Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas [2]

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DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas PHILIP

P.

WIENER

EDITOR IN CHIEF

VOLUME

II

Despotism

TO

Law, Common

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

.

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DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

DESPOTISM DESPOTISM

of domination. Like other classifications of

despotism

The concept

of despotism

is

perhaps the

least

known

of that family which includes tyranny, autocracy, absolutism, dictatorship (in its modern usage), and totalitarianism. Although nearly contemporary with "tyranny," the concept of despotism has not been as significant in the history of political thought.

theless at

some

times,

and

work

in the

of

some

Neverof the

the concept of des-

greatest political philosophers,

is

some

usually linked to

tion of liberty. This connection

is

its

family,

particular concep-

usually so close that

analysts ought to study together conceptualizations of

freedom and arrangements said to be incompatible it. This has not been the case. Freedom has been

with

much

studied; antithetical conceptions,

little.

This

be due to the assumption, stated by Aristotle

may

in his

study of tyranny, and by Montesquieu in his treatment of despotism, that on such forms there

is

not

much

potism has been sharply distinguished from other

to

members

patible with liberty are represented as simple; those

and has attained an unusual it into one prominence, as of government. of the three fundamental types It was of

its

family,

when Montesquieu made

in the

eighteenth century, and particularly in France,

that despotism supplanted tyranny as the

term most

often used to characterize a system of total domination, as distinguished

by a its

ruler.

from the exceptional abuse of power success of the term led to

The temporary

conflation with tyranny, as in the Declaration of

Independence where in successive sentences, "absolute Despotism" and "absolute Tyranny" are used as synonyms. In 1835 Tocqueville expressed the opinion that after the French Revolution, modern politics and society had taken on a character that rendered both concepts inadequate. Today their usage suggests archaism: controversies over twentieth-century forms of total

be

said.

Those forms of rule considered

that incorporate

by

this

it,

as complex.

The

to be

difficulties

incomcaused

assumption have rarely been explored.

The concept of despotism began as a distinctively European perception of Asian governments and practices: Europeans as such were considered to be free by nature,

Concepts

in contrast to the servile

of despotism

nature of Orientals.

have frequently been linked to arraignments of slavery,

justifications, explanations, or

The enemy may be employed

conquest, and colonial or imperial domination. attribution of despotism to an to mobilize the

members

of a political unit, or those

usually although not invariably, in negative form, of

Thus the Greeks stigmatized the Persians as despotic in much the same way that Christian writers were to treat the Turks. By an irony not always perceived either by the purported champions of liberty against despotism, or by their historians, such arguments often became the rationale, as in Aristotle, for the domination by those with a tradition of liberty over those others who had never enjoyed that happy condition. That chain of ideas is easily visible in Algernon Sidney, as well as in not a few other republican

an author's

expansionists.

domination have centered on the concepts of dictatorship and totalitarianism.

Despotism

is

a concept that has been used to de-

and compare polities, as a weapon in both domestic and international politics, and as an expression,

scribe

political preferences.

Because of the use

of a regional area.

The treatment

be broken down into

which it has been put as a category for sorting out and classifying the salient characteristics of one among

seven parts:

the forms of government, despotism belongs to the

natural slavery as the basis of absolute rule by an

to

terminology of comparative politics and historical

so-

ciology, or at least to their history. But rarely has

it

(1)

that follows will

the Greek theory, which represents

Oriental monarch regarded as legitimate by his subjects; (2) the

medieval treatment of despotism as one

been deployed for purely untendentious analysis. A very few authors such as Hobbes have assigned positive

variety of kingship, as distinguished from the royal and

connotations to the term; some others such as Bodin,

ism has been a label applied, not only in a polemical

and seventeenth centuries, when beginning with Bodin, despotism was defined as that form of rule which comes into being as the result of the victor's rights over the conquered in a just war, including the right to enslave him and to

but with a set of practical purposes in view:

confiscate his property, or as the result of the con-

Grotius,

and Pufendorf have treated despotism

as a

legitimate relationship on the basis of legal precedents

they did not care to repudiate. But most often despotspirit,

to identify

and

discredit arrangements antithetical to

the tyrannical variants of that form;

(3)

the

new

setting

of the theory in the sixteenth

quered party's consent

to

be enslaved

in return for

those seventeenth- and

or incompatible with those regarded by the analyst as

being spared by the victor;

making

eighteenth-century writers, for the most part French,

for political freedom. In

France during the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the aristocratic opposition to the crown

made

use of the concept of

its own model of the French monarchy's constitution and the purported violation of it by those who sought an Oriental mode

despotism to distinguish between

who although

(4)

they began by identifying despotism with

absolute Oriental regimes, nevertheless transformed the concept into one that

may be

applied to total

domination anywhere, and indeed according to them, accurately characterized the degree of centralization

1

DESPOTISM

contrast to tyranny, reigns of long duration and stable

eenth-century extensions and critiques of Montesquieu; (7) subsequent developments in the use of the term

government characterize despotism. Nor are foreign troops needed to put down the opposition of the ruled

by Robespierre and St. Just; Madame de Stael and Benjamin Constant; Hegel and Marx; and, finally, Tocqueville, with his vision of the possibility of a

new form

assertion of his arbitrary will.

the problem of succession that confront tyrannies. In

(Politics III.

On

1285a).

ix.

the other hand, there

of despotism latent

is

a powerful indictment

in the link

Aristotle established

demo-

be inevitable.

between it and tyranny. If the power wielded by Asian monarchs was royal, it was also tyrannical: it partook

historv of the concept of despotism begins

of the nature of royalty because despots ruled in

with the Greeks. The root meanings of the term

accordance with law and over willing subjects; but such power also partook "of the nature of tyranny because

qualitatively

of despotism

cratic society he held to 1.

The

despotes (6f07roT7)s) were those of

(1)

in

the

the head of a

family, or pere de famille; (2) the master of slaves. (3)

As a

political term,

despotism was extended to cover

which the power

monarch

own

they ruled despotically and according to their

judgment"

(Politics IV. viii. 1295a). Aristotle, further,

over his subjects, although indistinguishable from that

employs the word despotikos whenever he depicts the vitiated stage of each of the three forms of government

exercised by a master (despotes) over slaves, never-

(Politics III. viii.

was considered by the ruled as sanctified by custom, and hence legitimate. As Aristotle wrote, "The

Aristotle established another sinister similarity

a type of kingship, in

of the

theless

authority of the statesman (politikos)

men who

are

(despotes) over I.

by nature

is

exercised over

1279b; IV.

1292a; V.

iv.

1306b).

vi.

between

despotism and tyranny when discussing the devices

Although associated

requisite for their preservation.

master

with the tyrant, Periander of Corinth, Aristotle added,

are by nature slave" (Politics and despotism were said to rest

such means were also practices of the Persian empire

free;

that

of the

men who

1255b). Both slavery

(Politics V.

ix.

upon the same distinctive type of human relationship, and this was inappropriate to a community of free men.

rule in the

From

at the rulers'

the time of the Persian Wars, the Greeks con-

1313a).

Despotism, although rule according to law,

common

is

not

interest. All constitutions that

aim

advantage "have an element of despotism,

sidered despotism to be a set of arrangements charac-

whereas a

polis

non-Hellenic or barbarian peoples thought

III. iv. 7),

held together by the

teristic of

by nature, a form of kingship practiced by Asians, and the most notable example of which was to be found in the Persian Achaemenid Empire (559-330 b.c). At the time of the Persian wars, most mainland Greeks were repelled by the Oriental notion to be slaves

embodying divine

justice.

in

men"

a partnership of free

is

But these cannot

common between

exist

ruler

when

and

(Politics

of friendship and

ties

there

ruled, as

nothing

is

the case

is

under both tyranny and despotism, where the relationship is equivalent to that "between a craftsman and his tool, or

between the

soul

and the body

between

[or

there can be no

and hence absolute. As for themselves, they thought, as Herodotus reported, that they were free because subject only to

friendship, nor justice towards inanimate things, indeed

the laws of their respective city-states, rather than to

as a slave.

of a sun-king,

any Asian

ruler,

before

themselves. Free

edge

is

law,

his subjects prostrated

homage to they may acknowl-

not render such

earthly despotes

the law to which they have consented. Thus

the term received

came

whom

men do

The only

mortals.

2

Nor do despotisms have

and monopolization of power achieved under Louis XIV; (5) Montesquieu's formulation of despotism as one of the three basic types of government; (6) the eight-

its

still

another extension and this be-

fourth sense, and

was

so used

by Herodotus,

Xenophon, and Plato. Of all the Greek political writers, Aristotle wrote with the most detail, was the most concerned to compare and contrast despotism with tyranny, and was the most influential. On the one hand, Asiatic despotism is based, Aristotle asserts, not on force, but on consent. Hence fear cannot be said to be its motive force. Despotism is a form of constitutional monarchy, based on the observance by the king of existing law, rather than the mere

master (despotes) and slave]:

.

.

.

not even towards a horse or ox, nor yet towards a slave

mon; a

For master and slave have nothing

slave

is

inanimate slave" (Nicomachean Ethics VIII.

Thus

in Aristotle, the institution of slavery

to the political

of the

human

form of despotism, and

Among

an

xi).

is

related

this in

terms

Here between Greek and

the Greeks, there

is

a free class

and ruling and being ruled turn; among the barbarians, all are slaves by nature.

capable of holding in

comis

relationships characteristic of both.

Aristotle specifically distinguished

barbarian.

in

a living tool, just as a tool

Aristotle goes first,

office

on to draw two

that contrary to nature,

significant conclusions:

among

the female and slave occupy the

the barbarians,

same

position (the

reason being that no naturally ruling element exists

among them, and the conjugal union thus comes to be a union of a female who is a slave with a male

who

is

also a slave); second, that

it

follows that the

DESPOTISM Greeks

who

possess such a free class ought to rule over

the barbarians. Aristotle here cites the poet

who

wrote,

"Meet it is that barbarous people should be governed by the Greeks" (Politics I. i. 1252b). Another difference Aristotle claimed to have established was that based on climates. The peoples of cold countries, especially those of Europe, are full of spirit,

but deficient in

skill

and

intelligence; the peoples of

endowed with

skill and intelligence, are and hence are subjects and slaves. Possessing both spirit and intelligence the Greeks can continue to be free and indeed to govern other peoples (Politics VII. vi. 327b). It has thus seemed plausible

Asia, although

deficient in spirit,

to

many commentators that Aristotle in his lost "On Colonies" did indeed recommend

2.

and the barbarians as master ed. and trans. Ernest Barker, New

p. lix).

In the late Middle Ages, the concept of despotism

cept of despotism despite the differences separating

own

political, legal, social,

and

religious arrange-

ments from those of the Greek polis. Why did Charles V of France (1337-80) go to the trouble of commissioning a translation into Old French of Aristotle's Politics by Nicole Oresme, a great savant and scientist?

What

in the

William of

concept of despotism seemed useful to

Ockham and

struggle against the Avignon Papacy. His

V

argument

who from resembled those of Ockham and Empire, Roman their refuge at the court of the Holy used the concept of despotism in their effort to

dis-

power (plenitudo claimed by the papacy in all matters spiritual and temporal. Oresme was a Gallican and a proponent of the conciliar view of church government; he was accused by papal inquisition of having been the French translator of the Defensor Pads. Aristotle was also used to strengthen the position of secular kings and the Holy the

complete

potestatis)

Roman Emperor, who wished to be regarded a proprietor among proprietors, but as a unique

common

in the

royal monarchy; subjects enjoy natural

lib-

two variants: (1) the ruler has full power and is not bound by positive human laws or customs, although he is subject to natural law; (2) one man rules in the common interest, but is bound by laws and customs that he swears to maintain. The two other types of kingship, the despotic and tyrannical, are both denned by Ockham as rule in the interest of the monerty. It has

arch alone. Despotic kingship

who

are slaves, and

who

exercised over

is

consent;

must be

it

not as public

power which had been ordained for the welfare of the entire community. No other medieval writer made greater or more precise use of the concept of despotism than did William of Ockham, who did so both in his theory of kingship, and his delimitation of papal power. All

if

in

men

distin-

accordance with the law he begins

own good

to rule his subjects against their will for his .

.

.

;

but

for his

if

own

he begins to rule them with their consent good, he becomes, properly speaking, a Tract

Book 2, Ch. 6, trans. London [1954],

despot" (Dialogus, Part

3,

Ewart Lewis, Medieval

Political Ideas,

1,

301-02). At issue in Ockham's classification are the

I,

rights,

personal and property, of kings and subjects in

each of the three forms.

Ockham

used the concept of despotism to

also

delimit the powers of the papacy. Christ did not give

unlimited power to Peter. Otherwise

men would

all

have been made into slaves of the Pope, who has "no

power

to abolish or disturb the rights

and

liberties of

others, especially those of emperors, kings, princes, or

other laymen."

The papal

principate was established

only for the salvation of believers, not for the Pope's

honor or advantage. His

rule,

properly understood,

is

not "dominative or despotic, but ministerial," .

in his

Marsilius,

credit

is

into

interest, the other,

Kingship

in the ruler's interest only.

interest

Marsilius of Padua?

Nicole Oresme was associated with Charles

common

a tyrant ...

was revived as the result of the translation of Aristotle's Politics by William of Moerbeke, who rendered those words that derived from despotes as principatus despoticus, monorchia despotica, despotice principari, despoticum, and despotizare. Some medieval writers sought to understand and make use of Aristotle's contheir

one ruled

guished from tyrannical kingship: "a bad king becomes

leader (hegemon)

(despotes) (Politics,

in the

types,

to his

student, Alexander the Great, that he rule the Greeks

York [1946],

and prelacies may be divided

two

exhor-

tation

as

polities, principates,

.

.

the kind of principate one has over slaves;

.

.

.

Christ

did not give to the apostles, but a ministerial principate .

.

.

over free men, and which

in dignity

not so great in extent of power

men

over

is

imperatorum Lewis,

II,

much

is

nobler and greater

than a dominative principate even though .

.

.

it

is

even as a principate

nobler than a principate over beasts (De et

pontificum potestate, Ch.

VII,

trans.

E.

609).

Marsilius of

Padua used the concept of despotism

phrased somewhat differently, both to establish the positive principles that ought to prevail in the of a state

makeup

and to attack the Pope:

... for since the state

is

a

community

of free

men,

as

is

written in the Politics .... every citizen must be free, and not undergo another's despotism (despociam), that

dominion (Defensor Pads,

trans.

Gewirth.

I,

xn,

is

slavish

6, p. 47).

Because of excessive obedience on the part of Chris-

and the falsehoods put together by certain clerics, Pope now exerted an unjust despotism over Chris-

tians

the tian

believers

(.

.

.

suam injustam despociam

in-

3

DESPOTISM duxerunt super Christi

....

ibid,

II.

1

1.

fideles

sua simplicate credentes

Marsilius had found in Aristotle this

term associated with slavish barbarians. Addressing free men in his own part of the world, Marsilius found the

concept of despotism advantageous tutions

and practices of European

in attacking insti-

Like Ockham,

origin.

he did not follow Aristotle's practice of restricting despotism to exotic practices, while applying to abuses at

home 3.

the

name

of tyranny.

In the sixteenth century Jean Bodin redefined the

way

theorv of despotism in a

theme

made

that

it

a central

in the discussions of sovereignty, slavery,

and

by Grotius, Pufendorf, Filmer, Hobbes. Locke, and Rousseau. Yet Bodin did not himself employ

conquest

Latin equivalents for despotes [despotia,

either the

principatus

Moerbeke

despoticus)

introduced

by

William

of

French {princey despotique, despotic, despotes) coined by Nicole Oresme. One demonstration of the progress made by early or those in

Renaissance humanists was the retranslation from the

Greek into Latin of Aristotle's Politics by the Florentine, Leonardo Bruni, early in the fifteenth century. Leonardo Bruni replaced Moerbeke's equivalents by Latin words connected for the most part with dominus and dominatio. Although Leonardo Brum's rejection of words based upon despotes prevailed, later scholars substituted for terms based on dominus those Latin words ems and erilis (hems, herilis) which referred to a master of slaves and his relationship tu them. Jean Bodin adopted the term seigneur as the equivalent of despotes for one of his three varieties of government in the French version of the Six litres de la Republique (1576); while in his Latin version (1586) he used

be understood

of despotic in

government

in

Bodin must

terms of three aspects of his political

thought: his theory of sovereignty, his distinction be-

tween the forms of

states or

commonwealths and the

forms of governments; and the relationship he asserted

between the forms of states and climate. "Sovereignty is that absolute and perpetual power vested ." In the case of a monarchy, in a commonwealth.

to exist

.

.

although the ruler of a commonwealth (republique, res publico)

is

to divine

above human, positive law, he is subject and natural law. But is not monarchy so

was

justified

by reference

war

in a just

found

first

Roman

in the

slavery and appropriation of property

—a

was responsible

to the rights of

momentous

conquerors

step that in large part

shown

for the interest

in

despotism by

Grotius, Pufendorf, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. thus gave a

new

He

turn to the ancient connection be-

tween despotism, slavery, and the rights of conquest. Furthermore. Bodin by identifying the Turkish Empire with Oriental despotism implanted the notion that under this form of government private and property rights were unknown, and that the despot was the legal owner of all individuals and goods which he could treat as he liked. This view, later adopted by Montesquieu, was to be challenged as a matter of fact in the great eighteenth-century debate about the validity of the

concept of despotism. Bodin made the place

monarchy

despotic

within

a

first

attempt to

chronological

scheme (a step to be repeated with individual variations by Boulanger, Constant, Hegel, and Marx). Bodin considered despotic monarchy to have been the first form of government known to men. To Aristotle's view that the first kings were elected, Bodin opposed the theory stated in the canon law that lordship began with Nimrod. and originated in human iniquity. Bodin, like Aristotle, believed that "the peoples of Europe are prouder and more belligerent than inhabitants of Asia and Africa." Bodin followed Aristotle

come

quickly

in his belief that "tyrannies

to ruin, but

.

.

.

despotic states and

monarchies have proved both great and enduring." But Bodin passed over Aristotle's emphasis despotic

upon the

tacit

consent of subjects and the consequent

Nor was Bodin's

lack of interest in consent accidental. His

was calculated

own

theory

undermine theories that derived the legitimacy of rule from the consent of the governed, a doctrine the implications of which of sovereignty

to

had been made clear in his own time by the Monarchomachs. Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf knew and sigused the concept of despotism both as

nificantly

formulated by classical writers, and as rephrased by Bodin. In his

designated

De

pads by the word

iure belli ac

despotism

(1625), Grotius herilis,

as

De

in

defined identical with despotic rule? Bodin found his

imperium

answer

which was rendered as despotique by Jean Barbeyrac, who by his annotated translations and commentaries made Grotius and Pufendorf into authors familiar to every French reader concerned with political thought. Of these, perhaps the most attentive to these two authors and critical of them was Rousseau, whose Contrat social may be

in the

distinction he

second of

his innovations,

drew between forms

of state

the sharp

and forms

of government. In his treatment of monarchy, for in-

Bodin both distinguished the three forms of government and made it clear that despotical rule stance,

4

Law by which

legitimacy of despotism for Asians.

dominatus.

The theory

term to designate a theory

could occur in aristocratic or popular states. Bodin introduced several departures in the theory of despotism. Principal among them was his use of the

naturae is

herile;

et

called

gentium

De

as

did Pufendorf, in his

libri

potestate

octo (1673), a chapter of

herili.

Herilis

iure

DESPOTISM understood as a response, M. Derathe Pufendorf's brief and abstract digest, also translated

et civis (1673),

to

us,

tells

De officio hominis

by Barbeyrac. Argu-

ments, sometimes defining, sometimes justifying des-

it. For the lifelong obligation to work is repaid by the lifelong certainty of support, which is often lacking to those who work for hire by the day" (De

about

iure, II, v, xxv).

potic rule figure prominently in discussions by Grotius

Grotius

as

certified

any

legitimate

enslavement

and Pufendorf of slavery, conquest, and sovereignty. Through them, the concept of despotism was made into

consented to freely by a naturally servile people, or

theme central to political writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Grotius provided the justification for slavery used by Bossuet and was carefully considered by Robert Filmer and Hobbes. Locke owned almost all of Pufendorf's works and corresponded with Barbeyrac; Peter Laslett has suggested that Locke's concern with Hobbes probably stemmed

Although identifying Orientals as naturally servile, Grotius did not confine despotism to them. His second

a

from Pufendorf's critique of Hobbes. Although representing himself as the founder of a natural and international law based upon the nature of

man and

of reason, Grotius in practice subordinated

maxims of the civil law, to historiwhich he regarded as of equal relativism was prominent in his

questions of right to

sacrifice its liberty for other advantages.

one willing to

form of despotic rule based on the rights of conquerors was from one point of view, a theory of consent, but one which recognized as valid obligations those promises

made because

of threat to

life

took the same position, but based

or security.

Hobbes

unequivocally on

it

consent.

Pufendorf attempted to

justify slavery

and despotic

on the basis of consent. The absolute power of a conqueror over the defeated, of master over slaves, rule simply

or of a sovereign over his subjects are equally legiti-

based upon pacts of submission. Pufendorf

cal precedents, all of

mate

value. This juristic

stated that "although the consent of the subjects

and slavery.

justifications of despotic rule

be rightfully enslaved nature

in a just

in

In the

first

(1) by the law of exchange its liberty for by the law of nations, con-

voluntarily because

life

to the defeated

for their perpetual enslavement.

may

people

case, a

onstrated, slaves

(2)

war may grant

exchange

people

may

two ways:

in

subsistence or security;

querors

people

free to decide to

is

it

A

its

members

up

give

liberty

its

are, as Aristotle

dem-

by nature. Grotius carefully assembled

the classical texts ascribing a servile nature to

all

Orientals,

which

to

Hebrew

added

he

kingship

(imitated from such neighbors as the Persians, which

may

explain divine opposition to Israel taking a king).

Grotius, just

when

treating the rights of conquerors in a

war, takes a position that reduces Bodin's category

of despotical

government

comes.

A conqueror may

purely

civil,

to

one of three possible out-

reduce

men

to a subjection

purely personal (despotic), or mixed.

people defeated in a

just

war may be treated

in

A

any

ways and remain a state, or may lose that status, and become the property of a master who treats his subjects as slaves, whose interest he may rightfully subordinate to his own. Such rule is characteristic of of these

despotism, not civil authority (Grotius:

quod herilis

est imperii

ce qui, selon Aristote, est

le

among non

free

civilis;

peoples

Grotius refused to

condemn

ties.

"If this

form of subjection ...

limits of Nature, there

is

is

.

.

sometimes a people

is

required by the

victor."

He added

so gained

is

of the ruler

that the

war must be

just.

A kingdom

held as a patrimony, which by the caprice

may be

divided, alienated, or transferred

anyone he pleases, for by arms, he has gained a people of his own. These prerogatives do not belong to kings who have been chosen by the will of the to

people (De

officio, II, ix).

Pufendorf was so confident about

his

argument

justi-

fying despotic rule on the basis of consent that he rejected the Aristotelian case for natural slavery.

Men

by nature, Pufendorf asserted, enjoy equal liberty. If this is to be curtailed, their consent must be secured, whether that consent be express, tacit, or interpretative, or else they must have done something whereby others have secured the right to deprive them of their equality (De iure,

III,

n, 8).

Because of the political struggles waged

in early

seventeenth-century England, Bodin's theory of sovereignty was of great interest, and was translated by

Richard Knolles

in

French and Latin

1606 from a conflation of the texts of the Republic.

Monarchic

monarchy," as distinguished from the "royall" and "tirannical" varieties. But Hobbes restored the original Greek form and gave it a prominent place in his system

all its

forms,

consists of serving

a master in return for being provided with

.

violence of war to consent to the authority of the

du

Gouvemement

slavery in

which

authority,

seigneurale and dominatus were rendered as "lordly

Civil).

defining complete servitude,

is

required for the establishment of any kind of legitimate

Barbeyrac:

caractere distinctif

Pouvoir Despotique par opposition au

if

all

necessi-

kept within the

nothing excessively severe

at a

time when other writers and

his

audience regarded

Locke found that by distinguishing "paternal, political, and despotical power," the term as pejorative;

he could strike directly

and

at his principal target, Filmer,

indirectly at Hobbes.

By the end of the century

5

DESPOTISM Locke had succeeded in restoring its pejorative sense word despot and its derivatives. Hobbes in part followed Bodin's treatment of despotical government, and in part diverged from it in ways that clearly show the thrust of his own thought. From Bodin, Hobbes derived the theory of a type of government that originated in the submission of the conquered to the conqueror and thus legitimately held

to the

sovereignty or absolute power.

And although Bodin

did

give Oriental examples of this form, he did not limit

by mutual agreement; and bodies politic patrimonial and despotic because of fear of an invader, to whom they subject themselves. In Hobbes's preface to his

De

Latin treatise,

between

he repeated the distinction

cive,

states originating in

dominium patemum

et

despoticum, which he called naturale, and another type of dominium established by institution, called politicum

created by

Chapter 20 of the second part of

artifice.

Hobbes

Leviathan, "Of Dominion Paternal, and Despotical,"

followed him in this as well. But Bodin had restricted

treats commonwealth by acquisition, as distinguished from commonwealth by institution, the subject of the previous chapter. In both types, men choose their sovereign out of fear and consent to obey him uncon-

it

to

any one form of

state, or to Orientals.

legitimacy to those conquerors only

who had

partici-

pated in a just war, and placed no emphasis whatever on the consent of the conquered to serve as slaves in return for their lives being spared. Hobbes, on the contrary, omitted any mention of the just war, which figured in

the formulations of Bodin,

Pufendorf.

And Hobbes

in

Grotius,

and

chose as the binding element

dominion, not victory and the rights

it

confers, but

Within servos):

despotism.

Hobbes treated despotic government

this

acquisition,

they cede sovereignty; in

institution, the subjects fear

one

scheme, Hobbes defined despotical do-

the

(in

Latin

version;

dominium

herile

in

Dominion acquired by conquest, or victory is that which some writers call despotical, from ^eoTrorqs which signifieth a lord or master; and is the dominion of the master over the servant. ... right of

It is

not

.

.

.

the victory that giveth the

dominion over the vanquished, but

in

his

own

cove-

The Ele-

Hobbes created a greater gap than had thus far between the Greek and medieval concepts of despotism, and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century existed

and types of government. Already in the Elements Hobbes was concerned to discredit Aristotle's distinc-

formulation of

between good and vitiated governments: "that there is one government for the good of him who governeth, and another for the good of them that be governed, whereof the former is despotical (that is lordly), the other a government of freemen." When Hobbes insisted that there are but three types of commonwealth, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, depending upon how many held sovereignty, he did not deviate from Bodin (Part II, Ch. 5, no. 1). But in rejecting the types of government, Hobbes was clearly breaking down whatever elements of censure could be derived even from Bodin, whose view of tyrannical government involved a condemnation of it. Hobbes could brook not even this: ". the name of tyranny

gation. In his

tion

.

nothing more, nor

less,

.

than the

name

of sov-

one or many men, saving that they that use the former word, are understood to be angry with them they call tyrants" (Leviathan, ed. Michael ereignty, be

whom

nant.

ments of Law (first version, 1640), in De cive (1642), and in the Leviathan (1651), but he did not adopt Bodin's distinction between types of commonwealth

signifies

commonwealth by

a

another.

from fear does not distinguish it, in Hobbes's view, from the origin of any other type of government. A man becomes subject to another from the fear of not preserving himself. Hobbes's formulation may explain why Montesquieu later chose to designate fear as the principle or operative passion of

in

him to a commonwealth by subjects fear

minion

derives

But

ditionally.

covenant, the consent of the defeated. That such consent

O

form of union whereby many because they fear one another cede sovereignty to an individual or council

it

in

Oakeshott, Oxford [1947], p. 463). Beginning with the Elements, Hobbes distinguished

between commonwealths created by

institution, that

thereby was

it.

made

Total submission derived from fear into the sole basis of political obli-

"Review and Conclusion"

Hobbes made

to Leviathan,

clear the importance he attributed to

despotical dominion:

whoever conquered and could

provide peace and union ought to be obeyed. Locke's concept of despotical power was deployed against his principal target, Filmer,

and only secon-

darily against Hobbes. At the beginning of his second Treatise

(Two

Treatises of

Government, 1690), Locke

urges the necessity of distinguishing political power,

properly so-called, the "power of a Magistrate over a Subject

.

.

.

from that of a Father over

a Master over his Servant, a

his children,

Husband over

his

Wife,

and a Lord over his Slave. After defining political power, and considering it apart from other types of power, Locke in Chapter

XV

returned to

".

.

.

Pater-

and Despotical Power, considered together." Paternal power was dismissed by Locke, as a temporary power exerted by parents over children during the time when they were not yet capable of nal, Political,

living as freemen. In order to contrast political with

despotical power,

Locke recapitulated:

DESPOTISM Power

Political

and therein

Society,

hath set over it

shall

that

is

Power which every Man, having

Nature, has given up into the hands of the

in the state of

itself,

to the Gouvernors,

with

be employed

whom

the Society

this express or tacit Trust,

for their

That

good, and the preservation

of their Property.

on the

The Fundamental

other.

lute

power and authority over

political

power, which must originate from com-

and mutual consent, cannot be an power over the lives and fortunes of those who comprise a society. By contrast to political power, despotical power is defined by Locke as a condition in which not property exerted by Lords in an absolute

as are stripped of all

their

own

benefit over such

property because they have

for-

rights by being aggressors in an unjust war.

feited all

Locke thus contradicts

in a

number

of

ways Hobbes's

assertion that despotical dominion does not differ qual-

from any other legitimate form. For Locke defines despotical power as "an Absolute, Arbitrary itatively

Power one Man has over another to take away his Life, whenever he pleases." This is aimed against Hobbes's interpretation of despotical power as involving on the conqueror's side, the renunciation of his right to

kill

power covenant, which alone

the defeated. But Locke denies that despotical

can be created as the result of a can make

it

equivalent with other forms of legitimate

rule (Locke's

Two

Treatises

of Government, ed. Peter

Laslett, Cambridge [1963], para. 172). Locke rejected the notion that men could be

rightly

enslaved merely as the result of conquest. His feelings ran strongest

when considering own country:

a doctrine to his

the application of such

"Slavery

is

so vile

and

miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous that

'tis

much

Temper and Courage

of our Nation;

hardly to be conceived that an Englishman,

a Gentleman should plead for 't." These words begin the first Treatise, and are aimed at Filmer. Because both Treatises were occasional pieces, they did not take up the full range of questions treated by Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf. Locke has but one brief chapter on slavery. Anticipating his subsequent treatment of despotical power, Locke concluded that freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so joined to self-preservation that "a man, not having the power of his own Life, cannot, by Compact, or his own con." (para. 23). But sent, enslave himself to any one there appears to be an inconsistency between both his indignant rejection of the notion that Englishmen could ever be rightfully enslaved, and his careful circumscription of the rights of victory in a just war, on the one side; and his practice as an administrator concerned with slave-owning colonies in North America less

.

.

Governor

and sold in Africa were guilty and that those Europeans engaged in the slave trade were carrying on a just war. But when of such acts,

is

to

by some act that deserved death.

that all slaves captured

and arbitrary fashion for

negro slaves." In

This would imply Locke's commitment to the belief

absolute, arbitrary

Despotical power

of

Nicholson of Virginia. These treat slaves as rightly so because they were captives in a just war, who had

pact, agreement,

but persons only are at the Master's complete disposal.

his

1698 Locke helped draft the Instructions

forfeited their lives

Thus

Constitutions

Carolina provide that every freeman "shall have abso-

arguing against Filmer about the rights of Englishmen,

Locke was quite capable of seeing that a title gained by "Bargain and Money," rests not on natural law, but on quite another basis. As Polin has remarked, Locke's theory should logically have led him to a categorical condemnation of slavery. Given the actual practice of the slave trade, it was indefensible for Locke to justify Negro slavery in North America as meeting his criterion of personal punishment for aggression in an unjust war. Nor did any of Locke's arguments justify ownership by men who had simply paid money for slaves who had never

damaged them, nor perpetual enslavement of the children of slaves. The contrast between Locke's sensitivity freedom of Englishmen and

to the

his sophistries

about

Africans recalls the comparable attitude of Aristotle

Greeks and barbarians. Algernon Sidney, wrote to refute Filmer, was overtly con-

in relation to

who

also

temptuous of Asians and Africans, and argued that the superiority of a free people can be demonstrated from its capacity to conquer those who are naturally unfree. 4. It was in the seventeenth century that French writers

began

to

show some

interest in

both the cluster

of concepts associated with despotic government and

Greek form of the word instead of accepting Loys Le Boy and Bodin 's use of the word seigneurale as the French equivalent. New political circumstances, in the

both at home and abroad contributed to the

shift to-

wards revival of terms connected with despotique, one of the 450 neologisms successfully introduced into French by Nicole Oresme in his translations of Aristotle. Within France domestic resistance to the Crown by aristocrats and Huguenots, categories by no

means mutually exclusive, coincided with the identification of the Ottoman Empire as the seat of Oriental despotism. During the Fronde, the type of royal power exercised by the Sultan was called despotique, and distinguished from that recognized by French constitutional usage: "Not all monarchies are despotiques; only

the

Turkish

philosophes

.

.

.

is

of

that

kind" (Derathe, "Les

," p. 61).

After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Huguenots in Holland and England began to use the term despotique for the polemical purpose of compar-

7

DESPOTISM ing the absolutism of Louis

Grand

Seigneur. In the

Les soupirs de

XIV

to that of the Turkish

author

Saint-Simon, and Henri de Boulainvilliers. During the

its

noted with satisfaction the Glorious Revolution England, and hoped that in

this

France of I'amour pour

would spur the

la patrie.

in

rebirth

This phrase was

used in virtually the same sense in La Bruyere's Les caracteres, where it is contrasted with le despotique: II

n'y a point de patrie dans le despotique, d'autre

choses y supplement:

la gloire, le service du between Anglophile Huguenot and the aristocratic opposition

I'interet,

Regency Montesquieu was the

Abbe

to

meet Boulainvilliers and

Saint-Pierre. In contrast to his opponent,

Bossuet, Fenelon espoused the rights of the feudal aristocracy, tilism,

denounced royal

and constant resort

speaks of the state and

centralization, mercan-

to war. In France,

no one

but only of the king and his pleasure. In Telemaque, Fenelon has Mentor its

rules,

prince. This conjunction

preach that absolute power creates not subjects, but

on the one side to Louis XIV on the other, culminated in Montesquieu's use of the term le despotisme to characterize a distinctive type of government, incompatible with monarchy,

slaves.

exiles

whether of the type victorious

and parliamentary

tolerant, limited, in

England, or with that

known

to the

ancient French constitution as interpreted by nobles, parlements, and corporations hostile to royal centralization.

The author

of the Soupirs declared that the King

had replaced the

state,

that the

Church, the parle-

ments, the nobility, and the cities were

all

oppressed

by an arbitrary power just as despotic as that of the Grand Seigneur. This puissance despotique was contrary to reason, humanity, the spirit of Christianity

The despotic

itself.

spirit

was manifest

in the revoca-

tion of the Edict of Nantes, in royal distribution of offices

by appointment to new men, in its management and its constant resort to war. The author

of finances,

drew conclusions of great significance, although they were to be generally acknowledged only after the publication of

De

I

'esprit

des his (1748): a tyrannical

government, he argued, was

less

dangerous than one

was despotic. For a tyranny

that

is

limited to the

individual deviation of a ruler, but a despotic govern-

ment but

is

a system, once found only

now becoming

among

their property

Orientals,

established in France. Its subjects

are "in a condition of servitude, they

and their

own

nothing,

up in the air, depending upon the caprice of a single man." The step from le despotique to le despotisme was taken by Pierre Bayle and Fenelon. Bayle, who opposed the calls to action of his archenemy, Pierre Jurieu, and of the author of the Soupirs, argued lives,

are always

against the notion that a sharp distinction separated

Sovereigns

ultimately ruin le

it.

who

take sole possession of the state

Elsewhere Fenelon denounced both

despotisme of sovereigns and that of the people.

Wisdom

in government consists in finding a mean between these two extremes, that is, in une liberie moderee par la seule autorite des his. When le despotisme is at its height, it acts more speedily and effectively than any gouvemement modere; when exhausted and bankrupt, no one will come to its defense. In 1712 Saint-Simon compared the unprecedented authority exercised by Louis XIV with that of Oriental rulers, a comparison further accentuated by reference to his isolation by his ministers from the public. This image of Louis XIV as the Grand Seigneur or other Oriental despot was completed by the Abbe Saint-Pierre in his Polysynodie (1718), where he described the visirat, the delegation of power to a minister by an absolute ruler, or the alternative demi-visirat, where the ruler shares authority with two or more ministers, "much as did Louis XIV with Colbert and Louvois," as Rousseau wrote in his extract. 5. By choosing despotism as one of the three basic types of government, Montesquieu made the term into one of the central issues in eighteenth-century political thought. In part this was due to the fact that Montes-

quieu's views served the purposes of important groups

with important

garded

as

interests;

De

I'esprit

des his was re-

the statement of the most distinguished

The

thinker associated with the these nobiliare.

formed reader could not miss the

affinities

in-

between

Montesquieu, Fenelon, Saint-Simon, Boulainvilliers,

and the Abbe Saint-Pierre; not to mention spokesmen for

the

parlements after Montesquieu's death. Yet

Montesquieu's theory of despotism appealed directly to

Rousseau,

Robespierre,

and

Saint-Just,

whose

monarchy. Anticipating Voltaire's critique of Montesquieu, Bayle contended that the Grand Seigneur observed laws, just as did the Grand Monarque; there are more and less absolute kings, but

sympathies were not identified with the parlements and

known

theory of despotism served nobler purposes than the

despotism

from

the notion of the despot corresponds to no

and is but a political weapon. This was not the view of those highly placed aristocrats who deplored the increase in royal power, and reality,

o

sought to prepare in secret for the successor to

Louis XIV, a group which included Fenelon, Louis de

France esclave (1689-90),

la

who

famous anonymous pamphlets,

hereditary aristocracy. Montesquieu has some claim to

have transcended the mere interests of his class; any such case must be based on the demonstration that his rationalization of prejudices of a privileged caste.

Montesquieu took into account development of the concept of despot-

In his treatment, virtually every

DESPOTISM ism from

formulation in Greece to

its

with slavery, and

its

its

most recent form

identification

as a

system of

government. Like the other two types of government, despotism had to be analyzed or structure, and

have not grasped his contrast with despotism, which he saw as actuated precisely by that passion.

As

Similarly, the essential features of politics in a free

concept built

government are the limitation of power, the recognition and accommodation of groups conceded to have some autonomy, the regular discussion between them and the sovereign of alternatives to proposals judged to be adverse to their interests by the parties affected by legislation, and the preference for obedience based on consent (De I'esprit des lois. III, x).

its

principle or operative passion.

its

a concept, despotism

was an

ideal type, a

by logic to assist investigation. It is not expected that such an analytical construct will be found to be empirically embodied in all its aspects. An ideal type is designed to determine the extent to which any actual state of affairs

postulated

approximates

to,

or diverges from a

makes

Montesquieu

model.

point

this

fear,

Passive obedience presupposes education of a kind

clearly about despotism: It would be an error to believe that there has ever existed anywhere in the world a human authority that is despotic Even the greatest power is limited in all its aspects. were to attempt in some way. If the Grand Seigneur to impose some new tax, the resulting outcry would be such as to make him observe the limits to which he had not known he was subject. Although the King of Persia may be able to force a son to kill his father the same King cannot force his subjects to drink wine. Every nation is dominated by a general spirit, on which its very power is founded. Anything undertaken in defiance of that spirit is a blow against that power, and as such must necessarily .

.

.

.

.

.

come

to a stop

(

.

.

.

,

Considerations, XIII).

Although a number of the strands previously

made

in his

way

it

offices,

it.

in spirit,

requiring

every family

is,

as a

So-

little legislation.

must also follow a pattern:

in a

despotism,

matter of policy, isolated from

every other. Only religion and custom can moderate despotism, and these are at once

less effective

and

less

regular in their operation than the effect of basic laws that limit

Even

governments which willingly observe them. sphere of economic life, despotism exerts

in the

noxious effects.

The general uncertainty created by

the

caprice of the despot and his viziers impoverishes the

mass of men; commerce

is

unrewarding, the products

Because of

his

method, Montesquieu was able to

develop the psychological dimensions of despotism. Fear, the principle or passion imputed to despotism,

Thus

treated with a subtlety and depth previously unknown. Hobbes, who had founded so much on fear, as the principle underlying all politics was much in Montesquieu's mind, when he argued that no such system can satisfy its members. The units of despotism

but a system with a characteristic

Montesquieu refused

political form,

to

broken

shares the significant innovations

of theorizing about politics.

social organization propelled

to

timid,

cial relations

associ-

despotism was for him, not simply a structure of state

power and

peculiar to despotism: the subject must be ignorant,

of labor, incalculable.

ated with the concept of despotism recur in Montesquieu's formulation,

declared unsatisfactory

Montesquieu's definition of freedom as security from

nature

terms of

in

Many who have

despotism.

to

by

fear, a passion peculiar

reduce social organization

or political form to social orga-

nization. In his view, both the political institutions

and

is

are the despot himself; his viziers or ministers, to

he confides administration; and

whom

his subjects, equal in

This he argues in a number of ways: an analysis of

ism as

and terror. In the Persian Letters Montesquieu depicted despota system of fear, jealousy, and mutual suspicion.

the ties uniting despotic and free societies; as well as

This

illustrated in the relationships

among

the master

by contrasting with

of the seraglio, absent in Paris; his eunuchs,

who have

the social organization of despotic societies are simple,

their total subjugation

while those of a monarchy as he defines

(Lettres persanes, 1721),

of order;

its

are complex.

free societies, the characteristics

peculiar to despotism;

name

it,

its

suppression of conflict in the

refusal to recognize the legal status

and finally its upon immediate and unquestioned obedience commands. In a free society, the texture of relations

is

been sacrificed

to the execution of his wishes

maintenance of order; and

of intermediate groups and classes;

relationship, because

insistence

liberty,

to

among

persons and groups

is

much

looser than in a

despotism. Disagreements and even conflict are essential

to the one, fatal to the other (Considerations, IX).

Montesquieu contrasted the distinctive modes of obedience requisite to despotic governments on the one

of

his wives.

its

inhumanity, absence of

the use of force and fear in a relationship

where love ought

to rule, fails to provide

the fulfilment he sought. the master

is

The ultimate paradox

is

that

unlimited power; he cannot satisfy himself. Yet in the final analysis, Montesquieu

derstood without reference to the characteristics of

domination

free

its

incapable of enforcing or enjoying his

only despotism, as conceived by the

and

even

ostensible beneficiary, the master of the seraglio, with

governments on the other. The positive side of Montesquieu's political thought cannot be unside,

and the

This triangular

class,

but also slavery and as

all

condemned not members of his

other forms of total

incompatible with

human

nature, natu-

9

DESPOTISM ral

law. and the interests of

No

all

parties linked in such

human

prejudices.

To unmask those who

defended the African slave trade, Montesquieu reverted

Montesquieu had taken such an uncompromising view;

to the irony of the Persian Letters (XV, v). This section,

no other thinker of

philosopher

political

his

prior

century condemned slavery with

together with that deriding the Inquisition,

is

incom-

vehemence than did Montesquieu, a fact which explains in part the respect Voltaire and Rousseau had

parlementaire concerned to defend the privileges of his

for him.

class.

greater

In

XV

Book

De

of

lesprit des

Montesquieu

lois,

patible with the image of Montesquieu as a self-serving

(a) How prominent was the concept of despotism French eighteenth-century thought after Montes-

set

6.

out to refute the justifications of slavery, conquest, and

in

colonialism found in theorists of despotism from Bodin

quieu? In the analytical index to the Encyclopedie, the

by a master over

entry for despotisme runs to sixty-one lines; that for

on. Slavery, the absolute right held

and property of a slave, is contrary to nature. Nor is it justifiable even on utilitarian grounds. Its effects are deleterious to master and slave alike. No matter what the climate, all necessary work can be performed

collaborators.

by freemen. Slavery is in the long run fatal to both monarchies and republics. Nor did Montesquieu accept any of the justifications for total domination given in the Roman Law or by

quieu's

the

life

later jurists.

could be

He

denied that the claim to enslave

justified

men

by attributing pity to conquerors. The

reasons given by jurists were absurd.

Even

A

in

war, only

no murder a captive in cold blood. Nor does a man have a right to sell himself into slavery. Such a sale presupposes a price. But to give up one's status as a freeman is an act of such extravagance that it cannot be supposed to be the act of a rational being. And how can the enslavement of children as yet unborn be justified by any act or promise on the part of their necessity can create the right to

kill.

victor has

right to

parents or ancestors? Slavery violates both the natural

and the

civil law.

A

criminal

may be

justly

because the law he has violated has been

punished

made

in his

and he had benefited from it. But the same cannot be true of the slave, to whom law can never serve any purpose. This violates the fundamental prin-

favor,

ciple underlying

all

human

tyrannie, to twenty-eight.

who wrote

the

Montesquieu, as well as one of the editors' principal

The Encyclopedie helped to popularize Montesquieu in a way that, because it made his theories appear to be compatible with those of Diderot and D'Alembert, did not always coincide with Montes-

own

Then

in the eleventh volume, abridgment of Boulanger's Recherches sur I'origine du despotisme oriental under the title of L'Oeconomie politique. Boulanger (who will

Diderot

intentions.

an

introduced

be discussed below) was dead, but

his

manuscripts were

being circulated by Holbach because Boulanger had attributed

the

of

origin

theocracy based upon

despotism

fear. In this

primitive

a

to

way, despotism was

turned into a concept that could be used against the

Church. This was not enough to redeem this aspect of Montesquieu for Voltaire, whose attitude was highly

condemning

ambivalent,

Montesquieu's

theory

of

despotism, but applauding his attack upon slavery.

Against Montesquieu's position that despotism

government qualitatively

of

Voltaire maintained:

(

1)

different

now

is

a type

from monarchy,

that an extraordinary violation

usage was involved in

of historical

designation,

societies.

The Chevalier de Jaucourt, was a disciple of

principal entry,

Montesquieu's

too generally accepted, of the

all

As for other arguments offered in defense of slavery, Montesquieu riddled them with scorn. Often they

L'A.B.C. (1768), Voltaire engaged in an etymology of

derived from nothing more than the contempt

felt by one nation for another with different customs; often, from the absurd pretension that a nation could be reduced to slavery in order to simplify the task of

le

Such reasoning had encouraged those who had ravaged the Americas to believe that they merited absolute power. How pleas-

despot was a pure creation of his imagination: "a barian whose courtiers prostrate themselves before

ant to act as a bandit and to be considered a good

him; and

converting

it

to the true faith.

Christian. Slavery derives from the desire of a

few

for

unlimited voluptuousness and luxury; slavery appeals to the basest of

human

passions.

Whose

desires

would

great empires of Asia and Africa as despotiques. In his

despotisme.

It

had been used

in

Greek only

as pere

de famille; was unauthorized by Latin usage; in short, was an innovation in political language that was both unjustified

ferocious

and

recent. (2) Montesquieu's

madman, who

image of the

listens only to caprice; a bar-

who diverts himself by having his agents and impale [subjects] on all sides" (Commensur quelques maximes de VEsprit des Lois, III).

strangle taire (3)

Voltaire disputed the accuracy of Montesquieu's

not be kindled by the prospect of

data and citations, particularly those used to support

lute master of another's life,

his characterization of

for

10

temptible of

to

relationships.

Negro

slavery,

thinly disguised

it

becoming the absovirtue, and property? As

derives not only from such passions

by sophisms, but from the most con-

table

that

so

China

intelligent

a

as despotic: "It

man engaged

is

in

regret-

sheer

surmises supported by false citations" (Oeuvres [1785],

DESPOTISM 40, 94). (4) Voltaire,

who

believed in an absolute mon-

governments; elective aristocracy, the best

all

archy that would remove the hereditary privileges of

In Rousseau's

the aristocracy, and in the these royale about

government

the

view there

(III, v).

an inherent tendency for

is

to seize sovereignty, for the Prince to

become

French constitution, objected to the political implications of Montesquieu's distinction between despotism

oppress the sovereign, that

and monarchy; whatever

dissolve the social pact that alone morally obligates

theory

monarchy and

make

ever to its

Montesquieu's

valid in

between

its

And

abuses.

there

is

no reason what-

monarchy

essential to the definition of

recognition of the rights of a self-seeking hereditary

which belongs

nobility, is

is

best described by distinguishing

is

not If

much

to

which there

to feudalism, for

be said (Commentaire

.

.

.

Voltaire thought the concept of despotism to be

was more than balanced in his mind by Montesquieu's attack on slavery. On balance, Voltaire declared De lesprit des lois to be "the code of reason and liberty" (Commentaire .). (b) It was precisely in this way that Rousseau was most affected by the concept of despotism. Every major statement of his political theory begins by refuting the an aristocratic invention,

and Hobbes. Like Voltaire, Rousseau did not use

le

despotisme to designate the type of dominion said to

in his

Despotisme figured further ways:

thought

here that Rousseau makes his

is

Thus

(3) is

made between Despote and Tyran, which appears to rest upon much the same usage as despotisme

le

op. cit,

Discours sur I'origine et

the

in

parmi

I'inegalite

hommes

les

les

(Oeuvres,

190-91).

III,

In the Contrat social, Rousseau resorts to his distinc-

"The Abuse

tion in the chapter called,

and

its

Tendency

Degenerate"

to

Government

of

(III, x):

In order to give different

names

to different things,

I

shall

any usurper of royal authority, a tyrant; and any

call

usurper of the sovereign authority, a despot. The tyrant

who

he,

is

contrary to law, assumes the power to govern, and

then follows the law; the despot puts himself above the

laws themselves. Thus the tyrant a despot

may

not be a despot, but

always a tyrant.

is

in a just

In the Discours sur

.

.

.

I'inegalite,

three stages, the third of which

mind with despotism.

in Rousseau's

(1) in his

— acts which

the distinction

war. But the concept of the master-slave relationship

became connected

the people, to

.

apologies for slavery he found in Grotius, Pufendorf,

enslavement of those conquered

is,

by force alone

it

principal and third use of le despotisme.

it

.

justify the

citizens to obey. It

fondemens de

III).

,

master constraining

its

in three

angry rejection of the Physio-

Rousseau sketched the changing of

is

legitimate into arbitrary power, the recognition of that

between master and slave, which is the final Out of the disorders that preceded gradually the "hideous head of despotism,"

distinction

cratic

stage of inequality.

cratic use of despotisme to characterize an absolute

which finally succeeds in trampling underfoot the laws and the people, and in establishing itself upon the ruins

term le despotisme legal, which will be treated in connection with the Physiocrats, and (2) in his partially sympathetic comments upon the French aristo-

arises

it

The

become

on the Oriental model that had been imposed upon a European state. This usage occurs principally in his judgment upon the Abbe SaintPierre's model of the visirat, recapitulated by Rousseau as "a gross and barbaric form of government, pernicious to peoples, dangerous for kings, fatal to royal

of the republic.

houses

he can be driven out, he cannot protest against violence. The uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act, as those by which he disposed ... of the lives and goods of his

political system

.

.

.

the last resort of a decaying state" (Oeuvres

completes, Pleiade (Paris, 1959—),

644).

III,

But Saint-Pierre's positive proposals were rejected because they would favor the privileges of hereditary

which Rousseau called the worst of all forms of sovereignty. Rousseau commented that "a thousand readers will find this in contradiction with aristocracy,

the Contrat social. This proves that there are even

readers

who ought

to learn to read than authors

ought to learn to be consistent" challenge despotism.

is

(ibid.,

more

who

643). Rousseau's

directly related to his statements defining

He distinguished sovereignty,

the legislative

power, from government, the executive power which carries out the law. In

the Contrat social, Rousseau

follows only

own passions. Thus Rousseau again has assigned the name of despotism to the extreme point of corruption, which the

at

despot

is

social pact

is

broken. Thereafter "the

the master only so long as he

and as soon

is

the strongest,

as

subjects" (Oeuvres, HI, 191).

Rousseau's

way

of distinguishing tyrant

from despot

adapted to the categories of his own thought. He may have been the first to deny legitimacy to any king. This was not Montesquieu's position on monarchy. As for tyranny, Montesquieu had is

peculiar to himself, and

defined

it

as

had

the sense

it

des

XIV,

lois,

is

meaning "the intention

established power, above for the xiv,

and hereditary. Hereditary aristocracy

quieu's, but departed

all in

to

overthrow the

a democracy. This

Greeks and Romans" (De

a).

despotism originated

the worst of

who

his

divided aristocracies into three kinds: natural, elective, is

subjects of despotism

subject to the will of their master,

in

was

I'esprit

Again Rousseau's notion that corruption resembled Montes-

from

it

in a

way

that reveals

11

DESPOTISM Rousseau's intentions. Montesquieu believed that every form of government could degenerate into a despotism characteristic of it. Thus democracy could become the

despotism of

denied

this:

all

(De iesprit des his, VIII,

"Any condition imposed by

vi).

all

cannot be onerous to anyone" (Lettres

Rousseau

upon each de

ecrites

montagne, Lettre VIII, Oeuvres, HI, 842). (c) It is now generally agreed that there

la

is

no body

accurately be described as "enlightened despotism," a

term invented by nineteenth-century German

A

histo-

recent survey of the subject concluded:

although there

despotism

'Enlightened despotism'

who have implies;

it

it

is

an unfortunate expression

in

far less in

common

name

than the collective

burdens them with the disparaging name of

despot, which was already negatively charged in the eigh-

teenth century, thus anticipating what needs to be proved;

and

it

links these rulers, with

its

adjective

more

closely to

the Enlightenment than in fact they were (Peter Gay, The

Enlightenment,

The lated

II,

New

York [1969], 682).

idea of legal despotism" was explicitly formu-

by Le Mercier de

la

Riviere in his L'ordre naturel

et essentiel des societes politiques (1767),

de Nemours

in his Origine et progres

nouvelle (1768). Although they

all

and

Du

Pont

d'une science

favored an heredi-

Utopian because

is

interests of

men know

simply assumes that

is

in

harmony with law

Rousseau concluded that almost

their interests

its

passions.

Your system

Adam"

dren of

it

me

is

too good for the inhabit-

has no value whatever for the chil-

(C. E.

Vaughan,

ed., Political

Writings

of Rousseau, Cambridge [1915], II, 159-61). Boulanger's Recherches (d) Nicolas-Antoine

sur

du despotisme oriental was published posthumously by Holbach in 1761 in Geneva, and was translated by John Wilkes in 1764 in London. Boulanger was an engineer, who constructed a theory of the development of religion and society after a universal deluge. Boulanger sought to work out a scheme of historical stages from theocracy to despotism, republic, monarchy, thus providing a philosophical and historical I

origine

justification

for

Montesquieu's theory of despotism.

Boulanger ascribed

its

origins to primitive idolatry

and

theocracy, animated by the spirit of terror which was later

maintained

gods

who

in despotism. In theocracy,

it

is

the

are given supreme power. Sacerdotal gov-

This in effect was Montesquieu's Oriental despotism,

ernments are regarded as the physical manifestation of the supernatural government; the invisible master assumed human form in the reign of priests who be-

which by destroying

came

stitutional

legal limitation

on the monarch; they

distinguished their theory from despotisme arbitraire.

all

private property, destroys

the sources of wealth and industry. is

Le despotisme

all

legal

not rule by the arbitrary will of the despot, but by

the weight of evidence about the nature of things.

Thus

the sovereign does not express his will, but declares

what seems in accord with the laws of social order. Le Mercier de la Riviere took Euclid as his model of the legal despot, who by the irresistible force of evidence, has ruled without contradiction over

all

en-

lightened peoples.

None

of the distinctions

the Physiocrats protected

and qualifications made by

them

against the counter-

arguments of Mably, Holbach, Rousseau, Raynal, and Turgot. Holbach wrote that "A legal despotism is a contradiction in terms" (Systeme social,

London

[1773],

So great was the impression that had been made by Montesquieu. Rousseau attacked the PhysioII,

xiii).

cratic doctrine

on three points:

(1) that the notion of

basing politics on incontrovertible evidence

"The science

of

government

is

of combinations [of elements],

12

all.

them: "Gentlemen, permit

and powerful monarchy, the Physiocrats' theory

and

it

and nevertheless disregard to tell you, you assign too much weight to your calculations, and not enough to the inclinations of the human heart and the play

all

of despotisme legal contained strong elements of con-

tary

advance of reason, no cumulative progress. (3) Legal

is

Physiocrats define them, that

of

yokes together a disparate group of rulers

Saint-Pierre, the Physio-

a despot will rule according to his interests as the

ants of Utopia: three ways:

Abbe

crats believe in the progressive

and the

of political ideas in the eighteenth century that can

rians.

stances." (2) Like the

is

naive.

nothing but a science of applications,

and

exceptions according to times, places and circum-

Despotic government followed the and with it recorded history begins. Boulanger was implying, and this was why he was taken up by Diderot and Holbach, that religious beliefs originated in the fears and hopes of those who survived the great deluge. He also hoped to discover the origin legislators.

sacerdotal,

of the forms of government. His thesis

is

that after the

by the deluge, human history would be a struggle between man and the false idea he carries within him, the idea that political institutions ought to express the only true authority, which is that initial

terror caused

God. Holbach expressed similar views in La contagion sacree and Le systeme social. Thus it may appear that politically the concept was at its zenith, pressed into service as a political weapon, and, intellectually, equally in vogue, as for example of

with the impressive array of students of

human

history

and society produced by the Scottish Enlightenment. Adam Ferguson called the final part of his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), "Of Corruption and Political Slavery," and the last chapter "Of the Progress and Termination of Despotism." Ferguson,

DESPOTISM how

however, showed

the conceptions of corruption

and despotism could be combined with optimism about the future:

and the suppression of commerce means by which despotism comes to accomplish

National poverty are the

own

its

.

.

destruction.

.

.

.

.

When human

the utmost state of corruption, reform.

.

.

.

Men

.

.

survive,

and

has actually begun to

and

of real fortitude, integrity,

well placed in every scene; .

it

nature appears in

.

.

.

.

.

.

ability are

the states they

distorted image of the Orient

defeated despot. In his Legislation orientate (1778),

Anquetil denounced foreign exploitation of the peoples of Hindustan, to

whom

he dedicated his book.

Anquetil censured the arrogance as well as the

compose

prosper (Edinburgh [1966], pp. 278-80).

had provided the excuse

Europeans such as the English in India to confiscate native lands and wealth. If no private property existed under despotism, then the conqueror could take everything in the country because it had belonged to the

for

it knew when in fact it knew nothing about the world. From the height of the pyramid built

rapacity of the West, which believed that

everything,

Yet the doctrine of despotism, when utilized for so many purposes by such heterogeneous groups, began to become increasingly vague as it came into general usage. And the evidence upon which the concept was

based had begun to be seriously challenged, first by Voltaire, and then with much more weight by

rest of the

upon the

classical learning of the

Greeks and Romans,

the Europeans scorned those other civilizations, which,

however, they condescended to despoil. There was a considerable degree of irony in the fact that the concept of despotism from

beginning had been based

its

who

Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron 1 73 1- 1805), a pioneer student of Oriental languages and history. The attack he launched on Montesquieu and the theory of

consent to be thus ruled because they are slaves by

despotism considered as an empirical theory applicable

ancient Persians and their history was confronting the

(

empires

to the Oriental

serious that

it

classified as despotic

was

so

much more

reliable

work

had been done than was then available. It is interesting to speculate what Hegel, Marx, and Engels would have written about despotism, had they known of AnquetilDuperron's Legislation orientate (1778). For this was an authentic work of the Enlightenment, cosmopolitan in its respect for

other civilizations, while Hegel, Marx,

and Engels regarded the Orient as inferior to Europe, which alone possessed the principle of progress. Anquetil-Duperron, a grocer's son, had become (f )

fascinated by references to the Avesta, the sacred doc-

who founded the by the Iranians at the time of the Achaemenidae. This was the dynasty that was in the minds of the Greeks when they first coined the term despotism. No one in eighteenth-century Europe could translate the language in which the Avesta was written. of the religion of Zoroaster,

religion professed

way

Anquetil

made

to teach

him what they knew about

and

his

to India,

after living in India

persuaded the Parsees their sacred book,

from 1755 to 1761, returned

where he published his translation. But he found the minds of most Europeans closed to new knowledge about the Orient by the obsessive image to France,

of

despotism

enshrined

in

Montesquieu.

Anquetil

as the

nature. Anquetil,

model

who

for those barbarians

learned the language of the

concept of despotism after a long development.

probably merited the abandonment of

the concept, at least until

ument

on the Persians

Anquetil undertook to support by positive evidence the position anticipated by Bayle and Voltaire: despot-

ism

not a distinctive form of government, but a

is

violation of

monarchy and

its

own

Anquetil did not defend

ciples.

Asiatic rulers.

constitutional prin-

all

What he argued was

the practices of

dem-

that the facts

onstrated that their abuses ran contrary to what

made

their authority legitimate. In this respect, there

was

no difference between Asia and Europe. 7.

(a)

Given the prominence of the concept of

despotism in the political vocabulary of those hostile to the French monarchy in the eighteenth century, it is

not surprising that the term was deployed by

of those

who wished

to justify all or

some

many

part of the

Revolution. But few could have predicted that the

Terror would be defended in such terms by Robespierre, Saint-Just,

and Marat, while

be equally inviting to

Napoleon such

The

as

it

turned out to

liberal critics of the Terror

Madame

and

de Stael and Constant.

characterization of the Terror as "the despotism

of liberty,"

came not from

Robespierre,

who sought to prove

its

enemies, but from that terror

and virtue

both were necessary; "If the spring of popular govern-

ment

in

time of peace

revolution

is

is

virtue;

its

spring in time of

simultaneously virtue and terror. Without

argued that there was no basis in fact for attributing

virtue, terror

despotism to Turkey, Persia, and India, where private

power" (Report

property existed, and rulers were bound by codes of

Robespierre adapted the concepts of despotism he

On

which

is

deadly; without terror, virtue has no to

the Convention, Feb. 5,

1794).

he was not trained to assess, Montesquieu had selected evidence to suit his own purposes. Nor was the issue

found in both Montesquieu and Rousseau. Montesquieu had attributed to each type of government a principle or operative passion: that of republics was civic virtue;

merely of historical

that of despotism,

written laws.

the basis of inaccurate reports,

interest.

Anquetil asserted that this

fear.

Robespierre substituted

la

13

DESPOTISM terreur for Montesquieu's la crainte, as though acknowledging that the terror being practiced was at once greater and more active. Robespierre himself asked whether its use of terror did not stamp the

Committee It

of Public Safety as a despotism:

has been said that terror

is

the spring of despotic gov-

ernment. Does yours, then, resemble despotism? Yes, the

way that

heroes resembles that of tyranny's

satellites.

When the despot

uses terror to govern his brutalized subjects, he

despot;

when you

you are

right as founders of the Republic.

of the Revolution

Was

force

in just

the sword which gleams in the hands of liberty's

is

right as a

use terror to daunt the enemies of liberty,

is

The government

the despotism of liberty over tyranny.

meant only

to protect crime? (ibid.)

Robespierre defended terror as self-defense, as ven-

geance for centuries of oppression,

as preparation for

profound change. Rut he did so within the vocabulary

which

of despotism: referring to that "public virtue

has produced so

many wonders,"

the superiority of free

all others, the memories of the triumph and Sparta over the tyrants of Asia (a conflation of tyranny and despotism); the connection between corruption and despotism in terms that recall Rousseau: "a nation is truly corrupted when, after having by degrees lost its character and its liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or monarchy; it is the death of the body politic by decrepitude" (ibid.).

peoples over of Athens

Saint-Just used a different formula:

"A republican

his

all

XIV as

and glorious, she recalled and violence, including the

tranquil

acts of cruelty

revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a precedent for

punishing an entire category of persons, which the Convention followed in its actions against emigres and aristocrats. The cause of the Revolution was ultimately the despotism and wars of Louis XIV; it was he who

was Napoleon's model: both knew France required foreign wars; one

and

that despotism in

left

France bankrupt

organized for despotism; the other, defeated

and

humiliated. A despot should not be judged by temporary military victories but by the condition in which

he leaves

his country.

Napoleon completed the organization of despotism in France. Ry eradicating all corps intermediates, by destroying freedom of the press, and by turning the people into his servile flatterers, he made it impossible for anyone to tell him the truth. This, Madame de Stael wrote, led to his downfall in Russia. At home he had sought to be the sole ruler, but he could not escape the logic of despotism. He had to retail his power to his venal agents, whom he then had to bribe. The military despotism he created liberty in

made

the prospects for

France even more dismal than

XIV "Tyranny

a parvenu; despotism seigneur; but both are incompatible with is

son" (Considerations,

concluded that

Stael

aristocratic privilege,

II,

Part VI, Ch. 12).

after Louis is

a grand

human

rea-

Madame de

liberty, which had begun as must be reconciled with that

government has virtue for its principle, or else terror" (Oeuvres completes de Saint-Just, ed. Charles Valley, 2 vols., Paris [1908], II, 538). Terror temporarily com-

ble to defend a partial liberty without reference to

pensates for the absence of those institutions the Re-

advantages for

public will create to repress bad habits created by

Although Madame de Stael thus saw liberty as something that had to be adapted to the spirit of the

corruption and despotism. Thus terror makes possible republican

regeneration.

closer to Robespierre's: "It

Marat's is

was

formulation

by violence

ought to be established, and the

moment

that liberty

has

come

to

organize temporarily the despotism of liberty in order to

de

wipe out the despotism of kings" (Soboul, la revolution francaise, Paris [1970],

In

(b)

Madame

I,

Histoire

were adapted

to take

into account the Revolution, Reign of Terror,

and

Ronapartism. The these nobiliaire resounds in her

maxim ism,

that in Europe "liberty is ancient, and despotmodern"; only there has liberty developed (Con-

siderations sur la revolution franqaise,

I,

Ch.

II.).

passion for equality that had inspired the Revolution. In the nineteenth century

new its

rather

than

Despotism remained a relatively an evolving concept.

"Asia

In her

view of French history, the great despots are Louis XIV and Napoleon, because of their attacks upon liberty at home, and their constant resort to war in the of national glory.

its

The

static

stagnation

structure and principle, are

than a sharp break between Louis

To those who represented the

XIV and Napoleon.

Renjamin Constant, however, stressed other and novel elements in the Terror and the Empire. In his De lesprit de la conquete (1813), Constant for the first time suggested that despotism is an antiquated and static

form of domination. What had occurred

in the

Terror and under Napoleon was a more active regime

more deeply and had a new basis for power because of its revolutionary and democratic

its

name

its

allegedly produced by Oriental despotism, the conse-

quences produced by

that penetrated

I).

possi-

century, her view of Ronapartism did not stress

novelty.

there was remained stationary"

Ch.

would no longer be

all.

has always been lost in despotism, and what civilization (ibid.,

it

represented as eternal. She saw a continuity, rather

358).

de Stael the aristocratic and the

Protestant concepts of despotism

14

reign of Louis

elements. Constant therefore coined the term "usurpation" for describing the form of rule exercised by Napoleon, and declared it to be worse than despotism. Although not always precise in his formulation of

DESPOTISM Constant

terms.

implied that

usurpation

used the

despotic structures that already existed, but did so in its

own

way, creating a new type of oppres-

distinctive

The

States in question, without undergoing any change in

themselves, or in the principle of their existence

by demagoguery, propaganda,

history too ...

is

democratic slogans, mass military mobilization, and the

repetition of the

same majestic

made

sion

possible

breakdown

of the structures of a simpler society.

Yet his final judgment was that usurpation, like the

conquest and the system of despotism, were anachronistic, incompatible with the commercial

spirit of all

and pacificism of modern

spirit

attributed the Terror to

society.

And he

unrealizable ideals formu-

its

lated by imitators of ancient republics such as Rousseau

and Mably, who did not understand the differences separating ancient from modern societies. The partisans of ancient political virtue found that the sort of liberty they sought could be attained only by despotism. And this involved them in fatal contradictions, which pro-

duced a more thorough control of thought and expression,

a far more deliberate effort to use the state to

had the despotism of the old regime. Napoleon took advantage of these new devices, and also profited from the disgust felt by the populace at their use. The fear of Jacobinism was among his terrorize

its

citizens than

Despotism for Constant carried the overtones of an older, more static form of rule, which reigning in silence prohibits discussion,

potism

really unhistorical, for

all

the forms of liberty, interdicts

and demands passive obedience. But desallows its subjects to remain silent;

at least

usurpation "condemns him to speak,

pursues him into

it

the intimate sanctuary of his thought; and forcing to lie to his conscience, seizes

from him the

last

him con-

.

.

are

is

it

onlv the

ruin {Philosophy of History,

pp. 105-06).

Despite his low evaluation of the Oriental world, Hegel devoted not inconsiderable attention to it. In the East we find a political liberty which develops subjective freedom, but not conscience

men

the law

recognize, not their

own

and duty. In but one

will,

entirely foreign to them.

Among Asian

nations,

world history:

in

Creek

life,

Hegel grants only Persia a role

provides the external transition to

it

while the internal transition

is

provided by

Egypt. Egypt and Persia together comprise a riddle, the solution of which

The

Persian

Wars

when

sive period

is

found

Greek world.

in the

are treated by Hegel as the deci-

the Creek spirit encountered the

previous world-historical people: Oriental despotism

sovereign

— on

— a world united under one lord and

the

insignificant in extent

greatest assets.

.

which brings rapid destruction. This

in ceaseless conflict,

individuality

— on

one side, and separate states and resources, but animated by free -

history has the superiority of spiritual

bulk

.

.

.

Never in power over material

the other side stood front.

been made so gloriously manifest

.

.

.

(ibid., p. 268).

Hegel employs the concept of despotism (Despot(1) generalizations derived from his view of the history and internal structure of Orienismus) in three ways:

tal

despotism;

(2)

an ideal type of despotism

which could characterize any government;

in general, (3) identifi-

solation of the oppressed" (Oeuvres, ed. Alfred Roulin,

cation with systems of domination such as master-slave

Paris [1957], pp. 1004-45).

(Herrschaft-Slaverei),

Hegel assigned an important place to the concept of despotism, but that place was at the beginning of history. In his Philosophy of History, Hegel declared:

Knechtschaft). Such divisions are for expository pur-

(c)

The history of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of history. The East knows and to the present day knows only that One is free; the Greek and Roman world, that some are free; the German world knows that all are free. The first political form there.

fore

we

observe in history,

is

.

Despotism, the second Democ-

racy and Aristocracy, the third

London

.

Monarchy

(trans.

J.

Hegel thus placed the concept of despotism within a framework of stages; his teleology culminated in Europe.

Hegel declared Oriental experience "unhistorical," despite

its stability,

a quality previously admired

by

Aristotle:

On

the one side

we

belonging to mere space

— Empires — unhistorical history.

see duration, stability as

it

were

master-vassal

(Herrschaft-

poses only; they would have been rejected by Hegel,

whose philosophical method had committed him to his philosophy of history and phenomenology of spirit with his study of the state and its forms. The Philosophic des Rechts not only ends with sections on the phases of mind (para. 352-53), but identifies each of them with a world-historical stage or realm, the first of which is the Oriental (para. 355). attempting to synthesize

Sibree,

[1905], pp. 109-10).

or

(1)

In an essay written during his Frankfurt period,

Hegel wrote that Orientals have a fixed character, which never changes. The essence of the Oriental mind is

force;

one rules and the

rest

succumb. Their narrow-

ness of character does not admit love; hence subjects

must be bound by law that in the Orient

is external to them. Thus two apparently contradictory tendencies

are perfectly blended; the lust for domination over

all

and the voluntary submission to all forms of slavery. Over both reigns the law of necessity (Karl Rosenkranz, Hegels Lehen, Berlin [1844], pp. 515-18). Hegel had

15

DESPOTISM combined both based on natural

Aristotle's definition of servility,

despotism as

and Montesquieu's treatment

is

The

justifies civilized

nations in regarding and treating as

barbarians those

who

God

regarded as a high priest of

and

legislation are at the

himself: constitution

same time

religion" (Philos-

.

.

The

insights into the

power, arbitrary

rule,

crystallized

hereditary

a

is

the state at

and of

tale

monarchical violence,

accidents of personal

the

The

castes.

the

civil

become

class differences

vicissitudes

of

revolt,

war, and the overthrow of

home and abroad

Hegel wished to distinguish sovereignty in his sense from despotism, which does not possess the essential qualities of constitutional monarchy and rational bureaucracy. Sovereignty must be distinguished from might and pure arbitrariness, or despotism which means: ". any state of affairs where law has dis-

.

para. 278). Constitutional

monarchy

and laws, to which the king

is

is

.

the reign of

subject; despot-

ism, that of the unrestrained will of a single

(Encyklopadie

der

philosophischen

man

Wissenschaften,

It

own way by

his

(1848):

The bourgeoisie cannot

without constantly revolu-

exist

whole relations of

society.

.

.

.

made barbarian and

has

[I]t

semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the

West (Ch.

The

I).

unit of analysis

was vague: "the East," "barbarian

and semi-barbarian nations"; European capitalism held the center of the stage. Marx's story was told in Hegel's terms: "The Oriental empires always show an unsocial infrastructure

change

the persons and tribes

in

A

an extended section dealing with

who manage

p. 9).

Marx made but one attempt in fit Asia into his general scheme

the Hegelian style of development. In

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote: "In broad outline we can designate

the Master-Slave or Master-Servant relationship in the

(1859),

Phanomenologie des Geistes (IV, A) and another on the relationship between absolute freedom and terror, where another kind of total domination is attained (VI,

bourgeois methods of production as so

B, III), although

Hegel does not

refer to the "despotism

in the progress of the

economic formation of society"

(Avineri, pp. 33-34).

Marx assumed

rather than proved the similarity

sidered the moral status of slavery. Characteristically

among

he condemned

the Asiatic or Oriental

inadequate both justifications of slav-

ery by reference to "physical force, capture in war, saving and preservation of philanthropy,

the

life,

own

slave's

upkeep, education, acquiescence,"

and

all

the societies he

lumped together

mode

Marx developed the theory of a despotic centralized power carrying out indispensable public works

the idea of freedom can be realized only through the

mode

condemn-

other positions taken in the Philosophie des (1)

the suggestion that the

"inner dialectic of civil society thus drives

any rate drives a specific its

own

means

limits

notably irrigation because of needs attributable to the

villages.

civil society

it

— or

at

— to push beyond

and seek markets, and so its necessary which are either

of subsistence in other lands

deficient in the

goods

it

has over-produced, or else

generally backward in industry, etc." (para. 246).

(2)

"The

In

Das Kapital Marx

I,

Ch.

the

discussed

were the other part

self-

of his model:

simplicity of the organization of production in

these self-sufficing communities to the

was based upon a by its self-sufficient

of production distinguished

sufficing villages that

Rechts merit attention:

the

in land,

state

climate. This political organization

arrive at an adequate basis for

On

assumption that there was no private property

arguments for the absolute injustice of slavery (para. According to Hegel, not until we recognize that

we

as sharing

of production.

57).

ing slavery.

modern many epochs

the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the

of liberty." In the Philosophie des Rechts Hegel conas

to ascribe

to themselves the political superstructure" (Avineri,

domination. There

is

coupled with unceasing

changing

to

Two

them the

tionizing the instruments of production, and with

has already been noted that with Oriental

can

Marx.

reference to them occurred in the

first

Communist Manifesto

despotism Hegel associated a particular system of

state,

Hegel's

justification of colonial-

interested in Oriental societies for their

Karl Marx on Colonialism,

para. 544E). (3)

sake. His

treats their

.

appeared and where the particular will as such, whether of a monarch or a mob (ochlocracy), counts ." (ibid., as law or rather takes the place of law liberty

own

own and

its

as a formality" (para. 351).

dynamics and be developed in

Marx was not

para. 286).

(ibid.,

(2)

.

ism were to

of

history

in institutions.

conscious that the rights

is

of barbarians are unequal to

superstitious ceremonies,

them

lag behind

civilized nation

autonomy only

despotism

16

.

ophic des Rechts, para. 355). Distinctions based on

into

to

theocratic, the ruler being

of the absence of love in the Oriental seraglio.

"form of government

Hegel speaks of "the absolute right ... of heroes

found states" (para. 350). "The same consideration

.

.

.

supplies the key

unchangeableness of Asiatic societies 14, sec. 4).

.

.

."

(Vol.

Perhaps Marx's most sophisticated

model came in the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie. There Marx explained how above the village community, there is a higher unity, which performs such functions as irrigation and providing trans-

DESPOTISM The

portation. is

in turn

form of

product of the community

surplus

appropriated by

and

tribute,

in

this

higher unity in the

common works

for the glorifica-

tion of the unitv: in part the real despot, in part the

imaginary

tribal being, the god.

Thus Oriental despot-

ism appears to lead to an absence of property; in fact its

foundation

is

tribal or

Hobsbawm, New York Because of

common property (Karl

Economic

Pre-Capitalist

Formations,

J.

[1965], pp. 69-71).

Marx had

his analysis

to conclude that

He

then

described European colonial expansion as a cruel but necessary step towards world socialism. Just as Engels had written that "The conquest of Algeria is an important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilization" (Avineri, p. 43), so Marx said of India: "England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating

— the annihilation of old Asiatic

and the laying of the material foundation of Western society in Asia" (ibid., p. 125). Marx never approved of cruelty to Asians or their exploitation, but he does not seem to have thought that they were losing society,

much when

their country

culture destroyed.

was subjugated and

their

For Marx shared Hegel's purely

European perspective. Both used sources condemned by Anquetil-Duperron: both regarded all the high cultures of Asia as barbaric or semi-barbaric when compared to Europe. To this Anquetil had answered:

What

knowledge, Greeks, ians.

meant by barbaric peoples? Despite

is

if

all

our manners,

all

all

our

our civilization, the ancient

they were to reappear, would treat us as barbar-

Would they be

right to

do

partisan terms. Let us believe that different from us,

abandon such every people, however

so? Let us

capable of being truly valuable, of

is

possessing reasonable laws, usages, and opinions (Legislation orientate,

(d)

later,

Tocqueville had both enlarged his vision of the

decided that a

new name was needed

for

a

new

phenomenon: Thus

I

think that the sort of oppression that threatens

democratic peoples I

is

unlike anything ever before known.

myself have sought a word that would carry precisely

I seek to express. But such old words as "despotism" and "tyranny" are inadequate. The thing is new. Since I cannot give it a name, I must seek to define it (ed. J. P.

the idea

Mayer, Paris [1951],

Ch.

Vol. 2, Part 4,

6).

Tocqueville then proceeded to sketch the dangers

with a complexity far exceeding that found

in the first

part of the Democratie: to the invisible but potent in a democracy upon the nonconforming minority, he added the prospect of an impersonal and benevolent centralized power appealing to the individualism and the passion for material comforts of a society in which all are equal. What might occur, were the dangers not to be recognized and countered, would be a compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people. There could be worse outcomes for a democracy. Of these the worst conceivable democratic despotism would be the concentration of all the people's powers in the hands of an individual or body responsible to

effects of public opinion

no one. Tocqueville had the Terror and the Empire in

mind. But neither of these sorts of servitude was

inevitable. Tocqueville

what was necessary

ended

his

in order to

book by pointing out prevent them from

occurring. Nevertheless despotism as

Ancien Regime was no longer a

known

in

the

significant threat to

freedom.

v).

At some point

in the nineteenth century, the

concept of despotism began to appear archaic to some thinkers who felt that it had no reference to the most significant political

problems of the century.

that absolute power,

ment or

used the terms interchangeably. In the closing

greatest danger confronting democratic societies and

...

the Oriental society cannot develop internally.

He

chapters of the second part that appeared five years

Marx, E.

ed.

ity.

a society

whether

itself,

had ceased

It

was not

hands of a govern-

in the

to present a threat.

Rather the complex of elements that had gone into the concept of despotism no longer

seemed

to

be those

most worth taking into account. Although Constant had said something like this, it was Tocqueville who presented it in its most striking form. In one of the best-known sections of De la democratie en Amerique, Tocqueville warned democratic societies against the domination of the majority in matters of

opinion. In the

first

part of his

could not decide whether to

work

(1835), Tocqueville

call this

new form

of social

domination the despotism or the tyranny of the major-

BIBLIOGRAPHY Shlomo

Avineri,

ed.,

Karl Marx on Colonialism and

Modernization (New York, 1968). Robert Derathe, "Les philosophes et xviiie

siecle;

Francastel

le le

(The

despotisme," in Utopie et institutions au

pragmatisme des lumieres, ed. Pierre Hague and Paris, 1963). R. Koebner,

"Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a

Political

Term,"

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), 275-302. George Lichtheim, "Oriental Despotism," in The

Concept of Ideology and Other Essays (New York, 1967). Donald M. Lowe, The Function of 'China' in Marx, Lenin, and Mao (Berkeley, 1966). Sven Stelling-Michaud, "Le

mythe du despotisme

oriental,"

Schweizer Beitrage zur

Allgemeinen Geschichte, 18/19 (1960-61), 328-46. Franco Venturi, "Oriental Despotism," Journal of the History of Ideas, 24 (1963), 133-42. E. V. Walter, "Policies of Violence:

From Montesquieu

to the Terrorists," in

The

Critical Spirit.

Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse, ed. Kurt H. Wolff and

17

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY Barrington Moore, Jr. (Boston, 1967). Franchise Weil, "Montesquieu et le despotisme," in Actes du Congres

Bordeaux, 1956), pp. 191-215. Karl A. \\ it tDespotism. A Comparative Study of Total

Montesquieu

fogel, Oriental

Power New Haven, |

1957).

by the author

Translations, unless otherwise identified, are of the article.

Anarchism;

also

concept, every event in nature the course of which

MELVIN RICHTER [See

Hence they were not determinists. The Greek atomists suggested another feature of the concept of causation, which the work of Galileo, Descartes (even though he was not an atomist), and Newton was to establish in natural science. On this

in a causal chain.

Freedom;

Authority;

Revolution;

State; Totalitarianism.)

is

a stage in a process

is

determined by laws of nature,

and can be considered a necessary consequence,

ac-

cording to those laws, of earlier stages in that process.

A

cause of an event

is

simply a

set of initial conditions

that are, according to laws of nature, jointly sufficient for

its

occurrence.

This concept of causation underlies Laplace's

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY /.

1.

duction to his Essai philosophique sur

MEANINGS OF "DETERMINISM" IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

process, he maintained that, from a

(initial

positions

human

intelligence

derstood and misrepresented by

nowhere more than

its

is

adversaries;

in historiography.

Although

and anti-

determinists justly retort that their position has fared

no

better,

complaint.

to

all

future states of the universe.

terms of Newtonian physics) would

suffice

for the

doubtful, however,

like its

not only whether the terms of Newtonian physics or

any possible future physics would suffice, but also whether even a superhuman mind could specify, in any terms, a state of the whole universe, Laplace's formu-

name

for

two

It

was

intro-

different, but related, doc-

by psychological and other conditions, has little

part in historiography.

avoid ambiguity,

determinism,"

is

may

The

as yet

other, which,

lation has

now more

everything that

it

is

been rejected by many determinists. It is promising to define universal determinism

as the doctrine that

every event in principle

A is

deterministic system, in the sense here considered,

system there

of such a chain.

and some of which allow of variation

is

is

state of the system

everything in that set.

man without

or does not exercise his

power

necessitation exercises

move

which

in

magnitude

or intensity (the variables of the system) such that a

and medieval philosophy, a cause was conceived simply as that which produces an effect. Some causes were taken to produce their effects necessarily, as a moving hand holding a stick necessarily moves that stick. Others were taken to have the power to produce an effect, which they might exercise or not without necessitation, as a

a set of characteristics, each of

truly or falsely predicable of each thing in the system,

the seventeenth-century "scientific revolution." In ancient

within

a system of things in the universe. For any such

happens constitutes a chain of causation, a doctrine which obviously implies that human history forms part

causation that was not generally adopted until after

falls

some deterministic system.

be called "universal

also

the doctrine that

Universal determinism depends on a concept of

An

it

is

specified

in terms of

by a description of the characteristics in

event in the system

any persistence or change respect during a temporal istic

all

in

may be

any of

interval.

system must, in addition,

defined as

its states,

in

any

Such a determin-

satisfy three conditions:

must in principle be explicable (1) according to fundamental laws, which (2) mention no characteristics except those in terms of which states all

events in

it

hand. Most

of the system are specified, (3) the explanations being

ancient and medieval philosophers accepted the prin-

such as refer to no thing or event outside the system. Bergmann has usefully labelled the second of these

to

his

ciple that every event has a cause. But since most of

18

and

past

Laplace assumed that mass, position, velocity (the

of seven-

is

One, the doctrine that choice between different courses of action can, in all cases, be fully accounted played

infer all

and velocities of all bodies), a superknowing the laws of nature could

The English word "determinism,"

trines.

for

specifi-

required specification. Since

teenth- and eighteenth-century coinage. as a

complete

they cannot well deny the determinists'

French, German, and Italian counterparts,

duced

probability

cation of the state of the universe at a given instant

misun-

Determinism, so say determinists,

les

(1814). Treating the history of the universe as a single

Universal Determinism and Deterministic Sys-

tems.

strik-

ing formulation of universal determinism, in the Intro-

them took some happenings or events (namely, human or divine actions), to be caused by agents and not by other events, they held that some causes (namely,

bly abstract.

human

ple,

or divine actions), are not themselves events

conditions as "completeness" and the third as "closure." Deterministic systems, in this sense, are inevita-

The

solar gravitational system, for

consists of the sun,

exam-

the planets, and so forth,

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY within a deterministic system, will hereafter be

considered solely with respect to the characteristics

falls

taken account of in gravitation theory, and not as

referred to as "special determinist doctrines,"

concrete objects. The duration of such systems

trast

nor-

is

mally limited: thus, according to astronomers, the solar

every event

system had a beginning, and will have an end.

ministic svstem.

It

is

by con-

with universal determinism or the doctrine that the universe

in

within some deter-

falls

Two elementary facts about

the logical

between universal determinism and

a fallacy to infer that, because such systems are abstract

relations

and impermanent, they are not

determinist doctrines are often neglected. First, uni-

The complexity a limit on of

it.

real.

of a given deterministic system sets

how adequate

a theory can be developed

The Newtonian theory

of the solar gravitational

system, which inspired Laplace's formulation of universal determinism,

almost uniquely adequate be-

is

cause the solar system

in

is,

two

almost

respects,

uniquely simple: both the number of bodies composing it

— sun, planets, comets and so forth, and the number

of variables

by which

its

paratively few. Hence, establish

its

states are defined, are is

it

com-

versal determinism does not entail

any special deter-

minist doctrine. In particular, universal determinism

does not entail the special doctrine which Geyl calls

"determinism":

implies that

it

human

actions have a

place in the causal series, but has nothing to say about

what

that place

It

is.

is

compatible both with the

doctrine that the wishes and efforts of individuals cannot affect large-scale historical processes, and with the

doctrine that they can and do. Secondly, special deter-

practicable not only to

minist doctrines do not necessarily imply or presuppose

by the

universal determinism. Thus, the special form of deter-

state at the present time, but also,

Newtonian laws, to compute with reasonable accuracy its past and future states. By contrast, it would be

wishes and efforts of individuals

utterly impracticable to attempt a similarly adequate

a deterministic system.

theory of the earth's geological history; for the geological state of the entire earth at a

given time would

minism mentioned by Geyl appears

of Descartes,

who

not

is

considered the system of mo-

tion

mining geological change are more numerous. Geolo-

be deterministic, except when changes

accordingly simplify. They explain geological

and

realm of matter

rest in the

within

fall

example of this found in the philos-

classical

however,

logical independence,

ophy

The

to allow that the

may

be far too complex to define, and the variables detergists

special

caused by the activity of thought

(res extensa) to

in

it

(res cogitans)

were which

changes by constructing simplified models representing

he took to be physically undetermined. In a Cartesian

states of the earth or of parts of

universe, even though virtually

and showing how, according

it

at different times,

to established laws of

material world

fall

all

happenings

in the

within a deterministic system, uni-

work within one simplified model would bring about a transition to another. For more complex systems, we must be content with even less

versal determinism fails to hold for acts of the mind.

adequate sketches of a theory.

cal

nature, the forces at

The concept

of a deterministic system has led to

extensions in the

cognates

in the

a system S falls

to

is

meaning

of "determinism"

following way.

One who

and

deterministic, or that a set of events

within some deterministic system,

is

its

maintains that

K

naturally said

have embraced determinism with respect to S or

K. Such extended special usages are more

common

in

historiography than the general philosophical ones hitherto considered.

Thus Pieter Geyl has described

determinism as "represent[ing] the historical process as a concatenation of events,

one following upon the

other inevitably, caused as they

human force or by impersonal

are by a superworking in society

all

forces

2.

in

p. 238).

He

appears to have

mind the view, accepted by not a few

historians,

that social systems are, or are parts of, deterministic

systems, even

if

individual

human

actions are undeter-

mined. universe

is

in the

deterministic, or that a given set of events

is

the doctrine that the future

and unchangeable

(a)

will be, despite anything

classical

"logical

is

is

as

anybody may

do. In the

determinist" argument stated and

criticized in Aristotle's this

is

what what will

as the past: that just as

has been, has been and cannot be altered; so

be

made, a prediction

De

interpretation (18b 9-16)

from the premiss

said to follow

is

that,

when

it

necessarily either true or false.

and A. C. Danto was right in doing

Aristotle rejected this premiss as false;

has pointed out that, so,

if

Aristotle

then historical foreknowledge

sible. If that is so,

then

it

is

in principle

impos-

follows that neither universal

determinism nor any special determinist doctrine

in

historiography can be true. Predestinarianism,

determinism,"

is

sometimes called "theological

the doctrine that from

all

eternity

has foreordained everything that happens.

It

has

God

influ-

enced Christian historiography, although most Christian historians have accepted Saint Augustine's view, in

Such views as that a given system of things

determinism"

fixed

independently from the wishes or efforts of individuals" (Debates with Historians,

Views Improperly Classified as Determinist.

"Logical Determinism" and Predestinarianism. "Logi-

De

civitate Dei, that divine revelation has to

do

with the fortunes of the heavenly rather than of the earthly city.

19

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY Both universal determinism and

all

special deter-

minist historical theories treat historical events as

fall-

ing within a universal or a limited deterministic system.

Neither logical determinism nor predestinarianism does so.

Logical determinism

theorv at

all;

ent with, but

is

independent of any causal

and predestinarianism is

is

not only consist-

usuallv held together with, the doctrine

which the foreordained future contains undetermined interventions by God into the normal course of events. It can, therefore, produce nothing but confusion to classify these docof special providence, according to

trines as determinist. (b)

Absolute Idealism and "Historism." Absolute

(or,

German) idealism reached its consumG. W. F. Hegel's doctrine that the true

honoris causa,

mation

in

theodicy, or justification of

God

man.

to

in the philosophy of history. History

which its

is

is

be found

to

the process in

God, or the Idea, carries out

Spirit (Geist), or

self-appointed task of attaining self-knowledge:

first

externalizing itself in Nature, and then overcoming that externalization.

The working

of Spirit manifests itself

at different times in different

peoples and cultures,

being for Hegel a commonplace that, in his it

was doing

own

it

time,

Western (Germanisch) Protestant parts. But although

so chiefly in the

world, especially in

its

Hegel thought it dialectic-ally necessary that the selfdevelopment of Spirit should in his time have culminated in the western Protestant constitutional dialectical necessity

is

not deterministic. This

is

state,

shown

by Hegel's repudiation of historical prophecy, the possibility of which is implicit in determinism in both its universal and its special forms. "Philosophy,'' he declared, ".

.

.

appears only

there cut and dried after

when

its

actuality

is

already

process of formation has

system are, which in princi-

Although the main tradition of nineteenth-century European historiography rejected the absolute idealist conception of historical development, and affirmed, with Leopold von Banke, that every epoch is "immediate to God," its value residing in itself, it nevertheless inherited two fatal legacies from absolute idealism. The reality of any historical epoch is of course concrete; and historians who reflected philosophically on their work generally agreed with the idealists (1) that to describe the concrete in terms of abstract concepts

must

falsify

and

it,

(2) that

no aspect of anything con-

crete can be correctly understood except in relation to all

its

other aspects. These two doctrines are fused

motto used by

in the

Meinecke for his Die EntsteIndividuum est ineffa-

F.

hung des Historismus

(1936),

bile.

Until the mid-1940's, this historiographical tradition,

known

Germany

on the infrequent was referred to in English was mostly called "historism." That usage will be adopted in

as Historismus,

occasions on which

it

although "historicism" has become the

in this article,

commoner rendering

the

since

Because of

tenet that every aspect of

its

given historical situation historism

is

sometimes held

is

who embraced

historians

if all

institutions

to

of each

is

relative to that context:

is

suicidal.

No

not determinist.

The

he professed to find

in

history simply reflected his

is

neither

is

itself as

is

relativist in this

way,

conditioned by

its

necessary response to

it,

but only in the

much weaker

dant store of historical information in accordance with

of determinism: neither the dialectical necessity of

therefore a delusion.

parts,

Any

historian of

once assured that the present

reached by

Spirit,

main

is

moderate

the highest stage

could discover in the course of

development culminating in it. But such a line of development would not be deterministic. It is not intelligible in the way in which

history a

line of

is

an

historical

sense of being an intelligible response to

is

it

context in the determinist sense of being a causally

axiom. His belief that his philosophical theory of history was confirmed by his ability to interpret his abunit

is

absolutely true.

"historists" did not think that

institution or an idea

Hegel did not notice that the dialectical necessity

there

theory which implies that there

Yet although historism

less

to be understood

absolute good or evil nor absolute truth. Such relativ-

of

is

be determinist. As the

and ideas are

this

characteristic

in a

only in terms of their historical context, then the value

than

mind

life

historism themselves per-

mark

that the present

F.

conditioned by every other,

no absolute truth can present

To suspect

of

Historicism (1944).

ism

success.

appearance

The Growth of German

Engel-Janosi's much-cited

not only the task of philosophy of history, but also the

betrays a shallowness of

intelligible

Haydn's work.

present as the highest stage yet reached by Spirit its

is

it

same way as, say, the development of sonata form down to Haydn, which historians of music could not possibly discern unless they were acquainted with in the

ceived,

is

in a deterministic

ple are calculable in advance. Bather,

been completed" (Philosophy of Right [1822], Preface). It is even more evident from the nature of historical development as Hegel conceived it. It is axiomatic with him that what is real is rational. Hence to exhibit the

of abstract thinking.

20

changes

it.

In sum, absolute idealism and historism are not forms

nor the historical relativism of the other (c)

is

one

determinist.

"Historicism" and Historical Inevitability. In a

series of

papers written in the late 1930s, and pub-

lished in 1944-45, Sir Karl

unfamiliar

word

Popper introduced the then what he

"historicism" as a label for

later described as

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY ... an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction

is

their principal aim,

and which

as-

sumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the "rhythms" or the "patterns," the "laws" or the "trends" that underlie the evolution of history

(The Poverty of Historicism,

1957).

Popper sharply

province of the universe that

distinguished historicism from Historismus, which as

"Chaos."

was usual when he wrote, he called "historism." Historicism, in Popper's sense, was a fashionable position in the 1930's, and it has a long history, even though Popper classified some philosophers as historicists who were not (e.g., Hegel). There is an enormous variety of historicist positions, some of which are determinist and some not. An historicist position is determinist if and only if the historical patterns or trends the existence of which it affirms are conceived as falling within

to laws of nature;

because they make predictions on the basis

of historical patterns

by God;

which they take to be revealed do not think those patterns

but, since they

to fall within

any deterministic system, they are not

If

to

who

fatalists

Those

When the determinist

nonhuman

is

truth of universal determinism

confined to

its

appli-

cations in history. Pieter Geyl spoke for the antideter-

determinism

determinism to history

is

is

if

were

true,

it

p. 239).

would not

follow that any special determinist theory of history is

true.

In consequence, determinism in history

is

usually

defended philosophically, not by inferences from universal determinism, but

by methodological arguments

that scientific historiography presupposes

it.

In A Study of History, Vol. IX (1954), Toynbee acknowledges that "antinomian" modern historians

consider

"Man

in

man

in process

— the very

Toynbee makes several questionable assumptions: as,

that the only intelligible order there can be

human

history must be of the kind discovered

To

state this

by

assumption

throw doubt upon it. Like all social scientists, what they study. They classify, compare, and generalize. But not all classifications are of natural kinds, and very few generalizations even to

present state, lish

Process of Civilization" to be a

is

it

plausible neither that the social

the lawful determinants of the events they study,

nor even that they presuppose that

all

human

actions

have lawful determinants. ///.

SPECIAL DETERMINIST DOCTRINES IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

an impossible and necessarily

universal determinism

that this implies that

not subject to laws of nature

does not invalidate his original argument.

described his position

a fallacy, but that to apply

misleading method" (Debates with Historians,

Even

is

sciences have as their sole scientific function to estab-

interest in

among them when he

own

elsewhere

work; but they are neglected by most historians,

as "not that

alter the laws of his

remotely resemble putative laws of nature. In their

whose minists

man can

nature,

it is incomand therefore with

in this

is

implications of this conclusion

blasphemy against science he had denounced in antinomian historians! Of course, his implicit recantation

is

disputed.

is still

issues are treated

determinism

is

that historical events are

historians seek order in

grounds, and assailed on the ground that

moral responsibility. Those

is,

science in natural processes.

usually advocated on naturalist or materialist

patible with the freedom of the will,

Chaos.

and even

nature with God's help. Toynbee appears to have re-

in

The

it,

were made clear to Toynbee, he repudiated them, and announced that, although he cannot alter the laws of

determinists, for reasons given above.

It

antinomian professions,

subject to laws of nature.

such

PRESUPPOSE DETERMINISM?

are

Hence, Toynbee concludes,

furnish explanations.

a province of Order: that

hold that the future can be predicted by

DOES SCIENTIFIC HISTORIOGRAPHY

it

historians methodologically presuppose that history

magic, accept historical inevitability; but they are not

II.

their

in practice treat history as a

profess to find intelligible patterns in

mained unaware

either determinist or nondeterminist grounds.

are subject

one damned thing after

"just

do not

of civilization

asserted on

is

Now, whatever

They

it

of Chaos, then processes in

historians

For this reason, determinism must be distinguished from the thesis that what happens in history happens

may be

if

another."

determinists.

inevitably. Historical inevitability

not subject to laws

of Order, then processes in

unintelligible: history

a deterministic system. Theological predestinarians are historicists,

is

and observes that such a view must be reprobated as "blasphemy" by all right-minded devotees of natural science. There are, Toynbee declares, only two possibilities: the province of man in process of civilization is either one of "Order" or it is one of of nature,

comsome kind

In most special determinist doctrines that have

manded

serious attention

of social group

is

from

historians,

singled out as the intelligible unit

of historical study.

States,

classes, civilizations,

and organized religions have

been accounted such

units;

nations,

races,

cultures,

have been offered both about conditions that occur them, and about their courses of development. As put forward by

all

and determinist theories

social scientists, hypotheses

in

about

causal factors in the occurrence of this or that social

condition usually

fall

short of determinism: that

is,

of

21

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY the form, whenever a condition of the kind (\ occur* in a group of the kind (.', then a condition of tlic kind

C2

must, other things being equal, follow. Yet,

,

in

pop-

assume this form. Thus race and physical environment, which obviously have some causal significance, have from ancient times cropped up in determinist theories. That the powers ular presentations, they often

wilderness of the

human

past like flowers in a field,

each independently of every other. Nine of them he identified, while allowing that there may have been more; but he closely studied only two: the "Apollonian" culture of ancient Greece and Rome, and the

the nineteenth cen-

"Faustian" culture of the medieval and modern West.

turv conditions that enabled them to dominate the world was commonly believed to be an inevitable consequence of the nature of the "white race." Sophis-

Each culture has a life of about a thousand years, in which it passes through four stages, comparable to the four seasons; an agricultural and heroic spring; an aristocratic summer in which towns emerge; an autumn in which cities grow, absolute monarchies subdue aristocracies, and philosophy and science flourish; then finally, a winter of plutocracy and political tyranny, made possible by advanced technology and public administration. Having fulfilled the possibilities of its fourth stage, a culture develops no more. It is dead,

Western Europe developed

of

in

T

Buckle persuaded them-

work

habits then characteristic

ticated historians like H. selves that the irregular

of Spaniards, by contrast with the steady ones of the

were consequences of an extreme as opposed moderate climate. Both racialist and environ-

English, to a

mentalist forms of determinism are for

now

discredited;

geographers have produced abundant evidence

No

with which neither can be reconciled.

special de-

terminist theory relying on other alleged causal factors is

even though,

velopment can be

classified as cyclical or noncyclical.

Plato taught that even the ideal state

is

subject to

first

1934-61) his

The

an early cyclical determinist theory, although Platonic scholars interpret

it

as

no more than

an ethical parable. Of the innumerable later cyclical theories, three are

still

of Giambattista Vico, of

is

is

as follows.

intelligible units of historical study are neither

nations nor cultures, but societies, and especially those that are civilized, which,

by contrast with primitive and spatially

ones, are not only relatively long-lived extensive, but also relatively few. sarily

New

Science

.

.

.

concerning

Common

They

are not neces-

independent, as Spengler thought cultures are,

may be

but one

In his Principles of a

vols.,

not without qualification determinist: like

Oswald Spengler, and of A.

Toynbee.

in the

Study of History (12

discussed by historians: those J.

may

corpse

view about the presuppositions of scientific history, inconsistent. However, it has a determinist side,

which

is

its

it is

timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny. Prima facie,

many

A

ten volumes of

decay; and, in decaying, would pass through the stages: this

China,

in existence.

Toynbee's theory of historical development

theories of historical de-

Cyclical Theories. In his Republic, Book VIII

1.

like late imperial

long continue

even superficially plausible.

The numerous determinist

the offspring of another. Toynbee

distinguished twenty-one

known civilizations, which he and

Nature of the Nations (1st ed. 1725, 3rd ed. 1744), Vico maintained that in the development of their customs, laws, governments, languages, and

allotted to three generations; primary, secondary,

modes

of thought,

divinely

Russian Orthodox Christian, Iranic, Arabic), and three

chosen

Israel pass

(corso) of three

are secondary (Hindu, main Far Eastern, Japanese Far

stages:

first

the

divine

all

nations except

through a course or

religious,

the

then heroic,

then

human. Although it is the highest, the human stage is not stable. Having reached it, nations become dissolute, and return to barbarism; whereupon there is a recourse (ricorso) of the same three stages. Even the true Christian religion has been established by divine providence "according to the natural course of

human

institutions themselves," in the return of "truly divine

times" that followed the disintegration of the

Empire (New

Roman

velopment to be, not nations as Vico had thought, but cultures, which he defined as groups of individuals sharing a

common

they

and especially of

live,

conception of the world its

space. In

tertiary.

Of

the eight surviving in the present century,

five are tertiary

Eastern).

Each

(Western, main Orthodox Christian,

of the five tertiary civilizations

in

which

The Decline

is affili-

ated to one of two extinct secondary civilizations, the Hellenic and the Syriac, both of which are affiliated to the

same primary

civilization, the

Minoan. Each of

the three surviving secondary civilizations

is

affiliated

one of the two extinct primary ones: the Sinic and the Indie. In addition, there are four extinct primary civilizations: two of them perished without issue; and to

the other

two each had two secondary

offspring, all

four of which perished without issue. Finally,

Science, par. 1047).

Spengler took the intelligible units of historical de-

22

of the West (Vol. I, 1918; Vol. II, 1922; rev. ed., 1923), he described such cultures as growing in the aimless

Toynbee

counted ten other civilizations that were not only barren but necessarily so, being either abortive, or arrested, or fossils.

According to Toynbee, a civilization comes into being when a society responds successfully to a chal-

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY down by

lenge thrown

ment; and

grows

it

to respond to the

new

human

physical or

its

as long as

it

environ-

continues successfully

challenges to which every suc-

of the philosophical criticisms are weak. est

ism,

The common-

the charge that they involve universal determin-

is

which we have already shown

may

to

be

false:

a non-

cessful response must lead. In a growing civilization,

deterministic world

successful responses originate in a creative minority,

domi-

Another common objection is that Spengler and Toynbee especially generalize from too few cases; but Kepler obtained his laws of planetary motion from even fewer. R. G. Collingwood denounced Spengler for not "working at" history but only talking about it, on the ground that he relied on others for information about individual facts; and for not "determining

thus degraded to a proletariat,

either past or future," but only "attaching labels" to

which

is

imitated by an uncreative majority.

When

civilization responds inadequately to a challenge,

a it

breaks down, and a process of disintegration begins.

The unsuccessful response the minority

it

although no longer creative, establishes

The majority

nant.

from

alienates the majority

formerly imitated; but that minority, is

itself as

either internal or external. Disintegration proceeds in

them, on the ground

a succession of routs (times of troubles) and rallies,

as that,

usually three of each, terminated

The

last rally

by a decisive rout. extinct was to

now

of all civilizations

and all surviving civilizations except the Iranic-Arabic and the Western have already formed such a state. form a "universal

When

state";

seeking inductively based laws of historical

development, Toynbee treated civilizations as deterministic

systems,

each of which necessarily passes

through the stages described above.

Western

and

civilization, like all others, will

disintegrate; the important question

has broken

down

six

first

down

break is

whether

it

how far it has volumes of A Study of

already, and,

disintegrated. In the History,

follows that

It

if

so,

Toynbee decided that whether it has already is an open question; but in the last four

broken down

he

explicitly repudiated the

conception of civilizations

to

be teleological:

What

is

the point, sub specie

aetemi, of the system of civilizations itselP In his six

volumes the function of the higher religions

that that planet as

have told you would be the concrete object we know

cyclical theories of Vico, Spengler, and Toynbee have been refuted not by philosophers, but by historians. Each, as elaborated

errors of historical fact;

capable of revising

by

by its author, contains radical and none has found a defender

to

it

its critics. It is

accord with the facts estab-

as

though every known theory

of the solar planetary system as deterministic

had been

to contain radical errors about the orbits of

several of the planets. 2.

Noncyclical Theories. As they

hope of a glorious

resurrection,

lost

many

the Christian

thinkers of the

eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and of the Ameri-

to

can and French revolutionary movements that grew it,

came

to believe not only that

but that

in history

Hence, when Michelet's

order to foster the higher religions. the most impressive of the is

at a certain posi-

"Neptune."

fectible,

it

would be

The

out of

fessed inability to answer the question

who

us

first is

in his last six, civilizations exist in

cyclical theories; philosophically,

tell

be. Yet

tion at a certain time, they could not

secondary parents;

is

would

labels" to space, because, in predicting that a planet

bring certain tertiary civilizations to birth from their

Historically, Toynbee's

corresponding to Julius

Apollonian one, he did not

of specified mass and orbit

shown

came

2,000 and 2,200 somebody will

Collingwood would hardly have taxed Kepler with not working at astronomy, because he relied on Tycho for astronomical observations; or Adams and Leverrier with only "attaching

he suggested that only the disintegration of a

zation might be determined, not its growth and breakdown. Even more important, his principal interest

in the

that person

lished

civili-

making such predictions

that, in

a.d.

arise in the Faustian culture

Caesar

and implicitly abandoned his search for the laws of their development. At one point, as deterministic systems,

between

contain deterministic systems.

not. His con-

whether West-

ern civilization has yet broken down, since

man was

per-

he was being perfected.

translations,

Oeuvres choisies

work known outside Italy, thinkers in the Enlightenment and revolutionary traditions, while hailing him for treating hisde Vico

(2 vols., 1835),

made

Vico's

it cannot be excused on the plea of insufficiency of evidence,

continuous progress for Vico's cycles as their model

betrays a radical unclarity in his concept of a break-

of historical development.

down. The internal

between the concepts response, growth, creativeness, dominance, and breakdown are plain enough; but what states of affairs in the world any one of them describes is obscure. Although Vico's and Spengler's theories are less objectionable in this respect, all three have been severely criticized both philosophically and historically. Most links

torical

In

events as subject to fixed laws,

his

Cours

1830-42), Auguste

de

philosophic

Comte sought an

substituted

positive

(6

vols.,

explanation of this

progressive development; and, conceiving the level of civilization at level

reached

any given time at that

to

be a function of the

time in the various branches of

knowledge, he thought he had found the explanation in his Law of the Three Stages: that each branch of

23

DETERMINISM IN HISTORY knowledge passes successively through three

different

of

which he professed

to find in the

Phase

Rule of Willard Gibbs. Cibbs's Rule has to do with

metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive.

conditions of equilibrium in systems consisting of sub-

Human

stances

must pass through the same three stages. The theological stage, which he subdivided into fetishist, polytheist, and monotheist phases, Comte considered to have ended about a.d. 1400; and he was civilization

hopes

in

that,

when he

wrote, the succeeding meta-

was in its last throes. Since he believed positive knowledge to be cumulative, he therefore concluded that, in the future as in the past, the movement of history would necessarily be progressive. In drawing this conclusion, he assumed that the development of thought according to the Law of the Three Stages cannot be thwarted by other historical processes, physical stage

that

i.e.,

is

it

who

those

(

1859) tempted

believed that history

is

some

of

progressive to look

to biology for an alternative to the Comtist foundation for

their

faith.

Among those who succumbed was who had earlier, in Social Statics

Herbert Spencer, (1851), asserted

on teleological grounds that the

mate emergence

of the ideal

In First Principles (1861)

man

is

and subsequent books, how-

he inferred the progress of humanity

ever,

ulti-

"logically certain." as a neces-

sary consequence of a universal evolutionary

move-

ment from homogeneity to heterogeneity: an idea he obtained by generalizing a law of the pioneer embryologist von Baer. Such a movement cannot be inferred from the Darwinian theory of natural selection; but Spencer got over that difficulty by retaining Lamarck's doctrine,

now

exploded, that acquired characters can

Both the Comtist and evolutionist theories of pro-

Even if the Law would not follow that

gress are philosophically vulnerable.

were

true,

it

theology and metaphysics are misguided: the

might be a law of degeneration. And even

if

Law

Darwinian

natural selection ensures evolution by "the survival of (a phrase coined by Spencer), acute biolo-

the fittest"

H. Huxley saw that what

gists like T. fittest

In

may

A

is

biologically

not be so by other standards of value.

American History (1910), Henry Adams, writing as a former the American Historical Association,

Letter to Teachers of

the deeply skeptical

president

of

maintained

that,

according to the second

Law

of Ther-

modynamics, biological evolution is only an aspect of a more fundamental process of dissipation of energy. It is evident that human knowledge has increased, but may not that gain have been bought by a loss in vital-

Adams declared

to History (1909),

had disclosed phases besides Gibbs's three: in one passage he listed electricity, ether, space, and hyper-space; but in his theory itself he treated the last three as one, the Ethereal, and identified it with pure consciousness. He proceeded to assume that the that recent science

human thought

history of

the history of

its

phases,

and, by a quite unfounded analogy, that in

its

succes-

sive phases, the

is

movement

of thought accelerates ac-

cording to a law of squares. The phase about which are best informed began with the Scientific Revolu-

and was ending,

had not already ended, in it as the "Mechanical phase," Adams dated it from a.d. 1600 to 1900, and calculated by his law of squares that its predecessor should have endured for 90,000 years. The findings of history and archaeology, he claimed, confirm this: they tion,

if it

the twentieth century. Describing

make

probable that the thought-life of

it

man

in the

100,000 years preceding the Scientific Revolution was a single Religious phase,

even

in classical

which was not transcended

Greece. In the twentieth century, the

Mechanical phase passed, or would soon pass, into an which would be succeeded by an Ethereal phase. If his dates for the Mechanical phase are correct, and he thought that the margin of error could not be greater t han a century, the Electrical phase will last only v300, or 17.5 years, and the Electrical phase,

ing for error, this of

its

It

possibilities"

his "degradationist" hypothesis,

Adams

con-

structed an ingenious special determinist theory of history in terms of a conception of

human development

would "bring thought to the between 1921 and 2025.

limit

cannot be denied that Adams correctly prophesied

that in the twentieth century there

would be a

of scientific revolutions. Yet, shorn of

logue of phases, and

its

its

series

fanciful cata-

even more fanciful law of is, as indeed he acknowl-

squares, his theory plainly

edged,

sophisticated

a

Comte's, that the

it

rests

on the

version

intrinsically

of

Comte's.

Like

dubious assumption

development of thought

is

historically

an

independent variable.

The

final

noncyclical theory that merits consid-

eration arose within the Marxist

movement. At Marx's

graveside in 1883, Engels declared that "Just as Darwin

discovered the law of development of organic nature, so

Marx discovered the law

of

development of human was not deter-

history." Yet Marx's original position

was avowedly a radical version of Hegelianwhich the self-alienated God of Hegel's Phenomenology became self-alienated productive man. In all societies except the most primitive, Marx held minist:

ity?

Within

of Phase Applied

Ethereal only \/TL5, or about four years. Even allow-

be genetically transmitted.

of the Three Stages

which may pass through a specified number and gaseous. In The Rule

of three phases: solid, liquid,

we

an independent variable.

Darwin's Origin of Species

2A

germ

the

theoretical conditions: the theological, or fictitious; the

ism, in

it

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION down

that

own

to his

time production had involved

the division of labor and private property.

Hence

labor

had been alienated from the worker: its products do not belong to him, and he does not labor for labor's

The

sake.

prevailing

the social system

mode

— the classes of society and the

between them. Every

tions

from the alienation of labor nistic classes: those

who

of production determines

who

is

rela-

social system that arises

divided into two antago-

alienate their labor,

and those

control the labor alienated. Slavery, feudal serf-

dom, and working

wages are different forms of alienation, each of which determines a different form of class-division: master and slave, feudal lord and serf, bourgeois and proletarian. Although in the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx for

and Engels declared it to be inevitable that the proletariat would soon overthrow bourgeois society, they did not describe

it

as a stage in a deterministic process.

Like Hegel, they treated history as the history of man,

and man

as essentially rational:

when he

perceives that

theories of history, like those to cyclical ones, are historical.

them ally

happened. In each,

historical variable

in all is

is

not to understand the world, but to

is a tool of action. The Manifesto showed the proletariat what it could do, and what, being human, it inevitably would do: the contradictions of bourgeois society were reaching a crisis; and the

theory

nature of capitalist production

is

German

Marxists.

They conceived human

societies

which change can be explained according to two fundamental laws: that less advanced modes of production generate higher modes as deterministic systems, in

(the hand-mill leads to the water-mill, the water-mill

to the steam-mill); in conflict in

it, it is

that

is

with the

and

that,

mode

when

a social system

of production that prevails

overthrown, and replaced by a social system

not. This deterministic theory,

which

its

authors

styled "scientific socialism," has for half a century like

is

hung

an albatross from the neck of the Marxist move-

ment.

The

principal objections to noncyclical determinist

it

is

that

some

independent of the others, namely,

special determinist theories hitherto

BIBLIOGRAPHY Universal determinism

is

analyzed

Gustav Bergmann,

in

Philosophy of Science (Madison, 1957), and Ernest Nagel,

The Structure of Science (New York, 1961). Whether scienhistory presupposes determinism is discussed in A. C.

tific

Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge and New York, 1965); W. H. Dray, Philosophy of History (Engle-

in

Cliffs, N.J.,

1964);

and Morton White, The Founda-

of Historical Knowledge (New York, 1965); and also articles in Patrick Cardiner, ed., Theories of History

(Glencoe,

III.,

and W. H. Dray,

1959),

Analysis and History

(New

minist theories see especially

of the Democratic

York, 1966).

ed. Philosophical

On

special deter-

Henrv Adams, The Degradation

Dogma (New

York, 1919); Isaiah Berlin,

(London and New York, 1954); J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (1920; American ed., New York, 1932 and reprints); R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford and New York, 1946), and R. G. Collingwood, Essays Historical Inevitability

in the Philosophy of History, ed. W. Debbins (Austin, 1965); George Lichtheim, Marxism (New York, 1961); M. F. Ashley Montagu, ed., Toynbee and History (Boston, 1956).

ALAN DONAGAN

such that the destruc-

by the proletariat will end man's alienation from himself, i.e., from his own labor. For the first time in history, man will be both highly productive and free. The conversion of Marx's union of theory and practice into a determinist theory was begun by Engels in Anti-Duhring (1877), and completed by Kautsky and

tion of bourgeois society

the

is

a reason for skepticism.

tions

it:

usually possible to identify

knowledge or of production. advanced history have turned out false does not show that those yet to be advanced will do likewise; but it all

wood

change

it is

the development either of

That

strives to

that the point

of

all

the source of error: for example,

is

both Comte's and Engels' theories,

in

shown

investigation has

Historical

be radically irreconcilable with what has actu-

a major thesis that

he, or his society,

is pursuing contradictory ends, he overcome the contradiction. Every change from one form of class division to another has come about because the superseded system was breaking down under the burden of its contradictions, and a class identified with a mode of production in which those contradictions could be overcome seized its opportunity. In the Theses on Feuerbach (1845) Marx wrote

to

[See also Causation in History; Free Will; Hegelian

.

.

.

;

Historicism; Theodicy.]

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION Determinism

is

an obvious possible deduction from

God in most systems These systems normally define God as a being who is omnipotent, who is omniscient, and whose omniscience includes foreknowledge of all future events. It would seem that any being who possessed these characteristics fully would have to be ultimately the definition of the divinity or of theology.

responsible for every event that occurs in the universe.

Thus no individual lesser being, such as a man, could be truly free to act or to make a decision on any matter,

25

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION important or

trivial, at

any time,

any place,

in

in

any

conceivable circumstances. implications, and even provokes contradictions in

many

systems of theology. For most of these systems also include in their normal definitions of is

God

the idea that

good, and the ultimate source of

infinitely

all

is good in the universe. This creates the serious problem of explaining the evil that seems to be such an obvious and recurrent feature of all experience. It creates the particularly serious problem of explaining

that

the ultimate forms of evil forecast by certain systems of theology, such as the eternal

damnation of the

souls

human race. If Cod good, how can He permit

of a high percentage of the entire is

truly

omnipotent and truly forms of

evil to exist, particularly

pletely catastrophic

and

evil

which are com-

irreversible, such as the eter-

damnation of a human soul? There are several fairly obvious possible logical escapes from this dilemma. One can conclude, as benal

reading of the Pauline epistles in the

Testament. In developing his inter-

was almost certainly Ambrose (ca. 340-97), and other prominent earlier Western theolopretation, Augustine (354-430)

influenced by the preaching of Saint

gians.

He

departed from the views of influential East-

ern theologians such as Saint John Chrysostom. But he reacted most explicitly against the teachings of his

monk

contemporaries, the British

Pelagius and his

associates.

Pelagius seems to have been an austere moralist,

who

worked hard to convince Christians of their duty to lead good lives. The Pelagians argued that the evil, particularly the moral evil, which they acknowledged to be endemic in the world was due to free acts of by individual human beings.

will

Men

decide freely

knowledge of the fact that these deeds are wicked and that those who do them incur punishments decreed by God. This wickedperform wicked deeds,

to

in full

became pervasive, became the slaves

men

imitated each

ness, or sin,

as

lievers in

other and

of sinful habits.

or

punishes wicked acts in a variety of ways, partly in

many primitive religions do, that God is evil neutral. One can conclude, as many modern liberal

believers in progress do, that

God

is

not omnipotent

Or one can argue that evil is really an illusion, and that everything which seems evil serves some ultimate good purpose. at everv point in history.

These

logical escapes

They do not seem

to

do not

them

satisfy

most theologians.

to be confirmed either

experience or by revealed truth. Most theological

tems thus seek

to

by

sys-

dilemma by creating

face the

a

theodicy, or defense of God's goodness and omnipo-

through natural disasters like

this life

the

life to

come by

of the sinful.

If

a

man wants

to escape

and

exercise of his reason

human

souls,

may approach determinism openly and

closely.

But they hesitate to endorse

frankly.

The term "determinism" tends to be used

it

and

by the

will, in imitation of Jesus

decide to avoid

sin

he wished, and made man responsible

individual

sin,

so

led a perfectly

tence, and particularly His role in the salvation of

this

from

good life. Man can thus and do good. He can thus escape punishment and win rewards. He can even escape the ultimate punishment of eternal damnation and win the ultimate reward of eternal bliss in heaven. God gave

who

Christ,

man God

aware of

partly in

illness,

many unpleasant consequences, he can do

its

God

eternal punishment of the souls

evil. And most theologidilemma, shrink from endorsing determinism. Those who emphasize God's omnipo-

tence despite the existence of

ans,

the faculties of reason and will for these purposes. also

gave man freedom to use these faculties as he did not

if

use them as he should.

These arguments horrified many Christians, of

whom

in

Augustine was the most articulate. They did not seem

theology mostly as a polemicist's epithet, directed

consonant either with the revealed truths of Scripture

against theological arguments

which are charged with

overemphasizing divine omnipotence.

It is

thus

more

or with the

human

experience.

power and majesty

of

They seemed

God, to make

than an omnipotent being. They

precise to speak of approaches to determinism in the-

less

ology, rather than actual determinism.

for an individual

man

to diminish

Him something

made

it

possible

whether

CHRISTIAN DETERMINISM

to be good or bad, and thus to tell God whether to send him to heaven or hell. And that was an intolerable denial

In the Christian tradition, the nearest approaches

of divine omnipotence, an insult to divine majesty. In

/.

determinism are to be found more in ideas about man's ultimate destiny than in ideas about the course to

of man's

life in this

world.

Thev

ularly within systems derived

are to be found partic-

from the thought of Saint

Augustine of Hippo, the greatest early theologian of the Western Church. They have been derived most

Ho

his

New

Christian

This deduction, however, carries certain disturbing

He

oped from

commonly from

Augustine's doctrines of original sin

and predestination. These doctrines Augustine devel-

short

it

doomed

to decide freely

was a heresy, a its

dangerous that

belief so

it

adherents to damnation.

In arguing against the Pelagians, Augustine devel-

oped sin

is

his doctrine of original sin.

He

insisted that a

not one in a series of separate acts, based on

erroneous decisions. Sin

is

rather a radical defect of

human character, from which no man can escape by his own efforts. It is a defect which first became appar-

DETERUIX1SU IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION ent in the

man, Adam, when he defied God by and was thrown out

first

violating very' explicit instructions,

Garden of Eden and condemned to a painful and death as a result. This defect is passed on to every man born into this world bv the very way in which he is created, by the marital act, accompanied as it inevitably is by shame and lust. Every man is thus a sinner, even before he is born, incapable of doing anything that is good, doomed to do nothing but evil deeds and to suffer the full consequences for this evil

be generally- accepted. However

to

a rather controversial doctrine.

of the

gians uneasy because

life

of evil.

doing. This to

the true explanation for the evil

is

be endemic and uncontrollable

in the

God

men remain

did not intend that

desperate

state,

however.

He

all

we

see

world about

us.

this

in

did develop one, and only

way for escape from sin and its consequences. This was through His grace, made available to man through the life and passion of Christ. By grace a few men are purged of original sin, and left free to live the good lives which merit eternal rewards. This grace is a free one,

gift. it,

No man

can ask for

it,

or decide to appropriate

or do anything to deserve

to a small fixed

number

it.

Grace

is

given only

of men, the "elect" or "saints."

Others are called to the good

life,

the grace to take advantage of the

but do not receive call.

God, further-

more, decided which individuals would receive grace before any of them were even born. They are thus

predestined to salvation.

He endowed

these fortunate

individuals with perseverance, so that they

would

in-

evitably lead the good lives which merit eternal re-

wards. Every other

member

of the

human

race will

inevitably remain in the corrupt state in which

born, will find

and

it

all

are

impossible to avoid doing sinful acts,

will suffer the eternal

punishment which

God

decrees for the sinner.

These arguments are developed in their most extreme form in Augustine's anti-Pelagian tracts. There are scholars

who would

argue that Augustine's true

opinions are better revealed in his earlier works, which

human free will. Other two strains in Augustine's thought can be synthesized, and that there are elements of both free will and determinism in his thought. The allow a more significant role for

scholars

would argue

that the

texts of the anti-Pelagian tracts themselves,

come

however,

close to asserting a consistent determinism of

it

seemed

it also came to be made many theolomake God the author

It

to

God predestines the elect to salvation, it was felt that He must logically predestine the rest of mankind to live in sin and be damned. And this conclusion If

was difficult to reconcile with God's ultimately good and loving nature. Consequently a number of theologians in succeeding centuries proposed modifications of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, designed

some element of human responsibility for and damnation. To the extent that they did so, these modifications obviously reduced the degree of determinism in the doctrine. Against these modifications, other theologians worked out the Augustinian doctrine to introduce

sin

in

ever more rigorous and detailed forms. Their modi-

tended to bring the doctrine closer to deter-

fications

minism. However a number of them explicitly denied the charge that they were adopting determinism.

This process of modification and counter-modification continued for several centuries.

It

probably

and seventeenth centuries. The great Protestant Reformers were saturated in Augustinian theology. Luther had been educated as an Augustinian monk, and traces of that education remained with him throughout his life. Calvin's education had been secular, in classics and in law, reached

climax

its

in the sixteenth

but his writings reveal that he, too, had soaked himself in the writings of

Augustine. For Calvin the doctrine

of predestination

came

to

be particularly important.

In the controversies surrounding

it

during his career

and among his successors, it was reworked and developed into particularly extreme forms. Many of these forms had medieval antecedents, although Calvin and his successors were not always aware of them. One possible modification was the argument that

God

while

predestines the saints to salvation,

He

is

not actively responsible for the fate of the damned.

Human

will

is

too

weak

merit salvation. But

it

to choose the good,

and thus

remains strong enough to choose

the sinful way, and thus deserve punishment. This version

is

and

received wide support in influential

it

Against

labeled the doctrine of single predestination,

it,

circles.

the rigorous Augustinians argued that logic

man's ultimate destiny. Augustine's successors in the

requires double predestination, both of the saved

and

West were aware of this, and either used these tracts to approach determinism themselves, or tried to find ways of attenuating his doctrines so that the rigor of a full determinism could be avoided. Augustine's theology was tremendously influential.

of the

damned. God could not give away power to will actively to be damned and

the

Christian

came

system in

be the most significant single theological western Europe for more than a millennium.

And with

the rest of the system, the doctrine of pre-

It

to

destination, with

its

deterministic implications,

came

to

men

still

remain

omnipotent. Early disciples of Augustine, like Gottschalk of Orbais in the ninth century, read their master in this

A

way. So did Calvin.

second possible modification was the argument

that while

damned cause

God

predestines both the saved and the

to their respective fates.

He

He

does

it

onlv be-

knows, as a result of His foreknowledge, that

27

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION early seventeenth century.

the rest will lead lives that will deserve eternal punish-

debate were two Calvinist professors of theology at

ment. The rigorists rejected this modification,

the University of Leiden, Jacob Arminius and Francis Gomarus. Arminius, who had studied in Geneva with Calvin's own successors, tried to modify Calvinist doctrine in order to reduce its harshness and create some role in it for human responsibility. Gomarus went

undercutting divine omnipotence

They

ultimate result.

in yet

human life, as Or they argued

also, as

another way.

Cod must

omnipotent

insisted that an

course of everv

plot the

well as deciding

its

that Cod's decisions

about each man's destiny could not have followed His

knowledge about each man's behavior,

acquisition of

but must have

come

decree that

all

Adam's descendants would lead

of

and miserable

lives,

for the small

number

from

This view, that

this fate.

sinful

meriting eternal damnation, except

God chose to exempt God enacted His predes-

of saints

Adam's

tinating decrees only after

infralapsarian or sublapsarian.

It

beyond Calvin himself

in a five-point

in 1610. This

of salvation

man

to

failed.

However

divine

omnipotence a historic event, suspended at the creation of Adam, only to be reintroduced following his fall.

The

rigorists

too,

advancing an argument labeled supralapsarian.

They

consequently rejected

insisted that

this modification

God's decrees of predestination were

enacted before the creation of the

They

before the beginning of time.

eternal structure of the universe.

first

man, even

are part of the

God

could not

sus-

pend them, without denying an essential part of his nature. This view was advanced by several medieval theologians, by Calvin, and, most vehemently, by

own

seventeenth-century

his

Flemish

disciple

Francis

Gomarus.

A

God's offer of grace;

ful

was the argument that was God's initiative which saved or damned a man, man had to react to this initiative, or at least had to be prepared passively to receive it. The decision as to whether any individual was saved or damned, therefore, was a joint decision, for which both God and man shared responsibility. This argument, often labeled synergism, has a long history, and one can find traces of it in some of Augustine's Greek predeit

cessors.

One can

find

it

again in

many medieval

theolo-

gians and also in theologians of the Reformation such as Philip

Melanchthon. But for the

rigorists this, too,

was an unwarranted denial of God's omnipotence and Hence they rejected it. The whole debate over predestination came to one

exaltation of man's powers. of

its

historic climaxes in the Netherlands during the

who

faith; (2)

fact that

resist

(5) that

the faith-

receive divine assistance in leading the good if

they want

this assistance

The Remonstrance provoked

life,

and do not remain

a bitter controversy,

spread beyond which Calvinist influences had been strong. The controversy was finally settled, at least temporarily, in a general synod of representatives of all the Reformed churches, held in Dort, 1618-19. The synod of Dort was dominated by the Gomarists. It adopted a five-point retort to the Remonstrance which has come to be called the Five in

which the Gomarists led the

attack.

It

the Netherlands to other countries in

Points of Calvinism:

(1)

Unconditional election

— God's

predestinating decrees derive solely from his decisions,

any way depend on the beliefs or the Christ (2) Limited atonement the elect alone, not for all mankind; (3) Total

and do not

in

—

behavior of individuals; died for

depravity

— man in his natural state

and helpless

fourth possible modification

while

conditional, benefiting only those

perversely

inactive.

make

is

of

his death,

men, although only believers are benefited; (3) that man can truly do good, after he is born again through the Holy Spirit; (4) that man can

tended to make divine

also tended to

the harshest

The views

Remonstrance drafted by his followers document urged: (1) that God's decree

all

but only

an attempt to grant free will

it

all

system.

Christ died for

determinism a historic event, introduced into history at a definable point, after

his

by an act of will accept and persevere in that God's universal love is reflected in the

has been labeled

fall,

on

in insisting

consequences of

logical

protagonists in this

Arminius were most succinctly stated after

or concurrently,

first

A third possible modification was the argument that God made His decisions to save some and damn others after the creation of Adam, the first man. God endowed the first human creation, made in His own image, with complete freedom. Only when He saw how badly Adam used his freedom, did God take it away, and

2o

The

the saints will lead lives that will merit salvation and

that

he

is

grace

tion; (4) Irresistible

a

man he

saved;

(5)

is

is

so totally corrupt

incapable even of desiring salva-

helpless to

—once God decides resist,

to save

and automatically

Perseverance of the saints

— God

is

so assists

His elect to adopt the correct beliefs and live the

proper kinds of fall

life

that

from grace. This

is

it

is

impossible for them to

sometimes called the

formula, an acronym based on the five points.

TULIP

initial letters of

The formula obviously approaches

minism very freedom and

closely, since every point limits

exalts

the

deter-

man's

God's power. Yet even the canons

of Dort cannot be called completely

and consistently Gomarus, the

deterministic. For, despite the urgings of

assembly dominated by

his followers refused to

adopt

a clearly supralapsarian formula, but instead settled on

one with infralapsarian elements. Since the seventeenth century, there has been a

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION general decline in the acceptance of Christian theolog-

Among

imply determinism.

ical doctrines that

NONCHRISTIAS DETERMINISM

//.

groups

In non-Christian traditions, there are approaches to

that have remained relatively orthodox. semi-Pelagianism has become widespread and Arminianism has

determinism which resemble closelv those one

won many

forms of orthodoxy,

approaching determinism which are quite similar to ones found among Christians. The theology of Islam

to revise Christian doctrine radically, in order to

provides a particularly important place for determi-

And

adherents.

there have been frequent

attempts to break loose from

and

make

more credible

all

minds shaped by the revolutionary discoveries of modern science and to make it more relevant to men preoccupied by the problems it

to

7

own

of their

Adherence

societies.

to the traditional

theological doctrines implying determinism has been

limited to relatively small groups of

have remained

churchmen who

faithful to a really strict historic theo-

logical system, like Calvinism.

The twentieth true

century, however, has witnessed is

some

particularly

of twentieth-century

variety

of that

theology

labeled neo-orthodox, and dominated by the thinking of the

American Reinhold Niebuhr and the Swiss Karl

Barth. In the systems of the neo-orthodox one finds a significant place for the doctrine of original sin,

had

fallen out of favor

among

which

nineteenth-century the-

ological liberals. Original sin tends to be rooted less in

human

lust, as in

But the fact that

Augustine, than in

man

is

human

hnitude.

a finite creature does,

argued, create a radical defect in his nature. it

It

it

is

makes

impossible for him to be truly good, for being invari-

ably good in one's dealings with other

men

requires

knowledge of their inner problems and needs which no individual can ever achieve. Thus man remains in need of help from some exterior and transcendental a

source,

if

at least,

he

is

to avoid evil. Furthermore, for Barth

man cannot

seek for this external help and

must be freely offered by God alone, without any initiative from man. In Barth's system one even finds a significant doctrine appropriate

it

to himself. It

of double predestination.

made

The

doctrine

is

deliberately

whose thought Barth knew intimately and generally admired a great deal. For Barth predestination is essentially Christological. Jesus Christ is both the electing God and the elected man. In Christ, God Himself has both suffered rejection and enjoved salvation. All who are in Christ will benefit from these experiences. This view tends to make of predestination to damnation an ephemeral historic event, occurring in the past with quite distinct from that of Calvin,

the crucifixion of Christ, while predestination to salvation

is

a present reality,

which

will

be assigned to true

is

above

reflected

all in

the history of the closelv

is

analogous to the Christian concept of predestination.

The

position of

it

Muhammad,

the Prophet, as reflected

ambiguous on the problem, although seems clear that he developed a real predestinarian

in the

Koran,

is

position late in his

The

life.

earliest Islamic tradition

by developing a strong belief in uncompromising fatalism. By the beginning of the on

eighth

this position

however, some Muslims began to

century,

question this dogma, particularly the

members

extent that these doctrines of original sin and

predestination limit

human

free will

and

exalt divine

power, the modern systems of the neo-orthodox,

like

those of their predecessors, approach determinism.

of the

Kadarii/a sect. In reaction to their questioning, a sect of extreme predestinarians formed, called the Djabriya.

They argued

that

man

bears no responsibility of any

kind for any of the actions which seem to proceed from

man an automaton, and was too extreme for most Muslims. So intermediate positions

him. This makes of

generally prevailed.

Those Muslims who have defended human free

will,

They argue

that

do so basically

for ethical reasons.

Allah cannot be just

if

man

does not possess moral

responsibility for his actions. Those who have defended kadar grapple with the problem of explaining man's apparent consciousness of free choice. This phenome-

non

is

sometimes explained

as an illusion,

sometimes

explained as applying only to unimportant decisions

and not to those of ultimate importance. The mature position of Islamic orthodoxy, however, continues to endorse a strong measure of determinism. The theology of Judaism provides less room for approaches to determinism than either Christianity or Islam. But it does provide some. The doctrine of predestination

is

of particularly

little

importance, partly

because of the great importance Judaism assigns to the necessity for ethical behavior

among humans,

partly

because Judaism did not continue to accept an elaborate eschatology. Even among the Jews, however, there have been some groups which have adopted a doctrine of predestination. According to Josephus, this was a

cardinal tenet of the ascetic Essene sect.

In general, however, a

determinism

in

more

significant

Judaism can be found

approach to

in the

widely-

held doctrine of providence. Since biblical times,

believers.

To the

nism. This

concept of kadar, or divine decree, which

built

recrudescence of these doctrines. This

finds in

Christian theology. There are also objections to systems

manv

Jews have believed that God controls the universe in ways which benefit His chosen people, both as individuals and as a group. In general, they believe that this control is made most evident in the temporal life of

29

DETERMINISM IN THEOLOGY: PREDESTINATION man on

than being postponed until

this earth, rather

some post-temporal

The Jews, have had ample reason

after death.

life,

course, given their history,

be aware of the existence of evil and pain in temporal life. Such evil is sometimes explained

to

that they boiled over into

this

as a

Cod

man

which he would

good greater than that

to

to prepare

otherwise be entitled. Or evil can be explained away as

an

in

something good. Arguments of

illusion, or a step in a

be squared with belief

in a

and omniscient and who providence.

But evil

is

process ultimately issuing

Jehovah

rules the

can easily omnipotent

this sort

who

is

world through His

often explained by Jewish

man by God wicked behavior, an explanation which would place full responsibility on man for the evil that befalls him, but which diminishes the full plenitude of divine power. In popular Judaism, the dilemma is generally evaded, with both the doctrine of providence and the moral responsibility of man being taught. thinkers as a punishment administered to

for his

Protestant

among

cause.

who

took the leadership of the

This bellicosity was

first

evident

the Swiss cantons, in Zwingli's day, even before

Calvin became the recognized principal leader of the

became even more pronounced and France, where Calvinist Huguenots helped to plunge the nation into more than thirty years of religious wars beginning in 1562. It was repeated in the Netherlands, where the Calvinist Beggars helped provoke the eighty-years' war for Dutch independence in 1572. Also in Germany the Calvinists of the Palatimovement.

It

large-scale

in

nate organized a Protestant Union, which helped push

W

Europe into the Thirty Years' ar in 1618. In England the Calvinist Puritans won control of Parliament, and then tried to change the form of government by force, from 1640 to 1660. Even in the twentieth century, neo-orthodox theolo-

all

7

central

gians with elements of determinism in their thought

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES

have been noted

can achieve no reward or recognition for good conduct,

for their concern with social problems and morality. Both Niebuhr and Barth have been sensitive to the need for large-scale reforms which is most commonly exploited by socialists. Both were also early to recognize the great moral evil of fascism and to urge that Christians resist it with force, even war when that seemed necessary. The correlation between determinism and militancy in Christian civilization is not, to be sure, a perfect

why

one.

///.

OF DETERMINISM It is

a

common

reaction to systems including deter-

minism that they should induce fatalism, passivity, a complete conservatism. For if man can achieve nothing on his own initiative, why should he try to exercise any initiative? It is a similar reaction that these systems should induce amorality, even immorality. For if man should he be good? These tend to be the reactions

of neutral observers, however, not those of believers

systems containing elements of deter-

in theological

minism. In actual

fact, these

systems have often been

associated with socially active, even militant, religious

groups, which often

demanded

a puritanical moralism

of their members. In Christian Europe, the Augustinian

West has been usually more militant than the Orthodox emphasis on human free will. The difference was reflected at a fairly early point in the ecclesiastical history of the two areas. The East, despite the East's greater

churches in the East submitted to the control of secular

governments,

first

headquartered the

the control of the Greek emperors

in Constantinople, later the control of

Russian tsars headquartered in

Moscow

or

St.

Forms of cesaropapism thus have often characterized the Eastern churches. The churches in the West, meanwhile, led by the Roman pontiff, Petersburg.

claimed a considerable independence from the secular states,

and often made such claims good.

On

occasion

In

the

Catholic Counter-Reformation

of

the

seventeenth century, the neo-Augustinian Jansenist

movement was

in

most respects markedly

less militant

even though markedly more puritanical than opponent, the Society of

Jesus.

its

chief

But in general the

between Christian determinism and miliand surely significant. Similar historical examples of a correlation between determinism and militancy can be found in other systems. They are particularly striking in Islam. The cencorrelation

tancy

is

striking

death when the doctrine of kadar was generally accepted were the very years when Islam generated its most explosive force, con-

turies after the Prophet's

quering large parts of the Near East, the Middle East, Africa,

and

India.

The recrudescence

of

Muslim

mili-

tancy with the arrival of the Turks several centuries

have coincided with a revival of a kind It took a Turkic form in the doctrine of kismet, a form of fatalism about the development of this temporal world, not necessarily connected to later,

seems

to

of determinism.

the papacy even claimed a measure of control over

questions of man's eternal destiny.

the secular states.

This frequent correlation between theological determinism and social militancy poses problems of great

more modern times, predestinarian Calvinist churches were the most militant and puritanical prodIn

30

often the Calvinists

the religious

became so acute open warfare, it was most

tensions created by the Reformation

prophylactic or purge, designed by for a

When

uct of the Protestant Reformation.

of

psychological and cultural interest.

They may be be-

DOUBLE TRUTH yond the competence of a historian of ideas. But there clearly seems to be something about the beliefs that there

and

is

a

God who controls who believe

that those

the universe completely

Him

in

are His chosen

Faculty "hold that something

in the Parisian Arts

Catholic as

if

faith, as

if

there are

two contrary

in contradiction to the truth of

instruments, which induces a social activism which can

there

become

The same proposition may be

militant,

even

frantic,

even

fanatic.

truths,

is

a truth in the doctrines of the accursed pagans."

is

Useful introductions can be found in several encyclo-

pedias and dictionaries of religious thought, especially in

on the histories of doctrines

articles

like predestination

and

the

and

Sacred Scripture

true

and

false simulta-

neously, true in philosophy and false in theology

BIBLIOGRAPHY

is

true according to philosophy but not according to the

condemned doctrine

to accept this

— such

Unready denial of the law of contradiction, which of double truth.

he sees as a device to assert heresy, the bishop then lists 219 condemned errors. The masters of arts are

providence. See in particular the articles on predestination

warned not

The Jewish Encyclopedia, on kadar in the Encyclopedic de llslam, and on predestination and providence in the Dictionnaire de theologie catholique. The latter two articles,

Although the thirteenth-century Averroist Siger of Brabant, and his contemporary Boethius of Dacia are

by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, were developed into books and translated, as Providence (St. Louis and London, 1951

demnation, the

in

1,

and Predestination

(St.

Louis and London, 1953). Further

introductory material can be found in handbooks of dog-

matic history. For the Christian tradition, see

Reinhold

Seeberg,

(Darmstadt, 1959-65, 4

Lehrbuch

in particular

Dogmengeschichte

der

vols, in 5, reprint of the third edition

of 1920-23); an English translation

is

available under the

Text-Book of the History of Doctrines (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1966, seventh printing), but is based on the substan-

title

tially

shorter

specialized large.

Some

first

German

monographs and useful examples:

edition. articles

The bibliography on the subject

is

of

very

Georges de Plinval. "Aspects

du determinisme et de la liberie dans la doctrine de saint Augustin," Revue des etudes augustiniennes, 1, 4 (1955), 345-78;

J.

Bohatec,

"Calvins

Vorsehungslehre,"

in

J.

Bohatec, ed., Calvinstudien (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 339-441; Paul Jacobs, Pradestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei

Calvin (Darmstadt, 1937; 1968); John T. McNeill, The History

and Character of Calvinism (New

York, 1954); G. C.

to teach

them on pain of excommunication.

the only two masters mentioned by list

name

in the

of heterodox propositions

is

con-

so broad

includes doctrines taught by Saint Thomas. two senses the condemnation represents a crisis in the Western Latin mind. In the narrower sense, it is an attempt on the part of the Parisian Faculty of Theology to stop philosophical speculation in the Facthat

it

In

when

ulty of Arts, especially

that speculation

abandons

the traditional guidance of theology and openly professes

heterodox doctrines. At the time of the orga-

nization of the University in 1200, the greater part of Aristotle's lation.

works was already available

As the higher of the two

of Theology wished to assert of these

found

new doctrines,

its

in

Latin trans-

faculties, the

Faculty

control over the study

particularly the dangerous ideas

in the libri naturalcs

and the Metaphysics. From

the very beginning theologians were suspicious of their contents. In 1210

and again

in

1215 the public and

private teaching (though not private reading) of Aris-

works was banned

at the University. Yet the

Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956). Almost all of these

totle's

studies concentrate quite strictly on the history of doctrines,

with the tremendous power and comprehensiveness of

and do not consider the historical circumstances in which they arose and spread. A partial exception is the McNeill

Aristotle's doctrines,

book.

theologians themselves soon began to be impressed

errors

ROBERT [See also Evil; Free Will in Theology;

M.

KINGDON

God; Islamic Con-

ception; Necessity; Reformation; Religious Toleration; Sin

and Salvation; Theodicy.]

and

in

1231 Pope Gregory IX

decided that Aristotle might be taught

were

proval, the

first

knowledge of

Aristotle increased

and by

1243 the commentaries of Averroes became known.

Although the ban against an unexpurgated Aristotle was still in effect at the University in the 1240's, it was not always upheld. For example, in 1245 Roger Bacon lectured in the Arts Faculty on the complete Physics and Metaphysics. Nevertheless conflict did not break out between the two faculties, probably because the masters of arts continued to quote Saint Augustine

DOUBLE TRUTH

with respect, and to dismiss discreetly any heterodox doctrine of Averroes or Aristotle.

The doctrine

at Paris if his

expurgated. With this limited ap-

When the

split finally

1277 as part of the introduction to a Church condemnation of heterodox ideas. In this document the Bishop of

opened in the 1260's, the cause was not difficult to find. Led by Siger of Brabant, the masters of arts were

Stephen Tempier, declares that certain masters

cepts in disregard of the doctrines of revelation. Thir-

Paris,

of double truth

first

appears

in

openly professing heterodox Arabic-Aristotelian con-

3

DOUBLE TRUTH condemned

teen doctrines,

in 1270,

were included

in

the great condemnation of 1277. In the larger sense, the

more than

condemnation represents

were the guardians of the Augustinian tradition which had been dominant in medieval thought up to this time. Augustinianism had made its peace with pagan philosophy by absorbing the spiritual the theologians

orientation of Neo-Platonism while subordinating

The Augustinian universe

—

one which knows words the intellect is

destruction of the "acquired intellect" and the whole

of the

first

separated Intelligences. Emanating from this

Intelli-

is

soul.

Only the divine

It is

personal immortality, salvation, and resurrection. Finally, other

condemned

emanation proceeds by an eternal, necessary movement, controlling the Prime Mover entire

Himself. Such a

God can

only produce an effect similar

to Himself: a unique, undifferentiated substance.

The

multiplicity of effects in the world, then, presupposes

the multiplicity of intermediary causes, rather than the direct activity of

God.

It

follows that

the heavenly Intelligences

which

in turn

multiplicity of things on the earth.

thus

become

God The

is

the highest wisdom. In contrast, Christianity

tured as containing falsehoods "like is

found

is

pic-

other religions"

held to be based on myths and fables. Although the supreme

is

wisdom

is

in some thirteenth-century thinkers, the idea that

Christianity

is

false or

mythical only appears for the

time with John of Jandun

first

all

in the early fourteenth

century.

What

did the masters of arts actually say in profes-

sing these doctrines of the "accursed pagans"?

Did they

acts through

attempt to avoid conflict with revelation by saying that

produce the

there are

Intelligences

the immediate causes of earthly effects.

Here then we have a dramatic

ideas attack the very basis

of the Christian religion by asserting that philosophy

the notion that philosophy

The

is

men. This

the famous doctrine of the unity of the intellect,

and

decay.

all

a doctrine which destroys the Christian concepts of

and

arena of generation and

remains and

intellect

the one, true intellect for

gence are the other Intelligences, the heavenly spheres, finally the earth as the

sensitive

consists

immortal.

the Prime Being, the

not an inherent form

produced only when the vegetative and

human

moved by

is

functions operate, their cessation at death entails the

in the

is

man

for

to

it

Supreme Being who has created all from nothing. Through his omniscience, the Divine Being knows all; through His mercy He provides for all; through His freedom He orders all to His will. The Arabic-Aristotelian view, now championed in the Faculty of Arts, stands in dramatic opposition to this. The universe

—

not intrinsic to man. In other

is

but an assisting form. Since the "acquired intellect"

of a static, hierarchically ordered series of beings cul-

minating

a free,

contrast:

There arts,

two contradictory truths? no doubt that the most famous master

is

Siger of Brabant, taught

many

of the

of

condemned

doctrines. At various stages of his career, he held the

personal deity as opposed to an impersonal deity

unity of the intellect and consequent mortality of the

moved by

soul, the eternity of the

necessary causes; a created universe as op-

posed to an eternally emanating one; a knowing as

opposed

who who

to

God

one who knows only himself; a being on the earth as opposed to one

acts directly

acts through the intermediaries of the Intelli-

To

illustrate this crisis

isolate several of the

his attitude shifted at various

condemned

over, an eternal

movement

is

times (usually

under the pressure of attacks from the Faculty of Theology), he never admitted the possibility of two

Nowhere

in his writings

does the

term "double truth" appear, nor do

we

ever find the

we must As we

statement of two contrary truths as

set

down

to

propositions.

have seen, Aristotle and Averroes held the eternity of the world; it was moved by a Prime Mover who activates necessarily the Intelligences of the heavenly spheres. This denied creation ex nihilo of Genesis, and the freedom and providence of a personal deity. Moreconstant and absolute,

and the nature produced from such a movement exhibits the same features: there can be no interruption of the laws of nature. Hence there can be no miracles performed by a personal God or His messengers. In the second place, Aristotelian psychology, at least as interpreted

Though

show

more concretely and

the origin of the doctrine of double truth,

world, and the regularity of

natural change prohibiting miraculous intermption.

contradictory truths.

gences.

oZ

a divine intellect which at times unites itself

is

man. This union produces an "acquired intellect" which gives man the power to know. As the title "acquired" makes clear, this intellect the only human to

the professional rivalry of two faculties. For

Christian revelation.

soul

by Averroes, denied the immortality of

the individual soul. For Averroes the only immortal

1277 condemnation.

On

the other hand, there

is

in the

a

good

deal of evidence to indicate that Siger upheld the law of contradiction, thus explicitly denying the possibility

of a double truth. In his Questions on Metaphysics IV,

he says that

we

cannot maintain contradictory points

simultaneously for that

mind

itself,

he holds,

tradictory propositions.

such contradictions for ass.

With

this explicit

is

to

deny what we

will not allow

affirm.

The

adherence to con-

Even God does not produce He will not make man into an

acceptance of the law of contra-

problem remains of Siger's acceptance of the teachings of Greco-Arabic philosophy and his simultaneous insistence on the validity of Christian diction, the

revelation.

DOUBLE TRUTH Siger's solution to this

different attitudes

The

teaching.

work,

is

problem at

attitude,

common

first

various points in his

the assertion that faith

The word

reason.

is

throughout

in in

"truth" always appears

and reason. Prescinding from faith, Siger investigate nature with Averroes and

we must

argues,

Aristotle as our guides.

Our

conclusions, however, are

not true but simply the rational deductions of pagan philosophers. In expresses

itself as

most radical form,

its

this attitude

the reduction of philosophical inquiry

to the doctrinal history of previous thinkers.

proceed philosophically, says

Siger,

per

the

truth, Siger

result

Now all arguments of reason are generalizations

se.

from sense perception which enable us nature not through

own

its

to describe

causes but only through

When

on the mind.

effects registered

set

down

into

laws, such effects can never provide final certainty

because they do not establish the causes per se of the things they purport to describe. This reduces

sophical knowledge

a probable

to

all

philo-

or hypothetical

status.

When we

we examine

The highest

from the knowledge of causes themselves and not as they are inferred from effects; Siger's language we must have knowledge of causes can only

holds,

his

associated with faith and in opposition to the teachings of Aristotle

epistemological considerations.

true while the doc-

merely the conclusions of philos-

trines of Aristotle are

ophy and

consists of three

adopted

In effect Siger has established degrees of certitude.

Faith

absolutely

is

even though

certain

it

not

is

opinions of the philosophers, not the truth of the

demonstrable to reason. Rational inquiry limited, as

matter.

is,

But

Time

did not always satisfy him.

this attitude

and again we

find the assertion that the doctrines of

to

God's effects cannot attain

we

of these effects. For

cannot describe the

God's activity per se which

it

to the causes per se

in the

end

is

mode

of

the cause

nature are not simply those of Aristotle and Averroes

of the principles of nature. Rational demonstrations

but also the conclusions of reason. Unlike the

therefore which appear

attitude

which tends

first

with the doc-

to identify reason

only within

natural

final

and irrefutable are such and consequently

limits,

their

becomes separated from the philosophers; it produces a knowledge independent of their teachings. At times the arguments of

demonstrative status

natural reason appear "almost irrefutable." Yet faith

conclusion

contradicts them, and

we must accept many things on which "human reason leads us to deny." A strict antinomy develops between knowledge and faith: "I know one thing; I believe another," says Siger. There

ment

faith

"Although the argument of the Commentator has

trines of Aristotelians, here reason

is

an epistemological basis for

this attitude.

Natural

philosophy, according to Siger, presents us only with those laws established by

human

God

reason. Because

above rational laws, it follows that He may interrupt them, not to produce absurdities but to complete the is

inadequacies of

human

The

reason.

truth of faith

is

not denied by contrary assertions of natural reason

because revelation sible to

human

itself

derives from a source inacces-

on the great value of autonomous philosophy and the wisdom it produces leads him to adopt still a third position. Impressed with the nature of philosophy, Siger does not always reserve the

and he seems

to assert a double truth. In the

word

at least implicitly

Commentary on the

Metaphysics, he says: "The knowledge of truth belongs principally to philosophy because

the

first

truths."

causes and the

And

in the

first

it

has for

principles

Commentary on

its

— thus

the

object

the

first

De anima, he

holds that the knowledge of the soul gained by philos-

ophy

is

important for truth.

true principles

and

faith

in cases of specific

If

is still

philosophy establishes true,

it

seems

difficult,

doctrinal conflict, to avoid the

statement that two contradictory truths actually

The

solution to this

exist.

dilemma stems once more from

"We

Siger endorses this probabilism: strated

above that the is

it

The second

is

is

probable;

have demonis

eternal; this

it

is

not necessary":

not true" (Muller, 1938).

thinker mentioned in the 1277

nation, Boethius of Dacia,

attitude as Siger.

must

God

probable but not necessary"; "The argu-

of Aristotle

probability,

effect of

The method

of natural philosophy

limit itself to natural causes

these principles alone,

condem-

adopted essentially the same

we must

and principles.

On

accept the eternity of

the world, says Boethius. Although these principles

hold within the natural order, supernatural principles

may suspend them, (that

is

not by demonstrating their falsity

impossible) but by asserting the opposite on

grounds of revelation. Again

reason.

Siger's insistence

truth for faith alone

only probable. In several places,

is

we

are faced with relative

degrees of certitude rather than the absolute validity

Even though Boethius praised De summo bono as the pursuit of speculative truth and as the worthiest life for man, we must bear in mind that these concepts are relative to the natural order of philosophy. Nowhere are thev asserted absolutely as the 1277 con-

of contradictory truths.

the

life

of philosophy in his

demnation claims. There appears to be no reason to doubt the sincerity of Siger and Boethius in their proclamations of loyalty to the Christian religion. They were not secret atheists or rationalists. Sincere Christians, they were confronted with a dramatic gulf between their deeply held religious beliefs and the conclusions of their philosophical pursuits. Thev adjusted the conflict by setting the Christian

God

totally outside the natural order.

Then

33

DOUBLE TRUTH thev declared

descriptions of that order, produced

all

by philosophy, to be stateinents of a limited, probable, and hypothetical nature. The doctrine of double truth or two contradictory truths was imposed on them by their adversaries

hoped

ments,

to

who. by reading it into their stateend speculation they considered

in

Buridan

s

treatment of creation ex

The 1277 condemnation

effectively

ended philo-

sophical speculation in the Faculty of Arts until the

end of the century. In the fourteenth century, however, the masters of arts were once again allowed to take up the doctrine of the Stagirite and his commentators. On the testimony of two chancellors of the University, Jean Gerson and John Buridan, we learn that the masters of the Faculty of Arts were permitted to consider these doctrines provided they took an oath swearing

uphold the doctrines of revelation. "When expounding pagan ideas contrary to faith, the Parisian masters had to swear that they would demonstrate the falsity of to

nihilo.

Creation out of a void, he holds, must be accepted

on

faith but the notion that

a preexisting being

is

every existing being implies

valid for philosophy. Thus, ac-

cording to philosophy,

we must

hold the eternity of

the world which, in turn, throws into question the

immortality of the soul. For

heretical.

the world

if

is

eternal and

number of souls will be wandering around the universe. To avoid this absurdity, the logic of natural philosophy demands that we deny souls immortal,

an

infinite

the immortality of the soul.

On

the basis of natural

may be

philosophy, arguments for mortality

derived

either from Averroes' view of the unity of the intellect

or the Aristotelian disias'

souls. is

(fl.

Commentator Alexander

of Aphro-

200) view of the corruptibility of individual

Buridan chooses the Alexandrist position: the soul

a form educed from the potency of matter, extended

to the extension of matter, multiplied in distinct bodies,

and

generated and corrupted. This

is

the objec-

those views in conflict with faith. In order to do this

tively correct doctrine of natural philosophy.

However,

the masters asserted the necessity of giving a complete

Buridan decides that the doctrine of faith

exposition of pagan doctrines.

soul inheres in matter but

The

situation can

be well

illustrated

by considering

the thought of John Buridan, onetime chancellor of the University,

and one of the most

influential scholastics

of the century. Like Siger, Buridan accepts the mortality of the soul

and the eternity of the world

as the

doctrines of philosophy. Establishing these doctrines,

we

however, requires that philosophical

statements.

understand the nature of All

such

statements

are

finally

concludes,

is

only probable and must give

The most

Jandun upholds individual

mortality on Averroistic grounds, explicitly rejecting the "vile error" of Alexander that the soul actually is

not created but coeternal

with the world. The opposite view of is

true.

ception. Since Buridan grants a realm of final truth

a miracle not apparent to sense

above sense perception, it is clear that empirical knowledge does not arrive at ultimate certainty.

the corruptible soul immortal.

of Siger is

and Buridan, the major difference

we

discover

the growth in Buridan of a natural philosophy inde-

pendent of Aristotle. The tendency of separating reason and nature from the ideas of the philosophers already

—

—

in Siger is much more marked in Buridan. As a result, it is impossible for Buridan to argue that he is merely reporting the opinions of previous philos-

apparent

From

ophers.

his

many

criticisms of Aristotle,

it is

quite

evident that he intends to establish an independent and objective natural science.

become self

is

The

assertions of philosophy

the descriptions of nature, and Aristotle him-

often rejected in the

name

Nevertheless, Aristotle's authority that only

when Buridan

of natural reason. still

stands so high

agrees with the Stagirite does

he vigorously defend a philosophical position opposition to

in

sharp

of a philosophical probabilism can

faith,

while not

God produces this by perception: He makes

In Jandun, the status of natural philosophy raised, as in Buridan, to that of

tive description of nature.

is

also

an independent, objec-

Thus the doctrines of natural

reason, derived ultimately from sense perception, pro-

vide philosophic proofs whose demonstrative status logical not simply historical: these are not

is

merely the

proofs of Averroes and Aristotle, but the independent

conclusions of reason. Precisely because these laws are

derived from rational demonstrations based on sense perceptions, they are not absolutely true.

They must

be rejected when they conflict with revelation. Despite differences in the interpretation of the doctrine of the soul,

both Buridan and Jandun subscribed

to Siger's original division of probable philosophical

demonstration

vs.

A new

ele-

find the

first

absolute revealed truth.

ment, however, enters with Jandun. written stateinents of those

We

condemned

1277 which spoke of Christianity as

faith.

The development

before

1328), continues the tradi-

(d.

tion of Siger in several ways.

demonstrable to reason,

probable philosophical theses

way

radical Parisian master of the fourteenth

century, John of Jandun

memory, and induction

When we compare the

true: the

eternally immortal after

the irrefutable truths of divine revelation.

informs the body. The soul

— which derive from sense per-

is

is

death. For the argument of natural philosophy, he

merely probable because philosophical inquiry proceeds by three modes of understanding experience,

—

34

be seen

propositions of

full

of errors

and

based on fables and myths. In his Commentary on

DOUBLE TRUTH Aristotle's

De anima, Jandun

notes that Averroes atIt is

custom alone, savs

Commentator, which accounts

for the strength of

tacks the strength of custom.

the

Men come

religions.

to accept the fables and puerile

notions inherent in religious belief only because they

have heard them from childhood. And

mentary on the De caelo

in the

Averroes refers to religion in a derogatory sense prologue to Aristotle's Physics, Book

Commentator holds

Com-

mundo, Jandun notes

et

that

in his

There the

III.

that the doctrines of religion are

apologies established by religious lawmakers for the control of the

common

people; these doctrines corrupt

necessary principles and are "removed from truth and

human mind." The Commentator, Jandun

the

speaking of the Muslim religion, "and

speak of our religion he would

lie

adds,

is

Like

because

all

things

support faith which

must

is

believed," contends Blasius, "vou

The question

of course remains:

the

Jandun may be perfectly sincere in this statement. And it is equally important to say that once stated, the notion that religious belief

is

a

human

in-

modes

radically different

however,

it

From

that the soul can

development

this

in the late

at the northern Italian Universities,

faculties of theology,

we

find

organized without

an increasing emphasis

not only on independent philosophical speculation but

from waste, as

method

with Jandun that

Blasius' discussion of the

begins to appear that he favors an

absolute rejection of faith.

can begin to see

insisting

and reason are and cannot be combined; each must

pursue a separate path. soul,

is

increasing currency.

We

Blasius reject

of inquiry proper to faith

vention reinforced by conventional usage would gain

fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Particularly

Does

Christian faith absolutely or merely as irrelevant to

philosophy? Perhaps he

to note that

on

reject the Christian faith."

our religion are true and proved by the miracles

important

insists

evidence, and where the reverse occurs, you must

God and

is

which

reject the habit of philosophy

of

It

separates

with an absolute religious truth. Rather we must choose one or the other. "When you intend to

in

the glory of the Creator."

sharply

Blasius

conflict

he should

if

predecessors,

his

knowledge and belief. To know something, he declares, is to have arguments based on evidence; to believe something, knowledge is not necessary, and in the case of faith must be set aside. Unlike earlier thinkers he appears to reject the notion of asserting and denying at the same time with different degrees of certitude. We cannot have a probable scientific deduction in

He

introduces the notion

is

be created by spontaneous generation the case in lower forms of

of arriving at this conclusion

esting as the conclusion

itself.

is

life.

The

quite as inter-

Discussing the biblical

life must have been destroyed when waters covered the earth

story of the flood, Blasius points out that all

conclusions, asserting instead the absolute truth of

for forty days. "Nor in this matter," he warns, "should you believe the tales of women that Noah made an ark in which he placed all the animals" (Maier, 1949). Quite the contrary, all human and animal life was destroyed. Man was created anew from the waste products and the appropriate constellation of the stars.

philosophy, and thus turning philosophical criticism

It is

against Christianity

that the soul

also

on philosophical attacks on religious

truth.

Most

thinkers continued to adhere sincerely to the earlier

which established for the masters of arts a method distinct from that of theology. But there were some who denied the probable nature of philosophical

divisions

itself.

Perhaps the outstanding example of

ment

is

Blasius of

Parma

Padua, and Bologna

in

(d.

this

develop-

1416). Active in Pavia,

the late fourteenth century,

was professor of astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. He establishes the mortality of the soul by Blasius

proving that the soul has no function independent of bodily powers. Knowing, the highest function of the soul,

depends on the continuous operation of the

sensi-

tive

powers; and the eventual dissolution of the sensi-

tive

powers

carries with

it

the disruption and disinte-

gration of the mind. Since a function independent of

the body

is

the one feature Aristotle had declared as

proof of immortality, Blaisius claims that mortality proved. This proof has Alexandrist features and

is

is

not

new. But when Blasius announces that mortality is not merely probable but must be accepted absolutely we are in the presence of a

development of

this

new

stance

is

attitude of mind. The worth examining.

from

this startling discussion that Blasius is

mortal

—

concludes

produced from matter

generable and corruptible things.

Now

this

as other is

not a

probable doctrine of philosophy: Blasius contends that it

must be conceded absolutely.

The suspicions raised by the critique of the Bible and the absolute assertion of mortality are confirmed by Blasius' discussion of the origin of religions. The issue is no longer the status of any particular Christian belief but the value of Christianity itself. Following the astrological book De magnis coniunctionibus of Albumazar (805-85), Blasius explains that the diversity of religious belief arises from the conjunction of Jupiter with different planets. These in turn produce the different religious sects.

The Jewish

sect, for

example,

produced from the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn, while the sect of the Saracens is caused by the union of Jupiter with Venus. And "from the union of Jupiter with Mercury the Christian sect is produced." Christianity here originates from the same natural is

35

—

DOUBLE TRUTH forces

which produce the other

religions.

This extreme

astrological determinism eliminates free choice in reli-

gious matters.

Men no

longer choose their religions

freely; they are naturally inclined to a particular sect

by the conjunction of the planets. After some trouble with Church authorities and a forced recantation, Blasius gave a later lecture in which he denied these views. In this lecture he warns that the views of Albumazar are erroneous and false, denying specifically that the conjunctions of Jupiter with

the other planets produce the various religions. insists

furthermore that a wise

knowledge of the belief.

Despite

this denial,

from Church

pressure

Blasius accepts

He

certain.

all

man

will supersede the

deciding his

stars in

He

own

religious

obviously produced under

authorities,

appears that

it

these philosophical doctrines as religious

criticizes

doctrines on

philo-

example of this attitude can be found in the works of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525). Teaching natural philosophy at Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna. Pomponazzi summarizes and reshapes the

more

Of the philosophical themes we have traced Pomponazzi concerns himself primarily with three: the mortality of the soul, the regularity

and universality of natural laws, and the nature of religious doctrine.

In his immortality treatises

immortalitate animae, Apologia, and Defensorium

De

— he

The proof is original many formerly disparate

proves the mortality of the soul. only in the sense that elements.

it

unites

With Alexander of Aphrodisias, he insists that body and is forever bound to

the soul inheres in the its

material foundation; the corruption of the material

foundation entails the destruction of the soul. With

sophical grounds, attacks biblical miracles, and reverses

Blasius,

the traditional degrees of certitude in religion and

without some relation to bodily powers; for even the

philosophy. For Blasius truth appears to be on the side

highest function of thought

which claims the privilege of explaining the origin of religion itself as a natural phenomenon.

chain of powers based on corruptible matter. With

now

cannot simultaneously be an immaterial substance and

of philosophy Siger's

probable philosophical statements are

he

finds that

no function of the soul can

Scotus, he argues against

is

Thomas Aquinas

that the soul

transformed into an absolute philosophical certitude,

the act of the body; an immaterial substance

and separable from the body while an act

religious belief

and

its

representatives

perfecting

bodily

operations.

exist

part of an interlocking

bowing before

only out of tactical necessity.

Since

is

is

separate

a process

Aristotle

had

development of Blasius' doctrines appears in the sixteenth century, which marks the final liberation of philosophy from its subordination to revelation. In the Aristotelian tradition most thinkers continued

always defined the soul as the act of the body, we must hold that it is always bound to the powers it perfects;

to maintain sincerely the traditional distinctions be-

natural causes for "miraculous occurrences." Cures,

tween probable philosophical statements and absolute

visions,

and the

raising of the

in three

ways: as

human inventions,

The

full

religious

truth.

universities,

Some

professors

in

the

Italian

however, developed the dramatic

viewpoint

already

quickly to

this,

expressed

by

Blasius.

shift in

Beacting

the Fifth Lateran Council of 1513

revived the traditional oath of the Parisian masters of arts;

it

declared that

positions

of

all

discussions of philosophical

opposed to faith had to include both a defense and a reasoned argument against

revelation

hence

defended orthodoxy with a proclamation of the immortality of the soul as a dogma and the condemnation of three errors: the unity of the intellect, the mortality of the soul,

and the idea that such doctrines were true

is

it

In the

mortal,

De

Pomponazzi concludes. Pomponazzi discovers

incantationibus,

powers (found

in plants,

trained

mind can

clear conclusion

is

trace to their natural causes.

After Pomponazzi establishes these doctrines as the findings of philosophy

and natural reason, he applies

the usual distinctions which have been traditional for three centuries. These are the findings of natural reason,

he

says,

but they must be suspended by

all

there were

some who were

guilty of asserting the

absolute truth of philosophy while paying perfunctory

obeisance to the "truth" of revelation.

An

outstanding

The

produced

by angels or demons because there are no interruptions of the natural processes of birth, growth, and decay.

truth," said the theologians, echoing the

charged, of two contradictory truths. But doubtless

explained

heavenly Intelligences.

that there are no miracles

nation. In the

1277 condemworks of the professors of philosophy we do not find the open admission, as the Council

all

the effects of occult

Miracles are reduced to unusual events which only the

Church teaches immortality duced by Cod, demons, and

"at least in philosophy." "Truth does not contradict

dead are

animals, and men), or the

results of the activity of the

heterodox notions. The theologians of the Council

OD

radical conclusions of his predecessors in the

Aristotelian tradition.

this as true,

faith.

The

as well as miracles proangels.

We

must accept

rejecting the conclusions of reason.

Although not demonstrable by reason, the truth of faith is superior to the findings of reason. For God, who is the creator of nature, may suspend its principles. In these apologetic statements, Pomponazzi appears to be very close to Siger, Boethius of Dacia, and Buridan.

DOUBLE TRUTH Closer examination, however, reveals that he follows

Pomponazzi knows on Averroes' prologue to Physics, Book

the path of Blasius. Like Jandun.

and lectures

Commentator

that "truth

is

nor falsehood but

behaved."

He

But

works there are

lished

neither truth well-

in his

discovery of a

is

Siger, Boethius of Dacia, Jandun,

Pompon-

origin for religious doctrines. is

an invention of doctrine "not

this

accepted as invented by

men "who knew

very well that they did

Pomponazzi holds

Cod

that Christianity

is

not

but merely the product of

impersonal heavenly forces. These forces, the heavenly Intelligences,

produce

life-cycles for all religions, in-

cluding Christianity. In

fact,

approaching

its

Christianity

death which

itself,

why

is

he the

Intelligences produce so few "miracles" at the present time. If the origin of Christianity tioned, so are

its

is

temporally condi-

doctrines. Far from eternal verities,

they are the inventions of religious lawmakers to control a bestial

human

who seek

nature through the fear of

and the hope of heaven. The philosopher who does not need such restraints, Pomponazzi continues, may nevertheless understand their purpose and approve of them for the masses. These doctrines mark the beginning of the end of theological dominance in the West. Philosophy is no longer a collection of probable statements but an absohell

lute truth subjecting all doctrines to ysis.

as

its

powerful anal-

begins to dislodge theology from

It

its

position

queen of the sciences. If

we

cussed,

it

was probably

to

and Buridan

all sin-

be expected that some thinkers

confronted constantly with the un-

in this tradition,

christian naturalism of Aristotle, would one day pro-

claim the Stagirite's doctrines as the highest truth, and turn this truth against theology

itself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY The and

1277 condemnation

text of the

A.

Chatelain, 18891.

Paris,

Chartularium

543-55.

1.

Set- also:

is

found

Denifle

in 11.

universitatis

pariensus

W. Bentzenddrfer, Die

Lehre ion der zweifachen Wahrheit bei Petrus Pomponatius

the gift of an eternal

is

Yet

angels,

not exist."

explains,

possi-

cerely accepted the one supreme truth of theology.

the doctrine of mortality as proved bv philoso-

Finally,

made

ultimate escape from religious domination.

con-

lawmakers who proclaim

Demons and

its

pub-

which he apparently has the Church's teaching, he finds were also

phy.

the necessity of theological guidance. This ble

in his

caring for truth." Clearly the truth thev do not "care for"

the earlier thinkers, led by Siger. freed philosophy from

finally

Immortality, he comes to state, religious

professional

and

striking instances of

human

among

tionship of philosophy to theology

own name

acceptance of philosophy as absolute truth, and

azzi's

history of the idea

out an independent domain of inquiry for philosophy,

is

takes the precaution, as did Jandun. of

as false.

The

thus really the historv of the rela-

the end of philosophy

associating these views with Averroes.

demns them

is

philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition. By carving

make men good and

to

of double truth

of the

while the end of the religious lawgiver

his

name

In these lectures, he proclaims in the

III.

strongest institutional sanctions.

we have

dis-

see that the masters in the Faculty of

Arts at Paris initiated a tradition which lasted over four centuries in the universities of Europe those philosophers

who were

among

professionally concerned

with Aristotle and his commentators. Refusing to find or to force agreement between pagan doctrines and its most extreme form, the problem of the precise relationship

revelation, the Parisian masters raised, in

of philosophical inquiry to revealed truth.

they did this at a time

Rinasdmento

net

when

Moreover

revealed truth had the

(Turin, 1963). Pierre

Duhem,

Si/stcmc tin

monde, Vol. V (Paris, 1954). E. Gilson, "La doctrine de la double verite," Etudes de philosophic inediet ale (Strasbourg, 19211, pp. 51-69; idem. History of Christian Philosophy in

Middle Ages (New York, 1955).

the

T.

Gregory, "Discussioni

99-106 "Paduan Averroism and Alexandrism in the

sulla "doppia verita," Cultura e Scuola, 2 (1962), P. ().

Kristeller,

Light of Recent Studies," Atti del XII Congresso Inter-

nazionale di Filosofia, 9 (I960), 147-55. Perversity

and

Error:

Jandun (Bloomington, Galileis

S.

MacClintock,

Studies on the "Acerroist" John of Ind.,

1956). A. Maier, Studien zur

Naturphilosophie der Spatscholastik, Vol.

I:

Die Vorlaufer

im 14 Jahrundert (Rome, 1949), 279-99; Vol. IV:

Metaphysische Hintergrunde der spatscholastischen Naturphilosophie (Rome, 1955), 3-45. A. Maurer, "Between Rea-

son and Faith: Siger of Brabant and Pomponazzi on the

Magic

Arts," Medieval Studies, 18 (1956), 1-18.

la

J.

P.

Muller,

chez Siger de Brabant: La Theorie de double verite," Studia anselmiana. 7-8 (1938). 35-50. B.

"Philosophic et

foi

Nardi, Studisu Pomponazzi (Florence, 1965). A. Pacchi, "Sul

Commento della

glance briefly over the history

we can

(Tubingen, 1919). G. Di Napoli, L'bnmortalita dell'anima

al

Doppia

'De anima' de G.

di

Jandun, IV: La Questione

Verita," Rivista critica di storia delta filosofia,

15 (I960), 354-75. M. Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Problem of Double Truth," Journal of the History of Ideas. 29 1968), 163-76. L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and 1

Experimental Science, Vol. IV (New York, 1934). 64-79; Vol. V New York. 1941), 94-110. F. Van Steenberghen, Siger

de Brabant (Brussels, 1938); idem, Aristotle in the West (Louvain,

1955);

idem,

Im Philosophic au XIHe

siecle

(Louvain, 1966).

MARTIN PINE [See also Astrology; Certainty; Creation;

mortality; Dualism; God.]

Death and Im-

37

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

sider

in

A dualist is one who believes that the facts which he considers whether they be the facts of the world cannot be in general or a particular class of them the existence explained except by supposing ultimately of two different and irreducible principles. For exam-

—

—

anthropology explain facts about

ple, dualists in

man

by two fundamental causes: reason and the passions, soul and body, or freedom and determinism; in the theory of knowledge, dualists explain knowledge by the meeting of two different realities: subject and object; in religious cosmology, they picture the world as dominated by the perpetual conflict of a good and an evil

power, both of which have always existed.

How-

is most often and philoso-

ever, the subjects in which the term dualism

phy.

history of religions

Thomas Hyde seems

"dualist,"

which he uses

to

have invented the term

in his history of the religion

Persians (Historia religionis veterum

of the ancient

Persarum, 1700) in order to designate the think that ples.

God and

plied

it

later

by Leibniz. Christian Wolff

to the philosophers

and the soul

as

two

(dualistae) are those

who

"The

distinct substances:

who admit

ap-

first

considered the body dualists

the existence of both

material and immaterial substances, that

cede the

men who

two coeternal princiused in this same sense by

the devil are

The term was

Pierre Bayle and

is,

they con-

which God's adversary

often personified but

is

is

Manicheism there is something else, in addition to these two forms of dualism. Manicheism proceeds from Gnosticism, and Gnostic dualism although some scholars held it to be also identified with matter.

But

in

—

a synthesis of Hellenic (that

is

to say of philosophical)

and of Zoroastrian dualism

is

neither exactly a philo-

—

sophical dualism, nor a religious one belonging to the

Zoroastrian type, nor a synthesis of both.

It is

in fact

which consists essentially in the opposiof God and the world. We shall therefore handle a third section. This peculiar form of dualism may

a third genus, tion it

in

be considered

as

belonging principally to the history

real existence of bodies outside the ideas of

DUALISM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS Primitive Religions. A religion is not dualistic simply /.

because

it

admits the existence of good and

evil spirits.

good and evil spirits are still considered to belong to the same genus. They all belong to the forces of nature that can be both good and bad: good in certain respects and bad in other respects, good in certain circumstances and bad in other circumstances. These powers are concerned with what serves or injures them rather than with good for the sake of good or evil for the sake of evil. In animism both

Certain so-called primitive religions recognize a

supreme

spirit,

represent this

a great God, and certain

God

among them

as the principal but not the only

the souls and defend the immateriality of these souls"

creator of the world. According to stories that are

(Psychologia rationalis [1734], Sec. 39). Most philoso-

found among the North American Indians and in central and north Asia, a second being intervened in the

phers employ the word in Wolff's sense, whereas most historians of religions

"dualism" which

it

have retained the meaning of

had

in

Hyde.

The word "dualism" then has two ings: it

(1) religious

and

principal

mean-

(2) philosophical. In sense

(1)

designates religions such as Zoroastrianism of the

later Avesta

and of the Pahlavi books;

in sense (2)

dualism applies to philosophies such as Cartesianism.

must be noted that these are very different doctrines, from which it would be possible to draw even contraIt

dictory consequences. For example, the dualism of soul

and body or

of

mind and matter might lead to the mind (the

denial of the existence of an absolutely evil devil)

and even of an

itself evil for

evil principle.

Matter

is

not in

the dualistic philosophers; and a pure

mind can hardly be

oo

However, it may seem that they some systems, for instance in Manicheism,

separately.

of Christian theology.

There are various kinds of dualism, depending on the different subjects of reflection or research.

employed are the

them

are united in

evil for those

who

think that the

creation and caused the institution of death. The world had been created all good, without evil or death, but this second being (who is either an adversary or a clumsy collaborator of the supreme God) did something malicious or stupid which led to irreparable harm. These stories seem to express the astonishment of man in the presence of evil and death, and the tendency to believe that these do not belong to the essence of things but are rather the result of an accident which cannot be due to the supreme deity. A germ of dualism resides in that idea. But nowhere is the independent origin of the second being positively expressed; sometimes he is a creature of the good god, sometimes

nothing

is

said of his origin.

Religions in Antiquity. In ancient Egypt a dualistic

cause of error, and consequently of evil, is the mixture of mind with matter or the inversion of their legitimate

tendency appears, on the one hand,

hierarchic order,

has a perpetual adversary, Apophis, the gigantic serpent of darkness; on the other hand, a similar tendency

Since the two doctrines are distinct,

we must

con-

the sun-god Be, the principle of

in the religion of

life

and

truth,

who

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION which Set is the and constantly opposes Isis and Horns. However, Re (or another good god) might be represented as the universal creator. As for Set. who had been the principal god in certain provinces, he was for a long time regarded as capable of doing good in certain respects; only in a later epoch did he become the personification of evil. Moreover, he was regarded appears in the legend of adversary

who

as the brother of Osiris,

mon

Osiris, in

kills Osiris

which means they had a com-

hymns we

find

two groups

of divinities

who, though both were equally venerated, are sometimes conceived as opposed to one another: the deva and the asura. In the Brahmana, the deva remain as gods, but the asura

became demons. However,

demons are unorganized,

these

scattered, without a

and nothing is said about their origin. We also find in the Veda a greatly stressed antithesis between order (or truth, rta) and falsity (druh); but this opposileader,

tion

is

not the basis of the entire religion, as

it

is

in

Various ancient mythologies present a picture of a

tremendous battle between the gods and the giants, monsters, or demons. Babylonian mythology tells of the of

Marduk

against Tiamat.

The

Bible mentions

Leviathan, a sea monster of chaos, that

God

has van-

Greek mythology relates the The mythology of the Germans includes the past and future struggles of the gods against the giants and against the demonicpowers, offspring of Loki. (German myths refer also to the war of the Ases and Vanes, but this war seems to be of a different kind, since Ases and Vanes seem to be complementary forces whose struggle ends in a reconciliation.) The Indian epic narrates the war of the Pandava, born of the gods, against the army of

quished and will

kill.

battle of Zeus against the Titans.

their

demon

now

cousin;

this

transposition of an older story in selves fought the

is

story

is

perhaps the

which the gods them-

demons. These pictures of a gigantic

drama might suggest examples

Only

is

and the whole

of evil,

based on the idea of their incessant warfare.

end of time

at the

will the Evil Spirit

be van-

quished completely.

According have lived

was founded by

to tradition, this religion

Zoroaster who,

if

he

is

at the latest

may

not a legendary figure,

around 600

b.c.

but might have

been much older. The most general opinion is that he reformed the old Indo-Iranian religion. In fact, there found transformation. The word daeva, the Iranian form of the root which among the Indo-Europeans designated the gods,

in the

and some of the ancient

Avesta designates demons,

rites

witnessed by the Veda

are attacked. Certain customs practiced by the Magi,

and which other peoples regarded

a dualism, but in none of these

the dualism complete or systematic.

The

two parties are always descended from one another or from the same principle. Marduk is a descendent of Tiamat; Zeus and the Titans have the same origin; Leviathan was created by God; the combatants of Mahabharata are in the same family; Loki is an Ase like Odin who has a certain friendship for him. Zoroastrianism. The Iranian dualism differs from the others because of

its

systematic character.

It

implies

good around the great god Ahura Mazda or Ohrmazd, principle of truth; all that is evil is concentrated around the Evil Spirit, Ahra Mainyu or Ahriman, the power of falsehood. This dualism establishes a nearly perfect symmetry between a concentration of

all

that

is

as

impious (exposing

corpses to birds or dogs, consanguineous marriage),

seem to indicate a radical break with ancient beliefs. Above all, there is in the Gathas a constant aspiration for a transformation, for a "renovation" of existence,

a renovation requiring struggles

Zoroastrianism.

war

religion

are in the Gathas of the Avesta indications of a pro-

origin.

In the Vedic

Indian

good and those

the forces of

nated only

in

the future. In

all

which

these

will

be termi-

hymns one

feels

a constant concern to vanquish enemies, to convert

people to a certain doctrine, to combat a religion taken to

be

false,

and to

fight against social forces

taken to

be violent and oppressive. This systematic dualism, dividing

all

of the world's creatures into

good and

evil

beings, could express the intransigeance and the intol-

erance of the revolutionary reformer preaching a

new

order.

Was the Evil Spirit for Zoroaster completely independent of Ahura Mazda and co-eternal with him? We cannot be sure of

In one text of the Gathas, the Mainyu) and the Evil One are called "twins" and are said to "choose" truth and evil respectively. According to certain scholars this shows that the two spirits have the same origin and that the evil one became evil by choice. According to other scholars the word "twins" implies perhaps only a kind of parallelism, and they remark that these two spirits are represented as being from the beginning one good and the other evil. (In fact the Gathas do not distil guish clearly between choosing evil and being by nature bad; the daeva and the wicked are said sometimes to choose evil and sometimes to be sons of evil.) What-

Good

this.

Spirit (Spenta

ever the case

may

be, the Evil Spirit, in the formulas

opposed to the Good Spirit but not directly to Ahura Mazda. It is true that the latter seems at times to be identified with the Good Spirit, but the two are sometimes distinguished from one another. Perhaps, therefore, Ahura Mazda was in primitive Zoroastrianism above the battle. of the Gathas,

is

Ohrmazd is completely Good Spirit, and henceforth the Evil

But in later Zoroastrianism, identified with the

39

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION One

confronts him directly on the same plane.

The

authors of the Pahlavi hooks ninth century a.d.) assert the independent origin of the

two

principles.

This

evolution was justified moreover by the spirit of the

Gathas, for the warlike atmosphere of irreconcilable opposition that pervades these

deny any

to

The

between the

link

religion of Zoroaster

struggle;

hence

it

is

hymns should

lead one

indeed a religion of

"The one who

not a gentle one.

wicked is wicked" (Yasna, 46. 6). Certain beings in the world are regarded as the creation of Ahriman, which practically amounts to being regarded as completely wicked. The basis of Zoroastrianism is morality, but it is a harsh moralitv which is

good

for the

demands above

all,

seems, social discipline.

it

The

religious duty of the Zoroastrian consisted in fulfilling his function in society in the best possible

manner.

forms of a single fundamental relation of contrariety. the other hand, they distinguished profoundly soul

and body,

as

is

shown by

their theory of the transmi-

gration of souls and by the dictum attributed to as well as to the Orphics:

"The body

them

a tomb."

is

Heraclitus and Parmenides appear to have attacked

Pythagorean dualism, Heraclitus

showed

and form a

dualism of contraries.

at least the

that the contraries are inseparable

unity:

Parmenides proclaimed that only

the one, immobile, eternal Being exists, whereas the

many, the moving, perishable things do not

exist in

true reality.

Submission and work were the great virtues. In recip-

Empedocles, on the contrary, continued to maintain

rocation this religion seems to have been concerned

the two Pythagorean kinds of dualism. For him the

with the protection of the workers against the forces

dominated alternately by two opposing prinLove and Hate, which produce respectively unity and multiplicity. Furthermore, the soul for him has a different nature than the body, and he tells of world

is

and shepherd against the undisciplined warrior. There was a strong hope that an improved order would be established. Zoroastrianism is directed towards the future, it aspires

ciples,

and includes an eschatology. The Zoroastrian rites symbolize and prepare the great future "renovation" which will drive evil away once and for

moaned

all

and unify the world. Under the Sassanids a monistic trend developed in the speculation called "Zurvanism." According to the

kinds of beings: elements in general, that are mixtures

Zurvanite myth

on the one hand, and on the other, the mind (voiis) which alone exists apart, is pure, without admixture,

of anarchy, the protection of the farmer

to progress,

Ohrmazd and Ahriman are both sons Time (that is to say, eternity). How-

of Zurvan, Infinite ever,

some recent

studies tend to

was not generally taken

to

show

that

Zurvanism

a soul which, having fallen from the world of the gods,

unaccustomed place"

Anaxagoras, in his turn, clearly distinguished two in

which everything

is

and which, on coming

mingled with everything

else,

into the chaos of the elements,

puts order into them.

be a heresy, and was able

mingle with orthodox Zoroastrianism. After

at seeing itself in "this

(frags. 118, 119).

Plato does not teach any dogmas, but his dialogues

to

tend to support the view that the soul exists inde-

Ohrmazd and Ahriman are sons of eternity was perhaps a way of saying that they are eternal. In any case, Zurvan was too abstract and too indeterminate to establish a real unity above the two opposing

pendently of the body and that the intelligible world

principles.

true Being. Yet the world of sense has also a kind of

to

all,

say that

The really

case

is

is

modern Parsees. They have They think that Ahriman is only evil in man. They reject what

different with

become

the symbol of

monists.

what

is

nevertheless the most fascinating characteristic of

human goodness or badness human struggle to a struggle

is

independent of the world perceived by the

It is

to be, for only the intelligible, the Idea, constitutes

existence. In the

of

power

evil.

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY Western Philosophy. Pythagoras may already have been a dualist, in two senses. On the one hand, the //.

Pythagoreans taught that

all

things are

composed

of

is

not the only

is

also another cause,

namelv, Necessity. The Demiurge "persuades" Neces-

cosmic powers, the

good and

of the creation of the world,

cause of the universe; there sity to direct

erations the opposition of

myth

the Demiurge, the good "Worker,"

to

by any consid-

senses.

true that the latter world cannot be said really

Zoroastrianism: relating

the whole universe, and not attenuating

40

unlimited, the

On

adversaries. is

one and the many, the limited and the odd and the even, right and left, masculine and feminine, rest and motion, the straight line and the curve, light and darkness, good and evil, etc. Now. these opposites seem to have been the various contraries: the

is

most things towards the Good, but its Timaeus 47e-48a). In the Re-

not unlimited

(

public (379b-380c), Socrates says that

God

cause of everything, but only of what

is

Theaetetus (176a), he says: "It

is

is

not the

good. In the

necessary that there

should always be something contrary to the good." It

has sometimes been supposed that Zoroastrianism

influenced Pythagorean and Platonic thought, but is

hardly probable.

The wicked

soul

mentioned

it

in

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION Laws (896e-898c) does

Plato's soul,

and

not appear as a cosmic

Statesman (270a), he repels the idea

in the

world could be governed by two opposing evil, for Plato, is due to the ignorance produced in the soul by its union with the body.

that the deities.

Moral

Aristotle Plato,

is

whom

much more he

subject the basis of everything, the ground for the

existence of the universe. Hegel brought the whole of

ties

life; is

matter

is,

in actuality.

the soul in an intimate relationship to the body-

form or entelechy of a natural body potentially possessing life. Yet there remains in Aristotle something of the Platonic dualism, particularly in his theory of the prime mover, an incorporeal it

away

continu-

tries to restore a

He

defines

reality in itself.

having "separated" the

He

for

when he

is

Philosophers coming after Kant tried to do

with these profound divisions. Fichte made the free

between the lower and the higher him, already potentially what form

ity

of moral duty,

of a monist than his teacher

criticizes for

Idea from sensible things.

phenomena and things in themselves. For Kant there are somehow two worlds: one is the world of phenomena and the other, known only through consciousness

as the

reality into a single chain

by making contradiction,

posited and then transcended, the law of

all

first

thought

and of all nature. Thus the history of Western philosophy appears to be an alternation of dualism and monism. On several occasions philosophy has been renovated by a very

Platonism,

doctrine:

dualistic

and

Cartesianism,

Kantianism have initiated such renovations. However,

and separate substance; also in his theory of the intellect which he seems to hold as separate from all the other faculties of the soul, entering it as though it were

dualism was soon overcome and submerged by more

from the outside.

his pupils are not. It

After Aristotle the Stoics and Epicureans are first

monism according

which the whole world

to

more

school having a spiritualistic

thorough monists, the

or reason, the second having a materialistic

which reduces everything

is mind monism

leaned principally on from the thirteenth century onwards, theologians made use chiefly of Aristotle, not without modifying some of his theories in order to bring them into harmony with Christianity. Christian philosophy at

first

Plato, but

In the Renaissance period Plato returned, and with

him dualism was revived. In the seventeenth century Descartes sharply divided reality by defining mind exclusively as a substance that thinks, and matter ex-

seems

is

a dualist, but

though there was somedualism for most philoso-

as

thing too harsh and rough in

phers to bear. They wish to reconcile everything, and

dualism disappoints them by the very fact that

two

principles and not one alone.

dualism

to atoms.

The teacher

or less monistic doctrines.

is

a failure, that

does not succeed

it

it

posits

They believe in

that

unifying

of reality: they expect philosophy to unify every-

all

thing.

But the dualistic philosophers have perhaps

judged that the

human

condition requires us only to

think and act well in the present; they have tried, all, to justify the clearest method of thinking and the most certain morality. To confuse the body more or less with thought is to lodge in the body a mysterious force, which is impenetrable to clear science, and which destroys the will to govern the body.

above

clusively as an extended substance, thus distinguishing

In

own

our

twentieth century, Lovejoy has de-

them radically from one another. This distinction, which excludes any intermediary, allowed Descartes

scribed, under the title

to establish a clear, wholly mathematical science of

refute or to avoid dualism; he believes that they have

physics.

Every

fact in the material

world was to be

explained solely by geometry and mechanics. Descartes' successors did not tolerate this bifurcation

the

many

all failed.

Alain (1868-1951) has taught the moral value

of dualism in Cartesianism is

the most vigorous

entitled "Paralogism of the Ideality of the External

also has

World" (Transcendental dualism insofar as

it

Dialectic,

Book

II),

criticized

signified that thinking substance

and extended substance are things in themselves, but he admitted it insofar as it could signify that subject

phenomena. To this diviwithin phenomena he added the distinction of

and object are quite sion

distinct

and maintained that dualism

not a fault in a philosophy but, on the contrary,

two substances. Spinoza made extension and thought no longer two substances but two attributes of the one substance God. Leibniz, although he distinguished in a certain way the soul from the body, pictured all reality on the model of thought. Kant, in his chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason of reality into

The Revolt Against Dualism,

attempts of contemporary philosophers to

trait,

is

revealing the energy which

makes sound thinking. Philosophical dualism does not imply the condemnation of certain beings outside one's but expresses a will to govern one's self. Indian Philosophy. The dominant and best known

self,

philosophy of India its

is

the monistic Vedanta. But India

dualistic philosophies. In particular, the

very ancient and very important Samkhya teaches that

both matter

(or nature)

and the

Spirit

have existed

throughout eternity.

Chinese Philosophy. The oldest Chinese distinguish two fundamental powers, Yang and Yin. Yang is the celestial principle, luminous, warm, masculine, active,

41

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION and creative; Yin is earthly, dark, cold, feminine, passive, and receptive. But the Chinese philosophers represent them generally as manifestations of the same principle. ///.

DUALISM IN THEOLOGY

Pre-Gnostic Dualism. Around the beginning of the Christian era, dualistic ideas appeared in Judaism, in

permitted

it.

Thus

their dualism

It

is

The

more

and even has created the world by means of two opposing powers. According to the Rule of C/umran (III— IV), two spirits created by God, the Prince of Lights and the Angel of Darkness, dominate the world. Philo (ca. 13 B.c.-ca. a.d. 5()i says, though only in a single text, that God created the world by means of two powers, one of which is the cause of good things, the other of evil things (Quaestiones in Exodum, I, 23). Philo is. moreover, a Platonist, and it is not certain that for him matter was created by God. The Jewish Apocalyptic opposes the present to the future world in a sort of temporal dualism. But nowhere in Judaism is the denial of the value of the world carried to the point to which Gnosticism went and where even certain texts of early Christianity extended. The Qumran's angel of darkness is not the "prince of the world"; the two spirits are in the world "in equal proportion." Gnostic Dualism. Historians gave the name "Gnosticism"

at first to

a group of Christian heresies

which appeared towards the end of the first century. These various and numerous heresies had in common their rejection of the Old Testament and especially of the biblical doctrine of creation. The world is neither created nor governed directly by God, but by inferior blind powers that do not know God. The Yahweh of the Bible, creator of the world,

is

only the chief of

knowing the and the soul, a spark of the divine, is not of this world. The soul, enslaved in this world, can be freed, become conscious of its origin, and ascend to God only by grace of gnosis, the supernatural knowledge brought by the these lower powers; he created without true

Good. The world

is

not of

God

(directly;,

extent, therefore, the Gnostics attributed

an origin to the world different from the soul's origin. Moreover, they employed the Greek dualism of soul

and matter. Yet they were not completely dualistic, for according to them the Creator was somehow related to the true

God, as one of His angels or

as

an

offspring in the genealogy of emanations. Besides, the true

God,

if

syncretist.

difficulty in uniting

it

later Gnostics,

inheritors of a

Old Testament, saw no with pagan traditions (Platonism,

the Mysteries, Oriental religions).

On

the other hand,

we meet no longer only among the writings which seem to be pagan,

from about the middle of the second century, ideas of a Gnostic nature Christians, but in

for example, the Hennetica.

found

and

later in Islam,

in

Gnostic ideas are also

Judaism

in the

Kabbala.

Thus, after a certain epoch, Gnostic ideas seem to

be no longer tied necessarily to Christianity. This permits

many modern

was not

origin, contrary to it

scholars to hold that Gnosticism

from its what the Church Fathers believed,

essentially a Christian heresy; that

was a great current

of thought which, while mingling

with Christianity, existed apart from

even before

it.

it and perhaps These scholars have searched for its

origins principally in Zoroastrianism, in Hellenism, or in certain trends of

Judaism. Nevertheless, these re-

searches have not yet resulted in conclusions of any certainty. is still

The problem

ardently discussed.

of the origins of Gnosticism It is

true that after a certain

epoch Gnostic ideas spread beyond Christian circles, but still one cannot be at all sure that these ideas were not born there. No Gnostic text before Christianity is known, and the most ancient known Gnostics are Christians. In addition, it seems even more difficult to explain the profound opposition between God and the world by Hellenism, Zoroastrianism, or Judaism than by the New Testament. In the fourth Gospel, for example, the opposition between God and the world is already emphasized nearly as much as among the Gnostics. It

is

possible that the crucifixion of Christ, that

to say, the defeat of the Just this

One

deep pessimism with regard

in the world,

is

caused

to the world. Besides,

the Paulinist and Johannist idea that one could not be

divine Savior.

To some

a feeling

alien to

Christianity detached from the

acts

all in

God, and that there is between God and nature a gulf which cannot be crossed except by God. Gnosticism was particularly vigorous in the second century. But, condemned by the Church of Rome toward the middle of that century, it became more and world

that the

monotheism. Whether due to the influence of the Iranian religion or to the autonomous development of

God

was neither ab-

resided above

which, however, they remain limited by the rigorous

Judaism, Jewish writers teach that

42

least

solute nor systematic.

