The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Carus - Fundamental Problems
This book consists of a series of sections, which set forth the principles of the Monistic Philosophy, as the author conceives of it. He devotes more than one hundred pages to answers to criticisms. It is very difficult to pronounce a judgment on the book; it is, in some respects, I suppose, a remarkable one. The characteristic of Dr. Carus's mind is its power of lucid condensation; and he gives us here, in readable and brilliant language, the main results of philosophy as "the systematic arrangement of knowledge." The student of philosophy would not inaptly characterize the author's point of view as a combination of Hegel and Spencer mediated through Comte. But my impression is, that the ordinary intelligent reader, who cannot be supposed to read between the lines, would, while admiring the eminent clearness of the book, feel in it a disappointing absence of a definite point of view. Unless it is very carefully shown how it is that the world is one, and can be thought as one, Monism is apt to appear as somewhat otiose philosophy (πάντα καλά λίαν), and, as the outcome of philosophizing, hardly a pronounced step beyond the expression of the postulate with which all philosophy begins — that the world must be one. Nor, in this very regard, do I think does Dr. Carus help us much. His chapters show us how many so-called oppositions or dualisms are reconcilable with each other, but there is no evident connection between his chapters, which thus become a series of sketches [and there is an artistic play of light about them] rather than the logical development of a theory of knowledge and reality. It is easy to see how ideas and ideals and facts, how reason and sense, causation and free will, hedonism and asceticism, can all, and in fact all do, exist in the same world; how in fact the universe is God, and God is the universe; but what we want to say of a completed philosophy is one of two things, or perhaps both of them: either to know what aspect of reality is for us the highest aspect of reality, or to know what are the different points of view that the mind must take about the world, and how they can be logically connected. While the author has done wisely, it seems to me, in discarding the subjectivistic conclusions of the critical philosophy, I think he sinks too much the idea of criticism into that of realism, which latter idea too he carries out at the expense of what one might call a legitimate nominalism. The ethical outcome of Monism would, I fear, be indifferentism; what would save the system from that would be a tenable theory of individuality and of teleology. I do not mean to imply that a metaphysic should play into the hands of an ethic, but rather that the ethical facts should become at least part of the data of a philosophy. On the whole, the side of ethical showing that interests Dr. Carus is what is expressed in the Schliesse dich an ein Ganzes of Goethe, rather than in the In suo esse conservari of Spinoza or, for that part, of the evolutionist. His book, though, deserves study at the hands of all who have an interest in the development of philosophy.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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