Errol Harris
Encyclopedia
Errol Eustace Harris was a contemporary South Africa
n philosopher. His work focused on developing a systematic and coherent account of the logic
, metaphysics
, and epistemology implicit in contemporary understanding of the world. Harris held that, in conjunction with empirical science, the Western philosophical tradition
, in its commitment to the ideal of reason, contains the resources necessary to accomplish this end. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2008.
. Errol studied philosophy at Rhodes University
in South Africa, where he was a student of A.R. Lord and where he obtained his B.A. and M.A., and at the University of Oxford
, where he obtained a B.Litt. degree with a thesis on Samuel Alexander
and Alfred North Whitehead
.
He served as an education officer for the British Colonial Service, and during World War II was Chief Instructor of the Middle East Military Education College at Mt. Carmel, Palestine, with the rank of Major in the Education Corps of the British Army. He was succeeded as Chief Instructor by Huw Wheldon, later Managing Director of the BBC; another Instructor was Capt. Michael Stewart, later Foreign Secretary in Harold Wilson's government, and subsequently Baron Stewart of Fulham. Errol Harris received his D. Litt. in philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand
in 1950, where he was secretary, and then president, of the lecturers' association. He became a full professor there in 1953. He served on the executive of the South African Race Relations Board with Chief Luthuli, the Zulu paramount chief, and in this capacity came to know Oliver Tambo (Nelson Mandela's law partner, who succeeded Mandela as president of the ANC.), who advised the Board of the ANC's stand on various issues. Harris's first important philosophical work, Nature,Mind and Modern Science, appeared in 1954. In 1956 he went to the United States to lecture at Yale University
and Connecticut College
, where he was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy. This allowed his philosophical activity to prosper unimpeded and gain growing recognition.
From 1959-1960 he was Acting Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University in Scotland, and then returned to Connecticut College. In 1962 he became Roy Roberts Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas
, and in 1966 Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University
, where he was later named John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and where he taught until his retirement in 1976. At the World Congress of Philosophy in Vienna in 1968, he chaired the meeting that established the International Society of Metaphysics. After retirement he taught as a visiting Professor at Marquette
, Villanova
and Emory
Universities and was an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University
. He was President of the Metaphysical Society of America
in 1969 (and in 1985 was awarded the Society's Paul Weiss Medal for the outstanding contribution to Metaphysics), and President of the Hegel Society of America in 1977-8. He had a home near Ambleside in the Lake District in England since 1963, taking up permanent residence there in his latter years. He died on June 21, 2009 at the age of 101.
interest in the metaphysics of Baruch Spinoza and G.W.F. Hegel. Spinoza's philosophy is reconstructed, interpreted, and appropriated by Harris in Salvation from Despair: A Reappraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy (1973). He argued for the cogency, truth, and timeliness of Hegel's speculative logic in An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (1983). In retirement his philosophical activity continued uninterrupted, giving rise to numerous articles and volumes, including Formal,Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking: Logic and Reality (1987).
was insuperably inconsistent in every version found in European thought from Locke
to the twentieth-century analytic philosophers
. The verification principle, upon which empiricism is grounded, is held by Harris to be intrinsically false because sense perception
is devoid of immediate self-evidence
, depending on an interpretative context that is a product of thinking's discursive activity. Furthermore, the verification principle is also unable to account for the empiricist epistemologist's claim to truth for his own doctrine. Empiricism's "fallacy" is that "of propounding a theory of knowledge from which, if it is true, the theorist himself must be exempt, and which, if it applies to the theorist himself, must be false". Nor is empiricism able successfully to overcome the logical antinomies infecting the inductive method
, by which it usually tries to explain and justify the genesis and validity of the universal form of scientific theories. Finally, Harris argued that the hypothetico-deductive method, which some empiricists such as Sir Karl Popper employ in order to overcome the shortcomings of the inductive method, is epistemologically unfruitful, owing to its merely analytic and conjectural nature.
results achieved by contemporary physics
, biology
, and experimental psychology
, as well as of the procedures of scientific enquiry, reveals that empiricism is not even in harmony with the specific orientation of contemporary science. He concludes that science supports a world-view that is relativistic
, holistic
, organicistic
, teleological
and hierarchical in character—a world-view contradicted by the unconfessed atomistic
, mechanical
, and pluralistic
metaphysical presuppositions of formal
and mathematical logic
that are wrongly privileged by philosophical empiricism.
characteristics of the doctrines under consideration without making value judgements about them. Its peculiar task is rather that of discerning in them the true
from the false
. In his historiographical studies, Harris gives considerable attention to Spinoza's and Hegel's metaphysics.
