1250. Granted that "speculative philosophy . . .

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Granted that "speculative philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted," and granted, further, that "the true method of discovery," i.e., "for the divination of the generic notions which apply to all facts," is "the method of imaginative rationalization," or "the method of generalization"; still, one may insist that a method of discovery is one thing, a method of justification, something else.

So far as the second is concerned, Whitehead, as I understand him, has relatively little to say beyond insisting that the justification of "formulations of first principles," or "categorial schemes," has both an "empirical" and a "logical" side (cf. PRc: 3 [5]). In this sense, he can say that "speculative boldness" in imaginatively generalizing ideas must be balanced by "complete humility before logic, and before fact" (17 [25]). In this respect, he is very much like Hartshorne in not further clarifying the difference between the final appeal to experience proper to speculative philosophy, on the one hand, and that proper to science, or the sciences, on the other. That there is a such a difference seems clear enough. But just wherein it lies is not clearly spelled out – as it very well could be along the lines of Nygren's distinction between the three modes of objective argumentation.

To be sure, Whitehead is clear enough that philosophy's primary method is not deduction, as it is in the case of mathematics, because the "true place" of deduction in philosophy is "as an essential auxiliary mode of verification whereby to test the scope of generalities" (10 [16 f.]). But he says nothing about the difference between the "mode of verification" proper to philosophy, on the one hand, and the induction properly practiced by science, or the sciences, on the other.

The one kind of thing he does say, however, that appears to point to what, in my opinion, needs to be said is best represented when he says that "[w]hatever thread of presupposition characterizes social expression through the various epochs of rational society must find its place in philosophic theory," or when he talks about uncritically trusting the verbal statements of an established metaphysical system leading us into "difficulties which take the shape of negations of what in practice is presupposed" (17 [25]; 13 [20]). Of course, his many other statements about "practice"—such as "[w]hatever is found in 'practice' must lie within the scope of the metaphysical description," and "[w]hen the description fails to include the 'practice,' the metaphysics is inadequate and requires revision" (13 [19])—are statements of essentially the same kind. And they all point to something very like presuppositional analysis – or, more exactly, presuppositional analysis of self-understanding and life-praxis—as the proper method for verifying, or justifying, the putative discoveries of speculative philosophy.

This means, however, that one cannot clarify adequately the method of speculative philosophy without distinguishing systematically between the immediate experience to which science, or the sciences, finally appeal and that to which speculative philosophy finally appeals. Here what Whitehead has to say about the difference (he calls it "the grave divergence") between science and religion seems relevant, particularly in view of his statement elsewhere that "[t]he best rendering of integral experience, expressing its general form divested of irrelevant details, is often to be found in the utterances of religious aspiration" (208 [316]). "Religion," he says, "deals with the formation of the experiencing subject; whereas science deals with the objects which are the data forming the primary phase in this [sc. individual] experience" (16 [24]). Mutatis mutandis, speculative philosophy appeals to the experience of "the experiencing subject" as "one occasion of sensitive reaction to an actual world," while science appeals, not to "the sensitive reaction," but to "the percepta from which experience originates."

It also means that justification of speculative philosophy's formulations of the ultimate generalities requires the independent development of an existentialist analysis/transcendental metaphysics by way of analyzing the necessary presuppositions of self-understanding and life-praxis. If, as Whitehead admits, the words and phrases in which these formulations are cast "must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage" and therefore "remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap," whether or not these formulations are true, or "adequate," can be decided only by appealing to the literal terms relative to which they are metaphors. 

Thus, so far as I can see, "speculative philosophy" can be justified only in the same way in which more or less explicit understandings of existence, including the "secondary" understandings of philosophy, require to be justified – namely, by reference to the metaphysics (as well as the ethics) developed by analyzing the necessary presuppositions of our self-understanding and life-praxis.

14 October 2000