Abstract

This study is an attempt to develop an adequate theoretical model of the philosophical enterprise, to serve both as a guide for interpreting the history of philosophy and as a critical tool for evaluating the present state of and prospects for contemporary philosophical thought. Ballard proposes that philosophy be understood as man’s attempt to come to grips with the experience of crossing the boundaries that separate radically different aspects of human existence. These boundaries exist on many levels of experience; philosophy is most concerned with the crossing of the internal boundaries of "archaic experience," the most fundamental and universal form of human experience. Perhaps the most fundamental boundary in archaic experience is that between inspired insight and rigorous, rational analysis. Ballard interprets the history of philosophy from the standpoint of that opposition; philosophy is man’s attempt to navigate the continual crossing from one of these modes of experience to the other. Ballard is most concerned with the tendency of most modern philosophies to stress one or the other aspect of the opposition, frequently to the point where the philosophical significance of the other side of the opposition is completely denied. Although Ballard finds the germ of the rationalistic, scientific perspective in Plato, he believes it is Descartes who molded that perspective into a powerful philosophical tradition, carried on by Hume and modern analysts. Against this tradition, which treats man as merely one more scientific object, stands the transcendental or Romantic tradition, which takes man’s subjectivity as its starting point and formative principle. In the context of this radical division of the tradition, Ballard finds the philosophy of Heidegger extremely important. It represents one of the few contemporary attempts to admit both insight and scientific reason as philosophically significant by examining both against a more fundamental ontological background, Being itself. Being is the original source of all possibilities, and its philosophical elucidation provides a context within which the conflicting aspects of archaic experience can be accommodated. Heidegger’s thought thus offers a model of philosophical reflection that avoids the reductionist extremities of the main traditions of modern thought, and it is that model Ballard believes offers the best prospects for future philosophical development.—O. T.