. And individuation happens through a process of negation, the
dialectical process contributed by the idealist tradition.
How this happens is not difficult to imagine. Consider, for example, a child. As a
newborn, a child is not in any recognizable sense a unique individual. S/he responds to
his/her environment much as one might expect any other baby mammal to respond. S/he
appears determined by instinctual reactions. But as a child grows and develops, his/her
reactions become more sophisticated, responding not merely to satisfy instinctual needs but
seeming to develop relationships— different relationships—with different members of the
household. Indeed, child development looks like a process of alternating identification and
rejection of the individual parents and, in fact, of the siblings and other members of the
extended family. Freud’s psychoanalytic version of this process is perhaps the most
dramatic. One need not think Freud is correct, however, to appreciate the idealist position.
One needs only observe adolescent behaviour within the family to think the idealists might
well be correct.
Our memberships in other communities work in similar ways. We share a core of
beliefs or customs or traditions, say, with our church. But we each find our own special
place within that church, sometimes in relation to the other members and sometimes in
relation to particular dogma which we reject or accept to a greater or lesser extent than do
the church elders.
This process becomes even clearer in our individual relationship with our nation-state.
There are many more opportunities for individuation within the nation because, first of all,
it is a very large community. Secondly, it is often quite comprehensive; it covers much
more of our life, but usually in a more distant way, than does our family. Not only does it
provide us with a language, with customs, habits, and beliefs, but also with laws and
political structures.
Furthermore, these various communities often negate one another and their individual
members must learn to negotiate the tensions that arise from their imperfect congruence.
The process is complicated and messy. But idealists have maintained throughout that the
process of individuation is enriched by having more possibilities for negation, by having,
that is, more communities within which to struggle.
So individuals become more unique to the extent that they inhabit more and different
communities within which they can relate to more and other unique individuals. Each of
them has a set of relations different from every other one; idealists like McTaggart have
actually claimed10 that to be an individual is in fact to be in a unique set of relationships.
Individuals become real within communities. But the community is only made visible and
can only exist through the individual. Each individual is an existential instantiation of
his/her particular communities. Individuals cannot exist apart from communities. Nor does
community exist apart from individuals each of whom stands in a unique set of relations
to the others and to the shared language, beliefs, customs, and habits of the community.
Individuals are valuable because each offers an absolutely unique perspective on the world.
And each is related to every other because each other also offers a unique perspective on
the same world.11They share a commonality as manifestations of the same reality but from
different perspectives.
This has been a very incomplete presentation of some very rudimentary reflections on
how to reconceptualize community. Obviously, such a reconceptualization entails a much
more thorough exposition and analysis of what idealists have called identity-in-difference.
At this point, however, we might want to return to our earlier concern. Supposing we
accept this reconceptualized ‘community. ’ How does that advance our understanding of the
reality of human existence at the end of the 20th century? How does that help us address
the fragmentation of the human community?
One might begin by looking to membership in various communities. In particular, one
might begin by tiying to determine whether in fact any communities are ‘natural.’ By
‘natural’ I do not mean necessary for the existence of individuals. Rather, many have
argued that at least some communities, including family and nation, ought to be based on
some sort of biological method of identification. I would suggest, on the contrary, that a
biological or genetic method of identification leads to some of the very problems we seek
to resolve. In particular, it defines ‘nation’ as members of an ethnic group determined by
blood alone. In recent years, that has led to the shedding of much blood in the former
Yugoslavia. Developments in our understanding of DNA do not corroborate such a view.
In fact, DNA studies indicate that ‘race’ is also far less genetic than we have often been
prepared to accept. One might well argue from DNA studies that ‘race’ is a political rather
than a biological category. If that is the case, then ethnicity as biology also becomes
questionable.
Language, it seems to me, might be a more fruitful candidate for understanding
communities and for developing means of adjudicating relationships within and without
them We all share a capacity for language. Some have argued that language is that which
even defines us as ‘human,’ is that which demarcates our largest community. What I would
like to suggest in closing is that perhaps we need to investigate language as one way also
to demarcate separate communities. Inasmuch as language acquisition is accessible to all,
it is one way that does not preclude tolerance of and communication with other
communities. Nevertheless, it demands an openness and a willingness to expend some
energy to foster good relationships among communities. Any ‘nation’ might use as its mode
of identification and differentiation its own particular language, but that does not mean that
smaller communities within the larger one could not retain a different language as long as
they were willing to learn both. This might also serve as a useful argument for those
seeking to impose language requirements on our students.
Obviously, much more philosophical work lies ahead of us in developing that
argument. Language can be a way of connecting to others and a way of overcoming the
sense of ‘otherness. ’ How exactly that might work out in practical terms, so as to overcome
as well some of the fragmentation of human experience, remains to be explored. Let this
serve merely as the beginning of that conversation.
Notes
1. (Princeton: Princeton Universty Press, 1977) 377.

2. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modem Memory (New York: Oxford University Press,
1975) 8.
3. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller ( London: Oxford University Press,
1952); The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Allen and Unwin,
1931).
4. In The Philosophical Theory of the State, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1923).
5. See John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, Vol. I (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1921); Vol. II ed. C.D. Broad (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
6. In both Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London: Longmans, Green and
Company, Ltd., 1941) and Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A.C. Bradley, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1883; 5th ed., 1907).
7. See Eihical Studies, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), in particular “Why
Should I Be Moral?”
8. This is evident in many of his works, especially later ones, including Race Questions,
Provincialism, and other American Problems (1908) (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press,
1967) and The Hope ofthe Great Community (Freeport, NY : Books for Libraries Press, 1967).
See also The Basic Writings ofJosiah Royce. ed. John McDermott (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1969).
9. The 13th-century Franciscan John Duns Scotus expresses especially well this particular view
of the nature of individuation. Interestingly enough, Josiah Royce studied carefully and was
influenced by the work of Scotus.
10. In The Nature of Existence.
11. The concept of the “same world” is both complicated and difficult. Space does not allow for
more than my acknowledgement that it is a concept which needs to be developed far better than
I have done here.
14 Religious Belief and Community
WILLIAM SWEET
Introduction
Some 20 years ago, in what he described as a “hopeful book,”1Leslie Armour noted the
presence of conflict and disorder throughout the world that had, at its basis, a crisis of
community. Matters seem to have changed little since then; indeed, the crisis appears to
have become more acute. It is obvious that many countries of the world are characterized
by religious, ethical or cultural diversity that borders on the divisive, and many of us live
in states where we find around us people of sometimes radically different opinions and
commitments. And so we might wonder whether it is possible to maintain, build, or
rebuild community in such a context?
One response has been to try to find ‘neutral ground’ and to leave matters on which
it seems impossible to come to any agreement outside of the arena of public policy and
debate. Thus, philosophical liberals, such as John Rawls2 and Richard Rorty, argue that,
in a culturally divided world, stability and the possibility of life together require that the
state must remain neutral concerning different ways of life and conceptions of the good,
and that religion—which is generally not neutral on such issues—must not intrude into
the public sphere. As Rorty puts it in his 1994 paper, “Religion as
Conversation-Stopper,”3we cannot “keep a democratic political community going unless
religious believers remain willing to trade privatization for a guarantee of religious
liberty” (3) and that “dropping reference to the source of the premises of [...]
arguments”—i.e., that they are one's religious convictions—“seems a reasonable price
to pay for religious liberty” (5).
This response has met with resistance both from religious believers and from others
who argue that there is no such neutral ground, that individuals should not—and, in any
case, cannot—restrict their deeply-held religious principles and values to a private
sphere, and that any attempt to exclude these principles and values is inconsistent with,
and destructive of, those very ideals that underlie life in community. Hendrik Hart,4 for
example, insists that we carry our ‘world views’ with us, and that there is nothing
inappropriate about this. He notes Hans-Georg Gadamer’s point that there can be no
interpretation outside of an interpretive context, and that (as Gadamer writes in Truth and
M ethod)5 the opposition to ‘prejudice’—where ‘prejudice’ “means a judgment that is
given before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined”6—is
itself a prejudice. But in a world in which there is such a diversity of what Rorty calls
‘final vocabularies,’7 is there any way of building or preserving community? Does the
existence of a multitude of ‘final vocabularies’ entail that the world views they express
are incommensurable with one another? And, if this is so, does it follow that people of
one community or discourse can say nothing to those of other discourses, and so they
might as well avoid contact with, or be indifferent to, others? And how should those who
profess religious belief act in such a context?
In this paper, I will argue that one can build community in a culturally diverse world,
that that community can be pluralistic and tolerant, and that religious believers have an
important role in building and extending it. To begin with, I will look at what community
is, and what kinds of conditions have to be present for organized social life to be possible.
In doing so, I draw on some insights into the nature of community that one finds in idealist
philosophers such as T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, and Leslie Armour. I will argue
that, despite the diversity of discourses and ways of seeing and understanding the world,
there are ways of bringing different ‘final vocabularies’ into contact, that there are norms
forjudging commitments, beliefs, and values as ‘true’ and ‘false,’ or as ‘appropriate’ and
‘inappropriate,’ and that these provide a starting point for building community. (I have
argued this elsewhere.8) I will then indicate what role religious belief—and religious
believers—have in this, and will also argue that the building of community is a rational
activity for which we can give grounds that hold, irrespective of one’s religious or
ideological commitments.
The Idea of Community
How is community possible in a culturally diverse world? I want to begin by saying a few
words about the idea of community.
A community, in a broad sense, is a group of individuals who may share history,
language, and culture (and perhaps religious faith), who engage in common practices,
and, hence, who have common interests and a common good. These practices, as Robert
Bellah says, “both define the community and are nurtured by it.”9Foremost among these
practices, as Leslie Armour notes, is the capability “of establishing and legitimizing
institutions.”10 These institutions may be legal, religious, political, and/or economic in
character, and it is through them that the members of that group express themselves, both
as individuals and as a collectivity.11 But there is at least one other feature that should be
added; community importantly involves loyalty—which suggests an allegiance of its
members to these institutions that goes beyond casual choice.12
How would one ‘build’ community where it does not already explicitly exist? (I am
not suggesting, of course, that all communities are ultimately ‘contractual,’ for all human
beings are already in some community.) What, in short, are the conditions for community
or even for cooperative action? Before one could live—and, perhaps, before one could
even cooperate—with others, some objective and material conditions must be met.
At the most elementary level, living and working with others requires the presence
of resources for subsistence, shelter and security, as well as the possibility of satisfying
not only other physical, but basic intellectual, moral, and spiritual, needs. At an equally
elementary level, the people present have to share or be capable of sharing a discourse
and sets of practices, and they must recognize that they have at least some interests, needs
and goals in common with, and that require or involve the participation of, others. They
must also recognize individually the superiority of some values to others, though they can
(at least, to begin with) disagree about which things are needs, about the importance of
particular interests and goals, and about which values are superior to others.
Religious Belief and Community 221
But there are other material or quasi-material sets of conditions that must exist, for
they are necessary for many of these elementary conditions to exist. First, the individuals
concerned must ‘recognize’ one another as beings with whom they can live and act and,
second (though this is not actually independent of the first), they must—or must be able
to— share a number of beliefs, attitudes, and opinions about the character of physical
reality (nature), what constitutes a basic human need, how one might or must satisfy these
needs, and so on. We might (following Bernard Bosanquet) call these ‘dominant ideas. ’13
It is important to note that the ‘dominant ideas’ and the kinds of beliefs that are
necessary for the existence of a community are not just casual beliefs. As idealists such
as Bosanquet point out, these ideas reflect features of the world (e.g., how it operates, its
regularities and irregularities) and about what human persons require as persons (e.g.,
how to live in the world, how to acquire certain material and non-material goods, and so
on). They are not purely contingent or arbitrary, and they are not the kinds of things that
people can lightly—if at all— choose to adopt, or not adopt, or abandon. They are the
kind of ideas which not only allow conscious and purposeful action, but which also
constitute part of a person’s sense of identity and which, if that person gave them up, she
would (as one might in conversation say) no longer be who she was before.
These ideas are, then, also ones of value, of right and wrong, of how one can expect
reality to function, and so on, and their dominance is shown in how one (regularly)
responds in new situations. Bosanquet mentions the story of “how a traveller in a railway
carriage undertook to detect the vocation of each of his fellow travellers from their
respective answers to a single question.” The question was: “What is that which destroys
what it has itself produced?” and a naturalist, so the story runs, revealed himself by the
answer, ‘vital force,’ a soldier replied ‘war,’ a scholar ‘Kronos,’ a journalist ‘revolution,’
and a farmer ‘a boar.’ Each’s answer revealed that traveller’s dominant ideas-i.e., that
person’s “general mental system.”14 For many of us today, our dominant ideas vary to
some degree, but many are shared (and must be so if communication is to be possible);
they would likely include ideas such as ‘person,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘state,’ ‘fairness,’ and so
on—even though they are not always foremost in our minds. And sometimes they are the
kinds of ideas that, while one may say that one does not or cannot share them with certain
people, one cannot actually do so without creating serious tensions in one’s epistemic
structure, if not falling into outright inconsistency. (For example, to take pains to treat
someone like a dog is still to recognize that they are not dogs.)
‘Dominant ideas’ are necessary for community to be possible—i.e., they are part of
the conceptual framework that is essential for action to occur (and life to be lived), and
they provide the guidelines or principles necessary for action to be effective and for its
goals to be reached and perdure. Indeed, it is only through sharing (at least some of) them,
that there can be conversation or discussion among individuals. It is obvious that these
dominant ideas are not given in their entirety and ab initio. Certain ideas come to be
dominant over time—think of the ‘ideas’ of human rights and human dignity which, even
if not always respected, are characteristic of most contemporary ethical and political
discourse. Nevertheless, these ideas are not arbitrary. They arise in response to features
of the world in which we all live. In general, then, unless there are some such ideas,
unless there is the recognition of others as other persons, and unless one knows or has
assurance that these ideas are shared, community cannot exist. It is important to realize
that the dominant ideas and beliefs from which individuals start are not just an
individual's ideas or beliefs, but those of members of a community, and that our
communities of origin provide the epistemological and moral environment in which our
basic beliefs and our dominant ideas exist. These ideas, and the institutions in which they
are reflected, then, provide a basis in which individuals can understand others and
cooperate with them. It is because of this that dominant ideas have a power over those
who have them, and people exhibit a commitment or ‘loyalty’ to what they stand for,
which is generally not based on an explicit choice. Thus, individuals can be called out of
their private concerns by something that is in them and yet not reducible to their own
subjective interests and beliefs.
Now, for individuals or groups of persons to participate in the constitution of
community and to act together with others, there must be not only shared dominant ideas,
but at least a commensurability, if not an identity, of at least some beliefs—though
eventually even more than this is necessary. (For example, in discussions of and in
making appeals to human rights, we have to have some agreement about who has them,
what they are, what they mean, and what follows from them, or else the whole discourse
of rights becomes senseless.) And the sharing of these beliefs is not, I would suggest,
something that is simply the product of consensus, for some of these beliefs hinge on facts
about reality (e.g., material conditions necessary for life and growth, the nature of various
characteristics of the human mind, the human desire for knowledge and understanding,
and more), about rationality, and about the nature and value of others. (If this is correct,
it shows that human beings do share quite a bit, and that whatever incommensurabilities
there might be are rather small or local. Consequently, even where there are differences,
either these will not prove to be fundamental or they will be abandoned or overcome.)
It is, of course, true that, at times, one group of people will not be able to go far in
communicating with another, for sometimes the groups know too little about one another,
or the circumstances of building community have become rather complex, or discussion
just stops, and so the decision to engage in common action may be postponed or
reconsidered, and will have to start as if from afresh. (Here we might think of the
difficulties consequent on conflict between or among different ethnic groups in the same
area.) But there are successes. Think of the achievements of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in the Republic of South Africa.15 Since there is much in experience that is
common among potential interlocutors and that would give rise to dominant ideas that are
or could be shared, there is a basis for the recognition of common interests, for
communication, and for the building of community.
Some Implications of this Analysis of Community
This analysis of the conditions involved in community is not only compatible with cultural
diversity, but takes diversity to be an inevitable feature of community. To begin with, it
recognizes that each of us builds community out of his or her ‘particular’ dominant ideas,
basic commitments, and beliefs about ourselves and about the world. (This is, perhaps,
obvious, since we always act out of our beliefs, and cannot help but do so.) And since
individuals do live and develop in different geographical, economic, social, and
political circumstances, it is obvious that different groups of people can have different
attitudes, values, and views of the world, and that many of the attitudes and views that
now exist have changed (and will continue to change) over time. Moreover, it is clear that
no single set of ideas, beliefs, commitments, and practices can exhaust all human
possibilities, and so it would be inconceivable that there is exactly one ultimate and
universal set of practices that ideally constitutes community.16 One implication of this is
that each person, then, must be open not only to the possibility—but to the
likelihood—that there is a, or some, ‘truth’ in those of other traditions and cultures. A
further implication is that it is through seeing such differences that we are better placed
both to see what we do share and to understand our individuality. Diversity, then, is a
positive feature of community, and there is no reason to believe that a single community,
even a nation state, could not include a range of cultural, ethnic, or religious traditions.
Nevertheless, while this view encourages each person to be open to diversity and to
the ‘truth’ in the views of others, this does not mean that one cannot reasonably prefer one
view to another. Nor is being open to others simply a way of saying that one should be
open to the possibility that one will find ‘one’s’ truth in ‘another’s’ view. It is, rather, to
recognize that there are truths that appear in a number of discourses. There can be, then,
certain core ideas or beliefs which are true or authoritative for all. (Even anti-
foundationalists such as Kai Nielsen have argued that there are at least some ‘moral
truism s,’17 and, as Richard Rorty notes, the fact that some arguments don’t convince
everybody18doesn’t mean that they are not good arguments.)
This analysis of community is an ‘objectivist’ (i.e., non-subjectivist) view, as it
describes, in general outline, features necessary to life in community that are not
determined merely by the will of the subject. To begin with, it starts from what are
scarcely disputable claims about the world—that the physical environment, the kind of
political association and the kind of economic and technological development that exist,
and so on, are things that influence how one understands oneself and others, and that lead
to and colour the kind of community one can build. (The level of technology in a society,
for example, influences basic attitudes and beliefs about oneself and others and, in turn,
the extent to which one can be in community with even those with whom one is not in
daily contact.) Moreover, it supposes that communities are composed of human persons,
and that communities must respond to certain objective features about persons, such as
their material needs (e.g., for food and shelter), their emotional needs (e.g., for friendship
and other kinds of affection), their intellectual and spiritual needs, and their desires for
personal growth and self-development. And though the ‘recognition’ of others as
members, or potential members, of a community is something that, again, takes place
over time, the account I have outlined above suggests that this is not an arbitrary or
random activity (even if it is something that is not explicit and of which we may not be
fully conscious). Think, for example, of the process that led, in the early twentieth
century, to the legal recognition of women as legal persons.
It is true that, in some measure, this account of the conditions for community reflects
a theory of ‘human nature’ or a metaphysics. It recognizes that there are others ‘like us,’
who have the needs and desires that we have, and who have the capacity for flourishing
and developing as we do, and with whom we can be called to act. In fact, one might say
that there is here some echo of a classical view that establishes community on the
existence of a shared good and on ‘the’ nature of the individual. But it is, I would hold,
inevitable that any account of community would have some underlying principles and, in
any event, it is important to recognize that the preceding account does not reflect an
ahistorical or an a priori account of community or of the person, nor does it presume to
provide an exhaustive or essentialist view of either. Indeed, it challenges the metaphysical
presuppositions of many contractualist views which reflect a too narrow and too abstract
view of the person, and a too artificial account of the establishment of community. As
noted above, community has an influence over us, not because it is based on an explicit
or implicit agreement, but because it is an idea “embedded in [...] dispositional ideas,
recollected in shared [common] experiences, expressed through moral convictions, which
shapes all the institutions.”19
There is, then, a close relation between the individual and the community. Yet this
relation is not static. Because communities are also ‘in the world,’ as the world changes,
so communities must respond. It is because of the character of this relation of individuals
to the social environment that they can be called out of themselves by their own tradition
to extend that community and, in doing so, to work towards a more comprehensive one
to which they will continue to have a commitment or loyalty.
Given the characteristics and conditions of community noted above, the extent to
which the material and non-material needs can be satisfied is a criterion for having a
rational preference for one model of community over another. In other words, we can say
that it is reasonable to participate in building it, and that some views of community and
some ideas and beliefs (and, presumably, sets of practices within communities) are
superior to others. This is not to say that one may be able to ‘prove’ the preferability of
one kind of community over others, starting from a set of abstract first principles (e.g.,
as in a classical foundationalism). Nevertheless, one could say that a preference for a
particular community is a, or even the, most reasonable option (e.g., where the standard
for rational belief is that which would suffice in a courtroom, following the principles of
the common law). Such a claim does not require appealing to a ‘neutral’ ground of
justification, but it does suppose that there are some fundamental principles or common
ground which individuals from diverse backgrounds can share and which can be used to
establish a preference as rational.
This view of community is, I would hold, a liberal one, and if the preceding arguments
stand, it is one that is not only consistent with, but which recognizes and promotes,
pluralism. Although communication and working together require a sharing or a
commensurability of dominant ideas, there are important differences among individuals,
and the development of the dominant ideas of a new community must reflect an
adjustment in response to these differences. Community will have an open and pluralist
character. Still, this view is not an individualist one, for at least some of the dominant
ideas have their home within communities, and so this relation between individuals and
community may betray a certain metaphysic that will make some uncomfortable.
There is, of course, more to community (and to what must exist for a call to build it
to be effective) than has been covered in the preceding remarks. Still, the above account
is both largely descriptive and has a normative force. For example, these ‘conditions’ are,
to at least some degree, already met in the various communities that one finds; they are
the conditions that groups of intellectually mature human beings have to meet or respect
in order to build, or maintain themselves as a socially independent group of persons
capable of establishing and legitimating institutions. And since these conditions are
already present in culturally diverse societies, not only is it possible to speak of
community in a pluralistic society, but one can imagine building a broad—an
international or a world-wide—community, and calling on others to participate in this
despite the apparently different basic vocabularies and different sorts of dominant ideas
that they possess. For, at the root of these vocabularies and ideas, are the material
conditions of community, the presence of certain shared ‘dominant ideas,’ and the
recognition of one another as beings with whom one can act and work and pursue a good.
It is here that the development of a common discourse, discussion, and ‘building’
community would start.
Still, one might wonder what role religious believers can have in the building of such
a community. Doesn’t religious belief exclude or preclude the ‘openness’ that seems to
be characteristic of building community in a culturally diverse context? A detailed answer
to these questions is not possible here—a precise response would depend on a number
of empirical issues, particular to the specific situations believers find themselves in.
Nevertheless, it is I think possible to sketch out a view of the role of religious believers
that is consistent with both the preceding account of community, and with the demands
of religious belief. In the next few pages, then, I will draw on the example of the Christian
religious tradition to illustrate how believers might be called to act in a world of ethnic,
religious, and cultural diversity—though I would hold that many of the conclusions I will
arrive at could draw on other religious and humanist views as well.
Community and the Place of Christian Religious Belief
So how does religious belief or faith fit in with this account of community? More
specifically, what place can or must one’s religious belief have in building community in
a culturally diverse environment? Before turning to these questions, it is necessary to say
a few words about what is meant by the term ‘religious belief. ’
Observation of, and reflection on, religious belief and practice suggest that, although
religious belief involves intellectual assent, the beliefs to which one assents are not only
descriptive, but have an expressive role or function. They describe a relation to this world
and not just to that which is beyond the empirical, observable, and material, but they also
indicate one’s disposition (or intention) to act in a way that is part of a larger set of
practices. Moreover, it is through this larger set of practices that one makes sense of, or
understands, the world, and is able to act in the world.
There is a close relation between the descriptive and normative character of religious
belief. For Christians, their beliefs are about human needs and interests as well as the
divine-4God.’ But these beliefs involve ideas that are also basic to the believer’s noetic
structure, and may therefore constitute a fondamental part of the believer’s identity. One’s
religious belief is not, then, just a choice, an opinion, an ‘option,’ or an ‘attitude.’ It has
a normative and imperative character that reflects his or her understanding of what reality
is.
Thus, the obligatory ‘force’ of one’s belief depends on dominant ideas about what
God is, what God’s plans are, and what God expects of humanity. (For the believer, this
is not just a matter of private opinion, but of what is true. And so, one believer can
challenge others when they do not act in accord with their faith-and not just for
inconsistency, but for acting wrongly.) Furthermore, the obligatory force of the dominant
ideas and the beliefs that are part of religious belief involves not only the transcendental,
but the temporal—the commitments, needs and interests of human beings. (For the
Christian, these ‘dominant ideas’ include not only ‘God,’ ‘Jesus and Jesus’s mission,’
‘faith,’ the ‘divine,’ and ‘the spiritual life,’ but also ‘health,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘love’ and
‘justice’—which include friendship, cooperation, forgiveness, compassion, the promotion
of peace— ‘moderation in one’s life,’ ‘joy,’ and so on.)
These dominant ideas, and the related beliefs to which the believer appeals, are
reflected in institutions and public practices—religious and other, more general, social
institutions—that are part of the environment in which believers live. This institutional
dimension of religious belief is important because it provides a public representation of
the dominant ideas, and it reinforces the obligatory force of these ideas and of that belief.
(In factj some such as Robert Bellah have argued that religion—both in the institutional
sense and in the sense of providing a way of understanding the world and a ‘second
language’ for grounding basic commitments—is necessary in order to build
community.20) There is, then, a basic relation between the institutions and practices, and
the belief or commitment of individual believers.
Given these characteristics of religious belief, it should be no surprise that one’s
belief, and the institutions in which it is manifest, inspire—but also require—loyalty. This
loyalty indicates a trust and a willingness to persevere in the practice, to keep faith and
to act—to go ‘through thick and thin.’ It has such a hold over believers that, as Bosanquet
would say, if one gave it up, one would no longer be who he or she was.
Dominant ideas, including such a ‘trust,’ underpin the whole of the believing
community—they indicate what is necessary to sustain it, and also where the community
is (or should be) going. Since religious belief is a practice or a set of practices that
involves a disposition to act, and since the ‘dominant ideas’ which are present in religious
beliefs, involve commitment and must be put in practice, religious belief clearly involves
acting towards an end—which, for the Christian, is participation in the building of a
community. Belief involves acting on one’s belief and acting out o f that belief. This is
explicitly reflected in the Gospel message in Christianity, which calls on believers,
individually and collectively, to ‘go out to all nations,’21 to act in solidarity with others,
and to work towards the realization of ‘the kingdom of God.’22 To fail to act on one’s
belief is at the very least inconsistent, if not to show that one does not actually believe
what one claims to believe. Religious belief, then, reflects a form of life that not only
constitutes a community, but is oriented towards extending that community.
Now, it is a fundamental feature of Christian religious belief that believers are called
on to build not only community, but a community that is open to others. But the
community that is to be built is not (just) a community of Christians, nor is it necessary
that those who are to be part of it must become Christian (though, admittedly, this seems
to be preferred). After all, many of the values, principles, and dominant ideas that underlie
this community, while recognized by Christianity, are not, believers hold, uniquely
Christian values. While the dominant ideas of Christians are principles fundamental to
Christian life, many of them are fundamental to life in any community. They are ideas
which respond to human needs, which reflect interests and goods that are shared with
others, and which include among them a conception of a common good such as the value
of leading a fully human life. It is for this reason that a number of Christians (e.g., Jacques
Maritain23) hold that such ideas and values could serve as a basis for a broad national, or
even international, community.
The dominant ideas present in this Christian conception of community, then, by no
means make it a closed system. The Christian imperative to build community involves
a discourse and practices that are bound up with other (e.g., ethical and empirical)
discourses and practices that themselves change or develop over time, and so it must to
some extent be able to reflect them. (Admittedly, this assumes a certain
‘commensurability’ among the various discourses or practices that one finds in a
culturally diverse environment but, if arguments I have given elsewhere24 stand, this is
plausible.) Moreover, the ideas and the interests reflected within Christianity are
themselves not all absolute and unchanging. In living in the world and with others,
believers may find themselves being called out of their present views to reflect on (and,
as appropriate, ‘invent’ new) ‘structures of meaning’25 so that they can better take
account of, and more fully grasp, both the changing environment in which they live and
the infinite reality that is God—though there are of course principles or values that control
what kinds of new ‘structures of meaning’ are appropriate. Finally, given the ‘infinity’
that is part of the Christian conception of the divine, and given the physical and cultural
diversity in the world, it is clear that no finite community can instantiate all possible
legitimate social, cultural, and religious institutions. This Christian model of community
is open ended. Not only does it not require uniformity, but it anticipates diversity.26
Indeed, more than many non-religious models of common life, it allows for dominant
ideas and a conception of the good that include a recognition of the spiritual.
Still, this diversity is not incompatible with the unity that is implicit in the very idea
of community. It is attaining such an equilibrium of unity and diversity that, no doubt,
Jacques Maritain had in mind in describing his vision of a pluralistic yet Christian
political community (see his Man and the State and Integral Humanism), where a
leadership role would be played by a multiplicity of ‘civic fraternities,’ founded on
freedom and inspired by the virtues of Christianity, but where such groups would not
necessarily exercise political power and where there would be a recognition of, for
example, cultural diversity and difference of religious conscience. Although pluralistic,
this account of the place of Christian religious belief in building community is compatible
with Christian orthodoxy. And so, the openness that is characteristic of this community
does not entail that, to build it, one must give up or move away from one’s faith. Building
community, like believing itself, is not done in a vacuum. In fact, the religious believer
engages in the building of community ‘out o f his or her dominant ideas or, broadly
speaking, out of the system that constitutes his or her belief.
One model of how those having a religious commitment can cooperate and build
community with others who do not share the same ‘final vocabulary’ is reflected in the
dialogue that has taken place, particularly in the latter part of the 20th century, under the
name of ‘ecumenism.’ The ecumenical movement—and those who more generally
promote inter-Christian, inter-religious (e.g., Christian-Buddhist, Hindu-Christian,27 and
Muslim-Christian), and religious-atheist (e.g., Christian-Marxist) dialogue—aim at
“promoting cooperation and better understanding among different religious
denominations.” But the objective is not (as some ecumenists seem to suggest) simply to
understand one another or even just to find a way for individuals to come to a consensus
about what is important and what is not. The aim is to promote cooperation— and for this
to be effective, individuals must, at least in principle, be able to come to recognize,
despite the diversity of expressions and elaborations of belief in different cultures and
communities, that their respective traditions reflect shared or shareable insights and
concerns about what is fundamental to the human condition. The development of the
notion of ‘inculturation’ has been particularly helpful here. If certain truths can be seen
as inculturated, then it makes sense to hold that those outside of a tradition or set of
practices can recognize its positive values—i.e., those that enrich human life and
culture—as objective values, and yet which are open to further articulation—which “lay
bare the seeds of the Word.”28 (Such a process also provides an occasion for one to
rethink and to come better to understand one’s own faith and values. It is in becoming
aware of what the interlocutors share and in cooperating, ecumenism holds, that all will
be able to live more frilly.29)
The way in which many Christians see their faith and what is expected of them is quite
compatible therefore with the existence of, and with an obligation to build, a pluralist
community. And ecumenism, which seeks a unity that is consistent with diversity and
difference, has had some success. To date, people of sometimes quite diverse
backgrounds and traditions have met and have, in varying degrees, found common ground
on which they have been able to build. Still, it is important to note that a model of how
to build community does not imply or entail relativism or subjectivism, or taking one’s
religious (or non-religious) commitments any less seriously.
While Christians are called on, by their faith, to build such a community, this does not
mean that building community is something that is to be determined by themselves alone
and only on their own terms. It can be justified, and justified by reference to values and
ideals that are not simply internal to their religious traditions. We can see this by noting
some aspects of the preceding analysis of community.
First, the imperative to build community is a ‘rational* activity and one which can
be defended by reasoned argument. Reason has a role in the believer’s life, not only in
articulating one’s beliefs clearly and consistently (e.g., ensuring that they are consistent
with certain facts about the world) and in helping to find areas of agreement with others,
but also in discerning when one must change or modify the explicit opinions and beliefs
that one has. As I have argued in detail elsewhere,30 the articulation of our religious
beliefs—what they are and what they mean—is generally influenced by phenomena like
our understanding of the world and how it operates, the values dominant in our society,
and our basic moral intuitions, and so on. And so, it may turn out that some of one’s
putative ‘religious’ beliefs may be inconsistent (with facts or with other beliefs) or vague,
or ambiguous, and that one may have to change or modify them. Consequently, the
believer should be, on the one hand, something of a fallibilist, in some measure generous
and open in how he or she deals with ‘other-believers’ and non-believers, and prepared
to reconsider or compromise on some issues—in the present case, on one’s views on how
to go about building or maintaining community. But, on the other hand, if challenged
about the character of this community that they are called on to build, believers need not
retreat into a position of claiming that their view is just true ‘for them.’ Because their
views on community are rooted in facts about the world and about human beings and,
therefore, are to some degree, fallibilistic, they are also open to being defended rationally.
Second, we almost invariably find insights and truths in other cultures, and these
insights and truths sometimes help us better to understand our own beliefs and how to act
on them. This is because, presumably, the meaning and truth of one’s beliefs involve
more than just seeing their place in the system of beliefs one holds; their meaning and
truth are also determined by facts about a world in which people of many different
traditions and cultures live. Thus, even though the insights of other cultures might be
expressed in diverse ways (due to different historical circumstances and conditions), so
far as they reflect a world and a reality which human beings share, it is possible to
construct standards fo r community that cross religious and cultural boundaries and
putative final vocabularies.
Third, on the preceding account of religious belief and community, the imperative to
build community is not wholly contextual or subjective. It is true that the source of this
imperative is, for the believer, ‘religious’; at least some of the ideas and values that lead
believers to build and extend community are to be found in their faith. Indeed, the
‘dominant ideas’ of this community, and the conception of the good reflected in it, are
features of one’s ‘spiritual home.’ But this imperative also reflects the characteristics and
needs of human beings, determined in large part by features of the world in which they
live. There is, then, an objective character to this imperative, and this imperative is
important, particularly if one is to be called on to sacrifice, and perhaps even to die, for
the community. For if one were willing to make such a sacrifice, it is implausible, pace
Rorty,31 that she would think that the underlying imperative is just a matter of historical
contingency; surely he would be convinced that it was true.
We see, therefore, that in Christianity there is an imperative to work towards the
establishment of a community. This obligation to build community follows on the
dominant ideas and values characteristic of one’s faith, but it also reflects non-religious
principles and values and is rationally defensible. One can speak here, then, of both
religious and rational grounds for community. And one can defend this without having to
put aside one’s religious views.
Therefore, on this model, the Christian believer can envisage—and can have an
obligation to participate in the building of—a community that is both pluralistic and
reflects Christian values. What precise form such a community would take depends
largely on the concrete circumstances in which individuals find themselves and from
which they would begin. But, given arguments made earlier in this paper, one can say that
there is no need, and no reason, to put aside one’s Christianity before engaging in such
a task.
Strategies for Religious Believers in Building Community
In the preceding sections I argued not only that building community in a culturally diverse
world is possible, but that Christian religious belief calls on the believer to build a
community that is open and pluralistic, that this belief has an important role in the
obligation to act in this way, and that this is a kind of community whose principles are not
only intelligible to others, but which are capable of rational justification. But what can
Christian believers do specifically to build community with other believers and with non
believers? A few brief comments might be appropriate here.
I have suggested above that, when religious believers are called on to build
community—to help in the construction of ‘the kingdom of God on earth’—they are
inspired and supported by the dominant ideas and notion of a common good that are part
of their faith. And these are, as noted earlier, such ideas as love, compassion, justice, and
peace, but also ideals of ‘a truly human life,’ ‘flourishing,’ ‘fairness,’ ‘justice,’
‘cooperation,’ and so on.
An initial step in building community is to try to find or to construct a discourse
through which people can communicate with one another. This requires discerning the
principles or dominant ideas shared by one’s interlocutors. In establishing such a
discourse, believers could begin by trying to discern the particular beliefs of their
interlocutors concerning the world and about the place of people ‘in’ that world (e.g., by
determining what human needs are). These beliefs about society, political and economic
reality, the level of technology, and so on, are rooted in a reality that, while it cannot be
understood without reference to one’s beliefs, ideas, and practices, is independent of
them. Discussion and cooperation can start here.
Alternatively, given that the beliefs that people have are not exclusively religious,
there may be other ‘points of access’ that one shares with others—e.g., moral beliefs. And
the believer could look here, too, to find common ground. Believers must be open; they
must exhibit patience and humility. But since believers hold that the basis for their actions
and their commitment is something objective and non-arbitraiy—expressed in truths and
principles that lie at the core of their religious belief—they can assure themselves and
others that the model of community that is proposed is not just the product of consensus
or of determining what to do in light of a Rawlsian ‘wide reflective equilibrium.’ The
community is not, in other words, simply based on agreement or consensus; thus, it does
not leave the door open to all sorts of complications—such as the adoption of vicious
principles.
More concretely—and as Jacques Maritain, for example, would argue—the preceding

