Philosophy of Knowledge - 1897 Author:George Trumbull Ladd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HISTORY OF OPINION (continued) IT is a statement common among historians of philosophy that the foundations of the modern view regarding t... more »he sources, the nature, and the criteria of knowledge were laid by the reflective thinking of Descartes. And there is a certain warrant in the facts themselves for such a statement. For it has been shown how that side of the philosophizing of Augustine over the epistemological problem which, in spirit and with respect to the significance of its conclusions, was opposed to the trustful attitude of Origen toward the illumined reason of the individual, and which upheld the authority of the Church against free critical inquiry, dominated the doctrine of the Middle Ages. Descartes, indeed, took the appeal away from this tribunal of ecclesiastical authority, to that which holds its court of judgment within the inmost recesses of every man's self-consciousness. In doing so, however, he only returned to the other and better side of the philosophizing of Augustine himself. Neither in acuteness of analysis, nor in clearness and beauty of statement, nor especially in his manner of finding the reality of the soul, of the world, and of God, implicate in the primary act of cognition, was the founder of modern philosophy the equal of the Church Father. Indeed, we fear it must be confessed that, with the exception of Kant and Hume, down to very recent years, modern philosophy has not been much superior to ancient philosophy in its handling of the most important points in the problem of knowledge. Logic andpsychology have greatly flourished; but a satisfying episte- inology has been less promoted thereby than it would seem reasonable to expect. The greater freshness and naivete" of those earlier times, and the more ardent and unconcealed i...« less