In one sense, it is rather amazing that Pepper is highly regarded by anyone. He lived at a time (1891-1972) in America when Dewey's Pragmatism was popular. But then this was super seded, in most U. S. colleges, by British analytic philosophy -- with its emphasis on "what we mean when we say," and its positive hatred of "Weltanschauung" philosophy.

One of the clearest, brief statements of Pepper's philosophy is to be found in a lecture he gave at Notre Dame during the school year 1966-67. Several philosophers were asked to state what they took philosophy to be. Pepper noted that there was, historically, a close connection of philosophy with science. But each of the several sciences has its own narrow interests; none of them are comprehensive. That is the role of philosophy: "But the heart of philosophy is and, I am sure, will always continue to be, comprehensive understanding or what I shall call world hypotheses."¹

The study of "world hypotheses," is Pepper's way of speak ing of metaphysics. The question I began with is related to the reason Pepper should, in my judgment, be considered one of the greatest philosophers of this century. The point is not simply that Pepper was a metaphysician; that, in itself, is no claim to fame. I shall argue, instead, that Pepper deserves a high ranking because he was one of the last of the Renaissance men, who made all knowledge his province, and he taught his readers to see their world with the same vast scope. He also made impor tant contributions to the different areas of philosophy.

Pepper was a Renaissance man in the sense that he was a master of a large number of subjects. If we survey his biblio graphy we find papers (and books) on psychology, art, aesthetics, logic, ethics, general value theory, and metaphysics. It was once said of Immanuel Kant that, "You can do philosophy with Kant or against Kant, but you cannot do philosophy without him." Pepper also covered the area in as thorough a way as few philos ophers (who beside Aristotle, Kant, and J. S. Mill?) have.

Pepper's most important contributions were probably in the area of metaphysics. We understand the world in various ways. Suppose I am convinced that the world (and everything in it) is one large machine. I come to understand all things in terms of this basic image, as mechanistic. Pepper spoke of these basic images as "root metaphors." In World Hypotheses (1942), he claimed that metaphysical positions are generated from these root metaphors. These metaphysical positions are called "world hypotheses," because they are like ordinary scientific hypotheses except that they are unlimited in scope. Pepper argued that there are four such world hypotheses: mechanism, contextualism, organicism and formism. He defined these terms in his own way, but the closest examples to each of these are perhaps Hobbes or Locke for mechanism, John Dewey's pragmatism for contextualism, Hegel for organicism, and Plato for formism. In his Paul Carus lectures, published in 1966 under the title Concept and Quality, Pepper proposed a fifth world hypothesis called "selectivism,"
with the purposive act as its root metaphor. It is also impor tant to note that Pepper saw these as five separate, equally plausible, ways of explaining the world. It's no good trying to mix, for example, Plato's formism and John Dewey's pragmatism.

So much for exposition of Pepper's metaphysics; the reader will find it set forth in greater detail in Andrew Reck's The New American Philosophers.² Reck's account is excellent, but uncritical. Pepper's account of metaphysics has several advan tages that should be cited. One -- which is not often recognized -- is that his view has an answer for A. J. Ayer and the positiv ists. In his Language, Truth, and Logic (1963), Ayer argued that in order to be cognitively meaningful a sentence must be verifiable. Thus, to use a standard example, "Nothingness negates itself" is not cognitively meaningful -- but nonsense -- because nothing would count as verifying it. Ayer thought that all of the more important sentences of metaphysics, even the Platonist's "only the eternal Forms are ultimately real" (my example), are nonsense. By taking metaphysical positions to be hypotheses (however unlimited in scope), Pepper provided an answer. Almost any logic text will tell us that, of course, we want hypotheses to be verifiable, but this is only one of the criteria used in their evaluation. In his World Hypotheses, Pepper had a lot to say about "structural corroboration."³ We want our hypotheses to be verifiable, but we also want them to be internally consistent, free of contradictions, capable of being related to other scientific hypotheses, etc.

As a more general point, Pepper's World Hypotheses gives the philosopher a useful way of classifying various metaphysical positions. Does it really help to say that, in some sense or other, Plato, Bishop Berkeley and Hegel were all Idealists? Pepper's classification scheme is more illuminating, and, fur ther, it helps us understand these various metaphysical positions by explaining their origins in their different root metaphors. Anyone who has taught a course in Metaphysics -- and I cannot conceive of teaching it without using World Hypotheses as a text --  will recognize how useful this scheme is, for the reasons given above, and will appreciate Pepper's insistence that the four -- or five -- world hypotheses are different, and not to be merged into new hybrid forms. He will know how to correct the student who writes a term theme combining the best insights of Plato and Locke; he can show that this is an impossible combination.
 

In his chapter on Pepper, Andrew Reck tells us that Pepper took his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1916, and that  ". . . of all his Harvard teachers of philosophy it was Ralph Barton Perry who exerted the major influence upon his intellectual development."⁴
Ten years later, in 1926, Perry published his General Theory of Value. The book was widely read and much discussed in the learned journals; several articles relating to it appeared in the Journal of Philosophy during the early thirties; the Inter national Journal of Ethics devoted a special issue to it (July, 1930).  Unfortunately, by the time Pepper published his own Digest of Purposive Values in 1947, the philosophical world had changed. And by the time his major work on value theory, The Sources of Value appeared in 1958, very few major philosophers were interested in value theory. If I may be permitted a personal reference, my first introduction to Pepper's work (except for an essay or two in aesthetics) was in a year-long graduate course in value theory, taught by Van Meter Ames at the University of Cincinnati, during the 1960-61 school year. Pepper's The Sources of Value was the text. We compared it with the major works on value theory by Perry, Dewey, and C. I. Lewis. I became convinced that Pepper's work was rich in scope and insight. It incorporated all the best work done in the area in a unified system -- and combining Perry and Pepper is not like combining Plato and Locke. Indeed, Pepper even brought in some of the best work from sociology-anthropology and psychology (Ruth Benedict, Kurt Lewin, and E. C. Tolman) into a unified whole which seemed, to this student at least, far more profound than Perry's "interest'' theory of value.

But though I found a course in general theory of value extremely useful and philosophically interesting, the fact is such courses were already rare in America by 1961. Just a few years later, I tried to get an anthology published made up of major sources in value theory. I had Pepper's approval, but no publisher would touch the book. It may be possible that they were too critical of my "Editor's Introduction" to consider what followed it, but they seemed sincere in saying that their surveys showed little or no demand for such a volume. The point of all this is simply that Pepper's work on value theory is not as fully appreciated as it should be . Though an excellent book, The Sources of Value was published twenty-five to thirty years too late to gain the acceptance it deserved.

Only a brief summary of Pepper's theory of value will be attempted here. This has already been done (and done well) by Reck and another excellent summary of this one aspect of Pepper's philosophy may be found in W. H. Werkmeister's history of value theories.⁵ Actually, the best summary of his value theory was provided by Pepper himself. In the anthology of value theories I once projected, I had planned to use the final chapter of his Sources of Value, but he suggested that the con cluding chapter of his Ethics might be a better choice. I am now convinced that he was right. My summary is therefore based on the chapter in Ethics.

In the earlier chapters of his Ethics, Pepper considered the various competing ethical theories, such as "Cultural Absolutism and Cultural Relativism" (Chapter 4), "Individual or Egoistic Hedonism" (Chapter 5), "The Pragmatic or Social Situation Theory" (Chapter 7), etc. There is also a chapter on "The Evolutionary Theory of Ethics" (Chapter 10), which Pepper thought should receive more attention than it has in recent years. Which, if any, of these theories is correct? Pepper was convinced that our real problem may be that we have assumed -- too quickly -- that these theories must be taken as exclusive alternatives: "It seems possible that they may actually be complementary one to another, and that if each empirical normative system is brought into certain relations with the others, the various empirical norms may fit together. This is my belief...."⁶

Accordingly, Pepper sets forth various "natural norms" or "selective systems." That is, he discusses the mechanics of our purposive behavior (especially in the early chapters of Sources of Value), and notes that (as one example), obviously people do, sometimes, seek pleasure. Our drives towards plea sure lead us to perform certain acts and to reject others. But as the poet has written, no man is an island; we are always in a social situation, a developed culture, with culture and tradi tion, that must also have an effect on our moral behavior. And we are part of an ever-growing population, faced with the prob lem of survival: thus the selective system of evolution makes its presence widely felt.

I said earlier that Pepper himself summarized his position better than any of his commentators (including the present writer, of course). There is a paragraph in his Ethics that deserves to be quoted in its entirety (despite its length). After listing the several selective systems, he added:
 

The mere naming of these would seem evidence enough, after our earlier expositions, that natural norms controlling human conductdo exist. Descrip tions of them can be easily tested and confirmed. They are, moreover, all normative in their effects. The goal-directed drives of purposive structures are corrective of the means selected for achievement. And the structure of a consummatory field attained in purposive behavior corrects the acts of anyone maneu vering for optimum delight. The integrative action of personality structure puts constant pressure upon disturbing habits by the pain and frustration of the repeated conflicts they produce. The social situation corrects an act which fails to resolve a social problem by the very increase of tensions so produced. The normative demands of conformity by a cultural pattern are all too obvious to need comment, as are the integrative demands for an adjustment of social institutions when cultural lag is felt. And, lastly, there is the corrective operation of natural selection, not only in organic evolution but in its impact on man s cultural patterns and hence on man s conduct. This was dwelt upon in the chapter on evolu tionary ethics. There is abundant evidence of norma tive action in natural events through these various selective systems. The marvel is that any thoughtful or observant man could have persuaded himself to believe otherwise.⁷

Now, having summarized Pepper's value theory as clearly as I could, and with the admission that Pepper (as well as Reck and Werkmeister) said it better, I turn to criticism. I want to raise certain questions regarding Pepper's "selective systems" and this whole value theory (and the ethical theory based upon it) called "selectivism."

For a moment, consider the moral theory of Thomas Hobbes. At least, let us call the following Hobbes' theory; I do not wish to debate whether or not he held exactly this view. Anyway, man is said to be basically selfish and therefore, it is argued he ought to be selfish. For the sake of brevity, I shall dogmatically assert that this argument is valid. That is, if man is (by nature) selfish, and if there is anything he ought to do then it follows that he ought to seek his own self-interest, since this is the only option he has. Hobbes had only one "selective system," and thus matters were relatively simple. We could ask why Hobbes should write books in which he advises us to be self ish, while insisting that people already are selfish and cannot be otherwise. But I think Hobbes has an answer. Some people foolishly suppose they can be unselfish and need to be convinced otherwise. Others know that they are selfish and these con sciously seek their own interest, but don't seem to know how to go about it intelligently. By contrast, Pepper has several selective systems, not just one, and as he realizes (especially in his book Ethics), this makes matters much more difficult. How, for example, do we decide which value to seek if two con flict? What are the lines of legislation among selective sys tems? Obviously, natural selection (a "selective system" for Pepper) is a powerful motive, as indicated above, because if we do not survive we cannot seek any further values. In general, in both the Ethics, and Sources of Value, Pepper recommends an ''adjustable'' society which can powerfully arm for war but in time of peace will provide maximum freedom for individual devel opment. That is, we want a situation that will let us have as much as possible of all these values. But consider the case of a young man who, as a matter of conscience, refused to go to Vietnam. In the interest of his own "personality structure," to use the name that I think Pepper would use for the selective system involved, he opposed the "cultural pattern" (another selective system) of his society. Indeed, he considers his society basically corrupt, and flatly refuses to conform to its cultural patterns. Suppose he asks, "Why should I conform?" I don't think Pepper can tell him. Notice that the young man is asking a specifically moral question; he does not want a psy chological (much less a physical) description of the mechanics of his choice. Pepper would also seem required to say that the young man prefers, in this case, the selective system of the personality structure to that of the cultural pattern. But this is misleading, to say the very least. We can say that we like (or value) beer but prefer wine. This young man does not, in this sense, prefer something else to the cultural pattern; he refuses to acknowledge that his cultural pattern can be a source of value at all for him, or that it should be such for anyone. Again, I doubt that Pepper can help him. This argument, regard ing the draft resister, may not be entirely clear. So it might be well to spell out the major points involved:

1. The draft resister simply denies one of Pepper's selective systems.
2. The draft resister is concerned with what he ought to do in a very specifically moral sense of 'ought.' But a naturalistic ethic, such as that held by Pepper (or Dewey), seems capable of only "prudential"  'oughts.'
3. The draft resister also changes the lines of legislation among Pepper's selective systems.

It may be possible for someone holding Pepper's sort of ethical theory to answer 1 or 3, showing why (in a prudential sense) the draft resister should have been willing to change his ways. But 2 is the important claim. In short, since we do not at present have a draft in the U.S., perhaps we need not worry about it, but the important point is that Pepper's value theory does not seem able to handle such situations. A more contem porary example might be the young woman who chooses to leave her family (and their values) to join a religious 'cult.'  The same considerations apply.

But Pepper was basically an aesthetician. He had a life long interest in art and the philosophy of art. Reck has high praise for this part of Pepper's work. "While C. I. Lewis has taught that the immediate quality of all experience is aesthetic, it was Pepper who, more than any thinker of his generation, made aesthetics and the philosophy of art the technical fields of study they are today."⁸ Quite honestly, this is to overstate the case. A check of what has been published in the journals in aesthetics in recent years will show that the impact of Pepper's work is less than that of Monroe Beardsley, or Van Meter Ames, or Thomas Munro, or Susanne K. Langer, and perhaps George Dickie (to name only a few). Again, Pepper's work is not as well-known as it should be. Since metaphysics is not in vogue, philosophers of art have not taken sufficient notice of Pepper's The Basis of Criticism in the Arts (1945), in which the four "world hypothe ses" are brought to bear on the problem of criticism in the arts. Reck sums it up beautifully: "Each theory justifies a particular set of objective critical judgments of the work of art. Since the four theories are equally adequate, it follows that four equally valid sets of objective judgments can be made upon every work of art."⁹ And in the final chapter of his last book, Concept and Quality, Pepper himself applied the insights of his fifth "world hypothesis" to the problems of aesthetics.

To move to a second topic in Pepper's aesthetics, it is surprising that so little has been written on Pepper's view of the work of art as involving a "control object," a perceptual object and an object of criticism, and the related notions of funding and fusion. In his "Autobiography of an Aesthetics," Pepper discussed the way he had worked this out in The Work of Art. Speaking of the role of "dispositions" and "purposive values" in critical process, he remarked: "I thought I saw a possible application of this principle toward reaching a final determination of the object of criticism for any work of art through the funding process of gathering up the relevant details in the succession of perceptions set in motion by its control object. What this amounts to is a regarding of the control ob ject of any work of art as a dynamic center with a disposition for the attainment, through funded perceptions, of the complete object of criticism with all its relevant qualities as its goal ."^lO

What Pepper wrote in Chapter I of The Work of Art can, I think, be fruitfully compared with some passages written several years before by Jean-Paul Sartre in his early novel Nausea. Consider especially the long passage in which Antoine is looking at a black root at his feet. The root is variously described: "... this hard and compact skin of a sea lion . . . this oily callous, headstrong look.. .was it more than black or almost black?.. .That black amorphous, weakly presence, far surpassed sight, smell and taste. But this richness was lost in confu sion and finally was no more because it was too much."¹¹

In the case of this black root, we could speak of the physical object as the "control object" which endures throughout many perceptions of it. There is no Kantian "ding-an-sich" hiding behind it; there is simply the object as perceived. But even this root can never be completely known because this would require an infinite number of perceptions under all possible conditions. Several points need to be sorted out. First, apparently Sartre would say of anything whatever what Pepper says of art objects. Perhaps the difference that distinguishes art objects is their ability to sustain interest. Pepper suggests this in Concept and Quality when he speaks of  "... commerce with the stimulus pattern as long as it can sustain his interest."¹² Maybe Guernica and black roots are, in a sense, both perceptually inexhaustible, but few people would be willing to spend hours, day after day, staring at roots. This "perceptual inexhausti bility," if I may use that expression, seems to have nothing to do with values in Sartre's existential philosophy. He does not speak of an "object of criticism." But in fact this same in exhaustibility, coupled with a seemingly infinite capacity to sustain interest, does seem to be one of our more important value criteria, and Pepper deserves credit for having called attention to this in a clear way. This value criterion seems to extend beyond aesthetics. Many people argue that the Bible must have been divinely inspired because it appears to them to have this quality; it could only have been produced by an infinite God.  Similarly, we might argue for the philosophic greatness of, say, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, because this is a book that forever seems instructive no matter how many times we read it.

Though it may be somewhat repetitious, perhaps I should summarize this appraisal of the work of Stephen Pepper. His greatness lay, it seems to me, in that he was one of the last of those Renaissance men who made all of knowledge his province. He taught psychology early in his career, and there is a lot of psychology in such books as The Sources of Value. He was chair man of both the Philosophy and Art Departments at the university. He is perhaps best known for his many works on aesthetics, but it is difficult to imagine doing a course in metaphysics without using his World Hypotheses. The Sources of Value is one of the half-dozen (perhaps) major classics in the history of the general theory of value. He remained his own man. He spurned contemporary "analytic" philosophy, e.g. when (in 1969) Francis Sparshott said he had never "seen" the force of C. L. Stevenson's "emotive" analysis of moral judgments, Pepper responded, "I not only see it, I can see through it!"  He was considered a naturalist, an admirer of Dewey, but he complained of the fact that Beardsley had allotted so little space to Hegel in his history of aesthetics.¹³ In short, few philosophers in our day, or any day, have combined so much scope of knowledge with such remarkable insights into particular aspects of philosophy ....  and the arts.

I cannot resist a final word. I did not know Stephen Pepper well. But I know few philosophers who have succeeded so well in following the advice of another great philosopher, David Hume: "Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."¹⁴
 
 

return to contents

top

 

2. Andrew J. Reck, The New American Philosophers: An Ex ploration of Thought Since World War II. (Baton Rouge: Louis iana State University, l968}. Chapter 2, "Stephen C. Pepper: Philosophy of Values," pp. 44-80, is an excellent, thorough account of Pepper's thought.                                                  return

3. Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961). See, for example, p. 31.

4. Reck, p. 45.                                                                             return

5. W. H. Werkmeister, "Stephen Pepper and the Sources of Value," Chapter XII (pp. 275-306) of his Historical Spectrum of Value Theories, Vol. II, The Anglo-American Group. (Lincoln, Nebraska: Johnsen Publishing Company, 1973).                                                                                            return

6. Stephen C. Pepper, Ethics, (New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, Inc., 1960), p. 314.

7. Ibid., p. 315.    return     8. Reck, p. 46.          9. Ibid., p. 61.         return

10. Stephen C. Pepper, "Autobiography of an Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 28, 3 (Spring, 1970), p. 283.

11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea. (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions Books, 1959), pp. 174-176.                                                      return

12. Stephen C. Pepper, Concept and Quality: A World Hypothesis. (La Salle, Illinois, Open Court Publishing Co., 1967 , p. 609.                              return

13. Stephen C. Pepper, Review of Monroe C. Beardsley's Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 25, 2 (Winter, 1966), p. 214.                                                        return

14. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, third edition, with text revised and noted by P. N. Nidditch. (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 9.