Routledge Library Editions: Idealism, 4-Volume Set 9780367704452, 9781003156024, 9780367720261, 9780367720421, 9781003153153

Table of contents :
Cover
Volume 1
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Original Title
Original Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Part I An outline of the issues
1 The options
2 Berkeley’s system
3 The nature of anti-realism
Part II The topic-neutrality thesis
4 The inscrutability of matter
Appendix: The powers-thesis
5 Matter in space
6 The confinement of qualia
7 Mentalistic realism
Part III The refutation of realism
8 Nomological deviance
9 A defence of the nomological thesis
10 Spatial anti-realism
11 Full anti-realism
Part IV The case for phenomenalism
12 The rejection of the isomorphism-requirement
13 The principles of creation
14 The challenge of nihilism
15 The two frameworks
Part V The nature of time
16 The construction of inter-subjective time
17 The underlying reality
Notes
Index
Volume 2
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Original Title
Original Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Contents
Introduction
I. The Concrete Universal
A. The Abstract Universal
B. The Theory of Rational Activity
C. The Theory of Rational Activity Continued: Spheres of Rational Activity
D. Rational Activity and the Concrete Universal
II. F. H. Bradley’s Theory of Morality
A. Morality as Self-Realization
B. The Social Self
C. The Ideal Self
D. Morality and Religion
III. T. H. Green’s Theory of Morality
A. Thought and Experience
B. Rational Activity and Morality
C. Moral Theory and Moral Practice
IV. T. H. Green’s Political Philosophy
A. Rights and Obligations
B. The Theory of the State
C. The Scope and Limits of Government Action
V. The Theory of the Absolute F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet
A. F. H. Bradley
B. Bernard Bosanquet
C. Idealism without the Absolute
VI. Humanistic Idealism
A. Knowledge as an Integral Part of Rational Activity
B. Knowledge as the Object of Rational Activity
C. Philosophy
VII. Bernard Bosanquet’s Political Philosophy
A. The Real Will
B. Bosanquet’s Theory of the State
C. Points of Permanent Significance in Bosanquet’s Political Philosophy
VIII. The Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics of Josiah Royce
A. The Theory of Loyalty
B. The Nature of Being
C. The Place of Nature and Humanity in Being
D. Royce and Humanistic Idealism
Appendix 1: Sources of Quotations in the Text
Appendix 2: Selected Bibliography in Idealist Philosophy
Volume 3
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Original Title
Original Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I. Petrarch
Chapter II. Petrarch to Ficino
Chapter III. Marsilio Ficino and the Platonic Academy of Florence
Chapter IV. The Medici Circle (1): Poliziano, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Girolamo Benivieni
Chapter V. The Medici Circle (2): The Poema Visione
Chapter VI. The Trattato d’Amore
Chapter VII. Neoplatonism and the Arts
Chapter VIII. The Lyric: Michelangelo
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
Volume 4
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Original Title
Dedication
Original Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
A. Tragedy
B. Logos
C. Techne
Chapter 1: Logos is Unconditionally Good
A. The Classic Assertion
(1) Aristotle's Vision
(2) The Protreptic Logos
(3) The Indirect Argument
B. The Critique of Logos
(1) Protagoras
(2) Descartes’ Provisional Morality
(3) Spinoza’s Critique of Teleology
C. The Response of Logos
(1) The Argument from Self-Reference
(2) Techne and the Good
(3) Poeticism
Chapter 2: Is Logos Unconditionally Good?
A. Cleitophon’s Accusation
B. Eros and Logos
C. The Philosopher and the Poet
Chapter 3: Logos Is Conditionally Good
A. The Impossibility of Philosophical Dialogue
(1) Philosophical Dialogue
(2) Aristotle and the Principle of Noncontradiction
(3) The Misologists
B. Paradigms of Play
(1) The Athlete and the Child
(2) The Philosopher and the Poet (Continued)
(3) The Protreptic Logos (Continued)
C. Questions
(1) Eros and Logos (Continued)
(2) Asking Questions
Epilogue
Notes
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: IDEALISM

Volume 1

THE CASE FOR IDEALISM

THE CASE FOR IDEALISM

JOHN FOSTER

First published in 1982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1982 John Foster All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-70445-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-00-315602-4 (Set) (ebk) ISBN: 978-0-367-72026-1 (Volume 1) (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-72042-1 (Volume1) (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-00-315315-3 (Volume 1) (ebk) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153

The Case for Idealism John Foster Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford

ROUTLEDGE& KEGAN PAUL London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley

First published in 1982 by Routledge 4 Kegan Paul Ltd 39 Store Street, London WC1E7DD, 9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA, 296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne, 3206, Australia and Broadway House, Newtown Road, Henley-on -Thames OxonRG91EN Set in 10U2pt Times by Saildean Ltd, Surrey and printed in Great Britain by TJ. Press (Padstow) Ltd Padstow, Cornwall © John Foster 1982 No part of this book maybe reproduced in anyform without permission from the publisher, exceptfor the quotation of brief passages in criticism Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Foster, John, 1941The casefor idealism. (International library of philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. L Idealism. 2. Realism. I. Title. II. Series. B823.F67 141 81-21154 ISBN 0-7100-90194 AACR2

For Helen

CONTENTS

Preface

viii

PART I A n outline of the issues 1 The options 2 Berkeley's system 3 The nature of anti-realism

1 3 17 33

PART II The topic-neutrality thesis 4 The inscrutability of matter Appendix: The powers-thesis 5 Matter in space 6 The confinement of qualia 7 Mentalistic realism

49 51 67 73 89 108

PART III 8 9 10 11

The refutation of realism Nomological deviance A defence of the nomological thesis Spatial anti-realism Full anti-realism

125 127 145 162 176

PART IV 12 13 14 15

The case for phenomenalism The rejection of the isomorphism-requirement The principles of creation The challenge of nihilism The two frameworks

189 191 208 226 239

vii

Contents PART V The nature of time 16 The construction of inter-subjective time 17 The underlying reality

251 253 274

Notes

295

Index

305

viii

PREFACE

The aim of this book is to refute realism about the physical world and to develop, in its place, a version of phenomenalism. The views I defend are, I have to admit, in radical conflict both with our untutored intuitions and with current philosophical fashion. If this makes me uneasy about how the book will be received, I take some comfort from the thought that, whatever its failings, it is unlikely to be considered either platitudinous or unduly derivative. However idiosyncratic my views, I have greatly benefited from conversations with a number of friends and colleagues. Howard Robinson and Michael Lockwood, in particular, have been very helpful. J.A.F. Brasenose College, Oxford

ix

PARTI

AN OUTLINE OF THE ISSUES

1 THE OPTIONS

Even among philosophers the term 'idealism' is used in a variety of different senses to denote a variety of different positions. In what follows, I shall be concerned with three kinds of idealism, which can be expressed, summarily, by the following three claims: (1) Ultimate contingent reality is wholly mental. (2) Ultimate contingent reality is wholly non-physical. (3) The physical world is the logical product of facts about human sense-experience. My defence of idealism will be primarily a defence of claims (2) and (3), though I shall also try to show the plausibility of (1). I shall begin by explaining what the claims mean and how they are related. Reality is all that exists or obtains, the totality of entities and facts. Thus, if John is heavier than Mary, reality includes the entities John and Mary and the fact that John is heavier than Mary. I shall not pursue the question of whether facts themselves are entities. Certainly, I do not regard myself as incurring (as philosophers say) an ontological commitment to facts merely by employing the fact-terminology. I do not think I am committed to recognizing facts as entities when I say *There are several facts we must take into account' anymore than I think I am committed to recognizing respects as entities when I say There are several respects in which crocodiles and alligators differ'. And certainly it is not as entities that I am taking facts to be ingredients of reality

3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-2

An outline of the issues when I say that reality is all that exists or obtains, the totality of entities and facts. For a fact to obtain, in this sense, is just for something to be the case, i.e. for it to be the case that ..., for some suitable filling of the blank. The obtaining of the fact that John is heavier than Mary just is its being the case that John is heavier than Mary. Thus I might have said: reality is all that exists or is the case. None of this, of course, precludes our construing facts as entities. But if we do construe them as entities, we must still distinguish the two ways in which facts are ingredients of reality as elements of what exists and as elements of what obtains. We must still recognize that someone else who rejects this construal is not denying, in the relevant sense, that facts obtain. For, in this sense, he is accepting that facts obtain merely by accepting that John is heavier than Mary or that the earth moves or that 2 + 2 ~ 4. An entity (or fact) is contingent iff its existence (obtaining) is not necessary, in some sense of necessity stronger than merely natural necessity. (Here and throughout I use *iff as an abbreviation for 'if and only if.) The number 2, as normally conceived, is noncontingent, since its existence is necessary in the relevantly strong sense:1 there could not have been a world, however different from the actual world in composition and natural laws, in which 2 failed to exist (though, of course, there could have been a world in which the symbol '2', having a different meaning, failed to denote anything). Likewise, the fact that 2 + 2 — 4 is non-contingent, since its obtaining is necessary in the relevantly strong sense: there could not have been a world, of whatever composition and natural laws, in which 2 + 2 failed to be 4 (though, of course, there could have been a world in which the sequence of symbols '2 + 2 = 4', having a different meaning, failed to express a truth). In contrast, this chair (if it exists) and the fact there is a chair in this room (if this is a fact) are both contingent: the existence of the one and the obtaining of the other are not necessary in the relevant sense or, indeed, in any sense. Moreover, the fact that unsupported bodies fall is also contingent, since even though its obtaining is or may be the result of natural necessity (viz. the law of gravity), it is not necessary in any stronger sense. At least, it is not necessary in a stronger sense unless we define the term 'body' in such a way that it only applies to objects that behave in that way. And even if we do define the term in this way, there could have been a world, with different natural laws, in which objects with the same intrinsic 4

The options properties as bodies behaved quite differently. Where a necessity is stronger than natural necessity, I shall, to mark the distinction, call it a logical necessity. This is obviously a rather broad use of the term 'logical', since there are many cases where something which is, in that sense, logically necessary cannot be established from (what we ordinarily take to be) the laws of logic alone. Indeed, there are cases where something which is, in that sense, logically necessary cannot be established a priori (e.g. it is logically necessary that Hesperus and Phosphorus are numerically identical, though, given the difference in the concepts Hesperus and Phosphorus, this is not something we can know a priori2). But this broad use of the term 'logical' seems to me appropriate, because any stronger-than-natural necessity is a necessity of the strongest kind - the kind for which the necessity of logical truth, in the narrow sense, provides the clearest measure. If reality is the totality of entities and facts, contingent reality is, correspondingly, the totality of contingent entities and contingent facts - all that contingently exists or contingently obtains. I might equally have said: contingent reality is the totality of contingent entities and states of affairs. For I shall draw no distinction between contingent facts and states of affairs. I shall draw no distinction between the fact that John is heavier than Mary (i.e. its being the case that John is heavier than Mary) and the state of affairs of John's being heavier than Mary, nor between the fact that there is a chair in this room (i.e. it being the case that there is a chair in this room) and the state of affairs of there being a chair in this room. Maybe, strictly speaking, there is a subtle difference between contingent facts and states of affairs. But if there is, it is not relevant to my purposes. I will say that a fact or set of facts Fis logically sustained by a fact or set of facts F' iff Fobtains wholly in virtue of F' in the following sense: (a) Fis a logical consequence of F', i.e. it is logically necessary that ifF' obtains, then F obtains. (b) Fis mediated by F', i.e. the obtaining of Fis achieved through and by means of the obtaining of F'. (c) Fis exhausted by F', i.e. the obtaining of Fis wholly constituted by and is nothing over and above the obtaining of F'. 5

An outline of the issues To take a simple and philosophically trivial example, suppose that John weighs 14 stone and Mary weighs 10 stone. Now consider the fact (Fi) that John is more than 2 stone heavier than Mary. In the sense defined by (a), (b) and (c), Fx obtains wholly in virtue of the fact (F2) that John is exactly 4 stone heavier than Mary. So F{ is logically sustained by F2. And, quite generally, wherever two individuals instantiate some generic relation R, there is a determinate relation R' of R such that their instantiation of R is logically sustained by their instantiation of/?'. F2, in turn, obtains wholly in virtue of, and is thus logically sustained by, the combination of the facts (F3) that John weighs 14 stone and (FA) that Mary weighs 10 stone. And, quite generally, wherever two individuals instantiate some determinate weight-relation R, their instantiation of R is logically sustained by the combination of their specific weights. Finally (at least for present purposes), F3 and F4 are logically sustained by certain facts (partly general, partly specific to John, Mary and the earth) about mass, distance and gravity. Since a fact does not mediate itself, the relation of logical sustainment is irreflexive. It is also, for obvious reasons, transitive (if F sustains F' and F' sustains F " , then F sustains F") and asymmetric (if F sustains F \ then F' does not sustain F). It is also asymmetric in a special and stronger sense. Thus let us say that a fact F contributes to the sustainment of a fact F' iff there is a set of facts F'' such that F' is sustained by Fand F'' together, but is not sustained by either f or F" on its own. Then the special asymmetry consists in this: that for any facts F and F', if F sustains or contributes to the sustainment of F \ F' does not sustain or contribute to the sustainment of F. I shall say that an entity x is the logical creation of (or is logically created by) the fact or set of facts Fiffthe existence of x (i.e. the fact that x exists) is logically sustained by F. For example, and quite trivially, the set jJohn, Mary} (likewise, the aggregate John + Mary) is the logical creation of, in combination, the existence of John and the existence of Mary. Thus logical creation is a special case of logical sustainment, namely the sustainment of an entity's existence. I shall use the expression ' ... is the logical product of ...' to cover, generically, both cases of sustainment and cases of creation. Thus if F is a fact or set of facts, a fact F' is the logical product of F iff F' is logically sustained by F, and an entity x is the logical product of FifTx is the logical creation of F Likewise I shall 6

The options speak of a collection of entities and facts as the logical product of F when each element in the collection is the logical product of F. Where a fact is not logically sustained by any fact or set of facts I shall call it logically basic (or just basic) and where an entity is not the logical creation of any fact or set of facts I shall call it ontologically primitive (or just primitive). I shall also use the term 'ultimate' to apply generically both to logically basic facts and to ontologically primitive entities. Ultimate contingent reality is then the totality of ultimate (i.e. primitive, uncreated) contingent entities and ultimate (i.e. basic, unsustained) contingent facts. It is all that ultimately contingently exists or obtains. For short, I shall refer to it in future as simply ultimate reality. It is true, by definition, that every fact is either basic or sustained. But, in what follows, I shall make the additional assumption that every fact is either basic or sustained by some set of basic facts. In particular, I shall assume that the totality of basic contingent facts, which forms the factual component of ultimate reality, is, in a certain sense, exhaustive: that it encompasses, explicitly or implicitly, all that contingently obtains - that every contingent fact (every state of affairs) is either an element of this totality or sustained by it. This assumption is not one which I require as a basis for my arguments: I could manage perfectly well without it. But without it, the first two idealist claims would have to be re-expressed. For I want these claims to set a restriction on contingent reality as a whole. I want claim (1), that ultimate reality is wholly mental, to imply that every contingent fact is either a mental fact or logically sustained by mental facts, and I want claim (2), that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical, to imply that every contingent fact is either a non-physical fact or logically sustained by non-physical facts. Without the assumption that the totality of basic contingent facts is, in the relevant sense, exhaustive, the claims would not have these implications. (1) would be compatible with the assertion that there are non-mental facts which are not logically sustained by mental facts, and (2) would be compatible with the assertion that there are physical facts which are not logically sustained by non-physical facts. Thus construed, the two claims would be too permissive to carry the philosophical significance which I accord them in my subsequent discussion. To carry this significance, I would have to strengthen them by adding, as extra clauses, the propositions I want them to imply. 7

An outline of the issues It is for convenience of exposition that I am adopting the assumption of exhaustiveness: as I have said, I do not require it as a basis for my arguments. But, given the transitivity and asymmetry of sustainment, I also think that the assumption is true. It would only be false if there were some non-basic fact whose sustainment was infinitely regressive, such that every set of facts which sustained it, however directly or remotely, contained at least one fact which was itself sustained. And I can think of no case in which I would acknowledge a regress of this kind. The only case which suggests itself is a regress of physical constitution, whereby each space-occupant is composed of smaller occupants by whose arrangement and organization its existence is sustained. But even if there were such a regress of constitution (and it is far from clear that there is), it would not follow that there were no basic facts by which the existence of each occupant was sustained. For we could still insist that, in the final analysis, all occupants, however large or small, are logically created by facts about the physical properties of points at times. Indeed, such a position is one which I shall defend in chapter 5. Let us now consider, in more detail, the content of claims (1) and (2). (1) is the claim that ultimate reality is wholly mental. More precisely, it is the claim that: (a) Apart from purely temporal contingent entities (if there are any), e.g. moments and periods (if these are contingent), the only ultimate (ontologically primitive) contingent entities are mental, i.e. are entities such as minds (or conscious subjects) and mental events. (b) Apart from purely temporal contingent facts (if there are any), e.g. the fact that time is infinitely extended (if this is a fact and if it is contingent), the only ultimate (logically basic) contingent facts are mind-concerning, i.e. are facts about the existence and intrinsic character of minds, their location and structuring in time, the events and processes that occur in them, and the natural laws to which such events and processes are subject. In short, (1) is the claim that ultimate reality entirely consists, both ontologically and factually, in a world of time, minds and mind-governing laws. I shall call this claim the mentalist thesis, or, for short, mentalism. (2) is the claim that ultimate reality is wholly 8

The options non-physical. More precisely, it is the claim that: (a) Apart from purely temporal contingent entities (if there are any and if they qualify as physical), no contingent physical entity is ontologically primitive. (b) Apart from purely temporal contingent facts (if there are any and if they qualify as physical), no contingent physical fact is logically basic. Thus (2) excludes from the realm of ultimate reality: physical space, bodies, physical colour, elementary particles, electromagnetic fields, physical laws and everything else (apart from time), whether ontological or factual, which either common sense or scientific theory recognizes as an element of the physical world. I shall call this the physical anti-realist thesis or, for short, physical anti-realism, though often, where the reference to the physical is clear from the context, I shall speak simply of the anti-realist thesis and anti-realism. Both mentalism and physical anti-realism are theses which confine ultimate reality to entities and facts of a certain sort: mentalism confines it to entities and facts which are (including the temporal) mental, and anti-realism confines it to entities and facts which are not (excluding the temporal) physical. And in both cases, given the assumption of exhaustiveness, the confinements indirectly cover contingent reality as a whole. Mentalism requires that every contingent fact is either mental or logically sustained by mental facts (and therefore, as a special case, that every contingent entity is either mental or the logical creation of mental facts) and anti-realism requires that every contingent fact is either non-physical or logically sustained by non-physical facts (and, therefore, as a special case, that every contingent entity is either non-physical or the logical creation of non-physical facts). Now it is obvious that these two theses, mentalism and physical anti-realism, are compatible. Indeed, it would be very natural for someone who accepted one to find therein a reason for accepting the other. It would be very natural for a mentalist to conclude, on the basis of his mentalism, that ultimate reality is wholly nonphysical and very natural for an anti-realist to conclude, on the basis of his anti-realism, that ultimate reality is wholly mental. None the less, the two positions are, as such, logically independent. Mentalism does not, as such, commit one to anti-realism; nor does anti-realism, as such, commit one to mentalism. Mentalism does 9

An outline of the issues not commit one to anti-realism, because mentalism, while claiming that ultimate reality is wholly mental, is compatible with the further claim that some portion of that reality is also physical. A mentalist might reject anti-realism on the grounds that the categories mental and physical are not mutually exclusive. Conversely, anti-realism does not commit one to mentalism, because anti-realism, while claiming that ultimate reality is wholly nonphysical, is compatible with the further claim that some portion of that reality is also non-mental. An anti-realist might reject mentalism on the grounds that, even in the domain of the contingent, the categories mental and physical are not jointly exhaustive. The logical independence of the two positions can be nicely represented by means of Venn diagrams (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In both figures, UR

cm

Fig. 1.1

Fig.U

the rectangle UR represents ultimate reality (the totality of primitive contingent entities and basic contingent facts), while the two intersecting circles, M and P, represent, respectively, its mental and physical portions. The shading of a region indicates that it is empty (devoid of entities and facts), though the non-shading of a region does not indicate that it is not empty. Thus Figure 1.1, in which only M is unshaded, represents the mentalist thesis that ultimate reality is wholly mental, and Figure 1.2, in which P is shaded, represents the anti-realist thesis that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. It can be seen that mentalism is compatible with the denial of anti-realism, since the region common to both circles, which represents that portion of ultimate reality which is both mental and physical, is shaded in Figure 1.2, but unshaded in Figure 1.1. Likewise, it can be seen that anti-realism is compatible with the denial of mentalism, since the region lying outside both circles, which represents that portion of ultimate reality which is neither mental nor physical, is shaded in Figure 1.1, but unshaded 10

The options in Figure 1.2. Of course, in claiming that mentalism is compatible with the denial of anti-realism, I do not preclude there being philosophical arguments to show that the mental and physical categories are mutually exclusive, so that, in the final analysis, mentalism does require anti-realism. Nor, in claiming that antirealism is compatible with the denial of mentalism, do I preclude there being philosophical arguments to show that the mental and physical categories are jointly exhaustive, so that, in the final analysis, anti-realism does require mentalism. All I am claiming, at this stage, is that mentalism without anti-realism and anti-realism without mentalism are options which we cannot exclude prior to philosophical investigation. These options are initially available, given the way that mentalism and anti-realism have been defined. Whether we shall want or be able to make anything of them is another question. Whatever their differences, mentalism and anti-realism are united in their rejection of the common sense view of the status and character of the physical world. The common sense view is that ultimate reality includes a portion which is both physical and non-mental. It accepts the ontological primitiveness of certain physical entities and the logical basicness of certain physical facts, and denies that these entities and facts are circumscribed by the mentalistic framework of time, minds and mind-governing laws. I shall call this view standard physical realism or simply standard realism. It is represented, Venn-diagrammatically, in Figure 1.3.

t/fl

Fig. 1.3 The occurrence of a tick within a region indicates that the region is not empty. So to represent standard realism (the thesis that some portion of ultimate reality is both physical and non-mental), we put a tick in that portion of P which lies outside M. Obviously, the 11

An outline of the issues diagram leaves room for further elaboration, according to what position the standard realist adopts with respect to the status and nature of mind. A dualist, who holds that the mental and physical realms are quite separate, will shade off the common region where M and P intersect (or, at most, admit to this region only those basic facts, such as the obtaining of certain psychophysical laws, which concern the causal interaction between the two realms). Conversely, a physicalist, who holds that ultimate reality is wholly physical, will shade off that portion of M (indeed, that portion of UR) which lies outside P, thus absorbing the mental realm into the physical. Moreover, if the physicalist is also a mental anti-realist, holding that ultimate reality is wholly non-mental, he will shade off the whole of Af. As I have said, mentalism and physical anti-realism are alike in rejecting standard realism. Mentalism claims that ultimate reality is wholly mental and anti-realism claims that it is wholly nonphysical. So both are agreed that no portion of ultimate reality is both physical and non-mental. (Again this can be seen from the Venn diagrams, where that portion of P which lies outside M is ticked in Figure 1.3 but shaded in both Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2.) But it is worth considering in more detail what options, concerning the status and character of the physical world, are available to someone who rejects standard realism, and how these options are related, on the one hand, to mentalism and, on the other, to anti-realism. The rejection of standard realism is compatible with three importantly different positions with respect to the physical world. The first and most uncompromising position is that which denies the existence of a physical world altogether - denies the existence of any physical entities and denies the obtaining of any physical state of affairs. At its weakest, it holds that all our physical beliefs, however strongly they seem to be supported by our empirical evidence and however well they serve to systematize our experiences, are uniformly false. At its strongest, it holds that our very concept of the physical embodies some incoherence or contradiction. This outright rejection of the physical realm we may call, appropriately, the nihilist position or simply nihilism. Now, obviously, nihilism entails anti-realism: if there is no physical world, then ultimate reality, however composed, must be wholly nonphysical. But anti-realism does not entail nihilism. For the 12

The options anti-realist, unlike the nihilist, has the option of saying that there is a physical world, but one which is, in all respects, the logical product of something else. He has the option of saying that there are physical facts, but ones which are logically sustained, and that there are physical entities, but ones which are logically created. It is this option which constitutes the second position, and I shall call it the reductive position or simply reductivism. Thus the reductivist accepts the existence of a physical world, but as something which is wholly constituted by, and nothing over and above, a non -physical reality which underlies it. The third position accepts the existence of a physical world and, unlike reductivism, accepts that at least some portion of it is ultimate - accepts that at least some physical facts are logically basic and that at least some physical entities are ontologically primitive. Where it differs from standard realism is in holding that this ultimate physical world is, in substance and character, purely mental - that the primitive physical entities are mental entities and the basic physical facts are mental facts. It assigns the same logical and ontological status to the physical world as the standard realist assigns, but gives a non-standard interpretation of its intrinsic nature. This third position, with its distinctive combination of realist and mentalist claims, we may call, appropriately, mentalistic physical realism or simply mentalistic realism. It should be noted that, despite its title, mentalistic realism, while certainly a version of physical realism, does not entail full-blooded mentalism. For while it asserts that the physical portion of ultimate reality is wholly mental, it leaves open the possibility that some other portion is non-mental. Thus in the appropriate Venn diagram (Figure 1.4), it shades off that portion of P which lies outside Mt but need not shade off the region which lies outside both circles. Mentalistic realism becomes a version of mentalism only on the

(//?

Fig. 1.4 13

An outline of the issues additional assumption that, in the domain of the ultimate, the mental and physical categories are jointly exhaustive. Together with standard realism, which they all reject, these three positions concerning the status and character of the physical world exhaust the range of possibilities (though, of course, there is room for further subdivisions). In the first place, we have an exhaustive opposition between the two generic positions of physical realism and physical anti-realism, where realism asserts that ultimate reality contains a physical portion and anti-realism denies it. Realism, in turn, divides into the exclusive and exhaustive alternatives of standard realism, which takes ultimate physical reality to be (at least in part) non-mental, and mentalistic realism, which takes it to be wholly mental. Likewise, anti-realism divides into the exclusive and exhaustive alternatives of nihilism, which denies the existence of a physical world altogether, and reductivism, which accepts the physical world, but as something logically produced by, and nothing over and above, the ultimate non-physical reality. Thus the taxonomy of positions is as depicted in Figure 1.5. Range of options with respect to the physical world

,

X

i

, i

Realism

I

Standard

I

Anti-realism

I

I

Mentalistic

Nihilist

i

I

Reductivist

Figure 1.5 Of these options, standard realism, which embodies the common sense view, seems, intuitively, the most plausible. In the first place, the existence of a physical world seems to be amply supported by the testimony of our senses. If there is no physical world, why should the course of sense-experience be so consistently and intricately organized as if there were? Why should our physical beliefs, if uniformly false, prove so serviceable in explaining past experiences and so reliable in predicting new ones? Secondly, assuming that there is a physical world, it is hard to see how it could be entirely composed of mental items or how it could be nothing over and above a reality which is wholly non-physical. If ultimate reality is either wholly mental or wholly non-physical, how could there be room for a genuinely physical world? None the less, 14

The options despite its initial plausibility, the thrust of my arguments, throughout this work, will be against standard realism in both its aspects. Thus I shall argue that, in the framework of physical realism, the mentalistic version is not only coherent, but, in so far as one can pass judgment here, more acceptable than the standard version it rejects. And, more fundamentally, I shall argue that physical realism itself is incoherent. These two arguments (developed, respectively, in Parts II and III) are not independent. The considerations which, in the framework of realism, establish the coherence and superiority of the mentalistic version, also play a crucial role in establishing the incoherence of realism in any form. In addition to mentalism and physical anti-realism (claims (1) and (2)), I mentioned, at the beginning, a third idealist thesis (claim (3)), which asserts that the physical world is the logical product of facts about human sense-experience. This thesis is a species of reductivism and, a fortiori, of anti-realism. I shall call it reductive phenomenalism. By 'facts about human sense-experience' (or, for short, 'sensory facts') I mean not only (a) facts about the actual course of human experience (facts which are recorded by specifying the types of experience which occur in particular minds at particular times), but also (b) facts about the framework of natural necessity in which human experience is controlled (facts about how the course of experience is nomologically constrained, facts about what the laws of experience permit or prohibit). I shall say more about this phenomenalist thesis (in connection with Berkeley) in the next chapter, though the main discussion of it will come in Part IV, where, having already refuted realism, I shall develop and defend a specific version of it. (This development also continues into the final section of the book (Part V), where I consider the nature of time. For although this discussion of time will be largely self-contained, its results have an important bearing on the phenomenalistic enterprise.) However, there is one point which needs to be stressed at the outset - a point which concerns reductivism in general and the phenomenalist version in particular. I have used the term 'reductivism' to denote the thesis that the physical world is the logical product of an ultimate reality which is wholly non-physical. What needs to be stressed is that reductivism, in this sense, is not, and does not entail, any thesis about the analysis of physical statements. It does not entail that physical statements can be analysed in such a 15

An outline of the issues way that all explicit references to physical entities and all explicitly physical concepts disappear. It leaves open the possibility that the physical realm, while ontologically and factually derivative, is conceptually autonomous, so that physical statements cannot, without loss of meaning, be reformulated in non-physical terms. It leaves open the possibility that physical facts, though logically sustained by non-physical facts, cannot be adequately expressed except by means of an explicitly physical vocabulary and an explicitly physical ontology. This point, of course, carries over to the specific case of reductive phenomenalism. The term 'phenomenalism' is normally used to denote an analytical thesis - the thesis that physical statements can be analysed into sensory statements. But reductive phenomenalism, as I have defined it, does not commit one to such a thesis. Reductive phenomenalism commits one to taking physical facts as logicaUy sustained by (as obtaining wholly in virtue of) sensory facts, but not to giving physical statements a sensory analysis. Of course, anyone who holds that physical facts are logically sustained by sensory facts must give some account of the meaning of physical statements which is compatible with this view. He must construe physical statements in such a way that sensory facts can suffice for their truth; and if, as is likely, he holds the view a priori, he must construe physical statements in such a way that nothing but sensory facts could suffice for their truth. But none of this commits him to saying that there is even one physical statement which can be re-expressed in sensory terms. It does not even commit him to saying that, for some physical statement, there is a sensory statement which expresses its truthconditions. For he might want to say that, for each physical statement S, there is an infinite set a of possible sensory situations such that (a) each a-situation would, if it obtained, suffice for the truth of 5, (b) the truth of S logically requires that some a-situation obtain and (c) there is no sensory statement, however complex, which expresses the infinite disjunction of all a-situations. Curiously, reductive phenomenalism does not even entail that the truth of a physical statement could be established merely from an understanding of that statement and a knowledge (if it were available) of the sensory facts by which its truth is sustained. But the reasons for this will only emerge much later (chapter 14), after we have drawn the distinction between prospective and retrospective sustainment. 16

2

BERKELEY'S SYSTEM

I have distinguished three forms of idealism, which I have labelled menta/ism, (physical) anti-realism and reductive phenomena/ism. Both mentalism and anti-realism are theses about the composition of ultimate reality. The first asserts that ultimate reality is wholly mental - that all that ultimately exists or obtains (all that is ontologically primitive or logically basic) is confined to a framework of time, minds and mind-governing laws. The second asserts that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical - that there are no ontologically primitive physical entities and no logically basic physical facts. As we saw, while these two theses are compatible, neither of them, at least in any straightforward way, entails the other. An anti-realist could reject mentalism by maintaining that the mental and physical categories are not jointly exhaustive. And, more importantly for our purposes, a mentalist could reject anti-realism by maintaining that the two categories are not mutually exclusive. Both theses, however, are united in the rejection of the common sense view - the view we have called standard realism - that some portion of ultimate reality is both physical and non-mental. As we also saw, the rejection of standard realism is compatible with three different positions with respect to the physical world. Two of them, namely nihilism and reductivism, are forms of anti-realism, nihilism denying the existence of a physical world altogether, and reductivism accepting its existence, but as the logical product of (hence nothing over and above) an ultimate reality which is wholly non-physical. The third position, mentalistic realism, takes the physical world to be both ultimate but 17

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-3

An outline of the issues wholly mental. Like standard realism, it accepts the primitiveness of certain physical entities and the basicness of certain physical facts, but offers a non-standard account of their nature. The third idealist thesis, reductive phenomenalism, is a special case of reductivism - the case in which the physical world is taken to be the logical product of facts about human sense-experience. To deepen our understanding of these positions and the crucial distinctions they involve, I want, in this chapter, to illustrate them by reference to the philosophy of that most celebrated of idealists, George Berkeley. My aim at this stage, in discussing Berkeley, is purely expository: such themes in his work as I want to defend will be developed and defended in subsequent parts. It will suffice, for the time being, if we can use Berkeley as a means of setting the issues which confront us in a clearer perspective. In trying to provide an exposition of Berkeley, the main problems concern his theory of the physical world. But let me begin by summarizing his account of ultimate reality with a view to seeing, if we can, how his views on the physical world fit into this. This account can be conveniently divided into four parts: (1) Berkeley recognized only two kinds of ultimate, ontologically primitive entity, namely: (i) Conscious subjects (he calls these minds or spirits) which, like Descartes, he conceived to be immaterial, unextended substances, and to which he ascribed such states and activities as perceiving, thinking and willing. (ii) Ideas, which are the immediate objects of perception and which have no existence outside the mind. He restricts ultimate entities to these two kinds because, as he sees it, it is impossible to form a coherent conception of anything else. Any attempt to form such a conception leads, he thinks, either to some definite incoherence (such as the notion of an inert substance with causal power or the notion of an unthinking substance as the subject of mind-dependent qualities) or to something which, so far from being a genuine conception, is no more than an idle gesture towards a know-not-what. Berkeley speaks of ideas as things whose existence consists in their being perceived - whose esse is percipi (Principles II and III). This might suggest that he thought of ideas, not as ultimate entities, but as logical creations. It 18

Berkeley's system might suggest that he thought of an idea either (a) as something whose existence is logically sustained by its being an object of perception, or (b) as something whose existence is logically sustained by the intrinsic character of a certain perceptual experience. But neither of these interpretations of Berkeley would be correct. The (a)conception is manifestly incoherent, since there cannot be anything whose existence ( = being) is mediated by some fact about that thing; nor is there any reason to suppose that Berkeley thought that there was. As for (b), it is clear that in Berkeley's system, it is precisely in the occurrence of an idea that the intrinsic character of a perceptual experience consists: there is no more fundamental way of specifying the character of the experience than in terms of the idea perceived. Thus in asserting that the existence of an idea consists in its being perceived, Berkeley is not denying the ultimacy of ideas. He is only asserting that ideas cannot exist except as objects of perception - that their perception is built into their existence. Likewise, when he asserts (Principles CXXXIX) that a spirit is an active being whose existence consists in perceiving ideas and thinking, he is not denying the ultimacy of spirits. He is merely asserting that spirits cannot exist except as subjects of perception and thought - that perceiving and thinking are a spirit's essential attributes. (2) Within the class of minds or spirits, Berkeley recognized, in particular, (a) an eternal and uncreated spirit, God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, and (b) a group of finite and created spirits, ourselves. The existence of God and his relation to us is, arguably, the central theme of Berkeley's theory. And certainly it was as a defence of Christian theism that he offered the theory to his readers. His explicit purpose in publishing his Principles of Human Knowledge and his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous was to expose the errors and confusions latent in atheism and religious scepticism. (3) Berkeley divided our ideas into two kinds, distinguished by their causal genesis: ideas of sense (sensations), which are imprinted on a spirit by some external cause, and ideas of the imagination (images), which the percipient frames by his 19

An outline of the issues own volition. Berkeley held that all causation is volitional: only spirits have a genuine power of agency, and it is only through acts of will that they can exercise this power. Berkeley concluded that, while images are caused by the volitions of their percipients, our sensations are caused, and directly caused, by the volitions of God. (4) In this connection, Berkeley noted and stressed that God does not exercise his volition in a random way, but in accordance with certain fixed policies which impose rules on the course of human experience. Berkeley calls these rules the laws of nature. These laws of nature ensure a certain coherence, a certain thematic character, in the overall pattern of our sensations - a coherence which characterizes the course of experience, not only in each individual mind, but in the totality of our minds taken collectively. And it is this coherence, this consistent theme in human sense-experience, which explains our physical beliefs. For example, we come to believe that there is an external 3-dimensional arrangement of colours, because such a belief expresses, in its simplest form, the thematic character of visual experience. For our visual sensations are divinely ordered exactly as if they were presentations of such an arrangement, in perspective, to observers (ourselves) who are located in and move continuously through it. These, then, are the main components of Berkeley's view of ultimate reality. There is one further component, which becomes prominent in the Three Dialogues and which I shall mention later. It is clear from this account that Berkeley is, whatever else, a mentalist. He holds that ultimate reality consists solely of mental entities and mental facts - that, ultimately, there is nothing but time, minds, mental events, ideas and volitional causation. But we have still to discover his theory of the physical world. Obviously, as a mentalist, Berkeley rejects standard realism, since standard realism accepts a physical world which is both ultimate and non-mental. So the options to be considered are nihilism, reductivism and mentalistic realism. Given his theory of ultimate reality, we might expect Berkeley to be a nihilist. For how can there be a physical world if the only 20

Berkeley's system ultimate entities are minds and whatever occurs or exists within them? How can there be room for a 3-dimensional physical space or for the solid and voluminous objects we locate in it, if ultimately, apart from the heavenly world of God and (perhaps) angelic spirits, there is nothing external to our consciousness? True, given the coherence of God's volitional policies, the course of human experience is thematic, and our physical beliefs serve a useful function in recording the theme. But the utility of the beliefs is not enough to make them true. And on Berkeley's account it seems they must be false. On Berkeley's account, it seems that, while our experiences are organized exactly as if there were a physical world, there is not really one. However, while there are other points where his position is open to different interpretations, it is certain that Berkeley was not a nihilist. Nihilism was a position which he repeatedly and emphatically disowned. It is true that there are certain quasi-nihilistic elements in his thought. Thus he rejects as incoherent the opinion of 'the vulgar' (the ordinary man) that the sensible objects (the collections of sensible qualities) we immediately perceive by sense have an absolute existence outside the mind. Here he sides with 'the philosophers' (paradigmatically, Locke) in holding that the immediate objects of perception are our own ideas - entities whose esse is percipL At the same time, he also rejects as incoherent the opinion of the philosophers (again, paradigmatically, Locke) that, beyond the veil of our ideas, there are parcels of unthinking and insensible material substance which (subject to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities) our sense-perceptions represent. Here he sides with the vulgar in holding that the physical world is wholly composed of the sensible items which are immediately perceptible. But in rejecting these opinions, he does not take himself to be rejecting the existence of a physical world, but only to be rejecting certain prevalent but incoherent views about it. He thinks that once the incoherence of these views is exposed, we will see that our ordinary physical beliefs do not require them - see that these beliefs can be retained, without distortion, in his philosophical system. The resulting conception is one which absorbs the physical into the sensible and the sensible into the mental. As he summarizes it himself, at the end of the

Dialogues} 21

An outline of the issues My endeavours tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of the opinion that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which two notions, put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance. While this is certainly the substance of what Berkeley advances, the details are more obscure. Most of the time, he seems content simply to equate physical entities with ideas or collections of ideas, thus securing their mind-dependent existence in the most straightforward way. Thus, in a typical passage, he writes: Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known. (Principles VI). This principle of esse est percipU applied to physical entities, I shall call the hard-line doctrine. As I have said, the hard-line doctrine is what Berkeley seems to accept most of the time. But there are certain passages which suggest that perhaps his real position was more flexible. Thus almost at the beginning of the Principles, just before the hard-line doctrine is introduced, he says: The table I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. (Principles III, my italics). Here he seems to allow that, even when unperceived, a table may continue to exist in virtue of its potential to be perceived - in virtue of the fact that if someone were in the right place at the right time, he would perceive it. And if he allows this, he cannot consistently claim that a table is merely an idea, or coUection of ideas, whose esse is percipL Now, taken in isolation, this passage could, perhaps, be discounted as a momentary aberration. But the same thought re-emerges in a subsequent and much more elaborate passage. 22

Berkeley's system Thus, addressing himself to the objection that his principles commit him to denying that the earth moves, since its motion is not perceived, he answers: That tenet (that the earth moves), if rightly understood, will be found to agree with the principles we have premised: for the question, whether the earth moves or no, amounts in reality to no more than this, to wit, whether we have reason to conclude from what hath been observed by astronomers, that if we were placed in such and such circumstances, and such or such a position and distance, both from the earth and sun, we should perceive the former to move among the choir of the planets, and appearing in all respects like one of them: and this, by the established rules of Nature, which we have no reason to mistrust, is reasonably collected from the phenomena. (Principles LVIII). In the next section, he goes on to elaborate this: We may, from the experience we have had of the train and succession of ideas in our minds, often make, I will not say uncertain conjectures, but sure and well-grounded predictions, concerning the ideas we shall be affected with, pursuant to a great train of actions, and be enabled to pass arightjudgment of what would have appeared to us, in case we were placed in circumstances very different from those we are in at present. Herein consists the knowledge of Nature, which may preserve its use and certainty very consistently with what hath been said. It will be easy to apply this to whatever objections of the like sort may be drawn from the magnitude of the stars, or any other discoveries in astronomy or Nature. Obviously, these remarks cannot be discounted as a momentary slip, not only because they are so elaborate, but also, and more importantly, because he explicitly offers them as an answer to someone who takes him to be asserting the hard-line doctrine. And the answer he gives is, in effect, that he is not asserting this doctrine in an unqualified form - that the physical world contains many elements which, while we do not perceive them, exist in virtue of facts about the hypothetical perceptions we would have if our circumstances were different, facts which we can often establish on the basis of the regularities in our past experience. It is not difficult 23

An outline of the issues to see why Berkeley should feel the need to modify the hard-line doctrine in this way. In the first place, he wants to do justice to our ordinary physical beliefs, many of which explicitly commit us to accepting the existence of objects and events that are unperceived. Secondly, and more fundamentally, even if the physical world is, in some broader sense, mind-dependent, it cannot be entirely composed of the contents of human experience. For thus composed, it would not have, in relation to us, the publicity and externality required for it to qualify as a physical world in any decent sense. If there is no way in which Berkeley can allow the physical world to extend beyond the scope of our actual perceptions, there is no way in which he can allow for the existence of a physical world at all. If Berkeley is rejecting the hard-line doctrine in its unqualified form, thus allowing for the existence of physical entities that are unperceived, what positive conception of physical existence does he put in its place? How does he suppose the physical world to be constituted, given the purely mental character of his ultimate reality? Perhaps the clue is given in another passage where he tries to refute the charge that his position does, after all, amount to nihilism: It will be objected that by the foregoing principles, all that is real and substantial in Nature is banished out of the world: and instead thereof a chimerical scheme of ideas takes place. All things that exist, exist only in the mind, that is, they are purely notional. What therefore becomes of the sun, moon and stars? What must we think of houses, rivers, mountains, trees, stones; nay even of our own bodies? Are all these but so many chimeras and illusions on the fancy? To all which, and whatever else of the same sort may be objected, I answer, that by the principles premised, we are not deprived of any one thing in Nature.... There is a rerum natura, and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force Take here an abstract of what has been said. There are spiritual substances, minds, or human souls, which will or excite ideas in themselves at pleasure: but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by sense, which being impressed upon them according to certain rules or laws of Nature, speak themselves the effects of a mind more powerful and wise than human spirits. These latter are said to have more reality in them than the former: by which 24

Berkeley's system is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. And in this sense, the sun I see by day is the real sun and that which I imagine by night is the idea of the former. In the sense here given of reality, it is evident that every vegetable, star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane system, is as much a real being by our principles as by any other. (Principles XXXIV-VI). Here, Berkeley is saying that, while all ideas exist only in the mind which perceives them, and are, in that respect, equally subjective, ideas of sense are, in another respect, more real, more objective, than ideas of the imagination, since, unlike the latter, they are impressed on our minds by the external volition of God, in accordance with rules over which we have no control and displaying a coherence which is not of our own making. These ideas, while depending for their existence on our minds, are, as it were, the tokens of an objective and independent sensory order constituted by the laws of nature - an order which is manifested by the thematic character of our experience, but which is realized externally in the volitional policies of God. Berkeley sees this as a way of avoiding the charge of nihilism. So perhaps he is claiming that the existence of the physical world, properly conceived, amounts to nothing over and above the obtaining of this sensory order. On such a view, we can retain our belief in the reality of the sun, without abandoning mentalism, because the sensations on which it is founded bear, as it were, the divine imprimatur: they are not just the wayward illusions of the human mind, but the controlled output of a divinely ordained system, and, once we have freed ourselves from certain anti-mentalist misconceptions - both those of the vulgar and those of the learned - we recognize that the existence of the sun boils down to that aspect of the divine system manifested by the solar theme in our experience. In effect, our momentary and private solar impressions become, in the framework of the laws of experience, presentational slices of an enduring and public continuant. And, quite generally, physical space and its enduring occupants are constituted by certain persisting possibilities of sensation stemming from the systematic character of God's volitional policies. Thus interpreted, Berkeley's theory of the physical world would 25

An outline of the issues be a version of reductivism. He would be acknowledging the existence of a physical world, but reducing it to an ultimate reality which is wholly non-physical. He would be claiming that physical entities and physical facts are the logical product of the sensory order. He would be denying the ultimacy of the physical world, but claiming that human sense-experience and the nomological system which God imposes on it suffice for the truth of our ordinary physical beliefs. Not only would his theory be reductivist, but it would also be a version of reductive phenomenalism - a version of a distinctively theistic kind, in which the laws of experience are construed as God's fixed policies for causing sensations in us. There is no denying that this reductivist position accords with much of what Berkeley says in the Principles. It fits nicely with the way he draws the distinction between realities and chimeras between veridical perception and illusion. It does justice to the great stress he lays on the laws of nature and on the way we acquire knowledge of the physical world from the experiential regularities which these laws ensure. It explains how, contrary to the hard-line doctrine, he can accept the existence of unperceived physical objects and events on the basis of mere possibilities of sensation. Moreover, not only does the position accord with much of what Berkeley says, but it also seems to be what he needs. Unlike (apparently) the hard-line doctrine, it goes some way, perhaps the whole way, towards providing what we require of a genuinely physical world. It allows the physical world to extend beyond the scope of our actual perceptions; and, by grounding its existence on the divinely imposed laws of nature - laws which obtain independently of the particular experiences we (in accordance with our circumstances) receive - it accords the physical world something of the publicity and externality which our concept of the physical demands. It provides a Berkeleian mentalist with something which is, or approximates to, an effective defence against the charge of nihilism. On the other hand, we must not underestimate the difficulties involved in attributing this position to Berkeley, given the many passages where the hard-line doctrine is endorsed. The problem is not just that this doctrine and the reductive position conflict, but that the conflict is, on the face of it, so radical. The hard-line doctrine of esse est percipi equates physical objects with collections of ideas, and ideas are entities which have, in Berkeley's system, an ultimate existence. In contrast, the reductive position 26

Berkeley's system construes physical objects as logical creations, as entities whose existence is logically sustained by the character of and constraints on human experience. Thus the hard-line doctrine is a form of mentalistic realism: it takes ultimate reality to be purely mental, but identifies a portion of that reality with the physical world. But the reductive position, while still mentalist, is a form of antirealism. It takes ultimate reality to be wholly non-physical and thus leaves the physical world as something whose existence this non-physical reality sustains. Whether or not Berkeley was, at one time, a reductivist, or close to being one, it is a version of the hard-line doctrine, without qualification, which emerged as his final position. To see how he arrived at this position, we must begin by bringing out an aspect of the doctrine which I have so far suppressed. The hard-line doctrine, as we have said, equates physical objects with collections of ideas - collections of entities whose esse is percipi. But Berkeley never insists that all the ideas which form elements of the physical world exist in our minds or those of other finite created spirits. Indeed, the possibility that at least some of these elements exist in the mind of the infinite and eternal spirit, God, is one which he allows almost as soon as the hard-line doctrine is formulated. Thus the passage from Principles VI which we quoted earlier, to illustrate the doctrine, continues: Consequently, so long as they (the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world) are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. The same thought is picked up later in a famous passage dealing with the problem of physical persistence: It will be objected that from the foregoing principles it follows, things are every moment annihilated and created anew. The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived: the trees therefore are in the garden, or the chairs in the parlour, no longer than while there is some body by to perceive them. Upon shutting my eyes all the furniture in the room is reduced to 27

An outline of the issues nothing, and barely upon opening them it is again created (Principles XLV). Since this objection is scarcely distinguishable from the one about the motion of the earth, which comes a few pages later, one might expect Berkeley to answer them in the same way. But, in fact, the answers are quite different. In the later passage (LVIII), as we saw, he modifies the hard-line doctrine: he claims that the motion of the earth, which we do not perceive, amounts to no more than the fact that if we were transported to an appropriate viewpoint, we would perceive the earth to move. But in dealing with the question of persistence, raised in the earlier passage, he first reasserts the self-evidence of esse estpercipi, and then adds, in section XLVIII, For though we hold indeed the objects of sense to be nothing else but ideas which cannot exist unperceived; yet we may not hence conclude they have no existence except only while they are perceived by us, since there may be some other spirit that perceives them, though we do not. It is, presumably, the possibility of God's perceptions that Berkeley has in mind. Now in the Principles, the role of God as a perceiver of physical objects is left as a mere possibility and one to which Berkeley seems to attach little importance. What is asserted and emphasized is the role of God as the author of Nature, the law-giver whose volitional policies control the course of human experience. But in his later work, the Three Dialogues, the perceptive role of God takes on a new significance. Thus in the Second Dialogue, as a way of rebutting the charge of scepticism (i.e. nihilism), Philonous, who is the mouthpiece for Berkeley himself, says: To me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they have no real existence, but that seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure therefore as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it... Men commonly believe that all things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God, whereas I on the other side, immediately and necessarily 28

Berkeley's system conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him. (Luce and Jessop, p. 212). And in the Third Dialogue, when dealing again with the question of persistence, he says: Now it is plain that they (sensible things) have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my birth and would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true, with regard to all other finite created spirits; it necessarily follows, there is an omnipresent eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules as he himself has ordained, and are by us termed the Laws of Nature, (pp. 230-1). Compared with the Principles, these passages enhance the perceptive role of God in three crucial respects. In the first place, Berkeley claims not merely that God may perceive physical objects at times when we do not, but that he actually does. Secondly, he claims that God perceives not only those parts of the physical world which we fail to perceive, but also those parts which we do perceive, the whole physical world (according to Berkeley, of course, a purely sensible world) being present to and existing in God's mind, independently of our private and fragmentary perceptions. Thirdly, the ideas in God's mind, which compose the physical world as it exists in him, are, in some sense, construed as the originals or archetypes of which our sensory ideas are the secondary impressions or copies. For, as Berkeley puts it, the omnipresent eternal mind, knowing and comprehending all things, 'exhibits them to our view in such a manner and according to such rules as he himself hath ordained' (my italics). Berkeley exploits this third point later, in answering the objection that the hard-line doctrine does not permit different human subjects to perceive the same physical object. After an initial and unconvincing attempt to dismiss the dispute as merely verbal, Philonous says that the case is exactly the same for the materialist, who also concedes that what we immediately perceive are our own ideas. When Hylas retorts, 'But they suppose an external archetype, to which referring their 29

An outline of the issues several ideas, they may truly be said to perceive the same thing', Philonous replies: And ... so may you suppose an external archetype on my principles: external, I mean, to your own mind; though indeed it must be supposed to exist in that mind which comprehends all things; but then this serves all the ends of identity, as well as if it existed out of a mind. (p. 248). Now all this puts the hard-line doctrine in an entirely new perspective. It had seemed, at first, that, without some qualification, the doctrine could not accommodate our ordinary physical beliefs nor provide the physical world with that publicity and externality, relative to us, which our concept of the physical requires. But now it seems that Berkeley can and does retain the doctrine without qualification and without these undesirable consequences. By locating the whole physical world in the mind of God, he makes it public and external in relation to us, and sufficiently extensive and complex to accommodate all our ordinary beliefs, so long as those beliefs are exclusively concerned with sensible objects and are not infected by any incoherent views (whether vulgar or philosophic) incompatible with the hard-line doctrine itself. We can think of the situation like this: God has an all-embracing perception of a vast spatiotemporal arrangement of sensible qualities - a perception, of course, of which he is the causal agent, rather than the passive recipient. This arrangement, which is no more than a complex idea in God's mind, forms a kind of blueprint for his volitional policies, the policies being selected with a view to exhibiting the arrangement to human subjects through the sense-experiences they receive: particular experiences exhibit particular fragments of the arrangement, and, from the order and coherence of experiences, taken collectively, we piece the fragments together, interpolating and extrapolating as appropriate, until we achieve some overall picture which approximates to the divine blueprint. As a result, the arrangement, though just an idea in God's mind - an entity whose esse is percipi ~ qualifies as our physical world. It is something which has, in relation to us, the publicity and externality which our concept of the physical requires. It is something which our sense-experiences represent and with which, reflecting the thematic character of our experiences, our physical beliefs correspond. This is Berkeley's final solution - a version of mentalistic realism 30

Berkeley's system which accepts the hard-line doctrine of esse esc percipi, but locates the whole physical world in the mind of God. The only problem from Berkeley's standpoint - and it is one which he does not seem to notice - is that, in adopting this position, he is implicitly rejecting that element in the opinion of the vulgar which he is claiming to vindicate, namely that 'those things they immediately perceive are the real things'. By locating the physical world in the mind of God, he locates it beyond the scope of our immediate perception. We can, at best, have a mediated perception of physical objects by perceiving ideas (in our own minds) which represent them. Those who argue for a causal analysis of mediated perception may object, more strongly, that Berkeley puts the physical world beyond the scope of perception altogether. Because it is God's volitions which cause our experiences and because these volitions, even if rationally based on God's perceptions, are not caused by them, physical objects, they may say, do not stand in the right causal relations to our experiences for those experiences to count as genuine, if mediated, perceptions of them. But I think this only serves to show the unacceptability of the causal analysis in its strict form. So long as the aim of the volitional policies is to secure a match between human experience and the physical world, there is a clear sense in which our perceptual ideas not only resemble their physical counterparts, but derive their features from them - a clear sense in which our experiences are as they are because the physical objects are as they are. And this, it seems to me, would be enough to give our experiences the status of representative perceptions. The trouble for Berkeley is only that he wants our perception of physical objects to be immediate and presentative. In fact, of course, there is no way in which, within the confines of the hard-line doctrine, Berkeley can achieve all that he wants. Certainly, he wants our perception of physical objects to be immediate. But, at the same time, he wants the physical world to have an objective reality - to be public and external in relation to us. He wants the physical world to be both perceptually immanent and, in some way, ontologically transcendent. But, without abandoning the doctrine of esse est percipi, there is no way of reconciling these wants - no way of combining the immanence required for immediate perceptibility with the transcendence required for objective reality. The only way of combining them - and even here there is a suspicion of compromise - would be by abandoning 31

An outline of the issues physical realism for the reductive position we outlined earlier. For if the physical world is the logical creation of God's nomological system, there is a sense in which we can have it both ways. In that it is created by the system for human experience, the physical world is, in one way, directly accessible to human perception: to establish its existence and character we do not have to make inferences to some realm of objects which lies behind the veil of our own ideas. On the other hand, in that the system which creates it comprises the laws of nature - laws which are exhibited by, but are not reducible to, the thematic character of human experience - the physical world possesses an objective, external status which transcends the actual course of our experience and gives different human subjects a common empirical framework. But, of course, Berkeley cannot adopt this reductive position and retain the hard-line doctrine. Admittedly, Berkeley can and does retain one aspect of reductivism in his final position. For while he locates the physical world in the mind of God, as something whose esse is percipi, he would accept that it only qualifies as a physical world in virtue of its being a world for us, i.e. in virtue of its functioning as a blueprint for God*s volitional control of human experience. This is why he is able, in the end, to speak of the physical world as involving 'a twofold state of things', the one 'archetypal and eternal' (the world as it is exists in itself, as the internal object of God's perception), the other 'ectypal or natural' (the world as God creates it for us, by his volitional control of our experience).2 It is not that Berkeley accepts two physical worlds, the one (the divine world) to be construed realistically (as an ontologically primitive item in God's mind) and the other to be construed reductively (as something logically created by the constraints on human experience). Rather, he thinks that there is a unique physical world which both is, as something in God's mind, a constituent of ultimate reality and acquires its physical status, as a world for us, by being empirically expressed in the constraints on our experience. This is mentalistic realism rather than reductive phenomenalism. None the less, it retains enough of the phenomenalist position to count, in effect, as a reconciliation of the conflicting strands of thought in the Principles - to be a way of accommodating the core of theistic phenomenalism to the requirements of the hard-line doctrine. This, I suspect, is (more or less) how Berkeley himself must have seen it. 32

3

THE NATURE OF ANTI-REALISM

The distinction between physical realism and physical anti-realism is exclusively concerned with the question of what exists or obtains at the level of ultimate reality - with what entities are ontologically primitive (not logically created) and what facts are logically basic (not logically sustained). A realist is one who asserts that ultimate reality is at least partly physical - that it contains primitive physical entities or basic physical facts. An anti-realist is one who asserts that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical - that it contains no primitive physical entities and no basic physical facts. Accordingly. both nihilism and reductivism are forms of anti-realism. The nihilist rejects the existence of a physical world altogether. The reductivist accepts its existence as the logical product of something else. But both are alike in excluding physical entities and physical facts from the realm of the ultimate - the realm of what is un­ created and unsustained. Ultimate reality is the union of two components: an ontological component, comprising all that ultimately exists (the set of ontologically primitive entities), and a factual component, compris­ ing all that ultimately obtains (the set of logically basic facts). So there is the possibility of drawing the distinction between realism and anti-realism more finely, by opposing ontological realism. the thesis that some physical entities are ontologically primitive. with ontological anti-realism. the thesis that no physical entities are ontologically primitive, and by opposing/actual realism, the thesis that some physical facts are logically basic. with factual anti­ realism, the thesis that no physical facts are logically basic. The 33

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-4

An outline of the issues original distinction between realism and anti-realism could then be drawn by combining these more specific distinctions, the one concerned with the ontological component of ultimate reality, the other concerned with its factual component. Realism would be the disjunction of ontological and factual realism, and anti-realism would be the conjunction of ontological and factual anti-realism. Now it may seem that these further distinctions, while available, are pointless. If there is to be any point in drawing them, it must be possible to envisage a theory in which the ontological and factual questions are answered in opposite ways. It must be possible to envisage a form of selective realism which combines an ontological realism with a factual anti-realism or a factual realism with an ontological anti-realism. But surely no one could seriously entertain such a position. How could one accept the ontological primitiveness of certain physical entities without also accepting the logical basicness of certain physical facts? And how could one accept the basicness of certain physical facts without accepting the primitiveness of certain physical entities? However, there is a thesis, and one which has been seriously entertained, which threatens to drive such a wedge between the ontological and factual questions. This thesis, which I shall call the analytical thesis, asserts that statements about the physical world can be exhaustively analysed into statements which employ no explicitly physical concepts and make no explicit references (whether by designation or by quantification) to physical entities. The most familiar version of such a thesis is analytical phenomenalism, which asserts that physical statements (or some canonical class of them) can be exhaustively analysed into statements about human sense-experience. Now I have already stressed (at the end of chapter 1) that, as I have defined it, reductivism does not commit one to the analytical thesis. Thus to claim that physical facts are logically sustained by sensory facts, does not commit one to claiming that physical statements are analysable into sensory statements. Still, we might have assumed that, at least when combined with the acceptance of a physical world, the analytical thesis commits one to reductivism. We might have assumed, for example, that if all physical statements are analysable into sensory statements, then all physical facts must be logically sustained by sensory facts. But, on closer scrutiny, it becomes apparent that such an assumption is unjustified. 34

The nature of anti-realism Suppose T is a theory which purports to provide a complete phenomenalistic analysis of all physical statements - a theory which, by some finite and non-question-begging specification, pairs each of the infinitely many physical statements with some phenomenal (i.e. sensory) statement and claims that each such phenomenal statement provides the analysis of the physical statement with which it is paired. Suppose further (though I take this to be already implicit in our concept of analysis) that, according to T, all such analyses preserve factual meaning, so that, for each physical statement S, its analysans (i.e. the phenomenal statement which provides its analysis) states exactly what S states, though in a more explicit form. Suppose, moreover, that there are some physical statements whose analysantia express ultimate facts, i.e. facts which are not logically sustained by anything else. How is T to be classified in terms of our distinctions? Well, obviously, in respect of physical ontology, it is anti-realist. For it does not recognize any ontologically primitive physical entities. Indeed, it claims that all our supposed references to physical entities are to be analysed away, that our apparent commitment to a physical ontology disappears when we display, by means of the analyses, what our physical statements really state. It would be too weak to say that T excludes physical entities from the realm of the ultimate. If T is right, the very notion of genuine physical entities involves a misinterpretation of our physical language: once we have a proper understanding of our language and the statements we make in it, we no longer discern a category of entities (the physical) whose ultimacy might be at issue. In respect of physical ontology, T involves the strongest form of nihilism. On the other hand, so long as we accept that physical facts are just what true physical statements express (or, more accurately, that, when true, physical statements express physical facts), T turns out, on our suppositions, to yield a form of factual realism. For if two statements have the same factual meaning, they must, if true, express the same fact. So if, as T claims, the analyses preserve factual meaning and if, as we supposed, there are physical statements whose analysantia express ultimate facts, then there must be physical statements which themselves express ultimate facts, i.e. some physical facts must be ultimate. Thus, on the given suppositions, T answers the ontological and factual questions in opposite ways. It combines ontological anti-realism with factual realism. It excludes the physical from the 35

An outline of the issues ontological component of ultimate reality, but includes it in the factual component. Now, according to my definitions, a theory is realist iffit is either ontologically or factually realist (since realism is the thesis that ultimate reality is at least party physical) and a theory is anti-realist iff it is both ontologically and factually anti-realist (since antirealism is the thesis that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical). So the hybrid position, which combines ontological anti-realism with factual realism, is nominally a form of realism. But its metaphysical force is anti-realist. It differs from anti-realism not in its theory of ultimate reality, but in its interpretation of physical statements. It denies that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical, but it does so, not by expanding the reality to include facts which the anti-realist rejects, but by construing physical statements as expressing facts which the anti-realist accepts. It accords an ultimacy to physical facts, but only by reducing the commitment of physical statements to meet the anti-realist's restrictions - by showing (or purporting to show) that physical facts are not the kind of facts whose ultimacy the anti-realist intends to deny. Consequently, there is a sense in which the hybrid position allows the anti-realist all that he wants. The issue which divides them is an important one, but it concerns the semantics of our physical language rather than the nature of ultimate reality. When I first formulated my definition of realism, I did not intend it to cover a position of this hybrid kind. At that stage, I was taking it as uncontroversial that our physical statements involve a genuine commitment to a physical ontology and that, in consequence, to accept the ultimacy of certain physical facts is automatically to accept the ultimacy of certain physical entities. I was ignoring the possibility that someone might want to analyse physical statements in such a way that all physical terms and physical references are eliminated, thereby securing the ultimacy of physical facts within the restrictions of ontological anti-realism. In retrospect, we can see that, to fulfil my intentions, the definitions of realism and anti-realism must be amended (at least if we retain the principle that, whatever their analysis, true physical statements express physical facts). Thus let us say that a physical fact is merely nominal if it can be expressed, in fully analysed form, in a language devoid of physical vocabulary and with a universe of discourse (a domain of reference and quantification) devoid of physical entities. Then 36

The nature of anti-realism realism is the thesis that ultimate reality contains a physical portion in addition (if it has one) to its portion of merely nominal physical facts, and anti-realism is the thesis that ultimate reality contains no physical portion apart from (if it has one) its portion of merely nominal physical facts. The effect of this is to strengthen realism so as to entail ontological realism and to weaken anti-realism so as to be entailed by ontological anti-realism. The so-called hybrid position will now count as a case of anti-realism, since the only physical facts whose ultimacy it accepts are merely nominal. This brings things into line with my original intentions, and, I think, puts the boundary between realism and anti-realism in the most appropriate place. Although, from now on, I want realism and anti-realism to be construed in this way, I shall usually, for simplicity, continue to speak of realism as the thesis that ultimate reality is partly physical and of anti-realism as the thesis that it is wholly non-physical. When I do so, it must be understood that I am treating merely nominal physical facts, if there are any, as irrelevant to the question of whether ultimate reality is partly physical or wholly non-physical in the sense I intend. We have seen that it is not possible to envisage a genuine form of realism which admits the ultimacy of certain physical facts without admitting the ultimacy of certain physical entities. And, equally, it seems impossible to envisage a genuine form of realism which admits the ultimacy of certain physical entities without admitting the ultimacy of certain physical facts.1 But it does not follow from this that realism cannot be selective in other ways, that it cannot deny the ultimacy of certain kinds of physical entity or fact that we ordinarily accept or that are ordinarily accepted by the experts in the relevant field of physical inquiry. As we shall see, this point has two aspects-one trivial, the other important. But to appreciate this, we must start by examining the distinction between realism and anti-realism more closely. As I have been using them, the terms 'realism' and 'anti-realism' are short for 'physical realism' and 'physical anti-realism'. But, of course, the distinction between the positions which they signify is a special case of a more general distinction which we can apply to any subject matter. Thus just as, in the case of the physical, we distinguish between those who accept and those who deny that ultimate reality includes a physical portion (discounting as irrelevant 37

An outline of the issues merely nominal physical facts), so we can also distinguish, in (say) the case of the mental, between those who accept and those who deny that ultimate reality includes a mental portion, or again, in the case of the moral, between those who accept and those who deny that ultimate reality includes a moral portion. To mark these distinctions, we could speak of mental realism and mental antirealism, and of moral realism and moral anti-realism. Quite generally, for any subject matter 0, we can draw a distinction between 0-realism and 0-anti-realism, according to whether there is an acceptance or a rejection of the claim that there are ultin ite 0-entities and 0-facts. Now we might suppose that this general distinction, which is applicable to any subject matter, rests on the principle that, for any category of entities or any category of facts, one is being anti-realist with respect to that category iff one excludes its members from the realm of the ultimate. But such a principle would have some strange consequences. It would mean that whenever someone accepted some fact as logically sustained or some entity as logically created, he would, thereby, be adopting an anti-realist position with respect to it. And in many cases this conclusion would be counter-intuitive. We can see this if we cast our minds hack to the original definitions of logical sustainment and logical creation and to the examples by which these definitions were first illustrated. According to these definitions, a fact F is logically sustained by a fact or set of facts F' iff the obtaining of F is a logical consequence of, mediated by, and nothing over and above the obtaining of F'. And an entity x is the logical creation of a fact or set of facts F iff the existence of x (the fact that x exists) is logically sustained by F. Consequently, if John weighs 14 stone and Mary weighs 10 stone, the fact - call it H - that John is 4 stone heavier than Mary is logically sustained by, in combination, the fact that John weighs 14 stone and the fact that Mary weighs 10 stone. Likewise, whatever their weights, the aggregate of John and Mary - call it A - is the logical creation of, in combination, the existence of John (the fact that John exists) and the existence of Mary (the fact that Mary exists). It follows that, however ultimate reality is constituted, its ontological component does not include A and its factual component does not include H. But the recognition of this result hardly constitutes, in any intuitive sense, an anti-realist stance towards the entity and fact whose ultimacy is denied. For to justify the label 38

The nature of anti-realism 'anti-realist', a denial of ultimacy must surely, in some way, diminish the ontological or factual status of the items in question: even if not nihilistic, it must surely, in some way, preclude our accepting the reality of these items at face value - impose some qualification on the claim that they exist or obtain. But there is no hint of this, or anything like it, in the case of H and A. This is because the recognition of their sustainment or creation is, and is necessarily, implicit in the way these items are initially conceived. We never, nor could we, think of a weight-relation as obtaining except in virtue of the individual weights of the objects thus related. We never, nor could we, think of an aggregate as existing except in virtue of the existence of its parts. The denial of the ultimacy of such facts and entities does nothing to diminish their status or qualify our acceptance of their reality. We cannot so much as envisage the superior status or full-blooded reality which we might accord such items, but which we deny them by denying their ultimacy in the way we have specified. But if the mere exclusion of something from the realm of the ultimate does not, as such, constitute an anti-realism towards what is excluded, then in what sense is the position we have called physical anti-realism genuinely anti-realist? After all, this position is, as I have repeatedly emphasized, compatible with reductivism. It does not commit us to denying the existence of a physical world altogether. It allows us to retain physical entities and physical facts as the logical product of the ultimate non-physical reality. But if so, in what way does the reductivist exclusion of the physical differ from the exclusion of A and HI In what way does reductivism involve an anti-realist stance towards the entities and facts whose ultimacy it denies, but whose existence and obtaining it accepts? The answer is that reductivism sets these entities and facts in what is, relative to our initial conception of them, a radically different perspective. There is, as it were, a prima facie conflict between the postulated ultimate reality and the retention of a physical world - a conflict which we can only eliminate by uncovering a flexibility in our physical concepts which is not apparent in our ordinary understanding of them. The thesis that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical is anti-realist because, set against the background of our initial conception of the physical world, its prima facie force is towards nihilism. We may be able both to accept the thesis and avoid the nihilistic consequence; but we can do so only by revising 39

An outline of the issues (to suit the new restrictions) our conception of what the existence of physical entities and the obtaining of physical facts involve. In this sense, even a reductivist does not accept the reality of the physical world at face value: he does not accept, in full, the ontological and factual commitments of what forms, and necessarily forms, our initial view of how the physical world is constituted. Thus suppose someone holds that (to put it roughly) ultimate reality is composed of just human minds and the laws of human experience. Such a person may be either a nihilist, who rejects the physical world altogether, or a reductivist, who accepts it as the logical product of the experiential system. But there can be no denying that to accept it in this form, as the product of the experiential system, is to refuse to accept it in the form in which it is (even by the reductivist) ordinarily conceived. This is not to say that reductivism is excluded by our actual physical concepts, but only that, to permit reductivism, these concepts have, on philosophical scrutiny, to reveal an adaptability which our initial grasp of them does not anticipate. The charge of nihilism has at least to be faced, even if it can be successfully answered. It might be objected, by those familiar with the writings of Michael Dummett, that to classify every form of reductivism as anti-realist is to blur an important distinction. Dummett sees the issue between realism and anti-realism as concerning, not so much the composition of ultimate reality, as the semantic appraisal of statements. To be a realist with respect to some class a of statements is, according to Dummett, to accept the principle that each a-statement is either true or false. Conversely, to be an anti-realist with respect to a is to reject this principle, i.e. to leave open the possibility that some a-statements are neither true nor false. (Rejecting the principle does not involve asserting that there actually is an a-statement which is neither true nor false.) Thus, for Dummett, the distinction between realism and anti-realism turns on the acceptance or rejection of the law of bivalence for some relevant class of statements.2 Dummett sees the dispute over bivalence as reflecting different conceptions of the kind of meaning possessed by statements in the disputed class. According to the realist's conception,3 we have assigned a meaning to these statements in such a way that we know, for each statement, what has to be the case for it to be true: indeed our understanding of the statement (and therefore its possession of a meaning) just consists in our 40

The nature of anti-realism knowing what has to be the case for it to be true. The condition for the truth of a statement is not, in general, a condition which we are capable of recognising as obtaining, whenever it obtains, or even one for which we have an effective procedure for determining whether it obtains or not. We have therefore succeeded in ascribing to our statements a meaning of such a kind that their truth or falsity is, in general, independent of whether we know, or have any means of knowing, what truth-value they have. In contrast, according to the anti-realist's conception,4 the meanings of statements of the class in question are given to us, not in terms of the conditions under which these statements are true or false, conceived as conditions which obtain or do not obtain independently of our knowledge or capacity for knowledge, but in terms of the conditions which we recognize as establishing the truth or falsity of statements of that class. Such a conception leads to a rejection of the law of bivalence if we can envisage circumstances in which, for a given statement, neither the truth-establishing conditions nor the falsity-establishing conditions obtain. For the assignment of meaning to the statement would not provide any understanding of what it was for the statement to be true, or for it to be false, in such circumstances. Now if we were to work with Dummett's distinction, we should have to reformulate the dispute between the physical realist and the physical anti-realist as one which concerned the status of the law of bivalence for physical statements (or, more likely, for some canonical class of them). It would then become a mistake to classify all forms of reductivism as anti-realist. For reductivism as such does not entail a rejection of the law of bivalence. There is no contradiction in retaining the principle that each physical statement is either true or false, while claiming that the truth-value of any statement solely depends on what obtains in the ultimate non-physical reality. Rather, we should have to distinguish between realist forms of reductivism, which preserve the law of bivalence, and anti-realist forms, which undermine it. Thus consider the case of the reductive phenomenalist, who holds that physical facts are logically sustained by sensory facts. For each physical statement 5, he recognizes a range R{ of possible total 41

An outline of the issues sensory situations each of which suffices for the truth of 5 and a range R2 of possible total sensory situations each of which suffices for the falsity of 5 (i.e. for the truth of its negation). For Dummett, the crucial question is: is it the case that, for each physical statement, these ranges are exhaustive? If it is, then we have a form of realism, since the law of bivalence is preserved (for each statement 5, each sensory situation either suffices for the truth of S or suffices for its falsity). If it is not, then we have a form of anti-realism, since the law of bivalence is undermined (for some statement 5, there is some sensory situation which neither suffices for the truth of S nor suffices for its falsity). So reductive phenomenalism may be, in Dummett's terms, either realist or anti-realist according to its consequences for the law of bivalence. I can see the interest of Dummett's distinction (especially in the philosophy of mathematics), but it is not the one which I want to employ. Nor do I think that, in the case of the physical world, it has much to do with the issue of realism and anti-realism as traditionally conceived. Traditionally, reductive phenomenalism counts as a form of anti-realism, irrespective of its consequences for bivalence. And it does so because, irrespective of these consequences, it is incompatible with our ordinary conception of what the existence of a physical world involves - incompatible with accepting physical facts and physical entities at face value. Moreover, the discrepancy between Dummett's distinction and the traditional one becomes even more conspicuous when we consider the case of nihilism. Suppose someone takes ultimate reality to be wholly mental (e.g. on the lines of Berkeley) but also sees this as excluding altogether the existence of a physical world. This nihilistic position would count, by traditional standards, as a rejection of physical realism -indeed, as anti-realism in its most uncompromising form. But presumably, by Dummett's standards, it would count as realist. For in denying the existence of a physical world, the nihilist would not be rejecting the law of bivalence for physical statements. His position would be, quite simply, that any statement which asserts the obtaining of some physical state of affairs is false. Admittedly, he might concede that many of our utterances about the physical world, i.e. those which purport to make some singular reference to a physical entity, are neither true nor false, because he might hold that such utterances fail to make genuine statements at all. (This, 42

The nature of anti-realism presumably, would be the position of a nihilist who accepted P. F. Strawson's views on reference.5) But this would not be a rejection of the law of bivalence for physical statements. Nor would it be relevant to the issue of realism and anti-realism as Dummett conceives it. Naturally, Dummett is aware that his distinction differs from the traditional one:6 I do not pretend that, in using the term realism in the way proposed, we shall be precisely conforming to traditional philosophical practice. On the contrary, the point of the proposal is to enable us to keep clearly in mind a distinction which, under the traditional use of the term, has frequently been blurred. But, of course, considerations of this sort cut both ways. If the traditional use of the term blurs Dummett's distinction, it is equally true that Dummett's use blurs the traditional distinction. Thus, in the case of the physical realm, to classify someone as realist in Dummett's sense (i.e. as someone who affirms the law of bivalence for physical statements) does not reveal whether or not he recognizes certain physical facts and physical entities as ultimate. It would be pointless to discuss which distinction is the more important. Depending on their other concerns, some philosophers will find more interest in the one, and others in the other. All I need to emphasize is that I am using the terms '(physical) realism' and '(physical) anti-realism' to mark the distinction as I have drawn it. And I have no doubt that the issue between the realist and the anti-realist, in this sense, is, if not the only important issue, one which it is well worth investigating. I mentioned some time ago the possibility of a selective version of physical realism which, despite its realist character, denies the ultimacy of certain kinds of physical entity and fact that we ordinarily accept, or that are ordinarily accepted by the experts in the relevant field of inquiry. And I said that this point has two aspects - one trivial and the other important. We can now see how the different aspects arise. Obviously, no realism, however comprehensive, will accept as ultimate all that we ordinarily accept as genuine. For, as we have seen, there are kinds of logical sustainment and creation whose recognition is already implicit in our initial conception of the items thus created or sustained. Thus any 43

An outline of the issues realism must acknowledge that the weight-relation between two objects is logically sustained by their individual weights and that an aggregate is logically created by the existence of its parts. This kind of selectivity is purely trivial. It does not carry so much as a hint of anti-realism. Indeed, for this reason, we can hardly speak here of 'selective realism', since the scope of the realism is not reduced by the selectivity. But physical realism can also be selective in a more important way, where the restrictions on the ultimate reality provide, relative to our initial conception of the physical world, a significant change in ontological and factual perspective - where there is a genuine confinement of the physical realm within narrower limits than we ordinarily recognize. In such a case, the realism, by its selectivity, incorporates a degree of antirealism - not, as in the case of the analytical thesis, by combining factual realism with ontological anti-realism, but by combining a realism (both ontological and factual) about one portion of the physical world with an anti-realism (both ontological and factual) about another. This is a realism which is genuinely selective, and from now on, I shall reserve the title 'selective realism' for a position of this sort. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, selective realism can take a variety of forms. But most of these forms fall under two main and sharply contrasting themes, which provide, in their quite different ways, a rationale for the selection. One theme is that in which the selection is in favour of those aspects of the physical world which are most accessible to ordinary perception and is, correspondingly, against those aspects which are discernible, if at all, only through scientific experiment and theory. Taken to its extreme, this theme yields a form of realism which confines ultimate physical reality to a spatiotemporal arrangement of sensible qualities (colours, textures, sounds, flavours, etc.) together with the framework of laws which control this arrangement. Such a reality would be devoid, not only of the more rarefied and microscopic entities postulated by modern physics (such as waves and particles), but also of material substance itself: the sensible qualities would inhere in nothing except the regions of space they pervade. This would be a selective realism conforming to Berkeley's position (at least, to his realist position), though without, so far, the absorption of the sensible into the mental. The other theme, in contrast, is that which selects those aspects of the physical world which science shows, or claims to 44

The nature of anti-realism show, to be causally fundamental and which discounts, as mere appearance, much of what ordinary perception seems to reveal. Taken to its extreme, this theme yields a form of realism which confines ultimate physical reality to a spatiotemporal arrangement of elementary particles, waves of electromagnetic radiation, and fields of causal potential, together with the laws which control this arrangement. Unless it is wholly physicalistic, such a realism will also recognize as ultimate (though not, strictly as part of the ultimate physical reality) certain psychophysical (strictly physiopsychical) laws, which assign experiential effects to brain states, and which, in conjunction with the physical arrangement and physical laws, explain the sensible appearance of the physical world to human percipients. Thus, on this account, the sensible colours we encounter in visual experience have no ultimate physical realization, although bodies with the appropriate surface structures are, in virtue of the physical and psychophysical laws, disposed to look sensibly coloured when suitably irradiated and observed in appropriate conditions. Both kinds of selectivity - the one endorsing the perspective of ordinary perception, the other the perspective of scientific theory - involve a genuine anti-realism towards those aspects of the physical world whose ultimacy they deny, each being, in this case, anti-realist towards all or most (apart from the space-time framework) of what the other selects. The sensibly selective realist does not accept, at least at face value, the insensible world of scientific theory; the scientifically selective realist does not accept, at least at face value, the sensible world of ordinary perception. And in each case, as in the case of full-blooded anti-realism, the selection leaves, with respect to the non-selected aspects, a choice between nihilism and reductivism - between rejecting the reality of these aspects altogether and construing them as the logical product of what is selected as ultimate. Thus the exclusively sensible realist can either reject altogether the theories of science, taking them to be, at best, a convenient fiction (useful as a way of recording, in simple terms, the complex regularities in the spatiotemporal distribution of sensible qualities), or interpret these theories as sufficiently flexible, in their ontological commitment and factual import, to be true in virtue of the sensible facts he selects. Likewise, the exclusively scientific realist can either reject altogether the judgments of ordinary perception, conceding, at most, their utility 45

An outline of the issues as a route to scientific discovery, or interpret these judgments as sufficiently flexible, in ontological commitment and factual import, to be true in virtue of the underlying reality which science reveals. In both cases, the reductive approach lays great stress on the nomological aspects of the ultimate reality. It appeals to the fact that while the non-selected items cannot be accepted as they are initially conceived - cannot be accepted at face value - their initial conception at least reflects and underlines a genuine aspect of ultimate nomological organization. Thus in accepting, in a logically sustained form, the existence of particles or waves, the sensible reductivist appeals to the fact that the sensible world is organized exactly as if there were an underlying reality of the sort which the particle or wave theories (as initially interpreted) postulate. And in accepting, in a logically sustained form, the physical realization of sensible colour, the scientific reductivist appeals to the fact that the underlying reality is organized, both internally and in relation to human experience, exactly as if there were a spatiotemporal arrangement of colours (as initially conceived) which, in appropriate circumstances, are displayed to human view. In both cases, the reductivist argues that because the non-selected items correspond to certain aspects of the selected organization, it is less misleading to accord them a derivative status as the product of that organization, rather than reject them altogether. Of course, the selective realist does not have to be thus accommodating. He may conclude that the physical concepts whose application is at issue are not sufficiently flexible to allow a reductive account - that we cannot divorce the scientific theories or the perceptual judgments from our initially realist understanding of them without distorting their meaning. If this is what he concludes, then his anti-realism towards the non-selected items will be nihilistic. Just as the non-selected items may be treated either nihilistically or reductively, so, of course, the selected items may be treated either standardly or mentalistically. Thus with all the new distinctions added (apart from the alternative principles of selection), the taxonomy of positions, concerning the status and character of the physical world, expands from what was earlier depicted in Figure 1.5 (p. 14) to what is now depicted in Figure 3.1. There is one final point which needs to be emphasized. It is obvious that any move from comprehensive to selective realism is a move in the direction of anti-realism. Indeed, we can envisage 46

The nature of anti-realism

Range of options

, I

1

_

, I

Realism

I

I

Comprehensive

I

Standard

i

Anti-realism

I

I

I

Selective

Nihilistic

I

Reductive

I

Mentalistic

I

Nihilistic with respect to non-selected portion |

I

Standard with respect to selected portion

I

Reductive with respect to non-selected portion |

I

Mentalistic with respect to selected portion

Figure 3.1 arriving at a fully anti-realist position by passing through a series of selective positions in which the realist element gradually diminishes and the anti-realist element correspondingly expands. But what is also true, and perhaps less obvious, is that selective realism may also serve as a route to mentalistic realism. Mentalistic realism is not, on the face of it, a plausible theory. Indeed, it is not clear that it is even coherent - not clear that it makes sense to suppose that, as an ingredient of ultimate reality, the physical world is purely mental. But however intuitively implausible it may be, we must not set the conditions for its truth higher than we need. If we can justify some prior selectivity with respect to the physical items we take as ultimate, it is only these selected items whose nature is at issue: the mentalistic account of the physical world need only be as extensive as the realism with which it combines. We have already seen, in effect, one application of this point in the case of Berkeley - Berkeley, that is, construed as a physical realist. By rejecting material substance and restricting ultimate physical reality to the world of sensible qualities, he is able to achieve a mentalistic realism through the doctrine of esse est percipi - a realism which, in its final 47

An outline of the issues form, locates the sensible world in the mind of God, as the internal object of divine perception. Of course, in this case, the initial selection is, on the face of it, highly implausible. But it does not follow from this that every form of selection is implausible. And any selection can be seen as simplifying the task of mentalistic realism by narrowing the scope of that (the ultimate physical reality) whose substance and character has to be mentalistically construed. This is not to deny that, even after the simplification, there may be insuperable obstacles. In these introductory chapters, I have not tried to establish any important philosophical theory, either about the composition of ultimate reality or about the status and character of the physical world. My aim has only been to set the options and issues in a clearer perspective and, thereby, to provide a framework for our subsequent discussion. Given this framework, the main philosophical investigation can now begin. As you will have gathered, my overall aim, in this investigation, will be to refute physical realism and defend a form of reductive phenomenalism. But I shall begin, in Part II, by provisionally assuming the truth of realism and arguing, on this assumption, for the coherence and plausibility of its mentalistic version. The basis of this argument (the topicneutrality of physical description) will also form a basis for the subsequent argument against realism itself

48

PART II

THE TOPIC-NEUTRALITY THESIS

4

THE INSCRUTABILITY OF MATTER

For practical purposes, mentalistic realism, or, to give it its full title, mentalistic physical realism, is the conjunction of mentalism and (physical) realism - the conjunction of the thesis that ultimate reality is wholly mental and the thesis that it is, at least in part, physical. Strictly speaking, of course, while mentalistic realism is entailed by this conjunction, it does not entail it. For mentalistic realism is compatible with the denial of mentalism. It is compatible with the claim that ultimate reality is partly mental and partly non-mental, though it does entail that the physical world - at least, what remains of it at the level of ultimate reality - is wholly contained in the mental sector. But the possibility of mentalistic realism without mentalism is one which, in practice, we can afford to ignore, not only because our main concern is with the status of the physical world, but also because, if there were any reasons for adopting a mentalist account of physical reality, they would presumably be reasons for adopting a mentalist account of ultimate reality as a whole. Whether or not it is combined with an unrestricted mentalism, mentalistic realism is not, on the face of it, a plausible position. Part of its implausibility is that, at this stage, we have no conception of how it could be worked out in detail - of how, item by item, the physical portion of ultimate reality could be mentalistically con­ strued. But there is also a more fundamental point. On the face of it, the categories mental and physical apply to entities and states of affairs of different intrinsic kinds. If we want to specify the intrinsic nature of (say) a material object, we will do so in terms of its figure 51

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-6

The topic-neutrality thesis and extension and its material composition. If we want to specify the intrinsic nature of (say) a propositional attitude, we will do so in terms of the mental character of the attitude (belief, desire, hope, etc.) and the conceptual structure and content of the proposition on to which the attitude is directed. On the face of it, the intrinsic nature of a physical item is to be specified by its physical description and the intrinsic nature of a mental item is to be specified by its mental description. It seems, therefore, that the same portion of ultimate reality cannot be both mental and physical, since, if it were, its mental and physical descriptions would offer conflicting accounts of its intrinsic character. Before we consider this point in more detail, it will be useful, by way of clarification, to see how the same intuitive problem arises for an analogous, but more familiar, position concerning the status of mind. This analogous position we might call (to mark the analogy) physicalistic mental realism. Physicalistic mental realism holds that minds are an ingredient of ultimate reality, but takes them to be, in substance and character, purely physical. So physicalistic (mental) realism, like mentalistic (physical) realism, is, in effect, the conjunction of two theses. It is, in effect, the conjunction of physicalism, which holds ultimate reality to be wholly physical, and mental realism, which holds it to be, in part, mental. Again, strictly speaking, while physicalistic realism is entailed by this conjunction, it does not entail it. For physicalistic realism is compatible with the denial of physicalism. It is compatible with the claim that ultimate reality is partly physical and partly non-physical, though it does entail that the mental realm - at least, what remains of it at the level of ultimate reality - is wholly contained in the physical sector. But the possibility of physicalistic realism without physicalism in one which, in practice, we can afford to ignore for the same reasons that we can afford to ignore the possibility of mentalistic realism without mentalism. Applied to the case of human and animal minds, physicalistic realism assumes the familiar form of the mind-brain identity thesis, which identifies minds with brains and identifies mental states and mental processes with brain states and brain processes. Such a thesis does not claim that mental descriptions can be analysed into physical descriptions. It does not claim that when I report that I am in pain or have a belief that colour-additives are carcinogenic, then what I say is logically equivalent to, or even entails, some 52

The inscrutability of matter physiological description of the relevant event in or state of my central nervous system. Rather, it concedes that the correlation between mental and physical descriptions can only be established empirically, but claims that these descriptions apply to the same events and states - that what I describe introspectively as a pain is the very thing which physiological investigation would reveal to be, for example, an excitation of my C-fibres. Mentalistic (physical) realism and physicalistic (mental) realism are, in an obvious sense, diametrically opposite positions: the former tries to absorb the physical realm into the mental, while the latter tries to absorb the mental realm into the physical. But because each position is realist with respect to what it absorbs (give or take a certain degree of initial selectivity), both positions are in agreement over one crucial point. Both positions accept that there is a portion of ultimate reality which is both mental and physical We can see this from the appropriate Venn diagrams (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2).

UR

UR

Figure 4.1

Figure 4.2

In Figure 4.1, representing mentalistic realism (strictly, mentalism + physical realism), everything is shaded apart from A/, thus indicating that ultimate reality is wholly mental. In Figure 4.2, representing physicalistic realism (strictly, physicalism + mental realism), everything is shaded apart from P, thus indicating that ultimate reality is wholly physical. But in both figures there is a tick in the region where M and P overlap, indicating that some portion of ultimate reality is both mental and physical. It is this fact which makes both positions vulnerable to the intuitive objection that the mental and physical categories are 53

The topic-neutrality thesis mutually exclusive, since their items are of different intrinsic kinds. But because the two positions are diametrically opposed, this objection applies to them in subtly different ways. Applied to mentalistic realism, which tries to absorb the physical into the mental, the objection becomes that physical items have, prior to any such absorption, their own distinctively physical intrinsic character, which leaves no room for a more basic mental specification. Physical items, it is objected, cannot be intrinsically mental since their intrinsic character is specified in physical terms. Applied to physicalistic realism, which tries to absorb the mental into the physical, the objection becomes that mental items have, prior to any such absorption, their own distinctively mental character, which leaves no room for a more basic physical specification. Mental items, it is objected, cannot be intrinsically physical since their intrinsic character is specified in mental terms. In effect, then, the original objection divides into two parts, one of which is directed against mentalistic realism and the other directed against physicalistic realism. Although the intuitions behind them may be similar, it is important to keep these two parts distinct. The mentalist is happy to acknowledge that the intrinsic character of mental items cannot be specified in physical terms, just as the physicalist is happy to acknowledge that the intrinsic character of physical items cannot be specified in mental terms. As I have already said, physicalistic realism is familiar in the form of the mind-brain identity thesis. And since this thesis is not only familiar, but also quite fashionable, we might begin by seeing how its defenders try to meet the inuitive objection or, rather, that part of it which conflicts with their position. There might, after all, be something here which could be re-deployed in the defence of mentalistic realism. What the defenders of the mind-brain identity thesis say, in response to the intuitive objection, is that our mental concepts and mental descriptions are, despite initial appearances to the contrary, topic-neutral - neutral, that is to say, with respect to the intrinsic character of the mental items to which they apply. Thus, typically, they claim that when we characterize an item by means of a mental description, e.g. by characterizing it as a pain or as a belief that colour-additives are carcinogenic, what we thereby specify is not the intrinsic nature of the item (what the item is like in itself), but rather its functional properties, i.e. the causal contribution made by 54

The inscrutability of matter items of that intrinsic sort (whatever it is) to the production of behaviour, or, more generally, the role of such items in the total causal system which mediates between sensory input and behavioural output. Of course, they do not claim that mental descriptions are explicitly functional - if they were, there would be no intuitive objection to be met. Their claim is, rather, that such descriptions, while posing as intrinsic, turn out to be functional on analysis. Thus they might say, as a first approximation, that the mental predicate 'is a pain' is to be analysed (roughly) as *is an event of a sort apt to cause restless behaviour and to act as a negative reinforcer of response-types that produce it'. Now if these philosophers are right in their claim that mental descriptions are topic-neutral - descriptions which tell us nothing about the intrinsic nature of the items to which they apply - then the intuitive objection to physicalistic realism, in the form of the mind-brain identity thesis, disappears, since we can no longer exclude, a priori', the possibility that mental items are intrinsically physical Moreover, if they are also right in claiming that mental descriptions are implicitly functional, then we can envisage a way of empirically establishing that mental items are intrinsically physical and of establishing what intrinsic physical properties they possess. For a physiological and behavioural investigation might reveal that certain types of brain state and brain process have the right functional properties to satisfy certain mental descriptions, and that their occurrence is appropriately correlated with our employment of these descriptions in our introspective reports. Now it seems to me that this way of defending physicalistic realism against the intuitive objection fails. Indeed, it seems to me that, in a sense, it fails catastrophically, since it manages to get everything exactly the wrong way round. It locates topic-neutrality at the very point where our concepts and descriptions are topic-specific, and it locates topic-specificity at the very point where they are topic-neutral. However, our concern is not with the merits, but with the general form of the defence and whether it might be transferred, mutatis mutandis, to the case of mentalistic realism. The intuitive objection to mentalistic realism is that physical items have their own distinctively physical intrinsic character, a character to be specified in physical terms. Taking as our analogy the defence of physicalistic realism, the counter-claim we have to consider is that our initial intuitions are mistaken and that the 55

The topic-neutrality thesis physical description of the physical world (strictly, that portion of the world which is included in the sphere of ultimate reality) is in fact topic-neutral - a description which conceals the intrinsic nature of the items it describes. I want to argue that this counterclaim is correct. Just as the defenders of physicalistic realism argue that our introspective reports leave open the question of whether what they characterize is, in intrinsic nature, physical or non-physical, so I shall argue, in defence of mentalistic realism, that physical theories (at least in so far as they are descriptive of ultimate reality) leave open the question of whether what they characterize is, in intrinsic nature, mental or non-mental. Such an argument would not, of course, establish the truth of mentalistic realism, but only defend it against the intuitive objection. Indeed, later on (in Part III), I shall argue that it is false. For I shall argue that any kind of physical realism, whether standard or mentalistic, is false. As I have conceded, our initial intuition is that physical items have a distinctively physical intrinsic character, a character to be specified in physical terms. There are, I think, two factors which explain the existence of this intuition, without, however, doing anything to ensure its validity. Since my claim will be that the intuition is mistaken, I am going to begin, as a precautionary measure, by isolating these factors, so that we can then consider the issue in a more open-minded way, without the influence of some latent bias. The first factor is that when we consider our information about one sort of physical item, we tend to take for granted the topic-specificity of our information about certain other sorts of physical item to which the first sort is intimately related, and this creates the impression that our knowledge of the intrinsic character of the physical world is more extensive than it really is. The second factor is, to use the words of Hume, that "the mind has a great propensity to spread itself on external objects, and to conjoin with them any internal impressions which they occasion/1 The result is that, without any justification, we come to think of the intrinsic character of these objects as consisting partly in the sensible qualities by which they are represented in experience, and, to that extent, as amenable to physical description. We can illustrate the operation of both these factors by focusing our attention on what are, on the face of it, the two most fundamental ingredients of the physical world - matter and 56

The inscrutability of matter physical space. The operation of the first factor is seen in the way in which part of our conception of matter concerns its relation to physical space and part of our conception of physical space concerns its relation to matter. We conceive of matter as a substance which is 3-dimensionally extended in physical space and we think of its 3-dimensional extendedness as forming an essential part of its intrinsic nature. Conversely, we conceive of physical space as a 3-dimensional medium in which matter can be located and 3-dimensionally arranged, and even if we accept that it could exist without material occupants (everywhere a vacuum), we think of its capacity to receive such occupants as reflecting its intrinsically physical character. In each case, taken on its own, it may seem that we are setting limits on the intrinsic nature of a certain physical item by specifying its intimate involvement with another item whose intrinsic nature is already known. On the one hand, it may seem that we delimit the intrinsic nature of matter by specifying its essential 3-dimensional extendedness in physical space. On the other hand, it may seem that we delimit the intrinsic nature of physical space by specifying its role as a medium for material objects. But when we take both cases together, it becomes clear that, to a large extent, the two specifications cancel out, leaving us with a combined specification which is, or is more nearly, topic-neutral - a specification which characterizes matter-inphysical-space as a 3-dimensionally extended substance (of whatever intrinsic nature) in a 3-dimensionally extended medium (of whatever intrinsic nature). The operation of the second factor now serves to add something more specific. It can be seen, in the first instance, in the way in which we ordinarily think of material objects and their spatial arrangement as being, in their intrinsic character, as (in standard conditions) they sensibly appear. Thus we ordinarily think of material objects as pervaded by the sensible colours we experience when we observe them in daylight, and correspondingly, we think of their arrangement in physical space as something whose intrinsic nature is best conceived, modulo perspective, in distinctively visual terms. This visual conception of the physical world is, one suspects, largely undermined by the scientific findings. Science reveals that, given some illuminated material object, the only intrinsic properties of the object which affect its colour-appearance are the internal composition and spatial arrangement of its atoms, since it is only 57

The topic-neutrality thesis these properties which, by affecting the composition of the reflected light, affect the character of our colour-experience. And there seems to be no justification for taking an object to be intrinsically coloured if its being such would contribute nothing to its visual appearance. But even when we try to adjust to these scientific findings, traces of the visual conception may remain. Even when we subtract the subjective layer of colour-appearance and try to reach a more objective view of what the physical world is like in itself, we may find ourselves conceiving of matter-in-space as a greyish stuff suspended in a transparent medium. Indeed, it is hard to eradicate this visual picture until we can find something more acceptable, but equally topic-specific, to put in its place. The question of whether the physical world has, or might have, a distinctively sensible intrinsic character (whether a character associated with visual experience or some other sense-realm) is, I think, more complicated than most philosophers appreciate. It is a question which I shall consider, in some detail, in chapter 6. But for the time being I am going to adopt what, on the face of it, is the reasonable view, namely that distinctively sensible qualities have no ultimate physical realization. In the case of the so-called secondary qualities, like colour, odour and flavour, what this means is quite clear. It means that these qualities, taken as genuinely sensible qualities (as qualities that can feature in the content of sense-experience), have no place in the ultimate constitution of the physical world. It means that, ultimately, there are no physical colours, odours or flavours except in the form of powers to produce certain kinds of visual, olfactory and gustatory experience in us. In the case of the spatial qualities - figure and extension - the point is analogous, but more subtle. Obviously, I am not supposing (not, at least, at this stage) that these qualities have no place in the ultimate constitution of the physical world. (To do so, would be to suppose that, ultimately, there was no physical space and no spatially extended physical objects.) Nor am I supposing that, as physically realized, they should be construed dispositionally. Rather, my supposition is only that these spatial qualities, as qualities in the physical world, do not have whatever is distinctive of their representation in any particular sense-realm. I am supposing that, in its intrinsic nature, physical space is no closer to its representation in one sense-realm than in another, so long as both realms provide an equally adequate representation of its geometrical 58

The inscrutability of matter structure. In particular, I am supposing that physical space is not intrinsically visual, though it may have the geometrical structure which, modulo perspective, visual experience represents. Now that we have (provisionally) deprived the physical world, at least at the level of ultimate reality, of any distinctively sensible qualities, and have also noted, in the first factor, a way in which our conception of a physical item may appear to have a topic-specificity which it lacks, the intuition that physical items have a distinctively physical intrinsic character (a character to be specified in physical terms) is already appearing less secure. Our next task must be to examine the issue in more detail. I suggest we continue to focus our attention on matter and physical space and that we begin by considering whether it is possible, within the limits we have imposed, to provide a fuller physical specification of the intrinsic nature of matter- a specification which goes beyond our conception of it as a substance 3-dimensionally extended in physical space. One obvious suggestion to be considered is that we can enrich this conception by the specification of matter as solid Now the term 'solid' can be used in a variety of different senses. It is used in geometry to signify merely the property of 3-dimensional extendedness, and, of course, its use in this sense is of no interest in the present context. It is used in chemistry and physics to contrast with the term 'fluid', i.e. to distinguish matter in a solid state, such as stone and ice, from matter in a liquid or gaseous state, such as water and air. Again, this is not the relevant sense for present purposes, since, at the moment, we are only concerned with that generic kind of solidity which is characteristic of matter as such - something which is present in all material objects irrespective of their differences. For the same reason, we can ignore the sense in which 'solid' contrasts with 'flimsy' - the sense in which a house of bricks is solid and a house of straw is not. The relevant sense is, presumably, the one which Locke has in mind when he takes solidity to be that intrinsic property of matter which makes material objects mutually impenetrable - that which gives each particle and parcel of matter (in relation to other particles and parcels of matter) exclusive possession of the region of space it occupies, so long as it occupies it.2 Solidity, in this sense, is a special kind of 3-dimensional extendedness: it is the filling of, the taking up of room in, space in such a way as to leave that portion of space 59

The topic-neutrality thesis no longer available for occupancy by other portions of substance of the same sort. It is what prevents distinct parcels of matter from simultaneously extending through the same 3-dimensional region of space. Locke takes solidity in this sense to be an essential property of matter as such, 'inseparably inherent in body, wherever or however modified'.3 'All the bodies in the world, pressing a drop of water on all sides, will never be able to overcome the resistance which it will make, as soft as it is, to their approaching one another, till it be removed out of their way.'4 However, it is not clear that, even in this sense, solidity is going to be of any help. For it can be plausibly argued that the very notion of a spatially extended substance requires that, at any time, each portion of substance is individuated by its spatial location, so that it is logically impossible for distinct portions to occupy simultaneously the same 3-dimensional region, simply because, by their principle of individuation, they are numerically distinct only in virtue of being spatially discrete. If this is so, then the mutual impenetrability of material objects is rendered trivial, and if solidity is defined as that in virtue of which such objects are mutually impenetrable - that which gives each portion of matter exclusive possession of the region it occupies - then the concept of solidity is simply the concept of what it is to be a 3-dimensionally extended substance. Obviously, what we were looking for was a form of solidity which would constitute the ground of a causal power - a power to resist penetration, a power which bodies exercise by exerting a mutually obstructive force when they compete for the same spatial position. It is clear, too, that this is what Locke has in mind, although he also endorses, in another context, the spatial principle of individuation.5 The trouble is that, if we accept the spatial principle, there seems to be nothing left for such a power to do. The mutual impenetrability of bodies is guaranteed by the way in which different portions of material substance (as of any spatially extended substance) are numerically distinguished. To envisage two bodies as overlapping in space is eo ipso to envisage them as overlapping in substance and hence to envisage, in the region of overlap, only one parcel of matter - a parcel which is a common part of both. There are two ways in which we might try to overcome this difficulty, assuming that we want the concept of solidity to be more than just the concept of a 3-dimensionally extended substance. On 60

The inscrutability of matter the one hand, we might reject, in its strict form, the spatial principle of individuation. Thus we might argue that, while location in space provides the general framework of individuation for a spatially extended substance (the occupancy of different positions being the paradigmatic and only clear-cut form of numerical difference at a time), the supposition that two portions of the same substance simultaneously occupy the same region is not incoherent and could, in certain circumstances (where everything, apart from the spatial principle, seemed to indicate its truth), be the best explanation of our empirical data. If we took this line, but continued to regard material objects as in fact mutually impenetrable, we could recognize a causal power to prevent penetration and could take solidity to be the intrinsic property of matter on which this power was grounded. On the other hand, even if we retained the spatial principle and construed mutual impenetrability as a trivial consequence of the requirements of individuation, there would remain a further sense in which material objects are mutually obstructive - a sense which is not exhausted by their principle of individuation. After all, the spatial principle is compatible with a case in which, by all empirical tests, two bodies with no internal gaps seem to pass through each other unhindered, each body continuing on its original course completely unaffected by its encounter with the other. The appearance of co-penetration would not force us to abandon the spatial principle, since we could always insist on measuring the quantity of matter, at any time, by the extent of materially occupied space. We could say that the quantity of matter steadily diminished as the bodies seemed to merge and that it steadily increased as they seemed to separate. We could say these things, at the cost of certain causal anomalies, even though (as we may suppose) the combined weight of the two bodies remained constant throughout. Now, in actual fact, bodies do not behave in this way. When their paths converge, there is obstructive contact, a contact which deflects at least one of the objects from its original course. So, however matter is individuated, we may suppose that there is something about its intrinsic nature - something which we call solidity - which ensures that, in cases of convergence, the quantity of materially occupied space remains the same (the two parcels of matter persisting and competing for spatial position). However individuated, bodies have a power of mutual resistance, whether we construe it as a power to resist penetration (if we reject 61

The topic-neutrality thesis the spatial principle) or as a power to resist annihilation (if we accept it), and either way we can take solidity to be that intrinsic property of matter on which this power is grounded - that intrinsic property which, in the framework of natural law, ensures that the power obtains. This suffices to give the concept of solidity some additional content - additional, that is, to what is already found in the concept of a 3-dimensionally extended substance. But it is still not clear that the specification of matter as solid sheds any further light on its intrinsic nature. At least, it is not clear that it does so in a way that is relevant to our present concern. Here, we need to draw a crucial distinction between a mode of specification which is (as I shall say) transparent and one which is (as I shall say) opaque. Suppose I have a sealed envelope and I know that inside it there is a piece of paper on which someone has drawn a geometrical figure, but I do not know what type. If someone who does know tells me, correctly, that the figure is a triangle, his specification of the type is transparent If he tells me, again correctly, that it is an instance of that type of figure whose geometrical properties are discussed in the fourth chapter of the only leather-bound book in Smith's library, his specification is opaque. In both cases, the information he provides is, in a sense, about the intrinsic nature of the figure. But there is also a clear sense in which thefirstspecification (the one that is transparent) reveals this intrinsic nature and the second (the one which is opaque) does not. Unless I already have further relevant information about the contents of the leather-bound book in Smith's library, the second specification leaves me, in the most obvious sense, none the wiser as to what type of figure the envelope contains. Now, at first sight, it may seem that the specification of matter as solid is more like the first of these specifications than the second. And certainly, grammatically, it has the same kind of simplicity and directness: it is a specification of matter as being such and such, rather than as having that property which uniquely meets such and such conditions. But its grammatical form is not what is at issue. After all, without knowing what type of figure the envelope contains, I could coin a term 'envelopoid' to signify it (and to signify it rigidly, in Kripke's sense, so that it is a necessary truth, though unknown to me, that envelopoids are triangles6). I could then say, quite trivially, that the figure is an envelopoid, without knowing, in any interesting sense what type of figure it is. Clearly, 62

The inscrutability of matter the specification of matter as intrinsically solid is not as trivial as that. But we still need to consider what kind of information it provides. The point is that, so far, we have only introduced the concept of solidity by reference to the power of resistance which solidity sustains. So there are two possibilities. On the one hand, it may be that we have an independent grasp of what solidity is in itself, and that our specification of matter as solid is transparent - one which reveals that aspect of the intrinsic nature of material objects on which their power of mutual resistance is grounded. On the other hand, it may be that our only conception of solidity is as that intrinsic property, whatever it is, on which this power is grounded, and that our specification of matter as solid is opaque - one which reveals nothing about what matter is like in itself Locke himself took the specification to be transparent since he thought that the nature of solidity is revealed in tactual experience, i f anyone asks me What this solidity is\ he writes, i send him to his senses to inform him. Let him put a flint or a football between his hands and then endeavour to join them, and he will know.'7 He thought that intrinsic solidity is directly manifested through tactual pressure in the way that sensible colour is directly manifested through sight (though, of course, while he took solidity to be a characteristic of material objects, he confined sensible colour, of the sort visually manifested, to the content of sense-awareness8). But in this Locke was clearly mistaken. Tactual pressure only reveals the force of resistance. When I press a football between my hands, I feel it to be solid just in so far as I feel it to be obstructive. I detect its solidity just to the extent that I perceive it as a barrier to the progress of my hands - as a spherical region that I am unable to penetrate. Of course, the total tactual experience contains more than just the feeling of resistance: I feel the shape and size of the football and I feel the texture and temperature of its surface. But these additional components contribute nothing to the experience of solidity. The tactual experience of solidity is no more nor less than the experience of voluminous resistance, and, in so far as our concept of solidity is acquired through tactual experience, the specification of matter as solid is opaque. All it adds to the specification of matter as a voluminous substance is that there is something in its intrinsic nature (it does not say what) which makes material objects mutually obstructive. 63

The topic-neutrality thesis At this point, it might be suggested that the intrinsic nature of matter, including its solidity, would be revealed by scientific analysis. After all, we normally think of scientific analysis as taking us below the level of sensible appearance to a specification of how things really are. But, on reflection, it becomes clear that science cannot help us here. Science is informative, but it does not provide the kind of information we are demanding. Thus suppose we give a scientist (one, we will assume, with a wide-ranging competence in both theory and experimentation) some ordinary material object, like a piece of stone or wood, and ask him to provide a specification of its internal constitution. After making certain tests, he may be able to tell us of what chemical elements (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, etc.) the object is composed, and how these elements fit together, spatially and in certain kinds of causal bonding, to form the complex item we observe. Suppose we then press our inquiry further and demand a transparent specification of the intrinsic nature of the elements. What is hydrogen or carbon like in itself? If he takes the chemical elements to be physically fundamental, the most he can do, for each element, is to specify the shape and size of its atoms and say what causal powers and sensitivities they possess. Thus he may be able to distinguish hydrogen from carbon by the fact that their atoms differ in size or in weight or in valency. But he will not be able to say what the substances hydrogen and carbon are as such. If he does not regard the elements as physically fundamental, he may go on to specify their sub-atomic constitution. He may tell us that atoms are composed of smaller particles - protons, electrons, neutrons, etc. - and explain how the different chemical elements are formed by the different numbers and types of particles that make up the different types of atom. Still, we can press the same question with respect to these particles. What is the intrinsic nature of a proton or an electron? And here he finds himself in the same position as before. If he takes these particles to be physically fundamental, the most he can specify is their shape and size (if they have any) and their causal powers and sensitivities. Apart from their shape and size, he cannot say what protons and electrons are like in themselves. He cannot specify, transparently, the intrinsic nature of (so to speak) protonic or electronic stuff. Maybe the process of scientific analysis can be taken further. Maybe protons and electrons can be shown to be composed of still more fundamental particles. But however far the 64

The inscrutability of matter process of analysis is taken, it always terminates in entities whose intrinsic nature, apart from shape and size, remains concealed. Scientific analysis uncovers spatiotemporal arrangement and nomological organization, but does not reveal the intrinsic nature of the fundamental space-occupying substance or substances which are thus arranged and organized. It specifies the intrinsic nature of those substances only opaquely, in terms of their causal powers and sensitivities - the powers and sensitivities which, in the framework of natural law, their intrinsic properties sustain. When you think about it, this limitation on the scope of scientific analysis is hardly surprising. We can expect scientific investigation to reveal, or to go some way towards revealing, the number of distinct types of fundamental particle, their shape and size, their spatiotemporal arrangement, their powers and sensitivities, and, more generally, the laws which control their behaviour. For while these things are not, in the ordinary sense, accessible to observation, competing theories about them are subject to empirical tests. A given theory can be empirically evaluated in terms of how accurately it predicts and how well it explains what the scientist observes. But these tests could not be used to decide between competing theories (if there were any) about the intrinsic nature of particle-substance. Thus suppose, for the sake of argument, we have scientifically established that there is a single type of fundamental particle, have established its shape and size, have established the laws which control its behaviour and have established the way in which other more complex particles, like atoms and molecules, are built out of it. Suppose further that, envisaging two kinds of particle-substance, Kx and K2, we formulate two alternative theories, Tx and T2, where both theories record all that is already established and differ in only one respect, namely that Tx takes the substance of the fundamental particles to be of kind Ku while T2 takes it to be of kind K2. It is clear that the respect in which the two theories differ (i.e. over the intrinsic nature of the particle-substance) is not amenable to any empirical test. For within the sphere of what is observable, both theories have the same consequences, and they generate these consequences by ontological and nomological postulates which are exactly isomorphic. Thus in terms of accuracy of testable prediction and structure of explanation they are indistinguishable. And, consequently, there is no scientific way of deciding between them - no empirical tests 65

The topic-neutrality thesis which would indicate which, if either, of the alternative transparent specifications of particle-substance was correct or more plausible. Neither ordinary observation nor scientific analysis can provide a transparent specification of the intrinsic nature of matter, in its fundamental form or forms, beyond its specification as a spaceoccupying substance. Tactual pressure (e.g. pressing a football between one's hands) yields a perception of solidity, but only as an experience of obstructive force - an experience of voluminous resistance, whose intrinsic ground remains concealed. Scientific analysis uncovers the internal structure of material objects, but terminates in fundamental particles whose intrinsic nature, apart from shape and size, it identifies only opaquely-as that which sustains certain causal powers and sensitivities. In short, the most that empirical investigation (whether ordinary or scientific) can reveal are the number of the different fundamental forms of matter, their spatiotemporal distribution and their nomological organization. Beyond this, matter is empirically inscrutable. (The same, of course, is true, and for the same reasons, of any other type of space-occupying or spatially located physical item. Thus, whether we construe light as particles or waves, it is only its spatiotemporal and causal properties that we can empirically detect.) What is even more crucial, for our purposes, is that this limitation on the scope of empirical knowledge is matched by a co-extensive limitation on what we can express or conceive of in physical terms - a co-extensive limitation on the descriptive resources of our physical language and our system of physical concepts. It is not just that we cannot empirically discover the intrinsic nature of matter; we cannot even, in physical terms, formulate or envisage the possibilities - at least, we cannot do so if, as we are assuming, the possibility that its intrinsic nature is distinctively sensible is already excluded. This explains why the limitation on what physical science can reveal is not felt as a genuine limitation from the viewpoint of the scientist. He never finds himself in the position of wanting to adjudicate between alternative physical theories about the nature of particle-substance, since the alternatives do not present themselves in physical perspective. The point where the possibilities fall beyond the scope of empirical tests is the point where the scientist runs out of physical terms with which to express them. Within the framework 66

Appendix: The powers-thesis of his physical vocabulary and physical concepts, the case of Tx and T2 cannot arise. Again, when you think about it, the fact that the limitation on empirical knowledge and the limitation on physical description come at the same point is hardly surprising. The reason for their coincidence is not to be found in a general verificationist theory of meaning - in the claim that we have no way of formulating a possibility that we cannot, in appropriate circumstances, test. Indeed, I shall argue that we can formulate some of the untestable possibilities concerning the intrinsic nature of matter, though not in physical terms. The reason is more specific. It is that our system of physical concepts and, correspondingly, our physical language, have evolved to meet the needs of empirical theory, and it is as a medium or a vehicle for empirical theory (whether the implicit theorizing of common sense or the explicit theorizing of science) that the system, or the language, acquires its unified physical character. Even if the intrinsic nature of matter can be transparently specified, the fact that it is empirically inscrutable ensures that it cannot be specified in physical terms.

APPENDIX: THE POWERS-THESIS The only properties of fundamental particles which can be transparently specified in physical terms are (1) spatiotemporal properties, such as shape, size and velocity and (2) causal and dispositional properties, such as mutual obstructiveness, gravitational power and electrical charge. From this, I have concluded that, apart from their shape and size, the intrinsic nature of the particles (the intrinsic nature of, as it were, particle-substance) can, in physical terms, only be specified opaquely, as that on which their behavioural dispositions and causal powers are grounded. But is this conclusion justified? An alternative would be to say that the particles do not have the sort of intrinsic nature which I am supposing - that they are wholly characterized by the spatiotemporal, causal and dispositional properties which our physical language can specify and which empirical investigation can reveal. In particular, it might be claimed that each particle is, in itself, no more than a mobile cluster of causal powers, there being no "substantial9 space-occupant which possesses the powers and on 67

The topic-neutrality thesis whose categorical nature the powers are grounded. Such a thesis has been endorsed, in different forms, by a number of distinguished scientists and philosophers.1 If it is coherent, the thesis certainly has some appeal. For there is a natural reluctance to postulate physical properties which are empirically inscrutable and not even transparently specifiable in physical terms. But is the powers-thesis (PT) coherent? The main problem is that if all the fundamental particles are construed in this way, there seem to be no physical items in terms of whose behaviour the content of the powers could be specified, and consequently, it seems that, in the last analysis, there is nothing which the powers are powers to do. Let us begin with a concrete example. We will assume that atoms are the only fundamental particles and that all atoms are of exactly the same type. Now each atom has a number of causal powers. It has a power of resistance, whereby any two atoms are mutually obstructive. It has a power of gravitational attraction whereby, between any two atoms, there is a force of attraction inversely proportional to the square of their distance. It has a power of repulsion, whereby two atoms which collide, with certain velocities and directions, deflect each other in a certain way. And it has a number of other powers which we need not list. For PT to be true, it is necessary that some subset of these powers constitutes the essential nature of an atom. Let us suppose, for simplicity, that we select the power of resistance as the only (putatively) essential atomic power and leave the other powers to depend on the contingent laws of nature governing the behaviour of atoms. Thus each atom is construed as a mobile sphere of impenetrability, the behaviour and causal interaction of these spheres, apart from their mutual obstructiveness, being governed by additional laws. The problem arises when we ask: T o what is a sphere of impenetrability impenetrable?' The answer is: T o other atoms, i.e. to other spheres of impenetrability.' But this means that the specification of the content of the atom-constituting power is viciously regressive: each atom is a sphere of impenetrability to any other sphere of impenetrability to any other sphere of impenetrability ... and so on ad infinitum. From which it follows that the notion of such a power is incoherent, since there is nothing which the power is a power to do. To conceive of a sphere of impenetrability, we have to postulate some other type of space-occupant whose passage it is empowered to obstruct. 68

Appendix: The powers-thesis The problem is not avoided if we include further powers in the essential nature of an atom. Thus we might take the atomic nature to combine a power of resistance with a power of attraction, so that each atom is constituted by a mobile sphere of impenetrability surrounded by a more extensive (perhaps infinitely extended) field of gravitational potential (the field being structured, in accordance with the inverse-square-law, around the centre of the sphere). We could then try to specify the content of the power of resistance in terms of the behaviour of gravitational fields or specify the content of the power of attraction in terms of the behaviour of spheres of impenetrability. But neither specification blocks the regress, since it merely specifies the content of one power in terms of another The only way of avoiding the regress, it seems, is to construe at least one of the powers as a power to affect the behaviour of some type of substantial space-occupant - an occupant with an intrinsic nature independent of its causal powers and dispositions. But such occupants are just what PT excludes. Admittedly, the exclusion of such occupants from the actual world is compatible with there being some type of substantial occupant in terms of which the content of the powers is to be specified. Thus it would be theoretically possible to construe atoms as spheres of impenetrability and construe impenetrability as the power to obstruct some uninstantiated type of voluminous stuff. But such a position would be manifestly perverse. Amongst other things, it would rob PT of all the advantages which were claimed for it, since, in this form, impenetrability itself would cease to be empirically detectable or transparently specifiable in physical terms. If there is to be any reason for postulating a type of substantial occupant which atoms have the power to obstruct, it must be a reason for construing atoms themselves as occupants of that type with the power to obstruct each other. We have been considering the problem of content in the context of a particular example, in which we assumed that atoms are the only fundamental particles and that all atoms are of exactly the same type. But the problem itself is quite general and arises whatever fundamental particles we select and whatever differences of particle-type we introduce. The problem is simply that, in construing all the fundamental space-occupants as merely powerclusters, PT seems to eliminate the very items which we need as something for the powers to be powers to affect If we postulate 69

The topic-neutrality thesis more types of particle, the problem may be temporarily concealed, since there is more room for manoeuvre (specifying the content of one type of particle in terms of the behaviour of another) before the threatened regress becomes apparent. But the threatened regress always becomes apparent if the question of specification is persistently pressed. It is clear, then, that, if PT is to survive in any acceptable form, the content of the powers must be specifiable in terms of the behaviour of, or events in, things which are neither merely power-clusters nor substantial space-occupants. One possibility would be to try to specify the content of the powers in terms of the experiential responses of human subjects. Some powers (the first level powers) would be specified as powers to affect human experience; others (the second level powers), as powers to affect the spatiotemporal arrangement of first level powers; still others (the third level powers), as powers to affect the spatiotemporal arrangement of second level powers - and so on, as far as we need to go before invoking the framework of contingent law. But the trouble is that it is impossible to make sense of the first level powers without assuming either substantial space-occupants or power-clusters whose content is fixed in some independent way. This is obviously so in the case of our atomistic example (and, indeed, in any example which characterizes the physical world in a scientific way). For although atoms are endowed with powers to affect experience (e.g. each atom has the potential to form an element of experiencecausing brain-states, as well as the potential to contribute, in innumerably many ways, to the causation of such brain-states), these powers are ones which the atoms can only possess by already possessing some more basic nature as occupants of space. Indeed, it is clear that these powers are ones which the atoms possess only contingently, through contingent psychophysical laws assigning experiential effects to brain-states. But the point also holds quite generally, however the physical world is conceived. Thus, for the sake of argument, we might conceive of the world as composed of space, time and fields of experience-causing potential (whether static or mobile), such that any subject who is located in such a field is thereby caused to have an experience of a certain type. But even here, we have to postulate some further type of physical occupant (i.e. the subject's body) to make sense of the subject's location in a field. And there is no point in construing these further occupants as 70

Appendix: The powers-thesis mobile fields (or points) of experience-causing potential, since such occupants would merely reintroduce the problem they were designed to solve. As a last resort, we might revise the example in such a way as to make subject-location irrelevant. Thus, in place of the fields of potential we might postulate powers to cause certain types of experience in any subject who is in a certain mental condition - powers whose content can be specified without employing physical concepts at all. But, unless we postulate some additional physical states on which these powers are grounded, the effect of this revision would be to deprive the powers themselves of spatial location and hence deprive them of their physical status. Such powers, indeed, would be equivalent to purely psychological laws whereby a subject's prior mental condition causes him to have a certain type of experience. There could be psychological laws of this sort, but they could not, in the framework of physical realism, provide any ingredients for the physical world. If the content of the powers is not specifiable in terms of human experience, the only other possibility would be to specify it in terms of the geometry of space (or more precisely, space-time). To see how we might develop this possibility, let us return to our original example which takes atoms as fundamental. Among the powers we have attributed to atoms is a power of gravitational attraction. In the classical (Newtonian) theory, the exercise of this power is thought of in terms of a direct causal influence of one atom on the behaviour of another. Two atoms attract each other with a force which is inversely proportional to the square of their distance, and there is no intervening mechanism, bridging the spatial distance, by which the force is mediated. But in the modern (Einsteinian) theory - the General Theory of Relativity - the force of attraction is mediated by the geometrical properties of the intervening space. Put crudely, the location of an atom at a certain point causes a curvature in the surrounding space and this curvature deflects the paths of other atoms towards that point. Thus instead of atoms directly acting on each other across a spatial distance, we have atoms acting on the geometry of space and the geometry of space acting on atoms. Admittedly, we should really speak here of the geometry of space-time, rather than of space, but in the present context, the difference need not concern us.2 This suggests the following version of PT. We construe each atom as, in itself, a mobile point-centre of space-bending force and 71

The topic-neutrality thesis then leave all the other properties of atoms to flow from the laws governing the behaviour of such centres in the geometrically changing space. This seems to avoid the problem of content, and in a way which fits the perspective of modern scientific theory. However, the suggestion is open to a crucial objection. For there is no way of making sense of the claim that the space-bending forces are spatially located. It is true that, for each force, there is a point which is uniquely prominent in specifying its content - a point which forms, as it were, the focus of the geometrical effect. But this does not suffice to give the force itself (that which causes the geometrical effect) any genuine location-to make it pointcentred in the suggested way. If we are tempted to think of the force as spatially located, it is only because we began by conceiving of it as something which an atom exerts, the presumption being that the location of the atom is already ensured by some independent aspect (e.g. its substantial character) of its nature. The mistake is then to suppose that location is retained when the whole atomic nature is confined to the exertion of this force. Once the atomic nature is thus confined, atoms are eliminated and the space-bending force becomes merely an unlocated causal constraint on the geometry of space at a certain time. Of course, it might be suggested that, rather than postulate substantial space-occupants, whose intrinsic nature cannot be transparently specified in physical terms, we should settle for a physical world consisting solely of space, time (or space-time) and geometry-controlling laws. I doubt whether this theory is scientifically plausible: the fact that gravitational fields can be interpreted geometrically does not mean that all physical phenomena can be treated in a similar way. But, in any case, the theory is not a version of PT. It is not a way of construing the fundamental spaceoccupants as power-clusters, but the denial that there are any occupants at all. My conclusion, therefore, is that the powers-thesis is incoherent. And consequently, I stand by my previous conclusion that, apart from their shape and size, the intrinsic nature of the fundamental space-occupants (assuming there are occupants at all) cannot be empirically discovered or transparently specified in physical terms.

72

5 MATTER IN SPACE

Apart from its specification as a substance 3-dimensionally extend­ ed in physical space, the intrinsic nature of matter cannot be transparently specified in physical terms - at least it cannot, if, as we have provisionally assumed, matter is devoid of the distinctively sensible intrinsic qualities that feature in the content of sense­ experience. This is not merely a limitation on the scope of empirical knowledge. It is also a limitation on the descriptive resources of our physical language and system of physical concepts: beyond our conception of it as a voluminous substance, we cannot so much as envisage, in physical terms, what matter might be like in itself. To this extent, at least, I have found support for the thesis I want to establish, that, at the level of ultimate reality, the physical description of the physical world is topic-neutral - neutral with respect to intrinsic nature. And thus to this extent I have defended mentalistic realism from the intuitive objection that physical items have their own distinctively physical intrinsic character - a char­ acter to be specified in physical terms. However, the specification of matter as a voluminous substan­ ce - as a substance 3-dimensionally extended in physical space - is itself, one may suppose, to some degree topic-specific. Moreover, on the face of it, it seems that the topic-specificity is enough to exclude a mentalistic interpretation. One is inclined to say, like Descartes, that the extendedness of material substance suffices to make it non-mental and that the non-extendedness of mental substance suffices to make it non-physical (though we would presumably reject the full Cartesian view that the 3-dimensional

73

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-7

The topic-neutrality thesis extendedness of matter constitutes its whole essence, with the consequence that matter and physical space are identical). To see whether this inclination is well founded, we obviously need to consider very carefully what can be said about the intrinsic nature of physical space and its role as a medium for material objects. Only then will we be in a position to decide what possibilities are left open by the conception of matter as a voluminous substance, and, in particular, whether they include mentalistic realism. The most obvious thing we can specify about the intrinsic nature of physical space is its geometrical structure. It used to be thought that, leaving aside the question of whether physical space is bounded, its geometrical structure could be determined a priori by the application of Euclid's axioms. It is now generally agreed, and rightly, that this view is incorrect. It has been shown that there are other sets of axioms which are internally consistent but incompatible with Euclid's set at certain points, and it is hard to see how, other than by empirical tests, we could establish the appropriate set for physical space. Thus if our empirical measurements of the metrical properties of space consistently indicated some form of intrinsic curvature (analogous, for example, to the curvature of a spherical surface in plane geometry), and if there was no reason, other than adherence to the Euclidean axioms, for thinking that our measurements were systematically erroneous, there would be a strong case for concluding that physical space was non-Euclidean. Moreover, once we accept the possibility that physical space is non-Euclidean, we must accept the further possibility that its geometrical structure is not, as we intuitively suppose, homogeneous and static, but varies, in detail, from place to place and from time to time. And this, in effect, is what modern physics, in the form of the General Theory of Relativity, holds to be the case. For, in giving a purely geometrical account of gravitational fields, the General Theory postulates a 4-dimensional space-time continuum whose curvature varies from region to region (indeed, from point to point) with the varying density of matter. This theory has still to be reconciled with quantum mechanics, but in the sphere of astrophysics, which is its primary testing ground, it has received significant support. Even if it goes against current scientific theory, it will be best, for the purposes of our discussion, if we retain the traditional view of physical space as uniformly Euclidean. The points I want to make do not require this view, but they are easier to make within its 74

Matter in Space framework. Without the requisite mathematics, it is hard to come to terms with non-Euclidean geometry, and even harder to come to terms with the rippling curvatures of the space-time manifold. For most of us, the Euclidean view remains the one that is familiar and accessible, and we should try to see what is involved in the geometrical structure of a Euclidean space before we take on anything more complicated and more obscure. In claiming that physical space is Euclidean, we are claiming that it conforms to the Euclidean axioms. But in the framework of co-ordinate geometry, this claim can be expressed more succinctly in the form of a single rule for determining the distance between any two points, given their co-ordinates. We are already assuming that physical space is a 3-dimensional continuum, and we will also assume, for the sake of argument (though the assumption is also intuitive), that it is unbounded, i.e. infinitely extended in all directions. Now suppose we select three infinitely extended straight lines which intersect at right angles at a certain point. By choosing a unit of measure (e.g. the metre) and taking the point of intersection as the origin, we can use the three lines as an axis-system which assigns to each point in physical space three numbers, in a certain order, each number giving the distance and direction of that point, in the chosen unit, along one of the axes. These three numbers, taken in the relevant order, are known as co-ordinates. Every point is uniquely defined by its three coordinates and every triple of real numbers (where each number can be either positive or negative) provides the co-ordinates for a unique point. The claim that physical space is Euclidean can now be expressed as the following principle: For any co-ordinate system of the kind just described and any points Px and P2, if a, b and c are the co-ordinates for Px and a\ b' and c' are, in the corresponding order, the co-ordinates for P2, and if dis the distance between Px and P2 (specified in the relevant unit of measure), then:

(p- » (a-a'f + (b-b'f + (c-c')2

We may call this the Pythagorean principle, since it is simply the extension of Pythagoras' theorem to three dimensions. The Pythagorean principle assigns a Euclidean metric to every part of physical space and thereby ensures that the space conforms in every respect to the Euclidean axioms. 75

The topic-neutrality thesis This account of the geometrical structure of physical space (i.e. its specification as an unbounded, 3-dimensional, Euclidean continuum) has made use of explicitly spatial concepts - concepts such as point and distance. I want now to provide an alternative and more formal specification which covers the same ground without the use of spatial concepts. We can then ask in what ways, if at all, this (more) formal specification fails to capture all we know about the intrinsic nature of physical space - both what we know a priori, from our very concept of such a space, and what we know a posteriori, from empirical investigation. With P as a non-descriptive designator of physical space, the formal specification (FS) is as follows:1 For some S, some /), and some/and some g (1) Sis an uncountable set (a set with the same number of members as the set of real numbers). (2) Each S-member is simple (it has no parts or members) and contingent (there is a possible world in which it does not exist).2 (3) D is an uncountable set of 2-place relations and each of these relations is, and is of logical necessity, irreflexive, symmetric, and non-transitive. (4) For any pair of distinct 5-members x and/, there is one and only one Z>-relation R such that xRy. (5) For any D-relation R and 5-members x and y, if xRy, then • xRy, and if ~ xRy, then • ~ xRy (6) / i s a 1-1 function from D to the set of all real numbers greater than 0. (7) g is a 1-1 function from 5 to the set of all ordered triples of real numbers, both positive and negative. (8) There is, independently of/and g, some natural way of ordering Z>-relations in a series (with no first or last members) such that, for any Z>-relations Rx and R2i Rx is prior to R2 iff/(7*0 < / ( R 2 ) . (9) For any S-members x andy, any D- relation R and any numbers a,b,c,a' ,b',c\ if xRy and g(x) = (a, b, c) and g(y) =(a\b\c'),then(/*WJ2 - (a-a'f + (b-b'f +

(c-O2.

(10) P is the aggregate of all 5-members. It will help us to see the point of FS if, in reading through its 76

Matter in space clauses, we bear in mind the intended spatial interpretation. On this interpretation, S-members are the points of physical space (hence clauses (1), (2) and (10)) and Z)-relations are distancerelations between physical points (hence clauses (3), (4) and (5)). For any Z)-relation R, f(R) measures the distance between Rrelated points (hence clauses (6) and (8), with / reflecting some natural ordering of the Z)-relations) and the network of/-distances meets the requirements of a 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry (hence clauses (7) and (9), with g assigning co-ordinates to points). Physical space is unbounded (hence, in clause (7), g is a 1-1 function from S to the set of all ordered triples of real numbers, both positive and negative). Given our assumptions (that physical space is unbounded, 3-dimensional and Euclidean), FS seems to provide an adequate specification of the geometrical structure of physical space, though without the use of explicitly spatial concepts. In Part III, when we come to examine the nature of physical geometry more closely we shall see that this is not so and that FS needs to be both revised and supplemented in certain crucial respects. But for the time being, I shall take it as adequate for our purposes, since its deficiencies do not affect the present issue. FS (or so we shall assume) specifies the geometrical structure of physical space. But it does so in a way which is, in respect of the intrinsic nature of physical points and physical distance, topicneutral: we are not told what the Z)-relations are or what S-members are like in themselves. The crucial question is: does this formal specification express all we know about the intrinsic nature of physical space? Does it exhaust our knowledge, both a priori and a posteriori, of what physical space is like in itself? Our initial inclination is to say that it does not. For it seems, on the face of it, that FS does not even do justice to our intuitive conception of P as a genuine space, let alone our conception of it as a physical space. Part of the reason for this may be that we ordinarily conceive of a space in visual terms and attribute to it an intrinsic character distinctively matching our visual conception. In evaluating the adequacy of FS, this is something which we must discount. For we are working on the assumption that, at the level of ultimate reality, the physical world is devoid of any distinctively sensible intrinsic qualities. In particular, we are assuming that, in its intrinsic nature, physical space is no closer 77

The topic-neutrality thesis to its representation in one sense-realm than in another, so long as both realms provide an equally adequate representation of its geometrical structure. (The assumption, of course, is one which we shall have to justify in due course.) But there is another and, for our purposes, a more important factor. We think of a genuine space as something in which other things can be located - as something whose regions can be occupied and in which events and processes can occur. Yet there is nothing in FS which characterizes P as a space in this sense: there is nothing in the formal specification which indicates the capacity of P to form a medium for other things - its capacity to provide room for occupants and location for events. It would be easy to conclude from this that FS does not express all we know about the intrinsic nature of physical space. For it is natural to assume that our very knowledge that P is a genuine space stems from some knowledge of its intrinsic nature. Such a conclusion, however, would be too hasty. It is true that FS fails to characterize F a s a genuine space. But it does not follow from this that we have any further knowledge of its intrinsic nature. After all, the failure to characterize P a s a genuine space stems from the failure to characterize P as a potential medium. And even if the role of P as a potential medium is a consequence of its intrinsic nature, there may be a topic-neutral way of specifying that role - a way which, beyond what is expressed in FS, provides no transparent specification of what physical space is like in itself. In any case, if we do have some further knowledge of the intrinsic nature of physical space, in what does that knowledge consist? Nothing seems to be forthcoming here other than the recognition that P is a genuine space. And this does not serve to specify (at least transparently) the intrinsic nature of P, if our only account of what makes something a genuine space is in terms of its role as a medium. Following this line of thought, we might try to remedy the deficiency in FS by simply adding, as a further clause, the claim that P forms, or has the capacity to form, a medium for material objects - that any continuous 3-dimensional region of P (as defined by the formal specification of geometrical structure) has the capacity to be, at any time, materially occupied. But this just invites the further question as to how, in the context of FS, the notion of occupancy is to be understood. This notion is clear 78

Matter in space enough if the notion of a genuinely spatial region is taken for granted. But the latter is just what we are not taking for granted, but trying to explain in terms of occupancy. There is a danger here of being trapped in a circle of incomprehension - having nothing but an unexplained notion of occupancy to explain our idea of space and nothing but an unexplained notion of space to explain our idea of occupancy. The solution, it seems, must be to characterize occupancy itself in an equally formal way. Thus just as we have specified the geometrical structure of physical space in terms of certain formal conditions met by an unspecified set of relations (D) in an unspecified domain of entities (£), so we might try to specify the role of physical space as a medium in terms of certain formal conditions met by an unspecified relation (intuitively, occupancy) holding between portions of matter and members of S. To make things relatively simple (with no pretensions to scientific accuracy), let us suppose that any parcel of matter exhaustively divides into spherical particles (atoms), all particles being of the same size, and each having no internal gaps. Let us also adopt the spatial principle of individuation, in its strongest form, whereby each portion of matter is, at any time, individuated by the region it occupies, so that it is logically impossible for distinct portions to occupy the same region at the same time. And let us further adopt a spatial principle of persistence, whereby each portion of matter persists by following a spatiotemporally continuous path. Then, as an attempt to characterize occupancy in formal terms, we might expand FS into FS!: For some S, some Z), some/, some g, some 0, some n (l)-(10)asinFS. (11) O is a 3-place relation and it is logically necessary that, for any x, y, and z, if O(x,yfz), then x is an atom, y is an 5-member and z is a time. (12) n is a real number and n > O. (13) It is logically necessary that, for any time t and any atom x, there is an 5-membery which is the 0-centre of x at f, i.e. (d)O(x,y,t)\ (b) for any S-memberz and D-relation R, ifyRz then: O (x, z,t)\ttf(R)< n. (14) It is logically necessary that, for any time t, any atoms x and7, any 5-members w and z, and any D-relation R, if w is 79

The topic-neutrality thesis the 0-centre of x at / and z is the O-centre of/ at / and wRz, X\itnf(R) > In. (15) It is logically necessary that, for any atom JC, any change in the O-centre of x over time is, relative tog, continuous, i.e. if c is the variable O-centre of JC, any change in the value of g(c) over time is numerically continuous. The additional clauses, (11)-(15), are intented to fix O as the relation of occupancy holding between atoms, physical points and times, so that O(x, / , z) iff x is an atom,/ is a point, z is a time and x occupies y at z (i.e. y is a point in or on the region which x occupies at z). The number n measures the radius of an atom in the framework off and g. It is logically necessary that, at each time, each atom occupies all and only the points of some spherical P-region of radius n (hence clause (13)). Given the principle of individuation, it is also logically necessary that, at each time, distinct atoms occupy the points of non-overlapping regions (hence clause (14)). Finally, it is logically necessary that, over time, each atom follows a spatiotemporally continuous path (hence clause (15)). Unfortunately, however, these additional clauses do not suffice to characterize the relation of occupancy or to express the sense in which physical space forms a medium for material objects. In the first place, even if we interpret S-members as the points of physical space, there are other relations (indeed, infinitely many), in addition to occupancy, which meet the specified conditions. For example, let O be the relation which holds for an atom JC, an S-member/ and a time / iff there is an S-memberz and numbers a, b and c such that g(z) = (a, b, c) and g(y) = (a + 1, b + 1, c + 1) and x occupies z at /. O then meets all the specified conditions, its extension being isomorphic with, and geometrically indistinguishable from, the extension of occupancy. But, ex hypothesis O is not the relation of occupancy. The points to which an atom is 0-related at a given time are not the points it occupies but the points whose co-ordinates (supplied by g) are related to the co-ordinates of the points it occupies in the specified way. Secondly, apart from the reference we have independently assigned to *P\ the clauses of FSj do not even force us to interpret ^-members as the points of physical space. Thus suppose we (a) take S to be the set of all properties x such that, for some physical point/, x is the property 80

Matter in space of being identical with y and (b) take O to be the relation which holds for an atom x, an S-member y and a time t iff, for some physical point z, y is the property of being identical with z and JC occupies z at /. It is easy enough to fix D,f, g, and n correspondingly, so as to make this interpretation meet all the requirements of FS! (leaving aside the reference of 7*V3. But, ex hypothesis S-members would not, on this interpretation, be the points of physical space. Nor, indeed, would they be the points of any genuine space, and nor, in consequence, would O be any form of genuine occupancy. In both these respects, what is essentially wrong with FSi is that it fails to characterize the special intimacy of the occupancyrelation. It allows the deviant interpretations because it fails to express the distinctive way in which, as it were, an object coincides with the region it fills - the object drawing its form from the region and the region drawing its state from the object. Noting the failure, however, does not suggest any obvious remedy. For how exactly is the intimacy of occupancy to be expressed? If we invoke explicitly spatial concepts, we shall be going round in circles. If we continue to renounce such concepts, we seem destined to fall short of our target. Until we have solved the problem of occupancy, it is hard to reach any firm conclusion as to whether FS expresses all we know about the intrinsic nature of physical space. The solution, it seems to me, is to continue with the relatively formal approach, but change our ontological perspective. As we shall see, there may be alternative solutions involving different changes. But before we consider the alternatives, I want to recapitulate a point which came up in an earlier chapter. In chapter 3, I pointed out that physical realism leaves room for some selectivity in the kind of physical items that are taken as ultimate. The realist is committed to denying that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical; but he is not obliged to accept the ultimacy of every kind of physical entity and fact that we ordinarily recognize or that are ordinarily recognized by the experts in the relevant field of inquiry. As we saw, this point has two aspects - one trivial and the other important. The trivial aspect is that no realism, however comprehensive, can accept as ultimate all that we accept as genuine. For there are kinds of logical sustainment and creation whose recognition is already implicit in our initial conception of the 81

The topic-neutrality thesis items thus created or sustained. Thus any realism must acknowledge that the weight-relation between two objects is logically sustained by their individual weights and that an aggregate is logically created by the existence of its parts. This kind of selectivity is purely trivial: it does not carry so much as a hint of anti-realism. But physical realism can also be selective in a more important way, where the restrictions on the composition of ultimate reality provide, relative to our initial conception of the physical world, a significant change in ontological and factual perspective - where there is a genuine confinement of the physical realm within narrower limits than we ordinarily recognize. It is for such a case, where the selectivity reduces the scope of the realism, that we have reserved the title 'selective realism*. The exclusion of distinctively sensible qualities from the sphere of ultimate physical reality is an example of selective realism in this sense. Now it is the possibility of a more radically selective realism which is the key to the solution of our present problem. So far we have been assuming, at least implicitly, that both physical space and its fundamental occupants are ontologically primitive - that both are ingredients of ultimate physical reality. But it seems to me that, to understand the nature of occupancy - in particular, to understand the special intimacy of the connection between the occupiers and the occupied - we must revise that assumption in one of two ways. We must either construe physical particles as the logical creation of facts about physical space, in such a way as to be constituted as occupants of that space, or we must construe physical space as the logical creation of facts about physical particles, in such a way as to be constituted as a medium for those particles. Following one alternative, we accept space as ontologically primitive, but take the existence of the particles to be logically sustained by properties of points or regions at times, together with laws which ensure that the spatiotemporal distribution of these properties exhibits the kinds of uniformity and continuity characteristic of mobile, space-occupying continuants. Following the other alternative, we accept particles as ontologically primitive, but take the existence of space to be logically sustained by properties of, and relations between, particles at times, together with laws which ensure that the distribution of these properties and relations exhibits the kinds of uniformity and continuity characteristic of a containing, 3-dimensional medium. In the first case, we take the 82

Matter in space particles to be nothing over and above the distribution and nomological organization of the properties of space at times. In the second case, we take space to be nothing over and above the distribution and nomological organization of properties of particles at times. In either case, the relation of occupancy takes care of itself, since it becomes part and parcel of the way in which either the space or the particles acquire their existence. One way, the particles are ontologically constituted as occupants of the space. The other way, the space is ontologically constituted as a medium for the particles. Either way, we so characterize the ontological status of space and its occupants that there is no further question about the nature of occupancy. We now have a choice between alternative strategies for explaining occupancy, the one assigning a primitive status to the medium and a derivative status to the occupants, the other assigning a primitive status to the occupants and a derivative status to the medium. Each of these strategies accounts for the special intimacy of occupancy, and each promises to yield a characterization of matter-in-space in a way which both breaks out of the circle and achieves its target. As far as I can see, there is no other strategy with any prospect of success. So how do we decide between them? Well, on the face of it, the decision is clear. For while both strategies meet the requirements we have so far specified, only the first satisfies our intuitions in three further respects. In the first place, we ordinarily think of material objects as essentially spatial: we are prepared to assert not merely (a) that it is logically impossible for something which has no location in physical space to qualify as a material object, but also (b) that, for any material object, it is logically impossible for that object to exist without location in physical space. We think that something only qualifies as a material object if the occupancy of physical space is a logically essential attribute of that thing. Secondly, and this is a development of the first point, we think of physical space not merely as containing material objects, but as constituting the very form of their existence. We speak of such objects as existing in space; and by this we mean, not merely that they exist and have spatial location, but that they exist by and through their spatial location - that location in physical space is, as we may put it, their mode of being. Thirdly, and in consequence, we think of physical space as forming, in conjunction with time, the framework of identity for its 83

The topic-neutrality thesis material occupants. We think of a portion of matter as individuated at a time by the region it occupies, and as persisting through time by the following of a spatiotemporally continuous path. (These are, at least, our basic principles of individuation and persistence, even if we may want to refine them to deal with certain abnormal cases.) Now none of these intuitions can be retained if, adopting the second strategy, we take physical space to be the logical creation of pre-spatial facts about particles. For, on such an account, the particles would have the capacity to exist and persist without spatial location, since the existence of space would depend on certain contingent facts about them - facts about the distribution and nomological organization of their properties. Even if the particles would only qualify as particles in virtue of having spatial location, location would be a merely contingent attribute - something which the entities which qualify as particles could do without. In contrast, we can retain and, indeed, explain the intuitions if, adopting the first strategy, we take particles to be the logical creation of pre-particle facts about space. For if particles are ontologically constituted as occupants of physical space, it follows automatically that, for them, the occupancy of space is an essential attribute. Moreover, it follows automatically that space will constitute the very form of their existence and, with time, the framework of their identity. It is conceivable, perhaps, that subsequent investigation may lead us to revise our intuitions (I shall take up this point later4). But, as things stand, it is clearly right to begin by pursuing the first (space-primitive) strategy before we consider anything else.5 How, then, is the space-primitive strategy to be developed? Well, let us continue with the supposition that any parcel of matter exhaustively divides into spherical atoms, all of the same size and with no internal gaps. Let us also, for simplicity (again, with no pretensions to scientific accuracy), add to this the supposition that the intrinsic character of matter is invariant over space and time, so that each atom has the same intrinsic character at all times and all atoms have the same intrinsic character at each time. And taking r as the radius-size of an atom, let us use the expression *0-region' to signify a spherical region of radius r Now to construe atoms as the logical creation of pre-atomic facts about space, we must postulate, as underlying material occupancy, an intrinsic property A/, applicable to points at times (if you prefer, applicable to point-moments) 84

Matter in space and a set L oflaws, controlling the instantiation of A/, such that L ensures, amongst other things, that: (1) At any time, the total set of A/-instantiating points exhaustively divides into non-overlapping 0-regions; (2) All changes over time in A/-instantiation are spatiotemporally continuous. Let us say that a region-moment (i.e. a region-at-a-time) is M-pervaded iff all the points in or on that region instantiate M at that time. Then we know, from the partial specification of L, that the total distribution of M over points at times exhaustively divides into a set of series of 0-region-moments of A/-pervasion, where each series is spatiotemporally continuous and ordered with respect to time, and where 0-regions paired with the same moment in different series do not overlap. Moreover, since this aspect of the distribution is guaranteed by law, through the ensuring of (1) and (2), we can infer that in each series the persistence of A/-pervasion through the successive region-moments is a causally continuous process, in which, as it were, the deposit of pervasion is passed by each region-moment to its successor.6 It is not difficult to see how, with this as the underlying reality, atoms (in the form we have supposed) are the logical creation. For we can see in each spatiotemporally and causally continuous series just what is needed to constitute the path of a derivative spherical continuant - a continuant whose existence is logically sustained by, and nothing over and above, the successive instances of A/-pervasion, together with the laws which impose on these instances their spherical and (collectively) spatiotemporally continuous form. Atoms are the continuants - the mobile occupants of space - which preserve their identity through the region-moments they successively occupy. And underlying and wholly constituting them are the spatiotemporal distribution of M and the laws which control it. We can now see how to strengthen FS so as to express the role of P as a medium for material objects and, in consequence, express its character as a genuine space. It is simply a matter of adding to FS (within the scope of the initial quantifiers) (a) a specification of facts about 5-members which suffice for the logical creation of P-occupying continuants, in the way just explained, and (b) the claim that material particles are the continuants thus created. Exactly how we do this depends, of course, on our empirical theory 85

The topic-neutrality thesis of matter. But if we continue with the same simple assumptions (i.e. divisibility into equi-sized spherical atoms and invariance of intrinsic character over space and time), the result will be FS2: For some S, some Z>, some/ some g, some A/, some n, some L (l)-(10)asinFS. (11) M is an intrinsic property, distributed over S-members at times. (12) n is a real number and n > O. (13) L is a set of laws, controlling the distribution of M, and L ensures (amongst other things) that:7 (a) For any time f, there is a set a of sets of S-members such that (i) no two sets in a have more than one S-member in common; (ii) for each set 3 in a, there is a 3-member x such that, for any S-member/ and Z>-relation R, if xRy then:/ is a member of p ifff(R) < n; (iii) for any S-member;c, M(x,t) iffx is a member of a member of a. (b) Any change over time in the momentary distribution of M over S-members is, relative tog, continuous, i.e. if we say that M is assigned to triple x at time t iff, for some S-member/, M(y,t) and g(y) - JC, then all changes over time in the assignment of M to triples are numerically continuous. (14) Atoms are the logical creation of L plus the S-time distribution of M (M becoming, as it were, in the framework of L, the property of being materially occupied). Given our ontological strategy (space primitive, matter derivative) and given our assumptions about space (that it is an unbounded, 3-dimensional, Euclidean continuum) and assumptions about matter (its atomistic and invariant character), FS2 provides an adequate specification of the geometrical structure of physical space and its role as a medium for material objects. (Here, with respect to geometrical structure, I continue to ignore those deficiencies in FS which are to be corrected in Part III.) At the same time, the specification is topic-neutral: it does not reveal the intrinsic nature of, so to speak, the substance of physical space (i.e. the intrinsic nature of ^-members) nor does it reveal the intrinsic 86

Matter in space nature of physical distance (i.e. the identity of the Z)-relations). Indeed, discarding, as it does, all explicitly spatial concepts and any explicit concept of occupancy, FS2 is explicitly topic-neutral: it makes it clear that the intrinsic nature of points and distance is something it does not reveal. Obviously, for different assumptions about space and matter, we could construct a different topicneutral specification along the same general lines. What conclusions, then, are we to draw with respect to what remains concealed? It seems to me that there are three, the second and third being exactly parallel to the conclusions we have already drawn, in the previous chapter, with respect to the intrinsic nature of matter. (1)

Apart from its contingency and geometrical structure, as specified in FS, we have no knowledge (i.e. transparent knowledge) of the intrinsic nature of physical space. The impression that we do have such knowledge stems either from our conception of space in distinctively sensible (in particular, visual) terms or from our conception of space as a medium for material objects. The first source is to be discounted, given our assumption that physical space does not have a distinctively sensible intrinsic character. The second source too is to be discounted, since the role of space as a medium is adequately specified in a topic-neutral way. (2) A transparent specification of the intrinsic nature of physical points and physical distance lies outside the scope of empirical discovery. The most we can empirically discover is the geometrical structure of physical space, the role of that structure in providing a framework of spatial arrangement for physical objects and the causal contribution of such arrangement (by, for example, laws of motion and gravity) to the behaviour of the objects thus arranged. The reason for this is the same as the reason for the corresponding restriction on our empirical knowledge of the properties of matter, or, in our new ontological perspective, on our empirical knowledge of those intrinsic states of points and regions which underlie the existence of matter. The point is that if there were alternative theories which differed in their characterization of the intrinsic nature of physical space (i.e. the intrinsic nature of points 87

The topic-neutrality thesis and distance), but agreed in their specification of its geometrical structure, of its role as a spatial medium and of the framework of natural law, there would be no empirical way of deciding between them. For in terms of accuracy of testable prediction and structure of explanation the two theories would be indistinguishable.8 (3) This limitation on the scope of empirical knowledge is matched by a co-extensive limitation on what we can express or conceive of in physical terms. A transparent specification of the intrinsic nature of physical points and physical distance is not only beyond the scope of empirical discovery, but also beyond the resources of our physical language and our system of physical concepts. Apart from its contingency and geometrical structure, as specified in FS, we cannot so much as form a conception, in physical terms, of what physical space might be like in itself As I have said, the last two conclusions are exactly parallel to the conclusions we have already reached with respect to the intrinsic nature of matter. Put together, the two sets of conclusions yield the general conclusion that, whatever the nature of ultimate physical reality, its physical description is topic-neutral - a description which, beyond a specification of formal structure and nomological organization, conceals the intrinsic nature of both physical space and its fundamental occupants. This is the thesis which I set out to defend. At this stage, of course, the defence is only provisional. For it rests on the assumption, as yet unjustified, that the physical world is devoid of any distinctively sensible intrinsic qualities. It is this assumption, in a slightly modified form, that I shall try to justify in the next chapter Once this has been done, we can then go on to consider, in more detail, how the topic-neutrality of physical description bears on the issue of mentalistic realism.

88

6

THE CONFINEMENT OF QUALIA

Over the last two chapters, I have argued for the thesis that, whatever the nature of ultimate physical reality, its physical description is, in a certain sense, topic-neutral - a description which, beyond a specification of structure and laws, conceals the intrinsic nature of what it describes. Thus, in chapter 4, I argued that, whatever occupants of physical space we take as fundamental, it is impossible to provide, in physical tenns, a transparent specification of their intrinsic properties beyond a specification of their shape and size and other aspects of spatial or spatiotemporal arrangement. Beyond this, we can, in physical tenns, only specify their intrinsic properties opaquely, as those properties, whatever they are, which, in conjunction with the laws of nature, sustain certain causal powers and sensitivities. Again, in chapter 5, I argued that it is impossible to provide, in physical tenns, a transparent specification of the intrinsic nature of physical space beyond a formal specification (as in FS) of its geometrical structure - a specification which does not reveal what physical points and physical distance are like in themselves. Now in arguing for this thesis of topic-neutrality, I have assumed throughout (with respect to both physical space and its occupants) that, at the level of ultimate reality, physical items do not have any distinctively sensible characteristics apart from their dispositions to appear in certain ways to human percipients. I have assumed that, ultimately, physical objects have no colour, odour, flavour or any other of the so-called secondary qualities, except in the form of powers to produce certain kinds of sense-experience in us. And I have 89

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-8

The topic-neutrality thesis assumed that physical space does not resemble its representation in any particular sense-realm (that it is not, in intrinsic nature, distinctively visual or tactual or kinaesthetic or in any other way sense-realm-specific) beyond the extent to which that representation captures its geometrical structure. Someone who rejected these assumptions could reject the topic-neutrality thesis. He could claim that (at least part of) the intrinsic nature of (at least some) physical items can be transparently specified in physical terms by a specification of their intrinsic sensible qualities. He could claim, for example, that even at the level of ultimate reality, material objects have sensible colour and visual shape, and that, to this extent, their intrinsic nature falls within the scope of physical description. It is time to consider whether my assumptions can be justified. Let me begin by stating more precisely what these assumptions are and what it is that I wish to defend. I shall use the term 'sense-awareness' to signify the 'presentative' component in perceptual awareness, i.e. what is left of perceptual awareness when we subtract elements of recognition and interpretation, and I shall use the term 'sensation' (or sometimes 'sense-experience') to signify an episode of sense-awareness. I shall use the term 'sense-quale', in a somewhat broad sense, to denote those qualitative items (e.g. qualities, relations, modes of arrangement) which satisfy the following two conditions: firstly, each item either is or is capable of being an element or feature (however specific or generic) of the content of a sensation; secondly, for each item, it is logically impossible to have a transparent conception of it - a conception which reveals the item's essential nature - except by knowing what it is or would be like, subjectively, to have a sensation of whose content it forms an element or feature. The point of this second condition is to ensure that sense-qualia are distinctively sensible and lie outside the scope of a topic-neutral specification of the physical world. Two examples of sense-qualia, both drawn from the visual realm, are sensible colours (the sort of colours which occur in the content of visual sensations) and distinctively visual modes of spatial arrangement (the sort of modes by which sensible colours can be structured in a visual array). Now what I have assumed, in arguing for the topic-neutrality thesis, is that sense-qualia have no ultimate physical realization - that, at the level of ultimate reality, physical items have no distinctively 90

The confinement ofqualia sensible characteristics in virtue of which they resemble, in ways which transcend topic-neutral structure, the content of any sensation. I shall call this the exclusion-thesis, and the opposing claim, that some sense-qualia have an ultimate physical realization, I shall call sensible realism. Of course, even if some sense-qualia do have an ultimate physical realization, it is not as physically realized that they feature in the content of sense-awareness. For (as the case of hallucination shows), given any sensation 5, it is logically possible for there to be a sensation 5 ' (perhaps S itself) such that (1) S and S' have exactly the same intrinsic psychological character and are, therefore, qualitatively identical in content, and (2) there is no physical item which, in having 5 ' , the subject of 5" perceives. So whatever the nature of sense-awareness (and this is something which I shall consider presently), it is never, as such, the awareness of some physical item (i.e. of some sensible portion of the physical world), even if, on occasions, the awareness of a physical item is something which it mediates. Although the exclusion-thesis is what I have so far assumed, it is a subtly different thesis which I want to defend, namely that sense-qualia have no ultimate non-mental realization - more precisely, no ultimate realization outside the content of sense-awareness. I shall call this the confinement-thesis. The confinement-thesis is, in different ways, both stronger and weaker than the exclusion-thesis. It is stronger in virtue of excluding one possibility which the exclusion-thesis leaves open, namely that, for some sense-qualia, there is a form of ultimate realization which is neither physical nor sensory. It is weaker in virtue of leaving open one possibility which the exclusion-thesis excludes, namely that, for some sense-qualia, there is a form of ultimate realization which is both physical and sensory. The first difference (the respect in which the confinementthesis is stronger) is of no consequence, since the physical and sensory modes of realization are clearly exhaustive. But the second difference (the respect in which the confinement-thesis is weaker) is crucial. As we have seen, physical realism divides into a standard version, which takes the physical world to be non-mental, and a mentalistic version, which takes it to be mental. Correspondingly, sensible realism divides into a standard version, which takes the physical realization of qualia to be non-sensory, and a mentalistic version, which takes it to be sensory. Since I do not want to exclude 91

The topic-neutrality thesis the possibility of mentalistic realism - indeed, my aim is to establish its coherence, subject to the coherence of realism itselfit is only the standard version of sensible realism which I am concerned to refute. Moreover, this is all I have to refute for the purposes of the topic-neutrality thesis. For if sense-qualia are physically realized, it is only if their realization is non-sensory - outside the content of sense-awareness - that it falls within the scope of physical description in the relevant sense. It is only if their physical realization is non-sensory that it is, as it were, distinctively physical and thus capable of sustaining the claim that (at least part of) the intrinsic nature of (at least some) physical items can be transparently specified in physical terms. Standard sensible realism, the thesis that some sense-qualia have an ultimate and distinctively physical (i.e. non-sensory) realization, can be developed in two quite different ways, as either (a) a form of naive realism or (b) a supplement to scientific theory. Taken in the first way, the thesis is simply an endorsement of the naive assumption that, subject to certain corrections for perspective and other conditions of observation, physical items really are (and are ultimately and independently of sense-awareness) as they sensibly appear. It asserts, for example, that grass possesses, ultimately and independently of any visual sensation, the quale of greenness which it visually presents when observed in daylight, and that sugar possesses, ultimately and independently of any gustatory sensation, the quale of sweetness which we taste when we eat it. Whatever its intuitive appeal, it is hard to reconcile this naive form of sensible realism with the scientific findings. According to science, grass looks green, when observed in daylight, because it is disposed to reflect certain wavelengths of light, and what disposes it to reflect these wavelengths is not its possession of a colour-quale, but its atomic structure. Likewise, according to science, sugar tastes sweet, when eaten, because it is disposed to cause certain chemical changes in the taste-receptors on the tongue and palate, and what disposes it to cause these changes is not its possession of a flavour-quale, but its chemical composition. In the light of the scientific findings, naive sensible realism is seen to be both unwarranted and gratuitous. If an object's colour is causally irrelevant to its visual appearance, we might just as well suppose that only invisible objects, like air, have any colour or that all 92

The confinement ofqualia objects are uniformly pink. And if an object's flavour is causally irrelevant to its gustatory appearance, we might just as well suppose that only tasteless (i.e. apparently flavourless) substances have flavour or that all substances are uniformly sour. Once the scientific facts are known, we have no reason for taking sensible appearance as a basis for the ultimate ascription of colours or flavours to physical objects in any form - or, indeed, as a basis for the ultimate ascription of any other sensequalia. What presents a more serious challenge to my position is the case where standard sensible realism is developed as a supplement to scientific theory. As we have seen in previous chapters, scientific explanation, however fundamental, does not reveal the intrinsic nature of the physical world beyond a specification of its structure and laws, and, consequently, it leaves a gap in specification to which some form of sensible realism might be thought a natural response. Thus given the scientific explanation of colourappearance (in terms of an object's atomic structure and the effect of that structure on the absorption and reflection of light), it would indeed be wholly gratuitous to ascribe (i.e. ultimately ascribe) sense-qualia to physical objects on the basis of how they look, since the explanation leaves no gap which such ascriptions could fill. But, at the same time, the explanation does leave a gap, since it does not reveal the intrinsic nature of the physical entities in terms of which colour-appearance is explained. It does not reveal, beyond a specification of their spatiotemporal arrangement, the intrinsic nature of light and fundamental material particles; nor does it reveal, beyond a specification of its geometrical structure, the intrinsic nature of physical space. We have no way of empirically discovering what these intrinsic natures are. But, just because of this, we cannot dismiss the hypothesis that they are made up of sense-qualia. Unlike the naive form of sensible realism, such a hypothesis, while speculative, is not gratuitous. For it fills a gap in the scheme of scientific explanation. It goes beyond science at the point where scientific progress is blocked. To take a simple example (one which makes no claim to scientific accuracy), suppose science shows the physical world to be composed of the following elements: 93

The topic-neutrality thesis (1) time; (2) an unbounded, 3-dimensional, Euclidean space; (3) a homogeneous 3-dimensionally extended substance (matter), each portion of matter being a mobile occupant of the space and being individuated, at any time, by its spatial position; (4) a set L of physical laws which control the spatiotemporal distribution of matter (e.g. Newton's laws of motion and gravity, with quantity of matter as mass). Following the strategy developed in chapter 5, we will assume that matter is ontologically derivative - that its existence is logically sustained by certain intrinsic states of regions at times, together with a framework of law controlling the way these states are spatiotemporaUy distributed. In particular, we will suppose that there is a region-pervading quality Q such that ultimate physical reality consists of: (1) (2) (3) (4)

time; an unbounded, 3-dimensional Euclidean space; a distribution of Q over regions at times; a set Z/ of physical laws which control the distribution of Q, ensuring those distributive uniformities and continuities required for (^-pervasion to amount to material occupancy.

On this supposition, the spatiotemporal distribution of matter and the matter-controlling set of laws L are nothing over and above the spatiotemporal distribution of Q and the Q-controlling set of laws L'. We are now left with the crucial questions: What is Q1 And what, beyond geometrical structure, is the intrinsic nature of the physical space? Science does not and cannot provide the answers. So science leaves open the following hypothesis H: (a) Q is a sense-quality (a quality which is a sense-quale). (b) Physical space has a distinctively sensible intrinsic character appropriate to its role as a medium for Q. More specifically, science leaves open the hypothesis H': (a') Q is a colour. (b') Physical space has a distinctively visual character. To make (b') more precise, let V be that 3-place sense-relation 94

The confinement ofqualia (relation which is a sense-quale) such that it is logically necessary that, in the domain of visual field places, V holds for(x,j,z) iffx is closer Xoy than toz. Then / / ' might be re-formulated as: (a') Q is a colour. (b*) It is logically necessary that, for any three points xyy and z of physical space, x is closer toy than to z iff V(x,y,z). Of course, given the facts of visual perspective, (b*) does not entail that whenever V holds for a triple of visual field places, it also holds for the triple of physical points which these places perceptually represent, (b*) merely requires that whatever is distinctive about relative closeness in a visual field (so as to transcend a purely formal specification of geometrical structure) is also true of relative closeness in physical space, irrespective of how visual fields and physical space are perceptually related, I have said that the scientific version of standard sensible realism (as exemplified by H and / / ' ) presents a more serious challenge to my position than the naive version. And the reason for this is simply that the scientific version, being deliberately fashioned to fit the scientific findings, is protected against any objections to sensible realism which such findings might pose. None the less, since the two versions differ only in scientific plausibility, I need a general argument which refutes standard sensible realism as such and establishes that sense-qualia have no ultimate realization, in whatever form, outside the content awareness. Moreover, it is clear that this argument will have to be of an a priori kind. To establish the confinement-thesis, it will have to establish it as a conceptual truth. In developing this argument, it will be convenient to focus attention on the qualia drawn from a particular sense-realm. And here I choose the visual realm, for two reasons. In the first place, the visual realm provides, in the most conspicuous form, a distinctively sensible mode of spatial arrangement which could be taken as exemplifying the intrinsic nature of physical space. (While it is clear that spatial arrangement features in the interpretative content of tactual and kinaesthetic perception, it is harder to detect it - in, as it were, a raw presentative form - as part of the content of tactual and kinaesthetic sensations.) Secondly, and at least partly for the first reason, a standard sensible realism developed in terms of visual qualia - what I shall call, for short, visual realism - is, I 95

The topic-neutrality thesis think, by far the most plausible version and the hardest for me to meet. If standard sensible realism is coherent at all, it should at least be coherent when applied to the visual realm. I take visual realism to involve either or both of the following two claims: (1) Certain colours (colour-qualia) have an ultimate nonsensory realization in physical space. (2) Physical space has (and has outside the content of visual awareness) a distinctively visual character: it instantiates certain visual space-qualia (i.e. certain spatial relations or modes of spatial arrangement which occur in the content of visual awareness and which, however generic, fall beyond the scope of a formal geometrical specification). To refute visual realism, I have, therefore, to refute both claims. I have to establish both that colours cannot have an ultimate non-sensory realization and that physical space cannot have, outside the content of visual awareness, a distinctively visual character. However, the first thing to notice is that these two tasks are, in effect, equivalent. If colour-qualia are capable of an ultimate realization in physical space, physical space must have a distinctively visual character. Likewise, if physical space has a distinctively visual character, it must have the capacity to be a medium for the ultimate realization of sensible colour. The reason, in both cases, is that for a space to have a distinctively visual character just is for it to be the sort of space in which colour-qualia can be ultimately realized. Figure and extension are distinctively visual just in case they are the sort of figure and extension which can form elements of a colour-array. The distinctively visual character of a region cannot be divorced from its capacity to be colour-pervaded, and its capacity to be colour-pervaded cannot be divorced from its distinctively visual character. Consequently, any a priori refutation of claim (1) is automatically a refutation of claim (2), and any a priori refutation of (2) is automatically a refutation of (1). For the time being, I shall focus mainly on claim (1), which concerns the ultimate non-sensory realization of colour. Is it coherent to suppose that colours (i.e. colour-qualia) have an ultimate non-sensory realization? Our initial response is, I assume, to say that it is. But I want to start by making three points which should make us view this response with some caution. 96

The confinement ofqualia (1) Whether or not it is coherent, the visual conception of the physical world is one which it is psychologically difficult to relinquish. We may be led by the scientific findings to accept that there are no grounds for the ultimate ascription of colour-qualia to physical objects on the basis of how they look. But, as we noted earlier,1 even after we have adjusted to these findings, we find it hard to avoid thinking of the underlying physical reality in visual terms. The reason why the visual conception is so persistent, is that, ignoring the possibility of mentalistic realism (a possibility which we would normally discount), we cannot find any other topic-specific conception to put in its place, except, perhaps, a conception in terms of the qualia drawn from some other sense-realm. And if the choice is between conceptions associated with different sense-realms, the visual, given its conspicuously spatial character, is bound to seem (to any but the blind) the most appropriate. (2) There are some sense-qualities, which we ascribe to physical objects, but where, on reflection, it is clear that, in their physical realization, they are nothing over and above the dispositions of these objects to affect human senseexperience. Thus a piece of food has a cevidimflavoursolely in virtue of its disposition to taste a certain way to (cause a gustatory sensation in) someone who samples it in appropriate conditions. We know this, not because of any scientific findings, but because, by our very conception of them, flavours, as physically realized, are qualities of gustatory appearance. We have no grasp of what it is for a physical substance to be sweet or sour except in terms of how it tastes. (Indeed, we use the noun 'taste', with its explicitly phenomenal signification, as a synonym for 'flavour'.) Of course, the same substance may taste sweet to one person and sour to another, or taste sweet to someone on one occasion and sour to him on another. We can handle these variations of gustatory appearance in alternative ways. Thus on the one hand, endorsing the dictum *De gustibus non disputandum\ we can simply relativize the physical realization of flavour to a subject and a time, so that a substance is said to be sweet for a subject S at a time / iff it is disposed to taste sweet to S if sampled at t. 97

The topic-neutrality thesis Alternatively, we can take as our standard some specific set of circumstances (perhaps the normal subject in normal conditions, or perhaps the discriminating subject in favourable conditions), and equate the absolute flavour of a substance with the way it is disposed to taste when sampled in such circumstances. But whether it is relative or absolute, a substance's flavour consists, one way or another, in its disposition to affect gustatory experience. Now if the physical realization of a certain sense-quality amounts to no more than a 'phenomenal' disposition - the disposition of some physical object to affect human senseexperience - then, obviously, such a realization is not ultimate: it is the logical product of the disposition, and ultimately, unless the disposition is ungrounded, of those laws and categorical states of affairs by which the disposition is generated. Indeed, it seems inappropriate to count this as a genuine realization at all: it is rather that our ascription of the quality to the physical object is just a convenient shorthand for saying that the object is disposed to cause a sensation of the quality in us. So at least in the case of flavours, the confinement thesis is true: such qualities, as sense-qualities, have no ultimate realization outside the content of gustatory awareness. Now when we consider the case of colours, we do not immediately recognize the dispositional account as correct. It is not obvious that we should take a physical object's possession of colour as constituted by the way it is disposed to look, in the way that it is obvious that we should take its possession of flavour as constituted by the way it is disposed to taste. Indeed, our initial reaction is to take the possession of colour as something ultimate and intrinsic. None the less, it will be hard to resist a dispositional account unless we can show, independently, how colours and flavours are relevantly different. On the face of it, colours and flavours are qualities of the same general type. Both are qualities which feature in the content of sense-awareness and whose essential natures we can only grasp by knowing what it is like to sense them. Both are qualities which are, in themselves (as sense-qualities), non-dispositional. And both are qualities which we ordinarily ascribe to physical objects 98

The confinement ofqualia on the basis of their appearance - of how these objects look or taste. If an object's sweetness can be nothing over and above its disposition to taste sweet when appropriately sampled, how can (say) its whiteness be anything over and above its disposition to look white when appropriately observed? (3) Although, for colour, our initial reaction is to reject the dispositional account, there is still a point in our ordinary modes of thought where that account gets, as it were, an implicit acknowledgment. For while we do not normally think of an object's possession of colour as wholly constituted by its disposition to look a certain way, we do think of its disposition to look a certain way as logically essential to its possession of colour. Thus, on the one hand, we accept the coherence of the hypothesis that an apparently coloured substance, like paint, is really colourless. (Indeed, in deference to the scientific findings, we may find the hypothesis plausible.) For we think of a substance's possession of colour as more than just its disposition to colourappearance, and, therefore, as something which could be absent when the disposition obtains. But, on the other hand, we reject the possibility of there being a coloured substance which is totally invisible. For while we think of the possession of colour as something ultimate and intrinsic, we also think of it as something which, of logical necessity, involves a certain mode of visual appearance - as something which is necessarily capable of being visually manifested to an observer in favourable conditions. Admittedly, we would allow, I think, the possibility of there being a coloured substance which is invisible to us. We would allow that colours may be physically realized in ways which, owing to the limitations in our sensory equipment, we cannot visually detect. But we still think of the physical realization of colour as entailing the realization of an objective look and, hence, as something which is, of logical necessity, visible to a subject who is suitably equipped. It is clear how this aspect of our ordinary conception of physical colour involves an implicit acknowledgment of the dispositional account. For unless the physical realization of colour is purely dispositional, a disposition to affect visual 99

The topic-neutrality thesis experience cannot be essential to it. Thus suppose that a certain physical substance S possesses a certain colourquale C and that 5*s possession of C is ultimate and intrinsic. Now even if, in the actual world, S"s possession of C is connected with a disposition of 5 to look C-coloured, when observed by an appropriately equipped subject in appropriate conditions, this connection is only contingent. There is a logically possible world in which S possesses C, but in which, with different physical or psychophysical laws, it does not have this disposition. Indeed, there is a logically possible world in which S possesses C but in which, with different physical laws, this possession neither has nor is correlated with any causal power at all - hence, a world in which the possession of C is wholly irrelevant to any way in which S might be disposed to appear (whether visually or in some other sense-realm) to an actual or hypothetical subject in any conditions. The only way of securing an essential connection between the possession of Cand a phenomenal disposition is by construing the physical realization of colour in purely dispositional terms. And this, of course, involves denying that colour-qualia can have any ultimate realization outside the content of visual awareness. Taken together, these points provide some case for denying the coherence of visual realism. But, obviously, the case is not conclusive. The first point merely shows how, even if visual realism is incoherent, we may be misled into accepting it. And this, of course, does not establish that visual realism is incoherent - any more than Hume's psychological explanation of how we could come to think we have a coherent idea of natural necessity shows that we do not. The second point challenges the visual realist to find a relevant difference between colours and flavours, but it does not establish that there is none. The third point picks out one component of our ordinary conception of colour which is incompatible with visual realism. But we have yet to show that this component has any objective justification. All in all, visual realism is under pressure, but is not yet refuted. We have agreed that a physical object's possession of flavour is purely dispositional - the disposition of the object to taste a certain 100

The confinement ofqualia way when appropriately sampled. But we have yet to see why this dispositional account is correct. We have yet to see why it is impossible for flavour-qualia (which are, in themselves, nondispositional) to have an ultimate realization outside the content of gustatory awareness. Perhaps if we could identify the reason, we would be in a better position to see how, if at all, the analogy with colour is to be developed. The reason emerges when we consider a further class of sense-qualia which we are never even tempted to think of as having the capacity for an ultimate non-sensory realization. The class in question comprises what I shall call somatic qualia, where a quale is somatic iff it forms, or has the capacity for forming, the content of a bodily sensation - a sensation such as an itch or a tickle. Now the reason why these somatic qualia have no ultimate non-sensory realization is obvious. Such qualia are simply the determinate sensation-types of which bodily sensations are the tokens. If I have an itch on my back, the itch-quale is nothing less than the sensory universal of which the itch-sensation is a particular instance and the itch-sensation is nothing more than a sensory particular of which the itch-quale is the determinate type. It is impossible for a somatic quale to have any ultimate non-sensory realization simply because, since the quale is a sensation-type, any genuine instance of it is a sensation. This is not to deny that, when realized, a somatic quale forms an object of sensual awareness. It forms an object of sensual awareness simply because the sensation which instantiates it is, like any other conscious experience, self-revealing. The quale is just a sensation-type and the sensation is just a quale-token, but the sensation displays its quale, as an object of awareness, by displaying its own intrinsic character; and it displays its own intrinsic character because it is in the nature of any episode of consciousness to be self-revealing. It is clear that a similar account holds for the case of flavour. As intrinsic qualia, which form the content of gustatory awareness, flavours are simply the determinate sensation-types (or sensory universals) of which gustatory sensations are the tokens (or instances). And the qualia are displayed by the sensations which instantiate them, simply because, as episodes of consciousness, these sensations display their own intrinsic character. This is why flavour-qualia cannot have an ultimate non-sensory realization. And it is why we can only ascribe them to physical objects as 101

The topic-neutrality thesis qualities of gustatory appearance - as the ways in which such objects are disposed to taste. To say that a physical substance is sweet is just to say that it is disposed to cause a sensory realization of the quale of sweetness when orally sampled, in the same way that to say that it is itchy is just to say that it is disposed to cause a sensory realization of the quale of itchiness when placed on the skin. Can we extend this account to the case of colour? I think we can, but, to do so, we need to prepare the ground more carefully. To begin with, we need to recognize, as a universal principle, that, whether or not it has the capacity for an ultimate non-sensory realization, every sense-quale has the capacity for an ultimate sensory realization. For every quale achieves an ultimate realization whenever it occurs as or in the content of a sensation. That this is so for somatic and gustatory qualia is, of course, implicit in what we have just been saying, namely that such qualia are the universals of which bodily and gustatory sensations are the instances. But I want to put this point temporarily on one side (I shall return to it later) and argue for the principle in a purely general way. I take it to be uncontroversial that any qualitative item which can form the content of a sensation can also, in principle, form the content of a mental image. I also take it to be clear that, when they share the same content, sensations and mental images differ in their intrinsic character. Admittedly, they also, typically, differ in their mental context - in particular, in the character of their mental causes and effects. Typically, imaging, unlike sensing, is the result of the subject's volition: it is something of which he is the agent rather than the passive recipient. Again, typically, sensing, unlike imaging, inclines the subject to form a corresponding belief about the current state of his physical environment: it inclines him to believe that things are physically as the sensation represents them. But these differences are not essential, nor even universal. A mental image may occur unsummoned, as in the case of a dream or a memory that haunts one; and it is at least logically possible that someone should be able to initiate a hallucinatory sensation, as he can a mental image, by an act of volition. Likewise, someone may have a sensation, but, because he knows it is hallucinatory, feel no inclination to form, on its basis, any belief about the physical world; and conversely, someone who is deranged may take 102

The confinement ofqualia his own mental imagings to be veridical perceptions of physical objects. Sensations and images differ in their intrinsic character. But in what does their difference consist? Suppose, for example, Q is a visual colour-pattern (e.g. a circular patch of navy blue) and on one occasion I have a visual sensation of Q (e.g. when looking at some physical object) and on a later occasion I form (in, as we say, my mind's eye) a mental image of Q (e.g. in the context of recollecting my earlier sensation). On both occasions, Q occurs as an immediate and internal object of awareness: immediate, in that the awareness of it is not mediated by the awareness of something else; internal, in that it is part of the intrinsic character of each of the episodes of awareness that it is an awareness of that qualitative item. And on neither occasion is the awareness of Q, as such, an awareness of a ^-instantiating physical item, even if (as visual realism would allow) it is the means by which such an item is perceived or recollected. How then do the sensation and image qualitatively differ? Our first response is to say, with Hume, that the sensation has greater force and vivacity (Hume speaks of "impressions9 and 'ideas* where I speak of 'sensations' and 'images').2 But what does this mean? It is no use construing vivacity as a feature of the presented pattern (e.g. bright colours and sharp contrasts) since, ex hypothesi, it is the same pattern, Q, which forms the object of awareness on both occasions. Nor is it any use construing force in causal or dispositional terms (e.g. as an influence, or a power to exert an influence, on belief about the physical world) since this would not be relevant to finding an intrinsic difference. How then is the intrinsic difference between sensations and images to be characterized, given that they can be qualitatively identical in content? The only possible answer is that while, in imaging, qualia are merely (albeit transparently) conceived, in sensing they are, in some way or other, realized. By occurring in the content of a sensation, a quale achieves, in some way, a concrete realization; by occurring in the content of a mental image, its realization is only (though with a peculiar vividness) represented. We are forced to this conclusion to account for the difference between sensations and images. At the same time, we have to consider how it can be coherently developed. How is it possible for qualia to achieve a sensory realization? And what form does such realization take? One suggestion would be that qualia achieve their 103

The topic-neutrality thesis sensory realization by being objects of a certain kind of awareness. This suggestion is not compatible with our earlier account of the realization of somatic and gustatory qualia. But there is some initial temptation to apply it to the visual and auditory realms, where the presentative character of the sensations is more conspicuous. Thus it is tempting to say that a colour-pattern is visually realized by being visually presented (by being an object of visual sense* awareness) and that a sound-quale is auditorily realized by being auditorily presented (by being an object of auditory senseawareness). For our primary conception of a visual or auditory sensation is as an awareness of some qualitative item, and, in the framework of this conception, it is hard to see in what the sensory realization of the item could consist except its occurrence as an object of the awareness. Of course, if we say that visual and auditory qualia are realized by being objects of sense-awareness, we shall have to recognize, in addition to the qualia, a class of awareness-dependent particulars to serve as qualia-tokens (or qualia-instances). We shall have to recognize visual qualia-tokens whose esse is videri and auditory qualia-tokens whose esse is audiri. In this way, the position comes to assume the familiar form of the traditional sense-datum theory. As I have said, there is some initial temptation to adopt this position for the visual and auditory realms - to say that visual and auditory qualia achieve their sensory realization by being objects of a certain kind of awareness. But if we are to say this, we need to give some account of how the relevant kind of awareness has this realization-conferring character. Obviously, it will not help to point out that, in sensation, visual and auditory qualia are the immediate and internal objects of awareness, since this is also true of them in imaging. Nor will it suffice to say, negatively, that senseawareness is not a species of conceiving. For while it is true that a quale cannot achieve a genuine realization by being conceived (what could?), what we need is a positive account of the nature of sense-awareness which reveals how a quale can and does achieve a genuine realization by being sensed. The trouble is that no such account is forthcoming. There is simply no way of understanding how any form of awareness could have this realization-conferring character. Moreover, so long as we continue to think of visual and auditory sensations in terms of an act-object distinction of the traditional kind - sensations as acts of awareness, qualia as their 104

The confinement ofqualia objects - there is no way of understanding how they could turn out to be anything other than an especially vivid species of conceiving. How, if not by some form of conception, could a subject be aware of anything except his own conscious states? Qualia are realized in sensation. But we shall never obtain a coherent account of this, for any sense-realm, if we suppose their sensory realization to consist in or stem from their occurrence as objects of awareness. To get a coherent account, we must think of the dependence as running in the other direction. We must take the sensory realization of qualia as fundamental, and see their occurrence as objects of awareness as something to be explained in terms of it. We must say, not that qualia are realized by being sensed, but that they are sensed by being realized. This, of course, is just the position we have already and independently accepted for the case of somatic and gustatory qualia. Such qualia, we have already agreed, are the very sensation-types (or sensory universals) of which somatic and gustatory sensations are but the tokens (or instances). And when realized, these qualia are displayed, as objects of awareness, simply because the sensations which instantiate them, being episodes of consciousness, are self-revealing: the sensations display their own intrinsic character and, thereby, display the sense-qualia they entoken. All we now need to do is to apply the same model to all sense-realms. We must say that any sensation, in whatever sense-realm, is just a token or instance of a certain sense-quale, and that it constitutes an awareness of that quale simply by being, as an episode of consciousness, selfrevealing. Thus we must say that colour-patterns are visually realized because they are the very sensation-types (sensory universals) of which visual sensations are the tokens (instances), and that sound-qualia are auditorily realized because they are the very sensation-types (sensory universals) of which auditory sensations are the tokens (instances). And we must say that these sensations display the qualia they entoken, as objects of awareness, by displaying their own intrinsic character. Finally, to mark the difference between sensing and imaging, we must say that a mental image of a quale is just a transparent conception, of an especially simple and vivid kind, of its realization. Let us now consider how these conclusions bear on the status of visual realism. We know that no quale which is capable of forming the complete content of a sensation can have any ultimate 105

The topic-neutrality thesis non-sensory realization. For such qualia - complete qualia we may call them - are the determinate sensation-types (determinate universals) of which sensations are the tokens (instances). A complete quale cannot have an ultimate non-sensory realization, simply because, for the existence of a sensation, nothing more is required than an ultimate realization of the quale. So, in particular, we know that no complete visual quale (i.e. a visual colour-expanse or colour-pattern) can have an ultimate non-visual realization. Now the fact that the confinement-thesis holds for complete qualia does not, of course, entail that it holds for all qualia. It leaves open the possibility that certain non-complete qualia are detachable from all the sensation-types in which they feature and are capable of ultimate realization outside the content of awareness. Thus, in the case of the visual realm, it leaves open the possibility that colours have an ultimate non-sensory realization, though detached from visual extension, and the possibility that visual extension has an ultimate non-sensory realization, though without the capacity to combine with colour.3 However, these are possibilities which, for independent reasons, we are forced to reject. For, as we have already said, the distinctively visual character of a region cannot be divorced from its capacity to be colour-pervaded, and its capacity to be colour-pervaded cannot be divorced from its distinctively visual character. If a visual colour-expanse cannot have an ultimate non-sensory realization, nor can the colour and spatial elements it contains. Consequently, we must accept the confinement-thesis for all visual qualia and reject visual realism as incoherent. It is also clear that similar considerations would establish a similar conclusion for each sense-realm. There is something else which now falls into place. Sense-qualia are distinguished from other qualitative items by the fact that we can have a transparent (essence-revealing) conception of them only by knowing what it is like to sense them. Thus a transparent conception of a colour has to be a conception in visual perspective (in terms of what it is like for the colour to feature in the content of visual experience) and a transparent conception of a sound-quale has to be a conception in auditory perspective (in terms of what it is like for the quale to feature in the content of auditory experience). The confinement-thesis explains, in the simplest possible terms, why this should be so. Obviously a transparent conception of any qualitative item involves a grasp of what it is for that item to be 106

77ie confinement ofqualia realized. And if the item is capable of an ultimate realization, it involves a grasp of what it is for that item to be ultimately realized. Thus it is precisely because the ultimate realization of a sense-quale has to be sensory, that a transparent conception of it has to be in sensory terms - a conception which involves the knowledge of what it is like for the quale to be sensed.

