Six Secular Philosophers.

SIX SECULAR PHILOSOPHERS SIX SECULAR PHILOSOPHERS Lewis White Beck Professor of Philosophy in the University of Rochester HARPER & BRO TH ERS PUBLISHERS N E W YO RK SIX SECULAR PHILOSOPHERS Copyright © i960 by Lewis White Beck Printed inthe United States of America All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per­ mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper (5 Brothers 49 East 33 Street, New York 16, N. Y. FIRST EDITION C-K Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-11769 190 B ' 5 cf 3 S CONTENTS I II Preface 7 W hat Is Secular Philosophy? 9 Families of Secular Philosophers 18 III Spinoza 27 IV Hume 42 V Kant 61 Nietzsche 79 James 92 VI V II V III Santayana 106 Notes 119 Index 125 18668 To Charles Mills 18663 PREFACE Although the philosophers studied in this book contributed much to present-day secularism, they contributed even more to the conception of liberal religion. Modernism is not a peculiarly modem movement. Its beginnings were earlier than Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and the Social Gospel, and are to be found in the writings of philosophers in the main stream of European thought. Their critical estimation of religion— leading sometimes to its rejection, sometimes to efforts at its reform—is important to all those who are troubled over the position and function of religion in our culture and in a divided world. In this book I have discussed six philosophers whose works on religion seem to me to be most germane to contemporary issues: Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Neitzsche, James, and Santayana. In the winter of 1958-1959 I gave a series of lectures on these thinkers to The Brick Forum of The Brick Presbyterian Church in Rochester; since then, several of them have been delivered before other groups in the United States and Can­ ada. The vigorous response of my audiences—sympathetic, often critical, always constructive—and many requests for copies of the lectures embolden me to have them published. They are given here almost exactly as they were orally pre­ sented; but the questions raised by listeners gave me, here and there, occasion to clarify points that may have been left ob­ scure in their original form. March 9, i 960 L e w is W h it e B eck 7 I W h at Js Secular Philosophy ? W h a t is secular philosophy? This is a simple question, but if an answer is not to be overly simple and dogmatic, we must come to it in what may at first appear to be a roundabout way. W e must first discuss the meanings of the words “ religion,” “ theology,” and “ philosophy” before we consider the word “ secular.” What, then, is religion? There is a constant danger that when we try to think logically about religion, we may sur­ reptitiously convert it into something strictly intellectual that is easy to analyze, as if it were just a way of thinking that we are examining. Religion does include a set of beliefs about God, and these beliefs are meaningful or meaning­ less, true or false, and as such they can be examined in­ tellectually. But religion is more than such a set of beliefs. The word also refers to attitudes that people have and act upon when they do believe that God exists. The word also refers to conduct following upon these attitudes, not just to the beliefs that are held about God and man and their rela­ tionship. There are so many different conceptions of God that what one man consi