This is an English translation of Schelling's Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, one of the most significant works in the German tradition of philosophy of nature and early nineteenth-century philosophy of science. It stands in opposition to the Newtonian picture of matter as constituted by inert, impenetrable particles, and argues instead for matter as an equilibrium of active forces that engage in dynamic polar opposition to one another. In the revisions of 1803 Schelling incorporated this dialectical view into a (...) neo-Platonic conception of an original unity divided upon itself. The text is of more than simply historical interest: its daring and original vision of nature, philosophy, and empirical science will prove absorbing reading for all philosophers concerned with post-Kantian German idealism, for scholars of German Romanticism, and for historians of science. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of the three types of logic advocated by current philosophical schools.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Rozszerzona wersja wykładów Gilbert Ryle wygłoszonych na Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario w Kanadzie w 1984 roku.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

CHAPTER I CONTEMPORARY DESPAIR AND ITS ANTIDOTE 1. Forebodings The prevalent mood of contemporary mankind is one of despair, for never before have the ...

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Harris offers his unique interpretation of Spinoza as a dialectical thinker and addresses other commentators' misunderstandings of some of Spinoza's primary principles. The opening chapters discuss Spinoza's metaphysics and epistemology, the problem of relating finite to infinite in his system, the infinity of the attributes of substance, human nature and the body-mind relation, politics, and religion. The latter part of the book addresses Spinoza's influence on later philosophers and their interpretations of his doctrine. In the course of his discussion, Harris (...) stresses Spinoza's holism and its implication both within and beyond Spinoza's own writings. (shrink)

Harris elucidates the important philosophical implications of the Anthropic Principle. Tracing the continuous development of the principle from physics through biology and psychology, he examines the case for the thesis that intelligent life is necessarily involved from the very beginning of physical reality and that the entire process of natural evolution comes to consciousness of itself in the human mind.

This sequel to the highly acclaimed Cosmos and Anthropos demonstrates the impact on social, ethical, and theological doctrines of the twentieth-century scientific revolution, particularly the Anthropic Principle. Harris reviews the main arguments put forward in the Western philosophical tradition for the existence of God, as well as the critique of those arguments, and shows that the conflict between religion and science since the seventeenth century has resulted more from the implications of the Copernican-Newtonian scientific paradigm than from any insuperable divergence (...) of dogma or ultimate aim. (shrink)

Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

But in both these doctrines there is confusion between the temporal process and time itself, a confusion common enough but by no means permissible. For the process of change is not time, though it is what "takes time." It is sensible to ask whether it occurs slowly or quickly, but it makes no sense to ask whether time elapses more or less swiftly. We can consider how long a series of changes takes to occur but not how long a period (...) of time takes to elapse. Time itself does not take time. Our common expressions about the movement of time and its relative velocity are illegitimate and refer only to the number of distinguishable events in a series or the degree of our interest in them, so that we say time "passes" quickly when what occurs is pleasant and interesting, or when exciting events follow each other in quick succession. We say that it passes slowly when little happens which is of any importance to us, or when we are tense and expectant, over-eager for the occurrence of some anticipated climax. These are descriptions of changes in objects or in ourselves which may occur quickly or slowly, they are not descriptions of time. (shrink)

The Coherence Theory of Truth does not stand upon its own feet; it is the corollary of a metaphysic, without which it has no claim to credence and is without cogency. Likewise, no critique of the theory can have weight against it if it merely assumes an incompatible metaphysic which it does not validate and unless it can demonstrate the falsity of that on which the Coherence Theory rests. If metaphysics is simply a matter of taste and temperament discussion and (...) criticism become futile, but that metaphysics is simply a matter of taste and sentiment is an exploded doctrine. It can obviously not be maintained because it rests upon a metaphysic in its turn, for it follows from the belief that the world and the human mind are such that we can acquire knowledge of facts originally only through particular sense impressions which can never by their nature convey to us ultimate general truths about reality. This is a metaphysical presupposition and is thus incompetent to extrude metaphysics from the sphere of rational knowledge. (shrink)

One of Kant’s major contributions to modern philosophy was the recognition that genuine knowledge is never a mere patchwork of items of information, whether gathered from empirical sources or from intellectual, whether inductively inferred or deductively derived from first principles. “If each and every single representation were completely foreign, isolated and separate from every other,” he declared, “nothing would ever arise such as knowledge, which is a whole of related and connected elements.” Of this fact, Hegel was unshakably convinced. “The (...) Truth,” he maintained, “is the whole”; but it is no undifferentiated, featureless whole, no Schellingian night in which all cows are black. “The true form in which the truth exists can only be the scientific system itself”. (shrink)

