Digressions&Impressions

On The Stories we Tell: Hume and Sallust (with an observation by Smith on Plagiarism)

The same Cicero, who affected, in his own family, to appear a devout religionist, makes no scruple, in a public court of judicature, of treating the doctrine of a future state as a ridiculous fable, to which no body could give any attention. Sallust represents Caesar as speaking the same language in the open senate.--Hume, Natural History of Religion. (12.24)

The exploits of the Athenians, as far as I can judge, were very great and glorious,something inferior to what fame has represented them. But because writers of great talent flourished there, the actions of the Athenians are celebrated over the world as the most splendid achievements. Thus, the merit of those who have acted is estimated at the highest point to which illustrious intellects could exalt it in their writings.--Sallust, Cataline Conspiracy.

The Roman historian, Sallust (especially Catilinae Coniuratio) is a regular interlocutor of Hume throughout his career; he mentions him explicitly in Treatise (here). Sallust's account of the decline of republican Rome is the only named target of his more general criticism of the Roman self-understanding (in "Of the Refinement of the Arts"):

All the LATIN classics, whom we peruse in our infancy, are full of these sentiments, and universally ascribe the ruin of their state to the arts and riches imported from the East: Insomuch that SALLUST represents a taste for painting as a vice, no less than lewdness and drinking. And so popular were these sentiments, during the later ages of the republic, that this author abounds in praises of the old rigid ROMAN virtue, though himself the most egregious instance of modern luxury and corruption; speaks contemptuously of the GRECIAN eloquence, though the most elegant writer in the world; nay, employs preposterous digressions and declamations to this purpose, though a model of taste and correctness.--Hume

Hume quickly dispatches Sallust's account: "it would be easy to prove, that these writers mistook the cause of the disorders in the ROMAN state, and ascribed to luxury and the arts, what really proceeded from an ill modelled government, and the unlimited extent of conquests." To our modern eyes, Hume's causal explanation looks more plausible than Sallust's; while the Republic was a great war-machine, its oligarchic institutions were badly designed to govern the empire it had acquired.

But it is worth noting that Hume subtly misrepresents Sallust's position. For Sallust luxury is a late stage of the decline that follows badly formed ambition, first, and then avarice: "At first, however, it was not so much avarice as ambition that disturbed men's minds--a fault which after all comes nearer to being a virtue. For distinction, preferment, and power are the desire of good and bad alike -- only, the one strives to reach his goal by honourable means, while the other, being destitute of good qualities, falls back on craft and deceit....avarice is a noxious poison." [Handford's translation slightly adapted; here's the Latin]. So, for Sallust the evils of luxury are themselves a consequence of ambition that cannot be expressed properly.

In fact, while Sallust indeed expresses himself like a moralist, his position is at bottom identical to Hume's. For he is very clear that what causes the inability of ambition to express itself to proper ends in a proper fashion is the lack of external, mortal enemies after Rome's last rival Carthage is destroyed. The very same men and institutions stop performing admirably due to changed external circumstances. Common threats in survival secure common ambitions and, we may say (according to Sallust), a spirit of unity. In fact, even in the absence of Sallust's longer work on the history of Rome (now lost), we may understand his treatment of the Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Cataline as a joint, extended meditation on the nature of such decline after the demise of the Carthigenian threat caused by the improper expression of ambition (of which Sulla and the vices of luxury are the degenerate consequences), culminating in civil war and implosion. 

For, the rise of Marius, who is described as ambitious of power (here and here) is a consequence, on Sallust's account, of the class warfare among the nobles and the people; Marius is capable of enlisting the aspirations of the poor to his own ends. This class warfare had been a recurring theme in Roman history, but on Sallust's account, after the fall of Carthage, this class warfare came to predominate after the outbreak of peace and the lack of external fear (here). Interestingly enough, the proximate cause of the decline, for Sallust, is the disunity among Rome's ruling oligarchs who out of pride and lack of fear stop acting as a unified class. (During the rise and wars the "greatest concord" prevailed.) This opened the door to ambitious noblemen who preferred "true glory over unjust rule" (qui veram gloriam iniustae potentiae anteponerent) and in the lack of a moderate even generous response by the elite,* open-ended civil unrest.+

I am not claiming that Sallust is primarily interested in the nature of social causation in the way Hume is (although Hume hides his considerable debt to Sallust). For, it is not so much moralizing, but he nature of true glory,  that is the theme of Sallust's book from the opening lines. And he clearly thinks that writing such history can also generate such glory. Perhaps, even, one of the few paths to true glory in in an age of decline.