accounts of religious belief and community involve acting in solidarity, for economic
justice, and for the acknowledgment and respect of human rights. Indeed, community
requires substantial human rights—by which I mean, not the narrow set of rights
acknowledged by individualist liberalism, but something like those elaborated in the
United Nations Declaration of 1948, and in the subsequent covenants arising out of it.
These are necessary not only for community, but for discourse and for any inquiry into
values.
The preceding remarks provide a few ideas of how it is possible for individual
believers to participate in the development of community. It envisages constructing
opportunities or occasions for dialogue and the development of a measure of humility and
a willingness to learn. Through acting in this way, believers can build a community that
is animated by their faith, but which reflects not just religious but also general ethical
concerns and empirical facts. This community would be an ‘open society’ and, even
though believers may not be required to support a particular kind of political regime,
these principles and values suggest that the community to be built would normally be a
democratic one which recognizes human rights and human dignity. And so, despite the
‘crisis of community’ that one finds in the world, the Christian believer can have some
confidence that such a society, and solidarity with others, are possible.
Conclusion
Building, rebuilding, or just maintaining community in a culturally diverse world is not

an easy matter, and it is all the more difficult at a time when, in many economically
developed countries, beliefs concerning principles and values, and even concerning
empirical matters, are frequently considered to be simply personal preferences.
Nevertheless, building community is not a fruitless enterprise; one can, I have argued,
hold that community is possible in a world of multiple basic vocabularies and
commitments, and that the community envisaged can be a (moderately) pluralistic one.
I have suggested that believers can participate in building community without
abandoning, or putting aside, their faith. Indeed, it is one’s faith that often animates this
activity. Religious belief is not just a matter of intellectual assent to propositions, but
involves engaging in certain practices and showing a disposition to act in certain ways
under the guidance of dominant ideas and beliefs. One’s basic commitments, beliefs, and
dominant ideas cannot, then, be separated from praxis—for the believer, faith cannot be
separated from works.
These ideas and beliefs are normative and they also reflect a kind of loyalty—a
‘friendship’ or allegiance to them that goes beyond simple choice. Moreover, because
these ideas and beliefs are also a community 's beliefs, it is not simply up to the individual
to determine for him or herself what they mean, what they require, and how and when
they are binding. And so the view I propose here is not individualistic.
The call to build community involves an openness to others. Indeed, it is obligatory
for the Christian religious believer to work towards the realization of such a community
together with other believers and with non-believers. This task is possible, as I have
argued, because the ‘dominant ideas’ and the common good which generally (and, in the
case of Christianity, typically) constitute part of religious belief and to which the religious
believer appeals in acting are ideas that are or can be shared. One model of this way of
building community is ecumenism, and ecumenical dialogue shows how people and
groups of people might come to work with others in a way that recognizes the values in
other perspectives and that is open to change, but which is also consistent with Christian
religious belief.
The ways in which one might go about building community may legitimately vary.
Sometimes ‘sentimental education’ or appeals to self-interest or consistency will be
fruitful. But, given the character of dominant ideas and beliefs, there is also a ‘rational’
element whereby one can explain and give arguments for what one believes, for how one
can be called to act on this belief, and for why some commitments or trusts are preferable
to others.
To build community, then, religion need not, should not, and cannot be excluded from
the public sphere. Even though the source of the enthusiasm to build community may lie
in distinct and even opposing ideologies, faiths, and commitments, the sentiment is
common and there is common ground. As Hendrik Hart notes, in Search fo r Community
in a Withering Tradition, many believers and non-believers “share a deep respect for [...]
the call to serve the renewal of creation and of human life.”32Despite the “divided state
of humanity, the alienation across ideological abysses, and the bitterness between moral
or political camps,”33 then, there need be no cause for despair. Our hope lies in the fact
that we do or can share ideas, commitments, beliefs, and reasons and arguments with
others. And even in these anti-foundationalist days, the ‘reason’ that many defenders of
religion have rejected, and the ‘religion’ that has been marginalized by those who are
secular, may both yet prove to be keystones in building community.
Notes
1. The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community (Ottawa, ON: Steel Rail, 1981 ) ix.
2. For Rawls’ views on ‘liberal neutrality,’ see his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993) 190-200. For a contrary view, see William Galston, Liberal Purposes:
Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1991).
3. Common Knowledge, 3, No. 1 (Spring 1994) 1-6.
4. See Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, Anti-foundationalism, Faith and Community
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), Chs. 1 and 2.
5. Truth and Method [Wahrheit und Methode], translation edited by Garrett Barden and John
Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
6. Gadamer, Truth and Method 240.
7. For this notion of final vocabularies, see Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 189ff; Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 203ff.
8. See William Sweet, “Discourse and the Possibility of Religious Truth,” Sophia, 37 (1998) 72-
102.
9. See Robert N. Bellah [et al.] Habits of the Heart: individualism and commitment in American
life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 333.
10. The Idea of Canada 150.
11. The Idea o f Canada 156.
12. Thus, I would distinguish ‘communities’ from ‘associations.’
13. See Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State, ed. Gerald F. Gaus and William Sweet
(South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2001) 166ff, and the discussion o f ‘appercipient mass’
in Psychology of the Moral Self(\%91\ in The Collected Works o f Bernard Bosanquet, ed.
William Sweet (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1999), Vol. 8 ,42fF.
14. See Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State 166.
15. See, for example, Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning o f Apartheid's Criminal
Governance, by Kader Asmal, Ronald Suresh Roberts, and Nelson Mandela, 2nd ed. (New
York: St. Martins Press, 1998).
16. See Leslie Armour’s development of this point in The Idea o f Canada 127.
17. See God and the Grounding of Morality (Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press, 1991 ) 3-4,
9,37,80,161.
18. SeeRorty, “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality,” On Human Rights: The Oxford
Amnesty Lectures, 1993, ed. Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (New York, Basic Books, 1993)
111-134, at 123-124.
19. The Idea of Canada 127.
20. Bellah [et al.] Habits o f the Heart, e.g., 247-248.
21. See, for example, Matthew 28:19: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (King James Version).
22. See Colossians4:11: “These are the only men [...] among my fellow workers for the kingdom
of God, and they have been a comfort to me” (Revised Standard Version); the notion of the
‘kingdom of God on earth’ has been understood in Catholicism as the ‘Church of Christ.’ (See
the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation of the ecumenical council, Vatican II, Dei
Verbum, article 17; see also James V. Schall, “From Catholic ‘Social Doctrine’ to the
‘Kingdom of God on Earth’,” Communio, 3 [1976] 284-300; Repr. Readings in Moral
Theology, No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A.
McCormick [New York: Paulist Press, 1986] 313-330.)
23. See such work as Humanisme intégral (Paris: Fernand Aubier, 1936, in two translations: True
humanism, tr. M.R. Adamson [London: Bles, 1938]; Integral Humanism: Temporal and
Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom, tr. Joseph W. Evans [New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1968]), Principes d'une politique humaniste (New York: Éditions de la maison
française, 1944), and Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
24. See my “Discourse and the Possibility of Religious Truth,” op. cit. and “Religious Belief,
Meaning, and Argument,” Canadian Society for the Study of Religion Annual Congress,
Memorial University, St John’s, NF, 3 June 1997.
2 5 .1 owe this notion to Professor H. Daniel Dei of the Universidad de Moron, Argentina.
26. See Armour, The Idea of Canada 141-142.
27. See, for example, Hindu-Christian Dialogue; Perspectives and Encounters, ed. Harold
Coward (Maiyknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989) and Anand Amaladass, “Hindu-Christian
Dialogue Today” and Klaus K. Klostermaier, “Introduction: The Hindu-Christian-Science
Trialogue,” Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin, 10, 1997; see also the journal/magazine,
Current Dialogue published by the World Council of Churches.
28. Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church (Ad Gentes), (Promulgated by Pope Paul VI on
7 December 1965), article 11; see also Redemptoris Missio, John Paul D, (On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Conciliar Decree Ad Gentes) 7 Dec. 1990, articles 28,56.
2 9 .1develop these ideas in more detail in my “Value Inquiry, Cultural Diversity, and Ecumenism,”
in The Future of Value Inquiry, ed. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001)
177-88.
30. In Chs. 6 and 7 of Anti-foundationalism, Faith, and Community.
31. See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity 189.
32. Searchfor Community in a Withering Tradition (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1990)235.
33. Op. cit. xi.
15 Cultural Diversity and National
Identity in Canadian Political
Philosophy
DAVID LEA
Introduction
In 1981, Leslie Armour published The Idea o f Canada and the Crisis o f Community.1In
many ways it was a very prescient work; one which anticipated a decade of
communitarian/liberal debate which had previously lain dormant beneath a protracted
postwar intellectual obsession with the resolution of the opposing claims of utilitarian and
deontological theory. With respect to events in the wider political rather than intellectual
world, one can reread The Idea o f Canada and find answers and a response to the real
crisis of the Canadian national community which occurred a decade later as Canada
witnessed a second Quebec referendum, the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords,
and a widening gulf between East and West, French and English speakers, Quebec and
Ontario, and Quebec and Ontario vis-à-vis the rest of Canada.
From the perspective of the history of ideas, many of the central ideas which animate
The Idea o f Canada were later emphasised by the so called communitarians critics of
liberalism notably Michael Sandel,2 Alasdair MacIntyre,3 and Charles Taylor4 and, in a
subsidiary supportive role, Michael Walzer.5 But Armour did not intend his work as a
theoretical critique of liberal philosophy. Rather, he saw it as an articulation of the
concrete character of a unified Canadian culture, which stood as an alternative to the
individualism and sometimes possessive individualism of American culture. Nevertheless,
The Idea o f Canada offers us a moving account of many of the same ideas which were
later popularized and made familiar in the writing of the communitarian critics of
liberalism, e.g., the inadequacy of the bi-polar analysis of individual and state, the
importance of community within the unified nation state, the inadequacy of social and
political arrangements based solely on individual rights, the important relation between
community and individual identity, the theoretical inadequacy of assumed homogenous
societies, the role of the community and history in transmitting culture, and the unavoidable
historical cultural content which informs individual moral decision making.
In more recent years, two Canadian philosophers, James Tully and Will Kymlicka, have
produced widely acclaimed philosophical works which seek to make sense of both recent
communitarian criticism of liberal political philosophy and the political issue of special
group rights within a Canadian context. My intention in this paper is to examine their views
on the identity and function of the nation state. I will compare their positions with those of
Armour’s in The Idea o f Canada, a work which sought to articulate a conception of a
Canadian state and a Canadian national identity which could encompass diverse cultural
and ethnic groups. Though I might have included Charles Taylor in this comparative study
because he has also recently written on the subject of the political recognition of
multicultural groups, I have left him out because, unlike Kymlicka and Tully, he does not
offer explicit prescriptions for fulfilling the act of political recognition which would realize
the state’s political responsibility.6
Tully on Ancient and Modern Constitutionalism
Tully in particular has sought to defend the territorial and group rights of indigenous people
in the Canadian as well as American context. He has endeavoured to add historical
substance to the more recent communitarian/liberal debates by identifying an historical
shift in the conception of the constitutional state which ignored communitarian positions,
and by implication, the social-political interests of marginal groups, especially indigenous
peoples. Tully is deeply concerned with the plight of North America’s indigenous people
who, he believes, have been ignored and forcibly marginalized by a modern state which
seeks to impose the seamless uniformity of a single dominant culture. His work especially
seeks to redress the imbalance and reassert the rights to territorial integrity and self
determination of indigenous groups.
Tully’s books and essays are replete with historical accounts which document the
failure of the invading European peoples to honour the original commitments and
agreements which were made with the Amerindians. He points out that, as a result, North
American states continue to have fiduciary obligations to respect and recognize the
jurisdiction of these Indian nations, even though they have since breached the original
understandings. In the first John Seeley Lectures given at Cambridge University in 1993,
Tully identified linkage between the subsequent breach of trust and the emergence of
modem constitutionalism.7Modem constitutionalism is seen as the intellectual inheritance
of writers like Hobbes, Bodin and Locke. The constitutions generated by their ideas call
for seamless legal uniformity and centralized authority rather than the ancient acceptance
of parallel jurisdictions in which ethnic variation generated diverse jural systems, social
political structures and greater local autonomy. Tully notes, then, that the language of
modem constitutionalism has come to be authoritative and designed to exclude or
assimilate cultural diversity and justify uniformity (SM 58). But, for Tully:
An ancient constitution is multiform, an ‘assemblage’ as Bolingbroke puts it, whereas a

modem constitution is uniform. Because it is the incorporation of varied local customs, an
ancient constitution is a motley of overlapping legal and political jurisdictions, a kind of jus
gentium ‘common’ to many customary jurisdictions, as in the Roman Republic or the
common law of England (SM 66).
According to Tully, the latter institutions were the paradigm of the ancient constitution
prior to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. They made room for custom. For example,
customary forms of ownership, institutions and laws differed from locale and jurisdiction
yet were preserved within the blanket protection of the ancient constitution. Tully uses an
analogy to the ancient city to explain such a constitution. The ancient city allows, within
a single territory, for the co-existence of old eccentric streets and new geometric
thoroughfares, modem business areas, and diverse ethnic neighbourhoods with different
Cultural Diversity and National Identity 237
traditions and folkways (SM 112). In contrast, the modem constitution refuses to accept
varied local customs and seeks a procrustean solution in which all communities and
institutions are flattened and subsumed under uniform laws and subject to one national
system of institutionalized legal and political authority (SM 66).
With respect to the position of Amerindians in North America, Tully argues that
aboriginal societies in North America were sovereign nations with independent systems
of property, traditions of thought and international customary law developed over centuries
of use.8 Aboriginal property rights, therefore, were already enshrined within indigenous
customary law and sanctioned by these sovereign nations. Tully asserts that Indian
nationhood was recognized by the European powers as evidenced by negotiating processes
and treaties. Tully states: ‘Negotiations cannot extinguish the status of Aboriginal societies
as nations with independent systems of property and traditions of thought, any more than
negotiations can extinguish the equal status of the U.S. and Canada.’9 Furthermore, and
most importantly, he maintains they did not lose this sovereignty but remained independent
nations under the fiduciary protection of the North American states.10
Modem constitutionalism, however, has offered a rationale which pushes for a
dominant normative system of a homogeneous culture. In the case of the aboriginal peoples
of North America, the upshot of this reasoning led to the abrogation of the original
commitments as stated in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the U.S. Supreme Court
decisions of John Marshall. Rectification of this state of affairs entails the reinstitution of
a constitutional accord which reflects the original understandings between the Amerindians
and the Europeans, an understanding which guaranteed the co-existence of both cultures
within a fiduciary relationship. Recognition of this accord means that neither the European
nor the Indian system of integrated law, custom and thought is held to be superior. Both
continue to exist and apply contiguously, receiving mutual respect and necessary
operational protections. This recognition requires the rejection of modem constitutionalism
with its authoritative and exclusionary features which deny the distinct territorial
jurisdictions of indigenous peoples.
Moving away from the particular content of Tully’s conclusions, we should enquire in
general terms as to the identity and function of the state in relation to these diverse cultural
communities. Firstly, we notice that he takes a modified contractarian view of the state, in
the sense that the state takes its legitimacy from the consent of relevant components. Rather
than a consensual arrangement between individuals and the government—the traditional
liberal approach—Tully understands that it is the diverse cultural groups which must
consent to the arrangement which realises statehood. Moreover the resulting contract does
not straight jacket the consenting groups and individuals; rather constitutional dialogues
(which are intercultural rather than transcultural) should continue. Accordingly, from time
to time, meetings should be held to review how well the agreement fits—and either
amending or reaffirming it (SM 135).
Tully describes the appropriate union in a multinational, multiethnic state (like Canada)
as ‘diverse federalism.’ Such a union is characterized by three central conventions: mutual
recognition, continuity and consent (SM 116, 140)—that is: 1) the customs and identity of
each group is recognised; 2) all arrangements must proceed by consent; 3) and the distinct
identity of each group continues throughout the initial and all subsequent political
arrangements. It is on this basis that Tully endorses Quebec’s refusal to accept certain
federal legislation with which it disagrees, notably The Canadian Charter o f Rights and
Freedoms which was enacted in 1982 despite Quebec’s dissent. Tully argues that the
enactment of this legislation in the face of Quebec dissent represents a violation of the
convention of consent (SM 163). For Tully, therefore, Canadian federalism requires this
on-going dialogue, not simply between the federal government and the original ‘first
nations,’ but also among all the provinces. This, I believe, is sufficient to give one an idea
of the loose political arrangement which Tully sees according with an ancient constitutional
state.
Putting this picture together one can summarize Tully’s views on the appropriate nature
of state in two central points:
1) the constitutional state gains its legitimacy from the consent of its participating
cultural groups;
2) the agreement reached in dialogue is not necessarily a foundational universal or
‘fixed background to democracy.’ It is, rather, a commitment to further dialogue and
renegotiation of the original understandings.
Will Kymlicka: the State and the ‘Cultural Context of Choice9
At this stage I would like to look at the work of Will Kymlicka. In his initial ground
breaking work, Liberalism, Community and Culture, Kymlicka sought to reconcile
communitarian and liberal positions.11He endeavoured to demonstrate that the conclusions
reached by communitarians can be approached through liberal principles and indeed he
sought to demonstrate that liberal principles logically entail the protection of distinct
cultural communities. Kymlicka’s point was that communitarian positions are not at
variance with fundamental liberal principles.
Throughout his earlier and recent work, Kymlicka has maintained that cultural
communities, particularly ‘indigenous peoples,’ ought to be accorded special protections
of the law so that their culture is not undermined insofar as an attenuated cultural structure
damages the individuals who live within it. Yet Kymlicka specifically equates this personal
damage with undermining the liberal value of autonomy (LC 170). Selecting autonomy as
the central concern of liberal discourse, Kymlicka asserts that the range of choice which
allows us to be autonomous is undermined when one’s cultural community is in peril.
Kymlicka emphasizes the fragility of the cultural community and the dependence of the
individual on a ‘cultural context of choice. ’ He holds that autonomy depends upon a viable
cultural community which can offer a range of culturally sanctioned and societally
reinforced options. He believes that threats to the autonomy of ethnic individuals justifies
empowering cultural groupings in order to maintain traditional culture (LC 170).
Kymlicka’s two examples are Canadian Indians and French Canadians— ‘national
minorities’ which, he claims, face these threats.12
Like Tully, Kymlicka emphasises that the state’s legitimacy is gained through the
consent of the ethnic and national groups within it. Kymlicka allows that nations may find
themselves within multinational states either involuntarily or through federation. Ethnic
groups, on the other hand, exist within the state only because they have consented to join,
e.g., the Irish, Poles, and Germans in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Thus, ethnic groups
in polyethnic societies take the authority of the larger group for granted.13 But national
groups possess both a particular culture and inherent claims to rights of self government.
This fact endows national groups with special group rights which include rights to self
determination. Although they may have been coerced into joining a larger political entity
through conquest, for Kymlicka, this does not obviate their right to refuse the authority of
the state. Kymlicka accepts that if national minorities cannot get along, they ought to be
allowed to secede—as occurred when Norway separated from Sweden (MC 187). Thus,
we can generalize that, like Tully, Kymlicka sees the authority of the state legitimated
through the consent of its member groups, whether they are ethnic groups or national
minorities.
Similarly, Kymlicka argues against the concept of the state as consisting of political
territories subject to a set of common laws and customs. He argues that the only way to
promote the sense of solidarity and common purpose in a multinational state involves
accommodating (rather than subordinating) national identities to uniform normative
systems, whether legal or customary (MC 189). And for Kymlicka, this means allowing
these national groups certain rights of self government, e.g., rights to impose their own
customs and laws within their own territories. In a later work, Multicultural Citizenship,
Kymlicka argues that to ensure a measure of local autonomy and effect the cultural
protection of minorities within larger political entities, one needs to assure: 1) special
representation at the Federal level through special group representational rights; 2) the
devolution of authority over issues relevant to local culture to smaller political units, for
example, education, immigration, family law, language, and even resource development;
3) and, finally, the funding of special cultural practices which would not be otherwise
protected through the market (MC 189).
This completes our adumbration of the interests and rights which cultural groups can
claim within Kymlicka’s multicultural state. But at this stage we might press the point and
ask if there is any more to the role of the state in this political union. The key to
approaching Tully’s understanding of the rationale which binds diverse nationalities within
a single political union is perhaps found in his treatment of the concepts of ‘patriotism’ and
‘national identity.’ Kymlicka seeks to distinguish ‘patriotism’—the feeling of allegiance
to the state—from ‘national identity,’ which he interprets as the sense of membership in
a national group. With respect to multicultural states like Switzerland—and, according to
his understanding, Canada—he argues that national groups feel allegiance to the larger
state only because the larger state recognizes and respects their distinct national existences
(MC 13). There is shared patriotism but not a common national identity. But I wonder why,
then, do the national groups of Switzerland remain together in political union if all the
union appears to offer is respect for the rights of these groups to be different? Surely
greater respect might be achieved by simply partitioning Switzerland into distinct Italian,
French, and German speaking countries rather than federated cantons within a Swiss state.
Contrary to Kymlicka, I would argue that there must be something in the very concept
of Switzerland with which all Swiss identify and to which they have given their allegiance.
But Kymlicka tells us that, only if citizens in a country have a strong sense of identity
towards the other ethnic and national groups in the country, will they find the prospect of
sustaining their deep diversity inspiring and exciting. Thus, though national minorities
cannot have a shared identity because a commonality of history, language and perhaps
religion is missing, they will tend to stay in union in cases where they like and identify with
certain aspects of the other groups. This seems to me to be clearly wrong. Diverse cultural
groups do not accept the political unification under the federal government of the United
States, for example, because they identify with and like each other, but rather because the
idea of the United States makes sense to them. To a certain extent this holds even if the
ethnic group consists of economic refugees.
At this stage I would conclude that, after reading these two Canadian philosophers, one
is at pains to see a unifying principle which is supposed to unite these diverse cultural and
national groups into a single political unity. In both cases there is no determinate content
to the political arrangement; rather, we simply have an agreement to agree and
accommodate. Both obviously hold that if accommodation is no longer possible and
agreement cannot be reached, the parties are free to walk away from the arrangement.
However, as Michael Oakeshott has pointed out, the authority of the state is not derived
from consent but from the conviction that we should consent to the authority of the state.14
Consent is really therefore epiphenomenal to the state’s authority; it is the conviction that
we should consent which gives the state its authority. Oakeshott pointed out that the state
consists of certain organizational features: government, churches, industries, armies, and
so on, within a whole which we utilize to make the concept of the state more obvious and
understandable to ourselves. Ultimately these organizational features, within the whole we
call the state, function as a way in which we understand and organize ourselves within the
world. The legitimacy of the conception derives not from the fact of our consent, but
because the conception makes sense to the individual, which is to say it imposes order on
the world and provokes consent.
Armour on Nationalism and the Role of the State
In The Idea o f Canada, Armour assumes a perspective which is similar to that of