He had

not wished the Creation, had at

saved except by divine Grace means that there

is

a

deep separation between nature and salvation. Manicheism. Founded in the third century of our era by the Persian Mani, Manicheism is one of the late, syncretist forms of Gnosticism. Mani wanted to unite Christianity (under

its

Gnostic form) with Zoroastrian-

Buddhism, and Greek philosophy. In fact, the part played by Gnostic Christianity is by far the most imism,

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION portant part of his doctrine. But he

made Gnostic

Be

of Gnosticism.

that as

it

may, Saint Augustine kept

dualism more rigid and more systematic, reinforcing

alive in occidental theology a rather strong dualistic

on the model of Zoroastrian dualism. With him the two principles are truly independent and co-eternal. Evil for him was identical with matter, but he described evil as having traits which reminded one of

trend by his deep separation of Nature from Grace.

it

Ahriman.

Nobody was as

and voluntarily a dualist Mani. For him the positing of two principles was as consciously

By assembling Gnostic myths, he constructed a great myth which described the primitive separation of the two principles (Light, the substance of the soul, and Darkness, that the foundation of

is

true

all

religion.

Darkness

to say, matter); then their mixture, after

attacked Light and engulfed some of the

way

its

parts; then

the particles of Light (souls) can be freed from

He announced that would be brought back to their the principles would once again be sepa-

Darkness and return

some day

all

origin, that

to their source.

creatures

often believed that the Manicheans divided evil

beings.

This tendency

is,

however,

rather typical of the Zoroastrians. For the Manicheans,

everything in the world was a mixture; pure goodness

and

evil existed only in the principles. Moreover, the Manicheans were neither violent nor intolerant; they adapted their language to that of other religions, thinking that there was something good in nearly all

of them. Salvation for

them did not

consist in fighting

1.

Bianchi,

U.

dualismo

//

Ormazd

Duchesne-Guillemin,

religioso et

llran ancien (Paris,

Germains

(New

1962).

(Paris, 1959). A. V.

York, 1928).

2.

who

The

dualistic

Armenia and Asia Minor between the seventh and the tenth centuries, and continued later in the Balkans; that of the Bogomils, whose doctrine started in Bulgaria and spread in the Balkans between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries; that of the Cathari, who flourished in Western Europe in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries probably sprang not from Manicheism but, like Manicheism itself, from Gnosticism, which had continued in the Orient. The flourished in

—

principle of

all

these dualisms

is

still

the profound

between God and the world. Augustinian Theology. It has sometimes been held that Manicheism exerted some influence on the theology of Saint Augustine, who, in his youth, was a Manichean for nine years. But whatever there is of dualism in him seems rather to come from Saint Paul and Saint John the Evangelist, who, without themselves distinction

being Gnostics,

may have been

the principal inspirers

de

le

Studies

dualisme

Twilight of Zoroastrianism (London, 1961).

Alain, Etude sur Descartes (Paris, 1928).

Feng

(Yu-lan),

A

History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. D. Bodde (Peiping and London, 1937). A. O. Lovejoy, The Revolt against

and London, 1930). S. Petrement, Le de la phihsophie et des religions (Paris, 1946); idem, Le dualisme chez Platon, les gnostiques et les manicheens (Paris, 1947). L. Renou and J. Filliozat, L'Inde classique (Paris, 1947-53). A. Schweitzer, The PhiDualism (LaSalle,

dualisme dans

111.

I'histoire

losophy of Civilization, Vol. ed., trans.

II:

Civilization

and

Ethics, 3rd

C. T. Campion, revised by Mrs. Ch. E. B. Russell

(London, 1946). 3.

S.

Aalen, Die Begriffe "Licht"

(Oslo, 1951). A.

of the Paulicians,

J.

mazdeen," Etudes cannelitaines. 6 (1948), 130-35. M. Mole, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans I'Iran ancien (Paris, 1963). H. Te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion (Leyden, 1967). G. Widengren, Die Beligionen Irons (Stuttgart, 1965). R. C. Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi, a Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs (London and New York, 1956); idem, The

world.

— that

religion

W. Jackson, Zoroastrian

Alten Testament, im Spatjudentum

Middle Ages

La

de Menasce, "Note sur

P.-J.

1958).

I'aventure

G. Dumezil, Les dieux des

(Darkness) in themselves, and in escaping from the

Dualistic Heresies of the Middle Ages.

(Rome,

Ahriman.

dualiste dans lantiquite (Paris, 1953); idem,

against certain beings, but in fighting against matter

heresies of the

in

BIBLIOGRAPHY

all

good or

the creatures of the world into absolutely

absolutely

dualism again in Luther and

find this sort of

the Jansenists.

Dawn and

rated, this time forever. It is

We

und "Finsternis" im und im Rabbinismus

Adam, "Der manichaische Urspning der Lehre von den zwei Reichen bei Augustin," Theologische

Literaturzeitung. 77 (1952), 385-90. G. Aulen, Christus vic-

New York, and Toronto, The Origins of Gnosticism, Colloquium of Messina (Leyden, 1967). O. Bocher, Der johanneische Dualismus (Gutersloh, 1965). A. Borst, Die Katharer (Stuttgart, 1953). W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Gottingen, 1907). E. Bring, Dualismen hos Luther (Stockholm, 1929). F. C. Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees tor, trans.

A. G.

Hebert (London,

1931). U. Bianchi, ed..

(Cambridge, 1925). R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966). H. W. Huppenbauer,

Der Mensch zwischen zwei Welten (Zurich, Gnosis und spdtantiker Geist (Gottingen,

I,

1959). H. Jonas,

1934;

II, 1,

1954);

idem, The Gnostic Religion (Boston, 1958; reprint, 1963). H. Langerbeck, Aufsdtze zur Gnosis (Gottingen, 1967). S.

Petrement, "La notion de gnosticisme," Revue de Metaet de Morale, 65 (1960), 385-421; idem, "Le Col-

physique

loque de Messine et

le

(1967), 344-73. H.-Ch. S.

probleme du gnosticisme," Puech, Le manicheisme

ibid.,

72

(Paris, 1949).

Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge,

1947).

H. Soderberg, La religion des Cathares (Uppsala, 1949). P. Volz, Die Eschatologie der jiidischen Gemeinde im

4o

— ECONOMIC HISTORY government and relifamous men are born free but are everywhere

neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 2nd ed. (Tubingen, 1934). G.

for securing conformity, chiefly

Widengren,

Manichdismus (Stuttgart, 1961). R. McL. Wilson, The Gnostic Problem (London and Naperville. 111., 1958); idem. Gnosis and the New Testament

gion.

(Oxford, 1968).

natural freedom, though repeated by Jefferson and

Mam

unrf tier

SIMON'E

PETREMENT

[See also Epicureanism; Gnosticism; God; Heresy; Hermeti-

cism;

Myth

trines; Right

in

Pythagorean Doc-

Platonism;

Antiquity;

There

is

some

statement that

but the

in chains;

Lincoln,

part of the statement asserting

newborn babe has neither

And

to act.

first

manifestly false or without practical mean-

is

ing; for a

plausibility in Rousseau's

outside of limiting social conditions

and Good; Sin and Salvation; Stoicism.]

as to

is

beings living

so unrealistic

be essentially self-contradictory.

Institutions, or in the

the essence

aggregate a "culture," are of

— the primary distinctive human

word "freedom"

ECONOMIC HISTORY

nor power

will

human

in general, the idea of

trait.

and even inanimate

meaning must not

objects; but this

be confused with that of the human freedom

The Meaning of the

Topic.

The

title refers to

the

and hence abstract principles of "economic" conduct and of the free "economic" social order, based on exchange rather than with the concrete history of either history of the science dealing with the general

—

subject matter. "Pivotal ideas" include a large part of

the important things to be said about

modern

development in Western Europe following the Middle Ages. As the adjective in quotation marks indicates, the central and distinctive feature of this civilization

is

liberty,

or the closely

synonymous term, "freedom." About that, of course, many books have been written, and many more will be. Briefly,

it

refers here to the

comparative absence

or minimizing of "compulsory" control over personal

—

conduct by "society" its governmental agents and laws enforced by penalties for infraction interfering with people doing as they like and associating on terms initially

—

agreed upon. Freedom does not mean absence

in ques-

also used in connecinert ob-

This causes confusion only as implying a kind

which dogmatic devotees of mechadeny even to human beings

of purposiveness,

nistic science often

though the denial

The problems and of guiding in the relations

—

itself is a

purposive

act.)

of a free society, both of explanation its

policies in acting as a unit, focus

among the three main social

or embodiments of freedom

expressions

— the democratic

state, an "economic" organization through exchange of goods and services, and the general freedom of communication and association by voluntary assent and agreement. Logically, and especially in a historical view, the first requirement for freedom is religious, i.e., absence of exercise of power by persons or a "mob"

ostensibly acting for a supernatural source. This calls for notice especially because modern free society developed out of an antecedent medieval social order

on religion

— and

of "natural" obstacles to action, relative to a person's

explicitly based

"power"

of the persistence of such presuppositions in the short

to act,

which

is

taken as "given."

It

implies

absence of arbitrary interference by other persons, which liberalism views as the primary function of coercive law and government to prevent, to assure maximum freedom for all. The freedom in question applies in three major forms, which are inseparable. Primary is freedom of thought and expression, which largely entails freedom of action or conduct; and these freedoms are meant to be assured by political freedom, or "democracy" in the modern meaning of the term. All exist in an "institutional" social order partly compulsory in a broad "moral" meaning, but largely consisting of usage established by custom and mostly followed automatically or by voluntary choice. The type of these laws

—

is

44

is

though not with

tion with living organisms, jects.

"liberal"

civilization, a revolutionary

The word "economy"

tion here.

(The

used with respect to animals, plants,

is

that of the language current in a society, but will

its accepted proprieties or "manners." Men feel varying degree restrained and compelled by custom as such, as well as by the agencies which have evolved

modern epoch

in

which democratic

nominally accepted. These were in

practically because

ideals

first

have been

effectively born

seventeenth-century Britain, out of a three-cornered

struggle for rule

power between

by divine

a sovereign claiming to

right, a partly representative

Parliament,

and a judiciary and legal profession. Many features had existed before in varying degree, in Greece and Rome and even in medieval Europe (and some non-European lands) notably the rule of law in

—

contrast with government by arbitrary

the "pivotal idea" of free society

is

command; but

government by

consent of the governed, or in ideal terms,

For a group the laws

this

is

possible in only one way,

self-rule.

by having

made and enforced by

them, as far as possible;

i.e.,

the people subject to by agents chosen by a

include

majority, under free and equal suffrage. Majority tyr-

in

anny

is

limited only by moral forces and finally overt

resistance.

ECONOMIC HISTORY The

analytical science of economics, under

ent name, goes back less than a century.

The

its

pres-

discipline,

most distinctive features, is about a generation older; it grew out of the preceding "political economy," which arose in the late eighteenth century as

the middle of the eighteenth century,

important for

is

the transition to political economy, later replaced

by

in its

economics.

an aspect of the "Enlightenment" and revolutionary

During the mercantilistic period, apart from the propaganda for a "favorable" balance of trade, some writers in England discussed governmental activities more descriptively, and with some reference to policy. They also broached topics which were to become

marked by the American and French Revoluis also called the Age of Reason. This period individualism followed a few centuries of "national-

period, tions;

of

it

ism" beginning at the "Renaissance" with the founding of

modern

of feudal

states as monarchies,

through concentration

power. This individualistic efflorescence,

central later, notably the

of economic value.

William Petty,

The

meaning and determination

leader along this line was Sir

who wrote in the latter part of the He is most famous for his Political

seventeenth century.

along with modern science, led to the Protestant Revolt

Arithmetick (1691), which founded the modern science

and Wars of Religion, resulting in displacement of the Church as the supreme authority by a plurality of states. Renaissance civilization was as much, if not

of statistics.

more a new

interest should

birth as a rebirth (of classical antiquity).

Rs most "pivotal" concrete aspect was surely the launching or impetus given to modern science through

work

and Galileo (ca. 1610) in astronomy and mechanics, and of Vesalius (also 1543) in anatomy. Growth of trade, after the Crusades, was an important stimulus to liberalization. A major forerunner was Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519). Newton, roughly speaking, completed the movement in physical science, and in mathematics; Rene Descartes should be named, but after the beginning in Italy and Germany, the main development was Rritish. The the

of Copernicus (1543)

effective religious revolt started, of course, in

Germany

He and

Locke, discussed wages.

The

contemporaries, such as John

taxes, interest,

and money, and also wages and

mercantilists held that both

be low,

to favor effective trade rivalry

with other nations. Toward the end of the same century, writers

tional trade

began to advocate liberalizing interna-

— sometimes twisting the balance-of-trade

argument to serve this cause. Notable for reasonable views on trade policy was the work, Discourses on Trade (1691; ed. J. H. Hollander, 1935), by Sir Dudley North, as discovered by modern scholarship.

The Modern Cultural Revolution. What "fundain this transition was a culture-

mentally" happened

historical or "spiritual" revolution, a "conversion" in

the general mental and social attitude. Such events are characteristic of the history of Western Europe. Politi-

with Luther, but England had important forerunners

cally,

of both aspects, in John Wycliffe and Sir William

states,

history of analytical

its civilization first blossomed in Greek citywhich were succeeded by Hellenistic and Roman empires these in turn by the church-religion culture of the Middle Ages joined with politico-economic feu-

economics should begin with the coining by Plato's

dalism; this feudal order gave place in the Renaissance

contemporary, Xenophon, of the word oikonomikos.

to

Gilbert.

The Idea of Economics. The

It

—

monarchic "stat-ism." The Enlightenment replaced

new

combines two words meaning a house, household or estate, and a verb, to manage, or rule. In the Middle Ages, the Latin form was used with several meanings,

the idea of "L'Etat, c'est

one theological. In the seventeenth century the concept began to be applied to the management of a "state" under the French name economie politique; this followed when the establishment of absolute monarchy

through freedom and freedom for progress, directed

made

the state the "estate" of the king. In

German,

the doctrine was called "cameralism." At about the same time, the word "economy" and its relatives began to take on the general meaning it now bears the "effective" use of means to achieve an end, both means and end being "given." The doctrine of the preceding

—

nationalistic literature

is

commonly

called "mercantil-

idea of individualism,

freedom was progress

by

i.e.,

moi" with the

radically

freedom. The twin value of

— the two combined

as progress

intelligence. This "Liberal Revolution"

A

the greatest cultural overturn of history.

is

perhaps

major result

that modern men, set relatively free from tradition and authority, are largely motivated by rivalry. But is

this

is

in large part

turned to constructive action by

several "invisible hands"; mutual "material" advantage,

sportsmanship,

curiosity

— along

benevolence.

workmanship,

with public

None

spirit,

of these factors

and

scientific

sympathy, and

was

entirely new,

but the degree to which they burst forth and their

ism," because the writers advocated increase of na-

combination constituted a historical revolution.

by an excess of exports over imports, the difference to be received in "money" (gold or silver). Exposure of the fallacy of confusing money with

The new "science" of political-economy was introduced in 1776 by the Scot, Adam Smith, with his famous book, The Wealth of Nations. Its main thesis was practical and it dominated its field until about

tional wealth

wealth, especially in the Essays of David

Hume,

at

45

ECONOMIC HISTORY 1870, when the modern analytical science of economics began substantially to develop. The pivotal idea of the

new movement

also

is

freedom, but

postulate based on reason

now

as a scientific

— the (inseparable) economic

and political aspects are more directly pertinent here, though humanlv less important than the religious and cultural. (Smith's great manifesto for economic freedom was nearly simultaneous with Jefferson's Declaration of American Independence, its counterpart in the political field.) Apart from the fact that freedom itself is

a negative idea

be more

realistic

— the

in

major lesson to be learned from the history of ideas

men, including

the best minds, in seeing what it later seems should have been obvious at the first look. This is strikingly illustrated by the concept of economy. People have always practiced it have "economized," in many

much

— — but have been unaware of the principle,

as the famous M. Jourdain in Moliere's Le BourGentilhomme had talked prose from childhood but was surprised to learn the fact. People have even specialized, and exchanged products in crude markets, and for millenniums have used "money" of some form.

geois

But

in physical

nature

it

also took

many

centuries to

grasp the idea of "inertia," a fact seriously encountered constantly in everyday

life;

Aristotle

and

later great

thinkers thought that any motion once started

would

cease unless maintained by the continuous action of

some

force

—

until Galileo

showed the opposite

to be

the case.

Smith did not entitle his book "political economy," presumably because this had recently been used by his countryman Sir James Denham Steuart for a major work, Inquiry into the Principles of Political

Economy

(1767),

which properly belonged more

to the

preceding "mercantilist" school. Both economic and

freedom had been developing through

"his-

torical forces" for over a century, notably in Britain,

and Smith's book was essentially "propaganda" for more complete economic freedom (later called "laisserfaire,"

now

"laissez-faire").

Neither he nor his political-

economist followers argued their case in terms of what is now considered rational economic analysis. They had

no conception of a maximum return from resources, specifically as obtained through correct allocation among alternative uses. (And they took little notice of "technology," though they wrote at the height of the "industrial revolution," in which that was the major factor, and it is surely the crucial fact in the popular

46

from three

distinct sources

forms of income popularly

come

and to be received by three

different social classes.

Epochs

in

the Evolution of

Economic Thought.

it

and happens to present a neat cross-dichotomy main divisions, each with two subdivisions, which may be labelled I-A, I-B, and II-A and II-B. The main changes affect the objectives attributed to people by writers and thought to be proper as ends of social policy. In the first major epoch, extending from the beginnings in Greece through the Middle Ages (I-A and I-B), the aim was social and may be called idealistic or spiritual, in contrast with later "individualism" and "materialism." Ends were stressed, rather than means. (Max Weber thought the Greek spirit that of comrades in arms.) Writers looked to the persistence and prosperity of the small city-state with its culture, which bequeathed to later times a great literature and art and the word "democracy," though not the fact periods,

—two

—

as

now

The

conceived. next sub-epoch (I-B) begins with the decline of

imperial

Rome and

to ecclesiastical

Adam

political

"profit," the three

seems in order to relate the whole development to West-European history by distinguishing its main stages. Such a scheme will fit the recognized historical

to realize the "glacial" tardiness of

connections

and

point to consider as

essentially obvious ones introduced.

A

rent,

recognized, which were wrongly assumed to

Before taking up the transition to analytical economics,

it

pivotal the fallacious ideas replaced rather than the

is

moralistic or social-empirical conception of a division of the social product into three "shares," wages, land-

will

absence of coercion

and more

—

proached by way of absurd presuppositions, especially the second, which the writers failed to see as a matter of pricing the means of production. They adopted a

conversion to mystery

Christianity.

triumph of barbarism and of living

was

cults, finally

(Gibbon called

religion.)

it

the

The purported end

"salvation," for a future eternal

life, this

world being given up as a vale of tears and man as born to sin, curable only by supernatural action. The political order while waiting for the Parousia (Second Coming, end of the world) was a theocracy, i.e., a

—

clerocracy, headed by the autocratic

Pope

of

Rome.

As typical for authoritarian regimes, its first real concern was its own power. In the West, "feudalism" was variously joined with

this;

in the East, several patri-

archates were subject to the

Emperor in Constantinople

(new Rome) until the rise of Islam. This church-state conquered most of the old Roman empire, though turned back by the Franks at Tours in 732; in 1453 the Turks took Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire (and for some it marks the end of the Middle Ages).

conception of economy.) The two main themes of

The transition to the second major epoch (II-A) was made at the "Renaissance" in many ways more a new birth than a rebirth. In Northern Europe it was marked

economic

by the Protestant Revolt ("Reformation"). Feudal

analysis,

price and distribution,

were ap-

—

ECONOMIC HISTORY power became concentrated

in

nominally "absolute"

recognized and will be noticed here

monarchies, and in the ensuing Wars of Religion, political

(and economic) interests increasingly predomi-

None

wanted religious toleration, let alone general freedom, and the main result was a transfer of authority from the Church to new states, monarchies under sovereign by divine right. Social thinking became state centered, aimed at national aggrandizement. However, the states were several, and rivalry for power forced them to tolerate, even encourage, freedom in trade and industry and hence in science, for the sake of the new wealth they yielded, which the monarchs could tax. nated.

of the protagonists

though also historically sacred, bound by sanctity than the priestly, and

Political authority,

has been

less

secularism increased. Passing over details of the history,

most pertinent here

the fact that for a few centuries

is

"economic" thought was

nationalistic

— the doctrine of

The Major Fallacy of the

Pivotal, as the fountainhead of analytical fallacy,

came from

productive. (The idea

.

veniences which

it

annually consumes.

qualified this to read "useful" labor

the

eighteenth century, centered

late

new

American independence,

that

nation took the lead, while in France, revolution

was followed by

reaction, causing a setback for liberal-

ism in Britain. the age of individualism, hence of freedom, and economic thought, of "laissez-faire." But from this viewpoint, it should be subdivided: first came a century of "political economy" propaganda for laissez-faire extending from Smith's Wealth of Nations of 1776 to the rise of objective economic analysis in the "subjective-value revolution" of around 1870 promoted independently by W. S. Jevons, Carl Menger, and Leon It is

in

—

—

Walras.

The major premiss of individualistic philosophy

is

that the only value

is

the best judge of his

promote

—

is

personal well-being, and each

own and

of the action that will

.

.

—a

."

He

at

.

.

once

part of that

performed by the fraction of the people who work at all later defined in a confusing way. The main determinant of the productivity of labor is the proportion

—

of those is

who perform

useful labor. His

first

chapter

to deal with the "greatest improvement," which

specialization (he calls

it

other means of production are as

he

This,

says,

works

in three

is

much

specialized).

ways: to increase

skill,

from one task to another,

to increase the application of

(This

is

"division of labor," though

and

largely in France; with

folklore; cf. Genesis

Smith began his book with the statement that "The annual labor of every nation [italics added] originally supplies it with all the necessaries and con-

government were gradually liberalized, specifically in Britain, notably by the victory of Parliament, defeating Stuart absolutism, in the Civil War, the "glorious revolution" of 1688, and the ensuing settlement. lightenment,

was

3:19.)

to save the time of shifting

next stage (sub-epoch II-B) begins at the En-

due course.

an apparent mental fixation on labor as alone really

mercantilism, noticed before. But policy and formal

The

in

Political Economists.

proper machinery.

a main component of "capital," but generations

were required to correct the classical view of that concept and much of the world still views "property" as a means for exploiting workers; even the free nations commonly impute all "productivity" to labor.) "Stock" (capital) is the subject of Book II; it is defined as support for laborers, chiefly food, "advanced" by persons who have a surplus beyond their own needs for consumption. Book III ("Of the Different Progress of Opulence in Different Nations") is short and chiefly historical and propagandists. The main thesis of the whole work is found in Book IV, on "Systems of Political Economy," and is practical, not analytical. Two systems, the commercial or mercantile, and the agricultural, are considered and condemned, on vague grounds, so that "the obvious and

—

simple system of natural liberty establishes

own accord" (Modern ever, Smith at

Library [1937],

once introduces three

itself

p. 651).

of

its

How-

qualifications, as

tasks (and "expenses") of the sovereign: "defense,"

an

particularly in contrast with the state.

exact system of justice, and maintaining certain public

(Other groups, notably churches, were in liberal theory

works. These might be construed to allow an indefinite

reduced to voluntary associations, without authority

scope of public action, but the author's long discussions

science and criticism having destroyed the supernatural

need not be considered in detail. (Especially noteworthy is an eloquent, almost florid plea for a little rudimentary education, by local parishes, to offset the

appeal.)

it

The

state

is

practically a

means

only,

its

chief

function to maintain freedom by preventing "predation"

i.e.,

force and fraud.

(Adam Smith had added two

other functions, defense and "certain public works.")

—

liberalism introduced democracy selfgovernment through laws made by freely chosen representatives meant chiefly to prevent government from trespassing on liberty, and at the time to reduce

In politics,

—

greatly

its

scope of action with that of law. Necessary

sweeping qualifications of the

liberal

credo have been

on human beings of extreme specialization.) I, Chapters II and III continue with the division of labor. Chapter IV treats the "origin and use of money," but is chiefly remarkable because evil effects

Returning to Book

the author turns abruptly at the end to discuss exchange value,

and introduces the labor theory. Contrasting

exchange value and use value, he rejects the latter as a cause, noting that things which have the greatest

47

— ECONOMIC HISTORY of land and competition

ical-economist followers followed this lead for nearlv

one that the precise worth of a thing

a century. "Utility" was held to be a condition of value,

consisting of the rent, wages, and profit that must be

but not a cause

— or

measure, two things which were

as the essence of value

paid to bring

to

it

is

not private

uses,

The view replaced by the more

ownership, which makes rent a

market

(op.

cost.)

cit., p.

real cost,

is its

55).

of labor realistic

This

is

the

badlv confused. Ignored were the two essential and

"natural" price, which Smith indicates (correctly and

obtrusive facts:

pivotally,

goods, which

and secondly,

first,

that

men buy and

and a

prices pertain to units of

not whole categories;

sell,

that the use value of a unit decreases

as the quantity of the

good

increases.

A buyer

adds

an "increment" of a stock (perhaps beginning or ending with none). The comparison seller subtracts

is between having a little more or less of one good and of the other, making incremental utility relative. However, but for the fact of separately diminishing

marginal

one's purchasing

utility,

power would

spent on the good with the greatest

initial

all

appeal.

realistic conditions; the

any good

is

want

for (satisfying

power

of)

progressivelv satiable. Discovery (effective

recognition) of this obvious fact

came

nearly a century

be stressed as the pivotal idea marking the break from political economy to economics, and still later it was gradually seen that a parallel after Smith.

It

will

principle holds for applying resources in production.

Smith's Chapter

Price"

V

fuses value

Book

I

—on "Real and Nominal

the labor theory, and con-

measurement with

quantities of labor,"

the laborer. This

makes

of

— constantly asserts

sense.

is

we

"Equal

read, are of equal value to

false for

One might

causality.

its

exchange value and hardly rate

two

tasks as

(about)

equally irksome, but could hardly pronounce one a

numerical multiple of the other in that respect; and where different workers are involved, any comparison becomes dubious. However, there is sense in Smith's proposal to take the customary day's

wage

for

labor as indicating the relative value of

comparable situations separated statistical tabular

in

common

money

space or time.

not too clearly) will in fact be set in the

if

movement

long run by

of less to greater yield.

some resources from

of

Demand and

supply

uses

may tem-

"market" price somewhat lower or "monopoly" may exist, always charging "the highest price which can be got" (op. cit., p. 61). This "pivotal absurdity" was repeated by Ricardo, who added two others (Principles, Groffa and Dorr ed., I, porarily

a

fix

Or

higher.

a

249).

A

be

Furthermore, the law of decrease holds under any

pivotal error in the labor-cost theory (and others)

is

the failure to see that no cost directly affects price,

if

men

act with

economic

rationality.

price only as limiting supply and

is

Cost enters into the value of re-

sources for other uses, including direct enjoyment outside the market; this

of work,

and

it

the meaning of the irksomeness

is

applies also to

between

nonhuman

agents.

The

and price, a pivotal idea, was stressed in general terms by N. W. Senior, in his Outline of Political Economy, in 1836. Senior also true relation

cost

stated the underlying pivotal idea of "diminishing utility,"

but these insights were not recognized until

later.

Senior

became famous

much

for introducing the idea

of "abstinence" as a "subjective cost," along with labor,

and this was endorsed by J. S. Mill. Both used it to define "capital," but did not treat it as a determinant of the supply of the latter and the price of its use. This came much later, and gradually perhaps most clearly stated by Irving Fisher. to explain profit,

"Abstinence" tended to be replaced by "waiting" (notably with Alfred Marshall). This implies that of a "production period"

two

fal-

— meaning

in

lacies:

A

that an investment regularly is returned at a later date, with an increase; and second, that production goods

standard (index number) of prices was

first,

— labor

suggested after Smith's death in 1790, but was rejected

are produced

by David Ricardo (Smith's most famous follower) as not measuring production cost (in labor or wages), by which he practically measured and defined economic

People more typically save as social accumulation duration; thus the waiting

value.

nence. Further analysis of these

To Smith's (Book

credit,

his further discussion of value

Chapters VI, VII) though imputing the whole product to labor, with other shares as deductions, I,

qualifies labor cost for differences in skill

and

irksomeness and

requires

primitive society. Then,

when

"stock" has

accumulated and land been appropriated, the product must be shared with their owners, and these payments enter into exchange value. (Of course it is the scarcity

by primary

factors

and

capital.

— for an increased future income of indefinite is

perpetual,

i.e.,

is

gave a brief and general

to a later point. Senior

absti-

phenomena belongs state-

ment, correct as

far as

as the use of the

produce of industry to increase pro-

duction

it

goes, of the role of capital

in the future.

Returning to Smith,

also restricts the labor theory of value to a

(fictitious)

4o

between

little or no value in exchange (and conversely), illustrated by the famous contrast between water and diamonds. And his polit-

value in use have frequently

it is

to

be noted that he turned,

Book I, Chapters VI to XI, to a general discussion of his "component parts of price" (the costs of production): wages, profits, and rent. Some advance toward analytical economics is made in his Chapter X, "Wages in

ECONOMIC HISTORY and

Employments

Profits in Different

Stock."

Here he makes

now

of "distribution" as fails to

his nearest

of

approach

Labor and to a

theory

conceived, but he strangely

consider rent. His short Book

II

deals with the

Accumulation, and Employment of Stock.

Nature,

under "Divisions," he distinguishes arbitrarily between "Circulating" and "Fixed" capital. The former consists of goods for the owner's consumption, or First,

purchased for sale

a profit or for productive use by

at

and look

for a tenable

view of "distribution," there

Again to Smith's credit, there is of the absurdity introduced by Ricardo (taken to be found.

is little

little

from Malthus and others) that became a cornerstone

economy

of classical political

is

owners of

landlords,

capital,

Principles, original Preface).

tribution

buildings

which yield revenue, and

also the "acquired

and useful abilities" of the population. Circulating capital further includes

— specie or paper, sepaChapter — with "provi-

money

rately discussed at length in

and

sions,"

partial or

II

complete manufactures.

among

tion" of the social product

of land, and

instruments of production, including

I,

main problem

v.

among

and

iii)

three "classes,"

and laborers (Ricardo,

Smith does speak of

"ranks and conditions of

men"

dis-

(Part

later of the "three great constituent orders

... of every civilized society (op.

cit.,

p. 248).

Such

statements shed no light on the distribution that interest today

of

is

— payments for productive agents, which

are incomes to their owners, and determine their scale

Especially interesting, and historically pivotal,

is

of living.

The

may derive

"Of the Accumulation of Capital or of Productive and Unproductive Labor" [italics added]. Smith states clearly that productive and unproductive do not mean useful and useless, but refer only to whether the worker reproduces the "capital" he con-

here because

it

followers

the

sumes. (The importance of maintaining capital

receiving income from property

Chapter

"residual" or sur-

"to determine the laws which regulate the distribu-

employing workers. The second includes improvement all

— the

plus view of rent, with the idea that the

III,

well

is

emphasized in this fallacious view of it.) The main concern is with the amount of "circulating" capital an aspect of the fallacious view just noted and with

—

"class" distribution idea

the French "Physiocratic" school. as

is

in part

for

from

mention

was taken over from Ricardo or basis

idea, quite logical,

workers

It calls

of

his

Marxism. Marx's pivotal

that since only labor produces,

is

— Proudhon's

is

robbery of the

famous dictum that property

"theft."

The Marxist (pseudo) economic

analysis

follows

"The

Ricardo logically, drawing the opposite policy impli-

uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every

cation, the attack on versus the support of property

man

and market freedom. Both ignored the distinct role of the "entrepreneur," imputing it to owners of wealth. Both held a subsistence theory of wages and a Malthus-

the increase of this through saving ("frugality"). to better his condition" (op. cit, p. 326)

an

as

stressed

extravagance of government and

offset to the

and

errors of administration, rich to

is

also the inclination of the

spend on luxuries (especially on "menial serv-

ants," rather a pet aversion of his).

lacy" that a given

amount

The

"pivotal

fal-

of capital in any form can

Ricardo view of land and

its

property income

from

stated

Adam

Smith's treatment of prices as in effect ex-

wages, for a

them

we

money

profit,

cost of

and rent

modern reader

production— composed

— implies

that

it is

of

relations so obvious

rather his failure to state

clearly that seems to call for explanation.

When

turn to the treatment of these incomes themselves

Marx

all

laborers). Profit (in-

was most clearly Economy, J. Ashley edition, p. 416). By Mill's time, "rent" was under fire; Mill called it a "surplus," but opposed than

an assumption that workers have a fixed living requirement; and also the "Malthusian" population theory,

plained by

rent (but for

cluding interest) arises because labor produces more

maintain a definite amount of labor or industry, reflects

which implied that their numerical increase keeps wages at this level, regardless of the amount assigned to their support. (And this was sometimes fallaciously treated as a fixed "wages fund.") Diminishing returns to labor and capital applied to land was also assumed perhaps first explicitly stated by Malthus. Only generations later it was recognized as valid only if technological advance is ignored, also that such a law holds for the use of any factor in increasing ratio to others. The historical fact has of course been a vast rise of wages, in spite of redoubling of numbers of workers.

filched

is

is

required for

by

S.

its

support. This

Mill (Principles of Political

current confiscation yet favored that of future crease

—a

in-

palpably absurd distinction. Land value

is

speculative; any prospect of increase enters into pres-

ent value, and as in gambling,

is

generally overesti-

mated, so that on the whole losses exceed gains.

The treatment ical-economy "shares,"

means

of

income distribution

classics consists of chapters

which have

little

in the polit-

on the three

bearing on people's relative

of support or provision for the future.

tinction

The

dis-

between income and wealth was ignored or

confused; only

J.

S.

Mill discussed "property."

The

three kinds of income were wrongly conceived though at the

time they bore a vague relation to population

some "class" attributes; and they mean As with water and diamonds, land, and capital are not marketed as categories, but

sectors with

even labor,

less today.

49

— ECONOMIC HISTORY by bits and discrete items which each class.

No

among

orderly relation

now by

differ vastly within

the shares appears; that

—

few dogmas first, the three "factors." implicitly distinct and homogeneous. Labor, applied to land, is supported by "capital" at a subsistence level, due to as provisions advanced inferred

analysis centers in a

—

the "Malthusian" pressure of population, and "dimin-

Machinery and other forms of capital

ishing returns.

were mentioned never is

— chiefly by Smith and

fitted into the

mentioned

and

his

assigns to wages-and-profit i

XX

Chapter

Riches also defies interpretation.) their (joint

but

S. Mill,

puzzling chapter, XXXI, added

in a

his third edition;

J.

concept. \B\ Ricardo, machinery

A

in

generous reading

what would now be called

"marginal" product, of which labor gets

and

production land

in

does any kind with

The chapters

all others).

"shares" state various conditions

the

This

may

(and should) seem

tion started controversy,

are yet settled. (finally

The

trivial,

and not

simplicity

all

is

recognized) that any good

but

its

publica-

the implications

marred by the fact is wanted (used) in

make each

larger or smaller (logically in

in

quantity

is

a change in proportions, and goods

may

weaken the principle of appraisal "at the margin," which is valid under all conditions. Proportioning to equalize marginal total: if

utilities

clearly

"maximizes" the in one

an increment yields more satisfaction

use than in another, the total will be increased by

varying degree).

moving some

Economics as a Science. Economics, as noted before, describes "economic" behavior and an "economic" social organization, insofar as human conduct conforms to certain rules, assumed to be known axiomatically,

equality, for equal indivisible increments,

but not excluding other motives. Since

Leon Walras most notably perhaps by N. W. Senior and W. F. Lloyd in Oxford (in the 1830's); also earlier by Jules Dupuit and C. J. Gamier in France, H. H. Gossen in Germany (1854), and others.

its

root idea

"economy," which is relative to intentions and these are not observed by the senses, it is not a strictly empirical or inductive science. People economize use means more or less effectively to achieve ends but is

— —

as certainly, they

do not succeed completely

ing their ends to the

maximum

in achiev-

degree possible with

and the ends may not be ideally good. Ignorance and error play much the role of "friction" in mechanics, to which science the study of economics bears a fairly close analogy in methodology. Motives play the role of forces, which the

means under

their control;

also are metaphysical, not observed but inferred effects

— though the basis of knowledge

the two cases. (Friction

may be

the objective in economizing, bad.)

To reduce economic

useful, is

is

from

different in

and "efficiency," if the end is

harmful

friction (ignorance),

men

develop the role of "expert," and agency relations

permeate free

society.

Freedom

relates

choice of agents, in economics and politics. source of economic knowledge, is

i.e.,

is

largely

to

The main

of people's minds,

communication, chiefly by language

use of which

— the

rational

the special attribute, and mystery, of

man.

50

equal").

be complementary or antagonistic. This does not

dealing with

tending to

had been an error because the economic value of a good reflects the use-value of an increment (acquired or given up), not that of the commodity in the abstract; also that this value depends on the amount of the good used or transferred, decreasing as this amount increases. That is, wants are satiable (the want for any one good, "other things being as a cause of price

the marginal product of the land, taken

stands in a symmetrical relation with other kinds of (as

dawned

combination with others, hence an increase or decrease

empirically, in small units;

agents

It

classical rejection of use-value

and land (the owners en As simple economic analysis

bloc) take the "surplus." is

tion (later seen to hold in production also).

on a few minds that the

on Value and

subsistence, capital the rest,

shows, this

is what came to be called "marginalism," which happened to be "discovered" first in consump-

revolution

The

pivotal

new

logical idea of the subjective-value

The

of

it

into the field of greater yield, until is

reached.

principle had really been expressed by several

writers decades before

it

got wide recognition through

the works of William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and

—

In this period also the idea found parallel application in the field of

services

production and the yield of productive

—distribution

meaning.

in

the

modern and

relevant

Diminishing returns (incremental yield

often misstated as proportional yield even by Alfred Marshall, in his Principles of Economics [1890], p. 153) from increasing application of one agent to a given combination of others takes the place of diminishing

marginal

utility.

The increments

of physical yield de-

and the value product still more. (In this connection notable contributions had been stated by Senior, the German J. H. v. Thiinen, and M. Longfield, to be recognized later.) Near the end of the century, the incremental principle was applied especially to distribution by P. H. Wicksteed in England and J. B. Clark in the U.S.A., Wicksteed for the three traditional "factors," Clark for two, labor and capital. A controversy arose as to whether payment by marginal increments would exactly exhaust the product. This is strictly true only under subtle mathematical conditions; it is roughly true empirically, since producers must act on cline,

ECONOMIC HISTORY the

and the

principle,

uted

product

— after a fashion.

does get

distrib-

The Fallacy of Three Productive Factors. The most important defect

theory

in the traditional

that

is

its

and "nat-

"factors" are unreal. Persons (as productive)

ural agents" both largely qualify as "capital goods."

They have been produced

and require main-

at a cost

tenance and replacement. Natural agents cost invest-

ment

exploration and development, a distinctly

in

speculative activity; the classical "land" as "original

and indestructible"

is

unknown on

the market, and

these qualities pertain separately, in different

degrees to

concrete productive agents

all

human

And

ways and

—even

in-

however distinguished, are mutually complementary in use. Differcluding

beings.

all

kinds,

may be by investment affected by luck. These involve varying durability and the possibility, and cost, of reduplication or production of agents equivalent or more or less similar in function; ences economically significant for classification alleged

first

in the conditions of supply,

among a range of uses,

may

inconvenient Creek names by Edward H. Chamberlin (The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Cambridge, Mass. [1933], and revisions). Greater output from equal resources results from use of better technology, which calls for mention of a pivotal fact: that

qualities

is

No

and

re-

human and

tion

general classification by eco-

realistic, since differences

ter of indefinite detail.

"property,"

Laborers

in

are a mat-

a free society are,

from

social terms, a category distinct

"capital goods"; but further classifica-

i.e.,

depends on law and morals, or on technology.

The

principle of "decreasing returns" relates to any

kind of productive agent applied

in increasing

any combination of kinds. And

tions to

all

propor-

"means"

means of production. There is no corresponding law of "increasing returns" except, rigorously speaking, are

for a short threshold

of

means onto

turns"

on a minimal dosing of one kind

others.

The

expression "increasing re-

confusingly used for an increasing ratio of

is

output to inputs with an expanding scale of units organizations, due to increasing specialization so

The "unit"

possible.

The

ings.

in

made

subject calls for mention because the

because of the tendency of

some economists, larger scale

is

in

production has various mean-

expressions falsely suggest antithesis; but cially

is

usually created

fail

outright.

The

fact of technological progress sug-

on the whole, the results of research and development are worth more than they cost. But much gests that

cost

is

unrecorded and unknown, and

this

holds in part

for natural resources; the significance of this hardly

differential increase.

in

new technology

by investment. Such investment, however, is very different from the production of more productive agents of kinds already in use, or kinds already known. It calls for "invention," a creative act, perceiving and solving a problem. Here the end cannot possibly be known in advance, and so the activity cannot be "economic" in the strict meaning; in many cases such efforts

for the results also.

What

agents, without

nomic

stand for a group of vague monopoloid situations,

given

moving these themselves. Typical in economy is mobility, in effect, through

i.e.,

a progressive

an

transfer of the "investment in" the

largely a matter of obsolescence

is

placement,

rise to

no definable equilibrium position, and the product value may exceed or fall below its cost in particular cases.

also differences in transferability

but this

monopoly, or "oligopoly." The one gives

abstractly simple price problem, while the other term

many

more

two

espe-

people, and

to think that increasing returns with

also a general law. It holds only for

an

early stage in a hypothetical expansion of a "unit,"

beginning at zero. The gains from more minute specialization are soon offset

by increased

difficulty of

is

For progress

is

true of invention holds also for exploration

needs detailed explanation, or

on the "classical" theory of

bearing

in particular its

rent. Statistics

— grouping

cases— may reduce the error or "chance" but never remove it. And all economic activities are affected by some uncertainty, with general consequences that must be taken up later. (It is somewhat puzzling that statistics and probability theory apply to real "error," and even crime, fact

is

as well as purely

chance events, but the

familiar.)

The Concept of an Fxonomic System. The pivotal idea in the next great advance of economic science to be noticed here is that of an economic system, or the concept of a general equilibrium relation

—

the main variables economic analysis. This

among

— treated

and from combining and interrelating the several "partial equilibria" typified by demand and supply, the quantities offered and purall

in

prices

results

chased of a particular good,

On

analogy

the

change

is

of

quantities

in relation to its price.

mechanics,

mentioned before,

explained by an imbalance of forces causing

movement toward a

balance.

The

basic fact

is

that over

good sold must equal the quantity bought; hence if at a moment, buyers (say) will take more or less than sellers offer, market compea period of time the quantity of a

tition will raise or

lower the price

as

long as there

why

coordination, unwieldiness, and costs of management.

is

And

generally be bought at a higher price than at a lower,

if

the market conditions do not call for a large

number

of units of roughly the size of greatest

ciency, competition

is

effi-

impossible; the result will be

a difference. Utility theory explains

less will

and more sold (of an existing supply in the hands of owners or in a longer view, more will generally be

—

51

—

ECONOMIC HISTORY produced; but exceptions here require explanation).

The concept

economic system results from recognizing that different consumables are mostly produced by the same fund of resources which an entrepreneur producing any good acquires by outbidding those who want them for making other goods. The payments made are his costs of production, while to those who sell him the productive services they are income, which they use to buy portions of the joint of a unitary

social real product, thus

distribution.

The

performing the function of

idea of a system was perhaps

analysis

are

abstract;

—

them except for the triad of personal capacity, extermeans and materials, and "technology" (if this is distinguished from "labor-power," which there are good reasons for doing). Nonhuman agents call for most comment, first because the tradition has made a false distinction between "land" and other "capital goods," and secondly because of failure to relate these clearly

to "capital."

The

first

subhead

— can

— the Crusoe economy under given

form of a crude system of equations, by L. Walras, in his Elements d'economie politique pure of 1874 and 1877 (where he also inde-

conditions

pendently- stated the principle of utility theory).

justify the recognition of

Divisions of Modern Economic Science. fitting at this

It

seems

point to turn from history to outline the

content of modern analytical economics in terms of its

pivotal ideas. This content happens, like the history,

to

fall

omy;

naturally into four parts, forming a cross dichoti.e.,

there are two main divisions, each with two

"what" wants means are used to gratify

says nothing about

it

or what concrete

nal

first

effectively proposed, in the

tween

be treated

Differences be-

briefly.

different forms of productive capacity as to

conditions of maintaining a constant supply do not

productive factors but some

would not be too

differences cannot be ignored; this

and technology; but non-

unrealistic for labor-power

human

agents present the same problem of choice for

maintenance

as for growth,

considered together,

and the two will best be of what is commonly

Much

later.

called production of such indirect goods

is

not capital

which may be schematized as I-A, I-B, and II-A and II-B. The first main division deals with the economic conduct of an individual, first (I-A) under fixed general conditions, and second (I-B) with these subject to change through economic conduct by the acting person. The two together are introductory to the main subject matter, which fills the second major

creation but maintenance of an existing stock, hence

division. This describes the social organization of eco-

up

subdivisions,

nomic conduct

(a national

economy), as worked out

under mutual freedom, through exchange of goods and services in markets.

The second main

subdivisions, the

assuming

the

first

part has similar

fixed general conditions,

second dealing with economic activity partly

directed to changing these.

The given

conditions in

is

assumed with stationary conditions. To begin with,

productive capacity might, for simplicity, be arbitrarily treated as a unit,

making

it

Crusoe's problem to appor-

among the uses known to him maximum total want-satisfaction. The tion

in (a)

tionment so that equal units

equal additions to total satisfaction in

name comes from an

own

or another's

— does not

—

fit

the general concept of

economy.)

The

other names: Jevons had called utility,"

The been

first

it

"final

Menger simply "importance"

appor-

make The German

uses.

precise

meaning and conditions

controversial; subtleties

degree of

or "meaning"

and Walras "scarcity"

may be

of validity have

ignored here, but

the discovery was pivotal for the transition from political

economy

noted before)

to analytical it

was

later

economics, and

(as

also

recognized that parallel

principles hold for apportioning productive resources

diminishing marginal productivity and equalization for

The

final units in all uses.

principles hold for the al-

location of any single kind of

main division (two sub-parts) is to analyze the economic conduct of an isolated person (a "Crusoe" economy), abstracting from all social interests and relations. This is necessary in order to avoid serious fallacies that pervade economic discussion, particularly of economic progress, achieved through saving and investing. A full treatment would require much explanation and qualification. Economic task of the

all

early translation of the

(rarete).

knowledge (and "know-how"), which may either be considered as an internal resource or treated as a third main datum. (Economic conduct which changes basic conditions presumably causes progress, here meaning fuller satisfaction of given wants; action to improve wants one's

(b)

Grenz (meaning boundary). The three discoverers used

(Wichtigkeit or Bedeutung),

a stock of technical

They are summed

(of negligible size)

person or persons acting for satisfying them; the

They include

relevant general

diminishing "marginal utility" and

question are wants and the resources available to the re-

so as to achieve

it

principles have been stated above.

sources used are internal or external to the persons.

52

is

felt

good

— added to a com-

plex of others, assuming "correct" combination, recog-

nizing complementarities and antagonisms. In social life

analysis of

consumption

is

much

simplified

by the

intervention of money, an income as a fluid resource to

be apportioned

in

purchasing various consumables

available, at their prices.

a person's income that the

whole

is

is

More

precisely, that part of

devoted to consumption

commonly divided between

— for

this use

and

ECONOMIC HISTORY investment for future increase. Treatment of

this ap-

portionment belongs under the next heading. The Crusoe Economy with Planned, Net Investing. It

is,

live

of course,

on

"income" which people consume or

— with occasional, mostly temporary, additions

from "disinvesting" capital previously accumulated.

commonly assumes that consumpsome time, is the sole end of economic activity making increased future consumption the end of saving and investing. (Smith, op. cit, p. 625; but on p. 352 national power is the end of policy, and on p. 397 there are "two distinct objects," revenue for the people, and for support of the public services, in which "defence is much more important than opulence," p. 431.) In social life, consumption is by no means the whole end, Theoretical analysis tion, at

even

if

we add the security that wealth gives against may disrupt one's income, which might

events that

stopping further investment at any point. This concept is

most familiar

and elsewhere. It is pivotal for the understanding of economic analysis. Simple compounding by years (or other periods) is expressed by the formula, A — (1 + r) n where A is the amount accumulated by one dollar in n years at the simple interest rate r, the growth for a year. This r includes some interest-on-interest as well as on the principal. To separate the two, compounding should be continuous, the period being reduced to zero. (The formula becomes e" r where r and n have the former ,

,

meaning, e nr replacing (1 + r) n e is the number 2.7182818 a mathematical constant, the base of ;

.

.

not explicitly

if

and

useful here,

it is

simply postulated that he invests

for progress as well as to prevent decline.

The

usual

present-value

income stream

portunity which affords the highest rate-of-growth. is

simple where the future income

be perpetual (the normal case, the present value

is

simply

as will

%

dollar per year in perpetuity at

(also available for further investment).

$20.)

In a stationary

economy, only income

consists of services,

is

really pro-

Income

a part of maintenance.

rendered by persons or by "prop-

erty" (wealth, capital

goods)— only "scarce"

things

5%

annually

with work

bought and

sold, thus are not effectively capitalized

and are reasonably not counted

as wealth; but,

to

repeat, they are essentially like (other) capital goods

economically.

Some

personal earnings are in effect

capitalized through contracts for services,

and other

Investment theory is abstract and unrealistic, in that an investor could never have the knowledge required

is

The Free Social-Economic Order, Assuming gested scheme, what

income," the present value embodied

ary

A Crusoe

might need the capital concept,

if

he actively

decided to maintain a constant income, and

it

is

re-

quired for any rational decision on net investment. In society, there are other facts, especially the production for sale of

know

income sources, that make

it

necessary to

the "present-value" of a future stream or flow

by net investment, implies excess of cost, which must also be

of income. Such production, a value result in

known. As investing requires time, it involves a rate of growth, which is that of the income to be had by

at least

obviously excluded.

enforcement of these is limited as a protection to general freedom. As just indicated, capital is primarily "capitalized a capital-good.

is

where the procedure is not questioned. In a social economy, money is used and is lent at interest, which introduces complications, calling for further analysis, best taken up under the next heading. The need to analyze the growth rate of investment apart from lending and interest is a main reason for considering the Crusoe economy, where this

obligations; but

in

worth

explained here.

as true of mechanics,

slaves, they class

is

For a time-limited future income, use of the formula involves some algebra, but that need not be

for accurate calculation; but (to repeat) that

(Where there are

to

per income unit, the

valuable services, are property, but entailed as to own-

animals or machines.) In a free society, persons are not

The is

be shown). Then

having economic value. Logically, persons, as yielding ership.

dis-

annual yield divided by the rate as a percentage. (A

sumable income

is

found by

in question.

assumption makes progress mean an increasing con-

duced; reproduction

is

Rational investing calls for using that available op-

discounting

Detailed speculation on this point would not be

A

(and same rate) to find the investment that

in reverse

will yield the

—

,

counting the future income, using the same formula

and prestige would be absent, but he would presumably wish to be purposely active, and would have many for the distant future.

.

"natural" logarithms.)

bulk large with a Crusoe. Social motives such as rivalry

reasons for raising his scale of living

compound-interest formula and

as the

curve, but applies as well to growth of any population,

Sta-

tionary Conditions. Under this head, II-A in the sug-

economy

is

to

be considered

(or stationary state)

is

the station-

which was much

discussed early in the present century, especially in the

American economic literature. It was pioneered by John Bates Clark, whose book, The Distribution of Wealth, was published in 1899, following earlier cles.

Clark's

main object was

arti-

to advocate the marginal-

productivitv theory of income-distribution and defend ethically. He assumed two productive factors, labor and capital, including land in the latter. About the same time, Alfred Marshall, of Cambridge University, published a more realistic, though less systematic, it

53

—

ECONOMIC HISTORY treatment

He

tended the former to include "secular changes" conditions of

demand and

exin

supply, hut did not explicitly

work out this concept. (See his Principles of Economics, Book V, p. 379 in the sixth edition, little changed in his "final" eighth edition.) However, the subject comes up again in his treatment of "Distribution" in Book VI, which involves fallacies that must be pointed out. It

may be

Marshall's (obvious) veneration of his

classical forebears, especially Bicardo, that led

commit himself in the future

of

wages and

him

to

cf. also pp.

—which

implies the

534-36) and called

(p.

of the

economic land all.

its

Of land acreage

429, Glossary).

not true at

same

that

is

rent a "surthis

is

true;

leased or bought and sold,

Bicardo's land, as "original and inde-

never existed since

human

beings have

planned economically. Imagination can by abstraction form an idea of such "powers of the soil," but they cannot be separated in various

in practice

from

"artificial" ones,

meanings, and evidence shows that these

account for most or

all

of present land value; in fact,

past investment probably exceeds this,

Moreover these elements

exist in all

on the average.

productive agents.

As to the "surplus" theory, reasoning at an arithmetical level shows that rent viewed as a surplus is the mar-

and either theory applies to any "factor of production." (Marshall improved on J. S. Mill in ginal product,

seeing that the increase in land value

is

not free of

cost.)

main error, as regards stationary condi(from which Clark can be exonerated) also results

Marshall's tions

from following the

"classicals," specifically in neglect-

clear that asserting a tendency

it

equal" which could not be, and that such tendencies

more than

are

offset

by others making

for indefinite

cumulative change. Clark also failed to recognize

The

this.

exposition has already trespassed on the subject

matter of the next section where, incidentally,

be shown that even

in a social

economy,

if

will

it

stationary,

there would be

economic order under which modern progress

of the

has occurred, which should begin with a historical note.

The

"existing order"

is

a mixture of organization forms,

mainly based on free exchange, especially two which arose out of feudalism in roughly historical sequence.

The

enterprise system

stage, with

the

means

was preceded by a handicraft

marketing of products but

perhaps with one or

little

—

izing in a final product, using simple tools

the users.

dealing in

To be pictured are families more apprentices each special-

of production.

The product

is

owned by

sold in a market for

money,

with which are bought for consumption various products of other family units.

own may

Each

of these maintains

its

productive capacity, of person and property, and

increase this more or less, as in the Crusoe economy. This system survives to a substantial extent, in farming, repair work, and professional services. (Our familiar social-ethical problems due to inequality, wealth, and poverty, could arise in such a system and

—

did, in history.)

The

past few centuries have seen handicraft pro-

by a much more complex system,

gressively replaced

ing the nature and the consequences of technological

rooted

progress. This of course has offset any tendency to

"diminishing returns" from labor or capital or both.

prise-economy, production of any final good is carried on by an organization of persons and equipment, with

Wages have

much

risen manifold, in the face of a similar

population growth; the rate of interest has shown

something of a seesaw, moving upward or downward at different periods (but not very much) with the fluctuating growth of investment opportunity, which in

54

make

towards a long-run equilibrium assumes "other things

section II-B needs as introduction a brief description

plus"

structible,"

meant, and which can be read into Marshall's words), but should

as

ultimate equilibrium rates

(approximately) fixed in supply (most explicitly on

p. 170;

economy

said (following Bicardo) that land

interest

He

use the concept of a stationary

as a postulate useful for analysis (which Clark perhaps

little occasion for the lending of money. The Market Economic Order with Growth: Capital and Interest; Rent, Wages, and Profit. Discussion of

to the idea of a real stationary-state

— implied by

regards "rent." is

One can

connection with discussion of price-

in

determination over long and short periods.

it. The most serious error, still common economic writings since Marshall, is failure to note that new technology is chiefly produced by investment, which increases the yield of and demand for all kinds of productive services, however these may be classified. Moreover, this field of investment shows the opposite of diminishing returns; scientific and technical progress constantly opens the way to more progress, with no assignable limit. (And it also changes the character of both labor and economic land.)

is

in a

higher order of specialization. In an enter-

internal specialization of roles. This enterprise

legally

owned by a person who buys from

"entrepreneur," of the labor

power and property

entrepreneur

principle fixes

it

in

to

uses

may

own any

outside owners most services

it

uses.

The

part of the property

— often subject to creditor claims, a complication

be considered

ment

also

or small group, the

is

in

due course. The simplest arrange-

for the entrepreneur to hire property services,

paying

rent; the correct

meaning of

to all

property

the traditional

alike,

that term applies

limitation

to

"land" being a misuse of words. (The term "rent" might well apply to the hiring of persons, where the payment

—

happens to be called "wages" or, it would make for clear thinking if a common word, such as "hire" were used for both.)

ECONOMIC HISTORY The working

is explained by describing which "economic forces" tend

of the system

the general equilibrium

to establish, relative to given conditions

and

their wants,

—

as to persons

and technology

resources,

—

or,

in

"would bring about if the conditions were stationary long enough for them to work

Marshall's words, of

life

out their

Some

effect" (op. cit, p. 347).

full

limitations

of this tendency will call for notice. At equilibrium,

consumer expenditures would buy at the margin equal increments of satisfaction and all productive resources would yield (marginally) equal

simultaneously

all

increments of value product,

prices being equal to

The economic

costs (ignoring monopoly).

human

all

expressed

preferences,

rational

by the

they do so in economic

Enterprise organization

Adam

is

inevitable,

which they often do

creating

if

men

strive

(not universally, as

Smith strangely assumed).

imagined without use of money,

It

as a unit of value

intermediary in exchange. (But, to repeat, moneylending

is

not inevitable, since a loan

is

always equiva-

The main economic decisions are made formally by entrepreneurs, interacting with their opposite numbers in markets, and acting directly or through agents whom they hire. But they are finally responsible to consumers and owners of productive agents act in a real sense as agents of both, and "at equilibrium" have no power at all. (Describing the system as "consumer soverlent to another transaction, a lease or sale.)

—

dominated by the agency relation. Personal freedom is mostly freedom to choose agents usually among competing seekers politics are

—

of the role.

the

modem

The entrepreneur is the central economy. Each buys productive

makes products, and

sells

tion with

hoping to make some

profit

is

all

others,

an element

both

in markets, in

in the entrepreneur's

(along with the earnings of his erty);

but

it is

as likely to

own

figure of services,

competiThis

profit.

own income

services or prop-

be negative,

i.e.,

a

loss, as

which the word "profit" misleadingly suggests. The profit-system should be called profit-seeking, or "profit-and-loss." As noted above, the classical polita gain,

claim

tially valid

— which

Profit, correctly

of an

result

Marshall recognized.)

defined (including

market system, due in turn to the uncertainty of the and the limited foresight of entrepreneurs. (If any one of them knew the future, he would not suffer loss,

and

if

competitors knew, he could not make

his

a gain.) Uncertainty can often (in practice not always)

be reduced by insurance or dealing with cases

—

—

making up the partner

loss

if

there

is

loss. (The entrepreneur might consider what he could have made by working alone as wages and view profit as only the difference between this and what he realizes.) No new principle is

introduced

services of

if

either or both parties also furnish the

nonhuman productive

may own; payment be a

for the use of

cit.,

p. 407),

system was taken over by the Marxists and used cally in

propaganda

and

416) the Bicardian theory. (This for a social revolution

— in

logi-

place

agents which they any such item will

rent.

next step in the explanatory hypothesis has been

suggested, and

is

a pivotal idea. Instead of a lease for

any nonhuman agent, the parties may agree on a

sale,

owner taking a "note" for the price, and receiving interest instead of rent. Under theoretically ideal conditions perfect knowledge and economic rationality the sale price and interest rate would make the payment (per time unit) the same as in the other case. Under conditions resembling those of real life, the actual figures would be fixed by the best opportunity open for investment, the principal being the cost of creating a new income source with the same yield as that whose use is being transferred. Shifting the previous

—

—

attention from the two-person situation to a competi-

economy,

costs, uncertainties, attitudes

p.

The "active"

receiving profit, or incurring

recognized loan interest. Even

Mill merely divided

a deficit.

then an entrepreneur, paying wages and

is

the market will

then endorsed (on

in

To understand enterprise

groups, but never eliminated.

guish the entrepreneur function, and only incidentally S.

clearly the

future

tive

J.

loss), is

imperfect working of the competitive

ical-economists misconceived profit, failed to distin-

"gross profit" into three parts (op.

—by some po-

unit itself without the individual owner's essen-

litical

The

eignty" states a half truth.)

Both business and

served, also logically, in

it

himself taking any excess over the agreed share, and

affairs,

serious problems. to get ahead,

"rent"

for land-value confiscation

and

and as in a mechanical situation, these typically produce oscillations, where responses are not instanta-

— and

propaganda

can hardly be

fact

embodies "feedback" princi-

ples,

neous

strange use as a basis for a doctrine of laissez-

its

faire; in the case of

and profit, it is useful first to imagine a situation in which labor alone is productive and where just two persons wish to cooperate. The matters on which they must agree what to produce, by what procedure, and the division of the joint result might conceivably be settled by negotiation. But this would be difficult, and it seems more reasonable to expect formation of a partnership, in which one party will make the decisions and grant to the other a stated amount of the product,

choices. This conclusion should be qualified that the system pictured

forces are

partly

in

of

intelligent selection of opportunities in fix

a uniform rate

— after allowance for

towards risk-taking, and especially for complications due to the use of money. If

a temporary arrangement

for later resale will fully

is

desired, an

agreement

make the two arrangements The result will differ if risk

still

interchangeable.

55

ECONOMIC HISTORY attitudes differ

— or as will be explained,

if

the actual

has been held that as investment grows the yield-

—

must tend to fall due to diminishing returns. As noted above, this ignores the fact that much investment

sale in others.

knowledge, a

In

economy, income-yielding

social

a

are

assets

bought and sold, at prices which strongly tend to equal their expected vield capitalized at the going interest

which

rate,

to

in turn strongly tends to equal the rate

be expected on the best new investment opportu-

nities

open. But these prices are affected by numberless

and any rise or fall in the value of an asset impinges on the formal owner. Hence if the prospective user of a given asset is on any ground more uncertainties,

optimistic as to

its

who

current owner,

future market value than turns

it

the

is

over to him for use, they

on a price making a

will agree

sale

with a loan prefer-

able to both parties over any lease on which they can

rate

increases the yield of capital-goods by creating field of

ency to exhaustion but rather the contrary other than technical

exploration for natural resources. These familiar fields

perhaps tend to become

at

not in combination with

knowledge cannot be

some time

fully

use of existing assets, but with investment by one party to create a

new

source of income to be used by another.

This again could be arranged, by the

party making

first

the investment himself and leasing the result to the other; but the capital

good

to

two must then agree on the kind fit

of

the needs of the prospective user,

and for obvious reasons they usually agree on a loan of money. In fact, of course, lending money to entrepreneurs for "real" investment has become a major

—

that which now best defines the "capitalist." Thus the act of investing is divided: owners of abstract wealth held in the form of money (itself to them an investment) invests the money financially by lending to entrepreneurs who invest materially by buying productive services and creating income sources. (Other complications arise, but need not be considered here.) Each mode of investing may involve a "profit" (or loss), i.e., may yield more or less than might have been had

vocation

through perfect foresight.

Some lending and borrowing poses, notably

consumption

is

done

for other pur-

in anticipation of

income, or to avoid a sale of

assets.

receiving

This consumption

exhaus-

As to the yield- rate, the reasonable expectation is more of what has happened through modern history, some "seesaw" in the tive

rate of yield as

foreseen.

opening of new investments runs ahead

of or falls behind exhaustion of old. Moreover, "the"

any market

rate in

interest "

at any time is a complex of "pure and numerous other factors (risk, transaction

cost, etc.,

not in connection with the transfer for

known, but

new knowledge, and

business prospects), so that the true rate

is,

— and also

human qualities knowledge. And much goes into

goes into more people, and useful

However, the motive for lending money, rather than leasing some income source, is vastly strengthened in the major type of cases where it is done in modern that

new

investment that shows no tend-

agree, and conversely for the opposite situation.

life,

and especially the monetary situation and is

not definitely

determinate.

A

pivotal idea in the published discussion of interest

theory has been the

because

human

"dogma"

goods to future goods of is

that interest

is

paid

nature systematically prefers present

a fallacy because

it

like

kind and amount. This

overlooks two patent facts:

first,

one does not want to postpone today's consumption until tomorrow, neither does one want to consume tomorrow's provisions today; and further, that while

postponement of all consumption is Given provisions for two days, there seems to be no economic principle or general fact of psychology to determine the precise distribution between the two. Abstract rationality would surely call for something near uniformity over time, but some persons will diverge in one direction and some in the other. Of this, Alfred Marshall gave the homely illustration of boys eating a plum pudding: some will pick out the plums and eat them first, some will save them to the last, and others eat them as they come to them. An intelligent person of means (not on the point of suicide) will certainly consume some of his income (or wealth, by disinvestment) day by day, and keep some provision for the future; but as to how much of the latter he will invest for a future increase, again no general printhat perpetual

impossible.

is unimportant in the market, and finally comes under the same principles apart from a motive of charity. Any economic loan must have security and is always an alternative to the sale or lease of the asset

ciple can say.

in question. In a progressive society, a person's

at death and significant depends on the wide prevalence of such conduct. Economic science can say only that decision between consuming and investing some part of one's means is a matter of taste, not arguable like consumption

loan

—

con-

sumption of capital merely subtracts something from its growth in the whole economy. (Net social disinvest-

56

It

two parties. The latter is the case in real social life, and tliis is the main general reason why the lease procedure is used in some cases and the risk differs for the

ment hardly

occurs,

ganization by a

crisis.)

or does so only under disor-

It

one

surely seems reasonable to prefer enjovment while is

wealth

remarked accumulated net social accumula-

alive rather than after death; but, as

before,

people do

—

deliberately

leave

tion

—

ECONOMIC HISTORY choices

— (ignoring

contracted obligations) and that

making any investment that is made at the going rate; i.e., at the margin of growth of capital wealth in the society at the time, or in some newly discovered better opportunity where the return above the going rate would be profit. Two Major Qualifications of General Economic rational conduct dictates

—

The treatment

Analysis.

thus far has dealt with "pure"

theory, oversimplified in

where

One

two respects

in particular,

must be supplemented, though very briefly. two is monopoly including "monopoloid"

it

—

of the

either sellers or buyers are too few

where

situations

—

the other, money and probThe former may be more quickly

for effective

competition

lems due to

its

use.

briefly anything objective and useful about money, even ignoring all the preaching about its evils. Denunciation is largely based on confusing it with wealth, and wealth (also commonly confused with income) is merely one form of power. Here the classical

to say

economists deserve credit; they tried to get

political

behind

mask or

its

what they

And

fallacy.

"veil," though, as has

economic

said about

been shown,

reality

was

largely

they strangely ignored for the most part

the main problem that arises from the use of money. That problem is the periodic occurrence of "hard times," alternating somewhat cyclically with prosper-

Some

ous periods.

exception

is

called for by

treatment of speculation and crises (op.

J.

cit.,

S. Mill's

Book

III,

disposed of as to main essentials. Historically, as ob-

Ch.

served earlier, the founders, Smith and Ricardo, wrote

dance of money causes good business, either directly

"nonsense" about monopoly pricing; and

J.

S.

was

Mill

By 1890, Alfred Marshall had stated the principle correctly, in words and mathematically. (A mathematical study had been published in French by A. A. Cournot in 1838, but it received general notice only when rediscovered and published in English, in better.

little

1897, as Researches Into the Mathematical Principles

or

supply and through total net

Monopoly ically

is

less

interest plainly it

revenue or

is

to adjust the

the price so as to maximize his

maximize the

profit (not to

important

in fact

than

it is

price).

psycholog-

because the public greatly exaggerates both

prevalence and still more the real

evil.

its

Much monopoly

"natural," even inevitable, and more is beneficial. Governments grant temporary monopolies by patent, copyright, etc., to encourage useful innovations, and a large share of those privately set up work in the same is

On

way.

the other hand, the public encourages costly

monopolies

in the fields of labor

in foreign trade,

establish

and agriculture, and

rise

— alleging

that

condemning

for

market

more

rapidly than cost prices, thus raising profits,

— which

and conversely

for falling prices

ness prosperity

and depression, the

latter

causes busi-

with unem-

ployment and misery.

From

the

century,

sixteenth

writers noticed the

and gold from the New World) in favoring debtors at the expense of creditors. Adam Smith noted the loss incurred

by receivers of feudal rents, etc., which had been converted into cash from payment in kind. The inflation of the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars led to demands that obligations be repaid in money of the same value as that in which they were contracted. Meanwhile, John Locke and others had been developing in explanation the "quantity theory of money" or quantity and circulation velocity, as even Locke recognized the role of the

—

latter.

A

free

competition

is

pivotal idea for cycle (or "conjuncture") theory,

but slow to be recognized,

as early writers said.

is

the general fact already

enterprise

mentioned, that supply-and-demand adjustments work on the "feedback" principle, like a speed-governor on

unreal

an engine, a thermostat,

Exaggeration of the occurrence of monopoly

common ground

David

with an increasing quantity of money, selling prices

though "protection" does not directly

monopoly,

interest rates. In the 174()'s,

published his Essays with the pivotal idea that

effect of rising prices (due to influx of silver

Fisher.)

The monopolist's

by way of lower

Hume

of Wealth, with a bibliography of mathematical eco-

nomics by Irving

had held that abun-

XII). "Mercantilist" writers

is

a

or

etc.,

and

that all such

mecha-

and other

nisms produce oscillations. Thus any price normally

proving the contrary. Pointing out the error does

not imply that business monopolies do not exist or

shows cycles of rise and decline, more or less regular, extensive and prolonged as normal-price theory

present no serious public problems, but public action

should recognize. The basis of the

ineffective. This ignores facts

itself

causes restrictions

classical political

bankruptcy

more

figures

costly to society.

The

economists thought monopoly bad,

but proposed no action except negatively not to establish

them. In modern times "anti-trust" laws have

become

familiar, but in the

United States they exempt

highly restrictive labor unions, and "administered" prices.

Money and

Interest.

The Business Cycle.

It is

hard

—

in

response of an effect to

tion of "x"

is

phenomenon

cause.

When

profitable (say of hats, an

Russian propaganda) required for

its

it

new supply

is

"lag"

the produc-

example from

tends to expand, but time to reach the

market and

is

re-

duce the price, and, meanwhile, under individualistic control, the movement tends to be overdone, "glutting" the market and reversing itself. (This is abstractly an

argument

for central

advance planning and control

if

57

ECONOMIC HISTORY it

could be guided by complete foresight and were free evils of its own.) The cycles for an item will be

from

longer as

takes longer to expand production or to

it

exhaust an existing supply or price bulge that

its

sources. Further, a

would naturally be temporary

is

likely

be mistaken for a trend, prolonging the effects through reduction of current output to prepare for a to

later increase. This

is

obvious with livestock,

when

animals that would have been marketed are held back for breeding purposes; similar causes operate elsewhere.

make the value of money an extreme The current "price" the recipro-

Familiar facts

case for oscillation.

cal of the general price-level

—

—

is

not conspicuous, and

is vague in comparison with commodities which have an organized market or a known cost of production. And, more important, the

the position of equilibrium

self-perpetuation

and self-aggravating tendency of

price-movements is magnified. Rising prices make it seem preferable to hold goods rather than money and so to speed up the turnover of money; this stimulates real production, especially through bank loans, creating deposits which circulate as equivalent to more money. Hence further rise of prices and greater profit margins, and so on. But shortage of labor and decrease of its

boom and may

money

for

investment

in the

market and throughout the economy. At the time of a collapse, the need for "cash" to meet commitments

may

create a "panic" or near panic, causing a

demand

connected with

for loans at fantastically high rates, not

the long-run determination of the rate by investment opportunities.

Under such conditions one can hardly

Where

speak of "the" rate of interest.

the security

seems good, loans may be available at very low rates, and otherwise only at very high rates, or not at all,

A

forcing bankruptcies.

full

discussion

would prompt

analysis of the Great Depression of the

"New Deal"

cized especially by John

who

Keynes),

(later

Lord

as regards very short-period changes.

the pivotal fact of the wide instability of the

general price level and others:

Maynard Keynes

stressed the aspect of interest as a rent

on cash, rightly

From

1930's, the

measures, and the role of the ideas publi-

first,

that

be "managed"

consequences follow two

its

money, and circulating

—a

of

policy

credit,

laissez-faire

here

must has

"intolerable" results; but secondly, that the manage-

ment cannot be very effective, consistently with social freedom in economic and other respects. The measures taken under the

"New Deal"

administration of the

sion of the

unemployment and distress ("pump priming" through public make-work projects) were ineffective; unemployment was finally cured by the outbreak in Europe of World War II. Movements Opposed to Analytical Economics. Many aspersions have been cast on "political economy"

ment occurred

since Carlyle referred to

quality, along with rising wages, help bring the to

an end

— which

tends to be precipitate

cause a panic in the loan market. Typical and pivotal is

a sharp contraction in the capital-goods industries,

spreading to those serving consumption. In the depres-

1930s about half the calamitous unemployin the field of "durables," which had furnished about a fifth of the total employment. In general,

what happens

at the

peak of a boom

collapse and a drastic reversal of the trend

—

is

—

its

readily

1930's to deal with

This attitude

it

as "that

may be found

condemnation of the desire to idealists all science

is

in

dismal science."

the

for riches

dismal, since

New

Testament and money. But it

describes the

And

explained and even predictable; and in principle the

real, in contrast

boom is largely remediable through monetary and fiscal action. But no one knows just when to act or how much

nomics is an extreme case, because it deals with cost, the need to give up one good to get another; and the same prejudice doubtless underlies the popular con-

action to take, and the public

mind opposes "killing blame the "money

prosperity," and in any case tends to

power" for the unfavorable consequences. At the bottom of the cycle the situation is very different. It is not clear why the decline stops just where it does, or why the pickup is slow, which gives many observers the impression of a stable equilibrium along with extensive idleness of labor

and other resources. This

is

self-contradictory, but explanation of the situation in-

volves

many

of this article.

and discussion beyond the scope Adjustments, including liquidations, must

factors

be carried out, requiring time; and an is

that potential investment opportunities

far ahead,

and seized by

subject, controversy

A major

5o

demand

ditions raise the

aspect

phenomena and

is

is

individuals.

essential fact

must be seen the whole

On

abundant.

the relation

the interest rate

between monetary

— or

rates.

Boom

con-

with the ideal or perfect.

eco-

demnation of trade, and the market organization of production and distribution. There is a special ground for disliking historical economic thought in its advocacy (overt, implied or imputed) of the policy of public opposition to

Adam

humanitarian grounds. of position

by the

de Sismondi, book,

De

It is

laissez-faire.

The

pointed up by the reversal

Italian scholar, Jean Charles

who

first

la richesse

earliest

Smith's teaching rested on

supported

Adam

Leonard

Smith, in a

commerciale (1803), but

in

1819

Nouveaux principes His second position was sound noted earlier, Smith's great work

revolted against the position in his

d'economie politique.

and well taken, for, as was one-sided propaganda

for "natural liberty," with

argument either way from economic analysis. He never spelled out the meaning of the "invisible hand" little

ECONOMIC HISTORY harmonize the individual interest with that of Nor did he recognize the real logic of his position, the view that there is no real social interest,

now each

a part of the other

said to

prise are

society.

"cultural" freedom, religion included.

that society for

is

merely an organization of individuals

mutual economic advantage. The state end with values of

as a means, never an

perhaps

except

"defence,"

as

opulence" (op. cit,

be interpreted as

is

own

implied by the recognition

as

rated

viewed

is

its

of

"much more important than p. 431). The "hand" should not

"Providence," or a mystical force,

as

often done.

However,

laissez-faire (an expression not

used by

not an economic doctrine, but a

is

one. As already explained, the validity of economic freedom as a policy depends on that of the political

(instrumentalist)

ethics of utilitarian

individ-

which has serious limitations. This policy issue has nothing to do with economics as a science, which ualism,

assumes truth of

only its

the

partial

(analytical)

descriptive

principles, not their ethical Tightness

any more than the assumption of tions" in mechanics implies that

"frictionless condifriction (and other

qualifications) should

be ignored by engineers

plying the principles.

The common accusation

reality" of

economic theory

is

ap-

in

of "un-

as valid for theoretical

the other hand, the critics (on the ground in

question) are

based on

The most extreme opponents of the market economic order, and of the science which analyzes it, are the Marxists, who repudiate democracy also, in favor of nothing, i.e., anarchism, as far as the documents state. The original and still sacred "scripture," the Communist Manifesto, demands the "violent overthrow of all existing [bisherige] social order," by and for the workers of the world,

government

who "have

nothing to lose but

have a world to gain." Marx denned the agency by which a ruling class, of

open

to the criticism that

merely abstract

as

owners, exploits the workers. The revolution should establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat," giving

indication of

its

no

organization for unitary action. This

has worked out in fact as the dictatorship of a

self-

perpetuating clique, led by a "chairman";

mis-

is

it

and the system is miscalled "communism." In Russia, where its advocates came to power against Marxist predictions the regime is much farther from communism than is the (also misnamed) "capitalism" of the free nations. But the doccalled a "party"

—

—

trine (in essence

an application of Ricardian economics)

has been embraced by innumerable bright minds and has conquered over half of the world.

More reasonable, being more moderate, is the oppomovement called "socialism." Its advocates have

mechanics.

On

all

their chains [and]

Smith or Ricardo)

social

—

sition

stood for a democratic government, making the prob-

ig-

lem again one of politics. They have generally accepted

nores stated qualifications. Smith listed and developed

the main body of economic science, but have advo-

three general exceptions to the system of natural

cated governmental ownership and management of the

repudiation of laissez-faire means anarchism and

lib-

Any

bulk of income-yielding wealth (by some political

constructive criticism of laissez-faire must point out

body), with "just" distribution of burdens and benefits.

concrete evils of freedom and at least indicate in gen-

Political control of

erty, as tasks of the sovereign (op. cit., p. 351).

eral terms feasible

measures for the control and sup-

this

from payment

income distribution would separate and destroy

for productive services,

plementation of free-market relations that can reason-

the free economic system. In the case of labor, as an

ably be expected to remedy or mitigate them. Taking

incentive,

measures implies a political order; and modern West-

productive contribution, hence with the scarcity of

pay might correspond

to

some extent with

ern nations are committed to "democratic" govern-

particular abilities. Socialists have also been vague

ment

about the productive organization, as well as on

— law making and enforcement by representatives

of the citizen body, chosen

zens including

all

normal

by majority

vote, the citi-

adults. (Smith

and

his early

followers said nothing about the form of government,

the nature of the "sovereign.") In the the primary task of government tain the

maximum

is

to define

and main-

permissible freedoms, notably mar-

ket freedom, freedom presupposing a legal order. (The

modern West,

fair-

degree of

second of Smith's exceptions, after

defence, was to maintain "an exact administration of justice" in

Book

IV,

much more than he

now include much might be

Ch. IX.) This would intended, though

and the other two exceptions, or that of taxation. The democratic political order and the economic order of markets and enterread into his treatment of

this

justice,

and disagree widely on details; they agree chiefly in denouncing capitalism. The word "socialism" replaced "Owenism," stigmatized by Marx as "utopian" along

—

with other early schemes, in contrast with so-called "scientific" socialism. tion rested

tory,"

own

to this descrip-

on the "materialistic interpretation of

which

is

neither materialistic nor scientific

even "economic," in

Claim

his

as

it is

often called

an inverse-Hegelian sense; but

it

—but

his-

— nor

dialectical,

did logically imply

inevitability.

The

first

socialists to

be called such,

the "Ricardian" group.

They

are so

as a school,

were

named because

they based their teaching on the labor theory of production, drawing the

common

inference, the right of

59

ECONOMIC HISTORY laborers to the

whole product. A hook with

this title,

The Right to the Whole Produce of Labor (1899) bj an Austrian, Anton Menger, has in the English transla-

by H.

tion an Introduction

Foxwell, which gives

S.

perhaps the best account of the group. They were

Owen,

theorists not, like

reformers.

Some Owenites

tried to put the labor theory into practice

up labor-exchanges,

by setting

where workmen brought

stores

products to receive "scrip" stating their labor-time value, to be sold to others

were

on the same terms; they

Owen, Charles

short-lived.

Fourier,

Etienne

Cabet, and other Utopians established communistic colonies in America, attracted by cheap land;

became famous, but all failed. The first Ricardian Socialist, Thompson (1785?- 1833) whose tribution of Wealth also the

most

appeared

in time,

was William

Principles of the Dis-

in 1824.

Marx

influential, since

some

is

He was

perhaps

thought to have

taken from his book the idea of surplus-value. (He

might have gotten ing

it

from

what Mill defined

J.

S.

by merely renamJohn Gray and J. S.

Mill

as profit.)

Bray argued on similar

lines,

holding that property

is

stored-up labor, and an owner should receive only

postponed wages

for

its

labor cost. (Marx's labor-cost

theory would take account of the labor-cost of producing laborers.)

To the

have offered no plan

criticism that socialists

for the organization of

an economy without private

ownership, a few exceptions should be noted, notably

"The Webbs" (Sidney and

Outline for a

Beatrice),

Great Britain, and G. D. H.

Socialist Constitution for

Cole, Guild Socialism Restated (both London, 1920).

Also a book by Carl Landauer, Theory of National Economic Planning (1944, p. 47), and others, might be named. Of late there has been a tendency to use "planned economy" in place of "socialism," as more appealing. Whatever the name, the general issue of socialism versus free enterprise is a matter of degree and of details; as the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, said in 1895, "We are all socialists now." It is pointless to argue for either system in general; but for

the

modern Western mind there

is

a presumption in

favor of the market order, unless there to the contrary, since

There

is

a question

become and

still

of politics, having for

60

Of

this,

affords

a

good reason

more freedom.

socialistic a nation

preserve democratic forms,

lead to a dictatorship. science.

it

"how"

is

To

little

could

i.e.,

not

problem is one do with economics as a

repeat, the to

the most general principles are valid

any social order; while (somewhat) intelligent

The concept covers

theory.

means-ends

human The

more

or less effective

"function"

sub-

in

life.

more

intellectually

serious

opposition

"orthodox" economics has been "historicism." tention

methodological

is

matter of economics

— that

to

con-

Its

the proper subject

not inferences from familiar

is

economy, but description and induction and history. This doctrine originated in Germany and is characteristically German, as the more prevalent one is British. The alternative view has had advocates in English works; of these writers, T. E. principles of

from current

facts

is perhaps most important, though Sir William Ashley and many other economic historians might be named; also perhaps, R. H. Tawney, who was

Cliffe-Leslie

more

His book, Equality (London, 1929),

socialistic.

raises a serious

problem

inequality of

power

for advocates of freedom, since

limits

effective

inequality tends to grow, since

get

more power, and

this

is

And

freedom.

power can be used

to

conspicuously true of

economic power. Its growth has been largely checked by differential taxation, public education, and other measures, and by some natural counter-tendencies. German historical economics was doubtless suggested by the historical jurisprudence of Friedrich K. von Savigny and others. Montesquieu was a cultural forerunner. Two German historical schools are commonly recognized— the first led by W. Roscher, B. Hildebrand, and K. Knies, the second by Gustav Schmoller. This last was a "tsar" and censor of German university economics for a generation, under the Empire of 1871. He was important as a historian as well as a propagandist. Karl Bucher and others of the "schools" were more interested in history than in conceptual or mathematical analysis.

The

anti-deductivist writers called for a science not

of wealth alone but of life

mantic adherent stated schaft,

2nd

1928)

ed.,

the economic aspect;

it

— as Othmar

(Tote

Spann, a ro-

und lebendige Wissen-

— with only special attention to i.e.,

they opposed the "narrow-

ness" and the unreality of analysis and specialization.

(One might

man

ask,

why

only "life," not the world, since

and high authorities say that life is nothing but physics and chemistry.) An offshoot of the German movement was American "Institutionalism" which flourished around the turn into the twentieth century. Thorstein Veblen was its best

is

a part of

it,

known champion— writing

science

— and had a

Ayres. John R.

beings engage in production, distribution, and con-

tions chiefly

sumption and form a society, "economic" decisions will be made, by some units and for some units wisely or otherwise— and details do not affect the abstract

rutionalist,

—

all

including

relations,

Commons

from a

satire

devoted follower

in

along

with

Clarence E.

wrote on economic instituand Wesley C.

legal standpoint,

Mitchell was sympathetic; he was claimed as an

but his main work, on money,

insti-

statistics,

business cycles, belongs to "orthodox" economics.

and

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY What should be said about these opposition movements is that there is no conflict at all with orthodoxy. One can advocate a policy or write historical or sociological economics at will, distinguishing the result from history or sociology as far as possible. There was little excuse for a "methods quarrel" (Methodenstreit) such as raged in

Menger's

of Carl

Methods"

in

i

1883

Austria after the publication

L'ntersnchungen

it

into

that inductive treatment

superior, or even that no other

be written. But

("Inquiries

— chiefly between him and Custav

One mav contend

Schmoller. is

Germany and

economics should

remains true that price theory yields

laws more useful for guiding action than any other

comparablv simple view of social phenomena (e.g., criminology). There has been much effort to find predictive historical laws, but success has been sadly limited. Perhaps the major achievement has been Sir

Henrv Sumner Maine's formula, "from

Law

status to con-

Hegel used somewhat similar words, but with a very different meaning. tract" [Ancient

[1930], p. 182).

Doubtless enough has been said about the conflicting approaches; but a lelism of

chanics, greater,

word may

final

Economy, ed. W. J. Ashley London and New York. 1909). A new version has an introduction by V. W. Bladen, textual editor J. M. Robson, 2 vols. Toronto. 1965). E. von Bohm-Bawerk's chief works are bicipital and Kapitalzins, Vol. I, Ceschichte una Kntik Stuart Mill. Principles of Political

Smart II,

as Capital

1891; 1923).

On

Socialism the following are recommended: Alexander

and important bibliographies,

Joseph A. Schumpeter. History

of Economic Analysis (New York. 1954: published posthumously), and Edmund W'hittaker. A History of Economic Ideas

A

(New

York, 1939).

Other useful volumes

History of Economic Thought

(New

are: Eric Roll,

York. 1939; 3rd ed.,

of Economic Thought (New York. 1953); Alexander Gray, The Development of Economic Doctrine (London and New York, 1931); the last is less compre1942);

].

F. Bell, History

hensive than the others. Valuable for the history of "laissezfaire" are D. H.

(Oxford, 1949);

Macgregor, Economic Thought and Policy

and Edward

R. Kittrell, " 'Laissez-Faire' in

English Classical Economics." Journal of the History of Ideas, 27 (1966), 610-20. Additional studies are Edwin

Carman,

A

History of the Theories of Production and Distri-

Economy from 1776 to 1848, 3rd Mark Blaug, Ricardian Economics: A Historical Study (New Haven and London, 1958); and Paul T. Homan, Contemporary Thought (New York, 1928). The following are the best editions of economic classics. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Xations, ed. Edwin Cannan, bution in English Political

ed. (London, 1924);

(London and New York, 1904). It is available in and in a useful abridgment of W. J. Ashley, Selected Chapters and Passages from The Wealth ofS'ations (London, 1895; 1906). David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Vol. I of Works and Correspondence, ed. P. Sraffa and M. H. Dobb. 10 vols. (Cambridge, 1951-55). John

2

vols.

reprints,

to Lenin (London and and Harry W. Laidler. His-

Cray, The Socialist Tradition. Moses

New

York. 1946; reprint 1968);

tory of Socialism, rev. ed. Still

useful

Economy,

ed.

is

R. H.

I

New

York. 1968

Palgrave, Dictionary of Political

I.

Henry Higgs. 3

vols.

New

(London and

York,

1926).

FRANK

KNIGHT

H.

[See also Anarchism: Authority; Cycles;

Democracy; Economic Theory of Natural Liberty; Enlightenment; Equality. Freedom; Individualism; Liberalism; Marxism; Nationalism; Progress; Property; Socialism: State.]

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIBERTY "Natural liberty"

in

Vol.

;

Kapitids (Innsbruck, 1889), trans.

ties

revert to the paral-

BIBLIOGRAPHY for this topic,

London. 1890; 1932

Interest

William Smart as The Positive Theory of Capital (London,

questioned.

Background

and

Positive Theories

economic theory with the science of mewhere the abstraction and unrealism are but their necessity and usefulness are not

can be found especially

Innsbruck, 1884), trans. William

der Kapitalzinstheorien

ularly with

Adam

is

an expression associated partic-

Smith

in his

Inquiry into the Nature

and Causes of the Wealth of Xations

(1776).

It is

often

associated with the idea of laissez-faire, or the doctrine that

government should intervene

as little as possible

in the affairs of its citizens, especially in

matters relat-

ing to economic

Adam

life.

In the hands of

however, "natural liberty" realistic

basis of a

concept than

is

a

much more

laissez-faire

whole theory of

Smith,

subtle

and indeed

is

and the

social organization. "Natural

do what seems to him best in the circumstances in which he finds himself without fear of threat or reprisal. Political philosophers from Plato to Hobbes saw society organized primarily through what might be called legitimated threat. They were all convinced that if everybody did what he pleased society would rapidly fall apart and that the only thing that held it together was the organization of a credible threat system in the hands of the state. This would dissuade people from doing antisocial things that they wanted to do, because if they did so, thev believed they would suffer penalties inflicted by the state. The idea that society might be held together by mutual self interest would probably not have occurred to anybody earlier than the eightliberty" implies the ability of each individual to

eenth century.

61

a

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIBERTY We

can perhaps trace some origins of the idea

in

economic surpluses arose from

all

agri-

culture and that manufacturing was "sterile," pre-

or of natural rights. These relations, however,

vented them from achieving a complete theory of economic equilibrium. Of the French thinkers at the time A. R. J. Turgot had the most direct influence on Adam Smith and may well have influenced Adam Smith's ideas on the self-regulating character of the economy. The physiocrats, however, still believed that an absolute monarchy was the only means of reconciling the internal conflicts of a society and they did not have a clear picture of the self-regulating character

tenuous. Christianity,

it

is

true, did

are

introduce the idea

was a higher law than that of the state, which was the law of God. The enforcement even of the law of God, however, depended on the fear of Hell spiritual threat system of considerable credibility and that there

—

while

this

way from

long

—

undoubtedly operated to mollify the harsh-

ness of the material threat system,

it

is

a very

still

the idea of natural liberty. Hobbes,

indeed, makes an important contribution by breaking away from the spiritual threat svstem and supposing

of a price system.

that the state is a purely human institution which we put up with for fear of finding something worse. Hobbes, however, was very insistent that his "Leviathan" must exercise a monopoly of coercive power without which society would fall apart into the state of nature in which life would be ". nasty, brutish, mean, and short." It would certainly never have occurred to Hobbes that a man by following his own interests could enhance the welfare of all. Locke comes closer to the idea of natural liberty in his concept of limited government and society based on property. He comes close also to anticipating a labor theory of value, which is an important element

liberty as a self-adjusting process in society,

.

Adam

of

Smith.

He

still

Adam

traordinary insight on

how

society

is

We must

Smith's ex-

organized through

exchange.

much

Adam

to

him most

Smith that

it

of the credit for

it.

The Wealth of Nations

utility theorists

planation of

of discovering a celestial

me-

eenth

and undoubtedly

century

Adam

influenced

originates,

becomes legitimate

much

is

still

very underdeveloped and

origins of exchange,

however, did not hamper

in discussing the

distorts the natural

ment

Adam

is

harmonies of mankind. This

senti-

not wholly foreign to the optimistic bias of

Smith, although he

Scotchman

The most

to

be taken

in

too

is

by

it

direct antecedent of

of "natural liberty"

is

much

of a canny

He

exchange develops a division of labor, that the division of labor itself widens the market, and that the widening of the market promotes further exchange and further division of labor.

that

is,

we

We have

call "positive feed-

leads, therefore, into

"development,"

a steady increase in productivity, in specializa-

tion, in the extent of the

market and

in the total

per

capita output of commodities, which Smith regards as

the principal measure for the wealth of nations.

This process operates through the price system; that

very much.

Adam

Adam

consequences of exchange.

back" and which

and

even though the

further work. His vagueness about the

with

noble savage and his feeling

is

organized through

study of the social conditions under which exchange

here a process with what today

his idealization of the

is

first it

achieved a reasonably satisfactory ex-

Smith. Another possible source would be Rousseau, that the coercive system of civilization thwarts

give

rightly regarded as the

society

how exchange

sees very clearly that

The hope

fair to

Adam Smith, oddly enough, does not have any good theory about the origins of exchange, which he attributes to some mysterious "propensity to truck," and it was not until a hundred years later that the

the universe ruled by differential equations rather than angels.

seems only

exchange.

Smith

chanics of society was close to the minds of the eight-

is

how

essentially a study of

the

by

whereby

great systematic exposition of economics and

requires

Other possible origins of the idea may be found in Newtonian celestial mechanics with its concept of

conclude, therefore, that the idea of natural

each individual by following his own interests or bent promotes the total welfare, is an idea which owes so

.

gives a very large role to

government, however, and he lacks

Smith's concept

is,

the total set of

all

prices or ratios of exchange

which

the doctrine of the physiocrats

determines the terms of trade of any individual con-

The very name "Physiocmade

ducting exchanges. Since an individual has an output

racy" means the Rile of nature. The physiocrats

of the things

a particularly important contribution in seeing society

input from the market of the things that he buys, his

or economistes of France.

as a

whole of interrelated

parts. Francois

Quesnay,

the Tableau economique (1758), develops the

cept of national income as the

sum

pated the

in a certain

multiplier.

first

in

con-

of the geometric

series of continually smaller reactions,

62

however, that

the medieval and even later concepts of natural law

and so

antici-

degree the Keynesian concept of

The

peculiar physiocratic doctrine,

which he

sells into

the market and an

terms of trade are the ratio of the quantity of what

he buys to the quantity of what he

sells.

In these days

we would describe this by some kind of index number. Adam Smith did not have this device; nevertheless, his concept

is

fairly clear.

producing what he

is

Whether a person will go on producing and exchanging it,

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY depends on the terms of trade which he experiences. If these terms are poor, that is, if he is giving out a lot and not getting very much in return, then he will

which the terms are more favorable. This change of occupation, however, will have an effect on the terms of trade themselves, improving the terms of trade in the occupation which he has left and worsening the terms of trade in the one to which he has gone. This process will tend to go on until nobodv feels he can better his condition by shifting to another occupation, or, more accurately, until in each occupation the amount of resources entering the occupation is just equal to the amount leaving it. The price structure, which produced this situation would be an equilibrium price structure, or a structure of "natural prices" as Adam Smith called tend to

We

them.

occupation to one

shift his

notice that the

merely a vague appeal to of nature, but

is

in the sense that

people

level,

in

word "natural" here is not some divine order or order

a quite specific equilibrium

price structure

if

is

not at

its

concept natural

"high prices" as unusually profitable and will into them,

which

The second function

will bring the price

move

down, and

will

perceive those occupations with "low prices" as un-

move out of them, which The natural price system,

of the "invisible

promote economic development.

does

It

hand" this

more cheaply,

that

is,

adapted

is

a system of mechanical equilibrium and

of the social system.

In

its

concept

and operationalism, this removed from the vague concept of

sharpness, clarity, is

far

natural law and natural rights.

It

is

this

equilibrium

system, and not any presumed intervention from

God

which constitutes the famous "invisible hand" which turns the pursuit of private gain into public welfare. This "invisible hand" has two aspects. or nature,

In the

first

place,

it

organizes the productive activities

whole what demand, say the price of coffee will rise and

of society so that people produce on the

people want. Thus,

from tea to

coffee,

if

the price of tea will

become unusually ple into

and

it,

there

fall,

is

a shift in

production of coffee will

profitable

and

this will attract

peo-

production of tea will become unprofitable

that will chase people out of

it.

temporaiilv, will be higher than

least

new

eventual

here in that

equilibrium. There if

rapidly, there

a certain

is

new

structure of

its

dilemma

new processes can be imitated very may be no advantage in introducing

them; they will be imitated so rapidly that the price will

immediately to the point where

fall

profitable to innovate.

It is

introduced a coercive, that

it

for this reason that is,

not

is

we have

a non-exchange element

law or copyright, which can protect the innovator against too rapid into the system, such as the patent

imitation.

Adam Smith applied the concept

of "natural liberty"

beyond the realm of commodity exchange. He applied it in Book Five of The Wealth of Nations to education, to religion, and even to some extent to the far

is

be effective

if

the teacher

is

is

most

paid by results

highly unpalatable to the educational establishment,

which has always looked with horror on the idea of a free market in education. Nevertheless, Adam Smith's arguments cannot be dismissed easily. If the teacher's income does not depend on the performance of his duties, there

to

is

a strong temptation for the students

be neglected. At eighteenth century Oxford and

Cambridge, indeed,

as

Adam

Smith observes "the

greater part of the public professors have for these

many

years given up altogether the pretense of teach-

ing" (1937, p. 718). By contrast, he observes that:

Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for which there are no public institutions are generally the best taught. When a voung man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not always learn to fence or to dance very well, but he seldom fails in learning to fence or to dance (1937, p. 721).

Eventually the

The

production of coffee will be expanded and tea will contract until the

is

innovators of superior technology profit because the price, at

likely to

a very real sense a kind of celestial mechanics

is

to a previous level of technology, then the

judiciary. In education, the idea that teaching

in

it

unit of input in production. If the price structure

will bring the prices up.

therefore,

to

is

making things towards getting more output per

usually unprofitable and will

is

if

profitable to direct activity towards

perceive those occupations with

will

feedback from these dissatisfactions will be

political

slow and uncertain.

demand

is

satisfied

and the production of coffee and tea are once more equally profitable or at least equal enough so that there is no movement of resources from one to the other. By contrast, if the visible hand of government attempts to distribute commodities to people in accordance with their demand, by some sort of rationing, in the absence of any price-profit equilibrium mechanism, many demands will be undersatisfied or overfulfilled, and the

so-called "elective system"

at the university

he wishes,

is

as long as

by which a student whatever courses

free to choose

he completes a

sufficient

number

a good example

of hours at sufficiently high quality,

is

of "natural liberty," and the idea

owes a good deal

to

Adam

Smith.

The

criticisms of the elective system

they give a cafeteria education without consistency or

and that the student could not be trusted what was essential and what was nonessential substantial modifications of it in American

structure, to know

led to

63

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY which

universities,

interestingly

lenged again during the 1960's

enough were

in the

name

chal-

of liberty

h\ the student generation. This illustrates perhaps

some

of the difficulties of the "natural liberty" concept. In religion, also,

Adam

Smith advocated a separation

and state, and full religious freedom which would allow any sect the right to compete in the of church

dead and formal Lutheran Church and the vigorous and aggressive Lutheran Church of the between,

where

it

prohibits

established in Scandinavian countries

United States. Thus,

a

in

removed from

field far

we

find substantial

for the virtues of natural libertv

exchange rather than coercion recognized

in principle

for the use of

as a social organizer.

Natural liberty, however, has fully

and

ordi-

evidence

by

its limits,

Adam

which are

Smith, though

people from going to "the church of their choice."

modem

Adam

suspicious of the excesses of enthusiasm in religion, as

with him about exactly where the limits should be drawn. Thus, he argues against allowing bankers to

indeed was his friend David Hume. Hume, however,

issue notes of small

Smith, as a good eighteenth-century deist, was

argued that the way to protect society against the excesses of religious zeal was to set up an established church in which the clergy were not dependent upon the goodwill of the congregation for their pay, but on the goodwill of the established order.

Under these

circumstances there would be no payoffs for excessive zeal on the part of the clergy

and the church could

be relied on to be an instrument of the establishment.

By

contrast,

in religion

views

in

gation,

Adam

Smith argued that free competition

would force preachers

to

new members

order to attract

it

for adherents

rea-

to receive them; or, to restrain a

notes,

when

and

rational religion, free

see established, but such as positive law has perhaps never

country, because with regard to religion positive law always

and probably always will be more or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm (1937, p. 745).

some degree both Adam Smith and Hume may right. The state church, as in Scandinavia,

have been

apt to be an efficient producer of religious apathv,

States, has

more

at the edge.

religion,

as in the United

tended to make the competing churches

alike in the middle,

though perhaps more extreme

The history of religion

however, also supports

Adam

in the

United

States,

Smith's contention that

natural liberty will lead to development, for in the

United States the

under a regime of been spectacular, church membership having risen from perhaps 7 per cent in the time of the revolution to about 64 per cent in the 1960's. There can hardly be a greater contrast indeed rise of religion

free competition has

banker from issuing such

neighbours are willing to accept of them,

a manifest violation of that natural liberty which

is

is

the

proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such

some respect

regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in

a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the

restrained by the laws of as well as of the

all

governments; of the most

free,

most despotical. The obligation of building

party walls, in order to prevent the communication of

fire,

a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind

is

p. 308).

The problem which Adam Smith

is raising here is one which economists later discussed very extensively under the title of "externality." The freedom of all individuals to produce and exchange anything they like with anyone they like at whatever price they can get, only promotes the general welfare if there are no

effects outside the

a

exchanging

man produces something

to

parties. sell,

If,

for instance,

but in the course

it he creates a negative commodity, such water pollution which injures somebody else,

of producing as air or

in

all his

proposed (1937,

to that pure

and free competition

from receiving

with the regulations of the banking trade which are here

yet established and probably never will establish in any

is

said,

respect those of almost every

from every mixture of absurdity and postural fanaticism such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to

In

may be

sect finding themselves almost

both convenient and agreeable to make to one an-

them

it

to their congre-

other might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of

restrain private people,

payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing in

natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger

other sect and the concessions which they would mutually find

denominations as follows:

the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be,

and that competition of churches

The teachers of each little alone would be obliged to

To

economists and social thinkers might not agree

their

moderate

would force them to line up somewhere near the sonable middle. Thus he says:

64

say, the

is

nary economic activity

market of religious ideas for adherents. An established religion violates natural libertv because

it

he should clearly be charged for through the tax system. activities

On

which produce

this,

the other side,

if if

necessary there are

benefits to people for

the producer cannot charge them, then, unless

arrangement

is

made

for

which some

compensating the producer, this commodity because

he will not produce enough of

he

is

only producing enough to meet the demands that

can be paid

for. It is this

kind of consideration which

has generally led to the subsidization of education,

which

supposed to be an industry which produces above and beyond the private benefits which the educated person enjoys. Adam Smith recognized this indeed and proposed that the state should subsidize is

benefits

education of the poor.

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY Another possible case is that of public works, enterwhich either cannot be charged for easily or which require a magnitude of enterprise which the private sector is incapable of providing. Adam Smith

ceptably concentrated and unequal. The regime of

Adam

Smith envisioned

prises

"natural liberty," certainly as

took rather an unfavorable view of private joint stock companies which, he thought, were only capable of dealing in occupations in which the operations could

means of production, except, presumably, in human minds and bodies. Adam Smith indeed took a very unfavorable view of slavery even though it might be argued that the prohibition of slavery involved a restriction on the natural liberty

He

be reduced to a routine.

did not anticipate the

it,

implies private property in the

of a

man

compounded value

to sell himself for the

enormous growth of the corporation, although oddly enough for very good reasons. If it had not been indeed for what Boulding has called the "organization revolution" (1968), that is, the marked increase in the econo-

his future labor. This,

mies of scale

socially undesirable. This objection,

(that

the ability to increase the size

is,

of an organization without diminishing

its

efficiency)

which came about 1870 with the invention of the typewriter, the telephone, and other means of internal communication, as well as certain social inventions in regard to corporate organizational structure,

Smith would probably have been

The

classic

summary

of his position it is

comes on page worth quoting

there-

being thus completely taken away, the obvious and

simple system of natural liberty establishes

own

buildings, machines,

itself of

its

accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the

laws of justice,

is

perfectly free to pursue his

left

own way, and

own

and man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge interest his

to bring both his industry

capital into competition with those of any other

could ever be

sufficient;

the duty of superintending the

industry of private people, and of directing

employments most

it

towards the

suitable to the interest of the society.

According to the system of natural has only three duties to attend

to;

liberty, the sovereign

three duties of great

importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to understandings:

first,

common

the duty of protecting the society from

and even

however, did not capital and Here there was

physical

in

in land.

every inducement for the owner to deal with his property in the most profitable way, to

improve

it

and it

which usually meant

to innovate with

it.

often claimed that while private

is

property in the means of production, especially given a widespread achievement orientation in the society, is

systems either of preference or of restraint,

fore,

apply to private property

Nevertheless,

in full:

All

Smith one of the desirable infringements on natural liberty simply because he believed that slavery inevitably produced economic stagnation and hence was

right.

651 of The Wealth of Nations and it

Adam

of

Adam

however, represents for

highly favorable to the development process, the

price of this development tration of property

There are many reasons significant being

is

the increasing concen-

and power

in the

hands of a few.

for supposing this, the

man

perhaps that the rich

most

finds

it

easier to save both as a proportion of his

income and

as

an absolute amount than a poor man.

A man who

is

living at the bare

minimum

level of subsistence

and hence cannot accumulate propimprove his condition. A man whose income is above this level is able to save, and the more he saves, the larger his income and the more cannot save

at all

erty in any form or

he is able to save. This tendency is accentuated if, under the laws of inheritance, estates are unequally divided

among

inheritors, as they are

of primogeniture. infertile

as

It

is

accentuated

they frequently are.

under conditions if

the rich are

As the

statistician

Francis Galton pointed out, heiresses are frequently

why

they are heiresses. In rich but

the violence and invasion of other independent societies;

infertile, for this

secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every

fertile families

member

from the injustice or oppression of

the multitude of descendants. Economists have never

or the duty of establishing an

worked out an exact model which governs the dynamic process of the entire distribution of wealth. However,

of the society

every other

member

of

it,

exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of

erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain

public institutions, which

it

can never be

for the interest

any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence [sic] to any individual or small number of individ-

of

uals, it

though

it

may

frequently do

much more

than repay

in the

is

the riches tend to be dissipated

absence of positive intervention

in the

among

shape

income and inheritance taxation, the tendency for wealth to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands and its distribution to become more unequal seems to be quite strong and this is frequently of progressive

used as a justification for the restriction of the natural

to a great society.

liberty of the property-holder.

Another major criticism of the regime of natural liberty

is

that

it

inevitably leads to a distribution of

power, income, and wealth

in society

which

is

unac-

It

hold ally

Adam Smith did not development would actuincrease equality. There is an extraordinary pasis

interesting to note that

this

view and

felt

that

65

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY sage

Adam

in

Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments

(1759) in which he uses for the

first

time the expression,

the "invisible hand": It

to

is

no purpose that the proud and unfeeling landlord

and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely and views his extensive

fields,

vulgar proverb, that the eye

was more

fully verified

is

larger than the belly, never

than with regard to him.

The capac-

stomach bears no proportion to the immensit) of his desires, and will receive no more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which ity of his

of, among those who fit up the palace which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice that share of the necessaries of life which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce

he himself makes use in

of the soil maintains at all times nearly that

inhabitants which

it

is

only select from the heap what ble.

They consume

number

of

capable of maintaining. The rich

most precious and agreea-

is

more than the poor; and in spite and rapacity, though they mean own conveniency, though the sole end which thev little

of their natural selfishness

only their

propose from the labours of

employ be the

the thousands

all

gratification of their

desires, they divide

own

whom

they

vain and insatiable

with the poor the produce of

their

all

improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make

same

nearly the

distribution of the necessaries of

life

which

would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants; and thus, without intending it. without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

When

lordly masters,

seemed

to

providence divided the earth it

among

a few

neither forgot nor abandoned those

have been

left

out in the partition. These

too, enjoy their share of all that

tutes the real happiness of

it

human

who would seem to be much above them. body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for (1966, pp. 264-65). the

modern mind

in the light of

many

slums and ghettos,

parts of the world this

sunny eighteenth-century optimism seems a little unreal. Nevertheless, the point which Smith is making cannot be dismissed as absurd. The principle that the limits of the capacity of the belly

for the rich

man

to eat

food as the poor

66

man

even

makes

five or ten

it

impossible

times as

much

applies increasingly with the

development of the mass production of commodities. Thus, the same "capacity" principle applies to clothing.

One

certainly has to look carefully these days to

has

made

tell

many

the palaces of the eighteenth century impos-

sible to maintain,

and outside of the bottom 10 or 20

per cent of incomes, the United States has achieved a rough equality in the amenity of the dwelling. In the mass production society, just as practically every-

body has an automobile, so practically everybody has a bathroom, just because this

is

the only

way

of dispos-

ing of the automobiles and bathrooms that are pro-

duced. This

is

not to argue against progressive taxation

or inheritance taxes or other devices for ameliorating the tendency of a market society to increase inequali-

wealth and income. It is worth pointing out, however, that the real inequalities of income are much ties of

than they seem in money terms. Henry Ford may have had a money income ten thousand times that of his average worker, but he certainly did not live on less

ten thousand times the scale.

The above considerations perhaps do not meet anmore subtle, but perhaps more fundamental

other

criticism of the

that

it

regime of "natural liberty" which

leads to a concentration of private

and

is

irre-

Even though the rich may not constiburden on the developed society, the concentration of the ownership of physical capital is sponsible power.

tute a very large

much

greater than the concentration of incomes, sim-

ply because such a large proportion of total income,

80 per cent, is derived from labor. The owners do exercise a power in society disproportionate even to their income. This

something

like

which

they are in no respect

as

automobiles as the poor man. With housing likewise, the ever increasing cost of servants and maintenance

last,

In ease of

To

he cannot personally use one hundred times

rich property

inferior to those

famine, and destitution in

tendency towards rough equality of distribution; the rich man may have three or four superior cars, but

who

produces. In what constilife,

man from a poor man by his clothing. It applies even to automobiles, where again there is a strong a rich

power,

is it

sponsible,

argued, is essentially private and irreand without the checks and balances of

is

political administration. This irresponsibility of private

power

is particularly noticeable where it is based on monopoly. Under a regime of perfect competition, private economic power is very severely limited by erosion through market forces. Under these circumstances, the owners of private capital simply have to do what the market orders, otherwise, they will take losses and will lose their capital. It has been pointed out, for instance, by J. K. Galbraith in The New Industrial State (1967) that under modem conditions with

and large concentrations of private economic power, what he calls the "accepted sequence," by which the desires of consumers are supposed to govern the structure of production, no longer operates as well and is replaced in part at least by what Galbraith calls the "revised sequence." According large corporations

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY producers produce what is convenient for them produce and then through the arts of advertising and mass persuasion they persuade the consumers to to this,

excess of

to

is

take whatever the producers have produced.

The

regime of "natural liberty"

alters the

in a

way

that

Adam Smith would

We see

the

assets

never have imagined. same phenomenon in government where

payments out and hence

in over

on international account.

In regard to the argument about the balance of trade

in-

troduction of advertising and mass persuasion certainly

payments

equivalent to the increase in the country's liquid

or the balance of payments,

Adam Smith

argues with

great persuasiveness that the international payments

system

is

self-adjusting

and requires very

little

attention

from government.

the general public do not possess this expertise. Hence,

made even more by David Ricardo, who demonstrated that there was an equilibrium system at work in distributing the money stock of the world among the nations. A nation, for instance, which had an outflow of money, and a consequent diminution in its money stock, would have an internal deflation, to use the modern term, which would discourage imports into it and encourage exports out of it which would soon stop or even reverse the drain of money. Similarly, a country with a positive balance of payments, and which therefore is increasing its money stock, would have some inflation which would encourage imports and discourage exports and again would stop or even reverse the flow of money into it. Thus, movements in the balance of payments tend to be self-correcting. The structure of balance of payments simply reflects

the people either have to trust their government or

the shift of liquid assets

else have the policies "sold" to them by propaganda. Furthermore, there have been some notable failures of the "revised sequence" of which the Edsel automo-

or a group or a nation has a positive balance of payments, this means that its expenditure of liquid assets (money) is less than its receipts and he is increasing his total stock of money. Similarly, if his balance is negative, it means that he is decreasing his total stock of money. If the total stock of money owned by all holders together were constant, then the structure of balance of payments would simply reflect the "surge"

according to the "accepted sequence"

government, government will of the

people

as

is

supposed

in a

democratic

to carry out the

expressed by the voters. Under

the revised sequence the government decides

wants to do and proceeds to

sell

its

what

people on

it

its

policies in order to achieve their consent.

The

existence of the "revised sequence" can hardly

be doubted; what is hard to evaluate is its quantitative importance. It can be argued, for instance, that a good deal of persuasive advertising is persuading consumers to

do what they want to do anyway, that

ing previously

good thing

to

is,

by reveal-

unawakened desires. Whether awaken unawakened desires, of

it

is

a

course,

another matter altogether. Similarly, in the case of government, there may be decisions and policies where expertise is necessary for decision-making, and where is

bile

is

the classical example in the private sector and

perhaps the Vietnam war in the public sector. Cer-

was no grass-roots demand among the war in Vietnam and the attempts to sell it to the American people by the arts of persuasion did not seem to be particularly successful. tainly there

voters for a

This part of the argument was

clearly

of

money

stocks out of

among

owners.

some pockets

If

a person

into others, as

Another aspect of the regime of "natural liberty" which has received severe, and again not always justified, criticism is the famous argument for free trade.

at Christmas, for instance, household balances tend to

and still more, quantitative restrictions, such as quotas and licensing, are an interference with the "natural liberty" of exchange, and Adam Smith, of course, devotes a great deal of his argument to demolishing the mercantilist case for extensive government intervention in international trade relations. There are two aspects of this intervention; the first is concerned

has

with the balance of trade or the balance of payments,

balance while another group has a positive balance,

and the second with the protection of domestic indus-

the

Tariffs,

try.

By the balance

of trade, economists usually

mean

decrease and department store balances increase.

The view

much

adjustment themselves

homogeneous

in a

group

first

may

payments

still

society with a

is

is

The processes of Even

also cause trouble.

common money,

suffering

is

if

from a negative

likely to correct this

expenditures and the second

situation

of

may

one person or a group

its

is

in dispute, particularly the relative role of

price changes and income changes.

over the value of the imports of goods and services

The balance

movements are self-correcting recommend it. The actual mechanism by

that these

which these corrections were made, however

somewhat

the excess of the value of exports of goods and services for a particular country.

to

by diminishing

likely to correct their

by increasing their expenditures. Difficulties if these two reactions are not symmetrical,

arise

as they

may

not be, for a negative balance produces

includes items which are not payments for exports or

a greater sense of urgency than a positive balance. In

imports, such as the purchase or sale of securities, so

the international system, national economies

that in effect the balance of

payments represents the

may be

insulated from changes in the international balance of

67

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY payments by the national fiscal and monetary system, especially by the respective Central Banks. Under these circumstances, "natural liberty"

may

lead to perverse

consequences. The more extreme supporters of "natural liberty," such as Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, have argued that if free markets were in foreign exchanges so that exchange rates

allowed

between different currencies could fluctuate according to market forces, all balance of payments problems would automatically be solved. This, indeed, may well be true, but further questions arise as to whether speculative movements in foreign exchange markets would not create even greater difficulties in the system of of "protection"

is

quite different con-

ceptually from that of the regulation of the balance of payments, although the in practice. In its

may

two are sometimes confused

take the form of

and quantitative

—or

taxes.

tariffs,

Perhaps

Adam

bution to this controversy

economy as involving a

is

as

Adam

contract.

Smith

calls

Smith's greatest contri-

a clear perception of the

total allocation

among different

industries of rather fixed resources, so that

if

one indus-

another somewhere in the system must

try expands,

Hence he

sees the

problem not

in

terms of

the support or penalization of particular industries but in

terms of the distribution of industries in the total

economy. If, for instance, by imposing a tariff a country expands a particular industry and so makes it larger than it otherwise would be, Adam Smith sees clearly that because this industry is larger something else must be smaller. In effect, what Adam Smith is saying is that the burden of proof

lies

on those

who would

natural liberty.

He

that an absolutely free

quite clear result

industrial structure of the

He likewise argues for subsidization of education,

or even of public entertainments in a

must be

He insists, however,

justified in

as a whole,

and not

gloomy country

that these distortions

terms of the welfare of the society in

terms of the welfare of particular

industries.

68

more sophisticated arguments

part differ from

List,

Adam Smith

for protection,

do not

for the

most

argued,

in principle. List

for instance, that certain industries contributed

more

development of a society than others, and hence should be expanded through protection. This argument is used frequently in the case of poor counto the general

tries

who are seeking development. The facts may be difficult to establish, but Adam

today

Smith could not object to the principle.

It is

indeed

a special application of the principle of externality, as

noted above.

The

possibility of purely speculative fluctuations in

prices and speculative distortions in the price structure

suggests

still

another possibly pathological condition

of the regime of natural liberty.

Organized markets, both

in durable

commodities

such as wheat and in financial instruments such as

and bonds, are subject to speculative fluctuations which may not correspond to any significant conditions outside the markets themselves. The price of a commodity or financial instrument in an organized market tends to be that at which the market is "cleared," that is, at which the owners of the item in question in toto have no desire either to get rid of it or to accumulate stocks

it.

If

there

the item,

increased aggregate desire to accumulate

is

its

price will

rise.

If

then a

produces expectation for further

increase the desire to hold the item and

the price

still

expectations

may go on

realize that the price

process easily sets

in.

it

This process of

further.

is

rise

rise, this

in price

will further

may

increase

self-justified

some point people

until at

"too high," and the reverse

This will force the price

down

introduce a degree of uncertainty into the productive

is

market society does not

optimum proportional

like Scotland!

Later,

such as those of Friedrich

economy

distort the

economy. He defends, for instance, the Navigation Acts, on the grounds that a merchant marine larger than the free market would give, is necessary for defense.

its

had the

does not say that no

distortions are permissible. Indeed, he in the

it

which the whole until it reaches some process begins again. These speculative movements

proportionate industrial structure of any

away from

which

best terms of trade.

imports, quotas,

especially on imports,

— "bounties"

restrictions,

or direct subsidies

them

specialization in those industries in

most general meaning "protection"

means the establishment or preservation of a certain proportionate structure of industries in an economy by means of government intervention. The intervention

international trade forced a country to diminish

of each case

international trade.

The problem

theory of comparative advantage, in which he pointed out that import duties and other interferences with

Ricardo again clarified the argument further in the

kind of floor at

process which is most undesirable, and a strong case can be made for some kind of "counter-speculation," some agency, for instance, which will buy and sell the

item

periods of time to

at a fixed price for limited

prevent these speculative changes.

The old gold standard

itself

was one such "counter-

speculative" arrangement under which the monetary authorities effectively fixed the price of gold in terms

of the national currency within fairly small limits offering to

buy and

sell

by

gold for the national currency

at a fixed price in unlimited quantities. This system

broke that

it

down

eventually because

it

was increasingly

felt

interfered with the "natural liberty" of govern-

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY merits to pursue other

economic

policies

which they If, how-

regarded as more favorable to their people. ever,

we

look at something like the price supports for

agricultural commodities

which have been imposed

the United States for the last thirty years, there

in

is

a

good deal of evidence that the reduction of uncertainty for the producer which has resulted from the interfer-

from medieval times that trade is ignoble, that it is unheroic and that the good man, whether the saint or the soldier, acts for love or for glory and not for money. The feeling that money is somehow grubby and ignoble goes back a long

way

in history. Insofar, therefore, as

the regime of natural liberty

the delegitimation of exchange itself also attacks the

ence of "natural liberty" of free markets has actually created a very rapid rate of technological development in American agriculture which might not have taken

regime of "natural liberty."

place under the free market regime. These interfer-

less

Adam

ences with "natural liberty" are not, as

Smith

himself pointed out, necessarily inimical to the principle.

They represent the correction

of defects in the

Adam

somewhat checkered. The

Mill, of the generation after

Adam

Smith,

and in France, was considerable, culminating in England in the repeal in 1846 of the Corn Laws, which had imposed a protective tariff on the import of cereals. Even from the early policy, especially in Britain

we

decades of the nineteenth century, however,

find

a rising tide of sentiment in favor of protection, espe-

Germany. Nev-

cially in the

United States and later

ertheless,

was the mid-nineteenth century

in

perhaps the greatest apostle of natural

that saw-

liberty,

the

Frenchman, Frederic Bastiat, whose pamphlets are still classics of economic rhetoric, but who carried a belief in laissez-faire far beyond the cautious limits of Adam Smith. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, natural liberty not only comes into increasing disfavor as a principle of government policy, but is subject to increasing attacks both from the Protectionists and from the Marxists. The most severe criticism of the system of "natural liberty" itself has come from the socialists, and especially from the Marxists. The socialist criticism is many-sided and its psychological roots may be very different from its formal intellectual exposition. Some of it is a modern version of a very ancient feeling that exchange is in some sense degrading, partly because of its calculatedness, partly because it seems to be unproductive in the sense that it seems to produce no physical embodiment of value, especially where it

The farmer

or

the peasant, for instance, frequently feels that he

is

if

equal values are exchanged.

the "real" producer and that the merchant

is

merely

moving around among wheat or potatoes which the farmer has actually produced. There is also a lingering feeling trickily getting a profit out of

owners the

real

more

specific but also rather

exchange economy

for rejecting the in effect,

above. Marx,

listed

turned the labor theory of value, which

in

the hands of Ricardo was a rather sophisticated expla-

nation of what determined the equilibrium structure

accepted the idea perhaps even more enthusiastically than Adam Smith himself. Its impact on economic-

looks as

is

of relative prices, into the theory of production and

classical economists such as Ricardo, Nassau Senior,

it

criticism

convincing than the more psychological reasons

itself.

of natural liberty has been

and James

The Marxist

Smith, the history of the idea

system rather than a repudiation of the system Since the day of

virtually co-terminous

is

with the organization of society through free exchange,

exploitation. His

argument roughly

is

that as

it is

active

labor that ultimately produces everything, labor

is

in

some sense entitled to the whole product; therefore the income which accrues to the owners of capital as profit or interest it

derived from exploitation, that

is

is,

represents in reality a one-way transfer or a kind

of tribute

which

arises out of the peculiar

tion of the capitalist. Marx, then,

is

power posidraw quite

able to

worker working twelve hours which he only gets, say,

effective pictures of the

a day, producing products of half,

because

himself and

in

he

effect

is

working

six

hours for the boss. This

six

hours for

is

indeed a

radical criticism of the system of natural liberty it

and

has resulted in the destruction of that system over

a considerable part of the world and its replacement by centrally planned economies through a communist revolution. Private property, at least in the means of production, is expropriated by the state, acting, it believes, on behalf of the working class. The state then becomes the sole capitalist and the society becomes, in effect, a one-firm state, or the state becomes a giant corporation encompassing all economic activity.

The ultimate

social balance sheet of the centrally

remains to be drawn. They

planned economies

still

have succeeded

creating a rate of development

in

approximately equal to the rate which the successful at about the same communist revolution and the establishment of a centrally planned economy, especially in Eastern Europe, seem to have resulted in a marked acceleration of the rate of development, the earlier regimes having been remarkably incompetent leftovers from feudal times. On the other side of

capitalist countries

have maintained

level of income. In

some

the ledger the

economy has

human

cases a

cost of the centrally

often been very high.

It

planned

has not solved

the problem of concentration of economic power.

Indeed,

power

it

is

has accentuated the problem, as in fact

all

concentrated in the one corporation of the

69

ECONOMIC THEORY OF NATURAL LIRERTY state.

Such a system

tyranny as

slips easily into

it

did

Mao

under Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and under

unnecessary poverty, and the

lives,

loss of a

quantitative restrictions that create the danger of tyr-

which a job gives to a large portion of the population. If this had persisted, there is little doubt that the socialist criticism would have become unanswerable, and that the defects of socialist societies would have seemed mild in comparison to this overwhelming defect of a market-based economy. The challenge, however, produced a response in the shape of what has come to be called the "Keynesian Revolution," even though J. M. (later Lord) Keynes contributed to this revolution in the economic policy

anny whether

countries.

of capitalist countries in a rather confused or at least

been an interesting move countries towards what might almost

a confusing way. Nevertheless, an important revolution

Tse Tung in China. Capitalist societies,

it

should also

be said, are also capable of falling into tyranny, as, for instance, in Haiti or Nazi

seems to go hand

Germany. This always

hand, however, with a virtual

in

abandonment of the regime of "natural liberty," and the development of extensive governmental intervention in the price system, especially through quanti-

One could argue indeed

tative restrictions.

in capitalist or

in

socialist

that

it

is

In recent years there has

within socialist

he described as a

socialist version of "natural liberty,"

particularly in Yugoslavia,

where the various

enter-

role in society

in

economic policy has taken place

in

the capitalist

world, based perhaps on two social inventions, the that of national

income

statistics

first

which gave the policy

have been given a great deal of independence and are linked together by strictly market relationships. In all socialist countries, furthermore, it has never been possible to destrov either the consumer markets or the labor markets, although there is not much consumer

maker for the first time a reasonably clear picture of what was happening in the total economy, and the second, a very simple Keynesian-type model which

sovereignty or labor sovereignty. Under socialism the

hold purchases, government purchases, voluntary busi-

"revised sequence" of Galbraith operates with

ness investment, that

prises

force,

full

and consumers, while they have some freedom

of individual choice, in the mass have to accept

the planners decide

is

good

for them.

what

The workers

also,

while they have some freedom of occupational choice, are severely restricted in their choice by the national

suggested that

if

the Gross National Product at

employment was not absorbed is,

in

full

some way by house-

the willingness of businesses

and the internawould be set in motion to reduce the GNP and create unemployment. Three major policies were suggested by this model. The first was the use of a deliberate government deficit (excess to increase the total stock of capital,

tional balance, then forces

economic

plan. The drawing up of the plans, of course, consummated by a great deal of public discussion

of expenditure over receipts) to increase total con-

is

sumption when needed, and

and supposedly by public modification. One suspects, however, that a great deal of this talk by the "people's

of receipts over expenditures) to diminish consumption

representatives"

is

a political ritual designed to legiti-

mate the plan rather than

to

modify

it,

just as all too

democracy serves to legitimate the continuing policies of government rather than to change them. The "rediscovery" of the price system in the socialist countries, however, by such economists as E. G. Liberman of the Soviet Union, is a sign that the concept of natural liberty and the

often a voting system in a capitalist

organization of the society through free exchange

is

not dead, even in the socialist world.

The rise of Keynesian economics world has had an important effect socialist criticism

and

in correcting

in the capitalist

in blunting

the

what may have

been the most serious defect in a purely marketoriented society, which has been in the past the tendency of these societies to slip down at intervals into

70

ganized

when

the need

is

similarly, a surplus (excess

The second was Bank and the monetary system

to prevent inflation.

the use of the Central

to encourage or discourage business investment. third

was the

expenditure. item, but

direct increase or decrease of

The

may

foreign balance

is

usually a small

cause trouble in preventing the other

adjustments. in policy may be judged by contrasting the experience of the twenty years following the end of the First World War with the twenty years following the end of the Second. The first period (1919-39) was a disaster; it produced the Great Depression, Hitler, and ended in the Second World War. The second period has not had a great depression, the rich countries indeed have enjoyed unprecedented rates of development, and though the international system is almost unbearably costly and

The results of this revolution

in part

unemployment and depression. The Great Depression of the 1930's was the culminating example of this kind of defect. By 1933 in the United States, for instance, unemployment was 25 per cent of the labor force. This

very unsatisfactory, at least

represented not only a serious waste in product un-

of the regime of "natural liberty," but

realized, but

it

was a

social disaster in

terms of disor-

The

government

it has not yet degenerated world war. The success of the last twenty or twenty-five years, in comparison with the '20's and '30's, cannot all be attributed to Keynesian modification

into another

any rate must be attributed to

this. It is

some of

it

at

important to

EDUCATION realize,

however, that Keynesian-type intervention

in the interest again of correcting a defect in the

of "natural liberty," as expressed in

its

is

system

tendency

if

uncorrected to fall into deflation, depression, and unemployment, and has the result indeed of restoring something much more like the classical economics. It is

something of a paradox, for instance, that the success

employment policy reestablishes a regime of which it becomes highly apparent that an increase in a military dollar, for instance, comes out of something and somebody else and does not simply come out of unemployment. Under Keynesian manipulation, therefore, the economy looks much more like

David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817; London, 1917). Nassau W. Senior, An Outof the Science of Political Economy (1836; New York, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes

line

1951).

of the Wealth of Nations (1776; New York, 1937, Modern Library); idem. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; New York, 1966).

KENNETH

of a full

scarcity in

the world of the classical economists than doleful '30's,

the market

EDUCATION

and the virtues of organization through

become

all

the

more apparent.

in the use of the

market

It is inter-

been a revival of

interest

in fields like education,

income

esting indeed that there has

maintenance, and public works, where

it

has previously

been much neglected. After nearly two hundred years, therefore, we can claim that the regime of "natural liberty" is by no means dead. It has been many times transformed but

and more

[See also Economic History; Individualism; Law, Natural; Marxism; Property; Socialism; State; Totalitarianism; Work.]

did in the

it

its

transformations

made

stronger

it

relevant.

conditions of society,

We

self-appointed friends than from

and from its

institutions

to fear

The

may begin with the word "education." Through

the Latin

it

related both to the notion of bringing

is

up or rearing and forth, but

of

to that of bringing out or leading

during the centuries

its

meaning, and that

equivalents in other languages, has

its

more complex. has

many other may have more

"Natural liberty," like

BOULDING

E.

come

become even

In relatively recent times, "education"

and "psychology"

to stand, as "philosophy"

do, for a discipline or field of studies, once called

"pedagogics," often set up as a department or school

free

within a college or university, and thought of as subject

exchange of privately owned commodities through mutually accepted bargains is a powerful organizer in society, as we have seen, and there is no sense in

matter to be taught and developed by further research.

despising

it

or throwing

it

its

enemies.

out of the window.

On

the

it is absurd lo claim that the "market" can do everything. It is dangerous to claim that it can do more than in fact it can. Market institutions in

One

have now done

other hand,

society

must constantly be supplemented by

institu-

tions involving legitimated threat, as in the law,

and

of our tendencies

to

is

make everything

just an-

we

other subject in the educational curriculum, and

some

In

this

with education

itself.

however, "education" stands,

uses,

as

always did until recently, not for the discipline referred to, but for the enterprise on. In this sense,

which

is

the

it

studies

and

reflects

more important one

the history of ideas, education

is

it

just

not a study or

for

field

which create legitimacy and commuWithout a setting of law and legitimacy, indeed, the market institutions cannot function and will destroy themselves. Furthermore, the market is subject to pathologies of its own and there must be other institutions in society outside the market which can correct these. Government may not be the only one of these institutions for correcting the deficiencies of the market, but it is certainly the most important. Both the invisible hand and the visible hand are necessary for

of inquiry but an activity or endeavor of a very differ-

the healthy functioning of society.

a kind of action, not of theory or science.

by

institutions

nity.

ent kind, one that

practice,

Kenneth

E. Boulding,

A

Study in the Ethics of Economic Organization (New York, 1954). John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1967). Friedrich List, ical

Economy (German

ed.,

The National System of Polit1840; London, 1904; 1928).

and

it

is

the task of the discipline, with the this.

But

it is

— the concepts and theories —behind

cially the fact that

many

other

fields,

both

it

itself

What makes

interesting for the history of ideas, however,

ideas

The Organizational Revolution:

related to the discipline of educa-

help of other disciplines, to provide it

BIBLIOGRAPHY

is

and the disciplines supporting it (philosophy, psychology, etc.) in something like the way in which building bridges and rockets is related to what is done in engineering schools and science classrooms and laboratories. This enterprise needs theory and science to guide it, once it has developed beyond unreflective tion

it,

is

the

and espe-

and they have involved so

including philosophy, that are not

themselves primarily concerned with education. For, as Moses

Hadas

says, ".

.

.

education

most important enterprise" (Old Wine,

is

New

man's Bottles

71

— EDUCATION [1963], p. 3). If we include self-education, then on it depends "all that makes a man"; everything that raises man above or puts him ahead of the other animals. As Kant put it, "Man can only become man by education. He is merely what education makes of him" {Education [I960], p. 3). The example of wolf-children

defines the educational enterprise, that there are only

shows

does not appear to be definable" (To Criticize the

Critic,

and other Writings

closer

this,

though

man's biggest business

also

is

has always been true.

it

someone was able

recently that

to

— and,

indeed, educators

are beginning to use language borrowed from

merce and

We

industry.

have whole schools

develop and teach the discipline of

institutes to

education.

The economics

whether education

Even

we

if

much come

of education has

become an

and people debate the question

important stud),

too

com-

even speak now of "interna-

tional education," and, as noted,

and

only

It is

add that education

is

consider only formal instruction,

it is

not

to say that the enterprise of education either to involve

other such enterprise role with respect to isses

of if

and methods,

its

is

it,

and plays a its premcurriculum, or as one

stimulated by

it

either as a source for

as part of

its

aims. In short, the idea of education behind

there

is

one,

it,

one of the oldest and most important

is

example. President Garfield's idea of education with a student on one end and Mark Hopkins

on the other. In

fact, this

is

virtually

what

T

S.

Eliot

contends, coming to the conclusion that "education [1965], p. 120). Actually, he

when he

is

somewhat in passing, that we all mean bv education some training of the mind or body (p. 75). It is true that the term "education" is ambiguous and vague, or "wobbly" as Eliot so nicely puts it, but its uses do have more clarity and unity than he recognizes. The enterprise of education, as his to the truth

own

says,

passing remark suggests, consists in

fosters or seeks to foster in

some

ability, belief,

all forms and some individual or group some individual or group

knowledge, habit,

skill,

trait of

character, or "value," and does so by the use of certain

methods. There is always someone doing the educating, someone being educated, something being fostered in the second by the first, by some method or combination of methods.

Thus we can and do think of education but related ways:

in different

the activity of the one doing

(1) as

the educating, the act or process of educating or teach-

energizing and organizing ideas in Western culture

ing engaged in bv the educator,

ranking with those of government, morality, science,

experience of being educated or learning that goes on

and technology.

The word "idea" may stand a doctrine

for

progress"

or

proposition.

may denote

kind of change,

either for a concept or

Thus,

"the

idea of

either the concept of a certain

a constant change for the better,

i.e.,

or the belief that history actually embodies a change of that kind.

a concept of e.g., as

And "an idea of man" may mean man as a certain kind of animal or

either

being,

a rational animal or featherless biped, or a belief

or set of beliefs about such an animal or being, the Christian idea of man. of education," (1)

we

Coming

find that

"the idea of education"

concept of education, or

(b)

it

e.g.,

to the phrase "idea

has at least four uses:

mav mean

either

(a)

the

the belief or faith in edu-

"an idea of education" may denote either a concept of education, i.e., a suggested definition

in the

one being educated, and

duced

in the

possessed by him

when he

three uses of "education"

part of our task

roughly but

still

is

to

analyze, perhaps

A

large

somewhat

helpfully, the four categories thus

Those referred to in (la) and (2a) can be discussed together, for an idea of education that really proposes a definition of education is simply an attempt to give an analysis of the idea of education. distinguished.

It

may be argued

at

once that there

is

no such thing

as the idea or concept of education that underlies or

has been educated. In these

we

are referring to the en-

we (4)

as the discipline or study discussed earlier.

Two comments

are in order,

(a)

The

individual or

group doing the educating and the one being educated may be the same, as they are in any process of selfeducation, (b) Education in sense (4) can be defined as the study of

(1), (2),

as the reverse side

aims, forms, means, etc.

the result pro-

one way or another, but also think of education in a fourth way, namely,

(a)

its

(3) as

the process or

terprise of education in

as the result of (1)

education, about

(2) as

one being educated by the double process of educating and being educated, i.e., the combination of abilities, etc., that are produced in him or that are

cation; (2)

of education, or (b) a belief or set of beliefs about

72

2bi. for

as a log

places of activity in which

a profession.

everyone alive or is expected to, that every other human endeavor of any importance depends on and is served by it, and that almost every has

ideas of education such as are referred to in (2a) and

are distinct, there

and

(3);

education in sense

(3)

and

(2); and education in sense (2) of 1 Thus, though the four senses (

is

).

a nice kind of unity

among them.

be convenient to use the word "disposition" to denote all of the abilities, beliefs, habits, knowledges, It

will

skills,

traits,

or "values" that education

may

seek to

by activities of the kinds just indicated, as Dewey sometimes does, though he elsewhere prefers the term "habit." This is a somewhat extended and unusual use of the word "disposition," since it means designating foster

as dispositions not only things like cheerfulness, but

also

things like an ability to act,

a

knowledge of

EDUCATION God

physics, or a belief in

some

we need we

or education. But

term here and any ordinary word

single

choose must be extended to cover the very varied things under discussion.

We may idea of

say, then, that the idea of

someone

More

activities of certain sorts.

may be

education

X

by method

is

the

someone by

formally, the idea of

at least partly explicated as follows:

Y only

educates

education

fostering dispositions in

X

if

W

fosters disposition

Z. Strictly, of course, this

only of education in sense

but

(1),

in

Y

an explication

is

we have

already

seen that education in the other three senses can be

To

defined in terms of this one. just

this extent the

the idea of education.

called

However, we do not yet have

we

a complete analysis of this concept; to achieve this

must know something more, something about the

May we

ranges of the variables involved.

X

anything in the places of the place of

and

and

W, and any method

say that education

still

(writing in 1762) talks as

if

is

put

just

any disposition

Y,

in

place of Z,

in the

going on? Rousseau

we may when he

or should we build anything more about them into the definition of education? It is sometimes assumed that education is by definition concerned only to promote knowledge and intellectual excellences. Thus, R. M. Hutchins writes, "Education implies teaching. Teaching implies knowledge" (The Higher

pursued?

says that

men. Their moral and spiritual powers are the sphere of the family and the church" (Conflict in Education [1953], p. 69).

One

do something for us (Emile [1962], p. 11). It should be observed that our question here is not normative but conceptual. For example, we are not asking, as if education were althings, since they all

ready defined, what dispositions

what methods it should are asking whether any that might

use;

we

it

are

restrictions

should cultivate or still

to

education

put into our definition).

(i.e.,

In reply R.

we

it

and

be cultivated or the means that might be

employed are

unless

defining

on the dispositions

S.

be

built into the

very concept of

say that

X

is

educating

Y

if

he

is

fostering

undesirable and morally objectionable dispositions or using undesirable and morally objectionable methods; for example,

if

he

helping Y to form bad habits and

is

he

false beliefs, or if

is

using harmful drugs, brain-

is

a

and religious education within one says that such cultivation of moral and spiritual powers is not education, but something else, howit.

If

ever desirable

way

it

may

one not only

be,

rejects our usual

of speaking; one forces us to look for

some other

we have

throughout

term that covers the whole idea

been using "education" and

history

its

equivalents to

mean. Peters has also sought to build further criteria into the concept of education. is

going on only

of activity,

duct that in

if

X

some body

is

He

argues that education

Y into some form knowledge or mode of con-

initiating

is

of

governed by public standards enshrined

a public language to which both teacher and learner

must give allegiance. Education "consists in initiating others into activities, modes of conduct and thought which have standards written into them by reference to

which

it

is

possible to act, think,

varying degrees of

Peters has argued very cogently that,

it

we do

ordinarily include moral

skill,

and

feel

with

relevance, and taste" (Educa-

tion as Initiation [1964], p. 41).

extend the term education as Rousseau does,

we would not

can, of course, so define education, but

rather arbitrary limitation of the concept, since

education comes to us from three sources, from nature,

from men, and from

May

Learning [1962], p. 66). And again, "Education deals with the development of the intellectual powers of

formula

may be

given does represent a concept that

on the dispositions and methods to be

restrictions

Peters contends, furthermore, that education implies that the teacher

and learner both know what they are

doing, at least in an embryonic way, and care about it;

that,

though education does include the cultivation

of moral and spiritual powers as well as intellectual ones,

it

always entails some kind of cognitive or

intel-

washing, or hypnotic suggestion (Concept of Education [1967], pp. 1-6). This seems to be correct. It is true

lectual development, some kind of "knowing-that" as well as "knowing-how"; and that the methods it uses

we may

must be appropriate

say that what

tion," but

X

is

doing then

we would be more

education at

Education

all.

laudatory term and

its

is

"bad educa-

likely to say

is,

normally

at

it

is

not

least,

a

laudatoriness seems to be built

X

one must and morally unobjectionable dispositions (excellences) by similar means. Education must foster dispositions and use methods that are desirable and morally unobjectioninto

it.

If

one says that

is

educating

Y,

be thinking that

X

able, or at least

regarded as such, otherwise

is

cultivating desirable

it

is

not

education.

Does the concept of education impose any further

to the dispositions involved in the

kind of initiation described, as well as compatible with

knowing what he is doing and caring is a more adequate view than that of Hutchins, and one is tempted to accept it, at least if it can be made to cover the cultivation of bodily skills, manual training, aesthetic education, and vocational preparation, all of which we ordinarily cover by the

the learner's

about

it.

This

word "education."

On the other hand,

it is

not entirely clear that Peters'

definition will cover all of these things.

Moreover, he

appears to be thinking that the forms of activity and

73

EDUCATION X

thought into which

developed so,

Y must have been some public way, and

to initiate

is

and

in the past

in

though he does try to provide for the teaching of he seems to exclude from education

critical thinking,

the possibility that

mode

\

might

Y

initiate

into

some new

of activity or thought with standards not yet

publicly accepted

—or

possibly into

Life" that involves no standards at

Y comes

"own

to regard as his

some "form

of

or only those

all

thing" or commits

some act of "choice" or "decision." Such possibilities seem to be envisaged by those who are presently advocating a "new" or "free" education, and it does seem a bit arbitrary to say that what they are himself to by

envisaging just

not a form of education, even

is

may

very well

not).

The much-discussed question doctrination to

education

of the relation of in-

relevant

be one way

Indoc-

here.

in

to acquire at least

tions Peters has in

to rule out

is

which the young some of the disposimind, though he may be meaning

trination appears to

might be made

it

and morally unobjectionable

turns out to be desirable (as it

if

use in

its

education by his criterion that

if only as a child, what he is doing and why it is desirable. What seems crucial in the debate about it, however, is not whether indoctrination passes this criterion but whether its use is desirable and morally unobjectionable. Those who think it is never so tend to deny that indoctrination is a form

the learner must see,

of education, while those

who

think

so tend to hold that indoctrination tion,

even

if

they limit

rule indoctrination

its

is

sometimes

it

is

a kind of educa-

we

use. This suggests that

and other doubtful methods out of

education by definition,

and only

if

if

we

as undesirable or morally objectionable.

regard them

Should

we

rule

them out of education on any other grounds? To say no here has the disadvantage that, if we find promoting good dispositions by drug, pill, electrode, or hypnotism to be feasible and unobjectionable, then we must recognize such methods as properly educational, which

many

are admittedly reluctant to do.

hand, perhaps

we

educational only because

morally

or

the other

otherwise

we

them

as

are certain that they are

objectionable

—or

simply so

are educated by nature and things as well as by men, and that his way of speaking is not entirely

unnatural.

Still

he

is

only

find

"tongues

and "sermons

books

in trees,

if

there

is

surely

a teacher here

As for Rousseau's

talk

clear that

we

Z

go, then,

it

is

not

should build into the definition of educa-

more than the requirement that the and the means employed must be on some ground or other and morally unob-

were not

if it

Heidi's

—

this

he means the fruition of

it

for the action of

But automatic realization of dispositions when no one is doing anything to bring it about, not even oneself, is

not education but something

ophy

of education

is

prevent

unnatural

we have

dispositions

through our experience of vention ral if

is

else.

Rousseau's philos-

a philosophy of education only

because he thinks that

to do something to from being formed

men and

things. This pre-

a kind of educational activity. But the natu-

evolution of innate dispositions as such

not,

is

even

they are desirable, as Rousseau assumes. say that X may be a superhuman being; The Idea of Christian Education (1957, pp. 255-65), F. Bayne says that the basic idea of Christian educa-

Some would in S.

tion

that

is

God

our teacher. Now,

is

if

God

really

by some special act on his part (and not just through our own use of our natural faculties), "reveal" things to us, then He can be said to teach us. If X does,

reveals to

Y

Y

the

way

up a

to set

tent he

teaching

is

something. Thus the Psalmist writes, "Teach

O Lord;

way,

and

will

walk

in thy truth

.

.

.

,"

me

thy

and, again,

me good judgment and knowledge. God educates man, if one

"Teach

may

I

.

.

then say that

."

One

chooses,

one believes that such special divine revelation It seems better, however, to follow Plato's Meno in limiting the term "educating" to

is

if

available to us.

human

and instructing, and and regeneration usually does as some

activities like practicing

to think of God's acts of revelation as "gifts," as Christianity itself

—

kind of divine aid to education rather than as education

among

This would,

other things, accord with

faith,

hope, and love are not

acquired by teaching but by divine infusion. still

important only because

education

at least helpful as a

desirable

because

it

or because If

is

necessary or

enables one to understand His revelation, it

equips one to do His work in the world.

what has been is

it is

preparation for God's act of grace;

said

is

accepted, then

that the concept of education that

One can

argue then, as religious people often have, that

tion anything

As for the conceptual question about the ranges of X and Y, it seems fairly clear that we would think that X is educating Y only if X and Y both have minds of a human level. It is true that Rousseau says

at best;

What

ourselves.

would take place in our lives men and things on us.

innate dispositions that

dispositions sought jectionable.

them our

call

metonymy

about education by nature

simply a mistake. By

is

itself.

ranges of VV and

is

it

of

grandfather learned from the eagle he taught himself.

Aquinas' doctrine that

far as the

we

running brooks,"

in the

some kind

deserve consideration at

all.

far.

We do, of course, "learn" from

in stones."

is

too

public haunts" that

our experience with things, but to "teachers"

X

stretching the range of

when "exempt from

It is

incapable of producing desirable dispositions as not to

So

74

On

are reluctant to recognize

we

is

it

follows

a normative concept

open-textured at two points, since

it

restricts

EDUCATION the ranges of

W and Z

to

what

is

desirable

unobjectionable or judged to be

upon them.

other restrictions

education

and by,

if

education or

is,

It

is

also follows that all

"education of

strictly speaking,

men

not necessarily for,

— that

the idea of a distinctively

enterprise

and morally

but imposes no

so,

men"

— of

the idea of

human

activity

forming desirable dispositions or

of

Whatever may be thought Y,

that the idea of education

of this discussion of the

W, and is

Z,

remains true

it

the idea of an enterprise

which someone fosters certain dispositions in someone by methods of certain sorts. We may now observe that anyone who consciously embarks upon this enterprise must not only have this concept, he must also have certain beliefs or postulates a certain minimal philosophy, if you will. This is made clear by the discussion in Plato's Meno. These presuppositions are: (a) that some set of dispositions is desirable, (b) that

—

they are not innate or just naturally or automatically (as

they are not gift, (d)

Rousseau thought they might

be), (c) that

acquired wholly by luck or by divine

all

that they

may (some

of them perhaps wholly,

others at least in part) be acquired or passed on

by

humanly instituted activities of an educational kind, e.g., by practice or instruction, though possibly only "wid a little bit o' luck" or a bounteous divine aid. Actually, there

is

another presupposition, not envisaged

Meno, namely, (e) that they are not simply created in oneself by an act of choice or decision, out of whole cloth as it were (as so many seemed to think in the

in the 1960's).

One

might, of course, conceive of education without

making these assumptions, but then

it

would be the

Any X who

idea of a purely hypothetical endeavor.

equivalents in their languages) a

X

(educator) and a

Y

(educated),

of forming desirable dispositions by desirable methods.

—

They have different beliefs about education about what it should be like but they mean the same thing

—

by

it.

There are

also different kinds of education

physical, moral, vocational, public,

able methods.

etc.— but these

all

The same

basic concept underlies all

kinds and theories of education. All kinds and theories of education have the

same

five basic presuppositions.

We may end our account of the concept of education

in

acquired

its

process, involving an

involve the forming of desirable dispositions by desir-

excellences by morally unobjectionable means.

conceptual ranges of X,

"education" (or

with a word about

emergence

its

Western thought. Eliot

talks as

if

in the history of

our notion of educa-

undergone a kind of evolution through the all he shows is that we have had changing views about what X, Y, Z, and should be, which is true but does not mean that our basic concept itself has changed. Actually, according to the above account, the concept of education was fully conceived when tion has

centuries, but

some

W

individual or people

first

consciously judged that

a certain set of dispositions was desirable, that they

were not innate or automatically acquired, nor matters gift, and that they could (some of them at least in part) be acquired or passed on by some human program of teaching or practice. Just when and where this was we cannot say for certain, even if we consider only the Western world. We must suppose that some kind of education or paideia has been going on since the beginning of human history. The self-making of man, of which Kant speaks, may not be as old as the hills but it must be as old as man. Education must then have been in the world before of fortune or divine

the concept of

it

came

to anyone's consciousness in

an explicit way. As Eliot

says,

"... a long tradition

or so uncertain of success as to be pointless. X may be relatively optimistic or relatively pessimistic about education, but if he engages in it at all, he must make

and many educational institutions preceded the time at which the question, 'What is education?' needed to be asked" (p. 121). By Pindar's day, however, antidemocratic spokesmen were arguing that some men have arete ("excellence") by nature and others do not, and that for the former

these assumptions.

education

actually engages in the enterprise of education can do it

only under these presuppositions,

false,

then education

We

is

see then that there

of education and that

for,

if

they are

either impossible, unnecessary,

it is

is

such a thing as the idea

possible to give something

more nearly approaching a definition of it than T. S. Eliot realized. To say that X educates or is educating Y is to say at least that X is fostering desirable and morally unobjectionable dispositions in

Y by

the use

of methods that are also desirable and morally unobjectionable, or at least that in

Y by

tion

is

X

is

cultivating dispositions

certain methods. This idea (concept) of educa-

common

to all of the different ideas (doctrines,

theories) of education held

by

Plato, Kant,

President Garfield, or the Chinese.

They

all

Dewey, mean by

is

unnecessary, while for the others

it

is

of

no avail. Here we find the concept of education as we have defined it becoming clear. It came completely out in the open in the days of Socrates and the Sophists, when the Greek air was full of debate about education, as

is

shown by the

discussion Plato purports to describe

and Meno about the teachability of arete. For Meno begins by asking how arete is acquired and he lists four alternatives: (a) that it is acquired by teaching, (b) that it is acquired by practice, (c) that in the Protagoras

it

is

acquired by fortune or divine

possessed by nature. (c)

is

The

gift, (d)

that

ostensible conclusion

true and hence that

arete

is

is

it

is

that

unhappily not

75

EDUCATION acquired by education, but the point is

theory of education, then,

is

the above five questions. Since

it

a set of answers to

includes answers to

excellences by such methods as teaching and practice.

the

Thus the idea of education is here essentially complete and its postulates understood. This discussion, whenever it first took place, marks the real beginning of

tion should be like, not just descriptive, explanatory,

the philosophy of education. Indeed, precisely because philosophy

hand

took place

it

was beginning

to take a

educational enterprise.

in the

Differing ideas of or views about education must

much

agree with

what has been

four

last

will

it

be normative, saving what educa-

or predictive, as a psychological theory of learning or child development

A System of

i

would

be. In

J.

S. Mill's

language

Logic [1843], Book VI, Chs. V, XII),

is not a science, but an art. It may, however, and no doubt should, make use of such scientific theories of development and learning as a basis for

education

some

//

of

its

normative conclusions;

in fact, Mill

thought

educational theories should rest their normative "pre-

said, particularly

cepts" entirely on such premisses as psychology alone

with the general outlines of the analysis given of the

can provide, except for the one basic normative prem-

idea of education and with the statement of the pre-

iss

of

suppositions of any educational enterprise.

They may

include different views about the ranges of X, Y,

may and do

conceptual matters, they

still

substantive issues. In fact, as Eliot sees,

differ

it is

about

precisely

these further substantive questions that have been and

supplied by ethics, which for him was the princi-

ple of utility.

W,

and Z to be built into the idea or definition of education. However, even if thev agree completely about

What

usually called a philosophy of education

is

theory

properly called a philosophy. For a theory

is

of education might simply assume, without argument, that the dispositions to

be promoted and the methods

by the society and then it can be called a philosophy of education only by extreme courtesy. It is better regarded as a minimal theory of to

be used are those regarded

or individual the education

ones. These substantive questions, which remain open on any plausible definition of education, roughly stated, are: 1) Are the postulates of education true? Are the

education, reserving the

1

so cultivated? (2)

education

i

dispositions are desirable

and

by education? What dispositions are By what means or in what ways should

to be fostered

excellences?

What

Need they be

(3)

educators) seek to foster these desirable

dispositions? (4)

Who

is

to

How should (5) Who should

be educated?

educational opportunity be distributed?

educate? of questions.

They

are,

is

a family or group

moreover, interrelated and

hence cannot be answered in entire independence of one another, e.g., (1) and (2), (2) and (4), (3) and (4), and (4) and (5). In what follows, however, we shall have to keep them somewhat separate. It should also be noted that the since they ask

last

four questions are normative,

what should be done, or what

able, while the

first is

The main point

is

desir-

now, however,

is

the fact that theories and philosophies of education

answers to these substantive questions and, apart from conceptual or definitional preliminaries like

arise as

the above, consist of and are distinguished by their

answers to them. Before

we

discuss the questions

and

we must stop and philosophies, what they include, and how

divine

task

not wholly a matter of nature, luck,

is

or choice, but

the second

— to analyze the kind of idea of

education referred to earlier in

(2b).

is

some

in part or to

extent

programming. If it seeks to defend these assumptions, it must list these dispositions, analyze them, and show that the claims made in the assumptions are true. In other words, it must establish to educational

human may appeal

certain facts about

To do

this

it

or to theology

depend on

— different is

to

nature and about the world. to science, to metaphysics,

thinkers will have different

be appealed

their general

to,

views that will

philosophical orientations.

What means, methods, or practices education is make use of e.g., just what the teacher is to do

—

the classroom

Even

— will appear

in

answer to question

a minimal theory of education

may

to in

(3).

try to give

a reasoned reply to this question by seeking to justify the

main part of our

gift,

amenable

its

is

justifi-

Every theory of education in our sense will, then, assume an affirmative answer to the first question, though it may do so dogmatically, without discussion. That is, it assumes that the acquisition of desirable

to look at such substantive theories

they are or should be put together; this

of philosophy of educa-

education.

the issues involved in answering them, to see w-hat they are like,

title

to serve,

cation for their answers to normative questions about

views about what

not.

for our purposes

as desirable

is

tion for fuller theories that provide a reasoned

dispositions

Actually each of these questions

is

a theory in this normative sense, but not every such

are the historically and practically most important

excellences cultivatible by education?

76

A

that education

is

being definitely conceived as the attempt to foster

recommendations.

method

How

then

may

a precept about

of teaching something be justified? Suppose

one maintains, as the Greeks did, that in order to foster the moral virtues we should use music of certain sorts, at least

that

during a certain stage in a child's

was

for the

most part given up

life (a belief

in the Hellenistic

EDUCATION Period, though parents even in the twentieth century sometimes wonder about the possible moral effects of some new combinations of sound that some of their children listen to). To justify' this claim one must use an argument something like this: (a) Education should

clude that indoctrination should be used. But then one

The hearing of such and such

unobjectionable as well as effective or helpful in pro-

cultivate moral virtue, (b)

kinds of music

conducive to moral virtue,

is

fore education should

Or suppose we disposition

is

make

being fostered, learning

is

lines: (a)

more

effectively fostered

"doing" on the part of the student

if is

Then

by doing.

should foster an understanding of music, is

example shows that ethical considerations are important in connection with question (3) as well as scientific-

ones, since

(b)

Education

Any

dispo-

some relevant

arranged

for. (c)

them

Still,

answer to question

general, one must like (a)

(3),

make

use of a normative premiss

in these examples, which says something about

dispositions to be promoted, like (b) is

which says

and of a factual premiss

method or practice

that a certain

necessary, sufficient, or at least helpful for the pro-

motion of those dispositions. Two things about premisses like (b) should be noted. In the first place, even if they are simply assumed or

borrowed from common sense or

may

tradition, they are

be verified by empirical observation and scientific testing, and any theory that seeks to justify them must appeal to experience or to some empirical science. In the second place, they may be of different kinds depending on whether they assert that a certain practice is necessary, empirical statements that

sufficient, or neither

in principle

necessary nor sufficient but

still

helpful, for the fostering of the disposition referred to in premiss

(a),

or simply that

lying

is

more effective in and the conclusion

doing so than other methods are;

by themselves

(except in cases in which

lies

morally excusable,

there are any), the

if

cation of answers to question like (a) in

(3) will

justifi-

include a premiss

our examples that presupposes an answer (2),

plus, of course, a factual premiss like

In this sense, (2)

is

the central normative question

any theory of education, and the central part of any such theory is a list and description of the dispositions in

to

How

be fostered by education.

then

is

saying that a certain disposition (which a matter of nature, luck, divine

gift,

one to is

justify

not simply

or choice) should

be cultivated by education? From what has been

said,

show that the disposition is desirable on some ground and that it is not morally objectionable. In order to show that it is not morally reprehensible he must, of course, appeal to some ethical premiss about what is or is not morally wrong, bad, or vicious, and at least sometimes also to a factual premiss. For example, to show that a liking for the kinds of music Plato and Aristotle banned from education is not morally bad, one would have to use a premiss telling us what moral virtues we should have and it

follows that one must

a factual one to the effect that a liking for those kinds of music does not conflict with the acquisition of those virtues.

In order to

is

it

consider

dictate something about educational methods, e.g., that

play an instrument.

Thus, in order

be morally

we can

ethical premisses

educators should not use

(b).

in

when

except

to question

any normative conclusion whether this is specific or

to

justified.

Therefore education should include learning to sing or to justify

methods must be shown

ducing desirable dispositions before

use the dictum that, no matter what

our reasoning must be along these sition

There-

(c)

use of music of those kinds.

will not regard its use as morally objectionable. This

show

that

it is

desirable to foster a certain

morally innocuous disposition by education, one must,

must be understood differently, depending on which of these claims they make, though the argument

again, use premisses of

may

principles of education, and factual ones stating that

in (c)

in

each case be read as establishing that the prac-

tice in question has

Arguments

some value

the disposition in question

or desirability.

like those illustrated

establish that the practices they

do not, however,

defend ought to be

employed unless they show the practices to be necessary. Take the following argument: (a) Education should foster citizenship,

ducive to citizenship,

(c)

include indoctrination. isses

one may

is

con-

Therefore education should

Even

one accepts its prembecause one does having top priority; but, even if

reject the conclusion

not regard citizenship as if

Indoctrination

(b)

one gives citizenship

first

place, one

may

reject

it

because one regards indoctrination as morally wrong.

Of course, first

if

one believes that citizenship must be given

place in education, and that indoctrination

two

is

nec-

essary for promoting citizenship, then one must con-

kinds, namely, ethical or

other value premisses stating more ultimate aims or is

necessary, sufficient, or

at least helpful in relation to

them. For example, one

many would,

the three aims of educa-

might accept,

as

To prepare a child To equip him to be a good citizen. 3. To develop his powers and so enable him to enjoy a good life. Then to show that education should foster a certain disposition one would show that its acquisition or possession is required by tion discussed to

make a

by

Eliot (p. 69):

1.

living (for a vocation). 2.

or at least conducive to one of these ends (and not

more important end). The argument would have this form: (a) Education should promote such and such an end (or principle), (b) Disposition inconsistent with a

W

is

conducive to

this end. (c)

should foster W. Here

(a)

is

Therefore education

a normative or value

77

EDUCATION premiss;

belongs to one's ethical or value theory,

it

tails

acquiring and fostering the knowledge of astron-

be

omy

(the disposition called a

of crucial importance in the theory of education.

As

(e)

specifically, to one's political or social philoso-

phy. Political or social philosophy Aristotle said,

it

is

which and what branches that ordains

citizens are to learn,

Then

(b)

is

knowledge the different classes of (Ethics I, 2). and up to what point

of

.

.

end

(or living by a certain prinbe of a kind that depends on

experience and science for theories of education

verification, but in

its

some

might come from metaphysics

it

(f) Therefore education should foster a knowledge of astronomy (other things being equal), (g) In

order to do this

it

is

necessary,

among

other things,

to initiate people into the use of the telescope, (h)

.

necessary, sufficient, or at least helpful

I

knowledge of astronomy).

This can be done by education and by education

alone,

of the sciences are to exist in states,

will usual v

it

shown

politike

in achieving a certain ciple);

thus

is

a factual premiss, saying that a certain

is

disposition

or theology.

Therefore education should

initiate the

young

into the

use of the telescope. Granting the premisses, this as far as in (c), It

goes, a

it

(f),

and

not

is

good argument

is,

for its conclusions

(h).

final,

however, for the acquisition of a

mastery of astronomy might be incompatible with that

more important dispositions. But arguments to show would have a somewhat similar structure, and so this example can be used as a basis for a number of

of

this

Thus, answers to question

(3)

— which give us education — and answers to

depend on answers

to

answers to a more basic question which give us the

Both factual and normative premisses are necessary to answer normative questions about education. (2) Among the factual premisses must be some

more "ultimate" aims

education,

empirical or scientific ones,

How

(d). (3)

question

the "proximate" aims of

(2)

question

or

principles

(2)

depend on

of

factual premisses appearing in both cases.

are answers to this

more

fied?

and is

he

An

then

basic question, statements

about the more ultimate aims of education, to be

justi-

educational theorist might stop at this point

refer us to a philosopher or theologian, but,

if

he

offering us a full-fledged philosophy of education,

points. (1)

and possibly

e.g., (e), (g),

Epistemological premisses are neither necessary

nor sufficient to establish educational conclusions, as many twentieth-century writers on the philosophy

so

of education

seem

to assume. (4) Specifically religious,

theological, or metaphysical premisses are also neither

many

necessary nor sufficient, as Eliot and

The philosophy

of education

others

not autono-

will try to justify his statement in (a) of our last

allege. (5)

example. Then, again, he must appeal to premisses of

mous, for

it

two

(6)

What

is

depends on premisses from other fields. basic and central in the philosophy of

is

such normative inquiries as ethics, value

kinds:

first,

a

still

more

premiss, and, second, a

There will

is

no one form

basic normative or value

more

still

basic factual one.

education

must take, but he

theorv, and social philosophy, as

his reasoning

make use of premisses like

the following:

We ought

always to do what will bring about the greatest general balance of good over

evil

(the principle of utility);

is the end of life; Contemplating the heavens with understanding is good

Society ought to be

just;

Pleasure

in itself; Belief in Jesus Christ

Making a

is

necessary for salvation;

living (having a vocation)

is

necessary both

is

is shown by the role and conclusions like (c) and (f). (7) Philosophers of education might content themselves with establishing conclusions like (c) and (f), leaving more practical steps like (g) and (h) to educational scientists and practitioners, but they have

of premisses like

(a)

and

(b)

usually attempted to supply such steps too.

Four points should be added.

(8)

Eliot

and others must ulti-

good life; This life is all there is. Such premisses contain no explicit reference to education, and hence do not belong specifically to the phi-

who hold

that a philosophy of education

mately

on religious or theological premisses assume one appeals to are religious

losophy of education but to other branches of philoso-

or theological just because they are normative, because

for life

and

for the

phy, to science, or to theology.

One may,

of course,

rest

that the final premisses

they are about the nature of

man and

the universe,

seek to justify them in turn by appeal to

or because they are ultimate. But to say that they must

premisses, until one finally

therefore be religious or theological

more basic comes to one's most basic ethical or value premisses and one's most basic beliefs about man and the universe. To illustrate what has been said, one relatively complete line of argument in education might proceed as follows: (a) Other things being equal, what is good in itself should be pursued and promoted, (b) Contemplating the heavens with understanding is good in itself.

7o

heavens should be pursued and promoted. (d)This en-

to

more

(c)

Therefore the contemplative understanding of the

and not

axiological, philosophical, or scientific

is

to

just ethical,

make them

religious or theological simply by a kind of baptism.

For then atheism, naturalism, secularism, cynicism, hedonism, perhaps even skepticism, all become forms of religion without undergoing any conversion and without relaxing their opposition to theism or to what usually counts as religious or theological belief;

nothing

is

gained but a Pyrrhic victory.

(9)

and

One may

EDUCATION insist

that specifically theistic beliefs

to

bear on educational arguments

in

connection with premisses

is

not obvious and

one can agree to theistic

beliefs.

this

(b),

(d),

or

above,

e.g.,

but

this

(e),

not logically necessary: in

it is

(10)

must be brought

like the

only It

if

fact,

one already shares such

remains true that religious,

of the general history of thought or ideas; the latter is

matter goes, be relevant to the

one believes,

justification of educational conclusions. If

as

Thomas Merton

in this life

whole work of man God, one may and, indeed, must

did, that the

to find

is

use this belief as the basis of one's philosophy of educa-

That epistemological premisses may be relevant even though they are neither necessary or sufficient is shown by one of Cardinal Newman's arguments tion.

(1852) for teaching theology in universities: versity should teach knowledge, (b)

of knowledge,

(c)

(a)

Theology

is

A

uni-

a form

Therefore a university should teach

theology (The Idea of a University [1959], Ch. (b) is an epistemological claim. Incidentally,

II).

Here

and

what human The two histories

a part of the general history of

is

beings have done and

how

they did

it.

very intimately connected, but they

are, of course,

should not be confused.

epistemological, and metaphysical premisses may, so far as the logic of the

a history of certain actions, institutions, and prac-

tices,

In any case, however, a complete history of theories

way

of education will include, in one

or another,

four kinds of "ideas of education"

histories of the

distinguished early in Section

I.

The

history of the idea

would be the story, if it can be told, of the emergence into full consciousness of the concept

of education

we

of education

The

Section.

tried to analyze in the rest of that

closely

related

proposed

of

history

analyses or definitions of that concept

would be a part

of the history of analytical philosophy of education,

and

so

might be of interest both for the theory of

definition

and

tainly appear,

would

for the history of ideas. It

what was

if

said in Section

I is

cer-

correct,

specifically religious or theological, (lit Thus, a full

many proposed definitions of education are faulty, and that many apparent definitions are really disguised normative theories about what the aims and means of

normative philosophy of education will contain the

education should be, in which case they belong to the

following kinds of statements, in addition to definitions,

history of such theories.

Normative premisses like (a) and (b) in the longer of our last two examples. 2. Factual premisses like (d), (e), and (g),

belief (or faith) in education" that has characterized

it

should

be noticed that neither of Newman's premisses

distinctions,

and other

including at least

bits of analysis:

some empirical or

is

scientific ones.

Normative conclusions answering questions (2) and (3) like (c), (f ), and (h). It may include epistemological, metaphysical, or religious premisses, though it need not; if so, they will belong under the second heading

Answers

(4)

and

to these questions are

woven with answers

(5)

on our

somewhat and (3),

to questions (2)

earlier inter-

as has

been observed, but it is clear that in general they too will depend on premisses of the two kinds already distinguished, normative and factual, and that political and social philosophy in particular will play an important part

in

third of our histories

would be a

history of "the

some

thinkers and epochs in our culture, and it or parts have often been told. Here we can only analyze the belief. It is not a normative belief about the ends or means of education, but a factual conviction about of

its

it

and

efficacy

appeared not

results,

to have.

It

such as Socrates sometimes entails a belief in the presup-

positions of education formulated in Section

(unless they are normative).

list.

The

1.

3.

This brings us to questions

that

establishing them.

Among

the factual

goes beyond them, not

just to a

produce the dispositions

tion can in fact

I,

but

it

confidence that educait

seeks to

produce, but to a conviction that the acquisition of these dispositions will have certain In

modern times

of progress,

it

for results.

and has taken the form of a belief

man

will progress steadily either

some more

that,

can toward material pros-

through the spread of education,

and

hoped

has been associated with the idea as a race

premisses there will be empirical or scientific judg-

perity or toward

ments, for example, about the capacities, needs, and responses of different groups of children, or about the

may, however, take two more individualistic forms: the belief that education is the key to an indi-

effectiveness of different sorts of teacher training.

vidual's getting

ahead or succeeding

the belief that education ///

The

third part of our task

is

his

way

in the

to a

happiness, to perfection, or to salvation. is

some

to

make,

in the light

and comments on the "history of educational ideas" and on the chief issues involved in it. Such a history should be distinguished, more than it sometimes is, from a history of education. The former is a history of certain ideas, of certain concepts and theories, and is a part of our analyses thus far,

ideal goal.

It

clarifications of

of the last

is

Plato's

view

in the

world, or

more

ideal

An example

Syrnposium that the

right kind of child-leading will lead

him

to immortality.

In effect, then, the belief in education splits into four

two kinds of social faith, one idealistic and one materialistic, and two corresponding kinds of individual faith. Perhaps we should also recognize a fifth form of the belief the belief in education as a pana-

beliefs, viz.,

—

79

EDUCATION cea, said to be especially characteristic of Americans,

1960s.

at least until the It

however, especially

is,

about

normative theories of education that cerned. Perhaps

is

it

the

we

history

are

now

of

con-

possible to find implicit theories

Homer and

of this sort in

other descriptions of Greek

more conscious and fuller Greece through a conjunction of two developments the rise of philosophy or what Aristophanes called the "Think Shop" and tried to laugh out of existence, and the breakdown of the traditional or education, but, at any rate, theories arose in

—

"old" educational system. In a real sense, philosophy

and thinking about education arose together; philosophers at once set themselves up as teachers and critics, and education gave them a profession and problems to think about.

in

of education that have

our history there have been a great

many

debate of various kinds, more or less independent of or interdependent on one another, but all issues of

related in

some manner

must now

try to identify

to our

schema of

analysis.

We

and analyze them, make some historical remarks about them, and relate them to our schema all as an aid to understanding the issues and their history, and to our own thinking about them. Some of these "great debates" have been more or less perennial; others can be roughly dated in the sense that they peaked early or only recently. One could then take them up in some kind of chronological order. One can, however, also take them up in a more logical order dictated by their relation to our schema of questions. Here they will be dealt with in a mixture of these ways. Some of them are specifically educational, since what is at issue is some normative question explicitly about education, but others are meta-normative rather than normative the debate is about the method to be used

—

—

not).

But

can be asked for any other proposed

it

set

and for any other proposed methods of education and one might wish to add that it makes a difference who the pupil and the teacher

of desirable dispositions

—

are (Plato obviously thought that Socrates could teach virtue to at least

some young men).

be fostered

a certain disposi-

If

anyone by anyone by any educational method, it cannot realistically be taken as a goal in education anywhere. Even in his own context tion cannot

in

Socrates did not state the question accurately enough, as Protagoras partly sees.

we have

education

For he does not distinguish,

seen one must, between asking whether

is

necessary for the acquisition of virtue,

whether it is sufficient, or whether it is relevant at all. At most Socrates' crude evidence would show only that it is

not sufficient, not that

as far as

does not even show that

not necessary or helpful

it is

goes, in at least

it

some is

it

cases. His

evidence

not sufficient in

some

cases.

Before

we

leave the

Meno

will

it

be interesting to

notice that later theories of education have approxi-

mated more or alternatives,

less closely to

one or another of the

which, accepted without qualification,

would make the great enterprise of education "turn awry, and lose the name of action." This is possible within the framework of the five postulates of any educational endeavor (Section I). Thus, Rousseau and the followers of nature in education stay as close as possible to the alternative that the dispositions to

be

sought in education are in us by nature and are automatically

realized

if

nothing interferes;

traditional

Christian theory holds that the most desirable disposi-

tions—faith, hope, and love

—

or normative questions that are not specifically about

are mainly or wholly a and Kant makes the most crucial of them good will or moral virtue a matter of free noumenal choice that is not determined by anything

education, though they are relevant to

that goes

in

determining the answer,

tion

II,

say, to question (2) in Sec-

or about the kinds of factual premisses that

are admissible.

Still

our concern here arily historical;

others are about substantive factual

is

it.

In each case,

primarily analytical and second-

we cannot attempt

to settle the issues

involved.

We may (1)

The

matter of divine

discussion in the to. Is

Meno and Protagoras has somehow amenable

a virtue

by education or is it not? The question was not whether education is effective in fostering any to cultivation

desirable dispositions whatsoever. This

is

a

much more

which might perhaps also be discussed, but Socrates had no doubt that some knowledge and skills could be taught. The question was about a radical question,

particular set of desirable dispositions, namely, those

gift;

—

—

and

on

in

time or space, while the existentialists

their followers

come

making such a "deci-

close to

sion" a necessary and sufficient condition of the possession of

begin with three ancient debates.

already been referred

80

methods of moral education in promoting them (one feels that Socrates has some notion of a new method that will be effective where the old ones were

as

Between the many ideas appeared

the Greeks included in arete, and about the efficacy of traditional

any disposition whatsoever, thus rendering the

very possibility of education problematic. (2)

The debate highlighted by

nected with another which Plato

the

calls

Meno was

con-

"the ancient war

between the poets and the philosophers," itself highlighted in his Republic and in Aristophanes' The Clouds. Ostensibly this was a debate over the question who should teach, that is, who should be the ultimate educator the poet, who was also the theologian and historian of Greece, and who depends on divine inspiration, or the philosopher, who was also the scientist

—

EDUCATION who depends on

of Greece, and,

may

It

be thought of

also

"unified curricula,"

both aiming

reason or thinking.

an issue between two

as

two unified sets of dispositions, and virtue, but involving the two approaches indicated. In both of

at truth

radically different

these aspects,

has been continued ever since, espe-

it

and medieval periods, by the

cially in the patristic

could be used to achieve some end or other, or could be enjoyed for their own sakes, but which had no essential

reference

Socrates, Plato,

and

to

For

virtue.

be used

good were unimportant;

for or against the true or the

what

moral

or

truth

Aristotle skills that could

mattered in education was the moral and

really

which they conceived of good or the true. This opposition represents one of the main water-

intellectual virtues proper,

debate in educational theory between the theologians

as essentially directed to the

on one side and philosophers and scientists on the other. The high point on the philosophical side was

sheds in the history of educational thinking, for very

reached

different visions of education

educational thinking of Socrates, Plato,

in the

and Aristotle

—

or, as

century, in that of

some would say in the twentieth Dewey. Aquinas' philosophy of

education represents the most influential synthesis of the opposing positions.

we

usually call poetry

contention, except that

By that time, however, what had virtually dropped out of its

study continued to be a part

of the educational curriculum, as

it

still

Now

is.

its

It

all

of the arts, and, as Lionel Trilling has pointed

out (Beyond Culture [1965],

p. 219), in spite of the

recent conflict of "the two cultures"

good or

for

ill,

to be the

bids

it

fair, for

most important educational

World War II. The debate had another aspect in terms

influence of the period since

schema, for

it

also involves the question of the source

come from some kind

Do

of inspiration or revelation

some human effort of critical and systematic reflection? Here the question is not or are they reached by

whether

we

are to teach poetry or philosophy, religion

or science, but whether our conclusions about what

whatever

to teach,

it

may

be,

must be grounded on

premisses from one source or from the other. This again is

an issue that

And

shows.

it

we is

still

have with

us, as Eliot's

not only religious thinkers

essay

who

put

themselves on the side of the "poets"; a basic antirationalism infects a large part of contemporary educational thinking, especially that of the very "newest"

writers

— and

it is

closely connected with

developments

in the arts. (3)

A

third ancient debate concerning education,

between the was continued by Plato, and other philosophers on one side, and Quintilian, and other orators and rhetoricians

related to both of the others, took place

Sophists and Socrates, and Aristotle,

Isocrates,

on the other, with Cicero seeking a synthesis of sorts (one might think of this as one aspect of a three-sided war between poets, philosophers, and sophists). At issue here, for one thing, was Protagoras' thesis that education should be based on a study of the poets. But more important was the Sophist tendency to conceive of arete or excellence as consisting of a

number

with us

of

skills,

which they claimed to be able to teach, and which

emerge on the two

sides.

the question whether the

in

education should be on method or

in

or on knowledge and truth.

It is

skill

not unrelated to the

question of liberal versus vocational education; at any rate,

many "consumers,"

tion,

seem

not thinkers about educa-

if

conceive of

to

it

as a tool or a toy,

much

as the Sophists did.

it

What was

said

will hardly

do

tilian,

is

roughly true of the Sophists, but

for the orators, Isocrates

and Quin-

since they thought of the orator not only as the

possessor of a

number

of

skills,

but as essentially con-

cerned with truth and virtue. They were, however, relatively antiphilosophical,

of our

of the basic premisses of any educational theory.

they

still

is

emphasis

scope has been extended to include modern literature

and

too

much

in the

way

and did not make anything

of either philosophy or theology a

part of education as they conceived of Aristotle,

and other philosophers

did.

it,

as Plato,

For them, edu-

cation centered, not in philosophy or theology, but in the liberal

arts,

Middle Ages

the trivium and quadrivium of the

— which were roughly speaking originated

by the Sophists, and came to form the perennial curriculum of education. For it was not the poets or the philosophers

who won

that ancient war, or even the

theologians though they ruled for centuries, but the Sophists and their followers, those

who

curriculum consisting of a number of

believed in a

arts, disciplines,

or sciences.

Ultimately everything else was simply added to the

number. For long there were only the

liberal arts

and

classical studies, plus the faculties of law, medicine,

and theology; but slowly, in fact only recently, the natural and social sciences, modern history, language,, and literature, and other arts, were added to the curriculum and many other things, including, as was mentioned, education itself with nothing dominating the whole as the poets, philosophers, and theologians had each hoped their subject would; though some now think, as Herbert Spencer did (Education [1884], Ch. I) and as C. P. Snow does (The Two Cultures, 1959), that science ought to dominate if it does not do so already. Given this conception of education, of course, the main remaining questions are: Who studies which subject and by what compulsion, if any, must he? Thus these three Greek debates about education

—

—

81

a

EDUCATION were somewhat complex, involving a number of issues, and, in one form or another, had important subsequent histories. Let us now approach other issues in a more manner.

logical

As

(4)

we

saw, the central problem in the theory

of education

question

is

be fostered? But

How

other:

are

(2):

What

dispositions are to

this

question immediately raises an-

we

to

determine what dispositions

education should foster? For some the answer

They assume

tively easy.

that education

is

to

rela-

is

promote

may

one being educated have the aim of putting the being able to engage in those activities at will, and so have an end beyond themselves, though not necessarily one external to the latlatter in a position of

which

to his

going on. Or they look

ago

—

all

"elect" from

(History of Education

The

less

minimal theory of this,

and

to proceed?

Especially objected to

.

.

.

[1959], Ch.

7).

the notion that education has

is

an end beyond or external to

itself.

Aims

in education,

and even criteria or principles of education, are not under attack, only "aims of" or "external" to education. For education is life and life can hardly have an aim external to itself. Comment here must be brief. To begin with, education in sense (1), i.e., the activity of the educator, does and must have an end beyond itself, viz., the fostering of a disposition in the one being educated. There are criteria for determining whether he is educating and principles according to which he must act, but his actions must have an aim proximate aim

— to foster some

skill, trait,

aim of education

or value.

—

ability, belief,

One may

knowl-

also say that the

in sense (1), as distinguished earlier,

and (3). The question is whether it must have any aim beyond that of forming desirable dispositions, whether the dispositions are somehow means to something further. Some certainly are, for example, the habit of brushing one's teeth. Here the activity in which the disposition manifests itself education in senses

(2)

The same is true, as Aristotle argued, of the activities in which any techne like a mastery of carpentry manifests itself; they have an end, which is to build things like houses. On the other hand, the exercise of some dispositions like an ability to play a flute or a knowledge of geometry may or may not have an end beyond itself it may be engaged in simply for its own sake,

has value only or at least primarily as a means.

82

—

because

it

is

isses

pursued.

in

usual

philosophers like Peters (Authority

is

beliefs.

Which form they take depends on one's ethical theory. Even so, it is hard to see how one can avoid saying that some experiences and activities are worthwhile

But a

their

method is to look for "the aims of education." But this method has been much criticized by Dewey (Democracy and Education [1916], Chs. 4, 8, 18) and his followers and more recently by analytical

edge,

and normative

remains true that one's ultimate normative prem-

It

serve as the bases of his philosophy of education.

education must give more of a rationale than is it

another

is

which depends on one's most

question, the answer to basic factual

and Marrou think

[1964], pp. 307f.),

among them. Such approaches have

at the various

—

practical advantages.

how

have an end external

into a curriculum or simply let students

there,

them

also

as Eliot (pp. 75, 109, 117)

need not be statements about aims or ends to be They might be principles like Kant's first or second forms of the categorical imperative, which

arts, disciplines,

juggle

life,

and sciences referred to a moment and like mountains to be climbed

is

it

Whether they must

ter's life.

the dispositions regarded as desirable by the society in

say that the earlier activity of the educator and

of the

worthwhile

in itself.

But even then one

themselves

matory

aim

— and

Dewey

or, as

what

is

this

having or engaging

at

prefers to say, consum-

we

but to say that

should

them, and at helping

in

others to have or engage in them? (5)

Another meta-normative

issue that runs

through

the history of educational theory has to do with the

may

question concerning what kinds of premisses

must be appealed to

or

determining what dispositions

in

are to be formed by education: ethical, epistemological,

metaphysical, scientific, or theological. This issue has

more than once, but we may

already been touched on

add that theories of education may be

classified ac-

cording to the kinds of premisses they appeal

to.

Thus

a "scientistic" theory will ultimately appeal only to premisses, claiming, as

scientific

ethical

A

judgments

positivistic theory, like Mill's,

but will

insist that,

may deny

would contend,

to.

And so on.

though the

that

this claim,

scientific ones.

issues

It

A

reli-

as Eliot does, that theo-

logical premisses must, or at least

appealed

does, that

apart from one's normative prem-

one should appeal only to

isses,

gious theory

Dewey

should rest on scientific ones.

rest or

may and

should be

should be repeated, however,

between such opposing views

are relevant to educational conclusions, and philoso-

phers of education must be prepared to discuss them, they belong to philosophy generally, and not specifically to the philosophy of education. (6)

Another relatively

issue or

group of

educational ideas, the Belativists.

issues, is

The

that

abstract,

between the Absolutists and

Absolutists maintain that there

a certain set of dispositions (they it is)

that ought to

though normative,

very crucial in the history of

may

differ

is

about what

be fostered by education, or by some

central part or kind of education

(e.g., liberal

education), everywhere and at

all

or general

times, in everyone

capable of acquiring these dispositions and to the ex-

EDUCATION which he

tent to

is

capable of acquiring them. This

contention, of course, presupposes that all

human

beings

have the same basic nature and differ only in the in which they have it (and in "accidental" ways,

degree

though one may accept

like sex or color of skin),

this

presupposition and yet not be an Absolutist in educational theory

— Aristotle accepts

about barbarians,

it

(with

some doubts

and women) but he holds that

slaves,

a Relativist about vocational education. One can also be an Absolutist about the dispositions to be promoted,

but hold that the methods to be used are relative in

one of the ways indicated. If Dewey's view wholly relativist in sense (3), then he is most holding that

methods

not

likely

education should foster certain disposi-

all

tions (e.g., scientific intelligence) but that its

is

to the capacities

and

it

should gear

interests of the indi-

education should be relative to the political consti-

vidual child.

tution of the state, and, even in the case of the ideal

(7) One of the modern educational wars has been what Dewey called "the case of Child vs. Curriculum" that accompanied one of the four main revolutions in

state, offers rather different

kinds of education to free-

slaves, workers, and women. Though philosophers have a natural penchant for being Absolutists when they write about education, it is surprisingly hard to find good examples of this

men,

position

— was Plato an Absolutist? — but we may

cite

M. Hutchins, M. J. Adler, and perhaps Kant (though he too had doubts about women). Relativists about education may be and have been of many different kinds, depending on what they hold education should be relative to. They all hold that no important kind or part of education need or should be the same everywhere and at all times, that every kind or part of education of any significance must and should vary according to some principle, i.e., should R.

cultivate different dispositions. ples at least

have

all

The following

had followings:

(a)

princi-

that education

should be relative to the desires or value-judgments of the society in question,

and W. H. Woodward;

e.g.,

perhaps, H.

(b) that it

I.

Marrou

should follow the

the theory of education of

which

an aspect of the one

is

question

—

in existentialism,

new

morality," "free" (b)

Are these

by the educator but

wholly through a study of the

child's desires, needs,

capacities, experience, situation, welfare, etc? If so,

the educator, to consider only "present" interests,

is

etc.,

(c) Are they to be determined by the educator and the educated jointly, by mutual participation and agreement alone, no matter how young the latter is? If not, at what age is the line to

or also the child's future?

be drawn and on what basis?

the

used,

as defined

methods

(f)

(d)

The question

about the methods to be used,

question corresponding to

(a)

(b)

be used.

some

It

The

about the methods to be

The question corresponding to

corre-

(e)

to (c) about the

should be observed that these

should be relative to the historical situation in

which overlap, are normative and as indicated earlier, on the basis of normative premisses from ethics and social philosophy and factual premisses from the empirical sciences and any other source thought to be available. In any case, they are clearly the most pressing educational

goes on or to the problems facing society and

questions of the present time. Closely related to them,

possibly

Dewey;

or station in

it

members

(c)

life,

that

e.g.,

it

should vary with vocation

Rousseau

in other places;

(d)

Theodore Brameld and other "reconstructionists," and, in some passages, P. H. Phenix; (e) that it should be relative to individual capacity, commitments, interests, needs, native dispoits

Are

dispositions to be determined

and

which

"the

education, and "do-your-own-thingism."

tution of the state,

it

just described: (a)

mined by him, i.e., by his own choice or decision? There is a strong tendency today to say yes to this

sponding to

that

from

We may

the dispositions to be fostered in a child to be deter-

varying with the political consti-

good man" but "the virtues of the good citizen" by that constitution; this was Aristotle's view and in places Rousseau's, and seems to be that of those who think that American or democratic education must take a different form from other educations, including

times, the shift

distinguish at least the following issues in this debate,

flag in the sense of

cultivate, not "the virtues of

modem

subject-centeredness to child-centeredness.

at the time, e.g.,

sitions, or decisions, e.g.,

Rousseau, in

still

other places,

and other proponents of "child-centered" education. Further discussion is hardly possible, but a few comments are necessary. This debate shows the central role and social philosophy and of psychology and conceptions of human nature. One may, of course, hold some kind of combination of views, one for one kind or part of education, and another for another. One might, for example, be an Absolutist about liberal and of political

questions,

of

must be answered,

of course,

is

of education (8)

We

the question whether any part or kind is

saw

to

be compulsory or

not.

that reasoned answers to question (2)

presuppose normative premisses stating the more

ulti-

mate aims or principles of education, and that these in turn depend on yet more basic normative premisses that do not mention education, like the principle of utility and Kant's categorical imperative. Here is a large area for debate, of course, but since the basic issues are not specifically educational,

we can

hardly

stop to look at them, except to say that they will be of

two kinds

must

in a

way

that

distinguish, at least

is

not always noticed.

prima

facie,

We

between what

83

— EDUCATION is

morally good or morally right and what

is

a nonmoral sense; between the morally good a

life

that

desirable, good, or

is

in the sense in life,

or a

powers,

life

which

about stages

in itself

at least

a pleasant, happy, contemplative

of excellent activity or exercises of one's

may and have been

in this sense

worthwhile

good in and

humanities, and sciences, about teaching methods, or

life

it is

said to

be the good

not a pleonasm to say, as

many

life;

have,

good or best life. There is, of course, the view that the morally good or right way for a person to live simply is to do what will give him the good life in this sense, but this view (ethical egoism) is only one among many possible positions, and a dubious one at that. Except on this view, at any rate, there will be two kinds of ultimate normative issues, moral ones and nonmoral ones. The former are illustrated by the debate in ethics between the utilitarians, the ethical egoists, and deontologists like Kant, the latter by the debate in value theory about the good whether it is pleasure, excellent activity, that the morally virtuous life

is

the

—

is

likelv to

two sorts of issues are resolved, there be agreement that education, considered these

as a whole, should foster

both the dispositions required

by or conducive to the moral life and those required by or conducive to the good life, whatever these are. The most serious disagreement with this position would come from certain Relativists, e.g., from those who hold, as Aristotle does, that the virtues of the good citizen and those involved in the moral life or in the good life do not coincide, and that, when they do not, the former must be given precedence in education. This

is

why

Eliot,

who

rather surprisingly accepts the

and

principle of "the relativity of educational theory

practice to a prevailing order"

(p.

95), tries so

make

a living are conditions of leading a moral

we

list

we must

issues relating to questions (4)

the outstanding revolutions in educa-

modern

times, then, besides the movement toward child-centeredness, the rise of secularism, and the introduction of science and other modern subjects into the curriculum, we must add the advent

of a belief in universal education as an answer to

question

(4).

For, until relatively recently, Occidental

education was always thought of as virtually a prerogative of a larger or smaller male, white, elite class,

defined in one

way

The adoption

or another.

in universal education, generally

part compulsory, free, and public,

one of the reasons of a problem. In societies have always provided everyone

our educational theorv a sense,

all

of a belief

thought of as in large

is

is

much

so

—

women, slaves, peasants with some kind of education. They have all been taught to walk erect, to speak a rites, and so on. Again, the example of wolf children proves this. The issue is not whether everyone is to be educated, but what education each is to have, and how much choice he is to have in the matter. What is special about the doctrine

farm, to practice certain

is the belief that everyone is have or at least to be offered a formal education of one or another of a few general types, at least up

of universal education to

to a certain age or stage, the

life

main differences of opinamount of com-

ion being about the cost to him, the

pulsion involved, just what kinds of education to pro-

and where to

vide,

set the point at

one's own.

As

for question (5)

—one

which one

aspect of

it

is

is

on

whether

education or a certain kind or part of education should

be public or

not,

whether the

state should

be an edu-

cator in the sense of regulating and supporting or

all

of the educational enterprise within

its

some

bounds.

and of having a good one, education should also foster certain physical and vocational dispositions. Then one arrives at the threefold view of the aims of education borrowed earlier from Eliot. Even if one accepts this

The Greeks tended to answer in the affirmative, the Romans in the negative. The typical modern answer

rather common view one is not out of the woods, however; one must still wrestle, as Eliot so helpfully does, with the problem of the interrelation and possible

cation can be in any

conflict of the three aims,

and

also of the

means

of

realizing them. For example, one must decide what, if

anything,

is

the primary aim of education: character,

knowledge, excellence, the general good, personal

ful-

filment, success, or pleasure. (9) More specific matters relating to the aims and means of education in connection with questions (2) and (3) we must leave untouched, for example, ques-

84

(5). If

tional theory of

hard

show that the good citizen and the good man are the same in any society. If one adds, as it is plausible to do, that, inasmuch as being alive, healthy, and able to

to

ordering of education. But

language, to obey instructions, to cook, to hunt, to

virtue, self-realization, etc.

However

and

in the

mention some

tions about the curriculum, about the places of the arts,

is

that at least a large part of education should

public,

making

it

way

religious,

systems of education should be

and whether private

left free in their

of dispositions to be fostered or of in

doing

be

a question whether this part of edu-

means

to

choice

be used

so.

Other problems relating to question (5) are those of the amount and kind of training educators are to have, how teachers are to be recruited, what salaries and what status they are to receive. As has been indicated, however, the most crucial problem here is the extent to which each one of us, however young, is to be his

own

educator

Shrew

is

— how

far

Bianca in The Taming of the

right for all children

when

she says,

EMPATHY Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong. To strive for that which resteth in my choice. I

am

no breeching scholar

But learn

my

lessons as

in the schools;

please myself

I

III,

i

l,

feel-

and thoughts. The idea was first elaborated by Robert Vischer in Das optische Formgefiihl (1872) as a psychological theory of art which asserts that because the dynamics of the formal relations in a work of art suggest muscular and emotional attitudes in a viewing subject, that subings

not be tied to hours nor pointed times.

I'll

own

outside ourselves are the projections of our

lines 16-20).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ject experiences those feelings as qualities of the object.

may

Background material, historical or systematic, may be found in E. P. Cubberly, The History of Education New York, 1920); S. J. Curtis and M. E. A. Boultwood, A Short

Aesthetic pleasure

History of Educational

English "empathic understanding" refers to our delib-

i

W.

3rd

Ideas,

(London,

ed.

1961);

K. Frankena, Three Historical Philosophies of Education

(Chicago,

1965);

J.

W.

Tibbie,

The Study of Education

(London, 1966).

Works

referred to in the text are:

M.

J.

Adler, "In Defense

of the Philosophy of Education," 41st Yearbook of Sational

Society for Study of Education, Aristotle,

Xicomachean

Ethics;

Part

(Chicago,

I

Politics;

any

Theodore Brameld, Education as Power (New York, John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York, T. S. Eliot, To Criticize the Critic,

1942).

1939-44).

Kant, Education (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1960). H.

A

History of Education in Antiquity

(New

1916).

Sciences:

Immanuel I.

Marrou,

York,

1964).

S. Mill, A System of Logic (London, 1843). H. Newman, J. The Idea of a University (1852; Garden City, N.Y., 1959). R. S. Peters, Education as Initiation (London, 1964); idem, The Concept of Education (London and New York, 1967);

J.

idem, Authority, Responsibility, and Education (London,

New York, 1966). P. Common Good (New York, 1959;

H. Phenix, Education and the 1961). Plato,

Meno; Protagoras;

many editions. J. J. Rousseau, Emile (1762), trans, W. Boyd (New York, 1962). C. P. Snow, The Two

Republic;

and

ed.

Cultures

and

the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge

and

New

York, 1959). Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral,

and Physical (1861; New York, 1884). Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture (New York, 1965). W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400-1600

(New

York, 1967).

WILLIAM

K.

FRANKENA

[See also Imprinting; Irrationalism; Pre-Platonic tions; Progress; Psychological Theories; Right

English term in

Moses Hadas, Old Wine, Sew Bottles (New York, M. Hutchins, The Conflict in Education (New York, 1953); The Higher Learning in America (New Haven, 1962). W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. York,

circumstances as

(cf.

and Other Writings (New

Concep-

and Good;

Utilitarianism.]

own immediate

ence of our motivations and attitudes

Dilthey

1963). R.

(New

erate attempts to identify ourselves with another, ac-

counting for his actions by our

as used

York, 1965).

Gilbert Highet, 3 vols.

In the social sciences a similar conception called in

1965).

edition.

thus be explained as objectified

self-enjoyment in which subject and object are fused.

A

is

we remember

in

experisimilar

The German nacherleben Max Weber and Wilhelm or imagine them.

a translation of the

the works of Maurice Natanson, Philosophy of the Social Reader, 1963). All general behavior-maxims

are the results of an investigator's ability to "relive" a situation. This idea tists

is

accepted by

many

social scien-

method claimed to be unique Empathic understanding has been

as the basis of a

to those sciences.

made

the ground for ethics and personality theory as

well as for historical and sociological explanations. In popular usage the idea refers to the emotional

resonance between two people, when, like strings

tuned to the same frequency, each responds in perfect

sympathy

to the other

and each reinforces the

A good example

sponses of the other.

re-

of this occurs

concert music, like jazz,

in the statement: "Aleatoric

demands a strong empathy between performer and listener" (Houkom, p. 10). The word "empathy" (feeling-in) was coined by the American psychologist, Edward Titchener, as a trans-

German Einfuhlung. The theory of Einfuhlung arose in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Germany, and, like most German thought of that century had its roots in lation of the

Kantian philosophy. Kant's assertion that pure beauty is

the beauty of form

who developed

was variously interpreted. Those empathy refused to find

the notion of

the source of our aesthetic pleasure in form considered solely as

mathematical

relations, as the Herbartians did,

or in form as the bearer of Idea, as the Hegelians did.

They saw form

as the vehicle for the expression of

and emotions. Kant also declared that the judgment of beauty is grounded in the subject making feelings

EMPATHY

the judgment, not in the object (Kant, pp. 45-46). this

With

notion as well as with his assumption that the

mind's objects must agree with the forms and categories

Empathy

we

is

the idea that the vital properties which

experience in or attribute to any person or object

of the

mind he enunciated

ideas which, as their full

import and romantic interpretations, such as

Schiller's,

85

EMPATHY German

unfolded, were to characterize later

philoso-

I

experience feelings of pleasure and freedom.

This harmony between stimulus and

new

aesthetics elucidated the process of artistic crea-

to

mv

tion

and the resulting work of

is

negative.

aesthetics.

human

to the

subject. This

aesthetics turned

art primarily in relation

new

away from

meant

orientation

that

the classical idea of imita-

The theorists who believed the content of art was human feelings and emotions found their main problem was that of expression. They viewed the aesthetic problem tion,

which explained

art in its relation to nature.

as part of a larger question.

Not only works of

art

but

the forms of nature are incapable of experiencing

human

How,

feelings.

then, can they express

them?

In 1872 Robert Vischer, following a suggestion of

proposed an answer. The in some unconscious

his father, Friedrich Vischer,

explanation, he said, must

who

process of the person

endow them with

He named

lie

He must by an involuntary

views these forms.

their vital content

act of transference of

which he

is

not at the time aware.