107

7

MENTALISTIC REALISM

Mentalistic realism is the thesis that ultimate reality includes a physical world, but one which is, in its intrinsic nature, purely mental - a world wholly confined by the framework of time, minds and mind-governing laws. The original objection to this thesis was that it ran counter to a certain apparently fundamental intuition, namely that physical items have their own distinctively physical intrinsic character - a character to be specified in physical terms. Our arguments have shown that this intuition is mistaken. They have shown that the physical description of the physical world (at least, that portion of the world which lies within the sphere of ultimate reality) is topic-neutral - a description which, beyond a specification of structure and laws, conceals the intrinsic nature of what it describes. If its physical description is topic-neutral, we cannot just dismiss the suggestion that the physical world is intrinsically mental. At the same time, it is not clear how seriously this suggestion should be taken. We have yet to see what, in detail, a mentalistic interpreta­ tion of the physical world involves, and, at present, we do not even know whether one can be provided. Moreover, and more funda­ mentally, even if physical descriptions are topic-neutral, it might still be a conceptual truth that, whatever its intrinsic nature, the physical world is non-mental and capable of existing without the existence of minds. It might be essential to our concept of the physical that it is only when the topic-neutral conditions are satisfied by non-mental items that a resulting reality qualifies as a physical world. The fact that a physical description does not reveal 108

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-9

Mentalistic realism the intrinsic nature of the physical world does not ensure that mentalistic realism is a genuine possibility. To see the issues more clearly, it will be best if we focus our attention on a concrete example of a mentalistic realist theory. The example I have chosen is a particularly simple one. Indeed, from a scientific viewpoint it is clearly too simple, since it does not allow for enough diversity of ultimate physical ingredients. But the simplicity will serve to clarify the philosophical issues and, at the same time, to indicate a general strategy which could be adapted to other and richer scientific theories. Let us assume that, apart from the ontological basis of matter itself, all physical entities and physical facts are either part of or the logical product of a reality consisting of: (1) time; (2) an unbounded, 3-dimensional, Euclidean physical space (3) a homogeneous 3-dimensionally extended physical substance (matter), each portion of matter being a mobile occupant of P and being individuated, at any time, by its spatial position; (4) a set a of physical laws which control the spatiotemporal distribution of matter (e.g. Newton's laws of motion and gravity, with quantity of matter as mass); (5) human minds; (6) A set P of psychophysical (strictly, physio-psychical) laws whereby certain types of spatial configuration of matter (intuitively, certain types of brain-state) and certain types of change in the spatial configuration of matter (intuitively, certain types of brain-process) are causally sufficient for the immediate occurrence of certain types of experience in human minds. In assuming the physical reality to be thus constituted, we are, in conformity with the confinement thesis, excluding any ultimate non-sensory realization of sense-qualia. At the same time, we are to suppose that, in virtue of the distribution of matter and the physical and psychophysical laws, physical items retain their normal sensible appearance to human percipients. Thus we are to suppose that (via their dispositions to produce ^-relevant configurations) grass is disposed to look green when observed and sugar is 109

The topic-neutrality thesis disposed to taste sweet when sampled. Of course, the scientific explanation of these dispositions (or, more precisely, of the dispositions to produce (J-relevant configurations) would have to be adapted to the simplifying assumption that, apart from space and time, matter is the only ingredient of the physical world and that (matter being homogeneous) one portion of matter is just like any other portion except, at most, in quantity and spatial arrangement. Following the strategy developed in chapter 5, let us next assume that matter is ontologically derivative - that its existence is the logical product of certain intrinsic properties of points or regions at times, together with a framework of law controlling the way these properties are spatiotemporally distributed. More specifically, and to prepare the way for the mentalistic interpretation, let us assume that there are two region-pervading qualities Qx and Q2, where, at any time, Qx pervades those regions which are materially occupied and Q2 pervades those regions which are materially empty, such that the ultimate reality consists of: (1) time; (2) P\ (3) the spatiotemporal distribution of Qx and Q2 (i.e. their distribution over P-regions at times); (4) a set a' of physical laws which control the distribution of Qx and Q2 and ensure those distributive uniformities and continuities required for Qrpervasion to amount to material occupancy and Qi-pervasion to amount to material emptiness; (5) human minds; (6) A set P' of psychophysical laws whereby certain types of spatial configuration of Qx and certain types of change in the spatial configuration of Qx are causally sufficient for the immediate occurrence of certain types of experience in human minds. On this assumption, the spatiotemporal distribution of matter and the matter-relevant sets of laws a and (J are nothing over and above the spatiotemporal distribution of the qualities Qx and Q2 and the quality-relevant sets of laws a' and 0'. Given these assumptions, the mentalistic theory I want us to consider makes the following claims: 110

Mentalistic realism (1) There is a non-human mind M whose mental life includes or consists in a continuous stream S of sensations, all within a single sense-realm JL (2) R comprises an unbounded and continuous sense-field F and two sense-qualities Cx and C2. (3) The internal field-relations between different positions in F give Fthe geometrical structure of a 3-dimensional, Euclidean continuum (as specified, in chapter 5, by FS). (4) For any time /, the total 5-sensation at / consists in a certain distribution of Cx and C2 over F, in such a way that F exhaustively divides into non-overlapping 3-dimensional regions each of which is either pervaded by Cx or pervaded byC 2 . (5) F =* P, C, » Qx and C2 * Q2, so that (6) a' (the set ofphysical laws) turns out to be a set ofpsychical laws which control the distribution of Cx and C2 in Fand time, and P' (the set of psychophysical laws) turns out to be a set of psychopsychical laws which causally link /{-states in M with experiences in human minds. Let us call this the sense-field theory (SFT). Notice that SFT, as well as being a version of mentalistic realism, is also a version of what I called in the previous chapter 'mentalistic sensible realism*. For it postulates, for certain sense-qualia (i.e. for Cx and C2 and for modes of arrangement in F) a form of ultimate realization which is both physical and sensory. It is also, of course, reminiscent of Berkeley's final position, in which the physical world is taken to be an idea in the mind of God - a spatiotemporal arrangement of sensible qualities which exists as the object of divine perception. But the similarities with Berkeley must not be allowed to mask the crucial differences. On Berkeley's account, the physical world is a single complex idea, whose esse is percipi, while, in SFT, it is a stream of sensations. On Berkeley's account, the physical world is, in its intrinsic sensible character, as (though in a fragmented and perspectival way) our perceptions represent it, while, in SFT, its sensible character is adapted to the requirements of scientific theory. On Berkeley's account, the physical world is causally inert (though it serves as a blueprint for divine volition), while, in SFT, it is causally active - both internally, in the way in which one physical event causes another, and externally, in its causal influence on 111

The topic-neutrality thesis human experience. Apart from its mentalistic realism, there is not much in the sense-field theory which Berkeley would have found congenial. Granted our assumptions, is SFT a possible option? Might physical reality be as the theory claims? We must begin by distinguishing three quite different kinds of objection. Firstly, it might be objected that, whether or not it includes a physical portion, ultimate reality cannot be purely mental, since (the objector claims) the existence of minds logically depends on there being some more fundamental framework of non-mental reality. There is, of course, a variety of ways in which someone might try to sustain this objection, ranging from arguments in support of behaviourism (the thesis that mental states are dispositions to behave) to arguments that the identity of minds is parasitic on the identity of bodies. Secondly, it might be objected that, even if ultimate reality could be purely mental, there could not be a stream of experience of the kind which the theory postulates. In particular, it might be said, there could not be a sense-field with the geometrical properties ascribed to E Thirdly, it might be objected that, even if ultimate reality could be purely mental and could take the particular form which the theory specifies, it would not suffice for the ultimate existence of a physical world: F would not qualify as a physical space, and C, and C2 would not qualify as physical qualities. These three objections concern different aspects of SFT. The first is an objection to the coherence of mentalism as such, the second an objection to the specific version of mentalism which the theory adopts, and the third an objection to the combining of this mentalism with physical realism. The first objection is one which I shall not directly consider. For it raises a number of very large issues about the nature of mind which I do not have the space to discuss. Instead, I shall, for present purposes, work on the assumption that mentalism is coherent, whether or not it can combine with physical realism, and whether or not it leaves room for the existence of a physical world at all. The qualifying phrase 'for present purposes1 needs to be stressed. For the assumption that mentalism is coherent is not required either by my subsequent argument against physical realism (developed in Part HI) or by my subsequent argument for reductive phenomenalism (developed in Part IV), though, in expounding these arguments, I shall make use of mentalistic examples. Indeed, 112

Mentalistic realism these subsequent arguments serve, indirectly, to support the assumption. For in all its standard versions, the anti-mentalist objection accords the physical world a status which the arguments exclude. Even in the framework of physical realism, the antimentalist objection does not, in my view, have much plausibility. But once it has been established that physical realism is incoherent and that the physical world, if it exists at all, is nothing over and above the constraints on human experience, it is hard to see how the objection could even get started. Setting the anti-mentalist objection aside, there are two objections to SFT to be considered. One of them (originally, the second objection) attacks the specific version of mentalism which the theory adopts. The other (originally the third objection) attacks the combining of this mentalism with physical realism. Of these two objections, the second is the more crucial, since, in its most general form, it concerns the coherence of mentalistic realism as such. But I shall start by saying something about the first. In particular, I shall consider two possible objections to the geometrical characterization of F- objections which concern, in different ways, the non-finite character of the sense-field as specified in the theory. In the first place, it might be objected that it is incoherent to postulate a sense-field which is unbounded, i.e. one which is infinitely extended in all directions. It is very difficult to evaluate this objection. How exactly are we to distinguish between the postulation of something which is, by the standards of human experience, very peculiar, and the postulation of something which is, by all standards, impossible? How do we tell whether we are dealing with something which is genuinely contrary to reason, or something which merely defies imagination? My own inclination in this, as in similar cases, is to put the onus of proof on those who deny that something is possible - to hold hypotheses innocent of incoherence until proved guilty. Accordingly, I am inclined to take the postulation of an unbounded sense-field as coherent, since I know of no way of demonstrating its incoherence. But even if we take it to be incoherent and thus accept the objection, the sense-field theorist has a simple remedy, namely to modify his initial account of physical space so as to accommodate the new restriction on its mentalistic interpretation. After all, we do not have any empirical evidence that physical space is unbounded. The assumption of its boundlessness reflects, rather, the difficulty we 113

The topic-neutrality thesis have, prior to any mentalistic interpretation, in understanding what form the boundaries, if there were any, would take - in understanding how physical space could be bounded without there being some further space which encloses it. If we construe physical space as a sense-field, this difficulty disappears. We are already familiar, in the visual realm, with a sense-field which is bounded but not enclosed. Indeed, if there is a difficulty, it is that of understanding how anything like a visual field could fail to be bounded. So, if we think that an unbounded sense-field is impossible, we can meet the objection merely by assuming that physical space is bounded and by altering the specification of F accordingly. The second objection to the geometrical characterization of F is that it is incoherent to postulate a sense-field which is continuous. This objection, like the first, is concerned with a distinction between the finite and the infinite. While the first objection claimed that no sense-field can be infinitely extended, the second claims that no finitely extended portion of a sense-field can be infinitely divisible. The claim rests on the following argument: (1) If a finitely extended portion of a sense-field is infinitely divisible, then there is no limit on the fineness of the texture of quality-patterns that can occur within it. Thus suppose A is a finitely extended 3-dimensional portion of F. We can envisage A being covered by a chequer-pattern of equalsized cubes, alternately pervaded by Qx and Q2, so that each Qx -pervaded cube is flanked on each side by a Q2-pervaded cube, and each £)2-pervaded cube is flanked on each side by a Qj-pervaded cube. If A is continuous and thus infinitely divisible, there is no lower limit on the size of the cubes that can occur in such a pattern - no upper limit on the number of cubes such a pattern can contain. Hence: (2) If a subject has a continuous sense-field (whether bounded or non-bounded), he has, in respect of that field, unlimited powers of sensory differentiation. Provided there are at least two region-pervading qualities to be arranged within the field, there is no limit on the internal complexity of the sensations he is capable of having - no limit on the fineness of differentiation he can achieve. But: 114

Mentalistic realism (3) There must be such a limit. Hence: (4) No sense-field is continuous. What are we to make of this argument? Well, there are two initial points analogous to those we made in the case of the earlier objection. In the first place, the objector has yet to establish the truth of premise (3), and I know of no way in which this can be done. An unlimited capacity for sensory differentiation may be, by human standards, abnormal, but I see no reason to assert its impossibility. Secondly, even if the conclusion of the argument were accepted, we could still salvage the essentials of SFT by altering our assumptions about the nature of physical space. Thus we could say that space is finitely grained, but grained so finely in relation to the processes that take place within it, that, within the limits of accuracy of our measurements, it passes all the empirical tests for continuity. However, there is a further and equally crucial point. When we speak of a limit on the possible fineness of sensory differentiation - of a limit on the possible complexity of a qualitypattern within a finite portion of a field - we must be careful to distinguish between a logical and a causal limit - between a limit on what is logically possible and a limit on what is causally possible. Thus if the portion is infinitely divisible, there is no logical limit on the possible complexity of a quality-pattern within it, since there is enough room for any number of distinct quality-patches. But there could still be a causal limit - a causally minimum unit of qualitypervasion: if the field is 3-dimensional, there may be a distance d such that it is causally necessary that, for any quality Q and any 0-pervaded region R, R either is or contains or is contained in a spherical g-pervaded region of diameter d. Now, in effect, the argument we are considering trades on a confusion between these two kinds of limit. Thus, for premise (3) to have any plausibility, we must construe it as asserting the logical necessity of a causal limit, while, for premise (1) to be acceptable, we must construe it as denying, for a continuous field, the existence of a logical limit. So if (2) is concerned with the question of a causal limit, it does not follow from (1), and if it is concerned with the question ofa logical limit, it has no relevance to (3). Either way, conclusion (4) is not derivable. Thus, once the distinction between a logical and causal limit is clearly drawn, the argument collapses. 115

The topic-neutrality thesis It is worth noting, en passant, that as well as undermining the argument, this point also has an important bearing on the account we should give of our own visual experience. It is often argued that the visual field must be finitely grained (perhaps more finely in some subjects than in others) since even those of us with superior vision find, empirically, a limit on the minuteness of a differentiated colour-spot (i.e. a spot whose colour is different from the colour of its background) that can occur in any portion of the field. Thus Hume says: * Put a spot of ink upon paper, fix your eye upon that spot, and retire to such a distance that at last you lose sight of it; it is plain that the moment before it vanished the image, or impression, was perfectly indivisible. It is not for want of rays of light striking on our eyes that the minute parts of distant bodies convey not any sensible impression; but because they are removed beyond that distance at which their impressions were reduced to a minimum and were incapable of any further diminution. But the most we are entitled to infer from the empirical evidence is that minuteness is subject to a causal limit. We cannot conclude that the causally minimum unit of colour pervasion is logically indivisible. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could be. It is hard to see how a colour could be spatially realized except by pervading an extended region - a region divisible into further parts. And consequently, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the visual field is continuous. If this conclusion is correct, then the continuity of F, as postulated in SFT, is not even abnormal by the standards of human experience.2 I shall take it, therefore, that, with or without some modification of the geometrical properties of F (at most, I think, with respect to unboundedness), there could be a stream of experience of the sort which the theory postulates. So let us now move on to the central issue. Could such a stream, together with the laws which control its internal development and its effects on human experience, constitute a physical world? Could a sense-field with the appropriate geometrical structure constitute a physical space? Could sensequalities with the appropriate distribution and nomological organization constitute the physical qualities which underlie material occupancy and emptiness? It is arguable that they could not. It is 116

Mentalistic realism arguable that, while our physical theories provide no positive information about the intrinsic nature of the physical world, our very concept of the physical excludes the possibility envisaged in SFT. For it is arguable that our concept of the physical excludes any form of mentalistic realism - that it requires that, however intrinsically constituted, the physical world be non-mental and mind-independent. Let us call this alleged requirement the nonmental-requirement (NMR). Should NMR be accepted? Well, certainly it has some intuitive plausibility. If we were asked, outside the context of our previous arguments, 'Given an ultimate reality consisting solely of time, minds and mind-governing laws, is there room for the ultimate existence of a physical world?' the intuitive answer would be 'No'. But, at the same time, we give this answer in the conviction that NMR has a rationale. We assume that the requirement cannot be eliminated and leave what remains in our concept of a physical world coherent and serviceable. The trouble is that, set in the context of the topic-neutrality of physical description, NMR looks gratuitous. If all the other requirements for the existence of a physical world are neutral with respect to the intrinsic nature of physical items, and thus compatible with mentalistic realism, we can subtract the non-mental-requirement without affecting the coherence or utility of our physical concepts. And if the requirement turns out to be gratuitous, the mentalist can afford to ignore it. He can claim that if his position is in conflict with our ordinary concept of the physical, then the fault lies in the arbitrariness of our concept rather than in the inadequacies of his position. If mentalistic realism is to be excluded, we need to give NMR itself a firmer foundation. We need to show that our concept of the physical cannot survive in an acceptable form without it. One suggestion might be that NMR is a consequence of the deeper requirement that the physical world should be public and external - something which is perceptually accessible to different subjects and whose existence is logically independent of their conscious states. But how would this deeper requirement help to exclude mentalistic realism? Consider the case of the sense-field theory. The postulated stream of sensations S is private and internal to A/, but public and external for the human minds whose experiences, through the operation of P \ it causally controls. In whatever way, on our original assumptions, human subjects are the 117

The topic-neutrality thesis percipients of public and external items in physical space, they are, in SFT, percipients of public and external items in F. How could it be otherwise? For SFT retains all the original assumptions, and merely adds a specification of what the physical world, as we assumed it to be, is like in itself. This additional specification cannot make any difference to the relationship between the physical world, thus specified, and the subjects whose experiences it causally controls. The fact that the world turns out to be private and internal to M cannot affect its publicity and externality for us. Again, it might be suggested that NMR is grounded on the requirement that physical space be something in which, via our bodies, we are located. For how could we be located in something purely mental, like a sense-field? But the same answer applies. Let the defender of NMR tell us in what way we are located in physical space, and we will find that we are located, in the same way, in F. Or let him show the impossibility of our location in F, and he will thereby show the impossibility of our location in physical space. For whatever relationship obtains between us and physical space on the original assumptions, is preserved between us and Fin SFT. As we have already said, SFT denies nothing in the original topic-neutral specification of the physical world. It simply adds a specification of intrinsic content. It is clear, I think, that once we have accepted the topicneutrality thesis - once we have accepted that (beyond a specification of structure and laws) the intrinsic nature of the physical world cannot be specified in physical terms - we can find no justification for NMR. If the requirement holds, it holds gratuitously, and can be eliminated without disturbing what matters in our concept of the physical. And this means, as I have said, that it is something which the defender of mentalistic realism can afford to ignore. But as well as being gratuitous, the non-mental-requirement has another and more serious drawback. For not only does it cost us nothing to eliminate it, but it also costs us a great deal to retain it. The cost is not the exclusion of mentalistic realism, but the forfeiture of any grounds for accepting the existence of a physical world at all. As an anti-realist (in the making), I think I could bear such a loss with equanimity. But it would be unfair of me to put the realist unnecessarily in such an uncomfortable position. Let me now explain how this loss is incurred. Let us use the description 'fully neutral* to apply to a physical 118

Mentalistic realism theory iff that theory not only fails to provide an intrinsic specification of the physical entities and states of affairs it postulates, but also leaves open the question of whether these physical items are mental or non-mental Now suppose Tis a fully neutral theory which accords with our initial assumptions about the nature of ultimate reality. Thus T is a theory which, on the one hand, specifies the geometrical structure of space, the number of primitive region-pervading qualities, the physical laws which control the spatiotemporal distribution of these qualities and the psychophysical laws which control the effects of this distribution on human experience; but which, on the other hand, does not reveal the intrinsic nature of the 'substance' of space or the identity of the region-pervading qualities, and does not even indicate, explicitly or implicitly, whether or not this space and these qualities are intrinsically mental. Suppose further that, in deference to NMR, we introduce a stronger theory T' which is the conjunction of T and the claim that the space and qualities are non-mental - a claim which excludes SFT and any other form of mentalistic realism. Now whatever empirical evidence there may be for or against the acceptance of T, it is clear that the additional claim in T' is not subject to any empirical tests. It is not subject to any empirical tests, since it affects neither the prediction nor the explanation of empirical data: it contributes nothing to the observable consequences or explanatory power of the resulting theory. But if this additional claim is empirically untestable, then, short of divine revelation, we have no grounds for accepting it, and, therefore, to the extent that T goes beyond T, no grounds for accepting 7". When these considerations are generalized (as they can be), we are forced to conclude that if our concept of the physical does include the non-mental-requirement, then we have no grounds for believing that there is a physical world. For given any physical theory, we have no grounds for believing that such a theory, with its antimentalist commitment, is true. It might be objected that this line of argument assumes a false account of how physical theories are empirically tested. It seems to assume that, for each theory, the evidence relevant to its evaluation is of a raw experiential kind and does not include any prior knowledge of how things stand in the physical world. It seems to assume that each theory is to be evaluated solely in terms of how accurately it predicts and how well it explains the course of human 119

The topic-neutrality thesis experience, and that, for this purpose, we have an adequate, if partial, record of the course of experience independently of our physical beliefs. If this assumption were true, then the nonmental-requirement would indeed deprive us of any grounds for accepting a physical theory, in so far as the theory (permeated by that requirement) exceeded the conditions of full neutrality. But, it will be objected, the assumption is false. For, in evaluating a physical theory, part of the available evidence consists in physical information we already possess. Moreover, it will be claimed, such information is indispensable. For if we were to start by renouncing all our physical beliefs, and confine ourselves to information of a raw experiential kind, we would have no grounds for accepting any physical theory at all, even ifNMR were rejected. This is so, not only because, once confined to the realm of experience, it would be hard to justify taking any step beyond it, but also because, in practice, it is only through our knowledge of the physical world that we have any significant information about the course of experience. Without such knowledge, the information available to each subject, at any time, would be confined to what he could gain from introspection and direct recall, and such information would be too thin and too selective to justify the acceptance of even a fully neutral theory of how things are externally. But if we reject the assumption and admit certain items of physical knowledge as part of our empirical evidence, then the acceptance of NMR is apparently innocuous. For if the requirement obtains, it permeates the physical theories and the evidence alike: the commitment to a non-mental physical world becomes part of the very framework in which even neutral theories are assessed. Thus, however you look at it, it seems that NMR does not deprive us of our grounds for accepting the existence of a physical world. For either we are already deprived by a prior confinement of the empirical evidence - a confinement which puts even neutral theories beyond the scope of empirical tests - or else, as part of the evidence itself, we possess knowledge of the physical world - knowledge which, if the requirement obtains, excludes mentalistic realism. This objection would have some force if the nonmental-requirement had a rationale - if we could not eliminate it and leave our concept of the physical as coherent and serviceable as before. Let us, for the sake of argument, grant the claim that a crucial part of the evidence available for evaluating a physical 120

Mentalistic realism theory consists in physical information we already possess. Then if NMR were so deeply entrenched in our concept of the physical that this evidence would not survive reformulation in neutral terms, it would be true that, in so far as we have grounds for accepting a fully neutral theory, we have the same grounds for accepting one which is explicitly anti-mentalist - e.g. our grounds for accepting T would be grounds for accepting T'. But, in fact, NMR is not entrenched in this way. Even if it obtains, it can be systematically subtracted from our physical concepts without affecting their coherence or utility. And this means that, when comparing neutral and anti-mentalist theories, it is simply begging the question to lay claim to evidence which is already infected by the gratuitous requirement - to formulate the evidence in terms which, because they are governed by that requirement, automatically exclude a mentalistic account. For if the requirement is gratuitous, it should be subtracted from the evidence before we evaluate the theories. We cannot claim that the commitment to a non-mental world is essential to the framework in which physical theories are empirically assessed, since NMR can be detached from the framework as readily as it can be detached from the theories. We cannot justify a formulation of the evidence in anything but a neutral form, just as we cannot, on the basis of the neutral evidence, justify the acceptance of anything but a neutral theory. This is not to advocate a confinement of the evidence to that of a raw experiential kind, which might well prove insufficient to sustain even a neutral theory. It is simply to insist that we do not pervert whatever additional evidence we admit by needlessly describing it in terms which beg the question - terms which already exclude the possibility of a mentalistic theory. Consequently, I stand by the claim that NMR deprives us of any grounds for accepting the existence of a physical world, since it deprives us of any grounds for believing that our physical concepts, thus restricted, are ever satisfied. This means that the requirement is not only gratuitous, but positively embarrassing. For even if it does not undermine the coherence of our physical concepts (and so far we have found no reason why it should), it does, in a crucial respect, undermine their utility, by eliminating the grounds for their application. None of this, of course, proves that NMR does not obtain. To prove that, one would have to show, I suppose by a survey of opinion, that when all the relevant considerations are 121

The topic-neutrality thesis known and fully appreciated, there is a consensus of intuition in favour of rejecting it - a consensus in favour of saying that our concept of the physical is fully neutral. My own intuition is that this is so, but others may differ. Others may hold that, although gratuitous and embarrassing, the non-mentality of the physical world is a conceptual requirement. But what the discussion does establish is that if there is such a requirement, then, to that extent, our concept of the physical defeats its own purposes and needs to be replaced by one which, with the requirement removed, serves these purposes better. Moreover, in evaluating the possibility of mentalistic realism, it is this, rather than the analysis of our actual concept, which matters. What matters is how mentalistic realism stands with respect to that concept of the physical which we have reason to adopt. And that concept, whether or not it is our actual concept, is one to which the non-mental-requirement is not attached. Granted the coherence of mentalistic realism, are there any reasons for adopting it? Well, yes and no. On the negative side, we cannot claim that there are any empirical grounds which support it, just as we cannot claim that there are empirical grounds for rejecting it. Our empirical evidence only supports a neutral theory, which leaves open the question of whether the physical items it postulates are mental or non-mental. We cannot claim that by construing the physical world as mental we help to explain its observable features, in the way we can legitimately claim that by crediting human beings with minds we help to explain their behaviour. For a mentalistic interpretation is something we add to a physical theory only after all its explanatory work has been accomplished. Chi the other hand, there is, it seems to me, a philosophical reason for preferring mentalistic realism to standard realism. For we can form no positive conception of what the intrinsic nature of a non-mental world might be. The only positive conception we can have of a non-mental world is a conception in physical terms, and such a conception has been shown to be topic-neutral - one which does not reveal intrinsic nature. Consequently, to construe the physical world as non-mental is to put its intrinsic nature beyond the scope of positive transparent specification of even the most generic kind. We do not and cannot have the faintest idea of what a non-mental space and its non-mental occupants might be like. To claim that there could be such a world, 122

Mentalistic realism is to make a claim which we cannot substantiate by even the sketchiest of examples. This does not establish that standard realism is incoherent. But it does show that, if we are to be realists at all, anything other than mentalistic realism is the merest of fancies: it is something which we would never have entertained but for our faulty intuition that the intrinsic nature of the physical world can be specified in physical terms.

123

PART III

THE REFUTATION OF REALISM

8

NOMOLOGICAL DEVIANCE

Throughout Part II, I have been concerned with issues which arise within the framework of physical realism. I have argued that, at the level of ultimate reality, the intrinsic nature of the physical world cannot (beyond a specification of structure and laws) be transparently specified in physical terms. And, on this basis, I have argued for the coherence and plausibility of mentalistic realism, which claims that ultimate physical reality is intrinsically mental. In all this I have assumed a realist position: I have assumed that the physical world, or some selected portion of it, is a component of ultimate reality. In this third part, however, I shall be concerned with the issue of realism itself. I shall argue that realism is incoherent - that we can establish a priori that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. The conclusions we have already reached on the assumption of realism - in particular, the topic-neutrality thesis - will continue to play a role in the development of this argument. My anti-realist argument will be long and complex. With so much detail, there is a danger of losing our bearings at some point - of failing to see, so to speak, the strategic wood for the tactical trees. For this reason, I want to begin by providing a rough sketch of the overall strategy, so that, as the full argument unfolds, we may retain our sense of direction and have some idea of the relevance of each point to the final conclusion. Taking P as physical space, the core of the argument consists, roughly, in the establishing of three propositions, namely: 127

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-11

The refutation of realism (1) The geometrical structure of P is essentially linked with the nomological organization of/*, i.e. with the laws which govern what takes place within it. More precisely, if G is the geometrical structure of P, there are certain aspects of the nomological organization of P such that P*$ having an organization with those aspects is logically essential to P*s possession of G. (2) P possesses its geometrical structure essentially. That is, if G is the geometrical structure of/*, it is logically impossible for P to exist without possessing G. (3) No component of the physical world is ultimate unless P is (strictly, unless P-points are) ultimate. When, in (1), I speak of the nomological organization of P, or of the laws which govern what takes place within it, I do not intend this to include anything which is deducible merely from a geometrical description of />, or from such a description together with the most basic categorization of the objects whose behaviour in P, or the qualities whose realization in />, the laws control. I am not counting as a genuine law - as an aspect of the nomological organization - any restriction on behaviour or quality-realization in P, if, a priori, we can recognize that the same restriction holds for any space with the same geometrical structure in respect of occupants or qualities of (relevantly) the same basic type. Thus if P is Euclidean, I do not count it as a law that, by following a straight path in a single direction, no P-occupant can return to the point from which it started. For we know a priori that this behavioural restriction holds for the occupants of any Euclidean space. Likewise, if P-occupants are chunks of some homogeneous stuff, each portion of stuff being individuated, at a time, by the region of P it occupies, I do not count it as a law that P-occupants are mutually impenetrable (though I would count it as a law that, where there is competition for spatial position, the quantity of stuff is conserved1). For we know a priori that this behavioural restriction holds for any space whose occupants are individuated in that way. All this was, I suppose, fairly obvious, given the way I have used the term 'law' ( « 'law of nature') hitherto. But the reason I stress it is that I want it to be clearly understood that (1) is making a significant and, on the face of it, highly contentious claim about the nature of P. I want (1) to be understood as claiming that, 128

Nomological deviance if G is the geometrical structure of P, there are certain aspects of the nomological organization of P such that, while it is conceivable that there should be a space which has the same geometrical structure but lacks an organization (in respect of the relevant type of occupant or quality) with those aspects, P's having an organization with those aspects is logically essential to P's possession of G This claim is certainly significant. Indeed, our initial inclination is to reject it as clearly false. That is why I saw the danger that, following the principle of charity, someone might misinterpret (1) in a way which renders it uncontroversial, but useless for my purposes. From (1) and (2) we can immediately deduce that certain aspects of the nomological organization of P are logically essential to P, so that it is logically impossible for P to exist without having an organization with those aspects. It is this which, given an acceptance of (1) and (2), necessitates the first step towards anti-realism. For we have to ask how it is possible for such a consequence to obtain. How can any aspects of P's nomological organization (in the relevant sense) be essential to Fl Why is there no possible world in which P exists, and retains its essential geometrical structure, but is conjoined with quite different laws or with no laws at all? The answer we are forced to accept (given our acceptance of (1) and (2)) is that P is ontologically derivative. More precisely, we are forced to say that: (a) P is logically created by the nomological organization of something else. (b) Certain aspects of this underlying organization are both essential to the creation of P and logically determine certain aspects of P's nomological organization. And consequently, since anything which is ontologically derivative is so essentially, (c) certain aspects of the nomological organization of P are essential to P. But given the non-primitiveness (i.e. non-ultimacy) of P, we can infer, from (3), that no component of the physical world is ultimate, i.e. that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. In other words, given (1), (2) and (3), anti-realism is established by the following steps: (4) If P is ultimate, no aspect of its nomological organization is essential to it. 129

The refutation of realism Hence, from (1) and (4) (5) If P is ultimate, it is logically possible for P to exist with a different geometrical structure. Hence, from (2) and (5) (6) P is not ultimate. Hence, from (3) and (6) (7) Ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. This, then, is the preliminary sketch of the anti-realist argument I shall develop. Of the three initial propositions, (1) is, I think, the most contentious and I shall devote the rest of this chapter, chapter 9 and part of chapter 10 to defending it. (2) seems uncontroversial, but there are a couple of objections which I shall deal with in chapter 10. (3), which is plausible, but not uncontroversial, will be established in chapter 11. There is one further preliminary point. The anti-realism which I defend in this part will be developed in a particular direction (reductive and phenomenalistic) in Part IV. This development, of course, will take for granted the anti-realist conclusion already established. But there is also a sense in which the basis of the principles which underlie the anti-realist argument is only fully discernible in the context of the subsequent development. This does not mean that, without the subsequent development, the argument is less than conclusive. It means only that, through the subsequent development, the argument can be seen in a new perspective - a perspective which brings to light factors that had been operative, but hitherto concealed. As will be evident from the sketch, the argument focuses on the relationship between physical geometry and natural law. In particular, it will focus on a property which I call 'nomological deviance'. I want to begin by explaining what this property is. Putting it intuitively, a space S (whether physical or nonphysical) is nomologically deviant iff, if G is its geometrical structure, there is a different geometrical structure G' such that the laws which govern what takes place within S ensure that everything behaves exactly as if S has the structure G' rather than G. I have chosen the term 'nomological deviance' because, when a space is of this sort, the laws can be said to run counter to its geometry: the 130

Nomological deviance laws are as if the geometry is other than it is. I shall give a more precise definition of such deviance in a moment. But first it might be best to get our bearings by means of an example. Imagine the following situation: (1) £ is a space which is unbounded, 3-dimensional and Euclidean. Q is a quality which pervades 3-dimensional regions of E at times. The only events in Z are changes over time in the spatial distribution of Q. (2) Rx and R2 are non-overlapping and non-contiguous cubic regions of £ of the same size. C is a way of 1-1 correlating Appoints with /^-points such that (i) C is distance-preserving, i.e. if JC and/ are /^-points and xf a n d / ' are the correlated /?2-p°ints> then the distance between JC and/ is the same as the distance between x' and/' (ii) If we say: Firstly, that a region x corresponds to a region/ iff C correlates each JC-point with a/-point and each/-point with an x-point Secondly, that a region x is characterized at a time / iff (a) any portion of x which lies outside both Rx and R2 is Q-pervaded at t (b) any portion of x which lies inside Rx corresponds to an /^-region which is Q-pervaded at t (c) any portion of x which lies inside R2 corresponds to an jRrregion which is Q-pervaded at t then the spatiotemporal distribution of Q is governed by: (a) A law (L2) which, for some distance r, ensures that, for any time /, the total portion of L which is characterized at / divides exhaustively into nonoverlapping spherical regions of radius r. (b) A law (L2) which ensures that all changes over time in the spatial distribution of characterization are spatially continuous. (c) A law (L3) which (to put it loosely, but conveniently) ensures that each r-sized sphere of characterization pursues a spatiotemporal path of uniform motion in a straight line, except when obstructed by another sphere of characterization. (To speak of SL mobile sphere of characterization is just a loose, 131

The refutation of realism but convenient, way of speaking of a spatiotemporaUy continuous series of characterized spherical regions.) The predicate 'characterized' is, of course, somewhat contrived. For it applies to an Rx -region in virtue of the intrinsic state of the corresponding /?2-region, and it applies to an /*2-region in virtue of the intrinsic state of the corresponding /*,-region. The point of introducing it is to allow a simple formulation of the laws governing the spatiotemporal distribution ofQ. To illustrate the effect of these laws, suppose that, at a time /,, there is an r-sized sphere of g-pervasion which lies outside both Rx and R2 and is (again to put it loosely, but conveniently) moving along a straight line which passes first through Rx and then through R2. Outside Rx and R2, 0-pervasion and characterization are co-extensive. So the laws ensure that, unless obstructed, the 2-sphere, coinciding with a sphere of characterization, continues in R2

/?!

0

= pervaded

O

= not pervaded

State at t2

Figure 8,1 uniform motion until it reaches the boundaiy of/?, at, say, t2 (see Figure 8.1). But now consider what happens after t2. The laws

State at f 2 2

State at f 2 1

Figure 8.2 The characterized but unpervaded (unshaded) regions A and B in Rx correspond to the pervaded (shaded) but uncharacterized regions A ' andB' in R2. 132

Nomological deviance ensure that the sphere of characterization continues in a straight line through Rx. But because, by definition, an /^-region is characterized iff the corresponding /^-region is Q-pervaded, the Q-sphere gradually disappears into the boundary of Rx and, simultaneously, gradually reappears on the other side of the corresponding boundary of R2 (see Figure 8.2). Thereafter, the

State at r 32

State at f 3 t

Figure 8.3 ^-sphere continues in uniform motion through R2 until it reaches the opposite boundary at, say, f3. At which point the process is reversed: pervasion and characterization gradually re-unite as the Q-sphere disappears into the boundary of R2 and simultaneously reappears on the other side of the corresponding boundary of Rx (see Figure 8.3). The Q-sphere now moves towards /J2. When it reaches it, the whole process is repeated, mutatis mutandis, the sphere moving into and through Rx and then out of and away from R2- Thus the whole course of pervasion and characterization is summarized in Figure 8.4, with the unbroken arrows showing the route of pervasion and the broken arrows showing the route of characterization. R) •

U'h

/?2

/?t •

^1

^2

•

hh

•

hU

^1

^2 •

^2 w

tA-h

=•

^5-^6

Figure 8.4 Let me now explain why this is an example of nomological deviance. If 5 is a space and P is a geometrical property (and here a relation counts as a property), we shall say that P is nomologically 133

The refutation of realism constant in S iff, given the laws controlling what takes place within S, the nomological relevance of P, in respect of those laws, is invariant over the whole domain of S-items which instantiate it. Thus a distance-relation is nomologically constant in S iff its nomological relevance is invariant over the different pairs of S-points which are thus related, and a shape-property is nomologically constant in S iff its nomological relevance is invariant over the different S-regions of that shape. We shall further say that a space is nomologically uniform iff all geometrical properties are nomologically constant in it. Since the geometrical structure of a space is wholly determined by the network of distance-relations between its points, we might equally have said that a space is nomologically uniform iff all distance-relations are nomologically constant in it. Now it is clear that, given the nature of the laws of Q-pervasion, £ is not nomologically uniform. Consider, for example, the property of sphericity. The law Lx requires that, outside the immediate vicinity of the boundaries of Rx and R2, g-pervasion always comes in the form of spherical chunks of radius r. But in the vicinity of these boundaries the requirement is different. The requirement is that when a region of pervasion extends along some portion of the boundary of Rx or R2, there is a sphere Q>x (of radius r) overlapping Rx and a sphere * 2 (of radius r) overlapping R2, such that the /fcrregion which is part of 9X corresponds to the R2region which is part of 2, and such that either (a) Q pervades the *i-segment outside Rx and the ' , / ' and g'. Indeed, they were defined precisely to achieve that result. So, in terms of that analysis, whatever grounds we have for identifying distance-relations with the members of D, we have the same grounds for identifying them with the members of £)'. But we cannot do both. For the network of distance-relations relative to D' is different from the network of distance-relations relative to D. The />'-network is what results from the Z)-network by interchanging the regions A and B. One conclusion we can draw from this is that our earlier account of physical geometry, even if on the right lines, is inadequate. According to that account, for physical space to possess a determinate geometrical structure G is simply for there to be some network of relations, holding between its points, which exemplifies that structure. This will not do. For, as we have just seen, if there is a network which exemplifies G, then there are other networks (infinitely many) which exemplify other structures - even, as in our example, structures involving different topologies. Obviously, then, the requirements for the possession of a geometrical structure must be more stringent: there must be some further condition which selects from the alternative networks the one which uniquely constitutes the actual network of physical distances. And until we 141

The refutation of realism know this further condition, we cannot evaluate the claim that physical space might be nomologically deviant, since we do not know what it means for geometrical structure to be at variance with nomological organization. Given the different networks of relations, what is it for physical space to have one geometrical structure, at variance with the laws, rather than another, which fits them? One suggestion might be that the genuine distance-relations must be, in themselves, purely general, i.e. relations which do not involve, explicitly or implicitly, any singular reference to members or subsets of the domain of points to which they apply. If we look at the way that, in our example, D' -relations were introduced, it seems that they have this implicit reference. Df -relations were introduced as the /-transforms of £>-relations, where R' is the /-transform of R iff; necessarily, for any points x and / , R' holds for x a n d / iff/? holds for I(x) and I(y), and the function / was defined by reference to A and B, i.e. by reference to two particular subsets of the domain of points. Moreover, and as a direct consequence of this, it seems that D'-relations do not have, in any intuitive sense, a unitary relational significance: the same D'relation can turn out to be different relations when applied to different pairs of points. Thus if x is a point in A and if/ and z are points outside A and B, and if R' is a D'-relation, the holding of R' for x a n d / seems to involve a quite different relationship from its holding f o r / and z: if R is the /)-relation of which R' is the /-transform, then to attribute R' to / and z is to claim that / is /{-related to z, while to attribute R' toy and x is to claim that/ is /{•related to the C- correlate of x in B. All this suggests that we should identify distance-relations with the members of D rather than with the members of / ) ' and take the network of D-relations, not the network of D'-relations, as the genuine geometrical structure of physical space. This sounds plausible, but when we look more closely, it is not clear in what sense, independently of a chosen system of predicates, D' -relations involve an implicit reference to A and B. It is true that in the perspective of A D' -relations appear to involve an implicit reference to A and B and their relational significance appears to vary from one pair of points to another. But exactly the same can be said of ^-relations in the perspective of D'. If R is a Z)-relation and R' is its transform, then just as R' can be defined as holding for x and / just in case R holds for I(x) and I(y), so also R can be 142

Nomological deviance defined as holding for x andy just in case R' holds for I(x) and I(y). So if we take Df -relations as our starting-point, we can represent Z)-relations as the ones with an implicit singular reference and a varying relational significance. If we look at things impartially, all we are entitled to conclude, it seems, is that each set of relations is out of line with the other. And this we knew already. How, then, does our concept of physical distance and physical topology, together with the ultimate facts, yield a uniquely correct characterization of the geometrical structure of physical space? How is there an objective answer to the question of whether the region containing St Mary's is in Radcliffe Square or in Parliament Square, if there are alternative networks of relations which meet all the formal requirements of a 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry but answer this question in different ways? How can one network have a privileged status if our physical concepts are topic-neutral and set no restriction on the intrinsic nature of physical points and physical distance? The solution, I suggest, is that, from among the alternative networks, it is nomological organization itself which selects the physical geometry - nomological organization which picks out the network of physical distances. Thus, as I see it, it is not an empirical theory, but a conceptual truth that physical space has, as its physical geometry, that geometrical structure (that network of distances) which its nomological organization suggests: it has that structure which achieves, or comes as close as possible to achieving, the norm of nomological uniformity - that structure which gives, or comes as close as possible to giving, distance-relations (and, thereby, all other geometrical properties) an unvarying nomological relevance over the domain of physical points. In short, it is a conceptual truth that physical geometry coincides with functional geometry. St Mary's is genuinely in Radcliffe Square and Big Ben is genuinely in Parliament Square, because that is where they are functionally: that is where they are because that is where they have to be to secure nomological uniformity - to bring the causal processes leading into and out of the regions containing these buildings into line, geometrically, with the processes that take place elsewhere. This, of course, is to exclude the possibility that physical space is nomologically deviant, since nomological deviance is precisely the case where the intrinsic and functional geometries differ. If this is the right solution, we seem to be well on the way to 143

The refutation of realism establishing proposition (1) of the anti-realist argument, as initially sketched - the proposition that the geometrical structure of physical space is essentially linked with its nomological organization. But before we look into this, we must pause to consider a way in which the suggested solution can be challenged and an alternative solution offered in its place. It is to this that we turn in the next chapter

144

9 A DEFENCE OF THE NOMOLOGICAL THESIS

I am arguing for the thesis that the geometrical structure of physical space - more precisely, its physical geometrical structure - is logically detennined, in part, by its nomological organization, i.e. by the laws which govern what takes place within it. Thus suppose S is the set of points of physical space. Then there is a range of uncountable sets (Di , D2, D3 , ... ) of 2-place relations such that, for each set Di, the network of D1 -relations holding between the members of S satisfies all the fonnal requirements of a network of distance-relations. Given these different networks, it is, I am claiming, nomological organization which detennines the physical geometry: the network of physical distances is selected as that one which achieves, or comes closest to achieving, nomological unifor­ mity - that one which gives, or comes closest to giving, distance­ relations an unvarying nomological relevance over the pairs of points which instantiate them. In short, I am claiming it to be a conceptual truth that physical geometry coincides with functional geometry, and thereby I exclude the possibility that, in respect of its physical geometry, space is nomologically deviant. I shall call this claim the nomological thesis. Before developing my defence of this thesis, I shall, by way of clarification, make three preliminary points: We have been working on the assumption that physical space is unbounded, 3-dimensional and Euclidean, and, in consequence, we have been thinking of the nomological organi­ zation as selecting the physical geometry from a somewhat 145

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-12

The refutation of realism limited range of alternatives, i.e. from those networks of relations which meet the requirements specified in FS. But obviously such an assumption and the corresponding restriction are not required by the nomological thesis as such. Indeed, the thesis requires that the questions of whether physical space is bounded or unbounded and whether it is Euclidean or nonEuclidean are themselves to be settled by nomological considerations. A given network does not qualify as the network of physical distances merely because, within the range of Euclidean and unbounded networks, it comes closest to achieving nomological uniformity. To qualify as the physical network, it has, according to the nomological thesis, to come closest to achieving nomological uniformity in the total range of networks which meet the formal requirements of a geometry of any sort. This point, of course, also applies to the dimensionality of physical space. But in this case, there is, presumably, an additional a priori requirement that a physical space be 3-dimensional: i.e. it is only if their nomologically selected geometry is 3-dimensional that 5-members qualify, by the nomological thesis, as the points of a. physical space. 2 Even when we confine our attention to those alternative networks which represent physical space as unbounded, 3dimensional and Euclidean, we should, for the purposes of formulating the nomological thesis, take the range of such networks to be broader than that defined by FS. By clause (8), FS requires that the relevant set (D) of 2-place relations be subject to some natural ordering which agrees with the relevant assignment (/) of numbers to relations and which is independent of both that assignment and the related assignment (g) of co-ordinates to 5-members. At the time when we formulated it, this requirement was appropriate, since we wanted FS on its own to specify the geometrical structure of physical space. Indeed, without clause (8), the other clauses, apart from (1), (2) and (10) would have been vacuous, since their truth is guaranteed by the uncountability of S. Thus given any assignment of co-ordinates to 5-members (any 1-1 function from S to the set of all ordered triples of real numbers), and given the resultant network of distances which, relative to the tythagorean principle, this assignment imposes, we can trivially specify a set of relations whose extension in S conforms to that network. It is 146

Defence of the nomological thesis simply a matter of selecting, for each real number d > O, the relation of being paired by some member of a, where a is the set of all pairs \x,y\ of S-members such that, if(a,b,c) is assigned to x and {a', b' ,c' > is assigned t o / , then d2 * (a-a' f + (b-b' f + (c-c'¥. However, the requirement is neither needed nor appropriate in fixing the initial range of networks to which the nomological criterion is applied. For the point of applying that criterion is to select the geometry which comes closest to achieving nomological uniformity, irrespective of other considerations. The only natural ordering of distance-relations which is relevant to the nomological thesis is the one which emerges in the framework of their nomological selection. So prior to the application of the nomological criterion, we can count any network of relations as a candidate for the physical geometry, so long as, relative to some assignment of distance-numbers to relations, the network meets the requirements of an unbounded, 3-dimensional and Euclidean space. And still more broadly, when we drop the assumption that physical space is unbounded and Euclidean, we can count any network as a candidate, so long as, relative to some assignment, it meets the requirements of3-dimensionality. 3 If A'is the external item which we take to be a physical space, it is theoretically possible that there are two or more geometries for A" which come equally close to achieving nomological uniformity, there being no other geometry which comes closer. Thus, on the one hand, there is the possible case in which the nomological organization is too thin to determine a precise geometrical structure. And, on the other hand, there is the possible case in which different aspects of the organization select different types of geometry, the overall situation being one of swings and roundabouts. These cases are, I must stress, only hypothetical: in the actual world, the nomological organization is (I take it) sufficiently rich and coherent to pick out a unique geometry. None the less, it is still worth asking how the nomological thesis would deal with them. Well, let a be the set of geometries which, by the nomological criterion, tie for first place. Then a defender of the nomological thesis can, I think, reasonably accept the following three principles: (1) If A' qualifies as a physical space, its physical geometry is 147

The refutation of realism indeterminate with respect of a. Put another way, any determinate description of the physical world must be relative to an arbitrary choice of one a-member as the geometrical frame of reference. (2) A'does not qualify as a physical space unless each a-geometry is 3-dimensional. (3) The greater the discrepancy between the different ageometries, the less case there is for taking X to qualify as a physical space. These three principles do not, of course, yield a definite answer for every case, since the third principle does not say how similar the ct-geometries must be for X to qualify as a physical space. But I do not see any point in trying to make the nomological thesis, in its general form, any more precise. Certainly, it is easy to envisage extreme cases where the appropriate answer is obvious. But there are also likely to be cases where a defender of the thesis would want to say that the question of whether * does or does not qualify as a physical space could be argued either way. It is not an objection to the nomological thesis if there are some hypothetical cases where it leaves the status of A" indeterminate, any more than it is an objection if there are some hypothetical cases where, construing X as a physical space, it leaves its physical geometry indeterminate. These three points have helped to clarify the nomological thesis. None the less, there remain a number of importantly different ways in which the thesis can be developed or interpreted. Two of the alternatives will emerge at the end of this chapter, and one of these alternatives will be subject to a further distinction in the next. But I want to begin by considering a possible objection to the thesis in all its forms - an objection which offers a quite different criterion for selecting the physical geometry. The objection runs like this: It is true that there are many, indeed infinitely many, networks of relations, holding between the points of physical space, each of which meets all the formal requirements of a geometrical structure. But it is not on the basis of nomological organization that the network of physical distances is to be selected. Rather, what distinguishes the physical network from the others is that it is the one which, if we knew the intrinsic nature of physical 148

Defence of the nomologicat thesis space, without knowing its nomological organization, we would find it natural to select: it is that one which, independently of nomological considerations, would be conspicuous to someone who knew what the points of space were like in themselves. Thus while, from our actual viewpoint, nomological organization, in so far as we can infer it from our empirical evidence, is our only guide to physical geometry, it is not logically decisive. It could be that the real geometry differs from what the laws suggest and could be seen to differ if, per impossibile, we could look at things sub specie aeternitatis - look at things from the most objective, i.e. the transcendental, viewpoint. For example, if physical space is a sense-field, then, whatever its nomological organization, its physical geometry is determined by the relations of sensible distance between places in the field; for it would be this sensual geometry that was conspicuous to one who knew the intrinsic nature of physical space - who knew that physical points were sense-field places. Consequently, it is, after all, logically possible that physical space is, in respect of its physical geometry, nomologically deviant - possible that its nomological organization is at variance with its geometrical structure. Thus it is logically possible that St Mary's, while functionally located in Oxford, is physically located in Westminster and that Big Ben, while functionally located in Westminster, is physically located in Oxford. For if physical space is a sense-field, it could be that, in terms of the field-relations, the St Mary's region is in Westminster and the Big Ben region is in Oxford, although the laws controlling processes within the field, and controlling the effects of these processes on human experience, are, by the standard of nomological uniformity, exactly as if the positions of these regions were reversed. And it is the intrinsic sensual geometry of the field, not its nomological organization, which determines where the regions are physically located. I shall call this the transcendental objection, and the positive thesis it offers, of the determination of physical geometry, I shall call the transcendental thesis. It should be noted that the transcendentalist is not merely offering a transcendental version of clause (8). He is requiring more of the physical geometry than that its distance-relations should have some natural and pre-nomological ordering in line with their geometrical interpretation. Otherwise, he 149

The refutation of realism would be offering no solution to the problem of the alternative geometries, as posed in the previous chapter - the problem of different networks which satisfy the requirements of FS. The transcendental criterion is intended to be something which, amongst other things, will decide between these alternatives. How should we respond to the transcendental thesis? Well, we should begin by noting two obvious difficulties with it. The first difficulty is that, since we have no way of inspecting things from the transcendental viewpoint (the viewpoint of one who knows the intrinsic nature of physical space), the thesis renders the physical geometry of space empirically inscrutable. All we can discern from our actual (i.e. empirical) viewpoint is the functional geometry-the geometry, topic-neutrally specified, which meets (or comes closest to meeting) the requirements of nomological uniformity. And while the network of relations which constitutes this geometry obtains independently of the laws, we have no grounds for supposing that, independently of the laws, there is any basis for selecting it. We have no grounds for supposing that this functional geometry coincides with the transcendentally natural intrinsic (TNI) geometry - the geometry it would be natural to select, independently of nomological considerations, from the transcendental viewpoint. It might be objected that we do have such grounds - the same grounds as we have, quite generally, for (ceteris paribus) favouring a nomologically simple theory over one that is nomologically complex. After all, if the two geometries coincide, we avoid nomological deviance in respect of the TNI-geometry and thus have simpler laws at the transcendental level. And surely it is reasonable to postulate a TNI-geometry which yields the simplest laws compatible with our empirical data. Is not this just a case of Inference to the best explanation', with nomological simplicity as an explanatory merit? But the objection is misconceived. For there is no way in which the supposition of a transcendental nomological simplicity could, as such, serve any explanatory purpose. The only theory we can empirically justify is one which, being topic-neutral, leaves unspecified the intrinsic nature of the distance-relations it postulates. Considerations of simplicity contribute to the choice of this theory, but to claim that these distance-relations are transcendentally conspicuous in some pre-nomological way adds nothing to its explanatory power. Of course, we could seek a basis for this claim in a richer theory which provided an explanation of the laws 150

Defence of the nomological thesis themselves. Thus we might hypothesize that the laws are imposed by God and chosen so as to display to us, empirically, a structure which is already and distinctively conspicuous to Him. But, apart from the problem of justifying such a hypothesis, I assume that the transcendentalist does not want the acceptability of his thesis to depend on a theological position of this sort. Failing this, the supposition that the functional and TNI-geometries coincide would have to rest on an allegedly self-evident principle that coincidence is objectively more probable than deviance. But I cannot see how such a principle could be seriously entertained. The transcendentalist might reply that this problem for his thesis is only epistemological and that a thesis should not be rejected simply on the grounds that it leaves us with less knowledge or well-grounded belief than we ordinarily suppose ourselves to possess. This is true. But at least we are going to need a very powerful argument in favour of the transcendental thesis, before we would be willing to put physical geometry beyond the scope of empirical appraisal. On the face of it, the epistemological problem is a symptom of some substantial error in the account of how the physical geometry is to be selected. The second difficulty for the transcendental thesis is that there seems to be no guarantee that physical space has a TNI-geometry at all - no guarantee that, independently of nomological considerations, the transcendental viewpoint affords a natural way of selecting a geometry for physical space. It does, of course, afford such a way if physical space is a sense-field; for in such a case, the sensual geometry would be transcendentally conspicuous. But, presumably, physical space might be something quite different - something whose intrinsic nature is of a less intuitively spatial kind - where, even from the transcendental viewpoint, there is no natural way of choosing between the alternative geometries except in terms of nomological organization. The transcendentalist might try to avoid this problem by claiming that the possession of a TNI-geometry is a requirement of something's qualifying as a physical space. But given its epistemological consequences, such a claim would be hard to defend. For, since we have no way of achieving the transcendental viewpoint, the alleged requirement would deprive us of any reason for supposing that the external item which we call 'physical space' qualifies as a physical space in the relevant sense, i.e. qualifies as the sort of item which could form 151

The refutation of realism part of the subject matter of our ordinary physical discourse. This consequence, indeed, is so intolerable that, even if the requirement obtained (and I do not think that it does), we would be justified in revising our concept of a physical space so as to eliminate it. (There is a parallel here with the case of NMR.1) It seems, then, that rather than press the requirement, the transcendentalist would do better to modify his position by restricting the range of cases to which the transcendental criterion applies - by taking the transcendental criterion to be decisive in those cases where physical space has a TNI-geometry, but the nomological criterion to be decisive in those cases where it does not. In other words, it seems that he should retain his original thesis, but with the qualification that if the transcendental viewpoint affords no natural way of choosing between the alternative networks, except in terms of nomological organization, then it is nomological organization which determines the physical geometry. But the trouble with this is that, thus modified, the transcendental thesis is beginning to look somewhat contrived. For why should the nomological criterion fail in those cases where there is a TNI-geometry if it succeeds in those cases where there is not? Once we have conceded so much to the nomological criterion, it is hard to see any rationale for denying its universal applicability. These difficulties with the transcendental thesis are serious. But perhaps they are not enough to remove the challenge to the nomological thesis altogether. For the transcendentalist can still claim, with some initial plausibility, that there is at least one case where our intuitions are on his side, namely where we suppose physical space to be a sense-field. Thus if physical space is a sense-field, there does seem to be aprima facie case for equating its physical geometry with its sensual geometry, irrespective of its nomological organization. If, sensually, the St Mary's region is in Westminster and the Big Ben region is in Oxford, there seems to be a case for saying that our ordinary beliefs about their physical locations are mistaken and that physical space is, even in respect of its physical geometry, nomologically deviant. Before we reject the transcendental thesis altogether, we should examine the sense-field case more closely, to make sure that even here, where the transcendentalist has his best chances, the nomological criterion gives the right results. Obviously, we must focus on examples in which the sensual geometry is nomologically deviant, since it is for 152

Defence of the nomological thesis these examples that the nomological and transcendental criteria conflict. So far, we have only considered a very restricted form of nomological deviance in which the sensual and functional geometries coincide except in respect of the locations of two regions. Thereby, we have ensured that, although the nomological and transcendental criteria give different results, they at least agree in characterizing physical space as a unitary 3-dimensional continuum. We will be in a better position to assess the relative merits of the nomological and transcendental theses, in the chosen area, if we consider cases in which the nomological deviance, and hence the conflict between the rival criteria, is of a more radical kind. In fact, I shall consider two such cases, where what is at issue is, in the one case, the unity of physical space and, in the other, its dimensionality. The first case I want to consider is a development of the original case of RT-deviance. In the original case, there is a single sense-field and a pair of sensually congruent field-regions whose interchange is required for nomological uniformity - each region being functionally located where the other is sensually located. In the new case, there is also a pair of regions whose interchange is required for nomological uniformity, but the two regions belong to different sense-fields. In effect, then, the new case is also a case of RT-deviance, but in a trans-field form, in which each of the relevant regions is intrinsically located in one field and functionally located in the other. In detail, the case to be considered (case /) is this. There are two sense-fields, F a and F b , of the same intrinsic type - each being unbounded, 3-dimensional and Euclidean, and each being a medium for the same range of sense-qualities. The two fields are quite separate - if you like, suppose them to belong to different minds - so that there are no relations of sensible distance between places in one and places in the other. F a exhaustively divides into two portions F a , and F a 2 which lie on opposite sides of an unbounded plane A. Likewise, F b exhaustively divides into two portions Fbi and F b 2 which lie on opposite sides of an unbounded plane B. (Incidentally, the planes are not sensibly marked, anymore than the equator is marked on the earth.) The significance of this division is twofold. In the first place, physical space is the sum of F a 1 and F b 2 . That is, physical space exhaustively divides 153

The refutation of realism into two portions, the points in one portion being the field-places of F\ and the points in other being the field-places of F b 2 . Thus when a material object moves (if we can still speak of movement here) from one portion to the other, the underlying path of qualitypervasion is discontinuous: it disappears into the boundary A of F\ and re-emerges on the other side of the boundary B of F b 2 - t h e whole process being divided between the two fields. Secondly, and in line with this, the nomological organization is such as to yield a case of trans-field RT-deviance, in which the interchange of F\ and F b , (or F a 2 and F b 2 ) is required for nomological uniformity. Everything is nomologically constrained exactly as if, by the standard of uniformity, F a 1 is sensibly continuous with F b 2 and F a 2 is sensibly continuous with F\ (To envisage the details, turn back to the case of E, elaborated in the previous chapter, and adapt it to the trans-field form.) Thus F a j and F b 2 , while portions of different sense-fields, are functionaUy continuous - organized as the contiguous portions of a single space. This, of course, is why we, the subjects whose experiences the processes in F a j and F b 2 control, receive no empirical indication of the underlying discontinuity. Because the only empirically conspicuous geometry is one which the standard of uniformity itself selects, we interpret the two portions of physical space as forming a single undivided continuum. The fact that F a i and F b 2 are portions of different sense-fields is empirically concealed. How, then, is case 1 to be interpreted? What consequences does it have for the physical geometry of space? Consider first the transcendental criterion. According to this criterion, the physical geometry is that geometry which would be conspicuous, independently of nomological considerations, from the transcendental viewpoint - that geometry which it would be natural to select if we knew the intrinsic nature of physical space, without knowing its nomological organization. This criterion, therefore, will yield the result that what we call physical space is really the sum of two physical spaces, with no relations of physical distance connecting the points in one with the points in the other. Thus if x is a point in F a ] and y is a point in F b 2 then, on this account, it is a mistake, even in terms of physical geometry, to speak of the distance between x a n d j or of the spatial route from x to y or of an object moving along a continuous path from x to / . For according to the transcendental criterion, the physical geometry is fixed by the 154

Defence of the nomological thesis sensual geometry, and, in the sensual geometry, places in F*x and places in F b 2 stand in no geometrical relations. This consequence of the transcendental thesis is, it seems to me, manifestly absurd. For, irrespective of its other geometrical properties, what we call physical space must surely be, in terms of its physical geometry, a unitary space, even if, so to speak, its substance - the points which compose it - is drawn from two sense-fields. It may be that whenever I cross the High Street, the process which underlies the movement of my body is divided between two fields, but it is certain that, at the level of physical geometry, my body pursues a continuous path in a single space* This means that for case /, it is only the nomological criterion which yields the correct results. The physical geometry coincides with the functional geometry. F*x and P*i are contiguous portions of the same physical space, in line with their uni-spatial organization. The second case I want to consider involves a nomological deviance of a quite different kind, in which the sensual and functional geometries differ in respect of dimensionality. More specifically, it is a case in which physical space is a sense-field which is sensually 2-dimensional but functionally 3-dimensional. It will be easiest (though the assumption is not necessary) if we assume that the sense-field (F)» though unbounded, is only finitely grained, each F-place being sensually adjacent to four other places, two along one of the dimensions and two along the other. We could then represent the sensual geometry mathematically by a 1-1 function s from the set of F-places to the set of all ordered pairs of integers (both positive and negative) such that two places JC a n d / are adjacent iff, ifs(x) » (aA)ands(y) - (a\bf), then either(l)a - a' andb-b' ~ ± I or(2)£ = 6 ' a n d a - a ' « ± 1. Given this assumption, let us suppose that there are two sense-qualities Qx and Q2 such that it is logically necessary that, for each F-place x and each time /, x is either characterized by Qx or characterized by Q2, but not both.2 It is also necessary, whether logically or nomologically, that every episode of characterization is temporally extended, so that if a place is ^-characterized at /, where either Q — Q} or Q — Q2, it is ^-characterized throughout some /-containing period. Let us say that g is a 3-dimensional assignment iff g is a 1-1 function from the set of F-places to the set of all ordered triples of integers (both positive and negative). And let us say that two places JC and y are g-adjacent iff g is a 155

The refutation of realism 3-dimensional assignment such that if g(x) = (afb,c) and g(y) **4*-time arrangement of minds (each mind following an /4*-time continuous path). This means that, as 184

Full anti-realism in the case of Uh each atom coincides throughout its history with a unique mind and each mind coincides throughout its history with a unique atom. But it also means that, as in the case of t/2, atoms and Jf-minds are numerically distinct, since none of the coincidences is logically guaranteed. Now all three types of ultimate reality yield physical worlds of the same physical character. The replacement of Ux by U2 makes no difference to the spatiotemporal arrangement of atoms, nor to the physical and psychophysical laws, since the paths of the atoms are not affected by the positional exchanges of the tf-minds. Likewise, of course, there is no alteration, physically, in arrangement and laws when LJ\ is replaced by i/3. However, while all three types of reality yield physical worlds of the same physical character, the matter-selective realist cannot allow that they yield physical worlds of the same ontological status. For the realist wants to use U} as an example of a reality in which atoms are retained as ontologically primitive. It is crucial to this example - as an example of matter-selective realism - that atoms and /C-minds be numerically identical, since only thus do we get atoms as ingredients of the ultimate reality. But, as we have seen, atoms and tf-minds are not identical in either U2 or t/3. And, since ^-minds are the only ontologically primitive continuants, this means that, in the cases of U2 and i/3, atoms are ontologically derivative: they are entities whose existence is logically sustained by the way the tf-minds are nomologically organized. Thus the matter-selective realist is forced to say that if (/, is replaced by either U2 or £/3, the tf-minds cease to be atoms and a new set of atoms is created, and that if U2 or t/3 is replaced by t/lf the tf-minds become atoms and the original set of atoms disappears. These are strange consequences of the realist's position. The ontological alterations at the physical level seem out of all proportion to the marginal alterations in the ultimate reality. In fact, if we focus on the comparison of Ux with f/3, we can see that the realist's position is incoherent. Let us suppose that, in the actual world, the underlying reality is of type t/3. On this supposition, the actual laws permit AT-minds to exchange their ^"-positions in appropriate circumstances, though, purely by chance, no such exchanges occur, even when the appropriate circumstances obtain. As we have seen, this means that atoms and #-minds are numerically distinct, even though, throughout their history, each atom coincides with a single mind and each mind 185

The refutation of realism coincides with a single atom* Let us call the set of atoms F and the set of A'-minds A. Now, given the permissive laws, each atom has the nomological capacity to coincide with different AT-minds at different times and each AT-mind has the nomological capacity to coincide with different atoms at different times. But it is clearly not logically essential either to the members of F or to the members of A that they should have this capacity. Holding F and A constant, we can envisage a possible world W which is exactly like the actual world except that, with stronger laws, this nomological capacity is removed - a world which contains the very same atoms and the very same minds, but in which positional exchanges between AT-minds are nomologically excluded. In other words, we can construct around F and A a counterfactual situation in which the physical world remains the same but the underlying reality is of type U\- Now, obviously, just as F is the set of atoms in the actual world, so also it is the set of atoms in W. Moreover, since F-members and A-members are numerically distinct in the actual world, they remain numerically distinct in W. So by envisaging W, we have envisaged a world in which a Ux -reality obtains but in which atoms are ontologically derivative. But, according to matterselective realism, such a reality is one in which the atoms are identical with AT-minds and thus ontologically primitive. The realist might object that the possibility of a ^-world in which atoms are ontologically derivative does not entail the impossibility of a Ux -world in which atoms are ontologically primitive. Thus he might claim that given the actual world (a l/3-world), as specified, there are two different ways of transforming it into a Ux -world according to how much of the ontology we hold constant: if we retain both A and F, we reach a Ux-world in which atoms are derivative; but if we just retain A, we reach a L^-world in which the A'-minds become atoms and hence in which atoms are primitive. In each case, he would say, what we retain or discard is a matter for stipulation - a question of choosing our entities and then constructing the counterfactual situation around them. Alternatively, he might claim that, even if, given our supposition about the actual world, there is no way of envisaging a Ux -world in which the members of A are atoms, none the less there is no incoherence in supposing that the actual world is one in which a L^-reality obtains and in which the AT-minds are atoms. But neither of these claims is defensible. In the first place, while it is true that a merely 186

Full anti-realism qualitative description of a possible world leaves some freedom to stipulate the identities of the objects it contains, it is clearly incoherent to suppose that there are two possible worlds in which the ultimate realities are of exactly the same type and contain exactly the same primitive objects, but in which there are ontological differences at the physical level. For there cannot be differences at the physical level unless there is some difference in the ultimate reality to generate them. Consequently, we cannot make sense of the suggestion that, given an actual £/3-world, we can, holding A constant, reach different U\-worlds according to whether we retain or discard F. Granted that we can envisage a Ux -world containing F and A, we cannot also envisage a Ux -world containing A alone and thus cannot envisage a U{ -world in which A-members are atoms. Moreover, for the same reason, we cannot coherently postulate an actual f/ r world in which atoms are ontologically primitive. For given an actual U\ -world Wu we can, holding the /C-minds constant, envisage a possible £/3-world W2 in which atoms are ontologically derivative, and thence, holding both the A'-minds and the atoms constant, envisage a possible L^-world Wy in which atoms are ontologically derivative. Wx and W3 will then turn out to be the same world, since there is nothing to distinguish them at the level of ultimate reality. Consequently, Wx will be a world in which atoms are ontologically derivative. The upshot of this is that ASV is incoherent. Even if we suppose the ultimate reality to be as ASV postulates, we cannot identify atoms with tf-minds, since we can envisage the same atoms and minds in different circumstances (a C/3-world) where they are clearly distinct. So even in the case of a £/rreality we must take the atoms, like the physical space, to be ontologically derivative - to be the logical creation of the AT-minds and the nomological organization of their auditory states. But, clearly, the same considerations apply, mutatis mutandis, to any version of matter-selective realism. Thus whatever ontologically primitive continuants the realist postulates, we can envisage a possible world, containing the same primitive entities and the same material objects, but in which, with more permissive laws, the 1-1 coincidence of primitive and material items is only accidental. And by focusing on this possibility, we can see that, even in the postulated world, the items are not identical. Consequently, there is no way of constructing a coherent version of matter-selective realism - no way in which, accepting physical 187

The refutation of realism space as a logical creation, we can retain material objects as ontologically primitive. This conclusion is, in any case, what our modal intuition requires - our intuition that the occupancy of space is an essential attribute of material objects. All that remains is to show how nicely the conclusion and the intuition fit together. We have already established that physical space (if it exists at all) is ontologically derivative. We know, moreover, that if physical space is ontologically derivative and if, as our intuition requires, material objects are essentially spatial, then material objects too are ontologically derivative. But it is also true that by taking material objects to be ontologically derivative, we can explain why they are essentially spatial. They are essentially spatial because they are ontologically constituted as occupants of space. This holds whether or not space is taken as primitive. If, as we originally supposed, space were primitive, material objects would derive their existence from the distribution and organization of the intrinsic states of points at times. If, as we now know, space is derivative, space and material objects derive their existence from a common source, in such a way that the creation of the objects logically requires the creation of their spatial medium. Thus, in the examples we have been considering, the ,4 Mime arrangement of the tf-minds and its nomological organization suffice to create the atoms only because the organization, by as it were, embodying a 3-dimensional structure, creates a space to contain them. Quite generally, whatever the ontological status of physical space, material objects are essentially spatial because their spatial character is the inevitable consequence of their mode of creation. Obviously the considerations which require us to assign a derivative status to material objects (if they exist) also require us to assign a derivative status to any other occupants of physical space (e.g. sub-atomic particles, if these count as non-material). In consequence, since neither physical space nor its occupants are ontologically primitive, we are forced to accept that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. In other words, we are forced to reject physical realism altogether. From now on our concern will be to work out, in more detail, what we should put in its place. Should our anti-realism be nihilistic or reductivist? And if reductivist, what form of reduction should we accept? These are the questions to be considered in Part IV. 188

PART IV

THE CASE FOR PHENOMENALISM

12 THE REJECTION OF THE ISOMORPHISM-REQUIREMENT

We have established, and established a priori, that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. So physical realism is false - indeed, incoherent. But a realist could still try to salvage something from this conclusion. In the first place, as we saw at the outset,1 anti-realism admits of two versions, namely nihilism, which denies the existence of a physical world altogether, and reductivism, which accepts its existence, but as the logical product of something else. Obviously, while both these positions are anti-realist, reductivism is closer than nihilism to physical realism, since, like realism, but unlike nihilism, it retains the existence of a physical world. Moreover, reductivism itself admits of different versions, according to the type of reduction involved, and some of these versions are closer to realism than others. Thus reductivism moves closer to realism if it sees the creation of the physical world as necessarily involving an ultimate reality which is predominantly external to human minds. It moves still closer if it requires this external reality to be similar, in structure and laws, to the physical world it creates. And it comes closest of all if it requires the physical world and this reality to be isomorphic. So it is possible to retain much of the realist's position within the framework of anti-realism. Incidentally, when I speak of the existence of a physical world, I mean this to cover both the existence of physical entities and the obtaining physical facts. And, correspondingly, when I speak of the logical creation of a physical world, I mean this to cover both the creation of physical entities and the sustainment of physical facts. In the second case, I could have spoken, instead, of the logical production

191

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-16

The case for phenomenalism of the physical world, since, in chapter 1,1 introduced the predicate 'logical product of to cover both sustainment and creation. But, for some reason, I have a stylistic preference for the term *creation* in the present context. How much of the realist's position, then, should we retain? How close to or far from physical realism should our anti-realism go? I am going to divide our discussion of this question into two stages. In the first stage, which will cover this chapter and the next, I shall be exclusively concerned with the relative merits of different versions of reductivism. I shall, in effect, take the existence of a physical world for granted and simply try to establish the principles of its creation. In the second stage, covering chapters 14 and 15, I shall return to the issue between reductivism and nihilism - the issue of whether, given our anti-realism, there is or could be a physical world at all. The version of reductivism which is furthest from physical realism - the version which is, one might say, on the brink of nihilism - is that which takes the physical world to be logically created by the character of and (natural) constraints on the course of human experience. We already have a label for this position: reductive phenomenalism. Leaving aside the challenge of nihilism (to be considered later), it is this position which I shall try to defend, though with two modifications. The first modification is simply a narrowing of the phenomenalist thesis to read: The physical world is the logical creation of (merely) the constraints on human experience.' (Thus the character of human experience is treated as physically irrelevant except in so far as it reflects the constraints.) From now on, I shall take 'reductive phenomenalism1 to signify this narrower thesis. The second modification will emerge at the end of chapter 13, but I think it best, for the time being, to leave it concealed. To avoid any confusion, there are two preliminary points which must be borne in mind. Firstly, as we noted in chapter I,2 reductive phenomenalism is not the same as and does not entail analytical phenomenalism. In claiming that the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, it is not committed to claiming that statements about the physical world can be analysed into statements about the experiential constraints. I feel the need to emphasize this yet again because I am conscious of using the term 'reductive* in what may be, in philosophical circles, 192

Rejection of the isomorphism-requirement an unusual sense. Secondly, reductive phenomenalism does not, as such, deny the existence o\ an external reality, nor even deny it a role in the creation of the physical world. For in claiming that the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience it does not denv that these constraints are imposed by something external to the human minds. What it claims is that the constraints, on their own suffice for the creation of the physical world, irrespective of what, if anything, lies behind them - that if there is an ultimate external reality, it contributes nothing to the existence of the physical world except what it contributes to the obtaining of the constraints. The phenomenalist does not even have to deny that the existence of such a reality is logically necessary for the creation of a physical world. For he may be prepared to concede that, without something to impose them, there could be no constraints of a world-creating type. Such a concession would not undermine his claim that it is these constraints, on their own, which create the physical world, and that anything else contributes only indirectly, by contributing to the constraints. It will be easiest if we begin by considering the claims of reductive phenomenalism in the framework of a particular, and by now familiar, example. Let us assume that the physical world {PW) is composed of the following elements: (1) time; (2) a 3-dimensional Euclidean space; (3) a stock of spherical material particles, these particles having an arrangement, in space-time, of determinate type A; (4) a set a of laws governing the motion of particles in the normal Newtonian way. In addition, we will assume that there is a set 0 of psychophysical laws, assigning experiential effects in human minds to particleconfigurations. More precisely, we will assume that there is a function/, from configuration-types to experience-types, and 1-1 correlation between human minds and non-overlapping groups of particles, such that P ensures that, for any time t, mind m and correlated particle-group g, m has an experience of type y at t iff, for some c, g has a configuration of type c at / and/(c) — V- Thus 0 correlates each human mind with a particular group of particles (intuitively, the group which forms its neural embodiment) in such a way that the configuration of this group, at any time, determines 193

The case for phenomenalism (in accordance with f) the simultaneous experiential state of the mind.3 The total physical reality, PW + 0, I shall designate by P. Needless to say, these assumptions about the composition of the physical world and its nomological links with human experience are a considerable over-simplification of the truth. But, as I have emphasized on other occasions, this sort of simplification is required for the purposes of philosophical clarity. Along with these assumptions about the nature of the physical reality, we will begin by envisaging an ultimate reality (U) consisting of the following elements: rfl)Time. (2)A 3-dimensional Euclidean sense-field F, existing in some non-human mind. / External components (3)An F-time distribution, of (EC) determinate type Z), of two 1/4 sense-qualities Qx and Q2. (4)A set a' of laws governing External ^ the distribution of Qt and reality Q2. (E) A set P' of laws assigning experiential effects in V human minds to quality-configurations in F Human minds/subjects

We will assume that, for some F-distance r, a' ensures, amongst other things, that (a) at any time, the total portion of F which is gj-pervaded divides exhaustively into non-overlapping spheres of radius r (every other region of F being £ r pervaded), and (b) all changes in Qx- pervasion are F-time continuous. Because of this, we will often find it convenient, when describing events in F, to speak as if the spheres of Q} -pervasion were mobile continuants - each sphere preserving its identity through an F-time continuous series of region-moments. Adopting this way of speaking, we will assume that P and E are isomorphic, i.e. that the F-time arrangement of Qx -continuants matches the space-time arrangement of particles (both being of determinate type A) and that a' and fj' (in respect of Qx -continuants) match a and 3 (in respect of particles). This means, in particular, that 3' correlates each human mind with a particular group of Qx-continuants (just as 3 correlates it with a particular group of particles) in such a way that the configuration 194

Rejection of the isomorphism-requirement of this group, at any time, causally determines the simultaneous experiential state of the mind in accordance with/. Now, for each mind m and time t, the F-time distribution of ft and Qi up to and including t (or more intuitively, the arrangement, velocities and directions of ft-continuants at r), together with a' and P', sets a certain constraint on the course of m's experience at and after /. It does so in two ways: firstly, by causally determining, according to the /-configuration of the group of (^-continuants which is correlated with m, the experience of m at /; secondly, by causally influencing the subsequent configurations of this correlated group and, thereby, influencing the course of m's experience after t. (If the laws of motion (a') are, like the laws of experiential effect (p'), deterministic, then the distribution of qualities up to t determines their distribution subsequent to / and, thereby, determines the subsequent course of m's experience. But even if it does not determine the subsequent course of w's experience, it at least narrows the range of possibilities.) This constraint on the course of m's experience, imposed by the F-time distribution up to /, we may call the mt the constraints on the behaviour of A and B are the same as the constraints in E. Likewise, we have the same constraints on human experience. Thus suppose that, in E, A and B are members of the group of d-spheres correlated with the human mind M and that their collision at p at f3 would (given the rest of the ^-configuration of this group at t3) suffice, under P', to produce a simultaneous experience in M. Then in E6, the same type of experience is ensured in M at th even though the collision does not occur. In short, apart from the unchanging state of/*, everything is organized, both in the field and in human minds, exactly as if A and B followed their original uninterrupted courses, as in £, in the framework of the original laws a' and 3'. (As an alternative illustration, we could imagine a sequence of events in which, all within the region R, two spheres enter, collide within and re-emerge from the period T) Like Ex and E2, E6 exhibits a kind of nomological deviance. Its organization is not uniform with respect to its intrinsic structure. Uniformity can only be restored by re-inserting in R-T the eliminated spots of Qx-pervasion, thus eliminating the law that R-T is wholly gj-pervaded, and subsuming the rest of the organization under the general laws a' and P' - in short, by converting E6 back into E. Thus the functional (uniformity-achieving) structure of £ 6 , like that of Ex and E2, coincides, not with its intrinsic structure, but with the intrinsic structure of E. Moreover, as in the case of Ex and E2y the functional structure seems to be what is physically relevant. Following the precedent of those earlier cases, our inclination is to say that, in the physical world which E6 creates, the space-time distribution of material occupancy and emptiness matches the F-time distribution of Qx and Q2 in E (so that, although R-T is 218

The principles of creation wholly Q2-pervaded, material particles follow uninterrupted courses through the corresponding region of physical space over the same period), and that, quite generally, the physical reality has the character we attributed to P in the original example. Now this conclusion is not incompatible with the representational thesis. Nor is it incompatible with this thesis when the notion of empirical representation is defined in the suggested way. Quite the reverse. The conclusion follows from the thesis construed in terms of that definition. For we can find a characterization of E6 which meets all the requirements. Thus let us say that an F-region x is Qx-associated at a time / iff some portion of the pre-r distribution of Qx and Q2 (i.e. of the total F-time distribution preceding t) would, if a' obtained, necessitate the &-pervasion of x at t. Notice that to ascribe Qx -association to a region x at a time t says nothing about how x is pervaded at /; nor does it say anything about the laws which obtain. It only says something about the quality-distribution prior to /. It claims that the prior distribution is such that from it, together with the assumption of a', the Qrpervasion of x at / is deducible (whether or not a' actually obtains and whether or not x is actually Qx -pervaded at /). Let us next, in terms of Qr association, introduce two further properties Xx and X2. Xx applies to a region x at a time / iff (a) if t falls outside T, then x is g r pervaded at f, and (b) if/ falls within T, then every part of x which lies outside R is Qx -pervaded at t and every part of JC which lies inside R is both Q2-psrv&ded and Q,-associated at /. X2 applies to a region JC at a time / iff x is Q2-perv&ded at / and no part of JC is Qx -associated at /. Then E6 is what we obtain from E by substituting Xx for Qx -pervasion and X2 for (?2~P ervas i° n throughout, so that (he F-time distribution o(Xx and X2 in E6 matches the F-time distribution of Qx and Q2 in E and the laws for Xx and X2 in E6 have the same form as the laws, a' and 3', for Qx and Q2 in E? Let us call this characterization of F 6 , in terms of Xx and X2, K. Now we are assuming that (relative to its natural characterization, in terms of Qx and Q2) E exemplifies the type of structure encoded by the experiential constraints (CT) which it generates. Consequently, since E and E6 generate the same experiential constraints, it is also true that, relative to K, E6 exemplifies the type of structure encoded by the constraints it generates. Moreover, the encoding of this structure systematically depends on the AT-relative exemplification in the required way: that is to say, for each aspect A of the 219

The case for phenomenalism structure, the ^-relative exemplification of A is at least part of what accounts for the encoding of A by the constraints. So E6 meets all the conditions of empirical representation as we defined it: there is a type of structure (the one it exemplifies relative to K) under which E6 is empirically represented at the human viewpoint. Since this is the type of structure which P exemplifies, it follows from the representational thesis that E6 sustains a physical reality with the same character as P. In other words, the thesis endorses our original inclination, following the precedent of Ex and E2, to take the functional structure of E6 as what is physically relevant. How, then, might we see this case as undermining the representational thesis? The answer is that it forms a kind of bridge with cases which meet the phenomenalistic conditions but not the representational requirement. The point is that, in £ 6 , the regionperiod R-T has been rendered physically irrelevant: because it is a law that R-T is wholly Q2-perv&ded, the physical consequences are the same as if (perhaps, per impossible) the region did not exist over that period - the field being, throughout r, internally bounded by an /^-shaped hole in which no sense-qualities were, or could be, realized. It is true, of course that the attribution of Xx and X2 to regions within R at times within T plays a crucial role in K: it is in terms of these properties that we get an /'-time distribution matching the space-time distribution of matter and get laws of distribution and experiential effect matching the physical and psychophysical laws. But, whatever the R-T distribution of Xx and X2, all we can deduce from it about the intrinsic state of R-T is that R-T is wholly Q2-perva.ded. Anything else we can deduce concerns the distribution of the sense-qualities over F at earlier times. (It is this, of course, which makes the /^-characterization contrived, in the same way that the characterization of Ex in terms of*! and * 2 is contrived - the ascription of*, (* 2 ) to a region of R{ is really the ascription of Qrpervasion ((^-pervasion) to the corresponding region of R2, and vice versa.) We might just as well eliminate R throughout T and make up the loss to the domain of Xx and X2 with an appropriate portion of some purely abstract space - a portion corresponding to the /^-shaped hole in F. The significance of this is that as we increase the size of R and T, so, even by the standards of the representational thesis, E6 comes steadily closer to the phenomenalistic case, in which the physical reality is sustained by the experiential constraints alone. For as we 220

The principles of creation increase the size of R and T, so we diminish the portion of the external component which is operative in the sustainment. And we can make R and T as large as we like, so long as we retain some pre-7 period by which to fix the R-T distribution of Xx and Xv Even if we make R equal to F and make T cover everything after the first few seconds of the 'big bang', we still have the same constraints on human experience and the same A'-relative exemplification of the structure which these constraints encode. And, consequently, we still have, by the representational thesis, a sustainment of the same physical reality. But if the operative portion of F-time can be thus diminished, without affecting the existence or character of the physical world, it is hard to stop short of the full phenomenalist position. If, without revising our physical beliefs, we can coherently suppose that the ultimate external reality has remained unchanged over the last million years and will remain unchanged until the end of time, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the physical reality is the product of the experiential constraints alone and that the external reality, whatever form it takes, has relevance only as the determinant of the constraints. If E6 suffices for P, however extensive (preserving some pre-T period) we make R and T, it is hard to see the representational requirement as anything but arbitrary. It may be objected that the moral to be drawn from this is not that phenomenalism is correct, but that, contrary to what we supposed, E6 does not sustain a physical reality with the structure of P. But, on closer inspection, it is clear that such a conclusion is not available. If E6 does not sustain a physical reality with the structure of P, there are only two possibilities: (1) that E6 sustains no physical reality at all; and (2) that E6 sustains a physical reality with a different type of structure - presumably a reality isomorphic with E6 itself. The first alternative is highly counter-intuitive in the case where R and T are very small. Just as E6 approaches the phenomenalistic case as R and Tare increased, so it approaches the case of E as R and T are decreased. Unless we can find some quite general reason for being nihilistic - a reason which applies even when, relative to its natural characterization, the external reality has a physically appropriate structure - it seems impossible to deny that, for a sufficiently small R-T, E6 suffices for a physical reality of some 221

The case for phenomenalism kind. On the other hand, the second alternative is incompatible with the principles we have already established. If E6 has an empirical representation at all, it is represented under the structure of P, since it is this structure which is encoded by the experiential constraints. So if we take E6 to sustain a physical reality with a different structure - a reality (presumably) in which the distribution and organization of matter coincide with the distribution and organization of Qx - we abandon the principle of representation and undermine the principles of uniformity and relevance for which this principle provides the rationale. Ultimately, there is no way of pursuing the second alternative without reinstating the full-blooded isomorphism-requirement which we have already refuted. The only way of avoiding the phenomenalist position would be to draw a line through the spectrum of R-T sizes, so that, for all sizes below a certain limit, E6 sustains a physical reality with the structure of P and, for all sizes above that limit, it sustains no physical reality at all. This would be to retain the principle of representation, since wherever there is a physical reality, it has that structure under which the underlying external reality is empirically represented. But it would fall short of full-blooded phenomenalism, since there would be no physical reality at all if the intrinsic structure of the external reality deviated too radically from the structure encoded by the constraints. Of course, the exact location of the line is bound to be arbitrary, since the spectrum of R-T sizes is continuous: there is bound to be, as it were, a range of borderline cases whose status, as sufficing or not sufficing for a physical reality, is irresolvably arguable. But this, it might be said, is just the familiar problem of vagueness which we encounter in so many other cases. At what point, for example, does a table cease to exist if we remove its atoms one by one? However, in the case of E6i the problem goes deeper than this. When we remove an atom from a table, we are altering, if only marginally, its shape and size. It may be difficult to see any particular atom-removal as decisive in destroying the table; but, at the same time, we are forced to acknowledge that a sufficient number of atom-removals adds up to an alteration which is decisive, since, at each stage, it is only in virtue of possessing a tabular shape and size that the residual collection of atoms could qualify as a table. It is precisely because the removal of one atom alters the shape and size of the table that 222

The principles of creation the removal of sufficiently many atoms destroys it altogether. But, in the case of £ 6 , a marginal increase in the size of R-T is not matched by any alteration, however marginal, in the character of the physical reality. For, so long as some physical reality remains, its character is determined (in accordance with the principle of representation) by the character of the experiential constraints, and these constraints remain unchanged. So what we have to envisage in this case, unlike the case of the table, is that a way of altering the underlying reality which makes no physical difference can be extended to a point where it makes all the difference. Such an interpretation of E6 may be logically coherent; but it is devoid of any rationale. Why even think of drawing a line through the spectrum if the size of R~T is physically irrelevant up to the selected point? To do so would just be to succumb to the influence of our original anti-phenomenalist intuitions, which, by now, have been totally discredited. It seems to me, therefore, that, once we have endorsed the principle of representation (that the physically relevant structure of the ultimate external reality is that structure under which the reality is empirically represented at the human viewpoint), we cannot, if we accept the existence of a physical world at all, stop short of the full phenomenalist position. Having said this, I must now add a qualification. For I think there is one respect in which the phenomenalist position needs to be modified - though not in the direction of the representational thesis. As things stand, the phenomenalist claims that the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, where each constraint is a causal limitation on the subsequent course of experience for a particular mind at a particular time. What I think he should claim is that the physical world is the logical creation of these constraints, together with the fact that their fitting together, to encode a physical structure, is non-accidental. More precisely, I think that, for the sustainment of a physical reality, two conditions are necessary and (assuming there is no a priori argument for nihilism) jointly sufficient: (1) The totality of constraints encodes a physical structure, i.e. encodes a type of structure which could be the structure of a physical reality. (2) The fact that the different constraints, for different mindtime pairs, harmonize, so as jointly to encode a physical 223

The case for phenomenalism structure, is guaranteed by the general method of constraint-generation - a method which thus preserves the harmony through possible variations in the specific external conditions which obtain and the consequent variations in the constraints these conditions impose. To illustrate, here are two types of case which fail to meet the second condition: (a) There is a 1-1 correlation between human minds and external sense-fields such that (i) the course of experience in each mind is controlled by the configurations of qualities in the correlated field, (ii) each field has its own internal organization, but there are no nomological links between different fields, and there is no other external item on which processes in different fields are nomologically dependent, and (iii) purely by chance, the quality-distributions in the different fields harmonize in such a way as to generate, in the framework of the laws, constraints which fit together, across different minds, to encode a single physical structure. (b) There is a 1-1 correlation between times and external sense-fields such that (i) at each time, human experience is controlled by the quality-configurations in the correlated field, (ii) each field has its own internal organization, but there are no nomological links between different fields, and there is no other external item on which processes in different fields are nomologically dependent, and (iii) purely by chance, the quality-distributions in the different fields harmonize in such a way as to generate, in the framework of the laws, constraints which fit together, across different times, to encode a single physical structure. In neither of these cases does the ultimate reality qualify, by my conditions, as sustaining a physical reality, since the fit between the different constraints, whether across minds or across times, depends on a harmony between the fields which is merely coincidental. We cannot say that the fit is guaranteed by the general method by which the constraints are generated, since it would disappear if the quality-distributions were altered in some random way, the method of constraint-generation remaining the same. My reason for 224

The principles of creation requiring such a guarantee is that, without it, the constraints would not be sufficiently connected to combine in the creation of a single physical world. If there is to be a public and persistent world - the same world for different minds, the same world at different times - then surely the harmony of encoding across both minds and times must be ensured by certain fundamental aspects of the underlying external reality (e.g. its laws) independently of what particular constraints are, in accordance with the specific external conditions, imposed. This requirement is, of course, met by each of the cases E, E,, ... E6. It should be noted that this modification to the phenomenalist position does not reinstate any kind of isomorphism-requirement. It does not require that the underlying reality exemplify the structure of the physical reality it sustains, nor even that it does so relative to a suitable characterization. My conditions would be satisfied if the constraints were directly imposed by God with the intention of securing their fit. For such an intention, together with the omnipotence of God, would constitute that fundamental aspect of the underlying reality which ensured the harmony of encoding, across both minds and times, independently of the particular constraints imposed. From now on, I shall take the label 'reductive phenomenalism' to signify the phenomenalist position as thus modified. And if I usually, for brevity, characterize this position as the thesis that the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, it must be understood that the modification, though not expressed, still applies.

225

14

THE CHALLENGE OF NIHILISM

As I have often emphasized, anti-realism is compatible with two contrasting positions; it is compatible with reductivism, which accepts the existence of a physical world, though one which is logically created by an underlying non-physical reality, and it is compatible with nihilism, which denies the existence of a physical world altogether. The argument I have developed in the last two chapters does not establish which of these positions we should adopt. The argument shows what form reductivism must take, if reductivism is correct; but it does not show that reductivism is correct. It establishes that the physical world, if there is one, is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience; but it does not establish that there is, nor even that there could be, a physical world. It is time to examine the issue between reductivism and nihilism more closely. There are three ways in which a nihilist position, or something approximating to it, might be defended. Firstly, it might be argued that our belief in the existence of a physical world, while coherent, cannot be empirically justified and that, in consequence, it would be irrational to retain it. This, of course, would be an argument for scepticism rather than for full-blooded nihilism. Secondly, and more strongly, it might be argued that our very concept of a physical world is inherently realist and that, consequently, the refutation of realism is a proof that this concept has, and can have, no application. If successful, this argument would show reductivism to be incoherent and establish nihilism a priori. Thirdly, and in a similar vein, it might be argued that, whether or not it is inherently

226

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-18

The challenge of nihilism realist, our concept of a physical world is at least inherently anti-phenomenalist, and that, consequently, we should look on the argument of the last two chapters not as a defence of phenomenalism, but as a reductio of reductivism. This argument too, if successful, would establish nihilism a priori. The second and third arguments, which dispute the coherence of reductivism, are clearly more central to our concern. But I shall begin by saying something about the first, partly because it has an important bearing on the more central issues to be considered later. It might seem that the sceptical argument, while possibly threatening to other forms of reductivism, has little force against the phenomenalistic form which I have been defending, since this form minimizes the logical gap between our experiential evidence and our physical beliefs. The phenomenalism after all, construes the physical world as the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, the physical realization of a certain structure being nothing over and above the encoding of that structure by the constraints. To establish the existence and character of the physical world, we have, it seems, merely to decipher the code, and this presumably we can do, at least to some considerable degree, by looking for the simplest topic-neutral theory which explains the actual course of our experience. Of course, even on a phenomenalist account, the physical facts transcend our experiential evidence: at no time do we have, either individually or collectively, a complete record of human experience, and even if we did, it would not conclusively establish the obtaining of certain experiential constraints. None the less, it could be claimed that our evidence is enough to justify our physical beliefs, and that the grounds for scepticism are considerably less for the phenomenalist than for someone who makes the physical facts depend more crucially on the nature of the ultimate external reality. Admittedly, given my modification (at the end of the last chapter), there is one respect in which even the phenomenalist has to take account of this external reality. For the creation of a physical world requires that the harmony of encoding, across minds and times, is ensured by the general method of constraint-generation. But once the harmony is discovered, it seems reasonable to infer that it is non-accidental in this way, just as it seems reasonable to attribute an inherent bias to a coin which, over a long series of tosses, consistently turns up heads. However, this way of representing our epistemological situation 227

The case for phenomenalism is doubly misconceived, and, once the misconceptions are exposed, it will be seen that, even in the case of phenomenalism, there is a sceptical challenge to be met. In the first place, and here I endorse an earlier suggestion,1 most of our information about the course of human experience is itself evidentially grounded, in one way or another, on our information about the physical world. This is obviously so in the case of one subject having information about the experiences of another. For such information is only available to the extent that the character of the experiences can be inferred from the behaviour (including the verbal behaviour) and physical circumstances of the subject who has them. But it is also true in the case of a subject's knowledge of his own past experiences. I believe that my past experiences have collectively exhibited a certain coherence and thematic character - the sort which would be most simply explained by postulating an external reality with a physically appropriate structure. But I hold this belief only because I already accept the existence of a physical world and accept a certain account of the way in which my experiences and physical circumstances are systematically linked. It is true that I can directly recall a number of experiences - at least I think I can. But even here I rely heavily on my recollection of physical circumstances in fixing their temporal order, the temporal distances between them and their remoteness from the present. Divorced from my physical knowledge, the evidential value of these acts of recall would be very slight. This is not to deny that my current knowledge of the physical world (if it is knowledge) is in some way grounded on my past experiences. Presumably, it is only because they are causally derived from and rationally appropriate to (what is from a God's eye view) the accumulated evidence of past experience, that my current physical beliefs, if true, qualify as knowledge. But this does not mean, nor is it the case, that my current access to this evidence is independent of the physical knowledge it has supplied. Without relying on this knowledge, I cannot, to any significant degree, survey the course of my past experience to see whether the physical beliefs it has implanted are ones which it objectively warrants. In consequence, phenomenalism provides no automatic defence against the sceptic's challenge. For while phenomenalism construes the physical world as the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, we depend on our physical knowledge to establish what experiential constraints obtain. 228

The challenge of nihilism The second misconception is more subtle and concerns the nature of reductive phenomenalism itself. To appreciate it, we must start by taking a closer look at the relation of logical sustainment. As stated in the original definition,2 one fact or set of facts F is logically sustained by another fact or set of facts F' iff F obtains wholly in virtue of F' in the following sense: (a) Fis a logical consequence of F \ i.e. it is logically necessary that if F' obtains, then F obtains. (b) Fis mediated by F', i.e. the obtaining of Fis achieved through the obtaining o f f . (c) Fis exhausted by F', i.e. the obtaining of Fis nothing over and above the obtaining of F'. But there is a distinction to be drawn between two kinds of sustainment - kinds which, to mark the difference, I shall call prospective and retrospective. Thus let us suppose that F is logically sustained by F \ in accordance with the definition. Then I shall say that the sustainment is prospective iff someone who knew that F' obtained could, on that basis alone, establish its sustainment of F. In contrast, I shall say that the sustainment is refrospective iff it could only be established by someone who, in addition to knowing that Ff obtained, had independent knowledge of the obtaining of F Obviously, there is a parallel distinction between prospective and retrospective creation. An entity JC is the logical creation of the fact or set of facts F iff the existence of x (the fact that x exists) is logically sustained by F. So the creation of an entity is prospective or retrospective according to whether its existence is prospectively or retrospectively sustained. To construct an example of prospective sustainment, suppose that John weighs 14 stone and Mary weighs 10 stone. Then the fact (F{) that John weighs 14 stone and the fact (F2) that Mary weighs 10 stone jointly sustain the fact (F3) that John is heavier than Mary. For F3 obtains wholly in virtue of F^ and F2 in accordance with the definition. Moreover, the sustainment is clearly prospective. For anyone who knew the specific weights of John and Mary could, on this basis alone, establish their weight-relation (F3) and establish it as something which those specific weights (Fx and F2) logically sustain. The sustainment is prospective because it is discernible through a knowledge of the sustaining facts alone. But not all cases of sustainment are prospective. Thus consider the case in which, 229

The case for phenomenalism prior to the rejection of realism, we take the existence and arrangement of material continuants to be logically sustained by the spatiotemporal distribution and nomological organization of a certain quality. Assuming material continuants to come in the form of spherical particles, of the same size and type, we suppose that, for some quality Q, the underlying physical reality consists of a spatiotemporal distribution of Qy together with certain laws which ensure, amongst other things, that (1) at each time, the spatial distribution of Q divides into non-overlapping spheres of the appropriate (particle) size, and (2) over time, all changes in the spatial distribution of Q are spatiotemporally continuous. The distribution and laws are chosen in such a way as to allow us to construe the particle-continuants as constituted by the spatiotemporally and causally continuous paths of spherical Q-pervasion. But the derivative ontology of continuants is not something which would be discernible through a knowledge of the underlying reality alone. If our only information concerned the distribution and organization of Q, we could not, on that basis alone, establish the existence of any genuine continuants. We could recognize that, in a sense, things are organized as if there were continuants. And we might even, for convenience, speak as if there were - speak of mobile spheres of Q-pervasion which preserve their identity through the sequences of Q-pervaded region-moments. But this would only be ufaqon de parler, devoid of ontological commitment. To recognize the creation of the continuants, we have to know of their existence independently of what sustains it: we have to begin by acknowledging the particles and then envisage the distribution and organization of the quality as what underlies them. In other words, the postulated sustainment is retrospective - one which could only be established by someone who, in addition to knowing the sustaining facts, had independent knowledge of the facts sustained. It might be objected that, given the definition of sustainment, the very notion of retrospective sustainment is incoherent. According to the definition, if F is logically sustained by F' then F is a logical consequence of F'. But how can F be a logical consequence of F' unless the obtaining of F is deducible from the obtaining of F'? And if the obtaining of F is deducible from the obtaining of F' and all the other conditions of sustainment are satisfied, then surely the sustainment will be prospective - one which could be established 230

The challenge of nihilism from a knowledge of F' alone. But the objection is misconceived. For it is simply not true that whenever one fact is a logical consequence of another, the obtaining of the first is deducible from the obtaining of the second. It is easy enough to find counterexamples from other areas. Thus suppose */?' is short for 'this glass contains H2O* and *q* is short for this glass contains water*. Then it is logically (i.e. a stronger-than-naturally3) necessary that ifp then q. For since water and H2O are the same substance, there is no possible world in which a glass contains the one but not the other.4 Consequently, the fact that q is, in the relevant sense, a logical consequence of the fact that p (indeed, each is a logical consequence of the other). But the proposition that q cannot be deduced from the proposition that /?. The proposition that q can only be deduced from the proposition that p together with the additional premise that water and H2O are the same substance. And, given the difference in the concepts water and H2O, this additional premise, though logically necessary, cannot be established a priori. It can only be established empirically, by conducting the appropriate chemical analysis of the liquid we call 'water'. Now the phenomenalist claims that the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience. But, presumably, the creation he envisages is only retrospective. For, clearly, a knowledge of the experiential constraints (and of the non-accidental character of the harmony of encoding) would not, on its own, suffice to establish the existence of a physical world. On the basis of such knowledge alone, we could at best introduce the locutions of a physical ontology as a faqon de parler - a way of conveniently recording the fact that the constraints are, by the standard of explanatory simplicity, exactly as if there were an external reality with the appropriate structure. We could see, on such a basis, why the acceptance of a physical theory would be natural and useful for those subjects whose experiences are thus constrained, but we could not, on that basis, establish the theory as correct. It is only when we take the physical facts for granted that we can go on to assert their phenomenalistic sustainment. Admittedly, I am here assuming that, even if reductive phenomenalism is true, statements about the physical world cannot be analysed, with the preservation of factual meaning, into statements about experiential constraints. If they could, then a knowledge of the constraints would suffice to establish the existence of a physical 231

The case for phenomenalism world. For while, on the basis of such knowledge alone, we could at best introduce the locutions of a physical ontology as zfaqon de parler, recognizing the existence of a physical world would amount to no more than recognizing the truth of what, as bfaqon de parler, such locutions express. But it is clear, I take it, that the ontological commitment of physical statements cannot be analysed away in this fashion, and that, in consequence, the phenomenalistic creation (if it obtains at all) has to be retrospective. We can now identify the second misconception in the earlier reply to the sceptical challenge. It was assumed, in that reply, that to establish the existence and character of the physical world, we merely have to establish that the constraints on human experience encode the appropriate structure, since (given our phenomenalistic approach) the physical realization of a certain structure is nothing over and above its being encoded by the constraints. We can now see that this assumption is wrong, since, if there is a physical world, its creation is only retrospective - a creation which can only be established by someone who already and independently knows of the existence of the created item. Thus the original account of our epistemological situation was doubly misconceived. In the first place, information about the experiential constraints is only available through knowledge of the physical world. And secondly, even if such information could be obtained in some other way, it would not suffice to establish the existence of a physical world, given that the phenomenalistic creation has to be retrospective. In short, even if the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on experience, it is only through prior knowledge of the physical world that we can discover the constraints or recognize the creation. And this means that, even against the phenomenalism the sceptical challenge retains its force. Is there, then, some other way in which the sceptical challenge can be met? Well, certainly, there is no way of justifying our physical beliefs from scratch. If we were to discard the beliefs, we could find no rational way of re-acquiring them on the basis of what remained. This much, at least, we must concede to the sceptic. But it does not follow from this that, once we have the beliefs, it is irrational to retain them. The sceptic has not provided any evidence against them. Nor has he shown that they are not objectively warranted by the course of past experience. Moreover, there are two respects in which our physical beliefs are sclf232

The challenge of nihilism endorsing. In the first place, they are, by and large, mutually coherent. And secondly, they confirm the claim that they are objectively warranted: for by relying on the beliefs, we can go on to establish the systematic way in which their acquisition is controlled by, and appropriate to, our sensory evidence. All this, of course, leaves room for scepticism: it is conceivable, for example, that our physical beliefs are imposed by a malignant demon in such a way as to be self-endorsing in these ways. But at least there are no positive grounds for scepticism in the way there would be if these aspects of self-endorsement were absent or if we had some reason for thinking that our beliefs were not adequately grounded on past experience. The rational conclusion, I think, is to strike a balance between our ordinary convictions and the total agnosticism which the sceptic advocates. On the one hand, since we have no independent way of justifying the beliefs, it is unreasonable to hold them with an unqualified assurance: we must concede that they may be wrong - that there is room for doubt. On the other hand, unless there is some further reason for distrusting the beliefs (and the sceptic has not provided any), it is rational to retain them. This conclusion relies on a fundamental distinction between the rationality of acquiring beliefs and the rationality of retaining them. If the sceptic challenges this distinction, all I can say is that it reflects the way our minds actually work. For, whether we like it or not, our physical beliefs do survive the recognition that we have no independent way of justifying them. If such survival is irrational by the sceptic's standards, his standard of rationality is not one which we can achieve. It is rational to retain our physical beliefs in the face of the sceptical challenge. But the sceptical challenge is not the only way in which these beliefs can be attacked. As we saw at the outset, it can also be argued that reductivism is incoherent. And if reductivism is incoherent, the refutation of realism amounts to a proof of nihilism: it establishes a priori that there is no physical world. Such an attack on our physical beliefs is more fundamental and more far-reaching than the sceptic's. It is also more central to our concern, since it depends on our argument for anti-realism. The sceptical argument, if it has any force, applies equally against the realist: it is not reductivism as such, but a belief in the existence of a physical world which the sceptic calls in question. In an earlier chapter,5 I spoke of reductive phenomenalism as 233

The case for phenomenalism that form of reductivism which is furthest from physical realism and closest to nihilism. Given that reductivism has to take this phenomenalistic form, it may be wondered whether the difference between it and nihilism is of much importance. Thus consider the position of someone who (a), accepting the incoherence of reductivism, denies the existence of a physical world, (b) recognizes the utility and naturalness of physical theory from the human viewpoint, and (c) accounts for this utility and naturalness in terms of the way in which, realistically construed, physical theory explains the constraints on human experience. On the face of it, there is only a marginal difference between this position (let us call \l phenomenalistic nihilism) and reductive phenomenalism. The reductive phenomenalist takes human experience to be constrained in such a way as to make physical theory true. The phenomenalistic nihilist takes it to be constrained in such a way as to make physical theory useful. But why should we care whether it is truth or utility which physical theory achieves, if what underlies the achievement is the same in each case? The difference between the two positions seems even more tenuous when we remember that the phenomenalistic creation has to be retrospective. Even the phenomenalist must concede that, from a knowledge of the constraints alone, it is only the utility and naturalness of physical theory which can be discerned. It seems that the difference between the positions is one of perspective rather than of philosophical substance. The reductive phenomenalist looks at the role of the underlying reality from the viewpoint of physical theory. The phenomenalistic nihilist looks at the status of physical theory from the viewpoint of the underlying reality. But, however close the two positions may seem, their difference is of crucial importance, because it has a crucial bearing on our epistemological situation. If we had some way of discovering the constraints on experience without recourse to physical knowledge, it would not matter much whether we thought of these constraints as sustaining the existence of a physical world or as merely ensuring the utility and naturalness of physical theory: our information would be the same, whether we interpreted it in reductivist or nihilist terms. But, as we have seen, our knowledge of the constraints depends on our knowledge of the physical world: there is hardly any information available about the course of human experience which does not depend, in one way or another, 234

The challenge of nihilism on taking our physical information for granted. Consequently, the cost of adopting nihilism would be not merely the rejection of our physical beliefs, but the elimination thereby of our main source of empirical knowledge. As nihilists, we would no longer have any reason to assert the utility and naturalness of physical theory, since, without recourse to our physical beliefs, we would have no reason to think that experience was constrained in a physically appropriate way. It might be objected that if it can be rational to retain our physical beliefs when there is no independent way of justifying them, then it can also be rational to retain our experiential beliefs when we discard the physical evidence on which they are grounded. Why should scepticism prevail in the second case, if not in the first? But it only takes a moment's reflection to see the absurdity of this objection. It is one thing to retain a system of non-inferential beliefs, which we already possess without a basis of independent evidence. It is something quite different and manifestly irrational to retain a hitherto inferential belief when the evidence from which it is inferred is discarded and no alternative evidence is put in its place. Once nihilism is accepted, there is no way of avoiding the most drastic form of scepticism, in which each subject forfeits all his empirical information apart from the knowledge of his current mental states and the relatively insignificant knowledge he possesses, through direct recall, of his former mental states. So the choice between reductivism and nihilism is not inconsequential epistemologically. Nor, indeed, is the real choice between reductive phenomenalism and phenomenalistic nihilism. For the very acceptance of nihilism would deprive us of any reason for accepting it in that quasi-phenomenalistic form. Not only is the choice between reductivism and nihilism important epistemologically, but also, for that reason, we have a vested interest in preserving reductivism, if we can. But a vested interest does not, of course, constitute a philosophical justification. If there are arguments against the coherence of reductivism, they have to be taken seriously, however unpalatable their conclusion. We cannot just ignore the a priori arguments for nihilism on the grounds that the scepticism they generate is intolerable. Nor am I so pessimistic about human rationality as to think that we are psychologically incapable of accepting such an argument. I do not endorse Hume's famous dictum: 'It is in vain to ask, Whether there 235

The case for phenomenalism be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.'6 As I said at the beginning, one way of arguing against the coherence of reductivism would be by claiming that our very concept of a physical world has a built-in commitment to realism - that whenever we say that things are thus and thus physically, we are saying that they are thus and thus ultimately, or, at least, excluding the possibility that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. If such a claim were correct, reductivism would be incoherent. And nihilism would be the only tenable position, since we have already established, a priori, the falsity of realism. We should be forced to abandon all our physical beliefs, since these beliefs commit us to a metaphysical position (i.e. the ultimacy of the physical world) which we have already refuted. Such an argument for physical nihilism is analogous to the argument for moral nihilism of someone who maintains both that our ordinary moral thought commits us to recognizing objective values and that such objective values do not and cannot obtain.7 Let us call the claim that our concept of the physical has a built-in commitment to realism the C-claim. Now there is no denying that the C-claim has some intuitive plausibility. But it is important to see that its plausibility is, in a sense, presupposed by the very position (reductivism) whose coherence it denies. For, as we saw in chapter 3, reductivism would not (as it does) qualify as genuinely anti-realist if it were not developed in response to a prima facie case for nihilism. The point is that the mere exclusion of certain facts and entities from the sphere of the ultimate need not involve an anti-realist position towards what is excluded. Otherwise, we would be involved in an anti-realism towards aggregates simply by recognizing that their existence is logically sustained by the existence of their parts, and in an anti-realism towards weight-relations simply by recognizing that their obtaining is logically sustained by the weights of their relata. In order for an exclusion to count as genuinely anti-realist, it must preclude our accepting the reality of the excluded items at face value - preclude our accepting their reality in the form in which it is initially conceived. It is in this sense that reductivism counts as genuinely anti-realist towards the physical world. For reductivism, while preserving physical entities and facts, sets them in what is, relative to our initial conception of them, a radically different perspective. 236

The challenge of nihilism It is in this sense too that it presupposes a prima facie case for nihilism. For it is developed in response to a prima facie conflict between the restrictions on the ultimate reality and the acceptance of a physical world. We may be able to eliminate the conflict, but we can only do so be revising (to suit the restrictions) our conception of what the existence of physical entities and the obtaining of physical facts involve. It follows that, even if false, the C-claim is bound to seem plausible in the framework of our initial intuitions. For reductivism would not be genuinely anti-realist unless it appeared, initially, to be incompatible with the ontological and factual commitments of our physical beliefs. This ties in, of course, with the distinction between the two kinds of sustainment. It is just in those cases where a sustainment (or creation) thesis is anti-realist, i.e. one which conflicts with the perspective of our initial conception, that the postulated sustainment (creation) has to be retrospective, i.e. one which can only be established given a prior acceptance of the items sustained (created) - at least, this is so unless the perspective of our initial conception can be analysed away. The sustainment has to be retrospective, because, without a prior acceptance of the relevant items, there is no way of blocking the prima facie case for nihilism. The knowledge of the ultimate facts would not, on its own, oblige us to revise our initial conception of the entities and facts in question, and so would not, given the nature of that conception oblige us to accept their existence and obtaining. It is only where the entities and facts are independently assumed, that the restrictive account of the ultimate reality can lead us to revise our initial conception of them and accept that their existence or obtaining is nothing over and above the facts which the account specifies. We can see, then, that the intuitive plausibility of the C-claim is something which the reductivist can explain, without having to accept. Of course, it does not follow from this that the claim is false: it may be that our concept of the physical is inherently realist and precludes a reductive account. It is just that, even if the concept is not inherently realist, anti-realism is bound to have a prima facie nihilistic force. And this is something we have to allow for in evaluating the claim. Allowing for this, it seems to me that the C-claim is in fact false and that our concept of the physical does not preclude a reductive account. It seems to me that we can coherently suppose the 237

The case for phenomenalism physical world to be, retrospectively, the logical creation of an underlying non-physical reality, just as, prior to the rejection of realism, we could coherently suppose material continuants to be, retrospectively, the logical creation of the distribution and organization of a region-pervading quality. But I also think that this is not the real issue. For what really matters is not whether our actual concept of the physical embodies a commitment to realism, but whether, if it does, this commitment has any rationale. The reductivist is not going to be deterred if there is a commitment, but one which can be eliminated without disturbing the concept in other respects. He is not going to be deterred, for example, if what generates the commitment is merely that each physical proposition is formed by prefixing the realist operator i t is ultimately the case that' to a core-proposition which can stand on its own. After all, if we can eliminate the commitment, we have every reason to do so, since (given the refutation of realism) it deprives physical concepts of even the possibility of application. Indeed, our reasons for wanting to eliminate it are even stronger than our earlier reasons for wanting to eliminate NMR.8 In the earlier case, our aim was to make physical theory empirically testable. In the present case, our aim would be to make it coherent. To establish his case, therefore, the nihilist must show not only that our concept of the physical has a built-in commitment to realism, but that this commitment is, as it were, entrenched - one that cannot be excised without damaging the concept in other respects. He must show that the commitment is not just a gratuitous addition, but something which is inextricably bound up with other aspects of the concept - something which we have to retain if we are to retain a concept of the physical in any recognizable form. I can see only one way in which he might try to do this, namely by deriving the commitment to realism from a commitment against phenomenalism. Thus he might argue that our concept of the physical is, and is irremediably, incompatible with reductive phenomenalism and so, there being no other viable form of reductivism, is irremediably committed to realism. This would be to turn the second of the three arguments I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter into the third. Our next task must be to examine this third argument in more detail.

238

15

THE TWO FRAMEWORKS

Put at its simplest, the argument I want to consider is that reductive phenomenalism does not allow the physical world the right kind of externality to human consciousness to qualify as a physical world in any decent sense. I shall call this the externality-argument. We have already shown that reductivism has to take a phenomenalistic form. So by challenging the coherence of phenomenalism, the externality-argument is, in effect, challenging the coherence of reductivism as such. Moreover, we have also established the incoherence of realism. So by challenging the coherence of reductivism, the externality-argument is, in effect, an a priori argument for nihilism. The externality-argument can be formulated, in more detail, as follows: It is a conceptual truth that the physical world, if there is one, is external to human minds. This conceptual truth is not something we can eliminate by revising our concept of the physical: the commitment to externality is too deeply entrenched for our concept to survive, in any recognizable form, without it. But the physical world is external to human minds, in the relevant sense, only if it could exist without them, i.e. only if its existence is logically independent of their existence. Now according to reductive phenomenalism, the physical world is the logical creation of, and hence wholly constituted by, the constraints on human experience. Hence, according to phenomenalism, the physical world cannot exist without the obtaining of such 239

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-19

The case for phenomenalism constraints. But each constraint is a causal limitation on the subsequent course of experience for a particular mind at a particular time. Obviously, such constraints cannot exist without the existence of human minds. Hence, phenomenalism denies the externality of the physical world and thus conflicts, and conflicts irremediably, with our concept of the physical. On the face of it, this is a very plausible argument. One way the phenomenalist could respond would be to concede the force of the argument, but modify his position in such a way that it no longer makes the existence of the physical world depend on experiential constraints of the envisaged sort. Thus he might invoke the notion of a higher-level causal field which exists independently of human minds and whose content is defined by the specific constraints it is disposed to yield, for minds at times, if minds of the appropriate sort exist. He could then construe the physical world as the logical creation of such a field, the encoding of the physical structure being achieved through the character of the constraints, whether actual or hypothetical, which the field has the potential to impose. This would be to retain the essentials of his original position without undermining the externality of the physical world. The phenomenalist would concede that the physical world could exist without the existence of human minds, while maintaining that its existence is wholly constituted by the framework of natural necessity governing human experience. Now there may be, I suppose, independent reasons for wanting to modify the phenomenalist position in this way. (This is a question I shall not pursue.) But it would be wrong to accept the modification in response to the externality-argument. For the argument rests on a confusion between two distinct ways in which the physical world may possess or lack the property of externality - two distinct ways in which its existence may or may not depend on the existence of human minds. The distinction is, essentially, that between, on the one hand, what should be asserted within the framework of the physical theory whose truth is logically sustained, and, on the other, what should be asserted about the sustainment of the truth of such a theory. Once the distinction is appreciated, it will be evident that the kind of externality (mind-independence) which our concept of the physical requires is 240

The two frameworks in no way incompatible with the kind of internality (minddependence) which reductive phenomenalism entails. To see the distinction, it will help if we begin by focusing on a different, but related, problem concerning the status of psychophysical laws. In the broadest sense, psychophysical laws are any laws which causally link states of the physical world with states of human consciousness, in whichever direction the causation runs. But, as in earlier chapters, our concern here is with those psychophysical laws which link brain-states (as causes) with sense-experiences (as effects). Now it seems intuitively clear that, if there is a physical world, the obtaining of such psychophysical laws is not essential to its existence. Intuitively, it seems that the psychophysical laws are just a contingent addition to something (the space, matter, electromagnetic fields, physical laws, etc.) which could exist without them. Intuitively, it seems that the physical world could exist, with the same fundamental physical properties, but without any nomological links between brain-states (or any other physical states) and human experience. Of course, without such links, physical objects would be devoid of any secondary qualities, construed as Lockean powers, since physical objects only have powers to affect human experience via their powers to cause brain-states with experiential effects. But an object's possession of such powers, while essential to its perceptibility, does not seem to be essential to its existence. However, from the standpoint of reductive phenomenalism the situation seems quite different. According to the phenomenalist, the physical world is the logical creation of the constraints on human experience. The constraints encode a certain type of structure by being such that the ultimate realization of that structure would provide the simplest explanation of them (where simplicity requires, in particular, coming as close as possible to nomological uniformity and, subject to the pursuit of uniformity, avoiding unnecessary ontological or qualitative complexity). And the structure is physically (but non-ultimately) realized in virtue of its being encoded in this way. But obviously, the ultimate realization of this structure would not explain the constraints unless, in addition to an external component, the structure included laws linking the states of the component with human experience. So the creation of a physical world must always be part of the sustainment of a larger psychophysical reality consisting of a physical world together with certain psychophysical 241

The casefor phenomenalism laws. According to the phenomenalism therefore, the obtaining of psychophysical laws is essential to the existence of the physical world. The physical world could not exist without such laws since its creation is necessarily conjoined with their sustainment On the face of it, then, there is a conflict between our initial intuitions and reductive phenomenalism over the status of psychophysical lawsJust as there is, on the face of it, a conflict over externality. Our intuition is that the physical world could exist without such laws, while phenomenalism claims that it could not But when we examine the situation more closely, we see that the conflict is only apparent and that a phenomenalist can, and indeed must, regard each claim as correct when properly interpreted. Let us suppose that the structure encoded by the constraints is of the following form: (1) A 3-dimensional Euclidean space (the intrinsic nature of the points and distance-relations being unspecified). (2) A stock of spherical continuants (of ' External world ) (0 (w) and 0 [ 0 (w) and there are no human minds]).

On the other hand, claiming the mind-dependence of physical truth, he asserts: (d) ~~ 0 (there are no human minds and it is physically true that (3H>)0(W)). He accepts it as physically true that there is a 0-world which is external to human minds, but denies the possibility of its being physically true that there is a 0 world when there are no human minds. There is no inconsistency here. 245

The casefor phenomenalism We can now see how the phenomenalist can rebut the externality-argument. According to that argument, phenomenalism conflicts, and conflicts irremediably, with our concept of the physical, since phenomenalism construes the physical world as the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, while our concept requires it to be something whose existence is independent of human minds. But there are two ways of interpreting the claim that the physical world, if there is one, is independent of human minds. On the one hand, we can interpret it as a claim made within the framework of physical theory and hence as something which the phenomenalist accepts in asserting (c). On the other hand, we can interpret it as a claim of philosophical theory (concerning the metaphysical status of physical reality), namely what the phenomenalist denies in asserting (d). Now it is obvious that, as interpreted in the first way, the claim is a conceptual truth and one without which our concept of the physical could not survive in any recognizable form. For, obviously, this concept, as it features in physical theory (whether ordinary or scientific) is, and has to be, the concept of a realm which is external to and independent of human minds. But I can see no reason for taking the claim as a conceptual truth when interpreted in the second way. And even if, on this interpretation, it were a conceptual truth, it is one which, by conceptual revision, could and should be eliminated. There is simply no need for physical theory to embody a commitment - an incoherent commitment at that - to the metaphysical externality which the phenomenalist denies. Consequently, however the claim is interpreted, the externality-argument is misconceived. If the claim is interpreted in the first way, it is compatible with the phenomenalisms position. If it is interpreted in the second way, it is something which the phenomenalist can properly reject. The crucial error in the externality-argument, therefore, is its failure to recognize the availability for the phenomenalist of the distinction between physical and meta-physical truth - between the physical facts sustained by the experiential constraints and the philosophical facts about such sustainment. The relationship between the physical world and human minds has to be characterized in quite different ways according to whether we are concerned with its physical or meta-physical aspects. Once these different aspects are distinguished, the externality-argument collapses. The distinction between physical and meta-physical truth is one 246

The two frameworks which the phenomenalist needs to exploit at another point. According to phenomenalism, the character of the physical world is wholly determined by the structure encoded by the constraints - the structure specified by that topic-neutral theory (of ultimate reality) which provides the simplest explanation of them. Now this theory, just because it is topic-neutral, leaves open a range of more specific alternatives concerning the intrinsic nature of that in which the structure is realized. Thus the theory we envisaged earlier, which postulates an external world (consisting of a space, space-occupying continuants and laws of arrangement) and link-laws of type E, does not specify the intrinsic nature of the postulated space, beyond a specification of its geometrical structure, nor the intrinsic nature of the postulated continuants, beyond their shape and size. So this theory will be compatible with a range of more specific theories which characterize the space and continuants more precisely. This seems to pose a problem for the phenomenalist. For logic demands that wherever a structure is realized, it is realized in some specific form. Yet phenomenalism requires that physical reality be no more specific than the topic-neutral structure encoded by the constraints. To focus on a particular example, consider the question: 'Is physical space a sense-field?' By the law of the excluded middle, it either is or is not. But phenomenalism requires that, if it is, its being so is part of what the constraints sustain, and, if it is not, its not being so is part of what the constraints sustain. But neither alternative is thus sustained. For all that the constraints sustain is the physical realization of the structure they encode and the specification of this structure is neutral between the alternatives. So there seems to be a contradiction, in which logic requires that one of the alternatives obtains and phenomenalism excludes both. Once again, the right response for the phenomenalist is to appeal to the distinction between physical and meta-physical truth. Given the law of the excluded middle, the phenomenalist must obviously accept that, considered in its own terms, physical space either has or lacks a sensory character. He must accept that the experiential constraints (assuming they sustain the existence of a space at all) sustain the existence of a space as something-which-is-a-sensefield-or-not. That is, he must accept: 247

The case for phenominalism (e)

It is physically true that (H external space s) (s is a sense-field or ~ s is a sense-field)

At the same time, given the topic-neutrality of the encoded structure, he must also accept that neither the sensory nor the non-sensory character of physical space is part of what the constraints sustain. That is, he must accept both (0 and (g)

~ It is physically true that ( 3 external space s) (s is a sense-field) ~ It is physically true that (3 external space s) (~ s is a sense-field).

Thus in requiring that physical space be no more specific than the topic-neutral structure encoded by the constraints, the phenomenalist is not denying the physical truth that space has a determinate intrinsic nature, but denying that there is a determinate physical truth about its intrinsic nature. He is not making a physical claim about the intrinsic paucity of space, but a meta-physical claim about the limits of physical truth. And this is how he resolves the problem quite generally, accepting the demands of logic within the scope of physical truth and the requirements of phenomenalism with respect to the sustainment of physical truth. The point can be developed one stage further. So far we have been assuming, for the sake of simplicity, that the constraints encode a determinate structure, even though one which is topicneutral. But this assumption may be false. We cannot exclude the possibility of there being alternative topic-neutral theories which provide equally simple explanations of the constraints. Thus we cannot exclude the possibility that there are two topic-neutral theories such that: (1) The theories agree in postulating an external 3-dimensional Euclidean space and a stock of spherical continuants. (2) The theories postulate the same laws (both laws of motion and link-laws with human experience), but differ slightly over the spatiotemporal arrangement of the continuants. (3) Despite this difference, the two theories entail the same experiential constraints. (E.g. the differences in arrangement are confined to a period prior to the existence of human minds.) 248

The two frameworks (4) The theories provide equally simple explanations of the constraints they entail (e.g. they do equally well in achieving or approximating to nomological uniformity and in avoiding unnecessary ontological and qualitative complexity), and there is no other theory with equal or greater simplicity. (5) The constraints they entail are ones which obtain. In such a case, what the constraints encode is not a single structure, but the pair of structures, taken disjunctively, which the rival theories separately specify. This means that if one of the theories postulates an arrangement of type Ax and the other an arrangement of type A2, then it is physically true that either A x obtains or A2 obtains, but neither physically true that Ax obtains nor physically true that A2 obtains. In particular, there will be at least one region-moment x of physical space-time such that, while it is physically true that x is either materially occupied or materially empty, it is neither physically true that it is occupied nor physically true that it is empty. All in all, it seems to me that once we have distinguished the two assertive frameworks - the framework of ordinary physical theory and the framework in which we characterize the metaphysical status of physical truth - the coherence of reductive phenomenalism is secure. In particular, there is no conflict (none, at least, which is irremediable) between the claims of phenomenalism and our concept of a physical world. This does not, of course, establish that reductive phenomenalism is true. But this is not something which we could hope to establish by philosophical argument alone. For to establish the truth of reductive phenomenalism is, amongst other things, to establish the existence of a physical world. And there is no way of establishing the existence of a physical world a priori. The closest we can come, philosophically, to establishing the truth of reductive phenomenalism is to show that: (a) Physical realism is untenable. (b) Reductivism has to be phenomenalistic. (c) Reductive phenomenalism is coherent. (d) Scepticism can be resisted. And, apart from one residual issue, which I shall consider in part V, all this we have done. 249

PARTV

THE NATURE OF TIME

16

THE CONSTRUCTION OF INTER-SUBJECTIVE TIME

Reductive phenomenalism has to recognize a form of time which is logically independent of the physical world. For the phenomenalist takes the physical world to be the logical creation of the constraints on human experience, and each constraint is a causal limitation on the subsequent course of experience for a particular mind at a particular time. Obviously, this requires that human experiences have temporal locations independently of the physical world which the constraints on their occurrence create. whether or not this pre-physical time is also the time in which physical events are located. Moreover. it seems that what the phenomenalist needs is a form of time which. as well as being pre-physical, is inter­ subjective - something which temporally relates experiences in different minds as well as those in the same mind. For even if we could assign a separate time-dimension to each mind and then construe each constraint as controlling the course of experience in one such dimension, we could hardly think of the constraints on different minds as combining to create a common physical world. unless we could, independently of the creation. inter-relate these separate subjective dimensions in a common temporal framework. But can time be detached from the physical world in this way? In particular, can it be detached as something inter-subjective? If it can, is it something ultimate or something created by an underlying reality of pre-temporal facts? And. whether ultimate or created, how does this pre-physical time relate to the temporal location of physical events? It is clear that the phenomenalist owes us some further account of the nature of time and its place in his theory. It is 253

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153153-21

The nature of time such an account that I shall try to provide in these final chapters. My account will come in three parts. In the first part, I shall try to define a system of temporal concepts adequate for the specification of inter-subjective time in a pre-physical form. I shall sometimes speak of this definitional part as the 'construction' of intersubjective time. In the second, I shall consider the ways in which we might take inter-subjective time, thus defined, to be ultimately constituted. In other words, I shall consider the sorts of ultimate reality we might postulate to give the system of temporal concepts, as we have defined it, application. In the third, I shall consider the nature of physical time - time as it forms part of the framework of the physical world. Part one, the construction of inter-subjective time, will take up the rest of this chapter. Parts two and three will come in the next. We have mentioned the distinction between inter-subjective time (a single time-dimension for all minds) and subjective time (a separate time-dimension for each mind). But before we can deal properly with this distinction, there is another and more fundamental one to be drawn. This more fundamental distinction is between time as something which features in the content of sense-experience and time as something in which sense-experience is located. I shall call these two kinds of time, respectively, phenomenal and mental. As we have seen (in chapter 6), a sense-experience (sensation) is no more nor less than the realization of the total sense-quale, whether a quality or a quality-pattern, which it presents. So phenomenal time is time as it forms, along with other qualia, an element of what is experientially realized - an element of the total quality-pattern of which a sensation is the realization. In contrast, mental time is that in which sensations (the qualia-realizations) are themselves ordered and dated. Thus if we ask, 'Of what temporal pattern is sensation S a realization?' we are asking a question about phenomenal time; while if we ask, 'Did sensation Sx occur before sensation S2T we are asking a question about mental time. Subjective and inter-subjective time are different forms of mental time. It is a pre-physical version of inter-subjective mental time which the phenomenalist needs and which I shall try to construct. In doing so, I shall use phenomenal time as the basis. The existence of mental time, however it is to be construed, is uncontroversial. We have to accept that human sensations are located in time, whether this time is tied to or independent of the 254

Construction of inter-subjective time physical world, and whether it is subjective or inter-subjective. But why should we accept the existence of phenomenal time? Why should we accept that some sensations, as well as having temporal location, are realizations of temporal patterns? The reasons are partly empirical and partly conceptual. In the first place, duration and change through time seem to be presented to us with the same phenomenal immediacy as homogeneity and variation of colour through space. Just as I directly see the extension of a colour-patch or the juxtaposition of two differently coloured patches, so I also seem to see, as directly, the rest or motion of a colour-patch relative to the surrounding pattern, and to hear, as directly, periods and sequences of sound. Thus when a bird flies past my window, in full view, the movement of the bird-shaped patch seems to be as much a visual datum - part of the content of my visual experience - as its colour and shape. And when I listen to a tune, the duration and succession of notes seem to be as much an auditory datum - part of the content of my auditory experience - as their pitch and loudness. The natural conclusion to draw from this is that, in such cases, things are as they seem, i.e. that time-relations form part of the presented pattern - part of what the sensations realize. It might be objected that what seems like the sensing of a temporal pattern is really the recollection of a mental succession: I seem to see the movement of the bird because, at each time (i.e. moment of mental time) when I see its current position, I remember what positions I successively saw it occupy over the preceding (mental) period. But this objection fails. There is a clear difference between the kinds of experience I have when, on the one hand, I witness the movement of a bird through the series of points from Px to P2, and when, on the other, seeing it at P2, I remember that, some twelve hours earlier, I successively saw it occupy the successive points in the same series. This difference cannot be eliminated or diminished merely by reducing the time-interval from twelve hours to twelve minutes or to one minute or to one second or to a fraction of a second. Of course, it is diminished, though not eliminated, if we suppose the remembering to be accompanied by an image of the previous movement - an image whose content includes a temporal succession of bird-patch positions. But such a suggestion requires the acceptance of phenomenal time. For if motion can be imaged, it can also be sensed. And if motion can be sensed, it would be 255

The nature of time perverse to deny that it is sensed on those occasions when it seems to be. However, our reasons for accepting phenomenal time are not solely empirical. For at least in the case of the auditory realm, we cannot even conceive of there being a complete sensation (a sensation which could stand on its own1) whose content lacked a temporal element. Just as it is inconceivable that there should be a sensation of colour which was not the sensation of a colourpervaded region, so, equally, it is inconceivable that there should be a sensation of sound which was not the sensation of a sound-filled period.2 Phenomenal time is the essential medium for the realization of sound-qualia, as phenomenal space is the essential medium for the realization of colour-qualia. This claim is not to be confused with another, namely that any auditory sensation must be or be part of a mental period of continuous auditory awareness. This latter claim, indeed, might be disputed: it is at least arguable that a timeless being could have auditory experience. What I am claiming, and what semes to me to be indisputable, is that any complete auditory sensation, whether or not it is extended in mental time, must be the sensation of a phenomenal period. A mere pitch-loudness, abstracted from a time-field, cannot form a complete auditory datum, just as a mere colour, abstracted from a space-field, cannot form a complete visual datum. I am not sure whether phenomenal time is, in the same way, an essential ingredient of the other (non-auditory) sense-realms. But if it is essential to the auditory realm, it is at least available to the other realms. And granted its availability, we have no reason to doubt its presence in these other realms, given the empirical evidence in its favour. The distinction between phenomenal and mental time raises an intriguing question. The two forms of time must have something in common which makes them species of the same genus - something which makes it appropriate to classify both as forms of time. This common factor must consist in more than just the formal structure of a time-dimension (in the fact, say, that time is 1-dimensional and continuous), since this does not capture the distinctively temporal aspect: it does not distinguish a time-dimension from, for example, the dimension of phenomenal pitch or from a line in the visual field. On the other hand, it must consist in something less than a sharing of exactly the same modes of temporal arrangement, since, 256

Construction of inter-subjective time as sense-qualia, modes of phenomenal time-arrangement are not realized outside the content of sensation: mental beforeness is not just phenomenal beforeness transferred to the domain of sensations. In what, then, does the common factor consist? What justifies our use of the same temporal terms, such as 'before' and 'after', 'earlier than' and 'later than' to signify both relations within the content of sensations and relations between sensations themselves? The answer, whatever it is, must lie in the way in which phenomenal time-concepts and mental time-concepts are analytically connected. It must lie in either (a) the way in which the mental time-concepts are analysable (partly) in terms of the phenomenal, or (b) the way in which the phenomenal time-concepts are analysable (partly) in terms of the mental, or (c) the way in which both are analysable, collaterally, in terms of something else. Of these alternatives, (b) and (c) are excluded, because phenomenal time-concepts cannot be further analysed (except in terms of each other): like concepts of phenomenal pitch and colour, they can be defined only ostensively, through a sensation or image of that which exemplifies them. (Someone incapable of either sensing or imaging temporal patterns could form no transparent conception of phenomenal time, just as someone incapable of either sensing or imaging colour-arrays could form no transparent conception of phenomenal colour.) The answer must therefore lie in alternative (a). This point determines the whole strategy of my subsequent account. My construction of inter-subjective time is, in effect, a detailed elaboration of the way in which mental time-concepts are analysable in terms of phenomenal time-concepts together with certain concepts of a non-temporal kind. And, as such, it shows how mental time, in its various forms, derives its temporal character from phenomenal time. We must begin by looking more closely at the way in which phenomenal time is related to the mental succession of sensations in a stream of experience. Let us focus on the example of someone listening to a tune - say, for simplicity, the scale of middle C: Cx - silence - D - silence ... silence - B - silence - C2. His stream of auditory experience will comprise a series (ZO, in mental time, of total auditory sensations (an auditory sensation being total iff there is no larger auditory sensation of which it is a part), and each of these sensations will be a sensation of a temporal pattern - the realization of a time-field in which periods of sound and silence are 257

The nature of time arranged. For simplicity, let us assume that, throughout the series, the phenomenal periods of sound and silence are of a constant size (1 0-unit), except where shortened by the boundaries of the time-field, and that the time-field itself is of constant size, comprising exactly 3 0-units. Then, by choosing an appropriately corresponding unit (|i) of mental time, we can select from 2^ a second and less tightly packed series ( 2 y of sensations spaced at H-intervals, thus: 3 Mental time T^ Sx tx h (=" '1 + H) $2 '3 ( " h + V) $3

Phenomenal time-pattern 2 0-units of silence before 1 0-unit of Q 1 0-unit of silence before 1 0-unit of CX before 1 0-unit of silence 1 0-unit of Ci before 1 0-unit of silence before I 0-unit of D

tX6

5 1 5 1 0-unit of B before 1 0-unit o f silence before I 0-unit o f C2 SX6 1 0-unit o f silence before 1 0-unit o f C 2 before I

txl

Sxl

tX5

0-unit of silence 1 0-unit of C2 before 2 0-units of silence

Notice that, in E^ t h e time-patterns realized by successive sensations overlap, in that some last portion of the pattern realized by the earlier sensation is the same as some first portion of the pattern realized by the later one. Thus the last two units of the time-field of Sx are filled by the same pattern (a period of silence before a period of Cx) as the first two units of the time-field of S2f and the last two units of the time-field of S2 are filled by the same pattern (a period of Cx before a period of silence) as the first two units of the time-field of S3. And so on through the series. Now, on the face of it, this is puzzling. For it seems to imply that, for each note N, there are three separate realizations of a 0-period of N - one for each of the three positions in the time-field which, in successive £2sensations, the period occupies. Thus it seems to imply that the subject has, on successive occasions in mental time, three distinct sensations of a 0-period of Cx, one as part of SX, a second as part of S2 and a third as part of S3. Indeed, taking into account all the other I r sensations between Sx and S2 and between S2 and 5 3 , it seems to imply that he has many more than three sensations of a 258

Construction of inter-subjective time 0-period of Cx - infinitely many, if Et is continuous. This result is puzzling because it does not fit the character of our experience. When I listen to a scale, I seem to hear the succession of notes, but I do not hear each note more than once, except in so far as the note-period can be subdivided. How are we to account for the apparent contradiction? The answer is that where the temporal patterns realized by successive ^-sensations overlap, the sensations themselves overlap in a corresponding way. Thus while Su S2 and S3 are distinct, S] and S2 contain the same sensation of a ^-period of silence before a ^-period of C b S2 and S3 contain the same sensation of a ^-period of Cx before a ^-period of silence; and all three contain the same sensation of a ^-period ofCx. In line with this, each sensation extends through a period of mental time proportional to the phenomenal period which it realizes. Thus the succession of mental times /, ...txl turns out to be a succession of overlapping mental periods, each period covering a total span of auditory awareness. Obviously, the situation will be analogous in other sense-realms. In each realm, a stream of sense-experience will be constituted by a series of overlapping sensations, each of these sensations being the realization of a temporal pattern and each extending through a mental period proportional to the time-field in this pattern. These conclusions may seem surprising. For we might assume, prior to a thorough investigation, that the relation of being parts of the same sensation is transitive, so that if there is a single sensation which contains both x a n d / and a single sensation which contains both/ and zy then there is a single sensation which contains both x and z. If this were so, then successive total sensations could not contain a common component, since the transitivity would then combine the supposedly total sensations into a single larger sensation. The character of our experience requires us to abandon the assumption of transitivity. The same sensation can be a component of two distinct total sensations. It can be united, within a single span of sense-awareness, with a sensation x and also united, within a single span of sense-awareness, with a sensation z, even though x and z are not themselves so united. We are now in a position to take the first step in our constructive project. For we can now define, solely in terms of phenomenal time and the overlapping of sensations, the concepts of temporal order and distance in streamal time, i.e. in mental time as it applies, 259

The nature of time exclusively, to sensations in the same stream of experience. As a preliminary, we should note that since phenomenal time cuts across the different sense-realms, so that sensations in different realms may share the same time-field, sensations in different realms may be, in the relevant sense, components of a single sensation. Thus there may be, in a certain mental period, a single visuo-auditory sensation of a temporal pattern of colour-arrays and sounds. It follows that what we have been calling a total auditory sensation (one which is not a component of a larger auditory sensation) need not be a total sensation (one which is not a component of a larger sensation). A total sensation can, and often will, include components from different realms. Let us say that x O-precedes y iff, for some sensation 2: (1) x and y are total sensations and z is a component of both x and y. (2) x a n d / are realizations of temporal patterns. (3) z is the realization of some phenomenally last portion of the x-pattern and is the realization of it qua last portion of this pattern. (4) z is the realization of some phenomenally first portion of the /-pattern and is the realization of it qua first portion of this pattern.4 O-precedence is the relation of overlapping precedence - the relation which holds, within a stream of experience, between an earlier total sensation and a later total sensation which overlaps it. Let us further say that x ^-precedes y iff there is a series of total sensations, of which x is the first member a n d / the last, such that each member, other than / , O-precedes its successor.5 In other words, E-precedence is the ancestral of O-precedence - what stands to O-precedence in the way that being an ancestor o/stands to being a parent of. E-precedence is the relation of streamal precedence - the relation which holds between earlier and later total sensations in the same stream. This defines the streamal time-order. Temporal distance is then defined by two further principles. Firstly, the extent of any sensation in streamal time is measured by the extent (in phenomenal time) of the time-field it realizes. Secondly, if JC O-precedes / and z is the common component sensation, in which x a n d / overlap, then the temporal extent of JC + / is the sum of the temporal extents of x and / less the temporal extent of z. 260

Construction of inter-subjective time These two principles determine the temporal extent of any stream or stream-phase. Thus given any stream or stream-phase A, with S and S' as, respectively, its earliest and latest total sensations, we select from A a series of successively O-precedent sensations running from S to S". To measure the temporal extent of A we then add the extents of the members of the series and subtract, for each pair of successive members, the extent of their overlap. A stream of experience is any largest collection of total sensations such that the members of each pair of sensations are linked, one way or the other, by the relation of E-precedence. Typically, a single human mind contains many streams, separated by periods of unconsciousness, or, at least, periods in which there is no sense-awareness. We have shown how temporal order and temporal distance apply within a stream. The next step must be to show how they apply within a whole mind - to show how, within a single mind, the different streams, together with the non-sensory interludes, are located in a single time-dimension. Thus in what sense are my current sensations temporally related to those I had yesterday, given the intervening period of sleep? Suppose A and B are streams and (however this is to be construed) that A is earlier than B. UA and B belong to the same mind (if they are, as I shall say, consubjective), then they have, in a certain sense, the potential for being co-streamal: their consubjectivity requires that, with B held constant, a sufficient continuation of A would join up with beginning of B, making A and B phases of a single stream. On the other hand, if A and B belong to different minds (if they are dissubjective), they do not have this potential. Indeed, their dissubjectivity requires that, with B held constant, no continuation of A, however protracted, would make A and B phases of a single stream. Now this point is the key to the construction of subjective time (i.e. mental time as it applies, exclusively, to sensations in the same mind). For given two consubjective streams, their temporal order and the temporal distance between them can be defined in terms of the hypothetical intervening stream-phase required to join them: the earlier stream is that one of which this intervening phase is a continuation and the distance between them is the extent of this phase in streamal time. To be precise, let us say that A" is a continuation ofy iff x a n d / are aggregates of total sensations such that (1) every total sensation in x E-precedes every total sensation in y and (2) every sensation 261

The nature of time which some x-sensation L-precedes and which E-precedes some /-sensation is a constituent of either x o r / . In other words, x is a continuation o f / iff x and / are adjacent phases of the same stream, with x earlier than/. The crucial definition is then this: Stream x subjectively precedes stream/ by extent e iff, for some e', it is nomologically ensured that if/ were to remain the same and x were to have a continuation 2, with streamal extent e ' , then/ would be a continuation of z and e would be the streamal extent of that portion of 2 which neither the last total sensation in x nor the first total sensation i n / overlapped. Or put more precisely: Stream x subjectively precedes stream/ by extent e iff there is an e' such that, for any possible world w, if w has the same ultimate laws as the actual world and w contains x and/, then if, in w, x has a continuation with streamal extent e', then, in w, there is a stream-phase 2, with extent e', such that 2 is a continuation of x, y is a continuation of 2 and e is the streamal extent of that portion of z which neither the last total sensation in x nor the first total sensation i n / overlaps. At the cost of marginally overestimating the extent, we could conveniently simplify the definition to read: stream x subjectively precedes stream/ by extent e iff it is nomologically ensured that, if / were to remain the same and x were to have a continuation z, with streamal extent e, t h e n / would be a continuation of 2 (i.e. iff, for any possible world w, if w has the same ultimate laws as the actual world and w contains x and / , then if, in w, x has a continuation with streamal extent e, then, in w\ there is a stream-phase 2, with extent 1, such that 2 is a continuation of x and / is a continuation of 2). Combined with our construction of streamal time, this immediately yields the definitions of both order and distance in subjective time. Thus a sensation Sx is subjectively earlier than a sensation S2 iff either (a) S{ is streamally earlier than S2 or (b) for some stream x, some stream/ and some extent e, S{ is a constituent of x and S2 is a constituent of/ and x subjectively precedes/ by e. And if Su in stream JC, is subjectively earlier than 5 2 , in stream/, then (a) if JC = / , the subjective distance from S{ to S2 (i.e. if Sx and S2 are temporally extended, from the beginning of S, to the end of S2) is 262

Construction of inter-subjective time the extent of the stream-phase from Sx to S2, and (b) if JC * y, the subjective distance from Sx to S2 is the sum of (1) the extent of the stream-phase from S\ to the end of JC, (2) the extent of the stream-phase from the beginning of y to S2 and (3) the extent by which JC subjectively precedes/. It is interesting to note, en passant, that these definitions of subjective order and distance do not employ the concept of consubjectivity. There would be no circularity in defining consubjectivity in terms of subjective time, thus: two streams are consubjective iff, for some e, one of them subjectively precedes the other by extent e, and two sensations are consubjective iff they are constituents either of the same stream or of consubjective streams. Whether such definitions are philosophically appropriate is another matter. We may have independent reasons for taking the concept of a subject as fundamental and for defining consubjectivity in terms of it. I shall not go into this issue here.6 We have defined streamal time in terms of phenomenal time and the overlapping of sensations and we have defined subjective time in terms of streamal time and natural law. These results, however limited, are in line with our constructive aims. In the first place, the definitions show how, in its subjective form, mental time derives its temporal character from phenomenal time, which is conceptually fundamental. Secondly, thus defined, subjective time seems to be something which could, given an appropriate ultimate reality, obtain pre-physically and thus contribute, as the phenomenalist requires, to the creation of the physical world. On this second point, however, we must leave the final verdict till the next chapter. In our present agenda, the next task must be to take our constructive project into its final stage: the construction of inter-subjective (IS) time. In what sense can dissubjective sensations be temporally related? In what sense can different minds share a common time-dimension? My basic strategy will be to define the concepts of intersubjective time (i.e. the concepts of IS-temporal order and IStemporal distance) in terms of the concepts of subjective time and inter-subjective causation. Such a strategy is available, because the concept of inter-subjective causation does not presuppose the concept of inter-subjective time: we can grasp what it is for an event in the subjective time of one mind to cause (or contribute to the causation of) an event in the subjective time of another mind, without first assigning the two events to a common time-dimension.

263

The nature of time So it is possible, without circularity, to make use of the concept of IS-causation in the construction of IS-time. Moreover, this strategy promises to be in line with the phenomenalistic enterprise. For a framework of IS-causation seems to be something which the phenomenalist could postulate at the pre-physical level, and it seems to be just what is required to give human minds that communal organization needed for the creation of a common physical world. The strategy will be developed in accordance with three fundamental principles, which concern the relationship between IS-time and the elements (subjective time-order, subjective distance and inter-subjective causation) out of which it is to be constructed. The first principle (PI) is that, within a single mind, the IS time-order necessarily coincides with the subjective time-order. That is to say, we are to take it as a conceptual truth that, given a framework of IS-time, if Sx and S2 are consubjective sensations, located in that framework, then S: is IS-earlier than S2 iff S} is subjectively earlier than S2. The second principle (P2) is that, within a single mind, IS time-distances are necessarily proportional to subjective timedistances. That is to say, we are to take it as a conceptual truth that, given a framework of IS-time, if S h S2, 5 3 and S4 are consubjective sensations, located in that framework, then the IS-distances between Sx and S2 and between 5 3 and SA are equal iff the subjective distances between them are also equal. P2 does not, it should be noted, require that where the subjective distances in different minds are equal (unequal) the IS-distances are also equal (unequal). It leaves open the possibility that the same unit of IS-distance may coincide with different units of subjective distance in different minds. The third principle (P3) is that IS-causation necessarily runs forwards (from earlier to later) in IS-time. That is to say, we are to take it as a conceptual truth that, given a framework of IS-time, if x and y are events in different minds, located in that framework,, and if x causes, or contributes to the causing of, y, then x is IS-earlier than y. These three principles constitute the basic guidelines for our construction. We are to define the concepts of inter-subjective time in such a way that these principles hold. As we have constructed it, subjective time consists in certain relations of order and distance between consubjective sensations. The ontology is an ontology of mental events and subjective time is 264

Construction of inter-subjective time constituted by certain facts about them. However, for the purposes of constructing IS-time, it will be convenient to assign to each mind a subjective time-dimension and to introduce an ontology of subjective moments and periods drawn from such dimensions. These dimensions, of course, are the logical creation of, and hence nothing over and above, the temporal facts about sensations. Each dimension exists solely in virtue of the fact that, in the relevant mind, the sensations are arranged in a certain temporal order and at certain temporal distances, and that the positions in this arrangement leave room for indefinitely many other positions which might have been occupied by other (hypothetical) sensations in the same mind. Moreover, the identity of each subjective moment is fixed by the identity of the sensation (or momentary sensation-slice) which occurs at it or by its temporal relations with other moments, on the same dimension, whose identities are fixed by the sensations which occur at them. Each human mind has (presumably) only a finite span of sense-experience, bounded by an earliest and a latest sensation. But I shall take its subjective time-dimension to be infinitely extended in both directions. I can do this because the temporal arrangement of sensations leaves room for positions before the earliest sensation and after the latest, just as it leaves room for other positions in between. If we can mark out non-sensory periods between streams by envisaging their hypothetical connection by some intervening stream-phase, then, in the same way, we can mark out a non-sensory period before the first stream by envisaging a hypothetical earlier phase and mark out a non-sensory period after the last stream by envisaging a hypothetical later phase. And there is no limit on the possible extent of these additional phases. Although the subjective dimensions are created by the temporal relations between sensations, once we have the dimensions, we can use them to provide temporal locations for mental events of other kinds. In particular, we can speak of an act of volition Vas located at a subjective moment / in virtue of the fact that if there is, or were, a sensation at t, V is, or would be, consciously conjoined with it. This is important for our constructive project. If we are to construct inter-subjective time out of subjective time and intersubjective causation, we have to envisage causal lines running from an event in one mind to an event in another. And while we can plausibly think of such lines as terminating in a sensory effect, it is 265

The nature of time much less plausible to think of them as originating from a sensory cause. It is much more plausible to take the causing event to be a volition. It is not by having sensations, but by doing something that I have a causal influence on other minds, even if my sensations (or the beliefs I acquire from them) help to provide a reason for my action. Given this, the key concept in my construction of intersubjective time will be what I shall call volitional inter-subjective causal priority, or for short, V-priority. V-priority is a relation which holds between moments (points) on different subjective dimensions. Using 'x[m]' as short for 'moment x on the subjective dimension of mind m\ it can be defined in two steps. Thus let us say that x[m] is directly V-prior toy[mf] iffm and m' are different minds and m is in a position to causally affect, by an act of volition at JC, the sensory state of m' a t / . Then x is V-prior toy iff, for some x' a n d / ' , (1) x is either identical with or subjectively earlier than JC ', (2)y is either identical with or subjectively later t h a n / ' and (3) x ' is directly V-prior t o / ' . In other words, x[m] is V-prior to y[m'] iffm and mf are different minds and m is in a position to causally affect, by an act of volition at or w-later than x, the sensory state of m' at or m'-earlier than/. Where two minds share a common framework of IS-time, let us speak of them as IST-related. This relation, of course, is one which we will have to define, in due course, as part of the construction of IS-time. Now we know from PI and P3 that if m and m' are IST-related and if x[m] is V-prior to/[w'], then x is IS-earlier than / . (For we know from PI that, within a single mind, the IS time-order coincides with the subjective time order, and we know from P3 that IS-causation has to run forwards in IS-time.) Given this, we may be tempted to adopt the following very simple definition of temporal priority in IS-time (with variables ranging over subjective moments): D:

x is IS-earlier than y iff x is either subjectively earlier than or V-prior t o / .

However, there are two faults in Z). In the first place (Fault A), the definiens does not entail the definiendum. For if x and / are moments on different subjective dimensions, x a n d / will not stand in any IS time-relation unless the two dimensions are, as a whole, inter-subjectively related, and this requires more than just that one moment on one of them be directly V-prior to one moment on the 266

Construction of inter-subjective time other. It requires that the two dimensions be, in some appropriate way, systematically linked by relations of actual and potential causation. Secondly (Fault B)y the definiendum does not entail the definiens. For the fact that x[m] is IS-earlier than/[m'], where m + m \ does not ensure that JC is V-prior t o / : it does not ensure m is in a position to affect, by an act of volition at or m-later than x, the sensory state of m' at or m'-earlier than/. For the time being, I shall focus exclusively on Fault B. Suppose that mx and m2 are different minds and that a[mx) is IS-earlier than b[m2]. There are two ways in which a may fail to be V-prior to b: (1) It may be that the IS-interval between a and b (the IS-temporal distance between them) is less than the minimum required by the laws of nature, for a causal line from a volition in one mind to a sensation in another.7 Thus (for convenience) looking at things in physical terms, imagine the situation in which my body is next to yours, in which you are awake and alert and in which my muscular and your sensory systems are in perfect order. The circumstances are ideal for a swift causal communication from my volitions to your sensations. None the less, there is a minimum extent E of IS-time such that no volitional act of mine at IS-time / can affect your sensory state before / + £. It may be, of course, that with some form of surgical intervention (e.g. the insertion of super-conductive wires running from my brain to yours), this minimum could be reduced. But even so, there is likely to be some absolute minimum, fixed by the very laws of IS-causation, such that no causal line from a volition in one mind to a sensation in another could be temporally shorter. And if there is such a minimum - let us call it the ISC-minimum - and if the IS-interval between a and b is less than it, then a will, for that reason, fail to be V-prior to b. In such a case I shall describe the failure as nomologicaL (2) It may be that, while the IS-interval between a and b is not less than the ISC-minimum (if there is one), the other circumstances are, in one way or another, unfavourable. Here there is a multiplicity of different cases. To mention some of the more obvious ones: it may be that (i) mx no longer exists at a or has yet to come into existence at some point too late for it to be 267

The nature of time sufficiently IS-earlier than b, or (ii) m2 does not yet exist at b or has gone out of existence at some point too early for it to be sufficiently IS-later than a;8 or looking at things in physical terms, it may be that (iii) mx exists at a but is, and will be for some time, disembodied or physically paralysed, or (iv) m2 exists at b but is, and has been for some time, disembodied or physically anaesthetized, or (v) over the relevant IS-period, the spatial distance between the bodies ofml and m2 is too great to allow the transmission of a signal in the time available. The differences between these cases (and all the others I have not mentioned) need not concern us. What matters is the common factor, namely that in each of these cases we can, retaining the same laws and the same IS-time relation between a and b, envisage different circumstances in which a would be V-prior to b. For example, if mx no longer exists at a, we can envisage circumstances in which it continues up to and beyond a; or if m2 is anaesthetized over a period up to and including b, we can envisage circumstances in which it is not; or if the bodies of mi and m2 are, over the relevant IS-period, spatially too remote, we can, by adjusting their previous histories, envisage circumstances in which they are sufficiently close. In all these cases I shall describe the failure of a to be V-prior to b as circumstantial. This contrasts with cases of type (1), where the failure is nomological. For where the failure is nomological, the IS-interval between a and b is less than the ISC-minimum - the minimum fixed by the laws of IS-causation - so that there could not be circumstances in which, with the same interval and subject to the same laws, a was V-prior to b. This distinction between the nomological and circumstantial failures is an elaboration of Fault B of definition D. In effect, Fault B now divides into two faults: (1) x[m] may be IS-earlier than y[m'l where m * m' , but fail, nomologically, to be V-prior toy\ (2) x[m] may be IS-earlier than/[w'], where m # m \ but fail, circumstantially, to be V-prior to y. To correct these faults, we have to find some way of capturing the temporal priority in terms of IS-causation when the V-priority is blocked in either of these ways. It may seem that we can immediately deal with the case of circumstantial failure by introducing the weaker relation of potential 268

Construction of inter-subjective time V-priority, defined thus: x is potentially V-prior (PV-prior) toy iff it is nomologically possible for x to be V-prior to / , i.e. iff there is a possible world R\ with the same laws as the actual world, and x is V-prior to y in w. The idea would be that, where the failure is merely circumstantial, the temporal priority of JC to / shows up in the fact that, to make x V-prior t o / , we only have to transfer the moments to a world, with the same laws, in which the circumstances are more favourable. But, while we are moving in the right direction, PV-priority, as defined, is too weak for our purposes. For we have no guarantee that it is asymmetric. The laws may be sufficiently permissive to allow x to be V-prior toy in one possible world and y to be V-prior to x in another. And if this were so, PV-priority would give no indication of temporal order. What we need is the stronger relation of rigid PV-priority, defined thus: x is rigidly PV-prior (RP V-prior) toy iff x is PV-prior Xoy a n d / is not PV-prior to x. RPV-priority has the asymmetry built into it. Of course, RPV-priority will only be of use to us if we impose a certain restriction on the nature of IS-time, namely that the IS-time relation between any two subjective moments holds constant through all nomologically possible worlds (worlds with the same laws as the actual world) in which these moments exist. For we cannot hope to keep the relations of PV-priority rigid if we allow the temporal order of the relata to vary from world to world. But I do not see this restriction as problematic. It seems to me quite natural to construct IS-time in such a way that IS-time relations are logically tied to the identities of the subjective moments they relate (thus ultimately to the identities of, and subjective time-relations between, the sensations in the relevant minds) and the ultimate laws of nature.9 (Incidentally, an analogous restriction on the nature of subjective time was implicit in the definition of what it is for one stream to subjectively precede another by a certain extent. For, thus defined, the subjective order of two streams and the subjective distance between them hold constant through all nomologically possible worlds in which the streams exist.) Given this restriction, the relation of RPV-priority solves the problem of circumstantial failure. For where x fails, circumstantially, to be V-prior t o / , the temporal priority of x toy shows up in its RPV-priority - in the fact that it is nomologically possible for JC to be V-prior Xoy but not nomologically possible for/ to be V-prior to x. But RPV-priority does not provide an immediate solution to the 269

The nature of time problem of nomological failure. For where x fails, nomotogically, to be V-prior to / , it also fails to be RPV-prior to / , since, with the IS-interval between them holding constant through all nomologically possible worlds, there is no world, with the same laws as the actual world, in which x is V-prior to y. To deal with the case of nomological failure, where the IS-interval is less than the ISC-minimum, we need to alter, slightly, our constructive direction. Instead of seeking an immediate definition of temporal priority in terms of inter-subjective causation, we must first look for a definition of simultaneity and let the definition of temporal priority emerge from this. To this end, I shall now introduce a further relation, which I call coincidence. This relation is defined in four steps. Firstly, let us say that x[m] and/[m'] are causally isolated iff m * mf and JC is not PV-prior toy a n d / is not PV-prior to x. Secondly, let us say that x[m] is the anterior m-boundary for y iff (a) every moment which is subjectively earlier than x is RPV-prior t o / , and (b)y is either causally isolated from or RPV-prior to each moment which is subjectively later than x. Thirdly, let us say that x[m] is the posterior m-boundary for y iff ( a ) / is RPV-prior to every moment which is subjectively later than JC, and (b) any moment which is subjectively earlier than x is either causally isolated from or RPV-prior t o / . Then: x[m] and/(m' ] coincide iff JC a n d / are causally isolated and either (a) x is both the anterior and the posterior m-boundary for / a n d / is both the anterior and the posterior m' -boundary for JC, or (b) x is, in m-time, midway between the anterior and posterior m-boundaries for/, and y is, in m'-time, midway between the anterior and posterior m' -boundaries for JC. The point of this definition is that, using P2, we can establish that if m and m' are IST-related (i.e. are different minds which share a common framework of IS-time), then x[m] and yf/rT) are simultaneous iff they coincide. There are two cases to be considered: (1) where there is an ISC-minimum (a minimum IS-interval nomologically required for a causal line from a volition in one mind to a sensation in another), and (2) where there is not. Case (2) is straightforward: x[m] and y[mf] are simultaneous iff they are causally isolated, with each as the anterior and posterior boundary for the other. Case (1) is more complex. Let d be the ISC-minimum. Then if jc[m] occurs at the IS-time / and/[w'] occurs at the IS-time 270

Construction of inter-subjective time t \ then the anterior and posterior m*-boundaries for JC occur, respectively, at / - d and t + is the same as the m'-projection for (x,y). In other words, the same IS-distance may have different measures from the viewpoints of different minds - different measures in different frames of reference. Moreover, there is nothing to make one viewpoint superior to another - nothing to give one frame of reference a privileged status. So we must think of objective IS-distance as simply whatever holds constant, and necessarily holds constant, through the different projections. But we can see, from our definition of IST-relatedness and our definition of IS-simultaneity, that what has to hold constant is the ratio of one IS-distance to another, as measured by each projection. Thus let us say that r is the m-ratio for (x,y, w, z)in a iff, if dis the w-projection for (JC,y)\n a and df is the m-projection for (w,z) in a, then r is the ratio of d and df (i.e. did'). Then our definitions ensure that, for any a-moments x, y, w and z and a-minds m and m \ the /w-ratio for (x, y, w, z) and the mf-ratio for (x, y, w, z) are the same. For our definitions ensure, in accordance with P2, that if xx[m] , x2[m] , Xy[m] and xA[m] are, respectively, IS-simultaneous with yx[m'], yJim'\ yA*n'] and ^ 4 [m'], then there are equal subjective distances between xx and x2 and between x3 and x4 iff there are equal subjective distances between yx and y2 and between / 3 and y4. Hence, given an IST-community a and two a-moments x and y, we cannot speak of the absolute IS-distance between x and/. We can only speak either (1) of the IS-distance between x andy relative to some a-mind m ( — the w-projection for -unit of silence before 1 0-unit of C, before 1 0-unit of silence before i 0-unit of D. If E , is continuous in mental time, there are infinitely many such sensations between successive £ ^-sensations. The point of the additional requirements in (3) and (4) ('is the realization of it qua .. .*) is to ensure that the relation of O-precedcnce is asymmetric and can form the basis of temporal order in the stream. After all, there may be a case in which, apart from these additional requirements, all the specified conditions are satisfied, but in which the temporal pattern realized by z is, being twice realized in x, both the last and the first portion of the jc-pattern and also, being twice realized in / , both the first and the last portion of the 7-pattern. Without the additional requirements, we would have to say, in such a case, not only that x O-precedes/, but also that/ O-precedes x. Of course, the concept of series here is purely formal, not temporal. There is no circularity. However, I have discussed it elsewhere, namely in *In 5^-Defence' in G.F.Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity, Macmillan, London, 1979. Since the ultimate laws of IS-causation will not be directly concerned with IS-time (IS-time being what we have to construct partly out of IS-causation), I might have said, more precisely: 'If a is the uncountable set of relations underlying IS-temporal distances (so that, for each temporal distance d, there is an a-relation R such that, for any subjective moments x and/, if JC a n d / are ^-related, they are so in virtue of the conjunction of (i) their £-relatedness and (ii) the ultimate laws of nature), there may be an IS-temporal distance dsuch that, if 0 is that subset of a whose members underlie temporal distances less than dy then (i) the ultimate laws ensure that, for any x[m] and y[m% ifm^m' and x a n d / stand in a 3-relation, then there is no causal line from a volition at JC to a sensation at / , and (ii) a and b stand in a P-relation. Remember that subjective time-dimensions are infinitely extended in both directions. That we can envisage an ultimate reality which yields relationships of RPV-priority is shown in the next chapter. 17 THE UNDERLYING REALITY

1 In chapter 14. 2 In G.F.Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity, Macmillan, London, 1979, pp. 168-70. The example that follows is also taken from there. 3 Following the normal practice, I am using 'V* as a universal quantifier to mean 'For every .. .* and *D' as a binary sentential operator to mean (construed as a material conditional) *If..., then .. .*. 4 This ties in with what was said in the previous chapter, p. 269. 302

Note to page 288 5 General, that is, apart from their references to M and //. If it was thought desirable, even these references could be eliminated. Thus we could suppose that there are two mind-kinds K\ and K2, such that (1) there is a mind of kind K\, (2) it is either logically or nomologically impossible for there to be more than one X^-mind, and (3) all and only //-minds are of kind K2. We could then reformulate the example in such a way that what are nomologically relevant are not the identities of M and //, but the general properties of being a stream in a AVmind and of being a /^-mind.

303

INDEX

analytical phenomenalism, 16,34-7, 192,231 -2 analytical thesis, 15-16,34-7 anti-realism: in general, 37 -43,236 -7; with respect to physical world, see physical anti-realism archetypes, 29 -30,32,293 atoms, see particles auditory sensations, 104-S, 179-80, 255-60

contingent reality, 5,7,9 continuants, space -occupying, 82 -5, 229-30 creation, see logical creation Descartes, Rene\ 73 -4 dimensionality, of space, see nomological deviance dispositions and powers, 60-2,63 -7, 67-72,298 (ch. 10, n. 1); to affect experience, 58,70-1,89,97-102, 109-10,241 Dummett, Michael,40-3

basic facts, see logically basic Berkeley, George, 17-32,47-8,111-12, 292-4 bivalence, law of, 40-3 bodily sensations, 101-2,105 causation, 19-20,31,71,85,111-12,195, 263 -71,278 -93; see also intersubjective causation; volitional causation colour, 57-8,89 -107 passim comprehensive realism, 43-8 conceptual revision, 117-18, 120-2,152, 238,239,246 confinement thesis, 91 -107,109 constraints on experience, 15,25,32, 192-3,195-200,208-25,227-8,232, 239 -49,253,274,290-3 consubjectivity, 261 -3,274-7,282-3 contingency, 4 -5

Einstein, Albert, 71 empirical knowledge: the limitations on,64-7,87-8,93-5,118-23,150-1, 154, 156, 181-2,210-12, 228; and scepticism, 226 -35 empirical viewpoint, see human viewpoint encoding, of structure by constraints on experience, 196-200,208 -23,227, 232,241-9; harmony of, across minds and times, 223 -5,227 Euclidean geometry, 75-7,136,163, 177 -9; versus non-Euclidean, 74-5, 145-6,170-2 externality, of physical world, 24,26, 27-32,117-18,239-46

305

Index facts, as ingredients of reality, 3 -4 factual realism/and* realism, as distinct from ontological, 33 -7 flavour, 92-3,97-9,100-2,105 frameworks of assertion, 240-9 functional geometry, 137,139,143,14575,200-2,211-12 functionalism, in the analysis of mental descriptions, 54-5 geometry: of physical space, 71 -2,74-7, 86,113-14,115,127-75,176-80, 200-2,211 -13; of sense -fields, 111, 112,113-16,148-61,166-74,200-2, 2U-\3; see also under tews of nature; nomological deviance; nomological uniformity God, 18-32/wxrim, 47 -8,111,151,214, 216,292-4 human viewpoint, 150-1,197-9,209, 210-12,215,220,223; see also transcendental viewpoint Hume, David, 56,100,103,116 idealism, different kinds of, 3,7 -16, 17-18,294; $ee a&> mcntalism; physical anti-realism; reductive phenomenalism images, mental, 19-20,24-5,102-5 impenetrability, 59 -62,68 -9 indeterminacy, physical, 147-8,247-9 individuau'on, spatial principle of, 60-2, 79-80,84,128,180-1 inter-subjective (IS) causation, 263-71, 275,277,287-8,290 inter-subjective (IS) time, 253 -4,263 73,274,285 -8 ISC-minimum, 267-8,270-1,287 isomorphism-requirement, 200-7,209, 222,291 IST-community,272-3 IST-relatedncss, 266,270,271 -2,273

laws of nature: in Berkeley's philosopby, 20,23 -6,32,292-3; deter mining physical geometry, 127 -75, 176-80,200-2,211-12; physical, 826,109-11,177-80 and/xmi'm; psychophysical,45,70,109-10,177, 193-4,241-5,279; role of in sustainment and creation, 45 -6,82 -6,162 88 and/warn; and status of causal facts, 283 -5; underlying time, 274 93; and passim Locke, John, 59-63 logically bask, definition of, 7 logical creation: definition of, 6; of matter, 82-6,94,110,161-2,176-88, 229-30; of physical space, 162-75, 176-80; of physical world, phenomenalistically, 24-7,191 -249,28893; prospective versus retrospective, 229-32,237 logical necessity, 5,230-1 logical product, definition of, 6 -7 logical sustainment: definition of, 5 -6; of existence of matter, physical space and physical world, see logical creation; prospective versus retrospective,229-32,237 matter, 56-74; the logical creation of, see under logical creation matter-selective realism, see under selective realism mental time: construction of, 253 -73; inter-subjective(IS),253-4,263-73, 274,285-8; reality underlying, 27494; streamal, 257-61,278 rT; subjective, 253,254,261 -5,274-7,281 -5; see also phenomenal time; physical time mentalism,7-14,17-20,51,112-13,294 mentalistic physical realism, 13-15,478,51-6,73-4,91-2,108-23,127; in Berkeley's philosophy, 22,26 -32, 47-8,111-12,293; matter-selective, 176-80,182-7 mentalistic realism, see mentalistk physical realism mind -brain identity thesis, 52 -6

knowledge, see empirical knowledge Kripke, Saul,62,295 (ch.l, n.2), 296 (ch.4, n.6)

306

Index mind-independence, of physical wo rid, see non-mental-requirement; with respect to human minds, see externality natural necessity, 4 -5,15,192,240; see also laws of nature nihilism, 12-14,20-1,24,33,35,39-40, 42-3,45-6,191-2,226-7,233-9 NMR, see non -mental -requirement nomological deviance: definition of, in respect of geometry, 130,137 -8; dimensional, 155-60,167-8,173-4; qualitative, 202 -4,217 -23; recipro cal topologkal (RT), 131-43,149, 153-5,157-60,167,171,201-2,211, 215,291-2;seealso nomological thesis; nomological uniformity nomological irrelevance, 204-7,209, 211-12,215-16; see also nomological relevance nomological organization, see laws of nature nomological relevance 133-8,143,2047; principle of, 209-13,222 nomological thesis, 143-60; realist and and-realist versions of, 160-77 nomological uniformity: and geometry, 130-75; and reductive phenomenalism, 195 -23; principle of, 209-13, 222; see also nomological deviance; nomological thesis non-mental-requirement (NMR), 11722,152,238 occasionalism, 292 -3 occupancy, of physical space, 56 -7,59 62,72,73-4,77-87,109-10,161, 176-88; by h uman subjects, 70 -1, 118 ontological realism/anti-realism, as distinct from factual, 33 -7 ontological status: together with factual status, 5 -14,37 -40,43 -6; of matter, 81-6,94,110,161,176-88; of physical space, 81 -4,157-75 ontologically primitive, definition of, 7; versus ontologically derivative, see

307

ontological status opaque specification: distinguished from transparent specification, 62; of intrinsic nature of matter, 62 -7, 89; of intrinsic nature of physical space, 78; see also transparent specification overlapping, of sensations, 257 -61 particles, physical, 64-72,82-6,177 -88, 193-4 perception, 18-32/*u$im,44-6,91, 117 -18; see also sensations phenomenal time, 254-9; see also mental time phenomenalism, see analytical phenomenalism; reductive phenomenalism physical anti -realism, 7 -9; argument for, 127-88; in Berkeley's philosophy, 26 -7; compared with menta lism, 8 -11; and Dummett, 40 -3; in respect of matter, 176 -88; ontologi cal versus factual 33 -7; options left open by, 12-14,191-2,226; in respect of physical space, 162 -75; and selective physical realism, 43 -6; sense in which anti-realist, 37-40; see also nihilism; reductivism physical geometry, see geometry physical realism, 14; matter-selective, 82 -4,176 -88; mentalistk, q. v.; onto logical versus factual, 33 -7; refuta tion of, 127-88; selective, 43-8,81 2; space -selective, 82 -6,94,110; standard, 11 -15,20,122-3; supposed commitment of our physical beliefs to, 236-8 physical space, 56-9,73-88,127-88, 191 -225 passim, 247 -8; see also under geometry; logical creation; occupancy; ontological status; physical anti-realism physical time, 253 -4,288 -92, see also mental time physicalism, 12,52 physicalistic (mental) realism, 52-5 possible worlds,4-5,164-75,181,185-7,

Index 281 -3,298 (ch. 10, n.l); nomologicaUy, 262,269-70,281,283,287-8 potentiality, 274 -8,281 -3,287 -8; see also dispositions powers, see under dispositions powers-thesis, 67-72 primitive entities, see ontologfcally primitive prospective creation, 229-32,237 prospective sustainment, 16,229-32,237 psychophysical laws, 45,70,109-10, 177,193,241-5,279 publicity, of physical world, 24,26, 29-32,117-18,223-5,253,264,274 Pythagorean principle, 75,146 qualia, see sense-qualia rationality, 232 -3,235 -6,293 realism: in general, 37 -43; with respect to physical world, see physical realism reality, 3 -4; see also contingent reality; ultimate reality reciprocal topologkal deviance, see under nomologkal deviance reductive phenomenalism, 15 -16,41 -2, 192-249,253,263,274,288 -93;in Berkeley's philosophy, 22 -27,31 -2 reductivism, 13 -16,25 -27,31 -2,34,39 43,45-6,191-2,226-7,233-8; phenomcnalistic, see reductive phenomenalism Relativity, General Theory of, 71 -2, 74-5,170-2 relevance, principle of, see under nomologkal relevance representation, principle of, 212 -23 representational thesis, 214-23 retrospective creation, 229-32,237 retrospective sustainment, 16,229-32, 237,279 RT -deviance, see under nomological deviance scepticism, 226-33,235 science, 44-6,64-7,74,92-5 selective (physical) realism, 43 -8,81 -2;

matter-selective, 82-4,176-88; sensible versus scientific, 44-6; space selective, 82 -6,94,110 sensations, 18 -32 passim, 89 -107; and mental images, 19-20,24-5,102-5 sense-datum theory, 104 sense-field theory, 111-18,167 sense-fields, 111-18,148-74/xurim, 194225passim, 247-8,279; geometry of, see under geometry; temporal, see phenomenal time sense-qualia, sense-qualities, 89-107 and subsequently passim; ultimate physical realization of, see sensible realism sensible realism: mentalistic, 21 -2,2732,91-2,111-18; standard,44-6, 57 -9,89 -107; standard visual, 95 106 sensual geometry, see geometry simultaneity, 270-3 solidity, 59 -67; see also powers-thesis somatic qualia, 101 -2,105 sound-qualia, 104-5,179-80,255,256, 257-9,260 space, physical, see under physical space space-time, 71 -2,74-5,170-2 spatial principle, of individuation, see under individuation spatial qualia, 90,93 -5,95 -6,106,111 standard physical realism, 11 -15,20, 122 -3; see also non -mental require • ment standard sensible realism, see under sensible realism Strawson, P.F.,43 streamal time, 257-61,278 if. streams of experience: consubjectivity of, 261 -3,274-7,282-3; internal constitution of, 257-61; time within, see streamal time; as ultimate external world, 111 -18,278-88 subjective time, 253,254,261 -5,274-7, 281-5 sustainment, see logical sustainment tactual experience, 63,66,95 time: in context of reductive pheno-

308

Index menalism,see mental time; phenomenal time; physical time; and geometiy of physical space, 74,170-2 TNI-geometry, see transcendentaUy natural intrinsic geometry topic-neutrality thesis: 55-6,73,88,89, 108; as basis for mentalistk realism, 51 -6,108-23; in context of reductive phenomenalism, 247 -8,289-92; in context of spatial anti-realism, 1745; and problem of alternative geometrics, 139-43; with respect to matter, 56 -72; with respect to physical space, 73-88,143,174-5; with respect to physical time, 290 -1; and sensible qualities, 56,57 -9,89 • 107 topology, of space, see nomological deviance transcendental thesis, 148-60,168 transcendental viewpoint, 148 -60passim, 167,211; see also human viewpoint

transcendentally natural intrinsic (TNI) geometry, 148-60,167-8,211 -12 transparent conception, 90,103,105, 106 -7,122 -3,257,294 transparent specification: distinguished from opaque specification, 62; of intrinsic nature of matter and other space-occupants, 62-8,69,72,73, 89 -90; of intrinsic nature of physical space, 78,87-8,89-90,174-5; and topic-neutrality thesis, 73,88,89-90, 92 ultimacy, definition of, 7 ultimate reality, 7 -14 and passim uniformity, principle of, see under nomological uniformity visual realism, standard, 95-106 visual sensations, 20,103 -5,116,255 volitional causation: divine, 19 -20,24 6,30-1,32,292-4; human, 19-20, 102,265-71,275,277,286-8

309

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: IDEALISM

Volume 2

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

A. J. M. MILNE

First published in 1962 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. This edition first published in 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1962 George Allen & Unwin Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-70445-2 (Set) 978-1-00-315602-4 (Set) (ebk) 978-0-367-72195-4 (Volume 2) (hbk) 978-0-367-72203-6 (Volume 2) (pbk) 978-1-00-315384-9 (Volume 2) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM BY

A. J. M. MILNE ?h.D.,BSc.(Econ.) Lecturer in Social Philosophy at the Queen's University of Belfast

LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE

MUSEUM

STREET

FIRST

PUBLISHED

IN

I 9 6 2

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. © George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1962

TO J. J. MILNE

P R I N T E D IN G R E A T BRITAIN BY EAST M I D L A N D P R I N T I N G CO. LTD B U R Y ST. E D M U N D S , S U F F O L K

PREFACE

This book has grown out of work which I first began nearly ten years ago at the London School of Economics. I had been awarded a research grant by the Leon Bequest Committee of the University of London and I should like to express my appreciation to its members for the opportunity which they gave me. From 1952-54 I was in the United States on a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship and if my programme of study was broader than the scope of this book, it nevertheless contributed much which was to prove valuable, particularly in respect of my own philosophical development. This may be a suitable occasion for me to express my appreciation for my two years in America and I would like especially to thank Mr E. K. Wickman and Mr Lancing B. Hammond, who were then officers of the Division of Education of the Commonwealth Fund, for all that they did for me as for other Fellows. I should also like to express my thanks for the facilities which I enjoyed during 1952-53 in the Philosophy Department of the University of California at Berkeley, and during 1953-54 in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. When I returned from America the general plan of this book was taking shape in my mind, and working it out occupied me on and off for the next five years. During this period, as well as during the final stages of preparing the book for publication, I have received invaluable help from a number of people. Professor M. J. Oakeshott of the London School of Economics read through the first draft and I would like to thank him for some very helpful comments and suggestions. I am also greatly indebted to Professor W. B. Gallie of the Queen's University, Belfast. He read through two different drafts and, apart from making many valuable suggestions, has been a constant source of friendly encouragement for which I am most grateful. I am most grateful to Mr E. D. Phillips and Mr Philip Thody, both of Queen's; to the former for his many useful suggestions on points of style and expression; to the latter for his Herculean labours over the proofs. I should also like to thank Miss Ann

Greer for her care and trouble in typing the final draft. Last but not least, I must thank my wife both for her general support and for her tolerant indulgence during times when the strain of authorship was making itself rather obviously apparent. Finally, there is an intellectual debt which I should like to acknowledge. It is to the philosophical work of R. G. Collingwood. This has been the chief seminal influence in my thinking while working on this book and, although I never knew Collingwood personally, I should like to put on record my appreciation of what I owe to him. A. J. M. MILNE

Belfast, August 1961

CONTENTS PREFACE

page

I NTRODUCTION

5 II

I. THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL A. T H E A B S T R A C T

15

UNIVERSAL

l£

1. Introductory - 2. Classification - 3. Laws of nature B. T H E T H E O R Y OF R A T I O N A L A C T I V I T Y 22 1. Rationality is not a generic attribute-2. Technical and Economic Efficiency — 3. Ends and means: some further considerations — 4. The doctrine of self-realization —5. Rationality and morality — 6. Moral rules and customs and morally responsible conduct — 7. The scale of levels of rationality C. T H E T H E O R Y CONTINUED: ACTIVITY

OF RATIONAL S P H E R E S OF

ACTIVITY RATIONAL 39

1. The relation between the various spheres —2. Work and leisure - 3. Personal relations and citizenship - Morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity D. R A T I O N A L A C T I V I T Y A N D T H E CONCRETE U N I V E R S A L 49 1. The significance of the concrete universal within the context of rational activity — 2. Implications of the theory of rational activity for philosophy

II. F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY 56 A.

MORALITY

AS SELF-REALIZATION

56

1. Personal identity and 'self-sameness'— 2. Self-realization B. T H E S O C I A L S E L F 6l 1. *My Station and its duties* — 2. An ill-founded objection — 3. A more serious objection C. T H E I D E A L S E L F 1. The elements of the ideal self - 2. A crucial question which is not answered - 3. Allegation that morality is inherently defective

69

D. M O R A L I T Y A N D R E L I G I O N JJ 1. The nature of the religious object - 2. Religion as the rational activity of self-realization — 3. Critique and appraisal of Bradley's argument

8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

III. T . H . G R E E N ' S T H E O R Y OF M O R A L I T Y A. T H O U G H T A N D E X P E R I E N C E 1. Introductory — 2. The central role of thought in human experience-3. Some objections - 4. The doctrine of an eternal consciousness — 5. The case for a philosophical theory of morality completed-6. Further points arising out of Green's theory of experience

87 87

B. R A T I O N A L A C T I V I T Y A N D M O R A L I T Y 1. The desire for personal good - 2. The social basis of morality - 3. The ultimate moral community

IOO

C. M O R A L T H E O R Y A N D M O R A L P R A C T I C E 1. The two senses of 'What ought to be done?'-2, No good effects from bad motives - 3. The practical significance of the theory of morality - 4. Freedom and morality

IIO

IV. T . H . G R E E N ' S SOPHY

POLITICAL

PHILO-

124

A. R I G H T S A N D O B L I G A T I O N S 1. Introductory - 2. Moral duties and legal obligations - 3. Rights

124

B. T H E T H E O R Y OF T H E S T A T E 1. The moral basis of the s t a t e - 2 . Sovereignty and coercive p o w e r - 3 . The real problem of political obligation - 4. Disobedience may sometimes be a duty

130

C. T H E S C O P E A N D L I M I T S OF G O V E R N MENT ACTION 1. War and international relations-2. Punishment as a deterr e n t - 3 . Retributive and reformatory aspects of punishment4. Economic life and private property —5. Marriage and the f a m i l y - 6 . Retrospect

144

V. THE THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEYANDBERNARDBOSANQUET 165 A. F . H . B R A D L E Y 1. Introductory - 2. Bradley*s notion of the concrete universal 3. The nature of ultimate reality-4. Critique of empirical knowledge-5. The transmutation of human values in the Absolute

l6j

B. B E R N A R D B O S A N Q U E T 1. Bosanquet's notion of the concrete universal-2. The concrete universal as a clue to ultimate reality - 3. Truth and error in the Absolute - 4. Good and evil in the Absolute

183

C. I D E A L I S M WITHOUT THE A B S O L U T E 1. Summary of criticisms of the theory of the Absolute - 2. The begging of metaphysical questions-3. Knowing and what is known

194

9

CONTENTS

VI. H U M A N I S T I C I D E A L I S M

203

A. K N O W L E D G E A S AN I N T E G R A L P A R T O F RATIONAL ACTIVITY 203 i. Introductory — 2. Knowledge in rational activity at once practical and theoretical - 3. Levels of self -consciousness - 4. Self-consciousness and knowledge B. K N O W L E D G E A S T H E O B J E C T OF RATIONAL ACTIVITY 214 1. The roots of natural science — 2. What is known in natural s c i e n c e - 3 . The roots of historical knowledge - 4. What is known in historical knowledge C. P H I L O S O P H Y 225 1. The roots of philosophy — 2. History, philosophy and the history of philosophy — 3. Philosophy and practice

VII. B E R N A R D B O S A N Q U E T ' S PHILOSOPHY A.

THE REAL

POLITICAL

WILL

1. Introductory — 2. The paradoxes of ethical obligation and of self-government — 3. The real will as the principle of social responsibility — 4. The real will and self-consistent human achievement

B. B O S A N Q U E T ' S T H E O R Y O F T H E S T A T E 1. The theory of freedom—The state as the political organization of society - 3. Political criticism - 4. International relations — 5. Reasons for the inconsistency in Bosanquet's theory of the state

237 237

2^

C. P O I N T S OF P E R M A N E N T S I G N I F I C A N C E IN B O S A N Q U E T ' S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 263 1. Later thoughts on international relations — 2. Socialism and private property — 3. The scope and limits of government action —4. The theory of rights

VIII. THE MORAL P H I L O S O P H Y AND METAPHYSICS OF J O S I A H ROYCE 276 A. T H E T H E O R Y OF L O Y A L T Y 276 1. Introductory — 2. The preliminary conception of loyalty — 3. The revised conception of loyalty — 4. Practical significance of the theory of loyalty - 5. The theory of loyalty and the theory of rational activity B. T H E N A T U R E OF B E I N G 288 1. The interdependence of cognition and volition — 2. Human consciousness and the activity of self-determination — 3. Royce's version of the eternal consciousness — 4. Time and the eternal consciousness

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

IO C.

THE IN

PLACE

OF

OF ENGLISH

NATURE

AND

IDEALISM HUMANITY

BEING

295

1. The philosophy of nature: a preliminary view — 2. The philosophy of nature: a deeper view — 3. The place of humanity in being - 4. Immorality and evil D. R O Y C E A N D H U M A N I S T I C I D E A L I S M 1. Royce's metaphysics no foundation for his theory of morality - 2. Criticism of Royce's metaphysics - 3. Philosophy and religion

304

APPENDIX 1:

Sources of quotations in the text

3*5

APPENDIX 2 :

Selected bibliography in Idealist philosophy

32°

NOTE : The numbers in brackets after the quotations in the text refer to Appendix 1.

INTRODUCTION

The word 'idealism* has a well established meaning in English. It is also the name of a school of philosophy. This book is concerned with the school of philosophy, not with idealism in the ordinary sense. It might be supposed that a clue to the general standpoint of the school could be found in the ordinary meaning of the word but this is not so. As the name of a school of philosophy, 'Idealism' refers to ideas rather than ideals. An Idealist philosopher is not, qua philosopher, an idealist in the ordinary sense. This does not mean that he has no concern with ideals. He has; but as a philosopher, not as a devotee. At the turn of the century Idealism was perhaps the leading school of philosophy in the English-speaking world. Many professional philosophers approached their work in terms of its general standpoint and method. Today the situation is very different. There has occurred during the last two generations what has been described as 'a revolution in philosophy', one consequence of which has been the almost total eclipse of Idealism. Few contemporary philosophers have more than a superficial knowledge of it and fewer still have any interest in it. The general assumption is that it has been discredited by the philosophical revolution. But has it? To raise this question is not to deny that those who made the revolution had something to revolt against. It was largely a revolution against Idealism and there must have been something wrong with Idealism to provoke it. Nor is it to deny that valuable intellectual achievements have resulted from the revolution. But it is to question the assumption that the whole Idealist enterprise was unprofitable, that it was nothing but an unfortunate aberration in the development of modern philosophy. On a more positive note, it is to suggest that, notwithstanding certain defects, there may be something to be said for Idealism. This book is an attempt to follow up that suggestion. It is a critical study of certain aspects of the work of four Idealist DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-1

12

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

philosophers. It deals mainly with their social philosophy, but some consideration is also given to their metaphysics. By their social philosophy, I mean that part of their work which was concerned with human life in society, in particular their ethics and political theory; by their metaphysics, that part of it which was concerned with first principles, in particular their doctrines about knowledge and reality. It is the thesis of this book that there is a valid and significant form of Idealism to be found in the work of these philosophers, but that they did not succeed in developing it fully and consistently. They came nearest to doing so in their social philosophy and were least successful in their metaphysics. Indeed there are certain defects in their metaphysics which are due to the fact that in this part of their work they drifted away from the Idealist standpoint of their social philosophy. The aim of this book is to contribute to a re-assessment of Idealism by developing this thesis. Such interest as it may have will be largely for philosophers and those interested in philosophy. But perhaps it may not be altogether without interest for students of the social sciences. The social sciences and social philosophy are, or should be, complementary, and it is part of the thesis of this book that there is much of permanent significance in Idealist social philosophy. Perhaps the most marked difference between English Idealism and contemporary English philosophy is over the nature and scope of philosophy itself. Broadly, the current view is that philosophy is an activity of analysis, the aim of which is intellectual clarification. It does not yield knowledge; for that we must go to the sciences and to history. But according to the English Idealists, philosophy is, or at least can be, something more than merely analysis. It can yield knowledge, and knowledge of a kind which is not to be found in the sciences or history. In the course of this book, I shall argue in support of this conception of philosophy, notwithstanding the fact that the English Idealists sometimes abused it and, especially in their metaphysics, claimed too much for philosophy. But this does not mean that I underrate the value of analysis as it is conceived and practised today. Indeed I do not think there is any fundamental incompatibility between philosophical analysis in the contemporary sense and the form of Idealism which I shall recommend. Their aims are different but need not conflict. There will

INTRODUCTION

13

be disagreement only if it is contended that philosophy must be nothing but analysis, that nothing else is possible. But contemporary philosophers are entitled to demand that a more ambitious conception of philosophy should make good its claims, and I shall do my best in the course of this book to meet that demand. The four Idealist philosophers with whom this book is concerned are: F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet and Josiah Royce. About the first three, little needs to be said by way of introduction. They are generally acknowledged to have been the leading figures of the Idealist movement in British philosophy. One point only calls for a word of explanation. Green was ten years older than Bradley and, when he died in his middle forties, the latter's philosophical career had only just begun. But in this book Bradley's work in social philosophy is discussed before Green's. The reason is that Bradley's major contribution to this field was made at the beginning of his career, while Green's came in the last years of his life. It is moreover an improvement on Bradley's work. From the point of view therefore of both chronological and logical development, it is necessary to discuss Bradley first. Josiah Royce was a contemporary of Bradley and Bosanquet, and like them was a philosophical Idealist. But he was an American, and his inclusion in a book purporting to be about English Idealism may occasion some surprise. The reason is that a study of certain aspects of his work is necessary for the development of the book's main thesis. In addition, a glimpse of the parallel development of Idealism in America is perhaps not without some interest. As regards the word 'English' in the title, my excuse, if I need one, is that by it I mean 'the English-speaking world' rather than England. I have said that the aim of this book is to contribute to a reassessment of Idealism. This is a philosophical aim, but there is a sense in which it is also historical. Before you can make a critical evaluation of the work of past philosophers, you must know what that work was. This book is, inter alia, a reconstruction and exposition of certain aspects of the philosophy of Bradley, Green, Bosanquet and Royce, and in this sense it is a contribution, for what it is worth, to the history of philosophy. But it is not historical in the broader sense. It is not concerned with the personal biographies of the four philosophers, nor with

14

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the effect of their work upon other philosophers or on the general life of their time. Nor again is it concerned with the historical origins of their philosophy. On this last point however a further word may be added. It is well known that the historical origins of English Idealism are to be found in German Idealism, especially in the philosophy of Hegel. It may be thought that some account should first be given of the leading ideas of Hegel's philosophy to prepare the way for an understanding of the English Idealists. Now reference to the work of a predecessor may sometimes be helpful in elucidating some obscurity in the work of a given philosopher. But this is not so in the present case. Indeed I am inclined to think that the boot is on the other foot; certain obscurities in Hegel may be elucidated at least partially through a study of his English successors. In any case, this is a book not about Hegel but about the English Idealists. While they took over certain leading ideas from Hegel, they were not simply restating him. They developed their own philosophy for themselves and it deserves to be considered on its own merits. The question of the relation of English Idealism to the Idealism of Hegel lies outside the scope of this book.

CHAPTER I

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

A:

THE ABSTRACT UNIVERSAL

1. The central idea in nineteenth century Idealist philosophy is the notion of the concrete universal. The English Idealists took it over from Hegel and it played a most important part in all their work. In this opening chapter I shall try to give an account of it but some preliminary remarks are necessary first. The notion of the concrete universal is complex and cannot be neatly summed up in a few sentences or even paragraphs. It is bound up with a theory of rational activity and it can be under­ stood only in the light of that theory. Moreover, there is a certain ambiguity about the notion as it was actually developed in the work of the English Idealists. They do not seem alto­ gether to have succeeded in disentangling it from another idea from which, in fact, it is really quite distinct. This is perhaps hardly surprising. The notion of the concrete universal ap· peared to the English Idealists to be a new and fertile principle in philosophy, the value and significance of which could be appreciated only by putting it to work. In their efforts to ex­ plore its implications, it was perhaps inevitable that they should fail to emancipate themselves wholly from different and alien ideas. Later we shall have to pay attention to these ideas and to their consequences in Idealist philosophy. But first we must try to grasp the essentials of the notion of the concrete universal when it is free from ambiguity. In what follows I shall expound the notion as I understand it in my own way. In subsequent chapters I shall try to show that my view is in fact the one to which the English Idealists were committing themselves in their social philosophy, although they did not always appreciate the full implications of this commitment. One difficulty about the notion of the concrete universal is its name. vVe are accustomed to think of the universal or general

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-2

16

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

as abstract, and the concrete as particular or perhaps individual. From this point of view, the phrase 'concrete universal' seems equivalent to 'concrete abstraction', a literal contradiction in terms. But are we right in thinking that the universal is always abstract? This is the point at issue. Now it is within the context of rational activity that the notion of the concrete universal is significant. To understand in what way it is significant, we must explore that theory and a large part of this chapter will be devoted to that task. But we must begin with a brief consideration of the abstract universal. 2. We may gain some understanding of the abstract universal by considering certain elementary features of the notion of a class and the procedure of classification. The notion of a class in its simplest form is the notion of a number of things which are alike in all possessing a certain attribute. Among the books on my shelves, the paper-backs form a class. They are alike in all having the attribute of being bound in paper. This attribute is general or universal in relation to them. But each possesses it in a particular way. Each, that is to say, exhibits a particular instance of the universal. The universal is not something more than or set over against its particular instances. The attribute of being bound in paper is equally present in all the paper bindings of the individual books. It does not exist on its own apart from them. The universal and its particular instances are strictly complementary. From the standpoint of classification, every universal is a universal of particulars* and every particular is the particular instance of a universal. The distinction between them is a distinction between two aspects of an attribute. It is universal in relation to the class of things which have it. It is particular in relation to any one thing which has it. There is another distinction implied in the notion of a class. This is the distinction between the particular and the individual. They are not the same although our ordinary way of speaking and thinking tends to blur the difference. An individual is what exhibits the particular instance of a universal. The members of a class are always individuals, never merely * The use of 'particulars' where it is short for 'particular instances' is not to be confused with other well known uses in recent and current philosophy. My reason for adopting it will be apparent in the next para, where I distinguish between 'particular' and 'individual*.

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

If

particulars. The members of the class of paper-backs are individual books, not their paper bindings. Classification is a method of identifying individuals. We pick on the particular instance of an attribute exhibited by an individual and identify it as a member of the class of things having that attribute. But identification by classification is a matter of degree. The classification of a book as a paper-back presupposes the prior classification of the individual in question as a book. The priority here is logical not temporal. The two classifications may be made together being fused not in the single judgement: 'This is a paper-backed book/ The point to be noticed here however is that what an individual is identified as depends upon the attribute or attributes which we pick out. To turn now to the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. From the standpoint of classification, individuals are concrete. They exist as such in their own right. Attributes are abstractions made by us from these concrete existents. The attribute of being bound in paper exists as the attribute of individual books. It exists, that is to say, only in combination with the other attributes which together constitute individual books. When we single it out as a means of identification, we are abstracting it from its context. It follows from this that popular usage to the contrary notwithstanding, the distinction between universal and particular is not synonymous with the distinction between abstract and concrete, at least as far as classification is concerned. Individuals are neither universals nor particulars. They are concrete existents. Attributes may be universal or particular according to which aspect is considered. But in any case they are abstract. As a particular, an attribute is abstracted from its context in one individual. As a universal, it is abstracted from its context in a number of individuals. It is important not to be misled by the names which we give to individuals. When we classify something as a horse, we are not saying that there is some essence, 'horsiness', which it somehow embodies. We are saying that, in common with a number of other individuals, it exhibits particular instances of certain attributes. The name 'horse* is the name of a certain class of individuals. But we also have a general idea or concept

18

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of a horse. This is an intellectual construction made by us out of attributes which we have abstracted from individuals. It might be described as a second order abstraction, being a construction out of abstractions. The name 'horse' thus applies to or denotes an aggregate of individuals. It also represents or connotes an intellectual construction, namely an idea or concept formed by us of a type of individual. Failure to understand this may lead to a wild goose-chase in search of an essence which the members of a class are supposed to embody. It is ?, wild goose-chase because, within the context of classification, such essences are not realities. The only realities are individuals. There is another feature of classification to which we must pay attention. A given class may be divided into sub-classes. This division is based upon the different ways in which the universal attribute of a class is exhibited in particular instances. All the books on my shelves are bound but some are bound in paper, the rest in cloth. We have here the relation between a generic attribute and its specific form, a relation which is the basis of the class-sub-class or genus-species relation. The specific forms of a generic attribute are mutually exclusive. Each of my books is either a paper-back or bound in cloth; it cannot be both. The reason for this lies in the nature of the procedure of classification. When we divide a class into sub-classes, when, that is to say, we break down a generic attribute into its specific forms, we are directing attention not merely to the generic attribute but to the different ways in which it appears in particular instances. The aim is to discover the resemblances and differences among these specific instances and to divide up the members of the original class accordingly. If an individual is a member of one sub-class, it is precluded from being a member of another. It is allocated to that sub-class because the particular instance of the generic attribute which it exhibits takes one specific form and not another. The relation between a generic attribute and its specific forms is a relation between levels of abstraction. The specific form of a generic attribute is possessed not by all but only by some of the individuals possessing the generic attribute. When we move from the specific form and consider the generic attribute, we widen our range and take in a larger number of individuals which we now see to be related to those possessing

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

19

the specific form. But the higher the level of abstraction, the larger the class which possess an attribute, the less determinate will that attribute be. When a generic attribute is divided into specific forms, we come to know it better by discovering new features of it. When I divide the books on my shelves into paper-backs and cloth-bound, I am taking into account the material in which they are bound and giving more determinateness to the generic attribute which they all possess. Considered as a particular, we have seen, an attribute is an abstraction from one individual, the particular instance of a universal which it exhibits. Considered as a universal, it is an abstraction from a number of individuals, all of which exhibit particular instances of it. We have now seen that, as a universal, it may be either generic or specific. In order to get to know it better, we must inquire if it is generic, into its specific forms. If it is itself a specific form, we must inquire into the generic attribute of which it is a specific form and into the other specific forms of that generic attribute. I dwell on this point, for, from the standpoint of classification, universals are attributes. They are abstract and partake of the relation of generic to specific. We have learned, that is to say, something about universals as abstract within the procedure of classification. They are either generic or specific and we have learned something of the character of this relation. It is important, as we shall see later, in connection with the notion of the concrete universal. 3. For further insight into the abstract universal we must go to the scientific notion of a law of nature. Scientific laws are regarded as abstract universals and to understand why may help us. I shall therefore say as much but no more than is necessary for this limited purpose. The scientific notion of a law of nature is fundamentally the notion of a uniform relation between events and circumstances. This relation may be summed up in the formula: 'Whenever in a set of circumstances A, event X occurs, event Y will occur.' An elementary example is the following. Whenever the temperature of water under a pressure of one atmosphere falls to 32 deg. F., the water will freeze. It is a law of nature, that is to say, that water will freeze whenever these conditions are present. A law of nature is universal in the sense that it always holds.

2O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

The operative word in the formula is 'whenever*. But there is a hypothetical element in the notion of a law of nature. The formula states that whenever, in certain circumstances, one event happens, another will always happen. It states, that is to say, that if the circumstances are present, one event will always be followed by another. But it makes no pronouncement about whether or not the circumstances are present. Laws of nature are universal but in what sense are they abstract ? The formula states a relation between kinds of circumstances and kinds of events. 'Whenever in circumstances of a certain kind A, an event of a certain kind X occurs, an event of another kind Y will occur/ This presupposes that events and circumstances have already been classified. The concrete fact is the freezing of this water in these circumstances on this occasion. When we interpret it as a particular instance of a universal relation or law of nature, we are ignoring its concrete individuality and concentrating on the way in which it resembles what has happened on other occasions. But the notion of a law of nature goes beyond that of a class. It concentrates attention on how things change and not merely on their given attributes. Classification does not exclude all reference to change. I spoke above of classifying events and this implies the prior recognition of changes in things. But from the standpoint of classification, what is significant is the identification of events as resembling each other or as being different. From the standpoint of laws of nature, what is significant is not just that one event is like another in a certain respect, not just that this change occurring now is like another which occurred previously, although recognition of this resemblance is essential. The focus of attention is rather on the relation between the occurrence of events of one kind or class and those of another. A new dimension is thus added to the perspective afforded by classification. The concrete is still the individual but the emphasis is now on events, circumstances and occasions, rather than merely the existence of things or entities. A law of nature is abstract in a double sense. It asserts a relation which always holds between a class of circumstances and certain classes of events. This universal relation is abstracted by us from abstractions which we have already made from concrete facts. The freezing of this

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

21

puddle of water on this road this morning, a concrete fact, exhibits a particular instance of a universal relation between classes of events and a class of circumstances. In connection with the notion of a class, I drew attention to the relation between a genus and its species, and between a generic attribute and its specific forms. The principle of this relation is applicable to laws of nature. A number of apparently separate laws, each of which relates a different set of circumstances and events, may turn out to be special cases or specific forms of a wider generic law which embraces them all. When this happens, it is always in the context of a development in scientific theory. The discovery of a law of nature always takes place within the framework of a theory in terms of which the manifold variety of things and events in the world are observed, classified, correlated and reduced to order and relative simplicity. The first stage of abstraction, in which individual things and events are classified, is possible only on the basis of a theory which provides a criterion of relevance. I have pointed to the hypothetical element in a law of nature; the universal relation between events in circumstances of a certain kind. The question of what kinds of circumstances there are is a matter for theory. That circumstances of a certain kind are present on a given occasion is an interpretation of concrete fact made on the basis of theory. A development in scientific theory will give rise to new interpretations of concrete situations and to classification of circumstances and events at a higher level of abstraction, so that what were previously thought to be different sets of circumstances and events are now embraced within the framework of a single system. From the perspective of this theoretical system, the various laws discovered at a lower level of abstraction are now seen to be special cases or specific forms of a generic law holding between events and circumstances classified at the higher level of abstraction. An example of this procedure of scientific advance occurred in the development of classical or Newtonian mechanics. What happened was that a new theoretical system was constructed, in terms of which it was found possible to bring together, within the compass of a single law, a number of separate physical laws concerning different sets of terrestrial and celestial events. These were discovered to be different species of a single

22

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

genus. Many other examples could be cited from the history of natural science. But my purpose here is confined to elucidat­ ing the abstract universal and I am concerned with the notion of a law of nature only in so far as it throws light on this problem. I have tried to indicate the sense in which laws of nature are universal and abstract and to point out the way in which the relation between genus and species is applicable to them. This relation seems to be characteristic of the abstract universal, whether we consider it from the standpoint of classi­ fication or the notion of a law of nature. We shall find it a valuable clue to the difference between abstract and concrete universals. B:

THE THEORY OF RATIONAL ACTIVITY

I. At the beginning of this chapter I said that the notion of the concrete universal is bound up with a theory of rational activity. It is not an empirical theory. It is not, that is to say, an explanation of the occurrence of rational activity in terms of the psychological laws of mental events or of human be­ haviour. Nor is it a linguistic theory. It is not a theory of the consistent use of the word 'rational' based upon an analysis of its actual usage. What kind of theory then is it? It is a theory of the rationality of rational activity, of what acting rationally is. It is criteriological rather than logical in the technical sense. being an attempt to give an account of a criterion or standard. namely rationality. It starts from the assumption that rational activity is going on and that we have a working practical know­ ledge of it. It assumes that, for the most part, we try to act rationally. As a theory, its aim is to take what we already have a working knowledge of, and to try to get to know it better. Let us then begin with our practical working knowledge of rational activity. It is self-conscious, thinking activity; activity in which the agent has at least some idea of what he is trying to do and why he is trying to do it. We may sum up this characteristic by saying that rational activity is activity in which the agent is able to give reasons for what he does. It is tempting to regard this characteristic as the generic attribute possessed by all forms of rational activity. We might then go on to classify the various forms of rational activity on the basis

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

23

of the different kinds of reasons which are given for them. The problem for the theory of rational activity then becomes the problem of defining a generic attribute in terms of its various specific forms. Let us try this approach. Reflection on our practical working knowledge of rational activity suggests two different kinds of reason for what we do. We do some things simply as the means to ulterior ends; simply, that is to say, for the sake of their consequences. We do other things for their own sake, because in some way they are intrinsically worth doing. Thus it might seem as if the generic attribute of all forms of rational activity, namely that reasons can be given for what is done, may be broken down into two specific attributes or kinds of reason, that of being done as a means to an end, and that of being of intrinsic worth. The genus rational activity, in other words, has two species: activities which are carried out simply as a means, and activities which are carried out for their own sake. But this approach will not do, as further reflection on our practical working knowledge of rational activity makes clear. The species are not mutually exclusive. We do many things for both kinds of reason at once. A man is digging in his garden. From one point of view his action is a means to an end: he wants to get the bed ready for seeding. But he loves his garden and finds in its care and cultivation a deep personal satisfaction, so that nothing connected with it is merely a chore. Digging the bed is a means to an end, but it is also something more; an integral part of an intrinsically worthwhile activity. Rationality is not a generic attribute. It cannot be divided into mutually exclusive specific forms of rationality. It is therefore not an abstract universal, for the relation of generic to specific is characteristic of the abstract universal. But although not abstract, or at least not abstract in the sense in which attributes and laws of nature are abstract, rationality is a universal. It is in some way present in all forms of rational activity. It is with this universal, a universal whose logical structure is different from that of the universal in classification and natural science, that the theory of rational activity is concerned. 2. Rational activity is self-conscious thinking activity, activity in which the agent can give reasons for what he does. It is also

24

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

self-criticising activity. The rational agent is prepared to reflect upon what he is doing, to criticize it and to revise or modify his conduct accordingly. He is also prepared to listen to criticism from others and to accept it where it seems to him wellgrounded. But wherever there is criticism, there are criteria or standards. The theory of rational activity with which the notion of the concrete universal is bound up is in large part a theory of the various kinds of standard implicit in rational activity as we know it in practice, and of the relations between them. We have seen that the relation between activities which are the means to ulterior ends and activities which are worth doing for their own sake, is not the relation between two species of a genus. We shall see in due course that it is the relation between criteria or standards of rationality which is the basis of this distinction, although we shall also see that the notion of activities which are worthwhile for their own sake requires further elucidation. A course of action carried out as the means to an ulterior end can be criticized on grounds of technical efficiency. Does it enable the end to be attained more successfully than any possible alternative ? But it can also be criticized on grounds of economic efficiency. Is it the best way of bringing about the end, having regard to other ends which have also to be brought about, and to a limited amount of resources for attaining them all? These two standards may yield different results. From the technical standpoint, one course of action may be more efficient than another because it enables a given end to be attained more successfully. But from the economic standpoint, it may be the less efficient of the two. It uses up so many resources that the agent is unable to bring about other ends which he regards as equally important. The second course of action, while it does not attain the given end quite so successfully as the first, leaves enough resources available to bring about the other ends. The difference between technical and economic efficiency is not the difference between the mutually exclusive species of a genus. While the technical standpoint excludes economic considerations, the economic standpoint does not exclude technical considerations. It takes account of them but sees them as subordinate to the problem of allocating limited resources among

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

2$

competing ends. Its perspective is wider than that of the merely technical standpoint. It recognizes that the agent never has just one end to bring about but many, and that his available resources are always limited. The difference between economic and technical efficiency is a difference of kind which is also a difference of degree.* It is rational to aim at technical efficiency but it is more rational to aim at economic efficiency. The two standards constitute different levels of rationality, of which the economic is the higher and the technical the lower. But at the higher level, the lower is not neglected. It is included but in modified and revised form to take account of the wider perspective of the higher level. We have here the model of the relation between criteria or standards of rationality. It is the relation between the different levels in a scale. Its significance will become apparent as we proceed. 3. But rationality is not merely efficiency. That it is something more, is implied in the difference between doing something simply as a means to an ulterior end and doing it for its own sake; a difference which is not that between the species of a genus but which is nevertheless significant. Further consideration of the distinction between ends and means also points to the same conclusion. The distinction can be strictly drawn only if the ends are finite; if, that is to say, they are limited states of affairs which it is possible, at least in principle, completely to bring about. Unless this condition is satisfied, it is impossible clearly to separate the means from the end to which it is the means. Now the decision on a given occasion to try to bring about certain finite ends is made by the rational agent. His ends are not given to him ready-made; he chooses them. Moreover, at the level of economic efficiency, in order to allocate scarce resources between several ends, he must establish an order of priority among them. Upon what principle is he to choose his ends and estimate their relative importance ? To answer this question we must consider what sorts of reasons there are for trying to bring about finite ends. At first sight, it might seem that the bringing about of a finite end is desirable either because it is in its turn the means to a further end, or because its attainment is worthwhile for its own sake. But

* Readers familiar with R. G. Colling wood's Essay on Philosophical Method will recognize the source of this idea.

26

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

this statement obscures certain points which in the present context are important. A finite end cannot be the means to a further end. Only a course of action can be a means.* But a finite end once it is attained may be a necessary condition for, or a constituent or material component of, some course of action or activity which is itself the means to a further end. Again, the attainment of a finite end is never, strictly speaking, worthwhile for its own sake. But as before, the end once attained may be a necessary condition for, a constituent or material component of, a course of action or activity which is worthwhile for its own sake. In some cases this course of action or activity may be no more than the contemplation of a finite end which has been attained. But in such cases, it is the contemplation and not the attainment of the end which is worthwhile for its own sake. Our statement must therefore be reformulated as follows. The reason for trying to bring about a finite end is that it is a necessary condition for, a constituent or material component of, some course of action or activity which is either the means to a further end, or is worthwhile for its own sake. An example may help to throw light on the foregoing points. Two men arrange to play a game of tennis. Before they can start the court must have been marked out and the net set up. The marking out of the court and the setting up of the net are the means to an end. But this end is not the game of tennis. It is the existence of a state of affairs which makes the playing of tennis possible, a court properly marked out and a net set up and adjusted to the right height. Playing a game of tennis is not an end to which some other activity is the means. But it is an activity, a necessary condition for which is the attainment of a certain end. The point to notice here is the distinction between a means to an end on the one hand, and a necessary condition for, a constituent or material component of, a course of action or activity, on the other. A means to an end is always some action, course of action or activity. A necessary condition * Ordinary language does not support this point. We ordinarily talk as if things as well as actions are the means to ends. But ordinary language reflects practical not philosophical interests and, although not without philosophical significance, cannot be authoritative where philosophical questions are concerned. It serves well enough for practical purposes but from a theoretical point of view is often ambiguous and elliptical.

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

1J

for, a constituent or material component of, a course of action or activity is never itself a course of action or activity although it may often be the result of previous action. I said earlier that the reason for trying to bring about a finite end is that it is a necessary condition for, a constituent or material component of, some course of action or activity which is either the means to a further end, or is worthwhile for its own sake. But where the course of action or activity is the means to a further end, there will always be some other course of action or activity which is worthwhile for its own sake and with reference to which the attainment of the further end is desirable. In the last analysis, the reason for trying to bring about a finite end is that directly or indirectly it has something to contribute to some course of action or activity which is worthwhile for its own sake. There is however a further point to be noticed. Some activities worthwhile for their own sake involve, as an integral part of themselves, the bringing about of certain finite ends. But the actions which are the means to these ends ars not the means of the activities of which they are an integral part. Throwing up the ball to serve in tennis is a means to hitting it over the net. It is not however a means to the playing of tennis but an integral part of the game. Moreover, many activities are at once worthwhile for their own sake and at the same time the means to an end which is a necessary condition for, or in some way contributes to, other activities which are worthwhile for their own sake. A man may play tennis both because he loves the game and for the sake of the exercise, as a means, that is to say, to improving his physical fitness. Let us now return to our original question. Upon what principles is the rational agent to choose his finite ends and how is he to estimate their relative importance? In the light of the discussion of the last three paragraphs, we can say that he must choose them with reference to the contribution which they can make to courses of action and activities which are worthwhile for their own sake, and that he must estimate their relative importance with reference to the relative importance of these courses of action and activities. But this only points to a reformulation of our original question. The rational agent must decide what courses of action and activities are worthwhile for their own sake, upon their relative importance, and upon

28

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

which on any given occasion he is going to embark. Upon what principles is he to make these decisions? Something however has been gained so far as the theory of rational activity is concerned. We have learned that rational activity is not merely a matter of bringing about finite ends as efficiently as possible, but that it is a matter of engaging in courses of action and activities which have been evaluated from the standpoint of their intrinsic worthwhileness and relative importance. We can also see that this standard of the intrinsic worthwhileness and relative importance of courses of action and activities embodies a higher level of rationality than efficiency in either its economic or technical form. This is because questions about efficiency, which are always questions about the choice of means, are subordinate to, and can arise only in the context of, questions about the intrinsic worthwhileness and relative importance of courses of action and activities. Our problem now is to throw further light on this higher level of rationality. 4. So far we have neglected the rational agent. What is he? He cannot be identified with any one of his courses of action or his activities. Nor is he their total sum or aggregate. But on the other hand, as a rational agent, he is what he does. He cannot be wholly separated from or set over against his activities. The key lies in recognizing that courses of action and activities are not mere sequences of events. Each course of action and each activity is an individual determination of himself by the agent. He is not the sum of his activities but he is the centre from which they originate. Moreover he is equally present in them all. He is the self-conscious unity of which each course of action and each activity is a limited expression. In relation to him, they are fleeting and temporary. In relation to them, he is enduring and permanent. Each course of action and each activity may be described as a temporal and therefore finite microcosm of a non-temporal infinite macrocosm. But in using such language we must not forget that the rational agent is non-temporal only in relation to any one of his courses of action or activities taken singly. He transcends each one of them taken by itself but he is also immanent in each one of them. On the other hand, while he is more than any one of his activities and cannot be identified with their mere aggregate, he

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

29

is nothing apart from them. He has his being in and exists through his courses of action and his activities. Take away the possibility of rational activity and you destroy the rational agent. The doctrine sketched in the last paragraph is in essentials the Idealist doctrine of self-realization.* Most contemporary philosophers know that this doctrine is an integral part of Idealist ethics and social philosophy but few seem to have much idea of what it is about. The central point in the doctrine is that the self of the rational agent is a self which is always in the making. It is being continuously realized in every course of action and every activity of the rational agent. But what sort of self it is that is realized depends in part upon what courses of action and what activities the rational agent engages in, and in part upon the success with which he manages to harmonize them into a coherent way of living. His problem, a problem which is always with him, is to realize himself as fully and effectively as possible in the situation in which he finds himself. He must try to find and develop a way of living which incorporates those activities which summon forth and give expression to his native endowments and capacities. It is these activities and the courses of action which they involve which he finds worthwhile for their own sake. Their relative importance depends upon the strength in him of the various endowments and capacities which they respectively liberate and upon the relative ease or difficulty with which each of them can be incorporated into a coherent way of living. It follows that on any given occasion the rational agent must decide what courses of action and activities are worthwhile for their own sake, what their relative importance is, and upon which he will embark, with reference to the best self which he can realize in the circumstances. He must make these decisions, that is to say, on the principle of developing the best way of life which is open to him, this being the way of life which will enable him to realize himself most fully in the situation in which he is placed. It follows also that a given course of action may be criticized not only from the standard of efficiency but from the standard of self-realization. Is it a wise course of * Or self-determinations: Idealist philosophers sometimes use the latter name.

3O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

action, having regard to the best way of life open to the agent in the circumstances ? Is it an integral part of, or a contribution to, some activity which is itself a contribution to the best achievement of self-realization possible for the agent? The standard of self-realization, embodies a higher level of rationality than efficiency in either of its forms. Its perspective is wider for it takes account not only of ends and means but also of courses of action and activities which are worthwhile for their own sake. It takes account also of the rational agent and recognizes that rational activity is the activity through which he realizes himself. At the same time, it incorporates within itself the two levels of efficiency. They remain significant as subordinate standards of rationality which are relevant whenever questions about the choice of means for the attainment of finite ends arise. But as we have seen, questions about ends and means are significant in, and can arise only in the context of, questions about courses of action and activities which, directly or indirectly, are worthwhile for their own sake. These latter questions take us beyond the levels of efficiency to the level of self-realization. 5. But the notion of self-realization as a level of rationality requires further elucidation. Is any course of action or activity which liberates some native endowment or capacity of the rational agent ipso facto worthwhile for its own sake, and therefore to be incorporated, if possible, into his way of life ? Are no other considerations relevant ? What about the claims of what is called morality ? Has the rational agent no responsibilities, no obligations to other people? These considerations may serve to remind us that so far we have been considering the rational agent in isolation. This one-sided point of view must now be corrected. The rational agent dees not lead an isolated solitary life. He is a person and not merely an agent. He was born into and has grown up in a community of persons. He was conscious of himself, at least in a rudimentary way, as an individual person and of other persons distinct from himself, before he was able to act rationally. He has realized himself as a rational agent in what, from the outset, has been a social context. He has had to learn to live and act not as an isolated individual but as a member of society.

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

31

It follows that a course of action or activity which liberates some native endowment or capacity of the rational agent is not for that reason alone worthwhile for its own sake. It is always relevant to ask whether it is compatible with the agent's social responsibilities. Is it possible for him to engage in it and at the same time fulfil his obligations to other people? This does not mean however that the standard of self-realization has been abandoned. It means only that this standard has been revised. The self which is to be realized in rational activity must be a social self. The way of life in which it is realized must be a social way of life. The roots of morality lie in this social aspect of rational activity. In learning to live and act as a member of his society, the individual agent is realizing himself not merely as a rational but as a moral agent. But it may be objected that I have gone too far in saying that the self which is to be realized in rational activity must be a social self and that the way of life in which it is realized must be a social way of life. Even if it is granted that in learning to live and act as a member of His society the individual agent is learning to be a moral agent, it does not follow that he can only realize himself as a rational agent by becoming a moral agent. A given agent may be able to realize himself most fully in an immoral way of life, a way of life which, while it liberates his native endowments and capacities most effectively and is to him the most satisfying way of life possible, nevertheless runs counter to the requirements of social discipline and leads him to neglect his social responsibilities. Assuming that he can get away with such a way of life, that he can persuade or hoodwink the other members of his society into thinking that it is not immoral and that he really is a moral agent, is he realizing himself most fully as a rational agent if he pursues it ? To this objection it may be replied that if such a form of selfrealization were generally adopted, social life would break down in anarchy. This would result in the destruction of the conditions which make self-realization possible and everyone, including the immoral agent, would suffer. To this reply however it may be further objected that the important question is being begged. The immoral agent not unreasonably assumes that most members of his society will not follow his example. They will not, in any case, know that he is immoral and will con-

32

THH SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tinue to act morally, realizing themselves in social ways of living. The point of the objection is that it cannot be maintained that an individual agent can realize himself most fully only in a moral way of life. So far as the individual agent is concerned, the rational and the moral are not necessarily coextensive. They may sometimes diverge. But there is a further reply to this objection. The individual agent, who expects other people to be moral while he is immoral, is claiming a privileged status for himself, a status for which he can give no rational justification. He is claiming, for no good reason, to be exempt from the responsibilities to which everyone else is liable. It may be conceded that a way of life which is founded on such a claim is not without rationality, for it enables the agent who embraces it to realize himself in a way which to him is very satisfying. But it rests upon an arbitrary assumption, namely the unjustified claim to privileged status, and is therefore less rational than a moral way of life. I therefore conclude that, so far as its main point is concerned, the objection fails. The rational and the moral are, when properly understood, co-extensive. Full self-realization can be achieved only where the rational agent is also the moral agent. The self which is to be realized must be a social self and the way of life in which it is to be realized must be a social way of life. But this does not mean that the notion of a way of life which is privately satisfying, a way of life which enables the individual agent to liberate his native endowments and capacities and which to him personally may seem the best possible because the most enduringly satisfying, is irrelevant in rational activity. It remains relevant as a subordinate standard within the framework of morality, the framework of morality being the framework of a socially responsible way of life. We can now see that the notion of self-realization comprises two standards, that of morality and that of private self-satisfaction. Of these, morality embodies the higher level of rationality. Its perspective is wider than that of private self-satisfaction. It takes account of the social aspect of rational activity, of the fact that the rational agent is not an isolated solitary being but a member of a community. It embraces the notion of social responsibility and avoids the arbitrary claim to privileged status, a claim which is tacitly assumed when rationality is

THE CpNCRETE UNIVERSAL

33

confined to private self-satisfaction. But private self-satisfaction finds a place within morality. The two standards of self-realization are not mutually exclusive. The relation between them is that between a higher and a lower level of rationality. It is the same relation as that which holds between economic and technical efficiency. The claims of technical efficiency are not abolished at the higher level of economic efficiency. They survive but in modified form, having been revised in the light of a perspective which takes account of the problem of allocating scarce resources among a number of ends. In like manner, the claims of private self-satisfaction are not abolished at the higher level of morality. They survive but in modified form, having been revised in the light of a perspective which takes account of social responsibility. 6. But the notion of morality itself stands in need of further elucidation. So far we have seen only that its roots lie in the social aspect of rational activity and that it embraces the idea of social responsibility. From the standpoint of the individual agent, morality is something already there. It is embodied in the established rules and customs of his society. This, at least, is how it first presents itself to him. He becomes a moral agent by learning to obey these rules and customs and by learning also to criticize his own and other people's conduct in terms of them. They provide a stable framework within which he grows up as a member of his society. But is morality merely a matter of loyally obeying established rules and customs? These differ in certain respects from society to society. Even within one society, they are not by any means always fully selfconsistent. If morality is conceived of as merely obedience to established rules and customs, then there seems to be an arbitrary de facto character about it. The question naturally arises: is the body of rules and customs established in a given society itself moral ? But further reflection on morality shows that in its most developed form it is something more than merely obeying established rules and customs. These are indispensable in the training of the moral agent and after he has become mature they remain useful as working maxims. But they are only working maxims and the moral agent must accept or reject

34

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

them on his own responsibility. A course of action is not moral because it conforms to an established moral rule but because in the circumstances it is morally the best thing the agent can do. No doubt in most circumstances obeying the established rule will be morally the best thing he can do, but there will be times when this is not so. It is the moral agent's task to decide whether or not he ought to obey the established rule. He cannot make the rule the excuse for his conduct because he is responsible for the decision to obey it. Thus the arbitrary de facto element in morality disappears when it is realized that morality is not merely obeying rules. Morality embraces the idea of social responsibility. It is responsible conduct, conduct in which the agent can accept no authority except his own honest judgement as to where his duty as a social being lies. But upon what principle is the moral agent to decide where his duty lies if he is not to rely on the prescriptions of established rules and customs? By the time he reaches maturity and becomes fully conscious of himself as a rational and moral agent, he is already involved in a number of social relationships and commitments. He is engaged in some kind of work or occupation, has developed various leisure pursuits and interests, is involved in personal relationships with relatives and friends, and finally is a member of a wider political community. He has become a rational and moral agent, that is to say, through his participation in various spheres of rational activity, each of which is at the same time a social sphere. He cannot be wholly separated from or set over against his activities in these spheres. As a rational and moral agent, he is what he does in his work, in his leisure pursuits, in his personal relations and as a citizen. If he is to act with full moral responsibility in the determination of his day to day conduct, he must have a practical idea of the underlying purpose and general significance of the various spheres in which he is involved. He must see them as different aspects of a social way of life, a way of life which he and other rational agents are together engaged in developing. In the light of such an idea, he must interpret the immediate situation confronting him in his various capacities and work out for himself what his detailed responsibilities are. A practical idea of the underlying purposes and general significance of the various spheres of rational activity in which

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

35

he is involved is something which the moral agent can develop for himself only after he has first learned to conduct himself in terms of established rules and customs. He must serve his apprenticeship before he can become a master craftsman. But if he rests content with the prescriptions of prevailing rules and customs, and with received doctrines about the purpose and significance of the various spheres in which he is engaged, he is achieving something less than full moral responsibility. It is only when he is able to subject the received doctrines to the critical scrutiny of his own working knowledge and experience, and, on the basis of that scrutiny, convert established rules and customs into working maxims which he is prepared if necessary to modify or even disregard, that he is in a position to act with full moral responsibility. The morally responsible agent, properly so-called, is the morally autonomous agent, the agent who takes full responsibility for what he does and who determines his conduct in the light of an experienced and wellinformed practical understanding of the implicit rationale, the permanent value and worth of the various spheres of rational activity in which he finds himself involved. But the loyal obedience to established rules and customs is something more than merely a stage in the training of the moral agent properly so-called. It is itself morality, although not morality in its most developed form. Morality, that is to say, involves two standards: that of loyal obedience to established rules and customs, and that of morally responsible conduct proper, conduct in terms of the various spheres of rational activity. These two standards embody two levels of rationality. Morally responsible conduct, conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity, is the higher, obedience to established rules and customs is the lower. At the higher level, the lower is not abolished but is preserved as a subordinate standard. The claims of established rules and customs remain in the form of working maxims at the level of spheres of rational activity. This conception of spheres of rational activity has so far however barely been introduced. It calls in its turn for further elucidation and development. But before attempting that, let us try to recapitulate and sum up our results so far. 7.

In this section we have been engaged in the development

36

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of a theory of rational activity. It is a criteriological not an empirical nor a linguistic theory, the theory of the rationality of rational activity. We have investigated a number of different standards of rationality. We began with efficiency, which turned out to involve two standards, the technical and the economic. We then passed to the notion of courses of action and activities which are worthwhile for their own sake, and thence to the idea of self-realization as a standard of rationality. Here again we found that there were really two standards, that of private self-satisfaction, and that of morality. We then went on to examine morality more closely and resolved it again into two standards, that of obedience to established rules and customs, and that of morally responsible conduct in terms of the responsibilities of spheres of rational activity. We have also seen that each standard embodies a different level of rationality. We have, that is to say, a scale of levels of rationality. The lowest level is that of technical efficiency. Next above it comes economic efficiency. After economic efficiency comes self-realization conceived of in terms of private self-satisfaction. Above this again comes self-realization in the form of morality in terms of obedience to established rules and customs. Above morality, conceived of as rule-keeping, comes morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity. We have further seen that at each level in the scale something is added to our perspective. As we rise in the scale our view of rational activity becomes more comprehensive and coherent. At the lowest level our view is confined to the purely technical problem of how best to bring about a given end. At the level of economic efficiency it is widened to take account of the problem of the best allocation of scarce resources among a number of ends. At the level of private selfsatisfaction our view is widened again to take account of courses of action and activities worthwhile for their own sake and of the fact that the rational agent realizes himself in a way of life made up of these courses of action and activities. At the level of morality in terms of rule-keeping, the perspective is widened again to take account of the fact that the rational agent is not an isolated human atom but a social being. At the level of morally responsible conduct in terms of

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

37

spheres of rational activity, our view is widened once more to include the fact that the rational agent, whom we now know to be identical with the moral agent, is personally responsible for his conduct and cannot be content with what is merely established or laid down. We must not however overlook a genuine sense in which levels of rationality may be opposed. From the standpoint of technical efficiency, the claims of economic efficiency may appear as alien intrusions requiring a sacrifice of purely technical excellence. From the standpoint of economic efficiency, aesthetic considerations, adduced from the standpoint of private self-satisfaction, may appear as frivolous and obstructive. From the standpoint of private self-satisfaction, the claims of established moral rules and customs may appear as irksome restraints which interfere with intrinsically worthwhile activities. From the standpoint of established moral rules and customs, morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity may seem deserving of moral censure because not in accord with those rules. In general, from the standpoint of a given level of rationality which is below the highest, the standpoint of the level immediately above it will normally appear as alien. This is because the standpoint of the lower level must be modified before it can be harmonized with the wider perspective of the higher level. The higher level, just because it takes into account something which is excluded from the perspective of the lower level, is bound to strike a jarring note. The lower level, so far as it goes, is a standard of rationality, and it is bound to resent the claims of a different standard whose point of view it cannot properly appreciate. The opposition which from the standpoint of a lower level of rationality exists between itself and the level immediately above it can be overcome only through a transition to the standpoint of the higher level. This transition is itself a rational one, for the higher level takes account of the standpoint of the lower level. There is a sense in which the higher level achieves explicitly what the lower level promises but fails to fulfil. Anyone who takes efficiency seriously cannot rest content with technical efficiency alone. He is likely to find himself driven to consider the wider question of economic efficiency, for he has not merely one but many ends to bring about and his re-

38

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

sources are limited. The transition from economic efficiency to private self-satisfaction begins when the agent considers the relative priority of his various ends. This will lead him to consider the various courses of action and activities which make up his way of life and the nature and character of that way of life as a whole. The transition from private self-satisfaction to morality at the level of rules and customs will come easily to an agent who is at the same time a social being and who has learned to live and act as a member of a society. It is one which in any case he will find himself obliged to make when he begins to reflect upon the social context of his life. The transition from moral rule-keeping to morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity is the most sophisticated of all the transitions. It comes about if and when the moral agent recognizes the arbitrary de facto character of established rules and customs merely as established. The transition from a lower to a higher level of rationality is thus rational in the sense that if the agent thinks out his situation systematically, trying to take account of all its aspects, he will find himself being led on to the wider perspective of the higher level. But I do not mean that it is an automatic or natural transition in the sense that it invariably happens. What we have been exploring here may be described as the immanent logic of rational activity not its psychology. Rational activity is thinking activity, activity which originates in, and throughout is directed by, ideas. Its immanent logic is the general structure of the leading ideas or categories in terms of which it is realized in practice. Each level in the scale logically implies the one above it in the sense that when we try to think through its implications and ask how it is possible in the world as we know it, we are led beyond it to the level above. So much then for our discussion so far. The aim of this chapter is to expound the notion of the concrete universal and we have been led into the theory of rational activity because it is bound up with that notion. In the first section we saw something of the scope and significance of the abstract universal. At the beginning of this section we saw that rationality, although in some sense a universal, is not abstract. It is not a generic attribute which can be divided into mutually exclusive specific forms. The relation between the various standards of ration-

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

39

ality is the relation between the levels in a scale. The difference between one level and another is a difference at once of kind and degree. It is a difference of kind, because each level is a distinct form of rationality with its own special standpoint. It is a difference of degree, because each level in the scale is a fuller and more adequate form of rationality than those below it. Finally let us try to streamline our terminology. I shall normally hereafter speak simply of the level of ends and means. which should be taken to comprise both economic and tech­ nical efficiency. Since every level in the scale above that of ends and means is a level of self-realization, I shall not normally use that term to designate them although I shall of course employ it when the notion of self-realization is itself under discussion. I shall normally speak of 'the level of private self­ satisfaction', 'the level of moral rules and customs' and 'the level of spheres of rational activity' or sometimes, in the case of the last named, 'the level of morally responsible conduct'. Too rigid a terminology however is not desirable since the various levels of rationality are not the mutually exclusive species of a genus. I shall therefore extend, amplify or modify mine if and when the context demands it. C: THE THEORY OF RATIONAL ACTIVITY CONTINUED: SPHERES OF RATIONAL ACTIVITY 1. To return to the conception of spheres of rational activity: the different spheres of work. of leisure, of personal relations and of citizenship, are spheres of morally responsible conduct. They are spheres of self-realization for rational agents who, having become moral agents, recognize that they must deter­ mine their conduct for themselves, that it is not enough simply to rely on the prescriptions of established rules and customs. useful though these may be as working maxims. But what is the relation between these different spheres? The moral agent is the self-conscious unity of his various courses of action and activities. He realizes himself in his work, in his leisure pursuits and interests, in his personal relations, and as a citizen, but he remains one and the same person throughout. The different spheres are therefore not separate, self-contained and mutually

4O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

exclusive worlds. If they were, then the moral agent could not be one and the same person throughout all his activities. Morally responsible conduct would be schizophrenic conduct. This conclusion is supported by the testimony of common sense. A man cannot divide his life into water-tight compartments. He may distinguish between his work and his leisure, between his responsibilities to his family and his friends, and his responsibilities as a citizen, but these distinctions are not absolute divisions. How then are the different spheres of rational activity related ? To think of them as separate self-contained and mutually exclusive worlds is to think of them as adjacent or contiguous spheres. We shall do better of we think of them not as adjacent or contiguous, but as concentric spheres. We must think, that is to say, of the sphere of leisure as enveloping the sphere of work; of the sphere of personal relations as enveloping the sphere of leisure; and of the sphere of citizenship as enveloping the sphere of personal relations. This involves modifying but not wholly abandoning our ordinary ideas of work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship. We normally think of each of these spheres as a distinct centre of activities, some of which overlap and interpenetrate with those of other centres. But in order to understand their relationship as spheres of rational activity, they must be regarded from another point of view. Each sphere must be considered in turn from the point of view of its adequacy as a way of life for a society of moral agents. It is when they are thought of in this way that they are seen to be related as concentric, not adjacent or continguous, spheres. This way of thinking does not abolish but rather throws fresh light upon our ordinary ideas of work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship. 2. Let us briefly apply this doctrine, beginning with the sphere of work. The essence of work, as a sphere of rational activity, is self-maintenance. It comprises those activities which a society of moral agents must carry out in order to provide and maintain the conditions necessary for its continued existence. A society of moral agents is therefore always a society of workers. But is this all that it is ? Is its way of life nothing but self-maintenance, nothing but mere survival ? Must

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

41

it not also include something worth surviving for? This brings us to leisure. It seems natural, according to our ordinary ideas, to think of work and leisure as opposed to one another. Leisure activities are what we do when we are not working. But there is also a sense in which they are complementary. No man can be a worker all the time. He must have some intervals of rest, recuperation and, at least in some form, recreation. He can be a worker, that is to say, only if he also enjoys some leisure. This might seem to suggest that leisure is part of work because necessary for self-maintenance. It would then follow, not as I contended, that the sphere of leisure envelops the sphere of work, but the other way round. But this would still leave us with the problem of a way of life which was nothing but selfmaintenance, which included nothing worth surviving for. Leisure could not be cast for this role since ex hypothesi it is part of work, a mere phase in self-maintenance and not something worth surviving for. But leisure is something more than merely the rest, recuperation and recreation necessary for work. As a sphere of rational activity, it comprises pursuits and interests which are cultivated not for their survival value but for their own sake. If leisure in the narrower sense of rest, recuperation and recreation is necessary for work, then work in its turn is equally necessary for leisure in the wider sense of pursuits and interests which are cultivated for their own sake. A society of moral agents which cultivates such pursuits and interests must also be a working society, a society which provides and maintains the conditions necessary for its own continued existence. Failure to survive would terminate all leisure pursuits and interests. But the way of life of such a society is something more than mere self-maintenance. It includes, in its leisure pursuits and interests, something worth surviving for. Thus considered as the way of life for a society of moral agents, the sphere of leisure is more adequate than the sphere of work. It includes the sphere of work but goes beyond it, and at the same time gives it further meaning and significance. The two spheres should therefore be thought of as concentric, with the sphere of leisure enveloping the sphere of work. But this way of thinking does not invalidate our ordinary ideas of work and leisure. We can still think of them as distinct centres of activi-

42

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

ties some of which overlap and interpenetrate each other. But viewed thus, they are not being considered from the standpoint of their adequacy as ways of life for a society of moral agents. In thinking of work merely as a distinct centre of activities, we are ignoring the fact that it is enveloped by the larger sphere of leisure. But we recognize that there is some overlap between it and leisure, for we see that it includes certain activities connected with recuperation and recreation. In regarding leisure merely as a distinct centre of activities, we ignore the fact that it envelops the lesser sphere of work. We black out, as it were, that part of it which is filled by the sphere of work. But at the same time we recognize that there is some overlap, that certain leisure pursuits and interests, such as for example mountain climbing, directly give rise to questions of self-maintenance, and that in none of them is the question of continued existence ever wholly irrelevant. When we turn to consider work and leisure as ways of life, and think of them as concentric spheres of rational activity, we make explicit what was implicit when we were thinking of them merely as distinct centres of activities. We were thinking in a deeper more comprehensive way which takes account of what our ordinary ideas ignore. This does not mean our ordinary ideas should be given up, that we are wrong to think of work and leisure merely as distinct centres of activities. For most practical purposes this is the most convenient way to think of them. We should remember only that in so thinking our view is incomplete, and that for a full understanding something more is required. 3. But a way of life consisting only of the concentric spheres of leisure and work cannot be the way of life of a society of moral agents. There is nothing social about it, nothing to make it the way of life of a society. This brings us to the sphere of personal relations. Its roots lie in the individual moral agent's social self-consciousness. His consciousness of himself as a person is at the same time his consciousness of other persons distinct from himself. He is involved throughout his life in personal relations with members of his family, with neighbours, with colleagues and with friends. But if these personal relations are to prosper and not generate hostility and conflict, there must be mutual consideration and respect. Recognition

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

43

of this fact and of the responsibilities which it involves makes personal relations a distinct sphere of rational activity. We ordinarily think of it as cutting across the spheres of leisure and work. Many, but by no means all the activities connected with these spheres involve personal relations. But considered as a way of life for a society of moral agents, it envelops leisure and work. It is the way of life of a society whose members belong to families, and who, in the cultivation of leisure pursuits and interests, and in providing and maintaining the conditions necessary for their own continued existence, treat one another as neighbours, colleagues and friends. This does not mean that no one ever does anything by himself. It means only that what is done in solitude is always subject to and never at the expense of the responsibilities of personal relations. It is in terms of these responsibilities that the members of the society direct their conduct and realize themselves as moral agents. An adequate way of life for a society of moral agents must include the concentric spheres of personal relations, leisure and work. But is this all that it must include ? Such a society would inevitably be no more than a small-scale local community. Its opportunities for corporate organization and for the collective regulation of its affairs would be confined to what could be done through direct personal contact. Its leaders would have to know and be known by each member and their authority would be dependent on personal loyalty. Consideration of these limitations brings us to the sphere of citizenship. Its roots lie in the far reaching consequences of human action. What an individual agent does may affect not only his personal circle but many other people whom he does not and cannot know personally. What they do may affect him. His contact with them is impersonal but none the less real. The essence of citizenship as a sphere of rational activity is the recognition that these impersonal relations give rise to responsibilities no less than do personal relations. In one sense it seems to stand over against the sphere of personal relations as the sphere of public as distinct from that of private life. But there is another sense, for once not unfamiliar to our ordinary way of thinking, in which the sphere of citizenship envelops the sphere of personal relations. Being a citizen does not mean neglecting one's responsibilities to one's family, neighbours, colleagues and

44

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

friends. It means fulfilling them, but fulfilling them in the light of other responsibilities with which they have to be reconciled and harmonized. A society of moral agents for whom the sphere of citizenship is a way of life need not be merely a small-scale local community. Its opportunities for corporate organization and for the collective regulation of its affairs, would not be confined to what could be done through direct personal contact. Its leaders would not have to depend upon personal loyalty for their authority. They would be able to rely upon the capacity of the members of the society for recognizing their public responsibilities. In such a society, it would be possible to do something to control the far-reaching consequences of human action, and therefore to mitigate their effects. The capacity of the members for impersonal co-operation also makes possible an increase in division of labour and specialization in the activities connected with providing and maintaining the conditions necessary for the society's continued existence. It also makes possible an expansion in the range of leisure pursuits and interests. In short, considered as the way of life for a society of moral agents, the sphere of citizenship is more adequate than the sphere of personal relations. It does not abolish the latter sphere but envelops it and by virtue of its greater degree of social co-operation, is a richer, fuller and more varied way of life. At this point our geometrical metaphor of concentric spheres of rational activity has begun to break down. Considered as a way of life for a society of moral agents, the sphere of citizenship envelops the sphere of personal relations. But since within the sphere of citizenship leisure and work are expanded beyond what is possible within the sphere of personal relations alone, we can no longer strictly maintain that the sphere of citizenship envelops the concentric spheres of personal relations, leisure and work. Leisure and work have, as it were, burst through the confines of personal relations. The metaphor is apt so long as we are considering only personal relations, leisure and work as ways of life. It is appropriate also when we are considering only citizenship and personal relations without reference to the spheres of leisure and work. It breaks down when we try to consider all four spheres together from the

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

45

point of view of their relative adequacy as ways of life. The reason, as we have seen, is that the transition from personal relations to citizenship has repercussions on leisure and work. But all metaphors break down sooner or later. What is required of a given metaphor is that it should be illuminating. We have seen that work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship are not separate, self-contained and mutually exclusive worlds, and that therefore we cannot understand the relations between them by thinking of them as adjacent or contiguous spheres. The value of the metaphor of concentric spheres and the justification for employing it is that, despite its limitations, it enables the relations between work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship as different aspects of morally responsible conduct to be elicited and exhibited. 4. The individual moral agent is always a member of a particular society in a particular place at a particular time. Now this society can never be more than a society of moral agents in the making. Assuming that it has developed beyond the stage of a small-scale local community, its way of life will embrace the spheres of citizenship, personal relations, leisure and work. But by no means all its members will have reached the level of morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity. Many will be content to direct their conduct in terms of its established rules and customs. There will be some who have hardly if at all developed beyond the level of private selfsatisfaction, and who will disregard the established rules and customs whenever they think it is to their private advantage. Moreover these rules and customs will not be fully self-consistent. Nor will they be wholly free from irrelevancies and anachronisms. They may perpetuate certain institutions and ways of acting which distort the society's corporate organization and impede its management of its public affairs. They may bolster up prejudices which distort personal relations and cut into both work and leisure. Some of the leisure pursuits and interests cultivated by members of the society may seem to have little of intrinsic worth in them. Some of the activities dignified by the name of work will enable individual agents to make a living but make no obvious contribution to providing and maintaining the conditions necessary for the continued

46

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

existence of the society as a whole. It is in such a situation, a situation in which there is immorality as well as morality, prejudice as well as enlightenment, vested interests as well as social co-operation, that morally responsible conduct has to be achieved. We have seen that the rational agent must become a moral agent if his conduct is not to be infected with arbitrariness. He must realize himself in a social way of life, a way of life which allows other rational agents to realize themselves. Now he first becomes a moral agent by learning to obey the established rules and customs of his particular society, and it is in terms of the prescriptions of these rules and customs that he first understands the idea of a social way of life. But at this level of moral development, his capacity for social criticism is limited to breaches of, or departures from, established rules and customs. He is not in a position to assess and evaluate these rules and customs, nor the institutions and ways of acting which they buttress and support. For all that he knows the irrelevancies and anachronisms which they contain, the prejudices which they bolster up, may prevent many members of his society from achieving the rational activity of which they would otherwise be capable. His conduct is still infected by arbitrariness, the arbitrariness of established rules and customs merely as established. He is a member of a society of moral agents in the making and his conduct must contribute to making it more of a society of moral agents not less. This it will do only if it is based on a more adequate understanding of the current institutions and habits of his society. He must think of them not in terms of established rules and customs but in terms of a social way of life made up of the spheres of citizenship, personal relations, leisure and work, and he must try to assess the degree to which they severally assist or impede the achievement of such a way of life. Morally responsible conduct properly so called is the conduct of an agent who has come to see all this and does his best to act in the light of it. He knows that, as a citizen, he is a member of a society which stretches far beyond the range of his own personal circle, and that this society is corporately organized to deal with matters of public interest. He knows that each member of this society has his own circle of personal relations;

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

47

that, among them, a variety of leisure pursuits and interests are cultivated; and that they carry on the business of providing and maintaining the conditions necessary for their own continued existence through a complex system of division of labour and specialization. He has, that is to say, a practical idea of the underlying purpose and general significance of each of the spheres of rational activity which make up the way of life of his society. He knows that to realize himself as a rational and therefore as a moral agent, he must participate constructively in these spheres, and that the way of life which he develops must be a social way of life in which the underlying purpose and general significance of each sphere is duly reflected. But he also knows that, in the current condition of his society, by no means all its members achieve the full selfrealization of which they are capable. He knows that in certain respects its corporate organization is defective and that through ignorance and selfishness some matters of public interest are dealt with inadequately while others are not dealt with at all. He knows that the personal relations of the members of his society are not always characterized by mutual consideration and respect, and that sometimes they involve tension, hostility and conflict. He knows that, among the leisure pursuits and interests currently practised, some are not worth cultivating at all and that the value of others is distorted and exaggerated. He knows that some members of his society manage to provide and maintain the conditions necessary for their continued existence only inadequately and precariously. He knows that, as a result of all these things, many members of his society lead lives which in various ways are marred, cramped or mutilated. In the light of this knowledge he recognizes that his own constructive participation in political and civic activities, in personal relations, in leisure and in work, must include doing whatever he can in the current situation to help others to participate constructively in them too. What he can do in this direction may be much or little, depending upon circumstances. Sometimes it may only be negative: avoiding courses of action which increase the difficulties of other people. But whatever it is, positive or negative, he must do what he can. If he fails, he is developing his own way of life at the expense of other

48

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

people's opportunities for self-realization, and his conduct is still infected by arbitrariness. Thus he cannot become a morally responsible agent himself without helping to make his society more of a society of moral agents. In the last section I said that morally responsible conduct in terms of spheres of rational activity embodies a higher level of rationality than morality in terms of established rules and customs. In the present section, after elucidating the conception of spheres of rational activity, I have adduced further reasons to support my contention. But we must not forget that each level in the scale of levels of rationality incorporates those below it as subordinate standards. The morally responsible agent makes use of established rules and customs as working maxims. He will find private self-satisfaction not only in his leisure pursuits and interests but also in his work, his personal relations and his political and civic activities. Questions of ends and means will not be confined to his work. They will arise equally in the activities connected with the other spheres. There is also a sense in which the scale of levels of rationality seems to be continued through the various spheres of rational activity. When they are considered from the point of view of their relative adequacy as ways of life for a society of moral agents, leisure includes work, personal relations includes both leisure and work, and citizenship includes all three. Thus the level of spheres of rational activity breaks down into a number of levels of which the highest is citizenship. But we must remember that a way of life for a society of moral agents must at least embrace personal relations, leisure and work; otherwise there is nothing social about it. Thus it is only the spheres of personal relations and citizenship which can be regarded as further levels in the scale. Leisure and work are intelligible as standards of rationality only within the contexts of personal relations and citizenship. But having acknowledged the limited sense in which the scale of levels of rationality is continued through the spheres of rational activity, it will be as well for the sake of brevity to regard them as constituting one level of rationality, that of morally responsible conduct, or the level of spheres of rational activity. But does the scale of levels stop at the level of spheres of rational activity ? If so, then it follows that the highest form of

49 rational activity is citizenship. To be a rational agent is to be a moral agent, and to be a moral agent is to be a good citizen. But is this all that being a moral agent involves, allowing that it includes the responsibilities of personal relations? There are the activities of art and science. They are rational activities, but can they be thought of simply as connected with work or leisure ? We shall find the Idealist philosophers raising difficul­ ties of this kind and we shall see that there is another level in the scale above that of spheres of rational activity. But it will be as well to leave discussion of it and of how the lower levels are incorporated within it until we come to the works of the Idealist philosophers. Our development of the theory of rational activity has for the present gone far enough. We have what we need for an understanding of the notion of the con­ crete universal, and in the light of that understanding for beginning our study of the work of the Idealists. THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

D: RATIONAL ACTIVITY AND THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 1. At the beginning of this chapter I said that the notion of the concrete universal is significant within the context of rational activity. Having traced the main lines of the theory of rational activity in the last two sections, Jet us see what justifi­ cation there is for this contention. The universal in rational activity is rationality. But rationality is not an abstract universal, for it is not a generic attribute which can be divided into mutually exclusive specific forms of itself. There are different standards or forms of rationality, but they are related not as the mutually exclusive species of a genus but as levels in a scale of levels. Rationality, that is to say, is a universal the various forms of which differ in both degree and kind. The differ­ ence between one form and another is a difference in the degree of adequacy with which the universal is embodied. The scale of levels of rationality is a scale of forms of the universal, each form being a relatively more adequate achievement of it; Each form also sums up the whole scale to that point by incorporat­ ing within itself all the Jess adequate forms of the universal. We came across the idea of the concrete in our examination of the abstract universal. For dassification, the individual

£O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

members of a class are concrete realities, while for the scientific inquiry into laws of nature, it is individual natural events which have this character. In these contexts the concrete is taken to be what really exists and really happens, in contradistinction to what we take account of in our classifactory and scientific thought. We do not, in these forms of thought, try to know things and events in their full detail and variety: we confine our attention to certain aspects. We abstract, in other words, from the concrete reality of what exists and what happens. Now within the context of rational activity, it seems natural to take individual courses of action as concrete realities, for rational activity is made up of individual courses of action. But we must be careful here, for it is not the mere fact of a course of action but its rationality which is significant. It is the rationality of an individual course of action which differentiates it from an event or sequence of events. Its reality as a course of action is its rationality. Within the context of rational activity then, individual courses of action are concrete realities, but they are so because they are individual achievements of rationality. An individual achievement of rationality is always an achievement in terms of one of the levels in the rationality scale. It may be a course of action designed to bring about a certain end. It may be one in the performance of which the agent expects to find pleasure and satisfaction. It may consist in doing something which he regards as his duty because it is prescribed by some established rule or custom. Again, it may be the performance of a course of action which he identifies as his own particular responsibility in the context of his political or civic activities, his personal relations, his leisure pursuits and interests, or his work. You cannot even think of an individual achievement of rationality without thinking of it as an achievement in terms of one of the levels in the scale. Moreover, every individual achievement of rationality is an individual achievement of self-realization by the agent. At the level of ends and means admittedly this is so only implicitly. Considered by itself, it is simply an achievement of efficiency. But there is always a reference beyond the finite end to some course of action or activity, judged to be worthwhile for its own sake, in which the agent realizes himself as a rational agent. There is

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

£1

also one further point which it is important not to overlook. An individual achievement of rationality is always an achievement in a historical situation. It is a course of action performed in a particular set of circumstances at a particular time. How much of an achievement it is must be estimated with reference to this historical situation. In classification and science, the concrete and individual is set over against the abstract and universal. The former is real: the latter is not, as such, real. But within the context of rational activity, this contrast cannot be maintained. You cannot contrast the individual as the real with the universal as the unreal. Here the individual and the universal together form an indivisible reality. We now have the key to the notion of the concrete universal. In rational activity the universal is rationality. But in rational activity what is real is always an individual achievement of rationality. What is real, that is to say is always an individualized or concrete universal. This is the significance of the notion of the concrete universal. It is the notion of the nature and character of the real in rational activity. Its significance does not extend to classification and natural science. Here, as we have seen, what is real is not an individualized or concrete universal. There is however something suggestive of the notion of the concrete universal. The particular, as distinct from the individual, and the universal are complementary. What we have is always the particular instance of a general attribute and the particular case of a natural law; the paper cover of this book, and the freezing this morning of this pond. But the individuals or concrete realities in classification and science are not the particular instance of universals. They exhibit them but are more than them. This book is something more than its paper cover, this pond something more than the physical state of the water this morning. Nor do the names which we give to these concrete realities refer to universals which they somehow individualize. They stand for intellectual constructions made by us out of the attributes we have abstracted from concrete realities. To sum up: in rational activity the real is an individual achievement of rationality, a concrete universal; in classification and science it is an individual thing or event which is not an achievement of anything. To know an individual achievement of rationality for what

52

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

it is, to know it as a concrete reality, you must criticize and evaluate it. Initially this means criticizing and evaluating it in terms of the level of rationality at which the agent was consciously acting. But for full knowledge, something more is required. Each level of rationality incorporates those below it as subordinate standards. Strictly speaking therefore any level in the scale below the highest is only a subordinate standard of rationality. If the agent is consciously acting at a level below the highest, the question arises: does he understand its status as a subordinate standard? If his course of action is intended as the means to an end, is this end one which in the circumstances he ought to be trying to bring about? What is the activity for which its attainment is a necessary condition ? Is this activity connected with his work, his leisure pursuits and interests, his personal relations, or with his civic and political activities? Is it an activity which he ought to be contemplating, in view of his current responsibilities in these spheres ? In other words, if an individual achievement of rationality is to be fully known for what it really is, it must be criticized and evaluated in terms of the highest level in the scale, whether or not this was the level at which the agent was consciously acting. The same point may be made in terms of the doctrine of selfrealization. Any course of action is, at least implicitly, an individual achievement of self-realization. Full knowledge of it as a concrete reality is knowledge of it as an achievement of self-realization, and knowledge of it is an achievement of selfrealization is knowledge of how good an achievement it is. Having regard to the historical circumstances, is it the best self which the agent could have realized ? Is he, in performing this particular course of action, acting as a good citizen, remembering that citizenship as a way of life embraces personal relations, leisure and work, as well as civic and political activities? It follows that there is a sense in which, in considering a course of action in terms of any level of rationality below the highest, we are dealing with an abstraction. We are not considering it in its full context and therefore cannot gain full knowledge of it as an individual achievement of rationality. But in practice we are bound most of the time to deal in such abstractions in order to concentrate our attention on what is immediately relevant. Indeed it is not too much to say that we have a duty

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

53

to do so whenever, as in many situations, there is no time for leisurely reflection. What is important is not that we should give up considering courses of action in abstraction from their complete context, but that we should acknowledge what we are doing and, when full knowledge is required, be prepared to take account of the complete context. 2. This chapter opened with the statement: 'The central idea in nineteenth century Idealist philosophy is the notion of the concrete universal/ We have just seen how the notion of the concrete universal is significant within the context of rational activity. It is the notion of the nature and character of the real in rational activity. But we have still to see its philosophical significance. What are its implications for the theory of philosophy ? Every philosophy implies a theory of itself and Idealism is no exception. We shall find that the question of the nature and scope of philosophy arises at various points in the course of this book. I will now give a provisional statement of the nature and scope of philosophy based on the account which I have already given of the theory of rational activity and the notion of the concrete universal. It is the business of philosophy to know and expound the rationality implicit in the various standards and values operative in human life. But if this work is to prosper, it must be done on the basis of a correct understanding of the logical structure of rational activity. This is why it is important to differentiate philosophy from classification and natural science. The universal with which it is concerned, namely rationality, is not an abstract universal. The philosopher therefore cannot work in terms of genera and species. His work may be described either as expounding the various standards and values as embodiments of different levels of rationality in a scale, or as articulating the scale in terms of the various standards and values. In fact, he always does both together although the emphasis may be put either on the various standards and values, or, as in this chapter, on the scale of levels. But on whichever side the emphasis is put at the outset, the philosopher will find, if he proceeds far enough, that the other increasingly demands his attention. Thus if the theory of rational activity had been developed further than it was in this chapter,

54

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

other standards and values would have come into view besides those so far considered, and it would have been necessary to ascertain and exhibit their significance and status within the scale of levels of rationality. I said earlier that to know an individual achievement of rationality for what it is, to know it as a concrete reality, it is necessary to criticize and evaluate it. Now this work of criticism and evaluation is not philosophy. Philosophy is concerned, not with the morality of this course of action, not the way of life of the citizens of this political community, but with morality and citizenship as such. To know the morality of this course of action, the value of the way of life of the citizen of this political community, is the business not of the philosopher properly so called but of the critic. But it implies philosophy. It implies a theory of the rationality, the individual achievement of which on any given occasion is to be evaluated. But who is this critic ? The answer is: the rational agent. The work of criticism is an integral part of rational activity. In the course of articulating and defending his work as a critic, the rational agent may be obliged to make explicit the implicit theory of rationality in terms of which he is working. But he begins to philosophize only when he starts to question that theory and tries to develop it systematically. But it must be remembered that this is only a provisional definition of philosophy, based on my preceding account of the theory of rational activity and the notion of the concrete universal. Further reflection on that account suggests this definition is not wholly satisfactory. We have seen that within the contexts of classification and natural science concrete reality consists of individual things and events, while within the context of rational activity it consists of individual achievements of rationality. How do these contexts stand to one another? They are contexts of human experience and this suggests that, in order to understand the relation between them, we need a theory of the general character and structure of human experience. The formulation of such a theory has traditionally been the task of philosophy. It involves something more than merely coining to know and expounding the rationality implicit in the various standards and values operative in human life, although the latter work is no doubt a part

THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL

55

of it. But having noted this defect in our provisional definition, we may leave further consideration of it until we have seen something of Idealist social philosophy.

CHAPTER II F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

A:

MORALITY AS SELF-REALIZATION

1. F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies appeared in 1876. It was his first book although not his first published work. The aim of the book is to expound and defend a theory of morality. It is to be a philosophical, not a psychological or sociological theory. Bradley, that is to say, is concerned with morality as a rational activity and sets himself the task of investigating its rationality. Now in the last chapter, I have argued that rationality is not a generic attribute which can be divided into mutually exclusive specific forms. There are distinct forms of rationality but the relation between them is that of levels in a scale of levels, each one of which sums up and embodies those below it. Morality is rational activity at a level above those of efficiency and private self-satisfaction. According to this doctrine, the devel­ opment of a theory of morality and the development of a theory of rational activity are not two different enterprises but one and the same. The theory of morality when it is fully worked out, is also the theory of rational activity. Bradley accepts this doctrine and makes it the foundation of his work in Ethical Studies. But he does not explicitly expound it in advance of his main inquiry. It is only as that inquiry develops that its character and method gradually emerge. In this chapter, I shall trace the main lines of Bradley's argument and will try to show how it is based on the notion of the con­ crete universal and the theory of rational activity with which that notion is linked. The book marks the beginning of the Idealist epoch in English philosophy for it was the first major attempt to make the notion of the concrete universal the basis of a philosophical theory. But the attempt, as I shall also try to show, is not wholly successful. Bradley raises a problem

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-3

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

£7

which he is only partially able to solve. The problem is one which, as we shall see, is important in the subsequent development of Idealism. One further point may be noted at the outset. In Ethical Studies Bradley is anxious to avoid what he regards as questions of metaphysics, as distinct from moral philosophy. But he finds himself unable to keep wholly within his selfimposed limits. Metaphysical questions break through towards the end of his argument and have an important bearing upon his conclusions. Bradley takes as his point of departure the practical moral experience of every-day life. Morality is a going concern, something with which in practice we are all familiar, and the business of moral philosophy is to understand it. The way to this understanding lies in developing the implications of common sense notions of morality and revising these notions in the light of what analysis and criticism reveals. A philosophical theory of morality must explain our ordinary common sense notions but it must not explain them away. Its task is to make them intelligible by transforming them into systematic theory. In Essay i of Ethical Studies, Bradley argues that the key notions of ordinary morality are those of responsibility and accountability. He maintains that these notions presuppose the principle of self-sameness or enduring personal identity. 'Now the first condition of my guiltiness or of my becoming the subject of moral imputation/ he writes, 'is my self sameness. I must be throughout one identical person/ And he continues; 'If when we say "I did it", the "I" is not to be the one "I" distinct from all other Vs, or if the one "I" here is not the same with the "I" whose act the deed was, then there can be no question whatever that the ordinary notion of responsibility disappears/1* In Bradley's view, no theory which explicitly or implicitly denies the principle of self-sameness can claim to be a theory of morality. Such a theory does not make morality intelligible: it simply denies that there is such a thing. Two rival doctrines of considerable contemporary influence, both of which claim to be theories of morality, are convicted by Bradley on this ground. They are the doctrines of Tree Will' and 'Necessity'. According to him, the Tree Will' doctrine maintains that every action is the result of an absolutely undetermined and abso* All references are in Appendix I, pp. 315-319.

58

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

lutely unpredictable decision. 'You are free/ he writes, 'because there is no reason which will account for your particular acts, because no one in the world, not even yourself, can possibly say what you will or will not do next. You are accountable, in short, because you are a wholly unaccountable creature.** The enduring personal identity of the self is dissolved into a chaos of anarchic actions. Morality gives way to caprice. The flaw in the doctrine of 'Necessity' or 'Determinism', according to Bradley, lies in the psychology on which it professes to rest. 'Without personal identity/ he writes, 'responsibility is sheer nonsense, and to the psychology of our Determinists, personal identity with identity in general, is a word without a vestige of meaning/3 According to this psychology as Bradley understands it, the mind is nothing but a collection of sensations held together by the laws of association. This seems to him to lead to the conclusion that 'the mind itself is but a fiction of the mind14, and upon this he comments; 'The only thing which it is hard to understand is this; that we ourselves who apprehend the illusion, are ourselves the illusion which is apprehended/5 2. In Essay 2 of Ethical Studies Bradley says that the end or purpose in morality is self-realization. A full defence of this thesis would, in his view, involve entering the arena of metaphysics and this he is not prepared to do. 'How can it be proved that self-realization is the end?' he asks, and answers, 'There is only one way to do that. This is to know what we mean when we say "self" and "realize" and "end", and to know that is to have something like a system of metaphysics, and to say it will be to exhibit that system/1 Then after confessing that he has no such system to exhibit, he continues; 'All that we can do is partially to explain it and try to render it plausible. It is a formula which our succeeding essays will in some way fill up and which we shall try to recommend to the reader beforehand/ 2 We have already encountered the conception of self-realization or self-determination in the last chapter. The rational agent is not something different from or set over against his activities, nor is he merely their aggregate. He is the selfconscious unity of his various activities, each one of which is a

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

£9

limited determination of himself. Bradley is making essentially the same point but is entering the discussion at the level of morality. Although there is a purpose or end in morality, he maintains that morality is not merely a means to an end lying beyond itself. It is an activity which must be pursued for its own sake, which is worth while on its own account. It is rational activity, that is to say, at a level above that of efficiency. Bradley thinks that ordinary moral experience bears out this view. 'Let us first go to the moral consciousness, and see what that tells us about its end.' He writes: 'Morality implies an end in itself: we take that for granted. Something is to be done, a good is to be realized. But that result is, by itself, not morality: morality differs from art, in that it can not make the act a mere means to the result. Yet there is a means. There is not only something to be done, but something to be done by me—I must do the act, must realize the end. Morality implies both the something to be done, and the doing of it by me; and if you consider them as end and means, you can not separate the end and the means. If you chose to change the position of end and means, and say my doing is the end, and the "to be done" is the means, you would not violate the moral consciousness; for the truth is that means and end are not applicable here/ 3 Morality is a way of acting in which the self or personal identity of the moral agent is realized. Bradley expresses this in a series of rhetorical questions. 4Are we not forced to look on the self as a whole, which is not merely the sum of its parts, nor yet some other particular beside them?' he writes: 'And must we not say that to realize self is always to realize a whole, and that the question in morals is to find the true whole, realizing which will practically realize the true self?'4 The reference to 'the true self and 'the true whole' makes it clear that, for Bradley, the merely satisfying is not as such the moral. It is a matter of the self which in some sense ought to be realized, as distinct from that which we happen to want to realize. In support of his thesis, Bradley turns once more to practical experience. 'And, if we turn to life,' he writes, 'we see that no man has disconnected particular ends; he looks beyond the moment, beyond this or that circumstance or position; his ends

60

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

are subordinated to wider ends; each situation is seen (consciously or unconsciously) as part of a broader situation, and in this or that act he is aiming at and realizing some larger whole, which is not real in any particular act as such, and yet is realized in the body of acts which carry it out/ 5 And he sums up by saying; 'What I am saying is that, if the life of the normal man be inspected, and the ends he has in view (as exhibited in his acts) be considered, they will, roughly speaking, be embraced in one main end or whole of ends/6 Bradley's use of the word 'whole* must not be misinterpreted. He does not mean by it, a closed system. The self which is to be realized in morality is an infinite whole. By 'infinite' in this connection, Bradley does not mean a mere undifferentiated blank. The true infinite in his view 'is the unity of finite and infinite'.7 And he says that; 'the finite is relative to something else, the infinite is self-related*.81 take Bradley to mean that the self is an infinite whole in the sense of being the self-conscious unity of its individual actions. Each individual action is a limited or finite determination of the self but the self is always something more than any one of its individual actions taken separately and something more also than the mere aggregate of these separate actions. Summing up Bradley's argument so far; he has made the point that the theory of morality must be the theory of the rationality of a certain way of acting or which comes to the same thing, of the self which is realized in that way of acting. It must make explicit what it is that we are implicitly trying to do in our practical activity as moral agents. Bradley's main task thus still lies before him. So far, he has only established the requirements which the theory of morality must satisfy. But this limited result is not without significance for it provides a criterion on the basis of which certain theories can be eliminated at once. Unless a theory gives an account of the rationality of a way of acting, it cannot be a theory of morality at all. In Essays 3 and 4 of Ethical Studies Bradley rejects two wellknow theories on this ground. They are; Hedonism or 'Pleasure for pleasure's sake' the leading exponent of which, according to Bradley, is John Stuart Mill, and 'Duty for duty's sake' a theory which Bradley takes to be an important constituent of Kant's moral philosoDhv although he is careful to say that he

F. H. BRADLEY's THEORY OF MORALITY

61

does not wish his account of it to be taken as a full statement of Kant's ethical theory. I shall not, however, attempt to summarize his criticism of these two theories but will pass straight on to Essay 5, where he begins the positive task of expounding his own theory of morality. B :

T H E S O C I A L

S E L F

1. Essay 5 of Ethical Studies has the somewhat forbidding title of; 'My Station and its duties1. It is the best known essay in the book and is not infrequently read on its own apart from the other essays. Many have regarded it as expressing Bradley's full and complete view of morality. In fact, it is only a step in the development of his theory of morality, albeit an important one. In Essay 6, the argument of Essay 5 is criticized and revised in several important respects. Moreover it is difficult to see how anyone who had not grasped the essentials of the arguments of the first two essays of the book, could understand Essay 5. The key to the first two essays lies in the theory of rational activity and anyone who lacks this key is unlikely to understand what Bradley is trying to do in Essay 5. Bradley has set himself the problem of giving an account of the moral self, the self which it is the activity of morality to realize. In Essay 5, he offers a provisional solution. The moral self is the social self. To be moral is to be a good member of one's society, loyally discharging the various responsibilities which membership involves. Thus conceived, morality is a way of acting which embraces the moral agent's whole life. 'We have found self-realization, duty and happiness in one/ he writes, 'yes, we have found ourselves when we have found our station and its duties, our function as an organ in the social organism/1 This phrase 'an organ in the social organism' needs elucidation. We may notice, however, at the outset that in identifying the moral self with the social self, Bradley is following the main lines of the theory of rational activity according to which the roots of morality are to be found in the social context of all human life. He explicitly rejects the atomistic doctrine according to which society is nothing but an aggregate of separate, independent individuals whose nature and character is unaffected by

62

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

their social relations. 'We say that, out of theory, no such individual men exist/ he writes, 'and we will try to show from fact that, in fact, what we call an individual man is what he is because of and by virtue of community, and that communities are thus not mere names but something real, and can be regarded, if we mean to keep to facts, only as the one in the many/ 2 He proceeds to illustrate. 'Let us take a man, an Englishman as he is now, and try to point out that, apart from what he has in common with others, apart from his sameness with others, he is not an Englishman—nor a man at all; that if you take him as something by himself, he is not what he is/ 3 And he continues; 'What we mean to say is that he is what he is because he is a born and educated social being, and a member of an individual social organism, that if you make abstraction from all this which is the same in him as in others, what you have left is not an Englishman nor a man, but some, I know not what, residuum which never has existed by itself and does not so exist/* According to Bradley, the moral agent is a member of many social groups ranging from the family to the state and including intermediate associations such as the occupational group and the local community. Each is a field for self-realization. To be a moral agent, according to the doctrine of 'My Station and its duties' is to fulfil one's responsibilities in these various fields. The state is regarded as the widest community in terms of which the claims of other social groups are to be interpreted and harmonized. The social self, that is to say, is the self of the good citizen, a conception which includes within itself other forms of social activity. To live morally is to live socially, and to live socially is to live civically or politically. For the purpose of his discussion, Bradley limits the state to the nation-state but does not rule out the possibility of an international political community. 'Leaving out of sight the question of a society wider than the state/ he writes, 'we must say that a man's life with its moral duties, is in the main filled up by his station in that system of wholes which the state is, and this, partly by its laws and institutions, and still more by its spirit, gives him the life which he does live, and ought to live/5 'My Station and its duties' satisfies Bradley's criterion of a theory of morality; it is the account of a way of acting. When

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

63

he says that communities must be regarded as 'the one in the many', his point is that a community is a way of acting achieved by rational agents. They are the many, but they are also one in that they are not a mere aggregate but constitute a systematic unity. Nor is the rational agent anything apart from his membership of communities. Living and acting socially however involves living and acting politically. Social life must be within the framework of an organized political community so that its various forms with their several demands can be harmonized. Thus rational activity, the rational agent's determination of himself, turns out to be the activity of citizenship, an activity which includes all other forms of social activity. The activity of citizenship, rational activity at its most developed, is then identified with morality. Such is the doctrine of 'My Station and its duties.' We have already seen that Bradley draws an analogy between a society and an organism. No doubt he found it useful in order to bring out the fact that a society is a way of acting achieved by the co-operation of its members and that apart from society, the individual moral agent is nothing at all. But it may be objected that this analogy is as misleading as it is helpful for there is a sense in which a society is fundamentally different from an organism. The members of a society are selfconscious; they know themselves to be members and fulfil their functions in the light of this knowledge. The organs in an organism are not self-conscious and do not know that they are organs. They fulfil their functions blindly and automatically. A society lives in the thought and volition of its members; the life of an organism is a complex process of natural events. In Ethical Studies, Bradley seems to be aware of the limits of his analogy and does not think that a society is literally an organism. The following passage shows that he is fully alive to the fundamental role of thought and volition in the life of a society. 'It is quite clear that a nation is not public-spirited unless the members of it are public-spirited, that is, feel the good of the public as a personal matter or have it at their hearts. The point here is that you cannot have the moral world unless it is willed, that to be willed it must be willed by persons, and that these persons must not only have the moral world as the content of their wills but must also in some way

64

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

be aware of themselves as willing this content/ 6 But in spite of this passage, we shall see in a later chapter of this book that Bradley is in fact not altogether clear in his mind about the limits of the organic analogy. He seems to have thought that while they are different things, a society and an organism are alike in structure. So far as the argument of Ethical Studies is concerned, however, this point need not trouble us. It will be important when we come to the notion of the concrete universal which he explicitly formulated in his logic and metaphysics and we shall consider it in that connection. 2. According to the theory of rational activity expounded in the last chapter, the highest level of rationality is embodied in the sphere of citizenship. From what we have seen of it so far, 'My Station and its duties' appears to endorse this conclusion. But in my account of the theory of rational activity, an important point was the distinction between morality at the level of rule and custom and morality at the higher level of responsible conduct or spheres of rational activity. Now in Essay 5, Bradley does not draw this distinction. The passage just quoted, where emphasis is laid upon the thought and volition of selfconscious moral agents, suggests that 'My Station1 is intended to be an account of morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. But elsewhere in Essay 5, it is the objective character of the morality of 'My Station' which is stressed. The moral agent's duties are defined for him by the rules and customs of the institutions of his society. They are there, waiting for him to carry out, irrespective of his personal desires and feelings. He must, if he is to be moral, fulfil them loyally and conscientiously. This objective element in Bradley's view is one of the strongest points in favour of 'My Station' for it is here in complete harmony with ordinary common sense notions. When we come to Essay 6, where Bradley criticizes 'My Station', it becomes clear that what Bradley had in mind in that doctrine is something along the lines of morality at the level of rule and custom rather than the level of spheres of rational activity. But the distinction which he draws is in certain respects different from that given in my account in the last chapter. The nature of this difference is significant and we shall have to return to it later. But for the present, we shall do best

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

6$

to regard 'My Station' as an account of morality at the level of rule and custom, recognizing that in expounding it, Bradley tries to show the roots of rules and customs in the various spheres of rational activity which make up the life of a society. After expounding it, he devotes some space in Essay 5 to discussing an objection which he thinks is likely to be made against it and which he believes to be ill-founded. The objection is one which is liable to be made against any theory which finds the roots of morality in the social context of human life. Bradley's attempt to meet it is not without interest in the light of issues which we shall have to discuss in later chapters. The objection is that if, as in 'My Station', the moral self is identified with the social self, then morality becomes purely relative. There is not one morality but a large number, each being the morality of a particular society in a particular place at a particular time. No one morality can be said to be better than another for there is no independent standard according to which they can be judged. This conflicts with our ordinary notions of morality according to which the moral is in some sense absolute and universal and not merely relative and particular. Bradley thinks that this objection rests on a confusion. In one sense, morality is relative. What a man's duty is on a given occasion, depends upon who he is, where and when he is living, what his activities are and with whom he is in contact. But it is also absolute in the sense that whatever a man's duty is, it is absolutely binding upon him. He must do it, whether it is pleasant or painful, profitable or unprofitable from the standpoint of his personal self-interest. Morality is not relative in the sense of depending upon private interest, whim or inclination and it is an important part of the doctrine of 'My Station' to emphasize this point. In so far as the objection fails to appreciate these different senses of 'relative', it is ill-founded. But this does not dispose of the main charge that according to 'My Station' every society has its own morality and that there is no independent standard by which they can be evaluated and judged. But in Bradley's view, the fact that morality is relative to the life of a given society at a given time and place, does not rule out the possibility that it is also something more. On a teleological interpretation of human history, the various social moralities of different times and places appear

66

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

as successive approximations in the stages of a gradual development of a universal human morality which will be achieved when different societies are united together into the harmonious life of one universal human society. Bradley thinks that this teleological interpretation of human history is in accord with the general theory of evolution. The process of evolution/ he writes, 'is the humanizing of the bestial foundation of man's nature by carrying out in it the true idea of man, in other words by realizing man as an infinite whole. This realization is possible only by the individual's living as a member in a higher life, and this higher life is slowly developed in a series of stages. Starting from and on the basis of animal nature, humanity has worked itself out by gradual advances of specification and systematization and any other progress would in the world we know be impossible/1 If human history is a process of this kind, then different social moralities might be compared from the standpoint of the level of human achievement which they make possible and how far they further the development of wider human co-operation. Bradley clearly has some sympathy for the teleological interpretation of history, but he does not commit himself to it. He insists, however, that even if it is false, 'My Station' although as he says 'grievously curtailed' is still a tenable theory of morality. The ordinary unreflecting notion of a universal morality is dependent for its truth upon the truth of a teleological interpretation of the above kind and 'My Station' in no way precludes such an interpretation. But it does not depend upon the truth of such an interpretation, and if, after all, morality is only the morality of particular societies in particular conditions of time and place, then 'My Station' is still a tenable theory of that morality. 'We have rejected teleology but have not yet embraced Individualism.' Bradley writes; 'We still believe that the universal self is more than a collection or an idea, that it is reality, and that, apart from it, individuals are fictions of theory. We have still the fact of one self particularized in its many members, and the right and duty of gaining self-realization through the real universal is still as certain as the impossibility of gaining it otherwise/3 We are still entitled, that is to say, to identify the moral self with the social self and to regard a society as a way of acting realized

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

6j

in the co-operative activity of self-conscious rational agents who simultaneously realize themselves in so acting. In abandoning the teleological interpretation of history, we are not forced to accept the doctrine of social atomism. 3. Bradley ends Essay 5 with a brief account of certain objections which he thinks 'My Station' can not meet. In Essay 6, he develops them in detail and on the basis of the criticism which they imply, proceeds to revise and expand his theory of morality. 'My Station' is not wholly abandoned but is taken up and included in a wider theory. Before turning to that theory, let us see briefly what the objections to 'My Station' are. Bradley argues that the social self does not exhaust the content of the moral self. Morality is something more than being a good citizen, although the latter is an important part of it. 'It is first an error to suppose/ he writes, 'that in what is called human life, there remains any region which has not been moralized. Whatever has been brought under the control of the will, it is not too much to say, has been brought into the sphere of morality.'1 Morality, that is to say, is co-extensive with rational activity and with self-realization. No form of rational activity is exempt from the claims of morality. But if there are some kinds of rational activity which are not intrinsically social, morality cannot be identical with citizenship. It must include these non-social activities which fall outside the sphere of citizenship. At first it may seem as if the doctrine that there are nonsocial forms of rational activity cuts right across Bradley's earlier arguments and indeed the theory of rational activity sketched in the last chapter. Bradley's point, however, is that there are certain forms of rational activity which can be performed by individual moral agents working on their own. The activities he has in mind are art and science. He does not mean that the artist and scientist are non-social beings. He is not going back, that is to say, on the basic position of 'My Station', that it is only by living as a member of a society that a rational agent can determine himself. Art and science are activities which can be engaged in only by social beings, by men and women who are members of societies. His point is that in engaging in art and science these men and women are not further

68

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

determining themselves as members of their societies although they are further determining themselves as rational agents. Moreover in this rational, non-social self-realization, they are still within the sphere of morality. From the standpoint of the theory of rational activity, it may seem as if Bradley is maintaining that art and science are cases of worthwhile, satisfying ways of acting: forms of selfrealization which, however, must be subjected to criticism and revision in the light of the higher level of rationality embodied in morality. The worthwhile or satisfying is a level of rationality which is not, as such, social. But this is not Bradley's point. If art and science were cases of rational activity at the level of the satisfying, they would be subject to the claims of social morality. They would come within the sphere of citizenship, having to be modified and amended in order to contribute to that sphere. They would be co-ordinate with forms of enjoyment, with recreation and so forth, which are properly regarded as subordinate to the claims of citizenship and there would be no ground for objecting to 'My Station/ But Bradley is arguing that art and science are themselves ways of being moral although they are not ways of being a good citizen. He is suggesting that morality is a sphere of rational activity at a level of rationality above that of citizenship. It includes citizenship but also embraces other activities such as art and science which make their appearance for the first time at this new and higher level of rationality. This at least is how his doctrine appears when it is interpreted in terms of the theory of rational activity. He does not explicitly formulate it in these terms, for the theory of rational activity remains implicit in his argument, but, as we shall see, the general drift of his remarks bears out this interpretation. He expresses his view that art and science are ways of being moral, positive achievements of morality by saying: 'It is the moral duty of the artist or inquirer to lead the life of one and a moral offence when he fails to do so.'2 He then makes it clear that in his opinion, this way of being moral is not a social way of acting, not a contribution to citizenship. "But on the other hand/ he writes, 'it is impossible without violent straining of the facts to turn these virtues into social virtues or duties to my neighbour/3 Elaborating this assertion, he continues: The end

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

69

they aim at is a single end of their own, the content of which does not necessarily involve the good of other men. This we can see from supposing the opposite. If that were true, then it would not be the duty of the inquirer, as such, simply to inquire, or of the artist, as such, simply to produce the best work of art, but each would have to consider ends falling outside his science or art and would have no right to treat these latter as ends in themselves.'4 The moral self then is something more than the merely social self and 'My Station' is inadequate as a theory of morality. We must now turn to the wider theory which Bradley offers in its place. C :

T H E I D E A L

S E L F

1. The central thesis of the revised theory of morality developed by Bradley in Essay 6, is that the moral self is an ideal self. To the question: what is the content of this ideal self, he answers: 'We can at once gather that the good self is the self which realizes a) a social, b) a non-social ideal; the self which first does, second does not, directly and immediately involve relations to others/ 1 The sphere of morality, that is to say, includes the social self of 'My Station' but it also includes the non-social activities of art and science. Bradley argues that: The first and most important contribution comes from what we have called "My Station and its duties"/ 2 And he maintains that: The basis and foundation of the ideal self is the self which is true to "My Station and its duties"/ 3 But non-social forms of self-realization must not be overlooked, and the conception of the moral self as an ideal self allows for their inclusion. But why does Bradley call his revised conception of the moral self an ideal self? His intention is to contrast it with the social self of 'My Station'. He maintains that: 'If we investigate our good self, we find something besides, claims beyond what the world expects of us, a will for good beyond what we see to be realized anywhere. The good in "My Station and its duties" was visibly realized in the world and it was mostly possible to act up to that real ideal. But this good beyond is only an ideal, for it is not wholly realized in the world we see; and do what we may, we cannot find it realized in ourselves.

JO

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

It is what we strive for and in a manner do gain, but never attain to and never possess/4 He tells us what he is referring t o : The perfect types of zeal and purity, honour and love which figured and presented in our own situation and circumstances and thereby unconsciously specialized, become the guides of our conduct and law of our being/5; and these, he says: 'are social ideals; they directly involve relations to other men and, if you remove others, you immediately make the practice of these virtues impossible/6 Bradley's point here seems to be that reflection on our practical moral experience tells us that morality is something more than merely doing what is expected of us. To be moral is to achieve something more than mere social respectability. 'My Station' with its emphasis on established social institutions fails to bring out this ideal element. Morality involves living up to the spirit, not merely the letter of one's responsibilities, and this spirit eludes formal embodiment in social institutions. This is why Bradley speaks of the 'social ideal' as part of the content of the ideal self. It includes the social self of 'My Station' but also something more which is still social but which the former omits. Within the Ideal self, that is to say, all that is sound in 'My Station' is preserved, but its limitations are off-set. It remains a valuable conception, being the basis of moral education and training, and there is a sense in which the moral agent, in living up to the social ideal, remains true to 'My Station'; but without the conception of the moral self as an ideal self, a vital element in social morality is excluded. As for the non-social activities of art and science, these are embraced under the head of the non-social ideal, the other element in the content of the ideal self. They are ideals, because they involve standards which are never in practice more than imperfectly achieved. Being an artist or a scientist is never merely a matter of observing aesthetic and scientific conventions. There is always an element of creative originality, of aesthetic and intellectual autonomy which cannot be reduced to rule and convention. From the standpoint of the theory of rational activity, Bradley is maintaining that there is a level of morality above the sphere of citizenship. His revised theory of morality appears as a further development in the theory of rational

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

Jl

activity. We can now also see that although he did not, in expounding 'My Station', distinguish between morality at the level of rule and custom and morality at the level of responsible conduct or spheres of rational activity, he is apparently taking account of it in the distinction between the social self of 'My Station* and the ideal self of morality at the higher level. The explicit recognition of a social ideal within the ideal self, as well as the non-social activities of art and science, suggests that this sphere of ideal morality may be analysed into a scale of spheres along the lines of the theory of rational activity. The ideal social self, that is to say, may be seen as consisting of a scale of spheres of social ideals, the highest of which is that of ideal citizenship. The sphere of morality then appears as the highest, including within itself and summing up the scale of ideal social spheres as well as embracing the non-social rational activities of art and science. I am suggesting, in other words, that if we interpret Bradley's distinction between the ideal self and the social self of 'My Station' along the lines of my distinction between morality at the level of rule and custom and morality at the level of responsible conduct, Bradley's revised theory of morality can in principle be incorporated within the theory of rational activity. But is Bradley's conception of ideal morality really the same as my notion of morally responsible conduct? Does he mean by 'ideal1 what I mean by rationality at the level of spheres of rational activity ? The two notions clearly have much in common, but as we shall see later, they are not identical, and the difference is significant. 2. But the conception of the moral self as an ideal self needs further elucidation. How are the different elements which make up its content related to each other? Upon what principle is the moral self to be realized ? Bradley recognizes that more needs to be said. 'Our result at present is as follows:' he writes: 'morality is co-extensive with self-realization as the affirmation of the self which is one with the ideal. And the content of this self is furnished: a) by the objective world of "My Station and its duties": b) by the ideal of social, and c) of non-social perfection. And now we have to do with the question: how do these spheres stand to one another?' 1 It should be noted that Bradley is using the term 'spheres' in this passage

72

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

in an ordinary colloquial sense and not in the special sense which I gave to it in developing the theory of rational activity. In asking how they stand to one another, he is in effect asking whether they are to be regarded as merely contiguous or as concentric. As I have already pointed out, his earlier argument suggests that he thinks of 'My Station' and the social ideal as concentric spheres, the former falling within the latter, but here he is simply posing the question. But although he poses this question, Bradley's answer is unsatisfactory; indeed in one sense, as we shall see, he provides no answer at all. He begins by drawing attention to a fact of ordinary moral experience. The moral agent sometimes finds himself in a situation in which there is a clash between the different responsibilities arising out of the various activities in which he is engaged. In such cases, there is a genuine moral problem. Bradley insists that there can only be a moral problem when the clash is between different moral responsibilities, not when it is between a moral responsibility and a personal desire or inclination. 'The first point to which we must call attention,1 he writes, 'is that all these are cases of colliding duties: in none of them is there a contest between the claims of morality and something else not morality. In the moral sphere, such a contest is impossible and meaningless.'2 He continues with an example. 'We have in all of them, a contest between moral duties which are taken to exclude one another: e.g. my duty as artist on the one hand and father of a family on the other, and so on/ 3 Bradley insists that moral problems are essentially practical problems and as such, fall outside the domain of moral philosophy. 'And the second point on which we desire to insist with emphasis/ he writes, 'is that cases of the collision of duties are not scientific but practical questions. Moral science has nothing whatever to do with the settlement of them: that would belong, did such a thing exist, to the moral art. The difficulties of collisions are not scientific problems; they arise from the complexity of individual cases and this can be dealt with solely by practical insight, not by abstract conceptions and discursive reasonings.'4 A sympathetic man of the world may be able to give useful practical advice, but 'the man of mere theory is, in the practical sphere, a useless and dangerous pedant'.5 It fol-

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

73

lows, in Bradley's view, that the failure to discharge some recognized social duty is not necessarily a moral failure. It may be for the sake of contributing to some ideal that the omission has occurred and we are not entitled morally to condemn it on the abstract ground that a rule has been broken. 'So when the service of the ideal is appealed t o / he writes, 'in justification of neglect and breaches of law, we say that the claim is valid in itself, the abstract right is undeniable, the case is a case of collision and the question of moral justification is a question of particular fact/6 Now we need not quarrel with Bradley's point that moral problems are essentially practical, but we must not lose sight of the question which gave rise to the whole discussion. That was: how do the various elements of the ideal self stand to one another ? How, in other words, are the various spheres which Bradley has himself distinguished, related ? Are they contiguous or concentric? This is a theoretical question, a question which it is the proper business of the theory of morality to answer. Bradley recognizes that something is required of him on this point. 'And now in particular/ he writes, 'the relation of the two ideal spheres to the real sphere is precisely what subsists inside the real sphere between its own elements/7 The relation, that is to say, of the social ideal and art and science to 'My Station' is precisely the same as the relation between the different elements which make up the social self of 'My Station'. It is a relation of the same kind as that which holds between family, occupation and local community. Now this will not do as an answer to the question with which Bradley is faced at the present stage of his argument. The relation between the various elements of the ideal self must be an ideal relation. It must, that is to say, be a relation exhibiting a rational structure according to which the elements are harmonized. Unless it is a relation of this kind, the conception of the moral self as an ideal self, as a whole or system collapses. But the relation between the elements of the social self of 'My Station' which we are told is the model, is not an ideal relation. It is a relation articulated in the actual rules and customs of the institutions of a given society. On Bradley's own argument, to find the rational structure of the social self, we must go not to 'My Station' but to the social ideal. But we

74

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

are then still left with the problem of the relation between the two ideals, the social ideal and the non-social ideal comprising the activities of art and science. We need, that is to say, an account of the rational structure of the ideal self and it is the business of the theory of morality, according to Bradley's own conception of it, to meet this need. His theory breaks down at the crucial point in its development. Possibly this failure may have been concealed from Bradley himself through his pre-occupation with the practical character of moral problems. There is much wisdom and insight in his remarks on this latter point. Moral problems arise for a rational agent who has achieved a level of rationality above that of mere rule and custom. There can therefore be no rule or formula for their solution, and the theory of morality cannot be made the major premise of a moral syllogism in which particular duties are inferred. A moral rule may be made to serve this purpose, but we are concerned with a level beyond that of rule and custom. Moral problems are personal: they cannot be delegated, and the moral agent must solve them for himself. In all this, Bradley is summing up and articulating the verdict of mature moral experience. But moral problems are rational problems. They arise within the context of rational activity and demand a rational solution. The fact that they are practical does not mean that they are outside the range of rational inquiry. The moral agent in solving them must not act capriciously. His solution, if it is genuinely moral, must embody some principle. Moreover, it is not exempt from criticism, even though this may be hazardous in the case of other people's decisions, since knowledge and appreciation of some one else's situation can never be more than partial. While we may agree that the theory of morality cannot provide a formula for the solution of moral problems, it does not follow from this that it cannot give an account of the principles upon which such problems should be solved. In emphasizing the practical character of moral problems, Bradley has not justified his failure to give an account of the rational structure of the ideal self. 3. I will take up later the question of why Bradley fails to give a proper answer to this question which, if his theory is to

F. H. BRADLEY's THEORY OF MORALITY

75

be adequate, he ought to face and meet. First we must follow the main lines of his subsequent discussion. Having stated his revised theory of morality which is to make good the deficiencies of 'My Station', he proceeds to criticize it. But in his criticism, he gives no sign of being aware that his account of the ideal self is incomplete, that as it stands, it is not an intelligible conception, since no account is given of the rational structure which must relate the various elements. There is something else which troubles him, and we must try to see what it is, since it leads to a further step in his attempt to develop a theory of morality. It is, however, by no means an easy task to disentangle and elicit Bradley's argument in the last part of Ethical Studies. The impression grows in the reader that Bradley is himself wearied by the tortuous path down which his argument has led him. The vigour and freshness which were so marked a feature of the earlier essays has deserted him; the style becomes heavy and oppressive and the exposition is clouded by much obscurity. There is moreover a long digression into psychology, which begins in the latter part of Essay 6, and to which the whole of Essay 7 is devoted. It is only in the eighth and concluding essay that he returns to his main task and endeavours to complete the development of his theory of morality. The psychological excursion is by no means without interest, and it includes a penetrating analysis and criticism of the doctrine of psychological hedonism which is well worth careful study on its own account. An exposition of it would, however, carry me away from the main theme of the present chapter, and I shall confine myself to what is directly relevant to Bradley's theory of morality. I will conclude this section with a brief statement of Bradley's own criticism of his revised theory of morality; and in the next, I will turn to his attempt in the eighth essay to provide a solution. Bradley is troubled by what seems to him to be an inherent defect in morality itself. The conception of the moral self as an ideal self brings out the character of this defect. It is that in the last analysis, morality is an activity which is inconsistent with itself. Rational activity, the activity of self-realization, cannot therefore be identified with morality. It must be something more than merely morality. 'Morality implies knowledge of

j6

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

what the "ought" means/ Bradley writes, 'and the "ought" implies contradiction and moral contradiction/1 His point, as I understand it, seems to be that the activity of morality implies that what ought to be, the ideal self, must be a mere ideal and not real, while what is real must be non-moral and even immoral. 'So we see/ he writes, 'morality is negative; the non-moral and the immoral must exist as a condition of it since the moral is what it is only in asserting itself against its opposite.'2 Bradley is not maintaining that morality consists in merely abolishing the non-moral and immoral. It is not mere asceticism. 'But morality is not merely negative:' he goes on: 'it is a great mistake to suppose that the immoral is there already and that morality consists simply in making it not to be. The good will is not that which merely destroys the natural or the immoral: it does indeed destroy them as such but this by itself is not morality. It is when it destroys them by its own assertion, and destroys them by transforming the energy contained in them, that the will is moral/ 3 In these passages, Bradley does not seem to distinguish between the merely non-moral and the immoral. I will return to this point later, but for the moment let us concentrate on grasping the essentials of the difficulty about morality which he is trying to articulate. Morality presupposes the reality of the unmoralized, purely animal, side of human nature. But what is to be achieved in morality is the realization of a completely moralized self in which no traces of the merely natural remain. This moral self is an ideal, something which ought to be, but which on any given occasion is not real. The inconsistency in morality lies in the fact that this ideal, completely moralized self can never be achieved, for the attempt to realize it can be made only so long as the unmoralized animal self is real. Morality, that is to say, is the attempt to achieve a way of acting which in the nature of the case can never be achieved. A necessary condition of the attempt is that it should never be successful. The would-be moral agent is embarking on a hopeless enterprise. He will never succeed in realizing himself as a moral agent because there must always remain as part of himself, an intrinsically unmoralized element. The conclusion to which Bradley comes as a result of this criticism is that: 'Morality is an endless process and therefore a self-contradiction: and being such, it does not remain stand-

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

77

ing in itself but feels the impulse to transcend its existing reality/* Summing up what he believes to be the inherent defect of morality, he continues: 'It is a demand for what cannot be. Not only is nothing good but the good will, but also nothing is to be real so far as willed but the good, and yet the reality is not wholly good. Neither in me nor in the world is what ought to be, what is, and what is, what ought to be/ 5 This conclusion leads Bradley to the final step in his argument. The rational activity of self-realization must be something more than merely morality. The theory of morality must include some account of what this something more is. It must, that is to say, having exposed the inherent defect of morality as such, go on to a revised theory of the rational activity of self-realization in which the inherent defect of morality as such, is shown to be overcome. This is the task to which Bradley addresses himself in the eighth and concluding essay of Ethical Studies and we may postpone comment on his criticism of morality until we have seen how he accomplishes it. D:

MORALITY

AND

RELIGION

1. In Essay 8, Bradley maintains that the inherent defect which he believes himself to have located in morality is made good in religion. 'Reflection on morality leads us beyond it,1 he writes: 'It leads us in short to see the necessity of a religious point of view/ 1 He then continues: 'What it tells us is that morality is imperfect and imperfect in such a way as implies a higher which is religion. Morality issues in religion/2 Bradley then says that he will try to make good this assertion. 'Our object,' he writes, 'is to show that as a matter of fact religion does give us what morality does not give, and our method is simply as far as our purpose requires, to point out the facts of the religious consciousness without drawing conclusions to the right or left, without trying to go below the surface or doing anything in this connection beyond what is wanted for morality/3 We are to be offered, that is to say, as much but no more of the theory of religion as is needed to complete the theory of morality, and the method to be followed is to interrogate ordinary religious experience without raising deeper metaphysical issues.

78

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

The first thing which we learn from religious experience, according to Bradley, is that: 'Religion is essentially a doing, and a doing which is moral. It implies a realizing, and a realizing of the good self/* So far religion and morality appear similar but there is a fundamental difference. 'Religion is more than mere morality/ Bradley writes: 'In the religious consciousness we find a belief, however vague and indistinct, in an object, a not-myself, an object further which is real. An ideal which is not real and which is only in our heads, cannot be the object of religion.'5 A few pages further on, expanding his account of the religious object, he writes: 'Its positive character is that it is real and further, on examining what we find in the religious consciousness, we discover that it is the ideal self considered as idealized and real. The ideal self which in morality is to be, here truly is/ 6 Bradley then proceeds to draw a parallel between the religious object and the objects pursued in art and science. 'With religion, we may here compare science and art,' he writes: The artist and poet, however obscurely, do believe that beauty where it is is not seen, yet somehow and somewhere is and is real, though not as a mere idea in people's heads nor yet as anything in the visible world. And science, however dimly, starts from and rests upon the perception that, even against appearances, reason not only ought to be but really is/ 7 The artist and the scientist presuppose the reality of the object which they pursue in their respective activities. In like manner, the religious man presupposes the reality of the religious object. Bradley continues: 'In the very essence of the religious consciousness, we find the relation of our will to the real ideal self. We find ourselves as this or that will, against the object as the real ideal will which is not ourselves and which stands to us in such a way that, though real, it is to be realized because it is all and the whole reality/ 8 As I understand it, the central thought which Bradley is trying to express in his account of the religious object is as follows. For religion, the ultimate reality of the world is spiritual. The perceptible world of nature, the world of human society and social institutions, are appearances rather than realities. They are media through which we achieve a partial experience of reality, but they are not ultimately real in their

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

79

own right. We must, that is to say, make a Copernican revolution in our ordinary way of thinking for which reality is equated with the perceptible and the tangible, and locate it in the spiritual. This spiritual reality is the ideal self of morality which from the religious point of view is no longer a mere ideal. What from the standpoint of morality is only an ideal in contrast with the reality of human society, from the point of view of religion is real while society is only an appearance. We ourselves become real only to the extent that we are able to spiritualize ourselves, to live a genuinely religious life in which we try to embody in ourselves the ideal self which we now know to be the ultimate reality. The ideal self, from the point of view of religion, is already there. It does not depend on us for its reality. It is we who are dependent on it and we emerge from the transience and finitude of the merely natural life only by realizing in ourselves, albeit incompletely, something of the character of the ideal. This, as I understand Bradley, is the account of the religious object vouchsafed by religious experience. The following passage bears out this interpretation of Bradley's account of the religious object. 'We find in the religious consciousness/ he writes: 'the ideal self as the complete reality and we have besides its claim upon us. Both elements and their relation are given in one and the same consciousness. We are given as this will which because this will, is to realize the real ideal. The real ideal is given as the will which is wholly real and therefore to be realized in us/ 9 Bradley interprets the conception of religious faith in terms of his account of the religious object. 'Faith then is the recognition of my true self in the religious object/ he writes, 'and the identification of that both in judgement and will, the determination to negate the self opposed to the object by making the whole self one with what it really is/10 2. Having given an account of the religious object, Bradley next argues that, in content, religion and morality are the same. He returns to his first point, that religion is essentially practical. 'It means doing something which is a duty:' he writes: 'apart from duties, there is no duty and as all moral duties are also religious, so all religious duties are also moral.

80

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

In order to be, religion must do. Its practice is the realization of the ideal in me and in the world. Separate religion from the real world and you will find it has nothing left it to do.'1 He then goes on: The practical content which religion carries out comes from the state, society, art and science, but the whole of this sphere is the world of morality and all our duties there are moral duties.'2 It follows that since the content of religion and morality is the same, particular duties may clash in religion just as they do in morality but there can never be a conflict between religion and morality as such. 'And if this is so/ he continues, 'then this religious duty may collide with that religious duty just as one moral duty may be contrary to another. But that religion as such should be in collision with morality as such, is out of the question.'3 But although in content, religion and morality are the same, the fundamental difference between them remains. It is a difference of attitude, a difference both of belief and of feeling. 'So far religion and morality are the same/ Bradley continues, 'though, as we have seen, they are also different. The main difference is that in morality what only is to be, in religion somehow and somewhere really is, and what we are to do is done. Whether it is thought of as what is done now or what will be done hereafter, makes in this respect no practical difference/4 According to Bradley, this difference is not merely theoretical, it is of practical importance. The religious man faces his responsibilities in a spirit of confidence which is denied to one who is merely moral. "The importance for practice of this religious point of view/ Bradley goes on, 'is that what is to be done is approached not with the knowledge of a doubtful success, but with the perfect certainty of already accomplished victory.'5 So much for the last step in Bradley's argument: ignoring for the moment the fact that we have still not been given any account of the rational structure of the ideal self, let us try to interpret it from the standpoint of the theory of rational activity. He has already argued in his revised theory of morality according to which the moral self is an ideal self, that morality is a sphere of rational activity at a level of rationality above that of citizenship. It sums up and includes all that is embraced by the sphere of citizenship but includes also the non-

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

8l

social activities of art and science which fall outside the sphere of citizenship. But there remains a difficulty. Morality as the activity of realizing the ideal self suffers from an internal inconsistency. The ideal remains only an ideal and, in the nature of the case, cannot be fully realized. An unmoralized element in the self must remain as a condition of the attempt to be moral being made at all. The highest sphere of rational activity, the sphere within which citizenship and the non-social activities of art and science are embraced, the sphere which is to be the basis of a coherent way of life, cannot after all be identified with morality. It must be something more than merely the moral sphere. Bradley argues that it is the sphere of religion. Religion is a total way of living and acting. It is the allembracing sphere of rational activity in which all the lesser spheres are summed up and included. Its distinctive character comes from the attitude of mind and heart which it requires from those who are to achieve it. The Copernican revolution which it involves in ordinary secular ways of thought, enables the internal inconsistency of morality to be overcome. It preserves all the positive achievements of morality but is freed from its limitations. Moreover, it makes room for an activity which cannot properly be included within any other sphere of rational activity except religion, the activity of church membership. To locate this activity within the sphere of citizenship or within that of purely ideal morality, would fail to do justice to the character and rationale of churches. This at least seems a legitimate inference to draw from Bradley's general account of religion. In fact, his remarks about churches and about religious ritual, creeds and theology are only subsidiary to his main discussion. From the drift of his remarks, it appears that he regards churches primarily as institutions for moral training and discipline and he makes it clear that he is concerned only with the religious attitude of mind and not with particular creeds and dogmas. This is in keeping with his object of going no further into the theory of religion than is necessary to complete the development of his theory of morality. This, he believes to be accomplished, when he has shown from the facts of ordinary religious experience, that the inherent defect of morality is made good in religion, that religion in principle

82

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

provides an all-embracing sphere for the rational activity of self-realization. 3. I return now to the question of why Bradley fails to give an account of the rational structure of the ideal self in his revised theory of morality. This omission is not remedied in the last step of his argument in which he attempts to find in religion a cure for what he believes to be an inherent defect in morality as such. The ideal self from the standpoint of religion is to be regarded as already real, but we are still not told what its rational structure is. We do not really know what it is that from the standpoint of religion is already real. We can form no coherent idea of the religious object, for we do not know how the various elements, which are said to compose it, are related to one another. The ideal self is not a whole or system: it is not really on Bradleyfs view a self at all. It is only an aggregate of different elements which are not related in a system on any intelligible principle. Why is Bradley unaware of this gap in his argument; that at a crucial stage in the development of his theory of morality he has failed to answer a question of fundamental importance ? The reason is that although the notion of the concrete universal, together with the theory of rational activity, form the basis of his work, his understanding of them is imperfect. He has failed, that is to say, to work out all the implications of the ideas with which he is working and to appreciate their full significance. He sees that rationality is something more than either efficiency or the merely satisfying. He sees that it is coextensive with morality and that the roots of morality are social. He recognizes that the rational agent is not something separate from and set over against his individual actions but that rational activity is the activity of rational self-determination. He recognizes also that to be a rational agent and to be a moral agent is really the same thing. Up to this point, he has a clear grasp of the scale of levels of rationality. He understands, that is to say, that rationality is not a generic attribute, that it cannot be divided into mutually exclusive specific forms and that the various forms which it takes are related in an ascending scale of levels, each of which includes and sums up those below it. He has followed through and understood the development

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

83

of the scale up to the level of morality but here his intellectual grip begins to slacken. He is not clear about the further development of the scale and the reason lies in his inability properly to distinguish between morality at the level of rule and custom and morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. This inability in turn is due to a failure to understand the conception of spheres of rational activity. In section B of this chapter, I suggested that we should interpret 'My Station and its duties' as an account by Bradley of morality at the level of rule and custom. On this basis, it was possible to go on in Section 3 to give a provisional interpretation of his revised theory as an account of morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. But in fact Bradley is not clear in his own mind whether 'My Station' is an account of morality at the level of rule and custom or an account of citizenship in terms of morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. He oscillates between the two without grasping the difference between them. He fails to see that to act rationally as a responsible citizen is to have passed beyond the level of mere obedience to rule and custom to a higher level of rationality at which these rules and customs are subject to criticism and not merely accepted as given. Bradley seems to have recognized that spheres of rational activity must be thought of as concentric and not merely contiguous. He certainly thinks of the state as embracing the other social spheres and the sphere of religion as embracing all the rest. There are indications that he thought of the ideal social self as summing up and including the social self of 'My Station' although his remarks about the former are so fragmentary that it is difficult to be certain on this point. But in spite of this recognition, his understanding of the conception of spheres of rational activity seems to have been hazy, indeed he seems never really to have systematically thought it out. That a sphere of rational activity is constituted by the idea of a rational way of living and acting, that it therefore claims to be self-consistent and complete and is open to criticism on these criteria, is something which he does not seem to have properly grasped. He seems to have thought that what constitutes citizenship a sphere is the body of rules and customs of a given society and, as we have seen, he has no real answer to the

84

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

question: what constitutes the unity, i.e. the rational structure of the ideal self. It follows that we cannot regard Bradley's revised theory of morality in which it is conceived as the activity of realizing the ideal self, as equivalent to morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. It expresses his intuitive recognition that morality is something more than obedience to rule and custom and also, a point of some importance, that art and science are rational activities which cannot properly be included within the sphere of citizenship. But he is unable to articulate this recognition into a systematic theory and what purports to be a revised theory must be regarded as a penetrating but, as it stands, undeveloped insight. What then are we to make of Bradley's view that morality as such is inherently defective? According to him, morality presupposes the permanent reality of an unmoralized element in human nature from which it follows that the ideal self can never be fully realized and must remain, in the last analysis, a mere ideal. The way out lies through the Copernican revolution involved in the religious standpoint for which the Ideal self is already real and the natural self is only an appearance. Now Bradley does not seem to realize that within the context of rational activity there is a sense in which the Copernican revolution is already accomplished. Within the context of rational activity, the real is not the natural but the rational. The concrete reality of an individual action is the rationality which it achieves. To know what it really is, we must evaluate it as an achievement of rationality. We may agree with Bradley that the natural is the basis of the rational and the moral in the sense that without the natural, the rational and moral would be impossible. But this does not mean, at least within the context of rational activity, that the natural is to be regarded as real on its own account apart from its function within that context. What is real, that is to say, is rational activity and whatever enters into it is to that extent also real. In this sense, the Copernican revolution is already accomplished and we do not have to go to religion for it. But Bradley does not see this because his understanding of rational activity is imperfect. It may be objected that, although within the context of rational activity, the real is the rational, the question remains

F. H. BRADLEY'S THEORY OF MORALITY

85

whether what is real within this context is ultimately real ? It may be said on Bradley's behalf that he has tried to raise this question and that I am being less than fair to him in saying that the Copernican revolution which he believed to be necessary is already accomplished within the context of rational activity, that I am simply begging the question. But in reply, I must point out that it is Bradley who wishes to exclude metaphysical questions from the theory of morality and that he is therefore not entitled to smuggle them in surreptitiously under the pretext of developing that theory. If the question of the ultimate reality of rational activity and a fortiori of morality is to be raised, then it should be done openly and we must subject the whole conception of reality to a critical examination. My point is that Bradley need not have overstepped his selfimposed limits in developing the theory of morality and the fact that he does so without apparently being aware of the fact is a further indication that his understanding of his own principles is imperfect. I do not wish, however, to beg the metaphysical question and in later chapters we shall have to return to it. In particular, we shall have to see how Bradley himself handles it at a more mature stage in his philosophical career. Setting it aside for the present as irrelevant to the main argument of Ethical Studies, my chief criticism of the theory developed in that book is that it breaks down at a crucial stage because it fails to answer a question which, on the logic of its own argument, it ought to answer. We are given no account of the rational structure of the ideal self. But this does not detract from the significance of Ethical Studies as a pioneering achievement in which Bradley blazed a trail which others were to follow. Although unsatisfactory, the conception of the ideal self is highly suggestive. In drawing attention to art and science as rational activities, it poses a problem for the theory of rational activity. Do they properly fall within a sphere at a level of rationality higher than that of citizenship and, if so, what is the character and rationale of that sphere ? As we shall see in the next chapter, T. H. Green takes up this problem and tries in his theory of morality to provide a solution. I will end this chapter with a brief reference to a point touched on in section C There I drew attention to the fact that

86

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Bradley does not appear to distinguish between the merely non-moral and the immoral. In discussing what he believes to be the inherent defect of morality as such, he lumps them together, but in fact he is perfectly well aware that they are not the same. By the non-moral, he means the merely natural or animal. His view of the immoral appears in the course of his psychological discussion, especially in Essay 7, which has the title of 'Selfishness and the Bad Self/ Bradley's account is somewhat involved and no short excerpt will do it justice. Briefly, he seems to regard immorality as the conscious abandonment of responsibility. The bad self is the anarchic self, the self which is no self at all because lacking any principle of organization. The immoral man knowingly sets about the impossible task of realizing this bad self for the sake of the immediate satisfaction to be gained and heedless of the outcome. Later we shall have to take up the question of immorality again and I will say no more about it here. My purpose in mentioning it has been only to show that, in spite of his somewhat loose language at least as it appears in passages which I have quoted, Bradley does not deny the significance of the common sense distinction between what is merely non-moral and what is immoral or morally bad.

CHAPTER III

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

A:

THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE

1. T. H. Green, who was ten years older than Bradley. was born in 1836. He died prematurely in 1882 when Bradley still had the greater part of his philosophical career ahead of him. But Green's most important works in social philosophy, Pro­ legomena to Ethics and Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, may fairly be regarded as the sequel to Ethical Studies. They were the fruit of the years immediately preced­ ing his death and were published posthumously. The first is devoted to the exposition and defence of a theory of morality while the second is concerned with questions of political philo­ sophy. but they are not strictly separable. The argument of the second presupposes that of the first and is a continuation and development of it. They should be regarded as the two halves of a single work in which an attempt is made to set forth and work out a single point of view. In this chapter and the next I shall try to state the essentials of that point of view and to elucidate it. Bradley in Ethical Studies did his best to confine himself to the theory of morality without raising metaphysical questions. Green's approach in Prolegomena to Ethics is different. It is a central thesis of his philosophy, as of all Idealism, that man cannot come to know himself as a rational agent by means of natural science. But while Bradley in Ethical Studies was con­ tent to base his work on this thesis without trying to justify it,• Green thinks that it must be explained and defended. The past achievements of natural science make plausible the idea of a science of man which would include the subject-matter tradi-

• Except implicitly through his criticism of the doctrine of necessity. See Chapter II, section A. sub-section I of this book.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-4

88

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tionally assigned to moral philosophy. Is there really anything for moral philosophy to do when the scope and significance of psychology and anthropology has been properly understood? Green thinks that this question must be faced at the outset before moral philosophy begins. If, as he believes, there is work for. it to do, this must be because the perspective of natural science is of such a kind as to exclude knowledge of rational activity. The first task to which he addresses himself is therefore to show that this is so. Green thinks that the limitations of a natural science of man can be most readily appreciated in the case of knowledge rather than morality. 'As the first charm of accounting for what has previously seemed the mystery of our moral nature passes away/ he writes, 'and the spirit of criticism returns, we cannot but inquire whether a being, which was merely the result of natural forces, could form a theory of those forces as explaining himself/1 He then continues: 'Can the knowledge of nature be itself a part or product of nature in the sense of nature in which it is said to be an object of knowledge ? This is our first question. If it is answered in the negative, we shall at least have satisfied ourselves that man, in the respect of the function called knowledge, is not merely a child of nature/ 2 The task which Green has set himself falls into two parts. First, he has to show that his questions must be answered in the negative, that man as a cognitive agent is not merely natural. Then he must show that this is true also of man as a moral agent. In order to carry out the first part of his task, Green finds it necessary to raise those metaphysical questions which Bradley in Ethical Studies was anxious to avoid. He undertakes an examination of the place of the world of nature within human experience and of the scope and significance of human knowledge. In the course of this examination he develops a theory of the general character and structure of human experience against the background of which he interprets both human knowledge and the world of nature. I shall not try to follow his argument in detail in this chapter but will attempt to summarize the essentials of his theory of human experience. This theory is important not only for the understanding of Green but also of Idealist philosophy generally. It embodies a point of yiew which to some extent: all Idealists share although they

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

89

differ about some of its implications. Moreover it involves issues which, as we shall see later, cannot be ignored in any attempt to criticize and assess Idealist social philosophy. 2. According to Green, the characteristic thing about human experience is that it is thinking experience. It is an error in his view to suppose that there is anything in human experience which is given ready-made without having been categorized and interpreted by thought. What we experience is always something already within a framework of thought. This is so even in the case of our experience of sensation. Tor a sensation can only form an object of experience/ Green writes, 'in being determined by an intelligent subject which distinguishes it from itself and contemplates it in relation to other sensations. So that to suppose a primary datum or matter of the individual's experience wholly void of intellectual determination is to suppose such experience to begin with what could not belong to, or be an object of, experience at all/ 1 Green's point is that we become conscious of our sensations by attending to them and to attend is always to identify in however provisional and rudimentary a way. What is attended to is never a mere 'this', it is always something located within some framework of thought. To be conscious of a sensation is already to have identified it as a sensation of a particular kind and so to have begun to think. This is not to say that we can choose what sensations we are going to have. 'It certainly does not depend on ourselves/ Green writes, 'on any effort which we can suppose it rests with our will to exert or withhold, whether sensations shall occur to us in this or that order, this or that degree of intensity/2 But although the activity of attention through which we become conscious of our sensations is only partly under our control in the sense that we cannot help becoming conscious of many sensations which force themselves into our consciousness, this does not mean that sensations are given in human experience apart from the work of thought. Green continues: 'But the question is whether the relation of time between one sensation and another, or the relation between a sensation and other possible modes of itself which is implied in its having a degree, could exist if there were not a subject for which the several

90

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

sensations, or modes of the same sensation, were equally present and equally distinguished from itself?'3 We have the experience of sensation which we do, according to Green, only because we are thinking subjects. Our experience is never of bare atomic sensations but always of identified sensations and this is possible because our experience is self-conscious thinking experience. As with sensation, so with other levels of experience: to be conscious of an individual object is to have identified it however provisionally and tentatively as an object of a certain kind. It may even be only as a problem calling for further identification. We have no experience of self-contained isolated individuals but always of objects which are in some way related. According to Green, this experience of related objects is possible only through the activity of thought. 'If there is such a thing as an experience of related objects/ he writes, 'there must be operative in consciousness a unifying principle which not only presents related objects to itself, but at once renders them objects and unites them in relation to each other by this act of presentation and which is single throughout the experience/4 His point is that the common sense world of physical objects is not given ready-made to human experience. It is articulated and developed within experience through the work of thought. The same is true of the world of natural events investigated by science. We are conscious of natural events only because we think and, apart from the work of thought, there would be no world of natural events for science to investigate. This doctrine about nature may at first seem rather strange. We ordinarily think of our experience as occurring within the world of nature. Green seems to be saying that we should think of the world of nature as occurring within our experience. Such an idea however loses much of its strangeness if we take Green's point to be that what we call the world of nature is an interpretation which we make of an aspect of our experience. What the world of nature is in itself, what lies behind the things which happen to us, the events of which we are conscious, we do not know. It may be objected, however, that, stated in this form, Green's doctrine is of little significance. No one would deny it. But for him it is significant because it

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

$1

reveals the fundamental part played by thought in human experience and enables us to see that, as thinking subjects, we are something more than merely natural. He insists that what he has called 'the unifying principle', which makes possible our consciousness of related objects and events, is distinct from, and cannot be reduced to the related objects and events of which we are conscious. 'No one and no number of a series of related events/ he writes, 'can be the consciousness of the series as related/5 Green also insists that his doctrine does not mean that we must abandon our ordinary ideas about objectivity and fact. 'Objects do not cease to be objective, facts do not cease to be unalterable/ he writes, 'because we find that a consciousness which we cannot alter or escape from, beyond which we cannot place ourselves, for which many things indeed are external to each other but to which nothing can be external, is the medium through which they exist for us: or because we can analyse in some elementary way what it must have done in order to these things being there for us/ 6 What his doctrine does mean is that we must revise our ideas about the character and structure of our experience. 'It is not the conception of fact/ he continues, 'but the conception of the consciousness for which the facts exist that is affected by such analysis/7 We must give up, that is to say, the notion that there is anything in human experience which is given ready-made without having been categorized and interpreted by thought. But we must also revise our ordinary ideas about the world of nature and about the scope and limits of scientific knowledge. This, for Green, is the most important result of his doctrine. Summing up his theory of the general character and structure of human experience, he writes: 'The purpose of this long discussion has been to arrive at some conclusion in regard to the relation between man and nature, a conclusion which must be arrived at before we can be sure that any theory of ethics in the distinctive sense of the term is other than wasted labour. If by "nature" we mean the objects of possible experience, the connected order of knowable facts or phenomena, and this is what our men of science mean by it when they trace the natural genesis of human character, then nature implies something other than itself as the condition of being

92

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

what it is/ 8 What it implies is the work of thought. If, that is to say, we are to follow scientific usage, we must mean by 'nature' not an independent reality given ready-made to human experience, but a world which is articulated and developed within human experience by the work of thought, a world which is forever in the making in the sense of progressively becoming continually further articulated and further developed. Continuing the summary of his argument, Green says of the activity of thought or, as he calls it, the unifying principle in consciousness: 'We are further entitled to say of it negatively that the relations by which, through its action, phenomena are determined, are not relations of it, not relations by which it is itself determined. They arise out of its presence to phenomena, or the presence of phenomena to it, but the very condition of their thus arising is that the unifying consciousness which constitutes them should not itself be one of the objects so related/9 It is the activity of thought, that is to say, which makes possible our experience of related objects and events. Thought cannot itself therefore be one of the objects or events the experience of which is made possible by its own activity. Natural science is limited in its perspective to related objects and events. If man is therefore to know himself as a thinker and cognitive agent, he must do so by methods other than those of natural science. Such, in brief, is the argument by which Green carries out the first part of the preliminary task which he set himself in Prolegomena to Ethics, the task of showing that a philosophical as distinct from a scientific theory of morality is necessary. 3. The account given in the preceding paragraphs of Green's theory of human experience, although accurate enough so far as it goes, is incomplete. There is something else which must be added. But it may be helpful, before completing the account, briefly to consider certain objections to which the theory as stated so far may seem liable. It may be said that Green, in arguing that man cannot know himself as a thinker and cognitive agent through the methods of natural science, fails to take account of empirical psychology. Granted that a man's consciousness of related events on a given occasion is distinct from and cannot be reduced to the events of which he

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

93

is conscious, it does not follow from this that his consciousness and thought cannot be empirically studied by someone else. There is nothing in principle, it may be said, to prevent an empirical study of thought so long as the thought which does the studying is distinct from the thought which is studied. Intelligence tests are a case in point. On the basis of the information gained by such tests, it may be possible to correlate the capacity to perform certain intellectual operations with certain other factors such as social and economic status, emotional dispositions, and even biological characteristics. In short, Green has not made out a convincing case that man cannot know himself as a thinker and cognitive agent through the methods of natural science. When Green wrote Prolegomena to Ethics, empirical psychology was in its infancy, but its subsequent development does not invalidate the main point of his argument. This is that when thought is studied empirically it loses its distinctive character as thought and becomes merely one class of events among others. Its character as self-conscious, self-criticizing activity is excluded from the perspective of natural science which takes account only of events. This is not to deny the significance of intelligence tests, nor the possibility of correlating ability in the performance of certain standardized intellectual operations with other factors. But such an investigation presupposes a theory of what intelligence is and of the nature and significance of the intellectual operations which are to be tested. This theory is not an empirical theory. The psychologist must bring it with him to his empirical work. He must already know what intelligence is, that is to say, before he can study its empirical manifestations. Green's central point therefore remains. Man cannot know himself as an intelligent, thinking and cognitive agent through the methods of natural science although this does not mean that the empirical manifestation of intelligence cannot be studied by such methods. But even if Green is right about the limitations of natural science, exception may be taken to his insistence on the central role of thought in human experience. The new-born human infant, it may be objected, experiences but does not think. But in Green's view, the infant embarks on human experience only when it begins to think. In calling it 'human' we are saying that

94

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

it has this capacity although it has not yet begun to develop it. We are conscious of it as a new-born infant but it has only the most primitive and rudimentary consciousness of itself. Its experience at this stage is only at a sub-human level. It rises to the human level through becoming conscious of itself as a person, a process which involves learning to recognize other persons and, in an elementary way, to communicate with them. This development of social self-consciousness is a development of the capacity to think. To insist on the central role of thought in human experience is not to deny that there is a level of experience at which the role of thought is not central. Nor is it to deny that human experience presupposes and is developed out of this level. It is to deny only that such a level is itself a level of human experience properly so-called. 4. But we have still to see how Green completes his theory of the general character and structure of human experience. In his view further development is required to take account of an important aspect of knowledge which has hitherto been neglected. If there is to be knowledge, according to Green, knowing must make no difference to what is known. The facts of which we have knowledge must be the same, whether we have knowledge of them or not. 'But we cannot suppose/ Green writes, 'that those relations of fact or objects of consciousness which constitute any piece of knowledge of which a man becomes master, first come into being when he attains that knowledge/1 But according to the theory which Green has been developing, there is nothing in human experience which is given ready-made prior to, and independent of, the work of thought. It follows from this theory that what we have knowledge of is always something categorized and identified within a framework of thought, never something as it is in itself apart from all thought. How can this be reconciled with the doctrine that knowing must make no difference to what is known ? How can what we have knowledge of be the same whether we have knowledge of it or not, if it is not something as it is in itself but only something as it is for thought? This is the problem with which Green believes he must now deal. He solves it by arguing that, although 'those relations of fact or objects of consciousness which constitute any piece of

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

95

knowledge' must be independent of our thought, they are not independent of all thought. They must exist/ he writes, 'as part of an eternal universe and that a spiritual universe, a universe of consciousness, during all the changes of the individual's attitude towards them/ 2 The facts of which we have knowledge are thus the same, whether we have knowledge of them or not. But they are not independent of all thought. They are part of the system of thought of an eternal consciousness. In our human experience we are participating in this eternal consciousness. What we come to know on any given occasion is some fragment of what it knows already. It is by incorporating into his theory of human experience this doctrine of an eternal consciousness, that Green believes he can reconcile it with his conviction that, so far as human knowledge is concerned, knowing must make no difference to what is known. Green's doctrine of an eternal consciousness is reminiscent of Bradley's doctrine of the real-ideal self of religion in Ethical Studies, Starting from the side of knowledge rather than that of morality, he seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion. But does he really need this doctrine to complete his theory of the general character and structure of human experience? Is the problem, which it is introduced to solve, a real one ? He thought that it was, because of his conviction that knowing must make no difference to what is known. Now there are really two points involved in this conviction, although, as we shall see, Green does not seem to have realized it. The first is that for there to be knowledge, there must be something which is already there and which is independent of knowledge. The second is that, in our knowledge, what we know is always this independent reality or some part of it as it is in itself apart from our cognitive activity. These two points are separate. Accepting the first does not commit you to accepting the second. Granted that there is something which is already there which is independent of knowledge, it remains an open question whether, in our knowledge, what we know is this independent reality or some part of it as it is in itself, or whether in coming to know it we alter, modify or in some way transform it. Now a fact is always independent of the particular occasion on which it was discovered, and of the particular person by

96

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

whom it was discovered. It might have been discovered by someone else on some other occasion. The same fact can be discovered by different persons separately and at different times. This public character of facts no doubt implies that there is something already there which is independent of knowledge. But it does not imply that what we know when we know a fact is this independent reality or any part of it as it is in itself. What is required for facts to have a public character is not that they should be the same, whether or not they are known, but only that they should be the same for all who know them. That in coming to know facts, we should alter, modify, or in some way transform what is already there, is quite compatible with the public character of facts. Green's theory of the general character and structure of human experience commits him to holding that to know a fact is to know something, not as it is in itself apart from thought, but as it is for thought. But since the public character of facts does not necessitate knowledge of anything as it is in itself apart from thought, there is no problem. But if there is no problem, the need for the doctrine of an eternal consciousness disappears. Green does not seem to have examined his conviction that knowing must make no difference to what is known very carefully. Had he done so, he might have seen that it involves two points, and that accepting the first does not commit him to accepting the second. Had he seen this, he would have realized that there is no problem of reconciling his theory of human experience with the public character of facts, and consequently no need for the doctrine of an eternal consciousness. All this, however, is not to deny that there may be other reasons for incorporating a doctrine of an eternal consciousness into a theory of the general character and structure of human experience. We shall return to this topic in Chapter VIII of this book. At present my point is only that, in Trolegomena to Ethics, Green does not make out a case for the doctrine. It is not needed to complete the theory which he has been developing. Whether that theory is wholly adequate even without the doctrine of an eternal consciousness is another topic which for the moment we must defer. We shall see in a moment that it is adequate for Green's main purpose, the development of a theory of morality. So far as that theory is concerned, the doc-

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

97

trine of an eternal consciousness is of no real significance. The substance of the theory can be stated without it and I shall therefore make no further reference to it in my discussion of Green's social philosophy. 5. In order to complete the preliminary task which he has set himself in Prolegomena to Ethics, Green must show that the limits of the perspective of natural science prevent man from knowing himself not merely as a cognitive but also as a moral agent. The way for this has however already been prepared by his account of the central role of thought in human experience. Just as it is thought which makes possible our perceptual experience of a world of related objects, so it is thought which makes possible our practical experience as rational agents. It is because we are self-conscious thinking subjects that we can know what we want on any given occasion, and take steps to get it. After reminding the reader of the work of thought in perception, Green writes: 'In like manner, the transition from mere want to consciousness of a wanted object, from the impulse to satisfy the want to an effort of realization of the idea of the wanted object, implies, the presence of the want to a subject which distinguishes itself from it and is constant throughout the successive stages of the want/ 1 Since it is thought which makes possible our practical experience as rational agents no less than our perceptual and cognitive experience, and since natural science excludes thought from its perspective, it follows that we cannot gain adequate knowledge of ourselves as rational agents through the methods of natural science. Now morality arises within the context of our practical experience as rational agents. Only rational agents can be moral agents. It therefore follows that a merely scientific theory of morality is inadequate. There is work for moral philosophy to do which cannot be handed over to one of the natural sciences. This, in brief, is how Green completes the second part of his preliminary task. Man is a moral agent only because he is a thinker and an adequate theory of morality must do justice to the central role of thought in human experience. It must, in Green's view, be a philosophical theory, since it is a distinctive mark of philosophy to be concerned with the nature and significance of thought. His theory

98

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of the character and structure of human experience is by implication a theory of the standpoint and method of philosophy. He does not, at this stage, formulate an explicit theory of philosophy. But, as we shall see later, his view gradually emerges in the course of his argument. The passage quoted above, in which Green speaks of 'the consciousness of a wanted object' and of 'an effort of realization of the idea of the wanted object', suggests that what he has in mind is rational activity at the level of ends and means. From the way in which he continues, however, it is clear that his conception of rational activity is not confined to the level of ends and means. 'At the same time/ he writes, 'as the refecting subject transverses the series of wants which it distinguishes from itself while it presents their fulfilling as its object, there arises the idea of a satisfaction on the whole, an idea never realizable but striving to realize itself in the attainment of a greater command over means to the satisfaction of particular wants/ 2 This reference to 'a satisfaction on the whole' suggests that Green is thinking of rational activity at the level of private self-satisfaction, a level which includes that of ends and means. In fact, as we shall see, his conception of rational activity is substantially along the lines of the theory sketched in Chapter I of this book, although he expresses it in somewhat different terms. For him, as for Bradley, the theory of rational activity and the theory of morality are not two different things but one and the same. 6. There are some further points in Green's theory of human experience which it may be useful to touch on briefly before turning to his theory of morality. He distinguishes, as we have seen, between our perceptual and cognitive experience on the one hand, and our practical experience as rational agents on the other. But this does not mean that he thinks of them as separate compartments. For him the cognitive and the practical are interdependent throughout human experience. Cognition is bound up with rational activity from the beginning. 'So soon as any desire has become more than an indefinite yearning for we know not what/ he writes, 'so soon as it is really a desire for some object of which we are conscious, it necessarily involves an employment of the understanding upon those con-

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

99

ditions of the real world which make the difference so to speak between the object as desired and its realization/1 Cognition in its turn has a practical side. Desire and volition are always involved. 'In all exercise of the understanding/ Green writes, 'desire is at work. The result of any process of cognition is desired throughout it. No man learns to know anything without desiring to know it/ 2 In Green's view our practical experience as rational agents is always at the same time cognitive and perceptual experience. But this does not mean that he is equating human experience with the experience of rational agents. The new-born human infant embarks on human experience properly so-called only when it begins to think. But it becomes conscious of itself as a person, and of other persons with whom it communicates, before it is able to act rationally. There is a level of human experience, that is to say, which is not yet the experience of rational agents but which is nevertheless properly called human because thought has already begun to play its central role. It is, in a rudimentary way, a level of cognitive and practical experience. It is cognitive in that it involves identification and recognition. It is practical in that it involves attention and communication. Moreover, its cognitive side and its practical side are interdependent. Attention is practical and identification is cognitive. But attention and identification are inseparable. One always identifies, however tentatively and provisionally, what one attends to. But while it is necessary to take account of this lower level, it is no less important to recognize that, for the most part, human experience is the experience of rational agents. In so far as it is the experience of rational agents, its structure is the structure of rational activity. Each level of rationality is a level of human experience and this experience is always cognitive and perceptual, and for that matter also aesthetic, as well as practical. Green does not develop this point explicitly but it is implicit in his general doctrine. It has a bearing on the problem noticed at the end of Chapter I of this book. This was the problem of reconciling our idea of the concrete within the contexts of classification and natural science with our idea of it within the context of rational activity. For classification and science individual things and events

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tOO

are concrete realities. We regard them as really existing and really happening, whether or not we take account of them in our classificatory and scientific thought. But, according to Green's theory of human experience, setting aside his doctrine of the eternal consciousness, we have no knowledge of independent realities as they are in themselves. We know only that the individual things and events with which we deal in classification and science, exist and happen within the context of our experience as rational agents. What they are in themselves, apart from this context, we do not and cannot know. It follows that the concrete in classification and science is not individual things and events as such, but our individual experience of things and events, experiences which we have as rational agents engaged in the work of classification and science. Now our individual experience as rational agents is always an individual achievement of rationality. Each level of rationality is a level of human experience, and the concrete in human experience, in so far as it is the experience of rational agents, is coextensive with the concrete in rational activity. It is not merely practical but cognitive, perceptual and aesthetic as well. There are not really two ideas of the concrete, one within the contexts of classification and science, and one within the context of rational activity. There is only one, the idea of the concrete within the context of rational activity. It is the merit of Green's theory of human experience that it enables us to see this. It also enables us to see how the provisional definition of philosophy given in Chapter I may be brought into line with its traditional task. In so far as human experience is the experience of rational agents, the task of formulating a theory of its general character and structure, and the task of coming to know and expound the rationality implicit in the standards and values operative in human life, are complementary tasks. The one necessarily leads on to the other. But we shall return to these topics in a later chapter, and it is time now to consider Green's theory of morality. B:

RATIONAL

ACTIVITY

AND

MORALITY

I. Green develops his theory of morality in three stages. The first is devoted to an analysis and discussion of rational activity

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

IOI

or, as he calls it, 'deliberate action', without any specific reference to morality. In the second, the question of morality is taken up and the central thesis of the theory is expounded. In the third, the question of the relation of the theory of morality to moral practice is raised, and the theory is itself further developed and elucidated. The core of the first stage is in his account of motives. 'The motive in every imputable action/ he writes, 'for which the agent is conscious on reflection that he is answerable, is the desire for personal good in some form or other, and however much the idea of what the personal good for the time is, may be affected by the pressure of animal want, this want is no more a part or component of the desire than is the sensation of light or colour which I receive in looking at this written line, a component part of my perception in reading it/ 1 The desire for personal good is not like the desire to satisfy some bodily appetite such as hunger or sex. Nor is it the aggregate or compound of such desires any more than the meaning of a written line is the aggregate or component of the coloured marks on the paper. But the use of the term 'desire' in this context is rather misleading. In another passage Green says of a motive: 'It is constituted by an act of self-consciousness which is not a natural event, an act in which the agent presents to himself a certain idea of himself, of himself doing or himself enjoying, as an idea of which the realization forms for the time his good/2 Green's point is that an action properly socalled is always the outcome of a decision. It is never merely the response to a stimulus. A motive is simply the idea of an action which a man has decided to try to do. But the decision to do one action rather than another is always made in the light of what he thinks in the circumstances will be for his personal good. The desire for personal good, that is to say, is the ground of every decision. The purpose of action is to achieve the agent's personal good in the particular circumstances in which he finds himself. It might seem at first as if Green is simply propounding a form of psychological egotism. But this interpretation is premature. We must first see how the notion of personal good is developed. According to Green, a motive embraces both the idea of an action and the reason for which it is to be done. The

102

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

reason is never merely that the action is the means to an end lying beyond it. It is that, in the situation confronting the agent, his personal good requires him to do the action. The notion of personal good, that is to say, includes both ends and means. The key to the notion lies in Green's reference to the agent's idea 'of himself doing or himself enjoying'. What he has in mind is the idea of the agent's personal self-realization through some course of action or activity. Whether the agent is right, whether the activity is really worthwhile, are further questions. Green's point is that this is what the agent is implicitly doing when he decides to try to do a given action although he probably will not present the matter to himself explicitly in such a way. I said that Green's use of the term 'desire' is somewhat misleading. In the second stage of his exposition, where he is directly concerned with morality, he continues to use it. 'Regarding the good generically as that which satisfies desire/ he writes, 'but considering the objects we desire to be by no means necessarily pleasures, we shall naturally distinguish the moral good as that which satisfies the desire of a moral agent or that in which a moral agent can find the satisfaction of himself which he necessarily seeks. The true good we shall understand in the same way. It is the end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest.'3 This passage is likely to be misunderstood unless it is interpreted in the light of the special sense which Green gives to the term 'desire' in his account of motives. What he has in mind in saying that the good generically is 'that which satisfies desire' seems to be the following. Anything which satisfies a desire arising out of a bodily appetite or psychological need is to that extent good. But it must be further assessed from the wider standpoint of the rational agent's desire for personal good. Something which satisfies an immediately felt desire may be an obstacle to the rational agent's selfrealization. It may prevent him from participating effectively in some worthwhile activity. It is therefore not good from this wider standpoint. In saying that the good generically is that which satisfies desire, Green is not saying that only those things which satisfy desires in the ordinary sense of the term are good. This interpretation is borne out by the following

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

103

passage where Green writes: Tor an agent merely capable of seeking the satisfaction of successive desires without capacity for conceiving a satisfaction of himself as other than the satisfaction of any particular desire, and in consequence without capacity for conceiving anything as good permanently or on the whole, there could be no possibility of judging that any desire should or should not be gratified. No such judgement can be formed of any desire unless the desire is considered with reference to a good other than such as passes with the satisfaction of a desire.'4 In this passage Green is using the term 'desire* in its ordinary sense and pointing out that the criticism and control of desires presupposes a standard which is not that of the immediate satisfaction of desires as they arise. The standard is that of the agent's permanent good, or his good on the whole. Why then does Green introduce his special sense of the term 'desire'? Why does he choose to define the good as that which satisfies desire when he is himself using the term in two different senses? If he has been misunderstood, it may be said, it is largely his own fault for adopting so confusing a terminology. One reason is that, throughout the development of his own theory of morality, Green has in mind the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, especially that of J. S. Mill. His theory is intended to be a criticism of Utilitarianism but at the same time to do justice to it. This is why, having stated that the good generically is that which satisfies desire, he adds the qualification; 'but considering the objects we desire to be my no means necessarily pleasures . . .' He is trying to meet the Utilitarians half way, agreeing that what satisfies the desire for a pleasure is so far good, but at the same time insisting that many other things are also good. But another reason is to be found in the structure of Green's theory. Although he speaks of 'the good generically', it is not his intention to apply the categories of genus and species to ethics. He does not regard the good as consisting of two mutually exclusive species, the members of one being those things which satisfy desires arising out of bodily appetites and psychological needs, and of the other those things which satisfy the desire for personal good. On the contrary, as we have seen, in his view the distinction between the satisfaction of desires

104

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

in the ordinary sense and the satisfaction of the desire for personal good, is a distinction between two levels of goodness or value in a scale of levels. Of these, the satisfaction of the desire for personal good is the higher and it includes the lower within itself although transformed and modified by the inclusion. In saying that the good generically is what satisfies desire, Green is stating what he regards as the minimum characteristic of goodness. This characteristic remains at higher levels but appears in altered form in the light of the new standards introduced at these levels. Green, that is to say, is expounding the theory of rational activity sketched in Chapter I of this book, but is expressing it in a different terminology. The effect is to place the emphasis on a different aspect but not substantially to alter the theory. Rational activity is seen as the activity of satisfying desire and the different levels of rationality are seen as different levels of desire with correspondingly different levels of satisfaction. Since each level of rationality is a level of purposive activity and since all purposive activity involves the desire to execute the relevant purpose, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in Green's way of putting the matter. His terminology has the drawback that it involves a somewhat unusual use of the term 'desire' with a consequent risk of ambiguity, but he may well have thought the risk worthwhile in order to bring out the relation between Utilitarian ethical theory and his theory of morality. The relation between levels of rationality or levels of purposive activity is of such a kind that no terminology used to express it can be wholly free from the risk of misinterpretation. Whether Green's choice is the one most likely to minimize the risk may be doubted, but what is important is not the particular terminology he has adopted but the essence of the doctrine which he is trying to express. 2. In the passage quoted where Green says that the good generically is that which satisfies desire, it will be recalled that he continues: 'we shall naturally distinguish the moral good as that which satisfies the desire of a moral agent or that in which a moral agent can find the satisfaction of himself which he necessarily seeks'. He then tells us that the true good 'is the end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest'.

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

IOJ

We must not be misled by the use of the term 'end' here. He means the way of acting in which a moral agent can realize himself. Having in the first stage of his exposition given an account of rational activity at the level of private self-satisfaction or, in his terminology, the level of satisfying the desire for personal good, Green is now addressing himself to the task of giving an account of rational activity at the level of morality. In his terminology, this is the level of satisfying the desire of the moral agent. It includes the lower levels within itself. The personal good of the rational agent, that is to say, when it is properly understood, is the moral good. To be a fully rational agent is to be a moral agent. This is the central thesis which Green develops in the second stage of his exposition. He develops it by working out the implications of his conception of personal good. 'Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth' he writes. 'All other values are relative to values for, of, or in a person. To speak of any progress or improvement or development of a nation or society or mankind except as relative to some greater worth of persons is to use words without meaning/1 But while insisting that individual personality is the ultimate standard of value, Green also insists that the individual person is not an atom. He is always a member of a community of persons. 'Without society no persons,' he writes, 'this is as true as without persons, without self-objectifying agents, there could be no such society as we know.'2 He goes on to say that: 'only through society is anyone enabled to give that effect to the idea of himself as the object of his actions, to the idea of a possible better state of himself, without which the idea would remain like that of space to a man who had neither the sense of sight nor touch. Some practical recognition of personality by another, of an "I" by a "thou" and a "thou" by an "I", is necessary to any practical consciousness of it as can express itself in act/ 3 In another passage, Green says that: 'social life is to personality what language is to thought. Language presupposes thought as a capacity but in us the capacity of thought is only actualized in language. So human society presupposes persons in capacity, subjects each capable of conceiving himself and the bettering of his life as an end to himself. But it is only in the intercourse of men, each recognized by each as an end not

106

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

merely a means, and thus as having reciprocal claims, that the capacity is actualized and we really live as persons.'4 Thus the rational agent's personal good when it is properly understood is a social good. The self which he realizes must be a social self and the ways of acting through which he realizes it must be ways of acting which are consistent with life in society. It is this social aspect of rational activity which gives rise to morality. Thus we conclude/ Green writes, 'that in the earliest stages of human consciousness in which the idea of a true or permanent good could lead anyone to call in question the good cf an immediately attractive pleasure, it was already an idea of a social good, of a good not private to the man himself but good for him as the member of a community.'5 The rational agent, that is to say, in becoming conscious of himself as an individual person also becomes conscious of himself as a member of a community and of the responsibilities which this involves. In becoming a self-conscious rational agent, he is at the same time becoming a moral agent with obligations to others. His personal good, when it is properly understood, is a social or common good. Thus in his own terminology, Green develops the theory of rational activity sketched in Chapter I of this book. 3. So far Green has developed his theory of morality along fundamentally the same lines as Bradley in the early stages of Ethical Studies. They agree in distinguishing between rational activity at the level of ends and means, at the level of private self-satisfaction and at the level of morality. They agree also in recognizing that, above the level of ends and means, rational activity is the activity of self-realization and that it is from the social aspect of rational activity that morality arises. But Bradley sees the problem of the theory of morality as being that of eliciting and expounding the nature of the self which is to be realized in morality. While this self is necessarily social, it may also be something more. Green, on the other hand, sees the problem as being that of deciding what the ultimate community is, of which the moral agent is a member. He differs from Bradley in rejecting the idea that the moral self can ever be more than a social self and sets himself the task of eliciting and expounding the nature of the moral social self. Bradley, we

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

IO7

saw in the last chapter, fails to distinguish clearly between morality at the level of rule and custom and morally responsible conduct at the level of spheres of rational activity. He is aware that in some sense there is a distinction but fails to grasp its real import. Green on the other hand in principle understands this distinction. He does not expound it in detail but rather takes it in his stride. He argues that the ultimate moral community is co-extensive with mankind. 'Given the idea of a common good and selfdetermined participators in it/ he writes, 'the idea implied as we have seen in the most primitive human society, the tendency of the idea in the minds of all capable of it is to include as participators in the good, all who have dealings with each other and who can communicate as "I" and "thou". With growing means of intercourse and the progress of reflection, the theory of a universal human fellowship is its natural outcome.'1 There is, in Green's view, no justification for restricting the moral community to any group less than mankind. This does not mean that the claims of limited communities, of family, neighbourhood and nation, may be ignored in favour of a vague loyalty to humanity in the abstract. It means that these responsibilities must be interpreted and evaluated in the light of a wider responsibility to take account of the interests of all human beings who may be affected by the activities of these limited communities. No course of action is morally defensible however worthwhile in itself, if its achievement is possible only at the cost of riding roughshod over the opportunities for rational living of other human beings. In another passage Green writes: 'Whenever and wherever then, the interest in a social good has come to carry with it any distinct idea of social merit, of qualities which make the good member of the family, or good tribesman or good citizen, we have the beginning of that education of the conscience of which the end is the conviction that the only true good is to be good. This process is properly complementary to that previously analysed, of which the end was described as the conviction that the true good is good for all men and good for them all in virtue of their same nature and capacity. The one process is complementary to the other because the only good in which there can be no competition of interests, the only good which

108

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

is really common to all who may pursue it, is that which consists in the universal will to be good, in the settled disposition in each man's heart to make the most and best of humanity in his own person and in the persons of others.'2 Readers familiar with the ethical writings of Kant will recognize their influence in this passage. But Green is not merely restating Kant. He has tried in his theory of morality to incorporate what he believes to be of permanent value in Kant's doctrine and he clearly has much sympathy for the general spirit of his work. But he is fully alive to Kant's limitations and has tried in his own theory to go beyond them. The 'education of the conscience' from the idea of 'qualities which make the good member of the family or the good tribesman or good citizen' to 'the conviction that the only true good is to be good' is in principle the transition from morality at the level of rule and custom to morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. It is a development of the moral agent's selfconsciousness in the course of which he gradually becomes aware that he alone is responsible for his life, that there is ultimately no authority to which he can turn except his own honest judgement of the demands of the situation facing him and that in the last analysis what matters is that he should meet these with integrity and intelligence. But as his self-consciousness develops, the moral agent passes from the idea of a limited common good to 'the conviction that the true good is good for all men*. He gradually becomes aware, that is to say, that he is not only a worker, a member of a family and a citizen, but a human being and that his responsibilities extend to all human beings whether or not they are members of his own nation. Bradley, as we saw in the last chapter, indicates in the latter part of Ethical Studies that there is a level of rational activity above that of citizenship. But owing to his failure to grasp the essentials of the theory of rational activity beyond the level of private self-satisfaction and especially to be clear about the distinction between morality at the level of rule and custom and morality at the level of spheres of rational activity, he is unable to give an account of the defining characteristics of this highest level. Green is here doing the same thing, and since his understanding of the theory of rational activity is deeper

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

I09

and goes further than Bradley's, he is more successful. In arguing that the ultimate moral community is co-extensive with mankind, he is characterizing and delineating a level of rational activity higher than that of citizenship. It is the level of human achievement as such. It incorporates within itself but also goes beyond the various spheres of work and leisure, personal relations and citizenship. Like each of these spheres, it has its own distinctive activities. Of these, the most obvious are creative art in all its forms and the systematic pursuit of knowledge exemplified in natural science, historical research and scholarship and philosophy. But it also includes all the activities of lower levels modified and partially transformed by their new context. Its characteristic principle upon which all these activities are harmonized is that of the self-consistent development of human capacities. This is the thought which Green is expressing when he says that: 'the only good in which there can be no competition of interests, the only good which is really common to all who may pursue it, is that which consists in the universal will to be good, in the settled disposition in each man's heart to make the most and best of humanity in his own person and in the persons of others/ From the standpoint of self-realization, Green is arguing that the self which the rational agent ought to realize, the self to the realization of which he is implicity committed, is the human self. He must, if he is to be fully rational, try to be not merely a good worker, family-man, neighbour and citizen, but a good human being. While he cannot be a good human being unless he is a good worker, family-man, neighbour and citizen, he must interpret and evaluate his responsibilities in these spheres from the standpoint of the contribution he can make in his situation to the development of human capacities. But the development of human capacities must be self-consistent. There is no genuine human achievement when development in one direction is carried out at the expense of frustrating it in another. The human self to the realization of which the rational agent is implicitly committed is therefore a social self. His ultimate responsibility is to the community of mankind, the community which is dedicated to the self-consistent development of human capacities. It is in the light of this ultimate

110

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

responsibility that he must interpret and evaluate the other claims upon him. One way of expressing the essence of Green's doctrine is to say that genuine human achievement is non-competitive in the sense that, to borrow Bosanquet's phrase, 'it is not diminished by being shared'. The ultimate standard of rationality is the standard of genuine human achievement, for rational activity is the activity of a plurality of agents and it can only be fully realized on a non-competitive basis. But it must not be forgotten that rationality is a matter of degree. We are concerned here only with the highest level in the scale of levels. Green is in no sense denying that, for most practical purposes, we have to be content with something less than the ultimate standard. At least in one sense this is so, for it is clear that as he understands it we rarely, if ever, find genuine human achievement unalloyed by imperfections. But there is a sense also in which the ultimate standard is always within reach. To understand what this is, however, and to see how Green elaborates and fills out his theory of morality we must pass to the third stage of his exposition. C:

MORAL

THEORY

AND MORAL

PRACTICE

i. According to Bradley, the philosophical theory of morality has nothing to contribute to the practical solution of moral problems. Green agrees that it is not the task of the moral philosopher to act as an authority in such matters. No one except the moral agent whose problem it is can solve a moral problem. But he differs from Bradley in thinking that the theory of morality is still not without relevance. In the third stage of his exposition, he places the question of the relation between the theory of morality and moral practice in the centre of his discussion, and endeavours, through a systematic examination of it, further to elucidate and develop his own theory. 'In considering whether our theory of the good and of goodness/ he writes, 'can be of use in helping us to decide what ought to be done and whether we are doing it, it is important to bear in mind the two senses, the fuller and the more restricted, in which the question "what ought to be done?" may be asked. It may either mean, and this is the

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

11T

narrower sense in which the question may be asked, "what ought an action to be as determined in its nature by its effects V or it may be asked with the fuller meaning: "what ought the action to be with reference to the state of mind and character which it represents?" fl Green then goes on to say that: The former is the sense in which the question is asked when it is not one of a self-examining conscience but of perplexity between different directions in which duty seems to call. The latter is the sense in which a man asks it when he is comparing his practice with his ideal/2 Green then explains why the former sense is narrower and the latter fuller. 'We reckon the latter sense the fuller/ he writes, 'because a man cannot properly decide whether, in respect of character and motives, he is acting as he ought, without considering the effects of the course of action he is pursuing as compared with the effects of other courses of action which it is open to him to pursue, while he can compare the value of one set of effects with another without considering the nature of the motives which might prompt him to the adoption of the several courses of action leading to the several effects. Thus whereas the question in the latter sense includes the question as asked in the former sense, the question can be dealt with in the former sense without raising it in the latter/ 5 The narrower sense of Green's question, in which 'it is not one of a self-examining conscience but of perplexity between different directions in which duty seems to call', is strictly practical. It concerns the particular ends which the moral agent ought to try to bring about in a given situation and the means which ought to be used for the purpose. It must be answered by estimating the foreseeable consequences of alternative courses of action and evaluating them. The standard by which they are to be evaluated is that of morality, but the nature of this standard does not come within the narrower sense of the question. It is assumed that a man is trying to act morally, that he has a working idea of how he ought to live and act, and the problem is how best to implement this idea in detail in the situation in which he is placed. The fuller sense of the question in which a man 'is comparing his practice with his ideal' and trying to decide 'whether, in respect of his character and motives, he is acting as he ought', raises the prob-

112

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

lem of the nature of the moral standard itself. In order to know whether he is living up to his ideal, he must know what that ideal is. In order to know whether, in respect of character and motives, he is acting as he ought, he must know what character and motives he ought to have. He must, that is to say, have a theory of morality if he is to be able to criticize his own conduct. Moreover, the particular theory which he has is not without practical significance. It will be reflected in the standard which he employs in answering the question in the narrower sense. The question in the fuller sense is not itself a theoretical question, not a question about the nature of morality, but it clearly implies the answer to such a question. A man who reflects critically upon his own conduct can hardly avoid asking himself not only whether he is living as he ought but how he ought to try to live. Green proceeds to contrast his own theory of morality with that of Utilitarianism in order to illustrate his point that the theory of morality is not without practical significance. T o the Utilitarian,' he writes, 'the virtuous character is good simply as a means to an end quite different from itself, namely a maximum of possible pleasure. An action is good, or has moral value, or is one which ought to be done, upon the same ground. If two actions done by different men are alike in their production of pleasure, they are alike in moral value, though the doer of one is a virtuous character and the doer of the other not so/ 4 By the 'virtuous character* Green means the morally conscientious character, the man who is genuinely trying to act morally for the sake of so acting. According to Utilitarianism, such a character is of no intrinsic moral value. 'In our view/ Green continues, 'the virtuous character is good not as a means to a "summum bonum" other than itself but as in principle identical with the "summum bonum1'; accordingly, if two actions could be alike in their moral effects, as they very well may be in production of pleasure, but represent the one a more virtuous the other a less virtuous character, they would still be quite different in moral value. The one would be more, the other less of a good, according to the kind of character which they severally represent/5 Green admits that: 'It is only an action done by himself that a man has the means of estimating in relation to the character

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

113

represented by it. Actions done by others, if similar outwardly or in effect, can only be referred to similar states of character/6 But he then goes on: 'When from the nature of the case, however, a consideration of effects can alone enter in to the moral valuation of an act, the effects to be considered according to our view will be different from those of which the Utilitarian according to his principles would take account. They will be effects not in the way of producing pleasure but in the way of contributing to that perfection of mankind of which the essence is a good will on the part of all persons. These are the effects which in our view an action must in fact tend to produce if it is one which ought to be done according to the most limited sense of that phrase, just as these are the effects for the sake of which it must be done if it is done as it ought to be done/ 7 For Utilitarianism, the question 'what ought to be done?' is significant only in the narrower of the two senses distinguished by Green. The standard in terms of which the effects of alternative courses of action are to be evaluated is different from that which is derived from Green's theory. Hence it follows that a man may well act differently in a given situation, according to whether his standard is derived from Utilitarianism or Green's theory of morality. His moral appraisal of the actions of others will also differ. But the difference between Utilitarianism and Green's theory is a philosophical difference. Broadly it is the difference between a theory which conceives rational activity solely at the level of ends and means, whose only standard of rationality is efficiency, and a theory based on a more far-reaching conception of rational activity which distinguishes other levels of rationality beyond that of ends and means, and other standards besides that of efficiency. Hence it follows that the philosophical theory of morality is not irrelevant to moral practice. 2. The difference between Green's theory of morality and that of Utilitariansm is not as to whether it is the motive or the effects of an action which constitute its morality. Green is not contending in opposition to Utilitarianism that the motive is everything and the effects nothing. He agrees that the effects are always relevant. But he insists that, from the point of view

114

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of moral evaluation, the motive and the effects are interdependent, the latter cannot really be good if the former is bad. Tor it is only to our limited vision/ he writes, 'that there can seem to be such a thing as good effects of an action that is bad in respect of the will which it represents and that in consequence the question becomes possible whether the morality of an action is determined by its motives or its consequences. There is no real reason to doubt that the good or evil in the motive of an action is exactly measured by the good or evil of its consequences as rightly estimated: estimated i.e. in their bearing on the production of a good will or the perfecting of mankind. The contrary only appears to be the case on account of the limited view which we take of both action and consequences/1 He then proceeds to illustrate: 'We notice, for instance, that selfish motives lead an able man to head a movement of political reform which has beneficent consequences. Here, we say, is an action bad in itself according to the morality of the good will but which has good effects. Is it to be judged according to its motive or according to its effects ? But, in fact, if we look a little more closely, we shall find that the selfish political leader was himself much more of an instrument than an originating cause, and that his action was but a trifling element in the sum or series of action which yielded the political movement. The good in the effects of the movement will really correspond to the degree of good will which has been exerted in bringing it about, and the effects of any selfishness in its promoters will appear in some limitation of the good which it brings to society/2 According to Green, the proper standard by which a movement of political reform ought to be evaluated is that of citizenship. The aims of the movement must not be divorced from the way in which it is conducted. How far is the movement, taking account of both its aims and its methods, an achievement of citizenship? In the present situation, is the pursuit of these aims by these methods likely to contribute to the welfare of the political community ? If so, then the good citizen has a duty to do what he can to assist the movement. To the extent that those who participate in the movement are animated by these motives and play their part in it with integrity and intelligence, the movement is an achievement of citizenship. This is what

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

115

Green has in mind when he says that 'the good in the effects of the movement will really correspond to the degree of good will which has been exerted in bringing it about/ The selfish political leader who takes part from motives of private self-interest, contributes nothing to this achievement. He may be useful as a means although his value in this respect must be weighed against the corrupting influence which he may exert upon the movement. In evaluating a political movement as an achievement of citizenship, the success which it has in bringing about its special aims, the particular legislative and administrative changes which it advocates, is by no means irrelevant. But it is not the only, nor the most important consideration. The movement may fail to realize its special objectives and still be a valuable achievement of citizenship. Citizenship is not the means to an end lying beyond itself but a sphere of rational activity, a way of living and acting, and what is of ultimate importance is that, in the situation in which they find themselves, people should try to live and act as citizens. This does not mean that questions of particular ends and means should be regarded as unimportant. It means only that the achievement of a way of living and acting is something more than the achievement of efficiency in the bringing about of particular ends although efficiency remains a necessary ingredient. A man cannot be a good citizen without being efficient in his particular actions but he can be efficient in his particular actions without being a good citizen. If a political movement fails to achieve its special aims through a lack of efficiency on the part of those engaged in it, it is at best only a feeble achievement of citizenship. But if it fails not from lack of efficiency in the details of its work, but because the forces opposed to it are too strong, the failure does not in itself detract from it as an achievement of citizenship. The attempt may have been worth making even though success in terms of particular results was problematical from the outset. In considering whether he ought to assist a movement of political reform, the citizen is in effect asking the question: what ought to be done ? in the fuller of the two senses distinguished by Green. He is asking himself whether, in assisting the movement, he is doing what, as a citizen, he ought to do.