Oakeshott. Unlike Oakeshott, however, Armour sees the state as the organizational aspect
of the country which seeks ‘to coordinate, negotiate and seek agreement’ with the different
institutions (IC 129). Armour says that, ‘If the other institutions functioned perfectly the
state would wither away’ (IC 129). For Armour, it is the nation whose common outlook is
reflected in a country’s institutions (IC 130). Oakeshott, however, saw institutions
— governments, churches, industry, and so on—as the organizational features we utilize
in understanding the state and the order which it imposes on ourselves and the world (RPM
31). The difference, then, is that Armour sees our institutions as shaped by the national
community through culture. The nation, he says, ‘is the principle imbedded [...] in
depositional ideas recollected in shared experiences, expressed through moral convictions’
(IC 127). The nation is the ground of our institutions which finds its expression through
these same institutions. But according to Armour, institutions still stand in need of the state
to coordinate them. The economic, legal, political, and educational institutions demand
such coordination because each is orientated to different human needs and goals. The
imposed order Armour calls justice or ‘the idea and ideal of law’ (IC 129).
In contrast to Kymlicka and Tully, Armour believes that, despite the diversity in the
founding peoples—the aboriginals, the English and the French—Canada is a single nation
rather than a number of nations. He believes that a common language, religion or identity
of history are not necessaiy conditions for the existence of shared nationhood. Armour says
that the concept of a nation is the concept of a common outlook and strategy which is
reflected in the way institutions display themselves (IC 139). He says the institutions may
be legitimated by a variety of communities, each anchored in its own culture. Armour
believes that Canadians share distinct values which have arisen from distinct cultural
traditions and institutions (IC 120). He goes on to say that a Canadian world view exists,
and it emphasizes community, reason, and our collective relation to nature. He contrasts
this with an alternative view which he associates with that of the United States which, he
says, sees people as individuals, experiences as immediate and independent of reason, and
nature as something mainly to be used.
Armour, then, is dividing the work which Oakeshott believes the state undertakes
between the state and the nation. But this is only a point of scholarship; what is important
is that he, like Oakeshott, identifies that which holds diverse peoples together as ‘the
state’—the conception of ourselves within the nation state which makes sense of the world.
Furthermore, he attempts to articulate the unique content of the Canadian conception. The
more recent defenders of group rights, like Kymlicka and Tully, refuse to see the possibility
of any culture which transcends the language, religion or organization of a particular group.
Armour, on the other hand does. He recognizes that the founding groups share a great deal
of common history, though they do not necessarily have the identical history. Furthermore,
this common overlapping experience has expressed itself in institutions which have
developed in a Canadian context over the last several hundred years. It is certainly not
incorrect to refer to the ‘expression’ of this common experience as a Canadian culture.
In contrast, Kymlicka and Tully refuse to see the possibility of transethnic culture; for
them all culture is irredeemably ethnocentric and ultimately they give only the most
minimal content to the conception of the state. Consequently, one is at pains to see why
diverse national and ethnic groups would voluntarily accept a single unifying authority. One
can only conclude that the federation within the political whole has occurred by accident
or conquest. Ultimately, Kymlicka and Tully give good reasons why these diverse Canadian
groups should be allowed to go their own ways, but no clues as to why they have ever
voluntarily been together. Assuredly they have been together and continue to be together,
although one cannot say how long they will continue to be so.
Conclusion
In June 1997, Kai Nielsen and a young Quebeçoise colleague of his from Concordia
University in Montreal represented Canada at the First Annual Conference of Philosophers
and Social Scientists from Mexico, Canada and the United States in Puebla, Mexico. Both
he and his colleague argued the cause of Quebec nationalism and Nielsen argued, like
Kymlicka, that the secession of Quebec from Canada should be allowed to go ahead as was
the case when Norway seceded from Sweden. I pointed out that the proposed birth of this
new Quebec nation state would necessarily entail the death of the Canadian nation state
because Quebec secession would drive a territorial wedge between eastern and western
Canada as was the case with Bangladesh and Pakistan. Logistically and politically, it would
never be possible for the spatially divided territories of western and eastern Canada to
continue as a single political entity.
A further point I made was that there is no reason to assume that Quebec nationalism,
and the aspirations of some for Quebec political statehood, should take precedence over
Canadian nationalism or the viability of the Canadian state. The conclusion that we should
not be particularly concerned about Quebec secession will hold only if one believes, as do
Kymlicka and Tully, that there is no content to Canadian nationalism, and that the role of
the Canadian state is merely to accommodate group and individual rights. But there are
those who will hold, with Armour, that there is a Canadian national culture and that the
state does more than merely accommodate; it has a functional role in the ordering of
institutions to effect an ideal of justice. Those who accept this latter view will, no doubt,
also hold that there is something about the idea of Canada which is worth protecting and
maintaining.
Notes
1. Leslie Armour, The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community [IC] (Ottawa: Steel Rail
Publishing, 1981).
2. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1982).
3. Alastair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1981); Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1988).
4. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Sources of the Self: The Making of Modem Identity,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
5. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic
Books, 1983).
6. Charles Taylor,Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton
7. James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in the Age o f Diversity [SM] (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
8. James Tully, “Aboriginal Property and Western Theory: Rediscovering a Middle Ground,”
Social Philosophy and Policy, 11 (1994) 153-180, 178; see also ‘Rediscovering America: The
Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights,’ in Locke ’s Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. G.A.
Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 165-196.
9. Tully, “Aboriginal Property.”
10. See also Bruce Morito, ‘Aboriginal Right: A Conciliatory Concept,’ Journal o f Applied
Philosophy, 13 (1996) 123-140, who also argues that fairness demands upholding the original
fiduciary arrangement for the mutual protection of the well being of diverse cultures. Morito
concludes that this means that Amerindians are independent of European law and that imposing
treaty signing was itself a denial of the common ground that existed between nations.
11. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture [LC] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
12. Kymlicka’s argument for cultural protection on the basis of individual autonomy, in itself,
provides no reason one would give priority to the culture of the indigenous community over
that of non-indigenous communities. But in point of fact, he distinguishes between ‘national
minorities’ or self governing, territorially concentrated cultures which have been incorporated
into the larger state through conquest and colonization, and ‘ethnic groups.’ The latter groups
have voluntarily become part of the larger state through immigration. Kymlicka accords rights
of self government to ‘national minorities’ while denying these rights to ‘ethnic groups’ on the
principle that the latter consented tojoin the more numerous group whereas the former did not.
13. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship [MC] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 11.
14. Michael Oakeshott, Religion, Politics and theMoral Life [RPM] (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993) 13.
Taylor & Francis
16 A History of the History of Philosophy
in Canada
BRADLEY RUSSELL MUNRO
Introduction
In this article, I want celebrate Leslie Armour’s significant contribution to the history of
philosophy in Canada. To date the premier work in the history of English Canadian
philosophy is The Faces o f Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English
Canada 1850-1950,! by Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott. Prior to that book there were
only a few short articles written on the work of philosophers in Canada. In the first section,
I will describe what was out there before Armour and Trott did their research. In the next
section, I will describe personal experiences that were shared at the University of
Waterloo, and which challenged Armour and Trott to embark on the research that
ultimately led to this landmark work. Finally, I will discuss the other work that is out there
that enhances the scholarship on the history of philosophy in Canada.
Prior Work
In the early 1950s, University of Toronto Professor John Irving produced a number of
pieces on English Canada’s philosophical heritage. Irving was a real pioneer. He set the
standard for the work that followed, and it is important to highlight his publications in this
area.2
Most notable was a 48 page pamphlet which Irving edited in the University of Toronto
series entitled Philosophy in Canada: a Symposium .3 Included in this collection was
Irving’s essay, “One Hundred Years of Canadian Philosophy,” Charles Hendel’s paper,
“The Character of Philosophy in Canada,” as well as commentaries by Allison H Johnson
and Rupert C. Lodge. Fulton Anderson wrote the Introduction. Irving’s paper in that
symposium probably developed material from an earlier article in the University o f
Toronto Quarterly.4 About the same time, he published other historical articles on early
Canadian philosophy—one in the Canadian Historical Review, entitled “Development of
Philosophy in Central Canada from 1850 to 1900,”5 and another in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, entitled “Philosophical Trends in Canada between 1850 and
1950.”6Irving was famous for his work with CBC Radio and early CBC television. Some
of his radio work is captured in a 98 page CBC publication entitled Architects o f M odem
Thought? Irving was also noted for his work describing the Social Credit movement8 and
the mass media in Canada.9 Perhaps his best work was a book entitled Science and
Values.™
I was a student of Allison H. Johnson at the University of Western Ontario, and my first
exposure to the history of Canadian philosophy was through a series of articles initiated by
Irving but which had to be adapted by Johnson when Irving took seriously ill. These
articles are found in an excellent reference book edited by Western’s Carl F. Klinck entitled
Literary History o f Canada.u Chapter 23 was entitled “Philosophical Literature to 1910”12
and Chapter 30, “Philosophical Literature 1910-1964.”13 In addition to the text noted
above, Johnson noted Irving’s article, “The Achievement of Thomas McCulloch” in
Malcolm Ross’ book, The Stepsure Letters,14 and an article on “Philosophy” in Julian
Park’s The Culture o f Contemporary Canada}5
Still, an excellent starting point for a graduate student doing a history of Philosophy in
Canada, then, is Irving’s Philosophy in Canada: a Symposium. (There is perhaps some
irony in the fact that this symposium on Canadian philosophy was held as part of the
meetings of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association). In his own
essay, Irving begins with the appointment of James Beaven as Professor of Metaphysics
and Ethics at the University of Toronto in 1850 and moves through a discussion of
prominent figures like John Clark Murray, George Paxton Young, John Watson, George
John Blewett, and George Sidney Brett. Irving also introduces us to later figures like
Rupert Clendon Lodge, George P. Grant, Marcus Long, Emil Fackenheim, Allison H.
Johnson, Thomas A. Goudge, James Ten Brooke, Gregory Vlastos, H. M. Estall, A.E.
Taylor, A.T. McKinnon, Raymond Klibansky, David Savan, G. F. Kingston, and Antony
Mardiros, to name just a few. In his symposium paper, Allison Johnson introduces us to
figures like Jacob Gould Schurman, John Laird, Herbert L. Stewart, John Davidson, F. W.
Waters and George Bloomfield Sage. For his part, Rupert Lodge in his commentary,
discusses an early (1926) attempt to organize Canadian Philosophy and an unsuccessful
attempt (in 1937) to get a volume on contemporary Canadian philosophy off the ground,
as well as the early history of the teaching of scholastic philosophy in Canada which
attracted leading figures like Etienne Gilson and later Jacques Maritain to Canada. He also
drew attention to philosophers in Western Canada like J. A. Sharrard, J.M. MacEachran
and H T . J. Coleman.
The Faces of Reason
Leslie Armour and Betty Trott were motivated to write The Faces o f Reason after a series
of very hot and emotionally-charged debates at the University of Waterloo which took place
in the context of the discussions spurred on by Robin Mathews and James Steele’s
controversial work on the americanization of Canadian Universities. To let Armour tell the
story:
Over the years, I found and read some works of Watson, and learned more of Blewett. But
other interests supervened until 1969 when I returned from a sabbatical leave in England.
I found that my department chairman at the University of Waterloo had responded to the
concerns expressed by Robin Mathews and Jim Steele about the “de-Canadianization” of
Canadian universities with a memorandum announcing that “there is no Canadian
philosophy” (he added “in the sense in which there is American philosophy”). That chairman
was an American in a department dominantly American—the products of an educational
system in which, for the most part Canada is a blank space on the map populated mainly by
hockey players without teeth.16
A History o f the History o f Philosophy 247
Armour has politely understated what took place at Waterloo at that time. Not only was the
faculty of the Department of Philosophy predominantly American (the only Canadian-born
professors were Armour and Jim Home who was shared half time with the Department of
Religious Studies—though, to be fair, there was a Polish-Canadian Heidegger expert, and
a Spinoza scholar, who, I think, came from England and Continental Europe), but there
was also a very large contingent of American graduate students studying philosophy, a
number of whom were avoiding being drafted into the Vietnam War.
I was at Waterloo at the time, and was one of the few Canadian graduate students in
philosophy there. I felt that I had managed to move to an American graduate school without
leaving my own country. I, too, remember being quite upset about the verbal slap in the
face that came with the Chairman’s note, but also the taunting from some of the American
professors and students in the discussions that naturally followed. I was quite upset about
the insinuation, and quite sympathetic with the point that Mathews and Steele17 were
making since, while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Western Ontario,
the Department there had become largely American. When I began my studies in
philosophy at Western Ontario, the Department was under the capable chairmanship of
A.H. Johnson, and it looked as though a Canadian school of philosophy was developing in
a fashion similar to the “Toronto school of intellectual history,” that Irving described in his
contribution to the Philosophy in Canada symposium.18Young and naïve, I was too remote
from the machinations that took place to be able to describe in detail how the takeover took
place, but I remember there was great unhappiness on the part of many professors and
graduate students. Indeed some of the professors who were greatly admired and loved by
the students very quickly found other opportunities at other Canadian universities. Some
of the graduate students followed their lead. Professor Robert E. Butts, who took over the
chairmanship, wanted to build a Canadian version of the famous Pittsburgh Philosophy of
Science school, and he did. While there was a gain for Canadian students interested in the
philosophy of science and logic,19there was a real sense that something that was distinctly
Canadian was lost.
So by the time I arrived at Waterloo, in 1965, the Department of Philosophy there too
had already been Americanized, and was as Armour described it in the passage quoted
above. Betty Trott, who was a fellow Canadian graduate student who had come from the
University of Toronto, was even more incensed and angry by the Chairman’s remarks, and
it motivated her to work long (about 10 years) and hard with Armour to make the case for
Canadian philosophy with The Faces o f Reason. There are many ironies, however, in how
this case has been made. One irony is that The Faces o f Reason was written after Armour
had left Waterloo and was serving as Department Chairman, in the United States, at
Cleveland State University. (And recall that the symposium on Philosophy in Canada was
part of the meetings of the American Philosophical Association—albeit that the meetings
were held in Toronto.) Also ironic is the fact that a couple of earlier articles on English
Canadian and French Canadian Philosophy written by John Irving and Edmond Gaudron
respectively were published in a volume entitled The Culture o f Contemporary Canada,
which was prepared in the United States for Cornell University Press.20
In the Preface to The Faces o f Reason, we learn that the final published product was
reduced by one quarter as a condition imposed by the Canadian Federation for the
Humanities for financing of the publication. Armour and Trott tell us that principal among
the deletions “was a final chapter which sought to trace the fate after 1950 of the
movements described earlier.” Now that Leslie is retired from teaching at the University
of Ottawa, one hopes that he may find time to resurrect that work and publish it as a
continuation of the story told in The Faces o f Reason.
In April 1971, I was privileged to sit in on a series of lectures on Canadian
philosophers that Armour presented at the University of Waterloo. Here, he not only
introduced us to the key philosophers in English Canada (about whom he wrote in The
Faces o f Reason), but also he introduced us to some of the key figures in French Canadian
philosophy. He gave us a substantial bibliography of philosophical works written in
Canada. This series clearly demonstrated to his/our American colleagues that philosophy
in Canada was very active and very much alive and had been so since the mid-nineteenth
century. This series proved to be the seminal work that ultimately resulted in the
Armour/Trott book.
Other work in the area by Armour includes a paper entitled “Canadian Philosophy and
the National Consciousness” which was presented at the Conference on Canadian
Philosophy held in Ottawa in 1979. Later on, this paper was captured in the eighth chapter
of Leslie’s book, The Idea o f Canada and the Crisis o f Community .21 A. H. Johnson gave
a paper entitled: “The Concept of Canadian Philosophy” at the same conference.
The Armour/Trott book has not been immune from criticism, Thomas Goudge wrote
a critical notice on The Faces o f Reason in Dialogue entitled: “Complex Disguises:
Reason in Canadian Philosophy.”22
As an aid to those who wish to do further research into the history of philosophy in
Canada, let me take note of some additional sources that Armour and Trott used in
preparing their book. They acknowledge the work of Clifford Williams who wrote two
theses on the philosophy of John Watson.23 Roland Houde at the Université de Québec à
Trois Rivières gave them access to his bibliography which was unpublished at the time and
which, I believe, is still unpublished. They also mention that Jack Stevenson and John
Slater from the University of Toronto were in the process of preparing a complete
bibliography of philosophy in Canada.24 While that complete bibliography has never been
published, a part of it has appeared as Part III of Thomas Mathien’s Bibliography o f
Philosophy in Canada: a Research Guide/Bibliographie de la philosophie au Canada:
une guide à recherche25which is a supplementary volume of the Frye Library of Canadian
Philosophy series. Part I of Mathien’s guide is a “Guide to Research on the History of
Philosophy.” Part II provides a list of “Secondary Sources” and Part III provides a
bibliography entitled: “Some Important Works by Early English Canadian Philosophers.”
There is also an “Index of Research Tools” and a list of “Canadian Periodicals Which
Contain Articles of Philosophical Relevance.” The bibliography in Part III essentially
covers only the first hundred years (1850 to 1950); however, the secondary sources in Part
II include articles written in the 1980s. Certainly this work (especially the second and third
parts) is an extremely useful tool for graduate students or other researchers doing work on
Canadian Philosophy.
Other Works
Several significant articles on the history of philosophy in Canada have been published.
David Braybrooke described the Canadian philosophical scene in the Canadian Forum.26
Thomas Goudge wrote an article in 1968 in the Dalhousie Review entitled “A Centuiy of
Philosophy in English-speaking Canada.”27He also teamed with John Slater to write a short
historical sketch of the University of Toronto’s Department of Philosophy.28 In 1979, just
before the Armour and Trott book appeared, the historian Brian McKillop, now at Carleton
University, released his book entitled A Disciplined Intelligence; Critical Inquiry and
Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era.19Later, in 1987, McKillop published Contours
o f Canadian Thought,30which dealt with English-Canadian thinkers from 1860 to 1920.
While I was an undergraduate in the sixties, as I indicated above, I felt that the
Americanization of Canadian scholarship was taking place at that specific time. In fact, it
seems that this had always been a struggle for English Canadian scholars. McKillop gives
historical support to the view that the struggle in English-Canadian scholarship between
the conservative British tradition and the progressive American movements has been
around a long time. In his Preface to A Disciplined Intelligence, McKillop writes:
Caught historically between a British heritage, which many of them conceived to contain the
best elements of Western civilization, and an American neighbour, which advanced
ineluctably towards modernity in its modes of thought and action, Anglo-Canadians in the
Victorian era sought to establish and to preserve in Canada a broad moral code that would
constitute the core of a way of life reconciling belief and inquiry, tradition and innovation,
concern and freedom.31
Indeed, just as Canada gradually moved politically away from the “apron strings” of
Mother Britain in this century and fell more and more under the spell of the American
military-industrial complex, so too Canadian universities (and hence scholarship) fell
increasingly under American influence. Students in the sixties and seventies were therefore
just experiencing the culmination of a process that had been taking place since the mid
nineteenth century. This was never more evident than in the move in the sixties and
seventies away from what Irving had called the “Toronto school of intellectual history” to
the americanization of departments of philosophy (as well as departments of sociology,
psychology and political science) that was discussed at length during the controversy over
Mathews and Steele work on The Struggle fo r Canadian Universities. The struggle in
English Canadian philosophy departments, as they shrugged off the influences of British
Idealism, reflected a similar earlier struggle in American philosophy departments. In
Appendix One to Bruce Kuklick’s book, The Rise o f American Philosophy, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1860-1930,32 we read that the Americans also shifted emphasis from an
historical approach although at a much earlier date. Kuklick tells us that in the United
States “Philosophers’ interest in the history of thought began to shift at the turn of the
century [...]”33 This was essentially a half century before the change occurred in Canada.
The change in Canada happened mainly because of the influx of Americans into Canadian
philosophy departments. Kuklick attributes the change in the U.S. to Ralph Barton Perry
who, in response to the approach taken by Josiah Royce, urged “the separation of
philosophical research from the study of the history of philosophy.”34 Also in the first
decades of the twentieth century, philosophy professors at Harvard placed emphasis on
philosophy as a problem-solving discipline with the consequence, according to Kuklick,
that “For their best students, the American philosophers who matured after the Second
World War, the history of philosophy had the status Montague assigned it—something
studied only to the extent that it could contribute to problems of current relevance.”35 It was
the students of these American professors and their colleagues who came to Canada in the
’60s and ’70s and who changed the course of philosophy in Canada which had been so
dominated by the British (especially the Scots) until then.
Other historical work in Canadian thought includes Douglas Rabb’s book, Religion
and Science in Early Canada,36Rabb is the general editor of the Frye Library of Canadian
Philosophy series and his book was the first in a series which was to include volumes on
William Lyall, William Albert Crawford-Frost, Charles de Koninck, George Paxton Young,
Jacob Gould Schurman, George John Blewett, Herbert Leslie Stewart, John Clark Murray,
and John Watson. The Faces o f Reason has chapters on all but Crawford-Frost and de
Koninck (who is mentioned in the chapter on Catholic philosophers). With respect to John
Clark Murray, Armour and Trott published The Industrial Kingdom o f God ,37based on
Murray’s manuscripts.
Other useful articles are found in various collections. A number of small articles on
Canadian philosophy is found in The Canadian Encyclopedia published in various editions
by McClelland & Stewart (the latest is found in print and on CD-ROM38). Here, with
respect to the history of philosophy in Canada before 1950, Yvan Lamonde contributed an
article on French Canada, which is followed by a contribution by Elizabeth Trott on the
English Canadian scene. Leslie Armour’s article (with William Sweet and Kevin Sullivan)
entitled “Metaphysics and Philosophy of Religion” is there as well, and it captures some
of the work done in those fields in Canada since 1950. John T. Stevenson wrote the general
article on “Philosophy” (in Canada), which includes his reflections of what happened in
various branches of philosophy after 1950. Robert E. Butts wrote a short article on “Logic,
Epistemology, Philosophy of Science in English Canada,” which mentions many important
contributors in the period from 1970 to 1980. F. Duchesneau and R. Nadeau covered the
subject area for French Canada and noted key players in francophone Canada. Stevenson
and Thomas Mathien co-wrote an article on historical scholarship in philosophy in Canada
which not only recalls the “Toronto school of intellectual history” and the historical work
in the Catholic tradition in Québec, but notes significant history projects taking place in
Canada, such as the publication of the Russell papers (McMaster University) and work on
C.S. Peirce’s papers (University of Waterloo). Michael MacDonald and Guy LaFrance
contributed articles on ethics, social and political philosophy since 1950 in English Canada
and French Canada, respectively.
Another source of material on Canadian Philosophy and philosophers are the small
articles by Armour and Trott, among others, in The Oxford Companion to Canadian
Literature .39 And, finally, a curiosity, given what has transpired in Canada in terms of
national unity, but an interesting volume is Stanley French’s collection, Philosophers Look
at Canadian Confederation/La confédération canadienne: qu ’en pensent les
philosophes?40
The Last Half Century
Despite the few short articles in The Canadian Encyclopedia , what is sadly lacking is an
historical perspective on what has transpired in philosophy in Canada since the 1950s. As
we can see in the review of the literature above, the key works focus primarily on the
period 1850 to 1950. Very little historical work has been published on Canadian
philosophy in the last half century, in spite of the feet that this has been perhaps the most
active period for philosophers in Canada. This period saw the putting in place of
institutional vehicles for fostering a lively environment for philosophical discussion in
Canada. The Canadian Philosophical Association, which was founded in 1957-1958, gave
the community a regular place to gather and exchange ideas. Soon after, in 1962, the CPA
initiated Canada’s first philosophy journal, Dialogue. Much later, in September 1971,
Canada had its second philosophical journal with the publication of the first issue of the
Canadian Journal o f Philosophy by the Canadian Association for Publishing in
Philosophy. In 1990, the Canadian Journal o f Philosophy published a supplementary
volume entitled Canadian Philosophers: Celebrating Twenty Years o f the Canadian
Journal o f Philosophy:41The editor, David Copp, has a short introduction on the founding
of the Journal , and there are thirteen articles by Canadian philosophers. As well, it is
important to note that earlier, in 1986, when Dialogue celebrated its 25th anniversary
issue, Martyn Estall and Venant Cauchy, the founding editors, each wrote articles on the
beginnings of Dialogue.41 In that same issue, Michael McDonald, who was the English
language editor at the time, wrote a short introduction on “Philosophy in Canada,”43 and
the French language editor, François Duchesneau, contributed “Une étape dans l’histoire
de Dialogue.”44 John Stevenson wrote “Canadian Philosophy from a Cosmopolitan Point
of View,”45Wesley Cragg contributed “Two Concepts of Community or Moral Theory and
Canadian Culture,”46Thomas Mathien wrote an article “The Natural History of Philosophy
in Canada”47—to which Leslie Armour replied48—Douglas Rabb contributed “Canadian
Idealism, Philosophical Federalism, and World Peace,”49 and Armour and Trott replied to
their critics in an article called “The Faces o f Reason and its critics.”50
In making a comparison between Canadian Philosophy and American Philosophy
(recall the comment above from the University of Waterloo Department Chairman), it is
interesting to note a quotation from Sidney Hook’s book American Philosophers at Work
that John Stevenson used in his article in the 25th anniversary issue of Dialogue. He wrote:
Finally, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “[...] in no country of the civilized world is less
attention paid to philosophy than in the United States.” Sydney Hook in American
Philosophers at Work comments:
With respect to philosophy as a discipline and body of specialized thought [...], there
is little doubt that de Tocqueville’s judgment remains substantially true. The United
States is still a country in which philosophy is least studied, in which proportionately
fewer books on philosophy are bought and read, in which the views of philosophers
are considered less relevant to the concerns of non-philosophers, even less
newsworthy, than in most European countries.
And he remarks that American philosophy such as it is “is no parochial affair but an integral
part of the Continental, and especially the English tradition in philosophy.” Or as C.D. Broad
once put it in less kindly tones “All good ideas go to America when they die and arise again
as the latest invention of the local professors.”51
Let me now turn to what little literature has been published on the period after 1950.
As mentioned above, Carl Klinck’s Literary History o f Canada had a Chapter 30 entitled
“Philosophical Literature 1910-1964.” The first part of that chapter, which was originally
written by John Irving and adapted by A.H. Johnson, was devoted to George Sidney Brett
who taught at the University of Toronto from 1908 until his death in 1944. The second
part, which was written by Johnson, discussed other philosophers of the period, such as
Fulton H. Anderson, Thomas A. Goudge, Marcus Long, Emil Fackenheim, David A.
Stewart, George Grube, William Dray, Francis E. Sparshott, David P. Gauthier, Etienne
Gilson, Gerald Phelan, Anton C. Pegis, Joseph Owens, Bernard Lonergan, H. L. Stewart,
Rupert Lodge, John Macdonald, Charles de Koninck, J.C. Murray, Charles Hendel,
Raymond Klibansky, Alistair Duncan, James Ten Brooke, George P. Grant, Leslie Armour,
Zigmund Adamczewski, and Fred Kingston, to name just a few of the prominent
philosophers mentioned there. In Klinck’s second edition of Literary History o f Canada,
this chapter was rewritten by Thomas A. Goudge who put his own spin on many of the
same figures.52He also wrote a new section covering the period from 1960 to 1973 entitled
just “Philosophical Literature.” It is interesting to reflect on Goudge’s first two introductory
paragraphs of this chapter which tells us a lot about the nature of philosophy in Canada
after 1960. He writes:
A dominant fact about Canadian philosophical literature in the 1960s is that it greatly
increased in volume. A large part of the volume consisted of articles in journals, as was the
case elsewhere in the Anglo-American world. But there was also a substantial number of
books. This was a period of unprecedented expansion in higher education across the country.
Older departments of philosophy made many additional appointments in a short space of
time, and at the newer universities new appointments had to be made to set up their
departments. Thus the total population of academic philosophers became much larger than
it had been. Many of the younger appointees had recently finished Ph.D. theses which could
readily be made the basis of articles or books. A new avenue of publication opened up with
the establishing in 1962 of the first professional journal of philosophy in the country,
Dialogue, under the aegis of the Canadian Philosophical Association, itself founded in 1958.
Both the journal and the association are bilingual. These are some of the factors that
contributed to the extraordinary increase in the literature during the decade.
The specialization which had begun earlier was now accentuated. Within a few years
books appeared in all the main divisions of philosophy. There continue to be studies of
individual thinkers and texts of the past, and standards of historical scholarship remain high.
But many studies leave aside textual and historical concerns in order to tackle topics
analytically. Philosophers make use of new techniques to help them construct and criticize
arguments, explore conceptual meanings, and undertake phenomenological analysis and
description. The topics singled out for investigation are often ones being widely canvassed
throughout the philosophical world. Thus interest is strong during this period in theory of
action, philosophy of mind, meta-ethics, and the philosophy of religion. In view of this state
of affairs works can be best discussed not chronologically but in the particular division of the
subject to which they belong.53
I have quoted this passage at length since Goudge succinctly captures what was
happening in the period after 1960. Goudge goes on to document the contribution of
philosophers writing in Canada in the areas of Greek Philosophy, Mediaeval Philosophy,
Early Modem Philosophy, Recent Philosophy, Ethics, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Philosophy
of Mind and Action, Philosophy of Religion, and History and the Philosophy of Science,
as well as in encyclopedias and collections. We pick up the names of some of the
philosophers writing in Canada at this time, such as Jonathan Bennett, Páll Árdal, T. D.
Langan, Lionel Rubinoff, E. W. Kluge, Fraser Cowley, Jan Narveson, Charles Taylor,
Terence Penelhum, Zeno Vendler, Bas C. Van Frassen, Mario Bunge, Michael Ruse, Frank
Cunningham, Kai Nielsen, John W. Yolton, Ronald J. Butler, C.A. Hooker, and R.F.
McRae, to name a few.
When I complained to Brian McKillop about the scarcity of material documenting the
extremely productive period after 1950,1 discovered that Carleton University had just
graduated a new Histoiy Ph.D. who had written a sequel to A Disciplined Intelligence that
up-dates the discussion to 1960. Hubert R. Krygsman’s recently completed Ph.D.
dissertation is entitled “Freedom and Grace: Mainline Protestant Thought in Canada, 1900-
1960.”54 It is gratifying to see that young scholars are continuing this historical work.
It is fitting that I should end this article with reference to a recent Ph.D., since this
article has been geared to be an introduction to the various sources that have presented the
history of philosophy in Canada, and is intended as an aid to graduate students and others
wanting to break into the subject I wrote this article as a tribute to Leslie Armour, who not
only inspired my interest in the history of philosophy in Canada, but was veiy supportive
both while I was engaged in my graduate studies in philosophy, and subsequently while I
struggled with keeping up my philosophical spirit while employed outside of an academic
environment. Further, thanks to Leslie Armour and Betty Trott, documenting the work of
Canadian philosophers finally became respectable in the 1980s. Thomas Goudge as much
as acknowledged this in his critique of the Armour and Trott book. Concerning the interest
in discovering the history of philosophy in Canada, he wrote:
Several decades ago this interest scarcely existed. If any questions about the subject had been
raised, the chances are they would have elicited sceptical smiles or yawns. Many would
simply have denied—and a few still deny—that there is any “Canadian philosophy” at all.
Nowadays, however, the climate of opinion is more accommodating, so those who study and
write about what past philosophers in this country have done can expect to receive a serious
hearing.
Leslie Armour is a great teacher, a mentor, and a true friend, and for this I am extremely
grateful. As this Festschrift will attest, he has influenced a lot of students and colleagues
in the same way.
Notes
1. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and
Culture in English Canada 1850-1950 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
1981).
2. In Faces of Reason, Armour and Trott write about Irving’s work on the history of Canadian
Philosophy: ‘It is, indeed, to him that we owe the fact that it is possible at all to piece together
that history,” and later on the same page: “ without his work, the rest of us might well have
been unable to find our way” 449.
3. John A. Irving, Philosophy in Canada: A Symposium (Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Pamphlet Series, 1952).
4. John A. Irving, “One Hundred Years of Canadian Philosophy,” The University of Toronto
Quarterly, 20:2 (1951) 107-123.
5. John A. Irving, “Development of Philosophy in Central Canada from 1850 to 1900,”
Canadian Historical Review, 31 (1950)252-287.
6. John A. Irving, “Philosophical Trends in Canada between 1850 and 1950,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 12:2 (1951) 224-245.
7. Architects of Modem Thought (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1955)
[Broadcast in 2 series on CBC Wednesday night, Spring, Fall 1955].
8. John A. Irving, Social Credit Movement in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1954).
9. John A. Irving, Mass Media in Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962).
10. John A. Irving, Science and Values (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1952).
11. Literary History of Canada, ed. C.F. Klinck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965).
12. Klinck 431-444.
13. Klinck 567-597.
14. The Stepsure Letters, ed. Malcolm Ross (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, The New
Canadian Library, 1961).
15. The Culture of Contemporary Canada, ed. Julian Park (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1957)243-273.
16. The Faces of Reason xviii.
17. Robin Mathews and James Steele, The Struggle for Canadian Universities (Toronto: New
Press, 1969).
18. Irving, Philosophy in Canada 18.
19. Professor Butts, in conjunction with the philosophy departments in Southern Ontario
(Waterloo, Guelph, McMaster, University of Toronto) brought in some of the leading lights
from the American scene. Graduate students were able to participate in seminars with people
like Norwood Russell Hanson (who died shortly afterwards in an airplane crash) and Adolf
Grünbaum (whose paper on Quine’s Duhemian thesis so riled me that I ultimately wrote my
Ph.D. thesis on the subject).
20. In The Culture of Contemporary Canada, Irving’s chapter is entitled “Philosophy” 242-273
and Gaudron’s is entitled “French-Canadian Philosophers” 274-292.
21. Leslie Armour, The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community (Ottawa, ON: Steel Rail
Publishing, 1982).
22. Thomas A. Goudge, “Complex Disguises: Reason in Canadian Philosophy,” Dialogue, 20
(1983) 339-346.
23. Clifford Williams, “The Epistemology of John Watson” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Toronto, 1966) and “The Social Philosophy of Two Canadians: W.C. Keirstead and John
Watson” (M.A. Thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1953).
24. The Faces of Reason 517. As of the writing of this article (September 1997), this bibliography
had not been published. In reply to my e-mail message concerning its status, John Slater wrote:
“Unfortunately, our bibliography, which had a very large number of entries, was never
published, so you cannot cite it. If you want more information about it, I suggest you contact
either Jack Stevenson or Thomas Mathien, either of whom can be reached by addressing an
inquiry to them at the Department of Philosophy, U. of T., Toronto M5S 1A1.” He indicated
that “Tom Mathien did the lion’s share of the work on the bibliography.”
25. Thomas Mathien, Bibliogt'aphy ofPhilosophy in Canada: A Research Guide / Bibliographie
de la philosophie au Canada: une guide à recherche (Kingston: Frye Library of Canadian
Philosophy, Supplementary Volume One, 1989).
26. David Braybrooke, “The Philosophical Scene in Canada,” Canadian Forum, 53 (January
1974)29-34.
27. Thomas A. Goudge, “A Century of Philosophy in English-speaking Canada,” Dalhousie
Review, 47:4 (1967-1968) 537-549.
28. Thomas A. Goudge and John Slater, Instruction and Research in Philosophy at the University
of Toronto: A Historical Sketch of the Development ofPhilosophy (Toronto, 1977).
29. A. B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the
Victorian Era (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979).
30. A.B. McKillop, Contours of Canadian Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).
31. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence ix.
32. Bruce Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) 575-576.
33. Kuklick, The Rise o f American Philosophy 575.
34. Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy 575.
35. Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy 576. The Montague referred to here is William
Pepperell Montague (1873-1953).
36. J. Douglas Rabb, Religion and Science in Early Canada (Kingston: Frye Library of Canadian
Philosophy, 1988).
37. John Clark Murray, The Industrial Kingdom of God, ed. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott
(Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1982).
38. The 1999 Canadian & World Encyclopedia (Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1999).
39. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, ed. W. Toye (Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1983).
40. Stanley G. French, Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation / La confédération
canadienne: qu ’enpensent les philosophes? (Montréal: Canadian Philosophical Association,
1979).
41. Canadian Philosophers: Celebrating Twenty Years of the Canadian Journal ofPhilosophy,
ed. David Copp (Calgary: The University of Calgary Press, 1990).
42. H. Martyn Estall, “Dialogue: 1961 - 1 Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986) 11-15, and Venant Cauchy,
“Dialogue ou les bienfaits du pluralisme,” Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986) 7-10.
43. Michael McDonald, “Philosophy in Canada,”Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986) 3-4.
44. François Duchesneau, “Une étape dans Phistoire de Dialogue,”Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986) 5-6.
45. John T. Stevenson, “Canadian Philosophy from a Cosmopolitan Point of View ” Dialogue, 25:
1 (1986) 17-30.
46. Wesley Cragg, “Two Concepts of Community or Moral Theory and Canadian Culture”,
Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986)31-52.
47. Thomas Mathien, “The Natural History ofPhilosophy in Canada” Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986) 53-
65.
48. Leslie Armour, “Canadian Philosophy: the Nature and History of a Discipline? A reply to Mr.
Mathien” Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986)67-82.
49. John Douglas Rabb, “Canadian Idealism, Philosophical Federalism, and World Peace,”
Dialogue, 25: 1 (1986)93-103.
50. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, “The Faces of Reason and its critics.” Dialogue, 25: 1
(1986) 105-118.
51. Stevenson, “Canadian Philosophy” 20-21. The quotation is from Sidney Hook, American
Philosophers at Work (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1954) 10.
52. Thomas A. Goudge, “Philosophical Literature 1910-1960,” in Literary History o f Canada, ed.
Carl F. Klinck, 2nd ed. 4 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976-1990) Vol. D, 95-
107.
53. Thomas A. Goudge, “Philosophical Literature,” in Literary History of Canada, 2nd ed., Vol.
111,84.
54. Hubert R. Krygsman, Freedom and Grace: Mainline Protestant Thought in Canada, 1900-
1960 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Carleton University, Ottawa, 1997).
17 Cows, Wolves, and the Absolute
ELIZABETH TROTT
Introduction
Leslie’s love of cows really caught my attention, especially his love of Holsteins. Big,
angular, gentle, slow-moving, black and white cows. “I like to look out and see them
standing there,” he explained simply. I was no stranger to cows, having spent much of my
childhood at two rural family-related farms, one breeding championship Herefords, the
other a hundred acre subsistence farm with a motley collection of milking cows and the
usual chickens, pigs, cats, and two Belgians. A city girl, I took pride in being able to
identify the different breeds of cattle the way young boys call out the names of passing cars
and fanners indifferently remarie on one another’s weed patches. I had never really thought
of cows as field ornaments.
Holed up in a large farm kitchen with a leaky roof (Leslie’s wife, Diana, out buying two
goats to eat the grass), hatching plans to write a book, fuelled by anger, curiosity, pride, and
paranoid resentment, Leslie and I filmed and plotted in the heat of the day, and gathered
cows in the evening. Leslie and his family lived on a farm outside of Waterloo, during his
stay at the University of Waterloo, from 1962 to 1971.
Leslie and Diana slept in an oversized woodshed, with a large pot for catching rain that
seeped between old wooden shingles. When I visited the farm from the university where
I was completing my doctorate (with Leslie as my supervisor) I slept in a tiny upstairs
room. It was dry, but strangely noisy. Alone in my orange crate, the outside seemed
perilously close. Wind whistled in an aging window frame and rattled eveiy board in the
roof. Crows and pigeons could be heard landing and walking about in the early mom. Rain
pelted, dripped, washed down around me in mysterious cacophony. A buzzing fly, a skittish
mouse, a floorboard creaking as a child padded about below, echoed in my tiny room. But
unlike other parts of the house, it was dry. Days were often filled with farm work, haying,
milking goats, trying to train an Old English sheepdog to bark from behind the cows, not
while facing them. There were often tears, and shouting, despair and abandonment.
Throughout Diana remained cheerful, positive, supportive. A new roof would be too
expensive. Some bigger pots would do. I taught her how to drive. We rigged a bushel
basket and a heat lamp for some baby birds who had lost their nest. The mother bird found
them, fed them, and we wished them well as they tottered on the edge of the basket nailed
to the porch wall, and fluttered off-balance toward the shelter of long grasses by the bam.
We were three people licking our wounds.
Leslie’s wounds were to his spirit and intellect (and a formidable one it is). Every day
he felt undermined, criticized, plotted against by some of his American colleagues in the
philosophy department at the University of Waterloo. I was reeling from being the only
female in most of my classes—a time before sexual harassment officers and gender politics.
Diana was wounded by the daily pain Leslie exhibited and the tears I shed. She tried to heal
by making all around her live: rabbits, birds, flowers, cows. If it meant staying at the bam
all night, she laughed about the adventure. “Cows’ stomachs make a lot of noise,” she
announced while watching coffee boiling in a pot. I tried to make sense out of the
incongruities in which I was immersed—a sheep dog that couldn’t herd cows, goats that
played on the hood of my grey corvair, a philosophy professor in a woodshed, a farm house
that leaked—but never on Leslie’s books. I threw bales of hay—300 in one day—ferreted
out lost calves, milked goats, and rescued pigeons caught in the barn slats. In all I tried to
rethink a world that was hurtful into being loving. I succeeded only partially. Some pain
just doesn’t go away. Leslie wrote and wrote philosophy. Furiously he kept doing what he
knew how to do. And he wandered around the farm looking at cows.
The time was the late 1960s and the setting of the insidious confidence-eroding events
was a philosophy department staffed with nineteen Americans and two Canadians. The
seeds of the book that took ten years to write, The Faces o f Reason: An Essay on
Philosophy and Culture in English Canada, 1850-1950,1took root in the study of a farm
house, in the dark grip of emotional pain. We drank scotch and Little Brown Jug whiskey;
we became deaf to each other’s verbal assaults; we wrote a proposal for a research grant
and received it; we swore and we cried and we were comforted by Diana’s cups of tea,
Leslie’s coal-black humour, and my love of farms. Cowshit on my jeans was O.K.; spiders
had a right to live; a dog fornicating with a cat was not off-putting. I complained about
nothing and asked nothing. They wanted me there. We needed each other. The cows were
the buffer zone, living, giving creatures who needed no justification for their existence.
They were a good thing in the world. We, however, felt so devalued as humans in our own
country that we sought a definite theoretical ground for our identity as philosophers, as
Canadians.
The results of our efforts have seemed much like the pot in the woodshed. As long as
one keeps writing, speaking, struggling, the effort is the measure of success—like learning
to stay healthy. The minute one stops—think of baling a sinking boat—the future looks just
as futile. The boat will not stay afloat, the roof will continue to leak, the book on Canadian
philosophy will not spearhead a place for our thoughts in the curricula of philosophy
departments, or bolster national spirit. We had hoped to create a good thing, an accounting,
a point of reference for other philosophers and scholars in all disciplines. At best we caught
the attention of a few believers, a footnote here, a reference there, a couple of courses for
a couple of years.
I now regard the cows with envy and a clear sense of their separate existences. Milk is
good. Milk is always good. Milking cows need never to justify their existence. They stand
unreflective, untroubled, looking at their world, wary and observant, beyond critical
judgement. Leslie’s gaze and troubled walks among the cows were those of a pilgrim: how
to contact a way of existing so remote from his own, a creature that is neither dangerous,
aloof, desirous of friendship, selfish nor territorial? Perhaps what is good is inaccessible.
You see, cows don’t chase you unless you are too close to a new-born, they merely move
out of your way and stay out of your reach. Young calves, if you crouch quietly on your side
of the fence, will edge closer and closer to take a look at you. But lift a hand to stroke a
silky ear and they step just an arm’s length away.
What we could imagine for our labour was never quite realized. Our spirit of retribution
with the pen burned out. We would have to be content with embracing the ideas, not their
Cows, Wolves, and the Absolute 259
practiceJu st as one must be content with looking at cows, unperturbed as they are by one’s
gaze.
Leslie’s encounter with ideas began long before the cows. His first book, following his
doctorate from Birkbeck College, University of London, took its title from Hegel, The
Rational and the Real (1962).2 It was, in 93 pages, an account of “general conditions for
all possible experience” which he argues are “general conditions for all possible existence”
(RR 92). His claim is to distinguish between “descriptions of experience and descriptions
of the conditions for there being experience and for talking about it” (RR 91).
Scientific descriptions reflect systems of understanding that produce descriptions of the
world of physics and descriptions of everyday material objects. Metaphysics is about
conditions of understanding. Motor cars still exist and are not funny things made up of sets
of ideas. Rather they are examples of what can be experienced and they are part of
circumstances in which one can act in the world. The world is not some alien place that a
self discovers. It is that which my faculties of understanding (my capacity to recognize and
participate in systems and patterns) reveals to me. Armour writes: “Reality, on my account,
becomes a panorama of experience against a permanent background of possibility, an
experience driven on to its own completion, but a completion which, under the impact of
free agents faced with an infinity of possibilities, may take any number of forms” (RR 90).
We often seem to ‘experience different worlds.’ A parent’s perspective on appropriate
dress may not be that of a teenager. There are not multiple worlds but multiple possibilities
of ways of experiencing. One cannot list the contents of the world any more that one can
predict a new variation which the next free agent will claim it contains, because he/she has
experienced the world differently.
Armour insists in The Rational and the Real that what role language plays in
understanding is not a philosophical inquiry that can be pursued independently of questions
about the nature of experience. “Experiencing is an activity which, in the ultimate sense,
is not possible without language” (RR 9). This is not to say that small babies and other
sentient beings do not have experiences. They certainly have sensations and responses and
they develop patterns of response and systems of decision-making. It is to say that without
language experience cannot be understood as of the world. Experience is not just a
collection of sensations. To experience is to claim to know what is going on. More
importantly, it is to pass judgement on some set of sensations—to recognize patterns, to
seek for systems of understanding them, to doubt, to be sceptical, to reflect on sensations,
to reject one system of interpretation and employ another when drastic incongruities,
incoherences and illogical sets of interpreting schemes warn against acting too hastily.
Standing on a dock, the opposite shore appears. A nice swim, one may think. But how far
away is it? If we relied only on our sensations as a measure of decision-making we would
live short and chaotic lives. Language captures systems of interpretation and enables us to
reflect on their commensurability before we plunge into the water.3
Experience presumes reasoning, and reasoning that conjoins systems such as inductive
claims, causal analysis and moral responsibility (a ground of social coherence) is grasped
in linguistic models. Our ability to juxtapose and systematize these models is what we
mean by reasoning. Babies leam cause and effect. Crying produces some response. Unless
they can refrain from crying when Dad is on the phone, unless they can juggle linguistic
conceptual experiences in making a decision, they are not reasoning, in the ultimate sense.
Armour links experience to the world by suggesting the self is the possibility of all
experience, but must “produce some experience to exist as more than a possibility and
selection is thus inevitable” (RR 28). A self emerges as an experiencing agent free to
choose, think, act—in short, to determine from the knowable range of experiences which
experiences will be its own. In the complex process of sensations, pattern—encounters
(cause and effect) linguistic acquisition, and choice making, the self emerges— a linguistic
convenience to focus and direct experiences of an individual agent.
In a footnote to his chapter on “Thought and Reality” Armour writes:
My position is that whatever is a necessary condition for experiencing and reasoning must
exist—and also that nothing can exist unless it is amenable to experience or reason [...]
anything which exists must be describable [...] only entities whose ‘descriptions’ would
contain logical contradictions would ultimately count as ‘undescribable’ and it would be
fatuous to suppose that reality might contain components of this sort since the statement of
the supposition would then, itself, contain contradiction. (RR 29)
The self is not a thing; it is
a tendency to actualize possibility [...] Its existence is logically necessary since, without it,
there would be only possibility, that is to say nothing. The explanation of its activity is
ultimately logical and there is no duality between it and the world which it ‘experiences’
since it, too, would be nothing were it not for the experiences which it has. Neither is
intelligible without the other. (RR 36)4
Armour is not unaware of the epistemological problems any system of metaphysics has
to accommodate. Often our experience gives us conflicting systems and patterns—sticks
we know to be straight appear bent in water. He raises the question, which experiences are
to be considered ‘trustworthy’? A criterion of judgement in conjunction with an
understanding of the complexity of experience must be sought.
There has to be an element of permanence in the world, of that which does not leap into
being or disappear from it but is, from time to time, actualizable in experience. Only thus
could it be certain that instances were patterned and that the pattern would remain and not
burst into randomness. (RR 46)
Judgement will be possible because experience reveals patterns of permanent