The Asthetik (1903-06)

of

Theodor Lipps

is

the most

of examples from the visual arts. Lipps thought of

psychology as philosophy made

scientific. Its business

was the uncovering and describing of one's inner experiences. Yet his analysis of empathy is laden with the vestiges of philosophical speculation and his thought is

All that

experience, he says,

I

permeated by

is

my

Because an object as it exists for me is the resultant of two factors, something sensuously given and my own activity. The first is merely the

Why?

life.

my

material that as

it

object

activity uses to construct the object

me. Consequently

for

is

an experience of a

is

my

experience of that

self-activity projected as

an attribute of the object. This

is

the

fact of

first

appearance of an object originates asks to be "apperceived" in a particis a line it asks me to apprehend the

sensible

activity in

me.

ular way. If

bend of

its

It

it

curvature;

if

a large hall,

grasp

I

ciousness through a feeling of expansion.

swaying

in the

breeze

imaginative imitative actions not only do

with

life,

actions.

positive empathy.

basic drives It

I

If

and the empathy

feel displeasure

for displeasure

by the

that accounts for pleasure. But

object can elicit a response it

but contrary to

inner

important to recognize negative

is

empathy. One must account

same principle

my own

the responses are contrary

mv

which

inclinations

is it

if

an

appropriate to

would seem the

material of appearance must have far greater active

power than Lipps has assigned

to

it.

mentions three levels of empathy. The first is general apperceptive empathy when the form of a

He

common object evokes a unique recreative activity, and itself merely to be perceived. The Here objects summon from empathy. natural

the object presents

second

is

my understanding the

willful, striving activity of fitting

scheme of reality or a causal order. This them is the level where natural objects are humanized. The highest level is empathy for the sensible appearance into a

when we respond to the gestures, and tone of voice in another. Each of these levels is exploited in art and exhibited in our responses to art. But the way I attend to a work of art is different from my experience of an object in

human

being,

facial expressions,

the natural world. Before a

work

of art an ideal

self,

existent only in the act of aesthetic contemplation,

experiences an ideal world. This

is

Lipps'

way

of ac-

one might have to a painting of a raging storm, and to a raging storm in reactions

itself.

An Englishwoman, Violet Paget (1856-1935), who wrote under the name of Vernon Lee, presented the notion of empathic projection independently of Lipps. Her description is not entangled with metaphysical notions of the self, or with the identity of self and object.

Her early ideas, first stated in "Beauty and which was written in collaboration with C.

Ugliness,"

empathy.

The

is

counting for the difference

frequently unclear.

own

urges

of a

this process Einfithlung.

extensive analysis of empathy, presented with a host

but

These

tendencies of

I

I

I

carry out

its

its

spa-

see a tree

If I

movements

in

In these responsive

activities.

feel alive, for activity

also enliven the object

is

associated

by

my

vital

actions, being incipient, are actually

my

will.

Empathy

is

the projection of

Anstruther-Thompson (Contemporary Review, 72 [Oct.

and Nov. 1897], 544-69, 669-88), limit empathy to the projection of our own body sensations, particularly the imagined muscular adjustments we tend to make before a work of art. Later, influenced by Lipps, she considered these muscular accommodations as symptoms of emotions and ideas, which are our ejects. Actions like raising our eyes and lifting our heads when we look at a mountain towering above us give us an awareness of rising which then coalesces with the object of our attention.

The general

idea of rising

feeling and willing ego in an object. But there is no twofold consciousness of self and object. Empathy, he says, is the intuited fact that object and self are

which has accumulated in our minds from this and past experiences and from anticipated future ones, is finally transferred to the mountain and occasions a resulting

one.

emotional

my

86

nations,

Thenceforth the new philosophy explored the formative activities of the mind, and the

phy and

If

the elicited responses are in

accord with

my

incli-

fullness.

Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber along with some

EMPATHY German

other

who were

philosophers

interested in

problems of the Geisteswissenschaften ("humanistic and social studies") advanced the method of empathic understanding at about the same time Lipps was presenting his theory of empathy. Probably the

special

made

the source of both ideas lay in the statement

Vico that

man knows

only what he makes, his

becoming the character he

Doing

disintegrating altogether.

as

an empathic response. However,

feelings into the characters but

basis of the

method depends upon an

gator's sympathetic identification with

investi-

the point of

view and motivations of the human subjects of

his

An historian, seeking to explain the actions of someone in the past on a certain occasion should first study.

project himself imaginatively into the situation that

own

is

own

experiencing feelings

of the characters as though they

were

his

He

own.

been our traditional

tive identification. This has

re-

sponse to Western drama since the time of Aristotle.

One does it

not merely witness a drama; he experiences

with personal involvement. Though Bertolt Brecht

with his theory of the epic theater repudiated

this

drama

like

tradition, asking his actors to recount the

about the problem a drama presents, the continued

One

why Caesar

understands

crossed the Rubicon by becoming Caesar. Or, as Croce

understand a Sicilian

first

make

yourself into

method as a provide them with ma-

persistence of audiences to respond emotionally to the

characters in his plays attests to the strength of this

long habit of response.

Empathy

is

a latecomer to our stock of ideas, being

a Sicilian. Historical novelists adopt this

scarcely a hundred years old. But

device for

artistic

One could call

terials for

convincing character portraits.

differences

actually a

is

epic storytellers and expecting his audience to think

actions of his subject.

The

this

not projecting his

imagina-

relived, the investigator has a basis for explaining the

says, to

is

those circumstances as vicariousl)

confronted that person. Discovering his tive reactions in

refer

projects himself into a character through an imagina-

stances of the past.

The

he affects his au-

drama we often

In talking of our response to

attempt to

of the past by the reconstruction of circum-

this

to one's identification with the characters of a play

case in which the spectator

men

some

dience more successfully.

history, his art, his languages, his customs;

and in Vico's understand the poetry and customs of the

portrays,

residue of objectivity to prevent his behavior from

in

the beginning of the eighteenth century by Giambattista

"lives" his part,

directly experiencing states of feeling but keeping

purposes to

it

by reformulation

between empathic understanding

its

primitive animism

origins are diverse.

made

sophisticated

as a psychological theory, at least as

far as feeling into

natural objects goes. Poets have

conception of empathy are two. Empathic

always enlivened the world of our experience by

understanding derives from an alleged re-experiencing

humanizing it. Animism is the root of poetic metaphor. Aristotle foreshadowed a discussion of empathy when he remarked how often Homer described some physical

and the

first

and mental purposes of another and makes a knowledge claim about the causes

of the motivations

on

this basis

of that person's action.

The

original notion of

with another person limits

its

empathy

identification

to the

object with an adjective appropriate only to a living thing.

He

cites passages,

such as those where the poet

and emotions of the other, and makes no knowledge claim. When I identify in feeling with a laughing countenance I do not claim to use the laughter to tell me something about the laughing person. The nontechnical, popular idea of empathv appears to presuppose even more than the other two conceptions. It refers to that immediacy of communication between two people that dispenses with the need of conceptualization through abstract ideas conveyed by

speaks of the arrow as "bitter," or "flying on eagerly,"

language.

It is

255, Jowett translation).

which has

risen so strongly in our century that

feelings

part of the anti-intellectualist current

empha-

importance of sublogical, nonconceptual "thinking" over intellectualization. Deeper knowledge, it claims, is "co-naissance." It is also part sizes the greater

of the mid-twentieth-century emphasis

on communi-

term refers to the dynamic interrelationbetween mind and mind that language and outward signs fail to convey. A good actor, knowing that one does not project an emotional state to an audience merely by imitating the actions of one in that state,

or "panting" (Rhetoric 1411b). prets the affective part of

all

Empathy theory

inter-

experience as the uncon-

scious creation of metaphor.

The

belief that,

when one

is

communion

in affective

with another, subject and object become merged recognized at least as early as Plato,

beloved that "his lover

the mirror in

is

beholding himself, but he

who

is

not aware of

Sometimes the idea of sympathy,

as

is

says of the

whom it"

he

is

(Phaedrus

developed

in

the eighteenth century by such writers as Karnes and

Gerard,

is

cited as a source of the idea of empathy.

Actually the two notions are different.

Empathy

sup-

poses a fusion of subject and object, while sympathy

cation, as this

supposes a parallelism between them in which

ships

aware of the In svmpathy

I

am

between myself and the other. with; in empathy I feel in. Popular

distinction I

feel

thought often does not respect the difference, using

empathy where sympathy

is

meant.

87

EMPATHY The

by some that the distinguishing charempathy is the merging of subject and has not seemed by others to be the important insistence

France, and Herbert Langfeld in America.

in

common ground

has a

with Santayana's definition

It

object

of beauty as "pleasure objectified."

requirement. Living in the experience of another only

sympathy with him; when one means he has the same kind of feelings. What is the relation of empathy to British associationism, in the context of which the theory of

means being identifies

in perfect

with another

it

sympathy developed? Lipps insisted that empathy was independent of the association of ideas. One does not first see a form and then associate emotional content with it, he says; the perception and the emotion are indistinguishable. But we do know that Lipps was a great admirer of the psychology of Hume and translated some of Hume's writings into German. It is not surprising, therefore, to find a basis for conjecturing some influence. Hume's notion that certain qualities of things are naturally fitted to

produce particular feelings

been the

basis of Lipps' idea that sensible

generate appropriate activities

never explained

how

might have

in us

The

in us.

appearances fact that

he

the appearances do this leads us

assume that he never supposed there was a question here. Again, he declares that though a subject experiences vitality, power, and feeling in himself, he finds the empathie content in what is outside him. The to

"raging"

he

in the storm,

is

himself with observing that

what we can

feel

something

else.

in

first

He

says.

a remarkable fact that

it is

only in ourselves

we

can again find

This observation asserts that

we must

experience the raging in ourselves, then, upon

apprehend is

it

we

But the present raging

in those forces.

not identical with past raging.

They

are only similar,

and may be connected by association. On the other hand, empathy repudiates two assump-

One

tions inherent in the British tradition.

is

the pas-

sivity of the subject of experience. Associationism

the active

work

of the

mind

as

automatic as

if it

made were

movement responding to the contiguity and succession of impressions. Empathy gives the subject a reflex

all

a

the activity which

minimum,

it

the humanizing of nature this

denies, or at least reduces to

in the object.

The other

is

is

the claim that

a fallacy. Buskin described

"pathetic fallacy" which occurs

when we

see

something under the influence of emotion or contemplative fancy. "Cruel, crawling foam" is an untrue description of foam, for there

foam.

It

is

falsely

imputation but does not

Empathy enjoyed

no such power in Empathy accepts

is

imputed. its

call

it

the

greatest acceptance as a funda-

of this century. Variations of of Karl

the

a fallacy.

mental principle of the theory of art it

in the early part

appeared

Groos and Johannes Volkelt

in

It

to the voluntaristic activism that the

was congenial

Nietzschean and

Bergsonian philosophies were popularizing.

It

was

accepted as accounting for the appeal of the new decorative style of

I'art

One

nouveau.

of the leaders

Germany, August Endell, was a student of Lipps. With the increasing dehumanization of the Jugendstil in

content

of

the

new

twentieth-century

as

empathy was

reduced

first

art

principle of abstraction.

developed,

acceptance with

to equal

has

It

come under

strong criticism by those influenced by Gestalt psy-

They

chology.

object to the assumption that the ex-

pressive character of an object

form. Those

who

is

not inherent in

its

accept empathy today generally con-

cede

it is only one factor accounting for our responses. Empathie understanding has also met sharp criti-

One cannot identify one's self with another. Consequently there can be no resulting verifiable cism.

knowledge of the kind a science

seeks.

One can

only

claim at best a possibility. In spite of such criticism

empathie understanding has strong supporters. Empathy remains an idea to be reckoned with our

traffic

with

and

relations,

art,

with nature,

in

in

our interpersonal

in our inquiries in the social sciences.

then contents

seeing the energy of natural forces of a storm,

88

Basch

acteristic of

in the writings

Germany, Victor

BIBLIOGRAPHY The classical works Germany are Robert

for the

development of empathy

in

Das optische Formgefuhl, reprinted in Drei Schriften zum asthetischen Formproblem (Halle, 1927), and Theodor Lipps, Raumasthetik und geometrisch-optische Tduschungen (Leipzig, 1897), and Asthetik, 2 vols. (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1903-06; 2nd ed. 1914-20). Vernon Lee [Violet Paget], Beauty and Ugliness and other Studies in Psychological Aesthetics (London and

New York,

Vischer,

1912), written with C.

Anstruther-Thompson; and

The Beautiful (Cambridge, 1913) are the sources for her form of the theory. Herbert Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude

(New fullest

York, 1920),

is

the best introduction in English.

recent consideration

Empathy (New

is

The

David A. Stewart, Preface

to

York, 1956).

Shorter selections of Lipps translated into English

may

of Beauty (London and New York, 1930) pp. 252-58; Melvin Rader, A Modern Book of Aesthetics, 3rd ed. (New York, 1960), pp. 574-82;

be found

in E. F. Carritt, Philosophies

and Karl Aschenbrenner and Arnold Isenberg, Aesthetic Theories (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), pp. 403-12. For further reference see Wilhelm VVorringer, Abstraction

and Empathy (New

Y'ork, 1953);

sur I'esthetique de

Kant

Judgment,

trans.

J.

H. Bernard

Kant, Critique of

in Wilhelm Dilthey, Ideen und zergliedernde Psychologie and Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur

einer beschreibende

(Leipzig, 1894);

I.

(New York, 1951), pp. 45-46. method of Verstehen and

The development of the empathie understanding occurs iiber

Victor Basch, Essai critique

(Paris 1927);

ENLIGHTENMENT heralded sweeping social change.

Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen, 19201

The

ment and

Theodore Abel, "The

effective at the

American Journal of

Europe.

analysis of the idea occurs in

Operation Called 'Verstehen '."

in the

1948-49), 211-18, reprinted in

Sociology, 54

(

Madden,

The Structure of

ed..

best short state-

Edward H.

Thought (Boston,

Scientific

1960). pp. 158-66. The full reference for Houkom is Alf S. Houkom, "Lucas Foss and Chance Music," Music: the A.G.O. and R.C.C.O. Magazine, 2, no. 2 Feb 1968), 10.

CHARLES EDWARD GAUSS

It

same

It

become

did not

rate in the various countries of

originated in England both as regards structural

change and the reform of intellectual and moral ideas. While it was a reality in the English-speaking world, it remained a program and sometimes a Utopia in other parts

of

Europe.

The Enlightenment was

a

self-

conscious and highly articulate movement, presenting

common

[See also Iconographv; Impressionism; Metaphor: Mimesis;

common

Psychological Schools; Ut pictura poesis.]

approach, and reform proposals based on commonly

basic conceptions, a

held values.

Its

thought

is

methodological

basically a social philosophy,

from social premisses, concerned with social ends, and viewing even religion and art in social terms. (This article is devoted to a delineation of the basic starting

ENLIGHTENMENT

tenets of this philosophy;

English writers of the period speak of "enlightening" and "enlightened peoples," also of the "historical age"; in French lage de lumiere, lage philosophique, siecle des lumieres, siecle de la bienfaisance, siecle de I'humanite; in

German Aufklarung and

Zeitalter der

it

does not offer a circum-

account of the course of the Enlightenment

stantial

in different countries,

nor does

it

deal in detail with

the fields of art, religion, and natural science.)

Enlightenment

reached

its

climax

in

the

The mid-

eighteenth century in Paris and Scotland; in both these centers coordinated fellowships of thinkers and

men

broadly

world developed the body of thought which is peculiar to the Enlightenment. The ideas and quotations in this article are therefore derived from the

co-extensive with the eighteenth century, beginning

writings of the philosophes responsible for Diderot's

with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the writings of

and D'Alembert's Encyclopedie of 1751 and of the Scottish thinkers from Francis Hutcheson and David

Kritik; in Italian Illuminismo.

a historical period in the

Enlightenment denotes

same sense

as the

Reformation, Renaissance, and Baroque.

It is

terms

Locke and Bayle, and ending with either the Declaration of Independence of 1776 or the French Revolution

of the

Hume

onwards,

including

their

English

followers

historians,

Edward Gibbon and Jeremy Bentham. The thought of the Italian and German Enlightenment, though distin-

following Troeltsch, regard the eighteenth century

guished by outstanding contributors, was derivative,

of 1789 or the defeat of postrevolutionarv France in

1815 and the romantic reaction.

Some

(rather than the sixteenth) as the beginning of history. In this view, the individualism

modern

and toleration

of the Renaissance and Reformation, the cosmopoli-

tanism following the opening up of the

and the East

as well as the scientific

New World

advances of the

from English and French models and merging them with the respective national traditions. In Italy Cesare Beccaria and Pietro and Alessandro Verri followed in the footsteps of Steele and Addison's Spectator and Tatler, of Montesquieu, Hume, and the

starting

Germany

seventeenth century were merely programmatic and

Encyclopedie. In

did not lead to significant social, cultural, and political

never dominant, was largely influenced by the Univer-

changes until the eighteenth century. Naturally there

sity of

is

no monolithic

traditional

of the age to be discerned;

spirit

ideas persisted,

while the tendencies of

romanticism made their appearance and

left

a strong

The Enlightenment then represents a movement within the period to which it lent its name and to which it imparted its lasting significance. Its aspiraimprint.

tions

and

with us

anxieties,

its

debates and methods are

in their original

form; though

its

still

values have

been belittled by subsequent reaction, they appear increasingly meaningful to the survivors of the catas-

The Enlightenment from the been a European movement. Unlike earlier periods, which affected particular aspects of life or

trophes of recent history. outset has

certain classes of the population,

it

witnessed and

the Enlightenment, though

Gottingen founded by George

II of England whose historians and students (including Justus Moser and Freiherr vom Stein) echoed the thought of David Hume, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Gibbon, and Adam Smith; Johann Christoph Gottsched started bv translating the Spectator, the young Lessing translated Francis Hutcheson and Diderot; Kant set after Leibniz, from Hume and Rousseau, out, Mendelssohn from Locke and Shaftesbury; W'inckelraann was steeped in English thought, and so was Herder in addition to his debt to the French life sci-

in 1734,

ences.

Forerunners. According to D'Alembert's "Discours preliminaire" to the Encyclopedie, the Enlightenment

Drought to fruition the aspirations of two earlier pe-

89

ENLIGHTENMENT Greece and Greek ideas, Seneca and Vergil,

riods of enlightenment, namely, classical

and

Renaissance

the

Reformation.

supported by such Latin authors as

made

a great

impact upon the thought of the eight-

eenth century. While the old metaphysics, Hobbes's

was relegated

Aristotelitv."

to the background, the

individualism and the conception of knowledge as

being merely provisional, the Platonic application of mathematics, his Eros and Kalokagathia, an Aristotelian conception of nature, the anthropology

of Stoic philosophy, a Protagorean as Plutarch's notions of nation all

and

and ethics

humanism liberty

as well

— echoes of

these views reveal the continuity of the thought

of the period with the past.

However,

in contrast to

why

certain ideas

to a

new

critical

Modemes" had and scholarship

des

evaluation of their intrinsic value.

Voltaire and his followers went so far as to reject the Greek heritage because of its failure to order its social and political problems; others found refuge from the discontents of their own time in its beauty and thought. A spate of outstanding writing on the history of Greece and Rome all through the period serves as witness to the living presence of the classical world. The young Gibbon gave expression to the representative modern attitude: "I think that the study of literature, that habit

becoming a Greek or a Roman, a disciZeno or of Epicurus, is admirably adapted to develop and exercise the rare power of going back to simple ideas, of seizing and combining first princi-

they help

be regarded as

were largely an expression of contemporary by way of reforms, and often only of Utopias, they merely gave evidence of a challenge to a historical situation which lagged behind a new consciousness of what was possible and desirable. Underlying Structural Change. Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ideas

(1776-88), Ch. 38, distinguished three levels of social

change: the technological improvements, the legalpolitical-economic

and

infrastructure,

the

repre-

was

visible

sentative achievements of culture. There riod.

et

to

reality; elsewhere,

change occurring

classical art

in society;

came

relevant while others were rejected. In England the

new

Renaissance and humanism, the interest in classical

The "Querelle des Anciens

The

in the first level

throughout the pe-

scientific inventions, especially of the seven-

teenth century, found their practical application in an

The employment of new techniques and tools produced greater efficiency in agriculture. The modes of industrial production changed gradually from manufacture to "machinofacture." New roads and canals were constructed to carry the growing internal and foreign trade. The improved communications opened up an era of travel (including the Grand Tour) all over Europe. The advances in navigation and the art of war brought the continents of the earth within regular and easy reach of one another, thus consummating the increasing control of the forces of nature.

of alternatively

previous great discoveries. These technological ad-

ple of

vances

.

.

.

ples" (Gibbon, Essai sur ietude de la litterature [1761], Para. XLVII).

Traces of the thought of medieval forerunners from Roger Racon onwards can be widely discerned in Enlightenment writings. The decisive forerunners were Descartes, Leibniz, and

Newton

in the field of

method-

Racon and Locke both for their substanand their empirical approach, Grotius, Bodin, and Hobbes for their social and political thought. In general terms, the period was characterized by a shift of emphasis from old to new anthropological metaphysics, from the preoccupation with natural science to history and the social and life sciences, a turning away from dogma and traditional conventions, a ology, Francis

tive philosophy

critical reappraisal of established authority in the fields

of religion, politics,

human

situation

arts.

The

liberty, the place of

man

philosophy, and the

and man's

in society, the interrelation of social

nomena,

and natural phe-

come to The Enlighten-

their "uniformity amidst variety"

condition the guiding lines of thought.

ment was an

90

to explain

models was not a matter of imitation of the Ancients. exposed the treasures of

were occurring

structural changes

iconoclastic

movement

intent both

on

interpreting and ushering in social change. Radical

represented clearly "more and better" in comparison with earlier times; there was visible a well-defined progress which gave its imprint to a distinct stage of historical development or evolution. The traditional organization of society proved to be

inadequate in the face of technological change. Small agricultural holdings gave place to large-scale farming,

and surplus rural population converged on the towns. Competition and the division of labor made the security and rigidity of the guild system obsolete. The new commercial ventures involved risk-taking by individuals; but individual initiative, though unbounded in its aspirations, found itself hemmed in by a network of

governmental regulations and

power

of the state

assailed

came

to

be

inhibitions. felt as

by reform proposals and by

Thus the

abuse and was

rebellion.

and by parliawere into practice, put educational reforms ment and private initiative in Rritain and the small republics, and elsewhere by enlightened despots like Frederick the Great, Joseph II, Leopold II, and Catherine. Many reform proposals, from the Abbe St. Pierre to Rentham, remained only on paper. Where the new aspirations were blocked (as, e.g., Turgot's reform in 1776) rebellions resulted, and finally, the Legal,

fiscal,

administrative, political, religious,

ENLIGHTENMENT French

While

Revolution.

proceeded under

its

technological

change

own momentum, the reform of human judgment and needed ac-

in 1776, the

year of American independence and

Smith*s Inquiry into the Nature

Adam

and Causes of

the

and possible

Wealth of Nations, a daily average of 33,000 copies of newspapers was sold in Britain; Voltaire's books

scope of reform posed questions which could not be

reached a sale of one and a half million copies within

evaded.

seven years. Instant translations and personal contact between authors of different nations effected a cosmopolitanism far beyond that achieved in previous periods by the common use of Latin and French. Steele's and Addison's periodicals, The Tatler (1709-11) and The Spectator (1711-12), exerted an epoch-making influence as models of truly civilized living; they were soon imitated in Germany, France, and Italy. The universities in general were not instrumental in foster-

institutions involved

tion to give

The

The

direction.

it

desirability

was being eroded

traditional class structure

the process.

The

in

circle of citizens with a say in public

widened with the rise of the new bourgeoisie and its growing affluence. The progressive levelling of the distinctions of rank was visibly preparing the affairs

ground for the polarization of the population into the two classes of the rich, the employers, the exploiters and the poor, the employed, the exploited. The new middle class was imposing its values upon society, using

ing change, largely because of their ties with

commerce and education as vehicles of social change. In effect a new society came into being. Voltaire observed it in London in 1734 (Lettres philosophiques, Lettre X), and Hume, in his seminal essay "On National

established churches.

Characters" in 1748, described England as "a mixture

circles

of

monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The people

in authority are

composed

All sects of religion are to

of gentry and merchants.

be found among them; and

the great liberty which every to display the

man

manners peculiar

enjoys, allows

him

Hence

the

to him.

English, of any people in the universe, have the least

national character, unless this very singularity for such"

(Hume, Essays Moral and

may

pass

Political [1741-42],

Alessandro Verri noted in 1766 that in London toler-

ance and

civil liberties

were a

reality while in Paris

they remained philosophical ideas (quoted by Sergio

Romagnoli, the

cultural

ed., //

Caffe [reprint 1960], p. xlvi).

plane,

far-reaching structural

On

changes

these

the

commitments were

and Gottingen, they played a

loose, as in Scotland

leading role.

overcame their isolation by forming and meeting in coffeehouses and, in France, in salons. Thus the French philosophes combined in producing the Enlightenment's central enterprise, the Encyclopedic edited by Diderot and D'Alembert from Intellectuals

1751 onwards. The leading French authors, architects,

artists,

scientists,

from Voltaire to Rousseau, from

Buffon to Lamarck, took a hand in the enterprise. Previously

encyclopedias,

established

in

particular

Louis Moreri's Grand dictionnaire historique (1674),

had devoted

3rd ed. [1748], Essay XXI).

Where

their

space

mainly

to

biographical,

genealogical, mythological, theological, geographical,

and military-historical

entries.

naire historique et critique,

(Even Bayle's Diction1695-97, though con-

temptuous of Moreri, did not break with the established tradition.)

By

contrast,

the Encyclopedic contained

accompanied the rise of the new social order, affecting the substance and teaching of scientific thought, of religion, and of art. The man of letters and the artist acquired a measure of freedom from court and clerical patronage, and emerged as new professional groups. The hold of clericalism lessened, and so did papal

systematic and analytical articles on "Man," "Society,"

domination following the widespread elimination of

as a

the Jesuit order. Dissent was thriving in the new, less

the period witnessed the growth of a

hierarchical

society;

religion

gained

a

new and

deepened meaning in various strata of society, from philosophical deism and Rousseau's religion de Geneve to the popular revival movements of Pietism and Methodism. These currents were advanced by the development of the printed media of communication which, like other earlier inventions and discoveries, assumed only

now

their full potential.

A

spate of printed material

"Method," "Nature," as well as on the natural and and the various handicrafts. Like all the literature treated in this article, the Encyclopedic was an avant-garde piece of writing, the contents of which

social sciences

allow us to reconstruct a profile of the Enlightenment

movement.

(Side

by

side with these productions,

new cheap

enter-,

tainment literature as well as a greater diffusion of

new

writings in the old tradition, which aimed at the

enlarged reading public. Although popular reading habits

and crowd behavior have come

modern

to fascinate

some

historians, such publications are ignored here,

march of ideas, that due to man's creative liberty.) The Science of Human Nature and the Science of

as they hardly contributed to the is,

to the incivilimento

Legislation. Continental thinkers like to take as the

modern thought man's three "humili-

sprang up, periodicals, encyclopedias, novels, histories,

starting-point of

newspapers as well as book clubs and circulating libraries. Periodicals were numbered by the hundreds;

ations," namely, the recognition that the earth

is

not

the center of the universe; that man, rather than being

91

ENLIGHTENMENT created in the divine image,

and

like the other animals;

we

a creature of nature

is

that his reason

is

subject

may be supposed

to

have

left"

lAdam Ferguson,

to the passions and subconscious urges. In the view

.An

of the Enlightenment these "humiliations" appear as intellectual conquests which spell out man's peculiar

he can do. The answers to these questions supply the

truths,

I,

these are the scientific discovery of

responsibilities:

the realization of individual happiness in a

limits of liberty. In place of a static

and

conception

immutable order a new sociological perspective takes over; society and culture are regarded as products of history, i.e., of man's free and creative of a divine,

and as subject societv. what he

will,

to change.

in

is,

The

existence of

Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767], Part

Sec.

I).

man

and what he can do, become

It is

raw material

not enough to ask what

activity or at least preventing

Treatise.

Book

III [1740],

Part

can change the environment

humbly

not be better

to investigate the de-

human

passions and opinions of the

being,

and to discover from them what means an able legislator can employ to connect the private happiness of each individual with the observance of those laws which secure the well-being of the whole?" (Gibbon, "Abstract of Blackstone's Commentaries," quoted by

William

A

Holdsworth,

ating, thinking

being

the world

the

who

.

.

.

who

first

.

.

as "a feeling, deliber-

walks freely the surface of

among

.

other animals,

all

lives in societv, has invented sciences and

has a goodness and malevolence quite

made laws

given himself masters, has to

Law,

of English

History

London [1938], XII, 753). The Encyclopedic views man

know him

his

arts,

own, has

for himself

.

.

.

one must know him "Homme"). Man is the product

in all his qualities

in his passion" (article

and of history, as Hume points out in his epoch-making Treatise of Human Nature (1739); "There is a general course of nature in human actions There are also characters peculiar to different nations and particular persons, as well as common to mankind ... the different stations of life influence the Man cannot whole fabric, external and internal. live without society, and cannot be associated without [whose] actions and objects cause such government a diversity, and at the same time maintain such an of nature

.

.

.

uniformity in

The course

.

human

life"

(Book

Part

II,

III,

Sec.

I).

and national charman's sociability, uni-

of nature, individual

formity amidst variety

human

.

.

acter, the inequality of classes,

of

.

— these

nature enter into the

as basic propositions. It

is

notions of the science

modern

social sciences

necessary to

know man's

natural propensities and his historical achievements.

They

"man may mistake the he may misapply his industry,

teach, however, that

objects of his pursuit;

[Therefore] it is and misplace his improvements. of more importance to know the condition to which .

.

.

history, as to the advisors of the legislator in

who

which men and nations

Thus Adam Smith defines "political economy branch of the science of a statesman or legislator" (Book IV, Introduction), who must have the welfare live.

.

.

.

as a

of both the individual

and society

in

mind, must bal-

ance and protect the concerns of various groups of

and of various localities with a view to adjudicating what the state should take upon itself and what it should leave to individual initiative. If the article "Homme" in the Encyclopedic had dealt with facts of nature and history, that on "Societe" establishes the general principle of social action: "The rationale of human society is based upon this general and simple people

principle:

who,

like

I

want

be happy; but I want to be happy

to

myself,

own

according to his

light: let us

live

with

as well,

men each

then search for the

means of procuring our happiness by procuring theirs, or at least without ever harming it." The balanced emphasis on both man and society preserved Enlightenment thought from the extremes of nineteenthcentury individualism and holism. Progress

.

.

Sec. VII).

II,

The ought of the Enlightenment is therefore not an appeal so much to the individual, the product of nature and

it

and what

self-destruction.

ing the high a priori road [of metaphysical enquiry], sires, fears,

is

for the crucial enterprise of giving direc-

human

the basic questions to be explored. "Instead of follow-

would

man

it from Within the limits set by nature and historv there is a dichotomy between what is and what ought to be. Men "cannot change their natures. All that thev can do is to change their situation" (Hume,

tion to

viable society, and the exploration of the conditions

92

ourselves should aspire than that which our ances-

tors

and

Perfectibility.

"Man

is

susceptible of

improvement and has in himself a principle of He is in progression and a desire for perfection. some measure the artificer of his own frame as well as his fortune, and is destined from the first age of his being to invent and contrive. ... He is perpetually busied in reformations, and is continually wedded to his errors" (Ferguson [1767], Part I, Sec. I). The human condition is not necessarily immutable or retrogressive owing to the Fall. On the contrary, undeniable and .

.

.

cumulative progress can be seen to occur in the fields of science, technology, and the applied arts. Progress is is

a fact of history. transformed,

imperfection to his logical

The cosmos

evolves, the species

the individual grows from helpless full stature.

models and analogies

Mechanical and bio-

irresistibly influence the

understanding of the historical process. guishes

mankind

What

distin-

particularly from the animal world,

ENLIGHTENMENT says Buffon,

the perfectibility of the species and of

is

the institutions of society (Buffon. Histoire naturelle,

The concept

XIII, Paris [1765], 3-4).

of perfectibility

as a process implies the actual imperfection of society, just

enlightenment, according to Kant (Was

as

ist

Aufklarung?, 1784) denotes a process rather than an

end product. In

writings on history.

influential

his

Turgot compares progress to a storm-lashed sea;

men

must commit a thousand errors to arrive at the truth ("Plan de deux discours sur lhistoire universelle" [1751], in Oeucres de Turgot, Paris, I [1913], 277, 314). D'Alembert emphasizes the provisional and. perhaps, exceptional character of enlightened progress: "It took

make

centuries to to bring it

seems

it

an end.

to

to

a beginning; .

.

.

it

will take centuries

Barbarism

lasts for centuries;

be our natural element; reason and good

taste are only passing" (Discours preliminaire.

clopedic, 1751).

and various

.

.

"Man's progress

.

.

Ency-

has been irregular

.

yet the experience of four thousand

.

should enlarge our hopes and diminish our

years

apprehensions

.

.

[though] the merit of discoverv has

.

things

is first

foreign

agriculture, then manufactures,

commerce

and

finally

many

[though] this order has been in

respects inverted" (Book

III,

Ch.

I).

Millar distinguishes

the stages of barbarism and matriarchy, the pastoral age, the age of agriculture, that of the useful arts and

manufactures, and finally "great opulence and the

The

culture of the elegant arts."

by Comte and Hegel,

tripartition, later

used

rather usual.

is

"Conjectural history" does not imply a purely logical reconstruction of the origins

has been frequently

(as

suggested). Bousseau's account of the evolution of society

owes something

to the uncontrolled flights of the

imagination. However, in general, the conjectures used

by Montesquieu, Smith, Bobertson, Ferguson, et al., are not the "large" ones which are used to prove a case, but conjectures of detail based upon experience and

historical

Niebuhr was

probability,

sense

the

in

to say in 1804: "I

am

which

in

a historian, for

I

can trace a complete picture from individual extant

know where parts are missing and how and complement them" (Die Briefe Barthold Georg

data, to

I

may be

too often been stained with cruelty and fanaticism: and

Niebuhrs, Berlin [1926],

communication of disease and prejudice" (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. 38). Bentham expressly rejects Dr. Priestley's

without conjectures, history requires a judicious sense

the intercourse of nations has produced the

"expectation that of happiness

man

will ultimately attain a

and knowledge which

present conditions.

.

.

.

degree our

quent age on foundations formerly laid" (Ferguson

Perfect happiness belongs to it

written

what is possible and probable, "a just observation" and "the knowledge of important consequences" of the progress of mankind which "they build in every subse-

far surpasses

the imaginary regions of philosophy ...

317). Annals

I,

may be

of

[1767], Part

of the

first

I,

Sec.

was one Middle Ages as

In this sense Bobertson

I).

to trace the history of the

The

possible to diminish the influence of, but not to destroy,

a step in the history of European civilization.

the sad and mischievous passions" (Influence of Time

introduction of the concepts of progress and evolution

and

Place in Matters of Legislation [1802], Ch. V, I, 193-94). The conception of progress is based

did not entail a deterministic or teleological philosophy

and not any longer on

Works,

of history. In the hands of the authors of the Enlight-

it is

not necessarily

enment, most highly developed by Millar, it amounted to a taxonomy dealing with the accumulative character

is

a matter of

judgment and

of objective

probabilities like all other

phenomena.

upon

historical experience,

metaphysical speculation; therefore cyclical or unilinear;

Stages

it

of Evolution.

VOrigine des

Antoine

Yves

knowledge and

Goguet (De

rational technique, a sober

important types of structural

illustration of especially

innovation in the course of social change.

des sciences, Paris [1758],

In particular, the conception of evolutionary stages

two classes of positive (historical) laws, namely, those "which are, or at least ought to be, common to all the different kinds of society," and those "which are peculiar to a society which has made some progress in agriculture and commerce and in the more refined arts of life." The reconstruction of the stages of human evolution is a means of determining one's own place in the history of civilization. The task is undertaken on the basis of historical research as well as comparative and ethnological observations; where

served to combat the naive attribution of cultural,

I,

loix,

des

arts, et

16) distinguished

there are missing links in the record, judicious conjectures

have

to

complement

Montesquieu, Bousseau,

Adam

the

Smith,

picture.

Adam

Hume,

Ferguson,

John Millar, and others delineate subsequent stages of evolution. According to Smith "the natural course of

political,

and

social innovation to the legendary legis-

lators of previous historiography.

In the process of

historical reconstruction all relevant variables

have to

be taken into account, whether technological and biological, structural or cultural.

An

"infinite variety of

circumstances" (Turgot) determines the organic growth of society

which

[thev] are placed

"from the

arises

the speculations of

men .

.

.

.

.

.

the result from

but not the executions of similarly

Hume).

instincts, not

Human

from

the circumstances in which

human

human

action,

design" (Ferguson;

contrivance leads to unfore-

seen consequences (the "heterogeneity of ends"

—

fol-

lowing Wilhelm YVundt's psychological terminologvl However, this insight does not entail the helpless

93

ENLIGHTENMENT acceptance by Historismus of the status quo. For the

Enlightenment

it

ysis of historical

establishes the

sequences;

need

for a closer anal-

calls for the

it

development

whose

of the theoretical social sciences

task

it

in

is,

here; and

is

it

understood to speak the

Cape

of

matters not whether

it

in the island of

Good Hope,

are at

or in the Straits of Magellan"

The hut

(Ferguson, 1767).

we

Great Britain,

as natural as the palace;

is

man

the words of Karl Popper, "to try to anticipate the

the physical attributes of

unintended consequences of our actions" (Popper,

and moral propensities and the laws which may be observed to obtain in physical and social relations. Nature is the raw material on which the science of human nature is based, and from which the under-

"Reason or Revolution?," European Journal of

Sociol-

ogy [1970], 260). Nature.

Nature,

reason,

among

preeminently

period. "There

is

it

attach

scarcely a

utility

are

word .

.

that

is

used

in a

hardly ever does

.

a precise idea {Oeuvres diverses de M.

itself to

Pierre Bayle, [1727], III, 713).

many

and

liberty,

the most used keywords of the

vaguer way than that of Nature

The Encyclopedic empha-

are as natural as his

intellectual

standing of the

the

necessity,

possibility,

limitation of the science of the legislator In Baconian terms,

control

we must know

is

and the derived.

nature in order to

it.

The concept

Liberty.

of

liberty

is

hardly

less

awareness of man's animality to an Aristotelian con-

For some thinkers of the eighteenth century like Mandeville, Helvetius, and de Sade, it means the negative freedom from con-

ception of "what every being

straint

sizes the

from

different uses of the term, ranging

physical necessity to Utopian idolization, from Hobbes's

state."

One

is

in

its

most perfect

speaks of nature and natural history in the

context of religion, the soul, the law, reason, sentiment, taste, virtue,

happiness, innocence, society, providence,

physical necessity, order, and liberty.

The concept

is

ambiguous than

that of nature.

and the right to

Schiller,

is

it

self-realization.

self-perfection.

There

is

For others,

like

a rather general

is due to and spontaneous inventiveness.

consensus that the progress of civilization individual

initiative

Liberty of action and of thought are the prerequisites

brandished as a weapon in the urge to free mankind

for bringing

from the curse of original sin, against the world of conventions and of tradition, as, e.g., superstition, prej-

with the rhetoric of Rousseau and the French Revolution, liberty

udice, the belief in miracles and the reliance on grace

nature.

and revelation, the hierarchical order of society and governmental constraints of all kinds; all these are

since the Italian late twelfth century. According to

same time, nature

Voltaire (Essai sur les moeurs et I'esprit des nations

rejected as being unnatural. At the

imposes

its

own

constraints, not only through physical

necessity, not only

by way of an

aristocratic Epicure-

anism, but in the Puritan values of the rising cial bourgeoisie; rality,

commer-

work, frugality, usefulness, sexual mo-

and benevolence are regarded

as natural,

while

passions are not.

However,

in the

pedie, nature

is

view of the Scots and the Encyclo-

neutral in the sense that

it

needs to

be explored to provide the empirical foundation of the social sciences. Hume defines the term according to the context in which it is used; justice is an artificial in

contrast

arbitrary;

non

a

to

it is

natural

virtue,

artificial

is

is

yet

not

both socially determined and a sine qua

for the preservation of society.

But "in another

sense of the word, as no principle of the

human mind

more natural than a sense of virtue, so no virtue more natural than justice" (Hume, Treatise, Book III,

Part

II,

The

Sec.

I).

desire

for justice,

that

is,

the awareness of

and the urge to restore happiness, as well as the tendencies to improvement and cultivation, are natural propensities in man which serve "to obviate the casual abuses of passion" which itself, however, is natural as well. "If we are asked therefore, where the state of nature is to be found? we may suffering inflicted

94

answer,

It is

about great things. However, is

in contrast

not regarded as an attribute of

human

a gift of culture, inseparable from civilized

society, the great

achievement of European history

[1756], Ch. LXXXIII), the citadins of Italy

were

differ-

ent from the bourgeois of the northern countries of

Europe

in that

republic

they admitted loyalty only to their

rather

than

to

feudal

masters.

own

William

Robertson (A View of the Progress of Society in Europe [1769], Works [1834], HI, 129ff., 274ff.) and Gibbon (Decline

which

is

and Fall, Ch. 56) take up the same theme, developed with greater theoretical finesse by

John Millar (The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks [1778], Ch. V, Sec. Ill) and especially by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, Book III, Ch. Ill: "On the Rise and Progress of Cities and of the

Roman Empire"; Smith

Towns

after the Fall

ascribes also "the pres-

its "republican form of government" (Book V, Ch. II, Article IV). Rousseau in the Second Discourse (1755) and the Lettre a D'Alembert (1758) and Jean-Louis Delolme in his Constitution de I'Angleterre (1771) feel authorized to pronounce on questions of liberty because of their experience as citizens of the small republic of Geneva. All are agreed that the process which started in the city republics has come to its perfection in the England of the day, the only large country ever to have secured

ent grandeur of Holland" to

liberty to

its

citizens. This

widespread literature deal-

ing with the constitutions of the free peoples found

ENLIGHTENMENT its

culmination in Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de

moyen

sentations of Plutarch, Diodorus Curtius

romancers of the same

class

age (History of the Italian Republics, 1803-18), which treats history as the history of liberty, a notion which

and

(as)

inspired the work of Benjamin Constant, Auguste Comte, and Hegel. Though a precious gift of culture, liberty, for the Enlightenment, is not an end in itself. It is a means to the attainment of happiness, a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition of the good life. However, if the individual is to be free from restraint, is liberty not incompatible with order and good government? Locke had already rejected Filmer's definition of "'liberty' for everyone to do as he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any law"; he called such a

generally produced" (Macaulay,

Sismondi's Histoire des republiques italiennes au

condition "the perfect condition of slavery." In Locke's

view, "Liberty

is

to

be free from restraint and violence

from others, which cannot be where there

is

no law"

(Of Civil Government [1690], Book II, Chs. IV and VI). According to Hume only the madman is fully free; the absence of law and good government entails lack of Montesquieu liberty and security of individuals. disparages absolute liberty as a merely rhetorical no-

and defines a free people as "that which enjoys a form of government established by law" (Mes pensees, tion

Ch. XXII, No. 631). The Encyclopedic distinguishes moral, natural,

civil,

political liberty,

thought. Natural liberty

is

and

liberty of

the individuals' right to

happiness and self-fulfilment "under the condition that they don't abuse liberty "to live

it

to the

detriment of others";

civil

under the rule of law; the better the

laws, the better the liberty"; political or English liberty exists

when everyone

"good

civil

is

conscious of his security

and public laws safeguard

(article "Liberte"). Liberties, rather

abstract, are predicated

this

.

.

.

liberty"

than liberty in the

by the writers of the Enlight-

enment including Adam Smith, the protagonist of laissez-faire

Hume,

under the rule of law, who, following

war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors" as the alternative to "order and good government" (Smith, Book HI, Ch. IV). Liberty requires and justifies

license;

sees "a continuous state of

the reform of onerous laws, but not individual it

aims

at reconciling the duties

and

rights of

the individual with his role as a citizen. However, this prevailing conception of liberty the later Diderot

who makes

is

opposed

to that of

allowances for a capri-

cious liberty of the artist which resembles closely the self-willed arbitrariness of the masters of feudal courts

with their admiring and sycophantic followers.

It

is

patriotism

.

.

.

something eternally and from the blessings which it

intrinsically good, distinct

"On

Mitford's History

Complete Works, London [1879], VII. 686). Historians like Charles Rollin and political writers like H. F. Daguesseau thus aspired to a revival of republican Rome, holding up an idealized vision of

of

Greece" [1824]

a political order

in

which was certainly not based on the

human nature. Though the was unrealistic, it contributed effectively to the breakup of the existing order. Reason. The Enlightenment has frequently been arraigned for its overemphasis on abstract reason and insights of the science of

vision

its

neglect of imagination.

representative thinkers

Its

break with the rationalism and the esprit de systeme of those

who precede

philosophical

them. Locke's philosophy

bible,

Enlightenment

later agree

.

.

.

is

their

of

the

with de Maistre's verdict

contempt

that "philosophy begins with

"The word reason

detractors

the

as

just

for Locke."

has different significations:

it is taken for true and clear principles; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from those principles; and sometimes for the cause, and particularly the final cause. But the consideration I shall have

sometimes

of

it

here

a signification different from

is

(Locke,

An

[1690],

Book

is

Human

Essay concerning IV,

Ch. XVII, Para.

all

these

.

.

."

Understanding

Locke's concern

1).

with "the original certainty, evidence and extent of

human knowledge,

together with the grounds and

degrees of Belief, Opinion and Assent," in short, with reasoning or the discursive faculty, with proof,

classifi-

and deduction. There are marginal intimations of the power of reason to provide a Baconian art of discovery (ars inveniendi). On the whole, however, cation,

Locke dwells on the It

is

line,

limits of reason:

know

of great use to the sailor to

though he cannot with

ocean.

It is

it

fathom

well he knows that

it

is

the length of his

all

the depths of the

long enough to reach

the bottom at such places as are necessary to direct his

voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that

may

ruin him.

Our

business here

is

not to

but those which concern our conduct. those measures

whereby

If

know all things, we can find out

a rational creature, put in that state

world, may and ought to govern and actions depending thereon, we need not be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge

which man

is

in in this

his opinions,

(Book

I,

Ch.

I,

Para.

6).

human understanding is thus human nature which comes to

Locke's investigation of

equally at variance with the tendencies of popular

part of the science of

eighteenth-century writers who, unlike the Scottish

characterize the Enlightenment:

and Voltaire, instead of following Thucydides and Xenophon, turned "to the extravagant repre-

for practical conduct;

historians

and other

(who) ranted about liberty

It

serves as the basis

and though the formulation here

given seems to point to individual conduct, in practice,

95

ENLIGHTENMENT because of the weaknesses reasoning,

inherent

individual

in

points to the science of the legislator as

it

man

the only area in which contriving and reforming is

be presented as such and subjected to

He

tests.

disap-

not necessarily out of his depth.

proves the application of logic and the "spirit of

There

cussion" to the fields of literature and art because "the

another, epistemological aspect to Locke's

is

philosophy which expresses

itself in

his idealism

and

sensationalism, an aspect which interests professional

make a great impact and nineteenth-century materi-

passions and

have

tastes

dis-

their

own

sort

of

du

coeur).

The

dissection

(specifically Pascal's logique

logic"

philosophers, and which was to

of the psychology of love (by Marivaux, Prevost,

on the theory of

others) has ushered in a "species of the metaphysics

tionalists like

the

art

eighteenth-century

with

(beginning

alism

philosophers

social

sensa-

Condillac and La Mettrie). However, for the

ol

Enlightenment, the

discovery that moral and material qualities are "not

mind on practice" (Hume, Treatise,

qualities in objects, but perceptions of the

has

or no influence

little

Book

Part

III,

Sec.

I,

of metaphysical

first

I).

What

counts,

is

.

.

.

the rejection

causes which results in the setting

method" of experience,

free of the "plain, historical

observation, and experiment.

of the heart,"

and

'anatomy of the

"this

soul'

and

has even

make

slipped into our conversations; people

disser-

they no longer converse; and our societies have

tations,

lost their

principal ornaments

— warmth

and gaiety"

Diderot contrasts reason "coldly perceived"

(ibid.).

unfavorably with the "brilliant and sublime" imagina-

"Locke has

tion:

"Genie"). cians

.

.

.

He

seen, Shaftesbury has created" (article

mathematicians "bad metaphysi-

calls

bad actors

.

cannot be expressed

This consideration applies also to Hume's skeptical

.

.

in

bad

politicians

terms of

X

on a judicious observation of the

and

.

Y.

.

such things

.

They depend

intricate flow of life"

view of the limitations of reason. "Reason is nothing this but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct arises from past observation and experiinstinct ence. Reason is the discovery of truth and false-

Enlightenment pondered the problem of knowledge

hood

more

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

our passions, volitions and actions

.

.

.

.

ence of something which

by informing us of the is a proper object of

when

connection

excites a passion,

it

.

.

.

bility

.

.

,"

past,

when

.

and of it

the

discovers

it

effects.

.

.

All

knowledge resolves

that Trial

is,

lively

exist-

[1930],

itself into

Whatever

to be assented to"

(Hume,

Treatise,

proba-

"when reason

Book Book

I,

it

ought

Part

III,

I, Part IV, XVI; Book III, Part I, Sec. I; Sec. VII). For the alternative to reason is imagination which, when acting unchecked by reason, leads into

Sec.

superstition,

illusion,

and

fanaticism.

Imagination

by reason, the creative human nature protected from its destructive propensities by the this is the gist of the legislator and by education theory of knowledge underlying the quest of the good controlled

—

society of the reformers in the Enlightenment.

The awareness

of the limitations of the

derstanding rather than

its

human

the

The customary

of the

thinkers

any other

strictures of their

work

are

largely derived from nonrational "flights of the imagi-

nation" and from the wish to defend old bastions and temples. Far from being an abstract rationalist, Diderot

and Error. Though "understanding, and according to its most general with some propensity

weaknesses,

their

seriously than the thinkers of possibly

period.

Paris

279).

goes rather to the extreme of spontaneous, personal

the experience of many, of the

itself

Sophie Volland,

a

and

acts alone,

and mixes

III,

Lettres

in

letter,

or

it;

causes

of

principles, entirely subverts itself," yet is

.

reason

can have an influence only after two ways: either

when

(undated

.

.

.

[cannot] be pronounced either true or false

96

Newton's insistence that scientific knowledge is merely and that conjectures and hypotheses must

provisional,

knowledge.

the

In

article

"Eelecticisme"

Encyclopedie he foreshadows "the end of

all

in

the

schools"

modern philosophy. Prejudice, tradition, antiquity, and public opinion must be subjected by the philosopher to a rational analysis and experience, "peculiarly and personally his own." This view has been said (by Paul Hazard, La Pensee europeenne au XVIHe siecle, Paris [1946], II, 48) to blink at the problem of solipsism. However, the article as a whole makes it clear that of

eclecticism requires both imaginative genius, the gift to combine and explain, and the ability to gather evidence and to put facts to the test; only he who combines (objective) experimental and (subjective) systematic eclecticism, like

may

claim

to

Democritus, Aristotle, and Bacon,

be a truly eclectic philosopher

in

Diderot's sense.

un-

overestimation determines

Happiness and

and

Utility.

The

science of

human

the science of the legislator supply the

and

politics of the

nature

key also

Enlightenment.

also the attitude of the Encyclopedie. "All certitude

to the ethics

which is not mathematical demonstration, is only extreme probability. There is no other historical certitude" (article "Histoire"). D'Alembert in the "Discours

moral thought

the greatest happiness of the greatest number. For

preliminaire" of the Encyclopedie denigrates Descartes'

still

"believing he could explain everything," and extols

of the individual and of mankind.

is

based upon the principle of

Its

utility,

Locke, the fundamental interests (he expresses them in

terms of the law of nature) are the preservation

To

that end,

freedom

ENLIGHTENMENT under the law, equality of individuals, and justice

among them being

all

another

(pacta sunt servanda) are required:

equal and independent, no one ought to in life, health, liberty or possessions"

Government, Book

II,

Ch.

The

II).

".

and sympathy. Both these

.

harm

(Of Civil

human

science of

nature lays bare man's basic propensities, namely interest

.

qualities, says

self-

Hume,

are useful to the individual and to society, and

it

is

makes people virtuous. Like Liberty, "Virtue is considered as means to an end" (Hume, Treatise, Book III, Part III, Sec. VI), namely the happiness or well-being of the individuals composing societv. For the thinkers in the utilitarian mainstream there is no identity of human desires or interests. Man's selfishness, his insatiable avidity for acquiring power and possessions for himself and his group, if left to their utility that

itself,

is

destructive of societv. Therefore,

restrained and regulated through institutions

property, rights, obligations, etc.; the

legislator,

it is

must be governing

it

the science of

based on experience and reflection,

which suggests the right balance between warring interests. Adam Smith (in the Wealth of Nations, Book

Book

IV, Chs. IX, V, II;

extols "the natural effort his

condition,

when

Ch. VI; Book III, Ch. I) of every individual to better I,

suffered

freedom and security ...

in a

exert

to

with

itself

well-governed societv

... in a civilised country ... as long as he does not violate the laws of justice.

.

.

."

Provided security

is

created by the legislator without unduly restraining

spontaneous individual activity, "an invisible hand" leads

man

"to

promote an end which was no part of

his intention," that

is,

socially desirable ends.

What

De moments de plaisir, et de jours de tourments, De notre etre imparfait voila les elements ("Heaven, in creating us, made our life a blend/ Of desires, of loathing, of reason, of madness,/ Of moments of pleasure, .

.

.

and of days of torment,/ Of our imperfect being these are the elements"; Discours en vers sur l'homme [1738], Premier Discours)

Our exploration

human

of

nature serves to contain, not

Man's hope of salvation must come from religion or his own creativeness and discipline. The change

to

utilitarian is

it.

may

judge actions, but not the agent.

human

restricted to the exploration of

and

their consequences,

and

to the

He

propensities

demarcation of

social (and only indirectly of individual) good. Utilita-

rianism ethics.

is

a public philosophy, not a purely personal

Therefore there

no contradiction contained

is

Bentham's famous statement that

in

our "two

for

it is

sovereign masters, pain and pleasure ... to point out

what we ought

we

to

do

as well as to

determine what

What we shall do, follows from our and passions. What we ought to do, "is deter-

shall do."

instincts

mined by and proportional utilitarian)

tendency which (the

to the

conceives to have to augment or to diminish

community" {Introduction to the and Legislation [1789], Ch. I, Para.

the happiness of the Principles of Morals 1,9). It

is

was an alternative

true that there

philosophy, that of Lord Shaftesbury,

influential

who

put the

emphasis on the perfection of the individual rather than on the reform of society. aesthetics,

and,

It is

echoed

in Diderot's

with the predominant Neo-

allied

Platonic and Pietist tradition,

it

helped to thwart the

German Enlightenment.

ends are conducive to the well-being of society, can

short-lived

be discerned from past general and national experience

Shaftesbury's

and the observation of consequences; on this basis it is possible to advise the legislator on what regulations to promote and which to avoid. However, what acts

Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Good and the True are equally expressions of the sense of harmony and proportion. While rejecting the Promethean dogma of human corruption, he proclaims the benevolence of nature and

are conducive to the perfection of the individual except in his role of a citizen,

is

no concern of the

nor does utilitarianism have

much

Adam

to

legislator,

offer

on

this

Hellenic

or

According

aristocratic

to

philosophy

(Characteristicks of

1711), the Beautiful, the

the identity of

human

interests.

The Eros

of

contem-

Smith's Theory of

plation elevates the cultivation of taste, and the felicity

Moral Sentiments, 1759). Man's nature is inscrutable, motives and intentions are manifold and complex, and it is therefore overambitious for the philosopher

derived from the gemlike flame of vital experience,

subject (despite attempts like his

pronounce on

to

Voltaire

gives

the

to

philosophical

Que

de l'homme

is

life,

as in art,

subordinated to the

and action (though

Shaftesbury, in his scintillating and confused work,

and of the public

est ignore. 1

suis-je, oil suis-je, oil vais-je, et d'oii suis-je tire ?

interest).

In the English-speaking world, however, Francis

What

Hutcheson's philanthropic and democratic thought,

where am I, where am I going, and from where have come?"; Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne, 1756)

Shaftesbury, has intentionally developed against dominated the philosophical, literary, and aesthetic scene. In Hutcheson's view the sense of beautv and

("Man, stranger

am I

soi,

it

speaks also of the controlling power of the intellect

anthropology of the period in typical passages: L'homme, etranger a

the end can be neglected;

intensity of contemplation, passion,

his self-regarding morality.

expression

to the level of virtue. Accordingly, in

to himself, does not

know

himself.

I,

he del, en n ~*us formant, melangea notre De desirs, de degouts, de raison, de folie,

vie

the moral sense are not the same.

Harmony, rather than

97

ENLIGHTENMENT being natural and good in

itself,

is

the concord of

individual character with the social good. "Uniformitv

amidst variety,"

order and proportion find their

i.e.,

perfect expression

in

the reign of the moral law, in

"the love of humanity, gratitude, compassion, a study

good of others and a deep delight

of the

ness" (Hutcheson.

An

Inquiry into the Original of our

Ideas of Bvauti/ and Virtue [1725], Treatise 2; Treatise II, Para. 1). Politics.

upon the

happi-

in their

The guiding

I,

Para.

of

science

in short,

human

it

calls for the

and the

nature

precepts of the science of the legislator. In this sense political maxims are to be ungovernment of Laws obey censure freely" (A Fragment on Gov-

Bentham's and Kant's derstood:

punctually

"Under .

.

.

a

.

.

.

ernment [1776], Preface, Para. 16), and: "Criticize much as you like, if only you obey" (Was

as ist

Aufklarung?).

widely used concepts of the social

Institutions

must be criticized because they tend to

determine the rules of behavior.

power

in individuals or in office,

If

they concentrate

may deprive

they

the

contract and of natural law give a misleading impres-

mass of individuals of the safeguards for their security

sion of continuity with previous thought. Actually they

and give free rein to the violent passions of the privileged. As human nature is not obviously susceptible of change, an appropriate institutional framework

provide an obsolete vocabulary for a theory of individual

and

social interests,

which

is

based upon historical

experience and the consciousness of a

new

historical

Going beyond Montesquieu's classification of political and legal institutions, and, like Rousseau, starting from the problem how liberty can exist in a situation.

large country (as contrasted with the small city-state),

Delolme and John Millar subject the

British consti-

tution to penetrating sociological scrutiny.

needed and must be based less "on abstract and on "a study and delineation of things passing in the moral world. The question now afloat in the world respecting things as they are is the most interesting ... to the human mind" (William Godwin, The Adventures of Caleb Williams is

refined speculation" than

.

.

.

Political

[1794], Preface). Institutions both express the existing

thinking advances from a merely institutional to a

structure of society and, in turn, present a challenge

behavioral approach, from a mere theory of govern-

to things as they are. It

ment

The outstanding new

to political theory.

are the displacement of the state

and

Adam

is

which must be taken

factors

the condition of a nation.

comparatively

is

therefore necessary to scruti-

nize the functions and dysfunctions of social, legal, and political institutions.

Considering that society was

still

largely agricultural, this sociological scrutiny reached

climax in the investigation of rural morphology.

its

The formal

only one of the various into account in assessing

The new commercial

classless

Smith

of the state in the

of the individual, but never society.

constitution of the state

is

power

his followers fight the

name

criteria

by society and the

substitution of the citizen for the subject.

society

within the confines of the

which are spread widely and demarcated only faintly. Voltaire's (1734) and Hume's (1748) observations have been quoted above, in the section on

Modern

sociological

methods were being applied,

including highly developed questionnaires, in assessing the respective merits of large-scale and peasant-type holdings. Theoretical findings

were being put

to prac-

ruling groups

tical tests in the agricultural

"Underlying Structural Change."

and elsewhere, often under the guidance of Agricultural Academies which sprang up all over Europe. The theoretical side of this movement was started by Turgot and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, especially in the Ephemerides du citoyen

Rather than in the profuse clamor for natural rights and revolutionary measures, the real innovation of the time consists in the consciousness of the identity of rulers

and ruled (except

for the laboring classes

which

reforms introduced

in

Britain, Tuscany, France,

(from 1765). Soon

it

found

who, from 1768, toured

its

master

Arthur Young

in

Britain, France,

and

Italy,

on

were then not part of the political process). The traditional problems of rebellion and of the assertion of the

horseback, indefatigably surveying

individual against the metaphysical state are trans-

Scottish pioneers, Sir John Sinclair, as the

muted

of the English Board of Agriculture, created in the

into the

need

for defining a balance

among

the

ing and the farming population.

all

aspects of farm-

One

of the great first

head

divergent interests of the individuals whose totality

1790's a detailed survey of the agricultural structure

forms society. Rebellion and revolution in the circum-

of the various counties

stances are liable to

become

self-destructive

by

defini-

For Hobbes, self-mastery still meant the stoic acceptance of necessity imposed by nature and the tion.

sovereign.

behavior.

9o

men;

of the

insights

ideas of utilitarianism hear also

principles of politics and education. In politi-

cal thought the

to those of one's fellow

of one's

Now

It

self-mastery

is

a question of political

presupposes self-scrutiny, an understanding

own

propensities and interests in their relation

which

set the

tone for later

was soon imitated by Jean Chaptal, Comte de Chanteloup as the basis of sociological investigations (and

the Napoleonic Statistique de la France). Highlights of the considerable

new

sociological literature

were

Frederick Morton Eden's The State of the Poor (1797) and Sismondi's Tableau de lagriculture toscane Sir

.

.

.

ENLIGHTENMENT (1801) and

du Departement du Leman

Statistique

(1803).

Critique of Society. Society is seen both as a boon and as a burden. It supplies that "additional force, ability and security without which individual life could

Book

not persist" (Hume, Treatise,

III,

Part

II,

Sec.

However, society requires organization by law which safeguards the liberty of the individual bv curbing his license. Some persons are strong and some are weak; there is both biological and sociological inequality. Society can therefore be oppressive, and the legislator must take steps to protect the weak and II).

safeguard equality of opportunity for

The critique of society in the eighteenth takes up prophetic and Stoic themes. In this is

a critique of the

human

A

discontents.

Common

to

...

is

situation in general, a part

to this conclusion: all

.

.

the conviction that the time

is

.

out of joint; that what

man,

is

wrong with

it

due

is

to

in the life of

and emuladesires and the oppressive over-abundance

to the pathological multiplicity

tiveness of his

and the

of his belongings,

factitiousness

and want

of inner

spontaneity of his emotions; that "art", the work of has corrupted "nature"

London

Progress,

According to John Millar, .

.

.

and

.

.

(Primitivism

.

and

mankind

lament

man

the Idea of

Prometheus,

man's

Pandora's

lost

Box)

variance

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

become

like

.

.

.

.

innocence spills

over

(the

into

Fall,

the

.

.

commercial nation debarred from ex-

.

criticisms

of

the

capitalist

order are also

advanced by Jean Meslier, Morelly, G. B. de Mably, S. N. H. Linguet, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, and others.

Education. The aim of education individual to initiative

society. If

make

is

to prepare the

the best of the spontaneity and

which allow him he is restricted in

to

play his

full

part in

his self-expression

owing

must supply him and the vicarious experience which

facilities

make up a

full personality. Plato's

"citizen" must be

Kierkegaard,

it is

Adam

sociologically deter-

Smith, "can surely

be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable" (Smith, Book Ch. VIII). The division of labor not only produces

"is

concern with the

complemented by the concern with

When

society," says

.

.

mixed with that of the human situation. By contrast, the thinkers in the mainstream of the Enlightenment restrict themselves (for the reasons set out in the section above on Happiness) to the critique

Marx,

inextricably

"No

.

becoming the dupes

degraded

"man" (homme).

mined.

in a

of their superiors and of being (Am Historical View of the English Government [1787, London, 1803 ed.J, IV, 248, 249, 146, 156).

of

the trade

of

Nietzsche, Kafka, and so on. Critique of society

of society to the extent that

are

tensive information ... in danger of losing their importance,

Emile,

romantics,

the

.

numerous

machines

Rousseau's

of

[arouse] envy, resentment .

.

is

anxieties

,

to the division of labor, education

[1934], p. xiv).

of

at

.

with the This

example,

for

competitions and rivalships, which contract the heart set

Specific

them

an abnormal complexity and sophistication civilized

the individual in a rigid system of role allocation.

labourers, by far the most

it

eenth-century popular English novels of the period has

Whitney

what has come to be called the social and economic alienation of man, i.e., the freezing of in particular,

sense

judicious investigation of late eight-

led Lois

ous effects of commercial and industrial society, and,

century-

of the eternally recurring revolt against civilization and its

Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Dugald who all emphasize both the good and deleteri-

Rousseau,

Stewart

and other malignant passions the pursuit of riches becomes a scramble, in which the hand of every man is against every other. The class of mechanics and

individuals.

all

have created. This analysis of the Wealth of \'ations finds its parallels in the writings of D'Alembert,

I

"Life," says Rousseau in

would teach him (my

pupil).

he leaves me, ... he will be neither a magis-

trate, a soldier,

nor a

priest;

he

will

be a man" (Oeuvres

completes, IV, Paris [1969], 252). Pestalozzi translates

Rousseau's educational ideas into practice, and his

Emanuel von Fellenberg and Wilhelm Froebel, spread them all over

assistant-masters, Philipp

Friedrich

Europe. Professional education, foreshadowed by the

emphasis of the Encyclopedic and the resulting innova-

therefore necessary to counteract the

becomes universal. Education for citizenship comes to complement economic and political reform where there is a politically active and emancipated citizenry, as in England (where Fellenberg's methods were introduced by Lord Brougham). Where there is little political participation, as in Germany, education, like art and historiography, provides a haven for those who resign themselves to "seeking Greece with their

dangers inherent in the commercial and industrial state

souls" rather than putting into practice the reformist

by means of public education and other appropriate agenda of the state designed to redress the social imbalance which competition and the division of labor

aspirations of Faust

I,

prosperity but

is

also

the source of inequality, far

beyond the biological inequality of talents. It "destroys intellectual, social and martial virtues unless government takes pains to prevent it" (Book V, Ch. I, Part III, Article II). Traditionally, government has been on the side "of the rich against the poor" in the defense of property.

It is

tions,

and Wilhelm Meister. Uniformity amidst Variety. The educational process needed to make society inhabitable by man is the

99

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT common

task of science (especially the science of soci-

ety), of art, of religion,

cal

and of education

Unity and correlation

sense.

supply

principal

themes in this respect. The interrelation and mutual dependence of institutions, of people, and of nations, the unity and hierarchy of the sciences are widely discussed. The Encyclopedic, starting from and complementing Bacon's logical classification of the sciences by an historical arrangement, brings into view Francis Hutcheson's principle of uniformity amidst variety, the significance of the interconnection of the parts with

human

the whole.

Hume's science

of

attempt

basing

sciences

at

methodology;

all

the

nature

an

is

on a common Nature has the

of Human an attempt to introduce the experi-

his Treatise

subtitle "being

Bacon and Newton] into moral subjects." At the end of the period, Dugald Stewart, in his "Preliminary Dissertation, containing some critical Remarks on the Discourse prefixed to the French mental method

[of

Encyclopedia" (Philosophical Essays [1810], in Works, V, Edinburgh [1855], 5-54), adds a functional approach to the

merely

sciences

of

classificatory, earlier

matter

and

arrangements of the

The

mind.

full

of

title

emphasizes the rapport of the legal system with the constitution, the manners, the climate, the religion, the commerce, etc. of a peoMontesquieu's Esprit des

ple. In

1800

lois

Madame de

Stael published her

De

la

Litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales.

The

and

structure

BIBLIOGRAPHY

in the techni-

historic?.! totality

and

Man and

G. Bryson,

Society,

losophic

iter

Aufklarung (Tubingen, 1932),

creative will.

Hume

trans. F. C. A.

Enlightenment (Princeton, 1951). A. Cobban, In Search of Humanity (London and New York, 1960). G. R. Cragg, The

Church and the Age of Reason (London, 1960). J. Ehrard, L'klee de la nature en France (Paris, 1963), with bibliography.

(New

P.

Gay, The Enlightenment: an Interpretation, 2

Hazard, La Pensee europeene au XVIIIe

P.

vols.

York, 1966-69; London, 1967-70), with bibliography.

trans,

as

European Thought

(London, 1954); Vol.

Ill

of

in

the

siecle (1946),

Century

Eighteenth

French edition contains bibliog-

raphy. R. Hubert, Les Sciences sociales dans VEncyclopedie (Paris, 1923). A. O.

Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas

(Baltimore, 1948). F. E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century

Confronts the Gods (Cambridge. Mass., 1959).

The Industrial Revolution ed.

Mantoux,

P.

in the Eighteenth Century,

2nd

(London, 1928; reprint 1961). Kingsley Martin, French

New

Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1929;

York

(Paris, and London, 1962). R. Mauzi, LTdee du bonheur 1960). F. Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus, 2 vols. (1936; 2nd ed. Munich, 1946). J. Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensee franqaise au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1963). .

.

.

Age of Reason (London, 1956). Modern Culture, Vol. II: The Enlightenment 1687-1776 (New York and London, 1930). R. V.

Sampson, Progress

Preserved Smith,

J.

Starobinski,

A

in the

History of

The Invention of Liberty (Geneva,

1964). F.

Venturi, Settecento Riformatore (Turin, 1969). B. VVilley, The

Eighteenth Century Background (London, 1950).

HELLMUT

Universal Histories and the national histories of the

and its followers. Vico's Scienza nuova (1725) maps out both the common fundamental principles of mankind and the historical "philology" of individual peoples, i.e., the contribution of their free and

Scottish Inquiry of the

Koelln and James P. Pettegrove as The Philosophy of the

cohesion of social units supplies the raison d'etre of Scottish school

The

Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1945). E. Cassirer, Die Phi-

O.

PAPPE

[See also Ancients and Moderns; Classicism; CounterEnlightenment; Perfectibility; Progress; Religious Enlight-

enment; Religious Toleration; Social Contract; Utilitarianism.]

provides a definitive methodologi-

cal basis for a macrosociological theory in his essay

"On

National Characters" (1748).

Comparative

historical

and anthropological studies

confirm the interaction of nations as an enrichment of

THE COUNTER ENLIGHTENMENT

national character. "By comparing among all nations laws with laws, talents with talents, and manners with

manners, nations will find so themselves to others, that

country that love which

if is

little

reason to prefer

they preserve for their

own

the fruit of self-interest, at

countries,

is

as old as the

movement

itself.

The

procla-

la

mation of the autonomy of reason and the methods of the natural sciences based on observation as the sole reliable method of knowledge, and the consequent

and

rejection of the authority of revelation, sacred writings

expression.

bound up with this interest in common roots and functions, and characterize the leading ideas of

and their accepted interpreters, tradition, prescription, and every form of nonrational and transcendent sources of knowledge, was naturally opposed by the churches and religious thinkers of many persuasions. But such

the Enlightenment.

opposition, largely because of the absence of

least

of

they will lose that fanaticism which self-esteem"

exclusive

"Legislateur"

musique,

).

D'Alembert,

exemplifies

the

is

the fruit

(Encyclopedic

article

in

De

la Liberie

interchangeability

interaction of forms of art as

means of

de

Cosmopolitanism, toleration, universality are qualities closely

100

Opposition to the central ideas of the French Enlightenment, and of its allies and disciples in other European

common

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT ground between them and the philosophers ot the Enlightenment, made relatively little headway, save

bv

stimulating repressive steps against the spreading

Agrippa, Montaigne, and Pierre Charron whose

ence

influ-

discernible in the sentiments of thinkers

is

and

poets in the Elizabethan and Jacobean age. Such skep-

came

who

of ideas regarded as dangerous to the authority of

ticism

Church or State. More formidable was the relativist and skeptical tradition that went back to the ancient world. The central doctrines of the progressive French

of the natural sciences or of other universal rational

thinkers,

whatever their disagreements among them-

selves, rested

on the

belief,

Law,

trine of Natural

mentally the same in

and

that all

historical variations

rooted

human

in the

ancient doc-

nature was funda-

times and places; that local

were unimportant compared in terms of which human

with the constant central core

beings could be defined as a species, like animals, or plants, or minerals; that there

goals; that a logically

generalizations verification

chaotic

susceptible

could be

amalgam

were universal human

connected structure of laws and of

demonstration

constructed and

replace

and the

of ignorance, mental laziness, guess-

work, superstition, prejudice, dogma, fantasy, and,

above

all,

the "interested error," maintained by the

mankind and largely responsible for the blunders, vices, and misfortunes of humanity. It was further believed that the methods similar to those of Newtonian physics which had achieved such rulers

of

triumphs

in the

realm of inanimate nature could be

applied with equal success to the

fields

of ethics,

and human relationships in general, in which little progress had been made; with the corollary that once this had been effected, it would sweep away irrational and oppressive legal systems and economic policies the replacement of which by the rule of reason would rescue men from political and moral injustice and misery and set them on the path of wisdom, happiness, and virtue. Against this, there persisted the doctrine that went back to the Greek Sophists, Protagoras, Antiphon, and Critias, that beliefs involving value-judgments, and the institutions founded upon them, rested not on discoveries of objective and unalterable natural facts, but on human opinion, which was variable and differed between different societies and at different times; that moral and political values, and in particular justice and social arrangements in general rested on fluctuating human convention. This was summed up by the Sophist quoted bv Aristotle who declared that whereas fire burned both here and in Persia, human institutions change under our very eyes. It seemed to follow that no universal politics,

to the aid of those

schemas and advocated salvation

in

denied the claims

pure

faith, like the

great Protestant reformers and their followers, and the

wing of the Roman Church. The rationalist body of logically deduced conclusions, arrived at by universally valid principles of thought and founded upon carefully sifted data of observation or experiment, was further shaken by sociologically minded thinkers from Bodin (1530-96) to Montesquieu (1689-1755). These writers, using the evidence of both history and the new literature of travel and exploration in newly discovered lands, Asia and the Americas, emphasized the variety of human customs and especially the influence of dissimilar natural factors, particularly geographical ones, upon the development of different human societies, leading to differences of institutions and outlook, which in their turn generated wide differences of belief and behavior. This was powerfully reinforced by the revolutionary doctrines of David Hume, especially by his demonstration that no logical links existed between truths of fact, and such a priori truths as those of logic or mathematics, which tended to weaken or dissolve the hopes of those who, under the influence of Descartes and his Jansenist

belief in a single coherent

followers, thought that a single system of knowledge, embracing all provinces and answering all questions, could be established by unbreakable chains of logical argument from universally valid axioms, not subject to refutation or modification by any experience of an

empirical kind.

how deeply

Nevertheless, no matter

human

relativity

about

values or the interpretation of social, including

historical, facts

entered the thought of social thinkers

of this tvpe, they, too, retained a

conviction that the ultimate ends of

were, in

effect, identical: all

common core of men at all times

all

men sought

the satisfaction

and biological needs, such as food, shelter, security, and also peace, happiness, justice, the harmonious development of their natural faculties, truth, and, somewhat more vaguely, virtue, moral perof basic physical

and what the Romans had called humanitas. Means might differ in cold and hot climates, moun-

fection,

tainous countries and

mula could

fit

all

flat

plains,

and no universal

for-

cases without Procrustean results, but

truths established

the ultimate ends were fundamentally similar. Such

that

influential writers as Voltaire,

by scientific methods, that is, truths anyone could verify by the use of proper methods, anywhere, at any time, could in principle be established in

human

sciences were the most powerful

affairs.

This tradition reasserted

D'Alembert, and Con-

dorcet believed that the development of the arts and

itself

strongly in the writ-

ings of such sixteenth-century skeptics as Cornelius

human weapons

attaining these ends, and the sharpest fight

against

ignorance,

weapons

superstition,

in

in the

fanaticism,

101

COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMEXT human

oppression, and barbarism which crippled

effort

hopes, fears which are their own, they can

and frustrated men's search for truth and rational selfdirection. Rousseau and Mably believed, on the con-

affairs as

were themselves a major factor in the corruption of men and their alienation from nature, from simplicity, purity of heart and the life of natural justice, social equality, and spontaneous human feeling; artificial man had imprisoned, enslaved, and ruined natural man. Never-

tively

trary, that the institutions of civilization

theless, despite

profound differences of outlook, there

was a wide area of agreement about fundamental points: the reality of Natural

Law

(no longer formu-

know

they cannot

know human

Nature.

to Vico, our lives and activities collecand individually are expressions of our attempts

According

to survive, satisfy our desires, understand each other and the past out of which we emerge. A utilitarian interpretation of the most essential human activities is

misleading.

They

are,

in

the

first

place,

purely

expressive; to sing, to dance, to worship, to speak, to

and the

fight,

institutions

which embody these

activi-

comprise a vision of the world. Language, religious

ties,

rites,

myths, laws, social, religious, juridical institutions,

lated in the language of orthodox Catholic or Prot-

are forms of self-expression, of wishing to convey what

estant doctrine), of eternal principles by following which alone men could become wise, happy, virtuous, and free. One set of universal and unalterable principles governed the world for theists, deists, and atheists, for optimists and pessimists, puritans, primitivists, and believers in progress and the richest fruits of science and culture; these laws governed inanimate and animate nature, facts and events, means and ends, private life and public, all societies, epochs, and civilizations; it was solely by departing from them that men fell into crime, vice, misery. Thinkers might differ about what these laws were, or how to discover them, or who were qualified to expound them; that these laws were real, and could be known, whether with certainty,

one

is

and

for that reason

or only probability, remained the central entire Enlightenment. constitutes the

It

dogma

was the attack upon

of the

this that

most formidable reaction against

dominant body of

this

and

strives for; they it is

obey

intelligible patterns,

possible to reconstruct the

life

of other societies, even those remote in time

and place and utterly primitive, by asking oneself what kind of framework of human ideas, feelings, acts could have generated the poetry, the monuments, the mythology

which were their natural expression. Men grow individually and socially; the world of men who composed the Homeric poems was plainly very different from that of the Hebrews to whom God had spoken through their sacred books, or that of the

Roman

Republic, or

medieval Christianity, or Naples under the Bourbons. Patterns of growth are traceable.

Myths are

not, as enlightened thinkers believe, false

statements about reality corrected by later rational criticism, nor

is

poetry mere embellishment of what

could equally well be stated in ordinary prose. The

myths and poetry of antiquity embody a vision of the as authentic as that of Greek philosophy, or

belief.

world

Roman Law,

//

A this

thinker

who might have had

counter-movement,

if

a decisive role in

anyone outside

his native

that the Cartesians

were profoundly mistaken about

the role of mathematics as the science of sciences; that

mathematics was certain only because an objective structure of

reality;

not a body of truths; with

its

it

help

we

it

was a human

could plot reg-

— the occurrence of phenomena the external world — but not discover why they occurred as they ularities

did, or to

in

what end. This could be known only

for only those

who make

things can truly

to

God,

know what

they are and for what purpose they have been made.

Hence we do not, in this sense, know the external Nature— for we have not made it; only God who created it, knows it in this fashion. But since men world

102

voice, as

we

hear

it

but

in the Iliad or the

bution to the understanding of society or history. His

work

Scienza nuova (1725; radically altered 1731),

It

own

was a method and

originality Vico maintained, especially in the last

invention.

its

own

did not, as they supposed, correspond to

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). With extraordinary life,

with

us,

Twelve Tables, belonging uniquely to its own culture, and with a sublimity which cannot be reproduced by a later, more sophisticated culture. Each culture expresses its own collective experience, each step on the ladder of human development has its own equally authentic means of expression. Vico's theory of cycles of cultural development became celebrated, but it is not his most original contri-

country had read him, was the Neapolitan philosopher

of his

or the poetry and culture of our

enlightened age, earlier, cruder, remote from

—

are directly acquainted with

human

motives, purposes,

move

have denied the doctrine of which could have been known in principle to any man, at any time, anywhere. Vico boldly denied this doctrine which has formed the heart of the Western tradition from Aristotle to our own day. He preached the notion of the uniqueness of cultures, however they might resemrevolutionary

a timeless Natural

is

Law

to

the truths of

ble each other in their relationship to their antecedents

and successors, and the notion of a single style that pervades all the activities and manifestations of

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT societies of

human

beings at a particular stage of de-

once of comparative cultural anthropology and of comparavelopment. Thereby he laid the foundations tive

conceived as altering forms of collective con-

Such historicism was plainly not compat-

with the stern demands of moral obligation and the

linguistics,

aesthetics,

ritual,

sole reliable keys to

sciousness.

jurisprudence;

monuments, and especially mythology, what later scholars and

language,

were the

ible

Enlightenment of his times rested, the Konigsberg theologian and philosopher, J. G. Hamann, wished to

smash them. Hamann was brought up as a Pietist, a member of the most introspective and self-absorbed of all the Lutheran sects, intent upon the direct communion of the individual soul with God, bitterly antirationalist, liable to emotional excess, preoccupied

historical

critics

at

with the view that there was only one standard of

which some cultures or individuals approached more closely than others, and which it was the business of thinkers to establish and men of action to realize. The Homeric poems were an truth or beauty or goodness,

unsurpassable masterpiece, but they could only spring

from a brutal,

stern, oligarchical,

"heroic" society, and

needs

severe

for

The attempt

self-discipline.

of

Frederick the Great in the middle years of the eight-

eenth century to introduce French culture and a degree

economic and social as well as most backward part of provinces, provoked a peculiarly violent reaction

of rationalization,

military, into East Prussia, the his

in this pious, semi-feudal, traditional Protestant society

Homer. This doctrine struck a powerful blow

(which also gave birth to Herder and Kant). Hamann began as a disciple of the Enlightenment, but, after a profound spiritual crisis, turned against it, and pub-

notion of timeless truths and steady progress,

lished a series of polemical attacks written in a highly

interrupted by occasional periods of retrogression into

idiosyncratic, perversely allusive, contorted, deliber-

barbarism, and drew a sharp line between the natural

ately obscure style, as

sciences which dealt with the relatively unaltering

from

nature of the physical world viewed from "outside,"

smooth

and humane studies which viewed social evolution from "inside" by a species of empathetic insight, for which the establishment of texts or dates by scientific criticism was a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. Vico's unsystematic works dealt with many other matters, but his importance in the history of the Enlightenment consists in his insistence on the plurality

dictators of taste

later civilizations,

however superior

in

other respects,

did not and could not produce an art necessarily superior to at the

on the conviction that

all

impotent to demonstrate the

is

existence of anything and to

faith; faith is as basic

an instrument only for

universe for him, as for the older is

itself

German

mystical

a kind of language. Things and plants

and animals are themselves symbols with which God communicates with his creatures. Everything rests on reality as the senses.

Bertrand Russell and his more faithful followers. For

voice of God,

ask different questions of the Universe, and

particular, never

which nothing in reality corresponds; that to underis to be communicated with, by men or by God.

has obsessed thinkers from Plato to Leibniz, Condillac,

men

is

is

stand

describe in logically perfect language

Vico

truth

conveniently classifying and arranging data in patterns

tradition,

vision that

has given

who

man

an organ of acquaintance with

To read the Bible

is

the grace to understand.

endowed with

to hear the

speaks in a language which he

Some men

the gift of understanding his ways,

answers are shaped accordingly: such questions, and the symbols or acts that express them, alter or become obsolete in the course of cultural develop-

are

ment; to understand the answers one must understand

saints of the

Church. Only love

the questions that preoccupy an age or a culture; they

object

reveal the true nature of anything.

their

more profound because they resemble our own more than others that are less familiar to us. Vico's relativity went further than Montesquieu's. If his view was correct, it was are not constant nor necessarily

it

general; that reason

The

—a

he could make

bland and arrogant French and thought. Hamann's theses rested

one and only one structure of reality which the enlightened philosopher can see as it truly is, and which he can (at least in principle) is

as

superficiality of the

of cultures and on the consequently fallacious character of the idea that there

remote

detestable elegance, clarity, and

to him,

the,

of looking at the universe

which

is

his

book no

less

than the revelations of the Bible and the Fathers and

is

— can

— for

a person or an It

not possible to love formulae, general propositions,

laws, the abstractions of science, the vast system of

— symbols too general to be — with which the French lumieres have

concepts and categories close to reality

subversive of the very notion of absolute truths and of

blinded themselves to concrete reality, to the real

a perfect society founded on them, not merely in

experience which only direct acquaintance, especially by the senses provide.

practice but in principle.

However, Vico was

little

and the question of how much influence he had had, before his New Science was revived by Michelet a century after it was written, is still uncertain. If Vico wished to shake the pillars on which the read,

Hamann

glories in the fact that

Hume

has success-

fully destroyed the rationalist claim that there

a priori route to reality, insisting that all

and

belief ultimately rest

is

an

knowledge

on acquaintance with the

103

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT Hume

data of direct perception.

rightly supposes that

he could not eat an egg or drink a he did not believe belief

— what

their

in

Hamann

existence;

other sensation. True knowledge

how

it

—

rest

on any

as taste or

direct perception of

is

and concepts are never, no matter

may

specific they

little

water

the data of

prefers to call faith

grounds and require evidence as individual entities,

glass of

be, wholly

adequate to the

full-

ness of the individual experience. "Individuum est in-

wrote Goethe

effabile, "

Lavater

in

the physiognomist

to

J.

Hamann whom Goethe proThe sciences may be of use in prac-

the spirit of

foundly admired.

but no concatenation of concepts will

tical matters;

give one an understanding of a man, of a work of of

what

is

K.

art,

conveyed by gestures, symbols, verbal and

.

.

endowed with

divine attributes?" History alone

scribe their world

and

in

in particular the

poets de-

the language of passion and

inspired imagination. "The entire treasure of human knowledge and happiness lies in images"; that is why the language of primitive man, sensuous and imaginative, is poetical and irrational. "Poetry is the native language of mankind, and gardening is more ancient

than agriculture,

painting than writing, song than

recitation, proverbs than rational conclusions, barter

than trade." Originality, genius, direct expression, the Bible or Shakespeare fashion the color, shape, living flesh of

the world, which analytical science, revealing

only the skeleton, cannot begin to do.

Hamann

is

first

in the line of thinkers

who

accuse

nonverbal, of the style, the spiritual essence, of a hu-

rationalism and scientism of using analysis to distort

man

reality: he is followed by Herder, Jacobi, Moser who were influenced by Shaftesbury, Young, and Burke's anti-intellectualist diatribes, and they, in their turn, were echoed by romantic writers in many lands. The most eloquent spokesman of this attitude is Schelling, whose thought was reproduced vividly by Bergson at

movement, a culture; nor for that matter which speaks to one everywhere if only

being, a

of the Deity

one has ears to hear and eyes to see. What is real is individual, that is, is what it is in virtue of its uniquefrom other things, events, thoughts, and not in virtue of what it has in common with them, which is all that the generalizing sciences seek ness, its differences

Hamann,

to record. '"Feeling alone," said

abstract terms

.

.

.

"gives to

hands, feet, wings"; and again

"God

speaks to us in poetical words, addressed to the senses, not in abstractions for the learned," and so must any-

one

who

has something to say that matters,

who

speaks

to another person.

Hamann

took

inner personal

theories or specula-

little interest in

tions about the external world; life

he cared only for the

and therefore only

of the individual,

for art, religious experience, the senses, personal rela-

which the analytic truths of scientific reason him to reduce to meaningless ciphers. "God is a poet, not a mathematician," and it is men who, like Kant, suffer from a "gnostic hatred of matter" that provide us with endless verbal constructions words that are taken for concepts, and worse still, concepts tionships,

seemed

to

—

that are taken for real things. Scientists invent systems,

philosophers rearrange reality into

artificial patterns,

shut their eyes to reality, and build castles in the

"When data

are given you,

why do you

Systems are mere prisons of the

spirit,

air.

seek for ficta?"

and they lead

not only to distortion in the sphere of knowledge, but to the erection of built in

monstrous bureaucratic machines,

accordance with the rules that ignore the

teeming variety of the living world, the untidy and asymmetrical inner lives of men, and crush them into conformity for the sake of some ideological chimera unrelated to the union of spirit and tutes the real world.

with

104

.

yields concrete truth,

its

weening

"What

is

universality, infallibility

flesh that consti-

much lauded

this .

.

.

reason

certainty, over-

claims, but an ens rationis, a stuffed

dummy

the beginning of this century. antirationalist thinkers for

of reality in

by the

its

He

is

whom

unanalyzable flow

static, spatial

the father of those

the seamless whole is

the natural sciences. That to dissect a romantic

misrepresented

metaphors of mathematics and

pronouncement which

is

is

to

murder

is

the motto of an

entire nineteenth-century movement of which Hamann was a most passionate and implacable forerunner. Scientific dissection leads to cold political dehumanization, to the straitjacket of lifeless French rules in which the living body of passionate and poetical Germans is to be held fast by the Solomon of Prussia, Frederick the Great, who knows so much and understands so little. The archenemy is Voltaire, whom Herder called a "senile child" with a corrosive wit in place of human feeling. The influence of Rousseau, particularly of his early writings, on this movement in Germany, which came to be called Sturm und Drang, was profound. Rousseau's impassioned pleas for direct vision and natural feeling, his denunciation of the artificial social roles which civilization forces men to play against the true ends and needs of their natures, his idealization of more primitive, spontaneous human societies, his contrast between natural self-expression and the crippling artificiality of social divisions and conventions which rob men of dignity and freedom, and promote privilege, power, and arbitrary bullying at one, and humiliating obsequiousness at the other, end of the human scale, and so distorts all human relations, appealed to Hamann and his followers. But even Rousseau did not seem to them to go far enough.

Despite everything, Rousseau believed

in a timeless set

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT which

of truths

engraved on

men

all

could read, for they were

more durable than

their hearts in letters

bronze, therebv conceding the authority of Natural

Law, a

empty

vast, cold,

abstraction.

To Hamann and

his followers all rules or precepts are deadly;

mav be

they

necessary for the conduct of day-to-day

life,

into") the outlook, the individual character of

an

artistic

tradition, a literature, a social organization, a people,

a culture, a period of history. of

we must

individuals,

To understand the actions

understand the "organic"

structure of the society in terms of

minds and

activities

and habits of

its

which alone the members can be

but nothing great was ever achieved by following them.

understood. Like Vico, he believed that to understand

English critics were right in supposing that originality

a religion, or a

entailed breaking rules, that every creative act, every

illuminating insight,

obtained by ignoring the rules

is

of despotic legislators. Rules, he declared, are vestal virgins: unless they are violated there will

Nature

capable of wild fantasy, and

is

presumption

ish

men ful

as

is

who

are like sleepwalkers truly

philos-

are secure and success-

reality;

if

they saw reality

they might go out of their minds.

is,

Language life

mere childnarrow

a wild dance, and so-called practical

because they are blind to it

issue.

in the

"puny" and desiccated

rationalist categories of

ophers. Nature

it is

imprison her

to seek to

be no

is

the direct expression of the historical

of societies

and peoples: "every court, every school,

every profession, every corporation, every sect has

own

we

language";

its

penetrate the meaning of this

work of art, or a national character, one must "enter into" the unique conditions of its life: those who have been storm-tossed on the waves of the North Sea can

fully

(as

he was during

voyage

his

West)

to the

understand the songs of the old Skalds as those

who have never

seen grim northern sailors coping with

the elements never will; the Bible can truly be under-

stood only by those

who attempt

experience of primitive shepherds

To grade the merits

to enter into the in the

Judean

hills.

of cultural wholes, of the leg-

acy of entire traditions, by applying a collection of dogmatic rules claiming universal validity, enunciated by the Parisian arbiters of taste,

is

vanity and

own unique Schwerpunkt ("center of gravity") and unless we grasp it we cannot understand its character or value. From blindness.

Every culture has

its

language by "the passion" of "a lover, a friend, an

this

intimate," not by rules, imaginary universal keys which

preservation of primitive cultures which have a unique

open nothing. The French philosophes and

contribution to make, his love of almost every ex-

followers

lish

tell

us that

men

their

Eng-

seek only to obtain

pleasure and avoid pain, but this

is

absurd.

Men

seek

to live, create, love, hate, eat, drink, worship, sacrifice,

understand, and they seek this because they can-

not help

who

it.

Life

is

action.

knowable only by those

It is

look within themselves and perform the "hell-

ride" (Hollenfahrt) of self-examination, as the great

founders of Pietism taught

us.

deathly

Before a

embrace

which robs

all it

— Spener,

man of

Francke, Bengel

has liberated himself from the

impersonal,

touches of

life

scientific

and

we come

to be what we While Hamann spoke J.

thought

individuality,

how

he

man and

profoundly interested

experience in history. While the

natural

sciences

and

eagerly profiting by their findings, particularly in biol-

ogy and physiology, and conceding a good deal more to the French than the fanatical Hamann was willing to do, Herder in that part of his doctrine which entered into the texture of the thought of the

movements

that

he inspired, deliberately aimed against the sociological assumptions of the French Enlightenment. He believed that to understand anything

was

to understand

it

in

and development, and that this required a capacity which he called Einfiihlung ("feeling its

individuality

human

spirit,

simply being what

religion, national life tion,

it

work

is.

the

of the imagination,

Art, morality, custom,

grow out

of

immemorial

tradi-

are created by entire societies living an inte-

grated communal life. The frontiers and divisions drawn between and within such unitary expressions of collective imaginative response to

ience are nothing but gorizations by the dull,

common

exper-

and distorting catedogmatic pedants of a later

artificial

age.

Who

are the authors of the songs, the epics, the

the entire soul of which is poured out in all they are and do. Nothing is more barbarous than to ignore or trample on a cultural heritage. Hence Herder's condemnation of the Romans for crushing native civilizations, or of the Church (despite the fact that he was himself a Lutheran clergyman) for forcibly baptizing the Baits and so forcing them into a Christian mold

G. von Herder (1744-1803),

in

for

concern with

in irregular, isolated flashes

are.

his

pression of the

passionate

why

or

attempted to construct a coherent system to explain the nature of

Herder's

myths, the temples, the mores of a people, the clothes they wear, the language they use? The people itself,

cannot understand himself or others, or

of insight, his disciple

— have

spring

alien to their natural traditions, or of British missionaries for

doing

ants of Asia

this to the

whose

Indians and other inhabit-

were being by the imposition of alien social forms of education that were not

exquisite native cultures

ruthlessly destroyed

systems, religions,

and could only warp their natural development. Herder was no nationalist: he supposed that different cultures could and should flourish fruitfully side by theirs

105

COUNTER-EXLIGHTENMENT many

side like so

peaceful flowers in the great

human

garden; nevertheless, the seeds of nationalism are un-

mistakably present in his fervid attacks on hollow

cosmopolitanism and universalism

which he

(with

charged the French philosophes); they grew apace

among

the greatest inspirer of cultural national-

is

among

ism

nineteenth-century disciples.

his aggressive

Herder

the nationalities oppressed by the Austro-

Hungarian, Turkish, and Russian empires, and

ulti-

mately of direct political nationalism as well, much as he abhorred it. in Austria and Germany, and by infectious reaction, in other lands as well.

He

rejected

the absolute criteria of progress then fashionable in

no culture

Paris:

a mere means towards another;

is

human achievement, every human society is be judged by its own internal standards. In spite every

the fact that in later in a

somewhat vague

men and

all

is

represented as devel-

The

kills

tree of

too,

contemporary,

Herder's

(1720-94), the

about the old

the

historical sociologist,

first

life

Moser

Justus

who wrote

of his native region of Osnabriick

Western Germany, said that "every age had

style,"

death.

life.

So,

in

knowledge

every war has

its

own

its

own

particular tone, the affairs

common Humanitat which embraces

of State have a specific coloring, dress

inner connections with religion and the sciences; that

all

the sciences,

it

is

his

and

and manner have

earlier, relativistic passion for the individual essence

Zeitstil

and flavor of each culture that most profoundly influenced the European imagination. For Voltaire,

"local reason" for this or that institution that

and

Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Condorcet, there

societies

universal civilization of

is

only

which now one nation, now

another, represents the richest flowering. For Herder

Volksstil are everything; that there is

is

a

not

be universal. Moser maintained that and persons could be understood only by means of "a total impression," not by isolation of elecannot

ment from element

natural

manner of analytical chemwhat Voltaire had not grasped when he mocked the fact that a law which applied in one German village was contradicted by another in a neighboring one: it is by such rich variety, founded upon ancient, unbroken tradition that the

than that for food or drink or security or procreation.

tyrannies of uniform systems, such as those of Louis

One

XIV

there

is

a plurality of incommensurable cultures. To

belong to a given community, to be connected with its members by indissoluble and impalpable ties of

common and

language, historical memory, habit, tradition,

feeling,

is

a basic

human need no

its

less

nation can understand and sympathize with the

institutions of another only

own mean

to

itself.

because

it

knows how much

Cosmopolitanism

is

the shedding

makes one most human, most oneself. Hence the attack upon what is regarded as the false mechanical model of mankind used by scientifically minded French philosophes (Herder makes an exception for Diderot alone, with whose writings, wayward and imaginative and full of sudden insights, he felt a

of

all

that

genuine

affinity)

who

understand only machine-like,

causal factors, or the arbitrary will of individual kings

and

legislators

and commanders, sometimes wise and

ists; this,

he

in the

tells us, is

were avoided; it is so were preserved. Although the influence was not direct, these are the very tones one hears in the works of Edmund Burke and many later romantic, vitalistic, intuitionist, and irrationalist writers, both conservative and socialist, or Frederick the Great,

that freedoms

who defend

the value of organic forms of social

life.

Burke's famous onslaught on the principles of the

French revolutionaries was founded upon the self-same appeal to the "myriad strands" that bind into a historically utilitarian

human

beings

hallowed whole, contrasted with the

model of society

as a trading

company held

virtuous and altruistic, at other times, self-interested

together solely by contractual obligations, the world

or corrupt or stupid or vicious. But the forces that

of "economists, sophisters, and calculators"

shape

men

to age

and culture

are far

more complex, and to culture

differ

frightened

when

I

from age

and cannot be contained

in these simple cut-and-dried formulae. "I

106

is

tree of (science-dominated)

the arts and

oping towards a all

of

he attempted to construct which the whole of mankind,

fashion,

language, tradition, local feeling; uniformity

to

life

a theory of history in

Germans can be truly creative only among Germans; Jews only if they are restored to the ancient soil of Palestine. Those who are forcibly pulled up by the roots wither in a foreign environment when they survive at all: Europeans lose their virtue in America, Icelanders decay in Denmark. Imitation of models (unlike unconscious, unperceived, spontaneous influences by one society on another) leads to artificiality, feeble imitativeness, degraded art and life. Germans must be Germans and not third-rate Frenchmen; life lies in remaining steeped in one's own

times.'"

am

always

hear a whole nation or period

blind and

make

a family, a tribe, a nation, a

association of

thing

who

are

deaf to the unanalyzable relationships that

human

movement, any

beings held together by some-

more than a quest for mutual advantage, or by by anything that is not mutual love, loyalty,

characterized in a few short words; for what a vast

force, or

multitude of differences

is embraced by the word Middle Ages,' or 'ancient and modern

common

'nation,' or 'the

in the last half of the eighteenth century

history, emotion,

and outlook. This emphasis on nonra-

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT tional factors,

whether connected with specific religious which stresses the value of the individ-

beliefs or not,

to ancient historical roots

his

by the enthusiastic populist

stated

acute dislike for political coercion,

empires, political authority, and

all

forms of imposed

organization; or by Moser, moderate Hanoverian conservative; or

by Lavater, altogether unconcerned with

by Burke, brought up in a different tradirespectful towards Church and State and the au-

politics; or

tion,

thority of aristocracies

and

elites sanctified

by

history,

can

name

at a rational reorganization of society in the

and

of universal moral

intellectual ideals.

At the same time abhorrence of

inspired radical protest in the works of William Blake, of the

young

Schiller,

ern Europe. Above

turbulence in

and of populist writers

all,

it

Germany

in East-

contributed to unpolitical

in the

second third of the

The

work is a which represents an early form, not unlike the contemporary erotic fantasies of the Marquis de Sade, of a craving for escape from imposed rules and laws whether of scientific violent,

artist.

inspiration of this

individualism,

radical

reason or of political or ecclesiastical authority, royalor republican, despotic or democratic.

ist

By an odd paradox,

it

the profoundly rational,

is

unromantic Kant, with

exact, all

scientific expertise

at last stretch himself to his full stature as a sub-

lime creative

these doctrines clearly constitute a resistance to at-

tempts

in Sicily, 1839), leads his central

periences of more than "Gothic" intensity, to an island where there is total freedom in personal relations, all rules and conventions have finally been flung to the winds, where man in an anarchist-communist society

strongly conservative and, indeed, reactionary implica-

Whether

Inseln (1787; trans, as Ardinghello;

Rambles

and immemorial

corrupted by the sophistries of subtle "reasoners," has tions.

Artist's

characters after a bloodstained succession of wild ex-

custom, to the wisdom of simple, sturdy peasants un-

Herder with

an

impalpable,

ual, the peculiar (das Eigentumliche), the

and appeals

und die gliickseligen or

forms of Schwdrmerei,

his lifelong

who

is

in

hatred of

through

part,

exaggeration and distortion of at least one of his doc-

one of the fathers of

trines,

this

unbridled individ-

ualism. Kant's moral doctrines stressed the fact that

determinism was not compatible with morality, since only those

who

are the true authors of their

own

acts,

asphyxiating philistinism of the

which they are free to perform or not perform, can be praised or blamed for what they do. Since responsibility entails power of choice, those who cannot freely choose are morally no more accountable than stocks and stones. Thereby Kant initiated a cult of moral autonomy, according to which only those who act and

or the cruel injustices of the small and stuffy courts of

are not acted upon,

eighteenth century: the plays of such leaders of the

Sturm und Drang as J. M. R. Lenz, F. M. von Klinger, H. W. von Gerstenberg, and J. A. Leisewitz are outbursts against every form of organized social or political life.

What provoked them may have been the German middle class,

stupid and arbitrary

German

princelings, but

what they

attacked with equal violence was the entire tidy orderlife by the principles of reason and scientificknowledge advocated by the progressive thinkers of France, England, and Italy. Lenz regards nature as a wild whirlpool into which a man of feeling and temperament will throw himself if he is to experience the

ing of

fullness of life; for him, for C. F. D. Schubart,

and

for Leisewitz art and, in particular, literature are pas-

whose actions spring from a decibe guided by freely adopted sion of the moral inclination, and not from against be principles, if need of factors beyond their pressure causal the inescapable will to

— physical, physiological, psychological (such as emotion, desire, habit) — can properly be considered to control

or, indeed, moral agents at all. Kant acknowledged a profound debt to Rousseau who, particularly in the "profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar" in the fourth book of his Emile, spoke of man as an active

be free

with the passivity of material nature,

forms of self-assertion which look on all acceptance of conventional forms as but "delaved death." Nothing is more characteristic of the entire Sturm und Drang movement than Herder's cry "I am

being

not here to think, but to be, feel, live!", or "heart!

will,

warmth! blood! humanity! life!" French reasoning is pale and ghostly. It is this that inspired Goethe's reac-

Rousseau

tion in the seventies to Holbach's

choose the good; he

sionate

in contrast

a possessor of a will

which makes him

the temptations of the senses. "I

my

vices

and

free through

made known is

my

directly

free to resist

a slave through

remorse";

it is

the active

by "feeling," which

"stronger than reason

ment] which

am

[i.e.

fights against it," that

for

prudential argu-

enables

man

to

rich vitality of the Gothic cathedral at Strasbourg, in

need be, against "the laws of the body," and so makes himself worthy of happiness. But although this doctrine of the will as a capacity not determined by the causal stream is

which, under Herder's guidance, he saw one of the

directed against the sensationalist positivism of Helve-

Systeme de

la

nature

a repulsive, "Cimmerian, corpse-like" treatise, which had no relation to the marvellous, inexhaustibly as

noblest expressions of the

German

spirit in the

Middle

Ages, of which the critics of the Augustan age understood nothing. J. J. W. Heinse in his fantasy Ardinghello

tius or Condillac,

moral

will,

of Natural

it

acts, if

and has an

affinity to Kant's free

does not leave the objective framework

Law which

governs things as well as per-

107

CO UNTER-EXLIGHTEXMEXT and prescribes the same immutable, universal all men. This emphasis upon the will at the expense of contemplative thought and perception, which function within the predetermined grooves of the categories of sons,

seauian break between

goals to

a

mind

the

that

man cannot

German conception

escape, enters deeply into

freedom as entailing resistance to nature and not harmonious collusion with her overcoming of natural inclination, and rising to Promethean resistance to coercion, whether by things

the

or by men. This, in

of moral

its

turn, led to the rejection of

the doctrine that to understand that

is

knowledge demonstrates the

view

to accept the

rational necessity

and

and nature has occurred,

spirit

has been inflicted on humanity which art

seeks to avenge, but

knows

it

cannot

fully heal.

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a mystical metaphysician

deeply influenced by Hamann. cannot reconcile the

demands in it

my

of the soul

and the

heart: as soon as

I

"The

intellect:

try to carry

it

to

my

light

is

intellect,

goes out." Spinoza was for him the greatest master

since Plato of the rational vision of the universe; but for Jacobi this

is

death

in life:

it

does not answer the

burning questions of the soul whose homelessness

in

the chilly world of the intellect only self-surrender to faith in a

transcendent

God

will

remedy.

therefore the value of what, in his irrational state,

may

have seemed to man mere obstacles

This

philosophers

with

development of a primal, nonrational force that can be grasped only by intuitive powers of men of

conception opposed as reality, in its later,

ending

fight, at

it

is

in his path.

reconciliation

to

romantic form, favored the un-

times ending in tragic defeat, against

which cares nothing for and against the accumulated weight of

the forces of blind nature,

human

ideals,

authority and tradition

— the

vast incubus of the un-

made concrete

in the oppressive in-

stitutions of the present. Thus,

when William Blake

criticized past,

denounces Newton and Locke as the great enemies, it is because he accuses them of seeking to imprison the free human spirit in constricting, intellectual machines; Sets all

when he says "Robin Redbreast in a cage/ Heaven in a rage," the cage is none other

than Newtonian physics that crushes the the free, spontaneous spirit.

"Art

is

life

of the

life

out of

untrammeled human

the Tree of Life, Science

is

the Tree of

Schelling was perhaps the most eloquent of

who

all

represented the Universe as the

imaginative genius

— poets,

the self-

philosophers, theologians,

or statesmen. Nature, a living organism, responds to questions put by the

man

of genius, while the

man

of genius responds to the questions put by nature, for

they conspire with each other; imaginative insight

a thinkno matter whose — an a — becomes conscious of the contours of the future,

alone, er's

of

artist's,

which the mere calculating

seer's,

intellect

and analytic

capacity of the natural scientist or the politician, or

any other earthbound empiricist has no conception. This faith in a peculiar, intuitive, spiritual faculty

which goes by various names primary imagination

— but

is

— reason, understanding,

always differentiated from

the critical analytic intellect favored by the Enlighten-

Death"; Locke, Newton, the French raisonneurs, the

ment, the contrast between

reign of cautious, pragmatic respectability and Pitt's

or

method

it

and the analytic faculty

that collects, classifies, experiments, takes

the tragic hero Karl Moor, which ends in failure,

and establishes becomes a commonplace used thereafter by Fichte, Hegel, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and other antirationalist Carlyle,

crime, and death, cannot be averted by mere know-

thinkers of the nineteenth century, culminating in

ledge,

by a better understanding of human nature or of social conditions or of anything else; knowledge is

Bergson and later antipositivist schools. This, too, is the source of that stream

not enough.

The doctrine of the Enlightenment that we can discover what men truly want and can provide technical means and rules of conduct for their greatest

river of romanticism

permanent satisfaction and that this is what leads to wisdom, virtue, happiness is not compatible with Karl Moor's proud and stormy spirit which rejects the ideals of his milieu, and will not be assuaged by the reformist gradualism and belief in rational organization advocated by, say, the Aufkldrung of the previous generation. "Law has distorted to a snail's pace what could have been an eagle's flight" (The Robbers, Act I, Scene 2). Human nature is no longer conceived of as,

of a unique personality, individual or collective, con-

police

There

were is

all,

for him, parts of the

something of

this,

too,

in

same nightmare. Schiller's

early

play Die Rauber (1781), where the violent protest of

in principle, capable of

l(Jo

wound

being brought into harmony

with the natural world: for Schiller some

fatal

Rous-

to pieces, reassembles, defines, deduces, probabilities,

in the great

which looks upon every human activity as a form of individual self-expression, and on art, and indeed every creative activity, as a stamping scious or unconscious,

upon the matter or the medium

and upon which it functions, seeking to realize values which are themselves not given but generated in

bv the process of creation itself. Hence the denial, both in theory and in practice, of the central doctrine of the Enlightenment according to which the rules in accordance with which men should live and act and create are pre-established, dictated by nature herself. For Joshua Reynolds, for example, "The Great Style" is

the realization of the artist's vision of eternal forms,

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT prototypes beyond the confusions of ordinary experience, which his genius enables

which he seeks at his

him

to discern

and

to reproduce, with all the techniques

command, on

his

canvas or in marble or bronze.

method which Descartes and Galileo had inaugurated, and which for all their doubts and qualifications even such the very heart of the rational and experimental

sharp deviationists as

Hume

Montesquieu, or

and

Such mimesis or copying from ideal patterns, is, for those who derive from the German tradition of revolt

truly ardent

against French classicism, not true creation. Creation

found but made, not discovered but created; they are

creation of ends as well as means, of values as well

is

embodiments; the vision that

as their

into colors or sounds

is

I

seek to translate

generated by me, and peculiar

me, unlike anything that has ever been, or above all, not something that is common to to

men

other versal,

common, The notion

seeking to realize a

because rational,

ideal.

will be,

Rules

all

practitioners of

Abbe Batteux had

may be an

taught,

is

an

artist,

goal that is

I

objectively

my

or

beautiful,

it,

as Boileau

rejected in toto.

own, not because

it

What

this creative self

Some regard

it

be identified with a cosmic to

which

finite

men

ual, mortal, flesh

or

other

and blood

a divine principle

with their

selves, like

romantic

defiantly

romantics,

some, like Schelling and Coleridge,

conceive

this

activity as the gradual

growth into self-consciousness

of the world spirit that

is

perpetually moving towards

self-perfection, others conceive the

cosmic process as

having no goal, as a purposeless and meaningless

or metaphysical systems that claim to provide rational

or

aspire as sparks do to the great it

German

of the

according to

virtuous,

differs

spirit,

central flame; others identify

The most extravagant

transcendent entity to

may be as a

this

movement, which men, because they cannot face this bleak and despair-inducing truth, seek to hide from themselves by constructing comforting illusions in the form of religions that promise rewards in another life,

or

true,

approved by public opinion or demanded by majorities or tradition, but because it is my own. doctrine.

be by

to

methods are most appropriate, but as a perpetual activity of the spirit and of nature which is the selfsame spirit in a dormant state; of this constant upward movement the man of genius is the most conscious agent who thus embodies the forward activity that advances the life of the spirit most significantly. While

a philosopher, a statesman, because the is

pronounced

structure that can be studied or described by whatever

aid here or there, but the least spark

seek to realize

is

or that metaphysical doctrine.

work

that a

and creates its own practice, which uncreative craftsmen may imitate and so be saying nothing of their own. I create as I do, whether

am

be realized because they are mine, or ours, whatever

the nature of the true self

shared, uni-

of genius destroys them,

I

opponents of classicism, values are not

Novalis or Tieck, looked on the Universe not as a

any other work of man) is creation in accordance with rules dictated by objective nature, and or the

to

and firmly accepted. For the

fully

me and

of art (or

therefore binding for

Rousseau and Kant,

own

individ-

Byron, or Hugo,

writers

and painters.

justification

for

both for what there

what men

is

in

the world and

do and can do and should do; or scientific

systems that perform the task of appearing to give sense to a process that

which

less flux

is

is,

what

in fact, purposeless, a

it

is,

form-

a brute fact, signifying

Others, again, identified the creative self with a super-

nothing. This doctrine, elaborated by Schopenhauer,

personal "organism" of which they saw themselves as

lies at

elements or members

the cultivation of the absurd in art

class, or

History

— nation, or church, or culture, or

itself,

a mighty force of which they

the root of

much modern

well as of the extremes of egoistic anarchism driven to their furthest lengths

sive nationalism, self-identification with the interests

of his moods,

of the class, the culture or the race, or the forces of

most

progress

irrationalists.

and justifies committed from calculation of selfish advantage or some other mundane motive this family of political and moral of history, something that at once explains

acts

which might be abhorred or despised

if

—

conceptions

is

so

many

expressions of a doctrine of

on defiant rejection of the central theses of the Enlightenment according to which what is true, or right, or good, or beautiful, can be shown to be valid for all men by the correct application of

self-realization based

objective methods of discovery

open

to

anyone to use and

guise, this attitude

is

and interpretation,

verify. In its full

romantic

an open declaration of war upon

The

brilliant

rejection

Enlightenment

by Max Stirner and,

in some by Nietzsche, Kierkegaard (Hamann's and profound disciple), and modern

conceived their earthly selves as emanations. Aggres-

— with the wave of a future-directed dynamism

and of and thought, as

existentialism

—

of

central

the

principles

universality, objectivity,

of

the

rationality,

and the capacity to provide permanent solutions to all genuine problems of life or thought, and (not less important) accessibility of rational methods to any thinker armed with adequate powers of observation and logical thinking

— occurred

in various forms,

conserva-

tive or liberal, reactionary or revolutionary,

depend-

ing on which systematic order was being attacked.

Those, for example, like Schlegel,

and

Cobbett, to

in

Adam

Muller or Friedrich

some moods, Coleridge or William

whom the principles of the French Revolu-

109

—

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT Napoleonic organization came to seem the

tion or the

most

obstacles to free

fatal

human

self-expression,

trifles

— the

change

Gregorian calendar

to the

in the

adopted conservative or reactionary forms of irrationalism and at times looked back with nostalgia towards

mid-eighteenth century, or Peter the Great's decision

some golden past, such as the prescientific ages of faith, and tended (not always continuously or con-

at times

sistently) to

support clerical and aristocratic resistance

and the mechanization of

to

shave the boyars' beards, provoke violent resistance,

dangerous rebellions. But when

men

are sent

to war, to exterminate beings as innocent as themselves

no purpose that either army can grasp, they go

for

by industrialism and the new hierarchies of power and authority. Those who looked upon the traditional

exalted and

forces of authority or hierarchical organization as the

Enlightenment teaches, for mutual cooperation and

most oppressive of social forces

peaceful happiness,

to modernization

life

— Byron, for example,

obediently to their deaths and scarcely ever mutiny.

When

the destructive fulfilled.

instinct

Men do when

or George Sand, or, so far as they can be called

they are never so united as

romantic, Shelley or Georg Biichner

upon which

—

formed the "left wing" of the romantic revolt. Others despised public life in principle, and occupied themselves with the cultivation of the inner spirit. In

all

cases the organiza-

not

evoked men

is

come

makes

history

when given

a

it

is

the desire to sacrifice themselves or others as strong as

Maistre

clear that

common altar

immolate themselves. This

to

feel

together, as the

so because is

at least

De

any pacific or constructive impulse.

felt that

men

are by nature, evil, self-destruc-

good, or morally neutral and malleable by education

tive animals, full of conflicting drives, who do not know what they want, want what they do not want, do not want what they want, and it is only when they are kept under constant control and rigorous discipline by some authoritarian elite a church, a state, or some other body from whose decisions there is no appeal that they can hope to survive and be saved. Reasoning, analysis, criticism shake the foundations and destroy

or environment, or, at worst, deeply defective but

the fabric of society. If the source of authority

capable of radical and indefinite improvement by ra-

declared to be rational,

tion of life

by the application of rational or

scientific

methods, any form of regimentation or conscription of

men

was

for utilitarian ends or organized happiness,

regarded as the philistine enemy.

What

the entire Enlightenment has in

common

is

denial of the central Christian doctrine of original sin,

believing instead that

man

is

born either innocent and

tional education in favorable circumstances, or

by a

revolutionary reorganization of society as demanded, for example, sin

that

by Rousseau.

the

It is this

denial of original

Church condemned most severely

Rousseau's £mile, despite

in

attack on materialism,

—

doubt; but its

questioned

if it is

authority

is

invites

it

it

is

questioning and

may be argued away;

undermined by able

sophists,

and

this

accelerates the forces of chaos, as in France during

weak and

the reign of the

to survive

and

liberal

Louis XVI.

If

the

and knaves

frustrate the fools

State

is

utilitarianism,

who

will

mation of

authority must be absolute, so terrifying, indeed, that

its

and atheism. It is the powerful reaffirPauline and Augustinian doctrine that is the sharpest single weapon in the root and branch attack on the entire Enlightenment by the French counterrevolutionary writers, de Maistre, Bonald, and

the least attempt to question it must entail immediate and terrible sanctions: only then will men leam to obey it. Without a clear hierarchy of authority awe-

Chateaubriand,

inspiring

One

this

at the turn of the century.

of the darkest of the reactionary forms of the

fight against the

Enlightenment, as well as one of the

most interesting and influential, is to be found in the doctrines of Joseph de Maistre and his followers and allies who formed the spearhead of the counterrevolu-

will

always seek to destroy

power

the source of

it,

— men's incurably destructive

—

instincts

breed chaos and mutual extermination. The su-

preme power

— especially

seek to explain or justify

the

Church

— must

itself in rational

never

terms; for

what one man can demonstrate, another may be able to refute.

Reason

is

the thinnest of walls against the

De

raging seas of violent emotion: on so insecure a basis

Maistre held the Enlightenment to be one of the most

no permanent structure can ever be erected. Irrationality, so far from being an obstacle, has historically led to peace, security, and strength, and is indispens-

tion in the early nineteenth century in Europe.

most ruinous, forms of social thinking. The conception of man as naturally disposed foolish, as well as the

to benevolence, cooperation,

and peace,

capable of being shaped in

this direction

priate education or legislation, false.

is

for

The benevolent Dame Nature

and Helvetius

110

nature aggressive and destructive; they rebel over

of

— republics,

any rate, by approhim shallow and

elective monarchies, democracies, associations founded

Hume, Holbach,

lapse

or, at

is an absurd figment. History and zoology are the most reliable guides to Nature: they show her to be a field of unceasing slaughter. Men are by

able to society:

it

is

rational institutions

on the enlightened principles of free love soonest;

authoritarian

churches,

— that

monarchies and aristocracies, traditional forms of like

the highly irrational

institution

founded on lifelong marriage

—

it

is

col-

hereditary

of the

life,

family

they that persist.

CO UNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT proposed to rationalize communication by inventing a universal language free from the

The

philosophies

and

irrational survivals, the idiosyncratic twists

the capricious peculiarities of existing tongues;

turns,

if

they

would be disastrous, for it is precisely the individual historical development of a language that belongs to a people that absorbs, enshrines, and succeed, this

wealth of half-conscious,

incapsulates

a

remembered

collective experience.

vast

half-

What men

call

and prejudice are but the crust of custom which by sheer survival has showed itself proof against the ravages and vicissitudes of its long life; to lose it superstition

is

to lose the shield that protects men's national exist-

ence,

their

spirit,

the

memories,

habits,

that

faith

have made them what they are. The conception of human nature which the radical critics have promulgated and on which their whole house of cards is

an infantile fantasy. Rousseau asks

who was born

free

why

it is

that sheep

who

everywhere nibble

man

nevertheless everywhere

is

chains; one might as well ask, says de Maistre, it is

rests

that

in

why

are born carnivorous, nevertheless grass.

Men

are not

made

for free-

dom, nor for peace. Such freedom and peace as they have had was obtained only under wisely authoritarian governments that have repressed the destructive critical intellect and its socially disintegrating effects. Scientists,

lawyers, journalists, democrats,

intellectuals,

Protestants, Jews,

Jansenists,

atheists,

these are the

enemy that never ceases to gnaw at of society. The best government the world known was that of the Romans: they were

sleepless

be

to

the

scientists themselves: for this

clever,

volatile,

politically

the vitals

armies that, drunk with blood and passion, preserved

France

XIV

— than

fumbling and bungling. Louis

liberal

ignored the clever reasoners of his time, sup-

full of glory in his own bed. XVI played amiably with subversive ideologists Louis who had drunk at the poisoned well of Voltaire, and

pressed heresy, and died

died on the scaffold. Repression, censorship, absolute sovereignty, judgments from which there

no appeal,

is

these are the only methods of governing creatures

whom

de Maistre described as half men, half beasts,

at once seeking after God and Him, longing to love and create, but in perpetual danger of falling victims to their own blindly destructive drives, held in check by a combination of force and traditional authority and, above all, a faith incarnated in historically hallowed institutions that reason dare not touch. Nation and race are realities;

monstrous Centaurs fighting

the

artificial

of constitution-mongers

creations

bound to collapse. "Nations," born and die like individuals. .

are

said de Maistre, "are .

soul, especially visible in their

.

They have

a

common

And

language."

since

they are individuals, they should endeavor to remain "of one race." So, too, Bonald regrets that the French

nation has abandoned

its

ideal of racial purity, thus

weakening itself. The question of whether the French are descended from Franks or Gauls, whether their institutions are

Roman

or

German

in origin,

implication that this could dictate a form of present, although

it

has

its

the

roots in political contro-

has ever

versies in the sixteenth, seventeenth,

too wise

eenth centuries,

now

with the life in

takes

the

and early

color

of

eight-

mystical

purpose they hired

organicism which transcends, and

incapable

forms of discursive reasoning. Natural growth alone

Greeks.

Not the luminous intellect, but dark instincts govern man and societies; only elites which understand this, and keep the people from too much secular education that is bound to make them over-critical and discontented, can give to men as much happiness and justice and freedom as, in this vale of tears, men can expect to have. But at the back of everything, must lurk the potentiality of force, of coercive power.

In a striking image de Maistre says that

all

social

is

proof against,

all is

Only time, only history, can create authority that men can worship and obey: mere military dictatorship, a work of individual human hands, is brutal force without spiritual power: he calls it batonocratie, and predicts the end of Napoleon. His closest intellectual ally was Bonald, who in similar strain denounced individualism whether as a social doctrine or an intellectual method of analyzing historical phenomena. The inventions of man, he declared, are precarious aids compared real.

order in the end rests upon one man, the executioner.

to divinely ordained institutions that penetrate

Nobody wishes

very being, language, family, the worship of God. By

to associate with this hideous figure,

yet on him, so long as

men

are weak, sinful, unable

whom were

they invented?

Whenever

a child

to control their passions, constantly lured to their

doom

there are father, mother, family, God; this

by

evil

order,

of

all

all

peace,

sufficient

of

men drawn from

to

educate or control the passions

there

is

temptations or foolish dreams, rests all

society.

a vacuum,

The notion

that reason

power rushes

is

in;

is

all

ridiculous.

When

even the blood-

that

is

genuine and

lasting, not the

is

man's

is

born

the basis

arrangements

the world of shopkeepers, with their

contracts, or promises, or utility, or material goods.

Liberal individualism inspired by the insolent

self-

stained monster Robespierre, a scourge sent by the

confidence of mutinous intellectuals has led to the

Lord

human competition

had departed from the true faith, is more to be admired because he did hold France together and repelled her enemies, and created to punish a country that

—

in-

which the strongest and the fastest win and the weak go to the wall. Only the Church can organize a society in which of bourgeois society in

111

.

ENTROPY the ablest are held back so that the whole of society

de Hume," Revue de mdtaphysique

can progress and the weakest and

J.

greedy also

least

].

G.

Hamann

reach the goal.

Hamann

These gloomy doctrines became the inspiration of monarchist politics in France, and together with the notion of romantic heroism and the sharp contrast between creative and uncreative, historic and unhis-

Unity anil Language.

torical individuals

and

and

ism, imperialism,

nations, duly inspired national-

most violent and

finally, in their

pathological form, fascist and totalitarian doctrines in the twentieth centurv

The

failure of the

of the

system.

its

to bring

about

declared ends marks the end

French Enlightenment as a movement and a Its heirs and counter-movements that, to some

degree, they stimulated and affected in their turn,

romantic and irrational creeds and movements, political

and

and peaceful, individualist and and totalitarian, and their impact, belong to another page of history. aesthetic, violent

collective, anarchic

BIBLIOGRAPHY M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp Oxford and New York. 195.3). R. Ayroult, La genese du romantisme allemand, 2 vols. (Paris, 1961 M. Beyer-Froelich, Die Entwicklung des deutschen Selbstzeugnisse: Vol. 7, Pietismus 1.

und Rationalismus

(Leipzig, 1933), Vol.

Sturm und Drune sought only in cases where the common law remedy was inadequate. The common law courts exercised their jurisdiction through "writs" which directed the sheriff to seize the defendant's property and use it to satisfy a judgment against him, or through other writs which affected rights in rem; but Chancery acted onlv in personam, on the person directly. This was consistent with the theory that equity makes its appeal to the conscience of the party. A disobedient party was held by the Chancellor to be in contempt of the King, and thus

bers of the Sanhedrin. never

Since the

law, custom, and morals, and since the Bible places

such stress on equity that the

name

for

32:15; 33:5, 26)

word

for

became

it

a

— — equity jurisdiction could not become Jeshurun, Yoshenin iDeuteronomv

Israel

separately institutionalized but had to be

woven

into

the very fabric of rabbinic jurisprudence.

/V

While the

rationale, the

maxims, and the precedents

for equitable adjudication are all part of our ancient

Hebraic-Creek-Roman heritage, which flowed directly canon law. and into the secular law where the Church had influence, it was in the Anglo-Norman and Anglo-American legal systems that equitv won its into the

Before the

Norman

conquest,

the courts of the

Angles, the Saxons, and the other peoples of England

administered the

customarv laws peculiar

tribal,

to

each tribe or social group. With the Normans came the feudal social order, and beginning in

1178 the

successors of William organized royal courts to administer the

to all

King's justice according to the law

England

Roman conception of jus gentium, common ingredients in the customs

common

common

— perhaps something comparable to the

tribes" (Maine, p. 29)

in a

"the

sum

of the

of the old Italian

— what came to be known as "the

law." These courts exercised considerable

and adopted procedures to meet new conditions. But in the middle of the fourteenth century the expansion of the common law seems to have stopped, and the courts said that if the law is to be altered in any respect, Parliament must take the initiative.

discretion out of a sense of equity or fairness,

way

a rebel. Since the Chancellor could order

him

the parties before

to

he could keep a matter

do what equity demanded, in

controversy indefinitely

before him, and decree various steps or actions affecting

clearest formulation.

juris-

diction

Thus he could order

it.

specific

performance of a

contract, while a court of law could onlv

award dam-

ages for a breach. Unlike the King's courts of law,

Chancery could enforce

by compelling the demands of fairness or conscience. In due course, certain maxims came to be associated with equitable jurisdiction, among them: "He who seeks equity must do equity." "He who comes into equity must come with clean hands." "Equity suffers not a right to be without a remedv." There was, naturally, criticism of a court that trusts

trustee to act in accordance with the

candidly admitted that science, in the

as,

in the

it sought guidance in confamous statement by John Selden

seventeenth century (Selden's Table Talk, 1689):

Parliament did not respond to the challenge; yet

Equity is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to. Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. Tis all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a 'foot' a Chancellor's foot; what an uncertain measure that would be! One Chancellor has

considerations of equity could not be indefinitely re-

a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot.

pressed or repulsed.

The

stultification of

law

in the

'Tis the

same thing

in

the Chancellor's conscience.

royal courts created the royal remedy: the Chancellor,

the surrogate for the King in the administration of the

government, established

in his office

— the Chancery

an agency to hear grievances which the royal courts administering

common law would

cellor said that,

when he took

his

jurisdiction of a cause,

however,

now began

common

law but according to the dictates of equity. Since the Chancellor was usually a cleric the clerical

(1621-25)

—

—

Chancellor was Bishop John Williams he was naturally much more familiar with

the equitable principles of the canon law of the

152

and with the praetorian

edicts in

Roman law

Church

than with

I

the contest between the

open, and the King himself, in 1616, resolved

throwing

was a matter of grace or conscience, and that he would render justice, not according to the technicalities

last

James

courts and Chancery broke out in the

The Chan-

not hear.

it

of the

In the reign of

common law

an order on

weight on the side of the its

to restrain itself

latter.

it

by

Equity,

and to impose

work. Francis Bacon, as Chancellor

(1617-21), contributed to this effort. Before long equity itself

to

became

suffer

a system of precedents and

from

Chancellor was,

rigor it

was

juris.

itself

The conscience

said in 1672

the

by Lord Chancellor

Nottingham, not his natural or personal, but and official, conscience. After the Puritan Revolution,

began of

when

his civil

the struggle

EQUITY IN between royal power and Parliament was resolved

in

flows from the official

LAW AND

ETHICS

and impersonal conscience of

favor of the latter, the Chancellor, as the voice of the

the judge and not from his personal and moral con-

King's conscience, naturally declined; the

common law which had sided with Parliament, gained in prestige and authority. They now benefited from Sir Edward Coke's earlier struggle against James I, in which Coke was the champion of the supremacy of

science. In part this has

courts,

latures

the

common

law against prerogative.

Beginning

in the

eighteenth century the

common

law courts proceeded to introduce doctrines and pro-

which

cedures

for

had been limited

centuries

to

character

who spoke

Chancery. These reforms were effected sometimes by

without knowing

and sometimes by court decision. In time it became apparent that there was little if any justification for the two systems of courts, and a movement

yers speak equity on

statute

way

got under

to

combine the two

into a single court

system. This was accomplished by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875, which,

among

other things, fused

law and equity.

become

possible because legis-

and courts generally have learned from equity the need constantly to reform the law, substantively and procedurally, and they do so, though the bench and bar remain on the whole conservative. But judges no longer speak of the demands of conscience. They use formulas more acceptable to a secular, democratic society, and to a learned profession. But like Moliere's

it

— when

it,

prose for more than forty years

Anglo-American judges and lawmany occasions without knowing

they protect victims of fraud;

women

protect married

when they seek misfortune; when they rights;

for specific

in

relief

when they

their separate

from

distress,

property

mistake or

seek an injunction or an order performance of a contract; when they argue

is more important than form; when they evade the technicality of the law in the interest

that substance try to

when they seek to compel which he should have done they in fact follow precedents laid down by the great Chancellors, like Thomas More, Lord Ellesmere, Francis Bacon, Lord Cowper, Lord Harcourt, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Eldon. Equity remains the spirit by which the law is reformed, in one way or another, to become more responsive to the moral demands of of the intent of the law;

The American

colonists lost

no love on the King's

Remembering the the hands of some judges followand that equity was somehow

courts or the King's conscience.

oppression suffered at ing the Restoration,

associated with royal prerogative, they looked with

more favor on

the law of the

Hebrew

Scriptures than

common law and equity of England.

on the

the Constitution of the United States

Thus,

when

was framed,

it

provided for a single system of federal courts, with

power

as to

both law and equity; and some states also

However, this did not mean the two systems of law. It only meant that times the court sat as a court of law and at times

adopted

this pattern.

fusion of the at

—

a party to do that

society.

This equity,

spirit

and

manifests

itself

under other names than further than any

much

times goes

at

chancellor could have anticipated. For example, Jerome Frank's early and influential work, Law and the

Modem Mind

(1930)

is

extremely skeptical of the

effectiveness of laws formulated in general terms,

and

was more economical than two separate courts, could not but contribute in time toward a fusion. Some states set up entirely separate courts of equity and of law. New York State in 1848 broke new ground by adopting the code drafted by David Dudley Field, which effectively merged the two systems. In

places almost exclusive reliance on fact-finding.

The

1938 the federal courts adopted the essentials of the Field Code, and in 1948 New Jersey, by then the only

judicial process: judges are at their best

as a court of equity.

because

state

But

adopted

in part

it

with a Court of Chancery, also effected a merger

of the separate courts.

however,

is

still

The

right to equitable relief,

based on the inadequacy of "legal"

relief; equity's principles,

main

this device,

maxims, and precedents

re-

relevant.

VI

While equitable principles and procedures are identified as such, their force

is

now

still

largely historical,

and institutional, rather than moral. Lord Chancellor Nottingham would note that their force professional,

result

seems to be a reversal of

the exception

is,

be decided on

Aristotle's formulation:

in fact, the rule;

its

own

facts.

each case

What

is

or should

Aristotle admitted

only reluctantly and guardedly, Frank and the ruleskeptics accepted as the very core

and crown of the

when

consciously exercise their discretion and their

they

power

to "individualize" justice.

A

on and a belief that exceptions are in fact the rule can be found in contemporary moral theory e.g., Paul Lehmann's Ethics in a Christian Context (1963), Bishop John A. T Robinson's Honest to God (1963) and Christian Morals Today (1964), and Joseph similar denigration of general rules, a stress

fact situations,

—

Fletcher's Situation Ethics (1966). Interestingly, this

antinomian, "situational," "contextual" approach has

been developed mainly by theologians

— a development

that recalls the fact that at least in

England equity

153

ESCHATOLOGY was to

projected by chancellors

first

whom

was quite

of conscience to

whom

familiar

and congenial, and

"the law of conscience" was, in theory and

in fact, law.

But

it is

doubtful

if

would

the chancellors

wish to take credit for developments which give central place to facts rather than to rules, and which seem to replace the rule of

tion

ESCHATOLOGY

who were churchmen

the theological and philosophical conception

law with the rule of the excep-

— the rule of equity.

The Concept. Eschatology, or "the doctrine of last is todav often employed as a comprehensive term for all religious ideas of the afterlife. In the following, however, we shall employ the concept Eschatology in its original sense: eschatology describes and explains the goal and ultimate destiny of human histhings,"

tory.

Eschatology thus presupposes a unique linear flow

of history from the beginning to the

end of temporal

history.

Apoca.lt/ptics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Carleton

Kemp Allen, Law in

the Making. 6th ed. Oxford, \

19581 Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics,

Loeb

trans.

H. Raekham,

(London and Cambridge, Henry Freese, Loeb Classical Library (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1926). William W. Buckland, Equity in Roman Law (London, 1911). Huntington Cairns. Legal Philosophy from Classical Library, revised ed.

Mass.. 1934); idem. The "Art" of Rhetoric, trans. John

Plato to Hegel (Baltimore, 1949). Cicero,

De

republica

— De

of redemption to be expected

upon

the ending of the

world; and in these, of course, Christian influences are often present.

The

eschatological beliefs of Western

as well as of Islamic cultural history are rooted in late

Jewish apocalvptics in which the historical perspectives of the

Old Testament are fused with aspects of

Iranian eschatology.

Classical Library

Generally speaking, the idea was widespread in

(London and Cambridge. Mass.. 1938). Boaz Cohen, Law and Tradition in Judaism (New York, 1959); idem, "Letter and Spirit in Jewish and Roman Law," Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume (New York, 1953). David Daube, Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge, 1947). G. C. Field, The Philosophy of Plato (Oxford and New York, 1949). William S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 16 vols. (London, 1903-66). esp. 3rd ed. (1945), Vol. V. James Willard Hurst, Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston, 1950). John W.

antiquity that time proceeds cyclically, just as nature

legihus, trans. Clinton

W. Keyes, Loeb

Law and

Legal Theory of the Greeks (Oxford, 1956). Maimonides, Code, Book 14, The Book of Judges, trans.

Jones,

Abraham M. Hershman (New Haven, 1949). M. R. Konvitz. Morals in the Hebrew Scriptures, Plato, and Aristotle," in Social Responsibility in an Age of Revolution, ed. L. Finkelstein (New York, 1971). Henry Maine, Ancient Law (London, 1861), Ch. III. Frederic W. Maitland, Sketch of English Legal History (New York, 1915); idem, Equity,

"Law and

also

Forms of Action

and W.

J.

at

Common Law,

VVittaker (Cambridge,

Herbert Danby, Makkoth

Morrow, Laws,

I.

eds. A.

1909).

H. Chaytor

Mishnah,

trans.

10 (Oxford, 1933). Glenn B.

Plato's Cretan City (Princeton, I960). Plato, Dia-

logues, trans.

Benjamin Jowett (Oxford, 1892); idem, The Taylor (London, 1934). Theodore F. T.

trans. A. E.

Plucknett, Concise History of the

(London,

1956).

Common Law,

Frederick Pollock,

Max

Essays in

5th ed.

the

Law

does: history returns, after the expiration of a cosmic

year

— or aeon — to

its

beginning; events repeat them-

on the other

selves in perpetual reiteration. In Iran,

hand, the notion of a circular pattern was abandoned quite earlv. History

was viewed

content of world events

is

as a straight line.

The

men between

the battle for

the good god and the evil spirit. At the end of the world the dead are awakened and judged, the evil spirit is destroyed by the hosts of the good god, and there begins an eternally blessed existence on an earth freed

from

all evil.

This blissful period heralds the

eschaton of history; nothing

is

finale,

the battle between light and darkness, even

thought

is

borrowed from the

the

said of a repetition of

cyclical

if

the

view that the

eschaton corresponds to the felicitous beginnings of the world.

This Iranian belief concerning the end of time en-

countered Old Testament piety and was thereby intro-

duced ily

was all the more readview of history had the Old Testament from time immemo-

into Jewish thought. This

possible because the cyclical

been alien to rial.

God, the Creator of the world, guides the history

Handbook of Anglo-

of His chosen people along a straight line of historical

American Legal History (St. Paul, 1936). Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, by various authors (Boston,

development toward specific goals: He furnishes the Promised Land; He leads them through the catastrophe

(London, 1922), Ch. VII.

1908), Vol.

II,

Outlines

Badin,

Part IV. A. E. Taylor, Plato: the

His Work, 6th ed.

(New

York,

1952).

of Historical Jurisprudence,

Man and

Paul Vinogradoff, 2

vols.

(London,

1920-22).

MILTON [See also Equality; Justice;

lo4

There are myths among manv peoples

of the collapse of the world, sometimes also of a time

Precedent; Stoicism.]

B.

KONVITZ

Law, Common, Natural; Legal

of exile into a

new period

of redemption;

He

promises

House were not eschatological to the extent that they were not connected with the idea of the final end of all history. Under the influence of Iranian eschatology this Old Testament view of history was developed in time into the people a powerful Prince of Peace out of the

of David, etc. But these ideas

ESCHATOLOGY an apocalyptic eschatology, the oldest documents of

which

still

made

canon (Daniel; Isaiah

now

into the

includes not only the history of the children of

The good god now sets into motion the process of redemption in order to liberate the sparks of light from the power of Darkness and separate sparks of light.

to return

them

world of Light. As soon

to the

all its

peo-

process of redemption

Simultaneously, in place of the fluctuating

this-

collapse into Nothing again, so that history

Israel,

ple.

way

Old Testament 24-26). This apocalyptic view

their

but the whole of world history with

worldJv ideas of the goals of Israelite history, it substicosmic catastrophe that leads

to the

end

and of

its

master, the Devil,

and passing through an eschatological period of to a new world The depiction of the

re-

will

comes

definitively to an end.

While

tutes the expectation of a

of the old aeon

as this

completed the world

is

it

is

for apocalyptics

God

controls the old aeon,

nonetheless subject to the

for the Gnostic the

power

of sin so that

world and history are represented

demption yields

of absolute and perfect

mostly as a work of the Devil. Thus though one cannot

salvation.

old aeon can in conse-

properly speak of a goal of history

quence borrow its coloration from the cyclical view of history, and the history of the expiring world can be seen as a process of decline from a Golden Age. But the apocalyptic conflagration of the world at the end of the old epoch does not introduce any repetition of events but, in accordance with dualistic thought, leads into an ahistorical

new

aeon.

The

subjects of

the notion of an end of history

thought.

One can

is

in

Gnosticism, yet

at the root of Gnostic-

therefore speak of an unhistorical

Gnostic eschatology, and the asceticism of

this

life

becomes an adequate expression of an eschatological self-consciousness that strives for liberation from the

world

itself.

which was a serious competitor of

Gnosticism,

history are no longer primarily peoples, but individual

Christianity well into the fourth century, certainly

persons who,

the West (e.g., NeoWest and the East, in opposition to anti-Gnostic dualism, the quest for the meaning and the goal of world history controlled by God proved victorious. The answer given by apocalyptics, that the meaning of history lies concealed in its escha-

if

they have already died, are conse-

quently to be raised to judgment at the end of the old aeon.

The time and manner

ing point are decided by history, but to

of the eschatological turn-

God

alone as the master of

some scattered prophetic

course of history to

its

figures the

end, as well as the eschatological

outcome, has been revealed by

God himself in advance

influenced

forces in the

Thus the process of history unfolds inalterably in accordance with a plan laid down by God. Not infrequently a balance is struck between the historically immanent Old Testament hope and the

itual

).

transcendental apocalyptic expectation such that the

apocalyptic end of history

is

preceded by a

final

mes-

hence an interregnum between the old and the new aeons in which the elect rule together with the Messiah. Texts such as Revelation 20 have perceptibly influenced the history of the sianic reign within history;

West

expecting

in

a

thousand-year

(chiliasm); for although the eschatological

of

tological goal, incited powerful historically effective

(hence apocalypse, from the Greek apokalyptein, "to reveal"

thought

the

Platonism), yet in both the

West above

all,

and influenced both

spir-

and world history. The philosophy of history, a branch of inquiry still unknown to Greek antiquitv. could spring up only on a biblical foundation. Every current quest for the ultimate meaning of world history springs from biblical faith. Primitive Christianity. Jesus was an apocalyptic. He

was not indeed

interested in elaborating the depiction

of the final apocalyptic drama, but he foretold the

beginning of

last

events in the imminent future. His

exorcisms heralded the end of the old aeon. Even to

interregnum

the impious, provided they

interregnum

ing opened the

way

were repentant, his preachminute to salvation

at the last

some interchange with

under God's reign, which very soon, without human participation, would appear throughout the earth as a bolt of lightning from God's hand. When the Crucified One appeared to His disciples

another manifestation of eschatological world per-

after His death, they interpreted Jesus' resurrection as

spective arose in the confluence of Iranian and Greek

the beginning of the universal resurrection of the dead,

is

conceived as historically immanent, revolutionary

movements have often been

fired in anticipation of

Gnosticism. At about the same time as the apocalyptics, and not without it,

spiritual thought, viz., Gnosticism.

it.

Hebrew

Gnosticism

is

like-

wise associated with the Iranian dualism of a good and

God.

On

i.e.,

as the onset of last events. Jesus

the dead to be resurrected

(I

consummation

is

the

first

this view, a personage from the world under the power of Darkness during the battle between the two principles in primeval times.

true that the

The

eschatological redemptive act, themselves as a

evil

of Light

fell

powers then created the world as a place of sojourn and human bodies as prisons to hold this figure of Light captured and divided by them into so many evil

of

Corinthians 15:20).

all

It is

of apocalyptic last things

did not follow; nonetheless early Christianity continued to understand the events surrounding Christ as God's

munity of the redeemed, and their age eschatological

redemption.

In

other

as a

com-

time of

words:

"The

155

ESCHATOLOGY community did not understand

primitive Christian itself as

an

nomenon.

an eschatological, phe-

historical, but as

already no longer belongs to this world,

It

dawning" consciousness, and

but to the future ahistorical era that (R. in

Bultmann, p. 42). Out of this view of the subsequent course of

is

history, the prob-

lem arose how the eschatological community of the redeemed should live in history, and how historical time should be denominated from an eschatological point of view. As a solution of this problem there

emerged the extraordinary

dialectic of the primitive it is

by the

when

speak-

Christian concept of time, characterized as conflict of "It

is

here

now" and "Not

yet"

ing of eschatological redemption. Paul and John dwelt

with particular intensity on it

expression after his

this

problem and each gave

own manner.

Both understood their time as an age amid ages: the already

faithful lives

he

now

in the

new

aeon, even though

not yet free of the danger of relapse into the

is

old aeon.

The

unfaithful

world, but by faith

may

still

still

belongs to the expiring

find access to the

commu-

means the abandonment and living in the grace of God encountered by man in Christ. This faith redeems life: it brings righteousness and peace and joy (Romans 14:17). The faithful is a new creature (II Corinthians 5:17). To him is come the day nity of the redeemed. "Faith"

word

of the material

as the basis of life,

of salvation (II Corinthians 6:2), he lives in love

(I

and dies unto the Lord (Romans 14:7-9). The demonic forces of the expiring aeon have already been obliged to surrender their Corinthians

13),

and

power to Christ. The delay in the events this

is

not

felt to

conception.

It is

lives

time of

we

Peter 3:8

II

of time

is

postponed

to

by the read that with the Lord a distance. Already

thousand years are as one day. At

the

first

Church kept eschatological anticipation

alive with the injunction to

man knows

keep ever watchful for no

the day and hour of the end (Mark 13:32f.).

But the triumph of the Church in the

caused interest

in

Roman

state

an indeterminate eschaton to decline.

As a legally constituted instrument of salvation the Church bridges the period from the first Coming of Jesus until the end of history on his return. Ticonius and Augustine both equate the thousand-year interregnum that is to precede the actual eschaton with the age of the Church, and thus delay the end of the world by a great interval, even if the number 1000 is not taken literally. The Church has in general regarded with suspicion and has restrained any heightened interest in eschatology and in the revolutionary pathos easily associated with

it.

All

the same, one

apocalyptic book, the Revelation of Saint John, finally

made

its

way

in the fourth

into the

canon of the

New

Testament

century despite widespread opposition.

Thus apocalyptic eschatology

as the goal of history

has remained a significant feature of the

New Testament

and part of dogma, and can thus reappear

in the fore-

ground from time to time. It becomes manifest again in the Montanism of the second century with its acute expectation of an imminent end, but even at this time

was viewed

by the greater Church. Around

critically

the year 1000

many awaited

the end of the thousand-

vear reign and therewith the end of the world; as a definitive

be a

consummation of last problem in view of

difficult

even possible

for

John to renounce

result there

the

Day

Floris

of

was a temporary increase of interest Judgment (Peter Lombard). Joachim

in

of

1202) recalculated the epochs of history in

(d.

dogma

of the Trinity and anticipated

altogether the apocalyptic eschatology of the future

the light of the

including the return of Christ to which Paul clings:

that, following the

the believer has already been judged (John 3:18);

Son, the onset of the age of the Holy Ghost as the

it

age of the Father and that of the

longer of the world (John 17:11-16). The Christian Church. The primitive Christian un-

epoch assuring complete salvation would come in 1260. Nicholas of Lyra likewise counts on the imminent beginning of the last events in his commentary on the

derstanding of the present as eschatological time

Revelation of Saint John, written in 1329. In pre-

is

true that he

still

lives in the

world, but he

is

is

no

soon

weakened in the Church. The present simply becomes a time of preparation for the future salvation promised by the sacraments. Hope for the future is less connected with the end of the world than with the salvation of the individual soul after death. The doctrine of purgatory, in which individual souls are clearly

Reformation

awakened

times

apocalyptic

particularly

among

the Church. Pre- Reformation and Reformation figures

saw

in

the

Pope the

Antichrist

before the end; thus Luther

is

who would appear

able to announce the

end of the world

reformers inclined to call their age the

it.

survives

The all

teleological

mode

of historical thought

the same, and apocalyptic eschatology

is

who

suffered acutely from the unsatisfactory conditions in

flagration at the

with

were

speculations

those theologians

purified, displaces the expectation of a

cosmic conend of time; the Day of Judgment loses ground in favor of individual judgment after death and the tenets of penitence and indulgence connected

156

not abandoned, but the end some indeterminate temporal

as

twilight of the world.

manists,

apocalyptic

imminent,

just as

many

of the

final age,

the

Under the influence of the huthought

retreated

wholly

Zwingli, and eschatological fanatics, associated in

in

some

places with groups of enthusiasts and the Anabaptist

ESCHATOLOGY God

for

the time being by force of arms, soon discredited

all

movement seeking

to install the

Kingdom

radical speculations concerning the

eves of

end

of

of time in the

the reformers. Reformation catechisms con-

all

tained hardly any eschatological propositions of an

apocalyptic nature: Article XVII of the Augsburg Confession

denounces the chiliasm of the fanatics

as a

Jewish doctrine. Luther dissociated himself sharplv

from the social revolutionary thoughts of Thomas

Munzer (who died

in the

War

Peasant

in 1525).

from

Melchior Hofmann, the inspired prophet of the end of

the world as 3836, and in

of Jesus

Despite

his friends in Minister.

this,

apocalvptic anticipations of the end remained

alive

and were augmented

in

times of plague, in the

Thirty Years' War, and indeed everywhere that, from the time of the Counter-Reformation, minorities lived under repression and persecution and hoped for re-

demption from

their plight.

Above

cles all kinds of speculations

all in Pietistic cir-

concerning the onset of

(3 vols.,

who

Hess,

J. J.

— a clear sign

the author of the

first Life 1768-72), and in 1774 wrote a work

Of the Kingdom of Essay on the Plan of God's Provisions and Revelations; in the nineteenth century, J. C. K. Hofmann, among others, organized the whole of history of Salvationist dogmatics entitled

God.

An

on the basis of the Bible into a scheme of prophecy and fulfillment; more recently, in O. Cullmann, above all. who takes Christ as the "Center of Time," ebbing in undulating lines toward its end.

Among

and from the communistic fanaticism of

time,

Bernard Rottmann and

— was

of historical interest

the influential theologians of the present

whose suppositions are markedly determined by apocalyptic eschatologv are W. Pannenberg and J. Moltmann. Pannenberg sees the resurrection of Jesus as a prolepsis of final events. Anyone who relies on the resurrection of Jesus to

view

it

to its end,

thus enabled in advance

is

and hence

meaningful including that part of

to grasp history as

not yet played out.

it

Beginning with the resurrection of Jesus, Moltmann, Evangelische Kommentare (1968), erects a theol-

the thousand-year reign constantly reappeared. Fol-

in his

lowing the precedent of Jacob Bohme, Philipp Jacob

ogy of hope teaching that all our forces are to be concentrated on the final apocalyptic goal of history, for Jesus' resurrection heralds the end of the world as the end of misery, injustice, and mortality. "The social

Spener, for example, combined exegesis of Revelation

20 with the optimistic expectation of a better time for the Church in the future; and the Swabian Pietist, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger

hope

into this

"carnality

drew the

for,

he

says,

the end of God's ways."

is

Many contemporary

sects derive

concerning the end of the world

The group

entire universe

of historical salvation:

revolution of unjust conditions of transcendent losophers, G.

from speculations

in the

near future.

hope

the

is

immanent obverse

in the resurrection."

Kriiger and K.

Among

phi-

Lowith. for example,

associate themselves closely with the traditional biblical eschatologv. In all the scholars

more or

mentioned, there

was formed on the basis of the American William Miller's computations that Christ would return in 1843-44 to found the

pronounced association of the idea of progress that has appeared in modern

thousand-year reign. In the origination of such Catho-

of the sudden end of history

of Adventists, for example,

lic-Apostolics as the

New

Apostolic

Communion

lies

the conviction that in preparation for the return of

is,

of course, a

less

times with apocalyptic eschatologv. is

The conception

replaced by the inter-

pretation of history as a process aspiring to a climax. Idealism.

One stream

of thought running in opposi-

Christ twelve apostles must stand ready; these indeed

tion to the activation of apocalyptic eschatologv

met

represented by

1835 and together awaited last events. The Jehovah's Witness movement was based on the asserin

tion of another American, Charles

T

Christ returned in secret in 1874 and

would begin

its

is

By the time of the the third century, Clement

idealization.

Alexandrian theologians of

the imminent approach of the end recur frequently,

and Origen had already banished anv sensual eschatological expectations under Platonic and Gnostic influence. For them, all Being is spiritual. The souls of men are in increasing measure purified and by stages re-

Russell,

that his

thousand-year reign in 1914. Similar expectations of particularly in times of catastrophe and often on the

turned to their goal, divinity; until

basis of fantastic interpretations of Revelation, without

and the old order of the world, the material world,

however

ends.

at

once leading to the stable formation of

Such thoughts remained alive

sects.

The remarkable

increase in apocalvptic fanaticism

since the eighteenth century

universal

emergence of

is

connected with the

historical consciousness that

took place at that time; this in turn led to numerous

conceptions of an eschatologically oriented Salvationist theology; in the eighteenth century, for example, in J.

A. Bengel,

who computed

the date of the

end of

mystical circles, in which there

is

finally all are

in

saved

some places in some associa-

often

between the actual withdrawal of spirit from and apocalvptic conceptions of the end of history. In such circles Luke 17:21 plays a major role: "The kingdom of God is within you." The authentic tion

history

eschatological event

God

(J.

lies in

the union of the soul with

Arndt). Apocalvptics are therefore only of

lO

/

ESCHATOLOGY "We

marginal interest:

new

of a

rebirth

.

.

have enough on the sabbath we can well consign

the other

.

Cod's omnipotence"

to

Bdhme). Thus

(J.

in the last

mysticism takes the place of eschatology:

analysis

"When

I

abandon time

myself

enclose

Vngelus

in

I

am

God, and

myself eternity/ and

God

enclose

me"

in

Silesius).

For Fichte likewise, a leading representative of

"German

called

so long as this

attain to the rest, peace,

dom

of

God by

man can

idealism,"

everywhere and always,

so-

here on earth

is

his

own

desire,

and blessedness of the King-

conceiving of himself

own

in his

spirit

and can thus abide and rest Fichte combines this pure idealism

as a part of the Absolute in the

One.

Still

with eschatological aspects: the more

Kingdom

of

God

themselves, the

as a

more

men

realize the

moral and spiritual realm within will

then manifest

it

itself in

the

world of appearances also. Men must therefore form themselves in accordance with reason "until the species

copy of

actually exists as a perfected

its

eternal proto-

type in reason, and thus the purpose of earthly

life

would be attained, its goal manifest, and mankind would enter upon the higher spheres of eternitv"; ". for in the end everything must surely flow into the safe harbor of eternal rest and blessedness; in the end the Kingdom of God must appear, and His strength, and His power, and His glory" (Werke, V, .

.

own

man,

i.e.,

for all practical purposes in Hegel's

Christian philosophy of religion, on the basis of

which both Church and State a rational social order. of the

The

The

will

be consolidated

in

eschatological judgment

world collapses in unison with world history. view of the Kingdom of God, deriving

idealistic

from Fichte and Hegel, surrenders the notion of a sudden reversal of cosmic conditions by the intervention of God, and favors instead the idea of progress. Furthermore, interest in the definitive end of history diminishes altogether, and

replaced by the con-

is

struction of a course of history striving to attain

God

culminating climax.

its

functions as Spirit in this

progressive historical development.

The theology

of

down

to

the nineteenth century, from Schleiermacher

so-called liberal theology, similarly shows itself mark-

edly under idealistic influence. At least the idea of progress exercises great influence. R. Rothe

could expect the Christian

felt

he

state, the civitas Dei, as the

Kingdom of God. For A. Ritschl God, the perfection of which certainly lies in the remote future, comes to realization in the expanding community of those acting morally out of perfected form of the the

Kingdom

of

neighborly love. Secularization. ness that

The awakening

advanced

Salvationist

historical conscious-

schemes

in

theology

since the eighteenth century led in the course of a

general secularization of culture to a secular idea of

260f.).

Following the

lines of the

Alexandrian theologians,

eschatology

also.

Although

faith

was maintained

in the

Hegel also found that the Real, the Absolute-Divine, is Spirit. But here, as opposed to Origen, Spirit does

thought of the end or of the goal of history proceeding

not stand as a general idea in relation to natural reality;

to divine intervention in the course of history; the goal

rather is

it

realizes itself in the particular: everything real

spiritual,

everything spiritual

is

In the self-

real.

consciousness of the thinking spirit there

is

a reconcili-

ation in an ideal unity of the "for-itself" of universal spirit

here and the particular which derives from

there.

"The goal, which is Absolute Knowledge or knowing itself as Spirit, finds its pathway in the

it

in linear fashion,

no further consideration was given

was thought of as purely immanent. The path to this goal was in part seen as progress

of history

to ever greater perfection of the

human

— where clung more firmly to biblical thought — was interpreted or promoted

and

it

condition;

modes

as a

it

of

sudden

recollection of spiritual forms as they are in themselves

The pioneers of this development were the humanists, above all, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who wanted to see the Kingdom of God

and

as a universal realm of

Spirit

as they

accomplish the organization of their

spirit-

revolutionary incursion.

peace already realized

Movements of chiliasm and

in earthly

pacifism, with their

ual kingdom," Hegel says in the chapter of the Phenomenology of Mind. This process of the selfunfolding of Spirit thus takes place historically, and

society.

indeed in accordance with inalterable laws,

Reformation for the complete secularization of eschatology; Thomas Miinzer is one of the "saints" of com-

final

apocalyptics; but

God

does not write

its

just as in

laws from

immanent within history writes them from within. Instead of divine providence we find the "cunning of (spiritual) reason," which is even able to make humans act unconsciously and render seemwithout, but the spirit

ingly senseless or destructive actions in history service-

able for the purposes of Spirit.

attained

158

of itself in

when

Spirit

conscious thought,

comes

when

it

The end into

its

of history

own

gains absolute

in

is

self-

knowledge

intensive expectation of such an earthly realm of peace, have thus prepared the ground since the time of the

munism.

The Enlightenment, which led the battle of reason was able to view, to the extent that it was open to historical thinking, the worldwide triumph of human reason as the necessary outcome of

against unreason,

historical

(Turgot,

development Condorcet,

Lessing's essay

— not

the

that

history

of

positivists).

itself

Compare

also

Human

Spe-

on "The Education of the

ESCHATOLOGY cies."

But while Marx saw history striving with the necessity

pects the

of a natural law toward the proletarian revolution as

Under the spell of the Enlightenment Kant exKingdom of God in the guise of a worldwide ethical commonwealth, in any case as the end of a "progression stretching to eternity" of mankind involved in "the continuous progress and approach to the highest good possible on earth." In calling this view "chiliasm" Kant correctly observes the close connec-

between the devout

tion

pietistic

and the secularized

Enlightenment eschatology of the eighteenth century (Critique of Practical Reason, It is

at

Book

work even

in the idealistic

Ch.

II,

Sec.

5).

systems described above,

for in these ideas the divine spirit

human spirit so

is

identical with the

that the eschatological climax of history

can only be attained by means of is

II,

apparent that marked secular influences were

human

activity,

and

therefore conceived of as "this-worldly." In his book

The Kingdom of Christ (1842; 1959), F. D. Maurice takes up the idealistic concept of the Kingdom of God and awaits the onset of God's reign in the immanent moral perfection of mankind. Influenced by Maurice, Charles Kingsley, for example, hopes for the progress of the

Kingdom The

social order.

of

God

in the

improvement

had

its

last

century which expected progress in

impact also on so-called

zation to

of the

influence of secularized eschatology

come about through

liberal theology of the

human

civili-

the education of indi-

vidual personality after the example of the absolute personality of Jesus, and equated such progress with

the

Kingdom

of God,

which

it

saw

in

consequence

as

moral grandeur. Even Nietzsche's hero (Ubermensch) quiet naturally represents a secularized form of the

its

eschatological goal,

many

of his followers expect

outcome of a world revoluconsciously provoked by men. These modern

the classless society as the tion

Marxist theories of revolution are the most utterly explicit expression of secularized biblical eschatology.

In the

ple of

1960s the Marxist Ernst Bloch,

Hope

The

in

Princi-

(1959), offers the most impressive account

of the connection

between Marxist expectations

future and the hopes of religious apocalypse.

for the

He

inter-

prets Marxist thought about the future as the real sense

of Judeo-Christian

eschatology, just

conversely,

as,

religious socialism could for a time represent socialist

hopes for the appropriate temporal form of the biblical

hope

Kingdom

for the

of God.

Even

at the present

time the "feedback" from Marxist eschatology to theology

in

is

some places considerable; above

nection with the so-called

hope

of social justice

is

"God

all in

con-

dead" theology,

is

considered to be the only

meaningful form of eschatological hope (Harvey Cox). Increasingly expanded planning for the future, so necessary in the

modern world, with the

prognosis ("futurology"),

is

in itself

aid of scientific-

not eschatological,

but reinforces the effectiveness of secularized eschatological

world perspectives, above

all,

of

communism

and socialism. Evolution. Since the Enlightenment the optimism

concerning progress already founded

in

humanism has

broken new ground and, coupled with awakening

his-

torical thought, leads to the idea that history strives

"new creature" of Christian hope for the end of time. The most influential proposal for secularized escha-

development. This notion of development can be con-

tology to be found after Hegel was advanced by Karl

nected, as

Marx. History develops for him, as for the apocalyptics,

the sudden end of history. In idealism

with ineluctable lawlikeness. The impelling force of

virtually

history

is

neither

God

nor, as in Hegel, the absolute

toward

even

its

goal of salvation in constant or in undulating

we have

no room

seen, with the apocalyptic idea of it

clearly leaves

for apocalyptic eschatology,

in secular eschatology

ideas of evolution

and and

World Spirit, but instead the process of production with economic contradictions obtaining at any given time, and in connection with which the development of social classes and heightening of class conflict are played out. The ultimate class in world history is the proletariat. The proletarian revolution heralds the end of class conflict and therewith, so to speak, the end of history. Marxist theory computes the objective goal

revolution are in mutual contention.

of the course of history in advance: the victorious class

ogy assimilated to apocalyptic accounts had already been initiated by Oetinger and in Schelling's philosophy of nature, although it had appeared also in a

establishes the classless society.

the world.

With

it

will

for all individuals, the evil,

come

end

It

renews and redeems

the realm of freedom

of exploitation as primeval

the triumph of the good, the reconciliation of

contradiction between light and darkness, the

God

all

Kingdom

Evolutionary

ideas

were

stimulated

particularly

(mostly they had sought the felicitous outcome of history in a remote future, and originally they

were based

on the philosophy of history) in the nineteenth' century by Darwin's scientific theories of evolution and by the enormous advances of modern technology. The solely

incorporation of the totality of Nature in an eschatol-

number

of Enlightenment figures; and thus combina-

tions of

hopes for the Kingdom of

logical Utopias are to

God and

techno-

be found since the Renaissance.

without God. The very concept of revolution,

Darwin's doctrine of the higher development of species

hitherto an expression for political upheavals in gen-

as well as faith in technological progress then led in

of

eral, takes

on an

explicitly eschatological sense in Marx.

the nineteenth century,

on the one hand,

to purely

159

ESCHATOLOGY secularized hopes for the Ubermensch and a perfected

infrequently was the case, into pessimism viewing his-

society liberated from material need, and, on the other

tory as hastening toward catastrophe

hand, to theological attempts to reconcile the evolu-

Decline of the West. 1918-22; Eng.

tionary ideas of natural science with the superseded

there

eschatology. Mention should he

in this

connec-

example, of the Scotsman fames McCosh Unitarian Minot J. Savage (d. 1918),

for

tion,

made

1894), the

id.

1926-28)

trans.,

pagan

a revival of the cyclical thought of

antiquity (as adopted by Nietzsche in his doctrine of

the Eternal Return) rather than of the eschatological

consciousness of the Bible.

tian salvationism as the pinnacle of universal evolution.

Renewal of New Testament Eschatology. The very meaning of history appears to vanish when, on the one hand, hope for the end of sacred history by the intervention of an external source fades away, and at the same time the optimistic secular eschatology of progress also dwindles; when, on the other hand, the whole

Among

question of an eschatological goal for history

and

Henry Drummond

the English theologian

also

1897), on

(d.

whose views God

natural evolution that

is

reveals Himself in a

to lead to a

"more divine"

man. By comparing the evolution of creation with a

column topped

In a capital,

Drummond

others thinking along the

twentieth century are the

same

takes Chrislines in the

Cerman philosopher Leo-

aban-

is

doned. To the extent that nihilism appears appropriate

pold Ziegler and the French Jesuit and anthropologist

we come

who associates the "God from "God striving forward," and whose

history in

not only regarded highly in Christian circles,

view of which Jesus Christ represents the turning point of the aeon, so that the present at any given period is denominated an eschatological time. This

hut also plays an important role in the Christian-

eschatological interpretation of history has manifested

Teilhard de Chardin,

above" with the thinking

is

pathos

whenever revolutionary Marxist corrected by evolutionary thought.

dialogue

Marxist is

The Abandonment of Eschatology.

In the ideal-

ization of eschatology under the influence of

despite the

some

in its

trace of the influence of biblical thought: the

course of history is

Greek

modern secularization there remains, overwhelming role of the idea of evolution,

thought and

is

viewed as goal-directed, and history

therefore viewed as meaningful.

Nonetheless, over the

last

to an increasing extent in

has

lost

200 years there has been, intellectual movements,

some

the structure of a goal-directed process; inquiry

meaning of history has become meaningless. This abandonment of eschatology in general is to be into the

ascribed in the

thought

first

derived

place to the scientific

from

British

empiricism

Hobbes, Locke, Hume) which, through

its

mode

of

(Bacon,

views on

the death of the world by entropy, by cosmic collision,

and the

possibility of

plied only a

With

atomic disintegration, have sup-

meager alternative

to traditional escha-

must be associated, after the rise of and the collapse of the optimistic Enlightenment belief in progress, a form of historical relativism which accepts only discrete caustology.

its

this

connected historical events, but rejects any mean-

ingful pattern in the totality of history, all philosophies

of history, F.

and

all

eschatological beliefs

(J.

Burckhardt,

Nietzsche). Historical interest can thus be focussed

on the past and on the modest inquiry: "How things actually were" (positivistic historiography). Or history is understood mainly aesthetically as an expression of a unified intellectual and spiritual life (W. Dilthey). When this relativism was converted, as not solely

—

vigor in the course of

among

—

Church

those theologians most

history particularly

indebted to biblical

thought. Thus for Augustine the battle in world history

between the

and the

tcrrena

civitas

Dei

civitas

is

fought out in the history of the individual in such a

manner

that Christ

is

Kingdom

of

"rebirth," even though the palpable

God

now

already here and

live as a citizen of the

is still

God

able to

through his

worldwide victory

lacking.

Luther's conviction of standing at the end of time is

own

rooted in the existential experience of his

consummated of the "old

in the

Adam"

death of Christ; that

enslaved in

be, in assumption of the

child of

God

logical!]

sin; or, as

death

the death

the case

may

Pauline utterance:

we have [eschatoGod through our Lord Jesus

justified

peace with

is,

freedom guaranteed to the

in the sense of the

"Therefore being

by

faith,

Christ" (Romans 5:1). Luther

is

able to place in the

future the present eschatological gift of salvation

forgiving grace because it

is

it

simply an unmerited

now be

is

present in faith, that

gift of

by is,

God, and thus can

seized.

In the twentieth century, so-called dialectical theol-

historical consciousness

ally

closer to a return to the biblical

of the city of

an abandonment of every form of eschatology. History

160

was

O. Spengler,

(e.g.,

ogy relying on Luther and Kierkegaard returned to the dialectical interpretation of eschatology in the

Testament, following on the rediscovery in

ment

scholarship, toward the

New

New

Testa-

end of the nineteenth

century, of the primarily apocalyptic character of the biblical (J.

message concerning the Kingdom of

God

Weiss, A. Schweitzer). Karl Barth defines the ac-

knowledgment

of Christian revelation as an insight into

the existential truth "that time

becomes

as eternity,

is "the and eternity as this moment." Time, which future Now, in past and eternal moment, the

for faith,

PROBLEM OF

EVIL, come

The

to rest."

present at any given

moment

is

thus eschatological time, and in this sense Barth writes: "Christianity that

not wholly, simply, and totally

is

eschatology has wholly, simply, and totally nothing to

do with Christ."

Above

Bultmann,

R.

all

New

edly influenced by the Kierkegaard),

has

(itself in

Testament, Luther, and

New

back on

fallen

on aspects of turn mark-

reiving

Heidegger's existential philosophy

Testament

eschatology. According to Bultmann substantial passages in

New

the

rounding Christ

Testament

the events sur-

God's ultimately valid act of

as

The annunciation

salvation.

treat

of

these

events

thus

denominates every present moment as eschatological time. For

man from

liberates

it

himself, that

the sinful compulsion to locate his

life in

from

is,

the actuality

and the possibilities of his future, by bestowing on him life out of god's charismatic future. Such existence drawn out of God's future is eschatoof his past

logical

existence,

history

is

for

with

an end. Each

at

its

coming

moment

is

temporal

all

possessed of the

moment; the The eschaton evenfrom beyond history. To

of being an eschatological

possibility

(London, 1957;

New

York, 1962). R. G. Collingwood,

Idea of History (London and

La

come pensiero

Storia

e

York,

(Bari, 1938); trans.

Theory and Practice (1916;

Cullmann,

O.

1960).

Its

The

York, 1946i. B. Croce,

come azione

Douglas Ainslie as History:

New

New

Heil

als

Ceschichte

(Tubingen, 1965); trans, as Salvation in History (New York, 1967).

J.

G. Fichte, Werke, ed.

1908-12; reprinted, 1954

—

).

F.

Medicus, 6

vols. (Leipzig,

G. Kriiger, Ceschichte und

Tradition (Stuttgart, 19491. K. Lowith,

Meaning

in History.

The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1957). H.-J. Marrou, La Connaissance historique The Meaning of History New York, Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung (Munich. 1964). W. Pannenberg, Offenharung als Ceschichte (Gottingen, 1961). O. Ploger, Theokratie und Eschatologie, 2nd ed. Neukirken, 1962). E. Staehelin, Die Verkiindigung des Paris. 1956); trans, as

1965).

J.

Retches Cottes in der Kirche Jesu Christi, 7 1965). A.

and

New

Toynbee,

J.

A

vols. (Basel, 1951;

Study of History, 12

vols.

(London

York, 1934-61).

WALTER SCHMITHALS [See

Dualism;

also

Hegelian

.

.

.

;

Existentialism;

Marxism;

Gnosticism;

Millenarianism;

God;

Perfectibility;

Progress; Sin and Salvation.]

faithful actualizes this possibility.

tuates constantly in history

the extent that apocalyptic eschatology the

New

Testament

the existential is,

this

meaning

is

retained in

mythological conception has

PROBLEM OF EVIL

of representing futurity, that

the charismatic, or the character of grace of God's

liberating word:

new

life

fulfills

itself

solely in the

acceptance of the "freedom of the children of God."

Summary. The following may be up: the problem of eschatology

and meaning of

as the goal

historical

moving

is

said in

history. Since

man

being never confronts history but

in history

he

is

summing

inquiry into the end

is

as

an

always

never able to answer the ques-

tion about the eschaton objectively,

i.e.,

as a neutral

The

idea of

evil

and the problems which

it

has pre-

sented to thinkers throughout history have expressed

men's outlooks on nature and on human experience: the fundamental philosophical distinction between a natural-scientific and a incisively the great divide in

spiritual-religious

attitude.

Scientific

naturalism has

been concerned with description and explanation and on principle has been neutral to any basic evaluation.

observer. His judgment concerning the eschaton of

But religion, men's deepest response to the Highest,

history always implies a

judgment about himself as an historical being. Regardless of whatever solution has been or will be given to the problem of eschatology we conclude: since history is still an ongoing process at the present time, and nobody is in a position to scan history from its beginning to its definitive outcome, and since the course of history does not itself indicate what its end and goal might be, the question of escha-

has been essentially and thoroughly evaluative. Going

tology remains open as a subject for systematic inquiry and can only be answered as a matter of personal

consummate perfection

decision.

their ideals

beyond the domain

of description and explanation its judgments have been verdicts either of worship or of condemnation. In a religious perspective the idea of reality has been

completely imbued with the idea of perfection: ens realissimum ens perfectissimum. First and

last,

religion

has set out with a primal and ultimate recognition of in all its aspects.

Men

have

exalted their conviction of the essential supremacy of

and have proclaimed them as divine in and final justification. The maturing development of men's ideas of God has been due to origin, sanction,

BIBLIOGRAPHY E.

Benz, Evolution and Christian Hope, trans. H. G.

Frankl

(New

Judentums

York,

im

1966).

W.

Bousset, Die Religion des

spathellenistischen

Zeitalter,

3rd.

ed.

(Tubingen, 1925). R. Bultmann, History and Eschatology

man's progress in evaluative insight and

The very growth

vision.

in spiritual intelligence

phasized the radical problem of

evil.

In

conviction religion has declared: "Great

is

its

has em-

devout

truth

and

161

PROBLEM OF

EVIL,

it

—

and likewise for the other supreme do the facts of life really and finally sustain belief in man's status in the universe? Is external

will prevail"

values. But this

nature really attuned to our highest values, or

is

it

neutral to them, or even, in a sort of counter-religious

The confirmaupon the settlement of these issues. The actuality of evils demands reconciliation with the prevailing realitv of the Divine. The problem of evil is imposed by our experienced frustration of values, by the clash between what ought to be and what actually is. Religious reflection has not been able to shirk this problem. Even a brief consideration of its treatment in the ancient religions would disclose its abysmal character. Modern philosophy and literature have expressed the persistent embroilment demonic outlook,

is it

actually malign?

tion of religious assurance hangs

of secular

thought

theodicies.

The words

the issues of the

in

traditional

of Charles Bernard Renouvier

are brought to our attention:

"Life can concern a

(Zoroaster) in ancient Iran the basic

and thus the first principle of cosmicinterpretation, was the universal opposition of good and evil. This radical conflict, evident throughout nature and in human life, indicated a cleavage reaching to the very roots of being, a

fundamental dualism. In

the Zoroastrian theology the perfect creation by Cod,

Ohrmazd), Ahura- Mazda was countered

(or

at

each

turn by Ahriman's evil work: darkness against light,

corruption and banes against life.

The

daily conflicts

all purity and health and between good and evil in our

character and careers are only incidents in the universal

war between the two creative cosmic powers. True

is in man's loyal cowarriorship with the Lord, Ahura-Mazda, in every thought and word and deed that resist and defeat and destroy Ahriman's evil crea-

religion

tion: in industrious

and productive

labor, in

pure con-

duct, truthful speech, saintly thought. This world conflict,

though immemorial, was regarded by Zarathustra

thinker only as he seeks to resolve the problem of evil"

as destined to

(Lasbax, p.

destruction of Ahriman's entire evil creation. Thus the

1).

Religious thought in India, Brahmanic and Buddhist, set

out with a firm conviction of the evil in the whole

world of tained

finite existence,

different

but these two religions enter-

and different

explanations of evil

prospects of deliverance. Brahmanic pantheism con-

templated the world and ourselves in

its

inmost reality

Infinite;

in his

is

as manifesta-

it

but considered in their apparent multiplicity,

things and persons are corrupt

hope

in

Brahman. Everything whatever, or soul, Atman, is one with the

tions of the Infinite

and

tion in

which em-

should Brahman be mani-

and

evil?

finite existence stain

Does not

this

the perfection

of the Infinite?

Buddhist reflection followed the more radical course of avoiding the pitfalls of theodicy by a fundamental It

rejected

all

Brahman and Atman no

fiery

and basic dualism of good and evil in Zoroastrian its climax, not merely in an assured

theology reached

meliorism, but in the conviction of a finally perfect

world order. Unlike the sages of India, Greek thinkers were at

home evil

in this

world and did not seek deliverance from finite existence. Beginning

through escape from

with the sixth century, philosophical reflection turned

away from wards the

the traditional polytheistic mythology to-

portrayed the process of rational mastery, aristocracy

Why

fested in this world of delusion

atheism.

overthrow and

There are

to confront resolutely the basic questions

propensity towards

in the final

substantial existence as illusory,

and the cycle of rebirth, in his absorpBrahman. The Brahmanic sages were reluctant

broiled their theodicy:

initial

end

contemplated and sovereign Reason. Most emphatically in Platonism, this rationalism was decisive in the theory of knowledge, in ethics, in metaphysics. Truth and perfection and abiding reality are all rational. Error and evil and unstable multiplicity are in the material world and in processes of sense-impressions, desires, and impulses. Our human nature is a tangle of appetites and a dynamic drive of energies, but it also possesses intelligence and should be controlled and directed by rational judgment. In the words of Socrates, the unexamined, unintelligent life is not worth living. Plato

eventual saintly

Man's only deliverance from the illusory.

veil of illusion

alike, infinite or finite.

real substances; there are onlv processes,

but

all

ideal of ultimate divine unity,

as perfect

(dominance of the

best), as the right fulfillment

them are processes operating in strict retribution. Karma. The course of human existence is a wretched round of evils and miseries. This universal woe is due to men's deluded and futile attachment to the lusts and interests of their imagined soul or self. The deliverance

self-realization of personality.

from

matter. Plato

of

and

This positive Higher

Naturalism of the Platonic philosophy of

life

did not

quite silence the tragic note in his theodicy, but

would not

yield to final negation. In

human

life

it

and

To these three cardinal truths Buddha added a fourth: his program

was always the drag of corrupt was no docile optimist; he declared: "Evils can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good"

of a life of progressive liberation from egoism, leading

(Theaetetus 176; trans. B. Jowett). But he resolutely

towards the utterly

rejected any cosmic despair:

this evil state

is

possible only through the extinc-

tion of self-engrossment.

or convictions the

162

To Zarathustra fact of existence,

selfless

blessedness of Nirvana.

in finite reality there

God desired

that all things

EVIL, should be good and nothing bad "as far as attainable."

God

alone

is

was

this

absolutely perfect; any finite

world would of necessity have its strains of imperfection. So corruption and evils are actual: to be recognized and confronted and, within the range of our rational powers, to is

be overcome. In Greek

ethics, this

Greek

the problem of reason and the passions; in

philosophy of religion, theodicy which

is

we may

to find

note here a trend in

concluding classical ex-

its

Enneads of Plotinus. Between Plato and Plotinus, Greek philosophers with one notable exception exalted reason as the mark of the supreme and perfect reality. The exception is the Epicurean materialistic view of the world process and human existence as a scrambling and unscrambling of atomic configurations and motions. So-called good and evil alike are in the mechanical contacts and reactions of our sense organs, in pleasure and pain. Against this atomism, the Stoic sages of Greece and Rome contemplated the material world itself as manifesting a hierarchical order, from the most rudimentary dust to the highest rational perfection of God. In this pression in the

cosmic scale of being,

men may

lower desires and passions the sage

yield to the drag of

or, resisting all evil lures,

would follow the lead

of rational intelligence,

which

in apathy, the passionless life of godlike serenity

alone

is

virtuous and truly good.

as a

He contemplated nature

cosmic process of the hierarchical realization of

potentialities:

each type of existence

is

the

fulfillment of capacities of a lower order

Form

and

or

in turn

has the potential capacity to serve as the Matter of a higher order of being. Aristotle's

God

is

Pure Form

or creative reason in eternal self-contemplation. In

human

Reason and Soul, to the outermost rim of

least self-

manifestation, in the world of Matter. These are

nature and experience, the curve of perfection

all

degrees of perfection, but, being emanations, they are not and cannot be consummately perfect.

and

luminous

less

as they radiate

They

are less

towards the outer

darkness or the abyss of material existence and

between the

its

Our human career is a contention urge godward and the evil drag of sen-

corruptions and

evils.

suality.

Plotinus resists any cosmic pessimism: each

level or

zone of emanation has

tion,

but what

other material existence career of men.

its

appropriate perfec-

appropriate to animal or plant or

is

Our

is

true

not befitting the fulfillment

is

and

life

in

turning

godward, towards the life of reason, and even beyond reason, towards the mystical ascent in ecstasy. The intensified gravity of the problem of evil in monotheistic worship

Hebrew

religious

is

evidenced strikingly

mation, starting in the eighth century

from the

tribal

B.C.,

the

in

development. The prophetic

refor-

advanced

monolatry of the popular cults towards

monotheism and personal worship. The fuller this religious maturity by the prophet Jeremiah, in the days of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile of the people of ethical

attainment of

Judah, raised grave perplexities in the traditional doctrine of

men's covenant or contractual relation

of God's justice in rewarding the righteous

Before Epicurus and the Stoics, Aristotle pursued the course of realistic rationalism.

PROBLEM OF

prosperity

wicked the

to

God:

man with

and other blessings and punishing the

for their evils. Against the confident recital of

Psalm were the tragic

first

Bad men

facts of

Hebrew

life.

good escaped the horrors of the national ruin; and what multitudes of choice worshipers of Yahweh were driven into exile by the godless as well as

Babylonians!

This predicament and quandary of religious thinkers

ascends from Matter, bodily desires, and inordinate

provided the setting for the Book of Job: the probing of the problem of evil as evidenced in the undeserved

Form and harmonious

misery and ruin of righteous men. The nameless poet

passions towards the realized fulfillment of our

humanity

balanced rational ex-

in

good aspects or stages of human experience was

mark any

ecclesiastical

which perplex theodicy. He portrays an outstanding righteous and prosperous Job, who is laid low and stricken with ills, a mass of sores on the trash heap

demand

of the countryside.

Philosophical theodicy finds

consummation and

its

its

classical version,

self-criticism, in the

manifestation of God.

The thorny problem, why

or

traditional doctrine,

Neo-

friends, that

self-

how

perfect Deity should be manifested in such an imperfect world,

was not evaded by

Plotinus.

He met

The

both

Platonism of Plotinus. The Plotinian cosmology con-

templated the entire course of nature as the

it

by

God

longest dialogues consider the

expounded by

brings evil to

men

Job's prosperous justly, as

punish-

and that Job must therefore confess his hidden misdeeds and repent. Against their orthodox pronouncements stands God's own recorded praise of Job as his choicest worshiper. Are we, then, to follow Satan, the Adversary in God's cabinet, and regard Job's

ment

for their sins,

a reinterpretation of the process of self-manifestation.

sufferings as a testing of his righteousness, as gold

God

tested

alone

radiates or

is

absolutely perfect; the divine perfection

emanates

in nature,

in

posi-

for a theodicy.

its

Hebrew dramatic masterpiece proposes

searching dialogue alternative answers to the questions

tive but also coolly objective, without the tragic over-

tones of reflection that

of the

and

pression. This Aristotelian distinction of the evil

through the zones of

by

is

But Job's firm loyalty has already been declared bv omniscient Deitv. Or are the tribulations fire?

163

EVIL,

PROBLEM OF

of the righteous a mystery in the vast universe of

The poet

mysteries?

of the

drama has no formulated

solution of the abysmal problem, but he does portray

way

the right

in

which men should confront

—

it

in

of Ecclesiastes

a sardonic reflection of

is

another side of the problem of

men

sufferings of righteous

vanity of

human

life.

of all

Thev

are

all

them "go unto one

not the unmerited futility

final

the basic evil, sin,

always

is

in the

and

affirmed by

it

two

the

Aquinas declared:

sin

is

pillars

essentially aversio,

place;

winners and

losers, all

are of the dust, and

all

was fundamentally a gospel

The conviction

is

the

"When is

the will abandons the higher, and turns to what

lower,

and of man's own

utter incapacity to sur-

Any

any orthodox Christian

depreciation of the radical depravity and

any moral self-reliance were impious insults to the solemnity of Divine Grace. In thus concentrating its

view of

evil

on

sin,

Christian theology depreciated

be endured or even welcomed by the repentant and saintly soul, ready to suffer and be other

ills,

to

persecuted for

righteousness'

sake.

transvaluation and spiritualizing

In

of

this

all

radical

worth,

the

became

a problem of interpreting sin: its essential nature, its origin and ground in God's perfect creation, the blessed redemption from it for a saintly minority, and the everlasting damnation of countless unsaved multitudes. According to Saint Paul, the essential evil, sin, is in man's straying from the straight path of righteousness into the erring ways of the flesh. Paul's initial education was classical, but we are not to regard his contrast of the spiritual and the carnal as a mere rephrasing of the Greek dualism of reason and matter.

problem of

Nor

are

we

evil

justified in interpreting the Christian ideal,

the contempt of this world for the love of Christ, as explicitly ascetic.

and carnal, but

The

sinful life in detail

sin essentially

is

is

worldly

man's perverse scorn

it

becomes

evil

— not because

The

radical depravity vitiates

right measure,

is

good,

when

even that which, in set above its better

it is

and higher values. "He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." While ascetic saintliness did

become

exalted in Christian monasti-

demand

man

this

evil

Manichaean heresy, to which he had been attached some ten years prior to his conversion. Manichaeism, Rising the Zoroastrian antithesis of good and evil with the Greek dualism of reason and matter, ascribed for

human

the evil strains in

life

to man's inherently cor-

rupt bodily nature. Against Manichaeism, Augustine

upheld the Christian truth that of

all

God

is

the sole creator

existence, creator of the material world,

and that

everything in nature, as the above quoted passage maintains,

is

essentially

creation. Evil

But

choice.

is

good

in the will's

Augustine

in its place

and

role in

perverse misdirection of

rejected

Pelagian heresy, that our

will,

also

the

opposite

though inclined to

sin,

has also the capacity to choose the good. Between these

two

counter-fallacies, Augustinian theodicy pointed to

the source of evil in Adam's original disobedience to

God's

will.

The

of a free

Adam's evil choice was would have lacked the quality

possibility of

allowed by God, else

it

and morally responsible

when once made,

own

all

resources, our will

its

ruinous retribution. is

in

But that choice, its

dire

Adam. Left bound to sin and to

of us, tainted children of

its

unmerited,

act.

that original sin involved in

to

is

Our only

possible refuge, wholly

God's grace.

Augustinian theodicy has largely set the direction of later Christian doctrine but has also aroused

much

has been restated

more

antithesis

was directional

rigidly, e.g., in

yet recognize that,

to explain

nowise compromising the absolute

perfection of man's Creator. Augustine's version of

The

we may

as

orthodoxy reflected his strong reaction against the

criticism

while asceticism did gain ascendency in traditional

of the fundamental nature of evil,

of Christian theodicy,

depravity of

stark antithesis

this as a rigid formula,

evil to

is

perverse (sed

and of his only hope of redemption through Divine Grace, accentuated the other

was not a

and gradational; the good was always in the upward reach, the evil in the downward drag. Nowise asserting

that

is

of man's sinbil bondage,

cism, the basic Christian idea of the spirit and the flesh.

because the turning

turns, but

consequences

of God's will.

its

it

The recognition

of salvation

of sin, the vilest evil in

set the conditions of

it

some

to

him. Saint Augustine, in his City of God, had given the finest expression of this Christian conviction:

evil,

quia perversa est ipsa conversio)."

theodicy.

find

Saint

vanity of vanities, a striving

skepticism.

mount

we

man's turn-

Good

ing or straying from the immutable

which

existence,

depraved straving

of orthodoxy.

dour and sour negation of any abiding worth: value

of sinful men.

Whether

vain pride or ambition,

in

mutable good. And more than eight centuries before

and

turn to dust again" (Ecclesiastes 3:20). This

Christianity

164

manifested in sensuality or

satisfactions of

Good men and

after wind.

evil:

but the

so-called attainments

all

not a reduction of the evil to the carnal.

of man's will from the higher to the lower. So

forthright integrity.

The Book

Christian devotion, the hindamental Christian idea was

and controversy.

It

Calvinism, or

it

has been revised so

some semi-Pelagian

implications. Auhave pressed the point that Adam's fateful choice, while freely his own, was yet representative of his character, and they have raised the as

to

allow

gustine's critics

PROBLEM OF

EVIL, question whether that

would have

God could freely

Adam

actuallv create an

thermore,

how

Adam

a good choice, as he did

that freely chose evil. Fur-

are the rest of us, countless multitudes,

Lucifer and Milton's Satan

ship

mere omnipotence.

chaos,

when

It

ends on a note of

Cain's revolt against a

cruel animal sacrifice sweeps

supreme perfection as Divine, has contemplated with dismay its demonic counterparts of utter evil. Embattled against the blessed angelic and archangelic host are the wicked cohorts of the Lords

he slays

of Darkness. Kinships as well as differences in the

man

tion adoring all

various faiths have found expression in their views of

the Evil One.

The

extensive study of

them would

comprise an important part of the history of

Tempter

religions.

Buddha from was tempted by the

tried to dissuade the

even as Jesus the wilderness. Most terrifying

his holy mission,

was the Zoroastrian Ahriman. and

it

in evil

majesty

has been con-

jectured that the grim dualism of the Zendavesta

may

have had some influence on Jewish and Ghristian demonological speculation. Popular superstition and folklore, hagiography and

solemn theology teem with sion.

With

stories of

demonic

ro-

his

own

and tireless wiles the countless bondage the unregenerate multitude, and

The philosophy

which

of life in Goethe's Faust defies any

and

can be recognized clearly. Goethe portrays achievement and satis-

evil

as seeking a finality of

which no experience

faction

sense of eventual

in life

can vield.

It is this

which leads Faust to the devil for one moment

frustration

barter his soul's salvation to

supreme and consummate bliss. But the dramatic through which Mephistopheles leads him teaches Faust in the end that the true value of life is not in the ardor of gratified desires or in any seemof

career

ingly final achievement, but

pursuit

Of

life

Who

rather in the creative

high endeavor and noble hazard:

itself, in

and freedom only he's deserving win them anew (Part II. Act

daily must

Against this heroic

good we have

V,

Scene

dynamism

vi).

of worth:

the eucharist

Step

priestly vestment and desecrate Most of these stories are medieval. Modern Christian piety has been engrossed in its struggle with definite evils to be overcome and vicious tendencies to be curbed, but it has shown a steady decline of interest in the traditional demonology. The idea of the Devil, however, has stirred the imagination of great poets to dramatic expression of the problem of evil. Three outstanding works of genius should be noted here, however, briefly: Milton's Paradise Lost, Byron's drama, Cain, and Goethe's Faust. Milton's Satan is an archangel fallen and depraved. itself.

qualities of his erstwhile supernal character

are not extinct, but they have been perverted by his spiritual

downfall the more abysmal. The firm courage, heroic devotion, and pure loyalty of an archangelic character

have been corrupted into desperate temerity and

re-

bellious unyielding arrogance, a resolution indomitably

malign. In Milton's moral philosophy good and evil

by opposite directions of the will: towards devotion to high ideals which mark the truly intelligent spirit, or in the downward sweep of lusts and perverse drives. The most significant difference between Byron's

of Goethe's ideal of the

his portrayal of radical evil in the

and nuns, to assume

are determined

to blind fury in

cursory formulation, but the poet's guiding idea of good

nihilism of Mephistopheles,

made

moral

brother Abel.

they are ever ready to invade the cells of devout monks

misdirection to evil ends and have

him

final

God who demands

incur-

their protean

devils hold in

The noble

is

expresses the forthright, though futile, refusal to wor-

Adam?

alternative views of the Highest Good. Religious tradi-

Devil in

Bvron's

Lucifer as indomitable pride: furious violence

through no decisive choice of ours but due

Ethical theories have been distinguished by their

the

what Milton stigma-

Satan's rebellious disdain appears in

tizes.

mantically exalted as heroic ardor. Bvron's tragedy also

all

to our evil inheritance as children of

Mara

in the evaluation of iheir

is

characters. Byron seems to praise

eternity for our sinful

through

justly punishable wills, sinful

not have created an

made

who

moral

recognizes no degrees

down here! I could also sav: Step up! Twere all the same (Part II, Act I, Scene v). Within but

also

beyond the theological demand,

insistent in religions of salvation, to reconcile the evils

and the

sinful corruption of creation

with the

infinite

perfection of the Creator, philosophical thinkers have

sought a basic evaluation of existence. The alternative appraisals,

optimism and pessimism, have been enter-

tained in their literal meaning, to signify views of the

world

the worst possible, but

as the best or

more

generally they have expressed a fundamentally ap-

proving or a condemnatory evaluation. Philosophical reflection has rarely

proceeded to unqualified eulogy

or stark malediction, but the intensity of poetic speech

has not stopped short of either extreme. Examples of

both are not lacking; the following two

On

may

suffice.

the one hand, Pope's firm complacency: All nature All

is

but art

unknown

to thee:

chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord,

harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And One

spite of pride, in erring reason's spite.

truth

is

clear.

Whatever

is,

is

right.

165

PROBLEM OF

EVIL, On

the other hand are black pages of utter despair,

by Giacomo Leopardi:

as

Nought is worths Thine agonies, earth merits not th\ sighing Mere bitterness and tedium Is life, nought else, the world is dust and ashes. .

.

.

Scorn

all.

for all

is

The outstanding

systematic doctrine of pessimism in

the nineteenth century was Schopenhauer's philosophy. In

sharp opposition to

rationalism,

all

regarded nature as reasonless

sain.

infinitel)

optimistic intention been realized? Voltaire's irony may be recalled here: "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what must the others be like?"

Schopenhauer

at the core, as a blind

drive or urge or craving which he called the Will-to-

noon of philosophical optimism was the early eighteenth century. Its leaders were Leibniz and Shaftesbur\ the latter comes close to unqualified laudation of all existence. In contrast to them was the darkening outlook on life which marked later eighteenth-centurv thought and the systematic pessimism of some nineteenth-century philosophers. Schopenhauer and Hartmann. and most desolate of all, Julius

The

cloudless

;

Bahnsen.

It

manifested

is

perience

him from the particular

at

every level of existence. In

active as insatiate desire. All our ex-

life it is

a form of craving concerned with attack

is

or defence; our intelligence it

is

is

a tool of the Will-to-live;

analogous to the dog's keen scent or even to the

venom. In

snake's

all his

greeds and lusts

man

is

ever

wanting, insatiate and ungratified. The distress of un-

may

satisfied desires

some

pleasure of

Shaftesburv's optimism led

new

aroused by a

occasionally be allayed by the

fulfilled

greed.

want, but only to be

Thus our

life is

re-

a continual

and woes of dailv life to the universal which they are all transcended as elements in the cosmic perfection. Evils and woes are like the shadows that set off the light and beauty of the whole

pointed out two ways of escape from the wretched

picture or like the discords which swell the fuller

tangle of will-driven existence.

harmony

disinterested contemplation of aesthetic experience. In

apparent svstem

evils

in

of the composer's masterpiece.

Leibniz

less

is

rhapsodic but no

philosophical theodicy, which he

He

tional grounds.

assured in his

less

would

justify

on

ra-

distinguishes three principal kinds

round of

frustration:

creating or in beholding desires.

This

what he calls metaphysical evil, that is, the imperfection which is inevitable in finite existence. He depreciates the gravity of bodily aches and woes as less common and severe than grumblers aver, as largely avoidable or due to intemperance or other vices, to moral evil. The problem of moral evil involves Leibniz'

Will-to-live

cannot regard moral

tion staining the Creator's

to interpret

it

as

is

activity,

due to metaphysical

fection characteristic of

appeal here

own

evil as

all

an imperfec-

and he prefers

evil,

the imper-

finite existence.

Leibniz'

to his principle of the "compossibility'

of God's attributes.

God

in

His omniscience recognizes

wretched, and

ruthless,

art,

is

not

One

of

artistic

A more

transitory.

is

is

Evil conduct

achieved

radical denial of the

in the morality of

most usually due to

is

common

but more wicked is malice, which is not merely callous to the woes of others but actually gloats over them. Virtue and good conduct can only be in the curbing of these vices: in justice which ness to bear our

own

burdens, and in

tures,

He

due

to our essential imperfections as God's crea-

we

cannot complain of the Creator; but can

then rightly condemn us for being such as

He

has

created us? Leibniz' reduction of the moral antithesis, good-evil, to a metaphysical one, infinite-finite, has

been criticized all

as

compromising

basic valuation,

human

ethical

or divine.

judgment and

And

has Leibniz'

is

humane

willing-

loving-

kindness which moves us to relieve the woes of others.

But

in this

benevolent sympathy the moral saint

to recognize the fundamental evil in itself.

negation of

desires

all

life,

is

led

the will-

may proceed to and ambitions, to the

So he

driven craving

how

cally

compassion.

selfishness. Less

possible worlds."

was judged as precarious in its If our woes and sins are basi-

in the

is

intelligence regards or

extinction of the Will-to-live, Nirvana.

Leibniz' theodicy

them

and not as objects of our emancipation from selfish craving,

what we ourselves must understand, that any created world would have some imperfection. In His infinite goodness he has chosen the least imperfect world, and by his omnipotence he has created it, "the best of all

theological implications.

He

absolute.

reveals things as they are

however,

He

selfish,

bankrupt enterprise. Schopenhauer's pessimism

futile, a

of evil: physical evil, or suffering; moral evil, sin; and

theodicy.

166

live.

human

ascetic selfless

This proposed aesthetic, moral, ascetic deliverance has been criticized as inconsistent with Schopenhauer's

metaphysics. is

If

the ultimate reality

is

the Will-to-live,

the alleged desireless contemplation possible

man is by nature a tissue of selfish and ruthless how can he ever act with genuine compassion?

in art? If

desires,

How can

the ultimate Will-to-live be denied, in ascetic

Schopenhauer's successors have had to with grapple the fundamental discrepancy of the two saintliness?

sides of his pessimism.

In the most distinguished revision of the philosophy of the Will-to-live,

Eduard von Hartmann maintained

that neither the irrationalism of Schopenhauer's meta-

EVIL, physics nor the rationalism of Hegel explain adequately

which is unconscious urge conscious and intelligent mani-

the complexity of nature,

There was disagreement regarding what kind of pleasure

the other disturbing question,

by our intelligence: logical, genuine and maturing

Bentham was concerned with quantitaand proposed a hedonistic calculus of pleasures and pains as a guide in moral deliberation and choice. But John Stuart Mill emphasized the importance of distinguishing the quality of pleasures and

our development. Thus Hartmann described himself

pains in evaluating the good and evil in various pro-

with the capacity for festation.

