Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/159

 lead have to do with value in some way or another. Others say that it is epistemology, i. e. the theory of knowledge, because the theory of knowledge is supposed to deal with the most general principles on which all particular truths rest. One of the consequences usually drawn by the adherents of the view we are discussing is that philosophy is either partly or entirely metaphysics. And metaphysics is supposed to be some kind of a structure built over and partly resting on the structure of science but towering into lofty heights which are far beyond the reach of all the sciences and of experience.

We see from all this that even those who adopt the definition of philosophy as the most general science cannot agree about its essential nature. This is certainly a little ridiculous and some future historian a few hundred or a thousand years from now will think it very curious that discussion about the nature of philosophy was taken so seriously in our days. There must be something wrong when a discussion leads to such confusion. There are also very definite positive reasons why “generality” cannot be used as the characteristic that distinguishes philosophy from the “special” sciences, but I will not dwell upon them, but try to reach a positive conclusion in some shorter way.

When I spoke of Socrates a little while ago I pointed out that his thoughts were, in a certain sense, opposed to the natural sciences; his philosophy, therefore, was certainly not identical with the sciences, and it was not the “most general” one of them. It was rather a sort of Wisdom of Life. But the important feature which we should observe in Socrates, in order to understand his particular attitude as well as the nature of philosophy, is that this wisdom that dealt with human nature and human behavior consists essentially of a special method, different from the method of science and, therefore, not leading to any “scientific” results.

All of you have probably read some of Plato's Dialogues, wherein he pictures Socrates as giving and receiving questions and answers. If you observe what was really done — or what Socrates tried to do — you discover that he did usually not arrive at certain definite truths which would appear at the end of the dialogue but the whole investigation was carried on for the primary purpose of making clear what was meant when certain questions were asked or when certain words were used. In one of the Platonic