dispositions—not mere possibility, not ju st a chain of events, but a “chain of the
determinants of pattern” (RR 47).
Donna didn’t moo but crooned a hollow, aching howl, throwing back her head and
twisting it from side to side. Cow gathering had its aberrations and this unexpected event
was not mere whimsy. A quick count of newborns revealed one missing. Donna, the
essence of cow-mother, sensed loss but exhibited no cognizance of patterning. So she
stood, expressing her sense of interruption and ignoring our reassurances. She could not
talk; we could not communicate. A frantic search followed in the long grasses at the back
of the pasture, and there, honey-baked in the afternoon setting sun, was a ten-day old
slumbering Jersey. Three hundred bales thrown in a day did not equip me with strength to
lift the calf and march triumphantly to re-unite mother and offspring. The indignity of
poking and prodding the calf awake, the awkwardness of heaving and shoving to raise it
to its feet, the physical stress of hauling and manoeuvring a sleepy calf, now frightened, to
within sight of Donna (clearly the calf did not respond to the howls) were mine alone.
Leslie arrived and followed, keeping Donna in sight. The reunion was boring. Mother
slogged off to join the herd heading for the bam. The offspring followed, fruitlessly trying
for an evening snack. Patterns had been re-established. Approaching evening behaviour
kicked in. We stood and watched. There was a pattem here but barely accessible to us and
with only speculative emotive import. Cows were different.
The conditions of patterning can change and new patterns will emerge. The criterion
of judgement and trustworthiness seems fleeting and recedes often into conceptual
schemata, but Armour reminds us that if we can express those schemata in language then
we are still “talking about the world” (RR 47).
Armour tackles space and time, but of most interest in the chapter “The Structure of
Experience” are his observations about ‘cause.’ Cause, in the language of physics, will
provide interpretive structures for experience. What matters is which structures we choose
and what follows from those choices. If I choose to regard the world as an interesting set
of atoms, pushing people in front of subway trains will have little significance for me. If I
wish to talk of experience, intentions, purposes and valuations, I need criteria of judgement
to guide decisions. The attribution of cause to my behaviour—what caused me to do X or
Y— Armour suggests is “always evidence about narrowing or expanding the range of
known possibilities” (RR 67). But we cannot speculate about causes or purposes or
intentions unless someone acts and thereby actualizes a selected possibility. And one
seldom acts without some understanding of the implications of one’s actions. Our ability
to choose and act as a community means that our experiences have generated causal laws
that extend beyond a personal choice. Our grasp of causal laws enables us to select
possibilities for action. If we were victims of causality there would be no change. If we
were simple authors of causal laws there would be no social, moral, conscience. Hence we
must through experience participate in comprehensible systems and activate new ones
through free choice of possibilities.5
Talk of systems, sets, range, etc. is talk of classification, and categories of classification
are often referred to as universais. The question of where universais fit in the metaphysical
scheme of things is as old as Aristotle. Are universais ‘real’ things in the world? If not, are
they arbitrary, and since language relies on them are they not ‘about the world’ (RR 30)?
In short, if there are potatoes, apples and oranges, what are we saying when we claim there
are vegetables and fruit?
The question of universais has animated the minds of metaphysicians so persistently
that one dare not write about experience and the world without taking them into account.
Armour responds to the ‘problem’ in three concise pages with a cursory reference to F. H.
Bradley (RR 34) and, in a four-sentence footnote, to Whitehead (RR 35). His solution to
the issue, how do we talk about ‘non-existent things’?, is to propose that universais “have
an implicit being and become explicit with the existence of their implications” (RR 35).
Universais are none other than realms or patterns of possibilities. Possibilities must exist
beyond actualities or there would be no change. Change is the unfolding of an infinity of
possibilities (RR 36). Selves are logical linchpins for personal patterns. Realms of
possibilities are evolving patterns in conjunction with actions by conscious agents.
We make the world as much as it makes us. Our dualities of mind-body, time-space,
universal-particular are logical conveniences that classify patterns. Understanding is
grasping the multiple patterns of interpreting experience. Stare into a rippling, deep, green
pool of water. Movement of light, water lilies, spiders, minnows, frogs, guppies,
reflections, mirror images, shifting colours and patterns, ecosystems, weather, poetry,
passions, crimes, life, death, beauty, slime, parasites, larvae, predators, silence—where do
language and reality begin and end? Largely with our choice of universais, possibilities
once chosen now value-laden and weighted in an act of thought. In a single pool lies an
infinity of potential thoughts, modes of existence, and patterns we can conceive of but
never experience. We should howl like Donna at eveiy loss of life form for with it goes
another set of possibilities for human imagining, for conscious enactment, a realm of
universais to be explored or dreamed about. Such a tiny planet in a vast universe. To shrink
it further seems unconscionable. Not even Donna ignored a day made smaller. Leslie knew
full well that universais could not be dealt with adequately in three pages. He was to return
to the relation between modes of reasoning and the world in his book, Logic and Reality .6
But not before he wrote about ‘truth’ in The Concept o f Truth?
Armour’s interest in truth is related to the possibility of moral judgements. For us to
make true or correct moral judgements, conditions of morality must exist, such as
meaningful claims about duties and rights. Duties and rights themselves require other
conditions. For me to have a duty I must be able to choose as a free agent. Choice suggests
acceptance or rejection of a possible action amongst all possible actions. Again we are
seeking conditions. What must hold or be the ground of my freedom to choose? A duty is
a choice that is justified by a set of reasons (not desires that animate my feelings) which
will be related more to my intentions than my needs. What I mean when I claim to have a
duty is that the desired outcome of my actions is other regarding, not self regarding. (Duties
to the self, as Kant discussed them, are not excluded from Armour’s analysis, but I shall not
extend this point further as our focus is conditions of truth.) Choice that reflects intentions
focused on others also means that I have some knowledge that my choice will be a possible
action in the world. I could not plan ahead or have intentions unless there was a “fairly
orderly world in which, most of the time, events were followed by other events in a regular
way” (RR 67). Choices are not guesses or random mental acts. They require a knowledge
of causal laws for intentions to be carried out. “If any one chooses a given possibility he
must also choose the occurrence of whatever set of possibilities happens to come connected
with it” (RR 68). To act from duty is to have a clear knowledge of causal laws and systems
and to choose the one that fulfils one’s intentions. True moral judgements will produce
actions that reflect intentions directed to ethically appropriate ends. They are true or right
when (all else being equal) the intended effect occurs. We can be mistaken about the actual
outcomes of our actions. I may misjudge character or apply irrelevant systems of
knowledge to my choice. The person to whom I tell the truth about his or her medical
condition may not want to hear it. The promise to raise dividends for shareholders may
interfere with my desire to have the government hold up to the public my corporation as
a model of good business. But, for the most part, if I apply knowledge of causal laws to my
choice of possible actions, one that is characterized by my intent to bring about good for
another, or large numbers of others, causal laws, choice, and the intent to serve, not gain,
will produce true, moral judgements (RR 66-69, 82-87).
Leslie expanded his concept of truth in his book of the same name. Much of the book
reviews the coherence and correspondence theories of truth. His own theory emerges in his
attempt to dissolve the dualisms represented by the above two clusters of theories.
Correspondence theories suggest that the world is “out there” and sooner or later a set of
propositions will be worked out that represent its most durable and salient features.
Coherence theories suggest that there is “a perfectible system of ideas which constitutes
what is ultimately real” (CT 225). A timeless, complete, logical structure contains all
possible truths and therefore gives us no measure of its completeness. Because of our
limited, inescapable perspectives, such a proposal is more a logical fiction than a logical
presupposition of meaningful claims. The question with coherence theories arises: Of what
use is it to suggest there must be an ultimate perfect truth that I can never know?
Armour bases truth in the activity of the pursuit of knowledge, not just the knowledge
claims. There is no separate independent criterion called ‘truth’ embedded in logical
congruencies,—such as the tedious application of the law of non-contradiction, nor is there
a mysterious realm of truths to which ordinary mortals aspire. Rather there is the business
of asking questions within developing systems that produce answers that accord with the
conceptual schemes already in place. A relevant question will be one which reveals an
investigative technique that has produced system-enhancing answers, and which does not
exclude alternative paths (CT 223). “The world must be conceived of as the sum of a set
of perspectives actively chosen since the alternative is to conceive of it as the sum of a
variety o f ‘seemings’ passively accepted” (CT 222). There will be no one single absolute
frame of reference, but conceptual consistency should make it possible for a perfectly free
observer to make discoveries and decisions. If I choose to accept Catholicism I can learn
and deduce the right questions to extend my knowledge of the religion. If I find myself lost
in the forest I could opt to start praying, but the truth about how to survive would be better
worked out with knowledge of wind and stars, water routes, the location of the sun, and a
good G.P.S. tracking device. Truth is confirmed in my knowledge of relevant data
resources to answer my questions.
Truth, itself, if I am right, must be conceived as a relational property predicable of a system

which involves questions, answers, and presuppositions. As a consequence there is nothing
which lies beyond the perspectives which rational creatures capable of asking questions and
getting answers arc able to formulate. A particular focus is an essential ingredient in any truth
and to imagine it being transcended is to imagine an impossible, static universe. (CT 225)
This brief reference does not do justice to Leslie’s book, but it does alert us to several
important features. The search for single absolutist pronouncements about “the world,” or
an all-encompassing theory of “reality,” or a perfect self-sufficient causal explanation of
existence is bound to collapse in internal contradictions. Systems that do not accommodate
change, presuppose a universe beyond experience in which nothing happens. Reasoning
beings are not products of single conceptual schemes but can cross-examine them and ask
questions that will re-order, expand, and re-make the world they experience.
It is because we order (and so transform) our experiences by imposing rational structures

