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The New Philosophy

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Morality in Evolution

Abstract

Bergson’s intuition of duration had convinced him that true reality is duration — movement, life, a continuous creation of unforeseeable novelty. His critique of science and its organ, the intellect, had revealed that science has never grasped real duration and is, owing to the nature of the intellect, radically incapable of doing so. Reviewing the various philosophical systems, he discovered further that they have approached reality with the same habits of intellect as science, and have, therefore, also missed duration. The intellect conceiving reality as so many separate, solid bodies, parcels it out in view of the demands of practical life, and does not concern itself with the inner structure of things. The philosophers have accepted this fragmentation and have attempted to construct reality from the pieces. If metaphysics is only a construction, however, then, since there are many ways of fitting the fragments together, many rival systems of philosophy will be erected and scepticism must result.1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, Canada

    Idella J. Gallagher

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  1. Idella J. Gallagher
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© 1970 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Gallagher, I.J. (1970). The New Philosophy. In: Morality in Evolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7573-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7573-7_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-0034-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-7573-7

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