So in interpreting

human

nature

we

should

recognize the tangle of will-driven greeds but also the positive values attainable

aesthetic, moral, religious values, in

greatest number.

PROBLEM OF

as an evolutionary optimist, but the dark pessimistic

human

tone prevailed in his account of the

happiness

— a deluded and

quest for

He

or pain? Jeremv tive valuation

posed actions or experiences: "Better to be a Socrates dissatisfied

than a fool satisfied." This radical revision

dis-

affected the entire basis of strictly hedonistic valuation,

tinguished three stages of Man's Great Illusion. In

for as Mill recognized, the qualitative appraisal de-

men

classical antiquity lives

futile misdirection.

own men

sought happiness in their

on earth. Disenchanted

in this vain pursuit,

pended on

The

intelligent

issue

judgment.

between optimism and pessimism which

turned to the Christian gospel of immortality. The

signalizes the fateful

modern advance

of values,

and well-being in is once more undeceiving men. We are bound to face the grim truth; while we may and should promote the

importance of the right choice and thus of the basic role of intelligence in valuation, leads us to recognize a related and more general issue which has affected our basic ideas of good and evil. The history of thought manifests repeatedly a correlation of optimism with rationalism, and of pessimism with irrationalism and skepticism. This cor-

values of civilization, riper intelligence should lead us

relation

is

ment

expressed in Hegel's magisterial pronounce-

of

knowledge disabused

this baseless

longing for personal happiness after death.

pinned their

to

Then men

on a new ideal of social progress the future. But the course of history

faith

abandon the delusion of attainable happiness,

recognize the essentially tragic course of

Hartmann even entertained regard it as a constant menace

ence.

human

the ideal

— of

to

exist-

— today we

man's eventual

universal self-extinction.

Most dreary of all

all

pessimists, Julius

gospels of deliverance as

weak

Bahnsen rejected

palliatives.

He would

is

not hard to explain.

ment, "The Real

is

One

side of the argu-

the Rational, and the Rational

is

Thomases may still press the decisive question, whether our intelligence does have this alleged rational capacity to comprehend Reality. the Real." But doubting

If

we

"All

recall the

men by

first

sentence in Aristotle's Metaphysics,

nature desire to know," and

if

we

recog-

not yield to any optimistic concessions and held firmly

nize the urge for understanding as man's distinctive

to his desolate outlook: there is no way out. Our life, and nature altogether, are hopeless tangles of selfrending activities, ruling out any rational direction or organization. For Bahnsen, Macbeth's dismal soliloquy

characteristic, then

any denial or doubt regarding the

attainability of this

fundamental value would signalize

closed the entire argument:

especially

Life's

.

.

.

... idiot, full of

sound and

Signifying nothing (Act V, Scene

As has been noted

in

it

a tale

various

fury,

evil

of ethics.

Ethical reflection has tended to concentrate on the problems of the moral standard and the Highest Good, and any review of the principal alternative theories

would take

it

and meaningless existence,

results in the annihilation of values.

dismally than any philosophical formulation, in

more

tragic

James Thomson's City

of Dreadful Night:

good and

theories

when

than defeat and blight," as

our brief survey of the thought in

a losing venture. Skepticism exposes the

poetic outburst has expressed this "sense

5).

of classical antiquity, the basic ideas of

have been expressed

is

life as

radical evil of irrational

More

but a walking shadow

Told by an

human

The sense

that every struggle brings defeat

Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;

That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light behind the curtain; That

all is

vanity and nothingness.

us to other articles. But one doctrine of

widespread modern development that should be noted

Men's reactions towards this skeptical outlook have Some minds have recognized our inconclusive

has given a seemingly plain account of good and evil:

varied.

a

and downright incompetent thinking but have refused to be tragic about it. Montaigne was explicit but also genial about his motto, Que sgais-je? ("What do I know?"). Disavowing any claims to real understanding, he was content to tread the twilit alleys of human

critical

revision of the old Epicurean hedonism.

Reaffirming the reduction of good and evil to pleasure or happiness and pain or displeasure,

modern

utilitari-

anism answered the old question, whose pleasure?, by an altruistic answer: the greatest happiness of the

167

PROBLEM OF

EVIL,

experience, an aimless pilgrimage hut most interesting

and the world

withal. Life

offer us

no ground of

reli-

We

ance, hut no reason for fear or complaint either.

take things as they come, serene in fortuitousness.

demand

So Pascal, while

for understanding.

assured ahout the valid theorems of the geometric

method, recognized the incapacity of reason to answer reliably the ultimate questions

which most concern

us:

ahout the existence of God, ahout man's moral career

and

my

"When consider the short span of am dismayed to find myself here rather Who has put me here? By whose order

final destiny. life,

...

than there;

I

.

.

me?"

I

.

and direction has [I'ensees,

place and time heen allotted to

this

No. 205). Pascal admitted

he refused to accept

incertitude, but

towards his tragic skepticism varied. heart.

reason does not

know

"The heart has

basic

His attitude

it.

He

erance from the doubts of the intellect

demands of the

this, his

sought deliv-

in the insistent

its

reasons which

at all." In his tragic perplexity,

confronted with the dual hazards of belief and unbelief,

him

his will inclined

to

wager on the problematical

but infinitely momentous alternatives of again, his searching reason its

quest: "All our dignity

.

would refuse .

.

lies in

But

to surrender

our thought.

Let us therefore strive to think well: such dation of moral

faith.

is

.

.

.

the foun-

life."

In our day existentialism has reaffirmed the quandaries of rational intelligence,

natives to

it

but in

its

search for alter-

has followed different paths. Against

rationalistic reliance

had emphasized an

dialectic, a living truth expressed in the

own

all

on theology, dogmatic or philo-

sophical, Kierkegaard

existential

unique reality

which he did not merely know, which possessed him in consecration, in life and death. He would thus face God in self-penetrating encounter, and would not merely be doctrinally conversant about God. This surrender of rational proof to the demands of living conviction has been reaffirmed as repossession of orthodox verities by the pious fiat of unquestioning devotion, itself due not to any wisdom or merit of ours but to the working of God's grace in us. Thus, according to Karl Barth, we are raised from the evil vanity of his

spiritual crisis,

of rational self-reliance to the godly refuge of faith

and consecration. But the existential dialectic may proceed in an opposite direction. Disavowing all faith in God or in any supreme values as unwarranted, Sartre, starting with explicit atheism, begins reality, oneself. I

with the primal existential

am myself, I am what I choose and my freedom and my engagement in

become. That is this world of reasonless and unprincipled process.

168

is

a nauseating bewilderment, but

it is

my own

of

self,

If I am judged, it is my own continually

propelled career. Without any moral corpus

It

also a respon-

we have

own

here only one's

by a self-

juris of

genuinely positive and negative values, good or

Genial skepticism was intolerahle to minds committed to the

without contrition.

sibility

court of

evil,

continual self-assertion

and self-attestation, the freedom to which one is always condemning and entrusting oneself. The idea of evil has been expressed forcibly in the counter-appraisals of the historical process: the

mation or the denial of

modern man's

progress has been called the

new

or the

The

superstition.

The

social progress.

affir-

cult of

religion,

citing of evidence

on the

opposite sides of the controversy has been an assess-

ment

of

values of

The

modern ideas of the life, good and evil

and negative

positive in

social perspectives.

modern

optimist's inventory emphasizes

tech-

nological improvements in every field of the social

economy.

We

hear, as

it

were, modern versions of the

great soliloquy of Prometheus. Past ages

and crude

were cramped

and short-fingered indigence. But modern knowledge, expanded research, and perfected technical mastery have unlocked boundless resources in nature for our advantage and well-being.

We

in their isolation

have shrunk the barriers of space and time and

achieved instant communication on earth and beyond

The advance

in curative

icine has eliminated

one burden

earth.

lengthened man's ready universal

life

Our public

span.

in the

ment and bringing the

and preventive medafter another and has

West,

is

radiating

education, its

al-

enlighten-

gifts of trained intelligence to

vast areas of formerly dark ignorance.

Against this technological eulogy of the modern age, social-historical pessimists itual

barrenness,

have cited our glaring

spir-

the vulgarity and corruption, the

inequity and violence of

modern

turns in our contemporary crisis

life,

the disastrous

which threaten not

only the well-being but the very existence of humanity.

The

disdain

and despair of

civilization as a corrupt-

ing process were expressed with romantic fervor two centuries ago by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

He

flouted

the cultivation of the arts and sciences as pandering to the luxury and idle curiosity of the rich, who thrive on the miserable toil of the masses. The entire social system, with its governments that sustain exploitation and oppression, was denounced by Rousseau as a

wicked

fraud.

Of more recent memory

is

civilization

does not unite

We exalt aggrandizement. We not brotherhood.

condemnation and wicked. Our

Tolstoy's

of our social system as un-Christian

men

in

true

self-gratification

Christian

and

self-

only condone sensuality but

pander to it in our art and literature. We profess a concern for peace but gird ourselves for war and tax ourselves to build the most destructive armaments. We

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE not only accept but also support and promote an eco-

pression of this conviction than the passage from Saint

nomic system which exploits the masses for the enrichment of the few. This unjust system has entangled us all, so that even the few of us who aspire to a better

be recalled here:

way

cause that

of

life

are

made

willy-nilly participants in mani-

fold social evils. In all this

advocacy of a radical

social

God cited above, which may well "When the will abandons the higher,

Augustine's City of

and turns to what turning

is

is

lower,

it

becomes

evil to

which

it

turns, but

evil

— not

be-

because the

itself is perverse.''

reform and reconstruction, Tolstoy was appealing to the teachings in the

Sermon on the Mount. In his stern was also criticizing him-

verdict on our civilization he self.

His refusal to participate in the evils of our social

system marked the thoroughgoing change

in his

own

later course of life.

The world

crisis

in

our time has aggravated the

confusion in our social outlook.

On

all sides

we

hear

the warnings and the ominous blasts of the prophets

doom. Two disastrous wars and the postwar piling up of defensive and offensive armament have poured of

out our treasure that, rightly spent, might already have

served to wipe out poverty and revitalize and raise culture throughout

the

world.

As

it

is,

aggressive

nationalism and racial or religious hostility are violently ranging nations

and

social classes against

other. Ironically, the very advances of

each

knowledge and

technology are aggravating some of our social problems.

The population explosion which menaces

global starvation

is

us with

partly due to the reduction of infant

mortality and the improvement in sanitation achieved

by modern medical science. Between placid optimism and the pessimistic doom, the ongoing historical course, from primitive and barbaric stages to the widening scope of civilization, has been recognized as an expanding range of the fields in which human values may be pursued and realized, or frustrated. Spreading civilization shows how much higher and higher men can rise, or how much lower and lower they might sink, each depending on the wise or misdirected choice of values.

age

sets

crucial

but

BIBLIOGRAPHY M. Caro, Le pessimisme au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1876). al., Le mal est parnii nous (Paris, 1948). Paul Haberlin, Das Bose (Bern, 1960). Eduard von Hartmann, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, trans. E. C. Coupland, new ed. (London, 1931); idem, Zur Geschichte und Begriindung des Pessimismus (Leipzig, 1891). William E.

Paul Claudel, et

An Essay on the Origin of Evil (Cambridge, 1739). Emile Lasbax, Le probleme du mal (Paris, 1919). G. W. King,

La theodicee

Leibniz,

Erdmann

(1710), in Leibnitii Opera, ed.

E.

(Geneva, 1868). Plato,

Good (New York, 1898). Arthur Schopenhauer, The World and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, 6th

Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1892). Josiah Royce, Studies in

and

Evil

as Will ed.,

3

vols.

(London, 1907); idem, The Basis of Morality, (London, 1903); idem. Studies in Pes-

trans. A. B. Bullock

simism, trans. T. B. Saunders, 4th ed. (London, 1893). A. G. Sertillanges,

Le probleme du mal, 2

vols. (Paris, 1948-51).

Paul Siwek, The Philosophy of Evil (New York, 1951). James Sully, Pessimism (London, 1871). Radoslav A. Tsanoff, The

Suture of Evil (New York, 1931; 1971). R. M. Wenley, Aspects of Pessimism (Edinburgh and London, 1894). Charles Werner, Le probleme du mul duns lu pensee humaine (Lausanne, 1946).

RADOSLAV

A.

TSANOFF

[See also Buddhism; Demonology; Dualism; Existentialism; God; Happiness and Pleasure; Hierarchy; Neo-Platonism; Right and Good; Sin and Salvation; Theodicy; Utilitarian-

Our present nuclear

out these alternatives of good and evil with

momentous

we have

clarity.

not united

men

We

have

in a

humane

split

the atom,

social order.

Our present atomic technology can enable

us

to

achieve a civilization of unimagined progress, but

we

might also blow ourselves

The evaluation

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE The idea of an

to ashes.

of the principal versions of the idea

evolution of literature dates back at

least as far as Aristotle's Poetics

(Chapter IV). There

of evil inclines us to a gradational view. Value judg-

are told that the origin of tragedy

ments are seen

as forming a hierarchy which consists which are not on a par but are lower or higher. In its choice between them, good and evil are rightly conceived as directional, and at every level of

and

of choices

continues:

experience

men may contemplate

the prospect of a

higher attainment, but also face the hazard of degradation. In

J.

Le probleme du mal Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin

(Berlin, 1840). Ernest Naville,

philosophy and literature

between good and

evil

this idea of

the issue

has found reasoned or imagina-

tive utterance. Religious meditation has

no better

ex-

little

is

in the

we

dithyramb,

comedy in phallic songs, and then Aristotle "From its early form tragedy was developed

of

by

little as

the authors added what presented

itself

many alterations, tragedy ceased to change, having come to its full natural stature" to them. After going through

(trans.

Allan Gilbert, quoted from Literary Criticism:

New

p. 74).

The analogy

between the history of tragedy and the

life-cycle of

Plato to Dryden,

a living organism

is

York [1940],

here asserted for the

first

time.

169

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE Tragedy reached maturity, "natural stature,'' beyond which it could not grow, as man cannot grow after

Both Herder and Friedrich Schlegel proclaimed

many

he has reached the age of twenty-one. Evolution is conceived (as everywhere in Aristotle) as a teleological

In Herder's

process in time directed toward one and only one

poetry

absolutely predetermined goal.

a long paper,

Antiquity applied Aristotle's insight extensively: thus

literature.

sketches of literary history and in

Friedrich Schlegel's fragmentary histories of Greek (in

Griechen and Romer [1797], which contains

"Uber das Studium der griechischen

Poesie," written in 1794-95, and in Geschichte der

und Romer

Dionysius of Halicarnassus traced the evolution of

Poesiv der Griechen

Greek oratory towards the supreme model of Demosthenes, and Quintilian did the same for Roman eloquence culminating in Cicero. (See J. W. H. Atkins, Literary Criticism in Antiquity. Cambridge [1934], II, 123, 281.) Velleius Paterculus, in a passage quoted throughout the history of criticism, even as late as by

logical" concept of evolution

[1798]), the "organo-

employed with skill and consistency. Both Herder and Schlegel assume is

throughout a principle of continuity, the adage natura

nun facit saltum ("nature makes no leap"), which

Germany had been immeasurably strengthened by philosophy of Leibniz. But in

many

in

the

Herder, Schlegel,

detail,

Sainte-Beuve, asserted the alternation of periods of

and

flowering and exhaustion, the impossibility of lasting

the future and the implicit consequences of the deter-

Kamer-

minism implied in their scheme. Thus Herder teaches that poetry must decline from the glories of primitive song, but at the time he believes that poetry, at least in Germany, can be saved from the blight of classical civilization and be returned to the racial wellspring of its power. Friedrich Schlegel conceives of Greek poetry as a complete array of all the different genres

perfection, the fatal necessity of decay. (See

J.

beek Jr.,"Legatum Velleianum," in Levenden Tale, No. 177 [December, 1954], pp. 476-90; reprinted in Creative Wedijver,

Amsterdam [1962]. Sainte-Beuve quotes Nouveaux Lundis, 9 [January, 1865],

the passage in 290.)

These ancient ideas were taken up by Renaissance and neo-classical criticism: echoes can be found everywhere, but no systematic application to the history of

their

in a natural

followers vary in their attitudes toward

order of evolution.

The evolution

de-

is

scribed in terms of growth, proliferation, blossoming,

literature

was made before the middle of the eightwhen the growth of biological and sociological speculation (in Vico, Buffon, and Rousseau)

maturing, hardening, and

eenth century,

thought of as necessary and fated. But

stimulated analogous thinking about literature. John

"universal progressive poetry," an open system, per-

Brown (1715-66) wrote

fectible almost limitlessly. In the

A

a general history of poetry,

Dissertation on the Rise,

Progressions, Separations,

and Music (London,

Union, and Power, the

and Corruptions of Poetry

which expounds an elaborate evolutionary scheme: a union of song, dance, and poetry is assumed among primitive nations, and all subsequent history arts,

is

1763),

described as a separation of the

a dissolution of each art into genres, a process

of fission

and specialization, of degeneration linked to corruption of pristine manners. Brown's

a general

scheme, marred as

it is

by

his illogical

recommendation

of a return to the original union of the arts,

shadows the of poetry.

170

ism.

an ambition to become the Winckelmann of

still

fore-

later

concept of an internal development

Brown

writes a "history without names,"

is

is

completed only

one of but

its

Greece

— modern poetry

sorry detritus.

conceptions

is

What

is

common

all

of these

history.

Hegel introduced a strikingly different concept of evolution. Dialectics replaces the principle of continuity.

Sudden revolutionary changes,

posites,

reversals into op-

annulments, and, simultaneously, preservations

perfection of the Periclean climax, the decline with

his

manner-

to

of purely literary evolution in the general process of

dropped. Poetry

late Hellenistic

rather

on the analogy of animal growth, of an evolutionary substratum in the main types of literature, of a determinism which minimizes the role of the individual, and

Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), the first history of an art which traced an evolutionary scheme with a wealth of concrete knowledge. Within an overall analogy of growth and decline, Winckelmann describes four stages of Greek sculpture: the grand youthful style of the earliest time, the mature end with

is

the assumption of slow, steady change

constitute the dynamics of history.

imitators, the sad

is

Grimms, the process been in the dim natural poetry, and modern poetry

in blocks and masses, seen in a perspective which embraces the oral poetry of all known nations. Brown's sketch was published the year before J. J.

its

it

this closed cycle

irreversible decay: there has

past the glory of is

in

and

dissolution,

final

The

"objective

which poetry is only a phase) differs profrom nature. The biological analogy is

spirit" (of

foundly

is

conceived as self-developing,

in

constant give-and-take with society and history, but distinct

and even profoundly

different, as a

product

of the spirit must be, from the processes of nature. But in his

Vorlesungen uber Aesthetik (pub. 1835; lectures

given in the preceding decade) Hegel does not apply

method

consistently: he

makes many concessions view which he

to the older, "organological" point of

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE has met in the Schlegels.

scheme

Though he

traces an involved

of triads, from epic through lyric to a synthesis

in tragedy,

romantic

and from symbolic through

classical

to

the Lectures remain largely a poetics and and do not incorporate history successfully,

art,

aesthetics

different cycles of evolution disappears: Italian paint-

ing passes through exactly the

same

stages as Eliza-

bethan drama. Literary history becomes a collection of cases

which serve

as

documents

to illustrate a gen-

Symonds escaped some scheme by his aesthetic sense

eral scientific law. In practice,

as they should according to his theory. Hegel's fol-

of the rigidities of his

lowers tried to apply his scheme to literary history,

and by such a device as the concept of the "hybrid," which allows for the blurring of types which would otherwise be made to appear too sharply distinct. In

but most of them succeeded only in discrediting his

method by forcing

the complexities of reality into

(Cf., e.g., Karl Rosenkranz, Handbuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie, 3 vols., Halle [1832], and the much later writings of the St. Louis Hegelians, Denton Snider, W. T. Harris on Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.) With the advent of Darwin and Spencer evolutionism revived. Spencer himself suggested how the devel-

of Evolutionary Principles to Art and Literature," in

opment

evolutionism

Hegelian formulas.

of literature could be conceived in terms of

a law of progression from the simple to the complex. (See "Progress:

Law and Cause"

its

[1857], in Illus-

New York [1880], pp. [1862; New York, 1891], pp.

trations of Universal Progress,

the preface to Shakspere's Predecessors in the English

Drama (London,

1884)

Symonds

the book substantially in 1862-65.

says, that

"On

he wrote

the Application

Essays Speculative and Suggestive (London, 1890),

I,

42-83, contains a theoretical defense of his method. After Symonds,

Richard Green Moulton applied

Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist

to

(1885) and reiterated his faith in the principle as late as 1915, in

The Modern Study of Literature. There

is

hardly any English or American book in these decades

evolu-

which deals with oral literature and is not based on Darwinian conceptions. H. M. Posnett treated Com-

tionism were eagerly applied to literary history. But

parative Literature (1886) as a Spencerian progress

24-30, and First Principles

many

354-58.) In it

seems

countries the ideas of the

difficult to

tinguish the new,

new

decide exact priorities and to

dis-

Darwinian and Spencerian, motifs

from returns to ideas of "organological" or of Hegelian evolution.

The exact share

of these three conceptions

needs detailed investigation

in the case of

each writer

from communal

to individual

life.

F.

Gummere's Be-

ginnings of Poetry (1901) and A. S. Mackenzie's The Evolution of Literature (1911) may serve as later exam-

by American authors.

ples

two leading

In France the

critics of the

period,

Hippolyte Taine and Ferdinand Brunetiere, were pre-

on the subject. In Germany, for instance, where the romantic tradition was very strong, it would be almost

occupied with the problem of evolution. Taine, how-

impossible to disentangle the different strands in the

ever,

writings on Volkerpsychologie of H. Steinthal and

M.

terminological borrowings from physiology and biol-

Lazarus, or in those on the history of German literature and on poetics of Wilhelm Dilthey and Wilhelm

ogy, his concept of evolution remained purely Hegel-

Scherer. (See Erich Rothacker, Einleitung in die Geis-

Hegel,

2nd ed., Tubingen [1930], pp. 80n. and 215, for good comments on Steinthal, Lazarus, Wilhelm Scherer, and Dilthey.) Evolutionism is Dar-

conceive of historical periods as moments, to look for sant

winian only when

besides his article in Journal des Dehats [July 6, 1864]

teswissenschaften,

it

implies the mechanistic explana-

tion of the process (which tribution)

the

and when

fittest,"

it

was Darwin's

special con-

uses such ideas as "survival of

"natural selection,"

"transformation of

species."

ian.

is

He

not a naturalistic positivist: in spite of

definitely

whom

many

disapproved of Comte and Spencer.

he read

as a student, "taught

him

to

internal causes, spontaneous development, the inces-

becoming of

reproduced

in V.

things."

(On Taine and Comte, see

Giraud, Essai sur Taine, 6th

ed., Paris

[1912], p. 232, D. D. Rosea, L'Influence de Hegel sur

Taine, Paris [1928], p. 262n.

see

Demiers Essais de

On

critique et

Spencer and Hegel, de

Vhistoire,

3rd ed.

biological analogy to the history

Symonds applied the of Elizabethan drama

tion as a separate literary evolution. Literature

(1884) with ruthless consistency.

He

of the general historical process conceived as an orga-

In England, John Addington

argues that Eliza-

bethan drama runs a well-defined course of germination, expansion, efflorescence,

opment

is

and decay. This devel-

described as "e-volution," as an unfolding

of embryonic elements to

which nothing can be added

and which run their course with iron necessity to predestined exhaustion. is

The

completely denied. Genius

the sequence of the stages.

their

initiative of the individual is

incapable of altering

Even the

individuality of

[1903], pp. 198-202.) But Taine never thinks of evolu-

nized unity. Literature sents society.

It is

also

is

part

is dependent on society, repredependent on the moment, but

moment for Taine

usually means the "spirit of the age." Only once in all his writings does Taine think of moment as the position of a writer in a merely literary evolution. He contrasts French tragedy under Corneille and under Voltaire, the Greek theater under Aeschylus and under Euripides, and Latin poetry under Lucretius

171

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE and under Claudian, in order to illustrate the difference between precursors and successors Introduction to Histoire de la titterature anglaise, 2nd ed. [1866], I, hoc). Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906) finds his starting point in this very passage. Moment with him takes precedence over milieu and raee. He resolutely envisages the ideal of an internal history of literature which "has in itself the sufficient principle of development" |

Etudes critiques surVhistoire de Paris [1890],

III,

What

4).

is

iii

I'histoire .

It is

de

is

tion,

1826) provide

the

it

(such as Vigny's Cinq-mars,

stepping-stones,

which follow (such

Hugo's Notre

as

while

all

those

Dame

de

Paris,

1831) demonstrate only slow decadence. Chronology is

king: a neat gradation

and recession must be con-

strued at any price.

Later attempts to modernize and modify the con-

Manuel

la titterature francaise, Paris [1898], p.

and negative: we moves by action and reac-

a double influence, positive

convention and revolt. Novelty or originality,

is

which changes the direction of developis the method which defines the points of change. So far Brunetiere could be a Tainian or even an Hegelian. But he has also tried to transfer specifically biological concepts from Darwinism. He believes in the reality of genres as if they were biologi-

Manly was deeplv impressed by the mutation theory De Vries and proposed its application to literary history and especially to the history of medieval drama ("Literary Forms and the New Theory of the Origin

of

of Species," in

Modem

Philology, 4 [1907], 577-95).

But "mutation" turns out to be simply the introduction

new

which suddenly

new

the criterion

of

ment. Literary history

Evolution, in the sense of slow continuous develop-

cal species.

He constantly parallels the history of genres human

ment,

principles

is

Evolutionism, especially in the form in which rejected, in part, of course, simply in the

duration, rejected the

that

important tragedies, according to Brunetiere's

were not written

after Lemercier. Racine's

Phedre, in Brunetiere's scheme, stands at the beginning fresh

compared

was

name

of

genius and impressionistic appreciation. But the reac-

deeper roots was powerfully supported by the new philosophies of Bergson and Croce. Bergson's tion in the early twentieth century has

and

raises

order.

It is

new

issues. It

no accident that

creatrice (1907), ends

his intuitive act of true

whole idea of a chronological his central book. Evolution

with an attack on Spencer. Also

Croce's onslaught on the very concept of genre was

young

almost universally convincing. His arguments for the

to the frigid Renaissance tragedies

uniqueness of every work of art and his rejection of

of the decline of tragedy, but

and

it

formulated bv Brunetiere, was widely criticized and

concept of creative evolution,

definition,

types.

given up in favor of an anomalous principle

written before him, and that they died only in the sense

beings.

crystallize

of special creation.

French tragedy was born with Jodelle, matured with Comeille, aged with Voltaire, and died before Hugo. He cannot see that the analogy breaks down on every point; that French tragedies were not born with Jodelle but just were not with the history of

it

will strike us as

procedures, and styles (even as topics

which, according to the scheme, represent the "youth"

artistic devices,

of French tragedy. Brunetiere in his genre histories

of history) destroyed, in the eyes of many, the very

even uses the analogy of the struggle for existence to describe the rivalry of genres and argues that some genres are transmuted into other genres. French pulpit

basis of all evolutionism. Croce's prediction

and hope would come to consist entirely of and monographs (or handbooks and compendia

that literary history

essays

oratory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

of information)

was thus changed into the lyrical poetry of the romantic movement. But the analogy will not withstand close inspection: at most, one could say that pulpit

storia artistica e letteraria," in

oratory expresses similar feelings sience of things

human) or

(e.g.,

fulfills

about the tran-

similar social func-

2nd

is

being

ed., Bari [1927],

fulfilled

e psicologismo nella storia della poesia," in

But surely no genre has

It

literally

effect, to that of the

nistic variation of

Darwinian "sport," the mecha-

character

traits.

(See E. R. Curtius,

Ferdinand Brunetiere, Strassburg, 1914.) Brunetiere's followers pushed his schematism often to absurd extremes: thus Louis Maigron, in his Le

Ultimi

Saggi, Bari [1935], pp. 373-79). All over the West, the anti-historical point of in criticism reasserted itself at

behind our lives). changed into another.

("La Riforma della

Nuovi saggi di estetica, pp. 157-80; and "Categorismo

tions (the articulation of the mystery

Xor can one be satisfied with Brunetiere's attempt to compare the role of genius in literature, its innovative

172

which those preceding

cept of literary evolution failed. Thus John Matthews

the main one" (Preface to

imitate or reject. Literature

culmination point of the French historical novel, to

the

is

in the history of literature, the influence of

works on works de

all

historique (1898), simply declares one book, Merimee's Chronique de Charles IX (1829), to be the

the influences which

be established

to

inner causality. "In considering

operate

la titterature francaise,

Roman

was

view

about the same time.

in part a reaction against critical relativism,

against the

whole anarchy of values

to

which nine-

teenth-century historicism had led, and in part a

new

belief in a hierarchy of absolute values, a revival of classicism. T. S. Eliot has

most memorably formulated

his sense of the simultaneity of all literature, the feeling

whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of a poet "that the

EVOLUTION OF LITERATURE own

of his

country has a simultaneous existence and

composes a simultaneous order" ("Tradition and the Individual Talent" [1917] in Selected Essaijs,

London

His shortcomings are those of his period: he worships fact

and science so excessively that he has no use for work of art far too atom-

aesthetic value; he views the

dividing it into form and content, motifs and metaphors and meters. (On Veselovsky see Victor

[1932], p. 14). This sense of the timelessness of litera-

istically,

ture (which Eliot oddly

plots,

is

only another Eliot's

name

calls the "historical sense")

for classicism

and

tradition.

view has been followed by almost

English and American

critics.

On

all

recent

occasion they

may

recognize the illumination which criticism derives from literary history

K. Wimsatt,

jr.,

and history in general. (See William "History and Criticism: A Problematic-

Ky. The Verbal Icon, [1954], pp. 253-66.) But they have on the whole ignored the problem of an internal literary historiography and evolution. Histories of literature and of literary genres are being written without any allusion to the concept and apparently with no awareness of it. Relationship,"

F.

W.

Louisville,

in

Bateson's English Poetry

and

the English Lan-

guage (Oxford, 1934) and English Poetry:

A

Critical

Introduction (London, 1950) are attempts to trace the history of English poetry as a mirror of either linguistic

or of social evolution.

The

statistical investigations of

Josephine Miles (The Vocabulary of Poetry, Berkeley, 1946; The Continuity of Poetic Language, Berkeley,

and Modes

1951; Eras

new

in

English Poetry, Berkeley,

—

Russian Formalism: History Doctrine, The Hague, 1955; in Russian see B. M. Engel'gardt, A. N.

Erlich,

Veselovskij, Petrograd, 1924;

and

V. Zirmunskij's long

introduction to Veselovskij, Istoriceskaja Poetika, Leningrad, 1940.)

Deservedly Veselovsky enjoyed enormous academic

and thus imposed the problem of

prestige

evolution on the Russian Formalists.

emphasis on the work of with formal devices,

literary

They shared

preoccupation

his interest in the

"morphology" was unac-

of literary types. But his view of evolution

They had grown up in a revolutionary atmosphere which radically rejected the past, even in the arts. Their allies were the Futurist poets. In contemporary Marxist criticism art had lost all autonomy and was reduced to a passive reflection of social and economic change. The Formalists rejected this reducceptable.

tion of literature. But they could accept the Hegelian

view of evolution:

its

basic principle of an immanent,

dialectical alteration of old into

new and back

again.

which trace the changes in key words and sentence patterns aim finally at an evolu-

They interpreted

tionary scheme. But these are isolated instances.

the "actualization" of such conventions by a

1956,

The

ed. 1963)

been very different in Russia. There Spencerian evolutionism was stated most impressively in

story has

the grandiose attempts of Aleksandr Veselovsky

(1838-1906) to write a historical poetics on a world-

wide in

scale.

this for literature largely as a

wearing

out or "automatization" of poetic conventions and then school using radically

new and

new

opposite procedures.

Novelty became the only criterion of value. (On the Russian Formalists Erlich's book tive,

is

the most informa-

not only in English.)

Jan Mukarovsky (born in 1891), a follower of the

Veselovsky had been a pupil of Steinthal

1862 in Berlin; he drew evolutionism also from many

his

literature, his

Russian Formalists in Czechoslovakia

more coherently, with

who developed

a great awareness

other sources, including the English ethnographers.

their theories

much wider command and languages than anybody in the West, he traces the history of poetic devices, themes, and genres throughout oral and medieval literature. Yet

of philosophical issues, formulated the theory very

More

concretely, and with a

of literatures

Veselovsky 's theoretical rigid.

assumptions are extremely

Content and form are sharply divorced. Poetic

assumed as something given since immeit changes only under the impact of social and ideological changes. Veselovsky traces the breakup of the syncretism of original oral poetry and always looks for survivals of animism, myth, ritual, or customs language

is

morial times:

in is

clearly:

"A work

when

regroups the structure of the preceding period,

it

of art will appear as positive value

appear as a negative value if it takes over the without changing it" (Kapitoly z ceske poetiky, Chapters from Czech Poetics, Prague [1948], II, 100-01). A divorce between literary history and it

will

structure

criticism

is

advocated. Purely aesthetic evaluation

the business of criticism. In literary history there

one criterion of

interest: the

is

is

only

degree of novelty.

On many occasions Rene Wellek, who was a member

conventional poetic language. All poetic creativity

of the Prague Linguistic Circle in the thirties, argued

when man

(e.g., in "The Theory of Literary History," in Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, Vol. V [1936]) against this divorce between criticism and history pointing out that works of art are assemblings of values which constitute their very nature, and are not merely structures analyzable descriptively. In his view works of art are not simple members of a series, links in a chain. Still, he wanted to salvage the concept of literary

viewed

as occurring in prehistoric times

created language. Since then the role of the individual has been limited to modifying the inherited poetic

language

in

order to give expression to the changed

content of his

own

time.

On

the one hand Veselovsky

conducts a genetic inquiry into the dim origins of poetry, on the other he studies "comparative literature," migrations

and radiations of devices and motifs.

173

EVOLUTIONISM whole problem of an internal history modern concept of time.

Man is not merely in the present reacting against the immediate past (as the evolutionists assume) but lives

and complexity of the parts have increased. is thus opposed to the belief that the universe and its parts are eternally the same; or that they have been the same since they were created; or

simultaneously in three times: in the past through

that they are

memory, in the present, and, through anticipations, plans, and hopes, in the future. He may reach, at any moment, into his own remote past or into the remotest

cally in the past; or that they are

evolution, the

of literature by pointing to a

past of humanity.

An artist

does not necessarily develop

toward a single future goal: he can reach back to something he may have conceived twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. He can start on a completely different track. His reaching out into the past for models or stimuli, abroad or at home, in art or in life, in another art or in thought,

is

a free decision, a choice of values

which constitutes his own personal hierarchy of values, and will be thus reflected in the hierarchy of values implied in his works of art. This multiple relationship to past and present can be paralleled in larger groupings of works of art, in a period and hence in the whole evolution of art and literature. The interpenetration of the causal order in experience and memory refutes the simplicist schemes of evolution but does not dispose of the complex problem of the evolution of art and literature. It

still

is

unsolved,

if

variety,

Evolutionism

now

the same as they have been periodi-

higher and perfect source.

emanations from a

only living things are

If

included, theories of organic evolution result. These theories

may embrace

accounts of human, mental,

moral, and cultural evolution.

If

nonliving things are

included, there result theories of physical evolution

which may embrace the

If

what

is

included

universe as a whole, or everything that

metaphysical theories of evolution

real,

many

and

earth, the solar system,

the spatiotemporal cosmos.

is

the

is

held to be

result.

Hence

differences occur within the one family of ideas.

Early theories tend to be simple, vague, and speculative.

Later theories, particularly

more

when given a scientific-

and verifiable. There are many disagreements, however, about such issues as the origin, character, and causes of evoluformulation, are

intricate, exact,

some

tionary processes. In the present article

main stages

of the

in the history of this family of ideas will

be discussed.

not in theory, then

certainly in the practice of literary historians.

PROTOEVOLUTIONISM

/.

Proto-evolutionary ideas occur very early in man's

BIBLIOGRAPHY No

thinking about the world. is known to exist. Rene Wellek, "The Travaux du Cercle Linguis-

history of evolutionism in literature

For earlier treatments of

this

theme

see

Theory of Literary History," in tique de Prague, 6 1936), 173-91; idem, Theory of Literature, with Austin Warren (New York, 1949); and idem, "The Concept of Evolution in Literary History," in For Roman Jakobson (The Hague, 1956), pp. 653-61, reprinted in Concepts of Criticism (New Haven, 1963), pp. 37-53. For evolutionary concepts in historiography and philosophy see Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Tubingen, (

1922); F. S. C. Northrop, "Evolution in

its

Relation to the

Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Culture," in Evolutionary Thought in America, ed. Stow Persons

(New

Haven, 1950), pp. 44-84; and Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (Rerkeley, 1955).

RENE WELLEK [See also Continuity; Evolutionism; Historicism; Literature;

Periodization in Literature.]

him by plants and to

They were perhaps suggested

the observation of processes of growth in animals. Such

phenomena seem

served as a model for speculations about

began and how

it

acquired the features

pear

said to have held the view that "things were originated from a single, simple source through gradual unfolding and branching" (Chen, 1929). By others it was believed that the primary elements of the universe water, fire, wood, metal, earth had is

—

—

come

into being in an evolutionary order under the

influence of natural forces. Furthermore, "the Taoists

elaborated what comes very near to a statement of a

theory of evolution. At least they firmly denied the fixity

of biological species"

(Needham, 1956). In early

Indian thought, one of the Buddhist groups affirmed

which evolves

into

varying forms, including minds (here regarded as

dis-

"that nature ...

is

a unitary entity

from underlying

souls)" (Smart, 1964). is

The term

said to imply

new properties as which began when an initial state

that nature successively manifests

a result of a process of equilibrium

174

has. Evolu-

Chinese and Indian cultures. Confucius,

in ancient

for example,

"evolution" (parinama) in this context

Evolutionism is a family of ideas which affirm that the universe and some or all of its parts have undergone irreversible, cumulative changes such that the number,

it

have

to

the world

tionary cosmogonies, largely mythical in content, ap-

tinct

EVOLUTIONISM

how

at

each stage

itself

the

was

is

disturbed. Yet the novelty involved

only apparent, for whatever manifests

must have been implicit

start.

in unitary

nature from

EVOLUTIONISM Ideas similar to these were advanced by early Greek thinkers.

Among

the pre-Socratic philosophers, evolu-

were largely detached from mythical elements. The world-order was represented as having come into existence by virtue of the generative power of nature (physis). What took place was without design (techne), and exemplified the tionary doctrines predominated and

have a conventional

who

felt

the need for a

Nature was assumed by some to be

Like an organism is

itself subject.

it

can

From

initiate

this

literally alive.

changes to which

assumption

it

it

was only a and

They began

as sounds

men

means of communication more

comprehensive and subtle than grunts or animal

The growth

cries.

of language in turn accelerated the evolu-

tion of culture.

presence either of chance or of blind, irrational necessity.

origin.

related quite arbitrarily to things or notions by

ANTI-EVOLUTIONISM

//.

The impetus

of evolutionary thinking

Greeks was brought

among

the

an abrupt halt by the work of

to

Plato and Aristotle. Both of these influential thinkers

short step to an evolutionary conception of plants

held views that were incompatible with any conception

animals.

of irreversible, cumulative changes taking place in the

Both Anaximander and Anaximenes put forward the

real world. Plato

maintained that the real world

is

a

view that living things were generated spontaneously

realm of unchanging forms or archetypes apprehended

by the action of the sun's warmth on a primordial moist element. Empedocles and Democritus regarded the element as moist earth or slime. Such views were

solely

undoubtedly influenced by the observation of

anti-evolutionary consequences.

maggots, and

matter

(e.g.,

worms appearing on decomposed

flies,

organic-

meat), and by the mistaken idea that this

phenomenon was

a spontaneous generation of

life.

The

by thought. Things perceived by the senses are

imperfect copies of forms and are

When

less

than fully

real.

applied to living organisms this conception had It

implied that the

characteristics of organisms are to be explained

by

resemblance to ideal archetypes, not by descent from ancestors

who had undergone changes

of form and

pre-Socratics did not limit the application of this idea

function over long periods of time. Furthermore, this

to simple organisms, but applied

such a

way

as to allow fanciful

it

speculatively in

Platonistic conception

and

fantastic discon-

taxonomy

Thus Anaximenes believed that plants, animals, and men appeared on the earth in that order. But each was generated directly from the primordial element. Democritus likewise seems to have countenanced the ancient idea that men originated from the earth. Empedocles proposed that men had been formed by the random coming together of separate limbs and organs which had been produced spontaneously. Some of the combinations proved to be viable and others perished. Anaximander thought that men first developed inside a fishlike creature, from which they emerged to live on dry land. These and other ideas were mere hints of a theory of evolution as it was later to be understood. tinuities in the history of living things.

In Democritus there occur the rudiments of a doc-

and cultural evolution. The ideas involved were, however, not original with him, for they were widely current in the fifth century and had largely replaced earlier poetic and religious ideas of a "golden age" in the past (Guthrie, 1962). According to the trine of social

evolutionary view, the

first

men

lived like solitary

into

became

a basis for classical

which plants and animals were classified kinds that are sharply demarcated and allow no in

intergrading. This typological classification acted as a

block to the idea of a gradual transmutation of one species into another. Evolutionary

the process of detaching

taxonomy

is still

Platonism (Simpson, 1961).

world as a hierarchy which combines form and

Aristotle represented the real

of kinds of things, each of

matter. In his biological writings, however, he recognizes that living organisms are not sharply classifiable

many

intermediate types which

blur the lines of demarcation.

He even says in one place

into kinds, for there are

that "nature passes

from

lifeless objects to

animals in

an unbroken sequence." These views have led some students to conclude that Aristotle must have been an

But such a conclusion is mistaken. It wrongly supposes that because the affirmation of continuity in the living world is incompatible with a belief evolutionist.

in sharply discrete kinds,

it

implies that a historical

derivation of one kind from another must have taken place. Aristotle certainly did not think that the inter-

animals, without technical skills or social organization.

grading of organisms had come about historically.

Their manner of

would have been inconceivable

was highly precarious, and so the need to survive forced them to band together into societies. Here they developed the practical, and eventually the fine arts, and achieved a measure of civilization. Human culture was thus the daughter of necessity. Democritus called attention to the importance of the evolution of language in this process. He was among the earliest proponents of the view that words life

in

from the influence of

itself

of animal could slowly just as

it

to

him

It

that one species

change into another species,

would have been inconceivable

that the

com-

plex hierarchy of nature could have been gradually

developed from simple beginnings. For him the universe is eternal and unchanging. In it every thing has its fixed nature which remains unaffected by the motion which brings about its actuality from a state of potency.

1 75

)

EVOLUTIONISM The profoundly

anti-evolutionarv character of Aris-

totelianism helped to arrest

two thousand

for nearly

all

forms of evolutionism

years.

Another influence that worked during

this

in the

same direction

period was Christianity. After the time of

were occasional revivals of the idea that living things had arisen naturally from terrestrial elements and that human society had developed from a state of barbarism. Lucretius, Cicero, and Horace all advocated views of this kind. But such views were eclipsed when the Christian world-outlook became predominant in Europe. An essential part of this outlook was the biblical story of creation, according to which the universe was brought into being by an allpowerful Cod who had made it complete in every detail, with each kind of creature occupying its proper place in the whole. The period since the creation was relatively brief, being only a few thousand years. Adam, the first man, was created by Cod in His image, and hence could not possibly have had ancestors. The human race is, indeed, central to the cosmic drama which is being worked out according to the divine Aristotle, there

plan.

The

ground

what

is

due to the

rise of

sciences established three conclusions that

were

essen-

to the revival of evolutionary views.

tial (

was

of evolutionism

geology and paleontology. These

The changes

1

in the surface features of the earth

through the ages are the result of physical forces whose operation has been gradual and broadly constant. This uniformitarian doctrine replaced the ancient biblical

and also the conception that the had been subject to periodic catas-

story of the Flood, earth's surface

The

trophes.

appeared

classical

version of uniformitarianism

Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830), a work that profoundly influenced the thought in Sir

of Charles Darwin. (2)

The age

of the earth

is

far greater

than biblical

chronology allowed. In 1650 Archbishop Ussher calculated that the Creation took place in

century

later,

4004

b.c.

A

Buffon conjectured that some seventy

thousand years had elapsed since the molten earth

began

to cool.

By the beginning

of the nineteenth

universe merely forms the back-

century, the age of the earth was estimated in millions

taking place. Thus the static cre-

rather than thousands of years. This expansion of the

rest of the

for

the idea that the universe had developed in an orderly

way from an unorganized state. A second phase in the rebirth

made

ationism taught by Christianity

any idea of evolution

it

to arise, let alone

difficult for

be defended.

terrestrial

time scale provided the setting needed for

the doctrine that biological evolution tends to take

place slowly. ///.

The

(3)

EVOLUTIONISM REBORN

rebirth of evolutionism

is

advance of the natural sciences

associated with the

in the

period after the

Renaissance. Several stages in the process of rebirth

can be distinguished. The

first

was a

fossils

or "figured stones" which had been

result of the

new

which posed an enigma of the

first

(Protogaea,

to support this conclusion

Philosophy (1644), by Immanuel Kant in his Universal

hostile to the idea of

Natural History and Tlieory of the Heavens (1755), and by Pierre Simon de Laplace in his Exposition of the

1959).

to

the

dogma

of

special

creation,

even

which was not intended

theories to account for the presence of

fossils,

but their

views were subjected to ridicule by Voltaire

who was

development in nature (Haber, however, it was clearly understood that many fossils were relics of species long extinct, and that observed or reconstructed sequences of fossils were direct evidence for evolution.

though

to contradict the

chapter of Genesis. Furthermore, the

first

new cosmogony

IV.

By

Lyell's day,

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EVOLUTIONISM

During the eighteenth century evolutionary ideas the

biological

sciences

The

gradually

what happened

strong opposition.

a succession of orderly changes to

its existing complex Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) had given a definitive account of that structure, but had said nothing about how nature developed. Yet it was an obvious move to apply Newtonian principles

basic theoretical or philosophical principles, and

structure. Isaac

empirical discoveries

cosmogonic problems, and thereby bring to the fore

history of

in

matured, despite

supposed that originally the matter of the universe was in a chaotic, nebular state from which it passed through

to

how

for petrifactive processes to

occur. Later, Buffon and Maillet formulated geological

Descartes presented his theory as a purely imaginative exercise

One

was Leibniz

1680), although he did not surmise

much time was needed

System of the World (1796). As a consequence, the idea had a history emerged as a powerful rival

to nonevolutionists, are in fact

the remains of organisms that lived in the past.

cosmogony. Theories of how the physical universe, including the solar system, had been or might have been produced in accordance with mechanical laws were set forth by Rene Descartes in his Principles of

that nature

I/O

The

noticed in the earth's crust ever since antiquity and

is

complex, but broadly speaking, there were changes in

made

in those sciences.

On

new the

were influenced by the doctrine of continuity which had a considerable vogue at the time. They were also influenced by the nominalism which had become a feature of contemporary philosotheoretical side, thev

EVOLUTIONISM new

phy. These doctrines encouraged biologists to question

fully

and to investigate the anatomy, embryonic development and variability

Repeated deviations could lead to a diversification of species such as now obtains on the earth. The whole process might even have started "from two individuals alone." Furthermore, since the developmental "errors"

Platonistic conceptions of species,

organisms.

individual

of

Likewise,

theoretical

the

model of nature as a mechanical system governed by external laws was confronted with a rival model, due

than their predecessors, a

may be

species will result.

attributed to fortuitous rearrangements of the

nature as a self-organizing system

basic hereditary particles, no design or teleology need

functioning in accordance with inner dynamic forces.

be postulated. This explanation appears to anticipate

On

in outline

in part to Leibniz, of

the empirical side, the biological sciences brought

forward new interpretations of observed

much

accounts of evolution which

later

comparative anatomy, embryology, and genetics which stimulated maturing evolutionism. Three influential figures whose work embodies these ideas were Buffon,

appeal to genetic mutations and natural selection. Yet

Maupertuis, and Diderot.

that "he must be ranked

Buffon's

Histoire

vast

naturelle,

facts in

44

in

volumes

(1749-1804), contains material which, as Lovejoy has said,

"both fostered and hindered the propagation of

evolutionary ideas in biology" (Lovejoy [1959], p. 111).

The contribution

of Buffon's geological views has al-

Maupertuis'

approach was more speculative

despite his importance,

Darwin"

He

that variations

ape have a

among

common

He even

suggested "that

man and

origin; that, in fact, all the families

plants as well as animals, have

common stock" (Buffon

come from

and

also

which occur

in individual

development

might, given sufficient time, lead to an immense diver-

He

sification of species.

shared with both

men

a predi-

knowledge

he did not accept Buffon's concept of "organic mole-

of individual variations

cules" or Maupertuis' speculation that the basic hereditary particles

Nature herself." In holding this view, however, Buffon differed sharply from his contemporary, Carl

or a property which

as

von Linnaeus, who had defined a species

Platonistically

terms of invariant characteristics. Buffon defined a

gence.

had some rudimentary form of intelliThe most he was prepared to admit was that

"sensitivity"

is

either an inherent property of matter

The that

it

is

Spencer a century

and belong

to different

when

it

reaches a stage is

part of an evolutionary metaphysics. Like

he aimed

same species

acquires

distinctive feature of Diderot's transformism

two animals

of opposite sex belong to the

it

of sufficient organization.

species in terms of the relation of interbreeding, so that their offspring are fertile,

the precursors of

Lovejoy, 1950).

recognized the value of Maupertuis' conjecture

him to espouse evolutionism. Yet on the other hand, he publicly denied that species are mutable. They are "perduring entities, as ancient, as permanent,

if

all

lection for the idea of spontaneous generation, although

inclined

in

cf.

a

[1783], IV, 382). His

of anatomical homologies

overstating the case to say

above

Diderot was influenced by Buffon's Histoire naturelle and by Maupertuis' Systeme de la nature (1751). He recognized that the anatomical homologies mentioned in Buffon's work supported the idea that species evolve.

explicitly the hypothesis of organic evolution, without it.

it is

(Glass [1959], p. 74;

ready been mentioned. In addition, he stated quite actually espousing

than

empirical, and his ideas remained rather vague. Hence,

to explain

but

later,

how

much

less systematically,

the universe had evolved from

a primitive state towards increasing complexity and

that his refusal to espouse the transmutation of species

however, he espoused dynamic materialism. Matter with its inherent property of motion, and perhaps of sensitivity,

was due

accounts for

produce offspring or produce offspring that are sterile. It has sometimes been said species

if

they

to

fail

to his desire to avoid the hostility of the

Church. This

may have been

partly the case; but he

does offer arguments in support of his position drawn

from the biological knowledge of

his

day

(cf.

Lovejoy,

1959).

The importance in the fact that

of Maupertuis for evolutionism lies

he not only envisaged the transmutation

and diversification of species, but explanation of

how

about. His study of

also sketched

these processes might have

an

come

embryogeny impressed on him the norm in

frequent occurrence of deviations from the

specialization. Unlike Spencer,

a thoroughgoing,

all

a self-organizing

that has

may

and animals,

new

well as evolution.

mitted to offspring.

If

and are then

trans-

these characteristics enable the

organisms to adapt to the environment more success-

to be.

The universe

is

and ceaselessly changing. In the course of "millions of years," living things have undergone "an infinite number of successive organizations and developments." These have brought about the existence of sensations, thoughts, languages, laws, sciences, and arts on the earth. Living things have "perhaps still other developments to undergo which are unknown to us." The process of universal change is neither purposive nor mechanical but organic. Like the life-cycle of plants

individual development. "Errors" arise that produce characteristics of organisms

come

whole whose parts are interconnected

it

well be subject to dissolution as

These formulations of evolutionism

in eighteenth-

century biology met resistance from within the science

177

EVOLUTIONISM The chief resistance came from embryology which was then dominated by the version of preformaitself.

tionism

known

as the "encapsulation (emboitement)

gave a new

impetus to the idea of social or cultural evolution, but also contained the radical suggestion that

man was

theory," defended with powerful arguments by Charles

derived from apelike ancestors, such as the orangutans,

Bonnet

with

Considerations sur

in his

"evolution" in

corps organises

les

works to use the term a biological sense. For Bonnet, however,

was one

(1762). This

of the

first

"evolution" designated the process of ontogenesis

in-

terpreted as the development of an individual organism

from a germ ants, all

in

which

were contained.

it,

and

When

the world was created,

future generations of living things

thus implied that the boundaries

permanently

fixed.

were "encapsu-

between species were

The counter-theory

of epigenesis,

accepted by Maupertuis, Diderot, and K. F. Wolff, was favorable

to

because epigenesists

transforrnism

garded hereditary variations

as

whom he forms a single species. Yet neither Rousseau nor Monboddo accepted transforrnism. The

development of man did not imply for them that any species-barriers were passed in the rise from animality to

potential descend-

all its

lated" in a set of primordial germs. Preformationism

re-

adding characteristics development.

to living things in the course of their

But epigenesis had become linked with the notion of

humanity. Another formulation of progressionism

around the idea that a

more and more

single, basic

centered

prototype had been

fully actualized in the history of nature.

De

This idea was clearly stated by Robinet in his

la

nature (1761). "A stone, an oak, a horse, a monkey, a

man

began

are graduated variations of the prototype which

form

to

elements" tions has

itself

in the

with the

remote

past.

number

least possible

The

of

succession of varia-

been "so many steps towards the being of

humanity." Herder advanced a similar idea

in his

Ideen

zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit

more emphasis

spontaneous generation, and was discredited along with

(1784-91), although he gave

that notion

by the experiments of Lazaro Spallanzani (1729-99) and others. Hence the temporary triumph

standard form (Hauptform) which

of preformationism arrested biological evolutionism

animal kingdom and most perfectly exemplified in man. These ideas represented a response of speculative minds to the facts of vertebrate homologies discussed

Lamarck. This situation may have something had to do with the fact that even so eminent figure as Kant, who was vaguely attracted to evolua until the period of

tionistic

modes

of thought, rejected the idea that spe-

V.

A new This

by Buffon and Louis Jean Marie Daubenton. The conclusions of the new science of comparative anatomy were translated into terms of a teleological scheme

aimed

PROGRESSIONISM

was the metaphysical doctrine

progress, or progressionism.

It

make

its

eighteenth century.

in the latter half of the

at

from the

man has been and has been achieved by a one prototype that appears in

start

gradual perfecting of

version of evolutionism began to

appearance

to the

diversified in the

is

according to which the production of

can change.

cies

of

universal

resulted in large measure

all

living things.

Various metaphysical explanations of process were offered.

power" (puissance

this

perfecting

Robinet posited a "creative

active) that increased in strength

from what Lovejoy has called "the temporalizing of

through the ages and produced higher forms despite

the Chain of Being" (Lovejoy [1936], Ch.

According

the resistance of brute matter. Herder attributed the

conception derived from Platonic and Neo-

perfecting to vaguely conceived "purposes" of Nature

to

a

Platonic philosophy, the universe

is

ix).

a completed hier-

which have been realized

in

a necessary historical

archy or "chain" which extends from entities having

order. Exponents of Naturphilosophie, such F.

a minimal degree of being, through

Schelling and L. O. Oken, for

all

possible forms,

to the ens perfectissimum. This conception

which made

underwent

appearance in Leibniz. The stages of the hierarchy were regarded as coming into existence successively in time, starting with the lowest; and the movement towards the higher stages was regarded as unfinished and as continually a modification

its

first

producing new and diverse forms. Thus the conception of a static chain of being

178

lized state. This formulation not only

became

that of a unilinear

had

a strong appeal,

a divine

God

is

power

is

whom

had recourse

W.

J.

progressionism

to the belief that

expressed in the succession of forms.

gradually revealing his nature in the history

of the cosmos, and

man

is

the being in

whom

at last

These teleological explanation-schemes, especially the ones advocated by the

divinity

German

is

fully manifested.

Naturphilosophen, embodied the notion of

successive creation or spontaneous generation of kinds,

process of ascent to greater perfection.

and hence were not transformist. They were rather

The details of progressionism were worked out in many different ways. Thus, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Lord James Barrett Monboddo limited the scope of the

explanations which were strongly tinged with Neo-

doctrine to man's advance from a primitive to a civi-

in the early

Platonism, and formulated by minds of a romantic rather than a scientific cast. Yet the biological sciences

nineteenth century were

much

influenced

EVOLUTIONISM by such romantic speculations Ch.

(cf.

Nordenskiold [1929],

xiv).

and transformism was Darwin and Lamarck. These mainly due to Erasmus broad historical advance men accepted the idea of a But they living simple complex. of things from to

The

In the early nineteenth century biological progres-

sionism

linking of progressionism

came under

ranged

in a unilinear

there are different

The anatomist and paleon-

attack.

denied that living things can be

tologist, Cuvier,

sequence.

four fundamental

cannot

they

that

He contended

ar-

that

groups of animals, so be integrated into an

rejected the idea of a successive creation of kinds in

ascending taxonomic scheme or regarded as belonging

favor of the view that later kinds had descended with

to one historical series in which a single basic prototype was gradually perfected. The embryologist, Karl E. von Baer, and the paleontologist, Louis Agassiz, supported these contentions. Von Baer argued that the developmental processes in the four groups bear no significant

modifications from earlier ones. Both

men

held that

what had occurred at successive stages of this descent is amenable to explanation in natural terms. Erasmus Darwin's explanation was sketchy and quasi-poetic; Lamarck's explanation was more detailed and quasiscientific. The general pattern was similar in the two cases. It invoked the notion that living things, by virtue of an internal vital power, respond to the changing

environment

in

such a

way

as to satisfy their

wants

As a result of this process, somatic characteristics are developed which meet those wants or needs, and are passed on to successive generations of offspring. Thus in the course of time the organisms concerned undergo alterations of form and function. The alterations, however, are not random, for they are phases of the progressive advance of living things from or needs.

embryological relationships to each other.

Serious

doubt was thus cast not only on the idea that living things had evolved in a unilinear way, but also on the idea that they had evolved at all. For Cuvier, von Baer,

and Agassiz rejected the notion of the mutability of species. They were anti-evolutionists as well as antiprogressionists. This fact tended to obscure the logical

point that since biological evolutionism does not entail

progressionism,

it

is

quite possible to subscribe to the

former without subscribing to the

much

nineteenth-century

latter.

thought

Hence in was

evolution

mistakenly identified with progress, not only in biology

lower to higher types.

but also in other disciplines.

Although Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck helped to pave the way for the work of Charles Darwin, their

The work of Cuvier and von Baer helped to undermine the influence of the idea of a great chain or scale of beings. As zoological evidence accumulated, it became hard to accept the progressionists' view that

evolutionism was very different from eighteenth-century deists, for

cosmos

is

whom

his.

They were

the history of the

the actualizing of a divine plan established

Deism and evolutionism were readily combined in the view that God had so designed the universe that evolution is the means by which His plan is executed without miraculous intervention. The historical succession of forms obeys the laws ordained by God in the beginning. A basic aim of Erasmus Darwin in his Zoonomia (1794-96), of Lamarck in his Philosophic zoologique (1809), and somewhat later, of Bobert Chambers in his popular Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), was to advocate deistic evolutionism. All these works did indeed invoke empirical facts. But the facts were introduced not to support specific biological hypotheses, as was the case with Charles Darwin. They were introduced to support at

creation.

a general philosophy of nature. Furthermore,

reference was species.

made

to the

little

problem of the origin of

Erasmus Darwin scarcely mentions

things form a single, tidy, unilinear series. Lamarck, who was widely familiar with the evidence, admitted that such a series could only be formed by living

abstracting characteristics

By the time

come

which men

establish.

Moreover,

indi-

vidual organisms are parts of a continuous, changing process,

which is constantly creating life at the bottom and raising it upwards to more perfect

of the scale

forms of organization

(cf.

Gillispie, 1959).

animal groups.

metaphor had whose

twigs, branches, boughs, etc., represent respectively species, genera, families, etc., of living things, ramify-

ing in a complex, irregular

way from

a single trunk,

two main trunks at the base. This figure of the tree of life became a new paradigm in evolutionary biology, bringing with it a shift in thought which or from

allowed account to be taken of the facts pointed out by Cuvier and von Baer without rejecting the transmutation of species. The book that accomplished this revolutionary shift in thought was Charles Darwin's

On

the Origin of Species (1859).

whereas Lamarck took the position that since only trary groupings

to

to the fore, namely, that of "a great tree"

species,

individual organisms exist in nature, species are arbi-

common

of Charles Darwin, another

VI.

All

the

versions

DARWINISM

of evolutionism

prior

to

1859

two major limitations. They were not able to produce a well-organized body of evidence to show that evolution had occurred, and they were not suffered from

able to formulate a verifiable explanation of

had occurred.

Darwin did both

how

it

things for the theory

179

EVOLUTIONISM of organic evolution. His Origin of Species

as he

is,

"one long argument" which combines hypotheses, deductions, and observations to support three major says,

propositions: (1)

species of organisms

all

now on

earth

have descended by a long, gradual process of modifica-

from a small number of very different species in the remote past; (2) the chief cause of the transmutation of species is natural selection which acts on populations of organisms having varying and inheritable tion

characteristics

and

as a result there

is

differential sur-

it

was not

that caused a shock.

Even some

Huxley came to believe that there was a fundamental between the operation of natural selection and

the ethical values cherished by men. Nevertheless, by the end of the nineteenth century the force of the

Darwinian argument was augmented by the discovery

Adam" was

fossil

remains, and the "death

widely admitted

The Darwinian theory

(3) natural selection accounts for the adaptations of

Greene, 1959). Its

oppo-

of the privileged

upper

popular opposition, especially nents were mainly

(cf.

excited bitter theological and

members

in

England.

improve those adaptations, and conversely, it leads to the extinction of poorly adapted species. Darwin did not profess to have invented any of these ideas, and he was particularly cognizant of his indebtedness to Thomas Malthus and Lyell. What

of the ideology of the French Revolution.

he did was to make evolutionism for the

regime had been overthrown by those

it

also tends to

testable theory

dence

and to

time a

first

powerful body of evi-

offer a

it was community. There was the Darwinian method" (cf.

Consequently, before long

in its support.

accepted by the whole

scientific

indeed a "triumph of Ghiselin, 1969).

Darwinism had a revolutionary impact on many aspects of Western intellectual culture. It destroyed the quasi-theological frame of mind in the sciences, so that biologists no longer concerned themselves with the biblical story of the creation of species, or geologists

with the story of the Flood. Darwin's proof that

species change in a gradual, orderly

way under

influence of natural causes utilized the

same uniformi-

tarian principle

science.

the

by which Lyell had made geology a

The adaptations

of plants

and animals

to their

environments, cited by William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802) as evidence of providential design in

by Darwin without any reference to divine purposes. Thus the living world became amenable to explanation in mechanistic, or the world,

were accounted

more accurately world was.

for

naturalistic terms, just as the nonliving

A new

scientific outlook, altogether free

of theological presuppositions,

was strongly reinforced

by Darwinism. Of even greater importance was the impact of Darwinism on man's conception of himself. It was a clear implication of the Origin of Species that beings had descended not from an historical

created by

human

God

in

ancestors. T.

human

Adam

4004 b.c, but from remote, preH. Huxley developed this implica-

tion with reference to bodily traits in

Nature (1863). Darwin developed

it

Man's Place

in

with reference to

mental, moral, and social traits in The Descent of

Man

them

of Darwin's allies, such

conflict

of

life;

the novelty of

George Romanes, and Asa Gray, were unwilling to accept the conclusion that the powers of the mind were evolutionary products.

handicap the organisms

viable organisms to widely different conditions of

much

as Lyell. Alfred Russel Wallace,

of various proto-human

in the struggle for existence;

so

these ideas as the arguments offered in support of

and reproduction in the population, depending on the extent to which the characteristics favor or vival

180

Once again

(1871).

who

classes

regarded the theory as a threat to the

Establishment.

They

associated the doctrine of evolu-

tion with the atheistic materialism

which had been part

The ancien

who

held that

man can improve his lot and perfect himself by his own efforts. Darwinism was believed to belong to this same family before

its

of radical ideas.

More than

half a century

appearance, the influence of those ideas in

England had been counteracted by Malthus' Essay on Population (1798) and by Paley 's Natural Theology. Malthus had contended that the improvement of man's lot is made impossible by the rate of population increase and the consequent need to keep the population in check by a high rate of mortality in the struggle for existence. Rut Darwin had shown that it was precisely mortality in the struggle for existence that en-

abled natural selection to improve adaptation those that

survived.

ploded Paley is

s

among

Furthermore, Darwin had ex-

claim that the existence of adaptations

evidence of the providential ordering of the world.

To Victorian conservatives all this proved that the doctrine of evolution by natural selection was a threat to Church and State which had to be resisted. Nor would they have been reassured by the fact that Darwin had declined Marx's invitation to allow Volume I of Das Kapital to be dedicated to him (de Reer 1965], [

p. 266).

were made Darwinism to support the system of laissez-faire capitalism which had become dominant in the Western world. Those who reaped the benefits of the system but who were aware of its inequities, argued that it conformed to a primal law of evolution. For since, as Darwin had shown, competition in the struggle for In the later nineteenth century, attempts

to use

existence results in the survival of the

fittest,

the rich

are simply better adapted than the poor to the conditions of social

life.

To remove or even mitigate compe-

EVOLUTIONISM would be to go against nature. This doctrine, somewhat inappropriately called "Social Darwinism," was used to oppose government intervention in economic affairs, the growth of trade unions, and the rising

men of letters, such as Tennyson, Samuel Butler, and George Bernard Shaw. Above all it gave a renewed impetus to cosmogonic speculation in philosophy. As

Leading protagonists of the doctrine were Herbert Spencer in England and J. D. Rockefeller and W. G. Sumner in the United States.

were constructed

tition

tide of socialist ideas.

But Social Darwinism also had

its critics,

1

in

biology called attention to certain methodological

which influenced subsequent science. Darwin showed that explanation can be historical without losing its scientific character. For in biologyone is often able to explain phenomena by showing how they originated and developed. To understand "the tree of life" one has to understand how it grew. (2) By getting rid of Platonistic elements in his treatment of natural selection, Darwin established evoluit

1

tionary science on a nominalistic basis.

He

then intro-

duced statistical or "population" conceptions to permit generalizations to be made about the changes which selection produces in individuals.

(3)

The Origin of

Species explained what happened in evolution as an outcome of accidental and orderly events combined. Natural selection is an order-generating process. The occurrence of variations, the survival and reproductive

need

It

thus

They serve

certain ends

be so studied. Thus a

scientific

can be admitted

same time

draw philosophical

it

was clear

that his

sentence of the Origin of

final

Species remarked on the "grandeur of this view of life,"

and thereby invited a metaphysical interpretation of the books conclusions. Such metaphysical interpretations not only generalized those conclusions, but also

tended to deal with questions that Darwin

Among

legiti-

were the question of how life began, why it started to evolve, whether evolution had always been continuous, and to what mately bypassed.

these

extent naturalistic principles adequately accounted for

cosmic order, teleology

in nature, the

human mind, ostensible freedom human knowledge. In taking up these the

appearance of of action, and matters, evolu-

tionary philosophies sometimes tried to anticipate the findings of the sciences,

answers to

sometimes offered speculative

nonscientific

undertook conceptual

and sometimes and redefinition of

questions,

analysis

and must

concept of teleology

terms. Occasionally there face of the

consequence of

domain. The social sciences, for example,

became strongly evolutionary. Facets of human culture came to be investigated in terms of their origin, development, and survival or disappearance. The word

The

on by

ex-

biologist Ernst Haeckel, in

Germany, expounded

doctrine in his popular work, The Riddle of the Universe (London, 1899), Chs. I and XIII. "Evolution"

was

metaphysical teleology are rejected.

basic stuff being acted

Darwin's vigorous champion

These Darwinian ideas spread rapidly into the whole

that theological

its

trinsic forces or laws.

this

intellectual

The

a world-outlook.

and

at the

conclusions,

ideas could be readily generalized so as to constitute

alized doctrine, the total universe has evolved as a

adaptations are not the result of design, they are nevertheless purposive.

to

(4)

cording to universal laws in order to be a science. that

METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTIONISM

Although Darwin himself disavowed any intention

although

became clear that a discipline does not what must necessarily happen ac-

to establish

The Darwinian explanation showed

after 1859.

was a failure of nerve in the Darwinian challenge, so that an antievolutionary position ultimately emerged. It will be convenient to deal with a few of the major evolutionary philosophies under four headings: mechanistic evolutionism, vitalistic evolutionism, emergent evolutionism, and pragmatic evolutionism. Mechanistic Evolutionism. According to one gener-

success of organisms, etc., are matters of accident or

chance.

VII.

among whom

were C. S. Peirce, and also Peter Kropotkin. the author of Mutual Aid 1907). The question of the bearing of evolutionary theory on social philosophy and ethics was much debated at this time, and is still being discussed (cf. Waddington, 1960; Flew, 1967). The success of the Darwinian explanation scheme features of

a result various systems of metaphysical evolutionism

for

him the magic conception which could lead

to the solution of every

cosmic

riddle.

All natural

of works by

phenomena, he contended, "from the motion of heavenly bodies ... to the growth of plants and the consciousness of man, obey one and the same great law of causation." It produces "a vast, uniform, un-

anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, historians of

interrupted process of development." In the process

moral, legal, and political institutions, and so on. In-

countless types of organization arise, but "all

"evolution" began to appear in the

deed,

"it

filtered

was not long before the

through to

of

lesson of evolution

human endeavour,

in-

may be

ultimately referred to the mechanics of atoms." Yet since continuity prevails throughout, the

atoms which

music, and the history of ideas

constitute the world-stuff must be supposed to have

general" (de Beer [1965], p. 216). Darwinism excited

a rudimentary consciousness or "soul" from which the

cluding literature, in

all fields

titles

art,

the interest and frequently the antipathy of English

consciousness of

man was

evolved.

Hence atoms

are

181

— EVOLUTIONISM not just bits of physical matter. Haeckel therefore referred to his doctrine as "monism," not materialism. It

may be viewed

crude but

as a philosophically

influ-

attempt to unite Darwinism with the cosmogony

ential

initiated

by Descartes, Kant, and Laplace.

A more

sophisticated version of mechanistic evolu-

A

Sys-

tem of Synthetic Philosophy 1862-93). He had published an attack on the idea of fixed, created species, (

and a defense of transmutation, in his essay, "The Development Hypothesis" (1852). When the Origin of Species appeared Spencer accepted its contention that existing forms of life had descended with modifications from common ancestors. He even coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" which Darwin unwisely adopted as a synonym for natural selection. Yet Spencer was not a Darwinian. The general definition of evolution he formulated was inspired by von Baer's description of embryological development, and also by Lamarckian progressionism. Evolution is

gression

and dissolution

system

or, as

causes of this trinsic to

apply

movement

The

are mechanical, being ex-

matter and motion. Spencer undertook to

his definition to all

phenomena, from the forma-

tion of the solar system out of a primitive nebula to

the rise of civilization out of primitive

The

tions.

human

associa-

enterprise needed ten large volumes and

thirty years to complete.

In

its

day

it

was world-

famous. Part of the reason for

its

fame was

that the Synthetic

Philosophy proposed to reconcile science and religion.

But

in

doing so

it

largely negated evolutionism. For

Henri Bergson put

The

Vitalistic Evolutionism.

it,

"evolutionism only

ancient idea that orgain inor-

ganic matter had been invoked to account for the history of

life

by advocates of progressionism and

Naturphilosophie in the eighteenth century. The

influ-

ence of these romantic speculations did not end with the appearance of the Origin of Species, however, but

continued to be manifested hostile to

Darwinism.

No

metaphysical doctrines

in

objection was raised to the

conclusion that evolution had occurred. objected

was

to

the

philosophical

What was

adequacy

of

mechanistic or naturalistic explanations of evolution. Spencer,

p. 144).

encompasses, the Syn-

be an anti-evolutionary

nisms are animated by a vital force not found

The

6th ed.,

grand cosmic cycle. Thus it

name."

in

which the matter passes from a relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel {First Principles,

in the

thetic Philosophy turns out to

defined as "an integration of matter and a concomitant dissipation of motion; during

transformation"

be followed by the reverse process of retro-

will then

despite the wealth of detail

tionism was formulated by Herbert Spencer in

issue of teleology, largely ignored

came

in for

much

by Haeckel and

attention, as did the ques-

why organisms had become ever more diversiand complex since arising on the earth. Answers

tion of fied

to such questions in terms of a generalized vitalism,

romantic overtones, were offered by Schopenhauer and Bergson. The importance of Schopenhauer for the history of evolutionism was first pointed out by Lovejoy (see Lovejoy, 1911). The relevant material occurs mainly in a late work, Zur Philosophic und Wissenschaft der Natur (1850), which Schopenhauer wrote under the influence of Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a book that prefigured many Darwinian with strong

arguments for the theory of descent. Schopenhauer used Chambers' ideas to develop an evolutionary philosophy of nature as a final supplement to the earlier

First Principles (1862), Spencer adopted an epistemological premiss from Mansel's The Limits of Religious Thought (1858) according to which ultimate reality cannot be known. Now religion in-

system which Schopenhauer had worked out in Die

volves the consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power behind phenomena, and science, since it is only con-

which "objectifies" itself in the phenomenal world. By 1850 Schopenhauer construed this objectification as a process of cosmic, geological, and biological evolution. Each individual in the process embodies the will to live. The general diversification of types and the movement through sudden saltations towards com-

in his

opening volume,

cerned with phenomena, can acknowledge that they are manifestations of an unknowable reality.

Hence

there need be no opposition between the respective

claims of religion and science. But

it

process of evolution

phenomena

is

a feature of

follows that the alone.

Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818). According to that system, absolute reality striving,

irrational

for

maximum

domain of phenomena evolution is not allpervasive. For it is essentially a rearrangement of enduring matter and motion in various sectors inorganic, organic, and super-organic. The mechanical

by

its

causes

that

operate

are

likewise

enduring.

And,

is

Will, an unconscious,

power, beyond space and time,

plexity are explicable in terms of a striving of the Will

Ultimate reality does not evolve. Moreover, even in the

lo2

Spencer declares, more forthrightly than Diderot, universal development will eventually run its course. It

expression. This

the whole process like

is

an "end" determined

nature, though not consciously pursued. is

Hence

teleological, not mechanical. Yet

Spencer, Schopenhauer refused to give ontological

primacy

to evolution.

For the Will

in itself

is

timeless,

complete, and inscrutable. As Lovejoy remarks, "both

EVOLUTIONISM it was the romantic, imaginative quality works rather than the presence in them of cogent arguments and supporting evidence that made

systems consist of an evolutionary philosophy of nature,

appeared. Yet

projected against the background of an essentially-

of those

mystical and negative metaphysics" (Lovejoy [1911], p. 214).

A forth

thoroughgoing evolutionary metaphysics was

by Bergson

set

in L'evolution creatrice (1907; trans,

as Creative Evolution, 1911). This ingenious speculative

work proclaimed the ontological priority of time and becoming over being. It attributed the history of organisms and their living properties to the activity of a primordial impulse (elan

vital;

poussee

which and grow and

vitale)

Bergsonian evolutionism popular. Emergent Evolutionism. A central theme in the Origin of Species was that no abrupt changes had taken place in the history of life. That history conformed to the principle, natura non facit saltum ("nature

it is not an essential part of his theory. Huxley affirmed in Collected Essays (9 vols.,

infused inert matter, created organic structures,

advised since

endowed organisms with

Thus,

the capacity to

adapt to the environment. The created forms

in

vital

impulse freely

ever-increasing diversity, at each stage

"engrafting on to the necessity of physical forces the largest possible

amount

of indetermination." Like his

T H.

now and then, no small importance

1893-94) "that Nature does make jumps

and

a recognition of the fact

of

minor objections to the doctrine of 77). A Darwinian could accept the

in disposing of

transmutation"

is

(II,

eighteenth-century predecessor, Robinet, Bergson sup-

view that sudden novelties had arisen

posed that inert matter resisted the

although

that there

is

vital impulse, so

a constant tendency for organisms to

relapse into repetitive, devitalized routines. Eventually,

the individual organism dies, but the "current of

on to succeeding generations and gives rise to unpredictable novelties. At bottom, the vital impulse is "a current of consciousness" which has found expreslife" passes

sion in

human

intelligence as a result of "a sudden leap

from animal to man" (Creative Evolution, Bergson contended that

this doctrine

p. 195).

provided a far

makes

no leap"), and hence all evolutionary changes in organisms were gradual. Some of Darwin's supporters considered that his espousal of this principle was ill-

it

in

evolution,

was not clear how he could then escape

from accepting the unpalatable conclusion of thinkers like Schopenhauer and Bergson that the "leaps" to

The conceptual

novelty are due to a vital force.

diffi-

were resolved by the formulation of the doctrine of emergent evolutionism. In its full statement emergent evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine. But one of its contentions is empirical, namely, that emergent events can be obculties here

The

served in nature.

results of certain

chemical reac-

more adequate account of evolutionary phenomena than either Darwinism or Spencerian mechanism. These theories, he held, failed to make intelligible the springing up of new organic types, the drive towards ever-increasing complexity of structure, and the pres-

tions

ervation of adaptive functioning through phases of

unpredictable in principle. Emergents can also be

rapid change. Such

phenomena become

intelligible

if

they are regarded as consequences of the action of a vital

impulse.

It

works purposively to sustain each

organism for a short period, but final goal.

There

is

Man

is

him

does not pursue any

"teleology without design" which

results in continuous

In

it

progress, indefinitely pursued.

empirically

false.

Furthermore,

total of existence,

noted in the history of

life at

to

is

in revolt against

ideas at the start of the

welcomed

who

mechanistic and materialistic twentieth century.

the important place he gave to

mind

Many in the

evolutionary picture. Philosophers such as William

James, and writers such as Marcel Proust, Andre Gide,

and Shaw were influenced by his emphasis on creativity, freedom, novelty, and the flow of consciousness. His defense of metaphysics challenged the positivism

which had dominated French some years before Bergson's works

of Hippolyte Taine intellectual life for

those points where

new

which does not require the postulation The fact is, however, incompatible

a natural fact

with mechanistic, reductionist, or preformationist terpretations of

ical

Bergson's evolutionism was attractive to those

occur,

of a vital impulse.

what took

place.

patible with some, but not

and he has access

first

to the

organic types appeared on the scene. Their emergence

causal principle.

realized;

they

new

sumand being genuinely novel, they are

true freedom

is

when

these emergent events add something

the growing tip of this progressive movement.

ultimate reality in his intuition of time.

were

ple.

which happen suddenly provide a simple examHence the claim that nature makes no leaps is

all,

The emergence

It is

in-

likewise incom-

interpretations of the

of novelties in biolog-

evolution illustrates the cumulative aspect of the

process.

These contentions were embodied

in

systems of

by Lloyd Morgan in Emergent Evolution (1923) and by Samuel Alexander in Space, Time and Deity (1920). They construed "emergence" as applying not to individual events or to particular organic forms, but to broad "levels" of being. Lloyd Morgan affirmed that the universe had evolved by generating four temporally successive levels: psycho-physical events, life, mind, and spirit or God. Alexander distinguished five levels of complexes metaphysical

evolutionism

183

EVOLUTIONISM and

their qualities: space-time, matter,

deity.

The supervening of each

was declared

to

be inexplicable, a

on

life,

mind, and

jurisprudence, and social ethics. Pragmatism thus pro-

its

predecessors

vided a

fact to

be accepted

is

level

with "natural pietv." Other exponents of the doctrine

of understanding

how

cultural evolution

same

time,

pragmatic evolutionism did involve a world view, a

objected to this conclusion, and undertook to show that

predominantly empirical and naturalistic metaphysics,

emergents can be given a rational explanation ex post facto, without denying that when they occur they are

in

is no consensus about what kinds of levels cosmic evolution has produced. Bv no means do all emergent evolutionists accept the view that one of the levels can be called Cod. Naturalistic formulations of the doctrine have been given in which the main categories are physical,

e.g.,

or

elementary particles, atoms, molecules,

cells, or-

which no appeal was made

vitalistic agencies, or

On

unpredictable novelties. There

how many

like

and the unique products of mental,

observation and experiment to determine their worth.

either

action,

when

man

by making

living

systems because of the different degrees of complexity in their organization. this

view, however,

The metaphysical is

problematic.

It

functioning properly, are

adapts to an existing situation

behavior conform to

his

actively changing the situation to

meet

pragmatic approach to mind had

its

Darwinism but

Peirce's

it

or by

his needs.

This

roots not only in

also in Bain's conception of belief as

scientific principles as

among

constant

coping with the world, and must be tested by

sum

exist

in a

instruments

for

in this process. Ideas are

a "preparation to act," in

with the view that discontinuities

recognized to

which serve

ill

moral, and cultural evolution that have enriched the of things on the earth. These applications accord

is

him well or

inseparable, for

logical evolution

man

every other living thing,

capacities are, therefore, adaptive devices

Thought and

as a device for integrating bio-

cosmic purposes,

process of adapting to his environment. His mental

The notion of emergence has been accepted by many biologists as a valid description of what happened at critical stages of terrestrial evolution. The notion has been found useful

to

mechanistic laws.

the pragmatic approach,

be engaged,

ganisms, and societies.

also

contention

Chauncey Wright's view

of

"working hypotheses," and

in

in

Collected

Papers

(8

vols.,

1931-58) that "the elements of every concept enter

and make

extension of

into logical thought at the gate of perception

requires the

their exit at the gate of purposive action" (Collected

postulation of such highly controversial ideas as an

Papers [1934], V, 212). John

Dewey developed

these

cosmic evolution, pervasive levels of being, and

notions into a full-blown evolutionary logic in his

an inherent tendency of the cosmos to produce novel-

Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938). Another prag-

overall,

ties.

Furthermore, the model or paradigm associated

with these ideas

is

envisaged neither as

Emergent evolution is a temporal building up of a scale obscure.

of nature, nor as a temporalized chain of beings. For

which emerges "contains within it" all earlier levels, and also that the supervening of a level on others may engender novel qualities at one or more of those other levels. The model here would seem to be that of a developing organism which during embryogenesis can be observed to manifest new structures within which earlier structures are contained. Emergent evolutionism has, indeed, an affinity for organismic and epigenetic ideas, which have sometimes been combined with it. Pragmatic Evolutionism. A distinctive generalization of Darwinian conceptions took place in connection with the rise of pragmatism in America. The initiators of this doctrine accepted Darwin's view that evolution is continuous. But they broadened his theory of chance variations and natural selection so as to explain the role of human thought and its multifarious creations. Out of this explanation there developed a reconstrucit

is

said that each level

was not with abstract speculation but with reflection on tion of traditional philosophy. Its primary concern

184

way

related to biological evolution. At the

concrete problems of scientific method, education.

matist, G.

H. Mead, put the matter strikingly when

he said that "the

method is, after all, only grown self-conscious" (Move-

scientific

the evolutionary process

ments of Thought in the Nineteenth Century [1936], For in the history of science ideas, like somaticvariations in the history of life, have been subject to p. 364).

a selective process

the

which has resulted

in a survival of

fittest.

The world view which pragmatic evolutionism

in-

volved was, with one notable exception, pluralistic and

open-ended. "Nature" was the basic ontological category which embraced the multiplicity of events whose

and sometimes ranno fixed cosmic order and no overall direction in cosmic history. Yet a cumulative, determinate past is being built up by the actualization of some interactions are sometimes regular

dom. There

is

events out of the array of indeterminate possibilities.

Wright compared the physical history of the universe to meteorological phenomena, in his doctrine of "cosmic weather," where what happens is causally determined but shows no dominant trend. William James, in

opposing the Hegelian "block universe," suggested

world events are "only strung along, not rounded and closed." Dewey urged, in The Influence of Danvin on Philosophy, that a philosopher who has that in

EVOLUTIONISM

and absolute finalities in order and the specific conditions that generate them" (1910, p. 13). Pragmatism can find no meaning in a "wholesale theory" of first and last

The

after absolute origins

to explore specific values

things.

The exception

to

all this

was the speculative evolu-

tionism of Peirce. Although he had a sound grasp of the logic of Darwinism, recognizing as few did

its

use

of the statistical method, he never accepted the theory as a

complete explanation of either biological or

cul-

EVOLVTIOMSM

LITER ARY

VZ//.

learned the lesson of Darwinism will "forswear inquiry

influence of the idea of evolution outside the

is well illustrated by the work Samuel Butler, Friedrich Nietzsche, and George Bernard Shaw. They were primarily men of letters, and may be taken to represent respectively the fields of the novel, classical philology, and drama. All accepted the idea of descent with modification, but all were hostile to Darwinism and favorable to Lamarckism. Thev did not, however, embody their objections in

sciences and philosophy of

scientific or philosophical

arguments. They used vari-

that the diversification

ous literarv forms for the expression of their views, and

which has occurred among organisms cannot be accounted for bv any lawlike mechanism such as natural

often mingled rhetoric and invective with exposition.

Thus he held

tural evolution.

selection. trinsic

It

points rather to the operation of an in-

spontaneity in the universe. Furthermore, the

principle of continuity implies that evolution in the

Four broad themes appear

growth

is

widest sense of the word. But whatever grows

must be present

in the process

from the

Hence

start.

such phenomena as feeling and thought, so far from

They objected

(1)

that a theory

Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck were, he on much firmer ground when they attributed

of species.

man

phenomena have

these

developed through the forming of

habits, especially

habits involving the use of signs and symbols, to their

present state. Accordingly, man's adaptation ily

to a semiotic

a bio-physical

is

primar-

environment and only secondarily to one.

An adequate pragmatism

will

conclude that the purposive action into

therefore

which thought

passes,

is

directed to the increase of

concrete reasonableness, and

is

variations to the purposive activity of organisms.

man's mental powers arose by chance, by affirming that like all other organic attributes they are the outcome of

what (2)

living things

Peirce generalized these themes into a "cosmogonic"

whom

he

acknowledged his indebtedness. The universe is represented as growing from a state of total randomness in the infinitely distant past towards a state of total order in the infinitely distant future.

The

to

meet

literary evolutionists rejected

their needs

Darwin's the-

Cosmic evolution

is

also

which assigned far too much importance to the environment. "The influence of 'environment' is nonsensically over-rated in Darwin," Nietzsche wrote. "The essential factor in the process of life

Will to Power,

ized feeling" and ending with "an absolutely perfect,

Cunning? (1887)

and symmetrical system"

"at last crystallized." is

which mind be-

in

What happens

not causally necessitated. Yet

or "fated" to occur, partly because

it

it is

in

this

destined

involves a pro-

These and other descriptions can hardly be said to form a perspicuous and logically consistent doctrine. In this area of his thought, Peirce's transcendental and religressive unfolding of God's purpose in nature.

gious predilections often

led

him

to

make vague,

grandiose claims. These claims were not only at vari-

ance with the philosophical method he advocated elsewhere, but were also at variance with the principles that guided other pragmatic evolutionists

1949; Goudge, 1950).

(cf.

Wiener,

is

precisely the

tremendous inner power to shape and create new forms, which merely uses, exploits 'environment' " (The

represented as beginning with "a chaos of unpersonal-

process

have done

course of evolution.

in the

ory of natural selection as a mechanistic misconception

evolutionism reminiscent of Schelling, to

comes

Shaw

echoed Butler's contention in the Preface to his play, Back to Methuselah il921). The underlying concern appears to have been to block any suggestion that

not simply a bodily-

response.

rational,

and New (1879)

which invoked the notion of accidental

variations ultimately failed to account for the origin held,

throughout the cosmos. In

Darwin's admission of chance

Butler contended in his Evolution, Old

always been

an inchoate form,

to

or accident as an element in the evolutionary process.

being late arrivals on the evolutionary scene, have in existence, at least in

in the writings of these

literarv evolutionists.

.

.

.

II,

Luck or

Sec. 647). Butler asserts in

that living forms "design themselves

into physical conformity with their

own

inten-

by means of "unconscious memorv" which binds the generations together, allowing each tions."

They do

to profit

so

from the experience of its ancestors. Shaw Darwinian theory which he calls "Cir-

ridicules the

cumstantial Selection." the impulse

It

ignores "the simple fact" that

which produces evolution

is

creative.

No

matter what the environment, "the will to do anything

can and does,

at a certain pitch of intensity

and organize new to

tissue to

do

it

.

.

.

create

with" (Preface, Back

Methuselah).

These vitalistic views were part of the basis on which Nietzsche and Shaw envisaged the possibility of the evolutionary improvement of man. Unlike pre(3)

loD

EVOLUTIONISM Darwinian advocates of human believed that

and

to

man

species. But this

will not take place automatically.

development

has to be initiated

It

now. Both writers were vague about

as they are

the steps needed to set the development going, and also

about the distinctive qualities that are to characthe

terize (

new

type of

homo

— referred

to

as

the

'bermensch by Nietzsche and as the superman by

Shaw. In the Prologue to Also Sprach Zarathustra urged that

(1883), Nietzsche

Ubermensch

man

in

is

man must be

— a rope across an abyss.

that

he

seen as a

"a rope tied between beast and

transitional being,

.

.

.

What

is

great

a bridge and not a goal." Shaw-

is

superman can be brought What is needed

rejected the idea that the

about by any program of social reform. is

a profound collaboration with the creative impulse

whose purposes are being realized in the evolutionary process. Behind this theme lay the recognition that evolutionism, by dissolving the conception of a fixed human essence, had opened up or Life Force

the his

possibility

man

for

so

to

arrange things that

descendants will become beings far superior to

(4)

Shaw regarded

his doctrine of the Life

an evolutionary theology. In striving to

make

himself.

Force

God

is

as

become

The only method he can use perfect

is

many

that of trial

and

species were.

"We

in the effort

error. This ac-

failures

are not very successful attempts at

God," Shaw declared; but we can nevertheless "work towards that ideal, until we get to be supermen, and then super-supermen, and then a world of organisms who have achieved and realized God" ("The Beligion of the Future" [1911], p. 35).

Shaw's evolutionary theology was one of a number of formulations of the idea of a finite, developing in the

twentieth century.

The

God

idea occurs

William James, Bergson, Samuel Alexander, A. N. Whitehead, and others. It appeared to provide a way

in

of reconciling the presence of a divine

power

in the

world with the suffering, cruelty, and waste exhibited by the evolutionary process. The reconciliation is in But the attempt to undertake shows how profoundly evolutionism had penetrated

fact difficult to achieve. it

186

the thought of the times.

now occur

formulation. Evolutionary explanations

in

biochemistry, cultural anthropology, and relativistic

cosmology as well as in biology. Classical Darwinism has been replaced by an enlarged theory of natural selection which does greater justice to the facts of the

The changes

living world.

history of

life

that

have taken place

in the

are recognized to be extremely complex,

and a corresponding complexity has had to be introduced into the conceptual schemes employed to account for those changes. At the same time, interest in schemes of metaphysical evolutionism has continued,

among

especially

philosophically-minded biologists.

A

brief account of these trends will conclude the present article.

In Darwin's day there

was

little

knowledge of the

causes and the nature of variations which occur in

The laws

populations.

of heredity

until 1900.

first worked become widely

were

out by Mendel in 1865, but they did not

The laws provided

the basis for the

science of genetics which advanced rapidly in the

first

were indifferent or hostile to By the fourth decade, however, a theoretical breakthrough had been achieved which enabled B. A. Fisher (1930) and J. B. S. Haldane (1932)

which mark the history of life. Man is the latest experiment to be tried, and he is still on probation. If he fails to advance God's purpose he will be scrapped, as the numerous extinct counts for the

advocated

ther

God who

affirmed to be not

infinite, omnipotent, and perfect being, but a finite power, limited to working through the process of

to

conceptual

three decades of the twentieth century. During that

an

evolution.

its

become more intricate, and several furattempts have been made to give it a metaphysical

structure has

and

his plays, prefaces,

speeches he identified the Life Force with is

doctrine of evolution has expanded,

known

himself.

RECENT EVOLUTIONISM

During recent decades the explanatory range of the

has the capacity to surpass himself

become a new

by men

IX.

they

perfectibility,

period

geneticists

Darwinian

selection.

to restate the doctrine of natural selection so as to

reconcile

has

it

come

with the principles of genetics. The result

to

be known

evolution which

is

now

as the "synthetic theory" of

generally accepted

(J.

Huxley,

1943; B. Rensch, 1947; G. G. Simpson, 1949).

The new

synthetic theory, like classical Darwinism,

undertakes to explain evolutionary changes in naturalistic

terms. But

it

avoids past oversimplifications by

number of causal factors to account for changes. Hence the theory admits phenomena

correlating a

those

unrecognized by the Darwinians, such as different rates and levels of evolution, different degrees of selection pressure, evolution without speciation, etc. Further-

more, is

in the

new theory

the central feature of selection

differential reproduction,

Hence the unfit,

not individual survival.

struggle for existence, the destruction of the

and the survival of the

fit

become

of selection rather than identical with

it.

"gladiatorial theory of existence" can

terized as a Victorian

The

myth (Simpson,

special cases

T

H. Huxley's

now be

charac-

1949).

causal factors assembled by the synthetic theory

purport to explain pre-human biological evolution, but they do not purport to explain what happened after

EVOLUTIONISM conceded that human evolution

kind of natural selection by which increasingly complex

has been powerfully influenced by cultural factors that

and efficient aggregations were built up. Ultimately one type of aggregation survived, and gave rise to proto-life. Many unsolved problems remain in this area,

man emerged. For

man

it is

Hence

himself has produced.

quite unique

among

living things.

has been

his history

Other animals have

Man

been made by natural processes acting on them. has very largely a

new kind

made

himself by means of culture,

of adaptive mechanism. These facts

such as Sir Henry Maine's Ancient

(1861), E. B.

and Lewis Henry

Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871),

Morgan's Ancient Society (1877)

Law

Works

some

laid

of the foun-

dations for a science of cultural evolution. After the

waned

turn of the century, interest in this subject a time, but of L. A. J.

it

for

has recently been revived by the writings

White

(1949), V. G. Childe (1936; 1951),

and

many

un-

H. Steward (1955). The subject contains

solved problems, but evolutionary explanations appear

provide one fruitful way of tackling them Dobzhansky, 1962). to

(see

that

came

to

be occurred

in ancient religious tradi-

But the subject eluded a

tions.

Darwin could

scientific treatment, so

say as late as 1863, "it

is

mere

rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life." Nev-

T

Evolutionary conceptions figure in modern astron-

omy

at

two

There is a well-grounded theory which concerns the life-cycle of A developmental pattern has been

points. (1)

of stellar evolution

main sequence stars. worked out that specifies a regular succession of phases in a normal star's history. (2) There is also a group of cosmological theories

— relativistic

descendants of

the cosmologies of Descartes, Kant, and Laplace

which are based on evolutionary models. Here accounts of the evolution of the nebulae from a primordial, hyper-dense mass are proposed. These accounts are based partly on mathematical deductions from observations and partly on purely hypothetical interpolain the case of the origin of life, is

many

a subject containing

The spread

cosmological evolution

disputed

issues.

of evolutionary ideas in the sciences has

kept alive an interest in giving the ideas a metaphysical generalization. This interest has been mainly manifested,

however, among workers

rather than

among

in the life sciences

professional philosophers

anti-speculative predilections have been strong in re-

With the

cent decades. Accordingly, generalized evolutionism

twentieth-century biochemistry an evolutionary

has tended to be lacking in philosophical finesse, and

H. Huxley dealt with

John Tyndall

it

in his Belfast address of 1874.

approach to the subject became possible. A most influential hypothesis was stated by A. I. Oparin (1924; trans, as

Haldane

The Origin of Life, New York, 1938) and by According to a recent modified version

(1929).

has been

little

more than

a semi-popular extension of

scientific material.

In various publications, Sir Julian Huxley has con-

tended that evolution encompasses

"all the historical

by a process of chemical evolution on the earth, before there was free oxygen in its atmosphere. Through the action of ultraviolet light, inorganic material gave rise to organic molecules, which in turn evolved into complex biological polymers having a primitive capacity to reproduce.

processes of change and development at

From

biological,

of this hypothesis, life originated

these diffused polymers, specific closed organisms cell. At this was succeeded by organic

developed, culminating in the nucleated stage chemical evolution

evolution (see Bernal, 1967).

This speculative reconstruction recognizes a sub-

between chemical and organic evotwo processes are assumed to have some

stantial difference lution. Yet the

formal elements in common. cept of the survival of the of one particular molecular

"One

fittest,

of these

is

the con-

of the maintenance

pathway

as against others

which certain material substances proved to be lacking" (Bernal, p. 30). It is supposed that random combinations of inorganic elements were subject to a

for

whose

in 1868, as did

ertheless,

rise of

the capacity for mo-

tions that are not in conflict with observations. Yet as

At the other end of the scale, evolutionary explanations have been introduced into discussions of the origin of life. Innumerable accounts of how the first living things

how

lecular replication or reproduction could have evolved.

were

systematically underlined by the rise of evolutionary cultural anthropology in the nineteenth century.

including that of explaining

universe:

in

fact,

it

is

work

in the

the universe historically re-

garded" (1960, pp. 20-21). The overall process from "cosmic star-dust to human society" is continuous, yet it has three distinguishable phases which have super-

vened

in the course of time:

the cosmological, the

and the psycho-social. Each of the phases has its own self-transforming mechanisms, which display increasing efficiency, and so ensure genuine evolutionary progress. Basically, what undergoes evolution, Huxley contends, is "the world stuff." It is per se neither mental nor material, but it has mental and material

aspects

or

"potentialities."

Prior

to

the

psycho-social phase, the universe was devoid of purpose.

With the appearance

of

homo

purposes entered the cosmic scene. allow

men

sapiens, however,

Human

purposes

to influence the course of evolution,

if

they

and hence man has become "the sole agent of future evolutionary advance" (1953, p. 132). so decide,

187

EVOLUTIONISM A materialistic form of evolutionism is advocated by Simpson 1949: 19641 He distinguishes (a) the nonevolutionarv dimension of the universe the enduring

cern with precise ideas or with the relation of what

properties of matter-energy

tions

—

1

dimension

— the

— from

temporalis

(b)

the evolutionary-

successive,

cumulative

changes of configuration or structure that make up the historv of

The

life.

properties in

constitute the

(a)

affirmed to any evidence.

is

plain that evolutionism

It is

having great

ential historv

likely to

is

is

a family of concep-

and viability. be matched by

vitality

Its

long, influ-

its

continuing

future impact on man's thinking about the world

and

about himself.

ultimate causal explanation of events, but historical

explanations do have a limited place in relation to

Man

unique

is

in

(b).

being "the highest form of orga-

nization of matter and energy"

1

,

He

949, p. 344).

is

J.

D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland and New York, Chapter 2 contains an interesting account of the

the result of a purposeless, materialistic process. But

1967).

he does exhibit some behavior that is purposeful, and that can be influenced by "an ethical need" within and

history of ideas

The need impels him

peculiar to himself.

to

adopt

ethical standards for the guidance of his conduct in

changing

societv. but these standards are relative to

circumstances, and are never absolute. Simpson stresses

man's basic

trait of "responsibility." It

is

through the

exercise of this trait at the present critical point of

human

affairs that

homo

sapiens can ensure either the

future welfare of the species or

early extinction.

its

whether mankind will face up to that responsibility, Simpson finds no reason for despair, "but a good deal of reason for pessimism." A more optimistic, religiously-oriented form of evolutionism is presented in the posthumous writings of the Jesuit paleoanthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin Like Julian Huxley, he has espoused a (1955 ff. grandiose vision of cosmic evolution, or "cosmogenesis," which is orthogenetic in the sense that it depicts evolution as having been marked by a steady increase in the complexity and concentration of the As

to

).

stuff of

the universe. This stuff has an external "material

face," but inwardly

it

is

psychical or spiritual. In

its

evolution, successive thresholds of integration have

been passed, so that each

later level

concentrated or "involuted" than

human

its

is

more

intensely-

predecessors.

The

added to the planet a new envelope, the "noosphere," which has been superimposed on the biosphere. The concentration engendered by the level has

human

noosphere will make possible further Its

individual

of

Consciousness

Omega." like is

evolution.

outer manifestation will be the forming of a single

world-culture, and

inner state will be the melding

"at

a

point

in

Hyper-Personal

a

which we

Teilhard's concept of Point

much

God,

its

consciousnesses

might

call

Omega is obscure, Omega

else in his evolutionism. Apparently,

insofar as

He

determines the direction and

constitutes the goal of cosmic history.

personal consciousnesses at

Omega

The melding

will

of

be achieved

by the power of love, which forms "le Milieu divin" within which evolution takes place. All this represents

188

BIBLIOGRAPHY

the expression of a mystical outlook having

little

con-

Buffon,

on the origin of

1783), IV, 382.

life.

G. L.

Comte de

L.,

naturelle generate c! particuliere (Paris,

Histoire

Tze Tuan Chen, "Twenty Five Centuries

Before Charles Darwin," The Scientific Monthly, 29 (1929), 49-52. V. C. Childe,

Man Makes

idem. Social Evolution

i

Himself (London, 1936); London, 1951). Sir Gavin de Beer,

Charles Darwin, Natural History Library edition 1965),

by

far the best available

|

New

York,

account of Darwin's work.

Mankind Evolving (New Haven and Dobzhansk\ London, 1962), a comprehensive discussion with numerous historical references. L. Eiseley, Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It (New York, 1958), an T.

,

excellent, brief historv of evolutionary thought. A. G. N.

Flew, Evolutionary Ethics (London, 1967).

Sir R. A. Fisher,

The Genetical Theory of Xatural Selection (Oxford, 1930). M. T. Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969). C. C. Gillispie, Genesis and

Geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1951); idem, "Lamarck and

Darwin

in

the History of Science," Forerunners of Darwin

Baltimore, 1959), pp. 265-91; idem. The Edge of Objectivity (Princeton, 1960). Chapters VII and VIII are particularly relevant to the present article. B. Glass, O. Temkin, and

W.

L. Straus,

Jr.,

eds..

(Baltimore, 1959).

The

Forerunners of Darwin: 1745-1859 fifteen essays in this

book are

indis-

pensable for the understanding of evolutionism in the century before Darwin. B. Glass, "Maupertuis, Pioneer of Ge-

and Evolution," Forerunners of Darwin, pp. 51-83. Goudge, The Thought of C. S. Peirce (Toronto, 1950); idem. The Ascent of Life: A Philosophical Study of the Theory of Evolution (London and Toronto, 1961). J. C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames, Iowa, 1959). A well-documented history. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I (Cambridge, 1962). F. C. Haber, The Ages of the netics

T. A.

World: Moses to Darwin (Baltimore, 1959).

J.

B. S.

Haldane,

The Causes of Evolution (London, 1932); idem, "The Origin of Life" 1929), in Science and Life: Essays of a Rationalist (London, 1968), pp. 1-11. Sir Julian Huxley. Evolution: The (

Modern Synthesis (London,

1943); idem. Evolution in Action

(London, 1953); idem. Knowledge, Morality and Destiny (New York, 1960), also published with the title New Bottles for

New Wine (New

and the Problem

York, 1957). A. O. Lovejoy, "Buffon

of Species," Forerunners of

Darwin, pp.

84-113; idem, "Some Eighteenth Century Evolutionists,"

The Scientific Monthly, 71 (1950), 162-78; idem, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936); idem, "Schopen-

EXISTENTIALISM as an Evolutionist," The Monist. 21 (1911), 195-222. These works are examples of the history of ideas at its best.

hauer

J.

Needham, Science and

Civilization

China, Vol.

in

II,

History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, 1956). E. Nordenskiold, Biologins Historia, 3 vols. (Stockholm, 1920-24), trans, as The History of Biology (New York, 1929). Despite some inaccuracies, this work is a valuable source of ideas on the interrelations of biology, philosophy, and cultural history. B. Rensch. Neuere Probleme der Abstammungslehre (Stuttgart, 1947), trans, of the 2nd ed.. Evolution Above the Species Level New York, 1960). G. B. Shaw, The Prefaces

and would probably not have thought of himself as a philosopher; Heidegger has stated that his "philosophical tendencies cannot be classed as existentialism"; Sartre, we are told by Merleau-Ponty, only admitted to being an existentialist because he was so frequently called one that he felt that it was his duty

Thus

to accept the label.

impossible to look for

is

it

a definition of the term from any of the major pro-

ponents of the doctrine, though Sartre has

one

to providing

come

closest

L'Exwtentialisme

in his lecture

est

|

(London, 1934); idem, The Religious Speeches of Bernard

Shaw

(University Park. Pa., 1963), contains the essay,

"The

humanisme

Ufl

of 1946,

views.

of Evolution

(New Haven, 1949; rev. ed. 1967), the best new synthetic theory of evolution; idem. The Principles of Animal Taxonomy (New York, 1961); idem, This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist (New York, 1964). Part One contains interesting material on the history of the doctrine of evolution. N. Smart, Doctrine and Argu-

with the same

introduction to the

"Existence

in

Indian Philosophy (London, 1964).

J.

widelv read of the works (1955); trans.

is

probably Le Phenomene humain

Bernard Wall as The Phenomenon of Man C. H. Waddington, The

(New York and London, 1959). Ethical Animal (London, 1960). of Culture (New York, 1949). P.

that occurs the famous phrase

title,

prior to essence,"

is

that subjectivity

of philosophy, that the

concern of

is

explained as

human

individual

the central

is

legitimate metaphysical thinking.

all

Once any is

which

must be the starting-point

made

philosophical statement has been

possible to find hints of

it

in

it

previous writers, to

anyone who used similar forms

attribute priority to

of words, even though their main line of thought in

had been very

reality

in the writings of

different.

However,

it

only

is

Kierkegaard that there can be de-

tected

P.

stresses the existence of the individual as against his

The Science Wiener, Evolution and

THOMAS

GOUDGE

A.

[See also Biological Conceptions in Antiquity;

Chain of Literature; Genetic Continuity; God;

Inheritance Through

own

published as a book

L. A. White,

the Founders of Pragmatism (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).

Being; Evolution of

in this lecture, later

It is

meaning

H. Steward,

Theory of Culture Change (Urbana, 1955). P. Teilhard de Chardin, Oeuvres, 9 vols, to date (Paris, 1955 ff.). The most

as a gen-

eral description rather than a statement of his

Religion of the Future" (1911*. G. C. Simpson, The Meaning

ment

which was intended

Pangenesis;

Pragmatism;

Progress;

a

distinctive

philosophical

essence, the particular character of a to

what he shares with

all

other men.

viewpoint

that

man

as

It is

to this that

opposed

name "existentialism" will be given here. Certainly many philosophers and religious thinkers, such as Saint the

Augustine

in his

Confessions, and Pascal in his Pensees,

Recapitulation; Spontaneous Generation; Uniformitarian-

lay stress on individual responsibility, though they do

ism.l

this

context

the

in

Kierkegaard

is

the

first

a

of

universal

to assert that

metaphysics.

"Truth

is

subjec-

knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge" (CUPS, tivity," that "All essential

EXISTENTIALISM

He

176).

p.

also

emphasizes the absurdity of

this

knowledge; the notion of the absurd being another

A

philosophical movement

the

philosophers

who

sentatives, but rather

by

are its

is

often

taken

to

named be

its

not by repre-

opponents, by those

who

which unites thinkers who can be called exisFor Kierkegaard this absurdity is manifest the doctrines of Christianity: "The absurd is that

feature

tentialist.

in

—

observe from the outside a community of thought

the eternal truth has

amongst certain thinkers, and who give the name to what they regard as a trend in order to be able to refute or attack it. It is only the minor followers, usually not

has

the great innovators, accord. This

indeed the

is

who adopt

the label of their

own

certainly the case with existentialism;

name

has

more often been applied

as a

term

come

and so being

come

into being, has

forth, precisely like .

.

."

(CUPS,

The emphasis on

into being in time, that

p. 188).

individuality

and on absurdity has

frequently led to a romantic element in existentialist writing,

and has partly been the source of its popular no accident that many existentialists are

of abuse than as a neutral description. There would,

appeal.

however, be general agreement that the three major

literary figures as well as philosophers, Sartre

figures to

whom

the term "existentialist" can rightly

be applied are Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Kierkegaard did not use the term,

God

been born, has grown up, any other individual human

It is

being

perhaps the most conspicuous example, though Gabriel

Marcel has written many plays, and Albert Camus was better

known

for his literary than for his theoretical

189

EXISTENTIALISM works. Critics of existentialists claim that their writings are

of exaggerations. Their tendency to think in

full

terms of individuals, frequently

which are one of the

extreme situations

in

and the

staples of the novel

drama, the appeal of their arguments to the emotions

And

popular appeal.

its

movement schools

is

the resentment which the

many

has aroused in

appeal. Sartre's famous example of the uselessness of

man

moral rules to a

weight to the charge. Though Kierkegaard wrote no

ously capable of speaking to

is

intensely personal

with the central drama of his

life to

and

is

connected

an extent unknown

philosophers of other

partly due to their jealousy of such a mass

rather than to the reason of the reader, have given novels, his style

in

an extreme situation

tailed analyses of traditional

many

to

whom

is

obvi-

the de-

moral philosophy would

be boring or unhelpful. Sartre takes the case of the

engagement to a young girl. Regina Olsen, with whom he was deeply in love and who reciprocated his affection. However, Kierkegaard was convinced that he should not marry, owing to his father's sin and his own sense

young man who, after the fall of France in 1940, is faced with the dilemma whether to escape to England to carry on the fight with the Free French Forces or to stay and look after his mother, who is in need of

persuaded her to break

The moral rules "Do your duty to your country" and "Honor thy father and mother" here come into

in

most philosophers. This drama was

of mission.

I

le

ment by convincing her

that

of his voluminous writing

is

his

oft

the engage-

he was unworthy. Much connected with this epi-

and many of the books were dedicated to Regina; indeed, knowledge of this episode is necessary to understand both the contents and the elaborate pseudonyms under which many were published, though there were also philosophic reasons for the latter. To an unsympathetic reader, Kierkegaard's whole attitude seems morbid and unhealthy, and the same charge has been brought against other existentialists. One writer has even said: "I should be inclined to regard it almost sode,

his attention

if

she

to survive the hardships of the

is

time.

conflict,

and there

is

no superior moral rule which can

be invoked to decide between them. there would be no problem. (or

anyone

else) offer? In

asking for advice of an advisor

is

there were,

one sense even the act of

also the choice of the kind of advice

is

new government

higher duty

If

advice could Sartre

not a neutral matter, for the choice

who has preached obedience

that will be given; a priest to the

What

lies

with

will tell

his

him

him

mother.

to stay, as his

A member

of the

fiable as

and leave the country. Any attempt to take advice as if it were neutral will in fact be a decision. In the last resort the young man

tient

can only decide, choose one moral rule to be followed

as a touchstone or criterion of an author's being classi-

an Existentialist, that a reader may get impaand accuse him of gross exaggeration and pretentiousness; that the reader may be inclined to deflate him and 'boil down' what he seems to be saying to some true but absolutely platitudinous remark" (Mary

Warnock,

Existentialist Ethics [1967], p. 6).

extent this remark

would be accepted by

To some

existentialists,

one of their targets has always been complacency, the attitude that the world is basically in order as it is. Kierkegaard attacked the "Christians" of his day, who thought that baptism and confirmation were sure for

evidence of Christianity and

paradox and

who

failed to realize the

difficulty of true faith.

mocked

Sartre also

the complacent.

For

this

all

purpose exaggeration and life,

are

obvious techniques; an appeal to the emotions of the the

is

as

important as to his reason. Hence even

philosophers

among

the

techniques rejected by those the only element in

existentialists

who

man worthy

employ

regard reason as

of attention, and

who

think of the emotions as merely distracting to the

there are moral rules written into the nature of things,

bad faith or

inauthenticity, an agony of choosing. Kierkegaard's attack upon Christendom contained similar elements. The comfortable Christians of his day

but this

is

a device of

attempt to hide from one's

self the

failed to realize the paradoxical nature of their belief in Christ, to see the difficulty of claiming that the

Creator had

come

mous crowd and from

to earth in the

form of a

the dangers to individuality arising

it.

This concentration on the personal, the subjective,

intellect. It is this

and the other to be disobeyed. And this example is be seen as the true model of all moral choices. The smug, the comfortable, and the bourgeois pretend that to

man. Further, such a belief must make a radical difference to the believer's life; it could not be satisfied in perfunctory attendance at church one day a week. What was needed was authentic Christianity, as distinct from the watered-down version preached from the Danish pulpits of his time. Here again the authentic individual is the one who stands out from the crowd, who does not try to escape from the burden of choice by doing what everyone else does. In fact Kierkegaard was among the first to stress the growth of the anony-

paradox, concentration on the seamier side of

reader

to try

infinite

of

and of most others who can be described as was to expose the illusions of everyday and recall men to a more serious view of their

responsibilities.

tell

Heidegger and

"existentialists," life

Resistance will

The aim

three,

lyt)

tive element, that gives, or has given, existentialism

concentration on the emotional, the subjec-

the authentic individual

who makes

his

choice without

EXISTENTIALISM reference to "what they will think," the

movement had

in

the

its

made

existential-

no accident that greatest appeal in wartime and

ism popular in times of

crisis;

it

is

immediate postwar period, particularly

The

France.

in

on individual choice was obviously

stress

Frenchmen who found themselves same position as Sartre's young man. With the return of more settled social conditions, the need for such agonizing personal choices became rarer; at the same time it became evident that the state of the world is too complex for the isolated individual to affect it by his own action, that some sort of concerted effort is needed. Sartre's own development reflects this; he begins with an almost anarchic individualism, in which relevant to the man)' in the

the moral soundness of the person

is all

that matters,

and progresses to a modified Marxism, wherein his

mere facet of the thought. Authenticity comes to seem

earlier existentialism total

system of

is

reduced

to a

impossible unless social conditions are appropriate: "In a curved space

it is

impossible to draw a straight line,"

thinkers in question, as well as their influence on the

However, here

events.

sketched and effects

it

it is

main

their

indicated

why

lines of

thought are

had the

existentialism

did.

Though Kierkegaard can be called the founder of the movement, his views did not penetrate the intelwas partly because the effect, and partly time was not ripe for them to because he wrote in Danish and it was some time before German or other translations were available. English versions of his writings only appeared in the thirties and forties of the twentieth century. Kierkegaard's influence was not always decisive; Marcel reached his main conclusions before he had read the Danish thinker. Kierkegaard only turned to philosophy because of an objection to the way religion, or more specifically Christianity, was treated in the work of Hegel. To an extent which it is hard to realize nowadays, Hegel's was the dominant philosophy of the age; attacks on his system were thought to be attacks on world immediately;

lectual

this

have an

He claimed

one of the characters in Simone de Beauvoir's novel Les Mandarins expresses it. De Beauvoir's writings are

science of sciences, transcended and incorporated

very similar to those of Sartre himself.

other

as

What

remarkable about existentialism

is

is

the extent

which a movement whose central figures were often obscure and technical in their writings should appeal to a large number of people who normally would have shown no interest in philosophical works. No doubt many of them failed to understand the details of the discussion; certainly more people bought copies of L'Etre et le neant or of Sein unci Zeit than could have to

fully

understood them. But for a considerable period

of the twentieth century, existentialism

sophical

movement

that

sophically trained people

was a

philo-

numbered many nonphilo-

among

its

adherents. Cer-

and novels of Sartre were important were so because the central themes of authenticity and moral choice, of the individual as isolated in a hostile world, seemed to tainly the plays

in this popularizing, but they

reflect the

experience of the period.

From an Anglo-Saxon seemed ist

that

all

point of view

it

may have

Continental philosophy was existential-

in character; this of course

is

an

illusion.

Throughout

the period the majority of academic philosophers in

Europe were pursuing

their

own lines

though "intellectual circles"

of thought, even

in those countries

were

thinking in existentialist terms. This wide popularity

no longer

existentialist

to them.

though there are still those who find writers have something important to say

exists,

Hence

it

is

possible, at least in outline, to

trace the rise and

fall

movement

persons of

do

in the

this in full

of existentialism as an intellectual its

central proponents.

To

would require a detailed examination on the

of the influence of the events of their day

philosophy

itself.

modes

of thought, including art

Christianity was, as to take

its

that philosophy, as the

it

and

all

religion.

were, rationally reconstructed

who

place in the vast structure. Even those

objected tended to write in Hegelian terms, as

is

obvi-

ous in the case of both Marx and Engels and of

Kierkegaard himself. Instead of the dialectical progress of Hegel, Kierkegaard substituted a series of dialectical leaps. In

1843 Kierkegaard,

as well as Engels,

pointed by the Prussian government

undo Hegel's

influence.

Some

attended

who had been

lectures in Berlin by Schelling,

in

ap-

an attempt

to

features of Kierkegaard's

thought, such as the notion of

man

being his

own

were derived from these lectures, though the particular cast given them was his.

choice,

His basic idea

comprehended

in

is

that personal existence cannot be

a system; he compares Hegel to a

man who

constructs a vast palace and then lives in

a hovel at

its

gates.

For "existence corresponds to the is no room

individual thing," and in such a system there for

the

summed tial

individual, it

up:

"A

only for abstract concepts.

logical system

is

possible,

system impossible." Whatever universal rules

be established, the following of a rule

is

He

an existen-

may

always a matter

of individual decision. In fact the ethical represents

the universal;

it

refers

man

to a set of rules

render his conduct comprehensible to observers.

Agamemnon sacrificed could

sail for

which

When

Iphigenia in order that the

fleet

Troy, or Brutus ordered the execution

of his traitorous sons, they

made

a hard or tragic choice.

were commanded by laws publicly acknowledged, it was still open to them to hold back; their obedience gave their actions a heroic

Even though

their actions

191

EXISTENTIALISM character. But

what they did was

public, could be

understood by others because it was done in accordance with public rules, even if those others would have

been incapable of emulating them. But when Abraham decided to sacrifice Isaac. Kierkegaard claims in Fear

and Trembling, the situation was totally different. There were no public reasons for the deed, no obvious external ends to be gained by it, nor were the reasons

out with the bath water.

Some

sayings of Kierkegaard

which he could have given ones which others could have acknowledged, for he had a private command from Cod. Whatever may be the function of the story in the Old Testament, Kierkegaard takes it as the prime example of what he calls "the teleological suspension of the ethical." For the ethical demands that the father

seem very

should love his son, the religious that he should sacrifice

lowed him, notably Heidegger and Sartre. For to make the relation between man and God into something purely individual, mediated by no organization or body of public standards, is to be in danger of making Him into something like the choice of a

command is "higher" and so must Kierkegaard's own refusal to marry Regina,

him; the religious

be obeved.

in spite of his praise of

marriage

Either/Or

is

rele-

of the relation of an individual to

God

in

vant here.

The whole

an example of

is

versal; for

if

this

suspension of the ethical or uni-

God were an

object

whose existence could

normal way, then we should know that He existed. There would be no virtue in such a belief; it would not differ from that in any natural object. For the central feature of religious belief is a relation between the individual and God; hence public be established

in the

standards of proof are out of place. this

.

.

.

Hence "Faith

paradox, that the individual as the particular

higher than the universal,

is

justified

over against

This position cannot be mediated, for

all

is is it.

mediation

comes about precisely by virtue of the universal" (FT, p. 66). The knowledge obtained in this way makes the individual what he really is; it is existential knowledge. The paradox is manifest in that faith involves a relation between the temporal and the eternal, both in the story of the life and passion of Christ and in the fact that faith involves a relation between the finite believer and an infinite God. This can only come about by a "leap" of faith: "But can anyone comprehend this Christian doctrine? By no means. ... It must be believed. Comprehension

is

coterminous with man's relation to the

human, but faith is man's relation to the Divine" (SD, p. 226). There can be no rational justification of faith to the nonbeliever, and the believer needs none, unless considered a justification.

the passionate choice

itself is

In this sense truth

subjectivity.

Many

is

theologians have developed views based on

close to atheism, for

"When a does Cod

in his diary:

then neither to

example the remark

concrete individual lacks exist,

God, eternally understood,

is

nor

is

God

eternal."

faith,

present, albeit

It is

not difficult

why Kierkegaard can be held partially for the atheistic trend of many who fol-

understand

responsible

person rather than an independently existing Being. If

the "leap of faith"

is

a private and unjustifiable act,

validated only by what happens after the leap the status of

God becomes

is

peculiar; certainly

taken,

no

evi-

dence of His existence can be sought in the world. This is not to claim that Kierkegaard is responsible for the atheism of other philosophers, but only to point out

ambiguous character of his religiosity makes much of what he says to be incorporated into a system which is fundamentally atheist, such as that of Sartre. Indeed, Sartre's arguments against the existence of God might be seen as taking what Kierkegaard demanded and claiming that it was in principle unsatisfiable. Nietzsche talked of the "Death of God" in the modem world, by which he meant that the existence of God was no longer a simple and natural fact as it was for men in earlier centuries; Kierkegaard's frantic search for faith can be seen as an expression of the same feeling. One important difference between Kierkegaard and Heidegger and Sartre is that they are professional philosophers, concerned with teaching the subject and with presenting their ideas in a form which will be that the it

possible for

acceptable to their colleagues. Hence their writings contain reference to other philosophers and discussions

which might not have appeared to Kierkegaard relevant to the matter in hand. For another central influence on both Heidegger and Sartre was of questions

the phenomenologist, the philosophic

theologizing" are Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul

was

and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In various ways these have attempted to strip Christianity of the metaphysical accretions which they regard as inessential, and to put emphasis on some kind of relation, an

chair at Freiburg.

Husserl's

Edmund Husserl, who formalized

method both men later used. Heidegger pupil and later succeeded him in the

Kierkegaard; notable examples of such "existential Tillich,

192

between man and God. To many seem to be near atheism, for the kind of "demythologizing" which they have found necessary in order to give Christianity a meaning in the modern world has similarities with Kierkegaard's "attack on Christendom," and, as in his case, there is an inevitable suspicion that the baby has been thrown "existential" one,

Christians their views

In spite of his disclaimers, Heidegger's Sein

(Being

and Time) has had

tentialist

work. In

this

und

Zeit

a wide influence as an exis-

book the central concern

is

the

EXISTENTIALISM term which which human beings, as distinct from things, exist. It is this analysis which has facilitated the existentialist reading. For Dasein can only

analysis of Dasein, an almost untranslatable refers to the

way

be understood

in

human

terms of

in

way

existence, the

normal emotions,

tant respects.

and

Dasein has three important characteristics; the "facticity." the fact that

world which without

me

is

my

I

exist in

first

an already existing

world, which could no more exist

than could

I

without

it.

Things

in the

world

mere material objects but as tools, things "ready to hand" to be used in ways which are defined for me by the structure of this world.

are not experienced as

Heidegger also

talks of this as Geworfenheit,

ness," the fact that

to

born into a world which sets limits for me.

I

do something, but

it is

primarily possibility."

and so

as a series of "projects,"

life

much

as in the present.

in the sense of

My

life is

live

I

in the future

"transcendent"

always going beyond the merely given.

My personal time is different from that marked by watches and calendars; a future event (or a past one) may be more

"present" to

me

than that which

is

chronologically present.

Thirdly there

Dasein

is

is

"forfeiture,"

the

way

which

in

distracted from the realization of

being by the claims of everyday the inessential.

life,

its

of the trivial

und

dread

a striking feature of

contemplation of

it

cannot

Dasein,

dread

(Angst) and death. These involve a relation to Nothing. thing has often been criticized phers;

it

has been

compared

if it

were a kind

by analytic

of

philoso-

to the King's mistake in

Alice through the Looking-Glass of talking of "nobody"

were the name see why Heidegger, and later Sartre in a slightly different manner, found it necessary to use the term. It should be remembered that many mystics have also as

if

it

found the

of a person.

it

It

is

possible to

necessary to use the term in connection with

"Dark night

of the soul." Dread, as distinct

"who

human is

reality in

not what he

from

is

freedom. Further, for Heidegger

its

my

is

The

to die.

ultimate possibility, death,

an

is

essential feature of authentic living; the realization of

the fact that

I

must die makes possible a proper under-

my own

standing of

Dasein. Dread

A

be avoided.

state to

is

not a morbid

fictional representation similar

to Heidegger's analysis of the

is

way

in

which the conlife

given in Tolstoy's story The Death of Ivan Ilyitch. It is now possible to see the relation between

Heidegger's thought and Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl's motto was "Back by which he meant back

to the things themselves,"

to our actual

common

without the layer of

experience

sense and scientific pre-

suppositions which hide the "experienced

ena" from

Dread

us.

is

something which

phenom-

we experience much care as

and hence must be described with as would normally be spent on more "objective" experi-

ences. Again, that material objects present themselves as material objects

first, is

only as the result of

a result of the phenomenologieal method,

namely, of inspecting experience. Heidegger's use of

phenomenology was

by Husserl, but it is view experience without the normal presuppositions was an essential element of Sein und Zeit and one factor making for its appeal. criticized

clear that the attempt to

One important point stands out: Heidegger's man an essentially solitary individual whose relations with

of the

Heidegger's talk of "nothing" as

manino selfhood and no

each person must do for himself alone

be hidden by the everydayness of the world, reveal

being

actions,

connected with death; the only thing which

is

is

things

is

its

this original

not," again to stress the openness

is

of human existence,

Dasein is free, yet in everyday life it is enslaved. But unless there were some central "I" there would be nothing to be enslaved; the reality of Dasein may

Two

as that

what he

is

thought,

Zeit.

be extinguished.

way,

a similar

as tools

We live mostly in the inauthentic world

is

"Without

freedom." Sartre later characterizes

and

Man, "one" or "they" as in "They expect it of me." The analyses of this anonymous crowd which Sein

not determined in

is

free:

is

character of Nothing there

true

of das

plays such a part in our lives

project

templation of death can alter a whole attitude to

The second feature is "existentiality": "Dasein is not thing which has additionally the gift of being able

my as

am

make and which hence

did not a

I

"thrown-

fest

human

or "transcendence" involves nothing-

Dasein

ness; in that

the

is

as Kierkegaard said in the

it is,

human freedom

which it lives its life, never in terms of its essence. Normally this life is "inauthentic.'' Heidegger claims that this is not a moral term, though the use he makes of it shows that an inauthentic life is lacking in imporin

not directed to any particular

is

Concept of Dread, dread of no thing, of nothing. Further, for Heidegger, thing;

his fellows

only occur at the level of forfeiture, as part

anonymous world

of das

Man. Each person must

own relation with Being via the contemplation own death. Here, and in his emphasis on dread,

seek his of his

Heidegger

them

like

is

lies in

Kierkegaard.

The

difference

at all like that to a personal

God; indeed,

from Sein und Zeit what

this relation

is

only

later

the

between

the fact that the relation to Being

when

it

works that

is

it is

is

not

not clear

should be.

It

read in the context of Heidegger's

his central point

negative analyses of

becomes

human

clear. It

was

experience which

struck the readers of the book in the years following its

publication and which

made Heidegger

into

an

influential existentialist despite his expressed intention.

193

EXISTENTIALISM Jean-Paul Sartre

in

is

one respect the most

significant

of those considered here, for his development has been

move from

a

a full-blooded existentialism to a modified

Marxism. His reasons were basically a dissatisfaction with extreme individualism as a guide to moral choice.

For Sartre is first and foremost a moralist, even though his major early work L'Etre et le neant is described as an "essay in phenomenological ontology." The influence of Husserl and Heidegger is always visible, though he is often aim of life, and it

critical of

value. Its opposite

them. Authenticity

clear that for Sartre

is

"bad

is

faith," the

is

the

a moral

it is

attempt to claim

embodied

have

to

is

is

analysis,

is

shown

to

be

himself the fact that

him

to

work

it is

his

own

for long hours, etc.

choice which drives

The

striking analyses

which occur in L 'Etre et le neant are paralleled in many cases by fictional representations in Sartre's large output of plays and novels. For many people the first introduction to existentialism has been through these, rather than through his

However, Sartre

is

more philosophical

writings.

too good a writer to transfer his

philosophy direct to the stage; to take the expressions of the characters in plays and novels as statements of his philosophical

views often leads to error. The remark

end of Huis clos, "Hell is other people," is not his considered judgment on the world but is meant as evidence of the bad faith of the character uttering it. Bad faith is a belief in the lack of freedom: that a person acts as he does because of his character or because of his situation, the position into which he was born. Sartre wished to assert an absolute freedom, to regard everything that is done as the result of a choice. Material objects are what they are, can only behave at the

in

circumscribed ways;

ness, are separate

imagine alternatives.

man what he

is,

of one's self."

human

beings contain nothing-

from their situation It is

human is

it it

some

almost impossible to do anything at resistance or friction there

by the

fact that

he was born

at

such a time of

things

due

is

life.

The young man

is

implicitly of

situation should do.

It

this that

is

accordance with them, but Sartre wishes all,

or

all

to represent

important, choices as choice of values.

no rational argument

Hence

favor of one choice over

in

against another can be given. This view

is

garded

is

as irrationalism, but Sartre's point

criteria of rationality are not given

often rethat

even

by the nature of

the universe, they also have to be chosen. Sartre refers to those

way

who

believe that values are given in the same

as physical facts as salauds

the bourgeois. his

Thus

his attack

and equates them with on this class precedes

Marxism; to a great extent he

attitude of

many French

is

following the

writers and artists of the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries necessary to epater

les bourgeois.

He

is

who

felt it

attacking a

mental attitude rather than an economic group, a belief

properties.

lies at

is

order as

in

it is,

that

man

which objects possess

a failure to glimpse

the

the heart of man.

Sartre, like Heidegger,

provided a devastating nega-

human

shifts

in

is

way

This belief

nothingness that

condition.

and evasions

With great

skill

that are ordinarily

used to escape responsibility, to cover up the fact of choice. Everyone

when on how an

faith.

person might also seem to be limited by his situa-

some

what anyone in the makes it a choice rather than an arbitrary act. If there were a given set of values, it would be possible to choose in choice

in that his

same

he shows up the

A

imagined

if

but this

by deciding to join the Free French Forces, but a value,

Sartre's "existential psychoanalysis" has as

are given in his books on Baudelaire and Genet.

that

easier,

Values also are chosen, not given.

possesses rights in the

be changed. Detailed examples of the procedure

without

already mentioned chooses not just a course of action

tive analysis of the

tion,

would be

to the incompleteness of the

are really choices which bad faith has suppressed.

to

all;

nothing to push

is

we may imagine

different our life

that basically everything

the uncovering of the fundamental project to enable

is

Similarly, choice can only take place in a

against.

makes a

object

range of

full

might seem that gravitation

possibilities. It

his "project" that

its

an envi-

exist in

a restriction on freedom of action, but in fact without

they can

and the fundamental project is "choice Orthodox psychoanalysis is wrong to

can only

ronment, and every environment gives a

in that

think of complexes as existing in the unconscious; they

it

We

manifests our freedom.

were

famous

existence,

limitations.

order of nature instead of the result of choice. The in a

possible existence for

and to have a Given our original body it is how we react to it, whether we make it an excuse for failure or treat it as an obstacle to overcome, which

body

beings

concrete situation;

"playing at being a waiter," trying to conceal from

tion

seems

But to

is

shown to be infected with bad comes for advice, for instruc-

the time

authentic choice

is

to

be made, Sartre

confine himself to the bare

command

to

such parents and possesses such physical characteristics.

choose. Because of the analysis he has given, no positive

Sartre argues that these are not really limitations

recommendations can be made, for these would themselves become given values and so a source of bad faith.

viewed

194

human

that values or personality are given, are part of the

waiter in a cafe,

The only

existing in the world.

correctly.

disability

is

To take an extreme

if

case, a physical

not a limitation, but a particular

way

of

It is

significant that L'Etre et le

neant closes with the

EXISTENTIALISM words: "These questions a moral level.

No

will

I

.

.

.

devote

can be answered only on my next work to them."

such work has so far appeared;

also,

the fourth

volume of the series of novels Patfis to Freedom (Les Chemins de la liberie), which was to show how the characters whose inauthenticity had been exposed in the

first

books managed at last been completed

three

to

authenticity, has never

do

Sartre's efforts to

show what to

is

so.

achieve

in spite of

Sartre has found

it

easier to

wrong with everyday human life than way to live. Heidegger

provide a sketch of the right

evades

by a

this issue

shift of interest to

of Being, whereas Sartre's solution

is

the question

more

traditional,

invoking the concept of cooperative action. Authenticexistence can only be shared by a group. leads to his modified Marxism,

which

It is this

is

which

certainly not

normal party member. His relations with the Party have been complex; he has often been attacked for his "bourgeois idealism." He looks on Marxism as primarily a moral doctrine, and as political that of the

only insofar as

raison dialectique, existentialism

level of an "ideology," to

conditions are necessary

moral action to become possible. In Critique de is reduced to the

for la

just political

Marxism which

our time."

Many

is

something limited

in contrast

the "unsurpassable philosophy of

of the earlier insights

seem

to

have

Sartre's

abandonment

in the late nineteen-fifties

of existentialism

can be seen as the end of

movement, and his conversion to Marxism as a more is needed than analyses of the human condition. Not all of those who earlier followed him have taken the same path as Sartre, but the defection of the man who was the most popular of all existentialists is bound to make a significant difference to them. Existentialism never was an organized movement, but was a loose grouping of like-thinking people who found the analyses given by the writers discussed the

recognition that

here appropriate to the historical circumstances in

which they found themselves. In one sense there have been as many existentialisms as existentialists. That such a movement should have arisen is itself significant, ambiguous nature, twentieth-century thought would have been different and less interesting in spite of its

without

New

number

Revue Internationale de Philosophic

of the

The standard

Kierkegaard.

tains a bibliography. G. E.

and G.

Kierkegaard

of

life

New

Lowrie, Kierkegaard (London and

B.

books. Kierkegaard's

W.

is

York, 1938).

con-

It

Arbaugh, Kierkegaard's

Authorship (London, 1968), contains summaries of

own comments

all

his

are contained in The

My Work as an Author (1859), trans. W. Lowrie (Princeton, 1939; reprint New York, 1962). Works mentioned in the text: The Concept of Dread (1844;, trans. W. Lowrie (Princeton, 1944); Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), trans. D. Swenson (Princeton, 1941); Fear and Point of View for

Trembling (1843), (1849), I,

trans.

D.

&

L.

with The Sickness unto Death

trans.,

W. Lowrie

(Princeton, 1941); Either/Or (1843), Vol.

Swenson;

Vol.

W. Lowrie

II,

(Princeton,

1944).

Heidegger. His major work on which the existentialist interpretation rests

Time (London and E. Robinson.

is

und

Zeit (Halle, 1927); Being

and

York, 1962), trans. Macquarrie

and

Spin

New

A summary

translations of

some of

und

of Sein

his later

Zeit together with

works

is

given

in:

Martin

Heidegger, Existence and Being, introduction by W. Brock (London, 1949). A short account occurs in M. Grene, Martin

Heidegger (Cambridge, 1957).

Le prohleme moral

Sartre. F. Jeanson,

new

et la

pensee de

edition Paris, 1967), has

won

the

approval of Sartre. There are several English works on Sartre:

Anthony Manser,

Sartre (London, 1966;

complete bibliography of up to 1964. Works mentioned in the text 1967), contains a

New

York,

Sartre's writings are: L'Etre et le

neant (Paris, 1943), trans. H. Barnes as Being and Nothingness

(New

York, 1956); L'Existentialisme est

(Paris, 1946), trans. B.

Frechtmann

Camera (London,

as

1946),

No

un humanisme

as Existentialism

York, 1947); Huis clos (Paris, 1947), trans.

S.

(New

Gilbert as In

(New York, 1947); (New York, 1950); Frechtmann (New York,

Exit

Baudelaire (Paris, 1947), trans. M. Turnell Saint Genet (Paris, 1952), trans. B.

1963); Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris, 1960); Les

Chemins de E. Sutton

la liberte:

(New

E. Sutton as Reprieve

1950),

LAge

York, 1947);

(Paris, 1949), trans.

(New

de raison

Le

York, 1947);

La Mort dans lame

G Hopkins as Iron in the Soul (London,

and as Troubled

Sleep,

the projected fourth volume. J.

(Paris, 1945), trans.

Sursis (Paris, 1945), trans.

(New

d'amitie (Temps Modernes, Nos. 49

Camus.

it.

(1949)

contains bibliographies of the subject.

Sartre (Paris, 1947,

been denied. In many ways

and

compares the existentialists with the American pragMary Warnock, Existentialist Ethics (London and York, 1967), is a good brief survey (57 pages). A special

1962),

matists.

&

York,

1951);

50); this

is

Drole part of

La Derniere chance. Camus and the Literature

Cruickshank, Albert

of Revolt (Oxford, 1959), discusses garded as an existentialist.

how

far

he can be

re-

Marcel. Etre et avoir (Paris, 1935), trans. K. Farrer as

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Works. H.

J.

Blackham, Six

Existentialist Thinkers

Being and Having (London, 1949); Homo Viator (Paris, 1944), trans. E. Crauford (London, 1951; reprint New York).

ANTHONY MANSER

(London, 1952), and F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament (London, 1953), give good accounts. R. G. Olson,

An

Introduction to Existentialism

(New

York,

[See also

God; Irrationalism; Marxism; Romanticism.]

195

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

authors formed a school whose philosophical orienta-

been characterized as the "metaphysics of which did not preclude their doing pioneer

tion has

light," but

The

scientific revolution of the seventeenth century

had its remote antecedents

in

Greek and early medieval

thought. In the period from the thirteenth to the

six-

teenth centuries, this heritage gradually took shape in

a series of methods and ideas that formed the back-

work in experimental methodology. The basis for the theory of science

that developed Oxford school under Grosseteste's inspiration was Aristotle's distinction between knowledge of the fact (quia) and knowledge of the reason for the fact (propter in the

ground for the emergence of modern science. The methods adumbrated were mainly those of experimentation and mathematical analysis, while the con-

quid). In attempting to

cepts were primarily, though not exclusively, those of

niques that have

the developing science of mechanics. their evolution

may be

The

history of

to the other type of itly at least,

make the passage from the one knowledge, these writers, implic-

touched on three methodological tech-

come to typify modern science, namely inductive, experimental, and mathematical.

divided conveniently on the

Grosseteste, for example, treated induction as a dis-

which are

basis of centuries: (1) the thirteenth, a period of begin-

covery of causes from the study of

nings and reformulation;

presented to the senses as particular physical

(2)

the fourteenth, a period

of development and culmination; and (3) the fifteenth

and

sixteenth, a period of dissemination

and

transition.

By the onset of the seventeenth century considerable material was at hand for a

and

ideas,

namely

new

synthesis of

methods

facts.

The

inductive process became, for him, one of resolving the composite objects of sense perception into their principles, or elements, or causes stractive process.

from

that of classical science.

effects,

A

scientific

—essentially

when one could recompose

this

an ab-

explanation would result the abstracted

show their causal connection with the observed facts. The complete process was referred to as factors to

Experimental science owes

its

beginnings in Western

sion that

was

from Greek and Arabic, which gradually acquainted the Schoolmen with the entire Aristotelian corpus and with the computational tech-

until the

time of Galileo.

to the influx of treatises

of translations

niques of antiquity.

The new knowledge merged with

an Augustinian tradition prevalent in the universities, notably at Oxford and at Paris, deriving from the

Church Fathers; this tradition owed much to Platonism and Neo-Platonism, and already was favorably disposed toward a mathematical view of reality. The empirical orientation and systematization of Aristotle were wel-

comed

for their value in organizing the natural history

and observational data through the

that

had survived the Dark Ages

efforts of encyclopedists,

new among

in the universities.

Among

the earliest Latin

commen-

tators to make the works of Aristotle thus available was Robert Grosseteste, who composed the first full-

length exposition of the Posterior Analytics shortly after 1200. This work, plus a briefer

commentary on the

Physics and the series of opuscula on such topics as light

be employed

in schools

such as Padua

to follow

would have provide a

such an orderly procedure and then

to resort to intuition or conjecture to

scientific explanation.

This gave

rise to the

problem of how to discern a true from a false theory. It was in this context that the Oxford school worked out primitive experiments, particularly in optics, designed to falsify theories. They also employed observa-

and falsification when and heavenly phenomena that could

tional procedures for verification

treating of comets

human control. The mathematical component of this

not be subjected to

meth-

school's

odology was inspired by its metaphysics of light. Convinced that light (lux) was the first form that came to

primary matter

at creation,

and that the entire

struc-

ture of the universe resulted from the propagation of

luminous species according to geometrical laws, they sought propter quid explanations for physical phe-

nomena etry.

in

mathematics, and mainly in classical geom-

Thus they focused

interest

on mathematics

as well

on experimentation, although they themselves contributed little to the development of new methods of as

analysis. 2.

Science on the Continent.

The mathematicist some

orientation of the Oxford school foreshadowed in

ways the Neo-Pythagoreanism and rationalism

of the

as the stimulus for other

seventeenth century. This aspect of their thought was

Oxford. Taken collectively, their

generally rejected, however, by their contemporaries

and the rainbow, served

scientific writings at

to

Grosseteste further was aware that one might not

be able

while the

methods of calculation found a ready reception those with mathematical interests. The result was the appearance of works, first at Oxford and then at Paris, which heralded the beginnings of modern science in the Middle Ages. 1. Origins at Oxford. Aristotle's science and his methodology could not be appreciated until his Physics and Posterior Analytics had been read and understood

196

"resolution and composition," a methodological expres-

from the Near East,

Europe by way

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS at the University of Paris, especially

Albertus

Magnus

and Thomas Aquinas. Both of the latter likewise composed lengthy commentaries on the Posterior Analytics and on the physical works of Aristotle, primarily to put the Stagirite's thought at the service of Christian theology, but also to aid their students in uncovering nature's secrets.

Not convinced

of an underlying math-

not entirely lacking from scientific investigation in the thirteenth century.

One unexpected

end of the century

in

the

work

source

came

at the

of Arnald of Villanova,

who combined alchemical pursuits with those of pharmacy and medicine. Arnald was interested in quantifying the qualitative effects of compound medicines, and refined and

clarified a proposal of the

Arabian

ematical structure of reality, they placed more stress

philosopher Alkindi (ninth century) that linked a geo-

on the empirical component of

metric increase in the number of parts of a quality

their scientific

method-

ology than on the mathematical. Albertus

Magnus

is

to

particularly noteworthy for his

an arithmetic increase

in its

sensed effect.

skill at observation and systematic classification. He was an assiduous student of nature, intent on ascertaining the facts, and not infrequently certifying observations with his Fui et vidi experiri ("I was there and saw it for myself"). He recognized the difficulty of accurate observation and experimentation, and urged

as a precursor of the function later used

repetition under a variety of conditions to ensure ac-

to fruition in the fourteenth century. Jordanus

curacy.

own

contributions were experiments

effects of sunlight,

the structure of the universe over the

more orthodox

Aristotelian views of his contemporaries. best experimental contribution of this period,

however, was that of Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt, whose Epistola de magnete (1269) reveals a sound empirical knowledge of magnetic phenomena. Peter

explained

how

to differentiate the magnet's north pole

south, stated the rule for the attraction and

repulsion of poles, induction,

knew

motion (McVaugh, 1967). A more noteworthy mathematical contribution was found, however, in earlier work on mechanics, particularly in statics

and kinematics,

came Nemo-

that definitely

somewhat

as

rarius

and

his school

took up and developed (though

lever principle, by Archimedes' axiomatic treatment of the lever

and the center of gravity, and by Hero's

study of simple machines.

They formulated the concept secundum situm), with

of "positional gravity" (gravitas its

implied component forces, and used a principle

analogous to that of virtual displacements or of virtual

work to prove the law of the lever. Gerard of Brussels was similarly heir to the kinematics of antiquity. In his De motu he attempted to reduce various possible curvilinear velocities of lines, surfaces, and solids to the uniform rectilinear velocity of a moving point. In the process he anticipated the "mean-speed theorem" later used by the Mertonians, successfully equating the varying rotational motion of a circle's radius with a uniform translational motion of its midpoint. Other conceptual work in the study of motive powers and resistances, made in the context of Aristotle's Riles for the comparison of motions, laid the groundwork for the gradual substitution of the notion of force (as exemplified by vis insita and vis impressa) for that of cause, thereby preparing for later

more sophisticated

analyses of gravitational and projectile motion.

the fundamentals of magnetic

and discussed the

Kepler was

//

possibility of breaking

magnets into smaller pieces that would become magnets in turn. He understood the workings of the magnetic compass, viewing magnetism as a cosmic force to

by Thomas

1349) in his dynamic analysis of local

antiquity, exemplified by Aristotle's justification of the

his

which A. C. Crombie has noted employed the method of agreement and difference later to be formulated by J. S. Mill; the classification of some hundred minerals, with notes on the properties of each; a detailed comparative study of plants, with digressions that show a remarkable sense of morphology and ecology; and studies in embryology and reproduction, which show that he experimented with insects and the lower animals (Crombie, 1953). Albert also had theoretical and mathematical interests, stimulating later thinkers such as William of Ockham and Walter Burley with his analysis of motion, and doing much to advance the Ptolemaic conception of

its

(d.

on authority, including that of Aris-

Among

on the thermal

from

Bradwardine

not from original sources) the mechanical teachings of

uncritical reliance

The

ex-

He was painfully aware of and remonstrated common failing of the Schoolmen, i.e., their

against the

totle.

The

ponential function this implies has been seen by some

later to do.

His work seems

be the basis for Roger Bacon's extolling the experiit was praised by William Gilbert

The more valuable scientific contributions of the were in most instances those of

thirteenth century

who reformulated the science of made new beginnings in both experimentation and mathematical analysis. The fourteenth isolated individuals,

antiquity and

mental method, and

century saw a fuller development along these same

(1540-1603) as "a pretty erudite book considering the

lines,

time." 3.

Use of Calculation. Mathematical analysis was

culminating in important schools at both Oxford and Paris whose members are commonly regarded as the "precursors of Galileo."

197

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS The reasons

for the privileged position enjoyed

by

optics in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries are

come

many. One was the eminence

to enjoy

other was

its

among

it

earlier

had

the Greeks and the Arabs. An-

easy assimilation within the theological

context of "Let there be light" (Fiat lux) and the philosophical context of the "metaphysics of light" already

alluded

to.

Yet other reasons can be traced in the

and upper atmosphere, in

striking appearances of spectra, rainbows, halos,

other optical

phenomena

in the

the perplexity aroused by optical delusions or by an I

hi

hi

ing the

I'Ik-

1

formation

ol

the primary or lower rainbow, show-

much magnified drops

(01

collection of drops) that produce

the four colors Dietrich held were present .ii

\

ver on the horizon

drop

in

the observer at B. and a point directly chops! at

(or

/•.'.

is

to the

at

(.',

and

finally are refracted

again at

F

eve of the observer. Each drop (or group

of drops' reflects a different color at the

eve position.

and above all in the geometry toward the solution

possibility,

applicability of a simple

of optical problems.

Whatever the

the obser-

are refracted there, then are internally re-

Rected within the drop

and transmitted

The sun

Rays from the sun enter the uppermost

C.

at

the how. in front of

awareness of their

reasons, the fact

progress had already been

made

in

is

that considerable

both catoptrics, the

study of reflected light, and dioptrics, the study of refraction. In the former, the works of Euclid, Ptolemy, and Alhazen (d. 1038) had shown that the angles of incidence and reflection from plane surfaces are equal; they also explained how images are formed in plane mirrors and, in the case of Alhazen, gave exhaustive and accurate analyses of reflection from spherical and parabolic mirrors. Similarly in dioptrics Ptolemy and Alhazen had measured angles of incidence and refraction, and knew in a qualitative way the difference between refraction away from, and refraction toward, the normal, depending on the media through which the light ray passed. Grosseteste even attempted a quantitative description of the phenomenon, proposing

that the angle of refraction equals half the angle of

incidence,

Figure

2.

The formation

of the

secondary or upper rainbow, show-

ing the four drops (or collection of drops) that produce the four colors Dietrich held as in Figure

drops) at

F,

1.

were present

in this

bow

also. A, B,

and

C

are

Rays from the sun enter the uppermost drop (or

are refracted there, then are internally reflected within

the drop twice, at

H and

G, before being

finally refracted at

£ and

Figure

is,

of course, erroneous. In this way,

was Dietrich's composed shortly after

Freiberg. Perhaps the most remarkable

work on

the rainbow (De

iride),

1304, wherein he explained the production of the

through the refraction and reflection of Dietrich's treatise

transmitted to the eye of the observer. These drops reflect the same colors, but in the reverse order to those in

which

however, the stage was gradually set for more substantial advances in optics by Witelo and Dietrich von

is

lengthy and shows considerable

expertise in both experimentation and theory, as well

1.

as the ability to relate the two.

On

the experimental

side Dietrich passed light rays through a

Theory and Experimen t. These precursors worked primarily in the area of mechanics, concentrating on logical and mathematical analyses that led to somewhat 1.

abstract formulations, only

much

later put to experi-

They never reached the stage of active interchange between theory and experiment that charmental

test.

acterizes twentieth-century science,

and that could

wide variety

of prisms and crystalline spheres to study the production of spectra. filled

He

traced their paths through flasks

with water, using opaque surfaces to block out

unwanted

rays,

and obtained knowledge of angles of on which the rays

refraction at the various surfaces in

which he was interested were incident,

as well as

the mechanics of their internal reflection within the

Using such techniques he worked out the

only be begun in earnest with the mechanical investi-

flask.

gations of Galileo and Newton. In another area of

essentially correct explanation of the formation of the

study, however, a beginning

was made even

in this

type

of methodology; the area, predictably enough,

was

optics,

198

bow

light rays.

which from antiquity had been emerging, along

with mechanics, as an independent branch of physics.

primary and secondary rainbows (Figures

1

first

and 2). The and that

theoretical insight that lay behind this work,

had escaped all of his predecessors, was that a globe not as a diminutive of water could be thought of

—

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS watery cloud,

as others

viewed

it

—but

as a magnified

raindrop. This, plus the recognition that the

bow

actually the cumulative effect of radiation from

is

many

drops, provided the principles basic to his solution.

stract noun:

it

cannot

exist

by

itself;

in the

phenomena

by God's absolute power

it

would

his

later

be called a "laboratory"

the

to utilize

first

situation,

to im-

he was

is

seen

can even be made to disap-

mobilize the raindrop, in magnified form, in what

these principles in a striking way:

him

can increase

of rarefaction and condensation; and

known from Eucharist. Thus, with Ockham, problem more of language than

Dietrich's experimental genius enabled

it

or decrease without affecting the substance, as

pear entirely, as

is

the mystery of the

quantity

became

a

of physical science;

followers soon were involved in

manner

all

of

able to examine leisurely and at length the various

linguistic analyses relating to quantity, but not infre-

components involved in the rainbow's production. Dietrich proposed the foregoing methodology as an application of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics wherein he identified the causes of the bow and demonstrated its properties using a process of resolution and composition. In attempting to explain the origin and ordering of the bow's colors, however, he engaged in a far more hypothetical type of reasoning, and coupled this with experiments designed to verify and falsify his alternative hypotheses. This work, while closer methodologically to that of modern science, was not successful. There were errors too in his geometry, and in some of his measurements; these were corrected in succeeding centuries, mainly by Descartes and Newton. Dietrich's contribution, withal, was truly monumental, and represents the best interplay between theory and experiment known in the high Middle Ages. 2. Nominalism and Its Influence. Most historians are agreed that some break with Aristotle was necessary before the transition could be made from natural phi-

quently the physical problems involved got

One

maze

lost in a

of logical subtleties.

Ockham's treatment of motion went along similar Convinced that the term "local motion" designates only the state of a physical body that may be lines.

negatively described as not at

rest,

he effectively de-

nied the reality of motion. Moreover, since motion not a real effect,

it

is

does not require a cause, and

hence the Aristotelian rule "whatever moves is moved by another" quidquid movetur ah alio movetur) is no longer applicable to it. Some have seen in this rejection (

of

motor causality a foreshadowing of the law of

or even the principle of relativity (Sir taker, E. affinities

inertia

Edmund Whit-

Dijksterhuis). Undoubtedly there are some J. between Ockham's analysis and those of classi-

and modern mechanicians, but the identification need not be pressed. Ockham's more direct contribution would seem to lie in his preparing the way for cal

sophisticated,

if

highly imaginative, calculations of

spatiotemporal relationships between motions with

step

various velocities. These calculations opened the path

toward such a break came with the condemnation, in 1277, by Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, of 219 articles many of which were linked to an AristotelianAverroist cosmology. Concerned over God's omnipotence, the bishop effectively proclaimed that several worlds could exist, and that the ensemble of celestial spheres could, without contradiction, be moved (by

to considerable advances in kinematics, soon to be

losophy to science in the classical sense.

God) in a straight line. The general effect of his condemnation was to cause many who were uncritically accepting Aristotle's conclusions as demonstrated and necessarily true to question these. The way was thus opened for the proposal and defense of non- Aristotelian theses concerning the cosmos and local motion, some with important

scientific ramifications.

Another step came with the rise of nominalism or terminism in the universities. Under the auspices of William of Ockham and his school, this movement developed

in

an

Aristotelian

thought context but

quickly led to distinctive views in logic and natural philosophy.

Its

theory of supposition questioned the

reality of universals or

"common

natures," generally

made

at Merton College in Oxford. Nominalism quickly spread from Oxford to the universities on the Continent, where it merged its thought patterns with both "orthodox" and "heterodox" (from the viewpoint of the Christian faith) schools of Aristotelianism. From this amalgam came a renewed interest in the problems of physical science, a consid-

erably revised conceptual structure for their solution,

and a growing tolerance of skepticism and eclecticism. Most of the fruits were borne in mechanics and astronomy, but some were seen in new solutions to the problems of the continuum and of infinity. Nicholas of Autrecourt is worthy of mention for his advocacy of atomism at a time when Democritus' thought was otherwise consistently rejected and for his holding a

—

—

particulate theory of light. His skepticism generally has

him

led

to

be styled as a "medieval

Hume" and

as

a forerunner of positivism. 3.

Merton College and Kinematics. One

significant contributors to the

of the

most

mathematical prepara-

admitted by Aristotelians, and restricted the ascription

tion for the

of reality to individual "absolute things" (res absolutae),

Bradwardine, fellow of Merton College and theologian

which could be onlv particular substances or qualities. Quantity, in Ockham's system, became merely an ab-

of sufficient his

Nun's

modern science renown

of mechanics

was Thomas

mentioned by Chaucer in While at Oxford Bradwardine

to be

Priest's Tale.

199

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS treatises on speculative arithmetic and gewherein he not only summarized the works of ometry Euclid, but expanded their treatments Boethius and

composed

of

and

(proportiones)

ratios

tionalitates) to include

Thabit and

Ahmad

teaching to

a problem

new

proportions

in

He

composed

this

were fellows

of

were William

Merton Col-

among

in 1328.

of Heytesbury, John of

of all types of motions, or changes, in

and remission of forms" or the "latitude of forms," changes (qualitative

conceiving

and 7 of the Physics) relating

tative) as traversing a distance or "latitude"

to the comparability of

of a motion

F

directly proportional to the weight or force

is

causing

and inversely proportional to the resistance R of the medium impeding it. This posed a problem when taken it

conjunction with another Aristotelian statement to

in

the effect that no motion should result force tered.

F is equal

modern

In

when an applied

R

encoun-

should equal

when

to or less than the resistance

notation,

V

F < fi, and this is clearly not the case if V cc F/R, since V becomes finite for all cases except F = and R = oc In an ingenious attempt to formulate a mathematical

relationship

that

would remove

this

inconsistency,

Bradwardine equivalently proposed an exponential law of motion that may be written v?/v,

came

to

be widely ac-

cepted among Schoolmen up to the sixteenth century. never was put to experimental

It

easily

shown

to

be

significance lies in

complex completed changes

false its

test,

although

it

from Newtonian dynamics.

is

way

(as

well as quanti-

which

is

a "let-

ter-calculus" wherein letters of the alphabet repre-

sented ideas (not magnitudes), which lent

itself to

subtle

arguments referred to as "calculator/ sophisms." These were later decried by humanists and more logical

traditional Scholastics,

comprehensible,

who found

partly,

at

the arguments in-

because of their

least,

mathematical complexity.

One problem

which these Mertonians addressed to "denominate" or reckon the degree of heat of a body whose parts are heated not uniformly but to varying degrees. Swineshead devoted a section of his Rook of Calculations {Liber calculationum) to solve this problem for a body A which has greater and greater heat, increasing arithmetically by themselves was

to

how

its

decreasing proportional parts

show that A should be denominated as having the same heat as another body R which is heated to two degrees throughout its entire 3).

He was

able to

length, thus equivalently demonstrating that the

of the series

value

2.

I

+ % + %+%

•

•

sum

converges to the

Swineshead considerably advanced Brad-

Its

wardine's analysis relating to instantaneous velocity

representing, in a moderately

and other concepts necessary for the calculus; significantly his work was known to Leibniz, who wished

function, instantaneous changes rather than

preparing the

as

They generally employed

readily quantifiable.

(Figure

Referred to as the "ratio of ratios" (proportio proportioning, Bradwardine's law

all

units to infinity, in

\rJ

\R 2 )

They

its light.

did this in the context of discussions on the "intension

interpreting Aristotle's statements (mostly in Books 4

V

these

attention to a fuller examination of the comparability

By time various Arab and Latin writers had been

motions to mean that the velocity

hitherto had been done), thereby

for the concepts of the infinitesimal

calculus.

have it republished. Motion was regarded by these thinkers as merely another quality whose latitude or mean degree could to

Bradwardine composed also a treatise on the continuum (Tractatus de continuo) which contains a detailed discussion of geometrical refutations of mathe-

be calculated. This type of consideration led Heytesbury to formulate one of the most important kinemati-

Again, in a theological work he

to be known as the Mertonian "mean-speed theorem." The theorem states that a uniformly accelerated motion is equivalent, so far as

matical atomism.

analyzed the concept of

infinity,

using a type of one-

to-one correspondence to show that a part of an infinite set

is itself

infinite;

the context of this analysis

is

a proof

showing that the world cannot be eternal. In such ways Bradwardine made use of mathematics in physics and theology, and stimulated later thinkers to

make

similar

Although occasioned by a problem

cal rules to

come out come

in

dynamics,

the space traversed in a given time a uniform motion

body

at the

is

is

concerned, to

equal throughout

middle instant of the period of

The theorem was formulated during

its

the

and at least four attempts to prove it were detailed at Oxford before 1350. As the previous case of Bradwardine's function, no

early 1330's,

arithmetically

more

in

by other

whose velocity

to the instantaneous velocity of the uniformly acceler-

ating

Bradwardine's treatise on ratios actually resulted in substantial contributions to kinematics

of the fourteenth century, a rule

that has since

acceleration.

applications.

200

whom

on

in his Treatise

the ratios of velocities in motions (Tractatus dc propor-

tionibus velocitatum in motibus)

of

lege in the generation after him. Principal

this

(propor-

then applied

dynamics

many

Dumbleton, and Richard Swineshead. All writing towards the middle of the fourteenth century, they presupposed the validity of Bradwardine's dynamic function and turned their

materials from the Arabs

ibn Yusuf.

Oxonians,

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS cantly different from Newton's "the measure of the t

same

arising

from

its

density and magnitude conjointly"

iWeisheipl, 1963). 4.

Paris

and

the

Growth of Dynamics. As

in the

thirteenth century an interest in science with emphasis

on the mathematical began at Oxford, to be followed by a similar interest with emphasis on the physical at Paris, so in the fourteenth

century an analogous pattern

appeared. The works of the English Calculatores were read and understood on the Continent shortly after the

mid-fourteenth century by such thinkers as John of

Holland

Saxony

the University of Prague and Albert of

at

at

the University of Paris. Under less pro-

nounced nominalist influence than the Mertonians, and generally convinced of the reality of motion, the Continental philosophers again took

up the problems

of

the causes and effects of local motion. Particularly at Paris, in a setting

where both

Aristotelian

and terminist

views were tolerated, "calculatory" techniques were applied to natural and violent motions and

B Fici'be

3.

A

schematic representation showing

heat in body

.A,

with one degree in the

first

how

half of

a nonuniform length,

its

degrees in the next quarter, three degrees in the next eighth,

may be reckoned which

is

to

have the same heat

in the

of equal length

margin of a fourteenth-century manuscript of

Swineshead's Calculations. Paris

who drew them was

rational

body B

uniformly heated to two degrees throughout. Similar dia-

grams appear son

as a

two etc.,

geometry

,see

B\

Lat. 9558.

fol. 6r.

and the per-

apparently familiar with Oresme's configu-

Figure

4).

attempt was made at an experimental proof, nor was it seen (so far as is known) that the rule could be applied to the case of falling bodies.

The "Calcula-

tores," as these writers are called, restricted their at-

tention to imaginative cases conceived in abstract

vances were

made

in

new

ad-

both terrestrial and celestial

dynamics.

The first concept of significance to emerge from this was that of impetus, which has been seen by historians of medieval science, such as of the

modern concept

Duhem, The

of inertia.

as a forerunner

idea of impetus

was not completely new on the fourteenth-century scene; the term had been used in biblical and Roman literature in the general sense of a thrust toward some goal, and John Philoponus, a Greek commentator on Aristotle, had written in the sixth century of an "incorporeal kinetic force" impressed on a projectile as the cause of its motion. Again Arabs such as Avicenna and Abu'l-Barakat had used equivalent Arabic terminology to express the same idea, and thirteenth-century

moving points, and various types of resistive media, but usually in a mathematical way and without reference to nature or

tion (which they rejected) of violent motion. What was new about the fourteenth-century development was the

When

technical significance given to the concept in contexts

terms: they spoke of magnitudes and

the phvsical universe.

bodies, as did Swineshead

(fl.

they discussed falling

1350) in his chapter

the Place of an Element" (De loco elementi),

show

primarily to

it

"On was

Scholastics took note of impetus as a possible explana-

that

more

inertial

closely approximate and gravitational motion.

later

discussions of

The

that mathematical techniques are

first to speak of impetus in such a context seems have been the Italian Scotist Franciscus de Marchia.

inapplicable to natural motions of this type (Hoskin

to

and Molland, 1966). A final development among the Mertonians that is worthy of mention for its later importance is their

While discussing the causality of the Sacraments in a commentary on the Sentences (1323), Franciscus employed impetus to explain how both projectiles and the Sacraments produced effects through a certain power resident within them; in the former case, the

attempts at clarifying the expression "quantity of matter" (quantitas materiae), which seems to be genetically related to the

Newtonian concept of mass. Swineshead

took up the question of the "latitude" of rarity and density,

and

in so

doing answered implicitly

how one

could go about determining the meaning of "amount of matter" or "quantity of matter." His definition of quantitas materiae,

it

has been argued,

is

not

signifi-

projector leaves a force in the projectile that principal continuer of leaves a force in the along.

The

principal

its

motion, although

medium mover

is

that helps the

the "force

—

the also

motion behind"

not a permanent something temporary ("for a time"), like

(virtus derelicta) in the projectile

quality, but

left

is it

201

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS heat induced in a body by

fire,

and

this

even apart

from external retarding influences. The nature of the movement is determined by the virtus: in one case it can maintain an upward motion, motion, and

another a sideways

in

another a circular motion. The

in yet

last

case allowed Franciscus to explain the motion of the celestial spheres in

them by

terms of an impetus impressed

their "intelligences"

tion in that

it

— an

in

important innova-

bridged the Peripatetic gap between the

that the velocity of fall could increase in direct pro-

portion to the distance of

embrace both

terrestrial

and

celestial phe-

mutually exclusive. (This confusion was to continue

in

Leonardo da Vinci and the young Galileo.) Albert himself seems to have favored distance as the independent variable, and thus cannot be regarded as a precursor of the correct "law of falling bodies."

Perhaps the most original thinker of the Paris school

was Nicole Oresme. Examples

of his novel

approach

nomena.

are his explanation of the motion of the heavens using

A more systematic elaborator of the impetus concept was John Buridan, rector of the University of Paris and

the metaphor of a mechanical clock, and his speculations concerning the possible existence of a plurality

tance the school of Bradwardine at Oxford. Buridan,

An ardent opponent of astrology, he developed Bradwardine's doctrine on ratios to include irra-

perhaps independently of Franciscus de Marchia, saw

tional fractional exponents relating pairs of whole-

founder of a school there that soon rivaled

the necessity of projectile;

ever,

some type

he regarded

and gave

it

in

impor-

of motive force within the

as a

permanent

quality,

how-

a rudimentary quantification in terms

it

of the primary matter of the projectile and the velocity

Although he offered no formal discusmathematical properties. Buridan thought

imparted to sion of

its

it.

would vary

that the impetus

directly as the velocity

imparted and as the quantity of matter put in

this respect,

at least, his

in

motion;

concept was similar to

and to Newton's "quantity of motion." The permanence of the impetus, in Buridan's view, was such that it was really distinct from the motion produced and would last indefinitely (ad infinitum) if not Galileo's impeto

diminished by contrary influences. Buridan also explained the

movement

of the heavens

of impetus on them by creation. Again,

and

God

in

at the

this

by the imposition

time of the world's

he was anticipated by

of worlds.

number ratios, and proceeded of any two unknown celestial tional.

that impetus in its

is

not permanent, but

probably

is

irra-

all astro-

Oresme held

self-expending

very production of motion; he apparently associ-

sustaining a uniform velocity.

In

discussing falling

bodies, he seems to suggest that the speed of

fall

is

directly proportional to the time (and not the distance) fall, but he did not apply the Mertonian mean-speed theorem to this case, although he knew the theorem and in fact gave the first geometrical proof for it. Further he conceived the imaginary situation of the

of

earth's being pierced all the

way

through; a falling

body would then acquire an impetuosite that would carry it beyond the center, and thereafter would oscilto rest.

A

final

amplitudes until

it

came

and extremely important contribution

was Oresme's use

of a two-dimensional figure to plot

a distribution of the intensity of a quality in a subject

Despite some similarities between impetus and ertia, critical historians

is

ated impetus with acceleration, moreover, and not with

late in gradually decreasing

body

argue that the ratio

logical prediction fallacious in principle.

explain the acceleration of falling bodies: continued

impresses more and more impetus.

to

ratios

This probability, in his view, rendered

Abu'l-Barakat, Buridan used his impetus concept to acceleration results because the gravity of the

in-

such as A. Maier have warned

against too facile an identification. Buridan's concept,

or of velocity variation with time (Figure this

method

4).

Possibly

of graphical representation was antici-

pated by the Italian Franciscan Giovanni

di Casali,

but

of Aristotle's theory of motion, wherein the distinction

Oresme perfected it considerably, and on this account is commonly regarded as a precursor of Descartes'

between natural and violent (compulsory)

analytic geometry.

for example,

tained.

was proposed

A much

as a further

development still

ob-

greater conceptual revolution was

in

required before this distinction would be abandoned

and the principle of inertia, in its classical understanding, would become accepted among physicists. Buridan's students, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen, popularized his theory and continued to speak of impetus as an "accidental and extrinsic force,"

202

fall,

later authors such as

earthly and the heavenly, and prepared for a mechanics that could

or to the time of

fall

without seemingly recognizing that the alternatives are

The fourteenth century marked optical experimentation

opment fifteenth

and

in the

the high point in

conceptual devel-

of mechanics during the late Middle Ages.

and sixteenth centuries served mainly

riods of transition,

where the underlying

ideas

The

as pe-

were

thereby preserving the Aristotelian notions of nature

diffused throughout Europe, entered into combination

and violence. Albert

is

with those of other cultures, and provided the proxi-

regarding the free

of bodies, wherein he speculates

fall

important for

his

statements

mate

setting for the

emergence of

classical science.

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS Ptolemy

— works that perforce had a salutary effect in new

preparing for the

The

in different

«

of

scientific mentality.

writings of particular authors also contributed

Cusa

is

ways

to the

coming revolution. Nicholas

important for his use of mathematical ideas

in elaborating his

metaphysics, which prepared for the

transition, in Koyre's apt expression,

"from the closed

world to the infinite universe." He also placed great emphasis on measurement, and preserved elements of the medieval experimental tradition in his treatise on with

"Experiments mentis)

—

Scales"

(De staticis experimost of his experi-

this despite the fact that

fictitious and not one mentions a Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps overcontributions to science, since his was

ments are purely numerical

result.

rated for his

more the mentality

of the engineer; his notebooks are

neither systematic nor lucid expositions of physical

concepts. Yet he too supplied an important ingredient, wrestling as he did with practical problems of me-

He

chanics with great genius and technical ability.

(b)

brought alive again the tradition of Jordanus Nemorarius

and Albert of Saxony, and

kinematics and dynamics,

if

his speculations

inconclusive, reveal

on

how

and elusive were the conceptual foundations its early practitioners. Giordano Bruno may also be mentioned as a supporter and successor of Nicholas of Cusa; his works abound in NeoPlatonism and mysticism, and show a heavy reliance difficult

of mechanics for

Figure angle

Line

4.

(b)

AB

subject,

EF, and

In Oresme's system, the rectangle

(a)

and the

above measures the quantity of some quality in

each case represents the extension of the quality

whereas perpendiculars erected

BD

right tri-

(or motion).

in (at

and DE, FC. and

BC

in ibi.

the

in

to this base line, e.g.,

AC,

represent the inten-

Oresme designated the limiting line CD in (a) and AC in ib! as the "line of the summit" or the "line of intensity." This is comparable to a "curve" in modsity of

the quality at a particular point.

ern analytic geometry, while the figures themselves are comparable to the "areas

under curves."

on Renaissance magic and the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition. Of little importance for mechanics, his ideas are significant mainly for the support they gave to

Copemicanism and

there long after

Much

of this interplay took place in Italy, although

humanism, with emphasis on the

its

interest in classical antiquity, its

arts,

and

its

general preference for

Plato over Aristotle. Writers such as Marsilio Ficino

and Erasmus ridiculed, respectively, the Paduan Schoolmen and the "calculator/ sophisms" of their Parisian

counterparts.

Their overriding interest

philology, moreover, led humanists to

make much

Diophantus,

had gone

much

Aristotelianism into eclipse at

flourished

Oxford and

in subordination to theology as

it

was among Thomists, but rather under the patronage of the Arab Averroes or of Alexander of Aphrodisias, a Greek commentator on Aristotle. The Averroists were Neo-Platonic in their interpretation of Aristotle, whereas the Alexandrists placed emphasis instead on his original text. Again, at Padua the arts faculty was complemented not by the theology faculty but by the medical facultv; in this more secularized atmosphere closely in relation to medical

make

Greek and in accurate translation, the mathematical and mechanical treatises of Euclid, Pappus,

it

the scientific writings of Aristotle could be studied

available, in

Apollonius,

Paris, not so

influences.

in

even in the case of Aristotle, to confer unprecedented force on arguments from the

Archimedes,

infinite uni-

of

original texts, and,

authority of the classical author. Yet they did

concept of an

Of more direct influence, on the other hand, was work done at the University of Padua under Averroist and terminist

France and Spain also figured in it to a limited extent. 1. Italy and Renaissance Influences. The tradition perhaps most opposed to Scholasticism was that of

to the

verse.

and

problems and with much Arab commentators. The result was the formation of a new body of ideas within the Aristotelian framework that fostered, rather than impeded, the scientific revival soon to be pioneered by the Paduan professor, Galileo Galilei. Among these ideas some were methodological. Thev aid from

203

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS derived from extended discussions of what Galileo

would

"method of analysis" (metodo and the "method of synthesis" {metodo com-

refer to as the

risolutivo)

positivo). Writers such as Jacopo Zabarella systema-

tized these results,

showing how they could he applied

problems

detailed

to

physical

in

thereby

science,

bringing to perfection the methodology outlined by Grosseteste, which has already been discussed.

More than

a century before Zabarella, Paul of Venice

(Paolo Nicoletti),

who had

studied at Oxford in the late

Spanish students,

who

later returned to

modeling Spanish universities such as Alcala and Salamanca after the University of Paris. An edition of Swineshead's Liber calculationum was edited influential

in

by Juan Martinez Siliceo and published at Salamanca in 1520; this was followed by a number of texts written (some poorlv)

in the "calculatory" tradition.

who were

gians

around Thomist,

Scotist,

complained over

their students' lack of

and nominalist concepts soon adequate prep-

wrote commentaries on Heytesbury that were published and widely disseminated throughout Europe. Noteworthy is the commentary of Gaetano da Thiene,

aration in logic and natural philosophy.

who

Celaya

illustrated

much

of Heytesbury

s

abstract reason-

Theolo-

attempting to build their lectures

A number of these

his students.

at

numbers of Spain and were

fourteenth century, returned to Padua and propagated

Mertonian ideas among

was such

It

Domingo de Soto, a Dominican theologian and political theorist who had studied under a situation that led at

Paris as a layman, to prepare a series of

ing on uniform and difform motions with examples

textbooks for use at the University of Salamanca.

drawn from nature and from

Among

artifacts that

might be

constructed from materials close at hand. As far as

known

this fifteenth-century

group performed no

is

ex-

periments or measurements, but they took a step closer realization

their

to

by showing how "calculatory"

techniques were relevant in physical and medical

in-

2.

Paris

school in

and the Spanish

exerted

northern

Italy;

Universities.

considerable it

influence

also stimulated a

Mertonian ideas

The Paduan throughout

renewed

(or

interest

University of Paris at the

at the

beginning of the sixteenth century. The group this

which renewal took place centered around John Major

Jean Mair), the Scottish nominalist,

among

in

who numbered

John Dullaert of Ghent, Alvaro Thomaz, and Juan de Celaya. Dullaert edited many of the works of Paul of Venice, while he and the others his students

were generally familiar with the "calculatory" writings of Paul's students. Major's group was eclectic in its philosophy, and saw no inconsistency in making a fusion of nominalist and realist currents, the former embracing Oxonian and Parisian terminist thought and the latter including Thomist and Scotist as well as Averroist views. The Spaniard Gaspar Lax and the Portuguese Alvaro expertise

Thomaz

necessary

supplied the mathematical

understand

to

Swineshead's, and Oresme's

Several good physics texts especially noteworthy

Paduans, seemingly as (1517).

is

Bradwardine's,

into

his

scholars.

decades of the sixteenth cen-

same concern

and

for both realist

much

dictated by Soto's pedagogical aims.

One

innovation in Soto's work has claimed the

at-

tention of historians of science. In furnishing examples of motions that are "uniformly difform"

(i.e.,

uniformly

accelerated) with respect to time, Soto explicitly

men-

tions that freely falling bodies accelerate uniformly as fall and that projectiles (presumably thrown upward) undergo a uniform deceleration; thus he saw the distance in both cases to be a function of the time of

they

travel.

He

includes numerical examples that

show he

applied the Mertonian "mean-speed theorem" to the case of free

fall,

and on

this basis, at

the present state

adumbrated the is known, Soto performed no measurements, although he did discuss what later thinkers have called "thought experiments," particularly relating to the vacuum. An extensive survey of all physics books known to be in use in France of knowledge, he

is

the

first

to have

correct law of falling bodies. As far as

and Spain

at the

time has failed to uncover similar

who

3. Italy Again: Galileo. With Soto, the conceptual development of medieval mechanics reached its term. What was needed was an explicit concern with measurement and experimentation to complement the mathematical reasoning that had been developed along "calculatory" and Archimedean lines. This final devel-

that of Juan de Celaya,

from the Mertonians and organized and systematized by

exposition

of

Aristotle's

Physics

by then had become the custom, and thus of the late medieval development mechanics (statics excluded) to sixteenth-century

questions, as

in

at Paris in the first

tury. It reflected the

instance of this type, and one can only speculate as

Celaya treated both dynamical and kinematical

transmitted

used

more technical writings. came out of this group;

inserted lengthy excerpts

Thomaz,

these were a commentary and a "questionary" on Aristotle's Physics; the latter, appearing in its first complete edition in 1551, was a much simplified and abridged version of the type of physics text that was

"calculatory" interests, but with changes of emphasis

vestigations.

204

Celaya was but one of many Spanish professors Paris in this period; these attracted large

to the source of Soto's examples.

opment took place

in

northern

Padua, while Galileo was

Italy,

again mainly at

teaching there.

The

stage

was

set by works of considerable mathematical sophis-

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND MECHANICS under the inspiration of Archimedes, by sixGeronimo Cardano,

tication,

Special studies include C. B. Boyer, The Rainbow:

Mathematics (New York,

teenth-century- authors such as

Myth

Nicolo Tartaglia, and Giovanni Battista Benedetti. Also

Quaestiones super libros quattuor de caelo

the technical arts had gradually been perfected, and

E. A.

materials were at hand from which instruments and

experimental apparatus could be constructed.

The person

of Galileo provided the catalyst and the

genius to coordinate these elements and educe from

them a new kind

of synthesis that

tion with Isaac

Newton. Galileo received

would reach perfechis early

where

university training at Pisa around 1584,

his

student notebooks (Juvenilia) reveal an acquaintance

many Schoolmen,

with

including Soto, an edition of

whose Physics appeared at Venice their terminology in

in 1582. Galileo

an early treatise

On

motu), and only gradually departed from

used

Motion (De

it.

His teacher

to

Moody (Cambridge,

medes

in the

Middle

Mass., 1942);

ages, Vol.

Jean

1959);

From

Buridan,

et mundo, ed. M. Clagett, Archi-

The Arabo-Latin Tradition

I.

(Madison, 1964); idem, Nicole Oresme and the Medieval

Geometry of Qualities and Motions (Madison, 1968); H. L. Crosby, Jr., ed. and trans., Thomas of Bradwardine, His "Tractatus de Proportionibus." Its Significance for the Development of Mathematical Physics (Madison, 1955); S. Drake and I. E. Drabkin, eds. and trans.. Mechanics in Sixteenth Century Italy (Madison, 1969); H. Elie, "Quelques

Maitres de l'universite de Paris vers d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire

l'an

du moyen

1500," Archives

age, 18 (1950-51),

193-243; N. W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York, 1960); E. Grant, ed. and trans., Nicole Oresme, De proportionibus proportionum and Ad pauca respicientes

contributed to the developing science of mechanics

(Madison, 1966); M. A. Hoskin and A. G. Molland, "Swineshead on Falling Bodies: An Example of Fourteenth-Century Physics," The British Journal for the History of Science, 3 (1966). 150-82; A. Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore, 1957), and idem. Etudes galileennes, 3 vols. (Paris, 1939), much of which is summarized in idem, Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in

were

the

Francesco Buonamici, himself a

at Pisa,

classical Aris-

seemingly gave a muddled account of the

totelian,

medieval tradition, and

it is

difficult to

know how

well

Galileo understood what was presented. Actually this

matters

little;

at

hand

what

is

important

is

that the ideas that

for himself or another to use. Classical

Scientific

(Cambridge,

Revolution

from the head of Zeus, from the mind of Galileo or

M. McVaugh, Law," Isis, 58 (1967), 56-64;

his

contemporaries.

When

it

a revolution, and no one can deny

did arrive, this,

but

it

was was a

it

revolution preceded by a strenuous effort of thought.

The

genesis of that thought

known, chapter

makes an absorbing,

if little

in the history of ideas.

eds., et

1968);

E.

of Science (New York, 1967); "Arnald of Villanova and Bradwardine's

McMullin,

any of

Mass.,

Man

science did not spring perfect and complete, as Athena

ed., Galileo:

A. D.

Menut and

A.

J.

Denomy,

Eng. trans, by Menut, Nicole Oresme, Le Livre du del

du morule (Madison,

1968); E. A.

Moody, "Galileo and

His Precursors," Galileo Reappraised, ed. C. L. Golino (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 23-43; idem, "Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment," Journal

of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951), 163-93, 375-422. J. E. Murdoch, "Rationes Mathematice": Un Aspect du rapport des mathematiques et de 1962);

BIBLIOGRAPHY The

principal sources and bibliography are given in

M.

Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison, 1959); also E. A. Moody and M. Clagett, eds., The

Medieval Science of Weights (Madison, 1952). See too A. C. Crombie, Robert Crosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700 (Oxford, 1953), p. 195; idem, Medieval and Early Modern Science, 2nd

ed, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961); E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, trans. C. Dikshoorn (Oxford, 1961); J. A. Weisheipl, The Development of Physical Theory in the

Middle Ages (New York, 1959);

P.

rev.

Duhem, Etudes

sur Leonard de Vinci, 3 vols. (Paris, 1906-13; reprint 1955), a pioneer

work of great scope, but requires

of the researches of A.

Maier

in

revision in light

her Studien zur Naturphi-

losophie der Spatscholastik, 5 vols. (Rome, 1949-58), espe-

Die Vorldufer Galileis im 14 Jahrhundert (Rome, V, Zwischen Philosophic und Mechanik (Rome, 1958). See also: P. Duhem Le Systeme du monde, 10 vols. (Paris, 1913-59); idem. To Save the Phenomena, trans

cially Vol.

J.

H. Randall,

la

Jr.,

philosophie au

moyen age

(Paris,

The School of Padua and the

Emergence of Modern Science (Padua, 1961); C. B. Schmitt, "Experimental Evidence for and against a Void: The Sixteenth-Century Arguments,"

Isis,

58 (1967), 352-66; W. A.

Wallace, The Scientific Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg (Fribourg, 1959); idem, "The Enigma of Domingo de Soto: Uniformiter Difformis and Falling Bodies in Late Medieval Physics,"

Isis,

59 (1968), 384-401; idem, "The 'Calculatores'

Early Sixteenth-Century Physics," The British Journal for the History of Science, 4 (1969), 231-32; idem, "Mechanics in

from Bradwardine

to Galileo," Journal of the History of 32 (1971), 15-28; J. A. Weisheipl, "The Concept of Matter in Fourteenth Century Science," in The Concept of

Ideas,

Matter, ed. E.

McMullin (Notre Dame,

1963), pp. 319-41;

C. Wilson, William Heytesbury: Medieval Logic and the Rise of Mathematical Physics (Madison, 1960).

WILLIAM

I,

A.

WALLACE

1949) and Vol.

E.

Doland and C. Maschler (Chicago, 1969;

French, 1908).

original

in

[See also Abstraction; sation;

Continuity;

Alchemy; Astrology; Authority; Cau-

Islamic Conception;

Optics; Renaissance Humanism.]

Neo-Platonism;

205

EXPRESSIONISM IN LITERATURE EXPRESSIONISM IN LITERATURE

it

to label the

merung

Among the listed

by Lovejoy

Ideas," it

is

areas of

we

languages

knowledge and scholarly inquiry his essay "The Historiograph) of

note his reference to "Literary history, as

commonly

literatures

in

of

presented, namely, the history of the nations

particular

— in so

themselves ...

or

in

particular

far as the literary historians interest

thought-content of literature"

in the

(Essays in the History of Ideas, p. 1). It is with the explicit or implicit thought content of German literar)

expressionism that our survey

is

primarily concerned.

who

the history of ideas,

than dealing with philosophical systems or

components or elements (also called the unit ideas) of which such thought structures are made up. It does so knowing full well that "the seeming novelty of many a system is due solely to the novelty of the application or arrangement of the old elements which enter into it" (ibid., p. 4). esthetic currents, isolates the

In dealing with

German literary expressionism as we are fortunate in facing a

intellectual historians,

situation compatible

with Lovejoy

s

strictures.

For

unlike naturalism and surrealism in literature and im-

pressionism in painting, literary expressionism was not a

movement

use

and

in the strict sense of the

Rene Wellek's

definition, a

activities"

self-critical

to

resulting in "consciously

was, rather, a syndrome of

It

thoughts and feelings

in short: a

giving rise to

i.e.,

body of "self-conscious

formulated programs."

—

word,

—

Weltanschauung certain techniques and engendering a

preference for certain types of subject matter, such

1920; "The Twilight of Mankind"), same phenomenon as characterizing the

writes:

Expressionism

— a collective term

for a

complex

of feelings

—

and ideas (Gefuhls- und Anschauungskomplex) is not a program. There is a league of Activists, but not of Expres-

There the goal is Himlung (adherence to a common it is Losung (detachment). Whatever force seeks to compel intellectuals, artists and creators to subscribe to an identical program is to be condemned. A program implies sionists.

self.

discriminate" (The Great Chain of Being, p. 5). Yet he devoted considerable time and effort to the discrim-

means death

of the

adventure of spiritual loneliness. This

loneli-

bias (Tendenz), obligation. Ohligation

The

self:

ness gives birth to the

work

of art" (Vher

neue Prosa, pp.

llf.).

So diverse have been the opinions, artists

critics, as to

garded

as

grouping eral of

held by the

still

themselves as well as by literary historians and

who

should,

and who should

be

re-

For example, Georg Trakl, sev-

available.

is

whose poems appear

and who

not,

an expressionist that no universally accepted in

now sometimes

is

expressionist,

would seem

Menschheitsdammerung designated as a proto-

to belong, in part, to a

pletely different tradition which, on occasion, has

called surrealist. Similarly, the writings of the

combeen

German

dadaists are usually discussed in the standard surveys of expressionism, although the ties are very tenuous least esthetically speaking. tial" expressionist

Emst

par excellence, was shocked to see

However, Rainer

his plays staged expressionistically.

Maria Rilke, some of whose certain aspects of the

Orpheus

to

we

— at

Barlach, the "existen-

— display

Duino

stylistic

later

poems

tend to associate with expressionism,

cussed in this particular context.

would be downright

— including

and the Sonnets mannerisms of the kind Elegies

is

What

foolish to think that

rarely dis-

is

more,

it

an author's

Unlike their activist

entire oeuvre could be regarded as belonging, fairly

contemporaries (Franz Pfemfert and Kurt Hiller, to

and squarely, to expressionism. Those who wish to discuss this complex literary phenomenon are, therefore, well advised to concentrate on specific works or

as the

conflict

of generations.

name only two shared a

common

of the most prominent ones),

who

sociopolitical, humanist-pacifist goal

and expressed their views in periodicals like Die Aktion, Das Ziel, and Die weissen Blatter, all the expressionists proper seem to have had in common was, in the words of Gottfried Benn, their urge for Wirklichkeitszertrummerung ("destruction of external reality"). Intensitat ("intensity")

is,

in fact,

another of

"sacred words and phrases" which Lovejoy wished to see dissected. As early as 1915, Otto Flake, writing in Die neue Rundschau (XXVI, 1276-87), used those

206

Krell,

-ity, though they occasionally may be, usually are not of the sort which the historian of ideas seeks to

or

rather

and Kurt Pinthus,

work of the poets included in his collection. The basic difference between expressionism and activism (which Wolfgang Paulsen made the subject of a still cogent monograph) is well explained by Max

cause), here

Still,

literature,

(Berlin,

singled out the

However, Lovejoy disparaged the study of literary and artistic movements as "units" of the history of ideas; for, according to him, "the doctrines and tendencies that are designated by familiar names ending in -ism

ination of romanticisms.

most recent

editor of the paradigmatic anthology Menschheitsdam-

groups of works. Historically, expressionism in art

and

literature

must

be seen as one of many manifestations, in the arts, the sciences, philosophy, religion, and so forth, which were

symptomatic of the revolt against positivism, a revolt which erupted shortly after 1900. Like the cubists and the futurists from whom they were only tentatively and inadequately distinguished by such perceptive contemporary critics as Theodor Daubler and Her-

—

EXPRESSIONISM IN LITERATURE mann Bahr

— the

expressionists despised the realistic-

approach to art which, as a final, glorious offshoot, had recently produced the sensuous surface portrayals of impressionism. Following Cezanne, the naturalistic

aimed

cubists

at stabilizing

sionism by transforming

and eternalizing impres-

into an "art of the

it

museums"

(Cezanne's formulation) bordering on, but never actu-

geometrical abstraction. The

ally resulting in,

futurists,

glorifying speed and idolizing the machine, indulged in a

kind of accelerated impressionism using hardened

and centering

particles

The

in the notion of simultaneity.

expressionists, finally, pitted their

emotional

own brand

nineteenth century. of their chief literarv

in Platonic fashion be-

was

lieved that to reproduce an already existing reality

a waste of creative strength: "The world

why

should

we

sis

was not

is

there; so

repeat it?" (Uber den Expressionismus

und

in der Literatur

Empha-

die neue Dichtung, p. 56).

be placed on Sehen ("observation of

to

on Schauen ("visionary experipermanent values and thus merge the subjective with the objective. The program which the expressionists unwittingly embraced was formulated by Vincent van details") but

visual

ences"), in an effort to gain mystical access to

Gogh

in several letters to his brother

between 1886 and 1888. In one of August, 1888,

we

eves,

I

tion, is,

man.

I

should like to paint the portrait

I

man who dreams

want

as faithfullv as

But the picture

I

I

I

because

So

for him.

who

great dreams,

it is

his nature. He'll

to put into the picture

have

I

my

paint

apprecia-

him

as

he

can, to begin with.

not finished vet.

is

going to be the arbitrary of the hair,

have

I

use color more arbitrarily so as to express

the love that

colorist. I

get to orange tones,

Beyond the head, instead

mean room,

I

To

finish

it I

am now

exaggerate the fairness

chromes and pale lemon

of painting the ordinary wall

paint infinity, a plain background of

the richest, intensest blue that

I

can contrive, and by

this

simple combination the bright head illuminated against a rich blue

background acquires a mysterious effect, like the depths of an azure sky (Letters, p. 277).

star in the

without depicting

That

its

outside in a

way

you wanted

that could be recog-

an apple-tree you drew and coloured one vertical and three fairlv horinized.

is

to sav.

if

to express

zontal lines, attached a small coloured circle to one of those,

and wrote the word "Fruity" in

Spain [1927],

in the catalogue.

.

.

(Castles

p. 89).

may have spoken with

Although Galsworthy

a de-

gree of levity, this deliberate emphasis on the inside

phenomena

led to the serious and

on the part of many

dogged attempt,

expressionists, to breathe a soul

(beseelen) not only into animals

and

plants, but into

inanimate objects as well. Thus, Franz Marc wished to portray a horse or an eagle not as

woidd see and

he saw them but

and Theodor Daubler referred to Robert Delaunay's painted Eiffel Tower as an expressionist, or even the father of Delaunay (Daubler, p. 182). This spiritualizing tendas they

feel themselves;

ency marks one of the strongest contrasts between expressionism on the one hand and nineteenth- and twentieth-century

all

the other major

movements

(includ-

ing surrealism) on the other.

Although, as

we have

already indicated, no one

nonnaturalistic and anticlassical phases in the history of the plastic arts. After refuting the empathetic

and perception he

in these eras,

Substituting definition for description, Herbert

Read

called expressionism an art seeking to reproduce "not

the objective reality of the world, but the subjective reality of the feeling

which objects and events arouse

(The Philosophy of

Modem

Art, p. 51).

Much

finds to

mode

have prevailed

he introduces the concept of Kunstwollen

("artistic volition") in contrast to the

notion of art as

(Konnen) dependent on the artist's technical expertise and the nature of his materials. Kunstwollen, which disregards all conventional a

skill

canons of beauty, asserts itive still

itself most forcefullv in primand highly sophisticated ages when man is either afraid of his natural environment or has already

transcended

it

spiritually.

Rejecting the art of the

and realism-naturalism, Worringer praises the Middle Ages especially the Gothic style the baroque, and romanticism, during which periods, according to him and his followers, the urge for transcendence and spiritualization made itself felt, without quite succeeding in breaking through the Renaissance,

in us"

good

"great

a

Expressionism meant expressing the inside of a phenomenon

of creation

yellows. of the

quotes

gram or offered a theory that was binding for the entire "movement," one work in particular exerted a powerful influence on many artists: Wilhelm Worringer's book Abstraktion und Einfuhlung ("Abstraction and Empathy") which, originally written as a dissertation, was not published until 1908. In this treatise, Worringer, speaking as an art historian, champions the

as the nightingale sings,

fair

Expression,"

encounter the following exemplary

myself more forcefullv. ...

be a

"On

individual connected with expressionism wrote a pro-

of an artist friend, a

works

in his

dated mid-

Because instead of trying to reproduce exactly what

my

by John Galsworthy who,

painter" as ironically stating that

Theo, written

these,

passage:

before

entitled

of

spokesmen, the expressionists

said

of

nonerotic subjectivism against the imitative art of the

With Kasimir Edschmid. one

same was

Presidential Address to the English Association (1924)

and

nonsensuous

characteristically,

but,

the

neo-classicism,

—

—

207

— EXPRESSIONISM IN LITERATURE barrier of material

(notably

life. It is

precisely these three eras

baroque and romanticism) which the

the

Although, in Abstraktion und Einfithlung, Worringer his

art.

provocative

study was shortly to be regarded as the Bible of expressionism.

Without

model, for instance. Wassily

this

Kandinsky's ev,a\

(

her das Geistige in der Kunst 1912; 1

"Concerning the Spiritual

been written,

in

at least not in its

would not have present form. Here the Art")

father of abstract ("nonobjective") art, writing in 1910,

invokes the principle of Spiritual Necessity, his equivalent of Worringer's

K tins tic alien. Renouncing any

claims to universal beauty, Kandinsky states that "internal beauty

achieved through necessity and renun-

is

ciation of the conventionally beautiful.

are not accustomed to

it

it

To those who

appears as ugliness." But

Kandinsky's link with expressionism

a

is

the style he developed after 1910

is

weak

one, for

of the serene,

post-empathetic and Oriental-decorative kind, whereas,

on the whole, the expressionists (such of the Dresden Briicke)

as the

members

were drawn toward the neo-

in

any

at

rate,

was always

was preferred

stressed at the expense of

Korper ("body") or Materie ("matter

The

\

sought to

which the expresconvey was frequently hinted

by such synonyms as Ballung ("agglomeration or concentration") and Spitzen ("peaks"), both of which terms play a crucial role in the dialogue of Georg Kaiser's drama Von Morgens bis Mitternachts (1916; From Morn to Midnight). Elsewhere, phrases like Hohe des Gefuhls ("height of feeling") and Berge des Herzens at

in

common.

It

is

men-

an attribute of Mensch

(man seen abstractly and universallv) rather than Mann (man seen as a concrete and unique individual). The replacement of concrete particulars by quasiabstractions bordering, at times, upon allegorical forms, is

another distinct feature of literary expressionism.

Thus Goering's play

is

significantly entitled Seeschlacht

Die Seeschlacht or Die Schlacht Skagerrak. The poet August Stramm displayed an than

rather

am in-

creasingly radical tendency toward nounalization on the one tials

hand and reduction

its

bare essen-

— distinctly

preferred

of syntax to

on the other; and even Trakl

expressionism

are

so

brittle

— whose

ties

with

nounalized adjectives, such as ein Weisses ("a white thing

"l.

and hence less abstract, summarizing this significant trend,

to less generalized,

designations.

In

Edschmid claims

that, in the

context of expressionism,

"the rhythmic construction of the sentences ent," in so far as they serve "the

same

is

differ-

spiritual urge

is

the exhibition held in 1901 at the Salon des Inde-

in Paris, which included several canvases grouped together under the title "Expressionisme" by the otherwise unknown painter Julien Auguste Herve. (The term was never popular in France, where a kind of decorative expressionism that of Les Fauces flourished around 1905.) In Germany, the term was first applied to painting

—

—

in 1911, in

connection with an exhibition staged by

the Berlin Sezession.

It

was quickly popularized by and Worringer.

("mountains of the heart," a metaphorical expression

influential critics like Karl Scheffler

coined by Rilke) prepare one for the typically expres-

(The

Aufbruch ("departure") signaling the emergence of the projected New Man.

Hulme, who transmitted some of the key notions to Wyndham Lewis and the group of vorticists gathered around Ezra Pound and the shortlived periodical Blast, which became the voice of

sionistic situation of

Trying to pierce the surface of things, the expressionists intuitively

— the

grasped for essences. Mensch, werde

lines of a famous epigram by the seventeenth-century poet Angelus Silesius served as an inspiration for a whole generation of poets and playwrights, among them the proto-expressionist Ernst Stadler, whose poem "Der Spruch" ("Epigram" incorporating this dictum, has an almost programmatic ring. Like Wesen ("essence"), Kern ("core") is a term which crops up incessantly in expressionism, for instance, in Reinhard Goering's drama Seeschlacht ("Naval Engagement"), which contains a whole reper-

wesentlich!

opening

i

208

have

tality

pendants

intensity of the experiences

sionistic writers

beings,

appropriate point of departure for a semantic history

with Seele ("soul"), which

religious outlook than they usually

mind. Geist,

or reason and

it

human

had

favorite catchword, although occasionally they con-

more

all

to intellect

Geist ("spirit"), by the way, was the expressionists" fused or contaminated

which

refers to that

which renders only the essential" (op. cit., p. 65). Although the term "expressionism" and its cognates were occasionally used before the turn of the century (as Armin Arnold has shown in the opening chapter of his book Die Literatur des Expressionismus), the most

primitive.

suggests a

Kern primarily

irrespective of their race, creed, social status, or

expressionists exalted for similar reasons.

does not refer to contemporary

tory of phrases relevant to our survey. In this work,

latter's

attention of

Abstraktion

T

und Einfuhlung came

to the

E.

