CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: PERSISTENT Problems of PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER II. PROGRESSIVE IDEAS IN DEscartes. 1. Break with authority and tradition; sincere inquiry in place of authority; experience in place of tradition. 2. Nature his primary interest; study of nature by experiment 3. Scientific interpretation of the world and of man. 4. Conflict of his scientific ideas with theology. a. Explaining away of the traditional soul by his physiology b. Interference of his cosmology with the traditional teach- c. Overthrowing of traditional ethics by his basis for d. Undermining of the theory of the Eucharist by his physics. 5. Elimination of the traditional problems of orthodox metha- CHAPTER III. CONSERVATION OF TRADITIONS DESPITE PROGRESSIVE 1. The principle of God and the principle of clearness and dis- 5 2. The traditional problems of God and the soul. a. Proof of the existence of God; mixture of theology and traditional philosophy; failure. b. Proof of the existence of the soul; mixture of accepted c. Lack of empirical and historical research in his treatment d. Interpretation of the failure in the solution of the tradi- tional problems; traditional elements of his method; 3. The loose connection of the traditional problems with the CHAPTER IV. EXPLANATION OF THE CONFLICT BETWEen Descartes's 1. His time; history of the dogma, politics, and social conditions; main tendencies in current thought; main interests. 2. The effect of the conditions of the time on Descartes's philoso- phy; suppression of his naturalistic tendency; introduction of theological questions into his philosophy by opposing criti- cism; his efforts to keep up with the orthodox tendencies of the day at the expense of his sincerity in the expression of his thoughts and the retention of his most valuable production, 3. Descartes's personality as developed under the influence of the a. Descent and early education. b. Characteristics explanatory of his extreme cautiousness; 4. Facts which left in doubt Descartes's sincerity in matters of METAPHYSICS OF THE SUPERNATURAL AS ILLUSTRATED BY DESCARTES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION PERSISTENT PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY There is a tendency on the part of philosophers to aspire to heaven and to explore heavenly regions. Since heaven has been once for all formed and fixed, the problems of philosophy are always the same. The persistent problems of philosophy reduce themselves to the question of ultimates the ultimate reality of the world and the ultimate reality of man. This question comes up in philosophy again and again. Only the forms in which it appears are different. They differ with the knowledge, temperament, and surroundings of the philosopher. But no matter in what form this question comes up and what course the road of dialectics takes, philosophers all reach regions that transcend knowledge, and the question being unsolved recurs again. This question of ultimates has persisted in philosophy under the influence of theology and gained firm ground in the medieval period when philosophy was employed as a means for the advancement of Christian teaching. As taught in Christianity, the kingdom of God was considered by the philosophers of that period to be the only reality, and everything was studied in relation to it. While the Scholastics took it as a matter of fact that God is the ultimate reality and foundation of everything on earth, philosophers of later periods found it necessary to give this teaching a rational basis, and there resulted a desperate search for the ultimate which is still continued. Despite the earnest attempt on the part of the originators of modern philosophy to get away from the supernatural by suggesting experience as a substitute for authority and nature as a substitute for theology, scholasticism persists in philosophy to this very day. Both its subject-matter and method have been either deliberately or unconsciously continued. The mathematical method of present-day philosophy has accomplished no more in the way of proving its presuppositions concerning matters of fact than did the medieval syllogistic method, for there is just as little difference between these two methods as between the medieval i "soul" and the modern "principle of life" or "consciousness." Many a philosopher who considers himself above such superstitions as believing in a soul, wastes, however, a good deal of his ingenuity in investigating spiritual principles which are to perform the functions of the old "soul." That the supernatural bears a good deal of responsibility for the perplexities in which philosophy at present finds itself, a close and systematic study of the history of philosophy leaves no doubt. The supernatural, having once appeared in philosophy, has never left it, or rather, philosophy has never abandoned it. "In the manipulation of that theme, however, three major ideas stand out-God, the soul, and the universe. It is easy to see what a rôle these have played if we only consider what is left when we drop out all speculation about God, all speculation about the soul, and all speculation about the universe." 1 A consideration of the main topics of the leading philosophers affirms the truth of this statement. Indeed, there are hardly any modern philosophers who under one form or another do not give a more or less prominent place to these ideas in their works. These three ideas led to many other theological questions which are logically connected with them. Among these the problem of freedom stands out conspicuously. Descartes wrote Meditations, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are "demonstrated." Spinoza entitles his sections Concerning God, Of the Nature and Origin of Mind, Of Human Freedom. God, Freedom and Immortality are the famous topics of Kant. Leibnitz also deals with the traditional conceptions of God, whom he very originally calls the dominant monad, but whom he endows with all traditional attributes and merits. His arguments for God's existence are medieval, almost the same as used by Des cartes. The existence of souls he does not even question; he takes th existence of soul-monads for granted and builds the whole world oue of them. Wolf, the disciple of Leibnitz, develops the latter's philosophy into a purely scholastic system. Berkeley's whole speculato centers around a Deity. Hume, against his own principles, admits a Deity. Hobbes, having assumed that all spirits, both finite and infinite, are corporeal, not to fail in consistence, admits at least a corporeal god. The medieval material of Kant's philosophy was continued by the Hegelian school, which may be regarded as the revival of scholasticism. The philosophy of this school differs from that of the medieval only, perhaps, in modernized terms. The subject-matter and method are the same. Subjectivism and absolutism are the net results of crystallized supernaturalism. The absolute of Bradley, in whom modern 1 W. T. Bush, "The Emancipation of Intelligence," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. VIII, p. 169. |