Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T01:23:53.001Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Unity of Modern Problems1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

Of all the sciences, philosophy is the most concrete and comprehensive. The sense of cold, remote spaces which it is apt to generate in us is the result of this very width and concreteness. The philosopher has to condense the many-sided variety of human life and express it through the symbols of a common language. The symbols are at best only semi-transparent. Abstractness descends upon him the moment they become opaque. Philosophy, in fact, is useless to us unless we can see through it. If we cannot, the fault may be ours. If it is the philosopher's, then his failure is a failure to be wide enough or concrete enough. He needs above all to be sympathetically sensitive to the wide range of human interests, because it is this as a whole that he is bidden to systematize. He must give a single answer, and for that he must formulate a single question. Therefore his first problem is to discover the unity of problems.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1929

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Inaugural lecture on appointment to the Grote Chair of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University of London, University College, November 19, 1928.