Reading Notes: June 2nd, 2022

“The absolute identity of subject and object in any form of consciousness we can reach, is no more than a square circle. And to rest the assertion of such knowledge or consciousness on the simple statement that consciousness, in apprehending a dualism, transcends itself, is to leave out the only point demanding attention and proof.”  (Veitch, Introduction to Descartes’ The Method, Meditations and Philosophy, 123) 

“The problem of Philosophy may be said to be twofold: on one side is the question, What do we know? on the other, What is? Obviously the first question has its main interest for us as leading to the second. I put the question as to Knowing first; for it seems to me irrational to put that of Being first, or to attempt to settle any question about Being—about what is—first or apart from Knowing. That is a vain method, as seems to me, though it is professed, but always inconsistently acted upon. Further, I put the question as to knowing not only first, but in this form—What do we know? In these times it will be found pretty frequently put as, What can we know? I have no objection to this form of the question. I think we must in the end come to it. We must consider the question as to the conditions, the reach, the limits of human knowledge. But I distinctly object to its being put first….In a word, we must have Psychology—that is, a study of consciousness in its widest sphere before we can have Metaphysics, or the science of reality; and we must further have psychology in all its fulness before we can have what is called the Theory of Knowledge, for the simple reason that you cannot give the theory of a thing before you know what the thing is, and is in all its completeness. The mistake in ancient philosophy was to begin metaphysics before psychology; the mistake, common enough in modern philosophy, is to begin the theory of knowledge before psychology, and before we have any means of knowing what we know, or knowing knowledge as a fact of experience.” (Veitch, Knowing and Being, 1-4) 

Veitch’s indebtedness to the psychologism and Dualistic-Realisms of Hamilton, Mansel, etc., is unmistakable.  

“All consciousness is consciousness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. We cannot be conscious of a limit unless we are conscious of what is beyond the limit. That which is altogether limited or finite cannot know itself as limited or finite.” (Radhakrishnan, The Idealist View of Life, 169) 

“Even the greatest extension of physiological knowledge will not help us to infer mental activity from brain structure....The most detailed examination of the physical and physiological constitution of the eye will not explain the phenomenon of sight, even as the examination of the form and material of the axe will not explain the act of cutting.” (Radhakrishnan, The Idealist View of Life, 261)