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PARTISAN REVIEW
fered significantly in the place which they a3Signed to beliefs of
this
kind under the new regime. Neither Hume nor Kant had any
interest in variety of belief, nor, for these purposes, any historical
sense; and they virtually removed from the scene of rational
discourse all theories except those specifically accredited by their
own philosophical methods. Hume, whose "elimination" followed
the simple lines of atomic empiricism, regarded all beliefs as equally
irrational, but some as inevitable and convenient. Civilized life after
all rested on moral instincts, and Hume described those of his own
society. Kant more systematically attempted to show why our
knowledge was limited to certain kinds of object, and in doing so
pictured the mind as solely concerned with the objects of empirical
observation and science. He allowed in addition one belief (the
belief in Reason, with the related and tentative belief in God);
and all other theories were classed together as superstition. Hegel
differed from Hume and Kant in that he did not regard the fact
that a belief or theory had rested upon a discredited type of philo–
sophical argument as automatically denuding the theory of philo–
sophical interest or even of truth. He did not class theories as either
whole truths or total errors, but allowed to all the influential beliefs
that men have held the status of interpretation and discovery of the
world. All three philosophers are, of course, vulnerable themselves,
though not in the essentials of what they have to say,
to
attacks
by modem critics; all three, in different ways, can lay claim to the
title' of "empiricist."
Modem British philosophy is Humian and Kantian in inspiration.
It follows Hume and Kant in regarding sense experience as the
only basis for knowledge, and it follows Kant in ,attempting more
specifically to show that concepts not so based are "empty." Moral
and political philosophies, never the center of modem developments,
have followed in the wake. Attention was concentrated upon the
error by which former philosophers imagined themselves to be mak–
ing quasi-factual discoveries when really they were preaching. Since
morality could not be "proved" by philosophical argument, philo–
sophy now aimed at studying it in a non-partisan manner, analyzing
the "logic" of moral discourse in general, and leaving moral exhorta–
tion to others. Moral judgments, since they did not admit of empirical
verification, were first said to be "emotive" (a Humian position).