In his review of Phillip Grier’s anthology, Dialectic and Contemporary Science, Darrel Christensen expresses his regret that I “did not find occasion… to give more attention… to the sorts of well-informed and pointed criticism that E. McMullin raised.. in ‘Is the Progress of Science Dialectical?’” In that book it would hardly have been possible or appropriate, for me to have done so, because I did not write it, and although the editor invited me to respond to the authors who contributed, (...) Ernan McMullin was not one of them. The paper to which Christensen refers was presented to the first meeting of the Hegel Society of America in 1970, at which I was present; but after so long an interval of time I cannot now remember if or how, I responded to it. So far as my recollection serves, my own paper, although distributed to those attending the meeting, was not read and was not fully discussed. So there may well be some need for taking up Christensen’s challenge, even at this late hour. (shrink)

Following kant, idealists establish the transcendental unity of the subject as the prior condition of experience of objects. this is necessarily all-inclusive and the finite self becomes one of its phenomena, which cannot be identified with the transcendental ego, nor yet be wholly divorced from it. this is the basis of kant's paralogism of reason. t h green, f h bradley and edmund husserl are all victims of this paralogism, each in his own way. green fails to avoid it by (...) identifying the transcendental subject with the divine spiritual principle; bradley, admitting the problem's insolubility, propounds an incoherent theory of finite centers of experience; and husserl's device of 'mundanization' proves illegitimate and ambiguous under inspection. (shrink)

Harris seeks to diagnose the ailment that infects contemporary thinking and prevents adequate measures from being taken to counter the dangerous effect of the ...

The vagaries of the postal system, British or American, or both, apparently, have prevented until now by seeing Professor Hodgson’s complaints about my review of his and his colleagues’ translation of Part 3 of the Religionsphilosophie. I am dismayed and not a little surprised that he should have taken my comments so amiss, for I had not the least intention of suggesting anything but that their translation was admirable, and that the immense work they had accomplished was a very valuable (...) contribution to the subject. I thought I had made that clear. The use of the phrase “liberties taken with the text” was, perhaps, unfortunate, but to say that it was “a careless and irresponsible misrepresentation” is surely rather extreme. For what translator trying to put Hegel’s involved and involuted German into readable and intelligible English can avoid taking liberties with the text? One of the best and most gifted, William Wallace, takes liberties in almost every sentence, yet succeeds in great measure in conveying Hegel’s thought correctly and in lucid English. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley was a self-confessed idealist, but as there is no clear consensus concerning just what idealism is, the term has been applied to a wide variety of doctrines, many of which Bradley repudiated. Solipsism, the view that all and the only reality consists of the content of my consciousness, is rejected by the vast majority of idealists, and by Bradley in particular on the grounds that direct experience affords no clear conception of a self, and so far as (...) it gives any at all it is already in correlation with a not-self. If direct experience is to be transcended we may as legitimately conclude to materialism as to “idealism”; and nothing in experience, whether direct or indirect, proves that immediate feeling is confined to my self. In Ethical Studies he refers to the view that material things and other people are merely ideas in the mind of the thinker as “a silly doctrine,” and asks how the solipsist would answer the questions: Is my consciousness something that goes beyond myself; and if so in what sense? and Had I a father? What do I mean by that, and how do I reconcile my assertion of it with my answer to question? Whatever our reaction to these criticisms, they give clear evidence that Bradley rejected what he took to be solipsism, the argument of which he states as follows: “I cannot transcend experience and experience must be my experience. From this it follows that nothing beyond myself exists; for what is experience is its states.” Solipsism is the most extreme version of idealism, but for all idealists the crucial question remains whether their theories do not in the end reduce to something very like it; and if they do, they cannot be accepted, because solipsism is a patent self-contradiction, in that it reduces to the self what the very conception of a self must exclude from it. To this issue we shall have to return; let us meanwhile consider further what idealism meant for Bradley. (shrink)