, Harris disputed what he saw as one-sided empiricist and materialistic
interpretations of Spinoza's naturalism. He argues that Spinoza's polemic
against the final causes ought to be understood as referring only to the standpoint of external teleology, and consequently that Spinoza does not exclude a valid explanation of natural processes in the light of an inner teleology. On the other hand, Harris also rejects the opposite, mystical
or "acosmistic" interpretations of the relationship between substance and attributes, according to which substance would be undifferentiated and attributes would be nothing more than a contingent product of human intellect. Harris on the contrary maintains that Spinoza's theory of the scientia intuitiva clearly shows that Spinoza consistently conceives of substance's self-identity as intrinsically differentiated into a rational system of "individual essences," and moreover that Spinoza's geometric method is simply the outward dress of an inferential procedure that is similar to dialectical method.
in Hegel's metaphysics. In the wake of the many philosophical developments which affected the theoretical underpinnings of the natural sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Harris outlines a "reform" of Hegel's Naturphilosophie that rejects as obsolete at least three of its main contentions: (1) that the natural sciences are nothing more than the product of the finite intellect's analytic activity; (2) that it is impossible cogently to prove the coming-to-be in natural philosophy of a unitary process of real biological evolution; and (3) that the "bad infinity" of the spaciotemporal form of inorganic nature is clear evidence of its self-contradictoriness. According to Harris, in fact, Einstein's
theories of special
and general relativity
, as well as the contemporary cosmological
theories of the "expanding universe", involve a plausible conception of the physical universe as a "finite but unbounded Whole," so that it can be safely regarded as an objective, natural embodiment of the infinitum actu, or "true infinity," which Hegel had instead confined to the subjectivity of life and spirit.
of positivistic
epistemology never takes the form of subjectivism
or skepticism
. For him truth is the apex of a teleological process, whose more abstract and elementary forms are the theoretical perspectives worked out by the natural and human sciences, while its most concrete, fully blown aspect coincides with the self-reflective activity of metaphysical thought. The elements of his metaphysics show the acknowledged influences of Spinoza's rationalistic monism
, Hegel's absolute idealism
, Collingwood's logic, and Joachim's coherence theory of truth
. He wrote:
In Harris's view, the ultimate unity of the subject and object of knowledge means that reality
, which is the peculiar object of metaphysical thought, is identical with logical reason, which is the self-conscious act of systematic thought that thinks of reality. For Harris only dialectical logic can grasp the essence
of such an identity. By sublating into the absolute idea the very negativity of finitude, appearance and error, only dialectical logic can disclose a logical universe that is not simply an aggregate of "bloodless categories,"but is rather a fully actual, self-sufficient and self-conscious Whole. As a consequence, Harris's metaphysics, like Hegel's, finally develops into a "logic of construction" and a panentheistic theology
.
Harris is also the author of over ninety published articles and chapters of books, the earliest of which appeared in 1936.
(co-translator with Prof. Peter Heath)
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n philosopher. His work focused on developing a systematic and coherent account of the logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, and epistemology implicit in contemporary understanding of the world. Harris held that, in conjunction with empirical science, the Western philosophical tradition
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
, in its commitment to the ideal of reason, contains the resources necessary to accomplish this end. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2008.
Life
Errol E. Harris was born on February 19, 1908 in Kimberley, South Africa, to parents who had emigrated from Leeds,England. His father, Samuel Jack Harris, had been one of the defenders of Kimberley when he was besieged there (together with Cecil Rhodes) during the Boer WarBoer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
. Errol studied philosophy at Rhodes University
Rhodes University
Rhodes University is a public research university located in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, established in 1904. It is the province’s oldest university, and is one of the four universities in the province...
in South Africa, where he was a student of A.R. Lord and where he obtained his B.A. and M.A., and at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, where he obtained a B.Litt. degree with a thesis on Samuel Alexander
Samuel Alexander
Samuel Alexander OM was an Australian-born British philosopher. He was the first Jewish fellow of an Oxbridge college.-Early life:...
and Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
.
