If we consider the philosophy generally predominant in the universities of today, we are struck by the miserable role that many philosophers themselves consign to philosophy. We are thinking of positivistic and relativistic philosophies of every kind, logical positivism, empirical sensism, and the like. We are thinking of all those professors of philosophy who look upon science as something incomparably superior to philosophy, who have difficulty in proving that philosophy has a right to exist, who actually betray the very nature and role of philosophy. Reduced to its essentials, the philosophical creed of such men, logical positivists and semanticists, for example, actually amounts to a denial of philosophy. Sometimes this denial consists in restricting philosophy to the role of a mere handmaid to the sciences. Sometimes it involves the dissolution of philosophy, and the handing over of its objects to science. Thus ethics is often made an anthropological or sociological topic, or even a field for psychoanalysis. Epistemology and aesthetics are interpreted as parts of experimental psychology. And, as a matter of course, metaphysics is denied absolutely. (What is Philosophy?)
