Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942.

A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M| N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z

P

Paganism: (Lat. pagus, village) The term probably reverts to the designation of villagers who had not yet been reached by the missionary propaganda emanating from populous centers. Fourth-century Christians employed the term to refer to those faiths and practices outside the circumference of the Christian faith. -- V.F.

Pai chia: The "Hundred Schools," referring to the various tendencies of thought in philosophy, logic, ethics, law, politics, diplomacy, economics, agriculture, military science, etc, in the third and fourth centuries B.C. with Chi Hsia as a center. -- W.T.C.

Pain: See Pleasure.

Painting: A plane surface covered with colors assembled in a given order (M. Denis, 1890). -- L.V.

Paley, William: (1743-1805) Was an English churchman well known for a number of works in theology. He is also widely remembered in the field of ethics. His Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy passed through many editions and served as a text book at Cambridge for many years. As an advocate of the doctrine of expediency, he gave impetus to the later Utilitarian School. He maintained that the beneficial tendency is what makes an action right. See Utilitarianism. Cf W. Paley, Horae Paulinae, 1790; View of the Evidences of Christianity, 1794; Natural Theology, 1802. -- L.E.D.

Palingenesis: (Gr palm, again, genesis, birth) Literally, a new birth or regeneration A rebirth of ideas and events (in a philosophy of history), a new birth of individuals (in theology). -- V.F.

Panaetius: (180-110 B.C.) A prominent Stoic philosopher whose thought was influenced by the Skeptics; in his attempt to adapt Stoicism to practical needs of life, he abandoned some of the more speculative notions current among his predecessors. Influenced Cicero and Augustine. -- R.B.W.

Parcaratra: (Skr ) A quasi philosophical system of Vishnuism (q.v.) based upon the Agamas (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Pan-entheism: (Gr. pan, all; en, in, theos, god) The term for the view that God interpenetrates everything without cancelling the relative independent existence of the world of entities, moreover, while God is immanent, this immanence is not absolute (as in pantheism), God is more than the world, transcendent, in the sense that though the created is dependent upon the Creator the Creator is not dependent upon the created. God thus is held to be the highest type of Unity, viz., a Unity in Multiplicity. The term is employed to cover a mediating position between pantheism with its extreme immanence and a theism of the type which tends to extreme transcendence- -- V.F.

Panlogism: (Gr. pan, all + logos, word) The doctrine that the world is the actualization of Mind or Logos. Term applied to Hegel's theory of Reality. See Hegel. -- L.W.

Pan-objectivism: (Gr. pan, all + Lat. objectus, pp. of objicere, to throw over against) An extreme form of epistemological realism which attributes real ohjectivity to all objects of knowledge, veridical and non-veridical alike. See Epistemological Realism. -- L.W.

Panpneumatism: According to Ed. v. Hartmmn (q.v.) a synthesis of panlogism and pantheism (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Panpsychism: (Gr pan, all, psyche, soul) A form of metaphysical idealism, of which Leibniz's theory of monads is the classical example, according to which the whole of nature consists of psychic centers similar to the human mind. -- L.W.

Pan-Satanism: The vague belief that the world is somehow identified with the devil. Name given to pantheism by Herbart. Otto Liebmann (1840-1912) regarded Schopenhauer's philosophy as a sort of Pan-Satanism. -- J.J.R.

Pantheism: (Gr. Pan, all; Theos, God)

1. The doctrine that reality comprises a single being of which all things are modes, moments, members, appearances, or projections.

2. As a religious concept Pantheism is to be distinguished from Immanent Theism md Deism by asserting the essential imminence of God in the creatures. See Monism, Idealism -- W.L.

Pantheism, medieval: True pantheistic ideas are rare in medieval literature. The accusation raised against Scotus Eriugena seems unfounded and was caused more by his writings being quoted as authorities by the followers of Amalric of Bene (1206-7) whose views were condemned in 1210. His writings are lost, he apparently taught the identity of Creator and creature and called God the essence of all beings A contemporary was David of Dinant of whom still less is known, he identified, as it seems, God with prime matter. Master Eckhardt too has been accused of pantheism and some modern authors have believed to find confirmation in his writings. A more thorough study of them, especially of the Latin texts, shows this to be a misinterpretation. -- R.A.

Pantheistic Personalism: The doctrine that reality consists of a Supreme Personality of which the world of persons are parts. The Divine Personality having no separate existence from its creation. See also Critical Personalism, Mono-Personalism. -- R.T.F.

Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombast: (1493-1541) Of Hohenheim, was a physician who endeavored to use philosophy as one of the "pillars" of medical science. His philosophy is a weird combination of Neo-Platonism, experimentalism, and superstitious magic. He rejected much of the traditional theory of Galen and the Arab physicians. His works (Labyrinthus, Opus paramirum, Die grosse Wundarznei, De natura rerum) were written in Swiss-German, translated into Latin by his followers, recent investigators make no attempt to distinguish his personal thought from that of his school. Thorndyke, L., Hist. of Magic and Experimental Science (N. Y., 1941), V, 615-651. -- V.J.B.

Paraclete: (Gr. parakaleo, to call to one's aid) One who is called to assistance. More specifically: the designation of the function of the Holy Spirit, the third embodiment of the Christian Trinity. -- V.F.

Paradigma: The Latin foim of the Greek noun, which denotes model. Plato called his ideas in the world of ideas, models on which were patterned the things of the phenomenal world. -- J.J.R.

Paradoxes, logical: The ancient paradox of Epimenides the Cretan, who said that all Cretans were liars (i.e., absolutely incapable of telling the truth), was known under numerous variant forms in ancient and medievd times The medieval name for these was insolubilia.

A form of this paradox due to Jourdain (1913) supposes a card upon the front of which are written the words, "On the other side of this card is written a true statement" -- and nothing else. It seems to be clear that these words constitute a significant statement, since, upon turning the card over one must either find some statements written or not, and, in the former case, either there will be one of them which is true or there will not. However, on turning the card over there appear the words. "On the other side of this card is written a false statement" -- and nothing else. Suppose the statement on the front of the card is true, then the statement on the back must be true, and hence the statement on the front must be false. This is a proof by reductio ad absurdum that the statement on the front of the card is false. But if the statement on the front is false, then the statement on the back must be false, and hence the statement on the front must be true. Thus the paradox.

A related but different paradox is Grelling's (1908). Let us distinguish adjectives -- ie, words denoting properties -- as autological or i according as they do or do not have the property which they denote (in particular, adjectives denoting properties which cannot belong to words at all will be heterological). Then, e.g., the words polysyllabic, common, significant, prosaic are autological, while new, alive, useless, ambiguous, long are heterological. On their face, these definitions of autological and heterological are unobjectionable (compare the definition of onomatopoetic as similar in sound to that which it denotes). But paradox arises when we ask whether the word heterological is autological or heterological.

That paradoxes of this kind could be relevant to mathematics first became clear in connection with the paradox of the greatest ordinal number, published by Burali-Forti in 1897, and the paradox of the greatest cardinal number, published by Russell in 1903. The first of these had been discovered by Cantor in 1895, and communicated to Hilbert in 1896, and both are mentioned in Cantor's correspondence with Dedekind of 1899, but were never published by Cantor.

From the paradox of the greatest cardinal number Russell extracted the simpler paradox concerning the class t of all classes x such that ∼ x∈x. (Is it true or not that t∈t?) At first sight this paradox may not seem to be very relevant to mathematics, but it must be remembered that it was obtained by comparing two mathematical proofs, both seemingly valid, one leading to the conclusion that there is no greatest cardinal number, the other to the conclusion that there is a greatest cardinal number. -- Russell communicated this simplified form of the paradox of the greatest cardinal number to Frege in 1902 and published it in 1903. The sime paradox wis discovered independently by Zermelo before 1903 but not published.

Also to be mentioned are König's paradox (1905) concerning the least undefinable ordinal number and Richard's paradox (1905) concerning definable and undefinable real numbers.

Numerous solutions of these paradoxes have been proposed. Many, however, have the fault that, while they purport to find a flaw in the arguments leading to the paradoxes, no effective criterion is given by which to discover in the case of other (e.g., mathematical) proofs whether they have the same flaw.

Russell's solution of the paradoxes is embodied in what is now known as the ramified theory of types, published by him in 1908, and afterwards made the basis of Principia Mathematica. Because of its complication, and because of the necessity for the much-disputed axiom of reducibility, this has now been largely abandoned in favor of other solutions.

Another solution -- which has recently been widely adopted -- is the simple theory of types (see Logic, formal, § 6). This was proposed as a modification of the ramified theory of types by Chwistek in 1921 and Ramsey in 1926, and adopted by Carnap in 1929.

Another solution is the Zermelo set theory (see Logic, formal, § 9), proposed by Zermelo in 1908, but since considerably modified and im proved.

Unlike the ramified theory of types, the simple theory of types and the Zermelo set theory both require the distinction (first made by Ramsey) between the paradoxes which involve use of the name relation (q.v.) or the semantical concept of truth (q.v.), and those which do not. The paradoxes of the first kind (Epimenides, Grelling's, König's, Richard's) are solved by the supposition that notations for the name relation and for truth (having the requisite formal properties) do not occur in the logistic system set up -- and in principle, it is held, ought not to occur. The paradoxes of the second kind (Burali-Forti's, Russell's) are solved in each case in another way. -- Alonzo Church

G. Frege,: Grundgesetze der Anthmetik, vol 2, Jena, 1903 (see Appendix).
B. Russell,: The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge, England, 1903; 2nd edn. London, 1937, and New York, 1938.
Grelling and Nelson,: Bemerkungen zu den Paradoxieen von Russell und Burali-Forti, Abhandlungen der Fries'schen Schule, n.s. vol 2 (1908), pp 301-334.
A. Rüstow,: Der Lügner (Dissertation Erlangen 1908), Leipzig, 1910.
P. E. B. Jourdain,: Tales with philosophical morals, The Open Court, vol 27 (1913), pp. 310-315.

Parallelism: (philosophiol) A doctrine advanced to explain the relation between mind and body according to which mental processes vary concomitantly with simultineous physiological processes. This general description is applicable to all forms of the theory More strictly it assumes that for every mental change there exists a correlated neural change, and it denies any causal relation between the series of conscious processes and the series of processes of the nervous system, acknowledging, however, causation within each series. It was designed to obviate the difficulties encountered by the diverse interaction theories Moreover, no form of parallelism admits the existence of a spiritual substance of a substantial soul. Some regard consciousness as the only reality, the soul which is but an actuality, as the sum of psychic acts whose unity consists in their coherence. Others accept the teaching of the fundamental identity of mind and body, regarding the two corresponding series of psychical and physical processes as aspects of an unknown series of real processes. Thus mind and body are but appearances of a hidden underlying unity. Finally there are those who hold that the series of conscious states which constitute the mind is but an epiphenomenon, or a sort of by-product of the bodily organism. See Mind-Body Relation. -- J.J.R.

Parallelism, psychophysical: (Cr parallelos, from para, beside -- allelon, of one another). A dualistic solution of the mind body problem (see Mind-body relation) which asserts, in its extreme form, a perfect one-to-one correlation between the system of physical events in nature and the system of psychical events in mind. In its more moderate and restricted form, parallelism asserts only a correlation between all psychoses (mental events in an individual mind) and all or some neuroses (neural events in the individual's body). Thus there may exist physico-chemical and even neural processes in the body having no psychical correlates The term parallelism was introduced by Fechner (Zend-Avesta, Bk III, ch XIX, D) but the doctrine appeared in Spinoza (Ethics, Bk II, prop. 7 schol. and props. 11 and 12) -- L.W.

Paralogism: (Gr. paralogismos) A fallacious svllogism, an error in reasoning. See Sophism. -- G.R.M.

In Kant's system the paralogisms are arguments alleging to prove the substantivity, simplicity and eternality of the soul or pure ego. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Paramanu: (Skr.) An exceedingly (parama) or infinitely small or magnitudeless thing (cf. anu), a discrete physical entity playing a similar role in Indian philosophy as ions, electrons, or protons in modern physics. -- K.F.L.

Paramarthika: (Skr) Relating to spiritual, essential, or absolute matters. -- A.F.L.

