A Theory Against the Theories

Philosophers have always been able to construct shining and splendid systems of thought. The world as a “place of number,” as a dynamic series of Hegelian trilogies, as the dark sea of matter in which forms struggle —all these visions are complete, cogent and logical. In fact, they are too perfect; the world just cannot measure up. The schedule is too demanding, and does not leave room for the exceptions, imperfections and mysteries which no amount of thought can exorcise from the world. Some follow Plato’s example and decide that, if the world cannot measure up to Truth’s demands in the mind, so much the worse for the world. To such thinkers matter and the mere events of time become “unreal.”

But against this tendency of abstraction in philosophy, the common sense of man has always preferred one bird in hand to two in the mind. Against the perfect lucidity of the systems, poets have asserted the mystery of things that are. And the suspicion always returns that the “perfect” world of the mind is so orderly because it deals in thin inventions of the intellect. Such forms and essences have none of the reluctance that real things, with their own stubborn measure of existence, offer to the mind’s dominance.

GW

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Garry Wills

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Philosophers have always been able to construct shining and splendid systems of thought. The world as a “place of number,” as a dynamic series of Hegelian trilogies, as the dark sea of matter in which forms struggle —all these visions are complete, cogent and logical. In fact, they are too perfect; the world just cannot measure up. The schedule is too demanding, and does not leave room for the exceptions, imperfections and mysteries which no amount of thought can exorcise from the world. Some follow Plato’s example and decide that, if the world cannot measure up to Truth’s demands in the mind, so much the worse for the world. To such thinkers matter and the mere events of time become “unreal.”

But against this tendency of abstraction in philosophy, the common sense of man has always preferred one bird in hand to two in the mind. Against the perfect lucidity of the systems, poets have asserted the mystery of things that are. And the suspicion always returns that the “perfect” world of the mind is so orderly because it deals in thin inventions of the intellect. Such forms and essences have none of the reluctance that real things, with their own stubborn measure of existence, offer to the mind’s dominance.