Accueil
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ernest_Hocking#Pragmatisme_n%C3%A9gatif
« si une idée ne fonctionne pas, alors elle ne peut pas être vraie, car la vérité fonctionne toujours »
[CHAPTER IX : THE RETREAT INTO SUBJECTIVITY]
"
(p.100)
[CHAPTER XII : THE WILL AS A MAKER OF TRUTH]
"
(p.139)
[CHAPTER XIV: THE NEED OF AN ABSOLUTE: REFLECTIONS ON ITS PRACTICAL WORTH]
(p.183)
[CHAPTER XVII : THE KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS THAN OUR OWN]
"
(pp.241-242)
[CHAPTER XVIII : Such Knowledge as we could desire]
"
(p.255)
[CHAPTER XIX : That Knowledge we have]
"
(p.268)
[CHAPTER XX : Our Natural Realism and Realism Absolu]
"
(p.282)
[Essay - The Knowledge of Independent Reality]
"If it has been the fault of realism to give the object ot knowledge an independence which makes it meaningless, it can be no sufficient ground for idealism as a positive doctrine to refute a meaningless independence." (p.558)
"Now philosophy can have no permanent interest in a game of who shall speak last. While if we decide the matter by enquiring who has spoken first, the realist carries the day : the first intention ' of the mind is that it deals with objects independent of its own thought for their being. And no matter how successful you may be in showing what interest the subject may have in the objects which it finds, this interest is so far secondary, in respect to the existence of the independent objects, that it would be precisely the same interest were the objects as different as can be imagined. Your 'ich-will ' has no power to determine what the objects shall be ; it assumes that they are there to be accepted.
That the original and naive attitude of the mind to its objects requires to be interpreted, we must assert with idealism. But it seems clear to me from considei-ations like the foregoing, that the interpretation cannot be so readily found as by taking the object up bodily into the subject through the reflective turn so typical of idealistic reasoning. The idealist reflection shows successfully that nothing can be real for us in which it is not possible to trace the mark of ourselves and of our interests. But this always leaves it possible that the same objects may bear other marks at the same time ; and that these other marks are the defining characters of their objectivity.
The whole life of knowledge can best be understood, I believe, as an intercourse between the self and an independent reality. An analysis of cognitive experience should show what this means, and how idealism in extending the I-am to the entire scope of the I-think is rendering meaningless the conception of selfhood. Knowledge implies a complete breach, at some point or region, in the wall of the self. Let us consider whether any such region can be defined." (pp.558-559)
"There are reasons for looking for such a region first within physical experience. Some of these reasons have recently been put forward by M. Bergson. Largely the same reasons were touched upon by Kant, whose uneasiness about empirical idealism came in part from the same quarter ; and it may not be amiss to recall briefly these familiar considerations. The entire weight of our judgment of Wirklichkeit, Kant asserts, hangs upon Wahrnehmung. We may make to ourselves conceptions as we please of things according to the categories (for instance, of things so related that the condition of one thing carries with it a definite condition of the other things) ; but from these conceptions we can never know what actual things stand in that relation, nor can we understand how they can be so related, until we refer to physical experience. Of our knowledge of change, a strong point with M. Bergson, Kant says, that in order to represent to ourselves Veranderung, we are obliged to make use of Bewegung, or change in space, for an illustration : without this we cannot make even the general meaning of change clear to ourselves, for it is something whose possibility is quite beyond the grasp of the ' pure understanding.'. In sum : however much a priori knowledge may be possible, we have actually no working ideas at all without " Wahrnehmung, mithin Empfindung " ; and this click of sensation is required to give the note of reality to any part of the system of experience, categories and all." (pp.559-560)
"But as with idealists generally, so with Kant : while we hear him speaking boldly about ' external reality ' in quite realistic vein, we have always to expect from him the annulling stroke, " Yes — but what do you mean by external reality ? " Kant has not failed to express himself on this point, most radically of course in the " Widerlegung des Idealismus." The reality which we know in physical experience, he says in effect, is outer, not only in the two senses commonly accepted by idealism, namely, (1) that objects in space are outer to each other, and (2) that the system of nature confers upon some objects not now present to my perception the same reality which is attributable to these present : but also in a further sense which not even the personal ich-denke can engulf, namely, (3) that here we find this very personal self, in so far as it is a peculiar individual, in the process of being made. As a knower — so we might interpret the argument — I am as a whole a being with numerous peculiarities : I have not only a time-span, and a time-rate, but a very definite and particular time-span and time-rate. And so of many another element in my make-up — the special tension of my desires, the numerical coefficient of tenacity in my attention, and the like. Now if these peculiarities require explanation, they cannot be explained by anything within the self, because they affect and define the self as a whole ; but the truth is that we know these peculiarities in experience, and we know them only by knowing something else at the same time, namely, an outer reality which is measuring itseK against myself, and whose point of contact is found in sensation. I have no peculiarities which are not first peculiarities of something not-myself. Whatever may be the nature of this reality, here, in sensation, T see as it were my own measurements, my own peculiarities being borne in to me. The material of sense is, in its first moment, not-self-stuff ; and only in its second moment, as elaborated in my forms of experiencing, does it become part of my own being. The physical judgment, then, juts out into the idealistic night — it works in a realm where selfhood is metabolic, non-monadic." (pp.560-561)
"The essential point in this position of Kant's might be formulated in this way. You, the idealist, may legitimately attribute to, or include within, any self, so much as that self can understand and reproduce, and no more. The self, at your own rating, is to be defined by mastery, by self-consciousness, by self-sufficiency. And since this power of conscious control fades out as it approaches the particular, and never penetrates the particular, you must admit a final limit to the individual self at the point where experience becomes particular, that is, at physical experience. But reality has always, as one of its factors, particularity : whatever we think of as real we endow with the qualities of the reality which plays upon us in sensation, in so far as sensation is one of the maxima of experience, setting the standard of pungency, definiteness, completeness of detail, determinateness to the last point of enquiry, all-thereness ; whatever we believe real we regard as continuous in these respects with the reality thus presently touched, and in such wise continuous that this present moment is regarded as real by infection from or derivation from the rest of reality. Thus the successive points of our contact with reality arrange themselves in what we call a ' history,' a succession of moments marked at every point by these characters of particularity and surprise. Moreover, whatever reality the self has is measured by the prior and independent reality of the objects with which it deals ; nor do we finite selves ever acquire a reality which can subsist apart from our sensible objects. Dreams, imaginations, volitions, may be regarded as our several degrees of experimentation in being thus self -sufficiently real. But with the highest success of these experiments, namely, in successful action known to be such, our reality remains in large part centripetal ; we continue to live only by keeping open the avenues through which that independent being is communicated to us. Hence, in sum : the self does not inchide reality. Reality is beyond the self ; not a distinction within the self. What we can claim of reality is a point of contact, a surface of osmosis, in sensation : this is the border between the reality original, and the derivative reality of myself ; it is ' the immediate ' and also ' the ultimate,' the last point within and the first point without. Our experience is metaphysical (or perhaps better, metapsychical), not phenomenalistic ; but of the independent reality we possess only the ' that ' which we immediately experience as we experience our own limit ; we possess no 'what' whatever. Such is the Kantian answer to empirical idealism of physical experience." (pp.561-562)
-William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, Yale University Press, 1912, 586 pages : https://archive.org/details/meaningofgodinhu12hock/page/586/mode/2up?view=theater
« si une idée ne fonctionne pas, alors elle ne peut pas être vraie, car la vérité fonctionne toujours »
[CHAPTER IX : THE RETREAT INTO SUBJECTIVITY]
"
(p.100)
[CHAPTER XII : THE WILL AS A MAKER OF TRUTH]
"
(p.139)
[CHAPTER XIV: THE NEED OF AN ABSOLUTE: REFLECTIONS ON ITS PRACTICAL WORTH]
(p.183)
[CHAPTER XVII : THE KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS THAN OUR OWN]
"
(pp.241-242)
[CHAPTER XVIII : Such Knowledge as we could desire]
"
(p.255)
[CHAPTER XIX : That Knowledge we have]
"
(p.268)
[CHAPTER XX : Our Natural Realism and Realism Absolu]
"
(p.282)
[Essay - The Knowledge of Independent Reality]
"If it has been the fault of realism to give the object ot knowledge an independence which makes it meaningless, it can be no sufficient ground for idealism as a positive doctrine to refute a meaningless independence." (p.558)
"Now philosophy can have no permanent interest in a game of who shall speak last. While if we decide the matter by enquiring who has spoken first, the realist carries the day : the first intention ' of the mind is that it deals with objects independent of its own thought for their being. And no matter how successful you may be in showing what interest the subject may have in the objects which it finds, this interest is so far secondary, in respect to the existence of the independent objects, that it would be precisely the same interest were the objects as different as can be imagined. Your 'ich-will ' has no power to determine what the objects shall be ; it assumes that they are there to be accepted.
That the original and naive attitude of the mind to its objects requires to be interpreted, we must assert with idealism. But it seems clear to me from considei-ations like the foregoing, that the interpretation cannot be so readily found as by taking the object up bodily into the subject through the reflective turn so typical of idealistic reasoning. The idealist reflection shows successfully that nothing can be real for us in which it is not possible to trace the mark of ourselves and of our interests. But this always leaves it possible that the same objects may bear other marks at the same time ; and that these other marks are the defining characters of their objectivity.
