Philosophy

The diversity of philosophies is obviously reflected in the diversity of meanings of the term "philosophy"; this does not preclude, however, the recognition of some constants in these meanings. Among these constants, the definition of philosophy advanced by Plato in the Euthydemus lends itself best of all to connecting and articulating the different meanings of the term: philosophy is the use of knowledge for the benefit of man. Plato remarks that it would be perfectly useless to possess the science of changing stones into gold, if man did not know what to do with that gold; the science that makes one immortal would be of no avail unless one knew what to do with immortality; and so on. A science is needed, therefore, in which doing and knowing what to do with what one does, coincide - philosophy is the science (Euthyd., 288 e - 290 d). According to this concept, philosophy implies 1° the possession or the acquisition of a knowledge that would be the most valid and the widest possible; 2° the use of this knowledge for the good of man. These two elements frequently recur in the definitions of philosophy which have been given in different ages and from different viewpoints. One finds them in Descartes' definition, for instance, according to which "this word philosophy means the study of wisdom, and by wisdom is meant not only prudence in business but also a perfect knowledge of all the things that man can know for his own guidance, for the preservation of his health, and for the invention of all the arts" (Princ. Phil., Pref.). One finds them also in Hobbes' definition, according to which philosophy is, on the one hand, causal knowledge and, on the other, putting this knowledge to use for man's benefit (De Corp., 1, § 2, 6); and in the definition given by Kant, who defines the cosmic concept of philosophy - the concept of it, that is, which necessarily concerns every man - as that of "a science of the relationship of every knowledge to the essential end of human reason" (Crit. of Pure R. , Transc. Doctrine of Method, ch. III). This essential end is "universal happiness". Philosophy, accordingly, "refers everything to wisdom, but by way of science" (Ibid. , at the end). The definition of philosophy given by Dewey, as "critique of values", that is, "critique of beliefs, institutions, customs, policies, with respect to their bearing of goods" (Experience and Nature, p. 407), does not differ in meaning from the one stated above. All of these definitions - which we submit only as instances - can be brought back to the Platonic formula cited at the beginning. That formula has the advantage of assuming nothing as regards the nature and limits of the knowledge accessible to man or as regards the ends for the sake of which this knowledge may be used. This knowledge, accordingly, may be understood both as revelation or possession and as acquisition or inquiry. Its use, moreover, may be taken as directed to achieve man's otherworldly or worldly salvation, the acquisition of spiritual or material goods, improvements or changes in the world. That formula, accordingly, appears equally apt to express the manifold tasks which philosophy has taken upon itself at different times. Moreover, it expresses equally well, for instance, both the task of positive or dogmatic philosophies and that of negative or sceptical ones. When ancient scepticism proposes to realize the imperturbability of the soul through the withholding of assent (Sextus Empiricus, Ip. Pirr., I, 25-27), it understands philosophy simply as the use of a given knowledge directed to attain something advantageous. Analogously, when, in contemporary philosophy, Wittgenstein states that the goal of philosophy is the elimination of philosophical problems and of philosophy itself, or that of "being healed" from philosophy (Philosophical Investigations, § 133), he is not appealing to a concept of philosophy unlike the one we are discussing. Liberation from philosophy is the advantage which the use of knowing - which, in this case, is the rectification of language - can bring about.

The two recognizable elements of the definition which we considered apt to furnish the framework for the chief articulations of the meaning of the term, constitute of themselves the first of such articulations. In other words, the historically given meanings of the term may be distinguished 1° with regard to the nature or the validity of the knowledge to which philosophy refers; 2°with regard to the goal to which philosophy intends to direct the use of this knowledge; 3° lastly, with regard to the nature of the procedure which is held to be proper to philosophy.

I. Philosophy and knowledge - The use that man makes of the knowledge to which under whatever title he has access is first of all a judgement on the origin or the validity of such knowledge. With regard to the judgement on the validity of knowledge, two basic alternatives are offered, which establish the distinction between two different and opposite types of philosophy. The first alternative establishes the divine origin of knowledge: knowledge, for man, is a revelation or a gift. The second alternative establishes the human origin of knowledge: it is an acquisition by, or a product of, man. The former alternative is the most ancient and the one that is most often encountered in the world, since it is by far the most prevalent in oriental philosophies. The latter alternative is that which arose in Greece, and was inherited by the modern western world.

