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Return to Philosophy; Being a Defence of Reason, an Affirmation of Values, and a Plea for Philosophy
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
C.E.M. Joad
67 books32 followersCyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher and broadcasting personality. He is most famous for his appearance on The Brains Trust, an extremely popular BBC Radio wartime discussion programme. He managed to popularise Philosophy and became a celebrity, before his downfall in the Train Ticket Scandal of 1948.
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October 15, 2024
THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHER CRITICIZES THE “SUBJECTIVIST ATTITUDE”
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891-1953) was an English popularizer of philosophy, and a BBC broadcasting personality. After he foolishly rode a train without having a ticket and was caught, he was fired from the BBC, and the humiliation caused him to become bed-ridden. His 1952 book 'The Recovery of Belief' details his return (from agnosticism) to the Church of England.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1935 book, “Many people to-day adopt an instinctively derogatory attitude to reason. It is not, they say, a free activity of the mind, reaching conclusions under no compulsion save that of evidence; it is a tool of instinct and the handmaid of desire. They are sceptical also in their attitude towards values. Beauty, they hold, is not an intrinsic quality of things; it is merely the compliment which we bestow upon the objects which… give us pleasure… As with art, so with morals. To act rightly is merely to act in a way of which other people approve.
"It is the object of the following pages to criticize this subjectivist attitude and to expose its inadequacy in art, in morals, and in thought. The book is, therefore, in effect a restatement in modern terms of certain traditional beliefs; that reason, if properly employed, can give us truth; that beauty is a real value which exists, and that we can train our minds and form our tastes to discern it; that some things are REALLY right in a sense in which others are REALLY wrong, and that the endeavor to know truth and so discern value is the noblest pursuit of the adult civilized intelligence. The best name for this pursuit is philosophy.”
He points out, “To acquit yourself credibly in science or mathematics, you need a keen and alert intelligence. You also need training and practice; you require, in fact, education in the subject. In philosophy the requirements are not different. But there IS a difference… The line that separates the profoundest metaphysical speculation from nonsense pure and simple is never easy to draw, and the latter may and often does masquerade as the former. It is this circumstance which constitutes one of the attractions of philosophy for the untrained mind. Even a fool can put up some philosophical show, and in no department of human intellectual activity is it harder to detect the fact that the performance is worthless. Hence philosophy is everybody’s preserve.” (Pg. 23-24)
He observes, “That matter is ‘sensation in the sensationless’, that it is ‘life resulting in death and death in life’---announcements made Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy---are assertions which to me are almost entirely meaningless; they are a mere putting together of words. But just because they are superficially meaningless, they can be shown by an ingenious commentator to bear any one of an enormous number of different meanings; and, in a universe of this size and complexity, one can never be quite certain that in some of these meanings the words might not bear some relation to some kind of fact. It seems to me unlikely that they do; and if they do, the relation must, I should imagine, be incredibly remote. Nevertheless, one can never be quite sure that some grain of hidden significance may not be hidden in this mountain of nonsense.” (Pg. 30)
He states, “So also my students… coming to philosophy classes with a stock of ideas… which in fact represent the petrified science of some fifty years ago, unhesitatingly assume … that only material things exist and are real… [and] that beauty and truth are only ideas in the mind of man…I ask them whether, if the number three is only an idea in the human mind, twice three would cease to make six, if nobody knew that it made six. I ask them why, if beauty is MERELY a quality which the mind projects, it projects it into some things, pictures for example, and not into others such as pieces of string. Does this not, I ask, suggest the possession IN ITS OWN RIGHT by the object into which ‘beauty’ is projected of some quality which stimulates the projection?... Is it not perhaps, precisely the quality which men have wished to designate by the name ‘beauty’?” (Pg. 71-72)
He asserts, “What right, for example, has [Aldous] Huxley to talk of ‘lower values’, is all values are subjective? Yet when he wishes to castigate modern civilization, he does talk of them and continuously. Continuously in his essays he passes judgments which imply that some things are really BETTER than others, better and not merely more vital.” (Pg. 81)
He comments, “the value of philosophy lies largely in its uncertainty. The man who has no acquaintance with philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices, the preferences, and the habitual beliefs derived from the society in which he lives… None of the views which he holds are the result of independent thought; all are the product of convictions which… are merely the reflections of the conventions and prejudices of his age. To such a one the world tends to become dull and obvious. Common objects provoke no questions… Philosophy, which raises doubts about what has hitherto been taken for granted, keeps alive the sense of wonder and restores mystery to the world. By diminishing our certainty as to what is, it enormously increases the possibility of what may be.” (Pg. 208-209)
Joad is virtually unknown in the modern world (in America, at least); but his “popularizations” of philosophical topics and his clear writing style may still interest some modern readers.