English expressionism

—

in reality, a

blend of expres-

and futurist ideas.) Generally speaking, expressionism had little impact on English drama, whereas American playwrights like Eugene O'Neill (The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape) and Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine) were strongly influenced by sionist, cubist,

Georg

Kaiser.

Although "expressionism" had been applied to literature as early as 1911 (by Kurt Hiller), it did not gain currency until 1915 when Otto Flake published the

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE, review article mentioned above. In the

fall

of 1917,

however, Kasimir Edschmid denounced those imitators of the expressionistic style

who

sought to reproduce

external features without sharing the underlying

its

world view. And by April, 1922, Kurt Pinthus, prefacing the second edition of Menschheitsdammerung, could

assert,

good

in

faith,

that in the intervening

two-and-one-half years no poetry begging for inclusion in his

(New

York, 1963). U. Weisstein, "Vorticism: Expressionism

English Style," Yearbook of Comparative and General Liter13 (1964), 28-40;

ature,

idem, "Expressionism: Style or

W. Worringer, und Einfuhlung (Munich, 1908; new ed. 1948), Abstraction and Empathy (New York, 1953).

Weltanschauung?"

Criticism. 9 1967), 42-62. 1

Abstraktion trans, as

ULRICH WEISSTEIN

anthology had appeared. Indeed, what around

1917 had been true of expressionistic prose and poetry could

Der deutsche Expressionismus (Gottingen, 1965). Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, ed. Mark Roskill

now be

as well; for, along

most

Kaiser's

drama Georg

said to apply to expressionistic

with Coering's Seeschlacht.

[See

Empathy; Impressionism; Naturalism

also

in

Art;

Romanticism.]

significant plays, although written several

years earlier, had been premiered in quick succession,

among them Die Burger von Morgens and Gas Baal was run

its

Calais

Von

(1914),

The

(1918).

version of Bertolt Brecht's

first

also written in 1918.

Thus expressionism had

course, covering a time span extending over

the decade from 1910 to 1920, a decade which Gottfried

Benn was justified

in calling

das expressionistische

Perhaps the lustrum beginning in 1921 might be included by extension, although by 1923 the dominant style of the twenties, Neue Sachlichkeit (New

Jahrzehnt.

Objectivity, or functionalism)

mentum through

had acquired

mo-

full

(Stuttgart, 1966). H. Bahr, Expres-

sionismus (Munich, 1916). Th. Daubler, Der neue Stand-

punkt (Dresden,

1916). H. Denlder,

ismus (Munich,

1967).

B.

Drama

des Expression-

Diebold, Anarchie im

Drama

(Frankfurt, 1921). K. Edschmid, Uber den Expressionismus

und

die neue

Dichtung

(Berlin, 1919);

idem,

Schopferische Konfession (Berlin, 1920). M. Hamburger, Reason and Energy (New York, 1957), essays on Trakl, Benn, and "1912." C. Hill and R. Ley, The Drama of German ed.,

A

Bibliography

(Chapel

Hill,

1960).

W.

Kandinsky, Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (Munich, 1912), trans, as

1947). A.

A

(New York, Concerning the Spiritual in Art Klarmann, "Expressionism in German Literature: .

.

.

Retrospect of a Half Century," Modern Language Quar-

26 (1965), 62-92. M.

terly,

1919).

M. Niedermayer,

Krell,

ed.,

Jahrzehnts (Munich, 1962).

Uber neue Prosa

(Berlin,

Paulsen, Aktivismus

und

1935); idem, ed., Aspekte des Expressionismus

(Heidelberg, 1968). K. Pinthus, ed., Menschheitsdammerung (Berlin,

1920;

new

ed.,

Hamburg,

1959).

W. Rothe,

ed.,

Expressionismus als Literatur (Berne, 1969). R. Samuel and

German Life, Literature and Theatre (Cambridge, 1939). W. Sokel, The Writer in

R. H.

the

history

—a

The

object of this article

Thomas, Expressionism

is

not to detail their

process which would be impossible in so

short a space. Rather, the article will attempt to

in

overlooked

among

in

surveys

historical

— interrelatedness

these concepts themselves in their development

—

political,

the ideas of faith, hope, and

many

scholars.

can be seen as rooted to some extent

The problem

in the conflict

—

between two distinct conceptions of love eros and agape which were united in the Christian conception

—

of charity.

The

idea of eros was derived largely from the phi-

whom

losophy of Plato, for

it

meant a love

of

man

by which man seeks a contembe wholly satisfying (Symposium

for the divine, a desire

plation which will 210A-E). The contemplation or possession of the Good, according to Plato, is attained by a difficult ascent above the transient things of the world. Eros, then, is

an appetite for the Good, which

own this

is

sought not for

its

sake but in order to satisfy spiritual desire. Since

yearning

is

basically for the extension of one's

it

may

in this sense

In the

New

Testament eros

being,

favor of agape.

term

for love.

The

What

latter is

own

be called egocentric.

is

largely overlooked in

is

not simply another Greek

being conveyed

attitude. In the fullest sense

agape

is

generous love, not appetitive

is

need

is

is

a very distinct

God's love.

loved.

to satisfy that in oneself

It is

It

in the sense that there

which

is

incomplete,

not stimulated by or dependent upon that which

is

indifferent to value, seeking to confer good,

Extremis (Stanford, 1959); idem, Expressionismus in Kunst

rather than to obtain

und

creative,

Literatur 1910-1923 (Munich, 1960). H. Steffen, ed.,

il-

lumine some of the points of interrelatedness frequently

Lyrik des expressionistischen

W.

Expressionismus: Eine typologische Untersuchung (Berne

and Leipzig,

guishable.

charity are problematic to

A. Arnold, Die Literatur des Expressionismus: Sprachliche

Expressionism:

of faith, hope, and charity are pro-

foundly interrelated and in reality not clearly distin-

The connections among

BIBLIOGRAPHY

in der Literatur

The concepts

and between them and other phenomena social, and psychological.

the activities of the Bauhaus.

und thematische Quellen

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE,

Mittemachts (1916), Die Koralle (1917),

bis

and

it is

it.

It is

therefore spontaneous and

rooted in abundance rather than in

209

—

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE,

God himself

poverty. In this sense 4:8).

is

called love

The use of the agape idea to convey

(I

John

the Christian's

of love

toward God is therefore problematic. There are a few passages in the Pauline epistles in which agape is used in the sense of love toward God (e.g.,

Christian

Romans

ment

attitude

8:28;

Corinthians 2:9; 8:3: Ephesians 6:24).

I

Nevertheless, the use of the term in this sense

quent

He

in Paul.

does use

it

infre-

is

frequently to denote the

Recognizing the problem involved

is

in describing the "

itself

the whole devotion of love, while

emphasizing that

has the character of a response,

includes in that

it

While it

is

it

reciprocated love" (Nygren [1953],

this interpretation

127).

p.

can be and has been debated,

and which

indicates the inseparability of the ideas of faith

love and the futility of divisions and distinctions are too neat and simplified.

Church Fathers new developsome of these writings eros seems

In the writings of the

ments can be seen. In to

come

to the fore in the interpretation of Christian

love of God. That

there

is,

is

a tendency to distinguish

a tendency to speak

between "mere

faith"

and

Christian "gnosis." Within this frame of reference, the

mere believer

is

understood to have what

necessary for salvation, that

is,

God, but

into relationship with

is

essentially

he has been brought his understanding is

superficial. In contrast to this, gnosis implies a

of possession, that

Clement itself to

true

is,

of Alexandria

a higher and

kind

knowledge of God. Thus faith points beyond

wrote that

more

perfect stage, that

is,

gnosis

According to this view, then, there are two stages of development, and the true Gnostic is the Christian who has reached a higher plane (Stromata VII, Ch.

x.

55, 3).

of vision. Since he has true insight into Scripture, he

does not depend upon external authority as does the

mere

believer. This pattern of thinking

reflected also in Origen, is

developed

in

whose notion

A

strongly

of Christian love

terms of eros. Characteristically he also

described two levels of the Christian

and that of

faith

is

life,

that of

mere

gnosis.

theme and the agape theme was achieved by Augustine in his development of the synthesis of the eros

conception of Christian charity. The combination of these

two themes

is

suggested by the fact that he was

able to write of an "ascent" of the soul toward a "vision" of

God

Without

it,

faith

and hope cannot estab-

is

significant:

"When

it

is

The following

state-

asked whether a

man

good, one does not ask what he believes or hopes,

but what he loves" (Enchiridion, Ch. source of medieval speculation on

(by a "ladder" of virtue, speculation,

and mysticism) and yet also to affirm the utter sovereignty, gratuitousness, and spontaneity of divine love and grace. There is rich content in Augustine's view

While

charity.

cxvii. 31).

this

faith,

hope, and

generally recognized,

is

it

would

be misleading to assume that there were not other influences

upon medieval thought. One

important was an author

who wrote

about the

through most strongly

of the most

known as "Pseudo-Dionysius," year 500 a.d. What comes

in the

works of

this

author

is

the idea of love (eros) as a unifying and cohesive force

pervading the whole universe (De divinis nominibus, Ch.

He strongly emphasizes the symbolism God by the ladder of virtue, speculation,

iv, n. xv).

of ascent to

and mysticism. The ideas of Dionysius began to have impact upon the West in the ninth century, largely through the work of John Scotus Erigena, who stresses the idea that God is eros to himself, and when we love

God

it

is

God

really

loving himself through

us.

In the Middle Ages the most cohesive and original

primarily in terms of possession of God. Related to this is

life.

the right relationship to God.

lish

man's

is

absolutely central to the

is

Augustine's problematic synthesis was the major

toward God by the term "agape, a controversial scholar argued that in the epistles of Paul, especially, man's attitude of response to God is more clearly expressed by the word "faith." "Faith Christian's attitude

love of God, love of neighbor

love of God. This charity

Christian attitude to one's neighbor, however.

210

— God's love,

but the most usual meaning of charity for him

synthesis of Christian thought on the virtues of faith,

hope, and charity Aquinas,

who

most probably that of Thomas

is

conceptualizes them as three distinct but

interdependent

supernatural,

virtues directing

man

became

accepted in

officially

to

infused,

"theological"

God. Thomas's doctrine

Roman

later

Catholicism. Like

Ronaventure and the medieval Augustinians he considered himself a disciple of Augustine, but Aquinas is

too complex a thinker to be classified simply in this

manner.

What is radically

different in his thought stems

from a conscious choice to adopt Aristotelianism into his synthesis, and this marriage of Aristotelian philosophy with Augustinian Platonism profoundly affected the course of Christian thought for centuries to come. Although Thomas treats of faith, hope, and charity in is some point in focusing first upon what he does with the idea of charity and then seeing

that order, there

the other concepts in relation to In his analysis of charity,

this.

Thomas

follows Aristotle's

between love of concupiscence, which he takes to mean desire of the other's good for oneself, and love of benevolence, according to which the other's good is willed for his own (the other's) sake. Within this context, friendship is understood as mutual love distinction

of benevolence. Friendship, however, does not precisely exclude concupiscence.

similarity perceived

one

is

Rather, because of a

between the

self

and the other,

able to expand his "selfish" love, the benevolence

FAITH, HOPE, he has for himself, to the other, hi his doctrine what Thomas does is to extend the Aris-

that

on

charity,

totelian notion of friendship into the "supernatural"

order, so that charity

God.

He

man and God.

tance between

which he speaks

in

As a

life.

communication man special way.

God and

is

gift of

God

enabled supernaturally to participate

is

the divine

infused

is

it

with sanctifying grace, a totally gratuitous

by which man

for

infinite dis-

Indeed, the charity of

the result of grace;

is

man

seen as friendship of

is

does not intend to minimize the

He

is

result

of this divine

God"

"to the likeness of

is

ologica, II-II, q. 23,

a.

God (Summa

For Thomas, charity

is

(Summa

("will"

intellect)

and

it

that

he

may be

lost

and

is

that religious symbols cannot

be appreciated

Closely related to the idea of the act of faith as the others,

all

23,

II-II, q.

who have

7

a.

and

8).

sanctifying grace

extends to one's neighbor as

and implicit keeps

faith.

is

It

this distinction,

the distinction between explicit

degree, whose business

is

"men

to teach others, are

implies that for the masses of people subjection of

it

As Max Weber pointed

intent to detract from the absolute sovereignty

is

volves a placing of confidence in and dedication to a

prophet or to the authority of a structured

problem of reconciling man's basic drive

Weber maintains

fulfillment

self-

with the traditional doctrine of the

tally gratuitous quality of

God's

to-

of grace and the

gift

The inherent

difficulties in

Thomas's treatment of

show up more

the theological virtues

clearly in his

handling of faith and hope. Since for him the basic thrust of the will is

charity, faith

is

a will act.

is

it is

promises of God, and was no intellectual assertion of

when is

made,

its

it

works out that the

institutional church, with

hierarchy of priests and preachers, gains great

and with his distinction between explicit and implicit faith, is his handling of the problem of man's knowledge of God. Whereas in the AugustinianAnselmian tradition God's existence was considered to be self-evident, Thomas rejected this idea of God's self-evidence to us and proposed elaborate demonstrations based in large measure upon Aristotelian principles. Because of this complexity, it was natural

unseen, the act of faith requires also Theologica,

this

II-II,

is

to think 2,

q.

a.

1).

in recent centuries,

notion of faith invites deterio-

what has rightly been a — "the will to believe." The distortion has been called

ration into

distortion

aptly described by theologian Paul Tillich:

power. act of faith,

to conclude that "the truth about that after a long time,

Catholic theology the "will to believe"

not an act which originates in man's striving, but

given by grace to him whose will the truth of what the

Church

is

moved by God

teaches.

.

.

.

it

is

to accept

This kind of

that for

(Summa

such as reason

a few, and and with the admixture of many

Theologica,

I,

q. 1, a. 1).

This meant

most men, incapable of such mediating

course, ecclesiastical authority essary for

came

knowledge even of God's

Thomas's idea of hope virtue in the will

Roman Church

proper and principal object of

is

to

dis-

be judged nec-

existence.

as a supernaturally infused

interpretation agrees with the authoritarian attitude of the (Tillich [1957], p. 36).

God

known by

could discover would only be errors"

is

becomes an assertion of dogmas and between explicit and implicit faith

Also interrelated with Thomas's conception of the

(Summa

Roman

it

a lack of evidence, since the

is

body of Catholic theologians

In classical

When

the distinction

intellect.

undeniable that

of faith

and

by grace

Although Thomas's thought is far more subtle and complex than that of most of his disciples and of the great

Jesus,

possible

toward

Thus he can say that "to believe

with assent"

institution.

Abraham,

understood as a virtue in the

However, since there object of faith

God made

that the faith of

Paul had the central significance of reliance upon the

dogmas.

virtues.

necessary.

out, fides implicita really in-

of God's grace but rather to cope with the difficult for

under

knowledge of matters of faith, and to believe them more explicitly" (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 2, a. 6). This distinction has been characteristic of Roman Catholic theology ever since, and

mundane category

evident that there

of higher

obligation to have fuller

personal judgment to religious authority

it is

Thomas

not surprising that

is

maintaining that

criticized for his insertion of charity into the seemingly

was no

profoundly

Then dogmatic literalism or verbal fundamentalism becomes the believer's surrogate for deep

thinking with assent

of friendship,

At

that the capacity for intellectual

damaged and psychic infantilism in religious matters is encouraged. It means also that the sense of relativity

not only the most excellent

God. Although Thomas has been

in

means

honesty as well as for religious experience

is

well as to God, since what one wills to one's neighbor is

worst, this

as such.

understood as a faculty of the soul distinct

is

from the

its

religious awareness.

Theologica,

the will of those

autonomy, a descent

into a heteronomous, or "other-directed" situation.

in a

so that without charity they cannot be strictly true

It exists in

of the personality into a

thority involves a surrender of

2).

of the virtues but also the "form" of virtues

commitment

"thinking with assent" to certain propositions on au-

The-

and

1

This tendency to deterioration from a profound and authentic inner

self-

raised to a state of friendship with

supernaturally united to

AND CHARITY

also problematic.

For him, the

this virtue

is

eternal

211

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE,

The problems

happiness, seen as attainable through divine assistance,

although

we may hope

for other things secondarily

as related to eternal happiness 11-11, q. 17, a. 2).

this idea

(Summa

and

Theologica,

Although many Christians have found

meaningful

—

and of human suffering because and unchangeable. The medieval mind tended to view this world essentially as a vale of tears, the injustices of which would be facts of social injustice it

saw these

remedied

tacts as universal

in the life to

societv as hierarchical.

noble or peasant, cleric

come. It saw the universe and Each person, whether he was or layman, had his state of life

ethics

and

complex and have wide ramifications

First of all, there

is

the problem of moral insensitivitv

in relation to social structures. faith as thinking

between

for

politics as well as for theology.

The Catholic stress upon

with assent, and upon the distinction

and implicit

explicit

although

faith,

was

it

hardly conducive to revolutionary activity as regards the church's structures, could induce a certain inde-

pendence of the secular power, particularly if that power were not supported bv the church. An acute observer of this phenomenon, the seventeenth-century philosopher

Thomas Hobbes.

wrote, in regard to the

doctrines of infused virtue and of transubstantiation:

"For who

will

endeavor

obey the laws,

to

if

he expect

assigned to him by divine providence, and everything

obedience to be poured or blown into him? Or

would be satisfactorily explained at the Last Judgment. There was little experience or conception of social mobilitv and basically no conception of radical social

obey a priest, that can make God, rather than his sovereign; nay than God himself?" (Leviathan, IV, 46). However, basically this idea of faith worked for the established order insofar as that order was sup-

reform. This general outlook helped to form Thomas's

who

will not

The medieval church and

view of hope.

ported by

would not be farfetched to infer that there are psychological connections between this otherworldly conception of hope and the idea of faith as an assent

Catholicism for centuries afterward saw social and

It

to

propositions, with

explicit

and implicit

subsequent distinction into

its

faith.

Both ideas

reflect

and

rein-

political

On

tion, since stress

Max Weber

is

related to the stress on union with

Thomistic idea of charity.

On

God

the whole, then,

in it

the

must

be concluded that in the Thomistic synthesis human transcendence is seen primarily in terms of reaching out toward attainment of infinite Good, rather than in

terms of creative effort to transform the

human

Protestant Reformation, of course, brought a

strong reaction against medieval thought. Luther objected violently to

what appeared

to

him

to be the

egocentric character of the medieval ideas of the theological virtues.

He was

repulsed by the idea, so strongly

expressed in Thomas, of friendship with

made

God on God's

by transforming grace. Luther's basic objection was to any implication that man is loved by God because of man's own worth. He wished above all to stress the unmotivated character of God's love and the continued sinfulness of the justified sinner. He therefore struggled against the "ladder" symbolism level

possible

of medieval piety. For Luther, the Christian receives

God's love by bor.

When

he wished

he

faith

and then mediates

insisted

upon

to stress that

pletely unmerited.

is

placed upon salvation by faith alone.

points out that, given this frame of refer-

"every

rational

and planned procedure

for

achieving salvation, every reliance on good works, and

above

all

every effort to surpass normal ethical behav-

by ascetic achievement, is regarded by religion based on faith as a wicked preoccupation with purely human powers" (Weber [1963], p. 198). According to ior

Weber's analysis what happens is a complicated series phenomena. Transworldly asceticism and monasti-

of

cism tend to be rejected when salvation by faith

situation in this world.

The

problems of ethical motiva-

trine also uncovers serious

ence,

acceptable. Moreover, this conception of hope

church.

reform as superfluous.

authority, particularly to ecclesiastical authority,

is

the

the other hand, critical analysis of Luther's doc-

force a conditioning process by which subjection to

made

212

critique are

in itself, there are basic difficulties

which are attached more to what is not said than to what is actually said. This presentation of hope reflects the fundamentally otherworldly mentality of the Middle Ages a mentality which was insensitive to the

raised by the medieval synthesis of

the virtues of faith, hope, and charity and by Luther's

this to his neigh-

justification

God's love for

by

faith alone

man

is

com-

stressed,

and

as a result there

may be an

is

increased

emphasis upon vocational activity within the world. However, the emphasis upon personal religious relationship to God tends to be accompanied by an attitude of individualism in pursuit of such worldly vocational activity.

The consequence

resignation

regarding

is

an attitude of patient structures,

institutional

both

worldly and churchly. Thus Lutheranism too lacked motivation toward revolutionary activity

A

second serious

in society.

difficulty closely related to this,

and

inherent both in the medieval synthesis and in the Protestant ethic

is

the deterioration of the meaning

of charity into the sense

it

may have

in

as "charity bazaar" or "charity case." in this deterioration, aside

such expressions

What

is

involved

from a delusory idealizing

of selflessness vis-a-vis less fortunate neighbors,

is

a

lack of concern for the transformation of the alienating

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE, which are at the root of social noteworthy that both Augustine and Thomas accepted the institution of slavery, and that Thomas, in the same work in which he developed his long treatise on charity, upheld the idea that slavery structures themselves injustice.

is

in

It

is

some way

natural,

and

that the master has a special

right of domination, including the right to beat his

(Summa

slave 65,

a.

57,

II-II, q.

a.

3 and

4; q.

extent

commitment

to such

hood of the world

herent in a notion of faith which

whether

to a "will to believe," as assent to

authority,

is it

somehow

is

in-

reducible

be the idea of

faith

propositions mediated by the church's

which was the

distortion

medieval Catholicism, or whether

it

growing out of

be the Protestant

Of

all

modern

place through Christian- Marxist dialogue, and which

concern

by

redemptive history: "For

faith in the

the most alienating, the most

is

—

Lutheran dogma with its consequences scarcely seems any longer even

outlandish of beliefs

this

denotative existentially" (Jaspers [1958], p. 50). The basic reason for Jaspers' objection to this idea of faith lack of universality.

He

sees this chiefly in terms

of the fact that the doctrine as presented does not

correspond to universal terms of the fact that

it

human

experience, and in

excludes the possibility of faith

or revelation for those

who have

not received the

biblical message. This exclusiveness has

been noted

with alarm by others as well. Indeed, so widespread the conception of Christianity as exclusive that a

intolerance as one of the outstanding characteristics of Christianity. It is

not surprising, then, that in

modern times there

have been violent reactions to Christian belief. Modem atheism has in large measure been a revolt against the distortions of faith, hope,

Christianity.

and charity

in traditional

When in the nineteenth century Nietzsche

proclaimed the "death of God" he was not merely

The Marxist does not

God

man; rather he sees

own

activity reaching out

man's

temporary

Marxist

hope, but

it

is

world view, of a

static,

—

as

ConRoger

a purely

one of creative

is

human hope, it

is,

not Utopian or

but bent upon trans-

attainment of

who

this goal.

are most able to

Garaudy, one of those Marxists

communicate with progressive

Christian theologians, suggests the answer: If

we

reject the very

name

of

God,

it

implies a presence, a reality, whereas

which we

is

because the name

it is

only an exigency

and and of perfect consciousness (Garaudy [1966], p. 94).

a never-satisfied exigency of totality

live,

absoluteness, of omnipotence as to nature

loving reciprocity of

In effect, Garaudy distinguishes his position on man's hope from that of even the most progressive Christian thinkers by saying that the exigency of the Christian

tude

is

for

is

him

experienced or expressed as presence, it is

absence. This philosophical

atti-

similar to that of another influential Marxist,

who

tendency

otherworldly vision

Ernst Bloch,

to hypostatize the future into an already existing

so

man

alienation, material

all

which Nietzsche

was the hypocrisy of traditional Christian morality which he labeled "slave morality." Other major thinkers of modern and contemporary violently rejected

itself.

and moral. One might ask why atheism appears to them to be necessary for the from

whereas

of reality. Included in that vision

such

formation of the world, and upon the liberation of

for the infinite

of an entire

dimension of

to maintain an absolute open-

content with the world as

served

symbolic means of conveying the impending death

as a

beyond

theoreticians

Garaudy are concerned

named

as a

it

ness to the future. Their attitude

God"

arrived. Rather, the "death of

theology

see transcendence as an act of

calling

declaring that the age of unbelief in an entity

"God" had

new

Marxism has atheism as a presupposition; its primary is man. It defines man as a working being who enters into his humanity by transforming the world.

Arnold Toynbee has seen

historian of the stature of

however, prob-

is

has contributed to the development of a

and Rudolf Bultmann. The most scathing criticism of the latter was expressed by philosopher Karl Jaspers, who wrote of Bultmann's idea a philosopher this

place pointless,

in the third un-Christian.

most directly relevant to the ideas of faith, hope, and charity is that which has developed out of Marxism. This is particularly important in view of the cross-fertilization process which is now taking

of hope.

of justification

in the first

critiques of Christianity,

ably that which

version of "will to believe," characteristic of the notion of faith found in Karl Barth

be

to

second ignoble, and

in the

others has tc do with the exclusiveness which

is

some

widespread disillusionment. Theologian

this

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, declared that he

third difficulty, also closely interrelated with the

is its

Christians too, while re-

taining their identity as such, have shared to

considered the attack of Christianity upon the adult-

reform.

terrible

Many

hope, and love.

faith,

"Charity" then becomes a substitute for

functions as a distraction from

A

share a fundamental antipathy to a world view which they have seen as basically at odds with man's deepest striving toward a validly human realization of all

economic, and social reform, and the church

2).

political,

Theologica,

Camus, and Sartre, have rejected Christianity for a variety of reasons, but times, such as Feuerbach, Freud,

Aside from

this

an undisguised

also rejects the Christian

metaphysical difference, there

distrust for Christianity

God.

is

also

because of

its

historical record of teaching resignation in the face of

213

—

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE,

exploitation and oppression. past

and

exploit

The support given

in the

given by the churches to the forces that

still

and oppress human beings is an acknowledged more open Marxists to acceptance

obstacle even for the

of the Christian contribution to of them, however, have

the deep nature of faith

ence and the transitory

which

it

human

Some

progress.

overcome confusion between as commitment to transcendexpressions and ideologies in

encased. These few avant-garde Marxists,

is

more

in a

insights.

way the implications of such German theologian who

precise

Johannes Metz

communicates well

—a

American intellectuals hope as creative rather than passive wishful thinking. This hope is by no means Utopian; in its attempt to reform the world it recognizes the inseparability of the cross and the with

stresses the character of Christian

resurrection.

human

recognizes the reality of

It

pain of finiteness, of death.

tion, of the

aliena-

strives to

It

such as Bloch and Garaudy,

may have been helped in by dialogue with some avant-garde theologians. In am case they are in advance of the vast body

look steadily at these realities and to work through

this respect

them; hence

both of Christians and of Marxists.

for personal salvation abstracted

The

modern secular humanists and in particular of modern day Marxists have not been lost upon some Christian thinkers, who have taken upon criticisms of

themselves the task of rethinking the Christian tradition for those living in the age of "the death of It

is

God."

not by accident that the most powerful recent

trend in theology has been a

new "theology

of hope,"

rather than a "theology of faith" or of charity. This

does not In any means signify a minimizing of these latter ideas; rather,

interest in

it

indicates the central focus of

contemporary theology and

in the

contem-

porary consciousness: the future.

One

of the

first

and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Teilhard proclaimed almost poetically his sense of

belonging to that half of mankind which sees the seemingly fixed and random universe as moving forward, and expressed his anguish at the failure of traditional

Christianity to proclaim this evolutionary vision. At

modern religious crisis he saw a conflict between the "forward" impulse toward

the heart of the

within faith

progress in humanization of this planet and the traditional

"upward" impulse

of religious worship.

He saw

an apparent rather than a real contradiction because it is the inherent task and function of this conflict as

the church to Christianize all that

is

human

in

man.

Yet since church authority has in fact failed to embrace

everything that

is

we dream seems tions.

human on to

Thus "we see

earth, the unity of

which

two different directhe dramatic growth of a whole

beckon us

race of 'spiritual expatriates'

in

—human beings torn be-

tween a Marxism whose depersonalizing effect revolts them and a Christianity so lukewarm in human terms that it sickens them" (Teilhard de Chardin [1964], p. 268). Teilhard's prophetic vision reached out toward a synthesis to be attained in the future through the interaction of Marxism and Christianity toward the birth of a faith that would embrace total commitment both to the world and to God. In the 1960's the theologians of hope began to for-

—

its

characteristic of being a hope-against-

hope. Rather than being a purely individualistic hope this

world,

it is

attempting

—

from the

of a radically social

reach

to

out

and

us"

realities of

political nature,

toward

Abraham" the "God before ment to transformation of the

the

— through

"God

of

commit-

alienating structures of

For Metz, the responsibility of Christian

this world.

hope towards the world, then, implies the idea of a "political theology" and of "creative eschatology." Another important voice among the future-oriented theologians is Wolfgang Pannenberg, whose highly speculative work reconsiders some of the basic assumptions of Hellenized theological tradition. The list of

Christian thinkers to confront the

Marxist criticism was the Jesuit scientist, poet, philosopher,

214

mulate

ground-breaking

thinkers

also

includes

Dewart and Harvey Cox. However, there

whom

is

Leslie

no major

is more Moltmann, author of Theologie der Hoffnung. While it would be impossible to summarize here the wealth of his thought, a few points can be made. For Moltmann,

theologian in this area to

acknowledged than

universally

the eschatological as such, the

key in

is

the

indebtedness

Jiirgen

medium

of the Christian faith

which everything

Christian faith lives in hope, there

problem future

in Christian

— and

hope

thinking as such.

is

theology

— the

it is

is

only one real

in

God on

set.

problem of the

the foundation of theological

Moltmann

takes a strong stand against

the mysticism of being because he thinks

an immediacy to

Since

in

God which

it

presupposes

the faith that believes

the ground of Christ cannot validly adopt.

Future-oriented, he rejects

view. For him,

all

much

knowledge

of the Hellenic world

in faith

is

anticipatory

and fragmentary; its mobilizing force is hope, through the medium of which all theological judgments function as showing reality its future possibilities. Moreover, "creative action springing from faith is impossible without new thinking and planning that springs from

hope" (Moltmann [1967], p. 35). Moltmann 's theology of hope understands history as a reality instituted by promise. That is, there is a relation between promissio and missio such that the Christian consciousness of history

is

a consciousness of mission. In this view, then,

the reality of revelation too

man is

is

historic

and progressive, and

progressive in that

it

creates progress.

AND CHARITY

FAITH, HOPE, However promising may be gians of hope, however,

it

the

work

of the theolo-

should be recognized that

number of people alienated from Christianity is enormous. To countless educated persons the various forms of secular humanism scientific, ethical, and continue to seem more authentic than even political the

—

—

acted against modernity

in a

manner

threatened communities. The

typical of severely

Roman

Index of Forbid-

den Books, the Syllabus of Errors, the Anti-Modernist Oath,

all

reflected this sense of threat. Its defensiveness

expressed

kind of hyper-rationalism and a

itself in a

verbal fundamentalism which functioned to separate

the most enlightened manifestations of Christianity,

true believers from heretics, the sheep

Indeed, the quest for authenticity in faith, hope, and

Yet

love

a notable characteristic of the contemporary

is

attitude, particularlv

among

the young.

perhaps

It is

Camus The Myth of

if

toward

ossification,

to

continues to have such influence. In

criticism, has

of Sisvphus the absurd hero,

push a rock up a

and who yet conscious of

is

down

to face

up

in

to preserve the

which

has sustained a spirit of

tended to experience the death of

selfreli-

gious symbols and fatal acculturation. Indeed, since the Reformation, Catholicism and Protestantism have

a qualitatively higher union than has existed in the past,

again, is

claims that there

namelv

but one

is

rejected as an inadequate response to the problem

of the absurd.

a greater extent

managed

contrast. Protestantism,

to the hopelessness of finitude.

roll

Philosophical suicide, the irrationalist's leap of faith, is

has also

By

suicide, his in-

it

conscious that he has no hope of suc-

serious philosophical problem,

tention

for eternity to

goats.

as separate historical embodiments of and complementary aspects of Christian faith. It is coming to be recognized that continued reactualization of this faith, motivated by creative hope, will require a meeting of these opposites in striving toward

When Camus

ceeding.

doomed

only to have

greater than his fate because he

is

it,

hill,

it

Christian symbols.

for this reason that a thinker such as Albert

Sisyphus he sets forth a powerful svmbol in the figure

from the

Catholicism has displayed a marked tendency

The only adequate response

is

to live

functioned different

in

order that those

may dare

who

still

to speak to the

call

themselves Christians

modern world again about

charity.

the face of the absurd, refusing to escape.

The theologians of hope are attempting to take into this modern demand for utter honesty and authenticity. Hence the repeated insistence that Christian hope is not Utopian, that it is hope "in spite of," that it is hope-against-hope. Having absorbed into its consciousness the full weight of modern man's sense

account

of ambiguity

and having proclaimed that

understanding

is

all

religious

fragmentary and anticipatory, crea-

modern theology appears to have made a qualitative leap beyond the dogmatism of the past. However, there is room for serious doubt about whether institutive

tional religion will

be able

to

meet the challenge of

change.

A

central difficulty lies in the fact that institutional

religion

which

is

sacralized

and

thing or object.

way

by and things become

subject to a process of routinization,

structures, persons, places,

becomes transformed into a author notes with amazement the One

faith itself

which this objectification has occurred in "The peculiarity of the place given to belief in Christian history is a monumental matter whose importance and whose relative uniqueness must in

Christianity:

be appreciated" (Smith [1963], p. 180). In fact, most Westerners are unsuspecting about this and tend to think of the question of belief as a primary one. In

any event, institutionalized Christianity has tended to lose sight of the original revelatory experience which gave it its being and to focus upon transitory ideologies and structures as if these were ultimate. Catholicism especially has in recent centuries re-

BIBLIOGRAPHY in

The

principal biblical and patristic texts are discussed

A.

Nygren, Den kristna karlekstanden genom tiderna

(Stockholm, 1936); trans. (Philadelphia,

Sacred Canopy

1953).

(New

P.

S.

Watson

as

See also especially

Agape and Eros P.

Berger,

The

Das Princip Hoffnung (Frankfurt, 1959); A. Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe (Paris, 1942), trans, as The Myth of Sisyphus h Other Essays

(New

York, 1955;

and

York,

repr.);

1967); E. Bloch,

Cross Currents, 18, 3 (1968); R.

Garaudy, De I'anatheme au dialogue (Paris, 1965), trans. L. O'Neill as From Anathema to Dialogue (New York, 1966); K. Jaspers

and

R.

Bultmann, Die Frage der Entmytholog-

Myth and Christianity M. Marty and D. Peerman, eds., New Theology No. 5 (New York, 1968); J. Moltmann, Theologie

isierung (Munich,

(New

1954), trans, as

York, 1958);

der Hoffnung (Munich, 1965), trans.

of Hope (New York, 1967);

J.

Leitch as Theology

O'Dea, The Catholic Crisis (Boston, 1968); W. C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion. A Xew Approach to the Religious Tradition of Mankind (New York, 1963); T. Steeman, "The Underground T.

Church: The Forms and Dynamics of Change

in

Contem-

porary Catholicism," The Religious Situation: 1969, ed. D.

Cutler (Boston, 1969). pp. 713-48; P. Teilhard de Chardin, L'avenir de I'homme (Paris, 1959), trans. N. Denny as The

Man (New York, 1964); P. Tillich, The Courage Be (New Haven, 1952); idem, Dynamics of Faith (New York, 1957); idem. The Protestant Era, trans. J. L. Adams (Chicago. 1948); A. Toynbee. Christianity among the Religions of the World (New York, 1957); E. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der Kirchen und Gruppen christlichen (Tubingen, 1911), trans. O. Wyon as The Social Teaching Future of to

215

—

FORM

IN THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

of the Christian

Chun lies, 2

New

vols. (1931: reprint

York.

Of

concrete, "given to the senses."

course,

we can

Geselhchaft (Tiibingen, 1922; 1956), trans. E. Fischoff as

combine forms A and R by using the term "form" to refer to the order (form A) of what is directly perceived

Sociology of Religion (Boston, 1963).

(form

M. Weber, "Religionssoziologie,"

I960);

Wirtschaft

unit

MARY DALY Church

[See also Authority;

as an Institution; Cnosticism;

(3)

form

to the

object. Let us call is

God; Love; Reformation; Socialism; Women.]

R),

second power, as

Form may mean it

were.

it

the boundary or contour of an

form

C. Its opposite

matter or substance. In

this sense,

and correlate

frequently used

is similar to, but by no means form B: colors and contours perceived together belong to form B, but contour alone pertains

in

everyday speech, form

identical with,

to

FORM

IN

form C.

The above three

THE HISTORY

OF AESTHETICS

Few terms

have lasted as long as "form"; it has been in existence since the Romans. And few terms are as international: the Latin forma has been accepted in many modern languages, in Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Russian without change, in others with slight alteration

French forme,

in English

"form," and in

German

However, the ambiguity of the term persistence.

From

is

as great as

the outset the Latin forma re-

placed two Greek words: morphe and eidos; the

first

applied primarily to visible forms, the second to conceptual forms. This double heritage contributed considerably to the diversity of meanings of "form."

The many opposites

of form (content, matter, ele-

ment, subject matter, and others) reveal meanings.

means

If

content

is

is

numerous

its

taken as the opposite, then form

external appearance or style;

opposite, then form is

if

matter

regarded as shape;

considered opposite, then form

is

if

is

the

element

tantamount

to the

disposition or arrangement of parts.

The history of aesthetics reveals at least all of them important

meanings of form, understanding of (1)

First,

form

five different

for a

proper

is

equivalent to the disposition, ar-

A. In this case the opposites to form are elements,

components, or parts which form into a whole. its

The form

of a portico

A

unites or welds

is

the arrangement

columns; the form of a melody

is

the order of

When the

term form

we

is

applied to what

is

directly

form B. Its opposite then is content. In this sense, the sound of words in poetry is its form, and their meaning its content. These two meanings, form A and form R, are at times confusingly identified, but this should be avoided. Form A is an abstraction; a work of art is never just a disposition but consists of parts in a certain arrangement of order. Form R, on the other hand, is by definition

given to the senses,

216

and C) are

the other hand,

philosophy and then passed into aesthetics.

One

of

them

— we

shall

call

it

form

D — was

invented by Aristotle. Here form means the conceptual essence of an object; another Aristotelian

The

name

for this

opposites and correlates of

form

is

form

D

are the accidental features of objects. Most

modern

aestheticians dispense with this idea of form,

"entelechy."

thetics,

form

D

is

than the ideas of

so.

as old as

In the history of aes-

form

A and even

older

R and C.

(5) The fifth meaning, which we shall call form E, was used by Kant. For him and his followers it meant a contribution of the mind to the perceived object. The opposite and correlate of the Kantian form consists in what is not produced and introduced by the mind but it from without through experience. Each of these five forms has a different history, which will be presented here as they occur in aesthetics and the theory of art. The five forms appear historically not only under the name "form" but also under many different synonyms, e.g., figura and species in Latin, or shape and figure in English. We are concerned here not only with the history

is

given to

when and what meaning form appeared in theories of art, but also when and in which meanings it was regarded as of form, including not only the question of in

an essential factor of art. The History of Form A. Words which the ancient

Greeks used

to

name beauty

etymologically meant

pattern or proportion of parts. For visible beauty, for

sounds. (2)

On

of the concept but also with the history of theories

art.

rangement, or order of parts, which will be called form

of

(4)

but his has not always been

Form).

its

itself.

the remaining two concepts of form arose within general

(in

ideas of form (A, R,

the creations of aesthetics

shall call

it

works of architecture or sculpture, symmetria, that

is,

commensurability, was the principal term; for audible

was harmonia, that is, is, order, had a similar meaning. Such were the ancient synonyms of form A, the disposition or order of parts. These terms were not accidental: the Greeks used them because they were convinced that beauty particularly of the visible and audible kind consists in an arrangement and proporbeauty, for musical works

consonance. The word

it

taxis, that

—

FORM was

tion of parts, in form. This

their great contribution

to aesthetic theory.

disputed whether proportion

is regarded as its only (Enneads 16, 1; VI 7, 22). Had that been the case, only composite things could then be beautiful, whereas there are things which though simple are yet

basis

This aesthetic theory, as testified by Aristotle, origi-

among Pythagoreans, probably

nated

OF AESTHETICS

IN THE HISTORY

in the fifth

cen-

Beauty therefore,

tury b.c, and claimed that beauty consists in a well-

beautiful, e.g., the sun, light, gold.

defined simple proportion of parts. Strings produce

as Plotinus said, lies not only in proportions but in the

harmonious sounds when

their length

to the relatively simple ratio of

is

in

proportion

one to two (octave)

A portico of a temple is perfect and the arrangement of columns are computed according to the accepted module (in the Doric temples architects regarded five to eight as the correct ratio of the width of columns to the space between). A man, as well as a monument, is beautiful or

two

if its

to three

(fifth).

height, width,

when

observed

his proportions are correct; sculptors

the one to eight ratio of the head to the

body and

art,

that beauty

depends

Middle Ages aesthetics had appeared in not varieties. According to the one which was

very general

Greek

true to the ancient

upheld

1,

40).

"No

art

comes about without

So there

is

a certain proportion in sculpture and also

in painting. Generally speaking, every art

is

a system

"Every thing pleases only by

theory:

this

and

in proportions,

by numbers" (De ordine

in classical antiquity

is

II 15, 42).

ever expressed

Hellenic idea more emphatically than the Church. "There

(Stobaeus IV,

beauty and art

beauty; in beauty, by shapes; in shapes, by proportions;

beautiful" (De vera

proportion. All art therefore arises through number.

tradition,

consisted in form alone. Saint Augustine supported and

for-

this in a

time the position

privileged in the theory of

one but two

mula: "order and proportion are beautiful and useful"

on proportions, expressed

still

has ceased to be exclusive.

In the

No Greek

one to three of the forehead to the face.

The Pythagoreans, convinced

luster of things as well. Since that

of form A, although

this

this

old

Father of

no ordered thing which is not XLI, 77). And again:

religione

number" (De more measure, "The things, the more they

"Beautiful things please us by their

musica VI

And

12, 38).

shape, and order there

have that

is

is

lastly:

in all

good" (De natura boni

3).

This triad

of perceptions, and a system implies number; one can

(modus, species, ordo) became the formula of medieval

therefore justly say: things look beautiful by virtue of

aesthetics

number" (Sextus Empiricus VII, 106). The Pythagorean point of view was maintained by

peated

always beautiful and virtuous to preserve

said to

Plato: "It

is

measure and proportions" (Philebus 64E). "Ugliness means simply a lack of measure" (Sophist 228A). Aristotle's view was similar: "Beauty consists in magnitude and ordered arrangement" (Poetics 1450b 38). Just as the Stoics thought: "Bodily

beauty

is

the pro-

portion of limbs in their mutual relation and in relation to the

whole; so

soul" (Stobaeus

is it

II,

the case with the beauty of the

62, 15). Cicero thought similarly:

"Harmonious symmetry of limbs engages the attention and delights the eye" (De officiis I, 28, 98). Of the six

and survived a thousand

literally in the thirteenth

scholastic

compendium Summa

be beautiful

in the

Alexandri:

world when

proper measure, form, and order

ordinem" (Quaracchi

years.

ed., II, 103).

It

was

re-

century by the great it

"A

thing

is

observes the

modum,

speciem, et

Taken together they

were synonyms of what we call form. In the Middle Ages the principal term for form A was figura (from the Latin fingere, to shape). Abelard defined it as a disposition of the body (compositio corporis), both of the model and of the work of art (ed. Geyer, p. 236). However, the term forma was also used in this meaning. As early as in the sixth century Isidore of Seville composed both terms figura and

sym-

forma (Differentiae, Ch. 1). In the twelfth century Gilbert de la Porree wrote: "Form is used in many

metria) consist in the correct arrangement or disposi-

meanings; also in the meaning of the figure of bodies"

qualities of architecture that Vitruvius recognized as

many

as four (ordinatio, dispositio, eunjthmia,

tion of parts

(De architectura

for a general theory to

I,

2, 1). It is

rather unusual

meet with such a universal

acceptance over so long a period of time. teenth-century historian of aesthetics, B.

A

nine-

Zimmermann,

maintained that the principle of ancient art was form (Zimmermann, p. 192). This view is correct, and refers to the

meaning

of

form

as

an orderly disposition and

(Porretanus, p. 1138). tatis (ed.

Geyer,

The

p. 101),

stressed the distinction

treatise Sententiae divini-

dating from the same century,

between the conceptual form

(form D) and visual form (form A). Clarembaldus of Arras defined form (A) as follows:

"Form

shape

measure, number, connection

form,

The privileged position of form as orderly disposition was not called in question until Plotinus, at the close

(Patrologia Latina, Vol. 210, col. 504).

that the proportion of parts

is

While agreeing

the basis of beauty he

the appro-

Jansen, p. 91). Alain of Lille considered as synonyms:

proportion of parts.

of antiquity in the third century a.d.

is

priate arrangement of parts in material things" (ed.

(figura),

The ancient

symmetry, harmony, proportion was called form. This usage lasted until the end of the Middle Ages. As Duns Scotus formulated it: "Form and figure are

217

FORM

OF AESTHETICS

IN THE HISTORY

the external disposition of things" (ed. Garcia, p. 281).

works of Ockham it was part of their regular terminology: form was on a par with figure (ed. Baudry, p. 225 and p. 94). Also, in the

The

adjective formosus was, fairly early, incorpo-

rated into the language of the

same

art.

This adjective meant

as shapely, well-proportioned, beautiful;

it

conveyed a favorable aesthetic judgment, and was a sign of the appreciation of form in the Middle Ages. Then followed the noun formositas ("shapeliness"), which meant the same as beauty. The negative adjective deformis ("shapeless," "ugly") was also used. In Bernard of Clairvaux we find a play on the words formosa deformitas and deformis formositas which he used to describe the

time (Patrologia iMtina,

art of his

its

second variety, medieval aesthetics followed

Plotinus with his dualistic conception: beauty consists in

form but not exclusively

championed the

form. Just as Augustine

in

conception,

first

Pseudo-Dionysius

advocated the second (De divinis nominibus IV, 7). He is the author of the dual criterion of "proportion and luster" (proportio et claritas), a conception of beauty

which

also

had many

followers.

Bobert Grosseteste

described beauty as proportion, but concerning the light he maintained that "it is based not on number, not on measure, and not on weight or anything else like that, but on sight" (Hexaemeron 147 v). The

beauty of

won

second conception

Thomas divina nomina

the support of Saint

commentary on In and in his Summa theologica (Il-a IIae.180 a. 2 ad3): "Beauty consists in a certain luster and proportion" (Pulchrum consistit in quadam Aquinas

in his early

(Ch. IV, lect.

is

5),

".

2);

.

.

beauty

a concordance

is

and mutual attunement of parts." The consonance of parts determining beauty was called by Alberti conserto,

eonsenso, concordantia, corrispondenza, and par-

ticularly concinnitas.

Following Alberti the

was most commonly used

last

term

Benaissance to de-

in the

scribe perfect form. Nevertheless, Alberti used other

names forma

too: ordine, (ibid.,

Alberti

IX

had followers. In 1525 Cardinal Bembo

wrote: "The body in

numero, grandezza, collocatione e

5).

is

beautiful

proportion to each other,

when

just as

harmony"

virtues are in mutual

forme

its

members

are

with the soul whose

(Gli Asolani

I).

The

belle e regolate (Palladio,

with their different ap-

1,

I,

p. 6).

And

the

philosopher-mathematician Cardano explained once

more

that beauty

depends on simple proportions (De

subtilitate, p. 275).

This conception of art based on form persisted in It is most clearly stated by Nicolas Poussin. It appears also in the French Academy, where a particular stress was placed on the rules which govern form. We find it in the writings of the academic theorists Andre Felibien, Abraham Bosse, Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy, Henri Testelin

seventeenth-century France.

(Tatarkiewicz, Historia Estetyki, classical

III,

389,

n. 471).

The

conception was advanced by Francois Blondel,

author of a classic work on architecture; according to him, in a building the following are essential: 'Tordre, l'arrangement,

la situation,

proportion" (Blondel,

The supremacy

in aesthetics,

forme,

la

nombre,

le

la

p. 785).

of form

—

if

form

understood as

is

a simple, conspicuous disposition of parts which can

numbers

—declined

proaches to form A, persisted during the Benaissance.

be defined

The line advocated by Pseudo-Dionysius was kept alive by the Platonic Academy in Florence. Its head, Marsilio Ficino remarked: "Some regard beauty as an arrangement of component parts, or to use their own

century under the spell of romanticism. Nevertheless,

words, commensurability and proportion.

proclaimed true beauty to be "geometrical." And

not accept this view because this

We

do kind of arrangement .

.

.

it

in

soon revived,

in

the eighteenth

in the neo-classicism of the

end

mann and Quatremere dependently of

all

de Quincy.

artistic trends,

De Quincy

romanticism, Kant declared in 1790 that "in fine arts the essential

separate sounds, the glitter of gold and silver, knowl-

form"

called beautiful and are

and simple" {Convivium

V

1).

all

pure

This was in agreement

element

all

in-

and the

consists, of course, in

(Kritik der Urteilskraft, sec. 52).

In the

first

Schdnheit

half of the nineteenth century idealische

("ideal

Beauty")

with the beliefs of Plotinus and his medieval followers.

away from form but only

Pico della Mirandola's pronouncements were similar.

the concept of form

However, the representatives of this dualistic conception were in a minority during the Benaissance. It was the classical theory which again became pre-

aesthetics

dominant; namely, that beauty consists exclusively

the sense of form A, that

in

66)

(p.

of classicism

thing can be beautiful. However, pure colors, lights, all

of the

century, in the writings of Johann Joachim Winckel-

occurs only in composites and, therefore, no simple

edge, the soul, are

218

"Beauty

art:

the mutually adapted parts" (De

all

VI

re aedificatoria

claritate et proportione).

Both trends

a harmony of

great Palladio saw the excellence of architecture in

Vol. 182, col. 915).

In

and

lated the Benaissance theory of beauty

A

distracted

briefly.

aestheticians

The term embodying

reappeared

in

J.

F. Herbart's

and especially in the writings of his disciple, B. Zimmermann, whose entire aesthetics was conceived as

Formwissenschaft ("science of form"), precisely

the disposition and proportion of parts, in form (A).

elements.

This was the case in Alberti's treatises which formu-

The

is,

in

of the interrelation of

recognition of the importance of formal rela-

FORM is not a modern achievement; formal were the foundation of Greek aesthetics. On

IN THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS In Latin paleography, from the thirteenth to the

tions in the arts

fields.

relations

fifteenth century, a certain style of writing

the other hand,

it is

indeed true to say that

in certain

was called was used for the and liturgical texts, and

when

but only

littera forniata,

it

trends in art and art theory, the twentieth century has

copying of important,

again brought form to the fore in several meanings of

had a ceremonial character. Furthermore, in ordinary everyday handwriting, littera cursiva, a refined variant appeared around 1400 and was called cursiva forniata. "Structure" is an often used term in recent years, and its meaning is close to that of form A. However,

term, including that of form A. Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz and the adherents of "formism" and pure form defended form A in Poland, Clive Bell and Roger Fry in England. Emotions connected with figurative art, Fry said, quickly evaporate and those which remain the

it

biblical

usually refers only to nonaccidental forms created

spring from a purely formal relation: "what remains,

by inner forces or

what never grows less nor evaporates, are the feelings dependent on the purely formal relation." Twentieth-century artists and theoreticians concur on this point even when some of them use different terminology. Instead of "form" Charles Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) said "invariants" (Esprit Nouveau, 1921). He

applies rather to biological or geological structures;

also said:

la

science et

generaliser, ce qui est la plus

ence and

which

is

haute fin de

common

art share the

commun

out Videal

I'art

de

I'esprit ("sci-

those

who

in the

been adopted

been concerned with the problem of form in art some, like E. Monod-Herzen, give it a purely geometrical interpretation, and others, like M. Ghyka, a mystical one. The ancients, especially the Pythagoreans, were familiar with both interpretations.

While the whole

ancient theory of art attached particular importance

some movetheory doing the same, but in a more

we

art

as

are to include

may be

con-

sidered closely related to form A, particularly to form Aj, but sui generis are a second subspecies, form

The History of Form

of form

A

While the

B.

first

A2

.

sense of form

arrangement or order, the second sense

(B) refers to the

are

appearance of things. The correlates

component elements,

parts, colors in

painting, sounds in music; in form B, the correlates

are content, import, meaning.

The

impressionists stress

the importance of form in appearance, and the abstract

painters stress form in arrangement.

A and and occasionally confound the two concepts. early as the thirteenth century, Saint Bonaven-

Formalists have been advocating both form

ments

Yet as

A

If

structures in the "family" of forms, they

form

in art

This usage expresses

art.

products of natural processes.

to form, the twentieth century sees only

radical way.

theory of

in the

tendency to regard forms of works of

the

(A) refers to

twentieth century have

it

but recently, the term and concept of structure have

ideal of generalizing,

the highest goal of the mind").

Among

internal drives. Consequently

B,

drew a clear line of division, using figura as a uno modo disposisynonym of form: Figura dicitur tura

noted contemporary American aesthetician, Karl

.

ex clausione linearum

.

.

secundo modo

Aschenbrenner, has offered the following solution to

tio

the controversy over form: form alone (meaning form

fades sive pulchritudo (Quaracchi ed., V, 393). Here "form" (figura) has a twofold meaning: first, it is an arrangement enclosed within boundary lines; secondly, it is an external appearance or beauty of a thing. (1) The ancient Sophists were the first to single out

A) does not determine the aesthetic impact of a work

which is also composed of elements, but only form can be analyzed adequately and is, therefore, alone fit to be the subject of aesthetic theory. This view of art,

is

a

new

.

.

exterior

rei

form B and

solution to the old problem.

.

to

emphasize

its

importance,

e.g., in

the

Surveying two thousand years of the history of form

realm of poetry by separating the "sound of words"

we

a correct, beautiful, harmonious, and orderly arrange-

from their "significant content"; the "sound of words" and "beautiful rhythm" constituted the form in poetry. The distinction between form and content was pre-

A were

served in Hellenistic poetics. Posidonius' definition of

A,

either

notice another point; namely, form used to

any arrangement

ment; synonyms of

this

of parts or

more

mean

exclusively,

narrower sense of form

symmetria, concordantia, concinnitas. Particularly with the Pythagoreans and Augustine, form used to

an arrangement or order which

is

mean

and meaning

rational, regular,

poetry distinguished the word from "verbal expression" from ed. Jansen, p. 25).

its

its

"content"

(in

meaning, or Philodemus,

Following Demetrius another

for-

more specific explains the Greek and scholastic synonyms of form, e.g., numerus and ordo. A more thorough analysis will

mula contrasting form with content was used: "what the work communicates" and "how it communicates

therefore distinguish any arrangement (form A) from

vaguest and most flexible of

expressible by numbers; this

a harmonious or regular order (a subspecies, form

A

t ).

form A to the more The specific form A 1( in the sense that only an outstanding form is worthy of its name, may be illustrated in manynarrowing of the concept of

it"

(De elecutione [1508],

Some selected

p. 75).

This formula

is

the

all.

trends of poetics in late antiquity not only

"wording"

importance to

it

as

form,

but

attached special

as the very essence of poetry. Cicero

and Quintilian believed that "judgment of the ears"

219

FORM

IN THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

{aurium judicium)

is

important

oratory and poetry;

in

some Creek was the only judg-

as early as the third century B.C.. for

even

scholars the judgment of the ears

The names of these ancient known; one of them, Crates, maintained that pleasant sound makes the only difference between good and bad poetry; Heracleodor was even more ment

mattered.

that

formalists are

specific

B.

as superior.

were even more sharply external and internal factors

(sententia veritatis)

The

as

scholastics called content "the internal

sense" (sententia interior) and form "the external verbal

ornament" (superfiaalis ornatus verborum). They distinguished two kinds of form: one purely sensory, i.e., acoustic (quae mulcet aurem) or musical (suavitas cantilenae); the other, mental or conceptual form, the

manner of expression (modus dicendi), embraced tropes and metaphors and was on the whole optical in kind, employing images and constituting the visual aspect of poetry. These distinctions were elaborated chiefly ed. Faral, p. 153). by Mathieu of Vendome (Ars Form B thus includes ornatus verborum and modus .

.

.

,

dicendi.

two kinds

form there were two kinds of content (sententia interior); one comprised the subject of a work (fondus rerum) and In medieval poetics beside

of

problem

In the eighteenth century the

i2^

relation of

form

of the

to content ceased attracting attention;

in the

term

of

all arts.

By the middle

form B) appeared

in the

of that century

"form"

(i.e.,

theory of music (E. Hanslick)

and soon after in the theory of fine arts. This change was fundamental because previously the concept of form B had been applied only to poetics. In the art of the word, fonn and content were two separate items because only in this art do they form two different, clearly divided, and very dissimilar strata, viz.. words and things (verba and res). Here the form

is

linguistic, the

content material.

The reader

is

presented directly only with words by means of which

he may indirectly represent

things. Such a duality of form and content does not exist in other arts. However, musical works express something; works of painting and sculpture express, mean, or denote something, and what they express, mean, or denote

seems to constitute their content and not Nevertheless, the situation

is

because in none of them can

their form.

different in these arts

we

find

two

The content

strata as

of a novel

words and things. beyond the printed page seen by the reader; on

the plot of the events narrated, the other consisted of

dissimilar as

the ideological content, the religious or metaphysical

lies

import.

the other hand, the content of a picture (for instance

In Renaissance poetics the dividing line

between

form and content was just as distinct. The terms used were verba and res. Invention (inventio) and thought (sententia) were included in content; wording (elocutio) belonged to form. Some writers like Fracastoro and Castelvetro called form an instrument (stromento), intimating thereby an inferior role for form (B.

On

Weinberg).

the other hand, writers like Robortello

saw the real purpose and value of poetry in beautifully and properly ordered words, that is, in form B.

Form acquired

a

still

higher status in the aesthetics

of literary mannerism; while one trend within mannerism, called conceptismo, aimed at subtlety of thought (that

is,

of content), another (culturanismo) strove for

subtlety of language

However, line

if

we

— that

is,

of

Form B

(Gracian).

are to contrast form with content in

with Demetrius' formula ("what

is

"how movement

said" and

the river Seine in Monet's picture), picture.

What

but

subject,

its

lies

beyond

its

the picture

is

is

seen in the

not the content

model, or whatever the painter

imitated.

The concepts of form (B) and its correlated content changed when applied to the visual arts; one might even say that next to the old concept of form in poetics, a new concept of form (Bj), more universal and vague, came into existence. For a long time no occasion arose to confuse these two concepts, form A and form B, because the

first

was applied mainly

to the visual arts

and the second only to poetry. Confusion arose when form B was introduced to the theory of the visual arts in addition to form A. "Form" was then used in both senses at the same time. "Only form is important" intimated, first, that only the appearance (not the content)

is

important, and, secondly, that within the ap-

of literary

pearance only arrangement (not the elements); that is, only form B matters, but also form A within form B,

sively.

thus overlooking

it is

220

paramount importance.

nineteenth century not only in poetics but in the theory

A and

In the Middle Ages, form [compositio oerborum) and

of poetrv.

form D). The ideas of form

form

content in poetry, but also regarded

opposed to one another,

in a different sense (discussed

only contrasted form with

poetry as a pleasing

arrangement of sounds, thus uniting forms

content

it

meantime other problems came to the fore. The "form" and its synonyms were seldom encountered in poetics. The problem was revived in the

when he considered good

Hellenistic scholars not

below as were and its content (B) were which domain they poetics, in employed only in position of occupied a centuries and used for many

employed

said"),

then

we

notice that the whole

mannerism was centered on form excluHowever, the term "form" was rarely used

because the Aristotelians in taking possession of

it

the

meanings of "form."

distinction

between the two

FORM Another important turning point

3

in the history

IN THE HISTORY B elevated

has seen form

OF AESTHETICS

to the highest place in the

of form B occurred when a new question was raised: Which is the more important in art, form or content?

theory of

Formerly considered equally necessary and comple-

explanation of form begins with a third meaning given

mentary, form and content,

here of

in

the nineteenth and

especially in the twentieth century, began to

compete

art.

The History of Form

geometrical figure

supporters of "pure" form; the years 1920-39 heralded

Similarly, in

the ideas of formalism, suprematism. unism, purism,

guage, the long

Russia,

Clive

Bell's

Malevitch's pronouncements in

England,

in

France, the formists'

Le Corbusier's

in

Mondrian's

in

Poland,

in

P.

P.

many

A. Lalande's

this term.

philosophy gives as a

with each other. The debate was intensified by radical

neo-plasticism; also,

C. In

French dictionary of "a

of form:

definition

first

made up

dictionaries the

of the contours of objects."

Robert's dictionary of the French lanof

list

meanings of the term begins

with the definition: form

is

a "set of contours of ob-

jects."

everyday

In

speech

"form"

has

frequently

this

meaning, which seems to be the original and natural

Holland.

The moderate statement

of formalism appears in a

compared with which

one,

all

the others appear meta-

formulation like Le Corbusier's that in a true work

phorical or at least derivative. Thus conceived this

of art "form

is the most important thing." According extreme formalism only form is important, or stated negatively, content does not matter. The extreme view

sense of form (form C)

to

figure,

implies that

the

subject,

narrative

content,

and shape;

is synonymous with contour, meaning is close to that of surface

its

outline.

Form C

corre-

known

is

also outside of

everyday speech;

where

spondence with reality, the idea itself, the thing represented bv the work of art, and even the feelings ex-

applied to the works of architects, sculptors, painters.

pressed by

it

These comprise the

content

unnecessary, only form

is

are

all

will not help but

unimportant. In extreme formalism

may harm

is

needed; content

According to the

art.

used in

is

it

art, specifically in visual arts

a natural concept in poetics, form

is

one

images since they signify and express only themselves.

spatial forms.

the other hand,

without content

with

air.

An

is

W. Kandinskv remarked: "Form empty glove filled

not a hand but an

artist loves

form passionately

just as

he

loves his tools or the smell of turpentine, because they are

all

powerful means

(Cahiers dart.

1

[1935],

the service of content"

in

for the visual

arts,

Finally, an important distinction

between two kinds

Form C played an important

who

contrasted "the beauty of living

beings" with "the beauty of a straight line and circle" [Philebus 51C). In the eighteenth century this duality of form had been recognized in the theory of art; Kant

distinguished between free (freie) and dependent beauty

(anhangende Schonheit). and

Home

similarly

had

dis-

criminated between "intrinsic" and "relative beauty."

However, the sharp contrast between the two kinds of form has been questioned; Kandinskv, himself an

abstract painter, regarded abstract form as no

more

than an extreme link in a continuous chain of forms

from the purely representative

to the abstract.

To

say

nothing of the fact that various abstract forms are

form B

was indeed the basic idea during

it

that period.

appeared under the names "figure"

It

also

or "drawing" (in Latin texts jigura predominated; in

was more popular). "Form" was

used in those centuries rather with the different shade

meaning discussed below as form D (substantial "Drawing" was the natural synonym for form

as contour. G. Vasari in his Lives

long ago as Plato,

If

the natural

eenth century, but

forms representative of things, or reproducing objec-

and forms which are abstract or nonrepresentative. This duality of forms had been noticed as

is

part in the history of

of

tive forms,

reproduce

to

which are concerned with

was made: those with a corresponding content and those having none. In fact there are figurative of form

C

is

the theory of art only from the fifteenth to the eight-

Italian writers disegno

4).

who attempt

or construct forms conceived as contours.

formula of H. Focillon. forms are neither signs nor

On

artists

it

form).

.

.

.

,

I,

[simile a F.

of the Painters (Vite

168) considered drawing as similar to a form

una forma). Another

late

Renaissance writer,

Zuccaro, defined drawing as a form without bodily

substance.

Form C concerns

only drawing, not color, and there

C and B. For sixteenth-century writers contour (form C) and

lies

the obvious difference between forms

color represented

two opposite extremes

in painting.

Paolo Pino wrote about it in 1548 in his Dialogo di pittura. In the seventeenth century a rivalry ensued in the visual arts between form and color. Drawing was considered more important, particularly in academic circles: "Let the drawing always point the way and serve as a compass," Lebrun said; he was the

dictator in art during the reign of Louis

XIV

(Lebrun.

inspired by real objects

and

that the effect of abstract

pp. 36, 38). H. Testelin. the historiographer, declared

forms on the viewer

frequently due to associations

to the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture: "A good and competent draughtsman, even if he is a

is

with real objects. In any case, the twentieth century

221

FORM

IN THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

mediocre

colorist deserves

more respect than one who

cept of substantial form, they introduced

....

thetics.

p. 37).

The supremacy

of form as

drawing ended

of the eighteenth century, when, with the

They did

derived from Pseudo-Dionysius that beauty consists in

both the right proportion and luster

became

of objects. "Luster"

The rivalry and arguments died down, and the contrasting of form (C)

beauty of an object depends on

with color

when revealed

lost its topical interest.

the three histories, briefly given above,

we may

note that the most long-lived one was that

of form

A

as

arrangement, followed by form B as

appearance, and form ticular value

C

sance form

form B was

as drawing. In antiquity par-

was attached to form A, in the Renaiswas favored, and in the twentieth century

stressed.

When critics at we may

C

well

times write that a

wonder whether

work

"lacks form,"

possible for a

it is

work

of art, or for that matter, for any object to be without

form? The correct answer will be that

it depends on what we understand by "form." Objects cannot be without form A because their parts must be arranged in some way. However, this arrangement may not be an orderly or harmonious one, and therefore may lack form in sense A r So likewise with forms B and C, since no material object can exist without appearance or

On

contour.

important form."

the other hand, not every object has an

or, to

use Clive Bell's expression, "significant

W. Strzemihski

insisted

(a Polish

painter and theorist)

on the "inequality of 'form',"

"knots," and

its

"voids."

We recall

the words of the distinguished philosopher

who

declared that to see the forms of

things (rerurn videre fortnas)

is

a no

know

indispensable task than to

less

important and

the causes of things

(rerum cognoscere causas) (Essay on Man,

Though

beautiful this formula

because

it

is

is

sec.

9).

not quite precise

unclear which of the three concepts of

form Cassirer means.

The History of Form D (Substantial Form). The was initiated by Aristotle. He used morphe for form in various senses, e.g., shape or figure, but primarily as a synonym for his particular fourth concept of form

concept of

eidos, entelechia.

as the essence of a thing,

"By form

I

mean

physics 1032b

its

He

thus regarded form

nonaccidental component:

the essence of each thing" (Meta-

W. D.

Ross; see also 1050b 1034a 43). He identified form with act, energy, aim, and with the dynamic element of existence. This use of form may appear metaphorical to

2;

1041b

us but

it

1,

trans.

8;

was not

so

in

antiquity.

Aristotle's metaphysics, but neither in antiquity

However,

ever used in the

it

It

was

he nor

basic in

his followers

in aesthetics.

Middle Ages, when

in the thirteenth

(claritas, splendor)

identified with Aristotelian

form, and what resulted was the peculiar idea that the its

metaphysical essence

appearance. The

in its

first

to offer this

interpretation was probably Albert the Great; for

beauty consisted

D) revealing

in the luster of substantial

itself in

matter, but only

him form (form

when

has the

it

Mandonnet, V, 420-21). This viewpoint was maintained by the Albertine school, in particular, by Ulrich of Strassburg, who tersely wrote: "substantial form is the beauty of every object" (ed. Grabmann, pp. 73-74). Other contemporary schools, such as the Franciscan and Augustinian, thought the same way. Bonaventura accepted this view right proportion (form A) (ed.

and inferred that since beauty consists in substantial form, and since every being, has such a form, every being is beautiful: omne quod est ens hahet aliquam

formam, omne autem quod hahet aliquam formam hahet pulchritudinem (Quaracchi

The use but also

D

of form

its

end

ed., II, 814).

in aesthetics

reached

in the thirteenth century:

acteristic of the high

Middle Ages,

it

its

zenith

though char-

did not survive.

"Substantial form" along with the whole of Aristotelian

philosophy lasted until the sixteenth century but least of

Some

all in aesthetics.

e.g., in

Ernst Cassirer

into aes-

at the start

of Roger de Piles and the Rubenists, color gained a

Comparing

it

connection with the old idea

in

it

emergence

position parallel to that of drawing.

222

century the scholastics accepted the Aristotelian con-

paints beautiful colors but draws badly" (Sentiments

the sixteenth century nates in a perfetta

Ch.

traces could

still

be found,

the writings of Vincenzo Danti, a scholar in

who

said that shape in art origi-

forma intenzionale

11); also in the theories of the

who

(Danti,

Book

I,

painter Federigo

drawing with form and form knowledge (Book I, Ch. 2). These traces of Aristotelian form in aesthetics became extinct in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. F. Baldinucci, in his dictionary (1681), describes form as a philosophical but not aesthetic term, and so does Richelet (1719). Form D ceased as an aesthetic meaning, and was certainly not used in the nineteenth century. However, in the twentieth century, this conception under different names seems to be revived in the works of abstract painters, such as P. Mondrian or Ben Nicholson. When Mondrian writes that "... a modern artist knows that the feeling of beauty is cosmic and Zuccaro,

with idea,

identified

rule,

universal," or that

ment

new

of things because

it

art "expresses a universal ele-

reconstructs cosmic relations"

(Seuphor, p. 144), then he similar to

what the

is

praising a sense of form

Aristotelians called "substantial

form."

The historian of aesthetics will note also that "form" was used not only for Aristotle's entelechies but also

FORM

OF AESTHETICS

IN THE HISTORY

for Plato's Ideas.

always will be, created anew by geniuses. In short,

did

aesthetics a priori forms (D) play no role.

Medieval translators of Plato's works and they were followed by translators of Plato into modern languages. Translating "idea" by "form" is justified to some extent by the fact that in everyday Greek, "idea" meant shape, approaching form B, but so,

a different

meaning was introduced then by

translators,

Plato.

The

however, followed the original everyday

The

(3)

a priori forms in aesthetics. However, such forms were

discovered in the

by Konrad

Of

lose the right

course, the Platonic Idea has played a considerable

role in the history of aesthetics but not

under the name

last

quarter of the century, in 1887,

philosophy he followed

in

him

who was

Fiedler, a thinker

for

of idea as form.

his theo-

the nineteenth century also failed to detect any

ries in

As a result, "form" acquired another metaphysical meaning, which never achieved the same currency as form D, entelechy, in aesthetics.

meaning

who developed

successors of Kant

in

its

not a Kantian;

had knowledge had its

F. Herbart. Vision

J.

universal form, just as

a priori form for Kant. Fiedler admitted that it

men may

form of vision; however, artists preserve their work. Artistic vision and visual arts are not

in

Kant thought:

"form."

results of free play of the imagination, as

The History of Form E (A Priori Form). The fifth concept of form was created by Kant. He described form as a property of mind which compels us to expe-

they are governed by the laws and forms of vision.

rience things in a particular "form." This Kantian form (here called form E) find

in objects

it

by the

subject.

Thanks

E is endowed with and

is

the a priori sense of form;

only because to

its

we

imposed upon them subjective origin, form

it is

the unusual attributes of universality

necessity.

Did Kant have any precursors? Was his concept form known to anyone before? The Marburg School

(1)

of

attributed this concept to Plato, claiming that his a priori

approach was similar to Kant's, and that Plato

understood "ideas" as forms of the mind. Theaetetus appears

confirm

to

this

interpretation; his

works. thinker and follower of Plato, reflected over the nature of form in art: .

.

An

"Forms

artist

originate only through

human

does not imitate shapes of natural

clearer definition

The

rapidity of changes in artistic trends, especially

during the nineteenth century, could not but produce skeptical feelings about any single form

of artistic

must be more than one such form;

vision; there

Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), an early Renaissance

.

A

vague.

satisfaction.

Plato's

however, a more ontological conception dominated

art.

was was given by his disciples and successors: the sculptor A. von Hildebrand, two art historians, A. Riegl and H. Wolfflin, and the philosopher A. Riehl. Hildebrand's Problem der Form (1893) was an important turning point. He made a distinction between two forms of visual images: the nearby (Nahbild) and the distant (Fembild). A clear image can be seen only from a distance; only then does a distinct and consolidated form appear which the work of art requires and which can provide aesthetic Fiedler's understanding of the forms of vision

still

in the

history of art a variety of forms succeed one another in

coming

to the fore.

tion of the a priori

As a

result a pluralistic

form E of

art

and became characteristic of

came

concep-

into existence,

art theories in the

first

objects; he only renders matter capable of accepting

half of the twentieth century, particularly in Central

the form of art"; and further: "Every visible form will

Europe. Consequently, form

and image of the true and inin the mind" (Cusanus, p. 219).

constitute the likeness visible

form existing

This formulation in the pre-Kantian theory of art

is

probably closest to the Kantian meaning of form. (2)

Kant himself prepares a surprise for

us. In his

Critique of Pure Reason he discovered the a priori forms of knowledge in the mind: forms of space and

time and categories

like

substance and causality.

When

he embarked upon the critique of aesthetic valuation in his Critique of Judgment (1790), one might have expected that he would have also discovered in later

the

mind permanent,

universal,

and necessary forms.

But surprisingly enough, he did not detect in aesthetics any a priori forms analogous to those he found in the theory of knowledge.

He

did not think that beauty was

determined by permanent forms of mind but by unique gifts of artistic talent. Essential forms (form E) of beauty do not

exist, for

Kant; beauty has been, and

E

has

many

alternative

forms; they are not timeless, permanent as in Fiedler,

but correspond

conception

is

to,

best

and change with, the

known

in Wolfflin's

illustrated the alternative variety of sition

forms

He

in the tran-

from the Renaissance to the baroque, from the

linear to the plastic form,

form.

times. This

formulation.

The Austrian

from the closed to the open

school, under A. Riegl's leadership,

demonstrated the fluctuations of optical

and haptic

(tactile

art

between the

or kinesthetic) forms.

J.

Schlosser, close to this school, contrasted crystalline

form with organic form; W. Worringer, abstract with empathetic form (Abstraction und Einfuhling); W. Deonna, primitive with classical form. Though they differed they accepted form

E

in its pluralism.

The History of Other Forms. There are still other meanings of form which, though less important, are used (1)

in the

theory and practice of the

The name "form"

is

arts.

sometimes given

to tools

223

FORM

OF AESTHETICS

IN THE HISTORY

sculptors, potters, tinners,

produce forms, e.g., the forms used by and others. We may call

meanings." In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste (p. 109) distinguished three meanings: (a) as a

them forms F; they are employed in making forms, and at the same time are forms. Often, as in the case

sandals; (b) as a casting mold, e.g., for a statue; (c) as

which serve

to

model,

e.g., a

making

in the mind of an artist. Bonaventura's disbetween two meanings of form was given

of sculptor's forms, they are negatives of the forms which will be created with their help. Some of them,

an image

namely, sculptors' and potters' forms, are used for shaping the form we have called form C, whereas

above.

tinction

sandal used as a form (pattern) for

others, such as the tinctorial

Some of the concepts of form discussed above have disappeared and belong to the past; the concept of

objects color as well as

form

in

and printing forms, give shape, thus producing forms

the meaning of form A. History shows that the

importance of form F tects are

now making

in art

is

increasing.

Even

archi-

use of such forms in the produc-

tion of prefabricated elements for the construction

and

facing of buildings. visual arts, as in the history (2) In the history of the of music or literature, forms are frequently discussed in yet another meaning: conventional, traditionally or

commonly accepted

forms, binding on the composer

Once accepted, for whatever and waiting to be used. These forms, which we may call form G, are exemplified in literature by the forms of the sonnet or of tragedy with the "three unities" (place, time, and action); in music,

or writer

who

uses them.

reason, they are ready

the forms of the fugue or sonata; in architecture, the peripteros ("array of columns") or the Ionic order; the

and French gardening; the zwiehelmuster ("onion pattern") design in Saxon porcelain. These forms are partly structural and partly ornamental. Though they are all forms A, a few of them

bosquet form

are forms G.

in Italian

Many forms G have

a long and venerable

history, their Golden Age going back to antiquity when almost every variety of art was enclosed within such forms. Medieval art was also restricted by such con-

was also eighteenth-century classiRomanticism undermined the old forms, but also

D

modern aestheticians, and form E has acquired new names. Form F is used rather not needed by

is

in artists'

workshops than

in art theory;

form

technical expression of theoreticians of art; form

G is a H may

be replaced by other expressions. In all these cases there is no danger of confusing their respective meanings. However, concepts A, B, and C are closely easily

mixed up; and yet since name "form" deprive them of that usage. Thus

related and are likely to be

thev are so intimately linked with the it

would be wrong

to

there does not appear to be any prospect of eliminating the ambiguity of "form" in aesthetics and in the theory

we

of art. But once of the term,

it

are aware of the various meanings

ceases to be harmhil.

Summary. The

history of the five conceptions of

form developed along diverse lines. For an astonishingly long time form A has been the basic concept in art theory. Form B has been sporadically contrasted with and placed above content in works of art, for example, in the Hellenistic period, but never to such an extent as in the twentieth century. Form C was peculiar to art in the sixteenth and seventeenth cenwas a distinctive feature of high schoturies. Form

D

lasticism.

Form E aroused no

interest until the

end of

the nineteenth century.

trolling forms, as

cism.

created

way. History appears to show that art moves way from forms G. It is, however, possible for new stable forms to

be created. (3)

"Form"

of art

may

also

mean a kind or variety "new forms of paint-

of that art. In an expression like

ing" form of

is

used in the same sense as that in a "form

government" or a "form of disease." The term

is

used but does not belong in the theory of art; it is simply a convenient way of expressing the multiplicity of the arts: Ars una, species mille. In our catalogue of forms,

we may

Nor are

224

all

list it

as

BIBLIOGRAPHY

avant-garde art the

new ones departure from stable and conventional forms seems thoroughgoing: every artist wishes to have his own in their place. In

form H.

the meanings of "form" in art exhausted

by the above. Their great number has been known and remarked upon long ago. In the twelfth century Gilbert de la Porree wrote: "one talks about form in many

Pierre Abelard, iMgica 'ingredientibus, " ed. B. Geyer, in

Beitragc zur Ceschichte der Philosophic

and Theologie des

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De

re aedificatoria (Florence, 1485),

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Alexandri (Quaracchi, 1882), W. D. Ross

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S.

H. Butcher as Aris-

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scultori,

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F.

L'idea

de'

pittori,

architetti (Turin, 1607)

W.

TATARKIEWICZ

[See also Beauty; Iconography; Impressionism; Naturalism in Art; Structuralism; Style.]

FORTUNE, FATE, AND CHANCE

H. Bernard (London,

qui ne voient pas," Esprit Nouve.au, 8 (1921), 10. G.

Lomazzo,

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Migne, 83, 551; idem,

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I.

of Art History (London idem, The Sense of Form in Art

M. Meyer and "On Form and

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St.

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pp.

ibid.,

1961).

(Vienna, 1958); idem, Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft

W. Kandinskv, Ueber das Ceistige in der Kunst (Munich, 1910), trans. M. T. H. Sadler, as The Art of Spiritual Harmony (London, 1914). I. Kant, Differentiae,

(Chicago,

York, 1907). R. Ingarden,

Content of a Literary Work of Art," Studia z Estetyki, 2 (Warsaw, 1958), distinguishes nine meanings of "form" in contemporarv usage. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, Ch. I, 8, 18, in

vols.

1923), trans, as Principles

1648).

E.

De

malarstie (Warsaw, 1919; 1959).

Kunstgeschichtliche Crundbegriffe

Munich,

Gracian, Agudeza y arte del ingenio (Huesca, cf.

Summa

Ulrich of Strassburg,

H. Wolfflin, Renaissance und Barock (1888; Basel, 1961);

(New York,

.

3.

History of Literary Criticism in

Nowe formy w

1931).

p.

A

1-9. B. Italian

2,

(Paris,

Robert Grosseteste, Hexaemeron, MS, British Museum,

et

a Ilae, 180a. 2 ad

IV, lect.

Jahrgang 1925 (Munich, 1926). Vitruvius, De architectura.

L.

elocutione (Venice, 1508). Marsilio Ficino,

147 v

c.

1910), p. 363; idem,

pulchro, ed.

the

R.

II

In dicinis nominihus,

(Paris,

Dolce, Dialogo

1567).

ludo globi,

De

B.

Mandonnet

theologiae,

della pittura intitolato I'Aretino (Venice, 1557). Demetrius,

in

Stobaeus,

Basel, 1565), p. 219. V. Danti, Trattato delta

perfetta proporzione (Florence,

ium

436f. Sextus

M. Grabmann, in Sitzungsberichtc der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.-philol. Klasse,

1926), p. 91. N. Cusanus, (

I,

106.

sur la pratique de la peinture et sculpture (Paris, 1680),

5, ed.

De

VII,

W. Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, (The Hague and Paris, 1970). II. Testelin, Sentiments

Der Kommentar des Clarembaldus con Arras zu Boethius De Trinitate, ein Werk aus der Schule con Chartres im 12 Jahrh. (Breslau,

(London,

40.

1,

p. 37.

Trinitate, ed.

vols.

Trinitate (Basel, 1570),

ed. L. Vives (Paris, 1891-95),

\dversus

Eclogue IV 2 vols.

De

Scotus, Super praedicamenta, q. 36. n. 14,

Opera omnia,

Jansen, in

Expositio super libros Boetii

MacKenna, 5

1917-30). G. Porretanus, In Boethii in

J.

The Enneads,

Plotinus,

p.

(Nuremberg. 1550), ed.

Gli Asolani

Mabillon, 6 vols.

Bernhardi. ed.

D. 34a. 2q. 3 (Quaracchi, 1882-1904),

on Man, 2nd

Bembo,

Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia ad S.

(Paris, 1667-90). Saint

De

and London,

Yoi'k

P.

tans. B. Jowett, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1953).

The function chance

in the universe

antiquity to

modern

of indeterminism or the element of

modern

scientific

one goes

is

times.

a It

theme which runs from enters unavoidably into

"No matter how

developments.

in the expression of the

always depend

results will

essentially

in

far

laws of nature, the

an unavoidable way on

independent contingencies which

exist out-

under investigation" (Bohm [1957], p. 158). But scientific indeterminism is much beyond the scope of this survey. Our purpose is to trace the meanside the context

ings assigned historically to the various expressions of

the element of chance in the universe, in order to

understand the concept

most

common

in all its ramifications.

The

recurring terms indicating different

aspects of the element of chance are Fortune, Fate,

and Chance sity,

itself,

although other terms such as Neces-

Destiny, Providence, Predestination, Virtue, Luck,

This survey will deal

etc. also enter into the discussion.

primarily with Fortune, Fate, and Chance from earlv

Greek philosophy In

its

to the rise of

Humanism. in which reasoning

popular representations,

225

FORTUNE, FATE,

AND CHANCE

and superstition overlap. Fortune assumed numerous forms historically. In Roman times in particular, Fortune appears as a deity worshiped under various forms and names. Basically all the forms represented an unknown power whose effects seemed to escape the regularity of recognized laws of causality. That power was feared and consequently worshiped. As Fortune, it was personified into a divinity guarding the individual in a situation whose outcome was in doubt, such as a storm, a

an amorous

a financial venture,

trip,

experience, etc. If

work with

the laws of the universe

larity

unfailing regu-

based on antecedent causes, a complete knowl-

edge of

all

outcome would unfaila knowledge of the outcome itself. If

factors regulating an

ingly lead to

it still

appears in ideas about the formation

Such is the element of chance as represented in the Democritean system. Other thinkers sought explanations of the workings of the universe by personifying the element of causality which brought about events necessarily and unavoidably; that element of necessary sequence of cause and effect was symbolized in Fate, known as Ananke or Heimarmene. The notion of Fate could well have arisen from the observation of the inexorability of death. Among the Orphics Fate was viewed as the law which controls the conditions of our birth, death, in the

and successive reincarnations. The belief

process of a constant, monotonous, and unavoid-

able return to the point of departure

came

to

be sym-

observations prove that such unfailing regularity does

bolically represented in the revolution of a wheel.

not obtain in the laws of the universe, there must be

wheel of Fate was considered as regulating the course of humanity through the process of birth, death, and

some element which breaks element

may be due

that regularity,

and that

as chance,

know

all

reincarnation. Plato gathered myths and beliefs con-

known man to

cerning Fate, and reshaped them in a certain order

could conceivably be the failure of

possible factors affecting an outcome, thereby

leading to the conclusion that the greater the increase in

human knowledge,

determinate.

On

indeterminateness

the lesser the sphere of the in-

the other hand, is

inherent

would remain

in

if

the element of

very laws of

the

most complete knowledge; the laws of the universe would be a sumcausality,

mary

it

The

to the observer or inherent in

the laws themselves. This element, generally

in spite of the

which was to be adhered

to closely

thinkers. In his works, therefore,

by subsequent

we can

establish the

stage and the implications which had been reached

concerning Fate and its relation to Fortune. Since a pictorial symbol tends to be a substitute for reasoning, Fate

came

to be identified with Necessity

because of the unceasing revolution of

its

wheel. With

Necessity as the essential ingredient of Fate, the ques-

disentangled the chaos and established the cosmic order

tion of free will came to constitute a fundamental problem of ethics. How could the unceasing revolution of the wheel be interrupted so as to make it possible for man to exercise free volition? As developed by Plato in the Timaeus (4 IE), the laws of Fate are the divine decrees whereby the animal universe is produced out of successive reincarnations of man, who, however, determines the nature of each successive

came by chance." Here indeterminism

reincarnation by the

of the highest probabilities affecting an outcome.

One to

workings of

of the earliest explanations of the

the element of chance in the universe

Democritus, in the

fifth

century

his ideas, Aristotle states (Physics

attribute our

Heaven and

all

is

II. iv):

attributable

Referring to

b.c.

"Some indeed

the worlds to chance

happenings, saying that the vortex and shifting that is

present in

the creation of the cosmos as an actual element con-

On

In the

manner of his actions or volitions. Timean conception, the Creator first portioned

the worlds have

and distributed one to each star and then He showed them the nature of the universe and spoke to them of the fated laws. The fated laws were spoken by the Creator, and Fate as Heimarmene is considered a logos. Later the Latin word fatum was to be connected with the verb fari. The relations of the soul to the body are determined by the nature of the particular star, and Fate designated the laws which govern the succeeding reincarnations. Man's soul has been created by God, but his first bodily differentiation has been entrusted to the astral powers. Fate becomes the

chance ceases to function, because everything proceeds from an antecedent cause as a

obtained through successive palingeneses (Laws 904E

predictable and hence necessary result. In the world

5ff.).

noting the absence of organized purpose.

hand, once the cosmos

is

the other

established, natural causality

obtains and, as Aristotle further explains

(ibid.,

196a

"here below, plants and animals proceed from

28ff.):

a definite antecedent cause, and each thing springs

from the appropriate seed, so that an olive tree will reproduce an olive tree and a man will beget a man, not as a result of Chance but of Nature or of Mind." In the Democritean or atomistic cosmology, though chance may have been present at the formation of the

cosmos, once the heavens and

come

all

into being,

known

226

man, but

of the universe.

to

man

indeterminism disappears except as the

subjective insufficiency of

knowledge on the part of

off souls

instrument of perpetuation of the animal Universe

The well-being

of the Universe

is

the supreme con-

cern of the Deity, and to this end the welfare of indi-

AND CHANCE

FORTUNE, FATE, viduals of

is

subordinated and

Heimarmene

or Fate

is

in the Universe. In the

made

the

instrumental. The law power which keeps order

Timaeus and

to this

concept of the Universe

is

which

basic

is

accomplished by the

man makes through

choices which

hepublic

in the

the course of successive reincarnations

the compelling

which are independent of Reason and Nature; yet we observe that there are men who, with natural aptitude and with good reasoning, strive to attain success but while others with no such qualifications succeed.

fail,

In the ethical treatises, either written

by Aristotle or

attributable to his school of thought, these questions

power of the stars, but in conformity with the divine will. The souls originally assigned to astrally differ-

are treated in

entiated bodies have further differentiated themselves

which guides man to a desired success at the opportune moment and under the most favored circumstances, and does so in defiance of good reasoning, or rather by making bad reasoning come out right (1247b 34ff.).

by

their

own actions.

Different roles have been assigned

under their influence, to man,

to the stars and,

that framework, in order to maintain

of action for man, chance

patterns of

life

made

is

order

in

Within

to safeguard the fixed needs of the Universe.

some freedom The

operative.

are submitted for selection to the souls

full.

Eudemian

In the

Ethics luck

This personal instinct

is

also operative in those

when

personal instinct which guides man,

but the order in which the souls exercise their choice

to

its

is

higher than thought, and consequently

determined by

the

number

of choice

is

by chance, therefore,

lot. It is

of patterns available to the soul at the time

determined. This chance element, viewed

becomes

subjectively from the point of view of the soul,

Fortune. Following Fate, which of the Universe, the soul its

that

free choice of

life,

is

is

the law and order

transformed as a result of

but that free choice

may

itself

who

an end not even considered by them and therefore without any reliance on Reason or Nature. The attain

present for the exercise of their free will in their choice,

is

very beginning, must resolve

traced back

itself into that

which

must be

it

God who moves all things within us. The naturally lucky man is the one, therefore, whose desires are prompted and guided by the view of

The

deity.

Providence

this divine luck as

Scholastics'

is

introduced

and good Fortune is seen thus as pardisconnected from Fortune in general. However,

into the world, tially

How

be limited by the individual's Fortune (Cioffari [1935],

two questions remain unanswered:

pp. 34-42).

ble for the deity to bring luck to the undeserving?

Aristotle accepts the existence of the

chance event

and proceeds to explain how the belief comes about. The Greeks grouped chance events under Tyche or Automaton, which operates in nature and in human affairs, personified as a mysterious deity worshiped accordingly. Tyche ("Fortune")

is

used

general sense including the chance element in affairs

("Chance")

is

used in

purposes or values.

by Chance

relative

to

a

the etiological inquiry turns into a consid-

life;

eration of

itself,

He proceeds to determine the value

of occurrences controlled

happy

human

and Automaton the causal scheme in relation to

well as the deity

as

more

in the

human and

religious values. Neutral

Fortune

good Fortune and bad Fortune when viewed by the individual affected by this chain of resolves itself into

accidental occurrences. to the cause,

it

is

When

Mind

Fortune attaches

itself insofar as it

accidental causes. In such a role Fortune

itself

confronts either

is

guidance by the divinity or providential interference.

When Chance

attaches

itself to

insofar as accidents are causes.

the cause,

it is

Nature

As such, chance negates

the possibility of predicting the outcome, but does not affect the

human

or religious values of the outcome.

Therefore, in the ethical works of Aristotle Fortune

assumes a definite function as conditioning the happiness of

life,

but Chance in

its

restricted sense does not

enter into this sort of evaluative consideration. Philosophically luck has been resolved into causes

is

analyzed as operating through a personal instinct

Why

(1)

is it

possi(2)

bad luck visited upon those who deserve good luck? These questions become the main task of later is

writers, particularly in scholastic philosophy.

In the

Magna

moralia luck

is

connected with Nature

The lucky man

rather than with the deity.

is

defined

one who has an impulse without reason toward goals which he actually gets, and such an impulse is natural," since by nature there is in our soul something as "the

which we are impelled toward things

in virtue of

we

which is

are well fitted (1207a 16).

for

The man who

actuated by such an impulse behaves as though he

were beside

himself, unconscious of

what he

is

doing.

Reside this form of luck as a natural impulse, there is

another luck

— independent of any impulse — which

enables us to get praeter-rationally goods that have

not even been considered as desired. Thus in the

Eudemian

Ethics luck

impulse and in the

is

viewed

Magna

as a superrational

moralia as a natural, but

praeter-rational impulse in the province of psychology. If

the lucky ones had a reason for what they do, then

luck would constitute an

how

to

suits.

be lucky and

all

art: all

science

people would learn would be lucky pur-

In either case irrationality

lies

at the

base of

Fortune. Aristotle analyzes the realm of Fortune in terms

often repeated in the Middle Ages, and which explain

the

many

He

explains that good things have been divided into

later usages of Fortune, Fate,

and Chance.

227

AND CHANCE

FORTUNE, FATE,

three classes: external goods, goods of the soul, and

goods of the hodv. The external goods constitute the realm of Fortune. Under external goods are grouped noble birth, wealth, power (both political and

other-

can have no

reality of

own. As such,

its

The problem of maintaining both free will and fated causality was at the root of explanations of the fortuitous in a providential universe.

of goods ascribable to heredity, such as personal attractiveness or beauty, but there is no confusion be-

and space, but Fate

tween external goods and goods of the soul. Consequently the realm of Fortune which is transmitted to later philosophers

opposed

is

the realm of external goods as

goods of the

to

Fortune comes to be

soul.

viewed not just as an indeterminate cause, but power which controls external goods and arranges distribution

among human

beings in such a

affect their happiness. "Since

happiness,

it

will

way

our discussion

is

as a

Providence includes Fate and

is

In Proclus Divine

superior to

acts as a providentially ruled nature,

incorporeal nature; through itself

it

i.e.,

it.

Fate

as a divine

bodies are united in time

transcends connection and,

is independent of the thing moved. The between Fate and Nature lies in the fact that Fate is the only one of the two which controls external goods such as noble birth, reputation, and wealth. As such, its domain is that which was assigned to Fortune by Aristotle; Fate and Fortune become

as the

mover,

difference

their

interchangeable terms, but only in the particular sense

as to

that Fortune

about

be connected with the preceding

to

speak about good fortune. For the majority think that

happy life must be the fortunate one, or not apart from good fortune, and perhaps they are right in thinking so. For it is not possible to be happy without external goods, over which fortune is supreme" (Magna

the

moralia 1206b

can no

it

longer be suspended from God.

good children, beauty, and in general, good luck and bad luck (which include all other undefined external goods). There is an overlapping between the goods of the body and external goods in the matter wise), friends,

is

that part of the total chain

which

controls external goods. All things in the universe are

divided into three classes: the intellectual, the corporeal,

and the animal. The

is

more

is

less subject to

subject to Fate it.

life

of sense, or the corporeal,

and the

life

of the intellect

Fate guards the interest of the

universal over the interest of the individual. Fortune acts like the

daemon which governs our inner movedaemon works out

ments, with the distinction that the

30ff.).

to the accidental event affecting

the adaptation of the soul to the universe, and Fortune works out the adaptation of the universe to the soul. In Simplicius Fortune moves from the cold, philo-

man's existence and thereby to integrate Fortune into

sophical indeterminism of Aristotle's second book of

In understanding the relation of the fortuitous to

God,

it

became necessary

leading from

God

Divine Providence.

to trace the causal chain

Among

the Stoics in particular the

necessity arose to account for tially

bad luck

in a

providen-

ruled world. In Greek tragedy Fate had been

men and

considered a deterministic power ruling both gods. In Seneca

God and Nature became

identical,

and

Destiny was identical to both. Fate was the word of

God, which once spoken had to be obeyed (De procidentia V). In Apuleius Providence is the Divine Plan and Fate is the law regulating the unfolding of that plan (De Platone et eius dogmate, itself is

and order, but

necessity

which governs

variations.

The

I.

as such

12.205). Fate

the law

is

it

cyclical, eternally re-

power

Physics into an all-embracing

controlling

all

which are in need of attainment. Fortune (Tyche) is the divine power that controls success, both intended and unintended. In the universe all things are in need of attainment which need to participate in something, and all things need to participate in something when they are severed from one another. The celestial spheres, although separate from each other, are not severed because there is consubstantiation among them and not participation from one to the other. Tyche is things

operative

where, but

among its

the celestial spheres as

power

is

it

is

every-

not manifest because the neces-

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, with Lachesis control-

and constant attainment operating in them removes from our mind the concept of attainment. However, for all things in the sublunar world there is danger that the needed attainment may fail to occur

accompanying neces-

because of the concourse of indeterminable causes.

current character of Fate accounts for order.

tripartite

division of Fate

ling the future. Control implies sity,

necessity

and

account

to

into the

Parca:

leaving a residuum of free will and chance to be

accounted

for. In

Simplicius Fate

concatenation which

is

is

the chain of causal

inherent in the seed and there-

fore considered the ratio seminalis.

individual aberration

The

its

Mythology combines with philosophy

for the

made

It

to control

is

the law of

human

Stoics considered Fate as an incomplete

hension of causal concatenation. However,

228

it

defined as a cause

unknown

to

human

actions.

compre-

if

Fate

is

understanding,

sity

Tyche

is

the

power which conjoins

all

causes so that

each thing may not miss but will have its fitting outcome. It shows its power best when mind (or something like

it)

is

not directly causative, but, rather,

when

indeterminable causes are at work. Therefore Tyche,

although always operative,

is

particularly obvious in

the case of those occurrences in

which we see no other

cause. Fortune or Tyche has the function to guide

FORTUNE, FATE, everything

nature which

in

is

coming

process of

in

together into the proper order, and consequently

represented as the helmsman

which

it

Fortuna gubemans

is

—

becoming. The philosophic implications of Fortune and Fate steers all that crosses the sea of

some

are clear in

of the pictorial or mythological

representations. In Martianus Capella a.d.) the

universe

is

governed by a

(fifth

century

celestial Senate,

whose inner consistory are present Adrasteia, Heimarmene, and the Fates, right next to Zeus and Hera. These powers abide with Zeus. Adrasteia sets down the laws operating above the material world and binding on the gods as well; Heimarmene indicates the law which operates in the material world, and the three Fates are the ministers of Zeus whose job is to determine and record his mandates when the gathering takes place (De nuptialis philologiae [On the Marriage of Philology], I. 64ff.). The Fates indicate the laws of the events which must necessarily follow at the bidding in

of Zeus. Fortune

represented as a celestial deity

is

who

comes

controls the residuum

AND CHANCE

between constancy and the rare

or unusual occurrences. Having accounted for the oc-

currences which are under the power of Fortune, Chalcidius includes the Aristotelian distinction be-

tween Fortune and Chance, since they are both undetermined causes of undesigned results. However, while in Aristotle the causes for Fortune are Mind (for Fortune) and Nature (for Chance), in Chalcidius the principal cause of both Fortune and Chance is Fate. The influence of Chalcidius on Christian thought is profound. In his view Fate is controlled by Providence, which means that no occurrence in the universe is outside of the sphere of God's Will. Fate as the divine

law inherent

in the

world-soul and carrying out the

order of Nature carries a connotation of the spoken

mandate ability

of

God

as well as a connotation of unavoid-

or necessity.

The sphere

world-soul consists of three parts:

sphere of fixed

stars, (2)

of

domain of the

(1)

the aplanes or

the planetary spheres, and

into the conclave shocking everyone with her unexpected behavior. She interferes with the recording

unfailing necessity obtain, and therefore Fate

Fates by introducing sudden and unforeseen outbursts.

regularity,

Not

ity or

satisfied

she

rences,

with the control of unforeseeable occur-

some control over predictable becoming identified with Nemesis, retribution, in a way which will recur

claims

causality, thereby

the goddess of

frequently in later writers.

As

we approach

of integrating the element of chance into a providentially

governed universe becomes paramount. The

Neo-Platonic Chalcidius, in his Commentary on the

Timaeus (Ch. 145) enumerates and arranges the different causes of being. He tells us that some things come from Providence alone, some from Fate, some from free will, some from Fortune, and some from Chance. Thus all causes and outcomes are accounted for, both those which are determinate and those which are indeterminate. All existence proceeds from eternal,

God

uninterrupted flow whose regularity

called

God

is

Nous and which

the

namely

in those

events which have normal-

frequency rather than constancy, Fate actually

exercises

its

power. Here Fate regulates motion and

unchanging law of change. Since there

is

viewed

is

an infinite variety of accidental causes and an infinite

is

as the

temporal points

at

which they can occur, Fate

the determinate law of the series regulating these

changes, for

all

things

which take place

in the

heavens

or on earth return cyclically to their point of departure. In order to establish

some harmony between human

conduct and Fate, Chalcidius has recourse to a distinction of causes in the series

power

of Fate;

which comprises the

praecessione and those which are

sionem. Fate operates in

we deduce

total

they are the causes which are ex

secundum

human conduct on

praeces-

condition

from certain antecedents. These is freedom of choice at the start, but once a choice is made, necessity comes into control. Events are fateful only that

it

postulated antecedents are our merits. There

after the exercise of free will; otherwise there could

the intelligible essence of

be no rewards or punishments and consequently no moral law. Fate from this point of view becomes no

is

God

as the Highest,

showers His goodness through Providence to

name does

is

deter-

Providence, which the Greeks

Goodness, ever turned toward Its

one

imme-

expression of God's will and understanding. In diate sequence to

in

is

minate. But in occurrences which depart from unfailing

series of

Christian philosophy, the problem

(3)

the elemental world. In the heavens regularity and

all

who

beings.

not imply seeing the future in advance,

but rather the act of understanding of

all

things as a

more

deterministic than any other law.

there, but

it is

in

The law

our power to initiate or not to

is

initiate

the action which will set off the application of the law.

property of the Divine Mind. Next in sequence comes

Divine foreknowledge does not imply determinism, for

which is the law of the world soul; it is the unchanging law of change, which rules all things according to their nature. Fate, which makes room for

knowledge on the part of God is proportionate to the thing known: necessary knowledge for necessary things and contingent knowledge for contingent things. This concept becomes basic in the conciliation between free will and the element of chance in Christian doctrine.

Fate,

free will, contains

Fortune within

occurrences of elemental nature

and not constant

regularity.

itself,

because

we have

Fortune

is

the

in the

frequency

power

that

Fate thus related to free will contains Fortune within

229

FORTUNE, FATE, AND CHANCE itself.

In sequence, the

powers that are subject

idence through Fate are as follows: Nature,

(2)

Fortune,

(3)

(4)

1

1

Chance

to Prov-

the rational soul,

)

the restricted

(in

Christian God, but within that concept Fate as the

order

can well

remain. is

In

fact,

misused and that

proportionate to the nature of the things controlled.

one should speak of God's Will instead (ibid., Book V, Ch. 1). God's foreknowledge would tend to imply

Among

a deterministic system, but free will

sense), (5)

daemones. As stated, the control of Fate

is

heavenly things Fate operates with constant

On

however, the constant regularity is not free from exceptions and it is in this residuum that Fortune has its control. Because Art imitates Naregularity.

ture, the

earth,

same elements

in the

occurrences of Nature

are to be found in Art. Although Fortune operates in

human

events involv ing

choice and Chance in lower

animals or inanimate things, both are accidental causes

and

as such thev

have to be derived from principal

causes. In Chalcidius the

sum

total of principal causes

and therefore both Fortune and Chance derive from Fate. However, in addition to the constitutes

Fate,

is

maintained by

the fact that our wills are included in the order of

causes and effects and consequently they form part of

which temporal sequences do which would control results contrary to our wills is no more cogent than the necessity which controls them in conformity with our wills. The necessity implied in the order of causes which we term Fate is such only when viewed as a sequence of cause and effect; when viewed without the element of sequence it is timeless and hence not outside the realm of God's Providence (ibid., Book V, Ch. 9). God's foreknowledge not apply.

The

in

necessity

In such a providential system the causeless does not

Aristotelian explanations described, Chalcidius con-

which are not preceded by do

Fortune as the cause which brings together two actions or occurrences which, in appearance at least,

actually exist. Occurrences

are totally disconnected. His final definition of Fortune,

actually have a cause, but

and one which recurs frequently in scholastic philosophy is (Ch. 159): Concursus simul cadentium causarum duawm, originem ex propositi) trahentium, ex quo concurso provenit aliquid praeter spem cum admiratione ("There must be a concurrence of two causes, each arising from an act of free will, and the concurrence must produce an unexpected result"). Such are the elements which constitute Fortune in the Christian

Augustinian philosophy does away with indeterminism

siders

The

becomes With him there

Christian doctrine

in Saint Augustine.

is

able that God,

who provided

Any cause which

is

not manifest to our mind.

by the assumption that there can be in the providential order. However,

nothing causeless

mean that every cause is determined human beings are concerned. There are

does not

this

insofar as

fortuitous along with natural causes,

are the result of will.

The

and causes which

fortuitous causes are those

inconceiv-

cause of their unpredictable nature. The Augustinian

it is

for everything in the

universe, should wish that any part of rule of Providence

in the universe

it is

no question but

firmly entrenched

that Providence controls all things, for

a natural cause or are not purposed by our will

which are concealed from human understanding because of its insufficiency and are consequently assigned to Fortune and Chance. The Aristotelian accidental causes were concealed from human understanding be-

tradition.

it

escape the

(De civitate Dei, Book V, Ch. 11). beyond the control of Providence

fortuitous causes

would disappear

complete knowledge of

The

all

as such

if

man had

causality in the universe.

Aristotelian fortuitous causes could never disap-

pear entirely because there

is

actually an element of

cannot be accepted. Hence Fate as a necessary cause over and beyond Providence, or any astral determinism

indeterminism in the universe. The Augustinian explanation of Fate, Fortune, and

independent of God's Will, cannot possibly exist, for that would be tantamount to a denial that everything

Chance

in the universe takes place only according to God's

ary writers.

Will.

for

Yet Augustine realizes that terms such as Fate, Fortune,

and Chance do

He

and that, without a logical they would have disappeared.

exist

basis for their existence,

become

quite

both among Christian philosophers and

liter-

falls into

common

a difficulty

which

will

The fact that logically there is no place Fortune or Chance in his providential system does

not prevent Augustine from using these terms as popular designations of

accepted concepts. However, the

existence of Fortune as a divinity has to be repudiated,

potence and foreknowledge, permitted nothing to be

were a divinity and could systematically favor it would cease being inconstant and therefore would cease being Fortune (ibid., Book IV,

without order, that order of the universe might well

Ch.

therefore proceeds to present reasonable explana-

tions. Starting

230

universe

the

of

Augustine states that the word Fate

from the premiss that God,

in

His omni-

be called Fate, since the Stoics had already explained Fate as the order and connection of all causes inherent in the universe. This order and connection is now attributable to the will and power of the transcendent

for

if it

its

worshipers,

18). No religion can purify the language of the common crowd and eliminate all words which in any way refer to occult causes, but of one thing we can

be

sure: the reason that

because

it

is

any cause

concealed from

is

us.

fortuitous

An

is

simply

all-embracing

FORTUNE, FATE, providential tutelage in control of leaves no trolled

room

occurrences.

Yet

all

individual actions

unmoderated. uncon-

for undesigned,

the

Augustine

that

fact

eliminated Fortune from his providential system does not

mean

that as a divinity

disappeared from Chris-

all

if

the chance meeting of

of purpose,

two

itself,

for in Aristotle,

lines of action

Chance (Physics II. V. 196b 35 The interpretation of the chance occurrence !.

apparently undesigned meeting of unconnected lines

occurrences which did not

fit

of action does occur in Boethius, again with the qualifi-

cation that, although the chance occurrence

The Augustinian providential system does not question the existence of causality itself. However, in theories where the power of causality is denied to created

undesigned,

is exercised only by God directly, the problem of chance assumes a different solution. In the Epicurean system events were not causally connected and happened either as a result of chance or of undetermined free will. In the Philonic system, in which God is either the remote or immediate cause of all

beings and

it is

God

himself

who

"breaks the chain

it

the Aristotelian separation of

the Philonic sense

is

the providence of a

all

goods into goods of

order to delineate the sphere of action of Fortune.

most powerful over external goods, has some over goods of the body, but has no power over is

goods of the mind. The external goods over which Fortune has control are

(1)

wealth

and

in all its varieties, (2) dignity, is

(3)

never any question but that wealth

or material goods belong to the realm of Fortune.

However, dignity and power come

in different pro-

portions under the aegis of goods of the body and goods

human

of the mind; they will be attributed differently to the

from God. Fortune

God who is who can

in

power

of Fortune or to the

power

of Virtue, as

we

namely not bound by any

shall

mundane

glory as one of the further divisions of exter-

upset these laws of

nal goods

which are under the power of Fortune. Once

really "the 'divine Logos,

fixed laws of nature, but

appropriate

in that continuity for

occurrences which are not attributable to any also directly

own

the mind, goods of the body, and external goods in

power. There

come

its

belong to the world external to man. Boethius accepts

by endowing man with a touch of His own miraculous power through free will. The break in the continuity God's intervention; the break

may be

actual concursus

things unexpectedly attained or unintentionally missed,

effect

due directly to

The

and it is their unexpected and unforeseen conjunction which seems to have brought forth Chance. However, the chance occurrences, or the goods or

Fortune

is

not uncaused.

causes,

of His own direct creation" (H. A. Wolfson [1961], pp. 198ff.). Just as God performed major miracles in the creation of the universe, so He continues to perform minor miracles which break the continuity of causation

of causation for purposeful action

is

or concurrence of these causes has

of secondary causes or deviates from the continuity

cause must

as the

to

fixed as the

logically into a providentially ruled universe.

that happens,

devoid

is

occurrence cannot be ascribed to

the

power

became

tian concepts. It rather

which were ascribed

it

of finality in the chance event

AND CHANCE

'

see

in

writers.

later

Boethius

himself

adds

nature fixed by himself" (H. A. Wolfson, Philo, 4th

Boethius has established the existence of the chance

ed. [1968],

event, he proceeds to clarify the sphere of action of

II,

422).

The whole question

of the fortuitous

is

treated

com-

prehensively by Boethius. His explanation of the ele-

ment

of chance in the universe closely follows the

Aristotelian explanation.

He subdivides all

into constant, frequent, rare,

The constant occurrences

and even

occurrences

(half-and-half).

are assigned to the heavens,

the frequent or regular are assigned to Nature, the even (half-and-half) are assigned to free will,

and the rare

are assigned to Fortune or Chance. Moreover causes

two major classifications, those which have a purpose and those which do not. Since both Nature and Mind act teleologically, that is with are subdivided into

a purpose, rare occurrences of teleological import

may

the

power

that controls

it.

Like Augustine, Boethius proceeds to the justification of the workings of the Fortune in a divinely

universe.

The world

of

governed

becoming or of change,

in other

words the physical world, derives its causes, order, and form from the motionless Mind of the Deity. This Deity, one and undivided, wills the modus of multiplicity as the regime of the universe. This modus of multiplicity, when viewed in the purity of Divine

When

it

operates

world of motion and becomes order

in

time and

Intelligence, in the

space,

it is

is

called Providence.

called Fate; Fate in turn governs

Chance

occur in either realm. The element of chance operates among occurrences which have a purpose provided

by joining the acts and the fortunes of men, even though acts proceed from free will and fortunes may proceed from other causes including Chance. Fortune

they are rare. Boethius consequently explains Chance

may seem

as follows:

Chance and the

fortuitous occur in those

events which, although occurring rarely,

through Boethius

fails to

come about

and are done with a purpose. account for the Aristotelian argument

accident

to

move

at

random, but

in actuality

it

does

submit to a control and moves according to law.

The moral question which initially

answered

in Plato's

arises

Laws

with Boethius was (903C):

How

can

we admit of Providence when we see Fortune harassing

23

FORTUNE, FATE, AND CHANCE good men and favoring evil ones? If Providence l>\ its very nature has to be good, how can it tolerate evil? The answer is that Fortune is always good, regardless

way it appears to us. This is the element of faith and resignation which permeates the explanations of Fortune in Christian philosophy. of the

The

in

its

not enter into His foreknowledge. Fortune, or the

alterations,

irrationality,

its

more important

The

temperament

its

instability of

slippery ways,

Boethian figuration

of

merge with popular

beliefs to

—

its

flattery,

form part of the

all

Fortuna. Philosophic concepts

produce a figure which

approaches a divinity and yet retains

which contributed toward

its

the elements

all

conceptual development.

Basically, the Boethian figuration remains the core of

Cod.

In Albertus

and Chance

Magnus the

Saint

as a function of causality.

Aristotelian definition of Fate

influenced not only by the Stoic position, but bv

may be

in relation to

human

of

events,

comparable

among which

The order

to a procession in

are the fortuitous,

which one event

is

suc-

ceeds the previous one simply because they are observed

human

events have a causal sequence only from the

point of view of man's knowledge, so that for necessary effects there are necessary causes

and

such as Hermes Trismegistus, Firmicius Matemus, and Apuleius. In his fusion of many doctrines

manner

Since fortuitous events involve

writers

Albertus

presents

Providence to the

a

from

descending determinism

new

creature at the time of birth.

Fatal causality flows from celestial bodies

down

to the

causality

the

in

human

significant. It

is

scheme

of causality

important to coordinate

is

human

In referring

of causality

is

the

last link in

things to higher causes, the follow-

gentiles HI. 91): (1) volitions

(Summa

immediately by God, without intermediary;

Providence, through Fate, to the chance event. In

knowledge

the unfolding of the chain of causality essary causes,

which produce

first

come

effects with

nec-

unfailing

next come those causes which act with normal regularity; then those which act with halfway regularity; and finally the rare occurrences, in which regularity;

the fortuitous

is

observed.

as a force differentiated

when

When

among

causality

is

viewed

individual beings,

it

viewed as the entire process from necessary causes to rare occurrences, it is Fate. Thus in Albertus Magnus, as in Augustine and Boethius, Fortune and Fate are different aspects of the total Fortune;

it is

chain of causalitv. In Saint

questioned;

Thomas it is

Chance

accepted and explained

as

is

not

an integral

part of the providential system of the universe. Assumthe

Divine Ordainer cannot

Chance because

of the angels;

possibly

be

cannot proceed except from

(3)

God

bodily goods are disposed through

ence volitions and choices by acting upon our bodies

by

intellectual consideration without passion. Volitions

and choices which act without man's intention and without his knowledge are what we call Fortune. Angels illumine our minds to make appropriate choices; therefore the custodian angel

what we

call fortuna. Similarly,

celestial spheres cause natural

affect choices

and

volitions.

body

the cause of

dispositions

which

in the latter case

a natural disposition, as opposed to Fortune

coming

through the angels illumining our minds. The Arisimpulse toward achieving desired goals or which was not even desired has taken its proper

totelian

success

place in the Thomistic providential system. But the

which

astrological

determinism

Albertus has

now been absorbed

the universe

dential universe of

we may look for Chance anywhere in except in God himself. Chance must arise

is

impressions from the

Fortune

a direct cause,

effects

human medium

(2)

through the

the angels and celestial bodies. Celestial bodies influ-

is

the existence of

disposed by

contra

and choices are disposed

the chain unfolding from the Divine Mind, through

is

in

and God.

relation to the celestial bodies, the angels,

ing conditions and limitations prevail

The Fortune

choice, the

and the element of chance

Fortune: the Fortune of causality and the Fortune of astrology.

for contingent

which human choice enters the chain of

embryo. Albertus postulates two different types of

that

in

immediate prior causes, but not

in relation to the ultimate superior cause.

effects there are contingent causes.

ing

Fortune

the cause or in the effect, the absence of intentionality

the astrological theories which had developed through

is

If

analyzed as the absence of intentionality either

is

sequence constitutes no necessity. In the same manner,

Fate, Fortune,

232

only in relation to something

Thomas Aquinas

With Albertus Magnus and

is

exists

else in the universe, not in relation to

a return to the Aristotelian explanations of

Middle Ages and

early Benaissance.

is

element of chance,

in their temporal sequence; for God, who is above the temporal procession and sees the sequence both in cause and effect without relation to time, the

pictorial representations through the

there

God

in

is

as aspects of this personification. its

all-

any previous writer. The various

characteristics assigned historically to Fortuna appear

Fortune,

is

encompassing and timeless, and our own knowledge, which is derived from causalitv and is limited by temporal relations. Things which we see only in causes, sees in existence. Since for Cod knowledge and foreknowledge are the same, the element of chance, which involves a sequence of cause and effect, does

personification of Fortuna

Boethius than

somewhere between Cod's knowledge, which

still

survived

in

entirely in the provi-

God, the angels, and the

celestial

AND CHANCE

FORTUNE, FATE, which makes a person fortunate and the angels, then it is found to emanate directly from God himself. Through our will, which is disposed immediately by God, God himself is the only causa per se bodies. If the impulse is

referred higher than the celestial spheres

who

as the poet

synthesized previous philo-

and popular ideas brings a vast eclecticism into the concepts of Fortune. Fate, and Chance. In his philosophic work, the Convivio, he limits the sophic, literary,

influence of the fortuitous to the realm of the accidental, as

was

it

human

without divino imperio, as is

is

Fortune

in Aristotle's Physics.

cause concealed from irrationality

it

is

a

understanding, vet not

was

in Saint

Thomas.

translated into a simile: "the

subject to the intellect, the less he

Fortune" [Convivio IV.

is

Its

least

amount

is

a master of

become

(Paradiso XXXII. 53). Fortune and Fate

it

indistinguishable

when considered

as the indi-

mind

of

or reason. Fortune as the

in Simplicius.

The

made by

an impres-

is

the celestial spheres on the bodily dispo-

form of passions, and it is these bodily which produce a regularity in the ability or inability to achieve desired goals, or goals which may even be independent of desires. Although astro-

sitions in the

dispositions

logical destiny as such

is

denied

in

Dante's providential

system, the influence of constellations

is

resolved into

toward success or

Fortune aided by reason or Fortune the aider of reason. appears as the divine power that controls attainment

was

usually adversely. This individual destiny sion

subject to

xi.9i.

It

it

Fortune

soul.

always viewed as a tool of Providence and never as

the impression which in turn guides the individual

impulse of the Aristotelian ethical treatises appears as

or success, as

charge of external

in

more man

Fortune appears as the Chalcidian concursus causarum, which is accompanied

by the

always

is

vidual destiny which affects a person unexpectedly, and

of our Fortune.

Dante

works, and Fortune

goods only, never the goods of the

astrological

failure in

accordance with the

total

plan of the universe.

Fortune

As a divine Intelligence is

agent foresees,

in its role as a providential

and pursues future events (Inferno

judges,

it

has

its

own

VII. 69ff.).

beatitude and

consequently unconcerned with the effects of

its

on mankind. Since the activity of Fortune is that part of the Divine Plan dealing with the distribu-

activity

Fortune of Albertus Magnus appears as personal des-

tion of external goods, the identification of Fortune

tiny transmitted through the constellation or the indi-

with Divine Justice

vidual star.

The element

of chance

is

explained in

logical [Inferno

is

XXX.

the variations of Fortune are the basis of

13). its

Aristotelian fashion as the causa per accidens annexed

the figure of the wheel remains symbolic of

either to the agent or to the effect. Fortune appears

changes. Dante accepts as natural the thesis that

which opposes the regularity of Nature. The element of Fortune in the individual enters as the impression from the spheres which causes bodily dispositions. Yet all of the various elements which have historically been assigned to Fortune, Fate, and Chance are gathered into a single providential system of which

constant

as the cause

the fortuitous

is

fied

as

which

is

Thomistic philosophy In

Dante

is

this

in the providential

is

of

senni

umani (Inferno

oltre la difension di

causality with unfailing regularity, Fortune as a branch

of causality

within the realm of Fate,

latter

is

likewise a branch of Nature

is

which Dante created personifies all aspects of the fortuitous, from its place in the causal chain proceeding from God to the realm which affects the individual. The distinction between the goods of the soul and the goods of the body, or figure of Fortuna

maintained

throughout

Dante's

when

the

considered as the total circular movements of

The

the heavens.

in individuals

differentiation

which Fortune causes

independent of the

moment

of birth are

a result of this circular natura (Paradiso VIII. 127).

power of the individual which him toward a desired end, the power which unintentionally drives him away from the desired end (namely fortuna) must be a contrary grace as personified in Beatrice), he

is

main-

VII. 81). Since Nature follows

events.

goods,

is

The activity of Fortune is a priori that part human activity which is beyond our power to com-

tained.

Since virtue

external

find a correla-

moon; hence the correlation with the moon

which is the unfolding of Providence in multiplicity and time. The gradation from the Divine Mind to the individual event is therefore: God, Providence, Fate, and Fortune. Fate includes the regularity of Nature and Fortune includes the irregularity of all chance

The poetic

the

classi-

is

scheme

if

would cease

it

newly

termed Fortuna. Since Fortuna a personification of the fortuitous, and the fortuitous a branch of the chain of causality, its normal place

created Intelligence is

in

a divine Intelligence.

constant

and inexorable changes of the

tion in the constant

prehend; hence Fortuna remains

a part.

All the various aspects of the fortuitous are personified in a deity

movement of Fortune stopped, being Fortune. The changes of Fortune

its

Since

nature,

that

is

intentionally guides

power; hence

if

Fortune (Inferno

The

one

is

a friend of virtue (redeeming is

no friend of

II. 61).

influence of Fortune in

human

affairs

all-important in Boccaccio's artistic world. tion of Fortune

is

to

is

func-

determine the outcome of a course

of action. Boccaccio's universe

and God

becomes

The

is

strictly providential

directly in charge of both favorable

and

233

FORTUNE, FATE, AND CHANCE God

above Fortune and,

for misusing

God-given

of course, can do no wrong. Nature and Fortune are

Fortune as a

test of

unfavorable circumstances.

is

both administrators of the Divine Will. Fortune indi-

human

cates the operation of the heavens in

and the only way that is

affairs

influence can be forestalled

its

accepts with resignation the idea that Fortuna

ences

human

affairs,

enough advance notice through counteract

to

power

his reasoning

intended

the

influ-

man can have

but feels that

course

Fortune.

of

Boccaccio does not change the popular and accepted idea of Fortune; he simply molds

was

Fortune

pose.

in

charge

it

to

his pur-

fulfill

goods;

external

of

Boccaccio adds sensual pleasures and fame as external goods. Fortune

was an impulse whose

capable; Boccaccio maintains that love

effects are inesis

an even more

Petrarch's views, but in the Stoics the test has no

viewed

test is

as a preparation for eternity.

Petrarch resolved man's struggle against Fortuna into a system in which the escape from the inevitability of Fortune lies in a disregard of external goods

and

a withdrawal into contemplation of the goods of the spirit as a

preparation for eternal

life.

The

providential

system of the universe, of which the element of chance is

an integral part, can be maintained only by consid-

ering the chance event as an inscrutable part of the universe closed to our understanding as cal portrayal of

human

Dante and Boethius, the

Yet in Petrarch, as in

beings.

allegori-

Fortune offers again the opportunity

powerful impulse. Stoic Fate which became synony-

to

combine

mous with Fortune was considered

its

kindred powers, and to relate those elements to the

and

virtue;

a test of courage

Boccaccio assigns to Fortune the power

to rescue the

weak

of heart

courage needed to achieve

and inspire him with the his goal.

The

Aristotelian

impulse of the moral treatises becomes the impulse that leads the individual

toward achievement irrespective good Fortune is

of any moral import. In Boccaccio

a cause for exaltation and bad Fortune

is

a cause for

complaint, but both types of Fortune are part of the

all

the elements ascribed to Fortune and

philosophic concept.

Superstitions

permit in

man

ministic causality.

While Petrarch approaches Fortune from the point of view of

its

effect

on the

life

rectly related to his views in

human

affairs.

life is di-

on the influence of Fortune

Aristotelian explanations of the nature

of Fortune as a cause have

no bearing on Petrarch's between Fortune and

views. Petrarch sees no difference Fate, nor does the distinction

between fortuna and

casus enter into his considerations. Fortune Will and as such

it

must

is

God's

whether we like it to best conduct one's life

prevail,

The problem is how view of the unquestioned existence of the fortuitous element in human affairs. Assuming that all things in this world are transitory, the Divine Will regulates this transitoriness through

or not. in

Fortune. illusion

and

and

is

is

the comprehensive

summary

of the place of Fate,

Fortune, and Chance in a universe which as the unfolding of

Fate

is

Divine Providence. In

is

conceived

this system,

the operation of God's Providence. Without

changing the basic Christian concept which had developed up to that time, Salutati directs that concept

toward moral values for a good life. Astrological determinism is again refuted, not as being unverifiable this time, but as having no influence on the rational soul.

The

providential origin of the fortunate impulse brings

even the accidental into the fold of the total good for the universe. This seemingly accidental cause is traceable directly to Divine Providence. Those events which

but as a corollarv those events which are not entirely within man's control are not bona animi and therefore

Complete knowledge

mutable or external goods. Such external or mutable goods cannot be pertinent or important to virtue be-

evil.

a

Petrarch explains that these material goods are God's their

fortuna

necessary in the nature of the

is

on the part of man and complete goodness are one and the same. Accepting the traditional view that material goods constitute the domain of Fortune, and

et

between good

universe cannot possibly be

gifts

The De fato

of Coluccio Salutati constitutes a significant stage in

are entirely within man's control are the bona animi,

aspect of Fortune

basically not a distinction

what

logically for all accepted aspects

human

The good or bad

evil, for

of the individual, the

philosophic writers continued to search for a system

which would account

moral significance. Petrarch's philosophy of

about

to find relative happiness in a universe

of Fate, Fortune, and Chance. its

fears

which some elements elude the regularity of deter-

providential system and do not necessarily have any the question of Fortune resumes

and

Fortuna have been turned into rationalizations which

bearing on the moral character of the individual.

With Petrarch

234

Stoic concept of

significance for the afterlife, whereas in Petrarch the

Boccaccio

for free will to act prior to Fortuna.

The

gifts.

man's fortitude runs throughout

goodness depends on the use which

man

makes of them. Evil arises not from their possession but from their misuse. The root of bad luck is not any natural disposition, but the blame which Man bears

cause

if

they were, they would

become bona

animi.

Since those mutable goods do not lead to virtue, the

man who

is

aiming toward a virtuous

life

must either

them outright or be indifferent to them. Hence the equation that where there is the greatest prudence there is bound to be the least Fortune. The moral significance of the acceptance of Fortune resist

AND CHANCE

FORTUNE, FATE, becomes increasingly important

we

ample,

Fortune

man

varietate, for ex-

find that the mutability of the

goods of

so baffling that the only recourse for a wise

is

With Machiavelli we reach another important stage

in the early humanists.

De fortunae

In Poggio Bracciolini's

in the

concepts of Fortune, Fate, and Chance, and with

we

it

conclude the present study. The external

shall

goods which are the domain of Fortune are expanded

to

withdraw altogether from worldly goods. The comes from the madness of men in wanting to possess the goods under its control. There-

to include political

of Fortune

considered unattainable without

more men attach themselves to goods of the soul by following Virtue, the more the power of Fortune will be broken. The natural conclusion for Bracciolini, as it was for Petrarch, is that the way to

sions or through dedication to the goods of the soul

is

power

fore the

virtue

is

a

life

which

is

indifferent to the possession

power

compendium

Battista Alberti maintains that Fortune holds in

yoke

in

man who

Whereas in the Fortune was the impulse

submits to

Aristotelian moral treatises

toward achieving

it.

whether desired or not even Virtue which is the capacity for achieving goals of potential worth. Fortune is still in charge of external goods; however Virtue not only goals,

envisaged, in Alberti

it is

understands the distinction between the bona animi

and the bona externa, but develops techniques for attaining the bona externa when their possession can aid the bona animi. From the mobility of external goods which are under the domain of Fortune arises the mobility of human

And

affairs in general.

just as

the mobility of external

human

treatises this

mobility

the

human

affairs.

The

on the subject of Fortune take cognizance of

mobility and introduce the element of civil happi-

ness as

part

of their consideration of Fortune.

Giovanni Pontano's

ment

of Fortune

human all

of

is

De fortuna

the distinguishing ele-

is still

The

difference

does not

dential system, the denial of

its

is

attribut-

fit

into the provi-

existence

would leave

a lacuna in the explanation of the universe. Rather loosely, the influence of stars

to

God; Fortune

is

is

all

circumstances regarding the

sum

total of all mobility

His analysis of Fortune

is

a rationale

Machiavelli's views are centered on the realities of life as

they exist rather than on any theological concept

life. There is a conflict between the forces which preserve the organism and the forces which would tend to disrupt it or retard its development, namely between virtu on one side and fortuna on the

of eternal

other. Virtu it

considered as the

is

Everything

in life

external goods

izes

life

strength of a state;

the organized energy which propels the state.

is

is

and

in a state of mobility, not

their possession, but events

to the

wheel of Fortune, which symbol-

inexorable

constant,

Control

change.

come only through knowledge

of

this

of the laws

Therefore, knowing the time and order

regulating

it.

of things

the best guard against the

is

only

them-

Machiavellian concept of reality every-

bound

mobility can

is

power

of Fortune

Principe [The Prince], XXV).

(//

Contrary to the accepted Christian philosophy,

between a steadfast Divine First Cause and variable secondary causes. Sustained good Fortune is an impulse which comes directly from God, whereas rare or intermittent good Fortune can only come from accidental causes. Having assumed the existence of sustained good Fortune as an impulse directly from God, what remains to be explained is the intermittent good Fortune; the only source for the intermittent can be the causa per accidens. The astrological influence of Fate on the individual is not disit

of

Machiavelli denies any providential character to For-

able to the variation

carded because, although

no

face

some

elements which run contrary to the predictable

pattern of cause and effect.

is

the personification of

the unexpected collision with

purpose. Fortune

In

it

still

organism.

thing

regulate

but

between the mobility of human affairs and the ultimate purposes of humanity on this earth, which is the survival of the state as an

selves. In the

also

life,

which one must

of the balance to be maintained

Virtue can regulate the mobility of goods, they can

is

in

life,

oneself, or the

affairs.

under the domain of Fortune, so the mobility of human affairs is under its domain. If Prudence and

goods

is

the influence of Fortune. Machiavelli views Fortune as the

good outside of

only the

happiness

Escape from the

a solution for the contemplative

is

solution for the active

Leon

same

civil

it.

of Fortune through disregard of external posses-

trend,

of mutable goods. Following in the

power, because

attributed to Fate and

considered the handmaid of Fate.

tune; yet in no

Fortune

itself.

way does he deny

Fortune represents

all

the existence of

the external forces

man must learn to work or must overcome. Recognizing that the circumstances which beset man's path are those which are not under his control,

with which a

the struggle which arises

power and the power of view, Fortune

is

the

is

between mans personal

of Fortune.

From man's

power which

point

acts contrary to

and therefore capriciously. Fortune is and vices of men, because those are the failings which beset his progress. Fortune

his

control

identified with the errors

is it

affairs of

considered prevalent in the

men

because

represents a whole set of circumstances against which

a single individual must struggle. Writers prior to Machiavelli had sought ideological solutions to the confrontation

between man and Foron practical solutions

tune. Machiavelli concentrates

235

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM common

based on hard

sense.

Recognizing that the

which man acts is extremely mobile and changeable, and that by the nature of reality these circumstances are mostly bevond man's control, Machiavelli proceeds to show what man can do in a reality

one-sided struggle, as

were. In philosophic terms,

it

man's free will was the one sure weapon against the

man's free will

irrationality of Fortune. In Machiavelli,

which is choice and

acts through his virtu,

determine

to

a

man

Machiavelli assumes that

Cod-given power

his

follow is

it

through.

conditioned bv his

nature to act in a certain way, thereby accepting to

some extent Fortune

or Fate as an impression on the

individual to act regularly in a predictable way. ever,

man

How-

does have the power of choice, and through

power he can control his own nature. That power choice comes from the evaluation of future events

that

of

in their causes,

power

or the

and that evaluation

of reasoning.

is

own

The prudent man can

opposing

man can aim

by the

it.

The

ability to

at

virtu of

conquering

make appropriate

moment is

Fortune

is

rather than

in

Dante's Four-

Commentators (Cambridge, Mass., 1944). A. Doren. Fortuna im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, in Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1922-23, Vol. I (Berlin and Leipzig, 1924). K. Heitmann, Fortuna und Virtus. Eine teenth Century

Studie zu Petrarcas Lebensweisheit (Cologne, 1957). C. Kerr.

"The Idea

of Fortune in

Petrarch to Machiavelli" (Ph.D. 1956). E. VV.

Harvard University,

Mayer, Machiavellis Geschichtsauffassung und

si-m Begriff virtii

(Munich and

ragione e prudenza

Fortuna,

diss..

W.

Humanism from

Italian

Berlin, 1912).

nella

civilta

M. Santoro, del

letteraria

Cinquecento (Naples, 1967). H. A. Wolfson, Religious Philosophy,

A Group

of Essays (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).

VINCENZO CIOFFARI [See also Astrology;

Epicureanism;

Humanism;

Atomism; Causation; Chance; Cycles;

Machiavellism;

Renaissance

Necessity;

Virtii.]

Most important

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

or occasione, because the mobility of events

The concursus causarum

is

cir-

brought under

control. Machiavelli not only does not

The idea

of

human freedom

speculation on this idea.

antedates philosophical

When

philosophers began to

deny the

inquire into the nature and existence of freedom, they

as a signifi-

did not initially think of freedom as an attribute of

cant force in

a man's will. For example, no theoretical discussion

the ability

human affairs. What he does do is to raise of man to withstand and control the forces

of the concept of will appears in the works of Plato,

existence of Fortune, but he recognizes

it

of causality.

and therefore, no

and Chance as parts of the chain of causality in the universe have been analyzed by natural philosophers, they have been incorporated into providential systems by theologians, they have been personified by poets, and they have entered all types of pictorial figurations. The distinctions between the three terms were rigorously outlined by some philosophers and were completely obliterated by others, to the

Nonetheless, Plato had definite ideas regarding the

Fate, Fortune,

extent that

it is

impossible to trace each of the terms

However, the element of the fortuitous is concentrated more on the term Fortune than on either Fate or Chance, particularly because of the personification of Fortune and its elevation to the status of a divinity. Treatises continued to be written on Fate, Fortune, and Chance, treating the element of chance primarily as Fortune; as such the topic pervaded the literatures of western Europe long after the early individually.

236

(Cambridge, Mass., 1940); idem. Fortune

the choice of the propitious

cumstances provides the favorable vantage point of

human

to St.

choices based on

such that only one momentary combination of

attack.

Democritus

Cioffari,

V.

man can conquer Fortune

calculations of events and their effects. in the control of

it

Modern Physics

in

Fortune and

Fate from Thomas Aquinas (New York, 1935); idem, The Conception of Fortune and Fate in the Works of Dante 1957).

fore-

destiny. Symbolically, in the personification

of Fortune,

David Bohm, Causality and Chance (Princeton,

really prudence,

see dangers, forestall them, and thereby gain control of his

BIBLIOGRAPHY

in

humanists.

talk

about the freedom of the

conditions under which a

when

is

A man

free.

is

free

the rational part of his soul governs the other

parts, viz., the feelings

be enslaved by his being.

and

man

will.

and

passions.

his feelings or passions

A man may if

thus

they dominate

Governance by reason produces harmony

justice; in the individual, justice

is

conceived as

the state of the soul in which each part performs only its

proper function

A man is

be

is

in

harmony with

liable to sin

involuntary for no in this state.

tarily for the

if

his soul

is

all

other functions.

unjust; but the sin

man would knowingly choose to just man choose evil volun-

Nor does a

explanation of this choice

is

always

norance. Hence, according to Plato, a person in reason reigns, and

no

who

ig-

whom

possesses knowledge, can

do

evil.

Since a

man

incurs responsibility only for his volun-

tary actions, Aristotle undertakes an ethical and psy-

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

willed

moving principle

if its

is

An

is

un-

reaction to

outside the person,

i.e.,

moral

chological inquiry into the voluntary.

act

the person is acting under compulsion, or if the act can be explained bv reference to the person's igno-

makes two qualifications regarding the second way in which an act can be unwilled: (1) if a man does not regret having performed the act once rance. Aristotle

ignorance

his

is

removed, the act may be said to have

been involuntary rather than unwilled; (2) the ignorance must be about circumstances and consequences,

A man who

not moral principles.

acts contrary to a

is

it,

absolved from the responsibility for

evil.

Since a man's attitude or intention determines moral

good or evil, i.e., virtue or wrong attitude, i.e., judging

vice, the only vice

the

is

that things really are evil.

Hence, resignation or subordination to nature is the It is the attitude demanded by man's reason, which is an emanation of Providence. But, of

correct attitude. course,

man

has

it

within his power to accept or reject

own

the dictates of his

freedom

reason. (This conception of

similar to a conception that appears in

is

moral principle whose truth he refuses to acknowledge is acting willingly (assuming he is not acting under

determinists at several points in the history of philoso-

compulsion or through ignorance of circumstances and consequences) and wickedly (Wheelright, p. 203). If a man chooses to do something out of some desire

necessity,

is

man and he

in the

is,

Choice

e.g.,

e.g.,

do with matters

in

our power whereas desire

any cognitive state

so restricted) or with

is

not

like belief

bad whereas

atti-

some

that

mistaken judgments

object

intrinsically

is

consequence of Stoic doctrine seems to imply a contradiction, however, for a part of nature, man's passionate nature, is being morally condemned.

desirable. This

Some

a desire.

not identical with desire (choice has to

is

has

it

tude of acceptance requires the suppression of passion for these involve

be caused by the actor or agent rather

the recognition of

below of Spinoza.) This

to be. See the discussion

about things,

than some state of the agent,

is

the acceptance of the world as

i.e.,

and emotion,

libertarians will later require for freedom; to wit,

that the act

the idea that freedom

therefore, acting willingly.

Aristotle does not require for voluntariness, therefore,

what

viz.,

princi-

or even a strong or sudden impulse, the ple

moving

phy,

Stoics,

grappling with the inconsistencies and

other problems of their doctrine, attempted solutions. In the third century b.c. Cleanthes, for example, argued that foreordination

by Providence does not imply that

or opinion (choices are

good

are true or

a voluntary act preceded by

Epicurus had previously believed, however, that the

which a desire for some end is transformed into a desire for the means deemed appropriate to that end. Assuming that the chosen act is done willingly, it may be a virtuous or a vicious act. Virtue and vice, therefore, are voluntary. Moreover, a man may be responsible for the ignorance that makes his act unwilled and for the original choices that determined his present character, even if it is not now within

validation of man's sense of freedom requires an in-

false).

It

is

or

beliefs

deliberation in

his

power

to act contrary to his character.

Neither Plato nor Aristotle philosophized about

man's freedom or responsibility entirely

Stoic philosophers confronted

provide

a

satisfactory

by inviolable this issue,

account.

necessarily obeys the order of nature,

conceived entity.

But

as

laws.

The

but failed to

They accepted a

thoroughgoing materialistic determinism

—everything

which was

also

Providence and thought of as a material

this

thoroughgoing,

determinism turns out not to be really for,

although man's actions are deter-

mined, his attitudes and impressions, particularly his evil, are not. Since a man's

judgments about good and attitude or intention

good or does

is

evil,

is

the sole determinant of moral

what happens

to a

man

deterministic world.

or what a

morally neutral. Hence, Providence,

who

man de-

termines what happens in the world rather than man's

He

is

not possible.

introduced into the doctrine

which he accepted, the idea that atoms spontaneously swerve and saw this spontaneity as the basis of a genuine control and direction by a person over his own actions and destiny. As the Epicurean of atomism,

Lucretius

(first

century

b.c.)

expressed

it,

we can

act

atoms of which the mind is composed can swerve minutely, transmitting their motion freely because the to the body.

The

problems

in the light of

that are raised by a conception of the world as a

mechanism governed

an action not performed

first

great Christian philosopher to grapple with

the problem of human freedom in the light of Christian theology was Saint Augustine. Since Christianity imposed certain moral obligations on man, it appeared to follow that man's will must be free. For if man's will is under constraint, God cannot legitimately make demands upon him and then punish him if the demands are not satisfied. The fundamental obligation man is

under, according to Augustine,

is

the obligation to turn

and love God. Hence, man's will is free to turn to or turn away from God. The freedom of the will is evident from the fact that man chooses one or the to

other.

A

will that freely turns

right order.

The man

for this absence

and

from

God

himself, not

God

lacks a certain

God,

is

responsible

cannot, therefore, be

blamed

237

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM moral

for

evil, i.e., for

the lack in the man's will. But

Augustine also maintained that a will cannot have right

A

order without God's grace.

hence a good

will

motivated by love;

is

must be motivated by the love of God, through grace, that implants in man the seeds of man's love of God. A creature without God. But

it

will

is

How

grace will delight in the wrong objects.

man's

then,

will,

if

man depends

free

so completely

is

on

is

goodness on virtually any object because

this

view the object

free to

Spinoza on freedom are strikingly similar, determinism;

unwavering

but

lives, all

of grace.

may

It

is

the ability

is

if

freedom

Once man

not useful without grace.

is

was

Stoics,

human

beings are completely determined and can-

be different from what they

we

often think

implying the absence of causal determination; but this is a consequence of our ignorance of the causes

state

that determined our action or choice. Because the

given

We

are.

are free or choose freely in a sense

belief

the ability to will. But

is

the

their

absurd to suggest that an act of will

not be free

free will

is

and since men do choose throughout men have free will regardless of their

unlike

determinism to the psychological domain. The behavior and mental life not, therefore,

following way. Since free will

Spinoza,

in his application of

of

in the

tone and

in

content, to the ideas of the Stoics. Both accepted

Although it is not entirely clear how Augustine dealt with this apparent conflict, he seems to have resolved to choose

ways.

in different

In the seventeenth century, the views of Benedict

God's grace?

it

was often used

"free will"

believed to be causes,

immune

term

to explain behavior that

to explanation

was

by underlying

Spinoza rejected

this view of the concept. absurd to praise and blame people since

grace, he has the ability to use his free will to attain

Moreover,

union with God. Moreover, the fact that

God knows how man will choose does not negate the freedom of will. To know what a man will do is not to constrain him to do it. God knows how man will

they are and do what they must be and do.

beforehand

rather seek to understand the causes of their actions

freely choose.

Saint

He

also

accepted the reality of

believed, as did Augustine, that man's

ultimate happiness or fulfillment

is

found only

God. they would choose in

If all

men

God

because man's will necessarily chooses what

fully

recognized

this fact,

conceives to be good or desirable.

under

this necessity

two

and

it is

should

mind.

states of

Like the

We

Stoics,

man would two ways: (1) he acquiesce; and (2) he would seek

Spinoza

the wise

felt that

react to universal determinism in

Thomas Aquinas

free will.

The

does not preclude

will's

its

it

being

being free

would, of course,

knowledge of the causes of

his

own

behavior

to understand his position in nature.

on added

The

order

in

latter takes

significance in the light of Spinoza's meta-

physical system.

He

believed that "mind" and "body"

are not the names of distinct substances that jointly

comprise man, but are rather the names of two

differ-

not coercion since

ent ways of conceiving the unitary man. Hence, every

no external agent imposes itself upon the will independent of the will's inclinations. This distinction is

bodily state can be conceived as a mental one, and

for

reasons: (1) the necessity

similar to a distinction that will

is

become

central to the

approach to free will (the view that no incompatibility between determinism and free will) as presented in Hume. As we shall see, Hume

conversely.

The

knowledge of

there

to Spinoza,

is

causation which, he maintains, involves no objective

Although a man must choose what he deems to be good, his judgment that something is good or bad is not necessitated. Hence the freedom of choice is the freedom of judgment that guides the will. necessity. (2)

A

choice

is

free, therefore, if

it

is

the product of

deliberation involving free judgments.

judgment

is

not free because

it

An

animal's

flows from a natural

The factor confers freedom upon the

and causal knowledge, according

expressed in a deductive system where

is

logically, his

emotions will become active,

others, guided

they

by reason

alone.

He

be objective,

will

happy, and free of pettiness. This develop-

also represents an increase in perfection

and

freedom. Spinoza speaks of freedom because, under

man

tively) free of external influence, his states

choose the act he believes to be good, he

ideas will be the results of other ideas,

free to

i.e.,

be generated by mental activity itself. He will pursue his own interests and seek the friendship of

between deliberation and judgment. Each potential act may be viewed by the person under its good aspects or under its bad aspects. Although the person must is

be

will

ment

the lack of a necessary connection

will not

the lack of

depend on one another logically. The bodily is the predominance of passive emotions, emotions like love and hate that reflect the passive reaction to things that conduce to or detract from pleasure or vitality. As a man's intelligence increases and his ideas begin to succeed one another

in rational deliberation that is

causes,

is

aspect of ignorance

resolute,

judgment

man

ideas

instinct rather than rational deliberation.

resultant

ideas of an ignorant

connected logically because ignorance

"reconciliationist"

distinguishes coercion or compulsion from ordinary-

Zoo

confer

he

man's mental and physical aspects, ties resulting

rather from his

own

be (relaand activi-

will

causal activity. His

and

his

emotions

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM and actions

will

be determined by his

activity. In general terms, therefore,

of freedom as self-determinism, not

The views

own mental

Spinoza conceived indeterminism.

Wilhelm Leibniz on freedom bound up with his metaphysical

of Gottfried

are also intimately

outlook. Like Spinoza, he rejected any conception of

freedom based on the assumption that a choice is undetermined (philosophers often call this conception freedom the "liberty of indifference"). Any choice is determined by a combination of nonrational factors, i.e., feelings, together with a rational appraisal whose of

purpose

the selection of the act that appears to be

is

An

for the best.

nent in

its

act

is

free

determination

the predominant

if

is

compo-

the man's reason or intelli-

concludes that the question

swer

a tautology.

is

power

to will

what he

but have

it

in his

Locke fails to see not with whether or not a

in fact wills.

that the concern here

man can

absurd because the an-

is

A man cannot is

what he does will (since he does will A, he can will A), but whether or not he can will what he does not will. For if willing A is the only act of will

will in his

power,

it

looks as

the act

if

not free in

is

some important sense of "free." Locke added a section on the determination of the will to the

Human

second edition of

Understanding

hedonistic

— man's will

is

Essay Concerning

his

psychology

His

(1694).

is

always determined by a state

of uneasiness and, given that he believes this state can

gence. But, according to Leibniz' metaphysical system,

be removed, he will act accordingly,

each individual person's

determined by the relative urgencies of the uneasy

life is

the necessary unravel-

ling of his given nature. Thus, all acts are necessary,

including, therefore, free acts. Leibniz as a "reconciliationist"

because he tried to reconcile

metaphysical theory of necessity with his belief

this in

may be classified

freedom. His task was more

gous task for reconciliationists

Moritz Schlick because the

difficult

than the analo-

David Hume and two denied the exist-

like

latter

ence of objective necessity. In

this regard,

Leibniz

distinguished necessity from compulsion, the latter, of course, being incompatible with freedom, and distinctions

among

physical, moral,

made

different types of necessity (meta-

and

So

reflection,

or the mind's experience of

its

own

knowledge of power, including, of course, the knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the opposite of necessity; but Locke defines a voluntary act as one that is preferred by the agent even if the act is not free, i.e., even if the act is performed necessarily. Will, like freedom, is defined as a power of a person, to wit, the power to will or to perform that act of preference or thought that sometimes gives rise to the preferred act. Since freedom and will are powers of persons, freedom cannot meaningfully be predicated of the will; hence, there is no genuine is

the source of

concept of free

Locke

is

all

forced to concede, however, that the con-

genuine because

cern about free will

is

about the freedom

to will rather

will.

Locke

that a

initially

it is

the concern

than the freedom of

denies this freedom on the ground

man must choose some

making

alternative in a decision-

situation. Realizing that the question does not

concern the freedom to make some choice, but rather the freedom to

make

power

from determining the

a specific choice,

Locke examines

the status of the question, "Is he free to will

A?" He

to prevent desire or uneasiness

But

will.

this turns out not to

be a concession to indeterminism, but rather to those who identify freedom with rational action, e.g., Leibniz. For the interruption of the mechanical workings of the will

is

due to a judgment formed as the and consideration of alternative

result of deliberation

courses of action. Thus, a act he

and

this

from that is

man may

foresee that an

would perform has an undesirable consequence judgment, rather than the uneasiness that to the act, determines the will to refrain

act. In reply to the

charge that a "free-will"

incompatible with a determined

determines the

will,

even

will,

Locke presents

if

reason

his case against

the advocates of the liberty of indifference, arguing that

freedom cannot be conceived

of our judgments to our will.

A

similar to Locke's "free-will"

as the irrelevance

conception of freedom

was

advanced by

also

Rene Descartes. Although the view that determinism

true

is

and

compatible with the existence of free will has been held by a

number of philosophers, contemporary Hume's name, more than any other,

thinkers associate

with

this doctrine.

The

belief that all physical events

that a given physical event

that always caused

will.

being

mechanistic picture, Locke introduced

"free-will" as the

would lead

physical).

John Locke defined freedom as the power a person has to act in accordance with his will. Sense experience does not provide man with a clear idea of any power. activities,

states. Into this

priorities

it

have causes such

must occur

in the past recurs

if

is

the event

a belief that

has equal validity in the psychological sphere. predict

how any human

a complete

background,

knowledge of etc.

psychology, there

Hume

being will behave

no

We

can

we have

his motives, circumstances,

Since determinism is

if

is

true even in

liberty of indifference.

But

agreed with Locke that the existence of such

would not be worthwhile anyway. A man who would not be a genuinely responsible agent. It would be pointless, for example, to liberty

had

this sort of liberty

239

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM blame

praise or

this

man.

for,

since his actions are not

regularly connected with his motives, reinforcing or inhibiting certain motives will have no effect.

man

over, a

More-

held responsible for those acts that

is

character rather than his casual or unpre-

reflect his

The

noumena,

as

time and, hence, free from ordinary determination by

we do not know human beings noumena, they must be noumena to be free. Man

no room

to

latter two, unlike the former,

for the liberty of indifference.

The freedom we do have is the power to act or not to act, depending upon our decision. As Hobbes and Spinoza had pointed out. all human beings possess this power whenever no external impediments stand in their way or whenever they are not being constrained to act in a certain way by an external force. Later add certain internal constraints, e.g., psychological compulsions like kleptomania, to the list of impediments to liberty. reconciliationists will

freedom

Finally,

because a free act

is is

agent, in other words, his

determined by a decision that

A

determined by the operative motives.

is itself

by

compatible with determinism

own

is

free

one whose acts are caused

volitions rather than external sources. Rec-

is

to the free willin

as

noumenon

is

as

free.

we

cannot be conscious of freedom,

tells us only what what must always be or ought always be the case, moral laws must originate in man's

the case, not

"pure practical reason,"

i.e.,

his reason as

Hence

empirical inclinations.

transcending

a rational being

who

acknowledges the moral law must acknowledge that his will is being determined by his practical reason and this

is

A

freedom.

moral agent must, therefore, con-

ceive of himself as free. Man, however,

and

natural,

that

may

is

both rational

and

he. therefore, has natural inclinations

conflict

with the dictates of reason. His expe-

rience of morality, therefore,

an experience of

is

obli-

gation to the moral law within his deeper "noumenal" self.

Freedom, in fact, is the essence of morality. For if freedom is determination of the will by the laws of its own reason, then freedom is autonomy, legislation of the

Immanuel Kant

man

implies freedom. Since experience

by the

of

determined;

we

Although

of heated philosophical debates.

The approach

is

as

can be conscious of the moral law and the moral law

onciliationism has been and continues to be a subject

determinism problem has reconciliationist aspects

beings

events. Although

phenomenon

acts.

Human

as things-in-themselves, are outside

i.e.,

do not give us insight into the enduring personality and character traits that form the basis of judgments of responsibility. Hence, responsibility requires a regular connection between character and action that leaves meditated

self for

the

moral law

self.

is:

And one

of Kant's formulations

act according to the principle that

rational beings are lawgivers to themselves,

autonomous.

If

human

i.e.,

as

beings do not create the laws

that he wishes to deny neither. Determinism or the view that all events are caused certainly holds in the

they obey, they might be bound to them by an interest

empirical world, including the psychological domain

heaven), in which case morality would not be truly

of inner experience. Like

many

Kant was not disturbed by the

of his predecessors,

notion

is

not genuine freedom.

Freedom does involve

the absence of external constraints. Hence, is

free,

are

its

real. i.e.,

it

is

if

man's will

neither subject to external constraints nor

decisions determined by chance,

i.e.,

by nothing

Freedom, therefore, must be self-determination, its own laws. These

determination of the will by

laws are not natural laws,

enced events,

i.e.,

laws governing experi-

for such external determination

compatible with freedom. Experience

tells

man's decisions are often governed solely by

is

in-

us that

his desires

and inclinations, and, on that level, he is not free. Hence, Kant does not agree with those reconciliationists

who

say that freedom

is

ordinary determi-

God's laws might be obeyed

(e.g.,

in

order to go to

unconditional and necessary.

Many

determinism

fact that

precludes the liberty of indifference, for the latter

philosophers have rejected as unintelligible

Kant's attempt to preserve both freedom and deter-

minism. Since the rational determination of the will man qua noumenon is always in accordance with

of

morality,

it is

not clear

why men

act immorally. Pre-

sumably, they act immorally because they are determined to do so by their desires and inclinations. But then onlv moral acts are free and people ought never to

be blamed, therefore, for their immoral

since every it is

human

act

is

determined. Hence,

acts. Also,

part of the empirical world, all

free acts are determined.

Now, how can man qua noumenon

freely determine

the will to perform a specific act that

necessitated

it is

by antecedent conditions to perform? Nineteenth-century idealists tended to be

and

libertarians

good

nation by desires. Freedom, therefore, must be a special

on the

type of causality or determination. As stated above, experience tells us that

example. (A libertarian identifies man's freedom with his ability to interpose himself into the causal order

human

beings are subject to determination by natural law. But this

240

language, as phenomena.

or, in Kant's

conclusion

judging

is

formed from the vantage point of

human beings as

empirical occurrences in time

by

free-will question,

F.

H. Bradley

directly causing a decision or act.

The

is

a

decision or

not caused by some state of or occurrence within

act

is

the

self, e.g.,

a desire or belief, but by the

self directly.

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM Hence, not

all

occurrences are caused by antecedent

conditions, states, or occurrences. Kant

not exactly

is

a libertarian because he did not view self-determination as

incompatible with ordinary determination.) Bradley,

like

many

rejected the liberty of

reconciliationists,

indifference. If a man's choice proceeds not at his motives,

he

is

an

idiot rather

all

from

than a responsible

knowledge of

possible source of the

self-activity.

He

Kant that the experience may be delusive. Unlike Kant, however, Campbell is a genuine also agrees with

libertarian because he maintains that self-activity

is

incompatible with determinism.

The major

difference

between Bradley and Campbell self and character.

has to do with the relation between

that enable prediction of a man's character

For Bradley, man is free because the creation of character by the self cannot be understood determinis-

available at birth, determinism too

tic-ally.

agent.

If,

on the other hand, determinism requires laws from data is

incompatible with

The dilemma is resolved by the concept The accountability of an individual for a

responsibility.

of the

self.

past act requires an abiding

self,

since the

did the act must be identical with the

man who man held

accountable. Hence, responsibility requires a concept

more than a stream of changing and experiences. The determinist, who seeks laws

A man

accountable, therefore, for acts that

is

flow from his formed character. For Campbell self and

character are

less

create character; or dismay. in a

If

intimately connected. Self does not

"watches"

it

creation with delight

its

a man's character disposes

way his self views as immoral,

when

the self over-

a decision in favor of duty. Only

states

rides character or lets character override

fore ignores the thus,

self.

The

self's

creation of

not completely determined even

is

its

can be predicted from a knowledge of

Even

character. self

in the case of

can always change

character,

a man's acts

if

formed

his

a formed character, the

and thereby thwart the

it

determinist.

In the twentieth century, the position of the logical

on the free-will problem, viz., reconsway for a number of years. Moritz Schlick, for example, argued that the concern about freedom and responsibility arises from the confused assumption that laws of nature compel or necessitate human beings to behave in certain ways, when in fact these laws just describe what people actually do. Schlick enumerates the typical reconciliationist position: (1) freedom is the absence of compulsion; (2) freedom actually requires, rather than precludes determinism freedom as the liberty of indifference is nei-

Campbell

free.

is

it is

the

man

forced to maintain, therefore, that

a man's moral outlook

way

to act

may produce

of the self as something

connecting these various states and experiences, there-

him

the self

not determined in the ordinary

is

which his character traits are determined. Most contemporary philosophers conceive of freedom as the power or ability to choose (or act) differently from the way a person actually chooses (or acts). There has been a great deal of debate, therefore, on the meaning of: "He could have acted otherwise." in

positivists

Reconciliationists, like P. H. Nowell-Smith, argue that

ciliationism, held

the expression can be analyzed hypothetically,

—

ther real nor desirable;

(3)

determinism

is

compatible

with responsibility because the imputation of responsibility requires

only that the man's motives for doing

"He would have acted (or chosen) to."

differently

if

This hypothetical statement

ent with determinism because

was determined by his Campbell and others reject

actual desires or choices.

hypothetical analyses in favor of analyses (categorical) that

make freedom incompatible with determinism.

Many contemporary ciliationism

room

philosophers reject both recon-

and libertarianism and yet claim

for freedom.

They

conception of freedom as action caused by desire and the libertarian conception of self-activity.

outstanding

iationism.

Mill

representative

of

is

per-

reconcil-

and Schlick agree on fundamental

doctrine. Mill does, however, emphasize the fact that

we can

often modify our character

so, a fact

whose recognition

if

we

wish to do

constitutes the feeling of

C. A. Campbell has argued for libertarianism against Schlick's reconciliationism.

a real difference

but

insists

He concedes

that there

is

between causation and compulsion,

nonetheless that freedom

is

incompatible

with causation. Freedom requires self-causation and, like

explicable in

ways. As movement,

Kant, Campbell cites moral experience as the

two

They view

radically different

subject to ordinary determi-

it is

some behavior can be understood as action, as something done. Although the movement of a man's arm can be deterministically accounted for in terms

nation. But

of physiological conditions, the explanation of the fact that a

man

raised his

arm

planation. In fact,

it

terms of his desires,

in

purposes, and intentions,

moral freedom.

to find

reject the reconciliationist

human behavior as

the

consist-

possibility that his actual act

of rewards and punishments. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill

is

does not preclude the

it

the action be amenable to change by the introduction

haps

e.g.,

he had wanted

is

makes no sense

ministic account of action.

beliefs,

not a deterministic ex-

The

to request a deter-

libertarian concedes

to the determinist the possibility that all actions are

determined and then argues that some, the ones caused by the self, are not. According to A. I. Melden, a representative of this approach, this concession

is

a

241

— FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY The determinist who

mistake.

human

action

is

applies his doctrine to

guilty of conceptual confusion.

Melden's position

is

For

strikingly similar to Kant's.

phenomenal world,

mined; and

in

which case

may be conceived

it

noumenal world,

in

which case it determined

an arm movement

is

movement, and

if

free

deter-

is

it

of as part of the

For Melden

free.

is

if

conceived of as

And both

conceived of as action.

agree with the libertarian against the reconciliationist that

man

cannot be conceived as

(albeit quite special)

if

we

just a natural object

him

are to view

as free.

To

call

it

BIBLIOGRAPHY Thomas Aquinas.

Ethics, trans.

worth, 1955), Book Earlier

iugustine,

III.

Thomas

Basic Writings of Saint

(New J.

The Thomson (Harmonds-

York, 1945). Aristotle,

A. K.

Saint Augustine.

Writings,

trans.

On H.

J.

Free Will,

in

Burleigh

S.

(Philadelphia. 1955). F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies London,

No.

1927..

C. A. Campbell, In Defence of Free Will

1.

(Glasgow, 1938). Jonathan Edwards. Freedom of the Will, ed.

P.

Libertij

Ramsey (New Haven, 1957). Thomas Hobbes, Of and Necessity, in The English Works of Thomas

Hobbes, ed.

Sir

William Molesworth, 5

(London,

vols.

and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (New York, 1961). David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York, 1955), Sec. VIII. William James, "The Dilemma of Determinism," in The Will to Believe (1897; New York, 1839-45), Vols. IV, V. Sidney Hook, ed.. Determinism

192L. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. W. Beck (Chicago, 1949). G. W. Leibniz, Selections, ed.

L.

Philip

Wiener (New

P.

Concerning

(New

Human

York, 1959), Vol.

Free Action

(New

York, 1951). John Locke,

An

Essay

Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser, 2 vols. I,

Book

II,

Ch. XXI. A.

York, 1961). John Stuart Mill,

I.

Melden,

An Exami-

nation of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (London, 1867), Ch. XXVI. P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (Harmondsworth, 1954), Chs.

XIX, XX. Plato, The Republic, trans. F. M. York, 1945). Moritz Schlick,

Comford (London and New

Problems of Ethics, trans. D. Rynin (New York, 1939), Ch. VII. Benedict Spinoza, Ethics, ed. J. Gutmann (New York, 1949). Philip Wheelright, Aristotle

(New

York, 1951).

BERNARD BEROFSKY [See also Evil;

Necessity;

Freedom; Indeterminacy;

Newton on Method;

Justice; Nature;

Positivism in the Twentieth

Century; Right and Good; Stoicism.]

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY

is

that

it

something

is

sonal doing.

up

in its full

and personal sense;

such insofar as

it

is

voluntary.

voluntary, or the expression of will,

It is

less

it

is

to

— to exclude the suggestion

than a piece of genuine per-

a further point of refinement, to take

will, the voluntariness of

voluntary action, and to

which is free, from one which is not; a man may act with conscious intention to do what he does, and yet not seem to merit the distinguish an exercise of

it

description of being a free agent.

no

will has

it

The

assertion of free

significance, except in relation to is

some

intended to exclude. The force of the

term has varied, and

Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis

Nicomachean

taken

negate a negation about

constraint

Saint

is

for personal action

Kant a man's decision may be conceived of as part of the

so long as action

still

does vary, with predominant

and it is this which makes the history of the notion. The notion of freedom as such plainly derives from the distinction between the freeman and the slave. So long as freedom of will is simply equated with freedom of status, no point of philosophical interest arises; freemen are men who do what they like, slaves are men who do what they are told. But reflection will suggest that in many things slaves do what they choose, and in some things freemen are liable to constraint, being subject (for example) to kings. Nor can kings themselves do whatever they wish; they must obey the gods, or suffer the consequences. The development of legal practice leads to systematic thought on the topic. A man is not to be held accountable for actions which were not his own. The slave's action under orders is his master's. But equally on occasion a freeman might be coerced to act against his will; whose, then, is the action, and whose the responsibility? Sophistic Doctrine. An early Greek philosophical position regarding freedom was the simple denial of all intrinsic limitations upon the pursuit of voluntary aims. Moral convention and social structure are mere conveniences of life, and can be made the instruments of masterminds who know how to get outside them and to manipulate them. Such was, or was said to be (e.g., by Plato, Republic 336b ff.) the doctrine of certain fifth-century Greek Sophists who claimed to teach well-placed young men the art of success in public life. In opposition to this doctrine, Socrates and Plato shifted attention from external to internal constraint from the rub between one's own will and one's neighbor's to the rub between one's reason and one's passion or appetite. A man's true self was his Reason; to be free was to rule one's passions; it was no true freedom to make one's fellowmen the instruments of mindless interest in various types of constraint;

variation

appetite, or of exorbitant ambition.

"Free will"

is

to

be defined

in general as intentional

action uninhibited, or alternatively as the

242

act.

The

power

so to

idea of will adds nothing to the idea of action,

Plato

and

Aristotle. In the Republic Plato boldly

inverted the historical order.

The

of inward sovereignty does not

philosophical notion

arise

through the

inte-

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY riorization of political relations;

men

about:

it

is

way

the other

acknowledge political sovereignty through

recognizing the intrinsic right of Reason to rule

first

— "the State

and then accepting sovereignty in the as the outward individual writ large"

embodiment

of the

their souls,

litical

—

sovereignty

in the individual,

same Reason (Republic 534d). Po-

is to be valued as supporting Reason and keeping it on its throne. We are

we

not enslaved by a genuine exterior sovereignty; liberated by

Here

it.

is

are

the beginning of that famous

philosophical paradox, that a right choice of service is

even

hope

if

lies

rather in conditioning the next gener-

was

ation than in self-culture. Such an attitude

natural,

considering that the whole discussion arose out of a critique of city-state

life.

Reason was to prevail by

being socially projected, and embodied

above

all in

in institutions,

schools.

Aristotle lived to see the collapse of city-state au-

tonomy; but the cultural mission of his pupil, the all-conquering Alexander, was still conceived as the planting of Greek self-governing cities the world over, to drill

men

made some

into rational freedom. Plato

the only freedom.

concession to the individual's aspiration after the free-

The model

dom

cal.

or parable exploited by Plato is hierarchiSuppose a household presided over by a master

capable of finding the path of right reason for himself

and the other members of it, while they have no such capacity. If he lets himself be run by his inferiors, he will be enslaved and they (through the resulting chaos) will be unhappy. If he maintains control he will be free, and they will be both outwardly well-circumstanced and inwardly content, for they can feel the

even though

intrinsic Tightness of rational direction,

to save his soul,

One's effort it

might

by the myth of transmigration.

in this life

suffice to

might not take one

enable one to

make

far;

such an embodiment or destiny in one's next to allow of one's

but

the choice of life,

as

going further (Republic 617e).

Later Greek Philosophers. The progressive over-

shadowing of

city

autonomy by monarchical empire

Alexander provided a soil for Stoicism, a philosophy which both made the individual the captain of after

his soul,

and

same time related

at the

his strenuous

the position

self-government to the governing mind of the Universe.

of the rational self in relation to the passions or appe-

It was still the ideal, to let Reason rule; but Reason was now seen as embodied in the Universal Order, the recurrent cycle of world-process. Since the cycle must fulfill its pattern, and universal Reason (of which the individual's reason is but a function) must prevail, the new problem is theoretically posed, of the relation between the individual's exercise of freedom, and the

they cannot find tites.

it

Such

for themselves.

is

Reason persuades passion; passion merely over-

bears reason (Republic 548b, 554b-d).

him

Plato and after

Aristotle introduced several

refinements into the doctrine in their progressive realization of the necessity for reason to train the passions

themselves, and to take them into partnership as fellow

remained that

initiators of right intentions. It

essential

freedom was the freedom of thoughtfulness to find the right path; particular and practical choice was to be seen as general reason finding expression under given circumstances.

good

ciples of

A man had life,

no freedom to invent prin-

for they

were

down

laid

in the

nature of things. Free thought would lead to agreement

about the Good, as

it

would lead

to

agreement

in

operation of a universal, rational necessity. The solution lay in the doctrine of Relaxation is

official

— though

it

the Universal Reason which functions as our rational

mind, the

it

relaxes

its

mere rudiment

starting-point finds

operation in us to what of actual rationality; its

level in us

by and

is

(initially)

and from that

as

our personal

or free endeavor. So far from feeling himself oppressed

by the World- Reason, the Stoic embraced

Cosmic

it

con amore

mathematics (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106b). To be rational, then, is to be free. But does it lie

and, by willing in the line of

within a man's power to be rational? Does effort of

the spirit of this ethos, see Marcus Aurelius, passim.)

and

If one asked whether the sinner or fool could resist Cosmic Destiny, one was put off with such sayings as that God leads good will by the hand and drags recalcitrance by the hair. In practice a man was offered

will suffice to bring the passions into line? Plato

Aristotle

make no such unequivocal

claim.

They

discuss

the psychology of struggles for self-mastery (Plato,

Republic 439e

ff.,

Phaedrus 246ff.

;

Aristotle

Nicom.

that

freedom which

is

escape from

all

Will, enjoyed

frustration. (For

show how ruinously our very what good can be perverted by an judgment of is ill-formed character (Nicom. Ethics 1113a). They feel

the choice of being the victim of fate or the partner

no concern to enquire whether or not every soul that

so in a strictly pantheist system.

Ethics 1145-47); they

is

capable of hearing the philosophical gospel

is

capa-

ble also of winning her interior battle and finding felicity.

power

Their concern of

Reason

moralizing

human

as

is

rather to vindicate the free

such to perform

existence. It

is

its

function of

a hopeful enterprise,

of providence;

how men could have

such a choice was,

no doubt, theoretically insoluble and must always be

The contemporary

rival to Stoicism, the

School of

Epicurus, taught an out-and-out libertarian individ-

ualism (Diogenes Laertius, X. 133-34).

The philosopher

shook from his shoulders both the burden of politics

and the burden of cosmic

destiny,

and pursued an

243

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY amiable, cultured

own

life at his

sweet

under the

will,

leadership of the laudable and tranquil emotions.

It

must surprise the modern reader to observe that Epicurus supported his doctrine of freedom by a strict atomic materialism. Everything, including the soul,

a

is

human

chance constellation of atoms. But he does we do what the atoms make us do."

not conclude "So

He

"Our choices are ours

insists,

planation of the paradox

to

make." The exwere not

that the ancients

is

obliged to view the movements of matter as the realm it was that imposed Cosmic Reason, leave matter to itself,

Neo-Platonic deity

not seen as the Judge of men's

is

fixing their eternal destiny

souls,

merit; and so there

no urgency

is

according to their enquiry about

in the

the degree of a man's personal responsibility for his

character or attitudes.

men

If

are wise and holy, they

are wise and holy; they can be influenced towards such a desirable state, and their

The absolute

help.

own

been expected of any one

choices or resolves will

how much

question,

soul, has

could have

no practical impor-

who

of inflexible regularity. Reason

tance.

order; be rid of

himself placed before the bar of the Eternal Judge.

and there might be scope for the self-determination of a soul which atoms had transiently blown together. Epicureanism proved to be a deviation which was

The settlement

not followed up.

of world-empire in

Roman dominion and

the seemingly everlasting

the

toward divine monarchy favored a philosophical development building on Stoic foundations, but tending towards an elevation of infiltration of oriental attitudes

the

Supreme

Principle into an absolute transcendence

over the world. Neo-Platonism, as is

called,

reached maturity

this

in the third

development century a.d.

viewed the human soul

as an emanation from the universal being rather than as a part or function of it. it allowed a more intelligible

Insofar as the system

basis for the substantial distinctness of the

human agent

freedom to determine his own relation to the Divine. Emanation proceeded in a cascade of descending steps, and man embraced within his being an epitome of nature's sinking scale, from spirit above

and so

to

for his

mere matter below. He had

in his faculty of desire

another thing for the Christian

is

It

sees

But while on the one side biblical theism sharpened the sense of a free choice of will determining one's salvation or perdition, on another side

The God

question.

of the Bible

eign will, the creator of of

men by

will

all

it

called

it

in

conceived as sover-

things by

How

interposition.

is

fiat,

and the savior

then can the creature's

be anything but the instrument of the Creator's,

and how can the salvation of the elect be the work of any but God? Neo-Platonism conceived of God not as sovereign will, but as supreme perfection; less perfect beings were the outfall and overspill of his being, not the creatures of his will. He was their savior only in the sense that

he was their true Good, and that

without the pull of his attraction, no one would aspire after him.

tion

But equally

would have no

if

one did not

On

effect.

aspire, the attrac-

these terms

it

was

scarcely meaningful to ask whether the turning of a soul to

God was

Augustine

felt

its

work

or

his.

able to save man's free will on the

side of the Creatorship of

God. The Creator had chosen

freedom of choice essentially lay one love or another, and supremely with love for the Supreme. Christendom. It was as a doctrine of free will that

on his human creature much such a free will as Neo-Platonism taught, for had not he created man in his own image? But on the side of Redemption no such concession could be made. Redemption was a rescue of the perishing, a sheer seizure of minds in-

Neo-Platonism was embraced bv Saint Augustine at

capable of loving

God

the turn of the fourth to the

Though created

free to love

a corresponding scale of "loves," each with affinity for its

own

in

the

objects. His

power

to identify himself with

him deliverance from Manichaeism. In

fifth

century.

It

afforded

the crude heresy of Christian

common

with other forms of Gnos-

ticism this sect attributed the genesis of

mankind

to a

cosmic defeat by which elements of "light" were captured and enmeshed in "darkness." The Neo-Platonic in which to appear good creation. By a shift man, created in the divine

psychology gave arms to Augustine

champion

as the

of God's

in the level of his love,

image, had become the author of his

Being

free,

own

degradation.

he had misused the power of choice (Con-

So

far,

Augustine was

all

for free will.

trary or accidental in

emphases

in

He was

soon

There was nothing arbihis change of front. There were biblical and Christian theism

to face in another direction.

special

to confer

through their

own

act or choice.

God, man had

lost that

freedom by his disobedience or irreligion. Mankind, apart from the grace of salvation, was sick or corrupt; it needed to be restored or healed by God, before it regained freedom to love God. Fallen

man might

in-

deed exercise free choice in the pursuit of such objectives as he was capable of loving; he could not give himself the higher love. Restored by grace, he would choose freely on

all levels,

redeemed condition et litera,

De

still

except insofar as his un-

hung about him (De

spiritu

natura et gratia).

Augustine's teaching provoked vigorous reactions

fessions vii 3-21).

244

which tipped the balance of the Neo-Platonic system.

from Christians who feared it would enervate spiritual effort. It would be wiser, said Pelagius and Julian, to see in salvation God's provision of indispensable means, means which it lay in the free choice of man to employ

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY or to neglect. Augustine rejected that doctrine as in-

omnipotent grace with creaturely free

adequate to the Christian facts and as conducive to

cushioned.

spiritual pride.

We

do not reach out our hands and us.

The controversy

God had

eternally predes-

take salvation; salvation takes

drove him into extremes. tined will

whom

was

he would elect

None who

irresistible.

tion, indeed,

were denied

and

to salvation

his

saving

truly aspired to salva-

but their aspiring was by

it;

God's predestination and grace. Augustine carried the day against Pelagianism, but

human

the sharp paradox of

and divine

responsibility

predestination was found difficult to live with and was

is

which the

fallen will

a treatise

Of

an unmerited

will

is

un-

towards

gift

can do nothing. Luther wrote

the Will Enslaved (De servo arbitrio,

1525); Calvin carried the speculation of predestination

unexampled extremes (Instituta, iii 21-23; definitive 1559). Beaction was not slow to follow; on the part of the Catholic Church it was immediate (Council of Trent, 1545-63). Within the Calvinist confession Arminius led the revolt. Strict Calvinism has since been reasserted by one reform after another, but on balance to

ed..

has lost ground.

(e.g.,

Aquinas,

Modern Physicalism. Meanwhile a totally different come to the fore and defined the freewill question as it is now commonly understood. This is the

Theologica, prima secundae Quaest.

cix-CJriv).

issue raised

soon qualified by the Church. The Scholastics of the high Middle Ages elaborated a subtle account of the

cooperation of free will with grace

Summa

Salvation

issue has

by the development of

scientific materi-

But the balance of interest for them was somewhat

alism. If the activity of the

by their adoption of a Xeo-Aristotelianism drawn from Muhammadan sources. The system derived from Islam an overwhelming concern with the absolute

body were mechanical uniformity, how can the apparent freedom of choice be real? Atomistic materialism had been a school of Greek speculation but, as we have seen in the case of Epicurus, carried no necessarily deter-

shifted

sovereignty of the Creator's will over

and

The human

events.

all

created things

agent, like every other crea-

was a secondary cause instrumental to the sole cause, God. The Christian philosophers

ture,

primary

labored to find a place for free will under the

all-

God ^ibid.,

pars

determining and all-foreseeing mind of prima, qu. xiv

art.

created system, says

qu.

13,

xxii

art.

Thomas Aquinas,

Within the

4).

there are chances

genuinely open to the choice exercised by

human

will;

finite cause.

decision

human

But that does not stand

in the

free

any other

as real a cause as

is

way

of our

acknowledging the whole svstem, including the human volitions It is

it

contains, as the effect of divine ordination.

a superstition to suppose that a divinely ordained

effect

must operate by a process of mechanical deter-

mination rather than by one of free choice.

be misleading, then, to say that I

It

freely decided, since there

remains that

I

was going

surely be objected that it

is

to

would do what

It

was bound to no binding in the case. do what I did. It must

I

a harmless tautology,

if this is

does not give reality to God's prior causality; while

if it is

so understood as to

do

this, it

to a subjective illusion. Freely as

be toeing a predetermined

reduces free choice

we may

act,

The Protestant Beformation

shall

rejected the subtleties

of Scholastic Aristotelianism together with

physical preoccupations.

we

line.

The

interest of

its

meta-

Luther and

movements

to the is

is

now

and

his

its

uncompromisingness.

seen as a commentator on Saint Paul simply,

Xeo-Platonic overtones are

eignty of the divine will

is

lost.

The

sover-

conceived as decisive power

rather than as self-fulfilling

Good and

the collision of

is

The parentage

of

geared

that

it

scientific

rather to be found in astronomical

was an ancient and a medieval commonplace movements of the heavenly bodies were mathematically exact and ideally predictable. Supposing the "influences" of the stars upon the causality of earthly that the

events to be determinative, subject to fate.

It

was easy

human

actions will be

to refute the

argument by

pointing out that the effect of astral influence was highly general; different earthly agents reacted to

Summa

and men

it

might choose (Aquinas, Theologica, prima, qu. cxv). But now the hy-

variously,

as they

pothesis of the mathematical physicists

was

that earthly

bodies were composed of constellated atoms or of

which the motions and mutual influences and as predictable as those of the stars. Physical fate seemed to have descended from the skies, and so closed in upon us as to leave no escape. No conclusion could have been more unwelcome or more out of tune with the times. The new science was the expression of humanist self-assertion, of the resolve of strong minds to make all events, however unpromisvortices, of

were

ing,

as mathematically exact

subject

tion

in all

is

if

studies. It

which they reasserted

sharpened, insofar as Augustine

implications.

ministic

determinism

method

is

of a physical body, and

a system operating by rules of perfect and as

Calvin reverted to Augustine's position on salvation, Indeed, the paradox

human person

to

human

calculation or control.

The

was the voluntary invenof experimental tests and the forcing of them upon of physical enquiry

Nature; besides, as Descartes pointed out in his Meditations that

(i,

iv, vi), it

was only by a constant

act of will

one could hold the mathematico-phvsical hvpoth-

esis itself in face of the

senses.

What

contrary suasions of one's five

could be more preposterous, therefore,

245

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY than to

make

the will to intellectual world conquest

mechanism

the prisoner or even the creature of the it

postulated? Descartes deserves the highest credit for

the firmness with which he held to both sides of the duality of free

and

mind or

for the honestv

will

and of determinate matter;

with which he admitted his

in-

mind-

ability to construe the operative unity of the

knowledge of things

Kant's solution

agnosticism. His

German

them-

as they are in

a rational and systematic

is

successors attempted

more

by advancing bold metaphysical speculations concerning the subjective and the objecanswers

positive

poles

tive

of

existence

(Fichte,

Schelling,

Hegel,

Schopenhauer).

body person. There were thinkers who took the desperate course of deriving free will, e.g., Hobbes or Spinoza; they were violently disliked by their contem-

but do not need to go

poraries.

agnosticism. For the progress of the natural sciences

The Cartesian ity of

position treated thought as the activ-

a spiritual subject and found the immediate effect

of will in the formation of mental decisions.

How

the

clockwork body came to register or execute such decisions was beyond comprehension; all one could study

on that side was the mechanism through which

it

did

so. For practical purposes such a division of the ground was not inconvenient, and people could laugh at the rage for consistency which led George Berkeley to rid himself of dualism by reducing material objects to "ideas," thus making will or spirit the sole substance,

agent, or cause, subject only to the higher will of God.

was a more

when

the proved fruitbegan to suggest that its methods and basic conceptions were the models for all factual science, including psychology. It was then not merely a matter of squaring a freely-choosing mind with its mechanistically-conceived embodiment; it was It

serious matter

fulness of experimental physics

a matter of squaring an experienced exercise of free-

dom

in the

mind with

a causal explanation of mental

David

Hume who

first

in his Treatise of

academic

circles that

to thinking

it

is

still

It

on English-

spell

widely held in

an empiricist logic

distilled

from

phenomena

thought about matters of

and to

fact;

bound

Kant, in his two

and

to

Hume

first

that

we

to

shown by the

to exercise free

moral law.

scientist's

model

machine. Nature is by knotting themselves

in

combinations of increasing

elaborateness develop astonishing

new

properties of

and so a physical basis for free consciousness becomes less starkly inconceivable. The Human Sciences. The decreased urgency of the problem on the physical side in the present century has been balanced by increased pressure from histori-

joint action;

cal, social,

and psychological science. However little may be of attaining the mathe-

capable these sciences

matical rigor pursued in physical enquiry, they disclose a deep and complex conditioning of the individual

by

background, environment, and subconscious makeup, such as threatens to reduce the exercise of genuine choice to

trivial

proportions. Several thinkers have

been impressed by the predominant effect of one factor or another: Marx by the pressure of economic needs and of the current system for coping with them; Freud

or function. Self-creation. In the face of such considerations

men

have looked in opposite directions for a vindication of significant free decision.

A new and

historicized

version of the Stoic creed calls on us to identify ourselves with the

march

of historical process

should vainly hope to cut ourselves

from which

off;

so let us

on. Such, broadly,

Newton

such

is

the attitude of Marxists today, and, in effect,

Critiques,

conceded

to

are forced to think deterministi-

human mind. Reality is not such, as fact that we know ourselves called our power so to do

in favor of the

fits

actual order of nature lies (Kant thought)

comprehension; what

The

no longer the simple man-made seen as a complex of forces, which

is

it

and responsible choices

How

task.

Kant's scientific

lead

and mental processes, when making them an object of study; but Kant also maintained that our need so to think is an inescapable limitation of the

way with

be attempted. Immanuel

cally about both physical

is

the

themselves has eased their of physical reality

we

sense inescapable.

Solutions were

all

heritance of ancestral archetypes of personal relation

its

this

is binding upon all and that its applicability behavior makes determinism in some

the study of physical

on the abstract

Xature (1739). His subtle

thought continues to exercise speaking philosophers, and

of free will insist

by the twists of emotional attitude formed in us during one helpless immaturity; Jung by the individual's in-

rubbed the sore of

Human

was

Modern defenders

or diagrammatic character of our scientific knowledge

problem

experience in terms of invariant regularities.

246

attaining the selves.

we can

understand

in

with the

beyond our is

that the

very form of our cognitive processes prevents their

was the

attitude of Hegel;

the

Western optimists who are content to back momentum of scientific and technological advance.

By

contrast, several schools of existentialism

of those

forward a parody of Augustinianism

—our

have put acknowl-

edged conditionedness by factors of all kinds is a state of subhumanity from which we must be raised into authentic existence by deciding for ourselves what we will be and do. Kierkegaard and the religious existentialists

see the challenge to self-creation as the chal-

lenge to determine your existence in the face of God; Sartre

and the

atheists see

it

as the challenge to

be

FREE WILL IN THEOLOGY God

to yourself

The

— there being

embrace

call to

Cod

no other

for you.

and the

historical destiny

call

however seemingly opposed, modern belief in the The ancients saw free will as

action-style speech, so far

common

from being an oddity,

is

form. In the case of your talking choice, or

Insofar as thought later turned in a theistic direction,

in view of an opinion of you do not explicitly state it, you still take for granted. Indeed, your making of your choice is a virtual affirmation of the facts in view of which you make it. Voluntary decision to act upon (supposed) facts will often be taken as a more serious

human

assertion of those facts than a direct statement of them.

to exercise self-creation,

equally exemplify a distinctively

openness of the future.

freedom to

human

the determinate requirements of

fulfill

nature,

human

nature being a fixed quantity.

became a God-given form, articulated commands, and oriented towards God, the immutable living perfection. Even Kant, with his passion for moral autonomy, was still viewing free will as power to impose upon one's conduct a law written into the very structure of one's mind. The two sucnature

in divine

ceeding centuries have dissolved the

fixity

of the

human

aim. Romanticism popularized the conception of the

creator of the unique and allowed the indi-

artist as a

common

spoken option, you choose facts or events, which,

if

you did make the mere statement,

If

it

would be

in

event-style form.

Or

take the case in which you are simply describing

It remains true that you do the describing, and you go about it as you choose, talking backwards, forwards, or across the event-

events or their interrelations.

word and

process you describe, picking one

And

another.

rejecting

wish to understand your speech,

I

for the causes of the vocal inflections,

I

if

I

epoch to be seen as an unique invention. Historicism showed the degree to which what passed for human nature had been a cultural product changing with the times.

do not look

Evolutionism suggested the mutability in principle of

do both. To understand you as speaking I must understand the facts you state and to understand the facts

vidual

the

life

human

or even the

life

of an

and technology has seemed to put means of transforming our existence

species,

into our hands the

beyond recognition. In consequence, freedom of will is seen as no longer limited in scope to the fulfillment of human nature, but as the power and the responsibility, whether corporate or individual, to determine in some measure the very nature we are to express.

The

Linguistic Philosophy.

linguisticism

now

pre-

dominant in American and British academic philosophy offers no contribution, perhaps, to the development of the free will idea; but it offers a fresh approach to the free will-determinism issue, seeing of adjusting to one another

it

as a question

two modes

of speech,

through a careful study of the natural uses proper to

We

each.

look to your expressive intention. Whereas, to under-

stand what you are talking about,

you

state

I

must understand you

But

can

if

we

the matter

ever

of speech

its

come

led to

"

it?

The problem

of free will (excluding

its

Why

ing-by-cause category?

theological

problem of relating these two ranges of speech to one another. One point must first be made clear. Language which

aspects) will be the

as speaking; so in-

how

denying either mode

should anyone dream of

The answer

is this.

So long as

speak of choiceful actions from outside, as having been

done or

as likely to

—

be done, and then

and to

it

is

talk of

possible

them

as

more accurately put, to talk, instead, about the events in which they take effect. And events as such are subject,

Of an event we ask, "What Of a man's action, "What is he up to?

to

we are talking our way into or through choiceful acts we can use no category but the category proper to such talk — I cannot talk to myself the choice I am making, as being an event which occurs. But often we

and we use the language of event, process, etc. Actions we talk of as what we simply or freely do; events we talk of as happening. To actions we assign intentions, assign causes.

am bound

as straightforward as this,

is

to think of

rights?

events

we

I

reducing voluntary-action statements to the happen-

with or without implications of alternative choice

to events

attend to the causal

fact,

separably are the two modes or logics connected.

for us to switch categories,

use the language of sheer personal action

I

sequences you are describing. In

or,

we

— to exposition

assume, to the category of causal-

—

and knowledge of their antecedents. If, then, the event in which a choiceful act takes form is predictable, and causally determinate, how can that act itself be free? Such appears to be ity

in

terms of uniform sequence

are in principle predictable from a

the puzzle.

The

determinist case

is

that the causal regularity of

secondary to

choice-produced events should be accepted. There are

which we do our choiceful thinking or itself, as when you say to someone placing alternatives before you "I opt for" A or B

two stories one descriptive from "within" of the way in which the choice is made, another descriptive from

describes or mentions choiceful action

language

is

in

make our choice (J.

L. Austin,

1962).

show

How

to

Having made

Do

Things with Words, Oxford,

this point,

we may proceed

that the correlation of event-style

to

and personal-

—

"outside" of the event's position in the event-sequence.

Each story is veridical in its own sphere, and there no difficulty in letting them run parallel. The freewill rejoinder is that a solution in that sense

is

247

FREEDOM, LEGAL COXCEPT OF rests on a falsification. ground and expressed

rightlv he tolerated

descriptive stories.

1

Two

stories

discomfort in doubling

it

that

degrade a personal story a process

which unrolled

and

I

is

It

a hard case,

goes on choosing to maintain voluntary freedom

if

is

evinced by wild and continuous caprice. Most difficult of solution along linguistic

it.

onlv to be lines

is

the

no great mental

theological problem of free will in face of a sovereign

with a causal account of the

divine will, insofar as religious conviction puts forward

feel

because

is

in

imagination

to the level of a storv

as

did unroll.

it

to depersonalize the story. It as

man because he

the

ma)

when they are both objectively may tell a story of past voluntary

activity in cold detachment,

same behavior. But

covering the same

in different logical idioms

And

I

about that

is

only personal insofar

is

some measure with the characand express them as personally

identify myself in

statements about divine initiative in the origination of

human

which are

free acts

in

human

statements about the

formal conflict with

agent's

own

initiative.

Appeal may be made to the believer's practical understanding of what it is to exercise his will in prolongation

And then

the acquiescence in

it were) of God's. But no formal solution can be attempted without a prior examination of the special

a parallel cause-and-effect story

becomes impossible.

sense and status of statements about the Divine Subject

ters or agents in

it

active from "within."

All the rejoinder achieves

is

to set aside the deter-

compromise. Three possible positions may say 1 So much the worse for the

(as

traditionally

i

known

as the topic of Analogy).

minist's soothing

remain.

We

'

ultimate validity of the free-action language minist conclusion:

(2)

— a deter-

So much the worse for that of

the caused-event language

—a

libertarian conclusion;

So much the worse for both, our language in either case having a purely pragmatic value, in serving our (3)

purposes

— an agnostic conclusion.

The determinist

will

speak slightingly of the "sub-

and its expressions, the libertarian of the "abstract and diagrammatic character" of causality-constructions; while the

agnostic will cite the agelong inconclusiveness of the

debate between the two other parties, and the inadeof language as such to the nature of things.

The defender

of free will ruins his case

He must

plays his hand.

if

he over-

not deny the validity of

deny scope

living processes as to

to free personal action.

On

of his case, he must avoid exaggerating

The

individual

is

the other side

human

liberty.

constantly subject to pressures, visible

which he often has no motive and sometimes no ability to resist; and the free options he does and

invisible,

exercise are mostly within a range of choice narrowly

circumscribed by conditions outside his control. So

human conduct may

often be broadly predictable.

the other hand, the libertarian

is

On

not going to admit

that all the predictability in a man's conduct

is

man

will follow his usual policv in such

matters unless he his friends,

may

now

sees reason to revise

have formulated

his action.

to

it.

If

his policy to ourselves,

its

hill

is

liber-

Lamont, Freedom of Choice Affirmed (New York, 1967!. He offers a good historical survey. Austin Farrer's Freedom of the Will (New York, 1960) works largely tarian

is

Corliss

from linguistic ground.

To turn

to historical positions, in addition to references

the article

in

we may

cite

the following. For a classic

defence of the Calvinist position: Jonathan Edwards, Careful

and

Strict

Enquiry ... 1754). For German Idealism. Arthur Tlic World as Will and Idea (Die Welt als

Schopenhauer.

und

vols.

Vorstellung),

trans. R. B.

Haldane and

J.

Kemp,

(London. 1883). For American Pragmatism. William

Dilemma

Determinism" (1884), in The Will For Vitalistic Philosophy, Henri Bergson, Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience (Paris, 1889). For Existentialism. J-P. Sartre, LEtre et le neant (Paris, 1943). trans. H. Barnes as Being and Nothingness New York, 1956). James. "The to Believe

.

.

.

New

of

York. 1897

1.

i

AUSTIN FARRER [See also Agnosticism; Causation; Dualism; Epicureanism and Free Will; Existentialism; Free Will and Determinism; Freedom, Legal Concept of; God; Love; Nature; Necessity; Sin

and Salvation;

State; Stoicism.]

LEGAL CONCEPT OF FREEDOM

we

application, as causing

But voluntary consistency

any determining

contains a very

we,

think of the policv-rule. taken in conjunction with

the circumstances invoking

supply with

Inquiry into the

de-

pendent upon the operation of determining causes which restrict his freedom of choice. For in taking a decision, a

1

An

from a semi-determinist standpoint. An out-and-out

3

upon

difficult to

London, 1961

i

article, the

the history of philosophy from

and correspondingly

Freedom of the Will

Wille

so tightlv

is

a limited bibliography. Harold Ofstad,

causal-regularity interpretations so far as they go; but

fits

have been seen from the body of the

a certain angle,

he will maintain that we have no reason to suppose, and much reason to disbelieve, that the grid of natural uniformity

24o

Vs will

history of the freewill idea

bibliography as well as a thorough discussion of the subject

jective character" of personal experience

quacy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

not subjection

causality. His policy only guides

A .number

of legal conceptions contribute to the pop-

ular notion of freedom.

The ordinary man generally

freedom with the positive idea of liberty to do or not to do something, but to a lawyer such liberty associates

FREEDOM, LEGAL CONCEPT OF would

signify the absence of a duty to refrain

from

the act or omission in question. Free speech, for example, implies that

one

But freedom means

is

under no duty

much more

than

to

this,

keep

idea familiar to both laymen and lawyers a person's

immunity from the power

a freeman, as opposed to a slave,

under someone

else's

silent.

and a second that of

is

of another. Thus,

is

one

who

is

not

dominion. Yet a third meaning

which the word "freedom" implies in law is capacity to perform legal transactions, for example, to vote or

make as

a will; but since this aspect of the idea

important

as the other

two and

is

in fact

is

not

consequen-

on them, it does not merit separate discussion. Convenient though it is to distinguish between these

tial

ideas of freedom, it must be remembered have been interwoven throughout history.

component that they

This

may be why people

so often fail to realize that

"freedom from'' power and "freedom to"

assert oneself

two aspects of one issue, but two separate To gratify a desire for freedom from power does

are not issues.

not imply freedom to gratify every desire, otherwise deliverance from the evil of untrammelled

power

will

end in the evil of untrammelled liberty, and vice versa. There is a point beyond which liberty of action is harmful and needs restraining. For instance, if everyone were free to drive as he pleased on the road the result would be chaos. So, too, in countless other .vays one's freedom to do what one will has to be checked in the interest of others; and if restraint is not forthcoming spontaneously it has to be compelled. More troublesome is the question, which the law has sometimes to solve, of how far one should be free to surrender one's freedom or to degrade oneself; and to this there can be no general answer. It may be gathered from all this that freedom in law cannot inevitably

and we glimpse here the lesson that liberty of action at law can, in the main, be allowed with safety only where there is restraint bred from a spontaneous sense of obligation. The corollary of this would appear to be that a society which relaxes legal restraints without a corresponding measure of individual self-discipline is rushing, like the Gadarene swine, to destruction.

be isolated from social and moral

It

is

clear, then,

issues,

that a balance has to

be found

between authority and the individual as reflected in the measure of immunities and liberties accorded to the latter. To guard against the misuse of law, whether in the form of abuse of power or of liberty, men have appealed through the ages to principles of justice and morality and even to some higher law, such as Natural Law. These ideas, however, are so broad as to accommodate divergent interpretations with the result that the history of freedom in law becomes the story of how certain concepts of law and philosophy have been used to satisfy the paramount need of each age.

/;

Jewish

Law

contributed powerfully to the ideal of

freedom. The enslavement of the Israelites under the in which which individuals owed God, thereby obviating the need to

Egyptians led them to found a society

Pharaohs had no place and allegiance only to

in

depend on any human institution. But their assertion of independence went further, for even the rulership of God had to rest on voluntary acceptance, which is alleged to have occurred in the Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:18), and to have been renewed with Isaac and Jacob. This arrangement also set a pattern for the benevolent use of power by the ruler. The later appointment of Saul as king in 1037 b.c. amounted to a rejection of God's rulership, but the king's own position still rested on a contract with his people. The partnership between God and Man in the latter's development towards holiness led to an emphasis on discipline and corresponding restraint on liberties of action. At the same time, be it noted, these ideas must be considered in the light of the social structures of the age, for slavery was recognized, and equality did not obtain between men and women. Throughout the Greek era the background was one of precarious social stability, which tended to emphasize moderation and preservation of the status quo. Solon, it is true, sought to limit power by means of the idea that men should have a say in selecting those to whom they have to submit the idea of democracy; but both Plato and Aristotle stressed the need for

—

The former argued that the reimposed by society are necessary to develop virtue in those who possess this capacity. Not all men are so endowed, for they differ in this respect just as restraint in action.

straints

they differ in physique. Aristotle, for his part, con-

demned democracies restraints.

But

it

is

in

which people acknowledge no

not enough merely to have laws;

they must be just laws, that

is,

laws which enable

virtuous people to achieve as far as possible in the light of their reason the fullness of their nature in society.

A just law favors liberty, and freedom and good government go together. To educate is to develop the subject in virtue, so it becomes a prime task of the state to be the school of the citizen. On the other hand, slaves should accept their lot, since some people are slaves by nature. Indeed, it is the very service of wise and virtuous masters that brings out the best in their slaves; and masters should of course treat slaves with kindness.

The achievements

of the

Romans were

practical

rather than theoretical. That great repository of

Roman

Law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, Contains passages which would support absolute authority (e.g., Digest 1.3.31) as well as the authority of law (e.g., Codex 1.14.4). It was left to Cicero, who was not strictly a lawyer, to

249

FREEDOM, LEGAL CONCEPT OF strike off the ringing statement,

law that

we may

"We

are slaves of the

be free" [Pro Cluentio 53.146). But

he added that there were

limits to the use of law.

"True

law," he said, "is right reason in agreement with nature" and from it there can be no dispensation either by the Senate or the people (De republica III, xxii). This doctrine of Man's nature as the "true" source of law had much influence later. Roman Law recognized slavery throughout, and there were also grades of free men who in varving degrees were less privileged than lives, or citizens. Although it was admitted that slavery was contrary to Natural Law, it continued because it suited the economic order. The movement towards freedom is discernible in three ways. (1) In a.d. 212 citizenship was conferred on free men throughout the Empire; (2) increasing restrictions were imposed on the powers of masters over slaves; and (3) there was a preference for freedom rather than slavery in the inearly Christian philosophy did not

slavery, or for that matter

ernment. The equality of

condemn

condemn authoritarian govsouls in Heaven did not call

for social disruption in order to achieve equality of

bodies on earth. So fugitive

slave

to

was

it

return

that Saint Paul urged a

to

his

master (Epistle to

Philemon). Saint Augustine, however, sought to explain slavery as a form of collective retribution for original sin.