A) According to the first alternative, knowledge is a revelation or a divine gift, which one or more men have been granted, and that is transmitted by tradition among a privileged group of men (caste, sect, or church).
It is not easily understood by ordinary mortals except through those who are its depositories; neither is it possible for ordinary and non-ordinary mortals to increase its patrimony or judge its validity. An integral part of the interpretation of the origin of knowledge is the belief that even to use it to man's advantage (advantage that in this case is "salvation") is dictated or prescribed by a divine revelation or enlightenment.
It seems then that this interpretation eliminates or makes superflous the philosophical "work" related this purpose. Actually this seldom happens. The need to make the revealed truth easily understood by ordinary men, to adapt it to circumstances so that it can meet men's new of changed problems, to defend it against declared or hidden negations, deviations or unbelief, in this conception of knowledge, causes the philosophical work to find a large field of activity whereinwhere to face many tasks. But this work is still subordinate. It is not and cannot be decisive when it is a matter of fundamental interpretations and ultimate demands. It finds in revelation and in tradition insuperable limits which forbid any all possibility of development in directions different from those which they determine. Or cannot combat and destroy established beliefs, offer radical opposition to tradition, project and promote radical renovations. Its function is to preserve established beliefs, not to rectify or to renew them. It is, therefore, a subordinate and instrumental function, without autonomy and without the dignity of a directive power.
It has already been noted that almost all oriental philosophies are of this nature - a fact which has raised the doubt whether or not they can be called philosophies. But the western world also provides frequent examples of philosophies of this kind, although none of them present the characteristics listed in all their rigor. On the pattern of the most important of them, the forms which this type of philosophy has taken may be called scholastic. A scholasticism, in contrast to a pure example of oriental philosophy, presupposes an autonomous philosophy and avails itself of it; but it makes use of it for the defense and the illustration of a religious truth, that is, to confirm or defend beliefs whose validity is held as established beforehand and independently of any confirmation or defense. A scholasticism the word itself says it is essentially an educational tool. It helps bring man close, as far as possible, to a knowledge regarded as immutable in its basic features, and hence as not lending itself to either correction or renewal. The eventual abandonment of the beliefs which it interprets is not reckoned among the tasks - which are as manifold as man's approaches to truth and as the hindrances he meets on his way which a scholastic philosophy acknowledges as its own. The philosophical-religious sects of the second century B. C. (the Essenes), the doctrine of Philo of Alexandria (first century A. D.) and of many Neoplatonists, the Moslem and Jewish philosophies, the patristic and scholastic philosophies, as well as, in modern times, occasionalism, immaterialism, the Hegelian right and great part of contemporary spiritualism, are scholasticisms in the sense we have just clarified - that is, they are philosophies which consist in making use of a particular doctrine (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cartesianism, Empiricism, Idealism, and so forth) for the defense and interpretation of beliefs which, through this work, cannot be questioned, corrected, or denied. Each of the several scholasticism enjoys, of course, different degrees of freedom, and in each case such degrees vary from one period to another. St Thomas, for instance, recognises a certain degree of autonomy for "human philosophy", insofar as he acknowledges its specific domain to be the consideration and the study of created things as such - that is, their nature and their proper causes (Contra Gent. , II, 4). He is of the opinion, nevertheless, that such philosophy cannot possibly contradict the affirmations of the Christian faith, which should be held as norm for the right use of reason (Ibid., I, 7). Though philosophies of this kind may attain some important results, which become part of the common philosophical patrimony, their scope is strictly defined by their problem, which is the defense of traditional beliefs. Their possibilities do not go so far as the rectification and renewal of such beliefs.
B) According to the second alternative, knowledge is something that man has acquired or produced. The basis of this conception is that man is a "rational animal" and that therefore "all men", as Aristotle states at the beginning of the Metaphysics (980 a 21), "have the natural tendency to know". To have such a tendency means here that men not only wish to know, but actually realize this wish. From this point of view, knowledge is not the privilege or the exclusive possession of a few men; each may contribute to acquire it and increase it, and hence is entitled to judge it - that is, to either accept it or reject it. The search for and the organization of knowing is, from this viewpoint, the fundamental task of philosophy. When Thucydides (II, 40) has Pericles say: "We love the beautiful with moderation and philosophize without fear", he is surely expressing the attitude of the Greek spirit, which gave birth to philosophy in this second meaning of the term. Pericles was not alluding to a specific discipline but to the quest for knowledge, undertaken without prejudicial commitments or with the single commitment of putting every possible belief to the test. Taken in this sense, philosophy is an original creation of the Greek spirit and a permanent dimension of Western culture. It is the pledge that any inquiry, in any field, should obey only the limitations or the rules which it itself acknowledges as valid in view of its own possibilities and efficacy for discovery and confirmation. Philosophy, in this sense, is opposed to tradition, prejudice, myth and generally to groundless or unjustified belief, which the Greeks termed opinion. The contrast between opinion and science, between the love of opinion and the love of wisdom, is the one on which Plato most often insists, in order to clarify the concept of philosophy (Rep. , V. 480 a). Philosophy as inquiry is opposed by Plato to ignorance, on the one hand, and to wisdom, on the other. Ignorance is the illusion of wisdom and destroys the incentive to inquire (Symp. , 204 a). On the other hand, wisdom, which is the possession of science, makes any further inquiry superfluous. The Gods do not philosophise (Ibid, . 204 a; Theaet. , 278 d). Inquiry defines the proper status of philosophy. Heraclitus stated: "Philosophers must be good inquirers of many things" (Fr. 35, Diels). As inquiry, philosophy is "acquisition", as Plato said (Euthyd., 288 d), or "effort", as the stoics stated (Sextus Empiricus. Adv. Math., IX, 13), or "activity", as the Epicureans said (Ibid., XI, 169).
If philosophy is the pledge which turns knowing into inquiry, it conditions actual knowing, which is "knowledge" or "science". On the basis of the judgement which philosophy itself makes of actual knowing, this conditioning may take three forms, which define three basic conceptions of philosophy: the metaphysical, the positivistic and the critical. 1° According to the first conception, philosophy is the only possible knowledge; the other sciences, insofar as they are sciences, either coincide with it, or are parts of it, or are preparation for it; 2° according to the second conception, knowledge properly belongs to the particular sciences; the task of philosophy is that of coordinating or unifying the results of these sciences; 3° according to the third conception, philosophy is judgement on knowledge - that is, the evaluation of its possibilities and of its limitations, in view of its human use.
1°The first conception of philosophy is the metaphysical one. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages it was the ruling conception, and today it still is the conception accepted by many philosophical trends. Its foremost trait is the denial of any possibility of independent inquiry outside the realm of philosophy. There is either philosophical knowledge or no knowledge at all. It is often granted that outside the realm of philosophy there is an imperfect, provisional or preparatory knowledge; it is denied, however, that such knowledge possesses, of itself, cognitive validity. Thus Plato, on the one hand, gives the name of " philosophy" to geometry and to the other sciences, especially in view of their educative function (Theaet., 143 d; Tim., 88 c); on the other hand, he considers these sciences - arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and music - as simply preparatory to actual philosophy, that is, to dialectics, one of whose tasks is to "discover the community and interrelatedness of the sciences, and to demonstrate why the sciences are mutually connected" (Rep., VII, 531 d). Aristotle defines philosophy as the "science of truth" (Met., II, 1, 993 b 20), in the sense that it comprises all the theoretical sciences, that is, first philosophy, mathematics and physics, and it leaves out only practical activity: but practical activity too must turn to philosophy if it wishes to understand its own nature and foundations. Both Plato and Aristotle accept a particular discipline as first science: for Plato it is dialectics, for Aristotle it is first philosophy or theology. This particular discipline, however, is regarded by them as the most general as well. Dialectics, in fact, as we have seen, makes it possible to understand the connection and the common nature of sciences; and first philosophy, as the science of being as being, has as its specific object that necessary essence or substance, which it is the task of every science, in its own particular domain, to investigate (De part. anim., I, 5, 645 a 1). At other times, instead, philosophy is resolved into the particular disciplines, without bestowing on any of these a privileged character. This was done by the Epicureans, who divided philosophy into canonics, physics and ethics (Diog. L., X, 29-30); and by the Stoics, who divided it into logic, physics an ethics (Aetius, Plac., I, 2) and thought that the union of these parts among themselves was comparable to that of the parts of an animal (Diog. L., VII, 40).

This conception, which identifies the totality of knowledge with philosophy and refuses to admit that there is or can be, an authentic knowledge outside of philosophy, has outlived the constitution of the particular sciences into autonomous disciplines and, in some philosophical trends, has remained substantially unchanged to this day. Fichte's definition of philosophy as "science of science in general" (Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie, 1794, § 1) leaves no autonomy to the particular sciences; according to that definition, in fact, the doctrine of science "must give its form not only to itself but to all other possible sciences", so as to constitute "the one and complete system in the human mind" (Ibid., § 2). This claim was kept unchanged in all the definitions of philosophy given by Romantic idealism. Schelling's remarks have no other meaning. According to him, the task of philosophy is that of clarifying the accord - which actually is the identity - between the objective and the subjective, that is, between nature and mind, thus bringing to fulfilment the "necessary" tendency of all the natural sciences" (System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 1800, Intr., 1). Hegel stated explicitly that "the particular sciences deal with finite objects and with the world of phenomena" (Geschichte der Philosophie, Intr., A § 2); and that "the originative process and the preparatory works of a science are something different from the science itself", in which the former disappear and are replaced by the "necessity of the concept" (Enc., § 246). This means that philosophy alone is science, because philosophy alone demonstrates "the necessity of the concept", by using and handling in its own way - as Hegel did - the material which the so-called empirical sciences have made ready. Hegel, accordingly, reserves to philosophy the privilege of being "the thinking consideration of objects" (Ibid., § 2). Preliminary or preparatory knowledge is that which relies on representations. There is actual knowledge when, through philosophy, "the thinking mind, by means of representations and by working on them, progresses to thinking knowledge and the concept" (Ibid., § 1). It is clear that, stated in this way, the concept of philosophy as the totality of knowing is a declaration of philosophical pride, which was alien to the classical concept of philosophy. In classical times that concept acted as the specific commitment of scientific disciplines, which were inserted by it into realm of disinterested inquiry, as well as encouraged and supported in their process of conceptual formation. In the conception of Romantic idealism, on the contrary, particular sciences are lowered to the role of sheer handiwork, lacking any intrinsic validity. Science is reduced to this function by idealism as well as by spiritualism. The definition of philosophy as "general theory of mind leads Gentile to regard it as the consciousness which the absolute self has of itself, while empirical cognitions, based on the distinction between object and subject and of objects among themselves, are a false abstraction of such consciousness (Teoria generale dello spirito, 1916, ch. 15, § 2). Notwithstanding its less pretentious formulation, Croce's definition of philosophy as "methodology of historiography" implies the same philosophical pride. According to Croce, historical knowledge is the only possible knowledge, since history is the only reality. The reduction of philosophy to the methodology of historical knowledge amounts, therefore, to denying that scientific knowledge is knowledge. According to Croce, in fact, it is not knowledge but a set of practical expedients (La storia, 1938, p. 144; Logica, 1908, I, ch. 2). Contemporary spiritualism, on the other hand, follows for the most part the same path. Bergson makes intuition the organ of philosophy, because he regards it as "the direct vision of the mind by the mind" (La pensée et le mouvant, 3rd, 1934, p. 51), that is, the means of attaining, immediately and unerringly, that "real duration" which is absolute reality. His acknowledgement of sciences as adequate knowledge of the material world or of "things" is purely fictitious: according to Bergson, neither matter nor things have, as such, reality because they are but consciousness, and consciousness can be truly known only by consciousness itself: "By fathoming its own depths, does not consciousness enter within matter, life and reality in general as well? This could be questioned only if consciousness were added to matter as an accident; we believe to have shown, however, that such an hypothesis is either absurd or false - depending on how one looks at it - either contradictory in itself or contradicted by the facts" (Ibid., pp. 156-57). The concept of philosophy as privileged knowledge - however the privilege be grounded - is but one of the many expressions of the old concept of philosophy as unique and absolute knowledge. Those trends of modern thought which are usually termed "metaphysical" are characterized precisely by this concept of philosophy. Husserl expresses the Cartesian ideal of philosophy, which he makes his own, as follows: "Let us recall the guiding idea of Descartes' Méditations. It aims at a total reformation of philosophy, in order to turn it into a science whose foundations are absolute. This, according to Descartes, implies a concomitant reform of all the sciences, which is nothing else than philosophy itself. Only in the systematic unity of the latter can the former become truly sciences" (Médit. Cartés., 1931, § 1). In his last work Husserl posited, as the prime condition of philosophy: "An epoché from any of the notions of objective sciences, from any critical standpoint concerning the truth or falsehood of science, an epoché even from the guiding idea of science, from the idea of an objective knowledge of the world" (Krisis, § 35).