Errol Harris was a greatly respected and influential philosopher and public intellectual in North America, Britain and Europe in the 20th century. His autobiography provides insight into the influences that contributed to the shaping of his remarkable character and career. In these recollections Harris reveals a keen eye as he presents memories of growing up in several parts of South Africa in the early 20th century; childhood and youth in a close-knit but sometimes financially challenged Jewish family of fairly strict (...) religious observance; an account of inspiring intellectual experiences as an undergraduate and graduate at Rhodes College, Grahamstown (1925-29); teaching black South African university undergraduates at Fort Hare in 1929-30; studying philosophy at Oxford (1931-33) with many of the most celebrated figures on the Oxford faculty from that period; teaching at British public schools in the mid-1930’s; a short, unhappy, but adventure-filled stint as secretary to the Minister of Mines for Southern Rhodesia; tales of his experiences as an Education Officer for the British Colonial Service, inspecting remote village schools on horseback in Basutoland and Zanzibar in the late 1930’s, just prior to the outbreak of the war. He also recounts the religious experiences over these years that eventually led him to join the Church of England. Over the course of his long life, Errol demonstrated a serious concern for the common weal, along with a strongly-developed social conscience. Confronted with a range of historic challenges, including some of the most acute evils arising in the course of the twentieth century, he met the most serious of them head-on with a direct, resolute, and public response, calling upon all to embark on a path of sanity and reason toward a goal of mutual well-being. The book also covers his research and his writing of his fully realized and comprehensive philosophical system on the concept of mind, or consciousness, and its relation to the world. Excerpted from the Introduction. (shrink)

The category of being-for-self is central for the whole of Hegel's system. It is the category of wholeness, what Hegel calls the true infinite; and, in the preface to the Phänomenologie he has identified the truth as the whole in its self-generation, which is what the entire system of his philosophy presents. The exposition of this category in the Logic is therefore of singular importance, yet it is by no means easy to follow. Although we may be able to understand (...) how Hegel reaches this category, how it emerges from determinate being, the subcategories into which it evolves, and the transition to quantity that it presages, present nosmall difficulty. (shrink)

This sequel to the highly acclaimed "Cosmos and Anthropos" demonstrates the impact on social, ethical, and theological doctrines of the twentieth-century scientific revolution, particularly the Anthropic Principle. Harris reviews the main arguments put forward in the Western philosophical tradition for the existence of God, as well as the critique of those arguments, and shows that the conflict between religion and science since the seventeenth century has resulted more from the implications of the Copernican-Newtonian scientific paradigm than from any insuperable divergence (...) of dogma or ultimate aim. (shrink)

IN HIS PAPER "Hegel and the Law of Identity," Reynold Siemens accuses me of becoming involved in several serious muddles in my Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel. I am grateful to Mr. Siemens for treating what I have written seriously enough to think it worthy of considered criticism, but I fear that it is not so much I who have fallen into confusion as he. It is a confusion common among Hegel commentators, including many more sympathetic than Mr. Siemens, (...) and is apparent from the very beginning of his article, in his allegation that Hegel is ambivalent about the law of identity, and that he equivocates over the meaning of "true." I had hoped that I had warned readers of my book of this sort of confusion, but in his case I seem to have failed, and must try again. (shrink)

The term ‘Empiricism’ has had at least two different, though not unconnected, applications in modern thought, one to scientific method and the other to philosophical theory. My intention in this lecture is to try to show that, while these two applications of the term have a common source, their actual referents are widely divergent and in large measure even mutually incompatible.

Here is material for a complete introductory course in philosophy. The reader is presented with a comprehensive selection of the major classical texts, all accompained by explanatory commentary and criticism. Each work is placed in its historical context—from the pre-Socratic to the twentieth century—showing how each author marked a milestone in the history of Western thought. Where possible, complete texts have been used; longer works are covered by selections carefully made to illuminate central concepts. Explanation and criticism are couched in (...) straightforward language and technicalities within the texts are also clearly presented, making difficult arguments and ideas easily intelligible. (shrink)

The paper by Hans-Christian Lucas on “The ‘Sovereign Ingratitude’ of Spirit toward Nature” in The Owl of Minerva, 23, 2 : 131-150, is of special interest, if only because, as Lucas says, the transition from nature to spirit is as important for Hegel as is the much criticized transition from the logic to nature. Moreover, the section on anthropology in the Geistesphilosophie is unique, difficult, and much neglected by commentators. My own interest in it dates back longer than I can (...) remember, but Lucas does not seem to be aware of my paper on the subject. He, however, has had access to more recent texts than were at that time at my disposal, from which he cites helpful passages. On these sources I am not in a position to comment, but I should like here to address afresh some of the points bearing on complaints Lucas makes against Hegel’s lack of argument and failure to demonstrate the links between the stages of the dialectic. (shrink)

Professor Errol E. Harris, past-President of The Hegel Society of America, accepted the invitation of the Philosophy Department of Villanova University to occupy their Chair of Christian Philosophy for the 1982 spring semester. The following paper was presented as his inaugural address to that department.