English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/392 (page 6)
    ledge, and are preoccupied with metaphysical construc¬ tion rather than with the problem of knowledge or method.1 Locke is the first English philosopher to substitute the problem of knowledge for that of reality, holding, like Kant in his proposed £ criticism ’ of human know¬ ledge, that this is the previous question which must be answered before the metaphysical question of the nature of reality can be attempted with any hope of success. In his own memorable words, £ It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.’2 His main difficulty is to show how knowledge can be at once general and real ; and his conclusion is that it is either general and unreal, or real but merely particular. Our deficiency of certain knowledge is supplied, he holds, by that £ opinion,’ 6 faith,’ or £ assent ’ which is based upon probability, a conclusion which may be compared with that of the later Kantian criticism. While Locke had protested against (innate ideas,’ Berkeley’s protest was directed against ‘abstract ideas ’ ; and his nominalistic interpretation of the significance of general terms, as reducibile to the particular ideas which they represent, is closely connected with his reduction of the esse of the material world to its percipi. His theory of knowledge yields immediately a corresponding theory of reality. All that was left for Hume to do, to reach his sceptical dissolution of know¬ ledge, was to extend the Berkeleyan nominalism from matter to mind, and to identify the connexions between impressions and ideas with the customary association which Berkeley had already recognised under the name of £ suggestion.’ Thus the result of the sustained effort 1 Hobbes, like Bacon, lays the basis of his system in a theory of knowledge ; but his interest is rather in the materialistic system which he proceeds to construct on this basis than in the security of the basis itself. The Cambridge Platonists and other rationalistic critics of Hobbes in the seventeenth century similarly propose a theory of know¬ ledge which carries with it a corresponding theory of reality. 2 Essay concerning Human Understanding, Epistle to the Reader.