The Speculative Technique

In ordinary usage, to speculate is to wonder, conjecture, guess or to hypothesise.

Speculation occurs where a particular kind of knowledge being sought is not

available. While the natural and social sciences largely exclude speculation from their

methodology, philosophy includes it. This is because as indicated by Berlin,

Bosanquet and Maritain above, philosophy endeavours to transcend the empirical

method of the natural and social sciences, as well as the formal method of

mathematics. The speculative technique of philosophical reflection is most frequently

manifested in philosophers’ attempts to solve metaphysical problems such as death,

suffering and happiness, to which there are no simple answers (Njoroge and Bennaars

1986, 26-27). Other topics that have required the speculative technique of

philosophical reflection include reality and appearance, mind and matter, the one and

the many, permanence and change, time and eternity, freedom and necessity, and

unconscious mental states.

The speculative technique is also employed in reflections on values (axiology). For

example, in the quest for a just and workable political arrangement, the political

philosopher begins by examining existing models, but then goes beyond them through the technique of speculation - he or she takes the liberty to create and examine models whose workings may not have been hitherto tested in practice. Thus when in The Republic Plato recommended a society wholly organised on the basis of his three levels of intellectual ability, he was drawing from the strict militaristic model of Sparta. However, he did not restrict himself to the Spartan model, since he placed intellectual ability at the centre of his own prescribed model, in sharp contrast to the Spartan model which emphasised physical endowment (see Plato 1945).

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