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Legitimation of Belief

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For E. Gellner, `critical' monism (the attempt to restore intellectual order by lucid principles) is necessary in our search for the truth, for validity of our knowledge about the world.
Cognitive legitimacy can be moored on different anchors, of which two selector theories are the most important: empiricism and materialism. For the empiricists, man is not more than the totality of his experiences. He is a bundle of sensations, a ghost. For the materialists, the world is a regular and constant machinery, which produces all events. A materialist looks for theories which explain the workings of the machine.
I. Kant analyzed both viewpoints and was gripped by two fears: one, that the mechanical vision (science) did not hold, and two, that it did hold. He thought that science (determinism) was right. But a new problem arose: what with human freedom and morality? Kant's solution was that we, humans, imposed the mechanistic causal order on the world. This order was not in the nature of things, because we cannot know the real nature of things. (For a fundamental critique of Kant, see W. Heisenberg `Physics and Philosophy')
A fatal blow was given to empiricism by N. Chomsky, who proved that human beings possess innate ideas (grammar) prior to experience.

The source of our knowledge is experience, which leads to theories. But only those theories that can be falsified by testing are respectful (K. Popper).
E. Gellner attacks Popper, but his blows are far from fatal. First, science was always with us (the Romans exploited their silver mines rationally). Two, politically, Popper was not always for piecemeal changes. A revolution (with or without arms) was necessary to install or to defend democracy. Three, criticize is not enough. Criticism must be sustained by testing. Four, an open society was always within our reach. The big chasm provoked by Protestantism (M. Weber) could be an illusion.
The chasm can easily be explained by the loss of power by the Church. Capitalism flourished in those countries where the stranglehold of the Church was broken. Before, the Church controlled 75 % of all the money in circulation in the Western world (see, W. Manchester). It fought fiercely against science and rationalism (see, Saint Augustine's Confessions). Without a dictatorial Church, an open society was always within reach.

This rather small book contains a wealth of information on Descartes, Hume, Ryle, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, anthropology and political systems.
It is a thought provoking work and a must read for all those interested in `real' philosophy.

Gellner was recommended to me by a college professor who I had and gave great respect for as a resource to help me sort out the perplexing epistemological crises of modernity. It delivered in a very powerful way. At 208 pages, the book made sense of modern philosophical inquiry in a way that I found breathtaking and illuminating. Gellner was the kind of scholar who could understand the most erudite scholarship and discuss its sociological (i.e. real-world) implications intelligibly. As a result, he stepped on many specialized toes but I am deeply grateful for it. Furthermore, he was completely unashamed to castigate much of what constitutes scholarship recently as useless while maintaining a profound, though always critical, respect for empiricism and science. If you are interested in philosophy, you must read this book. The only other book I could equate to it as a survey, apart from the works of the philosophers themselves, is Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy."

If you wish to understand modern philosophy, this book is indispensable. It is very challenging but breathtaking.