Explorations across the Great Divide

Explorations across the Great Divide The Great Divide in contemporary philosophy is not really between the friends and enemies of metaphysics. It is between those who accept and those who reject tbe view that philosophy is an independent subject. Until quite recently. no one would have dreamt that a rejection of this view was possible. Everybody assumed tbat philosophy is a subject which embodies certain truths about the universe and man. These truths cannot be established by any other discipline, and they are presented in doctrines or theories supported by proofs. This conception has now been abandoned by a number of philosophers, especially in England. Under Wittgenstein's banner bearing the revolutionary slogan "Philosophy is not a theory but an activity/' they have travelled across the Great Divide, and are busy exploring the terrain they have entered. The reports of their explorations have been given a mixed reception by those who have remained behind. To conservatives. comfortably settled on ancient philosophical estates, the reports sound like an account of cloud-cuckoo land, and are treated with disdain. To more adventurous souls they sound like the brochures of a travel agency. The descriptions of the country are exciting. but the price one has to pay to get there seems excessive. The travellers themselves obviously enjoy the new climate of opinion and show little interest in returning home. Several recent publications illustrate this state of affairs in a manner worthy of comment. One of them, Alan White's G. E. Moore: A Critical Exposition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell [Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Co. Ltd.], 1958, pp. viii, 226, $5.00), is a lucid, discriminating study of the man whose writings did much to speed the travellers on their way. In a well-known passage Moore once remarked: "I do not think that the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is the things which other philosophers have said about the world and the sciences." His puzzlement was chiefly over what on earth a philosopher could have meant by what he said. His procedure was to subject the philosopher's words to an analysis in the hope of finding a precise meaning for them. Frequently he was able to show that words whose meaning in ordinary language is perfectly clear were being grossly misused, and that this was the cause of the puzzlement. The clarity of words in ordinary language arises from the fact that ordinary language is an expression of common sense, the ultimate court of appeal which Moore recognized. His writings contain many examples of scrupulous and subtle analysis. Rarely have linguistic confusions been so relentlessly exposed. Yet as White shows, Moore was too much of a traditionalist to cross the Great Divide. He never regarded philosophy as merely an activity of analysis. He believed that an important part of its business was to give a general description of the universe, including the chief kinds of good things. Such a description would constitute a positive doctrine. Furthermore, he accepted an old-fashioned Cartesian notion of mind and a Platonistic interpretation of concepts. Thinking is a mental activity quite distinct from verbalization. In conductng an analysis we "inspect" concepts which stand before the mind and which are non-psychological entities named by linguistic expressions. Indeed the meaning of a linguistic expression is what it names. These views are considered by followers of Wittgenstein to be archaic, untenable, and trouble-making. Mr. White respectfully but firmly disapproves of them, and seeks to show how they adversely influenced Moore's thought. One of the consequences of regarding philosophy as an analytic activity is the doctrine that philosophy should not culminate in any generalizations. All-embracing philosophical theses are banned. The corrosive effect of this doctrine on classical metaphysics, a generalizing discipline par excellence, can easily be imagined. It might be supposed, however, that the classical discipline of formal logic with its highly resistant structure would be impervious to attack. Yet that structure. too, contains many generalizations in the form of "principles" of rational argument. Hence it is not surprising that someone across the Great Divide should undertake to give formal logic...