1940: Philosophy

Effect of the War.

The year stands out as one in which the impact of the War upon the interests, activities and thoughts of those who are concerned with philosophy became clearly evident. Philosophy in Germany, most deeply affected by events, has all but ceased. Only a few of her leading figures remain, and these are either reduced to silence, or to innocuous studies of topics remote from the stream of life, or to giving intellectual support to the official ideology of the state. All but a few of her learned journals in philosophy have suspended publication and her scholars are scattered over the Western Hemisphere, many of them seeking refuge in the United States of America. In France where the full effect of military and political changes were becoming apparent at year's end, four chief tendencies were manifest: (1) The idealistic rationalism for which Léon Brunschvieg is the titular leader; (2) the antirational or mystical tendency with emphasis on feeling and intuition, somewhat after the manner of Henri Bergson; (3) the positivist or scientific trend following in the paths marked out by Dürkheim and others; and (4) the Catholic philosophy, resting its case as usual on the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition.

Philosophy in Italy, though greatly restricted by political pressure, still displays some vigor, as is evidenced by the founding of two new journals, one in the philosophy of law (Ballettino dell' Istituto di Filosofia del Diritto), and another (Studi Filisofici) devoted to 'scientific philosophy and the unprejudiced interpretation of the whole of experience.' The main body of Italian philosophy still gravitates about the position of neo-idealism, especially in a form rendered congenial to Fascism by G. Gentile, whose Il Pensiero Italiano del Rinascimento appeared in a third edition, enlarged and rearranged. For the rest, the Italian literature in philosophy was devoted in the main to studies in the history of thought; no new trend has emerged nor has a figure of the originality and power of B. Croce appeared.

English philosophy continued on its way with vigor and freedom, augmented by scholars from the continent and enlivened by discussions of the moral and spiritual issues raised by the War. The latter covered many pages in publications such as Philosophy and the Hibbert Journal. The journal Mind, on the other hand, remained relatively uninfluenced by the world conflict. Books on a great variety of philosophical subjects ranging from scientific methodology through metaphysics to religion, continued to come from English presses, though in diminishing numbers.

The retreat of philosophy in Europe has intensified philosophy in America, and the United States is at present the philosophical center of the world. The influx of many scholars from foreign lands has given American philosophy a cosmopolitan character from which every existing school, national or imported, has benefited. Among events of importance was the founding of the International Phenomenological Society, at Buffalo, New York, and its new publication, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, devoted to the furtherance and extension of the doctrines of the late Edmund Husserl. A German periodical, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, recently published in Paris, has now moved to the United States, where it will reappear as Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. The new Journal of the History of Ideas, under the editorship of A. O. Lovejoy, completed its first volume in 1940. Conferences on 'Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences,' and a 'Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life,' held in New York City, were typical of numerous smaller conferences devoted to the social, political and scientific bearings of philosophy. An incident which precipitated much controversy was the revocation of the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a professorship at the College of the City of New York, on grounds of moral views which he expressed in his books of the post-war period.

Evidences of a current spiritual renaissance in Latin America, especially in Argentina, were furnished by a memorial volume on Alejandro Korn, leading anti-positivist and neo-idealist of South America, and by the publication of Principios de ideología, the first course of philosophical lectures, given from 1822-1827, at the University of Buenos Aires.

Publications.

Of the large number of books, covering the whole range of philosophical problems, published in the United States, in England, in France and elsewhere, several outstanding ones may be singled out for special mention. In the fields of epistemology and metaphysics, Brand Blanshard's The Nature of Thought (2 vols.) presented a cogent defense of modern idealism, replete with a coherence theory of truth and doctrine of internal relations; W. P. Montague's Ways of Things defended and elaborated the author's animistic materialism, in which, however, he makes room for ethics, aesthetics, and an emergent conception of God; and G. Santayana's The Realm of Spirit, a critical restatement of the Platonic element in his system of thought, completing his mature philosophy begun years ago with Skepticism and Animal Faith.

The number of works in the field of philosophical history and commentary was especially large. Some of the most noteworthy were: Emile Bréhier's study of the nature of history and of Descartes in particular, in La philosophic et son passé; André Mattei's L'Homme de Descartes, unusual in its stress on the religious foundation of Descartes' thought; two notable studies of Spinoza's thought, the first, H. Joachim's unfinished commentary on Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, the other, David Bidney's work on The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza, which takes issue with Wolfson's well-known commentary on the same subject; F. H. Heinemann's David Hume, dealing especially with his science of human nature; G. R. G. Mure's Introduction to Hegel, by way of Aristotle; and the third volume of S. Dasgupta's definitive History of Indian Philosophy. The 'Library of Living Philosophers,' which has already published a volume on John Dewey, continued its unique series with a book of essays on Santayana along with his rejoinder.

Of especial interest in the numerous works on the philosophy of religion, including both Protestant and Catholic approaches, were: John Laird's Theism and Cosmology, the first of his Gifford Lectures, containing a critical examination of the cosmological proof of the existence of God; W. E. Hocking's Hibbert Lectures on Living Religions and a World of Faith, which seek to set forth the universal essence in the plurality of religions; Douglas C. Macintosh's Problems of Religious Knowledge; Edgar S. Brightman's A Philosophy of Religion; and two defenses of neo-Thomism, Antonia Lombardi's Critica delle metafisiche, and Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics, an exposition of liberal Catholic humanism.

In the relatively small number of books on logic and methodology, Willard Quine's Mathematical Logic was outstanding. It makes use of new techniques and improvements discovered since the appearance of Russell's Principia Mathematica. Kurt Riezler's Physics and Reality, defends the Aristotelian philosophy of nature against the doctrine of modern physics. In Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Rote Learning, a group of authors apply modern logical techniques to experiments in learning. J. H. Woodger's The Technique of Theory Construction, constitutes the fifth number of vol. 2 of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.

The field of aesthetics and of criticism was greatly enriched by T. M. Greene's The Arts and the Art of Criticism, in which he works out a precise set of categories intended to deepen the enjoyment of art through understanding. In the field of social philosophy, Karl Mannheim's book, Man and Society in an Age of Social Reconstruction, a brilliant and convincing study of what has brought European civilization to its fearful pass, stood out above all other works. Sidney Hook's Reason, Social Myths and Democracy defends a reasonable, socialized democracy from the idolatries of both the Right and the Left.

Necrology.

Death claimed many able scholars in philosophy in 1940, among them Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, founder and editor of the Journal of Philosophy; David W. Prall, best known for his work in values, aesthetics in particular; Abel Rey, distinguished in the philosophy of science; Célestin Bouglé, widely known for his contributions to sociology and the field of values; and John H. Muirhead, last of the old guard of British idealism.