Plenitude and contingency

modal concepts in nineteenth century French philosophy

Pascal Engel

pp. 179-237

in: Simo Knuuttila (ed), Modern modalities, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

There are many signs that allow us to predict the proximate advent of an epoch the general character of which will be the predominance of what one might call a realistic or spiritualistic positivism, having as its generating principle the awakening of the mind to the consciousness of its own existence, from which it realizes that all other existence follows and depends upon, and which is identical with its own action.1