By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
What are the necessary conditions of properly calling something "philosophy"?
I suggest two such conditions:
(1) that, and only that, may be properly called philosophy which can be confirmed (in whole or in part) solely by way of a strictly "reflective method" by which I mean essentially what C. I. Lewis means by the phrase, i.e., a method that appeals to the evidence of any human experience whatever, and thus requires no particular (or special) human experience(s); and
(2) that, and only that, may be properly called philosophy whose ultimate objective is the "wisdom" that "liberates," or "emancipates," in that it frees the self from itself and for itself by also freeing it from the quasi-natural forces of society, culture, and history.
13 September 1971; rev. 8 August 2002
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