Il6

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

The question presupposes a conception of what citizenship is. We are here brought back to the relation of philosophy to practice. In Green's view, the theory of citizenship is a part only of the theory of morality, albeit a most important part. The ultimate moral community is not the state but mankind. A full theory of citizenship, that is to say, involves interpreting it in terms of the higher level of self-consistent human achievement. As we shall see in the next chapter, this is what Green tries to do in his political philosophy. The point to notice here, however, is that a citizen's practical conduct may be affected by the theory of citizenship in terms of which he puts practical questions to himself. But there is, in Green's example of the selfish political leader, something which appears to be inconsistent with his previous argument. Earlier he said that 'it is only an action done by himself that a man has the means of estimating in relation to the character represented by it*. Now he speaks of our noticing that 'selfish motives lead an able man to head a movement of political reform*. But if it is Only in the case of our own actions that we can estimate integrity, how can we tell that the motives are selfish? Indeed it is hard to see how we are ever justified in estimating the moral character of others. But we do form such estimates and they are not arbitrary. We base them on our knowledge of the conduct of the person concerned in situations in which loyalty and responsibility are called for. It is improbable that Green intended to deny this and we must therefore not take his first statement too literally. His point may be interpreted as being that it is only where we have full and detailed knowledge of conduct that we are in a position to form an estimate of moral character. We are in a better position to do this in the case of ourselves than in the case of others and it is only where we are intimately acquainted with someone else that we should be prepared to risk a judgement as to his integrity. The less we know about a man's habitual conduct, the more cautious we should be in forming definite conclusions about his moral character. 3. Although Green thinks that the theory of morality is not without practical significance, he is fully alive to its limitations. 'Any value,' he writes, 'which a true moral theory may

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

117

have for the direction of conduct depends upon its being applied and interpreted by a mind which the ideal as a practical principle already actuates/1 The theory of morality, that is to say, can be of help only to a man who is already trying to be moral. Even here, the value is indirect. 'And it will be as well at once to admit/ Green continues, 'that the value must be rather negative than positive, rather in the way of deliverance from the moral anarchy which an apparent conflict between duties equally imperative may bring about: or of providing a safeguard against the pretext which, in a speculative age, some inadequate and misapplied theory may afford to our selfishness; than in the way of pointing out duties previously ignored/3 According to Bradley, the problem posed by 'the apparent conflict between duties equally imperative* is strictly practical. Theory has nothing to contribute to its solution. But in Green's view such a problem can arise only for a moral agent who has got beyond the level of rule and custom and is trying to think out his conduct for himself. It is the process of thought which has given rise to the problem and the solution must be sought not by abandoning the process but by carrying it further. According to Green, 'No good will come of this unless under the direction of a genuine interest in the perfecting of man/ 3 But he thinks that: 'Given this interest, it is only through philosophy that it can be made independent of the conflicting because inadequate formulae in which duties are presented to it, and saved from distraction between rival authorities of which the injunctions seem at once absolute and irreconcilable because their origin is not understood/* A little later, after saying that the function of bringing home their duties to men is that of the preacher rather than the philosopher, Green continues: 'Speculatively, there is much for the philosopher to do in examining how that ordering of life has arisen to which these duties are relative. What is the history of their recognition ? What is the rationale of them ? What is the most correct expression for the practical ideas which underly them?' 5 In another passage, speaking of the work of the moral philosopher, he writes: 'As a moral philosopher, he analyses human conduct, the motives which it expresses, the spiritual endowments implied in it, the history of thought,

Il8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

habit and institutions, through which it has come to be what it is/ 6 Green's point is that, for the moral agent who has got beyond the level of rule and custom, duties are not given ready-made. He must decide them for himself, and in order to do this he must have some understanding of the nature and significance of the various spheres of rational activity within which his immediate responsibilities arise. He is committed to a process of thought which, if its implications are fully developed, will lead him into philosophy. Green is not, however, saying that it will normally be necessary for the implications of the process to be fully developed. He is not maintaining that a man can achieve morally responsible conduct only if he first 'analyses human conduct, the motives which it expresses, the spiritual endowments implied in it, the history of thought, habit and institutions through which it has come to be what it is'. Ordinarily, it will be enough if the process of thought is carried to the point where the moral agent feels that he has a practical understanding of what he is responsible for, without troubling himself about its ultimate meaning within the framework of human experience. But there may be occasions, such as 'an apparent conflict between duties equally imperative' when the process must be carried further and the moral agent may find himself driven into 'examining how that ordering of life has arisen to which these duties are relative', and asking: 'what is the rationale of them ? What is the most correct expression of the practical ideas which underly them ?' Nor is it Green's view that philosophy should only be undertaken when practical problems seem to demand it. It should be cultivated in the same spirit as scientific research or creative art, for its own sake as a valuable human achievement. His point is that there will be times when it will join hands with practice and that the union will be better effected when there is a vigorous tradition of philosophical thought already going on. The moral agent who asks the question: 'what ought to be done?' in the fuller sense, who asks himself whether he is living and acting as he ought, and who is thus led to wonder how he ought to live and act, will be the beneficiary of such a tradition. He will be less likely to fall a victim to what Green.

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

II9

probably having Utilitarianism in mind, calls 'some inadequate and misapplied theory*. Bradley in Ethical Studies was unable to establish an intelligible connection between the practical thought of the moral agent in determining his conduct and the theoretical thought of the moral philosopher. He failed to see that the moral agent is committed to a process of thought which, when its implications are fully developed, leads to moral philosophy. This failure was due to his inadequate grasp of the theory of rational activity. Green, having a deeper understanding of that theory, is able to make the connection. For him, the highest level of rational activity is that of self-consistent or non-competitive human achievement. At this level all the subordinate levels of rationality find a place. It is a social level but the relevant society is not confined to any limited group. It is co-extensive with mankind. This human community is the ultimate moral community. The moral agent can realize himself fully only by living and acting as a member of it. Final 'deliverance from the moral anarchy which an apparent conflict between duties equally imperative may bring about' can be found only by interpreting immediate responsibilities in the light of the deeper responsibility to the ultimate moral community. But this interpretation, if it is to be adequate, involves thinking out the nature and significance of the ultimate moral community, and it is here that practical thought about moral problems passes into moral philosophy. Green is not however maintaining that the moral agent who supplements his practical thought by moral philosophy will thereby be relieved from all problems of conduct. He may still be in doubt about what to do on a given occasion owing to uncertainty about the probable outcome of different courses of action which seem to be open to him, an uncertainty which he has no means of removing. His problem is technical rather than strictly moral but it is still a problem of conduct. Green's point is that where the problem is strictly moral, where it is a case of doubt as to which of two loyalties ought to be respected, the theory of morality may be of practical significance. It must also be remembered that Green is not maintaining that the nature and significance of the ultimate moral community can be understood in isolation, without reference to the more im-

I2O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

mediate responsibilities of family, neighbourhood and nation. On the contrary, it is an integral part of his doctrine that it is only through an understanding of these limited communities that an understanding of the ultimate moral community is possible. A man can be a good human being only by being a good family man, neighbour and citizen. The theory of the highest level of rational activity must also be the theory of the spheres which it incorporates. Hence it is to Green's political philosophy that we must go for a fuller understanding of his moral philosophy. 4. To end this chapter, I will say something about Green's conception of freedom. It is an aspect of his general theory of morality and a brief consideration of his doctrine may serve as an introduction to his political philosophy. There is some reference to freedom in Prolegomena but Green's view is most systematically expounded in an essay entitled The different senses of freedom'. It seems to have been composed at the same time as Prolegomena and was posthumously published as an introduction to his Trinciples of Political Obligation. Early in the essay, Green writes: 'As to the sense given to freedom, it must of course be admitted that every usage of the term to express anything but a social and political relation of one man to others involves a metaphor/ 1 Explaining the necessity of this metaphorical sense, Green writes: 'Reflecting on their inner life, i.e. their life as viewed from within, men apply to it the terms with which they are familiar as expressing their relations to each other. In virtue of that power of self-distinction and self-objectification, which he expresses whenever he says "I", a man can set over against himself his whole nature or any of its elements and apply, to the relation thus established in thought, the term borrowed from relations of outward life/2 Green thinks that this metaphorical use of terms can be misleading. The problem of the freedom of the will is, he thinks, a misconceived problem arising out of the inappropriate use of a metaphor drawn from the relations of social life and the natural world. The point, according to Green is that the will is the man as a self-determining agent. It is not something like a body in space which can be acted on by another body. As Green puts it: 'A man in willing

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

121 3

is necessarily free since willing constitutes freedom.' What is self-determining, in other words, cannot be the product of something else acting upon it. Thus, according to Green, while it makes sense to talk of a man being unfree in that he is interfered with and restrained by others in his attempts to execute his own decisions, it does not make sense to speak of him as not being free in making his decisions. A decision, by its nature, must be free. A man may make a decision while being exposed to strong inducements one way or the other, but he alone remains responsible for the decision. A decision, as distinct from the attempt to implement it, cannot be restrained or interfered with. Thus rational activity, the activity of self-determination, is necessarily free activity. But there is another sense in which it is possible to speak significantly of decisions which are not free, or of rational activity which is not free. After speaking of a man as being free in the attempt to realize objects of his own choice, Green goes on: 'But in another sense he is not free because the objects to which his acts are directed are objects in which, according to the law of his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be found. His will to arrive at self-satisfaction not being adjusted to the law which determines where this self-satisfaction is to be found, he may be considered in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the will of another, not his own. From this bondage, he emerges into real freedom, not by overcoming the law of his being, not by getting the better of its necessity, every fancied effort to do so is but a new exhibition of its necessity, but by making its fulfilment the object of his will, by seeking the satisfaction of himself in objects in which he believes that it should be found and seeking it in them because he believes that it should be found in them/* In this passage, Green is arguing that there is a sense in which real freedom can be found only in morally responsible conduct. The man whose actions are directed towards objects In which, according to the law of his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be found' is trying to realize himself as a rational agent without becoming a moral agent. He is trying to develop a satisfying way of living and acting without taking account of his responsibilities as a social being. We may consider him as

122

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

being 'in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the will of another not his own' because he is not fully in control of his conduct. He remains in the last resort subject to the caprice of his own private inclinations. By contrast, the man who is capable of morally responsible conduct is free from this subjection. He is able to discipline his private inclinations for the sake of meeting his social responsibilities and is thus in control of his conduct in a way in which the other is not. What Green has in mind may perhaps be summarized as follows. Rational activity is determined by decisions. A decision is a choice between alternatives and every decision is free in the sense that on any given occasion a different choice might have been made from that which was made. Hence rational activity is free. But this is not the end of the matter. There are different levels of rationality and there is a sense in which these may be regarded as different levels of freedom. The rational agent who moves from a lower to a higher level of rationality is moving from a less to a more adequate way of thinking about human conduct and its situation. He is expanding his horizon and learning to understand and take account of what previously had either been ignored or merely accepted uncomprehendingly. He is putting himself in a position to make better informed decisions than before and so to increase his control over himself and his conduct. Thus in moving from the level of mere private satisfaction to that of morality, the rational agent is freeing himself from a way of thinking which confines him to the circle of his own private inclinations and for which the responsibilities of social life appear only as alien restraints. He is entering upon a way of thinking which will enable him to criticize and, where necessary, discipline his private inclinations instead of being subject to them, and which will enable him to see the responsibilities of social living as responsibilities which belong to him. Equally, in moving from morality at the level of rule and custom to morally responsible conduct at the level of spheres of rational activity, he is freeing himself from the limitations of an uncritical acceptance of established authority, and is entering a way of thinking in terms of which he can understand the nature and ground of rules and customs, and make them his servant rather than his master. Such, in brief, seems to be the

T. H. GREEN'S THEORY OF MORALITY

123

central thought underlying Green's essay. There is, however, one further point which, although Green does not deal with it explicitly, is implicit in his doctrine. It concerns the distinction between the amoral and the immoral. The amoral man is unable to reach the level of morality and is less free than the moral man, being subject to the caprice of his private inclinations. But the immoral man is capable of morality and is as free as the moral man. His immorality lies in his knowing disregard of his responsibilities. He decides to do what he knows he ought not to do and need not do. He is the rational agent who deliberately renounces the highest level of rationality of which he is capable and it is for this reason that he is censured. The amoral man must not be censured for he is not capable of morality.

CHAPTER IV

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

A:

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS

1. For Green's political philosophy we must go to his Prin­ ciples of Political Obligation. This book, which was post­ humously published, consists of the text of a course of lectures given by Green at Oxford in 1881. The lectures were a sequel to an earlier course on ethics in which some of the main ideas of Prolegomena to Ethics were expounded. Green announces his intention at the beginning of the first lecture. 'My plan will be:' he writes: 'a) to state in outline what I consider the true function of law to be, this being at the same time the true ground of our moral duty to obey the law; and throughout I shall distinguish moral duties from legal obligations: b) to examine the chief doctrines of political obligation that have been current in modern Europe and, by criticizing them, to bring out more clearly the main points of a truer doctrine: c) to consider in detail the chief rights and obligations enforced in civilized states, inquiring what is their justification, what is the ground for respecting them on the principles stated.'1 This plan has been formulated in the light of the theory of morality developed in Prolegomena. When Green speaks of 'the true function of law' and of 'the true ground of our moral duty to obey the law' it is the rationality of law as a human achievement and the rational basis of the duty to obey it that he has in mind. When he speaks of 'bringing out more clearly the main lines of a truer doctrine of political obligation' he has in mind the nature and significance of citizenship as a sphere of rational activity and of the responsibilities to which it gives rise. The plan is not so much an application of the theory of morality worked out in Prolegomena as a further development

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-5

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

125

of that theory. To be moral is to be a good human being and this is something more than merely being a good citizen. But on the other side it is not something less than being a good citizen. An important part of the theory of morality must be the thecry of citizenship as a rational human achievement. In this chapter, I shall try to show how Green develops this idea and will follow him in the main lines though not the full details of his plan. 2. We may begin with Green's proposal to distinguish moral duties from legal obligations. Legal obligations are those which arise out of the provisions of a given code of law and which, if necessary, the government will enforce by the use of its coercive power. But moral duties, just because they are moral, cannot be enforced. The question sometimes put/ Green writes, 'whether moral duties should be enforced by law, is really an unmeaning one, for they simply cannot be enforced. They are duties to act, it is true, and an act can be enforced. But they are duties to act with certain dispositions and from certain motives and these cannot be enforced/1 Moral duties, that is to say, belong to a rational agent as a social being. They are the particular actions which on a given occasion he must do in order to play his part as a member of a society. But they must be done freely and voluntarily, because the rational agent recognizes them as his responsibility in the situation: otherwise he is not contributing to his society and fails to realize himself as a social being. The man who does an action not because it is his duty but for the sake of avoiding punishment or social censure is not playing his part as a member of his society. His action is rational but at a level below that of morality. He may be achieving a way of acting which is satisfying to him as a private individual but he is not realizing himself as a moral and therefore as a social agent. But although moral duties cannot as such be legally enforced, one and the same action may be both a moral duty and a legal obligation. The distinction between them is not that between the mutually exclusive species of a genus. Green puts this by saying: 'There is a moral duty in regard to obligations but there can be no obligations in regard to moral duty/ 2 Normally it will be the moral duty of the citizen to discharge his legal obliga-

126

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tions. But it is not the fact that, if necessary, they will be enforced by the government which makes their discharge a moral duty. Citizenship is something more than merely obeying the law. The law is concerned with what in the last resort can be enforced by coercive power and is therefore confined to the external or physical side of action. As Green puts it: 'Only outward acts then can be matter of legal obligation/3 But what actions ought to be made legally obligatory ? The answer to this question/ Green writes, 'arises out of the above consideration of the means which law employs to obtain the fulfilment of obligations, combined with the view of law as relative to a moral end, i.e. the formation of a society of persons acting from a certain disposition, from interest in the society as such.'4 In speaking of law 'as relative to a moral end' Green's point is that the function and scope of law must be interpreted from the standpoint of rational activity at the level of morality. Ultimately this means from the standpoint of the highest level of rational activity, that of self-consistent human achievement. Giving a provisional answer to his question, he writes: 'Those acts only should be matter of legal injunction or prohibition of which the performance or omission, irrespectively of the motive from which it proceeds, is so necessary to the existence of a society, in which the moral end stated can be realized, that it is better for them to be done or omitted from that unworthy motive, which consists in fear or hope of legal consequences, than not to be done at all/ 5 This answer indicates that, according to Green, it is the proper function of law to compel those who would not otherwise do so to conform to certain minimum standards. These are the standards which must be observed if the members of a society are to have the chance of achieving the higher levels of rationality of which they may be capable. These higher levels must be achieved freely and voluntarily but the law can and should be used to prevent those who are capable of them from being pulled down to the level of the minority who are incapable of any sustained achievement of morality at all. These latter will be a minority for if they become a majority, rational social life will disintegrate into anarchy. Compulsion is thus used only against those who are incapable even of the minimum level of morality. There is no question of trying to en-

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

127

force moral duties. All those capable of morality will obey freely and voluntarily as a moral duty. But for a fuller answer, we must go to Green's theory of rights. It is to this theory that the major part of the first lecture is devoted after the initial distinction of moral duties from legal obligations has been made. 3. Green rejects the doctrine of natural rights or the 'Rights of Man* in its traditional form, although he does not deny that there is some significance in the idea. 'Natural rights/ he says, 'so far as there are such things, are themselves relative to the moral end to which perfect law is relative/ 1 The traditional doctrine gives no moral justification for the rights which it asserts. They are simply laid down and it is supposed to be the task of law to enforce them. But in Green's view: 'A law is not good because it enforces natural rights but because it contributes to the realization of a certain end. We only discover what rights are natural by considering what powers must be secured to a man in order to the attainment of this end. These powers perfect law will secure to their full extent. Thus the consideration of what rights are natural in the only legitimate sense, and the consideration what laws are justifiable, form one and the same process, each presupposing a conception of the moral vocation of man/ 2 Green's point is that the idea of rights is an aspect of the idea of law. A given system of law, together with the rights which it secures, should be subjected to criticism. But the standard of criticism is not some alleged body of natural rights which are supposed to be already there prior to all inquiry. It is the standard of morality, ultimately the standard of self-consistent human achievement. In criticizing a given system of law, we must ask: how effectively does it contribute to self-consistent human achievement in the particular circumstances in which it operates? In considering how it can be improved, we are led to consider what rights people have in the sense of morally justified claims to have certain powers secured to them by the law, or, to put the matter from the other side, what actions they are morally entitled to have made legally obligatory ? To have a natural right is to have a morally justified claim to have certain powers secured by law whether or not the law at the

128

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

time actually secures them. In this sense and no other, according to Green, the phrase 'natural right' is significant. Therefore to inquire what rights are natural and what actions ought to be made legally obligatory is one and the same inquiry. Having contrasted it with the traditional doctrine of natural rights, Green proceeds to develop his own theory further. The doctrine here asserted/ he writes, 'that all rights are relative to moral ends or duties, must not be confused with the ordinary statement that every right implies a duty or that rights and duties are correlative. This is of course true in the sense that possession of a right by any person both implies an obligation on the part of someone else and is conditional upon the recognition of certain obligations on the part of the person possessing it.13 This ordinary view, it may be noted in passing, does not support the traditional doctrine of natural rights in which little or no emphasis is placed on obligations. Green, however, has another point in mind. 'But what is meant/ he continues, 'is something different: viz that the claim or right of the individual to have certain powers secured to him by society and the counter-claim of society to exercise certain powers over the individual alike rest upon the fact that these powers are necessary to the fulfilment of man's vocation, to an effectual selfdevotion to the work of developing the perfect character in himself and others/* It is thus as a moral agent and therefore as a member of a society that a man has rights. On the other side, it is as the corporate organization of a group of moral agents that society has rights, that it is morally justified in claiming the power to regulate the conduct of its members in certain respects. It is this social basis of rights which underlies the ordinary view that the possession of a right 'is conditional upon the recognition of certain obligations on the part of the person possessing it*. Green sums up the social character of rights when he says: 'No one therefore can have a right except a) as a member of a society, and b) of a society in which some common good is recognized by the members of the society as their own ideal good, as that which should be for each of them. The capacity for being determined by a good so recognized is what constitutes personality in the ethical sense/5 Green's second point, that the society must be one in which

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

129

the members recognize a common good, is significant. It is restated in another passage where he writes: There can be no right without a consciousness of common interests on the part of members of a society. Without this, there might be certain powers on the part of individuals but no recognition of these powers by others as powers of which they allow the exercise nor any claim to such recognition. And without this recognition or claim to recognition there can be no right/ 6 Green is here saying that, without the consciousness of common interests among the members of a society, there would be no basis upon which they could agree that the exercise of certain powers should be allowed. Nor would there be any basis upon which the claim could be made that the exercise of a certain power, at present forbidden, ought to be allowed. There can be rights, that is to say, only in a society where there is fundamental agreement. It might be objected that, while as a matter of fact unless there is fundamental agreement within a society, the rights of its members are not likely to be secured, still this makes no difference to the rights themselves. If certain claims are morally justified, then whether or not the members of a given society agree that they are makes no difference. But in Green's view, this is another form of the fallacy of the traditional doctrine of the 'Rights of Man'. The root of the fallacy lies in the assumption that rights are independent realities which are somehow already there independently of any social situation. But for Green what is real is the level of rationality embodied in a given social situation. Where this falls below the level of morality, where the people concerned fail to recognize any common good in terms of which they can agree upon the regulation of their conduct, the notion of rights becomes irrelevant. An example of such a situation (which could hardly have occurred to Green) is where two different racial groups within a population come into conflict. Within each group, the level of morality will be reached, there will be genuine social relations and rights will be a reality. But, between them, there will be no genuine social relations, no achievement of morality and no rights. The situation represents a moral failure on the part of the members of both groups and it can be improved only when they can achieve some consciousness of common interests on

IJO

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the basis of which they can develop genuine social relations. Unless and until they can make this improvement and raise their inter-communal relations to the level of morality, the question of mutual rights and obligations between them cannot arise. Thus, for Green, the existence of a system of law which effectively secures certain rights to the members of a society is an indication that among them there is a widespread achievement of rationality at the level of morality. This is not however to say that the system of law cannot be improved. There may be rights which are overlooked or which are very imperfectly secured to certain groups. There may be vested interests which prevent whole classes from enjoying many of their rights. There is an indication only that a minimum level of morality has been generally reached. Nor does the mere possession of rights of itself guarantee the achievement of higher levels of rationality. It merely provides conditions under which these higher levels may be achieved. This is the thought which Green has in mind in the following passage in which he sums up the moral basis of rights and at the same time their limitations. 'Only through the possession of rights/ he says, 'can the power of the individual freely to make a common good his own have reality given to it. Rights are what may be called the negative realization of this power, i.e. they realize it in the sense of providing for its free exercise, of securing the treatment of one man by another as equally free with himself. But they do not realize it positively because their possession does not imply that, in any active way, the individual makes a common good his own/ 7 B:

THE

THEORY

OF

THE

STATE

i. After the first lecture, Green turns his attention to the second stage of his plan: the critical examination of the chief theories of political obligation current in modern Europe and the development of a truer doctrine. He devotes five lectures to reviewing and commenting upon the political philosophies of Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the analytical jurisprudence of John Austin. Summing up his criticisms, he writes: 'Looking back on the political theories which we have dis-

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

131

cussed, we may see that they all start by putting the question to be dealt with in the same way and that their errors are very much due to the way in which they put it.'1 Describing their way of putting the question, he goes on: They look only to the supreme coercive power on the one side and to individuals to whom natural rights are ascribed on the other, and ask: what is the nature and origin of the right of that supreme coercive power as against these natural rights of individuals?'2 Green then states what he thinks is wrong with this way of putting the question. The power which regulates our conduct in political society/ he writes, 'is conceived in too abstract a way on the one side, and on the other are set over against it as the subjects which it controls, individuals invested with all the moral attributes and rights of humanity. But in truth it is only as members of a society, as recognizing common interests and objects, that individuals come to have these attributes and rights, and the power, which in a political society they have to obey, is derived from the development and systemization of those institutions for the regulation of a common life without which they would have no rights at all/ 3 It is not because they make use of the notion of rights that Green objects to the way in which these theories formulate their questions. In his view, the notion of rights is of fundamental importance in the theory of the state. The state then presupposes rights and rights of individuals/ he says: 'It is a form which society takes in order to maintain them/ 4 What he objects to is the way in which rights are conceived, a way which takes no real account of their moral and social basis. In the following passage he sums up the essentials of his own view of the state in which he thinks the real character of rights is recognized. 'A state/ he writes, 'presupposes other forms of community with the rights which arise out of them and only exists as sustaining, securing and completing them. In order to make a state, there must have been families of which the members recognized rights in each other, recognized in each other powers capable of direction by reference to a common good. There must further have been intercourse between families, or between tribes that have grown out of families, of which each in the same sense recognized rights in the others/ 5 What he has in mind is that, when a political community is

132

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

formed, there is a transition on the part of at least the leaders of local communities from the sphere of personal relations to that of citizenship. They must already have achieved morality not merely at the lower level of rule and custom but at the higher level of spheres of rational activity. They move into the sphere of citizenship when, having been carried beyond the confines of their various local communities by the increasing range and complexity of their activities, they become conscious of common interests which they all share and of the need to regulate their conduct for the sake of maintaining and developing them. Only when this transition has been accomplished, only when the leaders of the different local communities have begun to think of themselves as members of a wider community and to recognize and fulfil the responsibilities which membership involves, can a state be formed. When Green says that the state 'only exists as sustaining, securing and completing* the rights which arise out of other forms of community, his point is that the leaders of the different local communities will have found that they can maintain the rights which they and their fellows already enjoy within these communities, only by forming a wider community and by accepting the necessary adjustments and modifications which this involves. It is the logic of the enterprise of maintaining rights which leads them into the sphere of citizenship and into the formation of a political community. They are making explicit the moral implications of the idea of rights. But the doctrine that the state exists for the sake of maintaining rights does not mean that it should be regarded merely as a means to an end. It is an institution of the sphere of citizenship and citizenship is a sphere of rational activity, a way of living and acting, a context within which questions of ends and means arise, but itself neither the means to an end nor an end towards which other actions are the means. Moreover, citizenship is a sphere of rational activity which sums up and includes within itself the subordinate spheres of personal relations, work and leisure. It follows that, while the rights which arise out of the social relations of these lesser spheres are maintained within the state, they will not be maintained in precisely the same form. The new context will make some difference and

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

133

will give rise also to new rights which may properly be called political and new duties. The creation of a political community is thus, on Green's view, a moral and social achievement which is possible only where there has already been a development of rationality beyond the minimum level of morality and some expansion in the range and complexity of the activities of local communities. 2. Green's objection to the theories which he criticizes is not, however, confined to their inadequate notion of rights. It will be recalled that he also thinks that: 'The power which regulates our conduct in political society is conceived in too abstract a way/ For his own view of the nature and significance of coercive power in the state, we must turn to his critique of John Austin's analytical jurisprudence and especially to his comments on the latter's doctrine of sovereignty. He quotes Austin's own definition. "The notions of sovereignty and independent political society may be expressed concisely thus: if a determinate human superior, not in the habit of obedience to a like superior, receives habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society and the society, including the superior, is a society political and independent/1 In the course of his comments on this definition Green remarks : 'When the power by which rights are guaranteed is sovereign, as it is desirable that it should be in the special sense of being maintained by a persqn or persons wielding coercive force and not liable to control by any other human force, it is not this coercive force that is the important thing about it or that determines the habitual obedience essential to the maintenance of rights. That which determines this habitual obedience is a power residing in the common will and reason of men, i.e. in the will and reason of men as determined by social relations, as interested in each other, as acting together for common ends. It is a power which this universal rational will exercises over the inclinations of the individual and which only needs exceptionally to be backed by coercive force/2 In another passage, Green says that what he calls 'the real determinant of habitual obedience' must be looked for i n that impalpable congeries of the hopes and fears of a people bound together by

134

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

common interests and sympathy which we call the general will'3 Green's point is that the state is a moral and social achievement. The basis of habitual obedience is the recognition by the citizens that they have a moral duty as citizens to obey the law. The government has to use coercion only in a small minority of cases where certain individuals for one reason or another fall below the level of morality and would not otherwise obey. But it cannot use coercion regularly, coercion, that is to say, cannot be the basis of the habitual obedience of the great majority because in such a situation the greater coercive force rests with the majority. When Green says that 'the real determinant of habitual obedience* is what we call 'the general will', he is asserting that the basis of any political regime is acceptance of its authority on the part of its subjects. This acceptance may sometimes be grudging or reluctant. A particular government may be supported because, although it arouses little enthusiasm, no available alternative is in sight and any government which can maintain order is better than none. In many cases, habitual obedience will reflect the minimum morality of rule and custom. The 'impalpable congeries of the hopes and fears of a people' may embrace any one or all of these attitudes. But what about a dictatorial or totalitarian regime? How can they be fitted into this account of the basis of political authority ? Green admits that there is a prima facie difficulty. 'It may be objected,' he writes, 'that this view of the general will, as that on which habitual obedience to the will of the sovereign really depends, is at best only applicable to selfgoverning communities not to those under a despotic sovereign/4 In answering this objection, he re-affirms his view that: 'In all organized communities, the power which practically commands the habitual obedience of the people in respect of those acts or forbearances which are enjoined by law or authoritative custom is one dependent on the general will of the community/5 But he then goes on: 'It may very well be that there is at the same time another power merely coercive, a power really operating on the people simply through their fears, to which obedience is rendered and which is not in turn representative of a general will/6

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

135

Green, that is to say, does not deny that within a political community there may be despotic or tyrannical power, power which commands obedience solely through fear. But in his view, 'Where this is the case, we shall find that such power is only in contact with the people, so to speak, at one or two points, that their actions and forbearances as determined by law and custom are in the main independent of it, that it cannot in any proper sense be said to be a sovereign power over them, at any rate not in the sense in which we speak of king, lords and commons as sovereign in England.'7 He then proceeds to commit himself to the assertion that: 'If a despotic government comes into anything like habitual conflict with the unwritten law, which represents the general will, its dissolution is beginning/8 A good example of a despotic power in Green's sense, although it is not one which could have occurred to him, is the secret police of a totalitarian state. The secret police operates on the fears of the people and by this means obtains their obedience. But, at the same time, the secret police may fairly be said to be 'only in contact with the people at one or two points', namely those concerned directly with politics. Apart from these, the actions of the people 'as determined by law and custom' are in the main independent of the activity of the secret police. It is not fear of the secret police which makes them observe traffic regulations, refrain from doing violence to the person and property of their neighbours, keep contracts, pay taxes and so forth. It is rather the recognition that these things must be done if there is to be any ordered social life at all. All the same, it may be thought that Green is too optimistic when he asserts that a despotic government which comes into habitual conflict with the general will is paving the way for its own dissolution. He seems to be suggesting that a despotic regime is something superficial, that it cannot seriously affect the way of life of a society against the wishes of the people. Twentieth Century experience of totalitarianism may seem to suggest a different view. But we must remember that, according to Green, it is 'in all organized communities that the power which practically commands the habitual obedience of the people' is dependent on the general will, and that the general will is 'that impalpable

136

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

congeries of the hopes and fears of a people bound together by common interests and sympathy.' It is therefore only in an organized community, in which there is some degree of social cohesion, that a despotism will be in contact with the people at only one or two points and will be unable seriously to affect their way of life against their wishes. What he has in mind is an autocracy like Czarist Russia. It was not coercive force which maintained the Czarist regime for so long but the acquiescence, albeit for the most part passive and uncritical, of the Russian people. But when social cohesion breaks down, as eventually happened in Czarist Russia, when, for whatever reason, the bonds of common interest and sympathy are snapped, there is no longer any organized community and no longer any general will. In such a situation, a ruthless well-organized minority may be able for a time to impose itself on a fragmented disorganized majority by coercive force, and obedience which begins through fear may eventually become habitual as a new routine of life develops so that coercion once more recedes into the background. It may be granted, however, that Green underestimated the capacity of a ruthless, dedicated and well-organized minority to subjugate by force a disunited and disorganized majority. No doubt also he failed to reckon properly with the puppet regime maintained against the wishes of the majority through fear of armed intervention from outside. But, notwithstanding these defects, the core of his doctrine remains significant. A state represents no moral and social achievement, there is no political community except in name, unless the great majority of its members are united by bonds of common interests and sympathy and obey the government not out of fear but as a duty. Where these conditions are not present, where what purports to be a state is kept in being only by force, there is no moral and social achievement. The relations between government and governed are at a level of rationality below that of morality. They are not social relations at all in any real sense. Green was perhaps too optimistic in thinking that such conditions could not last for long but there is nothing in his theory, although he did not realize it, to justify this optimism. 3.

According to Green's original plan, the reason for criticiz-

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

137

ing other political theories was in order to develop a truer doctrine of political obligation. We have still to see what that doctrine is. In his view there is a genuine problem of political obligation, but its nature is misconceived if it is stated in a way which implies a conflict between the rights of the individual and the authority of society. 'A right then/ he says, 'to act unsodally, to act otherwise than as belonging to a society of which each member keeps the exercise of his powers within the limits necessary to the like exercise by the other members, is a contradiction.'1 He then goes on to say that: 'No one can say that unless he has consented to such a limitation of his powers, he has a right to resist it. The fact of his not consenting would be an extinction of all right on his part/ 2 Green's point is that, as a social being, a man has a moral duty to limit the exercise of his powers. He is never entitled to do merely what he likes without reference to his social responsibilities. The condition of his having rights is that he should recognize and fulfil this moral duty. This principle applies in the case of the citizen and the state. 'Nor can the citizen have any rights against the state/ Green writes, 'in the sense of a right to act otherwise than as a member of some society; the state being for its members the society of societies, the society in which all their claims upon each other are mutually adjusted/3 It is not, that is to say, as an isolated individual but as a socially responsible agent that the citizen is morally justified in claiming that the government should secure to him certain powers in respect of his dealings with other men. In describing the state as 'the society of societies', what Green has in mind is that the sphere of citizenship incorporates within itself the various subordinate spheres which embody lower levels of rationality. The various claims to be secured in the possession of certain powers which arise out of the social relations of work and leisure, of family and neighbourhood life, become morally justified only after they have been interpreted and, where necessary, modified and adjusted in the light of the responsibilities involved in membership of the political community. It is the implications of these claims for all the members of that community which must be considered, not merely their effect on the lives of those immediately concerned. No citizen can have a right to act in a

Ij8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

way which is incompatible with the responsibilities of citizenship. This however is not the end of the matter. 'But what exactly is meant/ Green asks, 'by the citizen's acting as a member of his state ? What does the assertion that he can have no right to act otherwise than as a member of his state amount to ? Does it mean that he has no right to disobey the law of the state to which he belongs whatever that law may be? that he is not entitled to exercise his powers in any way that the law forbids and to refuse to exercise them in any way that it commands ? '* Green's way of putting his question, namely asking whether the citizen can ever have a right to disobey the law of his state, is somewhat paradoxical. According to him, a right is a morally justified claim to have certain powers secured by law. A morally justified claim to have the power to disobey the law secured by the law itself even under very special circumstances is surely inconceivable. It is a claim that the law should be used in a way which is destructive of law, a claim to have legally secured what is inconsistent with the whole idea of law, and no such claim can be morally justified. But the point behind his question is not paradoxical. He is really asking: is the citizen ever morally entitled to disobey the law of his state, has he ever a moral duty to do so ? Green's question, as thus reformulated, indicates the sense in which there may be a real problem of political obligation. It will appear as a moral problem which arises when the conscientious citizen is in genuine doubt about where his duty lies. As such, it will be a practical problem, the doubt will be about what ought to be done. But the question may arise in either of the two senses distinguished by Green in Trolegomena to Ethics. The problem, that is to say, may be primarily one of estimating and evaluating the probable consequence of different courses of action, or it may arise from doubt about the proper conduct of the good citizen in a given situation. Thus it will arise in an acute form in the fuller sense when the citizen asks himself whether it is his duty as a citizen to obey a law which he believes to be morally bad. The question in this form is still practical but as in every case of the fuller sense of the question : 'what ought to be done V it implies a theoretical question, namely that asked by Green as reformulated above: is it ever

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

139

the citizen's moral duty to disobey the law of his state? The answer to this question implies a general theory of citizenship. It follows that a problem of political obligation can arise only for a citizen in the proper sense, for a rational agent who has achieved morality at the level of spheres of rational activity. At the level of rule and custom, the problem will not arise for obedience to the law as such will normally be accepted without question as a moral rule. But it is possible that, where a new law comes into conflict with established customs, a stimulus will be given which will, as it were, jerk many people up to the higher level of morality at least for a time. Can it then ever be the moral duty of the citizen to disobey the law of his state? Discussing this question, Green writes: The only unqualified answer that can be given to it is one that may seem too general to be of much practical use: namely, that so far as the law anywhere cr at any time in force fulfils the idea of the state, there can be no right to disobey it, or that there can be no right to disobey the law of the state except in the interest of the state, i.e. for the purpose of making the state, in respect of its actual laws, more completely correspond to what it is in tendency or idea, namely the reconciler and sustainer of the rights that arise out of the social relations of men/ 5 For the term 'right' in the above passage, where it is used in connection with disobedience, we must substitute 'moral duty' in order to grasp Green's real meaning. In the nature of the case, the unqualified answer 'is too general to be of much practical use' for the question is a theoretical one and is not intended to provide direct solutions to practical problems. Nor indeed is the unqualified answer satisfactory theoretically. Granted that disobedience is only morally justified for the sake of making the state 'more completely correspond to what it is in tendency or idea', the theory of the state must itself be developed further to make clear what this means. Moreover, we should expect that the result of this further development, while not of direct practical use in the sense of providing rules which can be immediately applied to particular cases, may nevertheless be not without indirect practical significance. It should at least help the conscientious citizen to understand more clearly the nature of the situation in which he is placed.

I4O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

4. With the theoretical question raised by the problem of political obligation in mind, Green proceeds to the further development of his theory of the state and of citizenship. The general principle/ he writes, 'that the citizen must never act otherwise than as a citizen does not carry with it an obligation under all conditions to conform to the laws of his state, since those laws may be inconsistent with the true end of the state as the sustainer and harmonizer of social regulations/1 He then goes on to say that: 'The assertion, however, by the citizen of any right which the state does not recognize must be founded on a reference to an acknowledged social good/2 In Green's view, disobedience to any law is justified, if at all, only for the sake of asserting or calling attention to some right which at the time the state does not recognize and therefore does not legally enforce. Explaining what he means by 'reference to an acknowledged social good', Green writes: 'It is not every power, of which the exercise would be desirable in an ideal state of things, that is properly claimable as a right. The condition of its being so claimable is that its exercise should be contributory to some social good which the public conscience is capable of appreciating, not necessarily one which in the existing prevalence of private interests can obtain due acknowledgement, but still one of which men in their actions and language show themselves to be aware/ 3 His point is that it is not the responsibility of the citizen to act as the member of some hypothetical ideal state. He must act as a member of the political community in which he finds himself, and his responsibility is to try to make it more of a political community, to raise the general level of rationality which it embodies. This means taking account of the particular circumstances, including the 'prevalence of private interests', to say nothing of well established prejudices. The fact that there is a real political community at all, that many rights are recognized and secured by law, will be an indication that there is some consciousness of common interests, some bonds of sympathy uniting the citizens. But there may be a number of rights which are not secured owing to vested interests and long-standing prejudices. These must not be pandered to but neither must they be ignored. In pressing for the recognition of a right, contact must be established with the 'consciousness

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

141

of common interests'. It must be shown that failure to recognize the right involves inconsistency on the part of the government. That it is not likely to be legally secured in the immediate future is not a ground for failing to press an unrecognized right, but there must be good reason for thinking that the nature of the claim can be pretty generally understood and supported. It is against this background that the question of the moral justification of disobedience must be considered. 'As a general rule/ Green writes, 'no doubt even bad laws, laws representing the interests of classes or individuals as opposed to those of the community, should be obeyed. There can be no right to disobey them even while their repeal is urged, on the ground that they violate rights, because the public interest, on which all rights are founded, is more concerned in the general obedience to law than in the exercise of those powers by individuals or classes which the objectionable laws unfairly withhold/* It can never, that is to say, be the duty of the citizen to contribute to the undermining of the respect for law, for without general respect for law, citizenship becomes impossible. It can therefore never be the duty of the citizen to press for the recognition of a right in a way which contributes to the destruction of all rights including the one whose recognition is being pressed. But when all this has been allowed for, there may be circumstances in which disobedience is a moral duty. 'On the other hand/ Green writes, 'there may be cases in which the public interest, not merely according to some remote philosopher's view of it, but according to conceptions which the people are able to assimilate, is best served by a violation of some actual law. It is so in regard to slavery when the public conscience has come to recognize a capacity for right, for exercising certain powers under control of a reference to a general wellbeing in a body of men to whom legal rights have hitherto been refused, but when some powerful class in its own interests resists the alteration of the law/ 5 In Green's view, when public opinion generally has come to recognize that the slaves are moral agents who are capable of fulfilling social responsibilities, the violation of the laws upholding slavery on behalf of the slaves will represent 'the general sense of right on which the general observance of law depends:' 6 and 'there is no danger of its making a breach in the law-abiding habits of the people/7

142

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Green was writing less than 20 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States and the illustration was a natural one for him to take. Today problems of political obligation arise in less clear-cut but more poignant form. The puppet regime maintained against the wishes of the majority of the citizens through fear of armed intervention from outside is a typical case. What is the duty of the conscientious citizen who is forced to live under such a regime ? He has a general responsibility to do what he can to contribute to raising the level of rationality of the political life of his state and he may have good reason to think that he and his compatriots, if left to themselves, would be capable of something better than the current level of achievement. But there may seem little possibility of removing the puppet regime and anything like overt resistance will only make matters worse. It does not follow that his duty is merely to submit passively. It may be that the best thing he can do is to take part in clandestine underground activity against the regime which may at least help to keep alive the idea of a better political life. It may even be that under certain circumstances open resistance is worthwhile for this reason, although it is bound in the end to be crushed. Obviously no rules can be laid down and it ill becomes those who have the good fortune to enjoy a more rational political life to preach to those who are condemned to a lower level. Nevertheless Green's basic point remains. Whatever is done, whether open resistance or outward submission combined with clandestine activity, must be done in the name of citizenship. Green's illustration of slavery however helps to bring out another point. The laws which uphold slavery are morally objectionable: why? Because, by withholding legal rights, they make it difficult if not impossible for a group of men and women to achieve the level of rationality of which they would otherwise be capable. The relevant standard here is not merely that of citizenship but the ultimate moral community. Slavery is a moral evil because it arbitrarily restricts rational human achievement. It is because they are human beings, not because they are members of a particular national group that the servile status of the slaves is morally objectionable. The underlying point is that the sphere of citizenship is itself subordinate to the higher level of self-consistent human achievement. The

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

143

moral agent who tries to think out his conduct for himself will find that his duty as a citizen is only one aspect, albeit an important one, of his wider responsibility as a man. The state is the society of societies so far as the legal enforcement of rights is concerned, but it is not the ultimate moral community. As we shall see in the next section, Green recognizes this explicitly at a later stage of his discussion. It is, however, implicit in his doctrine of political obligation. But the same principle of contemporary relevance applies in the case of the level of self-consistent human achievement. Just as it is not the responsibility of the citizen to act as a member of some hypothetical ideal state, so it is not the moral agent's responsibility to act as a member of some hypothetical ideal humanity. He must take humanity as he finds it and do the best that he personally can to contribute to self-consistent human achievement in a situation in which many levels of rationality will be concurrently embodied. He must do the best he can to act rationally in a situation of imperfect rationality, and to make what contribution he can to raising the general level. He must make the most of what self-consistent human achievement is possible in the circumstances. It is against this background that the moral agent must think out his duty as a citizen. There is a sense in which, as Aristotle seems to have recognized, there may be a divergence between the good man and the good citizen. It can never be the moral agent's duty to be a bad citizen but it may be his duty to neglect active participation in political activity for the sake of fulfilling some responsibility arising out of family or professional life. There may be some contribution which only he can make in these fields while others who are not in this position can devote themselves actively to politics. Thus the citizen who is forced to live under a puppet regime and who has a growing family to look after, while he recognizes a general responsibility to aid movements which oppose the regime, may very well think that his moral duty is to look after his family and therefore net to take an active part in clandestine political activities. Others without family ties can do this: only he can support his family. Bradley intuitively grasped this aspect of morality and citizenship in his discussion of the Ideal Self in Ethical Studies but, owing to

144

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

his imperfect grasp of the theory of rational activity, was unable to give a satisfactory theoretical account of it. Green does not discuss it explicitly in the Principles of Political Obligation and only hints at it in Prolegomena to Ethics, but it is implicit in his general position. C : T H E

S C O P E

A N D L I M I T S

G O V E R N M E N T

OF

ACTION

i. From the problem of political obligation, Green turns in the last group of lectures to the third stage of his original plan. This was: 'to consider in detail the chief rights and obligations enforced in civilized states, inquiring what is their justification, what is the ground for respecting them.1 By 'civilized states', as we can now see, Green means organized communities in which there is habitual obedience to an established authority on the basis of common interests and sympathy and in which the task of harmonizing and securing rights is accomplished with some degree of success. Throughout his lectures Green has been speaking as the member of such a state. In developing his theory of citizenship and the state, he has been trying to lay bare the implicit rationality of the political life which is familiar in practice both to himself and to his hearers. The inquiry into the chief rights and obligations enforced in civilized states is a continuation of the same process. But the emphasis now will be on the scope and limits of government action, on the nature and significance of the task of securing rights. The chief rights and obligations which Green actually considers are those connected with life and liberty, with property and with the family. In what follows I shall try to summarize the essentials of his doctrine in each case concentrating especially on his view of the scope and limits of government action. According to Green, there is one right to free life, rather than two separate rights, one to life and the other to liberty. 'No distinction can be made/ he writes, 'between the right to life and the right to liberty, and there can be no right to mere life, no right to life on the part of a being that has not also the right to use the right according to the motions of its own will.'1 To the question: what is the foundation of this right? Green says: The

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

145

answer is capacity on the part of the subject for membership of a society, for determination of the will, and through it of the bodily organization, by the conception of a well-being as common to self with others.'2 But the society, membership of which is the moral basis of the right to free life, is the society of mankind, the ultimate moral community. It is not the state, the family or any lesser group. Green admits that: 'We are little inclined to the idea of the universal brotherhood of men, of mankind as forming one society with a common good of which the conception may determine the action of its members/ 3 But he then goes on: 'It is the proper correlative of the admission of a right to free life as belonging to man in virtue simply of his human nature/* It is then as a morally responsible human being that a man has a right to free life. But there are two activities of government, those of war and punishment, which seem prima facie to violate it. Green therefore proceeds to discuss them. He insists that every war is the outcome of human decisions. The death and suffering involved are human responsibilities not the results of natural disasters or accidents. 'But however widely distributed the agency may be/ he writes, 'which causes the destruction of life in war, it is still intentional human agency. The destruction is not the work of accident or of nature. If then it is to be other than a wrong because a violation of the right of mutual protection of life involved in the membership of human society, it can only be because there is exercised in war some right that is paramount.' But according to Green: 'This argument, however, seems to be only available for shifting the quarter in which we might first Be disposed to lay the blame for the wrong involved in war, not for changing the character of that wrong. It goes to show that the wrong involved in the death of certain soldiers does not necessarily lie with the government which sends those soldiers into the field because this may be the only means by which the government can prevent a more serious wrong. It does not show that there is no wrong in their death/6 Thus, although he thinks that war involves moral evil, Green is not a pacifist. Under certain circumstances it may be a government's duty to resort to war if this is the only way in which a worse evil can be prevented. It may be that, by means

I46

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of war, the general level of rationality in political life can be prevented from sinking as low as it would if pacific policies were adopted. By the same token it may sometimes be the citizen's moral duty to give up his right to free life. But all this does not alter the fact that there is evil involved. Some government must be pursuing a morally indefensible policy if war is necessary as a method of trying to salvage something from international political life. Green objects most strongly to the idea that conflict between states is inevitable, that, as long as there are many states, there are bound to be wars between them. 'There is no such thing as an inevitable conflict between states/ he writes, 'there is nothing in the nature of the state that, given a multiplicity of states, should make the gain of the one the loss of the other/ 7 And in another passage he writes: 'It is nothing then in the necessary organization of the state but rather some defect of that organization in relation to its proper function of maintaining and reconciling rights, of giving scope to capacities, that leads to a conflict of apparent interest between one state and another. The wrong therefore which results to human society from conflicts between states cannot be condoned on the ground that it is a necessary incident of the existence of states/ 8 In Green's view, national self-interest is no justification for a policy which violates the right to free life of the members of other states. National self-interest, no less than the private selfinterest of the individual, must be subordinate to morality. 'It is not the state as such/ Green writes, 'but this or that particular state, which by no means fulfils its purpose and might perhaps be swept away and superceded by another with advantage to the true ends for which the state exists, that needs to defend its interests by actions injurious to those outside it. Hence there is no ground for holding that a state is justified in doing whatever its interests seem to require irrespectively of its effects on other men/ 9 The final standard is that of the ultimate moral community. In the last resort no policy the effects of which are to frustrate self-consistent human achievement can be regarded as morally defensible. 'If those effects are bad/ Green writes, 'as involving either a direct violation of personal rights or obstruction to the moral development of society anywhere in the world, then there is no ultimate justification for

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 10

147

the political action which gives rise to them/ But, on the other hand, he is prepared to admit that the policy or political action which is the real cause of the wrong may not be the one which immediately occasioned it. A government may be justified in adopting a policy which has harmful effects on other human beings if this is the only way to avoid greater injury. But the fact remains that some morally indefensible policy has been pursued somewhere. The harm done to human beings is still a wrong even if the government which directly caused it is not morally responsible for it. The question can only be/ Green writes, 'as we have seen generally in regard to the wrongdoing of war, where in particular the blame lies/11 I have laid stress on Green's moral condemnation of war and of unbridled national self-interest, because the idea has got about in some quarters that Idealist political philosophy in some way justifies if not positively exalts war as an inherent feature of political life and gives carte blanche to national selfinterest as the ultimate arbiter of policy. It is true that those who have adopted this view have usually exempted Green from the general charge against Idealist political philosophy. But they have done so on the ground that, as regards his doctrine of war and international relations, Green is not a true philosophical Idealist. This however is an error. Green's doctrine of war and international relations follows from his general Idealist position. It is the result of a consistent development of the theory of rational activity which is the basis of his entire social philosophy. It is just because he is an Idealist that Green holds the doctrine which he does about war and international relations. But, it may be replied, if this is so, then so much the worse for Idealist political philosophy; for Green's doctrine with its exclusive emphasis on morality is largely irrelevant. It has little or nothing to contribute to the understanding of international relations which for the most part exhibit a level of rationality below that of morality. I feel some sympathy for this objection although I think that it is misconceived. Green's doctrine is not so much irrelevant as incomplete and therefore one-sided. The consistent development of the theory of rational activity needs to be carried a good deal further than Green takes it in his discussion of war and international relations. But in such a development, his

148

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

main points would remain. War is not a natural event but the outcome of human decisions. No war is therefore inevitable in the sense of lying beyond the power of human beings to prevent it. To the extent that the way of life of a nation can be maintained only at the cost of depriving other human beings of opportunities for rational self-realization which they might otherwise take, that way of life is tarnished and debased as a rational human achievement. What is missing from Green's doctrine is an adequate recognition and discussion of what is implied in an international political community. He does not seem to have appreciated the nature and scale of the obstacles which stand in the way of its realization. The fact that so much of international political life is at a level of rationality below that of morality might have suggested to him that an international common good, an international consciousness of common interests, is a sophisticated and elaborate moral and social achievement. But in failing to understand all this, he is perhaps only reflecting the somewhat superficial international optimism of his generation. It was because he was a Victorian and not because he was a philosophical Idealist, that he was able to rest content with an incomplete and onesided doctrine of war and international relations. 2. In punishing offences against its laws and regulations, a government is curtailing, at least temporarily, the right to free life of those whom it punishes. What justifies this curtailment ? According to Green: 'The idea of punishment implies, on the side of the person punished, at once, a capacity for determination by the conception of a common or public good, or in other words a practical understanding of the nature of rights as founded on relations to such public good, and an actual violation of a right or omission to fulfil an obligation, the right or obligation being one of which the agent might have been aware, and the violation or omission one which he might have prevented.'1 He then goes on to say that on the side of the government: 'It implies equally a conception of right founded on relation to public good and one which, unlike that on the part of the criminal, is realized in act, a conception of which the punitive act as founded on a consideration of what is necessary for the maintenance of rights, is the logical expression/2

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

149

In Green's view: 'A punishment is unjust if either element is absent: if either the act punished is not a violation of known rights or an omission to fulfil known obligations of a kind which the agent might have prevented, or the punishment is one that is not required for the maintenance of rights, or which comes to the same thing, if the ostensible rights to the maintenance of which punishment is required are not real rights, are not liberties of action or acquisition which there is any real public interest in maintaining/3 Thus, according to Green, it is as the agent of the state that the government is justified in punishing crime. As the agent of the state, its task is to secure and protect the rights of the citizens and it punishes crime for the sake of protecting these rights. This is, so far at least, a preventive or deterrent theory of punishment. But the punishment must be just, otherwise there is a failure in the work of protecting rights. If the person punished has not committed a crime, his right to free life is being arbitrarily curtailed. Moreover, if he is not in some degree a moral agent who is responsible for his actions and having a practical understanding of his duties as a citizen in relation to the law, he is not a fit subject for punishment. What he needs is treatment and if this is unavailing, then for his own good as well as for the sake of the general protection of rights, he must be kept under restraint. In such a case, there is no curtailment of his right to free life, because, being below the level of morality altogether, he has no rights to be curtailed. In Green's view, however, this does not justify the government in treating him arbitrarily, for, as we shall see later, we ought not to assume that he is permanently below the level of morality, that there is no hope of his ever attaining to at least a minimum level. The conditions on the other side are equally important. The right violated by the crime must be a genuine right, a morally justified claim to have certain powers. Nor is this all. The justice of the punishment/ Green writes, 'depends upon the justice of the general system of rights, not merely on the propriety with reference to social well-being of maintaining this or that particular right which the crime punished violates, but on the question whether the social organization in which a criminal has lived and acted is one that has given him a fair chance of not being a criminal/1 Punishment, that is to say, is not the

I£0

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

only method of protecting the rights of citizens. The government must do what it can to prevent the growth of social conditions which breed criminal tendencies. The best contribution which it can make in this direction is to see that the rights which it actually secures are genuine, and that to the best of its knowledge there are no genuine rights which are not enforced by law. According to Green, the way in which punishment actually operates in the prevention of crime is 'by associating in the mind of every possible doer of them a certain terror with the contemplation of the acts, such terror as is necessary on the whole to protect the rights threatened'.5 But how much terror is necessary in a given case ? How severe must the penalty be to act as an effective deterrent while at the same time remaining just to the criminal who has to bear it? How much allowance should be made for the criminal who in some way seems to have been unfairly treated by society? Green doubts whether any precise rule can be followed. Tor a positive and detailed criterion of just punishment,' he writes, 'we must wait until a system of rights has been established in which the claims of all men as founded on their capacities for contributing to social well-being are perfectly harmonized, and until experience has shown the degree and kind of terror with which men must be affected in order to the suppression* of the anti-social tendencies which might lead to the violation of such a system of rights. And this is perhaps equivalent to saying that no complete criterion of just punishment can be arrived at until punishment is no longer necessary; for the state of things supposed could scarcely be realized without bringing with it an extinction of the tendencies which state punishment is needed to suppress.'6 His point is that, although the government must do the best it can only to punish justly, it will never be able to do more than approximate to the standard of perfect justice. There is an inevitable arbitrary element involved in the fixing of the penalty. Apart from the lack of certainty about the severity needed to make it effective as a deterrent, there is no way of computing how much should be allowed for extenuating circumsstances, especially for the fact that the criminal may * Sic. Green here uses 'in order to' where modern usage requires 'to secure'.

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1£1

himself be the victim of unfair social treatment. Green seems to think that every criminal who is a proper subject for punishment, who is in some degree a moral agent and not a pathological case, has been made what he is at least in part through his social environment. The injustice of that environment has fostered the growth of criminal habits. Here he is entering the territory of empirical psychology and his view may well be open to criticism in the light of recent work in that field. But his main point remains unaffected. So far as the severity of the penalty is concerned, there is an arbitrary element in punishment. In view of this, justice itself seems to require that the penalty should err on the side of leniency rather than severity. 3. In stressing the preventive function of punishment, Green does not overlook the sense in which it may be regarded as retributive. Nor does he fail to take account of its possible reformatory function. In insisting that the government must punish justly, or as justly as the inevitable arbitrary element in the penalty will allow, Green is in effect acknowledging the retributive aspect of punishment. The criminal who is subjected to a just punishment cannot complain. Because of what he has done, he deserves to have his right to free life temporarily suspended. As Green puts it: The criminal, being susceptible to the idea of public good and, through it, to the idea of rights, though this idea has not been strong enough to regulate his action, sees in the punishment its natural expression. He sees that the punishment is his own act returning on himself in the sense that it is the necessary outcome of his act in a society governed by the conception of rights, a conception which he appreciates and to which he does involuntary reverence/1 The criminal, that is to say, has acted in a way inconsistent with his social responsibilities and therefore has for the time being forfeited his claim to be treated as a full member of his society. He must make some amends for what he has done before he is entitled to be restored to full membership. But while he admits that there is a retributive element in every just punishment, Green thinks that it does not concern the government. The already difficult task of assessing the penalty must not be further complicated by adding to it the aim of trying to make the severity of the penalty proportional

l£t

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

to the moral evil of the criminal. No such proportion can be established and in any case it is no part of the government's duty to try to punish immorality as such. The notion/ Green writes, 'that the state should, if it could, adjust the amount of punishment which it inflicts on a criminal to the moral wickedness of the crime rests on a false view of the relation of the state to morality. It implies that it is the business of the state to punish wickedness as such but it has no such business. It cannot undertake to punish wickedness as such without vitiating the disinterestedness of the effort to escape wickedness and thus checking the growth of a true goodness of the heart in the attempt to promote a goodness which is merely on the surface/2 Here Green is simply restating the fundamental point behind his distinction between moral duties and legal obligations. The government can enforce the latter by means of punishment. It cannot enforce the former. But, indirectly, the just punishment of crime contributes to maintaining the general level of morality. Green continues: 'This however is not to be understood as meaning that the punishment of crime serves no moral purpose. It does serve such a purpose and has its value in doing so, but only in the sense that the protection of rights and the association of terror with their violation is the condition antecedent of any general advance in moral well-being/3 Punishment contributes indirectly to morality, that is to say, by virtue of its role in the task of securing and protecting rights. Green thinks that while punishment has a reformatory aspect, this is subordinate to its main function of preventing crime. 'When the reformatory office of punishment is insisted on/ he writes, 'the reference may be and from the judicial point of view must be, not to the moral good of the criminal as an ultimate end, but to his recovery from criminal habits as a means to that which is the proper and direct object of state punishment, namely the general protection of rights/* It is only then as a method of protecting rights that the government should do anything to reform the criminal. But why go to this trouble, it may be asked ? Why not simply liquidate him and have done with it? 'Now when it is asked/ Green continues, 'why he should not be put out of the way, it must not be forgotten that among the rights that the state has to maintain are included rights of the criminal himself, These indeed are for

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1^3

the time suspended by his action in violation of rights, but, founded as they are on the capacity for contributing to social good, they could only be held to be finally forfeited on the ground that this capacity was absolutely extinct/ 5 He therefore concludes that: 'If punishment then is to be just, in the sense that in its infliction due account is taken of all rights including the suspended rights of the criminal himself, it must be, so far as public safety will allow, reformatory. It must tend to qualify the criminal for the resumption of rights/6 Thus, while so far as the government is concerned, punishment, including the reformation of the criminal, is justified solely for the sake of protecting rights, in Green's view: 'It is also for the moral good of the criminal himself unless, and this is an assumption that we ought not to make, he is beyond the reach of moral influences. It is morally the best thing that can happen to him/7 This is because, in order to fit him for the resumption of his rights, an effort must be made to rehabilitate him morally. Moreover there is a sense in which the reformative function of punishment includes an element of retribution. The criminal, in so far as he is morally rehabilitated and fit to resume his rights, will have come to understand the nature of his offence and to recognize that he deserved punishment. But Green then goes on to make what may seem a surprising statement. The just punishment of crime is for the moral good of the criminal, 'even if a true social necessity requires that he be punished with death. The fact that society is obliged so to deal with him affords the best chance of bringing home to him the anti-social nature of his action/8 To some there may be an element of paradox, not to say cynicism, in the suggestion that the morally best thing that can happen to a man is that he should be deliberately killed. Moreover it may seem that Green is guilty of inconsistency for he has just said that the assumption that a man is beyond the reach of moral influences is one that we ought not to make. To kill a man, it may be said, is the one sure way to put him beyond the reach of all human influences, moral or otherwise. But, on behalf of Green, we must remember that he speaks of 'a true social necessity* which requires that the criminal should be punished with death, and of 'the fact that society is obliged so to deal with him'. He is thinking of something like treason in war-time,

IJ4

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

where there might be some grounds for arguing that the only effective deterrent to those who are likely to commit it is fear of execution. Again the doctrine that we ought not to assume that anyone is beyond the reach of all moral influences does not imply that anyone has an absolutely unconditional right to free life. On the contrary, it may be a man's moral duty to give up his life under certain circumstances. In the light of these considerations, what Green has in mind may perhaps be stated as follows. Granted that there may be cases such as treason in war-time when the death penalty is justified, admittedly a controversial assumption, then there is a sense in which it is for the moral good of the criminal who is condemned to suffer it. It provides him with the opportunity to atone for his crime by giving up his life to deter other wouldbe perpetrators. It is his moral duty to do what he can to make amends for what he has done and this can best be discharged by co-operating with the government in preventing further crimes of the same kind. The co-operation required from him involves the loss of his life, but since this is for the sake of fulfilling his moral duty there is no real violation of his rights. Of course he will be executed in any case, whether or not he sees it in this light. But all that can be done for him morally is to help him to see it in this light. The only moral influences which are relevant in his case are those which will lead him to see that it is his duty to accept his execution. But all this of course depends on the initial assumption that the death penalty is justified as the only effective deterrent. The assumption may well be questioned in view of the inevitable element of arbitrariness in the fixing of any penalty. Green himself has misgivings on the point and is inclined to think that it is justified, if at all, only in the case of war-time treason. In war-time every citizen has a duty to give up his life in the interests of public safety. 4. Green objects to the doctrine that the government should try to punish wickedness as such on the ground that it rests on a false view of the relation of the state to morality. He sums up what he takes to be the true view of this relation in the following pasage: The effectual action of the state/ he writes, 'i.e. the community as acting through laws for the promotion of

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

155

habits of true citizenship, seems necessarily to be confined to the removal of obstacles.'1 This is what we should expect in view of his theory of morality, of citizenship and the state, and of rights. But the task of removing obstacles must not be interpreted too narrowly. 'Under this head/ Green continues, 'there may and should be included much that most states have hitherto neglected and much that at first sight may have the appearance of the enforcement of moral duties/2 This statement is in keeping with some remarks in an earlier passage where having laid down the basis of the right to free life, he goes on: 'And though this right can only be grounded on the capacity which belongs to the human nature for freely fulfilling some function in the social organism, we do very little to give reality to the capacity or to enable it to realize itself. We content ourselves with enacting that no man shall be used by other men as a means against his will, but we leave it pretty much to be a matter of chance whether or no he shall be qualified to fulfil any social function, to contribute anything to the common good, and to do so freely, i.e. under the conception of a common good/3 This suggests that Green does not subscribe to the doctrine of laissez faire in economic and social policy. The suggestion is borne out by the following passage where he writes: The freedom to do as they like on the part of one set of men may involve the ultimate disqualification of many others or of a succeeding generation for the exercise of rights. This applies most obviously to such kinds of contract or traffic as affect the health and housing of the people, the growth of population relatively to the means of subsistence and the accumulation or the distribution of landed property/ 4 It thus appears that the task of removing obstacles by securing and protecting rights may involve considerable intervention by the government in economic and social life. It is against this background that Green discusses the right to private property. According to Green the basis of the right to private property is: 'that everybody should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realizing a will which in possibility is a will directed to social good.'5 By 'getting and keeping' he means owning what has been acquired by work. On the subject of 'a will directed towards social good', Green says: 'Whether anyone's will is actually and positively so

1^6

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

directed does not affect his claim to the power. This power should be secured to the individual irrespective of the use which he actually makes of it, so long as he does not use it in a way that interferes with the exercise of a like power by another, on the ground that its uncontrolled exercise is the condition of the attainment by man of that free morality which is his highest good/6 This accords with Green's general theory of rights. They provide conditions under which the moral agent can achieve the highest level of rationality of which he is capable but they do not guarantee that this achievement will be forthcoming. Nor do they depend upon full advantage being taken of the opportunity. A man's right to acquire and own property is not affected by the fact that he makes an improvident or wasteful use of it. But the right to property, like every other right, is not unconditional. There is an obligation, namely not to use the property in a way which prevents others from becoming property-owners at all. According to Green, 'When the possession of property by one man interferes with the possession of property by another, when one set of men are secured in the power of getting and keeping the means of realizing their will in such a way that others are practically denied the power; in that case it may truly be said that property is theft.'7 He then proceeds to sum up: The rationale of property in short requires that everyone who will conform to the positive condition of possessing it, namely labour, and the negative condition, namely respect for it as possessed by others, should, so far as social arrangements can make him so, be a possessor of property himself, and of such property as will at least enable him to develop a sense of social responsibility as distinct from mere property in the immediate necessaries of life.'8 The key phrase here is: 'so far as social arrangements can make him so'. The government has a duty to intervene and, where necessary, regulate the use made of private property but only in the name of private property. Green is no apostle of laissez faire but neither is he a socialist. There is nothing wrong with private property as such. On the contrary it is a right, a morally justified claim so long as the correlative responsibility is fulfilled. It is a power which a man must have if he is to be a moral agent and make a rational life for himself.

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

157

Inequality in the distribution of private property does not constitute an injustice in Green's view so long as there is no violation of anyone's right to own property. Indeed he thinks that inequality is inevitable. 'Considered as representing the conquest of nature by the effort of free and variously gifted individuals/ he writes, 'property must be unequal. No less must it be so, if considered as a means by which individuals fulfil social functions/9 He points out that different kinds of property are needed for different trades and occupations. The artist and man of letters require different equipment and apparatus from the tiller of land and the smith/10 How is the property necessary for the performance of the various trades and occupations to be supplied and distributed? In Green's view, there are only two alternatives and he is quite emphatic about which is the better. 'Either then/ he writes, 'the various apparatus needed for various functions must be provided for individuals by society, which would imply a complete regulation of life incompatible with that highest object of human attainment, a free morality, or we must trust for its provision to individual effort which will imply inequality between the property of different persons/11 The latter alternative, a system of private enterprise in economic life, implies inequality in the distribution of property because it opens the way to 'the conquest of nature by the effort of free and variously gifted individuals'. The abuses to which such a system might otherwise give rise can be prevented in Green's view if the obligation correlative to the right of private property is legally enforced. The first alternative, according to which the production and distribution of the means of life are planned and directed by the government, is incompatible with a free morality because, in Green's view, the individual would have no real responsibility for looking after himself. Within the sphere of work he would not be a rational agent able to make decisions and plans on his own account, but merely a cog in a machine in the design and operation of which he would have no effective voice. If the sphere of work is to be a genuine sphere of rational activity, one aspect of a rational way of living and acting, the individual must be able to engage in it as a rational agent able to make decisions and plans. Moreover, if work is not a genuine sphere of rational activity, the

r$8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

achievement of a rational way of living and acting is likely to be seriously impaired. A man who is not responsible for looking after himself is unlikely to achieve much as a citizen or husband and father. But it may be objected that Green is posing extreme alternatives and that we do not have to choose between them. Granted that a society in which the whole of economic life was planned and directed by the government would allow little or no scope for the achievement of higher levels of rationality to its members, it does not follow that the only alternative is complete private enterprise. Indeed in the name of private enterprise itself, for the sake of securing and protecting the right of property, it may be necessary to take certain economic activities out of private hands altogether and entrust them to a public authority. Again, if it is not 'to be pretty much a matter of chance' whether individuals are 'to be qualified to fulfil any social function, to contribute anything to the common good', if the activities of one set of men are not to 'involve the ultimate disqualification of many others or of a succeeding generation for the exercise of rights', if 'the health and housing of the people, the growth of population relative to the means of subsistence and the accumulation or distribution of landed property' are not to be adversely affected by certain kinds of industrial and commercial activity, then the government may well have to undertake considerable supervision and perhaps even direction in certain instances over the general conduct of economic life. The right to acquire and own private property may include the right to make a foolish use of it, but it cannot consistently include the right to use it in a way which can be shown to be injurious not merely to the right to property but to other rights as well. In view of all this, it may be thought that Green's doctrine on the subject of property and economic life is largely irrelevant. But in fact, like his doctrine of war and international relations, it is not so much irrelevant as incomplete. It needs to be developed a good deal further than he has taken it. No doubt he underestimated the complexity of modern economic life. In posing the alternatives of complete socialism or complete private enterprise he is presenting an unreal choice. But, as in the case of his doctrine of war and international relations, a

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

IJ9

more complete view would incorporate his main points. If a man is to be a rational agent, capable of looking after himself and capable of taking responsibility for the conduct of his life, he must be able to own and use property. There is nothing unjust about the unequal distribution of property so long as the correlative obligation is fulfilled. Intervention by the government in economic life will be necessary, but it must be intervention on behalf of rights including the right to property. 5. From property and the economic sphere, Green finally turns to marriage and the family. According to him, the development of family life presupposes that: 'In the conception of the good to which a man seeks to give reality, there is included a conception of the well-being of others connected with him by sexual relations or by relations which arise out of those. He must conceive of the well-being of these others as a permanent object bound up with his own and the interest in it as thus conceived must be a motive to him over and above any succession of passing desires that claim pleasure from or give pleasure to the other/ 1 Without this capacity for social activity, there could be no family life at all. It implies at least some achievement of rationality at the level of morality. Green continues : 'Otherwise there would be nothing to lead to the establishment of the household in which the wants of the wife or wives are permanently provided for, in the management of which a more or less definite share is given to them, more definite indeed as approach is made to a monogamistic system but not wholly absent anywhere when the wife is distinguished from the female, and upon which the children have a recognized claim for shelter and sustenance/2 The reference to a 'monogamistic system* in the last passage suggests that Green regards monogamy as morally superior to polygamy. This is so, and Green gives reasons for his view. In the first place, polygamy arbitrarily excludes some men from the opportunity of marrying at all. 'Under a system of polygamy just so far as it is carried out,' Green writes, 'there must be men who are debarred from marrying. It can only exist indeed under a system of slavery which excludes masses of men from the right of forming a family/3 In the second place, polygamy is defective in the treatment given to the wife. 'Nor

l6o

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

does the wife under a polygamous system/ Green goes on, 'although she ostensibly marries, form a household or become the co-ordinate head of a family at all/* Moreover she is placed in a position of inferiority vis a vis her husband. 'And further/ Green writes, 'as the polygamous husband requires a strict restraint from his wife which he does not put on himself, he is treating her unequally. He demands a continence from her which, unless she is kept within the confines of slavery, can only rest on the attachment of a person to a person and on a personal sense of duty, and at the same time is practically ignoring the demand which this personal attachment on her part carries with it, that he should keep himself for her as she does herself for him/ 5 In the third place, polygamy is morally inferior to monogamy because under polygamy the proper claims of children cannot be adequately satisfied. 'For these claims can only be duly satisfied/ Green writes, 'the responsibilities of father and mother towards their children, potentially persons, whom they have brought into the world, can only be fulfilled if father and mother jointly take part in the education of the children, if the children learn to love and obey father and mother as one authority. But if there is no permanent consortium vitae of one husband with one wife, this joint authority over the children becomes impossible/6 Thus, in Green's view, the moral basis of the family as a social institution is to be found in the responsibilities which arise out of the personal attachment and sexual relations between a man and a woman, responsibilities both to each other and to their children. Monogamy is morally superior to polygamy because it is only under monogamy that these responsibilities can be adequately fulfilled. Green then turns to the question of the proper function of the government in relation to marriage and the family. Thus that marriage should only be lawful with one wife/ he writes, 'that it should be for life, that it should be terminable at the infidelity of either husband or wife, are rules of right, not of morality as such but of right. Without these rules, the rights of the married persons are not maintained. Those outward conditions of family life would not be secured to them which are necessary on the whole for the development of a free morality/7 The business of the government is to enforce these rules

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

l6l

of right. They are justified because, in Green's view, only if they are observed can marriage become a genuine moral achievement and the responsibilities of the partners to themselves and to their children be fulfilled. It does not follow of course that the mere observation of the rules will make a marriage into a genuine moral achievement. But without them the minimum conditions will not be present. In another passage, Green sums up his view. 'The ground for securing to individuals/ he writes, 'in respect of their marriage tie certain powers as rights, is that in a general w^y they are necessary to the possibility of a morally good life either directly to the persons exercising them or to their children. The more completely marriage is a consortium omnis vitae, in the sense of a unity of all interests and for the whole of a life-time, the more likely are the external conditions of a moral life to be fulfilled in regard both to married persons and their children. Therefore the general rule of the state in dealing with marriage should be to secure such powers as are favourable and to withhold such as are unfavourable to the consortium omnis vitae/ 8 Adultery, in Green's view, is the only ground for which the consortium omnis vitae should be legally broken. 'That the wife should be bound indissolubly by a marriage tie to an unfaithful husband or vice versa is a violation of the right of husband or wife as the case may be/ 9 he writes. Broadly his view is that after adultery the injured party is put in approximately the same position as a wife under polygamy, while the adulterer is roughly the moral equivalent of the polygamous husband. The position of the children in a marriage where there has been regular adultery also approximates to that of children under polygamy. The injured party therefore should have the right to end the marriage tie since otherwise he or she and the children are condemned to a morally inferior position. But in Green's view, although adultery is a violation of the rights of marriage, it should not be made a crime. The rights which arise out of marriage are of such a nature that punishment is not a suitable method of protecting them. 'If a husband/ Green writes, 'who would otherwise be false to the marriage bond, is kept outwardly faithful to it by fear of the punishment which might attend its breach, the right of the wife and children is indeed so far protected. But is anything

l62

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

gained for those moral ends for the sake of which alone the maintenance of rights is of value? The man in whom disloyal passion is neutralized by fear of punishment will contribute little in his family life to the moral development of himself, his wife or his children/10 The point is too obvious to need comment. But it follows that strictly speaking there is no right to fidelity in marriage in the sense of a morally justified claim which can be enforced by law. There can only be a right to have a marriage dissolved when there is infidelity, a right which must be left to the injured party to assert. Since adultery is not a crime, that is to say, the initiative in seeking divorce must rest with the injured party and not with the government. All this does not of course alter the fact that there is a moral duty to be faithful in marriage but, like all moral duties, it cannot be enforced by law. Green discusses at some length the question whether the government should recognize any other ground besides adultery for divorce. He considers both cruelty and incompatibility as possible grounds but is inclined to doubt the wisdom of giving them legal recognition. His conclusion is tentative and any short quotation would scarcely do justice to the spirit of his discussion which is at once candid and realistic. The upshot is, however, that he is inclined to think that if cruelty and incompatibility are made legal grounds for divorce, encouragement will be given to resort to cruelty and to exaggerate differences between husband and wife, as a means of escape from a marriage tie which is felt by one of the parties to be irksome. Many readers today may well find this unconvincing. They may well think that on Green's own doctrine if and when conditions arise which make the continuation of a decent marriage impossible, it should be ended subject to adequate provision being made for the children, who admittedly will be worse off than if their parents had been able to make a success of their marriage, but better off than continuing to live in a home which, except in name, has ceased to be a home at all. But to pursue this question would be to pass beyond the field of political philosophy into that of law. As with his discussion of the rights connected with other spheres, Green's account of the family and marriage is incomplete. It reflects to some extent the tone and temper of the Victorian age. But, as with his discussion of

T. H. GREEN'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

163

other topics, his main points stand. Marriage is a moral enterprise, the aim of which should be a consortium omnis vitae. It must, if it is to be a moral achievement, be monogamous and the government cannot aid that achievement by making marital offences a crime. It can only secure and protect the right of the injured party to have a marriage dissolved when it is impossible to continue it without moral degradation. 6. In this chapter I have tried to expound the essentials of the political philosophy developed by Green in the Principles of Political Obligation and especially to bring out its relation to his theory of morality. The value of his work lies in the extent to which he has been able to pierce through the immediate circumstances of his time to the nature and significance of citizenship and the state as rational human achievements. Inevitably he is only partly successful. Every philosophy is the product of its time and bears upon it some of the distinguishing marks of the contemporary intellectual and cultural atmosphere. Green's philosophy is no exception. It is pervaded throughout by an air of moral earnestness and, despite the candour and realism of his discussion, there is an underlying note of optimism and confidence in the future destiny of humanity. In our disillusioned mood in the middle of the twentieth Century, these traits are uncongenial. But we must not allow the Victorian flavour of Green's work to put us off. Green's work is valuable for us not as a conclusion but as a starting point. This was how he regarded the work of his predecessors. It was by criticizing them that he developed his social philosophy. He was able to penetrate further than they into the roots of morality and politics in human experience and to go further in eliciting and exhibiting the implicit rationality of morality and politics because he had a deeper grasp of the theory of rational activity. We can and should apply the same treatment to him. I have indicated in the course of this chapter certain points where his doctrine appears defective. In any case, our emphasis would be different in view of changes in the pattern of political and social life. Green has little or nothing to say about democracy and representative government and touches on nationalism only by implication. His view of the scope and limits of government action as covered by the

164

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

work of securing and protecting rights may well seem inadequate against the background of political life today. I do not suggest that he has said the last word on any topic. But I am suggesting that, if we are interested in developing a social philosophy for ourselves, it is by carrying further the work he has already begun that we shall make most progress.

CHAPTER V

THE THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE

A:

F.

H.

BRADLEY

1. In our discussion of Idealist social philosophy we have had to take account of certain metaphysical questions which the Idealist philosophers themselves found it necessary to raise. Although in Ethical Studies Bradley tried to exclude such ques­ tions, he was obliged to consider them in connection with his doctrine of the ideal self. Green found it necessary to raise them at the beginning of Prolegomena to Ethics in order to show that a philosophical as distinct from a scientific theory of morality was necessary. But in both these cases, the discus­ sion of metaphysical issues was subordinate to the main problem of the theory of morality. Green died without having done more than indicate the direction which his metaphysical thought was taking but Bradley, whose philosophical career was just beginning when he published Ethical Studies, eventu­ ally worked out and expounded a systematic metaphysical theory. This was the theory of the Absolute and it has come to be regarded as the official metaphysical doctrine of English Idealism. Bradley's theory of the Absolute was the outcome of what he described as 'the attempt to comprehend the universe not simply piecemeal or by fragments but somehow as a whole.'1 It might be thought that in social philosophy* we need not concern ourselves with the universe as a whole but some influential critics of Idealist social philosophy have seen fit to connect it with the theory of the Absolute and to attribute some of its defects to that theory. According to them, the theory of the Absolute has been used by Idealist social philosophers as

• In any case, the programme of this book requires some consideration of Idealist metaphysics. DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-6

166

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the foundation of an attitude of complacent acquiescence in the social status quo and of resistance to social reform. The existing social order is all right and the evil and suffering which is part of it must be accepted as a necessary price. This reactionary attitude, it was alleged, was given metaphysical support by the theory of the Absolute. L. T. Hobhouse in The Metaphysical Theory of the State makes this point in the course of a general indictment of Idealist political philosophy and in particular that of Bernard Bosanquet. Bosanquet had expounded a version of the theory of the Absolute which followed the main lines of Bradley's. 'Dr Bosanquet tells us that he personally believes in a nobler future:' Hobhouse writes 'but since the Absolute is perfection and since evil exists, evil is necessary to perfection and its evanescence seems altogether contradictory.'2 In another passage, discussing the reactionary social outlook which he believes the theory of the Absolute engenders and supports, he writes: There are those again for whom the world, as it is, is the incarnation of the ideal, for whom change is secondary and of no vital significance. For them evil must be justified as essential to good, though a more self-contradictory conception than that of evil maintained by good for its own purposes, cannot well be devised/3 But does the theory of the Absolute really give support to a reactionary social outlook? Even if it does, is it a theory to which Idealist social philosophy is really committed ? Does the theory of rational activity, which I have tried to show is the foundation of Idealist social philosophy, somehow imply the theory of the Absolute ? To answer these questions, the theory of the Absolute must itself be examined. What is the essence of the theory and what reasons are there, if any, for accepting it ? In this chapter I shall attempt a critical examination of the theory of the Absolute. I shall be concerned chiefly with Bradley's version of the theory since he was the metaphysical pioneer among the English Idealists, but I shall also pay some attention to the version later expounded by Bosanquet, partly in order to throw light on certain aspects of the theory, partly because it is Bosanquet's social and political philosophy which has especially been linked with the theory of the Absolute. This programme will necessarily involve reference to Bradley's and Bosanquet's metaphysical writings, but I shall not attempt

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET

l6j

anything like an exhaustive presentation of their work in that field. I shall confine myself to what is essential for understanding the theory of the Absolute and the reader must not expect a full and detailed statement of all the ground covered by the works to which I shall refer. 2. Bradley*s next book after Ethical Studies was The Trinciples ot Logic published in 1883. His conception of the nature and scope of logic, however, was somewhat different from that which prevails today. For him, logic was the theory of thought, or more strictly of cognitive thought. Its subject-matter was the typical forms of cognitive thought, namely judgement and inference. On this view, logic could be regarded as complementary to ethics. The latter was the theory of morality or practical thought, the former of cognitive thought. Both subjects were quite distinct from psychology, being concerned with the rationality of thought respectively in the context of practice and cognition. It followed that, for Bradley, logic embraced much which many philosophers today would regard as falling within the scope of the theory of knowledge but outside that of logic proper. It followed also for Bradley that logic must include at least some consideration of what cognitive thought was about, of the nature of truth and falsity and of the presuppositions of cognitive thought. One way of expressing the difference between this view of logic and that current today might be to say that for Bradley logic was essentially a philosophical subject which could not be wholly separated from the rest of philosophy, while twentieth-century logicians tend to regard their subject as an independent science which can be studied in its own right without raising any philosophical questions. But while he did not think that logic any more than ethics could be isolated from the rest of philosophy, Bradley thought it desirable that, in the study of cognitive thought, metaphysical questions should as far as possible be set on one side. Some account would have to be taken of them but they should not be pursued more than was absolutely necessary. So far as the theory of the Absolute is concerned, two things in Bradley's Trinciples oi Logic are relevant. One is the bearing of his account of judgement on the nature and scope of empirical knowledge, a point to which we shall return later. The other

l68

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

is a passage in which certain issues are raised which point to metaphysical questions. The passage has to do with the distinction between abstract and concrete in relation to the notions of universal, particular and individual and we may usefully take it as a point of departure. The abstract universal and the abstract particular are what does not exist/ Bradley writes: The concrete particular and the concrete universal both have reality and they are different names for the individual. What is real is the individual and this individual although one and the same, has internal differences. You may hence regard it in two opposite ways. So far as it is one against other individuals, it is particular. So far as it is the same throughout its diversity, it is universal. They are two distinctions we make within it. It has two characters or aspects or sides or moments, and you may consider it from whichever side you please, or from the side which, for the purpose of the context, happens to be the emphatic or essential side. Thus a man is particular by virtue of his limiting and exclusive relations to other phenomena. He is universal because he is one throughout all his different attributes. You may call him particular or again universal because being individual, he actually is both and you wish to emphasize one side or aspect of his individuality. The individual is both a concrete particular and a concrete universal and as names of the whole from different points of view, these both are names of real existents/1 I shall try to elucidate this passage in the light of the account given of the notion of the concrete universal in Chapter I of this book. We may take first the statement that: 'the abstract universal and the abstract particular are what does not exist/ In saying that the abstract universal does not exist, Bradley seems to mean that attributes like redness, sweetness, loudness and straightness do not exist in their own right. They are not independent realities but abstractions from the things whose attributes they are. By 'abstract particular' I take him to mean the particular instances of general attributes: this red, this instance of sweetness, etc. In saying that the abstract particular does not exist, his point is that what is real is not the particular red, the particular instance of sweetness but the thing which is coloured red and which has a sweet flavour. In other words, in denying that either the abstract universal or the abstract par-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 169

ticular has existence, I take him in his own way to be stating the doctrine of the relation between abstract universal and particular which I sketched in Chapter I, section A, in connection with the notion of a class. This interpretation is borne out when Bradley goes on to say: 'What is real is the individual which, although one and the same, has internal diversity/ This is the same as my doctrine that the concrete realities which form the members of a class are individuals. They are what exhibit the attributes upon the basis of which we classify them. But Bradley then says that the individual is both a concrete universal and a concrete particular. It is particular, 'so far as it is one against other individuals'. This is perhaps not fundamentally different from my account. One individual may be differentiated from others on the ground that it exhibits a particular instance of some attribute which they do not exhibit. But he then says that the individual is universal 'so far as it is the same throughout its diversity'. This is his notion of the concrete universal; the sameness of an individual throughout its diversity. Now, the notion of the concrete universal is the notion of what is real in the context of rational activity. This is always an individual achievement of rationality. The universal in rational activity is rationality, a universal which has a different logical structure from that of the universal in classification and natural science. The reality in rational activity is always an individualized or concrete universal. This is not so in classification or natural science. In these contexts, the individual is opposed to the universal. The former is concrete and real, the latter is not as such real, being an abstraction from the former. But in the context of rational activity this opposition cannot be maintained. The individual cannot be contrasted with the universal as the real with the unreal. Here individual and universal together form one reality. At first sight it might seem from Bradley's example of an individual, namely a man, that his notion of the concrete universal is not fundamentally different from mine. In support of this interpretation, there is his doctrine of self-realization in Ethical Studies, according to which the self is an individual achievement of rationality and, therefore, an individualized or concrete universal. But in the present passage, he says that a

170

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

man 'is universal because he is one throughout all his different attributes' and is particular *by virtue of his limiting and exclusive relations to other phenomena*. This suggests that Bradley is regarding a man not as a rational agent but simply as an individual member of a class. It suggests that what he has in mind in his notion of the concrete universal is not an individual achievement of rationality but rather the unity which belongs to a whole such as an organism. Significantly he does not say that a man is universal because he is one throughout his actions but only because he is the same throughout his attributes. A man is said to be particular not by virtue of his limiting and exclusive relations to other men but only to other phenomena, which suggests that other things besides a man could have been given as an example of a concrete universal. It seems, in other words, that for Bradley the notion of the concrete universal is not confined to the context of rational activity; it is not something which arises out of the logical structure of rationality, but is relevant also in other contexts. That what Bradley has in mind in his notion of the concrete universal is something like the unity of a whole such as an organism is borne out by what he says about an individual in the passage quoted above: 'this individual, although one and the same, has internal differences1. But it is not likely that he has forgotten the doctrine of Ethical Studies, according to which the self or rational agent is an individual achievement of rationality. The truth of the matter seems to be that for him the notion of the concrete universal, the principle of sameness in diversity, embraces both the unity of a whole such as an organism and the reality in rational activity, namely individual achievements of rationality. Here he is in direct opposition to the doctrine sketched in Chapter I of this book, according to which only some form of rationality can be an individualized or concrete universal. The unity or structure of an organism is not a form of rationality. It is not something which the organism consciously tries to achieve. It is an empirical unity, something which the organism simply has and which it cannot do anything about one way or the other. There is, however, a sense in which the unity of an organism is comparable to the unity of the self of the rational agent. The organism has its being in the system of functions of its several

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 171

organs. The self of the rational agent has its being in a system of activities. This superficial resemblance may have impressed Bradley and led him to overlook the fundamental difference between the two kinds of unity. The difference lies in the fact that the unity of the self of the rational agent is a self- conscious unity while the unity of an organism is not. The rational agent has seme idea of what he is doing in each of his various activities and of the bearing of each of them upon the rest. His unity as a self is wrought out in the perpetual attempt to harmonize them. But the organs of an organism carry out their functions blindly and automatically without consciousness of themselves or the system to which they contribute. The point, however, about Bradley's notion of the concrete universal is not so much that in it the self-conscious unity of the self of the rational agent is reduced to the automatic natural unity of an organism as that the difference between the two is glossed over. The principle of sameness in diversity or, as Bradley sometimes calls it, 'identity in difference*, blurs what should be kept distinct. In fairness to Bradley, however, it must be said that he is not himself satisfied with the doctrine set forth in the passage which I have quoted. He readily admits that more development and discussion is needed and claims only to have gone as far as is necessary for the purpose of logic. There is here, I confess/ he writes, 'a doubtful point I am forced to leave doubtful. It might be urged that if you press the inquiry, you will be left alone with but a single individual. An individual which is finite or relative turns out in the end to be no individual. Individual and infinite are inseparable characters. Or again, it might be said: the individual is finite and there cannot be an absolute individual. Metaphysics, it is clear, would have to take up these questions and in any case to revise the account which is given in this chapter. But that revision must be left to metaphysics and for the purposes of logic we may keep to the distinctions already laid down/ 2 Whether, however, in his metaphysics, Bradley will revise his notion of the concrete universal so as to bring out the distinction which the present account glosses over, we shall have to see. 3.

It was in his third book, Appearance and Reality, published

IJ1

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

in 1892, that Bradley addressed himself without reservation to metaphysics. 'We may agree perhaps to understand by metaphysics/ he writes in the introduction, 'an attempt to know reality as against appearances, or the study of first principles, or ultimate truth, or again the effort to comprehend the universe not simply piece-meal or by fragments but somehow as a whole/ 1 Passing over the first part of the book, which is devoted to a critical discussion of other metaphysical theories all of which are found to be unsatisfactory, let us try to see what his own positive doctrine is. He thinks that reflection upon human thought indicates a positive criterion of reality. Tor if you think at all/ he writes, 'so as to discriminate between truth and falsehood, you will find that you cannot accept open self-contradiction. Hence to think is to judge; and to judge is to criticize; and to criticize is to use a criterion of reality; and surely to doubt this would be mere blindness or confused self-deception. But if so, it is clear that, in rejecting the inconsistent as appearance, we are applying a positive knowledge of the ultimate nature of things. Ultimate reality is such that it does not contradict itself. Here is an absolute criterion. And it is proved absolute by the fact that either in endeavouring to deny it or even in attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity/2 According to Bradley's own account, this criterion of ultimate reality, consistency or coherence, is derived from reflection on human thought. Why should it apply to ultimate reality unless ultimate reality is in some way a system of thought or thinking activity ? Only thought can contradict itself and only thought can be coherent or consistent. But Bradley goes on to say that, by consistency, he does not mean the bare exclusion of discord. The formal standard of consistency must be combined with the notion of all-inclusiveness. 'We must say/ he writes, 'that everything which appears is somehow real in such a way as to be self-consistent. The character of the real is to possess everything phenomenal in a harmonious form/3 He then sums up by saying: 'The universe is one in this sense; its differences exist harmoniously within one whole beyond which there is nothing/4 And he adds: 'Hence the Absolute is so far an individual and a system/5 By the 'Absolute', Bradley means ultimate reality or the

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET I73

universe as a whole. The title is intended to bring out its unconditional, self-subsistent character. It is all-inclusive and selfmaintaining, being neither relative to nor independent on anything else, for there is nothing else. In saying that the Absolute *is so far an individual* Bradley is adopting the doctrine of his Principles of Logic. Ultimate reality is 'a sameness in diversity' 'identity in difference'. It is a concrete universal according to Bradley's notion, but not a concrete particular for there are no other individuals with which it can be contrasted. But in Bradley's notion of the concrete universal, as we have seen, the difference between the unity of an organism and an individual achievement of rationality is glossed over. When he says that 'the universe is one in this sense, that its differences exist harmoniously together within one whole', it is not clear whether we should think of this whole as analogous to an organism or to an individual achievement of rationality. All that we can gather so far is that experiences of discord and conflict are for us. They are appearances rather than reality, since reality is a harmonious whole. But just how they are reconciled in the Absolute, just how the differences exist together, remains uncertain. But Bradley has more to say about the general character of ultimate reality. So far we have been given only a formal outline of its structure. The Absolute is a system but it must be a system of something. 'When we ask/ Bradley writes, 'as to the matter which fills up the empty outline, we can reply in one word that this is experience/6 He goes on to say that: 'Sentient experience in short is reality and what is not this, is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside that which is commonly called psychical existence/7 In support of this contention, he writes: 'Find any piece of existence, take up anything that anyone could possibly call a fact or could in any sense assert to have being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience? Try to discover any sense in which you could still continue to speak of it when all perception and feeling have been removed or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being, which is not derived from and which is not relative to this source ? When the experiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced/8

174

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Developing this thesis, he writes in another passage: 'I mean that to be real is to be indissolubly one thing with sentience. It is to be something which comes as a feature and aspect within one whole of feeling, something which, except as an integral element of such sentience, has no meaning at all. And what I repudiate is the separation of feeling from the felt, or of the desired from desire, or of what is thought from thinking, or the division I might add, of anything from anything else. Nothing is ever so presented as real by itself or can be argued so to exist without demonstrable fallacy. And in asserting that the reality is experience, I rest throughout on this foundation: You cannot find fact unless in unity with sentience, and one cannot in the end be divided from the other either actually or in idea/9 Thus, according to Bradley, matter, in the sense of the inanimate or non-psychical, is not real in its own right. What we call inanimate matter is an abstraction made by us from our sentient experience. The characteristics of matter, its extension, impenetrability and so forth, are really characteristics of our experience. The idea of a material thing is the idea of certain feelings of hardness, extendedness, texture and the like, which form part of some sentient experience. But it may be objected that in this argument Bradley is guilty of a confusion. Granted that our knowledge of material things is derived from our experience, that it is only because we can see, touch, taste, hear, etc. that we are able to frame ideas of them, it does not follow that material things do not exist in their own right as independent realities. Bradley is confusing what we know with how we come to know it. He fails to see that what we know is one thing and the conditions which make possible our knowledge of it are something else. It does not follow from the fact that we become acquainted with material things through our senses, that material things have no independent existence apart from sentient experience. But in reply to this objection it may be said that the division between what we know and how we come to know it not only presupposes that there is something already there prior to and independent of our cognitive activity, but that in coming to know we do not modify or alter what is already there. The division, that is to say, presupposes that we know things as they are in themselves, as they would be apart from and in-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 175

dependently of our cognitive activity. Only if this is so, is how we know irrelevant to what we know. Now Bradley certainly thinks that there is something already there, prior to and independent of our cognitive activity, namely ultimate reality or the Absolute. But he is not committed to holding that, in our empirical knowledge, our knowledge of what can be seen, touched, tasted, etc., we are knowing things as they are in themselves. He might reasonably argue that the nature and status of what we know both empirically and in any other way, is not to be settled by fiat before metaphysical thought begins. It can be settled, if at all, only after a critical examination of our knowledge in all its forms, an examination which must include how we come to know what we claim to know. Now our knowledge of inanimate material things is derived from our experience. It is empirical knowledge. But as we shall see, according to Bradley, a critical examination of empirical knowledge shows that it does not give us knowledge of reality as such but only of appearance. What we know empirically is always altered and modified by the way in which we come to know it. But it may still be objected that even if inanimate material things are not independent realities in their own right but only abstractions made by us from our sentient experience, it does not follow from this that ultimate reality is sentient experience. Now Bradley does not maintain that the psychical life, which is the stuff of the Absolute is confined to human sentient experience. It is an integral part of his theory that the Absolute is more than human experience. But he insists that it is still experience. 'And if it is more than any feeling or thought which we can know,' he writes, 'it must remain more of the same nature. It cannot pass away into another region beyond what falls under the general head of sentience/10 This, however, is the point at issue. Must ultimate reality 'be more of the same'? Why should it not 'pass away into another region*? Bradley has defined ultimate reality in such a way as to exclude the possibility but has he any right to do so ? We shall have to return to this point after examining Bradley's critique of empirical knowledge on the basis of which he argues that what we know empirically is always appearance and never ultimate reality. But first let us see how Bradley sums up his argument

I76

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

so far. His conclusion is, he tells us 'that the Absolute is one system and that its contents are nothing but sentient experience. It will hence be a single and all-inclusive experience and hence no feeling or thought of any kind can fall outside its limits/11 The Absolute, that is to say, is an absolute individual or concrete universal according to his notion of the individual and the concrete universal. But whether we are to think of it as analogous to an organism or to an individual achievement of rationality is unclear. Our human experience is somehow included within it but just how it figures in the all-inclusive harmonious system has not yet been explained. 4. The essentials of Bradley's critique of empirical knowledge are to be found in the account of judgement which he gives in his Vrinciples ol Logic. 'Judgement proper/ he writes, 'is the act which refers an ideal content recognized as such to a reality beyond the act/ 1 In another passage he says: 'In the simplest judgement, an idea is referred to what is given in perception and it is identified therewith as one of its adjectives. There is no need for an idea to appear as the subject and even when it so appears, we must distinguish the fact from grammatical show. It is present reality which is the actual subject and genuine substantive of the ideal content/ 2 When he speaks of reality, he is not referring to the Absolute. That idea has still to be worked out. His point is that every judgement claims to be true and that it must be a judgement about something. This something is not the ostensible subject, not the grammatical subject of the sentence in which the judgement may be articulated. It is reality. Reality for the purpose of logic may be taken to be that which is given in what Bradley calls 'sensuous presentation' or elsewhere 'sentient experience'. 'We have seen already/ he writes, 'and have further to see that all judgements predicate their ideal contents as an attribute of the real which appears in presentation/3 But what appears in presentation is only an aspect of reality. 'It is impossible perhaps/ Bradley writes, 'to get directly at reality except in the content of one presentation. We may never see it, so to speak, but through a hole. But what we see of it may make us certain that beyond this hole it extends indefinitely/4 But this aspect of reality which appears in presenta-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 177

tion is modified by judgement. 'As soon as we judge/ Bradley writes, 'we are forced to analyse and forced to distinguish. We must separate some elements of the given from others. We sunder and divide what appears to us as a sensible whole.'5 He calls the judgement of perception 'the analytic judgement of sense' because it involves breaking up and analysing what is given in sentient experience. This inevitable procedure of abstraction vitiates the claim of the perceptual judgement to be true of reality. 'We have separated, divided, abridged, dissected/ Bradley goes on, 'we have mutilated the given and we have done so arbitrarily. We have selected what we chose. But if this is so, if every analytic judgement must inevitably so alter the facts, how can it any longer lay claim to truth?*6 This inherent defect of the perceptual judgement where we are in direct touch with an aspect of reality, infects all our empirical knowledge. What we know is never reality as such, but the appearances which we have abstracted from it. In Appearance and Reality, Bradley expounds the same doctrine in terms of what he calls 'the dualism of the "that" and the "what" \7 He insists that to judge that something exists is, at the same time, to judge what it is, but that the judgement of what it is inevitably falls short of its full reality. The 'what' is never adequate to the 'that*. 'But taking judgement to be completed thought/ he writes, 'in no judgement are subject and predicate the same. In every judgement the genuine subject is reality which goes beyond the predicated, of which the predicate is an adjective.'8 By the 'predicated' he means the ostensible or grammatical subject. It is of this subject that the ostensible or grammatical predicate is an adjective. The genuine subject is reality and this is always more than the grammatical subject which is an abstraction from some aspect of it given in sentient experience. There is a parallel between Bradley's doctrine that the judgement that something exists involves the judgement of what it is, and Green's doctrine that there is nothing in human experience which is given ready-made prior to and independent of the work of thought. Both in effect maintain that all attention is also identification. We never merely attend without forming some idea, however rough and provisional, of what it is that we are attending to. We never find ourselves confronted

I78

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

with a mere 'that' which has not in some way been categorized and defined as a 'what'. For Bradley, there is something merely given in human experience but it lies below the level of thought. There is, that is to say, a purely psychical level of human experience which consists simply of feeling as yet undifferentiated and unanalysed by thought. At this level, we are in direct touch with reality but it is a level below that of thought. When we begin to think and so to judge, we abstract from this psychical level and so 'mutilate' what is directly given in sensuous presentation. We are conscious of the given, that is to say, only as a felt background, never as a direct object of thought. For Green, the purely psychical level is a pre-human level of experience, since for him, human experience proper begins only at the level of thought. Both levels are somehow included within the scope of the eternal consciousness but that is a doctrine which we have yet to explore and which must be reserved for a later chapter. But although in Bradley's view, our empirical knowledge is confined to appearances and cannot reach ultimate reality, we can still, he thinks, know something of the general character of the Absolute. He has already said that the Absolute experience is more than any thought or feeling which we can know. He goes on to say that: 'What is impossible is to construct the Absolute life in its details, to have the specific experience in which it consists.'9 But knowledge of the main features of the Absolute is possible. Tor these main features/ he writes, 'to some extent are within our own experience and again the idea of their combination is in the abstract quite intelligible. And surely no more than this is wanted for a knowledge of the Absolute ? It is knowledge of course which differs enormously from the facts. But it is true for all that while it respects its own limits, and it seems fully attainable by the finite intellect10 Such knowledge is not empirical but metaphysical. It is to be got through a self-conscious and critical examination of human experience. But it is not human experience at the merely psychical level which must be studied but at all levels. The subject-matter for metaphysical thought is the experience of thinking, rational agents. In metaphysics, that is to say, human thought is reflecting upon itself in all its various forms and it is this self-conscious character which dis-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 179

tinguishes metaphysical from empirical knowledge where the subject-matter is human experience at the merely psychical level. But can metaphysics as thus conceived really lead to knowledge of the main features of ultimate reality and of how in principle they are combined ? According to Bradley, we are in direct touch with ultimate reality only at the purely psychical level of experience, a level below that of thought. Once we move from the purely psychical level to a level at which thought is operative, we are no longer in direct touch with ultimate reality. As soon as we begin to think, and so to become conscious of empirical objects, we mutilate the reality given in merely sentient, unthinking experience. It follows that, in reflecting upon our own thinking experience, we are reflecting upon our knowledge not of ultimate reality but only of appearance. On Bradley's own argument, there is no ground for his statement that the main features of the Absolute to some extent are within our own experience since, even if they are, we could not possibly know it. Ultimate reality, the Absolute if we are entitled to give it this title, remains out of reach of our knowledge whether empirical or metaphysical. The self-conscious critical examination of human experience, an examination which is always of thinking experience, may be expected to give knowledge of the main features of human experience. The idea of their combination is no doubt intelligible in the shape of a theory of the general character and structure of human experience. But unless we assume that the main features of ultimate reality are the same as those of human experience, an assumption which is ruled out by Bradley's account of empirical knowledge, we are not able to go further. All that we can say is that ultimate reality is of such a nature as to permit or at least tolerate an experience having the general character and structure of ours. On the logic of his own argument, therefore, Bradley is faced with a dilemma. If he is to preserve his doctrine that empirical knowledge is of appearance and not reality, then the hope of knowledge of ultimate reality must be given up as in principle lying beyond our scope. If, on the other hand, he abandons his doctrine of empirical knowledge and holds, on the contrary, that it affords direct knowledge of ultimate reality, then he has no basis for arguing that ultimate

l8o

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

reality is an Absolute system of sentient experience. The ground for the distinction between appearance and reality is cut away. However, at this stage, let us not press these objections but instead see how Bradley sets about the task of showing how in principle what he takes to be the main features of ultimate reality are combined. This will bring us back to his notion of the concrete universal and to the fundamental ambiguity which, as we have already seen, it involves. 5. According to Bradley, the Absolute is an all-inclusive, harmonious system of sentient experience. It is more than merely human experience but, because it is all-inclusive, human experience must fall within it and somehow be a part of it. But how does human experience figure in the Absolute ? The Absolute does not think, will or feel after our fashion. Being all-inclusive and harmonious, it has no need to inquire, to formulate and execute purposes, to articulate and express its emotions in finite creations. But thought, will and feeling are somehow preserved in the Absolute, although not as we experience them. According to Bradley, we must envisage the condition of the Absolute as one of permanent and complete satisfaction. 'Such a whole state/ he writes, 'would possess in superior form that immediacy which we find more or less in feeling, and in this whole, all divisions would be healed up and would be experienced entire containing all elements in harmony. Thought would be present as a higher intuition: will would be there where the ideal had reality: and beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this total fulfilment.1 The reference in this passage to the presence of will in the Absolute, 'will would be there where the ideal had reality', recalls the doctrine of the real ideal self of religion in Ethical Studies. But is the idea of how all these aspects of human experience are combined in the Absolute intelligible even in principle ? Speaking of the processes of human thought, Bradley says: 'Such processes must be dissolved in something not poorer but richer than themselves, and feeling and will must also be transmuted in this whole into which thought has entered/2 But what is the nature of this transmutation? There is a sense in which the transition from a lower to a higher level of rationality may be said to involve a transmutation or trans-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET l8l

formation of thought, will and feeling. The idea of the transmutation of thought, will and feeling, that is to say, has a basis in human experience. The movement from a lower to a higher level of rationality involves a change of perspective with a modification of our plans and purposes and our feelings about them. What at the level of merely private self-satisfaction appears both rational and desirable, appears in a different light when considered from the standpoint of morality. A course of conduct which is rational within the sphere of personal relations may have to be revised and modified at the higher level of citizenship. It may be thought that when Bradley speaks of the transmutation of thought, feeling and will in the Absolute, he has in mind something like the change in perspective involved in the transition from a lower to a higher level of rationality. On this view, the Absolute would be a level of rationality higher than any which we can reach but incorporating within itself the whole scale of human levels. Our highest level of rationality, that of self-consistent human achievement, would be a subordinate element within the sphere of the Absolute which would include forms of experience unknown to us as well as all that we know. But there are fundamental difficulties in the way of this interpretation. Rational activity at every level is the activity of rational human agents. But if the Absolute is the supreme level of rationality, it is not ex hypothesi a level which is open to human agents. The relation between it and the highest level in the human scale, therefore, cannot be of the same kind as the relation between a lower and a higher level within the human scale. In the latter case, the relation is between two levels of human activity, in the former it is between a human level and a super-human one. The transition from the level of self-consistent human achievement to the Absolute cannot be thought of as the same in kind as the transition from the sphere of personal relations to that of citizenship, or from the sphere of citizenship to self-consistent human achievement. The transmutation of thought, feeling and will which is supposed to take place in the Absolute cannot be comparable to the change of perspective which takes place between personal relations and citizenship or between citizenship and self-consistent human achievement, since the Absolute

182

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

is not simply one more level in the human scale of rationality. What then is the nature of the transmutation which thought, feeling and will undergo in the Absolute? The Absolute is a concrete universal according to Bradley's notion. It is a complete all-embracing individual, an identity in difference or sameness in diversity. Is it then something analogous to an organism, human experience being merely one of the organs? On this view, human experience would be contributing to the Absolute as an organ contributes through its special function to the life of the parent organism. But this interpretation is equally difficult to maintain. It must follow either that defects or failures within human experience lead to defects in the Absolute experience, and this conflicts with the doctrine that the Absolute is a perfect experience free from all blemish or discord; or that everything in human experience, all the suffering and misery, cruelty and folly, contributes to the Absolute, is necessary for its life, that whatever is, is ipso facto good. It was this latter interpretation which gave rise to Hobhouse's attack. But the analogy with an organism is difficult to maintain when we recall that, according to Bradley, the Absolute is somehow the complete fulfilment of what is imperfectly achieved in human experience. Thought would be present as a higher intuition : will would be there where the ideal had reality: and beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this total fulfilment/ The organic analogy breaks down because an organism cannot be regarded as the complete fulfilment of what is imperfectly achieved by its organs. On the contrary, the life of the organism is maintained through the functions of the organs and imperfections in these functions constitute defects in the life of the organism. We are thus no nearer to understanding the nature of the transmutation undergone by thought, will and feeling in the Absolute. It may be thought that the notion of the complete fulfilment of our imperfect human achievements affords a clue. Perhaps what Bradley had in mind was an ideal system of experience in which everything would be fully achieved, in which there would be no inconsistency, no evil, no folly, no blemish of any kind. But this will not do, for while undoubtedly Bradley does regard the Absolute as the perfect experience, it is no mere ideal but ultimate reality. It is all-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 183

inclusive and somehow, although it is perfection, manages to include all the manifold forms of imperfection. But just how this inclusion comes about is not made clear. According to Bradley the main features of ultimate reality are present in some way in our experience and the principle of their combination is in principle intelligible to us. It is in this connection that his doctrine of the transmutation of thought, will and feeling in the Absolute is important. Thought, will and feeling, which are features of human experience, are also features of ultimate reality, but are transmuted in that setting. If the principle of their combination is to be intelligible, the nature of this transmutation must be made clear. But it is not. Bradley fails to make good his claim. But he does not realize that he has failed. For him, the key to the nature of the transmutation undergone by thought, will and feeling, and to the principle of their combination in the Absolute, is provided by his account of the general character of the Absolute which he has already set forth. He has argued that the Absolute is an all-embracing individual, an absolute concrete universal. But he does not realize that his notion of the concrete universal is itself unclear, blurring, as it does, the difference between the unity of a whole such as an organism and an individual achievement of rationality. Thus, quite apart from the difficulties noticed at the end of the last subsection which have to do with the possibility of our knowledge of ultimate reality, the theory of the Absolute turns out, on examination, not to be a tenable theory. It purports to be a theory of the nature and character of ultimate reality but, owing to the ambiguity in Bradley's notion of the concrete universal, the notion which is the foundation of the account given of the nature and character of ultimate reality, it is not what it purports to be. It contains no intelligible account of the nature and character of ultimate reality. B:

B E R N A R D

B O S A N Q U E T

1. According to L. T. Hobhouse, Bernard Bosanquet's political philosophy clearly exhibited the reactionary social and political influence of the theory of the Absolute. I shall now briefly examine Bosanquet's version of that theory and in a later chapter will turn to his political philosophy. Bosanquet was

184

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

two years younger than Bradley and throughout their respective careers, they were philosophical allies. But, in this relationship, Bradley was the pioneer while Bosanquet was the follower who undertook the task of consolidating and cultivating the ground first explored by his more original colleague. His Logic was published in 1885, two years after Bradley's Trinciples and the latter was enthusiastic in his praise of it. The ground covered and position expounded are fundamentally the same in both works. Bosanquet, however, explicitly commits himself to the view, which is latent in Bradley, that logic and the theory of knowledge are one and the same. The work of intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world/ he writes, 'is the work of knowledge. The work of analysing this constitution or determination is the work of logic which might be described as the self-consciousness of knowledge or the reflection of knowledge upon itself.'1 He agrees with Bradley that the ultimate subject of every judgement is reality, that we are in direct touch with reality in sentient experience but that in judgement we inevitably abstract from, alter and modify what is given at the merely sentient level. Like Bradley, he tries as far as possible to avoid raising metaphysical questions while engaged in logic. It was not until he was appointed Gifford lecturer for 1911-12 that Bosanquet undertook the task of expounding a systematic metaphysical theory. By that time Bradley's Appearance and Reality had been before the world for 20 years and Bosanquet took the opportunity afforded by the Gifford Lectures to reformulate and restate the theory of the Absolute in a way which might meet the criticisms which had been made against Bradley's work. He also endeavoured to work out more fully than Bradley had done the implications of the theory for human life. The first series of lectures was published in a volume called The Vrinciple of Individuality and Value. The second lecture in this volume has the title: The Concrete Universal It opens with a passage which will repay examination. Bosanquet writes: Thus the true embodiment of the logical universal takes the shape of a world whose members are worlds. Whose members are worlds: for the same reason which made it inevitable for the mere generality to be defective by the omission of the contents which differentiate the class

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET l8$

members from one another, the universal in the form of a world refers to diversity of content within each member as the universal in the form of a class neglects it. Such diversity recognized as a unity, a macrocosm constituted by microcosms, is the type of the concrete universal.'2 The opening statement in this passage, that: The true embodiment of the logical universal takes the shape of a world whose members are worlds/ seems at first sight more or less to harmonize with my notion of the concrete universal. Thus it might be thought that what Bosanquet has in mind is the logical structure of the universal, rationality. A given level of rationality sums up and incorporates within itself the levels below it. It may be regarded as a world whose members are worlds. An individual achievement of rationality, e.g. citizenship, includes within itself individual achievements of rationality at lower levels. It will involve various activities each of which will involve series of actions at the level of ends and means. But Bosanquet goes on to say that: 'for the same reason which made it inevitable for the mere generality to be defective by the omission of contents which differentiate the class members from one another, the universal in the form of a world refers to diversity of content within each member as the universal in the form of a class neglects it/ His point here seems to be that the universal in the form of a class is the abstract universal. It fails to bring out the concrete reality of the class members as individuals and merely draws attention to the respect in which they are alike, namely in all exhibiting a particular instance of a general attribute. But the universal in the form of a world 'refers to diversity of content within each member'. This seems to be Bradley's notion of the concrete universal over again. Each class member is an individual, a sameness in diversity or identity in difference. It is a world in the sense of being a whole such as an organism. Bosanquet concludes by saying: 'Such a diversity recognized as a unity, a macrocosm constituted by microcosms, is the type of the concrete universal/ We have here the same fundamental ambiguity as in Bradley's notion of the concrete universal. Two different things, the unity of a whole such as an organism, and an individual achievement of rationality, are brought together under the principle of sameness in diversity or identity in

186

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

difference. The distinction between them, the presence in the one case of rationality and in the other of an empirical unity without rationality, is blurred. The fact that Bosanquet speaks in the opening statement of 'the logical universal' which he distinguishes from the 'mere generality' indicates that he thinks that the principle which unites the parts of a whole such as an organism is fundamentally the same as the principle underlying an individual achievement of rationality. The term 'logical' may not unreasonably be applied to the universal in rational activity since rational activity is thinking activity. It cannot properly be applied to the unity of a whole such as an organism. The unity of such a whole is empirical, not logical. 2. Bosanquet is of course unaware that, in his notion of the concrete universal, the distinction between two different things is obscured. He thinks that it provides a key to the understanding not only of human experience but also of ultimate reality. 'We are regarding it in general,' he writes, 'as the type of complete experience and from this point of view its characteristics are the same, whether we think of it as the object of knowledge, of will or of enjoyment.'1 On the subject of ultimate reality, he writes: 'It is all one whether we make non-contradiction, wholeness or individuality, the criterion of the ultimately real. We mean by it in each case the same. We mean that which must stand, that which has nothing without to set against it and is pure self-maintenance within.'2 Bosanquet is here maintaining that non-contradiction, wholeness, and individuality are in the last analysis the same thing. But he is also saying that non-contradiction, wholeness, and individuality are equally criteria of the ultimately real and that the ultimately real is all inclusive and self-maintaining. The ultimately real, that is to say, is free from contradiction, is a whole and an individual, and since it is also all-inclusive and self-maintaining, it must be a single, infinite individual. This brings us to the theory of the Absolute. The ultimately real is an Absolute concrete universal, an all-embracing macrocosm of microcosms. In other words, Bosanquet is saying that if it is agreed that ultimate reality must be all-inclusive and self-maintaining, then we have in the notion of the concrete universal a key to its character. Only a single infinite individual, an Absolute con-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 187

crete universal, can be all-inclusive and self-maintaining. But this argument gives rise to the same difficulties as Bradley's. It is not clear what an individual or concrete universal is. Under the principle of sameness through diversity two different things are brought together: the unity of a whole such as an organism, and an individual achieyement of rationality. Like Bradley, Bosanquet attaches great importance to the principle of non-contradiction or coherence. This then is the fundamental nature of the inference to the Absolute;1 he writes: 'the passage from the contradictory and unstable in all experience alike to the stable and satisfactory/3 This is in essence Bradley's argument that we can take coherence as a positive criterion of reality because it is a fundamental principle in all our thought and in our rational that is to say, thinking activity. Bosanquet comes to it by way of the coherence theory of truth. 'A true proposition/ he writes, 'is so in the last resort because its contradictory is not conceivable in harmony with the whole of experience, in other words, is not merely a contradiction of facts but a self-contradiction/4 There is a sense in which this view of truth is intelligible when it is taken in conjunction with the doctrine enunciated by Bosanquet at the beginning of his Logic to which I referred in the last sub-section. The work of intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world is the work of knowledge.' Taking the real world to be the empirical world and knowledge to be empirical knowledge, the coherence theory of truth as he understands it may be summarized along the following lines. An empirical proposition is not a natural event. It is propounded in answer to a logically prior question which arises within the context of some inquiry. To say that it is true is to say that at the present stage of the inquiry to deny it would be self-contradictory. You cannot deny it without being logically obliged to deny certain other propositions which you have already decided to call true and so contradicting yourself. The decision as to the truth or falsity of a given empirical proposition always involves reference to other empirical propositions upon whose truth you have already decided. It follows that the decision as to what is empirically true is always provisional, never final. The decision that a proposition is true, made at a certain stage in an inquiry, may have to be

188

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

revised at a later stage. But when this happens, there will always be other propositions whose truth has already been decided and with reference to which the revision is made. There is an irreducible hypothetical element in all empirical knowledge. What we call empirical truth or fact is never more than an interim report on the progress made so far 'in the work of intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world1, a statement of the provisional results of the current stage of an inquiry. Non-contradiction or coherence is an important principle in empirical knowledge. But its importance is as a principle of procedure rather than of truth. The systematic pursuit of empirical knowledge is a rational activity. Like all rational activity, it is subject to the standard of coherence or self-consistency. We are rational only so far as we aim at being self-consistent and try to avoid contradicting ourselves in what we do and say. Bosanquet seems to have thought that, from the fact that we try to be self-consistent in our human rational activity, we can infer that ultimate reality is completely self-consistent. Like Bradley, he does not seem to have realized that we cannot infer anything about ultimate reality from our own experience of rational activity except that ultimate reality must be of such a nature at least to tolerate our experience. Like Bradley, he thinks that ultimate reality is not only all-inclusive and selfmaintaining but also somehow the consummation and fulfilment of all our imperfect human achievements. The theory of the Absolute is the theory of the nature and character of this all-inclusive self-maintaining perfection. Bosanquet thinks that it provides us with a standard by which we can make a rational critique of human achievement: hence the title of the first series of his Gifford Lectures: The Trinciple of Individuality and Value. Speaking of the theory of the Absolute, he says: 'It is misapprehended if we call on it to put us in possession of an ultimate experience which is ex hypothesi impossible for our limited being. What it will do for us is much more relevant to the transformation of our lives. It exhibits to us in their relative stability and reciprocal suggestions of completeness, the provinces of experience which comprise the various values of life. It interprets the correlation of their worth with their reality and of both with their satisfactoriness to the soul/5 But

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 189

if the theory of the Absolute is to serve as the basis for a critique of human achievement, it must be an intelligible theory, a theory which is free from ambiguity. From what we have seen of it so far, Bosanquet's version has all the defects of Bradley's, being found on the same ambiguous notion of the concrete universal. Let us glance briefly at his subsequent development of the theory to see whether in principle these defects are overcome. 3. Bosanquet's second series of Gifford Lectures was published in a volume entitled: The Value and Destiny of the Individual In it, he attempts further to elucidate his theory of the Absolute and to make good his claim that the theory is of value for the understanding of human life. He argues that the Absolute, being perfection, cannot be adequately conceived in terms of any of our merely human values. 'Now in the first place/ he writes, 'the Absolute cannot be fully characterized by any one of these subordinate excellencies. As the perfect experience, it is more than beautiful, more than pleasant, more than true and more than good.11 But the Absolute is an allinclusive perfection and must in some way be the consummation or fulfilment of these subordinate excellencies. They are present in the Absolute but are transmuted or, as Bosanquet prefers to say, 'transformed*. After the above passage he continues : 'It is plain that the perfection which reconciles all these characteristics must be more than each of them. It cannot be a conjunction, it must, as we have argued throughout, be a transformation/2 Bradley, however, was unable to give any intelligible account of his doctrine of transmutation. Whether Bosanquet is able to do any better with 'transformation* remains to be seen. But the notion of an all-inclusive perfection gives rise to a further problem. What becomes of human failures, of error and evil? Are they somehow transformed in the Absolute? On the subject of error and its relation to the Absolute, Bosanquet writes: The Absolute certainly contains error as it contains everything but we cannot say that it is characterized by error, i.e. that when we think of it as the perfection which transcends and completes the nature of truth, we can think of it in this completeness as having error as a constituent member/3 Now

I9O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

according to Bosanquet, no human truth is absolutely true and no error is sheer absolute and unmitigated error. Error is partial, misplaced truth and truth is superceded error. But from the standpoint of the Absolute, all human truth in the last resort is error. It is always defective, being one-sided and abstract. 'If then we consider the Absolute, the perfect experience, from the standpoint of truth and error/ he writes, 'we must say: though it contains error, this is a subordinate aspect of its character as truth and can only belong to the ultimate experience so far as imperfect truth belongs to it. But that can only be as an element absorbed in it so that all varieties of relative points of view and one-sided emphasis come together in the one experience of reality and value/4 Truth and error, in other words, are for us and not as such for the Absolute. The Absolute does not think and know in the way in which we think and know. But it is somehow the fulfilment and complete achievement of our fallible efforts to think and know. It knows the reality of which we can only know the appearances. Yet, at the same time, our fallible efforts are somehow part of the ultimate experience of reality and value, since that experience is all-inclusive. The nature of this inclusion and of the transformation which it involves remains a mystery. 4. Bosanquet also discusses good and evil in relation to the Absolute. But before examining his doctrine on this subject, let us see what he has to say about good and evil within human experience. 'Good is primarily the conflict with evil and the triumph over it/ he writes: 'Evil is primarily the rebellion against good/1 He goes on to say that: There is no simple general choice between worlds of objects antecedently labelled good and bad. The whole positive material of life is in principle before or within the finite self and out of this it has to build itself a symbol or relative world of perfection involving the repudiation of what conflicts with it/ 2 This suggests a doctrine of rational self-realization along the lines of that developed by Bradley and Green, a suggestion which is borne out by the following passage. 'No doubt within every self-conscious finite creature/ he writes, 'there is something of a formed system which constitutes or indicates its attitude to perfection and by

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 191

contrast with which what opposes it is evil. But there is no standard or rationale for the identification and estimate of its structure unless we take it in connection with the spiritual organism in which the finite being finds to some extent completion and satisfaction/3 By the 'spiritual organism' he tells us: 'I mean the whole world of achievements, habits, institutions, in which the apparent individual finds some clue to the reality which is the truth of himself. This then, imperfectly as it is realized in connection with himself, stands to him so far for the satisfaction and foundation which his nature demands and his attitude so far as good, is to harmonize his being with it while eliciting from the material of life further harmony for both.'4 This world of achievements, habits and institutions is presumably a world whose members are worlds, a concrete universal in Bosanquet's sense. It suggests that what he has in mind is something like Green's idea of the sphere or world of self-consistent human achievement. So far as this part of his work is concerned, it seems not unreasonable to interpret Bosanquet's notion of the concrete universal as in essence the notion of an individual achievement of rationality. But the fact that he speaks of the world of achievements, habits and institutions as a 'spiritual organism' betrays the underlying ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal. For him, an individual whole such as an organism and an individual achievement of rationality are fundamentally the same in character. According to Bosanquet, evil is not merely the external opposition to good, not merely what obstructs self-consistent human achievement. It is this but also something more. Speaking of the evil attitude, he says: 'It is not merely interested to realize the self against a contradictory element as also is good, but it is interested to realize it in and as a contradiction.'5 In another passage he writes: The essence of the evil attitude is the self-maintenance of some factor in a self both as good and also as against the good system.'6 Human evil, that is to say, is not merely error in the attempt to achieve rational self-realization. It is not merely what baulks a sincere effort on a given occasion. It is the conscious repudiation of the effort not through weakness or because of overwhelming difficulty, but in the perverse attempt to achieve what the agent knows will

192

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

conflict with his main purpose. The essence of human evil, in other words, is perversity. The wilful persistence in a selfccntradictory course of action knowing it to be self-contradictory yet stubbornly trying to have it both ways. The evil man is the moral agent who knowingly neglects acknowledged duties and responsibilities and who therefore sinks to the level of merely private self-satisfaction in his conduct although capable of the higher level of morality. From the point of view of morality, it is a deliberately anarchic attitude. But what is the position of human good and evil in the Absolute? According to Bosanquet, the rational agent is inspired by the idea of the Absolute in his efforts to achieve rational self-realization. He is forever striving to reach perfection although, owing to the limits of his finite human nature, he must inevitably fail. 'He is always a fragmentary being/ Bosanquet writes, 'inspired by an infinite whole which he is forever striving to express in terms of his limited range of externality. In this, ex hypothesi, he can never succeed.'7 But, although this striving must always end in failure, from the standpoint of the Absolute it is not in vain. 'But this effort of his is not wasted or futile.' Bosanquet writes: 'It is a factor of the self-maintenance of the universe and so far is a real achievement. And it constitutes, as we have seen, an element in the Absolute, an element through which the detailed struggle of good and evil is sustained and the relative triumph of good within this conflict is made possible/8 So far as human good and the Absolute are concerned, Bosanquet seems to be repeating his doctrine about human truth. The rational agent can contribute to some valuable human achievement but this will never be an achievement of perfection. No human achievement is ever perfect. Improvement in principle is always possible. The Absolute in some way, how is not clear, is the consummation and fulfilment of imperfect human achievements. In the Absolute, the rational agent's limitations are overcome and his relative achievements are included. But in the case of human evil, matters are different. Evil is not merely error in rational self-realization but the deliberate repudiation of the attempt. How is this conscious perversity to be embraced in all-inclusive perfection? Bosanquet seems to think that, while the evil attitude may dominate

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 193

some human beings, it cannot gain a permanent hold on them all. Its triumphs are only temporary and, in human life as a whole, it will always be overcome. This must be so if the effort to achieve rational self-realization is, as Bosanquet says it is, 'a factor of the self-maintenance of the universe1 and 'an element in the Absolute*. If evil were to gain a permanent triumph, human life would degenerate into the anarchy of utter selfishness. There would be nothing but the separate efforts of finite rational agents to achieve private self-satisfaction with a consequent destruction of all social co-operation. Rational self-realization would be unable to play its part as a factor in the self-maintenance of the universe and human achievements would cease to be an element in the Absolute. But if this was to happen, the Absolute would be affected. It would no longer be perfection and, strictly speaking, no longer Absolute. Thus the triumph of good over evil within human life is guaranteed by the Absolute. Evil can never score more than a temporary success. This is fundamentally Bradley's doctrine of the real-ideal self of religion in Ethical Studies over again. In fairness to Bosanquet however, his point, although he does not make it very clearly, is that, in human life, the struggle with evil itself makes possible human achievements which would not otherwise be realized. Courage, fortitude and selfdenial are all called for and in some way these contribute to the Absolute. Thus evil contributes to perfection but only by being overcome. Its contribution, in other words, is purely negative. If it is objected that this means that while evil can never triumph equally it can never be wholly eliminated since, if it were, something would be lost in the Absolute, the answer is that, although evil cannot be eliminated, it may be greatly reduced in scale and extent. The need for courage, fortitude and self-denial will never disappear but their effective exercise can curtail the ravages of evil. But Bosanquet's doctrine does weaken individual responsibility in the struggle with evil. Since the triumph of good is assured, it does not matter whether you or I exert ourselves greatly in opposing evil. There will infallibly be others to take up the good fight, so why should we bother? Why, indeed, should we not ourselves take advantage of what evil may bring to us in the way of private satisfaction ? We shall lose the honour of contributing positively to the self-

THE

194

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

maintenance of the universe, but we shall still be making a negative contribution and we need not worry about destroying the possibility of human life. But these considerations have led us away from the theoretical issues involved in Bosanquet's doctrine to its hypothetical practical consequences. In this section, our purpose has been to see whether Bosanquet, in his version of the theory of the Absolute, is able to get over the difficulties which beset Bradley. From what we have seen of his argument, our conclusion can only be that he has not succeeded where Bradley failed. C :

I D E A L I S M

W I T H O U T

THE

A B S O L U T E

i. I have said that some critics of Idealist social philosophy, notably L. T. Hobhouse, had seen in the theory of the Absolute a doctrine which engendered a reactionary social and political outlook. I asked whether this was really so and also whether the theory of rational activity which, I have maintained in this book, is the foundation of Idealist social philosophy, somehow carries with it a commitment to the theory of the Absolute. It was in order to answer these questions that I undertook a critical examination of the theory of the Absolute as it was developed by Bradley and Bosanquet. We can now see that the charge of engendering a reactionary social and political outlook is not without plausibility. We saw, in the last section, that, according to Bosanquet, evil is somehow necessary to the perfection of the Absolute albeit in a negative way. The doctrine that the Absolute guarantees the triumph of good over evil, that in human life evil can never score more than a temporary success, tends, as I pointed out, to weaken the responsibility of the individual for combating it. More generally, the distinction between appearance and reality, with the implication that nothing in human life can be of permanent value, that perfection lies beyond our reach, may engender an attitude of indifference to human affairs. Everything is transient and nothing ultimately matters very much. Such an attitude would be an emotional not a logical consequence of accepting the theory of the Absolute, and there is no reason to suppose that either Bradley or Bosanquet would have commended it. We need not, however, deny that accepting the theory of the Absolute might

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET

1%

have such an effect. But more important is my second question: does Idealist social philosophy really carry with it a commitment to the theory of the Absolute ? From the criticisms which I have made of the theory in the two preceding sections, the reader will be in no doubt as to my answer. It is: no. I will now briefly summarize these criticisms. There have been three main lines of criticism. The first was directed against the notion of the concrete universal as Bradley and Bosanquet developed it. For them, the notion is summed up in the principle of sameness through diversity or identity in difference. But in their hands, this principle is ambiguous. It is applied indifferently to an individual whole such as an organism and to an individual achievement of rationality. They fail to recognize the important difference between these two things, that the unity of a whole such as an organism is an empirical unity while that of an individual achievement of rationality is constituted by its rationality. This failure suggests that their understanding of the theory of rational activity is imperfect, a suggestion which, in the case of Bradley, is borne out by the difficulties which arise in the later stages of his argument in Ethical Studies. My second main line of criticism was of certain steps in the argument through which the theory of the Absolute was developed. Both Bradley and Bosanquet argue that, from the fact that in our human rational activity, we try to be selfconsistent and avoid contradicting ourselves, we can infer that ultimate reality is coherent and non-contradictory. They assume, that is to say, that, from a characteristic feature of our human experience, we can infer something about the positive nature of ultimate reality. But they also argue that, while at the purely psychical level of experience we are in direct touch with ultimate reality, as soon as we begin to think, we abstract from and mutilate what is given at the purely psychical level. In our rational, i.e. thinking activity, what we experience is appearance, never ultimate reality. It follows that we cannot infer anything about the positive nature of ultimate reality from the characteristic features of human rational activity, because we can never get at ultimate reality as it is in itself to see whether in fact it has any of these features. Ultimate reality is simply what is given at the psychical level of ex-

I96

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

perience before thought begins to operate and all we can infer about it is the negative characteristic that, whatever else it may be, it is of such a nature as to tolerate our human rational activity. On the logic of Bradley's and Bosanquet's argument, no knowledge of the positive nature of ultimate reality is possible and the theory that it is an absolute concrete universal, a self-consistent system of sentient experience is without any foundation whatever. The upshot of this criticism is that Bradley and Bosanquet are impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Either they must maintain their distinction between appearance and reality, in which case there can be no positive knowledge of the nature of ultimate reality and no theory of the Absolute; or if they renounce the distinction and hold that in our thinking rational activity we directly experience ultimate reality they are committed to something like naive realism or at least dualism in which both thought and matter are ultimate realities, and once more the theory of the Absolute is without foundation. My third main line of criticism was what Bradley called the 'transmutation' and Bosanquet the 'transformation1 of human values and achievements in the Absolute. Setting aside difficulties connected with the possibility of knowledge of ultimate reality, I asked whether the theory of the Absolute is an intelligible conception. Here the doctrine of transmutation is of crucial importance. Bradley and Bosanquet tell us that the Absolute is perfection. It is an all-inclusive harmonious system of experience in which all our imperfect human values and achievements are consummated and fulfilled. For this to be intelligible, we need to know at least in principle how the transmutation comes about. How are human values, to say nothing of human sins and failures, transmuted in the all-inclusive perfection ? But, although we are repeatedly told that it happens, we are never told how, or upon what principle. The nature, character and method of the transmutation remains a mystery. But Bradley and Bosanquet seem to think that in principle the transmutation has been made intelligible and that the key to it lies in their notion of the concrete universal. We are thus brought back to the first main line of criticism. The ambiguity in their notion of the concrete universal, of which they were of course unaware, concealed from Bradley and Bosanquet the

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 197

fundamental obscurity in their conception of the Absolute. They thought that their notion of the concrete universal was intelligible in the form of the principle of sameness through diversity, identity in difference or a macrocosm of microcosms, and that, in presenting ultimate reality as an Absolute concrete universal, they were putting forward an intelligible conception. It will now be apparent why my answer to the second question is: no. The theory of rational activity, which is the foundation of Idealist social philosophy, does not carry with it any sort of commitment to the theory of the Absolute. Although both theories involve the notion of the concrete universal, the version employed in the theory of the Absolute is fundamentally confused and the theory of the Absolute reflects this confusion. The version employed in the theory of rational activity has been purged of the confusion and with it of any connection with the theory of the Absolute. It may be objected, however, that even if Idealist social philosophy is logically free from contamination by the theory of the Absolute, nevertheless that theory has in fact been associated with it and may have engendered a reactionary social and political outlook. In others words, the answer to my first question may be: yes, even if the answer to the second is: no. I admit that there may be something in the objection and can only say that one of the aims of this book is to try to dispel the belief that Idealist social philosophy has any necessary connection with the theory of the Absolute. The reader may perhaps agree that, from what he has seen of Idealist social philosophy in this book, there is nothing inherently reactionary about it and that there is something to be said for it on its own merits. In order that these should be appreciated, it is important to lay the ghost of the Absolute. 2. The theory of the Absolute was the outcome of an attempt to know reality as a whole or ultimate reality, such an attempt being in the opinion of Bradley and Bosanquet the proper task of metaphysics. But, according to my second line of criticism, on their own arguments such knowledge is impossible. Why did they fail to see this ? What prevented them from recognizing that, on the basis of their critique of empirical knowledge, positive knowledge of reality lies beyond the reach of human

I98

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

thought, since thought always abstracts from and mutilates the reality given in purely psychical experience ? A clue may be found in the notion of reality which plays so prominent a part in their thought. For them it is indubitable not only that there is an ultimate reality but that this reality is knowable. To deny that it is knowable is self-contradictory. Thus, in the introduction to Appearance and Reality, Bradley writes: 'To say that reality is such that our knowledge cannot reach it> is to claim to know reality. To urge that our knowledge is of a kind which must fail to transcend appearance itself implies that transcendence: for if we had no idea of a beyond, we should assuredly not know how to talk about failure and success and the test by which we distinguish them must obviously be some acquaintance with the nature of the goal/1 In this passage, Bradley is not arguing that ultimate reality is knowable. He is merely contending that there is no ground, at least before metaphysical inquiry begins, for maintaining that it is not. This at least is all that he is entitled to maintain. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in fact he thinks he has done more. In the body of Appearance and Reality, he writes as if the question of whether ultimate reality is knowable has already in principle been settled. Such knowledge is only of its general character and not of its details but it is positive knowledge. Thus the fact that on examination empirical knowledge turns out to be confined to appearance is not allowed to unsettle an issue which has already been settled. Whatever the limits of empirical knowledge may be, the scope of metaphysics is not affected. It never occurred to Bradley and Bosanquet, that is to say, that in the light of their critique of empirical knowledge they ought to revise their assumption that reality is knowable and that it is the task of metaphysics to seek this knowledge. On the contrary, for them the doctrine that empirical knowledge is confined to appearance presupposes another form of knowledge which is not so confined. Their fundamental error is their failure to see that in assuming that reality is knowable and in defining the task of metaphysics as they do, they are from the outset begging important metaphysical questions. What we are to understand by 'reality, whether or in what sense it is an object of knowledge, are questions which properly fall within the body of metaphysics.

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET I99

They can be answered, if at all, only after metaphysical inquiry has been carried some way. The programme of metaphysics must not be drawn up in such a way that they are settled in advance before real metaphysical work begins. In the passage quoted above, Bradley fails to come to grips with the real case which he ought to face. It is one which we have already encountered in connection with Green's theory of human experience and it is the basis of my second line of criticism. Briefly summarized it is this. Critical reflection upon human experience and upon the part played in it by thought, leads to the conclusion that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought. There is something given but it is always something categorized and interpreted by thought, never a mere 'this'. There is something already there over and beyond our experience but what it is in itself, as distinct from what it is for us, we do not and cannot know. The nature and character of our experience indicates that there is a 'beyond', but of its positive nature we can have no knowledge. If we choose to call this 'beyond* ultimate reality, then we must say that we can have no positive knowledge of ultimate reality. Bradley fails to do justice to this case in his opening statement. It is not a matter of asserting that reality is of such a kind that we cannot know it but rather that the nature and character of our experience is such that what we can know is of a certain kind. Nor does the doctrine that our knowledge cannot transcend appearance state the case properly. The case is that what we can know is always something categorized and interpreted by thought. To say this, is not to assert anything positive about the nature of what is already there apart from our experience but only to say something about our experience in general and its cognitive aspect in particular. But what is more important is that the case is not one which could be made at the outset of a metaphysical inquiry. It is itself the outcome of metaphysical inquiry. The proper objection to Bradley's programme of attempting to know ultimate reality is not that reality is unknowable but that the programme Has been drawn up in a way which begs important metaphysical questions. If there is to be a metaphysical programme in advance of metaphysical inquiry at all it must be drawn up in the most general

200

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

and non-committal terms. We must start in metaphysics, not with a clear-cut problem, but with the aim of reflecting on our experience in all its wealth and variety to see what, if anything, we can learn about ourselves and our situation. By the time we are able to formulate even relatively clear-cut problems, a good deal of fundamental metaphysical thinking will already have been done. Bradley and Bosanquet start with a more or less clear-cut problem, and never give a satisfactory explanation of how and why they came to formulate it as they did. 3. The doctrine that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought is, as we saw in Chapter 3, the foundation of Green's theory of the character and structure of human experience. It is significant not only as the basis of a case against Bradley's and Bosanquet's metaphysical programme, but also because of its implications for the general position of Idealism as a philosophy. In the next chapter I shall be concerned with this: here it may be useful to recall Green's conviction that knowing makes no difference to what is known. It was this conviction which led him to introduce the notion of the eternal consciousness into his theory of experience. I argued that there are two separate points involved in the idea that knowing makes no difference to what is known. The first is that, if there is to be knowledge, there must be something already there to be known. The second is that, whenever we have knowledge, what we know is unaffected by being known. In knowing it, we are knowing it as it is in itself when it is not being known. I argued that, while the first of these two points is inescapable, the second it not, and in the course of the present chapter I have elaborated this argument. There is however another point, consideration of which I have so far postponed, a point which indicates that there is, after all, something in the conviction that knowing makes no difference to what is known. The argument which I put forward suggests that I am maintaining both that knowing does make a difference to what is known, and that this is compatible with the necessary condition of knowledge, that there should be something there to be known. But am I maintaining that all knowing makes a differ-

THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE F. H. BRADLEY - BERNARD BOSANQUET 2OI

ence to what is known, or only that this is so in the case of some knowing ? The former view involves a difficulty. If it is a fact that all knowing makes a difference to what is known, could this fact itself be known ? To say that knowing does make a difference to what is known is to claim to know something about the character and structure of human experience, namely that it is of such a nature as to involve this consequence for knowledge. Now the character and structure of human experience is something which it has, as it were, in its own right. To know the character and structure of human experience is to have knowledge of something as it is in itself. It is to know something which, ex hypothesi, is unaffected by being known. It follows that, while there may be grounds for holding that some knowing makes a difference to what is known, there are none for holding that this is so in the case of all knowing. The latter view cannot be asserted without implicit self-contradiction, for to advocate it is to claim to have knowledge of the character and structure of human experience, and to claim at the same time that, in the case of such knowledge, what is known is unaffected by being known. Now the doctrine that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought, does not involve maintaining that all knowing makes a difference to what is known. Nor does it violate the necessary condition of all knowledge, that there should be something already there to be known. Nor again does it deny that human experience points beyond itself, that there is something already there prior to and apart from all human experience. It asserts only that, so far as this independent reality is concerned, we cannot know it as it is in itself. This, however, is not to deny that there is something which is independent of our thought and our human thinking experience. As regards our human experience itself, our experience as rational agents, we can reflect on this and know it as it is in itself, both in its general character and structure and in its individual details, because it is not something which is independent of thought but is itself the work of thought. According to my doctrine, that is to say, knowing makes no difference to what is known, where what is known is our own experience as rational agents. But since we can only know that there is a sense in which some knowing

202

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

makes a difference to what is known, if we already have knowledge where knowing makes no difference to what is known, it follows that the latter kind is fundamental. It is knowledge in the proper sense, while the former kind is only knowledge in a secondary derivative sense. From this it follows, according to the foregoing doctrine, that knowledge in the proper sense is selfknowledge, knowledge of human experience as regards both its general character and structure and its individual detail. This follows because only in the case of such knowledge does knowing make no difference to what is known. Now this conclusion is of some significance for the general position of Idealism as a philosophy and not least as regards its claims as a social philosophy. I therefore propose in the next chapter to elaborate it and to relate it to the general argument of this book.

CHAPTER VI HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

A:

KNOWLEDGE AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF RATIONAL ACTIVITY

At the end of Chapter I of this book, I gave a provisional statement of the nature, aim and scope of philosophy. It was based on the account which I had previously given of the theory of rational activity and the notion of the concrete universal. I maintained that it is the business of philosophy to know and give an account of the rationality implicit in the various values and standards operative in human life. What gives the work a special character is that, owing to the logical structure of rational activity, the methods of classification and natural science are inappropriate. The philosopher must give his account not in terms of genera and species, or laws of nature, but in terms of the levels in a scale. But I pointed out that this was a provisional definition of philosophy and that it would have to be modified and reformulated as the argument of the book proceeded. In particular, I emphasized that it did not include the theory of the general character and structure of human experience, that such a theory was traditionally a part of philosophy and that it was demanded by the earlier argu­ ment of the chapter. In Chapter III, the question of the nature and scope of philo­ sophy arose in connection with Green's theory of morality. According to Green, if man is to know himself as a rational agent who is capable of knowledge and morality, it must be through philosophy and not through natural science. It was to support this contention that he devoted the first part of Prolegomena to Ethics to the exposition of a theory of the general character and structure of human experience, a theory 1.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-7

204

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the foundation of which was the doctrine that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought. He argued that human experience is thinking experience, and that it is only in so far as he thinks, that man is a rational agent who is capable of knowledge and morality. I pointed out that this implies that, in so far as human experience is the experience of rational agents, it must have the logical structure of rational activity. Each level of rationality is a level of human experience. On this view, my provisional definition of philosophy could be brought into line with traditional ideas of its nature and scope. The work of formulating a theory of the general character and structure of human experience leads on to the task of giving an account of the various levels of rationality which make up the experience of rational agents. Conversely, the latter task leads back to an inquiry into the general character and structure of human experience which makes possible the various levels of rationality implicit in the values and standards operative in human life, an inquiry which would take account of whatever form or forms of experience are presupposed by and are the foundation of the various levels of rationality. At the end of the last chapter, I returned to a topic which had arisen in Chapter III, in connection with Green's theory of human experience. This was his conviction that there is knowledge only where knowing makes no difference to what is known. I pointed out that this conviction must be right, at least in the case of some knowledge, and that it does not conflict with the doctrine that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought. According to that doctrine, what is independent of human experience cannot be known as it is in itself, but only as it is for us. In this case, knowing does make a difference to what is known. But in the case of self-knowledge, where what is known is not something independent of human experience but human experience itself, this is not so. Here knowing makes no difference to what is known. Now if, as I have suggested, it is the task of philosophy to know human experience as regards both its general character and structure and the various levels of rationality which it includes, then philosophy is a form of knowledge in which

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

20£

knowing makes no difference to what is known. Further, if there is a sense in which knowledge in this form is more fundamental than any in which knowing does make a difference to what is known, and if philosophy is the only form of knowledge which explicitly sets out to know human experience in a way which does justice both to its general character and structure and to its range and variety, it follows that there is a sense in which philosophy is the most fundamental form of knowledge. In the present chapter, I shall try to elucidate and develop this conception of philosophy. It is a conception to which all the Idealists adhered, but which they failed wholly to disentangle from other ideas. Prominent among the latter, as we saw in the last chapter, is the view that it is the task of philosophy in the form of metaphysics to know ultimate reality, or reality as a whole. What I shall be attempting, in other words, is to expound the conception of philosophy at which the Idealists should have arrived if they had been wholly self-consistent in their work. On the whole, it was in their social philosophy that they came nearest to putting it into practice and it is a conception which must be made explicit if the significance of their work in that aspect of philosophy is to be understood. To many contemporary English philosophers, the notion that philosophy is a form of knowledge will be unacceptable. According to the current doctrine, philosophy is an activity of analysis and clarification. It is not concerned with the acquisition of knowledge. I do not question the intellectual significance of much of the work of analysis and clarification which has been done in the name of philosophy in recent years. I question only the propriety of identifying this work with philosophy and of denying that there is anything else deserving of the name. In the rest of this section and the next, I shall mainly be concerned with certain features of knowledge in its non-philosophical forms. In the third, I shall try to elucidate the conception of philosophy as a form of knowledge. This procedure is necessitated by the nature of the conception of philosophy which I am trying to develop. It may also serve to indicate the respects in which my position, and, I should add, the position implicit in Idealism, differs from the current doctrine.

2o6

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

2. All rational activity is cognitive: at every level of rationality, knowledge is indispensable. But the systematic pursuit of knowledge, as e.g. in natural science or history, is itself a rational activity. On the one hand, knowledge is an integral part of rational activity: on the other, its acquisition may be made the purpose of rational activity. But knowledge which is acquired through rational activity cannot be identical with knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity. There must be a difference, and discussion of it will occupy us in one way or another throughout the remainder of this section. I will begin with the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity. This topic has been touched on in earlier chapters. It arose implicitly in Chapter I, and explicitly in Chapter III in connection with Green's distinction between the two senses of the question: 'what ought to be done ?'. But so far what has been said about it has mainly concerned the higher levels of rationality, those of self-consistent human achievement and spheres of rational activity. I want now to consider it in connection with the lower levels and will return to the higher levels later. At the level of ends and means, the rational agent must have knowledge of the ways in which his various ends may be brought about. At the level of private self-satisfaction, he must know enough to enable him to develop a satisfying way of living in the circumstances in which he finds himself. At the level of morality, he must have the knowledge necessary for observing the rules and customs of his society. This suggests that the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at these levels is practical rather than theoretical. In terms of the distinction drawn by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind, it is a matter of 'knowing how . . .' rather than of 'knowing that . . /. But, while there is truth in this, it is important to realize that no knowledge can be purely practical without being in part theoretical as well. Every case of 'knowing how . . / involves some 'knowing that . . .'. The rational agent who knows how to bring about his ends, knows that he is an agent who has these particular ends. He knows that he is in a world in which there are things which can be handled, manipulated and exploited as means for the bring-

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

2oy

ing about of ends.* He knows what some of these things are and something of their specific properties. If he knows enough to develop a satisfying way of living, he knows something more about himself and his circumstances. He knows that he is an agent with certain capacities and limitations. He knows something of the various pursuits and activities which are possible for one having these capacities and limitations and something also of the different kinds of experience which they afford. If he knows how to observe the rules and customs of his society, he knows what these rules and customs are, that there is a society of which they are the rules and customs and that he is a member of that society. All this is theoretical rather than practical knowledge. It is a matter of 'knowing that . . .' rather than of 'knowing how . . .'. But the point is not that the rational agent must have the theoretical knowledge before he can have the practical. It is that, in acquiring the practical, he at the same time acquires the theoretical. In coming to 'know how . . / he simultaneously comes to 'know that . . .'. The knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at these levels is at once practical and theoretical. These are two aspects of it which can be distinguished but not separated. Although the practical aspect is prominent while the theoretical is more or less latent, they are both always present. It is necessary, however, to take into account two important aspects of rational activity. It is the activity of self-realization and it is always social activity. So far as self-realization is concerned, the point to notice is that the acquiring of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity is itself part of the process of becoming a rational agent. Becoming a rational agent involves learning how to act rationally and learning how to act rationally involves acquiring the necessary knowledge. But becoming a rational agent is a process which can never be completed. Self-realization is achieved through a way of living and a way of living is something which is always in the making. One never finishes learning how to act rationally and there is * Strictly speaking, according to the argument of Chapter I, section B, subsection 3 of this book, it is activities of exploitation, not the things which are exploited, which are the means for bringing about of ends. The rational agent, however, at the level of ends and means will not normally draw this distinction, and for this reason, as well as for the sake of brevity and smoothness of exposition, ordinary language is preferable in the present context.

2O8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

always more knowledge to be acquired. The social aspect of rational activity introduces rather more complex considerations. At every level of rationality, the rational agent is to some extent conscious of himself as a social being. Why this is so has at least in part already been indicated in Chapter I. A further consideration of the point will however be instructive in the present discussion. 3. The rational agent becomes conscious of himself as a rational agent through his rational activity. The development of rational self-consciousness is part of his process of becoming a rational agent. Each level of rationality constitutes a distinct level of rational self-consciousness. There is a scale of rational self-consciousness corresponding to the scale of rationality. But rational self-consciousness, even at the lowest level, is not developed out of nothing. It presupposes and is a development of lower levels of self-consciousness. Only a subject who already has some consciousness of himself as a distinct person can become conscious of himself as an agent having purposes and plans of his own. Personal self-consciousness is possible only for a subject who is already conscious of the distinction between self and what is other than self. Rational selfconsciousness presupposes personal self-consciousness and personal self-consciousness presupposes primary self-consciousness, the bare consciousness of a distinction between self and other. There is a scale of self-consciousness which includes the various levels of rational self-consciousness but also contains lower levels which are pre-rational. The various levels in the scale of self-consciousness are related to each other in the same way as the various levels in the scale of rationality. Each level in the scale sums up and includes those below it. At the level of personal self-consciousness the subject is conscious of himself as a distinct person. He is also conscious of other persons whom he can identify and distinguish from each other and from himself. Personal self-consciousness is always social consciousness. It is the consciousness of onself as one person among other persons, But the lower level of primary self-consciousness survives within the higher level of personal self-consciousness although in modified form. The bare consciousness of the distinction between self and other has

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

2O9

now become the consciousness of the distinction between oneself as a person and other persons. But, in addition, there is also the consciousness of the distinction between the world of persons and what is other than personal. This consciousness of what is impersonal is the consciousness of what comes between oneself and other persons. It is the awareness of the environment within which the world of persons is. But it is only at the level of morality that the social side of the rational agent's self-consciousness is directly relevant to his rationality. At the level of ends and means, to be rational is to be efficient. At the level of private self-satisfaction it is to make the development of a personally satisfying way of living the guiding principle of all one's conduct. It may be possible for a person to be efficient and to develop a satisfying way of living without being moral. Such a person would observe the rules and customs of his society only when it was in his self-interest to do so. His achievement of rationality would be confined to the level of private self-satisfaction. He would be realizing himself as a rational but not as a social agent. His rational selfconsciousness would not include any awareness of personal responsibilities as a member of a society. But his rational selfconsciousness would still have a social side. It would include the pre-rational awareness of himself as a person in a world of persons. But the rationality which he achieves does not include any development of this awareness. His rational self-consciousness, being confined to the level of private self-satisfaction, does not add to his social consciousness. Whether in fact anyone can develop a personally satisfying way of living without also developing at least some loyalty to some human group or association and there achieving some degree of morality, is a question which need not be pursued here. What we have now to notice is the connection between self-consciousness and knowledge. Each level of rationality, I have said, is a level of rational self-consciousness. But there is a sense in which each level of rationality is a level of knowledge, for at each level there is involved the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at that level. At the level of ends and means, the rational agent knows that he is an agent who wants to bring about certain ends; at the level of private self-satisfaction, he knows that he is an agent with certain

2lO

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

capacities and limitations; at the level of morality, he knows that he is a member of a certain society. At each level, this 'knowledge that . . .' is his consciousness of himself as a rational agent. But this account leaves out levels below rational selfconsciousness. At these pre-rational levels, there is always consciousness of what is other than self as well as of self. Each level in the scale of self-consciousness sums up and incorporates those below it. Thus at the levels of rational self-consciousness there is consciousness of what is other than self, since these levels include the pre-rational levels of primary and personal self-consciousness. At the level of ends and means, the rational agent knows that he is in a world of things which can be handled and exploited as means. At the level of private selfsatisfaction, he knows that there are certain activities which are possible and which yield certain kinds of satisfaction. At the level of morality, he knows that there is a certain society with a certain body of rules and customs. At each level, this 'knowledge that . . / is his consciousness of what is other than self. Thus my statement that, at a given level of rationality, the rational agent's self-consciousness is an aspect of the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at that level, is not strictly correct. Since self-consciousness is always consciousness of what is other than self as well as of self, rational self-consciousness at a given level of rationality is strictly speaking equivalent to the whole of the theoretical side of the knowledge which is integral to that level. But, since in speaking of rational self-consciousness the intention is normally to place the emphasis on self rather than what is other than self, it is not unreasonable to equate rational self-consciousness with an aspect of the theoretical side of the rational agent's knowledge, namely his knowledge of himself as a rational agent. There is no harm so long as it is realized that what is other than self is not excluded from rational selfconsciousness but that the emphasis is placed on self. In fact, the rational agent's self-consciousness at a given level of rationality and the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at that level are one and the same thing, but in the first case the emphasis is upon self and in

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

211

the second upon what is other than self. We can speak in terms of one or the other according to which side we wish to emphasize. 4. It follows from this argument that the various levels of rational self-consciousness constitute a scale of levels of knowledge. It consists of the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at each level of rationality. At each level, the lower levels of this knowledge are incorporated but in a form appropriate to that level. But rational self-consciousness, we have seen, presupposes pre-rational levels of self-consciousness. If we regard the various levels of rational self-consciousness as a scale of knowledge, then we must regard the pre-rational levels of self-consciousness as pre-rational levels of knowledge. Although this may sound rather paradoxical, it amounts only to saying that the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at least on its theoretical side is not developed out of nothing. It pre-supposes and is developed out of knowledge which is prior to all rational activity. It might seem, however, as if we had overlooked the point that the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity is subordinate to its practical side. The rational agent comes to 'know that . . / through coming to 'know how . . .'. But this relation is a feature of the prerational levels of self-consciousness. Regarded as levels of knowledge, they are at once practical and theoretical and in each case the practical side is primary, the theoretical secondary or subordinate. Thus the practical side of primary self-consciousness, the bare consciousness of the distinction between self and what is other than self, is the activity of attention. It is through the practical activity of attention that the subject becomes conscious of the distinction between self and other. Without it, the distinction would not be drawn and there would not even be primary self-consciousness. At the level of personal selfconsciousness, the practical work of attention is supplemented by the activity of identification* and, as the subject's capacity develops, communication. It is as he becomes able to recognize * Embryonic identification is already at work at the level of primary selfconsciousness but it is negative only, being the mere identification of what is other than self as 'something which is not self.

212

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

other persons, to distinguish them from himself and from each other, and in a embryonic way to communicate with them, that the subject becomes conscious of himself as a person in a world of persons. He is not yet capable of rational activity but he already has a rudimentary form of knowledge which is at once practical and theoretical and without such knowledge he could not go on to determine himself as a rational agent. The important point to notice is that at no level of selfconsciousness, either pre-rational or rational, and therefore at no level of knowledge, is there anything given ready-made prior to and independent of the work of thought. Bradley's doctrine of the 'what' and the 'that' may be conveniently adapted to express the point. At every level of self-consciousness, we never merely 'know that . . /, we always also 'know what , . .'. We always, that is to say, have some idea, however provisional and indefinite, of what it is that we are conscious of. At the primary level of self-consciousness this 'knowing what . , .' is so rudimentary as to be almost non-existent. It is merely the bare awareness of what is different from self and apart from this lacks all determinateness. But even this bare consciousness of difference involves thought in its most primitive form. The 'other' which the subject is conscious of at this primary level is not some independent reality as it is in itself apart from the work of thought, It is something as it is for thought. It is what the subject's thought is able to make out and present to him at this level. What is true at the primary level of self-consciousness is true of every higher level. What we know is never something as it is in itself apart from human experience but always something as it is for human experience and therefore for consciousness and for thought. This is not to deny that there is always a'given' character about our consciousness at each level. It is only to insist that we are always conscious of what is given as mediated through our thought. In this connection, the activity of communication which first begins at the level of personal self-consciousness is of special significance. In learning how to communicate, the subject learns how to think in terms of systems of ideas and thus to expand the range of his consciousness. Each level above personal self-consciousness involves a development of the systems of ideas already at work at lower levels.

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

213

It is in connection with the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at the level of ends and means, that the doctrine of the last paragraph is at variance with every-day common sense ideas. At this level, the rational agent knows that he is an agent who wants to bring about certain ends. He also knows that he is in a world of things which can be handled, manipulated and exploited as means. We normally regard this world as an independent reality, something which is already there prior to and independently of rational activity and indeed of human experience altogether. So far as the individual rational agent is concerned, this common sense conviction is quite correct. So far as he is concerned, the world of things which can be exploited as means is already there and is independent of his private experience. But it is not independent of all rational and all human experience. It is already there so far as the individual rational agent is concerned because it is an aspect of the experience of other rational agents who are already engaged in rational activity before he begins. From the private standpoint of the individual rational agent, rational activity is already there or, more accurately, already going on, independently of his own personal achievement of it. What the rational agent knows then, when he knows that there is a world of things which can be handled, manipulated and exploited as means, is not something as it is in itself independently of human experience. On the contrary, what he knows is an aspect of human experience, in particular an aspect of the experience of rational agents engaged in rational activity at the level of ends and means. I said in the last chapter that human experience is not self-maintaining or all-inclusive, that it does seem to point beyond itself. My point there and here is that we never know ultimate reality as it is in itself but only as it is for our experience. What we know as a world of things which can be exploited as means, no doubt is part of some larger reality but what it is as belonging to that reality we cannot know. So far we have been discussing knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity and what this knowledge presupposes. We have seen that it is knowledge which is at once practical and theoretical and that the practical side is prior,

114

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the theoretical side is secondary. We come to 'know that . . .' through coming to 'know how . . /. But we have yet to consider the knowledge which may be made the purpose of rational activity, e.g. natural science and history. Such knowledge is at least predominantly theoretical in character. We aim at coming to 'know that . . .' rather than at coming to 'know how . . .'. We can now see that the roots must lie in the theoretical aspect of rational activity. In the pursuit of it, rational activity turns back upon itself as it were, and attempts to expand and develop what is already an integral part of itself. We can also see that such knowledge, because of its origins in rational activity cannot escape from its characteristic limitations. It can never be knowledge of an independent reality as is in itself apart from human experience. It can only be knowledge of our human experience. B:

K N O W L E D G E AS T H E OBJECT OF R A T I O N A L A C T I V I T Y

i. As examples of the knowledge which may be made the purpose of rational activity, I have cited natural science and history. They are highly developed forms of such knowledge. In this section I shall propound a thesis about each of them. But these theses are not intended to be complete theories of science and history. What I have to say in each case is strictly relevant to the purpose of this chapter. That purpose, it will be recalled, is to sketch the conception of philosophy which I believe to be implicit in Idealism. We have already seen something of this conception in previous chapters. Its nucleus consists of the notion of the concrete universal and the theory of rational activity expounded in Chapter I, together with the theory of the character and structure of human experience which we first encountered in Chapter HI in connection with the work of T. H. Green. At the beginning of the present chapter I tried to sum up the result of preceding discussions and suggested the conclusion is that there is a sense in which philosophy is the most fundamental form of knowledge. My theses about science and history are intended to elucidate this conclusion. I will begin with natural science. Its roots lie in the theor-

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

2l£

etical knowledge which is necessary for rational activity at the level of ends and means. At this level, the rational agent knows that he is in a world in which there are things which can be handled, manipulated and exploited as means. It is out of this knowledge that natural science is developed. What for the rational agent at the level of ends and means is a world of things to be exploited, for the scientist becomes a world of things to be classified and analysed and of events to be correlated and systematized, not for the sake of applying knowledge to the realization of ulterior ends but simply for the sake of knowing more about the world. The pursuit of knowledge has become the purpose of his rational activity. I have tried to characterize the essence of the scientific attitude and to indicate its genesis. Certain amendments and qualifications however are necessary. I have said that the scientist's world is a world of things to be classified and analysed and of events to be correlated and systematized. In a sense, so also is the rational agent's world at the level of ends and means. He too classifies and analyses, correlates and systematizes. But he does so in order to discover how to bring about his various ends. What the scientist does is to develop, for its own sake, a way of knowing, initially developed in the course of rational activity at the level of ends and means. I said also that the scientist aims at clarifying, organizing and expanding what he already knows as an integral part of his rational activity at the level of ends and means. The emphasis perhaps should be on 'expanding'. Not only is the scientist not tied down to what he already knows as means to his ends, he is not restricted to any scheme of classification or types of events. His world is a world of whatever can be classified and analysed, correlated and systematized. Finally, it is important to remember that the scientist qua scientist is not a philosopher. Like the rational agent at the level of ends and means, he regards his world as an independent reality, something which is already there independently of human experience. As a scientist, he takes it for granted that what he knows is something to which no difference is made by being known. The things which he classifies and analyses, the events which he correlates and systematizes, exist and happen whether or not anyone knows about them.

2l6

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

2. My thesis about natural science is a thesis about what it is the scientist really knows through his work as a scientist. We have seen that the roots of science lie in the theoretical side of rational activity at the level of ends and means. We have seen in the last section that this is not knowledge of anything as it is in itself, apart from human experience. It is knowledge of an aspect of human experience, of an aspect namely of the experience of all rational agents. Apart from the experience of rational agents, there is no such world. The scientist's world is developed out of the rational agent's world of things which can be exploited as means. Since it is developed out of what is an aspect of human experience, it cannot be a reality independent of human experience, scientific opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. If the scientist's world is not what he takes it to be, what does he really know as the result of his work? My thesis is that what he knows is always something of the following kind: that if he performs certain precisely specified operations in precisely specified circumstances, certain precisely specified events will happen, events which he will be able to experience. According to this thesis, the complex body of classificatory schemes, scientific laws and theories which is the result of the work of science, is really a complex of systems of ideas in terms of which scientists can specify sets of operations and predict what will be experienced when they are carried out. The view of science contained in my thesis has something in common with two doctrines: Phenomenalism and Instrumentalism. As I understand it, according to Phenomenalism, these schemes, laws and theories form systems of ideas in terms of which scientists can specify sets of operations and predict the sensations which will be experienced when they are carried out. But according to my thesis, what is predicted is never merely sensations as such but observations, e.g. pointer-readings. The experience of observing a certain pointer-reading is not merely the experience of having certain sensations, although it certainly involves having sensations. It is an experience which is possible only for rational agents. But Phenomenalism makes no reference to rational activity and seems not to recognize the significance of the work of thought in human experience. As regards Instrumentalism, there is no

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

Ilj

difference from my account of what it is that scientists know as the result of their scientific work. But there is a difference as regards the essence of the scientific attitude. For Instrumentalism, as I understand it, the scientist is interested in specifying operations and predicting the experiences which follow them only for the sake of applying this knowledge to the bringing about of ends which arise outside science. The scientist, that is to say, is still only the rational agent at the level of ends and means, although he is now a much more efficient and competent one. But, according to my view, the scientist is more than this. What animates him is not merely the desire to increase his efficiency, but the desire to acquire knowledge for its own sake. As a scientist, he does not grasp the real nature and significance of the knowledge which he acquires, since he puts the emphasis on the things and events which he classifies and correlates rather than on the operations and the results which follow them. But this does not alter the fact that his aim is knowledge and not practical skill. It follows from my thesis that scientific knowledge is knowledge of an aspect of human experience. It is the same aspect as that which is known through rational activity at the level of ends and means but through the work of science, knowledge of it is expanded and enlarged. What the scientist knows is not merely the by-product of the practical work of bringing about particular ends but is the result of deliberate systematic activity. But it may be objected that even if my thesis is compatible with those sciences which are devoted to the discovery of natural laws, e.g. physics and chemistry, it is inapplicable to the quasi-historical natural sciences, e.g. geology, paleontology and certain parts of astronomy. The point about these sciences, it may be said, is that they afford knowledge of what is inherently independent of human experience because prior to the existence of human life. Much of geological knowledge e.g., is knowledge of a state of affairs before man evolved as a distinct species, while parts of astronomy are concerned with past events which were independent not only of human but of all life. My reply to this objection is to repeat once more that the doctrine that we cannot know anything as it is in itself apart from human experience does not involve denying that there is

2l8

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

something beyond our experience. On the contrary, our experience points beyond itself to something which we cannot experience and cannot know as it is in itself. The geological past and the astronomical past are conceptions in terms of which we think about what lies beyond our experience. But in thinking in terms of these conceptions, we do not gain knowledge of something as it is in itself apart from human experience. The accounts of part series of events given by geology and astronomy are not literally true. They do not tell us about past events as they really were but of how they would have been for us had we been able to experience them although, ex hypothesi, we could not have experienced them. The significance of these ways of thinking about what lies beyond our experience is that they enable scientists to enlarge the scope of their work. By thinking in terms of them, scientists can precisely specify many more sets of operations and the predictable experiences which follow them. The essence of the quasihistorical natural sciences is that they extend the theoretical framework within which science is carried on and so increase the range of science. I have said that scientific knowledge is enlarged and expanded knowledge of the same aspect of human experience which is known through rational activity at the level of ends and means. It follows that, for knowledge of human experience which will do justice to its range and variety and at the same time exhibit its general character and structure, we need something more than science. We shall not get this knowledge by thinking in terms of the categories and theories of natural science, for these categories and theories are relevant only to the purposes of science. The scientist, we have seen, is a rational agent who already has the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at the level of ends and means. He cannot however gain knowledge of himself as a rational agent through science. The roots of science lie in the knowledge of the world of things which can be exploited as means. The scientist reflecting upon what he already knows as a rational agent at the level of ends and means, places this world in the focus of his attention. He does not qua scientist take account of his consciousness of himself as a rational agent. He takes account of himself only as one more thing in the world of things which can be exploited as

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

219

means. The categories and theories in terms of which he classifies and analyses, correlates and systematizes, do not add to his knowledge of himself as a rational agent; nor do they directly afford knowledge of the general character and structure of human experience. What they do is to enable him greatly to increase his knowledge of possible sets of operations and the experiences which follow them. This is certainly an increase of his knowledge of human experience but it is an increase, as it were, on the same plane. It does not deepen and broaden it. But to say that something more than science is necessary for adequate knowledge of human experience is not to disparage science. For the sake of expository convenience, I have spoken above of 'the scientist'. But, in fact, natural science in its developed modern form is a great co-operative enterprise, a social as well as an intellectual achievement. We have seen in earlier chapters that as a rational activity it belongs to the highest level of rationality, that of self-consistent human achievement. Its work is of general human significance, for the aspect of human experience which it explores is relevant to all rational activity. Regarded as an achievement of critical intelligence embodying disciplined imagination, insight and tenacity, it is one of the great human triumphs. To say that, as knowledge, it is confined to an aspect of human experience is in no way to question its status as an achievement of rationality. 3. From natural science I turn to historical knowledge.* By 'historical knowledge' I mean knowledge of the human past as distinct from the quasi-historical natural sciences. The roots of historical knowledge lie in the rational agent's self-consciousness. At the level of ends and means, he knows not only that he is a rational agent but that he is a rational agent who lives through time. At any given moment, he knows that he is engaged in trying to bring about certain future states of affairs and that he has already taken certain steps and must now take others to realize these ends. At the level of private self-satisfaction, this temporal aspect of his self-consciousness is increased. * The reader familiar with Collingwood's work in the philosophy of history will recognize my indebtedness in what follows. But my doctrine is not identical with that of The Idea of History and in some respects is closer to that outlined in Speculumentis.

