Digressions&Impressions

Descartes on Indignation

The 195 Article. Of Indignation.

Indignation is a sort of Hatred or Aversion, that a man naturally beares to those who doe some evil, of what nature soever it be. And it is often mixed with Envy, or Pity, but yet, the object thereof is altogether different from them. For he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it: but he envies those who receive this good, and pities those who receive this evil. It is true, in some respects it is evil to possesse a good whereof a man is not worthy. Which may be the reason wherefore Aristotle and his followers, supposing that Envy is alwayes a vice, have cal­led that Indignation which is not vicious.

...

The 198 Article. Of the use of it.

Furthermore, Indignation is observed to be more in those who would seem vertuous, than those who really are. For althought they who love vertue cannot without some Aversion look upon the vices of others, they are Passio­nate onely against the great and extraordinary ones. For it is to be nice, and squamish, to have much Indignation for things of little concern­ment; it is to be unjust to have any for those which are not blameworthy; and it is to be im­pertinent and absurd not to confine this Passion to the Actions of men, but extend them to the works of God or nature: as they do who being snever contented with their condition or fortune, dare controule the government of the world, and the secrets of providence.--Descartes, René, 1596-1650., 2013, The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English., Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/A81352.

I was triggered to return to Descartes' Passions while preparing a review of Michelle Schwarze's wonderful book Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge: 2020). This book is primarily focused on Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith, but it has a preliminary chapter on seventeenth century ideas on resentment and indignation in which Descartes is omitted. This omission is no surprise because Schwarze is focused on recovering and articulating a distinctly liberal understanding of sympathetic resentment and Descartes is no precursor to liberalism or especially interested in promoting commerce and sociability.  Even so, I think Descartes plays an important part of the story she wants to tell, so, here goes.

Early in Passions (article 65), Descartes define or characterizes indignation as follows "evil done by others, having no relation to us, breeds only in us Indignati­on against them." Indignation is, thus, an impartial response ("no relation to us") to the witnessing or experience of harms done to others by third parties. It has, thus, a kind of spectatorship and impartiality built into its very possibility. In addition, it presupposes that these harms are in some sense moralized and intentional ('evils').  This is nicely conveyed by the seventeenth century Dutch translation by Spinoza's acquaintance Jan Glazemaker, where Descartes' indignation is translated as 'euvelneming' literally the experience of evil. 

As an aside, when we are harmed by others, according to Descartes, we feel something stronger than indignation: colere translated nicely as 'wrath'. This passion is very similar to indignation, but also includes the desire of revenge. So it is action-guiding (and can actuate bold and/or courageous actions (see sect 199 of  the Passions). In fact, the somatic instantiation of wrath divers among people, and Descartes is careful to distinguish between a sudden wrath and a carefully nurtured wrath, which when it is joined with love for another may well be a kind of indignation on their behalf. ("interest themselves in the behalfe of those they love, as if it were for themselves;" sect 201).

If we now look at Descartes' treatment of indignation in sections 195-198, we see that he adds an important qualification, that is, that we only feel it when we judge the victim unworthy of the harm ("he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it"). It has, thus, an evaluative feature built into its very triggering conditions. So, to sum up the discussion so far, according to Descartes indignation is a  moralized reactive attitude that presupposes considerable impartiality by an observer to intentional harm done to someone not deserving of it. That is to say, the spectator most share a moral universe with the perpetrator and victim. It's not especially action guiding, and seems to have more a role in what we might want to call moral score-keeping and, perhaps, recognition of harms done to other.

When we to turn to the section on the use of indignation (198), we see that Descartes de facto distinguishes two uses of it: first, it has a social role -- I will call it virtue-signaling -- to make us seem virtuous in the eyes of others. And we can infer from Descartes' terse analysis that in its signaling capacity, there is a tendency for an overuse of indignation. This clearly suggests that being thought virtuous creates what we might call social credit. And since indignation is not action guiding (and so has little consequences or negative feedback), there are incentives for being too oft indignant on  behalf of others without qualification because there are no drawbacks. 

It's worth noting that Descartes does not really spell out what's wrong with excessive virtue-signaling, except that he seems to rely on some kind of proportionality requirement that the passion needs to be commensurate with the triggering cause(s). I actually think this kind of principle plays a huge role in Hume's and Smith's moral psychology, and I am kind of sad I just noticed this feature in Descartes today. Of course, that causes and effects have to be proportional to each other is an important element in Descartes' physics (see, for example, his letter to Huygens, 5 October, 1637: “L’effet doit toujours être proportionné à l’action qui est nécessaire pour le produire.” [Quoted from S. Roux]), so  it is not ad hoc. But it has moved from a natural principle to a normative one that can be violated (and again that's not untypical of Hume and Smith). 

Be that as it may, presumably Descartes things that too-frequent indignation destroys the signaling quality of indignation when it is proper. (If X is a cheap source of social credit then X may well become inflationary.) So, second, there is a proper form of indignation of those who truly love virtue (and are not merely virtue signaling) at "great and extraordinary harms." Unlike, say, Hobbes (as described wonderfully by Theresa Bejan (recall)), Descartes really takes (to be anachronistic for a second) micro-aggressions for granted as not needing to be registered by bystanders and spectators. Perhaps this is due to the Stoic element in his thought.

It's not quite clear what the measure is that allows a spectator to distinguish between small-ish harms not deserving a passionate response and those so worthy. But indignation at the harms to others worthy of note is appropriate according to Descartes. Since it's not action guiding its primary function seems to be let victims (and their aggressors) know that evils done to them are recognized by outsiders. So I infer that its main role according to Descartes is as a kind of social score keeping that make victims of harms be seen by the community (and which establishes, thereby, to perpetrators that the have violated important social norms).

Interestingly enough, Descartes wants to rule out indignation at the greatest cause of all (and he puts this in surprisingly Spinozistic fashion) God or Nature [Dieu, ou de la Nature]. Again, we see a kind of appeal to a normative proportionality principle here. But lurking here is also an idea that we cannot make our indignation felt on God or Nature, and that in an important sense we are not fundamentally equal. 

I think it's pretty clear that by Descartes' lights, wrath -- as action guiding and nurtured over time under the sway of, say, anger or revenge, -- is taken as potentially more destabilizing to society than indignation. For, wrath can undermine good judgment. And so wrath must be moderated according to Descartes by generosity (sect 203).

You haven't read Schwarze's book, but I hope you trust me when I say that Descartes's account of indignation has already a lot of the building blocks that will be deployed by Butler, Hume, and Smith and that she analyzes with great skill. From the eighteen century perspective, what's really lacking in Descartes is a proper analysis of the role of sympathy in calibrating indignation. (Descartes was famously averse to sympathy because he associates it with the kind of philosophy he thinks is baloney.) And Descartes does not spell out the normative features that enter into judgment of the impartial bystander. If I am right about this it does raise an interesting historical-sociological question why Descartes' view of indignation was only really developed and elaborated during the eighteenth century by folk commonly portrayed as his critics.

 

On Professor Melamed, Rabbi Serfaty, and entry into the Snoge

My colleague, and friend, Yitzhak Melamed got denied entry to the Snoge (or Esnoga) to do some filming for a documentary on Spinoza by an eloquent Rabbi. (See below for the letter.) Looking at the wording of the letter, I suspect the Rabbi (who despite Amsterdam being a small village, I have never met) kind of calculated it would go viral. For his letter is needlessly insulting.

It is not insulting, to be sure, in calling Spinoza an 'Epicouros.' While the word is undoubtedly derived from 'epicurean' in so far as Epicurus believed that the Gods took no interest in people's affairs.** Now, it is generally applied to all heretics and so Spinoza fits the bill (regardless of what exactly the learned Rabbi has in mind--it would have been nice to know if he has Maimonides' meaning in mind or a more generic use.)

It is needlessly insulting not just because there is no reason to believe Spinoza ever set foot in the Snoge (which was built long after he left Amsterdam.) It is insulting because he declares Melamed "persona non grata" in the Snoge. This is peculiar given that the Snoge welcomes tourists without distinction from all walks of life, even keeping that in mind when setting its times for prayer; and has let an Epicouros like myself attend bar mitzwahs there. This is why I suspect some ambition and opportunism in the Rabbi's stance. He is now a very public defender of the faith. But only some opportunism. Let me explain.

Most of our friends have joined in the ridicule of the actions of the Rabbi, when they don't denounce it more strongly.* And here, much to my own annoyance, I wish to defend the Rabbi's stance. In these matters I tend toward the Lockean-Marxian (Groucho not Karl) in my sensibilities: as I suggested in a different context (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia-affaire): I am all for minority groups to have the right to decide on their often illiberal and sometimes immoral entry-requirements, not just membership, but also including their houses of worship (as long as Exit is relatively straightforward). The Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam is very small, decimated by the Holocaust and emigration. It doesn't just have every right to avoid facilitating a movie that however intelligent and sober still will aid in the glorification of its greatest Heretic, but in many ways it has a duty to do so.

As an aside, in an article that deserves careful scrutiny, "Freedom of Speech and Philosophical Citizenship in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," Julie Cooper has argued persuasively that Spinoza was a critic of philosophical/intellectual celebrity. That is, in fact, one of Spinoza's lines of criticism of Descartes. And it is pretty clear that the celebration of Spinoza -- which is, in fact, a big politicized deal in Amsterdam -- goes very much against the spirit of his political philosophy. So, somewhat ironically Rabbi Serfaty is in some respects defending Spinoza from his admirers here.

Melamed himself is often a critic of Spinoza, and in my presence has criticized Spinoza's (what we may call) moral philosophy in no uncertain terms. So, it is a bit odd the Rabbi thinks that the study of Spinoza is problematic. We are, in fact, far removed from, say, the spirit of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a learned reader of Spinoza. 

UPDATE: It turns out that the Rabbi has no legal right to refuse Melamed entry to library Ets Chaim. (I basing myself here on a report in Dutch (here). HT: Mum.)  This library is open to researchers from all over the world. And since there is government money sponsoring the foundation that runs it, the Rabbi can't treat Melamed as "persona non grata" there. But in re-reading the letter by the Rabbi, I think it's pretty clear he intends to keep Melamed only out of the Snoge.+ [End OF UPDATE.]

I would never personally argue that Rabbi Serfaty is obliged to keep the film crew out of the Snoge. (Plenty of politicians have been filmed there for events.) But there are grounds to suspect such a film would be a mechanism to help later day critics of the community (to which I never belonged) litigate against it, and certainly to treat the Cherem as a colossal mistake and a sign of backwardness. In fact, Rabbi Serfaty is acting here in the spirit of Rabbi Toledano who, in rejecting a revocation of the ban, argued that it would mean that "we in our synagogue should spread the denial of God's existence to the extent that it destroys our heritage and the pillars on which Judaism rests."  If you take that line of thought seriously, and he gets paid to do so, Rabbi Serfaty's position is common sense even though it lacks warmth and what my people call, menschlichkeit.

 

On Pynchon on 1984

By the time they have left the Ministry of Love, Winston and Julia have entered permanently the condition of doublethink, the anterooms of annihilation, no longer in love but able to hate and love Big Brother at the same time. It is as dark an ending as can be imagined. But strangely, it is not quite the end. We turn the page to find appended what seems to be some kind of critical essay, "The Principles of Newspeak". We remember that at the beginning, we were given the option, by way of a footnote, to turn to the back of the book and read it. Some readers do this, and some don't - we might see it nowadays as an early example of hypertext. Back in 1948, this final section apparently bothered the American Book-of-the-Month Club enough for them to demand that it be cut, along with the chapters quoted from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, as a condition of acceptance by the club. Though he stood to lose at least £40,000 in American sales, Orwell refused to make the changes, telling his agent, "A book is built up as a balanced structure and one cannot simply remove large chunks here and there unless one is ready to recast the whole thing . . . I really cannot allow my work to be mucked about beyond a
certain point, and I doubt whether it even pays in the long run." Three weeks later the BOMC relented, but the question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix?
The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, "The Principles of Newspeak" is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post- 1984 , in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past - as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence. Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored.--Thomas Pynchon (2003) "Introduction" Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell [HT: Victor Gijsbers]

We know that Pynchon is not the only major novelist that grappled with Orwell's Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four; at the end The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, who according to her own testimony about 1984, "read it again and again," pays homage to it in the "Historical Notes" themselves "Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, held as part of the International Historical Association Convention held at the University of Denay, Nunavit, on June 25, 2195." In presenting these historical notes, Atwood, reassures the reader, who may have no taste for (recall) Socratic metaphysics --  "for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved" (Plato, Republic, 546a)" -- that the "Gilead period," too, will come to an end in some sense. 

Pynchon, who is not exactly known for his optimism, is right to pay attention to the Appendix to 1984, but I am not entirely sure that his hesitant ("perhaps") optimism about what the Appendix signals can withstand scrutiny. His interpretation assumes, first, that the (let's call it) authorial stance of the Appendix has to be taken at face value. That's decidedly odd because 1984 represents us with a world in which just about every text is a forgery of some sorts. (While it would be a mistake to treat them alike, Orwell and Borges were contemporaries, after all.) In fact, much of the action of 1984 consists in the production of forgeries (not just of texts of memories). The production of newspapers by the Ministry of Truth and the torture chambers of Ministry of love have this in common. So, why would the Appendix be any different?

As an aside, the apparent function of the forgeries in Oceania appear to be to produce a totalizing infallibility about everything, not the least the past, of the Party. (No Pope would dream of this!) And what it illustrates is that even if one were to grant (for the sake of amusement) the linguistic idealist, that all is text, what one may call the production values that inform or are exhibited by the production of texts make a huge difference. Linguistic idealism comes in many varieties. If one treats this focus on 'values' as bourgeois, feel free to replace 'production values' with 'means of production' in the previous sentence. In so far as Orwell is a true socialist (and an author), this attention to the conditions of textual production need not surprise. 

But let's stipulate that we need to take the Appendix at face value. You may say, 'What else can we do, after all?' It's true, as Pynchon emphasizes, that the Appendix treats Newspeak as a thing of the past. Given that Pynchon explicitly understands Newspeak as the essence of Oceania, and in his argument tacitly relies on the metaphysical principle, I'll paraphrase Spinoza (E2D2), that when its essence is taken away the entity ceases to be, Pynchon infers from the demise of Newspeak quite reasonably that Oceania must have ended.

Before I get to the merits of Pynchon's argument, a reader may suspect that I will object to Pynchon's metaphysics as an imposition on the world of 1984. Of course, I am assuming you are not the kind of reader who may find my parading of metaphysical jargon quite pedantic. Even so it's worth noting that the core torture scenes in Part III of 1984, emphasize that metaphysics is salient. The torturer, O'Brien, repeatedly, in fact, reminds his victim, Winston Smith, that metaphysics is not his "strong point." So I am not going to object to the form of Pynchon's argument.*

Newspeak is what the philosophers call a final language. In the text -- I have in mind both 1984 and its Appendix -- this is marked by the contrast between the provisional versions (as, I now quote the Appendix, "embodied in the Ninth and Tenth editions of the Newspeak Dictionary") -- and its definitive form "embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary."  As we learn from the Appendix and, earlier in the novel, from Syme, who, before he is presumably vaporized, is one of the developers of Newspeak, Newspeak is supposed to be an austere language: its vocabulary culled down, and, through some semantic tools the expressive power of particular words is greatly enhanced, the language's expressive power is curtailed. It's a final language designed to be spoken and used by the Party.**

Now, Syme indeed suggests that the "Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak." The narrator of 1984 adds that this is expressed with "a sort of mystical satisfaction." And indeed this idea, the perfection of language, is characteristic of what we may call Enlightenment mysticism (and satirized by Swift). Pynchon's interpretation of 1984 is rooted in Syme's understanding of Newspeak.

The Appendix, which follows Syme's interpretation of Newspeak sometimes literally, omits this mystical claim. I'll quote the Appendix (and then suggest an alternative to Pynchon's interpretation):

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

Unlike Syme, the Appendix places greatest emphasis on the fact that the purpose of Newspeak was to make what in 1984 is called 'Thoughtcrime' impossible. Even a Quine-ean couldn't be heretical through indirect methods in Newspeak. We might say, then, that it is regimentation that is the fundamental function of Newspeak as a final language.

Interestingly enough, this is an aside, the author of the Appendix recognizes that once Newspeak is perfected, it would make translation of books and even complex fragments from older languages into Newspeak in a certain way impossible unless they either referred "to some technical processor some very simple everyday actions." (The Appendix offers the Declaration of Independence as an example of how "impossible" would be to render it into Newspeak.) One wishes (recall) our advocates of formal languages would keep this in mind.

Be that as it may, a more natural interpretation of the demise of Newspeak presents itself now.  For, from the point of view of the Party, the elimination of even possible Thoughtcrime would be self-defeating. For Thoughtcrime grounds the repressive apparatus of the Party. The possibility of Thoughtcrimes are -- as much as the conditions of permanent War -- central to the structure of self-discipline of the Party. The elimination of Thoughtcrime as a category would spell doom to the survival of the Party because it would lose its main means of self-control as a ruling, corporate spirit. It would then have to start codifying laws of some sort and bureaucratize, formalize these. This was not a problem in the world of 1984 because the perfection of Newspeak had been projected, as the Appendix notes in its closing sentence, into a more distant future (2050).

So, a more natural political possibility is that the Party abandoned the project of Newspeak because it saw that its perfection would be self-undermining and incompatible with the ideological needs of Ingsoc in power.*** (By contrast, a socialist language planner like Carnap recognizes that Esperanto, for example, is great for a world of public Enlightenment.) And the Appendix reflects the writings of someone who is intimately familiar with the abandonment of Newspeak (not the demise of Oceania).  Admittedly, there are some passages in the Appendix that exhibit a rather free-thinking attitude: the use of the Declaration of Independence as an example, in particular, is rather cheeky. And it forms the best evidence for Pynchon's interpretation. But the more literal reading of the Appendix understands it as a fragment from a reconstruction of the rise and fall of Newspeak as a social enterprise. That is compatible with the survival of Oceania once the Party realized that the mystical attitude toward Newspeak threatened to make it the essence of Oceania.+

 

 

Spinoza, Hume, and the Story of Thales and his Olive Presses

Most courteous Sir,—When Professor N. N. visited me recently, he told me that he heard that my Theologico-Political Treatise has been translated into Dutch, and that someone, whose name he did not know, was about to have it printed. I earnestly beg you to inquire carefully into the business, and, if possible, prevent the printing. This is the request not only of myself, but of many of my friends and acquaintances, who would be sorry to see the book placed under an interdict, as it undoubtedly would be, if published in Dutch. I do not doubt, but that you will do this service to me and the cause.

A short time ago one of my friends sent me a pamphlet called "Homo Politicus," or Political Man, of which I had heard much. I have read it, and find it to be the most pernicious work which men could devise. Honor [eer] and riches are the author's highest good; he adapts his doctrine accordingly, and shows the means to acquire them; to wit, by inwardly rejecting all religion, and outwardly professing whatever best serves his own advancement, also by keeping faith with no one, except in so far as he himself is profited thereby. For the rest, to feign, to make promises and break them, to lie, to swear falsely, and many such like practices call forth his highest praises. When I had finished reading the book, I debated whether I should write a pamphlet indirectly aimed against its author, wherein I should treat of the highest good and show the troubled and wretched condition of those who are covetous of rank and riches; finally proving by very plain reasoning and many examples, that the insatiable desire for honor and riches must bring and has brought ruin to states.

How much better and more excellent than the doctrines of the aforesaid writer are the reflections of Thales of Miletus, appears from the following argument [redenering]. All the goods, he says, are in common among friends; wise men are the friends of the gods, and all things belong to the gods; therefore all things belong to the wise. Thus in a single sentence, this wisest of men accounts himself most rich, rather by generously [edelmoedig]  despising riches than by sordidly seeking them. In other passages he shows that the wise lack riches, not from necessity, but from choice. For when his friends reproached him with his poverty he answered, "Do you wish me to show you, that I could acquire what I deem unworthy of my labour, but you so diligently seek?" On their answering in the affirmative, he hired every oil-press in the whole of Greece -- for being a distinguished astronomer he knew that the olive harvest would be as abundant as in previous years it had been scanty --, and sub-let at his own price what he had hired for a very small sum, thus acquiring in a single year a large fortune, which he bestowed liberally as he had gained it industriously, &c.--Spinoza to Jarig Jelles, The Hague, 17 Feb., 1671. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes (with modest modifications).+ [Here is the Dutch version in De Nagelate Schriften.]

In today's post, I am primarily interested in the third quoted paragraph (although the first two are definitely fascinating). I have noted before (recall) that in his Natural History of Religion, David Hume explicitly treats Thales as an "atheist" and, by implication, a proto-Spinozist, who treats cosmogeny without recourse to a deity. Presumably Hume's account of Thales was influenced by Diogenes Laertius, who presents Thales as a kind of pantheist (although not a monist about gods) and Cicero, who, in De Divinitatio (1:111), treats Thales as an exemplary natural philosopher with the skill to have rational foresight of nature.

This matters because Hume treats Thales kind of as the founder of philosophy, especially natural philosophy.* In this -- that Thales is the first real philosopher -- he kind of follows the presentation of Diogenes Laertius, who also attributes to Thales the saying, 'know thyself.' 

And, as regular readers know (recall) I am quite fond of the story of Thales, and its variants in Aristoteles, about Thales' monopolizing oil-presses. Thales shows up in these digressions more regularly (recall here; here; here; here; here); and even in my scholarship (and also here). 

I was reminded of the quoted passage by Spinoza by a Dutch learned (non academic) correspondent, Marco van Heugten, in response to a handbook chapter I published on "Spinoza and Economics."  Van Heugten correctly noted I had missed its significance. This is a shame because it could have nicely supported the general claims in the chapter in which I had argued that that Spinoza thought the open‐ended pursuit of wealth is a species of madness (Ethics 4, p44S), even though he did not reject moderate desire for the conveniences of life (Ethics 4, p45c2s). (Most of my chapter is on how he diagnoses a political problem of luxury, and the institutional mechanisms by which it can be managed.)

Spinoza's version of the story of the olive presses is close to Aristotle's version. In one important respect Spinoza's version of the Thales story deviates from Aristotle's. Aristotle very strongly implies that Thales knowledge of the heavens is irrelevant to his source of wealth (regardless what Thales and his friends or the common people may have thought). Monopoly is a decidedly terrestrial feature (and, as Aristotle claims, knowledge and use of it widespread), and any correlation between celestial phenomena and harvests an irrelevant aside. As it happens this nicely fits Aristotle's tendency to treat the heavens and terrestrial matters as relatively distinct.

Spinoza, who lived in an age of commerce, and whose Political Treatise is full examples that he understands the nature of monopoly, the role of incentives, and mechanism design just fine, does not treat Thales' astronomical knowledge as an aside. Post Galileo and Descartes, one may say, the heavens and earthly matters are re-integrated and so the idea that one could forecast (the directionality of) harvests based on astronomical observations was not wholly implausible. (Of course, Spinoza also recognizes that Thales was a monopolist.)

The point of the previous passage is nicely illustrated by Gassendi's (1649) treatment of the anecdote in volume 2 of the Animadversiones. My former (Ghent) colleague, Steven Vanden Broecke called my attention to it.+ Gassendi, who is a critic of judicial astrology, cannot take the relative decoupling of the heavens and terrestrial matters for granted because the new science is re-integrating them (which opens the door to certain forms of astrology still familiar to casual readers of the newspaper). And so he adds more detail about the kind and historical basis of empirical knowledge Thales would have possessed.

