Career
Hamilton studied at Oxford. He presented his dualistic and agnostic version of Kantianism in an essay, "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned," in the Edinburgh Review in 1829.
Hamilton studied at Oxford. He presented his dualistic and agnostic version of Kantianism in an essay, "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned," in the Edinburgh Review in 1829.
According to Hamilton, "to think is to condition"; indeed, to experience is to condition. External objects, in coming within human experience, are transformed by the conditions human beings impose upon them. Man thus comes to know how things appear to him; but he can never know what things are in themselves. What he perceives is relative to the few senses he chances to have and to the peculiar character of these few senses. Philosophy shows man how he must think, but not what, apart from him, things are.
Quotations: "Our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestation of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy."