Rule and end in morals / by John H. Muirhead.

  • John Henry Muirhead
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Rule and end in morals / by John H. Muirhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE PRINCIPLE OF IDEALIST ETHICS Coleridge’s well-known saying that every man is born either an Aristotelian or a Platonist, though not true in the sense usually assigned to it as mean¬ ing that every man is either an empiricist or an idealist, yet does indicate a real distinction between methods of approaching philosophical problems according to the comparative predominance of the analytic or the synthetic impulse. So taken it is applicable not only to individuals but to generations. This is not to say that thought from time to time swings idly like a pendulum from one side to the other. If it is a pendulum, it is one that marks the time of day and its meaning must be read off on the face of the clock. What is important to realize is that these counter movements are no accident but the result of what Plato called the dialectic or conversation of the mind with itself, that is always going on wherever it is alive at all, as to the meaning of its experiences and their claim to be a unity like itself. The Platonist is the man who takes his start from the vision of such a unity. Therein lies his strength. His weakness is the temptation to grasp at unity prematurely, leaving yawning gaps for others, or for himself at a more advanced stage, to fill in, before his vision can be declared veridical. His very unification thus becomes a challenge to 3915 B
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