As an aside, if I were Justin Smith, I might report to you the contents of seventeenth century almanacs on seasonal forecasting here. But I'll stick to what I know and mention that in the nineteenth century, the economist-logician, Jevons, tried to model, like a modern Thales, the correlation between sun spots and grain harvests. As I learned from my friend Sandra Peart, Jevons thought that the sun spots shaped economic moods (and expectations). Jevons treats Thales as "the father of philosophy."

Interestingly enough, Spinoza does not treat the anecdote about Thales to criticize the vulgar who mock the learned (which is common feature in the story about Thales). Rather, in his rendering it's Thales' own circle of friends who need persuading. And this makes me think that the letter to Jelles was partially intended for Spinoza's circle. 

This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that I have been unable to find the source of the 'argument' attributed to Thales, who is presented here as an exemplary, generous wise man (and it seems to me worth comparing it with (Ethics IV, P45S)). Since Spinoza lived a life very much in the spirit of the 'argument,' it was undeniably important to him. It's psychologically interesting that Spinoza volunteers the story after suggesting he will write a pamphlet (which he never did) against the doctrines of Homo Politicus. And the implication is that he, too, could be rich if he had wanted to be. This would have appealed to Jelles, who was a merchant, but who had turned his back on the business world and had been devoted to his studies. But judging by Spinoza's request to him (in the first paragraph), Jelles was taken to be still influential in worldly affairs. 

So, let me wrap up. Of course, in Spinoza the real point is that if one has wealth one should bestow it on noble causes. This echoes the account of liberality in Book IV (I think, please correct me) of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. And this is either a hint to his friend (who was wealth), or, perhaps more kindly, a thank you to his generous friend. 

We know that Adam Smith very much lived in the spirit of the argument attributed to Thales by Spinoza. (I don't have any reason to think Smith was influenced by Spinoza's depiction of Thales on this score.) But Hume does not. Hume explicitly defends the pursuit of (non-excessive) riches for the wise man and offers himself as an exemplar in his autobiography.

As regular readers know, I think Spinoza is not very far from Hume's pre-occupations at key points in his works. Paul Russell has offered solid reasons for thinking that this idea is a natural effect of the presentation of the Treatise.** In that light it is worth remarking, again, that in Hume's hands, at the start of his own philosophical project, Thales is treated as a natural philosopher and not a moral philosopher. This is, in fact, revisionary because it goes against Thales as one of the exemplary Greek wise men (and the presentation in Diogenes Laertius). And so a Spinozist, free-thinking reader of the Treatise is also alerted to the fact that Hume is no slavish follower at all.  

 

 

 

More's Utopia and the Reform of Christianity

‘People who have made up their minds to rush headlong down the opposite road are never pleased with the man who calls them back and points out the dangers of their course. But, apart from that, what did I say that could not and should not be said everywhere? Indeed, if we dismiss as outlandish and absurd everything that the perverse customs of men have made to seem alien to us, we shall have to set aside, even in a community of Christians, most of the teachings of Christ. Yet he forbade us to dissemble them, and even ordered that what he had whispered in the ears of his disciples should be preached openly from the housetops. Most of his teachings are far more alien from the common customs of mankind than my discourse was. But preachers, like the crafty fellows they are, have found that people would rather not change their lives to fit Christ’s rule, and so, following your advice, I suppose, they have adjusted his teaching to the way people live, as if it were a leaden yardstick. At least in that way they can get the two things to correspond in some way or other. The only real thing they accomplish that I can see is to make people feel more secure about doing evil.--Thomas More Utopia, Book 1, translated by Robert M. Adams

The quoted passage is part of the response by Raphael Hythloday to Thomas More's suggestion to use an "indirect approach" in one's attempts to offer expert advice to sovereigns, to use tact, and to try "what you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible." (37) I leave aside here the delicate question to what degree the character Thomas More stands in for the views of the author Thomas More. The character More (echoing Cicero) promotes a mitigation or amelioration strategy in contexts where one knows that there is no appetite for uptake of better, minimally decent courses of action.  

And Hythloday claims that the strategy advocated by More (the character) is a dangerous form of self-deception. Because one ends up legitimizing, even advocating true evil (even if -- one can stipulate -- it is less evil than it otherwise might be). And because More (the author) understands the problem and its complex temptations first hand, the issue is treated in timeless fashion. As I have noted before (recall; and here) the theme is pursued throughout Utopia.

But what I had not quite noticed before is that Hythloday uses the occasion to point out that speaking truth to power is as difficult as speaking truth to ordinary people (assuming, for the sake of argument, he believes in the truth of Christ's teaching). And not unlike the early Protestants who are just about to arrive on the historical horizon, Hythloday claims (in very Epicurean fashion) that the clergy have corrupted Christ's teaching in order for it to be acceptable by the people. (The point survives the further thought that on balance, Hythloday's pure religion is a rather Spinozistic Christianity [see here; here; and here.] He had made the same point -- the key role for the opinion and sentiments of the governed -- about the nature of royal authority in his vignette (recall) on the Achorians a few pages before. Interestingly enough, in both cases ordinary opinion dramatically constrains the ambitions of a ruling authority, in the case of royalty for the better (it makes it more responsible and pacific) and in the case of Christianity for the worse (it undermines the core teachings of the religion).

But the situation is a bit more complicated yet. As I noted when I was still writing at NewAPPS, earlier Hythloday contrasts, (i) Moses's legal code and the more gentle rule of Christianity. (Both are treated as mediation's of God's will.) And an implied contrast (ii) between the way one rules a barbarous people (recently liberated from tyranny) and the way one rules a more civilized people. The implied contrast (ii) effectively historicizes the Bible, whose commandments are now understood as fitted to a people at a particular time and place in need of strict rule. But in the passage quoted above, it becomes clear that the gentle rule of Christianity is in some sense felt to be too demanding for kings and people alike in the context of Roman empire and European feudalism.

Now, one way to go at this point is to look for a renewal of Christianity by a legislator with Moses' political skill. And it is not farfetched to see Utopus and (say Bacon's refounder of Bensalem, King Salomana) as an example hereof (recall here; here). And there are echoes of this project throughout the early modern period (up to Rousseau's divine legislator in the Social Contract).

Another way to go, if you think religions are in part a function of context and popular uptake, is to suggest that traditional Christianity has outlived its possibility. And that what is needed is a new kind of religion better suited for time and place. Comte is the best known example of an explicit attempt at this. But plenty of religious reformers between More and Comte can be said to fall in this category. I actually think an option like this is explored  in Book II of Utopia, but that's for another time.

At this point one may well wonder 'why religion at all?' Rather than treating the question as an anachronism, it is pretty clear that there is an answer to it in Utopia; where throughout religion is treated (anticipating Spinoza and Kant) as a regulator of moral life. And, as the quoted passage reveals, at least Hythloday believes strongly (anticipating Spinoza's eighteenth century critics) that without the restraint of religion people would be even more evil than we find that they are. People claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion.

I will stop here. But I don't mean to suggest this exhaust the issue in Utopia. Of course, that people claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion may also suggest that the problem is Christianity. Whatever else Book 1 of Utopia establishes (recall) is that people respond to incentives and that one must design and reform social institutions accordingly. It also establishes that monopoly power (in economic and political life) without countervailing powers is very dangerous to public or "common good." So, Book 1 also invites us to consider to what degree one needs religion to promote common good, and if one does, how it should be organized given a given material context. And if I understand More (the character) aright, this will be articulated in an indirect fashion.

 

 

Spinozism, Oppenheimer, and the Communism of Zionism

The third fundamental aim is that the land must irrevocably and for all time be the property of the community. "Mine is the land, saith the Lord, and ye shall work it for Me". In modern dress we must restore the primeval agricultural laws of Israel, which allocated the land for all time to the tribe or village community, which for its part only possessed it in fief from the nation as a whole.