All in

was

far

all

the early Christian concept of freedom

removed from

that of the Jews;

it

was, in effect,

freedom to enter into the bondage of God. After the Dark Ages, which followed the Roman the establishment of order required a

not liberty; the

power

power

Under the guise

selfish

Europe

policies soon reduced

to a barbarous

condition which culminated in the Thirty Years War. Little

wonder

that

voices,

notably

that

of duties, in the

known

Law," was evolved

as "International

hope of limiting the

Hugo A body

of

Grotius, began to be heard urging restraint.

liberty of action of states.

But duties lacking enforceability, which

is

the case with

Law, are of little avail, and today, when the weapons of war are assuming increasingly monstrous proportions, the continued insistence on the International

sovereignty of states foreshadows a very bleak future

who

indeed. In the municipal sphere the individual,

had trusted so fondly to his sovereign to be a bulwark against feudal oppression, soon found that he had exchanged one tyrant for another. Accordingly, John Locke was moved to argue that when men in a state sovereign, they surrendered to estate" could never inalienable,

right to

and be surrendered since they were

and a sovereign who

may be overthrown. Locke

liberty

"life,

them

tries to infringe

became the

thus

pher of the revolution of 1688

philoso-

England by which power was

in

the supremacy of the royal prerogative

replaced by that of the

Crown

classic case of Somersett ([1772],

all

set

20 State

in

the

Trials, 1) in

face against slavery for

its

time. In France events took a

structure,

Parliament, and his

in

main arguments

theory also furnished the

which English Law era,

him only the

preserve order. Personal rights to

more

drastic turn. Jean

of monarchs, of the feudal no-

Jacques Rousseau imagined a social contract whereby

from the eleventh century onwards, of the

sovereignty was surrendered to society as a whole. This

Church. The economic order was the feudal system

dispensed with the need for a personal sovereign, and

under which a person was bound to render service to the overlord whose land he held. The trends of the age consolidated power in the sovereign who, on the

within a few years of his death the French Revolution

bility and,

put the theory to sinister

effect.

Once again

the pattern

as superior to

was repeated: deliverance from the evil of untrammelled monarchical power led to the evil of untrammelled liberty of popular action, which in turn led to the power of Napoleon. The problem of protecting the individual was not to be solved merely by giving him immunity from the power of the monarch, for power was thereby only

quality in citizens.

transferred to the faceless institution called "govern-

one hand, sought to entrench his position and, on the other, was looked up to by his subjects in their struggle

freedom from the power of the feudal

nobility.

Legal theory was adapted to these ends.

Niccolo

for

Machiavelli in his Discourses characterized republics

princedoms and as requiring high moral People who lack this must be governed by tyrants, and in his Prince he proceeded to analyze and advocate absolute monarchy. Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan turned to Natural Law. Men, he

said, in a state of

the

life

of

Man was

short." This

nature were so unprincipled that

"solitary, poore, nasty, brutish

ended when

to a sovereign,

who

all

The

and

people yielded their rights

in return for absolute subservience

guaranteed order and a measure of freedom for

250

threats.

of the "sovereignty of states" the unbridled pursuit of

of nature entered into the primeval contract with the

terpretation of rules concerning a person's status.

Even

omnipotence posed two serious

sovereign's external independence

and

all.

internal

of development

ment." Protection against

this

independent judiciary, that free to

weigh governmental

is,

had to come from an one which holds itself

interests against individual

interests according to yardsticks of

its

own. Now, there

always a measure of interpretative discretion left to a judge in the application of any rule, and even with enacted laws a judge can, if he wants, adopt an interis

pretation favoring the individual. Chief Justice Coke's assertion in 1612 to

King James

I

that the king

was

FREEDOM, LEGAL CONCEPT OF under

God and

nificance, for

the Law,

made

it

was of the profoundest

sig-

the people's ultimate protection

come an

precepts of moral behavior. Lord Devlin

from power rest on the craftsmanship of the law of which the judges are the exponents, and thereby established one of the proudest traditions of Anglo-American Law. Where there is a constitution guarded by the courts their protective function is more pronounced. Baron de Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws (De lesprit des lois, 1748), believed the secret of freedom to lie in vesting the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of government in separate bodies. Under the Constitution of the United States, which embodies this idea, the Supreme Court has frequently declared Acts of

would not place immoral

Congress to be void for infringing fundamental

back; but

way

rights.

which the courts might help is by power

may be conducted law

if

and has given

institution of Christian countries

rise to certain

even though they

activities,

reach of the

in private, outside the

by their very nature they threaten the

institution

which is the foundation of the accepted morality. The danger in this argument is that a blind desire to uphold can so easily shade

institutions

off into

an abuse of

power.

may

It

est in the

also

be contended that the state has an

moral self-discipline of

and desirable

true

may

this

its

be,

it

is

inter-

However

subjects.

important that

convincing reasons be given. As long as religion pro-

may

vides the basis for self-discipline, the law

when

that influence starts to decline,

hold

mere

refusing to uphold the exercise of legislative

compulsion without alternative support, so far from preserving a sense of moral duty, will only appear

which, though not unconstitutional,

to perpetuate taboos against

Yet another

in

nevertheless

is

immoral. Discriminatory racial laws are an example. Until

now, courts have generally not concerned them-

selves with the morality of laws, but

some

find a basis for at least

it

possible to

is

judicial control.

Nearly

every revolution or constitutional settlement takes place as a reaction against an abuse, and the moral

behind the new power distribution are

objectives

on

built-in limitations

its

no matter what the circumstances of

somehow becomes

absolute,

is

and one which has had the

Whether courts

will

To argue that, its origin, power

future exercise.

adopt

an

illogical

sorriest

this line of

assumption

approach

is

from being solved. It has been would be unwise to relax legal people are disciplined to behave with far

is

restrictions until restraint

it

without compulsion.

Where

is

the line to be

drawn? John Stuart Mill in his tract On Liberty (1859) drew it at harm to others; that is, ne would use law only to forbid activities likely to disrupt any and every sort of society. Beyond this, he said, the law has no business to invade privacy.

An

objection to this

is

that

no sharp distinction can be drawn between "public" and "private" activities. Human behavior is a "seamless

web" and

in

numberless ways what one does in private

can have repercussions outside oneself, and vice versa.

That

is

why

effect, that

a British judge, Lord Devlin, argued, in

law

may be used even

in the

sphere of

whenever these are capable of undermining the institutions which form the fabric of private

restraints should

intelligent

mean

be relaxed, for to do so

people

that legal at the

very

time when the hitherto accepted basis of self-discipline is

being eroded

ous

on a

like cutting oneself adrift

is

peril-

tide.

The

prerequisite of freedom in the 1960's and early

1970's, then,

the instilling of a

is

in sight,

and

as

as reflected in

new

sense of disci-

which no answer is yet long as this is so, the history of freedom law must remain an unfinished story.

pline. It poses a

problem

to

For extracts from the Greek, Roman, medieval, and a few

graver than that of safeguarding people from the abuse

and

which

to rebel. This does not

BIBLIOGRAPHY

of preventing the abuse of liberty

pointed out that

bound

re-

UI

of power,

are

consequences.

mains to be seen.

The problem

legal

activities

the particular society (The Enforcement of Morals,

1959; 1965). Thus, the

monogamous marriage

has be-

of the

more modern

authorities mentioned, see Masters of

Political Thought, eds. E.

(London and

New

the followers of

J.

McC.

S.

and W. T. Jones, 3 vols. The controversy between

Sait

York, 1963).

and Lord Devlin

Mill

is

fully dealt

with by Basil Mitchell, Law, Morality and Religion in a

New

Secular Society (London and Devlin,

"The Enforcement

Lecture (London and

New

York, 1967); also Patrick

of Morals," British

Academy

York, 1959); idem, The Enforce-

ment of Morals (London and New

York, 1965); this includes

additional essays. See also E.

Corwin, Liberty against

S.

Government (Baton Rouge, La., 1948); D. V. Cowen, The Foundations of Freedom (Cape Town, 1961), Part II; A. T. Denning, Freedom under the Law (London, 1949); H. Street, Freedom, the Individual and the Law 1954; London, .

.

.

(

1963;

New

Orleans, 1964); C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a

Political Idea at

Rome (Cambridge and New

York, 1950).

For a technical legal analysis of liberty, see G. L. Williams, "The Concept of Legal Liberty," Columbia Law Review, 56 (1956), 1121. R.

[See also Authority;

W. M. DIAS

Democracy; Equality; Free Will; Law,

Natural; Social Contract.]

251

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

IN ANTIQUITY

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

surprisingly enough,

IN ANTIQUITY

were

clearly subordinated to

The terminology, theory, and practice of freedom of speech in the modern Anglo-Saxon world is genetically connected with Greek and Latin ideas and institu/.

tions. It

is

therefore not very difficult to recognize in

Greek and Roman world the words, ideologies, and institutions which can legitimately he studied as the classical counterpart of the modern notion of freedom of speech. But the evidence of the classical world the

presents serious difficulties to the interpreter insofar as

is

it

unevenly distributed, and relates to social and

political conditions

main evidence the

fifth

for

century

which are seldom well known. Our Greece is confined to Athens from

b.c.

about other Greek

Rome

we know

onwards;

verv

little

The evidence about

city-states.

begins to be entirely reliable onlv in the second

century

B.C.

Rome

This means that for both Greece and

comparatively

freedom was so the notion of impiety and later

of heresy as to require special treatment. 2. Though it may be mere pedantry, let us start with some very general remarks on the classification of

political

assemblies, insofar as

it

is

relevant to the

ancient history of the Near East, of Greece, and of

Rome. First of all, we must obviously make a distincbetween popular assemblies and councils of advisers. Not every popular assembly implies a democracy or indeed even the smallest amount of freedom of speech. The chieftain or king may convene an tion

assembly simply to give orders. In other types of assembly the people are asked to confer power on a sovereign and to sanction decisions previously taken either

by the king or by the council of advisers without

being given the alternative of refusing to do

mocracy

in its

ancient form exists

when

De-

so.

the popular

the important archaic period, in which institutions and

assembly has power to elect the king or the magistrates,

were shaped, is insufficiently known. Even so, one is bound to recognize that much more could be done with the extant evidence if it were properly collected, sifted, and interpreted according to modern methods of social research. The present sketch can onlv offer a provisional and small map of largely unexplored

to

ideas

territory.

The discovery and interpretation of data relating to freedom of speech in the great ancient civilizations Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite Kingdom, Persia, Phoenicia. Judeal present far more serious problems because with the partial exception of the biblical texts genetical connections with modern ideas and institutions are not apparent. It is even arguable that the whole political and social structure makes it difficult to isolate the verv notion of freedom of speech from other political and religious notions. The only field in which analogy of institutions makes comparison easier with the modern world is that of of the

—

—

One

general remark

make war and

As for the council of advisers,

two

notion of freedom of speech

is

added. The modern

assumed

right of speech in the governing bodies

to petition them, the right to relate

to include the

and the

right

and publish debates

of these bodies, freedom of public meeting, freedom of correspondence, of teaching, of worship, of publish-

ing newspapers and books. Correspondingly, abuse of

freedom of speech includes

libel, slander,

blasphemy, sedition. In the

classical

obscenity,

world

all

these

aspects appear to be present, including a sort of jour-

nalism at the end of the

Roman Republic and

at the

different forms in the

Membership

it

presented

itself in

East. In tribal societies

it

of the council

Popular assemblies are not to be found in the great monarchies of the Near East, with the partial exception of the

Hittite

Empire. In the Empires of Egypt,

Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, the monarch ruled despotically and by divine right with the assistance of his officers

and

advisers. This does not

mean

that indi-

vidual cities or villages of these Empires did not have their

popular assemblies and councils of elders. Councils of elders and general assemblies of

citi-

zens existed in individual cities of Mesopotamia since

An

the third millennium b.c.

episode

in

the short

Sumerian epic poem on Gilgamesh and Agga is regarded as the earliest evidence on record about both councils and assemblies. The extant tablets of the poem were inscribed in the second millennium but reflect the situation of a time not far removed from 3000 b.c. Gilgamesh, the mythical hero and lord of Uruk,

addresses the council of elders in order to enlist

support for war. The council turns but another assembly, which

beginning of the Empire. However, certain aspects

all

such as the right of petition never became seriously

of the elders

freedom of teaching,

disagreement

controversial. Others, such as

Near

was normally a council of elders. was often hereditary, less frequently, dependent on some sort of election. In large territorial monarchies the advisers were chosen by the king from among the members of certain families (including his own) and/or among the highest officers of the State: he could dismiss them at will. or in city-states

3.

may be

peace, to enact laws, and to adminis-

ter justice.

political assemblies.

252

issues only for

brief periods. Furthermore, religious

is

down

likely to

its

his proposal,

have included

the local arms-bearing males, overrides the opinion

and declares in assemblies

for war. is

The

possibility of

confirmed by an

omen

FREEDOM OF SPEECH of

the Old Babylonian Kingdom ica. 18(H) B.C.). Composition and function of such councils and

assemblies naturally varied in time and space. In the

Assyrian commercial colony of Kanis in Cappadocia in the

nineteenth century b.c. the council of elders

IN ANTIQUITY

magical text puts the Pankus above the court

though

officials,

places the "kin of the Pankus" below the

it

priests and the Pankus was an

are signs that

military. This

can only imply that the

and indeed there

aristocratic assembly,

had some say

it

in the succession to the

apparently divided into three sections while deciding

throne. Hittite scholars like to think that the

which might imply a collective vote of each section. In a trial for murder at Nippur about the twentieth century b.c. opposite opinions on the guilt of the culprit are chanted alternately by various members of the judging assembly. Thus military expeditions, trials, relations with local kings all appear to be within the competence of such gatherings. In no case are we

was an

institution of undeniably

acter,

but

sufficiently well

informed

to visualize the real

nature

of the activities of these bodies. Even the distinction between councils of elders and popular assemblies is blurred. According to what is now the prevailing opinion among Assyriologists, the Mesopotamian institutions developed from an original basis of primitive military democracy, and the king in Mesopotamia (in contrast to Egypt) was very seldom equated with a god. Indeed even the gods formed a society with some democratic features. The Enuma Elish was written in

the

first

half of the second millennium b.c. to explain

how Marduk had been king.

elected by the gods to be their

However powerful

the royal palace and the tem-

communal

ple might be in a city, the original

orga-

was especially strong in the great commercial centers. The proud sense of autonomy of the citizens of Babylon (who reminded Assurbanipal that even a dog is free when he enters their city) and the elements of social criticism in prayers and epics go well with this communal life. But the history of Babylonia and Assyria in the second and first nization survived beside them:

millennia b.c.

is

that of centralized empires in

decisions are taken

hardly

it

by a

king,

visible. Intellectual life is

and

which

his advisers are

directed towards the

reiteration of orthodox opinions, not towards expression

of dissent.

The absence

of popular protest against the

central

political

assembly

— not

cities.

just

with

The Pankus

is

I

(ca.

seen

Indo-European

an

judicial

powers of the Pankus to include the

We

a king under specified circumstances.

more

trial

of the Pankus after him. In the next century the

seem to have had an working with a tamer council of court

builders of the Hittite empire easier time dignitaries.

When

Shuppiluliumash

I

(perhaps about

1350) was suddenly faced with the request to provide a husband for the

widow

of

Tutankhamen, "he called

the great into council (saying): since of old, such a thing

has never happened before me." great"

of Hatti

The "council

of the

probably something different from the Elders

is

who appear

in a strange clause of the political

testament of Hattushilish

I.

Hattushilish

be anxious to establish a barrier between

I

appears to

his successor-

designate and the Elders of Hatti: "The Elders of Hatti

speak to you, neither

shall not

nor of

Hemmuva

shall a

nor of Tamalkiya, nor a

man of man of

...

,

...

,

nor indeed any of the people of the country speak to you." For the rest

we know

that the Hittite code

recognized the jurisdiction of the elders outside the capital. Naturally the king dealt with councils of elders in

occupied territories. it appears that the Hittite kings came to rely

Thus

increasingly

on a military organization

in

which

decision-making would be characterized by swiftness, secrecy,

move

and deference

to the king's will. Hattushilish's

— and more in general the — from approaching heir one of

to prevent the elders

common

people

his

is

the most definite and explicit limitations of freedom

we encounter know whether in the

of speech

in antiquity.

We

should like

extant Hittite documents.

1650) and in the edict of Telepinush

(ca.

to

exercise of justice the

4. The El-Amarna letters and the Ugaritic texts have shown the presence of councils of elders and less

1500) regulating the succession to the throne and

conspicuously of popular assemblies

reforming the judicial system. The etymology of the

during the second half of the second millennium.

word Pankus, an

was a world

adjective

meaning "entire,"

is

of

hear nothing

local

tioned in the so-called political testament of Hattushilish

ever

men-

life,

assemblies of individual

has

assembly? Telepinush even extended (or restored) the

weak was heard and whether intellectual life included discussion of moral and religious topics. The Hittite texts, such as they are, do not offer much in these directions. A moving soliloquy, the prayer of Kantuzilish for relief from his sufferings, is a sign of reflection and sensitiveness. But independent thinking on either political or social or religious issues does not emerge from the

and the poverty of intellectual controversy in Akkadian literature, have often been noticed. We must assume some freedom of speech behind routine legal and administrative processes: nowhere does it appear as a value or as an art in itself. The Hittites were the only great state of the Ancient Near East in which the king had to reckon with a administration in real

who

Pankus

Indo-European char-

irrele-

vant to the interpretation of the institution. But a

made

sense.

in Svria-Palestine It

which assemblies Both councils of elders and popular

of small city-states in

25o

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

IN ANTIQUITY when

assemblies seem to have been particularly active

was not

the local king

Amarna very

Letter 254 of El-

present.

vividly recounts the story of Labaja

addressed the citizens of Cezer.

Wen-Amon

Egyptian story of eleventh century

One

who

passage in the

indicates that in the

King judged cases between A. Wilson J.

b.c. the

foreigners in a popular assembly at Byblos.

recognized the Phoenician word mo'ed, "assembly," the Egyptian text.

The

in

existence of assemblies favored

changes of political allegiance

we would

in a

time of

crisis:

it

propaganda and is better described as inducement to rebellion. According to some El-Amarna letters (74; 81) a rebel against Egypt. favored what

call

Abdiashirta, apparently used political assemblies to

spread his

call to subversion.

In the old

South Arabian

documents of the b.c.)

states

(known

earlier part of the

first

to us

a tribal assembly or council existed and

summoned by

from

millennium

was

the king for the enactment of laws and

have seen from an Egyptian document that the

had popular assemblies and councils of elders as early as the eleventh century b.c. Greek and Latin sources confirm this feature which may be Phoenician

cities

an adaptation to city

life

of the old tribal assembly

and council of the Semites. Unfortunately we have no details. But we do know more about the constitution of Carthage, the Phoenician colony of the Western Mediterranean, because Aristotle was interested in

and described

it

in

some

constitution of Carthage cities.

detail.

was

While the Phoenician

kings,

perhaps

until

He

it

thought that the

similar to that of

Greek

cities of the East retained

Alexander

the

Great,

as early as the fifth

century

after

Carthage was a republic

was ruled bv a mercantile aristocracy through a supreme council of thirty members elected or chosen (we do not know how) for life. Aristotle tells us in a notoriously difficult passage of Book II, 1273a, of his Politics that the Carthaginian popular assembly was asked to decide on matters on which the magistrates and the council of the elders had not reached b.c. It

agreement. Indeed, in case of disagreements leaders the

common

does not

among

the

people were allowed freedom of

discussion. Aristotle remarks:

may speak

"Anybody who wishes

against the proposal introduced, a right that

exist

"the

fight

lie."

How they ascertained it is a question strictly connected with

nature

the

the

of

religious

the

of

beliefs

Achaemenids about which we know so little. It would appear that the Magi, "a very peculiar race," as Herodotus says, did not invariably function as religious counsellors to the Achaemenids. Whatever their origins, thev had become a priestly class which controlled sacrifices and interpreted dreams (Herodotus, I, 107; 140). Thev could not be ignored, but after the Smerdis affair there were legitimate suspicions. No doubt the king had other advisers. The six helpers of Darius in his struggle for the throne were the originators of families who had free access to the king (ibid., Ill, 118). These six families may ultimately be identical with the seven chiefs of the Persians and Medes, who according to the Book of Esther could see the face of the king, if we assume that one of the seven was

under the constitutions of Sparta and

We

are also told by Herodotus that during the expedi-

Mardonius was sent by Xerxes to

tion against Greece,

ask the advice of his vassals about the suitability of

engaging the Greeks with

pleased

(ibid.,

VIII, 67-69). Xerxes

opinion

minority

the

expressed

was by

Artemisia, but decided that the "advice of the greater

number should be followed." So he was defeated at Salamis. The considerable decentralization of the Persian state, with its system of satrapies, made it easier on private and individual consul-

for the king to rely tations,

though the

result often

was

rebellion. Political

debates were not a frequent occurrence with the

Achaemenids.

One

of the things

we

learn from the scanty evidence

about assemblies and councils of elders Palestine

is

of course that the

Hebrew

in Syria

tribes

and

with their

assemblies and councils of elders conformed to well-

known

patterns. Biblical tradition being

what

it is,

we

are never quite certain whether our evidence about

pre-monarchic

institutions

(and

even

monarchic

ceremonies) reflects actual events or later idealization

and theorization.

It

is,

for instance, suspicious that

no mention of an assembly of one tribe in the pre-monarchic period. But the picture of the functions of elders and assembly inspires trust even

apparently there

if

is

individual episodes bear the sign of later elaborations.

Crete."

Though we would not take Deuteronomy 5:23

with the Greek colonies of Sicily and

dence for the existence of elders in each tribe, elders of Judah (e.g., II Samuel 19:11) are well authenticated. So are the elders of Gilead who made a pact with

Nowhere in the Near East do we find a comparable right. The Carthaginians were in close contact

may

well have

something about freedom of speech and collective decision-making from their Greek neighbors. learnt

The

Persians, during the

certainly

254

by divine right and were supposed to

the representative of the family of the king himself.

other decisions.

We

never considered themselves gods, but had the truth

of elders.

Achaemenid

period, had

no assembly and probably no central council The kings who were chosen by Ahura Mazda

Jephthah (Judges

ll:5f.),

individual

The

as evi-

not to speak of the elders of

had

juris-

dictional functions even during the monarchy.

They "men

cities.

elders of each city

represented the tribes or the

cities: in

some

texts

FREEDOM OF SPEECH of

and "elders" are used interchangeably

Israel"

The

(Joshua 24: 1-2).

elders

had a say

of wars of the monarchic period

in the declaration

(I

Kings 20:8) and.

other nations. There

ancient

period, they organized the convocation of the assembly

taken

We

do not know

sarim, of the elders about

circumstances

the heads, the

hear

in

Kahal) had judicial functions,

{'edah,

Sabbath

at least in the idealization of later times: the

(Numbers

violator

various

Isaiah 3:14).

(e.g.,

The assembly

who were

whom we

blasphemer (Leviticus

15:33), the

24:14) are brought before

the judges are also

it,

and

it is

a touch of realism

Near East that the executioners. Women appear

conforming to popular

justice in the

before the assembly to ask for the right of inheritance

(Numbers

The 'edah and

27:2).

its

obscure "princes"

and arbitrations (Joshua 9:15; Judges 20:1). The 'edah proclaims Jeroboam King of Israel (I Kings 12:20). The assembly of Judah is probably implied as partner in the covenant of Josiah after the appear

in treaties

recovery of the Book of the

According

Law

Kings 23:1-2).

(II

to Chronicles the 'edah took part in the

Davidic dynasty with Joash Chronicles 23:3) and in the reform of Hezekiah restoration

the

of

Chronicles 29:28f.).

It

reappears after the exile

(II

decisions of basic importance, such as the repudiation of foreign wives (Ezra 10:1-2).

As we have aireadv

Hebrew

in the Bible

thinking.

Hebrew

in a

how

for us to visualize

It is difficult

an example of

how

disagreement

between

advisors of

were

decisions

council of elders or in assembly

We may

either before or during the monarchy.

have

a council of elders operated in the

Rehoboam

the

and

senior

the

junior

beginning of the conflict

at the

And we

with the northern tribes

(I

member how

assembly and the elders of

easily the

Kings

condemned Naboth

Jezreel

Jezebel's pleasure

(I

to

12:6).

re-

death according to

Kings 21:12). The historical books

whole give the impression of

of the Bible taken as a

informality and outspokenness in the relations between

Hebrew

the

leaders and their followers

which agrees

with the contractual nature of the relation impression

confirmed by the few

is

seventh and sixth centuries

B.C.

which have

This

itself.

letters

of the

so far

been

discovered (especially the ostraca of Lachish). The

who

man

writes to his superior uses traditional servile for-

mulas, but speaks directly and firmly, and in one case

boldly rejects an insinuation.

What

(II

in legal

much room

amphictyony and divine kingship which modern scholars have tried to introduce into for the notions of

what is more, in the election of the first two kings il Samuel 8:4; II Samuel 5:3). Later, in the post-exilic (Ezra 10:8).

not

is

IN ANTIQUITY

characterizes

Hebrew

however,

life,

intervention of the prophet in the

name

is

the

of Yahweh.

Recent concentration on the problem of the relation

between

cult

and prophecy, though understandable as

sometimes difficult to distinguish in the sources the assembly from the elders. In Exodus

a reaction to the romantic idealization of the prophet

19:7-8 Moses puts the words of Yahweh before the

Elders and assembly were closely involved in the

The prophet is the unpredictable messenger of the word of Yahweh. It has been calculated that out of the 241 mentions of the "Word of Yahweh" in the Old Testament, 221 indicate a prophetic utterance. The word of Yahweh manifests itself through the mouth of

covenants which characterize the election of leaders

the prophet. In the Prophetic Books, in the Psalms,

mentioned,

it

is

elders of Israel, of Israel

make

and

all

David

Samuel

5:1-3).

behalf of the people

and

the people answer.

a covenant with

later of kings

(II

among

in

The elders Hebron on

the Hebrews, though

it

would

be a waste of time to try to reduce these elections to

one pattern. The contractual character of leadership is a notion which underlies much of the biblical thinking about judges and kings and undoubtedly had its roots in historical facts.

It

has

its

notion of the covenant between

counterpart in the

Yahweh and

Israel

which in various degrees of development is accepted by all our biblical sources from the Yahwist to the Deuteronomist. According to one line of thinking, which did not prevail, the covenant with Yahweh was incompatible with the choice of a king and consequent covenant with him. Thus historical and constitutional thinking

in Israel

presupposes the existence of assembly

and elders and conceives the relation between

and

its

leader (whether

human

marks the progressive separation of

Israel

and even that is

Cod

from the

a

in the

Yahweh

member

and thinker, obscures the

Book it.

of Job (15:8) one finds the notion

own

Council, and the true prophet According to Jeremiah, Yahweh says

has his of

essential.

my council, then mv words to my people"

of the false prophets: "If they stood in

they would have proclaimed

Council of Yahweh is only one instance of the legal thinking which emerges from (23:22). This notion of a

the Prophetic Books. In

word

of

Yahweh

is

some memorable passages the

an indictment of Israel

legal terms for infringement of the

fore

I

will surely bring suit against

(Jeremiah

Micah

2:9ff.;

cf.

in

proper

Covenant: "There-

Yahweh], With your children's children

Deuteronomy

you [Oracle of I will contend"

32;

Isaiah

1:2;

6:1).

In other cases, of

Israel

or divine) in terms of

a covenant. Indeed a series of covenants with

as a solitary seer

which Jeremiah 3 and [Deutero-] meaning of

Isaiah 42:6, 49:8 (whatever the precise

these passages) are the most conspicuous, the prophet is

made

to

announce a new covenant with

Israel.

255

FREEDOM OF SPEECH Through exhaust

breaks try

promised

To \

itself in legal

Hebrew

life

all

to

legal situation

formulations.

It

is

the conventions and which the kings

the freedom of speech

in their midst,

Hebrews knew was

When

may

As long as

suppress or at least to control.

word

the

of

God

at this

notion of of Jewish

life:

prophets.

this

propheev

lost

implied a profound reorientation.

mediator in a new harmonious relationship between God and man. The task of the rabbi was to define the

The

point

is

Ancient Egypt from a certain point of view offers

the most interesting situation to the student of freedom of speech. Advisers at

Egypt

and

all levels

village notables

was no place a country which had settled

as elsewhere, but there

for formal assemblies in for divine kingship

and regular bureaucracy before

recorded history began. Yet the Egyptians appreciated

eloquence and knew the power of words. As the Vizier Prah-hotep said

in his Instruction.

hidden than the emerald, yet

it

maidservants at the grindstone." true in the crisis of the First

"Eloquence

is

more

Harper,"

is

the classic statement of Egyptian hedonism.

and power

In later times return to order

the form of the idealization of silence. of the Post-Hyksos period

is

politics took

The Wise Man

a silent man.

In perhaps the fifteenth century B.C. the scribe Ani

"A man may fall into ruin because of The "Hymn by the Scribe to his god Thoth" states: "The silent one comes and finds the

—

Amenemope one which influenced Hebrew Wisdom (or which were influenced by it!) "the truly silent man holds himself apart. He is like a tree growing in a well." According to the teaching of of the late texts

garden.

—

It flourishes, it

doubles

the Lord." Egyptian history it is

is

its fruits; it

dangerous to string together

rated by centuries. But the

stands before

and which are sepa-

a very long history, texts

impression

final

is

that in

Old Kingdom freedom of speech became an issue. Writers were aware that protesting, debating, and accusing were ways of undermining the the crisis of the

existing order. Silence

appeared to be the remedy:

it

element of astuteness and perhaps of concealment. But it implied the essential acceptance of an unmodifiable

When

their

irksome to the servants." Protests

The "Story of the Eloquent Peasant" has perhaps too much of a happy end to be regarded as a story of social protest. The eloquent peasant, after denouncing injustice in violent terms, not only gets his goods back, but also obtains the patronage of the Chief Steward whom he had accused. Other texts are less

ambiguous. The Sage Ipu-wer himself takes advantage of the freedom of speech he notices as a bad

He blames

as-

Intermediate Period

loud.

in the maidservants.

by suicide.

it

became a central virtue in later days. It did not necessarily mean compliance and obedience; it included an

female slaves are free with their tongues. it is

is

may be found with The warning came

(2200-2000 B.C.?). In the Admonition of the Leyden papyrus, Ipu-wer reflects the new discontent: "All mistress speaks,

ultimately (but this

if

life

advised his son:

of heresy.

made, even

was never aimed at political reforms; if anything, it encouraged anarchy, religious skepticism, and enjoyment of whatever pleasure life could offer. Another well-known early text, the "Song of the sumptions of

his tongue."

became

has acted.

This determined questioning of the ordinary

which are Kiddush Hashem ("sanctifving God's name") in contrast to Hillul Hashem ("profaning God's name"). The rabbi's concern was not freedom of speech, but cooperation with God, hence the danger of behavior

existed in

who

time acts for him

death instead of hastening

boundaries of the Torah, in other words, those types

5.

?

not certain) the soul persuades the bodv to wait for

through

The prophet gave expression to the constant feeling of guilt towards Yahweh which was inherent in the life of the Hebrew tribes. The rabbi, who to a certain extent replaced the prophet as a teacher, was the

256

can I speak to-da) one thinks of yesterday

No one

introduces into

momentum, the an unchangeable Torah became the center

his

whom

an element of freedom of speech which

prophets operated that the

new

But the word of Yahweh does not of course

the prophet a

to Israel.

IN ANTIQUITY

the King.

symptom

He compels

him to defend himself and concludes by saying that what the King has done, though perhaps good, is not good enough. The "Dispute over Suicide" presents suicide as the only remedy for a social situation in which nobody is left worth talking to:

order. The prospects of freedom of speech had never been brilliant, because there was no institution to which potential reformers could turn when they felt dissatisfied

with the Pharaonic administration. There

was no regular assembly in which 6. The development of Greek

to voice discontent. political assemblies

We

do not know how Greek assemblies actually functioned at any time of their history. Even for Sparta we are confined to the interpretation of a few (and not very is

to a great extent

still

obscure.

the majority of

coherent) pieces of evidence.

know

well

is

The only assembly we

the Athenian ecclesia, and even here our

evidence begins to be reliable only from the

fifth

tury b.c. Seen from the angle of classical Athens,

cen-

what

characterized a political assembly was the extent of its

powers

as the legislative, judicial,

and policy-making

body. Equally remarkable was the extent to which an

FREEDOM OF SPEECH ordinary citizen could initiate business or advocate

from the

policies

may

floor. It

well be that Athens took

a lead in the creation of what, in the

became known

as

century

fifth

B.C.,

democratic government, though

it

has been claimed that Athens was preceded by

5)

Decision

may mean

either that dissent

groups will ultimately act

contrasting ways.

in

of the introduction of important parliamentary fea-

institutions.

of the

such as the counting of votes, the regularity of

tures,

quorum

meetings, the

for the validity of certain deci-

sions, the qualifications for participation in the ings, the formalities of the relations

and other bodies

eral assembly

advisers,

priestly

(city

are

colleges),

meet-

between the gencouncil, king's

unknown

either

or

imperfectly known.

The

gested, but

and fourth centuries B.C., but the ordinary Macedonians never seem to have shared the ambitions

in the fifth

They had

of their kings in this matter.

perhaps Philip

II

We

assembly

military,

our evidence concerns the exceptional period when

soldier

was

It

has been asserted that every Macedonian

entitled to speak freely in that assembly,

and Polybius has been quoted statement. Polybius

tells

assemblies of the Greek polis of the archaic age. Life

Macedonian freedom

Greek camp near Troy may be the product of

among

the Phaeacians

seem

of the sort a poet might see for himself

wandered about Greece. The

be

when he

middle way

sensible

be to use the evidence of the Iliad about

when

little is

it is

in basic

we must

agreement with that

mind

is:

comment on

the sol-

"with such freedom

the Macedonians always address their

(isegoria) did

kings" (Polybius,

27,

5,

6).

Now

Polybius mentions

of speech, not on the occasion

of an assembly, but in connection with a deputation.

He seems

to emphasize the directness with which the Macedonian soldiers treated their kings, not what happened in the Macedonian assembly. In Spartan political life not all was crude. It has

indeed been suggested that with the so-called Rhetra of Lycurgus (Plutarch, Lycurgus 6),

which somehow

two kings were added), the and the initiative for presenting measures to the assembly was introduced into Greek political life for the first time. This would have happened in the eighth or seventh century b.c. The same Rhetra gave the assembly power to approve or reject proposals. Even by the beginning of the Peloponnesian war shouting was still the ordinary method of the assembly for the election of magistrates and for the voting on formal proposals (which might involve peace and war). The candidate who got the loudest shout at elections was deemed to have been chosen; and the proposal which had the loudest applause was deemed to have been approved. But at

by Homer and

political experience reflected

that,

in

even

in the

by the Odyssey.

Five features characterize the Homeric assemblies: assemblies described by

Homer

are irregular:

they are convoked in special circumstances. 2)

may be summoned by "important"

They

individuals: neither

kings nor magistrates seem to have the exclusive right to

message to the king

certain about the historic reality of the

always bear

most optimistic assessment, we are still left in the dark about the time, the places and the coherence of the

The

begging him not to try the

defined the powers of the gerousia (the council of 28

institutions described

1)

this

condem-

that

of the Odyssey. But

very

to

an authority for

nation of Leontius in 218 b.c. that the soldiers sent

diers'

the imagination of the poet of the Iliad, but the meet-

as

us apropos of the

a deputation to Philip V,

have less difficulty with the evidence on assemblies provided bv the Odyssey because it obviously reflects some acquaintance with the political

to

a national,

and we know that and Alexander spoke before it. For the rest, all a

case in their absence. Polybius'

assemblies only

"Homeric"

Their kings considered themselves Greek

question about the value of the Iliad as historical evi-

seems

has been sug-

Alexander's generals had to take responsibility for the

earliest descriptions of

ings at Ithaca or

It

the Macedonians preserved features of the

succession.

in the

No

a suggestion of doubtful value, that

is

it

Greek assemblies are of course to be found in Homer. Thev are a good example of the problems which Greek assemblies pose for the modern researcher. Any reader of the assembly scenes in the Iliad is entitled to ask whether such scenes reflect any historical reality: this is a part of a more general dence.

ultimately

Homeric assembly ends in civil war, but the danger is implicit in the whole course of action. 7. On the borderline between Greeks and nonGreeks there are the Macedonians.

Many

is

eliminated bv pressure or persuasion or that contrasting

some Greek States (including Sparta) never granted such powers to their assemblies and never allowed comparable freedom of speech in political meetings. The time and modality Ionian cities of Asia Minor.

IN ANTIQUITY

summon an

assembly, though

unthinkable to have one

it

bers of the city or of the army. 3) to "important" people

would obviously be

summoned by and

ordinary

mem-

The assembly

listens

signifies

approval or

dis-

life

members

to

whom

the

rule that council should take the responsibility

approval, but does not vote. 4) Intervention from the

least in the case of

floor in the exceptional case of Thersites in the Iliad

approval represented by the applause could be checked

is

clearly considered scandalous (yet

it

does happen).

by subsequent

voting decrees the extent of the

division, as

happened

in

432

b.c.

25

I

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

IN ANTIQUITY

In a disputed passage, Aristotle seems to

tell

us that

there was no freedom of discussion in the assemblies of Sparta

and Crete

(Politics II. 1272a).

We

anything very definite about Crete, but

cannot sav

in the case of

enough evidence to show that, whatever Aristotle may have meant, private individuals could speak in the assembly even in Aristotle's time. Sparta there

Aeschines

is

180-81) has a story about a disreputable

(I,

man who spoke

was warned the

the Spartan assembly and

in

Then an

listened to with attention.

elder

Spartans that the city could not survive for long listened to such advisers.

The

if

thev

possibilitv of speeches

But one point

by

demos formulates crooked decisions the gerontes and the kings shall decline to accept them. This rider was already known to Tyrtaeus (frag. 3a). that

Its

the

if

natural interpretation seems to be that

it

gives the

power of veto, limiting preexistthe assembly. The veto controls, but does

From

the end of the sixth cen-

every year to be members of the Council [Boule).

and

freely

Council were bound to discuss matters

this

in detail

during their meetings. After such

an experience they could not be expected to keep

silent

when they returned to the assembly as ordinary citizens. Freedom of speech in the Athenian assembly cannot have been more recent than the reforms of Cleisthenes.

may

It

What we know

of course have preceded them.

well enough

the second half of the

fifth

is

the state of affairs in

century

In the second part of the

fifth

b.c.

century and during

the greater part of the fourth century every Athenian citizen

had the

right to speak unless

he disqualified

himself by certain specified crimes (such as having been a deserter or having beaten his own parents, or having been found guilty three times of illegal proposals). Any citizen could defend his

own

proposals already submit-

kings and the gerontes

ted to the boule and introduced to the ecclesia by

ing rights of

probouleuma, or could submit proposals direct to the

furthermore, evidence in Thucydides and

No citizen could speak more than once in a meeting on the same topic. The only risk a speaker had

Xenophon that the assembly was an important decisionmaking body in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.,

having misled the people, a remote possibility even for

not abolish, the powers of initiative of the assembly.

There

is,

though

it

must be emphasized that deciding

after

ecclesia.

to face

was the

being prosecuted later for

possibility of

professional politicians.

We

for the period in

amount was accompanied by an exceptional amount of freedom of speech in the theater and generally speaking in ordinary life. A fifth-century law which made it illegal to attack people by name in comedies can have been enforced only by fits and starts because our information on it is both vague and contradictory. But there are two

Athenian practice. But the archaic assemblies of Ionia

remarks which we should like to make about freedom of speech in Athens outside the ecclesia. First, personal reputations were protected by various laws against slander. In the fourth century it was an offense even

remain a mystery, and

to sneer at

listening to opposite opinions

is

What we

not the same as taking

do not know is who at a given time took the initiative and controlled decisions behind the screen of theoretical equality of part in the debate.

really

the Spartiates. It is

a pity that

we have

so little information about

the limits of freedom of speech in other

Greek cities which they were not yet likely to have been influenced by Athens. We know from Thucydides that at Syracuse a magistrate could stop discussion in a way which seems different from

it is

as long as they

remain a mystery

possible to overrate Athens' contribution to politi-

we

of

need hardly add that

freedom of speech

this

extraordinary

in the assemblies

any citizen

for

having worked in the

marketplace. Secondly, about 432 b.c, Diopeithes'

terms for freedom of speech, parrhesia, spread from

making it an offense to deny the gods of the and to teach new doctrines about meteorological phenomena, showed that Athens cared more for politi-

Athens.

cal liberty than for intellectual liberty. Anaxagoras,

cal

freedom of speech.

It is true,

however,

presently see, that at least one of the

In the matter of freedom of speech

as

shall

two technical

much

of the

development of Athens is obscure. The rule that people over fifty had priority in speaking is attributed to Solon, and was already obsolete by the fourth century. It shows that private individuals were allowed to speak in the Solonian assembly, which seems to have been open to the fourth class, the thetes. It constitutional

when

became regular in Athens and when the ordinary citizen was allowed to propose amendments and new resolutions. is

258

lot

Members of

by private individuals seems always to have been

contemplated by the Spartan constitution. The famous rider to the Rhetra in Plutarch [Lycurgus 6) enjoins

clear.

is

tury b.c. five hundred Athenian citizens were chosen

uncertain

the meetings of the assembly

decree, city

Protagoras,

Diagoras,

and

perhaps

Apollonia had to run for their

go away and was

killed.

The

lives.

Diogenes

of

Socrates did not

suspicion that

democracy

and philosophy were incompatible could never be dispelled again, with the consequences that are evident in Plato's

With

works.

background of political institutions in be surprised if the notion of freedom of speech turns out to be an Athenian fifth-century mind,

this

we

shall not

idea. In earlier times the notion of liberty (eleutheria)

FREEDOM OF SPEECH did not include freedom of speech: indeed, another

important

notion

Greek

of

archaic

ethics,

aidos

IN ANTIQUITY

Persians, after the defeat of Salamis, "the tongue

no longer

in fetters." Pindar, the aristocrat,

is

was obvi-

("modesty, respect"), implied that silence and reticence

ously suspicious of this change of attitude towards free

good man. Since Homer (and probably even earlier, in the Mycenaean age) the free man (eleutheros) is the opposite of a slave. For Homer the event that stood out as the cause of transition from freedom to slavery was defeat in war, the end of "the free day." This, of course, was a gross simplification of real life with its many varieties of freedom and of slavery. Some archaic poets restricted the meaning of eleutheros to indicate the generous man. They paved the way to the later notion cherished by Aristotle that there is an inborn aristocratic qualitv of the mind which distinguishes the free man from the slave.

speech.

were

characteristic of the

On

the other hand, Solon perceived that debts can

be worse than war individual.

He

freedom of the

in affecting the

also associated the notion of eleutheros

with the notion of law (nomos) and regarded tyrants

enemies of freedom because tyrants do not

as the

It

when he spoke with

has been suggested that

in the second Olympian Ode, he had in mind the word parrhesia. This may or may not be the case, but certainly panglossia, like parrhesia,

horror of panglossia

denotes a readiness to utter anything. In another passage of the second Pythian Ode, Pindar explain that frankness

He

tions.

is

free

from

is

at pains to

political connota-

hated what he called the slander and envy

of people.

The word appears in

428

parrhesia, however,

nor

in Pindar,

in

in Euripides'

and Ion

B.C.)

In both cases the

is

to

be found neither

Aeschylus and Sophocles, and Hippolytus

(lines 672,

word

(line

first

422; performed

675; of uncertain date).

used in connection with

is

Athens. In other passages (most notably in the Electra, 1049, 1056; of uncertain date), Euripides uses

lines

mean freedom

parrhesia to tions

of speech in private rela-

also Orestes, line 905;

(cf.

Bacchae, line 668;

respect the law. During the Persian Wars, the Persian

Phoenician Women, line 391;

king appeared as an especially dangerous and powerful

But, in his only passage mentioning parrhesia, Aristo-

(now used in the abCreek attitude

zusae, line 540). Finally, Democritus says in a fragment

Liberty

tyrant. stract)

— came

eleutheria

to indicate a collective

to political life as opposed to Persian despotism. We do not know where and by whom freedom was first associated with democracy. The connection appears to

be current

Athens during the

in

century:

fifth

it

is

hinted at by Aeschylus and loudly proclaimed by Euripides; it

clearly familiar to Thucydides

it is

in Pericles' speeches. In

of speech appears to

who

democratic thinking freedom

be one of the most important

word

isegoria (equality in

Athenian democracy

to indicate

freedom of speech)

When Thersites spoke, he broke the

8.

the

virtue

aristocratic

Homer

of

respect

represents his aristocrats

and

conclude that

rules of aidos, self-respect.

endowed with "gentle who remembered

a popular

word

If

the eyes only, not also of the mouth.

the

fifth

century

sofar as speech

a is

new

still

is

The

a virtue of writers of

emphasize the value of aidos,

in-

concerned. But in the same century

notion spread, the notion that freedom of speech

a positive, or at least a remarkable, achievement.

Prometheus boldly." ideal

A

is

"you speak too an essential element of the

affectionately accused:

free tongue

democracy

is

The same Persae how, among the

of Aeschylus' Suppliants.

Aeschylus describes

in

the

inherent in eleutheria.

We

century parrhesia became

Athens, denoting freedom of speech

we turn to Herodotus (V, 78) and Pseudo-Xenophon

Old Oligarch"), Constitution of Athens (1, 12), them uses the word parrhesia. Both indicate democracy by the word isegoria. Isegoria was not necessarily a democratic virtue: it meant

we

find that neither of

equality of rights in the matter of freedom of speech

and could

easily

apply to a restricted number of

aristo-

who was an aristocratic contemporary of

was probably born about 550. It is hard him Isagoras because

Cleisthenes,

to believe that his father called

he wanted to encourage democratic virtues to

is

(Thesmophoria-

("the

Homer's lines, described the kings from whom gracious words flow (Theogony 84). Theognis has an implicit believe that aidos

in

ed.).

private situations.

But in the

who

is

Nauck, 2nd

chiefly in political matters, but occasionally also in

aidos" (Odyssey VIII, 172). Hesiod,

rebuke for those

in a political sense

in the late fifth

crats. Isagoras,

(V, 78).

it

(226D) that parrhesia

uses

and necessary ingredients of eleutheria. Aeschylus in the Suppliants (now dated after 468 B.C.) names the free mouth as a sign of freedom, whereas Herodotus uses the

phanes also uses

frag. 737,

fifth

in his son.

century isegoria, like isonomia,

mean democracy.

came

democracy rights. There was

Parrhesia represented

from the point of view of equality of an old-fashioned flavor about

isegoria.

We

are not

surprised that Herodotus and the Old Oligarch preferred

it

to parrhesia, while Euripides chose the

modern word

more

parrhesia.

knew both words and, of Not simply because he was never

Thucydides, of course, course, used neither. satisfied

with simple formulas. Discussion he appreci-

ated above of speech

all

is

things, but

he recognized that freedom

inseparable from good faith, both in the

speaker and in the

listener,

and must be used to

foster

259

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

IN ANTIQUITY

reason against unreason. The debate between Cleon

and Diodotus

is

not only the most profound discussion

about imperialism ever held Augustine;

fore Saint

also the most searching which discussion is useful

is

it

analysis of the conditions in

democracv.

ancient world be-

in the

After the fourth century b.c. isegoria remained a

word.

used

alone

it

with

together

or

own:

He

speech represents Thucvdides' contribution to the the-

ruled by an oligarchy. Soon afterwards, with the

ory of freedom of speech.

ruling the world, there

became more popu-

In the fourth centurv parrhesia lar

than isegoria. Demosthenes uses parrhesia twenty-

six

times as against three or possibly four instances of Isocrates

isegoria;

has parrhesia

twenty-two times,

isegoria only once; Aeschines parrhesia eight times, but

some

isegoria once. In

of the

Demosthenic speeches is most emphatically

ol doubtful authenticity parrhesia

Athens everyone enjoyed freedom of speech, At the same time

including foreigners and slaves. parrhesia was frequently used to

mean

either the virtue

of frankness or the vice of loquacity. Plato, of course,

knows parrhesia both but

sense,

political

in the political

Aristotle,

knows parrhesia only

in

in an anecdote about Athens 16. 6).

We

and

in the

remarkably

non-

enough,

the nonpolitical sense, except

Pisistratus (The Constitution of

League. In

J.

Sundwall's epoch-making

was ruled by a minority of wealthy people. Both the Macedonian and the anti-Macedonian parties had wealthy leaders. These people emphasized the right to say all that they wanted (parrhesia) rather than equality of freedom of studies that in the fourth century Athens

speech

(isegoria).

tutions

was

private

life

But the interest

in

democratic

insti-

were more interested in private virtues and vices than in politiand declining. People

cal achievements.

Menander replaced Aristophanes,

speak

Greek

for

left

though

in the assemblies,

and Philo considered

of the serious man.

one of

to

in

be the quality

it is

difficult to

was not

of parrhesia

became

Parrhesia

was more

connected with

as

of

characteristics

philosopher's

a

Nicomachean Ethics

brilliant,

political

point

we may

pause. Isegoria implied

imply the right

to say everything.

parrhesia looks like a for

whom

word

the other hand,

word invented by

a vigorous

life

parrhesia pleased Cleon, but

it

must have pleased

Euripides and certainly pleased Demosthenes. not surprised that Plato disliked

when

man

meant freedom from tradispeech. We doubt whether the

democratic

tional inhibitions of

On

it

We

are

(Republic 557e)

was granted as a privilege to the wise counsellor (Laws 694b; Laches 188e). We shall never know about Pericles. The two words parrhesia and isegoria point to the conflict between democracy as liberty and democracy as equality that was to concern except

it

later political thinkers.

imagine because

institutions.

virtue.

In

the

among the "magnanimous" man (1124b

Aristotle included

the

it

28-30) and of the good comrade (1165a

9).

Diogenes

made parrhesia his watchword (Diog. His choice may have discouraged other

the Cynic

Laert.,

VI, 69).

philos-

ophers from talking about parrhesia. As a matter of

Zeno nor Epicurus seem

to

have made

extensive use of the word. But later Epicureans to like parrhesia as a quality of friendship.

came

Philodemus

wrote a book on parrhesia, and Horace may have got from him or other Epicureans his incomtpta fides

nudaque

Veritas

Carmen,

I,

of friendship

condemned

(

parrhesia) of the ideal friend (Horace,

Plutarch defined parrhesia as the voice

24).

{Moralia

The Cynic Demonax

51C).

religious mysteries as secretive,

fore contrary to parrhesia (Lucian,

Demonax

texts teach us that parrhesia signified a

revival of the republican or democratic

this

grateful

having introduced him to

behavior towards tyrants and emperors.

At

was

14)

(I,

really meant.

The career it

Philodemus the

isegoria to

the idea of isegoria in politics:

what he

Bomans

connection with the good

Marcus Aurelius

his teachers for

league was

freedom of speech

little

assemblies.

political

Epicurean used isegoria king,

was

as a political right. 9.

Achaean

entitled to

in fact the

and parrhesia as a private virtue replaced parrhesia

equality of freedom of speech, but did not necessarily

used isegoria

member was

league every

this

fact, neither

have learnt from

2, 38, 6; 2, 42, 3).

to describe the state of affairs prevailing in the

the right of the Athenian citizen. But other texts say that in

its

(never

parrhesia

parrhesia on

If

It

was used by people with a philosophic education, both in the political and in the nonpolitical sense. Polybius

you attack, not the objective validity, but the good faith of your opponent, you introduce an clement which will poison democratic proceeding. Even more than Pericles' Funeral Speech, Diodotus in a

2o(J

common

very respectable though not a very

and there11).

Many

courageous

was not a meaning of

It

parrhesia, but rather the reaction of philosophically

men

educated

and moral degradation The meaning attributed to libertas by some Boman writers, including

to the flattery

inherent in tyranny. (or

even

licentia)

was certainly

Tacitus,

influenced

by

the

use

of

parrhesia. 10.

At

we mav

becomes pracand to Borne antecedents and to explain what

this stage the

tically identical

Greek

with the

turn to clarify

situation

Boman

situation,

in the Boman Empire. Bepublican Borne was an aristocratic society in

happened

which patricians and plebeians, patrons and clients, rich (adsidui) and poor (proletarii) were kept apart by law and custom. But patricians, patrons, and rich men were not necessarily the same persons. Different insti-

FREEDOM OF SPEECH tutions took different notice of the various categories

Up

end of the republic, patricians formed a group of their own in the Senate, though of citizens.

to the

of decreasing importance.

cians

were never allowed

On

the other hand, patri-

into the influential assembly

and the consuls-designate

ex-censors, the ex-consuls,

spoke

IN ANTIQUITY

first).

The general impression one century of the Republic

is

moved

intellectual life tongues

receives for the last

and was a

that in both political freely.

But

this

main legislative and electoral assembly, wealth was the main criterion for the classification. Wealth counted in the

crisis, and even in this period the beneficiaries must have been a restricted privileged group. Men like Cicero felt that there was less freedom of speech in Rome than in Athens. This admission did not imply

general assembly of the tribes (comitia tributa), but

any regret.

of the plebeians (comitia plebis tribute

I,

In the assembly

of the centuriae (romitia centuriata), the

less

dom

conspicuously.

The Roman army remained organized according

to

principles of wealth until the end of the second century

Later it became an army of proletarians. Patronage was recognized in civil law, especially in relation to freed men, who were ipso facto clients of their exB.C.

masters. Patronage operated unofficially in lawsuits, elections, services, etc. Legal regulations

and customs

Roman

affecting freedom of speech in the

society of

the Republic have to be interpreted against the back-

ground of

this

period of

complex net of

relations.

According to

typical of Republican

It is

Rome

that free-

was never directly and precisely connected with the more general notion of libertas. The very terminology of freedom of speech, however, pointed to a relationship between freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular: we hear of libera of speech

lingua, dratio libera. first

century b.c.

It

goes without saying that by the

Roman

terminology was influenced

by Greek usage. Yet parrhesia never had an exact equivalent in Rome; when it was translated by licentia, contumacia, an element of criticism was often implied.

The general

attitude seems to have

been that only

the most plausible interpretation, one of the laws of

persons in authority had a right to speak freely: one

the Twelve Tables (fifth Century b.c.) punished slander by death. Aristocrats were likely to derive most advantage from such a provision which can be paralleled

senses that freedom of speech belongs to the sphere

in other societies

(Anglo-Saxons punished slander by

the excision of the tongue). At the

century

B.C.,

end

of the third

the poet Naevius seems to have been

prosecuted in accordance with attacked the powerful Metelli

this

sphere of

libertas.

freedom

of speech with political

was one

of the

law

the assemblies themselves), political

In the political assemblies (comitia) as such there

was

no place for discussion. Citizens were there to vote.

intellectuals. Restrictions in the practice of astrology

(Dio Cassius, 56, 25, 5) and frequent expulsions of astrologers from

Empire. Noises

But there was opportunity for discussions in the more

protest in the

made

The magistrate who presided over

the contiones had considerable discretionary powers.

seems that he could either throw open the discussion

or invite carefully selected individuals to speak. For-

eign ambassadors were admitted to speak in such are

Rome

underlined the danger of any

known

to

have spoken

in

them. In the Senate freedom of speech was complete, but senators were asked to speak in order of rank

(which meant that the most influential members, the

in the circus

remained the only im-

pressive (and occasionally effective) form of verbal

informal meetings (contiones) which normally preceded

women

constant

trials,

and eventually elimination of potential rivals left the members of the Roman Empire in no doubt as to the repressive character of the regime established by Augustus. The burning of books and desultory persecution of philosophers (especially under Vespasian and Domitian) more particularly affected the intimidation,

enquiry about the future of the government of the

interference with education.

and

to say so (Suetonius, Tiberius 28).

and the disappearance of contiones before the formal assemblies (followed by the de facto disappearance of

this

into desuetude,

gatherings,

first

perform-

in a theatrical

and slander was prosecuted as which was stretched to cover attacks in theaters against individuals. At least since the time of Augustus (if not of Sulla) offensive words against persons in authority came under the law of maiestas: here again details are by no means clear. Foreign philosophers and rhetoricians were thrown out of Rome more than once in the second and first centuries b.c. under the ordinary coercive powers of the magistrates, who had the support of the Senate. This amounted to implicit

It

freedom became generally

recognized, for obvious reasons. Paradoxically, Tiberius

Limitation of political discussion even in the Senate

iniuria

the formal comitia.

as to the

law when he

ance (the details are extremely obscure). Later fell

11.

much

In the Imperial period the connection of

of auctoritas just as

sensitive

Roman Empire. Widespread

servility

people aware that adulation was a

characteristic vice

of Imperial

society

—a

astrous for the moral fibre of men. In the

vice dis-

first

century

and in the early part of the second, both Roman and Creek writers expressed profound disgust with adulation (Phaedrus, Persius, Quintilian, Juvenal, on the Roman side; Philo, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, and Epictetus, on the Greek side). Tacitus, though not without contradictions, gave this feeling its classical expression. His Annals are a study in the moral degen-

261

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

IN ANTIQUITY

eration resulting from the lack of freedom of speech.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

His Dialogue on the Orators examines the relation

between decay

in

eloquence and decline of political

liberty.

After the

first

decades of the second century freedom It

was

replaced by the issue of religious toleration raised by

we

the spread of Christianity. As far as

nobody presented the case

are aware,

for or against Christianity

freedom of speech. There is, however, a Christian development of the idea of freedom of speech which deserves our attention and mas bring our storv to a conclusion. Parrhesia was one of those words like ecclesia, as a question involving the principle of

suffragium

intcrcessio,

—

— which

the Christian

Church

took over from Creek and Latin political language and

endowed with

a

new meaning. The

preceded by the Jews

in

Christians

reinterpretation.

this

were

The

isolated expression of Isocrates' Busiris 40, "liberties

towards the gods," was rediscovered and given a posi-

meaning by Jewish writers such as the Septuagint translators, Philo and Josephus. The Septuagint used

tive

parrhesia to translate different

Hebrew

expressions

(Leviticus 26:13; Proverbs 1:20, Psalms 93:1, etc.), one

(with the exception of the biblical

texts

Ancient Near Eastern

of speech ceased to be an important issue.

J.

Pritchard,

B.

3 ed. (Princeton, 1968). Pioneer

Texts,

work on political thinking of the ancient Near East has been done especially by members of the Oriental Institute of Chicago. It will be enough to refer to H. and H. A. Frankfort,

J.

A. Wilson, Th. Jacobsen,

of Ancient

Man

Hie Intellectual Adventure

(Chicago, 1946); reprinted as Before Philos-

ophy (Harmondsworth, 1949); H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Cods (Chicago, 1948); J. A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt (Chicago, 1951); reprinted as The Culture of Ancient Egypt (Chicago, 1956); C. H. Kraeling and R. M. Adams, eds., City Invincible (Chicago, I960); A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1964); and the collection of essays by Th. Jacobsen, Toward the Image of Tammuz and other Essays (Cambridge. Mass., 1970); some of the most important essays by Jacobsen are quoted below. On Oriental political assemblies and related problems see especially: G. Buccellati, Cities and Nations of Ancient Syria (Rome, 1967). I. M. Diakonoff, "Die hethitische Gesellschaft," Mitteilungen aus dern Institut fur Orientforschung,

13

(1967),

313-66.

Evans,

G.

"Ancient

Mesopotamian

Assemblies," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 78 (1958), 1-11. A. Falkenstein,

Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale,

"La Cite-temple Sumerienne," 1

(1954), 784-815. G. Fohrer,

which indicated God's power. Parrhesia became the right and the privilege of the believer; already in Philo (De specialibus legibus I, 203) and later in the Testament of the XII Patriarchs {Reuben 4, 2) it is connected

fiir

with the notion of syneidesis, conscience

248-53. R. Cordis, "Democratic Origins in Ancient Israel,"

of

(cf.

Josephus, Antiquitates iudaicae 2, 52). In the

Testament, parrhesia "in the

consequence of conversion.

also

New

name of Jesus" is the The word occurs most

frequently in the Fourth Gospel, in Acts and in Saint Paul.

It

3:12).

is

the sign of the

new hope

(II

The believer can speak not only

of Jesus, but also to Jesus.

He

Corinthians in the

name

has parrhesia towards

God. Saint John Chrysostom makes it clear that a catechumen does not enjoy this right (Homilies 2, 5, ed. Gaume, X, 506). More particularly, parrhesia becomes the right and the privilege of the martyr and of the saint. These have purchased liberty by martyrdom and sanctification, and have a special right to speak to God. They can therefore help other people by speaking to God on their behalf. The Life of Saint Anthony by Athanasius is a conspicuous document testifying to this conception which was to affect the whole outlook of the Middle Ages. On the other hand

parrhesia

is

used in monastic texts

Apophthegmata patrum) attachment to

We

this

(for instance, the

to indicate pride

and excessive

world.

have come a long way from the political

parrhesia of which the Athenians were proud, but the

new

parrhesia of the Christian martyr and saint con-

tributes to the notion of

262

The Oriental

ones) quoted above are to be found in

and suffering give a

freedom of conscience. Faith

right to speak out

— even to God.

"Der Vertrag zwischen Konig und Volk Alttestamentliche

Garelli,

Wissenschaft,

in Israel," Zeitschrift

71

Les Assyriens en Cappadoce

1-22.

(1959), (Paris,

1963),

P.

pp.

171-204; idem, Le Proche-Orient asiatique (Paris, 1969),

Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume (New York,

1950),

pp.

2nd ed. (London, 1966). Th. Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2 (1943), 159-72; 369-88. O. R. Gurney, The

idem,

"Early

Hittites,

Development

Political

Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie,

"Die Rolle der Altesten

.

.

.

in Mesopotamia," 52 (1957), 91-140. H. Klengel, im Kleinasien der Hethiterzeit,"

Kramer, "Gilgamesh and Agga," American Journal of Archaeology, 53 (1949), 1-18. J.-R. Kupper, S. N. Kramer, et al., articles on "Vox Populi" in the Ancient Near East, in Revue Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, 57 (1965), 223-36. S. N.

L. McKenzie, "The Elders in J. Old Testament," Analecta Biblica, 10 (1959), 388-406. S. Moscati, The World of the Phoenicians (London, 1968). A. L. Oppenheim, "A New Look at the Structure of Mesopotamian Society," Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 10 (1967), 1-16. H. Reviv, "On Urban Representative Institutions and Self-Government in SyriaPalestine in the Second Half of the Second Millennium B.C.,"

dAssyriologie, 58 (1964). the

Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 12 (1969), 283-97. R. N. Whybray, The Heavenly Counsellor

XL, 13-14 (Cambridge, 1971). G. Widengren, "The Sacred Kingship of Iran," Numen, Supp. 4 (1959), 242-57.

in Isaiah

J.

A. Wilson,

"The Assembly

of a Phoenician City," Journal

of Near Eastern Studies, 4 (1945), 245. J. A. Wilson et al., Authority and Law in the Ancient Orient, Journal of the American Oriental Society (1954), Supp. 17. C. U. Wolf, "Traces of Primitive Democracy in Ancient Israel," Journal

GAME THEORY commit him

Some

of Near Eastern Studies, 6 (1947), 98-108. R N. Whybray, The Heavenly Counsellor in Isaiah XL. 13-14 (Cambridge,

present, others

1971).

other cup of tea, to go for a walk; some involve other

On Greece and Rome specific

bibliography

this

confined to

is

works on freedom of speech. For the history of

freedom

in general

Freiheit (Darmstadt,

refer to R. Klein, ed., Prinzipat unci

1969); H. Kloesel, Libertas (Breslau,

1935); D. Nestle, Eleutheria, Vol.

(Tubingen. 1967); M,

I

Pohlenz, Die griechische Freiheit (Heidelberg,

195.5);

Ch.

Wirszubski, Libertas (Cambridge, 1950); reviewed by A

Momigliano, Journal of Roman Studies, 41 (1951), 146-53. Greece and Rome: J. A. O. Larsen, Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (Berkeley, 1955). Greece: A. Andrewes,

"The Government

Ancient Society and

Ehrenberg

of Classical Sparta," in

Institutions. Studies Presented to V. E.

(Oxford,

1966),

pp.

1-20.

VII,

293-301.

(1940),

A. H.

M.

T

G.

"Isegoria

Griffith,

Jones,

Sparta (Oxford, 1967).

J.

in

the

cit.,

115-38.

A. O.

Larsen,

Athens," in Ancient Society, op.

at

"Cleisthenes and the Development of the Theory of De-

mocracy in Athens," in Essays in Political Theory: Presented to George H. Sabine (Ithaca, 1948), pp. 1-16. M. Radin, "Freedom of Speech in Ancient Athens," American Journal of Philology, (Brescia,

48 (1927), 215-20.

Rome:

1964).

T

G.

Bollinger,

Scarpat,

Parrhesia

Theatralis

Licentia

(Winterthur, 1969). T, Frank, "Naevius and Free Speech,"

American Journal of Philology, 48

105-10.

(1927),

M.

Gigante, Ricerche Filodemee (Naples, 1969). L. Robinson,

Freedom

of Speech in the

Roman Republic (Baltimore, 1940), Roman Studies,

discussed by A. Momigliano, Journal of

32 (1942), 120-24. Early Christianity: L. J. Engels, Reallcxikon fitr Antike and Christentum (Stuttgart. 1968), 7. 839-77.

W.

Jaeger,

(Berlin,

"Parrhesia et fiducia," in Studia Patristica,

1959), 221-39.

E.

schichte von Parrhesia," in Festschrift

fitr

R.

(Berlin, 1929), 283-97. H. Schlier, Theologisches

Seeberg,

Nieuwe

Testament,"

I

Worterbuch

zum Neuen Testament (Stuttgart, 1959), 5, 869-84. W. van Unnik, "De semitische achtergrond van Parrhesia het

I

Peterson, "Zur Bedeutungsge-

what weather

to expect.

Many

decisions are

made by

groups of individuals, and the group decision can be arrived at by a great variety of processes.

Some

decisions arise from a logical structure as in

There are also mathematical and logical decisions; whether tt is a transcendental number, or whether to accept a particular proof of the existence of God. Even in mathematics there may be uncertainty, as Godel has law.

shown. Decisions must also be

made when an individual make the deci-

plays a game. (First, however, he must sion to play,

which

normally though not necessarily

is

a voluntary one.) In playing the game, the individual

follows rules which, together with the decisions made, usually determine the winner. In

all

(maximum rewards) decision is a choice among

optimalitv

for

clearly a

cases the desire arise

will

the "best" decision will be preferred over

Many

since

alternatives all

and

others.

different kinds of decisions occur in connection

with games of various types, the number of different

games being indeterminate

since always

new games

can be invented. In order to describe the behavior of

and

individuals to

to evaluate their choices, criteria

have

be known or must be established. Clearly a comprehensive theory of decision-making

would encompass virtually all of voluntary human activity and as such would be an absurd undertaking, given the infinity of human situations. A more reasonable approach is to develop a science, or sciences, dealing with the principles, so as to govern decision-making in well-defined settings. In

what follows the structure

of that theory will be laid bare as far as this

is

possible

without going into the use of the underlying mathe-

ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO dom; Liberalism;

marry X. Many decisions are

to

respect to nature: what planting to choose,

in

Akademie, N.R. 25 (1962), 585-601.

[See also Constitutionalism;

have an-

to

C.

Nederlandse

Mededelingen

— whether

made with

Ehrenberg,

V.

"Isonomia," in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, Suppl.

Assembly

persons

for a distant future.

own — whether

decisions are entirely his

Democracy; Equality; Free-

State.]

matics.

Game

theory represents a rigorous, mathematical

approach towards providing concepts and methods for making reasonable decisions in a great variety of

human situations. Thus decision theory becomes part of game theory. The basic features of the theory are described in Section 2.

GAME THEORY

decision-making

is

important decisions J.

Decisions and Games.

Human life

is

an unbroken

ness, etc.,

is

cern here.

He

their origin

continuously confronted with the need for mak-

ing choices, some of them of narrow, others of very wide scope. In some cases he commands much information about consequences of a particular choice, in

most he

is

quite uncertain.

Some

affect the

immediate

below.

A

history of general

an impossibility, but histories of in law, military operations, busi-

another matter, though none of our con-

Games on

sequence of decisions made by the conscious individual. is

7,

Historical Considerations.

the other hand, as far as both

and development is concerned, as well as their scientific analysis, have a long and varied history.

The roots of games go back deep into the animal kingdom and to primitive society. Even the oldest known games of Homo sapiens are abstract creations

263

GAME THEORY of surprisinglv high order, and justify the expression

the best representation of

"Homo

military affairs

ludens."

Games

are present in

civilizations,

all

not only in great varieties of form, but thev also appear

life,

particularly of

customs, or war. the latter being especially visible

chance." Later, in his letter of July 29. 1715 to de Montmort he said il serait a souhaiter qu'on eut

during the time of maintenance of expensive private

tin

in disguises

such as

in

ceremonies,

diplomatic

liturgies,

mercenary armies. In Roman Imperial times publicgames were a great burden on the state. In modern ages the

monev

dom from

transactions, say, in the United King-

football pools, exceed those of

some

of the

largest corporations.

man

Since games have always occupied real sense

became

it is

curious that

was

it

in a

But

a subject of scientific inquiry, especially in

finally the

in

games.

fundamental notion of probability arose

from a study of games of chance and

is

a creation of

the sixteenth century, developed by Girolamo (cf.

very

games

so long before

view of the dominating role of uncertainty

Cardano

Ore, 1953) from which time Galileo, Blaise Pascal,

.

.

.

cours cutter des jeux, .

.

made

mathematiquement have a complete Study

traites

would be desirable

it

to

of games, treated mathematically"). Leibniz also

foresaw the possibility of simulation of real

life situa-

by indicating that naval problems could be studied by moving appropriate units representing ships on

tions

maneuver boards. The life

situations

is

similarity of chess to

some

real

obvious and was noted for example

as early as 1360 by Jacobus de Cessolis, or in 1404 by Dirk van Delft who saw in that game a microcosm better of society. The ancient Chinese game wei-ch known by its Japanese name of go was always inter'i,

preted as a mirror of complex, primarily military, operations. Later

many

authors have referred to the

game

Christiaan Huygens, the Bernoullis. Pierre Simon de

"game

Laplace and many others of equal distinction have

in spite

one thing to observe and quite another to establish a rigorous and workable theory. In 1713 when James de Waldegrave analyzed the game "le Her," as quoted in a letter from Pierre Remond de Montmort to Nicholas Bernoulli iBaumol and Goldfeld, 1968), a very different step was taken.

complexity and high mathematical sophistication

This remarkable study anticipated a specific case of

extended our understanding of is still

this basic

concept.

It

the subject of searching mathematical analysis

without which

it is

impossible for

modern science even

to attempt to describe the physical or social world.

Probability theory, not to be discussed further here

though to be used of

its

in

an essential manner, deals

with a simpler specialized

game

games

situation than that

which true strategic situations occur. These are characterized by the simultaneous appearance of several independent but interencountered

acting

in those

human

in

agents each pursuing his

Probability theory

first

own

goal.

explained chances in particular

of politics," "the

the stock-exchange, etc. But

some

what

of the market," or of

it is

similarity

now known

is

concept

as the (optimal)

(see Section 7,

minimax strategy

below) applied to a matrix game

without a saddle point. However

this

matter was

entirely forgotten or perhaps never understood,

had no

influence; also his solution

would have remained would not

singular since the mathematics of his time

by Laplace. The relationships between those games and situations similar to them, but transcending them in their human significance were subjected to analysis. While some issues were clarified it immediately became clear that buried under the obvious there were further questions which awaited formulation and answer, not all of them posed or given to this day. The application of probability theorv to physics, by then an actively developing abstract mathematical discipline, had to wait until the second half of the nineteenth century. Though it originated from the study of a social phenomenon, i.e., from games of chance,

have made

purposes

(J.

Bernoulli!

—except

— lagged behind

for actuarial

that

made

to

physics and astronomy.

The need for a theory of those games for whose outcome probability alone is not decisive was clearly seen, apparently for the first time, by Leibniz (1710) who stated: "Games combining chance and skill give

and

has only been unearthed recently. Thus de Waldegrave

games. But philosophical questions were raised, notably

the application to social events

264

human

and of the practice of medicine which necessarily depend partly on skill and partly on

it

possible to prove a generalization of his

specific result.

moot question whether mathematics could in the direction which the theory of games of strategy has taken. The interest of mathematicians was then dominated by the study of analysis, stimulated by the concomitant and inseparable It

is

a

have developed rapidly

development of mechanics. It can be even argued that it is at any rate largely an accident that the human mind turned early towards the formal science of mathematics and not towards, say, the intriguing task of formalizing law in a similarly rigorous manner. There is no known record of any deeper scientific concern with games of strategy for about 200 years, though various authors, including C. F. Gauss and others, have from time to time studied certain combinatorial problems arising in chess (e.g., Gauss determined the minimum number of queens needed to control the entire chess board). M. Reiss (1858), who even

GAME THEORY quoted Leibniz,

is

apparently the

first

who has game is a game

author

given an extensive mathematical treatment of a that

not strictly a chance game. But his

is

was not of great consequence. work too was forgotten and without influence. Among others E. Zermelo (1912) and E. Lasker (1918) advanced the understanding of chess mathematically and philosophically. In 1924-27 E. Borel published papers on a certain two-person game, for which he found an optimal method of playing, but he expressed belief that it would not be possible to of "solitaire" and as such It

seems that

arrive at

this

general theorem. Confirming the well-

a

known danger

making negative statements

of

ence, John von

Neumann

in his

in sci-

important paper of

to a positive linear transformation without fixing a unit

or a zero. In these terms payoffs will be expressed.

The

concept takes prior rank even over money units, though they be available. Utility thus defined is what

utility

when selectThe above-mentioned numerical ex-

the individual will fundamentally aim for ing his strategy.

pression is obtained from a small set of plausible axioms by combining probability and an individual's completely

ordered

preferences

of

set

(fulfilling

Archimedean order property), showing

vidual will think in terms of expected utility.

proved that these axioms define numerical

"utility"

manner.

in the desired

It

is

the

that the indiIt

and make

is it

an additional

step to assume that the individual will endeavor to

1928, "Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele" (Mathe-

maximize

matische Annalen, 100), proved precisely what Borel

The new utility theory also has given rise to a large literature. Though modifications of the original version

had thought

to

be impossible: a general theorem which is always an optimal strategy

guarantees that there

available for a player: the

and widely

influential

1938

in

minimax theorem

7 below).

(cf.

though decisive, was again neglected,

This paper,

though

now famous fundamental

J.

Ville

gave a simplified and more

this utility.

have been

proposed

(e.g.,

the

use

of

subjective,

Bayesian probabilities instead of the frequency concept, etc.) the theory has entered virtually

all

writings

on decision-making and the more modern treatments of economics. The theory has its antecedents in D.

general version of the proof of the minimax theorem.

Bernoulli's

In 1944 appeared the Theory of

Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgen-

Paradox" (1738; Menger, 1934 and 1967) in which he introduced the notion of moral expectation, i.e., a value

stern, a large

and comprehensive work, which defian immense, steadily growing literature on games and decision theory has arisen in many countries. The theory developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern has been extended, applied and modified, but its basic structure and con-

concept, in order to account for the fact that in spite

nitely established the field. Since then

of an infinitely large mathematical expectation in that

cepts sustain the

new developments.

Decision theory

in the narrower, principally statistical, sense

had de-

veloped due to the pioneering work of A. Wald (1950). The minimax theorem is of crucial importance also.

The newest

modifications and extensions of either

game

theory or statistical decision theory are manifold, and

some

brief indications are found in the text below.

history of the theory of

found 3.

in

games of strategy

to

The

1944

is

Before

"St.

Petersburg

a person will not risk his entire possessions as

a stake in order to be allowed to play this game, even

could be offered. The second step in the direction von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theory was taken by F. P. Ramsey in his "Truth and Probability" (1926; if it

of

was only rediscovered after the in von Neumannthe Morgenstern formulation was developed and had become dominant. The use of subjective probability does not invalidate the theory (Pfanzagl, 1962; 1967) as was already noted on the occasion of the original formula1931); but this paper

expected

theory

utility

tion in 1944.

The new theory

of numerical utility

is

not identical with theories of "cardinal" or "ordinal"

Morgenstern, 1972.

Utility.

game

famous treatment of the

discussing

games

of

strategy

utility of the older

and neo-classical economists, nor

proper and developing the essence of the theory, a

has

medium in which the payoff is made game is played for money then the winnings in money can be taken as the criterion for the outcome, be it a game of chance or of strategy. But when the score is not set in ready-made numerical

and power of the new theory a great number of experiments have been made a novum in this field. These experiments attempt to test the validity of the under-

clarification of the is

needed.

When

a

by a simple "win" or "lose" declaration, the matter is more difficult. While it would be possible merely to postulate the existence of a number, it is terms, or even

desirable to

show how

fiable character

a numerical criterion of a speci-

can be established. This was accom-

plished (von

Neumann and

showing that

"utility"

Morgenstern, 1944) by

can be defined as a number up

it

a basis in philosophical or political utilitarianism.

In order to establish further the empirical validity

—

lying axioms,

and

to clarify the question of

how

indi-

viduals behave typically in situations involving risk.

This behavior

is

clearly a

phenomenon

that

any theory

of decision-making has to take into account, given the

glaring fact of the prevalence of chance in

human

affairs.

The development

of the

new

theory of utility

defi-

nitely advances our ability to analyze decisions (Fish-

265

GAME THEORY The world

burn, 1970) and raises important philosophical issues

Games

4.

as Models of Human Actions.

Games can

two broad but sharply different categories: (a) games of chance and (b) games of strategy, which contain chance games as a simple, special case. In (a) the outcome is totally independent of the action of the playing individual as, e.g., in roulette. There may nevertheless be different manners of betting on the outcome, e.g., the player must decide whether to

be

classified into

place a given stake in one throw, or to distribute

over several places (numbers,

colors), or

it

over several

These questions lead to important exercises

plays.

in

probability theory but they do not alter the funda-

mental simple chance character of the game. In

(b)

the outcome is controlled neither by chance alone, nor by the individual player alone, but by each player to some extent. Chance may (as in poker) or may not (as in chess) be present. It is the entirety of the actions of the players and of chance if nature intervenes which determines the outcome and the equilibria (which the theory is to

—

—

phenomena

is

embedded

in that

the theory of knowledge. However, the connections

must not be overrated. Montaigne spoke of the need for separate scientific languages and this need has now become quite evident. It can be demonstrated that ultimately different fields of inquiry will generate even

own

For example, the logic of quantum by a projective geometry which the distributive law which in algebra means

their

"logic."

mechanics in

is

best described

+ c) =

ab

+

— — does not

hold (Birkhoff and von Neumann). It is to be expected that a calculus as germane to the social sciences may someday be developed (or discovered?) as differential calculus is to mechanics. Other parts of the natural sciences show signs of producing their own mathematical disciplines and structures, and this process may repeat itself. One that a(b

ac

important aspect of game theory given

rise to considerable,

This process

is

that

it

has already

purely mathematical activ-

determine). In the course of a play the interests of the

ity.

players are sometimes opposed to each other, some-

once more that the development of mathematics

times parallel.

ultimately dependent on the mathematician being in-

The

game theory

is

only in

its

beginning, but proves is

that besides ex-

volved with empirical problems. Mathematics cannot

games can be identified strictly with important other human actions which they

proceed solely on the basis of purely formalistic and

significance of

games proper,

plaining

therefore model. This

is

is

suitable

to be understood in the precise

which models are used in science, as when mere mass points and a theory of the solar system is built on that basis. In the same manner military, political, economic, and other processes can be identically represented by certain games of strategy. If a theory of such games can be established then a theory for the modeled processes is obtained. Such a theory would necessarily have to be mathematical. Its structure turns out to be quite different from that of classical mechanic-sand, a fortiori, from the differential and integral calculus. This is due

manner

in

possibly aesthetic grounds.

theory

may be

respect

The

the planets are considered to be

its

Thus the creation

of

game

of a significance transcending in that

material content.

essential justification for taking

games of

strat-

egy as models for large classes of human behavior was already stated in the

first

paragraph of

this section:

our acts aie interdependent in very complex manners

and

it is

the precise form of this interdependence that

has to be established. Interdependence has, of course,

been recognized, but even where neo-classical economics of the Walras-Pareto type tried to describe this interdependence, the attempt failed because there was

no rigorous method evident especially

to

account for interaction which

when

the

number

of agents

to the essentially combinatorial character of the prob-

is

lems encountered and to the wide divergence of the

small, as in oligopoly (few sellers). Instead large

is

num-

opposition of interest, no information processing or

were introduced (under the misnomer of "free competition") such that asymptotically none had any perceptible influence on any other par-

withholding, no bluffing, no discrimination, no exploi-

ticipant

underlying

Among

tation.

phenomena from

molecules or

Matter may

physical

stars there is

phenomena.

no cooperation, no

collide, coalesce, explode, etc.,

but

and consequently not on the outcome, each merely facing fixed conditions. Thus the individual's

is

alleged task was only to maximize his profit or utility rather than to account for the activities of the "others."

no conscious activity. to be expected that the widespread attempts to use the concepts and techniques that had originated in the natural sciences must ultimately fail when applied to social phenomena. But the acceptance of new approaches is slow and difficult in any field and the impact of natural science thinking is hard to break. It

bers of participants

was

there

2oo

of social

phenomena. But the two are different and as a consequence the structure of the sciences dealing with them will differ too. All sciences must, of course, have elements in common such as are dealt with in

of natural

(Martin, 1963).

Instead of solving the empirically given economic

problem,

it

was disputed away; but

reality does not

disappear. In international politics there are clearly

never more than a few

states, in

parties, in military operations a

parliaments a few

few armies,

divisions,

GAME THEORY So effective decision units tend to remain interaction of decisions remains more obvi-

ships, etc.

The

small.

ous and rigorous theory

A

"better" than another for the indi-

is

vidual, let alone

which one

To determine optimal,

wanting.

is

Rational Behavior.

5.

course of action

purpose of social science,

cisely the task of the

of law, of philosophy has been for a long time to give

Rational behavior

meaning

rather,

to the notion of "rational behavior," to ac-

count for "irrationality," to discover, for example

in

is

its

is

optimal. is

pre-

mathematical theory of games.

not an assumption of that theory;

is

identification

assumed

is

or "rational" behavior

one of

is

its

outcomes.

What

that the individual prefers a larger advan-

these advantages

criminal cases, whether a given individual could be

tage for himself to a smaller one.

considered as having acted rationally or not. In general

can be described and measured and are understood by the individual, and if he chooses not to pursue the

there appears to exist an intuitive notion of what "ra-

must mean. Frequently

tional"

this

notion would be

based on experience; but experience varies with each

and whether any person has an intuitively

individual,

clear idea of "rationality"

is

doubtful. In the simple

required course, then there

is

If

a limited definition of

nonrational behavior for such situations. that the demonstration

(if

optimal course of action

It is

assumed

the theory succeeds) of the as

is

convincing to the indi-

case in which an individual wishes to maximize a

vidual as a mathematical proof

and provided he controls all factors or variables on which his utility depends, then we shall not hesitate to say that he acts rationally if he makes decisions such that he actually obtains this maximum, or at least moves stepwise in its direction.

mathematical problem. But the theory allows that a

certain quantity, say utility,

Thus, rationality

predicated on two things:

is

identification of a goal

in

formed, possibly stated numerically, and over

all

the

(a)

the form of preferences (b)

control

the variables that determine the attainment

of the goal.

The

first

condition requires that the individual have

what he wants and that he possess information which will identify the goal he

a clear notion of sufficient

maintain their optimal strategies. Prior to the advent of

game

theory the term "ra-

had been used loosely as referring to both of the two conceptually different situations set forth above, as if there were no difference. The transfer of the notion of rationality from the completely controllable maximizing condition to one in which there is tional"

no exclusive control over the variables is inadmissible. This has been the cause of innumerable difficulties permeating much of philosophical,

the individual be able to determine

cated,

No which may writing.

side conditions,

exist when one is maximum problem changes the

confronted with a clear

make

in setting their values for

situation conceptually. In the case

goal,

and

of the variables as

amount of

should be distant)

set the values

may appear proper

it

foresight

reaching the intended

he actually can

demanded

is

to him.

(especially

if

The

the goal

considerable but this point shall

not be considered further.

The

control factor, however,

and ecohowever compli-

political,

be imposed or

and second the consequences of the changes he may finally that

the case of a

may deviate from his optimal course, in which case an advantage accrues to the others who

nomic

the variables,

in

participant

wishes to reach. The second condition requires that first

is

where

full

control

merely make the task of reaching perhaps even impossible, the maximum more difficult for example, because it may computationally be out exists side conditions

—

of reach. But even in

conceptually different

its

most complicated form

— and

vastly simpler

— than

it

is

the

farmer, for example, can arrange his planting so that

problem faced by, say, a chess player or a poker player, and consequently by any one whose activities have to be modeled by games of strategy. The conceptual difference does not lie in numbers of variables or in

on the average neither a very dry nor a very wet

computational

summer

of

is

of primary concern:

if

nature intervenes in his

tended behavior, the individual can control an different nature

by means of

will hurt him.

statistical

inin-

adjustment; the

Whether nature

is

always

in-

is another question (Morgenstern, 1967). But an entirely different matter if among the variables

different it is

there are

some

that are controlled

by other individuals

having opposite aims. This lack of complete control is

clearly the case in zero-sum (winnings

losses exactly)

compensate

two-person games of strategy, but also

in business, in military

combat, in political struggles

and the like. It is then not possible simply, and in fact, to maximize whatever it may be the individual would like to

maximize, for the simple reason that no such

maximum

exists. It is

then not clear intuitively which

difficulties;

but

we note that the solution

games becomes extremely difficult both when the number of strategies is large (even with as few players as in chess) and also when the number of participants increases, though each may have only a few strategies. When there are, say, 100 variables of which one individual controls 99 the other the remaining one, this appears to be a different situation from that when there are only 2 variables and each player controls one. Yet conceptually the two are identical. No practical considerations, such as possibly assigning weights to variables,

and the

like, in

action, will work.

an effort to reduce

difficulties of

The fundamental conceptual

differ-

267

a

GAME THEORY ence and

remains and has to he resolved by

difficult)

6.

Normative or Descriptive Theory. The purpose

game

of a theory of decision-making, or specifically of theorv,

to advise a person

is

how

to

behave by choosing

optimally from the set of his available strategies, in situations subject to the theorv. If

he decides knowingly

from the indicated course he has either

to deviate

substituted another goal, or dislikes the

moral and other reasons). nology whether he actor.

The theorv

It is

may be

strategies

means

(for

then a matter of termi-

considered to be a rational

is still

anv rate can take such deviations

at

into consideration. Clearly,

some

technically available

inadmissible in legal, moral, and

other respects. In some cases these questions do not arise:

chess

played equally whether the opponents

is

are rich, poor. Catholics,

Muhammadans, communists

Basic Concepts:

7.

The number

which

Game

description of a

ture.

fact there

may be

a feed-

social sciences (Morgenstern, 1935).

new

Theory and Social Struc-

game

of strategy involves

classified

games are first by virtue of the number of players or partici-

pants:

2

a

1,

of

concepts. Obviously,

Second,

n.

when

some

the winnings of

are compensated exactly by the losses of others, the

game

zero-sum.

is

Games

The sum can

negative (when

all gain),

when

are "essential,"

also

all lose),

be positive (when

constant, or variable.

there

is

an advantage

forming coalitions, which can happen even games, but only

when

tages in cooperation;

two

are only

it

n

^ 3.

in

in

zero-sum

This expresses advan-

when there game has to be "inessential" when there is

can develop even

players, but then the

Games

non-zero sum.

no such advantage,

in

are

which case each player proceeds

or capitalists. But business or political deals are affected

independently for himself. Note, however, that he

by such circumstances. Advice can be given with or

does not control the outcome for himself by his actions

without constraints which involve morals or religion.

alone; the "others" are always present,

The theory

also descriptive, as

is

must be

it

if it

is

also nature

is

still

and sometimes

present as an agent.

optimal strategy which only the theorv could discover!

Games are played according to rules which are immutable and must be known to the players. A rule cannot be violated since then the game would cease; it would be abandoned or go over into another

The answer

game

to

be used

as a model.

It

might be argued that the

theory cannot describe past events since before created

could

individuals

is

some

that for

have

not

it

followed

was the

situations the individual

and error and a tradition of empirical knowledge could develop after repeated trials. However, the same objection applies regarding ordinary can find

by

it

trial

maximum problems

(provided they are even given):

the identification and computation of the

was (and

many

in

cases

still

is)

maximum

out of reach even for

very large organizations; yet they behave as

could find

it

and they

try to

work

Theories thus can be viewed as

if

they

in that direction.

bemg both

descrip-

and normative. In the natural sciences a similar apparent conflict shows up in interpreting phenomena tive

as either causally or teleologically related, while in fact this distinction

how

may

own

who

use the theory in order

rationality will

be superior

(ex-

also intuitively accessible). Clearly,

if

more and more

players act rationally, using the theory, there will be shifts in actual

scribed.

This

pointing out.

behavior and in real events to be deis

It

A

tacit

assumption

is

that

They do this without doubt when playing for pleasure. When games are used as models, it may however happen that one's participation in the modeled situation is not voluntary. For example, a country

may be

forced into a military conflict; or, in

order to survive and to earn a living a person

may

have to engage in certain economic activities. Games come to an end; the rules provide for this. Again in the modeled situation one play of a certain game play being the concrete, historical occurrence of a

—

game

— may follow another play of the same game, or

the play of one

game may

follow that of another

game

even under simple conditions. In poker, bluffing is added, as the pretense by some players of having cer-

their

cept in the simplest cases where the correct answer is

possible.

great complexity that confronts any attempt at theory

the concepts of the theory are available and

improve

is

does not affect natural phenom-

capable of being used in both

future actions of those to

that

an interesting phenomenon worth

is

manners. Future descriptions of reality will be imif

if

has philosophical significance: progress

resolve into merely a matter of

the differential equations are written.

proved

—

players agree to play.

Sometimes it is possible to view such sequences as supergames and to treat them as an entity. In some games as in chess the players are perfectly informed about all previous moves, in others they have only partial information about them. Sometimes the players are not even fully informed about themselves, as e.g., in bridge, which is a two-player game, but each player (e.g., North and South) plays through two representatives. In this case information about oneself and to oneself is only disclosed by the manner of playing. In addition chance enters, since the cards are dealt at random. This example gives a first indication of the

Thus the theorv

in the natural sciences

knowledge of the workable social sciences changes social phenomena via changed indi-

ena, but the spread of

2bo

vidual behavior from

back into the

the theory.

and

so on.

tain sets of cards

can become an element

in the play.

GAME THEORY Decisions have to be made,

when

to bluff in the face

how

bv the other players,

of possible bluffs

by others, and many more such

bluffs

The

to surmise

by introducing the notion of which are the complete plans made up by

strictlv equivalently

strategies,

each player for such

Games

moves.

series of

described in the "normalized" form and

it is

which

if

he did would be disastrous.

The fundamental "Minimax Theorem"

countermoves and tell when the game has terminated. It is possible to view games described in this "extensive"

form

disclose his choice,

factors.

normally specify sequences of moves,

rules

out by his adversary and he cannot even accidentally

are then

thus that

assures that

the player, using mixed strategies, can alw ays find a r

correctly

computed optimal mixed

strategy to protect

himself (minimizing the worst in expected values that

can happen to him) precisely as in strictlv determined games he can identify, and even announce, his optimal pure strategy. The original proof of this theorem involved very advanced methods of topology and func-

The theorem

they shall be treated in what follows. In choosing a

tional analysis.

by specifying the precise complete course of action, the player may or may not be at a disadvantage in expected values if he has to make his choice openly before the other player makes his choice. If there is no disadvantage, then the game has a saddle

tance and has had wide ramifications: the original

pure strategy,

i.e.,

point in the payoff matrix, for his

if

the

first

player chooses

optimal strategy, then no matter what the second

may

player

do, he cannot depress the

first

pected payoff below a certain value which

same

of the saddle point. Exactly the

conversely for the second player.

is

is

Each behaves

tended

maximum

so that he

is

rationally

benefit

guaranteed

if

saddle

in pursuit of his in-

at least as

his

much

pure strategy

as corresponds

to the value of the saddle point. If the other player

deviates from his optimal strategy, tionally," the

first

i.e.,

behaves

strategies.

A

one can only gain. in

player forced to disclose his pure

would then be at a disadvantage and the question arises whether there is at all an optimal way of playing. The attempt of opponents to outguess each other by the chain of thought: I think that he thinks I

think he thinks

of the

.

.

.

will

it

stands unchallenged. As

often the case

is

mathematics, other simpler proofs have later been

offered,

by von Neumann himself

as well as

by others,

which

in turn has greatly benefited

from these developments. It is necessary to examine the significance of the use of mixed strategies since they involve probabilities in

which "rational" behavior

situations in It

seems

"rationality" plan,

nite

at

difficult,

first,

to accept

never lead to a resolution

dilemma exemplified by the Sherlock Holmes

is

looked

for.

the idea that

— which appears to demand a clear, a deterministic resolution — should

defi-

be

achieved by the use of probabilistic devices. Yet precisely such

In

is

the case.

games of chance the

task

is

to

determine and then

to evaluate probabilities inherent in the

strategy

that

in

"irra-

However, games usually have no saddle points pure

mistic"),

bodies, a theory

Games having

he chooses

it. Though the implications of the theorem have often been found uncomfortable (and were termed "pessi-

the value

then true

voluntarily or involuntarily, from one player to the other.

theory of games for any number of players rests on

such as using concepts from the theory of convex

no value of information flowing,

is

of outstanding impor-

one's ex-

points in pure strategies are strictly determined. In these cases there

is

of strategy

we

the optimal choice of strategy. This of

some

game;

in

games

introduce probability in order to obtain

interest.

is

philosophically

For example, the French mathe-

matician £. Borel asserted that the

human mind cannot

produce random sequences of anything; humans need to invent devices which will do this for them. Borel did not and could not give a mathematical proof be-

cause his assertion

not a mathematical one.

is

It

is

Professor Moriarty pursuit case (Morgenstern, 1928),

noteworthy, incidentally, that recent studies of the

which corresponds exactly to a qualified game of matching pennies. How then shall one proceed? John von Neumann proved in 1928 that for these games which are not strictly determined a saddle point always exists if the players resort to proper so-called mixed strategies: the now famous minimax theorem. A mixed strategy means that instead of selecting a particular pure strategy from the whole set of all available pure strategies, the player must assign a specific probability to each one of them such that at least one will be played. A properly chosen chance

brain seem to indicate, however, that

determine

device

will

chosen.

The player himself

then

the

will not

strategy

actually

know which

strat-

egy he will actually play; hence he cannot be found

and randomness

in its

some uncertainty

operation are essential for

its

proper functioning.

The which

identification of the correct probabilities with

to use each pure strategy

— sometimes computationally

is

a mathematical

—

and is accomplished by use of rigorous theory. Putting these task

formidable

probabilities to use requires then a suitable physical

generating device which always can be constructed. In

practice players

may merely approximate

such

devices where these would tend to be very compli-

some cases they will produce them exactly, matching pennies. In this game, on matching either heads or tails, one unit will be paid to the first cated. In as in

269

GAME THEORY matching player; when not matching, one unit by the first to the second. This game, clearly zero-sum and of complete antagonism between the two players, is

Hence each

not strictly determined.

being found out. As

self against

way

optimally correct

of playing

him-

will protect

is

well

is

for

known

the

both players

itself

upon

society as the best stable arrangement.

Hut since cooperation

is

a basic feature of

organization these games are of

little interest.

human No such

single imputation exists for essential n-person games.

Domination

then not transitive, thus reflecting a

is

well-known condition of

social

arrangements

in

which

to toss his coin simultaneously with the other plaver.

circularity often occurs (as, for instance, in the relative

which

values of teams in sports).

is

equivalent to choosing each of the onlv two

available strategies with probabilities itself

when

'.,,

'.,.

show heads or

tossed will either

The coin tails

pre-

cisely with the required probabilities.

The manner

which

in

this

game

is

plaved makes

appear to be a game of chance, but in realitv it is one of strategy. This incidentally illustrates a grave difficult)'

The

of giving correct descriptions of social events!

probabilities of

V2

V,,

,

have to be changed

if

there

should be a premium, say, on matching on heads over

matching on

tails.

The new

probabilities that secure

the saddle point can no longer be guessed at or be

found intuitively; they have to be computed from the theory, so quickly does the true, mathematical analysis

which requires the full use of the complex theory have to be invoked. When the number of strategies goes beyond two the computational difficulties increase at any rate; the computations may become impossible even when the game is strictly determined, as in chess, where there are about 10 120 strategies. The existence proofs of optimal strategies are valid nevertheless.

The problem now

arises

how

a social equilibrium

can be described when there are more than two deci-

Here only the most basic concepts can would require much space and intricate mathematical analysis. The strucsion makers.

be indicated ture

is this:

as a full description

when

in a

zero-sum game n

among

Thus the hope for

human

affairs

of finding a uniquely best solution in vain; there

is

such arrangements.

it

^ 3,

then the

Political,

is

no

schemes have been proposed under the quently even open, assumption that

when men organize themselves

stability for

and economic

social,

tacit,

this

freely.

is

but

fre-

possible

Only the

iso-

lated individual or a fully centralized (usually dictatorial) society

can produce a scheme that

better than any other

and

that

it

it

considers

hopes to be able to

enforce.

Thus there is, in general, no "best" all dominating scheme of distribution or imputation; but there may be a number of imputations which do not dominate each other and which among them dominate everything else. Such imputations, therefore, must be considered by society. Thev form a special "stable set," originally called the "solution set." Any one of the imputations belonging to social

this stable set

is

a possible, acceptable

arrangement.

A stable set is precisely a set S of imputations, no one of which dominates any other, and such that every other possible imputation not in S is dominated by some imputation

in S. (Technically, the

belonging to each stable or solution

imputations

set are

not even

partially ordered and, a fortiori, the elements of this set are not

comparable with one another.)

they will form coalitions wherever possible. In order

The stability that such a set possesses is unlike the more familiar stability of physical equilibria. For no

to be considered for inclusion in a coalition a player

single imputation can

may

be disturbed, not bv "forces"

possibility of cooperation

players arises, and

payments to other players; some may be admitted under less favorable terms (when n > 3) offer side

than those

and the

set

like.

by the

When

to be divided

initial

members

of the coalition

a coalition wins, the proceeds have

among

the partners and these then find

themselves in the same kind of conflict situation which arises for the players of a

The

totality of all

zero-sum two-person game.

payments

to all players

is

"imputation." In order to determine an equilibrium that all

is

"better," that

is,

then "dominates"

all

is

there

a unique social optimum, a division of the proceeds

game played by

which cannot be improved upon and which therefore is imposed or im-

of the

society

can always

could be), but by the proposal of a different arrange-

ment by which necessarily

there

is

lie

it

is

dominated. Such a proposal must

outside of

S.

But for every such proposal,

always a counter-proposal which dominates

the proposal, and which

lies in

S.

Thus a peculiar, which has

delicate but effective equilibrium results

process of proposal and counter-proposal always leads

more acceptable, from among

games. Only for those

itself; it

a physical equilibrium

it

other imputations. But that would

in inessential

(as

nothing to do with the usual equilibria of physics; the

possible ones than any other. Such an imputation

be the case

be stable by

an

appears to be necessary to find a particular imputation

270

poses

to

an imputation

in S.

Indeed the present notion

differs

so profoundly from the usual ideas of stability

and

equilibrium that one would prefer to avoid even the use of the words. But no better ones have yet been found.

There may

exist,

even simultaneously,

different,

conflicting solution sets or standards of behavior, each

one with any number of different imputations, always

GAME THEORY those within the respective solution sets are merely

from the original intentions, even though these may have involved sound philosophical and ideological

alternative to each other; they are not in fundamental

principles.

more than

one, sometimes even infinitelv manv. But

Physics studies given physical facts and

conflict as are the different standards.

Clearly,

is

it

difficult to identify solutions, i.e., sets

fronted with this tvpe of creation;

it

is

not con-

faces in this sense

Lucas made the important discoverv of a game of

though it may be expanding!) as far as we can tell. Not all given physical facts are known; new effects are constantly being discovered but it is

10 plavers that has no solution

doubtful that they are currently being created, while

of imputations with the required properties, even from

the

whole

teristic

this

is

set of all possible imputations. In

function form).

(in

is

open whether

and methods may be necessary to assure In

all

F.

the so-called charac-

The question

what modifications

a rare case and

1968 W.

in

concepts

solvability.

other cases so far investigated solutions have been

a static world

i

certain that novel forms of social organization are

it is

We know

being and will be invented. sciences are also, and in fact

more

with the evolutionary creation of

that the

clearly,

life

confronted

new phenomena,

not

only with their discovery, as in the case of physics.

found.

These admittedly

difficult

notions emerge from the

whose empirical basis is are not questioned even by current

But on the other hand, the time spans which are necessary for genetic

formed by facts that social and economic theory, though these theories have

concern with the creation of

not rendered a successful account of the nature of

vet

decision-making.

The

lack of identification of a single

settlement or imputation theory. Rather there characteristic

is

is

not a deficiency of

game

herein revealed a fundamental

of social,

human

organization which

cannot be described adequately by other means.

new

than breeding of

plants and animals) to have as

no practical importance

in this context.

This goes to show that the intellectual situation in is disquieting even when one abfrom the further complication presented by the

the social sciences stracts

existence of frequently changing ideologies.

There

In the light of these considerations one of the stand-

as to make this new phenomena (other

change are so great

rigorous mathematical theory

web

is

thus no

hope

to penetrate into the intricate

of social interdependencies by

means

of concepts

ard concepts currently used in describing a social op-

derived from the physical sciences, although thinking

timum, the so-called Pareto optimum (formulated by V. Pareto, 1909) appears at best to be an oversimplifi-

along such lines

cation.

That notion says that the optimal point

is

reached when no one can improve his position without deteriorating that of others.

among

formulation,

What

other things,

nonuniqueness, uncertainty, deceit,

is is

lacking in that to

etc.,

ent stability

i

ences.

events

Morgenstern, 1965).

The appearance

and complicated notions is due to a mathematical analysis that is germane to the subject matter and has nothing to do with any ideological or other conception of society. The mathematical analysis unravels implications of some generally accepted facts and observations, axiomatic-ally stated, and then leads via the fundamental minimax theorem to the discovery of relationships in the empirically given social world which without the aid of the new theory have either escaped notice altogether or were at best only vaguely and qualitatively described. Since inventions are possible in the social world this process is an unending one, which means that new concepts and theorems have arisen and more are bound to arise. For example, new concepts of solution structure have emerged. It may even happen that social organizations are proposed that have no stable sets; and that only work in a manner that is quite different of novel

dominates. This

is

partly due to

this description

has used abstract con-

cepts these were mainly taken from the physical sci-

account for

decisions that guarantee a precisely defined but differ-

Where

world.

hence a more

comprehensive frame within which individuals make

still

immense success of physics and the slow development even of any proper description of the social the

Thus a recasting of the records is necessary. The two movements

of past social of description

and theorv formation are as inseparably interrelated as thev were in physics and astronomy where the analysis of simple processes, for instance, that of a freely falling body, led to

mechanics and

to the dis-

covery of the appropriate tool of the differential

and

cal-

Fate will not be easier for the social sciences

culus.

in this

methodological situation

osophical significance of

game

lies

theory,

the deep phil-

i.e.,

of the

new

analvses of human decision-making and the interlocking of such decisions.

To give but one society

may be

exactly the

fully

same

illustration:

symmetric,

possibility,

a formal system of

i.e.,

give each

member

such as laissez-faire, and

therebv have provisions of complete freedom and equality. But the possibility of cooperation via coalitions,

agreements, and the like produces nonsymmetric

arrangements so that the intent of the law-maker cannot be maintained without forbidding coalitions which then would run afoul of the principle of freedom.

While

this

asymmetry

is

sometimes not very hard to

discover there are other, more elusive cases: but in

271

GAME THEORY Sociology, with a less advanced theory than eco-

order to he accepted the mathematical theory must

which are also obtainable from common sense experience. However, theory must in addition be able to predict the emerging structures and show how the inner nature of social processes works. yield results

first

Application

Applications.

8.

theories but

may be hard

to

lar

the distinction between the rules of

investigations.

fundamentally novel development occurs. This period

Some

directions of ap-

becoming clear, however. Decision theory is basic for, and indeed inseparable from, modern statistics. The use of the minimax theorem has given rise to a new turn in that science (primarily due to A. Wald) and produced a large literature. Noteworthy is a study by J. Milnor (1954) on games against nature in which various possible criteria, due certain authors such as Laplace, A. Wald, L. J. Savage, and L. Hurwicz, were plication are

regarding

investigated

showed

no

that

and

of axioms

their

it is

an open problem whether

can be evolved to resolve a

game

compatibility.

Milnor

criteria satisfy all of a reasonable set

nature,

against

this impasse.

then

our

new

ideas

Since this

is

incomplete and

ap-

Going back to Condorcet's voting paradox which is the possibility of an inconsistent colchoice, even when individual choices are con-

(1785), lective

always large when a

many

In political science there are increasingly plications.

sistent, great strides

stretch over generations.

games and the

antecedents of games) offer wide areas for sociological

test

theorems. The distance in time and difficulty from an

may

for

field

formulated rules but are the consequences rather than

final

and partly because the theories are in a state of which produces new concepts and is

fertile

standards of behavior (which depend on previously

active development

abstract theory to application

have been made

in illuminating

voting procedures (Farquharson, 1969), steps resting

many

of these

on the theory of weighted majority games.

In addition political

power

play, with favors granted,

payments made, bluffs, promises kept and broken, is as ideal and fertile a field for the new concepts as one could wish, but the path is thorny, especially side

because of the preliminary,

difficult quantification of

matters such as "political advantage" and the particular significance

gaining and negotiation process. ture has

though ple,

emerged which

it

is

how

is

like.

Of

the illumination of the bar-

is

A

considerable litera-

of great practical value

is

One

highly technical.

question, for exam-

the contracting parties should deal with

disclosure of their

own

utility functions in the

of negotiating. Another

is

Neumann and Morgenstern

process

the proof, given by von (1944), that of

two

bar-

changing knowledge of nature's laws also has to be

gaining parties the one will get the upper hand which

further complication not spe-

has the finer utility scale, a better discernment of ad-

—a

taken into account

considered by Milnor or others. Nature

cifically

be

completely.

out"'

Game Many

may

complex and therefore can never be

infinitely

"found

theory has a profound bearing on economics.

special problems

have been attacked such as sellers) which could never

oligopoly (markets with few

be adequately treated by conventional methods. Particularly noteworthy is the work by Shapley and Shubik (1965 to date). The penetration to other areas such as bargaining, auctions, bidding processes, general equilibrium, etc.,

is

slow but steady. The very structure

is threatened once it is recognized no determinism and that no one, not even

of existing theory that there

is

the state, controls

all variables, as

But recognition of

272

undoubtedly become a

of

the

and game theory have a potentially wide range of uses. Those already made are limited partly because of the newness of the field, because of computational difficulties,

will

applications once the connections are seen. In particu-

by. Decision theory

is

come

nomics

this

was explained above.

indeterminism demands the

vantages. Negotiation

there

is

is

always possible except when

antagonism, which

full

exists

only in a zero-sum

two person game. In all other cases negotiations are possible, whether the game be zero-sum or not. The application to military matters is obvious and some possibilities have been explored extensively in many countries. The idea of a "strategy" has after all since ancient times been embedded in military activities, but it is noteworthy that the modern theory did not take its inspiration from the military field but from social games as a far more general and fruitful area from which it could radiate. Combat and conflict, however, are as deeply rooted in

human

nature as

nation of both,

scrapping of more than can be immediately replaced,

military affairs,

and this causes a profoundly disturbing situation: one shows the logical inadequacy of existing theories but cannot offer a specific immediate and detailed replacement. Also recall that false theories often have had significant workability (Ptolemy) and therefore, though doomed, could live together with their ultimate replacement (Copernicus) for a considerable time.

study.

is

cooperation, so that the combi-

emerging with singular

makes

clarity

in

this field naturally attractive for

As a consequence there is now a game theoretic literature concerning combat, deployment, attrition,

deterrence, pursuit, and the in

war

— especially

in

like.

Also the insight that

nuclear war

lose ("Pyrrhic victories") has

— both parties

found precision

formulation of games with negative payoffs to

most cases

it is

only in the 1960's that

all

may

in the all.

In

these notions

GAME THEORY have become precise and were in part successfully applied in a concrete and computational form.

Game

theory has also been used in ethics, biology, and even engineering. This spread of applications is two-fold. First, in ethics the problems of decision-making are essential, and it may appear that

physics,

problems of evolution not provided of population genetics.

It

optimal strategy for survival of populations

Some

technology (not as a model) and

be accepted

would exclude technically

transitional phases of high interest

game). This exclusion of strategies shows

how

(as

to foresee the

ethical

and it is impossible development of these tendencies.

Philosophical Aspects. The appraisal of the phil-

9.

osophical significance of a

tively, directly or indirectly, singly or in groups, as well

a fundamental turn in

as

compromises and commitment. An ethics that connormative system of possible ideals (which can never be fully explicit in view of the infinity of

ance of a new

siders onlv a

cepts,

may be

by

encountered), or single decisions

single, isolated individuals

crucial issues of that field.

is

unable to deal with

The mere

exclusion of a

on moral grounds implies that the consequences of its use are known and can be disapproved. But the consequences depend also on the strategies chosen by the others and prediction of this type may be impossible. The moral code may forbid murder but accept killing on command in war, and then try to qualify what kind of commands are valid and which are not. This goes clearly beyond the mere establishment of an abstract normative system, not considered in action. Analysis taking into account the above points feasible strategy

leads to a probabilistic ethics

if

only because the not

determined games demand the use of mixed strategies. These ideas are now only in the first state strictly

of development.

They

are fundamentally different from

previous abortive applications of mathematics to ethics,

such as by Spinoza.

Second, in the other areas

game theory appears

as

is

scientific

new

field of science,

language expressing

it

may be premature

study of

stances has not only affected significantly sciences like

but

statistics,

is

spreading to other

mathematical discipline

— game

encing even pure mathematics, then in

fields

theory

we

correspondence. This then makes the use of the extensive

mathematical apparatus of game theory possible.

Illustrations

would necessarily be of a rather

special-

ized character and are therefore omitted here, though

the large field of linear

programming with

its

variants (of great practical importance) must be tioned.

Game

closely related

theorem

many men-

theory and programming theory are

by virtue of the well known duality programming.

for linear

Biologists (Lewontin, 1961; Slobodkin, 1964)

interpreted evolution in

game

have

theoretic terms, in spite

of the difficulty for a nonteleological biology to use

the purposeful orientation of

game

theory.

By means

of appropriate reinterpretation, including that of utility, it is

shown

that

game theory can

give answers to

is

new influ-

are justified

speaking of a philosophically relevant development.

While raising no claims of equal importance, the development of game theory has created a shift of standpoints in viewing the social world and human

quantum me-

behavior, just as relativity theory and

chanics have provided a ity. It is

new

outlook on physical real-

too early to be very specific: in those other

two areas

it

took years before the strange

new concepts

bounded space, the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship, and of

of space curvature, of an infinite but of

Bohr's principle of complementarity (to

name

only a

few) were properly incorporated into philosophy, and doubtful whether this process has already

it

is

to

an end. Consequently

it

will likewise

to

game theory

will

have

come

be many years

due

they were games because of a formal

as a

— and

before the philosophical discussion of the

if

con-

to do so. But if meaning to the fact that the decision-making under a wide set of circumas

Certain processes, say in engineering, can be

preted as

new

little shall

attribute philosophical

a mathematical technique rather than as a model. inter-

or of

treatment, or of the appear-

its

an extremely delicate matter. Hence

be said here

we

some

possibly in biology). There are here

decisions involve other persons, positively or nega-

situations that

in

doubtful whether a true model character can

individual or on society (Braithwaite, 1955). This view

reasons (though permitted within the rules of the

dif-

game theory

of these developments involve

strictly as a it is still

moral

in

ferent environments.

they consist primarily in imposing constraints on the feasible strategies for

by the theory

for

possible to identify an

is

new

outlook

crystallized.

In statements about the philosophic significance of it would help if it were unambiguously meant by "philosophy." Philosophy has but fairly well defined scope when it comes

a scientific area clear

what

a difficult

is

to analyzing

problems of knowledge, of

verification,

meaning of truth. But to determine the philosophical meaning of a new scientific development is almost impossible while that change is rapidly progressing. Therefore onlv some tentative remarks shall be made in which there is no attempt to order them according to their significance or to be exhaustive. Nor can one be sure that the principal philosophical meanof the

ing does not (a)

We

lie

elsewhere.

are confronted with a

new development

concerning our understanding of reason and rationality as the previous sections

have indicated. Both being

273

GAME THEORY human

possible

attributes

merly.

we

now

are

in possession of

were lacking or undefined

precise concepts that

for-

We

have a mathematical theory that is largely in character and whatever ultimate mathematics itself may be afflicted with there

combinatorial crises

has never been any doubt cast on the

character

final

The new light thrown on the problem behavior has shown that there is here not

of combinatorics.

of rational

one problem but many, that they inevitably lead to formulations requiring mathematical analysis, that one is

now

capable of providing such analysis

at consid-

tions of the designers.

More

contradictory.

Hence the attempt can only be

crete situations

that

never be dislodged from

will

it

manner, and it

field

certain

it is

We

again.

also

note that axiomatics, so far the ultimate formal expression

we

the

first

now

are capable of giving to theories, has

time firmly established

in

itself

for

the social

sciences.

A

(b)

further step has been taken in the behavioral

sciences by the replacement of determinism by the

new, extended,

role

which has been assigned

to another.

respects that of a probabilistic nature (as

all

is

is

not in

shown,

by the uncertainty regarding which imputation

e.g.,

in a solution set in

an rt-person game will be chosen).

This also affects the ideas held concerning prediction: neither deterministic nor probabilistic approaches need to work, as uncertainty of a different kind appears to

many

prevail in

Modern

(c)

social setups

and decision

decision theory has thrown

the nature and role of information,

its

situations.

new

light

on

flow from indi-

vidual to individual and on the value and cost of

or preventing it from spreading. In the mention must be made of the fact that one has gained control no doubt in an initial manner only of the troublesome notion of utility by tying it firmly to expectations and various forms of probability.

obtaining

same

it

spirit

—

—

(d)

The immense complexity

their interplay has is

been

of social actions

laid bare. It

is

and

seen that

it

greater by several orders of magnitude over what

earlier writers in the social sciences

and far

it

mainly

had contemplated, in part and so

— though only indirectly — how and why

has been shown

formalistic approaches

must

fail.

It

is

the

classical

probably no

exaggeration to state that social science will prove to

be

far

more

difficult

than physics and that

it

will re-

quire (as indicated earlier) the development of

mathematical

There

new

disciplines.

one philosophical consequence that must be stressed because it seems to have escaped proper attention thus far: it was emphasized is,

in

particular,

no a

self-

to for-

where

it fails.

Every

must

social theory

The axiomatization

of

games conforms

to

axioms require neither categoricity

new games can always be new

invented and these can serve as prototypes for social arrangements.

The theory of finding optimal strategies in decisionmaking has thus produced a new paradigm for the social and behavioral sciences. It will take considerable time before the full impact of this development is felt. But one philosophical meaning cannot be missed even now: the push towards a more general theory firmly based on combinatorial mathematical concepts and procedures.

However, before philosophy reaches its ultimate becoming the most general abstract science,

to proba-

though the indeterminacy introduced

bility

if

therefore be dynamic, proceeding from one formalism

nor completeness because

activity in a decisive

state that

much as possible and to supplement the formalism by new formalistic decisions in those con-

though limited by physical processes such as speed and memory of the computers.

Mathematics thus has encroached on another

we

malize as

this fact, since the

human

generally

complete formalization of sociehj is possible: formalization is made, it is either incomplete or

erable depth and that actual computations are possible,

of

274

above that certain formal systems of society will of necessity work in a manner different from the inten-

state of

in the sense of Leibniz'

sophical activity

may

Mathesis universalis, philo-

itself

be viewed

as a

game. This

only appears to be a heretic idea. Plato in Parmenides

game and the Sophists engaged openly in philosophical contests. Philosophical schools have always competed with each other, as is did speak of philosophy as a

the case in

all

sciences in different stages of their

development. The same applies to

art; it suffices to

between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. With this remark we return to the opening observation in this paper which showed the deep roots of games in human affairs to be such that recall the contests

we may

speak rightly of

man

as

Homo

ludens.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aumann and M. Maschler, eds., Recent Advances J. Game Theory (Princeton, 1962). W. J. Baumol and S. M. Goldfeld, eds., Precursors in Mathematical Economics: An R.

in

Anthology (London, 1968), Introduction by H. Kuhn, pp. 1-9. Claude Berge, Theorie generate des jeux a n-personnes (Paris, 1957). R. B. Braithwaite, Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher (Cambridge, 1955). M. Dresher, L.

S.

Shaplev, and A.

W. Tucker,

eds.,

Advances

in

Game

Theory, Annals of Mathematics Studies, No. 52 (1964). R. Farquharson, The Theory of Voting (New Haven, 1969).

M. Frechet and J. v. Neumann, "Commentary on the Three Notes of Emile Borel," Econometrica, 21 (1953), 118-27. P. C. Fishburn, Utility Theory for Decision Making (New York, 1970). K. P. Heiss, "Game Theory and Human Conflicts,"

GENERAL WILL Methods of Operations Research, 5 Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Leyden,

(1968), 182-204.

Johan

1938). G. Klaus, Spiel-

W. Krelle, und Entscheidungstheorie (Tubingen, 1968). H W. Tucker, et al.. eds.. Contributions to the Theory

theorie in Philosophischer Sicht (Berlin, 1968).

Praferenz

Kuhn,

A.

W

of Games, 4 vols. (Princeton, 1950-59); Bibliography in Vol. IV (19591. compiled by Dorothea M. Thompson and

Gerald

L.

busdam

Thompson. G. W. Leibniz, "Annotatio de

Lewontin, "Evolution and the Theory of Games,"

(New

York, 1950).

der Mengenlehre auf die Theorie des Schachspiels," Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Mathematicians (Cambridge, 1912), 2, 501-04.

OSKAR MORGENSTERN

qui-

ludis." Miscellanea Berolinensia (Berlin, 1710), p.

22. R. C.

A. W'ald, Statistical Decision Functions

James Waldegrave, Excerpt from a Letter (1713); see Baumol and Goldfeld, above. E. Zermelo, "Uber eine Anwendung

[See also Art

minacy

and Play; Axiomatization; Chance; Indeter-

Physics; Probability; Social

in

Welfare; Utility.]

Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1 (1961), 382-403. W. F. Lucas, "A Game with No Solutions," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 74 (1968), 237-39; idem, "Some

Recent Developments

Game

n-Person

in

Decisions

and

(New

Decision

York, 1957). Richard

(New

Unsicherheitsmoment

York, in

1963).

SLAM Games and

Theory."

Review, 13 (1971). R. D. Luce and H. Raiffa,

M. Martin, Intension Menger, "Das K.

der Wertlehre," Zeitschrift fur

Wolfgang Schoellkopf, with the assistance of W. Giles Mellon, as "The Role of Uncertainty in Economics," in M. Shubik, ed., Essays in Mathematical Economics in Honor of Oskar Morgenstem

Nationalokonomie,

5

459-85;

(1934),

(Princeton, 1967), pp. 211-31.

J.

trans.

W. Milnor, "Games Against

Nature," in R. M. Thrall, C. H. Coombs, and R. L. Davis, eds..

Decision Processes

(New

York, 1954). O.

Morgenstem,

Wirtschaftsprognose, eine Untersuchung ihrer Voraussetzun-

gen und Moglichkeiten (Vienna, 1928); idem, "Vollkommene Voraussicht und Wirtschaftliches Gleichgewicht," Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie,

6 (1935), 337 -57; idem,"Pareto

Optimum and Economic

Organization,"

Methoden

in

Systeme und den Wirtschafts und Sozialwissenschaften, ed.

GENERAL WILL The phrase

"general will"

is

ineluctably the property

of one man, Jean Jacques Rousseau.

but he

it,

made

its

He

did not invent

history.

Father Malebranche was the

first

well-known writer

put the words "general will" to philosophic use. In

to

work he spoke of God's general will as acall the laws of the phenomenal world and for grace. Cause and effect in the natural world are merely the "occasions" on which God's general will manifests itself {De la recherche de la verite, Book I, Chs. I-IV; Book V, Chs. I-II). While this notion has little direct bearing upon politics, it is worth noting his

first

counting for

that

from its origins the general will is a legislating It was Montesquieu who transferred it from the

N. Kloten (Tubingen, 1964), pp. 573-86; idem, in preparation, "History of Game Theory to 1944," International Jour-

organ.

nal of Game Theory, 1 (1972). Oskar Morgenstem and John von Neumann, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944); 3rd ed. (Princeton, 1953). John von Neumann, "Zur

Malebranche's work well, he did not find

Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele," Mathematische Annalen, 100 (1928), 295-320; trans. Sonya Borgmann, in Kuhn, et IV,

al.,

13-42.

O

(Princeton, 1953). (Paris, 1909).

J.

Ore, Cardano, The Gambling Scholar

V

Pareto,

Manuel d'economie

politique

Pfanzagl, "Subjective Probability derived

from the Morgenstem- von

Neumann

Utility

Concept,"

theological to

congenial and

the social

it

is

fairly

level.

Although he knew his

outlook

certain that Montesquieu

borrowed the phrase from an Italian jurist, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, who had, in a work on Roman law, spoken of the public or general will as the source of civil law. Montesquieu used the actual phrase volonte generale only once, but at a most important point, in discussing

i.e.,

the separation of powers in England.

(Princeton, 1967), pp. 237-51. F. P. Ramsey. "Truth and Probability" (1926), reprinted in The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays (New York, 1931).

Having explained the special autonomy and safeguards needed in order to keep the judiciary impartial, he turned to the executive and legislative powers, the latter being "the general will of the state, and the other

M.

the execution of that general will." Ideally, the legisla-

M. Shubik,

in .

.

ed.,

Essays in

Mathematical Economics

.

Reiss, "Beitrage zur

Theorie des Solitarspiels," Crelle's

W.

The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, 1962). L. S. Shapley and M. Shubik, Competition, Welfare and the Theory of Games, Vol. I, in preparation. M. Shubik, ed., Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior (New York, 1964). L. B. Slobodkin, "The Strategy of Evolution," American Scientist,

Journal, 54 (1858), 344-79.

Riker,

52, No. 3 (1964), 342-56. P. Suppes,

"The Philosophical

Relevance of Decision Theory," Journal of Philosophy, 18 (1961), 605-14. J. Ville, "Sur la theorie generale des jeux oil

is

power should

reside in the

not possible in large

whole people, but that states, where repre-

modern

sentatives must act

on behalf of the people. This had if electoral districts were fairly drawn and if everybody had the vote except people "of so mean a station as to be deemed to have no will of their own" (De I'esprit des his [1748], Part I, Book

many

advantages,

XI, sec.

6).

de ses applications, Vol.

Although Rousseau was certainly familiar with and deeply influenced by Montesquieu's writings, he began

Applications diverses et conclusion (Paris, 1938), 104-13.

to consider the notion of the general will together with

intervient l'habilite des joueurs," in

Traite 4:

tive

du calcul des probahilites

et

Emile Borel,

ed.,

275

GEXERAL WILL Denis Diderot when they were In several articles that

he wrote

close associates.

still

for the Encyclopedic.

Diderot had found the expression useful hut he never

developed

extensively. In describing the

came

gradually

when

it

thinking in

political

Greece, he showed

growth of how law

Only

to replace the cycle of revenge.

the "general will," which must be opposed to

as

an

as a

artificial

composite moral person yvhose

This "will of the state"

through law, was there an end to murder, rape, adultery, and parricide. In J. F. de Saint-Lambert's essay

(On the Duty of Man and the Moore, New York [1927], Rook

legislator,

we

uted to Diderot,

and "the

attrib-

also hear of the general will as

a necessary guide; without rants,

which was once

spirit of

legislators

it.

community

become

ty-

dies." Finally, in

For the of the

Diderot defined the general will as the sense of justice

until

shown by

mankind.

all

to

Justice,

he argued, must by

definition be a general rule that has a source other than

personal inclination. duties, fore,

it

have

kind. It

If

it

to

is

must be universally its

roots in the will

in fact,

is,

fix

valid,

all

of men's social

and

expressed in

all

such

it

must, there-

man-

all

actual social rules,

however various and inadequate, and

men when

it

and welfare of it

is felt

by

the force that restrains the particular,

is

all

they express indignation or resentment. As

regarding wills

in all

men, individually and

self-

collectively.

Fundamentally the general will, for Diderot, was the rule obliging mankind to do unto others as they would have others do unto them ("Grecs," "Droit Naturel," in Encyclopedic From the first Rousseau rejected the notion of a I.

universal

that a law obliging

mankind

in

came

dei,

social duties.

meaningful only

in the small classical

will. It

G.

108).

existed only in order to be delegated. For

decisions, because to

quality as a man. That

we

F

p.

man

or group ought ever

is

do so

is

why "we

to

make

its

renounce one's

will

never be

men

du contrat Sovereignty, he wrote,

are citizens" (Premiere version

Book I, Ch. II, p. 453). "mere personification" that stands for the will of all which alone is "the order and supreme rule" in society, and one that the people ought never to delegate (Lettres ecrites de la montagne [1764], VI, 201; Contrat social [1762], Book III, Ch. XV, pp. 95-98). The people, above all, are not everyone and anyone in a given place. They were all those who had no special wealth, talents, or powers (Emile, trans. B. Foxley, London [1948], pp. 186-87). In short, the

social. is

a

common man

alone stood to benefit from the civic

republic.

The importance merely

social,

men behaved

of the will for Rousseau

but also psychological.

was not

He knew

that

differently in groups than in isolation,

of individuals" one could not understand society (ibid.,

general was a fantasy

and the general

Ch. VI,

but "without a perfect knowledge of the inclinations

returned to Montesquieu's view, that vox populi alone expressed vox

II,

against

Only mutual obligations among members of a single civic body are binding and effective, he claimed (Premiere version du contrat social, Rook I, Ch. II, pp. 447-54). Thus he and an evasion of immediate

public acts

to insist

bond obliging mankind. As he reacted

the cosmopolitanism of his friend, he

all

Citizen, trans.

to part with any fraction of the freedom to

own

omic politique was meant

intertwined

monarchical absolutism, the will

theorists of

many

the source of

is

Rousseau, on the contrary, no

which Rousseau's Econbe a companion piece,

an article on Natural Right, to

will,

and united by virtue of the compact of the many is regarded as the will of all, so that it can use the powers and resources of all for the common peace and security."

the avenging "particular will," was finally established

on the duties of the

could be

republic in which

p. 202).

The general

something that was a life.

The

ability to

will only expressed collectively vital part of

make

every person's moral

choices, to will one's aims,

men from other animals even in the state However, when men form societies they lose the capacity to act independently and sensibly in their

distinguishes of nature.

own

interest.

The

arouses men's moral

"situation"

of society,

faculties, also deprives

and kindles

while

it

them

of

equality and virtue formed the spirit of the laws.

their self-reliance

was not just a matter of consent to a form of government. The general will was an articulation of the entire patriotic ethos, of which Sparta was the ultimate symbol. For unlike Montesquieu, Rousseau refused to compromise with aristocratic civil liberty as it existed in modern Europe. Only

tive inner dispositions. Society stimulates a

join to sustain the worst of all social evils: institu-

the civic spirit of antiquity could maintain a general

tionalized inequality. Society

Moreover,

will

this spirit

(Economie politique, passim). This

canism also separated Rousseau's ideas the thought of

276

and body endowed yvith a single sovereign, law-giving will. In Pufendorf s words, "a state is defined

of civil society as the creation of a union of wills,

dorf,

who

social republidecisively'

from

Thomas Hobbes and Samuel von Pufen-

had, in the seventeenth century, also spoken

approbation and with

it

Inequality and weakness

all

kinds of self-destruc-

need

for

ambition and competition.

become both personal attiThe strong and rich strive

tudes and social institutions. for

power; the weak and poor are driven by envy. Both is

thus a threat to

human

and a good education must concentrate on restoring that willpower (Discours sur I'origine de

will power,

I'inegalite, 1754), for

it is

the sole inner force that

have to counteract the impact of

men

their present social

GENERAL WILL condition which

"force of circumstances" which always tends to

social,

equality

is a mixed one, half natural and half and unjust and oppressive at all times. Like John Locke, Rousseau regarded the will as a

power

of the mind, a psychological faculty- His con-

tempt for metaphysics and for that part of it which was boundless (Emile, pp. 236, 253).

Book

(ibid.,

the will he

instills

contract that

first

Ch. IX,

II, is

far

That

p. 61).

in-

why

is

more important than

the

creates civil society. All societies,

of the will was, according to Rousseau,

good and bad. are based on generally accepted conventions. That is merely the definition of a society. All have contracts by which mere possession is transformed

not to direct specific actions, but to order men's pas-

into socially protected property, but the terms are

deals with the will

The function sions.

These passions are

a will to keep

Since happiness

good, as long as there

all

them natural and

proper balance.

in

the sole possible object of

is

human

good education develops the capacity

striving, a

is

to

never really enforced equally or

de

men

Natural necessity, within and outside

us must be accepted without a ever,

is

murmur. Opinion, how-

to be shaken off as a

man

once

it

is

his conscience

aroused, and which

is

own

Group

for his wills.

own

That

is

generally irresistible and not only

moved by an

orders, magistrates,

de corps." All special

"esprit

priesthoods, professions, or any

an

instinct,

to maintain their collective status. Private aggression

just like

is

which is

is

all,

more

real,

satisfying

goodness, nothing

more

elite

not the great problem of society.

is

It

organized,

impersonal violence, and group vanity and group wills that lead to incessant

war and

to the rule of the strong

A man with a will capable of own master. He wills what is necessary

over the weak (Emile, pp. 310-20; Economie politique, pp. 242-43; L'Etat de guerre, pp. 298-307). That is

and does nothing except what he freedom (ibid., p. 48). That is also the

why

felicity is

pressure

soldiers are

experienced

pursues his

Above

painful than remorse. all that, is his

is

may be composed of personally upright, excellent members, who would, however, stop at no evil in order

physical pain or pleasure. Nothing

than a sense of one's

most

what

fact

he must

rather than falsely defined, interests.

be able to liberate

that

are stupid and readily deceived into doing

they do not really want to do.

reject avoidable misery. It enforces resignation to necessity, first of all.

fairly (Lettres ecrites

montagne, VI, 199-205). The

la

way

every citizen must look and consult his own conscience before voting so that he will not be subject to the pressures in a well-regulated polity

into himself

to escape from the present torment of being torn between duty and inclination. For an individual such freedom may mean withdrawal from society. For "man in general" a social cure for the diseases of inequality would be required. What "men in general" need is a general will to protect them against the general social and emotional forces which

occasional selfishness of individuals or personal errors

tend to victimize them.

Book

and

all

that stimulates

It is

the will against inequality

and

sustains

it.

For without

Book

of privilege-seeking groups. It

is

the influence of such

pressures that the general will must combat, not the

which cancel each other and are of no consequence. the conspiratorial activity of those

It is

against equality that

is

pp. 42-43). That is condition of an effective social contract II,

Ch.

who

organize

be dreaded (Contrat

to

Ill,

why is

social,

the

first

that the rich

II,

Ch. IX,

the lesson of history. Only

must never be so rich and the poor so impoverished that the former can buy the latter. There must be no

in

a small, isolated, agrarian, patriotic republic in

personal subjugation. Secondly, the general will must

equality there can be no liberty (Contrat social, p. 61).

That

is

which men know each other and live under educative laws, given to them by a great legislator such as Lycurgus, would it be possible for them to be truly at peace with themselves and each other. Only then can vanity be redirected to public ends, xenophobia replace private ambition, and the sense of civic pride undermine that particular will that always seeks privileges. As such the "general will" for Rousseau was far less

an historical probability,

than a judgment against

all

least of all a likely future,

actual societies. For

all

actual societies are based on a fraudulent social con-

by which the rich dupe the poor into accepting remain as free as ever to do as they please (ibid.. Book I, Ch. IX, p. 39). The great legislator must liberate a people from history, take them, as it were, right out of it, by steeling their will and character sufficiently to resist the full

always be able to assert

itself

decisively against the

magistrates.

The main function zens

of regular assemblies of the citi-

to supervise the structure

is

and performance of

The general will does very little. no need for new legislation. On the contrary,

the government.

There

is

the people must merely hold to

its

ancient laws and

customs which, thanks to the wisdom of the

legislator,

main sources of its well-being. Policy, even in matters of war and peace, is up to the government. The rulers can be counted on to remain patriotic are the

tract

"chiefs," as long as their interests are not allowed to

legal restraint while they

diverge from that of the rest of the citizens.

watchful populace, asserting

its

will

An

against

equality, maintains that identity of interests (ibid., III,

ever-

all

in-

Book

Ch. XVIII, pp. 100-04).

The general

will

is

by

definition always upright

277

GENERAL WILL because society

expresses the spirit of the people. Every

it

based on public opinion. That

is

Book

inevitable

is

Ch. VII. pp. 122-23). The problem

merely a

is

men

tion" of

binding an "aggrega-

set of chains

not a genuine "association" fulfilling the

is

deepest interests of ordinarv men: peace and abun-

to ensure that opinions beneficial to the people domi-

dance. These are the benefits of a society, without the

(ibid,

nate.

Now

IV.

the people have an inherent interest in

For they know that exceptions to the rules will never be in their favor, but always in the interest of the few who are strong and shrewd. Injustice is selfinjurv for the people. Civic education must not only

justice.

see to

do not falter, but maintain and mores. For though the general will

that the people

it

their will, laws,

when

and oppression which are

inequalities

That

is

why

the general will

[Contrat social. Book

ity

When

Ch.

II,

usual burdens.

I,

pp. 39-40).

recognized that the general will

is

it

its

the will against inequal-

is

is

a

regulative law-maintaining force and not a govern-

mental

will,

is

it

clear that the rights of minorities,

other than those seeking to destroy equality, are not

order unless most of the people are inspired by patri-

it. An individual may be "forced to be made to abide by the conditions he has accepted when he joined the community; for as a

most of the time. A minority may

err; that

lawbreaker he has returned to the rule of force which

the majority ceases to possess

threatens his and every other citizen's freedom. That

is

certainly not the will of

all,

especially not

the

people are corrupt, there can be no effective civic otic zeal is

when

not serious, but

a general will, then the republic

ments,

their despotic

in

sooner or later

this

is

dead. Most govern-

group-urges, see to

death will occur

that

it

Book

(ibid..

III,

Ch. XI, pp. 91-92).

The general is

men

will

is

not only "general" because

it

When

must be made

to recognize itself. legislate; that

same way. That

is

is,

citizens in

all

in a sense tautological,

when

informed or misdirected, will privileges.

If it

ill-

ual

is at an end. The moi commun overcome by vanity. Then the fraudulent contract of the rich and powerful replaces the sover-

of the

is

eignty of the people. In such circumstances

men

obey,

prudence and sensible fear. They continue to have moral obligations, but no civic duties. For no obligation can be binding unless men have as they must, out of

accepted

it

ingful only

meanknown and

openly and vocally. Tacit consent

when

regular intervals.

is

it

can become vocal

If

the general will cannot be heard

cannot be said to

exist.

rule of personal

And

in fact,

it

at

will

power which now

be replaced is

so thinly

which serve only the rich. The sense its rule is gone (ibid., Book HI, Chs. XII-XIV, XVH-XVIII, pp. 92-95, 99-102; Book veiled under laws

of justice remains but IV, Chs. I-II, pp.

each citizen

is

102-06; Emile, pp. 437-39). Unless

heard with the deference due to a

of the sovereign people and unless a genuine

fraternity binds each citizen to every other there

effective contract

(Economie

politique, passim; Pre-

miere version du contrat social. Book

And

unless there

is

is

II,

Ch. IV, pp.

an effective social con-

sustained by an active general will, political

p.

must be free to leave, without any difficulty, a if he has fulfilled

war

II, p.

which include military service Book III, Ch. VIII, p. 102; Book

(ibid..

The general

105).

will cannot, as the

ignored or become feeble individuals,

when

in polities, as

it

in

time

IV,

word

implies evidently enough, be imposed, but

it

Ch.

"will"

can be

does within

the negative pressures of their "situ-

overwhelm them. Bousseau's general will was thus neither a plan

ation" in society

weakens,

the rule of law

Ch. VII,

outvoted, therefore, a mi-

of

latter

II,

nority need not feel aggrieved. Moreover, any individ-

his obligations,

It

since the will to equality cannot, except

tract,

may

is

exactly the

494-95).

Book

II,

is

scope.

Moreover, the general will can only

no

(ibid..

Ch. V, pp. 46-48). The social contract also include a unanimous agreement to accept

Book

can only will what

its

create rules that apply impersonally to

member

inherent in the contract

36;

society he no longer wishes to share,

something the

it

is

is.

is

genuinely useful to the sovereign people, and that

by the

free," that

in general: the inhibition of inequality. It

general also in

citizens

threatened by

future majority rule.

the expression of the greatest single social interest

of

278

society

for

revolution nor a design to say anything about actual societies except that they

would remain its

were irremediably unjust and on

so as long as civilization continued

predictable course, for the inherent tendency of

inequality

is

to increase.

ever, in spite of

its

a "higher"

It

will.

The general

will

is

not,

how-

decidedly unhistorical character, is

merely the

will that properly

educated ordinary people pursuing basic interests would follow if they were to organize themselves into units small and simple enough to suit their very limited political talents.

values that he

For Bousseau

felt

this

was the sum

of the

the philosophes had rejected in their

enthusiasm for an "enlightenment" and for forms of progress which corresponded to their

own interests and among whom

neglected the real needs of the people he, "the

watchman's son," had grown up. That alone

sufficed to ensure his continued uniqueness.

The

ideological career of the "general will" began

with the French Revolution

when

it

became

part of public discourse. That accounts for

subsequent

fate. Liberals

with the Terror and

merely

its

a vital entire

never ceased to associate

socialists

political, revolution.

it

with the incomplete,

Radical nationalists im-

GENERAL WILL mediately found some use for the notion and even conservative

an

discerned

eventually

nationalism

appealing principle of social unity "above classes" in

However, only the anarchists

it.

Rousseau's original conception, the

man whom

it

see

how

He

The protection

thus simply gave

and of the new

state that

the principle of the separation of powers, was, to

Constant, the only alternative to the rule of force. its

Abbe

revolu-

Moreover, he recognized without outrage that the laws

Sieves'

enacted and enforced by such a state would be the

Is

the Third Estate? 1789).

is

now

(

The

everything, the nobility-

at all. The people, moreover, have which Sieves referred as the "national will" or the "will of the community." He may have eschewed

which individual

result of a bargaining process in terests

came

superior to the particular will of any

a will to

and indeed could be said

the "general will" perhaps because he

knew

that

he

sole

aim was

to

permit the greatest degree of individual

de politique,

moner, corrupt or

will a "higher" will,

an undifferentiated whole whose presses itself indirectly through

will,

moreover, ex-

government, the

its

The general will was in fact becoming national self-determination, with one law made for all the citizens by its very own elected representatives.

way

to

national government. in the

philosophy of

J.

G. Fichte. In his radical youth

in

It

was

left

to

tion

possibility of in

will,

the actual will of

the whole people, must always have an opportunity

become

A

committee of "Ephors" must be set up to see that when the need arose the whole people would meet to reconsider the basic conto

tract.

special

Rousseau's Spartan

appealed

to

populism

in

made

vocal.

republic,

moreover, also

him deeply. Even when he abandoned his favor of an isolationist nationalism, which

social unity

its

highest aim, he retained

much

of Rousseau's vision of an educative polity that served

the needs of the people, even to as

if its

voice was no longer

sees. 16 and 17, trans, The Science of Rights; and Reden an die Deutsche

be heard (Naturrecht, 1796-97,

Nation, 1808, passim, trans, as Addresses to the Nation). In effect nationalism

became

for

him

German a

means

and expressing the general will after the humiliations of the Napoleonic Wars. Hegel was perfectly right in recognizing that Fichte remained close to Rousseau because Fichte had no

of both creating

conception of a "higher"

will.

As such their ideas led However,

the general

men's aspiring to moral self-determination

accordance with universally valid rules of conduct. a law-giving will that has freedom, conceived as

self-imposed duties, as will

because

it

In politics that

common

make

and other advantages that men might was entirely in keeping with his concepof the individual moral will, which was the rational

is

be represented, the

to

divorced from the interests, de-

pursue. This

sovereignty as a necessary active force. Even

could

Immanuel Kant

sires, felicities,

he was one of the few thinkers who accepted popular if it

Oeuvres, Paris [1957], pp. 1099-1112,

1132-45).

It is

This course of development can be traced perfectly

monarch or class, whose

to realize a general will

liberty, especially of intellectual expression (Principes

was not following Rousseau. For the people that will consists of everyone who happened to live at any given time in France. Rich and poor, ex-noble and comcivic, all are part of the people, of

in-

terms with each other. The result was

to

no longer anything

its

a

re-

placed the battle against inequality. Constitutional

tionary reputation, one need only look at

on

it

freedom

of individual

government based on a broad suffrage providing equality before the law and personal freedom through

the general will acquired

famous pamphlet What commonalty as a whole

task.

they cared for

had brought into being.

To

new

really believed in

little as

they, also, took to be the principal

ideologist of the Revolution

accept his general will as the principle that legitimized constitutional government.

one aim. And

its

aims solely

recognized to have a universal

means

that

is

it

a higher

moral goodness that

at a

human

application.

freedom was for Kant,

over, Kant's legitimate republic

is

in

as

More-

for Constant, the sole justification of the state.

no way different

from Constant's idea of constitutional government.

However,

it

is

based not on an actual historical or

psychological will, but on a hypothetical general will

and

social contract.

These are the standards

for judging

They stand

for everything to

which a people would morally have

to agree, not only

the legitimacy of states.

in

domestic but also

in international politics.

For unlike

Rousseau's general will, Kant's has a universal

human

scope. Equality of rights, impartial justice, and, above all,

external freedom are the necessary conditions for

realizing the rational moral will of

people need not be heard,

on

much

men, but the actual bring its "lower"

less

do not For the legitimizing general will expresses only a moral aspiration, the will to freedom and to justice, and not the material interests of the people, nor those of the governments that Kant will to bear directly

make

right

legislation. Bargains

any more than

so heartily detested. It

is

force.

the moral will of the individ-

directly to the Terror, according to Hegel.

ual applied to the organization of public

was not the only road away from radicalism. Benjamin Constant had also criticized Rousseau for ignoring freedom, but he was able to

Metaphysik der Sitten, Vol. I, sees. 43-52). It was also the last genuine expression of the original spirit of the

the "higher" will

Enlightenment.

life

(e.g.,

279

GENERAL WILL The general

Kant had no seat other than

will for

was confined to his highest moral reason. It was only with Hegel

the individual, even potentialitv. his

if

it

that the national will acquired an existence apart

the wills of the citizens

who composed

from

the political

to

which men can direct

The

wills.

and

the

is

sole

end

State, 1899).

eral will

it

does not serve men's natural needs for Its

legitimacy

historical necessity,

its

part in the

its

mankind toward an ever-greater it

alone gives

it

derived from

development of

and

It

is

For

all

these post-Revolutionary theorists, the gen-

played a part

in the difficult effort to find

a consensual basis to legitimize national governments.

For the Hegelians,

it

also

had the function of overcom-

ing the narrow scope that liberalism had ascribed to politics.

Rousseau was for them a link to the

classical

it.

its

ities

acts for the people,

but never through them. To the extent that individuals

make

self-development

collective

had regarded politics as the highest human activity. However, the revolutionary potential-

state

wills for

which

a rational form,

historically necessary structure.

The

rationality.

alone, in organizing a people, speaks

because

is

of

(Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophic Theory of the

and Kant, Hegel managed to resurrect Leviathan on a new basis. The state is the mind of the nation and its highest ethical will. Unlike Hobbes' artificial body, peace and well-being.

their political efforts, or their

the rational principle of the nation

state

order. Rejecting the individualism inherent in Rousseau

however,

tradition that

if

depend on this. It is guaranteed by historical forces which the state recognizes and consciously wills and acts upon

made

of that ideal

was

it

rendered

the will of the state their own, they are also

rational, but the validity of the state does not

it

it

necessary to refashion

it,

the existing state order. That

to support

relatively insignificant also.

Anarchism, doctrine, for

especially all

its

Joseph

Pierre

Proudhon's

un-Rousseauian radicalism, was

closest to the original conception.

hon's faith in progress

dampened

To be

sure,

Proud-

his voluntarism, as

some

had Hegel's. Moreover, Proudhon hated Rousseau, he took to be the primary ideologue of the "bourgeois" and statist Revolution. What had Rousseau known of economic laws, he asked? However, Proud-

aspects of the original popular will into the Hegelian

hon's notion of justice as mutuality, as openly, directly,

H. Green thus insisted that the legitimacy of

and continually renewed agreements between members of small groups and among such groups, is just what Rousseau had meant by a living social contract. Not the justice imposed from above, by God or by abstract law or by a state, but only the inherent feeling of community and of clearly understood self-interest expressed in personally made, mutual binding agreements, create true obligations. That was Proudhon's

(Philosophy of Right, sees. 257-360). Such a degree of depersonalization was not alto-

gether acceptable to Hegel's liberal English followers.

They, therefore, attempted to reintroduce state.

T

the state had to rest on

pursuit of the

its

at least

common good

which was a matter of securing, and even enhancing, the rights of each citizen. That did not mean that the will of the majority was needed as an affirmation of the state's legitimacy, but

it

did recognize the general

will as the expression of a valid

good. Without

demand

for a

common

only coercive force rules. In short,

it

it

whom

consent was given a greater part to play in defining

notion of immanent justice no

the legitimate state (The Principles of Political Obligation, London [1941], pp. 80-141). It was, however, a

and "the abolition of the opposition of the social law and the will of the individual," Proudhon wrote, must be the basis of a viable social

very vaguely defined consent. In far

ambiguous. For

less

opinion the

final

if

this respect

Hegel was

he did not make public

judge of legitimacy, he did not give

the state that function either. Only philosophy, as the retrospective recognition of

had not been

The

what had been and what

historically necessary,

can really judge.

attractions of the general will as a principle of

unity in a period of considerable industrial its final

strife,

panegyrist in Bernard Bosanquet.

The

found

state

the highest, most general organic unit to which

can aspire. ical

It

must, therefore, as a matter of sociologIts

history

is

that of the general will

gradually becoming more and more aware of

men

is

men

and psychological necessity be the source of the

highest values.

itself as

organize society into an increasingly comprehen-

sive unit, the nation state.

2o0

broadest possible, and therefore universally valid end

all lesser

group and

It

has claims on

class allegiances,

men above

because

it is

the

less

than Rousseau's.

Identity of interests

order.

He

also put his trust in the

common

people,

"as an organized union of wills that are individually free

and

that can

and should voluntarily work

to-

gether." For Proudhon insisted, as Rou'.seau had, that

the social contract involved not government but the

and moral environment in which simple live decent and satisfying lives. That is why his form of socialist anarchism was the only real effort to develop Rousseau's idea of the general will, rather than an attempt to integrate it into an inegalitarian order (P. J. Proudhon, Idee generate de la Revo-

whole

social

people might

lution

au XIXe

[1923], pp. I,

siecle, in Oeuvres completes, Paris 182-236; 267-331; De la justice, ibid.,

420-30).

The overwhelming problem of political thought in was how to cope with the

the nineteenth century

GENETIC CONTINUITY Revolution. Rousseau had been remote from that concern, but to the extent that he

was taken

to speak for

the forces of upheaval, his idea of the general will,

became

especially,

a political force that

had

contained or redirected. The result was nothing ironic: the last

to if

be not

defender of the agrarian republic was

transformed into the founding father of the modern nation state, and the general will of the European

peasantry was

made

industrial progress

to serve as the justification for

and

Cohban, Rousseau and the Modem State, London, 1964), contains a history of Rousseau interpretations. Bobert Derathe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et reprint). Alfred

2nd la

ed.

(

science politique de son

Dreyfus,

La

JUDITH

de politique (1815),

in

Oeuvres

Encyclopedic (1751-80),

XIV -XV.

J.

(Paris. 1957).

in

(Paris,

G. Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts Ill;

idem.

The Science of Rights, trans. A. E. Kroeger (Philadelphia, 1869; London, 1889); idem, Der gesehlossene Handelsstaat (1800), in Samtliche Werke, Vol. Ill; idem, Addresses to the

German Nation, trans. B. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull, ed. G. A. Kelly (New York, 1968). T H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London, 1882; 1941). G.

W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (1821), trans. T M. Knox (Oxford, 1942). Immanuel Kant, Uher den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, tangt aher nichts die Praxis (1793), in

Werke

(Berlin, 1914), Vol. VI; idem,

ibid.; The Philosophy of Kant, and ed. C. J. Friedrich (New York, 1949); idem, Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), in Werke, Vol. Ill; idem, The Philosophy of Law, trans. W. Hastie (Edinburgh, 1887). Nicolas de Malebranche, De la recherche de la verite

ewigen Frieden (1795),

trans,

(1674-75; Paris, 1962). Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu, L'Esprit des lois (1748), in Oeuvres completes (Paris, 1950), trans.

York, 1949).

au XIXe

Thomas Nugent P.

of the Laws (New Proudhon, Idee generate de la revolution

J.

siecle (1851), in

as

The

Spirit

Oeuvres completes

Bobinson

(Paris,

1923),

General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1923); idem. De la

Vol. Ill; trans.

B.

as

dans leglise (1858), in Oeuvres, op. cit.. Vol. IX. Samuel von Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and the Citizen According to the Natural Law (1673), justice

dans

J.

trans. F.

la revolution et

G. Moore

(New

(1762), trans. B. Foxley ings, ed.

New

.

;

Its

Own

Kind. Ry genetic

we mean not only that all life comes from "Law of Riogenesis"), but more particularly

life (the

comes from one or two parents

that each organism

of

its

own

species.

thus inherits

It

its

characteristics

unbroken lineage from its ancestors, to the beginning of its species on earth, and, if we accept the Theory of Evolution, to the beginnings of all life on earth. That living beings come from parents of their own kind is an observation as old as man, but the conviction that they can arise only in that manner was for ages in

The book

in dispute.

of Genesis, in relating the Crea-

tion Story, says that each creature brought forth "ac-

cording to century

its

B.C.,

kind." Aristotle, writing in the fourth is

Animals (Loeb

more

In the Generation of

specific.

Library,

Classical

747b 30-35), he

wrote; "In the normal course of nature the offspring

which a male and a female of the same species produce is a male or female of that same species for instance, the offspring of a male dog and a female dog is a male dog or a female dog." Yet the Rible affords witness

—

of the

common belief that

be generated otherwise, in the carcass of a lion

the lower orders of

as

life

could

when Samson found "bees"

he had

killed. Aristotle, too,

believed in the spontaneous generation of living things, for in the History

of Animals he

says:

whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation

Sieves, Qu'est-ce

Paris, 1888), trans.

from Life of

All Life continuity

For some plants are generated from the seed of plants,

J. J.

York, 1962); idem, The Social Contract

Emmanuel

.

(London, 1948); idem, Political Writ-

Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London and 1950).

.

Rousseau, Emile

York, 1927).

C. E. Vaughan, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1915; reprint

Oxford and

SHKLAB

GENETIC CONTINUITY

Denis Diderot,

Oeuvres completes

(1796-97), in Samtliche Werke (Berlin, 1845), Vol.

I;

N.

may

Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State (London. 1899; reprint 1965). Benjamin Constant, Principes

Vol.

W.

(London.

Liberalism; Marxism; Social Contract; State; Vox populi.]

Translations refer to the editions to which references

Zum

vols.

Anarchism; Democracy; Equalitv: Hegelian

be made. There are numerous versions of many standard works cited here.

fitr

Ginette

1934), Vol. I, Ch. V, a history of the idea of general will. Boger D. Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton, 1968), has an excellent bibliography.

political centralization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1876), Vols.

1950).

(Paris,

Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Moralist, 2

[See also

ed..

temps

volonte scion Malebranche (Paris, 1958). C.

H. Blondel as

que

What

le Tiers

Is

New

and

York,

Etat? (1789;

the Third Estate?

(London, 1963).

animals,

come from

putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as

case with a

Secondary Sources. John Bowie, Politics and Opinion in (London and New York, 1954). Ernst

the Nineteenth Century

Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant,

some elemental principle similar to a seed. ... So with some spring from parent animals, according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some of

and Goethe

(Princeton, 1945; also

number

is

the

of insects, while others are sponta-

neously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs (trans. V,

539a 16-26).

D'Arcv Thompson, Book

281

GENETIC CONTINUITY men could accept the view that heredity from a biological mechanism of some sort, the ghost of spontaneous generation had to be laid. For Aristotle, the greatest biologist of ancient times, and Before

results

for all those

who

until the year

followed his ideas so unhesitatingly

1600 or

later,

the pattern of development

by the Final Cause and the Formal Cause, the former being the End for which the organism exists, and the latter being the logos, or essential nature of the organism. Of the Creek philosopher's four causes, the Material Cause was supplied by the female

was accounted

for

parent and the Motive (Efficient) Cause was supplied

by the male parent. These two Causes supply substance and energy; but there is no indication that the Formal

Cause is

in

is

more

any way transmitted from the parents.

allied to the Final Cause,

and

exists in the

It

very

Leeuwenhoek

originated spontaneously.

found they grew and transformed and eventually hatched into flies. These, having mated, produced fertile eggs from which maggots like the original ones soon developed. Leeuwenhoek, although he performed no critical experiments to test his belief, strongly denied that any of the microscopic protozoans and bacteria he had discovered arose to a piece of beef,

into pupae,

"No

spontaneously.

proper Formal and Final Causes, a particular animal

eration," he wrote in 1694 (Letter 83).

might

from slime or

just as readily originate

filth

same

force provided by parents of the

The

creature takes birth without gen-

Meanwhile (1700-11), Antonio

or

Vallisneri,

who was

a student of the great anatomist Marcello Malpighi

(1628-94), turned his attention to the nature of plant

species.

spontaneous

scientific disproof of the idea of

readily rec-

ognized them as being insect larvae, removed them

nature of things. Hence, given the presence of the

decaying matter as from the substance and energizing

galls,

and proved that

Swammerdam had been

entirely

generation required a series of investigations extending

correct in his conjecture. Galls indeed arise from the

over two centuries, beginning with the experiments of

stinging of the plant tissues by the ovipositors of female

Francesco Redi

in

1668 and ending with those of Louis

Pasteur in 1860-64. Redi succeeded in showing that blowflies lay the eggs from

which maggots develop

in

putrefying meat, and that in the absence of the eggs

no maggots, and subsequently no flies, make their appearance, even though the meat decays. The method was simple, and affords a fine example of a scientific

Some

experiment involving a control. ing meat of various kinds were

vessels contain-

open; others were

left

closed with paper and sealed. In the former the

flies

due course the maggots made their appearance; the sealed vessels remained free of "worms." Later, in order to answer the objection that the sealing of the vessels might have prevented free access of air, Redi performed other controlled experilaid eggs,

ments fine

in

and

in

which some of the

vessels

were covered with

Naples netting, that would admit

flies.

In

some experiments

air

but exclude

a double protection

was

gall wasps,

and the egg

logical thought hardly

in

spontaneous generation, though

continuity be?

peared

on the

so,

— the

Redi retained a belief that

in certain other

origin of parasites inside the

animal body or of grubs inside of oak

by

galls

human

or

— there must

evidence

be spontaneous generation.

Bit

grew

1670 Jan Swammerdam,

against such views. In

painstaking student of the insect's that the grubs in galls

bit the

life

were enclosed

cycle, suggested in

them

for the

The

belief

held by com-

folk and by some scientists, was disproved in the main and was suspect in entirety. Genetic continuity was established as the normal if not the only pattern of life. Young developing organisms grow into adults like their parents because they have the parents they do. Presumably, then, they inherit some material basis that holds them to the pattern of development that

if the mesh was fine enough to keep them from dropping through, not a single worm ap-

Even

still

mon

is

cases

second to that of the nine-

teenth-century theory of organic evolution.

began to

meat.

develops

which eventually emerges full-grown and transformed into a mature gall wasp. Although the mystery of the generation of intestinal worms and the muscle-embedded cysticerci of tapeworms was not to be solved until 1832, it may fairly be said that Redi, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Malpighi, and Vallisneri wrought a revolution in bio-

eggs on the meshes of the cloth and the eggs developed

in the putrid

laid in the plant tissues

inside the gall into a grub,

provided by adding a second shelter of net. Flies laid into maggots, but

282

come from insects that had inserted their semen or their eggs into the plants. In 1687 Antony (Antonij) van Leeuwenhoek, in one of his famous letters to the newly founded Royal Society in London, described how a surgeon brought to him some excised tissues from the leg of a patient. The tissue had in it worms that the surgeon thought had sake of nourishment and must

characteristic of their arise:

By 1711, when gall

own

what might

species.

this

Vallisneri

A new

question

material basis of genetic

was completing

his studies

wasps, a French biologist, Louis Joblot, was

undertaking to

test

Leeuwenhoek's

belief that

protozoans and bacteria arise from parents of their

He prepared a boiled hay

even

own

which these were covvessels organisms commonly appear. Some uncovered. After were left with parchment, others ered several days the microorganisms appeared in vast numbers in the infusions left exposed, but not in the kind.

infusion, in

GENETIC CONTINUITY much

closed ones. There was

talk of "vital forces" in

those days, so to avoid the criticism that by closing

ence of microscopic yeast of reproduction

and were

cells.

These were capable

They

identified as plant cells.

the vessels the hay infusion in

caused the fermentation of sugar only when they were

force, Joblot after

alive, for

them had lost some vital a time removed the coverings from These were soon teeming with mi-

the closed vessels.

croorganisms.

after boiling,

Later experimenters,

Needham, were not

John Turberville

especially

satisfied.

many

type of experiment

Needham repeated

The

flasks.

least

at

used

appeared

open ones.

in the

thus

for bacteria,

remained an unsettled question. Later

Abbe Lazzaro

He

seeds.

results: bacteria

corked vessels as well as

Spontaneous generation, in 1765, the

this

times (1748-50), using boiled

mutton gravy and infusions of boiled corks to close his in the

Schwann showed

in the century,

Spallanzani, perhaps the

greatest experimental biologist of his time, reinvesti-

that boiling killed

them and

that neither fermentation nor putrefaction occurred if all

air

admitted to the vessel was heated

prior to entry. In similar experiments F. F. Schulze

used sulfuric acid to purify the

air

entering the

flasks;

von Dusch introduced the use of plugs of cotton wool, which proved effective in excluding dust and bacteria by and

1854 H. G.

in

mechanically

F.

Schroder and

T.

admitted to the

filtering the air

sterile

The chemists J. J. Berzelius, Friedrich Wohler, and J. Liebig were not satisfied. Heat, strong chemicals, or even mechanical filtration might in some way deflasks.

nature the

air.

Liebig admitted that yeast played a role,

He

but he insisted that the fermentation was brought about

found that infusions of seeds, even when most carefully

by some soluble substance formed through decomposition. Louis Pasteur, from 1857 to 1860, disputed with

gated Needham's results by more refined methods.

had

sealed, to

to

be boiled a long time

(e.g.,

45 minutes)

remain free of microbial growth. Needham had used

corks sealed with mastic, and had merely set his flasks

by the

fire at

kill

organisms. Spallanzani used glass flasks with

all

Liebig the issue of a vital versus a purely chemical character of fermentation.

a temperature he thought sufficient to

slender necks that could be fused in a flame and were

beyond

thus sealed hermetically

all

The

doubt.

flasks

At

this

time the bacteriologist F. A. Pouchet claimed

had actually demonstrated the spontaneous origin of microorganisms during fermentation and that he

putrefaction. Pasteur set himself to reexamine the bases

containing infusion were then immersed in boiling

of the ancient controversy.

water

conducted

and

for

45 minutes. His sealed

flasks

remained clear

became turbid with argument was not settled.

free of organisms; the controls

bacterial growth.

the

Still

Needham maintained

that the severe heating

had de-

stroyed the capacity of the infusions to support

life.

Spallanzani triumphantly broke the fused necks of the flasks

and showed

growth promptly oc-

that bacterial

Needham

curred in them. Then

maintained, and quite

correctly, that the heating led to the expansion of the

and would consequently be a low

air in the flasks prior to the fusion of the necks,

that after cooling there

pressure or partial

vacuum

broke the necks of the sealed

flasks

hear the whistle of the entering for the generation of

one

one could actually

air.

Air

is

necessary

claimed Needham, and Spalwere therefore not conclusive.

life,

lanzani's experiments

There the matter rested

When

When

in the flasks.

for the

time being.

and good resolution at a magof 400 diameters was possible, interest fo-

to

1864 he

He made

micro-

scopic observations of particles trapped from the air

and showed that there were many bodies capable of living growth floating in it. He confirmed Schwann's experiments with heated air. Most convincingly, he made flasks with long S-curved necks open to the air at the tips, and demonstrated that liquid media capable of supporting bacterial growth will remain sterile in such flasks after boiling, unless even so little as a drop flows into the final curve of the flask's neck, where dust might have collected, and

flow back into the body of the air

is

then permitted to

flask.

He examined

on a glacier high on Mont Blanc and found

be free of floating bacteria. Some of these their contents

still sterile,

Even blood remained

flasks,

it

the to

with

are preserved to this day in

the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Similar to the air of the city,

microscopes with achromatic lenses became

From 1861

experiments.

his crucial

flasks,

exposed"

became heavily contaminated.

sterile

when

collected with

suffi-

available in the 1830's,

cient precautions to exclude bacterial pollution.

nification

On the other hand, Pasteur's methods of sterilization by means of a single exposure to boiling temperature did not always prove effective; and Pouchet, who used

cused on the globules always to be seen in fermenting liquors.

The

earliest

conception of the nature of

mentation, from Antoine Lavoisier through

J. J.

fer-

Berze-

von Liebig, was that it was a strictly chemical process. Then, in 1835 to 1838, Charles Cagniard de Latour and Theodor Schwann indelius to Justus

pendently reported that alcoholic fermentation

is

in-

variably associated with, and depends upon, the pres-

hay infusions rather than nutritive broth as a medium, would have won his point at least for a time had

—

—

he not

lost his

courage or

John Tyndall described, and

his conviction.

1877 studied the phenomenon just found that by boiling for intermittent periods of not longer than a minute at intervals of 12 hours, steriliin

283

— GENETIC CONTINUITY zation could be obtained even in cases

was

boiling

ineffective.

He was

where a

single

thus led to postulate

the parent. There must then be something, reasoned this

happen, something that was pres-

bud which have been preorganized in a little polyp results from their devel-

ent from the beginning of the growth of the

Cohn, using similar methods, discovered the formation of spores by Bacillus subtilis in hay infusions, and then

"certain particles

such a

demonstrated that a single boiling

opment"

will

not

kill

the

way

that

(Palingenesie, "Tableau des Considerations,"

spores but that, after these have once germinated, even

Art. XV). Since the

a very short exposure to a high temperature will

anv part of

all

the organisms present. Tyndall,

also used optical is

methods

dust in even the

there

is

is

who was

kill

a physicist,

demonstrate that there

to

stillest air

— and asserted that where

dust there are germs.

The establishment

of Disease

thus intimately related with the final establishment

there

genetic continuity only raises the question of

is

mechanism. The eighteenth-century preformationists, of whom Spallanzani was one and his friend its

Charles Bonnet another, were the avowed mechanists of their day.

To them the idea

tary particles, derived either

whole. The "germ," then, organism,

that nutritive or heredi-

from an organism's parents, could of their own accord into all the complexity of a living

being was preposterous. Something preorganized must

be transmitted from parents

spring, to serve as a substructure

(or parent) to off-

and guide

were

in the great

in

—

the

The preformationists who majority among eighteenth-century

course of development. biologists

— were thus convinced that either the ovum

germ of the future being, embryo plant within a seed. To some preformationists this conviction meant the presence of a little homunculus within the head of the sperm, while the female parent would supply only nutriment for the growth of the next generation. To others, the ovists, the germ or embryo lay in the egg, and the semen or sperm of the male merely activated its development. The more sophisticated of the preformationists, such as Bonnet, though at first charmed by the idea of the infinite, or nearly infinite, array of embryos within embryos going back to Mother Eve or the sperm contains the

just as

one

or to the

finds a small

first

female of every other species, never-

theless admitted in the face of the evidence of repro-

duction by budding that such a concept was too crude. It

was

in particular the consideration of the

tion of buds

by Hydra, the

it

by

itself

of determining the exist(ibid.). It is, in

Bonnet's

further words, .

.

.

the primordial foundation, on which the nutritive mol-

work

ecules went to

to increase in every direction the

dimensions of the parts.

[It

is]

a network, the elements of

which formed the meshes. The nutritive molecules,

incor-

porating themselves into these meshes, tended to enlarge

them

(Palingenesie, Part VII,

Ch.

IV).

little

forma-

freshwater polyp

Evidently Bonnet's real opinions were far different from the ludicrous view commonly attributed to him. He clearly saw the need for a material pattern that from the beginning of each life would control the hereditary course of its development, and that would of necessity be transmitted from the parent generation to the offspring. Here,

The dilemma was most clearly pointed out in 1745 by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Bonnet's contemporary. There is abundant evidence that in sexually reproducing species the offspring inherit characteristics from both their male and their female parents. In fact, the very same characteristic can be transmitted in one and the same family, at times through the female and at others

through the male

sively.

How,

then, can a preformed embryo, or even

What-

a preorganized particulate system, be involved?

ever

is

transmitted from parents to offspring,

it

must

be provided equally by both male and female parents.

The

facts led

Maupertuis to a daring speculation.

Let us suppose, he wrote, that particles corresponding to every part of the offspring are provided

The

they find their

body and it clearly does not contain parts within it, like the bud of a plant, all ready to expand and unfold. It is a mere bump, an excrescence. Yet, as it grows in size, it puts forth tentacles, develops a mouth between them, and becomes a fully formed polyp of the same species as

Maupertuis studied

four generations and demonstrated this matter conclu-

forced Bonnet to a more general conclusion. its

line.

the inheritance of polydactyly in a Berlin family over

of the parents

bud can form anywhere on

however, lay the unresolved

difficulty.

that

hydra's

not necessarily a miniature

ence of a Plant or of an Animal"

Abraham Trembley,

discovered by his cousin

is

"every preordination, every preforma-

is

from the environment or

become organized itself

its

tion of parts capable

Germ Theory

of the

polyp can regenerate itself from body when cut into small pieces, the preorganized particles must exist in every part of the

of the fact of Genetic Continuity. But the fact that

284

make

Bonnet, to

the existence of highly resistant "germs." Ferdinand

chemical

and that

way

affinity

in the

into the right places

between

by each

generation of the embryo

like particles.

by reason of

Then

corre-

sponding particles will unite, and those that should be next to each other to form a part properly will be attracted together and by their union will exclude less

appropriate associations. The embryo will thus be built

up

in the correct hereditary pattern of its species,

but

GENETIC CONTINUITY since will

now

be

the paternal and

now

the maternal particles

may resemble

utilized, the hereditary character

the condition in either one of the parents.

after long periods of time. In

Maupertuis' particulate theory of heredity was not

accepted

in its time,

attraction on to

be

cles

because the very idea of chemical

the basis of affinity

was too

novel.

Maupertuis confused the hereditary

sure,

an avirulent, svmbiotic or latent condition from which, under appropriate conditions, they may be released

And

parti-

with the effects they produce and with the parts

whose development they control. In those respects Bonnet had clearer insight. But after all, the time was

viruses

may even be

some

cases the latent

transmitted from one generation

of host organisms to the next by being included in the

reproductive arise.

cells or

buds from which the offspring

Thus they become

virtually an inherited trait of

the host species! Nevertheless, for viruses too,

vivum ex vivo. Every Cell from a

Cell.

The

omnium

early formulations of

Oil

the Cell Theorv, especiallv in the classic form stated

Theorv or any recognition of the microscopic elements upon which heredity might depend. To see that at bottom heredity must depend on a sort of organic,

by Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann in 1839, were not helpful to the development of the concept

nearly a century before the formulation of the

chemical memory, and to attribute

this

capacity to

of genetic continuity. At the turn of the century (1802)

had thought

K. Sprengel

that cells originate inside of

separable particles that maintain their intrinsic nature

other cells in the form of granules or vesicles.

when

probably mistook starch grains for newly forming

in

combination was extraordinary enough. This

fundamental idea led Maupertuis further to suggest leading to the formation that defective development

—

of monsters

— might arise from excesses

in

numbers or

deficiencies of the particles; that the particles might

undergo novel alterations giving rise to new hereditary types; and even that the isolation of these forms in different parts of the earth might lead to the origin of

new

He

cells.

Nevertheless, and in spite of criticism by others, this

mistaken idea was adopted by others and was accepted

even by Schleiden himself as late Schwann, he seems to have gotten

new

formation of

cells

as

1849.

As

for

his ideas of the

from the notions of Christian

Friedrich Wolff almost a century earlier (1759; 1768).

Schwann,

in brief,

thought that

new

cells

might form

outside existing cells in the midst of a ground substance

species.

between the

Although Maupertuis' ideas of heredity were far in advance of the more general notions of a blending of

supposed to

parental characteristics and a loss of hereditary vari-

of crystallization from the mother liquor. Better ideas

abilitv in the

population through the mere action of

interbreeding and hybridization, they had tic

value; that

is,

little

heuris-

they stimulated few experiments. In

the absence of anv chemical and cytological knowledge of the physical basis of heredity they could not

be

exist

cells,

or alternatively

that they might form inside of the older cells

of the genetic continuity of cells

the discovery a nucleus plant.

is

(It is

were

to

made by Bobert Brown,

by a kind

be based upon in

1831, that

a regular feature of each cell in a flowering

not true, though often so stated, that Bobert

Brown discovered the nuclei of cells. They had been seen many times before. What he actually did was to

and soon they were forgotten. Similarly, one might say that Bonnet's views prefigure some of the

develop a general concept of the essentiality of the

more important modern

nucleus for the

tested,

ideas of the relation of the

cell.)

Schleiden and Schwann recog-

genetic pattern, or genotype, to the course of develop-

nized the importance of

ment and the production

work on animal

of a phenotype, or assemblage

of final characteristics. Again, there

was no way

to test

such ideas until the eventual development of experiit may fairly be said that had Darwin and others of his generation had a proper knowledge of the ideas of Maupertuis and Bonnet,

mental embryology. Yet

much

fruitless theoretical

speculation about heredity

might have been avoided. Nothing has arisen to disturb the generality of principle.

When

plant, animal,

this

and bacterial viruses

were discovered (1892-1918), the ghost of spontaneous generation was evoked by some who were puzzled over the release of viruses from healthy organisms. Further investigations,

however, disclosed that besides existing

in their typical virulent, infectious state,

many

viruses

are capable of adapting themselves so successfully to their hosts that thev

mav

live within the host cells in

cells,

this

concept, and Schwann's

such as the cells of the notochord

and developing cartilage

in

embryos, made

it

possible

to extend the concept to the cells of animals as well as of plants.

Cell division had already been observed carefully

by a number of workers: by J. P. F. B. C. Dumortier (1823) in filamentous algae, by Hugo von Mohl (1835-39) in filamentous algae and in the club moss Antfwceros; by J. Meven (1830) in green algae, the mycelia of molds, and the terminal buds and root tips of flowering plants; and by C. G. Ehrenberg (1833) in the fission of various protozoans. It was especially Meven and von Mohl who most vigorously opposed the views of cell formation put forward by Schleiden and Schwann and who maintained that on the contrary cells arise by selfdivision. Over the two decades from 1840 to 1860, and

critically

Turpin (1826) and

285

GENETIC CONTINUITY these views

were supported on the botanical side by Unger and Carl Nageli, and on the zoological side by A. Kolliker, R. Remak, and Rudolf Virchow. These

the

F.

daughter

men

generation to the next.

do in

succeeded

first

in

obtaining an admission that cells

by division, and ultimately that thev arise only that manner. Yirchow's aphorism, so often quoted arise

— Omnis cellula e cellula — merely put a period to the

nuclear material does in fact persist from one cell

A most was

interpretation at this time

who

1861 was one of the very

in

remarkable failure of that of E. G. Balbiani, biologists to

first

of selective staining of different

free cell formation because they regarded

he was misled into thinking of them

it

as equiva-

spontaneous generation.

carried the day and laid the foundation for the concept is

a basic corollary of overall

some

genetic continuity, the arguments continued for

time after 1855. There were

Observing

ciliate

parts of the

still

many

biologists

who

believed that while cells might arise by division of preexisting cells, they could also arise

as animals

by

free cell

Thus he interpreted the micronuclei as the and completely missed the significance of the beautiful examples of mitosis which he actually saw and figured. To sum up, by 1870 it was generally believed that cells arise only from parent cells, but the origin of the daughter nuclei from a parent nucleus remained in some doubt because of the dissolution of the parent "testes" of the protozoan

commencement

nucleus

dence and

was needed was a clear and unmistakable

opinion prevailed.

One of the most important early observations made on the nature of cell divison was Nageli's observation that the nuclei of the two daughter cells are derived from the division of the parent nucleus. (He saw this in the

stamen hairs of the spiderwort Tradescantia,

still

a classic material for demonstrations of mitosis to biol-

ogy students of

all ages.)

Nageli, however, thought that

was exceptional. By laborious and careful work Wilhelm Hofmeister (in 1848-49), using the same material, detected the breakdown of the nuclear membrane prior to divison of the cell, and

division of the nucleus

with remarkable clarity he figured the presence of a cluster of

what were

According to

later to

be called chromosomes.

his observations these

groups, each of which

became

separated into two

reconstituted into one

of the daughter nuclei. Considering that all of this

was

observed without the benefit of staining and with the imperfect microscopes of the time,

was a

it

truly re-

markable achievement. But the fact that others were unable to see nearly as much left them unconvinced that Hofmeister was correct. It was the zoologists, who were working largely with separate dividing

embryo

cells,

such as blood

or the dividing cells of

of marine invertebrates,

cells in the

newly

who seem

convinced that nuclear division

is

first

chick

daughter nuclei.

He

fine

What

sign that the

principal bodies within the nucleus, namely, the chro-

mosomes, possess their own genetic continuity. Every Chromosome from a Chromosome. In the establishment of the concept of genetic continuity, the decade following 1873 was a crucial period. During these years the details of mitotic cell division were worked out, step by step, by a considerable number of cytologists, among whom Eduard Strasburger, working on plant materials, and Walther Flemming, working on animal materials, were leaders. Many of these researches were closely connected with the study of the events of gametogenesis and fertilization. Here we shall look simply at the discovery of the sequence of events in the division of the cell and its nucleus, a towering achievement of nineteenth-century biology, fully as important as the Cell Theory itself. One may sharply contrast this remarkable development of biological science with the advent of Mendelian genetics, or of Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, for both of those achievements were largely the creation of single men, whereas in the

unfolding of mitosis

many

individuals contrib-

uted essential parts. In that respect the discovery of mitotic cell division was an advance

more

like those

of genetics in the twentieth century,

when

the Chro-

invariably a part of

thread connected the

mosome Theory

of Heredity and the elucidation of the and the nature of the genetic code have required the labors of many persons, even though some roles of

DNA

individuals

may

stand out as leaders or originators.

In the year 1900 the

also figured the star-shaped asters

some dividing cells. Some of the animal cytologists became convinced that the original nucleus becomes dissolved in the course of each cell division, and that in

of cell division.

have become

Remak saw the chick's blood cells in late division, when connected by a narrow stalk,

and he observed that a

at the

fertilized eggs

to

cell division.

stages of

with

mals.

formation. But slowly the increasing weight of eviscientific

cell.

protozoans during their conjugation,

organ systems analogous to those of multicellular ani-

Great changes in point of view rarely occur abruptly. Although Virchow's and Remak's views eventually of cellular continuity that

apply

a fixative and then a stain, carmine, to produce a degree

long dispute. It is very significant that both Remak and Virchow opposed Schleiden's and Schwann's idea of lent to

286

daughter nuclei are reconstituted within each cell; but by 1852 Remak concluded that the

Wilson, whose to

in

American

own work on

cytologist E. B.

genetic continuity was

fruitful, wrote in the first edition of The Cell Development and Inheritance (p. 46) the following

be so

GENETIC CONTINUITY way was opened

the discoveries by

and stained material was shown to be correct by Flemming and W. Schleicher by observing cell division in living material. Bv 1880 and 1882, when Strasburger's

by others

third edition of Zellbildung

words: "It was not until 1873 that the

for a better understanding of the matter. In this year

Anton Schneider, quickly followed same direction by Otto Biitschli, Hermann Fol, Eduard Strasburger, Eduard van Beneden, Flemming, and Hertwig, showed cell-division to be a far more elaborate process than had been ." supposed supposed, that is, by Remak and others, who thought that nuclear and cell division represented simplv a pinching in two of the nucleus and the body of the cell. First it became evident that cell division is regularly in

the

—

and

Zelltheilung ("Cell

Structure and Cell Division") and Flemming's Zelkub-

Kem und

stanz,

Zelltheilung ("Cell Substance, Nu-

and Cell Division") respectively appeared, the

cleus,

associated with the formation in the cell of an achro-

was almost complete. The final proof chromosome separate and move to opposite poles was provided for animal cells by van Beneden in 1883 and for plant cells by F. Heuser in 1884. It is a striking fact that the two greatest contributors

matic (nonstainable) figure called the spindle. Fol saw

to the unfolding of the nature of the mitotic process,

two asters in each dividing and Otto Biitschli observed

a serious misconception that plagued later students for

.

.

the initiation and growth of cell of the sea

urchin egg,

that a spindle-shaped structure, also achromatic,

is

story of mitosis

that the longitudinal halves of each split

Strasburger and Flemming, were each responsible for

many

years. Strasburger's error, the conception of the

transverse division of the chromosomes, offered a seri-

formed between the asters and is eventually cut through by a deepening constriction or furrow around

ous block to recognition that the elements of heredity

By

might be linearly arranged within the chromosomes;

the cell in the plane of the equator of the spindle.

1875 Strasburger had shown that cell things

happen somewhat

in the typical plant

A

differently.

indeed produced, but there are no asters

spindle

is

at its poles,

for of course,

versely,

chromosome really divided transtwo parts would be genetically each chromosome could contain only a

if

either

its

different, or else

and no furrow constricts the dividing cell. Instead, a cell plate is formed across the equator of the spindle, and gradually extends beyond the spindle until it meets the old cell walls on all four sides. The new, rigid cell

a single genetic element to be duplicated and appor-

wall separating the daughter cells

chromosomes are

layers

As

on either side of the

for the nuclear

that they can

nuclear

then deposited in

and

after the

has dissolved, and then in 1873 A.

shortly

thereafter

I.

his error,

however,

Strasburger recognized

cells.

in a

few years. Flemming, on the

other hand, clung to his erroneous view that at first

all

the

united into one long continu-

ous thread, a "spireme," which later breaks up into

cell plate.

elements themselves, Fol showed

be brought back into view

membrane

Schneider,

is

tioned to the daughter

Tschistiakoff,

stained and observed the bodies later to be

named

the separate chromosomes. This conception, which

was

based simplv on inadequate observations of the number of free

chromosome ends

in the early

was

less in conflict

ics,

and had a much longer

prophase nuclei,

with any of the principles of genetlife.

Even

in the

middle

chromosomes. These structures of the cell were especially well observed in the studies of Strasburger on

of the twentieth century, textbooks and teachers could

dividing plant cells and of Balbiani on those of a grass-

fact that a careful look at

hopper. The stained structures, rodlike in the grass-

nuclei in early prophase shows quite clearly that

hopper but often angled or V-shaped in the plant material, were found to cluster on the center of the

than two chromosome ends are apparent in various

—

They then divided Strasburger thought it to be transversely and the two parts thus formed moved to opposite poles of the spindle. Oscar Hertwig showed that these two groups of chromosomes reconstitute the nuclei of the daughter cells; and Strasburger showed spindle.

—

that in his plant cells, well before the spindle

as

chromosomes are

is

formed,

be seen within the nucleus long, twisted double threads, which later shorten

the

to

and thicken. Walther Flemming confirmed that this is also characteristic of animal cells, and in 1879 he added a most significant observation: the division of each chromosome to make two is longitudinal, not transverse. The succession of the stages of mitosis deduced from fixed

still

be found perpetuating

this error, in spite of the

Flemming's own

figures of

prophase nuclei!

Every

chromosome

from

a

chromosome

more

— how

sharply this continuity contrasts with the mass division

which may be very unequal in this understanding was quickly apparent. Vv'ilhelm Roux in 1883 suggested that the longitudinal splitting of the chromosomes implies of the cytoplasm,

amount. The significance of

the existence of a linear array of different hereditary

chromosome. work in plant physiology and plant hybridization, and referred to already, proposed what he called a "mechanistic-physiological theory of descent." In part he was "qualities" along the length of each

In 1884 Carl Nageli, a botanist noted for his

undertaking to criticize Darwin's theorv of natural he was also attempting to supply

selection, but in part

287

GEXETIC CONTINUITY a

conceptual scheme for a physical

stein to

s\

and unaccountably,

account

he

Yet unlike Darwin, not one of them

ignored Mendel's discoveries, he ignored entirely

all

to

the contemporary developments in knowledge of the roles of the nuclei of the

germ

cells

during

fertilization,

as well as the indications of the genetic significance

of the

chromosomes

were

that

be drawn from

to

check

as carefully against the

to

must

memory

determination of the hereditar\

heredity

characteristics of the offspring (see Maupertuis), Nageli

concluded that the hereditary material

is

not the entire

substance of the egg but only some special part of

it.

This restricted hereditary substance he called the "idio-

He supposed

plasma."

it

to

be dispersed

in a sort of

network through the entire substance of the cell, through nucleus and cytoplasm alike. By division of the fertilized egg into cells, the idioplasm

come its

distributed to every

new

cell

would be-

and give

to

each

hereditary character. Evolution was thought to take

place through changes in the idioplasm, changes going

on continuously and impelled by some inherent force toward inevitable change. For a man who so insistently proclaimed that he was a mechanistic biologist, this inconsistency was truly remarkable, but Nageli did not seem to notice that it was in the least illogical. Perhaps a word should be permitted to characterize a long, voluminous record of analogies between heredity and memory, best exemplified by a lecture given by the physiologist Ewald Hering in 1870. The dialectic progresses from the idea that memory must have an unconscious organic, or material, basis to the analogous idea that a material basis must be involved in the transmission from one generation of living organisms to the next of the

"memory"

development. The weakness

is

that guides

its

quickly apparent in the

purely speculative mechanism, which like Nageli's was

conceived in

total

disregard of the superb cellular

discoveries that at the very time

were laying a sound

basis for understanding the real nature of genetic continuity.

hoped

The reason to provide

is

readily found. Hering clearly

an organic basis for

his

Lamarckian

conviction that acquired characteristics can inherited.

Among

Samuel Butler R.

Semon

in

others,

Ernst

in 1878, H. B.

1904

all

Orr

Haeckel in 1893,

become in

1876,

and

finally

elaborated magnificent specula-

same amazing oblivion of the developing knowledge of cell division, chromosome individuality and persistence, and the Chromosome Theory of Heredity. Like Darwin, in an effort to actions about heredity in the

count for supposed heritable effects of the environ-

ment, they assumed the existence of "plastidules" or other living units that could be modified in various

body

parts,

and were then transmitted through the

effort

known

facts as

On

Maupertuis had

the contrary,

it

seems

have escaped these nature philosophers that memory

have

in the

made an

theory by further experiments. .Not one

done, over a century before.

mitotic cell div ision. Instead, reasoning that the sperm in spite of their differences in size,

his

of them, in fact, reasoned as clearly or tested his system

and the egg,

an equal share

288

reproductive cells to members of the next generation.

just as

for heredity. Strangely

at best

be a poor analogy for heredity, since

just

is

in animals,

whereas

characteristic of plants.

Herbert

demonstrably only

exists

as

Spencer, in his Principles of Biology (1864), was equally speculative and equally fallow. In postulating biological

units determinative of

revealed

less

development, he clearly

breadth of knowledge and biological

perspicacity than Charles Bonnet had exhibited a century earlier. It

was August Weismann, once a student

who undertook

of Nageli,

the task of properly relating Nageli's

concept of the idioplasm to the recent developments of cytology. In his

famous paper on the subject

first

Weismann

defined the germplasm unbroken lineage of cells connecting the fertilized egg from which an individual springs with that individual's own gametes, which through their union form the fertilized eggs of the next generation. "We have an obvious means by which the inheritance of all transmitted peculiarities takes place," he said, "in the continuity of the substance of the germ cells, or germplasm." Weismann stressed two principles about the germplasm. The first principle was the Continuity of the Germplasm. According to this concept, the substance of the body (the somatoplasm) is in each generation produced as an offshoot of the germplasm, or germ-line, so that whatever characteristics are inherited must be transmitted from the germplasm to the somatic part of the body. "Changes in the latter," Weismann stated, "only arise when they have been preceded by corresponding changes in the former." He deduced also that characteristics acquired by the soof heredity, in 1883, as the

matic

cells

cannot be transmitted to the next genera-

tion unless there

is

some physical mechanism

to transfer

material substances or particles from the somatic cells to the

germplasm. Weismann believed that any such was highly improbable, and in

transfer of particles

subsequent years he

set

himself to test the inheritance

by experiment. All of his work confirmed the noninheritance of whatever characteristics were acquired by the somatic cells, and of acquired characteristics later

from

this

experience he derived his second major prin-

Germplasm. By this he meant environment which are inherited must be exerted directly on the germplasm and cannot be produced in somatic tissues and thence be transferred to the germplasm. ciple, the Isolation of the

that effects of the

GENETIC CONTINUITY Weismann,

like

Hertwig and Strasburger,

identified

Nageli's idioplasm with the chromosomes, but Weis-

mann extended

is

made up

he called "ids," which

of hereditary elements

in turn are

composed

of heredi-

tary determinants for each inherited characteristic.

During somatic development, the ids were supposed to release their determinants and so to be used up. Only in the germ cells would the undiminished quota of ids be retained. Moreover, in Weismann's view, every chromosome was like every other. In spite of growing evidence of the individuality of the chromosomes, as as

their

Weismann

longitudinal

division,

already

noted,

resisted all objections to his schema. Here,

we have

supreme example of a scientist who commences with great insight and who hardens, in devotion to some favored conceptual model, into dogmatic resistance to all evidence that would force him to change his views! A theory far more like our modern views was put forward by Hugo de Vries in 1889, under the name of "Intracellular Pangenesis." De Vries wished to restrict the hereditary elements, or pangenes as he called them, to the nucleus and the chromosomes, and also if

ever,

a

to limit their activities to the particular cell within

which they might "intracellular."

By

the conception to the postulate that

each chromosome

well

massive volume on Intracellular Pangenesis, to have held views quite the opposite of his real ones.

De

lie.

That was what he meant by pangenes differ little from

Vries'

the conceptual genes of the twentieth century. In his

view they constituted the chromosomes, but could migrate into the cytoplasm and become active there, thus controlling the development of the cell. A representative group of them, however, would always re-

main behind within the nucleus, to be handed on by mitotic division to both body cells and gametes. Can one fail to be struck by the profound similarity between these pangenes supposed to remain in the chromosomes and the current concept of genes composed of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and restricted to the chromosomes, or on the other hand between the pangenes supposed to migrate into the cytoplasm in order to regulate development and to control the hereditary characteristics and the current views of messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid)? Since the pangenes were limited to the cell and corresponded one to one with particular hereditary characteristics, and since they were always represented in full measure in the nucleus, the conceptual model developed by de Vries was consonant with the principle of the isolation of the germplasm and the noninheritance of acquired characteristics. Unfortunately, the use of the term "pangenes" made everyone recall the speculative theory which Darwin evoked to allow for some supposed inheritance of acquired characteristics. Consequently de Vries is often thought, by persons who have never read his

of

when

the turn of the century,

Gregor Mendel's work

really

the rediscovery

gave birth

to

modern

had been established. Omnis chromosonia e chromosoma: every chromosome from a chromosome. Every Gene from a Gene. The line of thought about genetics, the cytological basis of genetic continuity

genetic continuity developed thus far has described an ever-increasing degree of precision in the generation of living forms. Biogenesis

becomes reproduction; recell division becomes longitudinally, or put more

production becomes cellular; mitotic;

chromosomes

split

accurately, they replicate themselves, since each

chromosome entire;

and

is

new

no ha(f-chromosome but a chromosome

finally,

the substituent elements of the

chromosomes, whether

visible

chromatids or invisible

genes, are held likewise to replicate themselves. During

the lengthy period from about 1883 to 1953, a span little was added to this particular line of development of the concept. True, the development of genetics made it clear that one is entitled to say: "Every gene from a gene." But that deduction was made on the basis of evidence that genetic continuity is not interrupted when cells divide, or when gametes are formed, unite, and generate a new individual. One could say where a gene resided in a particular chromosome, but not what it was. The gene and its replication remained total abstractions. Every DNA Molecule from a DNA Molecule. All of

of 70 years,

this

changed

in the

became evident

decade following 1944, when

it

that the physical material of heredity

had been generally supposed, protein but The problem of replication again became real when J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick in 1953 proposed, on the basis of chemical considerations and X-ray diffraction data, that the DNA molecule is a double helix. Its two strands have -sugar-phosphate-sugar-phosphate- backbones from which paired purine and pyrimidine bases extend inward toward the axis of the helix and are held together by hydrogen bonds that regularly match adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine. The basic problem of genetic continuity was at once recognized to be the nature of the mechanism whereby the DNA is

not, as

instead

is

deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

molecule replicates

itself

(Figure

Several aspects of the model of

1).

DNA

and its replicaneed some emphasis. First, the two strands of the double helix are in every detail complementary. They are not identical. A portion of the sequence that in tion

one strand might run

-CATCATCAT-

in

the other

would run -GTAGTAGTA- and read in either direction would be quite different from the first. The equivalence in amount of adenine with thymine and of guanine

289

GENETIC CONTINUITY

Thymine

Adenine

Guanine

Cytosine

Fl(.lR£ a.

1.

Model

(DNA) molecule.

of a deoxyribonucleic acid

tion of the

double helix the symbols

phosphate

(P)

are shown.

The paired

for the

one por-

In

repeating sugar

(S)

and

groups that constitute the backbone of each strand bases are A. adenine; T, thymine; G. guanine,

and C, cvtosine.

their

AT GC

ratios

:

may

be,

structure of the pairs of purine and pyrimidine

Adenine, a purine, regularly pairs with thymine,

a pyrimidine, by

means

of

two hydrogen bonds. Guanine, a purine, means of three

regularly pairs with cytosine, a pyrimidine, by

DNA's no matter

cluded the possibility that the two polynucleotide

is

a property of the

chains of a

DNA.

Similarly,

the equality of purine bases to pyrimidine bases

is

a

property of the double helix, not of the single strand. itself is

in a single step

strand makes, or

not a process that can be performed

by single-stranded is

DNA. The

single

a template for, a complementary

strand, with a polarity that runs in the opposite direc-

tion along the molecule, since the 3'-5' phosphate ester

linkages are reversed in direction in the

Properly considered, replication

is

two

strands.

thus performed only

by the double helix, which upon separation and formation of two complementary strands generates two double helices.

290

DNA.

all

double helix and not of single-stranded

Replication

The molecular

bases of

hydrogen bonds.

with cytosine, so characteristic of

what

b.

Watson and Crick found

that certain evidence ex-

that

is,

DNA

molecule are paranemically coiled,

are so coiled that they can simply slip into and

out of each other. Instead, they were plectonemically

and therefore, must in fact untwist. Since they could not very well be conceived to replicate while bound in the double helix, when every base is coiled, like strands of a twisted rope, in

order to

come

apart, they

paired and held by hydrogen bonds to its partner, it seemed that replication must require a prior untwisting and separation of the strands. As a most important part of their theory of DNA structure, Watson and Crick therefore postulated that replication is preceded by uncoiling of the strands, after which each strand could attract free nucleotides from the metabolic pool. These nucleotides could then become united by phosphate

GENETIC CONTINUITY ester linkages so as to

form a new strand that would,

and one labeled with ordinary nitrogen. There

with the original strand, twist into the double helix

therefore be only a single band, but

Thus each of the separated strands of the original double helix would serve as a template, and two double

indeed

again.

helices

DNA.

would be produced from one.

it

does

—

midway between

just

N 15 -labeled

occupied by pure

should

it

lie

will

— as

the positions

and pure

N 14 -labeled

After a second division, the separation of the

each case one heavy and

Step by step, evidence has been found to support the validity of this hypothesis. An important early

double helices will provide

piece of evidence was Arthur Kornberg's discovery

tion,

A in vitro one must 1956) that for the synthesis of supply a pool of nucleotide triphosphates, that is, nucleotides which are already provided with the

one heavy and one ordinary strand and half of which will contain two ordinary strands. The latter will form

DN

(

one ordinary strand

a

in

as templates.

Hence,

after replica-

duplexes will be formed half of which will contain

band

at the position characteristic of

DNA

in

medium with

which

high-energy phosphate bonds that enable formation of

all

the phosphate ester linkages to proceed. Calculations

nitrogen.

by Cyrus Levinthal and H. R. Crane, and by others, showed that the energy required to spin a very long

son-Crick hypothesis of replication, but shows that the

DNA

molecule so as to untwist

great but

is

triphosphate energy of the

would be

it is

not inordinately

only a small part of the available nucleotide

brief.

while the time required

cell,

A model was proposed

that envisaged

the progressive uncoiling of the double helix from one

end and the beginning of replication of the separated strands while the remainder of the double helix was still intact. It was found independently by Paul Doty and

Marmur

J.

that exposure of

DNA

to critical high

temperatures would lead to dissociation of the strands of the double helix

and that

if

cooling thereafter was

would in fact reassociwas possible to produce artificially, by bringing

sufficiently gradual, the strands

way

ate, or "anneal." In this

certain kinds of hybrid

it

DNA

about the association, while cooling, of single strands

from different sources. A celebrated experiment of M. Meselson and F. W. Stahl in 1958 provided very convincing evidence of the correctness of the Watson-Crick hypothesis. Escherichia coli was

culture of the bacterium

grown

in a

medium

A

first

containing heavy nitrogen (N 15 ),

DNA was labeled with this isotope. The were then transferred to a medium containing

replication has occurred in

This experiment not only neatly confirms the Watprocess in the

first

tracted from a sample of the original

and subjected

DNA

one

cell

was

ex-

N 15 -labeled

to ultracentrifugation in a

cells

cesium chlo-

which differentiates molecules by weight. The DNA formed a single band at a characteristic place. DNA from the sample taken after one cell division formed a single band at a different place, while DNA from the sample taken after two divisions revealed two bands, one of them at the same place as in the DNA from cells after the first replication, the other a new band still further displaced from the band characteristic of N 15 The interpretation seems ride density gradient,

.

clear.

When

the

N 15 -labeled

DNA N 14

mol-

each duplex will contain one strand labeled with heavy

ecule replicates in

new

medium

double helical containing only

,

may be

defined

replication has taken place

daughter generation to one-half

in the next,

one-

fourth in the third, one-eighth in the fourth, etc. this

is

so,

If

the original strand that serves as a template

we know from

remains intact. Yet

Herbert Taylor's

chromosome does not always may undergo exchange at one or more

studies that the original

remain

intact. It

new

points with the

sister-chromatid that

is

formed.

There is clearly a discrepancy here; but it serves mainly to emphasize the tremendous shift in dimensions when a DNA double helix is compared with a chromosome. The DNA double helix has a diameter of 20 A, the completely uncoiled chromosome one of at least 0.2 microns (or 2000 A), one hundred times greater. Until

we know much more of the

in

for periods equal to

Once

heavy nitrogen, there will always be some double one heavy and one ordinary strand when replicating in ordinary medium, but the proportion should decline from one hundred per cent in the

DNA

)

"semi-conservative," which

helices containing

cells

generation and two cell generations.

is

following way.

in

until all the

ordinary nitrogen (N 14

ordinary

about the internal construction

chromosomes and the exact arrangement of the molecules

in

them,

this

hundred-fold difference

dimensions (two orders of magnitude) leaves plenty

and for imagination. Numerous models have been proposed to explain how the replication of DNA can be semi-conservative while of scope both for molecules

that of the

chromosome

In this essay

reproduction in idea: all life

is

we have its

from

not.

sought for the meaning of

broadest terms.

life

of

its

We

began with the

own species. We have ended

with the replication of the

DNA

the direction of our discourse,

molecule. Reversing

we

see that the

whole

of genetic continuity really lies here. Because each

DNA

molecule can replicate

itself,

each gene and

chromosome undergoes replication. Because, whenever the chromosomes divide, the sister chromatids separate and move by means of the spindle mechanism into the daughter cells, it follows that every cell comes from a cell and contains within it the same genetic heritage.

