Published in Studium Generale 24 (1971) 800―822

Unspoken Philosophy:
The Presuppositions and Applications of Thought

James Wayne Dye

      We ordinarily think of philosophy as something thought or taught. It is generally assumed to consist in the conscious entertainment of ideas or propositions and the communication of these to others. This belief as to what are generic features of philosophy probably arises from taking philosophy to be exemplified in the overt activities of those persons commonly identified as philosophers, much as we tend to assume medicine or law or engineering to be whatever is practiced by the appropriate class of duly accredited professionals. Philosophers typically spend a good deal of their time, or at least assert that they do, engaged in thinking; they are most frequently teachers in colleges and universities; and they both write and lecture far more than does the average person. Moreover, there are few other traits peculiar to philosophers as a class, at least none so obvious as these; and to that extent, the ordinary view of philosophy is well grounded. A hasty perusal of the subject matters about which philosophers speak most frequently reinforces the received opinion all the more strongly; for they appear to be principally concerned with the analysis of certain linguistic claims or usages, on the one hand, or with the description of the contents and forms of awareness, attention, and intention, on the other hand. At least, this is what one might conclude from a sampling of the avowed interests of our two great schools of linguistic analysis and phenomenology.

      So conceived, philosophy would seem to be a relatively specialized activity, of little significance beyond the confines of the educational establishment. In other times and places greater utility has been claimed for philosophy, as, for example, during the Hellenistic period or in the cultures of the Far East. Societies tend to become suspicious of institutions having no apparent practical use, and today even college students, the relatively privileged social group to whom philosophers most frequently communicate their less esoteric and more widely significant doctrines, are demanding greater “relevancy” from philosophers and other academicians. Given past precedent and present doubts, perhaps the strictly professional construal of philosophy has become less tenable if not entirely obsolete. It is at least prima facie possible that it is too restricted [801] and also that holding a mistaken conception of philosophy might result in accepting ocher erroneous beliefs about matters of still greater importance. Therefore, it would seem to be prudent and perhaps fruitful to expand, imaginatively if not actually, our notion of philosophy to encompass a wider range of activities than the self-conscious acts of professional philosophers.

      The remainder of this paper constitutes an examination of what is involved in systematically expanding the concept of philosophy to the widest extent, namely to the extent of imbuing it with ontological significance. For the purpose of this examination, I propose as a hypothesis that philosophy is not restricted to conscious thought but is found throughout the entire spectrum of belief―thought―practice. The philosophy of the professionals, and the entire class of explicitly entertained, spoken, or written philosophy of which it is a major part, is only one mode of philosophy, sandwiched between two inarticulate modes. Since philosophy as a concept applied to certain sorts of articulated thought is noncontroversial, this examination will be restricted to disclosing the presence and structure of philosophy in unconscious belief and in practice. Since James K. Feibleman has said more about the unspoken modes of philosophy than any other contemporary thinker of whom I am aware, having explored them in several books and articles since he first formulated the concept of “accepted dominant ontology” in 1940 (Positive Democracy, ch. vi), it is fitting to attempt to show the soundness of the hypothesis through an exposition of his views. Accordingly, the examination comprises, in order, an exposition of Professor Feibleman’s theory of philosophy (1) in the mode of belief and (2) in the mode of practice, (3) a brief criticism focusing upon an apparent inconsistency in his theory, and (4) a concluding assessment of the viability of the hypothesis emphasizing some advantages consequent to its acceptance.

I

Explicit philosophy in its broadest aspects, and as it concerns human beings, may be defined as the attempt to discover some unchanging truths about the nature of things that change. Thus explicit philosophy has an actual existence in minds and in the tools of communication between them. Implicit philosophy, on the other hand, is nothing less than the true nature of things, the possibility or conditions according to which things have their being .... Applied philosophy consists in all our practical actions, in so far as these may lead to or follow from some theoretical attempt to discover truth. (The Theory of Human Culture, hereafter THC, 332―333).
Thus does Feibleman state the hypothesis proposed in the preceding introductory remarks. The object of our immediate attention, namely his characterization of implicit philosophy, is rather surprising, if not puzzling. Where one [802] might have expected reference to commitment or belief, one finds instead a reference to “the true nature of things.” Some elucidation seems desirable.

      In other contexts, Professor Feibleman does make the less striking, but, as shall be seen, nearly equivalent claim that consciously chosen beliefs are only a small portion of all beliefs adopted by human beings. He says, “the more strongly a proposition is accepted as true (for that is what is meant by belief) the less consciously does the process work. Our most irrefrangible beliefs are those which we do not even know that we hold” (The Institutions of Society, hereafter IS, 55). The body of normally unconscious belief may be termed “common sense,” if we wish to emphasize its functioning as “an ordinary affair appealing to the self-evidence of the specific individual” (THC, 13). When the contrast with explicit philosophy (also called “ostensive” or “express” philosophy, see Ontology, hereafter O, 8; THC, 321) is uppermost, it may be dubbed “cryptic philosophy” (O, 8). If only the affective functions of the body of belief are singled out, the designation “ethos” is more specific (THC, 13, 49). When contrasting the efficacious nature of the system of unconscious belief with theories merely maintained by philosophers but unadopted by their culture, the terminology of “concrete” as opposed to “abstract” philosophy is appropriate (IS, 27~277). However, the less specialized and more frequently employed expressions are “implicit philosophy” and “implicit dominant ontology,” of which the second occurs more frequently.

      Among the reasons for asserting the existence of implicit philosophy are the explanatory value which the hypothesis has for comprehending the significance of overt feeling and action which would otherwise be enigmatic, and the fact that previously unacknowledged beliefs are sometimes brought to our attention by the pressure of contradiction or elenchus. Feibleman provides several instances of phenomena which achieve perspicuity only when seen as functions of unconscious beliefs and of situations in which implicit beliefs are forced into conscious awareness. He observes that systematic inquiry does not begin until we have grown old enough to acquire skill in manipulating certain abstractions, but that meanwhile we must have acted and our acts must have involved certain presuppositions about the world, for “if we lived at all, it was in accordance with the beliefs from which we acted” (O, 8). A more direct claim is that specific, unconscious beliefs are often “contained as consequences more clearly in feelings and in actions than they are in the expression of conscious thoughts,” and indeed that such belief is especially clear when a man asserts one belief “and under the pressure of crisis” acts in conformity to another (IS, 270). This is a plausible interpretation of a phenomenon so common as to have been encapsulated in the proverbial expression, “actions speak louder than words.” More fundamentally still, we never encounter persons unclothed in commitments manifested objectively in conformation to the institutions and culture within which they live. To regard institutional and cultural determinations inseparable from the actual lives of human beings as merely derivative and conventional consequences of free choices by private individuals is to confuse “the solving of problems with the holding of beliefs.... To suppose consciousness primary and central to all other mental functions is to make belief deliberate, which it is not . . .” (IS, 285). The immediate experience of belief is of compulsion, gratifying but nevertheless involuntary. We have all had the experience of having such involuntary commitments brought to our conscious attention while simultaneously recognizing that their adoption must have been corporate rather than individual. We may refer to such beliefs by saying, “I have always believed that ....” Finally, there is the observation that the individual consciousness comes to philosophizing with “a certain amount of belief” (O, 14), since one must presuppose something, if only his own ability to discern the truth. To assume that one can distinguish between truth and falsity is already to have assumed an entire system of belief, for “What is common sense if not the basis upon which the judgment of the self-evidence of truths is made? And this basis is composed of an implicitly-held ontology . . . [which] rests upon an inherited point of view” (O,109).

