Robert Adamson (philosopher) - Philosophical Views

Philosophical Views

As he grew older his metaphysical optimism waned. He felt that the increase of knowledge must come in the domains of physical science. But this empirical tendency as regards science never modified his metaphysical outlook. He has been called Kantian and Neo-Kantian, Realist and Idealist (by himself, for he held that appearance and reality are co-extensive and coincident).

At the same time, in his criticism of other views he was almost typical of Hegelian idealism. All processes of reasoning or judgment (i.e. all units of thought) are (i) analysable only by abstraction, and (2) are compound of deduction and induction, i.e. rational and empirical. An illustration of his empirical tendency is found in his attitude to the Absolute and the Self. The " Absolute " doctrines he regarded as a mere disguise of failure, a dishonest attempt to clothe ignorance in the pretentious garb of mystery. The Self as a primary, determining entity, he would not therefore admit. He represented an empiricism which, so far from refuting, was actually based on, idealism, and yet was alert to expose the fallacies of a particular idealist construction (see his essay in Ethical Democracy, edited by Stanton Coit).