Page:An introduction to philosophy (IA Introductiontoph00brig 0).pdf/24

It is very difficult to give a precise and self-explanatory definition of this philosophical spirit with which we are concerned. It is perhaps easier to tell what it is not than to tell what it is. We may begin by saying that the spirit of philosophy is absent where there is no serious attempt to ask what things mean; where things are taken for granted without being understood; where events are left separate and loose, as mere brute facts, instead of being correlated and interpreted. Random observation, disconnected ideas, unquestioning belief and unquestioning doubt,—all these are evidently unphilosophical.

The philosophical spirit is also frequently absent where there is a connected system of ideas. The mentally unbalanced are often victims of systematized delusions about the nature of reality; G. K. Chesterton has said that the insane are the only truly logical beings. Subjects of post-hypnotic suggestion are able to create quasi-logical “reasons” for their extraordinary behavior; religious fanatics and extremists find grounds for the most untenable of beliefs. The seeker for truth should remember that not all correlation of ideas is philosophy, that not every appeal to reason is reasonable. There are spirits having the form, but lacking the power, of rationality; of such beware.
One of the perils of the philosopher is what psychologists call “rationalization.” Rationalization is the process of constructing a system of ideas, the real function of which is to justify some preëxisting desire or belief, without any