The ancient world knew no other means of maintaining that equality of land tenure, which it fully recognized as the only possible foundation of a sound national life, than to return every piece of ground sold or pawned to the heirs after a certain period: at the year of jubilee. Only because the return could not be effected on account of the power of the big landowners being strong enough to prevent the application of the law, only because of this did Israel fall like Sparta and Rome; that in the last resort is the cause of all Ahasver's sufferings.

p.74 We must forfend this evil, and 2000 years of history have provided us with a better means than the year of jubilee. The individual colonies possess their land corporately under the overlordship of the whole nation; and every individual colonist is only hereditary lease-holder within his community, paying a fixed sum which may not be raised. He cannot be given notice to leave as long as he fulfils his civic obligations to the nation and his economic and communal obligations to his community.

This way of holding land, imperfectly carried into effect under all the old systems of Common Law, insures all the advantages of individual land property and is free from its worst shortcomings. It grants complete security of possession, it bestows the home feeling in the fullest sense and forges this indissoluble link with the soil which roots the soul of the peasant in the field he tills; but it precludes the mortgaging of the soil, which deprives the peasant of the fruits of his labour throughout all the countries under Roman Law and throws them into the lap of the landlord. Further, it precludes that breaking up of agricultural holdings here and their accumulation there which divides the village community into an unfriendly aristocracy and proletariat, and thereby destroys that community of interests which alone, as the history of the world testifies, can make it invulnerable.--Franz Oppenheimer (1903) "Extract from his address at the sixth Zionist Congress in Basle," "Translated by E. I. M. Boyd,

A sympathetic discussion of the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer by Raymond Aron in his (1936) German Sociology, got me interested in the relationship between Oppenheimer (who seems to have been a left-Liberal inspired by Georgism) and Ordoliberalism. Indeed, Oppenheimer seems to have been the doctoral supervisor of Ludwig Erhard (and perhaps Röpke).+

And indeed Oppenheimer was a social liberal (or liberal socialist) who believed, "in the evolution of a society without class dominion and class exploitation which shall guarantee to the individual, besides political, also economic liberty of movement, within of course the limitations of the economic means. That was the credo of the old social liberalism, of pre-Manchester days, enunciated by Quesnay and especially by Adam Smith, and again taken up in modern times by Henry George and Theodore Hertzka." (The State (1908), chapter 7, translated by John M. Gitterman) And while Röpke would not self-identify as a social liberal (let alone a liberal socialist) or a Georgist, the quoted sentence describes Röpke's program in the 1940s very well (and these form the basis of Foucault's interpretation of ordoliberalism).

Much to my surprise, I then learned that not Röpke, but Oppenheimer coined the term 'the third way' in 1933. And then I suddenly realized that this Franz Oppenheimer was the same Oppenheimer as the one time Zionist Oppenheimer who co-founded Altneuland (1864-1943).

This Oppenheimer was one of the guiding lights behind the cooperative (now Moshav) Merhavia (מֶרְחַבְיָה) not far from Afula, which even received publicity from the New York Times at the time. Unlike other settler-colonists, Oppenheimer did not assume that Palestine was empty, but rather he hoped for collaboration between Zionists and local Arabs. So plenty of reasons to take a look at Oppenheimer's writings.

Today's digression is focused on one of his Zionist texts. On Oppenheimer's view, the first two aims of Zionism are (i) self-help or independence; (ii) and that agrarian development should be prioritized. He then quotes Leviticus 25:23, and returns to the recently much discussed passage of the Jubilee in the same chapter of Leviticus in order to provide the third aim.

And Oppenheimer then claims that the fall of biblical Israel was due to the undermining of the institution of the Jubilee not from without, but from within: the ordinary functioning of the property arrangements allowed for temporary concentrations of wealth. But these riches became the source of the power of large landholders to resist the Jubilee and so prevent the rule of law. Oppenheimer implies that this either undermined national solidarity and/or fatally weakened the military capacity of biblical Israel which now could not rely on on independent citizenry. There are, thus, lurking in Oppenheimer republican and limitarian commitments.

Now, it is worth noticing that Oppenheimer's diagnosis of this material and its relationship to the biblical Israel's decline is not far removed from Spinoza's account of this fall in the Theological Political Treatise, 17.106, p. 320. This is also, as Beth Lord has argued, rooted in growing inequality and, in my view, the growing accompanying appetite for luxury of the wealthy (and so accompanying lack of focus on martial virtues, etc.)

In fact, I think Oppenheimer's solution to the diagnosed problem is probably inspired by a proposal in the Political Treatise by Spinoza. For in the context of describing the best monarchy, Spinoza writes, 

The fields, and all the land, and if possible, the houses too, should be public property [publici iuris sint], i.e. subject to the control of the one who has the Right of the Commonwealth [ius civitatis habet]. He should lease them for an annual rent [annuo pretio] to the citizens, or to the city residents and farmers. (TP 6.12)

Now out of context it may seem that Spinoza is advocating a dependence of citizens on the King, but, in broader context, it is clear that the whole point of Spinoza's set up is to create a community of interests among rulers and citizens. (It's pretty clear that for Spinoza the leases cannot be abolished at will.) Oppenheimer achieves the same end by substituting the whole nation (the one with Right of the commonwealth) for royalty. 

Now I am not claiming that Spinoza must be the source of Oppenheimer's approach. There are, after all, plenty of nineteenth century utopian projects that have similar schemes. But I do think it likely that Oppenheimer was aware the connection. Throughout his System of Sociology he cites and quotes Spinoza's Political Treatise (a work by no means widely read or fashionable).

 

 

On the Polemics against Religious Philosophy in Analytic Philosophy

The views which have been noticed thus far attempt to limit the scope of scientific methods on the basis of considerations that are at least nominally scientific in character. The criticisms of science to which attention must next be directed do not even pretend to adduce scientific grounds for their claims, and are frankly based upon explicit theological and metaphysical commitments for which no experimental evidence is invoked. The chief burden of their complaints is that science offers no ‘'ultimate explanation” for the facts of existence; and their chief recommendation is the cultivation of “ontological wisdom” as the sole method for making “ultimately intelligible” both the order of the cosmos and the nature of the good life.

Some citations from recent writers will exhibit more clearly than would a paraphrase the unique mixture of pontifical dogmatism, oracular wisdom, and condescending obscurantism which seems to be the indispensible [sic] intellectual apparatus of this school of criticism. Ernest Nagel (1943) "Malicious Philosophies of Science" reprinted in Sovereign Reason, 37.

One of the sad spectacles of our age is to see otherwise mild-mannered and virtue-seeking religious philosophers cheer on the at times intemperate polemics of, say, Anscombe, Geach, and Plantinga. To say that it not to deny their philosophical contributions and skill in many contexts. And since I am not a stranger to polemics (and willing to grant I make fewer contributions to philosophy), even ill-tempered ones on the role of religion in philosophy, I am not casting stones that couldn't be thrown harder at me! 

It took me a long time to recognize that the championing of philosopher-brawlers (which is still endemic in wider analytic philosophy despite moves toward niceness), and the not infrequent closing of factional ranks, was itself a reflection of the sense of beleaguered-ness. And the reason I found it so hard to enter into that mind-set is that it seemed so self-evident to me that in the wider culture, Stateside, Christianity was by no means going extinct. But in riper age, I have come to recognize that behind all the aggressive political bluster, Christianity today exhibits all the signs of a world-historical implosion in the wealthier parts of the world. (That's compatible with phenomenal growth of Christianity elsewhere on the Planet.)* If I were Hegelian, I would say that the recent joyous flowering of analytic Christian, metaphysics is a sign of this! 

But I am not Hegelian. One oddity, however, is that if one goes over the classics of analytic philosophy, there is little explicit engagement with the status of theology and the role of religion in philosophy. Even Russell, who clearly was no friend of organized religion, claims, in a surprising moment of candor (not the least for the willingness to admit to an esoteric/exoteric distinction), that were he "speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God." ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas," 1947.)

And while I do not deny that verificationism undoubtedly also had an anti-Christian element to it, it was, as philosophical doctrines go, short-lived. Even so, it may well have reflected a broader climate that was very slow to disappear. One telling data-point for this thought, and to get a sense of that philosophical climate, it is notable that Gödel never published his ontological proof even after safely ensconced at the Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Okay, with that in place, I return (recall) to Nagel's "malicious philosophies of science." (See also, this post on the role of its companion piece, "Recent Philosophies of Science," in the displacement of dialectical materialism.) The role of 'malicious' in the title of the paper, gives a sense of its tenor. 

