A Realistic Philosophy

A REALISTIC PHILOSOPHY The Perennial Principles of Thought and Action in a Changing World K. F. REINHARDT, Ph. D. Stanford University THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY MILWAUKEE To DR. OSWALDO ROBLES Executive Head of the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Mexico, Mexico, D. F. Representative of the PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS among our neighbors south of the Rio Grande Preface by the General Editor A philosophy that is both alive and can be lived must strike its roots deep into the soil of reality. Such is the authors basic contention. It must be a philosophy that takes account of the full truth of things and can apply to passing problems the eternal principles a philosophy called to preserve what is best in the traditions of the past, and yet prepared with equal determination to assume its place in the van of every genuine modern forward movement. In a single word, it must be a realistic philosophy. Such, in its ideal development, is the system of thought here espoused, a system combining the truest elements of Greek wisdom with the finest product of the Christian mind. In this book the system is fearlessly applied to the issues that have arisen out of false and godless philosophic principles and which have thrown into cosmic confusion our twentieth cen tury world. There is no other system of thought in our time that can be said to verify all the essentials of a universal realism. Com pared to it, what are the countless conflicting and ephemeral philosophies of our age but broken mirrors, stained, dimmed, and reflecting only confused and isolated fragments of the truth From a false idealism, repugnant to common sense, on to a hopeless materialism, they alike represent butpartial views of that great, magnificent reality of which we all are part and that perpetually encompasses us. Realism may neither exclude the ideal nor belittle the mate rial. It may be no sketchy and superficial philosophy, singling out one thing only and condemning all the rest to a limbo of nonconsidered things. True realism excludes none of all Gods creatures, nor least of all God Himself, their Maker. It acknowl edges them alike and all the relations that arise from them. moil and contusion. For men of all denominations or of none, this book will be a valuable guide to a life of intellect and spirit. With prayer and the grace of God all other things can then readily enough be supplied for the needed renewal of rational human life and relations. If what has been said here may appear polemical, yet such is not the nature of this book. It is rather a positive presenta tion, making reference incidentally to the various schools and shades of thought, but with a purpose profoundly constructive. If the opening chapter, on the concept of being, is tensely metaphysical, yet the readers reward will be proportionately great in the assured hold it provides on the essential and funda mental principles of all clear thinking. In the latter sections particularly of this book abundant practical application will be found to the large human issues of our day with their un happily multiplied social and economic problems. JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S. J., PH. D. General Editor, Science and Culture Series St. Louis University April 20, 1944 Preface by the Author This book deals with the basic concept of Reality as such and with the main problems of philosophic realism as embodied in and elaborated by thephilosophia perennis. The author sees the reason for our uncertainties and confusions in the fact that philosophic realism has been exchanged in our time for un realistic attitudes in thought and life or for a certain false realism which takes account only of some aspects of reality, but loses sight of the whole. Out of these unrealistic attitudes grows the tendency to see things and events in isolation, sep arated from their natural and supernatural context and there fore emptied of their true meaning and significance...