Notwithstanding their open recognition of the validity of the scientific method, Jaspers' reflections on the nature of philosophy lead to this same concept, because they deny autonomy of structure and of validity to the particular sciences (Phil., I, p. 53; Existenzphil., 1938, Intr.). An even more radical devaluation of the particular sciences is effected by Heidegger, according to whom the presuppositions of modern science are the oblivion of being, the reduction of man to subject and of the world to representation (Brief über den "Humanismus", in Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 1947, p. 88).

2° The second conception of philosophy as judgement on knowledge is that which tends to resolve philosophy into the particular sciences, entrusting it at times with the specific function of unifying the sciences themselves or of gathering their results into a "world-view". The origin of this concept is found in Bacon. He conceived philosophy as a science whose task was, first of all, to distinguish and classify the particular sciences and, secondly, to give them their method, the material to work on and the techniques for putting this material to good use in man's behalf. In De Dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623), as he sketched the plan for an encyclopædia of the sciences on an experimental basis, Bacon entrusted "first philosophy", which he regarded as "universal science, mother of the other sciences", with the task of gathering "those axioms which are not peculiar to any of the particular sciences but are shared by several sciences" (De augm. Scient., III, 1). Hobbes, in his turn, identified philosophy and scientific knowledge. "Philosophy", he states, "is the knowledge of effects of phenomena acquired by right reasoning from the concepts of their causes or generations; or conversely, it is the knowledge of possible generations acquired from their known effects" (De Corp., 1, 2). This concept of philosophy, as coincidental with scientific knowledge and as commitment to its clarification and extension, gave rise to the English use of the term, to which Hegel had called attention (Enc., § 7 and note; Geschichte der Phil., Intr., A, § 2). According to this use, the term philosophy was applied not only to the natural sciences but also to scientific instruments such as thermometers, barometers, and so forth, and to general principles of politics as well. This latter use is still current in Anglo-Saxon countries. According to Descartes, philosophy comprised "whatever the human mind can know", and thus coincided to a great extent with scientific inquiries, all of which - to be sure - Descartes wanted to lead back to some basic principles (Princ. Phil., Pref.). The Enlightenment as a whole shared the concept of philosophy as scientific knowledge. "Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is, of the truth", Voltaire said (Dict. Phil., art. "Philosophy"). Wolff set beside the "rational" sciences, into which he divided philosophy, the corresponding empirical sciences, endowed with an independent method, which is the experimental method. Next to general or scientific cosmology, for instance, Wolff admits an experimental cosmology "which draws, on the basis of observation, the theory which scientific cosmology does or will establish" (Cosm., § 4); he recognises, moreover, that it is possible - though it is not easy - to derive the whole theory of general cosmology from observation (Ibid., § 5).

Within the compass of this meaning, positivism emphasised philosophy's particular role of gathering and coordinating the results of the individual sciences, in order to bring about a unified and most general knowledge. This is the task which Comte and Spencer assigned to philosophy. Comte wished that next to the particular sciences there be a "study of scientific generalities", which he likened to Bacon's "first philosophy". This study should "determine exactly the spirit of each science; discover the relationships and connections among the sciences; summarise possibly all their principles into the least number of common principles, always in conformity with the basic rules of the positive method" (Cours de philosophie positive, lect. 1, § 7; lect. 2, § 3). The concept of philosophy as the science which generalizes and unifies the results of the other sciences has been and still is widely accepted in modern and contemporary philosophy. It has been accepted, in fact, not only by positivistic trends but also by spiritualistic doctrines; the latter sometimes add to it a determination or a limiting condition, viz.: the generalisation and unification must constitute an image of the world which satisfies the needs of the heart. This is precisely the definition of philosophy given by Wundt, who declared that the function of philosophy was "the recapitulation of particular cognitions in an intuition of the world and of the life which satisfies the exigencies of the intellect and the needs of the heart" (Syst. der Phil., 4th ed., 1919, I, p. 1; Einleitung in die Phil., 3rd ed., 1904, p. 5). From this viewpoint, philosophy "is the universal science which must unify into a coherent system the universal cognitions afforded by particular sciences"; this is a concept which quite often turns up in the philosophical literature of the latter part of the 19th century and of the early part of the 20th, insofar as it enables philosophy to make ample use both of the natural sciences and in those of the sciences of mind. Sometimes there is a tendency to emphasise along these lines the character of unity and totality of this universal science. In this case, just as in Wundt's definition, this science is regarded as an intuition or vision of the world. This concept is a further determination of the concept of philosophy as "universal science", that is, as unifying and generalizing. Mach states: "The philosopher tries to find his bearings in the world of facts in a way that is as universal and as complete as possible … Only the fusion of the special sciences will bring about that conception of the world toward which all specialities strive" (Erkenntnis und Irrtum, ch. 1). Dilthey pointed out this connection between philosophy and the special sciences rather well, as he wrote: "The history of philosophy hands down to systematic philosophical work the three problems of the foundation, justification and connection of the particular sciences, as well as the task of meeting the inexhaustible need for the ultimate reflection on the being, foundation, value, purpose and connection of these sciences in the intuition of the world, whatever may be the form and direction which the execution of such task will take" (Das Wesen der Philosophie, end). In Simmel, the relationship between the foundation and unification of the sciences and intuition of the world - in which metaphysics properly consists - takes on the form of the distinction between the two boundaries defining the realm of philosophical inquiry. "The one comprises the conditions, the fundamental concepts, the presuppositions of particular inquiry, and can find no satisfaction  in such inquiry because they actually are its foundation. In the other, this particular inquiry is completed, connected and related to questions and concepts which have no place in experience and in objective, immediate knowing. The former is the theory of knowledge and the latter is the metaphysics of the above-mentioned particular field of inquiry" (Soziologie, 1910, p. 25; cfr. Pietro Rossi, Lo storicismo tedesco contemporaneo, Turin 1956, p. 242). Critical philosophy regarded the former of these tasks as properly belonging to philosophy (cfr. below); the latter, instead, was attributed to philosophy by the positivistic strain stemming from Bacon. The latest manifestation of this concept of philosophy in contemporary thought is the notion of "unified science", peculiar to Neo-empiricism, to which the International Encyclopædia of Unified Science (1938) is devoted. In this work, however, the very concept of unification is uncertain and variously understood by its several supporters. Neurath, for instance, understands it as the combination of the results obtained by the various sciences and the axiomatization of them in a single system; Dewey understands it as the exigency to extend the place and the function of science in human life; Russell, as unity of method; Carnap, as formal or linguistic unity; and Morris, as general doctrine of signs (International Encyclopædia of Unified Science, I, 1, pp. 20, 33, 61, 70). This disparity of views shows how difficult it is to realise, in the modern world, the ideal of the unification of the sciences, and pulls the rug under positivistic concept of philosophy (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933, IX, § 2).

