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Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942.
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Babism: An initially persecuted and later schismatizing religious creed founded in Persia prior to the middle of the last century. International in its appeal the number of its followers increased largely in America. As a development against orthodox Mohammedanism, the Babis deny the finality of any revelation. The sect's former extreme pantheistic tendency and metaphysical hairsplittings have been effectively subordinated to more pronounced ethical imperatives. -- H.H.
Background: (Ger. Hintergrund) In Husserl: The nexus of objects and objective sense explicitly posited along with any object; the objective horizon. The perceptual background is part of the entire background in this broad sense. See Horizon. -- D.C .
Bacon, Francis: (1561-1626) Inspired by the Renaissance, and in revolt against Aristotelianism and Scholastic Logic, proposed an inductive method of discovering truth, founded upon empirical observation, analysis of observed data, inference resulting in hypotheses, and verification of hypotheses through continued observation and experiment. The impediments to the use of this method are preconceptions and prejudices, grouped by Bacon under four headings, or Idols:
  1. The Idols of the Tribe, or racially "wishful," anthropocentric ways of thinking, e.g. explanation by final causes
  2. The Idols of the Cave or personal prejudices
  3. The Idols of the Market Place, or failure to define terms
  4. The Idol of the Theatre, or blind acceptance of tradition and authority.
The use of the inductive method prescribes the extraction of the essential from the non-essential and the discovery of the underlying structure or form of the phenomena under investigation, through (a) comparison of instances, (b) study of concomitant variations, and (c) exclusion of negative instances.

This process is facilitated by the choice of prerogative, or, if possible, of solitary instances in which the investigated data are comparatively isolated and unadulterated. But under the most favorable conditions inquiry must be a cautious, laborious, plodding, step by step affair, and results can never be more than provisional because of the possibility of undiscovered negative instances.

Bacon had no system of his own, but openly preferred the lonians, Atomists and Epicureans.

Bacon's theory of poetry also deserves consideration. Whereas reason adapts the mind to the nature of things, and science conquers nature by obeying her, poetry submits the shows of things to the desires of the mind and overcomes nature by allowing us in our imagination to escape from her. Out of present experience and the record of history, poetry builds its narrative and dramatic fancies. But it may also, in allegory and parable, picture symbolically scientific and philosophic truths and religious mysteries -- in which case it creates mythologies. Fr. Bacon, Works, 7 vols., 1857, ed. Spedding and Ellis. -- B.A.G.F.

