Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/166

 plans for its constitution, he assigned a place in it to all the sciences but Philosophy was not one of them. Leibniz found no place for philosophy in the system of the sciences because he was evidently aware that it is not a pursuit of a particular kind of truth, but an activity that must pervade every search for truth.

The view which I am advocating has at the present time been most clearly expressed by Ludwig Wittgenstein; he states his point in these sentences: “The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear.” This is exactly the view which I have been trying to explain here. We can now understand historically why philosophy could be regarded as a very general science: it was misunderstood in this way because the “meaning” of propositions might seem to be something very “general”, since in some way it forms the foundation of all discourse. We can also understand historically why in ancient times philosophy was identical with science: this was because at that time all the concepts which were used in the description of the world were extremely vague. The task of science was determined by the fact that there were no clear concepts. They had to be clarified by slow development, the chief endeavor of scientific investigation had to be directed towards this clarification, i. e. it had to be philosophical, no distinction could be made between science and philosophy.

At the present time we also find facts which prove the truth of our statements. In our days certain specific fields of study such as ethics and esthetics are called “philosophical” and are supposed to form part of philosophy. However, philosophy, being an activity, is a unit which cannot be divided into parts or independent disciplines. Why, then, are these pursuits called philosophy? Because they are only at the beginnings of the scientific stage; and I think this is true to a certain extent also of psychology. Ethics and esthetics certainly do not yet possess sufficiently clear concepts, most of their work is still devoted to clarifying them, and therefore it may justly be called philosophical. But in the future they will, of course, become part of the great system of the sciences.

It is my hope that the philosophers of the future will see that it is impossible for them to adopt, even in outward appearance, the methods of the