      It has been noted that “implicit dominant ontology” is the preferred term used to refer to the system of implicit belief, although other expressions are often found because of our author’s conviction that “call it what you will, names do not matter–a philosophy, an ontology, a metaphysics, an ideology, or a rationalization–the fact remains that a consistent set of abstract propositions accepted as true and carried out into a practice . . . is the essential ingredient without which there could be no social structures, no men behaving together repeatedly, no formalized ritual, no material culture objects, no higher values” (IS, 60). The many other terms are apparently used to maximize the possibility of denoting such belief in language that differently oriented readers can appreciate, but the preference for ‘ontology’ is based upon philosophical rather than rhetorical grounds. If the system of unconscious belief is logically prior to conscious and deliberately acquired knowledge, and if it is the base for feeling and action, it must at least be an unexpressed ontology involving a more or less consistent interpretation of the natural order, society, values, the self, and the forms of efficacious action.

      The other field of philosophy for which priority has sometimes been claimed, epistemology, is clearly secondary, in that knowing is only one way of being or acting among many, whereas any human action accords with some principles which may be uncovered by scientific investigation in a manner analogous to the way in which the principles of the actions of physical bodies are discoverable. Thus Feibleman can say that “ontologies are actual empirical entities, the general and systematic set of ideas imbedded in human cultures” (O, 118); but he identifies epistemology, by virtue of its restricted scope and the priority of belief to the testing of truth claims, as only a subdivision of ontology (O,183; also [804]see 527―548). In addition, epistemology lacks the direct empirical base of ontology in that, when made explicit, it is seen to be “a hash of applied logic, empirical neuro-physiology and psychology” (O, 117; also see 642―644).

      Once it is clear that the system of implicit belief is minimally an implicit dominant ontology, that as ontology it is prior to epistemology, and that exemplification in action rather than entertainment in consciousness is the criterion of adoption, there is no reason for restricting the field of implicit belief to knowing subjects. Consequently, one can say,

Philosophy is not the property of philosophers. It is implicit in the nature of things. In persons, this implicit nature is termed the content of the soul. The importance of philosophy is a matter not of discourse but of being. We are driven to place emphasis upon philosophy as a study by the importance of being, of existing things, their values and relations, and not because of the study itself. . . . The field does not depend upon the study but the study depends upon the field. (O, 5―6)

      In so few words is the received conception of philosophy as determined by the speculations of philosophers completely inverted. The philosopher does not define his field, rather he encounters it, not only within himself and other human beings but also in all other natural objects. The difference is that between a subjective starting point and an objective one. In the former case one believes himself to begin with the conscious entertainment of propositions, of which many are dubious or certainly false, and proceeds to belief in those for which there is good evidence. The sphere of belief is thought to be a function of the sphere of thought. In the latter case one begins as a being with socially acquired beliefs that are unquestioned because never explicitly identified, living in a world of natural objects behaving in conformity to unthought and unseated principles, and proceeds to uncover those principles by making them objects for consciousness. Feibleman believes the objective approach to be more in conformity with the facts, for “we do not start in the middle of ourselves . . . but in the middle of the world. Awareness of self is a highly sophisticated notion, while awareness of the world is naive, unexpected and inevitable” (O, 37). If this be true, the sphere of thought is a specialized function within he sphere of belief, and belief is primarily an ontic rather than a psychic phenomenon. “Belief, if it be of any strong degree of conviction, lies outside our control and often even outside our awareness. In this sense it is no more subjective than the kidney or the femur” (IS, 41).

      I shall attach the rubric ‘mentalistic’ to the subjective approach and ‘behavioristic’ to the objective. These rubrics distinguish the two approaches in terms of what would be acceptable evidence for a belief having been adopted. In the former case, a mental act is requisite; adoption is a species of conscious choice. In the latter case, only a certain kind of behavior is essential; to adopt a [805] principle is to act in accordance with it. Since Feibleman speaks of “beliefs entertained by all actual things” (O, 626) and gives as illustrations of evidence for unconscious beliefs the behavior of cockroaches (O, 430) and cows (O 627), it is obvious that he holds a behavioristic theory of belief. Consequently, the conformity of every actual entity to logical principles and, when acting or being acted upon, to still more restrictive principles is describable as “making certain ontological assumptions” (O, 100). The beliefs of human beings are only those assumed by “the fragment of nature which we know as human culture” (THC, 341). “Things hold beliefs only at the levels at which the things exist. A mountain holds only physical belief, hydrogen only chemical belief, and so on” (O, 629). Since a human being is a coordination of activities occurring on several empirical levels, from the physical to the personal, he has several modes of believing, corresponding to his modes of being (Ibid.; THC, 32). The lowest level of human belief is perhaps discoverable in the musculature. “Striped muscle, and, even deeper, smooth muscle, represent beliefs about physical conditions in the external world, and these perhaps do not differ from culture to culture” (IS, 269). Different beliefs are also presupposed in physiological differences which can be correlated with differing abilities (Ibid.). Beliefs consisting of abstract and general ideas are held subconsciously at no fewer than three different levels: the habits are those beliefs arising from resolutions to specific personal problems; the memories those derived from the history of events within one’s conscious life; and common sense or the implicit dominant ontology consists of those shared throughout the culture by all persons who have grown up in it (THC, 32 ff.; IC, 268―269; O 632―633).

