Background
William Pepperell Montague was born on 11 November 1873, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the son of William Pepperell Montague, a lawyer, and Helen Maria Cary Montague.
(Excerpt from The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledg...)
Excerpt from The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledge, Nature, and Value But in addition to the desire to make others philosophize, I have a more personal desire to win consideration for my own philosophy, its logic, and its ethics, and, even more, for those postulates on which its metaphysical hypotheses depend. These postulates are three: I. That consciousness is neither separate from material motion nor just an aspect of it, but is itself a high and special form of that same energy which manifests itself in matter and in life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
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(William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953) was an American re...)
William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953) was an American realist philosopher who advocated a frankly Platonic "subsistential realism." He called it a right-wing realism, in contrast with left-wing realism, whose adherents included the behaviorists, objective relativists, and-to some extent-pragmatists. Epistemology was secondary, however, to Montague's preoccupation with the psychophysical problem of the nature of mind and its relation to the body. Naturalistic monism, strongly supported by science, could not, Montague claimed, adequately account for such characteristics of mind as purpose, privacy, duration, and integration. Traditional dualism could account for them, but it was scientifically sterile in its reliance on concepts of spirit. Montague's answer, which he called "animistic materialism," was the hypothesis of a physical soul possessing all of the traits of mind although still physically describable.
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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(This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.)
This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.
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( This volume is based upon the seventh series of lecture...)
This volume is based upon the seventh series of lectures delivered at Yale University on the Foundation established by the late Dwight H. Terry of Plymouth, Connecticut, through his gift of an endowment fund for the delivery and subsequent publication of “Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy.” The deed of gift declares that “the object of this Foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The beliefs of men in the past, the author makes clear, were inevitably inspired by their fears of an incomprehensible universe and were derived from their ideas of the supernatural. Science has gradually created a new set of sanctions; and the religion of today, freed from the dread of the unknown, must be formed on this new foundation. Professor Montague proceeds to outline the basis of a philosophy of life reconceived from this point of view, applying to it the term Promethean Religion. It is a volume which will stimulate new thought and discussion, a distinguished addition to the important volumes already published on the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation.
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(Originally published in 1917 as a portion of “The Warner ...)
Originally published in 1917 as a portion of “The Warner Library, Volume 18,” this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 20 pages, describes the life and philosophy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Sample passage: The strength of the Nietzschean criticism of democracy can be illustrated as follows: Imagine all the individuals of a community to be arranged in a series according to their abilities. Assume that the series runs from zero percent at its lowest to 100 percent at its highest. If such a community is democratically operated, each member will possess an equal share in directing its affairs and receiving its benefits, with the result that the efficiency of management will be exactly 50 percent, or just one half what it would be under the aristocratic plan in which the best members or those ranking 100 per cent in ability are the rulers. Why should we tolerate government by the average when we might have government by the best? In organizing any private enterprise we should, as a matter of course, secure our directors from the expert minority of ability. Why should we make a wasteful exception to the rule of reason in the great enterprise of political and economic government? About the author: William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953) was professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1899 to 1903, and at Columbia University from 1903 to 1947. He was president of the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association from 1923 to 1924. Other works include “The Ways of Knowing or the Methods of Philosophy,” “The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledge, Nature and Value,” and “Great Visions of Philosophy.”
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Dustjacket edge worn and lightly soiled.
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William Pepperell Montague was born on 11 November 1873, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the son of William Pepperell Montague, a lawyer, and Helen Maria Cary Montague.
Montague studied at Harvard University and graduated in 1896. A brilliant student, Montague quickly completed his graduate work in philosophy. Awarded a Harvard Ph. D. in 1898, he spent an additional year in Cambridge as a teaching fellow before moving to the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for four years.
Barnard College offered him a post in the autumn of 1903, and by 1907 Montague was also teaching courses as a member of the Columbia University graduate faculty of philosophy. In 1941, he was named Johnsonian professor of philosophy. He retired from Barnard and Columbia in 1947. Three times (1920, 1934, and 1937) Montague chaired American delegations to international philosophy meetings. He served as visiting Carnegie professor in Japan, Czechoslovakia, and Italy.
William Pepperell died in New York City.
(Excerpt from The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledg...)
(Originally published in 1917 as a portion of “The Warner ...)