Of course, if even Hume is not above borrowing Sallust's explanation while criticizing the man (Sallust also offers a nice example of the ills of social contagion [tanta vis morbi ac veluti tabes plerosque civium animos invaserat] that clearly also influenced Hume), then we should not be surprised that Sallust himself was not above borrowing good ideas from those he criticized. As Adam Smith is said to have remarked to his students whhile teaching rhetoric, the great speech that Sallust "put in the mouth" of Cato was itself "copied" from Demosthenes (as modern scholars agree).

 

Boyle Plagiarizes Cicero

It is well known in the scholarly literature that despite the fact that Boyle's name has become associated with the Mechanical Philosophy, that he defended general providence (and thus the existence of at least one final cause). And, as scholars have noted (and Boyle, too), in his many design arguments the Strasbourg clock figures prominently. Here's an example:

’tis like a rare Clock, such as may be that at Strasbourg, where all things are so skilfully contriv’d, that the Engine being once set a Moving, all things proceed according to the Artificers first design, and the Motions of the little Statues, that at such hours perform these or those things, do not require, like those of Puppets, the peculiar interposing of the Artificer, or any Intelligent Agent imployed by him, but perform their functions upon particular occasions, by vertue of the General and Primitive Contrivance of the whole Engine” (A Free Enquiry).

Boyle here uses the world-clock analogy in order to drive home the idea that God’s general providence works by general and original (this captures the sense of Boyle’s “primitive” in light of the “first design”) causes. (Locke uses the Strasbourg clock in yet another subtly different argument in Essay 3.6.3 & 3.6.9.)

But elsewhere, in the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, Boyle adds two claims to his treatment of the Strasbourg clock that reveal his classical debt: (i) “the various motions of the wheels and other parts concur to exhibit the phenomena designed by the artificer in the engine…” (ii) “and might to a rude Indian seem to be more intelligent than Cunradus Dasypodius himself.” (Conrad Dasypodius was the designer of the famous Strasburg clock.) I return to that ignorant Indian below (while ignoring Boyle's shocking ignorance of the cultivation/civilization of India).

The phenomena exhibited by the (second) Strasbourg clock were primarily astronomical, that is, it was a gigantic planetarium in which heavenly motions and phenomena were faithfully represented (see the picture at the bottom of this post). I am not the first to note that Boyle is indebted to Cicero. But– to be anachronistic for a second – I have not found anybody noting that Boyle is really plagiarizing a specific argument by Cicero:

Our friend Posidonius has recently fashioned a planetarium; each time it revolves, it makes the sun, moon, and planets reproduce the movements which they make over a day and a night in the heavens. Suppose someone carried this to Scythia or to Britain. Surely no one in those barbarous regions would doubt that that planetarium had been constructed by a rational process. Yet our opponents [the Epicureans] here profess uncertainty whether the universe, from which all things take their origin, has come into existence by chance or some necessity, or by divine reason and intelligence. Thus, they believe Archimedes more successful in his model of the heavenly revolutions than nature’s production of these, even though nature’s role is considerably more ingenious than such representations.[1]

There are many arguments from design. Let’s dub the main one articulated in the quoted passage the “Posidonian argument.” It deploys the “structural resemblance of state-of-the-art-planetary mechanism to the celestial globe.”[2] For, it relies on the supposition that everybody (even barbarians) will grant that a sophisticated complex machine, which is a scientific representation of nature, must be the product of intelligent design, then (once granted) it turns to suggest that the represented complex (beautiful, well-adapted, etc.) machine must itself also have an intelligent author.[3] (For a picture of what we think is Posidonius's planetarium and some reflections on the afterlife of the argument, see here. [See also Mohan's response.])

I stipulate that despite the presence of minor variants we know that we are dealing with the Posidonian argument if a design argument is accompanied (as it is in Cicero’s text) by a reference or allusion to Archimedes’ planetary sphere and/or Posidonius’ portable planetarium as well as a savage/ barbarian.[4] (Obviously, there also treatments of Posidonius's planetarium without a focus on God's design.) Boyle substitutes the Strasbourg clock and a rude Indian, but preserves Cicero's argument form.

A few weeks ago I noted the logical structure and underlying significance of this Posidonian argument in the context of Dennett's reconstruction of a version of the argument in Descartes. For, the argument hinges on the fact that scientific theories and scientific representations presuppose God's order/design. Finding Boyle's adaptation of the Posidonian argument suggests further evidence for my claim that it  is not a by-product of the scientific revolution, but it's right there at the heart of that process that was once called the mechanization of nature.

