THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND IDEALISM.
HUMAN thought develops by antagonism. The great masters of speculation are of kin with the great prophets: impelled by a fiery energy and enthusiasm, they build up an edifice of thought, which is imposing by its large and bold outlines, and which for a time is admired as a flawless product. A new contribution has been made to the intellectual treasures of the race, and men are neither able nor disposed to criticise it. But when the new ideas have become common property, and when a new expansion of thought has taken place in other directions,—in science, literature, religion,—it begins to be felt that a fresh synthesis is required to do perfect justice to the increased complexity of human life. The accepted philosophy is not false, but it is inadequate: it has entered upon a path that points to a further goal. The critical movement begins, and cannot stop until a higher phase of speculation has been reached.
The philosophy of Kant has not been exempt from the inevitable law of philosophical evolution. Accepted at first by submissive disciples, it had afterwards to submit to a severe process of criticism which culminated in the Absolute Idealism of Hegel. The synthesis of Kant, as based upon an untenable opposition of the phenomenal and the real, was weighed and found wanting. The debt of humanity to Kant is incalculable, but a slavish submission to his system, and especially to the letter of his system, can only result in arresting the free activity of the human spirit. We must therefore be grateful to any one who helps us, not merely to see Kant, but to see beyond him. This is the task which Professor Caird, in his exhaustive work on the Critical Philosophy,[1] has set himself to perform, and he
- ↑ The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. By Edward Caird, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. In Two Volumes. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1889.