Nagel's paper itself has many virtues. He shows that many philosophical discussions -- which are still familiar -- about the purported gulf between mind and world; or how to make the qualitative nature of experience compatible with the purportedly mathematical character of modern science; or  the ways in which mechanistic (and/or deterministic) and physicalist science are taken to be incompatible with an orientation toward (emergentist) life or mind, all tend to rest on impoverished conceptions of the nature of science and the practice of experimentation in which much of science is rooted. 

But, it is notable, in the quoted passage above, that Nagel simply assumes that "experimental evidence" is required to ground or justify "explicit theological and metaphysical commitments." And while one can grant Nagel that science itself need not offer "ultimate explanation" for the "facts of existence" -- and, perhaps, in his day wisely does not try to do so [modern cosmology is frequently not so self-limiting] --, it follows straightforwardly from the undeniable possibility that experimental evidence may not settle all philosophical questions.+

The previous paragraph is not to excuse pontifical dogmatism or oracular wisdom. It's Thursday, and I carry my analytic membership proudly today. Nagel goes on to quote a number of eminent neo-Thomists (Gilson, Maritain and, although no neo-Thomists, Whitehead). I have to admit I do not find what they say especially puzzling or obscure. (But you may disagree.) What these positions have in common is a demand for (i) forms of explanation that go beyond efficient causes; (ii) an ultimate ground for existence beyond experience; (iii) and some connection between (i-ii) that conforms to cannons of intelligibility and a PSR.

The more interesting point I wish to make is that when Nagel shows, correctly, that science itself often goes beyond efficient causation, and even offers answers to 'why' questions, he himself notes that these (tentative) scientific answers are not themselves based on direct experiment: "in science the answer to the question "why" is...always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue may be deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced." (SR: 29) And Nagel grants that these initial conditions are going to be arbitrary or brute in some sense on so at odds with (iii). (In addition, the theory may well go beyond the experimental evidence that helped generate and confirm it.)

That Nagel recognizes the significance of (iii) is itself made clear when he insists that the appeal to causa sui is itself "mystery." (SR 30) And while I have some sympathy with Nagel's point -- which echoes, in a curious reversal, Clarke's Newtonian response to Spinoza -- that there is something unsatisfactory, especially to those familiar with science's ability to explain surprising difference makers in the world, about the fact that "no matter what the world were like, no matter what the course of events might be, the same Ultimate Cause is offered an "explanation,"" (SR 30) it is a mistake to charge this 'explanation' with mystery. That something is relatively bad at explaining particulars does not make it oracular or mysterious. 

I do not mean here to re-litigate Nagel's polemics. But it is easier to understand that in an intellectual milieu dominated by ideas like, and presumably influenced by, Nagel's a certain kind of counter-polemic may have been welcome. 

Now, so far I have done little to make the animus behind Nagel's position intelligible. But there is no mystery there. Nagel fundamentally objects to two ideas: first, that "only one conception of spiritual excellence is valid." (SR 33) And Nagel clearly believes, not without reason, that his targets promote such (ahh) spiritual monism. And, second, he rejects the dogmatism about such spiritual monism ground in a kind of intellectual hierarchy. The second point is more implied (but see what he says about Maritain).

For, Nagel the two ideas he rejects have no standing because they are not "based upon objective measures of well-being." (SR 33) And such measures must, according to Nagel be ground in careful experimental practice. To be sure it is in virtue of his commitment to this that he lets the reader grasp that shares with the neo-Thomists a rejection of the utilitarian tendency toward eugenics (SR 32). So, unlike many friends of science and experimental practice, Nagel does not deny that science is implicated in many contemporary problems. But he believes that a kind of anti-scientism, "rejects the one instrument from which a resolution of these difficulties may reasonably be expected." (SR 33)**

Of course, even somebody sympathetic to Nagel, like myself, may note that he has no experimental (or historical/conceptual) ground to suppose there is just "one instrument" that can offer such a resolution. He smuggles a lot into what is 'reasonable' to expect. 

Let me wrap up. So while Nagel's heart is in the right place -- after all in line with (recall) his pluralism, he is defending the diversity of spiritual excellence! --, Nagel's argument goes off the rails because he thinks that the neo-Thomists (and other fellow travelers" unfairly take advantage of the fact that in "“in the midst of actual and impending disaster” and in “period of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no immediate solution for pressing problems” people are to listen to those that disparage or stress the limitations of the sciences. (SR: 18; see also “the mounting economic and political tensions of our age,” further down the page). That is to say Nagel echoes the epicurean and Humean polemic against superstition that it takes advantage of fear. But we don't need to be Yoda, to recognize that countering polemic with polemic is no path to wisdom.

 

 

 

Clarity, Analytic Marxism, and the Purported Sinking of dialectics (by Sidney Hook)

The only alternative to this procedure is to present one's own theory of dialectic....I shall argue that it would be best in the interests of clarity to let the term sink into the desuetude of archaisms; in fact, I shall try to show that this is the legitimate moral that can be drawn from any critical investigation of the assumptions and types of procedure most frequently designated as dialectical in the history of thought...

There are two generic conceptions of dialectic under which the various meanings of dialectic may be subsumed. The first is the conception of dialectic as a pattern of existential change either in nature or society or man where the "or" is not exclusive. The second is the view that dialectic is a special method of analyzing such change. Usually, but not always, it is held that the method of dialectical analysis in some sense "reflects" or "corresponds to" the dialectical pattern of change. In any case, there is always a distinction drawn, though with no great regard for consistency, between the dialectical type of change and other kinds. When the dialectic is identified with change as such, it is explicitly contrasted with some other natural or supernatural element which is regarded as undialectical, e.g., unchanging form or pattern. Similarly, with the conception of dialectic as method. Whether taken as a method of analysis or discovery or both it is always distinguished from other methods called undialectical, i.e., metaphysical, scientific, commonsensical, etc. This last distinction is of the first importance. For the alleged justification of the dialectic method consists in its power to lead us to the discovery of new truths or to a deeper and more adequate understanding of old truths, not accessible to us by any other method-- Sidney Hook (1939) "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry" The Journal of Philosophy 36(14), 365-366.

A while ago (recall), I remarked with sardonic bemusement -- I am a liberal bourgeois intellectual, after all -- that analytic marxism is founded in an original sin, that is, an unearned dismissal of the dialectical method. That behind the brilliant rhetoric (recall) of G.A Cohen, Elster and the whole gang lies an appeal to clarity often linked to the stipulated superiority of the existing methods of social science. And while their embrace of clarity and rigor helped their careers in professional philosophy, and -- (let's stipulate) advanced academic discussion in a number of important scholarly fields -- it is by no means obvious they advanced marxism as a revolutionary doctrine to be feared by folks like me. For, while clarity is undoubtedly an important value that can be embraced by Marxists (see my treatment of Korsch's articulation of dialectics) it does not have, let's say, lexical priority over overthrowing capitalism.

In fact, I took considerable pleasure in pointing out that analytic marxists' dismissal of dialectics was unoriginal. For the rhetoric and whole style of pseudo-argument dismissing dialectics were anticipated by (recall here; and, for broader context, here and more recently here) the very bourgeois liberal philosopher, Ernest Nagel (who plays a non-trivial role in shaping analytic philosophy as such). But I noted that Nagel was, in turn, relying on Hook's efforts; and so it is worth looking at Hook.  

I often joke (with a note of ruefulness) that oblivion is the fate of all philosophers since the hegemony of analytic philosophy. But I was pleased to learn that our institutional collective memory, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has an informative entry on Hook, which treats him as a "leading interpreter and proponent of Deweyan pragmatic naturalism" and "polemicist." Hook was once one of the leading New York intellectuals. And, pertinent for us, Hook became after trying initially to synthesize pragmatism and marxism a leading anti-communists as time passes. (His anti-communism increasingly has a McCarthyite tendency.) A key step in Hook's attempted synthesis and eventual turn against marxism is his rejection of the dialectical method.