29

GENETIC CONTINUITY Because

from parent

cells arise mitotically

and

cells

because each individual must originate as a single cell or a cluster of cells derived either from two parent organisms or from one,

own

comes from

all life

of

life

its

lead

this

concept, genetic con-

mav

within a social context. Scientific ideas

tinuity,

human power and

which increase

applications

technological

to

alter the course of civilization. In

time, the concept that genetic continuity resides ulti-

mately helix

in the replicating strands of the

may

total control

DNA

double

the techniques of genetic surgery

assist in

and manipulation whereby man

is

species exhibit incessant variety. of the species

Man

differ

On

the other hand, the greatest influ-

concepts

may

lie

not in the field of

and man himself. The ultimate concern of man voice in the age-old cry:

life,

finds

Whence? And whither? world view, the

refine-

of the idea of genetic continuity to a point

where

In man's construction of his

clearly to reside in the replications of a

molecule represents the

sort of

in the validation of

Machine."

J.

O. de La Mettrie's

the ultimate reduction of

It is

final

step

"L'Homme symbo-

life,

most unique and characteristic property, reproduction, to the physical and chemical behavior

lized

by

full of differ-

The

almost as

representatives

much

as they re-

and chromosomes which can be observed must have their final locus in some change of a component of the DNA, some error occurring in the process of exact replication. Admit these alterations of the code, and

will

play upon. Thus, in our

remarkable

is

hereditary characteristics, and the mutations of genes

scientific

shown

of identical

semble one another. Our world view must therefore accommodate the existence of novelty and change in

at

is

final

double helix replicates

Yet the actual world

alterations of man's philosophical views of nature,

it

its

ent species, and populations belonging to the same

technological applications, but rather in the profound

ment

composed only

DNA

individuals, because the itself so precisely.

Continuity, in

produce a world of species

itself

some day acquire

not yet.

ence of

would of

refinement,

persists in asking:

over the evolutionary process and alter

hereditary characteristics in selected directions. That

time

anyone who

to satisfy

Whence? And whither? The Principle of Genetic inalterable, of populations

kind.

remains for us to place

It

enough here

its

once natural selection

is

supplied the material to

final

view, Genetic Continuity

and Evolution are the two great themes of life, and are linked through mutation and natural selection. Genetic continuity implies the replication of chance errors as well as the persistence in the main of the old, tried

and

tested, reasonably successful attributes.

Genetic continuity nature of

man

(and

both the stable element

all

in the

other living species), and also

that change may continue, that may be realized, and that a more creature may succeed us in the end.

hope

the basis for our

new

is

adaptations

prescient

of molecules. All the genetically transmitted charac-

and potentialities, both those defining the speand those distinguishing the individual, are coded the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA molecule

teristics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

cies in

and are produced during development through chemical control over the synthesis of a thousand

thousand

— proteins

in the cells of the

its

— ten

growing body.

Like the Theory of Organic Evolution, like the Theory of Natural Selection, the full explication of Genetic

Continuity

is

destined to affect most profoundly man's

view of man, man's view of life. Yet the mystery is not quite destroyed, not fully replaced by "L'Homme Machine." One must remember that the of

its

DNA double helix cannot replicate outside

most complex living surroundings.

It

cannot

replicate outside a system that includes not only necessary

components such

as trinucleotides

and necessary

sources of energy, such as adenosine triphosphate

(ATP);

it

also cannot replicate without the assistance

of a specific

enzyme,

the directions of

present in the

cell. Life,

molecules are after system; and

292

itself

some

it is

and replicates

all

a protein synthesized under

part of the

DNA

molecules

reproduction, the replicating parts of an integral,

complex

the system that lives, reproduces its

genetic code.

There

is

itself,

mystery

Aristotle,

Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck, Loeb

Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1943). Aristotle, Historia

animalium,

trans.

D'Arcy Thompson (Oxford,

R. Barthelmess, Vererbungswissenschaft

1910).

(Munich, 1952). C.

Bonnet, Palingenesie philosophique, Oeuvres, 24

vols.

(Neu-

chatel, 1783), Vol. VII. Y. Delage, L'Heredite et les grands

problemes de

A

la biologie

generate (Paris, 1903). L. C. Dunn,

Short History of Genetics

"Evolution and Heredity L. G. Stevenson

and Culture

and

(New

in the

York, 1965). B. Glass,

Nineteenth Century,"

in

R. P. Multhauf, eds., Medicine, Science,

(Baltimore, 1968), pp. 209-46. B. Glass, O.

Temkin, and W. Straus, (Baltimore, 1959), Chs.

Jr.,

2,

eds.,

3, 6.

Forerunners of Darwin

E. Guyenot, Les Sciences

la vie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1941). A. van Leeuwenhoek, Brieven (seu Werken), Deel II, Letter 83 (various dates and places); also in Latin, Opera Omnia (Lugduni Batavorum [Leyden] 1722), Vol. II. P. L. M. de Maupertuis, Venus physique (1745), in Oeuvres, 4 vols.

de

(Lyon, 1756). C. Nageli, Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre (Munich- Leipzig, 1884). E. Norden-

The History of Biology (New York, 1942). H. Stubbe, Kurze Geschichte der Genetik bis zur Wiederentdeckung der Vererbungsregeln Gregor Mendels, 2nd ed. (Jena, 1965). J. H. Taylor, ed„ Selected Papers on Molecular Genetics (New

skiold,

GENIUS, RENAISSANCE TO 1770 York and London.

196.51. for

papers by

W.

J.

D. Watson and

F.

H. C. Crick: M. Meselson and

J.

H. Taylor. H. de Yries. Intracellulare Pangenesis (Jena.

1889).

J.

Stahl: A. Kornberg;

D. Watson. Molecular Biology of the Gene

York and Amsterdam. 196.5

bung

F.

1.

A.

|

New

Weismann, Leber die Yererupon Heredity and Kin-

(Jena, 1883), trans, as Essays

dred Biological Problems, 2nd ed. (London, 1891), E. B. Wilson.

The Cell

in

I,

67-106.

Development and Inheritance

New

York, 1900).

BENTLEY GLASS [See also Biological Conceptions, Homologies; Inheritance;

Man-Machine; Spontaneous Generation]

sometimes considered Platonic

is

as

verging on distraction. Also

the divine character frequently attributed,

metaphorically or not, to genius, because

work what

compared both with God's

is

considered the result of supernatural inspirawhile ingeniutn

In fact,

tion.

original

its

is

is

creation,

and with

mean

intended to

"inventive intelligence,'" the Latin term genius (Italian

Renaissance

refers,

meta-

phorically or not, to a superior spirit inspiring a

human

genio)

the

in

originally

demon

being in the tradition of Socrates' of astrology (astral

used ingenium

spirit).

or in that

Petrarch and Boccaccio had but

in this sense,

rather atvpicallv;

still

but Poliziano and Pico stress the element of originality

when

thev use

Erasmus

The Portuguese

GENIUS FROM THE RENAISSANCE

TO

Genius

is

relevant to the historv of ideas in the follow-

powers;

the designation of a (2) as

man

possessing

these

the peculiar spiritual character of an

a man; (3) as a special talent for some particular type of performance. The first designation is basic. Performances conera, of a nation, of

may

sidered as products of genius

warfare, exploration,

tics,

etc.,

also

belong to

poli-

but such achievements

are regarded primarily as original intellectual work, as discoveries or inventions,

and especially

the eighteenth century, these original activities were this

by inventio, or equivalents of

term. Their further differentiation (especially of

discoveries

from inventions)

During the Renaissance (and

is

frequently

later),

two

ignored.

different Latin

terms were used for genius: ingenium and genius; they

seem

to

have

first

acquired

this

meaning

A fundamental

trait of

in Italy,

genius

is

that

it

is

by diligence; but, nevertheless, it may need diligence for its development and discipline. Whether this capability depends on a unique mental power, or on an assemblage (proportion) of powers, or on a kind of inward revelation, is a further debatable question. At first, irrational traits attributed to genius are considered irrelevant; later they are magnified by the this idea of the Platonic

pupil

of

Scaliger poetics,

doctrine of genius (1561), centering on

s

peculiarly

is

important.

Genius (ingenium,

something divine and innate, associated with enthusiasm (furor poeticus); it belongs to both arts and sciences. Cardano identifies genius with a kind of genius)

is

For Fracastoro and Giovio, genius

spiritus familiaris.

only means a talent in some particular held 1926; Thiime, 1927).

The term "genius"

is

(Zilsel,

used by

Adriani (Manuale, 1845) as the spirit of a nation.

For Bruno (1585), genius

as divine

enthusiasm

is

the

origin of the rules of art (Bruyne, 1951; Thiime, 1927).

But

seventeenth-century

Galileo, Torricelli,

Italian

authors,

such

as

Magalotti, Salvini, exclude from

genio supernatural and enthusiastic

traits (Zilsel, 1926).

and Pagano consider connection with beautv. For Vico, genio

Pellegrini (1650), Tesauro (1654),

ingegno is

in

the source of inventions (Croce. 1946; Pagano, 1650).

where

an innate capability, operating with spontaneous facility, versus talents which may be taught and learned

confluence into

a

Piccolomini, Erasmus, Trissino.

corresponding Italian words, ingegno and genio, were also used.

Hollanda,

and Vasari point out that genius and diligence are different qualities, but that they may be profitably united; the same connection between genius and memory is asserted by Boccaccio, Alberti. Enea Silvio

as artistic

creations in contrast to imitation. Until the middle of collectively designated

theorist

genius (Portuguese engenho, genio). Alberti. Gondivi,

1770

(1) the designation of superior mental powers productive of rare superior performances; or

as

art

Michelangelo, stresses (1548) the innate character of

ing meanings: also

Pico also refers to genius, as does

it.

in 1528. Gastiglione (1528) onlv uses ingegno.

doctrine of

furor poeticus in poetics. Genius, in this respect,

is

//

In

Spain,

Vives (1538) defines ingenium

strength of the

mind (Gracian,

as

the

1960); Huarte, in his

famous Examen de ingenios (1575), means by ingenio a special talent. Huarte's book stimulated many imitations

in

all

European

countries

(Lipenius,

1682;

Kahlius, 1740). Herrera (1580) identifies "Plato's ge-

nius" (Spanish genio) with "Aristotle's active intellect" as a supernatural

power

of invention. Rengifo (1592)

and Carvallo (1602) interpret ingenio as furor poeticus (Menendez, 1962). Gracian (1646; 1658) makes a distinction between genio and ingenio: the first seems to be (as for other authors) a natural inclination to un-

293

GENIUS, RENAISSANCE TO 1770 common

achievement, the second a peculiar

gence (agudeza) adapted analogies (Gracian,

intelli-

to discover similarities

1926; Zilsel,

I960; Cirot,

and

1926).

an original process (Dieckmann, 1941; Belaval, 1950). For d'Alembert (1751) genius, the power of original invention

in

and

science

cannot

art,

be

taught

(d'Alembert, 1930). Cahusac (1757) applies genius to ///

emotion and

The French Renaissance, aware originality

and inspiration

problem of

of the

poetry (Thiime, 1927),

in

seems, however, to ignore this twofold meaning of the

French term genie; ingenium as esprit (Zilsel, 1926), a

range

of

is

translated into French

word having

meanings.

a

much wider

employs

Descartes

the

term

ingenium to mean both an unusual capability to discover the truth (viz., new truths) and a special talent (Laporte, 1950). Genie appears in seventeenth-century psychology

as a

kind of inventive instinct which must

be ruled by reason and taste; or, as the natural spontaneity of an author, in contrast to science and art. Mairet 1637) calls it fureur divine (Zumthor-Sommer, 1

Guez de Balzac (1640) it is a coming from heaven, bestowing greatness

pendently of the

rules; in

philosophy, Shaftesbury

a genius, he has cree, construit, edifie

we owe him

because

(bon sens): sometimes

it

common

sense

and

it

by combination, not by

a rational

is

and Bouhours

finds

common

genius with art and

was usual in France, and Racine (Corneille, 1640-41;

Racine, 1669). In this sense, esprit

IV

its rules.

it

opposed

sense.

to,

of the age") as early as 1614 (Tonelli, 1955).

The doctrine

but not

Boileau contrasts

For Perrault (1693) genius

but as such

Evelyn

Andre

(1741), genius (feu de Vesprit)

infringe the rules of art, but only within certain

Vauvenargues (1746) considers genius as depending on the passions, and resulting from an assemblage of powers; its originality does not ex-

limits (Andre,

1843).

is

and seventeenth centuries (Thiime, 1927), but the term

above and sometimes against the rules; it should not be overwhelmed by enthusiasm; genius results from an assemblage of psychophysical powers (Wolf, 1923; Grappin, 1952; creation,

and divine inspiration developed during the sixteenth

of originality

especially for poetry

"genius" to stand for an instinctive and natural capa-

may

is

comparatively rarely used

ingenium it

Huygens

(Evelyn,

as a "universal

Wolselev

1662);

tion.

Temple (1690)

refers genius to "Coelestial Fire

or Divine Inspiration," superior to the constraint of

the rules. its

The doctrine

of creative imagination

superiority to the rules

is

it

discovers,

it

does not

and of

especially developed in

Shakespearean criticism, e.g., by Rymer (Thiime, 1927). During the eighteenth century British writers begin about genius, and

more than elsewhere. For Shaftesbury,

fact,

opposes

poetical genius to imitation and to laborious elabora-

to theorize

with natural laws; in

Mathematical

(1685)

opposes genius to talent: both are powers of invention, combining ideas received through the senses; but talent does not go beyond natural combinations, while genius is provided with an esprit createur (Condillac, 1803). In Batteux's opinion (1747), genius should not con-

connec-

does not include the idea of creativity).

refers to

Genius"

in this

frequently translated as "wit,"

is

clude imitation (Vauvenargues, 1857). Condillac (1746)

flict

of

In Britain, Barclay mentions a genius saeculi ("genius

"genius"

Fubini, 1965). For

synonym

a

is

genie.

tion (Latin

original

it

be matched by

to

beauty (Zumthor-Sommer, 1950). Dubos (1719) takes for

1923).

memory and judgment (Encyclopedic, 1765). Voltaire, as many others in his time, uses genie also to mean the character of an era ought

{feu sacre, sainte fureur) discovers the eternal ideas of

bility

power (Wolf,

verges on madness. For Dacier

(Thiime, 1927). Rapin (1686) calls genius feu celeste

incompatible with

an-

Voltaire identifies genius with "active imagination";

on the contrary, judgment governs genius but concealed under inspiration and apparent disorder

(Brav, 1927),

is

not,

froidement

suivies,

tion of genius: genius invents

creation,

(1681), is

is

noncees. Helvetius (1758) gives a mechanical explana-

at least after Corneille

Saint-Evremond regards

— Locke

only de grandes verites froidement

methodiquement

apercucs,

or of a nation (Tonelli, 1955) as

1927).

de Saint-Lambert

F.

(1757) opposes genius to taste; genius creates inde-

secret force

poetical genius as incompatible with

294

J.

1950); for Jean-Louis

and majesty (Bray.

and

faculty receptive to

feeling, as a

reproductive of impressions.

person is is

who

is

stress its irrational traits

a genius

is

a

able to create as nature does: and nature

a revelation of the universal

spirit.

Therefore a genius

considered as a second deity, or as a Prometheus.

Enthusiasm

man

is

a condition of creation; nevertheless, a

of genius should not infringe the rules of art: he

create. Therefore,

needs knowledge and good sense, although he avoids

tating nature,

minuteness. Addison (1711) considers genius as founded

it is a superior form of reason imiand promoted by enthusiasm (Wolf,

1923; Grappin, 1952). Diderot considers genius as a

on active imagination, and contrasts

mystery of nature, going beyond imagination and

but there are two kinds of geniuses: the

judgment by the force of enthusiasm; this brings about creation, as an idea drawn from experience through

natural

kind

(Homer,

pendently of the

it

Shakespeare)

rules; the second, or the

to imitation; first,

or the

create

inde-

learned kind

GENIUS, RENAISSANCE TO 1770 (Plato, Vergil, Bacon, Milton) have been educated and developed through the rales. For Young (1759). genius is divine inspiration; its creation is as spontaneous as that of nature, and the rales are only a hindrance to it.

With Young, the

interpretation of genius as a sort

of irrationality reaches

climax. Gerard (1759; 1774)

its

distinguishes genius from imagination: the second collects

new

materials, the

orders them into a whole

first

according to judgment and to

taste.

is

the original source of rules:

is

not constricted by them.

it

The work

establishes them, but

Though

genius, for Gerard,

does not act in a consciously rational

by inspired enthusiasm),

its

way

it

is

its

pursue

the sublime (Duff, in

science by judgment or understanding, in poetry by

imagination; only poetical invention

Moses Mendelssohn

metaphorically speaking, creative (Ogilvie, 1777).

In seventeenth-century Holland, Vossius mentions a

own

Castiglione's ingegno

ingenium

reason,

it

if it

may

can

reach

genius, nature dictates her

genius cannot oppose true rules

(Wolf, 1923; Grappin, 1952).

Hamann 1760-61 (

),

influenced by Young, breaks with

regards

as a divine inspiration

it

opposed and supe-

brought about by feeling,

rior to reason; creation

is

identified with intuition;

its

thinking

is

identified with

and its language is poetry. Genius considered sometimes as a kind of divine seizure

linguistic expression, is

(Grappin, 1952). For Klopstock, artistic genius, a bal-

ance of different powers, must be endowed with com-

in

its

as

(Zilsel,

various meanings (Lipenius,

"genius" appears only occasionally (Maior,

German term of French origin, das known since 1728 (Bertram, 1728), general use only after

Batteux (1751). grosser Ceist to

critics

J.

1682);

n.d.).

The

Genie, has been

but became of

A. Schlegel's translation of

Bodmer still employs grosser Kopf, mean a poetical genius submitted to

and of reason

rules of nature

only, not to those

(Grappin, 1952). Ingenium

imposed

also trans-

is

by Chr. Wolff, as Witz, but in the very meaning of a power productive of discovery

lated, e.g.,

restricted

Through

art.

rules; therefore,

mental powers

seventeenth-century treatises in Latin use

ingenium

by the

through

all

a certain aim;

1926).

translated into

German

Germany,

German

is

the rationalist tradition in the explanation of genius.

furor as ingenii excitatio for poetry (Bray, 1927). In late sixteenth-century

rales)

convinced that genius corre-

harmony towards

sublimity in

He

is

is

sponds to a state of perfection of

original and,

is

independency of the

knowledge. For Flogel (1762), genius is a of powers; it is not opposed to the rales.

enthusiasm

is

partially

required by some art (but not required in science). In

control

For Ogilvie, genius or invention proceeds

is

general, a genius must be especially predisposed to

inventive imagination, judgment, and taste. In 1767).

of genius

Resewitz (1759-60) explains genius through

it.

in

proper manifestation of genius

to reach

the preponderance over others of a certain aptitude

working

the

is

not always connected with genius, but genius should

genius as a proportion of different powers, such as art,

powers;

its

task

its

sudden manifestation generates enthu-

siasm. Originality (and

intuitive

completely

The production

ideal beauty.

unconscious;

harmony

is

faculty, utilizing all

a gift of nature and, in art,

(but rather

1923; Thiime, 1927). Duff considers

(Wolf,

whole representative

psychological explanation,

through the theory of association of ideas, rational

of genius

with an extraordinary strength of the

identifies genius

passion,

which can generate emotion along with moral

conscience.

It

subject

is

Lessing's theory

is still

to

more

rules

(Grappin,

1952).

rationalistic; genius

is

a

natural facility for discovering the true and reasonable

1933; Grappin,

principles of art (Rosenthal,

1952).

Riedel (1767) refers to genius as a facility in intuitive

knowledge, both Eberhard's

in science

interpretation

and

in art (Riedel, 1783).

genius

of

(1776)

almost

completely excludes irrational elements (Eberhard, 1786).

Genius for Herder means chiefly national genius.

For

(Genie as the characteristic of an era or of a nation

dictum, or

Kopf, is a favorable proportion of mental powers producing superior performances in science or, as

was used by other German authors at that time; however, the term Geist was generally preferred for the national characteristic.) Herder refuses to analvze the

ingenium venustum,

notion of original genius, but defines

of similarities

or

analogies

(Baeumler,

Baumgarten and Meier ingenium

in

art;

latius

1923).

they neither stress the

creative aspect of genius, nor admit irrational elements into

it

(Baeumler, 1923; Wolf, 1923; Grappin, 1952;

and freedom from the rales were claimed for artistic genius by Gellert in 1751 (Wolf, 1923). Trescho (1754) considers genius to be an

Tonelli, 1966). Creativity

instinct providentially inborn in all

human

beings, as

force.

At

first,

he

is

elements of genius, but later he (Ernst, 1916;

it

as a natural

inclined to stress the irrational restricts their function

Grappin, 1952). Lavater,

in his enthusi-

and rather confused exaltation of genius (1778), stresses its instinctive and extraordinary character astic

(Ernst, 1916).

Between 1770 and 1780, Kant developed a

an inclination towards a certain role in life. For Wieland (1755), genius is connected with freedom of

version of his theory of genius.

imagination and with enthusiasm. Sulzer (1757; 1771)

from

skill

or talent,

when

He

first

distinguished genius

these are not creative; genius

295

.

GENIUS, RENAISSANCE TO 1770 opposed

is

needs instruction, and

to diligence, but

proportion of four powers:

a favorable

judgment, creative

new

production of

and

spirit,

ideas

and

taste.

is

the

Genius, freedom,

ideals.

which cannot be

living organisms are elements

and

sensibility,

realm

Its

is

explained mechanically (Tonelli, 1966). Thus, a rational explanation of the force of genius

seems

be largely prevalent

to

und Drang

the Sturm

in spite of

Germany

in

in this period,

ideology, developing

after 1770: rational elements seem to be prevalent also

Sudheimer. 1935:

Goethe's earlv theory of genius

in

Grappin. 1952

1311..

Hainann. pp. 1S7L 207f.: Klopstock. pp. 254. 259f.: I69f.; Herder, pp. 221L 2281.. 247t.. Goethe,

Lessing, pp. pp. 270f.

Descartes

3 September, 1711).

\dilison. Spectator, 16(1

|.

l.e

Rond

Uembert, Discours priiliminaire ih I'Encyclopedie, ed. Ducros Paris. 19.50. pp 47. 53, 64 V M \ndre. Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. Cousin 1'aris. 1843), p. 59. A. Baeumler. (1

tier

Halle, 192. 5

.

rtcilskraft. ihre

(

reprinted as

Das

Geschichte und Systematik

Irrationalitdtsproblem in der

iesthetik imil Logik tics IS. Jahrhunderts bis zur Kritik tier

Darmstadt. 1967

Urteilskraft

Part

,

Wit:, pp. 157f., Baumgarten. V

paradoxede Diderot J.

Bertram.

F.

Brunswick. 1728'.

If.,

156f.. 299f.

Schonen

sogenannten

tin

in

p.

doctrine classique en

la

A. Ch. 7: pp. 146f.,

I.

Belaval, L'esthetique ions

Paris. 1950'. pp. 141. 15

Einleitung

Wissenschaften

mation de

La

199. R. Bray,

France

Paris.

for-

1927:

Balzac, p 87. Vossius, p. 88: Rapin. p. 90. E. de Brmne. Geschiedenis van de Aesthetica. De Renaissance Antwerp

and Amsterdam.

Hildesheim. 1967

m

de ingeniorum

731f.

Huarte.

II:

-21St.

(.

147f

I.

1,

1951),

142.

p.

G. Cirot. review

of "B.

P.

Sec.

=

II.

104. in

Oeuvres completes

Comeille. Cinna (1640-41), Act

II.

Paris.

scene

Croce, Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e

guistica generate

1946

Bari,

"Storia,"

.

Ch.

Ill:

lin-

Pellegrini.

p. 207: Vico, p. 253. H. Dieckmann, "Diderot's Conception of Genius,'' Journal of the llistoni of Ideas. 2 151-82 W. Duff. .An Essay on Original Genius and (1941

Tesauro,

Its

Various

Arts

Modes of Exertion

London.

.

141; Herrera, p. 71; Rengifo, Carvallo, pp.

p.

1774. pp.

dell'ingegno

ridotti

Britannicus

1669

46f..

Act

.

Vienna.

Schriften

Geniebegriff

1767'. pp. 6. 8.

in

Philosophy and the Fine

10. 22. 99.

j.

A. Eberhard.

III.

1783).

M. Pagano.

104f.

55f.,

Bologna.

arte

ail

scene

16.50.

2. F.

vom Genie und die Entstehung der 1901

Gottingen,

jungen Cot

Berlin. 1935'.

tin

many

with

ories of genius prior to Goethe.

Geschichte des Geniebegriff es in England (Halle,

Furor poeticus

the Italian Renaissance, pp.

in

sixteenth-

and seventeenth-century England, pp.

Wolseley, Temple. Rymer. pp.

Addison,

pp.

78f

Young,

.

62f.:

G

87f.

pp.

Accademia

della

und Dranger und der Fruhromantiker (Zurich. pp. 25f.: Lavater. pp. 29f.

and

art

J.

19161: Herder,

Evelyn, Sculptura: or the history

of Chalcography and engraving Copper (London,

1662), p. 74. E. Fubini,

Empirismo

e classicismo: saggio sul

Theory of Genius 1770-1779 1

L.

de Clapiers de Vauvenargues, Oeuvres Paris. 18-57

20f.

.

Geschichte

einer

des

Ccnicbegriffes

Aesthetik des 18. Jahrhunderts. Vol.

Gerard, pp.

37f.;

Wieland, pp. Flogel,

pp.

Entstehung

71f.:

I.

17f.:

Addison, pp.

Baumgarten, pp.

113f.; Sulzer, pp. 126f.:

tics

geschichte der Antike

La

al..

p.

7Sn.: genio P.

du Genie dans le preclassicisme allemand (Paris, 1952): Dubos. pp. 112f.: Batteux. pp. I14f.; A. Schlegel, pp. 110f.; Bodmer, p. 62: Baumgarten. pp. J. Grappin,

91f.:

theorie

Trescho. pp. 122f.; Wieland. pp. 125f.: Sulzer, pp. 139f.:

Resewitz. pp. 128f.: Flogel. pp. 134f.; Mendelssohn, pp.

Helvetius. pp.

Young, pp.

30f.;

p.

Resewitz. pp. 115f.: 130.

E.

Beitrag

Zilsel.

zur

Die

Ideen-

und des Fruhkapitalismus Tubingen, i

p.

Vives, et

24f.;

Ein

Ccnicbegriffes.

Batteux. pp.

52f.;

p. 73;

101f.: Gellert. pp. 108f.;

142f.:

Mendelssohn,

deutschen

der

in

von Gottsched bis auf

Saint-Lambert

Hoyo Madrid. 1960

ingenio and beauty, pp. 239f.

pp.

Goethe (Munich. 1932'. R. Wittkower. "Imitation. Eclecticism and Genius," in E. R. Wasserman. ed.. Aspects of the H. Wolf. Versuch Eighteenth Century (Baltimore. 1965

ed. del

78f.:

.

O. Walzel, Das Pwmetheussymbol von Shaftesbury zu

1926': definition of genius, p. 252;

pp.

Vie

."

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 4 1966); 217f., on the theory of genius in the eighteenth century; Meier, p. 219.

Turin, 1965). pp. 75f. B. Gracian. Obras completas.

ingenio.

Kant.

Memorie III. Volume

Barclav, Voltaire, p. 115; Kant. p.

:

Dubos and

31f., 51f.;

Tonelli.

delle Scienze di Torino. Series

Part II (Turin. 1955

Shaftesburv. pp.

Stunner

:

daU'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica.

60f.:

tier

1927

Cardano,

Shaftesbury, pp. 67f.:

sciences, des arts et des metiers iXeufchatel, 1765'. Vol. VIII,

Der Geniebegriff

7f.;

pp. 17f.; Fracastoro. p. 11; Bruno, pp. 23f.: French Renaissance, pp. 29f.; Saint-Evremond. p. 65; Dacier, pp. 72f

Cahusac. pp.

Ernst,

references to the-

H. Thiime. Beitragc zur

57f.;

J.

die

"Kritik tier Urteilskraft"

Lessing (Heidelberg, 1923): Dubos, pp.

"Imagination."

und

Sudheimer. Der Geniebegriff des

H.

>.

tics

art.

Lessing

Populurphilosophic Berlin. 1933'. O. Schlapp. Kants I^ehre

1786). pp. 208f. Encyclopedic

ou dictionnaire raisonnc

Der

Rosenthal.

E.

Allgemeine Theorie des Denkens und Empfindens (Berlin. ,

fonti

/

Racine.

J.

Riedel, Samtliche

J.

282f.

Ill,

Anfkttirungszeitalters.

ties

61; idem. "Kant's Earlv

B.

Kiel. n.d. Manuale M. Menendez Pelayo. Espand (Madrid. 1962). Vol.

p. 15.

OgUvie, Philosophical and Critical Observations on

28 (19261, 106f. E. Bonnot de Condillac, Connoissances

1.

D. Maior. Genius errans. sice

abusus

Historic th las ulcus estiticas in

3,

1803.

I.

scientUs

Florence. 1845'.

dell'arte greca

l^e rationalisme de M. Lipenius. Bibliotheca am Main. 1682: reprint

Laporte,

J.

Frankfurt I.

.

Gracian. pages caracteristiques." in Bulletin Hispanique,

humaines. Part

29b

82-96.

II.

1950), pp. 29f.

the Nature, Characters anil Various Species of Composition

.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kants Kritik

Paris,

philosophica

realis

London.

J.

M. Kahlius. Biblioteca philosophica Struvviana

I.

Gottingen, 1740),

problem of

irrationality,

269; invention, pp. 272f.; divine, pp. 276f.; Petrarch, pp.

213f.: Boccaccio, pp. 267f.; Poliziano. Pico, 214f.;

Hollanda.

p.

Erasmus, pp.

246; genius and diligence, pp. 266f.;

genius and memory, pp. 267f.; Scaliger. pp. 284f.; Cardano. pp. 292f.; Fracastoro. pp. 290f; Galileo, Torricelli. et al..

modern languages, Zumthor and H. Sommer.

pp. 296f.: translations of ingenium into pp. 294f.; Gracian, pp. 297f.

P.

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN "A propos du mot Philologie,

genie," in Zeitschrift fur romanische

66 (1950):

in general,

180f, 186; Mairet, 183;

Bouhours, 191; Boileau. 196; Perrault, 197f.

[See also Art

three topics of particular relevance to the history of ideas have here tion: (1) the

GIORGIO TONELLI and Play; Beauty; Creativity; Genius, Musical;

Irrationalism.l

ART AND ARTISTS

been singled out

for brief considera-

question of individual styles,

(3)

non

that of the

the unfinished

finito,

artist,

work

and

of

art.

Individual Styles and Rapid Changes of Style. Ever since Johann Joachim

Winckelmann and more

cally since the late nineteenth century,

specifi-

under the

influ-

ence of such scholars as Heinrich Wolfflin and Alois Riegl, the history of art has been equated with the

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN ART AND ARTISTS /.

that of

(2)

rapid changes of style within the work of one

and

history of styles,

many advocates

approach has

this

still

in the third quarter of the

a great

twentieth

century. Starting from Greece and the Italian Renais-

TERMINOLOGY

sance, standards of judgment, terms of reference,

and

The terms "individualism" and "genius" have gone through many changes of meaning and cannot even now be used in an unequivocal way. Individualism will

a critical language have been developed, and step

here be understood not only as "the individual pursuing

criteria.

his

own

New

ends or following

his

own

ideas" (Murray,

A

English Dictionary [1901], V), but also as the

self-conscious, reflective

conduct of single persons or

groups of persons allied by

common

step the history of art of

all

by

cultures and periods has

been approached and investigated with similar

stylistic

No one can doubt that large cultural areas (such as Europe and China) have developed mutually exclusive artistic conventions to which they have adhered for

interests, ideals,

very long periods of time; that there are national

and purposes. Genius is an infinitely more vacillating term, and its many meanings since antiquity have been

(French, English), regional (Venetian, Neapolitan), and

recorded

Murray's

in

concern here

is

New

English Dictionary.

The

primarily with the meaning the term

acquired in the course of the eighteenth century as

denoting the creative powers and outstanding originalof uncommonly endowed, exalted individuals. While the modern literature on individualism in general is scarce and unsatisfactory and on individualism in art and artists practically nonexistent, that on genius is vast, diversified, and illuminating. Written mainly by literary critics, it discusses almost exclusively poetry and poets. Since the fifteenth century artists have believed in a close alliance between the sister arts, the word and the picture the Horatian ut pictura poesis had widest currency for over 300 years and thus a concentration on artistic genius without taking into account literary criticism would tend to distort the ity

—

—

not necessarily closely related.

The

first

problem, that

of individualism in art cannot be divorced from visual

evidence, while the second, that of the origin, history, vicissitudes of the individualist artist

is

above

all

a sociological and psychological one. In the following

pages the latter problem will be more fully discussed than the former.

The

entire history of art could,

and

perhaps should, be written under the heading of

"Changing Aspects of Individualism in Art." Since this cannot be done within the compass of this article, only

vastly different;

mark

of individualism of peoples, re-

and periods. Nor can one doubt that by a strange emotional and intellectual but basically unconscious gions,

submission, creative individuals partake in and, at the

same time, become active heralds of the characteristic style of their country, region, and period. Each artist has, in fact, an individual style and a fluctuating degree of freedom within the broader stylistic setting of the

national and period styles.

must be admitted, how-

It

ever, that individual styles of artists reveal idiosyncratic traits to a

different

varying extent at different periods and in

cultural

contexts and,

recognition of personal styles

is

moreover, that the often dependent not

only on the degree of study and empathy but also on the theoretical standpoint of critics and historians. John

and

artist as

Individualism in art and individualism of artists are

and

as bearing the

art

INDIVIDUALISM IN ART

all

and that these puzzling phenomena may be described

Ruskin abhorred individualist

historical evolution.

II.

period styles (Gothic, Renaissance),

fully

artists;

he loved medieval

accepted the concept of the medieval

the servant of

God and

as such lacking the

worldly pride of individualists. In contrast to

this

view,

which is still to be encountered, it is now common knowledge that many masters of the Middle Ages great as well as mediocre often had highly individual manners (Schapiro, 1947). How else could we attribute with assurance certain statues of the West porch of Chartres to a great anonymous revolutionary, and lesser statues to his pupils and followers. Attributing works of art a highly specialized art historical pro-

—

cedure

— — implies an absolute

trust in the individuality

of style, without barriers of time and place.

297

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN But the conception of an individual

ART AND ARTISTS

style,

the aware-

and the wish to develop it in a definite direction, all this was not conceivable until Renaissance ness of

artists

new

it,

began

to see themselves as historical beings in

which the writing of autobiographies, starting with Lorenzo Ghiberti's, bears witness. It was only then that artists were able to survey the panorama of history and make a considered choice of their allegiance. No medieval artist could have expressed what the architect Filarete (Antonio Averlino) wrote about 1460: "I ask evervbodv to abandon the modern tradition [i.e., the Gothic style]; do not accept counsel from masters who work in this manner. ... I praise those who follow the ancients and bless the soul of Brunelleschi who revived in Florence the ancient manner of a

sense, to

building" (Oettingen, 1888).

The freedom

dom the

of choice

to change. It first

was accompanied by

seems that Renaissance

a free-

artists

were

to bring about controlled changes of their

literary

evidence and a highly developed technique of

analysis

it

would often be impossible

in the

second half

of the sixteenth century in Italy, the second half of

the seventeenth in France and, indeed, in most other

European

countries,

and the

first

half of the eighteenth

England. Somewhat similar observations led Clive

in

Bell,

in

and not yet forgotten book Art

his spirited

(London, 1914) to the not entirely paradoxical conclusion that Giotto

was

at

once the climax and anticlimax

move-

of medieval individualism: "For Giotto heads a

ment towards

imitation.

By contrast

.

.

.

Before the late noon of

was almost

the Renaissance, art

extinct"

(p.

148).

to the long period of the individualism

and based upon the homogeneous artistic culture

of style deliberately derived from

serviceable repertory of a

(fifteenth to eighteenth century), the

opened new doors

tion of genius

manner, not rarely even from year to year. Without

to

romantic concep-

an individual ap-

proach to style. Although romantic artists often deluded themselves by believing that their own creations

were independent of any tradition, they surely fostered a great richness and variety of personal styles and enhanced the potentiality of unpredictable and sudden

to recognize that

changes. Moreover, the fervent romantic belief in the

a great master's works from different periods of his

uniqueness and the inviolability of the individual led

career are actually by the same hand Wittkower, "The

to the conviction that art

Young Raphael," 1963). This is true of many from Raphael on and particularly so of modern

creed had important consequences for the future course

(

from a

Picasso's ability to switch

artists artists.

style derived

from

negro sculpture to one based on Greek vase painting

and sculpture

illustrates

well

how

choice effects radical changes of

The change from

the freedom of

is

approach to the training of

also reflected in a artists.

of the history of art.

means a romantic art nor the art of

be taught,

or, in

is

not teachable. This novel

Even Gustave Courbet, by no

artist,

declared: "I cannot teach

any school, since other words,

I

com-

changing

For medieval

artists

chosen few and an impersonal

autonomous, creative

position by counselling that a painter should not attempt to imitate another painter's manner. Medieval workshop practice was eventually replaced by the method of selective borrowing from many masters, a method that from Vasari to the eighteenth century was

regarded as style-forming and quality-enhancing, while has been stigmatized as

by the very freedom of choice the method implies, it can enhance individualism of eclectic. But, in fact,

style, as it It is

does in Picasso's case.

true,

art

my can

maintain that art

is

Such views help us to understand the peculiar devel-

one master. Cennino Cennini, in his late medieval artists' manual, warned apprentices against imitating many masters, and advised them to follow one master only, in order to acquire a good style. At the end of the fifteenth century Leonardo reversed this tion of

it

deny that

opment of art in the nineteenth century, when opened between the great individualist works

the road to eminence lay in the closest possible imita-

since the romantic age

I

completely individual" (Goldwater and Treves, 1947).

style.

a comparative stability to a

parative mobility of style

however, that the freedom of choice need

young

artists

had

to

artist

art

a gulf of the

production: the

stood aside, while

many

submit to the collective discipline

of the academies.

The Non Finito. The non finite affords perhaps an even deeper insight into the process of individualization than do problems of style. Unfinished Egyptian, classical, and medieval works have come down to us, but

it

can be said with complete confidence that

they were meant to be finished and remained incomplete for external reasons. cially

for

it

With Leonardo and

espe-

Michelangelo the non finito enters a new phase, now results from internal rather than external

causes.

Never before had

a tension existed

between the

conception and the execution of a work. But self-criticism, dissatisfaction

now

with the imperfect real-

between mind and

not necessarily lead to heightened individualism of

ization of the inner image, the gulf

For reasons not easily accounted for, periods pregnant with great individualist artists alternate with

matter, between the purity of the "Platonic idea" and

style.

298

Such "lows" may be found

style.

others which

show a

levelling in the individualism of

the baseness of

its

— often the sub— prevented these mas-

material realization

ject of Michelangelo's sonnets

ART AND ARTISTS

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN

however, never have claimed that unfinished creations

and a special knowledge in arithmetic and geometry (Pliny, xxxv, 76), and we have it on good authority that

can be regarded as finished (Barocchi, 1962; Tolnay,

artists

1964).

men

ters

A

from

finishing

from

shift

some

of their works.

They would,

one intimately con-

this position to

nected with expanding individualism culminates

in the

nineteenth century in the unfinished work bv Rodin

and

others.

Here the non

finito

is

often due to a delib-

erate decision to bring the creative process to an end at a

moment

of the artist's choice, so that the torso,

the roughly-hewn work, the half-finished picture, the

Rodin

sketchy execution are the finished product.

commented on

his Balzac:

"The

essential things of the

modeling are there, and they would be there in less degree if I 'finished' more." Thus the intentional non finito requires a new form of self-analysis and intro-

work

spection, for the

results

from a sophisticated

control of the act of creation. Moreover,

only half

if

and so much hidden and hinted at, the umbilical cord between the work and its maker is never truly is

said

severed. In consequence the personality of the artist asserts itself in the

demandingly than

work and through the work more

in

any other context and

at

any other

By the visual evidence of his "unfinished-finished" work the artist requests the public to follow him even where his goal seems indisperiod of the history of

tinct or

art.

when he seems

beset with problems peculiar

him alone. And the public is prepared to respond and pay due regard to the artist's genius, sure in the conviction that all he creates is important and worth the effort of interpretation and assimilation. Such considerations would seem to blur the dividing line between art and artist. Similarly, some of the points made to

in the part of this article

on Individualism of

Artists

period wanted to appear as gentleand mien: Zeuxis is reported to have amassed great wealth and to have displayed his name

during

woven

this

dress

in

golden

in

garments, and his

indulged

letters into the rival, Parrhasios,

The Greeks

felt

contempt

for those

It was the skill of the craftsman was valued (Poeschel, 1925; Schweitzer, 1925; Zilsel, 1926), and artists, therefore, were mentioned in the company of barbers, cooks, and blacksmiths. Moreover, both Plato and Aristotle assigned to the visual arts a place much below music and poetry. Plato's doctrine of divine enthusiasm had room for poets and musicians but not for artists. Nevertheless,

that

in the fourth

century b.c,

began

public's attitude

end of the fourth century Samos wrote a book on the Lives and Sculptors and this work, of which only

Characteristically, at the

the historian Duris of

of Painters a few fragments have survived, inaugurated the biographical literature on artists'

implying an interest

artists,

and

personalities

individual

There are many other indications

anonvmous craftsman. The

the

authors as Philostratus

from the rank of mere craftsmen to the level emancipated creators. Such a change has come about twice in the history of Western art: in fourth-century Greece and again in fifteenth-century Italy. A process

second century

(late

poets,

a.d.)

acknowledged

painters experienced

an interest

in art

It

is

the

mid-sixth-century

the

art,

saw the

fifth

xxxiv, 83; Sellers, 1896).

century b.c, the classical period of Greek Sellers, 1896;

Apelles' teacher, Pamphilos (ca.

painter

by artists Kalkmann, 1898). 390-340 b.c), was the

rise of a diversified literature

onart(Overbeck, 1868; first

reports that

architect

Theodoras of Samos, cast as a wondrous likeness" (Pliny,

And

artists,

Greece.

and sculptor, a bronze self-portrait "famed

b.c.

who

and ecstasy

now found

and involvement

a status symbol.

that, just like

inspiration

eager bid-

in art criticism

credibly reported that

tied

by bonds of friendship

Roman emperors

(Pliny, xxxv, 85). Later,

as Nero, Hadrian,

could boast an all-round education

such

and Marcus Aurel-

regarded painting and sculpting as a suitable pas-

time for themselves. In spite of

Pliny,

that the

Stoics as well as such

ius

in

show

170-245) and Pausanias

(ca. a.d.

of

earlier

to

in

idiosyncrasies.

respect for the individual creator superseded that for

tioners

began even our main source for Greek

the

in Aristotle's days,

i.e.,

to change.

Alexander the Great and his court painter Apelles were

tied to the elevation of practi-

of individualization

to toil

higher than slaves.

became

Antiquity and Middle Ages. The image of the is

who had

with their hands for money; they hardly ranked them

ders;

1.

71).

artists,

public recognition was lacking.

a place in the present section.

individualist artist

lived in luxury,

But despite the highly developed self-esteem of

(Schweitzer, 1925). Masterpieces

INDIVIDUALISM OF ARTISTS

who

extravagances (Pliny, xxxv, 62,

in similar

might, with a slight change of emphasis, have found

///.

embroideries of his

all this,

the old philo-

sophical and social traditions never ceased to assert

themselves;

century a.d.

we in

find

them

reflected as late as the

first

known dictum "We

Plutarch's well

enjoy the work and despise the maker" (Pericles

i,

4, 5;

Dresdner, 1915); or even a hundred years later

in

Lucian's assessment that by becoming a sculptor "you will

one of the swarming be nothing but a labourer whatever your achievement you would be

rabble

.

.

.

.

.

.

who lives by work of his hands" (Somnium, 9). With the decline and fall of Rome the modest "breakthrough" of the artist was soon forgotten and

considered an artisan, a craftsman, one the

299

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN many

ART AND ARTISTS

was once again reduced to the and craftsman. This is certainly true, although we now know that the Victorian image of the medieval craftsman, content to be an anonymous member of his lodge and devoted to his work for the glory of God alone, is a myth unsupported by historical facts. Many names of medieval artists have come down to us and even at the darkest period there were masters for

centuries he

status of artisan

of distinct individuality such as

S.

Eligius,

who

died

Noyon in 658; before having taken the vows he had won fame as an artist of remarkable accomplishments. It is recorded that he was a passionate reader, that he loved precious jewelry and gorgeous gowns, that he kept servants, and was surrounded by as Bishop of

aspect from his Civilization of the Renaissance

(1860).

Renaissance

2.

Individualism.

The Renaissance

protracted revolt against the guilds was a fight

artists'

on several

fronts: a fight for social recognition, for the

recognition of art as an intellectual rather than a manual occupation; a fight for the inclusion of painting,

and architecture among the

sculpture,

disciplines of

the liberal arts; a fight, moreover, for the right of free

men

to look after themselves

sciences dictated. In retrospect, ishing that

it

was

in

and act as their condoes not seem aston-

it

Florence, the most advanced

Europe, where the individualized

city-state in

artist

devoted pupils (Sehlosser, 1891). From the eleventh

showing many modern traits first evolved. The new class of merchant patrons with their highly developed

century onward the names of

individualism, their sense of liberty

ing from

some

Cathedral

artists

abound and, judg-

of their self-laudatory inscriptions

as those of Rainaldus, (after

Cathedral (1099)

— such

one of the architects of Pisa

1063), or of Lanfrancus, at

Modena

— we may safely assume that they had

a high opinion of their

own

merits and achievements

(Jahn, 1965). Epithets such as doctus, expertus, probus,

and artificiosus, frequently documents and inscriptions should,

sapiens, prudens, praestans,

found

in

early

however, not be too highly valued

as individual char-

acterizations but should, rather, be regarded as refer-

While some of trust and distinc-

and enterprise, and competitive spirit, found in their an attitude towards life which they themselves

their progressive artists

cherished. In this congenial intellectual climate artists

upon their rights as free individuals in a was somewhat unpredictable and not always beyond reproach. The first memorable case of a challenge of the guild first

insisted

manner

laws

that

that of the great Filippo Brunelleschi.

is

He

re-

fused to pay his dues and on 20 August 1434 was

thrown

into prison (Fabriczy, 1892). But Brunelleschi's

ended

He was

ring to the expert handling of execution.

self-assured disobedience

medieval masters rose to positions

released after a few days and no interference in his

in

victory.

while some architects in particular attained social advancement and high honors, the rank and file of artists were, in the words of Bishop Otto von Freising (d. 1158), not admitted to higher positions and were kept away "like the plague from more honorable and liberal studies" (Booz, 1956). When from the thirteenth century onward the urban working population of western Europe became in-

work

creasingly organized in guilds, artists could not easily

their

power. In England most painters remained low-

century and

class

tradesmen even longer than

tion,

.

.

.

assert their individuality; in the fourteenth

even

in the fifteenth the guilds

tended to control the

whole man, from the education of apprentices to the exercise of jurisdiction. Nor did they omit to look after the physical and moral conduct of their members. Thus there are good grounds to argue that the guilds had an equalizing influence, for artists were de jure and de facto craftsmen with a well-regulated training and

at the

cupola of Florence Cathedral

by many

others.

A

wealth of

is

recorded.

was followed documents shows how

This victory had symbolic significance;

it

and against what odds the artists carried struggle for emancipation. In France the guilds

relentlessly

on their

defended their rights stubbornly

until Colbert's reor-

ganization in 1663 of the Academie Royale de Peinture

de Sculpture (founded

et

in 1635), spelled

in

an end to

France; as "face-

painters" they were organized in the Painter-Stainers

Company on an

equal footing with coach-painters and

house-painters (Wittkower, 1968). Not until well into

a well-regulated daily routine.

when William Hogarth took and the Royal Academy was inaugurated with Sir Joshua Reynolds in the President's chair (1768), did British artists achieve a freedom comparable to that of their Italian confreres of 200 years before.

and

fifteenth-century Florence, has to be approached from

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the city breeds individualism, background of the guildcontrolled craftsman that the personality problems of Renaissance artists appear revolutionary and emphatically real. It would seem that Jacob Burckhardt's famous thesis of the liberation of the individual in the it

is

against the very

age of the Renaissance remains valid, especially

300

this

field of

in the

the visual arts, although Burckhardt excluded

the eighteenth century,

up

their cause

The

process of individualization,

first

observable in

the viewpoint of the artist as well as the public. Early in that century, the painter

Cennino Cennini wrote

a basically medieval craftsman's manual entitled

// libra

which he exhorted his fellow painters to emulate the dignity and temperance of scholars (Cennini, 1932). Otherwise Cennini's work contains dell'arte, in

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN mainly technical recipes. But at the same time a

new kind

arose.

Its

product,

first

moment

of literature on art written

Leon

Battista

by

in

artists

On

Alberti's

Painting (De pittura), written in 1436, a prophetic work of great perspicacity, contains the

modem

emancipated

artist.

His art

firm theoretical foundation, for

program of the must be given a ranks equal with

it

poetry and the theoretical sciences; and the self

has to be a

man

artist

him-

of immaculate character and great

manners

learning. In addition, Alberti regards polite

and an easy bearing as marks of personality that elevate the artist above the craftsman with his virtues of mere industry and technical skill. Alberti's contemporaries delved into theoretical studies with great eagerness and many tried their hand in the writing of treatises. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti composed a monumental work on art and artists that contains the first autobiography known to have been written by an artist (Schlosser, 1912). This must be regarded as a phenomenon of utmost importance, for an autobiography means looking at one's own life as an observer; it requires the distance of self-reflection, and introspection became an important character trait of the new race of

The new Alberti

propounded by and was in fact up-

ideal of artistic personality

adumbrated

a conforming, well-adjusted,

socially integrated type, an ideal that

held in academic circles through the ages. But at the

same time one can

emergence

also observe the

nonconforming, alienated

artist,

and

it is

this

of the

type that

of particular interest in the present context.

As early

as the fourteenth century a certain class of literary

production in Tuscany shows an anecdotal interest in the behavior of

above

general observations regarding these problems can safely be

made. Instead of being subjected to the regu-

lated routine of the workshop, the Renaissance artist

was often on

own and developed

his

compatible with

his

Now

freedom.

characteristics

periods of most

concentrated and intense work often alternated with unpredictable lapses into idleness.

The

vacillation be-

tween obsession with work and creative pauses became the prerogative of free individuals

who

felt that

they

were ultimately responsible only to themselves. Vasari, whose Vite de' piii eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti (first published in 1550) was the accepted model of historical writing on art for over 200 years, conveys the impression that his Tuscan countrymen showed a greater obsession with their work than others, and since they were the proud and conscious pioneers of an entirely new approach to art, he may not have been wrong at all. The corollary to obsession with one's work is

indifference to dress, cleanliness, food, family, public

affairs; in short, to

fixation. Vasari's

consequently

come

to

everything outside the object of the

Lives abounds with this theme and

many

life.

idiosyncratic personalities of artists

Masaccio

is

described as careless and

absentminded, entirely unconcerned about worldly

artists.

is

ART AND ARTISTS

all,

artists.

In Boccaccio's

Decamerone and,

appear mainly and burlesque pracFor Boccaccio a painter was a man full

in the

Tuscan novelle,

artists

as the perpetrators of entertaining tical jokes.

of fun, high-spirited, quite shrewd, of

morals, and not burdened by

much

learning.

one of Franco Sacchetti's novelle one wife exclaiming: "You painters are

somewhat

And

lax in

finds a painter's

all

whimsical and

mood; you are constantly drunk and ashamed of yourselves!" (Sacchetti, 1946).

matters;

Luca

della Robbia,

we

are told, dedicating

himself day and night to his work, patiently bore physical

discomfort; Paolo Uccello entirely disregarded the

world and lived like a hermit, intent only on unravelling the laws of perspective; Bartolomeo Torri from Arezzo, a pupil of Giulio Clovio, had to be turned out of the latter's house because he was so enamored of the study of anatomy that he kept pieces of corpses all over his room and even under his bed. It matters little whether such tales are true or merely anecdotes. For Vasari, his contemporaries, and sucaffairs of the

ceeding generations such anecdotes helped to elucidate individual character traits of artists of distinction.

The emancipated

artist

needed introspection, and

introspection necessitates pauses, often of considerable length. Early reports about such ior in artists are not

unaccustomed behav-

very frequent, but some are grati-

A contemporary

Leonardo has

of ever-changing

fyingly explicit.

are not even

us a vivid description of the latter's procedure

of

left

when

This remarkable statement sounds like a prophetic

painting the Lasf Supper. According to this eye-witness

Bohemian artist, and it is certainly true that such anecdotes would have been neither invented nor read if they had not echoed a popular

report Leonardo often stayed on the scaffolding from

definition of the

artists. But in contrast to the anecdotal topoi Tuscan novelle (Kris and Kurz, 1934), the literary image of the artist from the fifteenth century onward

reaction to in the

and light-hearted connotations and preproblems of individualization. Owing to the rich and, as time went on, steadilygrowing literary production concerning artists, some

loses its jolly

sents us with serious

dawn

to dusk without putting

down

his brush, forget-

and drink, painting all the time. Then, for two, three, or four days he would not touch his work and yet he would stay there, sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours a day wrapped in contemplation (Flora, 1952). Similarly, Jacopo da Pontormo would set out to work in the morning and return in the evening "without having done anything all day but ting to eat

stand lost in thought" (Vasari, VI, 289).

The

sculptor

301

ART AND ARTISTS

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN

Giovan Francesco Rustici, a remarkable individualist who had studied with Leonardo, contrasted the daily toil

workmen with

of

"Works of

art

the responsibility of the

artist:

cannot be executed without long

reflec-

tion" (Vasari, VI, 600). Such a statement, that

may

nowadays appear hackneyed, could not be experienced and verbalized until the Renaissance emancipation of the

requires solitude, and solitude and

Introspection

became

many

the hallmark of

Erasmus

as well as

artists.

Petrarch

attest that the intellectual recluse

When

of the Renaissance felt the pangs of isolation. artists

aligned themselves with scholars and poets, they

my is

joy

my

(Frey [1897],

There

is

rest lxxi).

no doubt that the agonized revelling

in self-

reflection was, at times at least, a satisfying experience for Michelangelo.

than his art

less

has fascinated and puzzled people for close to 500

Every possible epithet has been attached to his name, but in spite of the contradictory light in which he appeared to his contemporaries as well as to posterity, all agree that he was an eccentric endowed with years.

the class they joined. Michelangelo never allowed any-

a most difficult nature. "He is terrible, as you can see, and one cannot deal with him," Pope Julius II once

him while he

said during an audience (Gaye, 1839). Michelangelo's

Cosimo, Pontormo, and

terribilita became proverbial, to indicate both the tormented impetuosity of his character and the sublimity

developed symptoms, often to an excessive degree, of one, not even the Pope, to be near

worked. Artists

many

like Piero di

others behaved similarly. Leonardo justified this

kind of conduct. "The painter," he wrote, "must live alone, contemplate

mune

what

his

eye perceives and com-

with himself" (Ludwig, 1888).

why one

reasons

anyone before

it

And

Rustici gave

should never show one's work to

was

finished (Vasari, VI, 600).

A breach

of secrecy aroused Franciabigio to such a pitch of anger

damaged some

that he

Marriage of the Virgin a bricklayer's

figures of his fresco of the

(SS.

Annunziata, Florence) with

hammer. The

day. Tintoretto, a pleasant

result can be seen to this and gracious person, was

of an extremely retiring disposition.

He

rarely admitted

friends to his studio, "let alone other artists, nor did

he ever 1914).

other painters see him at work" (Ridolfi,

let

At the threshold of the romantic age Goya

talked persuasively about the "looking-into-himself,"

would seem a

the spiritual monologue. This attitude

sure sign of a highly developed individualism.

reveals this

the

of

artist

more

No one

clearly than the most individualistic

maybe

Renaissance and

of

all

time,

Michelangelo Buonarroti. The essence of the problem that

moved him

to the core

is

perhaps contained

in

the three lines of a sonnet that remained a fragment:

art

and

life

(Frey [1897],

That experience can only be

won

lxxx, 2).

in isolation,

and

mind letters. As

isolation spells agony. His suffering, his distress of is

a

the thread that runs through

man

many

of his

"You will answer that there

of seventy-four he writes to a friend:

say that

I

am

old and mad; but

I

no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety mad" (Milanesi, 1875). At the same period he put the paradox differently in a famous sonnet: is

than being

was not Michelangelo's

Eccentricity, however,

many

rogative, as

century onward

tend to believe.

From

pre-

the fifteenth

was regarded as a characteristic of group. The cases of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo stand out among many others. Both had misanthropic habits of the oddest kind. Piero di Cosimo was held by many to be rather mad, and Pontormo, "solitary beyond belief" was, as his diary it

artists as a professional

kept from 1554 to 1556 reveals, an almost insane hy-

pochondriac. Even minor

artists

such as Graffione

Fiorentino attracted attention because of their eccentric

behavior, while others led by a certain Jacone, a

pupil of Andrea del Sarto, went

all

out to epater

le

As their contemporary Vasari (VI, 451) tells ". under the pretence of living like philosophers, this miserathey lived like swine and brute beasts was held by them to be the ble existence of theirs bourgeois. .

.

.

.

finest in

.

.

.

.

the world."

The Post-Renaissance Gentleman-Artist. The list of eccentricities in which artists indulged is long, varied, and well-documented (Wittkower, Bom Under 3.

.

.

.

,

1963).

And

the reality of this

new type

thrown into relief by the violence of the reaction against it. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century the nonconforming artist with his foibles and extravagances was no longer fashionable. It was then felt that artists should unobtrusively merge with the social and intellectual elite. Vasari himself, to whom any form of excess was anathema, resorted in his biography of Raphael to a technique of idealization: he depicted Raphael as the acme of moral and intellectual perfection. According to him there was no greater contrast than that between Raphael's grace, learning, beauty, modesty, and excellent demeanor and of artist

Before he has experienced the immensity

Of

of his art.

Saturn

Entire understanding none can have

302

is

discomfort

Michelangelo's personality hardly

artist.

secrecy

Melancholy

And

is

ART AND ARTISTS

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN the majority of artists

who showed a detachment from and displayed eccentricity admixed with madness and uncouthness Vasari, IV, 315). Even before this was written, the Portuguese painter Francisco de Hollanda, who was in Rome between 1538 and 1540 and put in literary form the talks he supposedly had

the invitation of Louis

reality,

to the greatest artist then alive

with Michelangelo, ascribed the following statement

hardly ever again been equalled.

(

to the great master, surely in order to give

it

the weight

of highest authority:

painters. said,

They

while

lies

about famous

are strange, solitary, and unbearable,

in fact

they are not different from other

it

is

human

Only silly people believe that they are eccentric and capricious (Hollanda, 1899). beings.

In the second half of the sixteenth century the pro-

scription of the eccentric artist

was rather

Most revealing passages are

be found

to

general. in

G.

B.

Armenini's Dei teri precetti della pittura (1587) and

Lomazzo's Idea del tempio della pittura (1590). keep away "from the vices of madness, uncouthness, and extravagance, nor should they aim at originality by acting in a disorderly ." Thus from way and using nauseating language. the mid-sixteenth century on writers disavowed artists who displayed conspicuously a nonconforming behavior; instead they created and advocated a new image G.

P.

Artists are strongly advised to

.

.

of the artist: the conforming, well-bred, rational philosopher-artist, all

who

is

endowed by nature with From then onward artists

richly

the graces and virtues.

saw themselves in the role of gentlemen, and the public complied with this idea. Although the anti-conventional artist had come to stay, it may be claimed that great gentlemen and great individualists such as Rubens and Bernini, Lebrun and Reynolds embody most fully the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideal of the artist as a versatile,

unaffected, well-bred, captivating

man

Much

of the world.

other, these masters left

were

as

they differed from each

all

great individualists

who

an imprint on their time and later ages, not only

because of their art and through their art but also because of their powerful personalities.

As early as the 1540's Francisco de Hollanda makes Colonna say that those who knew Michelangelo had greater esteem for his person than for his work. Rubens' affability and prudence, erudition and eloquence, alert mind, broad culture, and all-embracVittoria

ing intellect shine forth after centuries just as does Bernini's spirited Italian individualism, gracing a

man

of infinite charm, a brilliant and witty talker, fond of

demeanor and "passionate Domenico reports. Bernini's

conviviality, aristocratic in in his

wrath," as his son

triumphal procession from

Rome

to Paris in

1665

at

not only an ovation

and

to a truly impres-

sive personality, but also illustrates

most vividly the

revolutionary reassessment of art and artists that had

come about

than 200 years. Indeed, the peak

in less

then reached in the estimation of

ment would take ters

so

much

artistic

genius has

Nowadays no govern-

trouble to look after a trav-

and architect. Unlike Colbert, prime minis-

eling artist

People spread a thousand pernicious

XIV was

would scarcely go out of

their

way

to

make

his

stay agreeable.

Among

eighteenth-century

Reynolds who,

artists,

it

was

in his country, attained a

Sir

Joshua

standing and

came

success comparable to Bernini's. Although he

from a family of modest means and although neither lavish praise nor public honors, neither his knighthood nor his presidency of the Royal Academy changed his essentially

trived"

move

— as

middle-class bearing, he "certainly

pupil James Northcote wrote

his

—con"to

any other had done before. Thus he procured for Professors of the Arts a consequence, dignity, and reception, which they had never before possessed in this country" (Northcote, 1818). At his death in 1792 a whole nation bowed before the achievement of this great man. Three dukes, two marquesses, three earls, and two lords were his pallbearers; ninety-one carriages, conveying all the members of the Royal Acadin a higher sphere of society than

English

artist

emy and

scores of distinguished luminaries followed

the body to

its

resting place in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Academicians and Bohemians. The sixteenth century has been called the century of the academies and, indeed, before the end of the century some academies of art were founded. Appropriately, the first one came to life in Florence in 1563 (Accademia del Disegno) with Vasari as its initiator and organizer. The new type of gentleman-artist would be unthinkable without the rising social and educational institutions of the art academies which saw their heyday between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Looking back from the position of the academic artist, the plight of his pre-academic colleague can be more easily understood. Not unlike the medieval artist, the acade4.

mician enjoyed the benefit of a professional organization, a center

Renaissance

toward which

artist,

by

the old and not yet in the to fend for himself.

his life gravitated.

contrast, partaking

new

social structure,

The Renaissance

The

no longer

in

had

artist's fight for

from the encumbrances of the guilds was reenacted in the romantic artist's fight for liberation liberation

from the

ties of

the academy. Just as the individualism

of the Renaissance artist put an end to the sheltered position of the late medieval craftsman, so the

new

303

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN romantic vocabulary

— enthusiasm,

ART AND ARTISTS

naivete, spontane-

autonomy of artistic creation, intuition, reversed many basictotality of vision, and so forth tenets of the academic artist. The specter arose of the ity,

feeling,

artist as a

—

kind of being elevated above the

rest of

mankind, alienated from the world and answerable thought and deed only to of the

own

his

Bohemian took shape,

in

image much by the

genius: the

fostered as

ideology and conduct of the artist as by the reaction

which he lived. Thus toward the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth problems of personality in the making, which, under kindred circumof the society on the fringe of \\

e see

had beset the artists of the Florentine Renaissance. With good reason, therefore, one may talk of a proto-Bohemian period around and after 1500 separated from the Bohemian era proper by the centuries of the conforming artist. 5. Romanticism and its Aftermath. By and large, Renaissance and post-Renaissance artists regarded the stances,

business of art as an intellectual discipline.

The

intel-

upon themselves had upon forming their minds and

moral freedom that would bewilder even their romantic precursors. When Pablo Picasso says that "the artist a receptacle of emotions

is

.

—

theirs

a very conscious surrender to the unconscious.

is

Contrary, however, to the

matism"

in art

may

shift

away from

intellectual-

nate. as

The

revolt

came

into

William Blake vented

Reason with these

its

own when an

artist

such

his scorn against the reign of

All Pictures that's Painted

whose

as sure as a

the

we

integrity

name

that

works

the man, the great

believe and of whose

are convinced. IV.

ART

AST) GENIUS

In the present context "individualism"

and "genius"

are sister terms and considerations of the one implicitly

illuminate the other. This

we

is

tion of genius that

emerged

when modern concep-

particularly striking

consider some of the roots of the in the

course of the eight-

his History

of Modern Criticism

eenth century. 1.

Natural Talent. In

Rene Wellek

said:

"The terms

ination.' 'invention'.

'genius,' 'inspiration,'

.

.

.

.

.

.

'inspiration,' 'imag-

They believed

in a rational

theory of poetry but not that poetry was entirely

.

ra-

tional." All the terms here mentioned are closely tied

up with the concept of genius, but the key

Romanticism with its "egomania" brought about a most change in the personality of artists. A romanticpedigree is recognizable in the untrammeled individualism of many twentieth-century artists and in their personality and social problems, though it must be admitted that the freedom they arrogate to themselves is in the last analysis derived from the revolution of the Italian Renaissance, the period in history on which

and had

they heap the fullness of their scorn.

art

serious

304

is

never forgot to say that poets need

Groat

(Keynes, p. 660

When

it

Renaissance poetics, and even the most rigid critic

with Sense and

with Thought

Madmen

by paying high

poeta votes, furor poeticus are the stock in trade of

lines:

Are Painted by

itself

name looms

the magic. Behind the

paints with his brain," and with

ism toward an intuitive approach begin to predomi-

deceiving

is

the artist above the work:

personalities.

eighteenth century does a

even though a doodle by Picasso

prices for such works. For, obviously, the public places

we

second half of the

belief, "auto-

loss of artistic individ-

lack a distinct personal quality, one cannot

argue that the public

in

until the

own

artists'

does lead to a

uality. Nevertheless,

or Klee

genius

based on science." Not

.

cultivate the emotional element in their creations, but

artist,

With Michelangelo, they believed that Leonardo they agreed that "painting has to do with natural philosophy," that it is "truly a science," and that a painter had "first to study science and follow with practice

.

Rothko strives to eliminate all obstacles "among others, memory, history, or geometry" iW'ittkower, Born Under Saturn, 1963), or Jackson Pollock maintains "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I am doing" (Read, 1967) they may emphasize and

a noticeable influence

man

his pictures "I

They are only do not understand them at all. pictorial arrangements that obsess me," or Mark

lectual responsibilities artists took

"a

come from no matter

where," or Marc Chagall comments on

later associated

with original genius

is

to

to the ideas

be found

in

the irrational element always acknowledged in poetry art.

The

idea that the poet

is

born with

his talent

when became conscious of the vital importance of individual artistic endowment (Schweitzer, 1925). The concept appears in the writing about first

taken shape

writers and artists

in

Hellenistic thought,

first

theorv even before the publication in 1554 of

artists,

Longinus' Peri hupsous (On the Sublime), which ex-

backed by an "authoritative" analysis of the psyche

erted a steadilv growing influence on literary criticism

and armed with an up-to-date vocabulary, could state with confidence the case for self-expression unencumbered by book-learning. Artists of the Freudian and post-Freudian era claim a degree of subjective and

(Monk. 1935). According to Leonardo painting "cannot be taught to those not endowed by nature" (Richter, 1939). The great Aretino was a passionate champion of inborn artistic genius; he voiced his view repeatedly

the psychologists entered the arena,

ART AND ARTISTS

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN and

in

"Art

is

a letter of 1547 expressed epigrammatically:

ing

the gift of bountiful nature and

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a number of progressive artists attempted to preserve something of the brio of spontaneous creation, with

is

given to us

Lodovico

1957). His friend

in the cradle" (Aretino,

Dolce, also a Venetian, in his Dialogue on Painting (1557)

made

such as G.

who are

opinion his own, and later art

this

Lomazzo

P.

critics

(1590) reiterated that "those

not born painters can never achieve excellence

became an

Thereafter this view

in this art."

often

repeated topos (Kris and Kurz, 1934). If

the artist

the gods, his

authors

owes

element

for the irrational it

his individual talent to a gift of

Quintilian, Pliny

venustas ("grace").

ward

classical

art

"Grace"

concept.

— made

works of

in

From

which

and called

theory was permeated with this for

the

Italians

from Baldassare

un non so

che,

French theory of the seventeenth century

in the

became the

art

Ancient

allowance

the sixteenth century on-

Castiglione to Vasari and beyond was

je

ne

sais quoi

and

in

England,

in

Pope's

immortal phrase, "A Grace beyond the Reach of Art"

(Monk, 1944). Critics and ideas of

how

artists of

The work

the Renaissance had definite

talent ought to be displayed. Pedantic,

slow, laborious execution

smacked

of the artist richly

be measured and valued

terms of working hours

spent on manual execution. fifteenth century a distant

The Archbishop "Painters claim,

of the artisan's craft.

endowed by nature cannot

in

As early

as

the

mid-

"rumbling" may be noticed.

Saint Antonino of Florence explained:

more or

for their art not only

less

reasonably, to be paid

according to the amount of work

involved, but rather according to the degree of their

application and experience" (Gilbert, 1959). But

it

was

not until well into the sixteenth century that artists

work depended on the ingenuity and not on the length of time that had gone into its making. Thus Michelstated with vigor that the compensation for a

of art

angelo supposedly said to Francisco de Hollanda: "I value highly the work done by a great master even

though he may have spent little time over it. Works are not to be judged by the amount of useless labor spent on them but by the worth of the skill and mastery of their author" (Holt, 1947).

The modern artist had to perform in a way that matched his new status, and thus we find from the second half of the sixteenth century onward most theorists insisting on facility of execution, on a manner of painting that would give the impression of rapid work and effortless skill hiding the toil that had gone into the making of the work of art. As early as 1550 Vasari made the memorable observation that "manypainters

.

.

.

achieve in the

first

sketch of their work,

though guided by a sort of fire of inspiration a certain measure of boldness; but afterwards, in finishas

vanishes"

the result that the finish itself

(Wittkower,

became

1967).

The

sketchy.

masters working with a free, rapid brushstroke assumed steadily greater

importance and led up to the position

whom

of painters like Delacroix, for

the

of

first flash

was "pure expression" and "truth issuing from the soul." It was in the context of this development the idea

art, too, defies rational analysis.

— Cicero,

boldness

the

it,

.

.

.

that

the

painter's sketch

well as the sculptor's

as

sketchy clay model (bozzetto) were conceded the status of

works of

art in their

sketch,

own

manner and

of individual

drawing, the

— savored by the eightvirtuoso — cannot, of course, be sepa-

and the bozzetto

eenth-century

The appreciation

right.

style in the

first

rated from the recognition of genius emerging at the same time. 2. Talent and Genius. But one must be careful not to confuse talent and genius. The qualities with which the term "genius" has been invested ever since the

mid-eighteenth

century,

such

as

spontaneity,

out-

standing originality, and exceptional creativity were not implied in the Latin ingenium and the Italian i.e., talent. The employed the term ingenium, or its

ingegno, meaning natural disposition,

Elizabethans

still

counterpart at that time, "wit." In the course of the

seventeenth century the use of the term genius

in-

creased and gradually supplanted "wit," absorbing

ingenium

in the process

(Kaufman, 1926). But before

the end of the seventeenth century Sir William

Temple

distinguished between "high flights of wit" and "the

pure native force or

spirit

of genius." Nonetheless

and genius remained synonyms for a considerable time. It was only after the men of the German "Storm and Stress" had aggressively turned their attention to the comparatively loose English ideas on genius "that was the distinction between genius and talent sharpened into the strong antithesis which is now unitalent

.

versally current ary, IV).

.

Thus we

.

."

see,

(Murray,

New

.

.

English Diction-

about a hundred years after Sir

William Temple's time, genius and talent taking on William Jackson in their present-day meanings.

Whether Genius be born or acquired (1798) declared man of genius must have talents, but talents are possessed by many without it [i.e., genius]. Genius is inventive, a creation of something not before ." existing; to which talents make no pretence (Kaufman, 1926). Again, about a hundred years later, the poet James Russell Lowell laid down epigrammatically: "Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is." Despite such semantic distinctions the term "talent" has been used in the preceding paragraph to characthat "a

.

.

.

.

.

305

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN terize the pre-eighteenth-century

ART AND ARTISTS

concept of inborn

genius, because during the Renaissance the accretion

of distinct ideas defining the still

modern term genius were

lacking. In the following sections these charac-

teristics will

be brieHv discussed, one by one.

Imitation and Originality. The literarv criticism

3.

knew

of the sixteenth century originality

between Marco

of no breach

On

and imitation.

the contrary.

Girolamo Yida's dictum (1527) that the highest originwas the most ingenious imitation of the ancients,

ality

emoted here

and

many

in lieu of

others,

also reverberated for a long

An

had a long

time

life

theory

in the

and pseudo-Aristotelian theory and art theory, and to a certain extent even artistic practice (Wittkower, 1965). It was only in the course of the eighteenth century that some great artists differentiated between copying and imitating (Anton Raphael Mengs) or copying and borrowing (Sir Joshua Reynolds). Borrowing from great masters was, according to Reynolds, "the true and only method by which an artist makes himself master of the profession. Such imitation is so far from the servility of plagiarism, that it is ... a continual invention." Horace Walpole, in the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762), valof art.

Aristotelian

of imitation informed both literary criticism

.

.

.

.

.

.

name

of an Original

." Characwas Shakespeare. and "original genius" appear in .

.

1750 (Edward Young,

books after

of

titles

it

"original"

teristically,

1759;

William Duff, 1767; Robert Wood, 1769, 1775). In one of his famous Spectator articles on Genius (No. 160, 3 September, 1711), Addison his subject as "so

uncommon."

It

still

regarded

was only

after the

mid-century that a vigorous analysis of "genius" was undertaken. Next to Alexander Gerard's, the most re-

markable

of

the

many

was Edward

publications

Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), in which the aged author intended to show genius the

way

out of the obstructions of Augustan dogma: the "meddling ape imitation destroys all mental individuality" was the new creed. The little book contains such well-known and often quoted passages as "An .

Original rises

may be

said to

.

.

be of a vegetable nature;

spontaneously from the

grows,

it

not made."

is

What

vital root of genius;

it it

has been called Young's

"vegetable concept of genius" (Abrams, 1953) has been

looked upon askance by some modern

because the

1966),

links

to

critics (Fabian,

processes

sub-rational

turned genius into an occult phenomenon. But Young's

compelling language and metaphors assured

The book was immediately

his suc-

translated twice into

iantly rose in defense of the great painter concluding:

cess.

"... a quotation from a great author, with a novel

German and

application of the sense, has always been allowed to

ing effect.

be an instance of parts and taste; and may have more merit than the original." But in the last decades of the

the romantic concept of genius. In his claims of origi-

created

Young

— as Herder wrote — an electrify-

actually

adumbrated the notions of

A

Young had gone far beyond Duff, the author of Essay on Original Genius (1767), who, despite his adulation of originality and exorcism of imitation,

criticism

demanded

eighteenth century this meant defending a lost position.

growing number of artists were in revolt. Their is epitomized in Chardin's Singe peintre (Louvre) showing an ape who copies an antique statue which on his canvas also turns into an ape. Hogarth,

nality

An

that an exuberant imagination must be reby a proportionate share of reason and

strained

judgment

— herein

apparently following Gerard's

in his

famous tailpiece of the Spring Gardens Catalogue of 1761, used the same simian formula to ridicule the

Essay on Genius, a work largely written

antiquarian adulation of masters of past ages.

An

Many

artists

were clamoring

originality, a search for

new

for a

new

kind of

values independent of

was literary critics rather than artists who defined the changed meaning of originality. The primary contribution came from England, perhaps influenced by Giordano Bruno's Eroici furori, published in London in 1585 and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. Bruno had a clear notion of the character of genius: "The rules are derived from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets." Such a premiss opened up the problem posed by Shakespeare's work: obviously, imitation. But

it

it

could not be

fitted into the traditional Aristotelian

and the modern alliance of originality and genius was probably due to Shakespearean criticism. Alexander Pope in the preface to his edition of Shakescategories,

306

peare (1715) noted: "If ever any Author deserved the

in 1758,

An but

not published until 1774 (Fabian, 1966). Already in his

Essay on Taste (1759) Gerard had made the point and acquired abilities may assist or

that "Diligence

improve genius: but a duce it."

fine

imagination alone can pro-

At the end of the century the radical dedication

to

found eloquent apostles in John Pinkerton and William Blake; in their revolt against

original

creation

imitation both used violent language unheard before. In his Letters of Literature (1785) Pinkerton attacked

"the complete folly of instituting Academies of Painting

.

.

.

that

good painter

is,

Schools of Imitation. Did ever any one

arise

from an academy? Never.

.

.

."

And

Blake in his utter condemnation of Reynolds' Discourses exclaimed

"What

has Reasoning to do with the

Art of Painting? " His dictum

"One power alone makes

a poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision" contains the gist of his

view of genius (Keynes,

p. 770).

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN 4.

Invention and Creation, Fancy and Imagination,

may be

Spontaneity and Inspiration. Blake

the most

and divine inspiration but his ideas are less his own than is sometimes believed. He enthroned originality and called it imagination. The terms heading this paragraph have their own violent exponent of spontaneity

complex history and,

at the

closely interwoven with the

same time, they are all growth of the concept of

or defined.

"Invention," a term of classical rhetoric, one of the

Renaissance literary and art theory

pillars of

1926), was,

might be

it

said,

demoted

in the

(Zilsel,

course

of the eighteenth century and increasingly replaced by

"creative" and "creation," terms

more

indicative of the

It has been suggested (L. Pearsall changeover began with the critical

recognized egotistical reliance on as

a

hallmark

of

genius

scholars to an epistemological exploration of

these terms. But a few

comments on other charac-

genius are in place.

teristics of

Genius without Learning. While Renaissance and

5.

theory could not envisage great achievement without the control of the reasoning post-Renaissance

and without

spontaneity of genius.

faculties

Smith) that

who shaped

this

He

."

spontaneity

Kaufman, 1926). William Duff (1767) singled out irresistible spontaneity. This list could be endlessly prolonged, for next to the emphasis on originality and creative imagination, spontaneity and inspiration were basic to the cult of genius. No more need be said here since a great deal of ingenuity has been devoted by

modern

genius.

.

.

untutored

ART AND ARTISTS

solid intellectual grounding, those

new concept

the

of genius created a thor-

study of Shakespeare. Dryden, discussing the character

oughly anti-intellectual image of the select few: they

of Caliban, said: "Shakespeare seems there to have

were deemed capable of producing from pure inspiration. Sir William Temple had already suggested that learning might weaken the force of genius (Of Poetry, 1690). And Addison made the memorable remark

created a person which was not in Nature, a boldness

which, at

sight,

first

Alexander Gerard

"The

stated:

vention

.

.

.

would appear intolerable." Yet Essay on Taste (1759) still

in his

and leading quality and he returned to this

first

,"

of genius in his

is

in-

Essay on

Genius (1774): while "Genius is properly the faculty of invention," he wrote, "it is imagination that pro." The new concise terminology apduces genius. peared in the Essay on Original Genius (1767) of William Duff, who found that "creative Imagination .

.

160, 3 September, 1711) that genius

(Spectator, No.

mere Strength

creates "by the

of natural Parts

and

without any Assistance of Arts or learning." By the

mid-century

this idea

must have been current

to such

extent that Dr. Johnson denounced as "the mental diseases of the present Generation

.

.

.

Impatience of

[was] the distinguishing characteristic of true Genius."

Contempt of the great Masters of antient [sic] Wisdom, and a Disposition to rely wholly upon unas-

Thereafter the concept "creative imagination" was

sisted

assimilated by the

German Storm and

Stress

movement

and became a catchword during the romantic era. Kant in the Critique of Judgment (1790) propounded authoritatively: "Creative imagination

of genius

and the

German

is

the true source

criticism also

out the distinction

between fancy (Einbildungskraft) and imagination (Phantasie), the former referring to

and the

latter, the

human awareness

higher power, to "divine infusion."

Coleridge, steeped in

German

aesthetic speculations,

likewise distinguished genius and imagination from the

lower

faculties, talent

And Ruskin It

was

and fancy (Wellek [1955],

II).

accepted these distinctions.

still

also in eighteenth-century criticism that the

spontaneity and inspiration was con-

vital function of

stantly reiterated.

William Sharpe

in his Dissertation

on Genius (1755), the first book on the subject, remarked on the natural untrained powers of genius.

Edward Young

(1759) laid

down

Genius

that genius creates

.

."

.

(The Rambler, No. 154, 7 Septem-

ber, 1751). Literary evidence of this concept as the following

Genius

.

.

.

by George Colman (1761-62): "The

needs neither diligence nor assiduity"; or

(1759),

"Many

a Genius, probably, there has

been, which could neither write, nor read"; "To the neglect of learning, genius sometimes owes

And on

its

greatest

and Nietzsche. It was only natural that primitivism now appeared as an asset favoring original genius. Adam Ferguson had expressed the idea quite simply in An Essay on

glory."

to Schiller, Coleridge,

the History of Civil Society (1767, p. 265): a primitive

poet

is

always original because "he delivers the emo-

tions of the heart, in for

words suggested by the heart: in the same year William

he knows no other." And

Duff made the more daring assertion that "original genius will in general be displayed in

its

utmost vigour

and uncultivated periods of society will seldom appear in a very high degree

in the early

and

that

it

.

"spontaneously from the vital root" of our individual natures. George Colman in his papers on Genius pub-

in cultivated life."

The St. James Chronicle (1761-62), claimed that "A Genius is a character purely modern, and of so late an origin that it has never yet been described

ing artists were rather conservative.

lished in

abounds

second half of the century; witness such remarks

in the

Young

basis of originality."

hammered

Study,

It

.

.

must be emphasized, however, that most practic-

extravagant claims

made by

Few

accepted the

literary critics for natural

genius. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for instance,

condemned

307

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN among

the opinion "too prevalent

ART AND ARTISTS of the imagi-

artists,

nary powers of native genius, and

its

sufficiency in

it

becomes more common with The su-

the diffusion of Renaissance Neo-Platonism.

great works." Despite his classic-idealistic convictions,

preme example

he was not unmoved by the new

Aretino addressed as "divine" and to whose

opposed

ideas, but

They

the notion that "rules are the fetters of genius.

men without genius." An insistence on freedom tempered, however, by study, learning, and are fetters to

imitation

prevailed with

who

Robert Adam,

other great

almost

is,

of course,

Michael piu che mortal

Angel divino ("Michael more than mortal/ Angel Divine")

between 1760

antiquity with novelty and variety." But at the

same

that

was

every one's mouth and

in

is still

terized the

new

position by saying: "In Italy one does

not care for the renown of great princes,

informed and improved by correct

only that they call divine."

taste

and the

taste,"

The concept

were the works of the ancients

Roman

friend, the great Gio-

vanni Battista Piranesi, in his Parere su I'architettura (1765) ridiculed reason and rule and advocated imagi-

native instead of imitative

art.

But despite

this stress

a standard

quotation. Francisco de Hollanda poignantly charac-

time he maintained that architecture needed "to be

(Works, 1773). Adam's

name

verse

practitioners.

and 1790, held that the freedom permissible to genius gave him liberty "to transform the beautiful spirit of

models of correct

whom

Michelangelo,

Ariosto gave a fashionable meaning in the punning

monopolized important

architectural commissions in England

it's

a painter

of the divinity of artistic creation lives

on (Kris and Kurz, 1934) and reappears imaginatively and forcefully in Shaftesbury's Platonic vision of artistic

inspiration as "divine enthusiasm." Shaftesbury,

who

according to Ernst Cassirer (1932; 1955) rescued

put on originality, he admonished his readers: "Let us borrow from their stock" (i.e., that of the ancients). Even Goya, the greatest genius of Blake's generation

the term "genius" "from the confusion and ambiguity

and, like Blake, an advocate of unfettered imagination,

Prometheus under Jove." The idea of the divine metaphysical power of genius became an inalienable part of English and also Continental considerations "Genius has ever been supposed to partake of something Divine," "Genius is from Heaven, Learning from man" (Young, 1759). Meanwhile, the

intended to inscribe on the

title

page to

his series of

Caprichos: "The sleep of reason produces monsters." In his

comment

deserted by

to this plate

reason

Goya added: "Imagination

produces impossible

United with reason, imagination

is

monsters.

the mother of the

and the source of their wonders." The Artist as Second God. The Renaissance concept of the divino artista ("the divine artist") had a double root. On the one hand, it was derived from Plato's theory of the furores, the inspired madness of which seers and poets are possessed; on the other hand, it looked back to the medieval idea of God the Father

arts

6.

as artist, as architect of the universe.

as 1436,

On as

it

Leon

When,

as early

Battista Alberti suggested in his treatise

Painting that the artist

may

well consider himself,

were, another god, an alter deus, he was probably

Whatever his the artist was divorced

prompted by the medieval deus source, the simile suggested that

from the rank and

The

file

artifex.

that

had previously attached to

it,"

goes on to charac-

terize the inspired poet, the real Master, as "a

Maker; a

God and

second

just

—

Prometheus motif as presented by Shaftesbury influenced German thought with archetypal power. This story was fully explored in a classic paper by Oskar F.

Walzel (1910). Genius, Madness and Melancholy. Plato not only

7.

opened up

for all times the

concept of divine rapture,

but was indirectly also responsible for the entrenched alliance

between genius and madness. Seneca's often

quoted dictum "There never has been great talent without a touch of madness" which referred to the Platonic

fire

of divine inspiration,

was usually misun-

derstood. Dryden's "Great wits are sure to madness

near allied,/

And

thin partitions

do

their

vide," and even Schopenhauer's "Genius

of "normal" people.

tertium comparationis between

bounds is

di-

nearer to

Leonardo called

madness than the average intelligence" echo the misinterpreted line from Seneca. But the myth of a close alliance between genius and madness was not but-

the artist signore e Dio (Ludwig, 1888; Panofsky, 1962),

tressed until the nineteenth century by professional

while Scaliger

psychologists (such as

poet or

artist is the act of creation.

expressed (for examples,

Zilsel, 1926).

it

were a second god"

alter deus). Similarly, the influential

other work, Trattato

.

.

the

This was often

1561) returned to Alberti's

{Poetics,

dictum: the poet was "as

.

Lomazzo

(velut in an-

(1584), regarded the fare e

creare of the painter as a lower form of divine activity.

The

308

(Zilsel [1926], p. 276);

epithet "divine" (divus, divino) for living poets

or artists appears rarely before the sixteenth century

J.

Moreau, C. Lombroso,

P.

J.

Moebius, W. Lange-Eichbaum) and pseudo-clinical evidence, so that

many great

nineteenth-century minds

such as Balzac, Rimbaud, and Taine took the supposed connection between mental illness and artistic genius for granted,

and the belief in it has become,

so widely that

this

connection has spread

in Lionel Trilling's phrase.

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN "one of the characteristic notions of our culture." The catchword "mad artist" of the vox populi, however, does not refer simply to lack of mental or emotional stability. The notion nowadays implies "a mythical picture of the creative man: inspired, rebellious, dedi-

ART AND ARTISTS

tal and emotional catharsis. Nevertheless, the Greek humoral pathology was forever dethroned as early as

1697 with the publication of G. E. Stahl's Lehre von

den Temperamenten. Sanity of Genius. In 1826, at a time

8.

when

the

cated, obsessive, alienated, as well as neurotic" (Philips,

conviction of the abnormality of genius was widely

1957).

shared, Charles

For an understanding of the idea of the mad before the nineteenth century, familiarity with totle's

sary.

doctrine of the Saturnine temperament

is

artist

Aris-

neces-

Developing the Hippocratian humoral pathology, between the melan-

Aristotle postulated a connection

cholic

humor and outstanding

talent in the arts

men

sciences. "All extraordinary

and

distinguished in phi-

losophy, politics, poetry, and the arts," he maintained,

"are evidently melancholic." But the melancholy of

Lamb raised the voice of common sense

on "The Sanity of True Genius" (1826). Not only did he deny any connection between genius and madness, but even maintained that genius "maniin his essay

fests itself in the

admirable balance of

Lamb had some psychiatrists

even

following in the

among

all

the faculties."

psychologists and

twentieth century (Wittkower,

10()f.), and what is perhaps more remarkable, took up and continued maybe

Born Under Saturn, pp.

—

—

Moreover, he took the important step of reconciling Aristotle's and Plato's views by maintaining that mel-

unknowingly ideas well established before him. Indeed, Leon Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century, Vasari. the Venetian Paolo Pini, and others in the sixteenth had a clear vision of the many accomplishments with which talent must be endowed, and even when the modern conception of genius began to make its entry, it was first the exalted, lofty, and harmonious qualities that were regarded as characteristic

ancholy, the ambivalent temperament of those born

of the very greatest. In his Reflexions critiques sur la

under the equally ambivalent planet Saturn was simply

poesie et sur la peinture (1719) the

men is a precarious gift for, although only the homo melancholicus can rise to the loftiest heights, he such is

also

prone to conditions bordering on

was Marsilio Ficino who,

in

his

De

insanity. It

vita

triplici

(1482-89), revived Aristotle's half-forgotten doctrine.

a

metonymy

for

Plato's

divine

mania

(Klibansky,

was widely accepted: only the melancholic temperament was capable of Plato's enthusiasm. From then on gifted men were categorized as Panofsky, and Saxl,

1964).

Ficino's conclusion

saturnine and, conversely, no outstanding intellectual

was believed possible unless its was melancholic. In the sixteenth century a author or artistic achievement veritable

wave

of "melancholic behavior" swept across

—

Europe (Babb, 1951). Many great artists and not only they were described as melancholic, among them Diirer, Raphael, and Michelangelo (Wittkower, Born Under Saturn, p. 104). Michelangelo's use of the terms "madness" and "melancholy" in reference to himself will now be more readily understood. They echo Ficino's uniting of Platonic "madness" and Aristotelian "melancholy," and there is reason to assume that it was this alliance that many a Renaissance artist re-

—

garded

as essential for his

But even

own

at the height of the

Abbe Du Bos spoke

and mind of genius, of the vivacity and delicacy of feeling inseparable from it, and said that the artist of genius must have "much more exquisite sensibility than normal people." Even much later, reasonableness and perfect balance appear as the touchstone of true genius. Thus James Northcote (1818) of the nobility of the heart

left

following

the

character

sketch

of

his

master

Reynolds:

He had none

of those eccentric bursts of action, those fiery

impetuosities which are supposed by the vulgar to characterize genius,

and which frequently are found to accompany

a secondary rank of talent, but are never conjoined with first. His incessant industry was never wearied into despondency by miscarriage, nor elated into negligence by

the

success.

.

.

.

The concept

of the sanity of genius

the idea that exceptional

is

linked with

work can only be accom-

plished by exceptional characters and, moreover, that

creativity.

vogue of melancholy,

doubts were voiced, and eventually the Renaissance

there

is

a kind of mirror-image relationship

between

personality and work. As Vasari informs his readers,

concept of the melancholicus was supplanted by the

the lofty art of Raphael could only result from a lofty

new image

soul.

of the conforming

artist.

— —

None

of the great

masters Rubens and Bernini, Rembrandt and Velazquez was ever described as melancholic and, indeed, showed any traces of the affliction. It was not until the romantic era, with artists such as Caspar David Friedrich (Hartlaub, 1951), that melancholy appears once again as a condition of men-

seventeenth-centurv

9.

Union

of,

and Dichotomy between, Man and his

Work. The mirror-image concept has a pedigree leading back to Plato's Politeia and Gorgias. Aristotle too believed in a union of the morality of the poet and that of his work. This theory it

in the Stoa, in Cicero,

and

had a long

life;

in Quintilian

we

find

(Heitmann

309

— ART AND ARTISTS

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN [1962], pp.

And

9ff.).

mainly owing

the Renaissance assimilated

the cornerstone of Renaissance philosophy.

"We

an essential passage:

can see

in

them

reflects itself not

looks into it"

through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth. Roileau, in L'Art poc'tique (1674), expressed firm belief

Que

ame

character and artistic qualities:

moeurs peintes dans vos outrages N'offrent jamais de vous que de noble images. votre

et vos

.

And probably

.

.

An

in

to be an Excellent Man." The theory of a mirrorimage relationship between character and work has found a following into our own days. In fact, it is often naively applied by art historians, who are forgetting is

that ambiguity

is

a specific characteristic of the visual

image: what looks chaste to one beholder

obscene to the next. Reflections upon the

may appear man behind

work must therefore be regarded with considerable skepticism. There are, however, also some deliberate attempts such as in Hartlaub and Weissenfeld 1958) to present the old Platonic concept in a modern psythe

—

This story would not be complete without taking

note of the fact that a theory diametrically opposed to that of the mirror

image had found advocates

an early date. There are passages

in Catullus, Pliny,

is

And from Boccaccio

repeated that no link

The theory culminates

on,

between told by him.

exists

the author and the character of the stories in his article

sulted from a degraded personality.

Other passages too had not entirely dismissed the old mirrorimage theory. It is, in fact, remarkable how vigorously

show

in Diderot's axiom, published

"Platonism" in the Encyclopedie, that

men may be

that he

the doctrine of a lected

mann

harmony between man and work

is demonstrated by material colby M. H. Abrams (1953, Ch. IX) and K. Heit-

reasserted

itself.

This

(1962).

The apparent impasse problem

mars a solution

that

common

understandable:

is

to this

sense insists that

every work of art bears the personal stamp of

its

maker.

would be absurd to postulate that a fierce brush reveals an unruly temperament or that "tame" painters or writers have gentle characters, are morally healthy, law-abiding, and pleasant to deal with. Nonetheless,

it

Diderot himself tried to resolve these contradictions

by drawing new conclusions from the Platonic concept of divine frenzy. In

mitted that the

De

la

poesie dramatique he sub-

artist in the ecstasy of

being very different from his normal clearly differentiate, he argued, .

.

qui

.

.

Hors de

.

lui,

il

We

(Heitmann

a

plume, larchet,

la

le

est tout ce qu'il plait a I'art

domine. Mais I'instant de I'inspiration passe,

le

et redevient ce qu'il etait;

is

must

between ourselves and

I'homme enthousiaste. qui prend

.

pinceau.

creation

self.

il

rentre

homme commun

quelquefois un

[1962], p. 20);

(".

.

the enthusiast

.

paintbrush. desires to

very

.

be

moment

.

.

who

When

takes

up pen,

in a frenzy he

fiddlestick,

everything he

dominates him. But the

in the art that

the inspiration

is

is

over, he returns to earth

and becomes what he has been before, quite often an ordinary man"). Basically in the same vein Flaubert postulated

much

later (1853) the principle vivre

en

bourgeois et penser en demi-dieu ("live like a bourgeois

remains untouched by such personal shortcomings.

and think like a demi-god"). Baudelaire seems to have deepened this insight by explaining that there are men whose art must be regarded as the result d'une vaste

There

great

morally deficient and a burden to

those close to them, and that nevertheless their

no

work

between grand auteur

et

energie vitale inoccupee ("a vast latent vital energy").

de bien. In he Neveu de Rameau Diderot maintained that geniuses are hypertrophically devel-

cussed in an illuminating chapter of M. H. Abrams'

oped

work

is,

in short,

link

homme

in

one direction, but are

failures as persons: lis

ne sont bons qu'a une chose, passe

o 10

the degradation of taste, color, composition, etc., re-

at

Apuleius, Ovid, and others (Heitmann [1962], pp. 16f.) denying a connection between the morality of the

author and that of his work.

Boucher (whom he

detested) in the Salon of 1765, Diderot remarked that

(

chological dress.

the assertion

Diderot, far from being a pedant, could happily contradict himself. Discussing Francois

not independent of Boileau, Jonathan

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715), a pioneering work for England, enlarged on the topic that "The way to be an Excellent Painter, Richardson

nineteenth century:

in the

their lesson from him, and from here, of course, there opened another avenue to the nineteenth-century theme of the alliance of genius and madness. But it has also been shown (Heitmann [1962], pp. 30ff.) that

(Gombrieh [1945], p. 59). This ancient conception, which in due course became part and parcel of the humanist Renaissance tradition, can be traced through the sixteenth century (Weinberg, 1961) and even

in the correlation of

up

paint-

[i.e.,

otherwise than

man who

readily taken

Goethe, Victor Hugo, Paul Bourget, and others learned

and buildings] the attitude and the image, as it were, of his [the artist's] mind; for in these works the

mind expresses and

was

thesis

To quote

ings

a mirror reflects the face of a

has been noticed that Diderot's forcefully stated

It

it,

to Marsilio Ficino's Theologia Platonica,

cela, rien;

ils

ne

Art here assumes a cathartic function, a theme (1953).

Keble,

It

dis-

appears that as early as the 1830's John

who held the Oxford Chair of Poetry,

progressed

which conceives of

savent ce quec'est d'etre citoyens, peres, meres, parents,

to a "proto-Freudian theory,

amis.

ature as disguised wish-fulfillment.

.

.

."

liter-

Psychoana-

GENIUS: INDIVIDUALISM IN lvtical dialectics offer a

deepened awareness and new-

methodology in approaching the problem of interaction between the artist and his work. In psychoanalytical opinion

new dimension

(Kris,

1953)

products add a

artistic

to the artist's personality, because the

from the resolution and sublimation of repressions. In this way the unity of work and personality is preserved, for we are made to understand why

works

result

a retiring character

may be

a bold

artist,

or an outgoing

timid in his work. Discreetly handled, this ap-

artist

proach may also throw more

light

on the

still

mysteri-

ous resources on which artistic genius thrives.

we

Although

are reminded that the

man

of the

second half of the twentieth century no longer believes in

geniuses (Lowinsky, 1964), they can hardly be abol-

ished by an act of "cultural will." Geniuses will appear

and be acknowledged both in the arts and sciences as long as Western man regards free development as the inalienable right of the individual. The extreme selfnormally associated with genius and conceded by society without a murmur is and will remain the very core of the problem of individualism.

interest

to at

it

BIBLIOGRAPHY For Parts

II

and

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III

vidualism in Art and Artists:

A

Renaissance Problem,"

M. H. Abrams, see above.

ART AND ARTISTS On

L. B. Albert i,

(

P.

Camesasca (Milan, 1957), The Elizabethan Malady (East Lansing,

Aretino, Lettere sull arte, ed. 180. L. Babb,

II,

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and

and "Cod and

Giorgio

Artist."

P.

Barocchi,

Vita di Michelangelo, 5 vols. (Milan

1645-70. ferung

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III,

W.

term.

Kunst

der

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Poetry

Blake,

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the

changing

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Prose,

of

Alexander Gerard,

An

Essay on Genius,

1774

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Originality,

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as:

in the

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in

English seventeenth-century writing.

Cassirer.

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still

no longer

important even though the categories used are satisfactory; H. Wolf,

Versuch einer Geschichte

10.

p.

(first

E.

German

Boston, 1955), pp. 316ff., Shaftesbury on genius.

Cennino D'Andrea Cennini, // libro dell'arte, ed. D. V Thompson, Jr. (New Haven, 19.32). E. R. Curtius, Europaische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter Bern, 1954), pp. 400-04, Imitation and Creation; 467-69, Divine Madness in Middle Ages; 527-29, Deus Artifex; trans. VV. R. Trask as European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton, 1953). A. Dresdner, Die Enstehung der Kunstkritik (Munich, (

1915; reprint 1968), with an excellent chapter on the artists

W. Duff, An Essay on Original Genius (London, M. Easton, Artists and Writers in Paris. The Bohemian 1803-1867 (New York, 1964), of importance for Part

in antiquity.

1767).

III, 4.

5 of this article. B. Fabian, see above, par.

2.

C. von

1892). p. 97. F.

Flora, Tutte le opere di Matteo Bandello, 2 vols. (Milan,

1934-35),

I,

646. C. Frey, Die Dichtungen des Michelangiolo

Buonarroti (Berlin, 1897), lxxx, inedito d'artisti

An

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.

.

2; lxxxi.

G. Gaye, Carteggio

(Florence, 1839-40),

489. A. Gerard,

II,

Essay on Taste (Edinburgh, 1759; 3rd ed. Edinburgh,

An Essay on Genius, see above, par. under Fabian. C. Gilbert, "The Archbishop on the Painters of Florence," The Art Bulletin, 41 (1959), 76. R. Goldwater 1780), p. 165; idem,

2,

and M. Treves, Artists on Art (New York, 1947), p. 295, from a Courbet letter of 1861. E. Gombrich, "Botticelli's Mythologies," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 8 (1945), 59; idem, Art

and

Illusion

(New

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192ff; idem, "Style," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

tation,

(A Journal

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"Caspar David Friedrichs Melancholie.

disser-

the

Keynes

Booz, Der Bau-

P.

meister der Gotik (Munich and Berlin,

Kaufman's are pioneering papers; they have been extensively used here; H. Thiime, Beitrage zur Geschichte des

Hamburg

ELH

of English Literary History), 4 (1937), 245-64,

English Language (London, 1957), 95-114; both Smith's and

Geniebegriffs in England (Halle, 1927), a

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(London, 1941), pp. 660, 770ff. A. Blunt. The Art of William Blake (New York, 1959), Ch. 3. D. F. Bond, "The Neo-

Fabriczy, Filippo Brunelleschi (Stuttgart.

(Munich, 1966), the most stimulating recent study on the

Uberlie-

(Berlin,

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Idea,

tion

La

1962), IV,

meaning

duct of Artists: A Documentary History from Antiquity to the French Revolution (London and New York, 1963), have

standard work; B. Fabian. Introduction to the critical edi-

Vasari,

und

Bialostocki, "Terribilita," in Stil

J.

in

artifex rhetor"

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been used extensively. For Part IV (Genius) the following were particularly important: M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford, 1953), a

Painting, trans.

with Introduction and Notes by J. R. Spencer London, 1956).

(New

York, 1968), 15, 352-61.

G

in

F.

Hartlaub,

Fragen an die

1951), pp. 217-36; idem and F Weissenfeld, und Gestaltung. Das Kunstwerk als Selbstdarstellung

Kunst (Stuttgart, Gestalt

des Kiinstlers (Krefeld, Kunstlers

1958).

K.

Heitmann, Ethos des

und Ethos der Kunst. Eine problemgeschichtliche

des Geniebegriffs in der deutschen Asthetik des 18. Jahrhun-

Skizze anlasslich Diderots (Minister. 1962), most important

on the conception

contribution to the problem of relation between character

derts (Heidelberg, 1923), with chapters

French and English aesthetics; E. Zilsel, Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffs (Tubingen, 1926), still the basic study, but scarcely goes beyond the sixteenth century. of genius in

The

following bibliography in alphabetic sequence con-

few items to which no reference is made in the but which have proved useful in writing the article. tains a

text,

and work. ed.

J.

F.

de Hollanda, Vier Gesprache

de Vasconcellos (Vienna, 1899),

liber die Malerei,

p. 21,

passim. E.

G

Holt, Literary Sources of Art History (Princeton, 1947), pp. 86ff.,

English translation of Ghiberti's autobiography.

J.

Jahn,

"Die Stellung des Kunstlers im Mittelalter," Festschrift Dr. h. c. Eduard Trautscholdt (Hamburg, 1965), pp. 38-54,

311

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E.

Saxl,

F.

Saturn and Melancholy (London, 1964),

a basic stud) of which Part III, Ch. 2 is E Kris. Psychoanalytical Explorations in Art (London, 195 3

particularl) relevant.

pp. 25ff.,60. E. Kris in geschichtlicher

I

.

and O. Kurz, DieLegende vom Kunstler. Versuch (Vienna, 1934). basic stud)

ol

traditional topoi in anecdotes about artists; pp. 56ff., for divino artista and natural talent. G. P. Lomazzo, Trattato

ed architettura (Milan, 1584 E. E. Lowinsky. "Musical Genius— Evolution and Origins of a Concept." The Musical Quarterly, 50 (1964), 321-40, 176 95. II. Ludwig, Leonardo (In Vinci. Das Buch ton der

dell'arte della pittura, scoltura

(Vienna, 1882),

Xtalerei,

3

solitar)

painter. E. L.

in

vols.

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1750-1800,"

Criticism

Literar)

English

Philological

for Part

IS (1939), 97-118, relevant

Quarterly,

god; 114. the

18, artist as

1.

Mann. "The Problem

IV,

3.

G.

Milanesi. Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti [Florence. 1875'. No. cdlxv. S. H. Monk. The Sublime 1935; Ann Arbor,

Philologie,

Sumthor.

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66

(1950!.

Romanische concerned with French

Zeitschrifl fur

in

170-201.

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York.

1964i. pp. 94ff. G.

pittori. scultori

ence.

ed

1878-85),

Yasari. l.e rite

urchitctli. ed.

168,

II.

204,

de piu eecelenti

G. Milanesi, 9

205, 217,

289.

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VI,

16.

H.

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V Womum

i

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Prometheussymbol

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133-65. B.

Weinberg. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1961). R. Wellek.A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950. 4 vols. (London and New Haven, 1955-651.

I.

13; 11, 46.

164. 299. etc.. for Part IV, 4.

M.

L.

Wiley, "Genius: A Problem in Definition." Studies in English. No. 16. The University of Texas Bulletin No. 3626 (July seventeenth 8, 1936), 77-83. lexicographic definitions in the

Nelson. "Individualism as a Criterion of the Renaissance,"

and eighteenth centuries. R. Wittkower (1961), see above, par. 1; idem, "The Young Raphael." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin. Oberlin College, 20 (1963), 163ff.; idem. and M Wittkower 1963), see above, par. 1; R. Wittkower,

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 32 (1933), 316-34, critique of Jacob Burckhardt's definition of individualism. G. Northcote, The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2

"Imitation. Eclecticism, and Genius," Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, ed. E. R. Wasserman (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 143ff.; idem. Introduction to Masters of the Loaded Brush.

1

Ch.

1960). of

I.

pp.

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10ff.;

of Ideas, 5

Vrt," Journal of the History

i

1944), I31ff. N.

(London, 1813-15), II, 322. W. von Oettingen, ( her das Lehen and die Werke des A. Averlino Filarete Leipzig, 1888), p. 272. J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Ceschichte der bildenden Kunste hex den Griechen (Berlin, vols.

Rubens to Tiepolo. Exhibition Catalogue "The Artist," Man Versus Society

Oil Sketches from

(New

York, 1967); idem,

Century

70-84

H. Wolf, see above, par. 2. R.

Britain, ed.

J.

1775). E. Young, Conjectures

writings.

W.

Philips, in Art

and Psychoanalysis (New

The Elder Pliny's ( 'hapters on the History of Art. Commentary and Introduction by E. Sellers (London. 1896). H. Poeschel, Kunst und Kunstler im antiken Urteil (Munich, 1925). H. Read, Art and Alienation. The Hole of the Artist in Society

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P. J.

nardo da Vinci. 2 No.

new

8.

C.

ed.

Wark

[See also Creation; Genius; Iconography;

Types

of;

Individualism,

Mimesis; Neo-Platonism: Renaissance; Roman-

ticism: Style; Taste;

XJt

pictura poesis.]

Joshua

vols.

(London and

New .

York, 1939), .

.

I,

35.

(Venice, 1648),

1914-24), pp. 64f. F. Trecentonovelle. ed. V. Pernicone (Florence,

II

RUDOLF W ITTKOWER

(San Marino, Calif.,

maraviglie dell'arte

1947), p. 191.

of the article.

Richter. ed.. The Literary Works of Leo-

Ridolfi. he by D. von Hadeln

Sacchetti,

1967). p. 44. Sir

on Original Composition (Lon-

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York,

1957), XIV. Pliny,

(Cambridge. 1968).

Wood, An Essay on

and Writings of Homer (London, 1769;

the Original Genius

1960), pp. 68-71, for Durer's

|

L. Clifford

in 18th

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(Hamburg, 1924; 2nd. ed. Berlin. advanced conception of talent and inspiration; idem, "Artist, Scientist. Genius: Notes on the 'Renaissance-Dammerung'," The Renaissance. Six Essays New York, 1962), pp. 173f., on the word creare in Leonardo's

MUSICAL GENIUS

(Berlin.

origins and evolution of the concept of musical genius have rarely been treated in reference works.

M. Schapiro, "On the Aesthetic Attitude in and Thought, issued in Honor of Dr.

The

von

The

Romanesque A. K. Coomaraswamy (London, Art." Art

1947), pp. 130-50.

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Commentarii) Berlin, 1912). I

Schweitzer. "Der bildende Kunstler und der Begriff des Kiinstlerischen in der Antike," Neue Heidelberger Jahrbueher B.

(1925), pp. lOOff., basic for Part

III,

1.

Bedeutungsgeschichte des Wortes," Marburg thesis (1943)

idea of musical genius grows and changes in close

association with the evolution of music itself so that the history of the idea is inseparable from the history

and the concept of the musician oped from Creek antiquity. of music

E. Sellers, see Pliny.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, 3 vols. 1710-11), 1, 51-53, on Divine Enthusiasm. L. Pearsall Smith, see above, par. 2. H. Sommer. "Genie, Beitrage zur 1

312

published by

/.

historv

it

devel-

CONCEPT OF MUSICIAN IN ANCIENT GREECE

The concept the

as

of the musician has

of

Western

changed throughout Greek poets

civilization.

GENIUS, MUSICAL endowed

individual musicians with the magical

men and

of affecting

gods

— Arion,

power

Timotheus, and

formalized

consigning the work of the practical

in

musician, as of any other practicing

artist, to

Orpheus are archetypes of the magic musician. In all ancient civilizations music and magic are closely connected. But the Greek writers on music ignored the magical and slighted the practical aspects

mechanicae rather than

of music. Their customary definition of the musician

definable as those that need chiefly the

above

is

all

confined to his speculative, theoretical function. Aristoxenos

(ca.

the

354-300 b.c.) defines a musician as the "knowledge" of the science

human hand

were considered

for their execution,

the province of the lower classes;

the liberal arts,

human mind were the province of the free man. Farming, hunting, navigation, medicine were thrown together with painting and sculpture as mechanical much

to the distress of the artists.

of music (Macran, pp. 95, 165). Aristides Quintilianus

arts,

(probably fourth century b.c), in Book

between mechanical and

I,

The

definable as those activities that need

arts,

for their exercise,

who commands

one

mechanical

the artes

the artes liberates.

to

Chapter 4

but

liberal

the

The

distinction

goes back to

arts

with

sharpness

which

of his treatise on music, precedes the various definitions

classical

of music with the following statement: "Music

Boethius and, following him, most medieval writers on

is

the

antiquity,

music downgrade the performing musician seems to

melody (fieXos) and all elements having to do with melody" (Winnington-Ingram, p. 4) a defini-

express

tion easily understandable in the light of the purely

well conveyed in the famous jingle attributed to Guido

melodic and rhvthmic nature of Greek music, and echoed by Bacchius Senex (probably fourth century

of

science of

a.d.)

—

word

almost

for

word (Meibomius,

p.

more

Arezzo

(ca.

1).

Musicorum

Magna

Greek

the

last

chapter of Book

he defines a musician art

of his

I

as

De

tradition

when,

at least until

et

cantorwn

est distantia.

dicunt, Mi sciunt, Quae componit Musica,

Nam

in

qui

facit,

quod non

sapit,

Diffinitur bestia.

institutione musica,

he "who masters the musical

not through mechanical exercise but after theoret-

ical investigation

is

Isti

Boethius (ca. a.d. 480-524), transmitter of ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics, and theory of music to the Christian West, follows

992-1050) that was quoted

It

late into the sixteenth century:

BOETHIUS

//.

a medieval than an ancient view.

through the power of speculation"

("There

is

singers.

The

a vast difference latter

between musicians and

merely perform, whereas the former

understand what makes music. For he

who performs

other kinds of musicians, performers and composers.

what he does not understand is a mere brute.") Boethius seems to have been the first to use the term

To performers he denies any competence

quadrivium, joining music with the mathematical

(Friedlein, p. 224). Boethius admits the existence of to judge

two and

understand music because of the merely mechanical

of arithmetic, geometry,

arts

and astronomy. Without these

character of their work (quoniam famidantur), and

four disciplines the philosopher cannot find the truth.

because they bring no rational powers to bear on music

The mathematical

on the contrary, are utterly devoid of the capacity for thought; the composers share the same fate because in composing they are not motivated by philosophical

most noble because they contained "the greater cer-

but,

by some natural

speculation, but

speculatione

ac

instinctu fertur

ad carmen

The concept

of

the

instinct:

quam

ratione,

instinctus

Boethius in a pejorative sense.

head of

all

qaodam

naturalis

human

A

is

trivium to

of the

were considered the

the language arts of the

intellect";

— grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric — were held

be of a lower order due to the implied reference

to the senses

and human emotions, from which spring

deception and uncertainty.

(Friedlein, p. 225).

motivating force animating the composer ratio at the

non potius

naturali

tainties

arts or sciences

as

the

used by

philosophy that places

faculties, that considers

Music,

as

taught

at

medieval

universities,

was

accepted as a part of the quadrivium and constituted the theoretical consideration of an art

element

whose every

— rhythm, melody, harmony — was reducible to

sensory experience as uncertain and as the source of

mathematical proportions. The speculative character

error and illusion, cannot give anything but a low place

of the medieval

to natural instinct. "It

is

know what one does than

much to

greater and nobler to

do what one knows," says

Boethius (Friedlein, p. 224). ///.

The contempt

THE MEDIEVAL VIEW

and the one-sided exaltafrom Boethius' treatise into the medieval philosophy of music and the arts. It is for practice

tion of theory flow

concept of music

is

further reflected

music into musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumental followin Boethius' division of

ing ancient models

— — music of the spheres (macrocosm),

the harmonious conjunction of body and soul (micro-

cosm), and music properly speaking, the art of sound pro-

duced on instruments, which includes the human voice, called instrumentum naturale (Johannes Affligemensis

[Johannes Cotto], in his

De musica cum

tonario [ca.

313

GENIUS, MUSICAL 1120]:

Waesberghe

vived

at

least

differentiates

[1950], p. 57).

the

into

between stormento

and stormento

artificiale,

speaking (Aron, Libra

distinction sur-

Pietro

Aron

naturale, the voice.

instrument

the

Opp.

II,

The

Renaissance.

properly

surprising tenacity to Boethius'

and Guido's views, thev

could not suppress occasional marvel

at the natural

of Clunv, tenth-century abbot,

dialogue on music, has the master say: "A rule,

is a general mandate of any art; thus things which are singular do not obey the rules of art" (Strunk,

certainly,

A

to rules

clearer subordination of individuality in art

hard to

is

Garlandia, art derives

"Any

find.

from the word

art," says

many

"is a collection of

Johannes of

The term

rules.

which

arto, artas,

because

the

it

limits us

as restringo, restringis, to restrict,

one of the most original and independent medieval thinkers on music, proves Man's inborn gift for music bv pointing to jongleurs who, though devoid ol all knowledge in the art of music, joyfully sing popular

and constrains us lest we do otherwise than us" (Lowinsky [1964], p. 477).

songs, free of error, observing accurately the position

cantus firmus, that

and semitones, and ending correctly on the final tones. While appearing to follow

of tones

appropriate

Guido's definition, Aribo expands

it

significantly, ex-

is,

which the plain chant serves as as the basis over which the other

voice or voices sing their counterpoints.

emancipated

itself

a spiritual, moral, or political nature,

set to freshly written texts of

is the first form polyphony in which all parts are written by the composer himself without the aid of a cantus firmus. At about 1260 Franco of Cologne described the com-

what is right, how to amend what is wrong, and how to compose perfect melodies himself (Waesberghe [1951], p. 46). Thus

of

Aribo includes in his definition the composer, excluded

position of a conductus as follows:

to judge

in Boethius' definition of

musicus. Moreover, in his

scheme of things he creates a place even for the untutored musical talent by distinguishing between the natural and the professional musician (the chapter referred to is entitled De naturali musico et artificiali). The terminology is related to the distinction between musica artificialis et naturalis introduced by Regino of Prum (d. 950); but musica naturalis was for the latter a vast concept encompassing the harmony of the spheres, the human voice, and the voices of animals, whereas musica artificialis was confined to the music thought out by human art and ingenuity and played on instruments (Pietzsch [1929], pp. 63-66). Aribo adds the new element of fresh and unprejudiced observation of

musical

performance, correct according to the

canons of the

art,

although executed by

illiterate

to write a

conduct ought

melody

he can, then

a

as

Boethius called the composer poeta, from the Greek

lating invention

first,

.

"He who wishes

to invent as beautiful

use

as

it

a tenor

is

used

Franco, in postu-

p. 155).

then contrapuntal elaboration,

doubtless follows Cicero's venerable division between invention, disposition, and elocution. His precepts are

those of a craftsman, who, absorbed in producing a beautiful piece of work,

is

utterly

unconcerned about

work of art. Crocheo (ca. distinguishes between the composing of 1300) polyphony based on a cantus firmus and freely conceived polyphony, specifically between organum and motet on the one hand and the conductus on the other. The process of composing over a cantus firmus he calls ordinare; for the projection of free polyphony he rethe inner processes that lead to the

In a remarkable passage, Johannes

But

say "order," because in motets and

I

comes from an

vived into the Renaissance. But as early as the twelfth

to the artificer's will

originally

we

.

.

writing discant" (Strunk,

in

meaning maker, producer, contriver, and later confined to the author of a poem. The term poeta for composer, revealing the unity of poem and melody, of word and tone in the medieval view, surcentury

first

serves the term componere:

jongleurs.

irocq-rqs,

thirteenth

from dependence on the Gregorian

The conductus,

master the whole science of modes and intervals, but

how

The

century saw the emergence of polyphonic music that chant.

he know

teaches

it

Garlandia, the thirteenth-century theorist, speaks for a polyphonic art, in

pecting of the professional musician not only that he also that

same

is

talent of untrained musicians. Aribo Scholasticus (ca.

1070),

term compositor used by Johannes the combination cantuum compositor

find the

AfHigemensis in

"compose," because

Yet,

even

is

mode and

(Lowinsky [1964],

more than

types of creativity. But

instinct.

"new"

a

for

it.

I

say

a totally

duration according p. 490).

a recognition of

two

procedures by one and the same craftsman.

in the

is

and rare distinction does not amount

the compositional process was conceived to be rational

Adherence to rules was taken to distinguish good composition from a poor one, a good composer

conductus the tenor

subject to

this fine

to anything

in the

mean

prompted by natural

mode and measure. And

the artificer to rhythmic

new work and

organum the tenor is subjected by

old, pre-existent chant, but

(Waesberghe [1950], p. 119). The esteem of the composer increased in medieval writings to the degree that rather than, as Boethius thought,

context must, of course, be carefully qualified;

lithic

knowledge of the

for our

human mind

ability of the

remote a period necessarily

at so

rests

on deduction

from archeological data onlv.

The

Venus of Laussel suggests was an object of worship, in other words, that those who made and reverenced the image sought that

original location of the

it

thereby not only to portray the female principle, but also to establish a special relationship

selves

and what they conceived

creatrix of tion

new

life.

How

they

be the source or

made

the mental transi-

from the phenomenon of

women

between them-

to

birth, as

observed

in

community, to the conception of a transcendental Woman or Great Mother as the source of fertility and new life is beyond our present comprehension. But, as we shall see, these Venus figures constitute Paleolithic prototypes of the Mother Goddess or Great Goddess, whose cult is well attested in the Neolithic period, and finds subsequent expression in many of the famous goddesses of the ancient Near individual

of the

East.

The Venus

of Laussel may, therefore, be reasonably

regarded as the

earliest

known

depiction of the idea

of deity for the purpose of worship.

It

important

is

stemmed from the concern of Paleolithic man with the phenomenon of birth as the operation of a mysterious power that replaced the deceased members of his community by others newly-born. The depiction of pregnant animals in to note that the idea probably

Figure

1.

Hit-

"Venus"

of

Laussel, probably the oldest represen-

tation of deitv, in the form of the

dart

Mother Goddess. Les Editions

et histoire

Paleolithic cave-art provides evidence of similar import; namely,

much smaller scale and carved in the round, which have also been found on various Paleolithic sites, would seem to indicate that a common motive inspired their making. A clue to this motive is possiblv to be found in the strange fact that the faces of the figures are invariably blank, whereas the maternal features are figures, of

carefully

This difference of treatment

depicted.

human need. The deification

of the female principle in Paleolithic

more certainly attested than principle. The most likely instance

culture

is

that of the

male

of the latter

is

that the

provided by the figure of the so-called "Sorcerer" of the Trois Freres Cave in the department of Ariege,

carvings were not designed as portraits of individual

France. This designation for the figure does, in fact,

surely significant.

women, but

It

rather

would seem symbolize

to

show

"woman"

is

the

represent an interpretation of

"mother" or source of new life. The context of their relevance, if this was their meaning, is clear. The phenomenon of biological birth provided the Paleo-

alternative interpretation that

lithic

peoples,

to

who made

as

the images, with ocular evi-

dence of the emergence from the female body of newbeings of their own kind. The phenomenon, moreover, was probably the more impressive since it is unlikely that the process of procreation

stood at the time. There

332

that these primitive hunting peoples

were deeply concerned with the reproduction of the animals upon which they lived. Thus the original conception of deity was intimately related to a basic

is

was properly under-

reason, accordingly, for

seeing in these figures, and particularly in the Venus

figure

is

it

it

which negates the depicts a god.

a strange composition. In form

it

is

The

generally

anthropomorphic; but the body is shown as covered with a hairy pelt, and with an animal's tail and genitals. The head, moreover, which is surmounted by the antlers of a stag,

has furry ears, owl-like eyes, and a long

tongue or beard. The posture of the figure

is

suggestive

of the action of dancing, though other equally reasona-

ble explanations could be offered. In view of the evidence that exists of a Paleolithic

GOD, IDEA

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

OF,

which men disguised as animals performed mimetic dances, many prehistorians have in-

hunting-ritual in

terpreted the figure as representing a sorcerer per-

forming such a magical dance (Figure

But

2).

this

interpretation encounters the difficulty of explaining

why

such a figure should be depicted in a cave which appears to have been used as a sanctuary. The problem involved here, though interesting and important, is

The

outside the scope of this article. pretation,

which some eminent

alternative inter-

specialists in prehistory

have advanced, is that the figure represents a supernatural "Lord of the beasts," whom the Paleolithichunters conceived of as the owner of the animals, and who had to be propitiated by those who hunted and killed them. This interpretation

has to be regarded as

less

is

reasonable; but

certain than that

it

which

Figure

2.

Dancing Sorcerer, drawing by miss

e.

lowcock

a.

presents the Venus of Laussel as the earliest depiction of the idea of deity.

The intimation given by earliest

Paleolithic culture that the

conception of deity was inspired by man's

concern with the production of

new

finds

life

re-

markable confirmation in Neolithic culture: the most notable instance will be briefly described here. Excavation of the Neolithic town at Qatal lia,

Huyuk

in

which dates from the seventh millennium

Anato-

B.C.,

revealed a flourishing cult of a Great Goddess,

Mesopotamian Innina-Ishtar, the Syrian Astarte, the Egyptian Isis and Hathor, the Anatolian Cybele, the Cretan Great Goddess, and the Cyprian Aphrodite. Many of these goddesses combined the roles of Virgin and Mother, and they were often intimately associated with a young god who, alternatively as their son or lover, was the deified spirit of vegetation.

has

who

//.

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, GREECE,

was concerned with both birth and death. This ambivalence of concept

is

in a strange

way. The

were adorned by

friezes of

evidenced

sanctuaries of the Goddess

models of the female human breast. These were found to contain the skulls of vultures and foxes and the jawbones of boars. No written texts, plaster

objects

unfortunately, exist to explain this strange symbolism.

AND ROME

The earliest written records, dating in Egypt and Mesopotamia from the fourth millennium B.C., reveal in both places a polytheistic form of religion which had evidently been long established. The Egyptian form, since it is generally the better documented and certainly more graphically presented, will be consid-

However, the union of symbols of maternal nourishment and care with symbols of death is profoundly

ered

and symbols found

Pyramid

first.

In the great corpus of religious texts,

known

as the

menacing headless human corpses. The interpretation

which were inscribed on the interior walls of the pyramids of certain pharaohs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, a great number of divinities, male and female, are named. Their divine nature is denoted

of these symbols

by a hieroglyph

suggestive,

this significance is reinforced

in the sanctuaries:

human

by other

skulls,

the

horns of bulls, and mural paintings of great vultures is

necessarily speculative; but the idea

of a Great Goddess,

whom

all

who

is

return at death,

religions, for

the source of is

known

life,

and

to

in other later

example, in Crete and the Greek Eleu-

sinian Mysteries. In such an ambivalent context, the

Texts,

(ntr),

resembling an axe or a

unfurled horizontally from

its

pole.

The symbol

cates that already the ancient Egyptians

flag

indi-

had conceived

of deity or divinity in an abstract form. Unfortunately

the essential

meaning of the hieroglyph

ntr remains

as

an enigma, despite many attempts to interpret it. looks like an axe; but there is some evidence that

of the revivification, of the dead.

jecting horizontally from a pole,

Great Goddess

is

identified or associated with the earth

Mother Earth, whose womb is conceived as both the source of life and the place of repose, and possibly

The

its

more primitive form

it

It

in

showed two streamers prowhich might represent

tradition of the deification of the female princi-

the standard that stood before primitive shrines. But,

which can thus be traced from the Paleolithic on through the Neolithic period, found expression in the early literary cultures of the ancient Near East and the Indus Valley. The tradition is embodied, with certain variant features, in such famous goddesses as the

whatever be the origin of the symbol, it is significant that in their earliest texts the Egyptians were already

ple,

able to envisage divinity as a distinctive quality or

character that could be attributed to certain specific entities

regarded as

deities.

333

.

GOD, IDEA OE PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE ACES Although the\ were thus able

conceive of divinit)

to

the Egyptians evidently believed that the virtue

found

expression or was embodied in a variety of personified beings, or

titles.

who were These

distinguished by individual

deities

cosmic beings such

ranged

as the

in

names

nature and status from

sun to strange animals and

wading bird related to the heron and the scorpion, which were worshipped at various local centers for reasons unknown to modern scholarship. Some deities were personifications of abstractions such as Shu "air"), Maat ("truth"), or Atum itniu a designation which seems to have meant "the insects,

such as the

ibis

a

.

not-vet-Completed-One.

The iconography envisaged their gods

who will

attain (completion)."

of the Egyptians shows that they in

concrete forms of varying kinds:

men and women in Egyptian human bodies and animal heads;

attire; or as

as

having

or as wholly animal

and insects). Some of were evidently of primitive origin; but some derived from a complex transformation of imagery. The most notable instance of the latter w as the representation of the sun-god Re bv a scarab-beetle. The ancient Egyptian word for the scarab-beetle was kheprer which was akin to kheper, "come into being" or "exist." Since the sun-god was regarded as selfexistent, and consequently called Khepri, the relevance of the scarab-beetle as a symbol is intelligible. But for the Egyptians the symbol had a further meaning. Scarab-beetles were believed to be of male sex onlv"! and they have the curious habit of pushing about balls of dung, on which they feed. Since ancient Egyptian cosmogonic myth was structured on the imagers of (i.e.,

mammals,

birds, reptiles,

these conceptions

henotheism. There

much

is

evidence, too. of the use

"Great God"), without name; generally the reference is to Re, the sun-god. but sometimes it denotes Osiris. of the expression ntr

'

(the

a personal

The

chief characteristics of the Egyptian idea of

were expressed

and Set was the state-god par excellence. The pharaoh was regarded as the "Son of Re." and his representative on earth. Re was the creator of the universe and the source of all life and deitx

(Figure

3).

power.

He

The

first,

in three gods: Re, Osiris,

as the sun-god,

sustained the order [maat) of the cosmos,

and Maat. the personification of tnith, justice, and order was regarded as both his daughter and his food. Consequently, Re was often thought of as the judge of mankind. This association with the moral law has a unique significance.

about 2400

It first

appears

in

Egyptian

texts

and thus constitutes the earliest evidence of the involvement of the concept of deity with ethics. Such involvement is not inevitable, and the history of religions affords numerous examples of B.C..

amoral and unmoral

deities.

fortunately permit us to see

The Egyptian records

how Re became

associated

with the moral order. The idea of maat was basically that of cosmic order as

opposed

to chaos.

For example,

the Egyptians conceived of a monster of darkness,

biological procreation, the sun-god, being self-existent,

was pictured as commencing the creation of the universe by masturbation, while he was also thought of heavens each day.

as rolling the sun across the It

has been well to analyze this scarab symbol, in

view of

its

curious

compound

of metaphysical thought

and esoteric imagery concerning the concept of divine self-existence inherent in the

word

kheprer.

The scarab

symbol may thus serve to show how behind the strange iconography of Egyptian religion there may often reside ideas that are remarkable for their metaphysical content.

So

far as

divinity as

it is

it

possible to define the quintessence of

finds expression in the

would seem idea of power. But it was power ancient Egypt,

it

that to

many it

deities of

inheres in the

do particular things: cosmic order,

to give life, fertility, prosperity, maintain

have supernatural knowledge, generally of a magical had special functions or abilities; and there was a tendency to associate local deities with the great state or cosmic to

kind. In the Egyptian pantheon, several deities

334

deities so

as to give the

appearance of a kind of

Fii.i hi

3.

BRANDON

Egyptian Deities, hirmeb veblac

sum

hen \nd

s.

c. f.

GOD, IDEA Apophis, which threatened to destroy the sun each day

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

OF,

and reviving of vegetation my thai of both Osiris and Christ, although the imagery of the death and resurrection of the grain does occur, their deaths and resurrelated ritually to the dying

as it rose and set. The social order in Egypt, which was maintained by the pharaoh, the son of Re, was part of the cosmic maat. Consequently, anyone whose conduct was not in accord with the accepted mores abused maat, the good order of things, of which Re was the upholder, and so incurred his vengeance in this world or the next. Osiris was a deity of a wholly different kind, and

each year. However,

one of peculiar significance for the history of religions. For whereas Re and all the other deities were by nature immortal, Osiris was a god who had died and

in a mortuary by reenacting

been raised ist

to life again.

There has been much

rections are regarded as historical events.

The

origin

god who saves mankind by his death and resurrection will be discussed later. Here it must suffice to note that in the earliest documents, i.e., the Pyramid Texts, Osiris appears as the key figure of the Christian idea of a

achieve immortality

ritual practiced to

his

legendary embalmment and resur-

rection.

The

special-

discussion about the origin of this extraordinary

in the

third deity

who embodies

of the Egyptian concept of deity

a distinctive aspect

is

Set. Originally this

first

god was associated with the desert and storms, which doubtless invested him with an austere character. In

resur-

the Pyramid Texts, he appears most notably as the

rected after being murdered by his evil brother Set.

murderer of Osiris. This sinister role meant that, with the growing popularity of the cult of Osiris, Set was

conception, but no agreed conclusion has emerged.

What

is

certain

is

that in the

Pyramid

appears as an ancient divine king,

The

Texts

show

and magical

Texts Osiris

who had been

that a ritual technique of

embalmment

was performed on the dead

revivification

gradually transformed into a god of

evil. In later reli-

pharaoh, following the pattern of what had once been

gious thought he

done for Osiris. On the principle of sympathetic magic, it was believed that the repetition of the rites would raise the king to a new life as Osiris had been raised. This mortuary ritual was gradually democratized until all Egyptians, who could afford it, looked forward to

disorder, being identified with Apophis, the monstrous

obtaining resurrection after death through Osiris.

ancient Iran.

by reason of his legend and soteriological significance, had a deep human appeal, and became the most popular of Egyptian deities, and his cult

striking

Osiris,

He increasingly acquired cosmic attributes, and was associated with the fructifying flood of the river Nile and with the annual lifespread far outside Egypt.

serpent of chaos guish the sun.

assumed a

became

who

the personification of cosmic

unceasingly threatened to extin-

Thus Egyptian theology progressively

dualistic character,

never became so radical as

although

in the

its

dualism

Zoroastrianism of

of deity differed in some ways from the Egyptian. Although the religion of the Mesopotamian peoples (the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians) was polytheistic like that of Egypt, their gods formed a hierarchy that was carefully

The Mesopotamian concept

related to the constitutive parts of the universe. Ac-

cycle of vegetation, especially grain. But, he also as-

cording to ancient Mesopotamian cosmology, the uni-

sumed another role. Already in the Pyramid Texts Osiris was venerated as the ruler of the dead, and by the New Kingdom period (1580-1085 B.C.) he had become the dread judge before whom the dead were tried by the weighing of their hearts against the symbol of maat

verse

("truth").

Ea), the

The

who

idea of a "dying-rising god,"

who

are ritually assimilated to him,

markable notion, and of those basic

it is

is

who

Each part was governed by a god: Anu, was the first in status; he was

followed by Enlil, presiding over the earth, Enki (or

god of the waters, and Nergal, lord of the this cosmic hierarchy were three

a truly re-

deities

which the most

is

notable example of such a category of deity before the

emergence of the conception of Christ as the divine savior who dies and rises again to life. Some other religions of the ancient Near East provided similar, but less well-constituted examples, namely, the Mesopotamian god Tammuz, and the better known figures of the Phrygian Attis and Adonis of Syria. Each of these deities was connected in some way with the life-cycle of vegetation: their deaths and resurrections being

of four parts: heaven, earth, the

ruled the heavens,

underworld. Below

intuitions to

the idea of deity generally relates. Osiris

of the dead.

saves those

not easily explained in terms

human needs and

was made up

waters that surrounded the earth, and the underworld

connected with the chief

(the moon-god),

Shamash

celestial bodies: Sin

(the sun-god),

and Ishtar (the

planet Venus). Vegetation was deified under the Su-

merian name of Dumuzi. The deity is generally known by the Hebrew name of Tammuz, and Ezekiel 8:14 refers to the annual rites of lamentation for his death.

Tammuz was associated with Ishtar (who was also the goddess of fertility) as her lover, by whom he was rescued from the underworld. The Mesopotamian pantheon contained many other In mythology,

gods of as

lesser significance, including national

Marduk

gods such

who were by their own

of Babylon and Assur of Assyria

accorded leadership over the other gods

335

GOD, IDEA

OF,

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES A

peoples. Despite this multitude of deities with varying

was a distinctive concept of deity in Mesopotamia which finds expression in various myths and legends concerning the relations of the gods to mankind. Thus it is related that the gods created men as servants who would relieve them of the task of feeding and housing themselves: hence the building of temples and the offering of sacrifices within them. But functions, there

from these human servants the gods withheld the immortality which they themselves enjoyed. This belief

man

attempted

to explain

had appeared

the

etymologically. Thus, in answer

it

him

in the

name

god who

of the

burning bush and commis-

Israel,

I

AM

me

to you.'" (R. S. V.)

due

to an attempt to

has sent

This mystifying statement

"Jehovah"

in their

to

WHO

people of

Mesopotamian Weltanschauung; it provided the main theme of the celebrated Epic of Gilgamesh. Associated with the belief was a corresponding concept of destinv. It was held that in the divine economy each person had a "destiny," i.e., a part or purpose to fulfil. When the gods no longer had use for an individual, he had no "destiny" and so died. The gods were generally regarded as benign towards their human servants, and as protecting them from demonic attack so long as they continued punctilious

that

sioned him to go to the Israelites who were then in bondage in Egypt, the deity is represented as replying: "I AM I AM.' And he said, 'Say this to the

derive the

affected the

Exodus (3:13-14) reveals

in

to Moses' question about the

could not hope to survive death profoundly

that

is

name "Yahweh" in English)

rendered

(traditionally

from the Hebrew root hqyah

hawah, meaning "to be." Modern scholars have

or

concentrated on the problem here, and a variety of interpretations has been suggested: according to the

opinion recently expressed by a specialist of great standing, the explanation in Exodus 3:14 derived from

an original formula,

Comes

"It

Is

He Who

Creates

What

into Existence" (W. F. Albright, p. 148). This

formula might be compared with the

title

Khepri of

the Egyptian sun-god, mentioned above.

Whatever may have been the

service.

Mesopotamian conception of deity was a realistic evaluation of the world as understood in terms of contemporary thought. The hierarchy of the gods represented cosmic order as opposed to the demonic forces of chaos (the idea is mythologically portrayed in the conflict between the gods and Ti'amat, In effect, the

the personification of primeval chaos, in the Babylonian

Creation Epic,

known

as the

purpose and welfare lay

Enuma

elish).

in its integration

Mankind's

with and the

original meaning of no doubt that it took some centuries before the deity was firmly established as the sole god of Israel. During the complex process, which

the

is

name "Yahweh,"

documented by the

Bible,

it

is

there

is

pre-Exilic writings of the

Hebrew

probable that the original conception of

Yahweh was

adjusted to the needs of the agrarian

culture that the Israelite tribes had adopted on their

settlement in Canaan. Thus there the assumption by

Yahweh

of

is

some

some evidence

of

of the attributes

of El, the chief Canaanite god.

support of the divine order.

Near Eastern cultures that of the Hebrews was destined to have a profound influence upon later Western thought and culture. Its conception of deity was essentially linked with the cult of the god Yahweh, and, in its development, reflected the transformation which the character of this deity underwent in process of time, owing to

During the pre-Exilic period, the Yahwist prophets were chiefly concerned to present Yahweh as the god who had delivered the Israelites from their Egyptian bondage and given them Canaan as their homeland. They represented him as a "jealous god," who commanded his chosen people: "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). It is difficult to be

a variety of causes.

certain whether, at the earlier stage of Israel's religious

The origin of the cult of Yahweh has been the subject of much specialist discussion. It seems to be generally agreed that Hebrew tradition reflects an awareness that

development, Yahweh was regarded as the only god of the universe, or as being more powerful than the

the cult had been specifically adopted by the ancestors

Yahwist prophets laid such emphasis upon the suprem-

Of the

religions of the other ancient

of Israel on

some notable occasion

Thus,

in the past.

made to the idea that a covenant had once been made between Yahweh and Israel. The transaction is dramatically in

Hebrew

literature constant reference

is

Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus

19:

Iff.).

Law

of the cult of

Yahweh before

won

can safely be said

its

is

that

be,

the

acy and omnipotence of their deity that the religion

which they promoted was

virtually monotheistic.

in the Yahwist creation-story in Genesis 2:4ff., is

Thus

Yahweh

represented as the creator of the universe and of

Various expla-

Yahweh's omnipotence that he is actually depicted as the author of both good and evil. (For example, it is

adoption by

general acceptance.

may

mankind. And so absolute was the emphasis upon

nations have also been offered of the original location

but none has

gods of other peoples. However that

to

described in the account of the giving of the

OOO

passage

Hebrews were curious about the name "Yahweh," and

Israel,

The most

Yahweh appears

to have

a desert god, closely connected with war.

that

been

spirit from Yahweh" that torments Saul in Samuel 16:14, and Yahweh causes David to number Israel and then punishes him for doing so by decimating the people with a pestilence in II Samuel 24: Iff.)

"an evil I

GOD, IDEA The Yahwist potence

who demanded his people.

of

him

as a just god,

a high standard of moral conduct from

The

his people,

that

an ethnic

religion:

it

was

Yahweh The logic of the Sinai Yahweh would protect and prosper Israel.

preceding the Babylonian Exile (586 disasters that Israel suffered at the

B.C.),

the various

hands of neighboring

were explained by the prophets as Yahweh's punishment for acts of apostasy. But from the Exile onwards a new attitude begins to appear. Since the misfortunes of Israel vis-a-vis the other nations were nations

just

such as could not reasonably be explained Israel's greater iniquity,

in

terms of

another message had to be

found. This finds expression in the apocalyptic literature of the period (ca.

now proclaimed

that

problem arose from the original Yahhuman nature, which precluded any hope of a significant post-mortem life for the individual. Instead, it was taught that Yahweh rewarded the pious with long life and prosperity in this world, and punished the impious by misfortune and early death. At death the shade of the individual descended to a wretched existence in the gloomy depths of Sheol, which was the Hebrew counterpart of the Mesopotamian kur-nu-gi-a, "the land of no-return." But since experience proved that often it was the pious that were afflicted with misfortune and early death, while the its

essentially

they were faithful to him. In the period

if

in

Yahweh's dealings with the individual similarly found

chosen people

Covenant was

was accordingly explained

commu-

the

primarily concerned with the relationship of his

itself,

just,

terms of apocalyptic eschatology. The problem of

nal and personal planes.

Yahwism was

fortune of Israel

god as and the unhappy

the idea of Israel's

being both omnipotent and

incompatibility of these two aspects

Yahweh soon became apparent on both

and

The discrepancy between

prophets, besides stressing the omni-

of their god. also presented

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

OF,

200 b.c.-a.d. 100). The prophets Yahweh would eventually vindi-

cate his suffering people, and punish their Gentile oppressors.

impious flourished

like the proverbial

an emerging sense of individuality

green bay-tree,

in Israel

brought

a questioning of Yahweh's justice.

The problem was

discussed in the

Hebrew

of the finest products of

Book

of Job,

one

literature. Job's mis-

fortunes are presented therein as a test case. For Job is

Yahweh was now

solution. This

wist doctrine of

an upright and pious man, so that the sufferings that

moreover, conditioned by the influence of Iranian

him are demonstrably undeserved. The drama God is both omnipotent and just, and the conflicting evidence of his own undeserved sufferings. Job's agony of faith is made the more poign-

dualism, which Israel had probably

ant by his acceptance of the orthodox view that death

Since

God and

firmly regarded as the only

Ruler of the universe,

this

apocalyptic faith

tended to take on a transcendental character.

through

its

first

was,

It

encountered

incorporation into the Persian empire of

the Achaemenides after the Exile (538

B.C.).

This meant

that Yahweh's eventual vindication of Israel identified with his ultimate

became

overthrow of the demonic-

powers with whom the gods of Israel's Gentile oppressors were associated. These ideas were set forth in an eschatological imagery that represented the "day of Yahweh" as the catastrophic overthrow of the existing world-order and its replacement by a new supernatural

"Kingdom some forms

God"

order, described as the

of

dom

of this apocalyptic

of Heaven." In

or "King-

befall

turns on Job's belief that

was

Although the problem is acutely no adequate solution within these terms was found by the author of the book. Indeed, no such solution was found elsewhere in Israel, until the second virtual extinction.

discussed,

century the dead

went

B.C.,

when

finally belief in a resurrection of

was accepted

Yahweh's justice was vindicated after death, if had not been in this life. The description of the Last Judgment in II(IV) Esdras 7:32-38, however, graphically shows how powerful the ethnic factor still was it

in the

Messiah ("Anointed"), was expected to overthrow the

a.d.; for therein the

ment, pp.

Yahweh

and judge the nations

70ff.).

logically

(cf.

Brandon, Judg-

This intense nationalistic view of

stemmed from

the

Covenant

and, with various modifications,

it

the Jewish conception of deity.

Even when

idea,

has characterized a

more

Zechariah 8:23 significantly the Lord

[i.e.,

Yahweh]

The

insensibly

in the divine

judgment of the

is

remarkable for

its

embodiment

of the profound

conviction that God, under his ineffable

name

of Yah-

they should worship him in the great Temple of Jeru-

shall take

men

hold of

salem, built on the spot which he had signified. This belief

was presented

we have heard

namely, of

with you.'

century

In the history of religions the Jewish conception of

God

the

is

first

fate of individuals

"Thus says

of hosts: In those days ten

God

in the

nations.

the robe of a Jew, saying, 'Let us go with you, for that

merged

God

post-mortem

irenic vision of

illustrates this:

from the nations of every tongue

is

Jewish conception of

weh, had specially chosen the descendants of Abraham for a unique destiny: namely, to be his holy people, and be settled by him in the land of Canaan, where

Yahweh's providence has occasionally found expression, it has been in terms of the universalist estimate of

peculiar spiritual status of Israel.

this belief

post-mortem judgment,

so that

eschatology a supernatural minister of Yahweh, the forces of evil

With

into Judaism.

also a belief in a personal

distinctive

God

in a

pattern as the

superb literature which set of

the

Jewish

conception,

"Lord of History." This

title

33

/

GOD, IDEA

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

OF,

Figure century

4.

The

b.c

-

central figure on this eighth-

silver strip

from Luristan

may

represent Zurvan, the ancient Iranian god of

way

which

a disposition to conceive of deities of ambivalent form.

providence for Israel

volves a linear view of time, which was unusual; for

Thus there are indications of the worship of sky-gods named Mithra and Vayu, who each represented both the good and sinister aspects of reality. Another such deity was Zurvan, who assumed an important role in

most ancient peoples envisaged the temporal process as cyclic in movement. To Jews, history has ever been

mysterious deity meant Time, and a form of the

has been used by scholars to describe the the Bible shows

how Yahweh's

was progressively revealed is

in

in historical events, or

what

presented as historical events. The revelation

Heilsgeschichte,

i.e.,

in-

"Salvation-History," or, in other

words, a teleological process in which the purpose of

Yahweh

been revealed and fulfilled. This teleological conception was, in process of time, transmitted to Western thought and culture by Christianity. However, before the Christian idea of

later Persian religion (Figure 4).

The name

occurs as early as the twelfth millennium

found

B.C.

of this

name

on tablets

at Nuzi.

Zarathustra seems to have rejected this Iranian pro-

for Israel has progressively

pensity to an ambivalent conception of deity by pro-

earliest

God whom he calls Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, as the only true God, and by identifying him exclusively with Arta ("Righteous Order"). There has been much speculation as to the origin of Ahura Mazda, and some specialists think that the conception was derived by Zarathustra from an Iranian counterpart of the Vedic god Varuna (see below). Whatever the origin of his Wise Lord, Zarathustra was concerned to trace the dualistic nature of the

provided by Zarathustra or Zo-

universe to a supernatural source. This he does in the

Gathas document the reform of Iranian religion which he initiated, and which profoundly affected the subsequent religious

Gathas by positing two primordial spirits: the Spenista Mainyu ("Bounteous Spirit"), and the Angra Mainyu

God can be

properly considered,

it

is

necessary to

evaluate the conceptions of deity in ancient Iran and

Greece; for each of these contributed to the religious

Greco-Roman world into which Chriswas born, and by which it was influenced.

situation of the tianity

The concept century b.c.

is

of deity in ancient Iran before the sixth

fundamentally obscure, since the

written evidence roaster (born ca.

is

570

tradition of Iran.

b.c). His

Much

attention has been given by

claiming the

("Evil" or "Destructive Spirit"). These spirits represent

the opposing aspects or forces of the universe: light

settled in the north-

However, Ahura Mazda with the principle of good order (Arta) and his radical condemnation of the Druj ("Lie"), some

western area of the continent of India, the literature

vestige of the earlier ambivalence of deity appears in

of pre-Zoroastrian religion. Since early

Aryan

and darkness,

known

that the

despite Zarathustra's emphatic identification of

Aryans

common

cultural

it is

shared a

settlers in Iran

tradition with the

who

of the latter (especially the Rig-Veda) has as relevant to the situation in Iran.

been sought

From

this

in

Iranian religion

is it

been studied

Evidence has

some post-Zoroastrian

research not only

it

also

traditions of Iran.

certain that primitive

was polytheistic and akin to

sented in the Rig-Veda, but

and death, good and

problem

specialists in Iranian studies to the obvious

338

Time. Cincinnati art museum

that repre-

appears that there was

life

evil.

the Gathas. For Zarathustra regarded Ahura as the sole light

cosmic creator, to

whom

Mazda

the origin of both

and darkness are attributed (Yasna,

14:5.).

This

a segment of the Avesta. This indication of an earlier tradition, which derived the two contrasting aspects

is

of cosmic

phenomena from

a single divine source,

is

GOD, IDEA significant in

view of

later

developments

in the Iranian

conception of deity. In the classic form of Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda, under the name of Ohrmazd, was virtually equated with the Spenista Maini/u, and represented the princi-

ple of Good; the opposing principle of Evil was called

Ahriman. The equation had the effect of making Good and Evil coeval; and, although Zoroastrian eschatology foretold the ultimate victory of Good (Ohrmazd) over Evil (Ahriman), logically the

two principles were equal

each having always existed uncreated. This

in status,

implicit equality provided

no ground for the belief that

Good should ultimately triumph over

Evil; in fact, their

mutual opposition was usually described

as eternal.

During the Sassanian period (a.d. 208-651), it would appear that an attempt was made to resolve the metaphysical problem involved in this orthodox form of Zoroastrianism by representing Ohrmazd and Ahriman as being both derived from Zurvan (Time) in such a

manner

as to establish the inferior status of the latter,

and thus

justify his

ultimate elimination. Unfortunately

the true nature of this Zurvanism

is

fundamentally

obscure, owing to the unsatisfactory character of the extant documentation.

What seems

reasonably certain,

OF,

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

lion's head. Around the monster's body a large serpent is entwined, and upon the nude body the signs of the zodiac are depicted; the monster stands upon a sphere and holds a long staff and keys. The image and its symbols were evidently designed to represent Time that rules and destroys all. Its presence in Mithraic sanctuaries as an image of Ahriman

body, wings, and a

probably indicates that the temporal sovereignty of

Ahriman

in

this

world was recognized

in

Mithraic

theology.

The influence of the Iranian dualistic conception of was very considerable. It can be traced in Gnosti-

deity

cism and Manichaeism,

in Judaism and the beliefs of and in Christianity. This influence was doubtless due to the fact that it helped to explain the origin and nature of Evil, which constitutes

the

Qumran

sectaries,

a basic problem for

all monotheistic faiths. It has been noted that Iranian dualism was not a logically absolute

dualistic interpretation of reality;

the ultimate triumph of

it

looked forward to

Ohrmazd over Ahriman.

In

was an ethical eschatology; for it summoned mankind to align itself on the side of Good (Ohrmazd) against Evil (Ahriman), because Ohrmazd would finally win and Ahriman would be exterminated. In other words, the Iranian conception of God, which this sense

it

on the authority of Eudemus of Rhodes, a disciple of Aristotle, is that the Persians were known to derive

seems

"a good god and an evil daemon" from Space (topos)

lence of man's experience of reality,

and Time

Zoroastrian form an expression of his hope that what

(chronos). In the later Persian

Rivayat

it

categorically stated: "with the exception of Time,

other things have been created.

.

.

.

Then

it

is

all

[Time]

and water, and, when these had intermixed, Ohrmazd. Time is both Creator and the Lord of creation which it created" (Spiegel, pp. 161ff.). There seems, accordingly, to have been some tradition in Iran of Zurvan as an ambivalent creator-deity, and that this was utilized in Sassanian times by certain thinkers who were dissatisfied with the metaphysical basis of orthodox Zoroastrianism. Orthodox reaction to this Zurvanite heresy found expression in the Bundahishn, where Ohrmazd is identified with Time: "Thus it is revealed in the Good Religion. Ohrmazd was on high in omniscience and goodness; for infinite Time he was ever in the Light" (XV, Iff.). There is evidence that the Persians conceived of two forms of Time: Zurvan akarana ("Infinite Time"), and Zurvan daregho-chvadhata ("Time of long Dominion"). With the former Ohrmazd was identified as Infinite Time. Zurvan daregho-chvadhata signified the destructive aspect of Time, which brings decay, old age, and death to all living things. This form of Time was associated with Ahriman, and the conception was incorporated into Mithraism, where it found striking iconocreated

came

fire

forth

graphic expression.

Many

Mithraic sanctuaries-con-

tained images of a monstrous being, having a man's

in its original

form to have reflected the ambiva-

became

in

its

Good would ultimately which he evaluated as Evil. The dualistic Weltanschauungen of those other religions and cults, which were influenced by Zoroastrianism, were inspired by a like optimism. The Greek conception of deity comprises two different traditions: the religious and the philosophical. Although the philosophical conception naturally commands the attention of historians of thought, for Greek philosophy has long been regarded as one of the greatest products of Greek culture, it was the idea of deity implicit in religious faith and practice that really reflected the outlook of the Greek people. Philosophical conceptions of the divine, such as Plato and Aristotle expounded, were destined to have a great influence upon medieval Christian and Muslim theology; but they had little effect upon contemporary Greek life and thought; indeed, most of the philosophers themselves conformed to the prescriptions and usages of the he identified as the principle of prevail over that

traditional religion.

The Greek view

of deity

first

finds expression in the

and Odyssey of Homer, and since these epics enjoyed a unique place in the Greek scheme of education, the Homeric view became the established evaluation. According to it, the universe was governed by Iliad

a hierarchy of gods, presided over

by Zeus. The major-

33a

GOD, IDEA

PREHISTORY TO MIDDLE AGES

OF,

were probably

of these gods

ity

origin,

Indo-European

of

being akin to those of the Aryan invaders of

India and Iran.

They were brought

Greece by the who conquered the Aegean peoples and whose religion seems to have been

Hellenic tribes

who lived

there,

into

based on the cult of the Great Goddess. The religion that finds expression in the

Homeric

literature probably

is

The essence

this is

impression

of divinity in

thunderbolts; Poseidon

is

Homer

supernatural

is

associated with the sea and

controlled power; a divine government

makes the universe

cause, an unfortunate

incident in the struggle

between the Greeks and Tro-

a Greek hero,

is

fated to

offspring of one of Zeus's

kill

many

Sarpedon,

liaisons

with

mortal women. The Homeric writer pictures Zeus as earnestly desirous to save his son.

him

that

if

He communicates

goddess Hera, who,

he interferes with what

gods will follow

his

is

in reply,

warns

fated, the other

example. Zeus sorrowfully recog-

what she

and allows Sarpedon to go to his fate. The episode reveals that the Greeks believed that there was a proper order (moira) of things nizes the truth of

says,

that maintained the balance of forces in the universe.

Zeus was the embodiment of this order, as the Egyptian sun-god was of maat and the Iranian Ahura Mazda

was omnipotent; but if he acted is fated") he would disrupt the universe and induce the other gods

was

of arta. Zeus

v-rrep

fiopov

("beyond what

the order of

(being deifications of power), in like

In the

is

given only of the bad.

no hope that the inequaliwould be divinely adjusted after death.

religion allowed

Odyssey the belief

is

graphically presented that

death irreparably shattered the psychophysical conof the individual

stitution

person, and that only a

whom

he ruled,

ruled over by Pluto and his queen Persephone.

Except for certain minor variations, the Homeric

XVI,

431-61, which describes the reaction of Zeus to an

his intention to the

for-

descend into the gloomy depths of Hades, which was

Greeks instinctively

significant instance occurs in the Iliad

human

ill

Homeric poems

for the

conceived of their gods as "men writ large."

the

by a vivid imagery: Zeus

wraith-like replica, without consciousness, survived to

anthropomorphic terms,

jans. Patroclus,

illustrated

a cosmos, not a chaos. This

aspect finds graphic expression in the

A very

is

Olympus. Cenerallv the assignments are balanced mixtures of good and ill; but sometimes, without apparent

ties of this life

in

fortune

portrayed as arbitrarily giving out good and

deadly aspects of cosmic phenomena: Zeus wields

it is

human

indicated divine caprice. In the Iliad XXIV, 527-33,

former predominating, for Zeus

earthquakes; Apollo's arrows are equated with pesti-

to act

manner, so that chaos would replace cosmos.

conception of deity formed the main tradition of Greek theology into the age of Greco-Roman culture.

It

finds

expression in poetry and drama; and negatively in sepulchral

art,

where the sad scenes of farewell make

no reference to Zeus and the other gods. Religious iconography, although it produced some superb depictions of deity in the idealized perfection of the

form, portrays only a calm dignity, aloof from

human human

emotions, and remote from concern with the aspirations It

and was

fears of mortal beings.

which appealed to many as a an attempt was made to set view of deity in a carefully articu-

in Stoicism,

philosophy of

life,

forth the traditional

that

scheme that rationally accounted for the universe and man's place in it. As Cicero succinctly defined Stoic theology: "Zeno and the Stoics generally maintain that God is aether, endowed with Mind, by which the universe is ruled" (j. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, I, frag. 154). Man could not, therefore, have lated

a personal relation with God; but he was counselled to live

"according to Nature," which meant integrating

Greek mythology was very conscious of the forces of chaos in the universe, which it personified under the image of Giants and Titans, whom the Olympian gods had once subdued after a truly titanic struggle. In the Homeric poems Zeus is described as "the father of gods and men." This title did not signify that he was regarded as the Creator of the universe; it connoted his sovereign supremacy. In these poems, also, the classic pattern of the Greek estimate of man's situation vis-a-vis the gods first emerges. The gods, and

himself with the cosmic process and not aspiring to

preeminently Zeus, are represented

a formless disintegrating mass"

in their dealings with

340

ernment; but the irrational variety of

Homeric

that

of

cosmic phenomena suggested an orderly divine gov-

power, generally associated with the more violent or

lence. But

of the forces oper-

The general harmony

tune to mankind from two urns, set on the floor of

Aegean

Aryan sky-god.

essentiallv the

was inspired by experience

ative in the natural world.

tra-

represents a fusion of Indo-European and ditions; but with the

of deity

as

being capricious

men. This presentation undoubt-

edly derived from the fact that the Greek conception

a destiny outside that process.

The

Stoics

assumed that

the cosmic process was rational, being the expression of the divine providence (irpovoia).

The

difficulty of

preserving this belief, however, against the logic of

experience

is

significantly reflected in the Meditations

of Marcus Aurelius,

who

nobly strove to live according

to Stoic precepts: "Either all things

rational source,

whole

(erf

come from

and combine together

that the former

be

true; but his

a single

coherent

atoms («to/x

h~

with the

(Jammer

[1966], pp. 359-60). Considering a box with a shutter,

tween problems of physics and of epistemology, problems which still persist, was discussed in great detail by Ernst Cassirer (Cassirer, 1936. L937).

serious

AE Ar

thought-experiment

lem, one of the crucial stages of the interaction be-

Heisenberg's interpretation of the uncertainty rela-

in the

moment known with

box so as to be opened

and

arbitrary accuracy,

re-

leasing thereby a single photon, Einstein claimed that

by weighing the box before and after the photonemission and resorting to the equivalence between energy and mass, £ = roc 2 both A£ and Ar can be ,

made

as small as desired, in blatant violation of the

relation

Bohr, however (after a sleepless night!),

(2).

refuted

Einstein's

challenge

with

Einstein's

own

weaponry; referring to the red-shift formula of general relativity according to which the rate of a clock depends on

showed

position

its

that,

if

in

this factor

Bohr

a

gravitational

is

correctly taken into ac-

field

count, Heisenberg's energy-time uncertainty relation

obeyed. Einstein's photon-box,

fully

is

means

if

used as a

measuring the energy of the

for accurately

photon, cannot be used for controlling accurately the

Heisenberg with having given "a causal explanation

moment

why

argument was erroneous, but so was Einstein's argument (jammer, 1972). In any case, Einstein was defeated but not convinced, as Bohr himself admitted. In fact, in a paper written five years later in collaboration with B. Podolsky and N. Bosen, Einstein showed that in the case of a two-particle system whose two components separate after their

causal

1935).

explanations

The main

physics

itself

attack,

— by

are

(Popper,

impossible"

however, was launched within

Albert Einstein in his debate with

Niels Bohr. 7.

The Einstein-Bohr Controversy about

Indeter-

minacy. Although having decidedly furthered the de-

velopment

of the probabilistic interpretation of quan-

tum phenomena through

his early contributions to the

photo-electric effect and through his statistical derivation of

Planck's formula for black-body

radiation,

Einstein never agreed to abandon the principles of

and continuity

causality

or,

equivalently, to renounce

the need of a causal account in space and time, in favor of a statistical theory; and he

saw

in the latter

only

an incomplete description of physical reality which has to be supplanted sooner or later by a fully deterministic

of

its

release.

If

closely examined,

Bohr's

refutation of Einstein's

interaction,

it

is

possible to predict with certainty

either the exact value of the position or of the

tum

momen-

one of the components without interfering with it at all, but merely performing the appropriate measurement on its partner. Clearly, such a result would violate the uncertainty relation (1) and condemn the quantum-mechanical description as incomplete (Einstein, 1935). Although the majority of quantumtheoreticians are of the opinion that Bohr refuted this of

To prove that the Bohr-Heisenberg theory of quantum phenomena does not exhaust the possibilities of accounting for observable phenomena, and is consequently only an incomplete description, it would suffice, argued Einstein correctly, to show that a close

challenge also (Bohr, 1935), there are some physicists

analysis of fundamental measuring procedures leads to

early recognized that the rigorous derivation of the

results in contradiction to the uncertainty relations. It

position-momentum

was clear

mechanical formalism as a calculus of Hermitian oper-

theory.

that disproving these relations

means

dis-

proving the whole theory of quantum mechanics. Thus, during the Fifth Solvay Congress in Brussels (October 24 to 29, 1927) Einstein challenged the correctness of the uncertainty relations

number phase of

by

scrutinizing a

of thought-experiments, but Bohr succeeded

in rebutting all attacks (Bohr, 1949).

590

October 20 to 25, 1930) where these were resumed when Einstein challenged the

(Brussels,

discussions

energy-time uncertainty relation

vival in the twentieth century.

The

Congress

this

The most dramatic

controversy occurred at the Sixth Solvay

who

consider the Einstein-Podolsky-Bosen argument

Copenhagen interpretation. more technical nature were leveled the energy-time uncertainty relation (2). It was

as a fatal

blow

to the

Criticisms of a against

relation

ators in Hilbert space has

from

no analogue

the

quantum-

for the energy-

time relation; for while the dynamical variables q and p are representable in the formalism as Hermitian

(noncommutative) operators, satisfying the relation

qp is

—

pq

=

ift,

and although the energy of a system

likewise represented as a Hermitian operator, the

Hamiltonian, the time variable cannot be represented

INDETERMINACY IN PHYSICS by such an operator

shown q and

and

p,

1933). In fact, it can be and momentum coordinates,

iPauli.

that the position

their linear combinations are the onlv

canonical conjugates for which uncertainty relations in the

Heisenberg sense can be derived from the oper-

between the dispermeasurements of position, and the dispersion or "spread" of measurements of momentum, if carried out on a large ensemble of identically prepared systems. Under these circumstances the idea that denotes, in this view, a correlation sion or "spread" of

ator formalism. This circumstance gave rise to the fact

noncommuting

meaning of the indeterminacy \t in the energy-time uncertainty relation was never unambiguously denned. Thus in recent discussions of this uncertainty relation at least three different meanings

ible

that the exact

of \t can be distinguished duration of the opening time i

of a

slit;

tion of a

variables are not necessarily incompat-

but can be measured simultaneously on individual

systems would not violate the statistical interpretation.

Such

an

interpretation

was

indeterminacy

Popper (Popper,

quantum-mechanical

of

suggested

19.35).

relatively

by

early

His reformulation of the un-

the uncertainty of this time-period; the dura-

certainty principle reads as follows: given an ensemble

concomitant measuring process

(aggregate of particles or sequence of experiments

c.f..

Chvlinski,

1965; Halpern. 1966; 1968). Such ambiguities led L.

Mandelstam and

Tamm.

I.

in

1945. to interpret \t

time during which

in this uncertainty relation as the

the temporal

an observable

mean value

of the standard deviation of

R becomes

standard deviation:

I.

equal to the change of

JK = -

.

If

its

^E,

performed on one particle which after each experiment is brought back to its original state) from which, at a certain

moment and with

a given precision Aq. those

particles having a certain position q are selected; the

momenta p

show a random where Sq Ip > ft,

of the latter will then

scattering with a range of scatter A;;

now, denotes the energy standard deviation of the system under discussion during the ^-measurement,

and vice

then the energy-time uncertainty relation acquires the

contention by the construction of a thought-experiment

same

for the determination of the sharp values of position

logical status within the formalism of

mechanics

as that possessed

quantum

by the position-momentum

and

momentum

The ensemble

relation.

A

versa.

different

approach to reach an unambiguous

in-

Popper even thought, though errone-

ously as he himself soon realized, to have proved his

(Popper, 1934). interpretation of indeterminacy found

an eloquent advocate

in

Henry Margenau.

Distin-

terpretation of the energy-time uncertainty relation

guishing sharply between subjective or a priori and

had been proposed as early as 1931 by L. D. Landau and R. Peierls on the basis of the quantum-mechanical perturbation theory (Landau and Peierls. 1931; Landau and Lifshitz [1958], pp. 150-53), and was subsequently

empirical or a posteriori probability, Margenau pointed

S. Krylov and V. A. Fock (Krylov and Fock, 1947). This approach was later severely criticized by Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm (Aharonov and Bohm, 1961) which led to an extended discussion on

elaborated by N.

without reaching consensus (Fock, 1962; Aharonov and Bohm, 1964; Fock, 1965). Recently atthis

issue

out that the indeterminacy associated with a single

measurement such as referred to in Heisenberg's gamma-ray experiment is nothing more than a qualitative subjective estimate, incapable of scientific verifi-

would at once revert measurement as the constituent

cation; every other interpretation to envisaging the single

of a statistical ensemble; but as soon as the empirical

view on probability frequencies,

is

is

adopted which, grounded

the only one that

is

in

scientifically sound,

tempts have been made to extend the formalism of

the uncertainty principle,

quantum mechanics,

by generalizing the Hilbert space to a super-Hilbert space (Rosenbaum, 1969), so that it admits the definition of a quantummechanical time-operator and puts the energy-time

between the dispersions of measurement results, becomes amenable to empirical verification. To vindicate this interpretation Margenau pointed out that, contrary

uncertainty relation on the same footing as that of

be measured with arbitrary accuracy

position

as for instance

and momentum (Engelmann and Fick, 1959,

1964; Paul, 1962; Allcock, 1969). 8.

The

Statistical

Interpretation

mechanical Indeterminacy.

If

of Quantum-

the ^-function charac-

terizes the behavior not of an individual particle but

of a statistical ensemble of particles, as contended in

the

"statistical

interpretation"

of

the

quantum-

mechanical formalism, then obviously the uncertainty relations, at least as far they derive

from

this

formalism,

refer likewise not to individual particles but to statistical

ensembles of these. In other words, relation

(1)

now

asserting a relation

to conventional ideas, canonical conjugates at

may

well

one and the

same time; thus two microscopes, one using gamma rays and the other infra-red rays for a Doppler-experiment, may simultaneously locate the electron and determine its momentum and no law of quantum mechanics prohibits such a double measurement from succeeding (Margenau, 1937; 1950). This view does not abnegate the principle, for on repeating such measurements many times with identically prepared systems the product of the standard deviations of the values obtained will have a definite lower limit. Although Margenau and

R. N. Hill

(Margenau and

591

>

INDETERMINACY IN PHYSICS 1961) found that the usual Hilbert space formalism

Hill,

of

quantum mechanics does not admit

measurements of non-

distributions for simultaneous

commuting

probability

variables, E. Prugovecki has suggested that

by introducing complex probability distributions the existing formalism of mathematical statistics can be generalized so as to overcome this difficulty. For other approaches to the same purpose we refer the reader to an important

paper b\ Margenau and Leon Cohen,

and the bibliography

therein (Margenau and

listed

Cohen, 1967), and also to the analyses of simultaneous measurements of conjugate variables carried out by E. Arthurs and J. L. Kellv Arthurs and Kelly. 1965), C. Y. She and H. Heffner (She and Heftier, 1966),

James

Park and Margenau

L.

1968), William T. Scott

i

L.

(J.

Scott,

Park and Margenau,

and Dick H.

1968),

to

that, rather, small errors

such values. As soon as

it is

must always be assigned

this

is

admitted, however,

easy to show that within the course of time these

accumulate immensely and evoke serious inTo illustrate this idea Born applied

errors

determinacies.

Einstein's model of a one-dimensional gas with one atom which is assumed to be confined to an interval

of length L, being elastic-ally reflected at the endpoints of this interval. If

atom v

is

at x

and d

+

=

At

it is

and

.v„ ,

it

assumed that its

at

follows that at time

L

the position-indeterminacy equals initial

time

knowledge has been converted

ignorance. In fact, even

t

if

the

tion of every air molecule in a

is

= L/\v

,

and our

itself,

into

the

complete

error in the posi-

initial

row

r

—

between

velocity has a value

only one millionth

one micro-second (under knowledge about the air will

of a percent, after less than

Holze and William T. Scott (Holze and Scott, 1968). These investigations suggest the result that neither single quantum-mechanical measurements nor even

be effaced. Thus, according to Born, not only quantum physics, but already classical physics is replete with

combined simultaneous measurements

of canonieally

u-indeterminacies

conjugate variables are, in the terminology of the

i-indeterminacies.

introduction, subject to i-indeterminaey, even though

standard conditions)

The

all

which

mathematical

from

derive

situation

unavoidable

Bom's

underlying

reasoning had been the subject of detailed investi-

thev are subject to u-indeterminacy.

Popper

gations in connection with problems about the stability

questioned the absence, in principle, of indetermin-

of motion at the end of the last century iLiapunov,

Indeterminacy

9.

and

acies,

in particular of

that at least

Physics.

u-indeterminacies, in classi-

theory indeterministic

one event

in the sense of

is

physics

to

is

if it

asserts

not completely determined

being not predictable in

Popper attempted classical

Classical

in

cal physics. Calling a

all its details,

prove on logical grounds that

indeterministic since

u-indeterminacies (Popper, 1950).

He

ing and predicting machine (today

it

derived

clusion by showing that no "predictor,"

i.e.,

contains this

con-

a calculat-

we would

say sim-

ply "computer"), constructed and working on classical principles, its

own

is

capable of fully predicting every one of

future states; nor can

it

fully predict, or

predicted by, any other predictor with which acts.

it

be

inter-

Popper's reasoning has been challenged by G. F.

Dear on the grounds that the sense in which "selfprediction" was used bv Popper to show its impossibility is not the sense in which this notion has to be used in order to allow for the effects of interference (Dear,

Dear's criticism, in turn, has recently been

1961).

shown

to

be untenable by W. Hoering (Hoering, 1969)

who argued on

the basis of

Leon

Brillouin's penetrating

investigations (Brillouin, 1964) that "although Popper's

reasoning

is

open to

criticism

he arrives

at the right

conclusion."

That

classical physics

is

not free of u-indeterminacies

contended by Max Bom (Born, 1955a; 1955b) who based his claim on the observation that even in

was

also

classical physics the

592

and

initial

Poincare), but

its

classical physics

relevancy for the indeterminacy of

was pointed out only quite recently

(Brillouin, 1956).

Bom's argumentation was challenged by von Laue (von Laue, 1955), and more recently also by Margenau and Cohen (Margenau and Cohen, 1967). As Laue pointed out, the indeterminacy referred to by Born is essentially

merely a technical limitation of measurein principle can be refined as much as

ment which

desired. If the state of the system

a point

P

is

represented by

in phase-space, observation at

will assign to

time

P a phase-space volume V which

is

t

=

larger

the greater the error in measurement. In accordance

with the theory

it

is

then

the representative point

known

P

is

that at time

f

=

located in a volume

which, according to the Liouville theorem of

f

x

V-,

statistical

now, at r = r, a measurement is performed, P will be found in a volume V\ which, if theory and measurement are correct, must mechanics, equals

V

.

If,

have a nonzero intersection

D

1

Vr Dj is smaller V To D,, as a of V so that the

with

than Vj and hence also smaller than subset of Vj, corresponds a subset

.

indeterminacy, even without a refinement of the immediate measurement technique, has been reduced. Since this corrective procedure can be iterated ad initial

libidum and thus the "orbit" of the system defined with arbitrary

accuracy, classical mechanics has no un-

assumption of knowing precise

eliminable indeterminacies. In quantum mechanics, on

an unjustified idealization

the other hand, due to the unavoidable interference

values of observables

is

INDETERMINACY IN PHYSICS of the measuring device

upon the

object of measure-

ment, such a corrective procedure does not work; in other words, the volume

made

V

in

phase-space cannot be

smaller than h", where n

the

is

degrees of freedom of the system,

mechanical indeterminacy

is

an irreducible

fundamental difference between physics has tions of

number

of the

and quantum-

classical

fact.

This

and quantum

ultimate source in the different concep-

its

an objective (observation-independent) physi-

cal reality.

Naturwissenschaften (Vienna, 1919), pp. 705-06. V. A. Fock, "Criticism of an Attempt to Disprove the Uncertainty Relation

between Time and Energy."

Soviet Physics JETP, 15

"More about

the Energy-time Uncer-

(1962), 784-86; idem,

tainty Relation." Soviet Physics Uspekhi, 8 (1965), 628-29.

Friedlander. Plato:

P.

"On

Halpern, Physica

York, 1958), p.

Light of Recent

24

274-79;

(1966),

"On

idem,

"Uber den anschaulichen Inhalt Kinematik und Mechanik,"

Heisenberg,

schrift fur Physik,

Quantum Theory

minism

and the Uncertainty Relation for Time and Energy," Physical Review, 122 (1961), 1649-58; idem, "Answer to Fock Concerning the Time Energy Indeterminacy Relation," Physical Review, 134 (1964), B 1417-18. G. R. Allcock, "The

phy of

the

in

of Arrival in Quantum Mechanics," Annals of Physics, 53 (1969), 253-85, 286-310, 311-48. Archive for the History

Time

of Quantum Physics (Philadelphia, Berkeley, Copenhagen, 1961-64). E. Arthurs and J. L. Kelly, "On the Simultaneous

Measurement of a Pair of Conjugate Observables," Ttie Bell System Technical Journal. 44 (1965), 725-29. N. Bohr, "Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Complete?,"

696-702; idem, "Discussion with Einstein," stein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A.

48

Review,

Physical

(1935),

in Albert Ein-

Schilpp (Evanston,

111.,

the

28 (1968), 356-58.

II, ibid.,

quanten-theoretischen

Aharonov and D. Bohm, "Time

der Zeit-

43 (1927). 172-98. W. Hoering, "IndeterJournal for the Philoso-

in Classical Physics," British

Holze and W. T. Measurement in Quantum Mechanics. II. A Detailed Position Measurement Thought Experiment," Annals of Physics, 47 (1968), 489-515. M. Jammer, The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics (New York, 1966); idem. The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (New York, 1972). N. S. Krylov and V. A. Fock, "On the Uncertainty Relation between Time Scott,

Science, 20 (1969), 247-5.5. D. H.

"The Consequences

of

and Energy," Journal of Physics (USSR), 11 (1947), 112-20. P. S. Kudrjawzew, "Aus der Geschichte der Unscharferelation,"

XTM:

Schriftenreihe

senschaften, Technik

Landau and

E.

M.

Lifschitz,

Mass., 1958). L. D.

fiir

Geschichte der Xaturwis-

und Median,

2 (1965), 20-22. L. D.

Quantum Mechanics

Landau and

R. Peierls,

(Reading,

"Erweiterung

Boltzmann, Lectures on Gas Theory

des Unbestimmtheitsprinzips fur die relativistische Quan-

Stephen G. Brush (Berkeley, 1964). M. Born,

tentheorie," Zeitschrift fiir Physik, 69 (1931), 56-69. M. von

1949), pp. 199-241. L. (1895), trans.

(New

in the

the Einstein-Bohr Ideal Experiment," Acta

Austriaca.

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and

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W.

T. Scott.

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idem.

Sitzungsberichte (1930),

Berliner

Measurement

of

V.

—

296-303:

in der Physik 2 Vbr/r00 to 1800. 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1934). M. Ginsberg. "The Individual and Socithe

losophy,

is

memorable pro-

not yet credited with

nouncements about apeiron, not even indirectly; but Thales

is

whereas

the only pre-Socratic his

who

is

not so credited,

younger compatriot Anaximander already

even emphatically so (ibid., sec. III). After Anaxito and including Aristotle, each and every philosopher dealt with infinity, openly or disguisedly; and many of them had a good deal to say about it. This in itself sets off Thales from all other philosophers, and it justifies the shrewd observation in is,

mander, and up

Diogenes Laertius that Thales, with

whom

it

was Anaximander, and not

(Greek) speculative philosophy

began (Diogenes Laertius, Book 1, Ch. 13). seems likely that Anaximander composed a book which Anaximander himself, or others after him, called "On Nature," and that it included a chapter on apeiron, perhaps at the head of the book. Apparently because truly It

this, late classical antiquity (many centuries after Anaximander) formed a consensus that Anaximander had been a one-man creator of the problem of infinity in classical Greek thought, and that this had been his

of

central achievement. This

however

is

a doubtful thesis.

INFINITY There

is

nothing

and Aristotle to suggest that

in Plato

the tenth and eleventh centuries a.d.; there are

in

stage of the philosophical past at the initiative of a

historical appraisals that Islamic philosophy in

mander or ever

never

Plato

philosopher.

specific

mentions

Anaxi-

alludes to him. Aristotle does mention

him, but relatively rarely, and

somehow very guardedly him out

(Kirk and Raven, p. 108), and without singling

problem of

for a special link with the

apeiron occurs in

all

In fact,

infinity.

eight books of Aristotle's Physica;

and, by Aristotle's express design, the major part of

Book

namely chapters 4 through

3,

9,

is

a concise

systematic essay about apeiron. Yet, within this essay,

Anaximander

is

mentioned only once, along with other

pre-Socratics, and, within the essay, the total reference to

him

is

it is

[the infinite] with the Divine, for

it

"deathless and imperishable

',

as

Anaximander

says with

12-14, Oxford

the majority of physicists (Physica, 203b translation).

Whatever

late antiquity

may have thought

or said,

from reading Aristotle one gains the impression that the study of infinity, in the

first

its

various facets, had been from

an all-Hellenic enterprise, in

which

virtually

had been. ambitious work The Decline

everybody had participated; and so indeed

Oswald Spengler, in his of the West, which was published

made much

had been an off-shoot of general Hellenism

(R.

turn

its

Walzer,

passim). If Greek natural philosophers of the Hellenic period were indeed wary of infinity, then this was due largely to the fact that they had precociously discovered how difficult it is to comprehend infinity in its conceptual ramifications and not because they had an innate hesitancy to be intimate with it. As is evident from various

works of Aristotle (Physica, De caelo, De generatione et corruptione, etc.), the Greeks had by then created a host of problems about infinity that are familiar to

and natural philosophy; problems about infinity were

us from cosmology, physics,

as follows:

Further, they identify

bloom

rived from Islamic philosophy that had been in

the problem, or problems, of infinity arose at a fixed

in

it

German

in 1918,

then as today significant

correlated with problems about continuity, motion, matter, genesis of the universe, etc.

For instance, on one occasion Aristotle suggests that the belief in infinity is derived from five sources: (i) from the

infinity of time,

magnitude,

(ii)

from the

(iii)

there

if

is

an

infinite

divisibility of

fact that the perpetuity of

generation and destruction only

from the

in

nature can be maintained

source to draw on,

(iv)

from

the fact that anything limited has to be limited by

something is

no

else,

limit to

and

finally, (v)

our power

from the fact that there

of thinking that would inhibit

of the thesis, to which, in the end, even

the mental attribution of infinity to numbers, to mag-

and B. Rochot subscribed, that unlike the Middle Ages and

what is outside the heavens. (Physica, 203b 15-25; our paraphrase is adapted from \V. D. Ross, Aristotle's Physics, p. 363.) These aspects of infinity are timeless; they might have been envisioned, spontaneously, by Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, or Herbart. There is most certainly nothing "ancient" or "antiquarian" about them, and there is nothing in them to suggest that Aristotle had any kind of innate hesitancy to face infinity when meeting it. Furthermore, certain special problems about infinity which are generally presumed to be "typically medieval" were formulated in later antiquity and had roots

professional historians such as P. Kucharski

the Renaissance, classical antiquity, before the onset

and diffusion of Hellenism, did not find it congenial to abandon itself to the mystique of infinity, but was aspiring to control and suppress infinity rather than to contemplate and savor it. To this we wish to point out that even during the Renaissance and after, leading scientists like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and others, were approaching problems of infinity with caution and reserve, and in no wise abandoned themselves to a mystique of the infinite. Furthermore, cosmology in the twentieth century ting infinity into It is

phers

its

is

also circumspect

true that since the Renaissance

— as distinct from philosophizing

many

philoso-

scientists

— were

in their find-

and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a leader this disposition may have been

among them. But even

a stage of a development that reached back into cal antiquity, into

Bruno

infinity of

Hellenism

philosopher

any

at

rate.

classi-

Long before

space was vigorously advocated, from

an anti-Aristotelian stance a Hasdai

Crescas

la

Bruno, by the Jewish

(1340-1411)

and

apparently created a fashion (Wolfson, Crescas'

this .

.

.

,

was apparently a late product of Judeo-Arabic scholasticism, which in its turn was depp. 35-36). Crescas

in the classical (first

disposed to opt for untrammeled infinity ings,

when admit-

context.

nitudes, or to

century

period

a.d.)

fashioned lasting

itself.

Thus, Philo of Alexandria

and Plotinus (third century a.d.) have problems about infinity which are

theological, in the sense that the infinity involved

a leading attribute of divinity. selves

knew

problems of this kind reached back and they may have reached back even

that

at least to Plato,

to

Xenophanes

later antiquity

(late sixth

century

B.C.);

except that only

loosened them out of the matrix of

"natural philosophy" within which they had

being

is

The Middle Ages them-

come

into

first.

After the Middle Ages this theologically oriented infinity

of

Hellenistic

provenance gave

rise

to

a

"secular" infinity in general philosophy, notably so in the

many

philosophical systems that were burgeoning

o(J5

INFINITY of "secular" absolutes; and there

infinity of

the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries

continue to be books and discussions in which seem-

and centered

in the

We

seventeenth century.

note that

the transition from theological to ontological infinity

was

a natural

tionary" in

development which was not "revoluLogically

itself.

it

does not matter

much

problems about

timeless

ingly

infinity

are

thought

about, talked about, and written about almost as

much

hours of today as they used to be in

in the restless

the leisurely days of yesteryear

(J.

A. Bernardete; B.

whether an infinity is a leading attribute of a theologically conceived divinity, or of some secular absolute

Welte; H. Heimsoeth).

with a commanding standing

concept, widespread, matter-of-fact, operational,

in the

realm of cognition

In present-day mathematics, infinity

There

is

an everyday in-

and morals, and being and belief. Paradigmatic-ally it was the same infinity, whether the absolute, of which it was an attribute, was the rationality of Descartes,

dispensable.

the logicality of Leibniz, the morality of Spinoza, the

to

sensuality of Hobbes, the empiricism of Locke, or the

This organic assimilation of

idealism of Berkeley.

of mathematics has been a part of the total develop-

In the

second half of the eighteenth centurv Immade a very curious use of infinity in

inanuel Kant

of Pure Reason. The fame of the work rests early chapters, in which Kant posits and ex-

his Critique

on

its

pounds a

his

celebrated thesis that space and time are

priori absolutes of a certain kind,

namely

that they

are not objectively real, but only subjectively ideal in

which Kant himself calls, "aesthetical." After expounding this thesis Kant dwells at length on other matters, but in the second half of the treatise, namely in the long section called "The Antinomy of Pure Reason" (trans. N. K. Smith, pp. 384-484), he returns to the thesis and undertakes to fully demonstrate that neither space nor time can be objectively real. Kant reasons after the manner of a medieval schoolman, namely by having resort to old-

ambiguity about

fashioned antinomies.

On

the presumption that space

Kant presents a

(or time) is objectively real, it

then would have to be

it

then would have to be

thesis that

and an antithesis that from which it follows, according to Kant, that space (or time) cannot be objectively real but must be aesthetically ideal. The nineteenth century was crowded with eminent representatives of general philosophy tivists, historicists,

works, there was their attributes,

was

tific

ones struck a

much

in large

discourse on absolutes, and on

infinity

among them. But nothing

said about infinity in

In contrast to

idealists, posi-

early existentialists

with

that

— — and,

works other than

scien-

new note and need be remembered. this,

in the

twentieth century, and

starting in the last decades of the nineteenth century,

become alive with innovations; but these innovations, even when adopted and exploited by philosophers, came about primarily in the topic of infinity has

ment

total

faith."

the general

body

development was Georg

numbers, between 1870 and 1890.

It

was a

catalytic

event, and more. But a complete account has to a string of predecessors, like

name

Cauchy, Abel, Bolzano,

Hankel, Weierstrass, and others.

Furthermore, the nineteenth century began and the twentieth century completed a separation between infinity in

mathematics and

infinity in physics, in spite

of the fact that, since the nineteenth century, physics,

more than

ever, explains

and interprets what mathe-

matics expresses and exposes (Bochner, The Role of Mathematics especially the Introduction and Ch. .

5).

While

.

.

,

mathematics has ceased to be

infinity of

syllogistically different

from other concepts, and oper-

ationally suspect, interpretative infinity of physics

more problematic and In

fact,

whether

in

phvsics and also cosmology,

rational

in ancient or

is

intriguing than ever.

modern

times, the infinite has

always been inseparable from the indefinite and even the undetermined. Physics of the twentieth century has greatly

compounded

hypotheses which

the situation by creating stirring

may be viewed

as novel conceptions

of the role of the indefinitely small

and the

indefinitely

large in the interpretation of physical events

nomena from Heisenberg;

and phe-

the laboratory and the cosmos (W. K. \Y.

Pauli).

Thus,

law of Werner

the

Heisenberg (the uncertainty principle), which that for an elementary particle

mentum cannot be is

its

position

states

and mo-

sharply determined simultaneously,

a statement of unprecedented novelty, about the

indefinitely small in physics. Next, the (statistical distribution

tion

intellectual

infinity to

Cantor's creation of the theory of sets and transfinite

for large

who from an

demonstrable, but have

of analysis since the early nineteenth century.

mathematics and fundamental phvsics and only secbe those philosophers

except that certain foundational

infinity are not

be posited axiomatically, and thus taken "on

ondarily in philosophy of any kind. Yet there continue to

it,

no mystique, uncertainty, or

is

Outstanding within the

finite,

infinite;

about

verities

a peculiarly Kantian sense,

606

God and

during the scientific revolution which extended over

is

law of

Max Born

of particles), which states that

assemblages of matter the density of distribu-

a probability and not a certainty, straddles the

indefinitely small

and

indefinitely large. Finally, the

waves and

devotion to religion, theology, or "non-scientific" phi-

unsettling principle of de Broglie (duality of

losophy seek refuge in perennial problems about the

corpuscles), which states that every elementary particle

INFINITY A

prominent ambiguity,

two realizations, a corpuscular and an undulatory, can be interpreted to mean that even

before

(ibid.)

the undifferentiated cannot be separated from the in-

phanes

(frag.

has, ambivalently,

reaches

and the infinite; in this interpretation it an uncanny insight of the Greeks, which was perceived by them dimly but discernibly.

definite

back

which we have referred

to

occurs in a verbatim fragment of Xeno-

B

K. C. Guthrie

28). In

an excellent translation of W.

runs (emphasis added):

it

to

The

indefinitely large also occurs in

present-day

cosmology (J. H. Coleman; G. Gamow; H. Bondi). Among cosmological models of the universe that are presently under active study there are hardly any that are as completely infinite as was the universe of

At our feet

We

see this upper limit of the Earth

coterminous with air, but underneath it stretches without limit [es apeiron].

The apeiron is

fragment clearly refers only to what

in this

under the surface, and not also

what

to

is

above the

Giordano Bruno, which played a considerable role in philosophy between 1700 ^nd 1900. The models with

horizon; but what this apeiron actually means cannot

"continual creation" are nonfinite, but they are

have been debating whether

in-

large rather than infinitely large (Bondi).

definitely

Even the "universe presumed to reach as

which

of telescopic depth,"

is

far out into the galactic vastness

most powerful telescopes will at any time reach, indefinitely large, inasmuch as there is a "rim of the

as the is

be

stated.

"infinite" or "indefinite."

undecidable, and

mony from

We

(Coleman,

apeiron,

In sum, in our days, the philosophical conception

back again

is

in the

matrix of "scientism"

it was first set, molded, and shaped in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., in small Greek communities of inexhaustible vistas. In the sections to follow we will enlarge upon some

(philosophy of nature) in which

it

We

we have

should be translated by think that the point

previously adduced

is

testi-

support of this conclu-

latest antiquity in

are not asserting that a Creek of the sixth or

fifth

of infinity

since the nineteenth century

sion.

universe" at which "galaxies fade into nothingness" p. 63).

Commentators

centuries

had

to

when encountering

b.c:.,

the

word

go through a mental process of deciding

which of the various meanings, in our vocabulary, is intended. The shade of meaning in our sense was usually manifest from the context; whatever ambiguities presented themselves, were inherent in the objective situation, rather than in the subjective verbalization.

Aristotle, in his usage

and thinking, tends to take

apeiron in the meaning of "infinite in a quantitative

of the topics raised in this survey.

whether they were Ionians, poet philosophers, Pythag-

and in the second half of his Physica (Books which deals with locomotion, terrestrial or orbital, apeiron is taken almost exclusively in this sense. At any rate, the second half of the Physica becomes as intelligible as it can be made, if apeiron is taken in this

oreans, Eleatics, or pluralists

sense exclusively. But in the

II.

When

5-8),

the Greeks started out to take stock of the

physical and cosmological

in their

sense,"

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

own

phenomena around them

— they quickly perceived,

patterns of discernment, the difficulty of

separating the infinite and the indefinite.

But the

Greeks did not allow themselves to become frustrated over this. During the formative stages of their rational-

even

still in Plato, the Greeks reacted to this by investing the word apeiron with both meanings in one, and they added a range of intermediate and proximate meanings too. Thus, in the context of a pre-Socratic philosopheme, and even still in Plato,

ity,

difficulty

apeiron,

have

when

translated into a

modem

idiom,

may

be rendered variously by: infinite, illimited, unbounded; immense, vast; indefinite, undetermined; even by: undefinable, undifferentiated. Furthermore, in

to

the

apeiron

and

meaning

may

— what

of:

infinite,

unbounded, and smallness of size; meaning of indefinite,

illimited,

refer to both bigness

is

important

—

in

its

undetermined, undifferentiated,

etc.,

(in

is

a

first

half of the Physica,

magnificent discourse on principles of

physics in their diversity, Aristotle

is

unable to keep

vestiges of the indefinite out of his apeiron, tints of quality are

keeping with

this, Aristotle's

of

Zeno

to

be quantitative,

and even

shading the hue of quantity. In report on the "puzzles"

(see next section, III), in is

which apeiron has

presented by him in the second

and only there; in the first half is no mention of the puzzles at all, not even in the connected essay about apeiron (see section I, above), in which all aspects of the notion are presumed to be mentioned. All told the Greeks created a permanent theme of

half of the Physica,

of the Physica there

cognition when, in their

own

thought patterns, they

interpreted the disparity between perception and con-

ception as an imprecision between the indefinite and

refer

the infinite. Also, our present-day polarity between the

our sense),

nuclear indefinite of quantum theory and the opera-

apeiron

not only to quantity but also to quality

may

which

even indistinguishably (Bochner, The Role of Mathematics, Ch. 2).

tional infinite of

mathematics proper

in a succession of variations

on

this

is

only the latest

Greek

motif.

607

INFINITY A

Greek

century Nicholas of Cusa broke a medieval stalemate

had been as indefinite as the etendue which it filled, and it is possible that, by a long evolution, both had inherited their indeterminacy from the original apeiron of Anaximander, which may have been the first "subtle

when he made bold

matter" there ever was.

came

remarkable confirmation of in

mathematical

finite

insight

the twilight period between Middle Ages and

Renaissance. In fact, in the

its

this

nor

infinite, that

to proclaim that the universe, in

one sense, neither another sense, both finite and

structure,

and, in

infinite,

indefinite.

is.

half of the fifteenth

first

A

century

half of the sixteenth century, Nicholas

upon himself

is

.

It

note that an imprecision between the

and the infinitely small intervenes whenever a substance which is physically known to

Copernicus took

be distributed discontinuously (granularly, molecularly,

the

solar system, but about the size of the universe

would only sa) guardedly, that it that means A. Kovre, Ch. III).

we

first

later, in

to rearrange the architectonics of our

he

immense, whatever is

true that in the

second half of the sixteenth century Giordano Bruno,

much applauded

Finally

in

is,

made

indefinitelv small

atomistic-ally, nuclearly)

mathematically assumed, for

Without such simplifying assumptions there would be no physics today, in any of its parts. It was ously.

the forte of nineteenth-century physics that

it

excelled

with patience and cogency, and incomparably deeper

which are theories of continuous distribution of matter or energy, and that at the same time, and in the same contexts, it was pioneering in the search of "particles" like atoms, molecules, and

philosophical wisdom, that this would be an astrophys-

electrons (B. Schonland).

a

wide-open and

philosopher,

all-infinite as

but Johannes Kepler, a

ical incongruity,

and

it

the universe as

could conceivably be;

scientists' scientist,

countered,

in field theories,

in the question of the overall size

of the universe Kepler ranged himself alongside Aris-

///.

A famous Greek

Koyre, Ch. IV

totle (A.

In the

Rene reason and

half of the seventeenth century,

first

Descartes, the

modern paragon

of right

"puzzles"

MATHEMATICS encounter with

infinity

is

the

about motion by Zeno of Elea, about

(logoi)

the middle of the

fifth

century

B.C. Best

known

is

the

clear thinking, insisted that his extension (etendue),

conundrum about "Achilles and

which was his space of physical events, is by size indefinite and not infinite; although in some of his

a quick-footed Achilles and a slow-moving Turtle,

Meditations,

when

dealing with the existence of

in general terms, Descartes imparts to

bute of infinity in the (B.

common

God

God

the attri-

(philosophical) sense

The

Platonist

Henry More, an

sure, philosophically

intolerant follower

and theologically,

to

change the

immeawould not surrender (Koyre, Ch. V and

verdict into indefinite, but Descartes, to his

surable credit,

VI). And, in the second half of the seventeenth century and afterwards, Isaac Newton, in all three editions of his incomparable Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687, 1713, 1726), when speaking of cosmic distances, uses the Copernican term "immense" (for instance, F.

Cajori,

ed.,

Principia,

p.

596),

but avoids

saying

whether the size of the universe is finite or infinite, or perhaps indefinite; although between the first and second editions, in a written reply to a query from the equally intolerant divine Robert Bentley,

made some kind of "admission" be

infinite (A.

Even

tains, against all

the Turtle."

It

main-

experience, that in a race between

the Turtle has any head start at

overtake him, ever. In

fact,

all

if

then Achilles cannot

by the time Achilles has

reached the Turtle's starting point the

latter

has

moved

on by a certain distance; when Achilles has covered

Rochot).

of Giordano Bruno, put Descartes under severe pres-

Newton

that the universe might

Koyre, pp. 178-89).

the aether of electrodynamics in the nineteenth

century, although

it

filled

a Euclidean substratum of

that distance,

the Turtle has again gained a novel

distance, etc. This gives rise to an

unending sequence

and the puzzle maintains that Achilles cannot exhaust the sum of the distances and come abreast with the Turtle (Ross, Aristotle's Physics, Introduction; also A. Edel, Aristotle's Theory .). The puzzles have an enduring appeal; but their role of distances;

.

in

stimulating

Greek

rationality

.

cannot be easily

gauged, because the Greek documentation of them

is

very sparse and hesitant. The puzzles were transmitted only by Aristotle, not in his Metaphysica, which

is

Aristotle's work in basic philosophy, but only in the

deals with problems of motion,

which and not with concep-

and principles of physics

in their generality as

Physica, and only in the second half of the latter, tions

does the first half. Furthermore, in classical antiquity the puzzles are never alluded to in mathematical con-

and there is no kind of evidence or even allusion would link professional mathematicians with them.

texts,

that

dimensions, had, by quality, a feature of in-

In a broad sense, in classical antiquity the conception

definiteness, or rather of indeterminacy, adhering to

of infinity belonged to physics and natural philosophy,

infinite

it.

608

is

the sake of manipulations, to be distributed continu-

By pedigree,

this

aether was a descendant of the

"subtle matter" (matiere subtile) of Descartes,

which

but not to mathematics proper; that

is,

to the area of

knowledge with which a department of mathematics

INFINITY is

Nobody

entrusted today.

in antiquity

expected Archimedes to give a lecture to

would have

"On

Infinity"

his engineering staff

an academic audience, or to

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

were rather

active.

But studies thus far have not determined whether, as

maintained

in the

voluminous work of Pierre

Duhem

a spark from the late Middle Ages leapt

at the Syracuse Ministry of Defence. Also, no ancient

(ibid., p. 117),

commentator would have said that Anaxagoras (fifth century B.C.) had introduced a mathematical aspect of infinity, as is sometimes asserted today (e.g., in Revue

which centered

in the

this revolution

was

de Synthese, pp. 18-19).

reasoned books of Anneliese Maier.

across the Renaissance to ignite the scientific revolution

seventeenth century, or whether

self-igniting, as

implied in well-

And

they also have

Furthermore, such Greek efforts by mathematics

not determined what, in this area of knowledge, the

from our retrospect, did bear on

contribution of the Arabic tributary to the Western

proper

—

as,

infinity,

—

again from our retrospect greatly hampered in their eventual outcome by a congenital limitation of Greek mathematics at its root (Bochner, The Role pp. 48-58). As evidenced by of Mathematics developments since around a.d. 1600, mathematics, if it is to be truly successful, has to be basically operational. Greek constructive thinking however, in math-

were

.

.

.

,

ematics and also in general, was basically only ideational.