      Having introduced the notion of empirical levels and of corresponding levels of belief, it is possible to discuss an apparent ambiguity in the concept of the implicit dominant ontology. Whereas previously in this exposition the implicit dominant ontology was not distinguished from the entire set of unconscious beliefs, now it has been identified with those beliefs held by human beings at one particular level of acceptance. This ambiguity is recognized by Feibleman, who writes,

. . . we shall call the implicit dominant ontology where its systematic nature is stressed and where its presence in all of the empirical levels and not just in the level of the cultural is under consideration, the inarticulate ontology . . . there emerges from the flux of existence . . . an inarticulate ontology . . . because events contrive to twist themselves into the shapes of interpretations of certain of the abstract systems. (O, 723―724)

      He does not always adhere to this more precise terminology. Sometimes, as evidenced from previous quotations, he refers implicit philosophy or ontology to the whole of existence, and sometimes he asserts without any adjectival qualification that “everything and every event–every existing organization –has its ontology” (O, 352; also see 100). Nevertheless his intention seems clear. [806] Ontology is implicit in all levels of existence since whenever any event occurs it accords with certain principles and not others. “Since the natural universe constitutes a unity, it must have, so to speak, an implicit dominant ontology of its own. The implicit dominant ontology of nature is the philosophy of the universe” (THC, 93). In the narrower sense, implicit dominant ontology consists of the principles which rule specifically human action above the merely physical or biological levels. It is cultural rather than individual and constitutes a “socially held theory of being” (IS, 276), objectified in all the social structures of a given society, including institutions, artifacts, customs, morality, and religion. Subjectively, the theory exists as the beliefs of the individual members of the society (IS, 60).

      However, implicit dominant ontologies are imperfect in that they do not completely mesh with the ontology of the natural world. Consequently, they may be modified to achieve greater (or lesser, for cultures may become unadaptive) conformity with the natural order. That the same ontology is not shared from culture to culture and from one epoch to another is demonstrable anthropological and historical truth; for example, the common sense of the ancient Greeks clearly differs from that of the ancient Romans (O, 109). Moreover, the common sense of any one society undergoes modification all the time, varying with the rate of social change. What is the basis for changes in the adopted body of belief? Answering this question involves some anticipation of the topic of the following section, applied philosophy.

      The notion of applied philosophy is in some respects rather difficult to distinguish from that of implicit philosophy. The cultural forms and practices constituting the hard empirical data for philosophy are in fact systematically and concretely ambiguous. From the perspective of practice, they presuppose certain philosophical theories in the ways they resolve practical problems; from the perspective of theory, they are applications of certain deductions from unquestioned axioms. The only way one can reveal the structure of the implicit dominant ontology is through analysis of the institutions, the ethos, and the artifacts of society; but these are the very same things which consist in, or are the consequences of, practice. Feibleman accordingly alternates between describing culture as the application of deductions from the axioms of a particular ontology (THC, 75) and as a structure exhibiting an implicit ontology (IS, 268). He holds the view that theory and practice form a continuum. When we are acquainted with the facts, the philosophical problem is to uncover the implicit theory; and when we know the theory, it is to search out possible concrete applications. If we address ourselves to the former problem we are engaged in “pure ontology,” and if we address ourselves to the latter problem we are engaged in “applied ontology” (O, 746).

      The connection between theory and practice is not merely factual but logical and ontological. There is “no valid theory without applications actual or [807] possible” (O, 733) and “All practice is the practice of some theory” (O, 453; also see 429). This relationship is of sufficient importance that Feibleman gives it a name–the Law of Application, which “states that every action has its role as the interpretation of a theorem in some abstract deductive system” (O, 725; also cf. the “Principle of Practice,” 746). This is the counterpart in the theory of applied philosophy to the behavioristic interpretation of belief in the theory of implicit philosophy. A subjectivist approach would, at best, allow for a Law of Application which states that every action is capable of being construed as the interpretation of some theorem. In the one case there is a claim about the way the world is and in the other merely a claim about what the mind can do. Since Feibleman has argued for the objective approach and for the dependency of epistemology upon ontology, he is committed to the stronger claim.

      Although in speaking of axioms, theorems, and interpretations, Feibleman may seem to have taken the implicit dominant ontology to be a coherent system, that implication is not acceptable without qualification. Common sense is, even at its best, “partly erroneous” (O, 428). It is more accurate to say that “Common sense endeavors to be a systematic body of beliefs . . .” (THC, 48). The implicit dominant ontology may be thought of as that philosophical system whose deductions find application in the institutions of society; but it is neither a complete nor an entirely consistent system, and the society which it informs is similarly imperfect. The ideal implicit dominant ontology would be the common sense of the ideal society. Social change is ontologically grounded in the difference between the actual implicit dominant ontology and the ideal ontology, and the intensity of social change varies with the degree of difference between actual and ideal that members of society can in some way perceive.

      Perception of the implicit ontology is normally mediated through feeling or acting, since all strong belief is most consistently expressed in what is done rather than in what is said.

Thus there is often a vast difference between the beliefs we actually hold and those we think we hold. It is indeed fortunate that we act from the former in most eases. The declared misanthrope otherwise would not save a man in danger, nor the confirmed misogynist a lady in distress. . . . The behavior which satisfies the social requirements of common sense, for instance the saving of human lives which might be in great peril, indicates the presence of a psychic belief that human life is worth saving . . . (THC, 43)

      However, there is an interdependency between feeling, acting, and thinking. When action is frustrated or feelings conflict, thinking cannot be avoided, for “the demonstration of inconsistency in subconsciously held beliefs is sufficient to justify the raising of inconsistent beliefs to the level of consciousness where they are in a position to receive further consideration’, (THC, 48). “Action is based on feeling directly, and indirectly on the reasoning upon which the feeling is [808] based. Hence it comes about that while reasoning does not directly dictate l action, it does so indirectly” (THC, 42). In this manner thinking is relevant for practice; and the problems of practice, on their part, provoke conscious reconsideration of ontology.

      The class of professional philosophers plays the same rÔle in society that conscious thought plays in personal life. Philosophical inquiry furnishes a critique of institutions in terms of their underlying presuppositions and seeks to give Linguistic expression to the true ontology (see IS, 220). Of course, philosophers share the standpoint of the inherited implicit dominant ontology of their culture. However, awareness of inconsistency and incompleteness leads them to attempt to transcend the parochialism of their own culture in order to “search for the charter which would accomplish the establishment of that institution which consists in the whole of humanity” (IS, 364). The ultimate goal of philosophizing is, on a personal and epistemic level, the same as that of culture, on a social and ontic level, namely perfect agreement with the ontology of the natural world (THC, 93). This goal, pursued by searching out “the best of alternative ontological postulate-sets” (O, 745), is never fully achieved due to the limitations of human knowing. Nevertheless, philosophizing is intrinsically valuable to the extent that it satisfies natural curiosity and practically valuable insofar as it may lead society to alter the implicit dominant ontology in the direction of a more perfect adaptation between culture and environment. In proposing a theory as true, a philosopher automatically proposes it for adoption (belief) and for application (action), since “there are no inapplicable truths” (O, 742). The cultural utility of philosophy resides in its fate in being adopted, for “the primary purpose of philosophy is the improvement of the subconscious” (THC, 331). Ostensive philosophical theory functions as an impetus for cultural change whenever its widespread adoption seems likely to lead to a greater realization of values than is possible with continued allegiance to the currently accepted implicit philosophy.

      What is most difficult to understand is how the philosopher, programmed by his cultural inheritance even to the extent of his criteria for rational belief, could possibly disagree with the prevailing viewpoint. He can do so only because the implicit ontology does not constitute a perfectly consistent closed system. Part of this imperfection in the system of belief is accidental, and as such is simply a consequence of the unfortunate circumstance that there is error abroad in the world. On the other hand, there are both formal and empirical reasons for thinking that the strain between conscious philosophizing and the implicit dominant ontology is a permanent possibility for human existence, even in the best of all possible worlds. These reasons support the contention that explicit philosophy is no mere accident but is the expression of an ontic need.

      The formal reason is that an ontology is subject to the limitation of any higher system demonstrated by Gödel for mathematical systems. In the explicit [809] ontology proposed by Feibleman himself this incompleteness is acknowledged by including among the postulates the doctrine of ‘fallibilism,’ using Peirce’s term for uncertainty inherent in an open system (O, 711―712). This inherent uncertainty imposes the obligation upon application that it always be tentative rather than absolutistic. The social claim to absolute truth, expressed sometimes in dogmatic assertion and more often in dogmatic action, is self-contradictory, for it goes beyond the bounds of justification that could be provided for any possible theory of reality. The philosopher’s knowledge of this theoretical limit to certainty, expressed in the Socratic claim to ignorance, furnishes a permanent motive for suggesting alternative systems and applications. The ideal society would manifest this philosophical disposition in its behavior by maintaining the experimental attitude towards its practices; the religion of the ideal society would perforce be “a church of the unlimited community with Socrates as its savior” (O, 514).

      The empirical reason resides in the temporality of existence. Although logically theory and practice may be merely distinctions within a common continuum, in actuality they are quite separated. One cannot pursue truth while applying it, instead one must “search for the truth as though it had no application to practice” (O, 713). It can readily be seen that separation is inherent in temporality, for, as the medieval concept of God clearly demonstrates, only an eternal being can combine thought and creation in a single act. Feibleman’s discussion is not couched in terms of the contrast between eternity and time, but its import is the same. He says, “considerable change, and the time in which it can occur, are needed for the transition between the abstract and the concrete. Hence theory and . . . practice . . . are never contemporaries” (THC, 339). This has two corollaries. First, in solving “the empirical ontological problem” (O, 778) of finding the ontology underlying a culture’s practices, one is in search of an entity whose existence antedates the practice to which it has been applied. Although Feibleman does not say so, this clearly makes the empirical ontological problem one whose solution is to be found in historical inquiry. Also, although again Feibleman does not say this, the history of philosophy is in this sense an absolutely indispensable element in philosophical inquiry, although not as what it is construed to be on subjectivist principles, namely the history of what certain men have said, but rather as what it would be interpreted objectively–a veritable history of ideas. Second, the prima facie claim that the philosopher is bound to his own time and place must now be modified to recognize that “He may be part of the present, but his work belongs to the future” (THC, 339), since the greatest significance of a philosopher’s work is discernible in the degree to which his point of view gets incorporated into the implicit dominant ontology.

[810]

II

      Because supremely successful theories become incognito as cultural commitments, the application of philosophical theories is little understood. “Philosophy is so completely presupposed by all our reasonings, feelings and actions, that no one seems to believe it is there at all” (O, 776; also see 115). It is easy to identify the theory applied to the special case, difficult to isolate that which applies to every case. In addition, the aforementioned temporal lag between theory and application seldom permits the philosopher who theorizes to see his theory applied. Furthermore, if philosophy constitutes a system, the postulates of that system, as of systems generally, are not amenable to application. The sole tests that may be used on them are independence, fertility, and completeness, although these are not entirely conclusive. But the deductions from the postulates are applicable, and on this basis Feibleman maintains that a philosophy must prove itself in the same way other theoretical systems “justify themselves by vivid and forceful applications” (O, 114). The theoretical interest in application lies in the fact that “If concrete objects which approximately satisfy the postulates do actually exist, then the postulates cannot involve inherent contradictions” (O, 701). The unquestioned assumption is that the existing universe is itself sufficiently consistent to provide the appropriate field for interpretations of our deductions from the postulates. But then we have no other option, with the possible exception of catatonia which, although an option, is hardly a viable one (O, 18―19).

      Granted philosophical systems are applicable theories, that application is the ultimate test of the truth of a system of philosophy, and that philosophical systems do get accepted, tested, and from time to time replaced, what is the mechanism whereby this is accomplished? How are philosophies produced and applied? Although I have not been successful in finding a clear statement to this effect, I am confident that Professor Feibleman would affirm that philosophies may be devised and subsequently applied in the manner in which they are often held–unconsciously. It seems possible that ideological changes could be wrought by charismatic figures whose proposals arise out of felt preferences rather than out of conscious assessment of alternatives, and who are believed or imitated by the masses more because of sympathetic and satisfying feelings than because of the deliverances of dispassionate evaluation. The most likely ground for rejecting this radical extreme as a possibility would be the belief that philosophies, although held unconsciously, must be adopted consciously, since they are theoretical systems and a choice between theories can only be made by reasoning, which is conscious. However, consistently with his behavioristic approach, Feibleman sees reasoning as present wherever there is choice. The fact of choice implies the presence of reasons, even though they are not recognized and may, in fact, be unperceivable. One of his illustrations of reasoning is a roach choosing a bread crumb rather than a scrap of cheese (O, 430). Reasoning [811] presupposes only primitive awareness of the practical alternatives, not consciousness of the principles implicit in the act of choice. Thus one might choose a leader, say Adolf Hitler, and only subsequently discover, if ever, that he had also chosen a pernicious philosophy.

