The Christian Philosophy of William Temple

1. Introduction.- A. Purpose and Plan.- B. The Unity of Temple’s Christian Philosophy.- C. The Major Influences on Temple’s Life and Thought.- I The Construction of a Christian Philosophy.- 2. The Philosophic Enterprise.- A. The Philosophic Approach.- B. The Philosophic Method.- 1. Deductive and inductive methods.- 2. The dialectical method.- 3. Meaning and task of philosophy.- 3. The Knowledge Venture.- A. Origin and Impetus.- 1. Thought as the extension of organic process.- 2. Desire as the impetus of thought.- 3. Practical and speculative interests.- 4. The knowledge venture itself justified.- B. The Cartesian Error.- 1. The dialectical movement of thought.- 2. The ultimacy of the subject-object relationship.- 3. The failure of Hume and Kant.- 4. Merits of antithesis and thesis.- 4. The Understanding of Reality.- A. Knowledge as the Apprehension of Reality.- 1. Rudimentary consciousness as organic reaction to environment.- 2. The real world as given in experience.- 3. Knowledge as built up gradually.- B. Knowledge, Truth, and Reality.- 1. Knowledge as distinguished from truth.- 2. A twofold criterion of truth.- 3. The inability of intellect to comprehend reality.- 4. Beyond intellect in quest of an explanatory concept.- 5. The Relevance of Christian Philosophy.- A. The Relation of Philosophy and Religion.- 1. Tensions between philosophy and religion.- 2. Values and disvalues of the tensions.- 3. Scientific philosophy versus theological philosophy.- B. A Christian Philosophy.- 1. The need of philosophy for religion.- 2. The Christian faith as supplying the need.- 3. The justification of Christian Philosophy.- C. Summary and Conclusions.- 1. The theoretical inadequacy of scientific philosophy.- 2. The practical adequacy of Christian philosophy.- II A Christian Philosophy of Personality: Human and Divine.- 6. Process and Personality.- A. Process, Mind, and Value.- 1. The historical priority of matter.- 2. The axiological priority of mind.- 3. The supremacy of spirit.- B. The Quest for an Explanatory Principle.- C. Personality as a Metaphysical Principle of Explanation.- 1. Purposive will as the only explanatory principle.- 2. A value-centered metaphysics.- 7. Human Personality.- A. The Union of Matter and Mind in Man.- 1. Man as a psycho-physical organism.- 2. Man as a personal being.- B. Difference between Personal and Sub-Personal.- 1. A Thing.- 2. A Brute.- 3. A Person.- C. Dimensions of Human Personality.- 1. Individuality and self-determination.- 2. Society and the need for fellowship.- 3. Fulfillment and the need for service.- D. The Ideal of Personality.- 1. Chief characteristics of human personality: Purpose, fellowship and love.- 2. Divine Personality as the completion of human aspiration.- 8. Divine Personality.- A. God’s Relation to the World.- 1. God as creator.- 2. God as an immanent principle of variability.- 3. God as the transcendent self-identical person.- 4. God’s revelation of Himself.- B. Divine Personality: A Triune God.- 1. Problems posed by the Ideal Personality.- 2. The trinity as the simultaneous activity of God.- 9. Justification for Theism.- A. The Convergence of Independent Lines of Argument.- B. The Philosophical Evidence for Theism.- 1. The demand of theoretical and practical reason for a principle of unity.- 2. The need for God to complete man’s search for unity through science, art, morality, and religion.- 3. Truth, beauty, and moral goodness as providing intimations of a personal God.- 4. A Supreme Mind as the necessary ground for the occurrence of mind in the World-Process.- C. The Evidence of Religious Experience.- 1. The Meaning of religious experience.- 2. The insufficiency of religious experience.- 10. From Theism to a Metaphysics of the Incarnation.- A. The Good of Evil.- B. A Christocentric Metaphysics.- C. Summary and conclusions.- 1. Personality as the key to reality.- 2. The Human Person.- 3. The Divine Person.- 4. Evidence for a Personal God.- 5. The Person of Christ.- III A Christian Philosophy of Personal and Social Morality.- 11. Personal Ethics.- A. A Theory of Value.- B. Man as a Moral Being.- 1. The Moral Level.- 2. Moral obligation as unique but derivative.- C. Fundamental Moral Principles.- 1. The obligation to be conscientious.- 2. The optimific principle.- 3. Lack of certainty in ethics.- D. Practical Principles of Guidance.- 1. Social significance of origin of obligation.- 2. Membership in society as a clue to right action.- 3. Love of neighbor as the absolute moral law.- 4. The failure of formal solutions.- 12. The Need of Ethics for Religion.- A. Conversion as the Solution to Practical Ethics.- 1. Man’s moral situation as a self-centered being.- 2. The self’s bondage to itself.- 3. Quest for values as a means of partial escape from self.- 4. God as the center of the self.- 5. Content distinguished from motive of morality.- B. Vocation as the Solution to Theoretical Ethics.- 1. Right and good as identical.- 2. Man’s inner logic as guide.- 13. Christian Social Thought.- A. Basic Social Principles.- 1. The sacredness of personality.- 2. The principle of fellowship.- 3. The duty of service.- B. The Political Order.- 1. Society as a natural product.- 2. The state as the necessary organ of society.- 3. The international community.- C. The Economic Order.- 1. The necessity for economic freedom.- 2. Economic productivity as a means to cultural productivity.- D. Summary and Conclusions.- 1. Actual value as a relation between mind and object.- 2. Ethics as a life of devotion to God.- 3. Society as the means for spiritual development.- IV A Christian Philosophy of History.- 14. The Historical Process.- A. Personality, Value, and Temporal Sequence.- B. The Interpretation of History.- 1. The historical method.- 2. The historian’s task.- C. The Forces Operating in Human History.- 1. Personal and universal fellowship.- 2. Self-interest.- D. Process and Result.- 15. History and Eternity.- A. Relation of Time to Eternity.- 1. Significance of the temporal for the eternal.- 2. Effect of the temporal on the eternal.- B. Relation of Eternity to Time.- 1. Significance of eternity for the temporal process.- 2. Effect of the eternal on the temporal.- C. Personality and Eternal Life.- 1. The imperative of immortality.- 2. Faith in God as the basis for immortality.- 3. Eternal life as fellowship with God.- 4. Capacity of man for eternal life.- D. Summary and Conclusions.- 1. The incompleteness of history.- 2. The Kingdom of God beyond history.- 3. The conditions for personal immortality.- V Evaluation and Reconstruction of Temple’s Christian Philosophy.- 16. Philosophy and the Christian Faith.- A. The Metaphysical Quest for Understanding.- B. Believing and Doubting.- C. The Philosophic Task of a Christian.- 17. Human Personality.- A. The Status of Personality in the World-Process.- B. The Unique Unity of the Human Person.- C. The Person and His Personality.- 18. The Category of the Personal and the Problem of God.- A. Personality as a Metaphysical Principle of Explanation.- 1. Purpose as a guiding image for metaphysical speculation.- 2. An experiential-empirical approach to the problem of God.- B. The Category of the Personal as a Basic Philosophical Concept.- 2. Personality as the primary concept in Temple’s philosophy.- 2. Justification of personal categories as basic philosophical principles.- 19. The Person in Relation to Society.- A. Value-possibilities and Value-experience.- B. Individual Integrity and Moral Worth.- C. The Obligation to Will the Best Possible Consequences.- D. Toward a Christian Civilization.- 20. God and the Meaning of History.- A. The Historicity of God.- B. The Meaning of History Within History.- C. A Concluding Comment.