( This volume is based upon the seventh series of lecture...)
(William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953) was an American re...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.)
(Dustjacket edge worn and lightly soiled.)
The thought of William Pepperell Montague forms an important chapter in the history of American philosophy. His early philosophical training at Harvard brought him into contact with George Herbert Palmer, William James, Charles S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, Hugo Münsterberg, and George Santayana. American philosophy was heavily dominated by theories of idealism that were aligned with the thought of Thomas Green, Edward Caird, and Francis Bradley in England, and fundamentally rooted in the work of Hegel and Kant. In his 1902 paper "Professor Royce's Refutation of Realism, " Montague emerged as a penetrating critic of idealist thought. By 1909, he was active with five other young philosophers Walter B. Pitkin, Walter T. Marvin, Edward G. Spaulding, Edwin B. Holt, and Ralph Barton Perry in pushing forward a philosophical alternative that came to be known as "New Realism. " Along with the growth of pragmatism, this movement put idealism on the defensive in American philosophy. Unity among the "Six Realists, " however, was short-lived; even in their original platform, each stated his own version of basic principles. Nonetheless, as Montague elaborated his philosophical vision, he never lost contact with the points of consensus that outlined the realist program. Thus, he explored and developed variations on the reality of a world independent of thought; the possibility of knowing that world without endangering its independence; rejection of the thesis that all relations are fundamentally "internal" in character; acceptance of scientific method as providing the normative model and foundation for knowledge; and the conviction that the universe is pluralistic.
Beyond stressing the independent existence of physical beings, Montague's realism took on a unique slant by incorporating Platonism. Sometimes speaking of his position as "subsistent realism, " Montague affirmed a realm of essences, logical forms, eternal possibilities, and ideals. The actualities that we encounter in space and time are existential embodiments of this sphere of subsistence, which is not dependent on human knowing and yet is both accessible to our minds and decisive in stimulating moral energy. Indeed, at our best we are agents with purposes and goals, who attempt to appropriate what Montague called "one high certainty that is quite philosophy's own: Ideals are eternal things, and the life that incarnates them attains an absolute value that time alone could not create and that death is powerless to destroy. " Not surprisingly, Montague's stress on a realism both physical and Platonic left him regarding mind and its relationship to the body as a central philosophical problem. Because of his scientific concern to define existence as far as possible in physical terms, he rejected traditional dualism.
On the other hand, he found most materialistic theories too mechanistic, and thus inadequate to account for such characteristics of mind as privacy and duration, purpose and integration. Instead, utilizing a distinction between kinetic and potential energy, Montague offered his "animistic materialism" as a better way to interpret the nature of human personality. Just as the coiling of a spring yields a potential energy, concealed and yet able to produce activity of its own, so the human nervous system may receive, incorporate, and utilize energy in an analogical manner. Such a view, Montague thought, had the advantage of allowing experienced differences between mind and body to stand without suggesting that more than one substance or basic reality is involved. Understood in this fashion, a person could legitimately be viewed as a unified and unifying center where matter, energy, and ideals might embody and inform each other so as to move life toward a larger and more inclusive goodness. Although Montague's realism gives us no transcendent power over nature, human choices and actions do exert influence and make a difference in the world. Moreover, our attraction toward ideals may signify the reality of a creative God who has the power to lure us toward the good. At times Montague even hints that a realistic universe may be panpsychic alive and full of mind throughout. If true, these "momentous" possibilities could support human hope: "For no longer should we be alien accidents in an indifferent world, uncharacteristic by-products of the blindly whirling atoms; and no longer would the things that matter most be at the mercy of the things that matter least. " Montague liked to think of philosophy as a form of vision. It should be logically precise, exacting, rooted in empirical data. But philosophy should not emphasize these traits to the exclusion of speculative insights that can nourish and enrich our lives; rigorous science and imaginative metaphysics belong together. Montague's efforts to combine those concerns make his work one of the great visions of philosophy produced by an American thinker.
Quotations:
"Skepticism is not a denial of belief, but rather a denial of rational grounds for belief. "
"To regard the successful experiences which ensue from a belief as a criterion of its truth is one thing and a thing that is sometimes bad and sometimes good but to assume that truth itself consists in the process by which it is verified is a different thing and always bad. "
Montague married Helen Weymouth Robinson on August 5 of that year; they had two sons.