By

this

we mean

that,

on the whole, the Greeks

only formed abstractions of the

first

order, that

ide-

is

whereas mathematics demands also abstractions of higher order, that is abstractions from abstractions, abstractions from abstractions from abstractions, alizations,

etc.

We

such.

are not underestimating Greek ideations as

Some

of

them

are

among

the choicest Greek

achievements ever. For instance, Aristotle's distinction

between potential

infinity

and actual

infinity

was a

pure ideation, yet unsurpassed in originality and imperishable in

conceived

its

importance. However, as Aristotle

and generations of followers knew it, this was not fitted into operational syllogisms,

it,

distinction

and was therefore unexploitable. Because of

this

even

front-rank philosophers, especially after the Renaissance, mistook this distinction for a tiresome scholasticism, until, at last, late Victorian

to assimilate

it

into

its

mathematics began

operational texture.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mathe-

matics was so fascinated with operational itself

skills,

its

newly developing raw it hid from

that, in its ebullience,

the necessity of attending to

some

basic con-

ceptual (ideative) subtleties, mostly involving

infinity,

the discovery and pursuit of which had been a hallmark

mainstream actually was. IV.

THE INFINITELY SMALL

Relative to the infinitely small, Greek mathematics attained two summit achievements: the theory of proportions, as presented by Book 5 of Euclid's Elements; and the method of exhaustion for the computation of areas and volumes, as presented by the essay "On Sphere and Cylinder" of Archimedes. Eudoxus of Cnidos (408-355 B.C.), the greatest Greek mathematician before Archimedes and a star member of Plato's Academy, who was even an expert on

—

"Hedonism and Ethical Purity"

On

processes.

an

the face of

infinity of steps,

tury to really overtake the Greeks in these matters.

ance,

between Greek precociousness and modern In

the realm

of mathematical

infinity

such a process requires

—

The symbol

pertise.

it,

by which the express introduction of infinity was circumvented. The Greeks never bestowed mathematical legitimacy on an avowed conception of infinity, but they created a circumlocution by which to avoid any direct mention of it. Thus the word apeiron occurs in Archimedes only nontechnically, and very rarely too. In the nineteenth century, Georg Cantor and others, but mainly Cantor, legitimized infinity directly, and the world of thought has not been the same since. But the Greek method of circumvention lives on too, as vigorously and indispensably as ever; except that a symbol for infinity namely the symbol "oo" which was introduced by John Wallis in 1656 has been quences.

diary

any,

but the Greeks devised a procedure

into

This raises the problem, a very difficult one, of

both

if

and he is, in historical truth, only a name. The durable outcome of these efforts was a syllogistic procedure for the validation of mathematical limiting

injected

determining the role of the Middle Ages as an interme-

in

survives,

Only in the nineteenth century did mathematics sober down, and finally turn its attention to certain conceptualizations and delicate ideations towards which the Greeks, in their precociousness, were oriented from the first. But even with its vastly superior operational skills, modern mathematics had to spend the whole nineteenth cenof the mathematics of the Greeks.

— had a share

achievements. But not a line of his writings,

the

—

with remarkable conse-

context,

occurs, for instance, in the limit

relation 1

lim„

which, notwithstanding is

=

0,

un-Archimedian appearits true meaning. In

its

purely Archimedian by

fact, since

\/n decreases

as

n increases, the Cauchy

definition of this relation states that corresponding to

ex-

any positive number

the

integer n such that 1/n

e,

however

to nt

and the

1,

last

relation can

be

verbalized thus: If f is

arise. It

number, then on adding it to itself the resulting number will exceed the

any positive

real

sufficiently often,

number

of Archimedes, then the statement just verbalized bea particular case of the so-called "Postulate of

Archimedes," which, for our purposes,

may be

stated

thus: If

a and

is if

both

a to

/;

two magnitudes

are any

of the

same kind

are, say, lengths, areas, or volumes),

b: that

is

> b,

na

(that

then on adding

the resulting magnitude will

itself sufficiently often,

exceed

some

for

(E.

n.

J.

Dijksterhuis,

Archimedes, pp. 146-47 has the wording of the postulate in original Greek, an English translation of his own, and a comparison of this translation with various others).

The Greek theory

of proportion

was a "substitute" continuum for

numbers, and the

infinitely small

is

involved in

his

background equipment,

to

be aware of the fact that such puzzles were ever con-

The "method

of exhaustion"

the syllogistic maturity of the

Riemann-Darboux

of the

ing today.

An

"postulate" into an "axiom," that

may

real

numbers; that

is

the idea of a real

they did not operationally abstract

number

from the idea of a general

magnitude. Instead, Euclid's Book 5 laboriously establishes properties of

a linear continuum for a magnitude

Greeks had been of real numbers and to

or

may

is

into an axiomatic

not be adjoined to suita-

ble sets of axioms, in geometry, analysis, or algebra.

This gives rise to various non-Archimedian possibilities

and

some

settings,

of

infinitely small

regrettably, did not introduce

nine-

1894)

and D. Hilbert (Grundlagen, 1899) transformed the

come

volume, time, energy, temperature,

equal to that

a present-day

came about in the late when G. Veronese (Grundzuge,

3,

The Greeks, most

is

innovation

teenth century

Book

etc.

in

text, but in operational efficiency the method was made obsolete by the first textbook on the integral calculus from around a.d. 1700 (C. B. Boyer, p. 278). However the method also embodied the postulate of Archimedes, and this postulate has an enhanced stand-

continuum (see Appendix to this section). Our numbers are a universal quantitative "yardstick" by which to measure any scalar physical magnitude, like length, area,

method

integral

graduate

of importance.

real

a Greek anticipation works of Archimedes,

is

of the integral calculus. In the

interlocking properties of denseness and completeness of this

Aristotle

This

made

Ch.

interest

and even

the major pronouncement (Physica,

7) that

an insight

is

which are of

may

a magnitude (megethos)

be-

only potentially, but not actually.

in depth,

and there are various possipronouncement

bilities for translating this ideational

from natural philosophy into a present-day statement in operational mathematics. We adduce one such statement: although every real

number can be

repre-

sented by a nonterminating decimal expansion,

it

is

(niyeOos, megethos) in general. If the

generally not possible to find an actual formula for the

inspired to introduce our field

entire infinite expansion; but potentially, for

give to the positive numbers the status of magnitudes,

scribed real number, by virtue of

then their theory of proportions would have applied

desired finite part of

and their theory of proportions thus completed would have resembled an avant-garde the-

obtained.

to the latter too,

ory of twentieth-century mathematics.

Within the context of Zeno's puzzles, Aristotle was also analyzing the infinitely small as a constituent of

the linear continuum which "measures" length and time. He did so not by the method of circumvention, which the professional mathematicians of his time were developing into an expert procedure, but by a reasoned confrontation a la Georg Cantor, which may have been characteristic of philosophers of his time. In logical detail Aristotle's reasoning

but he was right

is

not always satisfactory,

in his overall thesis that

if

mon

cannot

arise,

maximum,

force. In fact, in present-day

locomotion

is

their

mathematical mechanics,

operationally represented by a mathe-

matical function x

=

the length variable

a.

all this to

suffers annihilation, but

ing

n

arts,

a concrete specific point in

something incongruous

ness

applied

nowadays

as in Cantor.

sense that

612

change the

explicitly or intentionally, but

in the following

two

by the addition of a "hoop" This construction was not

it.

assumption. By Euclid's

straight lines are parallel

if,

was implied

own definition,

being

in the

same

and being produced indefinitely in both directions, they do not meet one another in either direction (T. L. Heath, I, 190). Now, around 1600 some mathematicians began to assume, as a matter of course, that

INFINITY Euclid's definition

two

equivalent to the description that

is

same plane

straight lines in the

produced

after being

are parallel,

they meet

indefinitely,

if,

two

at

both ends of the configuraTo assume this is, from our pres-

infinitely distant points at

tion (and only there).

ent retrospect, equivalent to assuming that there

is

E 2 the kind of hoop that we have described. same mathematicians soon began to sense, in The

around

own manner,

their

neither

is

£2

in this fashion

nor

operationally

that to close off original

intellectually

Gauss (1777-1855). Next,

for n

=

En can be

4,

+

preted as the space of quaternions a

ib

+

jc

inter-

+

kd,

which were created by William Rowan Hamilton (1805-65), and the point at infinity can be interpreted as a quaternion oc for which ° holds. This can still be done for E8 if it be viewed as a space of so-called Cavlev numbers = pairs of quaternions), but no other (

)

,

(

such cases of so-called "real division algebras" are

known

M. T. Greenberg, p. worth recording, as the history of ideas, that around 1900

(N. Steenrod, pp. 105-15;

As regards quaternions

87).

phenomenon

it

is

They began

to

"experiment" with other

a

procedures for closing

off

E 2 These "experiments"

there was an international organization of partisans

profitable.

were a

.

even a significant

part,

part, of the sustained

and projective geometries, and they were satisfactorily completed

efforts to erect the doctrines of descriptive

The outcome was total tive,

as follows. It

E2

our hoop around

,

but this

is

first

The

step.

hoop is too wide, that is, not sufficiently restricand it is necessary to "reduce" it in size by

"identifying" or "matching" various points of

it

with

and foremost,

it is

to "constrict" the

very appropriate to "iden-

hoop with each

tify" all points of the

hoop

as

figure

other, that

to a single point.

By the

E 2 becomes

tion of this single point, the plane

off"

is

addi-

"sealed

and the resulting two-dimensional Con-

infinity,

topologically a spherical surface S 2

is

.

one starts out with an S 2 say with an ideally smoothed-out surface of our earth, and removes one versely,

if

,

point, say the

North Pole, then the remaining surface

can be "spread out" topologically onto the E 2 Such .

a spreading out

done

is

in

cartography by means of

the so-called stereographic projection. This projection of a punctured sphere S 2 on the Euclidean

only topological, that formal, that

known

is

I.

E2

is

not

bi-continuous, but also con-

is

was already and geographer Ptolemy in his Geography (M. R. Cohen

angle-preserving; and this

to the astronomer

the second century a.d. in

and

E. Drabkin, pp. 169-79).

The one-point completion which we have

just de-

scribed can be performed for the Euclidean (or rather Cartesian) space is

En

of any dimension n, and the result

the n-dimensional sphere S n

.

Topologically there

is

no difference between various dimensions, but algebraically there

is.

be viewed

the

z

—

x

+

iy,

as

First, for

n

=

the plane

2,

E2 can

space of the complex numbers

and the added point

interpreted as a complex

number

at

infinity

oo, for

can be

which, sym-

bolically,

After the spheres, the next important spaces which arise

from E n by a suitable addition of points at infinity we will speak only of

are so-called projective spaces;

them by Pn (Other

"real" projective spaces, and denote

.

projective spaces are those over complex numbers, berg, loc.

En

if

—= oo

This interpretation

is

-=

oo.

For each dimension

identifies

each

Pn

n,

it

are identified

"glued together"). The resulting space

is

closed manifold (without any boundary), and

it is

attributed to C. F.

is

a

the

geometry M. Coxeter, p. 13). Klein's purpose in devising his geometry was to remove a "blemish" from the spherical (non-Euclidean) geometry of B. Riemann. In Riemann's geometry any two "straight" (i.e., geodesic) lines intersect in precisely two points, whereas in Klein's variant on it they intersect in precisely one point only. The Pn that is the real projective spaces, have a remarkable property: for even dimensions n they are nonorientable, but for odd dimensions orientable. A space is orientable, if a tornado (or any other spinning top), when moving along any closed path, returns to its starting point with the same sense of gyration with which it started, and it is nonorientable if along some carrier of the so-called elliptic non-Euclidean

of F. Klein

(S.

,

closed path the sense of gyration

gyration

is

two dimensional

P3

in

P3

it

reversed. In the

is.

n the sense of

reversed each time the path "crosses" in-

In particular, the space

finity.

is

Pn with an even-dimensional

case of a

elliptic

Thus, in

between

P2

P2

,

that

geometry,

is

is

the space of

not orientable,

a fully mobile society cannot

right-

and left-handed screws, but

can.

Nineteenth-century mathematics has created

commonly

from

arises

infinitely distant point of the

opposite ends of

infinite points at the

(that

distinguish

1

0,

cit.)

one

"hoop" around E n with its antipodal point, that is, if for each straight line through the origin of E n the two

but 1

C)

from the preceding one; the orga-

to inherit

quaternions, or Cayley numbers; see Steenrod, Green-

each other. First

was about

pertinent to install

only a

is

believed that quaternions were one of the most

potent operational tools which the twentieth century nization has been long extinct.

nineteenth century only.

in the course of the

who

in

other completions of

En which have become

many

the sub-

613

INFINITY stance of the theor)

o\

Riemann

surfaces and of alge-

braic geometry. Twentieth-century mathematics has

produced a one-point "compactification" droff, "I'ber die Metrisation

into all of genera] topology,

.

.

(P.

Alexan-

which has spread

."),

and a theory of prime-

."), ends (C. Caratheodory, "Uber die Begrenzung which in one form or another is of consequence in con.

tightening the looseness-at-infinity of Euclidean struc-

French painting was loosening the tightness-atThe French movement

inhnitv of perspective structure.

is already discernible in Dominique Ingres, but the acknowledged leader of it was Paul Cezanne. Cezanne was not an "anarchist," wanting only to "overthrow" classical perspective without caring what to put in its place, but analysts find it difficult to say what it was that he was aspiring to replace perspective by. We once suggested, for the comprehension of Cezanne, an analogy to developments in mechanics (Bochner, The Role of Mathematics pp. 191-201), and in the .

we

.

.

,

wish to point out,

all

great

philosopher-theologians

that,

with

difficulties

who

thought and exposition are having

strive for clarity of

them.

Thus,

Thomas

Saint

Aquinas, in a discourse on the existence and nature of

God

in the entering part of his

Summa

theologiae,

compares and confronts the completeness and perfection in God with the infinite and limitless in Him. In a "typically Thomistic" sequence of arguments and counterarguments, completeness and infinity are alternately identified and contrasted, as if they were synonyms and antonyms in one; and, although Aquinas very much strives for clarity, it would be difficult to state in a few sharply worded declaratory statements, what the outcome of the discourse actually is (Saint

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Completeness than infinity

in

theologiae. Vol.

philosophy

in

is

II).

even harder

to define

philosophy, and the relation between

two

instead of one (E. Loran, Cezanne's Composition), and

is recondite and elusive. The problem of this was already known to the Greeks. As a problem of cognition it was created by Parmenides, and then clearly formulated by Aristotle, but as a problem

by giving to

of "systematic" theology

present context

Cezanne was trying

that

perspective by

in their

in

another vein,

up the

to loosen

traditional

permitting several vanishing points

lines of

mode

composition considerable freedom

of convergence towards their vanishing

points (M. Schapiro, Paul Cezanne). This particular

suggestion

may be

off the

mark, but the problem of

the

relation

it

came

to the fore only in

the second half of Hellenism, beginning recognizably

with Philo of Alexandria, and coming to a nation in the Enneads of Plotinus.

first

culmi-

From our retrospect,

a parallelism between nineteenth-century develop-

the

ments

divinely intuited completeness and a metaphysically

geometry and

in

does

in the arts

exist.

One

and mottled with ambiguities and

of the worst offenders

polarities.

was Benedict Spinoza,

however much he presumed to articulate his thoughts more geometrico. In fact, the term "infinite" stands in Spinoza for such terms as "unique," "incomparable,"

"homonymous," "indeterminate," "incomprehensible," "ineffable," "indefinable," "unknowable," and many other similar terms (Wolf son,

What

is

.

.

.

Spinoza,

I,

138).

worse, Spinoza justified this license of his by

reference to Aristotle's dictum that "the infinite so far as infinite

certainly this

is unknown" (ibid., I, 139), which Aristotle would not have allowed to be exploited in

way.

But even when intended to be much more coherent, the conception of infinity in a nonscientific context,

infinity.

8.11, of the

Enneads

thus:

The absolute transcendence unlimited. Principle of

eliminating (A. H.

all spatial

of the

may

refer to the intensity of qualitative attributes intellect, justice,

goodness, grace,

as unconditioned,

ideas from our thoughts about

Armstrong, Plotinus,

Him

p. 63).

Also, a study of Plotinus of very recent date has the

following important summary:

Within recent years there has been a long and learned discussion on the infinity of the Plotinian One, and from it we learn much. The chief participants are now in basic agreement that the One is infinite in itself as well as infinite in power (J. M. Rist, p. 25).

Long before Physica (Book

that, Aristotle 3,

Ch.

6) to

bly opposed to "the

devoted a chapter of

his

an express comparison be-

tween completeness and

power, being,

One

things: particular necessity of

all

presents a thesis that infinity

it

between a

this,

of quantitative elements like space, time, matter, etc., like

fusion

Books

of evidence for

especially in theology, need not refer to the magnitude

but

was a

(to eV) of Plotinus

V and VI of the Enneads are and we note, for instance, that a recent study of Plotinus summarizes the passage VI, full

Nonscientific aspects of infinity are usually broad and elusive

"One"

perceived

THE COMPLETE AND THE PERFECT

VH.

614

Because of

.

formal mapping, potential theory, probability theory, and even group theory. In the nineteenth century, while mathematics was ture.

There are large-scale philosophical settings, in which infinity, under this or an equivalent name, does not magnify, or even emphasize, the outward extent of something quantifiable, but expresses a degree of completeness and perfection of something structurable. etc.

infinity, as is

he saw it. Aristotle and unmistaka-

directly

Complete and the Whole"

(re\e iov

Kal okov), and his central statement runs as follows:

INFINITY The

infinite turns out to

be the contrary of what

it

is

said

not what has nothing outside

it

that

but what always has something outside

it

(206b 34-207a

to be.

1,

A

It is

is

infinite,

Oxford translation).

His definition then

is

quantity

it is

infinite if

is

a part outside

as follows:

we can always take been taken. On the other

such that

what has already

hand what has nothing outside it is complete and whole. For thus we define the whole that from which nothing is wanting as a whole man or a whole box (ibid., 207a

—

—

finiteness

not implied automatically.

is

On the contrary,

the completeness of Parmenides can be mathematically

becomes complete

so formalized, that a universe

if it

is

so very infinite that no kind of magnification of

is

possible (Bochner, loc.

cit.).

it

But mathematizations

of the conception of completeness are of relatively it would not be meaningful to pursue comparison between mathematical and philo-

recent origin, and the

sophical versions of the conception beyond a certain point.

7-11).

'Whole' and 'complete' are either quite identical or closely

Nothing is complete (teleion) which has no end and the end is a limit (ibid., 207a 13-14). akin.

(telos);

makes and deservedly so. The great ontological poem of Parmenides clearly Immediately following

this passage, Aristotle

respectful mention of Parmenides,

BIBLIOGRAPHY The only general history of infinity is the book of Jonas Cohen; a supplement to it, heavily oriented toward theology, is the essay of Anton Antweiler. Of considerable interest is a collection of articles in the 1954 volume of the Revue de Synthese.

A comprehensive

study on infinity in Greek antiquity

is

outlines a certain feature of completeness, as an attri-

the

bute of something that

Greek thought had fully the same attitude modern thought. About infinity in the Old Testament see the books of C. von Orelli, Thorleif Boman, and James Barr. Occasionally one encounters the view that, in a true sense, infinity was originally as much a Hebraic intuition as a Greek one, and perhaps even more so. Such a view is implied in the books just cited, and it was expressly stated in Revue de Synthese, p. 53 (remark by M. Serouya). Infinity in the pre-Socratics is competently dealt with in the recent work of Guthrie. Infinity in all of Greek philosophy, Hellenic and Hellenistic, is also fully dealt with in the great Victorian standard work of Eduard Zeller. It is still very good on infinity in Plotinus, and also in Philo, in spite of recent special studies on the two, especially on

is,

ambivalently, an ontological

absolute and a cosmological universe. Ontologically this

universe was

made

of pure being and thought

and there has been nothing

itself,

like

it

since then

Vol. 2; Untersteiner, (W. K. C. Guthrie, A History Paimenide L. Taran, Parmenides .). And yet, ; as we have tried to demonstrate in another context, .

.

.

.

it

,

.

.

the Parmenidean completeness that

.

was

.

so rich in allusions

even allows a measure of mathematization

in

terms of today, more so than Aristotle's interpretation of this completeness

Universe

.

.

.

," sec.

would (Bochner, "The Size of the V).

The Parmenidean being and thought, of the universe, were conceived very course of

many

as constituents tightly. In the

centuries after Parmenides, they were

up and gradually transformed into the Hellenistic "One" and "Logos," which were conceived more diffusely, and less controversially. Also, in the course of these and later centuries, the Parmenidean universe, with its attribute of completeness, was overtly loosened

theologized, mainly Christianized. Aristotle took

it

for granted that the ontological

universe of Parmenides, in addition to being complete,

was also finite, and Parmenides did indeed so envisage it, more or less. But what was a vision in Parmenides was turned into a compulsion by Aristotle. That is, Aristotle maintained, and made into a major proposition, that the Parmenidean universe could not be other than

finite,

how had With

because, for Aristotle, completeness some-

to

be

this

anti-infinite automatically.

proposition

Aristotle

may have

over-

reached himself. Mathematics has introduced, entirely

from

its

own

spontaneity, and under various names,

which is reminiscent of the notion of Parmenides, and, on the whole, several versions of completeness, any of

work

of Mondolfo.

The author

is

a staunch defender

of the thesis that

towards

infinity as

Plotinus. In the case of Philo, specifically in his work,

of Philo there

About

is

infinity

very in

it is

and even

little

not easy to locate infinity

in Wolfson's detailed

direct reference to

medieval philosophy, European and

Arabic, and in subsequent philosophy

Spinoza, there

is

study

it.

up

to

and including

a wealth of material in Wolfson's two-

volume work on Spinoza. All of volume I is very pertinent, and not only the parts dealing expressly with infinity, like Chapter V, part III (Definition of the term "Infinite"), and Chapter VIII (Infinity of Extension). The latter chapter is of special interest for the genesis of Descartes' view on the nature of infinity of his extension II

(or etendue); see section

above.

About

infinity in scientist-philosophers, or cosmologists,

Cusa to Newton and Leibwork of Koyre, which features

or astronomers from Nicholas of niz there

the informative

is

a judicious selection of verbatim excerpts, all in English.

There are also recent books about the relevance of

infinity

to nonscientific general philosophy, such as the books of

Bernardete, Welte, and Heimsoeth. Infinity in

mathematics

is

accounted for

in

any general

history of mathematics, but especially in Boyer's The History

of the Calculus. For the history of Zeno's paradoxes the

Ol5

INFINITY main account, with

commencing

parts,

references,

full

1915,

in

by

is

the article in nine

F. Cajori in the

American

Mathematical Monthly. The references are carried to 1936 in the

lengthy introduction to Ross's edition, with

tary, of Aristotle's Physics. in

Cajori's account, the

To judge by an

outright association of the

first

paradoxes with mathematics seventeenth century

a.d.,

commen-

incidental remark

is

documented only from the work of Gregory of St.

in the

Georg Gantor's set theory there is much material in Cantor's Collected Works which have been edited by Ernst Zermelo. The principal memoirs of Cantor were translated into English, with introduction and notes, by P. E. B. Jourdain. There is a lack of studies on how the emergence of Cantor's set theorv fits into the history of ideas; there is, for instance, no special studv on For the roots and

S.

it

rise of

reflects itself in the philosophical

Peirce

(cf.

system of Charles

Collected Papers of Charles

S.

Peirce, ed. C.

York,

Creation of the L'niverse (New York, 1952). Greenberg, Lectures on Algebraic Topology (New

T

Marvin

Gregory of

1967).

quadratura

circuli

K. C. Guthrie,

A

Vincent,

St.

ami

sectionum

et

Opus geometricum (Antwerp,

History of Greek Philosophy, Vols.

1647). 1

and

2 (Cambridge, 1962 and 1965). T. L. Heath, The Thirteen

Books of Euclid's Elements (Cambridge, 1908); idem, History of Greek Mathematics, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1921). Heinz Heimsoeth, Die sechs grossen themen der abendlandischen Metaphysik und der Ausgang des Mittelalters, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart,

Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, the (New York, 1958). David

1954).

Revolution in Modern Science

Grundlagen der Geometrie (Leipzig, 1899), many and translations. P. E. B. Jourdain, Contributions

Hilbert,

editions

Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Mass. [1933], Vol. IV.

to the Founding of the Theory of Transfmite Numbers (Chicago and London, 1915). Immanuel Kant, Critique of

The following works are additional references for the study "Uber die Metrisation der im kleinen kompakten topologischen Raume," Mathematische Annalen, 99 (1924), 294-307. Anton Antweiler, Vnendlich,

Pure Reason, trans. Norman

Eine Untersuchung zur metaphysischen Weisheit Gottes auf Crund der Mathematik, Philosophic, Theologie (Freiburg im

en Grece," Revue de Synthese, 34 (1954), 5-20. Earle Loran, Cezanne's Composition, 2nd ed. (Berke-

of infinity. Paul AlexandrofF,

Breisgau, 1935). Saint

Thomas Aquinas, Summa

theologiae,

G.

S.

Kirk and

(Cambridge, 1957). to

the Infinite

Kemp

Smith (London, 1929).

The Presocratic Philosophers Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World

E. Raven,

J.

Universe (Baltimore, 1957).

Kucharski,

P.

"L'idee de

l'infini

ley, 1944).

Anneliese Maier, Die Vorlaufer Galileis im

14.

Latin text and English trans, by Blackfriars (London and

Jahrhundert (Rome, 1949); idem, Zwei Grundprobleme der

New

idem, Naturphilosophie (Rome, 1951); Zwischen Philosophic und Mechanik (Rome, 1958); idem, Metaphysische Hintergriinde der Spatscholastischen Naturphilosophie (Rome, 1955). Rodolfo Mondolfo, L'infinito nel

York, 1962), Vol.

II.

Hardie and R. K. Gave totle's

Vol.

Aristotle, Physica,

in the

trans. R.

P.

Oxford translation of Aris-

works under the general editorship of W. D. Ross,

2 (Oxford. 1930). See also

W. D.

Ross, below. A. H.

Scholastischen

Armstrong, Plotinus (New York, 1962). James Barr, Biblical

pensiero

Words for Time (London, 1961). Jose A. Bernardete, Infinity. an Essay in Metaphysics (Oxford, 1964). Salomon Bochner, The Role of Mathematics in the Rise of Science (Princeton,

Newton, see

1966); idem,

"The Size

of the Universe in

103 (1968), 510-30.

Scientia,

Hermann

Greek Thought,"

Bondi, Cosmology,

dell'Antiquita

Synonyma der gleichlich

Zeit

und

(Florence,

classica

Cajori, above. C.

von

1965).

Isaac

Die hebraischen

und sprachverErwin Panofsky,

Ewigkeit, genetisch

(Leipzig,

dargestellt

Orelli,

1871).

Albrecht Diirer (Princeton, 1945); idem, "Die Perspective als

'Symbolische Form,' " in Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg

2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1960). Thorleif Boman, Das hebraische Denken im Vergleich mit dem Criechischen, 4th ed. (Gottingen, 1965); 3rd ed. trans, as Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek Thought (Philadelphia, 1961). Carl B. Boyer, The History of the Calculus (New York, 1959). F. Cajori, "The

is reprinted in Panofsky's Aufsatze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin, 1964). W. Pauli, ed., Niels Bohr and the Development of Physics (New York,

History of Zeno's Arguments on Motion." American Mathe-

bridge, Mass., 1933), Vol. IV.

matical Monthly,

international de Synthese), 34,

12 (1915),

1-6, 39-47,

77-82,

109-15,

(1924-25); the latter

Charles

1955).

Peirce, ed. C.

S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles S. Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 6 vols. (Cam-

The Road

143-49, 179-86, 215-20, 253-58, 292-97; idem, Sir Isaac

Plotinus:

Newton

"L'infini Cartesien,"

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, trans. Andrew Motte (1729), res

vised by F. Cajori (Berkeley, 1934;

many

reprints); cited

Georg Cantor, Gesammelte Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts, ed. Ernst Zermelo (Berlin, 1932). C. Caratheodory, "Uber die Begrenzung einfach zusammenhangender Gebiete," Mathematische Annalen, 73 (1913), 343-70. Morris R. Cohen and I. E. Drabkin, A Source Book in Greek Science (New York. 1948). Jonas Cohen, Geschichte der Unendlichkeitsproblems im abendlandischen Denken bis Kant (Leipzig, 1869). James H. Coleman, Modern Theories of the Universe (New York, 1963). H. S. M. Coxeter, Non-Euclidean Geometry (Toronto, as

DID

Theory of the Infinite (New York, 1934). George

totle's

Gamow, The

W.

Vincent.

how

1957). E. J. Dijksterhuis, Archimedes (New York, 1957). Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols. (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1925). Abraham Edel, Aris-

Principia.

to Reality

Revue de Synthese (Centre Series (1954). J. M. Rist,

New

(Cambridge, 1967). B. Rochot,

Revue de Synthese, 34

(1954), 35-54.

Vasco Ronchi, The Science of Vision (New York, 1957).

W. D.

Ross, ed., Aristotle's Physics,

duction

and commentary

A

revised text with intro-

(Oxford, 1936); idem, Aristotle, a

complete exposition of his works and thought (Cleveland, 1959). Meyer Schapiro, Paul Cezanne (New York, 1952). A. Schoenfliess,

"Projective

Geometrie,"

mathematischen Wissenschaften, Abt.

5. Basil

1968).

Encyclopadie der

Vol. Ill, Leipzig,

1898-

),

Schonland, The Atomists (1830-1933) (Oxford,

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West,

Atkinson, 2 vols.

(New

York, 1926-28).

trans. C. F.

Norman

Steenrod,

Topology of Fibre Bundles (Princeton, 1965). Leonardo Taran, Parmenides, A Text with Translation, Commentary,

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS and

Mario Untersteiner,

Critical Essays (Princeton, 1965).

progeny surprisingly different from their parents.

of

Parmenide, Testimonianze e Frammenti (Florence, 1958). G.

Similarly the Russian peasant believes (reported

Veronese, Crundziige der Ceometrie (Berlin, 1894); the orig-

Vakar,

inal

edition

Italian

in

is

almost never quoted. Richard

Walzer, Greek into Arabic; Essays in Islamic Philosophy

Im Spielfeld von Endlichund Unendlichkeit. Cedanken zur Deutung der men-

(Oxford, 1962). Bernhard VVelte, keit

Daseins (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1967). Christian Wiener, Lehrbuch der darstellenden Ceometrie, 2 vols.

schlichen

p.

by

274) that seeds of wheat can engender wild

oats. In painful fact

peasants frequently see wheat turn

Another source of such commonsense confusions about heredity and variation is the observed fact that well-fed livestock have better qualities than into weeds.

ill-fed,

which underlies the English farmer's paradoxis through the mouth." On

aphorism, "The breed

(Leipzig, 1884). Harry Austryn Wolfson, Crescas' Critique

ical

of Aristotle, Problems of Aristotle's Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1929); idem, The

the other hand, "Like father like son"

Philosophy of Spinoza, Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1934); idem, Philo:

reappearance of tails and foreskins on the progeny of docked and circumcised sires. Shakespeare can be quoted for this too:

Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christiand Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1947). Eduard

is

also a

common

observation, sustained by such facts as the endless

anity,

Zeller,

Entwicklung, 3

peared

[See

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Die Philosophie der Criechen in ihrer geschichtlichen in

vols.

(1844-52); the English translation ap-

Rough-hew them how we

SALOMON BOCHNER

occasional speculations that

segments.

Axiomatization; Continuity; Cos-

also Abstraction;

mology; Mathematical Rigor; Newton on Method; Number; Rationality; Space;

Time and Measurement.]

will (Hamlet, V,

ii,

10).

In ancient and medieval philosophy one can also find

we moderns would lump under the concept, inheritance of acquired characters. Thomas Aquinas, for example, drawing on previous human reproduction in such how Adam's fall could taint

writers, analyzes

explain

to

as

compilation,

is

their preoccupation not with heredity

but with generation (or reproduction, as

we

call it

nowadays). This physiological process, and the associated process of development from seed to adult,

This idea can be traced back to speculative philosophy

attention

and even

elusive pattern of resemblances

if

one

is

willing to fuzz

the difference between science and other types of

mental

activity.

The

precise words, "inheritance of

acquired characters," are not found until the eight-

eenth century,

when

efforts at a scientific

they appeared as part of the

first

understanding of heredity.

In folklore one can find

many

cases that

would lump under this concept, such retelling in The Merchant of Venice (I,

Should

fall as

.

Fall parti-colored lambs,

There sort;

is

78ff.)

of

eaning time Jacob's.

a bit of rationality in bizarre stories of this

an effort

is

being

made

to explain the

the

and differences be-

tween parents and progeny, was isolated for special study. There are no obvious forms to be associated with the function of heredity, as flowers and gonads are with reproduction, or as seeds make one wonder how mighty oaks from little acorns grow. The prolonged argument

Some

historians date this

wakening much

.

and those were

drew

before heredity,

from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, was part of the wakening to the problem of heredity.

iii,

Jacob's hire, the ewes, being rank.

in

long

over the inheritance of acquired characters, lasting

end of autumn turned to the rams, And, when the work of generation was Between these woolly breeders in the act, The skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands And, in the doing of the deed of kind, He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, then conceiving did

themselves

Shylock's

In the

Who

to

we moderns as

what Jacob did. When Laban and himself were compromised That all the eanlings which were streak'd and pied .

his

progeny with a capacity to sin. The most noteworthy feature of Thomas' speculation, and of the other preeighteenth-century authors quoted in Zirkle's massive

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS (LAMARCKIAN) to primitive thought,

way

a all

appearance

One

than the eighteenth century.

Brumbaugh, goes

earlier

author, Robert

S.

so far as to say that scientific genetics

originated with the Pythagoreans (Journal of Heredity, 43, 86-88). A less extravagant modernization of ancient texts

is

carried out by Darlington,

who

reads the clash

of "hard" (Mendelian) and "soft" (Lamarckian) heredity into the rival speculations of

He

is

Epicurus and Aristotle.

actually dealing with the philosophy of science

rather than the study of heredity.

To reduce

the pur-

poseful activity of living things to the nonpurposeful

was Epicurus' mode of modern geneticist's. From this

action of material particles

reasoning as

it

mechanistic

viewpoint

is

the

Aristotle's

nonevolutionary

617

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS entelechv shares a fatal defect with Lamarck's evolu-

They

tionary inheritance of acquired characters.

both tainted by teleology; a future end

are

invoked as

is

the determinant of a present form or process. But such correlations

between ancient philosophical viewpoints

and modern scientific theories are a product of hindsight. To pretend that they were already apparent before the

rise of

genetics

undeserved

to put an

is

duncecap on a host of modern biologists, to render inexplicable the enormous labor by which they moved toward a precise understanding of heredity and variation.

The eighteenth-century

effort to classify all living

was the beginning of

things

essence or typical

that labor. Defining the

characters

of each

taxonomist was obliged to explain or nontypical characters of

many

away

species,

the

the accidents

and entire Thus

individuals

races that he included within a given species. the

more complex problem

of analyzing the pooled

heredity of a population was recognized long before the

more elemental one

common

of analyzing individual hered-

was

issue, for

Darwin's stroke

problem of a population's pooled heredity, which is obviously shaped by natural selection, from the problem of individual heredity and variation, which was a mystery. Darwin himself soon to separate the

called attention to the necessity of solving the second

problem, but he perceived insoluble:

What

is

it

in

a form that was

still

the source of the variations on which

selection works?

He and other evolutionists indulged in rather Lamarckian speculations on the subject, and experimental tests were undertaken. Some had clearly negative results, as when blood transfusions between different colored rabbits produced no change in coat color. Some seem to have proved the obvious, as when Weismann docked the tails of mice through twenty-two generations without shortening the tail on any newborn mouse. (It must be remembered that he was countering many

unverified

reports

Darwin himself published

of

inherited

mutilations.

a report that the Muslims

of Celebes are born with shortened foreskins.)

The few

and cart that is probably unavoidable in the opening of a major new area of inquiry. The same reversal marked pre-Mendelian experiments with plant hybridization, which derived from the eighteenth-century effort to achieve a scientific agriculture, and, on the theoretical level, focused once again on taxonomy: When hybrids are not sterile "mules," are they to be classified as new species? Such problems, aggravated by the growing fossil evidence

experiments that seemed to prove the inheritance of

of extinct species, led to the suggestion of a phylo-

instance of

genetic or evolutionary taxonomy, a dizzying proposal

Darwin brushed aside obviously teleological versions of Lamarckian inheritance such as giraffes getting long necks by many generations of stretching for the higher leaves but he saw no inconsistency between

ity,

a

reversal of horse

to substitute patterns of ceaseless

change

for a clear-cut

classification of fixed species. In Diderot's

apothegm,

"Species are only tendencies" (Rostand, p. 175).

One

of the

first

make de Lamarck. To

biologists to

was Jean Baptiste

this

bold proposal

explain

species evolve out of old he invoked the

how new common

acquired characters were subject to disputed inter-

when white moths, fed on the salts found produced some black progeny. (This happened in the twentieth century, and geneticists argued that the original stock had melanism as a recessive trait.) The important result of these experiments was the accumulating doubt they cast on Lamarckian inheritance, as thev failed to prove beyond doubt a single pretation, as in soot,

it.

—

—

other versions and the mechanistic outlook that underlay the theory of natural selection. Nor, for all

we

know, did Mendel, whose contemporaneous stroke of

observation that living things adapt themselves to their

genius was also a simplifying separation of a soluble

environment, and added the supposition that such

problem from a tangle of insoluble ones. He set aside not only the evolution of species, but even the adaptive variation of individual organisms. He reduced the analysis of individual heredity to a manageable level by counting a few unchanging characters as they come and go in various combinations through successive generations of hybrids. Leading biologists overlooked or brushed aside this radical suspension of their chief concerns, until continued hybrid experiments and the development of cytology pushed them toward a simi-

adaptation, time, tial

is

repeated by

if

finally

we

many

creatures over

much

transmitted to the progeny as an essen-

character of a

hindsight

new

species.

With the

benefit of

can see that the distinction between the

and accidental characters of supposedly fixed and the distinction between the hereditary and

essential

species,

acquired characters of changing species, were groping steps

toward the distinction between genotype and

phenotype. Largely ignored in his

own

lifetime,

Lamarck's the-

ory was part of the sporadic discussion of evolution

618

immediately seen as a crucial of genius

larly atomistic

conception of heredity.

August Weismann proclaimed

during the generation preceding Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). In the excited aftermath of that epochal

attention to

book the inheritance of acquired characters was not

of self-replication

it.

He

this

conception

in

the

and vigor that forced general declared heredity to be the function localized in the "germ plasm," the

1880's, with a clarity

IXHERITAXCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS nucleus of the specialized cells of sexual reproduction.

approximation to the mod-

through the 1920's, have vanished, for genetics has capable of solving the problems that gave

proved

itself

ern cytogenetic view, which localizes the hereditary

rise to

mechanistic Lamarckism in the

Partly because of

The

This was an erroneous

first

function in the nucleus of

Weismann was

all cells.

make

first

place.

abandonment of the inheritance

biologists'

of

a vigorous

acquired characters has been widely misinterpreted.

attack on the inheritance of acquired characters, for,

Many people think that any environmental influence on heredity has been denied. In fact geneticists have

his mistake

he reasoned,

it

is

inspired to

body that acquires germ plasm. The result

the surrounding

them, not the self-replicating

was a lively debate between "neo-Lamarckians." who argued that evolution was inconceivable without the inheritance of acquired characters, and "neo-Darwinians,"

who denied

The debate

it.

intensified efforts to

founded understanding of heredity and variation, with the result that Mendelian methods were simultaneously rediscovered achieve

a

precise,

experimentally

been the

first

They

to

make

precise analyses of such influ-

from the Lamarekists in denying the "adequacy" or "specificity" of environmentally induced change in the heredity of an individual organism. ences.

That

differ

they deny that the hereditarv mechanism of

is,

a living creature can

make an adaptive response

On

an environmental influence, except by accident. purely mechanistic basis they have shown

how

to

this

a mul-

by three separate scientists in 1900, namelv DeVries, Tschermak, and Correns. Thus the science of genetics was born, either denying

do make

the inheritance of acquired characters (in the Weis-

basic principles

mann

concept

of theorizing and experimentation, the inheritance of

biologists

acquired characters was seen to be either meaningless

(in

version) or ignoring

it

as a meaningless

the Mendelian). Until the 1930's

nevertheless clung to

some form

many

of Lamarckism, for

seemed too narrow, incapable

genetics

of analyzing

anything but the simplest patterns of segregation and recombination of unchanging hereditarv characters

— and

rather trivial ones at that, chosen for their

convenience

in

counting.

demonstrated their

By the

ability to deal

1930's geneticists

with complex char-

acters as well as simple ones, to incorporate in their

theory the constant appearance of

new

characters,

and

to analyze the pooled heredity of a breeding popula-

The overwhelming majority of biologists then abandoned any form of Lamarckism. Its mode of reasoning, based on the distinction between inherited and acquired characters, had proved to be hopelessly vague and unproductive by contrast with that of genetics, based on the distinction between genotype and tion.

phenotype. Aside from the Lysenkoites in the Soviet Union, the

who have

tried to keep some version view alive since the 1930's have been a tiny minority, such as L. Bertalanffy and H. G. Can-

only biologists

of the Lamarckist

non,

who

are distressed by the implacable

of contemporary biology. position

is

The

mechanism

hopelessness of their

indicated by their lack of original ideas. For

titude of breeding individuals, a population, can

ity in

finely

response to environmental influences.

or teleological.

and

adaptive changes of their pooled hered-

Once

these

were established by the usual interplay

It is

meaningless

if it

runs together such

diverse things as the effects of fertilizing plants and the effects of radiating them. ascribes to an hereditarv

It

is

teleological

mechanism

—

if

— ultimately

it

a

molecule of nucleic acid not only the function of self-replication, but also foreknowledge of a different,

improved self. Thus, it is not environmental influence on heredity but a confused or teleological view of such influence that has been abandoned. Other widespread misunderstandings concern the relevance to social thought of the affirmation or denial of the inheritance of acquired characters.

Long

a minor

aspect of the controversy about the social implications

were widely inLysenko affair in the Soviet Union. In 1936 the Soviet mass media began to denounce the study of human genetics as a reactionary pseudo-science, aristocratic, racist, or simply Nazi in its social implications. The Lysenkoites, who were then of biology, these misunderstandings flated as a result of the

winning

political support

to agriculture, quickly

by their reputation for aid

picked up

this

theme, and,

the 1940's, added another: Marxism has always

mitted

its

adherents to belief

in

in

com-

the inheritance of

acquired characters. Outside the Soviet Union aston-

the most part they grasp at aspects of their opponents'

ished defenders of genetics rejected the association

work, such

between genetics and the right, but many accepted the linkage of Lamarckism and the left. It fit the widespread picture of Marxism as an antiquated doctrine, and it could be provided with a semblance of logic:

extrachromosomal inheritance, or at the arguments of geneticists like C. H. Waddington, who has strained the limits of his as the discover)' of

science in an effort to explain the "unbridgeable gaps"

and the grand, persistent trends of evolution. In short, Lamarckism survives only as a portion of the vitalist

inheritance of acquired characters supposedly appeals

creed. Mechanist versions of Lamarckism,

tionary

fairly

common from

the

which were

late-nineteenth

century

to the

Marxist mentality by promising that revolu-

improvement of the social environment will improve the human breed. The awkward fact that the

619

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS Lysenkoites never used this logic was ignored. Their

on the Marxist theory of "practice" exemplified

winism."

transformation

methods

agriculture

of

through

— seemed too flimsy to be taken

in the

Lysenkoite

at face value.

Antiquated quackery could not improve farm yields;

seemed to be sacrificing agricultural improvement out of devotion to Lamarckian faith in

the Soviet leaders

human

The awkward

perfectibility.

cannot be found

faith

theorists

was

commits one was

that Marxist philosophy

a 1941 paper, "Engels and

—

to belief in the inheritance of acquired characters

unknown

virtually

until

T

D. Lysenko presented

it

in

Some Problems of Darto find any comment on

was impossible the subject in any publication of Marx or Lenin. Two or three fleeting remarks are in the posthumous publications of Engels, and a few more in the works of some other

It

leading

Marxist

such

as

Some

indicate ac-

theorists,

Plekhanov, Bukharin, and

Stalin.

Kautsky,

fact that such a

ceptance of the Lamarckian view, some acceptance

Marxist

of the Mendelian view, but none can reasonably be

in the basic writings of

interpreted as an important part of the author's social

also ignored.

Social theorists of any political persuasion have

had

theorizing. In each case the author

was simply repeat-

little to

say on the inheritance of acquired characters,

ing the current biological theory, as far as he under-

since

has not usually seemed relevant to their main

stood

it

concerns. This was the case even in the nineteenth century,

when many were

trying to found social sci-

ence on biological principles. Comte,

puted Lamarck's theory of evolution

it

Spencer admired

at considerable

and continued to

it,

true, dis-

is

length (Corns de philosophic positive, Vol.

Ill),

insist

while

on the

it,

and was quite

far

from any thought of deriving

a different theory of heredity from Marxist philosophy.

Even the

rise of the

linked with the races,

eugenics movement, loosely

science of genetics and heavily

contempt

tainted with subject

new

for the lower classes

did not provoke a

Marxist

and the reaction

against the science of genetics, or even against every

inheritance of acquired characters even after he be-

kind of eugenics. There was a minority of left-wing

came

eugenicists, such as the biologist K. A. Timiriazev,

a preacher of natural selection. Other biologizing

social theorists

of acquired

can also be quoted on the inheritance

characters

others straddling issue tial

is

—but

for,

Kidd

against,

every case their stand on

this

part of their synthetic philosophizing, inessen-

biological arguments,

"mere

same

criticism

this subsidiary issue to all their

which were,

more than

tosh said, nothing or

— Bagehot

in

to their social thought. Indeed the

can be extended from

illustrations"

of

as

Robert Mackin-

This criticism

endorsing the Bolshevik Revolution.

may be

in the biological aspects of social

population

run goal of the Soviet health program, and subsidized research in that field under the guidance of leading

Within a few years

geneticists.

a difference in values:

developed over

on the proletariat and peasantry. In this Soviet version of the worldwide eugenics controversy during the 1920's, science was hardly the issue, for genuine

problems,

development, most

and he strongly

knowledge of human genetics was slight, limited in the main to rare hereditary diseases. Eugenics was then either grossly ideological, as in the preference for certain classes and races, or simply pessimistic, postponing hopes of basic and permanent

improvement

when

of the

human

and sociology. Marxism in all its varieties has shown an overwhelming tendency to ignore or reject any derivation of sociological principles from biology. Each discipline is considered autonomous, sharing only the materialist philosophy that prompted Marx to hail Darwin's Origin of Species as "the mortal blow to

breeding humans

teleology in natural science." Using this line of argu-

the authorities decided that

ment Soviet Marxist

the lower classes,

geneticists in the 1920's

and early

1930's pictured their science as a triumph of dialectical

Lysenko view of the leading Soviet Marxist

materialist philosophy. Just before the rise of

geneticists as

condition until the distant

might know

time

philosophers.

friction

Soviet eugenicists tended to

endorsed the standard Marxist separation of biology

also the

Commis-

tion

contested, but the facts of

bunched on the center and right of the Only a few are to be found on the left, almost none on the Marxist left. Among the major Marxist theorists Kautsky alone had a serious interest

was

first

genes, while Bolshevik officials conferred this distinc-

social

political gradient.

this

The

Health declared eugenics to be the long-

sar of Public

principles

their

theorists are

in

who

a permanent place in the Soviet pantheon by

regard the intelligentsia as the repository of the best

political affiliation are indisputable. Biologizing social

notably

won

"parables," "metaphors,"

(Mackintosh, 1899).

DZU

The argument

between Marxism and Lamarckism a couple of quotations from Engels' posthumous reflections on evolution, and a heavy stress actual arguments for a linkage

as

much about

they already did about corn. By

the end of the twenties the Soviet authorities withdrew their support of eugenics research,

though

still

granting

the theoretical possibility of a socialist program of eugenics.

Research

in

human

genetics

continued,

oriented mainly toward medicine and psychology, until it

too fostered disdain for

whose IQ's were generally below those of the intelligentsia. Toward the end of 1936 the study of human heredity was suddenly linked with Nazi ideology and virtually suppressed, not to be revived until the 1960's. In the interim no effort was made

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS to create a Lvsenkoite theory of

place of the Mendelian theory.

The

human

heredity in

traditional Marxist

scientists

to

a

extreme.

ridiculous

"Man,"

declared

entertained Lamarckist ideas in a

Lysenko's main problem was to maintain his reputa-

separation of biological and social processes was simply

taken

who had

serious effort to solve scientific problems.

He promoted

invention).

an animal." Biological science, whether genuine or

recipes,

pseudo, has nothing to say about such a creature.

as the source of great increases in yields.

it

was not Marxist

social theory that

engen-

dered the Lvsenkoite belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. Neither was it the Lamarckist

Lysenko indignantly assertion that he was a Lamarckist,

which the

was

value

their

Communist

political bosses

by

denied

and the press hailed

The

fact that

agronomists

Stalinist officials,

who became

extremely xenophobic

They were

however,

in the last part of his reign.

rejected his critics'

completely impervious to the usual empirical

i

1936g.,

Moscow

[1937], pp. 57, 67, 327).

He was almost

A

non-

in

countries did not undermine the faith of

tradition in biology. In the 1930's

and with good reason (see Spomye voprosy genetiki selektsii. Raboty IV sessii VASKhXILa 19-27 dek.

his

a series of flashy agronomic

Lysenko, "thanks to his mind, ceased long ago to be

Thus,

term was

tion as a master of "agrobiology" (the

turning point

came

in 1952,

when

not,

criteria.

they recognized

the fiasco of "the Great Stalin Plan for the Trans-

formation of Nature," which was based

in

part on

in

Lysenko's proposal to plant huge quantities of trees

biology. His views derived from practical sources, as

and leave them to thin themselves. (He pictured the weaker seedlings as removing themselves to help the species flourish.) Public criticism of Lysenko was allowed to revive, and became intensive after Stalin's death, but Soviet officials did not withdraw all their support from him until 1965. Then Lysenko was pushed out of power into silent management of an experimental farm, and Soviet geneticists received strong support in their effort to repair the damage done by thirty years of Lvsenkoite mis-education.

completely ignorant of any theoretical tradition

he never tired of boasting. In a time of acute agricultural crisis, resulting from forced collectivization, he

was an agronomist with a flair for sensationalist public relations. He achieved fame as a bold innovator of agricultural techniques that were supposed to bring great practical benefit, in striking contrast to the sup-

posedly barren record of orthodox

scientists. First

he

challenged plant physiologists, by claiming that he had

found a quick and easy way to boost grain yields (moisten and chill the seed), and then he

fell

into

war

It is

a great puzzle

how

Soviet leaders could believe

with geneticists by promising to breed an improved

for so long in the practical benefit of Lysenkoism.

wheat within three years or less. When learned breeders and geneticists cautioned that several generations of progeny testing are necessary to establish a desirable, stable hybrid, Lysenko angrily denounced their academic learning as an impediment to practical achievement. He insisted that he could choose parent plants with foreknowledge of their progeny, and that he could make a final selection from the first generation of hybrids. These claims struck at the foundation of Mendelian genetics. Lysenko came to the inheritance of acquired char-

explanation

variety of

acters

when he appropriated

to his cause the vastly

Michurin (1855-1935), an

inflated reputation of

I.

uneducated breeder of

fruit trees

hybrids.

The inheritance

V.

who

believed in graft

of acquired characters became

a central belief of Lysenko's cult, for

it

enhanced

his

picture of living matter as structureless goo, capable of instant

alteration

to

suit

the needs of socialist

farmers. Gradually he and his followers disinterred

other obsolete doctrines and fancies, such as the possibility of cells

forming from noncellular globs of organic

matter, and the sudden transformation of wheat into

weeds. In 1948,

when

Communist Party

Committee of the power over biological

the Central

raised his

is

to

be found

The

in the Stalinist policy of

extracting agricultural produce by force. Since peasants

were poorly motivated and yields were generally low no matter what farming methods were used, it would have been hard to make an objective choice of farming methods in any case. But Stalinist officials were opposed on principle to objective criticism of their decisions. Only protracted stagnation of yields brought them to a grudging retreat from farming by decree, and from Lysenko's "agrobiology," which cast an aura

The method of determining truth by authoritarian trial and error was justified by Stalin's doctrine that "practice" is the supreme criterion of truth. In more precise language, one learns by bossing. In some measure this doctrine can be traced back to Lenin and even, though

of science over the Stalinist agricultural policy.

with considerable straining, to Marx's belief tionary praxis. That

is

in revolu-

the only significant connection

between Lysenkoism and Marxist theory. It is ironic that a Lamarckist view of human heredity should be widely ascribed to the figured

more

Aside from H. G. Wells,

who

left,

for

it

has probably

often in the popular ideology of the right. it is

hard to think of a socialist human breed by

has dreamed of improving the

research and education to the highest level, he ac-

transforming society. The characteristic attitude on the

knowledged

left

his kinship

was an many bygone

with Lamarckism.

ex post facto decree, very unjust to

It

has been that the breed

is

basically sound;

only a suitable environment to express

its

it

needs

great poten-

o2

INHERITANCE THROUGH PANGENESIS On

tial.

the other hand,

many

apologists for ruling

and dominant races have argued that generations of subordination and illiteracy have made the lower classes and subject races biologically inferior to their social superiors. (Marvin Harris, in his Rise of classes

Anthropological Theory, recognizes this

fact,

yet in-

Lamarckism with by acquired characters and still

consistently repeats the association of

the

left.)

Of

course,

it

is

denying the inheritance of arrive at the

also possible to begin

same upper-class master-race

bias.

One

Essays on

History:

the

of Scientific Thought

Evolution

Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving (New Haven, 1962). Marvin Harris. The Rise of (London,

1953).

II.

472-81.

Anthropological Theory Agrobiologiia, 6th ed.

(New

Th.

York, 1968). T. D. Lvsenko,

(Moscow, 1952; English

(

we

determined by genotypes. Either way

is

are obvi-

and sociological concepts. The known facts and the genuine logic of the matter can be summarized in two sentences: the Lamarckian doctrine gives no logical support to the political right ring of biological

or

left,

because

it is

for

4

Sochineniia,

vols.

(Moscow, 1939-41; 2nd

DAVID JORAVSKY [See also Biological Conceptions in Antiquity; Evolutionism; Genetic Continuity; Inheritance through Pangenesis; Perfectibility.]

factually wrong. Genetical science

INHERITANCE THROUGH PANGENESIS

because genuine knowledge of human heredity is inadequate for anything more precise. As Theodosius

Dobzhansky and other

geneticists

have shown, biology

does not support the zealots of any

class, nation,

or

most important political implication so far the new support it gives to an old observation:

race. Its

individual differences in hereditary capacities are far

more groups

significant

than average differences between

may prove

to be.

the relevant portions of the following works, which have rich bibliographical leads to other studies

and

to the sources.

Coleman, "Cell, Nucleus, and Inheritance: An Hisof the American Philosophical Society, 109 (1965), 124-58. L. C. Dunn, A Short History of Genetics (New York, 1965). A. E. Gaisinovich, "U istokov sovetskoi genetiki: bor'ba s lamarkizmom (1922-27)," Genetika, 4, No. 6 (1968), 158-75. Verne Grant, The Origin R.

torical Study," Proceedings

(New

York,

1963).

D.

Joravsky,

Soviet

Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-32 (New York, 1961); idem, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). V. L. Komarov, Lamark (Moscow, 1925), in idem, Izhrannye sochineniia,

znachenie," 1,

1 in

(1945);

Lysenko (New York,

OZZ

idem,

"Lamark

i

ego nauchnoe

Lamarck,

xi-xcvii. Zh. A.

is

a theory of a process of hereditary transall

parts of the organism

contribute to the formation of the entire organism.

propounded

First

in

ancient Greece, the hypothesis has

continually reappeared (often in different and increasingly

more

sophisticated terms and occasionally under

up to recent times. The main inducement leading

and

scientific litera-

ture

For an introduction to various aspects of the topic, see

of Adaptations

Pangenesis

mission according to which

different names) in both popular

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W,

1948).

ed.,

Vazhneishie khlebnye zlaki (Novosibirsk, 1929).

B. A. Vakar,

supports nothing more than a vague equalitarianism,

is

From

Benjamin Kidd: The Appeal to Biology or Evolution Human Guidance (New York, 1899). I. V. Michurin,

'otnte to

has only to assume that place in the social hierarchv ously dealing with self-serving illogic, based on a blur-

trans., 1954),

the largest collection of his works. Robert Mackintosh,

Filosofiia zoologii (Moscow, 1935), Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D.

lation of the idea of pangenesis

many

ognition that

to the original

was the

formu-

ancients' rec-

single characters of the organism

and can be it was that instances of point-to-point resemblance between parent and offspring seemed to them to necessitate a can vary quite independently of the

rest

separately transmitted to offspring. Thus

theory of transmission based on intermediary particles possessing a parallel point-to-point correspondence.

The

origins of the idea can

be found

of the Pre-Socratics, e.g., Anaxagoras

However, a envisioned

fairly detailed picture of

in

sexual

Hippocratic corpus Vessels

for

in the

century

the transmission

atomists.

the process as

appears

reproduction

(fifth

fragments

and the

the

in

B.C.).

of bodily

fluids

are found

ofMendelism

throughout the entire body. From every part of the body are

(London, 1966). Jean Rostand, L'atomisme en hiologie (Paris, 1956). Hans Stubbe, Kurze Geschichte der Genetik (Jena, 1965). C. Zirkle, "Early History of the Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis," Transac-

produced particles which mix with the bodily fluids in the The and are carried by them to the testicles. precipitating cause of this process is the pre-coital and coital stimulation. The transport of the fluids from the outlying

tions of the American Philosophical Society, 335 (1946), 91-151.

parts

Other works cited in this article include the following. C. D. Darlington, "Purpose and Particles in the Study of

smaller essence represented by the semen.

Heredity," in E. A. Underwood, ed., Science, Medicine, and

from every part of the body (Hippocrates, VII, 471-75).

1969). R. C. Olby, Origins

vessels

is

.

due also to this

temperature resembles

its

is

state of excitation.

.

.

.

The

.

.

increasing

a sign of the coction of these fluids into a .

.

.

The

offspring

parent because the particles of the semen

come

INHERITANCE THROUGH PANGENESIS Quite understandably, the ancient:, focussed their The alternating generation

precluded a program of controlled experi-

nature

attention on the adult form.

mentation that might have yielded an understanding

represented in the germinal link was seen as but a slight

of the roles of nature and nurture

interruption in the somatic continuum of the genera-

of living things. Such

tions constituting the

human

race.

Under such a view,

human

to

The

upon the construction

remain the case

until the

seventeenth century.

scientific revolution of the

the pangenetical process was their conceptualization of how

was

revival of pangenesis

was one

of the biological

could be funnelled

manifestations of the physico-meehanico-reductionism

from one generation into the next through the vehicle of the germ (see Diagram, p. 625). In their original considerations, two choices had lain

which characterized seventeenth-century science. Yet again it was the object of contemporary criticism. Mechanists such as Kenelm Digby saw insurmountable difficulties surrounding the assemblage and segregation of the gemmules purported to take place in the gonads. Vitalists such as William Harvey could not accept the theory's stress on heterogeneity and its seemingly preformationist implications. Pangenesis found its sup-

open

the heritable

all

traits

to the ancient speculators. First, that the consti-

tution of the

germ

linking the

two generations could

involve only a quantitative change; that tiated in miniature

with

its

is,

differen-

on a point-to-point correspondence

germ

differentiated parent. Second, that the

represented an actual qualitative change wherein the fully-differentiated constitution of the parent

somehow been

form had

translated or distilled into an undiffer-

entiated "essence" or "anima" which nonetheless con-

porters chiefly characters,

first

upholders of pangenesis

— the atomists and

those whose biological speculations were based on rather

world first

parallels with the physico-mechanical

strict

— could

accept only quantitative change. The

came from

opposition to pangenesis

man whose empirical liberate biology

Aristotle, the

those such as Antoine

saw

it

in the

the only

as

Le Grand

inheritance of acquired

mechanical

rational

process which could account for such.

Despite

tained the potential for future differentiation.

The

among

who, fervent believers

the

rapid

microscopy from the

inroads last

made by

biological

quarter of the seventeenth

century, scientists had failed to identify unequivocally the actual physical sites of

quently, the rife

with

first

germ production. Consewas

half of the eighteenth century

speculation

substituting

for

observation.

studies of generation helped to

Pangenesis would have been obscured in the great

from the physical world view. Espous-

debate that followed between epigenesis preformation

ing epigenesis and a teleological vitalism, he insisted

had

on qualitative change.

second half of the century. Accepting pangenesis as

Aristotle's

pothesis,

attempt to refute the pangenetical hy-

however, was by no means successful. His

counter to the central theme requiring unit-character transmission via corresponding particles

He

was

a

it

mode

not been for Maupertuis and Buffon in the of

germ formation, they

stressed

its

distinction

from theories of individual development. Thus, the idea remained current, though generally ignored during the

disap-

general preoccupation with the processes of ontogeny

could only respond weakly

the apparently untenable position of having

which characterized contemporary research. In 1809 there did appear an account of inheritance based on the modification of the germ via changes impressed on the parent form. It formed the basis of the evolutionary mechanism put forward by the French biologist Jean Lamarck. The finer details of process or mechanism, however, were generally omitted by him

to contradict the very basic

maxim

(save for occasional references to the action of bodily

come from nothing"

is,

pointingly tangential.

by asking "how could there be such particles for abstract characters as voice or temperament, or from such nongenerating sources as

Even more

principles" dictated so

was

left in

nails or hair?"

significant to the Greeks, for

much

whom

that "nothing can

Where

On the other hand, the controversy which followed upon the promulgation of Lamarck's theory does

basis for the great differentiation that

serve to underline the important twofold nature of the

(that

that true multiplicity

cannot arise from an undifferentiated unity). then,

was the

"first

to observation, Aristotle

must follow? Certainly,

fluids).

in

the

subject of acquired modifications. Notwithstanding the

Aristotle

had

question of the heritability of such changes (assumed

Besides this purely rational argument, there were

his

critics

singularly undifferentiated matter

felt,

which

not

Aristotle did

by Lamarck), there remained in his view, two distinct modes of acquisition. First, he recognized a purely passive or unconscious form of modification. Environ-

not prevail against pangenesis. First, the idealized

mental conditions brought about changes without any

nature of contemporary theories rendered them im-

activity or awareness

pervious to either proof or disproof by the limited

changes are impressed

observations of their time. Second, and relatedly, the

(and often in addition to the

seen in the egg.

two other equally important reasons why

Attic philosophy

which envisioned no manipulation of

on the part of the organism. Such strictly

from without. Second

where sentient and Lamarck saw the envi-

first),

thinking beings are involved,

uZo

INHERITANCE THROUGH PANGENESIS ronnient

producing heritable change through a

as

stimulus-response interaction

— with the organism

itself

taking on the role of active agent in effecting change.

The source

of such organic response for

the sentiment intcrieur possessed by

The response of this faculty was manifested by changes the use of organic parts. structure

Lamarck was

sentient beings.

all

to environmental stimuli in behavior, or habit, or

The consequent

was thus achieved

alteration of

in a quite different

manner

from that acquired passively. Taken together with Lamarck's often ludicrous examples, the involvement of a conscious

mind

or will

to his readers. It was vehemence shocking even

was thus only too apparent rejected

with

Due

a

vitriolic

to give his reasons for his hypothesis,

knowledge of his time: the and seemingly contradictory observations and the lack of any synthesis in the form of a theory or set of laws consistently applicable to the known facts. "I have been led, or rather forced, to form a view which to a certain extent connects these facts by a tangible method" abundance of many

(II,

sets of conflicting

357).

The method was simply Baconian

style

to address himself, in the

he espoused, to

all

the

phenomena, and from there one mechanism which could account for of genetic

known

classes

to extract the all.

The

recent

no small part to Lamarck, theories of both evolution and hereditary transmission were scientific anathema for nearlv

historiography of science has too readily dismissed this

half a century.

was Darwin who, in his Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (1868), picked up this aspect of the subject and thereby resurrected pangenesis. It was the first detailed discussion in nearly a century. The Variation was Darwin's conscious attempt to realize two aims that had remained unfulfilled

undermined by closer examination. It must be seen that it was Darwin's firm conviction that no general theory of inheritance was acceptable unless it equally explained important, exceptional phenomena. These he initially listed as: instances of noninheritance; dominance simultaneous with blending; exact duplication of parent through both sexual and asexual reproduction; inheritance of the effects of use, disuse, and habit; atavism; and saltations. In other words, for Darwin the rule must be proved by way of a valid explanatory incorporation of its exceptions. That his resultant hypothesis was not as ad hoc as modern historians have suggested is further shown by its anticipa-

of Species (1859). First, he supplied the mass of documentation supporting domestic variation

po/i/-particulate theory) of

in its time.

in

must be seen that the objections over Lamarck's

It

in the acquisition of

change were not directed towards

mode

to the

his

assumptions as

of transmission. In fact, a belief in the

inheritance of acquired characters was almost universally held throughout

most of the nineteenth cen-

tury. It

in his Origin

which had occupied the first chapter of the Origin. Second (and occupying the entire second volume of the work), he directed himself to discussing the phenomena of inheritance and the causes of variation on both of which his evolutionary theory so evidently depended. It was in the last major chapter of this volume that he put forward what he called his "Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis." (Darwin gave no indication whatever that he was aware of any prede-

—

A comparison of Darwin with Hippocrates will show little

the central

theme had changed

in

over two

thousand years. Said Darwin: ...

I

which implies that the whole organization, in the sense of every separate atom or unit, reproduces itself. Hence ovules and pollen grains, the fertilised seed or egg, as well as huds, include and consist of a multitude of germs thrown off from each separate atom of the organism (Darwin, II,

—

.

.

We

see that the reproductive organs do not actually

create the sexual elements; they merelv determine or permit

the aggregation of the 383).

many

of the results of the

machinations of the present foi-partieulate theory of inheritance.

Most noteworthy of these is his anticipaand position effects (II,

tion of panmixis, crossing over,

396-400). It was left to a German biologist, August Weismann, working during this same period, to put an end to the

long scientific vitality of the pangenetical hypothesis.

Working not only from

his

own

observations but the

accumulation of observation on the physical origins of ally credited

Weismann

is

gener-

with the hypothesis that has since

re-

placed pangenesis in the modern view of sexual gener-

Weismann's "theory of the germplasm" (1885,

published 1893) was based on the

first

clear distinction

between two fundamental types of cell, and the two distinct forms of cell division which characterize their reproduction. These were seen as the cells constituting the general bodily structure or somatoplasm, and those cells

comprising the reproductive or generative tissues

(containing the genetic constitution) or germplasm.

357). .

tion (within, of course, the limitations of an admittedly

ation.

venture to advance the hypothesis of Pangenesis,

—

But the strength of such

is

the generative elements by others,

cessors.)

how

instance of Darwin's theorizing as too patently ad hoc to merit serious attention.

criticism

invoking of the will as a factor

624

Darwin goes on

citing the state of genetical

gemmules

in a special

manner

(II,

Where

the great mass of ordinary body cells reproduce

through mitosis or common, fully-duplicating cell division, the germinal elements are produced through meiosis, or reduction-division. The latter elements fuse

INHERITANCE THROUGH PANGENESIS DIAGRAM

SOMATOPLASM

PANGENESIS

SOMATOPLASM

from the Greeks to

Darwin

(1868)

GERMPLASM The somatoplasm

I.

organism

—

GERMPLASM

GERMPLASM

—or the bodily constitution of the individual

seen as playing an integral part in the vital

is

series.

II

since

SOMATOPLASM

SOMATOPLASM

GAMETOGENESIS Weismann (1885)

/-I7DMDT *cxi GERMPLASM II.

GAMETOGENESIS ...^.^t^

(MEIOSIS)

The somatoplasm

*

_„.,_. .„., GERMPLASM

GAMETOGENESIS .w^t^-.c, MEIOSIS)

*

„„„.,„ .„.. GERMPLASM

plays no part whatever, being, in this view,

a result or manifestation rather than a cause.

at the inception of the

new

generation and upon

its

sexual maturity proceed to produce future germinal

elements in the

same way. Weismann

strated that the

somatoplasm

is

in

thus

demon-

no way causally

of the trends of thought they have produced. These

implications are:

(

1

)

The genetic constitution of organic

beings can be modified from without, via changes

impressed on the bodily constitution.

(2)

Modifications

linked to the production of the germplasm. In such

in the individual characters of one generation can be

achieved

transmitted and translated into modifications in the same characters in the following generation. (3) Similar

a view,

ultimate biological continuity

is

through a direct cellular continuity involving germ cells

As

only (see Diagram). is

individuals exposed to similar conditions will be simi-

so often the case in the history of ideas

particularly those emanating from scientific theories their

wider significance tends to extend well beyond

larly

and simultaneously modified.

through

The

or

lived or at least

outweighed

true whether the science

their sources. This has

been

upon which they are based

was good or bad, the reasoning sound or fallacious, or whether the interpretations have so exceeded their bases as to bear

has been

much

little

resemblance to the original. This

the case in the history of pangenesis.

Thus it is necessary to discuss the major implications that have followed from it and to give some indication

As environmental so, in

the case of

sentient or thinking beings, can they effect changes

the strictly literal context from which they originated. extrapolations of interpretation have often out-

(4)

conditions impress structural change

—

permanent

in the case of

will. (5)

As

alterations

man

man can

he therefore control

in

habit,

behavior,

— the direction of the mind or

control his environment, so can his genetic constitution

and thus

change need no longer be left to chance, but to the conscious manipulation of man. (6) As the bodily constitution of the organism lies causally prior to the genetic constitution, so

it

must be the principal subject

for the impression of change. It

is

clear that the history of the implications of

625

— IRONY pangenesis

a longer

is

than of the concept

and

itself.

far

more complicated one

Consequently, only the two

—

main areas of this histor) will be discussed here the social and the scientific. From the ancient Greeks through Darwin there was a general awareness and agreement upon the first three points. Darwin went part way towards accepting the fourth point but, giving primacy to structure, he excepted (or, in some cases, simply avoided discussing) the action of mind or will in effecting heritable change. reservation certainly not found in Lamarck!) Indeed,

\

in the post

more

higin

(

\

cars

from 1868, he came more and

upon these points

to rely

supporting, and

final!)

as, first

ancillary, then

cooperative processes of evolu-

tionary modification of natural selection.

increasingly an article of faith with

was the most

him

remained

It

that natural

his

permission to dedicate Das Kapital to him

least

is

at

understandable, albeit a bit ludicrous. (Darwin

graciously refused on the grounds of being unable to see any connection

between

their subjects.)

Despite the continued scientific verification of the

Weismann-Mendel theory

inheritance,

of

and the

contingent repudiation of pangenesis, Marxians and the Soviet interpreters of

Marx

Lysenko, Michurin,

(i.e.,

theory which had pro-

et al.) refused to relinquish the

vided the support for their dogma. Stalinist biology

continued to

fight

against

the current of accepted

science in an effort to revalidate the fallen theory. In the present era, however,

with

the

it

almost safe to say that

is

of both

repudiation

and Lysenko

Stalin

Marxian biology enjoys no more serious support

in the

Soviet Union than does anti-Darwinism in America.

of such

It

remains that a life-span of two and a half millennia

change. Despite Weismann's refutation of pangenesis

is

a record one for the history of an idea.

selection

important

source

— and the inheritance of acquired characters for which was the vehicle — anti-Darwinian chose to critics

it

anchor natural selection to

mistaken assumptions

its

regarding hereditary transmission. Thus,

he

into a fully

was not

to

second decade of the present centurv

until the

when Weissmann's view was mission

it

linked with Mendel's laws

comprehensive picture of hereditary transDarwinian evolution reached tnilv

— that

BIBLIOGRAPHY C. Darwin, The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (London, 1868). Hippocrates, "On Generain Oeuvres completes d'Hippocrate, ed. E. Littre (Amsterdam, 1962), Vol. VII; excerpt trans, by P. Vorzimmer. The remaining primary sources for over 2000 years of

tion."

pangenetical thought are too numerous to cite here:

widespread acceptance. During this same latter third of the nineteenth century, however, a number of social thinkers (Spencer,

citations can he found

Marx, and their followers) were

and

just

beginning to ab-

sorb the implications of the pangenetical hypothesis in its

evolutionary context. Coupled with their inter-

pretation of Darwinian evolution,

the very key

seemed

— the ultimate biological

radical change.

the

it

It

was

to provide

justification

—for

their extrapolations, based

on

below

in

sources on theories of inheritance. Both E. Interpretation of F.

J.

S.

Russell,

Development and Heredity (Oxford,

The

1930),

Cole, Early Theories of Sexual Generation (Oxford,

1930) are excellent and as useful today as they have always

been. For both a valuable history' of the idea of the inherit-

ance of acquired characters and interpretations

down

for the

subsequent Marxian

to recent times, see

Conway

Zirkle's

eminently readable Evolution. Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene (Philadelphia. 1959).

three of the above-mentioned implications, that

last

full

the two best secondary

PETER VORZIMMER

provided for them the basis for a de novo establishment

[See also Biological Conceptions in Antiquity: Evolutionism;

of revolutionary change.

Nothing runs more counter to a revolutionary phi-

Genetic

Continuity;

losophy than a sense of commitment to the past. The

teristics;

Recapitulation.]

Inheritance

of

Acquired

Charac-

genetic constitution that identifies every living being in the It

world

is

the biological legacy from the past.

dictates the direction of our

represents a

commitment

development and thus

to a relatively fixed pattern

IRONY

of the future as an ineluctable continuation of the past.

As such,

it

involves the characteristics that distinguish

races and species and, from the point of view of these social thinkers, the social constructs of

them. Yet thought

in

pangenesis

— a doctrine as old

as rational

and supported by reputable scientists (then) recent times lay a hope of breaking,

itself

through to

man based upon

—

or at least radically altering, the precedent of the past.

That Karl Marx, the

o2o

first

of a now-century-old line

of such interpreters, should have written

Darwin asking

Irony may be defined as the conflict of two meanings which has a dramatic structure peculiar to itself: initially, one meaning, the appearance, presents itself as the obvious truth, but when the context of this meaning unfolds, in depth or in time,

it

surprisingly discloses

a conflicting meaning, the reality, measured against

which the

first

meaning now seems

in its self-assurance, blind to its

false or limited and,

own

situation. Irony

IRONY but

"lies,"

bringing theorists

does so only as a dramatic means of

it

two meanings into open assert that bv encompassing

a single structure, irony resolves

The

unity.

conflict.

this conflict in

into

it

Some

harmony or

variable factors in the ironic structure are

the following:

made

of conflict

from the

between appearance and

slightest of differences to dia-

—

Aristotle's peripeteia,

e.g.,

—

and Pirandello's humor

Paul's

to trace the idea apart

little

Jean

attempt has been

from the term. The term

meanand comic irony through paradoxical irony to tragic and nihilistic irony, and now encompasses all the meanings outlined itself,

after quickly

shedding most of

has steadily extended

ing,

The degree

(1)

reality ranges

Although the idea of irony has undoubtedly appeared under other names

from

itself

its

original

satiric

metrical opposites.

above. Frequently, during

field of observation in which irony may be (2) noticed ranges from the smallest semantic unit e.g.,

has elicited intense ethical judgments, pro and con.

The

a

pun

— — to the cosmos. The most frequently used

fields

between one meaning located in words and another meaning located either in the same words or in their context verbal irony; the relation between an event or situation as interpreted from a limited point of view and that event as interpreted with a broader knowledge of the situation or of subsequent are: the relation

events

— called

dramatic irony

literature,

in

in

life

Cod, events, things, etc.; the relation between events and an observer's state of mind the ironic attitude, which may or may not called the irony of fate.

—

externalize

itself as

(3)

Irony usually has an author,

some

in

always has an audience, even

who by analogy

is

observation;

it

fields of if it is

only the author

amusing himself; and a victim, who is deceived by appearance and enlightened by reality, although an (4)

The

may

The

turn himself into a pseudovictim.

aspects of irony

may be analyzed

as follows.

variable factors here are the conception of reality,

model

in the history of irony

his

contemporaries, however, would have associated

the

word

irony.

eironeia with

As Cicero put

it,

modern conceptions of Socratic Socrates was always "pretend-

ing to need information and professing admiration for

wisdom of his companion"; when Socrates' interwere annoyed with him for behaving in this way they called him eiron, a vulgar term of reproach the

locutors

referring generally to any kind of sly deception with

The

overtones of mockery.

was the symbol of the

fox

eiron.

All serious discussions of eironeia followed

association of the

superhuman power

author

influential

the use of irony

has been the Platonic Socrates. Neither Socrates nor

verbal irony, dramatic irony, or

the irony of fate. a

The most

this history,

two

word with

Socrates.

upon the

These occurred

and the rhetorical. In ethics, was an habitual manner of behaving, a type of human character, and here the notion of irony as actual lying persisted, narrowed however to understatement. "As generally underin

contexts, the ethical

the field of observation

stood," Aristotle said in the Ethics, "the boaster

man who

is

a

pretends to creditable qualities that he does

not possess, or possesses in a lesser degree than he

the degree to which author and audience sympathize

makes

or identify with the victim, and the fate of the victim

claims or disparages good qualities that he does possess.

triumph or defeat. Reality may be thought of by author and (or) audience as reflecting their own values. In this

Midway between them is the straightforward sort of man" (iv. 7. 1-17). Aristotle recognized that under-

unsympa-

statement (eironeia) might have various degrees of

context, satiric irony reveals the defeat of an

comic irony reveals the triumph of a sympathetic victim. (Throughout this article, the word comic refers primarily to a rise from defeat to triumph, thetic victim;

as in Dante*s

Divine Comedy.) At the other pole, reality

may be thought this context,

of as hostile to

triumph

is

all

human

values. In

impossible, defeat inevitable.

sympathy

for the victim predominates;

in nihilistic irony, satiric

detachment counterbalances

In tragic irony,

out, while conversely the self-depreciator dis-

difference from the truth, including total denial of

phrastus the eiron was an even less respectable

he understated

his

own powers

liar:

specifically for the pur-

pose of escaping responsibility. in the Ethics Aristotle (ibid.) had mentioned humbugs" whose "mock humility seems to

Although "affected

or dominates sympathy, but a degree of identification

be really boastfulness," a sentence that implied the

always remains since author and audience necessarily

structure of irony as a

share the victim's plight. Paradoxical irony balances

it

was

lie

meant

full

to reveal the truth,

in the rhetorical tradition that this structure

two extremes. Everything is relative: reality in part does and in part does not reflect human values; author and audience fuse, or oscillate between, identification and detachment; comic triumph and tragic defeat counterbalance each other, or the satiric norm

came

constantly

fourth century B.C. Rhetoric to Alexander: irony

these

shifts.

it.

Of the two evils defined, he preferred irony because it was unostentatious. For Demosthenes and Theo-

Here the field of observawas narrow, limited to the brief figure of speech. As that, irony seemed ethically less censurable, and in to explicit definition.

tion

the Rhetoric Aristotle spoke of sort of jest.

The

full

it

as a

"gentlemanly"

pattern was formulated by the is

62/

IRONY blame through praise and praise through blame. This definition, bv shifting attention from the logical content of an ironic statement to the implied diametrically

opposed value judgments, opened the way to the later, sometimes misleading formula that irony is saying the "contrary" of what one means. Also, two aspects of irony were implied by this definition: "to blame by praise" is satiric irony; "to praise by blame" is comic irony, for undesirable characteristics attributed to a

sympathetic victim draw the audience's attention to his real virtues. Ariston

pointed out that Socrates'

way

of exalting his

opponent while depreciating himself

exemplified the

full

pattern.

and English

satiric literature

brought the

marketplace;

twenty centuries

it

lived

two

cal theory, the

in,

during

due

light."

modern way: he had been "a perfect character; yet veiled, and in a cloud chiefly by reason of a certain exquisite and refined raillery which belonged to his manner, and by virtue of which he could treat the highest subjects, and those of commonest capacity .

.

.

.

.

.

.

together,

.

.

and the

The

194-95).

toward the

.

.

.

both the heroic and the simple, the

comic"

(Characteristics

norm world was the critical

own mind;

[1714],

I,

of this subtly satiric attitude

absolute value contained in

irony, in Quintilian's terms, as either "trope," a brief

first

the ironist's

all

speech embedded

figure of

in a straightforward context,

which he disof speech and a per-

or "schema," an entire speech or case presented in

vasive habit of discourse. Generally speaking, these

true situation. Understatement, which in Aristotle had been limited to self-depreciation, spread out to include any statement whose apparent meaning falls some degree short of the reality, e.g., to say of a muscular

a completely admirable thing,

tinguished into an isolated figure

were the

limits of the field during the following cen-

turies. Quintilian,

however, said that "a man's whole

may be colored with irony, as was the case with Socrates, who assumed the role of an ignorant man life

.

.

.

wisdom of others" (Institutio ix. 2. 44-53). For Quintilian this manner was an indication and expression of goodness that was "mild" and lost in

wonder

at the

"ingratiating."

In the early eighteenth century the third earl of

Shaftesbury

(d.

1713) also described a "soft irony"

"spread alike through a whole character and life." Such

was more than an

irony

indication of goodness:

the expression of the perfect

way

of

life

to

it was which

language and a tone of voice that conflict with the

comic irony, that he has "a reasonably good arm." At first called litotes or meiosis, such understatement came to be called irony, at least by the end of the sixteenth century. The comic irony of praise through blame, which had also originated in Socratic self-depreciation, remained a minor figure of warrior, with

speech until the early eighteenth century, when England, nized

it

at least, Swift,

as a delightful

mode

in

which

to write letters

and converse.

The

had held in the Aristotelian 'school, but Shaftesbury was seeing irony in a modern way, from

trary" of

the subjective angle of the individual soul rather than

others occasionally to extend the opposition

from

it

Aristotle's objective social angle,

that Shaftesbury's emphasis fell

with the result

on the mental attitude

manner was only the external expression. The manner Shaftesbury described kept the degree of opposition between praise and blame very of

which the

slight,

ironic

avoiding satiric virulence or comic buffoonery:

was a fusion of modest self-abnegation, gentle gravand an apparent tolerance of all things behind which hid reservations about all things. The reservations were there because for the Neo-Platonic Shaftesbury the only important reality was the spirit within, which must tolerate but not be disturbed by the "immediate changes and incessant eternal conversions,

in

Pope, and their friends recog-

Shaftesbury aspired. Ethically, irony here reversed the position

o2o

its

of, rhetori-

or on the edge

chief fountains of

setting "everything in

(See Knox, pp. 47-53, for a hill discussion of Shaftesbury's conception.) Socrates was interpreted in this

which were

intervening

the

Cicero and Quintilian. In Cicero Socratic irony

became

own mind and

his

other values were limited and relative to one another. Apart from Socrates, the rhetoricians thought of

idea of irony, so called, out of the classroom into the intellectual

might find him puzzling, but he lived "disinterested and unconcerned," accommodating all appearances to

tragic

In the early eighteenth century, the omnipresence of French

the only audience aware of his irony and the world

abstract definition of irony as saying the "con-

what one means, the most popular formula from Cicero and Quintilian on, led the rhetoricians and

beyond and blame to logical contraries which might not involve praise or blame, such as praeteritio and negatio. praise

Cicero had pointed out that some types of irony do not say "the exact reverse of what you

something "different." Allegory "different" from

what

it

mean" but only

also says

something

means. Quintilian and later

it

rhetoricians classified irony as a type of allegory, but

ity,

Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1778-88) narrowed allegory

revolutions of the world."

He

himself might often be

to exclude irony: "allegory imports a similitude be-

tween the thing spoken and intended; irony a contrariety between them." However, the dominant conception of irony socalled was satiric blame through praise. The earliest recognized strategies, derived from Socrates, were

IRONY good qualities and self-depreciation meant to imply such Quintilian pointed out that the real meaning

of his being reduced to a state of beggary

direct praise of a victim for possessing

filled is that

he

in his pursuit of

lacks,

praise.

became evident

to

these strategies as

seventeenth century and

ern phase. Friedrieh Schlegel's oracular pronounce-

54-58). But he also remarked

6.

viii.

that irony as trope might state both praise explicitly: e.g., "it "it is

and blame

a fine thing to be a thief"

is

He

a fine thing to be honest."

— not,

also illustrated

which exposes a victim's ideas by

ironic concession,

echoing them with mock approval, and ironic advice,

which recommends that

its

victim continue to pursue

those foolish or vicious courses he

The

Later rhetoricians recognized irony,

and when

already pursuing.

is

was invented by Lucian.

ironic defense

in the late

all

the early eighteenth Boileau, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Vol-

and hosts of

taire, Fielding,

lesser

pamphleteers and

periodical writers used these strategies cheek by jowl the fallacious argument, the reductio

parody, burlesque, and the other strategies also

came

alchemy." Cambridge exhibits clearly

the rhetorical idea of satiric irony had been ex-

tended by the impact of fictional narrative. The mock sympathy with which ideas and opinions had been presented in ironic concession, advice, defense, and the like had become the grave presentation of character and action; the reality, which in many of the rhetorical ironies had been revealed by direct statement or burlesque exaggeration, in narrative was now revealed by the course of events: by dramatic irony. In Germany, during the last years of the eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth, the ironies of Cervantes and Socrates collided with transcendental philosophy, and irony entered its mod-

an audience "either by the delivery,

the character of the speaker or the nature of the subject" (Institutio

how

ad absurdum,

fictitious character, these

to

be called

All

ironic.

ments

lectures

widely

1797-1800) led the way, but Friedrich's

(chiefly

Schlegel, who was clearer and whose On Dramatic Art and Literature (1808) were translated, may have been more immediately

brother A.

W.

influential. In

any case, most of literary Germany was new way. It became the central

talking about irony in a

burlesque involving people degraded them to some

principle of an aesthetic in the Ertvin (1815) and later

degree by caricature, but the author presented his

writings of the philosopher K.

mock sympathy and

characters with

ened

approval, height-

"high" burlesque by elevated language.

in

When

who

W.

and Hegel,

F. Solger,

before Solger's death was briefly his colleague,

related irony to his

own

dialectical system.

An

admirer

such ironic strategies expanded into fictional

of Solger and student of Hegelianism, the expatriate

some length Swift's A Tale of a Tub, Pope's The Dunciad, Fielding's Jonathan Wild and

Heine helped to make the new ironies familiar in France, and in England many of them appeared in an essay "On the Irony of Sophocles" (1833) by Bishop Connop Thirlwall, a student of German thought, and an acquaintance and translator of Ludwig Tieck. Irony finally became the subject of an academic thesis in Spren Kierkegaard's Danish The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates (1841), which added little to the complex of meanings that had developed. Prior to the later eighteenth century, irony had always been thought of as a weapon to be used in the service of absolute human values derived from reality. For the eighteenth century, speaking very generally, this value had been "reason," supposedly reflected in the structure of the universe. Shaftesbury had found

—

narratives of

Joseph Andrews

— mid-century

critics for the first

time

defined the field of irony as the totality of an imaginative

work

Now

of art.

recognizing that irony could

be a literary mode of major significance, they saw Cervantes as the central model, flanked by Swift, Lucian, Erasmus. Cervantes especially had shown how to maintain tive. R.

an ironic manner throughout a long narra-

O. Cambridge

in the

Preface to his Scribleriad

common view:

(1752), expressed the

"the author should

never be seen to laugh, but constantly wear that grave irony which Cervantes alone has inviolably preserved."

Talking about his

own mock-heroic poem, Cambridge

continued:

To complete the design

of mock-gravity, the author

and

editors are represented full as great enthusiasts as the hero; therefore, as

all

things are supposed to appear to

them

in

a resting place in Neo-Platonism. of the

new

irony,

situation that has

the same light as they do to him, there are several things

On

which they could not explain without laying aside their assumed character. Then how shall it be known whether a burlesque writer means the thing he says or the contrary? This is only to be found by attention and a comparison of

evidence that

.

.

.

passages.

become

the one hand, there

human

familiar to the

out that

all

of his hero's great

expectations were "ironically given," "for of

all

of the

delivered to him, the only one

ful-

theorists

seemed

to

in

a

modern mind.

be considerable

values are only subjective and

sharply opposed to an external world that

is

chaotic,

inhumanly mechanistic, or ultimately unknowable, as in the Kantian epistemology that pervaded Schlegel's

Germany. On the other hand, they could not

And Cambridge pointed many prophecies

The German

however, found themselves

their faith that the values of the

be substantiated somewhere.

away from

No

human

relinquish

spirit

must

longer able to turn

the immediate world to the certainty of

629

IRONY a Platonic or Christian or Deistic absolute, they turned

tive" versus the "objective." At times Schlegel con-

toward the flux of existence and human art, recognizing that no "limited thing" could offer a resting place, yet hoping that out of the complex interrelationships of

ceived

something might emerge.

a wide-ranging experience

occurred to Friedrich Schlegel, as

It

Shaftesbury, that the best

way

for the

had

it

mind

to

to assert

freedom from "limited things" had been discovered

its

by Socrates. Irony, which Schlegel sometimes called "Socratic irony." was "never-ending satire," "continual

means

self-parody," by

above

all

of

which the

limited things," even over

or genius."

On

the other hand,

"things" that the spirit must

spirit "raises itself

its

"own

was

it

now

art, virtue,

very

in those

find itself.

Conse-

quently, in Schlegel the grave tolerance of Shaftesbury's

opened outward

ironic attitude

tive," "in earnest," "naively

to

become

engagement

paradoxically, an instrument of positive

same time

was an instrument of detachnew formula seem to have been Schiller's play theory of art and an analogy with the theological idea of Cod as both immanent and at the

that

it

ment. Behind Schlegel's

transcendent,

especially

in

post-Kantian,

Fichte's

idealist version.

The new

on

ironic attitude quicklv caught

both

in

For Tieck, irony "saturates its work with love, yet sweeps rejoicing and unfettered over the whole" (Sedgewick, p. 16). In Shakespeare's ironic art

and

life.

attitude A.

W.

Schlegel found the same combination

of creative absorption and "cool indifference," though

mood was

its

disillusioned:

above

it."

Goethe thought irony

raises the

happiness or unhappiness, good or

from which height

yet "soars freely

we may view

evil,

our

mind "above

death or

own

life,"

"faults

and

errors in a playful spirit"; even the scientist should

view

own

his

discoveries ironically, for they are only

provisionally true.

The

manifestation

external

of

irony

Friedrich

Schlegel located in an endless "tension of opposites."

and comic irony had of course exhibited a

Satiric

tension of opposites at just that

moment when

the

apparent meaning begins to give way to the real

moment both meanings

meaning. For that

some forms as a move-

ical

irony

is

"self-creating alternation," "self-criticism

surmounted."

And

since such irony does postulate ap-

pearances that are in part

but only in part,

real,

Schlegel returned to the association of irony with allegory.

Two

of Schlegel's chief models for paradoxical irony

in literature

were Laurence Sterne, who could both

love and laugh at the creations of his imagination, and

Don

Quixote, which Schlegel saw not simply as grave

satire

but as an unresolved tension between satire and

genuine sympathy for the Don's

ideals: "a charming symmetry" produced by "rhythmical alternations between enthusiasm and irony." In such phrases as this the word irony retained its old force as satiric, but

elsewhere

it

spilled over to include the "enthusiasm,"

a natural extension since the structure of enthusiastic

commitment followed by

satiric deflation paralleled

on

the surface the structure of satiric praise followed by

blame. In take on

this

its

context as well, then, irony began to

paradoxical sense.

new irony, came to be seen as examples

After the Schlegels had announced the

Ludwig Tieck 's early of

it.

plays

Setting out to satirize philistine prejudices, Tieck

had adopted the

strategies of burlesque satire, as old

as Aristophanes, especially

its

destruction of a primary

by the "reality" of author, actors, even audience stepping out of their normal roles to speak as themselves, attacking each other and commenting on the primary illusion itself, a device Tieck had also been impressed by in the authorial intrusions of Cervantes and Sterne. But Tieck became lost in endless relativity. A character in The World Turned Topsyfictional illusion

turvy remarks: "This

is

too crazy! See, friends,

we

sit

are simulta-

here as spectators and see a play; in that play spectators

neously before the eye in a precarious balance. Such

are also sitting and seeing a play, and in that third

irony,

however, had theoretically always resolved

tension in favor of a real meaning. So, too,

this

would the

and tragic irony to come. But Schlegel did not wish to resolve the tension in that direction. Nothnihilistic

ing

is

absolute, everything

"an incessant

.

.

.

is

So irony became two contradictory

relative.

alternation of

thoughts," the contradictory thoughts usually being faith in

630

it

—

Shakespeare had seen

"human nature through and through"

more often he described

ment from one thought to another, as in dramatic irony. The ironic author at first appears to engage himself with one meaning and in part really does so; he then appears to destroy that meaning by revealing and attaching himself to a contradictory meaning; this, too, however, he also destroys, either by returning to the first or moving on to a third, ad infinitum. Paradox-

"instinc-

open." Irony was now,

this tension as static, a fusion, as in

of verbal irony;

some

ideal

human

on the other, assent to a

value on the one hand, and

less ideal reality;

the "subjec-

play another play actors.

.

.

.

is

going to be played by those third

People often dream that

verkehrte Welt [1799], end of Act

sort of thing" (Die

III; trans.

Thompson,

pp. 58-59).

Shakespeare too was an

ironist

on the new model,

both Friedrich and A. W. Schlegel decided. To demonit was necessary to find satiric elements in what most people had supposed to be a predominantly

strate this,

sympathetic presentation, as

in

Don Quixote

enthusi-

IRONY asm had been found

W.

A.

to

counterbalance

Schlegel barred irony

when

satire.

Although

"the proper tragic

which demands "the highest degree of seriousit everywhere else. In the results of Henry V's marriage to the French princess, he saw

enters," ness,"

he found

dramatic irony that cast a

satiric

on Henry's

light

ambitions. Incongruous juxtapositions might be ironic:

comic scenes were often "intentional parody of the serious part." In his depiction even of "noble minds" Shakespeare had revealed "self-deception" and hypocrisy.

Such irony, A. W. Schlegel

was a defense

said,

against "overcharged one-sidedness in matters of fane)

and feeling." He assumed that all intelligent people were relativists: by constant ironic qualification Shakespeare "makes a sort of secret understanding with the more intelligent of his readers or spectators; he shows them that he had previously seen and admitted the validity of their tacit objections" (Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature [1809-11], trans. John .

.

.

Black, rev. A.

J.

W. Morrison

all good modern would be ironic. But if its irony was to be endlessly relative, where would the final values of a modern work lie? In literature, as in life, they would

literature

reside in the comprehensiveness of the author's activity:

work might be "limited

but in

inclusion of

its

all

every point,"

at

contradictions

it

human

artist

created a beautiful work "just as the essence of God, in

non-actuality, reveals itself intact as the very

its

human

core" of a

being. In both cases the idea inhabits

a particular "thing." For Solger the situation was ironic, because, on the one hand, although the "thing" appeared to suggest the infinite, it was really only a

and on the other hand, although the "infinite" appeared to transcend the thing, it could not really do so it must inhabit finite reality. Schlegels tension of opposites had become the "concrete universal," the ironic symbol of a universe which intimated meanings that could not be reached in an eternal form. But at least in the artistic symbol "all contradictions annihithing,

—

late themselves": irony

is

a unifying structure.

"Without irony," then, "there is no art." Considering the tension of opposites as moving rather than static, Solger found that irony "begins with the contemplation of the world's fate in the large":

"we

suffer

when we

see the most elevating and noble ideals dissipated

[1892], pp. 369-70).

Friedrich Schlegel thought that

a perfected

Solger's aesthetic. In Solger's view, the

would be

through their necessary earthly existence." A.

W.

Schlegel had barred irony from the "proper tragic,"

but for Solger satiric and "tragic irony" were simply

common

different aspects of the irony

the

first,

were destroyed;

false ideals

admirable ones, and the audience

is

to all art: in

in the

second,

not detached:

"we

Although the dominant movement in both and tragic irony was toward defeat, Solger saw

suffer."

"without limitation and inexhaustible." (For authorita-

satiric

and references to F. Schlegels scattered pronouncements, see Immerwahr, Wellek, and Muecke.) Hegel was not impressed. Rather unfairly, he saw

an opposing comic movement arising out of destruc-

tive discussions of

the

new

irony of the Schlegels as entirely negative.

In literature

it

produced "insipid" characters having

"neither content nor defined position." In the Schlegelian ironist looked fashion on

all

"down

whom

other mortals," some of

life itself,

in his superior his ironic

gravity actually deceived; he denied and destroyed that

of

was "noble,

freedom

great,

and excellent"

for the self; yet,

because

all

in the interest

his

freedom pro-

was beset and boredom. In fact, in opposing "self-will" to objective moral truth, "this type of subjectivism ... is evil through and through and universally." (Capel's translation of Kierkegaard,

hibited positive action and led nowhere, he

by morbid

Part

II,

feelings of emptiness

Introduction,

to Hegel's

n. 7,

comments on

gives a full

list

of references

tion,

had Friedrich Schlegel

as

alteration."

The very moment

union of idea and thing affirms both the value of the idea and the necessity of

its

embodiment.

When Ham-

Fortinbras must appear. (For discussions of and

let dies,

statements about

irony,

see

Wellek, Mueller, pp. 225-26, Sedgewick, Strohschneider-Kohrs.)

17,

and

references

Solger's

to

p.

Hegel accepted as a phase though it was only one phase: "that transition point which I call the infinite absolute negativity." For Hegel Socratic irony was negative dialectic. Socrates' humble questioning had Solger's version of irony

own famous

of his

induced

dialectic,

his interlocutor to state a definite proposition,

from which Socrates then derived

in

one way or an-

other "the direct opposite of what the proposition

was not so which ideas

stated." In this conception, Socrates' irony

much mocking

irony.)

in his "self-creating

that breaks the brief

praise as dramatic irony in

had also an however, than Hegel's objective moral truth. Friedrich had found it "strikingly ironic" that der grosse Maschinist behind

played the roles characters and events play in

the chaos "finally discloses himself as a contemptible

in the

betrayer." In not quite so disillusioned a way, this

torical process,

Actually, of course, the Schlegels' irony

objective side, one that

was

objective source of irony

less reassuring,

moved

to the foreground in

"Socratic irony

what

is

.

.

.

,

fiction.

like all dialectic, gives force to

taken immediately, but only in order to allow

the dissolution inherent in

it

to

come

to pass." Since

Hegelian system dialectic was deified as

in dialectic as

his-

Hegel spoke of the negative moment "the universal irony of the world" (Lee-

Oo 1

IRONY on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane [1892], I, 400). And although he thought Solger's use tures

of the phrase "tragic irony"

was

arbitrary, he himself

called Socrates' "opposition of subjective reflection to

morality as

meaning,

exists" a "tragic irony,"

it

in

The audience

exhibits "a slight cast of irony in

the grave, respectful attention impartially bestowed."

was sometimes easier it was for "we review the mockery of fate, we

But Thirlwall admitted that

God

for

it

to preserve such an attitude than

When

humans.

Kierkegaard's interpretation, "the irony of the world

can scarcely refrain from a melancholy smile"

with Socrates."

logical

It

soon became commonplace to think of the

field

and of mankind as the victim of a cosmic author. Heine spoke casually of the irony of God. the world, nature, fate, and even chance. The of irony as

life itself,

red cheeks of the elderly A. W. Schlegel, a parodv of youth, were a "healthy irony of nature"; the incongru-

ous juxtaposition of a Gothic cathedral with modern

An "ironic remark" might now mocking, but simply the straightforward observation of an ironic fact. was

buildings be,

not

in

ironic.

itself

Bishop Connop Thirlwall,

and

who believed

two movements

spelled out the

in a just god.

of irony, both in

Sophocles. In our personal lives

in

we

pursue objects which prove worthless; but

dread changes which "the

history

In

bilfill

moment

life

eagerly

we

also

our "most ardent wishes." prosperity

of highest

.

.

.

immediately precedes the most ruinous disaster"; but

Greek culture through Rome was followed by Christianity. In Oedipus the King there is "the contrast between the appearance of good and the reality of evil"; Oedipus at Colonus "reverses that irony," for Oedipus can here say, "Now, when all's the destruction of Greece spread

the

Roman

world, the destruction of

(Philo-

Museum. Cambridge [1832-33], II, 483-537). Whether as the questing romantic ego, the progress of world history, or a just god of some sort, the theorists of paradoxical irony had found a hopeful movement which preserved the balance of triumph and defeat. This was seen either as a human satiric norm counterbalancing an inhuman one, or as a comic movement counterbalancing the tragic. But when even these faiths receded, as for some nineteenth- and twentieth-century minds they did, the comic movement came to seem entirely deceptive, and the norm of satire became reduced to Nothing. Human values are only illusions. One result of this loss of faith was increasing notice of tragic irony. The other was that the idea of irony as counterbalancing sympathy with detachment began to isolate from the complex of paradoxical irony what may be called nihilistic irony, that peculiar merging of the satiric and the tragic adumbrated in Thirlwall's "melancholy smile." This view of irony became prominent in Heine, who "is repelled by the cold stars, and sinks down toward our little earth." God "is sometimes a greater .

satirist

than Tieck." In the "humoristic irony" of

Quixote the "insane dignity" of the

Don

is

made

.

.

Don

ridic-

am a man indeed." Though he used only the term "tragic irony," Thirlwall, apparently following

ulous by "fate," yet that ridiculous fate shows us the

Solger, extended the conception of irony into both

Troilus

lost, I

tragic

and comic situations in which the detachment was overcome by sympathy for the victim.

of irony

But the

satiric

remained

as

aspect did not totally disappear;

own conduct assumes a tone of self-mockery," but "when we member

that,

it

a qualification of the dominant feeling.

Clytemnestra's "vindication of her

while she

is

pleading, her

doom

is

.

.

.

re-

sealed,

and that the hand which is about to execute it is already lifted above her head," the tone becomes "deeply tragical."

In his discussion of

ambiguous language

in Sophocles'

tragedies, Thirlwall apparently established the associa-

term "Sophoclean irony" with dialogue that means one thing to the speaker, another to author and audience, whose view of the situation is wider and tion of the

truer. This sort of thing

common form

had been recognized

as a

of irony in satiric narrative; Thirlwall

simply extended the

field to tragedy.

He

also pointed

out a type of tragedy that contains an ironic dilemma,

such as the conflict of Antigone and Creon, "in which

632

side."

good and

evil are

.

.

.

inextricably blended on each

"tragedy

.

.

.

of

and

our

own

nothingness."

Cressida "is neither

there prevails in

it

Shakespeare's

comedy nor tragedy

an exultant bitterness, a world-

mocking irony, such as we never met in the merriment of the comic muse. It is the tragic goddess who is very much more before us in this play, only that she here would fain be gay for once, and move to mirth. It is as if we saw Melpomene at a grisette ball, dancing the chahut, bold laughter on her pale lips and death in her heart." (See Wellek, Vol. Heine's

comments on

Ill,

for references to

irony.)

As the nineteenth century wore on, the new ironies moved to center stage. At the turn of the

gradually

century Anatole France and Thomas Hardy especially were drawing the attention of a large audience to irony. By 1908 Alexander Blok could observe, "All the most lively and sensitive children of our century are stricken by a disease" irony (quoted in Glicksberg, "irony and pity" became In the 1920's France's p. 3). a catch phrase. H. W. Fowler (1926) announced that "the irony of fate" was hackneyed, and I. A. Richards (1924) began that preoccupation with irony among English and American academic critics which has

—

IRONY helped to make

it

a central idea in literary criticism

throughout the world. Tragic irony quickly established itself as an inde-

pendent aspect of irony, and G. G. Sedgewick has asserted that

it

does not qualify the tragic feeling: "it

heightens the sense of pity and terror." Paradoxical and nihilistic irony

have had a harder time disentangling

themselves from each other,

to the confusion of

.

.

.

audacity" (Westminster Review, pattern

—a

n.

s.

The full denying human

9, 1-33).

conception of reality as

values and the mingling of something like satiric

detachment with something dent

in a

number

like tragic

pathos

—

is

evi-

of Baudelaire's uses of the word; in

relativism of paradoxical irony

turn-of-the-century criticism of Laforgue's irony by

clearly the core of Kierkegaard's "mastered irony,"

Arthur Symons, Remy de Gourmont, and James Huneker; in discussions of the "cosmic irony" of Hardy and Housman; in Georges Palante's "metaphysical

criticism. is

The balanced

much

In 1856 George Eliot commented on Heine's "strain of irony that repels our sympathy. Yet what strange, deep pathos is mingled with the

emerged elsewhere.

the "philosophical irony" of

Renan and France, Henry

James's "full irony," the "objective irony" of of opposed

Mann,

Thomas

Richards' "balance William Empson's "double irony," Cleanth Brooks' "a

impulses,"

verv different conception of irony," and A. Zahareas' analysis (1963) of irony in

Camus

as nihilism counter-

balanced by a stubborn determination to go on (Texas

and Language, 5, 319-28). As an attitude toward life, paradoxical irony has been both praised and attacked. F. Paulhan (1909) argued Studies in Literature

at philosophical length that all

moral values are

rela-

and only the ironic attitude can give proportional weight to the demands of both society and the ego.

principle of irony"; in Irving Babbitt's notion of "roF. Schlegel had used only Notebooks but which has been frequently used by German scholars since Rudolf Haym's Romantische Schule (1870); in Morton Gurewitch's "European romantic irony," which he traces through Byron, Heine, Grabbe, Buehner, Leopardi, Flaubert, and Baudelaire; and in notice of the irony of the Absurd, frequent since

mantic irony," a term that in his

World War

Many

tive

Nietzsche thought the ironic attitude a sign of health

II.

critics

which duces, even at

self-pity

have commented on the despair and both expresses and in-

nihilistic irony its

(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886). The American Randolph Bourne (1913) believed that since the ironist does

Madame

aot absolutely reject any experience but

the realism of his

contrasting and criticizing and

is

moving on

constantly to

new

periences, he has an "intense feeling of aliveness"

ex-

and

"the broad honest sympathy of democracy" (Atlantic

Monthly, 111, 357-67). Attacks on

this attitude

have

detachment

ironic

some

Bovary,

most detached extreme. Discussing Flaubert insisted on his absolute as author; nevertheless,

method

to

produce

identification with the characters,

he expected

in his

audience

and he himself

recognized, as Kenneth Burke remarked, a "funda-

mental kinship with the enemy." Waiting for Godot

was

farcical

vaudeville,

yet

Ward Hooker

(I960)

ethics:

pointed out that the play's "irony in a vacuum" had

is no absolute commitment to anything. So H. Chantavoine (1897) and H. Chevalier (1932) attacked

changed the "laughter of the audience ... to sickening doubt which spreads from the addled minds of Vladimir and Estragon to engulf the audience" (Kenyon Review, 22, 436-54). Few moral critics have

all

resembled Hegel's attack on Schlegelian

there

Anatole France,

Wayne Booth

(1961) the elusive

mo-

of modern novelists, and Jean-Paul Sartre adopted the ironic attitude as a model for analyzing self-deception or mauvaise foi (L'etre et le neant, 1943). rality

The German romantics had tried and morality of paradoxical irony siveness, but, as sites

J.

C.

Ransom

to locate the unity in its

comprehen-

(1941) observed, "oppo-

can never be said to be resolved or reconciled

merely because they have been got into the same poem." Several American critics have attempted to solve this

problem

in a

Hegelian

way by

seeing para-

doxical irony not as the expression of absolute relativ-

dynamic learning process which produces Randolph Bourne irony was "the science of comparative experience" which "compares ism, but as a

tentative results. For

things not with an established standard but with each

other":

values

"slowly emerge from the process."

Cleanth Brooks, R. taken

The

much

the

R

Warren, and Kenneth Burke have

same

position.

quite different pattern of nihilistic irony has

.

.

.

risen to praise nihilistic irony, is

many

to attack

it:

it

absolute for negation and despair.

The

various types of satiric irony have been exhaus-

by twentieth-century critics. In "The and Others" (1961) Benjamin De Mott described a satiric irony based on nihilism as a positive norm, in the sense that it supplies a reason not for defeat and despair but for the ironist's arrogantly superior, ironic attack on "all positive assertion." Comic irony has apparently received almost no attention as an independent aspect of irony, and the term itself has usually meant what is here called satiric irony. What little attention it has received has been as part of an overall complex of dramatic irony, which has been repeatedly analyzed in tragic drama by English and American critics following Thirlwall. Henry James drew attention to a novelistic form of dramatic irony: the difference between what an un-

tively analyzed

New

Irony: Sicknicks

633

IRRATIONALISM IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY reliable narrator or center of consciousness understands in

what he

or sees and what the author and audi-

tells

Niebuhr and Kenneth Burke have used paradoxical ironv as a model for analyzing history. Niebuhr revived

ence understand.

methods of

the Christian view of Thirlwall— God "resisteth the

intensified in the criti-

proud and giveth grace to the humble"; Burke took the Hegelian position that history is an ironic dialectic only in which no cultural movement ever disappears the balance changes [Grammar of Motives, 1945).

In the field of verbal irony, the analytic

rhetoric have been revived

and

William Empson, Cleanth Brooks, and followers, now equipped with all the new ideas

cal practice of

their

cause, thereby keeping the door to progress open. Both

of irony as well as the old.

Such criticism has found

—

The most important recent theory whose Anatomy of

ironic incongruity in the minutest degree of difference

between meanings. For Brooks, "every word in a good poem acknowledges to some degree the pressure of the context" and is therefore ironic. In France, Vladimir Jankelevitch (1936) had asserted much the same argument in terms of irony as allegory: all language, indeed, is more or less allegorical. R. S. Crane 1952) observed that in this sense even a mathematical i

equation In

is

Wit and

satiric,

asserted that

such irony produces "comic pleasure,

probably by causing him to make preparations for contradiction,

which are immediately found

necessarv." That

is,

would the victim

to

be un-

the audience of satiric irony reacts of

comic

irony.

Thinking of ironv

as paradoxical, Richards, although not entirelv satisfied

with a "switchboard" psychology, located the faction of the audience in a static "balance of

satis-

opposed

impulses." In regard to the author, Freud asserted that

what one means paralwhich "delights in representing a pair of opposites by means of one and the same composite image" or "changes an element from the dreamthoughts into its opposite." This notion seems to have been behind Norman Brown's "law of irony" by which it could be shown that the "partially disclaimed irony as saying the opposite of the dream,

thought

is

Swift's

own

thought" (Life Against Death,

and Norman Holland's definition of irony as "a defense mechanism in which the ego turns the object 1959),

of a drive into

its

opposite" (Dynamics of Literary

all

a total structure of

Irony has continued to appear in fields of observation It has been analyzed in music and

is

that

the available ideas of irony into

was not

Even

vision.

clearly distin-

guished from comic irony.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Sedgewick.

Of Iron*/

ings of the

V

Drama

Especially in

1948). contains an historically oriented

(Toronto,

review of the mean-

word irony, including the Greek and the Latin. Word "Irony" and Its Context. 1500-1755

Knox. 77u-

(Durham. N.C., R. VVellek,

A

Haven, 1955

—

1961), deals with

developments

England.

in

History of Modern Criticism, 5 vols.

(New

gives consistent attention to irony as a topic

),

European literary criticism, with full references. D. C. Muecke, The Compass of Irony (London, 1969), contains an excellent bibliography. Also: W. C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961); C. I. Glicksberg, The Ironic Vision in Modem Literature (The Hague, 1969), to be used with caution; R. Immerwahr, "The Subjectivity or Objectivity of Friedrich Schlegel's Poetic Irony," Germanic Rein

oiew, 26 (1951),

173-91; V. Jankelevitch, LTronie (Paris,

1936; rev. ed., 19.50), a suggestive study;

S.

Kierkegaard,

M. Capel (New York, 1965); G. E. Mueller, "Solger's Aesthetics A Key to Hegel (Irony and Dialectic)," in Corona, ed. A. Schirokauer and W. Paulsen (Durham, N.C., 1941), pp. 212-27; I. StrohschneiderKohrs, Die Romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestultung (Tubingen, I960); A. R. Thompson, The Dry Mock: A Study of Irony in Drama (Berkeley, 1948); David Worcester, The The Concept of

Irony, trans. L.

—

Art of Satire (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).

NORMAN

Response, 1968). outside literature.

of irony

Criticism (1957)

human thought and

here, however, satiric irony

(.. (i.

Relation to the Unconscious (1905),

Its

in the listener

lels

absorbed virtually

ironic.

Freud, thinking of verbal irony as

as

of Northrop Frye.

[See also Allegory; Art

D.

and Play; Comic Sense;

KNOX

Rhetoric-

after Plato; Satire; Style; Tragic Sense.]

the visual arts, notably by Ortega y Gasset (1925), Jankelevitch, and Muecke. Goethe's observation that the truths of science should be viewed ironically has

reoccurred, and Heisenberg's Principle of Indetermin-

acy has reinforced it is

it

for

Muecke and Arthur

changes the particle

1957). In the field of politics, the attitude of paradoxical

irony has been

634

IRRATIONALISM IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Miller:

measurement itself being measured" (Collected Plays.

"dialectical irony that the act of

sions

dun

Mann

(1918),

political

recommended by Proudhon

revolutionnaire,

1849),

Palante

(Confes(1906),

and Reinhold Niebuhr (1952): it frees the activist from fanatical attachment to any one

For a bird's-eye view

of the history of the idea of

irrationalism in philosophy,

two preliminary method-

ological observations are in order. First, irrationalism is

a retrospective concept, that

is

established only through contrasting

is

to say, it

its

meaning

with a ration-

IRRATIONALISM IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY why

limit of being,

the critique of rationalism could not be completely

known by our

which has already been

alism

accomplished

established.

That

Kant's philosophy until

in

is

from talking about the

prevents us

nothing

tionalism in Heraclitus' thoughts;

and we can

ever,

freely admit

its

it

is

irra-

how-

implicit,

itself implicit.

we

Secondly, is

submit that properly speaking there

no tradition of irrationalism as there

What we

tradition.

may

is

a rationalistic

observe are irruptions, or even,

wish to say, eruptions of irrationalism. For

tionalism

is

we

irra-

prime matter which cannot be

all this, classical

philosophy, such as Plato's

shines.

The N'eo-Platonism

of a Plotinus, a Damascius, or

of the world in which starting from the One, situated above reason, emanations

scheme

a Proclus offers a radiate

we

and gradually become embodied

in things. If

we may say that skepticism, and we can see

take Hegel as our inspiration,

ancient philosophy ends in

form of irrationalism. However, rationalism does not assume

in skepticism a

a revolt.

we

find

reason any more than Plato's matter.

and Aristotle's, appears as a triumph of reason, and emerges from the ideas and forms on which reason

positive presence in

his philosophy, but only insofar as the positive element is

Despite

the

after

Cartesian philosophy had been formed. Nevertheless,

we

its

decisive

have the occasion to see that irrationalism perhaps comes often from too narrow a conception of rationalism. We shall have to judge to

forms until the seventeenth century with Descartes and

what extent

clear ideas that are not distinct, for example, pain

In addition,

shall

rationalists are right

they

tionalists that

have created a

up

rise

false

in saying to irra-

against reason because they

conception of reason. (See, for

example, Leon Brunschwicg's criticism of Wahl's Vers le coneret.

|

From mythology

post-Nietzschean philosophy

to

Myths used to reveal superhuman powers ruling over the destinies of men. there

a long and curious road.

is

Destiny

implies a certain type of irrational force;

itself

the wars of

men and

the genealogies of the gods are

manifestations of this extraordinary and harsh force.

When

a sage like Xenophanes raises his voice, he

takes account of the irrationality of the gods and rejects

them. But soon

among

the sages there appears another

who

proclaims that the logos which rules the universe

and

is

than

independent of

human

reason:

it

all things,

is

much more

vast

unites contradictory elements,

day and night, silence and noise, peace and war. At times this logos appears like a child playing with dice, as in the thought of Heraclitus, who is great enough to

be classed

as

both the greatest of the irrationalists

and one of the greatest of rationalists. It all depends on how wide a berth is given to reason. Like Nietzsche, Heraclitus is the bard of a greater reason than man's and also the bard of the Eternal Return. In the great classical philosophies of Plato and Aristotle reason

is

triumphant, but matter, as Plato repre-

something irrational. Elsewhere, above the Ideas and shining with the blinding sents

it

in the

Timaeus,

is

resplendence of the intelligible sun, there

which

is

is

the

inaccessible to pure reasoning. Reason

Good is

thus

the influence of science. But

is

proper to confine

it

thought to clear and distinct ideas? Descartes admitted

and

color and everything arising from the union of the soul

and body may each be experienced which belongs to the domain of the indistinct, the indistinct being what we do not know scientifically. This also is what Malebranche meant when he regarded the human soul as an obscure domain. We cannot, however, make Malebranche an irrationalist. On the other hand, one of his contemand body;

soul

distinctly but not their union

may be

poraries

justifiablv

considered a principal rep-

resentative of irrationalism, namely, Pascal. Pascal talks of the heart's reasons.

He

says that the heart feels that

space has three dimensions. Furthermore, religious truth is

is

not grasped by our understanding; such truth

revealed by the Incarnation and by miracles. Pascal

God

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with and it is not by rational demonstrations that God's existence can be proved. A short time before Pascal, another great writer, and contrasts the

the

God

of

of the philosophers,

like Pascal

probably a reader of Montaigne, namely,

Shakespeare, had said (or more exactly, had one of his characters, Hamlet, say), "There are

more

things in

heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of

in

your

philosophy."

At the end of the eighteenth century, the age of enlightenment call

it,

the

formulated Jacobi.

or, as

in the writings of

Hamann,

("Socratic

the Italian historians of philosophy

age of illuminismo, J.

G.

irrationalism

Hamann and

in his Sokratische

was F.

H.

Denkuiirdigkeiten

Memorabilia"), inspired, he thought, by

Socrates, derides

human

reason and seeks in numbers

only an intermediary faculty between two realms of

the symbols that will enable us to perceive the hidden

the irrational.

Deity. Jacobi insists on the inadequacies of reason in

God, being Thought reflecting on itself, cannot be presented as impervious to reason; we no longer have here that higher limit of the supra-rational such as we find in Plato's Good. However, at the lower

morals.

Aristotle's

Their great contemporary Kant writes:

shown the for faith."

limits of

knowledge

But obviouslv

this

in order to

"I

have

make room

statement scarcely covers

DoO

IRRATIONALISM IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY What he showed is that mind cannot grasp things in themselves; the mind can grasp only phenomena, and only because it shapes

began

to develop his ideas after

relativism.

the

reflecting on the philosophy of Kant. But the influence

them, that

is

to say, because

imposes

it

its

forms and

first

termine the conditions necessary for

edge to be

come

possible.

to see clearly

themselves thing in

is

By studying these conditions we why a knowledge of things in

impossible. There

itself to

a

knowl-

scientific

is,

nevertheless, one

knowledge of which we can to a

certain extent penetrate, namely, the

we

have respect for others

when we

self;

are confronted by

we can lay down Hamann and Jacobi were

what

is

morally autonomous, and

a moral

law for ourselves.

not mis-

it is

from Kant that two

were developed:

theories

F.

Schopenhauer and then of Friedrich Nietzsche

Among these thinkers Wilhelm

Dilthey went farthest

expounding philosophically the difference, as he viewed it, between explanation and understanding in

(

Verstiindnis): in the

plains

human

sciences, the scientist ex-

more than he understands. On

we might

assumption,

the basis of this

envisage a widening of the idea

and a kind of compromise, necessarily provicompromises are, between rationalism and

of reason

sional as all

irrationalism.

We must provide a special place, apart from all these groups of thinkers, for G.

taken in treating Kant as an enemy. Still

of

also

gave a special tinge to Simmel's philosophy.

categories on the sensory manifold. Kant seeks to de-

He

T

Fechner, the founder of

posited an earth-spirit above the

influential irrationalist

psychophysics.

W.

and

souls of individuals; the earth-spirit includes individual

first

souls

J.

Schelling's

Arthur Schopenhauer's. Schelling from the very

and

is

in turn

included in and absorbed by the

of his works stressed the role of intellectual intuition

soul of the universe. In another side of his

which he claimed was both a creation and an

he contrasts the

that

to

know

and

we can

in art, as in

metaphysics,

come

thought

is

presented as philosophy of

nature, then as philosophy of identity,

phase,

more

and

finally,

the

and

He

contrasts the inescapable

misfortune of the activity of our art,

will,

on the one hand,

on the other.

We

are here

confronted with a double-edged irrationalism; for the is

irrational,

correct to say that Bergson

for

him

is

and

art,

thanks to which

we can

La duree

Bergson

later called

The same

is

is

the cumulative development

an "intuition," and not a concept.

true of the elan vital ("life thrust"). This

aspect of Bergson's thought his

is

especially prominent in

Introduction to Metaphysics (Introduction a la

metaphysique, 1903) and pensee

et le

mouvant

in

the preface of his

in the criticism of the sciences as

the thought

conceived

a blind and

tionalism of Charles

all

We

cannot here go into the question of the possible

Hartmann and Sigmund Freud. Going Schopenhauer, we can best understand him

influences of von

back to as having started from Kant. It is also to Kant's influence that we should attach the work of Hans Vaihinger. This

profound commentator of Kant's philosophy

established a whole theory according to

move

in a

world of pure

which we which

fiction (fictionalism)

can be compared to certain characteristics of AngloSaxon pragmatism.

While German academic philosophy was dominated by neo-Kantianism, certain philosophies of life were being developed along lines that were irrationalistic in character. However, it is rather in the writings of Georg Simmel, a penetrating thinker and remarkable writer, that we find the expression of both vitalism and

it.

La

(1934). This aspect appears also

From Schopenhauer we may go on to of Eduard von Hartmann who presents conditions (the "Unconditioned").

an irrationalist?

moment of time unrolling from the Of duree we can have what Henri

escape from the irrational, surpasses reason.

creative unconscious, profoundly independent of

is

not something which can be understood by

the intellect.

preceding one.

with freedom through will

Is it

As for Schopenhauer, him under two aspects: as Will

as Representation.

transmundane vision he

In a sense, yes; specifically because duration (la duree)

of events, each

the world appears to

world view, day with the nocturnal light

anticipates Gaston Bachelard's views.

antirationalistic than the preceding

ones, as philosophy of revelation.

light of

of mechanical science. In this

by overcoming the duality of subject

reality

object. In Schelling's reflections there are several

stages; first his

last

insight;

through intellectual intuition's creative and

is,

visionary role

DoD

He

the whole of Kant's thought.

Edouard Le Roy

Also worthy of mention

is

the irra-

Peguy and of Georges Sorel. Clearly most of the themes of irrationalism are present in Bergsonism in which they are compressed: vitalism, criticism of science insofar as

it

consists of hy-

and general distrust of the abstract intellect. No doubt, Bergson was glad to emphasize often enough that intellect was sovereign in the realm of inert things, but that very fact shows the limitations of intelligence. Bergson's theories were welcomed as liberating ideas by William James because they gave freedom to man and enabled the future to have an open character. For a certain period of time Bergson's theories were potheses,

overshadowed by the prevalence of

existentialist ideas

associated with S0ren Kierkegaard, and by the phe-

nomenological views associated with It

Edmund

Husserl.

was only towards the end of his philosophical devel-

opment that Maurice Merleau-Ponty returned more incisive knowledge of Bergsonian thought. There

is

to a

a Kierkegaardian irrationalism in the sense

IRRATIONALISM IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Kierkegaard

was more

and

effective than Kant,

in a sense as effective as Pascal, in destroying science

order to

in

make room

Kant had sought the

for faith.

plexes; in Marxism, reason

what value

for

him

to us

as for Pascal,

is

tivity or inner state of

is

What

objectivity?

matters,

and one's subjec-

one's welfare

being insofar as

it

exists in

an

Heidegger places himself on quite a different plane.

Similar ideas occur in Gabriel Marcel,

who

devel-

independently of any influence by

his theories

The fundamental question for him is the question of being, the same being of which it was said in his Being and Time {Sein und Zeit, 1927), that it could be perceived only against the horizon of time, revealing

intense relation to the Absolute.

oped

and destroyed and more generally

relativized

on account of economic conditions.

conditions of objective knowledge, but Kierkegaard asks, of

is

for the benefit of the class struggle

on the difference between

itself

and hiding itself at the same time, somewhat like the hidden God of Pascal and Kierkegaard, also somewhat

and the instruments or objective things in my posseson the other hand. It is on that basis that he envisages the problem of my body which is absolutely

being is revealed and is Quoting a chorus in Sophocles' Antigone, Heidegger depicts man as the strangest and most terrible of beings. No less than man, perhaps, the things against which man's power is broken are strange

not comparable to an instrument that

and

Kierkegaard. Marcel

insists

being and having, between what

am, on the one hand,

I

sion,

am my body. However, I am not isolated

possess:

it

should perhaps

and through soul,

it I

exist in a

Gabriel Marcel's term), finally to

is

Thou. At

my

body,

in

to others.

"invocation"

its

am

I

(to

use

constantly a call to others

this point,

converges on Kierkegaard's. for example,

in

profound relation

going towards

beings.

in

terrible.

Undoubtedly man's power increases under

the profound influence of technology. But

I

And my and

I

like Kant's "thing-in-itself":

hidden

On

Marcel's thought

certain other points,

on the affirmation of essences, not

intel-

lectual or intelligible essence but hidden, veiled,

and

of Plato, except that

Husserl.

sensory things.

By taking

into

account

we

influence

the

of

development of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy as well as Martin Heidegger's. These philosophies are what might be called the penultimate forms of irrationalism. Sartre gave his book Being and Nothingness {Litre et le

neant, 1943), the subtitle Essay on Phenomenological

Ontology. it

It is

a strange

view of

reality

which divides

into a static "thing in itself," suddenly appearing

in sensation,

stantly in a

what

God

and something "for itself" which is conit is not, and is not what it is. The belief

or even in Platonic Ideas assumes that there

can be a union of

reality in itself

with reality for

Though

both

can best understand the

itself.

is based on the denial of such a possiand insists on the impossibility of such a union. Our world is henceforth mere contingency.

in fact

Nevertheless, in Sartre's thought there are mingled influences, beginning with Husserl

and Heidegger, of

is

it

tems; but this Being

came open

did to Holderlin's.

of reason

A

nonetheless true

and consethe benefit of the Id and com-

that in Freudianism, reason

quently destroyed for

It is

is

relativized

to return, past lost

in

in repre-

which

is

re-

philosophical sys-

to Nietzsche's thought

must hence be sought, and for Heidegger, can be discovered only in the abyss of

this principle

nonreason. Thus

we

see in Heidegger a resurgence of

irrationalism.

In the contemporary world, reason all sides.

though

is

attacked on

In the work, for example, of Michel Foucault,

it

appears

in a structured form,

it

is still

the

voice of irrationalism that speaks. Foucault thinks he

can pass beyond both rationalism and humanism tionalistic relativism.

The Destruction of Reason (1954).

beyond

foundation for the principle

That brings us to the question of knowing

books, the one precisely directed against irrationalism,

We have which is

vealed at times, but only partly

same time. What we witness

what sense it may be said that psychoanalysis and Marxism are irrationalistic. In one sense they may be said to be rationalistic and even ultra-rationalistic, but a philosopher like George Lukacs in vain entitles one of his

perceive,

sentation, to the presence of that Being

Karl Marx, on the one hand, and of Freud, on the other. in

We

an essence not yet known, an eter-

the evolution of philosophy,

it

in

Plato has just been mentioned, Heidegger

nity not belonging to concepts.

as

way

shines in an obscure

closer to Nietzsche.

classical concepts,

Sartre's atheism

bility,

say

things, rather than

lived-through (voilee-vecue), Marcel comes close to

Kierkegaard and Husserl,

who can

what is close to us, will best reveal the presence of sky and water, of mortal and perhaps immortal things? We live in a twilight zone from which, according to J. C. F. Holderlin, the ancient Gods have fled and into which future deities have not yet come. In this state of our existence we have to preserve the thought of being which is beyond all intelligible thought, like the Good whether remote

works

in his

is

at the

an

irra-

one of the characteristics of thought in the beyond existence and beyond essences something that our discourse cannot reach but to which It

is

1960's to see

it

can only point. But

just as

reason has

its limits,

alism, irrationalism also has

its

according to ration-

own

limitations

which

can be discerned from two viewpoints, that of science

and

that of

common

sense. In the

first

place, the world

637

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE in

which we

ity.

live

one

is

which we perceive regular-

in

Secondly, the relations established by mathematical

physics appear to our intellect as something certain; even the so-called uncertainty relations are valid only to a certain degree. Philosophy has always been both reflection

on

itself

and

particular, reflection

itself, in

on things other than

reflection

on science.

and Kantian

in the great Platonic, Cartesian,

grown

traditions. Science has

complex a manner

in so

quent!)

to

fitting

to

"The Gates of Paradise"

asks

poem

the

in

man

to distrust

Later, he represents (in the guise of

Urizen) the intellect insofar as real.

In the

it

defines, describes,

same

sense, Keats

cited for bringing a sort of curse

and

can be

on the legacy of

Newton. Poets, like the romantic Novalis or Holderlin, see reality as

made

of contradiction. In Novalis the idea

of a marriage of the seasons recalls Heraclitus as well as prefiguring the Eternal Return. ter,

a

Max Stimer comes on

extreme individualism and

is

pressing himself in no other

From another

quar-

the scene in pursuit of able to conceive of ex-

way than by

a cry.

Ponty and thinkers as different from him as Georges Battaille) and above the rational and "super-rational" G. Bachelard's term), there

than reason, that

Rimbaud put

times thought, and as

song of the angels" But at

a reason broader

"the rational

it,

chant raiwnnable des anges).

(le

philosopher can only question

this point the

towards Heraclitus, towards the origins.

BIBLIOGRAPHY A |. Ayer, "Some Aspects of Existentialism," Rationalist Annual 19481 William Barrett. Irrational Man (New York, I

les donnees (1887), trans. Time and Free Will (London, 1910); idem, "Introduction a la metaphysique" (1903), trans. T. E. Hulme

1958).

P.

as

L.

not the only form of the

revolt against reason or of hatred of the rational. Henri

Michaux, Antoine Artaud, and Georges Battaille have this

war

against logical evidence. This surrealistic attitude raises

knowing

to

.

.

.

(New

what irrationalism

Glancing over the metamorphoses of irrationalism we can see that it is sometimes a revolt and sometimes of a double revelation.

On

elements below reason

in

the other hand,

revelations

of a

possibility

Pascal,

1913;

1954);

.

.

and Commentary by Niels Tholstrup, rev. trans. H. V. (Princeton, 1962). Joseph de Maistre, Les Soirees de Saint-Petershourg, 6th ed. (Paris, 1850). Richard Miiller-

Freienfels,

Metaphysik des Irrationalen (Leipzig,

Jean-Paul Sartre, le

La Nausee

(Paris,

1927).

1938); idem, L'Etre et

neant (1943), trans. Hazel Barnes as Being and Nothing(New York, 1956). L. H. de Wolf, The Religious Revolt

ness

Against Reason

(New

York, 1949).

JEAN [See

also

WAHL

Counter-Enlightenment; Existentialism; Meta-

physical Imagination; Romanticism.]

the one hand, it reveals the which we can in turn distinguish the insights of M. Merleau-Ponty and elsewhere the disorder and chance asserted by Battaille, and, on the

York,

(1932), trans. R. A.

leads us.

can even distinguish the

.

.

Lowrie (Princeton, 1941): idem. Philosophical Fragments (1844), trans. D. F. Swenson (1936); 2nd ed. with Introduc-

realism of Andre Breton

the final question of

.

as

Audra and C. Brereton as The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (London 1935; New York, 1954). Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (London, 1953). Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris, 1942). F. Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (1864), trans. Constance Garnett in Works, 12 vols. (New York, 1912-20). Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927), trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson as Being and Time (New York, 1962). S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), trans. D. F. Swenson and W.

Hong

each pursued from their respective standpoints

Pogson

Introduction to Metaphysics

tion

is

Henri Bergson. Essai sur

idem, Les deux sources

expression of eternal irrationalism. However, the sur-

We

is

a higher reason, as Nietzsche at

is,

.

In the literary sphere, the surrealists form the last

a revelation.

the

is

romantic philosophers. William Blake,

encompasses the

above

which goes from revolt to revelation, and who, becoming aware of the end result, returns at the same time

no contradiction between them; quite to the contrary, one calls for the other. A study of irrationalism would not be complete if it did not turn towards the poets and towards certain

logical truths.

whether

be possible today. It is consein our minds for the

admission of both the inexpressible and the need of

entitled

remains

still

himself and think back on that series of transformations

make room

knowledge. There

The question

'Vibrational" (meaning by that term what Merleau-

is

that a synthesis like that of Descartes or Leibniz

no longer conceived

Blake,

Novalis, and Holderlin.

(to take

Meditation on science has been pursued ever since the time of the Pythagoreans and the atomists, and has

continued

the case for thinkers as different as Pascal,

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE

of a

Fenelon, and everything touching on that "numinous"

element about which Rudolf Otto has written. certain thinkers irrationalism

638

among

others

it

is

is

an end in

Among

itself,

and

a road to religious ways; such

is

Islam spread more rapidly than all other religions of which there exists a historical record. Only a century after

its

inception in

Mecca

(the year of the Hegira,

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE 1

ah.,

new

a.d. 622), the

i.e.,

dominated an

religion

area extending from the Iberian peninsula in the West

Moreover,

to the steppes of Central Asia in the East. to the

same degree

that

its

expansion was rapid, the

domain into a was profound and permanent.

transmission of the non-Islamic sciences to Muslims

much

easier.

to integrate

consolidation of this newly conquered

translators

new world

its

civilization

Islam developed of

and

birth

its

its

its

characteristic art within a century

own

a hundred vears later.

century

a.h. (tenth

learning and arts and sciences Bv the end of the third century

a.d.)

had reached the peak of zation had

itself

focus of intellectual

The

lands which

new

the world.

became

philosophical and scientific

The

civili-

previous civilizations, the

life in

rapidly consolidated into

where most

the Islamic world contained centers flourished.

of Islam

life

and Islamic

activity

become, through the assimilation of

many

the heritage of

the intellectual its

life

of the

of previous ages

intellectual activity of

the time

came

for Islamic society

own

it

into

its

own

perspective, there

and were

and men of learning already present within

The

borders.

scholars belonging to these mi-

nority religious communities, or those having recently

embraced Islam, knew either Creek or Syriac if they were Christians or Sabeans, and Pahlavi if they were Zoroastrian. They were also masters in the sciences in question as well as being well versed in Arabic, which by now was not only the religious language of Islam but also the language of discourse and learning of Islamic civilization. When the need for non-Islamic learning was felt bv Muslims, the means to acquire it was ready at hand.

had

Athens had long

When

to take cognizance of the presence of this heritage

But neither the presence of centers of learning nor scholars and translators

would be

sufficient to explain

ago l>een transferred to Alexandria and adjacent schools

the remarkable enthusiasm and determination with

Pergamum; and then through channels of Monoph-

which the Islamic world set out to make the knowledge of the ancients its own. This can be particularly appreciated when one realizes that the Byzantine civilization whose tongue was in fact Greek did not display the same amount of interest in the sciences of the ancient world. Islamic civilization set out deliberately and through concerted effort to master Greek, Persian, and Indian learning and science at the time when it was the most powerful nation on earth and had no military, political, or economic motive for turning attention to

like that of

eastern branches of Christianity, such as the ysites

and Nestorians,

this

heritage had already be-

come planted upon the soil of what was later to become the heart of the Islamic world, in such centers as Antioch, Edessa, and Nisibis. The more esoteric aspect of the Greco-Alexandrian tradition connected

with Neo-Pvthagoreanism and Hermeticism had also

become and

same region

established in the

the Sabeans of Harran,

who combined

intellectual life the

in the cult of

in their religious

Hermetico-Pythagorean ideas

and astrological ideas Babylonian and Chaldean sources.

these sciences.

The main reason must

of Alexandria with astronomical

drawn from

late

Besides the intellectual heritage of the Mediter-

therefore be sought in the

characteristics of the Islamic revelation

—

itself.

Islam

is

knowledge and not on love as example Christianity a knowledge in which the

a religion based on

—

ranean world, that of the Persians and Indians also

is

became

intellect (al-'aqt) itself plays the positive role of leading

available to the Muslims. Already during the

Sassanid period the Persian king, Shapur

had estab-

I,

lished a school in Jundishapur to rival that of Antioch

(fourth century a.d.). In this school Persian

learning, written mostly in Pahlavi

came in

as significant as the

Greek and

and

and Indian

Sanskrit, be-

Greco-Alexandrian learning

Syriac. This school

became important

medicine and astronomy and by the seventh century a.d. it was probably the most important medical center in the world, combining the scienespecially

tific

in

traditions of the Greeks, the Persians,

and the

Indians.

and many others became a part and their activity in fact con-

All these centers

for

man

to the Divine. Islam also considers itself as the

last religion of

fact, a

humanity and, by virtue of

this

very

return to the primordial religion (din al-hanif)

and the synthesis of all religions that have preceded it. These two characteristics taken together made it both possible and necessary for Muslims to come to know the learning of earlier civilizations and to assimilate those elements which harmonized with its world view into Islamic civilization. Being essentially a "way of knowledge," Islam could not remain indifferent to any form of knowledge. From the point of view of knowledge, a doctrine or idea is cannot be brushed aside and

of the Islamic world,

either true or false;

tinued in certain cases for several centuries after the

who now became minorities with recnew world civilization. The verv

is known. Plato and Aristotle had expressed views about God, man, and the nature of things. Once known, their views could not be simply ignored. They were either true, in which case they

"people of the book" were

should be accepted into the Islamic scheme of things

Islamic conquests, in the hands of the Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians

ognized rights

in the

fact that these minorities as

allowed to survive

in the

new

order

itself

made

the

ignored, once

considered in

its

it

existence

its

universal sense, or thev

were

false,

639

— ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE which case they should be

in

refuted. But in either

case they had to be studied and known. that confirms

all

its

truths

which can be ultimately summarized

in the axial

central doctrine of unity [al-tawhid)

is

legitimately

—

stars in the

firmament of Islam irrespective of their role

and Christianity. Seen "unity" in both

its

and

"Islamic" and

own. Moses and Christ are

its

John the Damascene could only be answered with a theology of similar intellectual content. Therefore, the Muslims sought to master the logic a theologian like

In considering itself as the last religion of man. Islam

has always believed that

themselves with the same weapons. The challenge of

in

Judaism

in this light, all that affirmed

metaphysical and cosmological

and philosophy of

Creek philosophy and

Wisdom"

Arabic, but

making these

ideas

its

own. This was especially true

them and

since Muslims, like Philo before

like certain

way

The this

Hermes

figure of

is

particularly significant in

connection. Already die

Hermes

associated with

"House of

as the

was translation of works into was also instrumental in the particular which Muslim theology was formulated, as we the case of the Christian hypostases and the

in

it

Islamic Divine Attributes.

The golden age

of translation lasted for a period of

nearly 150 years, from about 150 (767) to

During

300

(912).

period a large number of basic Greek texts

this

philosophy and the sciences, in the most general

in

were rendered into Arabic, sometimes directly from the Greek, at other times through the intermediary of Syriac. Special attention was paid to the works sense,

the Alexandrian school of alchemy and the Corpus

of Aristotle

Hermctirum symbolizes the synthesis of Greek and Egyptian traditions of science and cosmology. In Islam

more

Hermes became

antediluvian

nomical treatises such as those of Euclid, Archimedes,

Koran (Quran), and of Hermes was more-

and Ptolemy. Medico-philosophical treatises, especially those of Galen, were also translated extensively as were many works in the occult sciences whose original

prophet the

Idris,

identified

mentioned

Hebrew Enoch. The

with

the

in the

figure

over elaborated to include three different figures each associated with an aspect of the arts and sciences.

Hermes Trismegistus

known

West comes, not from Alexandrian, but from Islamic sources. Through the three Hermes, considered as the founders of science and philosophy and the first associated with the prophet Idris, Islam was able to legitimize the incoras

in the

poration of the intellectual heritage of previous zations into

its

heritage was

own world

itself

civili-

view, to the extent that this

compatible with the genius of the

The immediate source the

fire

of the spark

of intellectual activity

Syriac, Pahlavi,

and Sanskrit

commentators, of which there are

his

and

which ignited

translation of Creek,

texts into Arabic,

more

preserved as well as the high quality of translations.

of the

alike

the transmission of the

learning of the ancient world to Muslims through the

medium

of Arabic

in bringing into

but

it

is

one of the most

also

for not only

startling

was

it

phenom-

instrumental

being Muslim sciences and philosophy

played indirectly a

vital role in the crea-

and Renaissance science and philosthe West, and even influenced China and

tion of medieval

was the debates held in Damascus, Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, and other Muslim cities between Muslims and scholars and theologians of other religions. Often these debates were held in Imams. In these debates, where open discussion was usually permitted, the Muslims found themselves on the defensive before the weapons of logic and philosophy with which their adversaries were armed. Soon the Muslims realized that in order to defend the tenets of the faith itself they had to arm

many

Altogether from the point of view of

and quantity

quality

India.

the presence of the caliphs or religious authorities,

lan-

Greek or Syriac version is lost. In fact Arabic is today a valuable source of knowledge for Greek philosophy and science, especially of the later period, precisely because of the large number of texts translated and

ophy

medicine and astrology,

European

guages, and also to classical mathematical and astro-

than any possible utilitarian motives to benefit from

especially the Shi'ite

and

translations in Arabic than in

ena of cultural history;

Islamic revelation.

640

not only

specific function

see in

Christian theologians in the West during the Middle

Ages and the Renaissance (such as those who spoke of the "atomism of Moses"), considered philosophy and the sciences to have been derived from revelation, from "the niche of prophecy" to use the Koranic term.

movement

(Hmjt al-hikmah) of al-Ma J miin in Baghdad

whose

in

This

founding of such vast institutions

belonged legitimately to Muslims, and the Islamic

any religious inhibitions

thoroughly acquainted with

logic.

led to the concerted effort to translate, leading to the

senses in the non-Islamic sciences and philosophies, intellectual elite did not feel

their religious opponents, especially

who were

those Christians

in

The

greatest translators belong to the Abbasid pe-

riod, the

most important being Hunayn ibn Ishaq,

who

founded a school of translation known for the exactness and fluency of its renderings. Almost as significant was Ibn

Muqaffa 1

,

a

Persian

convert

to

Islam

from

Zoroastrianism, whose translations from the Pahlavi

helped found the new philosophical and of prose that

was being established

scientific style

in the

Arabic lan-

guage. But even before the Abbasid period translations

had been made and contact established between

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE Islamic

religious

and non-Islamic forms of

circles

teenth centurv) and others in the West

who were

The figure of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Shi'ite Imam, and his interest in the non-Islamic sciences have often been taken by modern scholars as

to the

being apocryphal tales not to be accepted seriously.

as

More

usually translated as theology, although the significance

learning.

recent research, however, has revealed that there

no reason whatsoever for doubting these traditional claims or for denving the link between the Imam and is

Jabir ibn

most

Hayvan, the father of Islamic alchemy.

It is

likely that the great flowering of interest in the

non-Islamic sciences during the Abbasid period goes

back

Umayyad

to earlier contacts during the late

when from

era

the inner processes within Islam itself there

interested in the esoteric significance of language.

Of

the transmitted sciences the one that

philosophv and the sciences are concerned

of theology in Christianity

are not by any

has

its

roots in

a.h.

The

earliest

onward.

way

intellectual activity in Islam

is

known

that

it

became known

as a

con-

first

century

community

in

such

possessing

a particular and definable opinion vis-a-vis the majority

From

these earlv

movements there grew the

systematic theological school,

cerned with those Islamic sciences which are properly

a

such as the Murji'ites, Qadarites, and Khawarij;

each sought to answer one of these questions a

is

Concerning these basic religious questions

of Muslims.

)

in Islam

who

relation of faith to works, the definition of believer, etc.

tory began to elaborate and manifest itself from the

eighth century a.d.

as far

Kalam,

munity on the questions of free will and predestination, the created or uncreated nature of the Koran, the

movement

a.h.

is

and that of Kalam

there arose different groups during the

second centurv

closest

means the same. The science of Kalam the earliest debates in the Islamic com-

grew the possibilities of contact with the non-Islamic sciences and their legitimization and integration into the Islamic tradition. It is, in fact, upon the properly Islamic basis of the first century a.h., to which was added the heritage of the ancient world through the of translation, that Islamic intellectual his-

is

mainstream of Islamic intellectual history

named

first

the Mu'tazilah

and founded by Wasil ibn c Ata 5 This school, which gained the ascendency during the caliphate of al.

cred law of Islam, theology (Kalam), as well as the

Ma'mfin and continued to be influential up to the fifth Baghdad and after that for many centuries among the Zaydis of the Yemen, sought to preserve Divine Unity from all that would blemish its

sciences dealing with

transcendence. But in so doing

speaking

"transmitted"

as

(al-'ulftm

al-

naqliyah) such as Koranic commentary, the traditions of the Prophet \Hadith), questions concerning the sa-

whole group of sciences

language, prosody, etc. is

This

usually distinguished in the

Islamic classification of the sciences from the "intellec-

(eleventh) century in

interpretation of the Divinity

God more

it

chose a rationalistic

which tended

to

view

as philosophical abstraction than as a Realitv

tual sciences" (al-'ultim al-'aqliyah), such as philoso-

Who

phy and mathematics, which in contrast to the first group need not be learned through transmission, and may be acquired through the innate intelligence possessed by man. During the first Islamic centurv, while the efforts of most men of learning were concentrated in the domain of the religious sciences, particularly the Koran and Hadith, in Basra and Kufa there began to develop contending schools of grammar which soon turned to

main principles upon which their different followers agreed and for which they have become celebrated: the Unity of God, His Justice, promise of reward and threat of punishment for good and evil acts, belief in the possibility of a state between belief and unbelief, and finally emphasis upon ordering the good and prohibiting the evil. The main Mu'tazilite figures such as Nazzam and c Allaf were powerful logicians and dialecticians to be reckoned with in the history of Islamic theology. It is they who for the first time developed the theory of atomism which is peculiar to Kalam and which was later developed extensively by the Ash'arites. The most significant influence of the Mu'tazilites was, however, most likely in providing an atmosphere in Sunni Islam more conducive to the reception of the philosophical and scientific heritage of the pre-Islamic

different philosophies of language, the

first

more

in-

clined towards Aristotelian and the second toward Stoic logic.

Some

of the earliest philosophical

metaphysical ideas in Islam are to be found early schools of

grammar, and

this

and

in these

type of philo-

sophical analysis of language and rhetoric in fact con-

tinued throughout the Islamic period and was especially

developed among some of the Andalusian Muslim

thinkers like Ibn

Hazm

of Cordova.

significance of the sounds

and

The metaphysical

days.

Arabic

ancy

letters of the

language, the sacred language of Islam, tant in the esoteric

is also imporand mystical aspect of Islam known

as Sufism. This aspect of the Islamic tradition left

influence

upon men

like

Raymond

The

its

Lull (early four-

in

is

the fountainhead and basis of revealed religion.

Mu'tazilites proffered five

It is

not accidental that their period of ascend-

Baghdad coincides with the height of activity the translation of works into Arabic. There are also in

certain similarities, although there

is

not in any sense

between the Mu'tazilites and Shi'ite theoloThe latter in turn were more sympathetic to the

identity, gians.

641

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE Greco-Alex-

a copula as in Indo-European languages, but by an

andrian philosophy in general than the Sunnis, not

which must be grasped intuitively. This "atomism" was bound to make itself manifest on the level of thought as well, even though Ash'arism was not exclusively Arabic by any means. Some of the

Hermetico-Pythagorean for

am

and

tradition

because of the more

rationalistic reason hut

esoteric character of Shi' ism,

which permitted the

integration of certain forms of Greco-Alexandrian

ence and philosophy into

its

perspective. In

know and

of the cause of coining to

its

sci-

support

to understand this

non-Islamic heritage, however, Shi'ism was favorable to the climate created

although

in

in

Baghdad,

other fundamental questions, such as the

meaning and pletely

by the Mu'tazilites

Imam, the two

role of the

differ

Kalam

Sunni circles was challenged

in

by the new theological school of Ash'arism founded c by A.bu'1-Hasan al-Ash ari and developed by his disci-

Abu Bakr

which opposed

al-Baqillani. This school,

the rationalistic tendencies of the Mu'tazilites, sought to reestablish the concrete presence of

God by

charting

a middle course between "tashbih" and "tanzih," or

by giving anthropomorphic qualities to God on the one hand, and abstracting all qualities from Him on the

much

It

thus depicted a conception of the Divinity

closer to the ethos of Islam

and

for this reason

soon began to replace Mu'tazilite Kalam. Of course a sizable and significant element of the Islamic com-

munity was opposed

to all

forms of Kalam as a

human

here

it

became a matter

al-

of "style of thinking" that

through Islam spread beyond the confines of those

were

who

racial lv Arabs.

The atomism

Kalam

of

divides

all

sensible reality

atoms or units (technically "parts that cannot be divided," juz* la yatajazza') which unlike the atoms of

Demoeritus and Epicurus possess neither length nor The atoms of Kalam are units without

dimension.

length or breadth but which combine to form bodies possessing dimensions.

It is

form of atom-

a particular

ism for which both Indian and Epicurean origins have

been posited without any great certainty, but which in any case differs from the classical atomism of Demoeritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius.

The

Ash'arites, moreover, divided time, space,

things, as well as

of space,

between moments

of time

and points

how can there be causality? The whole cosmic

matrix was segmented and atomized. To

Kalam continued

the Ash'arites appealed to the Divine Will. For

to

be pursued

in the

Sunni world,

and

motion into atomic units as well. As a result the continuous nexus between cause and effect is denied by them. If there is no substantial continuity between

intrusion into the Divine order. But to the extent that

Ash'arism replaced Mu'tazilism and has continued to

it

is

fill

the Divine Will which relates two

this

"gap,"

them moments of

be dominant to this day. The school of the Maturidites, which sought a more intermediate course between the demands of reason and the dicta of revelation, was

existence together and gives homogeneity to the world

never able to gain a great deal of popularity although

of heat connected with fire thinks that one causes the

it

was able

to survive

on

its

own.

Shi'ite theology,

about

Fire appears to "cause" heat.

us.

only the

mind which, by observing

other. Actually

it is

the

however phenomenon

It is

God who

wills the fire to be hot; be cold tomorrow without there

however, took the opposite direction from Ash'arism

He

and became more and more sympathetic to gnosis (al-'irfan) and theosophy (al-hikmah), while Ash'arism became the arch opponent of philosophy (falsafah) and all the theosophical and philosophical schools that were based on a systematic and rational although not rationalistic approach to knowledge.

being any logical contradiction whatsoever. Miracles

—

—

The

significance

it

Kalam

its

development of the

theory of atomism already begun by the Mu'tazilites.

an "atomic" element

in the Semitic,

nomadic

clearly reflected in the Arabic lan-

mentality that

is

guage. This

the tendency of going from one truth

is

by an

ous process.

intuitive

the habit of the

later in order to destroy the validity of the idea of

Divine Will as the nexus between two phenomena which the mind conceives as cause and effect. In fact some of the examples of Hume are the same as those of the Ash'arites which makes one think that perhaps he had become acquainted with them through the

swer particular questions, was

to another

which breaks mind to connect two phenomena together as cause and effect. One sees here arguments very similar to what Hume was to offer many centuries are in fact called khdriq al-'adah, that

played as the opponent of

the philosophers to take particular positions and an-

is

it

necessity in causality, without, however, positing the

in

philosophy and therefore the force that often caused

There

could will that

Islamic-

of Ash'arite

thought, besides the role

642

al-Juwayni,

like

into

At the end of the third (ninth) century the dominance

other.

theologians

Ash'arite

greatest

Ghazzali and Fakhr al-Din al-Bazi were Persians. But

com-

.

of Mu'tazilite

ple

invisible link

jump and

The Arabic sentence

not by a continu-

itself reflects this fact;

the subject and the predicate are connected, not by

Latin translations from the

A vermes'

Hebrew

translations of

Tahafut al-Tahafut and Maimonides' Daldlat

al-Hd'irin.

bound by Aristotelian physics, the were free to develop what one might call a "philosophv of nature" of their own based on this Not

being

Ash'arites

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE conception of the discontinuity of things. Within this scheme thev developed ideas which are of great interest in the history and methodology of science and appear as particularly attractive today when in subparticle physics a similar situation exists and causality in the classical sense

is

denied. Strangely enough, the

Ash'arite theologians, with a few exceptions like alRazi, all.

were not interested

the hold of reason

nature at

in the sciences of

Their aim in developing

this

atomism was to break

upon the understanding

and open the human mind to the

of reality

possibilities of

standing the verities of revelation.

under-

They were not

preted according to the unitary principle of Islam. This Peripatic school combined Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian teachings, partly because of the unitary

Enneads of Plotinus to be the Theology of and took the epitome of Proclus' Elements c Theology to be the Kitah al- ilal which came to be of known later in the Latin world as Liber de causis, attributed again to the school of Aristotle. There thus Aristotle,

developed a Neo-Platonic interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics centered around the doctrine of the One

and the emanation of the from

development of physics and which appear of particular

phy.

In Islamic civilization disciplines are clearly defined

and, although

we can

Kalatn in English, (al-falsafah) or

speak of the "philosophy" of

when Muslims speak

from Kalatn. Islamic philosophy, century

in the third (ninth)

Arabic

himself to philosophy. He, like his successors such as al-Farabi, believed that the original

home

of philoso-

phy was the East and that in reviving interest in philosophy he had brought philosophy back to its original abode. Besides a few segments cited in later texts no writings of this mysterious figure have survived, and so we have to turn to al-Kindi, the Latin Alkindus, as the first Muslim philosopher who left behind an appreciable corpus, and who must be credited with founding the Peripatetic (mashsha'i) school of Islamic philosophy, almost the only school that

became known

Latin West.

Al-Kindi in contrast to most Muslim philosophers,

who were Persians, was an Arab of aristocratic descent. He was born in Basra about 185 (801), studied there Baghdad, where he

later

became famous

at the

court of the caliphs, and finally died in the same city

about 252 (866) after having fallen from grace

at court.

Having received the best education of his day and having been in the current of the intellectual life of the Abbasid capital at the very moment when the great wave of translation reached its peak, al-Kindi helped more than any other figure to establish the Peripatetic

school of Islamic philosophy, a school that Aristotle,

in

and grades of being

which

not found with the

is

any school of Creek philoso-

true because the Muslims emphasized being and the distinction between the Necessary Being, or God, and the possible being which comprises all things in the universe, and they stressed

This

especially

is

the contingent nature of these things.

and philosophical system al-Kindi own and which were not followed by the later Peripatetics. He believed in creation ex nihilo, more in line with Muslim theologians than philosophers, and had a conception

distinct

and their gradual elaboration and assimilation by Muslim thinkers. Traditional Islamic sources mention Iranshahri as the first person in Islam to have devoted

in

same accent and color

intellects

Strangely enough in the development of this elabo-

after the translation of philosophical texts into

and

synthesis

methods and ends

properly speaking, began

in the

new

a

it,

theosophy (al-hikmah), they refer to

particular schools with well-defined

and very

of philosophy

fact that

of the

concerned with the development of the sciences but ironically enough developed theories about time, space, motion, and causality which were fecund in the later interest in retrospect.

by Muslim thinkers and also Muslims considered the last parts

vision of philosophy held

due to the

as seen primarily

is

based on

through the eye of

his

Alexandrian Neo- Platonic commentators and inter-

rate metaphysical

held certain views which are particularly his

of the classification of the sciences

more akin

to certain

Latin scholastics than to his fellow Muslim Peripatetics.

He was

also

profoundly

impregnated

with

Neo-

Pythagoreanism, more than were later Peripatetics, although

in Islam, in contrast to the

Latin West, the

and Pythagorean-Platonic traditions did not remain completely distinct; the most famous Peripatetic philosophers were also master musicians and some were outstanding mathematicians. In many other domains, however, al-Kindi opened avenues of thought that were followed by later Muslim thinkers. Like them, he was as much interested in the sciences as in philosophy and is therefore like the other Aristotelian

Muslim Peripatetics a philosopher-scientist rather than a philosopher. Also like later thinkers he was intensely interested in the harmony between philosophy and religion, although the path he trod was not pursued by his successors. He also set the tone for philosophical and scientific inquiry and is credited with a statement that characterizes the method and spirit

just

of nearly

all

the

members

of this school:

"We

should

not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it

from whatever source

it

comes

to us,

even

if it

is

brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples.

For him

who

seeks the truth there

higher value than truth abases

itself;

him who reaches

for

honours him" (Walzer [1962],

is

nothing of

it

never cheapens or

it,

but ennobles and

p. 12).

643

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE Al-Kindi left behind an enormous corpus of nearly 270 works on practically every domain of knowledge from logic and philosophy to metallurgy, pharmacology, and the occult sciences. Most ol this vast corpus has been

On

as

lost,

On

Philosophy and

hirst

the Intellect, survive

and Hebrew. al-Kindi was extremelv celebrated among Muslims and a few

in Arabic, Vet.

while a few of the basic works, such

as well as

among

sun

ive in Latin

the Latins. His fourfold division of

the intellect, based of Aphrodisias

(fl.

and contained

in

was not only very

also

upon the commentary of Alexander a.d. 200) on Aristotle's De anima al-Kindi's treatise on the intellect,

influential in Islamic

philosophy but

through the translation of this treatise into Latin as intellectu came to be well known in the West.

De

was regarded throughout the Occidental

Al-Kindi

Middle Ages as one of the universal authorities of

and during the Renaissance Cardanus conhim to be one of the twelve most important

astrologv.

sidered

intellectual

figures

new

The

of

human

history (Nasr,

1964a).

this genius

who was

the master of

many

is

due to

tongues.

Al-Farabi must also be considered as the founder of

philosophy

political

upon the

in Islam. In this

domain he relied and Republic

political ideas of Plato's Laics

rather than Aristotle's Politics, although his discussion of the virtues

is

akin to Aristotle's ethics. Al-Farabi sought

harmonize the Platonic conception of the philosopher-king and divine law (nomas) with the Islamic idea to

of the prophet-ruler and divine law or SharFah. His attempt was significant enough to have left a mark

upon nearly all see for example 1126-98)

who

later speculations in this in the writings of

also

domain

as

we

Averroes (Ibn Rushd,

commented upon

Plato's Republic.

Al-Farabi's major political work, Treatise on the Opinions of the Citizens of the Ideal State, remains the most popular and influential work of its kind in the history of Islamic philosophy.

In his

more general and popular works

al-Farabi set

out to harmonize the different philosophical schools,

perspective of Muslim begun by al-Kindi was established on a firm basis by al-Farabi (the Latin Alfarabius), whom some consider more than al-Kindi to be the real founder of Islamic philosophy. By now the

especially those of Plato

center of Islamic civilization, especially

of their points of view, set the tone for the general

intellectual

Peripatetic philosophy

its

intellectual

and Aristotle, with each other and with the tenets of the Islamic religion. His Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle, in which through a Neo-Platonic interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle he sought to demonstrate the unity

Muslim philosophers who saw

aspect, was shifting to a certain extent to Khorasan where the new Persian language and culture were also being born; and it is in this region that n! Farabi was born about 257 (870) and where he received his earliest education. Later he came to Baghdad both to learn and teach, and finally he migrated to Aleppo where he died in 339 (950). Al-Farabi is entitled the "Second Teacher," after Aristotle, on whom Muslims bestowed

and less popular works such as Philosophy of Plato and Philosophy of Aristotle he discusses both philosophers directly and

of the "First Teacher," to be followed in this

without reference to their Neo-Platonic interpretation,

the

title

tradition

by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Dante. In

context "teacher" means

more than anything

this

else the

vision of later

different

schools of philosophy, not as contending and opposing philosophies, but as different expositions and aspects of the

same perennial wisdom which Steuchius and

Leibniz were later to perennis. But in his

identify

more

as

the

philosophia

scientific

and seems to be fully aware of the differences in their points of view within the general harmony discussed

known

function of clarifying the limits and boundaries of the domains of knowledge and classifying and ordering the

in his better

sciences, a task that Aristotle achieved in the context

doctrines characteristic of the Muslim Peripatetics and

Greek

With al-Farabi

works.

the metaphysical and philosophical

for

based on the "philosophy of being," the triadic emana-

influential

education in both East and West during the Middle

tion of the many from the One, and an elaborate cosmology and psychology based on the multiple states of being, issuing from the One and returning to It, are already found in their characteristic Muslim formulation. It remained for the great genius of Avicenna to

Ages.

give

of

civilization

Islam. Al-Farabi

work on the

is

and al-Farabi performed

the author of the

first

classification of the sciences,

twice translated into Latin as

De

scientiis

which was and played

a share in determining the curricula of a "liberal arts"

Al-Farabi was also a "second Aristotle" in the sense that

he commented upon the works of the

especially the Metaphysics

Stagirite,

and the Organon, making

the meaning of these works fully available to Muslim

Moreover he wrote himself many works on and must be considered as the father of this

circles.

logic

644

sophical and logical terminology in Arabic

science

among Muslims. Much

of the exact philo-

them

their

most

complete

elaboration

and

elucidation in a systematic whole.

Between al-Farabi and Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980whose medical treatise was the standard text for about 400 years, 1100-1500) there were many intellectual figures of note both in Baghdad and

1037,

Khorasan. Al-Sijistani continued the philosophical dition in

tra-

Baghdad which now became mostly devoted

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE to logic,

and

al-

c

Amiri made Khorasan the new home

by living and teaching there all also of interest in that he sought

of Islamic philosophy

The

his life.

latter

is

Aristotle's theory of projectile

motion and developed

the impetus theory and the concept

came known

West

in the

which

momentum in modern many original name of Dc mineralibus,

to integrate the political

the fundamental concept of

of Sassanid Persia with Islam to

physics. His geological studies contain

and administrative thought form a political philosophy rather than turning only to Creek sources, and wrote perhaps the most passionate defense of Islam Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he

crowned over two centuries

is

features and, in fact, under the

the section of the Book of Healing on geology and

mineralogy had come to be known

written by a Peripatetic philosopher.

known

in the

West,

of philosophical thought

centuries as a

work

of Aristotle.

ing that the study of

upon all later IslamicWherever whenever the arts and sciences thought. and have been cultivated in Islam, his spirit has hovered over them as their "guardian angel." More than that he may in many ways be considered as the founder

out so brilliantly

as well as studies of the

of scholastic philosophy

plants.

its

effect

in its

systematic formulation.

Avicenna was born near Bukhara

370 (980)

in

It

in the

West

in fact,

is,

for

only in

the section on natural philosophy in the Book of Heal-

with an expression of Peripatetic philosophy which was so profound as to leave

later be-

as inclinatio, the father of

time.

first

the three kingdoms, carried

by

and Theophrastus, was brought together

Aristotle

the

all

the case of animals and plants

in

for

The Canon also contains both important new observations on medical cases

medical theories and

and many other philosophical Avicenna, toward the end

In addition to these

in a

pharmaceutical properties of

family devoted to learning. By the age of ten he had

and

mastered the religious sciences, by sixteen was a well-

wrote a series of works intended for the which he sought to expound what he called the "Oriental Philosophy." Although some of this corpus is lost, enough survives to enable us to recon-

known

physician, and by eighteen had

overcome

all

the difficulties in understanding the Metaphysics of Aristotle, thanks to the

precocity

is

commentary

of al-Farabi. His

proverbial in the East even today.

From

scientific contributions,

of his

life,

"elite" in

struct

the

contours

of

philosophy,

this

or

rather

the age of twenty-one until his death in 428 (1037)

theosophv (al-hikmah), which he contrasted with the

he wandered from one court in Persia to another as physician and even vizier, spending most of this period

"Oriental Philosophy" the role of intellectual intuition

in

Ispahan and

Hamadan where he

finally died.

this turbulent life his intellectual activity

During

continued

Peripatetic philosophy

and illumination

meant

(ishraq)

for the multitude. In this

becomes paramount, and

philosophy turns from the attempt to describe a

ra-

unabated. Sometimes he even wrote on horseback

tional system to explaining the structure of reality with

while going to a battle. The result was over 220 works

the aim of providing a plan of the cosmos so that with

which include the Book of Healing, the largest encyclopedia of knowledge ever written by one man, and the Canon of Medicine, which became the best known medical work in East and West and gained him the title

universal genius of Avicenna, the greatest of

the philosopher-scientists in Islam, hardly

left

any

field

untouched. In metaphysics he established the ontology

which characterizes medieval philosophy and left a profound mark upon Saint Thomas and especially Duns Scotus. The distinction between necessary and possible being, and between existence and essence or quiddity, the identity of the act of intellection with existence in the

generation of the heavenly intelligences, and the

emphasis upon the role of the tenth illuminator of the

human

intellect as the

intellect in the act of

knowl-

edge, are outstanding features of this most perfect

formulation of Muslim Peripatetic philosophy elaborated by Avicenna.

Of no

less significance

is

help

man can

escape from

this

his study of natural philoso-

phy. There, although continuing the Aristotelian tradition of hylomorphism, he continued the criticism begun by John Philoponus (H. fifth century a.d.) against

world which

regarded as a cosmic crypt. Henceforth, the primary role of philosophy

became

in the

is

East

to provide the

possibility of a vision of the spiritual universe. Philoso-

phy thus became closely wedded

of "Prince of Physicians."

The

its

in the Illuminationist

to gnosis as

we

see

theosophy of Suhrawardi more

than a century after Avicenna.

Curiously enough this aspect of Avicenna's works did not

become known

most of

all

in the

West, and

this fact

is

the cause of the great difference existing

between Islamic and Latin Avicennism. In the East Avicenna provided the first step in the journey towards illumination; even his Peripatetic philosophy became integrated by later philosophers and theosophists into a greater whole, in which the development of the rational and logical faculties itself becomes a preparation for illumination. In the West his philosophy became influential at Oxford and Paris from the twelfth century a.d. and influenced many figures like Roger Bacon, who preferred him to Averroes, or Saint Thomas, whose third argument for the proof of the existence of Cod is based on Avicennan sources, or Duns Scotus, who used Avicenna as the "point of departure"

645

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE that challenged

for the theological system

Thomism

texts,

such as the Emerald Table and the

Turba philosophortnn, also belong to the same Islamic

West the influence of Avicenna was not as great as that of Averroes and it is not possible to speak with full justice of a definite "Latin Avicennism" as one

Hermetical and alchemical tradition based on earlier Picatrix, so well

speaks of "Latin Averroism." Hut there

of the .\mi of the

is,

to use the

term of Cilson [Gilson, 1929. definitely an "Avicen-

known expo-

nizing AugUStinism" one of whose best

nents being William of Auvergne. Hut the latter was especially insistent on

who

of the angels

emptying the Avicennan cosmos

play such an important

role

in

Avicenna's ontology, cosmology, and theory of knowl-

scientist

known \\ i\e

and alchemist

better

known

and other

and

Copemican

Aristotelianism.

Of

The

cosmos.

difference

the

in

East and West

in a secularized

interpretation

of

Ages

parallelism

ophy

centuries during which the\

translation

in

is

had pursued a parallel

Besides the predominant Muslim Peripatetic school

which reaches its culmination with Avicenna there were other philosophical and religious schools that must be considered. From the second (eighth* century Neo-Pythagorean and Hermetic philosophy were

culti-

sometimes combined together. Followers of these schools differed from the Peripatetics in their apophatic theologv. interest in immediate

vated in certain

rather

than

circles,

distant

causes

in

natural

philosophy,

texts

West

also the

brought into being

from

Renaissance,

the

provided a strong

course,

Lull

to

rival

for

was

there

occasionally

opposition;

rather than

fact, the first

Peripatetic and

of

introduction of Aristotle's natural philos-

West came through the astrological work the Latin Albumazar, which in the of John of Seville was known as Liber

into the

Abu Ma'shar.

introductorius maior.

course.

an exposition

Hermetico-occult sciences were combined together. In

one of the factors that indicate the parting of ways between Islamic and Christian civilizations after the Middle Ages following Avicenna

Andalusian

Latin alchemy and Hermeticism which throughout the

Fludd.

for the

the

a translation

ot al-Majriti. the

Peripatetic school. In the

translation of these

Middle

background

is

of a Hermetical philosophv which was a rival to the

Paracelsus and

which could onlv occur

West,

All of these texts contain

or his school

sacred in Avicennan philosophy, and

indirectly prepared the

in the

of the fourth (tenth) century,

which was

still

And

Alexandrian. Byzantine, and Syriac sources.

edge. In doing so he helped to secularize the cosmos,

revolution,

in

The

earlier interest of the Latins

Islamic science had caused Adelard of Bath

twelfth century) to translate a shorter

work

of

(fl.

Abu

Ma'shar into Latin which prepared the ground for the wide reception of the larger astrological work through which Aristotelian physics reached the West twenty years before anv of his specific works on natural phi-

losophy became

The

known

in Latin.

tradition of "anti-Aristotelian" philosophv, par-

ticularly in phvsics,

is

to

be found among other Muslim

philosophers and scientists of the period.

Among

toward Stoic rather than Aristotlelian logic with its emphasis on the disjunctive syllogism, interest in Hippocratic rather than Galenic medicine, and of

earliest of these

course their special devotion to mathematical symbol-

about 251 (865) and died in 313 (925). Al-Razi,

ism and the occult sciences. As far as the mathematical

was an alchemist, phvsician. musician, and philosopher, was much more respected by Muslim and also Jewish philosophers for his medicine, in whose clinical aspect he was the foremost medieval authority, than for his

attraction

\eo-Pythagorean philosophy

known

exposition

found

is

is

concerned,

its

best

in the Epistles of the Breth-

ren of Purity, a collection of fifty-two treatises which exercised

widespread

a

Islamic world.

influence throughout the Being from a general Shi'ite back-

ground, these treatises were later adopted by the

who came

Isma'ilis.

own,

distinct

reached

its

to

develop a philosophv of their

from the Peripatetics, a philosoph\ which

peak with Xasir-e Khusraw who.

trast to the early Peripatetics nearlv all of

whom

many

ophy and was opposed

treatises

own

Isma'ilis

who,

to

it

as Rhazes.

who was born who

philosophy. But his philosophical ideas, although not of great importance in the later tradition of Islamic

philosophv. have recently attracted

much

interest be-

cause of the often unique views of al-Razi. Al-Razi was not a follower; he considered himself

master on equal footing with Plato and Aristotle. this

on Hermetic philos-

added

West

For

to Aristotelian natural philoso-

in fact,

in the

the

ibn Zakariva' al-Razi,

wrote

phy. Interestingly enough, his corpus, too, was adopted

by the

known

Muhammad

as a

composed his philosophical works in Persian. As for Hermetic-ism. it was naturally associated w ith alchemy. The first well-known Muslim alchemist. Jabir ibn Hayyan, wrote

so well

is

con-

in

in Arabic,

646

alchemical

the fourteenth century. Altogether, however, in the

in

works of

their

authorship but attributed to Jabir. Other famous

certain

reason also he fields,

felt

free to criticize them. In

especially ethics and cosmology, there

are elements of pure Platonism untouched by XeoPlatonic influences evident in him. In cosmology he posited five eternal principles which present similarithe Tiiiuieus but reveal even more relations with Manichean cosmogony and cosmology. But in any case al-Razi was opposed to Aristotelian physics and often criticized the Stagirite on his views in natural philosoties to

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE But even more important

He had a particular love for Galen and a remarkable acquaintance with his works. He wrote specifically of his preference for Galen over Aristotle.

philosophy of science was Alhazen's insistence upon

He

while the Aristotelians insisted that the aim of science

phy.

opposed the general view of Muslim philosophers on the necessity of prophecy, whose existence he did not denv but whose necessity he did not accept. This was in fact the main reason why he did not have also

anv appreciable influence upon later Islamic philosophv. which

essentially "prophetic philosophy."

is

Another great scientist, al-Biruni, who lived 362 (973)-ca. 442 1051), an admirer of al-Razi but opposed to his "anti-prophetic" philosophy, likewise wrote (

against

Aristotelian

whom some scientist,

natural

philosophy.

Al-Biruni,

consider as the most outstanding Muslim

was more

of a mathematician, historian,

and

in the

long run for the

the crystalline nature of the spheres. In

was

to

know

Greek science,

the nature of things, the Platonic mathe-

maticians and astronomers generally believed that their

aim was to "save the phenomena." The Ptolemaicspheres were convenient mathematical inventions that aided calculation and had no physical reality. Perhaps the most important heritage that Islamic science bestowed upon the West was the insistence that the role of all science including the mathematical must be

the search for knowledge of the reality and being of things.

The emphasis upon the

crystalline nature of the

spheres by Alhazen was precisely a statement of this

Muslim eyes was inseparable from

geographer than a philosopher in the usual sense, and it is through his scientific works that his philosophical

belief. Physics in

views must be sought. This remarkable thinker com-

physics and astronomy was so thoroughly adopted in

bined the mind of a mathematician and a historian. He was the author of the first scientific work on com-

the West that even during the scientific revolution no

parative religion, the incomparable India, as well as

the nature of things.

the real founder of geodesy, and the author of one of

a philosophy of physics that Alhazen and other

the most elaborate astronomical treatises in the history

thinkers had bestowed

ontology. This quest for the real in mathematical

one doubted that the role of physics was to discover

Newton was upon

all

actually following

Muslim

sciences of nature, not

these works, and especially in

only the Aristotelian but also the mathematical and

a series of questions and answers exchanged with

geometric sciences of Euclid, Ptolemy, and their suc-

of this science.

It is in

to

The modem debate concerning the nature of modern science and whether it deals with an aspect

certain tenets of Aristotelian physics such as the con-

of reality or simply with models convenient for mathe-

cept of "natural place." He, in fact, wrote openly on

matical calculation, debates which have been carried

many subjects which were

out

Avicenna, that al-Biruni reveals observation and analysis which

his

acute sense of

made him opposed

against the prevalent natural

cessors.

among such men

as E.

Meyerson, Cassirer, and

and the analysts reveals imparted

philosophy, such as the possibility of elliptical motion

Northrop and the

and the movement of the earth around the sun, and remarked justly that the helio- or geocentric question was one to be solved by physics and theology and not by astronomy alone, in which parametrics could be measured the same way whether the sun or the earth was placed at the center. Ibn al-Haytham, in Latin Alhazen, who lived ca. 354 (965)-430 (1039), was a contemporary of al-Blriini, and

in retrospect the significance of the realism

of the planets

was likewise a

critic of Peripatetic

philosophy in

many

work on optics, which influenced Witelo and Kepler, Alhazen was also a remarkable experimental physicist and astronomer.

ways.

The author

of the best medieval

He must be credited with

the discovery of the principle

positivists

mathematical physics by Alhazen and certain other Muslim thinkers. During the fifth (eleventh) century, altered political and social conditions, brought about by the reunification of much of the Islamic world by the Seljuqs (or to

Seljuks),

favored Ash'arite theology over philosophy

and the "intellectual sciences." The new university system which had come into being, and, in fact, which served as a model for the earliest medieval universities in the West, now began to emphasize the teaching of theology or Kalam in some places almost exclusively, and attacks began to be made by outstanding theolo-

and with placing the science of optics on a new foundation. His mathematical study of the camera obscura, the correct explanation of the course of light in vision as opposed to the Aristotelian view the explanation of reflection from spherical and

gians against the philosophers of the Peripatetic school.

parabolic mirrors, study of spherical aberration, belief

made

of inertia in physics

—

—

in the "principle of least

plication long before

time"

Newton

resolving a velocity into

its

in refraction,

and ap-

of the parallelogram for

components are among

outstanding scientific accomplishments.

his

In fact so

many

debates were held between the theolo-

gians and the philosophers that methods and arguments of

Kalam entered

Even

into the

domain

of philosophy

in Latin philosophical texts reference

to

is

itself.

often

the loquentes ("spokesmen") of the three

revealed religions, loquentes being derived from root in a lim (that

meaning.

manner is,

its

parallel to the derivation of mutakal-

scholar of Kalam) and having the

same

o47

ISLAMIC COXCEPTIOX OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE Of

who were most

the theologians

determining the future intellectual

influential

in

of Islam,

al-

life

Ghazzali and Fakhr al-Dln al-Razi are particularly significant. Many modern scholars have considered al-Ghazzali as the most influential figure in Islamic

He

intellectual history.

important.

Coming

at

certainly one of the most

is

moment

a decisive

of Islam he imparted a direction to

ever since, especiallv

sisted

Chazzali was both a

which has per-

the Sunni world. Al-

in

Muslim mystic) and a

a

Sufi

it

in the history

theologian, and he criticized rationalistic philosophy in

both capacities.

On

Uie one

hand he sought

to curtail

of reason and make it subservient to revelaon the other hand he tried to revive the ethics

power

the

tion;

of Islamic society by breathing into

Sufism and by making Sufism

the spirit of

it

the religious

official in

He was eminently

schools and universities.

successful

on both accounts. Al-Ghazzali was not

any way opposed to logic composed treatises on

in

or the use of reason and in fact logic.

But what he did oppose was the claim of reason

comprehend the whole

to

partial views

to assert

even

itself.

and to impose its domains where it had no authoritv

in

truth

Therefore, while making use of reason

he sought to criticize the rationalistic tendencies Peripatetic philosophy.

To

this

end he

first

in a

came

to consider the author

Algazel) as a Peripatetic.

Then he

in the

called The

they called

set out to criticize

of rationalistic philosophy

from gnosis and theology,

to

an end

was

like

for this early Peripatetic school

an Indian

summer

and did not exercise

any appreciable influence upon the later course of Islamic philosophy and thought. Al-Ghazzali also composed numerous works on Sufism of which the monumental Ihija' 'ulum al-din (Revivification of the Sciences of Religion is the most notable and remains to this day the outstanding work on Sufi ethics. t

The second like

theologian. Fakhr al-Dln al-Razi,

who

al-Ghazzali hailed from Persia, continued the

attacks of al-Ghazzali by selecting a single work, «/-

Isharat tea' l-tanbihat (Book of Directives of Avicenna,

criticizing

it

thoroughly. This most

also of

much

and

sixth

of India. fifth

(eleventh)

centuries a great deal of intellectual activity

took place

in

the Islamic West, that

is.

Morocco, and the surrounding regions, a ular significance for the history of

in

Andalusia,

fact of partic-

European philoso-

phv. and in the domain of Sufism for the whole later intellectual history of Islam. Both Ash'arite theology and Peripatetic philosophy reached the Islamic West much later than their birth in the East. In fact we do not encounter any eminent representatives of either

school in Andalusia until the sixth (twelfth) century.

The

outstanding theologian and philosopher of

first

who

383 993 -456 and who developed an independent school of il()64 theology, which he combined with law and the philosAndalusia was Ibn Hazm,

'lived

1

,

ophy

of language. This synthesis reflected all of the

manifested and externalized aspects of the divine into a unity. Ibn

systematic

w ork on :

Hazm

also

comand

religious sects

heresiography, for which he has been called the "historian of religious ideas."

He

the famous Dove's Xeck-ring

which

pression of the

is

first

also the author of is

a beautiful ex-

Platonic philosophy of love in

its

Islamic form. In the sixth (twelfth) century a religious reformer,

who was deeply influenced by al-Ghazzali. began a movement which resulted in the establishment of the Almohads, and the flowering of philosophy in the Islamic West. Before this period there had occasionally been Sufis who had taught cosmological and metaphysical doctrines, such as Ibn Masarrah who developed a particular form of cosmology based on "pseudo-Empedoclean" fragments, a cosmology in which bodies themselves possess different degrees of existence. This cosmology was to have an influence upon the Jewish philosopher Ibn Gabirol Latin name, Avicebron; a.d. 1021-58), who in his Fons vitae "Fountain of Life" employs a similar scheme, and also Ibn Tumart.

(

)

upon

the master of Islamic esotericism, Ibn 'Arabi.

But the regular cultivation of philosophy began with

Almohad conquest. Ibn Bajjah, who Avempace (d. a.d. known for his Tadbir al-mutauahhid

Ibn Bajjah after the

was well-known

to the Latins as

learned of theologians applied his immense learning

1138)

and demolishing the philosophical synthesis of Avicenna of which the Book of Directives and Remarks is perhaps the most concise testament. But

(Regime of the Solitary or Hermit's Rule), a philosophical protest against worldliness which terminates

to criticizing

648

and

and Remarks

w orld, and was

Meanwhile during the twelfth

combined

Arabic part of the Islamic world. The response

of Averroes to al-Ghazzali

the Arab

first

and. in fact, brought the career of philosophy, as a discipline distinct

in

among Muslims

influence

posed the

these views in his Incoherence of the Philosophers, a

work which broke the back

Sufism mostly replaced philosophy in the Sunni world

and especiallv

revelation

work

(whom

c

who

Purpose of the Philosophers al-Maqasid), which was translated into Latin and through which Latin scholastics

phers,

summarized

the views of the Peripatetics, especiallv Avicenna

was the foremost among them,

in

now the Kalam, applied to criticizing the philosohad itself become philosophical and was far removed from the simple assertions of al-Ash ari. In fact, with al-Razi and later theologians like him a philosophical Kalam developed which along with b\

is

best

with the philosopher's reaching illumination

in soli-

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE tude.

In

contrast

Avempace

to

al-Farabi

and

Averroes,

also

did not develop a political philosophy de-

but found the

voted to the creation of the ideal

state,

role of philosophy to consist in

helping the individ-

its

jurists,

and received the best education possible

theology, philosophy, and medicine.

judge of religious courts in Seville and Cordova and court physician in Marrakesh. At the end of his

ual to reach inner illumination. Avempace also wrote a commentary on Aristotle's Physics in which he con-

because

tinued the criticism of John Philoponus and Avicenna

in

titative relations to describe this

type of motion.

therefore

Moody

represents,

as

E.

A.

has

He

shown

(Moody, 1951), an important development in medieval dynamics and influenced late medieval physics, which was developed by such men as Bradwardine, Oresme,

and Nicolas of Autrecourt. The Pisan Dialogue (1632) coming from Avicenna through the Latin critics of Aristotle and a

of Galileo contains the "impetus theory"

dynamics which has appropriately been called by

modern

"Avempacean." Avempace's successor, was both a philosopher and physician, like many a Muslim philosopher before and after, and also like some of the Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides, who were so close to Muslims during this period. His Alive Son of the Awake, which served as a model for the Robinson Crusoe story and was the inspiration for some of the early Quakers as well as the source of Leibniz' philosophus autodidactus, is a philosophical romance whose end is mystical illumination and ecstasy. Although the title of this work is the same as that of Avicenna's, and Ibn

historians of science

Tufayl,

of

change

a

Andalusia he

against the Aristotelian theory of projectile motion, but in another vein; also he proposed what can be interpreted as the first new medieval development of quan-

Marrakesh While the

fell

in

as

in his

two works are not

identical.

Avicenna

philosophical narratives, or "recitals" as Corbin

them (Corbin, 1964a), was preparing the ground where the Angel acts as the instrument of illumination; Ibn Tufayl was seeking to demonstrate that revealed religion and philosophy ultimately reach the same truth, if the philosopher withdraws from society to meditate by himself. Ibn Tufayl 's emphasis upon the "inner light" shares this important element with the Avicennan cycle of narra-

calls

for his "Oriental Philosophy''

shows the ultimate goal of true philosophy to be a knowledge that illuminates; but there is an element of "utopianism" in Ibn Tufayl and a tendency, within the limits of medieval Muslim philosophy, tives in that

it

an independent

wrote on

way

of reaching the truth, but not

his teachings

by Latin

Averroists.

is

a

He

upon the

in

two

different

"twice revealed" to quote the state-

ment of H. A. Wolfson (Wolfson, 1961). He was once and then again during the Renaissance. The movement, begun early in the twelfth century in Toledo to translate Arabic works

translated in the twelfth century

into Latin under the direction of the Bishop of Toledo, had incited such interest that less than twenty years after the death of Averroes his works began to be

translated by such

men

as

Hermann

the

German and

Michael Scot, and the translations became rapidly disseminated. As the result of a misunderstanding of the Islamic background of his philosophy, Averroes

became

rapidly identified as a kind of anti-religious

and such works as Errores philosophorum Rome devoted special sections to the refutation of his ideas. Actually the Muslim Ibn Rushd and Averroes as seen by the Latin Averroists, like Siger of Brabant (thirteenth century) or the Schoolmen, in general are very different. The Muslim Ibn Rushd, of Giles of

and most celebrated of the Andalusian was more influential in the West than in Islam. He was born in Cordova in 520 (1126) to a distinguished family of

Muslim Peripatetics developed

political philosophy, following

He was

revealed religion. last

(1198).

Averroes became known to the West periods.

freethinker,

The

of

path of al-Farabi, and on Plato's Republic.

to seek to reach the divine outside the structure of

philosophers, Ibn Rushd or Averroes,

595

according to the "double tnith" theory which also

language, the

life

climate

known, Averroes devoted himself most of all to commenting on the works of Aristotle. Without including small treatises on Aristotelian themes and doubtful commentaries, there are thirty-eight commentaries by Averroes on the works of Aristotle, five of which were written in three forms: long, middle, and short. In fact Averroes became known in the West as the commentator of Aristotle par excellence. It is bv this title that Saint Thomas Aquinas refers to him, and Dante mentions him as the person who wrote the great commentary (il gran commento). Through his eyes the West came to know Aristotle, and the figure of Averroes was never separated from that of the Stagirite throughout the Middle Ages. Averroes also wrote certain independent philosophical works such as the Incoherence of the Incoherence, an answer to al-Ghazzali's Incoherence of the Philosophers, and The Harmony between Philosophy and Religion, in which, like other Muslim philosophers but in his own way, he sought to harmonize reason and revelation by giving each its due

by Avicenna to write philosophical narratives

which

political

elaborate philosophical systems for which they are

misconception of

in

the

in

from grace and died a lonely figure

earlier

although Ibn Tufayl follows the tradition established philosophical situations are depicted in a symbolic

He

in law,

served as chief

649

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE while an avid disciple of Aristotle, was also a firm believer in revealed religion and

Latin Averroes

its

necessity.

The

became identified with "secular learnname rallied many forces which

ing" and around his

were opposed to the official theology of Christianity but which nevertheless were instrumental in the flowering ol the arts and sciences during the thirteenth century. Strangel) enough Averroes was not only "twice revealed" but also twice misunderstood, for also during the Renaissance many Hellenists and humanists attacked him

having understood

Aristotle

properly, although a few continued to gaze

upon him

for

not

as the surest guide to the

understanding of Aristotle.

employed the term "perennial philosophy." For him this integral tradition of wisdom implied the synthesis ot the ways of ratiocination and intuition, and strangely enough he considered Aristotle the last of the Greek philosophers, with

Arab world was ended, except

for

one or two developed

instances. Shortly after Averroes, Ibn Sab'In

a philosophy that

is

much more

akin to the gnosis and

was now dominating the intellectual life of Eastern Islam; and Ibn Khaldun in the eighth (fourteenth) century in his Prolegomena developed the first thorough attempt at a philosophy of history, which has had a great influence in the West during the past century and which must be considered as the predecessor of the type of study of historv and civilization developed by Vico, Spengler, and Toynbee. The new direction which Islamic intellectual life took was determined most of all by the School of Illumination (ishrdq) of SuhrawardI and the intellectual and doctrinal Sufism of gnosis ('irfan) of Ibn Arabi. Moreover these currents established themselves upon the basis of a newly interpreted Avicennism illumination that

'

philosophy, or

Creek sense of

became reduced

to

theo-

merely

discursive knowledge. Another of the biggest sign posts

which indicates a parting of the ways between Islamic is the fact that in the West philosophy essentially begins with Aristotle whereas

and Western philosophy

SuhrawardI and his considerable intellectual posit ends with him. SuhrawardI was studied avidly in the East and his

for

terity

writings were translated into languages as diverse as

Hebrew and

Sanskrit.

Through

his teachings Islamic

first time. But he was not translated into Latin and therefore was not

philosophy spread into India for the

known

directly in the West. Certain Latin authors like

Roger Bacon, however, seem to have come to know about his ideas indirectly, and mention themes and motifs which can be easily traced back to SuhrawardI.

A

generation later than SuhrawardI,

Ibn

c

ArabI

performed a pilgrimage in the other direction coming from Andalusia to settle in Damascus. This giant of Islamic gnosis and the authority par execellence on Islamic esoteric doctrine was born in Murcia in 560 (1165) and after spending his youth in Andalusia set out for the East as the result of a vision of the Prophet of Islam.

some time in Egypt and from certain esoteric religious

After spending

encountering

difficulty

he went to Mecca to write, in

rather than the "anti-Avicennan" Peripatetic philoso-

scholars,

phy developed

Islamic cities, the al-Futuhat al-makkiyyah ("Meccan

in

the Islamic West. SuhrawardI, a

Persian

who was born

studied

primarily

Suhraward in 549 (1153), and after travelling throughout the eastern lands of Islam, settled in Aleppo where he was killed in 587 (1191). He was able to in

in

Ispahan

establish during this short lifetime a

new

intellectual

perspective which continues to this day in the Islamic-

new

which is called the School of on both ratiocination and mystical illumination, on the intellectual training attained through formal schooling and on spiritual

world. This

Illumination,

is

school,

based

made possible through the practice of The masterpiece of SuhrawardI, the Theosophy

purification

Sufism.

Revelations") which in Islam.

his

of

is

a

summa

this holiest of

of esoteric

knowledge

Later he settled in Damascus, there to write

most celebrated work, the Fusus al-hikam ("Bezels to die in 638 (1240). Not the least

Wisdom") and

remarkable aspect of

his life,

which was

so intertwined

enormous corpus of several hundred works he has left behind, works which transformed the intellectual life of the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia. Sufism, which is the esoteric aspect of the Islamicrevelation and is completely rooted in the Koran and prophetic traditions, had not for the most part exwith visions and wonders,

is

the

doctrinal teachings before Ibn

of the Orient of Light, as translated by Corbin (Corbin, 1964b), begins with a criticism of Aristotelian logic and

plicitly

formulated

'Arabi.

The

terminates with the question of spiritual ecstasy.

gnosis through the silence of their spiritual presence

SuhrawardI sought

to bring together what he bewere the two authentic traditions of philosophy and wisdom in the bosom of Islamic gnosis: the tradition of Creek philosophy going back to Pythagoras and the tradition of wisdom of the ancient Persian sages. He thus had a consciousness of the presence of a universal tradition, and is perhaps the first to have

lieved

650

this integral

sophia ("divine wisdom"),

After Averroes, philosophy in the Islamic West and the

whom

rather theosophy in the original

its

earliest Sufis

had presented the pearls of

had they spoken openly of occasionally someone c like al-Chazzali or Ain al-Qudat HamadanI had written on some particular aspect of Sufi doctrine. or through allusion. Rarely all

aspects of Sufism even

when

SuhrawardI also belonged to the

Sufi tradition

but his

task was the establishment of a kind of "isthmus" between discursive philosophy and thought, and pure

ISLAMIC CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE gnosis.

It

was therefore

left

and

to Ibn 'Arabi

his

disciples to formulate explicitly the teachings of Sufisin

doctrinal treatises dealing with metaphysics,

in vast

and anthropology, and of course with the spiritual significance and symbolism of various traditional sciences. These works were cosmology,

psychology,

henceforth studied

Muslim where Sufi

in various official centers of

learning in addition to the special centers

teachings were imparted.

some influence through the esoteric contact that came to be made between Islam and Christianity by way of the Order of the Templars and the fideli d'amore. Some of the but he and the Sufis in general exercised

c

Arabi, such as the correspondence be-

tween the heavens and the inner

being and

state of

certain cosmological symbols, are particularly discern-

Dante and

ible in

among Angelus

Raymond

Lull.

The

"gnostics"

such as Master

mystics

Eckhart,

and Dante himself in fact reveal certo Ibn 'Arabi and his school, often due

Silesius,

tain similarities

more

also in

Christian

to a similarity in spiritual types than to historical

influences,

which

at the level of

in this

order must of necessity remain

providing a means of expression or a

particular language of symbolism, rather than the vision itself

from which flows the truths expressed by

these mystics. In the

make any more

same way Sufism

itself

did not

who proposed

al-Din al-Shirazi

model

first new medieval shown by the recent

the

for planetary motion, as

S. Kennedy and his collaborators, which employed by Copernicus and which

research of E.

was

later

Copernicus most

likely

Creek

was

the

Ibn 'Arabi was not directly translated into Latin,

ideas of Ibn

magnitude who also revived the study of mathematics fact it was he and his student Qutb

and astronomy. In

sources.

It

learned through also al-Tusi

who

Byzantine established

astronomical observatory as a scientific institu-

first

modern sense, which through the observaSamarkand and Istanbul became the model for the earliest modern European observatories such as those of Tycho Brahe and Kepler. Al-Tusi answered the charges brought against A\ icenna by al-Razi and other theologians, and revived his teachings and trained many outstanding philosophers himself. Henceforth Persia, which had provided most of the Islamic philosophers up to that time, betion in the tories of

came almost

home

exclusive

the

of

philosophy.

Gradually the teachings of Avicenna, Suhrawardi, and Ibn

Arabi as well as the theologians became synthe-

c

which reach

sized in vast metaphysical systems

their

peak during the eleventh (seventeenth) century with

Damad and Sadr al-Din Shirazi. These metawho are the contemporaries of Descartes

Mir

physicians,

and Leibniz, developed a metaphysics which was no less logical and demonstrative than those of their

use of Neo-Platonism or Hermeticism

European contemporaries and yet which included a

than finding therein an appropriate means of expression

dimension of gnosis and intuition which the European

for

its

make

own

verities

coming from Islamic teachings

that

the Sufi vision possible.

After the seventh (thirteenth) century intellectual

contact between Islam and Christianity

completely to an end, only revived

century. Spain, which had been the contact, ceased to play this role after

by the

came

nearly

in the twentieth

main point its

of

reconquest

Christians, mostly because the Jews,

who had

acted as an intermediary, were dispersed or found themselves in a different cultural climate, and because the Christian mozarabs, that

Arab ways,

is.

also disappeared.

that the Jews,

who had

those It is

who had adopted

of interest to note

written their theology and

philosophy in Arabic until the twelfth century, began to write in Hebrew only after the destruction of

Muslim power in Spain. The contacts made possible in Sicily and in the Holy Land also came to an end about the same time due to the Crusades, and two sister civilizations which had followed a similar and parallel course for centuries each began to follow its own way. But contrary to what most Western sources have

philosophy of the period lacked completely. Quite

whom

justly

Corbin has called Sadr al-Din Shirazi,

many

Persians consider as the greatest Islamic philoso-

pher, a combination of a Saint

Thomas and

Bohme, which the context

Islam in

manifestation

could

alone

1964b). Moreover, these

of

make

its

possible

dominant

a Jacob

Persian (Corbin,

intellectual figures

of the Safavid period (a.d. 1502-1722) established a

new

school of philosophy which has survived to this

day

in

Persia itself as well as in the Indo-Pakistan

subcontinent and other surrounding regions where the influence of Persian culture has been

As

for

its

tradition presents a

the only one itself

felt.

significance for the West, this philosophical

most interesting parallel, in fact with which Western philosophy

that exists

can be compared. Based in their discursive aspect

upon the same Greek sources and inspired by two religions that are akin in many ways, Islamic and Western philosophy finally developed in two completely

different

directions.

existenz philosophy of the

some

When

German

one studies the

existentialists or the

written, the intellectual

nihilism

of the French existentialists,

one

means come

should also study the philosophy of Being of a

man

to an

life of Islam did not bv anv end merely because of the termina-

of

who draw

tion of this contact. In the seventh (thirteenth) century

like

the philosophy of Avicenna was revived by Khwajah Nasir al-Dln al-Tusi, an intellectual figure of the first

lectual horizons very different

Sadr al-Din Shirazi,

familiar in

the

mind

to intel-

from what has become contemporary Western philosophy.

651

JUSTICE same way then

In the

was

JUSTICE

that Islamic intellectual life

West to the extent that the ideas in the two worlds have a nearly inseparable history, the later development of Islamic philosophy and the living tradition of philosophy and gnosis that have survived in the Islamic world to the influential for centuries in the

rate ways: as a

present day can once again provide ideas that can be of great fecundity on the soil of Western intellectual

This influence of thought appears

life.

the few

who

at least

in two sepasupramundane eternal idea which is independent of man, and as a temporal man-made social ideal. The two meanings illustrate the difference between contemplation and action, philosophical reflection and practical conduct. Our discussion will, however, include a middle ground in which theory and

Justice has been conceived historically

among

through the dim glass of phenomenology,

practice are intermingled.

We shall,

existentialism, structuralism, etc., are searching for a

more penetrating

vision of reality than those systems

earthly, and which the West has been able

of discursive,

rationalistic

to provide for

them since

in his actions; (2) a

BIBLIOGRAPHY M