IN DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

By C. E. M. JOAD THE writer of a series of articles on Philosophy has come to feel instinctively that some apology is due both to editor and to readers. Space is congested, the drive of life grows daily more insistent, and the subject is apt to be thought dull and disagreeable. Philosophy, moreover, threatened on the one side by the encroach- ments of science and on the other by the growth of psy- chology, has in recent years been thrown very much on the defensive. It is said that philosophy has no rela- tionship to life, and that its results are either untrue, or, if true, remote from actuality. If by this is meant that philosophy does not solve for us the practical problems of every-day existence, the charge must. be admitted. If life be regarded as an art, philosophers are not its artists, nor does the study of philosophy confer a know- ledge of its technique. If life be regarded as a chess problem, philosophy does not provide a ready-made solution. In so far as philosophers have claimed that the study of their works fitted the student for the business of life, the claim is largely unfounded.

That a knowledge of philosophy does not directly affect the business of living, an observation of philosophers will readily. prove.. The political philosopher is no better either as a citizen or as a statesman than his neighbours. The metaphysician cannot provide an agreed and demon- strably correct answer to the questions, how the universe started, whether it works mechanically, whether there is a God, or whether there is such a thing as matter. The morals of the ethical philosopher are not noticeably superior to those of the plain man. In particular he is not necessarily remarkable for what is known as the philo- sophic temperament. He is not more serene, and he is not better tempered than the man in the street. He is just as likely to betray ill-temper when he breaks a bootlace, or to swear when he sits on a pin. A knowledge of all the ethical systems that have been propounded since man began to moralize will not make the philosopher a good man, and thinking will certainly not make him a happy one. On the contrary, there seems to be good reason for supposing that happiness and knowledge are in many ways incompatible, so that we are still to-day faced with the choice which the Greeks propounded long ago, between being a pig and happy, and being Socrates and unhappy. This fact need not, however, cause distress, since the question whether hap- piness is the only thing which is desirable is itself a philosophical question, capable of being answered in many different ways.

The result is that when the lecturer on Philosophy is faced with the inevitable question, "What's the good of it ? " he is reluctantly compelled to admit that, unlike psycho-analysis, which enables you to read the secret thoughts of your friends, or literature which provides you with suitable topics for intellectual conversation, or science which enables you to ride in a motor-car, philo- sophy has no direct practical value.

In the second place, it is said that philosophy arrives at no concrete results. This is a serious charge in an age which, being guided in the main by the stomach and pocket view of life, demands of whatever is proffered for its approval that it shall deliver "the goods." Now, if by "the goods " is meant a complete set of agreed answers to all the questions that have puzzled mankind since speculation began, it must be admitted that philo- sophy has none to deliver. The philosopher, instead of building upon the foundations laid by his predecessor, spends most of his energy in destroying the work of those who have gone before, disputing their hypotheses and throwing doubt on their conclusions. Many of the disputes of philosophers are, moreover, disputes about what exactly it is they are disputing about. Hence arises the gibe that a philosopher is like a blind man looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there.

But philosophy, after all, is the oldest of the sciences, and we should feel respectful towards the old and rally to. their defence. Having, therefore, frankly stated the charges against philosophy, and pointed out the respects in which they arc well grounded, let us see what answer philosophy has to make in its defence.

In the first place the charge that philosophy arrives at no definite conclusions, though true in a sense, is true only in a highly Pickwickian one.. All the sciences started life as philosophy. Astronomy, mathematics, biology and physics were branches of philosophy in the time of the Greeks, and for so long as they remained purely. speculative, they remained philosophy. So soon, how- ever, as anything definite began to be known about them, philosophy discarded them and they became separate sciences in their own right. Philosophy is thus in the unfortunate position of a schoolmaster who must inevi- tably lose his pupils directly they show promise. Definite knowledge has no place in philosophy, and it is in this superb aloofness from brute fact that men have found much of its charm.

Let us assume for a moment that philosophy is entirely inconclusive, and never does and never can increase the stock of our information about the Universe. Is it, therefore, valueless ? If we put philosophy at the N-ery lowest valuation, and admit the very worst that has been said about it, it becomes a kind of game. The game is that of discovering reasons for what we wish to believe upon instinct ; yet to find these reasons is none the less an instinct. It is the instinct of intellectual curiosity, and it is an instinct which only philosophy can fully satisfy.

. It is in the very inconclusiveness of philosophical argument that its fascination lies. Every argument about facts comes to an abrupt termination when the facts are known. If you have an argument with a man about the time at which a train leaves London for Newcastle, there will always come a stage at which someone will fetch the time-table and look it up. When this has happened there is no more to be said. Thus every argument except a philosophical argument is at the mercy of the man who knows. The production of fact stifles the exercise of intelligence by rendering it unneces- sary. Philosophy, which is the only pursuit in which nothing can definitely be known, alone emancipates its followers from factual knowledge. .

