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LIONEL ABEL
these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under
which they are contemplated by the followers of these respec–
tive sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as
enjoying and suffering beings.
If
the time should ever come
when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men,
shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood,
the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration,
and will welcome the being thus produced, as a dear and genu–
ine inmate of the household of man.
Has anyone asked whether our heroic cosmonauts can remain
members of the household of man? No, this question is never asked,
because it is not understood that our chief, our most important, our most
secure knowledge, is not dependent on any science. Wordsworth, of
course, was more interested in other values than the value of knowing.
He did not realize perhaps that the values he was interested in are the
guarantees of all our scientific knowledge. And I think it was Descartes'
understanding of this that made
him
the
g~eat
thinker he was, much
more than his contribution to mathematical physics, which could have
developed without his aid.
Edmund Husserl, because of the importance he gave to "lived
experience," realized after the advent of Hitler that he had to concern
himself with social questions, even though his training and tempera–
ment inclined him to a pure intellectualism and strictly technical prob–
lems. And so Husser! turned from the pure phenomenology which had
been his enterprise for years and wrote his great book on the crisis of
European humanity, his last and possibly most significant work. The
analysis of "lived experience" leads, and has
to
lead, to consideration
of social and finally political questions and to taking a stand on these.
I must point out here that the analysis of problems in logic, mathematics,
linguistics, does not lead, or have to lead, to any consideration of social
or political questions or to any commitment
to
social action. Bertrand
Russell was a socialist. Perhaps he still is. I am not sure. But his views
in technical philosophy did not lead him to holding political views,
as he himself has made quite clear. On the other hand, the analysis of
"lived experience," which yields the insight that we are involved with
others continually, does lead to taking a definite, even if wrong, stand
on society and politics.
It was Sartre's great merit to realize that the philosophical enterprise
he undertook involved a political as well as an intellectual adventure.
Now I am not going to endorse his support of Communist policies in the
past or in the present. Actually, Sartre is not very knowing politically.
And I think some of Mr. Hampshire's strictures on him in this regard