22O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

His knowledge of how to live in a satisfying way includes his knowledge of his own past activities and of the experiences which they afforded. At the level of morality, his knowledge of his own past includes at least some knowledge of the past of those members of his society with whom he is in intimate contact. In Chapter I, section 4, sub-section 1, when elucidating the notion of the concrete universal, I pointed out that all rational activity is activity in a historical situation. It is to act in a situation in which rational activity is already going on, a situation which is what it is as the result of past rational activity. The rationality of any course of action must be assessed with reference to the historical situation in which it was done. The knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity always includes some knowledge of the relevant historical situation. This knowledge forms part of the rational agent's self-consciousness on any given occasion. The essence of the historical attitude is an interest in past rational activity not merely for the sake of current action but for its own sake. The historian is a rational agent who, reflecting upon what he already knows about past action through his own rational activity, sets out to increase his knowledge of it. He has become aware that the historical situation which he knows as an integral part of his current rational activity is only the latest phase of a past process of rational activity which seems to stretch back indefinitely. He sets himself the task of finding out in detail what some of the earlier phases of that process were. This attitude is possible only for one who already knows how to live as the member of a society. Unless he had already gained, through his current rational activity, some knowledge of the past rational activity of other agents besides himself, the idea of a process of rational activity stretching back into the remote past could not arise. The historian, that is to say, is a rational agent who must have already achieved rationality at the level of morality and gained some social experience. No doubt the historian will already have become acquainted with traditional ideas about the past in the course of learning to live as a member of his society. But he is interested not in traditional beliefs but in knowledge. He wants to base his ideas about the past not on tradition, hearsay or legend but on

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

221

evidence. His aim is to make an intellectual reconstruction of the various phases of the past process of rational activity on the basis of the evidence of these phases, which has survived into the present. This evidence takes the form of documents, artifacts, buildings and even customs and rituals, all of which originated in past ages. It is through inference from these relics that he must make his reconstruction. The world of things which can be exploited as means becomes, for the historian, a world in which there are things which have been exploited as means and which have been used as material components of ways of living. For the individual historian, as for the individual rational agent, these things are independent realities. They are already there, prior to and apart from his experience. But they are not prior to and independent of all human experience. They are the products of rational activity and it is only because he is a rational agent already participating in rational activity that they can enter the historian's experience. They belong to a world which has its being within the experience of rational agents and which exists just so long as there is rational activity. 4. From the standpoint of the doctrine that we cannot know anything as it is in itself independently of and apart from human experience, historical knowledge presents no difficulties. The historian sets out to know in detail the past process of rational activity. Historical knowledge, in so far as it is attained is knowledge of human experience. But is it adequate as knowledge of human experience ? Can we find in it what we failed to find in natural science, namely a form of knowledge which will do justice to the range and variety of human experience and, at the same time, exhibit its general character and structure? My thesis is that historical knowledge fails to meet these requirements. It is indeed a way of knowing human experience but the knowledge which it affords is partial and incomplete. To appreciate the grounds for this thesis, we must return again to the argument of Chapter I. In section D, sub-section i, I maintained that the concrete reality in rational activity is always an individual achievement of rationality. An individual achievement of rationality, it will be recalled, is always an achievement in terms of one of the levels in the scale of rationality. It is an action done as a means to an end, an activity carried

222

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

out as a phase or moment in the development of a satisfying way of living, the discharge of some recognized obligation, or a contribution to some sphere of rational activity. The subjectmatter with which the historian deals is past achievements of rationality. But is his way of knowing adequate for his subjectmatter ? In this connection we must recall another point from Chapter I. In order to know what an individual achievement of rationality is, it is necessary to evaluate it as an achievement. This means evaluating it as an achievement in the historical situation in which it was done. But it means also not merely evaluating it in terms of the level of rationality at which the agent was consciously acting but in terms of the highest level in the scale. This at least is necessary if the achievement is to be known for what it really is. Now the historian is concerned with past individual achievements of rationality not as achievements of rationality but as constituting a temporal process. As we have seen, they always do constitute a temporal process. All rational activity is activity in a historical situation. On any given occasion, the rational agent finds himself confronted by rational activity which is already going on. The situation in which he has to act is what it is as the result of what he and other rational agents have been doing. The historian looks back to past situations. He tries to discover what they were and how one changed into another through the actions of the agents concerned. The process which he reconstructs is the process of these actions and the account which he gives of it is in terms of the beliefs, ideas, purposes and plans of the agents. The record of change which results from his work is a record of changing beliefs, ideas, purposes and plans, the changing beliefs, ideas, purposes and plans in terms of which successive generations of rational agents thought and acted. Moreover, the account which he gives is always of some definite activity which formed part of the life of a past society, e.g. its politics, its economy, its art or its science. This is because his concern is with what past agents believed themselves to be doing on given occasions which is always something in particular, however vague and confused their ideas may have been about it. It is not the historian's task qua historian to evaluate the various actions which make up the past process of rational

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

223

activity which he reconstructs. The account which he gives takes the following form. 'On a given occasion, an individual agent A, believing himself to be in a certain situation, pursues a certain course of action. This course of action appears to other agents B, C and D in the light of their respective beliefs about the situation, to be of a certain kind and to involve certain consequences. They therefore initiate courses of action which appear to A and to other agents E and F to call for further courses of action . . .' and so on. It is not the historian's business to evaluate these courses of action as individual achievements of rationality. He may personally consider them to have been wise or foolish, well-judged or ill-considered. He may think the beliefs of the various agents to have been prejudiced or erroneous, or again to have been well-informed and clear-sighted. But it is not his business to pass judgement. His concern is with what past agents on given occasions believed themselves to be doing when they acted, and with the process constituted by their actions. He accepts the various agents' own evaluation of their achievements because he is interested not in evaluating them but simply in what happened next as seen through their eyes. But why should the historian not evaluate the past actions which he narrates ? In practice, it may be said, most of them invariably do and are they not specially qualified to do so by virtue of their special knowledge of past situations? Now it may be recalled that, in Chapter I, section D, sub-section 2, in my provisional account of philosophy, I said that the work of evaluating individual achievements of rationality is the work of the critic. Every rational agent must to some extent be a critic. There is no reason why the historian should not turn critic and evaluate the actions he narrates as individual achievements of rationality. But it is essential to realize that, when he does so, he is no longer, strictly speaking, a historian. His evaluations imply a theory of rational activity and this theory is not the product of his historical work. It is something which he gets from elsewhere and when he uses it to evaluate past courses of action he is no longer speaking with the authority of a historian. But it would be a mistake to regard his evaluations as unfortunate lapses from the straight and narrow path of historical scholarship. The historian is himself living and

224

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

acting in historical situations. He is a member of a particular society during a certain epoch in its life, and his work is addressed to his contemporaries. He must make his narrative intelligible to them and, in order to do this, he will find it necessay to evaluate as well as merely narrate. So long as he does not conceal the fact that he is evaluating and indicates at least the general standpoint from which he is doing it, there is no detraction from his work as an historian. It follows that there is a sense in which the much discussed distinction between fact and interpretation in history is significant. Fact is what the historian qua historian narrates. Interpretation is what he does as a critic, namely evaluate the facts. But it must be remembered that, on this view, interpretation is no longer part of the work of history proper but a necessary literary embellishment. This distinction between fact and interpretation or between the historian qua historian and the historian qua critic, has a bearing on the question raised earlier: namely whether the historical way of knowing is adequate for its subject-matter. The subject-matter is past individual achievements of rationality. The historian qua historian does not know his subjectmatter adequately. He does not know past individual achievements of rationality for what they really were but only as constituting a temporal process. So far as the rationality of the actions which he narrates is concerned, he accepts the verdict of the agents who did them or were affected by them. On the other hand, while the historian qua critic does attempt to know his subject-matter in a way which is in principle adequate, for he does evaluate the actions which he records, it remains an open question whether the theory of rational activity in terms of which he evaluates is an adequate theory. This question takes us out of the province of historical knowledge. We must regard historical knowledge properly so-called as the way of knowing of the historian qua historian, not of the historian qua critic. It follows that the knowledge of rational activity which can be gained through history is imperfect, being partial and incomplete. From the standpoint of knowledge of human experience, history is equally defective. Its perspective is confined to what rational agents in the past believed about human experience. The historian qua historian does not ask whether they were

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

22J

right or wrong. It is not his task to inquire into the presuppositions of rational activity or to elicit the character and structure of human experience implicit in the activities whose history he narrates. Yet what he knows, so far as it goes, is a form of knowledge in which knowing makes no difference to what is known. What he knows, the past process of rational activity in terms of the beliefs and ideas of the agents concerned, is something which is already there and which, in principle, he can intellectually reconstruct without in the process altering or disfiguring it. What the historian knows, in other words, is what he sets out to know. From this point of view, history is more adequate as knowledge than science because what the scientist knows is not what his categories and theories lead him to suppose that he knows. Moreover, the historian's knowledge of human experience, although limited, is greater than that of the scientist. His perspective includes that of the scientist in the sense that, as the historian of science, he can trace the process of scientific thought down to his own time and can see it as the scientist qua scientist cannot, as the outcome of intellectual endeavour. I do not however mean to suggest that history is a greater intellectual triumph than science. From this point of view, they both stand on the same level, that of selfconsistent human achievement. c :

PHILOSOPHY

i. According to the conception of philosophy summarized at the beginning of this chapter, philosophical knowledge is knowledge of human experience. As we saw in the last section, the same is true of natural science and history but the knowledge which they afford of human experience is partial and incomplete. Philosophical knowledge is knowledge of human experience as the experience of rational agents and it includes also knowledge of levels of experience below that of rational activity. It is a way of knowing which exhibits the general character and structure of human experience and does justice to its range and variety. It is the most fundamental form of knowledge in the sense that, in it, knowing makes no difference to what is known and what is known, namely human experience, is known more adequately than in any other form of

226

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

knowledge. But, as the systematic pursuit of knowledge, philosophy no less than science and history, must have roots in the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity. To discover these roots we must go to the higher levels of rationality, those of spheres of rational activity and self-consistent human achievement. At these levels, the rational agent directs his conduct in the light of his judgement of the responsibilities which face him in his work, his leisure, his personal relations, as a citizen and as a member of the wider human community. Knowing how to identify these responsibilities and how to assess their relative importance on any given occasion is the practical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at these levels. On its theoretical side, this knowledge involves knowing something in detail of the current situation immediately confronting him in each of the various spheres of rational activity. But it also involves knowing something of the value and significance of work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship for human life. But the theoretical side of this knowledge remains subordinate to the practical side. Here, as elsewhere, the rational agent comes to 'know that . . .' through coming to 'know how . . .'. It is through his efforts to think out his responsibilities for himself instead of relying on the prescriptions of established rules and customs that the rational agent gradually gains knowledge of the value and significance of wcrk, leisure, personal relations and citizenship for human life. It is through these efforts that he gradually comes to see them as concentric spheres of rational activity within a way of life which is in principle open to all rational agents. It is through these same efforts again that he comes to see the value and significance of activities like art, science, history and philosophy as distinctively human achievements. But he does not articulate this knowledge into systematic theory. It remains more or less implicit, being expressed, if at all, only in the form of working conceptions in the course of his efforts to think out the demands of the situations which confront him. The roots of philosophy lie in the theoretical side of the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity at the higher levels of rationality. The essence of the philosophical attitude is the desire to know human experience as the ex-

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

227

perience of rational agents and to know it in a way which will do justice to all its facets and aspects. In coming to know the value and significance for human life of the various spheres of rational activity, the rational agent has implicitly adopted the philosophical attitude. He begins to philosophize when he becomes interested for its own sake in the theoretical side of what he already knows as an integral part of his rational activity and sets out to make it explicit in the form of systematic theory and to pursue its implications. From this point of view, he regards all the standards, values and general ideas in terms of which rational agents think and act as different forms of rationality and his aim is to discover the degree and kind of rationality they represent within the general structure of human experience. On the other side, his aim is to discover the general character and structure of human experience which makes possible the various kinds and degrees of rationality. I have said there is a sense in which the perspective of historical knowledge includes that of natural science. Science, being a rational activity, has a history, and history includes the history of science down to its latest phase. The perspective of philosophy includes both science and history. Science and history are both distinctive human achievements. It is the proper task of philosophy to discover the nature and significance of each and the structure of human experience which makes them possible. Science, history and philosophy may be regarded as the three distinct levels of knowledge, each of which incorporates but goes beyond the perspective of the level below it. But, while philosophy is theoretical knowledge in its most complete and systematic form, there is a sense in which it too is impartial and inadequate. The knowledge which it affords to human experience is always knowledge of it in terms of some aspect which has been selected as the point of departure. Just as all history is the history of specific activities, e.g. of politics, economics, art and so forth, so all philosophy is the philosophy of some standard, value or idea which has been selected as the point of departure. It is always knowledge of the character and structure of human experience as revealed through morality, art, science, politics or whatever the point of departure may be. These various points of departure are not mutually exclusive. The theory of morality will have implica-

228

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tions for the theory of knowledge, the theory of knowledge for the theory of art and so on. The account of the character and structure of human experience derived from one case must be compatible with that derived from another. In one sense, in coming to know a given standard, value or idea in terms of the character and structure of human experience, the philosopher always transcends his point of departure. But he never transcends it completely. His knowledge of human experience always retains something of his original angle of approach of his special point of departure. Philosophy may also be characterized in terms of the notion of the concrete universal. The universals of science are abstract. Those of philosophy are not. They are the universal side of individual achievements of rationality. The universals of philosophy cannot therefore be analysed into genus and mutually exclusive species. They are forms of rationality and are related as levels in a scale of levels, each level in the scale summing it up to that point. This holds not only of explicit forms of rationality but also with forms of human experience in general. Human experience is the experience of rational agents. Its structure is the structure of the universal rationality, those forms which constitute pre-rational experience, e.g. primary and personal self-consciousness, being levels of experience below the levels of rationality but surviving in them. Failure to grasp the structure of rationality and to realize that its various forms constitute a scale of levels, emasculates the attempt to philosophize. The purely analytic philosophy current in the English-speaking world today is a case in point. As an intellectual activity it is not without interest. From the point of view of the logic of the abstract universal, its procedure is impeccable. But as philosophy proper, according to the conception here being expounded, it fails to qualify. 2. There is another point which must be taken into account in considering the scope and limits of philosophical knowledge. The philosopher as a rational agent finds himself in a given historical situation. He is a member of a certain society and is already caught up in its life. The standards, values and ideas in terms of which that life is carried on have a history. In the past rational agents have thought and acted in terms of standards,

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

229

values and ideas which, if not wholly different from those currently in vogue, at least are not identical with them. In the course of the past process of rational activity, many shifts of emphasis have occurred. Some ideas have become obsolete, others have been expanded and developed. Some values have ceased to be important while others have come into prominence. Old standards have been applied to new contexts and have been reformulated and revised in the process. The current standards, values and ideas which confront the philosopher are part of the given historical situation in which he finds himself. They have come into being as the result of the gradual modification, adjustment and development of earlier standards, values and ideas. Even if, in some cases, they are formulated in the same terms, they are no longer understood in precisely the same way as in the past. What are the implications of this historical aspect of his subject-matter for the philosopher? He is interested in standards, values and ideas as forms of rationality within the general structure of human experience. It is the permanent significance of moral rules and customs, work and leisure, personal relations and citizenship, art and science, that concerns him. While there is a sense in which the current standards, values and ideas of his society have a special claim upon him, a point to which I will return later, he must not confine his attention to them. He must know their history and the account which he gives of the general character and structure of human experience must be such as to make intelligible the kind and degree of rationality, embodied in the standards, values and ideas of past ages as well. As a political philosopher, he must come to know political life in a way which makes intelligible the standards, values and ideas of the city states of antiquity and of feudalism, in addition to those of the nation-state. As a philosopher of science, he must understand the kind and degree of achievement embodied in Aristotelian as well as modern natural science. The account which he gives of the character and structure of human experience must do justice to both and bring out the significance of the transition from the one to the other. In this connection, it is important to realize that philosophy itself has a history. The philosopher, no less than the scientist and the historian, must build upon the work of his predecessors.

230

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

He must bring together the history of standards, values and ideas and the history of philosophical thought about them. But he must approach the latter not merely from a historical but from a philosophical point of view. He must look on it as a series of attempts to think out and come to know the permanent significance of standards, values and ideas and he must consider each attempt on its merits. He must ask, that is to say, of each past philosophy: how far does the general view of human experience, which it presents, make intelligible the kinds and degrees of rationality embodied in the various standards, values and ideas in terms of which in different ages rational agents have thought and acted? Inevitably, no one philosophy of the past will be adequate when judged from this point of view. Apart from other defects which it may possess, it will be limited by the author's inability to foresee future developments, so that he will not do justice to the standards, values and ideas of ages later than his own. It will be characterized by the perspective of the author's point of departure and will inevitably exhibit the limitations of the idiom of his age. But at the same time, it will also contain something positive which, so far as it goes, is genuine philosophical knowledge. It will make intelligible at least some of the standards, values and ideas in terms of which rational agents have thought and acted. The philosopher must make a critical study of the history of philosophy in order to elicit the genuine philosophical knowledge which is embedded in the philosophies of the past. He must try to work out for himself a view of human experience which will incorporate this knowledge and, at the same time, go beyond it by making intelligible standards, values and ideas inadequately treated in past philosophies. His aim must be to sum up the history of philosophy in his own philosophy, purging it of its defects while preserving its achievements and at the same time adding to them. But these past achievements will not be preserved in their original form. They will be reformulated and integrated into his own view of human experience. His own philosophy, however, cannot escape the fate of the past philosophies which he has been criticizing. Even in the rather unlikely event of its appearing to his contemporaries to be the last word in philosophical development, it will even-

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

231

tually pass into the history of philosophy and become subjectmatter for criticism by philosophers of the future. They must criticize it if they are to understand it. Inevitably they will find in it at least the defects which he found in the best of the past philosophies which he criticized. They must work out their own philosophies for themselves just as he has done. What he may hope is that they will find something of permanent significance in his work which, after being modified and restated, will be integrated into their philosophies. I said that the philosopher, no less than the scientist and the historian, builds on the work of his predecessors. There is, however, a difference in the two cases. Scientists and historians build on the work of their immediate predecessors. This they must assimilate and criticize. But, in order to criticize it, they need not go further back to the work of previous generations. They can criticize it directly, in the one case through experimental tests and in the other through an examination of the evidence and the inferences based on it. As a result of this critical procedure, some of the work of their immediate predecessors will appear in various ways to have been erroneous. New problems will be posed and new questions suggested. In so far as there is continuity between one generation and the next, it follows that current work in science and history incorporates all the achievements of the past. But this happens automatically without conscious effort on the part of scientists and historians. The case of the philosopher is different. In assimilating and criticizing the work of his immediate predecessors, he cannot use experimental tests or historical evidence. He must assess it on its own merits by deciding how far it makes intelligible all the various standards, values and ideas in terms of which rational agents have thought and acted. If it does this with any degree of success, it will incorporate in itself the genuine knowledge contained in past philosophies. The philosopher must go back to these past philosophies and see how well it incorporates their achievements. Only if he does this, has he any independent check on the account given by his immediate predecessors. The history of philosophy thus remains alive in current philosophy in a way in which the history of science and historiography does not in current work in these subjects. Scientists

232

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

and historians have no need to ask whether the work of their immediate predecessors incorporates the achievements of earlier generations. To the extent that it withstands experimental tests and confrontation by evidence, it does so. The nature of the philosopher's task precludes experimental testing and confrontation by evidence. Among other things, he is concerned with a view of experience which must make intelligible the procedure of experimental testing and inference from evidence. But the success with which a given philosophy sums up the history of philosophy in itself is not the only relevant consideration in criticizing it. Equally important are selfconsistency and freedom from ambiguity. A philosophy which contains internal inconsistencies may not, on that account alone, be lacking in all merit. It may be possible to reformulate the general view of experience which it presents in a way which will remove them. Again, along with inconsistencies which cannot be removed by reformulation, there may be genuine philosophical knowledge not to be found in any previous philosophy. Hume's philosophy, especially his theory of knowledge, is a case in point. What is then called for is a philosophical reconstruction which will incorporate the new insight without the attendant inconsistencies and, at the same time, preserve the achievements of earlier philosophies. As regards ambiguity: a given philosophy may seem at first to have reached a view of the character and structure of human experience which incorporates the main philosophical achievements of the past, but, after examination of its positive doctrines, may be found guilty of ambiguity. English Idealism in the hands of Bradley and Bosanquet is a case in point here. The ambiguity lies in their notion of the concrete universal. What is then needed is a reconstruction which will remove the ambiguity and at the same time preserve the positive achievements both of the philosophy in question and of past philosophies. This book is intended to be a contribution to such a reconstruction of English Idealism. Its aim is to exhibit the main achievement of English Idealism, its social philosophy and, by reformulating the notion of the concrete universal in terms of the theory of rational activity, to purge away the ambiguities of the original notion. The conception of philosophy which I am here developing I call 'Humanistic Idealism'

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

233

to distinguish it from the Absolute Idealism of Bradley and Bosanquet. For the sake of simplicity, I have spoken in preceding paragraphs of 'the philosopher'. In fact, the work of philosophy is of a complexity and scale which necessitates co-operation and collaboration. By 'a philosophy', I do not necessarily mean the work of one man, although it may sometimes be that, but the work stemming from a distinct view of the character and structure of human experience. By a 'school of philosophy', I understand the collective work of a group of thinkers who share roughly the same general view of human experience and, in consequence, the same general conception of philosophy. But in this connection it is important to remember what was said at the end of the last sub-section. The view of experience presented in a given piece of philosophy, which is expounded on a given occasion, will always bear upon it the marks of its author's point of departure. It will be the view of experience which is revealed from the angle of the theory of morality, of art, of scientific or historical knowledge. What is traditionally called metaphysics is no exception. It represents the view of experience revealed by the consideration of what it is to know and what there is to know, both questions being taken together. Every view of experience is partial and incomplete, since it reflects the perspective of the angle of approach to it. What is important is not that futile efforts should be made to overcome this inevitable limitation but that the different views revealed by different angles of approach should be checked against one another and, where incompatibilities are revealed, efforts should be made to remove them by revising the theories in question. 3. Has philosophy, on the conception of it here being expounded, any practical significance? So far as the actual business of living is concerned, does it make any difference whether the work is done or not ? Philosophical knowledge is knowledge of human experience as the experience of rational agents. In what way, if any, does it facilitate rational activity ? We have already touched on these questions in Chapter III in connection with Green's theory of morality and its implications for moral practice. But, in the light of the discussion of the present

234

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

chapter, it is appropriate to consider them briefly again. In this connection, we must recall what has been said about individual achievements of rationality. Rational activity consists of individual achievements of rationality. To know what an individual achievement of rationality is, you must evaluate it as an achievement. This must be done with reference to the relevant historical situation. But if it is to be done fully and completely, it must be done in terms of the highest level in the scale of rationality. Making such evaluations is the work of criticism. Every rational agent must be a critic. In order to act rationally, you must, to the best of your ability, recognize current individual achievements of rationality for what they are. One might describe the philosopher as the rational agent who is exploring and trying to know the basis of his own critical procedure. Will such knowledge make him a better critic ? In so far as he knows something of the various levels of rationality within the general structure of human experience his evaluations of individual achievements of rationality will be less likely to be marred by irrelevance and one-sidedness. He will know that ultimately it is in terms of the highest level of rationality that a given achievement must be judged. He will therefore not be taken in by appeals to immediate considerations and interests however pressing these may be. His perspective as a critic will be enlarged by his philosophical knowledge. He will have a clearer idea on any given occasion of what sort of things to take into account and how much importance to attach to each of them. But it must not be forgotten that evaluations of individual achievements of rationality must always be with reference to their historical context. Knowledge is necessary of the intimate details of the situation and to this philosophy has nothing to contribute beyond emphasizing that it is necessary. Thus while philosophy can help the rational agent in his work as a critic, something more is necessary if that work is to be well done. In the terminology of this book, individual achievements of rationality are concrete universals. Philosophy is concerned with their universal rather than their concrete side although not denying but, on the contrary, affirming that they are both. There is a sense in which criticism is the essence of all

HUMANISTIC IDEALISM

2^£

rational activity. The rational agent appraises and criticizes his own and other people's conduct in the course of defining the situation in which on any given occasion he stands. He defines the situation so as to identify his responsibilities and decide what in particular he shall do. But this decision itself involves further criticism. The agent evaluates possible courses of action as individual achievements of rationality and decides upon that which embodies the highest achievement. As a rational agent it is his duty always to embark on that course of action which is the highest achievement of rationality open to him. In defining the situation, criticism is retrospective. In deciding what shall be done, it is prospective. But the principle in both cases is the same. Thus philosophy is not without practical significance both as regards defining the situation and deciding what shall be done. It is relevant to prospective criticism in the same way as it is relevant to retrospective criticism, namely in enlarging the critic's perspective. But no more in the case of prospective than in the case of retrospective criticism is philosophy by itself enough. Before the agent can evaluate possible courses of action as individual achievements of rationality, he must know what courses are possible. This involves knowing the consequences of various alternatives and has nothing to do with philosophy. In so far as it is defective, the agent's prospective criticism will be irrelevant. In so far as it can help to make the rational agent a better critic, philosophy is not without practical significance. More generally, it can help us to understand better what we are trying to do as rational agents and how well we are doing it. But we must remember that philosophy as the systematic pursuit of knowledge has its roots in the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity. In one sense the rational agent in his work as a critic always does his own philosophizing. When, in the course of identifying his responsibilities and deciding which on a given occasion is the strongest, he thinks out the value and significance for human life of the various spheres of rational activity, he is implicitly philosophizing. So far as the actual business of living is concerned, it is this implicit philosophizing that matters. To be of practical significance, academic philosophy, the systematic pursuit of philosophical knowledge, must influence it. No doubt, this influence can best

236

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

be secured if academic philosophy is an integral part of higher education. In this connection a point touched on earlier becomes relevant. I said that current standards, values and ideas are of especial importance to the philosopher. They are so in the sense that they are the medium through which he must communicate with his non-academic contemporaries. As we have seen, he must not in his work confine his attention to them. But, if he is to have any practical influence, he must make them intelligible as forms of rationality and, in expounding his work, emphasis must be placed upon them. To do as much is indeed his social responsibility as a philosopher.

CHAPTER VII

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

A:

THE REAL WILL

In Chapter V of this book I expounded and criticised the theory of the Absolute developed by Bradley and Bosanquet. I argued that it is not a tenable theory and that the error which gave rise to its lies in an ambiguity in the notion of the concrete universal as formulated by Bradley and Bosanquet and em­ ployed in their metaphysical writings. My point was that, when the notion of the concrete universal is properly under­ stood and the distinction between a whole such an an organism and rational activity is grasped, the theory of the Absolute does not arise. The latter theory is not an integral part of Idealist philosophy but, on the contrary, arises from an error in the development of that philosophy. In the last chapter I attempted to sketch the outlines of a conception of philosophy based upon a consistent development of the central ideas in English Ideal­ ism, ideas which, in the course of preceding chapters, had already been examined and discussed. I contended that this conception of philosophy, which I called 'Humanistic Idealism', enables the genuine philosophical achievements of traditional Idealism to be preserved and in particular its achievements in social philosophy. In the present chapter, I shall try to sub­ stantiate this contention in connection with Bosanquet's politi­ cal philosophy. Boscanquet's best known work in political philosophy is his Philosophical Theory of the State, a book which was first pub­ lished in 1899. In the opening chapters, he tries to make clear the nature of the task on which he is embarking and in par­ ticular what he means by a philosophical theory. 'It is assumed then for the purpose of a philosophical treatment,' he writes, I.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-8

238

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

'that everything, and more particularly in this case the political life of man, has a nature of its own which is worthy of investigation on its own merits and for its own sake.'1 Later he goes on to say that for philosophy, 'society is an achievement or utterance of human nature, of course not divorced from nature in general, having a certain degree of solidity so to speak i.e. being able, up to a certain point, to endure the tests and answer the questions which are suggested by the scrutiny of human life from the point of view of value and completeness. Is the social life the best or the only life for a human soul? In what way through society and in what characteristics of society does the soul lay hold upon its truest self or become in short the best that it has in it to be?'2 There is nothing in these statements of the nature and scope of philosophy to suggest the theory of the Absolute. Indeed the general position which they indicate is not unlike Humanistic Idealism. No doubt Bosanquet would say that from the standpoint of metaphysics, which for him is the theory of ultimate reality, the conclusions of political philosophy need to be modified. No merely human achievement, on the theory of the Absolute, is more than appearance. But we can take his political philosophy on its own merits and need not concern ourselves with the problem of interpreting it from the standpoint of the theory of the Absolute since, as we have seen, that theory is untenable and no part of a consistent Idealist position. This is not to say, however, that Bosanquetfs political philosophy when taken on its own merits is not open to criticism. In fact, as we shall see, the ambiguity in the notion of the concrete universal which gave rise to the theory of the Absolute seems to have exerted a deleterious influence at certain points in Bosanquet's political philosophy. In this chapter I shall expound and criticize the essentials of his political philosophy. I shall be concerned for the most part with the argument of the Philosophical Theory of the State which is Bosanquet's most systematic and elaborate work in political philosophy. But I shall also refer to certain other writings at various points in order to bring out more clearly some features of his position. 2. Bosanquet begins his main argument in the Philosophical Theory of the State with a criticism of the atomistic theory of

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

239

society which was the basis of the Utilitarian moral and political philosophy. All such doctrines he calls theories of the first appearance', and he says that they 'are characterized by accepting, as ultimate, the absolute and natural independent existence of the physical individual, and therefore regard government as an encroachment on the self, and force as an oppression'.1 He argues that if human society is nothing but an aggregate of separate physical individuals, then morality and self-government are impossible. The view gives rise to what he describes as the paradoxes of ethical and political obligation. The paradox of ethical obligation,' he writes, 'starts from what is accepted as a self and asks how it can exercise authority cr coercion over itself, how a metaphor, drawn from the relations of some persons to others, can find application within what we take to be the limits of an individual mind/2 His point is simply that if authority and coercion is thought of solely in terms of physical force, as it is in theories of the first appearance, then it is impossible to see how a man can discipline and exercise control over himself. He can only discipline and control others against whom he can bring to bear physical force. Equally, it is impossible to see how there can be such a thing as self-government. The paradox of political obligation/ Bosanquet continues, 'starts from what is accepted as authority or social coercion and asks in what way the term "self", derived from the individual mind, can be applicable at once to the agent and patient in such coercion, exercised prima facie by some persons over others/ 3 The point here is that no society can be said to govern itself, if government and self are thought of in purely physical terms. There can only be the exercise of physical control and coercion by one group over another. There can be no such thing as political obligation any more than there can be such a thing as moral obligation. People simply do what they want unless and until they are forcibly restrained by other people. It is all a matter of physical force and nothing else. But this conclusion has been reached by starting with the conception of human society as nothing but an aggregate of separate physical individuals. Bosanquet therefore sets himself the task of developing a conception of society which will do justice to the political and moral life with which we are in practice familiar.

240

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

3. It is in the doctrine of a real or general will that Bosanquet finds the basis of a theory of society which will make morality and self-government intelligible. He acknowledges Rousseau as the original exponent of the doctrine but thinks that the latter's account fails to bring out all its implications. His version is intended to be a clear and consistent statement of an idea only partially understood and imperfectly developed by Rousseau. He introduces it to the reader of the Philosophical Theory of the State in the following passage. 'A comparison of our acts of will through a month or a year is enough to show that no one object of action as we conceive it when acting exhausts all that our will demands. Even the life that we wish to live, and which on the average we do live, is never before us as a whole in the motive of any particular volition. In order to obtain a full statement of what we will, what we want at any moment must be at least be corrected and amended by what we want at all other moments and this cannot be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonize it with what others want, which involves an application of the same process tc them. But when any considerable degree of such correction and amendment has been gone through, our own will will return to us in a shape in which we should not know it again, although every detail would be a necessary inference from the whole of wishes and resolutions which we cherish; and if it were to be supplemented and re-adjusted so as to stand not merely for the life which, on the whole, we manage to live but for a life ideally without contradiction, it would appear to us quite remote from anything which we know. Such a process of harmonizing and re-adjusting a mass of data to bring them into a rational state is what is meant by criticism and criticism, when applied throughout to the will, shows that it is not our real will or, in the plainest language, that what we really want is something more and other than at any given moment we are aware that we will, although the wants that we are aware of lead up to it at every point/ 1 This passage can best be understood if we interpret it as an attempt by Bosanquet to expound the essentials of the theory of rational activity in terms of 'will'. Taken by themselves, our day to day acts of will, what Bosanquet sometimes calls our 'actual wiir, embody rationality at the level of ends and means.

BERNARD BOSANQUET's POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

l\t

When we attempt to amend and correct what we want at anyone moment in the light of what we want at all other moments, we have moved to rationality at the level of private self-satisfaction. We are no longer thinking in terms of particular ends and means but of a satisfying way of living. When we go further and take account not only of our own wants but also of those of others, attempting to correct and adjust ours to harmonize with theirs, we have moved to the level of morality. We are now thinking in terms of a social, and not merely a privately satisfying, way of living. When Bosanquet says that: 'In order to obtain a full statement of what we will, what we want at any moment must at least be corrected and amended by what we want at all other moments and this cannot be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonize it with what others want . . .', he is emphasizing the social character of human personality. When we reflect on ourselves and our situation, we realize that a rational way of living must be a social way of living. When Bosanquet says that: 'when any considerable degree of such correction and amendment has been gone through, our own will will return to us in a shape in which we should not know it again . . .' his point is that most of the time we consciously think and will in terms of particular ends and means. It is from this limited perspective that our real will, what we really want as rational and therefore social and moral agents, appears quite remote. But if, for most of the time, we think and act only at the level of ends and means, how is it possible for us to achieve a social way of living ? Bosanquet's answer is that the laws, institutions and customs of a given society provide the frame-work of a social way of living for its members and that, by observing the rules and conventions which they embody, the members can live socially without having to go through a process of correction and amendment every time they act. The laws, institutions and customs of a given society, that is to say, provide a working formula for rational conduct. The members can concentrate the bulk of their attention on day to day problems of ends and means making sure only that they observe the rules and conventions of established laws, institutions and customs. In this way, their day to day acts of will are automatically corrected and amended so as to express

242

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

their real will without explicit thought on their part. The laws and institutions of any community/ Bosanquet writes, 'are, so to speak, the standing interpretation of all the private wills which compose it and it is thus possible to assign to the general will an actual concrete meaning as something different at once from any private will and from the vote of any given assembly, and yet as standing on the whole for what the one and the other necessarily aim at sustaining as the framework of their lives/2 Bosanquet agrees that the established rules and conventions will themselves be imperfect from the standpoint of the real will. But in his view the important point to realize is that, although imperfect, they provide the individual agent with a much better indication of a social way of living than he could work out for himself on any given occasion of action. 'It is needless to observe/ he goes on, 'that such a representation of the real will is imperfect since every set of institutions is an imperfect embodiment of life and any given system of life is itself incomplete. It is more important to remember that, although always incomplete just as the system of sciences is an incomplete expression of truth, the complex of social institutions is, as we have seen, very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at any particular instant move any individual mind in volition'.3 This account of laws and social institutions suggests that what Bosanquet has in mind is something like rationality at the level of moral rules and custom. In saying that a complex of social institutions although an incomplete embodiment of life is Very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at any particular instance move any particular mind in volition', he seems to be insisting that moral rules and customs embody a higher level of rationality than action at the level of ends and means. But is this all that he has in mind? His account of laws and social institutions is strongly reminiscent of Bradley's doctrine of the social self in Ethical Studies, the doctrine of 'My Station and its duties'. That doctrine, as we saw in Chapter II, conceals an uncertainty on Bradley's part about the higher levels of rationality. He fails to develop the theory of rational activity satisfactorily beyond the level of moral rules and customs and in particular fails to grasp the conception of spheres of rational activity. Is Bosanquet simply following

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

243

Bradley and repeating his errors ? The fact that he shares the latter's notion of the concrete universal together with its ambiguity and repeats the same errors in metaphysics gives substance to the question. But, on the other hand, Bosanquet was a close student of Green's work in ethics and political philosophy and, as we have seen, Green avoids Bradley's errors and develops the theory of rational activity fully and consistently. If Bosanquet really understood Green, then surely he would not simply repeat Bradley's errors. In fact, his understanding of Green was imperfect and he does not seem ever to have realized that Green's theory of morality was essentially a criticism and development of Bradley's. He tends throughout all his social philosophy to oscillate back and forth between the doctrines of Ethical Studies and Prolegomena to Ethics without realizing the respects in which the two differ. It is here that the chief weakness in his work lies, a weakness which, as I shall suggest later, is ultimately due to the ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal. 4. Green's influence on Bosanquet's political philosophy can be seen in the following passages from the Philosophical Theory of the State. Discussing the value and significance of social life he writes: 'In any case we have seen enough to suggest that society prima facie exists in the correlated dispositions by which a plurality of individual minds meets the need for covering the ground open to human nature by division of labour in the fullest sense.'1 His point is that social life should be regarded as a co-operative way of living in which human potentialities are realized to the fullest possible extent. He then goes on to insist on the importance of the function of contributing to the realizing of human capacities. 'But we have further pointed out,' he writes, 'that the true particularization of the human universal does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between different persons and that the co-relation of differences and the identity which they constitute remain much the same whether they chance to fall within a single human being or are dispersed over several. The stress seems therefore to lie on the attainment of the true particularization which does justice to the maximum of human capacity rather than the mere relations which arise between the members of a

244

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

de facto plurality, not that the claim of human nature in any individual does not constitute a claim that it should be perfected in him but that its perfecting must be judged by a criticism addressed to determining real capacities and not by the accidental standards of a given plurality.13 In these passages Bosanquet is expressing in his own way the doctrine that the ultimate moral community is the community of mankind and that the highest standard of rationality is the level of self-consistent human achievement. From a superficial reading of his argument it might appear that he is denying value and significance to individual personality but this is not his intention. He is not maintaining that 'the presence of human nature in any individual does not constitute a claim that it should be perfected in him'. His point is that it is a claim to achieve the rationality of which the individual is capable and that it must be evaluated accordingly. Each individual, that is to say, is a rational agent in the making and is entitled to be treated as such. But individuals are variously and unequally gifted. In the social division of labour through which human capacities are realized the difference between functions does not correspond to the difference between individual persons. Each man should perform those functions which he has the ability to perform. A gifted individual will be able to perform a variety of functions, another will find his personality in the performance of a few simple ones. What matters is that each should b& able to make the best contribution of which he is capable to self-consistent human achievement, not that each should be subjected to uniform treatment. AU this suggests that the laws and institutions of a given society should be criticized and evaluated from the standpoint of self-consistent human achievement. How far do they enable the members of the society to realize the capacities which they possess ? How far do they thwart or restrict the achievement of rationality by the members of other societies? Bosanquet seems to be committed to this doctrine by what he says about 'covering the ground open to human nature', 'the true particularization of the human universal", 'the attainment of the true particularization which does justice to the maximum of human capacities', and that 'the presence of human nature in any individual' constitutes 'a claim that it shall be perfected in

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

245

him*. On this view, the real will is the will for self-consistent human achievement. Each level of rationality may be regarded as a level of will and at the highest level, that of the real or general will, the lower levels are summed up and incorporated in modified and revised form. Rational activity is not merely a matter of intellect. It is practical and this may bevemphasized by expounding it in terms of volition. But, as we shall see later, Bosanquet does not consistently maintain this doctrine. There is no reason why the theory of rational activity should not be expounded in terms of the doctrine of a real or general will but Bosanquet's version cannot be regarded as a satisfactory rendering of it. B:

THE THEORY

OF THE

STATE

1. The doctrine of the real will was put forward by Bosanquet to solve the paradoxes of ethical obligation and self-government. These paradoxes arise in theories of 'the first appearance* which identify the self with the physical organism and government with force. For such theories, freedom is nothing but the absence of restraint. The doctrine of the real will however provides the basis for a deeper and more adequate theory of freedom. Bosanquet's theory of the state may be most conveniently approached through an examination of this theory of freedom. 'Liberty no doubt as Rousseau has told us/ he writes in the Philosophical Theory of the State, 'so far agreeing with Mill, is the essential quality of human life. It is so, we understand, because it is the condition of our being ourselves. But now that it occurs to us that in order to be ourselves we must always be becoming something which we are not, in other words, we must always recognize we are something more than we have become, liberty as the condition of our being ourselves cannot simply be something which we have, still less something which we have always had, a status quo to be maintained. It must be a condition relevant to our continued struggle to assert the control of something in us whic& we recognize as imperative or as our real self but which we only obey in a very imperfect degree/1 Bosanquet's point is that to be free or at liberty is to be in a position to act rationally. But the value and significance of

246

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

freedom depends upon how rational activity is conceived. For theories of 'the first appearance', rational activity is thought of simply in terms of ends and means and freedom is therefore merely the absence of restraint upon the agent's efforts to bring about his ends. But when it is realized that rational activity is something more than merely action at the level of ends and means, that it is the activity of rational self-realization and that there is a scale of levels of rationality, the conception of freedom as simply the absence of restraint upon the agent's attempts to bring about his ends is seen to be inadequate. To be free is to be in a position to realize oneself as a rational agent but everything turns on what being a rational agent is thought to involve. It is not merely a matter of bringing about particular ends which happen to be desired, but of trying to live and act in a certain way. As Bosanquet puts it, it is a 'continued struggle to assert the control of something in us which we recognize as imperative upon us or as our real self. In terms of the doctrine of the real will, to be free is to be in a position to realize not merely our actual or day to day will, but our real will. Bosanquet argues that freedom as the condition of being in a position to realize the real will is essentially a condition of mind. It is a matter of having reached a stage of moral and intellectual development at which one is not at the mercy of desires and impulses as they arise but is capable of selfdiscipline for the sake of acting in a socially responsible way. He proceeds to contrast this view of freedom with the absence of restraint theory. 'In the case of liberty conceived as a condition of the mind,' he writes, 'just as in the case of liberty conceived as the absence of physical menace or coercion on the part of other persons, the root of the matter is the claim to be determined only by ourselves. But in the literal case, what we mean by ourselves is the given self, the group of will and wishes, of feelings and ideas associated from time to time with my particular body; in short the casual, uncriticized mind as we experience it all day and every day/2 In calling the absence of restraint theory 'the literal case', Bosanquet is following Green. The latter's point was that the absence of restraint theory reflects accurately the use of the word 'freedom' in every-day life. Describing his own theory of

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

247

freedom as the metaphorical case, Bosanquet continues: 'In the metaphorical case, we have made so much progress in selfcriticism as to know at least that our self is something of a problem. We know that the given self, the mind from day to day, is not satisfactory and we throw the centre of gravity outside it and place the true self in something which we rather want to be than actually are, although at the same time it is clear that to some extent we are this something or we should not want to be it.'3 Bosanquet is in effect saying that if we take seriously the notion that freedom is freedom for rational activity, a notion which is implicit in the theories of 'the first appearance', we shall be led beyond the conception of absence of restraint on the attempt to bring about particular ends. To be in a position to act rationally is to have attained the appropriate stage of moral and intellectual development. It is to be free from the defects of character and the impediments of ignorance which prevent the achievement of rational activity at the level of morality. In all this, Bcsanquet is repeating the essentials of Green's theory of freedom, the main outlines of which were traced at the end of Chapter III of this book. According to this theory, the scale of levels of rationality may be regarded as a scale of levels of freedom. The man who is capable of rational activity at the level of morality is more free than the man who is only capable of achieving the level of private self-satisfaction because he has a mere adequate conception of his self and his situation and is less subject to the restraints of ignorance and caprice. To the man who is only capable of rational activity at the level of private self-satisfaction, the rules and customs of his society appear as irksome restraints upon his attempt to achieve a personally satisfying way of living. Equally the man who is capable of achieving the higher levels of rationality is more free than the man who is limited to the level of customary morality. He is no longer at the mercy of the arbitrary element in established rules and customs and is able to criticize them, obeying them not blindly but because he understands the reasons for them. There is a sense in which freedom at every level of rationality is the absence of restraint. The error of the theories of 'the first appearance' lies in thinking that the only restraints which can arise are those which impede the

248

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

bringing about of particular ends, restraints which directly or indirectly are always of a physical kind. We can now see how for Bosanquet the paradox of ethical obligation is overcome. The man who disciplines his personal desires and inclinations for the sake of discharging his moral obligations is acting freely. In deciding to do what he ought to do as distinct from what he would like to do merely from the point of view of his immediate impulses, he is acting in accordance with his real will. A paradox arises only if rational activity is identified with action at the level of ends and means, and freedom with the absence of physical restraint. Once it is realized that rational activity is something mere than merely action at the level of ends and means and that a man can discipline himself not only from fear but also for the sake of doing what he believes to be right, the paradox disappears. As regards the paradox of self-government: it arises from a view which regards a human society merely as an aggregate of separate selfcontained agents. It disappears when a society is seen to be a way of living for rational agents who freely accept and fulfil the obligations which membership of such a group entails. But this is not all. For Bcsanquet, organization and explicit regulation is necessary if a society is to succeed in the practical achievement of self-government. A self-governing society must be a political community or state. 2. Expounding his theory of the state, Bosanquet first remarks that: The term "state" accents indeed the political aspect of the whole and is opposed to the notion of an anarchical society/1 His point is that social life must become political if it is to avoid becoming anarchical. He goes on to argue that we must think of the state not as a separate community contrasted with other forms of social life but as the frame-work within which rational social life is lived. 'But it (the state) includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined,' he writes, 'from the family to the trade and from the trade to the church and the university. It includes all of them not as the mere collection of the growths of the country but as the structure which gives life and meaning to the political whole while receiving from it mutual adjustment and therefore expansion and a more liberal air. The state, it might be said, is thus con-

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

249

ceived as the operative criticism of all institutions, the modification and adjustment by which they are capable of playing a rational part in the object of human will, and criticism in this sense is the life of institutions/2 From the standpoint of the theory of rational activity, this notion of the state as the framework of social life is quite intelligible. It is fundamentally the notion of citizenship as a sphere of rational activity, a sphere which includes the lesser spheres of work, leisure and personal relations. That this is what Bosanquet seems to have in mind is suggested by the following passage. 'It follows that the state in this sense is not a number of persons but a working conception of life. It is, as Plato has taught us, a conception by the guidance of which every living member of the commonwealth is enabled to perform his function/ 3 Bosanquet goes on to say that he does not regard it as a criticism of his argument that in it 'state' and 'society' seem to be equated. He writes: 'We have hitherto spoken of the state and society as almost convertible terms and in fact it is part of our argument that the influence of society differs only in degree from the powers of the state and that the explanation of both is ultimately the same. On the other hand, it is also part of our argument that the state as such is a necessary factor in civilized life, that no true ideal lies in the direction of minimizing its individuality or restricting its absolute power. By 'the state' then we mean society as a unit rightfully exercising control over its members through absolute physical power/* This reference to power brings out an important feature of Bosanquet's theory. The state as the operative criticism of all institutions/ he writes, 'is necessarily force and in the last resort it is the only recognized and justified force. It seems important to observe that force is inherent in the state and that no true ideal points in the direction of destroying it.'5 But by 'force' he means something more than merely physical coercion. 'We make a great mistake/ he writes, 'in thinking of the force exercised by the state as limited to the restraint of disorderly persons by the police and punishment of internal lawbreakers. The state is the flywheel of our life. Its system is constantly reminding us of duties from sanitation to the incidence of trusteeship which we have not the least desire to neglect but

2^0

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

which we are either too ignorant or too indolent to carry out apart from instruction and authoritative suggestion/6 The force which is inherent in the state is the force of routine, organization, tradition and custom as well as physical compulsion. 'Without such power/ Bosanquet writes, 'or where if anywhere it does not exist, there could be no ultimate and effective adjustment of the claims of individuals and the various social groups in which individuals are involved/7 This account of the nature and role of force brings us back to the doctrine of the real will. We saw in the last section that according to Bosanquet, The laws and institutions of any community are, so to speak, the standing interpretation of all the private wills that compose it . . /. The real will, that is to say, is embodied in the complex of laws and institutions of a given society. We are now told that The state is the fly-wheel of our life. Its system is constantly reminding us of duties . . /. These duties, 'which we have not the least desire to neglect', are duties which 'we are either too ignorant or too indolent to carry out apart from instruction and authoritative suggestion.1 The complex of laws and institutions which embody the real will, that is to say, act upon us with the force of routine, tradition and custom. Our real will is our will to live and act as citizens and we realize it by conforming to the rules and conventions of the laws and institutions of our society. But what gives system and direction to the complex of laws and institutions is that our society is politically organized. To put it another way: only in so far as we are members of a politically organized society can we effectively realize our real will, our will to live and act as socially responsible persons, because only in a politically organized society can the complex of laws and institutions of social life be given system and direction. Social life which is not politically organized will tend towards anarchy and confusion, and the achievement of a socially responsible life, the effective realization of our real will, will be difficult if not impossible. The force of routine, organization, tradition and custom does not restrict freedom. The man who acts in accordance with his real will is more free than the man who acts only in accordance with his day to day will. The real will is the will to live and act as a citizen and this means to live and act in conformity with

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

2^1

the complex of laws and institutions of one's society, a complex which is given unity and direction through political organization. The force of routine, organization, tradition and custom comes to the citizen as what Bosanquet calls Instruction and authoritative suggestion'. He does not find it a restraint but rather a necessary guide in assisting him to become what he ought to be. What is restrained is not the citizen's real will but his actual will in so far as taken by itself it conflicts with socially responsible living. The man who responds to the discipline of routine, organization, tradition and custom and controls his immediate impulses and desires is for Bosanquet as for Rousseau 'being forced to be free'. The use of physical compulsion is a final resort in imposing the discipline of social living on recalcitrant individuals who are unable or unwilling to respond to 'instruction and authoritative suggestion'. What is coerced by this compulsion is their anarchic day to day will. In so far as physical compulsion is used against them, they are not being forced to be free, for they are capable only of the lower levels of freedom and not of the freedom of citizenship. Unless and until they become able to respond freely to the discipline of the complex of laws and institutions of the political community they must be subjected to physical compulsion in order to protect other citizens. The paradox of self-government arose out of a view which equated force with physical compulsion and government with force. For Bosanquet, force is inherent in the state and therefore in government but it is by no means identical with physical compulsion. The members of a politically organized society govern themselves in so far as they respond to the 'instruction and authoritative suggestion' of routine, organization, tradition and custom not from fear of punishment but from a desire to fulfil their social responsibilities. For Bosanquet, that is to say, self-government is to be understood as a necessary feature of rational social living. Now it seems to follow that every politically organized society must be self-governing. This is true in the sense that no politically organized society can exist on the basis of physical compulsion alone: those who supply the physical compulsion at least cannot be physically coerced. But on this view, there is no significant difference between a tyranny and a constitutional state. For Bosanquet, the important thing is that

2$2

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

routine, organization, tradition and custom should provide the 'instruction and authoritative suggestion' necessary to enable the citizens to act in accordance with their real will and no doubt this can happen only under a constitutional regime and not a tyranny. But the question now arises as to the adequacy with which the laws and institutions of a given political community embody the real will. According to Bosanquet, the state is 'a working conception of life' and 'the operative criticism of all institutions'. This suggests that the complex of laws and institutions must be criticized in the light of a working conception of life which is among other things a conception of political life or the life of citizenship. But what is this conception and can it itself be criticized ? Our next step must be to see how Bosanquet answers these questions. 3. Near the end of the Thilosophical Theory ol the State, Bosanquet takes up the question of the grounds on which states ought to be criticized. The state then exists to promote good life', he writes, 'and what it does cannot be morally indifferent. But its actions cannot be identified with the deeds of its agents or morally judged as private volitions are judged/1 He then goes on to explain why this is so. Referring to the state, he writes: 'Its acts proper are always public acts and it cannot as a state act within the relations of private life in which organized morality exists. It has no determinate function within a larger community but is itself the supreme community, the guardian of the whole moral world and not a factor within an organized moral world. Moral relations presuppose an organized life but such a life is only within the state not between the state and other communities.'2 When Bosanquet says that the actions of the state 'cannot be identified with the deeds of its agents', his point is that the personal failure of an official or politician is something different from the failure or inadequacy by the whole political community. An official may be dishonest, a politician may be politically inept, but this does not provide grounds for condemning the state of which they are members. It is their personal inadequacies and limitations which deserve censure* It is inappropriate to judge a state by the standards of personal conduct. Bosanquet's doctrine on this point does not conflict

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

253

with the theory of rational activity. Citizenship and personal relations are distinct spheres of rational activity. A man may behave well by the standards of the latter and at the same time badly by the standards of the former as when he allows loyalty to family or friends to lead him into acquiescing in crime. Being a good citizen is not the same thing as being a loyal friend or member of a family. But the two spheres are not mutually exclusive. They are concentric, that of citizenship including that of personal relations. Being a good citizen does not involve repudiating loyalties to family and friends. It means modifying these loyalties to harmonize them with the responsibilities of citizenship. When Bosanquet says that the state is the supreme community' he is, at least in part, expressing this relation between the responsibilities of citizenship and private life. But the statement that 'the state is the supreme community', taken literally, cannot be reconciled with the theory of rational activity. According to the latter theory, the supreme community is the human community. A man's responsibilities as a human being take priority over his responsibilities as a citizen of a particular state. To be moral is not merely to be a good member of a family and friend, nor even a good citizen, although it involves these things. It is to be a good human being. Loyalties to family, friends and to nation must be modified and where necessary revised to harmonize them with loyalty to mankind. Now the passages which I quoted from the Philosophical Theory of the State in section A, sub-section 4 of this chapter, where Bosanquet speaks of the social division of labour for 'covering the ground open to human nature', and of 'particularizing the human universal', suggest a position basically like Green's in which the ultimate moral community is the human community. The statement in the first of the two passages quoted above, that 'the state exists to promote good life' also suggests the same position. But the statements in the second passage that 'the state is the guardian of the whole moral world' and that the state 'is not a factor in a larger community', suggest that for Bosanquet the ultimate moral community is the political community, that morality is to be equated with citizenship. When Bosanquet says that 'moral relations presuppose an organized life', he is developing a point made earlier in his theory of the state, that a society will tend

254

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

towards anarchy unless it becomes politically organized. In an anarchic situation socially responsible conduct and hence morality is difficult if not impossible. But granted that in the absence of settled conditions and social stability, morality can hardly be achieved, the question remains as to what the various moral obligations and loyalties are and how they are related. It does not follow merely from the fact that a society without political organization tends towards anarchy, that the state is the ultimate moral community and citizenship the highest form of morality. But we have still to see what Bosanquet's positive doctrine of political criticism is. Referring to the state, he writes: The means adopted by such a supreme power to discharge its responsibilities as a whole are of course subject to criticism as respects the conception of good which they imply and their appropriateness to the task of realizing it/ 3 He goes on to say that: The nearest approach which we can imagine to public immorality would be when the organs which act for the state as such exhibit in their public actions on its behalf a narrow, selfish or brutal conception of the interests of the state as a whole in which, so far as can be judged, public opinion at the time agrees. In such a case the state as such may really be said to be acting immorally, i.e. in contravention of its main duty to sustain the conditions of as much good life as possible/* Bosanquet here seems to be saying that there are two levels of political criticism. On the one hand, a given state should be criticized on the basis of the general conception of life implied in the complex of laws and institutions which it tries to maintain. On the other, particular policies and measures should be criticized from the standpoint of their efficiency. A given state, that is to say, is an individual achievement of rationality and must be evaluated as such. In addition, the work of its government should be criticized in detail on the grounds of technical and economic efficiency but this latter criticism must be subordinate to the former. To the extent that the conception of life implied in a given complex of laws and institutions is narrow selfish or brutal, the state in question is a poor achievement of rationality. But it does not follow that a state which is a relatively poor achievement of rationality should necessarily be condemned as immoral. It may be the best that the citizens are

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

2££

capable of. A narrow, selfish or brutal conception of life may result from ignorance, stupidity or bigotry. A given state would strictly deserve censure as immoral only if there was good reason to think that its citizens were capable of a better achievement of rationality and that owing to lack of integrity in its public life on the part of at least some citizens, politicians and officials, things were worse than they need be. Immorality must not be equated with ignorance and prejudice although no doubt, where the latter are widespread, the former will also be present. In other words, the reasons why a given state represents a poor achievement of rationality will always be complex. In part it will be due to ignorance and prejudice: in part to immorality in those who could do something to improve the situation but fail to make the necessary effort. Setting aside the point about immorality, however, it seems that, in his positive doctrine of political criticism, Bosanquet is taking up a position fundamentally the same as that of Green. The good life which the state exists to maintain is something more than merely the life of citizenship. It is the life of selfconsistent human achievement and the ultimate moral community is not the state but the community of mankind. But this is inconsistent with the negative side of his doctrine of political criticism summarized in the two passages quoted at the beginning of this sub-section in which he maintains that the state is the ultimate moral community and that morality is equivalent to citizenship. Thus, on the one hand, he speaks of the state as 'the guardian of the whole moral world' and says that it 'is not a factor in an organized moral world'. On the other hand, he speaks of 'the duty of the state' and of its 'responsibilities'. How can it have a duty and responsibilities if it is not in some sense a factor in a larger moral world, if not necessarily an organized one ? We can now see that Bosanquet's answer to the questions posed at the end of the last sub-section is ambiguous. Those questions were: what is the working conception of life which the state represents? can this conception itself be criticized? In his positive doctrine of political criticism, he is following Green and maintaining that the state as a working conception of life is only an aspect of a larger moral conception. On this view, the working conception embodied in actual states can be criticized in the light of the larger moral conception. But on the

256

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

negative side of his doctrine, he seems to want to say that the state is the ultimate moral conception of life, that it is the supreme community and that there is no larger moral community beyond. On this second view, it is not clear how a given state can be morally criticized although it might still be criticized on the grounds of efficiency. 4. Earlier in this chapter, I said that, in his political philosophy, Bosanquet oscillates between Bradley's theory of morality in Ethical Studies and Green's in Prolegomena to Ethics. The inconsistency in his doctrine of political criticism is the outcome of this oscillation. It also affects his theory of international relations. For Bosanquet, the theory of international relations is part of the theory of the state. There are many states and the question arises: how ought we to regard the relations which grow up between them? Now Bosanquet has said that the term 'state' 'emphasizes the political aspect of the whole and is opposed to the notion of an anarchic society'. If we take literally his statement that the state 'is the supreme community' and 'the guardian of the whole moral world', it follows that relations between states are essentially non-moral. Indeed they must tend towards anarchy since there is no world state. On the other hand, if the supreme community is the human community, if the state is only an aspect of a larger way of life, then international relations have a moral foundation. Bosanquet turns to the subject of international relations near the end of the Philosophical Theory of the State. He begins by rejecting the idea of a cosmopolitan or international political community. Tutting aside the impossibility arising from succession in time/ he writes, 'we see that no such identical community of experience can be presupposed in all mankind as is necessary for the active membership of a common society and exercise of a general will.'1 The fact that mankind is too diverse to share a common life means, according to Bosanquet, that a common tradition of habits and institutions cannot be developed. There is then nothing in which a real or general will of mankind can be embodied and there can therefore be no international political community. But Bosanquet also repudiates the idea that the international situation is one of moral

BERNARD BOSANQUET's POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

2£J

anarchy. He continues: 'It does not follow from this that there can be no general recognition of the rights arising from the capability for good life which belongs to man as man. Though insufficient as variously and imperfectly realized to be the basis of an effective community, they may as far as realized be a common element of tissue or connection running through the more concrete experience on which more effective communities rest/2 In the first of these two passages, Bosanquet seems to be adhering to something very like Bradley's doctrine of 'My Station and its duties'. Morality is equated with citizenship but citizenship is not regarded as a sphere of rational activity. It is thought of in terms of conformity to the rules and conventions of the laws and institutions of a given society. Like Bradley, Bosanquet has not grasped the distinction between the level of moral rules and customs and the level of spheres of rational activity. He has not understood the conception of spheres of rational activity as a level of rationality above that of moral rules and customs. He recognizes that laws and institutions with their rules and conventions grow out of a common way of life and since there is not a common life of mankind there can be no one set of laws and institutions for all mankind. Hence there can be no international society for there can be a real society only where there is one set of laws and institutions. All this is the same line of thought which led him to say that the state 'is the supreme community', 'the guardian of the whole moral world' and 'not a factor in an organized moral world'. Given the moral of 'My Station and its duties', these statements follow. But in the second passage when he speaks of 'the rights which belong to man as man', Bosanquet seems to be reverting to Green's position. For Green these rights are moral rights. They imply the responsibilities which 'belong to man as man*. They imply that the ultimate moral community is the community of mankind. But Bosanquet is unwilling to admit that they are strictly moral rights. He denies that they can 'form the basis of an effective community' although at the same time he agrees that they 'form a common element of tissue or connection'. It is at this point that we can see that he has not fully understood Green's theory of morality. He has not understood, that

258

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

is to say, the way in which the theory developed by Green in Prolegomena to Ethics goes beyond Bradley's theory in Ethical Studies and overcomes the defects of the latter. Indeed he does not seem to be aware that Bradley's theory has any defects. But, at the same time, he seems to have been impressed by the notion of mankind or humanity in Green's theory of morality although he cannot grasp the idea of a moral community of mankind. As we have already seen in sub-section 4, section A of this chapter, he seems to have some understanding of the idea of self-consistent human achievement and he reverts to the idea again in his discussion of international relations. The main point which he seems anxious to make is that while the notion of humanity is what he calls 'an ethical idea', it does not mean accepting as the standard of human worth the common or average attainments of mankind. To him: 'It is plain that humanity as an ethical idea is a type or problem rather than a fact. It means certain qualities at once realized in what we take to be the crown of the race and includes sensibilities to the claims of the race as such.'3 He then goes on to point out that 'Sensibilities to the claims of the race as such is least of all qualities common to the race as such. The respect of states and individuals for humanity is then after all in its essence the duty to maintain a type of life, not general but the best we know which we call the most human, and in accordance with this to recognize and deal with the rights of alien individuals and communities. This conception is opposed to the treatment of all individual human beings as members of an identical community having identical capacities and rights. It follows our general conviction that not numbers but qualities determine the value of life. But qualities of course become selfcontradictory if they fail to meet the demands imposed on them by numbers.'4 The thought here seems to be that while it is the duty of the state to bring about and maintain conditions favourable to the development of the best human qualities of its own members, this must not be done at the expense of the rest of mankind. The latter must not be deprived of the opportunity of developing their own capacities in their own way. But this is in essentials the doctrine that the highest standard of rationality and

BERNARD BOSANQUET's POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

2^9

value is self-consistent human achievement. If self-consistent human achievement is to be made the ultimate standard, there must be a moral duty to respect it. Bosanquet, in spite of himself, is tacitly admitting that the ultimate moral community is not the state but mankind. If it is not, what is the reason for respecting and dealing with 'the rights of alien individuals and communities' ? It should be noted incidentally that the doctrine that the ultimate moral community is the community of mankind does not involve any idea of identical human beings with identical rights or that the standard of human worth is what is common or average to mankind. Bosanquet's insistence on human qualities is safeguarded in the notion of self-consistent human achievement as the highest level of rationality. Thus it appears that, in spite of his statements to the contrary, Bosanquet's real view is that the world of international relations is fundamentally a moral world, that the state is not the supreme community nor the guardian of the whole moral world. 5. In this section I have tried to expound and elucidate Bosanquet's theory of the state and to bring out the inconsistency in which it is entangled. But why did Bosanquet fail to notice this inconsistency ? Why did he fail to see that Green's theory of morality is a development of Bradley's based on a criticism of the latter's ? Why did he fail to see that he could not adopt Green's idea of humanity without accepting its moral implications and giving up a doctrine along the lines of 'My Station and its duties' ? An answer may be found in the notion of the concrete universal which he shared with Bradley, In Chapter I of this book, I expounded a notion of the concrete universal according to which a concrete universal is an individual achievement of rationality. In Chapter V, I tried to show that Bradley and Bosanquet in their notion fail to make a distinction between an individual achievement of rationality and a whole such as an organism. Their principle of 'identity in difference' applies equally to both. This, as I tried to point out, gives rise to a fundamental ambiguity in their notion. At times when they refer to a concrete universal or individual, they seem to mean an individual achievement of rationality; at times an organic whole; at times something which is supposed to be both. The Absolute is a case of the last kind.

26O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Bosanquet's doctrine of the real will reflects the essential ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal. The real will is said to be embodied in the laws and institutions of a given society. Bosanquet seems to be thinking of a politically organized society as a kind of moral organism. Its structure is supposed to be in principle the same as the structure of any whole. To be moral, to act in accordance with the real will, is to play one's part as an organ in the moral organism. Bradley uses similar language in his account of 'My Station and its duties' and takes the same view. Unless a society is politically organized, it cannot become an effective whole with a unified system of laws and institutions. Hence the conclusion that the state is the supreme society and the guardian of the moral world. As a working conception of life, it is the structure of the moral organism. But Bosanquet also thinks that the state is an individual achievement of rationality. The real will is the rational will. It is not the mere uncriticized day to day will for particular ends, but the will to live a coherent responsible life. Because he fails to see that there is any fundamental difference between the structure of an organic whole and an individual achievement of rationality, Bosanquet regards the real or rational will as the will to play one's part in the life of what he calls 'an effective community', that is to say in a politically organized society or moral organism. The view that a human society is a moral organism is not without plausibility and, as a metaphor, the expression 'moral organism' may sometimes be apt. The individual moral agent finds himself in a society which is already there. Its way of life with its institutions, traditions and customs is a going concern and by the time he has become conscious of himself as a moral agent, he is already caught up in it. He finds his personality as a moral agent by learning how to participate in the life of his society and this means learning how to observe its rules and conventions. From this point of view, he may be regarded as a part in the social whole, an organ in the moral organism. Again, among organized societies the nation-state is undoubtedly the most elaborate and developed. From a sociological standpoint, it may fairly be described as the supreme community. But a philosophical theory of the state is not merely a sociological description. What is wanted is a theory

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

261

which elicits and exhibits the rationality of political activity and its value and significance in human experience. Now a theory of the rationality of political activity and of its value and significance in human experience must at the same time be a theory of rational activity and of the general character and structure of human experience. Its account of these latter topics will inevitably be one-sided and incomplete, being limited by the special perspective of political activity, but it cannot avoid, at least by implication, putting forward a theory of them. So far as the theory of rational activity is concerned, Bosanquet clearly grasps the distinction between the levels of ends and means and private self-satisfaction and sees that the latter is a higher level of rationality than the former. The relation between the day to day will and the real will, neglecting the social aspect of the latter, is his way of expressing distinction. He also recognizes that morality represents a higher level of rationality than private self-satisfaction and that morality arises from the social context of all rational activity. This is brought out in his doctrine that the real will is a social will. But he fails to understand adequately the nature of morality as a form of rationality. In particular, he fails to grasp the distinction between the level of moral rules and customs and spheres of rational activity and seems to have no real understanding of the latter conception at all. The reason why Bosanquet fails properly to distinguish between rationality at the level of moral rules and customs, and spheres of rational activity lies in the ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal. He sees that a whole such as an organism is not simply a class of things which have in common some attribute. A whole, that is to say, is not merely the class of things which are its parts. There is a system which gives structure to the parts and makes them into a whole. A whole is not merely the sum of its parts. In the same way, he sees that a human society is not merely the class of its members. It is not a mere sum of individual agents. Its structure is the systematic rational activity of a number of agents. But there is a fundamental difference between a whole such as an organism and a human society, which Bosanquet does not see and which is the source of the ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal. A human society is an individual achievement of rationality but

262

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

it is also made up of individual achievements of rationality, namely the activities of its members as members. To live and act as a member of a society is an individual achievement of rationality by a rational agent and a society of such agents is in its turn an individual achievement of rationality. A human society, made up of selfconscious rational agents, is a genuine macrocosm of microcosms. But this is not true of a whole such as an organism. The parts are not self-conscious: the organism is not an organ of organs. A whole such as an organism is not an individual achievement of rationality. It is not rationality which gives a structure to its parts but a merely empirical or de facto system, a system which is intelligible in terms of events and their relations but not in terms of agents and their actions. Bosanquet, and the same is true of Bradley, has been deceived by the superficial resemblance between a whole such as an organism and a human society. He has seen that they are alike in that neither is a mere sum or aggregate. He has seen that both have a unity which is not the mere unity of a class. But he has failed to see that they are fundamentally different: that the unity in one case is that of an empirical system, in the other, of rationality. All this is to say that Bosanquet's understanding of rationality, and especially of its logical structure, is inadequate. He has enough understanding of it to realize the defects of utilitarianism and to have some idea of the scale of levels of rationality, but he is unable to get beyond the point reached by Bradley in 'My station and its duties'. Yet like Bradley, he seems to realize that something more is required. Bradley attempted without success to get further through the doctrine of the Ideal self. Bosanquet tries to do the same by making use of Green's idea of humanity. As we have seen, this involves him in inconsistency and indicates that his understanding of Green is imperfect. As regards a theory of the general character and structure of human experience which will exhibit the value and significance of political activity, Bosanquet does his best to follow Green but without accepting the moral implications of the latter's position. That this is inconsistent with his doctrine of the state as a moral organism does not occur to him because he is of course unaware of the ambiguity in his notion of the concrete universal.

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY C : IN

P O I N T S

O F P E R M A N E N T

B O S A N Q U E T ' S

P O L I T I C A L

26j

I N T E R E S T P H I L O S O P H Y

i. So far in this chapter I have dwelt on the defects of Bosanquet's political philosophy rather than on its merits. I must now try to redress the balance. Despite the great fissure of inconsistency which runs through his theory of the state, there is much in Bosanquet's political philosophy of permanent significance. It is to be found in that part of his work where he is following in Green's footsteps rather than Bradley's and may be regarded as an extension of the political philosophy first developed by Green. In certain respects indeed Bosanquet's doctrine is an improvement on Green's, being a fuller and more penetrating statement of what the latter had in mind. In this section I shall try to indicate at least some of the things in Bosanquet's work which I think would have to be incorporated into any political philosophy worthy of the name, notwithstanding the fact that they may be inconsistent with some of his other doctrines. It may be appropriate to begin with some of Bosanquet's later thoughts on international relations, since this was the last topic discussed in the previous section. In a volume of essays and addresses published in 1917 under the title of Social and International Ideals, Bosanquet returns to the subject of international relations. Discussing patriotism, he asserts that: 'No patriotism and no politics are trustworthy unless they are kept sweet and clean by a real and a fundamental love of the things that are not diminished by being shared, such as kindness, beauty and truth.'1 The thesis which Bosanquet advocates in his discussion is that patriotism and cosmopolitanism rightly understood are not antagonistic but complementary. The patriotic member of what Bosanquet calls 'a civilized nation' must be cosmopolitan in the sense that his loyalty is to humanity at its best not to humanity in its average achievement. The true cosmopolitan standpoint, that is to say, is that of a member of the community of mankind. The rational basis of the community of mankind is loyalty to self-cohsistent human achievement and this must also be the basis of loyalty to the nation-state. But in order to act on this loyalty and contribute to self-consistent human achievement, we must look

264

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

not to what is common to all humanity but to what is best. Thus Bosanquet writes: 'A great proportion of the human race lead lives which give us no guidance as to what is desirable for mankind. We cannot get any common purpose out of them and say: "this is the humanity we have to realize"/2 He then goes on to assert that: 'The fact is that the quality of humanity, whether cultural or humaneness, is rather to be discovered in the life of the great civilized nations with all their faults than in what is common to the life of man.'3 His point is that it is in the life of the great civilized nations that we are likely to find those values 'which are not diminished by being shared' and not in the values which as a matter of fact most of mankind actually respect. The patriot must be loyal to his nation not simply because it is his nation but because it stands for human values, values which are open to all mankind to cherish and pursue even though in fact only a minority at a given time recognize them. Such patriotism is, at the same time, cosmopolitanism in the true sense. But granted that true patriotism must be cosmopolitan, what bearing has this upon the actual conduct of international relations? International relations have to be carried out from day to day in the world as it is, which means in a world in which there is much uncosmopolitan patriotism and widespread respect for values and interests which are as likely to generate conflict as co-operation. No doubt citizenship should be thought of in international rather than national terms and the political community as a community of nations but how can these principles be given practical expression in an imperfect world? Bosanquet is fully alive to these difficulties and in another essay in the same volume he discusses them. 'Once you have a vitally coherent community/ he writes, 'intimately bound together by feeling and type of experience and allegiance to the same values and aspirations, then you possess the constituents of a true general will and how you go to work to realize its aims becomes a purely practical matter. At present the difficulty is to find such a common constituent throughout any area exceeding what is usually called the territories of a nation/* Bosanquet has in mind here the problem of giving practical expression to the idea of international political co-operation. His point is that an organized political community is built upon the

BERNARD BOSANQUEl'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

265

foundation of shared experience and common values. The problem is to find a basis of shared experience and common values for an international political community. His use of the term 'general will' in this connection may be taken to express the idea of socially responsible conduct. It is an application of his original doctrine of the real will but in a form which is unexceptionable. He thinks that a unity transcending the limits of national frontiers can be achieved only if there is a practical need for international co-operation to protect things which each nation values and which are not competitive. There must be a widespread recognition of this need among the citizens of the several nations. They must regard international co-operation as a responsibility of citizenship, a responsibility arising out of the facts of the current situation. 'If, on the one hand, there were to exist/ Bosanquet writes, 'in one or more communities a prevailing general will, i.e. a concordant sense of supreme objects which by a plain derivation demand a certain concerted action in favour of peace, for example, then there would so far be a solid foundation for practical steps towards international cosmopolitan unity/ 5 He goes on to point out that international co-operation cannot be achieved merely by drawing up paper constitutions and legal frameworks. 'It cannot be done by setting up machinery/ he writes, 'though to do it would need a machinery. This would be the consequence not the cause. It can only be done by making evident in the inner life of groups a devotion to the great ends of humanity so as to offer a sure foundation for precautions to be taken in their relations with each other against the obstruction of those ends which all of them genuinely desire and mould their lives upon/ 6 In all this, Bosanquet is inculcating a realistic but in no sense cynical attitude towards international relations. His fundamental point is that lasting international co-operation in politics is possible only to the extent that people are prepared to think and act internationally and this in turn is possible only to the extent that they desire and cherish genuinely human values. Lasting international political co-operation giving rise to real international citizenship, that is to say, is possible only where there is a genuine recognition that the ultimate moral community is the community of mankind and at the same time

266

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

a genuine desire to act on this recognition. This may not be strictly compatible with Bosanquet's doctrine in the Philosophical Theory of the State but it fits in well enough with the theory of rational activity and the general spirit of Green's political philosophy. It follows that we must not expect more international co-operation than the conditions prevailing at a given time make possible. In so far as the responsibilities of the ultimate moral community are imperfectly realized and the meaning of self-consistent human achievement as the highest level of rational activity is not understood, then we must make do with something less than lasting international political co-operation. It does not follow that we must resign ourselves to permanent international conflict but it does follow that we must live amidst disputes and tensions and must adapt ourselves accordingly. Bosanquet's teaching is as much a warning against naive optimism as it is a prophylactic against cynical pessimism. Its permanent significance is that it provides the basis for a critical assessment of the values, principles and general ideas in terms of which international politics are carried on. 2. From international relations let us now turn to the subject of socialism and private property. Bosanquet has something to say about both these topics. Discussing the issues involved in socialism in a volume called Aspects oi the Social Problem which was published in 1895 and to which he contributed several essays, Bcsanquet writes: 'I believe in the reality of the general will and in the consequent right and duty of civilized society to exercise initiative through the state with a view to the fullest development of the life of its members. But I am also absolutely convinced that the application of this initiative to guarantee without protest the existence of all individuals who are brought into being, instead of leaving the responsibility to the uttermost possible extent to the parents and the individuals themselves, is an abuse fatal to character and ultimately destructive to social life. The abolition of the struggle for existence, in the sense in which alone that term applies to human society, means, so far as I can see, the divorce of existence from human qualities and to further the existence of

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

267

human beings without human qualities is the ultimate inferno to which any society can descend/1 When he says that he believes in the reality of the general will, Bosanquet's point is that a society is not merely an aggregate of separate human atoms but a corporate way of living and acting. He is rejecting the Utilitarian view. His reference to the struggle for existence is intended to emphasize the importance of individual responsibility in the life of every society. What he is clearly against is the idea of a paternalistic state providing services for its members who passively receive them without taking any responsibility for their provision. In another essay in the same volume with the title of The Principle of Private Property', he develops the same point. After remarking that in the case of a child, 'his relation to things has no correspondence to his moral nature, no nerve of connection runs through his acts and dealings with the external world1,2 he goes on to assert that: 'Private property is not simply an arrangement for meeting successive momentary wants as they arise on such a footing as this. It is wholly different in principle as adult and responsible life differs from child life which is irresponsible/3 The principle of private property, according to Bosanquet, 'rests upon the conception of a common good to be realized in individuals as moral and rational agents/4 It is 'the unity of life in its external and material form, the result of past dealing with the material world and the possibility of future dealing with it, the general or universal means of possible action and expression corresponding to the moral self which looks before and after as opposed to the momentary wants of a child or of an animal. A grown man knows that if he does this, he will not be able to do that, and his humanity, his power of organization, his intelligent self-assertion depends on this knowledge/5 This does not mean that Bosanquet should be branded as a doctrinaire exponent of economic laissez faire. As he says: 'Clearly the principle does not demand an unlimited acquisition of wealth/ 6 In his view, The question of the organization of industry is really a separate question/7 He continues: The London and North-Western Railway cannot be effectively private property in the sense in which a wheel-barrow can be.

268

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Whether it is managed by the state or not makes little practical difference in this impossibility/8 Bosanquet is not opposed to socialism as such. 'If socialism means the improvement of society by society/ he writes, 'we are going on that track more or less today as civilized society has always gone, and the collective organization of certain branches of production is a matter open to discussion with a view to its consequences.'9 But he is opposed to that conception of socialism according to which private property is regarded as nothing but an instrument for the satisfaction of wants without reference to personal responsibility. 'Is it not enough/ he asks, 'to know that one can have what is necessary and reasonable ?m and he replies: 'No; that makes one a child. A man must know what he can count on and judge what to do with it. It is a question of initiation, plans, design, not of a more or less in enjoyment/11 From the standpoint of the theory of rational activity Bosanquet's principle of private property is intelligible in terms of the level of spheres of rational activity. It is a social principle being related to the conception of a common good. Private property must be acquired and used in a way which is compatible with the conditions of social living. But it is also a necessary condition for the achievement of what Bosanquet calls 'personal responsibility'. He does not develop this notion at any length but what he has in mind is essentially the idea of spheres of rational activity. The agent who is to achieve a rational and at the same time moral and social way of living in his work, his leisure, his personal relations and as a citizen, must be able to acquire, own and use property. Unless he is able to do this, he cannot take responsibility for his conduct in these spheres. He cannot look ahead and make plans; he cannot exercise initiative or experiment. He cannot fully appreciate that food and clothing, goods and services, comforts and the material conditions of well-being, do not simply turn up but can be had only through human exertion and human forethought. He remains in the condition of a child who is not personally responsible for his life. A child may be and normally is capable of rationality at the level of moral rules and customs. One way of expressing the difference between this level and that of spheres of rational activity is to say that the one is still that of

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

269

childhood while the other is essentially the level of adult life. To think of private property simply as a means to ends is to think of it in terms of the levels of ends and means and private self-satisfaction and to miss its real significance. On the contrary, it should be thought of as a constituent of a rational way of living and not merely as a tool. But all this does not mean that all property must be private. It in no way excludes the role of public property but, on the contrary, helps to make clear the distinction between the two. 3. From a discussion of socialism and private property, the question naturally arises: what should be the scope and limits of government action? For Bosanquet's answer we must go back to the Thilosophical Theory ol the State, The state is in its right/ he says, 'when it forcibly hinders a hindrance to the best life or common good/1 He is here re-stating Green's doctrine and he agrees with Green that the best life cannot be directly promoted by government action. 'On every problem the question must recur: f he writes, 'is the proposed measure bona fide confined to hindering a hindrance or is it attempting direct promotion of the common good by force ? For it is to be borne in mind throughout that wherever acts are enforced they are, so far as the force operates, withdrawn from the higher life. The promotion of morality by force, for instance, is an absolute self-contradiction/2 He argues that because of this limitation and in order to prevent misguided or inappropriate government action, 'We ought as a rule when we propose action involving compulsion to be able to show a definite tendency to growth or a definite reserve of capacity which is frustrated by known impediments, the removal of which is a small matter compared to the capacities to be set free/3 In terms of the theory of rational activity, Bosanquet's doctrine may be restated as follows. A government acts by making and enforcing rules. It can therefore affect directly only the three lower levels of rationality: those of ends and means, private self-satisfaction and moral rules and customs. Moreover, so far as the third level is concerned, it cannot make people moral. In so far as it has to compel obedience to its rules, it operates only at the level of ends and means and private selfsatisfaction. But where people already recognize that they

27O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

ought to obey the rules and customs of their society, it can affect what they do by the rules which it makes and facilitate their attempt to act in a socially responsible way. So far as the higher levels of rationality are concerned, government can only 'hinder the hindrances'. The levels of self-consistent human achievement and spheres of rational activity demand something more from the rational agent than merely conscientiously obeying established rules. But established rules and customs may obstruct or facilitate the achievement of the higher levels of rationality in various ways. Government can do something indirectly to help this achievement through the rules which it makes and enforces. What it can do will depend upon the capacity of its citizens for rational achievement. This must already be there and government can do no more than assist in its liberation. But in so far as this liberation depends upon the organization and systematizing of certain aspects of social life, the contribution of government will not be negligible. Bosanquet goes on to link his account of the scope and limits of government action with his doctrine of the force of routine, organization, tradition and habit, this force being inherent in the state. 'The social system under which we live/ he writes, 'taking it as one which does not demand immediate revolution, represents the general will and the higher self as a whole to the community as a whole and can only stand by virtue of that recognition being recognized. Our loyalty to it makes us men and citizens and is the main spiritualizing force of our lives/1 This passage is influenced by his conception of society as a moral organism but the central thought is not affected by that conception. He continues: 'But something in all of us and much in some of us is recalcitrant through rebellion, ignorance, indolence or incompetence, and it is only on these elements that the public power operates as power through compulsion or authoritative suggestion. Thus the general will, when it meets us as force and authority resting on force and not as a social suggestion which we spontaneously rise to accept, comes to us ex hypothesi as something which claims to be ourself but which, for the moment, we more or less fail to recognize/5 In this last passage Bosanquet is in effect restating Rousseau's doctrine that in being forced to obey the general will, 'we are being forced to be free*. His point is that while social discipline

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

2/1

may be irksome when we are feeling lazy or preoccupied with our own private affairs, it is something which, in our better moments, we know to be necessary. In obeying the government as the agency which enforces social discipline, we are obeying ouf better self. Without government to act as the agency of social discipline, most of us would be less scrupulous in conforming to the laws and conventions of our society. This lapse would not be due to wickedness so much as to laziness and selfishness and there is therefore a real sense in which government helps us to be our best self by stimulating us to overcome these human defects. The stimulus of government action, that is to say, may help us to rise from the level of private self-satisfaction to that of morality, assuming that we are already capable of achieving the higher level and have fallen back only temporarily. But all this assumes, as Bosanquet has said, that the social system under which we live 'is one which does not demand immediate revolution*. It must be a social system which is itself on the whole morally defensible. For Bosanquet's view of what this means as well as for further insight into his view of the scope and limits of government action, we must turn to his theory of rights. 4. Bosanquet introduces the subject of rights in the course of his discussion of the scope and limits of government action. 'And if we ask in general/ he writes, 'for a definition and limitation of state action, as such, the answer is in a simple phrase that state action is co-incident with the maintenance of rights/ 1 He then says that: 'All rights are powers instrumental to making the best of human capacities and can only be recognized or exercised upon this ground/2 He then turns to the relation between a right and a duty. 'In this sense/ he writes, 'the duty is the purpose with a view to which the right is secured and not merely a corresponding obligation equally derived from a common ground; and a right and duty are not distinguished as something claimed by self and something owed by others but the duty is distinguished as an imperative purpose and the right as a power secured because instrumental to it/ 3 In all this Bosanquet is following Green. By 'a duty* he means something different from 'an obligation'. A duty is the moral

272

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

basis of the claim to a right. But an obligation is the correlative of a right. It is what must be done by others in order to secure the right. 'Rights are claimed, obligations are owed/ Bosanquet writes/and prima facie rights are claimed by a person and obligations are owed to a person, being his rights as regarded by those against whom they are enforced.'* This reference to obligations being enforced recalls Green's distinction between moral duties and legal obligations. Legal obligations may be, and no doubt usually are, moral duties. But moral duties cannot as such be made legally obligatory because they can only be done for their own sake. No one can do his duty unless he recognizes that he has a duty and that he ought to do it irrespective of whether or not it is legally enjoined. Bosanquet continues: Thus the distinction between self and others, which we refused to take as the basis of society, makes itself prominent in the region of compulsion. The reason is that compulsion is confined to hindering or producing external acts and is excluded from producing an act in its relation to the moral end, i.e. the exercise of a right in its true sense, though it can enforce an act which in fact favours the possibility of acting towards a moral end, i.e. an obligation.'5 What lies behind Bosanquet's account of the relation between duties on the one hand and rights and obligations on the other, may be brought out by restating it in terms of the theory of rational activity. At the level of moral rules and customs, the rational agent's duty is to observe the established rules and customs of his society. At this level therefore, there is no distinction between duties on the one hand and rights and obligations on the other. The agent's duty is to claim the rights and fulfil the obligations prescribed in the established rules and customs. But at the higher levels of rationality the situation is different. The rational agent's duties are his responsibilities, the responsibilities which he has as a human being and which he must identify and meet in his work, his leisure, his personal relations and as a citizen. It is no longer enough merely to claim established rights and discharge established obligations. He must think out his responsibilities for himself and on occasion this may involve claiming new rights and neglecting established obligations. The rational justification for claiming that a certain right should be secured and the corresponding obligation fulfilled is

BERNARD BOSANQUET'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

273

that it is necessary if the responsibilities of the higher levels of rationality are to be met. It is in this sense that a duty is the imperative purpose for which a right is claimed. The relation between duties on the one hand and rights and obligations on the other, reflects the relation between the higher levels of rationality and the level of moral rules and customs. At the latter level, there can be no rational justification for the claim that a new right should be secured. Duty at this level is confined to claiming those rights and fulfilling those obligations which are already established. So far as government is concerned, its task is to secure rights by enforcing the corresponding obligations. But the rights which it ought to secure are those for which there is a rational justification, not merely those which are part of established rules and customs. Where the latter lack any rational justification and obstruct the meeting of responsibilities, government ought to do what it can to change them by making and enforcing new rules. But before going further, there is another aspect of Bosanquet's doctrine to be considered. 'Rights then are claims recognized by the state,' he writes, 'by society acting as ultimate authority for the maintenance of conditions favourable to the best life/6 But he then goes on to say that rights cannot exist and be unrecognized. Thus then a right, being a power secured in order to fill a position, is simply a part of the fact that such a position is recognized as instrumental to the common good. It is impossible to argue that the position may exist and be unrecognized for we are speaking of a relation of minds and, in so far as minds are united into a single system by their attitudes towards each other, their positions and the recognition of them are one and the same thing/7 Bosanquet is aware of the objection which this argument is likely to arouse. 'If we deny that there can be unrecognized rights/ he goes on, 'do we not surrender human freedom to despotism or to popular caprice ? The sting of the suggestion is taken out when we thoroughly grasp the idea that recognition is a matter of logic working on and through experience and not of choice or fancy/8 He then proceeds to explain: 'No person and no society is consistent with itself and the proof and amendment of their inconsistency is always possible. And one inconsistency being amended, the path is open to progress by

274

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

the emergence of another. If slaves come to be recognized as free but not as citizens, this of itself opens the road by which the new free man may make good his claim that it is an inconsistency not to recognize him as a citizen/9 Bosanquet's point is that a right is a rationally justified claim. The bare fact that a claim is asserted dees not mean that a right exists. To be a right, the claim must be made because it is rationally justified. A given right comes into existence when someone recognizes that certain conditions are necessary for the fulfilling of certain responsibilities and on this basis proceeds to claim the conditions. The fact that the government of the day or public opinion fails to acknowledge the claim does not mean that it is not a right. The government and public opinion may well be guilty of inconsistency or of failing to understand what is involved. But someone must have thought out the situation, seen that the conditions are rationally justified and proceeded to claim them for that reason before the right came into existence. It may be objected that the claim to certain conditions may be rationally justified but that no one has yet noticed it. But the point is that the right comes into existence only when someone does notice it and makes the claim on the basis of its rational justification. It might well be that a given right might have come into existence earlier than in fact it did but this does not alter the basic point. It follows that the rights which are embodied in the established rules and customs of a given society are not necessarily genuine rights. They are genuine rights only in so far as there is a rational justification for them and this rational justification is understood. After repeating that the recognition of rights is a matter of fact and logic, not of fancies or wishes, Bosanquet sums up his argument. 'If I desire to assert an unrecognized right/ he says, * I must show what position involves it and how that position asserts itself in the system of recognitions which is the social mind and my point can only be established universally with regard to a certain type of position and not merely for myself as a particular A or B/10 When Bosanquet says that a right 'must be established universally with regard to a certain type of position1, his point is that to be a right, a claim must be rationally justified for any one who has to meet the responsi-

BERNARD BOSANQUET's POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

V]$

bilities of some aspect of the life of a given society. A man must be able to show that the conditions which he claims are necessary to enable him to do his work as a doctor, a scientist, a merchant, a manufacturer or as a labourer, or again to meet his responsibilities as husband and father of a family. The conditions claimed are claimed universally in that they are necessary for any member of the society in question to meet these responsibilities and not merely for a particular individual in special circumstances. What is claimed as a right, that is to say, must be capable of being brought within the scope of a general rule which will apply without exception to all concerned in the society. The work of government in securing rights by enforcing the corresponding obligations is therefore limited to what can be brought within the scope of general rules. Because 'no society is consistent with itself, this work is never finished. Legal and customary rights must continuously be overhauled to see whether they are rationally justified, and as conditions change, new rights will come into existence and will require to be secured by government action. In this section, I have tried to indicate certain features of Bosanquet's political philosophy which, notwithstanding the inconsistency in his theory of the state, are of permanent significance. I do not mean that he has said the last word about international co-operation, socialism and private property, the scope and limits of government action or the theory of rights. My point is that these are topics of lasting interest in political philosophy and that what Bosanquet has to say about them, while needing to be supplemented and amended, is of positive value and should be incorporated into any political philosophy worthy of the name. While what he has to say is in essentials the same as Green, this is itself something worth noting. Critics of Idealist political philosophy have been especially severe in their comments on Bosanquet while tending to be more lenient towards Green. While not denying that Bosanquet's general position is more vulnerable than Green's, I think that, in fairness to him, the basic agreement between them on many important points needs to be brought out. In this chapter I have tried to show where the weakness in his political philosophy lies and how it arises, and at the same time to indicate its merits.

CHAPTER VIII THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

A :

TH E THE O R Y O F

L O Y A L TY

I. In Chapter III of this book, we saw that Green thought it necessary to supplement his theory of the general character and structure of human experience with a doctrine of an eternal consciousness. I argued in that chapter that in fact this doctrine is not needed. Green thought that it was, because of his conviction that there can be knowledge only if knowing makes no difference to what is known, a conviction which he does not seem to have subjected to any analysis or criticism. He seems to have assumed that there must be something already there prior to and independent of knowledge, and that what we know when we acquire knowledge is some aspect or fragment of this independent reality. The doctrine of an eternal con­ sciousness was introduced to bridge the gap between this con­ viction and his theory of human experience, the central thesis of which was that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought. My point was that, while there must be something already there prior to and independent of knowledge, there is no need to assume that we must be able to know this reality or some aspect or fragment of it as it is in itself apart from all human experience. It is enough if we assume that we know it as it is for us, that we know it as categorized and identified by thought. If we make this more limited assumption, the need for the eternal consciousness disappears. Neither Green's theory of morality nor his political philo­ sophy is directly connected with the doctrine of the eternal consciousness and I made no further reference to it in my dis­ cussion of these topics. In the course of discussing Bradley's

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153849-9

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

277

and Bosanquet's theory of the Absolute, I returned to the view that knowing makes no difference to what is known, developing and partly modifying what I had said about it in Chapter III. I did not find it necessary however to re-introduce the eternal consciousness. But it may well be thought that I have set aside the doctrine in too cavalier a way. It may fairly be regarded as an alternative to Bradley's and Bosanquet's theory of the Absolute. Indeed it would be more accurate to say that their theory is an alternative version of it, since the doctrine of an eternal consciousness is at any rate much more like Hegel's theory of spirit. Moreover, rightly or wrongly, the doctrine has been held to be an integral part of Idealism, to provide, as it were, an ultimate foundation for Idealist theories of ethics, politics and society, to say nothing of religion. I therefore propose in this chapter to consider the doctrine a little more fully and it is in this connection that Josiah Royce is of special relevance. Towards the end of the nineteenth century there occurred in the United States a development of Idealist philosophy similar to that which was going on in England. Josiah Royce, who was a few years younger than Bradley and Bosanquet, played a leading part in this movement and was one of its outstanding figures. His first book, The Religious Aspects of Thilosophy, was published in 1885 and in it he sketched the outlines of a philosophical position which in the next thirty years he restated, developed and expanded but never fundamentally altered. The essence of this position is that it is an attempt to unite ethics, religion and metaphysics into a single intellectual system. In the introduction to The Religious Aspects of Vhilosophy, he writes: These three elements then go to constitute any religion. A religion must teach some moral code, must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devotion to that code and, in so doing, must show something in the nature of things that answers to the code or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion is therefore practical, emotional and theoretical. It teaches us to do, to feel and to believe and it teaches the belief as a means to its teaching of the action and the feeling.11 For Royce, the theoretical element in religion is philosophy. In so far as it is the reasoned theory of a moral code, it is ethics or moral philosophy. In so far as it is the attempt to show

278

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

something in the nature of things that answers to the code, it is metaphysics. The two are bound up together. The reasoned theory of a moral code leads eventually to metaphysics. Incidentally his use of the term 'moral code* is somewhat misleading. It suggests a body of moral precepts but what Royce has in mind is rather the general notion of moral conduct. The task of moral philosophy is to work out a theory of what moral conduct is, a theory which will have practical implications but which is not itself a list of practical rules. Moral philosophy, that is to say, is concerned with the theoretical basis of a moral code, not with elaborating its details. Moreover, while he thinks that moral philosophy when fully developed must pass into metaphysics, he agrees that a distinction may be drawn between them and that it is possible to go a good way in moral philosophy without embarking on metaphysics. That this is his view is bcrne out by the plan of The Religious Aspects of Thilosophy, It is divided into two books. Book I is devoted to moral philosophy without metaphysics and Book II to metaphysics. The metaphysics of Book II is intended to be the further development and culmination of the moral philosophy of Book I but it is possible to consider the argument of Book I on its own merits without reference to Book II. The theory developed in Book I has strong affinities with Green's theory of morality and the central thesis of Book II is a doctrine of an eternal consciousness. It is for this reason that Royce is of interest to our present discussion. His general philosophical position is an Idealist one and at its core is a doctrine of an eternal consciousness. But The Religious Aspects of Thilosophy was Royce's first book. It was the product of his formative years and for a mature statement of his position we must go to his later work. His doctrine of an eternal consciousness was expounded most fully and systematically in his Gifford lectures, which were published under the title of The World and the Individual. In sections B and C of this chapter I shall try to summarize the essentials of his argument. But first it may be of interest to examine a later statement of his moral philosophy. This is to be found in his Thilosophy of Loyalty, a book which was published more than twenty years after The Religious Aspects of Thilosophy. It is in this book that Royce's general

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

279

social philosophy and his relation in this connection to English Idealism is most clearly exhibited. 2. Like several of his books, Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty is the text of a course of public lectures. Some of his best work took this form. The task of explaining himself to an audience unversed in systematic philosophy seems to have stimulated in him an effort to express himself with simplicity and lucidity. In books written primarily for his professional colleagues he was content with a rather lower standard in this respect. The lectures on loyalty were first given at a summer school in 1906 and were published two years later. In this section I shall first summarize the essentials of his argument and will then attempt some interpretation and comment. In the introductory lecture, he tells his audience that: 'In loyalty, when loyalty is properly defined, is the fulfilment of the whole moral law. You can truthfully centre your entire moral world on a rational conception of loyalty/ 1 Royce then goes on to give a preliminary account of loyalty which he proposes to expand, criticize and revise in the ensuing lectures. 'Loyalty shall mean/ he says, 'according to this preliminary definition, the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause. A man is loyal when first, he has some cause to which he is loyal, when secondly, he willingly and thoroughly devotes himself to this cause, and when thirdly, he expresses his devotion in some sustained and practical way by acting steadily in the service of his cause/2 Royce makes it clear that he does not consider mere uncritical obedience to be loyalty. Nor is it the unimaginative adherence to routine or custom. Loyalty demands initiative and responsibility. The loyal man/ Royce says, 'may often have to show his loyalty by some fact which no mere routine predetermines. He may have to be as inventive of his duties as he is faithful to them/ 1 Nor is loyalty opposed to freedom. On the contrary, there is no loyalty unless there is voluntary devotion to a cause. Royce insists that: 'true loyalty, being a willing devotion of the self to its cause, involves some element of autonomous choice/* As examples of possible causes to which loyalty may be given, Royce suggests friendship, the family and the state. Summing up his illustrations, he writes: 'Our initial illustra-

28O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

tions of possible causes were first, a friendship which unites several friends into some unity of friendly life; secondly, a family whose unity binds its members' lives together; and thirdly, the state, in so far as it is no mere collection of separate citizens, but such a unity as that to which the devoted patriot is loyal. As we saw, such illustrations could be vastly extended. All stable social relations may give rise to causes that may call forth loyalty.'5 But if loyalty must be freely given and if there are many possible causes to which a man may be loyal, upon what principle is he to choose? Royce remarks that: 'nobody can be equally and directly loyal to all of the countless actual social causes that exist/6 He goes on to point out that: 'It is obvious also that many causes which conform to our general definition of a possible cause may appear to any given person to be hateful and evil causes to which he is justly opposed.'7 So far indeed the conception of loyalty does not seem to be very promising as a key to the understanding of morality. It seems on the contrary to lack positive moral significance, since it has nothing to say about which causes are deserving of loyalty. But as yet, we have been concerned only with the preliminary account of the conception. Will a deeper and more searching examination reveal something of more positive moral significance ? Royce is fully alive to the objections which can be made against his preliminary account and concludes the first phase of his argument by summing up the difficulties to which it gives rise. T o sum up then, our apparent difficulties/ he says, 'they are these. Loyalty is a good for the loyal man but it may be mischievous for those whom its cause assails. Conflicting loyalties may mean general social disturbances; and the fact that loyalty is good for the loyal does not of itself define whose cause is right when various causes stand opposed to one other. And if, in accordance with our own argument in a foregoing lecture, we declare that the best form of loyalty for the loyal individual is the one that he freely chooses for himself, so much the greater seems to be the complication of the moral world and so much the more numerous become the chances that the loyalties of various people will conflict with one another/ 8 3.

Royce's next step is to point out that a clue to a deeper and

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

281

more adequate conception of loyalty is to be found in the difficulties to which his preliminary conception of it has given rise. The clue to a deeper conception of loyalty lies in the fact that it is the conflict of loyalties which appears to weaken the moral significance of the preliminary conception. Why is it that a conflict between different loyalties is judged to be morally bad? Royce answers that it is because the conflict results in the destruction of loyalty. He writes: 'If loyalty is a supreme good, the mutually destructive conflict of loyalties is in general a supreme evil. If loyalty is a good for all sorts and conditions of men, the war of man against man has been especially mischievous, not so much because it has hurt, maimed, impoverished or slain men, as because it has so often robbed the defeated of their causes, of their opportunities to be loyal, and sometimes of their very spirit of loyalty.'1 Loyalty, according to Royce's preliminary account of it, is inconsistent with itself when regarded as identical with morality. It is inconsistent with itself because it cannot be universally practised without bringing about its own destruction. But, according to Royce, it is just here that the clue to the nature of morality is to be found. The conception of loyalty must be made consistent with itself. It must be revised so as to make the universal practice of loyalty possible. This revision is accomplished by including, in the conception, the principle of loyalty to loyalty. This principle is the criterion by which causes deserving of loyalty are to be distinguished from those which are not. Royce writes: 'And so a cause is good not merely for me but for mankind, in so far as it is essentially a loyalty to loyalty, i.e. is an aid and a furtherance of loyalty in my fellows. It is an evil cause in so far as, despite the loyalty that it arouses in me, it is destructive of loyalty in the world of my fellows.'2 Now in his preliminary account of the conception of loyalty, Royce said that there was an element of autonomous choice in the devotion of a loyal man to a cause. This autonomous choice, according to the revised account, must be guided by the principle of loyalty to loyalty. The missing element of positive moral significance has now been introduced. In the following passage Royce emphasizes the responsibility of the loyal

282

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

man for his choice of a cause and sums up the revised conception of loyalty. He writes: 'However much the cause may seem to be assigned to me by my social station, I must co-operate in the choice of the cause before the act of loyalty is complete. Since this is the case, since my loyalty is never my mere fate, but is always also my choice, I can of course determine my loyalty, at least to some extent, by the consideration of the actual good or ill which my proposed cause does to mankind. And since I now have the main criterion of the good and ill of causes before me, I can define a principle of choice which may so guide me that my loyalty shall become a good not merely for myself but for mankind. This principle is now obvious. I may state it thus: "In so far as it lies in your power, so choose your cause and so serve it, that, by reason of your choice and your service, there shall be more loyalty in the world rather than less. And in fact, so choose and so serve your individual cause as to secure thereby the greatest possible increase of loyalty amongst men. More briefly, in choosing and in serving the cause to which you are to be loyal, be in any case loyal to loyalty"/ 3 Royce goes on to maintain that the principle of loyalty to loyalty is implicit in the every-day recognition of virtues and is the standard by which qualities of character are to be judged. 'My thesis is/ he writes, 'that all the common-place virtues, in so far as they are indeed defensible and effective, are special forms of loyalty to loyalty, and are to be justified, centralized, inspired, by the one supreme effort to do good, namely the effort to make loyalty triumphant in the lives of all men.'* And the same holds also in the case of duties and in that of rules of conduct. 'My thesis is/ he writes a few pages later, 'that all those duties which we have learned to recognize as the fundamental duties of the civilized man, the duties that every man owes to every man, are to be rightly interpreted as special instances of loyalty to loyalty. In other words, all the recognized virtues can be defined in terms of our conception of loyalty and this is why I assert that, when rightly interpreted, loyalty is the whole duty of man.'5 4.

Having stated his revised conception of loyalty, Royce then

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

283

considers its implications for the life of the individual moral agent. The attempt to live in accordance with the principle of loyalty to loyalty will inevitably give rise to problems. The agent must decide for himself to which of the various possible causes confronting him he is to give his loyalty. He may find that two causes, each apparently equally deserving of his loyalty, are mutually exclusive. How is he to decide between them ? Royce recognizes that such choices constitute genuine moral problems. 'Our question still remains however this:' he writes, 'since the only loyal life that we can undertake to live is so complex, since the one cause of universal loyalty can only be served by each of us in a personal life wherein we have to try to unify various special loyalties, and since in many cases these special loyalties seem to us to conflict with one another, how shall we decide as between two apparently conflicting loyalties, which one to follow? Does our principle tell us what to do when loyalties seem to us to be in conflict with one another?' 1 In answering his own question, Royce begins by emphasizing that in morality, as in everything else, human judgement is fallible and human beings liable to error. 'Now my special choice of my personal cause is always fallible/ he writes, 'for I can never know with certainty but that if I were wiser, I should better see my way to serving universal loyalty than I now see it.'2 But this inevitable fallibility does not justify inaction. Moral problems cannot be solved by default. There is always a duty to make a positive decision. 'Now what does this my highest cause, loyalty to loyalty, command?' Royce asks and he answers: 'It commands simply but imperatively that, since I must serve and since at this critical moment my only service must take the form of a choice between loyalties, I shall choose even in my ignorance what form my service is henceforth to take. The point where I am to make this choice is determined by the obvious fact that, after a certain waiting to find out whatever I can find out, I always reach the moment when further indecision would of itself constitute a sort of decision, a decision namely to do nothing and so not to serve at all. Such a decision to do nothing my loyalty to loyalty forbids and therefore my principle clearly says to me: "after fair consideration of the facts, decide knowingly if you can,

284

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

ignorantly if you must, but in any case decide and have no fear'7 3 Thus the moral agent who finds himself confronted by a clash of loyalties, e.g. between the claims of family or friendship on the one side and profession or nation on the other, cannot put off deciding which to serve on the grounds that he is not sure which will make the greater contribution to universal loyalty. He must ask himself, in the light of his present limited knowledge, which of the two presents him with the chance of contributing most to universal loyalty in the situation in which he is placed, or alternatively, which will do the least harm to universal loyalty if he failed to serve it. Having answered his question, he must go ahead and act. Once the moral decision has been taken, he must go through with it. Only fresh knowledge leading to the recognition of error justifies the abandoning of a loyalty once given. 'Fidelity to the cause once chosen/ Royce writes, i s as obvious an aspect of the thorough devotion of the self to the cause of universal loyalty as is decisiveness. Only a growth in knowledge which makes it evident that the special cause once chosen is an unworthy cause, disloyal to universal loyalty, only such a growth in knowledge can absolve from fidelity to the cause once chosen/4 It may be added that, according to the logic of Royce's argument, the moral agent is not only justified in abandoning a cause when he discovers it to be disloyal to universal loyalty, he has a positive duty to do so. To continue in the service of the cause knowing it to be undeserving of loyalty would be immorality. 5. In his introductory lecture, Royce said: 'You can truthfully centre your entire moral world about a rational conception of loyalty/ The subsequent lectures were devoted to developing a rational conception and it is as a rational conception that his general doctrine must be judged. From the standpoint of the theory of rational activity developed in this book, each level of rationality above that of private selfsatisfaction may be regarded as embodying a rational conception of loyalty. At the level of moral rules and customs, rational loyalty is loyalty to the established institutions and conventions of one's society. It is in terms of this primary loyalty that

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

285

all special claims to loyalty must be evaluated. At the level of spheres of rational activity, rational loyalty is conceived in terms of the responsibilities of work, leisure, personal relations and citizenship. Claims upon the rational agents' loyalty will arise in each sphere. These he must evaluate by thinking out his responsibilities in each sphere and assessing their relative importance. Since citizenship embodies the highest level of rationality and incorporates the other spheres within itself, his primary loyalty must be to his responsibilities as a citizen and it is in terms of this primary loyalty that all special claims must ultimately be judged. Finally, at the level of self-consistent human achievement, rational loyalty is conceived in terms of the rational agent's responsibilities as a human being. All special claims to loyalty must be evaluated not merely from the standpoint of citizenship but from that of self-consistent human achievement. The rational agent's primary loyalty is to those causes and those activities which he thinks in a given situation will foster rather than diminish self-consistent human achievement. Thus the scale of levels of rationality, so far as the levels above private self-satisfaction are concerned, may be regarded as a scale of rational conceptions of loyalty. The relation between these conceptions is the same as the relation between the corresponding levels of rationality. The conception of loyalty embodied in the level of spheres of rational activity is more rational than that embodied in the level of moral rule and custom but less rational than that embodied in the level of self-consistent human achievement. The primary loyalty of a lower level becomes at a higher level one more special claim to loyalty. Thus the loyalty to established institutions and conventions, which at the level of moral rules and customs is primary, becomes, at the level of spheres of rational activity, just one more special claim to loyalty. The same is true of loyalty to citizenship at the level of self-consistent human achievement. I have said that the levels of rationality above that of private self-satisfaction may be regarded as embodying rational conceptions of loyalty. But loyalty may also be significant at the level of private self-satisfaction. Many loyalties are given to persons and to causes on purely emotional grounds. They are

286

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

given, that is to say, not on the basis of whether the person or cause is in some way deserving of loyalty but simply because the agent feels himself drawn to them and finds personal satisfaction in serving them. From the standpoint of the moral levels of rationality, the persons or causes may or may not be deserving of loyalty. The point is that, so far as the agent whose loyalty is given is concerned, whether they are so deserving or not is irrelevant. The loyalty is given capriciously. The agent who gives his loyalty capriciously is acting at the level of private self-satisfaction even if in the service of his loyalty he sacrifices himself. I said just now that such loyalties are given on purely emotional grounds. I do not mean by this to deny the importance, indeed the necessity, of emotion in all loyalty whether rational or capricious. No one can be loyal to anything without being emotionally drawn to it. Perhaps the most valuable feature of loyalty as a moral conception is that it includes, as duty and obligation do not, the emotional aspect of all morality. But while admitting all this, it remains true that emotion by itself can never be the ground of a rational loyalty. Let us now return to Royce. His principle of loyalty to loyalty is fundamentally the same as the rational conception of loyalty embodied in the level of self-consistent human achievement. Only those causes, persons and activities are deserving of loyalty which respect the capacity for loyalty in all who have it. This amounts to saying that only self-consistent human achievements are ultimately deserving of loyalty, only those achievements, that is to say, which respect human personality and moral autonomy wherever it is found. This in turn amounts to saying that the ultimate moral community, the responsibilities of which take priority over all others, is the human community. Royce's doctrine here is fundamentally the same as Green's. Moreover he is in fundamental agreement with Green that the responsibilities of the human community for the most part must be identified and fulfilled through the responsibilities of limited communities. The agent must choose his loyalties in the situation in which he finds himself. He must be loyal to loyalty by supporting those causes and activities going on around him which, to the best of his knowledge, deserve loyalty. The account which Royce gives in his early lectures of a pre-

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

287

liminary conception of loyalty, with its emphasis on the voluntary choice by the individual of his cause, suggests that he may have had in mind something along the lines of the level of spheres of rational activity. He explicitly rejects adherence to routine as a case of loyalty and says that: 'the loyal man may have to be as inventive of his duties as he is faithful to them'. It may also be recalled that the examples he gives of possible causes of loyalty are friendship, a family and a state. But while he may have had something like the level of spheres of rational activity as distinct from the level of moral rules and customs in mind, he does not explicitly develop a rational conception of loyalty in terms of citizenship. He poses the problem of the man who is trying to evaluate the various special claims to his loyalty on rational grounds, but then goes straight to the rational conception embodied in the highest level of rationality. He has perhaps done less than justice to the rational conception of loyalty embodied in the level of moral rules and customs. The point here is that without at least this minimum loyalty no social life can last. Loyalty to established institutions and conventions, although uncritical and sometimes obscurantist from the standpoint of the higher levels of rationality, is nevertheless solid and enduring by comparison with the capricious loyalties of the level of private self-satisfaction. It is a necessary step to a more rational conception of loyalty and Royce in his preliminary conception of loyalty has not brought out its significance. These however are only minor points. Royce's general theory can be amended to incorporate them. What is important to notice is that his central thesis about morality is fundamentally the same as Green's. He also agrees with Green about the relation between the theory of morality and its practice. It will be recalled that Bradley in Ethical Studies held that the theory of morality, apart from exhibiting the general character of moral problems, namely in a collision of duties, had nothing to say about moral practice. Green, on the other hand, argued in Prolegomena to Ethics that the theory of morality is indirectly of practical significance. It can help the moral agent not only to understand what constitutes a moral problem but also what considerations are relevant to its solution. Royce thinks that moral problems arise from a conflict of loyalties and his prin-

288

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

ciple of loyalty to loyalty is intended to help the moral agent in his attempts to think out where his duty lies. It will not solve his problems for him but it will make clear what sort of solution he must try to find. But Royce is not content with a theory of morality by itself. He still retains the point of view of the introduction to Religious Aspects of Philosophy. Near the end of The Philosophy oi Loyalty, he writes: 'One wants a doctrine of the real world or a religion to help out one's ethics.'1 On the next page, he says: 'So far we have defined the moral life as loyalty and have shown why the moral life is for us men the best life. But now we want to know what truth is behind and beyond the moral life.'2 To this he adds: 'We want to see the relation of loyalty to the real universe/3 His thought seems to be that unless it is rooted in metaphysics, no theory of morality will ultimately carry conviction. To his metaphysics then let us go. B:

THE

NATURE

OF

BEING

I . Royce's first attempt to expound a metaphysical theory was made in Book II of Religious Aspects of Philosophy where it was intended to provide a foundation for the theory of morality developed in Book I. The attempt was repeated in several later works, and although there were changes in emphasis and in statement, the basic doctrine underwent no fundamental change. His most thorough and comprehensive attempt was made in his two series of Gifford Lectures which were delivered in 1901 and 1902, and were subsequently published under the title of The World and the Individual. The theory expounded in these lectures is the theory of 'the real universe* to which he refers at the end of The Philosophy of Loyalty. In this section and the next I shall state the central thesis of his argument and will then attempt to estimate its validity and significance. In the first volume of The World and the Individual Royce maintains that cognition and volition are not separate but inseparable. Every cognition involves volition and every volition involves cognition. Tacts are never known/ he writes, 'except with reference to some value that they possess for our present or intended activities.'1 Intellectual activities are as much matters of will as are those which are usually thought of as

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

289

practical. 'Volition is as manifest in counting objects/ he writes, 'as in singing tunes; in conceiving physical laws as in directing the destinies of nations; in laboratory experiments as in artistic productions; in contemplating as in fighting/2 But without cognition, we could not formulate our volitions to ourselves. Royce argues that: 'our voluntary activities are never known to us except as referring to facts to which we attribute in one way or another, an intellectually significant being, a reality other than what is present to us at the moment/ 3 Cognition and volition, knowledge and will, are two aspects of human consciousness which can be distinguished from each other but not separated. Summing up his contention, Royce writes: 'From this point of view then, the contrast between knowledge and will within our own conscious field is so far this: namely, that we speak of our conscious process as a knowing, in so far as all data are woven into one unity of consciousness, while we speak of this same process as will, in so far as this unity of consciousness involves the fulfilment or embodiment of a purpose/4 These two aspects of human consciousness are brought together, according to Royce, under the head of 'meaning'. He continues: 'The word "meaning" very properly lays stress upon both of these aspects at once, for what we call a "meaning" is at once something observed with clearness as a unity of many facts, and something also intended as the result which fulfils a purpose/5 Royce's point here is that what gives meaning to a proposition is not merely that it propounds a relation, e.g. that A is to the left of B, or that X is an attribute of Y, but that it is the answer to a question; and a question which has been asked, not at random, but for the sake of implementing a purpose. Elsewhere in The World and the Individual Royce distinguishes between what he calls 'external' and 'internal' meanings. An external meaning is the import of a proposition, that which it propounds. An internal meaning is the purpose for the sake of which particular questions are asked and particular actions done. All external meanings are ultimately dependent upon internal meanings. Taken by themselves, apart from any purpose, external meanings lose their significance and become meaningless.

Z$O

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

2. Thus for Royce, there are no facts which are independent of human purposes and no human purposes which are formulated without reference to facts. His next step is to argue that human consciousness has its being in the effort to formulate and fulfil purposes, an effort which is at once volitional and cognitive. Every centre of human consciousness is a centre of selfdetermining activity. The self-determination is achieved through the effort to formulate and fulfil purposes, or to make the same point from the other side, the formulation of every human purpose and the attempt by the agent whose purpose it is to implement it, is the activity through which the agent determines himself. Apart from this determination of himself through autonomous self-criticizing activity, he is not a human agent at all. What we call 'ideas' are nothing but integral elements in the process of self-determination. They are purposes which we present to ourselves and which lead us on to implement them in determinate activities. *In all cases every idea/' Royce writes, 'whether mathematical or scientific, seeks its own further determination. In every case it is true that such further determination is also to be given only in terms of experience/1 By 'experience' Royce does not mean only sensations but every form which human consciousness can take. He goes on to illustrate: 'Sometimes it is a definite group of sense experiences that we mean in advance;' he writes, 'then we are said to be observant in the physical world, and then in physical nature only do we find the desired determination of our will. Sometimes, as in the mathematician's world, we deal with objects that appear more directly under our control than do physical objects/2 He admits that from one point of view, all ideas are themselves facts. They are psychical events, or, as he puts it, 'masses of experience'. But he points out that they are facts only for an observer who finds knowledge of such facts necessary for the fulfilment of the purposes through which he is trying to achieve his own self-determination. Royce continues: 'But there are no ideas which have not an aspect in which they are masses of experience: and masses of experience are never objective facts except in so far as they present the answers to specific questions about facts: and the answer to a question is merely the more precise determination of the will that asks the question/3

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

291

To sum up Royce's central thesis so far: he is making a criticism of our ordinary, common sense notion of existence. What common sense takes to be hard facts, independent realities existing in their own right, turn out to be something different. They are members of worlds of ideas which we are obliged to present to ourselves and to develop in detail, in order to be able to formulate and fulfil our purposes. The common sense notion of existence therefore calls for revision. The revised notion may be put in Royce's own words: 'for, according to our central thesis,' he writes, 'except as consciously fulfilling a purpose, nothing can, logically speaking, exist at all.14 The qualification 'logically speaking' emphasizes that this is the implicit rationale of the notion of existence, i.e. how we are obliged to think of it when it is fully worked out. The assertion that only what 'consciously fulfils a purpose' can exist, emphasizes that to exist is to be found necessary for the achievement of self-determination. 3. Royce's general argument as we have seen it so far does not differ in essentials from that developed by Green in ?rolegomena to Ethics in the course of expounding his general theory of the character and structure of human experience. Royce, that is to say, agrees with Green that there is nothing given ready-made in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought. His doctrine about the interdependence of cognition and volition also recalls what was said in Chapter VI of this book about knowledge as an integral part of rational activity and to this point I shall return later. For the moment, however, let us continue to follow Royce's own exposition. His position is clearly untenable as it stands. If 'to exist* is 'consciously to fulfil a human purpose', then it seems that things must be called into existence when somebody has need of them and disappear when they are no longer needed. But things do not appear and disappear in this convenient way. They frequently force themselves upon us when they are not wanted and frustrate the fulfilment of our purposes. Moreover, one man's purpose may conflict with another's. It seems to follow therefore that something which fulfills A's purpose and at the same time frustrate B's, simultaneously both exists and does not exist. Royce is however fully alive to these difficulties

292

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

and meets them by further revising and developing the notion of existence. 'Our concept of being implies that whatever is/ he writes, 'is consciously known as the fulfilment of some idea and is so known either by ourselves at this moment or by some consciouness inclusive of our own.11 The objection is met by introducing the conception of a supra-human consciousness which is clearly recognizable as a restatement of Green's conception of an eternal consciousness. 'What is/ Royce writes, 'is present to the insight of a single, self-conscious knower whose life includes all that he knows, whose meaning is wholly fulfilled in his facts and whose selfconsciousness is complete/2 This 'single knower' or eternal consciousness, is a single, infinite act of self-determination, achieved through the formulation of a single, infinite purpose. The world, or what exists, is what fulfils this purpose. The selfdetermination which we manage to achieve through our efforts to formulate and fulfil our human purposes is possible because in it we are participating in the infinite purpose. Our human finite purposes are fragments of the absolute, infinite purpose. It is what our innumerable finite human purposes would be if they could all be consistently developed and worked out. The world, or what exists, is therefore what would fulfil our fragmentary human purposes if we were able to work out fully all that they imply. 'What our view asserts/ Royce writes, 'is that the world is and can be real only as the object expressing in final, in individual form, the whole meaning which our finite will, imperfectly embodied in fleeting instants, seeks and attempts to define as its own other, and also precisely as its own ultimate expression. In other words, the world, from our point of view, becomes real only as such an ultimate expression of our ideas/3 Royce maintains that this notion of a single, infinite act of selfdetermination is the real significance of the conception of God. In the following passage where he speaks of 'meanings' he is referring to inner meanings or purposes. He writes: 'AH meanings, if completely developed, unite in one meaning, and this it is which the real world expresses. Every idea, if fully developed, is of universal application. Since this one world of expression is a life of experience fulfilling ideas, it possesses precisely the attributes which the ages have

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

293

most associated with the name of God. God is the absolute being, the perfect fulfilment of life. Only God, when thus viewed, is not other than his world, but is the very life of the world taken in its wholeness as a single conscious and selfpossessed life. In God we live and move and have our being/4 And a few pages later, speaking of the complete and allembracing nature of the divine insight which is the selfconsciousness of the infinite act of self-determination, he says: This final view for which the realm of being possesses the unity of a single conscious whole, indeed ignores no fragment of finite consciousness, but it sees all at once as the realm of truth in its entirety.'5 4. To the question: if the world as the fulfilment of an infinite purpose is eternal, how are we to understand time? Royce makes the following reply. 'In brief, only in terms of will, and only by virtue of the significant relations of the stages of a teleological process, has time, whether in our inner experience, or in the conceived world order as a whole, any meaning.'1 He maintains that the distinctions between before and after, between earlier and later, between past and future, are distinctions which are necessary for the formulation and fulfilment of finite purposes. Time is the form of the will/ he writes, 'and the real world is a temporal world in so far as, in various regions of that world, seeking differs from attainment, pursuit is external to its own goal, the imperfect tends towards its own perfection, or in brief, the internal meanings of finite life win, in successive stages, their union with their own external meanings/2 From the point of view of human agents, striving to determine themselves through the formulation and fulfilment of finite purposes, the world appears as a world of temporal events. But 'these same events however, in so far as they are viewed at once by the Absolute, are for such a view all equally present and this, their presence, is the presence of all time as a "totum simul" to the Absolute/ And Royce continues: 'And the presence in this sense of all time to the Absolute constitutes the eternal order of the world: eternal, because it is inclusive of all distinctions of temporal past and temporal future: eternal, because, for this very reason, the totality of temporal

294

THE

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

events at once to the Absolute, has no events that precede or follow it, but contains all sequences within it: eternal because, finally, this view of the world does not, like our partial glimpses of this or of that relative whole or sequence, pass away and give place to some other view but includes an observation of every passing away, of every sequence, of every event and of whatever in time succeeds that event, and includes all the views that are taken by the various finite selves/3 By 'the Absolute* in this passage, Royce means of course the infinite act of selfdetermination, of divine, all-embracing insight. Some light may be thrown on Royce's central thesis if we try to think of it in terms of the notion of the concrete universal expounded in Chapter I of this book. That notion is somehow bound up with his argument, although, as I shall argue in a later section, much of the difficulty of his position is due to a failure to appreciate its full significance. The infinite act of self-determination which Royce understands by God, may be thought of as a complete individual achievement of rationality, an achievement which is at once all-embracing, including all lesser achievements within itself, and completely successful. It may thus be regarded as an absolute concrete universal but, unlike the Absolute of Bradley and Bosanquet, it is not even in some metaphorical sense an organism. Its individuality and unity are the individuality and unity of an individual achievement of rationality but of an individual achievement of rationality raised to a super-human level. Like the Absolute of Bradley and Bosanquet, it is a self-maintaining, all-embracing system with nothing outside it. But unlike their Absolute, it is not indifferent to the finite centres of experience which it includes. They, or rather we and all other finite centres of experience, in so far as we manage to determine ourselves, contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose, the purpose by expressing and fulfilling which the infinite act of self-determination is achieved. But owing to the limitations of our finitude, we can never see in detail how all this is so. We are in the midst of the expression and fulfilment of the absolute purpose which therefore appears to us as a temporal process. But the eternal consciousness takes it all in, as it were, at a stroke. Just as we are able to take in the unity of a picture or the meaning of a sen-

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

295

tence at a glance, or to appreciate the unity of a tune, even though all these things can be broken down by analysis into sequences and relations, so that eternal consciousness appreciates the whole universe. The universe is created and appreciated all at once in a single act of self-determination. This is the central thesis in Royce's theory of being or reality. Certain difficulties at once come to mind, especially when we remember that it is a theory which is supposed to provide a foundation for morality. How dees it do this and how is evil to be explained if everything contributes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose ? What becomes of human freedom ? How are we to understand nature, the world of events which, in our efforts to achieve self-determination, we are obliged to present to ourselves and study in detail ? Somehow the fact that we are obliged to do this must contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. But Royce is well aware of these difficulties and he devotes the greater part of the second volume of The World and the Individual to developing and expanding his central thesis in an attempt to meet them. Before embarking on any criticism of his argument, therefore, let us briefly see how he does it.

C:

THE

P L A C E

H U M A N I T Y

OF IN

N A T U R E

AND

BEING

1. Let us begin with the philosophy of nature which Royce believes is implied in his general theory of being. His first step is to acknowledge the limited validity of the view of nature implied in the human activities of empirical science and technology. For each of these activities, what exists or the facts, are what is found necessary in the fulfilment of their purposes. Royce holds that both empirical science and technology originated in the effort to develop human social life. 'It is our interest in social organization/ he writes, 'that has given us both industrial art and empirical science. As industrial art regards its facts as mere contrivances that have no life of their own but which merely express their human artificers' intents, so a philosophy of nature founded solely on our special sciences tends to treat the facts of nature, regarded in the light of our cunningly con-

296

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

trived conceptions, as having no inner meaning, and as being mere embodiments of our formulas/1 Royce admits that such conceptions of nature, those implied in industrial art and empirical science, are justified from the standpoint of human activity. Those doctrines/ he says, 'are perfectly justified as expressions of the perspective view of nature which we men naturally take/ 2 He maintains however that 'neither view can stand against any deeper reason that we may have for interpreting our experiences of nature as a hint of a vaster realm of life and of meaning, of which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God's life/3 And he believes that he has already shown good reasons for believing that what ultimately exists is not what consciously fulfils merely human purposes, but what fulfils an absolute purpose through the expression and fulfilment of which God determines himself. So what is essentially a humanistic conception of nature must be revised to conform to this deeper conception. The reference to a Vaster realm of life and of meaning foreshadows the direction of the revision. 2. Royce holds that: 'We have no right whatever to speak of merely unconscious nature, but only of uncommunicative nature, or of nature whose mental processes go on at such a different time-rate from ours that we cannot adjust ourselves to a live appreciation of their inward fluency, although our consciousness does make us aware of their presence/1 Now this is a difficult, not to say strange, doctrine. The central thought may perhaps be summarized as follows. The absolute concrete universal, the expression and fulfilment of the absolute purpose through which God determines himself, is a vast system of conscious activity. It is achieved through what must be supposed to be an infinite number of finite centres of consciousness. There are different types of finite centre; each type has its own special contribution to make to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose and accordingly determines itself in its own way. One type is differentiated from another by, among other things, the fact that each has its own rate of self-determination, and so a different appreciation of temporal succession. What seems like a year to us, may be no more than a fraction of a second to another type of consciousness, e.g. the type

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

297

which determines itself through the formulation and fulfilment of purposes embodied in what we take to be the phenomena of inorganic nature. On this view, what we think of as nature is our human experience of types of finite consciousness different from our own. Both they and we are elements in a vast system of consciousness; both they and we exist in the activity of selfdetermination, through which each type of finite consciousness contributes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. Royce sums up his contention thus: 'My hypothesis is that, in the case of nature in general, as in the case of the particular portions of nature known as our fellow men, we are dealing with phenomenal signs of a vast conscious process whose relation to time varies vastly, but whose general characters are throughout the same. From this point of view evolution would be a series of processes suggesting to us various degrees and types of conscious processes. These processes, in case of so-called inorganic matter, are very remote from us, while in case of the processes which appear to us as the expressive movements of the bodies of our human fellows, they are so near to our own inner processes that we understand what they mean. Just suppose then that, when you deal with nature, you deal with a vast realm of finite consciousness of which your own is at once a part and an example/3 Royce thinks that the evolution of new natural species may be understood as stages in the successive fulfilment of the purposes through which various types of finite consciousness determine themselves. It is a process fundamentally the same as that in which we human agents develop and expand our own personalities in the conduct of our lives. 'I now make the wholly tentative hypothesis,' he writes, 'that the process of the evolution of new forms of consciousness in nature is throughout of the same general type as that which we observe when we follow the evolution of new sorts of plans, of ideas and of self-hood in our own lives/3 He calls this a 'wholly tentative hypothesis' and is prepared to admit that all that he has to say about the detailed working out of the central thought underlying his conception of nature is tentative, but about the central thought itself, he feels quite sure. He further insists that new species, new types of finite consciousness, when they are

298

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

developed, may become at least relatively autonomous. All of them have their existence in their contribution to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose, but some which achieve selfconsciousness break away, as it were, from the parent type which first produced them and directly function in the absolute system. Others, which do not achieve self-consciousness, or only achieve it to a limited extent, have their being in fulfilling the finite purposes of their parent consciousness. In the following passage, which is not free from obscurity, Royce attempts to expound this notion which he believes will reconcile the theory of evolution with his own general theory of being. He writes: 'But now these new creations, if they survive, are not the mere contents of another and larger consciousness. They are all processes occupying time and embodying will. They are themselves finite, conscious purposes, having an inner meaning, a relation to the Absolute of which they are also, ipso facto, partial expressions, and a tendency to adjust themselves to the goal in their own way. If, as in case of the conscious self of any one of us, they become aware of this, their own relation to the Absolute, then they no longer survive or pass away merely so far as they serve the larger purpose that originally invented them as tentative devices of its own. They then, like all finite purposes of self-conscious grade, define their own lives as individually significant, conceive their goal as the Absolute, and their relation to their natural sources as relations that mean something to themselves also. Their destiny thus becomes relatively free from that of the finite self within which they first grew up/ 4 Perhaps much, if not all, organic life, other than human, is a case of types of finite consciousness which do not become self-conscious, or only to a very slight extent; and so have their being in the fulfilment of the purposes of the larger types of finite consciousness which produced them. They do not consciously serve the Absolute purpose, but do so through the part they play in fulfilling larger finite purposes. 3. Space does not permit a more thorough investigation of Royce's philosophy of nature and of the many questions to which it gives rise. Indeed in The World and the Individual Royce himself does no more than sketch, on a somewhat larger

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

299

scale and with a wealth of imagery and illustration, the central thought which I have condensed into the preceding paragraphs. He does not attempt to work systematically through all its implications; nor does he do so elsewhere. We need not however try to repair this omission. What is important is to decide whether or not there are good reasons for accepting his general metaphysical doctrine, and to this I shall turn in the next section. But we must not forget that Royce believed that his theory of morality required his theory of being as a foundation without which it would fail to carry conviction. We have yet to see how he thought that this foundation was provided. We may recall once more the central thesis of Royce's argument. Whatever exists does so through the contribution which it makes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. Human agents, in attempting to formulate and fulfil their own purposes and so determine themselves, are thereby contributing to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. That it is true that God here also wills in me/ Royce writes, 'is unquestionably the result of the unity of the divine consciousness.'1 But he goes on to point out that, through his actions, the human agent is contributing to the unity of the divine consciousness. Each centre of human consciousness, like every other type of finite consciousness, has a unique contribution to make. 'But it is equally true/ he goes on, 'that this divine unity is here and now realized in me and by me, only through my unique acts. My act then is part of the divine life that, however fragmentary, is not elsewhere repeated in the divine consciousness. When I thus consciously and uniquely will, it is I then who just here am God's will, or just here consciously act for the whole/ 2 We, that is to say, as finite centres of consciousness, are not annihilated in the eternal consciousness, but have an essential function to perform. God is necessary to us but we are also necessary to God. 'Despite God's absolute unity/ Royce writes, 'we, as individuals, preserve and attain our unique lives and meanings, and are not lost in the life that sustains us and that needs us as its own expression. This life is real through us all and we are real through our unity with that life.'3 Royce maintains that human self-determination is achieved through morality. It is through morality that human agents make their contribution to the fulfilment of the divine purpose.

3OO

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

Our human self-consciousness, which has its being in our efforts to achieve self-determination, is a moral consciousness. Its essence lies in the awareness by each of us of our own personal responsibility for our conduct: it is our consciousness that, whatever our private wishes, there is something which, as men, we ought to be trying to do. Tor now, however you define your moral philosophy/ Royce writes, it is indeed true that by the "ought" you mean at any temporal instant, the rule that, if followed, would guide you so to express at that instant your will, that you should thereby be made nearer to union with the divine, nearer to a consciousness of the oneness of your will with the absolute will, than you would become if you acted counter to this "ought"/ 4 And in support of this, he appeals to the common experience of mankind. 'It is enough for us here/ he writes, 'that this consciousness of the "ought" can and does arise, while the essence of it is that the self is to accomplish the object of its search through obedience to an order which is not of its own momentary creation/5 Thus Royce tries to bring his theory of morality into line with his metaphysics, the theory of morality being that which he first expounded in Book I of Religious Aspects of Philosophy and which a few years later he was to restate in The Philosophy of Loyalty, The universal standard of morality, summed up in the principle of loyalty to loyalty, has been given metaphysical roots. It is only by acting on the principle of loyalty to loyalty that men can contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose and achieve their own self-determination as men. It is through morality that mankind becomes real, morality being the form of being which is appropriate to the human type of finite consciousness. So Royce believes that he has been able to show 'something in the nature of things' which supports his theory of morality. He thinks that he has shown 'what truth is behind and beyond the moral life and that we can now see' the relation of loyalty to the rest of the universe. This relation is summed up in his central thesis: 'Only in so far as a man is moral is he real. Morality is not a noble but impractical ideal. On the contrary, it is the only reality for man/ 6 4. But the matter cannot be left here; for a little reflection discloses a serious difficulty. If morality and self-determination

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

30I

are equivalent, if a man exists only to the extent that he acts morally, what becomes of immorality? Can there be such a thing at all ? Must it not amount merely to error in the achievement of self-determination, and is this not at variance with the facts of ordinary moral experience? But Royce is perfectly aware of this difficulty and recognizes that unless he can overcome it, his metaphysical doctrine will not provide a foundation for his theory of morality but will undermine it. He does not deny that immorality, or as he calls it 'sin', exists, and he explains its essential character thus. T o sin is consciously to choose to forget, through a narrowing of the field of attention, an "ought" that one already recognizes.'1 And a little later, he writes: 'All sin then is sin against the light, by free choice to be inattentive to the light already seen/2 In other words, the heart of immorality is perversity: the deliberate refusal to admit and do what one already knows to be right. It is conscious irrationality, the deliberate attempt to achieve self-determination in a way in which one knows that it cannot be achieved. In so far as he is immoral, a man is destroying himself. No man could be absolutely and completely immoral without ceasing to exist as a man. Absolute immorality would be absolute caprice: total and utter irresponsibility. Immorality is a deliberate turning one's back on morality, the adopting of a purpose which is known to be in conflict with the system of purposes through which self-determination is being achieved. Royce's account of evil is indeed substantially the same as that given in various parts of their work by Bradley, Green and Bosanquet. But if immorality is a fact, if men can and do formulate and fulfil immoral purposes, purposes which to their knowledge contravene the principle of loyalty to loyalty, then evil must somehow contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. Everything which exists does so through the contribution which it makes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose, and, since evil cannot be an illusion, it can be no exception. Now Royce accepts this implication of his position. Tor us, evil is certainly not an unreality/ he writes; 'It is a temporal reality and, as such, is included within and present to the eternal insight/3 But he insists that, although the fulfilment of the absolute purpose includes evil, the absolute purpose is not as such evil.

3O2

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

'What we have asserted throughout/ he writes, 'is that no evil is a whole or complete instance of a being. In other words, evil, for us, is something explicitly finite, and the absolute as such, in the individuality of its life, is not evil, while its life is unquestionably inclusive of evil which it experences, overcomes and triumphantly transcends/4 A few pages later, Royce restates the central thesis of his metaphysical position so as to give explicit recognition to the fact of evil. Tor us, God has and is a will:' he writes, 'and through all the struggles of the temporal order, just this will is winning its way, while on the other hand, in the eternal order, just this will is finally and triumphantly expressed. Meanwhile in the temporal order, there is, at every point and in every act, relative freedom. And for that very reason there is the possibility and the fact of a finite conscious resistance to the will of the world by the will of the individual. The consequences of such resistance are real evils, evils that all finite beings and the whole world suffer/5 To the question: why are such evils necessary for the conscious fulfilment of the absolute purpose ? Royce has an answer. 'Such evils are justified/ he writes, 'only by the eternal worth of the life that endures and overcomes them, and they are temporally overcome through other finite wills and not without moral conflict. The right eternally triumphs and yet not without temporal warfare/6 Royce's argument thus is that evils are necessary because they enable a richer purpose to be expressed and fulfilled than would be possible without them. Every sin creates the opportunity for its own conquest, either by the sinner or by someone else, and thus the opportunity for the realization of qualities which could not otherwise be developed. We can be sure that all evils will be overcome for otherwise the absolute purpose would be frustrated, which is inconceivable. Royce does not think that the presence of limited opposition within the world constitutes any tarnish on the perfection of the absolute purpose. He also thinks that ordinary human experience bears him out. Tor as a fact, we ourselves even in our finitude/ he writes, 'know that the most significant perfections include, as a part of themselves, struggles whereby opposing elements, set by this very struggle into contrast with one another, become clearly conscious/7

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

303

He further thinks that all the suffering which befalls mankind, not as the result of human wickedness, but from natural disasters, disease and the like, can be explained in the same way. They are necessary because of the qualities which they summon forth in the effort to overcome them or to endure them, and these, the highest human qualities, are necessary for the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. 'Such perfections also include suffering/ he writes, 'because in the conquest over suffering all the nobler gifts of the world, all the richer experiences of life, consist. As there is no courage without a dread included and transcended, so in the life of endurance there is no conscious heroism without the presence of tribulations in whose overcoming heroism consists/8 Royce, in other words, is maintaining that all the vicissitudes of human life, whether the product of human wickedness or folly, or of apparently arbitrary natural events, ultimately contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose, through the qualities whose achievement they make possible. These things are sent to try us' sums up his doctrine on this point. Even the eventual extinction of the human type of finite consciousness within the temporal order would mean only that humanity had made its contribution to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. This final frustration of all human purposes, which the extinction of humanity would involve, is not ultimately different in significance from the thwarting of the purposes of an individual human being which occurs with his death. As to the meaning of the death of human beings in early life, or before they have had the chance to formulate and fulfil any significant purposes, Royce has this to say. 'But now what purpose can be fulfilled by the ending of a life whose purpose is so far unfulfilled ? I answer at once the purpose that can be fulfilled by the ending of such a life is necessarily a purpose that in the eternal world is consciously known and seen as continuous with, yet as inclusive of, the very purpose whose fulfilment temporal death seems to cut short/ 9 And he goes on: The thwarting of the lesser purpose is always included within the fulfilment of the larger and more integral purpose/10 His point seems to be that the grief and suffering of the parents caused by the death of a child summons forth in them qualities of fortitude and compassion which contribute to the fulfilment

304

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

of the absolute purpose. So Royce believes that he has faced and overcome the apparent difficulties which stood in the way of his metaphysical theory and prevented it from providing a foundation for his theory of morality. He believes that, through his conception of the eternal consciousness, he has developed a philosophy of religion in which metaphysics and ethics are reconciled. D:

ROYCE

AND

HUMANISTIC

IDEALISM

1. In the last section I said that the important thing about Royce's metaphysics is to decide whether there are good reasons for accepting his central thesis. With the argument of the last few paragraphs fresh in mind, it may be convenient to approach this problem with some remarks about the adequacy of his metaphysics as a foundation for his theory of morality, supposing for the moment that his central thesis is accepted. We must not, I may add, allow ourselves to be put off by his contention that evil and suffering are justified because they contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose by making it richer and deeper than would otherwise be possible. Royce is not condoning immorality; nor is he indifferent to human suffering. Rightly rejecting all facile arguments which pretend that these things are somehow illusory, he accepts their existence and is trying to understand and explain them. His appeal to every-day experience in this connection is surely not without force. A world devoid of hardship, of pain, of frustration and of grief, while it might be a more comfortable place than the world we know, would be one in which endurance, fortitude, compassion and sympathy would be irrelevant. But does Royce's metaphysical doctrine really strengthen his theory of morality ? It claims to show that morality is an integral element in the universe. Immorality is also admitted to have its place, but it is subordinate to morality. We are told that in the temporal order, although there is immorality, it never predominates, but is overcome through the struggle and effort of moral agents. Presumably if humanity one day disappears from the temporal order, this will not be owing to selfdestruction as the result of the predominance of immorality, but will come about through the process of evolution. Human-

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

305

ity will be superseded by other types of finite consciousness more suited to contribute to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose in the stage now reached. From the point of view of God, of course, nothing disappears and nothing comes into being. His absolute purpose is expressed and fulfilled in a single act of self-determination which is also one of insight and appreciation. The world is a temporal process only for us who are in the midst of it. But taking account of all this, does the claim that, within human life, morality will always triumph over immorality add anything to our understanding of morality ? On the contrary, it seems to me to take the heart out of morality. If the possibility of the triumph of immorality is denied, if we can be sure that, no matter how bad things may seem, no matter how feeble and irresolute current behaviour appears, nevertheless all will come right in the end, our own human responsibility becomes a hollow sham. Unless there is a real possibility of failure, success is worthless. Royce tells us that within the temporal order there is relative freedom, that there 'is the possibility and the fact of resistance to the will of the world by the will of the individual*. But he also maintains that everything contributes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose. In other words, the resistance is not serious, and when properly understood is no resistance at all, since it, too, contributes to the fulfilment of the absolute purpose through the qualities which are summoned forth in overcoming it. Our freedom and responsibility are, as he says, only relative. We cannot do any serious damage and even our resistance is, after all, a negative contribution. Royce might have preserved genuine human responsibility at the cost of admitting that the absolute purpose may be frustrated. But this would mean that God fails to determine himself, which would call for a wholesale revision of the metaphysical doctrine. Alternatively, he might have argued that if immorality does triumph in the temporal order, if humanity destroys itself through its own wickedness, then this must be for the sake of fulfilling the absolute purpose. Whichever triumphed, morality or immorality, it would not really matter, because in either case the absolute's purpose is being fulfilled. This alternative would preserve his metaphysical doctrine, but at the cost of failing to

306

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

provide, in that doctrine, any foundation for his theory of morality. We have seen what Royce's theory of morality is, independently of metaphysical considerations. In essentials, it is the same as Green's and implies, if it does not explicitly set forth, a theory of rational activity along the lines of that expounded in this book. The notion of human responsibility is an integral part of it. The individual moral agent is responsible for deciding which of the various possible causes of loyalty he ought to serve and how best to serve them. Each moral agent, that is to say, must implement the principle of loyalty to loyalty for himself; nobody else can do it for him. There is nothing except his own moral decision to prevent him from ignoring his responsibilities and surrendering himself to a life of caprice. Now in demanding a theory of morality founded on metaphysics, by which he means not only a theory of human experience but of ultimate reality, Royce is revealing himself unwilling to accept the implications for human responsibility which his theory of morality involves. He is unwilling, that is to say, to leave it to us. Morality must be shown to be not merely our responsibility, dependent on our capacity and resolution, but must be shown to be in wiser and more powerful hands. He is, in other words, going back on his theory of morality although he dees not seem to realize that he is doing so. The fact that he does not realize that he is doing so suggests that his own grasp of his theory, and of the theory of rational activity implied in it, is imperfect. 2. As a result of the foregoing discussion, I conclude that Royce cannot have it both ways. He must choose between his theory of morality and his metaphysics. If he wishes to retain the theory of morality first propounded in Book I of Religious Aspects oi Philosophy and later restated in The Philosophy ot Loyalty, then he must give up the metaphysical theory of The World and the Individual. If he wishes to retain the latter, then he must give up the former. I shall not argue that he ought to give up his metaphysical theory, that there are no good reasons for accepting it and that his theory of morality really implies a position along the lines of that sketched in Chapter VI of this book under the title of Humanistic Idealism. Let us recall Royce's first step in the exposition of his central

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

307

thesis. It was to criticize and revise the common sense notion of existence. Royce argued that what exists, the facts, is whatever is found necessary for the formulation and fulfilment of purposes. But he then went on to argue that these purposes cannot be merely human purposes because human purposes frequently clash and their fulfilment is often frustrated. His next step therefore was to argue that what exists is what is found necessary not for the formulation and fulfilment of merely human purposes but for an absolute purpose. This absolute purpose is expressed and fulfilled in a single infinite act of self-determination. It is an infinite all-embracing completely successful achievement of rationality, an absolute concrete universal. Everything that exists does so by virtue of the fact that it contributes in some way to the expression and fulfilment of the absolute purpose. To exist is to be an element, a phase or a moment in the infinite, all-embracing, completely successful, individual achievement of rationality. But is Royce justified in abandoning the humanistic standpoint after his first step ? He thought that he was because of the difficulty involved in maintaining that what exists is what is found necessary for the formulation and fulfilment of human purposes. But is this difficulty insuperable ? At the levels of ends and means and private self-satisfaction, the purposes of different agents will undoubtedly conflict. At the level of moral rules and customs, however, so far as the members of the same society are concerned, conflict between purposes will be less frequent. It will not be wholly absent because no set of rules and customs is fully consistent and because rules and customs are always susceptible to varying interpretations. At the level of spheres of rational activity the limitations of rules and customs no longer apply. Among the members of the same society, who have reached this level of rationality, purposes will not normally be in conflict. But the purposes of members of different societies may still conflict even at this level and there may also be conflict between purposes formulated in terms of the responsibilities of citizenship and those formulated in terms of some activity belonging to the level of self-consistent human achievement. It is only at the level of self-consistent human achievement, where purposes are formulated and fulfilled in terms of the responsibilities of the human community or, what comes

308

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

to the same thing, in terms of the principle of loyalty to loyalty, that the possibility of conflict is in principle removed. The significance of this, so far as Royce's argument is concerned, is that the conflict between human purposes is not ineradicable. In so far as they are formulated in terms of the highest level of rationality there will be no basic conflict. Royce's difficulty over the conflict of human purposes can be avoided if his revised notion of existence is reformulated thus. What exists is what is found necessary for the fulfilment of those human purposes which are formulated in terms of rational activity at the level of self-consistent human achievement. Such purposes do not in principle conflict. But as it stands, this will not do. The humanistic aspect is not properly brought out. A better formulation, which takes account of this aspect, would be: what exists is whatever we find ourselves obliged to acknowledge as present in the situation confronting us in our efforts to fulfil those purposes which we have formulated in terms of rational activity at the level of self-consistent human achievement. This avoids any suggestion that we know what exists independently of or apart from human experience and at the same time takes account of the 'given' or de facto character of whatever exists. It does not deny that something exists over and beyond our experience: it only asserts that we cannot have knowledge of it. Here it is important to recall the distinction between the knowledge which is an integral part of rational activity and the knowledge the pursuit of which may be the purpose of rational activity. To say that what exists is whatever we are obliged to acknowledge as present in rational activity at the level of self-consistent human achievement, is to say that what exists is whatever we may come to know as an integral part of rational activity at this level. There remains the knowledge of what exists which we gain through the systematic pursuit of knowledge, this systematic pursuit being itself an instance of rational activity at the level of self-consistent human achievement. Moreover this systematic knowledge, e.g. in natural science and history, is a development of the knowledge on its theoretical side which is an integral part of rational activity. For a more developed and sophisticated notion of existence, therefore, we must turn from the knowledge which

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

309

is an integral part of rational activity at the highest level of rationality to natural science and history. But we must turn to these forms of knowledge not as scientists and historians but as philosophers. Our task must be, that is to say, to elicit and examine the notions of existence implicit in natural science and history and to work out a theory of the character and structure of human experience in which the significance of these notions becomes intelligible. All this is to say that, if we are serious in our attempt to revise the common sense notion of existence, what we are in search of is a philosophical notion of existence, a notion which must be developed through a critical study of the significance of the notion in human experience. Now when Royce expounded his revised notion of existence, he was already committed to just such a philosophical enterprise. The revised notion was based on his doctrine of the interdependence of cognition and volition and this doctrine in turn was the outcome of an examination of the role and significance of cognition and volition in human experience. What he should have done, when confronted by the difficulty of the conflict of human purposes, was to examine and elucidate the notion of purpose. This would have led him into the theory of rational activity and to the conclusions that, at the level of selfconsistent human achievement, human purposes are not in conflict. It would have led him, in other words, to his own principle of loyalty to loyalty. From this, he would have been able to go on to a notion of existence along the lines of that sketched in the last two paragraphs. The logic of his own argument, that is to say, should have led him in the direction of the position sketched in Chapter VI of this book under the title of 'Humanistic Idealism' and not to the doctrine of an eternal consciousness. He was not justified, on the basis of his own argument, in abandoing the humanistic standpoint. What is strange is that, especially in view of his theory of morality, he did not see this for himself. Why did Royce find a humanistic position unsatisfactory ? Why did he fail to see that his metaphysical theory does not support but rather undermines his theory of morality ? 3.

A clue to the reason why Royce's philosophical thought

3IO

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

took the course that it did may be found in his preoccupation with religion, a preoccupation which, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, made itself evident in his first book. He seems to have been convinced that there is something greater than merely human experience which is also inclusive of human experience. He seems to have thought that religion is based on the human recognition of this fact and to have conceived it to be the business of philosophy to work out and theorize the insight embodied in religion, a task which involves developing a theory of morality and a metaphysical theory and showing the relation between them. This was a general presupposition of all Royce's philosophy and he does not seem ever to have subjected it to a serious critical scrutiny. Thus for him the question of whether a humanistic position was philosophically satisfactory did not arise. It was excluded from the start by his general presupposition according to which any position, to be philosophically satisfactory, must incorporate the insight of religion into a realm transcending but inclusive of human experience. It follows that the question of justifying his departure from the humanistic standpoint after his first step in The World and the Individual did not occur to him. From the beginning he was in search of more than a merely humanistic standpoint. This interpretation is borne out by Royce's procedure in expounding his philosophy of nature in The World and the Individual. We saw in section C, sub-section i of this chapter, that, having reviewed the conceptions of nature implied in empirical science and technology, he comments: 'Those doctrines are perfectly justified as expressions of the perspective view of nature which we men naturally take. Neither view can stand against any deeper reason that we may have for interpreting our experiences of nature as a hint of a vaster realm of life and of meaning of which we men form a part and of which the final unity is in God's life/ It is assumed without question that the insight of religion provides a 'deeper reason' than any drawn from 'the perspective view of nature which we men naturally take'. In the same way, Royce is convinced from the outset that no theory of morality couched in merely human terms will do. It is not that he begins with a humanistic theory of morality and finds himself driven beyond it by its inherent defects. This

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF JOSIAH ROYCE

3II

is true of Bradley in Ethical Studies but it is not true of Royce. It is rather that he assumes without question that an adequate theory of morality must be a religious theory. It must make morality intelligible in terms of the insight of religion. That insight must itself be theorized and so a theory of morality must be linked to a metaphysical theory. It follows that Royce would not have been impressed by the criticism developed against him in the last sub-section. That the conflict of human purposes is not ineradicable, that in his own principle of loyalty to loyalty he has pointed out a level of rationality at which they do not conflict, would not have seemed to him reasons for abandoning his quest for a theistic rather than a humanistic metaphysical theory. No doubt he would have accepted my suggested reformulation of his revised notion of existence, but would still have insisted that it must be further revised so as to incorporate the insight of religion. There is, however, the criticism made at the beginning of this section, that Royce's metaphysical theory undermines his theory of morality by taking away the substance of human responsibility. Whether he would have been impressed by this criticism I do not know. That success is hollow when there is no real possibility of failure is a point which does not seem to have occurred to him. He assumed from the outset that morality is conduct in the service of something greater than but inclusive of human interests and purposes, and from this standpoint the question of failure, its possibility and significance does not arise, or at least does not arise in a way which presents a serious problem. In this connection, the use which he makes of the notion of the concrete universal is significant. In section B of this chapter I said that Royce's conception of God is the conception of an infinite completely successful individual achievement of rationality. It is the conception, that is to say, of an absolute all-embracing concrete universal. It differs from the Absolute of Bradley and Bosanquet in that it is free from the ambiguity which pervades their conception. Royce does not confuse an individual achievement of rationality with an organic whole. Recognizing that the notion of the concrete universal is the notion of what is real in rational activity, he has raised it to a super-human level. He has in fact literally deified it.

3U

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

That Royce should have developed the notion of the con» crete universal in this way is intelligible in the light of his general presupposition. He wanted to find a conception in terms of which he could theorize the insight of religion, namely the recognition that there is something greater than human experience which is at the same time inclusive of it. In the notion of the concrete universal, it seemed to him that he had found what he was looking for. The rational agent who realizes himself in an individual achievement of rationality at the level of self-consistent human achievement is participating in a system of activity which transcends but at the same time includes him. It is an open non-competitive system, a system in which all rational agents may participate and find the fulfilment of their rational natures. It represents a standpoint from which the limitations of lower levels of rationality are offset while what is positive in them is preserved, modified and adjusted so as to reconcile them. What Royce did was to extrapolate the scale of levels of rationality beyond the level of self-consistent human achievement to a superhuman level. He believed that he had found in the structure of rational activity a key to the structure of ultimate reality, of what was greater than but inclusive of human experience. At the same time, he was aware that at the highest level, that of God, rational activity is something fundamentally different from what it is at any of the human levels. God, the eternal consciousness, is self-creating, all-embracing and infinite. There is nothing beyond or outside him. The structure of rational activity is his structure as it appears to us who are part of it. But is it legitimate to extrapolate the scale of levels of rationality to a super-human level ? The scale exhibits the structure of human rational activity and its significance is confined to the context of human experience. As to ultimate reality, that which lies beyond and yet also includes our experience, all that we can say is that it must be of such a nature as to make possible or at least not to prohibit the rational activity which we know. To say more than this is to claim to know what ex hypothesi we cannot know. Royce was misled by his general presupposition into two errors. The first was to try to gain knowledge of something which, because it lies outside human experience, cannot be known. The second was to misapply the

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS OF jOSIAH ROYCE

313

notion of the concrete universal, to try to extend it beyond the context in which it is significant. Royce's general presupposition, that is to say, is one which he ought not to have made and his metaphysical theory is the outcome of his failure to realize that he ought not to have made it. But, I shall be told, you are forgetting the insight of religion. Should it not count for something and was not Royce right to take it seriously ? Moreover, is it not a defect of the humanistic standpoint that it excludes religion from its perspective and is therefore unable to take it seriously ? Now in urging a humanistic standpoint against Royce and in criticizing his preoccupation with religion, I may seem to be denying any significance or value to religion. But this is not the case. I am denying only that religion has any special privilege so far as philosophy is concerned. G. R. G. Mure said of common sense that 'in the court of philosophy, its place is not on the bench but in the dock'.* The same may be said of religion and for that matter also of science, art and morality. No one form of human activity can claim exemption from philosophical scrutiny and criticism. What religion claims to be its special insight cannot therefore be accepted at its face value. If it professes to be an insight into what lies beyond human experience, I do not see how it can be taken literally as knowledge. But this does not mean that religion is without significance or interest. It has a rational as well as an emotional side and is a proper object for philosophical study. I cannot attempt this here but it may be worth remarking that the general position of Humanistic Idealism suggests that the roots of religion are to be found in the ultimate mystery surrounding the fact that there is human experience at all, and that religion is concerned with articulating human feelings about and responses to this mystery, and developing a way of life in which these may be adequately expressed. But religion is not metaphysics and it is perhaps the chief defect of Royce's philosophy that he failed to appreciate this fact. At the beginning of this chapter I referred to Green's doctrine of the eternal consciousness and to my remarks about it in Chapter III. Those remarks were limited to pointing out that Green was mistaken in thinking that he needed the doctrine to • See The Retreat from Truth,

314

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

help out his theory of human experience and in particular his theory of knowledge. I did not at that stage attempt to criticize the doctrine on its own merits. Now I have tried to do so, taking Royce's version of the doctrine as my target. I think that my criticisms are, in principle, equally applicable to Green's version. Green, in his published work, is more cautious about the eternal consciousness than Royce. He indicates the general form of the doctrine and affirms his belief in its necessity but does not systematically expound it. Whether he would have done so had he lived longer is an open question. It does not, however, affect the point I am making here which is that the doctrine of an eternal consciousness is not tenable. No more than the Absolute of Bradley and Bosanquet is it a necessary part of Idealism if we take Idealism to be a philosophical position based on the notion of the concrete universal. In the introduction to this book, I said that its thesis was that there is a valid and significant form of Idealism to be found in the work of Bradley, Green, Bosanquet and Royce, but that they failed to develop it fully and consistently. They came nearest to doing so in their social philosophy and were least successful in their metaphysics. The discussion of Royce's work in the present chapter completes my attempt to develop this thesis. I shall not try to summarize my main arguments since to do so would only be to repeat in condensed and garbled form what has been said at length in the course of the book. My case rests upon the notion of the concrete universal together with the theory of rational activity with which it is integrally linked, and upon the doctrine that there is nothing given readymade in human experience prior to and independent of the work of thought, together with certain corollary doctrines about the scope and limits of human knowledge. Whether, or to what extent, it is a convincing case, the reader must decide What is more important is whether I have managed to persuade him that there is something to be said for Idealism, that in particular its social philosophy is worth taking seriously. If I have been able to do this, the book will have served its purpose.

APPENDIX

i

S O U R C E S OF Q U O T A T I O N S

IN T E X T

In the following table the numbers in brackets refer to those in the text after each quotation. The reader who follows up these quotations to their sources will find that here and there I have made minor alterations in punctuation. This has been done partly in order to incorporate a particular passage more smoothly into my own text and partly in the interests of greater intelligibility when the original punctuation has left something to be desired in this respect. CHAPTER

ii.

All quotations in this chapter are from F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies, second edition.

A. sub-section i. (i) p. 5 (2) p. 11. (3) p. 36. (4) p. 38. (5) p. 39. 2. (1) p. 65. (2) p. 65. (3) p. 6$. (4) P. 69. {£) p. 69. (6) p. 70. (7) P* 77- (8) p. 78. B. sub-section 1. (1) p. 163. (2) p. 166. (3) p. 166. (4) p. 166. (5) p. 174. (6) p. 187. 2. (i) p. 190. (2) p. 192. (3) p. 192 3. (I) p. 217. (2) p. 222. (3) p. 223. (4) p. 223. c. sub-section 1. (1) p. 219. (2) p. 220. (3) p. 220. (4) p. 220. (5) p. 220. (6) p. 221. 2. (i) p. 224. (2) p. 225. (3) p. 225. (4) p. 225. (5) p. 226. (6) p. 226. (7) p. 226. 3. (1) p. 233. (2) p. 233. (3) p. 233. (4) p. 313. (S) P. 313D. sub-section 1. (1) p. 314. (2) p. 314. (3) p. 314. (4) p. 315. (5) p. 316. (6) p. 319. (7) p. 320. (8) p. 320. (9) p. 321. (io) p. 328. 2. (1) P. 333. (2) p. 333- (3) P. 333. (4) P. 334. (5) P- 334All quotations except those in section C, subsection 4, from T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics. A. sub-section 1. (1) p. 12. (2) p. 12. 2. (1) p. 50. (2) p. 52. (3) p. 52. (4) p. 37. (s) p. 2r (6) p. 74- (7) P. 74. (8) p. 58. (9) P- 59.

CHAPTER

in.

316

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

4. 5. 6. B. sub-section 1. 2. 3. c. sub-section 1. 2. 34.

CHAPTER

iv.

(I) p. 80. (2) p. 80. (I) p. 98. (2) p. 98. (I) p. 151. (2) p. 151. (1) p. 103. (2) p. 106. (3) p. 195. (4) p. 256. (1) p. 210. (2) p. 218. (3) p. 218. (4) p. 210. (5) P- 271. (1) p. 242. (2) p. 287. (1) p. 346. (2) p. 346. (3) p. 346. (4) p. 350. (5) p. 351. (6) p. 351. (7) P- 351(1) p. 352. (2) p. 352. (1) P- 373- (2) p. 373- (3) P 374- (4) P- 374- (S) p. 376. (6) p. 394. Quotations from T. H. Green's Lectures on the Principles oi Political Obligation, 1941 edition. (1) p. 3. (2) p. 3. (3) p. 3. (4) p. 2. All quotations in this chapter from T. H. Green's Lectures on the Trinciples of Political Obligation, 1941 edition.

A. sub-section 1. (i)p. 29. 2. (1) p. 34. (2) p. 34. (3) p. 37. (4) P- 37- (S) P- 38. 3. (i) p. 41. (2) p. 41. (3) p. 41. (4) p. 41- (5) P- 44(6) p, 48. (7) p. 45. B. sub-section 1. (1) p. 121. (2) p. 121. (3) p. 121. (4) p. 144. (5) P- 1392. (1) p. 94. (2) p. 103. (3) p. 98. (4) p. 98. (5) P- 98. (6) p. 99- (7) P. 99- (8) P- K>2. 3. (1) p. 143. (2) p. 144. (3) p. 146. (4) p. 146. (S) P-147. 4. (1) p, 148. (2) p. 148. (3) p. 149. (4) P- 150. (5) p. 151. (6) p. 151. (7) p. 151. c. sub-section 1. (1) p. 155. (2) p. 155. (3) p. 158. (4) p. 159. (5) p. 164. (6) p. 164. (7) p. 170. (8) p. 173. (9) p. 173. (10) p. 173. ( n ) p. 173. 2. (1) p. 186. (2) p. 186. (3) p. 186. (4) p. 190. (5) p. 188. (6) p. 189. 3. (1) p. 186. (2) p. 195. (3) p. 195. (4) p. 202. {s) p. 203. (6) p. 204. (7) p. 205. (8) p. 204. 4. (1) p. 208. (2) p. 209. (3) P- 159- (4) P- 209. (£) p. 220. (6) p. 220. (7) p. 220. (8) p. 220. (9) p. 221. (10) p. 221. (11) p. 221.

APPENDIX 1

317

5- (1) P- 233- (2) p. 233- (3) P- 23S. (4) P- 235. (s) p. 236. (6) p. 236. (7) p. 238. (8) p. 242. (9) p. 238. (10) p. 240. CHAPTER

V.

A. sub-section i.

2. 3.

4.

5. B. sub-section 1. 2. 3. 4.

c. sub-section 2. CHAPTER

(i) From F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality 2nd edition, p. i. (2) From L. T. Hobhouse's Metaphysical Theory of the State, p. 116. (3) Ibid. p. 117. (1) From Bradley's Vrinciples oi Logic 2nd edition, Vol. 1. p. 188. (2) Ibid. p. 190. (1) From Bradley's Appearance and Reality p. 1. (2) Ibid p. 120. (3) Ibid. p. 123. (4) Ibid. p. 127. (5) Ibid. p. 127. (6) Ibid. p. 127. (7) Ibid. p. 127. (8) Ibid. p. 127. (9) Ibid. p. 128. (10) Ibid. p. 129. (1) From Bradley's Vrinciples oi Logic Vol. 1. p. 10. (2) Ibid. p. 50. (3) Ibid. p. 50. (4) Ibid. p. 70. (5) Ibid. p. 94. (6) Ibid. p. 94. (7) From Appearance and Reality p. 148. (8) Ibid. p. 148. (9) Ibid, p. 140. (10) Ibid. p. 140. (1) From Appearance and Reality p. 152. (2) Ibid, p. 152. (1) From B. Bosanquet's Logic Vol. 1. p. 3. (2) From Bosanquet's The Trinciple oi Individuality and Value p. 37. (1) From Bosanquet's The Trinciple of Individuality and Value p. 54. (2) Ibid. p. 68. (3) Ibid, p. 268. (4) Ibid. p. 51. (5) Ibid. p. 268. (1) From Bosanquet's The Value and Destiny oi the Individual p. 212. (2) Ibid. p. 212. (3) Ibid, p. 212. (4) Ibid. p. 214. (1) From The Value and Destiny of the Individual p. 205. (2) Ibid. p. 205. (3) Ibid. p. 207. (4) Ibid. p. 207. (5) Ibid. p. 206. (6) Ibid. p. 215. (7) Ibid. p. 304. (8) Ibid. p. 304. (1) From Bradley's Appearance and Reality p. 1.

VII.

A. All quotations in this section are from Bernard Bosanquet's Thilosophical Theory oi the State, 2nd edition.

318

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

sub-section i. 2. 3. 4. B. All quotations sub-section 1. 2. 3. 4. c. sub-section 1. 2.

3. 4.

CHAPTER

(i) p. 2. (2) p. 47. (I) p. 90. (2) p. 52. (3) p. 5 2 . ( l ) p . I I I . (2) p. II4. (3) p. 114. (1) p. 66. (2) p. 166. in this section from the Vhilosophical Theory oi the State. (1) p. 118. (2) p. 133. (3) p. 134. (4) p. 133. (1) p. 140. (2) p. 140. (3) p. 140. (4) p. 172. (5) p. 141. (6) p. 142. (7) p. 172. (1) p. 302. (2) p. 302. (3) p. 304. (4) p. 304. (1) p. 306. (2) p. 307. (3) p. 308. (4) p. 308. (1) From Bosanquet's Social and International Ideals p. 12. (2) Ibid. p. 14. (3) Ibid. p. 14. (4) Ibid. p. 312. (5) Ibid. p. 315. (6) Ibid. p. 315. (1) From essays by Bosanquet in Aspects oi the Social Troblem p. 290. (2) Ibid. p. 309. (3) Ibid. p. 310. (4) Ibid. p. 311. ($) Ibid. p. 311. (6) Ibid. p. 311. (7) Ibid. p. 313. (8) Ibid. p. 313. (9) Ibid, p. 306. (10) Ibid. p. 313. (11) Ibid. p. 313. (1) From Thilosophical Theory oi the State p. 178. (2) Ibid. p. 178. (3) Ibid. p. 179. (4) Ibid, p. 186. (s) Ibid. p. 187. (1) From Vhilosophical Theory oi the State p. 188. (2) Ibid. p. 195. (3) Ibid. p. 195. (4) Ibid, p. 192. (5) Ibid. p. 192. (6) Ibid. p. 188. (7) Ibid. p. 196. (8) Ibid. p. 197. (9) Ibid. p. 198. (10) Ibid, p. 198. (11) p. 197.

VIII.

A. All quotations in this section, except for sub-section 1, are from Royce's Thilosophy oi Loyalty. sub-section 1. (1) From Royce's Religious Aspects oi Thilosophy p. 3. 2. (1) p. 15. (2) p. 16. (3) p. 102. (4) p. 108. (5) p. 108. (6) p. 108. (7) p. 108. (8) p. n o . 3. (1) p. 116. (2) p. 118. (3) p. 120. (4) p. 129. (5) P*1394. (1) p. 181. (2) p. 186. (3) p. 188. (4) p. 191. 5- (1) P. 305. (2) p. 306. (3) p. 307. B. All quotations in this section are from Royce's The World and the Individual Vol. 1., except those in sub-section 4 which are from Vol. 2 of the same work.

APPENDIX I

sub-section 1. 2. 34.

319

(1) p. 436. (2) p. 311. (3) p. 436. (4) P- 437(1) P- 334- (2) p. 334- (3) P- 334. (4) P- 4^1. (1) P- 396. (2) p- 400. (3) p. 39i. (4) p. 394. (i)p. 132. (2) p. 132. (3) p. 141.

c. All quotations in this section are from The World and the Individual Vol. 2., except where another reference is given. sub-section 1. (1) p. 203. (2) p. 203. (3) p. 203. 2. (1) p. 225. (2) p. 225. (3) p. 315. (4) p. 320. 3. (1) From Vol. 1. The World and the Individual. p. 468. (2) Ibid. p. 468. (3) p. 452. (4) p. 347. (5) P. 348. 4- (1) P. 359- (2) P. 359- (3) P- 395- (4) p. 395* (S) p. 398. (6) p. 398. (7) p. 409. (8) p. 409. (9) p. 440. (10) p. 440.

APPENDIX 2 S E L E C T E D B I B L I O G R A P H Y IN IDEALIST PHILOSOPHY

The following list of authors and titles may possibly be of use to any reader who wishes to study Idealist philosophy for himself. It begins with the philosophers with whom this book has been concerned and includes not only the works from which I have quoted but certain others which may also be of interest. It then continues with a list of some more recent works and authors. The latter is a purely personal selection and consists of books which in one way or another seem to me to indicate something of the Idealist standpoint and method. Anyone who wishes to learn more about Idealism may find them helpful but I should add that, in recommending them, I do not mean that I necessarily agree with them.

F.

A. Ethical Studies. The Principles ol Logic. Appearance and Reality, Essays in Truth and Reality.

H.

BRADLEY:

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH IDEALISM

32O T

.

B.

. G R E E N : Prolegomena to Ethics. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. A memoir to R. L. Nettleship in Green's Collected Works. Note: the latter do not include Prolegomena to Ethics.

H

Logic, or the Morphology ol Thought. The Essentials of Logic. Aspects of the Social Problem. The Philosophical Theory of the State. The Principle of Individuality and Value. The Value and Destiny of the Individual. Social and International Ideals.

BOSANQUET:

ROYCE: The Religious Aspects of Philosophy. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. The World and the Individual. The Philosophy of Loyalty.

JOSIAH

G . p.

ADAMS:

BRAND R

.

B. Idealism and the Modem Age. The Nature of Thought.

BLANSHARD:

Speculummentis. An Essay on Philosophical Method. The Principles of Art. The New Leviathan. The Idea of History.

G. C O L L I N G W O O D :

A . c . E w i N G : Idealism: a Critical Survey. The Idealist Tradition from Berkeley to Blanshard. M. B . F O S T E R :

The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel.

H.

H.

JOACHIM:

j.

H.

MUIRHEAD:

G

The Nature of Truth.

Philosophy.

.

M.

R

.

j .

G . MURE:

The Retreat from Truth.

OAKESHOTT:

H . A. R E Y B U R N : R.H.WOLLHEIM:

The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon

Experience and its Modes. Hegel's Ethical Theory. F.H. Bradley. THE

END

ROUTLEDGE OUTLEDGE LIBRARY LIBRARY EDITIONS: EDITIONS: R IDEALISM IDEALISM

Volume olume 33 V

NEOPLATONIS M O OF F THE THE NEOPLA TONISM ITALIA N RENAISSANCE RENAISSANC E IT ALIAN

NEOPLATONISM O OF F THE THE NEOPLATONISM ITALIAN RENAISSANCE RENAISSANCE ITALIAN

NESCA A A.. ROBB ROBB NESCA

R

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published published iinn 1935 1935 b byy George George Allen Allen & & Unwin Unwin Ltd. Ltd. First This edition edition firs published iinn 202 1 This firstt published 2021 by Routledge Routledge by Park Square, Square, Milton Milton Park, Park, Abingdon, Abingdon, Oxon Oxon O OX14 X 14 4RN 4RN 22 Park and b byy Routledge Routledge and 52 Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Avenue, Avenue, Ne New York, N NY 10017 52 w York, Y 10017 Routledge is is an an imprint imprint of of the the Taylor Taylor & & Francis Francis Group, Group, an an informa informa Routledge business business © 1935 1935 Nesca Nesca A A.. Robb Robb © All rights rights reserved. reserved. N Noo part part ooff this this book book ma may bee reprinted reprinted oorr All yb eproduced oorr utilised utilised iinn any any form form oorr b byy any any electronic, electronic, mechanical, mechanical, rreproduced or other other means means,, no now known oorr hereafter hereafter invented, invented, including including or w known photocopying and and recording, recording, oorr iinn an any information storage storage oorr photocopying y information etrieval system, system, without without permission permission iinn writing writing from from the the publishers publishers.. rretrieval Trademark notice: notice'. Product Product oorr corporate corporate names names ma mayy b bee trademarks trademarks oorr Trademark egistered trademarks trademarks,, and and are are used used only only for for identification identification and and rregistered explanatio n without without intent intent tto infringe. explana tion o infringe. British Library Library Cataloguing Cataloguing in in Publication Publication Data Data British A catalogue catalogue record record for for this this book book iiss available available from from the the British British Library Library A ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-70445-2 (Set) (Set) 978-0-367-70445-2 978-1-00-315602-4 (Set) (Set) (ebk) (ebk) 978-1-00-315602-4 978-0-367-72255-5 (Volume (Volume 33)) (hbk) (hbk) 978-0-367-72255-5 978-0-367-72272-2 (Volume (Volume 3) 3) (pbk) (pbk) 978-0-367-72272-2 978-1-00-315414-3 (Volume (Volume 3) 3) (ebk) (ebk) 978-1-00-315414-3

Publisher'’ss Note Note Publisher The publisher publisher has has gone gone tto great lengths lengths ttoo ensure ensure the the quality quality ooff this this The o great eprint but but points points out out that that some some imperfections imperfections iinn the the original original copies copies rreprint mayy b bee apparent. apparent. ma Disclaimer Disclaimer The publisher publisher has has made made every every effort effort tto o trace trace copyright copyright holders holders and and The would ould welcome welcome correspondence correspondence from from those those they they have have been been unable unable tto o w trace.. trace DOI: 10.4324/9781003154143

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

h NESCA A. ROBB, M.A., D.PHIL.(OXON)

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD MUSEUM STREET

FIRST P U B L I S H E D I N 1935

All rights reserved PRINTED

IN

GREAT BRITAIN

BY

U N W I N BROTHERS LTD., W O K I N G

TO

C. R. A. M. R. G. M. R. owfpyoi

iXoi

CONTENTS CHAPTER

PAGE

Introduction

11

i. Petrarch

17

n. Petrarch to Ficino

31

m. Marsilio Ficino and the Platonic Academy of Florence

57

IV. The Medici Circle (i): Poliziano, Lorenzo de' Medici, Girolamo Benivieni

90

v. The Medici Circle (2): The Poema Vmone

135

vi. The Trattato d'Amore

176

vn. Neoplatonism and the Arts

212

vm. The Lyric: Michelangelo

239

Conclusion

270

Appendix

279

Bibliography

296

Index

311

INTRODUCTION THE title of this study may need some explanation. It is customary to speak of the "Platonism" of the Italian Renaissance, but for two reasons I have preferred the term "Neoplatonism" as less misleading when applied to the teaching that emanated from Florence in the latter part of the fifteenth century. For the earlier Italian humanists Plato was a figure more venerated than understood. Petrarch and his immediate successors knew little or no Greek, so that their ideas of Platonism were pieced together from Latin authors and from the few dialogues then existing in Latin translations.1 As the fifteenth century advanced Greek scholarship advanced with it; but manuscripts of the Dialogues were rare and had mostly to be obtained by the slow and perilous expedient of going to the East to look for them; and when they were found definitions, commentaries, and the whole ground-work of systematic study had still to be prepared. External difficulties apart, it was not easy for the scholars of a world just emerging from the Middle Ages to form a clear estimate of Greek thought. Even those who were able to study Plato at first hand came to him, as was only natural, with many preconcep­ tions. Their interest in him was indeed mainly, though by no means exclusively, a literary one. There was no commanding philosophic intellect among them; but there was the need, more or less urgently felt, of setting up reasoned principles of thought and conduct in the face of the waning of mediaeval ideals. The many treatises on moral philosophy that appeared during the first period of humanism reveal, if not a deep understanding of Plato, a distinct Platonic colour. The coming of the Greeks in 1438 gave a powerful impetus to Platonic studies, but complicated the issues by the prominence 1 Only one, the Timaeus (trans. Chalchidius, fourth century), was at all widely known, but the Meno and Plzaedo were translated by Henricus Aristippus in the twelfth century.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154143-1

12

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

it gave to the works of the Neoplatonists. Through the influence of Gemisthus Pletho especially they came to be generally accepted as the truest interpreters of Plato. Marsilio Ficino, though he spent many years in the dose and loving study of the Dialogues^ drew almost as freely on Plotinus and the Alexandrian School when he came to elaborate his own philosophy. The same may be said, with varying degrees of truth, of his associates. On this account alone one should be cautious in speaking of Renaissance Platonism. There is, however, a further consideration. Modern Italian scholarship has gone far towards a fuller understanding of the philosophical background of the period; and it is no longer possible to regard the work of the Florentine "Academy" as a mere antiquarian revival. It met, or tried to meet, the specific needs of its own age, ceasing by that very fact to be a simple reproduction of Alexandrian models, though its external likeness to them is sometimes so great as to obscure real differences of aim and feeling. If it was not always consistent or satisfactory as a system of philosophy it was certainly the affirmation of a faith that informed more than one phase of the spiritual and intellectual life of the time. It contained, along with much that was worthless, real elements of originality. Some of its popular developments were so foolish that they have somewhat overshadowed its more valuable qualities just as, perhaps, the glamour that surrounds Ficino and his circle has done their reputation some harm. It has tempted the romantic to rhapsody and soured the scientific by reaction. My own aim has been first to give a dear outline of Florentine Neoplatonism, and then to consider its influence on art and literature during a period that extends roughly from the age of Lorenzo de' Medici to the middle of the sixteenth century and the beginnings of the Counter-Reformation. No rigid divisions of time have been fixed, but with few exceptions the works discussed may be placed between these bounds. Even within these limits it would require a work of greater dimensions than the present to exhaust so large a subject in all

INTRODUCTION

13

its bearing?. The leaven of Neoplatonism had penetrated the thought of the age in many directions; this study is confined to such of its manifestations as were, in a somewhat narrow sense, artistic and literary and to the use and abuse of philosophical ideas for aesthetic purposes. For this reason, in the chapter on Ficino some aspects of his thought, such as the theory of love and the conception of the dignity of man, have been discussed at length, while others which had fewer literary echoes have been much more summarily treated. Except for a few very general remarks in the opening of the first chapter no attempt has been made to trace the transmission of the Platonic heritage through the Middle Ages. The large and complex problems here involved are outside the scope of this inquiry, which does not primarily seek to assess the speculative value of Neoplatonism or to view it historically in relation to the systems of philosophy that preceded and followed it. The same considerations account for the exclusion of the philosophical developments of the latter part of the sixteenth century and of so great a name as Bruno's. With Petrarch begins what may fairly be called the Renaissance attitude to Plato, and his work provides a suitable starting-point. The two preliminary chapters deal respectively with his philosophical writings and with those of his successors down to the beginning of Ficino's literary career. The third chapter contains an analysis of the latter's Neoplatonism and of such variations of it as were introduced by Pico della Mirandola, and seeks to present a coherent view of such of their ideas as passed into common usage. The Medician circle has been treated as a homogenous group. Though its influence and prestige were great, it stands by itself in the literary history of the age, living its own independent and well-rounded life in the days of Lorenzo's ascendancy, and passing away almost entirely before the end of the century. Its members lived on terms of unusual intimacy, sharing in many common interests and enthusiasms that lend a distinctive character to their

14

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

work. They were, moreover, the personal friends and disciples of Ficino and Pico, and provide some of the most marked and interesting examples of Neoplatonic influence as well as some little-known material. Their work has been discussed in some detail, but the chapters on the Lyric and on the "Trattato d'Amore" are arranged on more general lines. To make a separate analysis of every individual treatise, of every one of an innumerable array of sixteenth-century "canzonieri," would be well-nigh impossible and of rather doubtful value. Several exhaustive works on the "Trattato d'Amore" and some others of slighter proportions on the lyric are noted in the bibliography. Here it has seemed sufficient to treat the questions broadly, but with plentiful illustrations and references for each point brought forward. In the chapter on art centres the chief difficulty of the work. To many it may seem unjustifiable to include art at all in a study of this kind. To trace an influence in literature, though an invidious task is a perfectly defensible one, but to try to establish the relation of any abstract mode of thought to the plastic arts is to follow, like Christian, a path between the fiends and the quagmire. Yet it may be generally conceded that between different periods and schools of art there exist certain broad distinctions other than those of individual temperament, of technical resources, or of purely aesthetic merit that correspond to fundamental differences of outlook. This does not, of course, imply that an artist must necessarily have a formal philosophy, but only that he can hardly, whatever his personal endowments, succeed in withdrawing himself entirely from the common cultural heritage to which he was born, the somewhat vague background of general ideas that makes up in any age the philosophy of the average unsystematic mind. During the Italian Renaissance Neoplatonism formed an important part of that background; and in few other periods has the connection between artists and men of letters been closer or more fruitful. The influence of the arts on literature ha$ often been noted; but the amount of literary inspiration in art is almost as

INTRODUCTION

15

remarkable, though more difficult to estimate with precision. The Neoplatonists' theories were almost universally known; and it may not be useless to examine how far, if at all, those theories were applied and how much of their peculiar idealism is reflected in the art of the time. The conclusions reached may perhaps appear too slight to justify the energy expended on them. I can only hope to present a debatable point of view soberly and without arrogance. In the final chapter on the lyric, Michelangelo has been given a place by himself. He was, in spite of the frequent obscurity of his verse, perhaps the greatest Neoplatonic poet; and he forms a link between the idyllic days of the "Academy" and the stormy close of Italy's golden age. His genius, at once so representative and so individual, requires special treatment; and a study of it may fitly round off this survey.1 The main portion of the work is analytical in character, but a final chapter has been added in which are summed up such general conclusions as the material collected seems to warrant. A word should perhaps be said concerning the translations. These are my own, with one or two exceptions which are noted where they occur. In my renderings of verse I have tried throughout to follow my texts faithfully, though here and there obscurely worded lines have caused me some uncertainty as to the author's real intentions, and at other times I have had to confront the problem, ever awaiting the translator, of whether fidelity consists in adherence to the letter or to the style and spirit of an author's work. As to how far these difficulties have been satisfactorily met the reader must be my judge. I sincerely hope that the versions here presented may be readable, but am well aware that they cannot be faultless. The labour of writing this book has been lightened and its completion made possible by the help and advice of many scholars for whose generous assistance I am deeply grateful. I much regret 1 Biographical detail and the facts of external history have been introduced throughout only where they seem strictly relevant.

16

NEOPLATONISM OP THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

that one of their number, the late Professor Gargano of Florence, is no longer here to receive this expression of gratitude. My special thanks are due to Professor G. Saitta, Professor G. Mazzoni, Professor Mario Praz, the Director of the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence, Sir Robert Tate, F.T.C.D., Dr. Henry Guppy, Professor J. A. Smith, Signorina Adelaide Conti, Miss V. Farnell, and Miss M. Mann. Above all I have to thank Professor C. Foligno of Oxford, whose wide learning and unfailing kindness and encouragement have placed me, like so many other British students of Italian letters, for ever in his debt. NOTE.—Throughout, in copying from MSS. and contemporary editions, I have preserved the original spelling, except for:— (a) Writing out abbreviations in full; and (b) Adding apostrophes or inverted commas where these would be used in modern Italian and where they make for immediate ease of reading. ABBREVIATIONS Arch. St. It. G.S. MS. Magi. MS. Laur. MS. Laur. Plut. Cod. Rice. Cod. Vat. Lat. Cod. Urb. Lat. N.A. o.c.

Archivio Storico Italiano. Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana. MS. Magliabecchiano. MS. Laurenziana. MS. Laurenziana fondo Plutarchiana. Codice Riccardiana. Codice Vaticano Latino. Codice Urbinate Latino. Nuova Antologia. Opera citata.

