Preliminary Remarks: Modern Philosophy
How the anti-Scholastic movement issued in Modern Philosophy and the plan of the Book.
The anti-Scholastic movement, which originated in the thirteenth century and increased in power and scope during the three following centuries, destroyed the prominence and influence of Scholasticism but did not replace it with any coherent system of its own. Glenn uses this to explain the character of Modern Philosophy: it begins not from a settled body of doctrine but from the critical question of the character and value of human knowledge, and it divides at once into competing schools according to the answer given. The Book is accordingly divided into three Chapters, treating the philosophy of the seventeenth century, that of the eighteenth, and that of the nineteenth and twentieth.
Preliminary Remarks
(17 Century to the Present Day)
The anti-Scholastic movement, which originated in the 13 century and increased in power and scope during the three following centuries, destroyed the prominence and influence of Scholasticism but did not replace it by any complete and comprehensive system of philosophy. Matters philosophical were in a formless ferment.
In the 17 century, however, systematized anti-Scholastic philosophies were formulated by Rene Descartes in France and Holland, and by Francis Bacon in England. Following the lead of these noted philosophers, thinkers of the 17, 18, 19, and 20 centuries have evolved numberless systems of non-Scholastic and anti-Scholastic philosophy, all more or less unstable and ephemeral. Our own day sees continuous changes in the character and principles of the predominating anti-Scholastic systems.
Negatively to characterize modern philosophy we may say, generally speaking, that it rejects the Scholastic doctrines of knowledge, Universals, matter and form, the substantial union of body and spiritual soul in man, and many other cardinal tenets of Scholasticism. Modern philosophy, impatient of anything resembling authority, holds itself strictly apart from connection with Revelation, and refuses to accept the services of revealed truth as its light and guide. Not all modern phi-
losophers are non-Christian, but most are; and it is fair to characterize modern philosophy generally as un-Christian, if not anti-Christian.
Positively considered, modern philosophy is a welter of disagreeing and contradicting systems. Yet these systems have a common note in the fact that they are mainly concerned with the critical question, the question of the origin, character and validity of human knowledge. In solving this and minor questions, modern philosophers are markedly subjective in two senses: (1) they show cleverness in formulating plausibilities that pass for philosophy without justifying that character as interpretations of the objective universe; and (2) they repose knowledge upon the basis of the knowing subject, rather than upon that of real objects known or to be known. Naturally enough, in view of the subjectivistic character of the modern philosophic spirit, nearly all modern systems weaken the power and valor of man’s cognitive faculties, as well as the objectivity of knowledge.
Scholasticism, submerged as it was at the beginning of the Modern Period, was never extinct. It lost its prestige in the 15 and 16 centuries, and it did not begin to regain its place of recognized prominence until the late 19 century. In our own day its place and power are assured; and the Neo-Scholastic Movement, inaugurated by Cardinal Mercier at the Institute of Louvain in 1880, promises to restore Scholasticism to its former influence.
The present Book treats of Modern Philosophy in three Chapters, as follows.