SENTIMENTALIST AND VOLUNTARIST THEORIES.

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We have

seen (162) how Reid with the Scottish school of philosophers

opposed to the scepticism of Hume the indubitable character of

the " principles of common sense," but without analysing and

justifying the intrinsic reasons of the common assent of men to

such principles, or meeting boldly the attacks of scepticism on

the claims of intellectual evidence. If, however, the individual

intelligence fails to justify its assents positively on grounds of

evidence, its ultimate dictate will be scepticism. This was felt

by a French student of the Scottish philosophy, Theodore Jouffroy

(1796-1842), who, concluding that truth is unattainable by reason,

maintained that scepticism can be and ought to be avoided by-

believing in spite of reason, and thus basing human certitude on

" an act of faith, blind but irresistible, in man s power to attain

to truth ". l This is what is known as the theory of " blind

faith ".

Already, in Germany, Jacobi (1743-1819), admitting the

main conclusion of Kant s Critique of Pure Reason, that the

human " understanding " ( V erst and} cannot transcend the limits

of sense experience, proclaimed that man is endowed with a

higher faculty than this "understanding" which reasons logically

from the data of sense. This higher faculty ( Vernunft : " reason ")

works in a hidden, mysterious way in the suprasensible domain

of the true, the good, and the beautiful, as a sort of spiritual feeling

or sentiment (Geistesgefuhl}. It is prior to, and deeper than, all

reasoning : we cannot seize or analyse it : we simply believe

in it and accept its dictates. It has not to do with phenomena

but gets us into contact with noumena, with reality. Through

1 Cf. TURNER, History of Philosophy, p. GoS ; MHRCIKR, op. cit., So, pp. 176-7.

ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 319

it we escape scepticism and rise superior to all the doubts and

limitations of the mere logical faculty, the understanding. 1

Thus, human certitude is based ultimately not on any

intelligent apprehension of reality as object of the human under

standing, but on an inevident dictate of sentiment or feeling.

This "philosophy of sentiment," sentiment or feeling variously

described as "rational," "moral," "esthetic," "religious,"

" spiritual," was widely espoused after Kant s time as superior

to the so-called " reasoned " systems with their alleged im

possible and deceptive claims for the supremacy of intellectual

evidence as the basis of certitude. 2

Although " feeling " or " sentiment " can scarcely claim to

be a third department of mental life, adequately distinct from

the domain of " cognition," and from " appetite " or " cona

tion," still the distinction has been widely recognized since the

eighteenth century (46) ; and accordingly the theories which

base human certitude ultimately on sentiment or feeling are

distinguished from the " voluntarist " theories, which, following

the moral dogmatism of Kant s Critique of Practical Reason, seek

the ultimate basis of certitude in the domain of the will. In all

voluntarist theories the mental act which reaches beyond mere

appearances and attains to reality is not an act of intellectual

apprehension, not an assent of reason, but an act of belief,

motived or determined by the will. Of this we have a minor

illustration in the French modification of the main or Kantian

theory, the " neo-criticism " and "philosophy of belief" pro

pounded by Renouvier (b. i8i8). 3 Kant, as we shall see, formu

lated three postulates for the practical reason. Renouvier and

the neo-Kantians contend that underlying all demonstration

there is a postulate, at the root of every assent there is a belief

accorded to a free dictate of the will. "According to the

classic intellectualism certitude is caused by the necessitating

action of objective evidence on the intelligence ; according to

the philosophy of belief, on the contrary, it is in ultimate analysis

1 This so-called higher faculty, distinct from intellect or understanding, is an

arbitrary fiction. Its postulation, by Jacobi, is due to this philosopher s defective

psychological analysis of the origin of our intellectual knowledge of the positively

immaterial or suprasensible domain of reality. All our knowledge of this domain

is attained by intellect through analogical concepts derived from the domain of

sense. C/. MERCIER, op. cit., 85, pp. IQO-I ; vol. i., ch. ix.

z lbid., % 79, pp. 175-6.

3 Cf. UEBERWEG-HEINZE, Geschichteder Philosophie, iv., pp. 396 sqq. ; MERCIER,

op. cit., 81, pp. 177-80; 87, p. 198.

