Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century #230766

What of values? Kant felt impelled to make judgments in this field as universal as our phenomenal judgments. It is this aspect of his system that brings Mr. Mead to speak of him as the philosopher of the revolution, a rather startling thing to say of the staid and orderly little German professor. Let us go back a moment. When the scientist of the Renais sance carried over from the teachings of the church the notion of a rational universe, he posited this as an assumption. He set it up as a postulate for the guidance Of his thinking. But he came more and more to realize its postulational character. When the church had set up this same concept, it had framed it in the form Of an arbitrary dogma. As such It was imposed on the thought of the time. Lthe essence Of the conflict which is referred to in the general terhi' the revolution is the conflict between the rational authority of the budding science and the arbitrary authority of the church.