Edward G. Ballard – författare

HE past does not change; it cannot, for what has happened T cannot be undone. Yet how are we to understand what has happened? Our perspective on it lies in the present, and is subject to continual change. These changes, made in the light of our new knowledge and new experience, call for fresh evaluations and constant reconsideration. It is now one hundred fifty years since the death of Immanuel Kant, and this, the third volume of Tulane Studies in Philosophy is dedicated to the commemoration of the event. The diversity of the contributions to the volume serve as one indication of Kant's persistent importance in philoso­ phy. His work marks one of the most enormous turns in the whole history of human thought, and there is still much to be done in estimating its achievement. His writings have not been easy to assimilate. The exposition is difficult and labored; it is replete with ambiguities, and even with what often appear to be contradictions. Such writings allow for great latitude in interpretation. Yet who would dare ·to omit Kant from the account? The force of a man's work is measured by his influence on other thinkers; and here, Kant has few superiors. Of no man whose impact upon the history of ideas has been as great as that of Kant can it be said with finality: this 5 6 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY is his philosophy.

The year 1959 has been called The Centennial Year in view of the anniversary of the publication of The Origin of SPecies and the centenary of the births of many who later contributed much to the philosophy of the recent past, such as Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Edmund Husser!' The essays in the present volume which are on subjects germane to any of the anniversaries celebrated this year have been placed first in the present volume. CENTENNIAL YEAR NUMBER DARWIN AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN The knowledge of methodology, which is acquired by means of formal education in the various disciplines, is usually com­ municated in abstract form. Harmony and counterpoint in musical composition, the axiomatic method of mathematics, the established laws in physics or in chemistry, the principles of mathematics - all these are taught abstractly. It is only when we come to the method of discovery in experimental science that we find abstract communication failing. The most recent as well as the greatest successes of the experimental sciences have been those scored in modern times, but we know as yet of no abstract way to teach the scientific method. The astonishing pedagogical fact is that this method has never been abstracted and set forth in a fashion which would permit of its easy acquisition. Here is an astonishing oversight indeed, for which the very difficulty of the topic may itself be responsible.

The year 1959 has been called The Centennial Year in view of the anniversary of the publication of The Origin of SPecies and the centenary of the births of many who later contributed much to the philosophy of the recent past, such as Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Edmund Husser!'' The essays in the present volume which are on subjects germane to any of the anniversaries celebrated this year have been placed first in the present volume. CENTENNIAL YEAR NUMBER DARWIN AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN The knowledge of methodology, which is acquired by means of formal education in the various disciplines, is usually com­ municated in abstract form. Harmony and counterpoint in musical composition, the axiomatic method of mathematics, the established laws in physics or in chemistry, the principles of mathematics - all these are taught abstractly. It is only when we come to the method of discovery in experimental science that we find abstract communication failing. The most recent as well as the greatest successes of the experimental sciences have been those scored in modern times, but we know as yet of no abstract way to teach the scientific method. The astonishing pedagogical fact is that this method has never been abstracted and set forth in a fashion which would permit of its easy acquisition. Here is an astonishing oversight indeed, for which the very difficulty of the topic may itself be responsible.

HE past does not change; it cannot, for what has happened T cannot be undone. Yet how are we to understand what has happened? Our perspective on it lies in the present, and is subject to continual change. These changes, made in the light of our new knowledge and new experience, call for fresh evaluations and constant reconsideration. It is now one hundred fifty years since the death of Immanuel Kant, and this, the third volume of Tulane Studies in Philosophy is dedicated to the commemoration of the event. The diversity of the contributions to the volume serve as one indication of Kant''s persistent importance in philoso­ phy. His work marks one of the most enormous turns in the whole history of human thought, and there is still much to be done in estimating its achievement. His writings have not been easy to assimilate. The exposition is difficult and labored; it is replete with ambiguities, and even with what often appear to be contradictions. Such writings allow for great latitude in interpretation. Yet who would dare ·to omit Kant from the account? The force of a man''s work is measured by his influence on other thinkers; and here, Kant has few superiors. Of no man whose impact upon the history of ideas has been as great as that of Kant can it be said with finality: this 5 6 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY is his philosophy.

