Note 75 — Chapter II · PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST MOVEMENT

It is easy to see the influence of Fichte’s will philosophy and practical idealism in Schellwien’s books (Philosophie und Leben, Wille und Erkenntniss, Der Geist der neuern Philosophie). He speaks of the primacy of the will (in point of time only, of course), or of the “unconscious” in the life of man, allowing, however, that man gradually transforms this natural life in the life of “creative activity” that is his proper life. He states (in the Spirit of the New Philosophy) the pragmatist idea that “belief” (p. 32) or the “feeling” that we have of the ultimate “unity” of “subject and object,” precedes (also in point of “time”) knowledge, pointing out, however, in the same place the limitations of belief. These latter, he supposes, to be overcome in the higher knowledge that we have in creative activity—an idea which, I think, may be associated to some extent with the position of Blondel.