Brand Blanshard

Brand Blanshard (1892-1987) was an American rationalist philosopher who defended a strong conception of reason during a period when reason was under various sorts of philosophical "attack". Generally regarded as one of the last great absolute idealists and strongly influenced by British idealism (especially F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet), he nevertheless departed from absolute idealism in some respects and was not much directly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel. Among American philosophers, his closest affinities were arguably with Josiah Royce.

Strongly critical of positivism, logical atomism, pragmatism, and most varieties of empiricism, he held that the universe consists of an Absolute in the form of a single overarching intelligible system in which each element has a necessary place. Moreover, this Absolute -- the universe as a whole -- he held to be the only true "particular", all elements within it being ultimately resoluble into specific "universals" (properties, relations, or combinations thereof that might be given identically in more than one context).

Also strongly critical of reductionist accounts of mind (e.g. behaviorism), he maintained to the contrary that mind is the reality of which we are in fact most certain. Thought, he held, is that activity of mind which aims at truth, and the ultimate object of thought is full understanding of the Absolute. Such understanding comes about, in his view, through a grasp of necessity: to understand (or explain) something is to see it as necessitated within a system of which it is a part. The Absolute was thus not merely consistent (i.e. noncontradictory) but positively coherent, shot through with relations of necessity and indeed operating purely deterministically. (Blanshard held the law of causality to be a logical law and believed that effects determine their causes as well as vice versa.) He defended both a coherence theory of truth and a strong doctrine of internal relations.

Sympathetic to theism but skeptical of traditional religious and theological dogma, he did not regard his Absolute as having the characteristics of a personal God but nevertheless maintained that it was a proper subject of (rational) religious inquiry and even devotion. He took as his own religion the service of reason in a very full and all-encompassing metaphysical sense, defending what he called the "rational temper" as a human ideal (though one exceedingly difficult to achieve in practice). His admiration for this temper extended his philosophical loyalties across "party lines", especially to the one philosopher he regarded as exemplifying that temper to the greatest degree: Henry Sidgwick. (He also spoke highly of Bertrand Russell.)

In ethics he was broadly utilitarian; however, he preferred the term "teleological" since the term "utilitarian" suggested that all goods were instrumental and he believed (with e.g. H.W.B. Joseph and W.D. Ross) that some experiences were intrinsically good. He also denied that pleasure is the sole good, maintaining instead (with T.H. Green) that experiences are good as wholes and that pleasure is not, strictly speaking, a separable element within such experiences. He gave an entirely naturalistic analysis of goodness, holding that an experience is intrinsically good to the degree that it (a) fulfills a drive or end and (b) generates a feeling-tone of satisfaction attending such fulfillment; he regarded the first of these factors as by far the more important.

Major works: The Nature of Thought (1939); Reason and Goodness (1961); Reason and Analysis (1962); Reason and Belief (1974).