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891-1953) was an English popularizer of philosophy, and a BBC broadcasting personality. After he foolishly rode a train without having a ticket and was caught, he was fired from the BBC, and the humiliation caused him to become bed-ridden. His 1952 book 'The Recovery of Belief' details his return (from agnosticism) to the Church of England.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1935 book, “Many people to-day adopt an instinctively derogatory attitude to reason. It is not, they say, a free activity of the mind, reaching conclusions under no compulsion save that of evidence; it is a tool of instinct and the handmaid of desire. They are sceptical also in their attitude towards values. Beauty, they hold, is not an intrinsic quality of things; it is merely the compliment which we bestow upon the objects which… give us pleasure… As with art, so with morals. To act rightly is merely to act in a way of which other people approve.
"It is the object of the following pages to criticize this subjectivist attitude and to expose its inadequacy in art, in morals, and in thought. The book is, therefore, in effect a restatement in modern terms of certain traditional beliefs; that reason, if properly employed, can give us truth; that beauty is a real value which exists, and that we can train our minds and form our tastes to discern it; that some things are REALLY right in a sense in which others are REALLY wrong, and that the endeavor to know truth and so discern value is the noblest pursuit of the adult civilized intelligence. The best name for this pursuit is philosophy.”
He points out, “To acquit yourself credibly in science or mathematics, you need a keen and alert intelligence. You also need training and practice; you require, in fact, education in the subject. In philosophy the requirements are not different. But there IS a difference… The line that separates the profoundest metaphysical speculation from nonsense pure and simple is never easy to draw, and the latter may and often does masquerade as the former. It is this circumstance which constitutes one of the attractions of philosophy for the untrained mind. Even a fool can put up some philosophical show, and in no department of human intellectual activity is it harder to detect the fact that the performance is worthless. Hence philosophy is everybody’s preserve.” (Pg. 23-24)
He observes, “That matter is ‘sensation in the sensationless’, that it is ‘life resulting in death and death in life’---announcements made Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy---are assertions which to me are almost entirely meaningless; they are a mere putting together of words. But just because they are superficially meaningless, they can be shown by an ingenious commentator to bear any one of an enormous number of different meanings; and, in a universe of this size and complexity, one can never be quite certain that in some of these meanings the words might not bear some relation to some kind of fact. It seems to me unlikely that they do; and if they do, the relation must, I should imagine, be incredibly remote. Nevertheless, one can never be quite sure that some grain of hidden significance may not be hidden in this mountain of nonsense.” (Pg. 30)
He states, “So also my students… coming to philosophy classes with a stock of ideas… which in fact represent the petrified science of some fifty years ago, unhesitatingly assume … that only material things exist and are real… [and] that beauty and truth are only ideas in the mind of man…I ask them whether, if the number three is only an idea in the human mind, twice three would cease to make six, if nobody knew that it made six. I ask them why, if beauty is MERELY a quality which the mind projects, it projects it into some things, pictures for example, and not into others such as pieces of string. Does this not, I ask, suggest the possession IN ITS OWN RIGHT by the object into which ‘beauty’ is projected of some quality which stimulates the projection?... Is it not perhaps, precisely the quality which men have wished to designate by the name ‘beauty’?” (Pg. 71-72)
He asserts, “What right, for example, has [Aldous] Huxley to talk of ‘lower values’, is all values are subjective? Yet when he wishes to castigate modern civilization, he does talk of them and continuously. Continuously in his essays he passes judgments which imply that some things are really BETTER than others, better and not merely more vital.” (Pg. 81)
He comments, “the value of philosophy lies largely in its uncertainty. The man who has no acquaintance with philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices, the preferences, and the habitual beliefs derived from the society in which he lives… None of the views which he holds are the result of independent thought; all are the product of convictions which… are merely the reflections of the conventions and prejudices of his age. To such a one the world tends to become dull and obvious. Common objects provoke no questions… Philosophy, which raises doubts about what has hitherto been taken for granted, keeps alive the sense of wonder and restores mystery to the world. By diminishing our certainty as to what is, it enormously increases the possibility of what may be.” (Pg. 208-209)
Joad is virtually unknown in the modern world (in America, at least); but his “popularizations” of philosophical topics and his clear writing style may still interest some modern readers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review