For openers, I would like to quote Bertrand Russell. The work dates back to 1917, about the time of the First World War. This horrible conflict,
optimistically but falsely labeled, "The war to end all wars" left many nations of the
modern era in tatters of social and physical ruin. So why is the work of a philosopher from that period of time significant? Probably depends on whether war is a natural or
artificially contrived phenomenon.
Bertrand Russell:
"Four questions thus arise in considering the truth or falsehood of
mysticism, namely:
I. Are there two ways of knowing, which may be called
respectivelyreason and intuition? And if so, is either to be preferred to the
other?
II. Is all plurality and division illusory?
III. Is time unreal?
IV. What kind of reality belongs to good and evil?
On all four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems
to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is
an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling,
which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is
the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life,
not as a creed about the world. The meta-physical creed, I shall
maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion,
as colouring and informing all other thoughts and feelings, is the
inspire of whatever is best in Man. Even the cautious and patient
investigation of truth by science, which seems the very antithesis of
the mystic's swift certainty, may be fostered and nourished by that
very spirit of reverence in which mysticism lives and moves.
I. REASON AND INTUITION[3]
Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I
have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which
reveals it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain--and
it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative--is that
insight, untested and unsupported, is an
insufficient guarantee of
truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is
first suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition
between instinct and reason; in the eighteenth century, the opposition
was drawn in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and
the romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by
those who rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought,
and then, as the purely
rationalistic defence of traditional theology
became
increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to
creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the
world. Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to
the position of sole arbiter of
metaphysical truth. But in fact the
opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct,
intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which
subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the
confirmation, where it
is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other
beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling
force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical
realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single
beliefs, held
instinctively, and held with such
determination that no
degree of
inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment.
Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom
reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards
themselves, though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is
least liable to error is in practical matters as to which right
judgment is a help to survival: friendship and hostility in others,
for instance, are often felt with
extraordinary discrimination through
very careful disguises. But even in such matters a wrong impression
may be given by reserve or flattery; and in matters less directly
practical, such as philosophy deals with, very strong instinctive
beliefs are sometimes wholly mistaken, as we may come to know through
their perceived
inconsistency with other equally strong beliefs. It is
such
considerations that necessitate the harmonising mediation of
reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual
compatibility, and
examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of error on the one
side and on the other. In this there is no opposition to instinct as a
whole, but only to blind reliance upon some one interesting aspect of
instinct to the exclusion of other more commonplace but not less
trustworthy aspects. It is such one-
sightedness, not instinct itself,
that reason aims at correcting.
These more or less trite maxims may be illustrated by application to
Bergson's advocacy of "intuition" as against "intellect." There are,
he says, "two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first
implies that we move round the object: the second that we enter into
it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and
on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither
depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of
knowledge may be said to stop at the _relative_; the second, in those
cases where it is possible, to attain the _absolute_."[4] The second
of these, which is intuition, is, he says, "the kind of _
intellectualsympathy_ by which one places oneself within an object in order to
coincide with what is unique in it and therefore
inexpressible" (p.
6). In
illustration, he mentions self-knowledge: "there is one
reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and
not by simple analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing
through time--our self which endures" (p. 8). The rest of Bergson's
philosophy consists in reporting, through the imperfect medium of
words, the knowledge gained by intuition, and the consequent complete
condemnation of all the pretended knowledge derived from science and
common sense.
This procedure, since it takes sides in a conflict of instinctive
beliefs, stands in need of
justification by proving the greater
trustworthiness of the beliefs on one side than of those on the other.
Bergson attempts this
justification in two ways, first by explaining
that intellect is a purely practical faculty to secure biological
success, secondly by mentioning remarkable feats of instinct in
animals and by pointing out
characteristics of the world which, though
intuition can apprehend them, are baffling to intellect as he
interprets it.
Of Bergson's theory that intellect is a purely practical faculty,
developed in the struggle for survival, and not a source of true
beliefs, we may say, first, that it is only through intellect that we
know of the struggle for survival and of the biological ancestry of
man: if the intellect is misleading, the whole of this merely inferred
history is presumably untrue. If, on the other hand, we agree with him
in thinking that evolution took place as Darwin believed, then it is
not only intellect, but all our faculties, that have been developed
under the stress of practical utility. Intuition is seen at its best
where it is directly useful, for example in regard to other people's
characters and
dispositions. Bergson apparently holds that capacity,
for this kind of knowledge is less explicable by the struggle for
existence than, for example, capacity for pure mathematics. Yet the
savage deceived by false friendship is likely to pay for his mistake
with his life; whereas even in the most civilised societies men are
not put to death for
mathematical incompetence. All the most striking
of his instances of intuition in animals have a very direct survival
value. The fact is, of course, that both intuition and intellect have
been developed because they are useful, and that, speaking broadly,
they are useful when they give truth and become harmful when they give
falsehood. Intellect, in civilised man, like artistic capacity, has
occasionally been developed beyond the point where it is useful to the
individual; intuition, on the other hand, seems on the whole to
diminish as
civilization increases. It is greater, as a rule, in
children than in adults, in the uneducated than in the educated.
Probably in dogs it exceeds anything to be found in human beings. But
those who see in these facts a
recommendation of intuition ought to
return to running wild in the woods, dyeing themselves with woad and
living on hips and haws."
-Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, Bertrand Russell,
PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK MYSTICISM AND LOGIC
EBook #25447 Available from
http://www.gutenberg.org/Since scholarship is too often very complex, the discussion will continue as convenient but not necessarily necessary. Posted this 4
th July 2009
