7 A recorded lecture by A. F. Holmes on ‘Hegel on Absolute Spirit’ from his recorded series A History of Philosophy can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGVhjGb6eRY.
8 You can also listen to a podcast interview for Philosophy Bites with R. Stern at https://philosophybites.com/2010/04/robert-stern-on-hegel-on-dialectic.html in which Stern discusses Hegel’s dialectic. In addition, you will find a Philosophy Now Radio Show podcast (23), in which G. Bartley discusses Hegel’s philosophy with K. Deligiorgi and P. Benson at https://philosophynow.org/podcasts/The_Ideas_of_GWF_Hegel.
Notes
* G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes [1807], English version adapted from Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (London: Sonnenschein, 1910), extracts from Preface, Introduction, Section A, Parts I, II, III, and Section B, Part IV (pp. 21–3, 25, 90–1, 104–5, 110–11, 113–14, 125–6, 129, 164–5).
1 1 Though the terms ‘thesis’, ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis’ are handy labels for referring to the structure of Hegel’s dialectic, it should be noted that they are not used by Hegel himself. Moreover, not all of Hegel’s translations and sequences have this ‘three-step’ development, though it is characteristic of many of them.
10 Beliefs Judged by Their Practical Effects: William James, What Pragmatism Means*
Our next extract illustrates a radically new approach to the problems of knowledge and belief which was developed by a number of American philosophers known as ‘pragmatists’. They took a robustly down-to-earth approach to the abstruse theoretical disputes that had traditionally preoccupied philosophers, and sought to apply a straightforward test when deciding whether to adopt a given belief, namely, what are the practical effects of accepting it? As Charles Sanders Peirce, generally recognized as the chief originator of the movement, expressed it in a paper published in the Popular Science Monthly in 1878, ‘Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.’1
The great American philosopher William James was highly influential in developing and promoting the new pragmatist outlook, and in our extract (from a lecture given in 1907) he attacks the very idea of ‘finality in truth’. Theories are ‘instruments’ not final answers. Belief formation is a practical process of constant adjustment and accommodation, where we strive, with ‘minimum disturbance’ overall, to reconcile our existing body of beliefs with new experiences. Furthermore, ‘there is no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact’. With its stress on the role of experience, the general character of the pragmatist outlook, as James explains, is empiricist rather than rationalist (see above, introductions to extracts 5 and 8). For the pragmatist, no theory is a ‘transcript of reality’, but our ideas are true in so far as they ‘enable us to get into relation with other parts of our experience’.
For some of the pragmatists (Peirce is an example) this leads to a scientifically oriented conception of knowledge and truth, where observation and experimental verification are the most important touchstones (compare Part II, extract 11, below). But James takes a more instrumental or utilitarian line, arguing that beliefs are to be accepted in so far as they afford practical benefits for ‘concrete life’. Hence, towards the end of our extract, he suggests that a pragmatist, unlike a hardline empiricist, will not necessarily rule out belief in God. For there is good reason to accept an idea or adopt a belief if it is ‘helpful in life’s practical struggles’. Some may object that this confuses the question of the truth of a belief, or of whether there is good evidence for holding it, with the question of whether it comforts us or otherwise helps us in life. But James points out that the ‘vital benefits’ of a belief have to be assessed against the vital benefits of other beliefs with which it may clash (e.g., belief in God may seem inconsistent with other vital parts of my belief system that I am unwilling to jettison). Whether God is accepted or ruled out as a result of this process is something James leaves open. For pragmatism offers no final answers, no hotline to the truth; we are left with a picture of belief as a flexible system where ‘the only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted.’ It is a picture that a significant number of philosophers have continued to find attractive, right down to the present day.
The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.
A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word pragma meaning action, from which our words ‘practice’ and ‘practical’ come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr Charles Peirce in 1878, in an article entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ … Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve – what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all …
It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere – no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one. …
Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the empiricist