A History of Philosophy, Vol. XI: Logical Positivism and Existentialism

Summary

This book is not a narrative history but a set of essays in which Frederick Copleston argues with his contemporaries. It first appeared in 1956 as Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism, was revised in 1972 with a new opening chapter, and was added to the Continuum edition of A History of Philosophy in 2003 as Volume XI under the title Logical Positivism and Existentialism. The occasion was the state of philosophy in the decade after the Second World War. In Britain, the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, introduced to English readers by A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic in 1936, had taught a generation of students that a statement is meaningful only if it is a tautology or can in principle be verified by sense experience. On that test metaphysical and theological statements were neither true nor false but without literal meaning. By the 1950s the stricter positivism was giving way to the analysis of ordinary language associated with the later Wittgenstein and with Oxford, but its suspicion of metaphysics remained. On the Continent, meanwhile, existentialism had become the most discussed philosophy of the postwar years. Copleston had debated Ayer on the BBC Third Programme in 1949, and the first half of the book continues that argument at greater length. After surveying British philosophy, he examines the verification principle and asks what kind of statement the principle itself is: if it is neither an empirical hypothesis nor a tautology, it looks like a recommendation about how to use the word 'meaning', and a recommendation cannot settle whether metaphysics is possible. Further essays defend a role for metaphysics, consider the analysis of perception, and argue that terms such as 'wise' or 'good' can be predicated of God analogically, keeping a real though limited meaning. A chapter on the human person asks whether analytic philosophy had left room for the self as a subject. The second half turns to existentialism. Copleston introduces its themes of existence, freedom, anxiety and choice, traces them back to Kierkegaard, and distinguishes thinkers open to transcendence, such as Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers, from the atheist existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Heidegger and Camus also figure in the discussion. He closes with a critical assessment in which he credits existentialism with recalling philosophy to the concrete person while questioning whether its descriptions of freedom can stand without a metaphysics of being. The book shows Copleston as a participant, not only a historian, and his own position, a Thomist realism open to analytic method, is stated openly. Readers who disagree with his conclusions can still use the essays as a clear guide to what the positivists and existentialists claimed. For high school students the chapters on verification and on religious language pair well with the radio debates, and the existentialism chapters with Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus.

Plot or Argument

• The British scene, 1956 and 1972

  An opening survey of analytic philosophy, rewritten for the 1972 edition to take account of the shift from logical positivism to linguistic analysis.

• Testing the verification principle

  Reflections on logical positivism and two notes on verification, asking whether the principle is an empirical claim, a definition or a proposal, and what follows for metaphysics if it is only a proposal.

• Metaphysics and perception

  An essay defending metaphysics as reflection on the conditions of experience, and a discussion of seeing and noticing within the analysis of perception.

• Speaking of God

  The meaning of terms predicated of God, defended through the doctrine of analogy against the charge that religious statements are empty.

• Where is the person?

  An essay on how contemporary philosophy treats the human person and whether linguistic analysis can account for the subject who speaks.

• Existentialism examined

  An introduction to existentialist themes, discussion of religious and atheist forms of existential philosophy from Kierkegaard to Sartre, and a closing critical estimate.

Characters

• Frederick Copleston, author

  Jesuit philosopher writing here as a disputant in the debates of his own decade.

• A. J. Ayer, subject

  Author of Language, Truth and Logic and Copleston's opponent in the 1949 broadcast debate.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein, subject

  Austrian-born Cambridge philosopher whose later work shaped the shift to ordinary-language analysis.

• Søren Kierkegaard, subject

  Danish writer on faith and the individual, treated as existentialism's forerunner.

• Karl Jaspers, subject

  German philosopher of existence and transcendence.

• Gabriel Marcel, subject

  French Catholic philosopher of presence and hope, Copleston's chief example of existentialism open to God.

• Jean-Paul Sartre, subject

  French atheist existentialist whose account of freedom Copleston criticises.

Lessons

• Turning a principle on itself

  Copleston's central move against logical positivism is to ask whether the verification principle passes its own test. Students learn a durable habit of argument: examine the status of the rule before accepting what it rules out.

  • Can the statement 'only verifiable statements are meaningful' itself be verified by experience?
  • If the principle is a proposal, why should anyone accept it?
  • Are there sentences you are sure are meaningful that no observation could check?

• Words fit for God

  Following Aquinas, Copleston argues that words like 'wise' and 'good' apply to God analogically: neither in exactly the creaturely sense nor in an unrelated one. The lesson asks how finite language can speak truly of the infinite without claiming to comprehend it.

  • What goes wrong if 'God is good' means exactly what 'Peter is good' means?
  • What goes wrong if it means something entirely different?

• Existence before essence?

  Copleston credits the existentialists with recalling philosophy to the anxious, choosing individual, then asks whether Sartre's claim that there is no given human nature can support the moral seriousness Sartre himself demanded.

  • How does Kierkegaard's individual before God differ from Sartre's self-creating individual?
  • Can a person be responsible if there is no standard he did not choose?

• Debate as a form of charity

  Copleston spent years arguing in public with Ayer and Russell. The essays model disagreement that states the other side accurately and attacks arguments rather than motives.

  • What makes a public debate fruitful rather than merely combative?
  • How does Copleston signal where he agrees with Ayer?

Context

In the late 1940s and 1950s British university philosophy was dominated first by logical positivism and then by linguistic analysis, both suspicious of metaphysics and of religious language, while France and Germany were absorbed in existentialism and phenomenology after the war. Copleston was one of the few English-speaking philosophers who engaged both movements in print.