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE CHAPTER I PETRARCH THE Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance was no new thing in the sense of having no roots in the philosophies that immediately preceded it. The contacts of the early doctors of the Church with the Neoplatonists of Alexandria brought into Christian philosophy elements which became so inextricably mixed with it that even those philosophers who professed themselves rigid Aristotelians could not always succeed in discarding them. Plato himself was scarcely known to the Middle Ages, which were in any case too far removed from Greek modes of thought to have understood him. The stream of thought that flowed from the Alexandrian philosophers ran, roughly speaking, in two main channels: the naturalistic and the mystic. The first, deriving from the Neo­ platonic conception of the Universe as a series of emanations from the ineffable godhead tended to seek for truth in the study of the cosmos as a manifestation of the divine, and therefore to the cultivation of mathematics and the natural sciences. The second, which came from the belief that true knowledge cannot be attained but can only be revealed to the soul, tended to emphasize the inwardness of religious experience and hence the independence of the individual who does not need an external authority to show him what he can only know by immediate revelation. The naturalistic current appeared most notably in the Arab philosophers like Avicenna; the mystic had its most famous ex­ ponents in the pseudo-Dionysius and St. Augustine. The latter, with his doctrines of self-knowledge as an essential in the approach

•

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154143-2

i8

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

to truth and of the will as the ultimate power in moral life, prepared the way for the dynamic conception of personality peculiar to the period of humanism. Augustine's teaching was perpetuated by a long series of followers, and it was not until the thirteenth century that Aristotelianism, as interpreted by Aquinas, became the official system of the Church and displaced its rivals, Augustinian and Avicennist. Even so, the Neoplatonic tradition was not eradicated, but lingered in the schools of Europe, and especially of Italy, to emerge once more into full life in the fifteenth century. In Dante, although the framework of his thought is Aristotelian, there are many Neoplatonic elements. In the Vita Nuova he elaborates ideas that were already common among the poets of the "stil nuovo" (e.g. that love is a means of moral perfection, an ascent through successive stages of contemplation towards a celestial vision) when he speaks of his passing from "amor sensitive" aroused by the sight of Beatrice, to "amor intellettivo," and hence to the universalized and depersonalized emotion of "Oltre la sfera che piu largo gira." In the Convivio and still more in the Commedia his debt to Neoplatonic sources is apparent and has often been pointed out.1 His theory of creation shows affinities with that of the Timaeus\ the world was created by the whole Trinity, Power, Wisdom, and Love, so that all creatures might participate with God in the joys of conscious existence.* The divine ideas, "splendore e pitture delle cose contingent} in Dio," are reflected in the creation.3 The primal matter, which receives the forms of all things, came from the hand of God in the same 1

His sources were mainly Dionysius and Augustine. He probably knew Chalchidius' translation of the Timaeus. See for the Platonic and Neoplatonic elements in his work E. Moore, Dante Studies, Oxford, ist series, pp. 156-64, 282-8, 291-4. A. Carlini Del Sistema, Filosofico Dantesco nella D.C., Bologna, 1902. £. Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, London, 1913. G. Gentile, La Filosofia, Storia del Generi letterarii, Milan, Vallardi (in continuation), Vol. I, p. 122. P. Wicksteed, Dante and Aquinas, London, 1913. V. Fornari, "II Convito di Dante'* in Dante e ilsuo secolo, Florence, 1865. » Paradiso, VII, 64-6 j XXIX, 13-18. 3 Par. XIII, 52-78 j Corwito, III.

PETRARCH

19

creative act as did the angelic orders and the heavens, as three arrows might fly from a three-stringed bow, a view that suggests the theories of emanation of the Alexandrian school.1 The angels move the heavens and by the virtue of the heavens all earthly existences are generated. Only into man God breathes an immortal soul, gifted with free will by which, with the aid of grace, he may order and purify his affections. Love, which moved God to create and draws His creatures back to Him, is the vital activity of the universe. It is the root of good and evil, the inspiration of poetry, philosophy, and art, the means by which the soul rises through various grades of being until it is satisfied at last by the Beatific Vision.* It was scarcely surprising that the Platonic Academy of Florence should have seen in Dante an illustrious forerunner. It was Petrarch, however, who first definitely linked the name of Plato with the ideals of Italian humanism. He was not himself a systematic or deeply original thinker, though he managed to give a certain personal quality to the ideas that he borrowed freely from his favourite authors. His philosophical writings contain in germ most of the motives that appear in the thought of the fifteenth century. Stoic ideals of virtue and glory; the first justification of Epicurus, that scapegoat of the Middle Ages; Augustinian conceptions of voluntarism and self-knowledge; a vein of scepticism and a passionate love for the serenity and beauty of the classics, are all combined in him in a Christian setting, and are directed towards the revaluation of man and his achievements that characterizes the Renaissance.3 Of this movement Plato became, for Petrarch and for those who followed him, a symbol and rallying cry. Petrarch's literary life covered all the middle years of the fourteenth century, a time in which the spiritual forces of ' Par., XXIX. * Purg., XVIII, 34-75. Par., V, 19-24. The moral system of Purgatorio is based upon the conception of sin as diseased love—love of evil object, love defective, love excessive. 3 The Platonism of his Rime is derived from the "stil nuovisti" and from the Ciceronian conception of rational love.

20

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

mediaevalism were losing their vigour. The religious idea as the Middle Ages conceived it was no longer satisfying to a people in whom the sense of human values was growing steadily stronger. The dominion of mediaevalism in Italy had never been as complete as it was in other countries. The existence of the free communes had kept alive the ideal of civic autonomy in the face of that of universal authority, and the presence of Roman antiquities and the persistence of the Latin language and traditions had preserved that strain of humanistic and even pagan feeling that never wholly vanished from the art and literature of Italy during the Middle Ages. By the fourteenth century these tendencies were well defined and were becoming increasingly self-conscious, but theoretically they lacked any real justification. Since reality was regarded as entirely beyond the reach of the human mind the activities of that mind could not be considered as a part of it. The division between religious revelation and human knowledge had grown painfully acute and no conciliation of the opposing terms had been found. The result was a general slackening of religious sentiment and of moral restraints. Active unbelief was not common but was exemplified in some of the Averroists of the University of Padua against whom Petrarch launched some of his fiercest invectives. They, like Petrarch himself, were moved by the desire for intellectual liberty, and numbered among them such a notable political thinker as Marsilio da Padova. Philosophy as a whole was passing through a dead period. After the Suntma contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas there had been little real creative thought Thomism, in which the philosophical implications of Christian dogma were developed on an Aristotelian basis, had become the accepted system of the Church; and the later Schoolmen, revolving continually within the same circle of ideas, tended with a few honourable exceptions to reduce their work to an arid and abstract dialectic. The oligarchic and ecclesiastical character of mediaeval learning had equally made a dosed system of the other branches of knowledge. The various sciences)

PETRARCH

21

formalized into "Summae" and "Summulae," threatened to become mere repetition of verbiage, and were protected against free criticism by the "Ipse dixit" of Aristotle's infallible authority. By translating the bulk of contemporary learning into the vulgar tongue Dante had gone far towards encouraging a more liberal spirit; but he made no intentional break with the mediaeval tradition. Aristotle was for him "il maestro di color che sanno"; and it remained for Petrarch, with his somewhat aggressive individualism, to challenge the schools that founded themselves on Aristotelianism. His lifelong desire to be a man apart and to separate himself from the herd had, no doubt, its share in his attitude; but he was sharply conscious of the need of a re-tempering of all intellectual life at the well-heads of ancient civilization, and of some moral force strong enough to be of practical worth to himself and his contemporaries. Yet it was hard for him, a professed lover of antiquity, to set himself against the cult of Aristotle. He saw the difficulty and met it at first by saying guardedly that his adversaries knew their Aristotle only through the medium of corrupt translations, and that in any case he was only a man and no more infallible than another. Later, under the influence of his favourite Latin authors, and especially of Cicero and St. Augustine, he frankly declared that Plato was the prince of philosophers and so confronted the Aristotelians with another great but still mysterious figure of the ancient world.1 Petrarch himself could not read Greek and knew only the scantiest translations of Plato, who was so little known during the Middle Ages that he was commonly supposed to have written only two works. One of these, the Timaeus, in the fourth-century Latin version of Chalchidius, was fairly widely diffused, and this 1 See De Suitpsius atque multorum ignorantia in Opera, Basle, 158i, pp. 1052-3. De Vera Sapientia> ibid., p. 323. Lettere Famitiari ed Fracassetti, 5 vols., Florence, 1863, Vol. IV, p. 15. The edition of the Lettere Senili cited hereafter is also that of Fracassetti, Florence, 1863, 2 vols.

2a

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Petrarch certainly possessed.1 In later life he may also have seen the Meno and the Phaedo in the translation made about 1157, by Henricus Aristippus, Archdeacon of Catania. It is possible that Barlaam, the Calabrian monk who taught him the rudiments of Greek, may have expounded for him some passages from other dialogues. It is, however, more probable that the manuscripts he eagerly collected remained to the last unknown to him. He had in his library at least sixteen works of Plato in the original, and cherished them though he could not read them, a fact that is almost symbolical of his attitude to their author. The bar of language would have kept him in equal ignorance of the work of the Neoplatonists had these been available. The whole Platonic school, however, shared in his commendation of their master, and he makes several references to Plotinus and Porphyry among the great men who honoured "the divine Plato."3 His chief sources of knowledge were, therefore, the so-called "Latin Platonists." Two of them, Cicero and St. Augustine, were the objects of his special veneration, so their tribute to the greatness of Plato carried peculiar weight. Both were also masters of style, and may have helped Petrarch to divine some of the aesthetic qualities that afterwards endeared Plato to the Renaissance. The glamour of a great name and of literary excellence might have attracted him even if the need for a prophet to set against Aristotle had been lacking. On the testimony of Augustine, strengthened by his own reading of the Timaeus and of the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, Petrarch formed an idea of Plato as the philosopher whose teaching approached most nearly to Christianity. 1

His copy, inscribed "Felix miser qui hoc sciens unde ista nescisti," is preserved in Paris. For his sources see P. De Nolhac, Pttrarque et Vhumanisme^ Paris, 1892. R. Sabbadini, La Scoperta dei Codici net secolo XIV e XV Florence (2 vols., I, 19055 II, 1914), Vol. I, p. 219. G. Saitta, La Filosofia di Marsilio Ftcmo, Messina, 1923, Ch. Ill, p. 44. G. Gentile, "I dialoghi di Platone posseduti dal P.,'* Rassegna critica delta let. it., torn. IX, 1904, pp. 193-219. Voigt, // Risorgtmento deWantichita classica, Florence [trans. D. ValbusaJ, 1888, 2 vols., Vol. I, p. 84. 3 De Suiipsius atque multorum Ignorantia. Opera, p. 1052.

PETRARCH

23

The doctrines of the immortality of the soul and of the creation of the world in time 5 and the idea of life as a continual preparation for death and the final vision of "il sommo ed unico bene" all seemed to him to be foreshadowed in the Platonic dialogues. The value of Platonism as a weapon against unbelief was manifest in his eyes, and he pointed it out to his friends and successors.1 It was not, however, the purely speculative aspects of Platonism that appealed to him most strongly. Abstract thought for its own sake interested him very little. His mind worked in terms of the individual and the concrete both by natural inclination and from fidelity to the Latin tradition. The idea of personality which had been obscured during the Middle Ages was central to his thought. Scholasticism, based as it was on a belief in an impassable gulf between the Infinite mind and the finite mind of man, had arrived at a conception of human personality as of something essentially static. The "voluntarist" schools of mediaeval thought emphasized man's free will, though the freedom they described was severely limited by the frailty of its possessor; but the fundamental belief in a humanity whose only hope of rising from its degradation lay in the gift of an external power lessened the importance of the individual, who appeared simply as a vessel to be filled or abandoned by grace from a transcendent source. This belief in its fervour had created all that is still vital in mediaeval art and thought; but by Petrarch's time it had lost its early vigour and passed into a stereotyped culture and a philosophy of abstract reasoning divorced from the immediate life of man. It was this cleavage between theory and life that Petrarch struggled to remedy. Philosophy for him was the art of virtuous living; and all systems that failed to teach that art he regarded as no more than splendid chains and sounding weights on the soul* Cicero and Augustine and Plato, as seen through their works, appeared to him as true philosophers whose first and final aim was the good of their 1

E.g. to Luigi Marsigli, whom he urged to take up the struggle against the Averroists. 2 De Sui. Opera, p. 1039.

24

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

readers.1 His own purpose in writing his philosophical works was mainly ethical. His range of speculation was narrow; and he ignored or only perfunctorily noticed many major problems. He was primarily concerned with the moral life of the individual, and it is his treatment of this favourite theme that gives him his chief interest and importance as a philosophical writer. From Augustine he derived his chosen form of moral philosophy, based on psychological observation. The two men were in many ways curiously alike. Both were restless and introspective with an exquisite sense of their own fleeting moods and inward contradictions and a rare power of fixing them in words. "Mihi quaestio factus sum" might have been said with equal truth by both of them; but where Augustine solved his problem by a final surrender of faith Petrarch remained unsettled to the end. There is no need to doubt the sincerity of his religious beliefs; but he was never, like Augustine, completely absorbed in religion. One may find evidence in his works of genuine devotional feeling, but nothing to match in kind or intensity with Augustine's cry to "the Beauty of Ancient Days" or his last conversation with Monnica. Petrarch himself recognized the deficiency. In his prose as in his verse there is a continual tension between the man of the Middle Ages, who believes his true life to be in another world, and the man of the Renaissance, whose deepest interest centres in the world of human experience. He follows Augustine closely in the place which he gives to self-knowledge and to the power of the will. Yet in his treatment of the former there is a difference which is almost one of atmosphere rather than of actual words; one feels that the centre of gravity has shifted. Augustine entered into his own soul in order to pass beyond himself to an eternal spirit outside and above him. Ostensibly Petrarch wished to do the same; but in comparison 1

Hi [Cicero and Augustine] sunt ergo veri Philosophi morales et virtutum optimi magistri quorum prima et ultima intentio est bonum facere auditorem et lectorem, quique non solum docent quid est virtus aut vitium praeclarumque iilud hoc fuscam nomen auribus instrepunt sed rei optimi amorem studium pessimique rei odium fugamque pectoribus inferunt. De Sui. Opera, p. 1052.

PETRARCH

25

he deals very perfunctorily with the divine vision, and lingers rather on the greatness of the human spirit as an active force in the world. Man's chief end is to live so that he may ultimately enjoy the knowledge of God. This is not attainable under earthly conditions, since God is above all that we can imagine or postulate of Him "aeterna sapientia per qua ex qua et in qua omnia."1 None the less it is possible for a man to approach true knowledge even in this life if he sets himself to seek it; and his first endeavour must be to know himself, or in other words to recognize his own ignorance and free himself of all false opinions, arrogance, and foolishness.* No knowledge of things external to itself can compensate the soul for ignorance of its own true nature. Man is a stranger on the earth "quasi hospes in domo aliena" and possesses nothing but the spirit within him. If he cannot hold that inner world he has nothing, for external things possess him instead of his possessing them.3 In the De Remediis Utriusque Fortuna Petrarch puts this inward struggle into the form of a dialogue between Reason and the passions, in which Reason proves by argument the unreality of all pains and pleasures, while the passions do not argue but repeat the same phrases again and again. Finally, Reason shows how most of our troubles could be avoided by the exercise of virtue and of a certain philosophic detachment. So far the thought is Platonico-Ciceronian, but Petrarch could not accept the purely intellectual ideal of the ancients. For Plato the man who continues to be the sport of passion is ignorant. If he could be brought to use his reason properly and recognize his true good he « De Per. Sap., II, Opera, p. 328. * Ibid. Cf. p. 325. Igitur si veils fieri noli ut iam dixi te ipsum opinari sapientiam. 3 Ibid., II, Opera, p. 325. Quid tibi prodest universum lucrari mundum teipsum perdens? Noveris licet omnia mysteria, noveris lata terrae profundo maris, alto caeli si te nescieris similis eris viro aedificante absque fundamento, ruinam non structuram faciens. Non est sapiens qui sibi non est sapiens: in acquistione enim salutis tuae nemo tibi germanior neque propinquior.

26

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

could not do otherwise than follow it, and in so doing become righteous.1 Petrarch, with his background of Augustinian culture and bitter experience, knew otherwise. He was not ignorant of what to do; his trouble was that he did not do it. The solution of his difficulty he saw in Augustine's teaching with regard to the will as the final arbiter of moral life. No man, he says in the Secretum, ever fell into sin except by his own voluntary act It is vain to plead that one cannot help oneself; when one says "I cannot" one ought rather to say "I will not" (ut ubi te non posse dixisti ultra te nolle fatearis). All sin is due to a misdirection of the will; and mere compunction without a change of volition is useless for moral progress. Mens immota manet, lacrimae voluunt banes, * Full knowledge of our own shortcomings should produce an ardent desire to forsake them. Such desire is in itself a great part of virtue, capable of annihilating all lesser wishes and opening a way through all difficulties. It is not easy, while one is in the body, to achieve a single-hearted love of the Good. If the soul of its own will rises towards heaven the lusts of the flesh drag it back to earth, and so, balanced between two desires, we fail of both. From the body proceed the phantasms that perturb the soul, and so dog and hinder it that it forgets its divine origin and its creator, and quenches its own brightness in the dust of mortality. It is the work of a great soul to withdraw itself from outward things and to be wholly at one with itself and choose to see with the inward eye rather than with the eye of flesh. Yet if the choice is made, the joy of the search is so great that it never brings satiety. The soul becomes like the man who found treasure in a field and sold all that he had that he might buy it The object of desire is the sovereign good which is present in the world as "delectatio in omne delectabile, pulchritude in omne pulchro," but man * For the De Rtmediis see F. Florentine, "La Filospfia di F. P.,'* in Scritti H PP« *74> 462-3,469; IV, pp. 120-38, 174. Poggio Bracciolini in "Oratio in funere N. Niccoli" [in Martene-Durand, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum amplissima collfctioy Paris, 1724, Vol. Ill, p. 729] gives an impression of his fame with a younger generation. [Cf. Salutati's praise in £/., IV, 138. S. says that L. M. left no writings, but neither did Pythagoras nor Socrates nor Christ.] Boccaccio contributed much to the revival of letters but did not fully share Petrarch's enthusiasm for Plato. In so far as he had a formal philosophy he was an Aristotelian and gave Plato second place. See Amoroso. Vision*, Ch. IV. Degenealogia pp. 250, 261.] Unlike Ficino, he ruled all consideration of profane love out of his Commentarius in Symposium, and he differed profoundly from the older man in his attitude towards astrology. [See Chapter V of this study, page 148, note 2.]

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY 63 mind. The syncretism for which the Florentines have often been blamed was an attempt to apply this principle and so reveal a single core of truth under the external differences of the various systems of thought They tried, in the midst of a very real and widespread relaxation of faith and morals, to establish rational bases for religion by showing how the witness of all philosophies pointed to the truth of the Christian revelation. Hence the strange and often extravagant parallels that they drew between the Hebrew prophets and the Greek philosophers and the sages of Persia and Chaldea. Pico, in whom this tendency is most marked, did not live to execute the great work of Christian apologetics which he had planned to write before finally renouncing the world; but Ficino, in the Theologia Platonica and the De Christiana Re/igioney did his utmost to build up a positive "docta religio." Rational or religious activity (for him there is no rigid distinction between the two) is the distinguishing mark of man. It is the eternal element in his being and must, therefore, at all costs be kept free from error and ignorance and enriched with all the treasures of wisdom and experience. "Liberamus obsecro quandoque philosophiam sacrum Dei munus ab impietate si possumus, possumus autem si volumus; religionem sanctam pro viribus ab excrabile inscitia redimamus."1 Like Nicholas of Cusa he aspired towards a vision of truth in which all contradictions are reconciled. Unity, truth, and goodness form a single stable reality that underlies this unstable and inconsistent world, and all knowledge is a return towards a single source. God is everywhere "secundum praesentiam." He is in all forms by "virtue," since there is in everything the effective virtue of the deity; in rational creatures He is "secundum unitatem personae," while within the Divine Mind only He is "secundum unitatem essentiae."* Grace is the pervading expression of the divine in 1 Ficino, Opera, Basle, 1573, Vol. I, De Christiana Religione, p. i. For the kinship of philosophy and religion see Vol. I, p. 854. [Epistolae, Lib. VII.] See Saitta, o.c., p. 76. » De C.R., Ch. XVI, pp. 20-21.

64

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

the world; therefore, all religions contain some good, though the Christian faith which alone is founded on the sole virtue of God is supreme among them. In Christ the union of God and man, infinite and finite, is accomplished; in Him may be sought the unity and harmony that the world of appearance seems to deny. He is "idea et exemplar virtutum." "Quid aliud Christus fuit nisi liber quidam moralis imo divinae Philosophiae vivens de caelo missus et divina ipsa idea virtutum humanis oculis manifesto."1 In spite of this, and in spite of Ficino's personal devotion towards the historical Christian revelation, a good many of his followers, fascinated by his doctrine of natural religion, inclined towards a theistic form of belief that treated the historical and traditional aspects of Christianity somewhat perfunctorily. Florentine Neoplatonism retained, naturally enough, much of the cosmogony and the vocabulary of its predecessors; and as it was on these traditional features, rather than on its more intimate spirit, that many of its disciples fastened, a rapid summary of them may be of value. The same cosmic vision is implicit in all the work of the school, but receives its fullest and clearest exposition in Pico's Heptaplus. Here one is confronted at first sight with the familiar Neoplatonic hierarchy of being. At the head of it is the One, the ineffable Godhead, perfect in simplicity, unity, and stability, exalted above all being and all knowledge. From the One there proceed the three degrees of "emanation" that form the three worlds of the cosmos. The first hypostasis, mind or spirit, becomes, in Pico's phraseology, the angelic or intellectual world, which is imperfect in so far as it is created and therefore exists not of itself, but by participation in the first being. Neither i De C.R., Ch. XXIII, p. 25. Cf. Pico, Heptaplus, Bk. I, Ch. VII, p. 15. "Quemadmodum autem inferiorum omnium absoluta consummatio est homo, ita omnium hominum absoluta est consummatio Christus. Quo si, ut dicunt philosophi ab eo quod unoquoque in genere est perfectissimum ad caeteros eiusdem ordinis quasi a forte omnis perfectio derivator. Dubium nemini est a Christo homine in omnes homines totius bonitatis perfectionem derivari. Illi scilicet uni datus spiritus non ad mensuram ut de plenitudine eius omnes acciperemus."

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY

65

is it perfect unity nor pure intelligence; perception and its object are not one thing in it as they are in God. The angelic world is a stable and unmoving multiplicity, and its distinctive activity is that of continually contemplating, beholding, and loving God. The eye cannot be filled with light, except by the sun; so the angel cannot receive virtue without being turned to God and the movement by which it returns is love. Besides carrying on their functions of contemplation and worship the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy govern and care for the celestial and sublunar worlds. The first of these is incorruptible, but inferior to the "intelligible" world because it is continually in movement and because it is a world of mingled light and darkness.1 It is divided into nine spheres or heavens, each ruled by one of the nine angelic orders, and its two great operations are movement and illumination. The movement is twofold, and consists first in the circular motion of the heavens round the earth and, second, of the movements of the stars among themselves. The light of the empyrean derives immediately from the Spirit of God and is diffused through all the spheres. The material or sublunar world is the region of darkness and corruption. It contains nine orders of sublunar life, corresponding to the souls of the spheres. Matter is simply void and formlessness "omnibus formis suscipiendis, sua tamen natura omnibus privatam."2 Forms are given to it by an "efficient cause" and are imperfect images of things that exist in the higher worlds after a more real and perfect fashion. There is indeed the most intimate connection between the three worlds, as the ancients taught obscurely by signs and figures "totius naturae et amicitias et affinitates edocti."3 Each created essence looks for guidance to the one immediately above it in the scale of being, and endeavours to reproduce what 1

"Hie vitae et mortis vicissitude, illic vita perpetua et stabilis operatic in caelo vitae stabilitas operationum locumque vicissitude. Hie ex caduca corporum substantia, ille ex divinae mentis natura caelum ex corpore sed incorrupto, ex mente, sed mancipata corpori constitutor." Heptaplus, Pici Opera, Basle, 1572, Vol. I, Bk. I, Ch. I, p. 5. » Ibid., Bk. I, Ch. I, p. n. 3 Ibid., Bk. I, Ch. I, p. 7.

66

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

it sees there in the one immediately below it. The angelic intelligence receives the ideas or types of all things from God and infuses them into the celestial world where they exist as virtues; and the soul of the celestial world contemplates the perfection of the angels and endeavours to transmit something of that perfection to the sublunar world by endowing matter with "forms" or "qualities." All things that exist in the material world are dim shadows of the eternal realities. "Est apud nos calor qualitas elementaris, est in caelestibus virtus excalfactoria, est in angelicis mentibus idea caloris. Dicam aliquid expressius. Est apud nos ignis quod est elementum. Sol ignis in caelo est, est in regione ultramondana ignis seraphicus intellectus. Sed vide quid differant. Elementaris urit, caelestis vivificat, supercaelestis amat."1 The Neoplatonists stood here in obvious danger of seeing "loose types of things through all creation," a danger into which their more unwary and unimaginative followers in all ages have fallen heavily; but they also shared, with the great Romantics, in a genuinely poetic feeling for the presence of the spiritual in the material. The visible world is a shadow, but a shadow of truth, or in a favourite simile, a house built in a material medium after the pattern already existing in the mind of the architect. It would be untrue to speak of Pico or Ficino as pantheists in the full sense of the word. God for them is manifest and active in the universe, but not identical with it; He may be apprehended through His creation, but it is dependent on Him while He is independent of it.* He is in all things because all things are in Him; or, as the Platonists have it, the divine goodness so overflowed that it left no particle destitute of itself. "Si ergo in uno mundi corpore vivente una quodam vita unique est quod alias ostendimus multo magis unum ipsum bonum est ubique etiam extra mundum."3 * Heptaplus, Bk. I, Ch. I, p. 7. * Minus enim est mundus ad Deum quam corpus ad animam maglsque eget Deo mundus quam corpus anima. Ficino, Opera, Vol. I., Theologia Platonica, Bk. I, Ch. VI, p. 91. But see Saitta's remarks on Ficino's "energico pamsichismo," o.c., p. 196. s T.P., loc. cit.

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY 67 This divine goodness, which is for ever fulfilling itself in the care and government of the world, so penetrates the whole creation that "Turn Musarum dux Bacchus in suis mysteriis, id est visibilibus naturae signis, invisibilia Dei philosophantibus nobis ostendens, inebriabit nos ab ubertate domus Dei in qua tota sicuti Moses erimus fideles."1 The mind of man, by an innate instinct (instinctus essentialis), seeks God always and in everything, and cannot be satisfied till it finds Him. There is in us all the desire [conatus] to deify ourselves, by an exaltation of the spirit which takes on the form of God as a burning object takes on the form of fire. It is natural and inevitable for man to desire perfect goodness and felicity, or, in other words, a god-like life; he has, moreover, not merely the desire but the capacity to know and possess the forms of all things including, therefore, even the "Summum Bonum."* His mind cannot be satisfied with the finite because it contains a ray of the divine light. God transcends our faculties, but He is none the less a part of them, the part by which the identification of the human mind with the divine is accomplished. In other words, the Absolute is within us, and God became man in order that man might become God.3 Where ancient Neoplatonism had tried to fill the chasm between God and the world with a succession of emanations, Ficino, without discarding the old framework, tries to reconcile all opposing terms in the soul of man, the "essentiam tertiam ac mediam," which by a natural impulse allies itself both with those things which are eternal only and those which are temporal only. The * Pico, Opera, Vol. I, De Hominis Dtgnttate, p. 320. * Ficino, Opera, Vol. I, T.P., Bk. XIII, Ch. I, p. 305. Cf. p. 91. Finis ignis est ultimi caeli concavum. Ideo flammula quaelibet si nihil prohiberet, illuc usque evolaret et quando concavum illud attingeret si dimensionem haberet sufficientem se per totum illud amplificaret ut toto eo quod sibi naturale est frueretur. . . . Scopus finisque mentis est ipsum verum bonum id est Deus." See Saitta, o.c., p. 78. 3 T.P., XIV, Ch. VII, p. 317. Deus agitat mens humana quotidie, Deo ardet cor, Deum suspirat pectus.

68

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

former it bends to its own capacity while it spiritualizes and ennobles the latter. "Quapropter naturale instinctu ascendit ad supera, descendit ad infera. Et dum ascendit inferiora non deferit et dum descendit sublimia non relinquit. Nam si alterutrum deferit ad extremum alterum declinabit neque vera erit ulterius mundi copula. Profecto idem facit, quod aer inter ignem et aquam medius qui cum igne in calore cum aqua convertit in humore."1 Ficino differs from his predecessors in making this deification a spontaneous act of the divine principle in man, or at least its natural reaction to the divine principle in the universe. "Proinde quia Deus homini absque medio se coniunxit meminisse oportet nostram felicitatem in eo versari ut Deo absque medio haereamus."* He is divided between the idea of the Absolute as utterly superessential and unknowable, and that of the Absolute latent in every soul and created in it anew with each increase of spirituality and true knowledge. The uncertainty has given rise to most of the contradictions that have been noted in his work; and it was mainly in an attempt to resolve it that he elaborated his theory of love. This is of fundamental importance in his thoughts Beatitude for him consists in a supreme act of love by which the human soul gives itself to God and so becomes assimilated to Him. Such an act is a voluntary death; it entails the rejection of the life of passion and opinion in which the soul is immersed while it is subject to earthly conditions. Yet the lover lives again in God and there finds his true self, and knows himself as he is known. He becomes at once a complete personality and a sharer of the divine life, since the inmost truth of his being is the divine activity that dwells in him. The two lives, God's and man's, are made one while yet remaining two. Since man is made in the image of God he carries on like though not identical activities. He can give himself in love to God, because God out of love created him. ' Ficino, Opera, Vol. I, T.P., Bk. Ill, Ch. II, p. 119. * De C.R., Ch. XXI, p. ^^. 3 See end of chapter for analysis of the theory of love.

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY

69

There is a reciprocal affection like that of parent and child, but it has its origin in the parent, "We love Him because He first loved us."1 Man's love is a spontaneous act which he is free to make or not as he wills, yet at the same time a response to something that is at once the utmost goal of his desire and a presence at the root of his being deeper than all conscious life. He is further endowed with the god-like faculties of understanding and creative power. He is continually endeavouring to understand himself and the universe, but he cannot be satisfied unless that understanding brings him to knowledge of the good.* Each increase of true knowledge must be a participation in God's knowledge, since that alone is truth; but we do not simply acquire something external to the mind; we re-create truth for ourselves as we apprehend it. Man's thought is a shadow or image of the divine thought. It is "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the mind of the Infinite I AM."3 Human art, science, and speculation are the means whereby we lay hold upon reality and bring it within the sphere of our consciousness. The peculiar character of Florentine Neoplatonism appears in nothing more than in its insistence on man's power to seize reality by his own efforts; in its endeavour, one might almost say, to take the kingdom of heaven by force. Even when he writes of the superiority of the contemplative over the active life Ficino is not really contradicting the fundamentally dynamic tendency of his thought. Contemplation for him is not a static condition; it is the soul's grasp on essential truth brought about by the full and harmonious exertion of reason and love. As he says, it is the only form 1

Diligit faber opera sua, quae ex materia fecit externa. Amat multo magis filium genitor quern ex materia intrinseca generavit, quamvis earn priusque restit nihil (T.P., Bk. II, Ch. IX, p. in). a T.P., Bk. I, Ch. VI, p. 91. 3 S. T. Coleridge, Poems, Nelson, Preface, p. xii. In T.P., Bk. XII, Ch. IV, p. 272, Ficino speaks of God as "agens primum et commune" who continually infuses truth into the mind of man **agens proprium et secundum." Reality is objective and eternal but "immortalis est veritas atque est continuus animi cibus, ut certe est sive ipsa convertatur in animum sive animum in seipsum converat" (T.P., Bk. XI, Ch. VI, p. 261}.

70

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

of pure activity; action that spends itself on material objects dissipates itself and falls away, but the activity of the mind is selfsufficient. It is the life of the spiritual man; a return to our own true being which dwells in God and is already a part of eternity, though we ourselves are ignorant of it "Cognosce te ipsum, divinum genus mortali veste indutum, nuda quaeso teipsum segrega quantum potes autem quantum conaris, segrega inquam a corpore animam, a sensum affectibus rationem. Videbis protinus purum segregatis terrae sordibus aurum, videbis lucidum disiectis nubibus aerem reverberis tune, crede mihi teipsum tamque divini Solis radium sempiternum. Neque audebis coram te ulterius turpe quicquam aut vile vel aggredi vel cogitare. . . . £s enim extra dum mundum ipsa complecteris. Sed esse te putas in infimo loco mundi, quia te ipsum quidem non cernis super aethera pervolantem sed umbram tuam corpus vides in infimo. Perinde ac si puer aliquis super puteum constitutus esse se in fondo putei arbitretur dum in se ipsum aciem convertit, sed suam quasi in fondo prospicit umbram. Aut si avis in aere volans, credat se in terra volare, dum umbram suam videt in terra. Ergo relictis umbrae revertere in teipsum, sic enim revertaris in amplum.1 The kind of consciousness that Ficino has in mind is evidently something more than the insight into one's own psychological peculiarities that is generally called self-knowledge. It is a direct awareness of a life that transcends all our purely empiric experience; and one may question how far such a state may be attained by any ordinary process of reasoning. Ficino himself, though he makes of inner dialectic a necessary discipline for the soul, speaks of the actual passing to that deeper consciousness as "una certa illustrazione" of the rational soul by the divine "furores" of poetry, prophecy, or love. He attains the crown of his reasoning by an irrational or supra-rational act. Where he uses the language of the mystics he seems to do so because it comes nearer than any other to expressing a state of insight that he himself had known. ' Ficino, Epistolae [Opera, Vol. I], Bk. I, p. 659.

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY

71

In a sense all experience is mystic, since there is in it something immediate and final that cannot really be reasoned about, but only apprehended through analogous experience; and there can be no experience more absolute than that by which a man is made aware of a harmony in himself that corresponds to a like harmony in the universe. That some such "simultaneous knowledge of the soul and of God" possessed Ficino in his moments of fullest conviction seems evident, but he was perhaps involved in an impossibility when he tried to turn the paradox of this direct apprehension into a strictly rational form. It is certain that he fell into many difficulties and inconsistencies in trying to explain exactly how the two harmonies were related. Over these metaphysical complexities there is no need to linger; what is, however, worthy of emphasis here is the characteristic quality of Ficino's mysticism, which is not an annulment but an intensification of human personality, implying the presence of the divine within the soul, and a free participation in the divine life, that is to say in love, knowledge, and creative activity. Ficino's real weakness, easy to understand in one writing in an age so full of hope and so glorious in achievement, is that he makes the process of perfection appear too easy and inevitable. In the twentieth century one may, without cynicism, think he exaggerated. Still, in the members of the Academy the idea of human dignity takes on a freshness of enthusiasm that makes it curiously winning. Man the microcosm, the "fourth world" of the Heptaplus, is the mirror in which the other three worlds are reflected, or still more he is ". . . creaturarum internuntium, superis familiarem regem inferiorem sensum perspicacia ratione indagine, intelligentiae lumine naturae interpretem, stabilis aevi et fluxi temporis interstitium et (quod Persae dicunt) mundi copulam imo hymenaeum, ab angelis teste Davide paulo diminutum."1 At his birth he is endowed with the seeds and germs of every form of life, material and spiritual. He is potentially all things and, at the same time, entirely free to choose those in which he desires to participate. ' Pico, De Hominis Dignitate [1486], Of era, I, p. 313.

72

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

He can live the vegetative life of plants, the sensual life of the brutes, or the life of a rational soul. Aspiring higher, he may give himself to intelligible truth and become as one of the angels; and if he cannot find contentment in any creature he may withdraw into the solitude of his own soul, and there be made one spirit with God "in solitaria patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit."1 He is, above all, utterly unrestricted, neither good nor evil, mortal nor immortal, but a being formed by God to contemplate and understand the rest of creation and to unify and recreate the universe in himself. "Jam summus architectus Deus hanc quam videmus mundanum domum divinitatis, templum augustissimum, arcanae legibus sapientiae fabrefecerat. Supercaelestem regionem mentibus decorarat, aethereos globos aeternis animis vegetarat, excrementarias ac faeculentas inferioris mundi partes omnigena animalia turba complerat. Sed opere consummate, desiderabat artifex esse aliquem qui tanti opens rationem perpenderet, pulchritudinem amaret, magnitudinem admiraretur. Idcirco iam rebus omnibus (ut Moses Timaeusque testantur) absolutis de producendo homine postremo cogitavit. . . . Nee certain sedem nee propriam faciem, nee munus ullus peculiare tibi dedimus 6 Adam ut quam sedem, quam faciem, quae munera tute optaveris ea pro voto, pro tua sententia, habeas et possideas. Definite caeteris natura intra praescriptas a nobis leges coercetur. Tu nullis angustiis coercitus, pro tuo arbitrio, in cuius manu te posui, ut circumspiceres inde commodius quicquid est in mundo. Nee te caelestem nee terrenum, neque mortalem neque immortalem fecimus ut tuiipsius quasique plastes et fictor in quam malueris tute formam effingas. Poteris in inferiora quae sunt bruta degenerare. Poteris in superiora quae sunt divina ex tui animi sententia regenerari. O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis felicitatem. . . ."2 Nothing can or ought to limit the infinite ventures of man's mind, which endeavours to be all things, and is, therefore, an « Pico, De Hominis DignitaU [1486], Opera, I, p. 315. * Ibid., I, p. 314.

MARSILIO FICINO AND THE PLATONIC ACADEMY

73

eternal progress. It may approach reality along many paths; by self-knowledge, since the mind is infinite potentiality (medium rerum) and by the study of history which confers a kind of universality on the individual by putting into his possession the collective wisdom and experience of the race. Every form of knowledge can indeed contribute something to the perfecting of the human spirit, since each contains an element of divinity and is transmuted into the spirit's substance as different kinds of food are transmuted into the substance of the body.1 Man is alone among animals in inventing and practising many arts. Other animals have at most one art which they follow of necessity, but man aspires to be like God who is in all places and who endures for ever. Therefore he cultivates the earth and scrutinizes the height of heaven and the depths of the sea. His mind leaps huge intervals of time and space and pierces into all manner of secrets. No bounds can restrain him and he seeks always to bear rule and to be honoured. "Atque ita conatur esse Deus ubique. Conatur quoque esse et semper ut Deus."2 His dignity is confirmed by his resentment of any form of servitude or degradation; by his impatience at being beaten even in trifles; and by every manifestation of natural shame.3 His desires are so limitless that he cannot be satisfied with the world he knows but must needs, like Alexander and Anaxagoras, demand others. He is undisputed lord of the earth (Est utique Deus in terra) linking it to heaven by his activities and so rendering the very soil he cultivates almost divine.4 The soul is the "form" of the body which it moulds in its own likeness. Bodily strength, beauty, and temperance are shadows of similar mental qualities, 1 Ficino, T.P., Bk. XIV, Ch. Ill, p. 310. For the universality conferred on the mind by historical study see Ep., I, p. 658. "Ei quidem quae per se mortalia sunt immortalitatem ab historia consequuntur, quae absentia sunt per earn praesentia fiunt vetera iuvenescunt. luvenes cito maturitatem senis adaequant. Ac si senex septuaginta annorum ob ipsarum rerum experientiam prudens habetur, quanto prudentior qui annorum mille et trium millum implet aetatem." * Ibid., T.P.t Bk. XIV, Ch. V, p. 311. 3 Ibid., T.P., Bk. XIV, Ch. IV, p. 311. "Esseservitutisomnis impatientem. Qui etiam servire cogatur, odit Dominum, utpote qui serviat contra naturam." 4 Ibid., Bk. XVI, p. 378.

74

NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

just as the beauty of things visible is the shadow of beauty in the intelligible world. Not only is each individual a cosmos of infinite value and wonder, but humanity as a whole is a lovely nymph "praestanti corpore nympha," an Idea in which all the component units become as one man (Singuli namque homines sub una idea et in eadem specie sunt unus homo).1 The wise man first learns to know his own soul and then studies, loves, and cares for humanity as for a brotherhood descended from one father (ex uno quodam patre longo ordine natos). To love and understand his kind is a crown of wisdom and power to the philosopher, who stands as a medium between God and man; a man in the presence of God, a god among his fellows.* Only the philosopher, that is the man who lives most perfectly in harmony with the law of the mind, is fitted to bear rule over this collective soul of humanity. It is he who ought to guide the fortunes of the state. Here again Ficino emphasizes the humanistic tradition; man is the heir of heaven, but he is also an "anima socialis" who carries on the divine activity under human conditions; and he who is inwardly perfect must offer his vision and counsel freely to the community. Ficino's own letters abound in advice on practical questions which shows how sincerely he endeavoured to carry out his own theories.3 His doctrine of love, which was destined to enjoy such astonishing popularity, is contained principally in his In Convivium Platonis De Amore Commentarius^ The fundamental importance of this ' Ep.y Bk. I, 635. Cf. Ep., I, 6585IV, 762. a Ibid., Bk. V, p. 805. To Lorenzo. 3 See E. Galli, La morale nelle lettere di M. F.t Pavia, 1897, and Lo stato lafamigliae Veducaz,ione secondo le teorie di M. F.9 Pavia, 1899. Also Saitta, Ueducaxione deW Umanesimo, Venice, 1928,01. XIV, p. 235, "Marsilio Ficino.'* 4 In Opera, Vol. II, pp. 1320 et seq. Ficino himself translated it into "volgare" and dedicated the translation to Bernardo del Nero. The final version was not completed till 1474 or 1475. It is mentioned in a letter to Alamanno Donati and Lorenzo [Ep.9 VII, p. 848], but remained in MS. until 1544 when it was published by Cosimo Bartoli. The edition is entitled Marsilio Ficino sopra lo amore o 59> 178 Averroists, 20, 32 Avicenna, 17

Beoni, 95, 163 Berni, Francesco, 239 Bessarion, Cardinal, 39, 49-54, 57 Betussi, Giovanni, 194 seq., 203 Birth of Venus, 217, 218, 219, 220 Blake, William, 220, 276 Boccaccio, 135, 179, 222 Boccalini, Traiano, 189 Bonincontri, Lorenzo, 136, 137, 161, 162 Botticelli, 136, 216 seq., 224 Bracci, Cecchino de', 243, 254 Bruni, Leonardo, 32, 34 Bruno, Giordano, 13,40, 75, 270, 271 Callixtus, Andronicus, 47 Calumny (of Apelles), 224 Campanella, Tommaso, 232, 240,250, 270, 271 Canti Carniascialeschi, 95, 107 Canzone del Amor Divino, 61, 118 seq. Canzoniere del Amor Divino, 112 seq. Caro, Annibale, 212 Castiglione, Baldassare, 180, 190 seq., 212, 222,

235

Cavalcanti, Giovanni, 181 Cavalcanti, Guido, 91, 119, 177,178 Cavalieri, Tommaso, 225, 242, 246Baldini, Baccio, 220 247 Bandello, M., 205 Chalchidius, 21 Bandini, A. M., 139 Chrysoloras, Manuel, 31, 34 Barlam, 22 Cicero, 21, 22, 23, 178 Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae, Cimabue, 214 Cittd di Vita, La, 136 seq. 226 Colonna, Vittoria, 225, 240, 242, 246 Beatrice, 18, 148, 221, 247 Bellini, Giovanni, 215 *47> *54 Bembo, Pietro, 180,184 seq., 190-194, Comparatio Platonis et Aristoteli$> 49 205, 239 Condivi, Ascanio, 241 Convivio, 18 Benci, Tommaso, 241 Benivieni, Girolamo, 61, 94, 95, Coppetta de' Beccuti, Francesco, 239 Coronation of the Virgin (Botticelli), 220 112 seq., 136, 181, 241, 247

3 i2

NEOPLATONISM

OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Corsi, Giovanni, 61 CortigianOy 190 seq. Council of Ferrara, 46 Council of Florence, 46 Crane, T. F., 176 Cusa, Nicholas of, 63 Dante, 18, 19, 97, 135,136, 139, 178,

220-223, 241, 247 De Amore, 194 Decameron, 222 De Christiana Religione, 59, 63 De excettentia et dignitate hominis, 40,

45

De hominis dignitate, 61 Deifira, 183 Delia Barba da Pescia Pompeo, 196 Delia Pittura, 224 della Robbia, 215 Delia Vita Civile, 138, 150 Delphic Sybil, 246 Democritus, 100 De Monarchia, 135 De Ocio Retigiosorum, 28 De Platonicae atque Aristotelicae Philosophiae Differentia, 48, 50 Deposition (Fra Angelico), 214 De Pukhro, 194 De Rebus Caelestis, 137, 161, 162 De Remediis Utriusque Fortuna, 25 De Vita Solitaria, 28 De Voluptate (Ficino), 97 De Voluptate (Valla), 98 Diacceto, Francesco Cattani di, 61, 182 seq., 188, 241 Dialoghi d*Amore, 197 seq. Dialogum ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, 3*

Dionysius (pseudo), 17, 146, 155, 270 Diotima, 84 Dispute of the Sacrament, 229 Divina Commedia, 18, 135-138, 220 Dolce, Ludovico, 222, 235 Dolci, Carlo, 236 Dominici, Giovanni, 179

Donatello, 90, 215 Donati, Lucrezia, 103 Donna mi prega, 177 Dore", Gustave, 220 Dttrer, Albrecht, 232 Dying Slave (Michelangelo), 229 Enneads, 59 Epipsychidion, 278 Equicok, Mario, 187 seq. Erasmus, 139 Evelyn Hope, 277 Ficino, Marsilio, 12, 13, 14, 31, 33, 45> 47> 5°> 54> 57 seq., 91, 95, 96, 97, 105, 107, 118, 119, 135, 138, 140, 146, 148, 150, 153, 157, 161, 163, 164, 165, 167, 170, 176, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 198, 201, 202, 205, 217, 218, 225, 227, 240, 241 Filelfo, Francesco, 40

Filosofo, 11, 205

Firenzuola, 205 Folengo, Teofilo, 164 Fortezza, 216 Franco, Matteo, 163, 165 Gaza, Theodore, 47, 49, 50 Gennadius (Georgius Scholarius), 47 Gioconda, La (Monna Lisa), 230, 234 Giotto, 214 Giraldi, Cinthio, 196 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 104 Guinizelli, Guido, 119, 177 Hecatomfila, 183 Heptaplus, 61, 64, 71, 92, 272 Hertha, 273 Home, Herbert, 217 Hugo, Victor, 271, 276 Ilaria del Carretto, tomb of, 215 In Calumniatorem Platonis, 50

INDEX In Convvuium Piatonis de Amore Commentarius, 74 Inferno, 220 Infinita d*Amore, 196, 204, 205 In Memoriam, 278 Ion, 223 In Platonis Convvvium (Pico), 61 Istitutiones Platonicae, 138

313

Marsigli, Luigi, 31, 32, 33, 40 Marsilio da Padova, 20 Marsuppini, Carlo, 33, 138 Medici, Cosimo de', 48, 58 Medici, Lorenzo de', 12, 13, 58, 90, 94, 95 seq., 135, 163, 166, 217, 218, 225, 240 Medici, Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de', 217, 220 Jacopone da Todi, 111 Medici, Nannina de', 167 Judith, 216 Medici tombs, 227, 229, 241 Memmi, Simone, 222 Keats, 230 Menendez y Pelayo, 176 King Lear, 233 Meno, 22 Meredith, George, 273 Landino, Cristoforo, 44, 61, 97, 98, Metaphysics, 50 136, 217, 220, 221, 223 Michelangelo, 15, 91, 136, 196, 220, Lando, Ortensio, 181 225 seq., 235,236,237, 240 seq, 275 Landscape in Rain (Leonardo da Middleton Murry, J., 270 Vinci), 232 Mistress of Vision, 275 Lasca, II, 239 Molza, 204 Lascaris, The, 47 Monnica, St., 24 Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 228 Montgomery, Robert, 137 Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci), 231 Morgante Maggiore, 163 seq. Laude (Lorenzo de' Medici), 96, 102, Mystic Crucifixion, 220 107 seq. Laura, 178, 185, 222 Nencia da Barberino, 95, 108, 163 Laws, 49, 54 Nesi, Giovanni di Francesco, 136, Leone Ebreo, 40, 75, 176, 197 seq. 153 seq., 161 Leonora, 194 Niccoli, Niccolo, 32, 135 Leopardi, 243, 273, 277 Nicholas V, 49 Leto, Pomponio, 33, 50, 63 Nifo, Agostino, 194 Lezioniy 196 Nuvolone, Filippo, 179 Libri d*Amore, 241 Libra di Natura d*Amore, 187 seq. Oraxioni, 95 Lippi, Fra Filippo, 216 Orcagna, 214 Lucian, 224 Origen, 139, 140, 168, 270 Orpheus, 48, 80 Macrobius, 28 Pallas and Centaur, 217, 219, 220 Madonna of the Magnificat, 219 Palmieri, Matteo, 136 seq., 159, 161 Madonna of the Rocks, 231, 234 Panegirico dell*Amore, 183 Madonna with Five Saints, 219 Manetti, Gianozzo, 40, 45 Paradiso, 220 Paradiso degli Alberti, 32 Manilius, 161 Paradisus, 136, 159, 160, 161 Marlow, 108

3H NEOPLATONISM OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Parados si> iSi Pater, Walter, 230 Paul II, 49 Paul, St., 102, 152 Pausanias, 79 Perugino, 233 Petrarch, n, i9seq., 33, 34, 35, 178, 182, 185, 196, 222, 239, 241, 243 Phoedo, 22 Phaedrus, 223 Pico della Mirandola, 13, 14, 40, 59, 60 seq., 118 seq., 139, 176, 181, 188, 228, 241,271 Pico della Mirandola, Giovan Francesco, 188 Piero di Cosimo, 233 Pietd (Giovanni Bellini), 215 Pietd (Michelangelo), 227 Pimandro, 241 Piranesi, 232 Pisani, The, 214 Platina, 188 Plato, n, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 31, 33, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 59, 75, 79> 80, 135, 138, 202, 212, 223, 241 Pletho, George Gemisthus, 12, 47-50 Plotmus, 12, 22, 28, 59,117, 121,146 Poema Visione, 136, 153 seq. Polisifo, 179 Politian (Angelo Poliziano), 46, 90 seq., 135, 160, 217, 240, 241 Pollajuoli, The, 216 Pontano, Giovanni, 33, 40, 161, 179 Porphyry, 22, 48, 121 Prato, Giovanni da, 32 Prinwvera, 217, 218, 219, 220 Proclus, 48 Prometheus Unbound, 276 Pulci, Luigi, 137, 141, 142, 143, 162 seq. Purgatorio, 220 Pythagoras, 51

Quaestiones Camaldulenses, 44, 61, 96, 97 Rabelais, 164 Raphael, 229, 230, 235, 236, 237 Rawerta, II, 197 Republic, 53 Rerum Naturalum, 161 Resurrection (Michelangelo), 228 Riccardi Chapel, frescoes in, 233 Riccio, Luigi del, 254 Rossi, Roberto de, 32 Salonika, Isidore of, 47 Salutati, Coluccio, 31, 34-39, 45, 179 Salvator Rosa, 234 Savino, Lorenzo, 176 Savonarola, 112, 136, 153, 219 School of Athens, 229 Sebastiano, del Piombo, 227 Secretum, 26, 178 Sekue d'Amore, 94, 96, 102 seq. Seneca, 39 Shelley, 61, 273, 278 Signorelli, Luca, 220 Sistine Chapel, 227, 241 Socrates, 84, 181 Sonnets from the Portuguese, 278 Speroni, Sperone, 198, 203, 204 Spinoza, 75, 198 Sposizdone d'un sonetto platonico fatto sopra ilprimo effetto d'amore, 196 Stampa, Gaspara, 239 Stanza della Segnatura, 229 Stanze per la Giostra, 92, 160 Stance (Raphael's), 229 Swinburne, 273 Symposium, 75, 92, 1185 Ficino's translation, Convito, 218, 241 Tansillo, Luigi, 239 Tasso, Torquato, 194, 240 Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate Animae, 59, 63, 138 Thinker (Michelangelo), 246 Thomas k Kempis, i i t

INDEX Thompson, Francis, 276 Timaeus, 18, 21, 148 Titian, 235 Tornabuoni frescoes, 220 Tornabuoni, Lucrezia, 96, 107 Toscanelli, Paolo, 138 Traversari, Ambrogio, 33, 41, 138 Trebizond, George of, 47, 49, 53 Trionfo di Bacco e d'Arianna, 95 Trismegistus, Hermes, 48 Tusculane, 22, 178 Valla, Lorenzo, 39, 40, 45,46, 98, 179 Varchi, Benedetto, 182, 196, 198, 203, 204, 205, 239 Vasari, Georgio, 217, 222, 235, 236, 243 Vegio, Maffeo, 179 Venus and Mars (Botticelli), 217 Verino, Ugolino di V., 136, 159, 160, 161

3i5

Verrio, 236 Verrocchio, 216 Vigny, Alfred de, 273 Villon, 108 Vinci, Leonardo da, 203, 224, 226, 229 seq., 271 Virgil, 97, 135 Virgin and Child and St. Anne (Leonardo de Vinci), 231 Vision of Judgment, 168 Visitation (della Robbia), 215 Vita Nuwa, La, 17, 178, 243 Vito de Gozze, Nicol6, 194 Viviani, Emilia, 278 Volpi, 165 Wordsworth, 273, 277 Wuthering Heights, 233 Zambeccari, Pellegrino, 179 Zoroaster, 48

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD

LONDON: 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.I LEIPZIG: (F. VOLCKMAR) HOSPITALSTR. 10 CAPE TOWN: 73 ST. GEORGE'S STREET TORONTO: 91 WELLINGTON STREET, WEST BOMBAY: 15 GRAHAM ROAD, BALLARD ESTATE WELLINGTON, N.Z.: 8 KINGS CRESCENT, LOWER HUTT SYDNEY, N.S.W.: AUSTRALIA HOUSE, WYNYARD SQUARE

ROUTLEDGE OUTLEDGE LIBRARY LIBRARY EDITIONS: EDITIONS: R IDEALISM IDEALISM

Volume olume 44 V

THE TRAGED TRAGEDY OF F REASON REASO N THE YO

THE TRAGEDY TRAGED Y O OF REASO N THE F REASON Towar owardd aa Platonic Platonic Conception Conception ooff Logos Logos T

DAVID AVID ROOCHNIK ROOCHNI K D

R

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published published iinn 1990 1990 bbyy Routledge Routledge First This edition edition firs published iinn 202 1 This firstt published 2021 by Routledge Routledge by Park Square, Square, Milton Milton Park, Park, Abingdon, Abingdon, Oxon Oxon OX14 OX14 4RN 4RN 22 Park and bbyy Routledge Routledge and 52 Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Avenue, Avenue, Ne New York, N NY 10017 52 w York, Y 10017 Routledge is is an an imprint imprint of of the the Taylor Taylor & & Francis Francis Group, Group, an an informa informa business business Routledge © 1990 1990 David David Roochnik Roochnik © All rights rights reserved. reserved. N Noo part part ooff this this book book may may bbee reprinted reprinted oorr reproduced reproduced oorr utilised utilised All in any any form form oorr bbyy any any electronic, electronic, mechanical, mechanical, oorr other other means, means, no now known oorr in w known hereafter invented, invented, including including photocopying photocopying and and recording, recording, oorr iinn any any informatio n hereafter information storaggee oorr retrieval retrieval system, system, without without permission permission iinn writing writing from from the the publishers. publishers. stora Trademark notice: notice: Product Product oorr corporate corporate names names ma mayy bbee trademarks trademarks oorr registere d Trademark registered trademarks,, and and are are used used only only for for identification identification and and explanation explanation without without intent intent ttoo trademarks infringe.. infringe British Library Library Cataloguing Cataloguing in in Publication Publication Data Data British A catalogue catalogue record record for for this this book book iiss available available from from the the British British Library Library A ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-70445-2 (Set) (Set) 978-0-367-70445-2 978-1-00-315602-4 (Set) (Set) (ebk) (ebk) 978-1-00-315602-4 978-0-367-71240-2 (Volume (Volume 44)) (hbk) (hbk) 978-0-367-71240-2 978-0-367-71300-3 (Volume (Volume 4) 4) (pbk) (pbk) 978-0-367-71300-3 978-1-00-315023-7 (Volume (Volume 4) 4) (ebk) (ebk) 978-1-00-315023-7

Publisher'’ss Note Note Publisher The publisher publisher has has gone gone tto o great great lengths lengths tto o ensure ensure the the quality quality ooff this this reprint reprint but but The points out out that that some some imperfections imperfections iinn the the original original copies copies may may bbee apparent. apparent. points Disclaimer Disclaimer The publisher publisher has has made made every every effort effort ttoo trace trace copyright copyright holders holders and and would would welcom The welcomee correspondence from from those those they they have have been been unabl unablee ttoo trace. trace. correspondence

DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237

The Tragedy of Reason Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos David Roochnik

Routledge New York and London

Dedicated to the Memory of Ben Kaplan (1891-1989) First published in 1990 by Routledge an imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35 Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P4EE Copyright © 1990 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Roochnik, David. The tragedy of reason : toward a Platonic conception of logos / David Roochnik. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-415-90315-7. ISBN 0-415-90316-5 (pbk.) 1. Plato—Contributions in doctrine of logos. 2. Reason. 3. Logos. I. Title. B398.L85R66 1990 90-31648 128'.3—dc20 CIP British Library Cataloging in Publication Data Roochnik, David The tragedy of reason : toward a Platonic conception of Logos. 1. Logic. Theories of Plato I. Title 160.92 ISBN 0-415-90315-7 ISBN 0-415-90316-5 pbk

CONTENTS

Prologue Introduction A. Tragedy B. Logos C. Techne Chapter 1: Logos Is Unconditionally Good A. The Classic Assertion (1) Aristotle's Vision (2) The Protreptic Logos (3) The Indirect Argument B. The Critique of Logos (1) Protagoras (2) Descartes' Provisional Morality (3) Spinoza's Critique of Teleology C. The Response of Logos (1) The Argument from Self-Reference (2) Techne and the Good (3) Poeticism

ix 1 12 18

23 35 38 45 64 76 82 87 93

Chapter 2: Is Logos Unconditionally Good? A. Cleitophon's Accusation B. Eros and Logos C. The Philosopher and the Poet

97 108 121

Chapter 3: Logos Is Conditionally Good A. The Impossibility of Philosophical Dialogue (1) Philosophical Dialogue (2) Aristotle and the Principle of Noncontradiction (3) The Misologists

140 148 154

vi CONTENTS

B. Paradigms of Play (1) The Athlete and the Child (2) The Philosopher and the Poet (Continued) (3) The Protreptic Logos (Continued) C. Questions (1) Eros and Logos (Continued) (2) Asking Questions Epilogue Notes

164 176 185 196 200 203 207

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Financial support from the Earhart Foundation allowed me to devote several summers to this project. Iowa State University granted me a semester of research leave during which I completed my penultimate draft. I am grateful to many people here in Ames. Conversations, and disagreements, with my colleagues have been instrumental in shaping my views. Working with students has been the critical experience that led to the selection of the texts that I discuss as well as the order in which I discuss them. Steve Pett read an early version of this book and urged me to continue. The encouragement and intelligence of Gina Crandell were a constant help. Rich White, Madeleine Henry, Barry Goldfarb, and Bill Scott read portions of the book and their comments were valuable. Charles Griswold read, and criticized, all of it. His responses were probing, insightful, and always generous. I'm certain that my work is better as a result of the many talks we've had over the years. There is no doubt, however, that all errors and confusions that remain in the pages to follow are my responsibility alone.

VII

PROLOGUE

This book attempts to defend a conception of reason—or to use the Greek word "logos"—that I contend can be extracted from the dialogues of Plato. The very notion of defending Plato may seem strange. Why would a philosopher enshrined for centuries as "classic** need a defense? A defense against whom and what charge? What does it mean to defend an author so long dead? Can he somehow be revived? In other words, what significance can a defense of Plato possibly attain for a contemporary audience? The classical conception of "logos" (the full meaning of which will be discussed in the introduction below) has been under siege for a long time. At least since Descartes, logos has been attacked for being vague, unproductive, and vastly inferior to the new mathematically based sciences and technologies that were being formulated in the seventeenth century. Descartes was animated by a desire for progress and the conviction that the power and possible benefits of science had been impeded by the dominant position accorded to classical learning in European culture. He attempted to overthrow the rule of logos by redefining what counted as knowledge. In an important sense, he succeeded: there was indeed a "scientific revolution" in which Descartes' assault on logos figured prominently. In the twentieth century, the scientific revolution has, for many, soured. This fact, however, has only led to an increase in the vehemence of the hostility voiced against logos. Critics such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, and most recently Derrida, have accused logos of fathering the Cartesian project. Logos is, for them, ultimately the origin of, and hence culpable for, the life-denying woes of the technological world. And Plato is typically taken to be the undisputed Father of the logos tradition. For such critics, there is an unbroken line leading from Plato to Descartes to biotechnology and word processing. Nietzsche's early book, The Birth of Tragedy, written in 1871, makes this IX

x PROLOGUE clear. Here Nietzsche, who was a trained classicist, argues that with the arrival of Socrates (or Plato),1 a terrible transformation occurred in ancient Greece, one that gave rise to a profound sickness that has subsequently plagued Western culture. A spirit of "theoretical optimism," of hyper-rationalism, took hold and displaced what until then had been the basic and very healthy impulse among the Greeks: the spirit of tragedy. (A full discussion of "tragedy" will be found in the introduction below.) Socrates is the prototype of the theoretical optimist who, with his faith that the nature of things can be fathomed, ascribes to knowledge and insight the power of a panacea, while understanding error as the evil par excellence. To fathom the depths and to separate true knowledge from appearance and error, seemed to Socratic man the noblest, even the only truly human vocation. And since Socrates, this mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences has been esteemed as the highest occupation and the most admirable gift of nature, above all other capacities.2

For Nietzsche, the theoretical optimism transmitted by Plato is a virulent disease. By equating knowledge with goodness, Plato ostensibly vilified and repressed other human capacities such as willing, feeling, creating, and playing. By elevating the importance of the mind, he downplayed the wonders of the body, and by searching for a timeless Truth he degraded the indisputable fact of human temporality. Plato set into motion a series of ideas and events that has culminated in a Western culture denuded of life and left only with its dehumanizing science and technology. And again: that of which tragedy died, the Socratism of morality, the dialectics, frugality and cheerfulness of the theoretical man—how now? might not this very Socratism be a sign of decline, of weariness, of infection, of the anarchical dissolution of the instincts?3

From a variety of quarters Plato has been damned repeatedly as the architect of a hyper-rational and oppressive world. The very word "Platonic" no longer refers only to the historical figure or his work. Instead, it is often used to label traditional Western rationalism itself, with its antiquated and offensive commitment to the Truth. Consider, for example, a remark made in the preface to a volume of essays published in 1987 and significantly titled After Philosophy. Its contributors include Rorty, Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, Davidson, Dummett, and Putnam. It is clear that they were chosen for their diversity. Nevertheless, says the editor, "all are agreed in their opposition to the Tlatonic conception of Truth/" 4 (The last four words of this sentence, as well as the procedure

PROLOGUE xi of capitalizing the first letter of "Truth" in order to highlight it with scorn, are taken from Richard Rorty.)' What is the relationship between the (supposed) "theoretical optimism" inherent in the "Platonic conception of Truth" and Greek tragedy? A good explanation is found in Martha Nussbaum's recent work, The Fragility of Goodness. She argues that in the Protagoras, for example, Plato attempts to develop a "science of practical reasoning." Armed with such knowledge, philosophers could eliminate the suffering caused by moral conflict and escape from the dangers and contingencies that ordinarily seem to plague human life. By contrast, Greek tragedy not only depicts, but also wisely affirms, the vulnerability of human goodness and the very emotions that Plato despises. As a result, Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche and characterizes the dialogues as "Plato's anti-tragic theater," as "theater purged and purified of theater's characteristic appeal to powerful emotions, a pure crystalline theater of the intellect."0 For Nussbaum, the dialogues, unlike the classical Greek tragedies, are hyper-rational denials of the fragility and uniquely beautiful pathos of being human. To a large extent what follows is a response to Nietzsche and scholars like Nussbaum. In other words, the principal charge against which I shall defend Plato is this: that he is "anti-tragic." I shall do so because I believe that it is an extremely serious accusation. In other words, I agree with Nietzsche and Nussbaum that tragedy is both illuminating and affirming of the value of human life; to deny it, therefore, is a sign of decline, of infection, of a hyper-rationalism gone awry. I further agree, with Nietzsche and his epigones, that the world of twentieth-century science and technology is genuinely dehumanizing and in need of revitalization. I do not believe, however, that Plato is the evil genius lurking behind these developments. Indeed, I think that precisely the Platonic dialogues can supply a revitalizing alternative to the scientific or technical conception of rationality today so predominant. Nietzsche's disciples, many of whom have become quite fashionable and whom I shall call "the subversives," are engaged in a wholesale rejection, or deconstruction, of the Western tradition of reason/ While it is not difficult to sympathize with their dissatisfaction, even their rage, at the technocratic worldview, their own response is no more fulfilling. The Western tradition is not homogeneous. While it may be true that the specifically technical conception of reason developed in the last 400 years is dehumanizing, classical logos is not the culprit. For it is possible, I shall argue, to extract from the Platonic dialogues a conception of logos that is compatible with the life-affirming insights of tragedy.

xii PROLOGUE This book thus reflects three related concerns. The first is with Plato. Through a discussion of a small selection of his works I shall attempt to show that embedded within the dialogues is a "tragic conception of logos." By the end of the book, I hope that the meaning of this phrase will be clear. The second is with Descartes and the founding of the technical conception of reason. I shall show how Descartes attacks and fundamentally alters classical logos. The result is an impoverished conception of reason, one that is unable to do justice to the significance and value of human experience. The third is with the subversives. I shall argue that through a great irony they, the grand deconstructors of Western rationalism, and Descartes, the founding father of the technical conception of reason, hold complementary positions. They can be conceived as two extreme positions that are like "flip sides" of a single coin. The Platonic conception of logos, as I move toward articulating it, will offer a third, a middle way, one that is richer and more humane than the two extreme views flanking it. A caveat about the strategy that informs this book: What follows is itself an imitation of a dialogue. By setting a series of texts by a wide variety of authors—Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Heraclitus, Derrida, Rorty, Hesiod, Homer—into opposition with one another, I shall attempt to generate a conceptual drama whose goal is to exhibit the nature or structure, which I have already described as tragic, of logos, the main character of the story. I shall follow this approach for the following reasons. I am convinced that the Platonic conception of logos can be of real value, and not just academic interest, for the contemporary debate about the fate of reason. I want to exhibit that conception and thereby make it accessible. This, I have decided, requires giving voice to a competing set of views and forcing them to confront one another; for such competiton is, I shall argue, of the essence in Plato's thought. The most obvious, and perhaps the most telling, fact about Plato's writings is that he never presents a "theory," a monological argument, about a single specified subject. He only writes dialogues.8 It is of course true that the character Socrates is usually the "hero" of his work, but as has been argued many times, it is illegitimate, and perhaps even impossible, simply to equate Plato with any of his characters.9 All of Socrates' statements—his arguments, assertions, myths, similes, and jokes—are placed in a specific dramatic context composed of a particular time and place and a series of characters. Socrates' remarks, therefore, are always addressed to someone for a specific reason and so are conditioned by the contingency of their dramatic context. As a result, it is illegitimate to

PROLOGUE xm isolate any given Socratic statement and christen it "Platonic." The full meaning of the statement emerges only as part of a dramatic whole. Beginning with the assumption that the dialogue form is an essential component of Plato's thought, I make two further claims. First, several of Socrates' most critical interlocutors hold views that are significantly similar to those of our own subversives. I refer to sophists such as Protagoras, rhetoricians like Gorgias and Thrasymachus, and a poet (more accurately, a "rhapsode") like Ion. I shall argue that these characters represent positions that prefigure the work of thinkers such as Derrida and Rorty. They were, in other words, ancient versions of the subversives. As a result, the Platonic dialogues are well equipped to comment on contemporary issues. Second, the Platonic conception of logos can only be made intelligible insofar as it emerges from the conflict between Socrates and his subversive interlocutors.10 A sizable portion of what follows is devoted to clarifying and substantiating this assertion. This book is an attempt to extract and to defend the Platonic conception of logos by reproducing such conflict in the form of a series of textual oppositions. If I am correct in my comparison between Socrates' sophistic and poetic interlocutors and the subversives, then it becomes entirely possible that the dialogues can help us, even today, participate in the battles currently being waged over the futufe of reason. A final note on my strategy: The first "scene" of this drama contains a discussion of Aristotle, not Plato. It would be a serious mistake to conflate the two and attribute to them joint authorship of "the classical conception of logos." Their disagreements are profound. Nevertheless, I have used Aristotle to help illuminate what I take to be a critical feature of Plato's thought. Aristotle's vision of the value, range, and security of logos is more comprehensive, and in an important sense more optimistic, than Plato's.'' Beginning with Aristotle allows me to show by contrast the great awareness Plato has of the limits . . . the tragic limits . . . as well as the goodness of logos. In what follows I shall not presuppose any knowledge of Greek philosophy or literature and when a Greek word is used, its meaning will be given. The scholarly references I have chosen to include will be confined to the notes (and largely to works in English). When needed I shall supply the primary text that is under discussion. (Unless noted, translations will be my own and have been formulated with an eye toward readability.) Finally, I shall try to explain what prompted the many transitions from section to section, from text to text, that occur throughout the book. My hope is that anyone willing to think seriously about the issues under

xiv PROLOGUE

discussion can benefit from this work. More particularly, I would like to address those readers who are troubled by the omnipresence of the technical version of rationality and, as a result, are tempted to join a noted philosopher of science in saying "farewell to reason."121 urge such readers to reexamine the tradition they are tempted to abandon and in particular to ask whether, in damning Plato, they have not misidentified their enemy. Is it possible that the Platonic conception of logos, far from representing the theoretical optimism deplored by Nietzsche, includes a tragic awareness of its limits as well as a life-affirming understanding of its goodness?

But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an Ancient Greek that he couldn't say "Big Deal." —Don DeLillo, White Noise

xv

INTRODUCTION

A

TRAGEDY

Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, generated by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence? -Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Before proceeding into the main current of this work, three terms require explanation. Two appear in the title of this book and the third, more precisely a descendant of the third, already was featured in the prologue. These are "tragedy," "logos," and "techne."' Tragedy was a form of drama that reached its peak in Athens during the fifth century b.c.e. The name itself seems to come from words mean­ ing "goat" and "song." This could indicate that the earliest tragedies, which took place sometime before the fifth century, were performed in contests whose prize was a goat. However, as is true of so much about classical Greek drama, the question of its origins remains obscure. Schol­ ars do not know exactly how or why or when tragedy originated. All that can be said with confidence is that it reached its pinnacle in Athens during the fifth century. Even this assertion, however, needs qualification. From the three great tragedians, Aeschylus (510-450), Sophocles (496-406), and Euripides (476-406), only some thirty-three plays remain. Seven each belong to Aeschylus and Sophocles, nineteen to Euripides. The manner in which these particular plays managed to survive the centuries of transmission is itself noteworthy. The seven each of the two older playwrights were the result of editions compiled by later scholars for use in various schools. Since both authors wrote scores of plays, we cannot be at all certain that the particular plays chosen for the editions were truly representative of their entire corpus. We do not know precisely who chose them or what DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237-1

2

INTRODUCTION

criteria they employed. It is obvious, therefore, that we do not have enough text with which to construct a historically complete or defensible characterization of either Aeschylus or Sophocles.2 The situation is slightly better with Euripides. In addition to an anthology, we have several more of his plays. These were preserved when a small portion of a complete alphabetized edition was discovered. (Notice how many of Euripides' plays begin with the English H: Hecuba, Helen, Heraclidae, Hippolytus).3 Euripides has frequently been described by commentators as the most perplexing of the three tragedians. His work has been most resistant to classification because his tragedies are extraordinarily diverse and often seem quite strange. It is possible, however, that this wide variety is a consequence not of some unique characteristic of Euripides, but of the simple fact that we have so many of his plays. In other words, if more work by Aeschylus had also survived, perhaps we would respond to it with a perplexity similar to that often felt after a study of Euripides.4 In short, Greek tragedy was a highly complex and multiplicitous genre, and we simply do not have enough textual data to be confident in making generalizations about it. Even with the thirty-three plays that remain it is dangerous to generalize. What, for example, does Euripides' Hecuba have in common with Aeschylus' Oresteia such that both should be called tragedies? It is clear that the safest and historically most prudent course is to speak of Greek "tragedies" and not "tragedy." But this is not typically done. At least since Aristotle (380-320), critics have yearned for a general definition of tragedy. For some reason, this word exerts a strong appeal. "Tragedy," in the hands of Aristotle or even thinkers far less than he, somehow becomes a provocative and luring notion. Why? Because critics can use it to speak about human life as a whole. Tragedy, they say, can tell us something fundamental about ourselves. Aristotle puts it this way when he compares tragic poetry to history: [Tragic] poetry is more philosophical and serious than history. For poetry speaks more about what is universal, while history speaks about what is particular. That which is universal is, for example, what sorts of things a specific type of person will say or do according to what is most probable or even necessary. It is this at which poetry aims (1451b5-10).D Tragedy teaches us about types of human beings and general patterns of behavior. It can thus be used as an occasion to comment, not on this or that particular person, but on what it means to be a human being. This is why Aristotle believes that drama should be included as part of a well-crafted educational system. Critics since Aristotle have followed

INTRODUCTION

3

his lead and books abound with titles such as The Spirit of Tragedy or The Tragic Sense of Life.b As stated above, the relationship between such philosophical or critical versions of tragedy and the hundreds of actual plays that were once performed in Athens is not obvious. Even Aristotle probably did not consider all of them since he wrote over one hundred years after their performance. Despite its enormous influence in shaping the critical reception of tragedy, Aristotle's account in his Poetics is not a historically verifiable characterization of tragedy. When speaking of "tragedy," therefore, I make no pretense to refer accurately to the hundreds of plays performed some 2,500 years ago. Instead, I have been inspired by a few of those plays, particularly Sophocles' story of Oedipus, to forge a conception of tragedy that I believe can be put to good use in articulating a conception of human life and knowledge. "Tragic" is an adjective widely, and poorly, used today. If a child is struck down by an incurable disease, the reporters call it "tragic." This event is sorrowful, terrible, and catastrophic. But it is not tragic. Tragedy does bespeak sorrow and catastrophe. Its essential movement finds the hero changing from what seems to be a reasonably good state of affairs into a bad one. As Aristotle puts it, tragic drama requires a peripeteia, a reversal or "a complete swing in the direction of the action" (1452a2223).' The child's death surely does involve a reversal for both the parents and the child. Still, it is not tragic. Aristotle explains that a tragedy must be sparked by an action performed by its hero. This he calls a hamartia, an error or mistake in judgment. This is a very difficult word and notion for scholars to pin down with certainty (1453alO and a!6).8 The important point here is that the hero must be at least partially responsible for his catastrophe. He must be causally implicated in the course of his reversal. The child did nothing to bring about her illness, and so her death is not tragic. The hero's hamartia, however, is not the sole or sufficient cause of the reversal. The hero is implicated in a world, in a network of causes and effects, that is not exclusively of his making. There is a dimension of "necessity" or "fate" in the hero's life. His catastrophe is thus as much a consequence of his necessary involvement in a world beyond his control as it is of his own action. It is precisely this duality, this delicate blending, of causes that characterizes tragic catastrophe. This is vague. To clarify, let us consider Oedipus as an example. (This tends to be Aristotle's procedure as well.)9 He is doomed, fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He was not consulted or made aware about this course of events before it occurred. Nevertheless, it is the inescapable fact of his life. But Oedipus is surely no puppet or purely passive victim.

4 INTRODUCTION He is quite capable of instigating actions on his own. He becomes furious at an old man who hits him. He kills the man in retaliation, not knowing that it is his father. This is surely a hamartia (a mistake, not a sin and, given the mores of the time, perhaps not even an egregious character flaw) and it sets into motion the sequence of events that constitute the tragedy. Oedipus is both the active instigator of his tragedy, and its unwitting victim. He was cursed. Suffering was mandated for him. But the consequences of his patricide were brought about by his killing of his father. This is still vague. How can such a contradictory blend of notions, determinism and freedom, fate and human agency, be made compatible? The key notion here is that the tragedy of Oedipus is the story of a man implicated in a context of events only for some of which he is responsible. This context, or structure, includes past events, his hamartia, his character, and his destiny. Oedipus was partially responsible for his downfall; a tragic hero has a history of which he is in only part author. This description of the dual causal network in which the hero is implicated remains vague and perhaps contradictory. Furthermore, it is not particularly informative about tragic drama, for even if it is true, then presumably it should apply to all human beings. In order for a tragic drama to become truly dramatic, the hero has to be more than an ordinary human being. As Aristotle puts it, he must be renowned and successful, as well as a decent human being. These characteristics are necessary in order for his reversal to have an emotional impact on the audience. More precisely, the hero must be sufficiently good so that his reversal will cause the audience to feel pity. On the other hand, the hero should not be so good that his reversal seems to the audience to be arbitrary and a perverse trick of a cruel world. He must be sufficiently good so that his downfall is not caused by his evil or vice (but by his hamartia and fate), but not exceptionally good. (See 1453a7-12.) He must be a man whom the audience can admire but still can identify as being one of their own. Precisely this combination of characteristics is found in Oedipus. He is a good king and highly regarded by his citizens. But as one character says to him, "Neither I nor these children sitting here at your throne in supplication equate you with a god. Instead, we judge you to be first among men in the fortunes of life and in the dealings with the world above(31-34)."10 The tragic hero, while identifiably human, has a certain drive or impetus to act on a grand scale that sets him apart from other men. He is impelled by an urge for some form of greatness. The hero pushes to the fullest extent of his power his ability to act. He then collides with the

INTRODUCTION 5 limits of his efficaciousness. In other words, the hero misjudges the boundary that separates his role as the author of his destiny from his role as a victim of that which is beyond is control. Above all else, through its portrayal of the hero's catastrophe a tragedy discloses limits. In the course of the collision between the hero's ability to act and the context that limits it, the spectator of the tragedy feels pity. The hero's suffering at the hands of a world beyond his limited control is undeserved. Oedipus, for example, did nothing to merit his curse. The spectator also feels fear. Since Oedipus is readily identifiable as a fellow human being, it is conceivable that a catastrophe like his can befall any who witness it. With the hero's reversal comes a "recognition," which Aristotle defines, quite simply, as "the transformation from ignorance to knowledge" (1452a30). Upon his reversal the hero realizes, among other things, where his ability to act is limited by a world beyond his control. Tragedy in this sense is an educational experience. Since the audience can identify and thus suffer with the hero, the drama teaches them where they, as human beings, stand. It properly orients them in the larger world in which they reside. As a result, the audience goes through a "katharsis," a purging or (as one commentator recently has put it) a "clearing up" of one's vision so that human limits can be accurately seen and fairly evaluated." The recognition of one's limits involves what is virtually a paradox. Consider, for example, a woman whose ability to walk has been limited (from the time of her birth) by the four walls of a cell. How would this woman come to an understanding that these walls are in fact limits? The four walls of the cell dictate the area beyond which she is not able to walk. To understand this, the woman would have to realize that there is something beyond her cell. To understand a limit requires somehow going beyond that limit. The woman would either have to gain a peek of what is outside the walls or would have to crash against them in order to learn what they are. Both options would bring pain. The first would force the woman sharply to revise her vision of the world. Her cell, which had previously been regarded as the world entire, would become transformed into what it actually is: a highly limited enclosure. The second would bring with it the pain of colliding with an inflexible boundary. Thus, to orient herself and her cell properly in the larger context of the world beyond, the woman would have to suffer. Something like this goes on in tragedy. Because of the hero's urge to act on a grand scale, he crashes into the limits of human efficaciousness, limits which most human beings rarely approach. It is in this sense that tragedy teaches its audience. It tells us that we are actors whose greatest strivings bring us into unwanted collision with our inescapable limitations.

6

INTRODUCTION

We are those who at our best must suffer the realization that we cannot achieve the greatest of our goals. This all sounds terribly negative. Tragic recognition, however, does not bring with it despair or paralysis. Instead, it brings katharsis and affirmation. It infuses our lives with awareness. It purges us of that false confidence that can lead to exaggerated claims for ourselves. It instills within us the deepest understanding of our real capacities. Such, at least, is the conception of tragedy I will employ for the purposes of this book. Let us consider more closely the tragedy of Oedipus. When the play opens he is the good king of Thebes, a responsible father and husband. He is not extraordinarily good: his virtue is that of a man and not a god. As such he is fully recognizable by his citizens and the audience as one of their own. He is, or so he thinks, ruler, tyrannus, of Thebes.12 He gained this rule by successfully saving the city, whose king had just been killed, from the oppression of a terrible monster, the sphinx. This he accomplished by answering the famous riddle: What stands on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night? Oedipus rightly declared that this describes a human being. The city was saved and he was awarded the throne and the former king's wife. This ability to solve the sphinx's riddle tells much about Oedipus. He is a man convinced that by the rigorous application of his intelligence problems can be solved. As a result, when Thebes is struck by a second crisis, a plague that has made barren the fruitful plants of the earth, the cattle in the field, and the women of the city, Oedipus firmly believes that he can repeat his inaugural performance. When he is approached by an elderly priest begging him to aid the citizens, Oedipus' first response is this: "My pitiable children. Known and not unknown are the longings you bring to me. For I know well that all of you are sick" (58-60). These few words, three of which refer to knowledge, reveal what confidence this man has in his ability as a problem solver. He is convinced, for example, that he has already taken the right first step toward eliminating the plague. He has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to the Delphic Oracle for advice. When Creon returns from Delphi he brings the disturbing news that the plague is caused by the fact that the murderer of the former king, Laius, is yet alive in Thebes. Once again, Oedipus acts decisively and boasts that "I will bring to light, from its beginning, this event" (132). Oedipus, the believer in the therapeutic effect of light, orders all citizens who might have relevant information to step forward. He threatens with punishment any who might withhold what they know or might actually be harboring the criminal. Finally, he curses the murderer: "Whether he

INTRODUCTION 7 worked alone or with others, may he live out a miserable life miserably! And I pray that if with my knowledge he should be living in my home, that I myself may suffer this curse" (246-251). Oedipus' strategy is that of a detective who calls in his witnesses. First is Teiresias, the blind prophet of the god Apollo. In many ways, Teiresias' first lines express the keynote of the entire play: "Oh woe upon woe, how terrible is intelligence when it does not profit him with intelligence" (316317). The prophet has here called into question a belief that is, to Oedipus at least, obviously true: that intelligence and the capacity to solve problems, that light, is good. Teiresias, despite his blindness, predicts the result of Oedipus' interrogation; he sees that Oedipus himself is the murderer of Laius. At the beginning of this scene, however, he refuses to say this, for he understands that this disclosure would wreak havoc on the king and his family. Teiresias understands that if Oedipus succeeds in his investigation, which is motivated by his good intention to save (what he thinks is) his adopted city, he will at the same time fail. Oedipus is outraged by Teiresias' silence. In his frustration, he accuses the old man of killing Laius. In fact, he draws up an entire scenario: Creon wanted to usurp Laius' throne and joined forces with Teiresias, who was motivated by a desire to secure a high position in the new regime. Together they plotted the ambush. This accusation, which the audience knows is false, is finally enough to provoke Teiresias to speak. He declares that Oedipus is the murderer. The audience knows that Oedipus' scenario is ill conceived and dreadfully wrong. In fact, Creon is loyal and Teiresias innocent. Sophocles, however, makes it clear that even though he is wrong, Oedipus, given the facts available to him, behaves rationally. First of all, Oedipus has no reason whatsoever for suspecting himself. For years he has been the good king of Thebes. As the play later makes apparent, he is a man honest about himself and at this point he simply is unaware that he has killed Laius. By contrast, he does have reason to suspect Teiresias. When the city was plagued by the sphinx and her riddle, the prophet did nothing. There is even reason, however slim, to suspect Creon, for it was Creon who suggested that Oedipus send for Teiresias (see line 288). Creon also had a motive; since Laius was childless, as the queen's brother he was next in line to the throne. The decisive problem with Oedipus' scenario is not that it is wrong. Given the lack of further information, as an initial hypothesis it would actually have been quite plausible. Oedipus' error is that he is far too confident and assertive about his scenario. He treats the results of speculation as if they were facts. The next three major scenes are interrogations that lead to recognitions. In each, Oedipus successfully questions a witness and so comes

8

INTRODUCTION

closer to the terrible realization that Teiresias was right: he himself is the criminal he so actively seeks; he is guilty of the very crimes of which he accuses others. The first witness is his wife, Jocasta. In what will turn out to be a stroke of brilliant irony, she tells him not to believe Teiresias, for prophets are unreliable (709). Her skepticism is based on a single experience. Many years earlier it was prophesied that the son she bore to Laius would murder his own father. But (as far as she knows) this did not happen. First, Laius was killed by robbers uat a place where three roads meet." Second, Laius had taken the prophecy seriously and had pierced his infant son's ankles and left him to die in the mountains. The earlier oracle now appears obviously false; Teiresias, therefore, should be ignored (708-725). Jocasta's story triggers Oedipus' memory: he himself had killed a man at a place where three roads meet. In a manner that is typical, and admirable, Oedipus does not shy away from the truth. He interrogates Jocasta further and discovers exactly where these three roads were, what Laius looked like, and with what sort of party he was traveling. Unlike his earlier speculation, Oedipus' conclusion here, that he murdered Laius, is based on compelling evidence.IH This scene (726-755) discloses the fundamental pattern of Oedipus the King. Through his own power of rational investigation, Oedipus has recognized a portion of the truth. (Which he announces by saying, "Oh god, these things are now all clear" [754].) He has gone through a reversal. His earlier confidence in both his innocence and his ability to understand the world around him has eroded. From Aristotle's point of view, this type of reversal is the best and most tragic: "The finest form of a recognition occurs simultaneously with a reversal, such as the one in the Oedipus" (1452a32-33). Indeed, the most elemental tragic pattern is precisely the coupling of recognition and reversal. As the hero comes to realize that his former judgments about himself were mistaken, as he comes to understand his limits, his fortunes are reversed. Insight brings suffering and a revision of his conception of himself. Oedipus' revision is in terms of his ability to know. He thought he was a master detective whose success would bring happiness. But it is his very success that causes him to recognize that he was mistaken. Oedipus describes in detail how he came to murder an old man at the place where three roads meet. He had been the crown prince of Corinth, a neighboring city. One day he had heard a rumor that he was not the legitimate child of the king and queen of Corinth, but a bastard. Determined as always to find out the truth he confronted his parents.

INTRODUCTION

9

Despite their assurances he went to the Delphic Oracle to learn definitively about himself. The oracle, however, told a terrible tale. It announced that he would lie with his own mother and murder his father. In response, Oedipus acted decisively. He did not return to Corinth and so, as he thought, he eliminated the possibility of his committing the crimes of incest and parricide. As he traveled he came to a crossroads where he met a party surrounding a high-ranking dignitary. The old man sitting in the distinguished carriage hit him as he was passing. Oedipus retaliated and killed all in the party but one. During his interrogation of Jocasta, it seems unmistakable that this victim was Laius. There is, however, one possible way of escaping this awful conclusion. Jocasta had said that several robbers, and not just one, had committed the murder. In addition, there was one survivor of Laius' party, a old man who is now a shepherd, who was an eyewitness to the event. Oedipus demands that the shepherd be brought to him for interrogation. Despite this apparent "escape clause," it is clear that Oedipus realizes that he did kill Laius. (This is evidenced by the fact that even when the shepherd is brought to him, Oedipus does not ask whether he was the murderer of Laius.) What is not known is only that Laius was his father. Oedipus has every reason in the world to believe that the king and queen of Corinth, the only two people he has ever identified as parents, are truly his parents. His abrupt leaving of Corinth was well motivated: he wished to keep his parents from harm. The audience has to sympathize with Oedipus here. How many of us would ever doubt that the most secure and enduring of all relationships, that to our parents, is in fact suspect? Oedipus operates, as would any of us, on the assumption that the way the world seems, and has seemed for his entire life, is the way it is. What differentiates him is only his great confidence that he sees his world accurately. The Jocasta scene provides Oedipus with a single fact or premise: He killed Laius. He is as yet unaware of the final conclusion: that Laius was his father. For this Oedipus must interrogate a second and third witness. The second is a messenger from Corinth. He comes bringing the news that Polybus, King of Corinth and supposed father of Oedipus, is dead. This appears not to be altogether bad news for two reasons. Oedipus will now inherit the throne and, at the same time, is free from the oracle's prophecy: since his father is dead, he can no longer be the murderer of his father. However, since Polybus' wife Merope is still alive, Oedipus fears that he might still commit incest. He expresses this fear to the messenger who in turn attempts to assuage Oedipus. There is no reason to fear returning to Corinth, the messenger says, because Merope is not Oedipus' real mother. Oedipus was a foundling, brought to the childless

10

INTRODUCTION

royal family of Corinth by this messenger himself. The messenger had been a shepherd at the time and had received an abandoned infant from another shepherd. And who was this other shepherd? "He was called Laius' man" (1042). This is Oedipus' second recognition. He now realizes that Polybus was not a blood relation and that, therefore, it is in principle possible that he killed his father. He now understands that he does not know who he is. When the Corinthian messenger remarks that the infant Oedipus was found on the slopes of Mount Citharon, had pierced ankles, and was given to him by Laius' man, Jocasta, whose own son was given identical treatment, knows full well the truth. Her husband and the father of her children is also her son. Oedipus himself is not certain that this is the case. After all, he has no memories of being exposed on the slopes of Citharon to die. He wishes to continue his investigation and demands that the third witness be brought to him. Jocasta rushes off the stage, soon to commit suicide. Before doing so she urges Oedipus to end his search: "By the gods, if you value your own life, don't seek this out!" (1060-1061). "Oh you wretched man, may you never know who you are" (1068). Oedipus does not heed Jocasta's warning. As always, he plunges forward, determined to find out the truth, confident that the truth will heal. The third witness, the Theban herdsman who was a member of Laius' original party and who had handed the infant Oedipus to the Corinthian, appears. He confirms these facts, these worst suspicions. He thus identifies Oedipus as husband of his mother. The scene closes with Oedipus speaking these lines: "Oh my god, that all things should now come clear! Oh light, let me see you now for the last time! Since I am one who has been revealed as born in the wrong, as having lived with those I should not have lived with, as having killed those I should not have killed" (1182-1185). Oedipus, the believer in light, leaves the stage and destroys his own eyes. The final scene of Oedipus the King directly confronts the audience with the challenge of tragedy. The blind and bloodied Oedipus, having discovered who he is, having learned that his confidence in himself as a rational problem solver is now empty, returns to the stage. And, almost miraculously, he is as yet unbowed. He has not been destroyed by his catastrophic revision of his understanding of himself. He is strong enough still to make certain demands upon Creon, the new ruler. He asks, for example, that he be exiled and that his daughter, Antigone, be allowed to stay with him (1436-1469). Where does Oedipus get this strength to remain standing on stage in full view of the audience? Why

INTRODUCTION

11

wasn't he destroyed? Why doesn't he destroy himself? Such questions typify, I suggest, the great challenge of this tragedy.14 Tragedy somehow affirms. The chorus ends Oedipus the King by saying, You who dwell in ancestral Thebes, look upon this Oedipus, he who knew the famous riddle and was the most successful of men. Who among the citizens did not look upon him with envy. Into what a great wave of disasters he has crashed. So that, looking at that final day, count no mortal happy until he has passed the limit of his life suffering no pain (1524-1530). Look upon and learn from Oedipus.15 Even though his story is about the catastrophe suffered by a man who thought he could see the world clearly (and in fact could not), the chorus has not abandoned the hope of seeing. They still want us, the audience, to look and learn. But to learn what? The tragedy of Oedipus is a paradigm. He thought that with knowledge alone he could heal his city and himself. Furthermore, and even worse, he thought that knowledge was best expressed as answers and straightforward solutions of problems: he thought that his answer to the sphinx's riddle, "man," was evidence that he actually knew something about being a human being. He thought that the question "who am I?" could be answered as simply as a riddle. By the end of his drama, he has learned that his life, so carefully and honorably maintained, had been nurtured on ignorance. The tragedy thus ends, not with the abandonment of knowledge, but with a new kind of knowledge: knowledge of ignorance, of limits; knowledge that life is not simply a riddle to be solved; knowledge of what it means to be a human being. Oedipus succeeds as a detective: he learns the answer to the questions "who killed Laius?" and "who are my parents?" But his very success brings catastrophe and causes him and the audience to revise their understanding of his success. More important than Oedipus' prowess as a detective is the knowledge he and the audience gain at the end of the play: We learn that life is fundamentally insecure and that, as a result, it cannot be reduced to a riddle. Oedipus the detective learns that life cannot be simply solved. Oedipus is not destroyed. He stands with the strength generated from having recognized his true place in the world. Such recognition came at a high price. His fortunes were reversed and it was Oedipus himself, through his intensive interrogation of three witnesses, who caused this. Recognition and reversal are simultaneous in this play. Together they culminate in a new, well-chastened knowledge. Oedipus the King, which finally can be described as a tragedy of knowledge, teaches us that we must acknowledge the precariousness of our understanding of even that which is most familiar. The world given to us by our parents, the world

12 INTRODUCTION

on whose paths we have stepped for all of our lives, cannot be counted certain. This realization is painful. But it is true. This play, particularly its structure, functions as the model for what follows. The first moment of this tragedy is assertion: Oedipus claims to know. His assertion is directly challenged by Teiresias. But to Oedipus, Teiresias is only what he seems to be: a blind man speaking to one of good sight. After his interrogation of the three witnesses, Oedipus realizes Teiresias was right and that he himself was blind to the truth that the unseeing Teiresias saw. The testimony of each witness contributes an essential piece of information or premise that helps to undermine the initial claim. Finally, when the syllogism is complete (I killed Laius; Laius was my father; therefore, I killed my father), the initial claim has to be fully revised. But the claim to knowledge is not totally abandoned, for the play ends with a new form of knowledge, the tragic knowledge of limits. B LOGOS For, as we say, nature does nothing in vain; and human beings, alone of the animals, have logos. —Aristotle, Politics

What follows is the tragedy of logos. But what does "logos" mean? The easiest answer comes from the dictionary. Liddell and Scott divide it into two basic components: (1) the word, or the outward form by which the inward thought is expressed; (2) the inward thought itself.16 This dual nature of its meaning gives "logos" extraordinary range. Primarily it refers to those outward sounds that express thought. Logos differs from "voice" or the production of mere sound. It is the ability to give voice to some reasoned thought. Word, sentence, talk, speech, explanation, language, discourse, story, argument, rational account—all these function at different times as the proper translation of "logos." It can also be rendered as "thought, reason, rationality, calculation," when it refers to the "internal talk" that goes on within. "Logos" thus comprehends virtually all that is verbal and rational within us. The one phrase that begins to capture both of these meanings is "rational account," a speech that attempts to render rational or intelligible any given phenomenon. A third meaning should be added. "Logos" can refer to something like "rational structure." It can refer to that which exists outside of the human mind or the voice. For example, Heraclitus begins one of his aphorisms by saying, "having listened not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one."17 This logos is not a human speech or thought,

INTRODUCTION

13

but the structure of the world "out there" that can be apprehended by human beings (who use their logos) and then expressed in language (in logos). Logos is what is found on this page. It is what I use in trying to communicate as best as I can what I think is important. It is what the reader employs in trying to decipher and then evaluate the meaning of my words. Logos is what Oedipus believes in. Early in the play, during one of his most assertive and confident moments, he states, "I examine every logos" (291), every possible explanation of the city's problems, in order to discover and effect a cure. It is logos in which he invests his hopes and his conception of which he must eventually revise. Even after having clarified somewhat the meaning of its two principal words, the phrase that best titles the content of this book, "the tragedy of logos," remains obscure. By contrast, "the tragedy of Oedipus" is not difficult to understand. Oedipus is a character who, in a complicated way, is responsible for his reversal and catastrophe. Because of his own drive toward greatness, he collides with the limits of his efficaciousness—and this very collision discloses to the audience something about the nature of human existence. But how can there be an analogous story about logos? The "tragedy of logos" implies that logos itself has a history in which it figures as a character whose reversal is inevitable. Logos has limits that it cannot surpass and against which it must collide. Such an assertion is quite similar to what many philosophers have said. Kant, for example, devoted much of his career to articulating "the limits of reason." But to attribute a tragic "fate" to logos is to do more than document its limits. It is to suggest that not only does logos have limits, but that it must collide with them. This implies that in its initial "scene" logos does not know its limits. Like the tragic hero, logos has some sort of internal drive toward greatness; it is driven to go beyond the bounds of its legitimate efficaciousness and suffer a catastrophe. Logos, through the intensity of its initial self-assertion, will instigate the developments that are to follow on these pages. Through a series of examinations it will progressively come to realize that it is incapable of sustaining or justifying its initial claims. As a result, it will finally be forced to revise those claims in light of its discoveries. It will suffer reversal as it comes to realize its limits. What differentiates the treatment afforded to logos on these pages from, let us say, a Kantian critical analysis of reason, can be understood as largely a matter of the form of what follows. Kant makes purely theoretical arguments. In other words, he gives his reader reasons to believe that the conclusions he advocates are true while those of his opponents are false. But if logos has a tragic "history," then this type of argumentation

14 INTRODUCTION is not an appropriate means of expressing it. The only form that can do justice to, can appropriately express, the tragic history is a drama. The reader must apprehend not only the argument leading to the conclusion that logos has limits, but must witness the entire surge of developments that logos undergoes. The goal is not to articulate theoretically the limits of logos, it is to witness a character who undergoes a reversal. We (the audience, the readers, those who care for logos) need to suffer as it makes its journey from confident self-assertion to the revision of its claim. Only by undergoing this entire sequence of events, from the first moment of assertion to the later stages of revision, can we truly appreciate the tragedy of logos. Perhaps a comparison with Sophocles will help clarify. Consider the following statement: "in Oedipus the King Oedipus gains self-knowledge and learns that his previous confidence in his rational prowess was ill advised." This statement is probably true. However, neither it nor a highly refined version of it can convey the full force of the actual developments of the play. The drama includes all the movement from Oedipus' initial self-confidence to his catastrophe. When, at the beginning of the play, Oedipus says (as I reformulate), "I am the son of Polybus of Corinth," he is wrong. At the end of the play when he says, "I am Oedipus son of Laius," he is right. But the latter statement does not simply replace the former. Being initially wrong is as integral a part of Oedipus' story as is being right; his drama is precisely that of moving from ignorance to knowledge. He must be initially wrong in order for him eventually to become right and for his story to unfold. Theoretical arguments do not work this way.18 For the theorist, being wrong is to be avoided at every turn. His goal is to establish through good reasoning what is true and right. Drama differs. It tells a story and so asks the reader to participate in each of the different chapters of the hero's tragedy. The teaching of the drama is not simply its conclusion: it is the work in its entirety. What follows has three chapters that together comprise the history of logos. There is no simple statement of the thesis of this book. What occurs at the beginning is not a premise in an argument. It is a moment in a drama. Even though it will later be revised, it cannot be eliminated, for it is as much a part of logos as the third chapter. To return to the issue at hand: logos is a word whose meaning is extremely broad. Part of the intention of what follows is to clarify it. Logos is tragic; that is, like Oedipus it undergoes a series of changes, a movement, from self-confident assertion to a revised conception of who it is. This movement requires that logos collide with its limits and thus

INTRODUCTION

15

have revealed to itself and to its audience the inadequacy of its initial claims. There is a problem, however. Who is to say what logos is? There are many versions of logos and people do not agree on what it means. Even if what follows succeeds in clarifying a specific sense of its meaning, what reason would there be to believe that the conception of logos depicted on these pages is an accurate representation of logos itself? Why, in fact, should anyone agree that "logos itself is a meaningful phrase? Even if we concur that the word is to be translated as "rational account" or "reason," there would still be sharp disagreement about what these words mean. A physicist, for example, when asked to give a logos of the human body, would do so given his own version of what constitutes a rational account. His logos would be composed largely in the language of mathematics and would explicate the body as a moving object in space. The biologist, when asked the same question, would present quite a different story and might use a language not nearly so mathematical. More different still would be the logos given by a sculptor concerned only with the body's lines of beauty and grace. It seems clear that "logos" is necessarily a controversial term. An example of this controversy was already alluded to in the prologue. There it was stated that Descartes radically altered the classical conception of logos. To prefigure the lengthy discussion of this issue that is to follow, in the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or "techne," the term to be discussed next.) Before that period of European history, particularly during the age of classical Greece, logos was not restricted in this fashion. It was much broader and embraced technical knowledge as only one of its several parts. The philosophers of both the seventeenth century and ancient Greece affirmed logos. But they fundamentally disagreed on what it meant. What would happen if contemporary representatives of these two competing positions were to debate one another on just this issue, what is logos? How would it be possible to settle the dispute between them? To ask an analogous question, how is it possible to establish that the conception of logos to follow below is "right," is in fact reflective of the human capacity for reasoned discourse? To settle such a dispute or establish such a claim requires explaining what the best meaning of "rational account" really is. In other words, one of the competitors would have to justify the contention that his version of logos is right and his opponent's wrong. But this attempt at justification is very peculiar. To determine that a certain version of rational account is correct would require giving a series of explanations. The attempt to give explanations, however, requires already having a conception of logos

16 INTRODUCTION to guide that attempt: giving explanations is precisely the task of logos. How, then, is it possible to defend a contention, and not just assume, that a certain conception of logos is correct? In order to give a complete defense of a specific conception of logos it might be necessary, for example, to explain what the human power of rationality really is and what types of objects it is able to handle successfully. On the basis of these two explanations, an argument might then be needed to certify that a specific type of language, of reasoned discourse, is the appropriate vehicle for expressing the conclusions garnered by the use of rationality as it comes to understand those objects that it studies. Consider the physicist. In order for him to explain why mathematics should figure so prominently in the logos of an object, he first must explain how it is that the mind (or the brain) gains information about those objects in the world treated by physics. On the basis of this, he would then be able to explain why it is that mathematical physics is the paradigmatic form and offers the best means of speaking knowledgeably about the world. (Physicists, of course, don't usually engage in this sort of enterprise; they do physics. Philosophers of science are usually assigned the sort of task just described.)19 Again, there is a problem. If the physicist is required first to explain the brain, the world, and the connection between the two, in order to justify his conception of logos, then has he presupposed what he needs to prove, namely a conception of what it is that constitutes a good rational account or explanation? Has he "begged the question"? The physicist had to have a working conception of logos in order to explain how the brain receives information. But where did he get this from? Framing such a conception was supposed to be the goal or the end, and not the beginning, of this endeavor. The physicist had to begin by using the very conception of logos he was supposed to justify. This seems like cheating. "Begging the question" is a serious offense. A basic goal and an animating impulse of logos, no matter what particular version one has of it, is to explain, justify, or defend its conclusions. To beg the question is to presuppose, rather than establish, a conclusion. In itself, the phrase "begging the question," is difficult to decipher. The Latin phrase of which it is a translation is petitio principi, which literally means "begging the beginning." The Latin is more faithful to the original phrase coined by Aristotle who also spoke of "begging the beginning." But what "beginning" is referred to here? One scholar suggests that the best way to understand this is to imagine a game.20 Person A begins the game by asserting a thesis. Person B is required to ask A a series of questions in order to force A to make a series of

INTRODUCTION

17

admissions. His final goal is to use these admissions against A's thesis. B "cheats" if he asks A, right at the beginning, to admit that A's original thesis was wrong: the goal for B is to force A to admit to independent reasons that will show that A's thesis is wrong, not just begin by saying it was wrong. Some sort of game like this may well have been played by the students in Plato's or Aristotle's school. The key idea is that when someone "begs the beginning" he fails to provide reasons for the conclusions he wants to establish. And this is cheating. For example, you may wish to prove Homer was the greatest poet. In order to prove this you offer as a supporting statement, "all people with good taste believe that Homer was the best poet." When pressed again to defend this statement, and to explain how you identify someone with good taste, you say, "I can always tell if somebody has good taste because they always prefer Homer to other poets." Such arguing is circular. You have used one reason (people with good taste prefer Homer) to support a conclusion (Homer is the best poet), and then backed up the supporting reason with a disguised version of the conclusion (a person with good taste is one who believes Homer is the best poet). The conclusion is being used to support itself and, as a result, what seems to be an argument is no argument at all: it is simply an assertion of an opinion. All human beings carry with them a host of opinions. What is supposed to differentiate the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. The physicist has an opinion as to what logos is. But why this opinion is worth holding is not really explained by his attempt to justify his conception of logos; it is assumed. The physicist is not being singled out for blame. This dilemma would plague any representative of a competing version of logos that attempts to justify itself. There is something inherently peculiar in this task. In order to carry on an investigation into the nature of logos one must begin with a conception of logos. After all, it is logos that is responsible for investigating things. But how, then, will it ever be possible to certify with confidence what logos is? If in fact this turns out to be impossible, then does every representative of logos begin in an irrational manner, with an unsupported opinion of what it means to be rational? This question will be discussed repeatedly below. Indeed, it is the critical problem that will propel logos into its catastrophe. Logos, as we soon will see, is driven to examine itself, to attempt to know itself. The result of this examination will force logos to conclude that it is unable to be rationally confident about who it is. It will suffer at the moment of this recognition for it will be forced to revise radically its understanding of itself.

i8

INTRODUCTION

Rather than attempt to explain here what particular conception of logos will be used in this book, let me only indicate that I will attempt to clarify what I mean by "logos" in the first chapter following this introduction. C TECHNE This word did not appear in the prologue, but it was present in the form of its cognates "technical" and "technology." Since "techne," as well as its descendants, will play a critical role in the tragedy of logos, it is important now to consider its meaning at some length. Again, let us begin with the dictionary. "Techne" (plural: "technai") derives from an Indo-European root that refers to "wood." For example, the "tekton" (a very old Greek word) was the woodworker. In the earliest times, building houses from logs and branches was probably an activity performed by an entire family or group. But as human society became more settled and more elaborate homes were needed, greater strength and cleverness were required by the house builder. The activity of the tekton, or "techne," came to label that particular skill uniquely possessed by one member of the community and needed by all. In subsequent centuries the meaning of the word progressively widened. From its very narrow origin, where it named only woodworking, it came to refer to many different skills. By the time of Homer (around 750 b.c.e.), the meaning of "techne" had been freed from the tekton. It meant skill or cunning or craft in general. One might well ask why woodworking, rather than metallurgy or something else, became paradigmatic for technical skill in general. "The activity of the carpenter differs from that of the smith through its more rational character. It demands a capacity for intellectual solution to particular tasks . . . a capacity to combine and improvise which, if explained to the layman, is comprehensible, but whose individual tasks, to be coordinated purposefully, remain the priority of the specialist."21 The above is the view of one scholar only and is speculative. Nevertheless, even if it is not completely accurate, it tells much about how the word was probably heard in ancient Greece. By 750 b.c.e. "techne" meant intelligent skill in a very broad and general sense. A good example of just how broad this sense was can be gleaned from a passage in Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound (which dates some three hundred years after Homer). Prometheus, a god, stole fire and techne from other gods and gave them to humanity in order that they might survive. In his elaborate description of his gift, Prometheus says: For indeed you know of the sufferings of mortal men, how before I placed intelligence in them and made them possessors of their own minds, they

INTRODUCTION

19

were foolish. I will tell you, not because I blame humanity, but because I gave men the things I did with a good intention. At first these men, though looking, looked in vain; they listened but did not hear. Like the shapes of dreams they muddled through their long lives in random confusion. They did not know how to build houses that face the sun, how to work in wood. As a result, they lived underground like small ants, in holes. They had no reliable means of telling the onset of winter or flowering spring or fruitful summer; but without knowledge they did everything until I showed them the rising and the setting of the stars, all so hard to discern. And lo and behold, number, pre-eminent of all clever devices, I discovered for them, and the combining of letters, memory of all things, the mother of the Muse, a good worker (442-461)."

Prometheus goes on to list more of the specific skills he distributed to humanity: animal husbandry, sailing, medicine, prophecy, metallurgy. He closes by saying, "all technai to mortals from Prometheus come" (506). There are at least two kinds of techne on Prometheus' list. The first might be described as "productive," that type of knowledge, like woodworking, that brings into being a useful artifact that aids in the direction of human affairs. This is perhaps the most obvious sense of the word. "Techne is a deliberate application of human intelligence to some part of the world, yielding some control over chance; it is concerned with the management of need and with prediction and control concerning future contingencies."23 "Techne," however, is broader than the quote might suggest, for it is also typified by arithmetic, simply called "number" in the passage and described as preeminent among all "clever devices." Why does arithmetic, which in itself produces nothing, receive this accolade? One reason at least is that many of the technai Prometheus mentions probably made use of some form of arithmetic: the house builder, the "meteorologist" who charts the risings and settings of the stars, and the sailor each performed a variety of calculations in their work. Each of their technai required some application of arithmetic. The woodworker had to measure carefully the dimensions of his house before cutting his timber. There is, however, a consideration more basic than the fact that the various technicians actually employed arithmetic in their work. Arithmetic is paradigmatic, even constitutive, of techne in general. For example, all technai have a determinate, that is limited, subject matter. Woodworking is about one subject only: the production of useful artifacts from wood. The woodworker, insofar as he is a woodworker, knows nothing about the rising and setting of the stars, for that is a separate subject. Since arithmetic is about number, and number is the very basis of determinateness itself, the simple fact about technai, that subject X is a self-contained

20

INTRODUCTION

unit of study separate from subject Y, is itself a "quasi-arithmetical" notion. To say that woodworking studies wood, while meteorology studies the heavens, is to select wood and the heavens as units distinct from each other. Arithmetic and mathematics in general reflect, in purest form, the activity of making distinctions. The number three is not the number four; a three-sided polygon is not a four-sided polygon. A line can be drawn between two corners of the four-sided polygon in order to distinguish two separate three-sided polygons. It is the very essence of mathematics to make such unambiguous distinctions.24 If the above is too abstract, consider this: All technai are relatively precise. When their practitioners are asked a question about their work, they are usually able to answer clearly. Without some measure of precision a techne loses its credibility. Mathematics is prototypical of techne insofar as it is the most precise of all subjects. In a similar vein, technai ordinarily result in some kind of expertise or authority that is widely acknowledged. There is, for example, usually little controversy that the doctor, and not the engineer, knows how to help us when we are sick. Criteria can be established to determine clearly who the expert, the master, in a given field really is. Furthermore, the expert can then transmit, either to peers or students, her mastery of her subject. In these senses, too, mathematics is paradigmatic. More than any other subject, the answer to a mathematical problem is certain, clear, and definitive. In the broadest sense, we can count on mathematics. Because it is teachable, precise, not controversial, and authoritative, a technical subject, like medicine, is typically thought of as the best and most obvious example of knowledge. It is to the master of such a subject that most people would point when asked to identify one who knows. In this regard techne might further be described as "ordinary" knowledge; that knowledge people ordinarily recognize. Again, in times of sickness most people are willing to defer to the judgments of the doctor. This last comment suggests another characteristic of techne, the one most clearly implied by the passage from Prometheus: A techne produces results that often are beneficial and as a consequence quite desirable. All of these attributes of techne, that it can be mastered and taught, that it is precise and not controversial, are derived from its first characteristic: that it has a determinate subject matter. Only because medicine, like computer science, electrical engineering, or carpentry, is a very limited and well-defined subject can it be mastered and then taught. Only because medicine has clear boundaries that separate it from other subjects can the person who has become an expert doctor be identified. People do not become experts in everything; they are experts about something very specific. There is another, still related and critical, feature of a techne. It is

INTRODUCTION

21

value-neutral. As mentioned, the results of such knowledge can be quite beneficial. Medicine, for example, can produce health. There is no guarantee, however, that the doctor will use her knowledge properly. Instead, the techne of medicine can be used for good or evil. With her knowledge, the doctor can heal a sick child or implant a deadly virus in an otherwise healthy patient. The doctor's technical knowledge permits her to take either of these actions. But when the situation arises, which will she choose? Obviously, the overwhelming majority of doctors will cure the child and refuse to implant the virus. But why? They are decent and reasonable and have taken an oath never to harm a patient. But why be decent? What makes the oath binding? Why shouldn't the doctor implant the virus and refuse to heal the child? There is nothing within the techne of medicine itself to answer this question. It is only in its use or in the larger human context in which it makes its appearance, and not in the subject itself, that medicine takes on a value. Medicine itself does not study how it should be used or applied.2:> Here again, mathematics is paradigmatic. With its formal beauty and marvelous precision mathematics is silent on the questions that emerge from the uniquely human realm of value and meaning. The fact that mathematics is constitutive of techne is hardly made explicit in Aeschylus. It is, however, made quite clear some years later by Plato in his Republic: "This lowly subject which comprehends the one and the two and the three—I mean in general arithmetic and calculation— isn't it the case that every techne and science must have a share in them?" (522c5-8). There is obviously some sort of overlap between "techne" and "logos." As already indicated—and this point is crucial—for the Greeks, and unlike Descartes, the two words are not identical. For both Plato and Aristotle there is a type of logos that is broader than, and so can embrace within it, techne. This "larger" type of logos can, for example, take up the issue of how the products of techne should be used. The three words "tragedy," "logos," and "techne" will function like guiding paths in what is to follow. Logos has a tragic structure and techne must always be kept in view in order to illuminate it. These three roads will eventually meet during the course of this book. They surely have not yet been fully clarified. What follows is devoted to doing just that.

CHAPTER

1

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY

A

Goon

THE CLASSIC ASSERTION

(1)

Aristotle's Vision

Aristotle was right: human beings are, by their very nature, "the ani­ mals who have logos." What this means is that logos is what essentially characterizes us. Without it we simply would not be who we are. To put this in different but related terms, logos is what is best about us. In order to become fully and best human it is necessary to exercise our capacity for logos to the highest degree possible. Because logos plays this crucial role in human life it is fair to say that not only is it good, but that it is unconditionally good; there is no occasion, no condition or set of circumstances, that negates the goodness of logos. Aristotle's famous assertion is found in the first chapter of his book the Politics, in a passage that analyzes how a city (a polis or "city-state") comes into being.' Briefly the process is this: A polis, which is a type of community (koinonia), is a natural entity that emerges from equally natu­ ral, but more primitive, communities. The first of these primitive commu­ nities is the household, a gathering composed of at least two pairs: a male and a female, and a ruler and ruled. The first pair is hardly surprising, for it is an obvious biological requirement. The second is puzzling. Aristotle claims that the joining of a ruler and ruled is as natural and as necessary for survival as the relationship between male and female: "Those that are by nature fit to rule and those fit to be ruled must be joined together for survival" ( l 252a3 l ). One reason that Aristotle makes this comment is because he believes that such hierarchies are found in all of nature. The relationship between ruler and ruled is not, in other words, an artificial imposition foisted by one group of people on another in order simply to benefit themselves. It is natural. The best example of what Aristotle means by the natural ruler and ruled is found in the relationship that obtains between the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237-2

24 Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD psyche (the soul, spirit or mind) and the body.2 "An animal is first of all composed of psyche and body. Of these the former is by nature the ruler, the latter is the ruled" (1254a34-36). (Aristotle's teaching on animals in general would take us rather far afield. Let us then concentrate only on human beings.) The psyche is able to use foresight, intelligence, and calculation to direct the workings of the body toward preestablished goals. Because it has such a natural ability, the psyche should rule the body. It fails to do so only in those people who are truly wretched and in whom "the body rules the psyche on account of this person being totally out of shape and contrary to nature . . . it is clear that it is according to nature and beneficial for the body to be ruled by psyche" (1254bl-8). In an analogous fashion, some human beings are more adept at giving orders because they are better at using their intelligence to foresee what is needed in the future. These are the "natural rulers." Those who are "naturally ruled" are better suited to use their bodies to fulfill these orders. No doubt this sounds shockingly elitist to our modern, egalitarian, ears. But it must be remembered that Aristotle is here talking about natural, and not legal or conventional, distinctions. In other words, if person A rules person B only because A's country has conquered B's, or because the laws stipulate that B cannot himself rule, then this is not a natural, but a conventional, ruler/ruled relationship. Aristotle would deny that it is good. Only if A rules B because A is truly more intelligent than B, only if the relationship between A and B benefits both parties, would Aristotle call it natural and good. When the male/female and ruler/ruled are themselves combined, they form the household, a small communal unit required for human survival. The second stage of development is the village which comes into being through the combination of households. This more advanced community facilitates day-to-day living and enhances the security of its members. Eventually, households join together to form a polis, the most complex and self-sufficient of human gatherings. Once they are joined together in the polis the range of human concerns can be greatly expanded. No longer is survival or the secure continuation of life the sole goal of the community. Once they become political, human beings can strive to live agoodlife(1252b!6-34). It is not necessary here to evaluate the anthropological or historical accuracy of Aristotle's assertions. Instead, our goal is to understand how he looks at the world and why he is right in making his famous claim that human beings are the animals who have logos. The most striking feature of the Politics analysis of the polis is its reliance on nature. All the developments charted by Aristotle are seen by him to be fully natural. They occur in accord with and in fulfillment of human nature. Natural entities are purposive. They have a "telos," a goal or end, toward which

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

25

all their parts and their entire activity are directed. Human being has as a dimension of its essential makeup a purpose: to be political. The biological coupling of females and males is for the sake of the continuation of the species; the joining together of households is for the sake of achieving a higher degree of security. Finally, the coming into being of a polis is for a purpose that encompasses the previous two: the living of a good life. Only in a polis can human beings become what they are capable of being. None of the prior stages (nor their purposes) were complete in themselves. They were like children who have not yet matured. Only with the advent of the polis do they successfully emerge into what they truly are. This type of reasoning is a prime example of Aristotelian teleology, his logos of the telos of natural entities. Aristotle declares that "as we say, nature does nothing in vain" (1253a9-10), that natural entities have some final state toward which their development is directed. As a result, a full account of such an entity must include an analysis of its telos. This type of account is sometimes referred to as the "final cause," which is an answer to the question "for the sake of what?" To understand properly any natural entity, this question must be answered.3 The telos functions as a standard by which to measure individual instances of a natural entity. If, for example, it is part of a tree's nature to have leaves, and a particular tree is diseased and does not have its full share of leaves, then that tree is rightfully declared deficient. Similarly with human beings: since the polis is the telos of communal development, a human being without a polls is not fully human and so cannot live a good life.4 Human beings are political animals. Aristotle's teleology has been out of fashion for centuries and no doubt sounds strange (offensively arrogant even) to a reader unfamiliar with it. Our scientific age, ever on the search for those particles that cannot be seen or that theory which can embrace all of the universe, dismisses the notion of natural purposes. As one scholar puts it, "the beginning of modern thought can be defined by the decay in the belief in that universal teleological order."5 Later in this book we will examine a pardigmatic example of such a dismissal and consider whether it is justified. For the moment, let us try to suppress our familiar preconceptions and look at the world through Aristotle's eyes in order to see whether his vision can illuminate our experience at all. The polis, he says, is natural and is the culmination of a process of development. This chapter began with Aristotle's declaration that human beings are by nature the animals with logos. It then stated that they are political animals. These two descriptions are related. And why human being is a political animal more so than any bee or other gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we assert, does nothing in vain;

26

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD and human beings alone of the animals have logos. Any usage of voice can indicate pleasure and pain, and so voice belongs to the rest of the animals (for their nature has come to this point, namely to have perception of pain and pleasure and to indicate this to one another.) But logos is for the purpose of clarifying the beneficial and the harmful and as a result the right and the wrong. For this is unique to human beings, that they alone have a perception of good and bad and right and wrong . . . And the sharing of these things makes a household and a polis (1253a7-16).

Having logos is the precondition of being political. Human beings join together in communities because they can speak to one another. We do more than make sounds indicating pleasure and pain; we can articulate reasoned thoughts about what is right or wrong, bad or good. It is a sharing, a bringing to voice, of a set of values that constitutes a polis. But what is logos for Aristotle? The passage above seems to indicate that it is just this capacity to discuss and clarify right and wrong. It is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. This sounds strange; one might rather expect logos to be described as the capacity to discern what is true or false. Why does Aristotle here give priority to what is good or bad, right or wrong? For one thing, he is talking about politics, whose very essence is the human ability to speak about values. In other contexts, such as his Metaphysics, he examines logos more from the point of view of truth and falsity. But what, then, is Aristotle's real view of logos? For this let us return to the passage about the coming into being of the polis. Aristotle's Politics itself gives a logos, a rational account, of the polis as a natural entity. As such, in this text Aristotle functions as a "physicist," one who gives a logos of some natural entity that has a physis, a nature. He articulates something essential about the nature of human beings. He would do much the same in a biological work examining the nature and structure of a fish. Aristotle observes, looks at the world, and then articulates what he sees. In a biological text, Aristotle might study human being as a mammal with a certain type of heart, lungs, etc. In the Politics he looks at human being in its political or communal aspect. And what he sees is that the capacity to speak rationally about values is essential to, or even coextensive with, the polis. We should notice that in the passages from the Politics that have been discussed there are no arguments; Aristotle has not proven that his views are correct. Instead, he seems to tell what he sees as the truth about human beings. This is his standard procedure. Aristotle is above all else a "theoretician," a word that comes from the Greek theorem meaning "to look at" or "to see."b He looks at the world and then tells us what he sees. As Heidegger puts it, "the logos lets something be seen . . . namely what

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 27

it is about; and it does so either for the one who is doing the talking (the medium) or for persons who are talking with one another . . . Discourse . . . lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about."' The following passage also should indicate how closely Aristotle's conception of logos is related to vision. All human beings by nature reach out for knowledge. An indication of this is the affection we have for our senses. For even disregarding their usefulness, we are fond of them for their own sake; and more than the rest, we are especially fond of the sense which is through the eyes. For not only when we are going to do something, but even when we're not about to do anything, we prefer seeing, generally speaking, to all the rest. The reason for this is that sight, most of all the senses, enables us to know things and it makes clear many distinctions . . . (Metaphysics 980a20-28).8 Sight is frequently used, both in English and Greek, as a metaphor for knowing. (We speak of insight, having a bright idea or an illuminating discussion.) It is not, however, only a metaphor since for Aristotle it (along with the other senses) makes an actual contribution in the process of acquiring knowledge. Aristotle is extremely confident about the reliability of our senses. They can be trusted for they can report accurately to us information about the world (about nature) "out there." Through a complex process that he describes in his book DeAnima, Aristotle shows how the senses constitute the first stage in the attainment of knowledge. It is not necessary here to examine the details of that process. Instead, let two further citations give some indication of how greatly Aristotle trusts our ability to see, and then say, the world as it is. For it is on account of wonder (thaumazeiri) that human beings, both now and at first, began to philosophize. At first, human beings wondered about the odd things that were right in front of them. Gradually they progressed and were perplexed about much greater matters, like the changes of the moon and sun and stars, and about the generation of the universe (Metaphysics, 982bl2-17). Seeing (theorid) the truth is in one sense difficult, in another easy. An indication of this is the fact that even though no one can adequately grasp it, all of us cannot miss it entirely. Instead, each of us is able to give a logos (legein) about some part of nature and even though as individuals little or nothing is added to the truth, from all of us contributing together something grand comes about (Metaphysics, 993330-04).'' These two short passages tell much about how Aristotle understands the human relationship to the world out there. In the first, he talks about

28

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

wonder. The Greek word here, thaumazein, is etymologically related to theorem, which means to see or to look at. Wonder, seeing objects in the world and being both amazed and perplexed by them, is the origin of philosophy. It is because we see things that puzzle us that we begin the search for knowledge. The search is progressive. Starting from that which is right in front of us, we are able to advance in our inquiries until we attempt to understand the nature of the universe itself. There is thus a continuity in our searching. The wonder-ful things in our immediate vicinity trigger a process of inquiry that eventually leads us to questions about the much larger whole that embraces these things. As such, we can and should trust our relationship to the world around us. When we are perplexed by what is in front of us, we can be confident that our puzzles, as well as our solutions, will lead us toward greater and more comprehensive questions. We are beings directed outwardly toward the world, approaching it with wonder and the desire for knowledge, worthy urges that should be affirmed and carefully nurtured. The second passage reformulates this theme. Seeing the truth is in one sense easy. Nobody can get it all wrong. Why? We are at home in, part of, the world. Simply to be alive requires being able to see some of the world accurately; we typically walk around, and not into, ditches.10 What we see is actually out there to be seen. Our senses rarely lie. No one can see everything, and some surely see more sharply than others, but by pooling together the visions of many we can see something grand. In this passage Aristotle evinces a great trust not only in the human ability to see without distorting the world out there, but to articulate faithfully that vision. "Each of us," he says, uis able to give a logos (legein, related to logos) about some part of nature." Language, according to Aristotle, is able to communicate, without distorting, the truth about nature, the world out there to be seen. To elaborate, consider the following passage from De Interpretation: Spoken sounds are symbols of affections of the psyche, and written words are symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written words are not the same for all men, so spoken sounds are not the same for all. However, those first things of which these [spoken sounds] are signs, namely the affections of the psyche, are the same for all, and the actual things of which these [the affections of the psyche] are likenesses are also the same (16a3-8).n Aristotle asserts that language can faithfully reflect actual things in the world. The psyche, in the process of sensation, is affected by these objects. These psychic affections, these sensations, are what Aristotle calls "first things." They are the primitive constituents of knowledge. Spoken sounds, especially words, are signs or representations of these affections.

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

29

Human languages obviously differ and in this sense are a matter of convention. But those first things for which language provides signs are "the same for all"—they are a consequence of the psychic ability shared by all human beings to sense accurately the world. Furthermore, that world, that set of actual objects out there, exists independently of the human ability to sense it; nature too is "the same for all." All of this implies that language can in principle provide us with a window to nature. By speaking carefully, knowledgeably, we can see clearly objects in the world. This is precisely the function of Aristotelian prose: it aims to let be seen those objects of which it speaks. This is also why Aristotle so often seems assertive rather than argumentative. Often he is not trying to prove anything, he is attempting to tell his readers what is before their eyes. The task of the reader is to do more than study Aristotle's text or dissect his arguments; it is to evaluate his assertions by examining the world in which we live. As with his teleology, Aristotle's "method" (his methodos, his way of going about the job of gaining knowledge) is today poorly regarded. As will be discussed below, the modern scientific project begins with a fundamental distrust of what is before our eyes. It begins by rejecting the testimony of common sense and ordinary language. By contrast, Aristotle has confidence that ordinary language can make a valuable contribution to the project of articulating the natural world as it is. For Aristotle, the ordinary, the usual, is also "ordinal"; it presents an order, sets a standard. Modern science begins with a rejection of ordinary language and an attempt to replace it with one much more reliable and precise.12 For Aristotle the way things ordinarily seem, and the way most people talk about most things, tell much about the way they are. The way things ordinarily seem is of no interest to the modern scientist. He has dispensed with purposes, has little interest in the teachings of common sense, the testimony of the naked eye, or the speakings of ordinary language. It is not only the scientists who have dispensed with Aristotle. To the contemporary subversives like Derrida and Rorty, for example, the notion that language can achieve transparency and thus allow an object spoken about to be "seen" is preposterous. Indeed, for Derrida there is probably no notion more offensive than that offered by Aristotle in De Interpretatione. The hierarchy presented in that passage—objects in the world, sense perceptions of those objects, spoken signs of those perceptions, written signs of that which is spoken—represents to him "logocentrism," the illegitimate confidence that the human voice can become a transparent medium through which the world can be made present, at its worst. For Rorty it would represent the antiquated notion that the

30

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

mind can be "a glassy essence," a mirror to the world. Both thinkers (and many readers) would reject utterly Aristotle's great hope.13 From a variety of perspectives, then, Aristotle is a udead dog," a naive philosopher whose time has fortunately passed.14 It is thus hardly to be expected that at this point the reader should be "converted" to Aristotelianism. The most to be hoped for is that Aristotle's vision will at least be considered as a way of looking at the world and the human capacity for logos. His is a logos of common sense. It attempts to explicate the ordinary "look" of things and not the "laws" that lie behind such appearances. It seems, for example, that the parts of living beings do have purposes. It is tempting to say, for example, that eyes are for seeing. It seems that language does refer to objects in the world. In one's daily life there are very few occasions to doubt one's sense perceptions. Aristotle's logos, as opposed to most contemporary versions, seeks to affirm this dimension of human experience. This is, I suggest, its greatness and beauty. As one commentator puts it, Aristotle "is a professional human being."15 His logos is the effort to tell us what our earthbound, purposive, ordinary, experience is like. In any case, the "logos" which functions as the title of this book is Aristotle's. It is the distinctly human ability to see and say the world as it is. Before clarifying further what "logos" means, a final point about Aristotle's "method." Consider the following comment he makes about his book The Nicomachean Ethics, the study of what is a good human life: Our subject would be sufficiently articulated if it should achieve the level of clarity that is appropriate to its subject matter. For the same degree of precision should not be sought for in every logos, just as it should not be sought for in all the things produced by craft. That which is fine and right, the very subjects of ethics and politics, contain much difference and instability. As a result they often seem to be a matter of mere convention and not nature. Good things too are characterized by such instability because harm often accrues to many people as a result of them. Some men are, for example, destroyed by wealth, others by courage. Therefore, it will be satisfactory in this particular kind of study to show the truth roughly and in outline and, since we are speaking from and about something that only usually holds good, to make our conclusions in a similar manner. It is necessary for the reader to accept what is said in the following in the same spirit. For it is a sign of an educated man to seek that degree of precision that is appropriate to each area of study. And what this appropriate degree is, is determined by the nature of the object being studied. For it

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 31 seems to be nearly the same thing to accept a probable conclusion from a mathematician as it is to demand a rigorous demonstration from a rhetorician (1094bll-27).16

What is crucial in this passage is the heterogeneity it allows for in the various branches of knowledge. Different subjects, or logoi, take up different objects. Arithmetic, for example, studies numbers; physics studies change. As a consequence of their having different objects, these subjects achieve varying degrees of precision. What degree of precision is to be expected in any given study results from "the nature of the object being studied." And these objects differ. The subject of the rhetorician, one of Aristotle's examples, is (broadly speaking) the means of persuading human beings. As a result, the rhetorician must know what techniques are best used under what circumstances. When, for example, is it most effective to make an appeal to pity? When should invective be employed? Being able to answer these questions requires some knowledge of human psychology. It is a mistake, says Aristotle, to expect the rhetorician to be able to achieve the degree of precision that is achieved by a mathematician. The latter studies only formal, purely abstract and invariable objects. From the mathematician we should expect the highest degree of precision. But only one who is ignorant would apply this same standard to the rhetorician; his subject matter is too variable, too complex, too muddy, ever to be made as clear as mathematics. The world itself is heterogeneous, filled with objects that differ in kind. Logos is the articulation of the world. Therefore, to do justice to that of which it speaks, logos must accurately reflect such heterogeneity. The logos constituting the Nicomachean Ethics or the Politics takes up human being in its social or political dimension. In this sense, their subject matter is the same as that of the rhetorician. It would therefore be a mistake to demand from them mathematical precision. As we shall see below, the contrast between the Aristotelian teaching on precision and that belonging to those who created modern science could not be more different. Aristotle's distinction between mathematics and those subjects that study human beings is fundamental: ethics and politics simply cannot attain mathematical precision. Contrary to the founding spirit of modern science, this fact does not disqualify these logoi from attaining the status of knowledge. Although it is true that in one sense all types of knowledge are the same (for they are all a result of theorem, of seeing), in another sense, types of knowledge differ: their objects are heterogeneous. Some, particularly those that concern the human community, are by nature imprecise. Finally, let us return to the passage from the Politics (1253a7-16) in order to decide what "logos" means for Aristotle. In it can be found two

32 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD aspects of logos. First, there is that which is at work in the text of the Politics itself, namely Aristotle's capacity to articulate his vision of a particular natural entity, human being in its political dimension. Second, there is the logos exhibited by the particular entity being studied in the text: the discussion of right and wrong which human beings undertake in the polis. For Aristotle, then, logos is a capacity to see and then bring to voice what really exists in nature; to make clear the truth of an entity. It is also the ability to clarify what is right and wrong, to speak rationally about values. In an important sense, however, these two sides of logos are connected. Since that which is right and wrong is measured by a natural telos, logos can achieve the truth about what is right and wrong. When a woman says of a particular tree that has only a partial filling of leaves, "that is a bad tree," she speaks truthfully. Similarly, when she says of a deed, "that action is a crime; it is destructive of the polis and so it is bad," or of a person, "he's worse than the guy next to him," her statements might well be true. There is no great disparity between articulating the truth and the value of an entity. Both are rooted in the ability to see that entity clearly. To summarize: Logos is the ability to give voice to what is in the world; and values themselves are located in the world in the form of the various purposes latent in natural entities. Logos is definitive of who we are: rational beings, living together in a common world to which we have good access (if only we see and talk straight). We converse with one another, seek knowledge about what is right and wrong, true and false. This description becomes the standard by which we should evaluate ourselves. Logos is our telos, it is good, and the extent to which we fulfill this capacity is the measure of our worth. We are "meant" to seek the truth in conversation and to attempt to articulate what is right and wrong. Aristotle makes this same point in different terms in the Nicomachean Ethics. Here he claims that logos is the "proper function" (ergon) of humanity. He says this in the context of asking, what is the highest good a human being can attain? The answer, in broadest terms, is "happiness" or "flourishing" (eudaimonid). His "argument" goes something like this: Every techne and action, every goal-directed activity and choice, aims for some good. Medicine aims for health, shipbuilding to build a ship, military strategy for victory. All human activities are, it seems, purposive: we do things for a reason, namely to achieve some goal, some good we think desirable. Furthermore, these goals are hierarchically ordered. A student

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 33

goes to class in order to pass a course; he desires to pass the course in order to graduate; he desires to graduate in order to get a job so that he may gain financial security. . . and so on. Aristotle claims that this ascending series of goals must terminate at some highest goal. If among the things we do there is some telos which we desire on account of itself, and we desire other things on account of it, and if we do not choose everything on account of something else, it is clear that this [highest] telos is the good and the excellent. [That there is some highest telos is evinced by the following: if there were no highest telos, our goal-directed activities] would proceed indefinitely. As a result our desire would be empty and vain. [Our desire is not empty and vain; therefore, there is a highest telos.] (1094al81-22)17 The highest goal is what Aristotle calls eudaimonia. It is that which is desirable in and of itself; it leads to nothing more desirable and so we do everything for the sake of it. If there were no such highest good toward which human desire led, then desire would be empty. In other words, we would continually be striving for objects that in principle could not satisfy since their attainment would bring only the desire for new objects. Without a stable terminus toward which desire can aim, all desires would be essentially the same—that is, they could not be ordered and significantly distinquished—and life would be empty and without direction, meaningless in just the terms used by the depraved Macbeth: "a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more." It does not seem to occur to Aristotle to entertain the possibility that life is meaningless and desire vain. He does not, however, explain why. Perhaps he is so impressed by the fact that those around him act as if life were meaningful that he does not feel the need to call this into question. Human beings generally do go after goals: we get out of bed in the morning and ordinarily act as if our goals were worth pursuing and our lives were meaningful. We take steps toward achieving what we deem good and attaining what we desire. We rarely collapse in despair or behave like Macbeth. No great argument is needed to establish the fact that desire is not empty and vain; only an honest look at those who live around us. It is only those whose conception of logos has lost all connection to the ordinary, to the commonsensical, who could entertain the proposition that life is meaningless. One might agree with Aristotle that life is not experienced as meaningless, but still object to him by saying that there is no reason why, in fact, there actually is a terminus or highest goal of human desire. Again, Aristotle might respond by saying that without a final standard there

34 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD would no ultimate way of measuring any given desire. There would simply be an indefinitely shifting series of desires, none of which would in principle lead anywhere. No desire would be higher than any other and therefore it would finally be impossible to distinquish desires that are positive from those that are not. The student planning to move up in the world and the low-life wanting to sell drugs on the street would, if they were to be evaluated on the basis of what they want, become indistinquishable. In this sense, if there were no terminal goal, all desire would be vain, a condition Aristotle finds inconceivable. Even if we grant the above, however, Aristotle's statement really tells us little, for without a better understanding of what eudaimonia is we do not learn much. Therefore, in order to flesh out his claim Aristotle asks, is there a function, a basic type of activity or work, that uniquely characterizes human being? If so, then actualizaton of that function would constitute our telos and would become the highest, most desirable, form of activity available to us. Eudaimonia would be that activity. Our function is not procreation or nourishment: these activities we share with plants. It is not self-motion or sense perception: these we share with other animals. The only activity that is uniquely ours, that makes us what we are, is logos. More specifically, Aristotle here calls it "the practical aspect that belongs to the human being who has logos" (1098a3-4). By "practical" Aristotle means "that which has to do with right and wrong." Our capacity, therefore, to discuss rationally (with the hope of attaining knowledge) questions of value is our unique function. By actualizing it we flourish, for it constitutes our eudaimonia and what is best about us.18 Logos is good; we are "meant" to discuss, to try to understand. Even further, logos is unconditionally good. Because it figures so prominently in the very composition of our lives, there is no condition, no external fact or situation, that can qualify or conditionalize its goodness. It just is good. We reason, talk together, and so become who we best can be. But unless we are misty-eyed worshipers of a dusty past, isn't the above all so much empty boast? Who is to speak so confidently of the human telos? Who is to say that Aristotle's vision bears any relationship to real life? One could object even more strongly and argue that such bold talk of a human function is not just misguided, but actually oppressive. Does Aristotle hide behind the facade of "nature" in order to impose his conception of rationality, of human life, upon unsuspecting readers? Has he suppressed a plurality of voices by insisting that his alone speaks what is true and good? As suggested above, Derrida and Rorty would certainly say yes. The Aristotelian, the classical, assertion infringes upon human

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 35 freedom, robs us of our polymorphous ways. Aristotle is a "logocentrist," an "ethnocentrist." He grants his own way imperial sway and calls it good. But, say the subversives, there is no human Good . . . only goods. There is no natural purpose whose goodness is unconditional . . . life is but a series of conditions. ("Never yet has the truth hung on the arm of the unconditional": Thus Spoke Zarathustra.}™ To speak of natural rulers is to perpetuate oppression and perform an act of violence. Any number of objections could be brought against Aristotle. On what grounds, a critic could ask, does the ordinary become ordinal and receive the privilege it has in Aristotle's thought? One could accuse Aristotle of the "naturalist fallacy," of moving from the "is," from the analysis of what a human being is, to the "ought," to what a human being ought to be or do. One might well object that his confidence in language to express the natural structure of the world neglects the powerful forces of subjectivity that always infect our speaking. Aristotle's critic might well say that we make the world do what we say; we don't say the world as it is. The critic could object that Aristotle's "natural" world is so highly structured that it denies the reality of flexibility and change. She could even go so far as to complain that it is precisely Aristotle's insistence on the goodness of logos that has brought a plague upon us, one caused by the unregulated spread of technology, by reason run rampant. To his critic, Aristotle's arrogance is stifling, his teleology a weapon for enslavement. There is, however, a form of argument that can offer support to Aristotle's vision and help fend off his opponents. We noted above that Aristotle himself simply asserts what he sees as the truth. In what follows, logos actually presents an argument for itself. Not surprisingly, its conclusion will be that logos is unconditionally good. (2) The Protreptic Logos Assume the following: All human beings wish to do well.20 The last four words are ambiguous, but intentionally so. They are broad enough to make the initial assumption worth accepting. Put it this way: All human beings wish to attach the adverb "well" to their doings. From the worst criminal to the best of men, all human beings move forward with an eye toward doing well. We move from where we are toward where we hope and plan to be with the aim of some sort of enhancement. Human action is intentional: we act for reasons. Even when to normal eyes an action seems perverse or harmful, the agent does it because he thinks doing so will enhance himself. Take the man who inflicts bodily harm upon himself. Even one so deranged must believe that self-harm is better, in some sense of the word, than his previous condition. The heroin addict who

36 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD imbibes a large quantity of a drug known to be harmful does so because he believes, however incorrectly, that it is "worth it." The brief and intense pleasure of the drug is counted, however inarticulately, by the addict to be better than the life free from drugs. The use of heroin eventually leads to degradation and this indicates that the addict's judgment is ill conceived. Nevertheless, simply because the addict acted freely and consciously, the use of the drugs is in some sense a consequence of wishing to do well. "Wish to do well" is a useful phrase precisely because it is broad enough to include within it all human intentions. We can reintroduce the word "eudaimonia" here. Human beings vary greatly in their conception of what eudaimonia is; but we are linked by our desire to achieve it. The above of course has to be specified further. What follows from the initial statement, "all wish to do well"? How do we go about trying to do well? First, by acquiring the good things that we desire. This is obvious because we believe that in the attainment of these good things lies the condition for eudaimonia. Actually, the statement that human beings desire good things is not accurate. Since we so often err in determining what is good, what we desire is more safely described as what we think is good. The drug addict desires heroin, which is not in fact good. Nevertheless, he is still motivated by a desire for what he (incorrectly) thinks is good. And what, generally, do human beings think is good? The list need not be surprising. Wealth, health, physical beauty, a good family, talent, fame, good luck . . . all are typical examples of good things most of us want. Less typical and more elevated would be virtues such as good sense, justice, and bravery. The specifics on the list are not crucial; what matters is that there is such a list filled with items deemed good and so desired by those who desire to do well. But there is a problem. The items on this hypothetical list are not actually good; they are neutral. Wealth, for example, can be used for, can bring, benefit or harm, good or evil. A woman may use her wealth either to buy heroin or to buy books. Her money, while sitting in the bank, is neutral and brings no benefit to her. Only upon being used does it bring benefit and so become charged with value. The argument being proposed here now has four stages: (1) human beings wish to do well; (2) to accomplish (1) we wish to possess what seems to be good; (3) what seems to be good is actually neutral; (4) neutral items must be used properly if they are to bring benefit and become genuinely good. Use becomes the critical notion. How then does one use neutral items properly? With knowledge. With the successful application of reason or logos neutral items become good. An analogy can be offered with carpentry. How does someone use well

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 37 the raw material that is wood? Only with the knowledge supplied by the carpenter. It is only knowledge that shapes the unformed neutrality of a material into that which is good. If the items on our hypothetical list are truly analogous to wood, then it is only knowledge that can consummate our wishing to do well. It is, therefore, a lack of knowledge that characterizes the heroin addict's failure; he thought, incorrectly, that the drug was good. He did not know what he was doing. The conclusion of the argument is now obvious: Logos, the striving for knowledge of how to use neutral things properly, is the highest activity available to those who wish to do well. It is unconditionally good because it, and only it, supplies us with the necessary means to transform the neutral into the good. Even money, that most powerful of motivations, that most apparent of goods, is really only neutral until it is used; and only logos can guide properly its use. Logos alone is the true source of eudaimonia and thus nothing, no external fact or circumstance, can conditionalize or call into question its goodness. This type of argument is traditionally described as or simply called "protreptic," a term that derives from the Greek verb "protrepein" which means to turn (trepein) someone forward (pro), to urge them onward, upward. More specifically, it refers to a type of persuasive speech used to exhort or encourage the listener to pursue some course of action. In this particular case, it means to exhort someone to engage in logos, in philosophy, in the quest for understanding of the good use of neutral items. Aristotle was right: logos is good. This is not to imply that anyone using her reason is simply by that fact doing what is proper. It is of course possible that logos may err. The doctor, for example, after having deliberated thoroughly, may conclude that it is good to heal a vicious criminal of a curable disease. In fact, this decision may prove to be wrong; it may well be the case that the doctor should have let the criminal die. Even so, such an error would not invalidate the claim that the doctor's use of her logos was good. Admittedly it strayed. But it can be corrected. This is another way of putting the protreptic point about logos: it is potentially self-correcting. If it errs, it is open to criticism, to rational self-inspection and improvement. Such openness is testimony to its unique goodness: only logos can correct itself. There is another sense in which logos is self-correcting. Imagine that someone objects to the protreptic argument. As an alternative, this person might propose that "logos is not good and thus we ought not to philosophize or pursue knowledge." There is, however, a problem with this objection: precisely insofar as the opponent here has aruged (has given reasons for, has attempted to defend his position) that one ought

38 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD not to engage in logos, he has engaged in logos. In other words, in the very act of trying to refute the goodness of logos, this person has used logos and so has given testimony to, has implicitly affirmed, the belief that logos is good. In this sense logos is able to embrace (to correct) even those who seem opposed to it. Even those who deny it is good, insofar as they try to make sense to another person, must use logos and so to it they give the nod.21 To summarize: The protreptic logos demonstrates that in order to do well one must use one's possessions properly and that this can only be done with knowledge. It concludes that seeking such knowledge is the highest, the most important, of all activities. Against possible objectors, it argues that even if someone using her logos makes a mistake, logos is able to correct itself. Similarly, all who deny the goodness of logos in fact affirm it (precisely in the attempt to deny it). All of this is evidence that Aristotle was right, that logos is unconditionally good. (3) The Indirect Argument Another way of supporting the claim of logos is through what is known as an indirect argument. This type of argument begins with a proposition that is the opposite of that whose proof is desired. Consequences are drawn from this initial proposition that are found to be unacceptable or contradictory (or absurd). As a result, the initial proposition itself must be rejected and its opposite accepted. In this particular case the assumption will be that logos is not unconditionally good. Consequences will be drawn that will force us to reject the assumption and accept its opposite. If logos is not unconditionally good, it is either unconditionally bad or conditionally good. The second of these two options is weaker than the first. (The first is a more negative and harsh judgment than the second.) As a result, if the second generates unacceptable consequences, then the first would generate consequences that are even more unacceptable. Therefore, only the second formulation—logos is conditionally good— needs to be examined. If logos is not unconditionally good there must be some condition or set of conditions that can negate its goodness. And what would this be? In a sense, it does not matter, for whatever this condition is (call it X), by definition it stands over and against logos and is not itself susceptible to treatment by logos. For reasons soon to be presented, if X negates the goodness of logos, then X negates the power of logos to identify it. As a result, if logos is not unconditionally good, then we are prohibited from saying what it is that negates its goodness. After all, saying what something is, is precisely the task of logos. For the moment let us translate

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

39

logos as "reasonable speech." If X negates the goodness of logos, then X is incapable of being articulated in reasonable speech; X looms in silence. It could be anything. Let me try to clarify. There are times when it seems good not to be reasonable. For example, it might be the case that musical improvisation and sexual intercourse are activities that reason impedes. When trying to improvise on the saxophone it is good to suspend the processes of analysis, justification, articulation, etc., since successful improvisation requires giving free rein to the musical imagination. Not only can this imagination not be analyzed, but the attempt to do so actually impedes the creative process. If we ask the musician "how did" you come up with that tune?" or "will you tell me how to do it myself?" no answer is or should be forthcoming. If we attempt to force the musician to answer such questions while he is trying to play, we might destroy the music. It might well be true that improvisation and good sex require suspension of rational activity. These examples, however, do not damage the claim that logos is unconditionally good. Because they can be identified, reasons can be given as to why these nonreasoning activities are good and how they function as conditions apparently capable of suspending the goodness of logos; these activities can be "embraced" or "surrounded" by logos. Among human activities most are best accomplished when accompanied by logos. Some, however, are best when left untouched— and there are good reasons for this. Sexual intercourse, for example, is good. It is good because it leads to procreation, because it furthers intimacy, and because it is fun. In order to be good, sexual intercourse is best left untouched by reason. Here the instinctive moves of the body best guide themselves. While the assertion "it is sometimes good not to be reasonable" is true, it does not conditionalize the goodness of logos. That logos is unconditionally good does not mean that logos is needed at every single moment. It means that it can identify and then explain why any given activity is good. If logos can do this, if it can locate all such -activities within a broad rational context, then its goodness will not be negated by some X that can be rationally identified. By surrounding, by explaining, that X, it will render the X subordinate to itself. It will embrace the X and not let it stand outside as an independent critic. The above does not imply that there can be no X. The key point the argument makes is that if there is an X, it cannot be identified. It must remain hidden in silence. The advocate of the X is, in the eyes of logos, an enemy, a criminal who threatens its authority. If the X exists (and cannot be identified),

4o LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD logos would be dethroned, subordinated to an inarticulate "something" that is "out there" in dark silence. Such a view produces unacceptable consequences. A world ungoverned by logos is one without rational standards. For example, if the X exists, then logos would no longer have ultimate authority in the adjudication of disputes over values. Should a doctor heal a vicious criminal or not? If logos is not unconditionally good, then in principle logos has no right to claim that it, and not something else, not some X, ought to be finally responsible for determining what should be done. What, in the absence of logos, would determine what should be done? The X can take an indefinite number of forms. The doctor may simply follow customary practice and obey the standing conventions of the day. She may consult a religious or political authority. She may act on a subjective impulse or intuition; she may simply do what she wants or take a vote. If X exists, then all exertions of logos—all efforts to determine rationally what, for example, is right or wrong—are conditionalized. If one judges that the criminal ought to be treated because the proper duty of the doctor is to heal, then that judgment will have to be made conditionally. The X looms, capable of negating the validity of that judgment. To put this point in other terms: If X exists and cannot be identified, then the situation that results is relativism. The goodness, appropriateness, the value of all exertions of logos will be relative to the condition that is capable of negating them. And this condition, as has been stated, is in principle hidden from the view of logos. Relativism is an often stated and familiar doctrine, although it is not usually formulated as it has been above.22 (The formulation just presented is not, however, what is most crucial. The key is the conclusion: Relativism is the consequence of denying that logos is unconditionally good.) When it is specifically addressed to questions of value (when it is ethical relativism) it implies that no action has any value in and of itself. An action is good or bad only relative to the person or group performing or advocating that action. One doctor may heal the criminal; another may refuse treatment. One society may force its doctors to heal all patients by means of its legal code; another may allow the doctor more discretion. Neither action, neither system, is in itself good or bad. Both are good, but only from the perspectives that each holds. Relativism implies that the question should the criminal be healed? cannot be answered except in terms that make reference to the individual doctor or to the doctor's society. Neither the doctor nor the society can be made to answer the demand that their values be defended in terms other than those that make reference to themselves, to their own perspectives. In this sense, relativism implies that the question should the criminal be healed? cannot finally be answered at all. Such questions are ultimately not in the purview

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 41

of logos. They are a matter of convention, custom, law; perhaps they are a matter only of subjective desire. Whatever they are a matter of cannot finally be rationally defended. Relativism is disease, is pollution, for it negates the efficacy of logos. It destroys the possibility of a complete rational debate of fundamental questions. If relativism holds, there is no reason to be reasonable about— to examine thoroughly—questions of value; for ultimately these are questions about which logos can have no authoritative say. If relativism holds, value judgments become groundless: there would be no firm ground, no discoverable reason, upon which any value judgment could be securely based. Relativism is thus the enemy, the usurper, who would dethrone logos the king. But relativism is untenable; it is a position that cannot be coherently held. It is a position whose consequences few, if any, can actually live. For the relativist, all value judgments are ultimately equal in the sense that none can muster a final defense of itself. This implies that if person A makes judgment P, and person B makes judgment R, and P is directly opposed to R, A (according to the relativist credo) must accord to B full equality with himself. Relativism forces A to suppress his urge to compete with, to defeat, B in rational argument. Again, I do not refer to a debate that could occur between A and B as to whose position is most in conformity with prevailing custom. The debate I consider occurs when someone asks, "but is R really better than P, and if so why?" This is the debate prohibited by the relativist. Such a view is at odds with the way people live. It surely is not likely, for example, that a doctor who adamantly believes that all life, even that of a criminal, must be honored, will accept with equanimity the fact that a colleague who disagrees with her has a view of equal rational worth to her own. We desire to give voice to our opinions, to try to elevate them to the status of knowledge. Relativism denies that desire. What it does instead is homogenize all desires. All desires and values are equal precisely insofar as none is ultimately defensible. Such equality is unacceptable, unlivable, a denial of what is patently true about human beings. It is simply not the case that, when questioned hard, persons A or B are willing to declare that their values are no more defensible than their opponents'. To declare that it is the case, is to defy the phenomena of ordinary life.23 Relativism is unhealthy for it forces its advocate into a kind of silence.24 It denudes him of his urge to bring forth his own set of values into the light of rational defense.

42 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD Relativism is unacceptable. Therefore, the initial proposition that generated it as a consequence—that logos is conditionally good—must be rejected. We are thus constrained to affirm the opposite assertion: Logos is unconditionally good. Logos is our telos, our essence. To deny this is to plunge into the darkness of silence and to rob human beings of what is best. And yet. . . this defense of logos, this classical assertion, is problematic. For doesn't the protreptic argument have holes? With it did logos manipulate its audience (or its opponent)? Even if the opponent accepts the first three premises, that we all wish to do well, that as a result we desire good things, and the things we desire are actually neutral, he is not forced to agree to the final conclusion, that knowledge of the proper use of a neutral item is the condition of eudaimonia. This conclusion assumes without proving that something like a "proper use," one that can be grasped by knowledge, really exists. If it is true that things do have a proper use, then it may well be the case that knowledge is necessarily the most desirable of goods. But it must be shown that proper use does in fact exist. Perhaps it does not; perhaps use is a matter, not of being proper, but of being pleasurable or of fulfilling a desire. Perhaps there is nothing to be known. If that is the case, then surely logos is not the highest good. There may not be a highest good. To put the same objection into different terms, in its protreptic argument logos imposes the analogy between carpentry and the use of neutral items upon its audience. (It argues that just as the carpenter forms the neutral material of wood into useful artifacts, so does logos transform the neutral items on the list of apparent goods into genuine goods, those that are used properly.) The critic of logos can object that this analogy is misleading. The carpenter uses wood as a passive material and has a techne to form that material according to design. But what analogous design is there in using apparent goods such as wealth, health, and physical beauty? If logos presupposes that there is such a design, then it begs the question and assumes what it purports to prove: that knowledge (the discovery of design) is the highest good. According to the critic, the protreptic logos is not an argument at all: it is nothing but exhortation, urging, pleading for its cause. It is groundless and nothing but a proclamation of its own desire. The critic turns the very charges logos brandishes against its enemy against logos itself. A similar objection can be aimed at the indirect argument. It argues that the consequence of stating that logos is only conditionally good is relativism and that the relativist would make value judgments groundless, reason-less. This it declares unacceptable. But in fact all the indirect argument actually does is outline the consequences of relativism and

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 43 then express its distaste for them. That's not enough. The charge of groundlessness would only be effective if it could be shown that there is actually a ground. This the indirect argument did not do. The indirect argument assumes that if logos can identify a given activity, even one that is apparently nonrational, and if it can explain why that activity is good, then it has rendered that activity subordinate to itself. But even if this is true, why does this type of subordination make logos better than that which it is explaining? Perhaps this type of subordination is exactly what should be avoided. In sum, in the indirect argument logos simply voices its disapproval at those who disagree. As a result, the indirect argument is just a disguised version of protreptic. It is nothing but an urging "forward"; but, the critic will ask, forward to what? It is nothing but a plea that a specific desire, for the classical version of logos, be privileged. Such a plea, which accuses those who disagree with unreason and shameful groundlessness, is cloaked in the authoritarian mantle of Reason, but in fact is no more substantial than the pleas of its opponents. Logos now stands accused. It began with untarnished confidence that it was the ruling principle of human life. It saw itself as happily at home, king of a natural world that welcomed it, a world whose purposes could be understood and articulated. But now logos is accused of being a tyrant, of leading a regime based on nothing but empty assertion and an ungrounded declaration that it can discover the purposive structures of nature. Logos cannot ignore this charge, for its most basic commitment is to providing an account, a defense, of its claims. Indeed, such a commitment is what best animates it—and so logos welcomes the opportunity to respond to its critics. Its initial response came in the form of the protreptic and indirect arguments. But these failed for they each presupposed what they pretended to prove: that logos is good, that neutral items can be used properly, that values are a matter of reason. Logos will have to respond again. Before proceeding to that response, we will pause for a digression. The view of logos being developed on these pages is inspired by certain texts of Greek philosophy and literature. In order to show how such a view can retain any vitality in facing the contemporary world it is necessary to engage in the following historical sketch. Its purpose is to show where logos fits in a larger context—to show, in other words, how the ideas being presented in this book can both challenge and illuminate (by contrast) the ruling ideas of today. As we will see next, an essential component of modern thought takes its bearings from logos. It does so negatively: it accuses logos. The accusation

44 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD against logos is a vital impulse behind the technological world. Logos, in the full and rich sense championed by Aristotle, has been under attack for hundreds of years by the proponents of modern science. In what follows, we will examine select writings of Descartes and Spinoza, two of the great architects of the modern worldview. We will see that both are fundamentally directed by the desire to dethrone Aristotle, to strip logos bare of all its mighty pretensions. What they offer instead will be a conception of reason with a greatly restricted purview, one that resists the Aristotelian temptation to speak about the purpose and goodness of natural entities. It should become clear that this is a conception under whose sway we today live. The attack against logos comes not only from today's rulers (those progeny of Descartes who were utterly successful in breaking logos's hold on the throne). Recently, especially with the warm welcome accorded to French thought here in America, the attack has come from another perspective: that belonging to the contemporary subversive. And this attack has become ever more shrill and widely felt. Thinkers such as Derrida and Rorty have made their considerable reputations based upon their assault on logos. Both follow the lead of Nietzsche, who prophesied so well the furies of the century.25 Nietzsche explicitly calls into question the goodness of logos, particularly its belief that it can adjudicate the question of value. For him, such a belief is the most pernicious form of the "theoretical optimism" he saw plaguing the modern world. For him, to elevate logos to the throne is to suppress the free play of human life. The belief that good and evil can and should be a matter of authoritative reason is blasphemy against the urgings of creativity. For Nietzsche there is no world out there, safely structured, amenable to the probing eye of reason. Instead, the world is like a river, ever flowing, whose banks ever change, a river never to be stepped in twice. Elevating logos to the throne is a means or device to deny this temporal flow and is thus evidence of a hatred for life. Nietzsche's best work aspires to remedy this hate, to repudiate those "rational/natural" standards whose real purpose is to deny time's incessant flow. His goal is to infuse thought with "the meaning of the earth" and to affirm the very incompleteness that is being human. The next section, then, has three parts and purposes: (1) to show briefly how the modern scientific project, as typified by Descartes and Spinoza, includes a fundamental assault on logos; (2) to show how the contemporary subversive, despite appearances to the contrary, actually shares a great deal with Descartes and Spinoza. Despite the fact that Rorty and Derrida complain of the tyranny of reason and of the "hyperrationalism" of the modern world, their views as to what rationalism is

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 45 are surprisingly similar to the early-modern proponents of the scientific revolution. The third goal is this: (3) to show that the complaint against logos, in both its early-modern and contemporary (subversive) genres, was prefigured in antiquity. There were Greeks themselves who complained of the tyranny of logos and sought its overthrow. One of them, a man named Protagoras, offered a critique as profound as any delivered by today's fashionable critics. To restate a line from the epigraph of this book, "What could you tell an Ancient Greek that he couldn't say 'Big Deal?" It is important to realize this: So many recent voices simply recast, often with a great deal of ornamentation, ancient messages. In Athens itself a dispute raged between the proponents and the opponents of logos. Each side was eloquently and powerfully represented. This was not an abstract dispute carried on in the pages of professional journals. Instead, each side championed a living option, a basic human possibility. As a result, the ancient dispute had an intensity and immediacy rarely found today. Revivifying it can thus be of value in helping us situate ourselves within, and clarifying the terms of, the often numbingly abstract, technical, and highly professorial debates of today. B THE CRITIQUE OF Locos (1) Protagoras Protagoras offers a profound alternative to the classical conception of logos (which, as I hope is clear, is now simply being called "logos"). In important ways, his challenge is similar to those attacks on logos presented by Derrida, Rorty, and today's "great" subversives. Before we begin Protagoras' story, some background is needed. Protagoras was the greatest of a group of highly influential teachers who appeared in Athens around the middle of the fifth century b.c.e.: the Sophists. "Sophist" is derived from "sophos" meaning wise or clever or skillful. Men like Protagoras traveled from town to town offering their sophia, their wisdom, for sale. They were the first professors, or paid teachers, in Western culture. And what did they profess? As usual, the historical question is not easily answered; the data on the actual man Protagoras is scanty since virtually none of his writings remain. For the purposes of this chapter I will largely rely on what Plato, in his work the Protagoras, had to say about the Sophist.26 There is a saying attributed to Protagoras from which I also will take my bearings: "Human being is the measure of all things; of that which is, that it is; of that which is not, that it is not." This statement is the

46

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

clarion call of relativism. It asserts that what seems to be the case to a given person, is the case. As such, it implies that there are no absolute, no natural, structures or standards that exist independently of the human beings who hold them. Since the human activity of measuring and holding standards varies from place to place and from time to time, Protagoras' famous dictum really asserts that all structures and standards are in a state of change. What, for example, seems to be the case to a person living in Athens may differ quite sharply from one living in Sparta. What seems to be the case to a twentieth-century woman may not be the same as what seemed so to her great-grandmother. No one has a privileged view of things; all views share an essential status: they are perspectives on, and measures of, things. This is, of course, oversimplified. Relativism has many varieties: one can be relativist concerning values, knowledge, reality, or any mixture of these. What sort of relativist Protagoras is has been a matter of scholarly debate. Furthermore, when Protagoras says "human being," what does he mean? Does he refer to each and every one of us as individuals? Does he refer to human society? Or does he have the species itself in mind? Finally, what exactly does he mean by "things"?27 What follows will, in part, present Plato's effort to answer these questions. Before proceeding to that, a bit more background. Assume that Protagoras' relativism applies to values. As suggested above, this is the easiest and I believe most illuminating way to begin a discussion of relativism. Assume further that when he says "human being," he refers to individuals and not the species. (This tends to be Plato's assumption.)28 This would imply that Protagoras believes that it is possible for a variety of human beings to function as a variety of measures of values. This would be true even if these human beings lived in the same society, were about the same age, and had similar social standing. If these assumptions are plausible, then it is clear that the sophistic teaching is deeply threatening to the traditional authorities of Greek life. If human being is the measure of what it means to be a good citizen, for example, then it is possible for one to be a good citizen in any number of ways. An obedient soldier, a disobedient soldier, an earnest participant in political affairs, and a recluse, are each, by their own lights, good. The relativist does not permit us to rank these people; they are equal in that they each have a particular perspective on what is good. And since no perspective is intrinsically better than any other, there is nothing by which their differences can be reasonably measured (except another perspective . . . and so on.) Two comments: A typical Greek polis, indeed any community based on a traditional and stable sense of right and wrong, would find such a view repugnant. A traditional society is, very simply, one in which the norms of the children are consistently formed by those belonging to their

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 47 parents; where, in other words, the old is implicitly taken to be the best. The Sophist, if he holds the position sketched above, attacks the very soul of this type of polis. He challenges its right to command the loyalty, and even the lives, of its citizens. Why, for example, should I be willing to die for my country (as was my father) if I acknowledge the principle that there is no substantial difference between my country and its enemy? If the ideologies of both are merely perspectival measures of the good, then I would be a fool to consider one genuinely superior to the other. The native and the old have no priority over the foreign and the new; both are but measures shifting like the sands on a beach.29 A second comment: There is one type of community in which the sophistic teaching (the relativism sketched above), even if it cannot be officially endorsed, can at least flourish—a democracy. In a polis ruled by the people, authority is granted only to that proposal, person, or group that wins the approval of the people. No individual has a right to impose his opinion on the polis, for no opinion can be declared authoritative or absolute. The opinions of the people, of course, vary over time. Furthermore, the people are highly susceptible to being influenced by someone adept at winning their approval. Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, thus commands the highest premium in a democracy. Whoever is most persuasive will win the day. In our contemporary democracy the persuasion of the people takes place largely through television and the manipulation of visual images. In Athens, the first democracy of the west, it took place through spoken words alone. Therefore, it was to Athens that the Sophists flocked. They offered to teach the most ambitious of the young men how to be successful in political persuasion: they taught rhetoric. The relationship between relativism and rhetoric is intimate. If human values truly do not have any intrinsic worth and are but relative to those who hold them, then there is no hope that rational debate, that logos, will be able to provide an authoritative defense of such values. What remains to be said about these values, therefore, is not an account of their goodness, but a speech designed only to win their approval. The author of that speech, the rhetorician, need not be committed to the goodness of the values he champions in public. Since no value is intrinsically better than any other, the rhetorician is free to champion any value whatsoever. In other words, if relativism offers an accurate description of human values, then rhetoric replaces logos as the most fundamental human activity. The Sophists, the ancient relativists, understood well the human and political consequences of their beliefs. Relativism is an attractive position. Today it is widely propounded by a great number of people (including the subversives). At first glance relativism seems commonsensical and benign: it seems to acknowledge the obvious fact that people differ

48 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD greatly in their value systems and beliefs and that such differences are worthy of respect. But relativism has a harsh underside to it that is rarely brought forward. If values are relative, then what determines which value will, or should, be held at any given time? The relativist believes that all values are, from the point of view of reason, equal: they are all perspectives. But all communities make decisions about values; they do not, indeed cannot, allow all values to flourish. Instead, each community decides which values will regulate it. But how are such decisions made? What is the relativist's answer to the question, how are, and how should, the values that inform any given community be determined? Obviously the answer would not be uby a reasoned defense," for the relativist denies that any such defense is possible. The Sophists realized that their views committed them to a rather disturbing thought: The values that are operative in any given community have no basis other than the fact that they are in command. Values are the result of a competition, a struggle, for supremacy. In other words, the sophistic view implies that the fundamental issue concerning human life is not what is good or bad, right or wrong; it is power. Whoever emerges victorious from the arena in which the struggle for power takes place determines which value will hold sway.30 One of Sophists' followers, a man named Callicles who appears in Plato's Gorgias, makes this point quite clear. He says: But nature herself, I think, declares that it is right for the better to take advantage of the worse and the more powerful to take advantage of the powerless. It's clear that the right has been determined as follows both among the rest of the animals, and in all the cities and races of human beings: the strong should rule the weak and take advantage of them (483c9-d6).

This is an unusually straightforward description of the core belief of sophistry from one of its more perceptive students. Life is a power struggle. The strong should rule, not because they have a better set of values, but because they are able to rule. Who rules "deserves," simply by virtue of ruling, to rule. Another Sophist, Thrasymachus, puts the same point into quite similar terms when he defines justice as "the advantage of the stronger."31 The "stronger" refers to those who hold political power. Thrasymachus assumes that those who rule do so for their own advantage. If the ruler, the one with power, decrees that X is just, then X is just simply because the ruler has decreed it so and can enforce his decree. Both Callicles and Thrasymachus state their views in the midst of arguing against the philosopher Socrates. In Plato's dialogues Socrates

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 49

functions as the representative of logos (although, as we will see, Plato's view of logos—while sharing much with Aristotle's—differs significantly from it as well). This means that Socrates believes that the questions, what is just? what is good? can and should be answered, not by a power struggle, but by rational inquiry. X is not just only because some ruler has decreed it so; X is just if and only if it can be rationally shown that X is just. Even the fact that the ruler and all who hold powerful positions believe that X is just does not legitimate X. Reason, logos, is the only tribunal for legitimation. The best activity for a human being, then, is not rhetoric, the quest for power, but philosophy, the public search for knowledge of what is good and just. Callicles believes that he himself is a powerful man capable of dominating others through his rhetorical prowess. As a result, Socrates' views are offensive, even preposterous, to him. Callicles believes that life itself is a power struggle and that he is thus acting according to nature in attempting to gain political power. Socrates' views would turn life "upside down." They would repress the creative impulses men have and seek to replace the urge to dominate with intellectual inquiry. Socrates wants to find out what justice is, and this becomes the question animating so many of his conversations. For Callicles such a philosophical question is absurd: what is just is what is to the advantage of the stronger. The goal of human activity should therefore be to become as strong as possible in order to gain advantage and exert control over others. Some men have the "right" to impose their will on others. In a world with no enduring standards to function as intrinsically worthy restraints upon the desires of men, there is no principle to prevent those who are powerful from having more than their neighbors. If they can succeed in taking advantage, there is no reason for them not to do so. Callicles enlists the aid of the Sophists in order to win the power struggle he takes as his world. To him, Socrates represents a pernicious diminution of human energy. By denying relativism, by claiming that logos can discover a set of values that is in principle binding upon all who are rational, Socrates denies the human urge to dominate. The "real man," according to Callicles, wastes no time asking "what is The Good." The real man imposes his particular version of the good upon his audience. By contrast, the philosopher, the lover of logos, is weak, cowardly, afraid to assert himself in the world. As a result he spends his time, not in the corridors of power, but in corners whispering to a few young people he can manage to convince to listen to him. Because of his lifedenying and escapist set of commitments, Socrates is doomed never to say anything "free and great and vigorous" (484d). He is doomed to be a passive player in the game of political struggle.

50 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD Nietzsche, in whose shadow stand Derrida and Rorty, was inspired by men like Callicles/The Sophists are no more than realists: They formulate the values and practices on the level of values—They possess the courage of all strong spirits to [know] their own immorality."32 Morality (in its Socratic version) implies that since values can be rationally discovered they should function as principles applicable to all human beings. Morality thus demands that no one should exert force or behave in any other irrational manner in order to place himself above another. For Nietzsche and Callicles such Socratic morality is a ploy to suppress the strong, to repress their creativity and will to power. As Nietzsche's character Zarathustra says; Truly, men gave themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find, nor did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself—he alone created a meaning for things, a human meaning! Therefore, he calls himself "man," that is: he who evaluates. Valuing is creating: hear this, you creators! Valuing itself is of all valued things the most valuable treasure. Through valuing alone is there worth: and without valuing the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear this you creators! Change of values—that is a change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always annihilates.33

Nietzsche's career was devoted to exposing the stultifying morality of his nineteenth-century Europe. To do so required him to attack logos, for it is logos that declares that values can be a matter for reason, that there are reasons to do and not to do various things. But such reasoning, such morality, inhibits life, makes it old and stale. And Nietzsche, inspired by the brilliant Callicles, wanted life to be unleashed. All of his followers, in one way or the other, agree. The students of the Sophists, then, were men who had broken with the traditional sensibility of their world, who did not believe that their fathers' opinions were necessarily the best. They wished, instead, to further their own political ambitions and were eager to employ the expertise of the Sophists to aid them. Their commitment was not to "The Good," understood as a rational object that exists "out there" in a world we all share. Instead, they were committed only to their own self-interest. One such young man appears in the prologue of the Protagoras. To him, then, let us turn.

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 51 (The following will include a somewhat detailed discussion of Plato's dialogue. In particular, the question, "What view of techne does Protagoras hold?" will be carefully considered. As mentioned in the introduction, "techne" plays a pivotal role in explicating the tragedy of logos. Why this is so will now begin to emerge. The full import of this section, however, will not become fully clear until later in the book.) The story begins just before dawn. Socrates is awakened by his young friend Hippocrates who is terribly excited. He has heard that Protagoras, the famous wise man, is in town, and he wants to meet him. Since he is too young to visit Protagoras alone he asks Socrates to accompany him. Hippocrates is eager to be made wise and willing to pay Protagoras a large sum of money for his tutelage. Socrates, who is clearly devoted to the young man, is concerned that Hippocrates has lost his wits and so asks a series of questions that are designed, first, to calm the boy down, and then to force him to reflect more carefully on what it means to be a Sophist. Socrates' first question is broad: "Tell me, Hippocrates, now that you are going to visit Protagoras and are willing to pay him a fee for what he will teach you, whom do you think you are visiting and who do you expect to become?" (31 Ib) To illustrate what he means by this, Socrates offers the following analogies: If the young man were to approach his namesake, Hippocrates the famous doctor, with the same intentions that presently motivate him to approach Protagoras, he would do so in order to become a doctor. If he were to approach Polykleitos or Pheidias, he would do so in order to become a sculptor. What, asks Socrates, is the analogous profession in which Protagoras would offer instruction? Hippocrates is forced to answer "sophistry" and to imply that he is himself eager to become a Sophist (31 Ie4). I say "forced" because, as mentioned above, in the traditional eyes of the polis, sophistry is shameful. It is an admission that there is no secure ground on which to base the citizens' loyalty to the set of values that the polis represents. Accordingly, Hippocrates, who still retains some of that loyalty, blushes when he answers Socrates' question (312a2). Socrates' method of questioning here is one he uses often. He employs what I will call the "techne-analogy."34 He places Protagoras' claimed field of knowledge (or, Hippocrates' perception of that field) into an analogy with very typical technai such as medicine or sculpture. As noted in the introduction, a techne has a determinate subject matter. Medicine is about something very specific: the workings of the human body. Sculpture is about the formation of images in stone. Both are relatively precise in their methods, capable of being mastered and then taught, and easy

52 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD to identify as noncontroversial examples of knowledge. By using the techne-analogy, Socrates forces Hippocrates to locate Protagoras' sophistry into the following analogical pattern: As the doctor is to medicine, and the sculptor is to sculpture, so Protagoras is to X. What is the X, the presumed field of expertise, Protagoras is able to communicate? Who is the Sophist? Hippocrates' first attempt at answering is "Just as the name suggests, he is the man who is knowledgeable about wise things" (312c5-6). Such an answer, however, fails to meet the criterion that Socrates, through the analogy, has imposed on this discussion: it is not sufficiently determinate. Both the painter and the carpenter, two noncontroversial possessors of a techne, would claim that they, too, are "knowledgeable about wise things." (This doesn't sound quite right in English; the word "sophos" is, however, broad enough to make it sound right in Greek.) The former would rightly claim that he is knowledgeable about the production of images. What analogous product can the sophist claim? Hippocrates answers again: "He is knowledgeable about making someone clever at speaking" (312d6). This is exactly the answer we would expect. The sophists were famous for teaching rhetoric, the art of clever, effective, speaking. As Socrates later says, Hippocrates is a young man who "desires to become big in the city" (316blO); that is, he is politically ambitious. Clever speaking seems to him to be the key to gaining his goals. But Hippocrates' second answer, at least as formulated here, still does not satisfy Socrates. Again he uses the techne-analogy to explain why: The master player of the lyre can make his student clever in speaking about playing the lyre. With respect to what similar object does Protagoras make his claim? The problem with Hippocrates' second answer is the same suffered by the first: It is not sufficiently determinate. Hippocrates is at a loss. He admits that he does not know how to identify what Protagoras teaches. Such an admission, however, is really a step forward for him. He now is aware that he does not understand what the Sophist actually teaches. Only when he is armed with such awareness, will Socrates take him to meet the Sophist. When Socrates and Hippocrates actually confront Protagoras, Socrates asks the Sophist a similar set of questions. He begins broadly: "What will accrue to [Hippocrates] if he associates with you?" (318a3) Protagoras answers, "Young fellow, if you associate with me, on the very day you join me you will go home a better man; and on the successive days, there will be similar progress. On each day you will become progressively better" (318a6-9). This answer is not satisfying. If Socrates' question had been directed

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

53

at Zeuxippos, the famous painter, the answer would have been: Hippocrates will get better with respect to painting. So, too, if the question were asked of Orthagoras. His answer would have been in fluting. With respect to what, in what, about what, will Hippocrates improve if he studies with Protagoras? Two points should already be clear: Socrates is not receptive at all to Protagoras' boast and he is preparing to do battle against it. Second, the techne-analogy is an effective weapon with which he can challenge his opponent's claim. It forces his opponent to specify exactly what he claims to be knowledgeable about. Protagoras responds: "My subject (mathema) is good counsel about domestic affairs, how one might best manage his own household; and about political affairs, how one might be most capable (dunatotatos) in both acting and speaking in the affairs of the city" (318e5-319a2).35 Socrates, in typical fashion, immediately reformulates this "advertisement."*' He replaces Protagoras' word "mathema" a broad term indicating anything that can be learned, with the more specific "techne," and ignores the matter of domestic affairs. Protagoras' claim, as now interpreted by Socrates, is to teach the "political techne and to promise to make men good citizens." The Sophist enthusiastically agrees with this description. Protagoras, at least according to Socrates, possesses a unique techne. Unlike all the others, its very subject is value. To use the word that later becomes prominent, Protagoras claims to teach political arete (319e2), or excellence. He teaches men how to excel in political affairs. This claim is both peculiar and instructive. A prominent feature of techne discussed above was its neutrality in matters of value: the doctor can use her knowledge for good or evil. Protagoras, by contrast, claims to have a techne by which he can make men good citizens. Furthermore, this claim should appear quite problematic given our description of Protagorean relativism. If that was accurate, what does the Sophist mean when he says he makes men "good" citizens? We shall see that these questions haunt the rest of this dialogue. Socrates is not at all happy with Protagoras' claim, and he again uses the techne-analogy to attack it. In the Assembly, the basic forum of political debate for the Athenians, if a question is explicitly a technical one, an expert is consulted. If, for example, a ship is to be built for the polis, and a decision has to be made about the design of that ship, the master shipbuilder is called. To him the other members of the polis defer. If an ordinary citizen, a layman, were to challenge the shipbuilder, he would be laughed down. On technical questions it is altogether reasonable to defer to the expert. By contrast, if the issue is one laden with the question of value, if it is a matter of policy, then all citizens are equally capable of contributing to the debate. All citizens, for example, should

54 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD debate whether a ship should be built with city funds. The two cases, Socrates concludes, are disanalogous: there do not seem to be technical experts whose subject is value. If this is true, then the subject Protagoras claims to have mastered and be able teach, the political techne, doesn't exist. In less polite terms, Socrates has just accused the Sophist of being a fraud. Socrates' analogy clearly does not prove that there is no political techne; it only shows that the Athenians, who might be wrong, think there isn't. Socrates does not tell us why he believes the Athenians are right, but he does give a clue. He offers a second argument that political arete is not a suitable subject for a real techne. He observes that it is often the case that excellent fathers are unable, despite their best efforts, to make their sons equally excellent. Kids go bad (319e-320b). By contrast, a shipbuilder can, with a good deal of reliability, train his apprentice. As parents know, it is not even clear what sort of teaching is required for an education in that most peculiar of subjects, arete. It is just this lack of clarity, this peculiar matter of communicating successfully a knowledge of value, that leads Socrates to assert here that political life, whose essence is arete, is disanalogous with techne. (It should be noted, however, that this is not equivalent to saying that political life is irrational.) Socrates has challenged the teachability of the Sophist's subject matter and thus his livelihood. In response, Protagoras tells a long story. In it, I suggest, we will get a good picture of what he teaches and of what he thinks a good life is. We will see further in what sense he offers an alternative to Aristotle's beautiful vision of logos and why someone like Nietzsche would find him so attractive.37 Protagoras Story (320c8-323a4) 320c8

There was once a time when there were gods, but mortal creatures did not exist. And when the allotted time arrived for their generation, the gods formed them within the earth by mixing earth and fire and various blends of fire and earth. When the gods were about to lead [mortal creatures] towards the light, they ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus to outfit them and to distribute to each of them powers as was fitting. Epimetheus asked Prometheus if he could do the distributing himself. "After I have distributed," he said, "you check it out." And because he persuaded him in this way, he did the distributing.