Dennett is right then the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument is not a by-product of the scientific revolution, but it's right there at the heart of that process that was once called the mechanization of nature.  - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/05/on-descartes-dennett-and-design-ciceros-posidonian-argument-reconsidered.html#sthash.fmz0mDbs.dpuf

On Descartes, Dennett, and Design (Cicero's Posidonian Argument, Reconsidered)

Imo indocti haec magna cum voluptate spectabunt et facillimo negotio ea quae nunc nullo modo capiunt, intelligunt.--I. Beeckman (1629), commenting on the effect of a planetarium.

Last week I had the good fortune to participate in Daniel C. Dennett's lectures, “Evolving Minds: From Bacteria to Bach and Back,” which he gave at the invitation of the Ferrater Mora Chair in the lovely town of Girona (see here for more info). During one of our breaks, we happened to discuss Dennett's "Descartes's Argument from Design" (Journal of Philosophy, 2008), in which he draws on Descartes's response to Caterus to make sense of Descartes's a posteriori argument for the existence of God (in Meditations 3). The key passage, which -- as Dennett notes (338) -- is repeated in Principles of Philosophy is, "if someone possesses the idea of a machine, and contained in the idea is every imaginable intricacy of design, then the correct inference is plainly that this idea originally came from some cause in which every imaginable intricacy really did exist, even though the intricacy now has only objective existence in the idea."

The argument from intricate machine to designer and then from most intricate design to perfect/godly designer would have been familiar to Descartes from various sources. But the most beautiful version of the argument is in Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods (recall), where a working planetarium (ascribed both to Posidonius and to Archimedes) is used to make the point. That Cicero may well be part of Descartes's inspiration is suggested by the significance of Archimedes's (planetary) sphere in both Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods (and some of his other relevant works, especially Tusculan Disputations [which is an important text in Descartes's development; see Menn]) and Descartes's Meditations (admittedly, Descartes is more interested in Archimedes as a mathematician than planetarium builder). [Above I link to Beeckman's treatment which is undoubtedly inspired by Cicero.]

Dennett, who has many astute comments on Descartes's argument, does not comment on the fact that at first blush, it would seem that Descartes innovates on the traditional argument by insisting that an idea or (judging by his description) an intricate blue-print can do the relevant work in the argument. It's one thing to take a working (or empirically succesful) planetarium "to Scythia or to Britain" where "no one in those barbarous regions would doubt that that planetarium had been constructed by a rational process," it's quite another point to a blueprint of an intricate machine and, say, see.

But the true novelty of Dennett's reading is that he ultimately interprets Descartes as claiming that Descartes, too, appeals to a working machine in the argument to design:

[Descartes] had used that very idea [of God] and no other as the sole foundation for his theory of... Le Monde...The fact remains that it was a huge theory, full of intricacy, remarkably self consistent, often fiendishly persuasive even in today's hindsight. Any idea that could generate such a stunning intellectual edifice would be a prodigiously fecund idea...because his idea is not just made of lots of good parts (ideas available to everybody), and not because his idea is of a wonderful thing? God; it is because his idea is (he thought) a stunningly well-designed engine of scientific discovery.

That is to say, on Dennett's reading, Descartes thinks he can point to his whole scientific theory as the working machine that represents and predicts the machinery of the universe. This is not the place to what degree pointing to Le Monde or the Principles of Natural Philosophy will really be more persuasive (in such a design argument context) than pointing to a working planetarium. Rather, my point here is that on Dennett's interpretation of Descartes, his scientific theory of the universe presupposes Godly design. Now the nature of this presupposition is, of course, a tricky matter -- and it took more than a century to work this out, including hard work by Toland, Clarke, Hume, Adam Smith, and Kant --, but we can represent the logical form of Descartes's argument, as interpreted by Dennett, as follows:

(I)                A condition of the possibility of (an intended) successful scientific representation of nature is that nature is not the product of chance, but (I*) design. &

(II)               Science is successful.[1]

(III)             ∴ There is a designer (or nature is designed).

I call this the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument. This argument became hotly debated in the eighteenth reception of Spinoza's and Newton's philosophies (often with a nod to Cicero and Posidonius/Archimedes) and I have been working on a short book on this topic. But if Dennett is right then the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument is not a by-product of the scientific revolution, but it's right there at the heart of that process that was once called the mechanization of nature. 

 

Spinoza and the Spirit of Christ (with notes on Bayle, Voltaire, Hume, and Smith)

If someone has read the stories of Holy Scripture, and has had faith in it in every respect, and has nevertheless not attended to the lesson Scrip­ture intends to teach with those stories, nor improved his life, it is just the same as if he had read the Koran, or the dramas of the Poets, or even the ordinary Chronicles, with the same attention as the multitude commonly give to these things. On the other hand, as we have said, someone who is com­pletely unfamiliar with these stories, and nevertheless has salutary opinions and a true and rational way of living, is absolutely blessed and really has the Spirit of Christ in him [et nihilominus salutares habet opiniones, veramque vivendi rationem, is absolute beatus est, et revera Christi Spiritum in se habet.].--Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise [Hereafter TTP], 5:46 [[III/79] (translated by E. Curley slightly adjusted).