He served as an education officer for the British Colonial Service, and during World War II was Chief Instructor of the Middle East Military Education College at Mt. Carmel, Palestine, with the rank of Major in the Education Corps of the British Army. He was succeeded as Chief Instructor by Huw Wheldon, later Managing Director of the BBC; another Instructor was Capt. Michael Stewart, later Foreign Secretary in Harold Wilson's government, and subsequently Baron Stewart of Fulham. Errol Harris received his D. Litt. in philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg is a South African university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University...
in 1950, where he was secretary, and then president, of the lecturers' association. He became a full professor there in 1953. He served on the executive of the South African Race Relations Board with Chief Luthuli, the Zulu paramount chief, and in this capacity came to know Oliver Tambo (Nelson Mandela's law partner, who succeeded Mandela as president of the ANC.), who advised the Board of the ANC's stand on various issues. Harris's first important philosophical work, Nature,Mind and Modern Science, appeared in 1954. In 1956 he went to the United States to lecture at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and Connecticut College
Connecticut College
Connecticut College is a private liberal arts college located in New London, Connecticut.The college was founded in 1911, as Connecticut College for Women, in response to Wesleyan University closing its doors to women...
, where he was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy. This allowed his philosophical activity to prosper unimpeded and gain growing recognition.
From 1959-1960 he was Acting Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University in Scotland, and then returned to Connecticut College. In 1962 he became Roy Roberts Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
, and in 1966 Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, where he was later named John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and where he taught until his retirement in 1976. At the World Congress of Philosophy in Vienna in 1968, he chaired the meeting that established the International Society of Metaphysics. After retirement he taught as a visiting Professor at Marquette
Marquette University
Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1881, the school is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities...
, Villanova
Villanova University
Villanova University is a private university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
and Emory
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
Universities and was an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
. He was President of the Metaphysical Society of America
Metaphysical Society of America
The Metaphysical Society of America is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950 for promoting the study of metaphysics. The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies...
in 1969 (and in 1985 was awarded the Society's Paul Weiss Medal for the outstanding contribution to Metaphysics), and President of the Hegel Society of America in 1977-8. He had a home near Ambleside in the Lake District in England since 1963, taking up permanent residence there in his latter years. He died on June 21, 2009 at the age of 101.
Philosophical work
During his years at Kansas and Northwestern Harris's major publications included The Foundation of Metaphysics in Science (1965) and Hypothesis and Perception: The Roots of Scientific Method (1970). He has also had an abiding historiographicHistoriography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
interest in the metaphysics of Baruch Spinoza and G.W.F. Hegel. Spinoza's philosophy is reconstructed, interpreted, and appropriated by Harris in Salvation from Despair: A Reappraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy (1973). He argued for the cogency, truth, and timeliness of Hegel's speculative logic in An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (1983). In retirement his philosophical activity continued uninterrupted, giving rise to numerous articles and volumes, including Formal,Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking: Logic and Reality (1987).
Epistemological and methodological criticisms of empiricism
Harris holds the epistemological position that philosophical empiricismEmpiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
was insuperably inconsistent in every version found in European thought from Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
to the twentieth-century analytic philosophers
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
. The verification principle, upon which empiricism is grounded, is held by Harris to be intrinsically false because sense perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
is devoid of immediate self-evidence
Self-evidence
In epistemology , a self-evident proposition is one that is known to be true by understanding its meaning without proof....
, depending on an interpretative context that is a product of thinking's discursive activity. Furthermore, the verification principle is also unable to account for the empiricist epistemologist's claim to truth for his own doctrine. Empiricism's "fallacy" is that "of propounding a theory of knowledge from which, if it is true, the theorist himself must be exempt, and which, if it applies to the theorist himself, must be false". Nor is empiricism able successfully to overcome the logical antinomies infecting the inductive method
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
, by which it usually tries to explain and justify the genesis and validity of the universal form of scientific theories. Finally, Harris argued that the hypothetico-deductive method, which some empiricists such as Sir Karl Popper employ in order to overcome the shortcomings of the inductive method, is epistemologically unfruitful, owing to its merely analytic and conjectural nature.
Theoretical and metaphysical criticisms of empiricism
Harris does not limit himself to refuting empiricism in a purely logico-immanent way, but also argues that a careful examination of the theoreticalTheory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
results achieved by contemporary physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, and experimental psychology
Experimental psychology
Experimental psychology is a methodological approach, rather than a subject, and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception,...