Now, if we look at Hook's "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry" all dialectic is dismissed. But strikingly we find only a single explicit mention of Marx's dialectic in a footnote: "I have omitted specific discussion of Marx in this paper because, whether or not we regard his findings as valid, I think it can be shown that he made no distinction between the dialectic method, as he understood it, and scientific method as applied to the historical and cultural sciences." (370) The footnote is more informative than it may seem. 

For, Hook's main strategy is to compare dialectics to ordinary "scientific method" which has a "basic unity" (378), and to find dialectics wanting in comparison to scientific method (371-379). But oddly, when he does so, he takes for granted that the metric/measure of comparison are the cannons of success internal to that scientific method. And to give a flavor of these cannons, among the criteria he identifies are "piece-meal verification" (371) and "predicting as closely as we can the specific form of the institutions of to-morrow" (375). 

Now, I don't mean to remind you constantly I am no Marxist, but even I can see that Hook is rigging the comparison against the dialectician. For Hook presupposes, oddly, that the "alleged justification of the dialectic method consists in its power to lead us to the discovery of new truths or to a deeper and more adequate understanding of old truths." But while undoubtedly dialecticians make such claims, and from my bourgois perspective often exaggeratedly so, this is not what the dialectician, is fundamentally interested in. For she is, I quote, Korsch (recall) committed to articulating "a theory of social revolution." It is plausible that if that is one's aim, one may well find that at times one has deeper understanding of social reality than those with more, say, armchair sensibilities.

Even a bourgeois intellectual like me can discern that in/with the ordinary scientific method as embraced by Hook, revolution is at best an afterthought. The scientific method (which is good at describing and predicting states of affairs) then functions as a kind of input into a different process  (i.e., changing the world). But while nobody denies that in this way science can contribute to enormous social transformations, including many unanticipated ones, this way of conceiving it allows capital to have a more than fair shot at shaping these outcomes.+ People like me would consider that a virtue of Hook's approach! 

By contrast, a key methodological move the dialectician asserts to make revolution really possible,  is "the coincidence of reality and consciousness." This coincidence makes marxist dialectic often seem weird. But as Bertell Ollman shows in Dance of the Dialectic,* the weirdness merely echoes the kind of things one finds in the whole tradition of what he calls the 'philosophy of internal relations' -- with Spinoza as one of the paradigmatic exemplars --  which simply rejects what since Tarski has come to be known as the classical account of truth. And so it is, also, no surprise, again quoting Korsch, this is "bound to appear to [critics of dialectics] as theoretically false and unscientific."

I do not mean to suggest there are no other arguments in Hook. But while all of them land serious blows, none of them take 'conduciveness to the revolution' as a fundamental aim. So, I regret to say we have returned to where started. I ruefully conclude that those purportedly most in the know about marxist dialectics (Hook, the analytic marxists, etc.) have produced refutations that ought not convince the would be revolutionary.** And while I have no standing as a score-keeper on such matters, I report as a psychological fact that it strikes me as a true scandal that these purported refutations are so obviously (to use a technical term) Quatsch. 

 

 

 

Newton, Spinozism, and mind/body interaction

Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person. There are parts that are successive in duration and coexistent in space, but neither of these exist in the person of man or in his thinking principle, and much less in the thinking substance of God. Every man, insofar as he is a thing that has senses, is one and the same man throughout his lifetime in each and every organ of his senses. God is one and the same God always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially, for active power [virtus] cannot subsist without substance. In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him, experiences nothing from the motions of bodies; the bodies feel no resistance from God's omnipresence.---Newton, "General Scholium" Principia, translated by Cohen & Whitman (1999), 941-942

The first three sentences of the quoted paragraph were inserted into the  third (and final) edition of the Principia (while the rest was added to the second edition). They have become subject of intense scholarly scrutiny because of the light they might share on the constraints on any possible explanation of the cause of gravity. So, for example, my good friend Andrew Janiak thinks that in the quoted passage there is a hidden premise that 'a substance cannot act where it is not substantially present' and this reinforces his argument that Newton (always) rejects unmediated action at a distance (Hylarie Kochiras has also argued this; in context my work is one of their targets.) Here I want to bracket that debate (but will return at the very end to it), and reflect a bit on Newton's underlying metaphysics of mind and mind-body interaction.

In context, in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, Newton has just asserted that God is eternal and omnipresent ("will not be never or nowhere," (941)) And in the paragraph following the one just quoted he claims that "the supreme God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere." (942; emphasis in original) That is to say, Newton's God is immanent in the universe. Quite a few more remarks in the General Scholium suggest this.

And, in fact, as 'the same necessity' suggests Newton's God's relationship to space and time is very tight (I would say an internal relation). Rather than creating space and time, by an act of will, they exist when he exists in virtue of the same necessity. How to think of Newton's modal metaphysics here is no simple matter (and I have devoted some space to it recall here; here; here). In an early text, De Gravitatione, Newton had tried to characterize this relationship in terms of an emanation doctrine, and there, too, it signals that space and time are not created (or so I argue here).

It's crucial to Newton's general argument that space and time are not nothing or merely ideal or useful conventions. (In De Gravitatione he makes a point of emphasizing this. In the General Scholium it's treated as self-evident.) And it follows from this that there are structural features of the universe (space and time) that are as infinite and eternal as God is. My interest is in trying to characterize one of the relationships between sentience and this spatial-temporal structure.

Now, a few paragraphs before  Newton had explicitly denied, and he added a second denial to the third edition, that God is a world soul (940). But a natural reading of the quoted passage at the top is that God is sentient with a soul. (I return to this below.) And such ensouled sentience makes a person. But unlike say, in Descartes' metaphysics, Newtonian ensouled sentience can be spread out in space and time. Yet, like a Cartesian soul, such a Newtonian ensouled sentience does not, despite existing in space and time, itself have parts or is even divisible.

As an aside, my own view is that Newton is a substance monist. For Newton, a substance is a directed source of activity, that is an agent.* (Janiak and I agree about this. But we differ on the monism.) And that the only truly active agent in his metaphysics is God. I grant that Newton uses the plural 'substances' (942) in order to deny, in Lockean fashion, that we have knowledge of their essences (and even less of God's essence). But when he uses 'substances' he means it in the more innocent sense of a 'material entity' not an 'agent.' 

Now, an obvious way to make sense of the contours of Newton's position on ensouled sentience in the General Scholium is that he thinks sentience is a kind of emergent property of matter immanent in nature. And so Newton articulates a kind of property dualism.+ This works well for what he says about human persons. 

In fact, Newton returns to the question of ensouled sentience in his fascinating closing paragraph of the General Scholium:

A few things could now be added concerning a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them; by its force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous; and electrical [i.e., electrified] bodies act at greater distances, repelling as well as attracting neighboring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the limbs of animals move at command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this spirit being propagated through the solid fibers of the nerves from the external organs of the senses to the brain and from the brain into the muscles. But these things cannot be explained in a few words; furthermore, there is not a sufficient number of experiments to determine and demonstrate accurately the laws governing the actions of this spirit. (943-944)

As Dempsey has argued, building on I.B. Cohen's interpretation of some draft manuscripts while Newton was developing a response to Leibniz (published in 1715 Account), Newton explicitly refers to experiments done by Hauksbee. Here it looks like Newton is sketching how sentience itself is ground in a powerful, "very subtle spirit" that pervades bodies. In particular, the presence of this spirit helps explain the exciting of sensation in beings like us. Now ''spirit" is a fluid (we use it in that sense when we describe liquor as 'spirits'). And for Newton a kind of (subtle) matter. So, this fits with the emergentism I attribute to Newton. (To be sure, I agree with Stein (2002) and Dempsey that Newton viewed this as a research program because we simply know to little about the nature of mind--so my claim is not meant to be doctrinaire, although Newton is an adamant critic of some positions he rejects.)