3° The third conception of philosophy as judgement on knowledge may be termed critical. It consists in reducing philosophy, either to doctrine of knowledge or to methodology. According to this conception, philosophy does not increase the quantity of knowledge itself; therefore, it cannot properly be called "knowledge". Its task is rather that of testing the validity of knowledge by determining its limits and its conditions - its actual possibilities. The initiator of this concept of philosophy is Locke. As Locke points out in "The Epistle to the Reader" which its premise, the whole Essay arose from the need "to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with". Still more exactly, philosophy aims at inquiring into "the nature of the understanding; the powers there of; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us" (Essay, Intr., § 4). The limitations of the human powers are clearly summed up by Locke in the third chapter of the fourth book of the Essay. As far as philosophy is concerned, however, these limits are brought out even more clearly in the work's final chapter, dealing with the division of the sciences. Three main sciences are distinguished there, viz.: natural philosophy or physics, whose task is "the knowledge of things, as they are in their own, proper being, then constitutions, properties and operations"; practical philosophy or ethics, which is "the skill of right applying our own powers and actions, for the attainment of things good and useful"; and the doctrine of signs, semiotics or logic, whose business is to "consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others" (Ibid., IV, 21, § 2-4). Philosophy is not included in this division of the sciences; which means that, according to Locke, philosophy is not a science in the sense in which physics, ethics or logic are sciences - that is, as knowledge of objects. Philosophy is judgement on science itself - that is, criticism. This viewpoint constitutes one of the basic strains of modern and contemporary philosophy. Hume made the task of academic or sceptical philosophy, which he professed, consist in the "limitation of our inquiries to such subjects as are best suited for the limited capacity of human intelligence" (Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 3). Since Kant, the limitation of knowledge is held to be the foundation of the validity of knowledge itself, according to a concept which Locke has already made use of. According to Kant the a priori conditions of knowledge (pure intuitions, categories) as well as the a posteriori conditions of it (the empirical datum or intuition) determine and limit man's cognitive possibilities in the sense that they not only exclude some fields of inquiry but also establish the validity or the effectiveness of these very possibilities. Kant formulated the whole realm of philosophy in these questions: 1° what can I know? 2° What must I do? 3° What can I hope for? 4° What is man? He added: "Metaphysics answers the first question; morals, the second; religion, the third; and anthropology, the fourth. In the end, however, everything could be led back to anthropology because the first three questions are related to the last. As a consequence, the philosopher must be able to determine: 1° the source of human knowing; 2° the compass of the possible and useful use of all knowing; 3° and lastly, the limits of reason" (Logik, Intr., III). When Hegel objects to this viewpoint and says that "wishing to know before knowing is at least as absurd as the wise resolve of some scholastic to learn how to swim before venturing into the water" (Enc., § 10), he merely wishes to be funny. Philosophy as criticism, in fact, presupposes that one already knows how to swim, that there is an effectual knowing, that of science, starting from which one may inquire concerning the possibilities of knowing, and may determine their limits. Contemporary Neo-criticism has modified the Kantian doctrine on religion; and, while keeping the concept of philosophy as criticism of knowledge, it has recognised three philosophical disciplines, viz.: logic, ethics and aesthetics - meaning by logic, mostly, the theory of knowledge. This doctrine was upheld by the so-called Marburg School (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer) as well as by French criticism (Renouvier, Brunschvicg). The primacy which gnoseology or epistemology has enjoyed in contemporary philosophy - and not only in the neo-criticism currents - is a consequence of the concept of philosophy as critique of knowledge. Gnoseology or epistemology, however, is characterised by particular assumption and problems. The concept of philosophy as critique of knowledge does not imply, therefore, the identification of philosophy with the crisis and abandonment of XIXth century epistemology, that concept survives as analysis of actual procedures of scientific knowledge and as determination of their limits and of their validity. This analysis is the peculiar task of methodology. Methodology, therefore, can be regarded as the latest embodiment of philosophy understood as critique of knowledge. The definition of philosophy as "analysis of language", proposed by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1922), may be viewed as part of methodology or as a further restriction of its task. By attributing "the totality of true propositions" to natural science, Wittgenstein denies that philosophy is a natural science. This word, he says, "must mean something that is either above or below the sciences of nature, not beside them" (Tract., 4. 111). The logical clarification of language becomes, then, the task of philosophy. "Philosophy is not a doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially in elucidations. Philosophy does not yield "philosophical proposition", but the clarification of propositions. Philosophy must take clear and delimit with precision ideas which otherwise would be, so to speak, blurred and confused" (Ibid., 4. 112).

II. Philosophy and the use of knowing - The second viewpoint, from which constants may be sought in the meanings historically attributed to philosophy and hence divisions and articulations of these meanings can be made is the one expressed in the second part of that definition which was taken as the starting point of this article - that is, the viewpoint that philosophy is the human use of knowing. Historically, this aspect of philosophy has been interpreted in two fundamental ways: a) philosophy is contemplative and constitutes a way of life which is an end in itself; b) philosophy is active and constitutes the means of modifying or correcting the natural or human world. According to the former interpretation, philosophy exhausts itself in the individual who philosophises. According to the latter, philosophy transcends the individual and properly has to do with man's relationship to nature and to other men - hence, with man's life in society. To use a term with a clear historical meaning, the latter interpretation could be called "enlightened".
a) The concept of philosophy as contemplation belongs, first of all, to philosophies of the oriental type, according to which the aim of philosophy is the salvation of man. Salvation, indeed, is man' liberation from all connections with the world, and hence the realisation of a state in which all activity is either impossible or meaningless. In the West, the concept of philosophy as contemplation was not the first form which philosophical work took; it was, rather, "wisdom", that is, active and militant philosophy -; but it was the first explicit qualification of such work. The basis of this qualification is the "disinterested" nature of philosophical inquiry. When Herodotus (I, 30) has King Cresus say to Solon: "I have heard of the journeys you have undertaken, philosophising, in order to see many countries", he obviously alludes to the disinterested character of such journeys, which were not made for gainful or political purposes but only for the sake of knowledge. Plato himself contrasted the scientific spirit of the Greeks to the love of gain of the Egyptians and of the Phoenicians (Rep., IV, 435 e). That the quest for knowledge cannot be subordinated or bent to ends alien to itself is something which stems from the very notion of such a quest, precisely in the form it took in ancient Greece (cfr. I, B). But something more than the simple exigency for the disinterestedness of inquiry appears in an account found in the writing of Heraclides Ponticus concerning Phythagoras (Diog. L. Proemium, 12), which was meant to justify the name of philosophy. According to that tradition, which Cicero relates in the Tusculanae (V, 9), Pythagoras compared life to the great Olympian celebrations, which some attend for business purposes, others to take part in the sporting contests, others for amusement, and others, lastly, just to see just what goes on. The last are the philosophers. What is being emphasised here is the chasm between the philosopher, whose interest only is that of seeing, that is, of contemplating disinterestedly, and the common run of humanity, busily engaged in their undertakings. The superiority of contemplation over action, then, is implied in this story, whose likely aim was that of using Pythagoras' name to add prestige to the concept of philosophy which was then being developed in the school of Aristotle. The contemplative character of philosophy - which has nothing to do with the disinterested character of research in general - as one of the possible answers to the problem of the human use of knowing, was stated and justified for the first time by Aristotle. That character, in fact, is based on the necessary nature of the object of philosophy, which is that which "cannot be otherwise that it is" (Nich. Eth., VI, 3, 1139 b 19). From this viewpoint, philosophy is wisdom, not prudence or practical wisdom Prudence, in fact, consists in deliberating well, but there is nothing to deliberate about in things which cannot be otherwise than they are (Ibid., VI, 5, 1140 a 30). On this basis, Aristotle opposes prudence to wisdom. Men like Anaxagoras and Thales are wise but not prudent: they do not inquire about human goods, they do not know what is good for themselves. They only know exceptional, wonderful, difficult and divine things. "No one", Aristotle states, "deliberates about what cannot be otherwise or about things which do not have an end, or whose end is not a realisable good" (Ibid., VI, 7, 1041 b 10). From this viewpoint, however, what is the possible use of knowledge? One only: the realisation of a contemplative life, that is, of a life devoted to the knowledge of the necessary. Contemplative activity, therefore, is regarded by Aristotle as the highest and the most blessed. It turns man into something higher than man himself, because he conforms with the divine in him (Ibid., X, 7, 1177 b 26). Aristotle's doctrine makes the following points regarding the human use of knowledge: inasmuch as the object of philosophy is the necessary, philosophy gives man nothing to do and is therefor contemplation; contemplation is a privileged form of individual life because it is blessedness itself. These two theses are typical of this conception of philosophy, which often comes up in the history of Western thought. It is dominant, first of all, in the entire post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy, which cherishes the ideal of the "wise", that is, of the man in whom the contemplative life finds fulfilment. Epicureans, Stoics, sceptics and Neoplatonists agree that only the wise man can be happy because he alone, as pure contemplator, is self-sufficient. The end which these philosophers attribute to philosophy is individual and private, viz., the realisation of a form of life which closes the wise within himself and his solitary contemplation. From this viewpoint, also, of course, philosophy is an effort at transforming or correcting human life. Aristotle's statement that philosophy gives man nothing to do, therefore, is not literally true. This statement means only that philosophy does not change the structure of the world, of the knowledge concerning the world, and of the forms of social life; whereas it can change the life of the individual by making him wise and blessed.

The contemplative attitude in philosophy can be easily identified in the basis of these traits. When Spinoza states: "The strong man considers, first of all, that all things proceed from the necessity of the divine nature and hence that, whatever he thinks is annoying or evil, and furthermore, whatever appears to be impious, cruel, unjust and shameful, is due to the fact that he has a blurred, partial and confused conception of things themselves" (Eth., IV, 73, schol.), he formulates in its classical form the contemplative concept of philosophy. The same concept is expressed by Hegel, who states that philosophy, like Minerva's owl whose flight begins at sunset, always reaches its destination when everything has already been settled, too late, therefore, to say how the world must be (Phil. of Law, Pref.). For Hegel, indeed, as for Aristotle and Spinoza, the object of philosophy is the necessary; its task is precisely that of showing the necessity of what exists, that is, the rationality of the real (Enc., § 12). From this viewpoint, philosophy is the rational justification of reality. And by reality is meant not only the reality of nature but also that of the historico-social institutions - that is, of the human world. In this respect, Schopenhauer's concept of philosophy did not differ very much. He stated: "Reflecting into concepts the whole essence of the world, abstractly, universally and transparently, and placing it thus as reflected likeness into the ever permanent and ever ready concepts of reason - this, and nothing else, is philosophy" (Die Welt, I, § 68).

In contemporary philosophy, the concept of philosophy as contemplation is still present in phenomenology and in spiritualism. Phenomenology is the effort to realise, through the epoché, the viewpoint of a "disinterested observer", that is, of a subject who is not, in his turn, subject to the limiting conditions which he is considering. Husserl states "The self of phenomenological meditation can become the impartial observer of himself, not only in particular cases but in general; and this himself includes every objectivity which exists for him, in the way in which it exists for him" (Cart. Med., § 15). And in his last work Husserl sees in philosophy "the historical movement of the revelation of universal reason, innate as such in mankind" (Krisis, § 6), and attributes to it the risk of bringing reason "to its own self-understanding, to a reason which understands itself concretely, which understands that it is a world, a world that is in its own universal truth" (Ibid., § 73). On the other hand Bergson by distinguishing between philosophy as intuition or consciousness of temporal duration, that is, of the becoming of consciousness, and science as knowledge of facts, views science as "the auxiliary of action" and philosophy as a contemplative activity. "The rule of science", he states, "is that which Bacon laid down, viz., to obey in order to command. The philosopher neither obeys nor commands; he only wishes to sympathise" (La pensée et le mouvant, 3rd ed., 1934, p. 158). Two characteristic traits which betray the presence of the conception of philosophy as contemplation are either the idolising of the "wise", as a privileged or perfect human condition, or the idolising of philosophy as the final and conclusive form of being. The forms of ancient and modern scepticism pertain to this conception. When Sextus Empiricus points to the imperturbability which sceptic philosophy enables one to realise, as the good of such a philosophy (Ip. Pirr., I, 25); or when Hume reduces the reason for philosophising, which he thinks is unable to act on man's deep-rooted beliefs, to the pleasure which he derives from it (Treatise, I, 4, 7; Inquiry Concerning Understanding, XII, 3); both assign to philosophy a contemplative function which exhausts itself on the sphere of the life of the individual. The function of philosophy as "therapy" for philosophy, that is, as liberation from philosophical doubts, of which Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, § 133) and some English philosophers who follow him (cfr. Revolution in Philosophy, 1956, pp. 106, 112 f.) speak, exhausts itself within the same sphere. These philosophers indeed, do not seem to assign to philosophical therapy any other role save that of freeing the individual from philosophical doubts, enabling him in this way to "feel better" in the way in which Hume felt better with his sceptical doubts.