upon them that we render them capable of providing answers to our questions and, in
obvious and important cases, it is because our choice of rational structures renders our
experiences intelligible that we are entitled to be satisfied with them [...] truth [...] is only
possible in a context in which our questioning—and thus our linguistic and logical
substructures—play a crucial role. (CT 244)
A logic of presuppositions—the conceptual arena of meaningful systems—needed to be

worked out: a dialectical logic, he called it, with acknowledgement of Hegel (CT 114-5).
“But these are matters for examination in some other book” (CT 115). That book, Logic
and Reality, was published in 1971.
Armour interprets traditional logic as locked into rule-bound systems that enable one
to work out conclusions that are first and foremost valid within the symbolic system. The
assumption is that such rules, applied to prepositional claims, can aid us in establishing
true propositions, claims about the world that must be true. There is little objection to the
rules of valid arguments first worked out by Aristotle. Valid arguments with false premises
can yield false conclusions. One common example that always signals a falsehood is
provided by a contradictory conclusion, e.g., this is an apple, and is a not-apple. On a
general level we seek to avoid conceptual clashes that prevent further meaningful
questions. Armour suggests that often the law of non-contradiction is inadequate to our
puzzles. Our concepts must exhibit flexibility; conditions for validity will be relevant to the
internal coherence of the system. In short, the belief that simple claims about the world will
enable us by logical argument alone to further our understanding of the world is short
sighted. There are no easy rule-bound solutions where frames of reference and conceptual
schemes interact, clash and must be worked through.
The move in 1971 from teaching at the University of Waterloo to becoming Dean of
Arts at Cleveland State University was wrenching. Leslie’s graduate students urged him
to go. We feared a feeling of intense frustration, of being wilfully ignored by his colleagues,
was eating away at a stunningly original mind. It mattered not which side of the border. He
needed a setting in which to rebuild confidence and do what he knew how to do better than
most, which was thinking and writing philosophy. Leslie was city-bound in a rambling
house with three teenagers, each like a headless horseman, running simultaneously in
dramatically different directions. Cows were out of the question. He bought a malamute,
the closest thing to a wolf that he could have. If not cows, wolves gained his love of the
other—free, independent, loyal to their community, without enemies (except man), joyous,
playful, inaccessible. Wolves were everything he believed about the country he left behind.
And a malamute was part wolf. The book on Canadian philosophy was under way and I
commuted from Waterloo and Toronto to Cleveland with pages of research and rough
drafts of sections. Tillicum would greet me as an unruly member of her pack. Feet on my
shoulders, she rocked me from side to side, her head pressed against mine. A small wolf
would have been bowled over. I bent my knees and stood my ground, with difficulty, but
refused submission. Leslie was the head of the pack. I had to be an equal member, not the
weakest member. A strong back kept my place.
Tillicum was a pet: loving, obedient, beautifully incongruous amongst the sweaty trees
and dank air of a Cleveland summer. I was saddened by her concrete jungle, but she
seemed oblivious to the hot pavement We referred to her as a dog, until, suddenly one day,
without warning, she threw herself violently against the front window, cracking the glass
and frame, but causing no harm to herself save a scratched nose. The racket caused her to
shift her focus and at Leslie’s urgent command, she cowered and crept into her huge cage-
den. Our clashing conceptual frames of references kept us awake long into the night. The
cause was the image of a small dog across the street. Tillicum was tame, but wild; a pet,
but not domesticated; she was a dog, but a not-dog, a wolf and a friend. The
presuppositions about her had to be expanded. Traditional logic would not enable us to
conclude anything about this creature. The dialectical tension of a part dog, part wolf in
Cleveland required new understandings, and the abandonment of old expectations. Diana
took her to dog school. There she showed no hostility toward her classmates, and cheerfully
feigned obedience unless she wanted a drink. Clearing the five-foot wooden enclosure was
effortless if a puddle of water had gathered nearby. (Malamutes, like wolves, smell water,
and when they do, they refuse to take a sled across the ice.) Her return to her place in line,
almost grinning at her five-foot-two companion, was commendable. Tillicum was soon
excused from class. She performed to please. She was not trainable. The sight of dogs and
cats outside the house threatened her territory. We put up a curtain. We took her for walks
at one in the morning. She taught Leslie to howl, correcting and repeating his songs. She
was unclassifiable, a conceptual set of possibilities that we struggled to understand. She
lived a happy life, we hoped. When Leslie and Diana returned to Canada (Ottawa) to a
smaller living room, the cage, without a door, stayed in the centre of the room. Graduate
students folded themselves around her lair, stepping carefully over her large paws that
filled the entrance. They sat, knees to chin, amongst the clutter of papers and books that
were her forest Tillicum was the other against which experience had to be re-thought, re
worked and re-categorized.
Published only two years after The Concept o f Truth, written largely on a houseboat
on the canals around London, England, Logic and Reality was Leslie’s third book in the
trilogy. He began with the search for conditions of experience in The Rational and The
R eal, then turned to the pursuit of a theory of truth that was intended to free experience
from the mysteries of an inaccessible noumenal world, and/or the inflexible dryness of
propositional logic as a way of representing reality. He sought to develop a ‘dialectical
logic’ that connects logic and reality in the tradition of Plato, Hegel, the neo-Hegelians,
Royce and Bradley. His intent was to develop Hegel’s work and to accommodate
traditional logics within that development.
But there has been a tendency, since, to regard dialectical logics and other logics as
incompatible or as two traditions with no meeting point, two activities with nothing in
common. The view which I try to defend in this book is that traditional logic and its modem
developments can be regarded as special cases which have a precise and clearly determinable
place within a dialectical scheme. (LR Preface v)
Thus Russell and Quine are as much a part of Armour’s text as Hegel and Bradley. The
two interests of metaphysics and logic are not separable. Just as conditions for truth were
essential to conditions of experience, so conditions of rationality are essential to claims
about reality (LR vi).
The search is for just principles—for “the animating idea of a dialectical logic” (LR
vi), and for how any such conceptual structure relates to discourse and knowledge. Notably,
Armour points out such a structure is “not externally related to that body and so there are
ways in which any piece of knowledge may influence it” (LR vi). Thus dialectical logic is
not a system developed and imposed as a grand ‘regimentor’ of a chaotic world. It is the
essence of intelligible conscious experience and, once expressed as such, can be conceived
of as an independent system which can be critically assessed for its comprehensiveness,
and more importantly its flexibility.
The search for a ground of all logics will involve some circularity, for what will be the
criterion for evaluating a logical system, other than some other system concerned with
canons of inference and workable argument forms? Is there a way of justifying one’s logic
by arguments which don’t presuppose it or some other system (LR 3)?
The difficulty [of circularity] could be avoided if it were possible to develop one’s inference
rules and arguments together with one’s subject matter. If the two are related in such a way
that neither presupposes the other but both are generated from the same source, no
circularity, of course, results. (LR 3)
If one could find one concept so general as “to be entailed by and involved with every
possible system of rational discourse” (LR 3) it would have connections with all possible
concepts. Such a concept would include all others, and by virtue of its identity exclude
them But, how to find such a transfigurational idea? A review of well known efforts from
Hegel and Tarski to Quine finds them all susceptible to the same complaint: The attempt
to reduce the functions of logical rules to exact components within denotative systems does
not capture the floating and multiple meanings of language. Logical atomism will not
establish a schematic representation of the world and how we talk about it.
The subjects of predication are always collections at once unified and diverse and [...] one
never does quite get to the point at which one can deploy the ‘Either it is or else it is not’
technique except as an approximation. (LR \2)
The thought of Tillicum rocking Tarski from side to side is too deliciously irreverent.
The search for a dialectical logic is a quest to unravel the dialectics that traditional
logics presume as givens—the analytic-synthetic distinction, experience as other than
logical systematizing, subject-object, the dualisms presupposed by truth claims. Armour
wants to defend the position that experience “will not shine through our conceptual
blunders,” but it can be “molded by the concepts we bring to it” (LR 15). We must be able
to know when experience misleads us. Reason must operate in spite of our enticingly
deceptive illusions, if only to alert us to their dangers. Does such a commitment to an
experiential backup system require a single unified system (closed system) perhaps based
on God, or the Absolute, or Truth? Armour’s previous writings about possibilities,

questions and free choice, should remind us of his resistance to this well-trodden path.
Any metaphysical system needs a starting point, a first concept either as the background
against which all else will be made intelligible, or one from which all others can be
derived. Hegel started with Being, in terms of which determinate claims about what exists
can be developed, not in the sense of listing the contents of the world, but in the sense of
developing the concepts which categorize and reflect ways of ordering contents that are
useful to us in the development of knowledge. F. H. Bradley started with a
dichotomy—appearance and reality—and then argued from this dialectical duo to an all-
comprehensive concept of the Absolute.
Armour begins with ‘being’ but not as an ontological claim (a word that stands for all
there is). Nor does he view it as a purely logical concept for that implies a specific system
and is therefore not inclusive of all possible systems of understanding. Logic cannot easily
grasp meanings reflected in poetic metaphors, or the emotive import of music. (Nor will
it easily categorize Tillicum.) Armour suggests that being refers to all systems which
“specify some distinction which can actually be made in the world” (LR 30). Each system
establishes some reference point for a kind of discourse which can be carried on. “They all,
therefore, tread on two common grounds—the domain which consists of all the distinctions
which are actually there to be made in the world and the domain of all possible intelligible
discourse” (LR 30). These domains are not identical for one contains room for reflection
on the other and so they can be distinguished conceptually. Intelligible discourse is part of
the world of possibilities “which is the domain of distinctions which are there to be made”
(LR 30).
Being is the “area of significant intersection of these domains [...] Whatever one’s
theory about anything, one has traffic of some kind with this intersection” (LR 30). Armour
refers to this intersection as the point between thought and reality, “the most general of the
concepts one can imagine” (LR 30). It cannot be held before one’s mind as an object of
thought (like Hegel’s ‘pure being,’ an intuition); “it can be seen, by seeing how all our
discourse works, to be at work” (LR 30). It is beyond the distinction of form and content;
it is what is presupposed in ordinary discourse. Armour rejects the idea of ‘a universe of
discourse’ as introducing the separation of word and object; an ontological being creates
the same problem in reverse. Thus the available subject matters of dialectical thought do
not resolve the dualism upon which they are based. Nor can one just propose a system,
without illustrating how its operation is related to the subject matter on which it works.
Which process of symbolic interpretation should one choose? Mathematics, logic, aesthetic
symbolization, theology, cosmological physics all have their appeal. Armour’s point is that
the available systems and the yet undeveloped ones will intersect at some point. If they do
not they will atrophy and become unstable. Armour suggests (by way of example) that we
think of the relations between church and state. The President of the United States no
longer justifies his actions by claims of having God’s support. If he did, those claims would
also have to accord with everything claimed by atomic physicists. This is not to say that
there is no God. Rather it is to say, if there is a God, h isser activities must stand in some
relation to presidents and physicists and must bear upon all happenings including those
reported by atomic physicists (LR 30).
Being is confirmed, not assumed. It is confirmed by intersecting systems of

understanding that enable us to get on in the world. The properties of ‘being’ can be
distinguished from distinctions made within it, and Armour refers to this set of properties
as ‘pure being,’ that which stands beyond all distinctions. It marks out and excludes
everything. Pure being includes the totality of all things and excludes the collection of
individual things but includes the idea of their exclusion. But what can such a concept do
for us? For the minute we try and suggest it functions or denotes intersecting processes of
thought and reality, we invoke other concepts of determinateness and distinction. Armour
suggests
if any concept [within intelligible discourse] can be shown to be necessary for the functioning
of the original concept, then both the additional concept and the principle of inference which
leads to it will be equally necessary. (LR 34)
The original concept is the cornerstone of logical entailment, setting the limits of meaning
in our utterances. Put another way, intelligible discourse is possible. Its possibility is also
its actuality. We can’t discuss its possibility in gibberish. Pure being as a concept,
therefore, includes intelligible discourse (as well as, gibberish). Our cognizance of this
observation is not intuited. It can be expressed; so being able to articulate the ground of
what I say is necessary to my being able to say what it is. All such concepts that are
necessarily linked to the original ‘pure being’ by virtue of their role in intelligible discourse
(the rules of inference which enable them to do work for us) confirm the original concept.
And thus in thinking and talking and separating and distinguishing I am world-making and
to appeal to the concept of pure being is to substitute a metaphysical cornerstone for a vast
and complex whorl of possible meanings in the din of evolving and devolving systems of
intelligible discourse.
As we try to specify those concepts necessary to the intelligibility of pure being, their
expression and role in the dialectic of thought and reality will “become increasingly
specific” (LR 34). Armour means that conversation is particularizing. We talk about
specificities and differences. Taming the blooming, buzzing confusion is what language can
do for us. Unlike William James, however, he does not think language makes our encounter
with the world functional, for that is to presume that the world is disorderly and we impose
grid-like conceptual restraints on it. Such a position always suggests a world we make to
suit ourselves and leaves the possibility open that such a world is just an artifice, not the
real world. Armour’s position is that even a blooming, buzzing confusion, to be thought
of as such, must be recognized against a presumption of how it could be otherwise. But
how could such a presumption arise if confusion is all there is?
Previous philosophers have appealed to otherworldly ideas: God, noumenon, nous,
reality, the Absolute. Armour’s point is that there is no ground for viewing such
presuppositions as beyond conscious experience. Each proposed ‘sense-making’ concept
is part of the totality of experience. If we can conceive of an idea necessary to our claims
about experience then that idea is part of experience, not something above and beyond
which the human mind may aspire to but never grasp. If Platonic forms, Kantian noumena,
Berkeleian Gods, Hegelian Absolutes are ideas essential to the dialectic of intelligible
discourse, then they are players in the real world. The mysterious, inaccessible, aspired-to
trappings of their conceptual form reflect our endless efforts at system building, not the
limits of our conscious capabilities. Beyond limiting, demarcating, ordering, and system
building which implies continually intersecting domains of discourse, what else is there?
If we can conceive of an idea then the experience of that idea is part of what is, of reality.
It may float around multiple systems: Platonic forms become Aquinas’ God, become
Berkeley’s nous, become Kant’s antimonies, become Hegel’s Absolute, become
McTaggart’s timeless spirits, become Sartre’s other, become Sprigge’s centres of
experience, become Armour’s reality. It is not that there is ‘something else. ’ Whatever that
something else is, as it is conceived, is a component in the possible inclusion and exclusion
categories of pure being. So the pious ‘something I know not what’ is merely an
anthropomorphically-charged logical expression.
The concept of pure being is that beyond which
nothing else can be referred to. There is only fragmentation to be indulged in. And all
fragmentation carries with it an element of falsification [which is why we build and rebuild
systems] [...] there are various ways of exhibiting the world as a unity and the special kind
of logical priority which belongs to discourse about ‘being’ is not necessarily either an
epistemological or ontological priority [...] propositions do not have a single, unequivocal,
reference. (LR 74)
Thus we need to grasp the domains under which all propositions can be subsumed, even
propositions which refer to the internal categories of their existence as propositions.
Ultimately Armour must work from the logical oppositions at the level of being (being,
disjunction, determinate being, individuation, etc.) to ontological claims that experience
cries out for: What is an individual, or a community? How do we expect to fit such fickle,
unpredictable, irascible, disjunctive components of experience into any system? What
domain of discourse will give them a dialectical toehold in a meaningful world? No one
domain is reserved for conscious individuals for they, like all other particulars, participate
in different systems and so can be both particular and universal depending on one’s
perspective (LR 166). Here we see some of the observations in The Rational and the Real
at work. If experience is always understood against a background of possibilities, then a
human being is a “tendency-pattem which can be traced against the background of
possibilities which enter into his life” (LR 164). One way of recognizing a tendency-
pattem, indeed a crucial way when it comes to identifying human beings as individual
components of other individuals, such as society, or a corporation, or a herd of cattle, is
through moral intentions and actions. “The continuing identity of an individual human
being, for instance, is significantly a matter of continuing moral aim and of continuity of
moral responsibility” (LR 169). Here we can understand the individual as both particular
and universal. The consistency in moral behaviour over time places that individual as
representative of moral laws. As a universal category of understanding, moral laws
represent a domain of discourse that bridges individual free choice—both what we choose
to do, and what we choose not to do, where we restrain our actions. Individuals (be they
human beings or collective entities, such as nation-states) are, as moral agents, universais.
The particularity of their own moral stories makes them individuals. To regard an
individual as a subject to which one can attach predicates as individuating tags, Armour
argues, is misleading. “Individuality is not, on this view, a property of anything but a

special kind of quasi-universal whose nature is exhibited through a process” (LR 170).
This process is the dialectic of particularizing within determinate being. It is the ebb and
flow of emerging possibilities as systems interact. An example follows. The convergence
and divergence of our words, depending on contexts, reveal not a fixed set of particulars
that can be grouped according to universal categories or classifications, but a set of
perspectives that play different roles in our experience. Armour’s example (LR 176-178),
somewhat truncated, is as follows: Consider a set of books, he calls it the library o f the
world, containing true statements that perfectly describe the world’s contents, including
their own classifications for orderly access and descriptions of the books as well. These
latter descriptions are not descriptions of particulars (books) and universais (categories)
for a book, as such, is a universal whose instance can be in a variety of places and times,
and the classifications can be thought of as particulars. The collection of history books on
my shelf is as much a history collection as the one in the public library but also a distinct
particular in the world of all possible history books. Were someone to say that the books
and their descriptions require more refined ontologies, Armour would reply that such
refinement may not nail down particularity any more than demarcate a universal. Consider:
a book is a set of words and sentences, it is also black marks on white paper, a member of
a class, a pivotal event in history, a repository of reflections. One can never be sure when
one has exhausted all the possible descriptions of a ‘book’ or in the library of the world,
all descriptions of its ordered contents. Searching for philosophy books in a library often
means looking in theology libraries or under categories of politics, economics, or other
classifications.
Thus our library of the world may contain all descriptions of its contents including
descriptions of itself. How we order which descriptions under which categories will be
approximate and ambiguous. Is the world any less ambiguous? Perhaps not. Armour
writes:
A red patch is, from one perspective, a particular thing and, from another, an instance of
redness, and from a third, a member of the class of all red things. A man may be imagined
as the sum of the events of his life or his life may be regarded as a series of instantiations of
him. (LR 178)
More likely he is understood through the events as a particular amongst the universal
(mankind) by those who know him, as an instant of the universal by others, and as both
particular and universal by himself: as universal in actions of courage, duty, inspiration,
religious devotion, loneliness, grief, fear, and love; as particular when he/she reflects on
his or her own special perspective of the world, a perspective developed through
independent actions and reasons for those actions. The self is, as a locus of individuality,
more like a bobbing float than an anchor, appearing and disappearing as the world flows
around, in and over, submerging at one moment, sparkling unexpectedly in a shaft of
sunlight the next. The dialectic of reality is a dialectical process of universal and particular,
looming and fading as benchmarks of meaning. With each new system of understanding
developed we seek to stabilize and control our lives. But often when one system begins to
narrow our focus we may ignore others and so our decisions and priorities, still freely
chosen, reveal new possibilities of actions and events and so new ‘selves. ’ When the man
who serves as the president of General Motors becomes the President of General Motors,
the birthday of his son may become ‘a note to his secretary. ’
Just as the book, somehow, needs its instances but is not exhausted by them and perhaps not,
finally, in some more remote sense, dependent on them, so a man must do something in
order to show himself but is not exhausted by what he does and even a red patch is both itself
and its universal. (LR 179)
If the categories of understanding (impoverished in representation as they are in this

tribute) stand as conditions of intelligible discourse about the world, and if they include as
part of their comprehensiveness descriptions of what can be meant by world, or reality, and
if they are animated by the process of their development—our experience of the
world—then it is not clear what else there could be beyond that which we can know. “The
world as something which comes to know itself is not, after all, an impossible concept” (LR
234). Whatever bodies of knowledge we develop, to be so, cannot contradict what we
know (not in terms of content) in regard to the logical conditions of knowing. So the claim
‘God exists’ is not contradictory to physical laws. It merely requires a domain of discourse
that is structured and intersects with other domains. How we demarcate that turf will be
contentious and fraught with exasperation, because of the complexity of interpretations the
claim invites. Such a claim may reveal both the grand capacity of the human mind to
imagine a world of all possibilities and the crippling, possessive, pettiness of that same
human mind instantiated through our capacity to succumb to tunnel vision when the illusion
of light is remote but dazzling.
Armour cannot, of course, dodge comment on the Absolute for it is part of the systems
housed in our metaphysical library. He may not see a need for such a limiting concept. He
has suggested that universal and particular as categories do not have fixed kinds of
ontological referents or inflexible epistemological roles. Still all inquiry has investigators,
objects of investigation and ordering schemes, and as such has its own limiting categories.
Results of inquiries must be consistent where domains intersect. Armour needs to fit a
concept of the Absolute—all possible knowledge—into the dialectic. He begins by asking:
If we could have complete knowledge, even of a thing or event, would we have the thing
itself? No, he answers, for the activity of coming to know it would be gone (LR 238).
Extended to the world of all possible knowledge, what would we be saying if we were to
claim knowledge of that? “Such a knowledge would not include the fixture if by that is
meant the domain still open to free activity. For by definition there is nothing to be known
about that” (LR 238). Nor would pastness be meaningful as all would be de-temporalized.
Part of knowledge of the past is its incompleteness. Those details would now be filled in.
Time itself begins to shrink to a convenience of thought.
Total knowledge could not be had by a community for they would have to have a
common perspective and, therefore, have a common responsibility for their actions, if they
act. If they act, their acts become the logical structure of their world—perfect reason,
perfect morality—but those ideas sound empty because with perfect knowledge there
would be little to deliberate. Armour says, with a nod to McTaggart, we could call such a
community of common spirits, the Absolute. It cannot be just one mind, for one mind
cannot, because of the dialectic, generate knowledge. It would have to have knowledge of
itself to have complete knowledge. Unity is not an absolute idea; it is relative to systems,
dialectical oppositions, disjunction, all of which form the conditions of knowledge
claims—conditions which ground the “unity of the world as a dialectical system and its
plurality as a set of dialectical individuals intelligible through, and only through, the whole
set of categories” (LR 245). Armour summarizes his categories and dwells little on the
Absolute. It is a limiting concept and perhaps not very useful. Such ideas invite some
individuals to posture as possessing them. Completeness should remain with the operations
of systems of understanding, not the conceptual products they produce.
Leslie is a man devoted to finding a place for things and ideas. Cows, dialectical logic,
rational morality, city wolves are parts of systems of understanding and of the world. We
will struggle with clashing systems as we seek their points of intersection and discard those
which are violently incongruous. (Purple finches who feed on irksome mosquitoes surely
have a place.) Canada is a place of many places, juggling its discursive system builders like
a clumsy but good-natured oaf. The effort to seek dialectical individuality has been bom
out of moral intent if not practical success. And only a shared moral vision will sustain its
individuality. It is little wonder that, when as a universal (Canadian) Leslie felt under
assault, he sought the particular to rebuild the self, Canadian-in-Cleveland. It is not
surprising that the passion to grasp the philosophical origins of Canada, as a place-of-
places, and to re-configure it as an individual, drove the ten years of research and writing
that produced The Faces o f Reason (1981). Leslie’s own work was clearly in the vein of
earlier Canadians, such as John Watson, who pined after “an invisible church”; George
Blewett, who quietly wrote of “the home of all relations”; John Clark Murray, who dared
speak of Marx as “rigidly scientific.” Oppositions fuelled understanding. One needed
constantly to develop new categories to house and nurture irritable and fractious
individuals. Oppositions can also fuel ironies and unexpected outcomes. The negative and
derogatory response by several sceptical academics to the work on Canadian philosophy
(What? Original thought in this Canadian backwater?) drained Leslie of much of his
courage when he returned to Canada to the University of Ottawa. The tragedy of our
mission to find our philosophical home, I fear, was the lack of attention given to his
previous work. The book on Canadian philosophy, though twice reprinted, seemed to
obfuscate the outpouring of a gifted mind. Did the publication cost Leslie his pride of place
as an original metaphysician? Perhaps, at home, where the contemporary system-builders
did not know the place they were in. But he has continued to do what he knows how to do,
producing new books on Spinoza and Pascal, fulfilling speaking engagements in Britain,
Europe, and the United States, and publishing over 200 articles and reviews.8 For me, the
world has been made infinitely larger. Though the journey was arduous and costly to both
of us, the infinite perspectives remain. The struggle to find a place for things, to imagine
new orderings, to celebrate new individuals united by a moral vision of co-operation,
illuminates each day. Cows, wolves and the Absolute. We can, if we choose, fit all into the
scheme of things.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Helpful comments were made on this paper by John Leslie and Robin Mathews. I am
grateful for their contributions.
Notes
1. The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada 1850-1950
(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1981).
2. The Rational and the Real: An Essay in Metaphysics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962).
3. The critic may suggest at this point that it is odd (if not outrageous) to suggest that animals
don’t experience pain because they don’t have language. Armour’s point is that sentient beings
feel pain but may not experience it as humans do who can account for pain, categorize the
sensation, anticipate it, and develop levels of tolerance for pain in accordance with other
systems of interpretation. Nevertheless, the reader may respond that electric fences do work,
that animals have some understanding of cause and effect, that one of the mysteries of the
animal mind is their capacity to estimate and judge. The discourse of humanity seems oddly out
of place; yet one cannot deny that cats seldom fail to estimate distances when jumping, flying
squirrels, as a species, survive, and cows don’t cross gaps too wide to bridge. Armour’s phrase
in the ultimate sense is a clue to the need for more comprehensive systems of understanding
that are required to transfigure feelings, psychological habits, and instincts of survival into
experiential schemata of explanation and reasoning.
4. In Armour’s discussion of a self and the world the reader may be tempted to ask which came
first? Such a question raises the familiar chicken and egg problem. Armour’s discussion is not
of space-time causality but of which meanings associated with experience exist as synthetic
revelations of an inescapable dialectical relation, that of self and world. The dialectical relation
is not of the <if-then> variety. For example, “If there is a self then there must be a world as its
logical prerequisite,” or conversely, “If there is a world then there must be a self.” Armour is
not attempting to deduce one claim from the other. Rather, he is arguing that for one claim to
be meaningful, i.e., the world or the self, the other must be part of our cognitive apparatus. This
position is made much more explicit in Logic and Reality (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 1972).
We need to regard “the category of dialectical individuality as providing that perspective from
which we see that our knowledge of the world, ultimately, comes home to us—that all that can
be known about the world can be seen as the reflection of ourselves in our efforts to establish
a framework for postulating our own individuality. It will still have its own independence, for
logically it has to be (with respect to its formal structure though not, indeed, its details) just as
it is. The possibilities for knowledge and experience, in other words, are logically independent
of anyone” (235). Note that Armour says that possibilities are logically independent, not truth
claims, facts, introspections and/or logically bound arguments.
5. For a much larger project, one should and could locate Armour’s thought in relation to Hegel
and the British Idealists (in particular, J.M.E. McTaggart), Leibniz, and Spinoza, and to A.N.
Whitehead. Of greater interest is his allegiance with Canadian philosophers who preceded him,
none of whom he had read at the time of these first major publications.
6. Logic and Reality: An Investigation into the Idea of a Dialectical System (Assen: Royal Van
Gorcum, 1972).
7. The Concept of Truth (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 1969).
8. See the Bibliography at the end of this volume. Diana, when not building book shelves, has
been her husband’s in-house proof-reader and editor, as essential to Leslie’s philosophical
system-building as to his journey as a self. She is his other. Diana continues to carve her own
path of creations and causes while maintaining intersections for their independent perspectives
and domains.
18 Canadian Nationalism and Canadian
Philosophy
ROBIN MATHEWS
Nationalism in Canada is unique in its character and in its manifestations. It is confronted