320d8 In his distributions, Epimetheus attached strength to those creatures without speed and he outfitted those who were rather weak with speed. He armed some, while to others who were without arms he gave another nature and devised another power for them which

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

55

they could use to survive. To those he made small he distributed winged flight or an underground dwelling. And those he augmented with size, he saved by means of this size. He distributed and compensated the rest of the mortal creatures in this fashion. He devised these measures with caution so that no species would be annihilated. 321a3 After he provided for them ways of avoiding mutual destruction, he devised protection from the divine seasons. He clothed some with both thick hair and solid skin which was sufficient to ward off both the cold and the heat. . . Then he provided different types of nourishments for each; to some, vegetation from the earth, to others the fruit of trees, to others roots. Finally, he did allow some to serve as the food for others . . . 32 Ib6 Because Epimetheus was not at all wise he was unaware that he had squandered the powers on the animals that don't have logos. The human race still needed to be outfitted by him and he was at a loss what to do. Prometheus came to him while he was at a loss and inspected his distribution. He saw that the other animals were suitably outfitted with all things, while the human race was naked and unshod and without beds or weapons. Furthermore, the destined day on which the human race had to go out from the earth into the light had arrived. So Prometheus, who was at a loss as to what form of survival he could provide for the human race, stole from Hephaestus and Athena technical wisdom together with fire; without fire technical wisdom could not possibly belong to anyone or be at all useful. Thus they were given to the human race. 32 Id4 In this fashion, humanity obtained the wisdom needed for survival. It did not, however, have political [wisdom], for that was in the hands of Zeus. And it was still not possible for Prometheus to enter Zeus' home on high; in addition, Zeus' guards were fearsome. But Prometheus secretly entered the common dwelling of Athena and Hephaestus, where they enjoyed doing their technical work, and stealing the fiery techne of Hephaistos and the other which belonged to Athena gave them to humanity. Because of this humanity gained resourcefulness in matters of survival. Later, it is said, Prometheus was punished for his theft because of Epimetheus. 322a3 When humanity had a share in the divine portion, alone among the animals it first of all, on account of its kinship with the divine, acknowledged the gods and undertook to construct altars and statues of the gods. Then, by means of techne, it quickly articulated voice and names and discovered dwellings and clothes and shoes and beds and nourishment from the earth. 322a8 At the outset, human beings, having been furnished in this manner, dwelt scattered all around: there were no cities. They were being

56 Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD wiped out by the wild animals since they were weaker than the animals in every way. Even though the productive techne was quite enough for them in terms of supplying food, it was still deficient in the fight against the animals. This is because human beings did not yet possess the political techne, which includes military skill. So they sought to gather together and save themselves by founding cities. However, when they did gather together, they did wrong to one another, because they didn't have the political techne; as a result they were scattered once again and faced destruction. 322cl

Zeus feared that our race would be entirely detroyed and so he sent Hermes to human beings to bring respect (aidos) and a sense of right (dike); the purpose of this was to engender orderliness and the bonds of friendship which would tie the cities together. Hermes asked Zeus in what manner he should give a sense of right and respect to human beings. "Should I distribute them in the same manner in which the technai were distributed? These were distributed as follows: One man who has the medical techne is quite sufficient for many laymen. And this is true for the rest of the technicians (demiourgikoi). Should I place a sense of right and respect among human beings in this fashion, or should I distribute them to everybody?"

322d 1 "To everybody," said Zeus, "and let everybody have a share in them. For cities would not exist if only a few people should have a share in them, as is the case with the other technai. And make this a law which comes from me: he who is unable to have share in respect and a sense of right will die as a disease of the city." 322d5 So it is, Socrates, that both the Athenians and other people believe that when the logos is about the arete of carpentry or of some other craft, only a few should be allowed to deliberate. And, as you say, they don't allow someone who is not one of these few to enter the deliberations. This is quite reasonable, I might add. By contrast, whenever they meet for a consultation on political arete, which is to be resolved entirely through justice and moderation, it is reasonable to allow every man to enter. This is because it is appropriate for every man to a have share in this arete or there would be no city at all. This story presents the fundamental elements of Protagoras' "worldview." (The fact that it does so in the form of a "myth" is significant and will be discussed below.)38 With his story, Protagoras attempts to overcome Socrates' objection to his claim to teach the political techne. First of all, the story tries to explain the fact that only a few are able and allowed to give advice as to how, for example, to build a ship, while all citizens are invited to debate questions of political arete or value: aidos and dike, the constituents of political arete, were, unlike the technai,

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

57

distributed to all by Hermes. By saying this, Protagoras seems to acknowledge Socrates' objection that political life and techne are, at least in this one sense, disanalogous. Once Protagoras makes this admission, however, problems arise. If techne is that which is paradigmatically teachable, and political life is disanalogous with techne, how can the Sophist's claim to teach the political techne be sustained? It is clear that in order to survive as a professional teacher Protagoras must show that the disanalogy is not total. Later in the dialogue he presents a series of arguments that are designed to do just this. He cites, for example, the widespread use of punishment as evidence that arete is teachable. Men punish others in matters that they believe are a consequence of "practice and exercise and instruction" (326d6-7). By contrast, they do not punish someone for that which is beyond their control, say for being small. Since men do punish others for political wrongdoing, political arete is teachable. Of course, such an argument doesn't prove that arete actually is teachable; it only shows that Athenian men (Protagoras' example) think it is. But the intention of his argument is clear: Protagoras wants to draw the analogy between political arete and techne. Carpentry and geometry are uncontroversially teachable. The "punishment argument" is meant to show that arete is similar. In response to the Socratic objection that fathers do not always succeed in transmitting their excellence to their sons, Protagoras offers a similar argument. Fathers send their sons to school and seek to provide them with numerous instructors in virtue. In school the sons learn, from the poets for example, of good men. The city itself tries to teach the sons by means of the laws (325c-326d). Therefore, he concludes, arete must be teachable. Again, however, his argument only shows that fathers think arete is teachable. Again, his intention is clear: Protagoras wants to suggest that arete is analogous to techne. But Protagoras must yet confront Socrates' objection: Why do fathers so often fail to instruct their sons in arete? Carpenters do not often fail to transmit their knowledge of carpentry? Or do they? At this point Protagoras again attempts to draw the analogy between what he teaches and techne. There is, he says, variety in natural aptitude. If we attempted to teach everyone fluting, some would excel, regardless of their fathers' abilities; others would do less well. Why? Some have musical natures (327b9). Analogously, some sons have natural aptitude for arete and others don't. All human beings have some capacity for, and thus can be taught some measure of, arete. However, since there is natural variegation of aptitude, some learn better than others and some can become teachers and help others improve. Protagoras counts himself as the best in doing just this (328bl-6).

58

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

Protagoras' view, as should now be clear, is slippery. What exactly does he teach? Is his subject, his mathema, analogous to techne or not? Sometimes he says yes (when he uses the punishment and natural aptitude argument); other times no (when he agrees with Socrates that the typical technai belong only to a few). I suggest that this vacillation is quite deliberate and that in his myth Protagoras systematically equivocates on the character of what he teaches. Protagoras' long story is a deliberate, and brilliant, attempt to disguise his subject. He wants to give it the appearance of being a techne, without having to accept the consequences that follow from such a claim. What he is doing is fully self-conscious. In an important sense, it is also coherent. As such, it constitutes a serious response to Socrates, who in this case is a representative of logos itself. To clarify what I mean, let's examine the myth more closely with an eye to exactly how Protagoras uses "techne." Techne first appears in the myth in the phrase "technical wisdom" at 321dl. Epimetheus was in charge of distributing the "powers" to the animals. The species were given various attributes to allow them to survive. But Epimetheus neglected the human race. Unlike the birds, who were given wings, and the wolves, who were given thick skins, humans had no means to protect and save themselves. They were naked, unshod, bedless, weaponless (321c5). Prometheus, attempting to correct his thoughtless brother's error, intervened on behalf of humanity. He stole technical wisdom (entechnon sophiari), along with fire, from Athena and Hephaestus. This provided humans with the wisdom needed for the maintenance of life (321d4). "Technical wisdom" here means the very general intellectual ability to maintain life. It is the skill that would lead to building tools, houses, agriculture, etc. It is, to reformulate twice, "the fiery techne" (321e2-3), the ability to use fire to build tools, or "the productive techne" (322b3). Human beings, on this account, seem to be by nature technical. But what does this mean? Is techne at this stage of the story analogous to, say, geometry or painting? No. Techne, in all three of the formulations cited above, refers to a very general and indeterminate ability to make things. When such an ability is systematized, when the fiery techne is made determinate by devising standards, procedures, and specific subject matter, then a "typical" techne would arise. Techne at this stage, then, is really "proto-techne," that natural ability to make things that is prior to the systematic acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Proto-techne grants humanity a "portion of divinity" (322a3); it makes us like gods, specifically the craft-loving gods Athena and Hephaistus. It is that by which we construct religious altars and statues, that is, organized religion. It is that by which we devise language ("speech and words"), houses, clothing, shoes, beds, and food (322a3-8). It is the basis of all

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

59

cultural phenomena. The key point is that for Protagoras, man is man the maker. Language, religion, the polis (322b6): none of these is "natural" in the sense of formally preexisting out there in the world before human activity. They are all made by human beings, and for one reason only; for survival, the only guiding principle of the Protagorean developmental story. As such, religion, language, and political community are analogous to the bird's wings and the wolfs thick skin: they are attributes of the human species that are best comprehended by their contribution to survival. As noted above, "cities" (poleis) are produced by proto-techne for the purpose of survival (322b6). "Poleis" here refers to primitive communities in which humans gather to protect themselves from stronger animals. But these poleis do not function well. The war against the animals is being lost because humans "do each other wrong" on account of not having the political techne (322b4-8). Human survival is threatened. This time Zeus intervenes. He sends Hermes to humanity with "respect and a sense of right" (aidos and dike), in order that the bonds of communal solidarity can be forged. Hermes asks whether these two gifts are to be distributed in the same way as were the technai (322c5). Zeus answers no. The technai were distributed only to a few who then administer to the needs of the many. One doctor, for example, treats many laymen. But aidos and dike, the primitive constituents of political life, are distributed to all. As mentioned above, this part of the story implies that Protagoras agrees with Socrates that, in this regard at least, political life is disanalogous with techne. But the disanalogy cannot be total; if it were, Protagoras would put himself out of business. Therefore, at certain crucial points, the Sophist affirms the analogy in order to give his mathema the veneer of epistemological credibility. Consider, for example, the use of the phrase "political techne" at 322b5 and 322b8. Both contexts are negative: primitive humanity did not have it. This is why primitive communities failed. Later in the story communities succeed. The listener is thus invited to infer that humanity gained the political techne. In fact, however, Protagoras never quite says this. Instead, he says that aidos and dike were distributed to all. Once again the listener is invited to infer: Aidos and dike are political techne. Soon the phrase "political arete" replaces aidos and dike (322e2-3). Then, "arete" alone comes to the fore (323a3). The listener is thus led to believe that arete is synonymous with political techne, and indeed scholars regularly make this claim.39 But Protagoras himself doesn't. And for good reason. Techne, in the strict sense that Socrates has suggested and Protagoras has agreed to, is knowledge of a determinate object. And Protagoras, for reasons to become apparent below, doesn't want to make such a determinate knowledge claim. On the other hand,

6o LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD he must maintain that his mathema is teachable and so he invites his listener to infer that political techne is present in his developmental account as a fact of human life. All human beings, says Protagoras, must participate in the political arete, injustice and moderation (323al-2).40 To reiterate, this implies that techne and political life are disanalogous, since the typical technai are available only to a few. There is another point of disanalogy. "In the other technai, just as you describe, if someone says he is a good flutist, or good with respect to any other techne that he isn't good at, they either laugh at him or get angry" (323a7-bl). In other words, in the typical technai it is prudent to admit one's ignorance. If someone cannot play the flute, he is mad to say that he can. Why? He will be quickly exposed as a fraud when a flute is put into his hands. Since techne is knowledge of a determinate subject matter; it is easy to establish clear criteria to determine whether someone possesses a techne or not. By contrast, uin justice and the rest of political arete" if someone is unjust it is madness not to dissemble and pretend to be just. A person can afford to feign justice: there is no determinate test to disqualify the claim. Therefore, no one should publicly admit to being unjust. Now we can see why Protagoras doesn't want the analogy between his mathema and techne to be strict. It would be mad for him to claim to play the flute: Socrates would put the flute into his hand and ask him to play. Analogously, if Protagoras were to claim a political techne with a determinate subject matter, Socrates would ask him to identify and explicate that subject. He would put the political analogue of the flute into Protagoras' hands in order to refute the Sophist's claim. The techne-analogy, as suggested above, is a most effective tool with which Socrates can refute his opponent's knowledge claim. Protagoras, however, is far too intelligent to allow Socrates to pin him down in this fashion. Therefore, he systematically equivocates on the analogy between his mathema and techne. There is good evidence that he succeeds in fending off the Socratic offensive: Socrates soon drops the analogy and changes his tactics after Protagoras' story.41 To summarize: To the extent that Protagoras claims that what he has to offer is in fact teachable, he draws the analogy between his mathema and techne. He did this with the arguments based on punishment and the fact that fathers try to educate their sons, and the natural-aptitude argument. By making proto-techne pivotal in his developmental story, and by suggesting that the political techne makes political life possible, he implicitly invites the reader to draw the analogy. But Protagoras is far too clever to push the analogy too far. He realizes that his subject is not

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 61 determinate in the sense that would please Socrates; he does not want Socrates to put the political analogue of the flute into his hands. He therefore denies the analogy. He explicitly contrasts his political teaching with the technai: the latter belong to a few experts, while his subject potentially belongs to all. He disanalogizes further by saying that in the other technai it is prudent to admit one's ignorance, while in political matters it is prudent to lie. What are we to make of Protagoras' vacillation here? Are his views confused? Hardly. Protagoras, I propose, has quite deliberately made his conception of techne slippery. He has artfully toyed with the criteria implied by Socrates' use of the techne-analogy. Sometimes he has aligned himself to them and so appears to claim a techne; at other times, he seems to steer away from claiming a techne for himself. As a result, he succeeds in presenting himself as having something to teach while not being forced to render his subject matter determinate. He thus preserves his clientele and saves himself from Socratic refutation.42 If this interpretation is plausible, then is it possible to specify what Protagoras teaches? Yes: arete. But what is this? It is not an epistemological entity analogous to the objects of geometry or arithmetic, the paradigmatically determinate technai. So what is it? I suggest we can answer this by reconsidering briefly the impact and strategy of Protagoras' speech. He has hedged, but to his greatest advantage. Given his claim that aidos and dike are distributed to all, he has transformed every one of his listeners (including Hippocrates) into potential customers: they all have a potential for arete. By means of the natural-aptitude argument, he has allowed for the possibility of an "elite," like himself, who can teach arete. At the same time, he has sufficiently distanced his mathema from techne and so avoided Socratic refutation. What does this tell us? Protagoras has just exhibited the very subject that he teaches: rhetoric. He teaches his students how to become "most capable in political affairs." He himself, with his long story, seeks victory in the competition he is waging with Socrates for the soul of Hippocrates. This, and not the truth, is the goal of his discussion. What makes Protagoras' story so interesting is that it not only exhibits his talent for rhetoric, but it also provides a background, a picture of the world, in which rhetoric would dominate. The Sophist's story provides the reasons, even gives a kind of justification, for why he so gracefully vacillates. Consider the following: Protagoras is a materialist. Mortal creatures were composed of earth and fire (320d). He does not mention a soul or any nonmaterial dimension of human life.43 Furthermore, he puts human beings on the same level as all other animals: all were created in the same manner, all are guided by the same principle, namely survival.

62 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD Indeed, survival is the only telos allowed for in his story. It is, apparently, the highest good available to humanity. Needless to say, this sharply differs from Aristotle's view on the telos of the polis. From such a starting point there emerges only one political value that is operative in a polis: social harmony. The citizens must cooperate in order that the polis become a strong enough community to sustain life. The problem with primitive communities was that humans harmed and thus weakened themselves. Arete is the ability to get along with others so that the polis is strong enough to win the battle for survival. But, given Protagoras' basic ideas here, does it really matter what type of community one belongs to? No. A communist regime may be harmonious as well as a democracy. As one commentator puts it, "This position is clearly unsatisfactory, as it leaves Protagoras no ground for moral criticism of the institutions of any state, no matter how cruel, unjust, etc., provided only that that state retains enough social cohesion to ensure its continued survival."44 It should be mentioned, however, that this position is unsatisfactory only if there are nonconventional standards that can serve to measure the various states. In other words, it is unsatisfactory only if relativism is false. And this, as yet, is still a matter of debate. To continue with Protagoras' story: It should be noted that Epimetheus had to persuade Prometheus to allow him to distribute the powers (320d67). This implies that the two initially disagreed as to who should receive this honor. This first episode of Protagoras' myth sets the stage or tone for what is to follow. Prometheus and Epimetheus disagree; they then wage a battle of words in order to determine who is to distribute the powers; Epimetheus wins, and his victory determines the development of the story. By positioning it in the first episode, rhetoric is thus portrayed as primordial, as the preeminent and paradigmatic form of speech. It is the key to winning the struggle for power that is the essence of human life. A similar point is also implied by Protagoras' description of language at 322a6: "Words and names" are the product of proto-techne. Man is man the maker and language is something constructed for the purpose of winning the battle for survival. Contrast this with the Aristotelian description of language cited above. There language was said to be for the purpose of uncovering the truth about natural beings existing in the world. Protagoras' "worldview" starts to emerge. In an important sense it is similar to that offered by Callicles. Humans are material beings making what they need and fighting to enhance their prospects for survival. All

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 63 cultural phenomena and institutions are products of proto-techne and contribute to this end. Therefore, no cultural phenomenon has any intrinsic value other than its ability to enhance the human prospect for survival. Since survival can be achieved in an indefinite number of ways, cultural phenomena can, for Protagoras, be legitimately manipulated, as long as such manipulation does not interfere with social harmony. For examples, consider language and religion. Neither has an inherent relationship to anything outside of the human community that uses them. Thus, there are no external restraints to govern their use. There is nothing, therefore, to prevent them from being manipulated. Why shouldn't a powerful and ambitious man like Callicles use language to distort the truth of a situation if he thinks it will benefit him? For Aristotle, whose conception of language implies that there is a world "out there" to provide an unyielding standard with which to measure any speech, Callicles falls short and is repugnant. By contrast, there is no basis given within Protagoras' worldview to criticize him. A similar situation obtains for the Protagorean view of religion. For the Sophist there is no possibility of blasphemy. Human beings share, we are told, in a portion of divinity. But this means that they are like Athena and Hephaestus, the two gods who make things. Human beings make their own world. They even make their own religion; they "construct altars and statues." As such, there is nothing to prevent them from manipulating religion for their own benefits, from using it, for example, to give credibility to any public endeavor. In fact, Protagoras does exactly this at the end of his story. He encourages his students to go to a temple to declare what they believe Protagoras' instruction is worth (328al). In other words, he uses religion to imbue his own profession with respectability.15 The view put forth by Protagoras is in fundamental opposition to logos. Logos, according to Protagoras, is a false and stultifying barrier to flourishing. In his view human beings are power seekers, political men seeking to enhance themselves. They are not driven toward a purpose except that of operating skillfully in the political realm. Logos, then, is a fraud according to the sophistic credo. Protagoras does not explicitly say this. But his deliberate manipulation, his artful deceit, his contempt for the Socratic question, imply it. For Protagoras the only constraint on human behavior is that it not interfere with social harmony, the essential condition for human survival. But given that one stricture, if it can even be called that, the door is open to anything. As such, Protagoras' is an unstable world where human achievement depends on the struggle for power. And power is best

64 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD achieved through language, through rhetoric. If Protagoras himself vacillates on the question of techne, he does so deliberately in order to combat Socrates: he does not want Socrates, the incarnation of logos, to pin him down to a specific conception of arete. This is because he does not think arete can or should be pinned down. It is not a matter of logos. Instead, arete floats, it shifts with the changing currents of popular opinion. In a similar fashion, his own story shifts ground continually. Its form mirrors its content. If the world is in flux, so, too, is his story. Indeed, this is exactly what Protagoras teaches: how to mold one's speeches to fit the appropriate occasion; how to respond to the indeterminate set of circumstances that continually, and unpredictably, arise; how, in other words, to win the battle for survival that occurs in human political life. The world of human significance—of values, purposes, and meaning— which for Aristotle can and should become an object of rational inspection, is for Protagoras a battlefield. (2) Descartes' Provisional Morality Logos began by asserting its unconditional goodness. It was convinced that it, and it alone, could heal, could make us whole and well. But logos discovered that it had enemies. Since it is in its very nature to welcome challenges to itself, logos entered into battle to defend its claim. And so logos, in the person of Socrates, went to visit and interrogate Protagoras. The Sophist responded to the Socratic challenge with an attack of his own. He showed himself to be a relativist who teaches and practices rhetoric. By offering his own "worldview," one that features man the maker in a battle for survival, he conspires to usurp the throne logos had occupied. Logos will soon angrily respond; this is certain. Before proceeding to that, however, the challenge to logos, which has come from a fellow Greek, needs reformulation. A continual aim of this book is to demonstrate how modern ideas often mirror ancient ones. I have already tried to indicate how Nietzsche, and by extension Derrida and Rorty (each of whom attacks logos), actually reformulate basic themes of Greek sophistry. Next I hope to show that the challenge to logos is not isolated to this subversive fringe of contemporary thought. Instead, it is intrinsic to the very basis of modernity.41' We turn now to Descartes, the great French philosopher and mathematician of the seventeenth century. He is one of the principal architects and prophets of the modern scientific worldview. As such, he is a mainstream modern thinker and hardly a "deconstructionist." Nevertheless, we will

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 65 find that, despite the fact that in one sense Descartes is a "hyper-rationalist," he too attacks logos with a passion. Furthermore, the consequences of his attack are surprisingly similar to some of the basic ideas latent in Protagoras' great story. In 1637 Descartes wrote Discourse on Method. It is in part an intellectual autobiography. This does not mean that the book faithfully reports all the many details of Descartes' life. Instead, in the form of a fable, Descartes describes certain pivotal moments that helped to formulate his basic stance toward the world.47 He starts with his early education. I have been raised on letters from my childhood, and because I was convinced that through them one might acquire a clear and steady knowledge of everything that is useful for life, I possessed a tremendous desire to learn them. But, as soon as I completed this entire course of study, at the end of which one is ordinarily received into the ranks of the learned, I changed my mind entirely. For I was embarrassed by so many doubts and errors, which appeared in no way to profit me in my attempt at learning, except that more and more I discovered my ignorance (p. 4).

Descartes was raised in the best schools of Renaissance France. He eventually rejected his traditional or "scholastic" education, which here he calls "letters." In our terms, we might say he had a training in the classical liberal arts. His curriculum was based to a large extent on the writings of Aristotle as they had been assimilated and systematized throughout the medieval period. For the purposes of this chapter, it is enough to say that Descartes rejected Aristotle, or classical logos, when he "changed his mind entirely" about the value of his education. Before we proceed to the reasons for Descartes' conversion, note well the words he uses to describe the original expectations he had brought to his education. He hopes to gain a "clear and steady knowledge of everything that is useful for life." It is not surprising to find that Descartes desires clarity, since this is something most of us strive for in our quest for knowledge. (Although it should be remembered that Aristotle, in his discussion of the degree of precision to be expected in various studies, believes that clarity is not equally forthcoming in every subject.) But what does Descartes mean by "steady" (assuree)? Presumably, that which is reliable, secure, without variance. Finally, Descartes also wants knowledge to be useful for life. But useful for what aspect of life? We will have to read further. At this point, only observe that in no way does Descartes argue that these three criteria—clarity, steadiness, and usefulness—are appropriate in the search for knowledge. He simply asserts and is guided by them from the outset.

66 Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD Descartes is quite specific about his verdict on the subjects he studied at school: I realized that the languages one learns there [in school] are necessary for the understanding of classical texts; that the gracefulness of the fables awakens the mind and read with discretion they aid in forming one's judgment; that reading good books is like a conversation with the noblest people of past centuries—their authors—indeed, a studied conversation in which one discovers only the best of their thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable power and beauty; that poetry has a ravishing delicacy and sweetness; that mathematics contains very subtle inventions that can serve as much to satisfy the curious as to facilitate the arts and to diminish men's labor; that writings dealing with morals contain many lessons and exhortations to virtue that are quite useful; that theology teaches how to go to heaven; that philosophy provides the means of speaking with probability about all things and of being held in admiration by the less learned (pp. 5—6). Each of the items on this list is briefly commented upon, and the comments seem positive. In fact, however, as the book unfolds it becomes clear that Descartes is being ironic here. For example, it sounds as if studying languages, the first subject mentioned, is a good idea: after all, they are necessary for "understanding classical texts." But what if, on the basis of the Discourse as a whole, it can be shown that Descartes rejects the value of classical texts? This would imply that the praise of languages he offers here is deceptive; it is a screen behind which he hides his true contempt for a subject that in his day was widely accepted as an essential feature of a good education. Or take the third item, reading good books. This is said to be like a "conversation" with the best minds of the past. But what if Descartes later formulates a method that is antithetical to conversation? Again, the apparent praise of the passage above would be undercut. I suggest that precisely this undercutting occurs in several of the items on the list.48 Descrates barely hides his contempt for "philosophy," by which he means that type of logos practiced by Aristotle. Philosophy teaches men how "to speak with probability (vraisemblablement) about all things." We will soon see that probability is a highly pejorative term for Descartes since, in his final analysis, it should be treated as equivalent to error. Thus, without sounding too harsh about a venerated master, with this single comment Descartes has heaped the worst blame possible upon Aristotle. The only subject that meets with unaffected enthusiasm on the list is mathematics. Mathematics has two features to commend it, one theoretical and the other practical. It "satisfies the curious." When a solution is achieved to a mathematical problem, it is unambiguous. Mathematics

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

67

broaches no doubt. Its answers are clear and steady and as such it is theoretically satisfying. Furthermore, many of these solutions can be applied. This is what Descartes refers to when he speaks of "the arts" (in Greek, "technai") which "diminish men's labor." He is thinking of "the mechanical arts" or what today we might call engineering. To a large extent such arts require the application of mathematical principles in activities designed to achieve some goal that is determined to be useful. In the introduction we have already noted the connection between mathematics and techne, and it is precisely this link that inspired Descartes in school. As he makes quite explicit later in the text, it was mathematics that would guide him throughout his career: I took especially great pleasure in mathematics because of the certainty and evidence of its arguments. But I did not notice its true usefulness and, thinking that it seemed useful only to the mechanical arts, I was astonished that, because its foundations were so solid and firm, no one had built anything more noble upon them. On the other hand, I compared the writings of the ancient pagans who discuss morals to very proud and magnificent palaces that are built on nothing but sand and mud. They place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear to be valued more than anything else in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them (pp. 7-8). Descartes here explicitly contrasts the certainty and firmness of mathematics with the "writings of the ancient pagans who discuss morals." The latter phrase comes close to referring to logos itself.49 To highlight this contrast Descartes invokes a metaphor soon to become prominent in his book: architecture. Mathematics is founded on principles that are clear and distinct. Because of this "steadiness" it offers a firm foundation upon which an "epistemological edifice" grounded on mathematical certainty can be constructed. By contrast, the ancients built palaces on sand. They elevated the virtues to the highest degree, but never explained exactly (precisely, clearly) what they were and how they could be known. The ancient version of logos, in other words, was groundless, based on nothing firm. It did not know itself; it thought itself a magnificent palace, whereas in fact it was nothing but sand and mud. This is the heart of Descartes' prophetic tirade against logos. Descartes despises logos and wishes to transform it radically. We have seen that Aristotle insists that logos can articulate the right and the wrong. We have seen the protreptic logos culminate in praise of the goodness of itself. Or, to use Descartes' phrase from above, the protreptic logos "contain[s] many lessons and exhortations to virtue that are quite useful." But useful for what? Certainly not for what Descartes has in mind. We

68 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD have also seen Aristotle admit that his logos of values cannot attain the same level of precision as mathematics. The nature of the subject matter does not allow for it. This is what Descartes hates. This is why, when we strip away his polite language, he is really thundering against logos here: "You speak with such confidence about what is good, what is naturally the best; and yet you produce nothing clear and certain. You know nothing about yourself, not even where you dwell, and yet you dare to speak for us all." To use Descartes' own, more measured, words, "I shall say only that, aware that philosophy has been cultivated over several centuries by the most excellent minds . . . there is nothing about which there is not some dispute—and thus nothing that is not doubtful" (p. 8). To reiterate an earlier point, the three original criteria proposed for knowledge—clarity, steadiness, and usefulness—were taken by Descartes to be self-evident. They predisposed him to reject Aristotle. In the citation above we see him invoking a further criterion, certainty, which itself is a refinement of the notions of clarity and firmness. Armed with these weapons he bombards logos which, it is quite true, does not achieve mathematical certainty. Logos makes visible objects in the world. Because these objects vary in kind it does not consistently attain the highest level of precision. As Aristotle says about the results achieved in his Nicomachean Ethics, the treatise whose object of study is the political or social dimension of human being, "It will be satisfactory in this particular kind of study to show the truth roughly and in outline and, since we are speaking from and about something that only usually holds good, to make our conclusions in a similar manner." In Descartes' view to admit the probability of one's results is equivalent to admitting failure. Probability, however, is only a defect if it can be argued, and not simply asserted, that certainty and the highest degree of precision are both possible and desirable in all subjects. But such an argument is not provided in the Discourse. Instead, Descartes states, "I took to be virtually false everything that was merely probable" (p. 8). As a result, he rejected logos. Let me digress a moment to situate Descartes' complaint a bit more precisely within the context of classical thought. In Plato's dialogue, the Phaedo, Socrates addresses (among other things) a traditional philosophical subject, the immortality of the soul. Exactly as Descartes describes it, there is dispute, doubt, and a lack of certainty in this conversation that Socrates has with his friends. At one point, when the dialogue has hit a particularly difficult turn and the conversants are confused, Socrates digresses to discuss what he terms "misology," which means "hatred of logos." He offers an analogy between misology and misanthropy, which

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 69 he says come about in the same way. The latter arises when someone who is excessively and unreasonably trusting in other human beings is continually disappointed in his relationships with others. After enough disappointments such a man finally ends up trusting no one and hating everyone. Analogously, when someone has an excessive faith in the capacity of logos to articulate the truth and is then sorely disappointed when logos repeatedly seems false to him, he runs the risk of becoming a misologist, one who believes that no logos can ever be truthful or secure. According to Socrates, for whom logos is our best hope for happiness, there is no greater evil. To guard against misanthropy, Socrates continues, we require knowledge of human beings and must accept the fact that most are neither extremely good nor bad but somewhere in-between. A proper orientation toward human possibility will protect us from excessive disappointment and misanthropy. Similarly, knowledge of logos will protect us from the danger of misology. Socrates does not elaborate on the nature of this knowledge. I suggest, however, that Aristotle's teaching on the level of precision in various subject can be useful here. To remain "philologists," friends of logos, we must understand that given the nature of the different objects we study, the same level of precision is not to be expected in all subjects. If, for example, mathematical certainty is used as the standard to measure ethics then the logos of human values will indeed seem false and misology, at least with regard to this particular sphere, will ensue. Descartes wants all subjects to achieve the same kind of certainty attained by mathematics. He is the prime example of one whose expectations of logos are enormous and, therefore, from a classical perspective, his understanding of the nature of logos is flawed. Since Descartes concludes that those "ancient pagans who discussed morals" failed to meet his standard, he abandons their enterprise altogether; he becomes a misologist. This does not imply that he abandons the quest for knowledge; it means that he relinquishes the desire of attaining knowledge in those areas where logos had once held sway, namely the realm of human significance and value. He comes to hate the "magnificent palaces" built only on sand, the claims of logos to articulate what is good and bad/>0 To return to the Discourse: As a result of his unhappiness with the traditional curriculum, Descartes "dropped out." That is why, as soon as age permitted me to escape the tutelage of my teachers, I left the study of letters completely. And resolving to search for no more knowledge than what I could find within myself, or rather in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling . . . (p. 9).

70 Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD As have young people of all generations, Descartes sought knowledge in his travels throughout Europe. But this experience was also disappointing. It is true that, while I spent time merely observing the customs of other men, I found hardly anything about which to be confident and that I noticed there was about as much diversity as I had earlier found among the opinions of the philosophers (p. 10).

The comparison Descartes makes here is extraordinary. He likens the diversity and conflict found in philosophical debate to that which he encountered in the world through which he traveled. The human world is rich, continually at odds with itself, surprising. People disagree and parade their differences in both speech and violence. There is no reprieve from the continual and contentious flow of life. Traditional philosophical dialogue, as Descartes says, is similar. Attempts to discuss the old questions about the value and meaning of life usually end in disagreement or lead to further questions. Such conversations are unpredictable; digressions are necessary, new issues emerge, objections are shouted. At best probable and tentative conclusions are reached. This was the basis for Descartes' disenchantment with logos. The living world through which Descartes traveled failed to satisfy him for precisely the same reasons. Philosophy, logos in the classical sense, mirrors life. To the exigencies of both life and philosophy he prefers the steadiness of mathematics. Descartes was in Germany when his next great moment occurred. The onset of winter held me up in quarters where, finding no conversation with which to be diverted and, fortunately, otherwise having no needs or passions which troubled me, I remained for a whole day by myself in a stove-heated room, where I had complete leisure for communing with my thoughts. Among them, one of the first that I thought of considering was that often there is less perfection in works made of many pieces and in works made by the hands of several masters than in those works on which but one master has worked. Thus one sees that buildings undertaken and completed by a single architect are commonly more beautiful and better ordered than those that several architects have tried to patch up, using old walls that had been built for other purposes (p. 11).

Descartes reports that alone in his stove-heated room he devised a method with which to order his intelligence and construct his scientific edifice. What is perhaps more important than the details of his method itself is the way Descartes describes discovering it. He did it alone. He, quite happily, was free from all conversation. Remember what was said concerning a passage from Aristotle's Politics: Logos is natural and best

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 71

for human beings. We are "meant" to talk with one another about what is right and wrong. Indeed, this is the soul of a political community. Such talk will never lead to absolute certainty and so will not dissolve all the questions and doubts we have about what constitutes a good and meaningful life. But such talk, the very activity itself, tells us who we are and can thus make us happy. Descartes rejects this view. Only when he is removed from the world, free from conversation, can he commune with his own thoughts. The architectural metaphor is prominent here. A typical city is a motley patchwork of styles and buildings constructed over the years by many architects. Descartes envisions something better: a single architect designing a totally unified city. Such a design would be more like a mathematical proof than a rollicking conversation.^ The details of Descartes' actual method, as presented in the Discourse, are sketchy.52 He states four of its "rules." The first was never to accept anything as true that I did not know evidently to be so; that is, carefully avoid precipitous judgment and prejudice; and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind with such clarity and distinctness that I would have no occasion to put it in doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties I was examining into as many parts as possible and as is required to solve them best. The third, to conduct my thoughts in an orderly fashion, commencing with the simplest and easiest to know objects, to rise gradually, as by degrees, to the knowledge of the most composite things . . . And last, everywhere to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I would be sure of having omitted nothing (pp. 18-19).

The last three rules represent procedures similar to those used in any mathematical or axiomatic system. From a simple beginning more complex propositions are generated. Each step must be carefully stated so that checks can be made and error avoided. What is really of most interest is the first rule. The beginning must be beyond doubt; it must be totally certain. Only when that is achieved can the generation of propositions properly commence. This is why he says, "I thought that I ought, above all, to try to establish something certain" (p. 22). If Descartes can construct a firm foundation, then he can build the edifice of modern science which, unlike the palaces of the ancients, will endure. The search for a certain beginning takes us to the famous dictum "I

72

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

think, therefore I am" (p. 32). This self-affirmation of the mind's existence is utterly certain because, unlike all other statements, even in the very act of doubting it the statement itself is affirmed. Doubting itself is a kind of thinking; therefore, that "I think" cannot be doubted. Unlike thousands of introductory philosophy students, however, let us not concentrate on analyzing the validity of this famous argument. Instead, let us focus on the context in which it is presented; and that is the quest for utter certainty. Descartes' systematic search for a first indubitable principle is guided by his admonition, "reject as absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt" (p. 31). But what does he sacrifice in order to achieve his goal or even just to commence his quest? To characterize that which is the least bit dubious as absolutely false is to declare war on logos. Logos is the commitment to articulating the real world, not only of material bodies in motion or of mathematical relationships, but of values, of purposes, of living ends. When it deals with these questions, which I have labeled the world of human significance, it does not attain certainty. Therefore, it is precisely these questions that must be sacrificed by Cartesian methodology. It should be remembered that Descartes himself makes a comparison between traditional philosophy, the very act of asking questions about the realm of human significance, and his travels through Europe. The "real world" he visited is like philosophy in its ambiguities and disagreements. Therefore, not only does Descartes declare war on logos in order to achieve his scientific objectives, he declares war on human life. He severs life from his revolutionary conception of reason. He negates the hope of ever attaining knowledge, "real" knowledge in his prophetic sense, about the realm of human significance. This is made apparent, not only by his solitary happiness in a stove-heated room, but also in what he calls his "provisional morality." Now just as it is not enough, before beginning to rebuild the house where one lives, to pull it down, to make provisions for materials and architects, or to take a try at architecture for oneself. . . one must provide for something else in addition, namely where one can be conveniently sheltered while working on the other building; so too, in order not to remain irresolute in my actions while reason requires me to be so in my judgments, and in order not to cease living during that time as happily as possible, I formulated a provisional code of morals, which consisted of but three or four maxims (p. 22). When it comes to knowledge Descartes is guided by the principle, if X is doubtful or probable, then X should be counted as false. If this principle were applied to actions taken in the world or to value judgments made

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 73 about those actions, Descartes would become "irresolute"; his beliefs and opinions about these matters are at least partially dubious. There is, presumably, something about this "subject" of actions and values (the realm of human significance) that does not lend itself to certain resolution. Such irresolution, however, would not be convenient for the work that Descartes takes most seriously, namely the pursuit of certain knowledge. Therefore, some provisional form of morality must be devised to manage the unruly, and unwanted, vagaries of life. The key point is this: The manner in which Descartes treats the human realm of action and value is exactly opposite to the manner in which he enters into his quest for knowledge. In the latter, if X is probable, X is rejected. In the former, probability is all there is. And what are Descartes' rules for action? Only the first two need concern us. The first was to obey the laws and the customs of my country, firmly holding on to the religion in which, by God's grace, I was instructed from childhood, and governing myself in all other things according to the most moderate opinions and those furthest from excess that were commonly accepted in practice by the most sensible of those people with whom I had to live . . . My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I could be, and to follow with no less constancy the most doubtful opinions, once I have decided on them, than if they were quite certain . . . (p. 25) The provisional code is really quite simple: when in Iowa do as the most sensible lowans do. When in New York, where the behavior is quite different, shift accordingly. Of course, this raises the question, how do we figure out who "the most sensible" really are? For Descartes, the answer seems to be by observing what most people are doing and what types of behavior are frowned upon. On the basis of such observations it is possible to imitate the accepted practices of the community. The second maxim teaches us to adhere to a decision once it is made even if it is not certainly known that the decision is correct. If, for example, one observes that lowans seem not to approve of overt displays of hostility and then tentatively concludes that he himself should avoid such displays, he should adhere firmly to this conclusion even though it is only probably correct; it is too inconvenient to vacillate. What is needed is a way of getting by in the affairs of life, not a way of discovering what is best to do. To reiterate, what is most striking here is that the procedure for treating values is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge. When it comes to values, we have to lie, to act as if there is certainty when there is not. Values, life, ordinary language, the entire realm of human

74 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD significance, is drained of the hope for knowledge. They are relegated to the junkpile of the irrational. We reach now the great affinity between Descartes and Protagoras, between the modern scientific view and ancient sophistry. Both drain from the world of human significance all hope of becoming a matter of knowledge. Both decertify logos, rob it of its authority, render it mute on the old questions (Is my life any good? What am I missing? What should I do?). Descartes fills the void created by the absence of logos with his provisional morality. Protagoras fills it with rhetoric. For the Sophist, life is a power struggle and rhetoric is therefore the privileged form of human speech. His great story describes human beings as strictly material creatures for whom survival and communal security are the highest goals. He does battle against Socrates who represents the urge to attain knowledge about what is a truly good human life. Unlike Protagoras, Descartes is a hyper-rationalist. He wants to achieve mathematical certainty in his scientific work and understand the material world fully. But this work is severed from his life as a human being in the polis. The world of breathing humanity is abandoned by Descartes and left to fend for itself. His own stance is to adopt the provisional code. This means that finally he, too, adopts a form of relativism: when in Iowa do as the lowans do. The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a "flipside," a complementary set of views which it generates as its train. And this is its misology, sophistry, its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. There is thus a quite literal type of schizophrenia in the world bequeathed to us by the Cartesians. It is, on the one hand, hyper-rational; it seeks to extend the purview of mathematical physics throughout the universe. On the other hand, it relegates the world in which the physicist himself dwells, the unique world of humanity and its communities, to the junkpile of the irrational. We who know so much are prohibited from knowing ourselves.*3 There are (at least) two possible objections to my reading of Descartes. First, the provisional code is, after all, provisional. It might seem, then, that once Descartes discovers his first principles he can add ethics to his scientific edifice. To shift metaphors, once the roots of knowledge are firmly in place, then a fruitful tree can arise, one of whose branches is "morals." I will not directly address this objection because its treatment would require too great an analysis of Descartes' other works (especially The Passions of the Soul and its discussion of "generosity"). I must therefore simply assert that I agree with those scholars who believe that "Descartes'

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 75 definitive morality is the same as his provisional morality, which is to say that morality remains incomplete."51 The second objection to my account is this: Descartes does not sever reason from human life. He can reconnect the two; after all, one of the three criteria animating his quest for knowledge is usefulness. [T]hese general notions show me that it is possible to arrive at knowledge that is very useful in life and that in place of the speculative philosophy taught in the Schools, one could find a practical one, by which, knowing the force and the actions of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens . .. just as we understand the various skills of our craftsmen, we could, in the same way, use these objects for all the purposes for which they are appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature (pp. 61-62).

The knowledge, certain and precise, that Descartes hopes to achieve and then apply is mathematical physics. He is explicit here: Such application is like "the various skills of our craftsmen"; it is techne in its ubiquitious modern guise, namely the application of mathematical knowledge of the material world. With his techne, which will replace the "speculative philosophy taught in the schools" (in other words, logos), Descartes hopes to conquer nature, reduce it to a slave, force it to remedy human life with "an infinity of devices that enable us to enjoy without pain the fruits of the earth" (p. 62). His principal example is medicine: I am sure that there is no one, not even among those in the medical profession who would not admit that everything we know is almost nothing in comparsion to what remains to be known, and that we might rid ourselves of an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even perhaps also the enfeeblement brought on by old age, were one to have a sufficient knowledge of their causes (p. 62)

It is easy to imagine words such as these being spoken by a contemporary medical researcher. Recent scientific work on the genetic basis of aging might even give some grounds for thinking Descartes right: there may indeed be hope that the enfeeblement of old age can be conquered by science. But even if Descartes was sincerely animated by the goal of using science to help human beings, even if his admonition to master nature is construed as a moral imperative, his solution still cannot satisfy. What can guide the Cartesian doctor? How should the knowledge gained in the Cartesian quest, how should techne, be applied? Should, for example, life always be extended by the application of medical technology? Descartes cannot answer; he provides nothing to guide the application process other than his provisional morality. If all the doctors in Iowa do X, then the Cartesian doctor should do X as well. Not because X can be

76 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD demonstrated to be a good thing to do, but because others do it. Techne, in such a scheme, will run unchecked; there is no conception of knowledge capable of regulating it. The Cartesian doctor may know her physics well, but will be strictly prohibited from knowing herself as a member of the human community. It should now be clear that Descartes' provisional morality parallels the subversive denial of the efficacy and goodness of logos. The subversives (at least those following Nietzsche) lack the Cartesian's faith in science.55 Nevertheless, these two pivotal tendencies of the twentieth-century, one so apparently hyper-rational, the other so contemptuous of the proud claims of reason, are actually "flip sides" of a single coin. For Descartes, if X is probable, then X should be treated as false. If the realm of human significance cannot be cleansed of all probability (and much of what is to follow in this book is meant to show this) it can never be approached with the aim of attaining certain knowledge. That realm must, therefore, be relegated to the irrational. "All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them." Thus speaks Nietzsche's Zarathustra.Db And Descartes would agree. By draining the human world of the possibility of becoming rational, Descartes carves out the space now occupied so noisily by the subversives. As has been stated and implied throughout this chapter, such a stance toward the human world, which has been called relativism, is unacceptable. It transforms the questions of value and significance into irrelevancies. It denudes the human realm of all hope of knowledge and thus allows men like Protagoras and Callicles to enter the vacuum created by the banishment of logos and fill it with their sophistic strategems for gaining power. It replaces logos with rhetoric and so prepares the way for thinkers like Rorty and Derrida. It is dangerously offensive and must be fought. (3) Spinoza's Critique of Teleology Logos has been attacked, first by Protagoras and, then, in a modern formulation, by Descartes. The attacks have different origins and motivations, but their consequences are surprisingly similar. Descartes rejects logos because it does not achieve the certainty he craves. He replaces it with his own conception of rationality, one modeled essentially on mathematics. He is a hyper-rationalist who wants to construct a wellgrounded scientific edifice.57 In wanting to do so he denudes the uniquely human realm of action of any hope of being made rational; mathematics,

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 77 after all, is mute on the questions of human goals, values, and significance. As a result, Descartes comes to share Protagoras' view that the human realm is without rational purpose (except for survival or convenience). For the Sophist, life is a power struggle in which the forces of the intellect should be marshaled, not to discover the truth, but to defeat one's opponent on the political battlefield. Although he is not nearly as forthright about this, there is nothing in Descartes' Discourse on Method to oppose this sophistic teaching. His provisional morality indicates that the questions of life are to be relegated to the junkpile of the irrational. Once this move is made, there is no obstacle left to impede, to limit or regulate, the powerful desires of a man like Callicles. A third variation on this theme now follows. We turn to Spinoza, a near contemporary of Descartes and a fellow-builder of the modern world. In a short section of his largest work (one whose title bespeaks the very issue we are now considering), Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (published around 1680), he expresses clearly his enormous hostility to teleology, which we have already identified as the lifeblood of classical logos. Spinoza is a critic forging a new vision of science, one that will arise on the ashes of an old world torn down. He, too, is a prophet predicting well the demise of the old king and the arrival of the new. "All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end" (Appendix, Part I, p. 439).>K With these words Spinoza clearly states the basis of his assault. The old way, the way of logos, had assumed that nature, the world out there, was like human beings. We saw this well in Aristotle: his vision was of a familiar world in which humanity was at home and welcome. His was a world where ordinary language was ordinal and could faithfully reflect that of which it speaks. Nature, like us, "acted" purposively. Therefore, the goal of any study of a natural object (including human beings) would include the discovery of purposes (or "final causes"). This assimilation of the natural and the external to the internal and subjective is what Spinoza blames as the chief cause of error. Aristotle thought that the world was like us ... and according to the most basic assumptions of modern science it is not. What is interesting about Spinoza's analysis of this fundamental error is that he views it as emerging from what is typically thought of as human nature itself: "I shall begin by considering this one prejudice, asking first why most people are satisfied that it is true, and why all are so inclined by nature to embrace it" (p. 440; emphasis mine). Human nature, or at least human beings as they ordinarily suppose themselves to be, causes human beings to misunderstand nature. Why?

78

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD [A]ll men are born ignorant of the causes of things . . . all want to seek their own advantage, and are conscious of this appetite. From these [assumptions] it follows, first, that men think themselves free, because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think, even in their dreams, of the causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant [of those causes]. It follows, secondly, that men act always on account of an end, viz. on account of their advantage, which they want (p. 440).

Two facets of human existence are noted by Spinoza. We are ignorant, and conscious that we are ignorant, of the causes of things. Second, we desire what is useful. Since we are ignorant of the cause of our own desiring, we think we are free. When we, for example, desire a drink and "decide" to move toward the faucet for some water, we think that we, as the locus of that desire, are the free originators of the action. Furthermore, since this action is the consequence of a desire, its aim is to achieve what is deemed to be useful to us. Since we are as equally ignorant of the "causes" of water as we are of our own desire, we might falsely suppose that the purpose of water is to quench our thirst. If we recall the protreptic argument offered earlier, we can see that Spinoza agrees with it to a certain extent. He assumes that human beings act with an aim in view; we aim for some benefit, something that is taken to be useful and good. The protreptic logos assumed that this phenomenon was inherently revealing of the way the world really is. For Spinoza, this fact of human intentionality is but the misleading and superficial appearance of our lives. We seem to be free and to move toward what we think is useful. But, in fact, we are not free. Spinoza is a strict determinist. He thinks we are not the free originators of our actions. Instead, we are part of an enormous network of causes and effects over which we have no control. Spinoza's vast explanation of this thesis in the Ethics is well beyond the limits of this chapter. Instead, we need only to consider what for many readers is surely a common enough thought: our sense of being free is a consequence of our ignorance. We think, we feel, we believe, we are free agents, but are not. We delude ourselves. In a similar fashion we delude ourselves about the world out there. Men, . . . necessarily judge the temperament of other men from their own temperament. Furthermore, they find—both in themselves and outside themselves—many means that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish . . . Hence, they consider all natural things as a means to their own advantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not provided them for themselves, they had reason

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

79

to believe that there was someone else who had prepared those means for their use. For after they considered these things as means, they could not believe that the things had made themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use . . . Thus this prejudice was changed into superstition and struck deep roots in their minds. This was why each of them strove with great diligence to understand and explain the final causes of all things (440-441).

Spinoza here attacks the religious belief in a loving God who created the world for the benefit of humanity. Such a belief is a far cry from any that Aristotle would entertain. Nevertheless, in this paragraph we can see how Spinoza's attack would apply, not only to religious "superstition," but to all teleological explanation and thus to logos in general. Any philosophical enterprise that takes its bearings from ordinary language, which is loaded with beliefs in purposes and values, is fundamentally misguided and indeed is no more than superstition. Spinoza's goal is methodically to replace teleological language with one that is purified of all taint of anthropomorphism: the mathematical language of science. Human beings, because of their ignorance of the world, believe that since various objects are useful to them, such usefulness is part of the nature of those objects. The sun sustains life; the eyes are useful for seeing. Ignorant humans falsely infer from these facts that the sun was made (by God) in order to sustain life and the eye was made for seeing. Aristotle would deny that "God" made the sun. For a variety of reasons intrinsic to his conception of teleology, he would not make even a truncated version of the first claim (the purpose of the sun is to sustain life).39 But (if we subtract God the maker) he would be perfectly happy with the second: the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have no purposes. They are all material beings obeying the laws of mechanical necessity. To think these objects do have purpose is to confuse the way we appear to act with the way the world really is; it is to be misled by the surface shine of ordinary experience and language. Teleological thinking, according to Spinoza, imposes a poorly understood, or ordinary, conception of human desire onto the larger tableau of a nonhuman world: "What is called a final cause is nothing but a human appetite insofar as it is considered as a principle, or primary cause, of some thing" (p. 544). Spinoza believes that his discovery of a world without purposes might have remained "hidden from the human race to eternity, if Mathematics, which is concerned not with ends, but only with essences and properties

8o LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD of things, had not shown men another standard of truth" (p. 441). Precisely like Descartes, Spinoza takes his bearings from mathematics. Mathematics, ever mute on purposes, cleanses the imagination of all false notions of final causality. Therefore, by fixing our gaze on the necessary deductions of geometry, we can learn that "Nature has no end set before it, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions" (p. 442). The troika of characters who comprise this chapter can now be yoked. Spinoza's critique of teleology shares much with Descartes' provisional morality. Both deny that the values and purposes of human life are capable of being understood in their own terms by ordinary language. Since both men are rationalists they believe that values and purposes can be understood—but not as values and purposes. They can be understood as motions of material body parts such as the brain or heart; they cannot be understood as independent principles that guide and regulate free human behavior. Like Descartes, Spinoza can be affiliated with Protagoras; that is, the consequences of his teaching for the world of human significance are sophistic. For Protagoras, man, made from earth and fire, is "man the maker." All cultural phenomena, including language, religion, and purposes, are "fictions." They are devices manufactured to achieve the end of communal survival. Purposes are subjective productions imposed upon a world in which they have no natural place. Protagoras is a rhetorician. He teaches his students how to become "big men" in the city, how to persuade others to accept those particular purposes they happen to champion. Although Spinoza seems to teach something far different, when it comes to interpreting the human world he arrives at a similar conclusion: It is a realm empty of rational hope, awaiting the strong desires of those who are powerful enough to take charge. Spinoza's teaching leads to two possible outcomes for the human realm of purposes. First, that realm could become an object of knowledge. This implies that it could be fully assimilated to mathematical science. ("I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, bodies" [p. 492]). However, since mathematics is not itself ideological and human experience, as people are "inclined by nature to embrace it," is, then the Spinozistic vision would transform the human world into something far different from what it ordinarily takes itself to be. In other words, if mathematical science is the only paradigm of knowledge, and if the human world is something to be known, then it must become an object of mathematical science. But, as Spinoza himself seems to grant, we are not "inclined by nature" to think of ourselves as such objects. Our language, our ordinary desires and experience, all tell

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

81

against such a mathematical interpretation of ourselves. (The evidence for such a claim? Simply ask, do you feel yourself, experience your goals, desires, hopes, loves, do you explain yourself, in mathematical terms?) Therefore, given Spinoza's conception of knowledge, to make the human world knowable would require reconstituting it totally, transforming it into something unrecognizable. (The above is not in itself a successful argument against Spinoza. It would only succeed as such an argument if it further explained why ordinary experience deserves to be treated as a standard. What, in other words, privileges the ordinary in measuring claims to knowledge?) The second possible outcome is that the human experience of purposes would be interpreted as bereft of all rational content. Again, Spinoza himself seems to believe that insofar as we pertain to ordinary language and to the surface appearance of our lives, human beings seem to make value judgments, assume they are free, seek purposes. But if human experience were to be properly understood in a Spinozistic manner it would be treated as devoid of all purposes. But what then would happen to that experience? It would have to be treated as an aberration, held in contempt as a form of self-delusion that denies the mechanical workings of the universe. It would have to be taken as something that needs to be subdued. Human experience would have to be excluded from that which can be understood. Given either of the two options, then, modern science is quite literally dehumanizing. (It should be mentioned that if the above is at all correct, then once again the link between modern science and the contemporary subversives has been clarified: both agree that the human world of purposes is not to be understood, is not to be regulated by a rationally determined Good.) The triumphs of modern science are, of course, magnificent. The computers never cease to fascinate and the prospects for the manipulation of the genetic structures of animals and plants stagger the imagination. But what do we know of the scientist and the purposive world in which she experiences herself as dwelling? According to Spinoza, nothing. We either reconstitute that experience so that it can be expressed in mathematical terms—we turn human beings into objects that can be treated, or perhaps even engineered, by mathematical science; or we dismiss such experience as incomprehensible—we agree with Nietzsche that morality is not an arena in which reason plays a significant role.

82 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD Spinoza, like Descartes, is a thundering prophet. He mounts against logos a comprehensive criticism. He accuses logos of not knowing itself. Logos believes it is rationally self-sufficient, that it can defend, and not simply assert, its claim to goodness. But Descartes and Spinoza, who begin with criteria for knowledge such as clarity, certainty, steadiness, and usefulness, and end by making mathematics paradigmatic, launch a frontal assault on the self-confidence of logos. How does logos know that it does not, as Spinoza says, impose its own desires onto a world that is not really of its kind? How does it know that purposes are not fictions and that teleology, even of the sober Aristotelian variety, is not just superstition? Logos believes it is solid. How does it know that it is not just a palace built on sand? These are the questions that will be confronted next. C

THE RESPONSE OF LOGOS (1) The Argument from Self-Reference

Logos has been three ways attacked. The Sophist charges logos with falsely parading itself as a spokesman for a stable and structured world. By promising to locate an enduring reality outside of the vital rush of life logos, says Callicles, denies the human power of action. By seeking to discover those "values" that reside in the nature of things, logos loses touch with the valueless, ever-changing flux that is life. The result is weakness and disease. The result is Socrates. Descartes accuses logos of being without foundation. Like a palace built on sand, traditional philosophy was grounded on nothing firm. It chirped about all subjects, but in none did it achieve indubitable certainty. As a result, its talk never went beyond mere probability and so its only audience was the ignorant. Real knowledge, says Descartes, is modeled on mathematics. It is clear and steady. It is useful; it can, in its manifestation as technology, be applied to manipulate, even to master, nature. Spinoza attacks teleology, one of the great hopes of logos. For him, Aristotle's beautiful vision is nothing but contemptible anthropomorphism. To "find" purposes in nature is actually to project human desire onto an inhuman screen. It is to fabricate purposes, not discover them. Logos, in Spinoza's view, is a perverse extension of a specific desire humans typically, perhaps even naturally, have: to see themselves in the world. To elevate such a desire to the status of reason is fundamental error and superstition. Against such charges logos will react in sharp defense, for it has now been accused of the very crimes that it had once brought to bear against

Locos Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 83 its own enemies. Remember, in section l.A.3. a basic tactic (or moment) of logos in arguing for its unconditional goodness was through "The Indirect Argument." Here logos began with a premise directly contrary to its own belief: Logos is not unconditionally good. From such a beginning unacceptable consequences were generated and, as a result, the initial premise had to be rejected and logos's own assertion had to be accepted. The argument was this: If logos is not unconditionally good, then it is (at best) only conditionally good. If this is the case, there must be some condition that is capable of negating the goodness of logos. But this condition, this X, is not itself susceptible to rational articulation. Since it is an essential and unique task of logos to ask the "what-is-it" type of question, if logos is suspended by X, then the question, what is X?, cannot be answered. As a result, X is beyond the pale of rationality. It dwells in silence. As a result, if the initial premise were allowed to stand, logos would lose its stature. The X would hover constantly, threatening to uncover the mantle of authority with which logos was accustomed to drape itself. Logos would no longer, for example, be deemed final judge and arbiter of disputes about values. Such disputes would have to be settled by some other means (force, persuasion, whim, political or religious consensus). It was argued in I.A.3. that the position generated by the premise "logos is not unconditionally good" is relativism and that it is unacceptable because it denudes the critical question of value of all hope of rational resolution. Logos accused its enemy of being both false and pernicious, for relativism implies that value decisions are groundless; since they cannot be adjudicated by reason, they are based on nothing firm. Perhaps they are based on political authority or mere fancy. What X is, what that which conditionalizes and replaces logos is, cannot be articulated. And so, hidden from view, it shifts constantly. The result is a diminution of the human urge to know. The result is the groundlessness of value judgments and this, said logos, is disease; it is the distrust of the urge to speak about and know what is right and wrong. The result is chaos, for if value judgments are emptied of the hope of rational adjudication all that remains are individual desires competing against one another for power. In section l.A.3. logos sent out a call: "you who deny the unconditional goodness of logos pollute and must be banished. No one should admit you into their home. You are vile for you deny what is best about being human. You cheapen life, for you would plunge us all into the groundless dark. You make a mockery of the altogether typical and admirable urge to defend our values in rational dispute. You are shameful and should show your face no longer." But in the next section, I.B., logos was itself attacked with what is

84 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD very much the same charge. Coming from Protagoras (and Callicles), Descartes, and Spinoza, logos was called false, unhealthy, groundless, and but one desire among many. And so now logos is enraged: "How dare you say this! For it is I, not you, who want, more than anything, to be grounded on the firm foundation of truth. It is you, not I, who believe that desire alone should be a guide to life. You defame me with your charge. You are blind, three ways blind, to accuse me of what you yourself are so guilty." In more measured terms, logos will bring arguments to bear against its accusers. First is the argument from self-reference, which is similar to the indirect argument given above. Let us begin with the first of the three charges against logos, that brought by the sophistic relativism propounded by Callicles and Protagoras. The assertion here was that values and truths are relative; that there is no stable, non-human measure of the Good or the Truth; that there are only truths and goods relative to, dependent upon, the many human beings who uphold them. (To reiterate two points: The procedure of capitalizing the first letter of "Good" and "Truth" to indicate the position of logos is borrowed from Rorty who, needless to say, prefers lower-case letters.00 Second, the question of what type of relativism Protagoras holds is frequently a matter of scholarly debate. Is he a relativist only about values [an ethical relativist] or does he hold the same beliefs about knowledge and truth? [Is he also an epistemological relativist?] This type of question could be applied to Rorty and other Sophists as well. In this section I will follow Plato's lead, and take sophistry to be concerned with both values and truth.) Assume that sophistic relativism is correct. If so, it seems perfectly fair to ask that this doctrine be applied to, or refer to, itself. If this occurs, however, we discover that relativism cannot coherently refer to itself. If relativism is true, then relativism cannot be true. After all, as a doctrine it is the denial that any doctrine is truthful. Since this denial should apply to, refer to, itself, relativism is a doctrine that negates itself. Consider the proposition "truth is relative." If it is true, then it should apply to itself. If, however, the truth of that proposition is itself relative (to, for example, the person speaking it), then it is no longer true about the truth of all other propositions. Since the proposition does seem to make an assertion about the truth of other propositions, it suffers an internal breakdown; it cannot make sense of itself. If Protagoras is right that all human beings are measures of the truth,

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 85 then he himself is but one among many measures of the truth. And so when he says, "all human beings are measures of the truth," he is asserting, not the Truth, but only his own version of the truth. According to the very rules implied by Protagorean relativism, if one of the Sophist's opponents should then say, "YouYe wrong, Protagoras; only some human beings, those with knowledge, are measures of the Truth/' Protagoras could not coherently object by saying that his opponent is wrong. For the Sophist, all statements are, with regard to their truth, equal. There is no measure of truth or falsity. Since all statements are equally true, there is no substantial difference between saying "all human beings" or "some human beings" are measures of the truth. There is no difference between truth and Truth. Protagoras' position cannot defend itself intelligibly without contradicting and thus destroying itself. The Sophist is blind to his own incoherence. This blindness, this failure of self-reference, is the key to the demise of logos's prophetic accuser. As revealed in his great story, Protagorean relativism rests on a notion of materialistic flux. (This is also consistent with Socrates' analysis in Plato's dialogue, the Theaetetus.f1 The world is in constant change and turmoil; it is a purposeless game in which the sole object is to survive. Language (always a possible translation of "logos") is but one of many human productions used to create some island of apparent calm in the midst of the storm that is real life. But if this is so, then language cannot legitimately purport to assert a Truth about real life. If Protagorean relativism claims to be True, it claims to be independent of this flux. If the world is flux, and language is part of the world, then language is flux; if so, then language cannot coherently refer to a stable, nonflowing Truth. But this is what Protagoras does.(>2 As such, his doctrine fails the test of self-reference and merits the charge of incoherence. A third way of expressing the dilemma is this: if Protagoras is right, then all human beings are, in one sense, equal. Since there is no Truth, no human being is closer to the Truth, more truthful, than any other. Since there is no Good, no human being is Better than any other. We are, in this regard, all the same. In one regard only is there difference between people: some have the power to enforce their particular version of what is good upon others. But such an understanding of values is ludicrous and untenable: people have convictions, typically think that they are, and can show that they are, Better than others.63 There is an urge, strongly felt, to defend in public the values one champions. As his story shows, Protagoras himself believes that he himself is Better; after all, he offers to teach and thinks he can best Socrates in argument. His

86 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD very tone of voice indicates the great sense of superiority he feels in himself. Callicles explicitly believes this as well. Such beliefs, therefore, testify to a deep incoherence. It is possible, as we will see below, to be a coherent relativist. But it is not possible for the relativist coherently to operate under the auspices of reason in the attempt to defend the superiority of his position. His position advocates the equality (from the perspective of Truth) of all positions. As such, it is in principle indefensible. The relativist can, of course, argue in order to have this or that position adopted; he can also argue that this or that position is more in keeping with, for example, customary practice or with conventional religion; but he cannot argue that his position is really True as opposed to others that are False. Therefore, once the Sophist attempts to defend his position in a debate with Socrates, who is interested only in what is True, he is doomed to incoherence. Since Protagoras agrees to answer Socrates' question it becomes fair to ask that his relativistic position refer to itself; and this it cannot coherently do. This point can be illustrated by briefly discussing Richard Rorty. Rorty wants to straighten traditional philosophers (or "Platonists") out. They have continually deluded themselves and outlived their usefulness with their all-too-serious quest for the Good and the True. To replace Philosophy (the Platonic quest for the Truth), he offers what he calls "conversation." Unlike Philosophy, unlike logos, conversation does not seek rational foundations. Instead, it is a civilized exchange of views, of truths, that takes place in a tolerant and convivial atmosphere. Rorty believes that the kind of questions asked by Plato should no longer be asked. His goal is not Truth; it is to engage in as many conversations as possible. The above only summarizes Rorty's position.64 The argument I propose is this: Let us assume that Rorty's version of conversation is compelling. If this were so, then there would be at least one person with whom Rorty could not converse: the Platonist. Such a person will always demand that the goal of a conversation be the Truth, the determination of who is Right and Wrong. Since Rorty denies that such demands are efficacious, interesting, or valuable, he should not argue against the Platonist. He should not try to prove that he is Right. He indicates this by closing his book with the following statement: The only point on which I would insist is that philosophers' moral concern should be with continuing the conversation of the West, rather than with insisting upon a place for the traditional problems of modern philosophy within that conversation.*™

In other words, Rorty insists that his version of conversation should be adopted by philosophers. He insists that the Platonist should be spurned

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

87

for he thinks his own doctrine, and not the Platonist's, is Right. If he didn't think this, why would he be so adamant that the Platonist not raise the traditional problems of Western philosophy? Something must be Wrong with those problems, with that approach to the world. Rorty insists that traditional philosophers open themselves to the conversation of the West as he depicts it. He tries to persuade his reader that his vision of conversational and tolerant philosophy is Right. (Of course he does; what else do any of us do?) In other words, he does something very traditional and exactly what he says philosophers shouldn't do. And this causes him to be incoherent: his own views should have inhibited him from making the statement cited above. This does not imply that Rorty's views about conversation and Platonism are wrong. It only implies that, given his views, he has no "right" to insist that he is Right. Apparently, Rorty could not resist the temptation of claiming that he was Right, and this is the downfall of his relativism: it cannot refer coherently to itself.(> (2)

Techne and the Good

Logos next counterattacks Descartes, who may fairly be called a "technocrat" (one who thinks techne should rule) or a "technicist" (one who thinks techne is the highest good). We saw that his work aims at the goal of creating a useful and reliable techne with which humanity can be healed of its infinity of woes. Descartes has a vision which in its way is beautiful: For him, man, through the technology spawned by mathematical physics, can become master and possessor of nature. Medicine can flourish. Nature need not threaten. Techne will rule and it is good. To achieve his goal Descrates redefines the criteria for knowledge. Above all else, he makes certainty, modeled on mathematics, foundational in the quest for knowledge. As a result of this most fundamental assumption, the questions of human significance are demoted in stature. Since their answers cannot be rewarded with certainty, human questions must be relegated to the irrational. The human realm is governed, not by knowledge, but by the ethical relativism expressed in Descartes' provisional morality. In other words, relativism is generated by and becomes the flip side of Descartes' technicism, his belief that mathematical techne is the highest good. Descartes succeeded as few men in history ever have, for we live today in a thoroughly Cartesian world. But it is not a coherent world. Ethical relativism is generated as a consequence of Cartesian technicism, and these two notions simply do not cohere. Why? Because technicism declares that techne is the highest good. But if relativism (the denial that

88 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD there is a highest good) is true, then such a declaration loses its meaning. That declaration, however, is precisely what initiated and animated the Cartesian project. To put this in other terms, it is of course possible to assert that techne is good. But to do so is immediately to deny technicism, for it is to invoke a standard higher than techne: there must be some "good," against which techne measures up as good. If such a standard is invoked, then technicism and relativism no longer make a coherent conceptual pair. Instead, they fall apart. (In much the same way that the world today, split as it is into its two predominant impulses, technicism and deconstruction, is falling apart.) Techne is value-neutral. This means that it can be used for good or evil and that it can make no value judgments about itself or anything else. Therefore, it is inconsistent to assert that techne is the exclusive mode of knowledge and that it is known to be good. One or the other, and not both, of these two assertions can be made. If, for example, someone states that techne is the exclusive mode of knowledge, he has to be willing to admit that there is nothing that can be known about its goodness. Instead, techne "just is" and its progress must remain unevaluated, unfettered by any knowledgeable regulation. If, by contrast, someone asserts that techne is good, then various qualifications have to be added. This position would insist that techne can be good, but only if it is guided properly or regulated knowledgeably; only if, in other words, there is a higher and more comprehensive mode of knowledge capable of subordinating it. There is an internal tension within technicism. Plato understands this well, and Socrates often exploits it when he finds it (or something like it) in one of his opponents. A good example comes from the first book of the Republic. Socrates, the representative of logos, the enemy of relativism, here argues against Thrasymachus, a professional rhetorician and (like Callicles) a student of Gorgias. Thrasymachus sells (teaches) his knowledge of rhetoric. Since he identifies himself as a teacher, and since techne is that type of knowledge which is paradigmatically (most easily recognized as) teachable, he thinks of himself as possessing a techne. As a rhetorician, however, Thrasymachus affirms a type of relativism. Socrates attempts to show that the combination of these two tendencies, the affirmation of both techne and relativism, is finally incoherent.*"7 When Thrasymachus is asked by Socrates, "What is justice?" (one of his typical what-is-it questions), he answers, "For my part I say that the just is nothing other the advantage of the stronger" (338cl-2). As mentioned in an earlier section, what Thrasymachus means by "the stronger" is the politically stronger, or the ruling body. Justice, in his view, is determined by, and so is relative to, the regime that is currently

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 89 in power. It could, for example, be advantageous for a tyrant to outlaw freedom of the press and for a democratic regime to tolerate dissent. Neither policy is intrinsically good or bad; they are equal in the sense that they get their "value" from the regimes in which they are enforced. For Socrates such a (sophistic) position is unacceptable, and he uses an elaborate argument to refute it. First, he convinces Thrasymachus to agree to the following propositions: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Justice is the advantage of the stronger. It is just to obey the ruling body. The ruling body sometimes errs; it makes incorrect laws. An incorrect law is one that is disadvantageous to the ruling body. It is just to obey all laws, both correct and incorrect. Therefore, it is just to do what is disadvantageous to the ruler.

Socrates then shows Thrasymachus that (6) contradicts (1). The entire series of assertions is inconsistent and the rhetorician's definition of justice must be rejected. At this point, a man named Polemarchus celebrates Socrates' apparent victory over Thrasymachus by shouting "Yes, by Zeus, this is most clear!" (340al). But another character, a man named Cleitophon, objects to such enthusiasm and says, "Of course, if you are witness for him" (340a3). Polemarchus insists that Socrates' argument is convincing. After all, Thrasymachus had agreed that sometimes the ruling body makes mistakes and so commands what is to its disadvantage; since it is just for those who are ruled to obey these orders, it is (sometimes) just to do what is to the ruler's disadvantage. Cleitophon explains that "Thrasymachus had posited that doing what is ordered by the rulers is just." Again Polemarchus repeats the argument: Since Thrasymachus agrees that it is just to do what the ruling body orders, and that the ruling body sometimes errs, his initial assertion must be abandoned since it is inconsistent with the other propositions he has accepted. At this point, Cleitophon makes a little speech: But he [Thrasymachus] called the advantage of the stronger what the stronger believes to be advantageous to himself. This is what must be done by the weaker and this is what he posited as the just (340b6-8).

Cleitophon here alters Thrasymachus' position slightly, but significantly. What he has seen is that the initial definition, "justice is the advantage of the stronger," presupposes that there is real or true advantage as opposed to an illusory or false one. This is a distinction needed

go LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

to distinguish correct from incorrect laws (proposition 3). Only if there is a true advantage is it possible to assert that a ruling body sometimes mistakenly chooses a course leading to its real disadvantage. One can make a mistake only if there is some standard by which correct and incorrect laws can be measured. In this case, the standard is real advantage. Cleitophon has seen a tension inherent in Thrasymachus' position. First, there is Thrasymachus' relativism. He believes that values gain their validity or meaning solely through the ruling body that enforces them. When he states (proposition 5) that it is just to obey all laws, whether they are correct or not, he implies that justice is simply obedience to the laws posited by any given regime. This is relativistic because it offers no way of justifying laws except through the fact that they are laws of a specific regime. In this view, no law is good in and of itself; it is "good" only relative to the ruling body that makes it. There is, however, a second, countervailing tendency in Thrasymachus' position. He relies on an objective standard, the ruler's real advantage, to differentiate correct from incorrect laws. If, for example, it would be advantageous for regime A to raise taxes, but due to an an erroneous analysis it does not do so, then obedience to the tax laws of the land would in fact be disadvantageous to the regime. In Thrasymachus' account, obedience to the laws of regime A would be both unjust (1, 4, 6) and just (2 and 5). The point is this: As a rhetorician, Thrasymachus believes that he can teach rulers how to identify and then achieve what is really to their advantage. He believes he has a techne to do this.(>8 He wants, in other words, to charge his techne with value; he thinks it good and well worth paying for. As a result, Thrasymachus retains a commitment to some measure of objectivity and to the notion that there are some standards of which only a few have knowledge. On the other hand, he is also committed to relativism: he does not believe that any law is in itself good or bad. Socrates' argument is meant to show that he can't have it both ways: these two commitments do not cohere. Cleitophon offers Thrasymachus a way out of his dilemma by suggesting that the initial definition of justice be changed from "advantage of the stronger" to "that which the stronger believes is his advantage." These two formulations are critically different. The former affirms some objective standard by which to measure real advantage. The latter, which radicalizes the moderate relativism latent in the former, does away with such standards for it does away with the possibility of error altogether: if justice is simply what the ruler believes is advantageous, then the ruler is never wrong.

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 91 Thrasymachus ignores Cleitophon's friendly appeal. Again, this is because he thinks he possesses a valuable techne worth paying for. He wants to preserve the possibility of the ruler making mistakes because he wants to preserve his own position as a teacher of potential rulers. Instead of following Cleitophon's advice he takes an altogether different line against Socrates. The challenge for Thrasymachus is to explain how the possibility of error (the making of incorrect/disadvantageous laws) can be reconciled with relativism. He does this by saying that the person with a techne, insofar as he has a techne, simply does not err. Unlike opinion or mere belief, knowledge (and techne is surely that), in the most precise sense of the word, does not err. The doctor, as a doctor, does not make mistakes. When she does make a mistake she, at the very moment of erring, does not really (precisely) possess the techne of medicine. Analogously, if a ruler, who is presumed by Thrasymachus to have a techne, errs, at that very moment of erring, he does not really have the techne of ruling. This would remove the problem Socrates has detected by removing proposition (3). Socrates is quite willing to go along with Thrasymachus' very stringent conception of a techne. He is glad to see Thrasymachus affirm his allegiance to techne because, as the next argument will show, precisely such an affirmation will eventually cause the Sophist's downfall. (1) The doctor (the one in precise speech, the one with a techne who does not err) cares for the sick. (2) The pilot of the ship cares for the sailors. (3) Therefore, all technai are directed toward the advantage of their objects.69 (4) Therefore, no techne considers its own advantage. (5) Justice is a techne. (6) Therefore, justice does not consider its own advantage (34 Ic5-342e8).

Again, the initial definition of justice, the advantage of the stronger, has to be rejected because it leads to inconsistent results. The point of these refutations is this: Thrasymachus' initial definition of justice is a formulation of relativism. At the same time, Thrasymachus is a kind of technicist.70 He describes justice as a type of techne so that he may teach potential rulers how to rule. Socrates will not allow him to be both a technicist and a relativist. The first argument pins him down on the issue of incorrect laws. It shows that he is not a thorough relativist; a dimension of evaluative objectivity remains in his position. The second exploits a basic principle about techne: it is oriented to an object other

92

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

than itself. Medicine, for example, studies the workings of human bodies; it does not study medicine (or the doctor). Carpentry studies the properties of wood; arithmetic studies number. Techne is not "self-reflexive;" it is "objective," directed to an object other than itself. Because it cannot reflect upon itself or its possessor, because it knows nothing about the human context in which its results appear, it is value-neutral. Thrasymachus defines justice as a techne that can secure the ruler's advantage. This implies that a techne can be charged with value. Socrates' argument is meant to show that it cannot. Socrates has a similar argument with Thrasymachus' teacher, Gorgias (in the Gorgias). First, he makes sure that the famous rhetorician admits that he has a techne (449a). Then, he persuades him to agree that a basic characteristic of a techne is that it have a determinate object. Gorgias is quite reluctant to do this, but Socrates is persistent, repeatedly asking him to identify specifically what his techne is about (449dl, d9, 451a6). Finally, Gorgias relents and says it is about "the just and unjust" (454b7). The next move that Gorgias makes, the one that will seal his doom, is to assert that techne is value neutral. His example is wrestling. A person who learns how to wrestle can use his knowledge well or use it to beat up his mother (456e). If he chooses to do the latter, neither the teacher nor the techne itself should be blamed (456d-457c). The techne, after all, is neutral on the question of use. A similar situation obtains with rhetoric. If Gorgias teaches a student the techniques of artful persuasion which the student then employs to argue for an unjust cause, neither Gorgias nor rhetoric should be blamed. The problem with Gorgias' position is that justice, the professed object of his own techne, is by definition not a neutral item. A student who studies with Gorgias will learn justice. Such a man will be just and cannot be unjust. Gorgias' claim to a techne, which is value-neutral, whose object is justice, doesn't make sense (460a-461b). These Socratic refutations are instructive. Many people, especially professors, profess to be relativists. At the same time, they want to be rewarded, or congratulated, or recognized, for their knowledge. They want to write books and be paid to give lectures that will win applause. To do this they almost invariably have to conform to the dictates of techne, the most easily recognizable form of knowledge. As a result, there is a tension within their work that can be exploited by a man like Socrates in order to bring about their downfall. Of course, the refutations do not prove that relativism is false. They only show what happens when a Sophist's relativism is formulated and

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD

93

professed in a certain manner. If the Sophist is clever and strong enough, he can avoid Socratic refutation. Much of what was discussed in section I.B.I, about Protagoras and his relationship to techne was meant to suggest this. Protagoras is a more advanced thinker than either Thrasymachus or Gorgias. He understood well Socrates' strategy. Socrates began his assault on the Sophist with the techne-analogy. He wanted to pin Protagoras down in the same manner that he pins Thrasymachus and Gorgias down. But this he failed to do, for Protagoras never allowed himself to be caught in the Socratic trap; he never clearly claimed to have a techne whose subject is arete. He understood the nature of his own relativism well enough to realize that capitulating to Socrates' repeated insistence that he do so would lead to his defeat. Thus he hedged on the techne question: he aligned himself with techne, but only superficially in order to give his mathema, his subject, the veneer of being something teachable. When he was pushed, he distanced himself from techne and, as a result, avoided the kind of tension that Socrates finds in Thrasymachus. Protagoras hedged, but beautifully and to his greatest advantage. By examining the strategy with which Socrates places his opponent's claim into an analogy with medicine, arithmetic, and so forth, we can see the pivotal role techne plays in his thinking. Socrates believes techne can be good. He is not a technicist because he also believes that there is some good that can be known by some (presumably) nontechnical form of knowledge. This latter knowledge is "higher" than techne; that is, it is capable of making knowledgeable judgments about techne, about the use of its products, its value, its meaning, its human significance. Socrates is quite pleased when a sophistic opponent such as Thrasymachus or Gorgias professes to have a techne. (In a similar manner, I was quite pleased when Rorty insisted that he was right.) By professing this the Sophist implicitly claims to know what is good. Therefore, by claiming a techne, the Sophist sets up within himself an obstacle to his own relativism. Relativism is the real enemy, and the fact that some relativists affirm the goodness of techne can be exploited in the fight against them. (3) Poeticism Protagoras, Descartes, and Spinoza finally agree on one crucial point: Human beings make their own values, meanings, and purposes. They agree that the human world is produced by human activity. As such, they can each be called "poeticists." This word comes from the Greek "poiein" meaning (among other things) "to make" or "to produce." The most familiar English word derived from poiein is "poet," which for us has a very narrow meaning: It refers to a writer of poems. The Greek word

94 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD can have a similarly narrow meaning: Homer was a poietes, a poet. But the Greek can also be much broader and refer to all who make, to productive activity in general. "Poeticism," as I use the term, is the doctrine that the human world is manufactured by human "poets" or "producers." Since human beings vary from time to time and place to place, poeticism implies that the human world is in a state of flux. It is, therefore, a variation on the theme of relativism. The poeticism in Protagoras' story is quite apparent for it clearly describes man as man-the-maker. Proto-techne, the intellectual capacity to produce, is what allows human beings to survive and become unique among the animals. Language, the polis, religion, and all the cultural phenomena that occupy the uniquely human realm of significance, are produced. Protagoras himself alludes to the kinship his version of sophistry has with poetry (in the narrow sense) by saying that Homer and Hesiod were in fact disguised versions of Sophists (see 316d). Descartes and Spinoza are quite different from Protagoras in that they are hyper-rationalists; they view the world of matter in motion, which came to be known as the physical world, not as a result of human production, but as something "out there" to be analyzed by the tools of modern mathematical physics. But, as has been argued, there is a flip side to their view. In addition to being proponents of modern science, they are Sophists as well: their hyper-rationalism generates in its train the notion that the human world, the world of cities and values and purposes, is governed only by the rules of provisional morality. According to Descartes, we "make do" with the conventions that have been sanctioned by custom and law. Such conventions are not to be scrutinized or evaluated under the categories of true, false, better, worse; they are to be used to supply a comfortable survival to the Cartesian scientist who does not want to be interrupted in his quest for the laws of physics. Spinoza, by rejecting teleology as completely as he does, by interpreting the ordinary human urge to discover purposes in nature as erroneous anthropomorphism, states that such purposes are made: "Final causes are nothing but human fictions," he says. As such, both he and Descartes finally must confess to a very sophistic, poeticist, view of the human world.71 The true quarrel, the real conflict, animating this story is between logos and poeticism. This is something Plato understood full well. In the Republic he mentions "the old quarrel (diaphora) between philosophy and poetry" (607b5). (Philosophy here can substitute for "logos.") The reason that this dispute is so old, so fundamental, is that it is between two of the most basically different and extreme views of the human world that can be held. Is the world made by human productive energy, or is it somehow

LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD 95 structured by entities that exist independently of human choice? Is man the measure? If so, then the human world is subject to endless shifts and changes. Human freedom and the power to create become the most cherished of gifts. Or is the world constituted by a stable set of objective standards that somehow reside in the world outside of human agency and thus function as natural goals by which we can measure our activity? The history of Western thought, as complex and elaborate as it is, is so often just the debate on this single question. That certainly is true today. Rorty and Derrida, as complex as their views seem to be, finally can be described as poeticists. For them, there are no enduring nonhuman structures accessible to human reason. Instead, the structures that exist are temporary things, fleeting, changing, ever different, present and then absent. They are a product of "conversation," says Rorty. They are a product of "writing," says Derrida. The human world according to the subversives is fabricated and final causes but fictions. A remarkable thread unifying today's subversives is the fact that they share a common enemy: the ancient philosopher Plato who is identified by them as the champion of logos, the purveyor of a world of eternal, unchanging, forms. A good example of the extent to which Plato has been vilified was already noted in the Prologue. There a remark from a recent book titled After Philosophy was quoted. Speaking of the many contributors to this volume, the editor states, "all are agreed in their opposition to the Tlatonic conception of Truth.' "72 "The Platonic conception of Truth" here means the belief that logos should seek to articulate the stable, nonproduced, structures and values that give shape to the human world. It is condemned as life-denying, as contemptuous of the creative plurality of voices that constitute human history. The ancient dispute thus takes the form, even today, of a battle between Platonism and poeticism. As will become apparent in the following two chapters, I think the subversives are wrong in their understanding and evaluation of Platonism. In general I think they have too thoroughly assimilated Plato to Aristotle. It is indeed true that Plato stands opposed to the subversive's poeticism. But he does not do so in the same way as his student. Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos. Plato is quite different. Most telling is the fact that he writes dialogues that are themselves a kind of poetry. We will see that for him logos is a more questionable, less assertive, and in this sense less happy affair than it is for Aristotle. When viewed from the perspective of the contemporary subversive or Cartesian, it is indeed true that Plato and Aristotle are united

96 LOGOS Is UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD in their defense of logos. But this does not imply that they fully share a conception of what logos is. The meaning of "logos" thus has started to shift, away from Aristotle and toward Plato. I hope that as this story further unfolds the Platonic conception of logos will be understood as different, not only from what is typically taken to be "the Platonic conception of Truth," but also from the Aristotelian vision that was discussed in the first section of this book. Logos argues that all three of its accusers are led to poeticism. It screams that this is finally unacceptable. Why? Because poeticism leads to nihilism, the rejection of all value. Poeticism interprets all values as the product of the creative energies of the value-makers. And these change. Values finally become a matter only of which creator has the most power to impose his particular version of value on the rest of us. There is nothing (nihit) with which such creativity can be measured or regulated. Anything goes; everything is in principle legitimate; it doesn't matter what values are created, only whether or not they can be successfully imposed. Poeticism implies that the human world is nothing but a flowing stream of ever-changing values. The flow never ceases, it takes with it all hopes and goals. This is madness, nihilism, and the degradation of human life; this is pollution. And logos is enraged. Are we to succumb to the flimsy and fickle whims of creativity, or to something more stable and enduring that can give our lives meaning? That is the question: and the reader can now predict the response of logos.

CHAPTER

2

Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY

A

Goon?

CLEITOPHON'S ACCUSATION

Even after having undergone the attacks leveled against it, logos can still assert (with confidence, with vigor), "I am unconditionally good. I represent what is best about being human.Without me you are left only with poetry and doomed to a life of insignificance, unhappiness, and disease." Logos has weathered its storm. And yet ... We have seen cracks, potentially vulnerable openings in the shield of logos. (The techne-analogy that Socrates foists upon unsuspecting opponents ...and Protagoras' artful dodge of it; the fact that logos failed to clarify, and perhaps even begged the question on, its guiding premise in the protreptic and indirect arguments; the defensiveness that has characterized logos's response; and finally, Cleitophon's suggestion to Thrasymachus.) The confrontation between logos and its accuser, this throwing back of charge and countercharge; is it but a squaring off and a screaming of two separate and hostile voices? If so, there would be nothing particularly distinctive about it; people with opposed views yell at each other all the time. But this particular confrontation is unique for two reasons. First, it represents two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world, both of which deserve to be taken seriously.Second, as we will slowly see, this is a dispute that neither party can win. Plato, more than any other philosopher, understands the nature of this most fundamental of disputes.He understands that both sides of the ancient quarrel are powerful and have merit.Plato is indeed a champion of logos; Socrates is his hero. But, perhaps surprisingly, Plato is not the single-minded proponent of the "Platonic conception of truth" that the subversives make him out to be. The Platonic conception of logos (of which this book is finally intended to be an exhibition) acknowledges and then incorporates within itself the voice of its accuser.Plato understands 97

DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237-3

98

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

the terrible precariousness of logos' assertions. Rather than simply declaring its unconditional goodness, he is willing to ask, "is logos in fact unconditionally good?" Platonic logos is willing to look at itself critically, suspiciously. And the result is a form of logos unlike any other, one that has neither the calm assurance of Aristotle, nor the utter distaste for reason found among the subversives. Both of these are univocal, singularly voiced. But Plato's voice, always expressed in the form of a dialogue, is complex. It praises and then seeks the Truth, but it does not claim to know it. It recommends the life of logos, but does not suppress or forget the voice of its accuser. Some indication of what I am talking about can be gathered from Plato's very short dialogue, the Cleitophon. Here the same character who in the Republic offered Thrasymachus a way of avoiding Socrates' refutation is the major speaker. What follows is a translation of the dialogue in almost its entirety.1 Plato's Cleitophon

406a Socrates: Someone has just now told me that Cleitophon, son of Aristonymos, when he was conversing with Lysias, condemned the time he spent with Socrates, while he praised his association with Thrasymachus to the skies. Cleitophon: Socrates, this fellow did not correctly relate to you the conversations I had about you with Lysias. For while it is true that with respect to some matters I did not praise you, with respect to others I did. And since, even though you pretend not to care, you are obviously blaming me, I would gladly recount these conversations to you myself so that you don't think that I am badly disposed to you. After all, the two of us are alone. For it's possible that you didn't hear the story correctly and so you're harder on me than you should be. So, if you allow me the chance to speak frankly, I'd accept it gladly and be willing to speak. 407a Socrates: It would be shameful of me not to accept your offer. After all, you're eager to benefit me. For it's clear that once I know in what way I am worse and in what way better, I will pursue and exercise the latter and flee the former to the best of my ability. Cleitophon: Please listen. Socrates, during the many times that I've associated with and listened to you, I've often been astonished, for in comparison with the run of men you seemed to speak so beautifully. Whenever you rebuked men you sang like a god on the tragic stage saying, "To where, men, do you think you are going? Don't you know that whoever among you invests his entire energy to making money does not do what he should? For your sons, those to whom you will

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

99

pass on your wealth, you do not provide teachers of justice who can teach them how to use their wealth properly— assuming, of course, that justice is something that can be taught. And if justice is something to be practiced and exercised, you do not provide your sons with those who will exercise and practice properly with them. Finally, you have not attended to yourselves in this regard. But when you see that you yourselves, as well as your sons, are sufficiently knowledgeable 407c about grammar and culture and gymnastic, which subjects you suppose to comprise a complete education in excellence (arete), and yet you are no less vicious concerning money, how is it that you do not despise your current education and seek someone who will help you overcome this lack of real culture?" "Indeed, it is on account of this dissonance and indolence, and not on account of some problem you might have playing the lyre, that brother deals inharmoniously with brother, and cities fight without measure and do and suffer the worst possible things to one another. . . . 407e

Socrates, when I hear you saying these things, I admire them greatly and I praise them wonderfully. And I also praise you when you utter the follow-up to this speech, when you say that the ones who exercise their bodies and disregard their souls are disregarding that which ought to rule and taking too seriously that which ought to be ruled; and when you say that if someone doesn't know how to use something it is better for him to give up using that thing. For example, if someone doesn't know how to use his eyes or ears or any other part of his body, it is better for him neither to hear nor see nor put any other part of his body to any use whatsoever.

408a

This point is especially true concerning techne. For whoever does not know how to use his own lyre clearly does not know how to use that of his neighbor; and whoever doesn't know how to use the lyre of others, does not know how to use his own. And this applies to the use of any other instrument or possession. This speech (logos) of yours also ends beautifully when you say that it is better for one who doesn't know how to use his soul to keep his soul quiet and not to live and act on his own. And if such a man has to live, it is better for him to spend his life as a slave rather than as a free man. He should hand over the rudder of his intellect, just as if it were the rudder of a ship, to someone else who knows the techne of steering human beings. This techne you, Socrates, have often called "the techne of politics," saying that it is the same as judging and justice. I must say that I have hardly ever spoken a word against these or any of your similarly fine speeches. You claim that arete is teachable and it is necessary for us most of all to be concerned with ourselves.

ioo Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

408c

Nor do I think that at some future point will I say anything against these most beautiful and protreptic speeches. Just as if we were sleeping, they wake us up.

Next, I was determined to hear what follows these initial remarks. At first, however, I did not ask you, Socrates, but your contemporaries and fellow enthusiasts, or comrades, or whatever these fellows should be called. First I interrogated those among this group who are held in highest regard by you. I asked, "what is the logos that comes next?" I imitated your manner and asked them, "Best of men," I said, "how do you interpret the protreptic speech in which Socrates exhorts you toward arete"? Do you think that this speech alone is all he has and that it is impossible for us to comprehend and grasp the issue completely? Will this be our life-work, to "protrepticize" those who have not yet been "protrepticized?" And will these latter men simply follow suit and protrepticize others? Or should we ask ourselves, 408e 'what comes next?' We might agree that men ought to do this very thing . .. but what comes next? How do we explain how the study of justice should begin?" "It's as if someone noticed that we were just like children who had no idea what gymnastic and medicine were and then protrepticized us to be concerned for our bodies. This person would censure us by saying that it is shameful to be so concerned about wheat and barley and vineyards and however many other things we do and possess for the sake of the body, while at the same time to have neither a techne nor a procedure by which the body might become as good as possible. 409a For such a techne does exist. And if we were to ask the man protrepticizing us, 'what are these technai?' he would probably answer that they were gymnastic and medicine. In an analogous fashion, we now ask, 'what is the techne concerned with the arete of the soul?' Let it be explained." The fellow who seemed to be most vigorous in this group responded to these questions and said that this techne is the very one that you hear about from Socrates; it is none other than justice. To this I said, "Don't just tell me its name, but answer me in the following way: someone might say that medicine is a techne. That which issues from this techne is two-fold. On the one hand, there is the continual production of doctors in addition to those who already existed. On the other hand, there is health. The latter, what we call health, is not itself a techne, but is the product (ergon) of that techne which both teaches and is taught.2 The techne of carpentry is similar. Houses are its product and the techne of carpentry is its teachable content." "Now, let justice be analogous in one respect: it produces just men as do each of the technicians mentioned above. But can we identify

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

101

the other element, namely that product which the just man is able to produce? Tell me." 409c

As I recall, this fellow answered, "the advantageous." Another one said, "the proper;" another, "the beneficial; and another, "the profitable." I then went back a step and said, "But these names, 'act correctly, be profitable, beneficial, etc.,' are found in each of the technai. But to what all these names refer each techne will articulate a unique something. For example, carpentry will use 'well, beautifully, properly,' specifically with regard to the production of wooden artifacts, which are not themselves the techne. Let the product of justice be articulated in a similar fashion."

Finally, Socrates, one of your comrades who was reputed to speak in the most refined manner, answered me and said that this was the unique product of justice: to create friendship in the cities. When this fellow was asked, he said that friendship is good and never bad. Furthermore, he said that although we apply the name to them, the "friendships" of children and beasts are not genuine friendships. For it had occurred to him that such relationships are more often harmful 409e than good. To avoid the untenable conclusion that would follow, he said that these relationships were inappropriately described as friendships. For the most truly genuine friendship is obviously likemindedness. When asked if likemindedness means having like opinions or knowledge, he first of all debunked like opinions, for it is necessary that many harmful like opinions arise among men. By contrast, he agreed that friendship is entirely good and the product of justice. The conclusion, he said, was that likemindedness and knowledge, and not opinion, are the same. 410a At this point we were at a real impasse in the logos, and those who were present were ready to strike at that man and say that the logos had run around in a circle and returned to where it began. They said, "medicine is also a type of likemindedness as are all the technai. Furthermore, the other technai are able to articulate what it is they are about. Whatever the subject matter is of justice or likemindedness, about which you've been speaking, it has eluded us and it is unclear what its product really is." Finally, Socrates, I raised these questions with you yourself. You told me that justice is harming your enemies and helping your friends. But later it seemed that the just man, since everything he does is for someone's benefit, never harms anyone. I endured and persisted with these questions, and not just once or twice, but a great many times. But finally I gave up. For I reached the conclusion that of all men you are able most beautifully to protrepticize others into being concerned for arete. However, I decided that one of two alternatives had to hold: either you were able to do

102

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? only this and nothing more. This is a situation which could come about in any other techne. For example, someone who is not a pilot of a ship could study carefully and compose a eulogy about the great 410c worth of piloting to humanity. This could happen with any of the other technai as well. Someone could perhaps lay upon you the same charge about justice, namely that even though you praise justice beautifully, you are not the least bit knowledgeable about it. Of course, this is not my opinion. As I said, one of two alternatives has to hold. Either you do not know or you're not willing to share your knowledge with me. Therefore, I think I'll go over to Thrasymachus, and whomever else I can, since I am at such a loss. It's as if I had been protrepticized to study gymnastic and not to disregard my body. Directly following the protreptic logos, you would tell me what sort of regimen my body, which has a particular nature, requires. If only you would desist from your protreptic speeches and give me an analogous account of justice. Now let it be stated that Cleitophon agrees that it is ridiculous to be concerned with extraneous matters while disregarding the soul, that for the sake of which we go through all our labors. And suppose also 410e that I agree with all the consequences that follow from this initial statement. And while I am speaking I am in no way asking you to behave differently, so that I will continue to praise you in some respects to Lysias and others. But in other respects, I will blame you. Because, Socrates, I will declare that for the man who has not yet been protrepticized, you are most worthwhile. But for the man who has already been protrepticized, you are virtually an impediment in the quest for complete arete and happiness.

What is unique, and surprising, about the Cleitophon is that it is almost exclusively a criticism of Socrates. This fact led many scholars of the past to claim that it was not written by Plato himself, that it was "spurious."3 After all, they asked, why would Plato write a dialogue in which Socrates, his great hero, the champion of logos, falls silent in the face of the charges leveled at him by Cleitophon? I propose that these critics missed something essential about the Platonic conception of logos. Incorporated within it is a dimension of profound self-criticism. Included within it is precisely Cleitophon's accusation. Cleitophon states that he both praises and criticizes Socrates. He praises him for composing the finest of protreptic speeches. He enjoys listening to Socrates rebuke other men for not caring enough about arete or excellence. Instead of asking, how can I live the best possible life?, most men spend their time trying to make money. Instead of seeking a real education, most men simply accept conventional wisdom and do not probe seriously the value and nature of their lives. No one is better at

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

103

encouraging such men to cease relying on traditional and thoughtless opinions than Socrates. No one is better at turning men toward the project of logos. Socrates provides rousing, pointed speeches and Cleitophon admires them. Apparently, he shares with Socrates a deep dissatisfaction with traditional wisdom and is willing to step beyond the dictates of convention in order to seek actively the good life. Cleitophon, however, has been consistently disappointed with "what comes next." Socrates is wonderful at waking men up and encouraging them to pursue arete, but he fails miserably when it comes to actually explaining to Cleitophon what justice, what the good life that he praises so beautifully, really is. It is as if someone constantly exhorted him to take care of his body, but failed to teach him or explain the technai of medicine and gymnastic. Without such explanation the exhortation becomes empty: even if he is "converted" and decides to care about his body, how would he know how to do so properly? Analogously, men can be turned by Socrates toward the project of caring about the well-being of their souls, but without some techne to direct this caring, Socrates' protreptic is incomplete. Cleitophon employs the very techne-analogy Socrates himself is accustomed to use: As medicine is to health so justice (interpreted as a techne) is to X. Socrates cannot identify the X, the determinate object or result (ergon) of the purported techne and so, as Cleitophon says in conclusion, his value is limited. Socrates is fine, but only for those who are asleep and not yet protrepticized; he can wake these people up. For those who have already been persuaded to question conventional wisdom, and actively seek the good life, he is worthless; he cannot properly identify the techne to which he apparently points. In sum, Cleitophon admires Socrates' ability to encourage his listeners to ask questions about living a good life. Finally, however, he rejects Socrates because he provides no definite, no technical answers to these questions. As a result of his dissatisfaction, Cleitophon has decided to give up on Socrates and turn toward Thrasymachus; he has given up on logos and turned toward rhetoric. In an important sense, Cleitophon's accusation is similar to that leveled by Descartes: traditional philosophy, logos, is nothing but protreptic. The ancient philosophers, says Descartes, "place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear to be valued more than anything else in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them" (p. 8). Like Descartes, Cleitophon holds to a singular standard of what counts as knowledge. For him it is techne; clear, certain and reliable knowledge.4 Socrates' protreptic speeches, while stirring, are for him no more than a passionate description of the goodness of logos. They promise much, but teach nothing. As a result, they are like palaces built upon sand. Socrates

104 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? praises speeches that he promises will come later. "Pursue logos," he urges, "for it is the source of the good life. Seek the logos of justice itself, goodness itself, beauty itself. Care about your life, your soul; don't just obey orders. Leave the herd and enter into philosophy. Ask questions. Speak and speak some more." "But where are these further speeches?" asks Cleitophon. "What comes next? Why can't you straightforwardly tell me what justice is? What can't you give me the techne by which I can guide my soul in conformity with reason? I want answers and not just more questions." Socrates urges others to want knowledge about values, about justice. His praise of that desire is beautiful and stirring. But that is all. Instead of teaching he only redirects, or even manipulates, the desires of his audience. He seduces them to philosophy. Philosophy is the desire for being able to say what justice is. If, however, the answer to this question is never given, a desire is all that philosophy is. Cleitophon implies that there is a basic similarity between sophistry and philosophy: both manipulate their audiences' desires. (Descartes implies this as well by saying of philosophy that it "provides the means of speaking with probability about all things and of being held in admiration by the less learned" [pg. 6].) There is, however, one crucial difference between them: the Sophist acknowledges this (either overtly, as does Callicles, or covertly, as does Protagoras). He admits that his goal is not the truth, but the production of opinions in others. The philosopher, on the other hand, dissembles, or simply does not understand himself. He purports to seek the truth, to be able to articulate what justice is. This, however, he does not actually accomplish, for his speeches are really only protreptic. The philosopher urges his audience to pursue an impossible goal. Given this similarity and this difference, Cleitophon finds sophistry more attractive. It is, in his eyes, more honest and promising. Since he will never accomplish anything of substance with philosophy and Socrates, he turns to sophistry and Thrasymachus. At least here, armed with the weapon of rhetoric, he will be able to pursue effectively what seems to be his own self-interest. Socrates falls silent in the face of Cleitophon's charge. Why doesn't he refute, or at least respond to, it? Answering this question, I suggest, will tell us much about the nature (and the limits) of logos. Cleitophon is a powerful interlocutor, and to understand fully his accusation we should turn back to his short speech in the Republic which was discussed above. Thrasymachus, it may be recalled, was a victim of Socratic refutation. He was defeated by Socrates because he (incoherently) maintained both

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

105

a positive evaluation of techne and his own version of relativism. Cleitophon made a short appearance in that dialogue. He proposed to Thrasymachus that he substitute "what seems to be the advantage to the ruler" for "what is the advantage to the ruler" in his definition of justice. In other words, he proposed that Thrasymachus get rid of all vestiges of objectivity in his account of justice and become a "radical" or thorough relativist. This tactic would have saved Thrasymachus from refutation, for it would have removed one of the two contradictory poles that Socrates detects and then exploits. Thrasymachus, however, rejected Cleitophon's friendly advice. He is, after all, a professional teacher who wants to claim for himself a techne. What happened to Cleitophon in the Republic? He fell silent. He was heard neither from nor about again.5 Such silence, I propose, is significant. One reason why is that Socrates' behavior in the Cleitophon is the same as Cleitophon's in the Republic. There is an uncanny mirroring effect between these two dialogues. In the dialogue named after him, Cleitophon is frustrated by what he perceives as Socrates' inability to move beyond protreptic speech. Cleitophon himself has already been "protrepticized" to the extent that he is able to identify conventional wisdom and values as mere opinions. He has been persuaded to rely, not on the traditional standards of the polis, but on his own powers of reason and discourse in order to achieve happiness. But instead of pursuing real wisdom, a truthful account of what is good, as a replacement for the conventional wisdom he has abandoned, he has turned to rhetoric. Rhetoric, at least as Plato understands it, is intimately connected with relativism. Its purpose is to teach men how to speak effectively regardless of what aims they hope to attain. It assists men in pursuing what they believe to be to their advantage; it does not teach what truly is advantageous. In the Republic Cleitophon asserts his relativism and then falls silent. In the Cleitophon he explains why he is a relativist: he is not convinced that logos can transcend its merely protreptic stage or that knowledge can replace opinion. In this dialogue it is Socrates who falls silent. There is a gap between these two men, one that logos does not seem able to mend. In the Republic Cleitophon suggests that the just is what seems advantageous to the ruling body. The ruler might decide that it is just to murder everybody over the age of ten or to make philosophers into kings. There is no rational or moral difference between these two acts if justice is strictly a matter of seeming. To put this point in stronger terms, if justice is only a matter of seeming, there is no reason to discuss the respective merits of these or any other conflicting actions. If logos is the attempt to differentiate the true from the false, and the good from the bad, logos is, given Cleitophon's proposal, pointless noise.

io6 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? Cleitophon dramatically incarnates a fundamental human possibility for Plato. His long speech in the Cleitophon shows why he turns away from logos: he is persuaded that Socrates can do no more than exhort his listeners to pursue philosophy and the study of justice. Since Socrates does not seem able to ground such exhortation, Cleitophon sees no difference between him and Thrasymachus. As such, the relativism (the denial of grounds) of the Sophist is preferable. In the Republic Cleitophon actually states his thoroughly relativistic proposal. His silence thereafter is fully consistent with his statement. No analysis or rational discussion of his position and its merits would, on his terms, be fruitful. In neither of these two dialogues is Cleitophon refuted by Socrates. It is in this sense that Plato incorporates Cleitophon's accusation within his own conception of logos. Plato, I suggest, knows that there is a gap here that logos cannot mend. Socrates can refute only those with whom he can converse, and thorough relativists such as Cleitophon can refuse or ignore conversation and yet remain consistent. Philosophical dialogue of the sort Socrates wishes to engender depends upon an unconditional affirmation of logos, a value that for it is "axiomatic." An axiom must be presumed before further arguments can commence. Since all arguments or proofs require that axioms be used, axioms cannot themselves be proven or defended by the arguments they generate. To attempt to do so would beg the question: in the very attempt to prove the axiom the axiom would be assumed. Precisely this impasse plagues logos and constitutes the gap between Socrates and Cleitophon. Logos must presume that it is good in order to argue that it is good. Therefore, it cannot demonstrate that it is good because such a demonstration would have to assume what it purports to prove, namely that logos is good. There is no refutation of a thorough relativist for he can, while remaining quite consistent, refuse to acknowledge the goodness of philosophical dialogue, of logos, and then refuse to argue at all. Unfortunately (for logos) there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. Socrates can only refute those who, like Thrasymachus, affirm the goodness of such dialogue. (This Thrasymachus did by including within his own position the possibility of attaining knowledge about real advantage. Since he stated that it was possible to differentiate between correct and incorrect laws, he implies that it is reasonable and good to have discussions about value.) By contrast, Cleitophon (like Callicles) is not a teacher but only a practitioner of rhetoric. As such, he feels no obligation to include a comparable affirmation of knowledge in his "position." He cannot be refuted for he does not acknowledge the fundamental axiom presupposed by all argumentation. Thorough relativism, the enemy of logos, is a deeply serious problem

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

107

because it testifies to the fact that rational argumentation depends upon a value judgment: that it is good to pursue the argument, to strive to replace opinion with knowledge. It is precisely this judgment that animates Socrates' beautiful speeches. But because it is a value judgment it is subject to rejection by someone asserting that values are relative to the ones upholding them. As a result, the very project of logos now seems dependent upon a judgment that cannot itself be secured by argumentation. In other words, this project is initiated, and perhaps sustained, not by a demonstration of its value, but by protreptic. In a certain, frightening, sense, Descartes was right: ancient philosophers do no more than encourage and exhort; they do not actually teach or know. Cleitophon's presence in the Republic is a surd, an irrational interruption, that is never truly removed, even if it remains silent. Indeed, Cleitophon's silence here, and Socrates' in the Cleitophon, hint at a terrible truth about logos. Silence looms as an irremediable possibility. It hovers on the horizon of philosophical dialogue, both limiting and threatening it. I do not only, or even primarily, refer to silence in the literal sense. Instead, I refer to any form of speaking that does not, and cannot, conceive of a reason for itself to continue. Any form of speaking that cannot answer, or at least address, the question "Why should I speak rather than fall silent?" is itself equivalent to "silence" in the sense I use the term. One could, for example, believe there is no reason to speak, but continue to do so for the sake of habit or manners or for the physiological sensation it produces. If, however, there is no reason to speak, no reason to be reasonable, then speaking is finally indistinguishable from, and simply a noisier version of, silence; it is purposeless chatter.6 There is a gap, a chasm, that looms between Socrates and Cleitophon.7 Socrates cannot refute this opponent; and Plato does not disguise this fact. Instead, he integrates it into his dialogue. The whole dialogue, then, becomes a peculiar and complex blend of positions and characters. The most prominent feature of most of Plato's dialogues is their protreptic sheen: "Love and pursue logos," they tell us again and again, "for here lies your happiness." But in many of the dialogues, such as the Republic, there is a softly stated but unmistakable presence, one that conditions, that qualifies, that tarnishes the bright luster of the protreptic. This is Cleitophon, a man who rejects the basic axiom of logos and who knows enough about himself to resist the temptation to argue for his rejection. Plato's shortest dialogue is titled after this character (whose name, perhaps ironically, literally means "illustrious voice"). I propose that despite its length it is a work of disturbing importance. Socrates' silence testifies to the precariousness of logos for it forces us to ask, Is it really true that logos is unconditionally good?

io8 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

B

EROS AND LOGOS

Logos: "My mind begins to wander, to whirl; I think I may go mad. Can this be? I no better than Thrasymachus because I cannot refute Cleitophon? I cannot break beyond this fact. I . . . one voice among many and not a king who with only his words shapes the world? I ... not unconditionally good? I am but a desire and all desires emanate from the same source, the human beings who desire; and this source, this vast mass of struggle, cannot possibly sustain the claim of being unconditionally good. I fear the old prophet had eyes; I fear I have said too much. Am I guilty of the very crime of which I accused others?" Logos trembles . . . and well it should. It recalls those moments of discomfort: the begging of the question, Protagoras' artful dodge, the space Cleitophon carves out for himself; an inviolable space immune from Socratic refutation. It is just this immunity that may drive logos mad, for it reveals a weakness not before divined. Logos, the commitment to finding the truth, has now recognized a most painful truth: It cannot refute the radical, the consistent and selfconscious, relativist. Therefore, logos must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false. It exhorts its listeners to want the same. But it cannot ground this desire. That is, it cannot prove that as a desire it deserves any privilege or is in any way definitive of being human. Such a demonstration would require that logos prove, without begging the question, that relativism, the "claim" that all desires are ultimately equal in their baselessness and that the realm of human values is therefore no more than an arena for the struggles of power, is false. And this, as we have seen, it cannot do. Therefore, the classic assertion, that logos is unique and more than one desire among many, the vaunted claim that logos is unconditionally good, is called into question. And yet . . . logos is not yet prepared to relinquish its throne. It has, however, recognized the force of Cleitophon's charge. (This it did in the form of Socrates' silence.) Therefore, if it is to defend itself, it must do so on a different footing than that it initially used. It must part ways with Aristotle who, with clear and happy spirit, articulated a beautiful vision of a world "out there" in which logos was at home. Aristotle's was a theoretical vision of an objective world. Now the emphasis must shift to a world "in here." Logos must take its bearings and build its case from the fact that it is a desire. What logos will next argue is that, yes, it is but a desire, but that, no,

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

109

desires are not all equal. Human desire has an ordered structure with logos at the pinnacle. This conclusion will be similar to that offered by Aristotle who stated (in his Nicomachean Ethics) that desire is "not empty and vain." Because of this assumption, Aristotle concluded that there must be a "highest good." In other words, he claimed that because desire was not empty and vain, because life was not meaningless, the objects of desire have an order. Some objects must be higher than others and, finally, this sequence must terminate in that which is desired for its own sake. If this were not the case, the objects of desire would proceed indefinitely; nothing would be intrinsically satisfying and desire would be empty and vain. Aristotle's implicit argument was valid: //desire is not empty and vain, if it is not indefinitely expanding or utterly without structure, then some objects of desire are higher than others. But this doesn't say much. Aristotle simply assumed (against potential opponents like Callicles and Cleitophon) that life was "meaningful," that desire had a termination point. But what if he was wrong? Now logos must do more. It must actually demonstrate, rather than simply assume, that desire has a structure. What follows will attempt that task; it will be a "subjective analysis," an analysis of desire itself. What follows is a discussion of a passage from Plato's dialogue, the Symposium.8 The setting is a drinking party in which the guests entertain themselves with speeches. The topic, they decide, will be eros, a word which in both Greek and English means "love," particularly that love expressed in sexual passion. The task that Socrates and his companions give themselves is to praise eros as fully and accurately as possible. Socrates is the last official speaker and he begins his talk in typical fashion, by interrogating the speaker who immediately preceded him, a poet named Agathon. Agathon had gone along with a conventional view, that eros is to be praised as a god. Eros, he said, was the most beautiful and beauty loving of all the gods. By examining this assertion, Socrates elicits the following four characteristics of eros. First, eros (says Socrates) is always "of something." Assume P loves. If so, then P loves or desires some A. (The addition of "desires" will be explained shortly.) Eros must have an object. In this regard it is like consciousness. When sensing or thinking, it is impossible not to sense or think of something; similarly, when loving, it is impossible not to love something. To put this in somewhat technical terms, eros is "intentional." (To verify this, one needs only to try an experiment: Try to think without thinking of something. It seems impossible. Now try to love without being directed toward, without loving some

no Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? object; try simply loving. It is, it seems, impossible. To love is to love something.) The second characteristic of eros is this: the something, the A, that is loved by P is not possessed by P. When I am hungry and desire food, it is because my stomach lacks food. When my stomach is totally full, I feel no hunger. If I am weak or sick, then I desire to be strong or well. The general statement "If P loves A, then P does not possess A" thus seems to hold. Eros is "negative." Ths statement above, however, cannot quite stand as formulated, for there is an obvious counterexample to it. If I now possess health, I may still desire to be healthy. Socrates explains this by saying if P loves A, and P possesses A, then P desires to possess A in the future. Since this third statement contradicts the second (because it allows P to love and to possess A), we should amend the second: If P loves A, then P does not possess A permanently and completely. If I am healthy and still desire health, it is because health requires continual maintenance to be preserved. These few remarks (which occur from 199c to 20 Ic) decisively shape Socrates' later discussion, for they disclose the third characteristic of eros: It is essentially temporal. Human beings are caught in the flow of time. We are incomplete, or finite, and aware of our incompleteness. We are continually lacking and so we are continually loving. We love and want what we lack, and our lives are spent in perpetual striving to overcome incompleteness (or finitude). Aristophanes, the famous comic poet and an earlier speaker, had touched upon this theme earlier when he had said, "The desire and the pursuit of the whole is called eros" (192elO). For Aristophanes, however, wholeness was found only in sexual union with a well-matched partner (accompanied by a healthy dose of religous piety). In other words, Aristophones, like most comedians, retained the ordinary meaning of "eros." Socrates does not. For him, Aristophanes' was an insufficient account of eros because, as we will see, human beings can never be fully satisfied, can never achieve the completeness we crave, through intercourse with other human beings. The first three characteristics all rest on the fourth, which is simply assumed throughout Socrates' discussion. Eros is a desire, a going after its object. Eros is a motive force: it impels the one loving to pursue, to move toward, an object. The Greek word for desire is epithumia. Let us, therefore, describe eros as "epithumotic."9 Armed with these four characterizations of eros, Socrates refutes Agathon who had said that eros was the most beautiful and beauty loving of the gods. Since eros is of what it lacks, if it is the love of beauty it lacks, and so cannot itself have, beauty. Indeed, it is clearly implied by Socrates' analysis that if eros loves beauty, then it cannot be a god (for in general

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? 111 the gods do not lack anything and so they surely should not lack beauty). Agathon quickly admits that his own account cannot be sustained. Socrates then dispenses with him and tells a story. He had once, he says, been instructed in erotic matters by a priestess named Diotima. She had put him through an interrogation in much the same way that Socrates himself had examined Agathon. Socrates too had once believed that eros was a god, both beautiful and beauty loving. When he learned that eros could not be such he was at a loss. If eros was not good and beautiful, he asked, was it then ugly and bad? If eros was not an immortal god, was it then mortal? Diotima rebuked him sharply for thinking only in these extreme terms. Socrates, she says, had ignored the possibility of the "in-between." Eros is inbetween a human and a god, the mortal and the immortal. It is a "daimon," a spirit (201e-202e). Diotima devotes the rest of her speech to articulating the structure of this daimon, this "spiritual" force that shapes human lives. She is most concerned with explaining the objects of eros. This makes sense: if eros is intentional, then it is precisely the capacity to enter into relationships with objects. Therefore, to explain the structure of eros means explaining the nature and order of its objects. The first statement Diotima makes is that eros has as its object "beautiful things" (204d3). Quickly, and without argument, she substitutes "the good" for the "beautiful" (204el). (This substitution is not quite as arbitrary as it sounds: the Greek word for beautiful, kalos, has "moral" overtones.) If P loves, P loves and desires to possess A. If P loves and desires A, it is because A is felt or believed to be good (to be attractive, beautiful). P expects that attainment of A will result in a state of affairs better than the one not including A. This can be reformulated (in terms used earlier): the object of P's eros is the attainment of "happiness" (eudaimonia: 204e7), that state of affairs achieved when good things, beautiful things, are possessed. It is, therefore, what we all want. All this may sound quite "idealistic." But in fact it is not. From the thief to the best of women, all action is directed toward some goal that is thought to bring advantage. This notion of advantage, here called the good or the beautiful, can be conceived in an indefinite number of ways. But the point is that human beings always go after what they take to be good. In other words, Diotima has added a fifth characteristic to the list: Desire is "ideological" in the sense that the object for the sake of which, toward which, human beings move must be "judged" to be good by them. This process of judging is rarely made articulate. The thief who steals the car rarely bothers to attempt to articulate why he believes (incorrectly) that such an action is good. But he does believe, however inarticulately, that what he does is for his good. If he did not, he would not do it. Diotima's point is that, in principle, every action propelled by desire

112 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? could be made articulate. If P desires to move toward A, it is because P "thinks," however inarticulately, that A is good. If P did not think A were good, P would go elsewhere. In sum, "human beings love nothing other than the good" (205e7-206al).I() The next stage of Diotima's analysis begins with a crucial transition. If P loves A, A is thought or felt to be good and so P desires A to be his own in order to be happy. Furthermore, P desires A always to be his own (206a9). The desire for what is good is the desire for the permanent possession of what is good. Soon this is reformulated even further: eros is eros of immortality (207a3), in the form of the immortal possession of the good. At a first hearing this description sounds farfetched, even mystical, and far from the ordinary lives of human beings. Does it make any sense to say that we want to be immortal? If it does, it is because of the earlier discussion Socrates had with Agathon. There it was agreed that eros is epithumotic and necessarily contains within it a negative moment: we desire what we do not have. Eros is ideological: we desire what is good. Eros is essentially temporal: we desire good things whose possession extends into the future. Ultimately, what we do not have is immortality. Immortality, therefore, is the ultimate object of desire. It is what we all want whether we say, admit, know it or not. Think of it this way: If you ever got totally what you wanted, you would cease to desire. Since desire is a necessary condition of life, if you ever got totally what you wanted you would cease to be alive as a human being. This can mean one of two things: Either you would be dead or you would become immortal. Rarely do human beings want to die. Therefore, insofar as you desire to get totally what you want, you desire immortality. Perhaps Diotima's position can be made more clear by considering a possible objection to it. Assume a woman desires some object (A) even though, or just because, it is an object only to be temporarily possessed. A woman might desire to scale a mountain even though she knows she must return to the plains. She might argue that mountain climbing is made even more attractive just because she must return to the plains. Diotima's response could take the following form: Assume A is an object that fulfills a desire. If the woman desires to possess A on a temporary basis, there must be some reason why the woman does not desire A on a permanent basis. There must be some desirable object B that supplements, replaces, or conditions the desirability of A. But A has been assumed to be fulfilling and so it should not require any supplementation. Therefore, either A is not fulfilling, in which case some other object (B) is more desirable, or A

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

113

must be desired as a permanent possession. (If the latter option is chosen, then the same analysis would be applied to B.) The mountain climber might say, "You're crazy. Immortality is the furthest thing from my mind. I want to climb a mountain, but I do not want this as a permanent possession; part of the thrill of the mountaintop is that I know I must return to the plains." If the woman says this, she actually denies that what she wants is to climb a mountain. The mountaintop (call it A) only seems to be the object of her desire; in reality, she desires to have a complex feeling that includes both the thrill of the mountaintop and the security of the plains (call it B). What she wants is the complex object A + B (call it C). This, not A, is what she wants. If she argues that she wants C only temporarily, some other object, D, will arise, and then we will have to say that she really wants C + D, or E. And if she thinks about it she will have to admit that, finally, it is E that she wants . . . and wants as a permanent possession. An opponent might object: "What if there is no termination point; what if we desire an indefinite array of objects, none of which we desire permanently?" On this account, we love the seeking of pleasures and goods and neither permanence nor total satisfaction. For the opponent, the fact that the objects of desires neither are orderly nor terminate is not a problem but a pleasure. Again, however, the opponent cannot explain why any object is not in itself totally fulfilling. Why is there a need to return to the plains at all? Why not perish on mountaintops? Human beings are restless and never quite satisfied; we move on. We do so, not because all objects are equally unfulfilling, but because we seek an object that is completely fulfilling. If this weren't the case (if this weren't the belief that implicitly is operative in us), then there would be no motive force to keep us going from one object to the next. It is our temporality, the fact that we are in and of time, that makes Diotima's account compelling. It is the awareness of our temporality that shapes and pushes forth our actions. Only because we are aware of the flow of time in which we are caught do we move, strive to achieve, push ourselves forward. I wake up and realize that this morning feels much the same as yesterday's. I realize that soon this morning will disappear and become tomorrow, that I am caught in a flow that cannot be stopped, cannot be reversed. That even my youngest child will soon age. I look back at yesterday's morning and realize it is gone, vanished; only a memory, usually dim, remains. And I understand that this very morning will soon be an equally dim yesterday. I imagine my dying and realize that just before its moment this very morning will be as insubstantial as yesterday's morning is now. I imagine my grandfather, soon to die, and understand that his looking back at his past is no different than mine. We are all caught.

114 Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? This is a very common feeling. We think about dying and the flowing away of our lives. Often it is easy to feel swept away in the current of time and sympathize with the famous lines of the deranged Macbeth: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

If Diotima is wrong, then Macbeth is right. If there is no way to get out of time, then time is but a succession of "syllables" pacing toward their end. Diotima tells us that we desire life to be more than a petty path of yesterdays leading to dusty death. Macbeth has lost that desire; and he is a madman. We desire to escape, to stand outside, the flow of time. When Diotima says this she is not being overly idealistic or mystical. She is being realistic about ordinary human experience. We want to jump out of time. Only by understanding this desire can we hope to understand, and affirm, who we are. But of course there is a basic problem. How can we, ever aging, "jump out of time?" What sense could this phrase possibly make? How can we gain access to or make contact with that which is not finite? At this point a metaphor takes command of the passage: Human beings are pregnant. Our lives are spent in giving birth to that which will remain when we are gone. The parent's child, the family legacy, the fame earned on the basketball court, the poet's poem . . . all represent the human urge to overcome finitude. As Aristophanes had put it, even in sexual embrace the soul desires something else that it cannot articulate, but only intuit, namely wholeness (192d). Diotima supplies the articulation that the comedian leaves out. She is willing to explain how it is that finite beings desire and attempt to give birth to that which is immortal. It is here that Diotima launches into what has become known as the "ascent passage" (210a-212a). Here she supplies the analysis of desire, of eros, as a hierarchical structure. By so doing, she permits logos to agree with its accuser that it is a desire and to deny the further and most damaging charge that it is on a par with all other desires. If desire is structured hierarchically, then logos, through a psychological argument, can still make a grand bid to occupy the pinnacle.

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

115

The Ascent Passage

210a4 He who is to proceed correctly in this matter [the initiate] must begin, when young, to go toward beautiful bodies and first, if the one guiding guides correctly, he must love one body [stage 1] and there engender beautiful logos [stage 2]." Next he must realize that the beauty found in any single body is kindred to that found in any other body, and if it is necessary for him to hunt the beautiful in form, it is silly not to suppose that the beauty in all bodies is one and the same. Having had this insight, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies and slacken his excessive love of one by being contemptuous and counting it something small. 210b6 After this, it is necessary [for the one proceeding correctly] to suppose that the beauty in souls is more honorable than that in body [stage 3]. The result of this is that even if someone is but slightly attractive, if he is fine in his soul he will be satisfying and the one proceeding correctly will love and care, and seek and give birth to such logos that makes the young better. As a result, he will be constrained to behold the beautiful in institutions and laws and to see that the beautiful is all bound together in kinship [stage 4]; and so he will suppose the beauty of the body to be something small. 210c6 After institutions it is necessary [for the one guiding] to lead [the initiate] to the sciences in order that he might see the beauty of the sciences [stage 5]. And looking at beauty on a grand scale, no longer is he a trivial and worthless slave who loves only an individual, either the beauty of a child or of some man or one institution, but turning towards and seeing the great sea of the beautiful he gives birth to much beautiful and magnificent logos and many thoughts in the abundance of philosophy [stage 6]. 210d6 This [the intiate] does until being strengthened and nourished he looks upon one particular sort of knowledge, which is of the following sort of beauty. Try to pay attention now as closely as you can. For whoever has loved properly up to this point, and has seen the beautiful things in proper order and has thus reached the telos of the erotic journey, suddenly sees a beauty amazing in its nature. 210e4 And this, Socrates, is that for the sake of which all the previous labors were. First of all, it always is, and it neither comes to be nor passes away; nor does it increase or diminish; nor is it beautiful in one way, but ugly in another; nor is it sometimes beautiful and sometimes not; nor is it beautiful relative to something, but ugly relative to something else so that it is beautiful to some but ugly to others. Nor in turn will the beauty appear to him like a face or a hand or anything else that partakes of the body; nor is it a logos or a science; nor does it exist in any other place, for example in an animal or in the earth or the heavens or anvwhere else; but itself

116 Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? together with itself it is always singularly formed and the rest of the beautiful things in some way participate in it. Unlike any which come to be and pass away, it neither becomes more nor less, and it suffers nothing.

Diotima's account is not an idealistic or "other-worldly" story of mystical transcendence. Instead, it is an analysis of what happens during the development of a hypothetical (and accessible) human desire. Not surprisingly, the "initiate," the one being initiated into the mysteries of eros, begins with the love of a single body. What is surprising is the fact that this first stage, this first and most familiar desire, soon slackens and its object is counted as "something small." Why? Is Diotima a prude who finds bodies distasteful? I don't think so. After the very first stage of loving individuals "beautiful logos" is generated. Eros, Diotima rightly explains, does not remain mute. We speak to our loves, call them "beautiful," tell why we love. Bodies, in and of themselves, simply do not satisfy for very long. For whatever reason, the urge is soon felt "to give birth" to logos which supplements, and soon comes to overwhelm, touch. Our hypothetical initiate has felt the urge to speak. He generates a beautiful logos. As a result, he comes to realize that the individual body beside his is not totally satisfying. And so he moves to stage 2, love of all beautiful bodies. It is not obvious what Diotima means here. Does she allude to a bisexual Don Juan? Probably not. More likely she indicates that the production of logos leads to the realization that the extension of the word "beautiful" far outstrips any single body. What comes to the fore here is what she calls "the beautiful in form." Because of our talking we come to realize that what we love when we love even a single body is not what it seems to be. The initiate says to his beloved, "I love you because you are beautiful." This is a logos, a speech produced by eros. The speech provides a means for the initiate to come to a realization: The word "beautiful" he has used does not exclusively refer to the body lying beside his. It refers to all bodies that can be described as "beautiful." There is a movement implied by logos, a movement from particularity (this beautiful body right here) to universality (to the form of beauty shared by all beautiful bodies). Language drives us upward, away from particularity. It forces us to realize that what we want is not an individual; we want more. This first transition of the ascent passage, from stage one to two, is paradigmatic of the whole process of ascent. It is because we talk that the objects of our eros change. Logos, which is produced by human erotic energy, provides a means for having a "realization." Logos functions like a lens through which we see the objects we love. When there is a disparity between what we are saying and what we are loving, then a need is felt

Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? 117 to move on. A single beautiful body simply isn't satisfying to one who speaks, for speaking refers to the beautiful in form. By speaking the initiate realizes (sees) that the single body does not fully satisfy and in this sense must be counted as something small. (A warning: It is obviously not necessary that every person who loves come to this realization. It is possible that someone can spend an entire life loving only particular bodies. What Diotima wishes to explain is the structure of the process that is engendered by dissatisfaction at the various stages. The motive force animating such dissatisfaction is eros and it finds its expression in logos. Once the initiate comes to realize that there is a discrepancy between the logos used to comment upon his beloved at a particular stage and that beloved itself, he feels a lack and is driven forward, upward. He is driven to harmonize his logos and his eros. That the initiate feels so dissatisfied is a contingent matter; it need not occur. Diotima's objective is to explain what follows when it does occur.) The initiate goes on to stage three, the love of souls. Here there is another realization, namely that the object of eros is not bodily at all. A body is necessarily particularized and the initiate's love is now for the beautiful in form, for the universal. Therefore, he must redirect his eros to the soul, which he takes to be the locus of universality. The soul, not the body, is the origin of logos, and it was the generation of "beautiful logos" that sparked the initial drive toward universality. Our initiate now realizes that genuine satisfaction comes through talking. As a result, he can be attracted by someone (like Socrates) whose body is ugly but whose soul is beautiful. This realization brings with it stage four, the love of institutions and laws or, we might say, the love of the polis. Here eros is not concerned with individuals at all, for the polis is not simply an aggregate of particular bodies. It is a unified entity capable on its own of commanding the loyalty and passions of its citizens. The political person loves, not individuals, but the "soul" of the polis, its principles, ideals, history. These are disclosed through logos, which is (or at least used to be) the medium of political life. Although she is quite vague about this stage, it is possible to make sense of what Diotima is talking about here. The process of wanting more, sparked by our talking, takes us beyond individual bodies to souls. Again, this is not idealism or prudishness; it is a description of what happens to people with powerful desires. They want something more than individuals. They want to be talked about. They want their words to reach far. They want to be recognized by the polis, and not just by their individual beloveds. Such recognition can take many forms; one might desire fame,

n8 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? political power, literary influence, the good feeling of deeds applauded as well done. Diotima does not spell any of this out. But her basic point, that because of logos the objects of eros progress upward, is clear and compelling. Diotima is virtually silent about both the fourth ("the political") and the fifth stage of the ascent. The latter is only described as "the beauty of the sciences." She appears eager to arrive at the sixth and highest stage in the development of eros, philosophical logos. Politics and the sciences are briefly mentioned and then soon left behind. We are not told why. An obvious inference is that it is because neither is fully satisfying, and the ascent passage presents the structural development of a soul in search of genuine satisfaction. But why are these two human activities unsatisfying? First, to politics. (I label stage four as "the political" even though I just acknowledged that there are many ways of interpreting what Diotima means here. I do this for two reasons. First, "political" is a very broad term. It refers to all public activity directed not toward the privacy of individuals, but towards the polis. Second, I think that when she says "institutions and laws" Diotima has politics [in a rather straightforward sense] in mind. The Athenians were an intensely political people, and it was a given that the most ambitious among them would seek political recognition. [In Greek, the word for "ambitious" is philotimos, loving of honor.] In what follows, then, I am presenting in skeletal form a Platonic critique of political activity.) In concrete political terms, the polis always suffers from factionalism. It is riddled with contention and can never become either fully harmonious or just. This is due precisely to the erotic nature of human beings. There are always individuals (like Callicles) who seek "to have more" than their fair share.12 There is among some of the citizens an urge to tyrannize, a desire for power. This is simply a specific application of Diotima's general teaching: eros is the desire for completeness, for total satisfaction. And one variant of such a desire is political. As Socrates puts it in the Republic, "eros has from old been called a tyrant" (573b6). Eros drives, it pushes; those with the strongest desires desire all. Political eros, therefore, issues in the desire for complete rule, for tyranny. The polis is a conglomerate of competing desires, of competing speeches. Each politician speaks to the public (or, in a system less democratic than the Athenians', to his competitor), but only to advocate a specific political program. The goal is not realization of a universally just city, but the fulfillment of a particular desire. Eros cannot be controlled, these speeches cannot be purged of their particularity, and so the city cannot be made either fully just or secure.13 Political logos, therefore, is necessarily limited and unsatisfying. The political realm is a cauldron of

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? 119 competition. If a politician's goal is total satisfaction, he has gone into the wrong business. This point can be reformulated: Earlier we saw that eros seeks that which is immortal and so nonhuman. Since the city is strictly a human affair, eros cannot be satisfied through politics. Upon realizing this, the initiate must again metamorphize the object of his eros. He turns to the sciences. Diotima is almost totally silent here about stage five. Presumably the vision of beauty gained through the study of the sciences is a form of intellectual satisfaction. Imagine the following scenario. For years our hypothetical initiate was driven by a desire to make a career in the polis. He directed his considerable ambition toward political activity. But he finally became frustrated. Politics, he learned, always requires compromise and capitulation and less than perfect solutions to its problems. The political man is forever pitted against others of his kind. His logos must, therefore, continually take into account what these others will say. Politics finally becomes ugly and after a while our initiate realizes that he desires something clean, something complete. In response he turns away from the city and toward any one of the particular sciences such as history, mathematics, or biology. Here he engages an object free from the hurries of human interference. The object doesn't vary, doesn't tantalize. The logos his science affords him need not direct itself to other human logoi that aim to thwart it. There is no need to compromise. He studies and learning pleases him. But soon even this experience becomes unsatisfying. We wish Diotima had said more about why. It must be because, like politics, the sciences are partial and eros desires completeness. The problem is specifying the exact nature of their incompleteness. Perhaps this is a result of the fact that the sciences proceed on the basis of unproven assumptions (axioms), or categorical distinctions that are not made explicit. Perhaps the individual sciences are unable to give a full account of their foundations and what exactly it is that makes them sciences. Perhaps it is because they cannot give an account of their own goodness. In any case, they are partial, they "cut off a portion of reality and study it. Biology, for example, studies only one small subject: living beings. Mathematics is only concerned with abstract magnitudes. Our initiate, a man driven by eros, wants more. He wants a logos of all things. He turns toward philosophy, the love of wisdom. The initiate turns away from, for example, biology, mathematics, or history, and toward "the great sea of the beautiful" where "he gives birth to many beautiful and magnificent logoi and thoughts in unstinting philosophy." What is the object to which the initiate finally turns? To what does this philosophical logos refer? Typically this is called by scholars "the Idea

120 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? (or Form) of the beautiful," although this phrase itself is not used here. At the pinnacle of the ascent, the initiate sees a "certain beauty" which is unchanging, complete, absolute (that is, nonrelative). This is "beauty itself," and it is the only object capable of satisfying fully human desire. Beauty itself is that which makes possible the beauty found in all particular objects; all these objects "participate" in it. It is perfect beauty found not in any particular manifestation, but only in the "Idea."14 Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. The only object capable of accomplishing this is the o.ne that allows for no limitation. Only beauty itself, understood as an object of human eros, an eros that speaks, will produce a satisfying logos. Diotima describes philosophy as "unstinting." Unlike all others, philosophical logos does not run out. At every other stage of the ascent frustration had to occur. At stage one, for example, there was a discrepancy between the speech that expresses the love the initiate had for his beloved, and his beloved. His speech used the word "beautiful," a word that would describe all beautiful objects. But the object of his eros at that stage was a particular body: His logos and the object of his logos did not harmonize. Only at the highest stage of the ascent, in philosophy, is there a harmony between the logos and its object. Because its object is complete, perfect, singularly formed, philosophical logos addresses that which is commensurate with its need for total satisfaction. According to Diotima, philosophy is the highest human activity, for it and only it has as its object that which is unchanging, immortal; that toward which eros can direct all its energy without fear of its object failing to satisfy. Diotima is a kind of inverse Freudian. She would say that latent within sexual attraction is the love of wisdom, of beauty itself; that Don Juan is a repressed philosopher. What we really love when we love (when we speak about what we love) is nothing particular. We really want to articulate what is permanent and unchanging within our experience. Diotima urges human beings to desire what we really desire. She urges us to know ourselves and thus to acknowledge the desire for immortality. Such selfknowledge, knowledge of the subjective constitution of human desire, confirms the goodness of logos. We are what we love and this, if understood properly, is wisdom. Therefore, only philosophy, the love of wisdom, adequately expresses the restless urgings of an eros that speaks. The objects of eros can be structured hierarchically. All human beings are erotic; we want, we love. We begin in the love of individual bodies. Virtually all of us begin to talk and thus produce (or "give birth to") a logos. Insofar as the logos attempts to express or comment upon the

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

121

loving relationship, it forces the lover to count his beloved "something small." For logos bespeaks more than individuals. The discrepancy between the object of eros and the logos about it drives us forward, toward the city, toward science, finally into philosophy. Logos is the vehicle of this erotic ascent. Therefore, logos is good insofar as it, and only it, allows for the complete expression of desire. All this implies that Cleitophon was wrong—or, at least, not totally right. It is true that Socrates' protreptic speeches, like those of the Sophist, address themselves to the desires of his audience. But unlike the Sophist, Socrates urges men and women to actualize the proper nature of their desire. Because the objects of desire can be ordered hierarchically (a contention the Sophist would deny), Socratic protreptic is not empty or vain; it is efficacious in urging us to pursue with logos the proper and most satisfying object of our desire. Logos has been humbled, but not defeated. It still has the strength to claim its throne. It may be a desire, but it is the highest desire. Logos still stands. It has confronted its accuser and seen within his very accusation a basis for hope. Through its subjective or psychological argument, it has weathered the storm of Cleitophon. C THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE POET But there are problems. For anyone who has followed the course of this book, for all those potential accusers, these are predictable. First, one could argue that Diotima's analysis of eros simply recasts Aristotle's assertions about human nature and the highest good (discussed above in LA. 1.) into metaphorical terms. Even though her treatment is a subjective one that takes its bearings from the human being who desires, she approaches eros as if it were an object in the world to be analyzed. By so doing she is open to the same set of objections previously directed at Aristotle. How does Diotima know eros is structured as she says it is? Her speech is a set of assertions about an object. She speaks as if her access to this object were unimpeded, as if language can with ease articulate this "thing" in the world as it is. But what if it can't? Diotima speaks as if there were a "human nature" that is ideologically structured. But is there? Do people really love the way Diotima says they do, or is she just reiterating the "classical assertion" and foisting upon an unsuspecting audience her own conception of how a human being should love? Does Diotima deny and repress the polymorphous wonder of human eros? There are other objections. As admitted above, the transitions between the various stages of the ascent passage are contingent. For example, it

122 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? is easy to imagine someone not moving from love of bodies to the love of the polis, and then leaving politics to study a particular science: there is no necessity that binds the movement between these stages. If this is the case, then in what sense can eros be said to have a structure? It is of course possible that someone might go through the development Diotima proposes. But the fact that someone might do so hardly certifies the further claim that this is the very nature of eros. And if this latter, very strong, claim cannot be substantiated, then Diotima does not actually advance the cause of logos any further. Logos remains but one desire among many, and not the culmination of a hierarchical structure. Another version of the accuser's objection would focus on Diotima's contention that eros has a termination point, a highest object. Did Diotima beg the question in order to reach this conclusion? Did she assume what she purported to prove, namely that eros has a hierarchical structure? If so, she simply repeated the classical assertion of Aristotle and is thus subject to the same objection he faced; she assumed, rather than proved, that desire is not "empty and vain." No doubt there are other problems with Diotima's account of eros. There is, however, a way of summarizing these many difficulties faced by the ascent passage (faced by the second attempt of logos to resecure its throne). In the Symposium Socrates is confronted by (at least) three types of people. There are sophists, a technician (in the form of a doctor), and poets.15 As has been argued throughout this book, these three types share a basic conviction, namely that the human world of significance is produced. (The Sophists and the poets are explicit proponents of this position; the technician embraces it as the "flip side" of his view.) In other words, all three types of opponents are "poeticists." What this means is that at least in terms of its characters the Symposium presents a version of the "ancient dispute" between philosophy and poetry. This is, however, more than just an observation about the dialogue's dramatic background; it is the perspective of the poeticist that best encapsulates the objections to be brought against the ascent passage. The poeticist would object: "Diotima, there's one enormous problem with what you describe, and it has to do with the various objects of eros that you propose. How do we know that this initiate of yours didn't make them all up? Your analysis of eros speaks only from the side of the subject: you tell me what the initiate wants. But you don't tell me whether what he wants actually exists. And if you can't tell me this, then your story is in big trouble. Isn't it possible that the 'Idea of Beauty,' which finally is the telos of your entire account, is just a 'fiction'? After all, you yourself admit that this is a psychological argument. Why, then, should I believe that all these objects of desire aren't just figments of a hyperactive imagination? Furthermore, and worse, if these objects are all made, then no

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

123

one of them is higher than any other; they all share the same essential stamp of human production. The making is all, and any standard one would use to measure such objects would itself be made; the making goes on and on. Don't misunderstand. I love the productive imagination. Your problem is not that you made up the Idea of Beauty; rather, it's that you pretend that the Idea of Beauty isn't made at all, that it just exists out there, itself by itself, to be seen by the philosopher. You pretend that you're different from us, but in fact you're just like us—you manufactured the Idea." The ascent passage can only succeed in defending the goodness of logos, can only argue that logos is the pinnacle of desire, if it can establish the fact that the Idea of Beauty actually exists independently of human being and is not a fiction. (For if this is not the case, then there is no reason to privilege philosophical logos.) The passage, however, does not comment on the reality or nature of the objects the initiate desires. Instead, it is a psychological analysis, an account of eros. (And since the stages it postulates are not necessary, even as a psychological account it provides at best only a probable story.) Consider this: grant Diotima the assumption that human beings desire immortality. Even if this is true, it does not imply that anything immortal actually exists. Human beings may be (as Spinoza suggests) predisposed to delude themselves, to want objects that do not exist. What we want is not necessarily what is. The ascent passage finds the initiate wanting that which is beyond the individual, namely the universal. But what is the status of these universals? Are they real, or are they fabricated by the initiate himself? The ascent passage does not say. To reformulate the poeticist's objection: Throughout the ascent passage there is continual interplay between the metaphors of giving birth and of seeing. For example, the initiate, in the transition from stage one to two, gives birth to a logos which in turn lets him see (or "realize") that individual bodies are unsatisfying.16 The initiate sees the discrepancy that obtains between his logos, which beckons toward the universal, and the object of his eros, which at this early stage is only particular. Logos is the vehicle that propels human eros toward a more universal object. But logos is a human production. Therefore, the question should arise, how is it possible to distinquish between what logos allows us to see and what logos produces? In other words, how do we know that what we talk about exists "out there" to be seen and is not just a product of our verbal imaginations? How do we know that there is anything out there whose impressions we receive untainted by our productive apparatus? Do we see and discover, or do we make?

124 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? Contrast the highly metaphorical ascent passage with the quite straightforward statement from Aristotle cited earlier: Spoken words are symbols of the affections (pathematd) of the soul, and written words are symbols of spoken words. And just as written words are not the same for all men, so spoken words are not the same for all. However, those first things of which these spoken words are signs, namely the affections of the soul, are the same for all, and the things of which these [the affections of the soul] are likenesses are also the same (De Interpretation, 16a3-8).

Aristotle's is a confident and unperturbed vision of the real. He broaches no doubt that the "first things," the psychic affections of which spoken words are signs, are universally present in human experience. And this is because these affections are reflective of a set of invariable objects in a common and constant world out there with which human beings successfully interact. Plato, at least insofar as he speaks through Socrates' story of Diotima, is more honest: he gives the subject more of its due. That is, he grants that the origin of logos is in the human subject, understood as an erotic agent, and not the world. To say this does not in itself preclude logos from viewing, without distorting, objects in the world. But it does raise a problem to which the opponent of logos will point: what is the ontological status of those objects? Is beauty itself an entity that exists independently of the human subject, or is it a mental or linguistic construct and thus dependent on the subject? Diotima's account cannot answer this question, for the Idea of Beauty—in the final stage of the ascent—is broached only insofar as it appears as the ultimate object of desire. The ascent passage speaks only from the side of the subject. As suggested above, the statement "You desire immortality" tells us only about you and not whether there actually exists any immortal object. Logos originates not in a cognitive capacity for the apprehension of objects, but in the desire to give birth to beautiful speeches. Like a child, it is born from passion. Its object never simply shows itself. Instead, it shows itself only through the lens manufactured by the erotic energy of the initiate. The lens is like neither a window nor a mirror; it is more like a kaleidoscope (from the Greek: kalos, beautiful, eidos, form, skopein, to view). It sees what it wants to see, namely what is beautiful and most satisfying. These conclusions are really quite strange (and the key point, one that will become paramount in Chapter III and will establish Plato as the hero of this book, is that Plato himself, the supposed champion of logos, is the author of this strangeness), for now the question must be asked, What

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

125

differentiates philosophy I logos from poetry? How is it possible to determine when the desiring agent makes it all up and when he sees what is really out there to be seen? The interplay of the two metaphors of birth and sight can now either be denounced by the poeticist as incoherent or announced as evidence that Diotima is herself a poeticist. By contrast, poetry can still be denounced by the philosopher as nothing but embellished sophistry. The ancient dispute still rages. How should we confront this dispute that plagued Plato and even today frames our most pressing debates? Logos is at stake. It no longer knows who it is. And we, the spectators, do not yet know who will triumph, the philosopher or the poet. How can the ancient dispute be resolved? I propose the following: Let us trace the dispute back to its earliest (Greek) roots and examine it in its most primitive manifestation. Let us consider the differences between the very first philosopher of the West, Thales, who lived around 585 b.c.e., and the first fully self-conscious poet, Hesiod, who lived even earlier. By juxtaposing these two archaic voices we will see that the very origin of philosophy cannot be understood without a (hostile) reference to poetry. The dispute is thus essential in constituting the manner in which philosophy conceives of itself. Furthermore, by scrutinizing its earliest formulation we will come to understand the basic terms of the dispute, terms that reappear in its subsequent manifestations. To illustrate this second point, I will digress later in the chapter to compare Hesiod with Derrida. We will see again how today's subversives were prefigured in antiquity by the Greek poeticists. The ancient dispute, originally waged in Greece, still helps us situate today's most influential thinkers. Standard versions of the history of philosophy invariably state that Thales of Miletus, who lived around 585 b.c.e., was the first philosopher. Quite simply, "Every history of philosophy begins with Thales." The reason Thales has maintained this durable appellation is that, unlike all before him, he "evidently abandoned mythic formulations: this alone justifies the claim that he was the first philosopher, naive though his thought still was." Thus, it has long been assumed that the year 585 was as significant as any other in Western history. Before that, thought was constrained by its expression in myth; it was only after 585 that the "first completely rationalistic attempts to describe the nature of the world took place."17 There are two features of this familiar claim that make it more extraordinary than it may initially appear. First, we have no writings whatsoever that can be definitively ascribed to Thales. All knowledge of his thought

126 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? is based upon a limited "doxography," reports about him made by ancient commentators, some of whom are themselves unreliable. It is even possible that Thales himself wrote nothing at all. This was, at least, "a persistent tradition in antiquity."18 Thus, the unanimously titled first philosopher is in the peculiar position of having no written texts that can undeniably be called his own. Second, given the absence of such texts, the claim that Thales was the first philosopher can only be made negatively. Since there is no corpus that can be employed to identify him positively, the determination of who Thales was can only be made by asserting who he was not. As the citations above indicate, he was not a mythmaker. "Muthos" in Greek means "story." The mythmaker made up stories to tell about the world. He was, in other words, a poet, a maker. As a result, the first philosopher can be identified only by the declaration that he was not a poet. The precise relationship between mythic poetry and early Greek philosophy is an issue fraught with scholarly controversy. Questions as to what Thales "really" said or to what extent the mythic tradition actually exerted an influence on the philosophers from Miletus have repeatedly been asked.19 They are not the issue here. The concern of this book is not "philological" or historical in the narrow sense. Instead, its goal here is to reflect on the extraordinary fact that the history of Western philosophy originates with Plato's "ancient quarrel," with a distinction between philosophy (logos) and poetry (muthos). Thales, a name with no texts attached to it, has become a repository or mirror for the tradition's understanding of itself. Thus "he" has become a uniquely revealing illustration of the demarcation that logos constructs between itself and that which is "different." It is just this difference that (as our reading of the ascent passage showed) encapsulates the basic opposition from which our drama is composed and upon which we will now reflect. In order to engage in this reflection the Thalenic logos, or a reconstructed version of it, will be compared with that of Hesiod, a purely poetic or mythic "thinker" who flourished around 700 b.c.e. (and with whom the Milesians are often compared.) Hesiod "sang" rather than spoke rationally. His was the archetypal muthos, a story of the doings of the gods. It was inspired or given to him by the Muses, the divine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and was not the conclusion of argument or observation, two "methods" frequently ascribed to Thales. Hesiod wrote, not in the declarative prose sentences in which traditional philosophy has invariably expressed itself, but in the dactylic hexameter of poetry.20 The standard reconstruction of the Thalenic logos finds him writing in prose, in words that were "psiloi" "bare" of poetic embellishment. As such, despite its primitiveness, the Thalenic logos is akin to the traditional

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

127

model of logos, of legitimate rational speech: he simply told his audience what he believed was the case, making no recourse to divine mediation, using unaided reason to discover and unembellished language to express the nature of things. By contrast, Hesiod's was a "mus-ical" discourse: he was inspired by the Muse, and poetry was his only voice. This, the opposition of bare, truth-telling, prose, and mus-ical poetry, is the ancient dispute. The following is the beginning of Hesiod's poem the Theogony:21 From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring, and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet. Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis-holder and queenly Hera of Argos . . . and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me—the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis: "Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, how to utter true things." So said the ready-voiced daughters of great Zeus, and they plucked and gave me a rod, a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvellous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things that were aforetime; and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally, but ever to sing of themselves both first and last.

These lines (as well as the next 75 or so) constitute a prelude to the rest of Hesiod's poem and are an invocation to the Muses. Hesiod, who is a shepherd, begins in this fashion for it is from the Muses that he both learned what to sing and received the power actually to sing it. As is well known, the Muses are responsible for the production of poetry in general and through them human beings forget their troubles and find rest from sorrow (line 55). That they are truly indispensable is shown by the famous lines that I shall cite again: Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, how to utter true things.

128 Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? A human being is a "mere belly," a body of appetites with no innate ability to transcend his appalling natural condition. It is only upon intervention by the Muses, who provide speech and song, that human beings attain some reprieve from the ceaseless pursuit of the satisfaction of appetite. Humans can sing, forget their sorrows, and speak with (what is felt to be) knowledge, if and only if the Muses choose to bestow their gift. Presumably men can, through some unspecified means, make judgments about what the Muses say and discriminate between their true and their apparently true (but false) sayings, for we are told that they say both what is true and what is false. By deciding to communicate their message to a general audience, Hesiod "implies a faith in the Muses' wish to tell the truth," a faith that may or may not be reasonably grounded.22 What this means is not yet clear. For the moment we can be content only with this: For Hesiod, human beings are mere bellies in need of mus-ical intervention in order to articulate and speak knowledgeably about things, in order to rise above the level of perpetual gastronomical dissatisfaction. And what is it that the Muses teach Hesiod to sing? How the holy race of the deathless gods came into being. But not only that. The Theogony is the account of the generation of the divine, physical, and human cosmos.23 The story tells of the coming into being of all the gods as well as the various components of the world (rivers, lakes, hills, dreams, etc.). The telos of the myth is the attainment of power by Zeus. In other words, it is the coming into being of the entire world that is under the sway of traditional Greek religion. It is not necessary, however, to worship pagan gods to appreciate Hesiod, for the real telos of the myth, as we will see, is the coming into being of the ordinary world we all, even now, experience. For our purposes here, it is only the very beginning of this story that is of interest: Indeed at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the eversure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black night . . . (116—123) The world began in chaos (which I here italicize to indicate that this is a Greek word). The meaning of this all-important first word is a matter of controversy. While the translator above uses the English cognate "chaos," another suggests "void."24 Etymologically, chaos goes back to "gap" or "chasm," a looming empty space in between. As such, the cognate is actually misleading. "Chaos" to our ears suggests an unordered mass of

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

129

parts. Chaos, however, has no parts. It is empty, formless, and undifferentiated. It is from chaos that the ordinary (or phenomenal), the organized and intelligible, world in which we all live emerges. The most basic feature of the ordinary world is that it is intelligible; it makes sense. The reason that it makes sense is because it is characterized by "differentiated multiplicity." This means that it is filled with many objects which can be understood as different from one another. The desk in front of me is intelligible in that I can distinquish it from the lamp placed on top of it. I don't confuse the lamp with the desk; I have no problems telling the difference between the door and the wall. As a result, my ordinary activities proceed quite smoothly: I don't attempt to turn on the desk in order to receive light, and I walk through the door and not into the wall. The Theogony's plot has a basic direction to it. It moves from chaos to intelligibility. It is the story of progressive articulation and organization. From chaos comes, through unknown causes, Earth, Tartarus (the lower world), and Eros. From these primordial beings comes, in genealogical order, a huge sequence of beings that constitutes the totality of the experienced or ordinary world. In sum, Hesiod teaches that the intelligible multiplicity that informs our experience originates in an undifferentiated primal chasm, which itself, because of its total lack of any differentiation, is unintelligible. More on this crucial notion will follow below. A key point to be kept in mind about Hesiod's poem is that, despite its manifold transformations, chaos never quite leaves the scene in the Theogony. This is due to the presence of Night. Night is born straight from chaos (line 123), and she herself gives birth to Death, Sleep, Fate, and others. These births, however, are strictly autogenetic: Night has no mate. Therefore, with no cross-fertilization to weaken its "genetic" heritage, Sleep functions as a direct transmitter and representative of primal chaos within human affairs.25 We fall asleep, and dreams often invade us with their shapeless terrors. For all that there is of light and clarity within human experience, there is also that which is dark and devoid of distinction. It is this cosmological fact of the retained presence of chaos that accounts for Hesiod's general stance of caution and moderation in facing up to the prospects of ordinary life. (This attitude comes out quite clearly in his other poem, Works and Days.) Behind the appearance of order and familiarity that characterizes our everyday experience lies that which is utterly unfamiliar, amorphous, and therefore threatening . . . chaos. It is easy to see that one can derive "bare" philosophical propositions from Hesiod's poem. For example, Aristotle interpreted Hesiod's inclusion of Eros as one of the three primal entities as his stumbling effort to

130 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? arrive at an "efficient cause," an answer to the question From what does motion or genesis of the world arise? Aristotle also claimed that by making earth the first of the corporeal beings to be generated Hesiod was among those early thinkers who are often described as "materialists."26 From another angle altogether, a conception of the "human condition," one not too distant from what might be called an "existentialist" view, can be elicited from the Theogony. That we can extract philosophical statements from poems is not surprising, for surely we are informed about ourselves, we draw out lessons from reading the great poets. Nevertheless, we do not call them, or Hesiod, philosophers. They are poets. In order to extract philosophical propositions from their poetry we must first commit an act of violence: we must translate their poetry into "truth-functional" prose (bare propositions trying only to tell things as they are). We must strip the poet of his Muse before analyzing the content of his work. We must expose the Muses for what they are: figurative representations of that mysterious affection, inspiration. We must then (if our commitment is to these bare, truth-ful propositions) condemn the poet for relying on so unreliable a source for his productions. The validity of inspiration cannot be tested and so should not replace rational substantiation of a "thesis." In this sense Hesiod is a paradigmatic poet, for he is fully self-conscious of these limits of his song. He knows himself as a poet for he acknowledges his dependence on the Muses. He confesses that the truth of what he sings is not demonstrable. When his Muses say "We know how to speak many false things as though they are true," Hesiod makes explicit what is implicit in most poetry: He has no rational basis for his faith in the goodwill and competence of the Muses. The poet is in the grip of the Muse and cannot see beyond what she reveals to him. Unlike the practitioner of logos, the poet cannot defend, cannot argue for the goodness of, his poem; he can only sing. When traditional wisdom tells us that Thales was the first philosopher because he abandoned mythic thought, it means that his great accomplishment was his repudiation of the Muse. There is another way of approaching Hesiod's call to the Muses. The Theogony asserts that the origin is chaos. (Hereafter, I will use the Greek word arche instead of "origin." Arche means "source, origin, first or ruling principle." It is a word typically associated with early Greek philosophy, and I use it here in order to prepare for the contrast I am about to propose.) This implies that the arche is essentially unknowable or even unthinkable. As mentioned, whatever its precise meaning, chaos is undifferentiated and formless. The activity of the mind (often called its "discursive" activity) consists precisely in differentiation. Thinking is like talking: it is based upon making clear the differences between individual

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

131

words. Without difference, there would be no intelligibility. Thinking is distinquishing among forms, structures, ideas, classes, or concepts. As such, thinking necessarily implies intelligible multiplicity. In other words, thinking presupposes that there are many forms, concepts, ideas, and so forth, and that they can be told apart. Because of the above, it is, quite simply, impossible to think chaos. Using other translations, it is impossible to think "the void" or "nothingness." To be able to think chaos would mean being able to take "it" up as an object of thought; to think or articulate it would be to articulate it as an intelligible "something" that is distinct from other "somethings." But the void is precisely not a thing; it is a "no-thing." Thus, it cannot be thought. This point can be clarified by a simple experiment:27 Try to think of nothing. Try to think the void. See what happens. It can't be done. When you think, you think of something. If you are thinking of nothing, how would you know you were thinking at all? (Even if chaos is translated as "gap" it cannot be thought. We can conceive of a gap, but only as a space in between and bounded by two other objects. We cannot think of a gap without its two boundaries, and so we cannot think of it in and of itself.) The Hesiodic arche resists explication by discursive reason or articulation by rational speech. As a result, implied in Hesiod's poem is a radical discontinuity, a fundamental difference in kind, between the arche and the human mind that thinks (or the voice that sings) it. There is a gap or chasm between the two. No discursive bridge can be erected between the ever differentiating mind and the shapelessness of chaos. As a result, in order to know or to bespeak the arche, in order to mend that gap, Hesiod must invoke some nondiscursive means. There is, one might say, a logical need for the Muses: their presence is mandated as a needed means of passage between the mind and chaos. Without them Hesiod would have been incoherent. That is, if he had attempted to explain the process through which he had obtained discursive knowledge of the arche, if he had attempted to justify his position in a traditionally rational sense, he would have refuted himself; since the arche is unthinkable he would have failed the test of self-referentiality. With the Muses, Hesiod acknowledges precisely the epistemological or cognitive status of his enterprise. Given the content of the Hesiodic arche, the invocation to the Muses, which is tantamount to a self-conscious affirmation of the limits of poetry, constitutes a well-crafted and coherent pro-logue. To put this in slightly different terms: Hesiod's poem does contain a direct or positive claim: the arche is chaos. As such, the arche is implicitly present in his poem. But chaos is just that which can never be made present for thought. It is indeterminate and so forever absent from the explicit workings of reason. Therefore, Hesiod includes a disclaimer

132 Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? immediately upon making his claim: It is not his human thought that is responsible for his poem; it is the Muses. His poem is mus-ical, it includes a supplement, an external aid . . . and so it must. The result is graceful and coherent. Let me digress: The "view" just sketched above and attributed to Hesiod—that the arche is chaos and the Muse is therefore required for song—is, I propose, quite similar to that now offered by the great deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida. It is worthwhile to expand on this observation in order to illustrate how the ancient dispute can still define the contours of today's most pressing debates. The real issue has never changed much; with all our sophisticated texts and subtexts it is, however, rather easily lost. By returning to the Ancient Greeks we give ourselves a chance to examine an issue unencumbered by contemporary fashion and language. By briefly suggesting a comparison between Derrida and Hesiod, this is what I would like to show. A single insight often seems to animate Derrida's work. By exploring texts written by Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and others, Derrida concludes that traditional philosophy is "phono-centric." What he means with this term is that among the varieties of verbal expression, and especially as compared to writing, the voice (in Greek, phone), has been granted privileged status by the Western rationalist tradition. When I speak, not only am I conscious of being present for what I think, but I am conscious also of keeping as close as possible to my thought, or to the "concept," a signifier that does not fall into the world, a signifier that I hear as soon as I emit it, that seems to depend upon my pure and free spontaneity, requiring the use of no instrument, no accessory, no force taken from the world. Not only do the signifier and signified seem to unite, but also, in this confusion, the signifier seems to erase itself or to become transparent, in order to allow the concept to present itself as what it is, referring to nothing other than its presence. The exteriority of the signifier seems reduced. Naturally this experience is a lure, but a lure whose necessity has organized an entire structure, or an entire epoch.28

Speaking seems to allow the signifier, the words that are voiced, to function as a transparent medium that permits clear access to that which is signified. When I speak there is apparently nothing, no instrument, no accessory, between me, the speaker, and that which is spoken. I, the author or parent of the speaking, am present to make clear my speech. I am there to present that of which I speak and to protect it from being misunderstood, from going astray or even being stolen (misinterpreted).

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

133

In speech there is a proximity to the signified that is so great that it might seem possible for the signifier simply to erase itself, to become an unobtrusive medium whose only function is to allow the signified to be signified. Imagine trying to explain why you did what you did last Saturday. If the person to whom you are speaking is right there with you, you will be able to answer her questions, continually reformulate, make sure she understands what you're talking about. Contrast this with writing an essay about last Saturday. It's risky. You might not use exactly the right words to express your meaning. You might, therefore, be misunderstood. Your written piece goes off into the world on its own and thus runs the risk of being misinterpreted. By speaking you are present as a mediator between your words and your audience. You, the parent of the words, are there to say and to protect what needs to be said. By writing, you absent yourself from your written work. Its fate, therefore, depends not on you, but on those who read. According to Derrida, this comparison between speaking and writing has been fundamental in shaping the thought of an entire epoch (that begun by Plato and challenged by Nietzsche): speaking, as opposed to writing, has been made into an ideal. The goal of all communication, all forms of language and thought, has been transparency and the ability to make present, without distortion, the object to which the signs refer. The goal has been to erase all traces of the signifier and to let the signified simply be seen. As a result, traditional Western rationalism has been guided by a "phono-centric" set of values—truth, presence, correctness— all of which derive from the privileging of the voice. The tradition has hoped to achieve just those characteristics that seem to belong to speaking. It is precisely these phono-centric values that Derrida calls into question. He asks his readers to deconstruct, to rethink, the traditional hierarchy into which writing and speaking have been placed, a hierarchy that "organized an entire structure, or an entire epoch." He asks us in particular to reconsider the place of writing. Writing compromises the proximity of the voice, for the written text, upon completion, is severed from its author and its destiny becomes a matter of chance as it circulates in a world of readers. The text is subject to endless interpretations, and its parent, its author, is absent, no longer there to defend it by clarifying its intention and meaning.29 For Derrida the essential characteristic of writing is its "iterability," its ability to be repeated, for with this comes its ineluctable potential for misinterpretation. Reading is made possible by the fact that written signs can be repeated in the absence of their author. The author perhaps

134

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

intended to give voice to some original content, that which is signified, but when he commits his work to the page he creates the structural possibility of differentiation between signifer and original signified. The irremediable feature of writing, of the "grapheme," is its "structural possibility of being severed from its referent or signified."30 To pose a question in terms that Derrida himself would not favor, what if writing, and not speaking, were granted privileged status? What if philosophers took their bearings from writing and made it the authoritative version of all expression? (Derrida wouldn't say this because he opposes all such hierarchies.) It would follow on Derrida's account that values such as truth and presence would lose their weight. Since writing necessarily implies the possibility of endless interpretations of the written text, knowledge (making present in speech, without distorting their nature, objects in the world) would no longer function as the paradigmatic goal of intellectual activity. Interpretations would replace knowledge. (In Rorty's terms, truths would replace Truth.) No longer would there be the hope of, for example, finding a correct and authoritative reading of a text. Instead, there would only be readings, many readings, of many texts. Indeed, the world itself would become a text, incapable of sustaining a truthful account, shot through with chaos. By reading a wide variety of texts of the past Derrida shows how speaking has been elevated over writing. Then he suggests that this dichotomy, this hierarchy, has no ground. In other words, the altogether crucial distinction between writing and speaking, one upon which the entire tradition is based, is itself baseless (is itself written). As a result, those dichotomies that have guided Western thought, truth/falsity, presence/absence, good/bad, correct/incorrect, are exposed as baseless. They are, in other words, deconstructed. There is an affinity between Hesiod's call to the Muses and Derrida's analysis of writing.31 It may be recalled that in the early lines of the Theogony the Muses tell Hesiod that they know how to tell both false things that sound like the truth, as well as true things. The Muses' true saying would give expression to things as they are, while the false would both resemble and deflect from reality. Only the Muses know for sure which version they are supplying to Hesiod. As a result, the poet sings as if he is revealing things as they are, but at the same time he admits that the truth is out of his reach. His call to the Muses acknowledges this bind. As suggested above, it is Hesiod's self-consciousness of his status as a poet, of his relationship to the Muses, that is the Theogony's most startling achievement. And his relationship to the Muses resembles the all-important role to which Derrida would assign writing.

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

135

When Hesiod states that chaos is first of all things, he makes an assertion whose claim to truth he must immediately disavow: chaos, after all, is inaccessible to discursive thought. Only the intervention of the nondiscursive Muses makes possible his singing of the poem, and Hesiod admits that he has no way of knowing if they are telling him the truth. Hesiod's statement about the beginning of things could be written as follows: chaos is the arche, that which makes possible the intelligible world. But this proposition can never be simply presented as the Truth. For, if chaos is the arche, there is no Truth. The entire world is conditioned by its beginning and its beginning is a chasm, a gap, that cannot be rendered discursive. The poet must reflect this in his poem, and this he does by invoking the Muses. Hesiod never simply states the Truth as such. Instead, by attributing authorship of his poem to the Muses he absents himself from his poem and thus negates his own claims precisely at the moment of making them. Derrida too negates his own claims. Since he is out to deconstruct the traditional hierarchies that have held Western reason in their thrall, he does not wish to replace them with a new set of dichotomies. He does not, for example, want to assert that writing is higher than speaking. Doing so would perpetuate the very tradition he hopes to overcome. Instead, by using a variety of devices he attempts to write "playfully," to give voice to his own version of chaos. This means he attempts to find a way of simultaneously asserting and retracting what he writes. As a result, he deliberately tries not to be serious. Since, on his own terms he should not make serious or substantial claims about the nature of things, Derrida requires a new, playful, form of expression—one that does not employ the traditional dichotomies. (Consider as an example this statement made by one of Derrida's followers: "My way is to make ideas appear, but as soon as they appear I immediately try to make them disappear . . . nothing remains but a sense of dizziness, with which you can't do anything.")32 "Play" is a crucial notion in all subversive thought, and it will be discussed at some length in Chapter III. For the moment, let us only say this: Derridean playfulness, his writing that makes no serious claims, is like Hesiod's call to the Muses. Both give voice to chaos and so are negations or repudiations of the possibility of making present the Truth of things. Both are antithetical to logos. Derrida conceives of himself as writing during "the eve of philosophy," after Nietzsche has successfully defeated the Platonic tradition. Hesiod wrote before its dawn. Of course, the two epochs are similar, for both are dark, without the benefit of the sun's light.33

136 Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? To return, finally, to the subject of this section: The tradition insists that only with Thales did philosophy proper begin and that Hesiod was a "mere" poet. I have suggested that Hesiodic poetry contains a view, namely that the arche which both originates and abides in the world is chaos. Furthermore, the mode of expression employed by Hesiod, a singing inspired by the Muses, is intrinsically appropriate and uniquely adequate to its task. In other words, the form of Hesiod's song, his poetry, harmonizes with its content, his view of the world. (If the arche is chaos, then mus-ical poetry is the best way of saying so.) Therefore, in order to read Hesiod without doing violence to his thought, one must avoid the traditional treatment afforded to the poet, namely the effort to disabuse him of his Muse and to translate his verse into bare propositions. Such translation would disrupt the internal coherence of the Theogony. What is most characteristic of poetry is not its metrical or lyrical embellishment but its reliance on the precarious beneficence of the Muse, whose presence implicitly declares the impossibility of the poet's ever fully justifying and clearing the ground from which he speaks. The presence of the Muses dictates that translation of poetry into bare propositions devoid of music is disfiguring violence. A parallel point about form and content can now be made about Thales (and the whole point of this chapter is to draw parallels: the ancient dispute involves two positions that can be placed alongside one another without intersecting.) The Thalenic view of the world, one radically different from Hesiod's, is equally in harmony with the form of the logos that expresses it. As we will see, given his understanding of the arche, nonmusical prose is the necessary form of Thales' logos. If I succeed in showing this, then the confrontation between Thales and Hesiod is between two self-contained and competing possibilities of thought, each with its unique content and an attendant form. Indeed, it is between two, perhaps the two, most basic human possibilities.34 To reiterate an earlier point: There are no writings whatsoever that can be definitively ascribed to Thales. Even in antiquity his name had attained the aura of a legend. For example, his was one of only four names that regularly appeared on the list of the "seven wise men of Greece."35 "Thales" became a word used to label anyone with superior intelligence, as in Aristophanes' line "The man is a Thales." To Thales were attributed major advances in geometry, astronomy, enigneering, practical wisdom, and a journey to Egypt. Some of this doxography dates from around 500 a.c.e., over a thousand years after Thales lived and so is clearly unreliable. What occurred (most likely) was that ancient authors, in search of a pedigree, imposed upon Thales, a name with no texts, the

Is Locos UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? 137 role of progenitor without having any sure knowledge of who he was. Thales was, and still is, the missing father figure sought for, created by, a tradition in want of a genealogy. As mentioned above, according to one tradition, Thales chose to write nothing at all. It is only with Anaximander, another Milesian and possibly Thales' student, that any written fragments remain. As one scholar says, "it was he [Anaximander] who first wrote down his views [about nature] . . . and thereby established a new literary form—the first in which prose was employed—which was to serve as the written basis for the new scientific tradition."36 The reconstructed version of the Thalenic logos has regularly been assimilated into the tradition that Anaximander might be said to have actually founded, that of philosophical prose writing about nature. I will adhere to this tradition and present the following prose statements as representative of Thalenic thought: (1) Of those who philosophized first, the majority believed that the only archai of all things were in the form of matter . . . But Thales, the founder (archegos) of this kind of philosophy says it is water. (2) And some say that the soul is mixed up in the whole, for which reason perhaps Thales also believed that everything is full of gods. (3) Mind (nous) is the quickest of all things, for it speeds everywhere.37 Even on the basis of just these few statements, Thales seems, when compared to his predecessors, to inhabit a new world, the most salient feature of which is the disappearance of the Muses. Especially with (1), the most reliable and widely accepted fragment, we are no longer befuddled by gods and stories. Thales here straightforwardly asserts that the arche, the origin, the first principle of all things, is water. It is often said that Thales' great accomplishment was his invention of empirical science. This was, at least, Aristotle's opinion. He speculates that Thales arrived at his famous conclusion by means of empirical observation: "Presumably he reached this conception from seeing that the nutriment of everything is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and depends upon it for its existence."38 Every living being requires water; water, therefore, is the arche. So reads Aristotle's Thales, the first philosopher who, with no aid from the Muses, using his powers of observation alone, concluded that the arche was a unity underlying the apparent multiplicity of things. And this unity was intelligible, articulable, accessible to human thought: it was water, a typical and determinate substance found in all animate, and many inanimate, things. It is, however, too narrow to describe Thales' great achievement as the "invention" of empirical science. Instead, I would formulate it this way:

138 Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD? Thales was the first thinker in the West to believe that the arche was intelligible. Consider the second and third fragments from above: Soul is mixed up in the whole, and mind is the quickest of all for it flows everywhere. What I suggest these statements imply is that the world is fully intelligible, that there is a continuity between the mind and the whole world out there that the mind thinks. The mind is at home in the world. It is "quickest" because it has the capacity to think all things. I can bring the concept "house" to mind and then quickly shift to "barn." By so doing, my mind speeds to both as they each become objects of thought. To turn Thales' dictum about water into a metaphor, the world is a series of determinate forms or "vessels" ("house," "barn") into which the mind can flow. Just as water adopts the shape of the vessel that contains it, so with equal fluidity does mind take on the form of that which it thinks. "[Mind] thus imitates water, by being able to run through and take on the form of all things . . . There is a remarkable affinity, a similarity in nature, of mind and the structure of the whole."39 The world is, despite its appearance of multiplicity, essentially homogeneous. It is unified by its arche, water, which, as a determinate substance, can be thought by the mind. In his assertion about water, Thales was of course wrong. Nonetheless, his achievement is historic. The Thalenic logos is an extraordinary departure from Hesiod's poetry because it posits a continuity between the mind and the arche. As a consequence, it does not require a nondiscursive passage to connect the two. Thales has no need for, and so he banishes, the Muses and replaces dactylic hexameter with simple prose. Thales nonpoetically makes his knowledge claim, and provides (in latent form) the condition that makes that claim possible—namely the affinity in nature between the mind and the arche. To summarize: Hesiod's poem sings what it takes to be the truth that the arche is discontinuous with the human voice that sings it. As such, the invocation of the Muses is not an irrational and primitive appendage to a colorful poem, but a declaration of self-consciousness: Hesiod knows what he's doing. The Muses are a necessary condition for the poet's being able to overcome the essential discontinuity of the mind and the arche. The critical point is this: Hesiod differs fundamentally from Thales. But it is impossible to declare that Thales is somehow legitimate and Hesiod not. Their difference is that they begin differently. Thales begins with a conception of the mind and the arche as continuous. Hesiod begins with a conception of them as different. Upon such beginnings each bases his view and creates a mode of expression.40 As a result, both the Hesiodic muthos and the Thalenic logos are adequate to express, they make good sense given, their respective beginnings.

Is LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD?

139

If the above is correct, how do we measure which of these two fundamental antagonists is right? On the basis of what can we declare allegiance to Hesiod or Thales? This is to ask, is the arche intelligible or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world in which we dwell. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer this question. This is because it is fundamental. It is a question that must be answered before any other inquiry can commence. This is what I mean: The question before us now is, Which form of expression is to be preferred—the poet's or the philosopher's? A bit more crudely, who was right, Hesiod or Thales? (The deconstructionist would object that this question already brings with it its own answer.) This is equivalent to asking, Is the arche intelligible (continuous with the mind) or not? How do we begin to go about trying to settle this issue? We could begin by approaching it rationally. That is, we could examine this dispute using the methods of traditional rationality. We could inspect each "position" for logical coherence, examine the respective consequences and presuppositions of each, and so on. But to begin this line of inquiry, is already to assume that Thales was right, that logos, not muthos, is the preferred form of our discourse. Why not begin by invoking the Muse? "Sing to me, O Muse, of the battle once fought between the philosopher and the poet. Tell me its story, declare its outcome." Such a beginning also is unfair: it, too, would simply assume that Hesiod was right. The point is this: In a dispute as fundamental as that between the philosopher and the poet, there is no means of fair adjudication. We all have to begin somewhere. This means that we all have to decide, to take sides, and our doing so cannot be defended.11 The juxtaposition of the two voices that comprise this chapter finds two self-contained, self-begun, forms of thought. We cannot adjudicate between these two basic human possibilities. They are the primitive beginnings of the Western tradition of philosophy and poetry. And what we have discovered is that Plato was quite right: This is an ancient quarrel. The history of philosophy, of logos, begins with a dispute between competing beginnings. Thales vanquished Hesiod and defined an epoch that lasted until the emergence of Nietzsche. But logos did not supplant poetry reasonably. It did not win its throne on the basis of fair play. Instead, it took the throne away. Far from being the fair-minded, openminded king it thought it was, logos now realizes that it was once a usurper; that it is a tyrant and not a king. Its birth is now rapidly coming to light. Logos is learning who it is.