Parapsychology: (Gr. para, at the side or + psyche, soul + logia from logein, to speak) The investigation of prescience, telepathy and other alleged psychical phenomena which seem to elude ordinary physical and physiological explanation. The term was proposed by Boirac (1893) and was adopted by Florunay and Oesterreich. See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la philosophie, Vol II, p. 646. See Prescience, Telepathy. -- L.W.

Parinama-vada: (Skr.) Theory of evolution expounded by the Sankhya (q.v.), according to which the disturbed equilibrium between two primary substances (prakrti and purusa) is responsible for change. -- K.F.L.

Parmenides: 6th-5th century B.C., head of the Eleatic School of Greek Philosophy, developed the conception of "Being" in opposition to the "Becoming" of Heraclitus. To think at all we must postulate something which is, that which is not cannot be thought, and cannot be. Thought without being or being without thought are impossible, and the two are therefore identical. At the same time the "Being" of Parmenides is that which fills space, non-being is empty space Empty space therefore cannot be, and if empty space or the "Void" cannot be then the plurality of individual things is equally not real since this results from the motion of the "full" in the "void". There is thus for Parmenides only one "Being" without inner differentiation; this alone really is, while the particularity of individual things is appearance, illusion. Homogeneous and unchangeable "Being" is the only reality. -- M.F.

Parmenides' main extant work is a poem "On Truth."

Parousia: (Gr. presence) In Plato's philosophy, the presence of the Idea in the thing which, in turn, pirtakes of the Idea; in theology, the presence of Christ after his prophesied return to earth. -- K.F.L.

Parsimony, Law of: Name given to various statements of a general regulative principle of economy of thought, or effort, in the use of means to attain a purpose, like that of William of Ockham (died about 1349), called Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. It is interpreted in the sense that the least possible number of assumptions are to be made in the attempt to explain ascertained facts. It has been supposed that the same principle of simplicity prevails in the physical cosmos, since apparently nature employs the fewest possible means effectively to attain the ends which are intended. -- J.J.R.

Particular: (Lat pars, a part) A member of a class as opposed to the property which defines the class; an individual as opposed to a universal. -- A.C.B.

Particular proposition: In traditional logic, propositions A, E (excepting singular forms, according to some) were called universal and I, O, particular. See Logic, formal, § 4. -- A.C.

Particulate: An adjective which means, having the form of minute particles, or assuming such a form. Also a verb now almost obsolete which signified, to divide into parts mentally, or to separate into really existing particles. Formerly it also meant, to particularize. -- J.J.R.

Parva Naturalia: The name traditionally given to a series of short treatises by Aristotle on psychological and biological topics: viz. De Sensu et Sensibili, De Memoria et Reminiscentia, De Somno, De Somniis, De Divinatione per Somnium, De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae, De Vita et Morte, De Respiratione. -- G.R.M.

Pascal, Blaise: (1623-1662) French philosopher mathematician and scientist. He conducted scientific researches including experiments on atmospheric pressure and invented an ingenious calculating machine. He turned from preoccupation with the scientific to the study of man and his spiritual problems and found faith as a sounder guide than reason. At this stage of his thought, theology becomes central. These thoughts are developed in his Provincial Letters and in his posthumously published masterpieces of style, the Pensees. -- L.E.D.

Passive Empiricism: The doctrine that knowledge comes by way of experience with the emphasis upon the negative character of the mind. The mind can act only upon the stimulus of contact with the world outside itself. John Locke furnishes an example of this view. See Tabula rasa. -- V.F.

Past: That part of time, continuously growing, which includes all the events which have already happened. Their relationship with other past events is generally regarded as fixed. -- R.B.W.

Past-Time: All the extent of time preceding a given event or experience, the term is occasionally confined to that extent of preceding time which is relevant to a given event or experience. Obviously enough, past-time is not a permanent condition unrelated to the succession of events: anything that is past has been present and also future before it became present The ontologlcal status of the past is uncertain, insofar as it has no existence at the moment when it is called past yet cannot be designated as unconditionally non-existent in the sense applicable to fiction or untruth. -- R.B.W.

Patanjali: The author of the Yogasutras (q.v.), not identical with the famous Hindu grammarian by the same name -- K.F.L.

Patripassianism: (Lat. pater, father, patior, suffer) The teaching that God suffers. In Christian thought this view was held by Sabellius (fi. first half of third century) in connection with the sufferings of Jesus conceived to be God manifested -- V.F.

Patristic Philosophy: The advent of Christian revelation introduced a profound change in the history of philosophy. New facts about God, the world and man were juxtaposed to the conclusions of pagan philosophy, while reason was at once presented with the problem of reconciling these facts with the pagan position and the task of constructing them into a new science called theology.

In general, patristic philosophy is differentiated from medieval and modern philosophies in that it failed to distinguish adequately between the conclusions of reason and the facts of revelation. Philosophy, theology and the truths of religion made one amorphous body of truth. However, three stages mark the development of patristic thought.

(1) From dawn of Christian Era to 200: The Fathers of this period, most of them converts from paganism, proclaimed the Christian religion as "the true philosophy." Their works were mostly apologetic in nature, directed either against pagan prejudices and misconceptions or the religious speculations of Gnosticism.

(2) From 200 to circa 450: With the catechetic school of Alexandria and in particular with Clement and Origen, the work of reconciliation between Hellenistic philosophy and the Christian religion formally begins. This period is characterized by the formulation of Christian truths in the terminology and frame work of Greek thought. It ends with the gigantic synthesis of Augustine (354-430), whose fusion of Neo-Platonic thought and Christian truth molded society and furnished the tradition, culture and mental background for Christian Europe up to the end of the 14th century.

(3) From 450 to the 18th century: During this period there is a general decline until the Carlovingian renaissance. Great names are not lacking, such as those of Pseudo-Denis the Areopagite, John Damascene, Boethius and Isidore of Seville. however, the originality and spiritual elevation of an Augustine are not to be found. The period is generally characterized by the elaboration and systematization of truths already formulated. Platonic and Neo-Platonic influences predominate, though Aristotle's logic holds an honored place throughout this pre-Scholastic era. Cf. Migne's Patrologiae Latinae -- H.Gu.

Patterns of learning: Reaction modes, physiological habit systems. -- J.E.B.

Peano, Giuseppe, 1858-1932, Italian mathematician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Turin, 1890-1932. His work in mathematical logic marks a transition stage between the old algebra of logic and the newer methods. It is inferior to Frege's by present standards of rigor, but nevertheless contains important advances, among which may be mentioned the distinction between class inclusion (⊂) and class membership (∈) -- which had previously been confused -- and the introduction of a notation for formation of a class by abstraction (q. v.). His logical notations are more convenient than Frege's, and many of them are still in common use.

Peano's first publication on mathematicil logic was the introduction to his Calcolo Geometrico, 1888. His postulates for arithmetic (see arithmetic, foundations of) appeared in his Arith�metices Principia (1889) and in revised form in Sul concetto di numero (Rivista di Matematica, vol. 1 (1891)), and were repeated in successive volumes (more properly, editions) of his Formulaire de Mathematiques (1894-1908). The last-named work, written with the aid of collaborators, was intended to provide a reduction of all mathematics to symbolic notation, and often the encyclopedic aspect was stressed as much as, or more than, that of logical analysis.

Peano is known also for other contributions to mathematics, including the discoverv of the area filling curve which bears his name, and for his advocacy of Latino sine flexione as an international language. -- A.C.

P. E. B. Jourdain,: Giuseppe Peano, The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 43 (1912), pp. 270-314.
Giuseppe Peano, supplement to Schola et Vita, Milan, 1928.
U. Cassina,: Vita et opera de Giuseppe Peano, Schola et Vita, vol. 7 (1932), pp. 117- 148.
E. Stamm,: Jozef Peano, Wiadomosci Matematyczne, vol. 36 (1933). pp. 1-56.
U. Cassina,: L'opera scientifica di Giuseppe Peano, Rendiconti del Seminario Matematico e Fisico di Milano, vol. 7 (1933), pp. 323-389.
U. Cassina,: L'oeuvre philosophique de G. Peano, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 40 (1933), pp. 481-491.

Peirce, Charles Sanders: American Philosopher. Born in Cambridge, Mass, on September 10th, 1839. Harvard M.A. in 1862 and Sc. B. in 1863. Except for a brief cireer as lectuier in philosophy at Harvard, 1864-65 and 1869-70 and in logic at Johns Hopkins, 1879-84, he did no formal teaching. Longest tenure was with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for thirty years beginning in 1861. Died at Milford, Pa. in 1914 He had completed only one work, The Grand Logic, published posthumously (Coll. Papers). Edited Studies in Logic (1883). No volumes published during his lifetime but author of many lectures, essays and reviews in periodicals, particularly in the Popular Science Monthly, 1877-78, and in The Monist, 1891-93, some of which have been reprinted in Chance, Love and Logic (1923), edited by Morris R. Cohen, and. together with the best of his other work both published and unpublished, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35), edited by Charles Hartshorne �ind Paul Weiss. He was most influenced by Kant, who had he thought, raised all the relevant philosophical problems but from whom he differed on almost every solution. He was excited by Darwin, whose doctrine of evolution coincided with his own thought, and disciplined by laboratory experience in the physical sciences which inspired his search for rigor and demonstration throughout his work. Felt himself deeply opposed to Descartes, whom he accused of being responsible for the modern form of the nominalistic error. Favorably inclined toward Duns Scotus, from whom he derived his realism. Philosophy is a sub-class of the science of discovery, in turn a branch of theoretical science. The function of philosophy is to expliin and hence show unity in the variety of the universe. All philosophy takes its start in logic, or the relations of signs to their objects, and phenomenology, or the brute experience of the objective actual world. The conclusions from these two studies meet in the three basic metaphysical categories: quality, reaction, and representation. Quality is firstness or spontaneity; reaction is secondness or actuality; and representation is thirdness or possibility. Realism (q.v.) is explicit in the distinction of the modes of being actuality as the field of reactions, possibility as the field of quality (or values) and representation (or relations). He was much concerned to establish the realism of scientific method: that the postulates, implications and conclusions of science are the results of inquiry yet presupposed by it. He was responsible for pragmatism as a method of philosophy that the sum of the practical consequences which result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception constitutes the entire meaning of that conception. Author of the ethical principle that the limited duration of all finite things logically demands the identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited community of persons and things. In his cosmology the flux of actuality left to itself develops those systematic characteristics which are usually associated with the realm of possibility. There is a logical continuity to chance events which through indefinite repetition beget order, as illustrated in the tendency of all things to acquire habits. The desire of all things to come together in this certain order renders love a kind of evolutionary force. Exerted a strong influence both on the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), the instrumentalist, John Dewey (1859-), as well as on the idealist, Jociah Royce (1855-1916), and many others. -- J.K.F.

Peirce's law: The theorem of the propositional calculus,

[[p ⊃ q] ⊃ p] ⊃ p.

-- A.C.

Pelagianism: The teaching of Pelagius of Britain who was active during the first quarter of the fifth century in Rome, North Africa, and Palestine. He denied original sin and the necessity of baptism in order to be freed from it. Death was not a punishment for sin, and men can be saved without the aid of divine grace. By justification men are purged of their sins through faith alone. Pelagius was notably influenced by Stoic doctrines. He and his followers refused to submit to the decisions of the Church, which repeatedly condemned their tenets, largely owing to the efforts of Augustine. -- J.J.R.

Perception: (Lat. perceptio, from percipere, to perceive)

(a) In contemporary psychology and epistemology: Perception is the apprehension of ordinary sense-objects, such as trees, houses, chairs, etc., on the occasion of sensory stimulation. Perception is distinguished, on the one hand, from sensation (the apprehension of isolated sense qualities) and on the other hand, from higher ideational processes of imagination, remembrance, conception and reasoning. The percept or vehicle of perception consists of actually given sense qualities supplemented by imaginatively supplied qualities which on the basis of earlier experience are ascribed to the perceived object.

(b) In early modern philosophy, perception was used in a much wider sense than (a). Thus, for Bacon, perception designated the mind's subjection to external influence and its adaptive reaction to such influence. (De Augmentis, IV, 3) Descartes and Spinoza designated by perception intellectual rather than sensuous apprehension (see Descartes, Principles, I, 32 and Spinoza's Ethics, II, prop. 40 schol. 2) and Leibniz understood by perceptions the internal state of one monad whereby it takes cognizance of other monads. Monadology, § 21. -- L.W.

Perception, non-sensory: As the opposite of imagining, it lacks the sensory content. Space and time have this characteristic as experienced by man. (Montague.) -- H.H.

Perception, pure: Is a form of action rather than a form of cognition. Involves an actual presence of external objects to the sense organs, is the reflection of the body's virtual or possible action upon these objects, or of the object's possible action upon the body. The consciousness of perception is a measure of its indetermination. (Bergson.) -- H.H.

Percepts: The abbreviation for perceptual data.

Perfectibility: The optimistic belief in the ability of man to attain an eventual complete realization of his moral possibilities. Opposed to the various philosophies and theologies of moral pessimism (e.g., the sinfulness and moral impotence of man, original sin, in Augustinianism, Lutheranism, Barthianism, et al.) -- V.F.

See Condorcet, Enlightenment.

Perfectionism: The ethical theory that perfection, our own or that of others or both, is the end at which we ought to aim, where perfection involves virtue chiefly and sometimes also the cultivation of one's talents or endowments. -- W.K.F.

Peripatetics: See Aristotelianism.

Peripety: (Gr. peripeteia) A sudden reversal of condition or fortunes, considered by Aristotle as an essential element in the plot of a tragedy. -- G.R.M.

Perry, Ralph Barton: (1876-) Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He was one of the founders of the new realist movement His classic biography of William James won the Pulitzer Prize for 1936. During the first World War he served as a major with the War Department Committee on Education and Special Training and this service has evidenced itself in his fervent advocacy of militant democracy. Among his works are Present Philosophical Tendencies, Philosophy of the Recent Past, General Theory of Value, 1926; Thought and Character of Wm. James, 2 vols., 1935; Shall Not Pertsh From the Earth, 1941. See Neo-Realism. -- L.E.D.

Perseity: (Lat. per se) The condition of being per se, by itself, that is being such as it is from its very nature. Perseity must not be confused with aseity The former implies independence of a subject in which to inhere, whereas the latter demands a still higher degree of independence of any efficient or producing agency whatsoever, it is predicated of God alone. Thomas Aquinas held: Quod est per se, semper est prius eo quod est per aliud. That which exists per se is always a substance. This mode of existence is distinguished from that which is per accidens, that is something which is not essential, but only belongs to a subject more or less fortuitously. A thing is per se owing to its internal constitution, or essence, but that which is per accidens is due rather to external or non-essential reasons. Thomas Aquinas taught that that which is per accidens, non potest esse semper et in omnibus, whereas that which belongs to something per se, de necessitate et semper et inseparabiliter et inest. Duns Scotus held that per se esse may be understood in the sense of being incommunicable, incommunicabiliter esse, or per se subsistere, subsisting by itself, not by another. In human acts that which is directly intended is per se, while that which is per accidens is praeter intentionem. Rational beings tend toward the good, or that which is regarded as good. If the good is intended for itself it is bonum per se, otherwise it is a bonum per accidens or secundum quid, that is relatively good. -- J.J.R.

Persian Philosophy: Persia was a vast empire before the time of Alexander the Great, embracing not only most of the orientnl tribes of Western Asia but also the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Jews and the Egyptians. If we concentrate on the central section of Persia, three philosophic periods may be distinguished

Zoroastrianism (including Mithraism and Magianism),
Manichaeanism, and
medieval Persian thought.

Zarathustra (Or. Zoroaster) lived before 600 B.C. and wrote the Avesta, apparently in the Zend language. It is primarily religious, but the teaching that there are two ultimate principles of reality, Ormazd, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness, is of philosophic importance. They are eternally fighting Mitra is the intermediary between Ormazd and man. In the third century A. D., Mani of Ecbatana (in Media) combined this dualism of eternal principles with some of the doctrines of Christianity. His seven books are now known only through second-hand reports of Mohammedan (Abu Faradj Ibn Ishaq, 10th c., and Sharastani, 12th c.) and Christian (St. Ephrem, 4th c., and Bar-Khoni, 7th c.) writers. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) has left several works criticizing Manichaeism, which he knew at first-hand. From the ninth century onward, many of the great Arabic philosophers are of Persian origin. Mention might be made of the epicureanism of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Kayyam, and the remarkable metaphysical system of Avicenna, i.e. Ibn Sina (11th c.), who was born in Persia. -- V.J.B.

Persistence: The condition of enduring in time, with or without change. -- R.B.W.

Person: (in Max Scheler) The concrete unity of acts. Individual person, and total person, with the former not occupying a preferential position. -- P.A.S.

In scholasticism: The classic definition is given by Boethius: person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights. -- R.A.

Personal Equation:

(a) Discrepancy between the chronological measurements of different scientific observers due to their differing reaction times. The error was first discovered in astronomical measurements but is a recognized source of error in all scientific measurements.

(b) The term has been extended to include all observational error due to the intrusion of idiosyncrasies of individual observers. -- L.W.

Personal Idealism: The affirmation of reality in the person and the personal nature of the World-Ground. Synonymous with Absolutist P ersonalism. -- R.T.F.

Personal Identity: (Lat. persona) Personal identity is individual identity as possessed by a person or self. Any individual, whether an inanimate thing, a living organism or a conscious self, is identical in so far as it preserves from moment to moment a similarity of structure. Personality identity involves in addition the conscious recognition of sameness. -- L.W.

Personalism: (Lat. persona, actor's mask) A modern term applied to any philosophy which considers personality the supreme value and the key to the meaning of reality.

Typical or original Personalism was theistic, the term being first used in America (1863) by Bronson Alcott for "the doctrine that the ultimate reality of the world is a Divine Person who sustains the universe by a continuous act of creative Will." (Odell Shepard: Pedlar's Progress., p. 494.)

Theistic Personalism was given systematic form in America by Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910) for whom it implied:

Metaphysically, the personal nature of the World Ground;

Epistemologically, a knowledge validated by the common source of thought and thing in the World Ground and mediated through personality;

Logically, the pragmatic assumption that life is superior to logical form,

Ethically, that values are real and based in the Cosmic Nature.

While the term Personalism is modern it stands for an old way of thinking which grows out of the attempt to interpret the self as a part of phenomenological experience. Personalistic elements found expression in Heraclitus' (536-470 B.C.) statement "Man's own character is his daemon" (Fr. 119), and in his assertion of the Logos as an enduring principle of permanence in a world of change. These elements are traceable likewise in the cosmogony of Anaxagoras (500-430 B.C.), who gave philosophy an anthropocentric trend by affirming that mind "regulated all things, what they were to be, what they were and what they are", the force which arranges and guides (Fr. 12) Protagoras (cir. 480-410 B.C.) emphasized the personalistic character of knowledge in the famous dictum "Man is the measure of all things."

The doctrine of the person reached its high point in Greek philosophy in Socrates (469-399 B.C.) who recognized the soul or self as the center from which sprang all man's actions.

Plato (427-347 B.C.) recognized the person in his doctrine of the soul, but turned the direction of thought toward dominance by the abstract Idea.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) made his contiibution by insisting that only the concrete and individual could be real.

St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) asserted that thought, and therefore the thinker, was the most certain of all things.

To Boethius (475-525) it was given to furnish the philosophy and definition of the person that held for the Middle Ages: "A person is the individual substance of a rational nature."

The importance of the person in Scholastic thought insured the personalistic concepts until they found expression in the work of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

The renewal of philosophy signalized by Descartes introduced a long line of personilistic thinkers in France who under various classifications offered the main opposition to naturalism, materialism and positivism. Among these were Geulincx (1625-1669), Occasionalism; Malebranche (1638-1715), Activism; de Lignac (1710-1769), Theistic Personalism; de Biran (1766-1824), Philosophy of Effort; Cournot (1801-1877), Probabilism, Vitalism; Ravaisson (1813-1900), Spiritual Realism; Renouvier (1815-1903), Neo criticism, Personalism; Lachelier (1832-1918), Spiritua] Realism; Boutroux (1845-1921), Philosophy of Discontinuity; Bergson (1859-1941), Philosophy of Chinge, Intuitionism.

In Germany the first use of the word pcrsonalism seems to have been by Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and later by Hans Dreyer, Troeltsch, and Rudolf Otto. Among German Personalists would be included G. H. Leibniz (1646-1716), Monadism; R. H. Lotze (1817-1881), Teleological Personalism; Rudolf Eucken (1846-1926), Theistic Personalism, Vitalism; Max Schcler (1874-1928), Phenomenological Personalism; William Stern (1871-1939), Critical Personalism, Pantheistic Personalism.

In England many Theistic Personalists have appeared since Bishop Berkeley (1710-1796), Subjectivism, Subjective Idealism; including A. C. Frazer (1819-1914); T. H. Green (1836-1882); Edward Caird (1835-1908); James Wild (1843-1925), Singularism; A. J. Balfour (1848-1930); J. Cook Wilson (1849-1915); W. R. Sorley (1855-1935). Also English were H. W. Carr (1857-1931), Monadistic Personalism; F. C. S. Schiller (1864-1937), Humanism, Personalism; J. M. E. McTaggart (1866-1925), Atheistic Personalism.

In America we have among Theistic Personalists in addition to Bowne, G. T. Ladd (1842-1921); J. W. Buckham (1864-), Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930), Personal Idealism, Absolutistic Personalism; G. A. Wilson (1864-1941); H. A. Youtz (1867-); R. T. Flewelling (1871-), Personal Realism; A. C. Knudson (1873-); E. S. Brightman (1884-), "The Given." Though probably rejecting the term personalism, a view of American Personalism would be incomplete without mention of W. T. Harris (1835-1909); C. W. Howison (1834-1916); Josiah Royce (1855-1916); G. T. W. Patrick (1857-); W. E. Boodin (1869-); J. A. Leighton (1870); W. E. Hocking (1873-); J. B. Pratt (1875-), Personal Realism. Among contemporary Personalists abroad mention should be made of Ph. Kohnstamm, Holland, Critical Personalism; N. Losski (1870-), Prague, Organismic Personalism; N. Berdyaev (1874-), Paris;, Maurice Blondel (1861-1939), Paris, Activism; Ch. Baudouin (1893-), Geneva; Radelescu-Motru, Bucharest. In France also should be noted the leader of the Personalistic movement which might be denominated Political Personalism, E. Mounier. -- R.T.F.

Personalism, Critical: The term used by William Stern to define his concept of person as applied to the organic whole of existence. See Pantheistic Personalism, Mono-Personalism. -- R.T.F.

Personalistics: Term used bv William Stern in psychology to indicate a study of the facts that are true of man as a meaningful living whole -- a fundamental science of the human person. The Personalist, XVIII, p 50. -- R.T.F.

Personality: The totality of mental traits characterizing an individual personality or self. See Self. -- L.W.

Personal Realism: That type of Personalism which emphasizes the metaphysical nature of personality, its continuous activity in natural phenomena, and its unanalysable or realistic character as experienced fact, the ultimate real, the object of immediate knowledge. -- R.T.V.

Perspective: (Lat. perspectus pp. of pelspicio, to look through) The determination of inclusiveness of what can be actual for any organization. The point of view of an individual on the rest of existence. (a) In epistemology: the perspective predicament, the limited though real viewpoint of the individual, the plight of being confined to the experience of only part of actuality. (b) In psychology: the perception of relative distance by means of the apparent differences in the size of objects.

In aesthetics: The sense of depth and distance in painting as in poetry. Term used also for time elapsed. -- J.K.F.

Pessimism: (Lat. pessimus, the worst) The attitude gained by reflection on life, man, and the world (psychiatrically explained as due to neurotic or other physiological conditions, economically to over-population, mechanization, rampant utilitarianism; religiously to lack of faith; etc.) which makes a person gloomy, despondent, magnifying evil and sorrow, or holding the world in contempt. Rationalizations of this attitude have been attempted before Schopenhauer (as in Hesiod, Job, among the Hindus, in Byron, Giacomo Leopardi, Heine, Musset, and others), but never with such vigor, consistency, and acumen, so that since his Welt als Wille und Vorstellung we speak of a 19th century philosophic literature of pessimism which considers this world the worst possible, holds man to be born to sorrow, and thinks it best if neither existed. Buddhism (q.v.) blames the universal existence of pain, sorrow, and death; Schopenhauer the blind, impetuous will as the very stuff life and the world are made of; E. v. Hartmann the alogical or irrational side of the ill-powerful subconscious; Oswald Spengler the Occidental tendency toward civilization and hence the impossibility of extricating ourselves from decay as the natural terminus of all organic existence. All pessimists, however, suggest compensations or remedies; thus, Buddhism looks hopefully to nirvana (q.v.), Schopenhauer to the Idea, v. Hartmann to the rational, Spengler to a rebirth through culture. See Optimism. -- K.F.L.

Petites Perceptions: (Fr. little perceptions) Term by which Leibniz designates confused and unconscious perceptions. (Cf. The Monadology Sects. 21, 23 ) The Leibnizian theory of petites perceptions anticipates the modern theory of unconscious mind See Unconscious Mind. -- L.W.

Petitio principii, or begging the question, is a fallacy involving the assumption as premisses of one or more propositions which are identical with (or in a simple fashion equivalent to) the conclusion to be proved, or which would require the conclusion for their proof, or which are stronger than the conclusion and contain it as a particular case or otherwise as an immediate consequence. There is a fallacy, however, only if the premisses assumed (without proof) are illegitimate for some other reason than merely their relation to the conclusion -- e.g., if they are not among the avowed presuppositions of the argument, or if they are not admitted by an opponent in a dispute. -- A.C.

Phala: (Ski ) "Fruit", result, effect -- K.F.L.

Phantasm: (Gr. phantasma, appearance) Term used by Hobbes to designate an image or representation directly given to the percipient. See Elements of Philosophy Concerning Body, Part IV, ch XXV. -- L.W.

Phantasy: (in Scholasticism) The internal sense perceptive of objects, even of absent objects, previously pciceived by the external sense. The phantasm is the species of the object perceived by an internal sense and retained in the phantasy. -- H.G.

Pharisaism: The most characteristic type of Palestinian Judaism at the time of Christ. This group is to be thought of as the remnant of the traditional culture of the ancient Hebrews. Scorched by the memory of the long struggle between their fathers' and other cultures which resulted in the unhappy Captivity, these descendants took on a more militant nationalism and a more rigid loyalty to traditional customs, teaching their children in schools of their own (the Synagogue) the religion of the ancient sacred covenant. Since their ways separated sharply from their brethren in the dispersion and from the less nationalistic minded at home they acquired the party name (from the second century B.C.) "Pharisees." Their leaders were devout students of the written and oral traditions which they regarded as the Divine Will (Torah). To this tradition they added detailed codes of rigorous religious living. Popular among the masses they were comparatively few in number although powerful in influence. Pharisaism was a book-centered religion, strongly monotheistic, intensely legalistic, teaching a national and social gospel of redemption by an expectant supernatural visitation. The term "Pharisaic" unfortunately has acquired a sinister meaning, probably due to certain N.T. statements linking Pharisees with hypocrites. R. T. Herford in his Pharisaism (1912) and The Pharisees (1924) has shown thit this religious party was preeminently spiritually minded even though legalistic and not sufficiently understood by Christian traditionalists. -- V.F.

Phase: (chemical, physical) A term referring to a homogeneous composition of matter, either solid, liquid, or gaseous. All three phases of a single substance may co-exist. -- W.M.M.

Phase Rule: (chemicil, physical) A relationship between the number of components (C), phases (P), and degrees of freedom (F) (variability) of a heterogeneous system with respect to pressure and temperatuie and similar intensive variables when in equilibrium: P + F = C + 2. Discovered by J. W. Gibbs (1839-1903). -- W.M.M.

Phenomena: See Appearances.

Phenomenalism: (Gr. phainomenon, from phainesthai, to appear) Theory that knowledge is limited to phenomena including (a) physical phenomena or the totality of objects of actual and possible perception and (b) mental phenomena, the totality of objects of introspection. Phenomenalism assumes two forms according as it (a) denies a reality behind the phenomena (Renouvier, Shadworth, Hodgson), or (b) expressly affirms the reality of things-in-themselves but denies their knowability (Kant, Comte, Spencer.) See Hume. -- L.W.

Phenomenal World: The world of appearance as opposed to the world as-it-is-in-itself. The only world we know, said Kant, is the world-we-know, (appearance). The real world is beyond our knowledge. -- V.F.

Phenomenological Personalism: Applied to the system of Max Scheler. -- R.T.F.

Phenomenology: Since the middle of the Eighteenth Century, "Phänomenologie," like its English equivalent, has been a name for several disciplines, an expression for various concepts. Lambert, in his Neue Organon (1764), attached the name "Phänomenologie" to the theory of the appearances fundamental to all empirical knowledge. Kant adopted the word to express a similar though more restricted sense in his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (1786). On the other hand, in Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) the same word expresses a radically different concept. A precise counterpart of Hegel's title was employed by Hamilton to express yet another meaning. In "The Divisions of Philosophy" (Lectures on Metaphysics, 1858), after stating that "Philosophy properly so called" is "conversant about Mind," he went on to say: "If we consider the mind merely with the view of observing and generalizing the various phaenomena it reveals, . . . we have . . . one department of mental science, and this we may call the Phaenomenology of Mind." Similarly Moritz Lazarus, in his Leben der Seele (1856-57), distinguished Phänomenologie from Psychologie: The former describes the phenomena of mental life; the latter seeks their causal explanation.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was the first to apply the name "Phänomenologie" to a whole philosophy. His usage, moreover, has largely determined the senses commonly attached to it and cognate words in the Twentieth Century. In his Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01), Husserl gave the name to such investigations and theories as make up most of that work and of the only published volume of his Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891). This established what was to remain the primary denotation of the term in all his later writings. On the other hand -- owing to changes in his concept of his unchanging theme -- the explicit connotation of the term, as used by him, underwent development and differentiation.

In the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen phenomenology was defined (much as it had been by Hamilton and Lazarus) as descriptive analysis of subjective processes Erlebnisse. Thus its theme was unqualifiedly identified with what was commonly taken to be the central theme of psychology; the two disciplines were said to differ only in that psychology sets up causal or genetic laws to explain what phenomenology merely describes. Phenomenology was called "pure" so far as the phenomenologist distinguishes the subjective from the objective and refrains from looking into either the genesis of subjective phenomena or their relations to somatic and environmental circumstances. Husserl's "Prolegomena zur reinen Logik" published as the first part of the Logische Untersuchungen, had elaborated the concept of pure logic, a theoretical science independent of empirical knowledge and having a distinctive theme: the universal categorial forms exemplified in possible truths, possible facts, and their respective components. The fundamental concepts and laws of this science, Husserl maintained, are genuine only if they can be established by observing the matters to which they apply. Accordingly, to test the genuineness of logical theory, "wir wollen auf die 'Sachen selbst' zurückgehen": we will go, from our habitual empty understanding of this alleged science, back to a seeing of the logical forms themselves. But it is then the task of pure phenomenology to test the genuineness and range of this "seeing," to distinguish it from other ways of being conscious of the same or other matters. Thus, although pure phenomenology and pure logic are mutually independent disciplines with separate themes, phenomenological analysis is indispensible to the critical justification of logic. In like manner, Husserl maintained, it is necessary to the criticism of other alleged knowledge; while, in another way, its descriptions are prerequisite to explanatory psychology. However, when Husserl wrote the Logische Untersuchungen, he did not yet conceive phenomenological analysis as a method for dealing with metaphysical problems.

The most radical changes in this concept of phenomenology and its relations to other disciplines had taken place before Husserl wrote his Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, of which the only published volume, "General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology," appeared in 1913. They resulted from a development having two main aspects.

1. Phenomenological analyses, partly summarized in the Logische Untersuchungen, had led Husserl to the view that material (generic and specific) as well as logically formal universals or essences are themselves observable, though non-individual, objects. Further analyses showed that awareness of an essence as itself presented might be based on either a clear experiencing or a clear phantasying (fictive experiencing) of an example. In either case, the evidence of the essence or eidos involves evidence of some example as ideally possible but not as actual. Consequently, a science like pure logic, whose theme includes nothing but essences and essential possibilities, -- in Husserl's later terminology, an eidetic science -- involves no assertion of actual existence. Husserl used these views to redefine phenomenology itself. The latter was now conceived explicitly as the eidetic science of the material essences exemplified in subjective processes, qua pure possibilities, and was accordingly said to be pure also in the way pure logic is pure. A large proportion of the emendations in the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen serve to clarify this freedom of phenomenology from all presuppositions of actual individual existence -- particularly, psychic existence.

2. Under the influence of Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Husserl coined the name "Intentionalität" for what he saw is the fundamental character of subjective processes. The reflectively experienceable part of one's stream of consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of subjective processes as immanent in the stream itself and, on the other hand, consciousness of other objects as transcending the stieam. This character of subjective processes as consciousness of, as processes in which something is intended, is a property they have intrinsically, regardless of whether what is intended in them exists. Seeing intentionality as the fundamental attribute of subjective processes, Husseil held that phenomenology must describe them not only with respect to their immanent components but also with respect to their intended objects, as intended, in the language of his Ideen, phenomenological description must be "noematic," as well as "noetic" and "hyletic."

Every conscious process intends its objects as in a context with others, some intended as presented, others intended as to become presented if intended future consciousness takes a particular course. In other words, consciousness is always an intentional predelineating of processes in which objects will be intended, as the same or different within an all inclusive objective context: the world. A pure phenomenology should therefore describe not only paiticular intended objects but also the intended world, as intended -- as part of the "noematic-objective" sense belonging to consciousness by virtue of the latter's intrinsic intentionality. To be sure, in such noematic-objective description the phenomenologist must still disregard the actual relations of the described subjective processes to other entities in the world. But, Husserl contended, when one disregards everything except the intrinsic nature of subjective processes, one still can see their intentionality; therefore all the entities and relations from which one has abstracted can -- and should -- reappear as noematic-intentional objects, within one's isolated field. In particular, the disregarded status of the observed stream of consciousness itself, its status as related to other entities in the world, reappears -- as a noematic-objective sense which the observed consciousness intends. Moreover, as purely eidetic, phenomenology finds that the intrinsic character of any actual consciousness, as intending a world and itself as in that world, is an essentially necessary determination of any possible consciousness.

Husserl noted, however, that even when one's analyses are thus pure, both abstractively and eidetically, one naturally takes it for granted that possible consciousness is possible in some (otherwise indefinite) possible world. That is to say, besides finding "the world" as part of the intentional objective sense posited in the consciousness under investigation, the investigator continues to apprehend this consciousness as essentially worldly, even though he successfully disregards even its possible relations to other worldly objects. At this point, what Husserl considered as the philosophically decisive change in his concept of phenomenology ensues.

Before writing the Ideen, he had come to believe that, as the reflective observer of one's subjective processes, one can establish and maintain the attitude of a mere onlooker, who does not participate even in his own natural attitude of believing in a possible world and apprehending his consciousness as essentially possible in that world. If this attitude of self-restraint (epoche) is consistently maintained, one can discriminate a status of one's consciousness more fundamental than its actuality or its possibility in a world and one can see that this essential worldliness of consciousness is a reflexive consequence of its more fundamental character as consciousness of a world. One can then see, furthermore, that every intendable object is essentially, and most fundamentally, a noematic-intentional object (a phenomenon) and has its being and nature because consciousness -- regardless of the latter's secondary status as in the world -- is intrinsically an (actual or potential) intending of that object, in a certain manner, as having certain determinations. Such was Husserl's contention.

In the Ideen and in later works, Husserl applied the epithet "transcendental" to consciousness as it is aside from its (valid and necessary) self-apperception as in a world. At the same time, he restricted the term "psychic" to subjectivity (personal subjects, their streams of consciousness, etc.) in its status as worldly, animal, human subjectivity. The contrast between transcendental subjectivity and worldly being is fundamental to Husserl's mature concept of pure phenomenology and to his concept of a universal phenomenological philosophy. In the Ideen, this pure phenomenology, defined as the eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity, was contrasted with psychology, defined as the empirical science of actual subjectivity in the world. Two antitheses are involved, however eidetic versus factual, and transcendental versus psychic. Rightly, they yield a four-fold classification, which Husserl subsequently made explicit, in his Formale und Transzendentale Logik (1929), Nachwort zu meinen Ideen (1930), and Meditations Cartesiennes (1931). In these works, he spoke of psychology as including all knowledge of worldly subjectivity while, within this science, he distinguished an empirical or matter-of-fact pure psychology and an eidetic pure psychology. The former is "pure" only in the way phenomenology, as explicitly conceived in the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, is pure: actual psychic subjectivity is abstracted as its exclusive theme, objects intended in the investigated psychic processes are taken only as the latter's noematic-intentional objects. Such an abstractive and self-restraining attitude, Husserl believed, is necessary, if one is to isohte the psychic in its purity and yet preserve it in its full intentionality. The instituting and maintaining of such an attitude is called "psychological epoche"; its effect on the objects of psychic consciousness is called "psychological reduction." As empiricism, this pure psychology describes the experienced typical structures of psychic processes and of the typical noematic objects belonging inseparably to the latter by virtue of their intrinsic intentionality. Description of typical personalities and of their habitually intended worlds also lies within its province. Having acquired empirical knowledge of the purely psychic, one may relax one's psychological epoche and inquire into the extrapsychic circumstances under which, e.g., psychic processes of a particulai type actually occur in the world. Thus an empirical pure intentional psychology would become part of a concrete empirical science of actual psychophysical organisms.

If the psychologist, having isolated some instance of subjectivity, considers it only as a purely possible example of subjectivity in some possible world, he is effecting a further, so-called eidetic, reduction of the psychic and is in the position to develop an eidetically pure phenomenological psychology or (as Husserl also called it) an eidetic psychological phenomenology. He can discover, not merely empirical types but essential psychic possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities, in any possible world. Moieover, eidetic reduction can be performed, not only on the psychic but also on any other abstractive region of the world, e.g., the physical, the concretely psychophysical, the cultural. We can develop purely eidetic sciences of every material region (material ontologies), an eidetic science of the formally universal region, "something or other" (formal ontology, the formal logic of possible being), and finally in all-embracing science of the essential (formal and material) compossibilities and non-compossibilities in any possible concrete world. An eidetic psychological phenomenology would thus become coordinated in a universal eidetic science of worldly being.

There is yet a third kind of epohe that allegedly enables one to discriminate subjectivity qua transcendental -- by effecting yet another kind of reduction, which Husserl eventually called "transcendental-phenomenological." (In his Ideen he called it simply "phenomenological.") By refraining from participition in one's inveterate (and justifiable) natural attitude of presupposing the world and the status of one's subjectivity in the world, one can see the world (and whatever else one may intend) as fundamentally a noematic-intentional object for transcendental subjectivity -- for one's individual self, the subject whose life is one's own transcendental stream of consciousness, and for other transcendental subjects. As one can describe one's actual psychic subjectivity, so one can describe one's actual transcendental subjectivity and thus produce an empirical transcendental phenomenology. Again, as in the case of the purely psychic, so in the case of the purely transcendental, an eidetic reduction enables one to produce a purely eidetic science -- here an eidetic transcendental phenomenology, the theme of which is the absolutely universal domain of transcendental subjectivity in general, including the latter's noematic-objective sense: the entire world and all its possible variants. This eidetic transcendental phenomenology is what Husserl ordinarily meant when, in the Ideen or subsequent works, he spoke simply of "phenomenology. "

Because the difference between phenomenological pure psychology and transcendental phenomenology depends on a difference in attitude towards "the same" subject matter, their contents are widely analogous. Husserl maintained, however, that genuine philosophy is possible only as transcendental phenomenology, because it alone is knowledge of that non-worldly nucleus of subjectivity in which everything intendable as immanent or as transcendent is constituted (produced, generated) as an essentially intentional object. As envisaged in the Ideen and later works, phenomenological analysis is chiefly "transcendental-constitutional" analysis of the subjective structures in which the concrete individual world is built up as an intersubjectively valid transcendent sense for transcendental subjectivity. In the course of such analysis, every legitimate philosophical problem must find its definitive solution. From the transcendental-phenomenological standpoint, however, one traditional problem, namely the relation between what are essentially objects of consciousness and "things-in-themselves" that are not essentially objects of consciousness, is seen to be spurious. On the one hand, it is evidently false that all directly presented objects of consciousness are immanent in the mind, on the other hand, the concept of an entity that is not an intentionally constituted object of transcendental consciousness is evidently self-contradictory. This is the central thesis of what Husserl called his "transcendental-phenomenological idealism."

The diversity of concepts that Husserl himself expressed by the word "phenomenology" has been a source of diverse usages among thinkeis who came under his influence and are often referred to as "the phenomenological school." Husserl himself always meant by "phenomenology" a science of the subjective and its intended objects qua intentional; this core of sense pervades the development of his own concept of phenomenology as eidetic, transcendental, constitutive. Some thinkers, appropriating only the psychological version of this central concept, have developed a descriptive intentional psychology -- sometimes empirical, sometimes eidetic -- under the title "phenomenology." On the other hand, Husserl's broader concept of eidetic science based on seeing essences and essentially necessary relations -- especially his concept of material ontology -- has been not only adopted but made central by others, who define phenomenology accordingly. Not uncommonly, these groups reject Husserl's method of transcendental-phenomenological reduction and profess a realistic metaphysics. Finally, there are those who, emphasizing Husserl's cardinal principle that evidence -- seeing something that is itself presented -- is the only ultimate source of knowledge, conceive their phenomenology more broadly and etymologically, as explication of that which shows itself, whatever may be the latter 's nature and ontologicil status. -- D.C.

Phenomenon: (Gr. phainomenon, Ger. Phaenomenon) In Kant: Broadly, appearance or that which appears. More specifically, any presentation, cognition or experience whose form and order depends upon the synthetic forms of the sensibility and categories of the understanding. In contrast to noumenon and thing-in-itself which lie outside the conditions of possible experience, and remain, therefore, theoretically unknowable. See Kantianism and Noumenon. -- O.F.K.

Philo of Alexandria: (30 B.C.- 50 A.D.) Jewish theologian and Neo-Platonic philosopher. He held that Greek thought borrowed largely from Mosaic teachings and therefore justified his use of Greek philosophy for the purpose of interpreting Scripture in a spiritual sense. For Philo, the renunciation of self and, through the divine Logos in all men, the achievement of immediate contact with the Supreme Being, is the highest blessedness for man. -- M.F

Philosopheme: (Gr. philosophema) An apodictic syllogism (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.

Philosopher, The: Generally used name for Aristotle by medieval authors after the "reception of Aristotle" from the early 13th century onwards. In earlier writers the name may refer to any head of a school, e.g. to Abelard in the writings of his pupils. -- R.A.

Philosophes: French 18th century philosophers, e.g. Condorcet, Condillac, Rousseau, Voltaire (q.v.).

Philosopher King: In Plato's theory of the ideal state rulership would be entrusted to philosopher kings. These rulers would reach the top by sheer talent and merit after a long period of training in the school of everyday work and leadership and by a prescribed pattern of formal discipline and study. The final test of leadership lay in the ability to see the truth of the Platonic vision of a reality governed by universal ideas and ideals. -- V.F.

Philosophical Psychology: Philosophical psychology, in contrast to scientific or empirical psychology, is concerned with the more speculative and controversial issues relating to mind and consciousness which, though arising in the context of scientific psychology, have metaphysical and epistemological ramifications. The principal topics of philosophical psychology are

the criteria of mentality (see Mental),
the relation between mind and consciousness (see Consciousness),
the existence of unconscious or subconscious mind (see Unconscious mind),
the structure of the mind (see Mind-stuff Theory, Gestalt Psychology),
the genesis of mind (see Mind-Dust, Emergent Mentalism),
the nature of the self (see Ego, Self, Personal Identity, Soul),
the mind-body relation (see Mind-Body Relation),
the Freedom of the Will (see Detetminism, Freedom),
psychological methodology (see Behaviorism, Introspectian),
mind and cognition. See Cognition, Perception, Memory.

-- L.W.

Philosophy: (Gr. philein, to love -- sophia, wisdom) The most general science. Pythagoras is said to have called himself a lover of wisdom. But philosophy has been both the seeking of wisdom and the wisdom sought. Originally, the rational explanation of anything, the general principles under which all facts could be explained; in this sense, indistinguishable from science. Later, the science of the first principles of being; the presuppositions of ultimate reality. Now, popularly, private wisdom or consolation; technically, the science of sciences, the criticism and systematization or organization of all knowledge, drawn from empirical science, rational learning, common experience, or whatever. Philosophy includes metaphysics, or ontology and epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, etc. (all of which see). -- J.K.F.

Concerning the task of philosophy. See also Science of Science, Epistemology.

Philosophy of Change: The theory that change itself is the only enduring pnnciple and therefore the fundamental reality. Applied to the views of Heraclitus, and in modern times to those of Henri Bergson. -- R.T.F.

Philosophy of Discontinuity: The theory that the principle of change is the fundamental basis of reality; that natural law is but the outward aspect of what is internally habit Being as an irreducible synthesis of possibility and action. God the Creator and Essence of things. Applied to the thought of Renouvier, Boutroux, and Lachelier. -- R.T.F.

Philosophy of Effort: The theory that in the self-consciousness of effort the person becomes one with reality. Consciousness of effort is self-consciousness. Used by Maine de Biran. -- R.T.F.

Philosophy of Mind: Philosophical theory of the nature of mind and its place in the world. See Philosophical Psychology. -- L.W.

Philosophy of Religion: An inquiry into the general subject of religion from the philosophical point of view, i.e., an inquiry employing the accepted tools of critical analysis and evaluation without a predisposition to defend or reject the claims of any particular religion. Among the specific questions considered are the nature, function and value of religion; the validity of the claims of religious knowledge; the relation of religion and ethics; the character of ideal religion; the nature of evil; the problem of theodicy; revealed versus natural religion; the problem of the human spirit (soul) and its destiny; the relation of the human to the divine as to the freedom and responsibility of the individual and the character (if any) of a divine purpose; evaluation of the claims of prophecy, mystic intuitions, special revelations, inspired utterances; the value of prayers of petition; the human hope of immortality; evaluation of institutional forms of expressions, rituals, creeds, ceremonies, rites, missionary propaganda; the meaning of human existence, the character of value, its status in the world of reality, the existence and character of deity; the nature of belief and faith, etc.

The subject of the philosophy of religion is regarded in conservative circles not as a discipline given to free philosophical inquiry but as a particular religion's philosophy. In this form it is a more or less disguised apologetics or defense of an already accepted religious faith. While the data for this subject include the so-called classical religions, philosophy of religion, in the genuinely philosophical sense, takes for its material religious expressions of all types, whether classical or not, together with all the psychological material available on the nature of the human spirit and man's whole cultural development. -- V.F.

Phoronomy: Noun derived from the Greek, phorein, used by Plato and Aristotle in the sense of motion, and nomos, law; signifies kinematics, or absolute mechanics, which deals with motion from the purely theoretical point of view. According to Kant it is that part of natural philosophy which regards motion as a pure quantum, without considering any of the qualities of the moving body. -- J.J.R.

Phronesis: (Gr. phronesis) Practical wisdom, or knowledge of the proper ends of conduct and of the means of attaining them; distinguished by Aristotle both from theoretical knowledge or science, and from technical skill. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.

Physical essence: (or physical composition in Scholasticism) Consists in the composition of the parts by which that composite truly is. Of these parts, that which indifferently constitutes this or that, is called matter, as the body in man, but that which determines and perfects matter is called form, as soul. -- H.G.

Physicalism: The thesis, developed within Scientific Empiricism (q.v., , II B), that every descriptive term in the language of science (in the widest sense, including social science) is connected with terms designating observable properties of things. This connection is of such a kind that a sentence applying the term in question is intersubjectively (q.v.) confirmable by observations (see Verification). The application of physicalism to psychology is the logical basis for the method of behaviorism (q.v.). See papers by O. Neurath, R. Carnap, C. G. Hempel, in Erkenntnis, 2, 1931; 3, 1932; 4, 1934; Scientia 50, 1931; Rev. de Synthese 10, 1935; Phil. Science 3, 1936; S. S. Stevens in Psych. Bull. 36, 1939. -- R.C.

Physico-Theological Argument: Kant's (q.v.) term for the teleological proof of the existence of God. -- O.F.K.

Physico-Theology: A theology which finds corroboration in natural philosophy. A term now in general disuse. -- V.F.

Physics: (Gr. physis, nature) In Greek philosophy, one of the three branches of philosophy, Logic and Ethics being the other two among the Stoics (q.v.). In Descartes, metaphysics is the root and physics the trunk of the "tree of knowledge." Today, it is the science (overlapping chemistry, biology and human physiology) of the calculation and prediction of the phenomena of motion of microscopic or macroscopic bodies, e.g. gravitation, pressure, heat, light, sound, magnetism, electricity, radio-activity, etc. Philosophical problems arise concerning the relation of physics to biological and social phenomena, to pure mathematics, and to metaphysics. See Mechanism, Physicalism..

Physis: See Nature, Physics.

Picturesque: A modification of the beautiful in English aesthetics, 18th century. -- L.V.

Pieh Mo: Neo-Mohists; heretical Mohists. See Mo che and Chinese philosophy.

Pien: Argumentation or dialectics, which "is to make clear the distinction between right and wrong, to ascertain the principles of order and disorder, to make clear the points of similarity and difference, to examine the laws of names and actualities, to determine what is beneficial and what is harmful, and to decide what is uncertain and doubtful. It describes the ten thousand things as they are, and discusses the various opinions in their comparative merits. It uses names to specify actualities, propositions to express ideas, and explanations to set forth reasons, including or excluding according to classes." It involves seven methods: "The method of possibility is to argue from what is not exhausted. The method of hypothesis is to argue from what is not actual at present. The method of imitation is to provide a model. What is imitated is taken as the model. If the reason agrees with the model, it is correct. If it does not agree with the model, it is incorrect. This is the method of imitation. The method of comparison is to make clear about one thing by means of another. The method of parallel is to compare two propositions consistently throughout. The method of analogy says, 'You are so. Why should I not be so?" The method of induction is to grant what has not been accepted on the basis of its similarity to what has already been accepted. For example, when it is said that all the others are the same, how can I say that the others are different?" (Neo-Mohism.) -- W.T.C.

Pien: Transformation or change in process; change from ens to non-ens; gradual change. See Hua. -- W.T.C.

Pien che: Sophists or Dialecticians. See Ming chia.

Pien hua che: The evolutionary transformation, which of effortless power is the greatest. (Sophism.) -- H.H.

Pietism: In general, an emphasis upon the individual appropriation of religious truth as over against its formal acceptance. As a movement, the term refers specifically to the reaction against the cold orthodoxies within German Protestantism of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Philip Spener (1635-1705) is regarded as the father of German Pietism. Under Spener's influence August Franke (1663-1727) became one of the most vigorous champions of the movement toward a more genuine Christian living. Franke was a preacher of power and founder of charitable organizations. Spener's Pia Desideria, "The Things Religiously Desired" (1675) is regarded as the Manifesto of the movement. Pietism also carries a derogatory connotation: a person is said to be "pietistic" if the seriousness of his religious practices lead him to extremes, even to the point of asceticism and fanaticism. See Puritanism. -- V.F.

Ping t'ien hsia: World peace, the ultimate goal of Confucian moral training and education. -- W.T.C.

Pistology: A noun derived from the Greek, pistis, faith, hence in general the science of faith or religious belief. A branch of theology specially concerned with faith and its restricted scope, as distinguished from reason. -- J.J.R.

Pity: A more or less condescending feeling for other living beings in their suffering or lowly condition, condoned by those who hold to the inevitability of class differences, but condemned by those who believe in melioration or the establishment of more equitable relations and therefore substitute sympathy (q.v.). Synonymous with "having mercy" or "to spare" in the Old Testament (the Lord is "of many bowels"), Christians also are exhorted to be pitiful (e.g., 1. Pet. 3.8). Spinoza yet equates it with commiseration, but since this involves pain in addition to some good if alleviating action follows, it is to be overcome in a life dictated by reason. Except for moral theories which do not recognize feeling for other creatures as a fundamental urge pushing into action, such as utilitarianism in some of its aspects and Hinduism which adheres to the doctrine of karma (q.v.), however far apart the two are, pity may be regarded a prime ethical impulse but, due to its coldness and the possibility of calculation entering, is no longer countenanced as an essentially ethical principle in modern moral thinking. -- K.F.L.

Planck, Max: (b. 1858) A German physicist who taught at the University of Kiel and later at the University of Berlin. He is world-famous for his theory of quanta, according to which all energy travels in units comparable to atoms of matter. See Planck's constant. -- R.B.W.

Planck's constant: In quantum mechanics (q.v.), a fundamental physical constant, usually denoted by the letter h, which appears in many physical formulas. It may be defined by the law that the quantum (q.v.) of radiant energy of any frequency is equal to the frequency multiplied by h. see further Uncertainty principle. -- A.C.

Plastic: The effect of relief obtained by the nuance of light and shade. -- L.V.

Plato: (428-7 - 348-7 B.C.) Was one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers. He was born either in Athens or on the island of Aegina, and was originally known as Aristocles. Ariston, his father, traced his ancestry to the last kings of Athens. His mother, Perictione, was a descendant of the family of Solon. Plato was given the best elementary education possible and he spent eight years, from his own twentieth year to the death of Socrates, as a member of the Socratic circle. Various stories are told about his supposed masters in philosophy, and his travels in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Egypt, but all that we know for certain is that he somehow acquired a knowledge of Pythagoreanisrn, Heracleitanism, Eleaticism and othei Pre-Socratic philosophies. He founded his school of mathematics and philosophy in Athens in 387 B.C. It became known as the Academy. Here he taught with great success until his death at the age of eighty. His career as a teacher was interrupted on two occasions by trips to Sicily, where Plato tried without much success to educate and advise Dionysius the Younger. His works have been very well preserved; we have more than twenty-five authentic dialogues, certain letters, and some definitions which are probably spurious. For a list of works, bibliography and an outline of his thought, see Platonism. -- V.J.B.

Platonic Realism: See Realism.

Platonism: The philosophy of Plato marks one of the high points in the development of Greek philosophical genius Platomsm is characterised by a partial contempt for sense knowledge and empirical studies, by a high regard for mathematics and its method, by a longing for another and better world, by a frankly spiritualistic view of life, by its use of a method of discussion involving an accumulation of ever more profound insights rather than the formal logic of Aristotle, and, above all, by an unswerving faith in the capacity of the human mind to attain absolute truth and to use this truth in the rational direction of human life and affairs.

The works of Plato are chiefly in the form of dialogues, remarkable for their literary as well as for their philosophic qualities. The following list includes all the dialogues recognized as authentic by modern authorities.

Early period: Ion, Charmides, Htppias I and II (doubtful), Laches, Lysis, Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Gorgias, Protagoras, Meno, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Menexenus.

Middle period: Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, Theaetetus, Cratylus.

Late period: Timaeus, Critias, Sophistes, Politicus, Philebus, Parmenides, Laws, Epinomis (doubtful). Thirteen Letters have also been preserved, of which two (VII-VIII), at least, are probably authentic.

Plato's theory of knowledge can hardly be discussed apart from his theory of reality. Through sense perception man comes to know the changeable world of bodies. This is the realm of opinion (doxa), such cognition may be more or less clear but it never rises to the level of true knowledge, for its objects are impermanent and do not provide a stable foundation for science. It is through intellectual, or rational, cognition that man discovers another world, that of immutable essences, intelligible realities, Forms or Ideas. This is the level of scientific knowledge (episteme); it is reached in mathematics and especially in philosophy (Repub. VI, 510). The world of intelligible Ideas contains the ultimate realities from which the world of sensible things has been patterned. Plato experienced much difficulty in regard to the sort of existence to be attributed to his Ideas. Obviously it is not the crude existence of physical things, nor can it be merely the mental existence of logical constructs. Interpretations have varied from the theory of the Christian Fathers (which was certainly not that of Plato himself) viz , that the Ideas are exemplary Causes in God's Mind, to the suggestion of Aristotle (Metaphysics, I) that they are realized, in a sense, in the world of individual things, but are apprehended only by the intellect The Ideas appear, however, particularly in the dialogues of the middle period, to be objective essences, independent of human minds, providing not only the foundation for the truth of human knowledge but afso the ontological bases for the shadowy things of the sense world. Within the world of Forms, there is a certain hierarchy. At the top, the most noble of all, is the Idea of the Good (Repub. VII), it dominates the other Ideas and they participate in it. Beauty, symmetry and truth are high-ranking Ideas; at times they are placed almost on a par with the Good (Philebus 65; also Sympos. and Phaedrus passim). There are, below, these, other Ideas, such as those of the major virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage, justice and piety) and mathematical terms and relations, such as equality, likeness, unlikeness and proportion. Each type or class of being is represented by its perfect Form in the sphere of Ideas, there is an ideal Form of man, dog, willow tree, of every kind of natural object and even of artificial things like beds (Repub. 596). The relationship of the "many" objects, belonging to a certain class of things in the sense world, to the "One", i.e. the single Idea which is their archetype, is another great source of difficulty to Plato. Three solutions, which are not mutually exclusive, are suggested in the dialogues (1) that the many participate imperfectly in the perfect nature of their Idea, (2) that the many are made in imitation of the One, and (3) that the many are composed of a mixture of the Limit (Idea) with the Unlimited (matter).

The human soul is considered by Plato to be an immaterial agent, superior in nature to the body and somewhat hindered by the body in the performance of the higher, psychic functions of human life. The tripartite division of the soul becomes an essential teaching of Platonic psychology from the Republic onward. The rational part is highest and is pictured as the ruler of the psychological organism in the well-regulated man. Next in importance is the "spirited" element of the soul, which is the source of action and the seat of the virtue of courage. The lowest part is the concupiscent or acquisitive element, which may be brought under control by the virtue of temperancc The latter two are often combined and called irrational in contrast to the highest part. Sensation is an active function of the soul, by which the soul "feels" the objects of sense through the instrumentality of the body. Particularly in the young, sensation is a necessary prelude to the knowledge of Ideas, but the mature and developed soul must learn to rise above sense perception and must strive for a more direct intuition of intelligible essences. That the soul exists before the body (related to the Pythagorean and, possibly, Orphic doctrine of transmigration) and knows the world of Ideas immediately in this anterior condition, is the foundation of the Platonic theory of reminiscence (Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus). Thus the soul is born with true knowledge in it, but the soul, due to the encrustation of bodily cares and interests, cannot easily recall the truths innately, and we might say now, subconsciously present in it. Sometimes sense perceptions aid the soul in the process of reminiscence, and again, as in the famous demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem by the slave boy of the Meno, the questions and suggestions of a teacher provide the necessary stimuli for recollection. The personal immortality of the soul is very clearly taught by Plato in the tale of Er (Repub. X) and, with various attempts at logical demonstration, in the Phaedo. Empirical and physiological psychology is not stressed in Platonism, but there is an approach to it in the descriptions of sense organs and their media in the Timaeus 42 ff.

The Platonic theory of education is based on a drawing out (educatio) of what is already dimly known to the learner. (Meno, Repub. II-VII, Theaetetus, Laws.) The training of the philosopher-ruler, outlined in the Republic, requires the selection of the most promising children in their infancy and a rigorous disciplining of them in gymnastic, music (in the Greek sense of literary studies), mathematics and dialectic (the study of the Ideas). This training was to continue until the students were about thirty-five years of age; then fifteen years of practical apprenticeship in the subordinate offices of the state were required; finally, at the age of fifty, the rulers were advised to return to the study of philosophy. It should be noted that this program is intended only for an intellectual elite; the military class was to undergo a shorter period of training suited to its functions, and the masses of people, engaged in production, trading, and like pursuits, were not offered any special educational schedule.

Platonism as a political philosophy finds its best known exposition in the theory of the ideal state in the Republic. There, Plato described a city in which social justice would be fully realized. Three classes of men are distinguished: the philosopher kings, apparently a very small group whose education has been alluded to above, who would be the rulers because by nature and by training they were the best men for the job. They must excel particularly in their rational abilities: their special virtue is philosophic wisdom; the soldiers, or guardians of the state, constitute the second class; their souls must be remarkable for the development of the spirited, warlike element, under the control of the virtue of courage; the lowest class is made up of the acquisitive group, the workers of every sort whose characteristic virtue is temperance. For the two upper classes, Plato suggested a form of community life which would entail the abolition of monogamous marriage, family life, and of private property. It is to be noted that this form of semi-communism was suggested for a minority of the citizens only (Repub. III and V) and it is held to be a practical impossibility in the Laws (V, 739-40), though Plato continued to think that some form of community life is theoretically best for man. In Book VIII of the Republic, we find the famous classification of five types of political organization, ranging from aristocracy which is the rule of the best men, timocracy, in which the rulers are motivated by a love of honor, oligarchy, in which the rulers seek wealth, democracy, the rule of the masses who are unfit for the task, to tyranny, which is the rule of one man who may have started as the champion of the people but who governs solely for the advancement of his own, selfish interests.

The Platonic philosophy of art and aesthetics stresses, as might be expected, the value of the reasonable imitation of Ideal realities rather than the photographic imitation of sense things and individual experiences. All beautiful things participate in the Idea of beauty (Symposium and Phaedrus). The artist is frequently described as a man carried away by his inspiration, akin to the fool; yet art requires reason and the artist must learn to contemplate the world of Ideas. Fine art is not radically distinguished from useful art. In both the Republic and the Laws, art is subordinated to the good of the state, and those forms of art which are effeminate, asocial, inimical to the morale of the citizens, are sternly excluded from the ideal state.

The ethics of Platonism is intellectualistic. While he questions (Protagoras, 323 ff.) the sophistic teaching that "virtue is knowledge", and stresses the view that the wise man must do what is right, as well as know the right, still the cumulative impetus of his many dialogues on the various virtues and the good life, tends toward the conclusion that the learned, rationally developed soul is the good soul. From this point of view, wisdom is the greatest virtue, (Repub. IV). Fortitude and temperance are necessary virtues of the lower parts of the soul and justice in the individual, as in the state, is the harmonious co-operation of all parts, under the control of reason. Of pleasures, the best are those of the intellect (Philebus); man's greatest happiness is to be found in the contemplation of the highest Ideas (Repub., 583 ff.).

In the field of the philosophy of religion, Platonism becomes obscure. There is little doubt that Plato paid only lip-service to the anthropomorphic polytheism of Athenian religion. Many of the attributes of the Idea of the Good are those of an eternal God. The Republic (Book II) pictures the Supreme Being as perfect, unchangeable and the author of truth. Similar rationalizations are found throughout the Laws. Another current of religious thought is to be found m the Timaeus, Politicus and Sophist. The story of the making of the universe and man by the Demiurgus is mythic and yet it is in many points a logical development of his theory of Ideas. The World-Maker does not create things from nothing, he fashions the world out of a pre-existing chaos of matter by introducing patterns taken from the sphere of Forms. This process of formation is also explained, in the Timaeus (54 ff), in terms of various mathematical figures. In an early period of the universe, God (Chronos) exercised a sort of Providential care over things in this world (Politicus, 269-275), but eventually man was left to his own devices. The tale of Er, at the end of the Republic, describes a judgment of souls after death, their separation into the good and the bad, and the assignment of various rewards and punishments.

H. Stephanus et J. Serranus (ed.), Platonis Opera (Paris, 1578), has provided the standard pagination, now used in referring to the text of Plato, it is not a critical edition.
J. Burnet (ed.), Platonis Opera, 5 vol. (Oxford, 1899-1907).
Platon, Oeuvres completes, texte et trad., Collect. G. Bude (Paris, 1920 ff.).
The Dialogues of Plato, transl. B. Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1920).
W. Pater, Plato and Platonism (London, 1909).
A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work (N. Y., 1927).
P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933).
A. Dies, Autour de Platon, 2 vol. (Paris, 1927).
U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Platon, 2 vol. (Berlin, 1919).
John Burnet, Platonism (Berkeley, 1928).
Paul Elmer More, Platonism (Oxford, 1931).
Constantm Ritter, Essence of Plato's Philosophy (London, 1933).
Leon Robin, Platon (Paris, 1935).
Paul Shorey, Platonism, Ancient and Modern (Berkeley, 1938).
A. E. Taylor, Platontsm and Its Influence (London, 1924).
F. J. E. Woodbridge, The Son of Apollo (Boston, 1929).
C. Bigg, The Christian Platomsts of Alexandria (Oxford, 1913).
T. Whittaker, The Neo-Platonists (Cambridge, 1918, 2nd ed ).
John H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Angle-Saxon Philosophy (New York, 1931).
F. J. Powicke, The Cambridge Platonists (Boston, 1927).

-- V.J.B.

The Academy continued as a school of philosophy until closed by Justinian in 529 A.D. The early scholars (Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates) were not great philosophers, they adopted a Pythagorean interpretation of the Ideas and concentrated on practical, moral problems. Following the Older Academy (347-247 B.C.), the Middle and New Academies (Arcesilaus and Carneades were the principal teachers) became scepticil and eclectic. Aristotle (384-322 B.C. ) studied with Plato for twenty years and embodied many Platonic views in his own philosophy. Platonism was very highly regarded by the Christian Fathers (Ambrose, Augustine, John Damascene and Anselm of Canterbury, for instance) and it continued as the approved philosophy of the Christian Church until the 12th century. From the 3rd century on, Neo-Platonism (see Plotinism) developed the other-worldly mystical side of Plato's thought. The School of Chartres (Bernard, Thierry, Wm. of Conches, Gilbert of Poitiers) in the 12th century was a center of Christian Platonism, interested chiefly in the cosmological theory of the Timaeus. The Renaissance witnessed a revival of Platonism in the Florentine Academy (Marsilio Ficino and the two Pico della Mirandolas). In England, the Cambridge Platonists (H. More, Th. Gale, J. Norris) in the 17th century started an interest in Plato, which has not yet died out in the English Universities. Today, the ethical writings of A. E. Taylor, the theoiy of essences developed by G. Santayana, and the metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, most nearly approach a contemporary Platonism. -- V.J.B.

Platonism, medieval: Plato's works were not accessible to the medievil writers previous to the 13th century. They possessed only part of the Timaeus in the translation and commentary by Chalcidius. Nor were they acquainted with the writings of the Neo-Platonists. They had the logical texts by Porphyrius; little besides. St. Augustine, the greatest authority in these ages, was well acquainted with the teachings of the "Academy" of his time and became a source for Neo-Platonic influences. Furthermore, there were the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius of which first Alcuin had made a rather insufficient, later Scotus Eriugena a readible translation. Scotus himself was thoroughly Neo-Platonic in his philosophy, however "Christianized" his Platonism may have been. The medieval "Platoniststs" held, among some propositions of minor importance, that universals were existent substances (Realism, q.v.), that body and soul were two independent substances, united more or less accidentally; they assumed accordingly a "plurality of forms" in one substance. Some believed that Plato had been given a peculiar insight even in the mysteries of Christian faith. Thus they went so far as to identify the anima mundi, which they believed to be a Platonic notion, with the Holy Ghost (e.g. Abelard). Even after the revival of Aristotelian philosophy, against which the "Platonists" reacted violently, Platonism, or as they afterwards preferred to call it, Augustinianism persisted in many schools, especially in those depending on the Franciscans. -- R.A.

Pleasure and pain: In philosophy these terms appear mostly in ethical discussions, where they have each two meanings not always clearly distinguished. "Pleasure" is used sometimes to refer to a certain hedonic quality of experiences, viz. pleasantness, and sometimes as a name for experiences which have that quality (here "pleasures" are "pleasant experiences" and "pleasure" is the entire class of such experiences). Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of "pain". Philosophers have given various accounts of the nature of pleasure and pain. E.g., Aristotle says that pleasure is a perfection supervening on ccrtain activities, pain the opposite. Spinoza defines pleasure as the feeling with which one passes from a lesser state of perfection to a greater, pain is the feeling with which one makes the reverse transition. Again, philosophers have raised various questions about pleasure and pain. Can they be identified with good and evil? Are our actions always determined by our own pleasure and pain actual or prospective? Can pleasures and pains be distinguished quantitatively, qualitatively? See Bentham, Epicureanism. -- W.K.F.

Pleasures of the imagination: The moderate, healthful, and agreeable stimulus to the mind, resulting (in the primary class) from the properties of greatness, novelty, and beauty (kinship, color, proportionality, etc. ) in objects actually seen; (in the secondary class) from the processes of comparison, association, and remodelling set up in the mind by the products of art or by the recollection of the beauties of nature. (Addison.) -- K.E.G.

Plekhanov, George Valentinovich: (1856-1918) Was a Russian Marxist who became the philosophical leader of the Menshevik faction of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, opposing Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik wing. In spite of what are regarded as his political errors, such as his support of the war of 1914-1918 and his negative attitude to the Revolution of October, 1917, contemporary Soviet thinkers regard Plekhanov's works as containing valuable expositions of Marxist philosophy. Among his writings in this field are,

Our Disputes (1885),
On the Problem of the Development of the Monistic View of History (1895),
Essays on the History of Materilism (1896),
On the Materialist Conception of History (1897),
On the Problem of the Role of the Individual in History (1898).

-- J.M.S.

Pleroma: Literally the Greek term means a filling up, it was used by the Gnostics to denote the world of light, or the spiritual world of aeons full of divine life. -- J.J.R.

Plotinism: The philosophic and religious thought of Plotinus (205-270). His writings were published by Porphyry in six books of nine sections, Enneads, each. All reality consists of a series of emanations, from the One, the eternal source of all being. The first, necessary emanation is that of Nous (mind or intelligence), the second that of Psyche (soul). At the periphery of the universe is found matter. Man belongs partly in the realm of spirit and partly in the sphere of matter.

Plotinism offers a well-developed theory of sensation. The objects of sensation are of a lower order of being than the perceiving organism. The inferior cannot act upon the superior. Hence sensation is an activity of the sensory agent upon its objects. Sensation provides a direct, realistic perception of material things, but, since they are ever-changing, such knowledge is not valuable. In internal seme perception, the imagimtion also functions actively, memory is attributed to the imaginative power and it serves not only in the recall of sensory images but also in the retention of the verbal formulae in which intellectual concepts are expressed. The human soul can look either upward or downward; up to the sphere of purer spirit, or down to the evil regions of matter. Rational knowledge is a cognition of intelligible realities, or Ideas in the realm of Mind which is often referred to as Divine. The climax of knowledge consists in an intuitive and mystical union with the One; this is experienced by few.

The Idea of Beauty is one and perfect according to Plotinus. All lesser beauties, spiritual and physical, are participations in the one, supreme Beauty. The attribute of the beautiful which is most stressed is splendor, it consists of a shining-forth of the spiritual essence of the beautiful thing.

Characteristically Plotinian is the teaching that man must first turn his mind away from the inferior things of sense toward the inner reality of his own soul. He must learn to regard his soul as part of the World-Soul. He must transcend the multiple things of the realm of Mind and endeavor to achieve that communion with the One, which is his ultimate good. There is no question of personal immortality and so the goal of human life is a merging with universal Spirit. In his politics, Plotinus favored a sort of community life incorporating many of the idealistic suggestions to be found in Plato's Republic.

Plotinism is a theocentric form of thought. As reality becomes more intelligible, it becomes more spiritual and Divine. The Ideas in the sphere of Nous are Divine and in later Neo-Platonism become gods; hence the system is polytheistic.

As a school of Greek and Latin philosophers, Plotinism lasted until the fifth century. Porphyry, Apuleius, Jamblichus, Julian the Apostate, Themistius, Simplicius, Macrobius and Proclus are the most important representatives. Through St. Augustine, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, John Scotus Eriugena, and the Greek Fathers, Plotinian thought has been partly incorporated into Christian intellectualism. Nearly all prominent Arabian philosophers before Averroes are influenced by Plotinus, this is particularly true of Avicenna and Algazel. In the Jewish tradition Avicebron's Fons Vitae is built on the frame of the emanation theory. Master Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa continue the movement. It is spiritually related to some modern anti-intellectualistic and mystical currents of thought.

Plotin, Enneades, (Greek text and French transl.) by E. Brehier, (Bude), 6 vol., Paris, 1930-40.
Mackenna, S., The Enneads of Plotinus, London, 1917-1919.
Heinemann, F., Plotin, Leipzig, 1921.
Brehier, E., La philosophie de Plotin, Paris, 1928.
Inge, W. R., The Philosophy of Plotinus, 2 vol., 2rd ed., London and N. Y., 1929.

-- V.J.B.

Pluralism: This is the doctrine that there is not one (Monism), not two (Dualism) but many ultimate substances. From the earliest Ionian fundamentals of air, earth, fire and water, to the hierarchy of monads of Leibniz, the many things-in-themselves of Herbart and the theory of the many that "works" in the latter day Pragmatism of James and others, we get a variety of theories that find philosophic solace in variety rather than in any knowable or unknowable one. See Dualism, Idealism, Materialism, Monism, Political Philosophy (Laski). -- L.E.D.

Plurality of causes: The doctrine according to which identical events can have two or more different causes. "It is not true that the same phenomenon is always produced by the same causes," declared J. S. Mill, author of the doctrine. Quite the contrary, "many causes may produce some kind of sensation, many causes may produce death." Mill's position was not taken in support of the doctrine of free will or of that of chance, but rather in opposition to an old contention of the physicists, among whom Newton stated that "to the same natural effect we must, as far as pssible, ascribe the same cause." The subsequent controversy has shown that Mill's position was based on the confusion between "the same phenomenon" and "the same kind of phenomena". It is doubtless true that the same kind of phenomena, say death, can be produced by many causes, but only because we take the phenomenon broadly, nevertheless, it may remain true that each particular phenomenon can be caused only by a very definite cause or by a very definite combination of causes. In other words, the broader we conceive the phenomenon, the more causes are likely to apply to it. -- R.B.W.

Plutarch of Athens: (5th century AD) Founder of Athenian Neo-Platonism, author of commentaries on Platonic and Pythagorean writings.

Plutarch of Chaeronea: (about 100 AD) Famous biographer and author of several philosophical treatises. -- M.F.

Parallel Lives; Opera moralia (tr. Bolin's Classical Libr.)-

Pneuma: (Gr. pneuma, breath) A Stoic, also Epicurean, concept signifying spirit, vital force, or creative fire in its penetration into matter. Sometimes understood as psychic energy, or distinguished as the formative fire-mind and the divinely inspired rational part of man from the more emotional, physical aspect of soul. In early Christian, particularly Gnostic philosophy, pneuma, as spirit, is differentiated from psyche, or soul. See Pneuma Hagion, the Holy Ghost. -- K.F.L.

Pneumatology: (Gr. pneuma, spirit + logos, theory) In the most general sense pneumatology is the philosophical or speculative treatment of spirits or souls, including human, divine and those intermediate between God and man. D'Alembert restricted pneumatology to human souls. Discours preliminaire de I'Encyclopedie, § 73; he considered pneumatology, logic and ethics the three branches of the philosophical science of man. The term has also been considered to exclude man and to apply only to God and the angelic hierarchy. (See article by Bersot in Franck's Dict. des Sci. Philos. ) The wide sense in which pneumatology embraces first, God, second, the angels and third, man is perhaps the most convenient and justifiable usage. -- L.W.

Poiesis: (Gr poiesis) Activity of creating or making, artistic production (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.

Poietic: Relating to production or the arts of production, e.g. poietic knowledge, as distinguished from practical and from theoretical knowledge. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.

Poincare, Henri: (1854-1912) French mathematician and mathematical physicist to whom many important technical contributions are due. His thought was occupied by problems on the borderline of physics and philosophy. His views reflect the influence of positivism and seem to be closely related to pngmatism. Poincare is known also for his opposition to the logistic method in the foundations of mathematics, especially as it was advocated by Bertrand i (q.v.) and Louis Couturat, and for his proposed resolution of the logical paradoxes (q.v.) by the prohibition of impredicattve definition (q.v.). Among his books, the more influential are Science and Hypothesis, Science and Method, and Dernieres Pensees. -- R.B.W.

Point-event: A. N. Whitehead's term signifying an event with all its dimensions ideally restricted. -- R.B.W.

Poissons Law: This rule, which is also called Poisson's Law of Small Numbers, is an elaboration of Bernouilli's Theorem dealing with the difference between the actual and the most probable number of occurrences of an event. 1. In cases of Random Sampling, the Poisson Exponential Limit is used in place of the Normal Probability Function or the strict application of the Bernouilli Theorem, when considering events which happen rarely. 2. In cases of Dispersion of Statistical Ratios, a Bernouilli Distribution is used when the probability of an event is constant, and a Poisson Distribution is used when that probability is variable. In both cases, there is a maximum involved which will not be surpassed, and the values obtained by Poisson's Law are smaller than those obtained in the other cases. -- T.G.

Polarity, philosophy of: Philosophies that make the concept of polarity one of the systematic principles according to which opposites involve each other when applied to any significant realm of investigation. Polarity was one of the basic concepts in the philosophy of Cusanus and Schelling. Morris R. Cohen made use of the principle of polarity in scientific philosophy, in biology, in social and historical analysis, in law and in ethics. (Cf. Reason and Nature). -- H.H.

Political Personalism: The doctrine that the state is under obligation to provide opportunity to each citizen for the highest possible physical, mental, and spiritual development, because personality is the supreme achievement of the social order. A movement in France represented by the journal Esprit. -- R.T.F.

Political Philosophy: That branch of philosophy which deals with political life, especially with the essence, origin and value of the state. In ancient philosophy politics also embraced what we call ethics. The first and most important ancient works on Political Philosophy were Plato's Politeia (Republic) and Aristotle's Politics. The Politeia outlines the structure and functions of the ideal state. It became the pattern for all the Utopias (see Utopia) of later times. Aristotle, who considers man fundamentally a social creature i.e. a political animal, created the basis for modern theories of government, especially by his distinction of the different forms of government. Early Christianity had a rather negative attitude towards the state which found expression in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei. The influence of this work, in which the earthly state was declared to be civitas diaboli, a state of the devil, was predominant throughout the Middle Ages. In the discussion of the relation between church and empire, the main topic of medieval political philosophy, certain authors foreshadowed modern political theories. Thomas Aquinas stressed the popular origin of royal power and the right of the people to restrict or abolish that power in case of abuse; William of Ockham and Marsiglio of Padua held similar views. Dante Alighieri was one of the first to recognize the intrinsic value of the state; he considered the world monarchy to be the only means whereby peace, justice and liberty could be secured. But it was not until the Renaissance that, due to the rediscovery of the individual and his rights and to the formation of territorial states, political philosophy began to play a major role. Niccolo Machiavelli and Jean Bodin laid the foundation for the new theories of the state by stressing its independence from any external power and its indivisible sovereignty. The theory of popular rights and of the right of resistance against tyranny was especially advocated by the "Monarchomachi" (Huguenots, such as Beza, Hotman, Languet, Danaeus, Catholics such as Boucher, Rossaeus, Mariana). Most of them used the theory of an original contract (see Social Contract) to justify limitations of monarchical power. Later, the idea of a Natural Law, independent from divine revelation (Hugo Grotius and his followers), served as an argument for liberal -- sometimes revolutionary -- tendencies. With the exception of Hobbes, who used the contract theory in his plea for absolutism, almost all the publicists of the 16th and 17th century built their liberal theories upon the idea of an original covenant by which individuals joined together and by mutual consent formed a state and placed a fiduciary trust in the supreme power (Roger Williams and John Locke). It was this contract which the Pilgrim Fathers translated into actual facts, after their arrival in America, in November, 1620, long before John Locke had developed his theorv. In the course of the 17th century in England the contract theory was generally substituted for the theory of the divine rights of kings. It was supported by the assumption of an original "State of Nature" in which all men enjoyed equal reciprocal rights. The most ardent defender of the social contract theory in the 18th century was J. J. Rousseau who deeply influenced the philosophy of the French revolution. In Rousseau's conception the idea of the sovereignty of the people took on a more democratic aspect than in 17th century English political philosophy which had been almost exclusively aristocratic in its spirit. This tendency found expression in his concept of the "general will" in the moulding of which each individual has his share. Immanuel Kant who made these concepts the basis of his political philosophy, recognized more clearly than Rousseau the fictitious character of the social contract and treated it as a "regulative idea", meant to serve as a criterion in the evaluation of any act of the state. For Hegel the state is an end in itself, the supreme realization of reason and morality. In marked opposition to this point of view, Marx and Engels, though strongly influenced by Hegel, visualized a society in which the state would gradually fade away. Most of the 19th century publicists, however, upheld the juristic theory of the state. To them the state was the only source of law and at the same time invested with absolute sovereignty: there are no limits to the legal omnipotence of the state except those which are self imposed. In opposition to this doctrine of unified state authority, a pluralistic theory of sovereignty has been advanced recently by certain authors, laying emphasis upon corporate personalities and professional groups (Duguit, Krabbe, Laski). Outspoken anti-stateism was advocated by anarchists such as Kropotkin, etc., by syndicalists and Guild socialists. -- W.E.

Politics: (Gr. polis, city) The normative science which treats of the organization of social goods. The branch of civics concerned with government and state affairs. See Political Philosophy. -- J.K.F.

Polysyllogism: A chain of syllogisms arranged to lead to a single final conclusion, the conclusion of each syllogism except the last serving as premiss of a later syllogism.

In contrast, an argument consisting of a single syllogism is called a monosyllogism. -- A.C.

Polytheism: (Gr. polus, many; and theos, god) A theory that Divine reality is numerically multiple, that there are many gods, opposed to monotheism. See Plotinism. -- V.J.B.

Pompanazzi, Pietro or Pereto: (1462-1524) Was born in Mantua, in Italy, and studied medicine and philosophy at Padua. He taught philosophy at Padua, Ferrara and Bologna. He is best known for his Tractatus de immortalitate animae (ed. C. G. Bardili, Tübingen, 1791) in which he denied that Aristotle taught the personal immortality of the human soul. His interpretation of Aristotle follows that of the Greek commentntor, Alexander of Aphrodisias (3rd c. A.D.) and is also closelv related to the Averroistic tradition. -- V.J.B.

Pons asinorum: The literal meaning of the Latin expression, asses' bridge, has been figuratively applied to a diagram constructed by Petrus Tartaretus about 1480, whose purpose was to aid the student of logic in finding the middle term of a syllogism and disclose its relations. It was assumed that it was as difficult to persuade students to do this as to get asses to pass over a bridge. Hence the expression has also been applied to any relatively easy test. Euclids proposition, that if two sides of a triangle are equal the angles opposite to those sides must also be equal, has been called a pons asinorum for students of geometry -- J.J.R.

Porphyry: (c. 232-304 B.C.) A disciple of Plotinus, who adapted Aristotelian logic to Neo-Platonic philosophy. His method of classification by means of dichotomy is known as the "Tree of Porphyry" (q.v.). Cf. Isagoge (tr. by Boethius, q.v.). -- R.B.W.

Port Royal Logic: See Logic, traditional.

Port Royalists: Name applied to a group of thinkers, writers, and educators, more or less closely connected with the celebrated Cistercian Abbey of Port Royal near Paris, which during the seventeenth century became the most active center of Jansenism and, to a certain extent, of Cartesianism in France. The Port Royalists were distinguished by the severity and austerity of their moral code and by their new educational methods which greatly promoted the advance of pedagogy. The most noted among them were Jean Duvergier de Hauranne