Composition

The essays were collected in 1956, when Copleston was teaching at Heythrop and lecturing in Rome. For the 1972 revised edition he replaced the opening survey of British philosophy, since the positivism of the 1930s had largely given way to other forms of analysis. Continuum included the book as Volume XI of the History in 2003.

Reception

The book was read as a careful Catholic reply to positivism and as one of the earlier English introductions to existentialism. Later readers have found its account of existentialism more useful than its survey of analytic philosophy, which the rapid changes of the 1950s and 1960s soon overtook.

Comparisons

• Philosophical Investigations

  The Investigations, published in 1953, drove the turn from verificationism to ordinary-language analysis that Copleston's revised opening chapter records.

• The Problems of Philosophy

  Russell's empiricism and logical analysis helped prepare the ground for the positivists; Copleston had debated Russell on God's existence on the BBC in 1948.

• Summa Theologica

  Copleston's essay on terms predicated of God restates Aquinas's teaching on analogy from the questions on the divine names.

• Either/Or

  Kierkegaard's contrast between aesthetic and ethical lives is the background to Copleston's account of existential choice.

• Fear and Trembling

  The book's treatment of faith as a passionate relation of the individual to God is the root of the religious existentialism Copleston sets against Sartre.

• No Exit and Three Other Plays

  Sartre's dramas put on stage the freedom without given nature that Copleston analyses and questions.

• The Stranger

  Camus's novel of the absurd, often grouped with existentialism though Camus resisted the label, gives students a concrete case for Copleston's discussion.

• A History of Philosophy, Vol. IX: Maine de Biran to Sartre

  Volume IX returns to Marcel and Sartre two decades later in a fuller historical setting.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Copleston classifies the verification principle and why that classification matters.
• The difference between univocal, equivocal and analogical uses of words about God.
• How the 1972 opening chapter shows British philosophy changing after 1956.
• Which existentialists Copleston thinks leave room for transcendence and which do not.

Key terms and names

Logical positivism

The movement of the Vienna Circle and its British followers holding that only tautologies and empirically verifiable statements have literal meaning.

Verification principle

The criterion that a non-tautological statement is meaningful only if sense experience could in principle confirm or disconfirm it.

Analogy of predication

The scholastic teaching that a term such as 'good' applies to God and creatures in related but not identical senses.

Linguistic analysis

The postwar British method, influenced by the later Wittgenstein, of clarifying philosophical problems by attending to the ordinary use of words.

Existence precedes essence

Sartre's formula for the claim that a human being first exists and then defines himself by his choices, with no prior given nature.

Transcendence

In Jaspers and Marcel, the reality beyond the self and the world toward which human existence is open.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension According to the logical positivists, why are statements about God neither true nor false?
2. Comprehension What three options does Copleston consider for the status of the verification principle?
3. Interpretation Why does Copleston think the doctrine of analogy avoids both anthropomorphism and agnosticism?
4. Interpretation What does Copleston think existentialism got right that analytic philosophy had neglected?
5. Interpretation Why does Copleston treat Marcel and Sartre as answering the same questions in opposite ways?
6. Big Question Is it possible to argue someone out of a philosophy that declares your conclusions meaningless?
7. Big Question Does freedom need a given human nature in order to be meaningful?

Faith Connections

• Isaiah 55:8-9 (Scripture)

  God's thoughts being higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth frames the problem analogy addresses: real speech about a God whose ways exceed our concepts.

• 1 Peter 3:15 (Scripture)

  Copleston's broadcast debates and these essays are an example of giving a reason for the hope that is in you, with gentleness and respect, to opponents in the university.

• Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names (Church Fathers)

  The patristic teaching that God is named from his effects yet exceeds every name lies behind the medieval doctrine of analogy Copleston defends.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Copleston argues that logical positivism rests on a verification principle that is neither empirically verifiable nor analytically true, so it cannot rule metaphysics and theology out of court; that words can be used analogically of God with genuine meaning; and that existentialism, though it rightly returns attention to the free, concrete person, cannot sustain its account of freedom without a metaphysics of being; and he judges the religious existentialism of Marcel and Jaspers better placed than Sartre's atheism to meet that need.

Rhetorical device: retorsion (turning an argument back on itself). Copleston applies the verification principle to the principle itself, showing that by its own standard it must either be meaningless or be a proposal rather than a discovery.

Debate: Resolved: The verification principle refutes itself.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain the verification principle in your own words, present Copleston's objection to it, and argue whether a positivist could answer that objection.

Comparison with Fear and Trembling: Compare Kierkegaard's knight of faith with the self-creating individual of Sartre as Copleston describes him, and argue which better accounts for Abraham's obedience on Mount Moriah.

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Script a five-minute radio exchange in which a logical positivist and Copleston argue whether 'God loves the world' says anything at all, each allowed one question the other must answer directly.

• Classroom

  Give students ten sentences (scientific, moral, religious, mathematical, poetic) and have them sort each by the verification principle, then discuss which verdicts seem wrong and why.

• Essay

  Using Copleston's essays, argue whether analogy gives religious language enough meaning to be true or false, answering the strongest objection a positivist would raise.

• Fiction

  Write a short story about a student in 1950s Oxford who has absorbed Language, Truth and Logic and meets a grieving friend; let the story test whether the student's philosophy can speak to grief.

Further Reading

• Language, Truth and Logic, A. J. Ayer

• Logical Positivism: A Debate (BBC broadcast, 1949), A. J. Ayer and F. C. Copleston

• Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard

• The Mystery of Being, Gabriel Marcel

• Existentialism Is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre