By Schubert Ogden
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3. Against this is to be set the consideration that the "dependence" in question might be merely objective--as it presumably is in the case of beings incapable of understanding-whereas what is obviously required is a mode of dependence that is also subjective, in that it involves somehow the understanding of one's dependence on the part of the one who is dependent. But this requirement is hardly all that hard to satisfy--witness Schleiermacher's talk of "the feeling of absolute dependence." In that event, 2however, the question would obviously be whether the difference between talking about "having confidence" and "being (understandingly, or feelingly) dependent" is more than a merely verbal difference.
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Above all, I carry away the conviction that, while Collingwood is certainly right that "the whole of life, regarded as a whole, is the sphere of religion, and ... the same whole, regarded as made up of details, is the sphere of science" (_Faith and Reason_: 145), he is almost certainly wrong that "\[t\]he proper sphere of faith is everything in the collective sense-\--everything as a whole," while "\[t\]he proper sphere of reason is everything in the distributive sense-\--every separate thing, no matter what" (142). In other words, Collingwood misleads in representing the distinction between religion and science as only another way of talking about the distinction between faith and reason-\--and vice versa. For just as faith, in its way, has to do with parts as well as the whole, so reason, in its way-\--in the way of- _{-}philosophical{-}{_}-, as distinct from scientific, reason-\--has to do with the whole as well as parts. There are passages, indeed, where Collingwood himself clearly says as much (e.g., 91), so his position on the matter is simply not consistent. |
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