320 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

the will, with all its concrete, personal springs of action, that

must and does freely determine all certitude, whether spontaneous

or reflex, and which consequently establishes the fundamental

distinction between truth and error." l But they do not openly

go so far as formally to identify truth and error with the re

spective objects of our likes and dislikes. Rather they look to

"a general accord of thinkers " as at least a provisional criterion

of truth. Such truth and certitude as are thus attainable

are, of course, not absolute or objective, but only relative and

subjective and moral : something like the " probabilities " of

Carneades and Cicero (37). But we must be content with them,

as the best attainable. It is plain, they argue, that there is

no discoverable objective standard which would be a sure test

of absolute truth : because even amongst the most sincere and

highly gifted thinkers we find mutually contradictory views,

some regarding as false and inevident the very judgments which

others proclaim to be evidently credible and true. And finally

we can see by reflection and experience that there is no single

judgment, however "self-evident," against which reason cannot

raise doubts and difficulties. Unless, therefore, the will freely

interpose to arrest reflection and stifle doubt, there can be no

certitude. So that certitude is ultimately a matter not of the

reason but of the will.

We have given those few illustrations of anti-intellectualist

theories of knowledge and certitude in order to reveal the

general drift of such theories. We can now offer a general

argument in criticism of the attitude and implications revealed

in them : an argument which will tell equally against Kant s

philosophy of the Practical Reason, against Pragmatism, and all

similar tendencies in more recent philosophy.

All such theories may be described by reason of their op

position to absolute scepticism, and their rejection of intellectu

ally objective tests of truth and motives of certitude as forms

of " subjectivist dogmatism". However they may differ among

themselves in detail, they all agree in basing human certitude

at least concerning the fundamental metaphysical, moral and

religious convictions that are of deepest import to mankind not

on intellectual grounds, on motives which reflecting reason can or

ought to evaluate, but on motives which determine assent or

belief by their exclusive appeal to affective needs, impulses,

1 MKRCIEK, op. cit., p. 179.

ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 321

instincts, of the thinking subject. For all of them alike the last

word of critical philosophy must be sought not in objective evi

dence, not in the appeal of reality to the intellect, but in its

subjective influence on affective dispositions of the soul.

Now, no affective disposition or inclination of man s nature,

whatever form it may take, or however it be described, can issue

a dictate which will be accepted, or ought to be accepted by man,

constituted as he is, and endowed as he is with the reflective

faculty of reason, intellect, intelligence, as the supreme and

ultimate motive of certitude.

For the subjective source, the affective disposition of will, or

feeling, or sentiment, from which such dictate emanates, must

issue this dictate either blindly, or else only because and in so far

as it is itself enlightened.

But if it acts blindly it cannot reasonably and dejure satisfy,

and de facto it does not under the test of reflection satisfy, a being

endowed with the faculty of rational reflection on the grounds

and motives of his assents. He may be inclined instinctively

to trust those natural tendencies ; he may earnestly wish to safe

guard the fundamental moral and religious convictions which are

so intimately bound up with man s individual and social dignity

and well-being. But endowed as he is with the power of rational

reflection he cannot reasonably rest in an instinctive trust in such

natural tendencies, wishes, desires, etc. ; he cannot help inquiring

how and why they are there, or how and why they are what they

are. His nature as a rational being impels him to seek enlighten

ment regarding those tendencies, and regarding the real value

or validity, the real credibility and grounds and truth, of the

judgments which they dictate : and, should he in this reflective

inquiry fail to find satisfactory reasons for what they dictate,

should they prove blind, impervious to intellect, unjustifiable be

fore the bar of reflecting reason, he could not possibly escape the

issue of universal scepticism.

If, on the other hand, the dictates of those affective tendencies

be enlightened, in other words if reason precedes and guides them,

if they are reasonable and reasoned, justifiable and justified, this

must be because there is intellectual insight into the sufficiency

of their grounds and motives, because in other words the grounds

and motives of such dictates do ultimately make an adequate

evidential appeal (153-4) to intellect, so that such dictates are

ultimately based on a motive of the intellectual order. But in

VOL. II. 21

322 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

this case certitude is ultimately based not subjectively on the

dictate of an affective tendency, but objectively on the evidential

appeal of the content of the judgment to the intellect which ap

prehends and assents to it as true. And so, subjectivist dog

matism is abandoned.

We see, then, that for a being endowed as man is with the

faculty of intellectual reflection, the ultimate motive of certitude

cannot be of the subjective, psychological, non-intellectual,

affective order : that subjectivist dogmatism can be only another

name for scepticism.