Afterwards this freedom was recovered by the patriarchs, guided by the Spirit of Christ, that is, by the idea of God, on which alone it depends that man should be free, and desire for other men the good he desires for himself (as we have demonstrated above, by E4p37).--Ethics 4, p68S [translated by E. Curley]

In his Ethics, Spinoza glosses "Spirit of Christ" as "the idea of God" (E468S); because this claim is uninformative, last week I asserted that Spinoza presupposes knowledge of TTP here. For, the TTP makes clear that to possess the "Spirit of Christ" it is sufficient to have the right opinions and a rational manner of living. Crucially, in order to posses it one need not have been exposed to the Gospel. This much is obvious from TTP. And this is why in the Ethics, he can claim about the Patriarchs that they possessed the Spirit of Christ even though they would have lived prior to Christ. More striking the wording in the TTP entails that one can have this Spirit of Christ without knowledge of philosophy. For, it it is said to involve merely "salutary opinions." This is not to deny that a philosophical life or knowledge can also generate, perhaps more secure, blessedness (plenty of passages in both Ethics and TTP suggest that, too). 

That one can have a true and rational way of living without knowledge of Scripture would have struck Spinoza's readers as shocking (which is, perhaps, why Spinoza calls it the "Spirit of Christ"--to lessen the shock). It generated a famous controversy, associated with Bayle's name, if a society of atheists is possible. Voltaire answered in the affirmative treating the Senate of Rome on the precipice of the Republic's collapse as an exemplar, but with a sneer to Spinoza's denial of final causes ("Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes"), thought it pernicious.*

Moreover, as suggested above, TTP's wording implies that one can have a true and rational manner of living without philosophy. It is, in fact, an innate capability. (Here's how chapter four of the TTP is summarized: the "divine law which renders men truly blessed and teaches true life is universal to all men...we must think that it is innate to, and as it were, written in the human mind.") So, in the Ethics, Spinoza claims that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were free in virtue of their desire for other men the good that they desire for themselves. That is to say, according to Spinoza the Patriarchs were free because they lived according to moral norms in which they see themselves as no better than others. (I return to this below.) I almost wrote 'according to moral law,' but in the TTP Spinoza associates a universal moral law with Christ (TTP 5:9 [III/71]) and Christianity (12:24 [III/163]), although he credits Isaiah 1:10-17 with formulating it first (TTP 5:4 [III/69]).   

An impatient reader may well think that I am ignoring the most important feature of Spinoza's treatment of Adam. For, Spinoza is re-interpreting original sin:

God prohibited a free man from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that as soon as he should eat of it, he would immediately fear of death, rather than desiring to live; and then, that, the having having found a wife who agreed completely with his nature, he knew that there could be nothing in Nature more useful to him than she was; but that after he believed the lower animals to be like himself, he immediately began to imitate their affects (see IIIP27) and to loose his freedom. (E4p68s)

This is complicated passage (recall). In Hasana Sharp's felicitous phrase, it's "an unusual version of the story in which neither Eve nor a deceitful animal seems to do anything." (Sharp's treatment is worth reading.) Unlike Hobbes in Leviathan, who gives Eve a starring role and in his re-telling focuses on the nature of dominion (recall), Spinoza focuses on the nature of freedom.* To simplify: according to Spinoza freedom consists in having the right comportment toward life, that is, one that is purely life-affirming (and has no space for death). Counterfactually, it would entail that one is 'led by reason alone,' that is, one would not discern any limitation in nature and in one's own life. If mortality is a mere limitation and incompatible with our true nature, that is, one's conatus (E3p4-8), then, indeed, there would be no space for the contemplation of death in a free man's life.

On Spinoza's re-interpretation of Scripture, it teaches that the Adam and Eve's way of living in the Garden of Eden was life-affirming and mutually beneficial ("nothing more useful"), that is, according to a moral norm, even though it did not require having a concept of good and evil. But contrary to the Augustinian interpretation, Spinoza allows that man's nature is not so corrupt as to prevent (the recovery of) freedom by mortals.

