The Gulf in Modern Philosophy: Is Thomism the Bridge?

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY: IS THOMISM THE BRIDGE? If, working within my self-imposed limitations, I were to make no reference whatsoever to existentialism, I could not justly be rebuked . For one thing, it has been quite without influence on the main trends in contemporary British philosophy; for another thing, in so far as it has been discussed, existentialism has been taken seriously as a stimulus to ethico-religious thinking, rather than as a metaphysics. Professional philosophers, for the most part, dismiss it with a contemptuous shrug. Yet there would be a certain cowardice in ignoring it completely, welcome, in some respects, as that decision would be. Existentialism lies on the periphery of British philosophical consciousness; it stands, for British philosophers, for Continental excess and rankness. To sketch its ramifications, then ... may at least bring into sharper focus that fundamental opposition between British and LatinTeutonic philosophy on which I have several times insisted, but in somewhat general terms. Thus run the opening paragraphs of the chapter on Existentialism and Phenomenology in Dr. John Passmore's amazingly comprehensive work A Hundred Years of Philosophy. And, given the situation to which he draws attention, it is perhaps more surprising that he should mention existentialism and phenomenology at all in his work than that he should feel it necessary to apologize for doing so. He goes on to say that the accusation of insularity might well be common to both sides, though he clearly thinks it applies far more to the Continentals than to the British: " whereas the British philosopher knows his Descartes, his Leibniz, his Kant, the Continental philosopher is likely to be almost wholly ignorant of Berkeley, Hume and Russell." Passmore continues: The fact we have to live with, then, is that if most British philosophers are convinced that Continental metaphysics is arbitrary, pretentious and mind-destroying, Continental philosophers are no 8 THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY 9 less confident that British empiricism is philistine, pedestrian and soul-destroying. Even when existentialism reflects certain aspects of British empiricism-as in its emphasis on contingency-it does so in the manner of the distorting mirrors in a Fun Fair; what seemed eminently rational and ordinary suddenly looks grotesque. (op. cit., Penguin ed., pp. 466:ff) It is perhaps noteworthy that the contrast which Passmore draws is between what he describes as "British" and " Continental " philosophy respectively; no direct mention is made of American philosophy, which can certainly not be called " British," though it might make an even better claim than French and German philosophy to the adjective " Continental." And it may well be that philosophy in the New World is somewhat broader in its scope and sympathy than philosophy in either of the two divisions of the Old, though I think for the most part it tends to conform to the " British " type. As far as the rest of the English-speaking world is concerned, philosophy as a professional discipline in academic institutions manifests little more than a series of variations on the theme of linguistic empiricism, though a convenient loophole is provided, for those who wish to indulge any leanings towards the romantic and the enigmatic without compromising their reputation for professional integrity, in the obscurer aphorisms of the later Wittgenstein. Only in departments of Philosophy of Religion in the often despised faculties of Theology is it usually possible to find any serious consideration of either existentialism or, still more rarely, of scholasticism. (In passing we might note that in those rare circles in which there is a genuine interest in medieval scholasticism it is almost invariably an interest in scholastic logic and not in metaphysics. And, of course, it is always respectable to study the history of anything, even of scholastic metaphysics.) And even Passmore, with all his encyclopedic comprehensiveness, makes only passing references to Marxism, the one philosophy which, in our own time, has moulded the mode of life of something like one third of the human race. One of the very few attempts that have been made to bridge 10 E. L. MASCALL the gap between those whom, with apologies to American readers, I shall still venture to call the British and the Continentals was the conference...