Aesthetics, fledgling of the philosophic brood, is the most suspect of that family. It is suspected of all the philosophical sins: vagueness, disorder, dogmatism, emotionalism, reductionism, compartmentalization. Sometimes its youth is thought to be a sufficient excuse for these divagations. Sometimes the very nature of its content, involving the waywardness of genius, the remoteness of feeling from intellect, the surd of inspiration in even the mildest appreciation, are believed to condemn aes­ thetics irrevocably to the underside of the civilized man's domain. Some philosophers have gloried in this apparently mystical and a-rational quality and have seen in it the very nature of the beautiful; others have come to regard it, rather, as evidence of the unskillfulness of our minds and have turned away from aesthetic problems to the task of sharpening the aesthetician's language and logic. The laughter of the gods is not difficult to discern through the poetry of the more mystical aesthetician or through the prose of the analysts. Meanwhile the manifold complexities and problems of aesthetic experience invite our understanding. For aesthetic experience is a present fact of human life and may, perhaps, be understood by men. Such, at least, will be the present assumption. This is the reason why the title of this book mentions art together with analysis; for if art is intelligible, the work of art and the experience of it may be analyzed into its functional parts.

When Heidegger's influence was at its zenith in Germany from the early fifties to the early sixties, most serious students of philosophy in that country were deeply steeped in his thought. His students or students of his students filled many if not most of the major chairs in philosophy. A cloud of reputedly Black Forest mysticism veiled the perspective of many of his critics and admirers at home and abroad. Droves of people flocked to hear lectures by him that most could not understand, even on careful reading, much less on one hearing. He loomed so large that Being and Time frequently could not be seen as a highly imaginative, initial approach to a strictly limited set of questions, but was viewed either as an all-embracing first order catastrophy incorporating at once the most feared consequences of Boehme, Kierkegaard, Rilke, and Nietzsche, or as THE ANSWER. But most of that has past. Heidegger's dominance of German philosophy has ceased. One can now brush aside the larger-than-life images of Heidegger, the fears that his language was creating a cult phenomenon, the convictions that only those can understand him who give their lives to his thought. His language is at times unusually difficult, at times simple and beautiful. Some of his insights are obscure and not helpful, others are exciting and clarifying. One no longer expects Heidegger to interpret literature like a literary critic or an academic philologist.

Aesthetics, fledgling of the philosophic brood, is the most suspect of that family. It is suspected of all the philosophical sins: vagueness, disorder, dogmatism, emotionalism, reductionism, compartmentalization. Sometimes its youth is thought to be a sufficient excuse for these divagations. Sometimes the very nature of its content, involving the waywardness of genius, the remoteness of feeling from intellect, the surd of inspiration in even the mildest appreciation, are believed to condemn aes­ thetics irrevocably to the underside of the civilized man''s domain. Some philosophers have gloried in this apparently mystical and a-rational quality and have seen in it the very nature of the beautiful; others have come to regard it, rather, as evidence of the unskillfulness of our minds and have turned away from aesthetic problems to the task of sharpening the aesthetician''s language and logic. The laughter of the gods is not difficult to discern through the poetry of the more mystical aesthetician or through the prose of the analysts. Meanwhile the manifold complexities and problems of aesthetic experience invite our understanding. For aesthetic experience is a present fact of human life and may, perhaps, be understood by men. Such, at least, will be the present assumption. This is the reason why the title of this book mentions art together with analysis; for if art is intelligible, the work of art and the experience of it may be analyzed into its functional parts.

This book is intended to offer an interpretation of an important aspect of Plato''s philosophy. The matter to be interpreted will be the Platonic myths and doctrines which bear upon self-knowledge and self-ignorance. It is difficult to say in a word just what sort of thing an interpretation is. Rather than attempting to provide a set of rules or meta-rules supposed to define the ideally perfect interpretation, several distinctions will be suggested. I should like to distinguish the philological scholar from the inter­ preter by saying that the latter uses what the former produces. The function of the scholarly examination of a text is to make an ancient (or foreign) writing available to the contemporary reader. The scholar solves grammatical, lexical, and historical problems and renders his author readable by the person who lacks this scholarly learning and technique. The function of the interpreter is to make use of such available writings in order to render their content more intelligible and useful to a given audience. Thus, he thinks through this content, explains, and re-expresses it in a form which can be easily related to problems, persons, doctrines, or events of another epoch or of another class of readers. At the minimum, the interpretation of a philosophic writing may be thought to prepare its teaching for application to matters which belong in another time or context. Detailed application of a doctrine is, of course, still another thing.