C. D. Broad Quotes on Knowledge
C. D. Broad’s Scientific Thought (1923), The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), and the late An Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy (1933, 1938) gave early twentieth-century British analytic philosophy one of its most systematic surveys of the philosophical analysis of knowledge across the natural sciences, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. The central methodological commitment is the careful canvassing of the available philosophical positions on each major question — sense-data, the mind-body relation, time, causation, the place of value in nature — followed by the patient comparative assessment that earned Broad the Cambridge reputation of the most lucid expositor of philosophical alternatives in his generation. The framework, drawing on Russell, Moore, McTaggart, and the broader Cambridge analytic tradition, supplied the principal pre-Wittgensteinian model of analytic philosophical method and remains the standard early-twentieth-century survey of the philosophical sciences.
Quotes
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Attributed to C. D. Broad:
“Philosophy is the criticism of categories.”
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Attributed to C. D. Broad:
“We must take seriously the possibility of paranormal phenomena.”
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Attributed to C. D. Broad:
“Speculative philosophy follows critical philosophy as systematization follows analysis.”
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Attributed to C. D. Broad:
“There is no question of philosophy that has been definitively settled.”
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Attributed to C. D. Broad:
“The aim of philosophy is clarity, not edification.”
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“From Critical and Speculative Philosophy (1924)”
I understand that it is the wish of the Editor of this collection of essays that each contributor should describe his own system of philosophy. Were I to interpret this demand literally I could not contribute anything at all, for two excellent reasons. In the first place, I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to -
“In the meanwhile I retire to my well-earned bath-chair, from which I shall watch with a fatherly eye the philosophic gambols of my younger friends as they dance to the highly syncopated pipings of Herr Wittgenstein's flute.”
From the Preface to Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925) -
“From John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1928)”
Take an eighteenth century English whig. Let him be a mystic. Endow him with the logical subtlety of the great schoolmen and their belief in the powers of human reason, with the business capacity of a successful lawyer, and with the lucidity of the best type of French mathematician. Inspire him (Heaven knows how) in his early youth with a passion for Hegel. Then subject him to the teaching of Sidg -
“If Hegel be the inspired and too often incoherent prophet of the Absolute, if Bradley be its chivalrous knight, McTaggart is its devoted and extremely acute family solicitor.”
From John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1928) -
“From John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1928)”
If Hegel be the inspired and too often incoherent prophet of the Absolute, if Bradley be its chivalrous knight, McTaggart is its devoted and extremely acute family solicitor. -
“From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930)”
It is to be feared that Spinoza would not have been enlightened enough to appreciate the beneficient system of the Ph.D. degree, introduced into English universities as a measure of post-war propaganda, whereby the time and energy of those who are qualified to do research are expended in supervising the work of those who never will be. -
“There is no important problem in any branch of philosophy which is not treated by Kant, and he never treated a problem without saying something illuminating and original about it. He was certainly wrong on many points of detail, and he may well be wrong in his fundamental principles; but, when all criticisms have been made, it seems to me that Kant’s failures are more important than most men’s successes.”
From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930) -
“From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930)”
There is no important problem in any branch of philosophy which is not treated by Kant, and he never treated a problem without saying something illuminating and original about it. He was certainly wrong on many points of detail, and he may well be wrong in his fundamental principles; but, when all criticisms have been made, it seems to me that Kant’s failures are more important than most men’s suc