Abstract

2. The title has been carefully chosen. It has three terms: being, immediacy, and articulation. The argument is such that, if one of the three collapses into another, the battle is lost. The threatened term is being. For if being is absorbed into immediacy, an exaggerated realism results. But if being is absorbed into articulation, idealism results; and that, it seems, is greatly to be deplored. Being, then, is the prize between "Immediatists" and "Articulatists." If being is reduced to articulation, then whatever it is that the "Immediatist" seeks to save will have been lost. And if being is reduced to immediacy, then articulation will be alien to being, and so will philosophy. It is against this second reduction that Professor Smith chiefly argues, because it is the current one-sided wisdom which makes genuine philosophy impossible.