      The exemplary scenario of the cultural career of philosophy provided by Feibleman is somewhat more cerebral, but not excessively so. The general scene he depicts is one of alternating periods of social unrest during which many competing philosophies are propounded until some philosophy emerges victorious and periods of relative calm during which deductions from the adopted philosophy are applied to practice. The rhythm of philosophical change is iambic, the period of theory selection being short and violent, the period of application to practice being long and comparatively calm (THC, 335). Those periods in which philosophies compete are troublesome because they are the same times in which the old dominant beliefs are being discarded, a process which may require violent revolution; but they are also times of greater historical importance, for the postulates selected then may yield applications throughout an indefinitely long future era. The victorious philosophical system is always chosen for reasons–as has been seen, there is no other kind of choice–but that does not mean that it would have to appear to be the most consistent of the various theories proposed for belief. The rationality of an adopted system of belief–and of the social act of adoption–is manifest only in subsequent use.

      The adoption of a philosophical theory is a social process. The discovery of a philosophical theory so that it is available for adoption and application is more likely the work of a single man or a few men of extraordinary genius. Insofar as a novel philosophical proposal clashes with the hitherto received wisdom, it is an imaginative construct out of touch with present reality, literally a product of daydreaming, which Feibleman describes as “the most potent source of power over the future through imaginative planning in the present” (O, 756). However, as has been previously noted, there is a moment of historicism in the efforts of the creative philosopher, whose imaginative construct does not arise ex nihilo but is suggested by “the more preferable among the implicit dominant ontologies” (O, 779). There remains sufficient creativeness to warrant classifying the innovators as the ultimate moving causes in history (IS, 348). “The great philosopher is a culture-maker in the grand sense” (O, 779).

      However, the innovator is in one sense powerless. He makes an ontology available by formulating it in language, but he cannot procure its adoption and application. The outcome of his efforts is a matter for fate; and the agents of fate are, on an individual level, the theorists of practice and, on a social level, the leading institution of his society.

      The theorist of practice is that person who has formalized practical techniques and who is therefore in a position to join the pure theory of the ontologist with the action of the man of practice. Pure ontology, in having to depend upon such [812] expertise, is in precisely the same position as pure mathematics. To apply a mathematical form to the explanation of certain phenomena, say the behavior of particles in an accelerator, requires a theoretical knowledge of the demands of both fields, which the mathematician qua mathematician does not possess. Similarly, the ontologist who proffers a theory of reality is not in the position, qua ontologist, to determine whether and to what extent it may be satisfactorily applied to the details of experience. The problem of application is that few theories, especially theories of great generality, contain deductions which precisely conform to all the experiential facts. It is up to those who best understand the facts to achieve the best fit of theory to practice achievable under the circumstances, to attain what Feibleman calls “the optimal pragmatic” (O, 744). In the case of an ontology, i.e. a theory of the widest possible scope, many different experts in various areas of human endeavor will be requisite, since any organized field of lesser generality will provide a set of interpretations of the general theory. Thus for ontology the first level of concern with its modus operandi is in application to other theoretical levels, such as ethics, the arts, and the sciences; if it is adopted there and if the adoption is fruitful for those pursuits, it will find application to progressively less theoretical levels of activity until it informs the minute details of unthinking practice (O, 715 ff., 742―745).

      It is obvious from this sketch of the process of applying ontology that eventually the entire society must be involved in its practice, in a way which is not true for the practice of law or music or alchemy. It is unlikely that such widespread application could be achieved by the uncoordinated efforts of individuals, no matter how talented or persistent they might be. The social adoption of philosophies demands the theoretical labors of individuals but can be finally accomplished only through the agency of institutions. (I suppose there would be the limiting case of societies so small that a single person could be an institution; but even these would not be exceptions, for in such cases the authority of the person, and hence his power over social belief and practice, is not personal but official.) The institutions of society constitute a hierarchy, from those which merely perform indispensable functions to those which both direct and embody social preferences for certain final values. Institutions are distinct from social groups in being relatively permanent agencies; and their permanence is secured by their having a “large-scale rational justification” (IS, 96; also see 176) or a “concrete ontology” (IS, 236, n. 2). This justification is proclaimed publicly in symbolic form as myth. Of course a myth need not be recognized as myth by those who accept it; on the contrary, they ordinarily take it to be literal fact or noble ideal (IS, 168―169). The myth is the philosophy of the institution in a form adapted to mass consumption. The leading institution of a society is that institution whose concrete ontology has been accepted as the implicit dominant ontology of the entire society, publicly acknowledged in the social myth and felt as the [813] ethos. Thus there is a relationship of mutual dependency: leading institutions require philosophical foundations and philosophies must be institutionalized in order to be applied.

      In the more complex societies, philosophy is itself an institution or an indispensable part of the educational institution. Yet philosophy has never been a leading institution. So to become an implicit dominant ontology a philosophy is normally adopted by another institution with greater status. Subsequently, both philosophy and institution are altered. The philosophy is no longer free to develop on its own but has become “the adopted property” of the other institution and the “instrument of coercion” in the fulfillment of that institution’s goals (IS, 222). The institution changes in that “As an originative force it may be that an institution dies in taking up its role as a leading institution .... The man of action . . . substitutes for the man of contemplation” (IS, 234). Ultimately, nothing remains unchanged, for “As the concrete ontology of a leading institution becomes the implicit dominant ontology of a society, there is a general alteration in the atmosphere .... the ethos, which is so pervasive, emanates from the leading institution” (IS, 233). The official philosophy even partially determines the history of speculative philosophy and science, for the contributions of creative individuals are “usually judged by how far they are, or are not, consistent with the dominant ontology; if the work of individuals is in harmony with it, they are elevated; if not, they are exiled, punished or perhaps even executed” (IS, 307). Since institutions are basically means whereby societies wrestle with problems they have not been able to solve (IS, 178), if the problem with which the leading institution is primarily concerned becomes less important, or is solved, or if the institution becomes ineffective due to environmental changes, there ceases to be a reason for continuing to apply the official philosophy. With the evaporation of reasons for belief, only certitude remains; and “the less rational the ground for belief is, the greater the certitude” (IS, 310). Unimaginative dogmatism is the senility of applied philosophy, and it is inevitable since “no more than a certain number of consequences can be drawn in action from a given set of beliefs. When these have been run through, nothing more remains to be done except repeat . . .” (IS, 311). The institution declines and its philosophy eventually yields to another.