b) The concept of philosophy as guiding or transforming activity is already present in the legend of the Seven Sages, which Plato relates for the first time (Prot., 343 a). The Seven Sages, in fact, were moralists and politicians, and the sayings in which they condensed their wisdom have to do with the conduct of life and human relations. The first great instance of a philosophy explicitly conceived for the purpose of transforming the human world, however, is the philosophy of Plato. Which Plato's is wholly directed at modifying the form of social life and founding it on justice. The education of the philosopher culminates not in the vision of the good but in the "return to the cave". The philosopher must place the results of his speculation at the disposal of the community, and must use them for the guidance and direction of it. "Each of you", says Plato, "must descend in turn into the common dwelling and accustom yourself to contemplate objects in darkness: because by becoming accustomed to the darkness, you will see much better than those who have dwelt there below all the time, and will recognise the features and the object of each image because he has seen the true exemplars of beauty, of justice and of goodness. In this manner we ourselves and you will fashion and govern the city as men who are awake and are not dreaming, as it happens in most cities through the fault of those who fight among themselves over shadows and vie with one another for power as though it were a good" (Rep., VII, 520 c). Platonic philosophy is wholly dominated by this educative and political commitments. According to Plato, the task of philosophy is not that of making the blessedness of contemplation available to a number of men but that of giving to all the possibility of living according to justice (Ibid., 519 e). This active conception of philosophy remained dormant for a long time. Only in the Renaissance was it revived by the Humanists, who thought of philosophy as prudence. In De Nobilitate Legum et Medicinae, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) said: "I am quite surprised at your contention that wisdom lies in contemplation, and that prudence is its servant, related to it as a manager is related to his master; that wisdom is the highest virtue, insofar as it belongs to the best part of the soul, that is, to the intellect; and that happiness consists in conducting oneself wisely. And then you add that since metaphysics is the only free science, the philosopher requires that speculation should always precede action … True wisdom, however, does not consist in pure speculation, as you think. If you take prudence away, you will find neither the wise man nor wisdom itself … Indeed would you term wise the man who knew about the heavenly and divine things but failed to provide for himself and to help his friends, his family, his relatives and his country?" In Isagogicon Moralis Disciplinae (1424), Leonardo Bruni asserted, in the same spirit, the superiority of moral philosophy over theoretical philosophy.

The subsequent growing acceptance of this active conception of philosophy believed that only moral philosophy was active. Bacon, however, also regards the philosophy of nature as active, because its end is to rule over nature. Bacon does not hesitate to term "pastoral" even Telesius' philosophy, which he held in great esteem and partly followed, because it seemed to him that Telesio's philosophy "contemplated the world placidly and almost leisurely" (Works, III, p. 118). Hobbes emphasised the same function of philosophy (De Corp., I,§ 6). Descartes, in his turn, thought that philosophy was meant to attain the wisdom and the science of whatever is useful or advantageous for man (Princ. Phil., Pref.). Locke and the philosophers of the Enlightenment assigned philosophy the same task of guidance and correction. With Locke, philosophy becomes critique of knowledge and the effort to free man from ignorance and prejudice. It remains such for the XVIIIth century Enlightenment, which views philosophy as reason's striving to get hold of the human world, to free it from, errors and to cause it to progress. D'Alembert described the action exerted by philosophy in his own days as follows: "From the principles of secular science to the foundation of revelation, from metaphysics to matters of taste, from music to morale, from the scholastic disputes of theologians to thing of commerce, from the right of princes to that of peoples, from natural law to the arbitrary laws of nations - in a word, from the problems which concern us most to those which interest us least, everything has been discussed and analysed or at least subjected to questioning. A new light thrown on some objects, a new darkness perceived about others, have been the outgrowth or consequence of this general effervescence of minds, just as the effect of the ebb and flow of the ocean is that of carrying something to the shore and of carrying something away from it" (Oeuvres, ed. Condorcet, p. 218). The Enlightenment concept of philosophy was shared by Kant, according to whom philosophy must enlighten and guide humanity in its dutiful progress toward universal happiness, by determining man's actual possibilities in all fields (Review of Herder's, Ideas on the Philosophy of History, 1784-85; cfr. Critique of Pure Reason, Trancs. Doctrine of Method, ch. III, end).

By emphasising the necessary, because rational, character of being, Romanticism as a whole constitutes a return to the contemplative conception of philosophy. Positivism itself, which explicitly intended to renew the Baconian doctrine of knowledge as possibility of dominion over nature, is not always faithful to the recognition of the active character of philosophy. White for social positivism (cfr.) (St. Simon, Proudhon, Comte, Stuart Mill) philosophy is mainly a means for transforming human society, for evolutionary positivism philosophy's character is more contemplative than active. The defense of mystery - that is, the recognition of the insolubility of the so-called ultimate problems, which Spencer regards as a task of philosophy, places philosophy at the same contemplative level as religion. The discussion regarding the solubility or insolubility of the so-called "world enigmas" falls entirely within the scope of contemplative philosophy. Ardigò's positivism as well as materialistic monism (Haeckel) and spiritualistic evolutionism (Wundt, Morgan, et al.) are just as contemplative. As a matter of fact, the Romantic climate is present in positivism as well as in idealism, and leads both to the concept of philosophy as contemplation of a necessary reality. A protest against this concept is constituted by the "new materialism", which found in Marx one of its partisans, at odds, on the other hand, with Feuerbach's theoretical materialism. "Philosophers to this day", he stated, "have only interpreted the world in different ways: the point now is to transform it" (Thesis on Feuerbach, 11). But despite Marx' emphasis on the commitment to transformation which must qualify philosophy as such, his doctrine holds on steadfastly to the very ground on which philosophy as contemplation is founded. This ground, in fact, is the necessity of the real; according to Marx, moreover, the transformation of society, that is, the transition from a capitalistic to a classless society, will come about "with the fatality which presides over the phenomena of nature" (Kapital, I, 24, § 7). On this basis, the task of philosophy appears to be that of a prophetic Cassandra rather than that of furthering and guiding the transformation itself. In this respect, neo-criticism at times escapes the Romantic climate. In Uchronie, Renouvier resolved to do away with "the illusion of previous necessity, which makes of the accomplished fact the only fact, among all other imaginable ones, which could actually take place" (Uchronie, 2nd ed., 1901, p. 411). According to Renouvier, the "analytic philosophy of history has the task of determing the general connections of historical facts, in order to guide the development of history itself (Introduction à la philosophie analytique de l'histoire, 1864, pp. 551-52). On the other hand, the determination of philosophy as "world view" (weltanschaung) - a determination to which philosophy was subjected in the second half of the 19th century by thinkers coming from neo-criticism or positivism - has a clear contemplative meaning. A polemical stand against the contemplative interpretation of philosophy was taken, instead, by pragmatism since its inception. This may be seen in C.S. Peirce's essay How to make Our Ideas Clear (1878). In this essay, Peirce stated that the whole function of thought is that of establishing habits of action (or beliefs); therefore, that the meaning of a concept consists exclusively in the possibility of action which that concept defines. Peirce explicitly denied the very presupposition of philosophy as contemplation, that is, the necessary character of the real. He showed how the regularity and order of events as well as the conditional relations among these same events have nothing in common with necessity, which implies the possibility of unerring prediction (Chance, Love and Logic, II, ch. 2). Dewey's definition of philosophy as "critique of values" (Experience and Nature, p. 407) expresses, precisely on the basis of the assumptions established by Peirce, the guiding function of philosophy. According to Dewey, the task of philosophy is the ancient one, inscribed in the etymological meaning of the word quest for wisdom. Wisdom differs from knowledge insofar as it is "the application of what is known to the intelligent performance of the tasks of human life" (Problems of Man, 1946, p. 7). Morris' definition does not have a different meaning: "A philosophy is a systematic organisation of basic beliefs - beliefs on the nature of the world and of man, beliefs as to what is good, beliefs as to what methods should be followed to attain knowledge, beliefs as to how life should be lived" (Signs, Language and Behavior, 1946, VIII, § 6). A belief, for Morris and for pragmatism as a whole, is but a rule of behaviour. Philosophy as organisation of basic beliefs, therefore, constitutes what Sartre termed "the fundamental project of life". In Sartre's own work one may notice the transition from the contemplative conception of philosophy expressed in L'être et le néant (1943) to the active or "enlightened" conception expressed in Critique de la raison dialectique (1960) In the former work, Sartre planned to conduct an inquiry termed "existential psychoanalysis", whose aim was that of "bringing to light in a rigorously objective way the subjective choice through which each person makes himself person, that is, he causes that which he is to be announced to himself" (L'être et le néant, p. 662). According to Sartre, the upshot of an inquiry of this kind should be the classification and the comparison of the various possible types of behaviour, hence the definitive clarification of human reality as such (Ibid., p. 663). The contemplative character of such a discipline is evident. In the latter work, however, Sartre views philosophy as "totalization of knowing, method, regulative Idea, offensive weapon and community of language", and furthermore as an instrument acting on societies in decay in order to transform them - an instrument which may also constitute the culture and even the nature of a whole class (Critique de la raison dialectique, p. 17). In the former case, philosophy gave man nothing to do, because man could do nothing. Sartre defined man as "useless passion", that is, as the impossible longing to be God (L'être et le néant, p. 708). In the latter case, philosophy inserts itself into the world as a finite but effective human force, and strives to transform it. Not subject to the destiny of either failure or success, the notion of project aptly expresses the guiding and operative character which the trends of contemporary neo-enlightenment attribute to philosophy. A project relies on available cognitions and determines their possible use in order to guarantee man's existence and coexistence. A philosophy which plans the human use of knowing along these lines - which, after all, are those which Plato already clarified - is obviously the determination of techniques of living which can be tested, corrected or rejected.