The whole life of knowledge can best be understood, I believe, as an intercourse between the self and an independent reality. An analysis of cognitive experience should show what this means, and how idealism in extending the I-am to the entire scope of the I-think is rendering meaningless the conception of selfhood. Knowledge implies a complete breach, at some point or region, in the wall of the self. Let us consider whether any such region can be defined." (pp.558-559)
"There are reasons for looking for such a region first within physical experience. Some of these reasons have recently been put forward by M. Bergson. Largely the same reasons were touched upon by Kant, whose uneasiness about empirical idealism came in part from the same quarter ; and it may not be amiss to recall briefly these familiar considerations. The entire weight of our judgment of Wirklichkeit, Kant asserts, hangs upon Wahrnehmung. We may make to ourselves conceptions as we please of things according to the categories (for instance, of things so related that the condition of one thing carries with it a definite condition of the other things) ; but from these conceptions we can never know what actual things stand in that relation, nor can we understand how they can be so related, until we refer to physical experience. Of our knowledge of change, a strong point with M. Bergson, Kant says, that in order to represent to ourselves Veranderung, we are obliged to make use of Bewegung, or change in space, for an illustration : without this we cannot make even the general meaning of change clear to ourselves, for it is something whose possibility is quite beyond the grasp of the ' pure understanding.'. In sum : however much a priori knowledge may be possible, we have actually no working ideas at all without " Wahrnehmung, mithin Empfindung " ; and this click of sensation is required to give the note of reality to any part of the system of experience, categories and all." (pp.559-560)
"But as with idealists generally, so with Kant : while we hear him speaking boldly about ' external reality ' in quite realistic vein, we have always to expect from him the annulling stroke, " Yes — but what do you mean by external reality ? " Kant has not failed to express himself on this point, most radically of course in the " Widerlegung des Idealismus." The reality which we know in physical experience, he says in effect, is outer, not only in the two senses commonly accepted by idealism, namely, (1) that objects in space are outer to each other, and (2) that the system of nature confers upon some objects not now present to my perception the same reality which is attributable to these present : but also in a further sense which not even the personal ich-denke can engulf, namely, (3) that here we find this very personal self, in so far as it is a peculiar individual, in the process of being made. As a knower — so we might interpret the argument — I am as a whole a being with numerous peculiarities : I have not only a time-span, and a time-rate, but a very definite and particular time-span and time-rate. And so of many another element in my make-up — the special tension of my desires, the numerical coefficient of tenacity in my attention, and the like. Now if these peculiarities require explanation, they cannot be explained by anything within the self, because they affect and define the self as a whole ; but the truth is that we know these peculiarities in experience, and we know them only by knowing something else at the same time, namely, an outer reality which is measuring itseK against myself, and whose point of contact is found in sensation. I have no peculiarities which are not first peculiarities of something not-myself. Whatever may be the nature of this reality, here, in sensation, T see as it were my own measurements, my own peculiarities being borne in to me. The material of sense is, in its first moment, not-self-stuff ; and only in its second moment, as elaborated in my forms of experiencing, does it become part of my own being. The physical judgment, then, juts out into the idealistic night — it works in a realm where selfhood is metabolic, non-monadic." (pp.560-561)
"The essential point in this position of Kant's might be formulated in this way. You, the idealist, may legitimately attribute to, or include within, any self, so much as that self can understand and reproduce, and no more. The self, at your own rating, is to be defined by mastery, by self-consciousness, by self-sufficiency. And since this power of conscious control fades out as it approaches the particular, and never penetrates the particular, you must admit a final limit to the individual self at the point where experience becomes particular, that is, at physical experience. But reality has always, as one of its factors, particularity : whatever we think of as real we endow with the qualities of the reality which plays upon us in sensation, in so far as sensation is one of the maxima of experience, setting the standard of pungency, definiteness, completeness of detail, determinateness to the last point of enquiry, all-thereness ; whatever we believe real we regard as continuous in these respects with the reality thus presently touched, and in such wise continuous that this present moment is regarded as real by infection from or derivation from the rest of reality. Thus the successive points of our contact with reality arrange themselves in what we call a ' history,' a succession of moments marked at every point by these characters of particularity and surprise. Moreover, whatever reality the self has is measured by the prior and independent reality of the objects with which it deals ; nor do we finite selves ever acquire a reality which can subsist apart from our sensible objects. Dreams, imaginations, volitions, may be regarded as our several degrees of experimentation in being thus self -sufficiently real. But with the highest success of these experiments, namely, in successful action known to be such, our reality remains in large part centripetal ; we continue to live only by keeping open the avenues through which that independent being is communicated to us. Hence, in sum : the self does not inchide reality. Reality is beyond the self ; not a distinction within the self. What we can claim of reality is a point of contact, a surface of osmosis, in sensation : this is the border between the reality original, and the derivative reality of myself ; it is ' the immediate ' and also ' the ultimate,' the last point within and the first point without. Our experience is metaphysical (or perhaps better, metapsychical), not phenomenalistic ; but of the independent reality we possess only the ' that ' which we immediately experience as we experience our own limit ; we possess no 'what' whatever. Such is the Kantian answer to empirical idealism of physical experience." (pp.561-562)
-William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, Yale University Press, 1912, 586 pages : https://archive.org/details/meaningofgodinhu12hock/page/586/mode/2up?view=theater
