KNOWLEDGE AND "KNOWLEDGE"
233
past but current specialization in the sciences and more rigorous cri–
teria of logical analysis make it unlikely that philosophic systems
will play the same fructifying role in the future as in the past.
C. D. Broad's conception of critical philosophy makes it anci\1ary
to scientific and common sense knowledge. "The most fundamental
task of Philosophy," says Broad in his
Scientific Thought,
"is to take
the concepts that we use in daily common life and science, to analyze
them, and thus to determine their precise meanings and their mutual
relations." This, as he points out, does not make it a merely verbal
discipline unrelated to the ways of things and the patterns of events.
On the other hand, speculative philosophy for Broad is exciting and
important but of a rather ambiguous cognitive character. It is
"Man's final view of the Universe as a Whole, and of the position
and prospects of himself and his fellows" in it. In the past Specula–
tive Philosophy has been mostly "moonshine." In the present, it
must be based on rigorously exercised Critical Philosophy. In the
future it can consist only "at best ... of more or less happy guesses."
And at all times it tends to be unduly influenced by one's liver and
bank balance. This is hardly an encouraging view of philosophical
knowledge.
Although this is not the place to develop the idea, I wish to
mention in conclusion a quite different conception of philosophy,
which is at once more modest than the view that philosophical
knowledge is "superior" to scientific knowledge and yet more com–
prehensive than Broad's interpretation of "critical philosophy." To
the extent that philosophy is not a substitute or rival of the sciences,
or an analysis of the categories, the logic, and the language of the
sciences,
it
is a way of looking at the world, a
Lebensphilosophie,
a
theory of criticism, ultimately concerned with the better and worse.
Philosophy in this sense is wider and more precious than science
because in Dewey's words it is "occupied with meaning rather than
with truth." It is not a revelation of the physical or metaphysical
structure of the universe but of the "predicaments, protests and as–
pirations of humanity." It was none other than Dewey who deplored
"our lack of imagination in generating leading ideas," and who
denied that "the scientifically verifi.able" at any moment "provides
the content of philosophy." Indeed, "as long as we worship science
