Arthur F. Bentley

From Philosopedia

Bentley, Arthur F. (16 October 1870 - 21 May 1957)

Bentley, who was to become a noted political scientists and philosopher, was born in Freeport, Illinois. He received his B.A. in 1892 and his Ph. D. in 1895 from Johns Hopkins Univrsity.

Philosopher and author with John Dewey of Knowing and the Known (1949), Bentley responded in 1956 to Warren Allen Smith as to his views concerning the various humanisms:

I align myself with the more liberal elements of naturalistic humanism, and I regard John Dewey as continuing to be our leader in such inquiry. More loosely (though without further detail of personal examination) I find myself in broad sympathy with Professor Harry Overstreet’s confession of faith as he sets it forth in his letter to you of August 1951, a copy of which you were kind enough to send me.

Humanism covers a wide extension. I, in contrast, work in a limited range. Let us hope that this differentiation of effort will prove itself useful in our parallel investigations of the future.

In the earlier stages of my work (say, fifty years ago), I characterized my inquiry as an attempt to fashion a tool. In slow stages I have watched this tool develop. In more recent years it has localized itself as cross-section of society (quiescent) and as group-pressure and pressure group (action) with the two types uniting as both material and method in transactional development. Progress has already been made with the examination of knowings-known in transactional framework and we may regard the book, Knowing and the Known, as the most advanced presentation now available in this direction.

Some of the older forms of treatment are still being deemed worthy to fight over, but these lie outside my range and include subject-object, subjective-objective, individual-social, and psychological-sociological. These minor disturbances will before long, we hope, wear themselves out and cease to waste our time.

To be transactional will involve the rejection of split postulation in cases where the split fails to be mentioned by the workers in the field but is simply presumed to be in charge behind the scene. Such cases include assumptions about subject and object, individual and social, which cases must be won on their merits or rejected on their de-merits, and not hidden in the bushes. Except for the extreme individualists scattered among the American Humanist Association membership, I am inclined to think that a reasonable degree of harmony can be established between the Humanist and his friends.

In 1954, Bentley was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. Also that year, he wrote Inquiry into Inquiries.