by a unique combination of forces which—uniquely—misrepresents it. People calling for
reasonable treatment of ‘national’ concerns are often uniquely vilified, marginalized, and
set apart. Only in Canada, one might say quite correctly, could that be the case; but, of
course, the unique condition of nationalism in Canada guarantees that the response to it will
also be unique and the treatment of those called ‘nationalists’ will be of a special nature.
No better example of the attack upon reasonable nationalism can be found than the
response to the quiet suggestion that Canadian philosophy should have a small, solid place
in the curriculum of Canadian colleges and university philosophy offerings. No better
example of the ‘punishment’ meted out to persons who suggest such an idea can be found
than the marginalization and ‘erasure’ of Leslie Armour as a serious and original Canadian
philosopher.
At the outset we must, in fairness, recognize that a person like Leslie Armour—liberal,
pluralistic, tolerant, wide-ranging in his philosophical work and his disciplinary
interests—probably wouldn’t think of himself as a nationalist. The name is conferred upon
people like him by those who are horrified at any suggestion that Canadians should
recognize ideas, developments, or ways of acting that have shaped them uniquely and
helped to shape this community. The name ‘nationalist’ is conferred by those who are
horrified, for instance, at the suggestion by some that Canadians in post-secondary
institutions in Canada who are interested in philosophy should be offered the possibility of
studying Canadian philosophers and philosophy as one of their options. In short, in Canada
a person is not usually a self-described nationalist. Rather, he or she suggests a perfectly
reasonable measure relating to the conduct, the education, the rights, or the actions of
Canadians, and “the unique combination of forces” in the country leaps to the attack, leaps
into a posture of confrontation. Only a small part of the attack is to give the person under
attack a name the combination thinks of as truly evil: ‘nationalist,’ or worse, ‘narrow
nationalist.’
The remaining part of the attack is undertaken to undermine the legitimacy and
credibility of the person, to marginalize him or her. Finally—Canada being a tolerant and
open, democratic society—the person so marginalized is permitted a half-life as a semi
crank, and may live out his or her days industriously producing ideas and work categorized
as eccentric, and mostly ignored.
The marginalization of Leslie Armour is such a perfect example of that process it
deserves examination. The general scope of his work is presented by Elizabeth Trott in her
essay in this volume. I wish merely to address what should have happened and what did
happen—as I have followed and understood events—when Armour and Trott set out to
organize, explain, and make accessible a first major overview of Canadian philosophy so
that universities and colleges might turn seriously to the subject. Any honours or titles
conferred on Armour or Trott at this very late date will have to be measured against the
seriousness with which Canadian philosophy is taken in post-secondary institutions and the
attention which is paid to Armour’s own philosophical work. For ‘the deathbed
repentance’ of power-holders is an embedded colonial practice in Canada. It involves the
process of honouring superior and original people when they are no longer a threat to
power-holders and the second-rate. Those latter two kinds can pride themselves—by the
honours they are conferring—on upholding Canada’s claim to be a ‘tolerant and open,
democratic society.’
Over ten years Armour should have been given major institutional assistance. Upon
completion of The Faces o f Reason he should have been named to a senior position at a
major university. He should have been surrounded with young scholars and researchers in
a Canadian Philosophical Institute, uniting francophone and anglophone scholars inquiring
into and teaching Canadian philosophy and its relation to religion, statecraft, sociological
structures, First Nations thought, and so on.
Instead, ‘the unique combination of forces’ worked to marginalize him. He was led to
believe, as he began preparing work on Canadian philosophy, that forces in the University
of Waterloo were so antipathetic to his work that he had to leave the university. The
finished manuscript of The Faces o f Reason was subjected to a protracted and unusual
series ofjuiyings. Finally approved for financially assisted publication, it should have been
published promptly by the University of Toronto Press, but it was bumped from publisher
to publisher in a long, drawn-out process of delay. When finally published, its concluding
chapter had to be dropped. That chapter suggested the influx of foreign—mostly U.S.
immigrant philosophers—after 1950 served to push aside and/or submerge the Canadian
philosophical tradition. When the book found its way into the hands of readers, the
philosophical community received it quietly. Not until a 1986 issue of the Canadian
philosophy journal, Dialogue, was Canadian philosophy as a subject of study focused
upon—to be dismissed. ‘The unique combination of forces’ had done its work well.
Canadian philosophy was declared to be non-existent.
Before saying something about ‘the unique combination of forces’ in Canada which
names nationalists (often irrationally) and attacks them, we should agree what, in fact,
nationalism is in Canada. We should know what people and groups named nationalist do
in the country—how they give themselves a character. With premeditated aforethought I
will use a definition of nationalism used by the late Quebec historian, Michel Brunet. I do
so because it is a good definition. I do so, as well, because excellent definitions of the kind
abound in Quebec even while the Québécois are routinely accused by some of bordering
on, hankering after, sliding towards, secretly wishing for a totalitarian state characterized
by hatred, racism, anti-semitism, exclusionary and unjust laws, and the oppression of all
democratic freedoms.
In his brilliant essay “The Cultural Fatigue of French Canada” (1962), Hubert Aquin
makes an absolutely essential point about the ugly insinuations directed at francophones
in Quebec. He argues that anglophone Canada loves everything unique about French
Canada but its sense of national identity. Anglophone Canada encourages all the cultural
pleasantries of Quebec, even pays to see them flourish, but attempts to reject, to stamp out
Canadian Nationalism and Canadian Philosophy 277
anything that expresses uniqueness as a community, anything that might lead to political
demands based on national identity. In brief, the larger force in Confederation rejects the
reality of community uniqueness in Quebec because it offends given structures of power.
In Quebec, as Aquin points out, there are always spokespeople for the anglophone view
of Canada. In Quebec, too, the constant denial of a real aspect of life leads to endless stress
and to the production of “cultural fatigue.”
In exactly the same way a ‘unique combination of forces’ in anglophone Canada
encourages many kinds of (anglophone) Canadian expression and activity. But it attempts
to reject, to stamp out anything that expresses uniqueness as a community, anything that
might lead to political demands based upon an assertion of an unique national identity,
anything that offends the given structures of power on the continent and Canada’s
subservient place within them. For those concerned with the full expression of anglophone
Canadian identity as a community, the denial of uniqueness—and the attacks upon
reasonable Canadians like Leslie Armour—lead to a cultural fatigue similar to the one in
Quebec described by Hubert Aquin. Anglophone Canada always has plenty of
spokespeople for the continentalist view of Canada.
Nationalism, in Michel Brunet’s words
is simply the manifestation of the natural and spontaneous solidarity that exists among
members of a human group sharing an historical and cultural tradition from which the group
derives its distinctive identity. This manifestation of solidarity is more or less conscious and
more or less complete, according to the peculiar circumstances which have influenced and
continue to condition the development of each collectivity.1
The groups called nationalist in Canada and Quebec in the last fifty or sixty years reveal
the uniqueness of nationalism in Canada. They are not white supremacy groups such as
have been historically present in the USA and are present today. They are not exclusive
groups such as are present now—sometimes even in legislatures—in France and Germany
and Russia where foreigners are attacked and/or proposed for deportation. Such kinds of
people in Canada are found in very small, crack-pot groups very far from the centre. They
are not considered nationalists by any serious observers.
Nationalist groups in anglophone Canada (to focus on it for a moment) have been those
calling for justice, equality, compassion, and economic liberation for all the people and
calling for reasonable independence for Canada. Such was the group in government around
Walter Gordon in the 1950s and after—until they were dispossessed by the ‘unique
combination of forces’ that names and attacks so-called ‘nationalists’ in Canada. Such were
the groups in the 1960s and 1970s called the Committee for an Independent Canada and
the Waffle Movement in the New Democratic Party, the latter calling for socialism and
independence. Such was and is the group called The Council of Canadians. Such too,
though narrower in some ways because of their special focus, are the National Action
Committee on the Status of Women, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and Canadian unions
(apart from U.S. unions)—especially the Canadian Auto Workers.
Something of importance comes to view in the light of that information. In the USA,
France, Germany, and Russia, for instance, we may say very generally that the population
recognizes that government is moderately, reasonably, and pretty dependably determined
to secure the interests of the people. Small portions of those populations, however, want
racist or exclusivist policies, in addition. They are called ‘nationalist’ groups because they
choose part of the population to consider ‘exclusive. ’ They require special benefits for that
part of the population and restrictions upon the rest.
In anglophone Canada, on the other hand, small portions of the population recognize
that government is not moderately, reasonably, and pretty dependably determined to secure
the interests of the people—in fact is often quite the opposite. Those small portions of the
population form into organizations and call for justice, equality, compassion, and economic
liberation for all the people who make Canada their home—and they appeal to a quite large
‘silent’ majority in Canada. They call for a reasonable measure of independence for the
country in order to guarantee the power to act for all of the people. In Canada, then, it may
be fair to say, to begin, that government is often ‘anti-nationalist,’ giving rise to peculiarly
Canadian nationalist groups. Government then is a part—but only a part—of the ‘unique
combination of forces’ that names certain opponents ‘nationalist’ and works to suppress
them.
Would government in Canada, it is fair to ask, stifle the development of Canadian
philosophy in post-secondary institutions and help to marginalize people like Leslie
Armour? The short answer is ‘Yes,’ though the full answer would contain contradictions
and complexities.
To explain that answer, in part, one must point out that there are still a number of areas
of Canadian knowledge which are not treated at all or are treated badly in post-secondary
institutions. Canadian philosophy is one of those areas. Knowledge about Quebec is
another—in anglophone universities, and knowledge about anglophone Canada in Quebec
universities. Federal and/or provincial governments could say to universities, for instance:
‘Areas of knowledge important to Canada are weakly served. If you offer improved
education in those categories we will suitably increase your budget.’
Universities not wanting to offer some kinds of Canadian information could refuse
cooperation. They would suffer no penalty. But no government in Canada has seriously
addressed the problem of Canadian materials in Canadian colleges and universities. The
reason is not that all legislators are certified ignoramuses. The reason attaches to the
operation of governments in a colonial system, operation which systematically treats
‘nationalist’ issues as controversial at home, likely to arouse criticism from the imperial
centre, and so to be avoided where possible, smothered where evident.
That is a partial explanation. The anti-nationalism of Canadian governments is more
active, however, than is suggested above. They systematically eradicate or marginalize
what we might call ‘independentists’ in Canada through a process of propaganda, lobbying,
public relations, management of granting agencies, attacks upon public institutions like the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and encouragement of anti-independentist activity.
In the face of the milieu created and supported by governments and their continental,
corporate funders, policy is, nonetheless, supposedly shaped ‘freely’ and ‘democratically’
in the workplace and on the ground as if government is not involved. But that is not so. I
well remember, just for instance, in the early 1970s a provincial Liberal Party convention
in Ottawa. Bright, young students concerned about U.S. takeover of the economy wore
buttons to the convention and spoke on the question of Canadian independence. After the
convention they told me they were taken aside by federal cabinet minister Mitchell Sharp
and given a tongue-lashing. If they wanted to succeed in the Liberal Party, they were told,
they would drop their embarrassing independentist line.
The argument against Leslie Armour and Canadian philosophy hasn’t been put by a
cabinet minister, as far as I know. It has been put simply and forcefully by academic
philosophers wholly in tune with the milieu created by corporate forces and governments
in Canada. First, they argue that philosophy is not national, the idea being ridiculous.
Secondly, they say, there is no such thing as Canadian philosophy. Both are false
arguments. Both are easily answered. Both dominate in the philosophical community in
Canada.
The truly bizarre animosity towards and the rejection of Canadian philosophy needs
more explanation. To begin, those proposing that Canadian philosophy be taken seriously
have not been extremists. They have not made unreasonable demands. They have not
sought to crowd out other materials of study. They have simply said that in itself
philosophical thought in Canada since 1850 is interesting and qualifies for serious study.
Secondly, they have said—as is said frequently of philosophical thought produced in almost
any time and place—that the philosophical thinkers in Canada since 1850 have cast light
upon the larger intellectual history and production of ideas, say, in literature, statecraft,
political theory, religion, and so on. Finally they make two statements so fundamental they
barely need mention: the opening up of study at a Foundations level may reveal deeper and
related levels of interest that might help to open more fully the scope of intellectual activity
in Canada. Some philosophical thinkers, in addition, might find in the development of
thought in Canada ways to modify or help shape their own philosophical outlooks.
None of those are extreme or unreasonable ideas. And yet opponents have seemed to
hold it as an article of fundamental doctrine that they must block the reasonable teaching
of Canadian philosophy in Canada. To compare: when Canadian and Quebec literatures
were opened up for serious study, opposition spokespeople argued there was no literature
of excellence in Canada, certainly not enough to study. They argued Canadian literature
was parochial. They argued it did not—as other literatures do—possess the inner integrity
to qualify it for study in a discipline. No one would say that today, thirty years later. Indeed,
Canadian literature is seriously considered abroad at least in part because Canadians
seriously consider it at home.
In order to recognize the simple proposition that communities put their mark on
philosophical thought we could use the able argument put forward in The Faces o f Reason
that communities in stress look deeply (and in relation to real conditions) into the meaning
of being and knowing, and the resulting ‘philosophies’ bear the stamp of place and time.
We might quote the slightly more nuanced and witty statement Elizabeth Trott and Leslie
Armour make in a 1986 issue of Dialogue :
Anyone can tell the French from the German phenomenologists and existentialists even
though they surely have much in common. Everybody knows the difference between Oxford
philosophy and philosophy in Belgium. Even though Belgian philosophers know (secretly,
of course) that this is because they are more intelligent than Oxford philosophers, this does
not settle the question in everyone ’s mind.2
We need only observe in the world around us how the semi-desperate, romantic Right
of France, living the 1968 destruction of de Gaulle’s expansionist agenda, turned to
philosophic inquiry that seemed to answer a need to strike out at the containers of civil
society, especially where they were communitarian. De Gaulle was no Hitler, but he had
the kind of attraction that authoritarian corporatism engenders and which helped shape, for
instance, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and his attitude to Nazism in the early 1930s.
While arguing for contingency, he—at the same time—seemed to incarnate perfected
Being in very suspicious versions of folktruth guided by those-who-know.
Out of the Gaulliste rout, came—at least partly—the so-called post-modernist
philosophies which undermine textual intention, deny all community solidarities that may
be said to have a basis or family relation to socialism, and often argue for the evil ulterior
intentions of the State. Philosophers connected to those ideas claim to operate at places of
closure, revealing important hidden intellectual activity and presuppositions. But they are
very selective. They never directly confront the meta-narratives, the mythical constructs,
the closures of corporate capitalism and imperialism. That avoidance delivers them into the
hands of an increasingly faceless totalitarianism which attempts to erase, in a marketing
agenda, all arguments of reason, all beliefs in a traditional search for virtue. In brief, they
embrace a new myth of (technological, commercial) efficiency (a myth taken as truth) over
against ideas of reason and traditional myths of narrative and/or story telling (the myths and
parables of the tradition) since Plato.
In effect the semi-desperate romantic Right of France turned to the questions that
haunted Germany between 1918 and 1928. That decade produced Spengler’s great work,
Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, among many more. Significant, then,
is the debt of a number of the post-modernists to Heidegger. Significant, too, is the attempt
to dispossess thought and reason in any traditional sense as part of an argument to advance
social deconstruction and atomization—the ideal conditions for the health of corporate
capitalism and imperialism.
We speak in these matters of ‘the French philosophers,’ of the effect upon the West of
‘the French philosophy.’ No group, least of all among U.S. scholars, throws up its hands
and insists that the very locatable ideas of post-modernism sprung into being ex nihilo or
were graven on tablets on a high mountain and handed to the General Assembly of the
United Nations. And yet in Canadian philosophy departments immigrant U.S. personnel
figure strongly in the arguments that philosophy is not national and that, anyway, Canadian
philosophy doesn’t exist.
The role of U.S. immigrant philosophers in the suppression of Canadian philosophy
engages, importantly, the person of Leslie Armour and his intellectual character. To begin,
I propose there are, perhaps, two or (at most) three seminal U.S. philosophers: James,
Dewey, and perhaps Peirce. They are seminal in the way that Hobbes, Locke, and Smith
are seminal in Britain. To put the matter briefly (in order to move on), they are
philosophers who are as much created by their society as expressing philosophical ideas
for it. Just as most British philosophers who followed the three named could only do so as
social products of the realities shaped and recorded by Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, so most
U.S. philosophers since Peirce, James, and Dewey have only been able to think new
thoughts as a function of thinking the thoughts of those three.
I take it that the overbearing influence of the Analytic tradition in the U.S. is not
unrelated. That tradition encourages the idea that words and concepts can have clear
meanings independently of history, culture, and context. I venture to say that its public
force was greater in the U.S. than in Britain, and that it links with what I have called the
seminal U.S. philosophers. The vacuous New Criticism in literature which swept the U.S.
and countries influenced by it was based on the same proposition: that a poem, for instance,
could be perfectly read without reference to history, culture, and context. The New
Criticism in literature occupied the same historical period as Analytic philosophy did and
was largely carried by U.S. theorists. Its progeny includes most of the theories that
substitute technique and linguistic analysis for history and culture. That is one of the
reasons that Heidegger and to some extent ‘european’ post-modernism have found a place
in the U.S. and have even (by Rorty and others) been called a form of ‘Pragmatism,’
something the U.S. has as a most fundamental basis of its public philosophical thought.
I don’t want to take the argument far enough to hurt the necessary shape of this paper.
But it is essential, as a major observation, to point out that among the thinkers and schools
mentioned—as they are found in the U.S. especially—a huge problem presents itself. The
claim for the absolute nature of contingency and/or for the plurality of Beingness seems to
be insupportable, even with the Dewey-like claim to be seeking utopia. What happens to
the thinkers is ugly. Heidegger’s flirted with the Nazis. Dewey and James supported,
finally, U.S. imperialism. The post-modernists are lap-dogs to corporate capitalism, as
were— less visibly perhaps—those in the Analytic tradition.
All that is said to underscore a central fact: Canadian philosophy—in a broadest
statement—tended to Idealism and to sympathy with non-contingent European philosophy.
U.S. philosophy and Analytic philosophy in its Anglo-American expression were and are
the opposite and solidly antagonistic to Canadian philosophy. In brute terms, Canadian
philosophy impeded and impedes the Truth that Truth is what U.S. philosophers say it is.
The national character of U.S. philosophers—especially the pragmatists James and
Dewey—is recognized widely. As Gay Wilson Allen writes in his popular biography, “the
two men were to supplement each other in building a world wide reputation for
Pragmatism as the characteristic and genuine American philosophy. [...]”3 A humourous
footnote may be added to that claim. The Modem Library edition of John Dewey ’s
Philosophy held by the Victoria (B.C.) Public Library has a special notice pasted into the
front cover. It reads, “This volume is one of a collection of 350 books about the United
States of America. Presented by the Carnegie Corporation [...]” Gerald E. Myers reports
in William James that the philosopher was remembered as “America’s representative
thinker” at the time of his death.4 The word ‘representative’ at the time meant something
like ‘heroically central to the culture. ’
We don’t have to go into a description of Pragmatism to say it is definitively anti-
Hegelian. Dewey began as a Hegelian but moved towards the Pragmatic ideas of William
James. James never gave Idealism much room and thought Edward Caird, for instance, a
hopeless muddle. To write about the differences between the Pragmatists in the USA and
the post-Hegelian Idealists in Canada would require a book, at least (which of course
should have been written, and hasn’t been). Two points are important. First, many U.S.
immigrant philosophers in Canada after 1950—regardless of what kind of philosophy they
professed—were by nature and formative society philosophical Pragmatists infected with

some form of Analytic sense of things. Secondly, the basic character of that rooted
philosophical stance is inimical to post-Hegelian Idealist philosophy. I’m saying that nearly
all the U.S. philosophers landing in Canada after 1950 were stamped from the same coin.
Or as Armour says in only a slightly different context:
Ernest Gellner [...] once toured the United States and found that, though in every State there
were at least two of every kind of philosopher, all of the pluralism added up to nothing. They
all lived the same lives.5
In a truly exciting way the burden of Canadian Philosophy between 1850 and 1950 is
Idealist. In addition, the philosopher—Leslie Armour—who proposed with Elizabeth Trott
to provide a foundation text to make Canadian philosophy accessible for study is, himself,
an Idealist philosopher.
The point is clear. Aided by both British and Canadian academic philosophers who
scorn what they assume is ‘colonial expression’ and were influenced by the Analytic
tradition, many U.S. immigrant philosophers reject Canadian philosophy from a national
U.S. philosophic bias. The fact that the philosophy department at the University of
Waterloo was made up of nineteen U.S. immigrant philosophers and two Canadians when
Armour felt he had to leave the university is not without relevance. Nor is it irrelevant that
Elizabeth Trott had to face extraordinary criticism (not to say questionable behaviour)
when she undertook and completed a PhD on the perfectly reasonable subject of the Neo-
Hegelians.
We have, I think, dispensed in two ways with the claim that philosophy is not national.
First, by giving examples of philosophies clearly recognized as national or possessing
recognizable national colouring, and, secondly, by arguing that many U.S. philosophers in
Canada have helped to suppress Canadian philosophy because it is not U.S. philosophy.
To answer the second argument—that there is no Canadian philosophy, one again
begins in the real world. At the same time that Armour and Trott were preparing The Faces
o f Reason others were fighting for the legitimacy of Canadian and Quebec literatures. They
were told, as I have said, there was no Canadian literature worth teaching, that the ‘great’
universities didn’t teach Canadian literature, that Huckleberry Finn is a great Canadian
novel. It is possible, if not probable, that the people in academic positions fighting to have
Canadian and Quebec literatures fairly represented might have lost their struggle. But
outside the walls of the academies real writers were producing real literature and they were
not about to have their existence and their expression defined away by British and
Canadian academic literature teachers scorning ‘colonial’ expression and by U.S.
immigrant teachers who rejected Canadian literature because it wasn’t U.S. literature.
We must not think, however, that the struggle was easily won. More than fifteen years
after Leslie Armour was hounded from the University of Waterloo, I was contacted to
undertake an exchange year at Simon Fraser University. Half of the members of the English
Department, where I was to teach, were U.S. immigrants. Some among them organized a
remarkable resistance to my presence at SFU. They did so on the grounds—as the U.S.
citizen Chair of the English Department wrote me—that my ideas about literary and
cultural nationalism offended many department members who didn’t want to provide me
a place in British Columbia to utter them.
The fight went on for six months, was reported on national radio, and editorialized
about in the Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun. The Canadian Association of
University Teachers investigated and publicly declared SFU in violation of academic
freedom. Margaret Atwood, then chair of Canadian PEN, announced to the SFU
administration that she would take the issue to PEN International and have SFU censured
for oppressing a Canadian writer. The SFU administration finally submitted to reason, but
it never apologized. The faculty union of SFU pretended the episode never occurred. The
student newspaper ignored it completely, and the Students’ Council looked the other way.
As with Leslie Armour and philosophy at the University of Waterloo, someone working for
reasonable recognition of national literary expression was seen as offensive by many U.S.
scholars at SFU and was, in addition, an embarrassment to most Canadians in the
institution. The latter mostly looked through the conflict as one looks through clear glass.
Modern society being what it is, Canada does not support a body of philosophical
thinkers living independently of academic institutions in the way it supports a body of
creative writers. When immigrant scholars in league with colonial Canadians scorned the
idea of Canadian philosophy—and far outnumbered concerned Canadians—the battle was
lost, and remains lost.
I taught a Canadian philosophy segment in a fourth year Intellectual History course at
Simon Fraser in the last decade. More than once, students came to me seeking more. They
began by acknowledging the philosophy department at Simon Fraser University would
never teach Canadian philosophy. But, said the students, if they could get the administration
to list a whole semester course devoted to Canadian philosophy, would I teach it? What we
know about the opening of such ‘Foundation’ courses in neglected materials is that both
faculty and students soon discover areas where research is needed. Before long, the true
dimensions of the subject become clear, and knowledge of major importance becomes
available to the community. Suppression of genuine academic material defeats the
fundamental purposes of higher learning. No course like the one in Canadian philosophy
that students asked me for has become available at Simon Fraser University or at any other
university in Canada that I know of
I wrote above that I would discuss the ‘unique combination of forces’ which
misrepresents nationalism in Canada and uses its misrepresentations to smother
expressions of Canadian uniqueness. I wrote, too, that the case of Leslie Armour and
Canadian philosophy provides as good an example of that process as we might find. I have
referred already to the obstructions and delays in having The Faces o f Reason published.
Doubtless as a result of the push for Canadian curriculum, the matter of Canadian
philosophy was discussed before The Faces o f Reason was published. David Braybrooke,
writing on “The Philosophical Scene in Canada” in Canadian Forum6 proposed a common
characteristic to some Canadian philosophizing. Probably more importantly, Braybrooke
suggested (in very circumspect language) that those philosophers who don’t connect with
the society they are in might need to examine “the agent’s illusions” in order to find what
social causes pertain. Though he wrote opaquely, I take him to mean that philosophers in
anglophone Canada delude themselves in their claims of purity, for he suggested they might
benefit from observing practice “in extrapolating the methods of psychoanalysis to the
exposure of collective illusions.” Professor Braybrooke did not, after that, enter the field
(even in an opaque way) to defend the idea of Canadian philosophy.
In 1976 Professor F.E. Sparshott delivered a presidential address to the Canadian
Philosophical Association intended to “scotch the snake” of Canadian philosophy. He was
answering the Commission on Canadian Studies which suggested Canadian philosophy
should be taught. Glib and pretentious, the address was probably best summed up by
Sparshott himself when he suggested the occasion might lead him “to mouth ignorant and
disconnected platitudes.”7 In a ‘patter’ that was familiar at the time, Sparshott argued that
no one knows what ‘Canadian’ means, there is not enough money to do the job of bringing
in Canadian philosophy, the Commission on Canadian Studies asked for the wrong things
in its concern for Canadian philosophy, good philosophy rarely relates to time and place,
and published references to national philosophy aren’t really references to national
philosophy.
As if to manifest David Braybrooke’s suggestion of the need for an agent to look at the
source of his illusions, Sparshott makes a grand blunder. He writes of philosophical
influence in Australia, saying it is “as inexplicable as the Black Mountaineers’ conversion
of the Tish poets in British Columbia in the sixties.”8 But the conversion of the Tish poets
in British Columbia is perfectly explicable. U.B.C. was filling with young, dynamic,
ethnocentric U.S. scholars. Most of them knew nothing about Canada and its literary
traditions. One of them at least had connections to the Black Mountain poets. Soon the
literary guest list at U.B.C. was almost exclusively filled with non-Canadians, mostly U.S.
guests, the Black Mountain poets visiting frequently. They came for brief visits. They came
for summer programmes. The young Canadians were taught to have contempt for their own
traditions. They were given to understand that they were being ‘liberated’ from noxious and
repressive traditions by adopting U.S. theory and practice. The U.S. ‘invasion’ had a
marked and understandable effect on the young Canadians at U.B.C. who, in addition, saw
few visiting Canadian writers who could present a different point of view.
Indeed, I was in charge of literary guests at the University of Alberta about this time,
bringing mostly Canadian writers to the university. I wrote to the immigrant U.S. faculty
member in charge of U.B.C. literary guests, suggesting we share guests and cut costs. I
would send on some Eastern Canadian writers to U.B.C., and she could send some of her
mostly U.S. guests on to Edmonton, an exchange that would have pleased the granting
agencies. The idea obviously had no appeal, because Helen Zontoff, a friendly acquaintance
of a few years and the person in charge of U.B.C. literary guests, didn’t even bother to
acknowledge my letter. The example used by Sparshott of “inexplicably” Americanized
poets in B.C. says all that needs to be said. He works in his address from an illusion that
ideas burst upon communities out of, almost, nowhere. His life must be full of surprises.
His article is theoretical fluff, ending with Deweyite vacuousness. “Perhaps we manifest
our Canadianism,” Sparshott writes, “not by learning what Canada has been but by
showing what it is to be.”9
To celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the philosophical journal Dialogue, Canadian
philosophy was considered in 1986. The Faces o f Reason had been published in 1981. But
the forces of strangulation were winning, and the articles about Canadian philosophy
changed very little in the philosophical community. The tenor of discussion in that
community is made clear by J.T. Stevenson. “Anyone,” he wrote, “who expresses an
interest in studying the history of philosophy in Canada is very likely to encounter
opposition, perhaps hostility, perhaps ridicule from many of his or her colleagues.”
Stevenson continued: “the opposition as expressed to me, has been so vehement and loaded
with emotion that I have come to think that the mere mention of ‘national philosophy’ has
the power to plunge some philosophers into a nightmare.”10 He writes of “the depths of
horror which my interest in Canadian philosophy has aroused.” Though Dialogue has
provided a bare minimum of discussion about the subject, the journal has been generous
compared to the Canadian Journal o f Philosophy.
Seeking, perhaps, more giddy heights of Universal Philosophical Relevance, CJP has
ignored the subject of Canadian philosophy almost completely. Browsing in it recently, I
came upon a ‘philosophical’ (?) consideration of the U.S. war in Iraq. Called “The Just
War and the Gulf War,” written by two U.S. philosophers, the article made me realize that
to write of the Canadian philosophy dispute would deliver the journal into the realms of
embarrassing parochialism. The CJP is not, in fact, a Canadian journal; it is a U.S. journal
published in Canada.
The unique combination of forces which misrepresents nationalism in Canada and uses
the misrepresentations to smother expression of Canadian uniqueness is contributed to— as
I have already suggested—by Canadian governments fearful of stirring the displeasure of
U.S. interests. It is contributed to also by some British immigrants (especially in the
academy) who believe Canadian thought and experience are ‘colonial,’ and therefore
second-rate. It is contributed to by blindly ethnocentric immigrants from the USA who
measure the relevance of all human experience by their own formative experience in the
U.S. It is contributed to by general U.S. state policy which intends Canada as a resource
hinterland and peripheral market not to be disturbed by notions of independence and
national uniqueness.
Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott confronted all the constituent parts of that
combination of forces. In themselves, even unconsciously, they presented a claim for the
legitimacy and the integrity of Canadians engaged in the exploration of their own being and
identity. That, in itself, presented a challenge to the colonized and the strangers. They also
suggested that a body of knowledge with historical and intellectual authenticity in Canada
deserved the attention of Canadians, admitting that it might clarify, strengthen, and provide
a stronger foundation for confidence in Canadian culture and for understanding distinct
differences Canadians have from—especially— U.S. people. Indeed, the two philosophers
represented an expression of an uniqueness of Canadian community that might lead to
political demands based on national identity.
They had to be stopped.*
The attraction of the Leslie Armour and Canadian philosophy experience as a case
study in the oppression of Canadian thought derives from two fundamental facts. First, the
suggestion of creating a comer for Canadian philosophy in institutions of higher education
is perfectly reasonable on almost every ground. Secondly, the major proponent of that idea
is a philosophical thinker of power and originality who has gone on producing important
work. There is no sound basis upon which to suppress the teaching of Canadian philosophy
or to marginalize the work and person of Leslie Armour. And yet those things have been
done with extraordinary success. One likes to believe that there will be a great day of
reckoning when justice will be done and the role and work of Leslie Armour will be
celebrated widely among Canadians. And why not believe that? Colonial societies live with
so much experience of contempt for their essential qualities they have a right to dream—no
matter how far from reality their dreaming takes them.
Notes
1. Michel Brunet, “The French Canadians Search for a Fatherland,” Nationalism in Canada, ed.
Peter Russell (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966)47.
2. Elizabeth Trott and Leslie Armour, “The Faces of Reason and its critics,” Dialogue, 25 (1986)
105-18,112.
3. Gay Wilson Allen, William James (New York: Viking, 1967) 436.
4. Gerald E. Myers, William James, His Life and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986)1.
5. Leslie Armour, “Philosophy and Melancholy in Scarborough,” Canadian Forum, 76 (April,
1998)40.
6. “The Philosophical Scene in Canada,” Canadian Forum, 53 (January 1974) 29-34.
7. F. E. Sparshott, “National Philosophy,” Dialogue, 16 (1977) 3-21, at 3.
8. Sparshott 16.
9. Sparshott 21.
10. J.T. Stevenson, “Canadian Philosophy from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” Dialogue, 25
(1986) 17-30, at 17.
Afterword:
Beyond Idealism?
WILLIAM SWEET
The essays in this volume attest to the flourishing of philosophical reflection on community,
metaphysics, and idealism. Most of the contributors have drawn on insights found in the
work of the nineteenth and twentieth century Anglo-American idealists in order to address
such issues as the anti-realism/realism debate, the character and basis of internal relations,
the interplay between metaphysics and epistemology, the foundations of ethics, the role of
the moral person in the community, the place of religious commitment in the public arena,
the relation of philosophy to culture, as well as the place of idealism in the history of recent
philosophy.
But, as Leslie Armour has argued, philosophy cannot be divided into discrete, ‘atomic,’
subfields. Not only do ethical and political questions require a historical contextualization
and a metaphysical grounding, but metaphysics itself rests on certain social and logical
grounds. Philosophical investigation in any one area inevitably leads into other areas.
Like Armour, many of the authors who have contributed to this volume hold that these
issues in religion, politics, and ethics rest not just on metaphysical presuppositions, but on
idealist ones. It has been argued, for example, that the more plausible communitarian
political theories reflect idealist presuppositions.
O f course, there would be a good deal of resistance to saying that thorough
philosophical enquiiy will lead one in the direction of idealism. But this is, perhaps, in part
because idealism is a rather broad term. The idealism that seems most fruitful in dealing
with many of the issues discussed in this volume is not—or, at the very least, is not
only—the subjective idealism of Berkeley or the rationalist idealism of Kant, but one of
quite a different kind.
In its more recent forms, such as in British idealism of Bosanquet, Bradley, Wallace,
Caird, McTaggart, and Green, idealism is an approach or a tradition rather than a doctrine.
It traces its roots from Plato and Aristotle, through Rousseau, Spinoza, and Kant, to Hegel
and a wide range of late nineteenth and early twentieth century authors. It is a philosophical
view that emphasises—as noted in the Introduction—that “primary reality consists of
ideas,” that “reality is capable of rational interpretation,” and that “social relations and
institutions were not ultimately material phenomena, but best understood as existing at the
level of human consciousness.” It does not (as some idealisms do) deny the independent
existence of nature, or encourage its disciples to live apart from the world. So, while there
are many philosophers today who would be unwilling to describe their views as ‘idealist’
for fear of having to take on what they would see as implausible philosophical claims, they
might nevertheless be sympathetic to a model of philosophy described by the idealist
Bernard Bosanquet. Idealism, as Bosanquet writes in his 1898 essay “Idealism in Social
Work,” “is the spirit of the faith in real reality, and its way of escape from facts as they seem
is to go deeper and deeper into the heart of facts as they a re ”1Few philosophers would
disagree with such a portrayal of their own activity.
When idealists, such as Leslie Armour, hold that philosophy cannot be done piecemeal,
and that enquiries must be pursued as they lead from one topic to another, it is important
to recognize that this includes putting philosophical ideas into practice. As Armour remarks
in a recent interview (27 December 1997)—“It is not enough to create a metaphysical
theory, I think one must draw the practical consequences of that being true.” While not all
idealists have done this, Green and Caird made efforts in this direction, and others, such as
Bosanquet, Henry Jones, Edward Caird, and R.B. Haldane, have clearly extended them.
One might well say that this approach is, again, not unique to idealism, and that it is
simply descriptive of what it is to do philosophy—though it must be acknowledged that
many of those writing and teaching in philosophy do not do this. But while there is no
obvious conflict between what it is to do philosophy and the idealist approach, it remains
true that terms such as ‘idealism’ have been seen as misleading, unduly contentious, or
problematic. So a number philosophers sympathetic to the approach and objectives of an
idealist view have wished to move ‘beyond idealism.’
James Connolly has recently noted this concerning R.G. Collingwood’s work—that,
because of problems with the meaning of the term and because of the criticisms of his
idealist teachers and predecessors, Collingwood went to great pains to deny that he was an
idealist.2 And it is interesting that, later in life, Bosanquet too ceased to describe his view
as an ‘idealist’ one (see especially his The Meeting o f Extremes in Contemporary
Philosophy3), preferring instead the term ‘speculative philosophy’ to describe his work.
In recent writings, Leslie Armour has also come to leave behind the term ‘idealist’ to
describe his philosophical approach and to employ instead the expression ‘speculative
philosophy.’ Speculative philosophy (as Bosanquet writes in “Realism and Metaphysic”4)
is simply a way of “appreciat[ing] what things are at their maximum” and focussing on the
object “as a whole with all its qualities, primary, secondary, or tertiary [; it is] unlikely to
leave anything standing, independent and unshaken in its prima facie nature.”5 And, thus,
it is not far from certain versions of ‘realism.’ “[T]he common basis of realism and of
speculative philosophy [is] not ‘Can we know the real?’ but ‘What is in detail the real
which we know?’”And Armour would agree. If one looks at some of his latest essays, such
has “The Balance of Extremes: Metaphysics, Nature, and Morals in the Later Philosophy
of Bernard Bosanquet,”6 and “Maritain, Canada, and the Scholastic Tradition,”7 he seems
to favour a speculative philosophy, in the “sense of a construction in which a logic which
is in some important sense objective plays a crucial role and in which the mind is able to
get beyond its own perspective.” And it is to such a view of philosophy that more and more
philosophers are beginning to return. The shift to ‘green’ social and political theory, for
example, reflects in many ways the recognition of the value of a philosophical approach that
is open to holism, coherence, monism, and other characteristics of idealist philosophy.
At the beginning of the twenty first century, we see that Anglo-American philosophy
is calling into question a number of the views that supplanted the idealism of 100 years ago.
Contemporary anti-realism, perfectionism, and communitarianism, all reflect ideas that
those idealists would have found quite congenial. But perhaps this simply reinforces the
view that it is time to move beyond the term ‘idealism,’and beyond like terms, such as
‘realism,’ ‘analytic philosophy,’ ‘phenomenology,’ and so on.
Beyond Idealism? 289
If we are to move ‘beyond idealism,’ however, it is to move in the direction of

