James Frederick Ferrier - Later Writings

Later Writings

Ferrier's matured philosophical doctrines find expression in the Institutes of Metaphysic the Theory of Knowing and Being (1854), in which he claims to have met the twofold obligation resting on every system of philosophy, that it should be reasoned and true. His method is that of Spinoza, strict demonstration, or at least an attempt at it. All the errors of natural thinking and psychology must fall under one or other of three topics: Knowing and the Known, Ignorance, and Being. These are all-comprehensive, and are therefore the departments into which philosophy is divided, for the sole end of philosophy is to correct the inadvertencies of ordinary thinking.

Self-evident truths concerning knowing and the known are discussed in the Institutes of Metaphysic (Ferrier is thought to have coined the term epistemology in this work, p. 46). It explains that the fact that any intelligence, in addition to knowing whatever it knows, must as the ground or condition of its knowledge have some cognizance of itself is the basis of the whole philosophical system. In addition, the only possible kind of knowable is one which is both known of an object and known by a subject (Object + Subject, or Thing + Intelligence). This leads to the conclusion that the only independent universe which any mind can think of is the universe in synthesis with some other mind or ego.

The leading contradiction which is corrected in the Agnoiology or Theory of Ignorance claims that there can be an ignorance of that of which there can be no knowledge. It is corrected by appealing to the fact that Ignorance is a defect, and argues that there is no defect in not knowing what cannot be known by any intelligence (for example, that two and two make five), and therefore there can be an ignorance only of that of which there can be a knowledge, that is, of some-object-plus-some-subject. Therefore the knowable alone is the ignorable. Ferrier lays special claim to originality for this division of the Institutes.

The Ontology or Theory of Being forms a discussion of the origin of knowledge, in which Ferrier traces all the perplexities and errors of philosophers to the assumption of the absolute existence of matter. The conclusion arrived at is that the only true real and independent existences are minds-together-with-that-which-they-apprehend, and that the one strictly necessary absolute existence is a supreme and infinite and everlasting mind in synthesis with all things.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica adjudges Ferrier's works as remarkable for their unusual charm and simplicity of style, qualities which are especially noticeable in the Lectures on Greek Philosophy, one of the best introductions on the subject in the English language.

A complete edition of his philosophical writings was published in 1875, with a memoir by Edmund Law Lushington. See also the monograph by Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane in the Famous Scots Series (link below).