      However, since pure philosophy, pure science, or pure art have never been leading institutions, it is difficult to say whether the usual history of application is a necessary or only a contingent feature of the pattern of social progress. Certainly societies have not seen the virtue in placing abstract pursuits high on their lists of important problems. If a society did adopt philosophy as its leading institution, perhaps the future of applied philosophy would be quite different from its past. One might speculate that under those conditions, for example, the method of science would eventually replace the method of authority in determining generally accepted belief. The great practical dilemma is that in [814] order to make theoretical pursuits supremely important, society has first to realize that “chief among the elements that we ought to undertake to control is the theory of reality, the theory of knowledge and the moral code . . .” (IS, 389). Here we have the analogue in Feibleman’s philosophy to Plato’s problem of how to establish the Republic.

III

      Does philosophy exist in the unspoken modes of belief and practice as well as in explicit thought and communication? Taking the preceding exposition as an argument for this hypothesis, I think it shows it to be a plausible abduction from the available data. However, among the problems I find in Feibleman’s position, one is sufficiently serious to require further attention. His assertion that the ideal for cultural ontology is approximation to the ontology of ”the universe of nature” (THC, 93) is most perplexing. My doubt about the propriety of this allegation has both ontological and epistemological motivations.

      The ontological motivation lies in the necessity that whatever conformity is possible between the cultural form of existence and the natural order must already hold, if culture be the highest level of existence and nature the remainder of the universe of existence. Although I would not rule out the possibility of a residue of sheer chance in nature, the lowest levels of existence display more or less unbroken conformity to their ontological assumptions. The higher levels, to the extent that they are constituted by lower levels, just to that extent conform to the laws of lower levels. A man, insofar as he is physical, always obeys the laws of physics. However, the lower levels do not determine, but are only necessary conditions for, the higher forms of organization, which are ‘higher’ precisely because they encompass a range of possibility not available to their less complex constituents. Accordingly, implicit ontologies should constitute an ascending series from the minimum ontology of physical existence to the maximum ontology of culture. For this reason, any culture approximating to non-cultural ontology would seem to be approaching existential insipidity. For the same reason. Feibleman’s claim that freedom is a special case of determinism seems odd. If freedom consists in an increased range of options for realization out of the realm of possibility, clearly the higher the level of existence, the more freedom. Thus determinism should be a special case of freedom for anyone who takes culture as the empirical analogy of his metaphysics. On that analogy, determined behavior would be that deficient mode of existence peculiar to entities relatively limited in possibility; it could be described as ontological stupidity, consisting as it does in relative inability to entertain a future unlike the past. I rather suspect Feibleman confuses freedom with chance, which is the absence both of freedom and lawfulness. The only alternative would be inconsistent application of the cultural analogy. [815]

      Surely the problem of the ideal culture, from the ontological perspective, is actualizing the best possible culture from the total range of possibility actualizable at that level of existence. The actualized ideal would certainly conform to the rest of nature, but so equally would any lesser actualization, including the worst possible culture, should that exist. Feibleman could be interpreted as agreeing with this when he says that we should seek “that philosophy whose application to society will permit the most complete attainment of what can be consistent” (IS, 389; also cf. O, 524). Perhaps the statement in THC is merely an inadvertency; or perhaps in the ten years between THC and IS the notion of ‘agreement with nature’ has been replaced with the notion of ‘maximum attainment.’

      On the epistemological side, the theory of implicit philosophy entails that knowing be culturally conditioned. The objects of knowledge, even those located outside culture, are such as to conform to social requirements, since “Men’s conception of the relations between nature and culture is a function of modifications of their own social relations” (C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, hereafter SM, 117). Feibleman admits that culture is the most inclusive realm of empirical reality presently known. How then could one living within that inclusive form propose its approximating to anything other than an improved form of culture without committing a reductionist fallacy? How could the ideal of cultural ontology be intelligible save as an ontology of the ideal culture? Of course, the ontology of the ideal culture would presumably be one which adequately harmonized our experience of all the empirical levels, from the physical to the cultural. Although it still sounds a bit strange to me, I suppose one might speak of approximating to the ontology of the natural world, meaning thereby a relationship existing within culture and not between it and some external reality. In belief, such a cultural ontology would be felt as the perfect complementariness of the natural and cultural orders. In application, it would be the life of the natural society. Perhaps this is what Feibleman means to say. At least it seems possible to identify it with that unity of “freshness and novelty of change together with the dependability of permanence” which is one of his alternative characterizations of the final goal of existence (O, 524).

IV

      Does the theory of implicit and applied philosophy have worthwhile consequences for the understanding and enhancement of experience? As has been shown, Feibleman would say that the final answer to this question could be obtained only via thorough application–a systematic trial which might well require centuries to complete. I suppose that is technically correct; but some possibly advantageous applications come immediately to mind. I shall limit myself to mentioning three. First, the theory yields a superior interpretation of explicit [816] philosophy and especially of the history of philosophy. Second, it provides an intelligible basis for a science of culture. Third, it permits a radical revision of the prevailing concept of the relationship between society and nature. The first two advantages are primarily theoretical and are related in that in each case the major virtue lies in being able to construe the discipline involved as a science with a specific empirical field, a task notoriously difficult and probably impossible under currently prevailing theories of philosophical knowledge. The third advantage is primarily practical and may have momentous consequences for the future of mankind. The first two stress the concept of implicit philosophy, the third the concept of applied philosophy.

      The recent philosopher who has best shown that the theory of implicit philosophy allows for the existence of an explicit philosophical science is R. G. Collingwood. Collingwood’s term for what Feibleman would call an unconsciously believed postulate is “absolute presupposition” (An Essay on Metaphysics, hereafter EM, 31―32) and his most nearly equivalent, although rather more restrictive, term for what Feibleman would call pure ontology is “metaphysics” (EM, 40―41). He defines metaphysics as “the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking” (EM, 47). So defined it is not only clear that metaphysics is a science but also perfectly clear, at least to anyone familiar with historical thinking, that it is a branch of the science of history (EM, 59).

      Collingwood says that the metaphysician investigates the presuppositions of persons through analyzing the records of their thought. If he is successful in discovering what has been presupposed by a single person,

this fact makes it probable that the same presupposition has been made by other persons having in general what may be called the same cultural equipment as himself . . . [and] correspondingly improbable that it has been made by persons whose cultural equipment was noticeably different. At the same time let it be understood that probabilities are not history, which demands proof; and that the only way to prove that somebody has made or has not made a certain absolute presupposition is to analyze the records of his thought and find out. (EM, 60)

      Here Collingwood differs from Feibleman with regard to method, but apparently not with regard to conclusions. Collingwood wishes to prove something for an individual instance and subsequently to generalize to the entire class. Feibleman wishes to establish what we must accept about the whole class in order that we may find such members in it as the historian is able to procure for us. Collingwood emphasizes documentary evidence produced by individuals, Feibleman cultural and artifactual evidence produced by institutions and societies. Clearly, the methods are not entirely incompatible; [817} and the practicing historian uses both, his emphasis depending upon whether he begins with more information about the individual or more about the culture.

