Abstract

Thought is occupied as a rule with a stuff which is not thought. What could thinking mean without a topic, a grist as from outside ordinarily supplied by the senses? As cognitive beings we can have no quarrel with the supply--we accept; as practical beings we never simply accept. The gibe of Marx, that philosophy reflects on the world whereas the task is to change it, does but describe the daily program of everyman. Only, to alter fact is not to escape fact. The degree to which fact is alterable, and by us, is itself a fact. Our problem is this unremoved enveloping factuality, the cosmic web into which all our struggling, shattering, reshaping more deeply enmesh us. What if anything our philosophies do with fact is today the chief test of their grasp of their proper business.