III. Philosophy and its procedures - The viewpoint of the procedure or method proper to philosophy is the third viewpoint from which constants of meaning may be found which enable us to discern basic articulations in the historically given interpretations of the concept of philosophy. From this viewpoint, philosophies may be divided into (a) synthetic or creative philosophies, which proceed by producing their object conceptually, and acknowledge neither limits nor conditions to this work of construction; and (b) analytic philosophies, which acknowledge the existence of data and proceed to describe or analyse such data. The specific trait of analytic philosophies is the limitation to which they consider themselves bound by the data, however they may understand the nature of the datum itself. The specific trait of synthetic philosophies, on the other hand, lies in not recognising such limitation and in contending that their method is wholly constructive, that is, capable of exhausting, without residues, the whole object of philosophy.

(a) The synthetic procedure cannot appeal to situations, facts or elements independent from itself, to test the validity of its results. Its characteristic, accordingly, is that of being itself its own controlling device. A philosophy's method may be considered synthetic whenever a philosophy assumes that the validity of its results depends exclusively on its own internal organisation and can therefore be recognised and established once for all, without any need for techniques or procedures independent from it to test and confirm its results. In this case, in fact, its procedure amounts to the creation or composition of its object ex novo, in a way that neither requires confirmation nor fears contradiction. Hegel's philosophy is the purest embodiment of this type of philosophy. When Hegel states: "Philosophy does not have the advantage other sciences enjoy, of presupposing its objects as immediately given by representation, and the method of its knowing as already granted at the outset and subsequently" (Enc., § 1), he is asserting precisely the exigency that philosophy should construct its own object and its own method entirely and by itself. Insofar as it produces by itself both object and method, however, it can be held accountable for its results - whatever these may be - to no science and to no other eventual viewpoints. Hegel underlines the absolutely independent or unconditional character of its method. He says, for instance: "As in science the concept, method unfolds by itself and is only an immanent progression and a production of its own determinations" (Phil. of Law, § 31). He goes on: "The highest dialectic of concept is that of producing and grasping determination not simply as limit or position but by drawing from its own positive content and result; for only in this way is it development and immanent progress. This dialectic is not the outer doings of an objective thought but the content's own soul, which causes its branches and its fruits to bud forth organically" (Ibid., § 31). The difference between this method, productive or better creative of its object, and the analytic method, which Hegel regards as proper to post-Cartesian sciences, is stated by Hegel himself in the following way: "The method advanced by Descartes rejects all methods directed to knowing what, by its content, is infinite; it surrenders itself, therefore, to the unrestrained arbitrariness of imaginations and assertions, to a presumption of morality and pride of sentiment or to a boundless opining and reasoning, which declares itself in the most energetic way against philosophy and philosophers" (Enc., § 77).

This conception assigns to philosophical procedure the production of its object, and turns the object into the infinite itself, that is, the Absolute or God, which resolves or annuls into itself every fact or finite thing. Before finding its typical form in Hegel, this conception was expressed by Fichte as the exigency that philosophy, as the doctrine of science, should give systematic form not only to itself but also to all other possible sciences, and should guarantee to all sciences the validity of this form (Uber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, 1794, § 1). Fichte held that the doctrine of science should produce not only its own form but also its own content; and that the content and be, therefore, "the absolute content" (Ibid., 1). Going even further, the conception of the synthetic method may be seen in Spinoza, according to whom the philosophical procedure which he terms intuitive knowledge, third type of knowledge, intellectual love of God - has for its object the necessity with which all things stem from the divine nature. The intellectual love of God is that very love with which God loves himself (Eth., V, 36). This means that the knowledge of the necessity with which all things derive from God is the very knowledge that God has of himself. From this viewpoint, the mathematical procedure of the Ethics acquires a profound significance in Spinoza's philosophy: it is not an artifice of exposition but the conformity of the method of philosophy to the necessary procedure by which things derive from God. Viewed from this perspective, the synthetic method exhibits itself in its most outstanding trait in its claim to have the value of a divine glance cast on the world, of the very knowledge that God has of himself and of his created effects. It can be easily seen, then, how this claim has been often advanced by philosophy. "This science alone", Aristotle said, "is divine; and it is such in a twofold sense: because it belongs properly to God, and because it has to do with divine things. To it alone both privileges have been reserved by destiny: God, indeed, appears as the cause and principle of all things, and only or mainly a science of this type can be proper to God" (Met., I, 2, 983 a 5). Aristotle, accordingly, termed first philosophy theology. It is true that first philosophy is such on account of its universality, and that it is universal only insofar as it is science of being as being (Ibid., VI, 1, 1026 a 30). But the very science of being as being is theology, because it is the science of the cause or raison d'être, and this cause or raison d'être is God. Aristotelian philosophy, therefore, has an avowedly synthetic character; it may be regarded as the first and classic instance of synthetic procedure. It is not such, of course, only because it considers itself as coincident with the knowledge that God has of himself. Any synthetic philosophy may be easily recognised as such on account of this feature.