One may still wonder why the Patriarchs are held up as explicit exemplars of free men. Part of the answer is suggested by the fact that at least in four of the scholia of the Ethics, Spinoza treats his philosophy as an emendation or purification of Scripture; as evidence I can point to, in addition to Ep4P68s, E2p7S, E4P54S, and e5p36S. In that last proposition, Spinoza informs the reader that in the Ethics, blessedness, salvation, and freedom all mean the same thing and consist "in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men. And this love, or blessedness, is called glory in the Sacred Scriptures." (E5p35S) Another part of the answer is the Patriarchs' lack of philosophical knowledge; as Spinoza writes about Scripture's presentation of the Patriarchs, "they did not know any attribute of God which explains his absolute essence." (TTP 13:13-15; [III/169]) And, so (again), according to the reading of Spinoza proposed here, freedom (blessedness, etc.) need not presuppose philosophy.+

This is not to deny that Spinoza argues that in a philosophical or wise person, freedom is most stable and durable. But it is rarely remarked, I think, that philosophy's arch-rationalist, Spinoza, anticipates those (e.g. Hume and Smith) that philosophy is dispensable while a free and moral life remains possible. 

A note on the Dauler Wilson Garber debate over Berkeley’s Corpuscular Scepticism

[I]t will be demanded to what purpose serves that curious organization of plants, and the animal mechanism in the parts of animals; might not vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves of blossoms, and animals perform all their motions as well without as with all that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and put together; which, being ideas, have nothing powerful or operative in them, nor have any necessary connexion with the effects ascribed to them? If it be a Spirit that immediately produces every effect by a fiat or act of his will, we must think all that is fine and artificial in the works, whether of man or nature, to be made in vain. By this doctrine, though an artist hath made the spring and wheels, and every movement of a watch, and adjusted them in such a manner as he knew would produce the motions he designed, yet he must think all this done to no purpose, and that it is an Intelligence which directs the index, and points to the hour of the day. If so, why may not the Intelligence do it, without his being at the pains of making the movements and putting them together? Why does not an empty case serve as well as another? And how comes it to pass that whenever there is any fault in the going of a watch, there is some corresponding disorder to be found in the movements, which being mended by a skillful hand all is right again? The like may be said of all the clockwork of nature, great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be discerned by the best microscope. In short, it will be asked, how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena? Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 60

[T]hat what has been objected in sect. 60 amounts in reality to no more than this:- ideas are not anyhow and at random produced, there being a certain order and connexion between them, like to that of cause and effect; there are also several combinations of them made in a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances which are seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves discernible only to the curious eye of the philosopher. But, since one idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that connexion? And, since those instruments, being barely inefficacious perceptions in the mind, are not subservient to the production of natural effects, it is demanded why they are made; or, in other words, what reason can be assigned why God should make us, upon a close inspection into His works, behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, and so much according to rule; it not being credible that He would be at the expense (if one may so speak) of all that art and regularity to no purpose. Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 64

There is a famous and thus far inconclusive, multi-layered debate between the two giants of early modern scholarship, Margaret Dauler Wilson (her paper) and Daniel Garber (his paper). The debate centers on Berkeley’s views on (what has been dubbed) ‘corpuscular skepticism,’ roughly, the idea that in addition to veil-of-ideas skepticism, Berkeley inherits from Locke skepticism about our ability to access to the posited to exist (real) corpuscular essences of things. One of the hermeneutic questions about Berkeley (and one that he faces with admirably forthrightness in Principles, Book 1, 60-66) is what right Berkeley has to posit such material corpuscles in his system. It is worth noting that the debate matters for the history of science (and philosophy) because in these passages, Berkeley helps promote a decisive shift in explanatory standards from an emphasis on essences to an emphasis on laws in the natural sciences. When we do not reflect on this, we tend to assume that such shift was a natural one, and perhaps already completed due to the influence of Descartes and the success of Newton’s Principia. But the shift in explanatory standards was, in fact, an eighteenth century achievement (unsettled again Lavoisier provided access to chemical essence). [See work by McMullin, Ducheyne, Downing, and your reporter.] 

But the Garber-Wilson debate and its reception has overlooked, I think, that in Principles 60-66, Berkeley is responding to an ingenious argument developed by Clarke in his (1704) Demonstration on the Attributes of the Being of God. It would be correct to label Clarke’s argument a ‘design’ one, but in doing so we also obscure the significance of Clarke’s argument. For the particular design argument that Berkeley is responding to is an argument relies on the history of empirical success of science. In particular, in Principles 60 and its restatement in 64, Berkeley is responding to a hypothetical critic that has assimilated Clarke’s particular argument (the “common philosophy”) in defense of the existence of not just general, providential “final causes,” but local design (or finality). Clarke’s argument relies on then recent and progressive, specialized (to use some anachronism) scientific knowledge. Clarke writes: