Abstract

Regardless of one’s philosophical sympathies, Professor Brand Blanshard is surely to be respected for the acuity with which he has resisted the onslaught of the “analytic” movement in America. As pointed out by Professor Bruce Aune, “For the past sixty years, the emphasis of Anglo-Saxon philosophy has been analytical rather than speculative. Mr. Blanshard has persistently opposed this emphasis….” Predictably, Aune goes on to convey his opposition to Blanshard’s speculative aim, indicating that he remains “unmoved by the doctrine of internal relations.” Surely this is a very curious and interesting point; exactly what do the critics of Professor Blanshard mean by their assessment of the doctrine of internal relations as speculative rather than analytic? Do they mean to suggest that he reaches his systematic conclusions without an intensive analysis of concepts? While Blanshard’s aim is admittedly the speculative one of a totally coherent and intelligible world-picture, this does not mean that the justification for those conclusions supportive of his speculative aim is one which is unmindful of the demands of logical analysis. Let us, then, reexamine Blanshard’s doctrine of internal relations, as he himself has done in a recent paper, with an eye to determining whether it is fundamentally opposed, as suggested by Aune, to the emphasis of logical analysis.