, as well as of the procedures of scientific enquiry, reveals that empiricism is not even in harmony with the specific orientation of contemporary science. He concludes that science supports a world-view that is relativistic
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
, holistic
Holism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
, organicistic
Organicism
Organicism is a philosophical orientation that asserts that reality is best understood as an organic whole. By definition it is close to holism. Plato, Hobbes or Constantin Brunner are examples of such philosophical thought....
, teleological
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
and hierarchical in character—a world-view contradicted by the unconfessed atomistic
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
, mechanical
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
, and pluralistic
Pluralism (philosophy)
Pluralism is a term used in philosophy, meaning "doctrine of multiplicity", often used in opposition to monism and dualism . The term has different connotations in metaphysics and epistemology...
metaphysical presuppositions of formal
Formal logic
Classical or traditional system of determining the validity or invalidity of a conclusion deduced from two or more statements...
and mathematical logic
Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...
that are wrongly privileged by philosophical empiricism.
Philosophical historiography
Harris maintains that the temporal variation of different metaphysical doctrines cannot be regarded as a procession of discontinuous, subjective opinions whose validity, at best, is confined to particular epochs. On the contrary, he asserts the existence of "eternal problems in philosophy" and conceives their historical development as a unique, logically necessary, teleological process through which they progressively achieve more coherent and adequate formulations. Philosophical historiography, therefore, should not simply confine itself to registering the external philologicalPhilology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
characteristics of the doctrines under consideration without making value judgements about them. Its peculiar task is rather that of discerning in them the true
True
True may refer to:* Truth, the state of being in accord with fact or reality-Music:* True , 1996* True , 2002* True , 1983** "True"...
from the false
False
False or falsehood may refer to:*False *Lie or falsehood, a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement*Falsity or falsehood, in law, deceitfulness by one party that results in damage to another...
. In his historiographical studies, Harris gives considerable attention to Spinoza's and Hegel's metaphysics.
Substance and attributes in Spinoza
By stressing the crucial relevance of Spinoza's doctrines of the infinity of the attribute of the cogitatio, of the idea ideae and of the intellectus infinitus dei (the infinite mind of god) as an "infinite mode" of substanceSubstance theory
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
, Harris disputed what he saw as one-sided empiricist and materialistic
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
interpretations of Spinoza's naturalism. He argues that Spinoza's polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
against the final causes ought to be understood as referring only to the standpoint of external teleology, and consequently that Spinoza does not exclude a valid explanation of natural processes in the light of an inner teleology. On the other hand, Harris also rejects the opposite, mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
or "acosmistic" interpretations of the relationship between substance and attributes, according to which substance would be undifferentiated and attributes would be nothing more than a contingent product of human intellect. Harris on the contrary maintains that Spinoza's theory of the scientia intuitiva clearly shows that Spinoza consistently conceives of substance's self-identity as intrinsically differentiated into a rational system of "individual essences," and moreover that Spinoza's geometric method is simply the outward dress of an inferential procedure that is similar to dialectical method.
Hegel's Naturphilosophie
Harris's interpretation of Hegel's philosophy—unlike that of most of Hegelian interpreters in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—emphasizes the crucial role of NaturphilosophieNaturphilosophie
Naturphilosophie is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of Nature in the earlier 19th century...
in Hegel's metaphysics. In the wake of the many philosophical developments which affected the theoretical underpinnings of the natural sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Harris outlines a "reform" of Hegel's Naturphilosophie that rejects as obsolete at least three of its main contentions: (1) that the natural sciences are nothing more than the product of the finite intellect's analytic activity; (2) that it is impossible cogently to prove the coming-to-be in natural philosophy of a unitary process of real biological evolution; and (3) that the "bad infinity" of the spaciotemporal form of inorganic nature is clear evidence of its self-contradictoriness. According to Harris, in fact, Einstein's
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
theories of special
Special relativity
Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...
and general relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
, as well as the contemporary cosmological
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
theories of the "expanding universe", involve a plausible conception of the physical universe as a "finite but unbounded Whole," so that it can be safely regarded as an objective, natural embodiment of the infinitum actu, or "true infinity," which Hegel had instead confined to the subjectivity of life and spirit.
Harris's Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Mind
Harris advocates the possibility of knowledge of objective truth; his criticism of the naïve realismNaïve realism
Naïve realism, also known as direct realism or common sense realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world...
of positivistic
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
epistemology never takes the form of subjectivism
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...
or skepticism
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
. For him truth is the apex of a teleological process, whose more abstract and elementary forms are the theoretical perspectives worked out by the natural and human sciences, while its most concrete, fully blown aspect coincides with the self-reflective activity of metaphysical thought. The elements of his metaphysics show the acknowledged influences of Spinoza's rationalistic monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
, Hegel's absolute idealism
Absolute idealism
Absolute idealism is an ontologically monistic philosophy attributed to G. W. F. Hegel. It is Hegel's account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole. Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject to be able to know its object at all, there must be in some...
, Collingwood's logic, and Joachim's coherence theory of truth
Coherence theory of truth
Coherence theory of truth regards truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences, propositions or beliefs. There is no single coherence theory of truth, but rather an assortment of perspectives that are commonly collected under this title...
. He wrote:
- "The philosophical theory demanded by the modern outlook must, accordingly, maintain five main theses: (i) that mind is immanent in all things; (ii) that reality is a whole, self-sufficient and self-maintaining, and that coherence is the test of truth of any theory about it; (iii) that the subject and object of knowledge are ultimately one – the same thing viewed from opposite (and mutually complementary) standpoints; (iv) that events and phenomena can adequately be explained only teleologically, and (v) that the ultimate principle of interpretation is, in consequence, the principle of value."
In Harris's view, the ultimate unity of the subject and object of knowledge means that reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
, which is the peculiar object of metaphysical thought, is identical with logical reason, which is the self-conscious act of systematic thought that thinks of reality. For Harris only dialectical logic can grasp the essence
Essence
In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without...
of such an identity. By sublating into the absolute idea the very negativity of finitude, appearance and error, only dialectical logic can disclose a logical universe that is not simply an aggregate of "bloodless categories,"but is rather a fully actual, self-sufficient and self-conscious Whole. As a consequence, Harris's metaphysics, like Hegel's, finally develops into a "logic of construction" and a panentheistic theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
.
As author
- Cosmos and Anthropos
- Cosmos and Theos
- The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science (1965)
- Nature,Mind,and Modern Science (1954)
- Hypothesis and Perception (1970)
- The Spirit of Hegel
- The Substance of Spinoza
- The Reality of Time
- Formal,Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking (1987)
- An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (1983)
- The Problem of Evil
- Atheism and Theism
- Perceptual Assurance and the Reality of the World
- Salvation from Despair, A Reapraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy (1973)
- Fundamentals of Philosophy
- Analysis and Insight
- Revelation Through Reason
- South African Survey
- Reflections on the Problem of Consciousness
- White Civilization
- The Survival of Political Man, A Study in the Principles of International Order
- Annihilation and Utopia
- Apocalypse and Paradigm
- One World or None
- Earth Federation Now!
Harris is also the author of over ninety published articles and chapters of books, the earliest of which appeared in 1936.
As editor and co-editor
- Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind by the late Harold JoachimHarold JoachimHarold Henry Joachim was a British idealist philosopher. A disciple of Francis Herbert Bradley, whose posthumous papers he edited, Joachim is now identified with the later days of the British Idealist movement. He is generally credited with the definitive formulation of the coherence theory of...
(reconstructed from notes taken by his students - Prof. Joachim was formerly Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
) - Towards Genuine Global Governance : Critical Reactions to 'Our Global Neighborhood (co-editor with James A. Yunker)
- The History of Philosophy from Descartes to Hegel by the late Arthur Ritchie Lord (co-edited, with commentaries and annotations, with William SweetWilliam SweetWilliam Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a Past-President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University...
) - A Reprint Edition of 'The Principles of Politics' by Arthur Ritchie Lord, Together with a Critical Assessment (co-edited, with commentaries and annotations, with William SweetWilliam SweetWilliam Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a Past-President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University...
) - Foundational Problems in Philosophy by the late Arthur Ritchie Lord (co-edited, with commentaries and annotations, with William SweetWilliam SweetWilliam Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a Past-President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University...
)
As co-translator
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
(co-translator with Prof. Peter Heath)