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.

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    of English philosophy during its best period to solve the problem of knowledge is the sceptical dissolution of know¬ ledge into opinion, of certainty into probability, of rational connexion into customary association. And while the refutation of this scepticism is attempted independently by the Scottish intuitionists and, under the inspiration of Kant and his successors, by the idealists of the nineteenth century, the doctrine of associationism is developed by Hartley and the Mills, and Spencer invokes the aid of the new principles of evolution and heredity to reinforce the same view. It may be said, therefore, without qualification that, since Lockers epoch-making substitution of the episte¬ mological for the ontological problem, the basis of English metaphysical theory has always been sought in a theory of knowledge. To take two notable examples from opposite schools of thought, section i. of Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic is devoted to < the epistemology, or theory of knowing,’ section ii. to ‘ the agnoiology, or theory of ignorance,’ section iii. to c the ontology, or theory of being’ ; part i. of Spencer’s First Principles to c the unknowable,’ part ii. to ‘ the knowable.’ Before proceeding to the exposition of his system, the former writer thinks it necessary to prove that it is possible to know reality and to distinguish knowledge from ignor¬ ance ; the latter to prove that we cannot know reality or the absolute, but only the relative and phenomenal. Gnosticism and agnosticism alike rest upon a theory of knowledge. Although, in the light of the Kantian 4 criticism,’ this view of the relation of the ontological to the epistemological problem came home to these later thinkers with a new clearness and conviction, it was a lesson which they might have learned from the indepen¬ dent movement of English philosophy. (3) It is important to observe the precise sense in which English philosophy may be said to be dominated by the practical or ethical interest, as contrasted with the speculative or metaphysical interest which is the inspiration of Continental philosophy. It cannot be
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