      There is a logical and an empirical advantage to Feibleman’s approach. The logical advantage resides in the correctness of his position that ontology is prior to epistemology. If we have not already accepted the objective reality of shared beliefs informing the subconscious of each individual in the same culture, it is impossible to infer from knowledge of one person’s presuppositions anything whatsoever about those of another. The inference may be only probable; but the probability is grounded in an assumption that presuppositions are ordinarily social not individual. The empirical advantage is that Feibleman stresses the rÔle of the institutional hierarchy, religious and moral practices, and communal artifacts in providing knowledge of the implicit dominant ontology. In using such evidence, we move directly from the empirical consequences to the socially accepted system of belief, and not, as in the case of the individually authored document, to the writer and thence to the culture. In some cases, as for example in our knowledge of the presuppositions of the ancient Sumerians, we know rather a lot about the Zeitgeist and almost nothing about the mind of any individual. In other cases, such as interpreting the fragments of the pre-Socratics, prior knowledge of the predominant myths, linguistic practices, and even trade routes is essential for sound conclusions about the beliefs of individuals. Collingwood expresses his view of history as “all history is the history of thought” (An Autobiography, hereafter A, 110); and this way of putting it may lead him somewhat astray, for we tend to think of thoughts as belonging to the persons who express them. We may then slip into thinking that the beliefs manifest in the expressed thoughts of individuals exist in those persons, which is analogous to thinking that the Pythagorean theorem exists in the triangle presently before me. Feibleman distinguishes between beliefs, which, if deeply held, are social, and conscious thought, which is more personal. The analysis of social phenomena can provide the most direct knowledge of belief. At the same time–and this is the truth in Collingwood’s position–history is the history of the great thinkers insofar as they are the sources of those novel thoughts which produce significant alteration of belief. Incidentally, Collingwood does sometimes make historical claims which do not detour through the minds of specific persons, as all historians do (see, e.g. A, 100, 120―146; also see The Principles of Art, chs. xiv―xv); so his mistake may be merely verbal.

      What then of philosophy as a science? The generally accepted conclusion that most of the statements of individual philosophers do not belong to science seems well founded; and I will shortly suggest a reason for this. However, philosophical statements are certainly data for historical science, and in the case of the history of philosophy, the most important data. To uncover the beliefs underlying those statements is a task for historical science; and unless [818] that task be reasonably well advanced, the overt claims remain unintelligible because we know not what beliefs they interpret. Whether certain implicit beliefs are held by philosophers of a certain cultural tradition in a certain era is as much an empirical fact capable of scientific determination as it is an empirical fact whether the atmosphere exerts a certain pressure on the surface of certain objects at a specific time and place. The specific techniques for determining the two kinds of fact may differ, but the general method is identical. If philosophy is to some degree occupied with the discovery of what beliefs were in fact held by great philosophers and their contemporaries, it is to that degree a science. That it is necessarily so occupied is evident from the fact that all philosophical problems have histories.

      A word needs to be said about a certain error, which Collingwood explicitly denounces (see A, ch. vii) and which I think Feibleman is committed to repudiating. Many philosophers, of whom Aristotle is the most renowned but by no means the worst offender, apparently believe that the history of previous philosophy can be read as a series of half-baked attempts to think that which they themselves clearly discern. This is of course not science; it is not even good science fiction. The history of philosophy reads off the accepted beliefs from the explicit testimony and then shows how the testimony interprets the beliefs, or wrestles with problems occasioned by the beliefs. It must be emphasized that the historian necessarily undertakes his analysis with an hypothesis in mind, but it is an hypothesis about what questions, arising from contemporary belief, the historical figure was struggling with. It must not be an hypothesis about how the historical figure attempted, and of course failed, to solve problems arising from beliefs constituting the common sense of the so-called historian of philosophy. Noting that Professor Feibleman sometimes uses what he calls the history of philosophy in a fashion rather like Aristotle at his worst (see O, ch. i), I doubt that he sees the full implications of his theory in this instance. Attempting to interpret past philosophers as if they had nothing better to do than to solve the interpreter’s problems is not history of philosophy; it is, at best, edification.

      Not only does the theory of implicit philosophy provide a basis for understanding one mode of explicit philosophy as an historical science, it also provides insight into the character of creative philosophizing, which is the more popular mode of philosophical thought. Here the philosopher is interested in solving problems occasioned by contemporary belief hitherto unresolved or unacknowledged; and he proposes his suggestions for adoption and application. However, ideas once proposed begin independent careers of their own. Recognizing this, Feibleman correctly emphasizes that the creative philosopher’s aim is the improvement of the unconscious and that his success or failure will be decided by future events. Collingwood also holds an analogous, although far from identical, view (see An Essay on Philosophical Method, ch. x). This mode [819] of explicit philosophizing is not science but prophesy. Philosophy, as science wedded to prophesy, is a culture’s conscious bridge between the higher generalities of the immutable past and those of the imaginable future.

      The study of culture can be interpreted in a fashion similar to the history of philosophy. In fact, Collingwood apparently finds no difference at all, in that he includes the study of the presuppositions of Arabic, Indian and Chinese thought, and even the presuppositions of primitive and prehistoric peoples in ‘metaphysics’ (EM, 71). Indeed, the investigative method is essentially identical, only being applied primarily within a spatial orientation instead of, or in addition to, a temporal one. The objectivity of science requires a certain logical distance between the inquirer and his field. In the case of the physical sciences the distance is provided by the relative simplicity and constancy of the set of assumed beliefs present in the objects studied, in the case of history by differences in the inherited common sense which have crept in with the passage of time, and in the case of culture by long-standing differences in the dominant ontologies due to geographical and political isolation. The science of culture should operate most efficiently when working from data provided by foreign cultures for the same reason that history finds it very difficult to discern the reasons operative in recent events, although in both cases the insights achieved at some remove may furnish otherwise unattainable understanding when applied close to hand. Feibleman’s speculations about the science of culture lead him to the conclusion that it involves no differences in principle from other sciences but that it does not yet exist (in 1946) and that it will not exist until social scientists grant hypotheses precedence over the mere collection of data (see THC, 35―354). Since that judgment was passed, much has been done towards establishing the science of culture, and it is interesting how closely the first steps correspond to he theory of implicit philosophy.