speculative philosophy. The writings and the example of Leslie Armour have, in several
respects, shown what this might look like, and it is with thanks for this, and for his
friendship, that his former students and colleagues honour him with this collection of
essays.
Notes
1. Originally published in The Charity Organisation Review, n.s. Ill (1898): 122-33. Reprinted in
The Collected Works of Bernard Bosanquet, ed. William Sweet, 20 vols. (Bristol, UK:
Thoemmes Press, 1999), Vol. 14,149-160 at 151.
2. “A New Leviathan among the Idealists: R.G. Collingwood and the Legacy of Idealism,” in
Bernard Bosanquet and the Legacy of British Idealism, ed. William Sweet (forthcoming).
3. The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy (originally published, London:
Macmillan, 1921), Collected Works, Vol. 18. Bosanquet makes this shift, it seems, because of
a wish to distinguish his position from that of Croce and some of the Italian idealists, but also to
differentiate it from subjective idealism.
4. “Realism and Metaphysic” (originally published in Philosophical Review, 26 (1917) 4-15, at
6), Collected Works, Vol. 1.
5. Bosanquet writes: “in order to avoid the ambiguous term Idealism, I am at present applying the
name of speculative philosophy” (“Realism and Metaphysic,” op. cit.).
6. In Bernard Bosanquet and the Legacy of British Idealism, ed. William Sweet (forthcoming).
7. In Études maritainiennes / Maritain Studies, 15 (1999): 53-69.
Taylor & Francis
Leslie Armour - Bibliography to 2000
WILLIAM SWEET
“The Duty to Seek Agreement,” Journal o f Philosophy, 56 (Dec. 3,1959): 985-991.

“The Ontological Argument and the Concepts of Completeness and Selection,” Review o f
Metaphysics, 14 (1960): 280-291.
“Absolutes in the Law,” Venture, Spring, 1961.
“Value Data and Moral Rules,” Philosophical Quarterly (Edinburgh), 12 (1962): 228-
238.
“Morality, Objectivity and Time,” Indian Journal o f Philosophy, 3 (1962): 269-281.
The Rational and the Real: An Essay in Metaphysics, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962.
“Rationality, Goodness, and Immorality,” Theoria, 29 (1963): 1-11.
“Necessity and the Concept of God,” Papers o f the Michigan Academy o f Sciences, Arts
and Letters, 51 (1965): 439-452.
“A Reply to Professor Mavrodes,” Papers o f the Michigan Academy o f Sciences, Arts and
Letters, 51 (1965): 463-470.
“Stark’s “Dualism” and the Psychology of Knowledge,” Perceptual and M otor Skills, 24
(1967): 293-294.
“Logic and the Concept of God,” Proceedings o f the Seventh Inter-American Congress o f
Philosophy, Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1967, Vol. II, pp. 211-221.
The Concept o f Truth, Assen: Royal Van Gorcum; New York: The Humanities Press,
1969.
“Aliens in Their Own Land,” The Nation [New York], Vol. 212, No. 24 (June 14,1971)
750-753; reprinted in Social Space: Canadian Perspectives, ed. D. I. Davies and
Kathleen Herman, Toronto: New Press, 1971, pp. 146-148.
Logic and Reality: An Investigation into the Idea o f a Dialectical System, Assen: Royal
Van Gorcum; Atlantic Highlands, NJ, The Humanities Press, 1972.
“The Concept of Ownership and the Idea of a Natural Law,” Philosophy in Context, 1
(1972): 42-47.
“Law and Society,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary Volume 1 (1972): 32-35.
“The Concept of Crime,” Philosophy in Context, 2 (1973): 23-32.
“Crime and Society I,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary Volume 2 (1973): 22-27.
“Law and the Concept of Person,” Philosophy in Context, 3 (1974): 46-55.
“Law, Responsibility and Social Atomism,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary
Volume 3 (1974): 24-30.
“The Philosopher and the Law,” Philosophy in Context, 4 (1975): 89-97.
“Law and Reason,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary Volume 4 (1975): 67-76.
“Social Principle, Law and Education,” Western Ontario Law Review, 14 (1975): 131 -148.
“Law and Revolution,” Philosophy in Context, 5 (1976): 79-88.
“Value, Community and Freedom,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary Volume 5
(1976): 22-34.
“Smith, Morality and the Bankers,” Review o f Social Economy, XXXIV (Dec. 1976): 359-
371.
“Smith on Government and Politics: Morality & the Bankers,” Adam Smith and The
Wealth o f Nations 1776-1976: Proceedings o f the Bicentennial Conference, Eastern
Kentucky University, Richmond, Ky., March 24-26, 1976, ed. William R. Morrow and
Robert E. Stebbins, Richmond: Eastern Kentucky University, 1977. (Extended version
of paper in Review o f Social Economy, 1976)
“Change, Value and Objectivity,” Philosophy in Context, 6 (1977): 70-81.
“Change, Value and Objectivity,” Philosophy in Context, Supplementary Volume 6
(1977): 21-28.
“Bosanquet, Newman and the Dialectics of Rationality,” in Rationality Today, ed. Th.
Geraets, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1977, pp. 491-497.
“Economics, Social Bonding and the Theory of Instrumental Values,” Philosophy in
Context, 7 (1978): 51-68.
“Russell, McTaggart and ‘I,’” Idealistic Studies, 9 (1979): 66-76.
“Confederation and the Idea of Sovereignty,” Philosophers Look at Canadian
Confederation—La confédération canadienne: q u 9en pensent les philosophes?, ed.
Stanley G. French, Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1979, pp. 225-232.
“Human Rights, a Canadian View,” The Philosophy o f Human Rights: An International
Perspective, ed. Alan Rosenbaum, Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Press, 1980,
pp. 195-206.
“Ideas, Causes and God,” Sophia, 19 (April, 1980): 14-21.
The Conceptualization o f the Inner Life, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980.
[with E. T. Bartlett III]
The Faces o f Reason: Philosophy in English Canada, 1850-1950, Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 1981. (Distributed in the United States by Humanities Press,
Atlantic Highlands, NJ) Reprinted 1995. [with Elizabeth Trott]
“Faith, Reason and Love, A Reply on Behalf of Cardinal Newman,” Scottish Journal o f
Theology, 34 (1981): 437-446.
The Idea o f Canada and the Crisis o f Community, Ottawa: Steel Rail, 1981. (Distributed
by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ)
“Religion et philosophie au Québec et au Canada Anglais,” [Intervention on La
philosophie et son enseignement au Québec, by Yvan Lamonde] Philosophiques, 9,
No. 2 (1982): 307-316.
John Clark Murray, The Industrial Kingdom o f God, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
1982. [Edited, annotated and wrote introduction; with Elizabeth Trott.]
“The Tensions in Alastair McKinnon’s Philosophy of Religion,” Analytic Philosophy o f
Religion in Canada, ed. Moustafa Faghfoury, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
1982, pp. 173-188.
Articles in Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, revised edition, ed. William Toye,
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983; 2d ed., ed. Eugene Benson and William Toye,
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997.
[with Elizabeth Trott:] Philosophy in Canada, pp. 642-647 [2d ed., pp. 912-918];
George Grant, p. 317 [2d ed., pp. 489-490]; Rupert Lodge, p. 469 [2d ed., p. 677];
William Lyall, pp. 475-476 [2d ed., pp. 684-685]; John Clark Murray, p. 538 [2d ed.,
p. 779]; John Watson, pp. 821-822 [2d ed., p. 1169].
Bibliography to 2000 293
[alone:] Jean Charbonneau, pp. 109-110 [2d ed., pp. 185-186]; Louis Lachance, pp.
420-421 [2d ed., p. 613]; Louis-Adolphe Pâquet, pp. 634-635 [2d ed., pp. 901-
902].
“Should We Have a Pure Philosophy?,” Philosophy in Context, 13 (1983): 17-30.
“Wittgenstein’s Philosophy and Religious Insight,” Southern Journal ofPhilosophy, XXII
(1984): 33-48. [with Mostafa Faghfoury]
“Experience, Individuality and the Existence of God,” Science et Esprit, XXXVI (1984):
341-350.
“The Social and Philosophical Origins of Religion in Québec and English Canada,”
L ’amitié et le dialogue entre le Québec et l'Ontario / Friendship & Dialogue Between
Ontario and Quebec, ed. Henri-Paul Cunningham and F. Temple Kingston, Windsor:
Canterbury College, 1985, pp. 142-162.
“Constitutional Law and the Nature of Basic Legal Propositions,” Journal o f the Indian
Council fo r Philosophical Research, 2 (Spring, 1985): 35-50. [with Chhatrapati
Singh]
“Philosophy & Denominationalism in Ontario,” Journal o f Canadian Studies /Revue
dÉ tudes canadiennes, 20 (1985): 25-38.
“Liberty, Community, and the Social Good,” Cogito, 3, No. 3 (Sept. 1985): 29-38.
“The Economist and Moral Values,” International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 12,
Nos. 6/7 (1985): 41-53.
Articles in The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James H. Marsh, 3 vols. Edmonton: Hurtig
Publishers, 1985 (updated for the second edition, 4 vols. Toronto, McClelland and
Stewart, 1988; updated for the third edition [on CD Rom, Toronto, McClelland and
Stewart, 1997 and after; in print, Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1999 and after])
“Philosophy, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Religion since 1950” (second edition,
pp. 1662-1663 [with Kevin Sullivan]; third edition, pp. 1809-1811 [with William
Sweet]).
“Ephrem Longpré,” p. 1242; third edition, p. 1367.
“Louis Lachance,” p. 1162; third edition, p. 1275.
“Louis-Marie Régis,” p. 1847; third edition, p. 1994.
Review of Technology and the Canadian Mind, Innis/McLuhan/Grant, by Arthur Kroker,
Canadian Literature, No. 110 (Autumn, 1986): 163-164.
“La rationalité des arguments sur Dieu: L’actualité d’un argument de Locke,” Urgence de
la philosophie: actes du Colloque du cinquantenaire de la Faculté de philosophie,
Université Laval, 1985, ed. Thomas De Koninck, Québec: Presses de l’Université
Laval, 1986, pp. 540-554.
“Canadian Philosophy—the Nature and History of a Discipline: A Reply to Mr. Mathien,”
Dialogue, 25 (1986): 67-82.
“The Faces of Reason and Its Critics,” Dialogue, 25 (1986): 105-118. [with Elizabeth
Trott]
“The Kingdom of Ends in Morals and Law,” Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 13 (1986):
13-27. [with Chhatrapati Singh]
“Canada and the Concept of Nature,” Interpreting Canada: Four Essays, ed. Graeme
Wynn (B.C. geographical series, no. 43), Vancouver: Tantalus Research Limited, 1986,
pp. 43-66.
“Newman, Anselm and Proof of the Existence of God,” International Journal fo r
Philosophy o f Religion, 19 (1986): 87-93.
“Experience and the Concept of God,” Science et Esprit, XXXVIII (1986): 343-360.
Review of Interpretation and Social Criticism, by Michael Walzer, Library Journal, Vol.
112, Iss. 6 (April 1,1987).
Review of The Closing o f the American Mind: Education and the Crisis o f Reason, by
Allan Bloom, Library Journal, Vol. 112, Iss. 8 (May 1,1987).
Review of The Rise o f Urbanization and the Decline o f Citizenship, by Murray Bookchin,
Library Journal, Vol. 112, Iss. 10 (June 1,1987).
Review of End and Beginning, by Franz Borkenau, ed. Arthur Lowenthal, International
Studies in Philosophy, XIX, No. 1 (1987): 65-66.
“Crisis of Faith,” [Review of The Regenerators, by Ramsay Cook], Canadian Literature,
No. 115 (Winter 1987): 246-248.
Review o f The Evolving Constitution, ed. Noonan Dorsen, Library Journal, Vol. 112, Iss.
20 (Dec. 1987).
“Charles De Koninck, The Common Good, and the Human Environment,” Laval
théologique et philosophique, 43 (1987): 67-80.
“Values, God and the Problem About Why There is Anything at All,” Journal o f
Speculative Philosophy (New Series), 1 (1987): 147-162.
“Maritain and the Metaphysics of Community,” Etudes maritainiennes/Maritain Studies,
3 (1987): 53-82.
Review of The Alphabetization o f the Human Mind, by Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders,
Library Journal, Vol. 113, Iss. 1 (January, 1988): 87.
Review of Ideology ofAdventure: Studies in M odem Consciousness, by Michael Nerlich,
Library Journal, Vol. 113, Iss. 6 (April 1,1988): 86.
Review of The Radical Renewal: The Politics o f Ideas in M odem America, by Norman
Birnbaum, Library Journal, Vol. 113, Iss. 13 (August, 1988): 167.
“John Watson’s Inaugural Lecture,” Religion, Science and Philosophy in Early Canada,
ed. J.D. Rabb, Kingston: Frye Publishers, 1988, pp. 3-17.
“James Beaven and the Arguments for the Existence of God,” Religion, Science and
Philosophy in Early Canada, ed. J.D. Rabb, Kingston: Frye Publishers, 1988, pp. 79-
86.
“Cartésianisme au Québec,” Archives de philosophie (Paris), 51, cahier 1 (Bulletin
cartésien XVI) (1988): 1-12.
“Perestroika, Economics, and Morality,” International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol.
15, No. 9 (1988): 39-50.
“Newman, Arnold, & The Problem of Particular Providence,” Religious Studies, 24
(1988): 173-187.
“History, Community, Ethnicity, and the Thrust of Technology in Canada,” Ethnicity in a
Technological Age, ed. Ian H. Angus, Edmonton: The University of Alberta for the
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988, pp. 157-175.
“The Origins of Values,” Ethics and Justification, ed. Douglas Odegard, Edmonton:
Academic Printing and Publishing, 1988, pp. 177-193.
“John Locke and American Constitutionalism,” Constitutionalism: The Philosophical
Dimension, ed. Alan S. Rosenbaum, New York: Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 9-30.
“Social and Philosophical Pluralism in Canada,” Philosophy and Culture, ed. V. Cauchy,
Montréal: Montmorency, 1988, Vol. IV, pp. 724-731.
“Copleston and Maritain: The Absolute, Rational Desire, and the Existence of God,” De
Philosopha, 8 (1988-89): 66-87.
“A Reply to Father Dewan,” De Philosophia, 8 (1988-89): 128.
Review of The Politics o f Lord Durham, by Janet Ajzenstat, Canadian Philosophical
Reviews, 8 (1988): 293-295.
Review o f The Road to Vichy, by Yves R. Simon, Laval théologique et philosophique, 45
(1989): 445-447.
Review of The GraywolfAnnual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy, ed. Rick Simonson and
Scott Walker, Library Journal, Vol. 114, Iss. 1 (January 1989): 86.
Review of Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure o f Human History, by Ernest Gellner,
Library Journal, Vol. 114, Iss. 8 (May 1, 1989): 79.
Review of The War Against the Intellect: Episodes on the Decline o f Discourse, by Peter
Shaw, Library Journal, Vol. 114, Iss. 10 (June 1, 1989): 132.
Review of The Ethics o f Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice (Contemporary Issues in
Philosophy), eds. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Library Journal, Vol.
114, Iss. 12 (July 1989): 82.
Review of M oral Vision and Professional Decisions: The Changing Values o f Women
and Men Lawyers, by Rand Jack and Dana Crowley Jack, Library Journal, Vol. 114,
Iss. 13 (August 1989): 136.
Review of uDumbth ” and 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter, by Steve Allen; Library
Journal, Vol. 114, Iss. 17 (Oct. 15, 1989): 91.
Review of Preposterous Violence: Fables o f Aggression in M odem Culture, by James B.
Twitchell, Library Journal, Vol. 114, Iss. 18 (Nov. 1,1989): 105.
“Emanation and Contemporary Metaphysics,” Etre et savoir, ed. Jean-Louis-Allard,
Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1989, pp. 35-52.
“George Grant, 1918-1988,” Canadian Literature, No. 120 (Spring, 1989): 250-251.
“Leibniz, Transubstantiation and the Relation Between Pure and Applied Philosophy,”
Philosophy in Context, 19 (1989): 33-46.
“The Common Good and the Canadian Tradition,” Études maritainiennes/Maritain
Studies, 5 (1989): 23-40.
Review of L Anti-humanisme auXVIIe siècle, by Henri Gouhier, Journal o f the History
ofPhilosophy, 28 (1990): 299-301.
Review o f M oral Tradition and Individuality, by John Kekes, Canadian Philosophical
Reviews, 10, No. 4 (1990): 146-150.
“Charter of the Right?,” [Review of The Charter o f Rights and the Legalization o f Politics
in Canada, by Michael Mandel], Canadian Forum, 69 (1990-1991): 29-30.
Review of La puissance du rationnel by Dominique Janicaud, International Studies in
Philosophy, XXII, No. 3 (1990): 119-120.
Review of Cosmopolis, by Stephen Toulmin, Library Journal, Vol. 115, Iss. 1 (January
1990): 113.
Review of The Moral Domain: essays in the ongoing discussion between philosophy and
the social sciences, eds. Thomas E. Wren, in cooperation with Wolfgang Edelstein and
Gertrud Nwmer-WiiMer, Library Journal, Vol. 115, Iss. 6 (April 1, 1990): 117.
Review of Pornography, the Other Side, by F.M. Christensen, Library Journal, Vol. 115,
Iss. 10 (Jun. 1,1990): 156.
Review of A Passion fo r Justice, Emotion and the Origins o f the Social Contract, by
RobertC. Solomon, Library Journal, Vol. 115, Iss. 17 (Oct. 15,1990): 90.
“Newman’s Theory of Ideas,”Paideusis, 3 (Spring, 1990): 3-16.
“Maritain and the Emergence of Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Malebranche and the
Angels,” Études maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 6 (1990): 57-86.
“The Social Self and the Need for an Alternative to Socialism,” International Journal o f
Social Economics, Vol. 17, No. 9 (1990): 4-16.
“McCulloch, Lyall, Schurman, and Kierstead, Four Philosophic Responses to Science,
Religion and the Unity of Knowledge,” Science and Society in the Maritimes Prior to
1914, ed. Paul Bogaard, Sackville, NB: Acadiensis Press for the Mount Allison
University Centre for Canadian Studies, 1990, pp. 101-118.
Review of The Institution o f Philosophy, eds. Avner Cohen and Marcello Dascal,
Canadian Philosophical Reviews, 11, No. 3 ( 1991 ): 163-165.
Review of Evolution and Consciousness: The Role o f Speech in the Origin and
Development o f Human Nature, by Leslie Dewart, Dialogue, 30 (1991): 195-198.
Review of A History o f Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future, by Charles Van Doren;
Library Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 1 (Jan. 1991): 122.
Review of The World o f the Imagination: Sum and Substance, by Eva T.H. Brann;
Library Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 4 (Mar. 1,1991): 91.
Review of Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, by Norman Oliver Brown, Library
Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 7 (Apr. 15, 1991 ): 96.
Review ofModernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions o f European
High Culture, by Robert B. Pippin, Library Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 10 (Jun. 1, 1991):
143.
Review of Theorizing American Literature: Hegel, the Sign, and History, eds. Bainard
Cowan and Joseph G. Kronick, Library Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 12 (July 1991): 98.
Review of American Mythologies, by Marshall Blonsky, Library Journal, Vol. 116, Iss.
18 (November 1, 1991): 102-103.
Review of Objectivism: The Philosophy o f Ayn Rand, by Leonard Peikoff, Library
Journal, Vol. 116, Iss. 19 (November 15,1991): 86.
“Error and the Idealists,” Philosophia, the Philosophical Quarterly o f Israel, 21 (1991):
3-23.
“Perestroika, Economic Freedom, and Moral Agency,” International Journal o f Social
Economics, Vol. 18, Nos. 5/6/7 (1991): 83-98.
“Professor Raiklin, Hegel, and the World Historical Individuals,” International Journal
o f Social Economics, Vol. 18, Nos. 5/6/7(1991): 133-138.
“Gewirth, Maritain, and MacIntyre: The Unity and Universalization of Moral Principle,”
Etudes maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 7 (1991): 49-78.
“Science and Religion in the Work of Charles De Koninck,” Laval théologique et
philosophique, Al (1991): 387-400.
Review of American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition, by Russell B. Goodman,
Dalhousie Review, 71, No. 3 (1991-1992): 374-377.
Review of Science, Community and the Transformation o f American Philosophy, by
Daniel J. Wilson, Canadian Philosophical Reviews, 11, No. 6 (1992): 446-448.
Review of Studies in Philosophy fo r Children: Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery, ed. Ann
Margaret Sharp and Ronald F. Reed, Library Journal, Vol. 117, Iss. 2 (Feb. 1, 1992):
93.
Review of The Olympian Dreams and Youthful Rebellion o f Rene Descartes, by John R.
ColQ, Library Journal, Vol. 117, Iss. 10 (Jun. 1, 1992): 130.
Review of The Genesis o f Kant's Critique o f Judgment, by John H. Zammito, Library
Journal, Vol. 117, Iss. 13 (Aug. 1992): 104-105.
Brief entries in Les œuvres philosophiques (sous la direction de) Jean-François Mattéi.
(Collection « Encyclopédie philosophique universelle » ed. André Jacob) III, 2 vols.
Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1992.
“Samuel Alexander,” Vol. 2, pp. 2204-2205.
“Edward Caird,” Vol. 2, pp. 2306-2307.
“Le Cartésianisme, le menaisianisme et les racines de la vie politique au Québec,” Essais
de philosophie politique québécoise (XVIIIe etXIXe siècles), sous la direction de Harel
Malouin; avec une préface de André Vidricaire, Montréal: Université du Québec à
Montréal, Dép. de philosophie, 1992, pp. 39-51.
“Josiah Royce and the World Order,” Laval théologique et philosophique, 48 (1992): 249-
261.
“Economics, Social Consciousness and the Laws of History After Marx,” International
Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 19, No. 6 (1992): 28-41.
“Can Economic Systems be Chosen? History, Values and Human Nature,” [Festschrift in
honour of John E. Elliott] International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 19 Nos.
7/8/9(1992): 273-291.
“Logic and Experience in Whitehead’s Metaphysics,” Process Studies, 21 (1992): 203-
218.
Being and Idea: Developments o f Some Themes in Spinoza and Hegel, Hildesheim,
[Germany]: Georg Olms, 1992.
Review of C.P. Snow and the Struggle o f Modernity, by John De la Mothe, Literary
Review o f Canada, Vol. 2, No. 5 (May, 1993): 6-8.
“Woes of Reason,” Review of Voltaire 's Bastards: The Dictatorship o f Reason in the
West, by John Ralston Saul, Canadian Forum, 71, No. 817 (1993): 43-45.
Review of A Dictionary o f Philosophical Quotations, eds. A. J. Ayer and Jane O ’Grady,
Library Journal, Vol. 118, Iss. 2 (Feb. 1,1993): 70.
Review of Frontiers in American Philosophy (Vol. 1), ed. Robert W. Burch and Herman
J. Saatkamp, Library Journal, Vol. 118, Iss. 6 (Apr. 1, 1993): 101-102.
Review of Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End o f Knowledge: The Coming o f Science and
Technology Studies, by Steve Fuller, Library Journal, Vol. 118, Iss. 13 (Aug. 1993):
107-108.
Review of Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early M odem Political
Thought, by Joshua Mitchell, Library Journal, Vol. 118, Iss. 14 (Sep. 1,1993): 187.
Review of Danto and His Critics, ed. Mark Rollins, Library Journal, Vol. 118, Iss. 17
(Oct. 15,1993): 67-68.
Review of Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in
Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel, by Martin J. Matustik, Library Journal, Vol. 118,
Iss. 19 (November 15,1993): 81.
“Infini-Rien ”: Pascal *s Wager and the Human Paradox, Carbondale, Illinois: Southern
Illinois University Press for the Journal of the History of Philosophy (Journal of the
History of Philosophy Monograph Series), 1993.
“The Paradoxes of Thought and Being,” Études maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 9
(1993): 29-58.
“Descartes and Eustachius a Sancto Paulo: Unraveling the Mind-Body Problem,” British
Journal fo r the History o f Philosophy, I, No. 2 (Sept. 1993): 3-22.
“Economics and Culture: Lenin’s Troubles With Nationalism,” International Journal o f
Social Economics, Vol. 20, Nos. 5/6/7 (1993): 84-102.
Review of Memoirs by Pierre Trudeau, Literary Review o f Canada, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Feb.
1994): 3-7.
Review of Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954, by Hannah Arendt and edited by Jerome
Kohn, Library Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 2 (Feb. 1, 1994): 78.
“Mysticism and Politics,” Review of George Grant: A Biography, by William Christian,
Canadian Forum, 72, No. 828 (Apr. 1994): 36-38.
Review of The Magus o f the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins o f M odem
Irrationalism, by Isaiah Berlin, Library Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 6 (Apr. 1, 1994): 107.
Review of A Pitch o f Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises, by Stanley Cavell; Library
Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 8 (May 1,1994): 106.
Review of Critique o f Applied Ethics: Reflections and Recommendations, by Abraham
Edel and others, Library Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 9 (May 15,1994): 76.
Review of The Past as Future, by Jurgen Habermas; trans. and ed. Max Pensky, Library
Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 13 (Aug. 1994): 90.
Review of Russian Thought After Communism: The Recovery o f a Philosophical
Heritage, ed. James P. Scanlan, Library Journal, Vol. 119, Iss. 21 (Dec. 1994): 96.
Review of Paul Emile Léger, évolution de sa pensée 1950-1967, by Denise Robillard,
Literary Review o f Canada, Vol. 3, No. 8 (Sept. 1994): 7-9.
“Canada and the History of Philosophy,” Canada, Theoretical Discourse/ Discours
théoretique, eds. Terry Goldie, Carmen Lambert, and Rowland Lorimer, Montréal:
Association for Canadian Studies, 1994, pp. 19-48.
“Gnosticism, the Dream Economy, and the Prospects for Communism,” International
Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3/4 (1994): 31-53.
“Is Economic Justice Possible?” International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 21, Nos.
2/3/4 (1994): 32-58.
“Morality, Freedom and Social Science: Professor Machan and the Remains of
Communism,” International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 21, Nos. 5/6 (1994):
80-87.
“History, Order and the Social Sciences: Thomas R. Jeannot and the Future of Marxism,”
International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 21, Nos. 5/6 (1994): 88-96.
“Logic and Experience in Whitehead’s Metaphysics,” Process Studies, 21 (1994): 203-
218.
“The Idea of a Perennial Philosophy,” Etudes maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 10 (1994):
57-78.
“Self, Deconstruction, and Possibility, Maritain’s Sixth Way Revisited,” Etudes
maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 10 (1994): 79-107.
Review of The Birth o f Presence, by Jean-Luc Nancy; trans. Brian Holmes et al, The
Review o f Metaphysics, 48, No. 4 (1994-1995): 918-920. [with Suzie Johnston]
Review of Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth o f the Unconscious, by Jacques
Bouveresse and translated by Carol Cosman, Library Journal, Vol. 120, Iss. 4 (Mar.
1,1995): 75. [with Suzie Johnston]
Review of S. L. Frank: The Life and Work o f a Russian Philosopher; 1877-1950, by
Philip Boobbyer, Library Journal, Vol. 120, Iss. 8 (May 1,1995): 99.
“Deadly Ideas,” Review of No More: The Battle Against Human Rights Violations, by
David Matas, Canadian Forum, 74, No. 840 (1995): 41-44.
Review of M y Kantian Ways, by Ermanno Bencivenga, Library Journal, Vol. 120, Iss. 12
(Jul. 1995): 83.
Review of The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, ed. Nicholas Jolley, Canadian
Philosophical Reviews, 15, No. 4 (1995): 37-39.
Review of The Fundamental Concepts o f Metaphysics: World’ Finitude, Solitude, by
Martin Heidegger, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Library Journal, Vol.
120, Iss. 15 (Sep. 15,1995): 71.
Review of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Library
Journal, Vol. 120, Iss. 15 (Sep. 15, 1995): 72.
Review of The Lukács Reader, by Georg Lukács; ed. Arpad Kadarkay, Library Journal,
Vol. 120, Iss. 18 (Nov. 1,1995): 67.
Review of World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction, by David E. Cooper, Library
Journal, Vol. 120, Iss. 20 (Dec. 1995): 113.
Review of Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal's Wager, by Jeff Jordan, Journal o f the
History o f Philosophy, 33 (1995): 688-689.
Review of Whitehead and Bradley: A Comparative Analysis, by Leemon B. McHenry,
Bradley Studies, l,N o . 2 (1995): 153-155.
“Choice and Social Change: The Idea of Civil Society and the Post-Marxist State,”
International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 22, Nos. 9/10/11 (1995): 12-27.
“Economics and Social Reality: Professor O’Neil and the Problem of Culture,”
International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 22, Nos. 9/10/11 (1995): 79ff.
“F.H. Bradley, Duns Scotus, and the Idea of a Dialectic,” Bradley Studies, 1, No. 1,
(1995): 6-29.
“Logic, Community and the Taming of the Absolute,” Laval théologique et philosophique,
51 (1995): 507-528. [with S. Johnston]
“Maritain, Gilson, and the Ontology of Knowledge,” Etudes maritainiennes/Maritain
Studies, 11 (1995): 202-219.
Review of The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-
James, Library Journal, Vol. 121, Iss. 6 (Apr. 1,1996): 74.
Review of Changing the Bully Who Rules the World: Reading and Thinking About Ethics,
by Carol Bly, Library Journal, Vol. 121, Iss. 12 (Jul. 1996): 119.
Review of The Philosophy o f Symbolic Forms. Vol. 4: The Metaphysics o f Symbolic
Forms, by Ernst Cassirer [ed. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene; trans.
John Michael Krois],Zràra/y Journal, Vol. 121, Iss. 12 (Jul. 1996): 119.
Review of Bertrand Russell: The Spirit o f Solitude, 1872-1921, by Ray Monk, Library
Review of On Race and Philosophy, by Lucius Outlaw, Library Journal, Vol. 121, Iss. 14
(Sep. 1,1996): 181-182.
Review of The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul, Library Journal, Vol. 121,
Iss. 20 (Dec. 1996): 97-98.
“The Summum Bonum and Idealist Ontology,” Current Issues in Idealism, eds. Paul
Coates and Daniel D. Hutto, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996, pp. 203-234.
“Bradley’s Other Metaphysics,” Perspectives on the Logic and Metaphysics o f F.H.
Bradley, ed. W. J. Mander, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996, pp. 1-30.
“F. H. Bradley and Later Idealism: From Disarray to Reconstruction,” in Philosophy after
F. H. Bradley, ed. James Bradley, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996, pp. 1-30.
Review of Playing God?: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom, by Ted Peters,
Library Journal, Vol. 122, Iss. 1 (Jan. 1997): 103.
Review of The Fate o f Place: A Philosophical History, by Edward S. Casey, Library
Journal, Vol. 122, Iss. 2 (Feb. 1,1997): 81,84.
Review of Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth; The Essential Works o f Michel Foucault,
1954-1984 (Vol. 1), by Michel Foucault, edited by Paul Rabinow, and translated by
Robert Hurley and others, Library Journal, Vol. 122, Iss. 5 (Mar. 15,1997): 66.
Review of The Courage To Become: The Virtues o f Humanism, by Paul Kurtz, Library
Review o f Selected Writings o f Richard McKeon. V o ll: Philosophy, Science, and
Culture, by Richard McKeon and edited by Zahava K. McKeon and William G.
Swenson, Library Journal, Vol. 122, Iss. 20 (Dec 1997): 109.
Entries in the Biographical dictionary o f twentieth-century philosophers, ed. Stuart
Brown, Diane Collinson, Robert Wilkinson. London; New York: Routledge, 1996. on
G. P. Adams [pp. 4-5], H. B. Alexander [p. 15], James Mark Baldwin [pp. 46-47],
George Blewett [p. 76], George Brett [p. 101], James Edward Creighton [pp. 163-
164], Gustavus Watts Cunningham [p. 166], Charles De Koninck [pp. 171-172],
Charles Dunan [p. 205], Alfred Jules Fouillée [pp. 145-146], Jules de Gaultier [pp.
267-268], Octave Hamelin [pp. 302-303], William Torrey Harris [pp. 313-314], Louis
Lachance [p. 428], JulesLachelier [pp. 428-429], J. A. Leighton [pp. 447-448], Rupert
Lodge [pp. 466-467], George Herbert Palmer [pp. 593-594], Jacob Gould Schurman
[p. 709], and John Watson [pp. 823-824].
“The Logic of Economic Discourse,” International Journal o f Social Economics, Vol. 24,
No. 10(1997): 1056-1079.
“Ipseity and Generosity According to Descartes,” Laval théologique et philosophique, 53
(1997): 695-708.
“The Reunion of Reason and Experience,” Études maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 13
(1997): 175-189.
“Philosophy and melancholy in Scarborough” [Review of Better Living: In Pursuit o f
Happinessfrom Plato to Prozac, by Mark Kingwell] Canadian Forum, 76, No. 868
(Apr. 1998): 38-40.
Review of Encounters: Philosophy o f History After Postmodernism, by Ewa Domanska,
Library Journal, Vol. 123, Iss. 14 (Sep. 1,1998): 186.
Review of The Sociology o f Philosophies: A Global Theory o f Intellectual Change, by
Randall Collins, Library Journal, Vol. 123, Iss. 16 (Oct. 1,1998): 92.
Review of The Attack o f the Blob: Hannah A rendt’s Concept o f the Social, by Hanna
Fenichel Pitkin, Library Journal, Vol. 123, Iss. 16 (Oct. 1,1998): 93.
Articles in M odem Germany: an encyclopedia o f history, people, and culture,
1871-1990, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr, 2 vols. New York: Garland
Publishing, 1998.
“Karl Jaspers,” Vol. 1, pp. 524-525.
“Philosophy,” Vol. 2, pp. 762-764.
“Infinity, Personhood, and Immortality,” Études maritainiennes/Maritain Studies, 14
(1998): 43-56.
“On Making God Go Away - a Reply to Professor Maxwell,” Dialogue, 37 (1998):
291-298.
Review of Philosophy in the Flesh, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Library Journal,
Vol. 124, Iss. 1 (Jan. 1999): 103.
Review of Riding the Wind: A New Philosophy fo r a New Era, by Peter Marshall, Library
Journal, Vol. 124, Iss. 2 (Feb. 1,1999): 92.
Review of Map to the End o f Time: Journeys with Friends and Philosophers, by Ronald
J. MsmhQimQT, Library Journal, Vol. 124, Iss. 5 (Mar. 15,1999): 82.
Review of The Social Construction o f What?, by Ian Hacking, Library Journal, Vol. 124,
Iss. 13 (Aug 1999): 96.
“Preface,” [to Intuition and Reality: a study o f the attributes o f substance in the absolute
idealism o f Spinoza, by James Thomas], Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999, pp. vii-xi.
“Anselm’s Proof and Some Problems of Meaning and Reference,” God and Argument, ed.
William Sweet, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999, pp. 97-113.
“The Absolute, the Infinite, and Ordinary Experience,” Bradley Studies, 5(1999): 62-86.
“Maritain, Canada, and the Scholastic Tradition,” Études maritainiennes / Maritain
Studies, 15 (1999): 53-69.
“The Ethics of the Infinite,” Études maritainiennes /M aritain Studies, 15 (1999): 120-
133. [with Suzie Johnston]
Review of German 20th Century Philosophy: The Frankfurt School, ed. Wolfgang
Schumacher, Library Journal, Vol. 125, Iss. 3 (Feb. 15,2000): 165-166.
“Love, Reason, and Reality: Argument and Emotion in McTaggart's System,”
Anglo-American Idealism, 1865-1927, ed. W. J. Mander. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2000, pp. 163-181.
“The Ideals of Knowledge and the Idea of a University” Etudes maritainiennes / Maritain
Studies, 16 (2000): 3-23.
“Descartes and the Ethics of Generosity,” The Bases o f Ethics, ed. William Sweet,
Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2000, pp. 79-102.
“Economic Rights and Philosophical Anthropology,” Philosophical Theory and the
Universal Declaration o f Human Rights, ed. William Sweet, Amsterdam/Atlanta:
Rodopi Press [forthcoming 2001].
“Agents, Causes, and Explanations: The Idea of a Metaphysical System,” The Nature o f
Metaphysics, ed. William Sweet and James Thomas [forthcoming 2001].
“The Balance of Extremes: Metaphysics, Nature, and Morals in the Later Philosophy of
Bernard Bosanquet,” Bernard Bosanquet and the Legacy o f British Idealism, ed.
William Sweet [forthcoming 2001].
“Speculative and Analytic Philosophy of History” in The Philosophy o f History, ed. James
Thomas and William Sweet [forthcoming 2001 ].
Index
Absolute, 5,11, 15, 31,45-52, 55, 61, 63- Broad, C.D., 81, 104-105,251
67,71, 109-110, 137, 138, 141, 143- Brown, Patterson, 119-121, 124,127,129
145, 150, 181, 183-185,189-191,217, Brunet, M., 276, 277, 286
257
Acton, H.B., 105 Caird, E., 6, 16, 22, 27, 67, 281
Advaita Vedanta, 181 -183 Campbell, C.A., 100, 101, 104-106
Aliotta, A., 106 Canadian Association of University
Allen, G.W., 281, 286 Teachers, 283
Anscombe, E., 126 Canadian Journal o f Philosophy, 251
Anti-realism, 3,11, 59, 65, 109, 111-116, Candlish, S., 105
209, 287 Causa essendi, 171
Aquin, Hubert, 276, 277 Causal hierarchy, 120, 123-126
Aquinas, Thomas, 109, 119, 124-130, Causal laws, 133,261,263
167, 168, 171, 172, 269 Causal system, 119
Aristotle, 115, 120-125, 127, 128, 129 Church, 27, 153,216,217,233,234,240,
Armour, L. 3-12, 15, 16,25, 53,110,115, 267, 272
116, 131-151, 178, 179, 207, 214, Clarke, W. Norris, 127
219,220,233,235,241-242,245-256, Commonwealth, 183, 190, 192, 194
259-289 Communitarianism, 8,178,180,235,236,
Asian philosophy, 40, 50 238, 280, 287, 288
Atwood, M., 283 Community, 1-8, 10, 12, 14, 110, 135-
Augustine, 8, 9, 46, 53, 110, 153-155, 138, 143, 144,148-150,177-180,182,
159, 163-164, 166 183, 185, 190-193,206-209,212-234,
Austin, J.L., 36 237, 238, 240, 243, 251, 255, 261,
Ayer, A.J., 1, 14, 116 269, 271,275
Comte, A., 27, 52, 54
Bergson, H., 1, 48, 54, 190 Conche, M., 167
Berkeley, G., 6, 25-27, 29, 67, 116, 186, Consciousness, 1, 5, 9, 19,21,28, 50, 54-
269, 287 59, 64, 65, 67, 80, 83, 88, 102, 156-
Blake, W., 48 158, 181-184, 187-190, 193,210,287
Blanshard, B., 2, 14, 83, 100, 105-106 Copernicus, N., 25,29
Boethius, 168-169, 174 Cosmology, 53, 104, 112, 115, 174, 189
Bosanquet, B., 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, Craig, W.L., 129
28, 29, 66, 77, 94, 95, 97, 104, 106, Cresswell, M.J., 105
220, 221,226, 233,288, 289 Criterion, 56, 64, 94-96, 111, 195, 196,
Brahma, 189, 190, 193 224, 261,263,266
Brahmãloka, 177,181-183,185-186,187, Critical realism, 30
189-191, 193
Brahman, 53, 181-184, 190-193 Darwin, C., 26
Brain, 33,42, 111, 115,213 De Gaulle, C., 280
Braybrooke, D., 249,255,284 De Mameffe, J., 105
Democracy, 7, 191-193,238 Gandhi, M , 185

Demon, 111, 112 Gauthier, D., 252
Dewey, J., 99, 101, 106,281,282 Geach, P., 109, 119-121, 125-127, 129
Dialectical logic, 264,266,267,272,287 Goldschmidt, V., 173
Dialogue [Canadian Philosophical Goodman, N., 37
Review], 248,251-253,276,279,285 Green, T.H., 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 15, 16,21-22,
Divine mind, 112, 115-116, 128 27, 28, 55-60, 62-67, 78, 83-85, 97,
Dürkheim, E., 31 102, 104,214,220, 287, 288
Duty, 6, 69, 72, 153, 197, 203, 262, 270
Hegel, G.W.F., 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 27, 29,
Eckhart, Meister, 158, 162 34, 36, 57, 60, 65, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92,
Eliot, T.S., 22, 44, 45, 47, 48,49, 50, 52 97, 101,102, 105,131,135,138, 141,
Empiricism, 3, 5, 10, 33, 34, 55, 58, 62, 153-161, 164, 165, 186, 215, 218,
79,91, 132 259, 265, 267-270, 273, 282, 287
Enlightenment, 40, 186 Heidegger, M., 247,280,281
Epicurus, 29 Herbart, J.F., 83, 84, 104
Epiphenomenalism, 31, 240 Hinduism, 13, 181, 182, 188, 189, 190
Eschatology, 191 Hobbes, T., 202, 212,280
Eternal Consciousness, 5, 59, 65, 67 Hobhouse, L.T., 96, 104, 106
Eternity, 47,48, 109, 142-144, 145, 146, Hogg, A., 1, 13
153, 163, 164, 166-173, 174 Holism, 3, 13, 15, 60, 63, 64, 288
Ethical Altruism, 11, 22, 72-74 Houang, F., 106
Ethical Egoism, 22, 71, 72-74, 182 Hume, D., 8, 29, 32, 36, 58, 66, 80, 103,
Evolution, 13, 14, 33, 49, 51, 187-190, 121, 153, 155
191 Huxley, T.H., 80, 81, 103
Ewing, A.C., 2, 14, 53, 104
Excluded middle, 113, 136 Identity in difference, 64, 137, 142, 164,
165
Faith, 5, 11, 51, 52, 134, 155, 158, 161, Immediate experience, 61, 62, 65, 77,
162, 164, 171, 184, 193, 220, 225- 100-102, 105, 106
232, 234, 287 Inclusive harmony, 44
Feeling, 22, 31, 33,45,46, 51, 57-59, 62, Individualism, 31, 69, 75, 184, 188, 212,
65, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83-85, 88-93, 96- 213,235
106, 153-155, 157, 188,262, 273 Individuality, 10, 94, 97, 110, 137, 140,
Final vocabulary, 219,232 142, 145, 150, 178, 184-186, 191,
Finite God, 51 192, 215, 223, 270, 272, 274, 275
Finitude, 51, 71 Individuation, 143, 207, 209, 215-217,
First mover, 121-125, 127-129 219, 269
Forgiveness, 161,226 Intelligibility, 21, 32, 78, 80-82, 85, 90,
Foster, M.B., 106 92, 93, 95, 100
Foucault, M., 29, 34 Internal relations, 22, 78, 79, 82, 85, 86,
Freud, S., 25,216 105, 287
Internationalism, 191
Gadamer, H-G., 219,232
Index 305
James, W., 15, 54, 104, 106, 268, 280, Mok§a, 181, 182, 185, 187, 192
281 Montague, R.D.L., 105
Jivanmukti, 181-183, 190 Montague, W.P., 250,255
Joachim, H., 94, 106 Moore, G.E., 35, 83, 104, 200
Joseph, H.W.B., 105 Moral Psychology, 69, 74, 105
Murti, T.R.V., 161
Kagey, Rudolf, 103
Kant, 13, 25, 27-29, 30, 33, 36, 52, 58, Nagarjuna, 161
63, 64, 65, 67, 78, 80, 88, 133, 136, Nationalism, 7, 180, 185, 191, 193, 240,
141, 153-156, 158-161, 172, 186, 195, 242, 275-278, 282, 283, 285
202,215,262, 268, 287 Nehru, 185
Keeling, S.V., 105 Neo-Platonism, 6,153,155,156,158-161
Khatchadourian, H., 104 Newman, J.H., 7, 8,27
Kingdom of God, 5, 177, 181, 186, 190, Nietzsche, F., 39, 40,41, 51, 53, 54
226, 230, 233, 250, 255 Nirvana, 50, 53, 162, 187
Non-contradiction, 94, 264
Lamont, J., 120, 121, 127 “Now” of Eternity, 164, 166
Liberation, 177, 181-184, 186, 190-193, “Now” of Time, 164-166, 170, 171
211,277, 278
Linguistic philosophy, 32, 35,95, 96,281 Objectivity, 34, 135
Locke, J., 55-58, 64, 79, 192, 236, 242, Ockham, W., 121
280
Logical positivism, 111, 112, 116, 208 Pantheism, 115
Lotze, H. 66, 80, 81, 84, 104, 189 Paradox, 10, 21, 39, 69, 72, 109, 110,
132-136, 154-162, 166
MacIntyre, A., 2, 235, 242 Paranormal, 47
Mack, R.D., 103, 106 Pareschatology, 191
MacKinnon, D.M., 105 Parmenides, 164, 166, 167
MacNiven, D., 22, 69, 105 Pascal, B., 8, 26, 160, 162, 272
Madhyamika Buddhism, 161 Pears, D., 104
Maimonides, 172 Peirce, C .S.,51,54, 250, 280
Malebranche, N., 8 Perception, 2, 15, 16,45, 58, 86, 91, 187,
Manser, A., 105, 106 188
Martensen, H.L.J., 158, 162 Perpetually “other”, 165, 166
Marx, K., 35, 185,272 Phenomenalism, 41, 79, 81, 116
Masson, D., 104 Physicists, 27, 113, 132, 267
Materialism, 26,29, 31, 45, 51 Planck, M., 32, 113
Mathematics, 29, 40, 101, 116, 124, 136, Plato, 1,4,6, 13, 14,25,48, 58, 131, 153,
141,267 156, 157, 162, 164, 167, 187, 194,
McKinnon, A., 161, 246 265, 280, 287
McTaggart, J.M.E., 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 15- Plotinus, 27, 29, 34, 142, 158, 162, 164,
16, 21, 27, 32, 104-105, 109, 133, 166, 167
138, 216, 217, 218, 269,273, 287 Pringle-Pattison, A. Seth, 16, 28, 32, 67,
Miracles, 28, 32, 36 105
Process philosophy, 52, 54 Sunyata , 161

Pure being, 134, 135, 145, 181-183, 193, Superimposition, 49, 50
268-270 Swinburne, R., 36
Radhakrishnan, S., 1, 9, 13, 177, 178, Tagore, R , 191-193

181-194 Taylor, A.E., 28, 32, 66, 246
Realism, 8, 10, 26, 30, 34, 65, 192, 288, Taylor, Charles, 2, 6, 16, 177, 235, 236,
289 242, 253
Religion o f the Spirit, 192 Tennyson, A., 48
Rights, 2, 3, 7, 9, 15, 137, 183, 184, 192, Time’s Arrow, 46
193, 198, 213, 235-243, 263, 275 Timescape, 47
Rorty, R , 35, 207-209, 219, 223, 229, Totalitarianism, 184, 193,276,280
233, 234 Transcendental ego, 88
Rule-utilitarianism, 205 Trinity, 27, 130
Russell, B., 3, 8, 15,40, 83,103-105,135,
250, 266 United Nations, 192,231, 280
Ryle, G., 99, 106, 132 Unity and diversity, 43, 59, 63
Universalizability, 195, 202
Çankara, 181 Universais, 41, 42, 132, 137, 262, 270-
Sarvamukti, 181-183, 186, 187, 194 272
Schelling, F., 36 Universes, 46, 112, 116
Schiller, F., 34 Utilitarianism, 195-198, 200, 201, 205,
Schiller, F.C.S., 104 206,215
Schopenhauer, A., 40, 51, 53
Self-actualization, 208, 215 Vander Veer, G., 106
Self-realization, 69-72, 75, 147, 149, 181, Vat, 111, 112, 115
215,216 Vatican II, 233
Self-sacrifice, 11,22, 69-73, 74, 75, 188 Velecky, L., 127
Sentience, 45, 51 Verifiability, 11, 111, 112, 116, 142, 208
Sin-consciousness, 160, 161 Vivekananda, 191, 192
Socialism, 184, 193, 277, 280
Spencer, H., 79, 80, 81, 103 Ward, James, 89, 103
Spinoza, B., 8, 9, 16, 109, 110, 116, 131, Whitehead, A.N., 1, 51, 54, 103, 190,
138-140,142,144-152,247,272,273, 261,273
287 Williams, C.J.F., 121-127, 129
Sprigge, T.L.S., 2, 15, 105, 200, 269 Wollheim, R., 103-105
Stallo, J.B., 104
Stout, G.F., 104 Yeats, W., 54

Idealism, Metaphysics and Community

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IDEALISM, METAPHYSICS AND COMMUNITY

Series Editorial Board:

David Cooper, University of Durham, UK

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © William Sweet 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00065043

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-73371-8 (hbk)

Introduction: Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the 20th Century 1

1 Primus inter pares: D.C. Stove among the Idealists 25

2 F.H. Bradley’s Absolute, or Rationality Transmuted 39

3 Bradley and Green on Relations 55

4 F.H. Bradley on Conflict of Interest 69

5 F.H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and the Theory of Relations 77

PART 2 -METAPHYSICS 107

6 Anti Anti-Realism 111

7 St. Thomas and Infinite Causal Regress 119

8 Leslie Armour, Spinoza, and Rational Psychology 131

9 The Suffering Reality of Reason and Love:

10 On Time and Eternity 163

PART 3 - COMMUNITY 175

11 Radhakrishnan’s Concept of Universal Liberation 181

12 The Act/Rule Dispute 195

13 Conceptualizing Community in Order to Realize It 207

14 Religious Belief and Community 219

15 Cultural Diversity and National Identity in Canadian Political Philosophy 235

16 A History of the History of Philosophy in Canada 245

17 Cows, Wolves, and the Absolute 257

18 Canadian Nationalism and Canadian Philosophy 275

Afterword: Beyond Idealism? 287

Bibliography o f the Works o f Leslie Armour 291

Richard M. Fox [“The Act/Rule Dispute”] is Professor of Philosophy at the Cleveland

Thomas De Koninck [“On Time and Eternity”] is Professor of Philosophy at Université

John Leslie [“Anti Anti-Realism”] is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University

Robin Mathews [“Canadian Nationalism and Canadian Philosophy”] is an adjunct

Kevin Sullivan [“Radhakrishnan’s Concept of Universal Liberation”] teaches

William Sweet [“Religious Belief and Community”] is Professor of Philosophy at St

James Thomas [“Leslie Armour, Spinoza, and Rational Psychology”] is author of

Lee F. Werth [“F.H. Bradley’s Absolute, or Rationality Transmuted”] is Associate

Brenda Wirkus [“Conceptualizing Community in Order to Realize It”] is Associate

Contexts and Criticisms

Idealism, Metaphysics and Community in the Philosophy of Leslie Armour

Exploring Idealism, Metaphysics and Community Today

Stove, Idealism, and Religion

Philosophy, Idealism and Religion

The Nature of Questioning

Bradley addresses a likely suggestion, that is:

The General Nature of Reality

And time would also be there in harmony, transmuted, of course.

Bradley recognized that the timescape of a dream or fantasy is not to be integrated in

The point of intersection of the timeless

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Subsequently, Bradley’s light will be employed in terms of a motion picture analogy,

[...] There is, it seems to us,

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

And there is the familiar poem by William Blake:

To see a world in a grain of sand

With respect to the same theme, Alfred, Lord Tennyson contemplates:

Flower in the crannied wall,

Returning to water metaphors and T. S. Eliot, we have:

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

[...] music heard so deeply

Reality being itself undifferentiated, yet manifesting itself in terms of particulars in