The Unknowable: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Metaphysics

Description

W. J. Mander presents a history of metaphysics in nineteenth-century Britain. The story focuses on the elaboration of, and differing reactions to, the concept of the unknowable or unconditioned, first developed by Sir William Hamilton in the 1829. The idea of an ultimate but unknowable way that things really are in themselves may be seen as supplying a narrative arc that runs right through the metaphysical systems of the period in question. These thought schemes may be divided into three broad groups which were roughly consecutive in their emergence but also overlapping as they continued to develop. In the first instance there were the doctrines of the agnostics who developed further Hamilton's basic idea that fundamental reality lies for the great part beyond our cognitive reach. These philosophies were followed immediately by those of the empiricists and, in the last third of the century, the idealists: both of these schools of thought--albeit in profoundly different ways--reacted against the epistemic pessimism of the agnostics. Mander offers close textual readings of the main contributions to First Philosophy made by the key philosophers of the period (such as Hamilton, Mansel, Spencer, Mill, and Bradley) as well as some less well known figures (such as Bain, Clifford, Shadworth Hodgson, Ferrier, and John Grote). By presenting, interpreting, criticising, and connecting together their various contrasting ideas, this book explains how the three traditions developed and interacted with one another to comprise the history of metaphysics in Victorian Britain. Cover The Unknowable: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Metaphysics Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: The Unconditioned 1: Sir William Hamilton 1.1 The Way of ‘Learned Ignorance’ 1.2 The Relativity of Knowledge 1.3 The Law of the Conditioned 1.4 Common Sense and the Existence of the Unconditioned 1.5 Hamilton and Kant 1.6 Substance and Adjective 1.7 Space and Time 1.8 Causality 1.9 The Question of Free Will 1.10 God 1.11 Concluding Remarks 2: Henry Longueville Mansel 2.1 The Philosophy of Kant 2.2 Negative Reason: The Impossibility of Thinking of God 2.3 Positive Reason: Belief in the Existence of God 2.4 Theology, Revelation, and Faith 2.5 Mill’s Objections to Mansel 2.6 Space and Time 2.7 Substance, Mind, and Matter 2.8 Causality and Freedom 2.9 Concluding Remarks 3: Herbert Spencer 3.1 Spencer’s Epistemology 3.2 The Religion of the Unknowable 3.3 Science and the Unknowable 3.4 Space, Time, and Matter 3.5 Force and Causation 3.6 Spencer’s Psychology 3.7 Concluding Remarks 4: Thomas Henry Huxley 4.1 Agnosticism and Metaphysics 4.2 Agnosticism and Epistemology 4.3 Huxley on God 4.4 Huxley on Causation 4.5 Huxley on the External World 4.6 Huxley on the Self 4.7 Evolution and Ethics PART II: Empiricist Objections 5: John Stuart Mill 5.1 Mill’s Empiricism and His Attitude towards the Unknowable 5.2 Mill on Time and Space 5.3 Mill on Matter (Phenomenalism) 5.4 Mill on the Self 5.5 Mill on Causation 5.6 Mill on Free Will 5.7 Mill on Laws 5.8 Mill on God and Religion 6: Alexander Bain and George Croom Robertson 6.1 Alexander Bain 6.2 Bain’s Empiricism 6.3 Time and Space 6.4 Phenomenalism and the External World 6.5 Causation, Uniformity, and Force 6.6 The Self, the Mind–Body Relation, and Human Freedom 6.7 Things-in-Themselves 6.8 George Croom Robertson 6.9 Methodological Considerations 6.10 Metaphysical Considerations 7: Shadworth Hollway Hodgson and William Kingdon Clifford 7.1 The Metaphysical Society 7.2 Shadworth Hodgson 7.3 Hodgson’s Methodology 7.4 Causality 7.5 Demonstration of the Material Universe 7.6 Things-in-Themselve 7.7 The Unseen Universe 7.8 William Kingdon Clifford 7.9 Phenomenalism 7.10 Causality 7.11 The Unknowable and Religion 7.12 Clifford’s Metaphysics 8: G. H. Lewes and Karl Pearson 8.1 G. H. Lewes 8.2 Three Examples of Empirical Metaphysics 8.3 Metempirics and the Unknowable 8.4 Karl Pearson 8.5 Pearson and the Centrality of Sense-Impressions 8.6 Some Examples of Pearson’s Reductionism 8.7 Scientism 8.8 Agnosticism and Metaphysics PART III: Idealist Objections 9: James Frederick Ferrier 9.1 Transitional Comments 9.2 Ferrier 9.3 Ferrier’s Conception of Ignorance 9.4 Ferrier’s Conception of the Contradictory 9.5 Relative vs Objective Contradiction 9.6 Ferrier’s Positive System 9.7 Ferrier and British Idealism 10: John Grote and James Hutchison Stirling 10.1 John Grote 10.2 The Method of Philosophy 10.3 The Subject, Idealism, and the Scale of Sensations 10.4 Things-in-Themselves 10.5 Notionalism/Relativism 10.6 James Hutchison Stirling and The Secret of Hegel 10.7 Religion and the Infinite 10.8 Externality 10.9 Protoplasm, Materialism, and Agnosticism 10.10 Hume, Kant, and Causality 11: The British Idealists 11.1 John Caird and the Unknowable 11.2 John Caird on the Growth of Reason 11.3 Edward Caird 11.4 Edward Caird on the Infinite 11.5 Edward Caird contra Spencer’s Dual-Aspect Theory 11.6 Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison 11.7 Henry Jones 12: F. H. Bradley 12.1 Bradley’s Critique of Empiricism 12.2 Bradley’s Critique of the Association of Ideas 12.3 Bradley’s Critique of Things-in-Themselves 12.4 Bradley’s Critique of Correspondence Theory 12.5 Bradley on the Relativity of Knowledge 12.6 Bradley, Collingwood, and Mansel 12.7 Bradley, the Idealist Heretic 12.8 lies beyond any possibility of direct conception.. Feeling 12.9 Degrees of Truth and Reality 12.10 Concluding Comments Bibliography Works published before 1920 Works published after 1920 Index