CHAPTER

Locos IS

3

CONDITIONALLY

Goon

For I, men of Athens, have received my reputation through nothing other than a kind of wisdom. And what sort of wisdom is this? That which is, perhaps, human wisdom -Plato, Apology of Socrates A

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE ( l)

Philosophical Dialogue

Logos seeks its origin. Unlike most, logos wishes to certify itself and its rule with the full blessing of a reasoned defense. And so it seeks out occasions for self-testing, for finding out whether its claim to authority has any merit. Why should it rule? Why should it, and not Cleitophon, and not the poet, be king? Because unlike its competitors logos can explain and justify its occupation of the throne. It can (so it thinks) demonstrate that its rule is grounded and not merely a manifestation of its desire or rhetorical prowess. But logos has suffered terrible defeats. It discovered first that it could not refute the radical relativist. Then it recognized that it could not refute the poet. Logos now stands accused, more alone than it ever has been. And it hears a voice: "Hunt no further. You've discovered too much. You now know who you are not: you are not the pure-bred king. Your rule is bastard. Let this interrogation alone. The charges against you, while hard, have not yet fallen you. Stay on your feet and move. Dismiss your inquiry." Such a voice is tempting. But of course logos does not concede. Its very nature impells it towards further discovery. It cannot rest content on a throne of falsehood. Logos is, perhaps above all else, honest-and so it is driven to find out who exactly it is, what its defeats mean. "Let break what will: I go forward to know." There is one last, slim, avenue of hope for logos to regain (legitimately) a portion of its throne. This is found in its belief in philosophical dialogue. It has learned that Cleitophon and the poet (Rorty and Derrida) are formidable enemies, each with their own self-contained presentations of themselves. It has learned that it cannot unilaterally refute them, that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237-4

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

141

there are powerful reasons why it cannot demonstrate conclusively that they are false. But logos still believes it can talk with them; it still has faith in dialogue (dia-logos), the effort of two people holding opposing views to communicate and compare their differences, rather than polemically juxtapose them. Logos disagrees fundamentally with Cleitophon and the poeticist. The recognition that it could not irrevocably refute either of its two opponents hurt, nearly crushed. But logos still has the strength to say to its opponents, "Come, let us reason together. Let us examine our differences, talk in the spirit of openness and compare our positions. Between Socrates and Cleitophon there was silence; between Hesiod and Thales a gap. But why? There's no need for uniformity. Let us keep our differences alive but talk them through." Armed with such a hope, logos can still press forward, no longer with its previous assertiveness, but at least with some confidence. Unfortunately, one last scene of pain remains to be enacted. For we will next see that philosophical dialogue of the sort in which logos now invests its hope is impossible. This scene is particularly painful because such dialogue is typically thought of not only as possible, but also as highly desirable. The exchange of opposing ideas, the testing of thoughts, the friendly play of competing views have long been encouraged. Indeed, in a democracy that guarantees the freedom of speech, philosophical dialogue seems paradigmatic of tolerance and free inquiry. Part of the seductiveness of philosophy is that it seems to promise just such dialogue. After all, our founding father, Plato, wrote nothing other than dialogues—and these have been taken to be a spectacular impetus for our intellectual tradition. I agree that Plato's dialogues are spectacular and that I am happy to be a member of the tradition he helped to found. Nevertheless, there are serious questions about the nature and the very possibility of something we too often take for granted. What is a philosophical dialogue and is it in fact possible?1 Philosophy, as we have seen in our earlier discussion of the Symposium, is the love of wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge of the highest, most fundamental, most comprehensive or simply the most important things. (This is, I realize, a vague description. I will attempt to clarify it as I go on.) Philosophy is an erotic activity; it is the striving to gain this knowledge through logos. It is the commitment to discuss the most important and fundamental issues in the hope of attaining knowledge. What, then, is dialogue? The original word comes from the Greek: dialegesthai means "to converse." Philosophical dialogue is a kind of conversation about fundamental issues. But what kind? The distinguishing feature of such dialogue is that it involves an "exchange between basically

142

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

different outlooks."2 In other words, it implies fundamental disagreement or controversy. If there is no disagreement, a conversation may still occur—but it is not a philosophical dialogue (as it is defined here). Instead, such a conversation will be one that is grounded upon some fundamental agreement and is "insular." Examples of this are instruction or some sort of joint research venture. Clearly, the type of dialogue logos now hopes for, that between itself and Cleitophon, or itself and the poet, qualifies as philosophical, for there is fundamental disagreement. The easiest way to illustrate this is simply to state that logos believes in the ultimate intelligibility of the world (of the arche), a contention with which neither the poet nor the radical relativist would agree. A philosophical dialogue would be this: a conversation in which two equally articulate people disagree about positions they hold on a fundamental issue. It is an attempt to resolve the issue in question. I include the portion about equality to eliminate the possibility of, for example, a student arguing with a teacher. What is in question here is a disagreement between two mature adults, each with a well-conceived position they believe is defensible. I include the portion about the attempt at resolving the issue because, given the definition of philosophy as embodying the hope of and commitment to attaining knowledge of that which is important, the disagreement the two parties enter into must include the motivation to settle it. The issue over which they are at odds is fundamental. Knowledge of it is the goal. The dialogue must be serious; that is, it must be sincerely directed toward achievement of the goal. This is the specific mode of conversation that I claim is impossible. The argument I will now present in support of this claim is relatively simple and, of course, not truly original.3 In order to take place, all conversation requires an agreed-upon "common ground." This is constituted by a common vocabulary and agreement upon the rules that govern the conversation and determine what counts as "significant" or meaningful discourse. ("Rules" would refer to those of grammar but also, and more importantly, to a more informal and various set of principles. Examples will be provided shortly.) In the case where the participants disagree and attempt to resolve the disagreement there must also be agreement upon what can, in principle, adjudicate the dispute. Without this there is no way to determine if progress in the conversation has taken place. All this will be explained further below. For the moment, simply accept the following: Philosophical dialogue is a kind of conversation. As such it requires a common ground in order to take place. A philosophical dialogue is about fundamental issues. As

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

143

we will see, however, agreement on such issues is precisely what constitutes the common ground needed for the controversial conversation to take place. Therefore, if there is a disagreement about fundamental issues, and there certainly can be, the result is not dialegesthai, but either polemos, polemical speech, or silence—either of the friendly (mutually tolerant and respectful) sort or not. Philosophical conversation is possible only in its insular variety. Both the silence between Socrates and Cleitophon and the gap between Hesiod and Thales are as necessary as they are lamentable. One ambiguity in what has just been said lies in the notion of a fundamental issue when that phrase is used to define philosophy. Soon there will be an example. Before that, however, consider the following: What happens if, as is likely, a particular reader disagrees with my definition of philosophy. You could, for example, agree with my general definition, but disagree with the list of fundamental issues that I later propose. What you consider to be an issue might not be on my list. At first blush you and I, as philosophers, have nothing to say to each other. We've agreed that philosophy is about fundamental issues, but we don't have one in common. On the other hand, you might say, "We don't have an issue in common. Let's talk about that. What do you think a fundamental issue is? I don't agree. Defend your list." Here it seems that you and I might disagree about our list of issues, but continue to discuss our disagreement. This would entail our entering into a "meta-philosophical dialogue," a dialogue about philosophical dialogue. We would each suspend our loyalty to certain fundamental issues and instead discuss what it is we should discuss. Having done this we would, it seems, have entered a neutral realm of discourse in which no stand would be taken on what issues should be discussed. Even here, however, there would still be a need for a common ground to make the conversation possible. We would still have to share a common vocabulary and set of rules. We would also have to agree that "it is good to suspend one's presuppositions about what constitutes a fundamental issue." This latter agreement, however, can exemplify the problem. Assume for a moment that the statement in quotation marks expresses a judgment on a fundamental issue. It is clear that there can be no dialogue about it. If you think it's true that it is good to suspend one's presuppositions and I disagree with you, then we cannot argue. You disagree with me as to what constitutes a fundamental issue (an issue worth talking about) and to argue with you I would have to suspend my presupposition, which in this case happens to be that one ought not to suspend one's presuppositions. Consequently, to argue against you I would have to agree with you. The question, Should these presuppositions be suspended? cannot be

144 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD debated without being answered. To debate the question requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. You might object and say this is a rather drastic view or that my example of a fundamental issue in the preceding paragraph was not appropriate. However, even if we dispense with the example, there are other problems. If you and I enter into a meta-philosophical dialogue we must agree, first, on the rules governing it and, second, on the criteria for adjudicating it. How do we legitimately argue for our chosen issue? Are we allowed to use foul language, cite poetry, or scream hysterically? Are there a list of informal fallacies that cannot be broken? Must the Principle of Noncontradiction be obeyed? Is vagueness to be counted as a liability? Is the sound of our words to be factored in as part of our performance? Should our positions be measured on the basis of their ability to move an audience? These are just examples of what I mean by "rules." We cannot enter into a meta-philosophical dialogue unless we agree on them. Furthermore, we must agree how to determine when progress has been made in the course of such a dialogue. As Rorty puts it, we need "a set of rules which will tell us how rational agreement can be reached on what would settle the issue on every point where statements seem to conflict."4 Unless there is some vision of what it means to agree, a conversation that involves disagreement cannot progress. Even if you and I disagree on the question, Would Dukakis have been a better president than Bush? we would share a sense of what agreement would be like. But what if we hold divergent views on the question, is chaos the arche or not? Given our views, that sense of agreement might be impossible to attain. These rules are fundamental issues on which agreement is needed in order to constitute the common ground making the meta-philosophical dialogue possible. (The best example is the Principle of Noncontradiction, which will be discussed below.) As a result, the hope that there can be a dialogue about dialogue that operates free from judgment upon what a fundamental issue is, has been quashed. In a similar fashion, another quashed hope would be that invested in the notion of a "method." Someone could say, "If two partners in a discussion disagree on first principles but share a common commitment to the same method for resolving the dispute, philosophical dialogue is possible."5 This is wrong since commitment to a method implies commitment to a set of rules and criteria, to an entire conception of rationality. Agreement on a method thus implies agreement on fundamental issues. To summarize: Assume two people agree that philosophical dialogues are about fundamental issues. Assume they disagree about what these

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

145

issues are. There are two possible outcomes. Either they immediately stop talking, or they attempt to adjudicate their disagreement through a meta-philosophical dialogue. But the latter option has been shown to be impossible, for it recapitulates the dilemma involving fundamental issues. Therefore, in both cases philosophical dialogue is impossible. Rather than disagree with my list of issues, you could instead disagree with my very characterization of a philosophical dialogue. This is the tack taken by Rorty. As mentioned above, he differentiates Philosophy, the traditional, or (as he would say) Platonic, quest for Knowledge of Truth and Goodness, and philosophy, the attempt "to see how things, in the broadest sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term."b Without the capital P philosophy means "conversation" about a host of issues none of which should be called "fundamental." Rorty envisions as "all-purpose intellectual of a post-Philosophical culture" one who "passes rapidly from Hemingway to Proust to Hitler to Marx to Foucault to Mary Douglas to the present situation in Southeast Asia to Ghandi to Sophocles. He is a name-dropper, who uses names as these to refer to sets of descriptions, symbol-systems, ways of seeing."7 Rorty would accuse my definition of being Platonic. The question now is, can Rorty and I get into a dialogue in my sense of the term? Gan we get into a "conversation" in his sense of the term? The answer to the first question is no. I think there are fundamental issues and he does not. Two outcomes are possible. Perhaps Rorty will discuss my choice of an issue in the name of tolerance and collegial assistance. Although I am a Platonist he will assist me, for example, when I get stumped on the problems involved in the "theory of Ideas." Is this a philosophical dialogue? No, for there is no real, no "serious," disagreement about the issue in question. Rorty should not take a position on this issue (at least not a serious one), for it is a traditional issue and so he thinks it has outlived its usefulness. What Rorty wants is to change the subject; he is devoted explicitly to the elimination of fundamental issues from the philosopher's repertory. Again, he might talk with me, but our conversation would be on a par with the one he had about Rembrandt with the local art historian or the one about L.A. Law with his neighbor. In other words, all conversations are equal in that none is truly Better or more Truthful, none is more important, than any other. As a result, Rorty will not make a serious commitment to resolving the issue I present: he does not believe it is worth pursuing. Can Rorty and I get into a dialogue on this question: Are some issues fundamental or not? No, for this question is itself fundamental. A positive or a negative answer to it would constitute a Philosophical position and would thus represent an old-fashioned, and therefore objectionable,

146 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD claim to the Truth.8 Someone who denies the possibility of fundamental issues surely cannot discuss this denial philosophically, for immediately upon doing so he would have contradicted himself. The answer to the second question, Can Rorty and I get into a "conversation" in his sense? is also no, and for many of the same reasons. A Rortian conversation implies that no issues are fundamental. I believe some are. Therefore I, as a Philosopher, cannot participate seriously in a conversation which, in my view, is and always will be less than fundamental. What would be the point? I would, of course, attempt to persuade him that some issues are fundamental, but if Rorty is consistent then he will not seriously defend his denial. (It should be apparent that the word "serious" is becoming increasingly important. Its opposite is "play" and will be discussed shortly.) To summarize again: I offered a definition of a philosophical dialogue. We might agree that it is accurate. If so, then we will either agree or disagree about the list of fundamental issues. If we agree on this, there is no dialogue. If we disagree, there is no dialogue. Finally, we might simply disagree about my initial definition of a philosophical dialogue. If so, there is no dialogue. This may all seem exaggerated; you might angrily respond, "Why be so extreme? Of course we can talk about these issues, even if we disagree. You listen to me and I to you. There will be mutual respect and attentiveness." So we talk. After having listened, you might say, "That was interesting. I totally disagree, but I've enjoyed and even benefited from listening to you. Thanks." Was that a philosophical dialogue? No. Several points are relevant. First, there is a mutually agreed-upon respectfulness here. There must also be enough of a common vocabulary and a shared conception of what is significant discourse so that both parties can understand each other. This itself might constitute fundamental agreement. Even if it doesn't, what we really have here is tantamount to "philosophical silence" between the interlocutors. We each affirm the other's right to have and express views on various issues and so we are not faced with literal silence. From a philosophical perspective, however, we have not entered into a converation challenging the other on his ground while retaining our own. We distance ourselves from each other and so acknowledge the gap between us. By contrast, a philosophical dialogue, since it is erotic, requires a commitment to pursue the same goal, adjudication of the dispute. If there is merely a friendly distance and not a shared attempt at resolution of the issue, there is no dialogue. The fact that you say to me (and even say sincerely) "thanks," the fact that you actually benefited

Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 147 from listening to my presentation does not imply that we had a philosophical dialogue. You might be using my position as a means for testing your own. These types of converations often do occur and they are genuinely beneficial, but they are not, given my definition, philosophical dialogue. There is another possibility here. After having listened you might say, u You know, you're right. I'm wrong. I'll come over to your side. Thanks." A less extreme version of this would be, "You know, you're right about that point. I'll modify my position to take your point into account. Thanks." Is either of these a philosophical dialogue? Each certainly seems to be. In fact, neither is. The first represents didactic persuasion, or simply instruction. What occurs here is an evolution and a transformation on the part of one of the interlocutors. The conversation begins in disagreement. But in the course of listening to me you decide (or realize, or see) that my position is superior to your own. For this to occur there must be some point of agreement. Once this point has been reached, the dialogue—if there actually had been one—ends. But was there a dialogue before that moment? No. You were listening as I stated my views. You were silent and then realized that I was right. Is this whole conversation— the conversation before the point of agreement—the point itself, and the subsequent conversation a philosophical dialogue? No. The question is whether it is possible for representatives of two "basically different outlooks and approaches" to converse. The case of didactic persuasion is very possible and highly desirable, but it is not a philosophical dialogue. What is at issue here is whether two people who disagree with each other can continue to converse while maintaining their fundamentally divergent positions.9 In a didactic conversation the divergence at some point vanishes. The fact that we have such conversations gives us all the more reason to talk to each other. But this is not to say that philosophical dialogue is possible. In the second case, where I modify my position to take into account the good points you have made, we again fail to have a genuine dialogue. This situation is very much like the one described above—namely that of self-testing or, more drastically, of honing one's weapons for future use. There are at least two potential objections to what I have argued. First, someone might claim that I have stipulated a definition of philosophical dialogue that is so narrow as to reduce it to triviality. Put into other terms, the thesis offered here is tautologous and I am running around in logical circles. To a certain extent, that's true. (If a philosophical dialogue is so defined as to be impossible, then it is easy to show that it is impossible.)

148 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD If the definition is even somewhat accurate, however, this is not equivalent to philosophical triviality. When there is disagreement about fundamental issues, and then an attempt is made to engage in dialogue, big problems do emerge. Such confrontations are quite real. There are breakdowns in arguing against certain kinds of people and positions. At some point, there just isn't any reason to keep talking. This isn't an accident or one person's fault; it's the result of fundamental disagreement and represents the troubling side of human conversation. It is precisely this type of disagreement that has animated this book. As logos has interrogated its three accusers it has confronted those who differ on the most fundamental of issues. It is for the purpose of focusing attention specifically on this type of confrontation that the definition of a philosophical dialogue has been made so apparently narrow. The second objection is that it might be possible to agree on one fundamental issue and, nevertheless, continue to disagree about others. (This is a restatement of the first objection that the definition was too narrow.) Can an agreement occur on one level and then become the common ground making possible a fundamental disagreement on another level? No. The reason for this is that issues are hierarchical with respect to their fundamentalness. Genuinely fundamental issues are those that, and only those that, establish common ground. (Now, I realize, this sounds completely circular.) Thus, if dialogue were to occur there would have to be agreement on fundamental issues, which is a contradiction. If such agreement does occur, any subsequent disagreement will be over an issue less than fundamental, and therefore dialogue about it will not qualify as philosophical. To make this point more clear I need Aristotle's assistance. (2) Aristotle and the Principle of Noncontradiction The name Aristotle gives to that discipline which studies the most fundamental of issues is "first philosophy," or sometimes just "wisdom" (Metaphysics 1026a24,982a2). As opposed to all other forms of knowledge that "cut off some portion of being (or reality) and then study it, this discipline is not partial. Mathematics, for example, cuts off one slice of reality, the abstract notion of magnitude, and studies it. Mathematics is not concerned with anything else; it narrows its focus and then concentrates only on its object. By contrast, first philosophy is truly fundamental, for it attempts to get to the bottom, to the cause or the principle, of all things, all objects. First philosophy is the study of being simply as being,

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

149

and not being as magnitude (mathematics) or being as life (biology) or being as celestial objects (astronomy).10 In Book IV of the Metaphysics, Aristotle raises the question, Does the study of being simply as being also study "what are called in mathematics the axioms"? (1005a20). An axiom is one of several kinds of "starting points" (archai) that Aristotle discusses in his Posterior Analytics, which is the study of "demonstrative science" (71b20 ff). "Starting points" in general are those propositions needed for a demonstration to take place, for it to begin. They themselves cannot be demonstrated, for they are what make demonstration possible. They must be accepted, therefore, by some other form of knowledge (be it intuition, induction, or dialectic) without proof.11 The starting points are either subject specific or general and applicable to many subjects. The most general are like what Euclid called the "common notions," a frequently cited example of which is "If equals are subtracted from equals the remainders are equal."12 These can be called the axioms and are what "the man who is to learn anything whatever must have" (72al7-18). It is because axioms pertain to all studies that they are fundamental. They constitute the ground upon which any given science arises. "They belong to all things that are and not to any given particular genus in separation from the rest. Everyone uses them" (Meta. 1005a23-25). It is for this reason that it is the task of the first philosopher, he who studies being as being and not just a cut-off portion of being, also to study the axioms. The most "certain" or "secure" (bebaiotates\ 1005b22) of all these principles is the Principle of Noncontradiction, which Aristotle formulates as follows: "It is impossible at the same time for the same thing both to belong and not belong to the same thing and in the same way" (1005bl920). (A more strictly logical version of the Principle reads, "The most certain of all basic principles is that contradictory propositions are not true at the same time" [lOllblS]. In a more psychological formulation Aristotle says, "No one can believe that the same thing can at the same time be and not be" [1005b23].) It is impossible for some S to be both P and not P at the same time and in the same way. This is the most fundamental of all axioms, for it is the rock-bottom Principle constituting the ground of all rational discourse—of logos itself. "All men who demonstrate refer back to this ultimate belief (1005b32-33).13 The Principle of Noncontradiction, with the question of being as being, is the most fundamental issue for Aristotle. Can it be debated? Can someone deny the Principle's truth and then argue with one who affirms it? If so, and only if so, will a philosophical dialogue be possible. The first point is that the Principle cannot be directly proven. Any

150 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD attempt to do so would beg the question, for the Principle is (in Aristotle's logic) the basis of all proof procedures and therefore the attempt to prove it would require assuming (using) it. There is therefore no possibility of a dialogue that culminates in a direct proof of the item debated.14 Aristotle states that the Principle of Noncontradiction can only be defended "elenchically" (1006al2). What this means is that someone denying it can only be refuted in the midst of attempting to defend his denial; he will refute himself in the very act of attempting to defend his own thesis. The only requirement that Aristotle makes of his opponent is that he "say something significant" (semainein\ 1006a21). That is, in defense of his position the denier of the principle must say something that is significant both to himself and to his opponent in the debate. Once this occurs, however, the dialogue terminates. For simply by stating something significant the denier has actually affirmed what he thinks he is denying. Why? The Principle, for Aristotle, is the foundation of all significant discourse. The denier has affirmed that some single attribute, in this case "false," applies to some subject, the Principle of Noncontradiction, and not its opposite. His defense of the position depends on his making this claim. But it is just this dependence that destroys his argument: he has obeyed the Principle in the name of rejecting it. He should have said, "The Principle of Noncontradiction is both true and false." That, however, would have been a meaningless statement, for he would no longer have had a discernible position to defend. The elenchic refutation, then, presents the denier of the Principle with two options: Either say nothing significant in defense of his position (in which case, says Aristotle, he is indistinguishable from a vegetable [1006al5]); or immediately be refuted upon articulating a significant defense. In both cases there is no philosophical dialogue. What this means is that for Aristotle it is impossible to enter into a dialogue about the most fundamental of philosophical issues. The remainder of Book IV is a series of arguments intended to defend the Princple of Noncontradiction. Most take the form of an indirect argument (or a reductio ad absurdum). They begin by assuming the denial of the principle and then draw out what Aristotle takes to be the unacceptable consequences that follow. In the first such argument Aristotle begins by asserting, "It is clear that this very thing, at any rate is true, that the term 'to be' or 'not to be' means something definite" (1006a29). The term "man," for example, means one thing: Let this be "two-footed animal." If this is the case, then in the statement "S is a man," being two-footed is what being a man means about S. If S is a man, then S is two-footed and is not not two-footed. The predicate refers to, and therefore means, something definite. If this

Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 151 were not the case, then when I said, "S is a man," it could not be determined what I was talking about. That to which the predication referred would be indefinite and as a result there could be no discourse significant both to myself and to the person with whom I was speaking. To state Aristotle's general formula: "For not to speak significantly of some one thing is not to speak significantly at all" (1006b7). Denial of the Principle of Noncontradiction implies that it is possible to have significant discourse without there being any restriction on the number of true predications attributed to a given subject. Therefore, denial implies that it is possible to speak significantly without speaking definitely of one thing. This, for Aristotle, is absurd. Aristotle's reasoning here sounds circular, and in a way it is. He begins with a particular conception of significant discourse and then shows that rejection of the principle, which establishes the nature of that discourse, leads to the absurdity of there no longer being any significant discourse. The circularity here is not, however, vitiating. The point is that if the issue is what counts as legitimately significant discourse, the argument must be circular: That mode of discourse must itself be used in order to establish itself as significant. There can be no philosophical dialogue concerning the nature of significant discourse itself. Logos now recognizes the reason for its discomfiture at the hands of Cleitophon and Hesiod. It began with the belief that it could refute such opponents. Then it learned it could not do so without begging the question, without violating a basic precept of rational argumentation. Logos next approached its enemies in the hope of at least having a dialogue with them. The revelation of this section, which is the most abstract of any that has yet transpired, is that it is impossible for two fundamentally opposed views of the world to debate what counts as significant discourse. And precisely this question has been at stake throughout the various encounters found in this book. It is because of this impossibility that a gap exists between Socrates and Cleitophon. In the Republic, Cleitophon falls silent. In the Cleitophon, Socrates falls silent. The gap between the two men is one that logos cannot bridge. Instead of examining the differences in their positions, Cleitophon opts for Thrasymachus, for rhetoric, as his mode of significant discourse. He decides no longer to use his powers of reason and speech in the attempt to discover the Truth about beings in the world. He no longer attempts to attach single predicates (good, true, bad, false) to single subjects. Instead, he (like Rorty) suspends his loyalty to Socrates and the project of Truth, he terminates his flirtation with logos, and joins

152 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD forces with Thrasymachus. Socrates' silence in the face of such a defection is his acknowledgment that logos cannot prevent it. lD A similar situation obtains with Hesiod. Since chaos is the residual principle of all the world, there is no stable reality to which one may univocally attribute true predicates. Mus-ical poetry is the poet's version of significant discourse. Hesiod's call to the Muses, and their response to him, is evidence that he (like Derrida) is self-conscious of the conception of significant discourse that he adopts. And such a conception the philosopher cannot refute, cannot even debate. To do so (as we have seen so often) would require begging the question and thus would violate a basic precept of reason. To return to Aristotle: He argues that if the Principle of Noncontradiction is denied, then the doctrines of "substance" and "essence" must also be denied (1007a20-21). It would take a long time to explain what these terms mean. Suffice it to say that a substance is a stable being that exists in its own right and that these two doctrines comprise the basis of the natural view of the world discussed at some length in Chapter I above. Substances are what are "seen" by the discerning intellectual eye. They are the objects of Aristotle's confident assertiveness. If their existence were denied there would no longer be any possibility of an "essential predication." This is a statement that says that S is P and must be P in order to be S. As such, if S were to cease being P, then it would cease being S. For example, Aristotle says that a human being is essentially an animal with logos. Therefore, without logos a being is not human. If the principle were to be denied, then essential predication would disappear. The reason for this is that the contrary to the essential predication could as equally well be predicated of the subject: S could just as well be not-P as P. If there is to be such a thing as "being essentially human," this must be different from "not being a human." If the two are not different, if the principle were denied, then there could be no essential predication. In sum, the Principle of Noncontradiction is, for Aristotle, the ultimate regulator of predication. In order for any predication to be significant it must refer to something definite and stable. We saw this in Chapter I; Aristotle's is a world of stable substances. Without the principle "anything goes," since essential predications would lose their privilege. To say anything goes means that without the principle there would be no articulable substance that can be identified as the recipient of essentially true predications. Yet another way to put this point is that if the principle is denied there will be no univocally true propositions. For the denier, S is both P and not P; neither of the two statements, "S is P," "S is not P," is simply and

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 153 solely true. Instead, in some sense both are true. In fact, denial of the principle leads to every possible statement being true (or being as equally true as any other statement). The result of all this is that anything that seems to be true can be counted as being true (1009al34-15). In short, if the principle is denied, then relativism is affirmed. Aristotle identifies an old friend of ours, the Sophist Protagoras, as a proponent of both relativism and the denial of the Principle of Noncontradiction. Protagoras' position emerges from the same view . . . For if everything that seems true or appears true is true, everything must be true and false at the same time; for many people form judgments that are opposed to those held by others, and they believe that those who do not have the same views as they do are wrong. Therefore, the same thing must be and not. And if this is the case, all opinions must be true; for those who are wrong and those who are right hold views that are opposed to each other. So if things are really the way [Protagoras thinks], everybody will be right (1009a6-15).

Aristotle explains the conjunction of relativism and the denial of the Principle of Noncontradiction this way: If it seems to you that Sam is good, it is, according to Protagoras, true that Sam is good. (Remember Protagoras' famous dictum: "Man is the measure.") If in addition it seems to me that Sam is bad, "then it seems to me true that what seems true to you is false; so it is false. So it is both true and false that" Sam is good.16 Denial of the principle goes hand in hand with Protagorean relativism to form a view in stark contrast to Aristotle's own. To summarize: For Aristotle, the Principle of Noncontradiction is the most fundamental of all principles, for it is the foundation of all rational discourse. It itself, however, cannot be proven; it must be assumed. In fact, its truth cannot even be debated, for if it were debated in a manner that would please Aristotle, then that very dialogue would have to be conducted in accord with the principle. The denier, the proponent of Protagorean relativism; for example, would thus be well advised simply to ignore Aristotle's invitation to debate (and the abuse directed at him if he refuses). If the Principle of Noncontradiction is paradigmatic of a fundamental issue, and if philosophical dialogue is to be about such issues, then it is clear that philosophical dialogue is impossible. This thought should frighten—if the most basic beliefs, the very foundations of our conception of significant or rational discourse, cannot even be debated, then in what sense are they rational? Does rationality proceed

154

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

upon irrational grounds? If so, then what differentiates the denial from the affirmation of the principle? One answer readily suggests itself: "the consequences that follow." Denying the principle, one might argue, gets us nowhere, while its affirmation makes possible the wholesome work of rational activity. But from where did these conflicting directions emerge? Is there any good reason to prefer one over the other? Upon what is each based? Such questions might of course be dismissed as pointless. But what if we, we who follow this story of logos, desire, indeed are driven, to pursue them? What happens then? (3) The Misologists By mentioning relativism in the previous section and identifying an old friend, the Sophist Protagoras, it should now be clear that the imaginary opponent in Aristotle's Metaphysics, the one denying the Principle of Noncontradiction, holds a position like that of logos's accusers (in both their ancient and contemporary guise). To use a term mentioned above, the accusers are "misologists," haters of logos. The expressions of Cleitophon and Hesiod each represent a form of discourse that differs fundamentally from Aristotle's. Implicit in their conceptions of significant discourse is the denial of the essential primacy of the principle and the (metaphysical) consequences that follow. This has already been noted. But that this is also true of the contemporary band of subversives, especially Derrida, is even more clear. Derrida acknowledges in Of Grammatology that an enormous gulf separates him from the traditional version of logos or significant discourse, which he calls "phono-centrism" or "logocentrism." Logocentrism is based upon a "metaphysics of presence," a conception of the world that features Aristotelian substances, natures, stable realities. According to Derrida, logocentrism implies the primacy of the voice, which in turn implies that human beings can gain direct access to that which is present out there in the world simply and essentially as itself. An excellent example of logocentrism is Aristotle's statement in De Interpretatione, which I have already cited twice. There spoken words were said to be symbols of mental representations of things as they are. Commenting on, and I think illuminating, this passage Derrida says, "The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence."17 Aristotle, if you recall, made writing a "symbol" or "sign" of spoken words. He thus placed writing a step further away from the reality of objects in the world. In other words, Aristotle conceived of a sequence: Things in the world, the mental experience of those things, spoken words

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

155

giving voice to mental experiences, written symbols of spoken words. This sequence is phonocentric because it subordinates writing to speaking; it places spoken words closer to reality and thus grants them a better chance to articulate things as they are. It is just this subordination to which Derrida objects. His "nonphonetic" account of signification, his elevation of writing and rejection of Aristotle's sequence, "menaces the history and life of the spirit and self-presence in the breath . . . because it menaces substantiality, that other metaphysical name of presence and ousia."18 ("Ousia" is the Greek word typically translated as "substance.") With his nonphoneticism, with his grammatology, Derrida approaches just the view Aristotle describes as following upon rejection of the Principle of Noncontradiction. For Aristotle, if the principle is denied, a set of consequences follows that is unacceptable, but not quite refutable. It is not clear whether Aristotle thinks that an actual or serious philosophical position can include a denial of the principle. He implies, on the one hand, that the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who seems to be such a denier, did not really believe what he was saying, that he was just talking. On the other hand, Aristotle spends a good deal of time explaining how it is that men come to adopt the view associated with the denial (see 1005b25 and 1009a22 ff.). Regardless, Aristotle knows that either acceptance or rejection of the principle is a fundamental decision in that it constitutes a whole conception of significant discourse. So too does Derrida understand that his rejection of traditional logos, his rejection of the metaphysics of ousia and presence that regulated the classical version of predication, has enormous consequences. He knows that he is heading toward a version of "unregulated" (or "anarchic") predication. The single word that best captures what Derrida means is "playful." This is opposed to "serious," or traditional. The importance of play in subversive thought cannot be overemphasized. It is a notion Derrida inherits from Nietzsche, whom he rightly credits with making the first great move in the overthrow of traditional logos and metaphysics. Nietzsche, far from remaining simply within metaphysics (with Hegel and as Heidegger wished) contributed a great deal to the liberation of the signifier from its dependence or derivation with respect to logos and the related concept of truth or the primary signified, in whatever sense that is understood.19

By "liberation of the signifier" Derrida means rejection of the traditional conception of significant discourse wherein the signifier had to refer to something definite and stable. With logocentrism overthrown, language is free to roam, is not bound to the definite object, "the primary signified." The implications of this view are vast: an entirely different

156

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

way of writing and thinking would have to emerge, one freed from the traditional task of simply stating things as they are. Derrida's experiments with different forms of writing, his playful use of language, his disdain for standard modes of argumentation, are evidence for this. Liberation means liberation from seriousness, the old way of saying things as they are, and an opening to a new way, to play. "One could call play the absence of the transcendental signified."20 In order to clarify the notion of misology further, and to understand a bit more about Nietzsche and Derrida, we need now to try to make sense of the notion of play. (I don't mention Rorty here because on the surface he is less playful than Derrida. Nevertheless, implicit within his sober critique of Philosophy is an attempt to overcome seriousness that is similar to that found in his French colleague. Consider, for example, the fact that Rorty diagnoses the cause of Heidegger's Nazism as a case of taking Philosophy too seriously.)21 As usual, my procedure will be to recall an ancient author. There was one Greek philosopher who greatly influenced Nietzsche (and therefore indirectly influenced Derrida): Heraclitus. And vital to Heraclitus' thought is the notion of play. To him, then, let us turn. Who was Heraclitus? He lived in Ephesus, on the west coast of what is now Turkey, around 500 b.c.e. His writings have come down to us in the form of a group of unordered aphorisms, or short statements. These aphorisms are obscure and their language is peculiar. It is not at all clear how they fit together, and so they do not seem to express a coherent philosophical argument. As is true of much early philosophy, however, scholars are not certain what form Heraclitus' original writings actually took. It is possible that Heraclitus wrote a book and that the writings that have come down to us (which have been compiled from a wide variety of doxographical sources) were not in the form we have them today. For several reasons, some of which I'll explain, I think that Heraclitus' writings have come down to us exactly as they were intended to. As is true of Hesiod's poetry and Thales' prose, the aphorisms suit Heraclitus' intentions perfectly. The form of this writing is adequate to its content, to the thought its author wishes to express.22 It may seem odd to describe Heraclitus as a "misologist" since three of his aphorisms read as follows: Of this logos which always is human beings always come to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and after they have heard it for the first time. For even though all things come to be in accord with this logos, human beings are like those without experience, even when they experience

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

157

both words and actions of the sort that I describe as I divide each thing according to nature and say how it is. What they do when they are awake eludes the rest of human beings just as they forget what they do when they are asleep (1). It is necessary to follow what is in common. Even though the logos is common, most men live as though their intelligence was private (2). After having heard not me but the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one (50).

These statements sound as if they belong to the tradition that Thales founded and Aristotle perfected. They seem to postulate a logos, an objective order existing out there and forming an intelligible world that human beings can (with their logos) apprehend. Indeed, Heraclitus is often credited with being one of the first of the Greeks to use the word "logos" in just this fashion.23 But what is this logos to which Heraclitus asks us to listen? What is his world like? The following two aphorisms tell much: Lifetime is a child playing (pais paizori) draughts; the kingship belongs to a child (52). War of all things is father, of all things is king, and he reveals some as gods, others as human beings, he makes some slaves, others free (53).

Lifetime is a pais paizon: the Greek words for "child" and "playing" are closely related. (Draughts was probably a game like checkers.) The kingship is in the hands of a child. What does any of this mean? The world is not ideologically, reliably, predictably structured. There are no stable entities, no fixed purposes toward which living beings grow. Think of children playing a game; they make up the rules. They change the rules. They ignore or play without rules. They pick up a stick or a cup and their imaginations bring these objects to life; they shift their attention and these objects die. They play for no stated purpose. If an adult counsels a child, "It's a good time for you to go and play," chances of success are slim. If an adult suggests that a child play with a specific toy, the child may well reject this advice and pick up a kitchen utensil instead. This is the play of a child: creative, imaginative, indifferent to command, spontaneous, fabulously alive, ever changing without definite purpose. And Heraclitus places the kingship (of what?) in the child's hands. What does this signify? The world to which he is trying to give expression is bereft of authoritative structure. The pais paizon tokens a world of constant, purposeless change.24

158

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

Nietzsche was fond of this aphorism and made the following comments about it: In this world only play, play as artists and children engage in it, exhibits coming-to-be and passing away, structuring and destroying, without any moral additive, in forever equal innocence.20

By "coming-to-be and passing away," Nietzsche refers to the ceaseless pace of change and the absence of any permanent, or "natural," structure in the world. All structure is fiction, a consequence of human creativity. For this reason Nietzsche associates the playing child with the artist. Both the child and the artist bring structures into being and then, when their attention shifts, let them pass away. This restless and creative energy is "innocent"; that is, it occurs without reason, without a preestablished goal. Children play, not because play is good, but because they just play. ("The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.") Artists create, not because art is good, but because they are creative. The two thus exhibit coming-to-be and passing-away . . . the play of the world.2(> To return to Heraclitus: What, then, should we make of his comments about war? How can the kingship be in the hands of a child and war be the father and king of all things? What could be further from child's play than adults making war? In an important sense, however, these two activities are similar. For example, the course or development of both a war and the play of a child are unpredictable. They are both spontaneous, incapable of being fully controlled, with outcomes undecided until the end. Two countries, A and B, go to war. Despite the carefully workedout plans for defense, the army of A falters unexpectedly in the field; B defeats A, gains its territory, and expands its borders. The new borders, the new structure of B, are highly contingent. In other words, there is nothing natural, nothing fixed, about them; they are the consequence of the fortunes of war. Its newly expanded territory is more than B bargained for, and soon the citizens of A will revolt; the borders of B will change again. All is change, all structure is provisional. Nothing is fixed, there is no purpose to the ongoing conflict of A and B; nothing abides. War is the father of all, distributing its spoils to the occasional victor. To reformulate this entire train of thought, consider what is perhaps Heraclitus' most famous aphorism: "It is not possible to step twice into the same river" (91). Why not? Because the river never ceases to flow; the water drifting by our feet is the continual change of the river. Because everything flows, nothing abides. This is Heraclitus' world.

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

159

Heraclitus is fond of statements such as these: "Donkeys prefer chaff to gold (9)"; "Pigs wash themselves in mud, birds in dust or ashes (37)." These can be read as straightforward descriptions of how various species of animals differ. Or, as I suggest, they can be read symbolically: Gold has no intrinsic value; ask the donkey. Mud is not intrinsically superior to ashes or water. It depends entirely on one's perspective. Nothing is good in and of itself. Why? Because if something were to be good in and of itself, it would require that something be fixed and stable, that it have a nature. And nothing does; everything changes, especially what is considered to be good. Consider the following two aphorisms: To god, everything is beautiful and good and just; but human beings suppose that some things are unjust and others are just (102).2' The human abode contains no good sense; the divine does contain it (76). The first aphorism states that the divine and the human understand things differently. Human beings make distinctions; they evaluate different people and things differently. They say, this is beautiful, that's ugly; he's evil and she's good. By contrast, to the divine everything is good. And as the second aphorism indicates, the divine is right. What does it mean to say everything is good? To clarify, we might return to some comments Aristotle made in his discussion of the Principle of Noncontradiction. If the principle does not hold, he argued, then there would be no stable basis for predication, and the possibility of significant discourse (as Aristotle understands it) would be destroyed. It would no longer be possible, for example, to assert that a human being is essentially an animal with two feet, that H is T. Without the principle, H might also be not-T. If this were the case, then it would not be possible to identify securely an example of H. The name "human being" would no longer refer to or signify something definite and stable, an animal with two feet. In turn, this would lead to the breakdown of significant or rational discourse since, as Aristotle puts it, not to speak significantly of one thing is not to speak significantly at all. Another way of putting this point is that if the principle is denied, then the doctrines of substance and essence, the stable components of reality, would also be denied. As a result, there would be nothing "behind" or in addition to "appearances" that could be invoked as a measure; all appearances would be counted as equally truthful (see 1007a20 ff. and 1009alO ff). If it appears to me that Edna is good, then Edna is good. If to you she appears evil, then she is evil. Without a stable reality by which to measure them, all appearances are the same. In other terms, if the principle is denied, then all opinions would be counted as true (1009alO

fo.

160

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

Heraclitus is mentioned by Aristotle as one who denies the principle (1005b25, 1010al3, 1012a24). I do not think, however, that Heraclitus simply asserts that it is false. If he did, then he would obviously defeat himself (for he would be declaring that the principle was F and not notF.) Instead of declaring it false, Heraclitus dismisses its relevance. What I mean is this: The principle contains a "time clause"—P cannot belong and not belong to S in the same way or at the same time. At different times S can obviously be P and then not-P. Socrates is bearded now but he can be not-bearded later. What Socrates cannot be is bearded and notbearded at the same time. This last phrase presupposes that time has discrete moments that can be abstracted and separated from one another. The principle implies that S can receive the predicate P at some particular moment that is somehow outside of the flow of time. At the same time, S cannot be P and not-P. Heraclitus denies that there are such isolated or frozen moments. Nothing is outside the continual flow of time, and so there is no moment at which S must be P or not-P. Of course, human beings can delude themselves; we can act as if time did have its discete moments. Finally, however, these are just fictions with which we comfort ourselves. There is no stable basis of predication, no basis for saying, "She is good and not evil." Since all things flow, she is just as evil as she is good. Human beings, fallen into error as they typically are, persist in making rigid value judgments (in presupposing that there are fixed moments of time). If they had good judgment they would realize that she is neither good nor evil; she is in fact nothing. Instead, she is becoming, changing constantly. Value judgments of the typical sort, therefore, stand at odds with the flow of things. The goal of Heraclitus' aphorisms is to teach us to affirm, rather than to defy, the fact that everything is in flux and nothing abides. When he says, "To god everything is beautiful and good," we need not imagine some divinity nodding his head. Instead, we should recall what Aristotle describes as a consequence of denying the Principle of Noncontradiction, namely the truth of all appearances. All is the same, unified in its flux. All is good; that is, "It is wise to agree that all is one." To elaborate, consider these aphorisms, which I translate quite literally: "The way up down one and the same (60);" Immortals mortals mortals immortals, living their death and dying their life" (62); "Want and fullness" (65). In each opposite words are placed directly next to each other. There are few connectives, no verbs, nothing except the bare juxtaposition of two words that "ought" not to be next to each other. Heraclitus writes this way because a consequence of his world-picture is rejection of the relevance of the principle of Noncontradiction. But if this is the case, what sense can we make of those aphorisms originally

Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

161

cited where Heraclitus asks us to listen, not to him, but to the logos? How can there be a logos without the basic principle of stability? How can there be an objective order in a world of constant change? If "the most beautiful cosmos a dust-heap piled up at random" (124), how can there be a logos or a person who uses well the human capacity for logos? If Heraclitus is the relativist he appears to be, how can he coherently say, "One man to me is worth thousands, if he is the best" (49)? The key to answering these questions is, I think, this: Heraclitus' aphorisms are meant to exhibit the playful flux of the world. They are not intended to be a stable Aristotelian explanation of the way stable things stand. Instead, they themselves are meant to imitate the pais paizon. The aphorisms, with their apparent contradictions and obscurity have a coherence and expressiveness all their own. Precisely by being imageridden aphorisms, rather than arguments or demonstrations, they exhibit the truth they mean to tell. They are an appropriate and adequate form to give voice to the world Heraclitus sees. To illustrate what I mean consider these: "Nature loves to hide" (123); "The harmony invisible than the visible harmony better" (54). How is an invisible harmony, one that does not appear or manifest itself, better than a visible one? To answer, consider first what the visible harmony might be. This might be the appearance of regularity in change: "Cold things get hot, hot things get cold, wet things dry, the parched is moistened" (126). From opposite comes opposite. The cold night gives way to the hot day. To say "The day is cold and hot" is not a contradiction because the two predicates are attributed to the subject at different times. For many scholars, this is the way of explicating the Heraclitean aphorisms by explaining away their appearance of self-contradiction. Many scholars take him to be a member of the tradition founded by Thales, and his logos is interpreted as an obscure attempt to tell the truth about the rhythmic flow of nature.28 I think these scholars are wrong. The visible harmony is inferior to the invisible harmony. The appearance of the regular exchange of opposite for opposite, the apparent rhythm of nature, can be articulated: cold (night) gives way to hot (day) which gives way to cold (night). But this articulation, which to some seems to be a "law" of nature, conceals as much as it reveals. It reveals: it says something about the rhythm of natural change. But it conceals as well: precisely by being a stable articulation, it hides the fact that nature is not stable. To say something definite about nature is to employ a human fiction to conceal something about nature (which loves to hide.) Heraclitus is not like Aristotle. His aphorisms love to hide. This is why his language is so peculiar, why he offers bare juxtaposition of contradictories, why he so often leaves out inflections of the verb "to be." The meaning of these aphorisms cannot be

162 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD "pinned down." They make no attempt to articulate firmly a natural realm. Instead, they reflect the play of the world. The invisible harmony is better than the visible one. Heraclitus' aphorisms must make something visible; they must say something. But at the same time they allude to what is not said, to what is invisible, to what they themselves, just by being stated, conceal. "The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks (legei) nor hides, but gives signs (semainei)" (93). The lord at Delphi says nothing straightforwardly, gives no logos in Aristotle's sense. Nor does he hide; he does, after all, say something. Instead, he gives signs, indirect indications. The verb here, semainei, is the same one Aristotle uses when he states his general principle in Metaphysics, IV: "Not to speak significantly (semainein) about one thing is not to speak significantly at all." I change the English translation because Heraclitus and Aristotle attach such different meanings to the verb. Aristotle's logos is a direct pointing out of the shape of natural entities. For him, if language did not refer to one definite thing, to something stable, then it could not be meaningful. Heraclitus would disagree. His aphorisms are riddles that cannot be simply solved ("what we see and grasp we leave behind; what we neither see nor grasp, we carry with us" [56]); they indicate, allude to, a world of play that flows through our fingers as we attempt to grasp it.29 "In the same rivers we both step and do not step, we are and are not" (49a). The best of men, the one worth thousands to Heraclitus, is he who has the strength to affirm, and not to flee from, the potentially paralyzing thought that nothing abides. Nietzsche expresses his admiration for Heraclitus by imagining him saying the following: I see nothing other than becoming. Be not deceived. It is the fault of your myopia, not of the nature of things, if you believe you see land somewhere in the ocean of coming-to-be and passing away. You use names for things as though they rigidly, persistently endured; yet even the stream into which you step a second time is not the one you stepped into before.30

It takes great strength to admit that nothing abides. To believe, as Aristotle does, that there is something solid and dependable in the ocean of becoming is a consequence of weakness, of myopia. More specifically, to believe this is to be seduced by ordinary language (especially nouns). We think our names refer to beings, structures, islands. But, in fact, the name misleads for there is no being to correspond to that name. What is needed, therefore, is a different way of using language, one that will not mislead. And this is the Heraclitean aphorism. It plays. It changes. It

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

163

contradicts itself. "One, which alone is said to be wise, is not willing and willing to be called by the name of Zeus" (32). Heraclitus' aphorisms perfect the art that Derrida is now trying so hard to master: that of being playful, of creating a mode of assertion that retracts itself, that is both present and absent, that allows the signifier to roam in playful freedom from the signified.31 Heraclitus, Nietzsche, and Derrida, then, are misologists: They hate logos in its classical sense. For them there is no stable and unchanging principle of being; instead, there is becoming, world-play, unregulated flux. In such a view the Principle of Noncontradiction has no privileged status: there are no natural and enduring substances capable of admitting unequivocally true propositions. The goal of language and thought, therefore, is not to state the Truth about things as they are, but to go with the flow. The pais paizon rules, and logos is condemned as myopic weakness. This is anarchy, the view that fundamentally opposes itself to the principle and so to the conception of significant discourse held by Aristotle. To digress briefly: One of the more interesting developments in the profession of American philosophy in recent years has been an eagerness to hold a dialogue with the misologists. I am referring to attempts to mend a split that has long characterized the profession, namely that between the "Continental" (European) and "analytical" (Anglo-American) philosophers. The recent Continentals are subversives, misologists, following the lead of Germans like Nietzsche and Heidegger and their French descendants like Derrida. As their title suggests, the analytical are those following the Anglo-American tradition of sober-minded, rigorous, traditional analytical thinking. In one sense, these thinkers see themselves as following in Aristotle's footsteps; they adhere to the Principle of Noncontradiction; they are serious. These two camps have long battled each other for power and prestige in the academic world. Now, we are told, the time has come for reconciliation and dialogue. A good example of this new spirit of harmony comes from a former president of the American Philosophical Association. He laments the fact that too often in the past much of discussion in the philosophical community "has been insular and has militated against the admittedly difficult but also essential exchange between basically different outlooks and approaches." He goes on to say that "the task before us now is to initiate a serious dialogue among the many different philosophical opinions represented in the Association."32 A comparable statement is made by a spokesman for the Cambridge University Press, which recently

164 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD commissioned a work titled Modern French Philosophy. This book aims "to increase mutual recognition and respect . . . on both sides of the same Channel." Even more recently, the author of this book was made an editor at Oxford University Press and has started a series devoted to Continental philosophy.33 The main purpose of this chapter has been to show that this hope is ill conceived. The two sides of the Channel, if they indeed represent, on the one side, the misologists and, on the other, the advocates of the Principle of Noncontradiction, cannot be bridged for they represent divergent views on fundamental issues. There can be conversion; Richard Rorty, for example, has transformed himself into a subversive. There can be mutual tolerance. But there cannot be philosophical dialogue. The recent developments in the profession of philosophy have recapitulated, yet again, the oldest of disputes: that between logos and its accusers.34 This, finally, is the insight logos attains: It cannot refute its opponents, its accusers, those who hate it. It cannot even enter into dialogue with them. This it now sees. And such seeing brings with it a recognition of a previous blindness. Logos screams: "Everything is now all too clear. I am not king, have never occupied a faithful throne. I, supposed lover of knowing, have never known who I am. Now I do, for now I know that I, the supposed knower, am ignorant. And this, my new knowledge, castigates me for my old blindness. Who was I to accuse my accuser . . . for I am guilty of the self-same crime. Even worse, I have compounded my crime with self-deception and arrogance. But I have learned; never again shall I see the world with these same eyes." B

PARADIGMS OF PLAY (1)

The Athlete and the Child

Exhausted. Is logos finished? Must we (who for some time have admired logos) give up on all light, all possibility of using reason, the capacity to know, to make ourselves whole and well? Has the initial moment, the Aristotelian impetus, been exposed as nothing but deluded and oppressive fraud? Is there hope of any sort, or are we destined only for despair? I am not sure. But if there is not hope in the sense of an expectation of resolution or rectification, there is yet another possibility: affirmation. Even after its reversals and hard-won recognitions, perhaps logos will yet be able to stand and say yes to who it is. It has confessed its blindness, but has not yet been fully crushed. Perhaps logos is newly understood.

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

165

Derridean play, the liberation of the signifier, the overthrow of logocentrism, is the most contemporary and vigorous form of misology. It cannot be refuted nor can logos even engage it in a serious philosophical dialogue. This misology spreads like fire, deconstructing what was old and once thought good. As we have seen, Derridean play finds its antecedents in Nietzsche who, in turn, acknowledges his debt to Heraclitus' pais paizon. Child's play is the image of a world emptied of being, of structure and stability, a world in which reason has no true home, no ability to articulate with authority what is right or wrong, good or evil. (It is worth recalling that this sort of misology is not restricted to those who are fashionably subversive; it is also the flip side of the view generated by those most apparently sober of men, Descartes and Spinoza. Descartes, for example, constructs a provisional morality in order to get on with the serious business of mathematical physics. He conceives of the world of purposes, values and meanings as a series of conventions produced by the human imagination and imposed by the will. There is no principle to guide the production of such conventions; their coming into being is a matter of creative energy. This is, I propose, akin to the view tokened by Heraclitus' pais paizon.)™ It is surprising, but true, that after all these pages play has become the issue. To the pais paizon logos must somehow respond, make its plea, perhaps capitulate. But does this imply that logos must totally renounce its serious purpose? Must it repress its erotic nature, that which energizes it as it strives to attain its goals? Must it bow to Nietzsche's character Zarathustra as he does battle against the "spirit of gravity," the impulse to deny the flow of time? The old king serious has indeed been dethroned; but do we yet understand what will take its place? Do we, in other words, yet understand what play is? Heraclitus' pais paizon is a specific image, or paradigm, of play and it is of course true that children wonderfully exemplify play. But adults play as well and do so quite differently than children. "There is, in other words, a crucial difference between mere playfulness and playing to win."3b The question I will ask in this section is, Why should the child, rather than the adult, automatically be given pride of place when it comes to play? Yes, the seriousness of Aristotle has been dethroned. After its three recognition and reversal scenes (the successive discomfitures at the hands of Cleitophon and Hesiod, the revelation that philosophical dialogue is impossible) logos can never again be so assertively serious. But this does not imply that logos must be supplanted by Heraclitean play. This would be necessary if there were only two options, Aristotelian seriousness and

166 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

the pais paizon. What if, however, there is a third way, one that somehow falls in between the two just mentioned? I will explore this possibility by proposing an image to counter the Heraclitean pais, one that takes its bearings from an adult, not a child, playing to win. The subject of this section will be the athlete. (And is this what logos has come to? Once so proud, it first offered an argument for itself, one that claimed nature as its warrant. Its second best way, the subjective or psychological argument, analyzed the structure of our erotic longings and language and concluded that they point upward to the Idea. Now, impoverished logos can only present an image. It can only hope what follows will exert some force of attraction on its reader, but it recognizes that if the reader feels no such force, sees no value in the image, then the game is over. The reader may well believe that this whole story has now degenerated into poetry, that the little semblance there ever was of argument in this book has now self-consciously given way to a battle of images. There is no argument to prove to such a reader that this image should compel and inform. At some point, all we can do is point and ask, "Do you see it or not?") The most basic form of adult play is athletics, that type of organized and rule-bound competition in which the participants compete for a prize (in Greek "athlon" the root of "athlete," means "prize"). What I will suggest is that the athlete provides an alternative paradigm of play, one that shows a middle ground between child's play, the image used to represent the instability, the purposeless flux, of the world of human significance, and the old-fashioned quest for Truth and Goodness. The athlete, as a paradigm of play and an image of a stance to be taken toward the world, shares with traditional Aristotelian seriousness the belief that human energy directed toward agreed-upon goals is meaningfully well spent. At the same time, it shares with Heraclitus' child the belief that such goals do not abide, are insubstantial and in this sense meaningless. This sounds like a contradiction or a paradox, and in some sense it is. But it is a paradox that can be affirmed and lived and it is this possibility that will allow logos to go on. As usual, a discussion of a select portion of a Greek text will provide the occasion to explain what I am talking about. This time it is the penultimate chapter (Book XXIII) of Homer's Iliad. Here the poet sings of the athletic contests held during the funeral of Patroklos, the Greek hero slain by the Trojan warrior Hektor. Briefly, the background to the story is this: The Greeks, led by Agamemnon, have gone to war against the Trojans to regain Helen. In the course of the protracted battle Agamemnon insults Achilles, the greatest of all Greek heroes, by taking

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

167

away his prize, the woman Briseis. In response to this affront, Achilles refuses to fight with his comrades. As a result, the Trojans gain much ground. Achilles is intractable. Even though the Greeks suffer defeats and many of his comrades fall to the enemy, he refuses to reenter the battle. Only when the Trojans actually approach the Greek ships does Achilles relent: he allows Patroklos, his beloved friend, to wear his own armor and go to the aid of the beleagured Greeks. For a while Patroklos succeeds in shoring up the Greek defense, but soon he is killed by Hektor. At this point Achilles rejoins the fight. From Book XVII to XXII Homer sings of Achilles' murderous rage. He kills a great many Trojans. Finally he avenges Patroklos' death by slaughtering Hektor, a killing he culminates by mutilating the Trojan's corpse. With the death of Hektor in Book XXII Achilles' rage at last is spent. Book XXIII recounts the games held in honor of Patroklos, and Book XXIV tells the story of what is perhaps the greatest reconciliation of enemies ever depicted: that between Priam, king of the Trojans and father of Hektor, and Achilles, hero of the Greeks. The Iliad is framed by Achilles' rage (menis). It is his anger at Agamemnon that starts the action of the poem, and it is not until this rage is redirected, and then fully expressed, at the Trojans that the poem ends. What is quite extraordinary about Achilles is that despite his famous menis, he is not simply, one-dimensionally, a violent man. Indeed, he is as capable of love (philotes) and loyalty as he is of rage. As one scholar puts it, "The Iliad is as much about the philotes of Achilles as it is about his menis. The love he feels for Patroklos, his conversations with his mother, and his tender relationships with his surrogate fathers Phoinix and Priam are as exceptionally human and as unparalleled among the Greeks as is his divine wrath."37 In keeping with this human and social side of his character, Homer makes it clear that before the events depicted in the Iliad Achilles had behaved quite decently toward his enemies.38 But with the death of Patroklos he is transformed into a totally antisocial, maddened killer. The following scene exhibits this well. Here Achilles slaughters Lykaon, a pathetic man who only a few days earlier had been captured by Achilles. In what had then been his typically decent and social manner, Achilles had allowed him to live. Lykaon has no such luck the second time. Poor fool, no longer speak to me of ransom, nor argue it. In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny then it was the way of my heart's choice to be sparing of the Trojans, and many I took alive and disposed of them. Now there is not one who can escape death, if the gods send him against my hands in front of Ilion, not one of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam. So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour

i68 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD about it? Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are. Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal? Yet even I have also my death and strong destiny. (XXI, 99-110)

Hapless Lykaon spreads his bare arms wide in a final, lifeless gesture, and Achilles slaughters him. He grabs the corpse and flings it into the river shouting madly that "a fish will break a ripple shuddering dark on the water as he rises to feed upon the shining fat of Lykaon" (XXI, 126127). "Die on," Achilles cries, addressing, it seems, the whole world. There are scenes of comparable violence in these later chapters of the Iliad. Achilles slays twelve innocent Trojan boys, mutilates Hektor's corpse, and goes so far as to do battle with a river. Even within the warrior world of the Homeric hero these are unacceptably violent actions for they break the code that regulates this archaic warfare. In his rage Achilles is no longer human; he becomes death incarnate and his mere scream terrifies a whole army.39 Book XXIII, however, tokens a transformation. Here, when the funeral celebration begins, Achilles returns to the friendly ways of his past. A series of games, of athletic contests, is held and for these Achilles acts as referee, peacekeeper, and distributor of prizes. There are moments when he even smiles (see line 556). A good example occurs during the chariot race. A young man, Antilochos, becomes angry at the king's brother, Menelaus. He voices a grievance not too different from the one Achilles himself had leveled at Agamemnon in Book I, namely that he is not getting the prize he deserves (lines 543-555). Achilles manages to deflect Antilochos' anger and so prevents a second internal quarrel from erupting among the Greeks. He acts toward Antilochos as Agamemnon should have acted toward him. The notion of celebrating a funeral with athletic games may seem strange to us. In the Iliad, however, there is clearly something deeply appropriate about these contests. What is it? Why does Homer have his Greeks honor the life and death of the warrior Patroklos with games? In one sense, the answer is easy: This was a traditional way of honoring the deaths of distinguished men, and the Iliad is a poem that reflects traditional ways of life.40 But as a poet, Homer does more than report accurately the ways of the society he depicts, and so the easy answer tells little. Why games? Attempting to answer this question will help clarify how the athlete functions as a paradigm of play, as an image of a stance to be taken toward the world, one that is in-between traditional seriousness and the pais paizon. The athletic contests of the funeral and the war that comprises most of the action of the Iliad are analogous. They are both competitive and

Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

169

directed to a goal or prize, namely victory. In war, at least as Homer describes it, there is a need for strength, skill, daring and endurance, qualities required as well by the successful athlete. It is thus hardly surprising that in the Iliad the victors in the games (Diomedes, Ajax, Odysseus, Meriones) are among the best fighters. Athletic contests, however, also differ fundamentally from war. Instead of destroying a society, they enhance it. They are socially productive and bring laughter rather than tears. (See lines 556, 625, 647, 789, 797, 840.) War is deadly serious, but games are not. Here we find the basic reason why athletics are an appropriate manner of celebrating the funeral of Patroklos. In honoring the death of a warrior the games rehearse many of the aspects of war without war's horrifying and all-too-serious blood. They celebrate physical vitality and, at least in part, the value system for which the warrior died. They reaffirm life and so integrate the warrior's death back within a socially viable context: they encourage the community to go on. But there is more. In their graceful brevity games offer us miniature lives. For the athlete, the game, while it is being played, is totally consuming. The athlete is so thoroughly immersed in the game that he forgets the world outside. Those of us who have played know this experience well. The web of everyday concerns that generally occupy us are forgotten as we play. This is why games are capable of inspiring such enthusiasm. They generate a small world of their own, one whose rules, goals, and boundaries, unlike those of the everyday world, are clearly defined, agreed upon, and within reach. This is why the game is so immersing, why it is a small island in the flow of everyday time to which so many of us return again and again. Within the game there is no doubt about what is expected of the athlete, and when the game ends there is no doubt who won and who lost. Unlike everyday life, games can be completed and then begun again. Unlike everyday time, whose indefinite future ever looms ahead (promising, threatening, causing a fracture between now and then), games are played with a fluid and concentrated motion that frees us from doubt. We simply play, always moving forward, always trying hard, unencumbered by all the qualifications the ordinary world with its hidden future and troubling past suggests. If the game is a miniature life, then it is not surprising that in the heat of competition it can be experienced as something like a life-or-death matter. This is the source of what is frequently so objectionable about athletics. Athletes risk serious injury to themselves or to their opponents, they cheat, they explode into violence. Enormous sums of money are spent to achieve success, and games can become all too consuming. Athletes become too serious and forget the tired phrase, "it's only a game"

170 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD Indeed, such sensible counsel is regularly forgotten. Athletic play is precarious; it is tensely balanced between the two extemes that flank it. It can, on the one hand, easily become too serious and thus more closely resemble war than play. It can also lapse into the other extreme. If the athletes are not serious enough, if they cease to care who wins and hold victory in contempt, then the game is no longer a true contest. In order to be played well, the game must be played in order to win. If victory is not taken seriously as a goal, then the activity is more like child's play than athletics. It is with the phrase "It's only a game" that the true nature of athletic play is illuminated. Games are only games. The goals athletes strive for are not really of life-or-death significance; athletes only act as i/they are. Games are not really that serious because their goals are the products of artificial conventions. Winning a game of basketball, for example, might require putting a ball through a hoop fifteen times. How one is allowed to do this is circumscribed by the rules: one is not allowed to kick the ball, hit the defender, step on the boundary line, and so forth. In order for the game to occur these rules must be adhered to strictly, for the rules make it possible for the game to become the small, self-contained world that it is. Imagine if the prohibition against kicking the ball were not strictly enforced: there would be arguments, chaos; there would be no distinction between a well-played and a poorly played game, and it never would be clear what constituted victory. It would not be a good game. For the athlete, the rules make the game satisfying. This is why, even without an official referee (in "pickup" games), there is surprisingly little dispute over rules; athletes implicitly realize that their play requires acknowledgement of the conventions that constitute their game. These rules, however, are arbitrary. The hoop placed on the backboard is not "by nature" ten feet above the ground. There is no reason why three steps should not be taken between bounces of the ball. These are conventions; they could easily be changed.41 This implies that the goal of the game, victory, making fifteen baskets, is also arbitrary. As a result, in an important sense victory is quite meaningless; it has no enduring worth imbedded in the nature of things. Depositing a round ball in a hoop fifteen times has no meaning outside of the temporary, highly conventionalized, world of the game. This is why games frequently look so peculiar or childish from the outside. What has just been said, however, does not imply that the experience of athletics, playing the game, is meaningless. The ordinary experience of athletes, our return again and again to the court in order to find a small segment of time meaningfully well spent, testifies to the deep attraction of the game. Despite the fact that the goal is constituted by something artificial, we feel our playing to emerge from our natures; we

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

171

are compelled by the experience of competitive play and relish the small but engrossing life-world of the game. What the above implies is that the simple achievement of victory cannot account for the experience of playing. Winning does not exhaust the meaning of the game. We must, it seems, play for the sake of playing and not for the sake of winning. This may sound "idealistic" and so someone will object: For the serious, the real, athlete winning is the only thing that counts. But this is not so. If victory as an isolated fact were the only thing that really mattered in a game, then a list of an athlete's victories would be equivalent to an account of what was meaningful in the athlete's experience. It simply is not the case that the phrase "200 victories, 150 defeats," adequately explains the experience of years on a basketball court. The cliche is quite right: It isn't who wins or loses, but how one plays the game. The cliche of course gets forgotten at the highest reaches of televised athletics where the prizes for victory include enormous sums of money. But the overwhelming number of athletes are not professionals. It is street-play, pickup games played over the lunch hour, the games where the name of the victor is soon forgotten, that are the animating force behind all athletics. They are what initially sparked, and usually maintain, even the professional athlete. It is the pickup game, and not the Super-Bowl, that tells us what athletics mean. Victory, the prize, is the goal of athletic play, but it is not equivalent to the meaning of play. It's not who wins or loses, but how one plays the game. But we must not become so intoxicated with the cliche that we forget a crucial fact about athletics: If it is true that good play, not just victory, is what really matters, it is equally true that play can only be good when it aims for victory. This is peculiar. How can the athlete play so hard, so seriously, on a rectangular court whose dimensions are arbitrary? Why should the athlete direct her intense energies toward achievement of an all-but-meaningless goal? Athletics are a most peculiar, even paradoxical, phenomenon. In them we find a nonserious, forgettable, or meaningless goal, victory as arbitrarily defined, making possible a serious, an erotic, activity which itself is experienced as meaningful. There is thus a dimension of absurdity in athletics. We compete for a goal soon to be forgotten. Athletes act as if life itself were at stake when what is really at issue is nothing but fifteen baskets. It's only a game. But in the midst of competition athletes play, indeed must play, as if the goal of the game, victory, really did matter. We play for that which, upon distanced reflection, dissolves into absurdity. This is why those who are outside of a game are often incredulous, or even contemptuous of, those of us who play. This is why some athletes, when the game ceases, feel almost ashamed at having taken it all so

172 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD seriously. Why should a rational adult risk bodily harm playing a game when the game is, from the outsider's perspective, a silly bundle of conventions? To note this dimension of absurdity in athletics is not to condemn them. Quite to the contrary, it is precisely this paradoxical nature of athletics that is their enduring charm and why, compared to the petty pace of everyday life, they stand out as islands of such brilliance. In order to play well, the athlete must play to win. Not to do so is virtually to cheat, for the game is defined by its rules, which in turn mandate victory as the goal. But victory, in and of itself, is bereft of meaning and so not a serious goal. After the pickup game has ended, who won is of little or no consequence. And yet the athlete returns to play, to attempt to win, again and again, for the game is experienced as deeply compelling. We play for a goal which, upon reflection, is empty. But our play is not empty. Athletic competitions so appropriately close the Iliad because they represent and affirm in succinct, graceful, and nondestructive form the paradox of human striving. They are analogous to the actual war from which they are a reprieve. In the Homeric world war is the most serious of activities, for it is the only arena in which a meaningful life (or in Homeric terms, glory) can be achieved.42 The Trojan War, however, is fought for the most absurd reason: the abduction of a Spartan woman, Helen, who was stolen by a Trojan prince, Paris, son of Priam. As Homer makes us realize time and again, the cause and goal of the war are desperately out of proportion with the destruction they bring. Troy, a living city of women, men, and children, is annihilated by the rampaging Greeks only for the sake of Helen and men's pride. One scene in particular makes this pain sharp and clear. Here Hektor pauses briefly from the battle to return to the walls of Troy. He visits his wife Andromache and infant son. When he reaches to pick his boy up, the child is frightened by his father's crested helmet. To comfort him, Hektor kisses his boy and prays that he "may be as I am, preeminent among the Trojans, great in strength, as I am, and rule strongly over Ilion" (VI, 477-478). The reader, and to some extent even Hektor, knows that both Hektor and Ilion are doomed for destruction, and so this prayer, emanating from the love of a father, is really a prayer for the death of a son. Homer tells us that Andromache, witnessing this peaceful and affectionate moment, "laughed through her tears" (VI, 484). Human laughter, generated by the warmth of the family, is forever laced with the tears of pointless battle. Unlike the gods, we are mortal and cannot keep for long the prizes we hold dear. Our losses are continually impending and cannot be reclaimed.

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

173

Even the sadness of this scene, sparked by the richness of domestic life and the intuition of its demise, does not imply that Homer condemns the war Hektor fights. Homer is not a pacifist, for in an important sense he affirms war. As stated, given the very limited world of the Homeric hero, war is the only arena in which glory, the most meaningful and serious of goals, can be achieved. But glory is bought at a disproportionately high, or even paradoxical, price: the death of fundamentally similar men seeking the very same goal. Even this fact, however, does not provide grounds for pacifism. War typifies the tragedy of human striving. All striving is, finally, for goals, like Helen, whose substance vanishes. This does not imply, however, that striving for such goals is itself meaningless; tragedy does not imply despair or paralysis. Instead, the situation can be clarified by athletics. In order to play well the athlete strives for a victory soon to be forgotten. In order to fight well, the warrior does the same. The difference between war and athletic play in Homer's poem is that only the latter, because it ends and then begins again, allows us to see sharply and to affirm appreciatively what our striving is.43 We strive for goals: glory, money, publication, wisdom, power, large families, pleasure. The achievement of such goals is but a moment. Our goals fade: There is not some nature of things to certify them with enduring value. They vanish. And so what to do? Join forces with Nietzsche and Heraclitus and proclaim that all is a flux whose king is a playing child? Are we to renounce all our erotic strivings because goals are not imbedded in an eternal structure? Are we to abandon our attempts to understand the world if it cannot be shown that the world is definitively, naturally, structured? No, not if we take our bearings from the athlete. As an image of a stance to be taken toward the human world, the athlete allows us to say yes to our striving, whether it is on the battlefield, in the political arena, or in our conversations. Even though our goals are no more than hoops nailed back to a board, our striving is to be prized. The athlete gives us a middleground. The ephemerality of our goals, the fact that they are not imbedded in the nature of things, should inhibit us from taking them too seriously. But without serious and goal-directed activity, we lose ourselves and cannot play well. Heraclitus' pais paizon is a distortion. As an image of human experience it fails, for people do play games, try to win, and take their goals seriously. They do play well or play poorly. This must be taken into account and as an image the athlete, not the child, is able to express this. Unfortunately, there is no argument, no appeal to human nature, to certify claims such as the ones just made. Indeed, objections could be offered. (One could argue, for example, that athletes just delude themselves by taking their their games so seriously.) For the moment, however,

174

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

let us agree only on this: logos has been forced to acknowledge the primacy of play. But what is play? Is it necessarily the pais paizon, or is there an alternative? As a paradigm of play, athletics provide an option in between Heraclitean (Derridean) child's play and the Aristotelian seriousness fundamentally opposing it. This paradigm has only been asserted and not defended. No reason has been provided as to why the athlete is any more acceptable than the pais paizon. The two paradigms have simply been juxtaposed. At this point habit will force (some of) us to ask: Which of these two paradigms is "better"? What would happen if the two paradigms were brought into competition, if they were to "debate" and rationally contest each other's merits? The answer is all too obvious: The athlete would "win," for the athlete is essentially a competitor, while the child is not. The obviousness of the answer shows the problem with the question: As we have seen all too often, entrance into a competition such as this one between the two paradigms of play is hardly a neutral act. Even to ask for such a competition is to predetermine its outcome. Simply to begin the game is already to declare allegiance to one of the two paradigms, namely the athlete, for it is the athlete who plays such games. Therefore, if given a choice the proponent of the pais (the misologist) should, in order to remain true to herself, refuse to enter such a game. Instead of attempting to defend herself against a competitor, she should speak in the voice of a Heraclitean aphorism or ask for assistance from one of Hesiod's Muses. The game of rational defense is one in which she should express no interest and take no part. The proposed competition between the two paradigms of play thus recapitulates the various confrontations we have seen throughout this book. The proponent of the pais paizon is like the Sophist. Therefore, if faced with an invitation to debate against a representative of logos, like Socrates, she should follow the lead of Cleitophon and reject the model of Thrasymachus; that is, she should refuse to debate Socrates. Debating Socrates requires entrance into a game. But once the Socratic game begins, it is over, for like every game it has rules (or presuppositions). To say yes to Socrates' invitation to debate is to agree that competition is good, that the prize of victory should be sought. This is, however, a fundamental decision, one that gives shape to an entire view of the world (one in which knowledge is made good). The Sophist (the poeticist, Heraclitus, the misologist) disagrees with Socrates on the most fundamental of levels. Therefore, she cannot win against Socrates when the game is played according to the philosopher's rules. The introduction of the paradigm of the athlete does not obviate the dilemma, the tragedy, of logos. The juxtaposition of the two images leaves

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

175

us still at an impasse, for it provides no avenue of rational adjudication. Nevertheless, from this chapter emerges a modest form of self-affirmation. Logos, whose fortunes have been terribly reversed throughout the course of this book, will exit the stage dressed like a beggar and not a king. But it will exit standing and not crawling—for logos, as we will now see, is conditionally, and not unconditionally, good. It is good contingent upon acceptance of one condition: that there be some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. If there is an opponent who attempts (or is persuaded to attempt) to defend himself in a rational contest, then he is willing to play Socrates' game. If the opponent is not so willing (and in its own way this is a coherent, perhaps even reasonable, option) then logos has no legitimate authority to compel him to do so: the gulf that separates Socrates from someone like Cleitophon, or Hesiod from Thales, cannot be rationally or unconditionally bridged. Still, there is something to be gained from this chapter: //the opponent wishes to debate, to enter the competition, then the victory of logos can be secured. And there is something else: We can observe that human beings, for whatever reason, frequently—perhaps typically—do want to enter such contests. (If "typically" is objectionable in the previous sentence, then substitute "people we know" for "human beings.") They do want to defend their positions (even when their positions denounce logos) in public display. Once they attempt to do this, they enter Socrates' game, they capitulate to the paradigm of the athlete even while attempting to defend the paradigm of the child. They thus recapitulate the incoherence Aristotle exposes in those denying the Principle of Noncontradiction: In the midst of denying logos they affirm it. And this spells their defeat. Old habits die hard: Some of us are tempted to say, it is natural for human beings to want to play Socrates' game, to enter into rational contest. But saying this would only restate the Aristotelian maxim that human beings are the animals with logos. Therefore, the affirmation of logos made here is far less grand than that made during its first scene (Chapter I.A.I.) Here it is strictly conditional. If someone enters the Socratic game, he commits himself to its rules. And these rules stipulate that victory in debate is possible, that rationally certifiable knowledge is the goal, that the Truth should be sought. Such rules, however, represent just the position that the opponents of logos would like to argue against. While the pais paizon is viable, and in an important sense irrefutable, it is thus faced with one enormous restriction: It cannot claim for itself a position that it is prepared to defend. Claim-making is a temptation that the followers of Heraclitus should, for their own good, resist. In the next section we will briefly discuss another of Plato's dialogues,

176 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD the Ion. In it we will find an excellent example of someone, the rhapsode Ion, facing, and then succumbing to, the temptation of claim-making. We will see how carefully Plato analyzes Ion's dilemma and how he even offers Ion the potentially fruitful option of resisting the temptation and avoiding Socratic refutation. There are three reasons to engage in yet another dialogue such as this. First, doing so will allow for a quite explicit statement of why Plato is the hero of this book. Second, discussing the Ion will culminate the treatment of the all-important quarrel between the philosopher and the poet. Finally, the issue of techne, which has been discussed piecemeal throughout this book, will be raised and concluded. In the introduction it was said that "techne," along with "tragedy" and "logos," was one of three words that would function as guiding paths for the argument of this book. The meaning of this statement should finally be clarified in what follows. The three paths will meet and (I hope) this story will draw to a reasonable close. (2) The Philosopher and the Poet (Continued) In a short dialogue titled the /on, Socrates confronts a man named Ion who is a rhapsode, someone who makes his living reciting poetry, particularly that of Homer. Ion is a skilled performer. He can make tears appear in the eyes of his audience when he sings of woeful Andromache; his recitation of the battle between Hektor and Achilles is so thrilling that his hair stands on end (535b-c).44 This gift of rhapsody is one that Socrates professes to admire, and he approaches Ion with the intention of having him explain what knowledge it is that allows him to accomplish these extraordinary feats. And indeed, Ion, I often envied you rhapsodes for your techne. For at the same time that it is always appropriate for your techne to adorn your body and make it seem as beautiful as possible, it is necessary for you to spend time with many good poets, and especially with Homer, the best and most divine of the poets. Furthermore, the fact that you must come to understand Homer's thought, and not only his words, is enviable. For one would not be a good rhapsode if one did not comprehend that which is said by the poet. For the rhapsode should be an interpreter (hermeneus) of the poet's thought to his listeners. And if he does not know what the poet means he cannot do this well. (530b5-c6)

As this paragraph makes clear, Socrates conceives of Ion as more than a mere performer. Socrates suggests, and Ion agrees, that the rhapsode is an "interpreter" as well as a singer, who should understand the thought

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 177 of and comprehend that which is said and meant by the poet. ("Hermeneus" is the root of our word "hermeneutics.") Even further, Ion claims (or is persuaded to claim) to possess a techne (530b6, b7, c8), a determinate knowledge or expertise about his subject. After these initial remarks, the dialogue falls into three distinct parts. The first contains a typical Socratic refutation. Socrates demonstrates that Ion cannot substantiate his claim to having a techne. Obviously, then, the tone of this section is negative: Socrates reveals the inadequacy of his opponent's boast. The second section, however, is quite different. In it Socrates discusses what gift the rhapsode does possess. While it is true, he says, that Ion does not have a techne, he does have a very real and positive talent. This Socrates goes on to describe. At the end of this second section Socrates presents Ion with a choice: He can rest content with the positive, but nontechnical, characterization of poetry, or he can reassert his claim to a techne. Ion chooses the latter option, and in the third section of the dialogue he is again refuted by Socrates. The transition between the second and third sections is highlighted by the choice Socrates presents to Ion and is the crucial juncture of the dialogue. As we will see, this choice, whether to claim a techne or rest content with the nontechnical characterization Socrates offers to Ion, is equivalent to a choice between entering or refusing to enter Socrates' game. If Ion relinquishes his claim to a techne, he could refuse to play Socrates' game. He could not be refuted for he would have no rational claim to defend. He, like Cleitophon or Hesiod, could thus carve for himself an inviolable space, one immune to Socratic refutation. On the other hand, if Ion continues to profess a techne, which in fact he does, he commits himself to certain presuppositions and is then quite easily refuted. Like other Socratic opponents, Ion cannot resist the temptation of claim-making. Once he succumbs, he is doomed to refutation. What happens to Ion illustrates the point made in the previous section: //someone chooses to argue against Socrates, he commits himself to the rules of Socrates' game. These rules, however, are not neutral—for they presuppose the outlines of a philosophical position. (They imply that knowledge is good, authoritative, capable of being rationally defended and explicated, and should be sought.) Simply entering the game thus implies affirmation of Socrates' position. Therefore, when an opponent such as Ion, who thinks he holds an anti-Socratic position (that poetry, not logos, is the higher good), enters the game, he loses it. In the first part of the dialogue Ion professes to have a techne. Socrates refutes him by getting him to agree to the following assertions (which occur on lines 531a-533b and which I paraphrase): If Mike professes to

178 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD have a techne about subject S, then Mike professes to be a master, an expert about S. As a result, Mike ought to know S thoroughly. Therefore, if Jan and Dean talk about S, with Jan doing so well (knowledgeably) and Dean doing so poorly (with ignorance), then Mike should be able to evaluate, comment upon, speak intelligently about, both Jan and Dean. For example, if Mike is an expert in arithmetic, and Jan and Dean both venture to comment on a problem in addition, with Jan getting the problem right and Dean wrong, then Mike should be able to criticize and evaluate both their efforts. Ion claims to have a techne whose subject is poetry. Therefore, he should be able to comment on all who enter this field. Hesiod and Archilochus (a poet of the 6th century b.c.e.) are both poets, but Ion is unable to comment on their work. He is interested in and knowledgeable only about Homer and thus fails to meet an essential criterion of a real expert (in Greek, a technites, one with a techne). Therefore, Ion's claim is illegitimate. Ion responds to the loss of his techne with a certain innocent charm. He says: "I cannot argue against you on this point, Socrates. But I am conscious of this ability in myself, that of all men I speak most finely about Homer and have plenty to say. And everybody else says that I speak well [about Homer], but not about the other poets. Can you tell me what this means?" (533c4-8). This plea leads Socrates into the second part of the dialogue where he tries to explain to Ion what gives him the power to rhapsodize so beautifully about his beloved Homer. I do see, Ion, and I am going to make clear to you what this talent of yours seems to me to be. For, as I was just now saying, it is not a techne which allows you to speak about Homer so well, but a divine power which moves you, just like the power that is in the stone which Euripides called "the magnet," but which most people call "Heracles' stone." For this stone not only attracts the iron rings themselves, but injects a power into these rings so that they too can do the very thing which the stone can do, namely attract other rings. The result is often a long chain of iron rings attached to one another. And it is the power from that stone which joins together all these pieces. In a similar fashion the Muse herself makes men enthused and through these enthused men, who make other men enthused, a chain is fastened. For all the good epic poets compose all their fine poems, not by virtue of a techne, but by being enthused and possessed. The same is true of the lyric poets. Just like corybantes who dance when they are not in their right minds, so too are the lyric poets not in their right minds when they compose their fine lyrics.4' Instead, when they embark upon their harmony and rhythms, they act like bacchants and are possessed, just like the bacchants are possessed when they draw honey and milk from the rivers. And the souls of

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

179

the lyric poets, not being in their right minds, do this very thing and they themselves admit it. For the poets tell us, I think, that from the gardens and glens of the muses they bring us their songs, plucking them from the honeyflowing fountains like the winged bees. For they are thus winged. And the poets speak the truth. For the poet is a light thing and winged and holy and he is not able to compose before he becomes enthused and out of his senses and his mind is no longer within himself (533c9-534b6).

Socrates explains that Ion speaks well about Homer, not by virtue of a techne, but because he enjoys a "divine dispensation" that moves him. Socrates likens this divine power to a magnet, one that not only moves iron rings, but magnetizes them as well. The rings, in turn, move other iron pieces and the result is a well-linked chain. Analogously, the Muse causes the poet to become enthused or inspired. In turn, the poet inspires the rhapsode, who finally communicates this electrifying power to his audience. The spectator is the last of the rings, the poet the first.4h Both the rhapsode and the poet, then, are able to speak as well as they do because of the very "mus-ica!" inspiration we discussed above when examining Hesiod. The poet has no techne. Instead, he is possessed (533e7), not in his mind (534al). The poet is like the bacchant, out of his mind (534b5). Was I right to describe this passage as positive? Does Socrates add to "the greater glory of poetry" by apotheosizing its origin? Or is Socrates "making a nasty joke on poetry" by exaggerating its passive and inspired nature? 1 ' The passage, I propose, is ambiguous; it is both positive and negative. It is negative, but only from the vantage point of techne. Techne requires rational explanation of a determinate subject matter. This the poet cannot supply: he is inspired, his subject matter (to be discussed below) is not determinate and so cannot be rationally explained. But the passage is also positive, for Socrates credits the poet with an ability to speak about wonderful things wonderfully. What is perhaps the crucial line from above occurs after Socrates cites the poets describing themselves as "winged bees." He then says about these poets: "And they speak the truth." The poets, in likening themselves to bees, use a simile; they describe themselves, explain themselves, poetically. Surprisingly, Socrates says they speak the truth. How can this be? Surely poetry is not the language of truth; surely, the "bare" words of philosophical prose, following the tradition invented by father Thales, are the appropriate voice for those seeking the truth. Why then would Socrates praise the poets who use a simile, instead of a straightforward rational explanation? Of course when he says "And the poets speak the truth," he may be ironic. But I suggest

180 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD otherwise: Socrates here credits the poets with an appropriately selfreferential, and in this sense truthful, account of themselves. By describing themselves poetically as winged bees they relinquish all pretense to a rational justification for themselves: They know they are inspired, somehow out of their minds. This phrase, "out of their minds," sounds terribly damning. However, Socrates does not here condemn the poets for being psychotic. Instead, he credits them with a capacity to speak about that which is beyond the grasp of typical rational or technical thought. And what is this, the "subject matter," about which the poets sing? Socrates tells us in the following lines: Does Homer speak about any subject other than that which all the poets speak about? Does he not narrate, for the most part, about war and about associations of all kinds: those between good and bad men, and private and public men; and about the gods, how they associate with each other and with men. And does he not narrate about heavenly matters and about the things under the earth, and about the genesis of the gods and heroes? Are not these the subjects about which Homer has composed his poems? (531c2-d2).

The subject of the poets ranges from the subterranean to the heavenly, from the human to the divine. As such, what is described here might be called "everything." The poets do not restrict themselves; they are not experts in any particular field. Instead, they sing without limitation about all aspects of human being and the world. We have already seen an example of this in Hesiod. His Theogony is an account of the genesis of the cosmos, of the physical, human, and divine worlds. In this sense, Hesiod's subject matter is everything. This may sound quite peculiar: How can anyone, even a poet, sing or speak of everything? Later in the dialogue, when Socrates professes his skepticism about the possibility of anyone doing this, Ion reformulates this claim. He says that he knows "what is appropriate for a man to say and what sorts of things are appropriate for a woman, and what sorts for a slave and what sorts for a free man, and what sorts for one who is ruled, and what sorts for one who is ruling" (540b3-5). In other words, here Ion claims as his "field" of expertise the whole range of human discourse. This is not as ludicrous as it may sound.48 Homer, whose epics contain characters of all sorts, is somehow able to speak for all of them. The poet, the storyteller, is somehow able to depict the great variety of human experience; he can talk or sing, he can imitate, what everybody else says when they talk about the values, meanings and hopes that animate them. In other words, his "subject" is the world of human significance.

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

181

If either of these two characterizations of the subject matter of poetry, literally everything (or "the whole"), or the entire range of human discourse, is accurate, one consequence follows: Poetry cannot be a techne. Techne has a determinate, or strictly limited, subject matter and neither of the two characterizations suggested is determinate. There is no techne that can master the whole range of human significance, that can know with certainty what is good for human beings. (This is why, of course, Descartes despairs of the possibility of any "moral" knowledge.) The achievement of the poets that Socrates highlights is their implicit acknowledgment of this "limitation" in their poetry. They understand themselves and the nature of their subject: By claiming inspiration, rather than techne, by employing a simile rather than an analysis to describe themselves, they admit that in order to speak about their subject they must be "out of their minds." In other words, since their subject is indeterminate, access to it cannot be typical, cannot be technical. A Muse is required. What is being described here is similar to what was said earlier about Hesiod. His Theogony tells us that chaos is the origin (arche) and at the heart of the world. This means that the world is perpetually stricken by indeterminacy, for chaos is no-thing. Because of this, there is a radical discontinuity between the world about which Hesiod sings and Hesiod who somehow "knows" how to sing. Unaided reason, logos on its own, cannot bridge this gap: Hesiod cannot clearly explain how he knows how to sing. Thus, he must invoke the Muses. The poet requires, but never can totally rely upon, his Muses—for they "know how to speak many false things as though they were true." There is no independent power of reason to assess the inspirational communications of the Muses. Instead, the poet is in their grip, and so the poem can never claim for itself certainty or solidity. Its source is beyond the poet. As a result, he must be out of his mind, inspired, to begin his poetry, to engage that source. He must be a "light thing" in order to let himself be transported. Invoking the Muse, being self-consciously poetical, relying upon inspiration—these are ways of acknowledging that the world is inaccessible to the probings of reason. If the world is such, then poetry is the most adequate way of saying so. Thus when the poet describes himself poetically as a winged bee, he evinces a type of self-referentiality: His poetry refers to itself coherently. Poetry reflects and expresses a vision of the world as fractured, as having no unbroken avenue of access between the human mind and the origin of things. If the world is such, then a muse is required to say so. Far from being "merely poetry," the mus-ic of poetry is a perfect match of form and content. What we see in Socrates' poetical description of the poet is the same type of self-referentiality we have seen not only in Hesiod, but in Cleitophon as

182 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD well. As a radical relativist disenchanted with Socratic promises, Cleitophon believes there is ultimately no structure to the world and so no reason to follow the siren call of Socratic protreptic. For him, there is no meaningful difference between silence and speech (for there is no reason to speak rather than to remain silent) and so no reason to play Socrates' game. It is precisely by not playing the game, by resisting that temptation, that Cleitophon carves an inviolable space for himself, one Socrates cannot invade. The poet, who describes himself poetically and thus acknowledges the limitations of his claim, occupies a similar space. Socrates realizes this and even goes so far as to offer it to the rhapsode Ion. Far from being the simpleminded hater of poetry and the singleminded advocate of classical reason that the subversives typically take him to be, Plato appreciates the profound alternative poetry offers.49 Well-crafted and self-conscious poetry, that which invokes a muse, gives voice to a vision of a world not fully accessible to the rational workings of logos. There is no way of proving this poetical or sophistic worldview false, since attempting to do so begs the question, presupposes the very position in question. Socrates is incapable of refuting an opponent who understands himself. A dialogue such as the Ion is meant to teach its reader this lesson, to teach, in other words, the limits of logos. Socrates presents Ion with a choice. In essence he says to him, "You can, if you wish, represent the poet and claim for yourself the electrifying power of inspiration. If you do, there is nothing more I can say. You will be out of your mind, in the grip of the Muse, and I will remain a devotee of logos. But if you choose to represent the poet, beware—for with this choice you must steel yourself against a temptation: that of claiming for your rhapsodic ability the status of a techne. A techne requires that you be able to explicate rationally the connection between yourself and your subject matter. Therefore, you must choose between them." Unfortunately, Ion makes the wrong choice. He claims a techne for his rhapsodic abilities. (It should be remembered that Ion is not a real poet, but a representative, or hermeneus, of the poet. [As such, he corresponds rather nicely to what today we call a literary critic.]) At the crucial juncture of the dialogue, immediately following its second part, he says to Socrates, "You speak well, Socrates. However, I would be astounded if you should speak so well that you would persuade me that I am possessed and mad when I praise Homer" (536d4-6). Ion refuses Socrates' offer of a poetic self-description. As a consequence, he becomes fair game for refutation.50 (A clarification: In the above, poetry and techne seem to be placed in opposition to each other—Ion is asked to choose between them. This

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 183 may appear to contradict an earlier point, namely that technicism and poeticism are two flip sides of a single coin. Cartesian technicism, for example, led to the provisional morality, which in turn corresponded to a poeticist interpretation of the world of human significance. There is an important difference between Descartes and Ion, however. Descartes admitted, as Ion does not, that there is no techne concerning the world of human significance. He was willing to relegate that world to the irrational and restrict his techne to mathematical physics. He tried to keep the two flip sides quite separate. By contrast, Ion wants to bring them together; he wants to have some sort of poetic techne. Since poetry includes within its subject matter the world of human significance, which is indeterminate, it cannot be a techne. When the rhapsode states that it can he exposes himself to Socrates' refutation.) In the third part of the dialogue, Ion is defeated by the following argument (536e-542a): Technai are "field specific." For example, a doctor, and only a doctor, knows about medicine, and only about medicine. Only the doctor can comment knowledgeably about the specific field in which she is an expert and only in that field is she an expert. Therefore, when Homer speaks about medicine, only the doctor is able to determine whether he does so well. That is, only the doctor is able to judge whether Homer speaks about medicine correctly. The only techne Ion professes is that of being a rhapsode. Therefore, he should limit his commentary to those few passages in which Homer speaks about rhapsodes. But Ion professes much more than this, namely to be able to comment upon all of Homeric poetry (which, in turn, comments upon or imitates all sorts of people). Given the initial assumptions about the nature of techne, this claim is rendered ridiculous. This second refutation is obviously flawed. Ion claims to speak well or finely about Homer (see 538b2). Socrates takes this to mean that he speaks correctly, with technical expertise (538c4). Furthermore, Socrates assumes Homeric poetry is nothing more than an encyclopedia of technai. If this were the case, then it would be true that to judge Homer would mean to determine how much he knows about medicine, carpentry, and so forth. But obviously there is more in Homeric poetry than technical information. Socrates clearly exaggerates and overly intellectualizes (or "epistemologizes") poetry. He reduces the beauty of the epics to correctness and thus distorts them. Why does he do this? I suggest that it is in order to highlight the relationship that holds between techne and poetry. Ion is not clever. He is easily persuaded by Socrates that to speak well is to speak correctly. But the reader of the dialogue shouldn't be as easily duped. We should instead imagine the response that a better representative of the poet

184 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD would make. He might say, "You're wrong, Socrates. Of course Homer does more than provide technical information. Speaking well is not equivalent to speaking correctly, with technical accuracy. Speaking well is speaking beautifully, musically, wonderfully about wonderful things. The muse breathes her voice into me and I sing electrically. Only listen to me and you will hear." By assimilating poetry to techne, Socrates "defeats" Ion. This defeat, however, is predicated upon the foolishness of the poet's representative and not the inherent vulnerability of the poet. Ion should have accepted Socrates' poetical description of poetry. He didn't. Instead, he entered into Socrates' game. To return to an idea mentioned long ago, he abided by the "techne-analogy." In other words, he let Socrates treat his professed knowledge as analogous to the ordinary knowledge found in a typical techne. A techne requires no muse; it should be able to explain itself. The possessor of the techne, the expert, should be able to identify the specific field of his expertise. But Ion has no such field. His voice, inspired by the poetry of Homer, bespeaks the entire and indeterminate range of human discourse. And so in the third part of the dialogue, the one framed by the techne-analogy, Ion is made to look extremely foolish. The careful reader should realize that despite Ion's defeat, the ancient dispute between philosophy and poetry is hardly resolved by Plato's dialogue. Quite to the contrary, Plato preserves the dispute and weaves it into the very fabric of his dialogue. Ion's choice, his giving in to temptation, at the crucial juncture shows us what happens if Socrates' opponent ventures to play the game of refutation. The fact that it is a choice should remind us that the outcome of the game is strictly contingent. The further fact that Socrates himself offers to Ion a coherent, that is poetical, selfdescription shows how the alternative of poetry is incorporated within the Platonic conception of logos—a conception that is revealed not just in Socrates' arguments, but in the dialogue as a whole—as an option, an opponent, that cannot be defeated.51 The dialogue shows how this option can be rendered invulnerable. It also shows how strong the temptation is for the opponent to claim a techne. Techne is the paradigmatically teachable form of knowledge; it is that which is most easily recognized and rewarded as knowledge. With a techne one who professes to know something can readily secure himself in the eyes of others as one who actually does know. Ion is not quite ready to admit that he is "out of his mind" or inspired. Techne tempts him to give up his purely poetical account of himself. The dialogue shows this lure at work. It does not prove that one ought to aspire to a techne or that it is good. Indeed, there is no reason that Socrates can provide to

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

185

compel Ion to desire a techne for himself. Instead, Ion's claim is induced only by his own desire for a certain public status. (It is precisely this desire, by the way, that characterizes many of today's deconstructionist/literary-critical professors. With typical scholarly sobriety they profess their poeticist and relativistic "doctrines." Finally, this leads them into incoherence . . . not because they are poeticists, but because they have doctrines. What they should do instead is call upon a Muse. Of course they don't do this: if they did, how could they rise through the ranks of the fashionably academic?)52 The game Socrates plays against the poet (or the poet's representative) is contingent upon his opponent's having a desire for a public recognition of himself as one who knows and can teach a techne. If that desire is present, if that first step is taken, a common ground shared by Socrates and his opponent will be staked out. Ion takes that first step; as a consequence Socrates refutes him upon the common ground they share. The dialogue in its totality should, however, force its reader to reexamine the maneuvers that induce Ion to take that step. Are they themselves rationally defensible, or are they rhetorical ploys? Does Socrates use logos to defeat Ion, or does he just manipulate him? Is Socratic refutation predicated only upon something as precarious as Ion's desire? Is it predicated only upon a foolish opponent who is ignorant of his own selfinterest? (Recall, if you will, what happened when Socrates encountered someone who wasn't foolish, namely Protagoras.) If so, then perhaps we should conclude that Cleitophon was quite right—Socrates is good only at protreptic, that mode of discourse that encourages people to play a game that the philosopher knows in advance he will win. Far from having any real knowledge about human nature or the Good, perhaps logos can do no more than exhort people to adopt the particular paradigm of play advocated by Socrates. (3) The Protreptic Logos (Continued) Cleitophon was right. Socrates speaks most beautifully, but only about speeches yet to come. He exhorts men to care about, to speak about, the Good, but he does not tell them what the Good is. As he does with Ion, he frequently makes use of the techne-analogy in his conversations; but he has no techne of the Good to teach. With Socrates there are no answers, no proofs. He cannot, for example, prove that the radical relativism tempting Cleitophon is false. Socrates offers the protreptic logos, but this is finally unsatisfying to someone like Cleitophon, a man who like so many of us wants answers, wants a techne. When Cleitophon realizes

i86 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

these are not forthcoming from Socrates, he abandons him for Thrasymachus and rhetoric. Cleitophon was right that the Socratic protreptic is most beautiful. But he did not understand the full implications of, and so was unable to evaluate properly the status of, Socrates' logos. Protreptic is the effort to persuade others to accept the essential condition, to take the first step in a game, whose very rules imply that logos is good. We just saw an example of this game: If Ion makes a certain claim, if he agrees that the techneanalogy is an appropriate way for him to formulate his own claim to knowledge, then he has agreed to the essential condition that will, eventually, secure the supremacy of the Socratic position. Ion does agree and so he commits himself to providing a rational defense of his rhapsodic abilities. Ultimately, this implies an affirmation of the goodness of logos. The only problem is that the position Ion believes he can defend, namely his poeticism, is a denial of the goodness of logos. Therefore, he contradicts himself and is easily defeated by Socrates. Socrates cannot demonstrate that logos is unconditionally or necessarily better than the poetry Ion represents. He cannot prove with certainty that philosophy is superior to poetry. Instead, the lesson the reader learns from this dialogue is that once Ion makes the choice to defend poetry in accord with the standard rules of rational disputation he must fail. It is vital to make this clear: Plato does not declare that philosophy is simply, demonstrably, or unconditionally superior to poetry. Instead, he depicts what happens if the representative of the poet makes certain claims. If he invades the territory of logos (by affirming the techne-analogy, by acquiescing in the rules of the Socratic game), the poet will be defeated by the representative of logos. But this defeat is conditional upon the poet himself taking that first step.53 Protreptic is the effort to encourage others to play the Socratic game, to enter the conversation, to accept the techne-analogy, to embrace logos. If Ion exemplifies someone persuaded to do this, then Cleitophon is a prime example of someone who is sufficiently confident and self-conscious to resist Socratic protreptic. The silence that follows his brief speech in the Republic and Socrates' parallel silence in the Cleitophon represent Plato's acknowledgment of the gap that separates these two men. Logos cannot mend this gap; it cannot argue, without begging the question, that one ought to argue on Socrates' terms, accept the analogy, or deem logos good. The protreptic logos employed by Socrates is not itself a a techne.54 That is, it is not a knowledge of a determinate subject matter. Instead, it is a knowing how to exhort, urge, encourage an indeterminate variety of human beings to care about and pursue wisdom. But Socrates frequently

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

187

uses the term and the concept of techne within his exhortations. It is necessary next to consider the relationship between these two pivotal words, "techne" and "protreptic." As promised in the introduction, techne will help illuminate the Platonic conception of logos, in which, as we are now seeing, protreptic plays an extremely important role. A good example of how Socrates incorporates techne into his protreptic logos was already noted in our discussion of the Protagoras. There Socrates used the techne-analogy to encourage Hippocrates to think critically about Protagoras. If you recall, this young man was terribly eager to gain the famous Sophist's wisdom. By asking him a series of questions Socrates forced Hippocrates to consider closely what Protagoras actually had to offer. If Hippocrates were to study with a doctor, he would receive tutelage in medicine. If he were to study with a sculptor, he would learn sculpture. In both of these cases it was relatively easy to determine the subject matter and the credentials of the professor. But what about studying with a Sophist: What is the analogous subject that Hippocrates would learn? Socrates used the analogy to exhort Hippocrates to think through this question and thus to protect himself from the Sophist's great charms. Another example of Socrates' protreptic use of the analogy comes from a dialogue titled the Laches. Here Socrates faces two older men, Lysimachus and Melesias, who wish to have their sons educated. The education they seek to obtain is not the typical sort found in a specific subject. Instead, they want their sons to be made excellent; they wish to obtain for them an education in excellence, in virtue, in arete. They wonder whether they should have their sons trained by a master in the techniques of fighting in armor. Would this, they ask, be a reasonable way of educating their sons in virtue? They solicit the opinions of two respected military men, Laches and Nicias (178a-180b). Nicias says yes, Laches no. Lysimachus asks Socrates to cast the deciding vote (184d). The fact that Lysimachus makes such a request shows that he is not eager to think through the issue of education on his own; he wants someone else to settle it for him. It is clear that Lysimachus is a thoughtless man willing to rely on the opinions of the majority to mold his own. Socrates does not cooperate with Lysimachus' democratic proposal. Instead, he uses the analogy to exhort him to settle this debate by means other than a vote. He asks him (and I reformulate), "Suppose you were about to have your son trained in gymnastics. Would you take a vote how most effectively to accomplish this, or would you enlist the services of an expert trainer?" Melesias answers that he would of course employ a trainer. The issue would be resolved not by the majority, but by someone with knowledge. Similarly, if the issue were how to treat a problem with

i88 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD the eye, one would consult a trained doctor instead of taking a vote (184d-e). The analogy that Socrates urges Lysimachus to accept is this: As the trainer is to the exercise of the body, and as the eye doctor is to the treating of the eye, so X is to the education of the young in virtue. Socrates does not supply the X here. (And this, of course, was what frustrated Cleitophon.) Instead, he uses the analogy to encourage Lysimachus to abandon his reliance on the principle of majority rule and instead seek some sort of knowledge in order to decide on a teacher for his son. The analogy is used by Socrates, not to explain or deliver his own version of the X, but as a protreptic device designed to exhort Lysimachus to care about knowledge of arete. In addition to exhortation, the techne-analogy is useful in refutations. In the Protagoras Socrates uses the same analogy with which he exhorted Hippocrates to refute Protagoras himself. If Protagoras is a true teacher who deserves to be well paid for his teaching, Socrates argues, then he should be able to disclose fully the subject matter that he professes to have mastered. After all, if Hippocrates were to study with an expert painter or flutist, it would be clear what he would learn and how success in his lessons could be measured. Socrates demands that Protagoras provide an analogous disclosure and unambiguous criteria against which his claim can be measured. As shown in chapter I, Protagoras is far too clever to be taken in by Socrates. He therefore hedges on the question, Does he have a techne? He does so beautifully and to his good advantage: He knows that if he straightforwardly claims to have a techne he will be refuted by Socrates. (On the other hand, if he straightforwardly denies having a techne, then he will have nothing to teach.) By hedging so artfully he avoids refutation by avoiding a clear claim to a techne. Other interlocutors, among them Thrasymachus, Gorgias, and Ion, are not so perspicacious. They profess to have a techne, and then are refuted for they cannot successfully disclose and then defend their expertise of their professed subject matter. It is very tempting to infer from Socrates' use of the analogy in exhortations and refutations that he himself has a techne. Indeed, many scholars have made this inference the basis of their interpretation of Plato's dialogues. I believe they are mistaken. By contrast, I believe that Cleitophon, who questions whether Socrates possesses any real knowledge at all, is far more perceptive in his appraisal of Socrates.55 There is no question that Socrates believes that in some sense techne is good; this we saw above. There is also no question that he often uses the analogy to encourage men like Hippocrates and Lysimachus to think

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 189 about what they hope to learn and to refute men like Protagoras and Ion who claim to know much. But neither of these two facts necessarily implies that he has a techne. Socrates believes that what is good about techne is that it is knowledge. Someone, like Thrasymachus, who affirms the goodness of a techne, has made an important value judgment, namely that knowledge is good. Socrates proceeds to use this judgment against him. Thrasymachus had proposed a version of relativism, which, if true (and taken to its most extreme conclusion), would render all values relative. But by declaring techne to be good, as Thrasymachus implicitly does, he elevates techne to the status of nonrelatively good. This judgment about techne thus contradicts his own relativism. Socrates forces Thrasymachus to acknowledge this contradiction and eventually defeats him. It should be noted that to say that techne is good does not imply that it is the best or the exclusive mode of knowledge. In fact (as we saw in Chapter 1 .C.2), it implies something quite different. Since (as was argued in the introduction) it is value-neutral, techne is incapable of evaluating itself. If techne is judged good, then the knowledge that is responsible for making this judgment cannot itself be a techne. Techne is thus located in an in-between position. It is superior to ignorance, but some other, higher, mode of knowledge, namely knowledge of what is good, is needed to evaluate it. Therefore, the fact that Socrates believes that techne is good does not necessarily imply he has a techne. He may have a "nontechnical" form of knowledge that is capable of judging the goodness of techne.56 The same type of argument can be made about his use of the techneanalogy in his refutations. Techne is ordinary knowledge. ("Ordinary" means knowledge that is generally recognized, admired, or easily identified.) Since its subject matter is determinate, someone who professes to have a techne can easily be checked: His claim can be measured against the subject matter. If someone professes to be able to play the flute, he can be tested by putting a flute into his hands. Because of this, techne is a very useful device in refuting those who profess to know something. It forces them to disclose their professed expertise. It is especially useful in refuting those who, like Protagoras or Ion, claim knowledge about an unusual or atypical field, one that is not obviously determinate. (In Protagoras' case, this is political arete] in Ion's, the whole range of human discourse.) The techne-analogy reveals the inappropriateness of their claims. Again, however, the fact that Socrates uses the analogy in this manner does not necessarily imply that he himself has a techne. He may simply be using an effective device to refute those who make inappropriate claims. Finally, the same point can be made regarding Socrates' use of the

igo LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD analogy in exhortations. Techne is knowledge we can trust and identify. It is particularly useful in pointing out to those, like Lysimachus, who would abandon the possibility of knowledge altogether, that their ordinary practice implies an affirmation of knowledge. Lysimachus seems to believe something like this: "Attaining knowledge that can resolve questions about value is hopeless. I might as well abandon the search and rely on the opinion of the majority." In response, Socrates points out to him that when he is sick he goes to the doctor, and does not take a vote on what medicine he should receive. Ordinary practice includes an affirmation of knowledge, and Socrates continually reminds his interlocutors of this. He uses this ordinary awareness of knowledge to exhort his listeners to seek knowledge about the extraordinary question of value. Yet again, the fact that he employs the analogy to do so need not imply that he himself has a techne. Many scholars, however, would agrue that Socrates does have (or wishes to or thinks that he does have) a techne. This is quite plausible; after all, he so frequently makes use of the techne-analogy in his arguments that it is hard to imagine that he himself doesn't have one. These scholars would argue that techne need not be value-neutral, that there is some "higher-order" techne whose object is precisely the good.57 Again, I disagree with this interpretation. The real question at issue here (and it is one that is hardly restricted to Plato scholars) is this: Is there a techne that can take up the world of human significance (of arete, of the Good) and treat it as a determinate object to be mastered and then taught? If the answer is yes, then the next and obvious question is, what is it and who has it? Precisely as Cleitophon demands, one would wish to see it if Socrates professes to have it. Cleitophon never gets to see such a techne, and so quits Socrates for Thrasymachus. If the answer is no, then the next question is, if there is no techne of value, must the realm of human significance be relegated to the junk pile of the irrational? Descartes, for example, thought that questions of value could not be treated with technical precision, and so the junk pile (in the form of his provisional morality) was precisely where he placed such questions. It is possible to agree with Descartes that no techne can satisfactorily and with certainty handle the world of human significance, but disagree that techne is the sole model of knowledge. The fact that there is no such techne does not preclude the possibility of knowledge of the human world. Instead, there may be a nontechnical, nonordinary, form of knowledge—or conception of logos—that in fact can know about this

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

191

world. This, I suggest, is the teaching that can be extracted from Plato's dialogues. The reason that there is no techne to treat the world of human significance is this: The human world cannot be made into a determinate, stable object capable of being mastered. Human beings are simply not such objects. In a sense, much of what has been written throughout this book (and the way it has been written) has been an attempt to show this. Human beings, as the Symposium teaches, are erotic: We desire, strive, run madly after objects not our own. But eros itself is not a fixed object; it is not-a-thing; instead, it is a force that directs itself to, and so is shaped by, things other than itself. Because of its indeterminacy, it cannot become the object of a techne. To approach this point from a different angle: The human world (the one depicted in the Platonic dialogues and in a far inferior manner in this book) is populated not only by the admirable and sober Socrates and the other friends of logos, but also by Cleitophon, Hesiod, Callicles, Protagoras, Descartes, and Spinoza. The desires that propel human life only take shape upon being directed toward objects other than themselves. And these objects, these desires, vary widely, even madly. The characters mentioned are intensely hungry, terribly in search of satisfaction. They do not capitulate to those who would oppose them. And all are residents of the one world we are trying to understand. Because they each have a justifiable claim to citizenship, this is a world unstable and rife with oppositions, for these are powerful characters eager to dispute. As a result, the world they populate cannot become a determinate and clean subject like medicine or arithmetic. Unlike the realm of number, or of the body, the human world is not fixed; it is electrified by competing desires. The subject matter is we who are self-consciously alive, ever fluid, competing, and hence indeterminate. We cannot be held down to be observed and counted. To reformulate again: Throughout this book we have repeatedly seen what occurs when there is a debate or conflict between two fundamentally opposed positions. When Socrates confronts the radical relativist, when the philosopher Thales confronts the poet Hesiod, when Aristotle argues against Heraclitus, when the contemporary subversive squares off against the traditional conception of logos, we witness human beings, whose ideas differ at the most fundamental of levels, attempting to communicate with one another. In each case rational communication at some point breaks down. This is not due to some accidental, and therefore remediable, deficiency in the opponents. In situations such as these, failure is necessary. This is because fundamentally different positions are based on

192 Locos is CONDITIONALLY GOOD different "starting points," on divergent presuppositions. Communication between them must break down, for it requires agreement on just such starting points. Therefore, no such position can be defended against the most pressing of objections without assuming itself. It is just these starting points that we would like to understand fully and see debated. Is the world "out there" accessible to the probings of human reason, or is it not? Are the goals and values that constitute the world of human significance manufactured by us, or do they exist in natural independence? Are they stable or fictitious? Is human being the measure, or are there purposes that abide in the nature of things? Does an athlete or a child at play best image the human relationship to the world? Should we invoke a Muse before we sing or speak straightforwardly about the nature of things in words bare of embellishment? Is silence no worse than speech? Is there a good reason to argue with those with whom we disagree? Answers to questions such as these represent fundamental assumptions; and these must collide. The human world is the sum total of such collisions. Human beings, madly different, forever assume fundamentally divergent positions. That most ancient and basic dispute between the poet and the philosopher has gone on for centuries. It rages yet today as the deconstructionists do battle against the "Platonists." Because human beings adopt such different positions, the world we occupy is always one of internal opposition. Conflicts daily emerge in any polis, for men such as Thrasymachus or Callicles always demand more than their fair share. Their desires, their view of the world, are not amenable to reason's gentle suasions. Indeed, the audience that proves to be receptive to any given speech, to any logos, is always limited to those who already agree on its fundamental, its originative, assumptions. There never will be widely spread agreement or a beneficent silencing of the cacophany of competing voices. Here all is turmoil. These sorts of remarks would seem to place their author in the camp of the subversives, for don't they express an all too Nietzschean or Heraclitean message? Doesn't the above deny rational structure and ask that rhetoric and the politics of power substitute for philosophical dialogue? Doesn't it echo Rorty's complaint that Philosophy never gets anywhere and should therefore be abandoned? No. For only two related admissions emerge from the above: First, it is true that there is no techne of, no solution to the problems of the human world. This does not mean, however, that the human world is utterly irrational. It would mean this only if techne were the sole form of human logos (only if finding solutions were the sole task of logos) and this, as will be discussed below, is not the case. The second admission is that the scope of logos is indeed destined to

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

193

remain "insular." In other words, logos cannot convince everyone, all its opponents, of its goodness. In the context of the Platonic dialogues, this means that Socrates occasionally (but pointedly) fails in his attempt to refute his opponents. There are always some, like Cleitophon and Callicles, who remain unmoved by his arguments. Logos, as Plato teaches, has limits. Against such limits it is driven (by its erotic nature) to collide. Logos began its drama by wanting more than it could legitimately claim for itself. On the basis of its progressive understanding of itself, it now has come to recognize its insularity. Logos cannot persuade everyone and thus should make no further pretense to a universal throne. Instead, it is destined to wander only in the company of kin. This does not imply, however, that logos, that Philosophy, should be abandoned. The fact that we admit that logos will never fully succeed and will always collide against its limits, the fact that we now recognize that the drama of logos is tragic, need not cause us despair. Tragedy somehow affirms. The preceding paragraph remains obscure. The concluding sections of this chapter will attempt to clarify it. For now, consider only this: The author of this book takes his bearings from Plato and not Heraclitus or Nietzsche. Within these pages is a desire for knowledge of the world of human significance. It is true that this cannot be technical knowledge. Therefore, the goal animating this book should be described as "nontechnical" knowledge. By definition, such knowledge, if it exists, must be difficult to articulate and display. Techne is paradigmatically clear, reliable, and noncontroversial. Nontechnical knowledge of the world of human significance would share none of these features. Its object would not permit it to do so. Therefore, such knowledge is terribly difficult to exhibit or see. Cleitophon, for one, simply doesn't see it. He's not just being petulant; he has a reasonable complaint. What, then, is this nontechnical conception of knowledge? Again, let me postpone this question until the concluding section and return to the issue more immediately at hand: The relationship between techne and protreptic. The fact that Socrates uses the techne-analogy in exhortations and refutations, the fact that he thinks techne is good, does not imply that he has one. What his use of the analogy does imply is that he believes that knowledge of the world of human significance is desirable. The analogy itself does not bind Socrates to a conception of what this knowledge is like. It only implies that it is good and should be sought.58 It is, in other words, essentially protreptic. The analogy encourages Socrates' listeners to affirm the goodness of logos. Protreptic, singing the praises of logos and the evils of relativism, turns its audience forward, upward, toward the project of being rational. But is it itself rational? Protreptic is the attempt to redirect the desires and cares of others toward logos. But on the basis

iQ4 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD of what? Again, old habits die hard: One is tempted to say, on the basis of what it means to be a human being, or on the basis of the structure of eros. Such temptations manifest a vestigial trace of Aristotelianism. But if Aristotelianism has been discarded, then the notion of a human nature cannot be appealed to in order to provide a basis for the protreptic logos. Is the step toward logos, then, arbitrary and irrational? No, not quite. There is no basis for such a step if by basis one means a certain, verifiable ground upon which an indestructible edifice can be constructed. If one means a Cartesian foundation, then there is no basis for being rational and thus no real difference between being rational and irrational. The architectural metaphor fails when applied to logos. There are no conclusive arguments to demonstrate the goodness of logos. We are not, however, faced with utter irrationality or baselessness, sheer emptiness, as a consequence of this failure. There are yet reasons to play Socrates' game. What reasons? First of all, whatever the explanation might finally be, we can observe that people (the ones we know, the ones reading this book) are drawn into this game. They wish to claim that their position is demonstrably superior to their opponents' (even if their position is one— like Rorty's—that denies that "superiority" can be demonstrated). Maybe this is just a bad habit, a remnant of a bygone authoritarian age that would best be left behind. I do not know. But one simply needs to observe human beings at work to conclude that so often we make claims, describe our positions as good, and then prepare to do rational battle for them. Such claim-making is the essence of Socrates' game and the lifeblood of logos. Even the misologists, when they think themselves able to defend their misology, participate in this game. As we have seen, the ability to resist the temptation of claim-making is rare. The misologists, so many of whom work in universities, make claims constantly and then write books in their defense. As a result, the Socratic affirmation of logos, the philosophical position that views logos as essential to living a good life, can account for a good deal of human behavior. To reformulate the above, ordinary life gives testimony to the goodness of logos. We walk around walls and not into them. In other words, the ordinary practice of walking around a wall implies a judgment: Bumping into a wall is bad, not good, and not good and bad at the same time. Ordinary life seems to offer evidence for the Principle of Noncontradiction and, eventually, for the goodness of logos. When sick, we go to the doctor. When building, we rely on the expert carpenter. The subversives' denial of knowledge, their relativism, if translated into the ordinary world, becomes absurd. Therefore, their denial of knowledge of values and purposes should be disregarded as mere academic talk.

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 195 But the opponent of logos can quickly reply: Why should we take our bearings from and give privilege to ordinary life? (Contemporary science doesn't do this, and it's flourishing.) Doesn't ordinary life vary from culture to culture so greatly that appeal to it is futile? Another, less compelling, reason can then be offered: The game is traditional. Giving reasons and defending judgments in public argument has been the standard procedure by which the intellectual tradition of the West has been regulated. Of course, and unfortunately, such a view is but a version of conventionalism. Why should any of us adhere to the traditions of the West? A final reason, then, and one related to the first: The Socratic game is able to absorb its opponent within itself. Within the game, fundamental disagreement cannot be tolerated. As we have said so often, there are no misologists who can argue successfully against Socrates, since their participation in the argument belies their own misology. One cannot argue against logos without acceding to it. It is this feature of logos, however, that leads Derrida to make the following complaint. (He is talking specifically here about those who are mad. His remarks, however, could be generalized to refer to logos's many accusers.) The misfortune of the mad, the interminable misfortune of their silence, is that their best spokesmen are those who betray them best; which is to say that when one attempts to convey their silence itself, one has already passed over to the side of the enemy, the side of order, even if one fights against order from within it, putting its origin into question. There is no Trojan horse unconquerable by Reason (in general). The unsurpassable, unique and imperial grandeur of the order of reason, that which makes it not just another actual order or structure (a determined historical structure, one structure among other possible ones), is that one cannot speak out against it except by being for it, that one can protest it only from within it.D9

For Derrida, reason is imperial; it is a tyrant who cannot be overthrown from within: When one speaks out against it, one is really for it. The capacity of logos to absorb its opponents is, for the deconstructionist, a grand strategy,—a forceful, and not a rational, imposition of power. What Socrates sees as a virtue, Derrida sees as an authoritarian vice. For him, then, the step toward logos, acceding to Socratic protreptic, is willful and arbitrary rather than rational and natural. Perhaps Derrida is right. Logos, lover of knowledge, is a tyrant and uses more than just "reasons" (which really are no more than signs or

196

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

suggestions) to certify its goodness. It knows, too well, that reasons such as the ones given above can be deconstructed, exposed as presuppositions rather than as rational conclusions rooted in solid ground. Logos must, therefore, confess its ignorance here. It must admit that it cannot give a complete account of itself and its goodness. It must rest content with its conditional, and not unconditional, goodness. Logos: "Oh darkness and memory .. . what, then, is left for me to affirm? Without certain knowledge, how can I go forward? Without a techne, how can I teach? Having been stripped of my authority to command, with what voice shall I speak? Are my words destined only to fly aimlessly wherever the wind would take them?" C

QUESTIONS (1) Eros and Logos (continued)

Logos retains a voice. As it exits the stage it is dressed like a beggar and not a king. It is destined to wander, homeless, shoeless, sleeping on doorsteps. But to wander such is not the same as collapsing in a heap of despair. Logos is alive and in its own, newly discovered way, well. It will make no further attempts at the throne. It knows its ignorance, understands its limits, and is prepared to say that they are somehow good. It will wander, but with a happiness all its own. With what voice can logos still speak? In what tone? No longer can logos assert with regal and untroubled confidence. Instead, its paradigmatic form of expression is now the question. The assertion was Aristotle's. The question is Plato's, and he is the hero of this story. To explain, let us return briefly to the ascent passage of the Symposium. There we saw the intimate bond between logos and eros. At each stage of the ascent the initiate is impelled to speak, and each speaking forces him to realize the discrepancy between his speech and the object that he loves and speaks about. Dissatisfaction is experienced and so the initiate has to move on, upward, from the love of one particular body to the love of souls, institutions, particular sciences, and finally to the love of "beauty itself," the "Idea of Beauty." In pursuit of this final, universal object the initiate engages in philosophical logos. Logos uses the ascent passage as a justification for itself. By presenting a structure of human desire, with logos at its pinnacle, Diotima seems to argue that the goodness of logos is unconditional. Such a claim seems similar to Aristotle's assertion that human being is by nature the animal with logos. As such, it can no longer be accepted as definitive. The ascent

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

197

passage does not, however, have to be totally rejected because there is another way of reading it that will lessen its Aristotelian assertiveness and make it better able to account for all the hard recognitions and painful reversals that logos has suffered. Diotima presents a picture or history of an emerging philosophical psyche and the type of logos affiliated with it. Philosophical logos is erotic in origin. It is perverse; that is, the philosopher turns away from all that is usually desired by most human beings, namely the particularized world of bodies, cities, and sciences. His desire is somehow for everything; the object of philosophical logos is the "Idea of Beauty." The philosopher desires to speak about that perfect object whose beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, that universal object that brings order and unity to the particulars of experience. It is not clear, however, whether such an object can be "theoretically" articulated. The Idea is not presented as a clean, determinate entity that simply exists "out there" to be seen and then articulated without distortion by a windowlike mind. Instead, the passage describes all objects, even the most universal, as appearing only as objects of desire. The ascent passage speaks only from the side of the subject. The "Ideas," those glorious objects, ultimate structures, and supposedly reliable barriers against relativism, are invoked, but only as objects of a certain psyche that desires them. As a result, the passage does not clearly construct a line to separate the philosopher, with his belief in the objectivity of knowledge, from the subjectivism of the poet or the Sophist. The ascent passage does not make clear how the philosopher, or representative of logos, is fundamentally different from his enemies. This is because the passage does not prove that the Ideas are independent or natural beings that have not been fabricated by the human imagination. Since they are invoked only as objects of desire, it is possible to conclude that this is all they are, that they are dependent for their existence on human desire. If this proves to be the case, then the Ideas would become open to all the vagaries, the shifts and flows, of life. They would be no more than debris floating in Heraclitus' river. The question that thus surfaces, for the final time, is how, if at all, does Plato differentiate philosophy from poetry or sophistry? Three conceptions of human discourse, of speaking, can be elicited from Diotima's ascent passage. Two are extreme and can be explicated rather straightforwardly. The first, and the most optimistic, is based on an Aristotelian reading of the passage. As we have discussed, Aristotle thinks it is possible for human logos to see and then say what is really "out there." His version of logos is capable of becoming a window through

198 LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD which the world of natural entities shows itself. As such, the truth is within human grasp. The ascent passage can be interpreted as containing this sort of teaching. One can read it to imply that the Idea of Beauty can ultimately be explicated by the philosopher at the pinnacle of his ascent. Philosophy, on this reading, can articulate "everything"; it can supply a techne whose object is that which brings unity to experience. Of course, various objections have been raised against this interpretation of the passage. The possibility of a clear-eyed gazing at objects is not obviously offered by Diotima: the lens through which the initiate sees the Ideas is more "kaleidoscopic" than windowlike. It allows the initiate to see what he wants to see, namely beautiful forms. The fact that such forms are what the initiate wants to see does not imply that they actually exist. People may well delude themselves and fabricate beautiful purposes and order. Such fabrications would be impositions, fictions, of the human imagination. Therefore, on this, the second reading of the passage, a sophistical or poetical conception of discourse is elicited. These, then, are the two extremes: On the one hand, the Aristotelian views reality simply as reality. On the other, the Sophist or the poet views reality only as an object of desire. To broach the third conception, the one in between, let me state a theme for a final time: The Sophist's relativism, his poeticism or belief that reality is ultimately shaped by desire, cannot be refuted. Socrates can use all his self-referential arguments, can appeal to the goodness of techne, can try his protreptic best, but he cannot provide conclusive reasons to demonstrate that the position held by the radical relativist or Sophist should be rejected. Or, to add a necessary qualification, he cannot refute the Sophist who resists the temptation to make the claim that he has a techne or a defensible position. The Sophist, if he is careful, is an irremediable and looming presence who challenges (by conditioning) all the claims of the philosopher. To the extent that the ascent passage does not clearly stipulate the objectivity of the Ideas and prove that they are not fabricated by the human imagination, the Sophist lurks as a threat even within Diotima's speech. If, however, the Sophist does make a claim that his position is deserving of rational validation, if he desires (for whatever reason) to defeat the philosopher in public debate, then he can be refuted by Socrates. Once the debate commences certain conditions implicitly become operative. Most important of these is that the opponents agree that in principle the debate can be won. To enter into this game implies doing so armed with a defense of one's position and a resolve to settle the dispute. Therefore, a standard must be evoked by which the two competing positions can be measured. Such a standard is what makes the game between Socrates and his opponents intelligible, for it makes victory—the necessary goal

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 199 of such a game—possible. As a result, once the sophist or the poeticist enters the debate, he implicitly becomes a Platonist, one who affirms the existence of just such standards and thereby rejects relativism. To put this into stronger terms, everyone who enters into such a debate automatically becomes a Platonist. Since such debates are the essence of philosophy, every philosopher is a Platonist. Yet again: None of this implies that Platonism is absolutely true or that philosophy is unconditionally superior to poetry or sophistry. It only means that if someone tries to argue against Socrates, to refute Platonism on its own terms, he will fail; in attempting to show that logos should be rejected, he will in fact affirm it. According to Diotima, the Ideas are the objects of desire operative in philosophical discourse. In their existence the philosopher invests his belief, not because he is sure or can prove that they exist, but because he cannot make sense of what he is doing as a philosopher without them. This, I propose, is the teaching of the ascent passage. It is very close to what is sometimes called a "transcendental argument," an argument that tries to explain what conditions must obtain for a given experience to be possible. The ascent passage, however, is not really a transcendental argument. Its "conclusion," that the Ideas are there to be secured by logos, only emerges when a particular psyche, engaged in a specific form of logos, pursues the farthest reaches of its desire. When this occurs, that psyche must invest its belief in the Ideas. When this does not occur, there is no reason for the Ideas to exist. There is no necessity that the search be undertaken. The Ideas cannot, then, be proven to exist necessarily or independently of those searching for them. The ascent passage is an analysis of that erotic agent who is compelled by some pressing need to philosophize. Such a compulsion implies a certain set of beliefs. In this sense, the ascent passage is strictly psychological, a logos of the psyche. It concludes that a certain type of psyche, that belonging to both the philosopher, as well as anyone wishing to argue against the philosopher, must affirm the existence of the Ideas. This is not the same, however, as a demonstration of the truth of Plato's "theory of Ideas," for it does not prove that the Ideas are not fictions of the human imagination. The point is this: The Platonist believes that there are ultimate structures or standards which he then describes as being self-sufficient, altogether nonchanging, and even eternal. The intensity of these descriptions reveals the desire to resist all forms of relativism. The Platonist also understands that these descriptions do not simply reflect the nature of things. What they do reflect are the beliefs or commitments at work when someone acts upon a desire for a certain kind of conversation; when we defend our views in public debate, argue against opponents, try with

200

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

others to know, we play Socrates' game. The intelligibility of such activities requires the belief in nonrelative standards. But such activities are ephemeral; they are borne on the wings of desire and can give no sure evidence of what is built into the nature of things. The third form of discourse, the way of talking, that the ascent passage invites us to consider is philosophical. This term is now used strictly in the Platonic, and not the Aristotelian, sense. The latter, as beautiful as it is, is simply a matter of going after the truth. The former is precarious, unstable, difficult to pin down. Philosophical logos has something to do with pursuing the universal structures of reality, but these are not simply out there to be seen through the window of the mind. Philosophical logos has more to do with dialogue, with talking to others, especially opponents, for in the midst of such conversation a certain set of conditions, mandated by the desire that animates the conversation, gets charged into operation. Philosophical logos wants knowledge, but it accepts the fact that in an important sense its goal is unattainable. (2) Asking Questions Philosophical discourse, logos in its Platonic variety, never reaches its desired terminus. It is forever the love, and not the possession, of wisdom. To reformulate this, and much of the above: Philosophical discourse is fundamentally interrogative. Its paradigmatic sentence is the question, and not the assertion. This is not to say that all philosophers do is ask questions; that would be ridiculous. They ask questions, entertain possible answers, review such answers, and then proceed forward once again. Nevertheless, the question is the animating force of philosophy, for it is the most erotic of sentences.60 To question is to seek an answer. Doing so implies that the answer is not possessed, not known, by the questioner. The fact that the question is posed, however, implies that the questioner does know a great deal. He knows, for example, that he does not know the answer; that is why he asks the question. Furthermore, posing a question implies that an answer is desirable and a belief that, in some sense, it is possible. Consider this: I ask you, "Who won the game on Monday?" That I do so means that I know there was a game, that I know enough about games to understand that there was a single victor, that I realize that I do not myself possess the answer to the question, and that I acknowledge in myself the desire to attain it. I also know, or at least suspect, that you are a reasonable candidate to assist me, which is why I ask you and not someone else. In short, a great deal of knowledge is packed into the asking of a

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD 201 question. As such, the question is located somewhere in between knowledge and ignorance. The questioner is not totally ignorant, for he knows enough (about himself and the object of his question) to pose the question. He is not totally knowledgeable, for he lacks an answer. The questioner seeks, strives for objective knowledge, for an answer. The Platonic version of logos is not poetry. It seeks objective answers, it loves wisdom, it wants to speak about what is Good and Beautiful for all. For the very same reason, it is not Aristotelian. It is erotic, incomplete; it does not issue in an unambiguous, unclouded, theory. It is in between, interrogative, protreptic. It urges us to ask questions and it subjects this very urging to examination. It seeks out dialogue with those who object even to the asking of such questions. It believes in the goodness of the question and is sufficiently aware of its limitations as to condition all its expectations and conclusions. Precisely this awareness of limits makes questioning so vital, for the question affirms the precariousness of the entire project of logos. It proceeds with knowledge of itself: It knows that it does not know. This is knowledge, but of an altogether peculiar sort. The question discloses a desire to know and sparks entry into Socratic dialogue. With such entry comes the implicit commitment to those structures that would make answers possible. Yes, such standards exist; they exist insofar as we seek them. Yes, there is a basis for protreptic: One ought to seek knowledge of the Good, one ought to attempt to answer Socrates' questions. What is Beauty? What is Good? Socrates gives no answers, has no techne. But the very asking is capable of sustaining for a lifetime. The question has a logic, a structure of its own. It is posed between knowledge and ignorance, aiming for the former and fleeing the latter. It is on the way, in motion. It somehow sees the goal toward which it strives. But it is not yet there. Logos is fundamentally interrogative. An obvious objection can be directed at that statement: It is not self-referential. That is, although it purports to praise the question, it itself takes the form of an assertion. Throughout this book self-reference has been a standard used to criticize others. (The relativist, for example, was accused of failing to refer to himself coherently.) Therefore, the same standard should be used to measure any position this book would advocate. While it is true that the first sentence of the previous paragraph is not literally a question, I would yet maintain that this book has exhibited an interrogative conception of logos throughout its many pages. There has been no systematic argument, no attempt made at a comprehensive interpretation of Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or Spinoza. Instead, a series of texts have been placed into opposition

202

LOGOS is CONDITIONALLY GOOD

with one another in the hope of generating a story, one that sparks its readers and draws them into its reflections. From these chapters, all of which were inspired by the Ancient Greeks, it is hoped that readers have been persuaded to pursue certain questions and perhaps read, or reread, certain books. If nothing else, this book, if at all successful, has been an invitation.

EPILOGUE

I have attempted to defend a conception of logos characterized as Platonic. I began with an assumption that has been well defended by other scholars: The dialogue form is essential to a philosophical appreciation of Plato's thought. For this reason I have focused a great deal of attention not only on Socrates and his arguments, but also on his opponents and their challenges, confusions, and silences. Characters such as Protagoras, Ion, Callicles, Thrasymachus, and Cleitophon represent positions that are essential to a complete understanding of the dialogues. These are troubling figures with powerful views that cannot happily or straightfor­ wardly be dismissed as false or evil. Other ancient authors, especially Heraclitus and Hesiod, were introduced to amplify this side of the "an­ cient dispute" and to demonstrate how basic it is-not only to the dia­ logues, but to Greek culture in general. Because of the above, Martha Nussbaum's description of Plato as the author of an "anti-tragic theater" seems quite wrong. Far from being "pure" or "crystalline" the dialogues are kaleidoscopic. They are works of drama constituted by the complex lines of interaction between their polymorphous characters. Far from denying the human experience of contingency, as Nussbaum believes the dialogues do, they incorporate it within their very structure. Plato writes dialogues in which his Socrates can, for example, be awakened by Hippocrates, spurned by Cleitophon, or mocked by Callicles. As a result, I dispute the central thesis of The Fragility of Goodness: That Plato's views are fundamentally at odds with those preserved in Greek tragedy. Nussbaum advocates much the same position as that proclaimed by Nietzsche: That by trying to achieve a "god's-eye perspective" Plato showed his hate of human life. Again, this seems wrong. Human experi­ ence, as the Symposium teaches, includes the desire to achieve a god's-eye perspective; we are erotic and seek immortality. This desire belongs not only to some mystical elite, but is reflective of ordinary human striving and talking. While it is therefore true that the desire for philosophy is 203

DOI: 10.4324/9781003150237-5

204 EPILOGUE urged by the dialogues, it does not follow that they are "crystalline" arguments to consummate that desire through the work of pure reason. Instead, they are dramas; philosophical desire is conditioned by the contingencies of the dramatic context Plato so carefully weaves. One of the most important elements constituting that context is rhetoric, which steadfastly keeps its gaze focused on that which is altogether human. Another is poetry, which denies that a logos unaided by the Muse can achieve reliable knowledge. The dialogues, populated as they are by representatives of both rhetoric and poetry—two options that the philosopher cannot dismiss as demonstrably false—thereby reflect the boundaries against which logos must collide and the conflicts by means of which it must be understood. How to end? One question that arises is, Does this book, which argues that the philosopher can refute neither the poet nor the rhetorician, culminate in skepticism? If we simply hearken to the Greek root of "skepticism" (skeptomai: to look at carefully, to consider), then the answer is yes. The story ended with a call to question. But we are not left with skepticism as classically formulated by Pyrrho and preserved by Sextus Empiricus. The goal for the Pyrrhonian is tranquillity (ataraxia). By learning how to oppose any argument about the real nature of things with another argument of equal weight, this skeptic systematically learns how to suspend judgment on all such issues. He learns how to distance himself from and to cease to be disturbed by traditional philosophical questions. The result, so it is claimed, is peace of mind.1 Pyrrhonian skepticism seems to be flawed in its empirical observations about human psychology; in other words, it gets the appearances wrong. The discovery of the equal balance of opposed arguments hardly needs to lead to tranquillity. What if human beings are erotic? What if we push for answers, demand satisfaction even when it is not apparently forthcoming and continually disrupt the balance? If such desires are reflective of who we are (or appear to be), and if certain beliefs must attend them, then Burnyeat's verdict on skepticism seems just: "When one has seen how radically the sceptic must detach himself from himself, one will agree that the supposed life without belief is not, after all, a possible life for man."2 To reformulate: It is skepticism, and not Platonism, that is truly, even systematically, "antitragic." By denying an impulse to greatness, to knowledge, it forecloses the possibility of a tragic collision against the limits of human efficaciousness. If that impulse is, for whatever reason, strongly felt, then skeptical ataraxia will be neither compelling nor even plausible. One further point: Even though this book ended in questions, I did lay a claim to some sort of knowledge that I hoped would reflect that described by Socrates as "human wisdom."3 This knowledge consists in

EPILOGUE

205

an understanding of the contours of those debates that ensue when various versions of the "ancient dispute" arise again and again. It consists, in other words, in knowing what happens when people disagree on very basic issues and then attempt to champion their ideas and discuss their disagreements. If successful, this book showed what happens when the philosopher meets the poet or the rhetorician (or the subversive) and attempts to engage her in an argument over her fundamental beliefs. It is true that such arguments cannot be conclusively and rationally settled. This need not, however, lead to a skeptical abandonment of the dispute. Precisely because the issues are so basic and compelling, the representatives of the various positions rarely relinquish their desire to defend their claims. As a result, the battles, it seems, must be fought again and again. Articulating the patterns that such arguments regularly follow was the content of this book; if it succeeded, such an articulation constitutes its claim to knowledge. The skeptical notion that the battles could some day cease seems to be neither accurate, coherent, nor desirable.4 Only a small selection of passages from a few of the many dialogues was used to substantiate the thesis that the conception of logos this book proposed was in fact Platonic. As a result, and as any classical scholar will surely realize, not nearly enough textual material was analyzed to warrant a claim about Plato simpliciter. A vast number of scholars have commented on virtually every line of text that was cited. About most of these commentators the book was silent. This is not because their works are unimportant. It is because this book was animated mainly by a desire to confront directly and accessibly certain issues that the Platonic dialogues raise. Far from being merely of antiquarian interest, the dialogues provoke questions that occur continually to reflective people. They treat such questions coherently and with an unmatched fidelity to our experiences. As a result, even today they can play a significant role in shaping our lives. Using ancient books as a guide, I tried to enter into a debate that is alive and well: What role should logos play in our lives? Can it speak to our deepest longings, or must we abandon or deconstruct it in the name of our humanity? From a variety of perspectives, logos has been damned as the culprit and made accountable for the barrenness that plagues the twentieth century. The subversives counsel us to say "farewell to Reason" and to welcome an age that comes "after Philosophy." Not surprisingly, I shall end this book by reiterating a protreptic response: To relinquish the desire for Truth, for answers, for a rational understanding of our experience and a certification of our values would be a disaster. The desire for

2o6 EPILOGUE Truth is, for whatever reason, felt within and spoken about. This, our logos, sustains our openness to the deepest questions that we are sparked to ask and thereby nourishes us. A life without such logos does not seem worth living for a human being. I hope that you agree; if you do not, I ask only that you try to explain why.

NOTES

PROLOGUE 1. The relationship between Plato and Socrates is notoriously complex. In this book "Socrates" will refer only to the character appearing in Plato's dialogues. I do not mean to imply here that Nietzsche follows the same procedure. I only mean to indicate that I am not willing to broach the issue of Socrates versus Plato in itself or as it appears in Nietzsche's work. Doing so would lead into scholarly disputes of a magnitude so great that they would distract from the main purpose of the book. 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), 97. 3. Ibid., pg. 18. 4. Kenneth Baynes, ed., After Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 7. 5. On this point see Rorty's "Pragmatism and Philosophy," in After Philosophy, 26-65. 6. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 133. As will become apparent, Nussbaum's book treats many of the same issues as my own. I have commented on her work in some detail in "The Tragic Philosopher: A Critique of Martha Nussbaum," Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989): 285-99. Among its other virtues, Nussbaum's book has an extensive bibliography, and I shall refer the reader to it often. 7. Since she is an Aristotelian, this remark obviously does not apply to Nussbaum. 8. Of course, Plato's letters are an exception. 9. Charles Griswold's Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings (New York: Routledge, 1988) contains numerous essays that provide a good overview of the issue of how to read the dialogues. His bibliography is an excellent guide to the literature. 10. Charles Griswold's "Plato's Metaphilosophy: Why Plato Wrote Dialogues?" in Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, 143-67, argues for a similar thesis. 11. This remark should begin to make clear where I diverge from Nussbaum's reading of Aristotle. 12. Paul Feyerabend, Farewell To Reason (London: Verso, 1989).

INTRODUCTION 1. "Techne" and "logos" and their plurals ("technai," "logoi") are Greek, but will be used so often that they will not be italicized.

207

208

NOTES

2. A good introduction to the historical background of tragedy can be found in the articles "The Origins of Tragedy" and "Tragedy in Performance" in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 3. There is no "H" in Greek, only an aspirated iota. 4. This is a point made by John Herrington with regard to the fragments of the other plays by Aeschylus. See his Aeschylus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 45-60. 5. The Greek text is Hude's edition of the Poetics (Oxford: 1969). In general, I will use Oxford editions and supply page numbers of quoted material in the body of the book. 6. These two examples were selected almost at random (for their titles alone) and were written by Herbert Muller and Miguel de Unamuno. 7. The phrase is Stephen Halliwell's translation of 1452a22. See his The Poetics of Aristotle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). 8. See T.C.W. Stinton, "Hamartia in Aristotle and Greek Tragedy," Classical Quarterly, 25 (1975): 221-54. 9. Examples of where Aristotle cites Oedipus Tyrannus in his Poetics are 1452a25, 1452a33, 1453a20, 1453b6, 1454b8, 1455al8. I would use these and other references to defend the familiar assertion that this play is for Aristotle the paradigmatic tragedy. 10. The Greek text is Pearson's edition (Oxford: 1975). The translation is mine, but R.D. Dawe's commentary, Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and David Grene's translation in the Chicago series (The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore) have been consulted. 11. See Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 388-89. 12. The term "tyrannus" can be usefully opposed to "basileus" The latter refers to a king whose rule has been inherited; the former is someone from the outside who has gained the rule of a city. Oedipus thinks he is the former, when in fact he is the latter. Bernard Knox has made this point in "Why is Oedipus Called Tyrannos," in Word and Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 87-95. In this book the movement is from logos thinking itself a basileus to realizing it is a tyrannus. 13. This is controversial. The question of what did Oedipus know and when has been debated frequently. I provide evidence for my own answer below. 14. Bill Scott reminded me of another question: Why exactly does Oedipus ask for a sword at 1255? He also first suggested that, since we are left with no stage directions, one of the most pressing questions faced by a would-be director of this play is how to situate Oedipus during the last scene. When exactly does he leave the stage? Is he fully erect or is he bowed? 15. Because of their grammar and meter these last lines are frequently declared spurious. Dawe claims that they are obviously so: see Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, p. 247. Perhaps they are. Nevertheless, they can be fruitfully employed to formulate what I take to be the essential question of the play. 16. Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. 17. Fragment number 50, from Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1952). See also fragments numbers 1 and 2. Heraclitus will be discussed at some length below. 18. A great exception to this statement, one far too complex to discuss here, is Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I realize the short shrift given to Kant. An interesting modern

NOTES

209

example of a theoretical argument designed to show the limits of reason is Nicholas Reschers The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). Rescher even uses the phrase "the tragic fate of philosophy" (pg. 54) to describe his conclusions. 19. It is not necessary for the reader to agree that the physicist must perform exactly the task I have just outlined, only that something like it is required for the physicist, or the philosopher of physics, to justify her conception of logos. 20. I base this discussion on Richard Robinson's "Begging the Question," Analysis 31(197071): 115-17. 21. Jorge Kube, Techne und Arete (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969), 14. Pages 9-35 of this book present a good history of the word. 22. The Greek text is Murray's edition (Oxford: 1975). The translation is mine, but I have consulted Mark Griffith's commentary, Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and David Grene's translation in the University of Chicago series. 23. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 95. I substitute "chance" for her "tuche" Terence Irwin, throughout Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford: 1977), wrongly equates techne with productive knowledge. 24. See Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), especially pages 46-61, "The Concept of arithmos" for an informative discussion of these issues. 25. For a discussion of the question, Is techne (or technology) value-neutral? see Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977).

CHAPTER 1 1. Politics, 1253a9-10. The line reads, "Human beings, alone of the animals, have logos." My Greek text is Ross's edition (Oxford: 1988). 2. "Soul" typically translates the Greek "psuche" The latter, however, has a quite different connotation than the former. Rather than use the familiar translation, I employ the cognate "psyche" and hope that its meaning will emerge. The best text to consult for what Aristotle means by the term is of course De Anima, "On the Psyche." 3. See the Physics 194bl6 ff. for a discussion of the "four causes." A good introduction to the subject of Aristotelian teleology is Martha Nussbaum's essay, "Aristotle on Teleological Explanation" in her Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 57-106. Her bibliography is useful in getting a sense of the literature on this subject. 4. This sentence requires one qualification. A human being without a polis cannot live a good human life. Such a being is either a beast or a god (1253a29). 5. See W. Wieland, "The Problem of Teleology," in Articles on Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes (London: 1975). 6. To begin the long argument required here to establish that Aristotle's work is thoroughly "theoretical" and then to explain what this means I would examine his frequent use of the verb "theoreo" and then see if this meshes with his description of cognitive activity in the De Anima. One difficulty that plagues any attempt to decide upon the character of Aristotle's "prose" is that it is probable that what remains of his written work is lecture notes.

210 NOTES 7. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. MacQuarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 56. Heidegger is talking here about the Greek conception of logos in general. I think he is wrong in applying it to Plato, but helpful in thinking about Aristotle. 8. The Greek text is W.D. Ross's critical edition of the Metaphysics, vol. I (Oxford: 1970). Note that hearing is required for learning at 980b23. 9. The second citation is from a chapter of the Metaphysics that may not have been written by Aristotle. (See Ross's commentary, p. 213.) Even so, it is, I believe, Aristotelian in spirit and therefore illuminating in the context in which I cite it. For a recent discussion of Aristotle's view of perception see Deborah Modrak, Aristotle: The Power of Perception (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). 10. Aristotle uses this sort of "argument" at Metaphysics 1008bl5-16, which I will discuss in a later section. This section of the Metaphysics exemplifies what it means to approach logos from the perspective of the true and false. 11. My Greek text of De Interpretatione is Minio-Paluello's edition (Oxford: 1966). J.L. Ackrill's translation and commentary (Oxford: 1968) has also been consulted. 12. As Nussbaum's "Aristotle on Teleological Explanation" shows, this modern project was prefigured in antiquity by Democritus. 13. See Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976), 11 and 30, where he specifically mentions this Aristotelian text. See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 40-41. 14. I borrow the phrase "dead dog" from Paul Feyerabend who writes that Aristotle isn't one in Science in a Free Society (London: NLB, 1978), 53 ff. See also his "In Defence of Aristotle," in Progress and Rationality in Science, ed. G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), 143-180. 15. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 261. Her entire section on Aristotle should be consulted both to illuminate the reading I propose as well as to offer an alternative to it. 16. My Greek text is By water's edition (Oxford: 1962). 17. The material I place in square brackets are my own attempts to clarify the text. 18. This is a highly controversial argument. See Nussbaum, "The Function of Man," in De Motu Animalium, 100-106. Her notes provide a good introduction to the literature on this issue. 19. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann. (New York: Penguin, 1968), 52. 20. In this section I imitate the protreptic arguments that are given by Socrates in Plato's Euthydemus. Aristotle himself wrote a protreptic work which probably was similar to those arguments. Today it can only be speculatively reconstructed. See for example Aristotle's Protrepticus: An Attempt at Reconstruction by Ingemar During (Goteborg: 1961). 21. Sec Metaphysics 1006a25. 22. My formulation of relativism is idiosyncratic. I do not believe, however, that acceptance of it in all its detail is required for the argument to progress. Relativism comes in several varieties—ethical, cognitive, ontological, vulgar, etc.— and there is a mountain of literature on each. Two recent anthologies are Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989) and Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,

NOTES 211 1982), both edited by Michael Krausz (the latter volume with Jack Meiland). Also see Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, 19-89. I focus on ethical relativism because it is familiar and rather easy to think about. I later shift to epistemological relativism when talking about truth. Ultimately I think such a shift is justified. The pursuit of the truth is a human activity and as such requires a positive evaluation before its commencement. In this sense, ethical precedes epistemological relativism. 23. This view is accepted by J.L. Mackie in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977). What is interesting about Mackie's position is that although he accepts this point he maintains that on a "higher level" relativism is nevertheless true. He admits "that a belief in objective values is built into ordinary moral thought and language, but [holds] that this ingrained belief is false" (p. 49). 24. Much of my discussion of silence is inspired by what Stanley Rosen has to say in Nihilism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969). 25. Rorty does not explicitly follow Nietzsche. His heroes are Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Heidegger, whom he describes as "therapeutic" and "edifying," rather than "systematic," thinkers. See the introduction to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 26. Doing this of course prejudices the argument in favor of Plato. No attempt will be made to do justice to the historical Protagoras except insofar as I quote his famous dictum (the text for which comes from Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker). The types of arguments that will later be brought to bear against Protagoras will be similar to those employed in the Theaetetus. Since Protagoras antedates Aristotle it is peculiar to say that he challenges him. As stated in the prologue, the strategy informing this book is to position various Greek texts not into a chronological sequence, but into a dramatic one. The ideas championed by Protagoras were surely available to Aristotle and so I do not think that this procedure is distorting. 27. Laszlo Versenyi, in his Socratic Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) 8— 38, is sympathetic to Protagoras and has an interesting analysis of "things" in his famous saying. 28. I think in particular of how Plato treats Protagoras in his Theaetetus. 29. Despite what I have just said, the historical Protagoras apparently had a reasonably good reputation in Athens. For a defense of him see Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 100-106. 30. For a more detailed and sympathetic view of the Sophists see G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For a polemical defense of sophistry see Brian Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 31. This definition comes from the Republic and will be discussed below. 32. Nietzsche. The Will to Power, no. 429 (New York: Random House, 1967). For the connection between Nietzsche and Callicles see the appendix to E.R. Dodds's commentary on the Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), titled "Socrates, Callicles, and Nietzsche." 33. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 59. This is from Kaufmann with some small modifications. 34. I have discussed this issue at length in "Socrates' Use of the Techne- Analogy, "Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), 295-310.

212 NOTES 35. "Dunatotatos" is somewhat ambiguous here. In this context it means "most capable." In others, it could well mean "most powerful." 36. In other dialogues Socrates also formulates, or reformulates, an opponent's claim to make it include profession of a techne. I think, for example, of Gorgias 449a, Ion 530b, Charmides 165c ("episteme" is used here, but in this context is synonymous with "techne"), and Republic 332c. 37. Nussbaum also finds him quite sympathetic: The Fragility of Goodness, 89-121. So does Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 157. For an extended defense of Protagoras see D. Loenen, Protagoras and the Greek Community (Amsterdam: 1940). My translation should be compared with that found in the Loeb edition. I occasionally omit some lines in order to shorten the text. 38. The issue of myth will be discussed in the two sections titled "The Philosopher and the Poet." 39. See, for example, Loenen, Protagoras and the Greek Community, 22-23. 40. "Dikaiosune" and "sophrosune" replace "aidos" and "dike.'" 41. I refer to 329c where Socrates abruptly changes directions and begins the "unity of virtue" argument. 42. A view somewhat similar to my own is presented by A.W.H. Adkins in "Arete, Techne, Democracy and the Sophists," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 93 (1973): 3-12. 43. This is in stark contrast to Socratic myths where the soul figures so prominently. Consider, for example, the "palinode" of the Phaedrus. 44. C.C.W. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras (Oxford: Clarendon Plato Series, 1976), 101. 45. Protagoras' fragment on religion reads: "Concerning the gods I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much to prevent one's knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man's life." (The text is The Older Sophists, edited by Rosamond Sprague [Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972], 20.) My view diverges sharply from the more typical one, such as that held by Loenen, that Protagoras and Callicles are extremely different kinds of characters. My own, and I believe Plato's, view is that Protagoras is simply more artful in disguising his position. 46. Stanley Rosen has made a similar point in a series of complex and useful writings. I refer to his Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), especially "Transcendental Ambiguity: The Rhetoric of the Enlightenment." Also see his "A Central Ambiguity in Descartes," in The Ancients and the Moderns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 22-36. 47. The word "fable" appears on page 4 in the Discourse. For a discussion of what Descartes means by it, see Etienne Gilson's text and commentary on the Discourse (Paris: 1967). In citing page numbers I refer to the standard Adam and Tannery edition, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: 1897-1910). I use the English translation of Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980). Cress includes the standard pagination in his edition. 48. Gilson's commentary, 109-19, has a detailed discussion of Descartes' curriculum. 49. Gilson, pp. 130-31, states that Descartes probably had Seneca and the Stoics in mind here. Even so, his remarks would seem to apply fairly to logos as well. 50. This section refers to Phaedo 89d-91c. It should be noted that Socrates explicitly says that logoi are not like human beings, most of whom are metaxu (90b4). Also, note that Socrates does use the phrase techne peri tous logous at 90b7. Finally, it's obvious that Descartes himself speaks of "morals . . . the highest and most perfect moral system,

NOTES 213 which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom" (Principles of Philosophy, 14). I shall comment on this line shortly. 51. Le Corbusier here comes to mind. 52. The more complete presentation of the method is given in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind. 53. The point I make here, which could be described as a critique of the Enlightenement, is surely not original. Rosen has made versions of it numerous times. From a different perspective, so have Horkheimer and Adorno in a work like Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Gumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). The literature criticizing the "Cartesian" scientific world is voluminous. To return to the last point made in note 50: It is obvious that in my discussion of Descartes I have said nothing about his "theology" or his other works. These, one could argue, are precisely his attempt to comment upon the world of human significance. I believe that finally a reading of these works would confirm what I have said so far, but in this book I do not document that assertion. Attempting to do so would force me into a scholarly argument that would go beyond the limits of this short section. 54. Hiram Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 56. Caton here is voicing agreement with the position of Gilson and Alquie. The metaphor of the tree of knowledge comes from the Principles of Philosophy, 14. The key to Cartesian "morality" is "generosity": "I believe that true generosity, which causes a person's self-esteem to be as great as it may legitimately be, has only two components. The first consists in his knowing that nothing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose his volitions. . . The second consists in his feeling within himself a firm and constant resolution to use [his freedom] well—that is, never to lack the will to undertake and carry out whatever he judges to be best" (Principles, 446). 55. By contrast, consider the following assertion by Rorty: "Unlike Nietzsche and Heidegger, however, the pragmatists did not make the mistake of turning against the community which takes the natural scientist as its moral hero—the community of the secular intellectual which came to self-consciousness in the Enlightenment. James and Dewey rejected neither the Enlightenment's choice of the scientist as moral example, nor the technological civilization which science had created. They wrote, as Nietzsche and Heidegger did not, in a spirit of social hope" (Consequences of Pragmatism, 161). Given Rorty's assumptions, I do not understand what he means when he accuses Nietzsche of making a "mistake." I think what he means by "spirit" in the last clause is actually just a mood. 56. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 75. I have modified Kaufmann somewhat here. 57. I should note that this is a quite traditional reading of Descartes, which would be challenged by someone like Hiram Caton in his The Origin of Subjectivity. 58. My text for Spinoza is The Complete Works of Spinoza, trans. E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). I only cite Curley's pagination. 59. Again, see Nussbaum, "Aristotle on Teleological Explanation," in De Motu Animalium, 59-106, for an extended discussion of this issue. 60. See, for example, the Introduction to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 3-13. 61. See Theaetetus, 179e ff. The issue of self-reference as applied to Protagoras is frequently discussed in the literature. See, for example, M.F. Burnyeat, "Protagoras and SelfRefutation in Plato's Theaetetus," The Philosophical Forum, 85 (1976): 172-95. My own discussion of this issue occurs in "Can the Relativist Avoid Refuting Herself?" Philosophy and Literature, 14 (1990): 92-98, where I criticize Barbara Smith's Contingencies of Value.

214

NOTES

62. In fairness to Protagoras, he never quite does this in the Protagoras. Instead, he presents a myth, a story, and not an argument designed to verify his position. The significance of myth will be discussed below in the sections titled "The Philosopher and the Poet." 63. See note 23. 64. See Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 315-322. 65. Ibid., 394. 66. Rorty doesn't think he is a relativist. See "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism," in Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 160-75. 67. There is a great deal of literature on Thrasymachus. For recent examples, see B. O'Neill's "The Struggle for the Soul of Thrasymachus," Ancient Philosophy, 8 (1988): 167-86; F. Sparshott, "An Argument for Thrasymachus," Apeiron, 21(1988), 55-67; and P.P. Nicholson's "Unravelling Thrasymachus's Arguments in the Republic" Phronesis, 19(1974): 210-32. 68. Again, it is Socrates who first uses the term "techne" in the dialogue (332c). He thus establishes, at the outset, the terms of this discussion. 69. In typical fashion, Socrates is quick to generalize after only a few examples. 70. Perhaps it is going too far to call him a technicist; the word "techne" is so common and its meaning usually so broad, that to adopt it as a description of one's abilities may simply reflect ordinary usage. 71. This is a highly truncated version of Spinoza on teleology. After all, he did have an elaborate political philosophy. The issue of whether it is possible, for example, to have a nonrelative theory of rights without teleology needs to be explored. 72. Baynes, After Philosophy, 7.

CHAPTER 2 1. I translate this, the shortest of all Plato's dialogues, almost in entirety because it is so rarely read. To make it slightly shorter I left out 407d-e. I coin an English word, "to protrepticize," in order to keep the Greek visible to the reader. For an alternative translation see that by Clifford Orwin in The Roots of Political Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 111-116. Orwin's interpretive essay should also be consulted. 2. Ergon can mean "product," "result," or "activity." 3. I have commented at length on this dialogue in an earlier version of this section, "The Riddle of the Cleitophon," Ancient Philosophy 4 (1984): 132-145. I think I succeed in showing that the dialogue is genuine. 4. This is the key point made by Jan Blits in his article, "Socratic Teaching and Justice: Plato's Cleitophon" Interpretation, 13 (1985): 321-334. 5. I can think of no other character in the dialogues who is treated this way. 6. This sense of silence is articulated by Stanley Rosen in his chapter on Wittgenstein in Nihilism. 7. Also consider Philebus' silence in the Philebus and Callicles' in the Gorgias. 8. An earlier version of parts of this section appeared as "The Erotics of Philosophical Discourse," in the History of Philosophy Quarterly 4 (1987): 117-130.

NOTES 215 9. A famous opposition is between eros, the "pagan" or "epithumotic" conception of love, and agape, the Christian conception. On this subject see Anders Nygren, Eros and Agape (Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1953). 10. Of course, a more accurate way to put this is to say that human beings love nothing other than what they think is good. 11. All material in brackets is my commentary. The various "stages" I label could be debated: I use them only for convenience. I use the term "initiate" because the language here is that of religious initiation. For a more idiomatic translation see Nehamas and Woodruffs (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). 12. "To have more" translates "pleonechein" a word used by Callicles and Socrates in the Gorgias. 13. Such a view is, I believe, compatible with the political teaching of the Republic. Saying this puts me in the camp of the notorious Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom. Bloom's interpretive essay in the The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 307-436 is a good introduction to this line of interpretation. I do not intend to try to defend it myself. Let me only say that, in response to Strauss's many critics, 1 think that a sober, clearly argued interpretation can validate the apparently strange idea that the principal teaching of the Republic is that political justice is impossible. 14. Among contemporary scholars Plato's theory of Ideas is perhaps his most talked about legacy. The amount of literature on it is vast. A. Wedberg's "The Theory of Ideas," in Plato: /, ed. G. Vlastos (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), is a clear introduction to the issue. 15. I refer to Phaedrus and Pausanias, who if not Sophists themselves are surely friends of the Sophists, Eryximachus the doctor, and Aristophanes and Agathon the poets. 16. "Realize" translates "katanoesai" at 210a8. Verbs related to seeing abound: theasasthai at 210c2, idem at 210c4, blepon at 210c7, theoron at 210d4 are only some examples. 17. Parts of an earlier version of this section appeared as "The First Philosopher (and the Poet)" in Classical and Modern Literature, 6 (1985): 39-54. The first quote in this paragraph comes from R.E. Allen Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle (New York: Free Press, 1966), 1. The second and third come from G. S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 98, 73. 18. D. R. Dickes, "Thales," Classical Quarterly, 9 (1959): 298. See also Diogenes Laertius, 1.23. This little piece of information could be put to good use by a deconstructionist. 19. For a sense of the literature see Leo Sweeney, Infinity in the Presocratics: A Bibliographical and Philosophical Study (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972). 20. It is true that the philosphers Empedocles and Parmenides also wrote poetically. I would argue, however, that in their case the form of their writing is not an essential component of their thought; in other words, their thought could be translated into prose without being damaged. As we will see, this is not the case with a genuine poet like Hesiod. 21. The translation I use is that of H.G. Evelyn-White in the Loeb Classical Library. 22. Pietro Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 12. Pucci's reading of Hesiod is somewhat similar to my own; this is especially true of his comparison between Hesiod and Derrida. 23. For this point see Norman O. Brown, Hesiod's Theogony (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1981), 10.

216 NOTES 24. "Void" is Brown's. M.L. West, in Hesiod: Theogony—Works and Days (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) uses "chasm" and says in a note, "This is the literal meaning of the Greek name Chaos; it does not contain the idea of confusion or disorder" (p. 64). 25. On this point see Norman O. Brown, Hesiod's Theogony, 11-13. He refers to this as the human cosmos. 26. See Aristotle's Metaphysics 984b23-31 and 989alO. 27. I call this simple but the problem of no-thing or non-being is hardly that. From its initial articulation in Parmenides to Plato's Sophist to Hegel's treatment of it, it is of decisive importance in the history of philosophy. Stanley Rosen has an interesting essay on nothing: "The Limits of Analysis: Linguistic Purification and the Nihil Absolutum," in Ancients and Moderns. 28. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 22 29. Many of these comments about writing are prefigured in Plato's Phaedrus. Derrida has commented on this text in "Plato's Pharmacy," in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.) A good analysis of Derrida's commentary on the Phaedrus is found in Charles Griswold's Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 230-242. 30. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 318. 31. See Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, 13. 32. Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 127. This sentence was brought to my attention by my colleague Tony Smith. For an entertaining critique of Baudrillard, see Robert Hughes, "The Patron Saint of Neo-Pop," New York Review of Books, 36 (June 1,1989): 29-32. 33. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 7. The affinity between "postmodern" and "preclassical" thought is easily documented by noting the esteem in which the pre-Socratic philosophers are held by both Nietzsche and Heidegger. See, for example, Heidegger's Early Greek Thinking, trans. David P. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1984). I will discuss one such pre-Socratic, namely Heraclitus, shortly. 34. It should be recalled that Protagoras employed a myth in order to respond to Socrates. His doing so should be seen as testimony to his self-knowledge. 35. See Diogenes Laertius, 1.401. 36. Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origin of Greek Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 6. 37. These three fragments come from Aristotle's Metaphysics 983b6-2l, his DeAnima 41 Ia7, and Diogenes Laertius, 1.9. 38. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b22-29. 39. Drew A. Hyland, The Origins of Philosophy (New York: Putnam, 1973), 100. Hyland's entire essay on Thales should be consulted. 40. The order might be reversed: perhaps one begins with a certain form that demands an attendant content. 41. To ask, Who is right? presupposes that one position can actually be "right," a notion unacceptable to the deconstructionist. I should address an issue that perhaps has occurred to some readers. What is the relationship between the type of argumentation 1 present here, and will continue to

NOTES 217 present in later sections, and classical skepticism? Many of my arguments will indeed resemble the skeptical method of balancing equal options. I differ as follows: The goal for the Pyrrhonist skeptic is a life without belief, which in turn is said to constitute a life of tranquillity or ataraxia. This seems to me to be based upon a thesis about human nature that is both wrong in itself and incoherent on its own terms. I will return to this issue in the epilogue.

CHAPTER 3 1. Parts of this section appeared in an earlier form as "The Impossibility of Philosophical Dialogue," in Philosophy and Rhetoric, 19 (1986): 147-65. 2. A former president of the American Philosophical Association, John Smith, said this. (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 56 [1982]: 6.) My reason for citing this speech will be made apparent soon. 3. The argument I present has been formulated in various contexts. There is, for example, the issue of the incommensurability of scientific theories (and the translatability of their terminology) generated by Kuhn's work. 4. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 316. 5. My colleague Tony Smith put this to me as a version of a Habermasian objection. I should state that it was a disagreement with Smith that started me on the train of thought represented in this book. 6. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, xiv. He is quoting Sellars. 7. Ibid., xl. 8. My remark is meant to call into question the coherence of Rorty's attempt to argue philosophically for his position. His real business should be that of getting into conversations with strangers and not arguing with philosophers in learned books. With his discussions of Proust and Nabokov in Contigency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), perhaps he has done this. 9. The strategy of the ad hominem mode of argumentation should be considered as an alternative. When practiced by someone like Socrates, this can be taken as a form of irony. Socrates frequently will adopt his interlocutor's position as his own in order to expose its flaws. I do not think, however, that such a strategy succeeds when dealing with fundamental disagreement: the position is so foreign that, if adopted, there could be no dialogue. 10. I oversimply here in that I ignore the question of theology. The notorious question plaguing the Metaphysics is whether first philosophy studies "being qua being" or "god" or both. 11. See Posterior Analytics 71b27-28 and Nicomachean Ethics 1140b31 ff. The text of the former is the Loeb Edition, ed. Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976). 12. For a good discussion of this see H. Lee "Geometrical Method and Aristotle's Account of First Principles," Classical Quarterly 29 (1935): 113-124. 13. This may not be true. See, for example, Jan Lukasiewicz, "On the Principle of Contradiction in Aristotle," Review of Metaphysics, 24 (1971): 485-509. Also, note the striking phrase eschaten doxan, at 1005b33: in what sense is affirmation of the Principle a doxal 14. R.M. Dancy in Sense and Contradiction (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), disagrees with this. See pp. 29-34. This is a valuable work and should be consulted.

218 NOTES 15. I suppose Rorty would deny any affinity with Thrasymachus. He is a tolerant man who has dedicated his most recent book to the "memory of six liberals" (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity); presumably he is not interested in power politics. He says he is not a relativist. Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced. As is true of many contemporary theorists, Rorty's position is a complex attempt to embrace some version of relativism without becoming vulgar. The reader should investigate whether I am being fair to him or not. 16. These are Dancy's words: they come from Sense and Contradiction, p. 61. The translation of Meta. 1009a6-15 I cited was based on his translation as well as that found in the Loeb edition. 17. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 11. 18. Ibid., 26. 19. Ibid., 19. 20. Ibid., 50. 21. Richard Rorty, "Taking Philosophy Seriously," The New Republic, April 1988: 31-34. 22. For a discussion of Heraclitus' possible book see G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, ThePresocratic Philosophers, 183-85. When I cite Heraclitus I follow Diels and simply place the aphorism number in parentheses. 23. See Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 187-88. 24. Two immediate objections can be raised against this statement. First, one could argue that child's play is ideological. For example, even apparently purposeless play can be interpreted as being for the sake of learning. This may well be the case. Still, on the surface child's play seems to be purposeless. The second objection is that Heraclitus speaks so often of the regularity of change. This will be discussed shortly. 25. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago: 1962), 55. 26. See the section in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, titled "The Three Metamorphoses." To see how seriously play is taken, see Eugen Fink, "The Ontology of Play," in Sport and the Body, ed. Ellen Gerber (Philadelphia: Lea Be Febiger, 1972), 76-86 and Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Play as the Clue to Ontological Explanation," in Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 91-118. 27. Charles Kahn, in The Art of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), argues that this aphorism is not genuine (183-85). 28. Kirk and Raven's book is a good example of this rather standard view of reading Heraclitus. 29. For an interesting commentary on this aphorism see Robert Rethy, "Heraclitus, Fragment 56: The Deceptiveness of the Apparent," Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987): 1-7. 30. Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 54. 31. Examples of Derridean playfulness are his use of an "X" to "cross out" the word "is" (see Margins, 5-6), his playing with his signature in Margins, 330, and the typography of Spurs. 32. See note 2 to this chapter. 33. See Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Descombes is the editor of the Odeon series at Oxford. Its first release was Stanley Rosen's Hermeneutics as Politics.

NOTES 219 34. Of course, I oversimplify the continental/analytical split. These are two camps which have many diverse members. It is surely possible for an analytical philosopher to discuss points of interest in Heidegger's Being and Time or the works of Husserl or Marx. 35. Again, I would attempt to substantiate this assertion about Descartes with an analysis of his key virtue, "generosity." 36. Stanley Rosen, The Ancients and the Moderns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), ix. 37. Seth Schein, The Mortal Hero (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 98. Schein's book is a good introduction to both the Iliad itself and to the enormous amount of scholarship that has been devoted to it. 38. See, for example, VI, 416-20. The translation I cite is that of Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). When no book number is cited, the lines are from XXIII. Parts of this section appeared in earlier form as "Iliad XXIII: The Tragicomedy of Athletics," Arete, 3 (1986): 159-68. 39. See XXII, 345-49; XXI, 175 ff.; XVII 229-30. 40. Homer's treatment of traditional material is a major concern of Schein's. For a discussion of the role of athletic games in funerals see L.E. Roller, "Funerary Games for Historical Persons," Stadion, 1 (1981): 1-18. 41. There are, of course, "natural" limitations to such conventions. The hoop could not, for example, be placed fifty feet high. No one could reach it. 42. Again, Schein's book is a good place to start to understand the Homeric notion of glory. 43. An eloquent defense of the position that Homer is opposed to war itself comes from Simone Weil, "The Iliad or the Poem of Force," trans. M. McCarthy. (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlets, 1957). 44. This section appeared in preliminary form as "Plato's Critique of Postmodernism," in Philosophy and Literature 11 (1987): 282-91. 45. "The Corybantes were priests of Cybele, the Phrygian mother-goddess:" Plato's Ion, a commentary by Andrew M. Miller (Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College, 1985), 10. 46. For an elaboration see N. Tigerstedt, Plato's Idea of Poetical Inspiration (Helsinki: 1969), 13-18. 47. These two possibilities are mentioned by Paul Woodruff in his English edition of Plato's Ion and Hippias Minor (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), 9. 48. This is rather typical of the sort of claim a Sophist might make. Consider, for example, that Gorgias says he can answer all questions (Gorgias 447d) or the claims made by the Sophists in the Euthydemus. 49. My view is in stark contrast to the more orthodox way of reading Plato's relationship to the poets. There is a mountain of literature on this subject. Again, consult Nussbaum's Plato interpretation in The Fragility of Goodness to get a sense of the position I oppose as well as the literature. 50. There are, I believe, several such crucial junctures throughout the dialogues. One is Gorgias finally specifying a specific object of his techne at Gorgias 454b. Another is when Thrasymachus rejects Cleitophon's advice, a mistake Protagoras avoids. 51. Far too many Plato commentators ignore the dramatic context in which Socrates' various arguments are imbedded. The question of how properly to read the dialogues

22O

NOTES

is itself an old dispute. A good place to begin its study is Charles Griswold's introduction to Platonic Readings; Platonic Writings (New York: Routledge, 1988). 52. The best example of this tendency that I know is found in Barbara Smith's The Contingencies of Value.

53. Consider what Socrates says about the poets in the Apology: they have "many fine things to say, but they don't know what they're talking about" (22c). In other words, what they say is in itself fine; the poets cannot, however, give a logos defending what's fine about it. When they try to, they get into trouble. 54. A question should be asked: Is techne as strict as Socrates makes it out to be? Is it possible that a more flexible notion of techne, such as that found in Isocrates and which later came to be known as "stochastic," is a viable option? I shall explore this issue in depth in a future work. 55. A few of the many commentators who argue that Socrates has, or thinks he has, a techne, include Jorge Kube, Techne und Arete, Terence Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory, Rosamond Kent Sprague, Plato's Philosopher King (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974), and Morimichi Kato, Techne und Philosophie bei Platon (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986). There is a great deal of literature on this issue. This, too, I plan to discuss in a later work. 56. Paul Woodruff discusses what he calls "non-expert knowledge" in "Plato's Early Theory of Knowledge," in Epistemology ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 57. The notion of a second-order techne is Sprague's. See note 55. 58. This seems to violate the usual Socratic procedure of specifying what something is before discussing what it is like. 59. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 36. (There is a quite peculiar feature of my copy of this book. After page 20 comes page 36 which is followed by page 35, 34, etc. This happens until page 21 which is followed by 37. I've assumed this was just a printing error. Maybe it's not.) 60. As anyone familiar with his work will realize, this section and the previous one on play were inspired by my teacher Drew Hyland. (All errors and confusions are, however, my responsibility.) His The Question of Play (University Press of America, 1984) and The Virtue of Philosophy (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986) represent his own elaboration of the themes of eros, play, and questioning.

EPILOGUE 1. A good introduction to skepticism is Sextus Empiricus, ed. and intro. Philip Hallie (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985). For a discussion of the modes, see Julia Annas, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 2. Myles Burnyeat, "Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism," in Doubt and Dogmatism, ed. M. Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 53. 3. "Human wisdom" translates anthropina sophia at Apology 20d8. 4. A final formulation of my divergence with skepticism: It is ultimately "Buddhistic." I mean this metaphorically, but there is a possibility that Pyrrho was in fact influenced by the Buddhists: see Everard Flintoff, "Pyrrho and India," Phronesis 25 (1980): 88108. Robyn Smith kindly showed me this article.

INDEX

Achilles, 166-9 Aeschylus, 1, 2, 21; Prometheus Bound, 18-20 Anaximander, 137 Arche ("first principle," "origin"), 130-32, 135-9, 144, 181 Arete ("excellence," "virtue"), 59-62, 64, 93, 99-103, 187, 188, 190 Arithmetic, 19, 21 Aristotle, xii, xiii, 16, 17, 29, 30, 44, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 62-9, 77, 79, 95, 96, 108, 121-2, 129, 130, 137, 159, 175, 191, 196-8; De Anima, 27; De Interpretatione, 28, 29, 124, 154, 155; Metaphysics, 26, 27, 148-153, 163; Nicomachean Ethics, 30-3, 68, 109; Poetics, 2-3, 8; Politics, 12, 236, 31, 32, 70; Posterior Analytics, 149 Athens, 1, 3,45,46,47, 118 Athletics, 166, 168-174, 192 Axioms, 106, 149 Beauty, Idea of, 122-4, 196-8 Beauty, itself, 120 Beautiful, the, 111, 115, 120 Begging the question, 16, 17, 106 Burnyeat, Miles, 204 Callicles, 48-50, 63, 76, 77, 82, 84, 86, 104, 106, 118, 191-3 Certainty, 71, 72, 74, 76, 82, 87 chaos ("chasm," "gap"), 128-131, 134-6, 144, 152, 181 Cleitophon, 89-91, 97-109, 121, 141,

143, 151, 154, 174, 175, 177, 181, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 193, 203 Conversation, 86, 87, 95, 141, 142, 145, 146 Creativity, 44 Daimon ("spirit"), 111 Deconstruction, xii, 88, 134, 135, 192, 195, 196 DeLillo, Don, xv Democracy, 47, 141 Derrida, Jacques, ix, x, xii, xiii, 29, 34, 44, 45, 50, 76, 95, 132-5, 163, 165, 195; Of Grammatology, 154-6 Descartes, ix, xii, 15, 21, 44, 64-77, 80, 82, 84, 87, 93, 94, 103, 107, 165, 181, 190; Discourse on Method, 65-75 Desire, 33, 34, 108, 110, 112-4, 116 Determinateness, 19, 20 Dialogue, xii, xiii, 98, 106, 107, 140151, 153, 164, 192,200,203,204 Diotima, 111-125, 196-99 Drama, 14 Epithumia ("desire"), 110 Eros, 109-22, 191, 196-9, 200, 201 Eudaimonia ("happiness"), 32—4, 36, 37,42, 111 Euripides, 1, 2 Fate, 3, 4 Forms, the, 95 Freud,120

221

222

INDEX

Games, 169-172, 174, 194, 195, 198, 199 Good, the, 85, 86, 111, 112 Gorgias, xiii, 88, 92, 93 Griswold, Charles, 207, 220 Hamartia ("tragic mistake"), 3, 4 Heidegger, Martin, ix, 26, 27, 155, 163 Heraclitus, xii, 12, 155-163, 165, 173, 191, 193, 197, 203 Hero, tragic, 3-5, 13 Hesiod, xii, 126-132, 134-6, 138, 139, 141, 145, 151, 152, 154, 156, 175, 177, 179, 191, 203; Theogony, 127-132, 180, 181 Homer, xii, 18, 176; Iliad, 166-9, 172, 173 Hyland, Drew, 216, 220 Ideas, Platonic 120, 197-9 Immortality, 112, 113, 120, 123 Inspiration, 130 Intelligibility, 129, 131, 138 Irrational, the, 74, 76, 77, 87, 190 Kant, 13 katharsis, 5, 6 Limits, 5, 11-14, 182, 193, 196, 201, 204 Logocentrism, 29, 35, 154 Macbeth, 33, 114 Mathematics, 15, 16, 20, 31, 66-70, 75_7, 79_80, 82, 87, 148 Medicine, 20, 21 Misology, 68, 69, 74, 154, 156, 1635, 174, 194-5 Morality, 50, 81 Morality, provisional, 64-77, 80, 87, 183, 190 Muses, 126-132, 134-9, 152, 174, 178, 179, 181, 182, 204 Myth, 56, 125, 126

Nature, 12, 23-9, 32, 34, 43, 75, 77, 80, 82, 87, 94, 101 Nietzsche, ix-xi, xv, 1, 35, 44, 50, 54, 64, 76, 133, 135, 139, 155, 156, 158, 162, 163, 173, 192, 193, 203 Nihilism, 96 Nothingness, 131 Nussbaum, Martha, xi, 203, 204, 207 Objectivity, 90, 91, 105, 197, 198 Oedipus, 3-14 Optimism, theoretical, x, xi, xiv, 44 Ordinary, the, 29, 35, 79-81, 194, 195 Peripeteia ("reversal"), 3, 8, 13, 14 Pessimism, 1 Philosophy, 37, 49, 70, 72, 86, 94, 104, 119, 120, 126, 141, 142, 145, 163, 164, 186, 192, 193, 197-200, 204 Phono-centrism, 132, 134, 154, 155 Physics, 74-76, 96 Pity, ix-xv, 4, 5 Plato, ix-xv, 96, 97, 124, 125, 133, 139, 141, 190, 191, 193, 196, 201, 203, 204; Apology, 140; Cleitophon, 98-107; Gorgias, 48, 92; Ion, 176185; Laches, 187, 188; Phaedo, 689; Protagoras, 45, 46, 50-64, 187, 188; Republic, 21, 48, 88-92, 94, 104-7, 118; Symposium, 109-125, 196-200; Theaetetus, 85 Platonism, x, 86, 87, 87, 135, 145, 192, 199, 204 Play, 44, 135, 146, 155-8, 161-3, 165, 166, 168-175, 192 Poeticism, 93-6, 122, 125, 183, 186 Poetry, 94, 122, 125-7, 130, 136, 138, 139, 152, 156, 178-186, 192, 197, 201, 204 Polis ("city-state"), 23-26, 32, 46, 47, 51,53,59,62,74, 117-119 Power, 48, 49, 118, 192 Precision, 20, 30, 31, 65, 68, 69, 74 Principle of Noncontradiction, 144,

INDEX 148-153, 159, 160, 163-4, 175, 194 Probability, 66, 68, 73, 76 Prometheus, 18, 19, 54, 55, 58, 62 Prose, 126, 127, 137, 156, 179 Protagoras, xiii, 45, 51-65, 74, 76, 77, 80, 84, 85, 93, 94, 97, 104, 153, 154, 185, 187, 188, 191, 203 Protreptic, 35-38, 37, 42, 43, 67, 78, 97, 100, 102, 107, 182, 185-9, 193-5,201,205 Psyche, 24, 28 Pyrrho, 204, 205 Recognition, 5-8, 17 Relativism, 40-3, 47, 48, 53, 62, 74, 76, 83-6, 87, 88, 90, 92-4, 105-8, 153, 154, 185, 189, 193, 194, 1979, Rhapsode, the, 176, 177, 182 Rhetoric, 31, 47, 49, 52, 61, 62, 64, 74,88,92, 103-5, 151, 186, 192, 204 Rorty, Richard, x-xiii, 29, 30, 34, 44, 45, 50, 64, 76, 84, 86, 87, 93, 95, 134, 144-6, 164, 192, 194,213 Rosen, Stanley, 211, 212, 214, 216, 219

223

84-6,92-4, 104, 106, 121, 122, 174, 187, 197, 199 Sophocles, xii, 1, 2, 7; Oedipus the King, 6-12, 14 Spinoza, xii, 76-82, 84, 93, 94, 123, 165, 191 Substance, 155, 159 Subversives, the, xi, xii, 29, 35, 44, 45, 47, 50, 64, 76, 81, 95, 98, 152, 154, 163, 191, 194, 205, Suffering, 4-6, 8 Superstition, 79, 82 Techne, 1, 15, 18-21, 32, 51-8, 67, 75, 76, 87, 88, 91-3, 99-103, 1769, 181-193, 198, 201 Techne-Analogy, 51-4, 58, 60, 61, 93, 97, 103, 184-8, 190, 193 Techne, political, 53, 54, 59, 60 Technicism, 87, 88, 183 Technology, ix-xi, 18, 35, 44, 82, 87 Teleology, 25, 29, 35, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 94, Telos, 24, 25, 32-4, 42, 62 Temporality, 113, 114 Thales, 125-7, 136-9, 141, 143, 156, 161, 175, 179, 191 Thrasymachus, xiii, 48, 88-92, 103, 104, 106, 151, 152, 174, 186, 188, 189, 190-2, 203 Tragedy, x, xi, 1-12, 21, 173, 193, Truth, x, xi, 84-6, 95-8, 135, 145, 146, 151, 163, 175,205,206 Tyrannus ("tyrant"), 6, 208

Scientific Revolution, ix, 45 Self-reference, 82, 84, 85, 131, 180, 181,201, Sextus Empiricus, 204 Signified, the, 132-4, 155, 156, 163 Signifier, the, 132-4, 155, 163, 165, Silence, 41, 105-7, 143, 146, 151, Values, 21, 26, 32, 40-2, 44, 46-8, 152, 182, 186, 192, 195 50, 53, 54, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 77, Skepticism, 204-5 80, 82-5, 90, 94, 96, 108, 189, 192, Smith, Tony, 217 205 Socrates, x, xii, 48-54, 57-61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 74, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91-3, War, 158, 169, 170, 172, 173 102-4, 105-7, 141, 143, 151, 174Wonder, 27, 28 191, 193-5,201,203,204 Writing, 132-5, 155 Sophists, the, 45-53, 64, 74, 77, 82,