ECLECTICISM (from the Gr. ts, out of, and Xeyefr, to choose or select) is a term that may be applied to any body of theories or doctrines that are combined without regard for their systematic coherence and real unity. We may thus find eclecticism in theology, in philos ophy, in medicine, politics or in the sphere of any of the theoretical sciences. The eclectic is usually guided by practical motives: he adopts from the various conflicting systems what seems to him the most plausible and useful opinion on this point or that, drawing now from one school, now from another. He is not con cerned primarily with the systematic connection, or even the logical consistency, of these various doctrines with one another, but rather with the plausibility and practical applications of the views taken singly.
In philosophy there have been many men, both in ancient and in modern times — some of them writers of great popularity and influ ence — who, without attaching themselves to any particular system or forming one of their own, undertook to select from various quarters the particular doctrines that appeared to them to be true and to combine them in their teaching. This eclectic tendency was most prominent in the ancient world during the later period of Greek philosophy, when the theoretical interest of earlier times had greatly declined and when skepticism had infected many of the best minds.
The differences between the three principal schools (Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics) began to be less emphasized and elements from one school were adopted by adherents of an other. Moreover, a form of eclecticism ap peared in Alexandria also, where thinkers like Philo sought to unite Hebrew theology with Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean conceptions. Cicero, who did more than anyone else to ac quaint his fellow countrymen with Greek philos ophy, was a thorough-going eclectic, troubling little the systematic connection of the doctrines and selecting freely from the various schools what seemed to him true. In modern times, the school founded by the French philos opher, Victor Cousin, is known as eclecticism. Cousin sought to unite German idealism, as represented by Kant and his successors, with the Scottish philosophy of "common sense' and the doctrines of Descartes. Consult Zeller, 'Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy' (Eng. trans., 1883) ; Janet, 'Victor Cousin et son oeuvre' (1885) ; Simon, 'Victor Cousin> (1887).
J A Id ES E. CREIGH TON, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Cornell University.