(b) Philosophy's analytic procedure is recognised negatively by the lack of the claim to be valid as divine knowledge of the world, and positively by its recognition of a limit to its possibilities and of a control of its results. As a consequence, the analytic procedure is not the construction ex novo of its object but the resolution of it into the elements which enable one to understand it, that is, into its conditions. The determination of philosophic procedure along these lines was done by Kant, at first in one of his pre-critical writings of 1764 On the Distinction of the Principles of Natural Theology and of Morals, and afterwards in the second main part of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the former work, Kant opposed the analytic method of philosophy to the synthetic method of mathematics. He stated: "Any general concept may be attained in either one of these ways: either by means of an arbitrary connection of concepts or by isolating those cognitions which have been clarified by subdivision. Mathematics arrives at its definitions by following always the first way… Philosophical definitions, instead, are quite different. Here the concept of things is already given but in a confused and insufficiently determinate manner. One must subdivide it, compare in each case the notes which have been set apart with the given concept, in order to determine and complete this abstract idea" (Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral, I, I, § 1). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguished between philosophical knowledge as knowledge by concepts and mathematical knowledge, which consists in the construction of concepts. Mathematics, Kant says, can construct concepts because a pure intuition, that of space time, is available to it. Philosophy, on the contrary, has no pure intuition at its disposal but only a sensible intuition: the objects of philosophy, therefore, must be given and, accordingly, can only be analysed, not constructed, by philosophical procedure (Critique of Pure Reason, Doctrine of Method, ch. I, sect. I). Kant, therefore, warns philosophers against the claim of organising their science according to the mathematical model. Properly speaking, there are in philosophy neither definitions - which are constructions of concepts - nor axioms - that is, evident truths, nor demonstrations - that is, apodeictic proofs. With regard to demonstrations, Kant says: "Experience teaches us what is; it does not teach us that it cannot be otherwise. Empirical principles of proof can give us no apodeictic proof. An intuitive certitude, that is, an evidence, cannot possibly be gotten from a priori concepts (in discursive knowing), even though the judgement be apodeictically certain" (Ibid., Doctrine of Method, ch. I, sect. I). From this point of view, the procedure of philosophy is far from being able to give man a knowledge comparable to that which God possesses. "The determination of the limits of our reason can be done only on the basis of a priori principles. But the limitation of reason - which turns out to be the knowledge, however indeterminate, of an ignorance which can never be fully eradicated, may be known also a posteriori, that is, from the fact that in every knowledge of ours there remains something else to be known" (Ibid., On the impossibility of a sceptical satisfaction). Philosophy never is a perfect science, to be either taught or learnt. "One can only learn how to philosophise, that is, how to exercise the talent of reason in the application of its universal principles to particular inquiries, but always preserving reason's right to inquire upon such principles at their source and to either confirm or reject them" (Ibid., Doctrine of Method, ch. III).

Kant's determinations constitute a relatively complete or mature concept of analytic procedure in philosophy. Their immediate precedent is to be found in Locke: "Our business here", Locke said, "is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge" (Essay, Intr., § 6). The concept of philosophy as analytic procedure - that is, as aimed at determining the conditions and hence the limits of human activity - inspired 18th century Enlightenment. From this point of view, however, and with the diversity due to the difference of cultural means at their disposal, the thinkers of 18th century Enlightenment renewed the ideal of the ancient Enlightenment of the Sophists and of Socrates, who viewed philosophy as directed to the formation of man in the community. The very Platonic concept of philosophy may be regarded as a manifestation of this Enlightenment, according to which philosophy is an instrument for man, in man's behalf. Plato, in fact, denied that philosophy was proper to the divinity. Like love, philosophy is lack because it is desire for wisdom on the part of one who does not possess wisdom by his own nature. Man is philosopher because he "stands between the wise and the ignorant", while the divinity, that already possesses wisdom, ha no need to philosophise (Conv., 204 a-b). On the other hand, dialectics, which is the method of philosophy, is conceived by Plato as analysis, that is, as a procedure enabling one to distinguish between true and false discourse, by showing the things that can combine among themselves, and those that cannot (Soph., 252 d-e). In order to show what are the things that can be combined, and what are those that cannot, dialectic proceeds by composing various determinations into a single concept, and then by dividing this very concept into its articulations, as an able carver would do (Phaedr., 265 e). At each step, therefore, dialectics presupposes the suitable choice of the determinations to be joined into a single concept and of the points where the concept should be divided. This choice, like any other, presupposes the use of data - and this has caused the Platonic method to be justly considered an empirical method (Taylor, Plato, 4th ed., 1937, p. 377).

The main features of this analytic conception of philosophy are that philosophy is a human activity, that is, limited in its scope and validity; that philosophy consists in making choices, not in constructing its objects in its entirety. The third feature, which perhaps is the most obvious and the most outstanding, stems from the former two: the one by which this method is, among other things and primarily, discernment and use of data, that is, of facts, elements or conditions which are not products of the method itself. The problem lies in the choice of data and in their elaboration in view of possible solution. It is a distinctive feature of analytic philosophies generally that the notion of problem is basic for them, while such notion is either non-existent or is regarded as secondary and negligible in synthetic philosophies - as in the case for the philosophies of Aristotle and Hegel. A further determination of this conception, a determination which it acquires only in the contemporary world, has to do with the field from which philosophy can or must draw its data, and with which the interpretation of these data can or must be compared. It is only a recent idea that the results of philosophy, like those of any other inquiry, are not definitive but need to be put to the test and tried out. In this connection, Dewey termed philosophy critique of critiques. "It may seem a betrayal to some" he stated, "to think of philosophy as the critical method of developing methods of criticism. But this concept of philosophy also awaits to be tried, and the trial which will either approach or condemn it lies in its eventual issue. The import of such knowledge as we have acquired, and of the experience which thought has brought to life, lies in evoking and justifying the proof itself" (Experience and Nature, p. 437). This exigency, however, becomes operative only when one determines the field from which philosophy draws its data and in which it finds its possibilities of confirmation. The determination of this field is the distinctive feature of the analytic philosophy of our times. Now, the fields to which philosophy can resort to are only two, viz., 1° individual existence, 2° existence in society.

1° The philosophies which resort to individual existence for the search of data and for the eventual testing of solutions, usually regard individual existence as consciousness, and regard consciousness as philosophy's specific domain. In the contemporary world, the best known and most typical philosophy of this type is that of Bergson, which takes the explicit form of an inquiry into the "immediate data of consciousness" and which uses these data in reaching solutions which can be tested, in their turn, only within the scope of consciousness. Phenomenology, which Husserl conceived as "a radical return to the pure ego cogito in order to bring to life anew the eternal values stemming from it" (Méd. Cartés., § 2) - is connected with this type of philosophy. The methodological flaw of this type of philosophy lies in the fact that in it the datum - which must function as limit or control of the analytic procedure, is not actually independent from such procedure because it can be discovered or assumed only on the basis of the presuppositions that inspire the procedure itself.

2° The forebear of the philosophies which appeal to associate existence is the philosophy of Plato, whose intent was precisely that of testing the results of philosophy in associate life. Kant's philosophy belongs to the same family. According to it, the results of philosophy must be put to the test in the moral and political domains, that is, in the field of human relations in general, and they must be an instrument of progress in that field (Whether Humanity is Constantly Progressing toward What is Better, written in 1728, and On the Enlightenment, written in 1784, as well as the above-cited work, II, b). Dewey refers to inter-human experience for the testing of the results of philosophy - that is, of the suggestions made by philosophy for the intelligent conduct of life (Experience and Nature, ch. X). On the other hand, Heidegger's existentialism, though not planning to put the results of its analysis to the test, draws the data for such analyses from common everyday existence, from what happens among men "first and mostly" (Sein und Zeit, § 9). Lastly, philosophy understood as language-analysis may be led back to the same horizon, insofar as it regards language as the basic inter-subjective fact, and hence views the clarification and correction of it as the most suitable instrument to eliminate ambiguities and redress inter-subjective relations. This, at least, would seem to be the foremost meaning of this philosophy. Its meaning differs, however, if it is understood, as it is understood by some - as a "therapy" to free men from doubts, regarded as fictitious - engendered by philosophy. In this case, since no one save the person affected is in a position to judge whether or not he feels sufficiently "healed", philosophy's testing-ground would actually be the private life of the individual.