MORAL PHILOSOPHY THE CRITICAL VIEW OF LIFE By WARNER FITE Ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος The unexamined life is not fit for human living. Socrates, in "The Apology". NEW YORK THE DIAL PRESS BJ COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE DIAL PRESS, INC. PRINTED IN U. S. A. THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS GL 91709 PREFACE The purpose of this essay is to present a moral philosophy in the form of what may be called a philosophy of life. It is not my purpose to offer a "constructive system", such as to display an increasing conclusiveness as it approaches completion. What I will present is a point of view; which becomes necessarily less distinct, and raises ever deeper questions, as it broadens towards the horizon. And a point of view, because I believe that nothing in philosophy, however truly objective (and it is my purpose to offer something objective), is either intelligent or intelligible except as the expression of a point of view, in the last analysis inevitably personal. For this reason I have not hesitated to speak in the first person, to draw upon personal experience, or to give expression to personal opinion, taste, or feeling, whenever this would best convey my meaning. Somewhat for the same reason the book is not addressed exclusively, or perhaps primarily, to students of philosophy. It has been my hope to speak intelligibly to every cultivated man; to every person curious about the meaning of human life as presented, not in philosophy only, but in literature, art, and science. To those acquainted with my "Individualism", printed in 1911, I would suggest that the point of view of the present volume is a further development (and therefore, I hope, a juster and more mature expression) of the point of view of the former volume. There I was interested in |