      Claude Lévi-Strauss is the most illustrious of those who have undertaken, within the past dozen years, the attempt to establish the science of culture, sing the facts of cultural existence as evidence for general hypotheses rather hen as mere exotica. A passage from his Structural Anthropology (1958) identifies the method and empirical field of this science.

In anthropology as in linguistics, therefore, it is not comparison that supports generalization, but the other way around. If, as we believe to be the case, the unconscious activity of the mind consists in imposing forms upon content, and if these forms are fundamentally the same for all minds–ancient and modern, primitive and civilized (as the study of the symbolic function, expressed in language, so strikingly indicates)–it is necessary and sufficient to grasp the unconscious structure underlying each institution and each custom, in order to obtain a principle of interpretation valid for other institutions and other customs, provided of course that the analysis is carried far enough. (21) [820]

      As for the means whereby the unconscious structures will themselves be revealed, he writes, “Here anthropological method and historical method converge” (Ibid.). The major difference seems to be that whereas history, as Collingwood sees it, deals with specific problems in specific eras of specific cultural traditions, anthropology seeks the presuppositions of humanity as a whole. The method is basically the same, but the field is vastly enlarged. In a later volume Lévi-Strauss uses this method to analyze so-called primitive thought and shows that once its “unconscious structure” is extricated from the empirical data the mind of the primitive is revealed as being formally just as logical as that of the modern–that they constitute “two distinct modes of scientific thought” (SM, 117). Whether Lévi-Strauss’s conclusions will endure I would at present hesitate to say. Certainly the hypothesis of structural identity underlying all human, perhaps all living (SM, 252), reason is an interesting and audacious one for which a good deal of persuasive evidence has already been presented.

      However, the philosophical significance of the mere existence of this enterprise is staggering. Many, perhaps most Anglo-American, philosophers, steeped in the tradition of subjectivistic empiricism, continue to believe knowledge arises from sense particulars via some sort of associative magic and that universals never explain but need explaining. Although this starting point has never yielded a satisfactory account even of the physical sciences, here it is repudiated in the foundations of a science. To the extent that the science is successful it will have shown how conscious thought and action and ultimately all that man does or makes are intelligible only as interpretations of certain formal principles. The a priori metaphysics of empiricism will have been undermined by a genuinely empirical discipline. The a priori theory of proper names as nonsignificant tags for particulars has already been left in shambles by Lévi-Strauss (SM, chs. vi―vii). A philosophy founded on an objective ontological conception of reason, on the contrary, should be able to construe an emerging science of culture as a specialized application of its own system. A philosophy like Feibleman’s, which takes culture as its “empirical analogy” (O, 264―265; S. C. Pepper would say “root metaphor”), should be even more adaptable to the undertaking.

      The usefulness of the theory of applied philosophy may be seen in analyzing problems of human ecology. The prevailing conscious understanding of the relation between society and nature is that of informing or expropriating power to raw material, and consequently the problems arising for societies because of the recalcitrance of nature are regarded as technological problems. This view is derivative from a metaphysics whose beginnings lie in prehistory. Perhaps the first beliefs as to the relation of man to nature were that the human is weak and insignificant, that nature is strong and awesome, and that the human is enslaved to nature. The worship of the great gods may be the mythical souvenir of this early view. However, at least since the technological revolution of the [821] Neolithic Age, the increasingly dominant belief has been that the human exists to conquer and rule island territories within nature. The first civilizations flourished in the almost ready-made islands of fertile river valleys, where practical deductions from general assumptions could enjoy exceedingly long and successful careers due to environmental stability. But man has become more and more daring. Since the development of modern scientific technology (which is the applied form of the Cartesian dualism of subjective and purposive mental substances which manipulate a mechanically ordered and passive world of extended substances), no environment has been considered unconquerable. Now nearly all life supporting processes upon Earth and in nearby portions of space are subject to varying degrees of cultural control.

      Is the older ideology of conquest suitable for the present victorious age? All social analogies suggest that it is not; dictatorial occupation invariably produces inefficiency, resistance, and perhaps revolution. Yet we retain the unconscious ideology of conquest both with respect to natural and political ideals, and because of our continued belief we regard our most serious problems as merely tactical affairs. Hence we speak more of liquidating the current war than of extending our notion of ‘tolerance’ or of possibly restricting our notion of ‘freedom.’ We speak of controlling automobile exhaust, manufacturing phosphate free detergents, and such like rather than of questioning the large scale applicability of the ideal of conquering nature which has been profitable on the small scale. Of course questioning previously successful principles is maladaptive unless there is already a certain failure of application apprehended in feeling and in action, since in stable situations adherence to the tried and true is far more efficient than thoughtful choice. However, given our Angst, our increasingly violent behavior, our befuddlement at environmental deterioration, the revival of astrology, and the popularity of Heideggerian philosophy, I take it as obvious that we live in unstable times.

      For one who conceives the present technological culture as a field of applied beliefs which may be obsolete or inconsistent, the practical issues are no longer technical. On the contrary, they are ontological. What is in question is man’s relation to man and man’s place in nature. It is no longer non-cultural nature that has to be changed but ourselves insofar as we hold a certain concept of nature. Thus philosophizing becomes especially significant. Only theorists who can show us a persuasive and popularizable picture of ourselves as natural beings with a limited rÔle in the natural order can lay the foundations for conceptual reorientation. A conceptual reorganization may be necessary, perhaps along lines which would replace the idea of conquering nature with the possibly more viable concept of cooperation. The Cartesian metaphysics of subjective egocentrism paralleled with dead mechanical nature is more than just an intellectual error. When applied, ideas can save; but if they are erroneous they may be lethal. [822]

      Perhaps I have not shown that speaking of the unspoken modes of philosophy is the best way to speak. However, it clearly provides insight not otherwise obtainable, and it vastly enlarges one’s concept of the field of philosophy and its range of scientific and practical significance. I suppose if one “is a lazy or a stupid man, he may find this enlargement embarrassing” (Collingwood, EM, 71, quoted out of context), but I trust most will find it at least interesting, if not valuable.

Bibliography

Collingwood, R. G.: An Autobiography. London: Oxford University Press 1939. An Essay on Philosophical Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1933.

– The Principles of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1938.

Dye, J. W.: “Cultural Relativity and the Logic of Philosophy,” Tulane Studies in Philosophy XVI (1967) 37―52.

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– The Two-Story World, ed. Huntington Cairns. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966.

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– The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1966. ‘’

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