In particular, Dempsey calls attention to a passage, "if this spirit may receive impressions from light and convey them into the sensiorium & there act upon that substance which sees & thinks, that substance may mutually act upon this spirit for causing animal motions’" (quoted by Cohen in Newton 1999: 282) I agree with Dempsey that Newton thinks this spirit is a key element in mental causation. But the most natural reading of the passage is, I think, that this subtle spirit is a mechanism by which mental causation takes place. It is not obvious that this spirit also helps constitute or ground the substance which sees and thinks.

Interestingly, Dempsey argues it is likely that Newton is "not here endorsing the independent existence of the mind, but rather is distinguishing it from the organs of sense and the brain. What is more, one straightforward explanation of the natural interaction of this spirit and the mind is precisely that the mind and the spirit with which it interacts are quite similar in nature." (Dempsey 2006: 438) And this fits very nicely with my own emergentist reading. But as I note this very monistic interpretation of Newton's metaphysics of mind is rather speculative.

In fact, I often read Newton in Spinozistic fashion in which God is the one and only substance. (This is, in fact, Clarke's position in 1704, which is what made him a juicy target for Leibniz.) And the universal quantifier in the first sentence of the quoted paragraph, seems to suggest that what Newton says about human minds must fit also God's mind: "Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person." And if this 'every' includes God, this suggest that God is not just immanent nature, but also material (e.g., "motions").

But I have always hesitated about this because in the General Scholium Newton rejects, as I noted above, the idea of God as a world soul and he writes shortly hereafter that God "totally lacks any body and corporeal shape" (942). So, I think it is not obvious that God's sentience is an emergent property of matter. For (a) God's sentience cannot be grounded in such matter, and (b) in various places, Newton seems to suggest that conceptually and temporally God precedes matter. (In the General Scholium that is not explicit, but it is a kind of implication of his claims about the designed nature of the visible universe.)  And so if this is right God's sentience and personhood is not ensouled. But something altogether mysterious.

The passage in which I take him to reject God as the world soul reads as follows:

But, in looking again  He rules all things, not as the world soul but as the lord of all. And because of his dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator. [Newton adds a note: 'that is, universal ruler.'] For "god" is a relative word and has reference to servants, and godhood is the lordship of God, not over his own body fas is supposed by those for whom God is the world soul, but over servants. (940)

Drawing on early work by Dobbs, Rudolf De Smet & Karin Verelst have convincingly argued that here (and in a few other places of the General Scholium) Newton is echoing Lipsius's attack, inspired by Philo, on the old stoic notion  of anima mundi. The effect of this Lipsian reading is that God remains immanent to nature, but is not ground in body. 

In re-reading the passage, it is not obvious to me anymore that Newton rejects conceiving God as the world soul as such. Rather, he is rejecting analyzing God's rule in terms of the world soul because it does not capture the hierarchical nature of God's dominion.

So, it is possible that Newton thinks God's sentience in the pervasive more subtle (electric) fluid/spirit. Even so, given that Newton is explicit that God "totally lacks any body and corporeal shape" (942). it seems unlikely that we're supposed to read Newton as claiming that God's sentience is ground in, and emergent of a, subtle electric (etc.) spirit.++ So, I don't think it is correct to treat God's sentience in terms of emergent properties (in the way, say, Spinoza's parallelism encourages).**  Even though Newton and Spinoza agree that thought is a something like an attribute of substance.

So, where does this leave us? First, rather than seeing Newton as relying on a principle of local action, he is articulating an account of the relationship between sentience and body. For human sentience this is ground in a kind of emergent quality of body, especially a subtle fluid. Second, God is immanent in nature, and features of his existence can be derived from the study of nature. Ordinarily,** bodies are not hindered by his presence, and "he does not act on them nor they on him." In so far as God does interact with the bodies and spirits in nature this is fundamentally mysterious, as mysterious as his substance. In fact, in a passage that echoes a skeptical trope in Locke, Newton really stresses the fact that we really have no epistemic access, not even analogical, to God's sentience.

he is all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all force of sensing, of understanding, and of acting, but in a way not at all human, in a way not at all corporeal, in a way utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the ways in which the most wise God senses and understands all things. (942)

Third, rather than positing a principle of local action, Newton is developing an account of sentience that may be illuminated by experiments on electricity. But leaves us without any resources to make claims about God's agency.

 

 

Beattie on Hume's Imperialism, Christianity, Moderation

I wonder at those men who charge upon Christianity all the evils that superstition, avarice, sensuality, and the love of power, have introduced into the Christian world, and then suppose, that these evils are to be preyented, not by suppressing criminal passions, but by extirpating Christianity, or weakening its influence. In fact, our religion supplies the only effectúał means of suppressing these passions, and so preventing the mischief complained of; and this it will ever be more or less powerful to accomplish, according as its influence over the minds of men is greater or less; and greater or less will its influence be, according as its doctrines are more or less firmly believed: It was not because they were Christians, but because, they were covetous, and cruel, that the first invaders of America, perpetrated those diabolical cruelties in Peru and Mexico, the narrative of which is insupportable to humanity. Had they been Christians in any thing but in name, they would have loved their neighbour as themselves. No man who loves his neighbour as himself, will ever cut his throat, or roast him alive; in order to get at his money.--James Beattie, postscript, 1778 (1770) An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (sixth edition) p. 460

ln his response to Hume's infamous racist footnote, Beattie notes, among other arguments, that "The empires of Peru and Mexico could not have been governed, nor de metropolis of the latter built after so singular matter, in the middle of a lake, without men eminent both for action and speculation." (427) I assume Beattie is here referring to Tenochtitlan the capital of the Aztec empire. In noticing Beattie's use of 'metropolitan,' I wondered whether he was the first to use it in this sense. But it was, according to the OED, not unusual by his time.  Not unlike (recall) Descartes, perhaps, Beattie assumes that great imperial cities, or perhaps empires, grow according to some plan. It is notable that Beattie does not imagine the possibility of an Aztec women facilitating the rise of Tenochtitlan.

As can be seen in the quoted passage above, in the postscript, Beattie returns to the empires of Peru and Mexico. And here he is addressing the great, post-Spinozist debate (recall here) of the eighteenth century whether a polity of atheists is possible. This is, in fact, central to the purposes of his book. Beattie de facto grants that it such a society is possible, but asserts that if so it will engage in inhumanity and "diabolical cruelties." And he treats the conquest of the Americas as an example of this.

There is no sign in his Essay (but perhaps elsewhere) that Beattie thought that the conquest of the Americas is any sense providential, or (as Las Casas hoped) itself an opportunity of spreading the gospel, or (as Adam Smith suggested) an opportunity for mutual gain. It's pretty clear he thinks conquest was a disaster for the locals. As I have noted before, it's not entirely clear that Hume rejects the violent extension of civilization.

Now, Beattie asserts that Christian "religion supplies the only effectúał means of suppressing these passions," (emphasis added) that lead to violent conquest. That claim is compatible with two further facts Beattie acknowledges: (i) that many self-described Christians are not true Christians in this sense; and (ii) that even Christians who do not engage in imperial projects and have sincere faith can become so dogmatic in their Christianity (he offers as an example Valla and Scaliger (p. 451)) such that they become inhumane partisan sectarians and develop what he calls a "persecuting spirit" (p. 125).

So, while genuine adherence to Christian doctrine is necessary to suppress the acquisitive passions it is not sufficient for a humane and pacific temperament. There has to be what we may call a 'principle of moderation' such that true Christianity is possible in those that are sincere doctrinal Christians. And it is pretty clear that Beattie thinks that despite presenting himself as a friend of moderation, Hume's skeptical philosophy undermines this very principle of moderation (p. 448; and p. 125).

Even if we were to grant, and not everybody will, Beattie his criticism of Hume (recall also yesterday's post), Beattie does not seem to explain in the Essay how to cultivate the principle(s) of moderation in would-be-true-Christians beyond getting doctrine right (which he admits is insufficient). This is a shame because it might have benefited the would be reader, even a would-be-humanitarian legislator.