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.