Bacon, Roger: (1214-1294) Franciscan. He recognized the significance of the deductive application of principles and the necessity for experimental verification of the results. He was keenly interested in mathematics. His most famous work was called Opus majus, a veritable encyclopaedia of the sciences of his day. -- L.E.D
Baconian Method: The inductive method as advanced by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The purpose of the method was to enable man to attain mastery over nature in order to exploit it for his benefit. The mind should pass from particular facts to a more general knowledge of forms, or generalized physical properties. They are laws according to which phenomena actually proceed. He demanded an exhaustive enumeration of positive instances of occurrences of phenomena, the recording of comparative instances, in which an event manifests itself with greater or lesser intensity, and the additional registration of negative instances. Then experiments should test the observations. See Mill's Methods. -- J.J.R.
Bahya, ben Joseph Ibn Padudah: (c. 1050) Philosopher and ethicist. The title of his work, The Duties of the Heart (Heb. Hobot ha-Leba-bot), indicates its purpose, i.e., to teach ethical conduct. First part demonstrates pure conception of God, unity and attributes. His basic principle of ethics is thankfulness to God, for His creating the wonderful world; the goal of religious ethical conduct is love of God. A second work ascribed to him is the Torot ha-Nefesh, i.e., Doctrines of the Soul, which deals primarily with the soul, but also with other subjects and evinces a strong neo-Platonic strain. See Jewish Philosophy -- M.W.
Bahyanumeya-vada: (Skr.) A Hinayana Buddhist theory (vada), otherwise known as Sautran-tika, based upon a realist epistemology. It assumes the reality and independence of mind and object, which atter is inferred (anumeya) as being outside (bahya) consciousness and apprehended only when the sensory apparatus functions and certain physical conditions are fulfilled. -- K.F.L.
Bahyapratyaksa-vada: (Skr.) A Hinayana Buddhist theory (vada) of realism, otherwise known as Vaibhasika. It holds that objects exist outside (bahya) the mind and consciousness, but that they must be directly (pratyaksa) and not inferentially (cf. Bahyanumeya-vada) known. -- K.F.L.
Banausic: (Gr. banausos) Vulgar; illiberal; applied particularly to arts, sciences, or occupations that deform the body or the mind. --G.R.M.
Baptism: A rite of dedication and induction of an individual into a circle of social and religious privilege. The rite is usually of a ceremonious nature with pledges given (by proxy in the case of infants), prayers and accompanied by some visible sign (such as water, symbol of purification, or wine, honey, oil or blood) sealing the bond of fellowship. In its earliest form the rite probably symbolized not only an initiation but the magical removal of some tabu or demon possession (exorcism -- see Demonology), the legitimacy of birth, the inheritance of privilege, the assumption of a name and the expectancy of responsibility. In Christian circles the rite has assumed the status of a sacrament, the supernatural rebirth into the Divine Kingdom. Various forms include sprinkling with water, immersion, or the laying on of hands. In some Christian circles it is considered less a mystical rite and more a sign of a covenant of salvation and consecration to the higher life. -- V.F.
Baroque: A style of art, produced especially in the 17th century, considered by classicists a type of false art; by romantictists a product of magic imagination. -- L.V.
Barth, Karl: (1886-1968) Swiss theologian, widely influential among current social pessimists. God, he holds, is wholly other than man, not apprehensible by man's reason nor attainable by human endeavor. Christianity is a revealed and supernatural religion. Man must trust God's plan of salvation or be doomed to utter ruin. God is the sole judge and his judgments are beyond man's attainments. The Barthian position is called "crisis theology" (crisis, the Greek word for judgment) and "dialectical theology" (because of the emphasis upon the contradict on between God and this world). For a summary of Barth's position see The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (1939). -- V.F.
Basic Sentences, Protocol Sentences: Sentences formulating the result of observations or perceptions or other experiences, furnishing the basis for empirical verification or confirmation (see Verification). Some philosophers take sentences concerning observable properties of physical things as basic sentences, others take sentences concerning sense-data or perceptions. The sentences of the latter kind are regarded by some philosophers as completely verifiable, while others believe that all factual sentences can be confirmed only to some degree. See Scientific Empiricism. -- R.C.
Bathmism: A name given by the Lamarckian E.D. Cope to a special force, or growth-force, which he regarded as existing and as exhibiting itself in the growth of organic beings. -- W.F.K.
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb: (1714-1762) A German thinker of the pre-Kantian period and disciple of Christian Wolff whose encyclopaedic work he tried to continue. Among his works the best known is Aesthetica in which he analyzes the problem of beauty regarded by him as recognition of perfection by means of the senses. The name of aesthetics, as the philosophy of beauty and art, was introduced by him for the first time. -- R.B.W.
Becoming: (Medieval) Any kind of change is actualization of potencies. It is often called, following Aristotle, a "movement", because moving is a striking instance of becoming, and because the thing "moves" from the lower level of potentiality to the higher of actuality. Actualization is achieved only by a factor which is act itself. The act is in this sense prior to the potency not only in nature but also in time. See Being, Dialectic, Hegel. -- R.A.
Begging the Question: The logical fallacy of assuming in the premisses of an argument the very conclusion which is to be proved. See Petitio principii. -- G.R.M.
Begriffsgefuhl: (Ger. Literally, conceptual feeling) The faculty of eliciting feelings, images or recollections associated viith concepts or capable of being substituted for them. Sometimes, the affective tone peculiar to a given concept. -- O.F.K.
Behaviorism: The contemporary American School of psychology which abandons the concepts of mind and consciousness, and restricts both animal and human psychology to the study of behavior. The impetus to behaviorism was given by the Russian physiologist, Pavlov, who through his investigation of the salivary reflex in dogs, developed the concept of the conditioned reflex. See Conditioned Reflex. The founder of American behaviorism is J.B. Watson, who formulated a program for psychology excluding all reference to consciousness and confining itself to behavioral responses. (Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1914.) Thinking and emotion are interpreted as implicit behavior: the former is implicit or subvocal speech; the latter implicit visceral reactions. A distinction has been drawn between methodological and dogmatic behaviorism: the former ignores "consciousness" and advocates, in psychology, the objective study of behaviour; the latter denies consciousness entirely, and is, therefore, a form of metaphysical materialism. See Automatism. -- L.W.
Being, hierarchy of: (Scholastic) The Neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of "emanations" from the "One" persisted throughout the Middle-Ages, though it was given another meaning. Emanationism properly speaking is incompatible with the notion of creation. But the medieval writers agree that there is a hierarchy, comprising within the visible world inanimate beings, plants, animals, and rational beings, men; above them rank the immaterial substances (subsistent forms, angels) and finally God Who, however, is so far distant from any created being that he cannot be placed in line. Whatever is asserted of God is so only "analogically" (see Analogy). There is analogy also between the grades of created beings; their various levels are not of one kind, no transition exists between inanimate and animate bodies, or between material and spiritual substances. Though the original meaning has been abandoned, the term "emanation" is still used, even by Aquinas. -- R.A.
Being: In early Greek philosophy is opposed either to change, or Becoming, or to Non-Being. According to Parmenides and his disciples of the Eleatic School, everything real belongs to the category of Being, as the only possible object of thought. Essentially the same reasoning applies also to material reality in which there is nothing but Being, one and continuous, all-inclusive and eternal. Consequently, he concluded, the coming into being and passing away constituting change are illusory, for that which is-not cannot be, and that which is cannot cease to be. In rejecting Eleitic monism, the materialists (Leukippus, Democritus) asserted that the very existence of things, their corporeal nature, insofar as it is subject to change and motion, necessarily presupposes the other than Being, that is, Non-Being, or Void. Thus, instead of regarding space as a continuum, they saw in it the very source of discontinuity and the foundation of the atomic structure of substance. Plato accepted the first part of Parmenides' argument. namely, that referring to thought as distinct from matter, and maintained that, though Becoming is indeed an apparent characteristic of everything sensory, the true and ultimate reality, that of Ideas, is changeless and of the nature of Being. Aristotle achieved a compromise among all these notions and contended that, though Being, as the essence of things, is eternal in itself, nevertheless it manifests itself only in change, insofar as "ideas" or "forms" have no existence independent of, or transcendent to, the reality of things and minds. The medieval thinkers never revived the controversy as a whole, though at times they emphasized Being, as in Neo-Platonism, at times Becoming, as in Aristotelianism. With the rise of new interest in nature, beginning with F. Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, the problem grew once more in importance, especially to the rationalists, opponents of empiricism. Spinoza regarded change as a characteristic of modal existence and assumed in this connection a position distantly similar to that of Pinto. Hegel formed a new answer to the problem in declaring that nature, striving to exclude contradictions, has to "negate" them: Being and Non-Being are "moments" of the same cosmic process which, at its foundation, arises out of Being containing Non-Being within itself and leading, factually and logically, to their synthetic union in Becoming. -- R.B.W.

In scholasticism: The English term translates three Latin terms which, in Scholasticism, have different significations. Ens as a noun is the most general and most simple predicate; as a participle it is an essential predicate only in regard to God in Whom existence and essence are one, or Whose essence implies existence. Esse, though used sometimes in a wider sense, usually means existence which is defined as the actus essendi, or the reality of some essence. Esse quid or essentia designates the specific nature of some being or thing, the "being thus" or the quiddity. Ens is divided into real and mental being (ens rationis). Though the latter also has properties, it is said to have essence only in an improper way. Another division is into actual and potential being. Ens is called the first of all concepts, in respect to ontology and to psychology; the latter statement of Aristotle appears to be confirmed by developmental psychology. Thing (res) and ens are synonymous, a res may be a res extra mentem or only rationis. Every ens is: something, i.e. has quiddity, one, true, i.e. corresponds to its proper nature, and good. These terms, naming aspects which are only virtually distinct from ens, are said to be convertible with ens and with each other. Ens is an analogical term, i.e. it is not predicated in the same manner of every kind of being, according to Aquinas. In Scotism ens, however, is considered as univocal and as applying to God in the same sense as to created beings, though they be distinguished as entia ab alto from God, the ens a se. See Act, Analogy, Potency, Transcendentals. -- R.A.

In Spinoza's sense, that which "is", preeminently and without qualification -- the source and ultimate subject of all distinctions. Being is thus divided into that which is "in itself" and "in another" (Ethica, I, Ax. 4; see also "substance" and "mode", Defs. 3 and 5). Being is likewise distinguished with respect to "finite" and "infinite", under the qualifications of absolute and relative, thus God is defined (Ibid, I, Def. 6) as "Being absolutely infinite". Spinoza seems to suggest that the term, Being, has, in the strict sense, no proper definition (Cog. Met., I, 1). The main characteristics of Spinoza's treatment of this notion are (i) his clear-headed separation of the problems of existence and Being, and (ii) his carefully worked out distinction between ens reale and ens rationis by means of which Spinoza endeavors to justify the ontological argument (q.v.) in the face of criticism by the later Scholastics. -- W.S.W.

Belief: Acquiescence in the existence of objects (e.g. external things, other minds, God, etc.) or assent to the truth of propositions (e.g. scientific, moral, aesthetic, or metaphysical statements). The belief in objects is frequently immediate and non-inferential; the belief in propositions usually rests on reflection and inference.

Theories of belief may be classified as:
(a) affective,
(b) intellectual and
(c) volitional.

Hume's theory that belief is a feeling of vividness attaching to a perception or memory but not to a fiction of the imagination is an example of (a) (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, § 5 Pt. II). Bain and James Mill represent (b), while W. James represents (c). (The Will to Believe, Etc., 1896). -- L.W.

In scholasticism: means either faith or opinion. Opinion is a statement lacking evidence. Faith is a supernatural act, due to God's grace, referring to things reason finds beyond its capacity of proof, though not contradicting its principles. Statements capable of experimental proof are not objects of faith. -- R.A.

Beneke, Friedrich Eduard: (1798-1854) A German thinker of Kantian tradition modified by empiricism; his doctrines exerted considerable influence upon the psychology and educational theory of the 19th century. Main works: Erfahrungseelenlehre, 1820; Physik d. Sitten, 1822; Metaphysik, 1822; Logik als Kunstlehre des Denkens, 1832; Lehrbuch d. Psych. als Naturwiss., 1833; Erziehungslehre, 1833; Pragmatische Psychol., 1850. -- R.B.W.
Benthamism: Name conventionally given to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who regarded the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the supreme ethical goal of human society and individual men. The morality of men's actions is determined experimentally by their utility, which means the power of an action to produce happiness. The moral quality of any action is estimated in accordance with its pleasant or painful consequences, for the sovereign masters of man are pleasure, the only good, and, pain, the only evil. Ethics becomes a matter of calculation of consequences. -- J.J.R.
Bentham, Jeremy: (1748-1832) Founder of the English Utilitarian School of Philosophy. In law, he is remembered for his criticism of Blackstone's views of the English constitution, for his examination of the legal fiction and for his treatment of the subject of evidence. In politics, he is most famous for his analysis of the principles of legislation and, in ethics, for his greatest happiness principle. See Hedonic Calculus; Utilitarianism. J. Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789; Outline of a New System of Logic, 1827; Deontology. -- L.E.D.
Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch: (1874-1948) Is a contemporary Russian teacher and writer on the philosophy of religion. He was born in Kiev, exiled to Vologda when twenty-five; threatened with expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, he became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In 1922, he was expelled from the Soviet Union and he went to Berlin, where he established his Academy of Religious Philosophy. He moved his school to Paris and established a Russian review called Putj (The Way). His thought resembles that of the Christian Gnostics (see Gnosticism), and it owes a good deal to German idealism and mysticism (Boehme). He is a trenchant critic of systems as diverse as Communism and Thomistic Scholasticism. His most noted works are: Smyisl Istorii (The Meaning of History), Berlin, 1923; Novoye Srednevyekovye (transl. as The End of Our Time, N.Y., 1933), Berlin, 1924; Freedom and the Spirit, N. Y., 1935. V. J. Bourke, "The Gnosticism of N. Berdyaev", Thought, XI (1936), 409-22. -- VJ.B.
Bergson, Henri: (1859-1941) As the most influential of modern temporalistic, anti-mechanistic and spiritualistic metaphysics, Bergson's writings (Les donnees immediates de l'experience, Matiere et Memoire, L'evolution creatrtce, Le rire, Introduction a la metaphysique, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, etc.) were aimed against the dogmatic and crude naturalism, and the mechanistic and static materialism which reached their heights in the second half of the last century.

The vital center of his doctrine is duration rather than intuition. Duration is the original thing in itself, the "substance" of philosophic tradition, except that to Bergson it is a specific experience, revealed to the individual in immediate experience. All things, consciousness, matter, time, evolution, motion and the absolute are so many specialized tensional forms of duration. The phrase elan vital sums up his vitalistic doctrine that there is an original life force, that it has passed from one generation of living beings to another by way of developed individual organisms, these being the connecting links between the generations. Bergson regards as pseudo-evolutionary the effort to arrange all living beings into a grand uni-linear series. True or creative evolution is pluri-dimensional, i.e., the life force is conserved in every line of evolution of living beings, causing all of the numerous varieties of living forms, creating all new species, and dividing itself more and more as it advances. As the vital impetus is not moving towards any fixed, predetermined and final end, an immanent teleology is within the life force itself.

It is an error to see Bergson's philosophy as being exclusively an intuitive critique of knowledge. Such a mode of exposition constructs of his thought a mere "ism", a species of intuitionalism. Bergson was the first to try to give the term intuition a scientific basis. He transformed and regrounded the static pattern of the older forms of intuitionism by giving it a biogenetic and psychologically dynamic justification. Intuitive knowledge is not limited to the favored few, is not a private, purely solipsistic affair, but is a general property of all thinking minds. Bergson's conception of intuition represents a fusion of scientific objectivity and artistic directness.

Moreover, it is a serious wide-spread error of interpretation to consider Bergson as an anti-intellectualist. His alleged anti-intellectualism should be considered as a protest against taking the static materialism and spatialization of Newton's conception of nature is being anything but a high abstraction, as a rejection of the extreme claims of mechanistic and materialistic science, as an effort of reason to transcend itself in harmony with the greatest idealistic thinkers, as an effort of thinkers to stress the dynamic nature of reality, and as a persistent criticism of reason, a continuation of the Kantian tradition. His much misread conception of intuition may be viewed as akin to Spinoza's intuitio, to wit: a completion rather than a rejection of reason. -- H.H.

Berkeleianism: The idealistic system of philosophy of George Berkeley (1685-1753). He thought that the admission of an extramental world would lead to materialism and atheism. Hence he denied the existence of an independent world of bodies by teaching that their existence consists in perceptibility, esse is percipi. The cause of the ideas in our mind is not a material substance, but a spiritual being, God, who communicates them to us in a certain order which we call the laws of nature. Things cannot exist unless perceived by some mind. Berkeley acknowledged the existence of other spirits, or minds, besides that of God. -- J.J.R.
Berkeley, George: (1685-1753) Pluralistic idealist, reflecting upon the spatial attributes of distance, size, and situation, possessed, according to Locke, by external objects in themselves apart from our perception of them, concluded that the discrepancy between the visual and the tactual aspects of these attributes robbed them of all objective validity and reduced them to the status of secondary qualities existing only in and for consciousness. Moreover, the very term "matter," like all other "universals," is found upon analysis to mean and stand for nothing but complexes of experienced qualities. Indeed, "existence" except as presence to consciousness, is meaningless. Hence, nothing can be said to exist except minds (spirits) and mental content (ideas). Esse = percipi or percipere.

At the same time, Berkeley, trusting the external reference of individual experience, argues from it the existence of a universal mind (God) of which the content is the so-called objective world. Finite spirits are created by God, and their several experiences represent his communication to them, so far as they are able to receive it, of his divine experience. Reality, then, is composed of spirits and ideas. The physical aspects of the world are reducible to mental phenomena. Matter is non-existent. G. Berkeley, Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phdonous, 1713; De Motu (critique of Newtonian mechanics), 1720; Al-ciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1733; Siris, 1744. -- B.A.S.F.

Bernard of Chartres: (died c. 1130) Has been called the "most perfect Platonist of his century'" by John of Salisbury (Metalogicus, IV, 35, PL 199, 938) but he is known only at second-hand now. He taught in the school of Chartres from 1114-1119 and was Chancellor of Chartres from 1119-1124. According to John of Salisbury, Bernard was an extreme realist in his theory of universals, but he taught that the forms of things (formae nativae) are distinct from the exemplary Ideas in the Divine Mind. A treatise, De expositione Porphyrii has been attributed to him. He is not to be confused with Bernard Silvestris of Chartres, nor with Bernard of Tours. E. Gilson. "Le platonisme de Bernard de C.", Revue Neoscolastique, XXV (1923) 5-19. -- V.J.B.
Best: The principle of the best of all possible worlds; according to Leibniz, the world which exists is the best possible because God's wisdom makes him know, his goodness makes him choose, and his power always makes him produce the best possible. See Optimism. -- J.M.
Bewusstsein Ueberhaupt: German expression meaning "consciousness in general" that is, consciousness conceived as a real entity over and above individual conscious centers. See Consciousness. -- L.W.
Bhagavad Gita: (Skr. the song, gita, of the Blessed One) A famed philosophic epic poem, widely respected in India and elsewhere, representing Krishna embodied as a charioteer imparting to the King Arjuna, who is unwilling to fight his kinsmen in battle, comprehension of the mysteries of existence, clearly indicating the relationship between morality and absolute ethical values in a Hindu philosophy of action. -- K.F.L.
Bhakti: (Skr. division, share) Fervent, loving devotion to the object of contemplation or the divine being itself, the almost universally recognized feeling approach to the highest reality, in contrast to vidya (s.v.) or jnana (s.v.), sanctioned by Indian philosophy and productive of a voluminous literature in which the names of Ramamanda, Vallabha, Nanak, Caitanya, and Tulsi Das are outstanding. It is distinguished as apara (lower) and para (higher) bhakti, the former theistic piety, the latter philosophic meditation on the unmanifest brahman (cf. avyakta). -- K.F.L.
Bhasya: (Skr. speaking) Commentary.
Bheda: (Skr. different, distinct) Non-identity, particularly in reference to any philosophy of dualism which recognizes the existence of two opposed principles or admits of a difference between the essentially human and the Absolute. -- K.F.L.
Bhedabheda: (Skr. "different [yet] not different") A philosophy admitting the point of view of bheda (s.v.) as well as that of abheda (s.v.), depending on the mental and spiritual attainment of the person. -- K.F.L.
Bhuta: (Skr. become) The "has-become", or the ultimate element or concrete thing as it has en oh ed from the abstract, metaphysical unity through a process of infinite particularization and limitation. -- K.F.L.
Bhutatathata: (Skr.) "So-ness", the highest state conceivable by the Vijnana-vada (s.v.) in which there is a complete coincidentia oppositorum of beings and elements of knowledge; directly identified with the Adi-Buddha, or eternal Buddha, in Vajrayana Buddhism. -- K.F.L.
Biconditional: The sentential connective =, "if and only if." See Logic, formal, § 1. -- A.C.
Binomic forces: Extra-biological forces, which influence the direction and development of life. I.e. all physical, chemical and other environmental forces which affect living organisms in any way. The second law of thermo-dynamics seems to vitalists to be an exception to their view that the creative life-force evolves upwards. Nonetheless natural selection is influenced by binomic forces. -- C.K.D.
Biometry: The scientific application of mathematical analysis to biological problems (also spoken of as "mathematical biophysics" and "mathematical biochemistry"). The journal Biometrtka was founded by Karl Pearson. -- W.M.M.
Blondel, Maurice: (1861-1939) A philosopher in the French "spiritualistic" tradition of Maine de Biran and Boutroux, who in his essays L'action (1893), and Le Proces de l'Intelligence (1922), defended an activistic psychology and metaphysics. "The Philosophy of Action" is a voluntaristic and idealistic philosophy which, as regards the relation of thought to action, seeks to compromise between the extremes of intellectualism and pragmatism. In his more recent book La Pensee (1934), Blondel retains his earlier activistic philosophy combined with a stronger theological emphasis. -- L.W.
Bodhisattva: (Skr.) "Existence (sattva) in a state of wisdom (bodhi)", such as was attained by Gautama Buddha (s.v.); a Buddhist wise and holy man. -- K.F.L.
Body: Here taken in the sense of the material organized substance of man contrasted with the mind, soul or spirit, thus leading to the problem of the relation between body and mind, one of the most persistent problems of philosophy. Of course, any theory which identifies body and mind, or does not adequately distinguish the psychical from the physical, regarding both as aspects of the same reality, eludes some of the difficulties presented by the problem. Both materialism and idealism may be considered as forms of psycho-physical monism. Materialism by denying the real existence of spiritual beings and reducing mind to a function of matter, and spiritualism, or that species called idealism, which regards bodies simply as contents of consciousness, really evade the main issue. All those, however, who frankly acknowledge the empirically given duality of mind and organism, are obliged to struggle with the problem of the relation between them. The two most noted rival theories attempting an answer are interactionism and parallelism. The first considers both body and mind as substantial beings, influencing each other, hence causally related. The second holds that physical processes and mental processes accompany each other without any interaction or interference whatsoever, consequently they cannot be causally related. The Scholastics advance the doctrine of the human composite consisting of body and soul united into one substance and nature, constituting the human person or self, to whom all actions of which man is capable must be ascribed. There can be no interaction, since there is but one agent, formed of two component elements. This theory, like interactionism, makes provision for survival, even immortality, while parallelism definitely precludes it. No known theory can meet all objections and prove entirely satisfactory; the problem still persists. See Descartes, Spinoza, Mind. -- J.J.R.
Boehme, Jacob: (1575-1624) Of Gorlitz, was the son of poor parents, received little formal schooling, studied the Bible and the works of Pastor Valentine Weigel assiduously. He became noted as a mystic, theosophist, and in his own day was called the German Philosopher. He wrote in German but his early followers translated his works into Latin, hence it is difficult to distinguish his personal thought from that of his school. He thought that all reality, even God, contains a duality of good and evil, the universe and man's soul are nothing without God. He has had much influence on later German and Russian mysticism. Chief works: Aurora, Vierzig Fragen von der Seele, Mysterium Magnum, Von der Gnadenwahl. Deussen, J. Boehme, uber sein Leben u. seine Philos. (Kiel, 1897). -- V.J.B.
Boethius: (470-525) An influential commentator on Aristotle and Cicero, who, in his own thinking, reflected a strong influence of Neo-Platonism and Augustinianism. De Consolatione Philosophiae (Migne PL, 63-4, 69-70). -- R.B.W.
Bolzano, Bernard: (1781-1848) Austrian philosopher and mathematician. Professor of the philosophy of religion at Prague, 1805-1820, he was compelled to resign in the latter year because of his rationalistic tendencies in theology and afterwards held no academic position. His Wissenschaftslehre of 1837, while it is to be classed as a work on traditional logic, contains significant anticipations of many ideas which have since become important in symbolic logic and mathematics. In his posthumously published Paradoxien des Unendlitchen (1851) he appears as a forerunner in some respects of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. --A.C.

W. Dubislav, Bolzano als Vorlaufer der mathematischen Logik, Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Gorres-Gesellschaft, vol 44 (1931), pp. 448-456. H. Scholz, Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos, Abhandlungen der Frieds'schen Schule , n. s. vol. 6 (1937), pp 399-472.

Bonaventure, St.: (1221 -1274) Was born at Bagnorea, near Viterbo, and his name originally was John of Fidanza. He joined the Franciscans in 1238, studied at the Univ. of Paris under Alexander of Hales, and took his licentiate in 1248. He taught theology in Paris for seven years and received his doctorate in 1257. In this year he was made Superior-General of his Order and he taught no more. His chief works are Commentaria in IV L. Sententiarum, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, Quaestiones Disputatae (Opera Omnia, ed crit., 10 vol. Quaracchi, 1882-1902). His philosophy is Augustinian, with some Aristotelian modifications in his theory of intellection and matter and form. But his Divine Exemplarism, Illumination theory, and tendency to stress the psychological importance of the human will, derive from St Augustine. E. Gilson, La philosophie de S. Bonaventure (Paris, 1924-). -- V.J.B.
Boodin, John Elof: American philosopher born in Sweden in 1869 who emigrated in 1886 to the United States. Studied at the Universities of Colorado, Minnesota, Brown and especially Harvard under Royce with whom he kept a life-long friendship though he was opposed to his idealism. His works (Time and Reality, 1904 -- Truth and Reality, 1912 -- A Realistic Universe, 1916 -- Cosmic Evolution, 1925 -- Three Interpretations of the Universe, 1934 -- God, 1935 -- The Social Mind, 1940) form practically a complete system. His philosophy takes the form of a cosmic idealism, though he was interested for a time in certain aspects of pragmatism. It grew gradually from his early studies when he developed a new concept of a real and non-serial time. The structure of the cosmos is that of a hierarchy of fields, as exemplified in physics, in organisms, in consciousness and in society. The interpenetration of the mental fields makes possible human knowledge and social intercourse. Reality as such possesses five attributes: being (the dynamic stuff of all complexes, the active energy), time (the ground of change and transformation), space (which accounts for extension), consciousness (active awareness which lights up reality in spots; it becomes the self when conative tendencies cooperate as one active group), and form (the ground of organization and structure which conditions selective direction). God is the spirit of the whole. -- T.G.J
Boole, George: (1815-1864) English mathematician. Professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, 1849-1864. While he made contributions to other branches of mathematics, he is now remembered primarily as the founder of the Nineteenth Century algebra of logic and through it of modern symbolic logic. His Mathematical Analysis of Logic appeared in 1847 and the fuller Laws of Thought in 1854. -- A.C.

R. Harlev, George Boole, F.R.S., The British Quarterly Review, vol. 44 (1866). pp 141-181 Anon., George Boole, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. 15 (1867). Obituary notices of fellows deceased, pp. vi-xi. P.E.B. Jourdain, George Boole, The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 41 (1910), pp. 332-352.

Boolean algebra: See Logic, Formal, §7.
Bosanquet, Bernard: (1848-1923) Neo-Hegelian idealist, regards Reality as a single individual all-embracing, completely rational experience, combining universality and concreteness. It alone exists. All other particulars -- minds or things -- are only partially concrete, individual and real. The incidental, incomplete, dependent and only partially existent character of finite consciousness is shown by the reaching, seeking character of all its activities, sense-perceptions, thought, moral action, and even aesthetic contemplation -- all of which indicate that self-realization means self-abandonment to something larger than the self.

This something larger is the cosmic drama written, staged, and acted by the Absolute, who is artist and actor as well as a rational intelligence, intent no less upon dramatic than upon intelligible unity and self-expression. The world-process is tragic, witness the sin and suffering and imperfection with which it is fraught. But in the infinite tragedy, as well as in the tragedies composed by men, evil is contributory to the perfection of the whole, and, when seen and accepted as such by the finite individual, not only loses its sting but produces a "catharsis" of his attitude towards it, in which he cheerfully accepts it, battles with it, and finds his triumph over it in nobly enduring it. This "catharsis," identifying him as it does with the meaning of the life of the Absolute, is his peace and his salvation. Main works: Logic, 1888; The Philosophical Theory of the State, 1899; Value and Destiny of the Individual, 1913. -- B.A.G.F.

Bourgeoisie: (Fr.) In its strict sense in the theory of historical materialism (q.v.) the class of urban, commercial, banking, manufacturing and shipping entrepreneurs which, at the close of the middle ages was strong enough, by virtue of its command of developing technics, to challenge the economic power of the predominantly rural and agricultural (manorial) feudal nobility, and to supplant the latter in point of economic and social leadership. -- J.M.S.
Boutroux, E.: (1845-1921) Teacher of Bergson and M. Blondel, is best known for his defense of radical contingency and indeterminacy in metaphysics. Influenced by French "spiritualism" stemming from Maine de Biran, Boutroux was critical of the current psychological and sociological treatment of religious experience. Main works: Contingency of the Laws of Nature (tr. 1920); Philosophy and War (tr. 1916); Science et religion, 1908. -- L.W.
Bowne, Borden Parker: (1847-1910) His influence was not merely confined to the theological world of his religious communion as a teacher of philosophy at Boston University. His philosophy was conspicuous for the combination of theism with an idealistic view which he termed "Personalism" (q.v.). He mainly discussed issues of philosophy which had a bearing on religion, ethics, and epistemology. Main works: Metaphysics, 1882; Philosophy of Theism, 1887; Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 1897; Personalism, 1908; Kant and Spencer, 1912. -- H.H.
Bradley, Francis Herbert: (1846-1924) Dialectician extraordinary of British philosophy, Bradley sought to purge contemporary thought of the extremely sensationalistic and utilitarian elements embodied in the tradition of empiricism. Though owing much to Hegel, he early repudiated the Hegelian system as such, and his own variety of Absolute Idealism bases itself upon no scheme of categories. His brilliant attack upon the inadequate assumptions of hedonistic ethics (Ethical Studies, 1877) was followed in 1883 by The Principles of Logic in which his dialectic analysis was applied to the problems of inference and judgment. It was, however, his Appearance and Reality (1893) with its famous theory of "the degrees of truth" which first disturbed the somnambulism of modern metaphysics, and led Caird to remark upon "the greatest thing since Kant". In later years Bradley's growing realization of ultimate difficulties in his version of the coherence theory led him to modify his doctrines in the direction of a Platonic mysticism. See Essays on Truth and Reality, the second edition of the Logic Collected Essays, etc. -- W.S.W.
Brahma: (Skr.) The creator or creative principle of the universe, main figure of the Hindu trinity (see Trimurti). -- K.F.L.
Brahma eva idam visvam: (Skr.) "Brahman, indeed, is this world-all", famous passage of Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.11, foreshadowing the complete monism of Sankara's Vedanta (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Brahman, Brahma: (Skr.) The impersonal, pantheistic world-soul, the Absolute, union with which is the highest goal of the Upanishads (q.v.) and Vedic (q.v.) thinking in general. It is occasionally identified with atman (q.v.) or made the exclusive reality (cf. brahma eva idam visvam; sarvam khalv idam brahma), thus laying the foundation for a deep mystic as well as rational insight into the connaturalness of the human and divine and an uncompromising monism which gave its impress to much of Hindu thinking. -- K.F.L.
Brahmana: (Skr.) One of several Vedic (s.v.) dictums or treatises of a ritualistic and sacrificial character which prepared the way, sometimes over an Aranyaka (q-v.), for the Upanishads (q.v.) by incipient philosophic reflections. -- K.F.L.
Brahmanism: The predominant form of philosophical, theological, and ethical speculation of India, sponsored by the Brahman caste which traces its doctrines back to the Vedas (q.v.) and Upanishads (q.v.) without ever having attained uniformity in regard to the main doctrines. -- K.F.L.
Brahmasutras: (Skr.) An aphoristic compilation of Badarayana's, systematizing the philosophy of the Upanishads (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Brain: According to Aristotle, it is a cooling organ of the body. Early in the history of philosophy, it was regarded as closely connected with consciousness and with activities of the soul. Descartes contended that mind-body relations are centered in the pineal gland located between the two hemispheres of the brain. Cabanis, a sensualistic materialist, believed that the brain produces consciousness in a manner similar to that in which the liver produces the bile. Many have sought to identify it with the seat of the soul. Today consciousness is recognized to be a much more complex phenomenon controlled by the entire nervous system, rather than by any part of the brain, and influenced by the bodily metabolism in general. -- R.B.W.
Brentano, Franz: (1838-1917) Who had originally been a Roman Catholic priest may be described as an unorthodox neo-scholastic. According to him the only three forms of psychic activity, representation, judgment and "phenomena of love and hate", are just three modes of "intentionality", i.e., of referring to an object intended. Judgments may be self-evident and thereby characterized as true and in an analogous way love and hate may be characterized as "right". It is on these characterizations that a dogmatic theory of truth and value may be based. In any mental experience the content is merely a "physical phenomenon" (real or imaginary) intended to be referred to, what is psychic is merely the "act" of representing, judging (viz. affirming or denying) and valuing (i.e. loving or hating). Since such "acts" are evidently immaterial, the soul by which they are performed may be proved to be a purely spiritual and imperishable substance and from these and other considerations the existence, spirituality, as also the infinite wisdom, goodness and justice of God may also be demonstrated. It is most of all by his classification of psychic phenomena, his psychology of "acts" and "intentions" and by his doctrine concerning self-evident truths and values that Brentano, who considered himself an Aristotelian, exercised a profound influence on subsequent German philosophers: not only on those who accepted his entire system (such as A. Marty and C. Stumpf) but also those who were somewhat more independent and original and whom he influenced either directly (as A. Meinong and E. Husserl) or indirectly (as M. Scheler and Nik. Hartmann). Main works: Psychologie des Aristoteles, 1867; Vom Dasein Gottes, 1868; Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, 1874; Vom Ursprung sittliches Erkenntnis, 1884; Ueber die Zukunft der Philosophie, 1893; Die vier Phasen der Philos., 1895. -- H.Go.
Broad, C.D.: (1887) As a realistic critical thinker Broad takes over from the sciences the methods that are fruitful there, classifies the various propositions used in all the sciences, and defines basic scientific concepts. In going beyond science, he seeks to reach a total view of the world by bringing in the facts and principles of aesthetic, religious, ethical and political experience. In trying to work out a much more general method which attacks the problem of the connection between mathematical concepts and sense-data better than the method of analysis in situ, he gives a simple exposition of the method of extensive abstraction, which applies the mutual relations of objects, first recognized in pure mathematics, to physics. Moreover, a great deal can be learned from Broad on the relation of the principle of relativity to measurement.

As an emergent materialist, he holds that everything happens by the blind combination of the elements of matter or energy, without any guidance, excluding the assumption of a non-material component. While he regards primary qualities as physical emergents, he yet considers secondary qualities, such as color, taste, and smell, as transphysical emergents. He favors the emergence of laws, qualities and classes. Psyche, physical in nature, combines with other material factors to make the life of the mind. Broad holds to a generative view of consciousness. Psyche persists after death for some time, floats about in cosmic space indefinitely, ready to combine with a material body under suitable conditions. He calls this theory the "compound theory of materialistic emergency." Sensa, he holds, are real, particular, short-lived existents. They are exclusively neither physical nor mental. He replaces the neo-realistic contrast between existents and subsistents, by a contrast between existents and substracta. Main works: Scientific Thought, 1923; The Mind and Its Place in Nature, 1925; Five Types of Ethical Theory, 1930. -- H.H.

Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan: (1881-) Dutch mathematician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, 1912-. Besides his work in topology, he is known for important contributions to the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. See Mathematics and Intuitionism (mathematical)). -- A.C.
Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F.
Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931.
Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.
Bundle, Theory of Self: The conception of the self as a mere aggregate of mental states. The designation is an allusion to Hume's famous description of the self as: "a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." (A Treatise on Human Nature, Part LV, § 6.)--L.W.
Buridan's Ass: The story of the ass, which died of hunger and thirst because incapable of deciding between water and food placed at equal distances from him, is employed to support the free-will doctrine. A man, it is argued, if confronted by a similar situation, would by the exercise of his free-will, be able to resolve the equilibrium of opposing motives. The story of the ass is attributed to John Buridan, a 14th century nominalist who discussed the freedom of the will in his Quaestiones in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis, 1489, Bk. Ill, quest. I, but is not, in fact, to be found in his writings. (Cf. A.G. Langley, translation of Leibniz's New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, p. 116 n.) Dante relates the story in Paradiso, IV. -- L.W.