Part 4

History as individual judgment--The individual element and historical sources: relics and narrative--The intuitive faculty in historical research--The intuitive faculty in historical exposition. Resemblance of history and art. Difference between history and art--The predicate or logical element in history--Vain attempts to eliminate it--Extension of historical predicates beyond the limits of mere existence--Asserted unsurmountable variance in judging and presenting historical facts and consequent demand for a history without judgment--Restriction of variance, and exclusion of apparent variances--Overcoming of variances by means of deep study of the concepts--Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning--Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique--Various legitimate meanings of protests against historical subjectivity--The demand for a theory of historical factors--Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements--Empiricity of the division of the historical process into four stages--Divisions founded upon the historical object--Logical division according to the forms of the spirit--The empirical division of the representative material--Empirical concepts in history; and the false theory as to the function they fulfil there--Hence also the claim to reduce history to a natural science; and the thesis of the practical character of history--Distinction between historical facts and non-historical facts; and its empirical value--The professional prejudice and theory of the practical character of history.

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy--Historical quality of the culture required of the philosopher--Apparent objections--Communication of philosophy as changing of philosophy--Perpetuity of this changing--The overcoming and continuous progress of philosophy--Meaning of the eternity of philosophy--The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc.; and its meaning--Philosophy as criticism and polemic--Identity of philosophy and history--Didactic divisions, and other reasons for the apparent duality--Note.

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature--Elimination of an equivocation concerning this practical character--Impossibility of unifying them in one concept--Impossibility of introducing into them rigorous divisions--Laws in the natural sciences, and so-called prevision--Empirical character of naturalistic laws--The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning--Pretended impossibility of exceptions to natural laws--Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity--Nature as practical activity--Nature in its gnoseological significance, as naturalistic or empirical method--The illusions of materialists and dualists--Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior reality in respect to a superior reality--The naturalistic method, and the natural sciences as extending to superior not less than to inferior reality--Claim for such extension, and effective existence of what is claimed--Historical foundation of the natural sciences--The question whether history be foundation or crown of thought--Naturalists as historical investigators--Prejudices as to non-historicity of nature--Philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and effect of philosophy upon them--Effect of natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation--Reason of these errors. Naturalistic philosophy--Philosophy as the destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE

Idea of a mathematical science of nature--Various definitions of mathematics--Mathematical procedure--Apriority of mathematical principles--Contradictoriness of the a priori principles. They are not thinkable, and not intuitive--Identification of mathematics with abstract pseudoconcepts--The ultimate end of mathematics: to enumerate, and, therefore, to aid the determination of the single. Its place--Particular questions concerning mathematics--Rigour of mathematics and rigour of philosophy--Loves and hates between the two forms--Impossibility of reducing the empirical sciences to the mathematical; and the empirical limits of the mathematical science of nature--Decreasing utility of mathematics in the loftiest spheres of the real.

VII

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

Theory of the forms of knowledge and doctrine of the categories--Problem of classification of the sciences; its empirical nature--Falsely philosophic character that it assumes--Coincidence of that problem with the search for the categories, when understood with philosophic rigour--Forms of knowledge and literary-didactic forms--Prejudices derived from the latter--Methodical prologues to scholastic manuals, their impotence--Capricious multiplication of the sciences--The sciences and professional prejudices.

THIRD PART

THE FORMS OF ERROR AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

ERROR AND ITS NECESSARY FORMS

Error as negativity; impossibility of a special treatment of errors--Positive and existing errors--Positive errors as practical acts--Practical acts and not practical errors--Economically practical acts, not morally practical acts--Doctrine of error, and doctrine of necessary forms of error--Logical nature of all theoretical errors--History of errors and phenomenology of error--Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts--Errors derived from errors--Professionally and nationality of errors.

ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM

Definition of these forms--Æstheticism--Empiricism--Positivism, the philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic--Empiricism and facts--Bankruptcy of Empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition--Evolutionistic positivism and rationalistic positivism--Mathematicism--Symbolical mathematics--Mathematics as a form of demonstration of philosophy--Errors of mathematical philosophy--Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.

III

THE PHILOSOPHISM

Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis--Philosophism, logicism or panlogicism--Philosophy of history--Contradictions in its assumptions--Philosophy of history and false analogies--Distinction between Philosophy of history and books so entitled--Merits of these, philosophic and historical--Philosophy of nature--Its substantial identity with Philosophy of history--Contradictions of Philosophy of nature--Books entitled Philosophy of nature--Contemporary seekings for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings.

THE MYTHOLOGISM

Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis. The mythologism --Essence of myth--Problems relating to theory of myth--Myth and religion--Identity of the two spiritual forms--Religion and philosophy--Conversion of errors, the one into the other--Conversion of the mythologism into philosophism (theology) and of the philosophism into the mythologism (mythology of nature, historical apocalypses, etc.)--Scepsis.

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM

Dualism--Scepsis and scepticism--Mystery--Critique of affirmations of mystery in philosophy--Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism--Mysticism--Errors in other parts of philosophy--Conversion of these errors into one another and into logical errors.

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number --Their logical order--Examples of this order in various parts of philosophy--Erring spirit and spirit of search--Immanence of error in truth--Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth--Search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; the series of errors--Transfiguration of error into tentative or hypothesis in the search so understood--Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis--Immanence of the tentative in error itself as error--Individuals and error--Duplicate aspect of errors--Ultimate form of error: the methodological error or hypotheticism.

VII

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Inseparability of phenomenology of error from the philosophical system--The eternal course and recurrence of errors--Returns to anterior philosophies; and their meaning--False idea of a history of philosophy as history of the successive appearance of the categories and of errors in time--Philosophism case in point of this false view, as is the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy--Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy, and the books which take it as their title or programme--Exact formula: identity of philosophy and history--History of philosophy and philosophic progress--The truth of all philosophies; and criticism of eclecticism--Researches for authors and precursors of truths; reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.