It is of the practical influence of philosophy, however, that I wish chiefly to speak. Philosophy will take a common object and show us that we know much less about it than we expected. A chair, for example, which appears to common sense to be four wooden legs surmounted by a square wooden scat, can be shown by philosophical reflection to be an idea in the mind of God, a colony of souls, a collection of sense data, a piece of our own psy- chology or a modification of the absolute. Philosophy can give very good reasons for supposing that the chair is each and all of these things, and, although it cannot definitely prove which of them it is, it at least makes it quite certain that it is not just a chair. From this point of view the value of philosophy lies largely in its uncer- tainty. The man who has no acquaintance with philo- sophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices, the preferences and the habitual beliefs derived from the society in which he happens to have been born, and the period in which he lives. If he is born in Turkey he thinks it right to have four wives ; if in England only ore.

If he is born in 300 n.e. he thinks the sun goes round the earth ; if in A.D. 1900 he takes the contrary view. None of the views which he holds are the result of independent thought ; all are the product of convictions which, having grown up without the consent of his reason, are merely the reflection of the conventions and prejudices of his age. To such a man the world tends to become dull and obvious. Common objects provoke no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. Philosophy, which raises doubts about what has hitherto been taken for granted, keeps alive a sense of wonder and restores mystery to the world. By diminiihing our certainty of what is, it enormously increases the pos- sibility of what may be. Thus it makes life more inte- resting not because of the answers it provides to the questions it raises, but because, by the mere process of raising such questions, it liberates us from the dominance of the actual and opens up to us a region of emancipating thought.

. In the second place philosophy confers a certain largeness upon the mind, and ultimately upon the character, through the largeness of the objects of its quest. Taking the whole realm of knowledge for its sphere, it deals with those ultimate questions which are of the profoundest import for human weal or woe. For equipment to grapple with these problems philosophy arms itself with the most up-to-date resources of know- ledge, including the results achieved by the special sciences. The philosopher does not presume to question these results ; they are true no doubt within their own sphere. "But what," he asks, `.` is their import within a larger sphere ? " "The biologist," he says, "tells me this, and this seems to point to one kind of universe. The physicist, on the other hand, tells me that, which seems to suggest another. Now, are this and that really contradictory, or do they both yield to some deeper interpretation which reconciles them 'both ?'

In any event, what is their significance for my answer to those questions that have troubled man since thought began, and which, since they are apparently insoluble, will still trouble him when thought ends ? (Will it, by the way, or can it ever end ?) Has the universe, for example, any plan or purpose, or is it merely a fortuitous concourse of atoms ? Is mind a fundamental feature of the universe in terms of which we are ultimately to interpret the rest, or is it a mere accident, an eddy in the primaeval slime, doomed one day to finish its pointless journey with as little noise and significance as it began it ? Are good and evil real and ultimate principles existing independently of men, or are they merely the names we give to the things of which we happen to approve or to disapprove ?

Philosophy seeks to study these questions impartially, not desiring to arrive at results which are comfortable' or flattering to human conceit, nor to construct a universe which is comformable with human wishes. On the contrary, it endeavours to maintain a modest attitude towards objective fact, and to discover truth without fear or favour.

Those who give time to the study of such impersonal questions are bound to preserve something of the same impartiality and freedom in the world of action and emotion. Since a consideration of fundamental ques- tions show us how little is certainly known, the philo- sopher is ready to grant the possibility of contrary views having as much or as little truth as his own. Thus philosophy generates an attitude of tolerance which refuses to make the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, the same as that which separates the things done and the views held by the self from the contrary actions and thoughts of others, and holds that, just as it takes all sorts to make a world, so does it take all opinions to make truth.

Finally, the fact that no agreed answer has yet been discovered to the most fundamental questions cannot but suggest to the honest thinker that all systems hitherto constructed are in some degree false. Those who have no tincture of philosophy are inclined on all questions not susceptible of proof to supply the place' of knowledge by converting their conjectures into dogmas. The philosopher, on the other hand, will admit that even his so-called knowledge is conjectural, and regard fanaticism, bigotry and dogmatism not only as an offence against manners, but as a betrayal of the truth. It is, therefore, for the sake of the questions themselves which philosophy studies, and of the methods with which it pursues them, rather than for any set of answers that it propounds, that philosophy is to be valued.

Through the greatness of the universe which it studies the mind itself achieves greatness. It escapes from the. circle of petty aims and desires which for most of us constitute the prison of everyday life, and, forgetting' the nervous little clod of wants and ailments which is the self, is elevated into communion- with that which is greater than the self. On the practical side this greatness of the mind generates qualities of tolerance, justice and understanding, in the growth of which lies the chief hope for the world to-day.