GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

558
POLITICS
1
peacefully inclined socialists affect the course of events.
The is problem one on which it would be. interesting to
hear Green's views.
IV. COMMENT AND CRITICISM
Applicability ofA Priori Principles to Politics and Ethics.
The questions discussed in this chapter seem remote
from present-day interests, and, although the issues which
they raise are very much alive, a modern discussion of
them would be carried out in terms very different from
those used in this chapter. The doctrines of Sovereignty
and Natural Rights are the fruits of an attempt to apply
to politics and ethics absolute general principles reached
by abstract reasoning, principles whose application to
this kind of subject matter is apt to be unfruitful. Aristotle,
it will be remembered, 1 warns his readers that exact
conclusions must not be expected when we are studying
ethics and politics, because their subject matter is too
various and changing to admit of the precise application of
universal general principles. His warning might with
advantage have been borne in mind by some of the
theorists whose views we have been considering.
This stricture is not intended as a reflection upon the
validity of abstract reasoning as such. There are certain
branches of study to which general principles, deduced
of self-
by the mind by reflection upon the implications
evident axioms, may with advantage be applied. Examples
are logic and mathematics. That a tree cannot both be
and not be a beech tree; that the double of any number
must be an even number, are principles which, though
they are verified by sense experience, are not derived
from sense experience. They are accordingly known as
a prim principles, and the knowledge which is reached
by their means as a prim knowledge. 1 From these
l Scc Chapter XVII, pp. 688-690.
Sec Chapter IV, pp. 87, 88.
See my G\ddi to Pklosopfy, Chapter IV, for * difcuuion of the
raised by the existence of a priori knowledge.